The condition of condition

"I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in." Granted, we are conditioned beings. The question is, how much objectivity is it possible garner to see what the conditioning is? Science is supposed to do that. Yet how conditioned is science itself?

To observe requires an observer, a means of observation, and an object. Any one of these three can be heavily conditioned. As human observers our consciousnesses are wildly different and in varying states of receptivity. Any means of observation will inherently leave out as much as it magnifies: for instance, a telescope or microscope. The unaided sense organ has its narrow range of reception. And the object of perception is inherently conditioned as the result of the interaction of the observing consciousness and the observing lens. Especially on the quantum level, even down to the chronology of events, reality is heavily determined by the action of these factors. And this makes turning to the world of our minds particularly interesting when it comes to considering the effects of conditioning, because much theory and experimentation points to the fact that thought is a quantum phenomenon.

Because the act of observation is fundamental to assessing the situation before we even formulate a hypothesis, and as we have seen, the act of observation is rife in all its elements with conditioning, scientific observation can dangerously heighten the conditioning through which we see the universe. Rather than filtering out subjective differences it can reinforce incorrect assumptions based on consensual, "common sense" conditioning, which tends always to remain unchallenged.

So the mindfield of life is where the observational process is paramount in conditioning the result, and it is that Everest which we must first assault in achieving the first base of deconditioning.

Money pressure

Money represents stored energy and as such is a huge source of stress for most people, because this compression of energy is taking place not only into a material form but these days, more and more, into an abstract mental form. Numbers on a page or a computer screen have increasingly come to represent the medium of exchange rather than, say, a gold coin or even paper currency. Therefore money becomes primarily a mental phenomenon, a introversion of active, dynamic free-flowing energy into a symbolic and highly constrained form. The pressure of holding this force on the mental plane creates an unusual and intolerable strain on the psychology.

Capitalistic and socialistic economic systems alike are showing cracks due to the pressure from this high compression factor. Just as we have pushed the earth to the breaking point in terms of environmental stresses, it could be argued that the global economic system, increasingly precarious as it now seems to be, is suffering because the human beings at its basis, which include everybody, are not able to quite comprehend or psychologically support the huge energetic payload borne by that system.

Rather than packing more and more energy into money as a way of increasing its potential, more energy needs to be released into intelligence. That will increase human potential and realize the goal of money which is to increase provide a medium for the flow of energy into new and more useful forms. How does this happen? By increasing the consciousness around every process involving money. And that will become the basis of an enlightened financial system. By increasing consciousness I mean transcending negative stereotypical  attitudes about money, such as that it is the root of all evil. In and of itself it is neutral. Instead of investing all our hopes and fears in the means to the end, we need to invest our free and stored energy into activating our intelligence towards its fullest expression. That process will use money among many other possible means as part of the carrier wave for our fulfillment. In so doing the pressurized situation that is causing all of us grief may finally be harnassed for the greater good.

If and when

Grammarians have no doubt pointed this out before, but the phrase "if and when" (or "when and if") is totally preposterous. "If and when I ever make it to New York, I will definitely go see the Yankees play." Okay, if you go, there is no question of when, because if you don't go, there is no when. There is only a when if you do go. And when you do go, there is no if. You go a certain time and there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

And you can't really say "if or when" because that's either redundant or contradictory. It's not an either/or situation. If you go, there will be a when. If you don't go, no when. You could have an intention to go when, but then if you don't go, there is no when. So just say "if." Or "when."

Except that doesn't sound as good as "if and when," does it? The naked if or naked when doesn't quite do justice to the contingent nature of existence on this paradoxical planet. On the quantum level, a particle can appear at two places at once. Or two particles separated in space at a distance farther away than they could reach at the speed of light can still communicate with each other instantaneously. Light can be both a wave and a particle. And so on. Therefore, let us wallow in our indeterminacy and speak the preposterous. When and if we actually do arrive at clarity in terms of who we are and why we're here, our linguistic formulations may magically rearrange themselves anyway so that we babble in algorithms that comprehend all the mysteries of n-dimensional reality.

