The movie Limitless

Here we go again, another movie discussion!

Has anyone had the chance to see the movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper?

Even if y'all haven't seen the movie it would make a good discussion.  The movie centers around a degenerate writer (with the bluest eyes ever!  ) who takes an experimental drug that allows him to access 100% (rather than just the 10% it is said we use...) of his mind and what happens when that "Limitless" potential is unleashed.


I guess I'll add, without giving away any real spoilers, it is shown that this pretty useless guy ends up being able to learn languages and play piano quickly and easily.  He can make math useful by being able to count cards.  His writing becomes stellar.  He can make correct connections and conclusions by subtle observations.  Basically everything is sharper, more focused and easier.  He's just plainly smarter and better at everything.  Basically what a lot of people would strive to be simply by being able to tap into that unused portion of his brain.

Of course there is a downside. Otherwise there wouldn't be a movie. And of course no such drug exists (that we know of!!) but there should be other ways of tapping into that potential, right?

Oh i saw that a few months back!

The problem was people started dying or something if they stopped taking it didnt they? or they got ill....

I haven't seen it but sounds exactly like Lucy. If anyone hasn't seen it yet I highly recommend you watch  it, or at least watch the trailer lol

Yes, Night, if they stopped taking the pills cold turkey they got sick or even died.

Lunar, that movie looks awesome! I definitely see some similar themes there.

I think that our brains exist the way they do for a reason and that there definitely has to be a way of utilizing the portions that currently are not used. Perhaps it's kind of like what we were discussing in another thread about knowledge that has been "hidden" from us. Perhaps it's all related and as the trailer says maybe we aren't ready for that yet, but we are making so many advances and our understanding of how the human brain and the Universe works is approaching the point where we are close to being ready.

So no drug like the one in the movie exists, but it doesn't really have to, does it?

If you gave someone a pill, told them it was the experimental drug NZT and explained it would allow them to fully access their mind, 100% just by the placebo effect you should be able to obtain similar results, right?

I wonder why that hasn't been tried yet...

Oh my goodness! This didn't yet trigger a "heated" discussion? It's a very nice movie, Kazoo. Very well done indeed. Speaking of "the potential," however, yes watch Lucy. Limitless is definitely more entertaining and connecting, Lunar. It's a "light" and "smiling" movie. Lucy, on the other hand, is more Sci-Fi, heavyweight, even outlandish (in comparison, I mean). Yet when it comes to the mind potential, Lucy is definitely more "accurate" (regardless of how it ends). For example, at some point of releasing this potential, "emotions" will simply disappear. In fact, I paid attention and took this Lucy seriously particularly after this scene where emotions vanished. I remember I then said, "wow, these guys know what they're talking about." (The same happened with The Matrix too by the way, as far as I remember particularly after "There is no spoon." )  


Now back to the "Conspiracy Theory": An insider revealed this very strange information about the Elite: They always tell the world in advance, through such media as the movies, what they're up to. For example you can trace back the 9/11 operation in at least three different movies produced and released before the so-called terrorist attack actually took place. So they always do that; always reveal in advance their next move—be it good or bad—but we just don't get their "messages." Our insider here, namely Lindsey Williams, on the contrary almost instantly reads the signs and picks these messages.

So let's do it too. Working in a related field and continually watching movies, I can tell you that we have two recurring "messages" in the movies and media recently: Time Travel, and the Mind Potential. Could there be a "message" here? Personally I think so. So be ready everyone, we're very likely to witness something big, really big, in the next decade or so.


Anyway just my two cents. A lot can be said here really, so thanks Kazoo.

kazoo wrote:So no drug like the one in the movie exists, but it doesn't really have to, does it?

If you gave someone a pill, told them it was the experimental drug NZT and explained it would allow them to fully access their mind, 100% just by the placebo effect you should be able to obtain similar results, right?

I wonder why that hasn't been tried yet...

