1.
- I’d like you to take a look at this discussion,* it’s on YouTube, between three theorists of a coming new age of spirituality. The first talks about a drive of everything living towards complexity that is cumulative, the second about what he calls morphogenetic fields where what one organism learns can be communicated to another without direct contact, and the third a progress of mathematics and society, with chaos theory modeling entropy defying increase of organization being the latest development. All three had experience with hallucinogenic drugs in the 60s.
- I’ll watch it.
- You’ll see three very smart guys. They share in common a particular kind of mistake.
- Which is?
- You'll hear the first say the Internet is about to establish the connection of all with all, bringing to an end the drive for complexity in which no complexity once gained ever was lost. You'll hear the second say the earth and the sun could be consciousness beings. And you'll hear the third predict that human society is in the midst of a self-organizing spike of increased consciousness, with the appearance now of chaos theory modeling this spike being a representative part of that sudden rapid increase of human consciousness.
- When was the video recorded?
- 1998.
- Since then, we see that the Internet brings about not species consciousness but connection of like to like in islands of communication. Morphogenetic fields haven’t helped us to communicate despite the Internet. And the progress of society rapidly increasing? A billion people in China alone living in a dictatorship, rapidly increasing poverty in the United States and parts of Europe. Like the earth holds a highly complex organization of many life forms adapted to inorganic processes, the human species has also been developing a physical complexity: better health, longer life, less statistical chance of suffering violent attack. But like the earth, and the sun for that matter, isn’t conscious, so social complexity of this kind is not the same as complexity of human life.
- What's the difference?
- The self organizing spike modeled in chaos theory: sudden change, and uniformity of direction: does that remind you of anything? In social life?
- Fashion.
- Exactly. People copy each other going in the same direction all motivated by the same perception of desirability. Would you say fashion is a serious, important social development?
- Of course not.
- Why not?
- To use the idea of the first guy, it isn’t an increase in complexity. Communism was thought to be the latest, even the last idea, the newest and most complex. And it was just a fashion.
- Likewise a new species in the Amazon jungle is not more complexity. To be complexity, the organization has to be cumulative: nothing to be lost, but something to be gained. As with communism, in which social complexity is gained at the cost of individual complexity, so with new species. Something always is lost, communication restricted, in each new, dead end specialization.
- I take it being a dead end is part of the definition of fashion.
- Yes. Now the alternative to this view of social progress is the belief that progress is individual, happens with the benefit of a social organization that could be better or worse organized as a practical matter, but social organization is not the place of development.
- Individuals develop. Some of them.
- Yes. History itself doesn’t progress but is cyclical. It tends to decline from a golden age of individuality, and move to destruction of individuality in highly organized social development.
- So tools like the Internet hasten this process of decline. Science too.
- We hesitate to agree the earth or the sun has a soul and is conscious, despite perhaps their having great complexity, because we don’t hear them speak. Language would be a sign they acted as a whole. Same goes for the predicted unified human consciousness to arise out of Internet enabled increasing shared knowledge. Can you hear its voice? Of human species consciousness?
- I might if I took hallucinogenic drugs.
- Otherwise?
- Not so far.
- We see nothing in the organization of the earth, or the sun, or human society that is cumulative of complexity. We see specialization.
- So where did these smart guys go wrong ?
- They confused the causality of the body with the causality of the mind. There is a theory of brain scientists that in the fractal involutions of the dendrites in the brain a wave form record is made that is just the kind of cumulatively increasing knowledge of the whole looked for. This record is then read or decoded in the process of memory retrieval in the nerves themselves into specific memories.
- I know the ideas. The dendrite level is more like the mind, and the nerve processing more like the body.
- Or as some explain, the quantum level, and the classical level.** Social life works with bodies.
- But social life is made up of ideas.
- The communication in actual societies is like the relations between species on earth, or the parts of the human body: between specialized role and specialized role.
- Like what happen on the Internet.
- Increased knowledge, fed into social life, results only in increased complexity of species organization, which involves reduction of complexity, decreasing freedom of the individual.
- Then morphogenetic fields aren’t going to lead us to group consciousness anytime soon.
