Program Notes
Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake
(Minutes : Seconds into program)
05:38 Ralph Abraham: “It does seem very attractive to think of
the electromagnetic field as some kind of favored intermediary among all the physical fields.”
07:41 Rupert Sheldrake: “There’s this mystery of light. I still
think Maxwell’s electromagnetic formulations of light are much too simple.”
10:56 Ralph:
“I think that we ought to think about the possibility that this effect [the paranormal] will not be confirmed in laboratories.”
15:39 Rupert:
“There is some sense in which our imagination, our image-making facility, is self-luminous.”
25:54 Ralph:
“We have therefore in our individual consciousness a particular affinity with the electromagnetic field … as epitomized by vision.”
30:41 Terence McKenna: “Why is divine omniscience a necessary concept?
Can’t the universe get along just being partially aware of what’s going on? … What problems are solved by hypothesizing that notion?”
33:36 Rupert:
“I find it more reasonable to find that our minds are in touch with larger minds and are in many ways shaped by larger mental systems.”
33:57 Terence:
“The mind of the whole universe seems unnecessary to hypothesize and unlikely to be encountered.”
45:14 Rupert:
“I think that the cosmic mind may be largely unconscious because I think that most things that happen in the cosmos are habitual and therefore unconscious.”
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067 - Light and Vision (Part 1)
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon
00:00:23 ►
those of you who have been with us here in
00:00:26 ►
the Psychedelic Salon for a while know that for the past four weeks I’ve been producing three
00:00:31 ►
podcasts a week and you’ve also probably noticed that each week the podcasts seem to come out a
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little later and a little later. In fact today’s podcast by my schedule is over a day late already
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so obviously three a week is probably more than I can keep up with
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at least if I’m going to ever finish reworking my website
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do a little email and most importantly
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listen to some of my own favorite podcasts
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so for the next month or so I’m going to cut back to two shows a week, but with all of
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the good programming coming out of the Cannabis Podcast Network, the Sea Realm, and quite a few
00:01:12 ►
others, you should have plenty of mind candy to keep you engaged during the holiday season.
00:01:18 ►
And to introduce today’s program, I’m going to follow a suggestion that Fig sent in,
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and once I read it, it seemed
00:01:26 ►
obvious that I’m surprised at myself for not doing it before. And what she suggested is that when I
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play the second side of one of the trialogue tapes, that I introduce it by playing a few minutes from
00:01:39 ►
the end of the previous side first. That way we can all hear where the conversation left off and get back into the flow
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of conversation from the previous podcast. Brilliant idea, Fig, and thanks for sending it along.
00:01:53 ►
So without any further ado, here is a brief soundbite from the end of side A of tape 5 in the
00:02:00 ►
series of trilogues with Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake
00:02:06 ►
that were held in the month of September in 1989 and again in 1990
00:02:12 ►
at the Esalen Institute on the California coast.
00:02:16 ►
And we begin with Ralph Abraham’s speculation about the human brain.
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So the brain, as described by currently
00:02:28 ►
the better mathematical model,
00:02:29 ►
which will get much more complex as time goes on,
00:02:33 ►
it requires much more mathematical structure
00:02:36 ►
to even discuss the thing or imitate its behavior
00:02:39 ►
than does the mathematical model
00:02:43 ►
for the electromagnetic field.
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And that brain is much closer to the physical universe than to the mathematical model for the electromagnetic field.
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And that brain is much closer to the physical universe than to the mental.
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So I think the electromagnetic field is too thin to occupy more than a fraction, a fractal
00:02:55 ►
dimension of the entire structure of the field, carrying recognition, memory, how to serve in tennis and learning a new language and recognizing
00:03:06 ►
haiku and all this.
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Yes, well, I mean, I am somewhat inclined to agree, but I think somehow it has to play
00:03:18 ►
this kind of interface role between the chemical and the psychic or the morphic realm.
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It has to interface with morphic fields somehow
00:03:31 ►
because one has to have these planes linked together.
00:03:34 ►
There’s another question you see that arises.
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How does the electromagnetic field interface with the quantum matter fields of the electron?
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Because the electron and the nucleus,
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the nucleus structure and the electrons in their orbit
00:03:46 ►
are held in those orbits by quantum matter fields,
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not by electromagnetic fields.
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In fact, being opposite charges,
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if it were just electromagnetic,
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electrons would plummet into the nucleus.
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So the structure is actually maintained by fields
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which, in a sense, are stronger than the electromagnetic field,
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which resist it and override it.
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And the electromagnetic field sort of works around those fields.
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It’s a more subtle field, but it works around them.
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So we’ve already got one model.
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I don’t know how much attention people have paid
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to the interface of those two fields,
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but they are separate kinds of fields.
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And they interface because the electron and the nucleus
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are electrically charged,
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but at the same time their structure is made of quantum matter fields.
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Yes, well, if Nick Herbert were here he’d say that it was the quantum matter field and not the electromagnetic field.
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Maybe he would say that was the intermediary between the physical and mental planes.
00:04:41 ►
But Ralph, if you feel that the electromagnetic field is inadequate to
00:04:45 ►
what Rupert’s asking of it, then you must be equally skeptical of the morphogenetic
00:04:50 ►
field. It sounds to me like what you’re saying… No, I’m not skeptical. I think that what we’re trying to do is through the
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revision of the actual phenomenon of light of our experience to make up a model for some of the phenomenon
00:05:07 ►
which now modelers, I mean scientists, prefer to totally ignore. And the electromagnetic
00:05:15 ►
field and its history as a modeling effort, its hermeneutical history, is an excellent
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history is an excellent history to imitate and that what we must do is try to fashion a field concept around the phenomena that have been ignored and it
00:05:37 ►
does seem very attractive to think of the electromagnetic field as some kind
00:05:41 ►
of favored intermediary among all the physical fields.
00:05:47 ►
Well, let’s just put it this way,
00:05:48 ►
that the perhaps the M field
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or the mind
00:05:53 ►
of the world, the oversoul or whatever,
00:05:55 ►
will end up with a mathematical model
00:05:57 ►
which is simply
00:05:59 ►
field theoretic,
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maybe with many dimensions,
00:06:03 ►
and that is coupled only to the electromagnetic field.
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And the electromagnetic field, of course,
00:06:08 ►
is coupled to all the other physical fields
00:06:10 ►
and through that intermediary.
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So this is a combination model, a sandwich model,
00:06:16 ►
which might be successful in explaining
00:06:19 ►
perception, cognition, idiosyncrasies of time,
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and that there would be sort of eventually a general relativity theory for the M field,
00:06:30 ►
which would explain time anomalies like clairvoyance and so on.
00:06:38 ►
And in that case, I think what we’re talking about now is the conception,
00:06:44 ►
the struggle to envision the coupling between the M-field
00:06:48 ►
and the electromagnetic field, including wave metaphors, particle metaphors, and so on.
00:06:53 ►
That’s kind of what it’s about, at least Model 1 you described at the beginning explicitly
00:06:57 ►
in these terms.
00:06:58 ►
That’s right.
00:06:59 ►
Well, my first model, you see, has always been that the perception and mental activity
00:07:04 ►
must have a kind of field-like structure.
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They’d be morphic fields of some kind.
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These perceptual fields are in turn part of these behavioural fields which involve action as well as perception.
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The perception and the action are linked together.
00:07:16 ►
It’s not motiveless perception that one’s usually carrying out.
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It’s linked in some way to action.
00:07:22 ►
Bergson said all perceptions are potential actions or possible actions.
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There’s a sense in which they’re very closely related.
00:07:29 ►
So this was my first model,
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and I thought of the sense of being stared at
00:07:34 ►
as a way of testing for the existence of this other kind of field.
00:07:38 ►
It then occurred to me that there’s this mystery of light.