Just read this. Personally I believe it's been already tried, Kazoo. Well, thoughts are things, right? Now think about this: What if you visualized, with vividness and intense concentration, some sort of "tunnel" between 2015 and, say, 1945? Could you time-travel through this tunnel? This is more or less the same idea that was applied in the 1980s, according to some reports, and even succeeded, and with the help of some computers, radars, and bizarre "antennas" and "thought amplifiers" from Tesla, we could already travel through time since. This is all off topic but I  mean, yes, your idea, is quite applicable. Actually I myself built a "Machine of Dreams" on the Astral Plane. The challenge was, I had to train and control my mind to clearly "see" and also "hold" it for long enough--as they did in the alleged time-travel experiments. In fact that's why I ended up Yoga and Zen and spiritual.

Hello everyone,

Firstly thank you for the fascinating thread Kazoo. I haven't seen Limitless or Lucy, but may see both some day.

In the meantime, just a couple of quick notes on the discussion before I forget what I meant to say:

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1) Emotion: I have not read enough to know yet whether enlightenment is traditionally associated with being beyond all emotions, but while many emotions are "unbalanced" and even "negative" phenomena, surely some kind of emotion is necessary to make even an enlightened being...  human? Loving-kindness, compassion, joy: are these not emotional states that every person should strive for?

On the other hand it reminds me of a Taoist story about a man who wanted to become immortal.

A sage put him through many trials, to which he was instructed to not respond. He was not to respond to anything in any way, not physically, not emotionally. He was only to watch.

At first demons came and presented him with visions of himself being butchered; the most foul things seemed to happen in that room, and yet he didn't bat an eyelid. He was put through many situations, terrible situations, which tested him, but he never reacted to any of them.

As the last part of the trials, the sage had the man reincarnated as a woman, at which stage he - now she - was married to a wife-beater, and bore a child. The now-woman bore all the insults and physical abuse of her husband with perfect equanimity. But when one day the husband got so upset he took the child's life, the woman cried.

The vision disappeared, the man was a man again and the sage returned.

"You were doing so well," he said sadly. "You only had that one last trial to complete and you would have been immortal.

"What did I do wrong?" asked the man.

"You have managed to abandon anger, jealousy, covetousness, pride, you have shown yourself resistant to pain, you are above all things. Except love. Your one failing was to love."

And the sage disappears, leaving the man to berate himself for losing his one chance to become immortal.



This story always unsettled me. I know it is meant to be read allegorically but - to be "above" love? To no longer feel love? We would be inhuman.
Perhaps that is the point on some level - that to become immortal we would no longer be human.
But I know that it's supposed to show the perfect spiritual practitioner too, the one who is untouched by worldly things.

And it upsets me. Yes, perhaps the man should have transcended good and evil, seen that really, the child's death was not really bad, that fundamentally, "Everything is perfect, complete, whole". Nonetheless...    I'm not sure I'd like to exist if I were like that. I'd rather not be immortal, I'd rather be dead.*

An interesting article I found on Buddhism and emotions: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/desilva-p/wheel237.html

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2) I just wanted to drop in that the "10% of brain" thing is apparently a myth (the first article actually even mentions Lucy):

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-10-brain-myth-explained-in-60-seconds/

https://www.quora.com/Where-does-humans-only-use-10-of-their-brains-come-from

Which is not to say that most of us use our brains as effectively as advanced spiritual practitioners such as Swami Vivekananda for example (with his well-known Encyclopedia Britannica "remote access" memory)

So it doesn't really matter what percentage of our brains is used; what matters is how we use those brains.







_____________________________________________________________________
*(Though of course as Alan Watts points out, you never really die, you're always there, because you are everybody, humans are everywhere...  but that's another topic.)

Kazoo, this topic reminds me of Akira:

I've heard also that it's a myth about 10%. Even Bashar says we use 100% of the brain to make it seem like we only use 10.
I always believed we just use 10% of any given region of brain at a time. I do believe though that there might be certain regions of brain that are dormant to majority of people unless you know how to awaken them or somehow stimulate them.

Who remembers the good old "Phenomenon" where John Travolta gets those brain superpowers (which funny enough reminds me of how Uri Geller describes his first experience after what he was able to manipulate matter with mind. The sky going bright and seeing light and then sort of passing out, then assuming there must've been some UFO encounter).
It turns out in the end that the reason he can move things with mind and have all that amazing mental ability is due to a brain tumor that has been pushing on a certain region of the brain.

