Lucille
Lucille
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TL;DR see "Summary" at the end...
The animation is a tad creepy, but I found this lecture absolutely fascinating. Watch it first, then read my interpretation below.
On first brush, she seems to be way off the map: "The will of spirit in action has produced everything that exists. If we understand that intelligent will lies behind everything that exists; is the cause of everything that is; is the creator in the universe; we may perhaps gain some idea of what is necessary for us to know in order properly to user our powers. We all stand as creators in the midst of our creations. There are creators below us in the scale of intelligence."
She claims that the world in the small (including everything, even "inanimate" matter) consists of "infinitesimal organisms" which "seek what they like and avoid what they dislike."
However, I would like to turn your attention to another "crazy", Terence McKenna, discussing hardcore DMT tripping:
He describes entities that he terms "machine elves" "gnomes" and "self-dribbling basketballs" but they're not merely inanimate things, they're actually intelligent and they "talk" "vibrate" "sing structures into existence" - and you are their audience. Now, I'm extremely skeptical of the whole idea that psychedelic drugs help you contact remote beings somewhere out there. I have no doubt they make you feel that way.
There is a much more mundane possibility here... that the psychedelic drug is somehow breaking down the barrier between the conscious, "awake" or "alert" mind of the ego and the computational circuitry of the brain that makes this whole roller-coaster ride of consciousness possible.
So, here's my hypothesis of what McKenna is describing (in terms of methodological materialism).
There must be some kind of "proto-thoughts" which eventually form into the thoughts which we experience in our conscious mind as the "inner voice" or "inner dialogue". When you speak to yourself in your mind, who's talking and who's listening? We haven't the slightest idea how big or small these proto-thoughts are or what their nature or encoding is. Similarly, there must be some kind of "proto-action", some kind of primitive urge to act that underlies the indivisible urge to action which we consciously experience.
Yet, how could there be any physical metaphor for these proto-thoughts or proto-urges? If what McKenna is describing is really a lifting of the veil that hides the subconscious from the conscious, then it makes sense that the world should appear and sound and feel very strange and alien because whatever sensations he is experiencing are really piggy-backing on the brain's systems which were designed to construct conscious awareness of real, physical phenomena; I think it's safe to say your brain wasn't designed to get plastered on DMT (though McKenna has actually written a book claiming otherwise, lol).
Each of the facts that are so astonishing, I believe, reinforce my hypothesis.
That you experience other-worldly sights, sounds, sensations and feelings
That you perceive many entities
That these entities are immensely intricate
That these entities are intelligent
That these entities speak to you and particularly that they urge you to act
That you utter syntactical gibberish
My hypothesis is that there are zillions of "proto-thoughts" and "proto-urges" floating, subliminally, in the brain. Most of these are so simple and buried so deep in the subconscious that no amount of drugs would ever make you directly aware of them. However, there is some kind of "selection principle" which operates on the simplest and smallest proto-thoughts and proto-urges by which those that are not sufficient to rise to the level of consciousness are eliminated and the others rise and possible join together. As this process continues, the final result is a much smaller number (maybe hundreds or thousands) of almost fully-formed thoughts and urges which lie just below the surface of consciousness.
When McKenna takes the DMT, the veil is lifted - this veil is the final round of selection that elminates all but one or two proto-thoughts and proto-urges. The result is your consciousness. When that veil is lifted, you are conversing with the many proto-thoughts and proto-urges from which your consciousness is being selected. This is why the entities are intelligent. They don't just seem intelligent, they are intelligent, every bit as intelligent as you are because any one of them could have been selected in the final round to become your conscious thoughts and urges.
The immense intricacy of the entities is a result of the fact that they have already undergone many levels of selection and accumulation of smaller, simpler proto-thoughts and urges. So, they are fantastically complex. They are particularly difficult for the individual to analyze because they are every bit as complex as he himself is... they are, in essence, the many individuals he could have become in the ordinary conscious state.
He says he feels these entities jumping in and out of himself, which is also consistent with my hypothesis. This is what it feels like for one of your proto-thoughts or proto-urges to make the final round of selection and become you. Or, perhaps it's more accurate to say that you finally become one of them. This is consistent with Blavatsky's insight that everything within the Universe "seek what likes and avoid what dislikes." I think these proto-thoughts/proto-urges are best understood as acting beings and, thus, subject to praxeological law.
He reports that he felt like he could do the very jumping they were doing through his own body from deep down up towards his mouth and out. I think this is particularly the proto-urge to speak. The feeling of exhaling from one's diaphragm and out through one's mouth and into the space outside the mouth and that the act of doing so constructs some kind of real object (a thought that others can hear and "see").
Finally, there is the syntactical gibberish which confirms that a) the DMT is retrogressive and not progressive and b) the psychedelic experience is primarily centered around retrogression of the discursive component of consciousness.