00:07:42 ►
I still think, you see, Maxwell’s electromagnetic formulations of light
00:07:46 ►
are much too simple.
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You see, whereas you were saying
00:07:49 ►
the model of the brain
00:07:50 ►
to get the complexity out of it
00:07:52 ►
that’s in it would have to be more complex
00:07:53 ►
than his equations,
00:07:54 ►
that’s obviously true.
00:07:56 ►
But when I’m seeing you,
00:07:58 ►
all the information about you,
00:07:59 ►
everything that’s transferred to me
00:08:00 ►
through my vision
00:08:01 ►
is coming through the electromagnetic field
00:08:05 ►
and Maxwell’s equation could…
00:08:06 ►
Well is it? I mean, are we not then buying the oversimplification of the physicist in assuming that?
00:08:13 ►
Why not have a full mental wave traveling from my mental being to yours as a wave
00:08:21 ►
phenomenon or a particle phenomenon, resonance phenomenon,
00:08:26 ►
that takes place in the mental field alone.
00:08:28 ►
Plus you exist in a cloud of pheromones
00:08:31 ►
that are also transducing information.
00:08:34 ►
Yes, but in parenthesis about pheromones,
00:08:37 ►
this staring-up test can exclude those
00:08:39 ►
by being done through double-glazed glass windows.
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But in fact, in all cases when it’s
00:08:45 ►
been done that we’re aware of hasn’t the possibility that the pheromone was
00:08:50 ►
carrying the effect been it’s been done through windows one of the most common
00:08:55 ►
anecdotal sources of this is people who tell me that when in traffic jams they’re
00:08:59 ►
stuck in traffic jams or traffic lights with the windows rolled up, you know, and the air conditioning on
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and the window, they look at the back
00:09:07 ►
of the neck of women in other cars who turn
00:09:10 ►
around. I mean, there are a lot of men who find this a
00:09:11 ►
favourite pursuit of traffic lights.
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I’ve had many anecdotes told me of this
00:09:15 ►
kind, and that’s through two lots of
00:09:17 ►
glass. So, I
00:09:19 ►
think that… No, but even if you could handle
00:09:21 ►
this, if you could explain this with pheromones,
00:09:24 ►
that means that I would have to have the capability to focus my pheromones on a single person
00:09:28 ►
with mental power alone, or visual, or looking, or whatever it is.
00:09:35 ►
So it’s not a very good hypothesis.
00:09:36 ►
Anyway, I think it could be empirically excluded at a very early stage through these glass partitions.
00:09:41 ►
So back to the physical, the
00:09:46 ►
electromagnetic field. If one wanted to model the information coming, you know,
00:09:51 ►
through, if one did want to model it properly, how I could see you through the
00:09:57 ►
electromagnetic field, you’d need more than Maxwell’s equations. And the thing
00:10:03 ►
is that the way we treat light is we take for granted the information
00:10:06 ►
that travels through it. Virtually everything we read is going through the electromagnetic
00:10:11 ►
field. All the information in libraries we access through it. I mean, everything that
00:10:16 ►
human knowledge is capable of in a stored or written form is mediated through it.
00:10:21 ►
We’d be in a pickle without light. We’d be in a pickle without light.
00:10:26 ►
And so Maxwell’s equation
00:10:30 ►
does seem a little simple
00:10:31 ►
to model the transfer
00:10:33 ►
of the entire stock of human knowledge.
00:10:35 ►
Well, we’ve come to the crux of the problem
00:10:36 ►
because Maxwell’s equations
00:10:38 ►
was made up to model the observables
00:10:41 ►
and it did a really good job.
00:10:42 ►
And here we’re kind of stuck
00:10:43 ►
for lack of observables in spite of this anecdotal
00:10:46 ►
evidence, which to me
00:10:48 ►
has the same force as
00:10:50 ►
a report from the Argonne National
00:10:52 ►
Laboratory. Nevertheless,
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I think that we ought to
00:10:56 ►
think about the possibility
00:10:58 ►
that this effect will not be confirmed
00:11:00 ►
in laboratories, which is
00:11:02 ►
already the experience of so many
00:11:04 ►
experimental efforts over these years with the experience of so many experimental efforts
00:11:06 ►
over these years with the cards and so on to confirm the so-called paranormal.
00:11:11 ►
Whereas there is evidence, it always seems to be just the slightest bulge of the curve
00:11:17 ►
to the right or left of the absolutely insignificant result, that these phenomenon that we want to capture in a model don’t seem to be very robust
00:11:29 ►
and they come and go because due to the fact perhaps that they live primarily in the mental
00:11:35 ►
field they’re very subject to the noise the heat bath and the mental field which maybe all the time
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I’m trying to get the person to turn. Somebody else somewhere is trying to get them not to turn.
00:11:46 ►
Or they’re trying to get somebody else to turn.
00:11:48 ►
I mean, I don’t know.
00:11:49 ►
For whatever reason, these effects are very difficult to confirm.
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And I’m thinking of that as being a kind of evidence in itself
00:11:57 ►
that on the one hand, we have the very widespread impression
00:12:02 ►
that these things exist on behalf of many people dousing and so on.
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And on the other hand,
00:12:07 ►
the impossibility to confirm them
00:12:08 ►
in the experimental paradigm of modern science.
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Somehow this is just suggesting to me
00:12:15 ►
the necessity for a thicker model,
00:12:18 ►
a richer field in which to try to do the modeling,
00:12:22 ►
where there’s just chaotic attractors everywhere
00:12:25 ►
and no homeostasis or anything like that.
00:12:29 ►
Well, yes, I agree we need a thicker field
00:12:31 ►
to deal with most of these parapsychological phenomena.
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I suspect the sense of being stared at may be different under laboratory tests.
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You see, whereas the others have proved evanescent and hard to pin down,
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it’s not that this has proved like that.
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It’s that this is something that
00:12:45 ►
parapsychologists, for some mysterious reason, have assiduously ignored. And there literally are three
00:12:51 ►
published papers in the literature, and I gave a lecture on this three or four months ago to the Society for
00:12:56 ►
Psychical Research. I gave a lecture called The Sense of Being Stared At, and there all the veterans of the
00:13:02 ►
British Society for Psychical Research were present, you know, ghost investigators of yesteryear and hardened experimentalists and so on.
00:13:11 ►
Ectoplasma nuts.
00:13:12 ►
Yes, you know, veterans of many seances and so on, they were all there and all the luminaries
00:13:23 ►
of the Society and not one of them had ever thought of this as a paranormal or psychical phenomenon
00:13:28 ►
after 50 years of psychical research.
00:13:30 ►
They told me so afterwards.
00:13:32 ►
They were fascinated by the lecture,
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because in a sense this really has been a blind spot of parapsychology.
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And if you look through any textbook on parapsychology,
00:13:41 ►
there’s nothing, no mention of the sense of being stared at.
00:13:50 ►
Well, will this result in some new experiments then, or what must we do to stimulate some research? Well, I’m working on it. First of all, I’ve decided that I’ve got to try and train myself.
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I’ve got this biofeedback training system for this. You have two people. One sits with their
00:14:02 ►
back to the other. The other tosses a coin, and if it’s
00:14:05 ►
heads you stare at them, if it’s tails you look away and think of something else. And so you make
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a click when you’ve done the coin, you’re ready to stare. If it’s heads you then stare, and the
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other person from the click knows the trial’s begun, and then they say yes or no, depending
00:14:21 ►
if they think they’re being stared at. And they’re right or wrong. You record the result.
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And then you tell them, correct or incorrect.
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So there’s instant biofeedback.
00:14:32 ►
And one can train oneself to test various subtle…
00:14:35 ►
I’ve done hundreds of trials of this.
00:14:37 ►
Test on various subtle sensations.
00:14:40 ►
And the interesting thing is that most people are more often right
00:14:44 ►
when they are being looked at than when they’re not.
