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Aikido
Whenever I move, that's Aikido.
O Sensei, Morihei Ueshiba
Aikido, Japanese martial art that uses a
system of holds, throws, and locks as its principal movements.
The name comes from the Japanese words ai (union, harmony), ki
(vital breath, energy), do (way). The art focuses on controlling
one's ki (vital energy within the body that is centered in the
abdominal region) to subdue an opponent. Aikido advocates
self-defense, emphasizing nerve points that, when pressed, can
bring down an adversary without maiming or killing.
Aikido depends on two categories of
movement: those of control (katame-waza) and those of throwing an
opponent (nage-waza). More than 700 movements belong to these two
waza. All are derived from the basic kata (forms), which include
freeing oneself from grips, throwing an opponent to the ground by
exerting pressure on the limbs, and immobilizing the opponent by
placing pressure on the joints. These three series of movements
are the foundation of all self-defense movements in aikido.
Aikido students form pairs, alternating positions of uke
(assailant who is thrown) and nage (person who is assaulted). In
response to a throw, students use rolling or leaping falls to
absorb impact and lessen the chance for injury.
...
Aikido is a Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba
(often referred to by his title 'O Sensei' or 'Great Teacher').
On a purely physical level it is an art involving some throws and
joint locks that are derived from jiu-jitsu and some throws and
other techniques derived from kenjutsu. Aikido focuses not on
punching or kicking opponents, but rather on using their own
energy to gain control of them or to throw them away from you. It
is not a static art, but places great emphasis on motion and the
dynamics of movement.
Upon closer examination, practitioners will find from Aikido what
they are looking for, whether it is applicable self-defence
technique, spiritual enlightenment, physical health or peace of
mind. O Sensei emphasised the moral and spiritual aspects of this
art, placing great weight on the development of harmony and
peace. "The Way of Harmony of the Spirit" is one way
that "Aikido" may be translated into English. This is
still true of Aikido today, although different styles emphasise
the more spiritual aspects to greater or lesser degrees. Although
the idea of a martial discipline striving for peace and harmony
may seem paradoxical, it is the most basic tenet of the art.
Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido, once
pinned an opponent using only a single finger.
Chaos
chaos, in science, field of study devoted to
processes that exhibit complex, apparently random behavior, such
as cloud formation or fluctuations of biological populations.
Attempts to predict the behavior of these systems led to the
development of an interdisciplinary science, NONLINEAR DYNAMICS.
Chaos (kâ´òs´), in Greek mythology, the
vacant, unfathomable space from which everything arose. In the
OLYMPIAN myth GAEA sprang from Chaos and became the mother of all
things.
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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better
lighting." - Alan Dean Foster, "To the Vanishing
Point":
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"Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks all
acknowledged the primal dragon of Chaos even as the gods of their
civilizations felt compelled to tame and organize the beast.
Christianity tried to erase the goddess altogether. That is why
the Church decided that God created the world ex nihilo, from
nothing at all. But you can still smell the briny spew of the
primal goddess in the formless, watery void that opens Genesis --
a distinct echo of the older Babylonian myth.
"The dragon of Chaos wore a far more
honorable face in the East, where it was known as the Tao. For
ancient sages like Chuang-Tzu, the subtle order of natural chaos
was rich and bountiful compared to the bankrupt legalism and
moralistic strictures of Confucian civilization -- which
paradoxically produced the very disorder it wanted to suppress.
The Taoists felt that only by tearing down the State of things --
including ordinary consciousness -- could we return to the golden
age, the mixed-up harmony symbolized by the wonton (which derives
from Mr. Hun-tun, Chuang-Tzu's lord of chaos). If these anarchic
dreams could not be realized in society -- as Lao Tzu hoped to do
-- then at least they could be realized in the body, through
spiritual and physical practices which would open up the
spontaneous chaos within. "
- Erik Davis - _Spiritual Chaos?_
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Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds
habit.
--Henry B. Adams (1838-1918),
To find a form that accommodates the mess,
that is the task of the artist now.
--Samuel Beckett (1906-89), Irish dramatist, novelist.
Conversation with John Driver, 1961. Quoted in: Deirdre Bair,
Samuel Beckett, a Biography, ch. 21 (1978).
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all
disorder a secret order.
--Carl Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist. Collected Works,
vol. 9, "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious," pt.
1 (1959; ed. by William McGuire).
There is nothing stable in the world;
uproar's your only music.
--John Keats (1795-1821), English poet. Letter, 13-19 Jan. 1818,
to his brothers George and Thomas Keats (published in Letters of
John Keats, no. 37, ed. by Frederick Page, 1954).
Chaos is a name for any order that produces
confusion in our minds.
--George Santayana (1863-1952),
"Chaos is present everywhere in
countless ways and forms, while Order remains an unattainable
ideal."
--M.C. Escher,
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Feedback is all around us. Some
philosophers and scientists believe that consciousness itself is
nothing but feedback; it's the brain thinking about the
brain. Thinking about thinking creates feedback, and that
may have been one of the sparks of human consciousness.
