So long as we have an
internet, and so long as no totalitarian regime turns the internet to mush, all
of us are now called forever to cope with a problem which NSA calls: “drinking
from a firehose.” This is a basic fact
of life now, but people do need to reflect on some basic facts of life, in order
to avoid falling half-conscious into habits which do not work. Even at the most
mundane level, “sleepwalking” does not lead us to good outcomes or good use of
the natural learning ability in our brain and in our soul.
Looking back at history –
there were early people of no books, like early shamans; such still exist. Then
there were the People of The Book, one book, the best their tribe could
maintain. But then came People of Ten or a Hundred books, who struggled to do
justice to more than one book, and tried to transcend the limits of only
knowing one book. And now, we are the People of a Million Books. Some even want
to augment it further by direct electronic input to the brain. How can we cope?
(In this long post, I will proceed step-by-step to maximum complexity).
One possible response to
complexity is to run away in abject fear. The temptation to run away in abject
fear from all kinds of things is another very basic fact of life which we can
never ignore. It is such an important fact of life I should say more about it.
Some of you may remember the classic book by the psychologist, Eric Fromm,
Escape from Freedom, trying to understand how highly intelligent Germans with
such a rich long-standing culture could turn into Mickey Mouse robotic stormtroopers. (My apologies to The Mouse; this is just an idiom.) A more
important book on the psychology of being human is the new classic book by
George Valliant, of the Harvard psychology department (still alive this week, I
hope) about the many different defense mechanisms which intelligent people use
when confronted with really scary or awful things. One of those mechanisms is “denial”
– simply putting one’s head into the sand, and pretending one is living in a different,
simpler world, where the scary thing never happened. His studies of the
long-term outcomes of people’s lives shows that this does not work out very
well, as one might expect. Denial is a matter of lying to oneself, the exact
opposite of “sanity” or “integrity” (zhengqi), discussed in technical detail as
part of www.werbos.com/Mind_in_Time.pdf. Two defense mechanisms which work much better
are controlled postponement (“I
really will get to it, but it’s more than I can handle today”), looking for the
silver lining in the cloud (“What did God have in mind here? How will it turn
out to be for the best?) and “converting lemons into lemonade.” That’s all very
crude and rough stuff, in a way, but it’s important as a basic starting point.
Another important example of
people running away in fear is given in the VERY important article, “Are We a
Nation of Mystics,” by Greeley and McReady (reprinted in a book edited by
Goleman, which I bought in hard cover for $1.50 last month, just for that one
article.) That article recounts some unexpected findings of a large NSF-funded
study of deep values in the US population, performed by the National Opinion Research
Center after the usual tough NSF competition for funding. After some surprising
pretests, the big survey asked: “Have you ever had the feeling of being very
close to a powerful spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself?” 2/5 of the people said yes, but the fraction
was higher among educated, prosperous and happy people. They did their best to
follow up by probing educated “yes” people more. They learned that such things
are more tabu in our present society than sex was in the Victorian era.
Everyone they found responded to this experience by saying: “OK, God, thank you
very much for that, but PLEASE don’t do that again! I will be a good boy (or
girl).” They did their best to avoid a repetition, and diligently became very
strong and loyal in whatever religious tradition they happened to be born to,
Christian or Moslem or Jewish or Hindu or whatever. Greeley and McCready argued
that a larger follow-on survey was needed, but so far as I can tell, it never
happened. This is also one of the very important facts of life we should start
from.
So if a million books is too
much to handle, what happens if people go all the way, back to no books at all
(not even any sutras, if any Buddhist imagines he or she is exempt from this
issue)?
Well, there WAS a time of no
books, the time of shamanism, and those of us who are truly People of a
Thousand Books or People of a Million Books are called to learn what we can
from the human experience of that time.
