It's Elemental

Tag: Consciousness

  • The creative potential of langage — or, attend to your speech, for it creates worlds

    Following on the last posts about language, I’m just going to go way out on a limb here and re-present a picture that Rudolf Steiner gives which, when you really take it in, can transform your whole sense of language.  It is this:

    Steiner points out how at the present time, humanity can only tap into the deep formative forces of creativity in an unconscious way, or in a sort of caricature of what is possible.  So to give birth to another human being requires a certain kind of process in which our consciousness plays only a tiny role — all the ‘work’ of creation is done unconsciously (for US — quite consciously for… other beings).

    Speech in Motion - Eurythmy
    Speech in Motion – Eurythmy





    The place in the human being where we are beginning to find an entry into the realm in which this kind of creation–conscious creation–is possible can be found in the human larynx.  Now, if you have a sense that there is a relationship between creative forces and the motions of the sounds that underlie speech, you begin to see that what speech is primarily today is only the merest possible shell of what is possible with regards to creation.

    The sounds that I produce (or that you implicitly imagine, even unconsciously [MRI studies show this] if you are reading this) are capable of calling up within you an image, a picture… a feeling, evoked by my words.  Not just the structure and grammar and so forth, but the actual sounds themselves are a part of this, and are not arbitrary (as I mentioned in the previous post). 

    Sounds are movement, and the larynx does what it does only as a mobile, dynamic organ of self-transformation.  The larynx is doing a little dance, putting form into movement through time and interval.  Alchemically this is all working with the Air element — reversal/polarity.  The oscillations of the air itself happens through the polarity of compression and rarefaction, but even more: in order for my words to call up an image in you, you cannot remain the same — you must change.  The way that you can allow my words to allow you to experience what lies behind the words — the experience of the one speaking — is only by going through a microcosm of a microcosm of a macrocosm. 

    The macrocosmic level is the process of life–>death–>life (i.e. reincarnation).  The microcosmic process is awake–>sleep–>awake.  The further microcosmic process is speaking—>listening—>speaking.  In this last process, a part of you must go to sleep in order to dream through my words.  Just as the continual process of dreaming is overshadowed by the entrance of day-waking consciousness, so too your ability to meet the images contained within the words of another’s speech is overshadowed by the holding on to and expression of elements of oneself and the temporary identity with one’s own images.

    You must dream into my words as I actively speak them, just as I must do the same if I am to hear you through your words.  Now, that’s all just background.

    The real image is that in the future, rather than reproducing by the unconscious means that are the only ones presently available to humanity, we will learn how to reproduce consciously, and this will take place through the further development of what is now the human larynx, where we have the greatest connection to the creative forces–which now take the form of the ability to call up in another’s soul images that are produced in one’s own.

    I hope the sense of this connection is clear.  I recognize that this probably seems WAY out there, but I’d just like to share that such a way of thinking is possible, and that from a perspective that isn’t forced into materialistic boundaries, but which can consider the movement of processes in a wide variety of scales, such an imagination has considerable import. 

    This is all linked up with morality and how, as Bonnie points out, our speech is, in fact, a creative vehicle by which the world comes into being… So you can imagine that what we are doing right now in the exchange of ideas through words is a kind of proving ground and developmental platform on which we are expanding our ability to tap into something of the radical (root) nature of the creative forces, which are normally relegated to an unconscious realm. 

    One can, if one wishes, find this thread about speech all through the ages, as far back as you want to go.  It is the root of the idea concerning the magical power of words; words as creative actions that are connected with the deepest sources of the universe.

  • Evidence, science, and spiritual knowing: developing organs of spiritual perception

    Evidence can be gained through a variety of means.  Just as you would wish to use a sensitive detector of particular frequencies of light if you are doing x-ray crystallography, and not, say, an acoustic detector, so too we need to develop and use detectors that are appropriate to the realm in which we wish to gather evidence if we are to hope to gain any knowledge in that realm. 

    Thus, if we wish to develop knowledge of spiritual realms, we will need to develop organs of perception (for no material ‘device’ can do this for us) which are capable of perceiving in the realm of the spirit.  Not only that, but those organs, like any physical detector, need to be sensitized, tuned, and placed in the proper experimental setup for good evidence gathering to be likely.