That is what is so interesting about seeing a smaller example of
a feedback system and be able to, when you look at one of these
patterns, to see everything from hurricanes to swastikas, and all
kinds of things in between. Some mathematicians to this day, even
with chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics, say "How can such
complex behavior arise from such a simple system?"
These systems also have meaning in the physical world. What
we have in video feedback is an incredibly simple system that is
deterministic in design yet we get incredibly complex output from
the system, even if there's no human intervention. When everyone
thinks of fractals they think of a digital environment, and here
is this totally analog environment which I never understood
before producing beautiful, self- referential images.
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"Everything is sentient." -
Pythagoras.
A "failure of logic" in a
"paranoid democracy", ghost in the machine? Sentient
Electronics? As technology develops also our dependence on
that system increases, even fault tolerant computers are
vulnerable to overload, no standards have as yet been developed,
"software is not predictable". The nine hour
breakdown of AT&T's long distance telephonenetwork in
- from the liner notes for the track _NYC
Overload_ MP3 by Clock DVA off of _Man-Amplified_ CD on Contempo
(1992)
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In the beginning, according to the Pelasgian
mythmakers, there was chaos, which is where most creation stories
originate. To the Pelasgians, however, chaos was not just a
great cloud of nothingmess. Rather, it was dynamic region
that contained tremendous potential- a place of great energy but
no differentiations to define things as separate or
individual. There were, in short, no dualities. The
grand scheme of creation, in this view, was to impose order on a
limitless kernel of possibility. This idea was passed down
through the centuries and has become part and parcel of our very
definition of the universe. 'cosmos' is the Greek word for
'order.'
Databases
So reality is like a computer database in
that the right search word or "incantation" might cause
a piece of information - a UFO or ghost or other
anomaly--to materialize.
If you think of [reality] as the software for the universe, all
it would take is for someone to change a comma in the program and
the chair you are sitting in wouldn't be a chair at all. The
major benefit from this model is that it handles anomalies very
well. Coincidences would be a normal expectation. If you address
a database with a request for anything with the word
"pool" you will get ads for sunscreen, lotions,
billiard balls and an investment prospectus or two. In
parapsychology, gifted subjects may be forcing similar
coincidences between separate locations or separate minds. One
way of testing the theory, by the way, is to create massive
informational anomalies and see what happens when they collapse.
You could enhance remote viewing experiments, for instance, by
loading the site with large quantities of data about highly
unlikely events or situations, then quickly erase that data to
collapse the singularity.
- Jacques Vallee
~ ~ ~
TRP: Although you never talk about it, when
you're talking about these elves singing and creating this is a
concept that Australian indigenous peoples have carried within
them. Native American people singing the reality into existence
over and over, singing creation, and singing life. It's their
database, it's their social database is this art form. But to
them it's not an art, it's how they communicate, it's how they
see reality.
TM: Well, the word becoming flesh, singing
it into existence. In some profound way that nobody understands,
certainly I don't, we are imprisoned by our expectations, and
somehow the change never happens until the expectations are
deconditioned.
- from an interview in The Resonance Project
Magazine
Meme
"An idea is something you have;
an ideology is something that has you."
--Morris Berman
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"I don't entertain, I enter the
brain..."
- DJ Spooky - _Degree Zero_ MP3 off of _Riddim Warfare_ CD on
Outpost/Asphodel (1998)
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Coined by zoologist Richard Dawkins in his
controversial book _The Selfish Gene (1975) , the 'meme' is
the study of ideas which replicate and transmit themselves via
the human mind the way a virus does in a biological host.
Important early scientific studies were
conducted by Daniel C. Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter in the
1980s, before a climate of viral metaphors (Ebola, AIDS) and a
rapidly growing hedonistic cyberculture helped popularize the
memetics field in the1990s.
Memetic engineering developed from diverse influences,
includingcutting edge physics of consciousness and memetics
research, chaos theory, semiotics, culture jamming,
military information warfare, and the viral texts of iconoclasts
William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, and Genesis P-Orridge.
The memetic engineer is able to isolate,
study, and subtly manipulate the underlying values systems,
symbolic balance and primal atavisms that unconsciously influence
the individual psyche and collective identity. A highly educated
but susceptible intelligentsia, worldwide travel, and information
vectors like the Internet and cable television means that
hysterical epidemics and disinformationcampaigns will become more
common. This warfare will be conducted using aesthetics, symbols,
and doctrines as camouflage that will ultimately influence our
cultural meme pool. These contemporary 'life conditions' are
explored in books like Carl Sagan's _The Demon Haunted World_,
& John Brockman's _The Third Culture_. Fictional descriptions
of memetic engineering include Isaac Asimov's seminal
_Foundation_ series, G.I. Gurdjieff's _Beelzebub's Tales To His
Grandson_, Neal Stephenson's _Snow Crash_, and Robert W.
Chambers' unearthly _The King In Yellow_ tome.
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Memetics
Synopsys: Meme: an information pattern, held in an
individual's memory, which is capable of being copied to another
individual's memory.
