Fractal Yarrow Flower

The yarrow flowers are abundant this year, due to an especially late spring and late, heavy rains. Yesterday, when I was out walking the dogs, I noticed how beautifully fractal the yarrow flowers are. Looking at the largest flowerhead shape here as the first level, you can easily see two fractal levels down from there--the florets within the flower have florets of their own. Here's the picture I took with my cell phone.

Notice how fractal the yarrow flower is

When I look at this outwardly bursting, fractal pattern I am reminded of ananda-joy energy exploding outward into our space-time continuum from the center of here and now.

Ananda-joy energy bursting outward into our space-time continuum manifests at the next fractal level up as the smallest level of material quanta (anu). The Simple Explanation proposes that a unit of consciousness (UC) is associated with every manifested thing, from quanta on up.

When the inward-poking forces wrap around from the outside and slide into the vortex, they wind up poking outward from the center in an explosive pattern. You can read more about toroidal flow here.

Here is what the yarrow flower looks like before it unfurls. All the florets are turned inward, facing the inside.

Can you see how the inside of the yarrow resembles the illustration above of toroidal flow? On the outside, you can see only the stems, looking very much like meme strings wrapped around a UC.

I am also reminded of "falling backward" into smaller and smaller fractal calculations until the pattern of the yarrow flower becomes the pattern of the molecules and the atoms and the sub-atomic particles fractally nesting until not even their wave forms remain to disturb the singularity of pure consciousness.

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At the beginning of this article I identified three fractal levels of one repetitive pattern that makes up the yarrow flower. Here are a couple of more pictures that demonstrate two more fractal levels up from the flower. Looking at the entire plant, you can see that each yarrow flower is to the plant as each floret is to the flower. One level up from there, you can see that each yarrow plant is to the field as each flower is to the plant, as each floret is to the flower, as each tiny floret is to the larger floret...

Yarrow flower

Yarrow plant

Yarrow field

Toroids and Trees

Almost every day I walk with my dogs in a small woods that runs alongside a canyon creek near our inn. Over the past three years, I've become very fond of these woods, the little creek, and the tiny waterfall that marks our turnaround point. 

Franny and Zoey at Oredson-Todd Woods in Ashland, OR

Since writing the Simple Explanation, I've been noticing toroids in the trees. Look--

Tree Torus

My cell-phone photos do not do justice to this sensuous, rounded tree torus. Each tree has a torus wherever a branch existed and exists no more. When the branch goes away, the tree's skin fills in and rounds out the hollow.

For that matter, the torus is there from the beginning of the branch, as well. You could say that the branch emerges out of the torus form, like a stick poking out through a donut. It is difficult to observe this at the formative stage, but you can see how it happened in retrospect, by examining a branch in the process of going away.

In the photo above, you see a dead branch on its way out, emerging out of the torus in the wall of a fallen tree. Had this been a live tree, the skin would have grown back around the hole left behind after the branch stump finally fell out, forming the torus shape in the earlier photo.



Tree in process of reforming a torus shape around a sawn-off limb.

In the same manner that the Simple Explanation suggests each of our organs has "a mind of its own" with its own governing UC attached to it, so each tree branch is a separate and distinct entity, a fractal of the mother tree. Each branch as a job to do, to follow the sun and gain nourishment from the rain and sky, in order to contribute to the tree's greater good. When it is no longer able to do its job, the branch withdraws into its original torus shape from which it emerged.

Lisi's "Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything"

A comment by one of our Anonymous readers last week invited me to read the Wikipedia article called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything," which concerns a physical theory of everything (TOE) recently proposed by Garrett Lisi et. al. Naturally, the similarity between the title of that theory and the Simple Explanation's title piqued my curiosity. I have now read the Wiki article and have also followed and read various html links leading out from that article. While I don't pretend to understand all of the physics, from what I can tell so far, their theory is possibly compatible with the Simple Explanation's toroidal model.

Look at these images from the wiki article.  Here we see Lisi's breakdown of the hierarchical levels of matter.