No, that time was not a
Garden of Eden, but it was honest and innocent to a certain degree. It was a
time before the invention of the Priest-King, which many of us tend to think of
as the first great power-mad plug ugly oppressing the bodies and spirits of the
mass slaves of the first agricultural civilization, in Ur, the first organized
People of the Vegetable. (Some historians understand that the People of the
Horse and the People of the Boat were just as important as a birthplace of
human civilization, but that’s another story.) Before the oppression of the
Priest-Kings, one sees a kind of more natural expression of the human soul and
human life, not organized by science, but honest and relatively sane. In a way,
it is like the languages of the time, uninflected – like Chinese and English,
pre-inflection and post-inflection. Not like the endless complex rules of ad
hoc grammars and prescriptions which came from Priest Kings and their rule-based
approach to life.
In 2009, when the
International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) was held in San Jose,
California, and when Borders Books was going out of business, I bought a really
great book on sale – The World of Shamanism, by Walsh. I remember with great
happiness reading that book very slowly and carefully, with meditation, as I
sat on the balcony of a suite on Norwegian Cruise Lines looking at the Pacific
Northwest, where I actually met a very real active shaman on one of the port
stops. Later I learned how this book really was as unique and important as the
cover material suggested. The book talked a lot about practices shamans would
use to try to learn specific skills of the soul, skills which benefit from
exercise just as the skills of our body do. My friend Yeshua says he really
likes my metaphor of the “spiritual couch potato,” comparing most religious
loyalists to folks who believe in physical fitness, who spend their lives
drinking beer on the couch and screaming great loyalty to Their Team even as
their own body rots away. Shamans were not couch potatoes! It was also
interesting that the visit to San Jose gave me a chance to talk to people in that
part of the Western tradition who are most the opposite of couch potatoes. (It
reminds me also of a book by Pete Sanders, using concepts as fuzzy but as practical
as Valliant’s, in the same general realm. My 2012 paper in Neural Networks is
more precise, if more veiled.)
Because that book was so
important, I later mentioned it at a Quaker Meeting “drop-in” discussion, when
we were asking how we can learn from all the great experience of humans across
history. But first I checked on Amazon for the rest of the literature on
shamanism, which I had sampled before less systematically. Amazon highly
recommended “The Way of the Shaman,” to buy along with Walsh – but I did notice
a high recommendation from Carlos Castenada, several of whose books I had read
many years ago, a very active question mark. The first review praised the high
academic credentials of the author, and criticized those earlier reviews which
were negative, arguing that they were either grossly ignorant or near-racist
efforts by native people to keep European type people off of THEIR turf. But I
read a lot further... and sure enough, down around the twentieth review, one
guy mentioned very briefly that he was upset that the whole thing was
propaganda for drug culture. (“Aha!” I thought, “Not a coincidence that
Castenada advocates this one.”). I decided I had no intention of reading
further or of buying the book (though I suppose I would if I were a narrower
specialist), and would of course not write a review; however, I did post a
comment to the first review, noting that I once had a friend who also spoke for
the “natural drugs in cultural context school,” who also had great credentials
in anthropology (including field work in South America) and was really
intelligent... and ended up dead of it. (Actually, I had two close friends who
were that kind of anthropologist reading that kind of stuff a lot, with field
experience. One ended up dead, one ended
up having the exact same vibes as Ben Carson. But the second one did not take
drugs; he only believed.)
Of course, addiction is one
of the basic facts of life with drugs that everyone should understand – but not
everyone does, as we see every day in national statistics. Both with drugs and
with stimulation of the brain (whether by wires or by microwaves or by light),
it is really essential that EVERYONE should really understand the basic
experiments done by James Olds senior, a famous neuroscientist whose son is
still active in that field. I read Olds’ key article, but there probably is a
u-tube video by now showing mice pumping hard on a lever to get electrical
stimulation to the brain – pushing so hard and so constantly that they literally
kill themselves to do it. Electrical or chemical stimulation to certain parts
of the brain is much more powerful than sex in taking over the whole
personality. There is mathematics to explain this more deeply (as in my papers
in the journal Neural Networks, which won the Hebb award), but for most folks
there is a simple story which may explain it better.
