Musings on trans-personal consciousness

Sitting on a ridge in the Mojave Desert, just north of Joshua Tree National Park, watching a rain storm blow in…

Like fronts of weather moving across a landscape, similarly, emotions and beliefs blow across human societies and through human consciousness, and we, without the “meteorological” tools to see, measure, track, or forecast those fronts of emotion, instead experience them as arisen from ourselves, individually, and thus with no capacity to prepare for and shelter ourselves from them, so that we might be able to remain largely unaffected and undamaged by the storms such fronts can bring on. Instead, we are overwhelmed by them, and blown like tumbleweeds across the emotional landscape; a society, a world of tumbleweeds blown about without shelter or stability.

We have yet to understand that...

To read the rest of this short musing, please go to:
http://www.steveberer.com/work-in-progress/
or specifically:
http://www.steveberer.com/work-in-progress/2018/12/30/musings-on-trans-personal-consciousness

Transforming our psychological ground

Our work:
Transforming the psychology of accumulation
To the psychology of sensitivity;
The psychology of control and conquest
To the psychology of empathy and compassion.

These are goals that cannot be framed in 12-step programs or 5 year plans. This is not a generation’s issue or a systemic flaw to be fixed with new laws or higher average wages. These are changes that work in evolutionary time, not human time, and our human engagement, if it is to be sustained, must be embedded in, and central to ideologies that have trans-generational endurance. I think specifically here of religious ideologies.

These ideals will come into direct conflict with political and economic desires, where accumulation of power and wealth is the guiding animus, and in which individuals are driven by nothing more than the dictates of self, which require an enemy, a competitor, or lower economic or social classes to motivate action and measure success. Respect and empathy, on the other hand, are values that require, in large measure, effacement of self, or more accurately, a higher sense of self. This is counter to our biological condition. Therefore, many will argue against the very viability of such an ideal, and those that argue for it will be working against a daunting gradient in biology.

However, I would argue that there is a counter-gradient in nature, a spiritual or divine gradient, more subtle than biology, and working on a longer wavelength, such that biology will appear dominant and more efficacious in generational time, but spirit will prevail in evolutionary time.

This is not mere fantasy or romanticism. It is now 2500 years since the Hebrew Prophets first articulated the basis for these ideals, and since then we see that for every cresting of political oppression and predatory economics, consistently and irresistibly there have arisen social, religious, political, and economic forces to counter and overthrow these regimes.

Witness: the re-emergence of Catholic faith in religiously eviscerated Poland, a re-emergence and resurgence strong enough to cast off the yoke of a superpower.

Witness: Marxist ideology, founded on deeply flawed sociological and psychological principles, which was yet able to swell in a single generation to effectively counter unrestrained predatory capitalism. Core principles of Marxism are now integral components of all high-functioning capitalistic systems, including unions and coops, workman’s comp and unemployment compensation, social security and universal health care. (Ironically, we do not yet see a similar, but opposite integration into most communist/Marxist systems, which remain predatory on the individual. However, Kerala state in India may be one of a few emerging counter-examples. Some might also argue that the Scandinavian countries are Marxist states that have successfully integrated capitalism.)

Witness: the emergence of a culturally, economically, and politically vibrant (and militarily powerful) Jewish state in the face of the most profound disaster to the Jewish people since the Roman destruction. Is there another example of such a reversal of fortune in all of history? Note also the rapid migration of anti-Jewish animus from Christian lands to Muslim lands, exposing the temporally local biological cross-currents and backwashes that are trying to counter the aeonic, spiritual tides of a Jewish national identity.

Indeed, I would argue that today the teaching of the Prophets is more well-known and more motivational than at any time in history, and that the force of their words, within and outside of religions, will increasingly shape political and economic systems.

Witness: the success of the American experiment based on prophetic ideals of freedom, justice, and equality, and of the value of the individual. America was founded to counter “divine right” and social and economic entitlement and ossification. The US continues to be a powerful magnet, drawing the best, brightest, and most idealistic from nations around the world, thus enhancing the likelihood of its continuing success. I would argue that America is the first example of a nation constituted on the prophetic ideals derived from the divine wavelengths valuing sensitivity and empathy over accumulation and power. The critical reader, of course, will immediately note how the biological cross-currents and backwashes of accumulation and power have swept across, and are disrupting these spiritual forces.

