Thursday, February 18, 2010

The Undifferentiated Unity

My friend in Montana, Jenny, sent some good observations and questions via email. Let’s address them here, together.

First, she says, “Thought, as our species experiences it, appears to be a function of individuality and if it is thoroughly reflected upon appears more as a review than the extension of the unfamiliar.” She writes of metaphysical writings that propose we do not really “think;” that thinking’s true nature is creativity rather than invention. I like the sound of this, although I am unfamiliar with the writings referred to, and I need clarification of the difference between creativity and invention… She also writes that “decision making has become a substitute for choice.” Since decision making is the primary function of units of consciousness, I wonder at the difference between decision making and choice… Jenny? Will you reply in “Comments” with clarifications?

She quotes someone as saying that “consciousness is another way of saying split mind.” I would agree with that. Being conscious implies a perceiver and something to perceive. This is the first division, the first duality: self and object. Ch. 1 of the “Simple Explanation” steps through the genesis of this first dialectic. Jenny suggests that the term “undifferentiated unity” would be a good way to describe what I call the pure consciousness of the metaverse, without pattern or form. Yes, undifferentiated unity is an accurate term to describe the ground state of the metaverse, the condition of no divisions, no dualities, no particularities, only undifferentiated unity. This would also be the state achieved during transcendent meditation when one merges back into thoughtless bliss.

Jenny also recommends reading David Bohm’s “Wholeness and the Implicate Order,” for Bohm’s notions of the relationship between order and consciousness.

Jenny had not encountered the toroid prior to reading the “Simple Explanation” blog. Now she is looking for them in nature. She writes, “I suspect this structure is represented in some form, somewhere (other than the doughnut). If it is, as the narrator indicated on the science channel, a form that exists at every point in space then surely it is mirrored somewhere in our visible world.” Jenny started looking for toroids and discovered that healthy red blood cells--the oxygen transport system of the body—are toroids!


For sure, I hadn’t thought of that. What I can tell you is that the toroidal shape is everywhere once you start looking, from the tiniest objects in our universe—quantum probability clouds—

to huge, overarching shapes that have been shown to enfold our planet, our solar system, and our galaxy.




Van Allen Belt surrounds earth







Kuiper Belt surrounds our solar system









Oort Cloud surrounds our solar system




The Simple Explanation proposes that the great mother of all toroids enfolds our entire physical universe, holding its divisions and particularities away from the “undifferentiated unity” of the background metaverse and at the same time sending organizational and informational toroidal waves inward.
Lastly, Jenny has asked me to clarify “metaverse.” The metaverse, as I use it, is “one step back” from our universe. To observe something’s meta level requires the observer to “step back” or “step up” one level to the place where unity dissolves apparent division. For example, if a couple were disagreeing over where to go for dinner, rather than fight over the merits of Mexican vs. Chinese food, the couple could step up to the meta level and examine whether this was really just a power struggle or test of who loves who more. By taking it up to the meta level, the dialectic of this food vs. that food becomes irrelevant. So it is with the metaverse. I wanted to step back from our universe to the meta level of creation in order to resolve our apparent divisions. The meta-universe or metaverse resolves our apparent divisions by unifying them at the higher level. As to the descriptions given of the metaversal matrix and the subsequent unfolding of our universe, these were inferred through intuition and logic. In my chalk drawings, the metaverse is located "outside" the universal toroidal shell.

13 comments:

  1. Jenny, those are some great insights.

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  2. In response to your inquiry about the clarification of my proposal that we may not be the creatures of thought we consider ourselves to be, and that thought as we seem to experience it is primarily a function of the acquired known over time, I believe that posing the question,"do we think?" is actually a consideration that offers value, and if nothing else, could make for an interesting exchange of ideas. The questions that would naturally flow from the first one could be intriguing.
    For the purpose of ease and unanimity in our communications I would like to preface the discussion by representing the distinction I am making between what we reference as thought in our daily lives, with the lower case "t", and what may be considered Thought in its spirit-identification form, with the capital "T".
    I suspect that what we call thought is erroneous in its very nature. Its relationship with consciousness and the activity of memory is intimate and feels familiar, and we embrace it even if that familiarity breeds contempt. Thought may be a psychological construct imagined over time which is continually and unceasingly referenced in terms of its defining fundamental principles which are; the good and the bad of this existence, and am "I" pleasured or displeasured by one of these perceptive/behavioral options. That may be all the cause there is in our lives thus severely reducing the current of information accumulated over millions (perhaps billions of years - all of time) to a drop, as opposed to having available an ocean of reference. (I am not alluding to omniscience here, just yet.) Whereas, Thought of the creative sort would not be a function of conscious control in which measurement and comparison are the tools of its expression. Part 1

