Aliens May Actually Be Billion-Year-Old Robots

[Black Angus]

ABSTRACT: My purpose is to initiate a discussion of the ethics of implanting computer chips in the brain and to raise some initial ethical and social questions. Computer scientists predict that within the next twenty years neural interfaces will be designed that will not only increase the dynamic range of senses, but will also enhance memory and enable “cyberthink” — invisible communication with others. This technology will facilitate consistent and constant access to information when and where it is needed. The ethical evaluation in this paper focuses on issues of safely and informed consent, issues of manufacturing and scientific responsibility, anxieties about the psychological impacts of enhancing human nature, worries about possible usage in children, and most troubling, issues of privacy and autonomy. Inasmuch as this technology is fraught with perilous implications for radically changing human nature, for invasions of privacy and for governmental control of individuals, public discussion of its benefits and burdens should be initiated, and policy decisions should be made as to whether its development should be proscribed or regulated, rather than left to happenstance, experts and the vagaries of the commercial market.

The future may well involve the reality of science fiction’s cyborg, persons who have developed some intimate and occasionally necessary relationship with a machine. It is likely that implantable computer chips acting as sensors, or actuators, may soon assist not only failing memory, but even bestow fluency in a new language, or enable “recognition” of previously unmet individuals. The progress already made in therapeutic devices, in prosthetics and in computer science indicate that it may well be feasible to develop direct interfaces between the brain and computers.

Look at Plug in to the brain: http://web.it.kth.se/~maguire/Talks/nrw-20011129.pdf

Worldwide there are at least three million people living with artificial implants. In particular, research on the cochlear implant and retinal vision have furthered the development of interfaces between neural tissues and silicon substrate micro probes. The cochlear implant, which directly stimulates the auditory nerve, enables over 10,000 totally deaf people to hear sound; the retinal implantable chip for prosthetic vision may restore vision to the blind. Research on prosthetic vision has proceeded along two paths: 1) retinal implants, which avoid brain surgery and link a camera in eyeglass frames via laser diodes to a healthy optic nerve and nerves to the retina, and 2) cortical implants, which require brain surgery and the pneumatic insertion of electrodesinto the brain to penetrate the visual cortex and produce highly localized stimulation.

The latest stage in the evolution towards the implantable brain chip involves combining these advances in prostheses technology with developments in computer science. The linkage of smaller, lighter, and more powerful computer systems with radio technologies will enable users to access information and communicate anywhere or anytime. Through miniaturization of components, systems have been generated that are wearable and nearly invisible, so that individuals, supported by a personal information structure, can move about and interact freely, as well as, through networking, share experiences with others. The wearable computer project envisions users accessing the Remembrance Agent of a large communally based data source.

Wearables and body-nets are intermediate technologies; the logical next step in this development is the implantable brain chip, direct neural interfacing. As early as 1968, Nicholas Negroponte, presently director of MIT’s Media Lab, first prophesied this symbiosis between mankind and machine. His colleague, Professor Gershenfeld, asserts that “in 10 years, computers will be everywhere; in 20 years, embedded by bioengineers in our bodies…” Neither visionary professes any qualms about this project, which they expect to alter human nature itself. “Suddenly technology has given us powers with which we can manipulate not only external reality — the physical world — but also, and much more portentously, ourselves.” Once networked the result will be a “collective consciousness”, “the hive mind.” “The hive mind…is about taking all these trillions of cells in our skulls that make individual consciousness and putting them together and arriving at a new kind of consciousness that transcends all the individuals.”


I spoke to three different experts, all of whom have given this subject considerable thought: Kevin Warwick, a British scientist and professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading; Ramez Naam, an American futurist and author of NEXUS (a scifi novel addressing this topic); and Anders Sandberg, a Swedish neuroscientist from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.

They all told me that the possibility of a telepathic noosphere is very real — and it’s closer to reality than we might think. And not surprisingly, this would change the very fabric of the human condition.