As I hinted earlier, I think we should think of these entities as complete in themselves. They are "beings" that - consistent with Blavatsky's principle of Universal action - are striving to survive, they are acting beings which avoid what they dislike and seek what they like. Each one is competing to "jump into him" that is, each one is competing to be the one that is selected to be him. This selection principle is, of course, unmistakably Darwinian. The competition, then, is between bits of "neural software" that we experience as "self-dribbling, jewel-crusted basketballs" that resemble Faberge eggs and "sing structures into being" if we lift the veil of consciousness with the aid of DMT.
But there is really no a priori reason that we should think that the Universe itself is not subject to this principle all the way down. We prejudicially divide between "animate" and "inanimate" matter and we ascribe to the latter a certain sort of mundane, inactive solidarity. A rock will simply sit there, inert for the entire lifetime of the universe unless something acts on it. Hence, whatever the rock is made of is clearly inert, as well.
But it is conceivable that at the lowest levels (say, near the Planck distance, which we still cannot get within 20 orders of magnitude of observing), the Universe itself is undergoing a similar process of action whereby everything that exists is competing to remain in existence. Like the smallest and simplest proto-thoughts and proto-urges, they can act in only very limited and unsophisticated ways but the underlying principle is the same.
Now, I'm not going to claim that this is an explanation of consciousness because I don't think that it is. But I think physical theory may have to re-tool itself as we peer further down into the physical world because there is a lot of room for complexity below what we can currently observe.
Summary: What I found fascinating in Blavatsky's lecture was the idea of extending the action principle to the entire Universe itself (particularly, in the small) so that we might be able to think of the smallest components of the Universe as "acting beings" which are "seeking what they like" and "avoiding what they dislike" and that I think we can actually see this principle in action in the case of psychedelic drugs and the experience of proto-thoughts and proto-urges they enable us to experience.
Clayton -
The animation is a tad creepy, but I found this lecture absolutely fascinating. Watch it first, then read my interpretation below.
On first brush, she seems to be way off the map: "The will of spirit in action has produced everything that exists. If we understand that intelligent will lies behind everything that exists; is the cause of everything that is; is the creator in the universe; we may perhaps gain some idea of what is necessary for us to know in order properly to user our powers. We all stand as creators in the midst of our creations. There are creators below us in the scale of intelligence."
She claims that the world in the small (including everything, even "inanimate" matter) consists of "infinitesimal organisms" which "seek what they like and avoid what they dislike."
However, I would like to turn your attention to another "crazy", Terence McKenna, discussing hardcore DMT tripping:
He describes entities that he terms "machine elves" "gnomes" and "self-dribbling basketballs" but they're not merely inanimate things, they're actually intelligent and they "talk" "vibrate" "sing structures into existence" - and you are their audience. Now, I'm extremely skeptical of the whole idea that psychedelic drugs help you contact remote beings somewhere out there. I have no doubt they make you feel that way.
There is a much more mundane possibility here... that the psychedelic drug is somehow breaking down the barrier between the conscious, "awake" or "alert" mind of the ego and the computational circuitry of the brain that makes this whole roller-coaster ride of consciousness possible.
So, here's my hypothesis of what McKenna is describing (in terms of methodological materialism).
There must be some kind of "proto-thoughts" which eventually form into the thoughts which we experience in our conscious mind as the "inner voice" or "inner dialogue". When you speak to yourself in your mind, who's talking and who's listening? We haven't the slightest idea how big or small these proto-thoughts are or what their nature or encoding is. Similarly, there must be some kind of "proto-action", some kind of primitive urge to act that underlies the indivisible urge to action which we consciously experience.
Yet, how could there be any physical metaphor for these proto-thoughts or proto-urges? If what McKenna is describing is really a lifting of the veil that hides the subconscious from the conscious, then it makes sense that the world should appear and sound and feel very strange and alien because whatever sensations he is experiencing are really piggy-backing on the brain's systems which were designed to construct conscious awareness of real, physical phenomena; I think it's safe to say your brain wasn't designed to get plastered on DMT (though McKenna has actually written a book claiming otherwise, lol).
Each of the facts that are so astonishing, I believe, reinforce my hypothesis.
That you experience other-worldly sights, sounds, sensations and feelings
That you perceive many entities
That these entities are immensely intricate
That these entities are intelligent
That these entities speak to you and particularly that they urge you to act
That you utter syntactical gibberish
My hypothesis is that there are zillions of "proto-thoughts" and "proto-urges" floating, subliminally, in the brain. Most of these are so simple and buried so deep in the subconscious that no amount of drugs would ever make you directly aware of them. However, there is some kind of "selection principle" which operates on the simplest and smallest proto-thoughts and proto-urges by which those that are not sufficient to rise to the level of consciousness are eliminated and the others rise and possible join together. As this process continues, the final result is a much smaller number (maybe hundreds or thousands) of almost fully-formed thoughts and urges which lie just below the surface of consciousness.
When McKenna takes the DMT, the veil is lifted - this veil is the final round of selection that elminates all but one or two proto-thoughts and proto-urges. The result is your consciousness. When that veil is lifted, you are conversing with the many proto-thoughts and proto-urges from which your consciousness is being selected. This is why the entities are intelligent. They don't just seem intelligent, they are intelligent, every bit as intelligent as you are because any one of them could have been selected in the final round to become your conscious thoughts and urges.