Years ago, I heard of some
wise but poor parents on the wrong side of the tracks trying to explain to
their children why they should not give in to the drug dealers dominating their
neighborhoods, and how they should understand what they see around them. “If
you take that drug, it immediately becomes a kind of monkey on your back. It
asks to be fed. If you feed it, it makes you happy, but if you don’t it hurts
you. If you give in and feed it, it gets bigger and bigger, and can hurt you
more and more. But if you feed it, that monkey on your back becomes so big that
it becomes bigger than you, it totally takes you over, and pretty soon, there
is no more ‘you’ any more. You are dead, and there is no one left but the
monkey.” Electrical stimulation of those parts of the brain does the same thing
even more, and I am still VERY DEEPLY concerned about plans going ahead right
now to extend the use of such stimulation. I would urge anyone connected with
that kind of technology in any way to listen to the whole day of a recent
discussion sponsored by the White House, and think hard about what is really
going on:
In fact, this week I really
hope people will pay enough attention to the recent capture of a Saudi prince,
alleged to be caught carrying two tons of captogan and cocaine in his airplane,
to be distributed to people in ISIL and in Saudi Arabia, where the spread of
ISIL and the folks behind ISIL is linked in part to the effects of these drugs.
Addictive drugs are like a form of slavery (and with due respect to Ben Carson,
this is a real similarity, not like his preposterous way of describing
abortion); after the “monkey takes over”, the person becomes a puppet or slave
of the drug dealer, who then uses him as part of an army of thieves to get money
for the drug dealer. Taking addictive drugs, or allowing brain stimulation
which includes reinforcement centers as part of what gets stimulated, is
basically the same as selling oneself into slavery... but worse than slavery,
suicide of the self. I wish people would remember that the words “inalienable
rights” involve NOT LETTING PEOPLE BE SOLD INTO SLAVERY EVEN BY THEMSELVES.
People selling themselves into slavery happened a lot in early America, and it was a very important realization by folks
like Jefferson and Washington that we need to outlaw (annul) such practices. The
concept of bankruptcy rights was part of that, as many historic forms of debt
also became like slavery... like lawyers
who feel they are not allowed to practice pro bono law at a low salary because
they need to pay off student debt. The biggest immediate danger with electrical
brain stimulation is with employers who ask for it, and folks like that Saudi
Prince who want inhuman beserkers to fight to kill all non-shariacs and all non-Sunnis.
======
However, if we are true
People of a Million Books, we will look further beyond this part of the story,
important as it is.
First, the cost issue.
Some folks would argue that
addictive drugs are not so bad if the drug is plentiful and cheap, so that the
user does not have to become a slave of the drug distributer or electricity
provider. I have at times been something
of a caffeine addict myself, and that
was not such a big problem – but it was crucial that coffee did not hit the
reinforcement centers in such a powerful; and direct way as cocaine, heroin,
captopan, juiced up versions of marijuana, morphine type pain relievers or any
form of electrical stimulation which affects the central areas of the brain.
That guy I knew who died thought that coca (sp?) leaves were safe... I was really, really upset when our local
hospital provided “on demand” type drip pain relief to my wife after an
operation, exactly the kind of reinforcement learning situation which maximizes
the chance of addiction; she left and quietly went “cold turkey,” but I have
met people who did not, whose entire lives were destroyed by such pain relief
drugs. But yes, low-cost maintenance
clinics (with other important provisions to balance them out) could be
immensely useful in reducing the damage which addictive drugs do in the
Americas today. Not a small issue. I wish that brain stimulation helmets were
as easy to cope with, socially...
Second, the value issue.
From a scientific viewpoint, “chemicals
ingested by human users” includes everything from hard drugs to water and air. Of
course, addictiveness to the brain is not the only important attribute of such
chemicals!
