A Simple Explanation of Jellyfish

Box Jellyfish photo and related article posted at SciNewsBlog

The New York Times ran an article last Tuesday (June 7, 2011) on jellyfish entitled, "So Much More Than Plasma and Poison." Here's a quote from that article:

A diverse group of thousands of species of gooey, saclike invertebrates found throughout the world, the jellyfish are preposterously ancient, dating back 600 million to 700 million years or longer. That’s roughly twice as old as the earliest bony fish and insects, three times the age of the first dinosaurs.
“Jellyfish are the most ancient multiorgan animal on earth,” said David J. Albert, a jellyfish expert at the Roscoe Bay Marine Biological Laboratory in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The New York Times article goes on to cite several recent studies of jellyfish that disprove old assumptions. Contrary to earlier belief, jellyfish are not brainless, thoughtless lumps of protoplasm. Box jellyfish, for example, have eyes very much like human eyes, mounted on gyroscopic stalks that allow them to stare upward and out of the water for active shoreline navigation. Another study of jellyfish concludes that, although their neurons are distributed diffusely and not concentrated into a brain, jellyfish do nevertheless perform complex behaviors well beyond simple reflex. Please take a look at the nine-picture slideshow that accompanies the New York Times article by clicking on this NYT link, The Complexity of Jellyfish. Believe me, it's worth the look!

Here's what comes to my mind when I look at these photos of jellyfish--swimming toroids!

Here; watch the following short youtube video of bioluminescent jellyfish and see swimming, glowing toroids for yourself. It's quite beautiful.

Now here's the absurdly Simple Explanation of what we are seeing:

Jellyfish are the purest expression of the manifested toroidal pattern at the multi-organed animal level.

It's as if the first pattern that our ancient governing units of consciousness attempted was the pattern most familiar to them: the toroid.

The toroidal pattern seems to have been a very good choice; jellyfish have survived for at least 600 million years and passed unscathed through five global waves of mass extinction. Jellyfish were populating the planet well before vegetation evolved on land! According to the NYT article, jellyfish are twice as old as bony fish and insects, and three times older than the earliest dinosaurs. With that much jellyfish time, chances are good that there have been an enormous number of jellyfish UCs.

There is even one type of jellyfish, turritopsis nutricula, that appears to be immortal. Through a process called transdifferentiation, this creature is able to cycle from polyp to adult to aged and back to polyp again in an unending cycle of regeneration.

Turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish

Simple Explanation's diagram of memes and karma encycling an individual's UC.

Since reading about jellyfish and seeing these pictures of them, I've been doing a little jellyfish qigong in the morning that you may like to try:

Standing comfortably, arms relaxed at sides, chin down, eyes closed. Breathing in slowly, imagining myself a jellyfish breathing in ocean water and bouying up, floating effortlessly in the sea. Feeling light, swaying in the currents.  Then exhale the air, exhale the ocean water, coasting along in the current of sea, relaxing. Resting lightly, the legs and arms, the tentacles,hanging loose.  Repeat.

Peace. 

Toroidal Patterns in Fruit

I love seeing the toroidal patterns in the fruits and vegetables as I prepare them for salads. Here are a few pictures from my kitchen that clearly illustrate how the toroidal flow imprints itself upon fruit.



Could this apple resemble the torus any more closely?

The Simple Explanation's basic toroidal forces: yellow arrows = love, coherence, gravity pressing inward; white arrows cycle around the outside, up, over, and straight down through the center = constantly recycling protoenergy, karma; arrows out from the middle = ananda, joy, expansion, energetic and material manifestation into our apparent universe. 

This is the toroidal pattern of creation, fractally replicating as an apple. The straight stem follows the pattern of the toroidal pole. The skin takes the shape of the outside of the torus, wrapping over the lip and falling into the gravity well of the stem. The seed explosion at the middle resembles the ananda/joy point of individual manifestation, carrying forward the next iteration of fractal expressions of the torus.



Top view of apple showing the outside flow pattern of the torus, as lines loop from pole to pole and then over the top hump and down into the center. The toroidal pole comes straight up the middle.

Top view of the most basic energetic patterns of creation. This is a top view of the Simple Explanation toroidal forces diagram above.

 A few days ago I was moved to photograph these cherry tomatoes as I was preparing them for an omelet.

The first thing that struck me was the impression of the Tree of Life in the tomato half, like a sparkling little diorama of a tree and its roots.

Cherry tomato tree of life

Next I was struck by the perfect torus shape.

The cherry tomato is a fractal iteration of the universal toroidal fractal.

(the following section has been relocated from the "stay centered" article.)

Oftentimes, matter can be seen as an allegorical expression of idealistic patterns. I recently noticed even more similarities between this toroidal model and the seed patterns in fruit.

The star of seeds inside a pear is like particles pouring out of the big bang.



The star of seeds at the center of the pear expresses the fractal formula of the pear.

Behold the UC as expressed by the pear. You can see the dynamic energy of both vitality and information exploding from the center of the pear as a starburst of seeds. The center point of the toroid expresses both energy and joy and it bursts forth into our universe. The patterns at the center of the fruit are fractally true. The center is life and truth. It is the center from which the metaversal pattern emerges. Near the seeds we see an area of denser nutrients (the intense yellow of the bottom photo). This area can be thought of as the sustenance of our immediate surroundings, placed there by the Universal UC for our use and care. The meaty area outside that is what I think of as somewhat removed from the middle, as consciousness looking outward rather than inward. There are no metaversal seeds out there. Finally, we can see the skin containing this pear, holding it separate, sealing it off, protecting and constraining.



The star of seeds, ananda/joy, exploding from the middle. Love/coherence pressing inward from the skin. A UC made manifest.



