READ Stalking the Wild Pendulum (StWP) pages 60, 62-63
“When a person has been trained by biofeedback to produce
theta waves or can put himself into a deep meditative state and at the same
time is able to watch the second hand of a clock in front of him, he will be
surprised to find that the second hand has come to a stop. It’s a rather
startling experience, and the natural reaction to it is: ‘This is impossible!’
At that moment, the second hand will accelerate and resume its normal rate.
However, if we can get over this reaction and watch with half-open eyes the
face of the clock, while all the time being in a deep meditative state, then we
can keep the second hand from moving for as long as we wish…
Why, then, did the watch slow down or stop altogether for
a while? I propose that the observing mind (or ‘the observer,’ for short), the
entity that correlates and makes sense of the information submitted to it by
the brain, was absent. It went off to the beach and left the ‘hardware’ at
home, unattended. The ‘hardware,’ by which I mean the sensory organs and the
brain, are processing and producing the information, but the entity that
correlates and makes sense of the information, has left the body for a while…
From the moment the watch stopped to the moment it
started moving again, the ‘observer’ was ‘out of the body.’ In cases in which
the watch has only slowed down, the ‘observer’ was ‘split.’ He was partially on
the beach and partially in the body, handling information at a reduced rate.”
What or who is the “observer”?
What is the relationship between the observer and the
brain?
READ StWP page 63
“An alert reader has probably noticed by now an
interesting property of this ‘observer’: He can flit about to distant places in
fractions of a second. He may leave his physical body and be off to a beach
thousands of miles away and be back all within one or two seconds. In the previous chapter we discussed the
behavior of oscillators and pendulums. Let’s recall what happens when a
pendulum comes to one of its extreme positions. We found that between the
points at which the pendulum has to come to a full stop and the point at which
it started on its return trip, there is an area in which causal relationships
between time and space break down, in which its position “smears out” and
infinite or nearly infinite velocities are encountered because of the uncertainty
principle operating on the quantum scale of things. We know that we cannot
accelerate physical objects to the velocity of light, not to speak of infinite
velocities. But under the conditions we are discussing, physical matter loses
its definiteness, it becomes less “solid” thus making it easier for the
observer to separate from it. Our bodies, as we know from Chapter 1, behave in
pendulum-like fashion.”
It is possible that the “observer,” having no physical
mass, could really be flitting back and forth at very high velocities with each
up and down oscillation or movement of the subatomic elements of the body?
How does the observer separate from the body?
Is the “observer” which can “flit” to different locations
a single entity or is there an “observer” in every subatomic element of a human
body?
READ StWP page 71
“Here the attentive reader has probably noticed that in
our subjective time we have unceremoniously slipped through the velocity of
light barrier. This is something that no physical object can do; but our
‘observer,’ being a nonphysical entity, will have no problems doing this.
However, the ‘observer’ is still tenuously linked to the physical body, and the
physical senses still relay messages to him in an undistorted form. He still
operates, although loosely, against a background of physical spacetime.”
If the observer within each of us is a non-physical
entity, what is it?
If the non-physical observer can travel faster than the
speed of light, where could they go?
What does it mean that the observer is still tenuously
linked to the physical body and what does this imply about the physical body?
What does it imply about the observer?
READ StWP page 71
“It is time now for us to start putting together the
assumed bizarre behavior of the pendulum or oscillator discussed in Chapter 3.
When the distances per unit time at the extreme point, through which the
pendulum is moving, become extremely small, almost infinite or infinite speeds
are encountered. But infinite speeds of what? The answer seems to be: infinite
speed of a nonphysical entity, the ‘observer,’ while the physical body loses
its definiteness in space. (We cannot know its position.) The ‘observer’
retains its integrity as an information-processing unit in spite of its rapid
expansion into space, while all we can say about the physical body is that it
‘blinks’ off and on twice per each oscillation, at the points of rest. So, as
our bodies oscillate up and down about seven times a second, the ‘observer’
expands at the end of each movement for an extremely short period of objective
time, then contracts, unaware of the event… This would happen about fourteen
times a second since we have two points of rest per cycle. Normally, we retain
no memory of the event. However, the ‘observer’ can cover long distances within
this very short period of time and observe many things. No wonder then, that he
can be off to a distant beach and be back in a few seconds.”
What does the fact that the non-physical observer retains
its integrity as an information-processing unit mean and imply?
What sorts of things could the observer see when its
consciousness expands?
