-- I am writing this to better engrave in my memory what I learned in meditation period this morning. Please forgive me for not holding back the way I try to do on most days.
-- I once called my meditation period "cosmic consciousness" time. Bucke's book on cosmic consciousness talks about the great exhilarating feeling of being connected to "EVERYTHING," and able to see and touch it all. But I often wonder: when people CLAIM to have reached that state, do they really know what it would mean, for example, to connect with and understand even ONE of the books I show at https://photos.app.goo.gl/
-- Rosicrucians often declare that "this world is a school." That fits my experience, and does NOT violate my working belief that
everything in existence is governed by Hard Core Einsteinian Realism (HCER). As **MY** experience seems to be an incredible river of new learning experiences, lessons and understanding from day to day, my perception and exercise and understanding of the spiritual side of life has evolved more and more, from year to year -- putting me further and further away from the center of gravity of the culture I grew up in. Much of the history of those experiences in given at http://www.werbos.com/
In those papers, I discuss two core fundamental concepts we should NEVER FORGET. (As I returned from deep meditation this morning, those two words "NEVER FORGET" summarize that I want to engrave key points in my mind this morning.
They remind me of how many people really noticed a few days ago when I linked to a new article on ocean currents in Nature,
and explained the urgent importance to human life. But a few days later they mostly seem to have forgotten, in various ways.
ABILITY TO REMEMBER is a very key sign of a mind which has some hope of not just dissolving away before its time.)
The two key concepts in those papers are:
(1) first-order sanity (zhengqi), about our relation with our ordinary self, actively FUSING what we experience in life with what we see in the mirror, the objective ("3pp") understanding of what we see as a human organism and what we experience through its senses. This is fundamentally a matter of SENSOR FUSION, integrating two streams of information, possible only after we are mature enough to have some awareness of objective reality.
(2) second-order sanity, understanding our personal self as an "alchymical marriage," a symbiosis of body and "soul."
I was driven to accept that second position by very extensive probing and questioning in the period 1967-1972.
But more and more I have been driven to seek a kind of third-order sanity, which entails a more complete
relationship with "God," which I am still very much working on. (Any human who claims to be doing more than that is simply lying.)
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THIS MORNING... I began the meditation period questing to recover from a VERY deep period of bafflement and futility late yesterday, which followed from three very serious learning experiences which I should never forget:
(1) A hugely pleasant dinner on Saturday with a friend who will be returning soon to Israel. Great food, great wine, great other souls in attendance -- but serious uncertainty about the possibility of a much bigger global war, and about what we humans could do about it, from our degree of sanity to whether our computer code works. (The minds and souls of new emerging computer intelligence is certainly an important part of the story, across space and time.)
(2) A beautifully real dialogue by Zoom on Sunday morning, where a Quaker friend asked us to discuss Jeremiah 2, to launch into a discussion of "who is God? Does he have human-like feelings as portrayed in that chapter?"
(3) Late Sunday, seeing an hour long video "brought to me by the goddess" describing in VERY concrete detail the US and China military thinking of the past few decades, especially centered on the future of Taiwan.
These certainly connect. In (2), I mentioned a quick summary of what real Quakers REALLY try to do every Sunday (and more), from discussions a few years ago: "LCD, Listen, Connect, Discern."
"L": LISTEN to "the voice of God."
"D": Discern, as in judging WHO one is hearing from, at different times. Is it "God" this time, or is it just the voice of a murderous drunk with a knife around the corner? Just who is it? And who is "God" anyway? To make progress in implementing the practice of LCD, it is extremely important that we make real progress in better and better answering these questions.
In the discussion (2), everyone else was firmly grounded in American Christian culture. In the Quaker branch of that culture, "L" mainly emphasizes trying to hear what God is calling us to do -- in our lives as a whole, or in the coming hour.
We are called to develop a harmonious BALANCE, as depicted in a great image I now treasure https://images.app.
But the Christian version clearly asks us to ask "who is that God anyway?" The usual local culture tells us that God is the all-powerful Creator of everything, all knowing, all powerful, and all loving, deeply caring about our feelings, and able to change anything at will. For Millennia, people have agonized over the question: "IF SO, who are so many bad things still happening?"