Speaking of emotions and going back to Bashar that's what he says about the greys- that they didn't intentionally harm people during abductions because they have no emotions and had no idea or a way to perceive that people experience emotions like fear.

I agree with Selina, I wouldn't want to live an eternal emotionless loveless life, sounds pretty
tedious to me to be honest.
Then again I remember once my grandmother told my mom when she was about 7-8, that you know when you grow up you're not gonna want to play with dolls anymore and my  mom was shocked. She just could not imagine a life without dolls or even a possibility of her not wanting to play with them, HOW BORING! What am I going to do every day if I can't play with dolls?
So maybe once I get to that 'advanced' level, being emotionless will seem  more appealing, although I kinda feel sorry for myself if I do.

Lunar, I love the way you relate your mum's story about how she couldn't imagine a life in which she wouldn't like playing with dolls to how we approach the unknown. (I still played with dolls aged 13 to be honest, not by myself really but with my best friend, we'd reached an age where we shared little else in common any more and didn't really know what else to do...  and it was like play-acting, telling a story with characters... that went on even after dolls were abandoned...   and...    hasn't...really ceased in my case )

(



)

Tangent over... but what you say is very true, we tend to judge the unknown as negative even though we've never experienced it... not sure if I've shared this story before, but it reminds me of your mum's story --- it's by Chuang Tzu:

Spring was Princess Li's favorite season. She loved the blooming flowers in her garden and would spend hours walking there, taking in the colors and savoring the fragrance.

Today, something was wrong. Instead of enjoying herself, she sat alone and seemed unhappy. Mei, her handmaiden and companion since childhood, grew concerned and decided to approach her: "Princess, forgive me for intruding. Are you alright?"

"Oh, I'm fine, Mei. I am just thinking about my… engagement." Her father the Duke announced in the morning that Princess Li was to be wedded to the King of Jin in a few months.

"I heard the announcement as well. The Duke said it was very auspicious and a great cause for celebration."

"For others, perhaps, but not for me. I have never met King Jin and I have no idea what he is like. I love my life here with my flowers and have no wish to leave…. Oh, how I dread the wedding!"

The sudden intensity of Princess Li's emotions surprised Mei. "Have you told your father that you do not wish to marry him?"

"No. Jin is a powerful kingdom. Our alliance with them, cemented by marriage, is something that will make us much stronger and more secure. It is my duty to do it. I cannot avoid it."

"What will you do then, Princess?"

"The only thing I can - put it out of my mind as much as possible."

Time passed. As the wedding drew closer, Princess Li became increasingly anxious. When the date finally came, she refused to come out of her room. This caused quite a commotion. "Unacceptable!" The Duke was displeased. "Mei, you are the only one she listens to. Go talk some sense into her. Quickly!"

Mei entered the inner chambers to discover the princess crying her eyes out. "Princess, what are you doing? Everyone is waiting for you."

"I don't care! I won't marry him!"

Mei noticed that the princess had soaked her clothes in tears, so evidently she had been crying for quite some time. "Princess, did you not tell me yourself that this is something you cannot avoid?"

"You don't understand! I really, really don't want to go to the Jin Palace! I want to stay here!"

Mei took a deep breath. She knew how to get through to the princess, but even her ability and patience would be taxed to the limit this time. "Princess, you know as well as I do that everything has been set in motion. We cannot put it off any more than we can push back the waves of the ocean."

The princess snapped back and Mei responded with her soothing voice. After several hours of this, the princess grew too tired to continue. She allowed herself to be led to the royal carriage. Finally, the wedding party was able to get underway. To the princess, the rest of the wedding went by like a blur.

After an initial period of adjustment, Princess Li grew accustomed to life in the Jin Palace. The King treated her well and kept her in luxuries she had never experienced before. The royal bed in particular was a marvel. When the princess slept on it, she felt as if she was floating on air. Moreover, every meal at the Jin Palace was spectacular. The princess had never tasted so many delicacies, cooked in so many different ways.

Spring arrived again. Princess Li was delighted to discover beautiful flowers blooming in the royal gardens of the Jin Palace. She wasted no time at all summoning Mei to her side, so they could go exploring together.

