I think trees are sentient and have feelings, they are just virtually rendered as everything is. I also agree that walking where edibles are growing, yes, they do call out to be taken in, to be eaten. Long live nouns, critters, and plants!
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

I reckon Tom must agree with us really, Bette; after all he saw that living cotton-wool aura above the trees as a young man. Now he threatens them with a superposed blue/yellow fungus. Metaphor or not, the PMR rule-set does not permit this!

And have you must have seen the way current computer rendering abuses trees -makes them look like spiky telegraph poles. When I forced my young son off his computer games for a walk, he looked at the trees and said, "Wow! Direct X 20!"
It was a mini epiphany for him. Now he likes walking in the countryside. TBC has better rendering.

That's cool about your son Ross, I've really been noticing the quality of the rendering lately too, the beauty. Computer games make young minds ready for the virtual reality reality, imo.
Love to you and yours
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

- Bette

It's Spring in Northern hemisphere PMR!
You may be right, Bette. It's only since I read MBT that I thought computer games might have a point: just like the ubiquitous cellphone, despite our free-will, we seem to be absolutely bound to this new technology (one might almost say enslaved - now there's an oxymoron!). It must be the power of the organising fractals - leading us inexorably towards AI Guy.

The only oxymoron I know is that guy on TV that sells Oxyclean, lol. Oh wait, that is mean of me, ;), except I can be a moron too so it's fair as I call myself out on it all the time. It's like having a child/adult with autism allows me the occasional autism joke, like the 'if you're autistic and you know it flap your hands' song, even though my son doesn't flap it (flapping their hands) is often associated with autism. My favorite autism joke (and my only other one) is the 15 year old boy who had never spoke a word in his life, he comes down to breakfast where his mom has fixed him eggs, he takes a bite, and says, 'mom, these eggs taste like $hit!'. Mom says, 'son, you spoke why now?', and he says, 'up until now everything was good.' My son one time a decade ago in a new place had to use facilities and spoke a sentence to me, "I gotta go caca" that was music to my ears, so this jokes resonates with me. I often wonder if I am holding him back by having such good nonverbal communication with him, and keeping things consistent for the comfort factor of me basically always being here. I mean I am not going to be here forever, I suppose I should share him more. But enough about me, let's talk about you. What do you think of me? I'm on a roll, sorry. I guess I'm in a good mode/mood, woohoo. Have a great day everyone! Unless you have other plans ;).
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

rossw,

Just because those trees are not sentient (make interactive intellectual decisions), doesn't mean they don't have feelings, memory, and awareness of themselves and their enviornment. read through this thread of posts.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2909&hilit=trees

Tom C

That makes me feel better, that trees are not sentient. I was taking it personal that they sent their roots into my plumbing for water. ;) I thought sentient meant able to feel though, confusion reigns, yikes! :)
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Thank you Tom. As Bette indicates, I seem to have a misunderstanding of the term "sentient". If I had see that thread, I wouldn't have posted. Super stuff.

I had thought that "sentient" meant a more generalized awareness as well. Apparently there are a vaiety of views on this:
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=sentient

S: (adj) sentient, animate (endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness) "the living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage"- T.E.Lawrence
S: (adj) sentient (consciously perceiving) "sentient of the intolerable load"; "a boy so sentient of his surroundings"- W.A.White

So, just a term definition confusion.

Fascinating idea, that VR/PMR exist only as data... A bit like Kathy, I have a feeling that I am missing something implicit.

Sigh. It is a feeling as though I ought to be able to turn 90 degrees, look sideways into the VR, and see "black space". (Oddly, I keep getting the non-physical perception, lately, that all this stuff I see... this "reality" through which every morning I walk the dogs, is just "color" spread thinly over what is really empty blackness. THis was happening even before I stumbled upon MBT.) It is as though a person's individual reality ought to be more fluid than it seems to be... or is it, and I just haven't noticed? It seems like there must be directly accessable practical tests (On the order and simplicity of: I touch my nose and I sense that it is still there. It is like One should be able to look behind the curtain, and all one has to do is to pull it aside, but with what hand, what lever? What, I guess I am asking, is the practical method of decoupling from a VR ?

I'm also wondering what the switch is that selects to actualize a low probablity result instead of a high probablity result. Or do low probablity events only occur when something "wills" (whatever that means) them to, effectively changing them to the highest probability ?

Thanks,
-Montana

I believe the practical method is to shift your conscious awareness from this VR frame to a different VR frame by meditating.

I think the more IUOC in on a specific event happening a specific way raises the probability spike of it happening that way. Or perhaps the more absolute free will choices made by IUOC associated with the event towards it happening that way raises it. Or both or neither.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Montana,

Think about how your VR body, if it were a physical body, would be sensing it's existence within this reality, if it were the fully physical reality it is purported to be. Your vision would be a matter of your eyes receiving the photons, focusing them upon the retina where your rods and cones would sense the photons with photochemical reactions and convert them to nerve impulses to transmit to the visual centers of your brain, where your mind would presumably reside and be the perceiver of your visual sense. The same goes for your ears, converting the sound impulses incoming into nerve impulses via the hair like sensors within your cochlea. Your sense of smell would come from the many chemical receptors in your nasal passages, also creating a stream of nerve impulses. These same chemical receptors also generate most of what you think of as taste while the sensors on your tongue actually only sense sweet, sour, bitter and sweet. The same for your tactile sensors on your skin and internal sensors. All creating nerve impulses that transmit to your brain to be perceived by your mind, supposedly residing there.