- No. Truly cumulative knowledge is individual. Scientific theories, ever more specific knowledge of relations between specialized parts, replace each other like new fashions, with ever more uniform and consistent relation between less variable parts. In individual development all memory is retained, nothing is lost in specialization. In such development perhaps there is communication directly at a level lower, more fundamental than that of the body, why not? But progress in individual development is hindered by social progress of the kind we’re talking about.
- Is there any other kind of social progress? And did you just say you believe in this new age soul communication?
- Love draws love. Beauty brings beauty. Truth elicits truth.
- Not on the Internet. Not in society. Not in our kind of progress.
- For real social progress we have to work out first how to remain individuals with our knowledge. Learn how to avoid playing social roles. That involves detailed knowledge of how we go the wrong way.
- And these three guys on the video didn’t think of taking this precaution? Didn’t know how to prevent mind being confused with body, didn’t know how to stop cumulative thinking from devolving into body like specialized organization?
- That’s how it looks to me.
Further Reading:
Killer Metaphysics
___________________
* McKenna, Sheldrake, Abraham
** "In some way, and to some degree everything enfolds or implicates everything, but in such a manner that under typical conditions of ordinary experience, there is a great deal of relative independence of things." David Bohm, "A New Theory of the Relationship of Mind and Matter"
The quantum level of moving information leads to the classical on which particles somehow both retain their classical status in relation to other classical things while also returning to quantum status which allows unfolding into organic species. Species interact materially with other species while also returning to quantum status so as to unfold into individual humans of the species. Ditto the thought of individual humans and ditto their offspring thoughts. The new age is supposed to be brought about by communication, but this result relies on that communication being on the quantum level, while the Internet, for example, obviously works on the classical level, and predictably enough shows classical results.
2.
- One of your favorite ideas is that we experience a relation to the whole when we stop acting and feel love. What does it mean if, as Bohm's quantum physics* claims, that every particle of an atom does the same? Not that it loves, but is in a relation to the whole? You say when we love we don't really stop moving but hold our position with regard to the world, and this theory says the same, but oppositely, that when we hold our position we stop being in relation to the whole: the particle previously moving in response to a wave of information coming from the whole world now acts like an isolated particle.
- When a particle stops moving it acts like a thing and when we stop moving we act like a human being. We have been through this before, and many times. Do you recognize the relevant concepts?
- I have a sense, something...
- You have a feeling. You're a little confused. Your mind is in movement. The world is not stable in love of the whole. You can't find yourself in it at the moment.
- Oh! Those ideas. I remember. My sense of the world is open, while my attention is on myself as a problem, in a failed relation to the unclear world.
- Yes. You will try out various kinds of actions, characteristic things you've repeatedly done, looking to see if the world as a whole will come back to you. You make a change in your relation to the world. Now, what goes on when the particle is moving in the grips of the whole world?
- The theory says it acts like a wave, not a particle.
- When you move, you see yourself as a doubtful particle, and the world as unclear. When the particle moves, it is as it were invisible to itself as a particle, but in the grips of the whole. Do you see the consequence of this difference between our behavior in movement and the particle's?
- You tell me.
- The particle doesn't make a change in the world when it moves.
- Which is why the classical world doesn't change! Why it obeys physical laws.
- Yes. The quantum world, being sold to us by the prophets of the new age as a world of love and connectivity, is actually what the old systems of morality warn us against: falling into the passions of fear and hatred that bring loss of self awareness in action aimed at keeping the world the same.
3.
- The end approaching is more like the destruction of consciousness than shared consciousness. But aren't you missing the point?
- Which is?
- That what the new world is going to bring is shared unconsciousness.
- The world we get a glimpse of when we take drugs. The material world losing all human content helps us on our way.
- Maybe it's the only way.
- What about increasing human content in the world?
- Do you know how to do that?
- At the quantum level information carried by waves of the whole is filtered down to information about a single particle. In the Kabbalah, acting with wisdom creates beauty, which remains in the world and becomes the foundation of new creation.
- The whole improved by the individual, not the whole reduced to the individual.
- Freedom at the end of time, not in the world's destruction, but in its perfection.