Memetics: the theoretical and empirical science that
studies the replication, spread and evolution of memes
Cultural evolution, including the evolution of knowledge, can be
modelled through the same basic principles of variation and
selection that underly biological evolution. This implies a shift
from genes as units of biological information to a new type of
units of cultural information: memes.
A meme is a cognitive or behavioral pattern that can be
transmitted from one individual to another one. Since the
individual who transmitted the meme will continue to carry it,
the transmission can be interpreted as a replication: a copy of
the meme is made in the memory of another individual, making him
or her into a carrier of the meme. This process of
self-reproduction, leading to spreading over a growing group of
individuals, defines the meme as a replicator, similar in that
respect to the gene (Dawkins, 1976; Moritz, 1991).
For genes to be transmitted, you need a
generation. Memes only take minutes to replicate, and thus have
potentially much higher fecundity. On the other hand, the
copying-fidelity of memes is in general much lower. If a story is
spread by being told from person to person, the final version
will be very different from the original one. It is this
variability or fuzziness that perhaps distinguishes cultural
patterns most strikingly from DNA structures: every individual's
version of an idea or belief will be in some respect different
from the others'. That makes it difficult to analyze or delimit
memes. This does not imply that meme evolution cannot be
accurately modeled, though. After all, genetics was a
well-established science long before the precise DNA structure of
genes was discovered.
Examples of memes in the animal world are
most bird songs, and certain techniques for hunting or using
tools that are passed from parents or the social group to the
youngsters (Bonner, 1980). In human society, almost any cultural
entity can be seen as a meme: religions, language, fashions,
songs, techniques, scientific theories and concepts, conventions,
traditions, etc. The defining characteristic of memes as
informational patterns, is that they can be replicated in
unlimited amounts by communication between individuals,
independently of any replication at the level of the genes.
Of course, the capacity of the nervous
system for learning is the result of evolutionary processes at
the genetic level. Yet I will here not go into detail about why
that capacity has been selected. The increased fitness resulting
from a nervous system that is flexible enough to adapt its
behavior to many new situations, seems obvious enough. If a
useful type of behavior can be learned directly from another
individual by communication or imitation, that seems like a most
welcome shortcut for having to discover it by personal
trial-and-error. More arguments for why the capacity for meme
replication has evolved genetically can be found in most texts
about the recently founded domain of memetics (Moritz, 1991).
Memetics can be defined as an approach
trying to model the evolution of memes. Memes undergo processes
of variation (mutation, recombination) of their internal
structure. Different variants will compete for the limited
memoryspace available in different individuals. The most fit
variants will win this competition, and spread most extensively.
Different criteria for the fitness of a meme, relative to other
memes, can be formulated.
Variation, replication and selection on the
basis of meme fitness determine a complex dynamics. This dynamics
will be influenced by the medium through which memes are
communicated, and the copying-fidelity, fecundity and longevity
it allows. Perhaps the most powerful medium for meme transmission
is the computer network, and this implies some specific
characteristics for memes on the net.
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As is the case with genes, it is not
necessary to know the exact coding or even the exact size or
boundaries of a meme in order to discuss its fitness, and thus to
make predictions about its further spreading, survival or
extinction within the population of competing memes. Such
predictions can be empirically tested. For example, a memetic
hypothesis might state that simpler memes will spread more
quickly. This can be tested by observing the spread (perhaps in a
controlled environment) of two memes that are similar in all
respects, except that the one is simpler. Theories can also be
induced from empirical observation of meme behavior "in the
wild". Given the differences in variation and selection
mechanisms, it is also possible to make predictions about the
competition between memes and genes.
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censorship:
Any attempt to hinder the spread of a meme
by eliminating its vectors. Hence, censorship is analogous to
attempts to halt diseases by spraying insecticides. Censorship
can never fully kill off an offensive meme, and may actually help
to promote the meme's most virulent strain, while killing off
milder forms.
- Memetic Lexicon
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Memetics is vital to the understanding of
cults, ideologies, and marketing campaigns of all kinds, and it
can help to provide immunity from dangerous
information-contagions. You should be aware, for instance, that
you just been exposed to the Meta-meme, the meme about memes...
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In memetics, ideas are viewed as almost
independent creatures in a symbiotic relationship with human
minds and cultures. A meme is a (cognitive)
information-structure able to replicate using human hosts and to
influence their behavior to promote replication.
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Host = A host must be able to possess at
least the potential capacity to elaborate on the meme and to
perform those cognitive tasks connected to the meme that we
normally refer to as "understanding". This means that
only humans can be hosts (animals can perhaps become hosts for
simpler memes, but we will not discuss this here), at least until
the development of artificial intelligences reaches further.
Vector = A vector is anything that
transports the meme between hosts without the capacity to reflect
on the meme. Examples are a wall, a voice, an email-program, or a
picture. Can a human be a vector? Yes she can, if she lacks the
cognitive capacity (or interest) to elaborate on a specific meme.
Then she is just a non-reflective carrier of the meme, much the
same as a book. Note though that the human vector is still
a potential host - or inactive host (Grant, 1990) - for the meme,
should she suddenly choose to analyze the meme (in its widest
sense) or achieve the contextual understanding which would make
this possible.