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  3. "To set up what you like against what you dislike - this is the disease of the mind"

    "Can we change destructive behaviors once we are aware of them? Or are we, at least at this stage of human evolution, trapped in a state of cognitive dissonance in which, powerless to change we watch ourselves behave in ways we do not condone?"

    If there is accuracy in this proposal then it could account for the nature of the effects our activity (what we call thought) produces "out there." Every objective, each motivation, and the matter of significance in our lives would be contaminated by this now acceptable state of affairs - seeing through the glass darkly, myopic, opinion heaving, righteously indignant source of very densely constructed mediocity. (All of our "going nowhere dreams.") Mechanisms of illusion are what have been substituted for Thought, of the miraculous order. Memory may be one of these mechanisms. It is related to all those experiences we define as essential and therefore valuable - loss and gain, pain and pleasure, sickness and health, fear and certainty - the list of neurotic demonstrations are abundant, yet curiously bounded. (J. Krishnamurti made a distinction between technical memory, like rememmbering your phone number or how to drive yourself home, and psychological memory which include pleasurable/traumatic experiences, and are recalled to testify to ones success/suffering.) Part 2

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  4. I suspect that if someone could come up with an algorithmic equation that would reveal the fractal geometric equivalent for insanity you may find that the pattern would embrace most, if not all, of the behaviors "mankind" embodies and therefore manifests "out there" in the real world. (Are we to assume that this worldy condition is actually reality?) The planet and these human forms are bodies of evidence. They may not exist at the level of cause but simply in the field of effect. The cost for seeing these conditions as cause would secure a particular perceptive ability that insures an interlocking chain of error that is conspicuously selective, divisive, and fragmented. We then draw the conclusion that what has consequences must be real. Correction becomes our perceived function producing the relationship (an effect) of victim (helplessness/weakness) and accuser. I read a book years ago that was, in part, responsible for my questions about the nature of thought. It is titled; "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes. It is a stunning and provocative exploration that draws its conclusions from studies of the brain in relationship to archeological evidential data. I was first introduced to the notion of the "split-brain" phenomena in this unorthodox document. I now wonder if Mr.Jaynes ever completed his work to be titled, "The Consequences of Consciousness?" I'll have to check into it. What I surmised was that the split-brain condition was still the effect of something our senses could not embrace - the split-mind. The brain may be the physical progeny of the split-mind phenomena. In this scenario the brain becomes an instrument of conflict whose function is to make up problems which must be solved but correction under these very limited conditions must invariably separate. If correction is not identical with Forgiveness(different than pardon) the activity is merely a shift of balance in the arena of sacrifice. Part 3

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  5. "In his dialogue with Phaedrus reported by Plato, Socrates recounts how Thoth, the Egyptian god who invented letters, had misjudged the effect of his invention. Thoth was thus reproached by the God Thamus, then the king of Egypt:
    This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblence of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."
    I thought this to be an interesting quote. It implies many things but within the context of the rest of the document it is indicated that memory performed, at one time, considerable feats, was considered an art, and was regarded differently, perhaps even developed in a manner we would today consider mysterious.
    Your book title is perfectly relevant, in that I believe that there is a "Simple Explanation of Absolutely Every-thing" but what continues to elude us is that explanation for absolutely no-thing. This is where consciousness (at least as we experience it) cannot go. Consciousness can point to It (that which is immeasureable), pray for It, have faith in It, and believe one has actually found It (the most formidable delusion of them all), but It cannot be found because It was never lost - we just believe that we can be separate from It. We may be suffering from an acute and debilitating case of imaginary guilt for having left home - but not really - just in our dreams/nightmares.
    If you remain interested in this kind of conversation I will attempt to address the other considerations I referenced, like the difference between choice and decisions.
    I'll sign off for now.
    Good night...J Part 4

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  6. Excellent, Jenny! This is wonderful stuff. Please do go on...