Divine Causality and human will

The following poem seems to be an appropriate follow-up to the previous post. Actually, it was written a few months before I wrote the prolegomena, and oddly, it was not written in stevespell. Thus the title, assigning it to Jefferson as my way to honor him. The poem is part of The Pardaes Dokkumen, from the section Tranzkript ov the Hevvenlee Korten. You can find numerous other pieces from The Pardaes Dokkumen in this blog.

Found Beneath a Floorboard in Monticello

What is done in Ertha
That is true and good and compassionate
Is done also in the High Places
And established there in the Central Code.
But what is done here in Ertha
That is false or cruel or inaccurate
Is erased from Ertha
And barriers are erected in the High Places
That are compounded as those errors are repeated,
So that the good has amplified momentum
And what is not for good is increasingly diverted
And diminished in momentum.

However, even in the most corrupt actions
There are minute details of good.
Thus, as the ungood is thwarted,
Yet the fragments of good are promoted.

In all of our actions
Most is dross, to be cast off or thwarted
By the Divine Will.
But the pintele good,
Which is mostly poorly known to us,
Is amplified, that the Divine Will
Slowly, inexorably, works Its Purposes.

Those that act with most force in the world
Rarely achieve much good.
Those that act with most good in the world
Rarely act with force.

The measure of force required
Is a crude measure of an action's ungood.

Zeno's Paradox

I have been fascinated by Zeno's Paradox for at least 4 decades, and there must be many dozens of musings scattered through my notebooks on the topic, including not a few solutions to the paradox. This is my latest musing.

5/15/2010, Shabbat Bemidbar, plane to DC
Reading Bohm, Implicate Order, pp. 199 to a third of the way down 201.

Zeno’s paradox, although appearing to pertain to motion, really is about consciousness and the perception of time. In consciousness, time is overlapping, like a series of semi-transparent images arrayed and overlapping each other. The term I have used is “superimposition” and in some cases “embedded,” while Bohm uses “enfolded.” As our sense of time is superimposed (a fundamental property of consciousness), so events are embedded in each other, and “now” includes some indeterminate component of “past” and “future.” The more expanded and expansive (expansen) our consciousness, the more the past and future is “embedden” in our “now.” Indeed, we must not think of time as a single thread, and in the same way, we must not think of consciousness as a single thread, or even as just a few threads. Our math, Aristotelian, Euclidean, as it is, distorts and misrepresents reality. We mathematically represent motion as a vector, but it is really multiple vectors, which in the calculus of consciousness are synthesized and unified, a simplification useful for most applications, but inaccurate as we begin to unpack the actual “workings” (in quotes because the term implies a mechanistic representation, and consciousness is not mechanistic) of consciousness and our awareness of minute periods of time and motion. When we try to stop-frame time, we realize it can’t be done. Just as a geometric point is a fiction, so is an instant in time. However, an instant in consciousness is not only an indeterminately short moment, it is a series or compilation of time frames, long and short, extending back, potentially thousands of years, or more, and forward in ways and “distances” we cannot calculate or comprehend.

Hercules overtakes the turtle because the geometric model that would restrain him with its infinite regression is fundamentally flawed. It posits time as a single line made up of an infinite number of tangent points. But time is not a single line, it is not even linear, and there are no such things as instants.

At my horizon, and hazy still:

1. Time is a complex superimposition of multiple frame-periods, individually discontinuous (?), and variable in their endurance/extension, (reified, integrated synthesized) by consciousness.

2. Human will/intentionality is the (necessity)(?) that generates this uni-dimensional synthesis, this illusion of a single thread of time, of moments, of motion, and of divisibility. I say will is what drives us to create the Euclidean illusions of time because will is what motivates us build, make tools, hunt, plan, and calculate, and all these functions require that time be simplified into one dimension in a series of causally connected moments.

3. Concepts and perceptions of predictability and control derive from archaic portions of consciousness that incline us to strip reality of its complexities.

found this in my notebook

Those that act with most force in the world
Rarely act for good (or achieve much good).
Those that act with most good in the world
Rarely act with force.