00:14:47 ►
But the reason I
00:14:48 ►
wanted to discuss this in the first place is that I actually don’t know which to think. I don’t know whether it’s better to adopt the
00:14:56 ►
electromagnetic hypothesis, which has certain advi- I mean, it has the attraction of
00:15:01 ►
giving
00:15:03 ►
another side to the phenomena of light which most people think
00:15:06 ►
is just physical and it’s all in textbooks.
00:15:09 ►
Because I think light’s far more mysterious than that.
00:15:14 ►
And it also… that’s one advantage.
00:15:18 ►
The second is that it then takes us into a whole other area, which is that this metaphorical
00:15:24 ►
use of words like the light of consciousness
00:15:26 ►
and the fact that when we dream we see things in a kind of light,
00:15:29 ►
we do have a kind of inner light,
00:15:31 ►
which illuminates psychedelic visions, dreams, daydreams,
00:15:35 ►
visual images with your eyes closed.
00:15:38 ►
There’s some sense in which our imagination,
00:15:40 ►
our image-making facility is self-luminous.
00:15:43 ►
Now, is that kind of light, if understanding or
00:15:48 ►
perception, if vision is related to normal physical light, here we may have something
00:15:54 ►
where the physical light comes first and vision comes second when we’re looking at somebody,
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you know, if you turn the light off you don’t see them. But in this other case it may be the
00:16:02 ►
other way around and their relationship may be expressed in the reverse sense.
00:16:05 ►
But if you have vision, in the visionary sense of vision, that vision may itself generate light through an association between vision and light,
00:16:13 ►
so that at least subjectively they’re self-luminous.
00:16:16 ►
And then if somebody has visions enough, according to all traditions, they start developing halos,
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and their bodies actually become luminous according to
00:16:25 ►
mystical and spiritual traditions it’s interesting according to one school of pharmacologists
00:16:33 ►
attention is the thing they most suspect of being mediated by dmt because dmt is so quickly
00:16:47 ►
because DMT is so quickly able to be brought forth and degraded. It has a fast reaction time,
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which is exactly what you need in a system
00:16:54 ►
where you’re going to throw attention first from one object to another.
00:17:01 ►
And these tryptamine hallucinogens certainly fill the head with light
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I mean if you take
00:17:07 ►
the visionary
00:17:09 ►
the intensity of the visionary experience
00:17:12 ►
as an index of the intensity of inner light
00:17:16 ►
then they release this
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and their near relatives
00:17:21 ►
in brain chemistry
00:17:23 ►
serotonin is transduced to melatonin by a light-mediated reaction.
00:17:31 ►
In other words, light actually enters through the eyes and a part of the visual pathway breaks off and goes to the pineal gland
00:17:40 ►
where photons work a chemical change on serotonin
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and turn it into melatonin.
00:17:48 ►
So the tryptamines, their near relatives,
00:17:52 ►
all this stuff is going on in the pineal,
00:17:54 ►
and it’s all light-driven chemistry.
00:17:57 ►
Nevertheless, it seems that this kind of vision
00:18:00 ►
has nothing to do with light, with the electromagnetic field.
00:18:06 ►
Even though these neurotransmitters are very photosensitive the fact is that in the
00:18:11 ►
dark you have very bright visions so that the the neurochemical activity in
00:18:17 ►
the visual cortex or somewhere is as it were mimicking the effect of the photons falling upon the visual, on the retina,
00:18:28 ►
producing a chemical wave, etc.
00:18:31 ►
So in the alternation many times back and forth
00:18:34 ►
between electromagnetic and chemical waves
00:18:37 ►
in, well, neurophysiological level,
00:18:41 ►
these psychedelics, for example, are taking over at some point and supplying what
00:18:53 ►
appears to be the result of the previous train of several reversals.
00:18:58 ►
So this illumination on that level, actually, the photons can be replaced, as it were, by this other messenger.
00:19:09 ►
Well, it’s interesting, this business of light. I probably tried this out on you in the past, Ralph,
00:19:14 ►
but one of my cosmological fantasies of years past was, you know, there’s this curious problem with the fact that the photon has no antiparticle.
00:19:27 ►
It’s the only particle without an antiparticle,
00:19:31 ►
and this is a really sort of disturbing asymmetry in things.
00:19:37 ►
And so who preceded me in this?
00:19:41 ►
I think Hans Olven, this Swedish cosmologist,
00:19:44 ►
he suggested that at the Big Bang, the reason there is such a low incidence of antimatter in this region of the universe is that actually the Big Bang was not a spurting of matter into the continuum, but that it went in two directions
00:20:06 ►
and out of a single point like a double jet and
00:20:10 ►
two bubbles were blown at once in other words
00:20:14 ►
and we are in one universe with a very high proportion of matter versus antimatter and there is a twin of
00:20:21 ►
our there is a twin of our universe, the anti-universe, and we cannot detect it or see it or transmit
00:20:28 ►
information between ourselves and it in any way. And in this anti-universe, every particle,
00:20:36 ►
anti-particle exists. Well, in a higher dimensional manifold, these things have gone off into the great void,
00:20:46 ►
but they are actually on a collision trajectory of such a nature
00:20:52 ►
that after a certain amount of time, they will re-encounter each other.
00:20:56 ►
And when this happens, because it’s happening in a higher dimension,
00:21:03 ►
it isn’t like a collision of two solid objects.
00:21:07 ►
It’s more like the sudden instantaneous superimposition of two objects
00:21:15 ►
so that this cosmic collision, if you will,
00:21:19 ►
could actually occur across the entire face of the topological manifold instantly. It would be
00:21:28 ►
as though every particle in the universe underwent collision with its antiparticle at the exact
00:21:36 ►
same moment.
00:21:37 ►
Three-dimensional blackout.
00:21:39 ►
Yes, and at that moment parity would be conserved.
00:21:48 ►
All particles in the universe would cease to exist except the anomalous photon,
00:21:52 ►
which would be in this moment
00:21:54 ►
in which all the rest of matter disappeared.
00:21:57 ►
The photons would then be left to obey the physics
00:22:02 ►
of a universe made entirely of photons. And what this would be,
00:22:07 ►
we can’t say. But the form would be preserved in that final moment. All form would be turned
00:22:15 ►
to light.
00:22:16 ►
Obviously cosmos.
00:22:18 ►
Yes. And so since tradition is so keen on resolving things into light. And what’s also amusing about this kind of cosmology
00:22:28 ►
is that it’s a totally apocalyptic cosmology.
00:22:31 ►
There would be no warning.
00:22:33 ►
This collision with the antimatter twin
00:22:36 ►
could occur at any moment.
00:22:39 ►
Another vision of the end.
00:22:41 ►
Terence LeCun.
00:22:44 ►
Of cosmologies, there is no end.
00:22:48 ►
And of apocalypses, there is no end.
00:22:51 ►
I think it might be useful, Rupert, to think about the habits of electromagnetic nature
00:22:58 ►
and the behavior of the electromagnetic field
00:23:05 ►
as evolving according to habits of the morphogenetic field,
00:23:10 ►
explaining in this way the resonance between them
00:23:13 ►
as above, so below,
00:23:16 ►
that the EM field has created,
00:23:19 ►
the EM field,
00:23:20 ►
to do its bidding in the quantum matter level?
00:23:26 ►
Well, certainly, you see, if the electromagnetic field, it is the bearer of all visual information
00:23:35 ►
in the world.
00:23:36 ►
I mean, of everything we see, of everything in every book, in every diagram.
00:23:39 ►
Now, this brings me to another fantasy or idea, as the electromagnetic field is an interface,
00:23:45 ►
not just between the matter fields in us and the mental aspects,
00:23:52 ►
or psychic or morphic aspects of our being,
00:23:54 ►
but also the electromagnetic field is playing a similar role
00:23:58 ►
in the mental structure of the soul of the world.