    Of course, the basis for the spiritual organs of perception we are talking about here are rooted in our attention: it’s quality and rhythm.  For example, we lay people can only talk about all the fascinating stuff coming out of quantum mechanics in a second-(or third)-hand way, because we have ourselves not done the experiments in question, and our judgments and opinions on the matters are derivative of the interpretations of these experiments by those who have done them and their interpreters.  We would not expect an interested lay person to provide new information about quantum processes ex nihilo, but we can learn to conceptualize and come into closer relationship with those processes by virtue of our studies of what has been communicated about them by relative authorities.

    The exact same holds for spiritual considerations: those that have developed capacities to perceive spiritual realms can interpret and communicate these results to those of us that don’t, and we can study and learn about realms which we may not otherwise have access to as a consequence.  Moreover, just as we might, if we were really interested, take the necessary steps to learn the skills and concepts necessary to do research in quantum mechanics, so too we can take the steps necessary to learn the skills and concepts that allow one to do research in the spiritual worlds.

    Or does all this sound completely far-fetched?

    Unless we are scientific researchers in a particular field, we actually have very little direct evidence for our knowledge about quantum mechanical processes, chaos theory, and so forth; it’s almost completely anecdotal, yet we trust those that have done the research to provide us with a coherent and accurate picture of ‘what it is like’, and primarily on this basis we feel comfortable using the concepts and talking the talk.

    I’m only writing this because I wanted to point out that the scientific method in no way whatsoever excludes the non-physical, and that it is possible to have a clear understanding of how that is so; i.e. such a thing as spiritual science is possible.  Poor research is just as much of a problem in physical science as in spiritual science — and we must either rely upon ‘experts’ to let us know when this is the case or become an expert ourselves.

    Tree of the Wise
    Tree of the Wise

  • Social Networking and Consciousness

    I would like to say that the quite frankly astonishing rise of social-networking tools clearly points to an unmet need in the ‘wired’ populace at large.  We increasingly live in a fragmented society, where our friends and family are scattered across the globe.  Many of use no longer, for economic, personal, or many other reasons, choose to live in the same place for our entire lives, where we could build up a local network of family and friends.  And even if we do so, the demands of modern life and our cultural habits tend to erode (it seems) many opportunities for face-to-face gatherings over a long time period; such things now require real effort and are not a de facto part of everyday life.

    So it seems that a way of assuaging the erosion of the human need for contact, and just as importantly, a context within which such contact can be meaningful, can be found through the social networking tools.  These tools are not designed, and cannot really take the place of repeated face-to-face interactions, but what they DO provide is a way to ‘keep the door open’ to people who you might otherwise lose track of or only communicate with very rarely.  By having, for example, a Facebook page, you put yourself in a position of taking moments out of your day to have a conscious connection with people who would otherwise likely not enter your thoughts that day.  The immediacy and digital ‘nearness’ provided by the technologies allows for and creates a different kind of interaction than has heretofore been possible on the planet.  On the one hand, these technologies constrict certain kinds of communication; but it opens up others at the same time, and allows a thread of connection that can later be followed up by a more present, face-to-face, or otherwise soul-ful type of communication.

    This is something of the positive side of these tools, but they can also be used for pure ego-stroking, for bullying, for economic reductionism, etc.  Such is the way of any tool.  For me it’s always a question of how the tool is used, and I am convinced that humans have the power to make tools like this (and other technologies) work in a positive way for the benefit of themselves and the planet.

    It’s true: there is no substitute for real face-time.  I would simply point out that Facebook and such tools are NOT actually substituting for face-time.  In fact, the reverse might be true: the immediacy and ubiquity of social networking tools may actually increase the potential for two or more people to get together IRL (in real life)–there must be a study on this somewhere… if not, any takers?

    My feeling is that the use of such tools lessens both perceived and actual gaps between individuals, while also allowing individuals to discover more potential relationships that might otherwise be missed.  Increasingly human beings are going to have to learn how to deal with the instant availability of essentially infinite data.  In the pre-wired-era, the available data was restricted to your immediate sensory neighborhood, and you had no choice about this, notwithstanding the influence of books and letters.  Now, we have a choice, and can access a whole variety of types and fields of information literally out of thin air.  It opens up a whole different set of possibilities for human creativity and interaction….