Connecting brains
My first question to the group had to do with the technological requirements. How is it, exactly, that we’re going to connect our minds over the Internet, or some future manifestation of it?

“I really think we have sufficient hardware available now — tools like Braingate,” says Warwick.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-much-longer-until-humanity-becomes-a-hive-mind-453848055?IR=T

And perhaps its just coincidence but the Greys are often described as having a hive mind.

I think the hive mind is coming to humanity, and it will require these technologys to make it happen. And when i look at everyone holding a mobile device, and being totally absorbed in their social networking devices...... It wont be forced on us, we will embrace it willingly. Or at the very least unwittingly

 

[Black Angus]

Mind-control: ‘I drove a car with my thoughts’

The merge between our minds and machines is coming, and the differences between them will blur to the point of indistinction.

 

[Thomas R. Morrison]

At the end of the day your brain is still just a storage device.

No that’s absolutely false. We understand that certain regions of the brain are instrumental in certain kinds of functions, but that’s as far as it goes – at the cellular structural level, every brain is unique. And it’s not just the neural “wiring” that’s distinct in each brain; the feedback mechanisms are all interdependent in ways that are unique to your brain specifically.

"Everyone's brain is different, a different shape and size and organised differently."
BBC NEWS | Health | Unlocking the brain's secrets

“Thus, the scientists say that, when it comes to their inner workings, our brains are as unique as our fingerprints. So much so that it is possible to tell individuals apart simply by looking at their patterns of brain activity and how different brain regions communicate with one another.”
No Two Brains Are Alike, Investigation Reveals

Im not sure we are anything more than the data contained within the brain.

We’re much more than the data; our identity is encoded into the structure of each brain, and no two brains are alike. So you’d need something like a Star Trek replicator, so you could scan and build an exact replica of your brain down to the molecular level and arrange every atom exactly as they‘re arranged in your brain right now, to make a proper facsimile of “you.”

Its a complex thing to be sure, but its quantifiable down to the last detail.

Good luck with that: not only are the trillions of cells in your brain uniquely arranged like an unfathomably intricate 3D fingerprint that’s always shifting, but even each neuron is genetically distinct, and varies from person to person:

Scientists Surprised to Find No Two Neurons Are Genetically Alike

Who you are as an individual depends on all of those unique structural features, and memory is only a small but important part of it.

And if its a machine, it can be reverse engineered, duplicated and enhanced.

Sure it’s a machine, but unlike any ordinary machine, each one is totally unique. If you could replicate the entire brain from the molecular level up, then sure, you could duplicate who you are and how you think and all the rest of it. But that would be about as easy as making a perfect replica of the Amazonian rain forest down to the last leaf and sand flea.

Who you are is far more than merely your memories. How you think and feel and process information is encoded in the totally unique structure of your brain.

 

[Black Angus]

Its still just a complex biological machine, and as such can be replicated

Can we replicate the human brain? Scientists create nanoscale electronic synapses for neural networks

Human Brain Could Be Replicated In 10 Years, Researcher Predicts

And today us humans are trying to build artificial brains, inspired by our own. And slowly, in the recent years (many more articles and reviews online!), artificial neural networks and deep learning have slowly eroded many gaps between computers and human abilities. It is only inevitable that they will become more and more like a person, because we are actually building them with that goal in mind! We want them to do things for us, as driving our car, providing customer service, being a perfect digital assistants, reading your mind and predicting your needs. And also pervade every instrument and sensor in the world, so they can better assist us to get the right information at the right time, sometimes without us asking for it.

But building a synthetic brain does not mean we need to copy our own. In fact, that is not our goal at all, our goal is to make an even better one! Our brain is made of cells and biological tissues, and our synthetic brains are made of silicon and wires. The physics of these media is not the same, and thus we only take inspiration from the brain algorithms, as we build better and larger synthetic hardware, one step at the time. We are already dreaming of neural networks that can create computing architectures by themselves.

