hupinghu's blog

Transforming Ideas Into Action: Clinton Global Initiative:
The Clinton Global Initiative is a project of the Clinton Foundation that brings together a community of global leaders, university students, and private citizens to identify and implement innovative solutions to the world's most pressing challenges, including poverty alleviation, climate change, global health, and education.

Combating Climate Change: Clinton Climate Initiative:
The Clinton Climate Initiative is making a difference in the fight against climate change in practical, measurable and significant ways, by working with 40 of the world's largest cities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. CCI is assisting partner cities to make energy-savings improvements to buildings, transit systems, lighting and waste management.

Treating HIV/AIDS & Malaria: Clinton Health Access Initiative:
The Clinton Health Access Initiative is helping to turn the tide on the HIV/AIDS pandemic by working with governments and other partners to increase the availability of high-quality AIDS care and treatment for people in need, lower the cost of essential tests and treatments, and strengthen health systems in the developing world.

Fighting Childhood Obesity: Alliance For a Healthier Generation:
The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a partnership between the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association, is dedicated to ending the increase in childhood obesity and helping all kids and their families lead healthy, active lives.

Promoting Economic Opportunity: Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative:
The Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative is helping families and individuals keep more of the money they make by supporting state and city efforts to promote access to basic financial services. CEO also matches inner-city entrepreneurs with successful business leaders to help them grow their businesses and flourish in an urban economy.

Creating Sustainable Development in Africa: Clinton Development Initiative:
The Clinton Development Initiative in Malawi and the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative in Rwanda work to generate income for smallholder farmers, increase agricultural productivity, and enable sustainable growth to alleviate poverty.

Enabling Sustainable Development: Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative
An innovative partnership between the Clinton Foundation, the private sector, governments, other NGOs and local communities, the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative is working with the natural resource industry to improve health and education programs and alleviate poverty, starting in Latin America.

So, we solute former President Wiliam J. Clinton and his Foundation for "A Decade of Difference."

Huping Hu & Maoxin Wu

October 15, 2011

In his editor’s introduction entitled "Transcending Self-Consciousness", Nixon delivers his introduction with the following opening: "What is this thing we each call “I” and consider the eye of consciousness, that which beholds objects in the world and objects in our minds? This inner perceiver seems to be the same I who calls forth memories or images at will, the I who feels and determines whether to act on those feelings or suppress them, as well as the I who worries and makes plans and attempts to avoid those worries and act on those plans. Am I the subject, thus the source, of my awareness, just as you are the subject and source of your awareness? If this is the case, it is likely impossible to be conscious without the self (yours or mine), the eye of consciousness, and it must certainly not be desirable, for such a consciousness would have no focal point, no self-that-is-conscious to guide it, so it would be cast adrift on wide and wild sea like a boat that has broken from its anchor. Without self-enclosure, “We shall go mad no doubt and die that way,” as Robert Graves (1927/1966) expressed it."

In his first article entitled "Transformations of Self and World I: Modeling a World", Christopher Holvenstot states in his Abstract the following: "Severe seasonal depression entails the yearly collapse and reconstruction of a functional, useable, meaningful world. This radical annual transformation provides a unique perspective onto fundamental conscious processes by illuminating the cognitive elements and dynamics behind the construction and deconstruction of self-models and world-models."

In his second article entitled "Transformations of Self and World II: Making Meaning", Christopher Holvenstot states in his Abstract the following: "A theater workshop, ostensibly about acting, turns out instead to be about not acting, yet answers a lot of questions about how to act in the real world – ironically, by exploring the world of dreams. This transformational experience provides a view into the realm of the psyche, and this view is used to highlight the inappropriateness of empirical precepts in the formation of a field of consciousness studies."

In his article entitled "The Shock of the Old: A Narrative of Transpersonal Experience", Milenko Budimir states in his Abstract the following: "Here I present a description of some transpersonal experiences that occurred as a result of meditation practices as well as reflections on those experiences. I connect these experiences with some historical precedents, particularly to sources in the Eastern Orthodox Christian spiritual tradition, but also to contemporary sources as well as some 20th century philosophical ideas. Lastly, I describe how these experiences ended up shaping a new worldview, the most significant and lasting being a deep sense of interconnectedness with the world. This sense of interconnectedness further lends support to an inclusive rather than an exclusive understanding of religious belief, and correspondingly a mystical sense of the world and humans’ place in it."