00:24:03 ►
You see, if the soul of the world, if there is a world soul which permeates the entire
00:24:09 ►
cosmos, which in its bodily level is mostly expressed in the gravitational field, but
00:24:15 ►
which at its sort of knowing or psychic or perceptual level is mainly expressed through
00:24:22 ►
some kind of interface with the electromagnetic field. The electromagnetic field would be a perfect medium for the world soul’s
00:24:30 ►
omniscience and then through the world soul for divine omniscience because
00:24:35 ►
that nothing that happens doesn’t affect the electromagnetic field. The
00:24:39 ►
holographic reality of the electromagnetic field at any one moment
00:24:42 ►
is what’s happening. At least it’s
00:24:46 ►
in exact correspondence with what’s happening. And so all the light in the universe, including
00:24:54 ►
this kind of cross-currents of memory that would be set up, for example, by the continued
00:24:58 ►
presence of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the fossil light of the Big Bang, it’s still there
00:25:05 ►
as a kind of background. So there’d be even a kind of light memory built into the whole
00:25:10 ►
universe. So this similar model you see gives us the universal electromagnetic field as
00:25:17 ►
the universal basis of the world soul, of its knowing or perception or interfacing with
00:25:23 ►
other planes of reality reality and as a medium
00:25:26 ►
of divine omniscience
00:25:27 ►
well I like the idea of the
00:25:29 ►
electromagnetic field being the chosen
00:25:32 ►
representative
00:25:32 ►
the ideal intermediary
00:25:35 ►
that is positioned in the hierarchy of
00:25:37 ►
fields in that way
00:25:40 ►
it’s positioned in the
00:25:42 ►
hierarchy of fields
00:25:43 ►
is very much as the position of our individual consciousness in the hierarchy of fields is very much as the position of our individual
00:25:47 ►
consciousness in the hierarchy of consciousness in the world soul. And therefore, we have
00:25:54 ►
in our individual consciousness a particular affinity with the electromagnetic field, with
00:25:59 ►
electromagnetic perception, reception, and so on, as epitomized by vision.
00:26:07 ►
And if this fantasy has any reality,
00:26:11 ►
then it seems like it should be easier
00:26:13 ►
if there would be phenomenon of mental effect
00:26:17 ►
of the action of mind over matter.
00:26:21 ►
Then the easiest thing to affect
00:26:24 ►
should be the electromagnetic field. As in dowsing
00:26:28 ►
is a sensitivity, direct sensitivity to magnetic field. Then you’d wonder is it easy to, for
00:26:35 ►
example, to mentally influence magnetometer. Let me tell you one fantasy I’ve had for an
00:26:40 ►
experiment of this kind. You know those puzzle pictures that I did experiments with?
00:26:46 ►
You know, you have those black and white blotches. Did you see those ones I used in my experiments?
00:26:52 ►
When you recognize it, there’s a visual gestalt is set up. You see the man on the horseback
00:26:59 ►
against the pattern of blobs, and you now see it differently. So if there’s anything in this sort of thing
00:27:05 ►
coming out as well as coming in, when you look at that picture of black and white blotches
00:27:09 ►
knowing what it is, as opposed to scanning helplessly for trying to find what it is,
00:27:14 ►
you should be seeing it differently. And in particular, where the lines, the outlines
00:27:20 ►
of the horse are, which you sort of fill in mentally, those lines should be reinforced
00:27:24 ►
as above other parts of it. Now, if this picture were produced by means of a liquid crystal display,
00:27:30 ►
or something of that kind, where you could actually, full of sort of probabilistic processes
00:27:35 ►
that could actually be monitored in some way, I’m not quite sure how to do the technology of this,
00:27:39 ►
but some probabilistic light-sensitive processes that were built into this picture that you’re looking at,
00:27:46 ►
you know, little units,
00:27:48 ►
it might be possible to pick up,
00:27:51 ►
when you explain to somebody,
00:27:52 ►
you have somebody look at it,
00:27:54 ►
you then show them the answer and they look at it again,
00:27:56 ►
and the pattern of output from this thing,
00:27:58 ►
as these pattern of probabilisms, may change
00:28:00 ►
because it may be less random
00:28:01 ►
now that certain lines and directions
00:28:04 ►
have been recognized and reinforced. And that might be a way, if one could possibly design the
00:28:11 ►
sensor side of this apparatus, it’s a matter of finding something that’s probabilistic.
00:28:17 ►
I would imagine that in a photographic film, whether the silver grains go or not is probabilistic, except with high light intensity they’d all go very fast
00:28:27 ►
but I should imagine with very low light intensity it must be probabilistic
00:28:30 ►
so one could possibly do it with some kind of
00:28:34 ►
suitably fine grain
00:28:37 ►
photo emulsion thing
00:28:39 ►
where one has a light intensity
00:28:42 ►
where it’s a probabilistic matter whether you get the thing going over the edge or not
00:28:47 ►
do you see what I mean?
00:28:49 ►
some experiment of that kind
00:28:50 ►
maybe with a computer terminal
00:28:52 ►
or a photoluminescent screen
00:28:54 ►
there might be a way to
00:28:55 ►
affect it by looking that someone else could see
00:28:58 ►
that’s right, if it’s a photoluminescent screen
00:29:00 ►
that’s working probabilistically
00:29:02 ►
at a low level of intensity
00:29:04 ►
you might be able to get a kind of enhancement of the luminescences along’s working probabilistically at a low level of intensity, you might be able to
00:29:05 ►
get a kind of enhancement of the luminescences along the outline, as it were. Just one more
00:29:11 ►
word on divine omniscience. You see, it seems to me that any theology of divine omniscience
00:29:18 ►
would require any all-knowing mind, any theory of any omniscience, whether it’s the world soul as an intermediary or God directly
00:29:28 ►
or the goddess or any form of omniscience,
00:29:33 ►
would require the divine mind to know everything.
00:29:36 ►
And since knowing everything would include knowing all the properties
00:29:39 ►
and states of the electromagnetic and the gravitational fields,
00:29:43 ►
one can be pretty sure that what’s going on in those fields
00:29:46 ►
is essential to divine omniscience just on general principles.
00:29:50 ►
But the usual model I find when people think about divine omniscience
00:29:54 ►
is to think of it as an entirely miraculous process,
00:29:57 ►
totally disconnected from any kind of physical reality,
00:30:00 ►
somehow standing outside it.
00:30:02 ►
Yet any reflection on this subject would show that divine omniscience must involve
00:30:08 ►
not just somehow standing outside all things, but in some sense being imminent within them as well,
00:30:14 ►
knowing from within, not just seeing from outside.
00:30:19 ►
And therefore must, in some sense, pervade the electromagnetic field.
00:30:23 ►
Just as Newton thought the medium of divine omniscience was space,
00:30:26 ►
absolute space, which he called the sensorium of God,
00:30:30 ►
everything happens in space,
00:30:31 ►
and therefore space is the sensorium of God,
00:30:33 ►
everything happens in God’s sensorium,
00:30:35 ►
and God therefore knows where everything is and how fast it’s moving.
00:30:40 ►
Why is divine omniscience a necessary concept?
00:30:45 ►
We need a little primer on divine omniscience a necessary concept? We need a little primer on divine omniscience.
00:30:47 ►
I mean, can’t the universe get along just being partially aware of what’s going on?
00:30:55 ►
Well, it depends whether you think there’s any…
00:30:57 ►
There are a lot of people who think that if they’re pantheists,
00:31:00 ►
they think that the universe is in some sense conscious,
00:31:06 ►
they’re pantheists, they think that the universe is in some sense conscious, or the soul of the world in some sense is perceiving what’s going on, not just entirely unconscious. And
00:31:12 ►
there are many theological traditions of divine omniscience. There are a lot of people who’ve
00:31:17 ►
got a stake in cosmic omniscience. I’m just stating this as a sociological fact.