Can We Copy the Brain? – Towards Data Science


Connecting our brains directly to technology may ultimately be a natural progression of how humans have augmented themselves with technology over the ages, from using wheels to overcome our bipedal limitations to making notations on clay tablets and paper to augment our memories. Much like the computers, smartphones and virtual reality headsets of today, augmentative BCIs, when they finally arrive on the consumer market, will be exhilarating, frustrating, risky and, at the same time, full of promise.

Melding mind and machine: How close are we?

And the next generation is already giving machines access to their minds

6 Electronic Devices You Can Control with Your Thoughts

And once Synthetic intellect, has access to biological intellect............

Its going to be looking at how we work, and then building on that knowledge.......

Buckle up my friend, its going to be a wild ride

And i predict biological substrates will go the way of stone tools..........

 

[Black Angus]

Off on a tangent

Darpa wants downloads because it makes churning out F16 pilots easy

Could we soon UPLOAD skills into our brains? | Daily Mail Online

The old way :

The new way

Scientists create Matrix-style technology to 'upload' knowledge to your brain

Meet the Two Scientists Who Implanted a False Memory Into a Mouse | Innovation | Smithsonian

 

[Black Angus]

Could human memories be uploaded and stored -- just like data -- in a computer? Scientists say not now, but in the coming decades it's likely we'll be able to store our memories in a way that allows us to retrieve them later. Long the stuff of science fiction novels, this kind of merger between computer technology and the human brain is being pushed by new findings in neuroscience, as well as advances in computer science and artificial intelligence
Download Your Memories; Retrieve Them Later

This Neural Network Built by Japanese Researchers Can 'Read Minds'

 

[Black Angus]

Where could this go? Meier points out that neural computing, with its low-power demands and tolerance of faults, may make it possible to reduce components to molecular size. “We may then be able to make computing devices which are radically different and have amazing performance which, at some point, may approach the performance of the human brain - or even go beyond it!”

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2009-03-brain-chip.html#jCp



Human and artificial intelligence join forces to study complexity of the brain



Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-human-artificial-intelligence-complexity-brain.html#jCp

 

[spacecase0]

go look at someone that has had a stroke
whatever they were doing after that event is still there later,
but if they failed to renew memories of something old, they loose it
so,
I see this as the brain is a device to store memories,
and I ask,
would this hardware be something new ?

 

[Thomas R. Morrison]

go look at someone that has had a stroke
whatever they were doing after that event is still there later,
but if they failed to renew memories of something old, they loose it
so,
I see this as the brain is a device to store memories

Memory storage is obviously only one feature of the brain's functions; otherwise, we'd all have the same personality and think the same way and react the same way to every situation.

The human brain is the most complex structure on the planet. Anyone who thinks that we'll be able to mimic the highly unique structure and processes of the individual human brain anytime in the foreseeable future is completely misled.

Perhaps one day we'll be able to replicate the general functions of the human brain, but replicating an individual is an entirely different story. I doubt that any synthetic system will ever emulate the ludicrously complex neurochemical network that defines an individual personality and sense of self.

Imagine that we could record every visual and sensory sensation throughout your entire life. Now play that data back to anyone. Are they now you? Obviously not: the unique structural architecture of each person's brain will process that information differently; each person who experiences that data stream will decide that different moments were the most important ones, and the meaning that they assign to those memories will be very different, and how they use those memories will be very different. Even identical twins develop radically different personalities, and they share the exact same genetic code. Now factor in the dizzying diversity of the human genome, and you've got a totally insoluble mystery of human individuality.

This is all so self-evident that I'm stunned that it's not obvious to everyone. We're far more than the data that we store in our brains - it's the distinct underlying structure of our brains that defines who we are as individuals. The notion that we could simulate the extravagant level of complexity that defines us as individuals using some crappy computer program is the height of human hubris, imo.