Even now, I have a cup of
coffee or caffeinated tea – just one – on most mornings, and a cup of Kedem
wine (or other wine) with dinner about half the time. Maybe there is a mild
degree of addiction in both cases. In both cases, I went totally zero for a
long time, even though these are inexpensive habits. (I just spent $70 for a
whole case of Kedem Concord Cream Red, which they say is the only wine made from
native American grapes, including shipping, from the web.) With caffeine, I
once was addicted, and could feel the damage to my body – but once in the
morning does not do that. The coffee in the morning WITH my wife Luda is a nice
ritual, and it is entirely natural and appropriate that I am deeply addicted to
HER. Also, she has found some amazingly good-tasting coffees, and a little bit
of extra wakefulness/stimulation is not so bad now that I am retired, and don’t
have other scarier things to wake me up each morning. The wine has other health
benefits in moderation.
In truth, I have also had
more than one bai ju at times in China, and more than one pisco in Chile – but I
also remember turning down the two times I was offered Peruvian style pisco
with coco leaf in it. “It is safe and harmless,” I heard. But why take chances,
when you have seen someone killed by stuff he was told was harmless? And when
the Chilean variety was also available.
But – what about more?
It is true that many native
spiritual traditions actually have used mind-altering drugs through the centuries.
We had a very serious
discussion of that in Udaipur in April, when there was a lunch break in our
tour of India and I was not fit to eat lunch. Luda showed me a magazine article
about NIH granting a permit for selected researchers to use psilocybin under certain
protocols, in research. That is the one really serious drug to get that kind of
approval.
In a way, the idea here was for
people to try to open up their minds to get MORE inputs. If one lives in a
small village, without books or internet, one may rightly feel a need for MORE
complexity, more inputs beyond the very limited range in the local area. That
was the motive here. And yes, there was a motive of trying to “open up the eyes
of the soul,” to get more inputs from the world beyond the atoms and photons we
see so easily with the eyes of the head.
The article described a
really intense debate among serious people about that new protocol. Both sides
agreed that unsupervised use of psilocybin (let alone other stuff!) has led to
huge damage to people, too much and too common to allow it. But the folks who
developed the new protocol argued that it would allow people to reap the
benefits without the risks which once applied. The risk in opening up the eyes, they argued,
was that people could see things which would freak them out, which they could
not handle, and which would destroy their lives.
I actually forget the precise
details of the argument, except that I disagreed with BOTH sides (one was too
harsh, one too
naively optimistic). When
Luda and another person asked my view – I cited a book I once read by Annie
Besant, a leader both of theosophy and of Indian independence. “Indian
independence?” you may ask with incredulity. Yes, Indian independence. On a
previous blog post, I posted a picture of Mahatma Ghandi’s personal library in
Mumbai, with several books of Annie Besant in prominent positions. There is a
book which fell into my hands years ago, “The Seven Lives of Annie Besant,”
which describes her period as teacher to Ghandi, and we noticed the street
named after her in Mumbai. It is a long story... and I even remember a time
many many years ago when I wished I could meet a woman like her! Blavatsky was
more prominent in theosophy, but Besant struck me as a whole lot more sane and
real in what she wrote.
In one of her books, Besant
(like most of the highest level spiritual teachers) urges strict avoidance of
mind-altering drugs. It is very simple, she said.
Your soul ALREADY has connections to everything ready to engage; the main thing
which limits the inputs from the spiritual world to your brain is a kind of
NATURAL HEALTHY fear, a realization that you are not really ready to handle that
stuff, that level of complexity. Instead of force-feeding a firehose through a
straw, breaking the straw, she recommended following nature... by STRENGTHENING
THE STRAW... so that just by nature more inputs will be easier to take into it.
Now that I think of it, that
reminds me of an old Taoist teacher I spoke to decades ago in the Cosmos Club
in DC, who said: “Of course we know how to bring people to enlightenment. We
who know can do it in five minutes. The problem is how to get the person to
survive AFTER that, which is harder. All the work and the discipline is led
with that goal in mind.” (That reminds me of Gopal Krishna's book on how to stay alive after you successfully raise the kundalini, which was helpful to me in graduate school.)