    But obviously I’m not yet giving a well-rounded picture.  I should also point out that the way that these technologies lead human consciousness around may be problematic in a number of ways, and the identification and harmonizing of these regressive or sclerotic tendencies should be addressed up front.  But to speak of these would require an even longer discussion — one including talk about the inner life of the soul.

    Below:  a diagram depicting connections between a single user’s Facebook friends.

    my facebook friends

  • seeing upside down (with bonus experiment!)

    Did you know that your eye is related to the pinhole camera?

    Light enters through the pupil of the eye, and a tiny image of the outside world fans out across the back of the eye, on the retina.  If you have an extremely dark room that has a window to the outside world, try this:

    Get some pieces of thick card-stock paper, or even a piece of cardboard, that covers your window entirely.  Make sure that your room is as dark as possible and that no light enters (this is much more difficult to achieve than you may think, but perfection is not required).  Poke a small hole, about 3 millimeters in diameter, in the paper, so that light from outside your room can enter through the hole (this works best during bright daylight conditions outside).  Now get a white towel or sheet, or even a white piece of paper, and hold it right on the hole. Now slowly move the piece of paper/sheet/whatever back from the hole… and be AMAZED!  No really, you will be amazed, trust me!

    For the truly inquisitive (that should be all of you reading this), try different sized holes, as well as holes of different shape, and see what effects this has on the resulting experience.  Also pay close attention to what happens as you move your ‘screen’ closer or farther away from the hole.  Now, for even MORE ridiculous fun, have someone go outside and move around in front of the window as you watch the screen on the inside…

    But this was all just a little experimental tangent to my real topic, which is that, just as in the above pin-hole camera exercise, the image which falls upon your retina is inverted.  Why, then do we experience the world ‘right side up’?


    A ridiculously simplified picture of the inversion of images on the retina.
    A ridiculously simplified picture of the inversion of images on the retina.

    Our brains – and this is a mysterious process – re-inverts the image so that our experience of the retinal impulses fits with information we get from other senses.  Equally fascinating, the process which the brain accomplishes is not restricted to any particular given orientation of the incoming retinal stimulus.  What I mean is that the image of the world can be presented onto the retina with any arbitrary rotation, and given sufficient time, the brain will compensate in such a way as to perfectly cancel out the rotation so that we again experience the world ‘right side up’.

    Even more interestingly (I know, can you stand it?) it isn’t just with orientation that this occurs.  Check out this quote from a 1967 paper by J.J. Gibson:

    “The altered ‘form’ of the sample-field produced by spectacles can be of many sorts: Stratton’s inversion, or Erisman’s reversal, or Kohler’s reversal, or tilt, or displacement (with wedge-prisms), and curvature, and compression, or ordinary telescopic magnification or minification, or single-meridian magnification or minification (Ogle), or for that manner, a non-geometrical bias of the sample-field such as the chromatic aberrations or color. The ‘invariance theory’ should still apply. We ordinarily don’t notice the forms of the visual field anyway, except in pictures: what we detect are invariants.”

    Such phenomena are well known in the realm of optics (the first such experiments being performed by Stratton in 1896, and later by Ivo Kohler in the 1950’s) where research subjects (probably volunteer grad students) wore a prism that inverted the retinal image all day long for a period of at a few weeks.  For many subjects, it took approximately a week or so for the image to switch.

    Once they adapted the research subjects then experienced the world ‘normally’ with no strangeness – their brain simply found it more economical to re-integrate the incoming stimulus in a way that allowed it to mesh with other sensory stimuli; the system tended towards a relatively stable attractor.

    Of course, when the subjects took the glasses off, the world re-inverted, and they experienced the world upside down, just like they did when the glasses first were put on, but the re-adaptation took much less time, and subjects could even become ‘practiced’ at switching between wearing the prism glasses and having them off.

    Do you not find such a phenomenon both compelling and mysterious?  Do you not sit in awe at the complex workings going on behind your eyes all the time?

    Our sense of touch and proprioception play a large role here, but also hearing and other senses which include directionality in relation to our 3D physical space.  Even more important, however, is the ability for the subject to actively move through space with the altered perception.  If the subject is restricted from moving (some subjects were literally strapped into a wheelchair), no visual adaptation occurs, and the world continues to be experienced in an inverted fashion.