In his article entitled "Background Motivations for My Views on Consciousness", Chris Nunn states in his Abstract the following: "I wish to show here that my theories, and my life in general, have been greatly constrained (though I would say enlarged) by a few, brief and unusual experiences. Equally clearly, the content of the experiences reflected to some extent my cultural and personal history. Can they be regarded as no more than a culturally determined curiosity, perhaps a bit like the dancing manias of the Middle Ages or the recent epidemic of ‘alien abduction’ experiences? My personal answer to that question is: ‘No. The experiences truly reflected aspects of Reality that we don’t often perceive and the culturally determined part of their content was just the icing on the cake – how Reality was able to express itself within my particular, very limited mind.’ That’s why I feel it has not been a waste of my time to try to build ideas that promise to integrate experiences of this sort with more mainstream Western understandings, for theories foster observations and, thus, sooner or later, fuller appreciation of truths about ourselves and our world."

In her article entitled "How Often or How Rarely Does a Self-Transcending Experience Occur?", Syamala Hari states in her Abstract the following: "Almost always, the self is involved in our perception of the world, thinking, and actions, but it does momentarily step aside now and then. I describe below a few of my experiences of self-transcendence that seem quite ordinary with nothing mysterious about them and they are all of short duration. To explain how the self is present or not in an experience, I describe some properties characteristic of the self such as its sense of personal identity and ownership of action. Manifestation of these properties in an experience indicates the presence of the self and absence of these properties indicates its absence. In an act of observation, full attention paid to what is being observed seems to push every thought, including the self, out of the conscious mind and keep it fully occupied with the act of observation. A characteristic property of the self-transcendent state seems to be that one can only recognize such a state as being free from self, but one cannot prove that it is so because the outward effect of the state may be the same as that of an alternative state where the self is present."

In his article entitled "Self-Transcendence as a Developmental Process in Consciousness", Roland Cichowski states in his Abstract the following: "After an introduction describing certain difficulties in relating the nature of self-transcending experiences, I give a narrative description of three successive episodes in which a certain relationship and development over time can be discerned. This is followed by a discussion of the impact they have had over the course of my lifetime together with observations on how they have affected my outlook. These experiences have led me to the view that it is more likely that it is consciousness generating the illusion of a material reality than a material reality generating consciousness. I consider self-transcendence to be understood as a stage in the development of the consciousness of each human being, and ultimately in the development of humanity as a whole."

In his article entitled "A Longitudinal History of Self-Transformation: Psychedelics, Spirituality, Activism and Transformation", Phil Wolfson states in his Abstract the following: "A longitudinal historical approach for portraying and examining personal transformation is presented along with a proposed instrument—the Transformational Codex—for cataloging that history and the elements that compose it. One element, psychedelic transformation, is then discussed in depth along with a schema for viewing transformations that may occur related to psychedelic use and practice."

In her article entitled "Transcending the Self Through Art: Altered States of Consciousness and Anomalous Events During the Creative Process", Tobi Zausner states in her Abstract the following: "The capacity for transcending the self through art arises from the creative process, an altered state of consciousness facilitating the occurrence of anomalous events such as precognition and interior visions that appear to be outside the spacetime of waking life. Frustration can trigger the far-from-equilibrium conditions necessary for creativity, while inspiration may seem as if its source is exterior to the artist, and the experience of flow, like a trance state, can produce an altered sense of time. Archetypes in the creative process link a single mind to the collective unconscious and works of art become self-opening worlds that create an expanded reality."

Finally, in his article entitled "Breaking Out of One's Head (& Awakening to the World)", Gregory M. Nixon states in his Abstract the following: "Herein, I review the moment in my life when I awoke from the dream of self to find being as part of the living world. It was a sudden, momentous event that is difficult to explain since transcending the self ultimately requires transcending the language structures of which the self consists. Since awakening to the world took place beyond the enclosure of self-speech, it also took place outside our symbolic construction of time. It is strange to place this event and its aftermath as happening long ago in my lifetime, for it is forever present; it surrounds me all the time just as the world seems to do. This fact puts into question the reality of my daily journey from dawn to dusk with all the mundane tasks I must complete (like writing of that which cannot be captured in writing). My linear march to aging and death inexorably continues, yet it seems somehow unreal, the biggest joke of all. Still, I here review the events leading up to my time out of mind and then review the serious repercussions when I was drawn back into the ego-self only to find I did not have the conceptual tools or the maturity to understand what had happened."

Huping Hu & Maoxin Wu

October 9, 2011

This year's Nobel Peace Prize (see Press Release) has been awarded to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work".

According the Press Release, " We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society."

Congratulation to llen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman!

And congraulations to all women of World who struggle for women's rights, equality and well-beings.