00:31:22 ►
And what is so good about it?
00:31:25 ►
Well, that there’s a lot to be said for models of reality.
00:31:30 ►
They’re very popular, and I think that they’re intriguing, to think of models of reality
00:31:37 ►
in which there is a knowing, a sense of knowing associated with the cosmos.
00:31:41 ►
I mean, it’s in so many…
00:31:42 ►
But that…
00:31:43 ►
Isn’t that different from, I mean, divine omniscience?
00:31:45 ►
We all have a sense of knowing, but we’re not omniscient. No. What problems are
00:31:52 ►
solved by hypothesizing that notion? It’s to do with the question of the nature of
00:32:03 ►
our own minds. You see see there are two possible models
00:32:05 ►
one is that our minds are the most advanced in the universe
00:32:08 ►
and that’s the standard model of secular humanism
00:32:11 ►
that the rest of the universe is essentially unconscious
00:32:14 ►
and that living organisms crawled out of the primal broth
00:32:18 ►
and then through the miracles of random mutation
00:32:20 ►
and neo-darwinian natural selection
00:32:22 ►
gave rise to organisms such as ourselves
00:32:24 ►
with complex nervous systems and mutation and neo-Darwinian natural selection gave rise to organisms such as ourselves with
00:32:25 ►
complex nervous systems that happen to have this interesting subjective correlative consciousness.
00:32:31 ►
And this consciousness we have has emerged out of the darkness of the earth and darkness
00:32:35 ►
of the universe and is the highest consciousness there is.
00:32:38 ►
That’s dogs and cats, you know, may be a little way towards us, and it’s conceivable
00:32:43 ►
intelligent beings exist on other planets but
00:32:45 ►
basically this is it. That’s the one
00:32:47 ►
model. The other model, the more traditional
00:32:50 ►
one is to derive human
00:32:51 ►
consciousness from a much larger consciousness
00:32:54 ►
which pervades the
00:32:55 ►
cosmos, pervades the earth
00:32:57 ►
pervades the whole of life
00:32:59 ►
on earth and that our consciousness
00:33:01 ►
has arisen by a kind of
00:33:04 ►
diminution or descent of some
00:33:06 ►
higher kind of consciousness rather than ascent from a lower and finally from a non-existent
00:33:11 ►
kind of consciousness, that we’re a reduced version, a self-contracted version of a higher
00:33:16 ►
consciousness rather than an inflated version of a lower one or none at all.
00:33:22 ►
That’s the biometaphysical background.
00:33:28 ►
I find it more reasonable to suppose that our minds are in touch with larger minds
00:33:31 ►
and in many ways shaped with larger mental systems,
00:33:34 ►
those of whole societies, the ecosystems, Gaia,
00:33:37 ►
the galaxy, the entire cosmos,
00:33:40 ►
and maybe a cosmic mind beyond that or a universal.
00:33:44 ►
I think it’s more reasonable to think that our minds are in some sense…
00:33:46 ►
Well, I can go as far as a Gaian mind,
00:33:49 ►
because it seems a biological object,
00:33:52 ►
not a theological hypostatization.
00:33:56 ►
The mind of the whole universe
00:33:58 ►
seems unnecessary to hypothesize
00:34:03 ►
and unlikely to be encountered.
00:34:05 ►
It’s no problem.
00:34:06 ►
Suppose there was another Gaia, another inhabited planet.
00:34:11 ►
Then it will have its own Gaia mind.
00:34:14 ►
And they will be citizens of the universe even as we are.
00:34:17 ►
And between our Gaia mind and theirs, there might be a dialogue in progress.
00:34:23 ►
Yes, but nothing of this suggests
00:34:26 ►
theology. This is just
00:34:28 ►
an exoneration of biology.
00:34:29 ►
You just projected theology onto
00:34:32 ►
it as
00:34:33 ►
an association with the phrase
00:34:36 ►
divine omniscience,
00:34:38 ►
which is usually associated
00:34:40 ►
with Yahweh, the one God,
00:34:42 ►
and his divine
00:34:44 ►
omniscience. That is unnecessary to make that association.
00:34:47 ►
As soon as you have gone as far as the guy in mind,
00:34:51 ►
you can certainly go further,
00:34:53 ►
as there is obviously a hierarchy of worlds
00:34:57 ►
up into the universe, as it were.
00:35:01 ►
Yes, although I’m not convinced that the hierarchy
00:35:04 ►
is minded at every level
00:35:06 ►
the universe is obviously a hierarchy
00:35:08 ►
but if there were simply
00:35:11 ►
does Jupiter have
00:35:12 ►
a Jupiterian mind
00:35:14 ►
well possibly but a stranger
00:35:16 ►
question is does the solar
00:35:18 ►
system have a mind
00:35:20 ►
I think that’s sort of silly
00:35:22 ►
now we’ve moved you a minute
00:35:24 ►
that’s the interface to discuss then yes I think that’s sort of silly. Now, we’ll give you a minute. That’s the interface to discuss, then.
00:35:26 ►
Yes, I think that’s the interface, you see,
00:35:29 ►
because for me it seems entirely natural,
00:35:31 ►
I suppose, on any holistic model of reality,
00:35:34 ►
that if Gaia has a kind of mind,
00:35:36 ►
the soul of the earth,
00:35:38 ►
then the Gaian mind will be embedded
00:35:40 ►
in the solar system mind,
00:35:41 ►
and that in the galactic mind.
00:35:43 ►
And that these higher levels of mind consciousness being, which may be hard to conceive by us,
00:35:53 ►
are very likely to exist by a simple logical argument.
00:35:58 ►
I don’t think that…
00:35:59 ►
Although not necessarily in a hierarchical order.
00:36:03 ►
I mean, chipmunks are not small portions of whales.
00:36:07 ►
No, no, no.
00:36:08 ►
But chipmunks are not inside whales.
00:36:10 ►
Chipmunks are inside sort of terrestrial ecosystems.
00:36:14 ►
They’re small portions of terrestrial ecosystems.
00:36:16 ►
Whales are in different ecosystems.
00:36:18 ►
And both these, the oceanic and the terrestrial ecosystems,
00:36:21 ►
are part of the Gaia.
00:36:23 ►
So the hierarchy is of more inclusive units.
00:36:27 ►
The solar system is not on the same level as the Earth.
00:36:30 ►
It’s a higher level of organization of which the Earth is part.
00:36:33 ►
The galaxy is a higher level of which the solar system is part.
00:36:36 ►
So we need to decide whether we can have any interest
00:36:41 ►
in a lunar mind or not, or a solar mind.
00:36:44 ►
I think it’s an earth lunar mind.
00:36:47 ►
Yes, I think the moon’s part of the earth as a system.
00:36:50 ►
It orbits the earth. It’s in its gravitational field.
00:36:52 ►
It’s in our blood.
00:36:53 ►
It closes our time.
00:36:55 ►
If you accept Gaian mind,
00:36:58 ►
do you think there’s a similar kind of mind associated with Jupiter?
00:37:02 ►
Yes, I think planets are animals.
00:37:07 ►
Primates and so on running around. Yes, planets are like animals. But I don’t believe that… I think that…
00:37:12 ►
Then there’s a mental ecosystem of our solar system, which is the solar mind. Now we’ve
00:37:18 ►
got to there.
00:37:19 ►
But that’s an island.
00:37:20 ►
And that’s in astrology, you see, is it?
00:37:21 ►
That’s an island, sure.
00:37:22 ►
It’s the movement of the solar organism.
00:37:23 ►
Now we’ve got your limit. But a minute ago it was the guy in mind.
00:37:26 ►
Now we’ve boosted you without rockets to the solar mind.
00:37:31 ►
Certain other places in the solar system seem potentially open
00:37:35 ►
to the support of recognizable forms of life, the oceans of Europa.