    A lesson to be learned from this is that we are complex beings, WHOLE beings, in whom stream diverse sensory flows, which, like rivers in confluence, turbulently spin off vortices in a chaotic and ordered dance of becoming.  Our senses, rather than objectively reporting pure sensory ‘data’ to a central computer, are continually involved in, reshaped by, and reciprocally influenced by the dynamic, pulsing whole that lies beheath and within conscious experience.  This includes our emotions, our thoughts, our desires, as well as our other senses, our metabolism, our memory, and our will, to name just a few.

    No sense is isolated from any other.  Channels overlap.  Information bleeds.  The source is also the receiver.  The created is also the creator.

    Mmmmmmmm. chewy!



  • how do you know what knowledge is?

    It’s quite a dilemma – not being able to directly check much of what we are exposed to and presented as ‘knowledge’.  Unless we begin to discover our own ways of knowing (a very difficult proposition, but I think possible), then we likely remain wanderers in the fog of our own (and other’s) unconsciousness.  

    Of course, at least in any near future, it doesn’t seem like subconscious situational effects can be avoided – nor do I think they should be.  Much of what we enjoy as part of our everyday capacities for thinking, feeling, and willing are rooted deeply and complexly in unconscious processes.  Indeed, what is normally conscious for us is perhaps one of the tiniest slices out of what can be potentially conscious, and perhaps the potentially conscious is just the tiniest slice out of the full depth and breadth of the universe as a whole – or not (because, in accord with what I just said, this is an impossible determination, requiring consciousness to take place).  

    In any case, pretty much EVERY modern study that follows the basic scientific practices is a study in obfuscation, requiring for its potential success a decided ignorance of as many ‘attenuating’, ‘circumstantial’, ‘probabilistic’, or ‘random’ factors as possible.  The more willfully ignorant a study becomes, the more exact are its pronouncements, and the more its knowledge is sequestered from the whole.  This is why all studies require additional work to be re-connected to the complex actualities of the world, necessitating interpretation, reframing, and recontextualization.   

    This suggests a different way of performing ‘studies’, discovered long ago by Goethe and others, in which the situatedness, the contingency, the circumstantial, are all necessarily included aspects of any attempt to work with and understand a phenomenon. 

    plants-11


  • unknowing and the creative moment

    There are some things about creativity that have been on my mind.  I have been trying to hone in on the qualitative experience of the creative moment… what does it feel like to be creative?  What kinds of qualities distinguish the feeling of being creative from other types of feelings, like the feeling of ‘producing’, ‘innovating’, and so forth?  What makes a creative moment creative?

    It seems to me that in the experience of the creative moment, there is always a place where knowing runs out… where consciousness finds itself in a state of openness, as if surrounded by space.  In particular this feeling seems to be accompanied by the sense that the normal boundaries of the ego are loosened, expanded/expended, but not yet replaced or filled with anything.  This is specifically true with respect to the actual genesis of the creative activity, while during the activity this sense can be replaced with a feeling which Mihály Csíkszentmihályi called ‘flow’.

    In every case that I can think of (for myself, that is), creative moments are states of being characterizable by a sense of potential, of a sort of future-coming-into-the-present — but notably always without knowledge or specific anticipation.  It is a very hard state to even think about because it seems that thinking itself — at least in the normal, ego-centered thinking of much of daily life — is suspended, as if in the air.  And even in thinking ‘about’ the creative moment, there is almost a lacuna of consciousness around the creative moment itself, as if consciousness met a border that it could not cross with its normal configuration… so I have the feeling that it is as if some part of consciousness travels ‘underground’ or perhaps ‘above’, into the ‘sense of awaiting’ that permeates the surrounding ‘space’.

    You can see that the normal tendencies of speech have a hard time when applied to a moment which seems to transcend encapsulation.  One usage of languge serves to delineate, define, demarcate, depict, circumscribe, form, or otherwise pinpoint (alchemically this would be representative of the Earth element).  My initial questions are, in a sense, Earth questions, with language leading towards and assuming this Earthy aspect.  Yet by its very nature the object of the inquiry is perhaps unable to be Earthed – so I find a contradiction even in the asking of the question.  Thus a paradox: if it were possible to actually describe in words the qualitative essence of a creative moment, the creative moment itself would necessarily remain undescribed, even de-described.