Maoxin Wu & Huping Hu

October 7, 2011

This year's Nobel Prize in physics went to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, Adam Riess. They well deserve the prize and congratulations!

As blogged by Philip E. Gibbs at viXra log: "[i]n the late 1990s these astronomers upset the prevalent belief that the universe’s acceleration must be slowing down due to the pull of gravity. They observed the brightness of distant supernovae in the universe, using them as standard candles to gauge distance. A comparison of the redshift and the brightness was found to be more consistent with the view that the rate of expansion is increasing."

According to Gibbs, "[t]he simplest way to model the expansion is to add a cosmological constant term to Einstein’s gravitational field equations. Such a term means that energy is added to space as it expands which must be compensated by negative gravitational energy from the increasing rate of expansion. The popular term dark energy has been used to refer to this mysterious feature of space and time but its origin remains a mystery and the Nobel prize has only been awarded for the discovery of the acceleration, not for dark energy."

The theoretical side of this amazing discovery is very unsettling and the whole of physics may be transformed by further developments.

Huping Hu & Maoxin Wu

October 4, 2011

Michael Persinger (1993, 2010a & 2010b) is truly a pioneer in the field of experimental studies of mysitical experiences and have done ground-breaking experimental work over the years. In 1999, Wired Magazine published an article entitled "This Is Your Brain on God" in which the author, Jack Hitt stated that "Michael Persinger has a vision - the Almighty isn't dead, he's an energy field. And your mind is an electromagnetic map to your soul."

Persinger states at his website that "[a]s a human being, I am concerned about the illusionary explanations for human consciousness and the future of human existence. Consequently after writing the Neuropsychological Base of God Beliefs (1987), I began the systematic application of complex electromagnetic fields to discern the patterns that will induce experiences (sensed presence) that are attributed to the myriad of ego-alien intrusions which range from gods to aliens. The research is not to demean anyone's religious/mystical experience but instead to determine which portions of the brain or its electromagnetic patterns generate the experience. Two thousand years of philosophy have taught us that attempting to prove or disprove realities may never have discrete verbal (linguistic) solutions because of the limitation of this measurement. The research has been encouraged by the historical fact that most wars and group degradations are coupled implicitly to god beliefs and to the presumption that those who do not believe the same as the experient are somehow less human and hence expendable. Although these egocentric propensities may have had adaptive significance, their utility for the species' future may be questionable."

Our own theoretical and experimental studies (see references at the end) have shown that: (1) Consciousness is prespacetime (non-spatial and non-temporal) and not in the brain; (2) brain is an interface between Consciousness and the external world; (3) quantum spin is the mind-pixel; (4) magnetic field is manifested by the internal world based on the Principle of Existence. Therefore, altered states of consciousness such as sensed presence and out-of-body experience whether they are produced by magnetic, electric or other stimulations or circumstances can be most effectively explained as the changes of the relative contents and/or intensities of the test subjects’ neural quantum entanglement with their surroundings etc. (including possibly spiritual environments or information!).

Thus, interpreted from the perspectives of the latter findings, Persinger's "GOD experiments" might not have proven that GOD and/or mystical experiences are a mere phenomenon localized in the material brain but can be explained as the non-spatial and non-temporal Consciousness through the brain quantum-entangles with his/her environments possibly including the spiritual environment!

For readers interested in more details, please read the below and the articles listed in the Reference.

In a recent article Persinger and his colleague(s) summarize their results as follows (Michael, 2010a):

Quantitative EEG data indicate that a sequence of stimulation by between 1 and 5 uT fields at the scalp’s surface with as little as 10% greater intensity over the right hemisphere compared to the left is associated with greater convergence of theta activity between the left temporal and right prefrontal region. Subsequent bilateral stimulation is associated with greater right-to-left temporal coherence. These two experimental conditions and quantitative EEG patterns are associated with reports of out-of-body experiences and the sensed presence, respectively.
....

The results and approaches of our research and those of Olaf Blanke both show that out-of-body-experiences and the sensed presence can be generated experimentally by stimulating either one or the other of the hemispheres within specific regions. The quality of the experiences, although direct comparisons have not been made, appears to be similar and the quantitative or meaningful intensity reveal similar values for individual salience.
....

[We] reviewed and re-analyzed the approximately 20 experiments involving 407 subjects that have demonstrated the experimental elicitation of either the sensed presence or out of body experience. [Our] re-analyses clearly showed the specific magnetic configurations and not the subjects’ exotic beliefs or suggestibility was responsible for the increased incidence of sensed presences. The subjects’ histories of spontaneous sensed presences before the experiment (and exposure to the magnetic fields) were moderately correlated with exotic beliefs and temporal lobe sensitivity. The side attributed to the presence at the time of the experience was affected by the parameters of the fields, the hemisphere to which they were maximized, and the person’s a priori beliefs.