00:37:40 ►
No, but does it need recognizable life to have a mind? You see, in the Gaian mind, it is not
00:37:46 ►
only the so-called
00:37:48 ►
living
00:37:49 ►
beings in it, microbes
00:37:51 ►
included that have mind.
00:37:54 ►
The ecosystem is
00:37:56 ►
a mind. Well, but you don’t want to
00:37:58 ►
define mind so broadly
00:38:00 ►
that it’s no longer recognizable
00:38:02 ►
as what we say when we
00:38:04 ►
ordinarily use the word mind.
00:38:05 ►
Well, that’s the problem. I think so.
00:38:06 ►
Well, we don’t know what we do use.
00:38:07 ►
I think the Gaian system, as described by you yesterday beautifully,
00:38:10 ►
as this system of control, self-control, interpenetrating, holistic system,
00:38:17 ►
that the functions of all these different components of the complex system appear to think.
00:38:24 ►
I mean, they fit exactly our model of thinking.
00:38:27 ►
Now, to ask if it’s conscious or unconscious is a different question, I think,
00:38:32 ►
which very much complicates the issue due to the fact that we have consciousness and unconsciousness.
00:38:38 ►
Oh, well, I’m definitely into the notion that if you can’t have an I-thou relationship with it,
00:38:44 ►
it’s fairly uninteresting
00:38:47 ►
to call it a mind.
00:38:48 ►
Well, do you think that the guy in mind would then be dead if the human species became extinct?
00:38:55 ►
No, any more than anyone else is dead if an acquaintance dies. I communicate with the guy in mind. Then why can’t Jupiter have a
00:39:08 ►
Jupiterian mind without the necessity of microbes? Oh, I grant that. It’s these more diffuse
00:39:15 ►
abiological systems. Well, no, who said that? If Jupiter has one, the sun… The sun is
00:39:23 ►
a hard step to take.
00:39:25 ►
Well, this is one we discussed the other day.
00:39:27 ►
If the Sun indeed is a very complex resonant pattern
00:39:30 ►
of magnetic fields…
00:39:31 ►
It has neurons.
00:39:32 ►
…with little sort of cells and vortices
00:39:34 ►
throughout its whole surface,
00:39:35 ►
the whole thing with very complex resonant patterns,
00:39:38 ►
as has recently been shown,
00:39:40 ►
with complete magnetic polar reversals every 11 years
00:39:43 ►
starting at sunspot maximum,
00:39:45 ►
and longer periods of resonance, too.
00:39:47 ►
A very complex system of highly probabilistic turbulences,
00:39:51 ►
resonances, and so on.
00:39:53 ►
There’s a physical interface.
00:39:55 ►
If a mind has to have a physical interface,
00:39:57 ►
then there’s a pretty good one for the sun.
00:40:00 ►
And the solar system as a whole
00:40:02 ►
involves all what’s going on in all the planets
00:40:07 ►
all the gravitational interactions
00:40:08 ►
the electromagnetic field of the sun
00:40:11 ►
in which everything is made manifest
00:40:13 ►
the electromagnetic field of the sun
00:40:14 ►
includes us sitting here in this room
00:40:16 ►
everything that’s illuminated
00:40:19 ►
and if there’s some kind of associated mind with the light
00:40:23 ►
which is one of the things we started off with.
00:40:25 ►
The solar mind, which is the source of the light,
00:40:27 ►
directly and indirectly, everything that we see,
00:40:31 ►
is, in a sense, we’re in it.
00:40:33 ►
We’re in that solar.
00:40:35 ►
The light is coming from the sun, and in a sense, we’re in it.
00:40:38 ►
All things may be seen by the sun.
00:40:40 ►
The sun is often, in many cultures, called an eye in the sky.
00:40:44 ►
And on the dollar bill,
00:40:46 ►
that eye of Horus, which is in the
00:40:48 ►
triangle there, but it’s the radiant eye.
00:40:50 ►
It’s the sun. It’s not only the seer,
00:40:51 ►
but the emitter of light,
00:40:53 ►
which brings us back to the sort of theme from which
00:40:55 ►
we started, you know, the connection between light
00:40:57 ►
and vision. And if the
00:41:00 ►
sun has both this inner dynamics,
00:41:02 ►
plus is the field
00:41:04 ►
of which all things in the solar system
00:41:06 ►
are seen and related,
00:41:08 ►
plus is related to them all through the gravitational field.
00:41:11 ►
We’ve got galaxies, clusters, and the cosmos beyond.
00:41:14 ►
Yes, there’s no doubt that we can jack him up the rest of the way.
00:41:16 ►
But where is self-consciousness?
00:41:17 ►
I think that the problem has to do with divine omniscience.
00:41:20 ►
Divine omniscience.
00:41:22 ►
That’s more difficult.
00:41:24 ►
It certainly is.
00:41:24 ►
If that put you off.
00:41:25 ►
That’s… Because it implies a kind of knowing that is never met with.
00:41:33 ►
Well, that’s surely implicit in the very concept of divine omniscience. Any notion
00:41:39 ►
that our consciousness is less than higher forms of consciousness implies
00:41:42 ►
there must be forms of knowing that we don’t meet with.
00:41:49 ►
But omniscience is a kind of mathematical notion,
00:41:54 ►
not something you could expect any biological system to attain.
00:41:58 ►
Biological systems just get, you know, sentience and then a little more and a little more and then a lot.
00:42:01 ►
But divine omniscience is like mathematical absolute
00:42:07 ►
it means certain knowledge of everything that’s some program well if I just was
00:42:16 ►
suggesting the simple thought that conceived for the purpose of argument
00:42:20 ►
that there’s some kind of sense of knowing associated with the
00:42:23 ►
electromagnetic field but this then would that not amount to complete knowledge of everything in the physical level?
00:42:29 ►
Does it include knowledge of the future?
00:42:32 ►
I’m talking now about perceptual knowledge of the present.
00:42:36 ►
I mean, my discussion has been entirely centered on omniscience of the present.
00:42:40 ►
I’m not now thinking of knowledge of the future.
00:42:43 ►
That’s a separate question. This is the Laplacian thing, wasn’t it?
00:42:48 ►
If you knew the initial positions, i.e. in the present,
00:42:52 ►
this divinely omniscient mind could calculate all futures.
00:42:56 ►
Well, yes, that’s Laplace, but that was in a deterministic universe
00:42:59 ►
where God was modelled on Laplace.
00:43:02 ►
But what I’m talking about is divine omniprecipience,
00:43:06 ►
let’s just say, omniperception.
00:43:09 ►
That if there were a mind associated with the electromagnetic
00:43:11 ►
and the gravitational fields,
00:43:14 ►
the positions and everything that’s happening in the universe
00:43:18 ►
would be known to it,
00:43:19 ►
not through some kind of external mind looking and examining it,
00:43:22 ►
but because this knowing would pervade these fields.
00:43:26 ►
There’d be nothing in the universe outside them,
00:43:28 ►
on the physical level.
00:43:30 ►
True, although within my own body
00:43:32 ►
I have very little understanding of what’s going on.
00:43:37 ►
Well, the divine omniscience may be,
00:43:39 ►
it may be as unconscious as your omniscience
00:43:43 ►
of what’s going on in your body.
00:43:47 ►
What you need to know in your body is when something alters.
00:43:50 ►
And if you had a pinprick, you’d instantly know it.
00:43:53 ►
But you’d know it by contrast with the non-pinprick state,
00:43:59 ►
because your present state is different from being asleep or unconscious or comatose.
00:44:03 ►
You see, the fact is that our mind is primarily unconscious, and consciousness is not a necessary consideration of omniscience.
