Many deep thinkers like Arthur C. Clarke and Teilhard de Chardin argued that we might be approaching, or able to create, a huge transition in our collective spiritual life, similar to the pop culture of the "Aquarian Age." Here I will briefly outline my integrated view of basic physics, brain, mind and soul, drawing on lots of new work and papers, and talk about what that theory says about this Great Question about the Future of Humanity.
1. The coming new age (?), how it fits a PREVIOUS new age:
About 2.5 billion years ago, this planet experienced a really huge transition, when certain bacteria learned how to do photosynthesis with chlorophyll, converting the CO2 in the atmosphere to O2, which led to many other massive changes. The question this calls me to think about: is there any chance that OUR level of life, which claims to be more conscious than bacteria, will learn a new way to channel the qi coming to us in OUR environment, in a way which also leads to further changes of massive impact? Qi Is not the same as sunlight, but there is an interesting analogy between the role of oxygen in that ancient transition (oxygen being BOTH in the atmosphere AND in living organisms) and the levels and types of qi in our world. Oxygen did not SEEM so important in the atmosphere of earth and in what powered life BEFORE that great transition, but the transition had massive effects.
2. Why this question is important, even urgent:
Why is this so important? I still worry, with good reason, whether humanity will kill itself off, due to problems emerging both in climate and in the massive new internet, as discussed in huge detail at werbos.com -- the world’s two most urgent “existential risks,” threats which really are moving now to make the human species extinct.
(1) Climate extinction, the real risk and low cost ways to stop it
http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm
(2) Sustainable Intelligent Internet (SII), How to prevent a fast coming disaster which toadys’s regulat8nb strategies alone are only making worse
http://www.werbos.com/How_to%20Build_Past_Emerging_Internet_Chaos.htm
True progress in building intelligent and human centered internet requires deeper understanding of human minds, brains and even souls (for those of us who believe in all these things). For blogs on those connections, starting from the NSF research initiative I formulated and ran in 2008, see:
http://www.werbos.com/mind_brain_soul.htm
**IF** there is some hope of humans better channeling and using qi, and connecting our society to the noosphere, our chances will be a lot better. But is it possible, and if so how?
Here I give great thanks to our neighbor, whom I bcc, who did at least two things to send me in this direction: (1) to point my wife and me to recent talks and a book by Hazen of Carnegie, who discussed the great oxygen or oxidation event 2.5 billion years ago in great detail; (2) to ask me: "DO you believe this new integrated theory you have linking physics, consciousness, neuroscience and the soul? If you now only give 50% probability to its being completely true, what of the other 50%"?
That for me is also a hugely important and serious question, but the biggest problem with my current theory is WHAT IT LEAVES OUT, like what we should believe about a great qi transition.
3. Hard core Einsteinian realism, a theory of everything underneath
ONE PART of my current "standard theory": I believe that the most likely model of the "law of everything" is the theory that we live in a curved Minkowski space, governed by general relativity and by Lagrange Euler equations, EXACTLY as given in equations in the book by Moshe Carmeli:
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=aZJIDQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Classical+Fields+Carmeli&ots=rwYcb4gbIp&sig=aI7tuoeusWDpRiNpE9EZnvTXEvk#v=onepage&q=Classical%20Fields%20Carmeli&f=false
More precisely, my present personal standard model asserts that EVERYTHING WHICH EXISTS In OUR COSMOS is governed by those equations or by natural extensions of them (for which we have no empirical evidence as yet), such as assuming SOME geometric manifold with positive Grassmanian with 4 to 20 dimensions, as in Einstein's later work on unified field theory, collaborating with Infeld and others.
4. Best mainstream quantum field theory as an emergent statistical theory
It goes on to assert that the "modern Schrodinger equation", psi dot = i H psi, is a good APPROXIMATION to the emergent statistics predicted by this underlying model, in the limit where states of the universe can be approximated as a mix of continuous fields and point particles. My papers at arxiv and elsewhere on "extended Glauber Sudarshan distribution functions" show this. That is worth mentioning, because many of the questions we address in life and mind and our experience can be addressed well enough for now, starting by assuming that psi dor = i H psi is the true law of everything.