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Elaboration
Something that a host actively thinks about
is less likely to be forgotten, and also more likely to influence
behavior. Thus memes that encourage thinking or fantasizing about
themselves or related concepts have increased chances of
survival. Rituals and ceremony are often powerful reminders of
the meme.
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Storage
If a meme is to be spread by a host for a
long time, the host must remember the meme. If a host is infected
and later forgets the meme and/or stops acting out the new
behavior before the host has spread the meme on, the host has not
done the meme any more good than if the host had not been
infected in the first place. Thus successful memes encourage
permanent or long-lasting changes in the host. Note that it
is not necessary for the hosts to remember the meme itself, just
change their behaviors in a way that will promote the spread of
the (reconstructed) meme.
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External storage
Since human memory tends to be rather
uncertain, external memory aids can also aid memes greatly not
just as vectors, but as memory feedback.
If a host is infected by a scientific
meme-complex he will be encouraged to read books relating to the
meme complex. The host becomes likely to learn more and more
about the theories rather than forgetting parts of them, and
should he forget something relevant he can look it up again, the
books can serve as memory feedback loops and also act as vectors
for other parts of the meme-complex causing further infection.
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Infection Phase
After successful decoding the meme becomes
part of the host's mental structures, and this is called
infection. A person who does not remember a meme at all is not
infected. A person that does remember a meme but who's behavior
is not affected has thus become a human vector. A person whose
behaviour is affected by a meme has been actively infected and
can potentially transmit it to other hosts.
Networks
At any given moment in any population of human beings, there will
be individuals who have
reached different stages in the developmental sequence. Each will
possess a certain store of
data and will consequently emit behaviors, which stimulate others
who have reached a stage
appropriate to respond to them. The product of interaction
between such individuals will be
certain typical relationships or attachments.
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"Because networks of communication may
generate feedback loops, they may acquire the ability to
regulate themselves. For example, a community that
maintains an active network of communication will learn
from its mistakes, because the consequences of a mistake will
spread through the network and return to the source along
feedback loops. Thus the community can correct its mistakes,
regulate itself,and organize itself. Indeed, self-organization
has emerged as perhaps 'the' central concept in the systems view
of life, and like the concepts of feedback and self-regulation,
it is linked closely to networks. The pattern of life, we might
say, is a network pattern capable of self-organization. This is a
simple definition, yet it is based on recent discoveries at the
very forefront of science."
- Fritjof Capra - _The Web of Life_
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"...what is happening is a tendency
toward what I call turning the body inside out. Through our
media and cybernetics, we are actually approaching the point
where consciousness can be experienced in a state of
disconnection from the body. We have changed. We are
no longer bipedal monkeys. We are instead a kind of
cybernetic coral reef of organic components and inorganic
technological components. We have become a force that takes
unorganized raw material and excretes technical objects; we have
transcended the normal definitions of humans. We are like
an enormous collective organism with our data banks, our
forecasting agencies, and our computer networks, and the many
levels at which we are connected into the universe. Our
self-image is changing; the monkey has been all but left behind
and, shortly, will be left behind."
-Terence Mckenna - _Archaic Revival_
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"In the old days, evil things spead
rapidly, but now good things spread rapidly. If you
understand...everything begins to appear wonderful and beautiful,
and it naturally makes people stop wasting or stop desiring
unnecessary things. This awakening is contagious and it will be
transmitted to everybody soon."
- Tamo-san
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"Like the Irish King Cuchulain who
fought the tide with his sword, they lose who would battle waves
on the shores of light. The book is slow, the network is quick;
the book is many of one, the network is many ones multiplied; the
book is dialogic, the network polylogic."
- Michael Joyce
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The view of living systems as networks
provides a novel perspective on the so-called hierarchies
of nature. Since living systems at all levels are networks,
we must visualize the web of life as living systems
(networks) interacting in network fashion with other
systems (networks). For example, we can picture an
ecosystem schematically as a network with a few nodes. Each node
represents an organism, which means that each node, when
magnified, appears itself as a network. Each node in the new
network may represent an organ, which in turnwill appear as a
network when magnified, and so on.
In other words, the web of life consists of
networks within networks. At each scale, under closer
scrutiny, the nodes of the network reveal themselves as
smaller networks. We tend to arrange these systems, all nesting
within larger systems, in a hierarchical scheme by placing
the larger systems above the smaller ones in pyramid
fashion. But this is a human projection.
In nature there is no "above" or "below," and
there are no hierarchies. There are only networks nesting
within other networks."
- Fritjof Capra, _The Web of Life_
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"In the province of connected minds,
what the network believes to be true, either is true or becomes
true within certain limits to be found experientially and
experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be
transcended. In the network's mind there are no limits."