Memory

I was not until I was. Yet that is past. If I am not now, there is no was, because there is no memory. Remembering now my wasness, I realize that the past is a very curious thing. If I uncover yellowing remnants of its existence, its vague lineaments in my memory seem to be marching relentlessly into nonexistence, stayed only by my momentary reflections. Perhaps they are saved ultimately in the cosmic database. Or do they truly particalize in the infinite night?

I was not until I was, then I was not. Until I discover myself again, retrieve myself from the labyrinths of history and the tarnished mirror of memory.

Piece of work

Humanity has an exalted opinion of itself, and why not? It looks around, sees that it dominates all the animals, and to a certain extent the environment (although global warming may decide that contest rather decisively in favor of the home team). At the same time, one is distressingly aware of the shortcomings of this species. Shakespeare in Hamlet expressed exhaustion with the idealized Renaissance view of human potentiality: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" Obviously, Hamlet was disenchanted. And who, living in this benighted day and age, can not be also? Still, that ideal contains the seed potentiality for the evolution of consciousness in the species. It resonates across the ages as a reminder that we are greater than we know. Even now, not in some distant future when mankind has purified itself and refined out its greed and violence, but now, we have the voices of our better angels deep inside our ears, quietly reminding us of who we already are.

The time before time

What was the time before time? That is, before time existed (presumably before the Big Bang, because there could be "by definition" no time before matter and energy existed). And so the question renders itself meaningless....but wait a minute, by whose definition? I think we're being subjected to a bit of philosophically naive materialistic reductionism run amuck here. Answer the question!

The time before time is a different level of existence. It simply defines itself as that reality upon which so-called "3-D," or three-dimensional sensory reality is based. It is independent of 3-D and in fact totally permeates and suffuses the temporal aspect that can be measured in terms of moving objects, even quantum particles. Quantum time does begin to approach it, being nonlinear and acausal, but the time before time partakes of a reality that transcends the quantum layer of virtual fluctuations in which relative existence finds its temporal grounding.

Dali's "Persistence of Memory" gives a flavor of this pure existence aspect of time. Just as his melting watches are found on a spaceless plane (one with no fixed spatial reference points), the sense of momentousness, of being poised on the edge of a moment, create a sense of timeless time. This is still time, but we hear no ticking, we see no digital readout that uniquely identifies this moment from any other. It is a kind of knowing time, that knows us very well indeed, that is conscious, and that wants us to listen to it. A different kind of time, in other words, from the reductionist version, the passive slave to materiality. We'll listen now, old man. Look at my life. I'm a lot like you were.

Avatar eyes

The word avatar has come into very loose use, to say the least, since gamers have appropriated it to refer to a virtual incarnation within a reality construct. No longer is it merely the domain of Hindu deities to take a body to play in the earthly dimension, but in the Age of Immanence all of us earth dwellers can follow suit, suiting ourselves in magical skin to fly through other worlds. Now, James Cameron in his ground-breaking movie Avatar, has delivered a complete visual and sensory experience of this shape-shifting phenomenon to millions of filmgoers (especially in 3D of course).

Although the movie can be faulted for a lack of conceptual originality and perhaps trite characterization, it seems petty to quibble about what it is not in the light of what it accomplishes in communicating about the impending evolutionary change that impacts us. The race of Na'vi are profoundly connected to the life and consciousness of the planet and like many indigenous tribes on Earth come up somewhat short when having to defend themselves against death-dealing high-tech civilizations (although they find hidden resources in this case). In this story, a soldier of no particular distinction gets the chance to inhabit an avataric body and to live among the Na'vi and learn their ways. In his human life he is paralyzed from the waist down; in his Na'vi body he can run through giant trees, leap into space swinging on vines, ride on flying dragons, and do many things, in short, we would all like to be able to do, including win the love of a beautiful Na'vi princess.