The immense intricacy of the entities is a result of the fact that they have already undergone many levels of selection and accumulation of smaller, simpler proto-thoughts and urges. So, they are fantastically complex. They are particularly difficult for the individual to analyze because they are every bit as complex as he himself is... they are, in essence, the many individuals he could have become in the ordinary conscious state.
He says he feels these entities jumping in and out of himself, which is also consistent with my hypothesis. This is what it feels like for one of your proto-thoughts or proto-urges to make the final round of selection and become you. Or, perhaps it's more accurate to say that you finally become one of them. This is consistent with Blavatsky's insight that everything within the Universe "seek what likes and avoid what dislikes." I think these proto-thoughts/proto-urges are best understood as acting beings and, thus, subject to praxeological law.
He reports that he felt like he could do the very jumping they were doing through his own body from deep down up towards his mouth and out. I think this is particularly the proto-urge to speak. The feeling of exhaling from one's diaphragm and out through one's mouth and into the space outside the mouth and that the act of doing so constructs some kind of real object (a thought that others can hear and "see").
Finally, there is the syntactical gibberish which confirms that a) the DMT is retrogressive and not progressive and b) the psychedelic experience is primarily centered around retrogression of the discursive component of consciousness.
As I hinted earlier, I think we should think of these entities as complete in themselves. They are "beings" that - consistent with Blavatsky's principle of Universal action - are striving to survive, they are acting beings which avoid what they dislike and seek what they like. Each one is competing to "jump into him" that is, each one is competing to be the one that is selected to be him. This selection principle is, of course, unmistakably Darwinian. The competition, then, is between bits of "neural software" that we experience as "self-dribbling, jewel-crusted basketballs" that resemble Faberge eggs and "sing structures into being" if we lift the veil of consciousness with the aid of DMT.
But there is really no a priori reason that we should think that the Universe itself is not subject to this principle all the way down. We prejudicially divide between "animate" and "inanimate" matter and we ascribe to the latter a certain sort of mundane, inactive solidarity. A rock will simply sit there, inert for the entire lifetime of the universe unless something acts on it. Hence, whatever the rock is made of is clearly inert, as well.
But it is conceivable that at the lowest levels (say, near the Planck distance, which we still cannot get within 20 orders of magnitude of observing), the Universe itself is undergoing a similar process of action whereby everything that exists is competing to remain in existence. Like the smallest and simplest proto-thoughts and proto-urges, they can act in only very limited and unsophisticated ways but the underlying principle is the same.
Now, I'm not going to claim that this is an explanation of consciousness because I don't think that it is. But I think physical theory may have to re-tool itself as we peer further down into the physical world because there is a lot of room for complexity below what we can currently observe.
Summary: What I found fascinating in Blavatsky's lecture was the idea of extending the action principle to the entire Universe itself (particularly, in the small) so that we might be able to think of the smallest components of the Universe as "acting beings" which are "seeking what they like" and "avoiding what they dislike" and that I think we can actually see this principle in action in the case of psychedelic drugs and the experience of proto-thoughts and proto-urges they enable us to experience.
Clayton -
wasted
wasted
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swirlsofhistory
swirlsofhistory
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Leibniz already thought this without the aid of psychedelic drugs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadology
It's funny how often drug induced mutterings, in spite of their supposed creativity, closely reflect the existing ideas of ruling class philosophy.
It's funny how often drug induced mutterings, in spite of their supposed creativity, closely reflect the existing ideas of ruling class philosophy.
Superabound
Superabound
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
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is Clayton the Tim Wise of dragonkin?
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
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I think your op looks very interesting op, could you let me know what it was about
Lucille
Lucille
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Well, if you go back to the original thread I started on Mises.org, you will see that the first few posts actually were about this very subject: the Universe as an acting (because evolving) being. My specific problem is not with the idea of evolution as pervasive even within processes we do not ordinarily think of as evolutionary (e.g. particle physics) but, rather, with Smolin's theory of "embedded universes" within black holes. Such a theory is unfalsifiable since we cannot even observe black holes, let alone what is inside them.
Clayton -
Superabound
Superabound
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
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Lucille posted:Well, if you go back to the original thread I started on Mises.org, you will see that the first few posts actually were about this very subject: the Universe as an acting (because evolving) being. My specific problem is not with the idea of evolution as pervasive even within processes we do not ordinarily think of as evolutionary (e.g. particle physics) but, rather, with Smolin's theory of "embedded universes" within black holes. Such a theory is unfalsifiable since we cannot even observe black holes, let alone what is inside them.
Clayton -
i spent literally 3 hours today reading about holograms
Superabound
Superabound
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
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did you know that the entirety of the hologram is recorded onto every point of the hologram? if you cut a hologram in half, instead of two halves of a single image, you get two full copies of the image, each at half the resolution. pretty neat!