We can't even model a single cell with a computer program. They have to use algorithms to roughly approximate the astonishingly complex quantum interactions of molecular wavefunctions, because no computer can perform the calculations required to accurately model a single cell in real time. If we could, it would be a huge windfall for research pharmacology, among other things. But the chemical interactions in a single cell happen so fast and are so complex, that we can only hope to roughly approximate these process with supercomputers in the future. Accurately simulating the chemical and highly plastic interactions between the trillions of cells in the human brain in real time is an unthinkably ambitious concept.

I have no doubt that we'll be able to create synthetic intelligence long before then, which will open the doors to all kinds of marvelous innovations. But if you think that we'll be able to accurate replicate -you- as an individual in any meaningful sense in the foreseeable future, then I think you're dreaming of a future that's eons if not millions of years away, if it's possible at all.

Like I said before, we have a much better shot at extending human life, than we have of replicating who you are with some shoddy digital simulacrum that's simply the wrong technology for the job at hand. The only way I can envision a true high-fidelity replication of who you are, is to replicate your brain down to the molecular level - and that technology is at least many eons away, if it's achievable at all. Wildly overstated ambitions of arrogant computer scientists notwithstanding.

 

[Gambeir]

The real problem I have with this idea of transplanting your mind in to a mineral is that it is scam. Of that you can be absolutely 100% positive because it is a criminally designed plot ancient to our species.

The with first part of any criminal plot is a lie.

The first part of this criminal plot is that it's a complete lie: It's a lie because it cannot be done. So the complete lie is the big lie. The big lie is the lie told by the rulers and the experts within a society. This is a repeating theme in human history. It is a lie which always, and without fail, involves mass murder. Naturally it is a criminal construct which has specific ends.

The lie is intended to create a delusional state of mind in the mass population: To construct a false reality. It is appealing because it claims it will help you personally. Everyone see's a personal profit as it were. Often the liars whom market the big lie claim that the impossible can now be made possible. That part of the lie is especially appealing to the young and idealistic. The big lie is therefore a generational lie and a repeating theme in human history.

In the case for AI, the big lie is that the whole construct is a complete fabrication and cannot be done, but is being willingly mass marketed with the explicit object of making people believe it is possible and true: To construct a false reality about what is possible, the impossible is now possible, so there's a large element of gullibility. Gullibility means swallowing and digesting; something in it for everyone and the lie tastes good too, but the object of the big lie is to conduct mass murder for mass profit. So the motives are as old as humankind. Nothing new under the Sun as the saying goes. The mass marketing of AI is no different. It's motives are the same, the exact same as the one which launched the last global war, something we would do well not to forget.

The last Global War was the result of another big lie and that lie was again based on so called science. It was a war based on the idea of a superior race of people, and we would do well to not forget that fact because science is the reason we should not forget: Science is soaked in blood first and foremost: remember that much at least.

War is about cancelling debts, primarily through murder, so wars are really about robbery by way of mass murder; if it were not there would be no generational disputes about what so~called nation state owns what lands, hence the slaves that live there and the material objects they own. Another little recognized tool for mass marketers of war is history, because as any historian worth 50 cents knows, the first weapon deployed in marketing war and murder is actually history.

AI is another big lie. It is about mass murder for profit. The marketers of AI do not want to discuss their real motives. They want to sell you on the idea that you can live forever inside a rock, a mineral, a crystal palace incarnate, but they don't want to talk about all the evidence which refutes their claims. They won't acknowledge knowledge which is ancient to humans.

A healthy dose of reality is called for. If you're sold on AI as a viable reality then think carefully because you're listening to people whom claim to be experts and scientist but whom cannot explain something as complex as gravity. Cannot explain vast portions of missing space, yet again they can put your mind in a mineral?