- John C. Lilly
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There may exist a vast communication network
in the topological nature of things. A network that becomes a
fact only for those species or individuals who will but have the
intelligence enough to seek this vision. It will by them be found
to be persistent in the nature of things. Alchemy thrives in a
climate of such ideas. To validate the idea of the worth of the
visions of worlds at a distance one must emerge with some idea
spawned by the visionary Other but with a utility in the here and
now. The wave quantification of the I Ching is the only idea of
this sort that I personally have glimpsed in completeness. It
took years to elaborate and its relation to the here and now is
still elusive. Fragmentary themes abound: symbiosis, saucer-lens
vehicles whose possessors navigate the higher topological oceans
in our heads. All this could be transference and fantasy. In the
classical sense of the word the experimenter with hallucinogens
pursues gnosis: privileged knowledge concerning nature and
vouchsafed by her in ecstacy.The history of consciousness is the
halting exploration of the once irrational images and processes
met in dreams and trance. Such images become concepts and
discoveries asinformation flows through the multiple-continuum of
being seeking equilibrium, yet paradoxically carrying everywhere
images of ways the flow towards entropy was locally reversed by
this being or that society or phenomenon. We are immersed
in a holographic ocean of places and ideas. We can understand
this to whatever depth we are able. The ocean of images and the
intricacy of their connections is infinite.
- Terence McKenna - _Open Ending_
"In the time of gathering together,
make no arbitrary choice of your associates. There are secret
forces at work, leading together those who belong together."
~~~I Ching Wisdom
Realities
"there is nothing real outside our
perception of reality"
- sample from 604 track _Perception Of
Reality_ MP3 by Psy-chaos
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reality then becomes a "shared
hallucination", meaning that there is a cemented, agreed
upon perception of something. if there was a race of people
living on an island who thought that the color green was actually
the color pink, are they wrong? to the majority of the
people on this planet, maybe, but to them the notion of
"being wrong" about something like that is
absurd. they are simply not sharing in the agreed upon
perception, or hallucination. wars are fought over this
kind of difference. in order for us to stop fighting, and
even arguing (a waste of valuable time), we must simply accept
that "green" is "pink" to some people.
english prime. - @Om* 2/3/2000
"'reality' is for people who can't
handle drugs..."
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The fractal-enhanced map-point
leaflet announced a giant, illegal party -- a rave, where
thousands of celebrants would take psychedelics, dance to the
blips of computer-generated music, and discuss the ways in which
reality itself would soon conform to their own hallucinatory
projections. No big deal. Bohemians have talked this way for
years, even centuries. Problem is, after a few months in
their midst, I started believing them.
Quantum physicists at the best institutions agree that the
tiniest particles making up matter itself have ceased to behave
with the predictability of linear equations. Instead, they jump
around in a discontinuous fashion, disappearing, reappearing,
suddenly gaining and losing energy.
Mathematicians, likewise, have decided that
the smooth, geometric model of reality they have used since
- Douglas Rushkoff - _Cyberia: Life In The Trenches Of
Hyperspace_ (1994)
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In Part Two of _The Holographic Universe_,
"Mind and Body," Michael Talbot discusses the
psychological aspects of the holographic model. According to
Bohm, "In a universe in which all things are infinitely
interconnected, all consciousnesses are also interconnected.
Despite appearances, we are beings without borders. Deep down the
consciousness of mankind is one." (p. 60) The holographic
theory, according to the author, can explain many psychological
phenomena. Some of these include psychic phenomena, the ability
to see "auras", psychosis, the power of the mind to
heal using visualization techniques, effects of placebos on
healing, lucid dreaming and altered states of consciousness. The
power of the mind is awesome and remains untapped. The author
believes that by understanding the holographic model we can learn
to access these powers. "In the implicate order, as in the
brain itself, imagination and reality are ultimately
indistinguishable, and it should therefore come as no surprise to
us that images in the mind can ultimately manifest as realities
in the physical body." (p. 84)
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"All life is only a set of pictures in
the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born
of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause
to value the one above the other."
- H.P. Lovecraft
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"Reality" is a word in the English
language which happens to be (a) a noun and (b) singular.
Thinking in the English language (and in cognate Indo-European
languages) therefore subliminally programs us to conceptualize
"reality" as one block-like entity, sort of like a huge
New York skyscraper, in which every part is just another
"room" within the same building. This linguistic
program is so pervasive that most people cannot "think"
outside it at all, and when one tries to offer a different
perspective they imagine one is talking gibberish.
The notion that "reality" is a noun, a solid thing like
a brick or a baseball bat, derives from theevolutionary fact that
our nervous systems normally organize the dance of energy into
such block-like "things," probably as instant
bio-survival cues.
Such "things," however, dissolve
back into energy dances -- processes or verbs -- when the nervous
system is synergized with certain drugs or transmuted by yogic or
shamanic exercises or aided by scientific instruments. In both
mysticism and physics, there is general agreement that
"things" are constructed by our nervous systems and
that "realities" (plural) are better described as
systems or bundles of energy functions.
So much for "reality" as a noun.
The notion that "reality" is singular, like a
hermetically sealed jar, does not jibe with current scientific
findings which, in this century, suggest that "reality"
may better be considered as flowing and meandering, like a river,
or interacting, like a dance or evolving, like life itself.