But here is a key point: BOTH the Lagrange-Euler fundamental model ANDT the psi dot = i H psi approximate statistical model LEAVE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS UNANSWERED. The CHOICE of Hamiltonian operator H, and of Lagrange density for the Lagrange-Euler model, LEAVES OPEN a whole lot of uncertainty.
By the way, in my papers published in 2019 (link at werbos.com/religions.htm) I thought 4 might be the underlying truth, instead of 4. But as I thought over the paper by Werbos and Fleury in ResearchGate, I understood how "macroscopic Schrodinger cats" really can exist in an Einsteinian universe. that makes a lot more sense to me than using 3D Fock space for space and just one dimensions for time!!!
5. Why I see no reason to doubt 3 and 4
And so, I would tell my neighbor: on deeper reflection, I really see NO evidence that the model is not true. I see no evidence guiding me to a possibly better model, at all.
HOWEVER, there really ARE big and important questions LEFT UNANSWERED, even after I augment the model with the noosphere species model discussed in those links (and at werbos.com/religions.htm).
6. BUT: How explaining mind and consciousness requires MORE (in emergent phenomena) :
How I would address mind, soul, psi and God:
When the model is not yet augmented, it leads to one obvious question: does PSI exist? (Here I use the acronym "psi" to refer to the entire class of theories which assume the reality of psychic and/or spiritual reality, beyond what can be explained by what can emerge from quantum electrodynamics (QED) operating over the kinds of individual brains we see in our skull. Of course, I do not assert that ALL tgheories of PSI are true!). the unaugmented model does not tell us whether PSI exists or does not exist. The world needs better dialogue from those who DO believe in PSI (with probability >90%), the PSI+ people, with the PSI- disbelievers and the PSI0 truly undecided people. But for me, my more complete augmented theory does start from PSI+, because of what MY first person database of experience tells me (again see werbos.com/religions.htm). The simplest, most unavoidable explanation is that we are all part of the "noosphere" of our solar system, which is a living organism containing both brain and body (and matrix and shell..). The "noosphere species theory" is one key part of my personal standard model.
And another person I bcc'ed asked: But what about GOD?
I deeply respect those ancient Israeli mystics who would use the neme (or names) God in their inner thoughts but not out loud. I respect that, because the word "god" means so may different things to so many different people that it usually messes up the level of communication. Not always, but usually. ONE of the many legitimate meanings of the English word "God" IS the local noosphere of our solar system of which we are part. The majority of serious and meaningful spiritual experience on earth, where people feel they have somehow contacted God or been contacted by god, really are contacts with our noosphere, according to my standard model and all the huge database of experience which underlies it.
BUT: when I said this yesterday, I sense a very important and legitimate question;
"IS THAT ALL? JUST OUR SOLAR SYSTEM?" I apologize for leaving out another key part of my standard theory. IN ADDITION to our local noosphere, there is AT LEAST the entire species of noospheres across the cosmos, which ours is biologically connected to (at least as children are connected to their parents in space-time), AND the cosmos itself (which has some of the same properties as intelligent brains due to the way that Lagrange-Euler equations work). And it does not leave out the possibility of other life forms in the cosmos, but I don't spend so much time speculating about them.
Many months ago, my brother pointed me to the colorful tree of life diagram from Luria Kaballah. I tend to believe that this tree of life was "inspired", in the sense that the image reflects (well if imperfectly) serious real "things" in our cosmos. At The Top is the "crown" or "creator," which I would interpret as the cosmos itself, as the underlying Lagrange-Euler equations. These in turn generate a massive stream of emergent phenomena, described well enough by the psi dot = i H psi model; that leads precisely and mathematically to the grand canonical Boltzmann probability density operator, given in the book by Chaikin and Lubensky which I quote often. (That book described real, empirical, advanced quantum theory, the culminating work of Julian Schwinger, far more mainstream and reliable than all the ancient philosophies which sometimes get called "quantum mechanics" in less mathematical ontologies and hermeneutics and postmodernism.)
