Your Brain Might Be a Radio - How "fantastic" stories unlock the nature of consciousness.

[BridgeTheGap]

SCENE 1. Mark Twain was famous for mocking every orthodoxy and convention, including, it turns out, the conventions of space and time. As he relates the events in his diaries, Twain and his brother Henry were working on the riverboat Pennsylvania in June 1858. While they were in port in St. Louis, the writer had a dream:

“In the morning, when I awoke I had been dreaming, and the dream was so vivid, so like reality, that it deceived me, and I thought it was real. In the dream I had seen Henry a corpse. He lay in a metallic burial case. He was dressed in a suit of my clothing, and on his breast lay a great bouquet of flowers, mainly white roses, with a red rose in the centre.”

Twain awoke, got dressed, and prepared to go view the casket. He was walking to the house where he thought the casket lay before he realized “that there was nothing real about this—it was only a dream.”

Alas, it was not. A few weeks later, Henry was badly burned in a boiler explosion and then accidentally killed when some young doctors gave him an overdose of morphine for the pain. Normally the dead were buried in a simple pine coffin, but some women had raised $60 to put Henry in a metal one. Twain explains what happened next:

Read more: http://www.utne.com/mind-and-body/your-brain-might-be-a-radio-zm0z14fzsau.aspx#ixzz3FfKitM2o

[NJCher]

1. Looking forward to reading this tonight

I've long thought of the brain as a radio.

I think drugs alter the "station," and that's why we shouldn't prosecute people for drug use. Some day we will look back on such craziness like we now look back at how they treated the mentally ill in the 1700 and 1800s. Even the 1900s.


Cher

[Thirties Child]

2. Thanks for posting this

So much truth. So much to absorb.

[nenagh]

3. Bookmarking...

thank you...

[Big Blue Marble]

4. Thank you for this article.

This is a thoughtful article about the most important issue of our lives.

[CaptainTruth]

5. We know so little about the brain & the universe, the nature of reality.

I believe some people have this ability, to see upcoming events or events happening miles away. My mother did & my sister & I inherited a bit of it, although I've never tried to cultivate it like my sister has.

[magical thyme]

6. radio/tv receiver has been my take for as long as I can remember

I've had some of those "big dream" precognitive experiences, and they've always involved highly emotional situations.

[ms liberty]

7. great article. bookmarking to revisit later. k&r. n/t

[tomm2thumbs]

8. an interesting read to be sure!

Thanks for posting

[LongTomH]

9. I find this interesting; but, if you had posted this in the Religion forum........

.......you would have the hardcore materialists jumping on you with the paranoid stomping boots!

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. 'paranoid', 'stomping' - that's nice

Very pleasant. I find it interesting that you posted to insult some DUers.

[shrike]

11. My husband had an experience remarkably similar to Twain's, only the deceased was a co-worker

Funeral home was the same as in the dream, the garb the deceased wore in the coffin, flowers. What was particularly weird was the deceased's wife, who looked as she did in his dream. They'd never met.

FTR, neither DH nor I believes in psychics: we think they're charlatans of the worst kind, preying on the bereaved. But these experiences he's had -- more than the one I've mentioned -- have puzzled him. And me. I think the theory outlined in the article is as good as any.