- Robert Anton Wilson - _Cosmic Trigger_
By allowing for the unpredictability of
simultaneous truths, certain humans start growing more receptive
to signals beyond the realm of their own minds. It is here in the
Concept-Free Zones where humans can unwrap their high-frequency
antennae from self-preoccupation and direct it towards each
other.. and down to the planetary entitiy.. on up to the stars
and.. beyond.
- Antero Alli -_Akashic Record Player_
Silent Communication
..."Nothing was gradually perfecting
the art of silent communication, or perhaps it would be truer to
say that the art of silent communication was gradually perfecting
Nothing. He had passed through a critical threshold when he
learned - or was taught - to converse with any part nature's
Kingdom, silently; with plants, trees, rivers, mountains, insects
<["bees, in particular"]> and animals, or even
with creatures in distant places.
<["methocantordusts"]> Once he had passed through
this critical threshold, Nothing had discovered that distance
itself was not a problem; and then, soon afterwards, that time
was not a problem either. So he could quite unselfconsciously
converse, in a manner of speaking - but without himself actually
uttering even a single word - with other lands and with other
times. He had no idea how far distant planets, each of these in
their turn would 'speak' silently back to him, or all would join
in a silent conversation, all speaking together but in such a way
that the conversation of each, and of the whole amalgam, remained
perfectly clear. Communication with another age - either
backwards or forwards in time as time is normally measured - was
just as simple, though it always helped to have at least one
definite <["cultural"]> reference point."...
- Edward Matchett, page 192, from _The
Deepening of Personal Encounter_, "The Core of True
Genius"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What pets seem to pick up is
intentions. They pick up when people are about to go away
on holiday even before they've started packing. They pick
up when people want to take them to the vet, and will often
hide. Dogs often pick up when they're going to be taken for
a walk. Dogs can be trained to respond not just to words
and whistles, but even to silent, mental commands. Many
dogs and cats seem to know when a person they are bonded to has
died, even when this happens far away. They seem to be
sensitive to changes in the field that connects them to their
people. This field is affected by the activities, emotions
and intentions of their people - whether they're coming back or
going away, whether they've died, whether they're in pain or
trouble, whether they want to play. The animals seem to be
picking up not specific messages but rather general changes in
the tension of the field...
Rupert Sheldrake - _The Evolutionary Mind_
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Wizards are clear on their intention. They
know what it is they really need; what underlies all their many
wants and desires. Wizards hold this intention in their mind. And
then let go. No attachment to how or when; just a simple openness
to whatever may be -- and a silent delight in the synchronicities
that come to be.
- "How To Be A Wizard" by Peter
Russell
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the
Strange Attractors
1. Point attractor, such as a pendulum
swinging back and forth and eventually stopping at a point. The
Attractor may come as a point, in which case, it gives a steady
state where no change is made.
2. Periodic attractor, just add a mainspring
to the pendulum to compensate for friction and the pendulum now
has a limited cycle in its phase space. The periodic attractor
portrays processes that repeat themselves.
3. Torus attractor, picture walking on a
large doughnut, going over, under and around its outside surface
area, circling, but never repeating exactly the same path you
went before. The torus attractor depicts processes that
stay in a confined area but wander from place to place in that
area. (These first three attractors are not associated with Chaos
theory because they are fixed attractors.
4. Strange attractor, this attractor deals
with the three-body problem of stability. The strange attractor
shows processes that are stable, confined and yet never do the
same thing twice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The final crop circle formation of 1997, was
the "Strange Attractor" fractal at Hackpen Hill .
The term means "an irreducible invariant set that attracts
the trajectories of all nearby points." This term was used
by Terence McKenna to describe the "Omega Point," which
sucks our evolutionary trajectory towards it, like the plughole
at the end of time.
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STANDING STONES AS STRANGE ATTRACTORS - A
Speculation
by Jaq. D. Hawkins
The science of chaos is of interest to many
magicians. There are several books in print on the subject,
two of which are listed in the sources section at the end of this
article.(1)(2) For those who are unfamiliar with the subject, I
offer a simplified explanation. In the 1960's and 70's, a few
scientists began finding order within the disorder of natural
phenomena, such as turbulence in the atmosphere and bodies of
water, fluctuations in wildlife population, etc. They were
mathematicians, physicists, biologists, chemists, all seeking
connections between different types of irregularity.
They used computers to create special kinds
of graphic images which capture the delicate structure underlying
complexity in nature. They found that order arises spontaneously
out of chaotic systems, and simple mathmatical equations are used
to model systems every bit as violent as a waterfall. Simple
deterministic models could produce what looked like random
behaviour.
A scientist by the name of Edward Lorenz is
credited with the discovery of the 'strange attractor', which is
a point in phase space which attracts the movements of molecules
into spiral patterns. In chaotic systems, the molecules never
follow the same path around the attractor, but create a pattern
of folds within folds in the pattern, always staying within a
limited range. This can apply to any types of molecule,
fluids, gases, or energy.