Further Reading:
Kabbalah & The Dalai Lama
Karma & Kabbalah
______________________
* Summarizing Bohm's and his own interpretation, Hiley has explained that the quantum potential "does not give rise to a mechanical force in the Newtonian sense. Thus while the Newtonian potential drives the particle along the trajectory, the quantum potential organises the form of the trajectories in response to the experimental conditions." The quantum potential can be understood as an aspect of "some kind of self-organising process" involving a basic underlying field.[35][36] The quantum potential (or information potential) links the quantum system under investigation to the measuring apparatus, thereby giving that system a significance within the context defined by the apparatus.[37] It acts on each quantum particle individually, each particle influencing itself. Hiley cites the wording of Paul Dirac: "Each electron only interferes with itself" and adds: "Somehow the ‘quantum force’ is a ‘private’ force. It thus cannot be regarded as a distortion of some underlying sub-quantum medium as was originally suggested by de Broglie".[38] It is independent of field intensity, thus fulfilling a precondition for non-locality, and it carries information about the whole experimental arrangement in which the particle finds itself.[38] (from Wikipedia)
4.
- Do you agree? Mind is more than matter, and more than any arrangement or movement of matter, is something more than a form, more than a kind of information or programming directing arrangement of the parts of the body?
- I agree.
- But then, what is it?
- I have no idea. But let's ask instead, what is matter?
- And answer?
- Matter is what mind moves by moving the body which then moves the world in contact with it.
- And is the mind what the body moves too, as claimed by brain researchers?
- We can imagine that material things can direct the mind step by step through the process of forming a single idea out of the world of all memory and present sensation, like the particle filters down from the wave in quantum mechanics. But the mind is not an idea making machine. If it is going to be a machine at all, it is a time travelling machine. It stops responding to the present world, and looks back and looks forward, doing nothing but hold its place in present time and space.
- The mind uses matter, moves matter, even if it is only the brain being moved through, to travel through time.
- Yes. And here is the point I want to make: we don't know what mind is, and we don't know what matter is, but we know mind can do something with matter that matter cannot do with the mind. Matter can undermine the ability of mind to do what it does, destroy or manipulate the brain, but can you conceive of matter equaling the time travel performance of mind?
- I'm not sure.
- The other day I told you about Niels Bohr, his idea that using one experimental apparatus to look at electrons we see waves, using another experimental apparatus we see particles, because we with our experimental apparatus are co-creators with nature of the object we see, the wave or the particle. If so, even the quantum field doesn't escape its world, the confinement and causality of the experimental apparatus.
Further Reading:
It Just Happens
* McKenna, Sheldrake, Abraham
** "In some way, and to some degree everything enfolds or implicates everything, but in such a manner that under typical conditions of ordinary experience, there is a great deal of relative independence of things." David Bohm, "A New Theory of the Relationship of Mind and Matter"
The quantum level of moving information leads to the classical on which particles somehow both retain their classical status in relation to other classical things while also returning to quantum status which allows unfolding into organic species. Species interact materially with other species while also returning to quantum status so as to unfold into individual humans of the species. Ditto the thought of individual humans and ditto their offspring thoughts. The new age is supposed to be brought about by communication, but this result relies on that communication being on the quantum level, while the Internet, for example, obviously works on the classical level, and predictably enough shows classical results.
2.
- One of your favorite ideas is that we experience a relation to the whole when we stop acting and feel love. What does it mean if, as Bohm's quantum physics* claims, that every particle of an atom does the same? Not that it loves, but is in a relation to the whole? You say when we love we don't really stop moving but hold our position with regard to the world, and this theory says the same, but oppositely, that when we hold our position we stop being in relation to the whole: the particle previously moving in response to a wave of information coming from the whole world now acts like an isolated particle.
- When a particle stops moving it acts like a thing and when we stop moving we act like a human being. We have been through this before, and many times. Do you recognize the relevant concepts?
- I have a sense, something...
- You have a feeling. You're a little confused. Your mind is in movement. The world is not stable in love of the whole. You can't find yourself in it at the moment.
- Oh! Those ideas. I remember. My sense of the world is open, while my attention is on myself as a problem, in a failed relation to the unclear world.