Even that is a bit
oversimplified, but it is a good next step. To grow to the full extent of our potential,
we must always consciously test the limits of what we can handle. But we do not
need any kind of drug to do that, at least not in the modern world. By testing
and straining our capacity, we can expand our capacity... but that means living
“on the edge of chaos,” pushing to our limits but NOT BEYOND, and doing the
same with those of our friends who can put with it and who are valuable enough
to be worthy of the effort.
====================
And so... to maximum
complexity...
At least, the maximum seen on
this tiny little planet in the middle of nowhere...
Besant, like some yoga
traditions, talked about planes of existence – material, etheric, astral,
mental, cosmic, soul, etc. (This also reminds me of a
wonderfully vivid book, “In My Soul I am Free” by Steiger.) When I first saw
this... I had powerful mixed feelings. On the one hand, as a tough and skeptical
scientist (still!) I found troubles parsing that into something coherent,
something beyond gibberish. On the other hand... I did a few early experiments
on out of body stuff... and there was such a compelling authenticity to the
experiential part of it, and I knew enough to fully appreciate the importance
of first-hand experience and empirical data. As of now, I view all that as a
poetically valid way to describe some real and authentic experiences, whose
underlying ground requires more explanation. In essence, it comes down to the “noosphere,”
which I have discussed before and will again, since it is as real and
fundamental as I see it as the earth itself. What we experience as “astral”
travel is really just a mental thing occurring within the noosphere, a translation
into things our brains can cope with of thoughts within the noosphere.
(Certainly major parts of Besant and of the Upanishads resonate with that. The
scientific book “Lucid Dreaming” by LaBerge of Stanford also does a beautiful job
of making these connections in a discrete way.) As we learn how to translate
more and better, it becomes more accurate. The “mental plane” is basically just
a more direct version. And then “cosmic consciousness” is even more direct, a
more direct and complete access to the noosphere itself.
At which point,
unfortunately, people can “bliss out” and lose it. (I am reminded of the next
to last section of Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus, which embodies ideas from
Scottish Rite freemasonry... the section where there is a final trial, the
trial of NOT letting oneself just bliss out at a high level.) One aspect may
indeed be psychokinetic stimulation of reinforcement learning centers, which is
contrary to the nature and intentions of the soul, but seductive to the brain
part of the self. But it is also like what Greeley describes... a point where
people can have their lives changed, but return to something else. People often
say at such moments “I knew everything... everything was there,” That’s nice.
Suddnely you have access to REALLY huge library, not a million books but a
billion. (As someone far off laughs and says... imagine another life where is a
trillion, and there is a whole galaxy out there, REALLY.) A natural defense mechanism is to bliss out,
return to ordinary life, boost your ego with how infinite you are (remembering
always you don’t want to be held to THAT again!)
But.. a better defense
mechanism... is not just to postpone and tolerate others... but to test the limits,
to GO BACK and start sampling that library, to “play tunes on the cosmic
keyboard,” and slowly, carefully try to enhance what one is capable of. And
yes, to correlate with other sources of input and testing, like internet and
media and conversations with others.
In the end... Yeshua
describes how some of us get called to “the watch,” a state which I view as the
activity within “cosmic consciousness” of really paying attention to what is
going on on the earth as a whole, which has ever so many levels. I wondered
where the terms “day watch” and “night watch” really came from, which
stimulated the fantasy-translated but interesting movies of those names from
Russia recently. Now I know.
But can I handle it? I don’t
feel a lot of confidence, because that firehose is ever so overwhelming. My
limits are more than visible. But then again, I remember a time when the
foundations of quantum physics and of mouse brain intelligence seemed overwhelming...
and
there was reading from Wollman at the last Quaker drop-in on patience and
persistence. I suppose I will keep trying. Maybe if enough folks do, we humans might
even survive as a species. Maybe.
As for this kind of blog post -- it is such a tiny percentage of what comes along that firehose in ten minutes!
Part of coping with complexity is integrating what it all means... but part is condensing enough for others to get some idea. Yes, I have a lot to learn about that part too. In the original, there are a whole lot more real equations, but this kind of blog is not the right place for them, for many reasons. ("Of all the sacred languages written on earth, the only one with traction beyond this planet is mathematics.")
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