Pure Pedantry : When Readers Comment

Reality is always more complicated than you think.

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Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience. He is due to graduate in 2032. He received a BS and a MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University -- where he spent most of his time drinking heavily and building vegetable catapults instead of learning information that would now be eminently useful. When he is not failing terrifically to perform his sworn duties, he enjoys watching bad movies, ethnic food, and running.

Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.

Jake is joined periodically by two wonderful guest bloggers: Kara Contreary and Kate Seip. See the About Page.

DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own or those of my co-bloggers. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments we currently attend.

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When Readers Comment

Category: Comments
Posted on: December 23, 2007 8:48 PM, by Jake Young

Gregory had this to say about the post on why you sometimes feel like you are falling when you are going to sleep:

there is a spiritual explanation for this, it is the moment when awareness stops identifying with the physical mind/body, and falls into the subtle body, on its way to complete disassociation with any of the bodies, what we call deep sleep..
in the world, many cultures know about these bodies, have for thousands of years... in the backward west though, with our addiction to the religion of science, we think we are discovering things...

i reckon science wil,l discover the subtle bodies in about fifty years...

enjoy,... meanwhile, there are other means of knowledge than via the senses and intellect... start meditation... you will see for yourself

Heh, heh. He said subtle bodies.

You go ahead and run with your spiritual explanation, Greg. I'll stick with things I can measure.

Comments

Yeah, I think I read about those extra bodies in Miracleman. That was a damn fine comic book.

Posted by: Joseph Hewitt | December 23, 2007 10:25 PM

Hypnogogic hallucination, it's actually pretty well understood and not spiritual. Basically, it represents your brain being taken offline, and removed from physical control of your body.

Posted by: MarkH | December 23, 2007 11:17 PM

Whether its spiritual or empirical this is something I have wondered about. I think when we get to the actual provable, testable and repeatable stage on the mind-body connection it is going to be very fascinating stuff. I sometimes try to relate it to those 10 or 11 dimensions that Quantum physics has postulated but can't quite touch yet. I think that science has some marvelous discoveries in store!
Dave Briggs :~)

Posted by: Dave Briggs | December 28, 2007 5:22 PM