What separates this from the plethora of wish-fulfillment superhero adolescent fantasies that we have been overexposed to in the movies the last few decades? Two things at least: the participatory feel of the transformation into a new body that makes us want to thoroughly embrace it ourselves, and the sense of merging into a communal and planetary consciousness that is fundamentally different from the narcissistic superhero model.

The last shot of the film is the newly opened eyes of the hero who has been completely reborn in his Na'vi body. As the Na'vi say when they meet each other, "I see you." May we all start seeing each other, for real, in our new birth.

The three talismans

I am embarking on a journey. As I walk along the road, I become aware that someone is walking alongside me. He has something to give me for my journey: an amulet to wear around my neck, inside of which are three tiny talismans. He tells me that each of these will offer its own kind of help for me when I need it.

I open my bag and find a magnifying glass, a pen, and a smooth stone.

The glass will help me see details. The pen to take notes. And the stone to help me think.

And as I continue my quest, another level of help that these talismans provide will kick in. The Glass will intensify the witnessing power of my consciousness. As much as I will be looking through it as I observe an object, I will also be seeing the observer. The nature of my observational subjectivity will become clear as I realize the nature of the self that experiences. The Pen will allow me to write the truth of any subject, including things that I do not know in my conscious mind, through the act of writing itself. All I need do is sit down and let the words flow to my intention. And the Stone will have the power of transforming anything in to the best that it can possibly be, through its very touch. A glass of cheap wine becomes the noblest vintage.

My quest--what is it? Is the ultimate meta-investigation: to find out what my quest is. These talismans will be the help I need to learn my hidden purpose.

Cease, Augustus

The month of peace has nearly passed. Beneath the Colosseum, the lions wait impatiently to be let loose on the virtuous folk whose tender souls make their flesh similarly tender. The blue skies above, in this unseasonably mild Iowa summer of our content, veil a gathering storm. This unsettling truth we may acknowledge grudgingly, aware as we are that we have had ample warning signs of catastrophic change for years. It behooves us to breathe deeply in this waning August air, sensing and noting a vibratory quality therein, like an olfactory warning that the unexpected has arrived and is merely waiting a short time longer for an opportune moment to announce itself.

Really virtual

Time and space, according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, which was his gravity field theory, are curved in the presence of mass. In Newtonian mechanics, they were invariable absolutes. They became somewhat less concrete as they were subjected to the vagaries of the observer subjectivity in special relativity theory and then subsumed as aspects of an overarching geometry in general relativity. Finally, with the advent of quantum mechanics, time and space became full-fledged virtual entities. Really virtual, not just virtually real.

In considering the word "virtual," we remember that it means as if in fact, not in fact. There is a jump implicit there. When we jump to the conclusion that something possesses some quantum of virtual reality of something, affirming its probabilistic exsistence, that quantum jump is itself a reality-making factor wherein the "stuff" of consciousness takes on the mantle of creativity.

Any creator uses the "as if" principle constantly. In fact, one cannot write, act, paint, or do anything unless one pushes forward with the action as if one can actually do it. There are so many times that I sit down to write, not knowing what I am going to write but having a pretty good idea that I will be able to figure out something to say in a manner that does justice to the impulse that caused me to sit down at the computer to begin with. And then something almost always does emerge from that probabilistic virtual "as if" state. Then the thing lives its virtual life, becoming real momentarily to whoever reads it, and is immediately transformed into the stuff of their consciousness, perhaps in greatly morphed form.

No matter. If it lives at all in any form, the purpose was fulfilled and the light has been passed. For while we live on this planet, we must keep on passing the light back and forth to each other in order to be able to hold the torrent of information quanta that is pouring down upon us from the multiuniverse at an ever-increasing rate. The virtue of virtuality will be seen as consciousness jumps up a quantum frequency to accommodate this cosmic river.

