Scientific Holistic Healing and Who You Are

There are many very important basic facts of life which many of us learn bit by bit, and take for granted too much. The slide here is one of them.Many of us know people who need healing, and after 70 almost all of us need more and better healing ourselves, whether we like it or not. And who is the “I” who needs healing? That is important too. HOLISTIC HEALING is the important idea that we each are a whole system (an open system connected to the rest of life and the cosmos), and that the best results come from considering the whole system and the many interactions between its parts. SCIENTIFIC HOLISTIC HEALING is when we make full use of science, combining both the first person scientific approach and the best of third person objective science and medicine. (This is a case of what I call “first order sanity” in the first of my 2019 publications I link to at Werbos.com/religions.htm.)  In a way, our results are only as good as our understanding of how this system really works, and I have spent ever so many years on that, and on connecting it to the many conditions I have run across through the years.I have already written ever so much about the box on top and the box on the lower middle. But what of the links between THOSE two boxes, for healing? I can only mention a few things this morning, when other duties call. For example – I was ever so grateful when Arlington County, in its initial response to covid lockdown, offered three free classes we took in the open air, two on tai qi and one practicing art. Simple mindfulness, connecting from above to below and back, and using awareness to make up for the horrible loss of balance and skill I had after a fall two years ago… But in the scientific understanding of the brain, the links to the left and the right are also ever so important. More later if I have time. Well.. one thought: I gave a talk yesterday (recorded at MST) on the most advanced new directions in understanding how brains really work. Freud and Pribram were major parts of it, and THEY did not neglect the role of hormones! Nor did Kamal Harris’ mother or several of the women very important to the solid science here. 

