Do we have the kind of brain which can form and recall a BINARY dual image, so the we can get full advantage of understanding the two different states on theleft and tight above, or the duality of the top and the bottom?
These images already give me two very important stories which I need to remember, from my own life, relevant also to the larger questions of life. On the upper left you see my mother happy and energetic, on a big rental ship in Avalon, New jersey, from her 90th birthday party. I am so grateful to my brother John and sister Suzie for arranging that party, which brought together so much of her family and friends, enough to fill a ship. At that time she was living with John in his house in new Jersey.
But on the right, you see her in the Brandywine Haddonfield eldercare house, where she spent the last few years of her life because she did need special care. This photo is from a visit by me, Luda and Chris. Again and again she asked,"What I am I doing here, basically doing nothing? Where is my purpose in being here (on earth) at all?" Actually, I heard her ask that question intently in other places for years, but before then I heard her answer. This time, I saw her cut back on eating, and talk clearly about many problems and her past life (which she was still quite happy for). She died peacefully in bed with John's son Rob nearby, well before this year when many, many people in eldercare places died of covid. I wondered: was THEIR sense of lack of purpose a major factor in THEIR mind-body connection, and death? Purpose in life, telo, utility functions... that is a pervasive foundation we all need to know about more, from life to internet. See werbos.com/religions.htm and ,y earlier post on telos...
So that is one important duality, our clear memory and understanding of the differencebetween the state on the left and the state on the right. Having them alli n one memory is not the samething; the duality is important in itself, for our best thinking at all levels.
But what of the top and the bottom? The sharp contrast between the being on the top and the being on the left is also extremely important, and it's not just a matter of race or species. We took this picture in Galway, Ireland, on January 18 2020. as part of my perpetual spiritual quest, I tuned into what i saw there and even opened up a little conversation with one or two of those creatures there.
"What about YOUR purpose? What do you think of YOUR future?" Response; "What a dumb question. I am what I am, a cow sitting in the sun, happy to be where I am, to do what I am doing here and now, with no need and no point to ask questions beyond that. Yes, I will go to a barn again, and then back, and maybe not forever, but that is my life and I am glad of it." So different from my mother!!! Both both beings, and myself, have a natural, living connection to our noosphere(again, see werbos.com/religions.htm for my papers published in 2019 on this). Some are at higher levels of consciousness and connection than others, but we all connect.
But: what of bigger implications? The meaning for computers of having such dual state records is clear and important, but it requires hevay prerequisites in subjects like RLADP. So let me address some human aspects.
At a mundane level, I don't see this in the brain, sadly. we can LEARN to encode such memories and use them (two states at once), but it must be an act of will, a learned skill. that skill becomes ever more important, at the highest level of mental and policy challenges to humans, precisely because there are such stark choices before us. It is part of second-order sanity or Zhenqi, a larger topic which I discuss in those 2019 papers.
At an esoteric or spiritual level, I remember a discussion we had a few months ago about a book called "The Technique of the master." That really is the core idea in that book, of great importance in that realm.
And finally, I remember my own exercises or experiments with PK, in the period from 1972 to 1978. Living in Roxbury, in the slums, in late 1972, my suitemate loaned me a book which I would not have looked at before that: "How to Help Yourself with ESP." By then, I wondered very deeply what psychic or spiritual experiences mighht be based on, and I was attracted by the idea of getting first hand empirical data which would be a lot more persuasive to me than stuff I could read.
And so, I deciedd to play with a little mobile made up of plastic fishes. ("No harm in trying, to see what I can see," I thought. ) I started doing it as an exercise in trying to see more in the dark, and predict the movement. (See the discussion of Bootstrap training in my paper in Neural Networks 2012.) But as I looked and relaxed... in my mind I could somehow get a HOLD or GRIP on the entire present state... and equally clearly envision an image of a DIFFERENT possible state... and exert a little energy. That's really just an example of what that book was talking about. I haven't played with mobiles much at all since I joined the federal government in 1978 (not enough time to play!), but the sense of CHOICES BEFORE US has remained strong. But this year, 2020, I do not see what the choices really are so coherently. The elections remind me of Yeats' poem, where the bestlack all conviction and the rost are full of passionate intensity (like 1920's?).
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By the way, I should be careful not to rule out the possibility that something like this might exist evne in the machinery of the mammal brain. It DOES allow envisioning of goal states. Could the wiring between neocortex and basal ganglia actually allow an act of holding a present state and a goal state clearly in mind, clearly distinct, considered at one time as inputs? Could it be hardired? we don't know, really.
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Days later.. I was reminded that the duality is complicated, and cross species.
This morning, I went straight from bed (and a very detached state) to a comfortablechair in our study downstairs, overloooking nature therough big glass doors. And what did I see?
At first,it seemed that the same female deer who had laid down just past the edge of our land had returned, but without her Bambi. I made up a whole story in my mind, about a distraught mother deer joining the Deer Lives Matter movement (not a laughing matter), and that SHE had had s sense of purpose, not like those cows. But.. well, it all reminded me of Trungpa, the cycles ofs uffering out there. Then Luda looked and said:"No, I think that's Bambi himself, grown up, hurt (like broken leg?), here for a place of safety where there were some red berries to eat as well. That reminded me of an ancient British rock song, "Mother... I killed a man... I don;t have long.." Whatever.
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