The measure of force required
Is a crude measure of an action's ungood.

Time is Illusion

As Rovelli explains it, in quantum mechanics all particles of matter and energy can also be described as waves. And waves have an unusual property: An infinite number of them can exist in the same location. If time and space are one day shown to consist of quanta, the quanta could all exist piled together in a single dimensionless point. "Space and time in some sense melt in this picture," says Rovelli. "There is no space anymore. There are just quanta kind of living on top of one another without being immersed in a space."...

Einstein, for one, found solace in his revolutionary sense of time. In March 1955, when his lifelong friend Michele Besso died, he wrote a letter consoling Besso's family: "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

The rabbis concur in their biblical exegesis. "There is no past or future in Torah," they teach. Therefore they are not bound by the vector of time and its inherent causality. Thus Abraham is bound by the laws of Kashrut (keeping kosher) even tho those laws were received "historically" 400 or more years after Abraham died, and Jacob studied in a Yeshiva (a school of Jewish learning, especially Talmud) even tho Talmud was not compiled until about 500 CE, or about 2400 years after Jacob died! From a historian's point of view, this kind of exegesis sounds like mere foolishness. From the point of view of quantum mechanics, the rabbis were brilliantly prescient.

Our 'reason' is a bucketful of one-dimensional correspondences

This, from my collection, Ammung the Ruwenz ov the Tempel, I Herd...

Offeringz Thru the Nite

And the Lor enterd intu Proffets,
Frum Moesheh tu Ezra,
Tu emmerj a Torra thru them.

And Uddoniy askt them,
     "Yu hu kry ekstattek weepingz
     "In Owwer speretchuwel kohabbettate:
     "How will the chieldz rememmer This Moment,
     "And how will the knowen My Prezens be sustaend?
     "In the day wen My rezen iz unfathem.
          "The paganz will hak at the branchen ov my Tree.
          "Thay will wieldlee tare at its illumennaten leevz,
          "And bern owt the nests in its swaying arberz,
          "And the dellakkut frute thay will kast in the street
          "Tu krush with the heel ov thaer pawlish boots.
          "And the faent iyz pepel will refuze tu see.
          "Thay will fill thaer iyz with delluezhen and mith,
          "And no mor deziyer the taest ov trueth.

     "And thus My riten
     "Until yu understand:
          "The offer on its piyer on the Alter all nite
          "Until the morning the fiyer on the Alter keep berning.*
                    * Viyeekra/Leviticus 6

     "If yu keep the fiyer berning all nite
     "Then My absens will kum tu an end.
     "If not, tu hume and tu wut will I retern?
     "Hu iz slaying the bullz?
     "Hu iz laying a hart-wept peese on the flamen?"

More on science and religion

In his insightful comment to my last post, David Van Dusen <http://www.typeschrift.blogspot.com/> says:

"The dogs will fight." & "There is a (divine) gradient to nature." --- Indeed! --- And a divine gradient, also, to the blood-feuds, cock-fights, and peace-by-other-means we wage over Divinity, and Nature?

Well David, a "Divine gradient" does not mean a straight line. To the contrary, it means a tendency with many irregularities and seeming inconsistencies, and even much that appears retrograde.

One example: The Romans destroyed the 2nd Temple and did their best to destroy Judaism, but what resulted was a renewed Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism, with a profoundly powerful social, moral, and intellectual trajectory. That’s the Jewish view, and we’ve been saying it for 1800 years, but you would be hard-pressed to find much Christian (or Muslim) acknowledgment of that point of view until the enlightenment was well under way (1750+). In fact, in Europe (as opposed to the US, whose founders used Judaism as an important model) it only became "reasonable" to openly talk about Judaism’s historic value and validity after the military destruction of European nazism. That war, which dismantled the last vestiges of Europe’s moral and intellectual "authority," allowed a more open and honest reevaluation of Judaism and Jews. In sum, in spite of, shall we say, 95 generations of active resistence, the Divine gradient, which we Jews believe establishes Judaism’s priesthood role, persisted. Israel was restored, and Judaism’s fundamental importance to Western and Middle Eastern culture is now beginning to be acknowledged and studied by people other than Jews.