How music has aided my spiritual development

Early last night, I once again did use music in PSI, and saw ways others might. But just as new mathematics builds on foundations which are essential which not everyone knows about, I must start with background. Just as an example -- in 2009, I found myself sitting next to Klaus Nobel, in a fancy meal at a high ranking restaurant in DC. Klaus spoke about how he was the real force behind the "Nobel prize in Economics" which, he said, is not officially a real Novel Prize. but his real interest was on what I call PSI, the development and use of psychic or spiritual capabilities. I assured him that I was just as deep into that as he was, and that I have been working in my own way. He arched his eyebrow and was clearly skeptical I could really mean that. "IF so, and if your interest is real, what music do you use?" It is clear HE viewed that connection as fundamental. It reminded me of people who wrote about groups in Switzerland whoview mathematics, music and mysticism as entangled fields, which only reach full expression when working together. Now it reminds me of jung's Red Book, which discusses the importance of multiple modalities, not ONLY words. For me, I did not even BELIEVE in PSI until spring 1967. I forcibly rejected the possibility of PSI, for reasons I have repeated often enough. But I did not reject music. In one year of my life, when I was twelve, I lived with my mother, brother, sister and a beagle in a row house on Graver's Lane, in the Chetsnut Hill part of Philadelphia. In the same year, I commuted by train to the University of Pennsylvania, where I took the junior advanced calculus course under Professor Schub. That same year, I scraped up $100 to buy a used upright piano, which I used for the usual kinds of piano lessons. I felt some affection for Mr.Conkey, the music teacher in my school, who made sure we knew the standard music theory and heard lots of classical music. In his class, and on the radio, I heard a good amount of classical music, and echoed the disrespect we had for popular music of the time. It certainly was an activity consistent with the spirit of mathematics. I even "composed" a few things in little blue music score books; Mr. Conkey nodded his head in vacant approval, with a few suggestions, but no sign of greatness or such. For two years, 1962-1964, I attended a boarding school, the Lawrenceville School, which radically changed my understanding of music, in a way which set the stage for PSI. I did not listen to classical music much even on the radio there, but I often went to their music building, which had great pianos, and where I could even start improvising. As I put more of my real energy and feelings into it, it seemed to go somewhere, and I even remember a music teacher walking in and showing some real interest. More important, in the second year, I met "the other smartest kid in the class," a new kid from New York. Actually, late in the first year, I already went through a radical change in viewpoint. As I was taking Alonzo Church's graduate course in Princeton on mathematical logic, I gradually realised that pure deductive logic, no matter how perfect, simply doesn't provide enough basis to answer the basic questions of ethics and purpose which I had been interested in since I was 12. That was when I said: "Stop asking what you SHOULD do; ask what you WOULD do if you were wise. You need to better understand the "YOU" (the I)," which implies what I now call first order sanity, which calls for full openness to first person inputs. But did I realize it yet that year?? In my second year, that kid from New York loved to listen to Mahler, which I even listened to once in our school library. Yes, I had listened to a lot of music, but he said I was not REALLY listening. I needed to learn how to really feel the music inside me as I was listening. I needed to learn how to listen to and feel the whole thing. That turned out to be really important. In my three years as an undergraduate at Harvard, 1964 to 1967, I did not believe in PSI at all until spring 1967. But I did believe in classical music, and even in its value in strengthening my first order sanity, my full awareness of what was around me. (You might call it a kind of "mindfulness.") My parents bought me a stereo as I started school, and I bought a few albums of classical music, and listened hard for my whole time as undergraduate. Stravinsky, Prokoviev, Shostakovich, Bartok, Faure, maybe Bolero, a few others. I would rest back in a comfortable leather easy chair, and let the music totally roll over me, and fill me. And at times I used that as a prop as I prepared to concentrate hard on issues involving neural networks, economics, political systems, and other such things. In my second year, I even took a course from DeVore on primate behavior (to help me understand how brains work), where I saw the classic video by vanderPost (whose name I did not notice at the time) on the "Bushman dance," which I immediately understood as a key to where humans languages really come from. Music and dance BEFORE words, the foundation on which words are built. And so, I believe that these efforts were a crucial part of what CAUSED me to have the unsought-for dramatic PSI experience I have often written about, in the spring of 1967, which forced me to reconsider PSI quite seriously. I describe that already in the published, open papers I link to at www.werbos.com/religions.htm, and in what they cite for more detail. Serious interest in US-China relations and interest in observing how things work in my brain were other crucial elements. In my last year there, 1966-1967, I also had access to a great piano in my house at Harvard, where I went back to improvising, and even discussion with serious musicians, whose art does have some resonance with PSI. In 1967-1968, at LSE, my main access to music was hearing OTHER people's music, as in restaurants or the street, but then I did listen to popular music, and realize it is a window into minds around me. From 1967 to 1972 I had a series of experiences, mostly due to my experimentation, which moved me from <1% belief in PSI to >99%. In much later years, I did open myself to a 10% possibility that ALL psi experiences might be caused by a kind of Jungian synchronicity, caused by our cosmos implementing optimization equations which look a lot like an intelligent system in itself; however, as I looked more closely (in recent years, again), that dropped back down a lot. And so, in a post on "Higher states of Consciousnss", I noted how I put huge energy into the main practice I followed from 1972 to Christmas 1978. (I also posted a "poltergeist" story from that time describing the practice.) As I went to bed, I would listen to New Age music on radio or stereo or eight track tape, as part of mobilizing a kind of "qi" and trying various things. But when I went to work for US government at Christmas 1978, I simply could not afford to do that until I retired in 2015. In that time, I mostly dropped out of LEARNING AND EXERCISING Psi, except for the three limited phenomena I described in my post on higher consciousness. (Astral and assumption dreams, and "cosmic consciousness" as I woke in the morning.) Of course, I still OBSERVED popular music, even top 40, as a kind of source of data on what people are thinking. Only slowly have I begun to use music at times in that old way, step by step. In 2020, my wife hung a big flat TV in our bedroom, which I can reach by chromecast from a phone or tablet computer in bed. I found just two groups, Tangerine Dream and Renaissance, which I had used in 1972-1979 which I can get deeply, spiritually into now at night, helping me elevate my soul. Tangerine Dream came first, for several reasons; in a way, it connects to the "yang" side of my life, the sky-connected heavily mathematical side. I previously posted how I could use it to enhance connection with our noosphere, but in truth the sky is even bigger than that. Last night, Renaissance. In truth, I was reminded somehow of a clear song they sang in the early period, when I ALMOST married a woman from Chile. It was SO close that I tend to believe I DID marry her, in another strand of our multiverse. There was a book by Silverberg which described our relation in such detail, and its future, enough to make me worry, especially after a high-PSI person I knew well contacted me and gave me wranings which just happened to fit the book (which he had not read). There was a song by Renaissance back then which fit that strand (in a detailed, earthy, concrete veridical way, the kind of detail any sane PSI experimenter would insist on). And so, as I wonder agaon what strands of the multiverse we may connect with,,, I decided yesterday was overdue to locate their work. So I did. it was not so easy for me, using a phone for chromecast. On the phone, I found only two pieces, Scheherazade and Ashes are Burning. I got deep into a better recording of Scheherazade earlier this year, and it was serious and engaging enough, but I only needed to listen once. (More and more, I just replay by memory in my head.) I still value Scheherazade, which resonates IN PART with my relation with my wife and with the multiverse in general. (Last night,I had a strong impression that Kamala Harris should pay attention to a good recording, which resonates with the Vishnu/Lakshmi/Kamala story she must know about.) But I wanted to hear something more substantive about multiverse, and I knew from the 1970's that this specific group has some real PSI input in what they did. Ashes are Burning was serious, and I really wonder what THAT is saying. One response: in part, those are TRUMP'S ashes in play right now. It echoes that little phrase I heard during CC: "Manifest harder your core, but cleanse and purify your shadows and reflections." Could it be that OUR version of Donald Trump is being cleansed, or is this just a stage in the growth of the best Dondald Trump there is, even as that OTHER Trump who really took office for a second term is dissolved away in the multiverse, just as quantum computers throw out sequences which don't make it to the final show? Was there even some kind of backwards flow of information in this album? (It took other data points to make me consider this. Of course, I do not know, but I do wonder.) But I wondered about that girl from Chile. I hope the multiverse did not erase THAT album which I remember owning and listening to in the 1970s! I gave up on my phone, but a few hours later, rolled over in bed, connected my little samsung tab to our wifi, and used it to find more. I found Prologue, You can Understand, and one other by the same group. No Chilean girl, but much more interesting and PSI-related material. "You can understand" evoked the strongest memory and will and connection. And there was more. All on my yin side, perhaps, but not a restricted muddy kind of yin. And later, in CC, I found most of this written into my brain (bit by bit, a kind of joint venture), along with at least four other homework assignments. And some deeper understanding of what I had heard.