Education is corrupted. It's been corrupted for well over a 150 years. Education has a history ya know. It's not a good history either. So when these experts whom tell you things are themselves wearing the armbands which mark them for who they are, who they work for, then you would be well advised to gulp less and question more.

 

[nivek]

Off on a tangent

Darpa wants downloads because it makes churning out F16 pilots easy

Could we soon UPLOAD skills into our brains? | Daily Mail Online

The old way :

The new way

Scientists create Matrix-style technology to 'upload' knowledge to your brain

Meet the Two Scientists Who Implanted a False Memory Into a Mouse | Innovation | Smithsonian

The uploading of information in this way I would think will be possible but there are things to consider...For one thing a machine could only upload raw information, the user or recipient in this case will have to digest that information, formulate and assimilate it, its not simply a matter of upload and go...It would be like uploading via FTP in a crude comparison, like this site was uploaded via FTP, then it needed to be installed on the server, its wasn't a matter of uploading and ready to go...

The second thing is if we were to obtain information in this way, its limit is the brain, if the information isn't digested the soul and accompanying consciousness will have no use for it...The soul cannot be put into a machine and a machine cannot give the soul information...

...

 

[spacecase0]

the brain can store information, but I don't keep anything critical in there
the brain needs some methalization transport thing to store memories
I just don't have that, gives me good perspective on brain VS other memory storage
I have had pure information sent to me (so very clear for a moment), my ability to catch it all was the issue
if you could copy the brain and give it to someone else,
my guess is that you are going to run into all kinds of issues,
mostly that most people just don't have the capacity to accept it.
also, digital can not accurately simulate analog. not sure how so many people think it can

 

[Black Angus]

I take the view that the brain/mind is either a machine or magic.
I think its easy to confuse a sufficiently complex machine for magic.

If its a machine it can be replicated. Not today, but how many eons did man look at the birds flying above before we started using supersonic aircraft .

My problem with the classical idea of a soul is it seems purpose designed to bandaid the obvious, observable reality that all things die and turn to dust. To the self aware, the ego this is highly unpalatable and thus the workaround of an immortal soul was born.

But it cant be tested or verified, where was it before self aware sentients came into being, where does it go when the bioform breaks down and how does it get there ? Is the information contained in it transmitted electromagnetically, or via the aether ?. What does it do when it gets there. If it gets reloaded into a new bioform, to what purpose.

Do animals have souls, do dolphins and chimps, does my dog have one. He has memory, i can test and verify that with his favorite toy.

The classical soul seems to be some endowment from a higher being, once was some believed black people had no souls.
which seems absurd since every knows its gingers who have no souls.

Its a device that's been used to differentiate us from the rest of the biological's here.

Does a replicant have a soul ? does a self aware sophont built from lab grown biological components have a soul ?

If not, does it have the same rights we do ?

As we move into a world where artifical life forms and synthetic intelligence are born, i wonder if we should subscribe to such a concept, given it cant be tested or verified.

It strikes me as something that will be used against the next minds to come into being here.

 

[Black Angus]

The issue of Copy vs Transfer cant really be resolved.
To an observer its a copy, to the participant it feels like a transfer.
Take our star trek transporter: looking at the process, its a kill and copy. But to those using it it feels like a transfer.

Ive long been fascinated by the Greys and the narrative thats attached to them. Many have said they seem to have something to do with the dead. Streiber is one, but there are others.
One abductee was told "We recycle souls", another who told one how ugly it looked was told "don't say that, one day you might look like this". She took it to mean the human species might one day look like that. But what if the reply was more literal.

What i posit next is not presented as fact, the answer. Its an idea. food for thought.

Paul Davies, a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University, says in his new book The Eerie Silence that any aliens exploring the universe will be AI-empowered machines. Not only are machines better able to endure extended exposure to the conditions of space, but they have the potential to develop intelligence far beyond the capacity of the human brain.

"I think it very likely – in fact inevitable – that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of the universe," Davies writes. "If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is overwhelmingly likely to be post-biological in nature."

