Re: Hilgard's "hidden observer"

From: rmiller <rmiller.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 22:53:56 -0500

At 03:44 PM 6/26/2005, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>Dear Richard,
>
> Let me follow up on your suggestion: Assuming a "personality" is made
> up of multiple modules,does it necessarily follow that a "hidden
> observer" exist as a seperate entiry, or could it be that the usual
> single personality results from an entrainment (the modules become like
> oscillators that couple to each other) over the many modules?

Hilgard asked the "entity" that question more than a few times. The hidden
observer came across as quite normal-sounding. reasonable and real. A
Finnish psychologist by the name of Reima Kampmann made an extensive study
of the phenomenon, but unfortunately published little--and what he did
publish was never translated to any languages other than Finnish. Bottom
line: The hidden observer seems to be as real as such entities can be--or
perhaps as real as some of the better business CEOs. Certainly better than
some of the former CEOs in the news lately. Otherwise, it appears that the
hidden observer phenom has not been studied in depth. I haven't seen much
published research.

> This idea predicts that if this entrainment mode is unstable and there
> are other possible metastale entrainment modes possible, then the
> personality that emerges is unstable; we get the symptons of
> multiple-personality disorder that makes "personalities" analogous to the
> metastable (phase space) orbits of a chaotic system.
> If no stable or metastable entrainments between the multiple modules
> obtain, we have the symptoms of autism. No?

Autism supposedly has been associated with structural changes based upon CT
cans. Beyond that I don't know enough about autism to comment. Ornstein
suggests that multiple-personalities are rather normal. On the other hand,
there are some great books out there about this complex and weird
phenom. For those who think the brain is just a complex radio set,
multiple personality disorder can be thought of as merely having a crummy
tuner (coil?) or a bad antenna. Melvin Morse, a Seattle pediatrician
suggested that there is an antenna of a sort--and it's located in the right
temporal sulcus. According to his books, this area also serves as some
sort of ejection seat for the soul. I wrote a novel a few years ago that
hypothesized a specific EEG signal emanating from this area (resolved using
a standard Fast Fourier Transform circuit.) By monitoring the wavelet
coming from this area, one could determine the time of exit for an OOBE.

Rich M


>Kindest regards,
>
>Stephen
>
>----- Original Message ----- From: "rmiller" <rmiller.domain.name.hidden>
>To: "Norman Samish" <ncsamish.domain.name.hidden>; <everything-list.domain.name.hidden.com>
>Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 3:58 PM
>Subject: Re: Have all possible events occurred?
>
>
>>At 10:22 AM 6/26/2005, Norman Samish wrote:
>>
>>>"Stathis Papaioannou" writes: Of course you are right: there is no way to
>>>distinguish the original from the copy, given that the copying process works
>>>as intended. And if you believe that everything possible exists, then there
>>>will always be at least one version of you who will definitely experience
>>>whatever outcome you are leaving to chance. Probability is just a first
>>>person experience of a universe which is in fact completely deterministic,
>>>because we cannot access the parallel worlds where our copies live, and
>>>because even if we could, we can only experience being one person at a time.
>>RM Comments: (1) I'll have to disagree with Stathis' (apparent) statement
>>that "probability is just a first person experience of a universe."
>>No proper foundation. (2) Additionally, Stathis assumes that we cannot
>>access the parallel worlds where our copies live. Since no one
>>can even define consciousness, or isolate precisely where memory is
>>located (or even what it is), there is no way we can preclude simultaneous
>>experience. The best we can say is, "we simply don't know." And, (3),
>>for the same reasons, we cannot say that we "experience being one person
>>at a time." There are numerous psychological models---neodissociationism
>>being just one---that posit a personality made up of multiple modules,
>>all interacting (somewhat) under the guidance of an executive, Hilgard's
>>"hidden observer." Unless and until we fully understand how
>>consciousness is linked to personality, we probably shouldn't preclude
>>multiple or simultaneous experience.
>
Received on Sun Jun 26 2005 - 23:57:38 PDT