Could new tests stop covid much faster than any of our leaders yet know?

 Medical experts now say that our ability to detect covid fast and cheap will be more important to stopping the pandemic even than vaccinations. The leader of one of the medical technology lists I receive urged us to tell the world about a huge opportunity we are missing, applying a type of technology I once funded at NSF (under my QMHP activity https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0709/0709.3310.pdf) which is much faster and cheaper than all the covid tests being used now. My reply to his list:

Your post raises the issue: IF quantum dots could improve our ability to detect covid and other pathogens, WHAT SHOULD WE DO about that? As you say, we could repost to Facebook.

Before I retired from the National Science Foundation, my first response would be to learn more about the exact nature of the opportunity, to better judge the other options for action. And so even now I went to scholar.google.com advanced search:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&q=author%3AWright+author%3ACrowe+dots&btnG=

That yields a link to the actual paper

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl048073u, but more important, by clicking on citations, one can see the list of 134 later articles citing it:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1845991345213564136&as_sdt=5,47&sciodt=0,47&hl=en

Immediately this tells us that QD for diagnostics is a serious opportunity, but also that it was not entirely ignored. 

Indeed, if I were at NSF, seeing 134 citations, I might ask: "Is this one of those emerging technologies, fitting our early Emerging Technologies Initiative (ETI) (which I briefly ran from 1988 to when it was abolished in a reorganization), which could go a lot further

and yield more benefits sooner, with the help of a modest NSF/ETI style infusion of money (and competitive review and workshops)?"

The old NSF really was a remarkable jewel, but it had firm fences: diagnosis and treatment of disease belongs to NIH, not NSF,

and we had checkers making sure we did not overstep such bounds. 

I would ask: "Are there opportunities which the community has not yet touched because of how crossdisciplinary they are,

requiring that we build new connections?" That may well be, because quantum dots and quantum information science and technology (QuIST) have lots to offer that medical folks may not know about yet. IF SO,that woould have argued for more NSF initiative. In some cases, we even built JOINT initiatives with NIH, which were allowed. In this case, having a compelling national interest mattered, and matters even more now than then. (SOME things might be easier now than then! I once worked with a woman named Sonya Spengler at NSF who was active in many interagency joint initiatives, was in computer science, and was aware of recent covid funding from NSF.) But as of now, I am retired, and do not know what I would find out next if I were still there. 

Still, we hope covid will be over by the time such new research could start to be usable. Who knows? I just hope we do not have a giant superspreader here in the DC area just two days from now, an event which will affect all government activities. 

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Reply from medical expert:

Correct, Paul. There are already such diagnostic devices on the way, probably certified too: http://www.radetecdiagnostics.com/covid-19-antigen-test/

But they are not widely used yet. The problem is with the hazardous nature of heavy metals used predominantly for such materials, but this bottleneck could have been overcome if investments in this kind of research have been placed on time. 

Not ignored, but  the illness of government funding agencies both in Europe and the US is that they are underfunding risky projects and prefer that industry realizes them. (The only exception in the US - DoD funded projects; Europe does not have such a mechanism). But industry has conflict of interests. It is profit-driven and not public-wellness driven. Why then invest in expensive technologies and methods, if the old ones are somehow working, and we can make incremental research using the old vehicles? This is ill policy, sorry. We see its results right now. This happens with any challenge so far. We decide to "collectively" share responsibility and do something when it is too late. It is like intervention for cancer patients in the last stage of the disease. This pattern has been always and for any problem since the end of WWII. Obviously only defence projects can produce results on time, but medicine is not their (primary) job. That's the problem.