In vivid terms one test subject in Persinger’s experiment reported “I felt a presence behind me and then along the left side. When I tried to focus on the position, the presence moved. Every time I tried to sense where it was, it moved around. When it moved to the right side, I experienced a deep sense of security like I have not experienced before. I started to cry when I felt it slowly fade away ([Persinger] had changed the field patterns)”.

Also in vivid terms, another test subject reported an out-of-body experience stating “I feel as if there was a bright white light in front of me. I saw a black spot that became a funnel....no tunnel that I felt drawn into. I felt moving, like spinning forward through it. I began to feel the presence of people, but I could not see them. They were along my sides. They were colourless and grey looking. I know I was in the chamber but it was very real. I suddenly felt intense fear and felt ice cold.”

Persinger and colleague (2010a) reasoned that: "Our primary assumption is that consciousness and its variants of mystical states can be expressed as quantum phenomena. If consciousness and thought are coupled to electron movements, then a macroscopic manifestation should be congruent with the magnetic field strengths associated with neurocognitive activities. Access to the information within the movements of an electron, its fundamental charge, and the photon emissions associated with changes in electron movements, would allow mystical states and the information with which they are associated to have alternative interpretations that recruit the fundamental properties of space-time and matter."

Persinger et. al.’s above experimental results can be best explained by the spin-mediated consciousness theory for the reasons stated below:

First, the primary targets of interactions for the weak pulsed magnetic field used by Persinger’s Group are the nuclear and/or electron spins associated with the neural membranes, protein and water etc. Indeed, neural membranes and proteins contain vast numbers of nuclear spins such as 1H, 13C, 31P and 15N.

Second, as we have experimentally demonstrated (Hu & Wu, 2006a-c), pulsed electromagnetic fields (photons) carries information through quantum entanglement from external substance (and environment) which they interacted with.

Third, nuclear spins in the brain form complex intra- and inter-molecular networks through various intra-molecular J- and dipolar couplings and both short- and long-range intermolecular dipolar couplings. Further, nuclear spins have relatively long relaxation times after excitations (Gershenfeld & Chuang, 1997).

Fourth, quantum spin is a fundamental quantum process with intrinsic connection to the structure of space-time (Dirac, 1928) and was shown to be responsible for the quantum effects in both Hestenes and Bohmian quantum mechanics (Hestenes, 1983; Salesi & Recami, 1998).

Therefore, altered states of consciousness such as sensed presence and out-of-body experience whether they are produced by magnetic, electric or other stimulations or circumstances can be most effectively explained as the changes of the relative contents and/or intensities of the test subjects’ neural quantum entanglement with their surroundings etc. (including possibly spiritual environments/information!).

References

Persinger, M. A., Vectorial cerebral hemisphericity as differential sources for the sensed presence, mystical experiences and religious conversions. Psychological Reports, 1993; 76: 915-930.

Persinger, M. A. et.al. The Electromagnetic Induction of Mystical and Altered States within the Laboratory, JCER, 2010a; 1(7): 808-830.

Persinger, M. A. & Lavallee , C. F., The Electromagnetic Induction of Mystical and Altered States within the Laboratory, JCER, 2010b; 1(7): 785-807.

Hu, H. & Wu, M. Spin-mediated consciousness theory. arXiv 2002; quant-ph/0208068. Also see Med. Hypotheses 2004a: 63: 633-646.

Hu, H. & Wu, M. Spin as primordial self-referential process driving quantum mechanics, spacetime dynamics and consciousness. NeuroQuantology 2004b; 2:41-49. Also see Cogprints: ID2827 2003.

Hu, H. & Wu, M. Action potential modulation of neural spin networks suggests possible role of spin in memory and consciousness. NeuroQuantology 2004c; 2:309-316. Also see Cogprints: ID3458 2004d.

Hu, H. & Wu, M. Thinking outside the box: the essence and implications of quantum entanglement. NeuroQuantology 2006a; 4: 5-16.

Hu, H. & Wu, M. Photon induced non-local effect of general anesthetics on the brain. NeuroQuantology 2006b 4: 17-31. Also see Progress in Physics 2006c; v3: 20-26.

Hu, H. & Wu, M. Evidence of non-local physical, chemical and biological effects supports quantum brain. NeuroQuantology 2006d; 4: 291-306. Also see Progress in Physics 2007a; v2: 17-24.

Huping Hu & Maoxin Wu

October 2, 2011