The clash of science and religion

Jbooks.com, in its 'discussions' section posed the following question to its readers, under the title of The Clash of Scientific Understanding and Religious Truth:

"Rabbi Soloveitchik suggests that the controversy isn't between evolution and creationism, nor is it whether God exists. The issue at heart is that man cannot be both made in the divine image and be equal to other species.

Are you convinced? Does human capacity for understanding our physical world separate us from everything or do biological similarities trump religion? Can science and religion ultimately be synthesized?"

I responded:

I think the Reb is a bit inaccurate in his thinking here. Science can not, and will not extinguish the divine spark in humans. That spark is an existential fact, tho many may not be attuned to it. Neither will science diminish our (apparent) higher consciousness of the divine; that is, higher as compared to other animals. The conflict between science and religion is really not about truth. It is about modes of thinking, and authority.

As for authority, the transfer of power from religious institutions to secular ones (or vice versa), was and is a turf war. The dogs will fight.

I think the more interesting issue is modes of thought. Put in its simplest terms, science asks how, and religion asks why. For example, we would not go to an evolutionary biologist to get an answer to why we humans exist. We would rather ask how we (probably) came to exist here. We would ask 'why are we here?' to a person who specializes in addressing questions of ethics and values.

However, the 2 modes of thinking are critically dependent. The Hebrew Bible often addresses the issue of how, and produces anecdotal evidence to describe the process. For example, Beraysheet/Genesis begins as a clearly scientific text, addressing the issues of origin of the universe (1:1+), origin (and evolution) of species (1:11+), origin of culture (2:16+, 6:18+, and other places), and origin of nations (10:1+). Science has filled in a great deal of detail in some areas.

But the evolutionists (and I am being specific here for the sake of brevity), for all their focus on process, have failed to grasp and work with an essential fact: there is a (divine) gradient to nature. What drives evolution, a process that goes from simple to more complex? There is no survival advantage in greater complexity. Indeed, it violates the principles of inertia and entropy. Specifically, "life" appears to be non-inertial in its behavior. There are no physics to answer the questions of what sets life in motion, what resists it, and what impels it. Life is anti-entropic in its trajectory towards greater complexity and organization. The evolutionists simply ignore these essential "details" and not a few other issues as well.

In sum, there is no conflict between science and religion, even tho there are many foolish and uninformed (or ideologically pre-formed) people on both sides.

Musings on the nature of cause and effect

We must rethink our linear and simplistic ideas about cause and effect. This is true not only for the physical world, but even more critically, for the nature of consciousness, or as some would call it, the spiritual world. The following poem continues my explorations on these matters.

Mewzen on Kawz in Effeks

Hoeshaya 8:4: "They ordained officers but I [God] did not know."

How kan this be?
Wut iz it God duz not kno?

Thus we ar telld:
The hewman Seel in Addom iz non-exxisten.
Oenlee az it seek holeeness,
Oenlee az it bilden knowen,
Oenlee az it persu justis,
Duz it rizen tu exxisten.
Els it stumbel in degreez a darkness
And exxert itsellz tu no effeks.

Addom themsell iz mere indetermennus.
The Prezzens a God alone giv direkten tu the werl.
And wut iz not tu God will fall awway, debree,
Az a skatter a leevz sterrd by a winden,
Az a pile ov ashez, a life bernd awway.

That wich livz in darkness, in Addom
Haz no fewcher in Godz evolven werlz.
It shudder and flikkerz, it vibe and reverb
Beneeth the kawz and effeks a Life.
The vast and tedeyus hewman laberz
Ar but soyelz in wich the dellakkut frute
Ov the hewman Seel iz seed and rooted.
This sivvillazzaten, this moest ov wut we see
Iz insubstanshel, iz a dezzert merrozh,
Like dust devvelz sterrd by owwer on-rushen Lor.

The Ejjipshenz, the Babballoneyanz, and the Romenz,
The inkwizzatterz, the zarz, the notseez,
The iyattolahz, thay will all tare down,
But the Lor iz lift Hem holee wunz.
And the tru, the holee werk kontinnewz
And, nevver dout, but nuthing haz bin loss.