We Create Our Reality

Frederick Travis, PhD, director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition, explains that the concept "We create our reality" is more than a philosophical statement. It is a physical reality driven by neural plasticity—every experience changes the brain. Therefore, choose transcendental experiences and higher states of consciousness naturally unfold.

[froschkenig]

45min in and I can already say that from the three speakers I listened to so far in this series, this talk is by far the most appealing one to me. Excited about what is coming in the last 35min

[raycosmic]

We do not create Reality. We create our experience of Reality, and the quality of that experience is determined by our perspectives, values, attitudes and assumptions.

Every perception is to some extent memory. Every memory is to some extent imagination.

[truthsoldier]

You can achieve the state of “heaven” here on earth. I have experienced it before, but sadly it went away. The best way I can describe the state is I had absolutely no fear, I felt connected to everybody and everything, I had the most energy I’ve ever had, the connection that I felt at the time had a lot to do with the complete understanding that everybody just wants to be loved like me, I completely understood that and completely felt that for the first time, but even more importantly all I wanted to do was give people my love. I have never felt love like that before, my mind was 100% clear. When I was in that state, I literally would go out in public and noticed that people were drawn to me with nothing but good vibes, so not only did I feel the complete consciousness shift, but other people could see it or feel it in my presence as well. I know for a fact that I experienced what Buddha calls Nirvana, the same thing that Jesus called Heaven.

[dustinneathery]

what a blessing stanford and fellows are for sharing this content

[sharonbaab]

I am not saying this is not an interesting lecture, but I have a bit of an issue with the title of this video. I have not learned about how we create our reality. This video is more about the promotion of TM, than anything else - which is fine, but I think it would be better if that would be reflected in the title.

[saleemisgod]

Basically the brain is no longer seen as static or fixed but has a surprising degree of flexibility. Meditation seems to be the new area of study and if you really want to turbo charge your brain learn a musical instrument no matter what age you are.

[heyassmanx]

this guy is great - awesome awesome lecture

[MikeTrainormusic]

Thank you for posting this, Stanford! This was really great, Especially liked hearing his experience and description of TM

[paulwhitlock]

It's interesting that the Buddha is reputed to have said " With our thoughts we create the world ". One can say this about age, example, I say to someone how old are you, they say I'm 10, 20, 60 or whatever; but we create numbers, so in reality you could say I have no age, the numbers are just a way to understand things in our ordinary everyday lives.

[markrowland]

Thankyou all for this presentation. I have learner more than I ever expected.

[cwilkinsonwck]

Visualization, awareness, thinking, and intention... these are the states of mind. We need to drop thinking and be in awareness

[ianclark]

Great information, very informative, Thank You, Namaste

[HigherPlanes]

amazing lecture. I learned quite a bit.

[MarioStankovic]

And yet we live in a world full of people who petrify their brain and mind, under no circumstances are changes allowed. Even better let's discriminate or kill does who dare to change our everyday village life, even if it would bring health, love and joy. In the end there are two choices: opening love and closing fear, enjoy your decision. 

[ZpointG]

We create *our perception* of Reality, the raw data of the real world is what it is. Our perception of Reality changes according to the corresponding experiences, knowledge and wisdom we accrue throughout our lives.

[mattgraves]

Wow, this is truly an amazing talk. We have some incredible hardware

[kernalofficial]

keep learning and reading we can change  the experience of our brain

[SunshineInWoods]

suggested that, for instance, the effects obtained with TM might be
larger than those obtained with other approaches. We looked at this
difference in our analysis and at first glance replicated the earlier
findings. This can be taken as evidence of the superior effects of
TM, but we also pointed out an alternative explanation: We found
substantially larger effects for results published in books than for
those published in peer-reviewed journals. So if it was the case that
the review process in the edited books was less rigorous than that in
the journals, the larger effects in the books might be regarded as less
reliable than those reported in the journals. If only the journal results
are compared, TM does no better than the other approaches. In
addition, the funnel plots for the TM studies (for both chapters and
articles together—not shown—and for articles alone—see Figure 4)
indicate that even these results for TM might be slightly overestimated.
So, it seems that the three categories we identified for the sake
of comparison, TM, mindfulness meditation, and the heterogeneous
category we termed other meditation techniques, do not differ in their
overall effects"

[spiralsun]

Loved this lecture.

I like that openness was one of the factors. I am as high on openness as it is possible to be from personality tests. I wonder if it is partly because I made up a mantra when I was about 4 years old but I didn’t know what it was or anything about meditation. I made it up when I realized that my thoughts were stressing me out and causing feedback. I did not see separation of me from the world. That can seriously stress out a kid. I just started saying a monotone symmetrical phrase over and over and it was life-transforming.

Also, where can I get a 16 channel EEG PROGRAM ?!? 😎👍🏻

[AstralSorm]

Missed part of the warning about college.
"And we don't have a bit of an idea in which ways!"

So the next step is, let's say, "metaformal thinking" - modifying formalisms and modes of thinking, then perhaps reconciling formalisms, languages - "metasymbolic thinking". Then going towards reprogramming automatic processess consciously - "autoconditioning" so to speak, again towards sensory level, but with much better tools than a child. Then perhaps a "blank slate"? Accepting everything without preconditions, to look at it without presuppositions and stereotypes, but then making it available to all the analytic tools we have learned.
This is a curious symmetry of original phases of development...

A bit too much woo about TM (marketing too much?), curious metaphors, calling the states higher when they're actually the exact opposite - low, quiescence as the endpoint with precisely tuned senses by our own volition or happening by accident in times of extreme stress or relaxation. Language is a creaky old tool, states are pretty impossible to describe, it's even worse than trying to describe a dream or experience one can relate with to someone else.

What happens when all four modes are active at the same time? Between dream and waking, there's lucid dreaming, hypnagogic/hypnapompic states. Between sleep and meditation, there's a "delta meditation mode"... But what's in the center of the square? "Theta mode", like in children or some epileptics? But how does a self-driven state differ from those? It must, of course.

I dislike the abuse of statistics. R coefficient is not descriptive. It only specifies the amount of linear fit quality. To be qualified to say that it describes 66%, you need ANOVA, Fischer's T test or similar statistics. High R can be coincidential. Similarly slightly abusing Z scores, which assumes normality of the distribution - the assumption possibly untrue and you have to verify it.

By the way, people can and will learn meditation and more on their own. The capacity to do that is always there. Heck, it can even be forced via quite "instrumental" techniques (part of this is the mantra sound you're using), but of course it can be dangerous to mental stability and could induce seizures. There's also no need for this superfluous "cosmic consciousness" construct or a flashy label.

And the integrated, smoothly switching two (or even four) states is not the same as the state in the middle. Seems a step below.

Even then, this is *way* behind current neuroscience. It's like reading about science in the 80s. EEG is hugely imprecise.