To really understand the life and mind which emerge in our cosmos, the challenge is to understand what the grand canonical Boltzmann operator really TELLS us. It has many similarities to the Bellman equation (and its descendants) which is the foundation of our new understanding of minds, brains and "artificial general intelligence." In the mathematics of intelligent systems, there is a great duality at the top between "PREDICTION" and "OPTIMIZATION" . These parallel exactly the primary duality of "TRUTH" and "WISDOM" just under the crown in Luria's tree of life. This great duality dominates the actual emergent life of our entire cosmos, from QED life to dark matter and energy and noospheres and more. It lies at a level ABOVE those more .. tangible?... manifestations of life and mind. (And no, I am NOT proposing a distinct universe from which they manifest. Just mathematical principles.)
There are lower levels on the Luria tree of life which also connect to my standard theory, but you should see one point: nothing important predicted by that vision contradicts my understanding of the physics, augmented by the noosphere species theory describing ONE ASPECT of the emergent phenomena, emerging form statistics and thermodynamics. And, since the noosphere species model predicts AND DESCRIBES SEVERAL TYPES of qi, it certain ALLOWS the question I started with in this post.
In truth, I have also scoured several other phenomena which seems as if they cast doubt on my standard theory. Because this email is so long already, I won't say more
right now... but no, I do not even see reasons for adding doubt about it. After all, with noospheres and a cosmos in play, the real questions are about the details, the shape of L and H and where they take us.
7. And a note on Newton...
My neighbor even got me to do a THIRD investigation, to look closely at:
(1) The Dark Heretic. Isaac Newton BBC 2003 Documentary - YouTube
I have read several books on Newton, and even had access to some of his less public "adept" stuff, but this was stimulating to me in several ways.
For example, if there is an analogy between the great transition to photosynthesis releasing oxygen and a transition we might hope for channeling qi at a new level (A QUESTION) ... what of FOLLOW ON consequential transitions? I was impressed to see that Newton really did seem to have a solid direct sense of our noosphere, but what of dreamlike impressions of what might follow LATER (presumably after my own death by old age)? It reminded me of a few ASPECTS of the Book f Revelations which stunned me decades ago -- NOT inducing idiotic fundamentalist or hermeneutic stuff, but seen as what might leak through in dreams which are not TOTALLY confabulation. I remember quoting a line form that book to a guy who worked for GE Aerospace in Valley Forge (circa 1970), and how shocked he was about the fit to something classified they were working on. "Where did you read that? tell me, because we need to withdraw that paper from print?" I laughed, but mostly forgot about it until this week.
My neighbor did rightly notice some bias and spin games in the BBC video, but I can filter such things..
8, About That Qi Question I Started With This Week
In my view, qi is a set of things. It refers to the physical channel by which soul or noosphere acts on mundane matter made of electrons, protons, neutrons and electromagnetism (including our bodies). However "qi" (as used for millennia in Chinese culture) also refers to flows of what Freud called "psychic energy" within the nervous system of the noosphere itself.
I started this post with a question, not an answer.
Even in a history of 4.5 billion years, there can be decisive times of transition. So was the great oxygen event of 2.5 billion years ago ONE such transition time for our local noosphere, and could it be that we may be approaching or trying to create/survive ANOTHER such transition of that same noosphere, of which we are part?
Yesterday, I saw another episode of Hazen's video course which clarified that history, and raised more questions. The transition 2.5 billion years ago was dramatic and important, preceded by changes in the life which caused it and followed by changes in geology. (I will always remember his picture of giant streaks of hematite and magnetite in the ricks, after the transition. That same hematite and magnetite are what we see in our blood, as it carries and releases oxygen!) But I will need to try to read his book today, for clarity.
Could it be that the deep human spiritual culture evolution of our recent past is more like the "boring billion" he talks about, from 1.8 billion to 0.8 billion years ago, when there was already SOME free oxygen in the atmosphere (but only 1 to 2%), just as qi ALREADY affects human life and culture to some small degree? (Like through all the religions of earth?) A lot did change through those years, but what was the SPECIFIC change 2.6 to 2.5 billion years ago which created the big jump from 0 to 1 or 2%? On the other hand, could the possible changes in our deployment of qi be like that other transition I read about next, whet ended the boring billion, another jump up?
The larger process was somehow evolved in a much larger stage, to go as quickly as possible in a way, but it takes time. People who study developmental psychology know well that major discrete changes can happen, but still take time, because of all the elements which need to be connected and aligned. Still, it does contain moments when connections are made, to dramatic effect.
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