00:44:11 ►
And I think a major fallacy of the modern system
00:44:16 ►
is to emphasize the grandeur of consciousness,
00:44:19 ►
to imagine that our mind is primarily conscious
00:44:22 ►
is just to deny the existence of the unconscious
00:44:25 ►
which is part of the rational
00:44:27 ►
approach is to the denial of
00:44:29 ►
the irrational. The fact is that
00:44:31 ►
consciousness is a drop on the bucket
00:44:33 ►
of the individual mind
00:44:36 ►
and it could
00:44:37 ►
be that the guy in mind is
00:44:39 ►
completely unconscious
00:44:41 ►
and that wouldn’t matter
00:44:43 ►
at all. I think that it it functions as a mental being,
00:44:47 ►
and even the concept of consciousness is inappropriate
00:44:50 ►
for the world soul, the cosmic mind, and so on.
00:44:56 ►
It’s just not an appropriate concept.
00:44:57 ►
There’s no need to project that little tiny self-reflection aspect
00:45:02 ►
of our own being onto the cosmic mind that’s unnecessary.
00:45:07 ►
We could discuss that at a future time.
00:45:10 ►
Yeah, what do you think about that?
00:45:12 ►
Well, I think that the cosmic mind may be largely unconscious, because I think that
00:45:17 ►
most things that happen in the cosmos are habitual and therefore unconscious.
00:45:21 ►
But there’s a curious kind of consciousness or awareness associated with habituation and all
00:45:27 ►
sensory modes that we know of work on the principle of difference what you detect are not fixed levels
00:45:32 ►
like when you’re sitting on a cushion you’re not sensing the pressure on your bottom you get you
00:45:37 ►
habituate and even in the simplest organisms habituation is the first form of learning it’s
00:45:42 ►
the ability to sort of filter out or become unconscious of everything that’s habitual in the environment.
00:45:49 ►
The way consciousness works…
00:45:50 ►
Novelty is the big thing.
00:45:52 ►
Yes. What attracts attention is novelty.
00:45:55 ►
Anything new in the environment immediately attracts the attention of a person, an animal, or anything.
00:46:01 ►
And they usually react with fear, then followed by approach and curiosity, and and then if it’s harmless it’s just accept and ignore this pattern
00:46:09 ►
shown by pet dogs it’s the Gregory Bateson’s theory of information so it’s
00:46:14 ►
the difference that makes a difference I mean this is standard sensory
00:46:17 ►
physiology it’s not just Bateson’s that sensory systems work on differences and
00:46:21 ►
sensory perceptions are all based on differences so
00:46:25 ►
you become sensually aware if you’re just
00:46:27 ►
staring vacantly at a
00:46:29 ►
whole area of what we call the visual field
00:46:32 ►
appropriately enough you don’t
00:46:34 ►
notice anything in particular as soon as there’s any motion
00:46:36 ►
in it your eye immediately battens onto the moving
00:46:38 ►
object and that’s
00:46:40 ►
because it’s a difference so this is
00:46:42 ►
the way our senses work
00:46:43 ►
now I think that if there were to be something like the Gaian mind
00:46:47 ►
or the mind of the solar system or even the galactic mind,
00:46:52 ►
that it would probably work in a similar way,
00:46:54 ►
be habituated to anything that stays the same or follows regular cycles.
00:47:00 ►
But it may be that consciousness would flare up, as it were,
00:47:03 ►
or become associated with anything that challenged crisis, problem, pain,
00:47:08 ►
or anything that makes, or any new thing that makes a difference.
00:47:14 ►
There might be a kind of rising of awareness about that in the down-line.
00:47:17 ►
There might be, against a large background of unconsciousness, which is the way…
00:47:21 ►
What you’re saying is novelty would drive it.
00:47:21 ►
unconsciousness which is the way… You mean that what you’re saying is novelty would drive it?
00:47:25 ►
Novelty would drive it, and it would be driven by… and also discomfort, because there’s
00:47:31 ►
certain kinds of pain that we have that persist and act as motivations for our behaviour,
00:47:36 ►
and I think there’d be some… there’d have to be some kind of…
00:47:39 ►
So disequilibrium would drive it, is a better term.
00:47:43 ►
Yes.
00:47:44 ►
Yes. So there’d be disequilibrium and novelty. I mean, there’d be a variety of things that would drive it. Yes. It’s a better term. Yes. So there’d be disequilibrium and novelty.
00:47:45 ►
I mean, there’d be a variety of things that would drive it.
00:47:48 ►
But the reason I think that this is a reasonable view is that we see the same pattern not just
00:47:53 ►
in our own minds, but this thing of sensory differences and habituation, right back to
00:47:57 ►
unicellular organisms and plants.
00:48:00 ►
And it seems to be a kind of universal mode of awareness
00:48:05 ►
or at least of sensory awareness
00:48:07 ►
and since we’re talking about perceptual
00:48:09 ►
the perception of the world soul
00:48:12 ►
if the electromagnetic field is as it were its sense organ
00:48:16 ►
or a part of its sensory system
00:48:18 ►
then something of this kind would apply
00:48:21 ►
we’re talking about reductionist Gaian psychology.
00:48:29 ►
Well, it’s not just reductionist Gaian psychology.
00:48:33 ►
I mean, the electromagnetic field is only part of this,
00:48:35 ►
just as the electromagnetic changes in our brains
00:48:38 ►
are only part of the brain.
00:48:41 ►
Well, it’s valuable to parse the system into parts
00:48:44 ►
without necessarily reducing it to its the system into parts without necessarily
00:48:46 ►
reducing it to some of its parts
00:48:48 ►
we’re talking at the moment anyway
00:48:49 ►
only about Gaian perception
00:48:51 ►
not about Gaian understanding
00:48:53 ►
nor about Gaian hopes, fears
00:48:55 ►
and goals
00:48:57 ►
nor about Gaian dreams
00:48:59 ►
nor about Gaian daydreams
00:49:01 ►
nor about Gaian memories
00:49:02 ►
so there’s much more to the Gaian mind than its perceptual mode of knowing what’s going on now.
00:49:10 ►
And light is just one of the aspects of that perceptual mode,
00:49:13 ►
as it’s just one of the aspects through which we know the world around us.
00:49:17 ►
But somehow the light and what happens in the light has to be related to our vision.
00:49:24 ►
And so the question is,
00:49:27 ►
first there’s the question of our own vision,
00:49:28 ►
how it’s related to light.
00:49:29 ►
Gaian vision.
00:49:30 ►
And then how Gaian vision,
00:49:31 ►
or other forms of vision,
00:49:32 ►
are related to it.
00:49:33 ►
Yes.
00:49:37 ►
So we’re on the track of a cognitive map of the Gaian mind.
00:49:41 ►
That seems to be the appropriate level.
00:49:42 ►
We’ve tried smaller,
00:49:43 ►
we’ve tried larger. That feels comfortable this year. Yes, to be the appropriate level. We’ve tried smaller, we’ve tried larger.
00:49:45 ►
That feels comfortable this year. Yes, that’s right. Yes. A cognitive map of the guy and
00:49:51 ►
mind. Maybe we should rest at this point. Yes. I don’t know about you, but I’m going
00:50:00 ►
to go back and re-listen to that part where Terrence was talking about a possible twin for this universe,
00:50:07 ►
but one that has more anti-matter than matter.
00:50:11 ►
I want to try to think about that in the context of a possible 2012 event.
00:50:17 ►
Of course, I guess the only event that would occur if these two universes, assuming they even exist, of course,
00:50:27 ►
but if these two universes ever collided, both would zero out.
00:50:31 ►
Poof!
00:50:32 ►
And what does that remind you of?
00:50:35 ►
How about those first few seconds after inhaling a couple of deep hits of 5-MeO?