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  7. Reply to Jenny's post of March 13th at 6:36 PM:
    "Yes" to your description of ordinary thought processes as evaluative memory rather than creative thinking.
    The Simple Explanation would describe this as your governing UC's preoccupation with its own meme bundle--the memes we choose to embrace, the memes we choose to reject, our karmic record of interactions with the material world and other UCs--picture the personal UC and its garment of tatty old memes. This garment's pattern defines the UC's sense of personal identity. The material bound UC mistakes its meme bundle for all that is and it does not look beyond to the greater metaversal patterns available to inform and guide its decisions.

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  8. Reply to Jenny's post of March 13th at 6:57:
    I think we can change destructive behavior once we are aware of them. The piecemeal approach would be to detach from the memes that contribute to suffering, while concurrently seeking out beneficial memes to take their place.
    For example, if I have a habit of eating too much junk food and the consequences are showing up negatively in my body, then I need to isolate the meme that encourages the junk food and cease valuing that meme and any associated meme that's riding along with it. Rational-emotive therapy would be helpful in this regard. If you discovered, for example, that you eat junk food when you feel stressed, the meme is "junk food calms me down." Once the meme is isolated like this, it can be detached and a more helpful meme can be inserted to replace it. "Breathing deeply calms me down," for example.
    This approach, though helpful, does not free the UC from the greater delusion that "this is preferable to that." As long as the UC believes some phenomena are good and some are bad, reality will remain fragmented.

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  9. I was going to reply in detail to the other two sections of Jenny's comments, but there really is no need. I agree with what you're saying, as far as I can understand your meaning. By "split mind," are you referring to our "meat mind" vs. our higher UC? Did you read the section called "Mud Up, Spirit Down"? In Yoga, this split is called "manas" for the meat mind, and "discriminating intelligence" for the Self UC. The meat mind is very clever and a human can get along very well on the manas alone. The job of the manas is to navigate the meat through this manifested universe. The job of the discriminating intelligence of the Self UC is to reconnect the soul to its original source and true nature--the metaversal consciousness of the universal UC.

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  10. Riffing on something anonymous said in an earlier comment concerning a fractal formula for insanity...
    I was watching a program on television that showed how the capillaries feeding healthy tissue are regular fractal branches. Then they showed how the capillaries that feed cancer tumors are not fractal but chaotic. They said they use the chaos to spot tumors.
    Isn't that neat? I'm pretty sure this applies to the fractal insanity notion as well.

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  11. I got lost at “Being conscious implies …”, my reaction being, to whom? I think oneness requires the twoness of at least zeroness; first decision being self and not self.

    I really liked the story of the god with the letters; it’s like a memory that won’t quite settle into place. Far be it from me to argue against literacy.

    Freud was WRONG. There’s at least five of me here! They’re climbing all over! Oh… sorry. Never mind; I woke up looking at a fractured mirror.

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  12. Freud was wrong all over the place, Greg. No arguments here on that score. I don't think he's held in such high repute nowadays, so we don't have to bother refuting him. I know you're joking, but just a reminder that negatively invoking unpleasant memes is still keeping them alive in your meme bundle just as surely as if you were praising them.

    The "implies" of "being conscious implies" was implying to you and me, the ones having this discussion. It didn't mean to refer to the undifferentiated unity implying. But you're probably joking again, yes? You must think I'm too serious. I can see from the blog how people might get that impression.

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  13. Hi Cyd, Great site you have. I agree with your panpsychic toroidal fractal metaverse philosophy. But I miss the element of computation. In fact the presence of UCs in a conformation at one level themselves are also informational content from the perspective of higher level UCs. A kind of computational substrate made of midichlorians. This then creates a pancomputational panpsychic whole. I explain this here: http://ezinearticles.com/?Panpsychic-Pancomputationalism-As-Framework-to-Build-a-TOE&id=9178760
    If you like it, feel free to add the computational element to your philosophy, which in fact would make it merge with my philosophy or TOE. You can also have a look at my blog: http://technovedanta.blogspot.nl

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