In both US and European research programs there is no place for supporting an individual's research idea, if it is not "embedded" within an established research institution and his/her proposal does not fall within the frame of particular calls or programs. If Einstein had to fund his research through applications today - he would probably never try this option - he would not get a penny in his original capacity as "hobby scientist". But it was possible to read such people some 100+  years ago. In short: there are too many hurdles and too much bureaucracy for original research in the West, whereas China is literally throwing money after its research institutes and emerging companies. I still would not like to work there, for sure. 

I would ask: "Are there opportunities which the community has not yet touched because of how crossdisciplinary hey are,

requiring that we build new connections?" That may well be, because quantum dots and quantum information science and technology (QuIST) have lots to offer that medical folks may not know about yet.

We suffer from an over-coordination and over-optimization of limited research funds, but then when the fire is burning, there is enough money from the deep reserves to "through" where? - in the same companies that were supposed to develop these innovations over the years before, but they are not really interested in doing that (s. above). The only exceptions are the companies that cannibalize the markets.

 

PJW: Still, we hope covid will be over by the time such new research could start to be usable.

I am telling you that covid will not be over, and if covid is over, then there will be something much more severe.

But we will forget like the zebras in the savannah witnessing that one of them was eaten and the lions are full and lazy until the next lunch.

Today we are not luckier than the zebras despite our intelligence and technology. Mother nature is not waiting for us to digest the truths she serves us.

How Could Humanity Avoid Strangulation and Death By Growing Surveillance?

Many people are deeply worried by where the growth of surveillance is taking us, all over the world. A fellow member of the i4j Leadership Forum asked us today to pay attention to a very serious article in the Financial Times. He wrote: Good insights but it is only part of a very important and urgent story. By Harari .

https://amp-ft-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.ft.com/content/19d90308-6858-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75

My analysis: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for the post. As you say, it gives good insights but is only part of the story. I view this story in game theoretic terms. In truth, I sometimes refer to John Von Neumann's Theory of Games and Economc Behavior as my "Bible". As with the other bibles, I even value the commentaries and extensions

Saving the World: Reformulating Game Theory: The mathematics underlying human societies, conflict and cooperation (drpauljohn.blogspot.com) .

There are MANY pathways to total disaster on the internet. New misuse of surveillance might be fatal for us all by itself, in the end, but it is only one of several  such threats to humanity. A year ago, government agencies in Japan and Korea both asked me for an overview of these risks and what we could do about them: Design Challenge for Global AGI - YouTube.

In essence, new technologies have changed the game, such that the Nash equilibrium of the new game (the output we get if we only have natural forces and competition) is death to us all. But Von Neumann and others have taught us a lot about how to get to a better outcome, more of a win-win Pareto optimum. It can be done only by exerting a higher level of awareness and consciously deciding to cooperate, but it can be done, IF WE COOPERATE.  (see the overview page attached.)  [At bottom, I explain more what a Nash eqiulibrium is.]

(More details coming at www.ffsii.org.)

Human societies have been through challenging times before, not SO threatening, but bad enough that Nash equilibria would have hurt us a lot. There have been many cases, like the US Constitution, the ten comandments, twelve tablets of Rome, etc., when people WROTE DOWN a new "social contract", a certain kind of deal. We are entering a new period when the only way out it to INCLUDE (bot not rely solely on) a new CYBER social contract, building on clear principles with the right properties. That IS possible; the attached page is a kind of overview of what it could be, four tablets if you will rather than two, but there is a whole lot of technica lknowledge which can fill in these essential needs, IF PEOPLE DECIDE TO DO IT, and not just keep on with stupid wars of all against all.

But does anyone care enough to really try this kind of new direction? Perhaps if you join, you can make the crucial difference. 

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Nash equilibrium is the outcome of a game where each player chooses actions which maximize ITS utility function, on the assumption that its choice of actions does not affect the choices of other players.

Formally, a Pareto optimum is a choice of actions such that any change in the choices would lead to worse results for at least one player. Crudely, "win-win" choices.

In the game theory post I started from here, I mention for example work by Schelling in his nice clear book Strategy of Conflict, giving a feeling for what win-win solutions can be like in reality. Usually we face a LADDER of degrees of cooperation, step by step... Scheeling and Raiffa have given very detailed examples of such ladders which arise in international discussions and in large organizations.