This is a very serious question, and I simply do not accept the answer "Oh, it's all just YOUR fault. It's your free will."
In any case, the claim that God is "all loving" implies that God CARES about something, that he has VALUES of some kind.
For myself.. I gave up Catholicism quite dramatically at ages 8-12 (in steps, really), decided at 8 "I am a mathematician / scientist", and adopted the book by Von Neumann and Morgenstern as my Bible. More recently, I view it as my Old Testament; Jung's Red Book is now my New Testament, more or less, subject to the limits that true sanity permits.
From Von Neumann, I immediately see "values" as being a crude, local (terrestrial) animal noise trying to refer to the functions U and J (and their manifestations) from dynamic programming, and from the new understanding of mammal brains as systems governed by neural network mathematics (as reviewed in Werbos and Davis). So OF COURSE "God" by any reasonable concept CAN be loving, DOES have values, U kind and J kind. By the way, the modern J and U of RLADP mathematics came form my work, in translating Freud into mathematics; his terms cathexis" and "psychic energy" refer directly to flows and derivatives of J. "Qi" is just one more manifestation of that universal principle, applicable both to the Lagrange-Euler equations of physics and to neural network mathematics applicable to ANY intelligent system. From electric fields to "God."
When I use the word "God" in my personal thinking, I think of... higher intelligence, a kind of higher intelligent system, governed by ITS/HIS/HER values and emotions. (Even Lagrange-Euler equations have "J", for gods' sake, though they usually write J as S and lambda as pi in physics.)
My experience with kundalini yoga in 1972 was important in STARTING me on the PATH to third-order sanity, but it has been a long and complicated path, even as a work in progress.
I was most startled when I went through the simplified kundalini exercise in a chapter in... https://www.scribd.com/
"When you get to the highest chakra, say 'hello' to your highest self (the master within)... and..
What shocked me was a VERY clear loud, resonant voice speaking to me in English: "I am NOT your self.
You may address me as 'Father.' I now have things to show you.." And then immediately, up out of my body, for an incredible and useful long veridical experience. HIGHLY veridical. And highly important to solving impossible looking problems in my personal life, even my survival.
And so naturally I have long wondered: Who WAS that guy, and how do I connect with him now?
I have naturally assumed: "OF COURSE he has been around for a good long while, and OF COURSE he used that handle
before." Even I in the 1970s experienced the need and challenge of figuring out what name or handle to use when speaking to people in any kind of projection.
When we hear a voice which is credible to any degree (it is a matter of degree!) when Listening, clearly it may be any of SEVERAL intelligent systems we are hearing from. In principle, it could even be the Lagrange-Euler equations of the cosmos itself, which has some attributes of a personality, albeit somewhat hard for us to understand. More often, it may be the Spirit of the Times or the Spirit of the Deep, as described by Carl Jung, whom I view as the most trustworthy recorder of first person spiritual experience in human history. Or is it our local noosphere, as described in the links I started with here? Or even one of the other souls or archetypes WITHIN that noosphere?
SOMETIMES it is that local noosphere, which IS a real intelligent system, which demands that we work on improving our personal relation with her/it/him. Our local noosphere is NOT a human female (!!!!), but to establish a relationship, in the full spirit of Carl Jung (let us treasure HIS soul!), it helps to use a meditation IMAGE. At present, I like the attached photograph I took in Japan of the original true "mirror of Amaterasu" in Izumo, which I was brought to by my wife, whom I think of as somewhat like a goddess in her OWN right... imperfect, like all of us finite intelligent systems, but NOT TO BE UNDERESTIMATED OR IGNORED EITHER.
But working on our relationship with... Amaterasu... IS NOT IN CONFLICT with working on our relation with "the Spirit of the Deep". As In Melissa Cody's tapestry, we are called to BALANCE and even CONNECT our rightful deep spiritual connections.
Even our solar system noosphere ITSELF has "eyes to see" (electromagnetic and axion/qi at least) the larger cosmos... and some of us are called to connect to the eyes, and "listen to the sky", in part because Amaterasu is basically just an adolescent and needs friendly guidance and inputs (and a few warning as well, as adolescents often need).