Lets assume for the sake of argument he is right:

That the greys are in fact nothing more than the biological machines employed by a synthetic intelligence/s

They recognize that the rarest thing in existence is an individual experience set, no two are ever the same. Not even twins.

So they are here to upload our experience sets when we die, call it a copy not a transfer if you like. But even a copy of the mona lisa would have value if the original were destroyed in a fire.

That copy could be placed into a sufficiently advanced simulation as to make it think its still "real" Just as our transporter users do.

Maybe it gets loaded into an optimised biovessel (the grey) when it wants to.

The grey bioform is optimised because it functions in a non terrestrial environment, it doesnt need sex organs, it doesnt need a stomach etc etc. We can speculate on any number of described features that are consistant with this idea.

To such a machine our memories are very valuable, like the only surviving books in some vast library. Making a copy when the native bioform breaks down is logical to it. Its all lost otherwise.

Compare this with the classical story:

2 Corinthians 5

Speaks in the language of the day it was written, that when you die, who you are, is taken "up" to the heavens and given a new body, much improved on the old one, fit for purpose for its eternal life in the heavens.

Its the same story, just a different lexicon.

And the best part of this theory ?
When you die, you will have it confirmed or not.
One day we each and every one get to test it.

 

[Black Angus]

Exposes the agenda behind the bio-robotic grey aliens’ genetic manipulation of certain human races

• Reveals the Grey’s nature as sophisticated self-aware machines created by a long vanished extraterrestrial civilization

• Explains how their quest to capture human souls appears in the historical record from biblical times

• Explains how the phenomenon of racism is a by-product of their genetic tampering

In 1997 Nigel Kerner first introduced the notion of aliens known as Greys coming to Earth, explaining that Greys are sophisticated biological robots created by an extraterrestrial civilization they have long since outlived. In this new book Kerner reveals that the Greys are seeking to master death by obtaining something humans possess that they do not: souls. Through the manipulation of human DNA, these aliens hope to create their own souls and, thereby, escape the entropic grip of the material universe in favor of the timeless realm of spirit.


https://www.amazon.com/Grey-Aliens-Harvesting-Souls-Genetically/dp/1591431034

But what if its not souls, just our experience sets they want. I think this author is almost correct.

 

[nivek]

Do animals have souls, do dolphins and chimps, does my dog have one.

Animals do not, my Australian Shepherd does not, some people do not, which people do and which do not?...It's not about race or creed, that idea was born out of ignorance...It's also not up to someone else to determine who has and who has not, that is a folly and futile to try...Work must be done to know about the soul, work many people simply are not aware of, not willing to do, nor wish to do, it means change and many people are unwilling to change...I'm getting a bit off topic now so that's all I'll say in this thread about the soul...

...

 

[humanoidlord]

To the greys: Yes i think a good case can be made they are synthetic bioforms designed as mechanisms to carry downloaded synthetic intelligence.

i strangely dont have a formed opinion about greys,one thing i always found weird is that the greys,reptilians and nordics replaced all classical humanoids, wich is understandable when you consider that the ultraterrestrials (or as i call them the interdimensionals) adapt to the current human culture (in the dark ages they were demons, in the 1800's they became airship pilots and so on, so on),
however i always thought that the abduction phenomena is something separate from the real interdimensional phenomena, i have two theories about this:
1: there are almost no real abductions, and the "real" abductions are actually illegal mind control tests like MK-ULTRA , the greys are actually heavily distorted (due to drugs) images of normal humans wearing gas masks and bio suits. some abductees report UFOs wich look like heavily distorted images of helicopters too.
2: most abductions (like 98% of them) are purely hallucinatory and are caused by dreams or hypnagonic hallucinations
again i dont have a formed opinion

 

[spacecase0]

looking at it while denying what consciousness is,
the brain is an interface to quantum noise
if you want to reproduce it, you would have to make that same sort of interface.