The original Lorenz attractor moves in a
double-spiral pattern around two strange attractors. Other shapes
were later created, but the data was always pulled into visible
shapes. "Of all the possible pathways of disorder, nature
favors just a few."(1)
For many centuries, science has been
discovering explanations for things once called magic.(3) It
seems reasonable to theorize that our ancestors may have found a
way to tap into the natural energy of the earth, depicting their
mental images of this energy in diagrams. The inner-folding
pathways depicted by the Lorenz diagrams brings to mind the
labrinth patterns depicted on the Glastonbury Tor and other
sites. The patterns twist within themselves, covering every bit
of space within a constricted area, yet the paths never cross.
Some of the spiral patterns surrounding a single attractor are
reminiscent of the spiral patterns carved on ancient monoliths,
known as 'cup and ring' markings.
Scientist and archaeologists have been
speculating on the purpose of standing stones and stone circles
for many years. Some validity can be found for many theories, the
most wisely accepted being for astronomical observation. While
this theory seems to fit well with the positioning of the stones
erected into circles, it does not explain the individual stones
found in a wide variety of situations. Some of these stones have
been credited as marking stones for old Roman roads, yet others
are found standing in fields or other out of the way locations.
These stones are often believed by the local population to have
healing properties. Many people have experienced a
"tingling" sensation when they touch the stones, and in
some cases a violent rocking sensation that seems very powerful.
The dowser John Williams, feels a
representation of a positive and negative force. A Welsh water
diviner, Bill Lewis, and John Taylor, professor of mathematics at
Modern man is always eager to believe that
our ancestors were primative animals, with nothing more important
to think about than their next meal, but the evidence is
increasingly pointing to a different picture. One where our
ancestors had architectural and building skills, mathematical and
astronomical knowledge. The next obvious step is to
discover a way to use this energy spiraling around the stone.
What did our ancestors use it for? The answer is yet to be
discovered.
VALIS
Vast Active Living Intelligence System
VALIS (acronym of Vast Active Living Intelligence System from an
American film): A perturbation in the reality field in which a
spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex is formed, tending
progressively to subsume and incorporate its environment into
arrangements of information. Characterized by
quasi-consciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an
armillary coherence.
- Great Soviet Dictionary, Sixth Edition
1992
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the excepts of the Exegesis reworked into the "Tractates
Crytptica Scriptura" that close the novel _VALIS_, Philip K.
Dick expresses the MIT computer scientist Edward Fredkin's view
that the universe is composed of information. The world we
experience is a hologram, "a hypostasis of information"
that we, as nodes in the true Mind, process. "We
hypostasize information into objects. Rearrangement of objects is
change in the content of information. This is the language we
have lost the ability to read." With this Adamic code
scrambled, both ourselves and the world as we know it are
"occluded," cut off from the brimming
"Matrix" of cosmic information. Instead, we are under
the sway of the "Black Iron Prison," Dick's terms for
the demiurgic worldly forces of political tyranny and
oppressive social control.
Following this event, Dick experienced a remarkable series of
visions, hallucinations, and dreams, many of which centered
around VALIS, a "Vast Active Living Intelligence
System" that he defined in his 1980 novel of the same name
as a "spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic
vortex...tending to progressively subsume and incorporate its
environment into arrangements of information." Not a bad
definition of the Internet, though Dick experienced this incoming
information web far more intensely than today's online
grazers. Sometimes it struck him as a pink beam of esoteric data,
or as a compassionate feminine "AI [Artificial Intelligence]
voice" speaking to him from outer space. Other times, Dick
felt he was in telepathic communication with a first-century
christian named Thomas, and once "the landscape of
California, U.S.A. 1974 ebbed out and the landscape of Rome of
the first century C.E. ebbed in."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PKD says in VALIS that "We are not individuals. We are
stations in the single mind" also........" that Space
and Time were revealed as mere mechanisms of separation."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ON OUR NATURE. It is proper to say: we appear to be memory coils
(DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like thinking
system which, although we have correctly recorded and stored
thousands of years of experiential information, and each of us
possesses somewhat different deposits from all the other life
forms, there is a malfunction - a failure- of memory retrieval.
There lies the trouble in our particular subcircuit.
"Salvation" through gnosis - more properly anamnesis
(the loss of amnesia) - although it has individual significance
for each of us - a quantum leap in perception, identity,
cognition, understanding, world- and self-experience, including
immortality - it has greater and further importance for the
system as a whole, inasmuch as these memories are data needed by
it and valuable to it, to its overall functioning. Therefore it
is in the process of self-repair, which includes: rebuilding our
subcircuit via linear and orthogonal time changes, as well
as continual signaling to us to stimulate blocked memory banks
within us to fire and hence retrieve what is there.
The external informational or gnosis, then, consists of
disinhibiting instructions, with the core content actually
intrinsic to us - that is, already there (first observed by
Plato; viz: that learning is a form of remembering).
The ancients possessed techniques
(sacraments and rituals) used largely in the Greco-Roman mystery
religions, including early Christianity, to induce firing and
retrieval, mainly with a sense of its restorative value to the
individuals; the Gnostics, however, correctly saw the ontological
value to what they called the Godhead Itself, the total entity.