On another note, this morning when I opened the Albion Inn's refrigerator, I was greeted by this charming watermelon.

The outside of this watermelon reminds me of the Simple Explanation's model of memes shrouding UCs, wrapping around the torus shape from pole to pole and back again through the middle:

toroidal pattern on the watermelon's skin



A Simple Explanation of "Stay Centered"

We are often advised to "stay centered" in order to better deal with life's challenges. This is timeless advice. Most ancient philosophies, in the West and the East, incorporate some version of "staying centered."

Both the Bible and the Tao Te Ching promote the memes "stay centered," and "walk the straight and narrow path." For example, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said,

Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13)

And Lao Tzu similarly recommended,

The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths. Be aware when things are out of balance. Stay centered within the Tao. (from verse 53, Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation)

In the examples above, "staying centered" refers to keeping to a narrow field of possible action, as opposed to broader or more diverse paths.

Another way to "stay centered" is expressed by the Golden Mean, which Aristotle described as keeping to the beneficial middle and avoiding extremes. In Chinese philosophy this is called the Doctrine of the Mean. In Buddhism the same meme is called The Middle Way. Each tradition uses slightly different words and metaphors, but they all articulate the same meme.

Here is the Simple Explanation of "Stay Centered":



Staying Centered Near the Vortex Maintains Alignment with the Metaverse

Staying centered means keeping your conscious focus on the here and now, remaining poised in the present between past and future. Staying centered means allowing your Unit of Consciousness to align with the Universal UC, rather than with your ego. Staying centered acknowledges that the answers lie in the immediate present, not out there in some other place or time.   

According to the Simple Explanation, information from the metaverse flows into our universe through the dynamic patterns of the Universal UC. In our model, the patterns of our space-time continuum emerge fractally from the zero-point field at the center of the Universal UC. These patterns are both ideal and material. Idealistic patterns include, for example, the laws of physics, mathematics, and karma. Material patterns are expressed in the 3-D universe with which we are all familiar.

Spiritually, the best solutions arise from God, also known as the Universal UC, or the metaversal fractal. Answers to problems are not found in the broad pathways of the world; attempting to find answers "out there" will not align you with the metaversal plan. Keeping to the center aligns one with God's will.

When I image nestling backward into the Universal UC, I imagine falling smaller toward the ananda/joy direction, while still feeling the outer skin of the Universal UC holding from the outside and flowing through the middle. Perfection and possibility emerge from the middle as the universe instantiates around me. This would be the truest expression of the meme "stay centered".

Sagrada Familia -- Biomimetics and Architectural Symbolism

At the doctor's office the other day, I happened to see the December, 2010, National Geographic article on Barcelona's Sagrada Familia cathedral.  How this amazing structure, which has been under construction for a hundred years, passed me by until now is a mystery to me. The architect, Antoni Gaudi, designed this cathedral to uniquely reflect God's plan of natural structural design in contrast with the usual human approaches to architecture and engineering. The load-bearing columns, for example, replicate the twisting and branching structure of tree trunks rather than the normal design and arrangement of columns and arches typical of cathedrals. Gaudi also reflected God's plan in pure math forms, such as "Quadratic surfaces and conic curves: parabolas, hyperboloids, ruled surfaces."

The National Geographic article calls Gaudi's approach "biomimetic architecture."

Here's a quote from the National Geographic article:

"As idiosyncratic as Gaudí himself, it is a vision inspired by the architect's religious faith and love of nature. He understood that the natural world is rife with curved forms, not straight lines. And he noticed that natural construction tends to favor sinewy materials such as wood, muscle, and tendon. With these organic models in mind, Gaudí based his buildings on a simple premise: If nature is the work of God, and if architectural forms are derived from nature, then the best way to honor God is to design buildings based on his work. As the Barcelona scholar Joan Bassegoda Nonell notes, "Gaudí's famous phrase, 'originality is returning to the origin,' means that the origin of all things is nature, created by God." Gaudí's faith was his own. But his belief in the beautiful efficiency of natural engineering clearly anticipated the modern science of biomimetics."

Yes, toroidal forces appear is in this cathedral in many forms. Here's what Wikipedia says about the hyperboloids:

"Gaudí used hyperboloid structures in later designs of the Sagrada Família (more obviously after 1914), however there are a few places on the nativity façade—a design not equated with Gaudí's ruled-surface design, where the hyperboloid crops up. For example, all around the scene with the pelican there are numerous examples (including the basket held by one of the figures). There is a hyperboloid adding structural stability to the cypress tree (by connecting it to the bridge). And finally, the "bishop's mitre" spires are capped with hyperboloid structures.[9] In his later designs, ruled surfaces are prominent in the nave's vaults and windows and the surfaces of the Passion facade."

Here's an image of a hyperboloid

Do you see that this mathematical structure is also the central funnel of the torus? The hyperboloid shape can have a wide waist or a narrow waist.

 

Natural light is funneled through the cathedral's ceiling through numerous hyperboloidal skylights. Hyperboloid skylights allow more light to enter because light rays follow the same straight lines that create the circular cut-out. Take a look at the image of the hyperboloid above. Do you see how the grid lines that seem to swirl around are actually straight? A ray of light that enters along one of the grid lines at the top of the figure goes straight along wall of the hyperboloid through the middle to an apparently wider diameter than the size of the hole. A simple hole or tube only allows the light to go straight down the sides of the cut-out. 

The twisting of the columns also follows the hyperboloid which provides structural strength. A hyperboloid column distributes load more efficiently than a traditional straight column.

I personally love the skylights. To me, the light coming in through the funnel is a good visual metaphor for the light of God inspiring our path, or to put it another way, for the metaversal information pouring into our universe through our universal funnel.

 Watch for another article here soon discussing the symbology of the cathedral's spires...