 

[humanoidlord]

Last week I listened to a strangely intriguing interview with David Adair, on Heather Wade’s new podcast The Kingdom of Nye. He told a story on Art Bell’s show back in 1997 or 1998, about an experience that he claims he had at Area 51 about 20 years before anyone in the public knew about that base. But in this recent interview he describes a detail that he avoided back then. He had said that he was shown a weird organic-looking fusion engine the size of a school bus, that had suffered a containment failure. And in this interview he elaborated on that: he claims that this engine was conscious, and it communicated with him. It even had a name: “Pitholem.” Evidently it was surviving by absorbing some of the thermal energy in the room, and it was not happy about being held prisoner by the military people in command, which it referred to as “black hearts.”

adair is even more fishy than the other whistleblower you mentioned, his story has some serious flaws, most related to the organic engine

 

[Area201]

I used to write off this kind of thing as lunacy, but then I read Paramahansa Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi, and found his accounts of Babaji and his sister Mataji, and some other accounts of transient materialization and such. Now I don’t know what to think. He man was so sincere that it's palpable, so it's hard to believe that he was confabulating all of that stuff.

One thing I’m absolutely certain of is that this state of consciousness that we’re in now, is only a faint shadow of the level of consciousness that we’re actually capable of - we're all basically sleepwalking. But does that awakening entail any supernatural powers, like immortality or teleportation? I wish I knew for sure. But I’m inclined to believe that a dramatic shift upward in consciousness doesn’t imbue one with any transcendental physical powers, because the known avatars like Christ and Buddha and Mohammed and Lao Tzu, and more recently Jiddu Krishnamurti, apparently lived outwardly normal human lives, and died just like everyone else (although their experience of it was much different, no doubt). And I’ve never heard a single story of Krishnamurti performing any kind of miracle, although the depth of his insight was pretty miraculous.

Ultimately it probably doesn’t really matter: everyone should experience at least one moment of enlightenment in their lifetime, so they can see the unvarnished truth for themselves. I think that’s far more important than the flashy stuff we’ve heard about in legends.

Yeah the AOY was a game changer for many. It's like "wtf so religion and God are legit?". I read the Gospel after high school and couldn't figure it out, but layed out by Yogananda it finally made sense. The miracles part are hard to believe, but similar to the exotic technology we study here (i.e. ARV) they also are doubted by accepted science. I just think they are both rare and reflective of a higher understanding of the intricacies of the universe. A lot of factors have to come together to show either one in practice from scratch. You might find interest in my earlier post King of Kings here, very relevant.

What's interesting, as you know, one of the many "miraculous" accounts is of a saint who was able to just find a recently dead body (though young) to move into. He wasn't finished with his development but didn't want to start from birth (rebirth), so he just used this person's body (somehow placed his soul into it).

This crossess over into what Black Angus and other have mentioned, theoretically some of the advanced ETs are able to use hypertechnology to transfer a soul into another body. Both parties (the saint with his superpowers) and the hypertechnogically advanced extraterrestrials are doing something of the same effect - transferring a soul into another body (or container), but with different approaches. The big difference is the perspective is that souls are one and the same as the Eternal Substance (God) so it's not simply a piece of memory data on a memory stick to transfer.

ESP or clairvoyance powers abound in religion stories and the AOY, as a native 6th sense, but the black projects use it (or try to use) to spy on the "enemies" and so on. We have satellites and internet now to transfer info the speed of light, but the "masters" are said to have communicated via intuition instantly long ago before any of this technology was in existence. The heart chakra is the receiving message and the spiritual eye chakra is the sending message part.

A lot of people are extracting DMT at home and ingesting to experience moments or enlightenment (what goes with ego death) or at least some small degree of. I think that method (though effective and immediate) is like a preview to a movie only, still very replicable. Mostly these produce positive effects on users, though abuse and negative effects to as with any substance.