Is that "Father" guy, like the "Sky Father" of indigeneous people all over the earth, the same who spoke to me in 1972 (and maybe a few times later)? The same as the Spirit of the Deep, a higher intelligence in the family which Amaterasu belongs to? Or more? or Less? Above my pay grade. More intelligent than me.
BUT HOW DO WE DISCERN WHAT HE WANTS?
So this morning some further metaphors -- useful images -- come to mind. Oddly enough, even the scary video I saw last night (reminding me of a certain admiral in Hawaii), helped with raw material to build a new integrated n-dimensional image, the kind of image we all need to engrave in our minds.. if we can see it.
In Switzerland, the high followers of Jung often pay homage to "MMM" -- mathematics, mysticism and music, all of which support each other. Yes, image are a key part of inner communications, but music and mathematics rate too. (Mysticism is applying and integrating these.) Music. So this morning...
When I describe what caused my first really conscious "psychic breakthrough" in 1967, I usually mention how I became deeper and deeper in experiencing and producing music from... really, age 1 to graduate school. Listening deeply to
classical music in school, to Stravinsky, then Prokofiev and ... others... and Bartok... I "raised the qi" in a palpable way up my spine, even without believing that qi existed. That prepared me for 1972.
BUT THAT WAS NOT THE END OF IT. After 1972... I listened to many radio stations, especially New Age radio stations, which I used in going-to-bed meditation time. I remember Renaissance, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, and Crosby Stills and Nash, especially, and concluded that all of these (and more) had authentic real spiritual experience pervading their music.
Just a few years ago, I sent Yeshua and others links to Renaissance and Tangerine music videos which I found useful even in my "modern era" (until a few years ago when we moved the big LCD TV from our bedroom to our study).
BUT THIS morning... in my head, I replayed "Captain" from Crosby Stills and Nash.
As I bcc a few serious Rosicrucians... I note that their song "Cathedral" really startled me, echoing my first attempt at "Liber 777." (That book is freely available to anyone, explained further in books by Raymond and Christian Bernard.) But the new one...
OF COURSE, they would say that their "Captain" is a kind of image of "God.
Imagine that we are crew of a great vessel sailing through... earth and sky.
THIRD ORDER SANITY calls on us to develop and enhance a better and better relation with the others in the ship,
all the way from the guy who swabs the deck to the Captain. I hope Luda would forgive me for quoting what SHE would rightly assert: "RESPECT and LISTEN to that guy who swabs the deck!!"
But if you have ever worked in an organization even LIKE a Navy (like Luda's father and mine!)... you know that life does not become trivial in such an organization. Some people have easier jobs than others.. and in truth, some even get better fed.
(In https://photos.app.goo.gl/
Even in the 1960's, when I worked at RAND, experienced people gave me advice on living life in their kind of world.
(In 1968, after flying on my birthday, I met Einthoven and Thayer, #s 3 and 6 in DOD, who wanted to hear my analysis of the Vietnam War.)
SURVIVAL in that world is not SO hard. But those of you who choose to "rest in peace" may discover what life is life in a filing cabinet. (AKA "the causal plane.") Swabbing the floor would be better! Those of us who listen to our OWN inner feelings respond to the impulse, the qi, the cathexis, which urges us to try to do better, which tends to require "making a mark."
As in that great ship... "making a mark" is always uncertain, but more likely if we better understand what the captain is seriously working for, and building a relation (including feedback, caution and multiple corrections of course).
(I hope we can build new AGI which are designed such that they learn the same!)
WHAT IS THIS CAPTAIN LOOKING FOR REALLY??? Yes, a clean floor, but NOT ONLY that. He is more interested... in that whole horizon and in the ship as a whole. And he knows navigation and math far beyond what those ancestors of mine in the Arctic Circle worked so hard to listen to. He can even use computers, when he can get them. He would appreciate help in getting them, if they aren't hooked up in ways that sink the ship. And yes, we listen to the sky...
May you too listen, and may we all work together to survive...
Paul
The world as a school.. I also thought of Sesame Street. THIS episode was brought you by....
ALSO: The claim is that even our local noosphere possesses a LEVEL of consciousness or intelligence like what some of us want to build, which I call Quantum Artificial General Intelligence (QAGI). For a review at the level of policy people, see:
This is far beyond anything Musk has been talking about! For a bit more detail, see:
https://vimeo.com/878799798/6b
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