So you have these nerve impulses, essentially a digital data stream as a nerve transmits either a zero or a one, representing your senses interaction with reality. This perception occurs within your mind which interprets the incoming data stream to be the perceived reality. This is precisely the situation where we are defining this as a virtual reality with a digital data stream being interpreted by your mind which we state to be located within Consciousness Space, within your total self and more specifically within your virtual self that is selected and subject to the rule set of this PMR VR so that it perceives basically correctly, ignoring any imperfections of your VR body. That is our definition of a virtual reality, that it is interpreted within your mind rather than being 'out there'.

The method of decoupling from a VR is meditation. As you reduce your conscious perception of this VR in meditation, you can intend to connect it to another VR such as NPMR. You can intend to do certain specific things, really limited only by your expectations and ability to interpret the results. This is your mind existing on the RWW or in Indra's Net, to use an ancient concept, communicating over the RWW or the communication 'net' of Indra's net to contact another IUOC, to connect to another VR data stream, to access a data base of past or future reality, to remote view, to experience an OOB 'flight' or whatever. Your perceptions are potentially very fluid, but your expectations and the psi uncertainty principle act to keep you from noticing this.

Ted

You really have a way with words, Ted. It also seems you've as good an understanding of the neural aspects of the brain as I do, or deeper, and I am a psychology grad student focusing on neuroscience. Thank you, as always, for this.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Thanks Ted,

I'm comfortable with the idea that sensory information is digitized. I just have the feeling that I am not seeing some key thing here. It is vaguely like deja vu (sic) but with no obvious object. Ah well, in time.

Thanks for being here,

-Montana

Montana,

In a sense, I think that I know what you mean, but not clearly or for sure. I do not know any simple test as you ask. I find all of the cumulative anomalies I have experienced as proof sufficient of the virtual nature of reality, plus all the problems it solves in terms of explaining reality. There are many 'weird' perceptions and experiences reported from shamanic experience and ecstatic trance experience with Felicitas Goodman's ritual posture's, but that is not necessarily what you mean. Did you ever see the movie, Dogma? I always thought the concept of the 'junior demons' ripping the face of reality with their hockey sticks and stepping through to somewhere else, passing through the blackness behind the scenes, was appealing. But I have no idea how to do it, since it does not fit my mental model of reality. You tend to not be able to do what you do not believe that you can do. And real violations of the rule set tend to get suppressed by the Psi Uncertainty Principle.

Tom has mentioned manifesting a 'physical' body in other VRs. I would think that this would be a 'neat' way to travel here in PMR. Turn off your physical manifestation 'here' and turn it on 'there', perhaps to get to Tom's events 'cheaply' or to 'get out of Dodge' in time of trouble. Or perhaps at check out time to avoid burial expenses for your relatives. But all clear violations of the Psi Uncertainty Principle. Try some telekinesis when you are alone, as proof for yourself. Or just ask your guides to do you a favor and provide some clear manifestation as 'proof'. They might oblige. True levitation, rather than the 'hopping on your buttocks' that some refer to, could be interesting. Then there is Douglas Adams flying by 'falling and missing the ground'. Carlos Castaneda claimed that some of the other apprentices of Don Juan had learned to fly with or hide behind the 'lines' of reality. But that is a whole other ball game.

Ted

When I had originally read Casteneda my understanding was that the flying and a lot of the regular contact with D. Juan and the other senior sorcerers was done with the dreamed body. But I can see TC's model of things makes more sense.

(Here is a video of levitation, which appears legit. I toss it in here because it almost seems to fit and wanted to share it with people before I forget about it completely) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW6pVFOpE6Q

(Aside: I know lots of people have doubts about Castenda's veracity. I personally suspect that his teachers advised him to change his writing style to protect himself from intrusions of public consciousness, by muddying the waters and fictionalizing and or dramatizing the basic non-fiction message, which still shows through. Some of his work is unmistakably in the style of a harlequin romance. Other lines I feel certain he lifted from TV shows. This maneuver effectively invoked the psi-uncertainty principle. There is too much in the work that is profoundly insightful to dismiss it though. And when he published, there was not alot like it out there, and nothing that was mainstream.)

It's not that I am looking for proof of anything. Like probably everyone on this board I have had more psi type experiences than I can remember. I just have this odd feeling that there is something central in the whole idea of VR, latent probabilities and The PUP that I am just not getting... and I have no idea what it is.

The guides tip is a good one and will use it. They tend to orbit at a healthy distance as I tend to ride'm pretty hard, lord knows. But sometimes they indulge me.

-Montana