00:50:42 ►
I don’t know about you, but for me, that experience is pretty much an
00:50:47 ►
annihilation of my universe. I know it took one of my friends almost half a year to get
00:50:52 ►
back to baseline after his first 5-MeO trip, so if you’re thinking about taking that journey,
00:50:58 ►
be sure you know what you’re doing and have an experienced sitter with you, too. I’m also going to have to go back and re-listen to part of today’s trialogue
00:51:08 ►
and see if I can put aside some of my own ingrown bias
00:51:12 ►
against the concept of divine omnipotence
00:51:15 ►
that Rupert was trying to sell to Terrence and Ralph.
00:51:20 ►
Kind of unsuccessfully, I thought.
00:51:23 ►
You know, it’s interesting that this topic came up in today’s trialogue,
00:51:26 ►
because I recently received an interesting email from James,
00:51:31 ►
who’s another Canadian salonner who joins us from beautiful Prince Edward Island.
00:51:37 ►
And James broached the same subject by asking,
00:51:41 ►
do you have any interest in the intersection of spirituality,
00:51:45 ►
I hesitate to say religion, and psychedelics?
00:51:49 ►
Well, yes, James, actually that’s basically what got me involved in this work in the first place.
00:51:56 ►
In fact, I no longer am able to use psychedelics without being spun into deep thoughts about spirituality. And I totally agree with you that we should distinguish between organized religions and spirituality.
00:52:11 ►
Personally, I have a pretty dim view of all organized religions and don’t see much spirituality in any of them.
00:52:18 ►
To me, the word religion is just another way to say we want to control your mind and have you think like we tell you how to think.
00:52:27 ►
And personally, I want no more of that.
00:52:29 ►
Thank you very much.
00:52:31 ►
If anyone wants a truly spiritual experience,
00:52:34 ►
all they have to do is ingest six or seven grams of psychedelic mushrooms
00:52:38 ►
and I’ll guarantee that they’ll have a truly mystical and very spiritual experience.
00:52:44 ►
I’ll guarantee that they’ll have a truly mystical and very spiritual experience.
00:52:51 ►
I guess I should point out that maybe that shouldn’t be anybody’s first experience with magic mushrooms.
00:52:57 ►
Until you know how to navigate that space, it’s probably best to use a lower dose.
00:53:00 ►
Maybe three or four grams would be better at first.
00:53:06 ►
I can’t really say because we’re all so different, so you’ll just have to follow your own instincts on that.
00:53:14 ►
However, I do believe that it’s wise to follow Jonathan Ott’s warning that we should beware the dreaded underdose.
00:53:21 ►
As funny as that may sound, my bet is that many of you know the truth of that statement.
00:53:25 ►
I’ve seen more people struggle with a low-dose LSD experience than with a heavy dose of ayahuasca. If you don’t take enough to propel you over the threshold
00:53:32 ►
of that psychedelic boundary, the chances are you won’t have a peak experience and you
00:53:37 ►
might even wind up having a very uncomfortable trip. I don’t know what got me hyperlinked
00:53:43 ►
into that direction, but maybe I better move on to some more earth-grounded topics,
00:53:48 ►
like the flood that recently took place in Scotland,
00:53:51 ►
where it wiped out Queer Ninja’s house and his recording studio, too, I guess.
00:53:57 ►
As I’ve mentioned before, Queer Ninja produces one of the most energetic and happiest podcasts around,
00:54:02 ►
and although the dope fiend comes in a close second in that category.
00:54:07 ►
I just really love listening to those guys.
00:54:10 ►
Anyway, when the sounds of the worldwide weed didn’t come out in the week of the flood,
00:54:16 ►
I kind of expected a low-key subdued program once Queer Ninja got back online.
00:54:22 ►
But was I ever surprised, pleasantly so, when I listened to his first program after the flood,
00:54:28 ►
the one that’s just now out.
00:54:30 ►
In fact, he was even more upbeat and fun to listen to than before,
00:54:35 ►
and I think we could all learn something here.
00:54:38 ►
You see, each week at the start of his show,
00:54:40 ►
Queer Ninja tells us what variety or varieties of cannabis he’s using.
00:54:46 ►
And so now I know what to take if I’m ever flooded out of my house.
00:54:50 ►
You know, it seems like this week’s program was fueled by some Nepalese hash.
00:54:57 ►
And from the sound of it, this must have been some pretty amazing hash.
00:55:02 ►
In fact, I highly recommend that the next time New Orleans floods,
00:55:06 ►
that we just forget about sending food and water to the flood victims
00:55:10 ►
and instead send them large quantities of Nepalese hash.
00:55:15 ►
It might not restore their physical losses,
00:55:17 ►
but it sure seems to do wonders on the spiritual plane.
00:55:21 ►
Anyway, Queer Ninja, it’s great to hear you back
00:55:23 ►
and in such good spirits once again. And
00:55:25 ►
I hope you get the Cave Studio back online and in operation pretty soon. And for those of you who
00:55:31 ►
haven’t yet had the pleasure of tuning into the sounds of World Wide Weed, you really owe it to
00:55:36 ►
yourself to check out his podcast as well as the other great programs on the Cannabis Podcast
00:55:41 ►
Network. I know some of you have been sending emails and asking about what other podcasts are Thank you. I think you’ll find KMO’s latest podcast on the Sea Realm quite interesting. It features the second half of his interview with Rick Doblin of MAPS,
00:56:08 ►
as well as a soundbite from my recent interview with Sheldon Norberg.
00:56:13 ►
And you can find links to those podcasts on our main podcast page,
00:56:17 ►
which is at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.
00:56:22 ►
Also this week, I heard from Bill Bill who joins us from Japan and who, like Nick and Trey and Fig and many more of you, says he’s really been enjoying these trialogues.
00:56:32 ►
So many thanks for writing you guys and I’ll do my best to keep the trialogues coming.
00:56:39 ►
But if you’re looking for some other great talks in addition to podcasts while you’re waiting for my next program or you’ve maxed out on some of these others?
00:56:49 ►
Well, there’s what appears to be a great website that lists quite a few lectures that are along many of the same lines that we play here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:56:59 ►
And I believe it was James, actually, who sent me the link. And that is futurehi.net, www.futurehi.net, slash media.html.
00:57:14 ►
And I haven’t had a chance to listen to any of them yet myself,
00:57:18 ►
but their speakers include Albert Hoffman, Houston Smith, Joseph Campbell,
00:57:24 ►
let’s see, Marilyn Ferguson, Terrence McKenna, and a whole bunch more.
00:57:27 ►
And it looks like a great resource, and thank you, James, for letting us all know about it.
00:57:33 ►
I know I’m forgetting some messages that I got through tribe.net as well as from your emails,
00:57:39 ►
but if I don’t get this podcast finished pretty soon,
00:57:42 ►
I’m not going to be able to say that I actually completed three podcasts a week for four weeks.
00:57:49 ►
But, hey, it’s been fun, and I’ve sure enjoyed being with you here in the psychedelic salon so often.
00:57:55 ►
You know, it’s really great to feel your vibe as I put these programs together.
00:58:01 ►
There are a lot of us out there, you you know and between a whole group of podcasts like
00:58:06 ►
this one we’re all being interconnected in ways that we may never understand but in some strange
00:58:13 ►
way perhaps Gaia is connecting each of us in some kind of a new neural network getting us ready for
00:58:20 ►
her next great evolutionary leap or maybe I should come back down to Earth
00:58:27 ►
and close this program
00:58:28 ►
and leave the wild speculations to the trial-loggers.
00:58:32 ►
Before I go, I should mention that this
00:58:35 ►
and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
00:58:37 ►
are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution
00:58:40 ►
Non-Commercial Sharealike 2.5 license.
00:58:44 ►
And if you have any questions about that, you can email them to me.
00:58:48 ►
The address is lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.
00:58:53 ►
And thanks again, Jacques, Cordell, and Wells,
00:58:55 ►
for the use of your music here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:58:58 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:59:03 ►
Be well, my friends.