- Yes. You will try out various kinds of actions, characteristic things you've repeatedly done, looking to see if the world as a whole will come back to you. You make a change in your relation to the world. Now, what goes on when the particle is moving in the grips of the whole world?
- The theory says it acts like a wave, not a particle.
- When you move, you see yourself as a doubtful particle, and the world as unclear. When the particle moves, it is as it were invisible to itself as a particle, but in the grips of the whole. Do you see the consequence of this difference between our behavior in movement and the particle's?
- You tell me.
- The particle doesn't make a change in the world when it moves.
- Which is why the classical world doesn't change! Why it obeys physical laws.
- Yes. The quantum world, being sold to us by the prophets of the new age as a world of love and connectivity, is actually what the old systems of morality warn us against: falling into the passions of fear and hatred that bring loss of self awareness in action aimed at keeping the world the same.
3.
- The end approaching is more like the destruction of consciousness than shared consciousness. But aren't you missing the point?
- Which is?
- That what the new world is going to bring is shared unconsciousness.
- The world we get a glimpse of when we take drugs. The material world losing all human content helps us on our way.
- Maybe it's the only way.
- What about increasing human content in the world?
- Do you know how to do that?
- At the quantum level information carried by waves of the whole is filtered down to information about a single particle. In the Kabbalah, acting with wisdom creates beauty, which remains in the world and becomes the foundation of new creation.
- The whole improved by the individual, not the whole reduced to the individual.
- Freedom at the end of time, not in the world's destruction, but in its perfection.
Further Reading:
Kabbalah & The Dalai Lama
Karma & Kabbalah
______________________
* Summarizing Bohm's and his own interpretation, Hiley has explained that the quantum potential "does not give rise to a mechanical force in the Newtonian sense. Thus while the Newtonian potential drives the particle along the trajectory, the quantum potential organises the form of the trajectories in response to the experimental conditions." The quantum potential can be understood as an aspect of "some kind of self-organising process" involving a basic underlying field.[35][36] The quantum potential (or information potential) links the quantum system under investigation to the measuring apparatus, thereby giving that system a significance within the context defined by the apparatus.[37] It acts on each quantum particle individually, each particle influencing itself. Hiley cites the wording of Paul Dirac: "Each electron only interferes with itself" and adds: "Somehow the ‘quantum force’ is a ‘private’ force. It thus cannot be regarded as a distortion of some underlying sub-quantum medium as was originally suggested by de Broglie".[38] It is independent of field intensity, thus fulfilling a precondition for non-locality, and it carries information about the whole experimental arrangement in which the particle finds itself.[38] (from Wikipedia)
4.
- Do you agree? Mind is more than matter, and more than any arrangement or movement of matter, is something more than a form, more than a kind of information or programming directing arrangement of the parts of the body?
- I agree.
- But then, what is it?
- I have no idea. But let's ask instead, what is matter?
- And answer?
- Matter is what mind moves by moving the body which then moves the world in contact with it.
- And is the mind what the body moves too, as claimed by brain researchers?
- We can imagine that material things can direct the mind step by step through the process of forming a single idea out of the world of all memory and present sensation, like the particle filters down from the wave in quantum mechanics. But the mind is not an idea making machine. If it is going to be a machine at all, it is a time travelling machine. It stops responding to the present world, and looks back and looks forward, doing nothing but hold its place in present time and space.
- The mind uses matter, moves matter, even if it is only the brain being moved through, to travel through time.
- Yes. And here is the point I want to make: we don't know what mind is, and we don't know what matter is, but we know mind can do something with matter that matter cannot do with the mind. Matter can undermine the ability of mind to do what it does, destroy or manipulate the brain, but can you conceive of matter equaling the time travel performance of mind?
- I'm not sure.
- The other day I told you about Niels Bohr, his idea that using one experimental apparatus to look at electrons we see waves, using another experimental apparatus we see particles, because we with our experimental apparatus are co-creators with nature of the object we see, the wave or the particle. If so, even the quantum field doesn't escape its world, the confinement and causality of the experimental apparatus.
Further Reading:
It Just Happens