"You seem to be in high spirits, Princess."

"I am! I cannot wait to walk amongst the flowers."

"How strange! Can this be the same person who really, really didn't want to be here?"

"Please don't remind me," Princess Li blushed. "I still cannot believe how foolish I was. It's so wonderful here, I cannot understand why I was so afraid."

( http://www.taoism.net/living/2006/200604.htm )

It's meant as an allegory for how we approach death. We judge it as bad, but we don't really know...for all we know death might be really nice once we get there.

Have you seen the film Somewhere in Time?

its Where Christopher Reeves character meets an old lady on the opening night of his play who asks him 'Come back to me'

anyway the film is about him using his mind and visualisation to take him back into time when this woman was younger and they fell in love at some big hotel.


He basically just removes anything modern from the Hotel Room, dresses to match that time periods attire even obtains money from that time, and just visualises until he tricks his mind into being back in the past.

Great story Selina and no I haven't seen that movie Nighty, but sounds interesting

I feel like I'm not scared of death because of what comes after or that there would not be anything after, but I am scared of death for the idea of my children having to have a life without me, if that makes sense.
I think that death will feel like waking up from a dream. Sometimes I have dreams that I am working at my old work place and it's SUPER busy, I have multiple projects going on and I am running around like a hamster in a wheel. Then I wake up and after a few moments realize that it was just a dream and it was silly to get stressed and stuck in a rut. That's how I imagine death- waking up and realizing it was just an illusion or a game.

So beautifully put Luney.

And I haven't seen that movie either Nighty...or have I? Wait....actually I think I may have...but not all of it...is it from the 80s? (not looking it up on mobile)

yeah it's an old film x

Oh yes... I saw it... some of it... didn't like it very much.

(I'm very very picky )

Very interesting concept, though. I generally love anything to do with time (well... I mean... I love the concepts behind any of these books/movies )

P.S. Not a movie but I ADORE David Deutsch...I just want to squeeze him... and his ideas

Lol, I remember when I was like 9 or 10 and somebody asked me for fun if I have a boyfriend already. To me it just seemed so disgusting that people want to have some BOYFRIENDS? Why? And even worse! They KISS! They literally open their mouths and stick tongues in each others mouths and they actually LIKE IT!! EWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!
Not in a million years could I imagine I would someday kiss anyone and like it.

Well I've never kissed a boy either.

this thread is going off course a bit. Back to Limitless and Lucy and Night's film guys.

Thanks for the discussion guys!

Regardless of the actual percentage of the physical brain we actually use or the percentage of "brain power" we access, I think it can be said that most people don't harness the full power of our minds.

Lotus, I get what you're saying about understanding LoA and some of the other esoteric things we discuss here may be similar to taking a NZT type pill but I think the power of suggestion that goes along with taking a physical pill might help some people get beyond the mental barrier we have placed on our own abilities. We may not have faith in our own abilities but have a belief about a pill.

Lotus wrote: Now think about this: What if you visualized, with vividness and intense concentration, some sort of "tunnel" between 2015 and, say, 1945? Could you time-travel through this tunnel? This is more or less the same idea that was applied in the 1980s, according to some reports, and even succeeded, and with the help of some computers, radars, and bizarre "antennas" and "thought amplifiers" from Tesla, we could already travel through time since.

omg Kazoo!!!!!!

i was looking at that picture the other day!!!!!!

kazoo wrote:So no drug like the one in the movie exists, but it doesn't really have to, does it?

If you gave someone a pill, told them it was the experimental drug NZT and explained it would allow them to fully access their mind, 100% just by the placebo effect you should be able to obtain similar results, right?

I wonder why that hasn't been tried yet...

Well, I just might give it a try. My mind seems to accept the placebo effect very well.

However, in this case, as of the moment, I don't have the belief there is a drug or pill that can do what either of those two movies project.

BTW, I loved both of those movies. I've watched Limitless about three times, and, Lucy, the same.