In the dark

I sit here in the dark, lights having been extinguished by the thunderstorm. I seem to have no candles in the house. Only the light of my laptop, running on battery, helps me fend off the night. If the lights never came on again, what would I write, right now in this moment, to publish on the web, my final message in a bottle to the universe? How about this...

Mutability and fate decree
That I can no longer see
In the dark equality
All is silent and lonely
Enter darkness without fear
Laugh no laughter, shed no tear
That which is written here
Very soon shall disapp

Librarian's blog

As I have not been at pains to conceal, my official title is "Galactic Librarian, Orion Sector." The Orion Arm of the Milky Way is considered by some a bit of a backwater, not a real arm at all but more of a "spur." Without getting into a controversy about nomenclature, let me just observe that the location of the Orion Arm with respect to the center of the galaxy and the other arms more than makes up for its diminutive size. It is neither too close to the crowded center, with its monstrous black hole and bevies of star clusters, nor a straggler on the very edge of things, rubbing shoulders with the impossibly vast intergalactic night. Rather it is in a comfortably middling location that is convenient even if one should be hunting for cosmic crustacea in the Crab Nebula (over at the end of the Perseus Arm) or whisking around the hotspots in the Sag (Sagittarius Arm, that is). The Orion Arm, in fact, has a bit of a reputation as a scholarly mecca and repository of information about galactic cultures past, present, and future. Some rather nebulous accounts have given larger libraries precedence, such as the Behemothra in the Centaurus Arm, but one must look beyond mere size, I think, to the quality of the intelligence that is housed within these repositories and also the quality of the minds that constitute the scholarly environment around them. If all that is taken into account, the Orion Arm is second to none.

In my present capacity as Researcher Second Class on assignment to the Sol system, I have garnered many physical manifestations of the local bibliophlora and bibliophauna, in the form of books. The acquisition of these books has actually been proceeding in a more orderly fashion than the actual reading, digesting, and interpreting of them. I shall attempt to correct that with a new blog which I am establishing. It will serve to provide interim reports on significant writings that I encounter, for it is not my opinion alone that this planet is extraordinarily rich in this kind of resources. One might almost nickname this world Orbis Biblios, so that will be the name of my blog.

Time windows

Why, when we regard time in the form of past, present, and future, do we assume that the views that we possess of those entities have an inherent reality? We look at event streams through these windows of time, as we would view information on a computer through the windows in a graphical user interface. In that case, we know that the format through which we are viewing the information is not the information itself: it is contingent, it is customizable, and its appearance derives from presentation logic in the operating system rather from qualities inherent in the information itself. But in the case of time, we think that these time windows give us knowledge of time itself.

What is time? It is not the event streams themselves, which of necessity exist within an underlying context. If we are to answer the question, it is that abstract mathematical underlying reality that we must seek to understand. Past, present, and future are relative views that flash before our eyes as the train passes features in the landscape. If we were to know the country of time, we would have to recognize the unity of the landscape as the underlying reality and its specific features as dependent as much on our consciousness and our perspective as on the objective event structures which are enshrined in our perceptions.

The prisoner's dilemma

To give you an idea how crazy people's attitudes around this death thing are, let's say you were sentenced to a very long time in prison. What if the day you had to walk in the place they told you, "You'll be confined to a narrow cell and will lose your freedom. But that's not the worst part!" And you say, "What could be worse than that?" And they say, "Someday you'll have to leave! You won't be able to stay here anymore."..."Um, okay, well, I guess I will just have to deal with that when the time comes."

I seem therefore

I seem therefore I am, the dreamer said. I was not until I was, and then I saw there was I, an I, amidst the seeming. So I became real, and all else too, until I saw what I thought was real was not, but merely seemed to be. Then I knew I was dreaming.

Ever where

drink deep
a draught of dreaming

delve the divine
dive even into death

finally
see
in the dark

-- Citrus Shine On

A better algorithm

Algorithms based on causality are retro. I'm talking about "if...then." It is very time consuming to go through all the possibile outcomes in any given situation.