    Therefore some questions:

    Is language as evocative rather than descriptive enough of a tool to allow thinking about creativity to proceed?

    Do all creative moments share some specific qualities, perhaps at a meta or meta-meta-level?  Or is it impossible for creative moments to be bound at all by any possibile prescription?

    With respect to the individual experiencing a creative moment, what kinds of processes occur qua the experienced sense of self/other?  That is, what happens to the sense of self in such a moment?

    Related: Are creative moments ever something that can be ‘mine’ in the same way that I can speak about (a perhaps naive) experience of ‘my’ pain, ‘my’ thoughts, and so forth?

    Also related: To what extent do ‘others’ play a role in creative moments that ‘I’ experience?

    Lastly: If we were seers, able to perceive the activities of the spiritual worlds, how would we describe what is experienced by a single human being in a creative moment?

    Newton's Third Law

  • on distinction

    Trying to summarize:

    The drawing of a distinction is a formative act.  Drawing a distinction FORMS the space, constellates the infinitely possible unknown into spaces which are shaped by the particular WAY in which the distinction is drawn.  The resulting spaces can not help but take the complementary shape of the distinction that defines them.


    The drawing of a distinction is an INformative act.  Drawing a distinction INFORMS the observer to distinguish the space like this.  The resulting shape of any possible knowledge within the space cannot help but be informed (formed-in) by the particular way in which the distinction is drawn.


    The distinction is an epistemological act that creates itself, and in so doing, is also the creation of the space in which the distinction occurs, as well as of the observer who makes the distinction.


    There are levels of distinction; distinctions can be made about distinctions, and distinctions can be made about those distinctions…


    Distinctions are atemporal and aspatial.  They are the primitive act.  The distinction between the distinction, the space, and the observer are all formally equivalent, just as the three interior angles of a triangle are all formally equivalent.  In other words, they are interchangeable in any process that specifies ANGLE. 


    The only process that specifies distinction, space, and observer is DISTINCTION.  The form (which is the same thing as the LAW of form) is an ouroboros.


    Consciousness is the consciousness of distinction.  That is to say, consciousness is distinction; it cannot be other than consciousness of distinction. Therefore consciousness is co-extensive with all distinction.  What is distinguished is conscious of its distinction; this is why there is distinction; this is why there is consciousness.


    Time is a higher order distinction that requires recursivity.  It is a distinction about a distinction.  Time is dependent upon the oscillation of distinction between two states made by that distinction.  Time is the injunction to cross the boundary between the states, and once crossed, to cross again.  The crossing is atemporal.  Only the distinction of the crossing is temporal.  The distinction of the crossing of the distinction is time.


    <—————-distinction—————->

    Now, I have no idea if any of the above is sensible or insensible <crossing boundary: its sensibility or insensibility is only possible on the basis of the distinction as such.  In itself it is neither sensible nor insensible, but what it would be if it could> but it has raised some questions for me:


    Is distinction ONLY binary?  Is distinction always between this state and that state, that is, between one and another?  Is it possible to distinguish not just between one:one, but between one:many, between one and another+another+another?  In other words is this a binary reductionism? <crossing boundary: yes, if this binary distinction is made.  now make another distinction.>


    Okay, but what about the, um, distinction in quantum mechanics of the possible eigenstates of the wave function?  There are an infinite number of possible eigenstates for any given system (even the simplest), and they must ALL be taken into account (their probabilities must be worked in to the equation). Then, out of the whole field of possibilities, ONE is observed.  In the observation, all the other possible values have a probability of zero, while the observed value has a probability of one.   This sounds an awful lot like the idea that the fundamental act of distinction creates the space and thus the values of any distinction in the space thus created.  Does this have any validity, either as an analogue or at least a metaphor? <X: Do you distinguish it as such?>


    …


    Okay I have another question.  What happens if we DON’T DISTINGUISH?  I mean, we don’t un-distinguish and we don’t distinguish.  Without distinction… what happens?  Is this (GSB language) a marked empty mark? 


    Crap!  And can making a distinction of a distinction actually be the same as not making a distinction in the first place?


    Please, anyone, help?!

    <X:                 >

    20080507-IMG_6032