Lunar posted: "......which funny enough reminds me of how Uri Geller describes his first experience after what he was able to manipulate matter with mind. The sky going bright and seeing light and then sort of passing out, then assuming there must've been some UFO encounter......." end quote

Geller did say he believed he got his powers from an extraterrestrial " entity " called Spectra. I think he retracted that statement in his retirement years. But, in his early days, it's what he believed.

rodan wrote:Well, I just might give it a try. My mind seems to accept the placebo effect very well.

However, in this case, as of the moment, I don't have the belief there is a drug or pill that can do what either of those two movies project.  

BTW, I loved both of those movies. I've watched Limitless about three times, and, Lucy, the same.  

Glad you weighed in Rodan, I was hoping you would!  This kind of thing seems to be right up your alley!

I guess the next question would be, which is the path of least resistance?  Changing your beliefs about your abilities to do all of the things the characters do in the movie after taking the pill or changing your belief that such a pill could exist?  

Like I said earlier, the understanding we have of the human brain has reached the point that I can totally see something like this coming about within our lifetimes for sure.  

I applaud your willingness to be a guinea pig!  I think if such a pill did really exist I'd be too worried about side effects.  But then like in the movie, the ironic part is once you start taking the pill you get smart enough to know how to tweak the formulation to avoid the adverse affects.

Uh, that photo! lol
But no, that was in Canada 1940 and they didn't go to Canada. They rather "connected" with the "Philadelphia Experiment" space-time—Philadelphia 1943.

Anyway…

Lotus, I get what you're saying about understanding LoA and some of the other esoteric things we discuss here may be similar to taking a NZT type pill but I think the power of suggestion that goes along with taking a physical pill might help some people get beyond the mental barrier we have placed on our own abilities. We may not have faith in our own abilities but have a belief about a pill.

I get what you're saying too and I even believe what you're talking about is the most important idea one can, and should, consider after watching a movie like Limitless. What you're talking about, in other words, is extremely important and it deserves our full attention.

Generally I agree with you, of course. However, what do you/we exactly mean by "the mental barrier we have placed on our own abilities"? In my opinion, it's not only a matter of "limiting beliefs" or even "limiting conditioning" and "programming." Humans are born humans. We are born limited. We do have it innate or inherent in us to be limited—merely by virtue of being human. Humans, for example, cannot be omniscient. Only gods are.

However we CAN be omniscient—not because we can be gods but because we ARE indeed gods. So yes, there may exist a pill (or a plant or a psychedelic or a technique or any permission slip) that you can take to expand your abilities and "get beyond the mental barrier placed on our abilities." However, that would still remain within the human conditions. No pill whatsoever, real or placebo, can make you omniscient, for example. To be omniscient you rather need to get back to your original god state—which simply means "taking off" the "human mask" altogether. This is how you can truly unleash your astonishing powers. But *this* is not getting "beyond the mental barrier" placed on our abilities; this by definition is rather getting beyond the whole "human mind" itself. It's the mind itself, indeed, that functions as the "human mask," gives us the illusory "human persona," and imposes all those "human limitations" and barriers on our infinite being and truly "limitless" power. 

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Yet at the end of the day, Kazoo, unfortunately not only do most humans know nothing about their potential; they also "prefer" their human limitation and even "love" their prison cells. They're mostly the "pig-people" as a great sage, Swami Prabhavananda, once described them, "those who want to stay wallowing in their mire."

"When told that all sense-experience is, in the last analysis, painful, the pig-people become scornful and angry. They find such a philosophy cowardly and lacking in spirit. One should not be afraid of pleasure, they exclaim; one should seize the flying moment and enjoy it, whatever the consequences. They quote approvingly from their poets (for many of the finest poets write pig-poetry) saying that "one crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name."...

But it is you who are really afraid. It is you who shrink from experience. You talk so much about your pleasures, yet you know nothing about pleasure. You never try to understand its nature. The universe of sense-experience is a great book; and he who reads it through to the end with discrimination will know at length that there is nothing but the Atman (the Self). No experience is in vain, no page of that book is superfluous, provided that the reader learns something from it and passes on to the next. But you never learn. You never pass on. You read the same page over and over, repeating the same meaningless experience, like a man who is half asleep, reading without remembering a word."