Two realms there are, upper and lower. The
upper, derived from hyperuniverse I or Yang, Form I or
Parmenides, is sentient and volitional. The lower realm, or
Yin, Form II of Parmenides, is mechanical, driven by blind,
efficient cause, deterministic and without intelligence, since it
emanates from a dead source. In ancient times it was termed
"astral determinism." We are trapped, by and large, in
the lower realm, but are through the sacraments, by means of the
plasmate, extricated. Until astral determinism is broken, we are
not even aware of it, so occluded are we. "The Empire never
ended."
The name of the healthy twin, hyperuniverse
I, is Nommo. The name of the sick twin, hyperuniverse II, is
Yurugu. These names are known to the Dogon people of western
Sudan in Africa. (*Nommo is represented in a fish form, the early
Christian fish.)
The primordial source of all religions lies
with the ancestors of the Dogon Tribe, who got their cosmogony
and cosmology directly from the three-eyed invaders who visited
long ago. The three-eyed invaders were mute and deaf and
telepathic, could not breath our atmosphere, had the elongated
misshapen skull of Ikhnaton, and emanated from a planet in the
star-system Sirius. Although they had no hands, but had, instead,
pincer claws such as a crab has, they were great builders. They
covertly influence our history toward a fruitful end.
From _VALIS_ by Philip K. Dick
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It all had to do with time. "Time can be
overcome," Micrea Eliade wrote. That's what it's all
about. The great mystery of Eleusis, of the Orphics, of the
early christians, of Sarapis, of the Greco-Roman mystery
religions, of Hermes Trismegistos, of the Renaissance Hermetic
alchemists, of the Rose Cross Brotherhood, of Apollonius of
Tyana, of Simon Magus, of Asklepios, of Paracelsus, of Bruno,
consists of the abolition of time. The techniques are
there. Dante discusses them in the _Comedy_. It has
to do with the loss of amnesia; when forgetfulness is lost,
true memory spreads out backward and forward, into the past and
into the future, and also, oddly, into alternate universes;
it is orthogonal as well as linear.
- Phlip K. Dick - _VALIS_
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
excerpts from the Tractates:
22. I term the Immortal one a plasmate, because it is a form of
energy; it is living information. It replicates itself -
not through information or in information - but as information.
31. We hypostatize information into
objects. Rearrangement of objects is change in the content
of the information; the message has changed. This is a
language which we have lost the ability to read. We
ourselves are a part of this language; changes in us are changes
in the content of the information. We ourselves are
information-rich; information enters us, is processed and is then
projected outward once more, now in an altered form. We are
not aware that we are doing this, that in fact this is all we are
doing.
36. In summary; thoughts of the brain
are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements - change
- in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information
and information-processing which we substantialize. We do
not merely see its thoughts as objects, but rather as the
movement, or, more precisely, the placement of objects: how they
become linked to one another. But we cannot read the
patterns of arrangement; we cannot extract the information in it
- i.e. it as information, which is what it is. The linking
and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language but
not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not
someone or something outside itself).
37. We should be able to hear this
information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside
us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a
language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable
reason we can't read outside and can't hear inside. So I
say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our
intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of
the Brain is a language. We are parts of the Brain;
therefore we are language. Why, then, do we not know
this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the
outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the
world "idiot" is the word "private."
Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common
thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus
our real life and purpose are conducted below our threshold of
consciousness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paperback - 241 pages Reissue edition (July 1991)
Vintage Books; ISBN: 0679734465 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.70 x
8.00 x 5.23
The first of Dick's three final novels (the others are _Divine
Invasion_ and _The Transmigration of Timothy Archer_). Known as
science fiction only for lack of a better category,
"Valis" takes place in our world and may even be
semi-autobiographical. It is a fool's search for god, who turns
out to be a virus, a joke, and a mental hologram transmitted from
an orbiting satellite.
The proponent of the novel, Horselover Fat,
is thrust into a theological quest when he receives communion in
a burst of pink laser light. From the cancer ward of a bay area
hospital to the ranch of a fraudulent charismatic religious
figure who turns out to have a direct com link with god, Dick
leads us down the twisted paths of Gnostic belief, mixed with his
own bizarre and compelling philosophy. Truly an eye opening look
at the nature of consciousness and divinity.
Synopsis
Valis, the disorienting and eerily funny centerpiece of Philip
Dick's final trilogy that includes The Divine Invasion and The
Transmigration of Timothy Archer, is part science fiction, part
theological detective story--in which god is both missing person
and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime.
Zen Buddhism
A Chinese and Japanese school of Mahayana Buddhism that asserts
that enlightenment can be attained through meditation,
self-contemplation, and intuition rather than through faith and
devotion.
Zen . . . does not confuse spirituality with
thinking about god while one is peeling potatoes. Zen
spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
--Alan Watts (1915-73), British-born U.S. philosopher,
author. The Way of Zen, pt. 2, ch. 2 (1957).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This Zen look on consciousness neatly fits
in with Susan Blackmore's (author of _The Meme Machine_) views
that consciousness is essentially an entity ''telling stories to
itself'' : i.e., it's a ''belief'' or ''self-deception''
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Cage was the father of indeterminism, a
Zen-inspired aesthetic which expelled all notions of choice from
the creative process.