In a chess game, one cannot go through every possibility and analyze the outcomes because there are just too many combinations. A computer can do that but not a person. So experienced players will simply eliminate moves based on pattern recognition; i.e., they know that certain patterns in the chess position are not conducive to an advantage, so they eliminate them without looking into the specific sequence of moves that would result if a particular unfavorable move was played. They come up with a short list of candidate moves and then if necessary "think ahead" about the "if...then" ramifications.

Still, it would be more efficient to be able to eliminate all moves but one completely on the basis of pattern recognition. That could be very difficult to do. Ultimately, though, in life, it would be immensely freeing: to just know what the right thing to do, without having to think about it.

The mind, after all, knows nothing. It is a heuristic device, immensely useful, especially when employed Socratically to penetrate beneath the surface of appearances, but in terms of making choices, its algorithms are painfully slow and indeterminate. The heart and the gut are better choosers.

In a room with death

When I was ten years old in 1957, in the days before Roger Ebert, my main source of movie reviews was Parents Magazine. I remember distinctly when The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman first came out, they featured a photo of the Knight, played by Max von Sydow, playing chess with Death. As a chess player I was fascinated to see the movie, although it was not until perhaps ten years later that I had the opportunity to do so. (It of course became one of my favorite movies.)

In my imaginings now, I am in a room with Death, although not the black-garbed archetypal figure; and we are not playing chess. But we are much closer than is customary for either one of us. Death is not personified at all; it is more like a presence, one that is saying "Wake up!" And sends a bit of a chill all over the body to reinforce that message. But almost immediately the chill is replaced by a solar warmth emanating from the heart. And the heat and the light from that mollifies the mind and is in itself the awakening that is spoken of. Fear is never a factor. If one is to be afraid of anything, it would be life.

But why be afraid of that either? One is here and charged with all kinds of projects and plans. There are opportunities. As long as life itself is propelling us, we may as well go with the flow. And if Death mates us in the end, well, thank God for that. Well met, well mated, old friend.

News from the universe

It is time for another segment of "News from the Universe." It appears that there is a disturbance in the Force...again. Truth is, there are going to be quite a few more. That's the only way we can shake off this lethargy that has descended on this planet like a fog. We spend our lives waking up, and struggling to stay awake, forgetting instead, and then at the behest of a spam message or two popping in from reality, jumping back into our skin, putting our infinitude at the full service of inconsequentiality.

I know...harsh! But consider this. Considering the infinitude of possibilities inherent in the random variability quotient of each and every particular moment, couldn't we expect better than this? It is a testament to the artistry of creation that the illusion of concreteness is so convincingly portrayed on the stage of materiality. Convincing us, that is, that nothing else is, than that which is represented in the moment by IT.

Oh yes, the news; that was just the commercial. The powers of the east are arrayed against the powers of the west. How does that grab you? Are we scared yet?

I'm not going to try to win your vote, but just ask yourself one question: are you better off now than you were four seconds ago? Now that's a time frame that's practically near enough to be now.

Well, that's all. If it didn't seem like much, turn on your inner TV. You'll find wall to wall commentary, twenty-four seven, about every issue under the sun. Goodday! (and good luck!)

Whose idea was it

...that we should incarnate in this material dimension? Was it yours? Or mine? Or maybe God's. Or maybe not. Maybe it was a demon whispering in our ear. Maybe a good demon actually.

...if it is good that we are here. Good or not, we must find the good in it. In this particular dimensionality. And there is much good; the only place, in fact, a certain kind of good can be found.

...the good feeling that can be found on the interface of yin/yang, self/other, male/female, time/space, whatever opposites can be found, and they can be found in abundance in this world, there is the opportunity to feed them to the senses to become sensation to be turned into feeling. Love. Pleasure.

...Feel it. Love. Pleasure. Bliss vibration. Without measure.

...Good idea.