Levels of magnification:
1. Macroscopic level - Matter
2. Molecular level
3. Atomic level - Protons, neutrons, and electrons
4. Subatomic level - Electron
5. Subatomic level - Quarks
6. E8

[Click here to read this blog's Simple Explanation article on hierarchies of matter and their relationship to consciousness.]

At the smallest level of instantiation, Lisi proposes this "most beautiful" geometric figure, called E8.

Diagram of E8

Interesting how this view of E8 so resembles a topside view of our Simple Explanation's familiar wireframe torus. Beyond the similarity in names, both Simple theories propose a single mechanism that unites the four fundamental forces into one singular protoforce.

 The figure below is another view of E8. Click on the caption to see a most amazing dynamic view of E8 in rotation, hosted at wikipedia commons.





Rotation of the E8 root system in eight dimensions, with particle assignments corresponding to gravitational, electroweak, and strong charges



 Later, when I have more time, I may attempt a Simple Explanation of "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything."  In the meantime, this Scientific American article where Lisi defends his Theory is an interesting read.

Bagel-shaped Protons

I'm sorry I haven't been able to write much lately. This is our busy season here at the Albion Inn and my innkeeping duties prevent me from sitting at the computer long enough to get an article out. But every once in a while we have a guest here at the inn that somehow furthers the Simple Explanation along, either through discussions with me, or through some other means.

We had a physics professor staying here at the Albion Inn last week. He and his wife were amused to see the torus on my Simple Explanation business card. It happens to be the same torus drawing as the illustration below. Turns out this professor, Gerald Miller, demonstrated back in 2003 that some protons are toroidal. The others, he said, were spherical. I asked him if it was possible that the spherical protons were actually toroidal. He said, "no." But then I asked him if the spherical protons might not look spherical on the outside, but possess toroidal flow energies within their borders. He said, "yes, that could be the case."

Here's a short article from the online Discover Magazine about it:

Discover Magazine,What Shape Are Your Protons?

by Kathy A. Svitil

From the August 2003 issue; published online August 1, 2003

In the subatomic world, nothing is simple. Take the proton, a fundamental particle found in the nucleus of every atom. For decades, students have been taught to picture the proton as a nice round ball, like a miniature planet. But no: The latest computer simulations show the particles can resemble peanuts, beehives, even bagels.

The three faces of a proton: sphere, peanut, and bagel.

Graphics courtesy of Gerald Miller/University of Washington (3).

Protons are complicated because they are composites of three smaller bits, called quarks, that zip around inside at roughly half the speed of light. "Quarks cannot escape from the proton. When they come to a wall, they turn around and change their direction," says theoretical physicist Gerald Miller of the University of Washington. Bouncing around gives the proton a net angular momentum. Using a mathematical model based on studies from particle accelerators, Miller showed how a proton's internal momentum affects its shape. Fast quarks that spin in the same direction as the overall proton distort it into a peanut, while quarks that have opposite spin breed bagels. Proton shape-shifting probably influences subatomic interactions in ways that are not yet known. Nobody understands exactly how the momentum inside a proton keeps changing. "All we can say is that sometimes it is large and sometimes small, and every proton can fluctuate instantly from one shape to another," Miller says.

I just love how the universe brings all good things to me. Even our guests are special.

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



Is Gravity a Toroidal Force?

What is gravity? Whence does it originate?

It occurs to me that gravity could be the attractive force of the outside of the toroidal shell that transmits our fractal consciousness.

In the diagram below, the yellow arrows pointing inward have been identified by the Simple Explanation as "coherence," or "love." At the very large level of the Universal UC, this force of coherence extends into our universe as the force that contains our space/time continuum and that ultimately draws the multiplicity of fractal UCs back to itself. 

At the very small level of material instantiation, this inward force of cohesion feels like a "pull," drawing anything outside itself toward the surface of its shell. This is the same fundamental force that contains, at the very large scale, or pulls, at the very small scale, always seeking reunification of the diverse manifestations.

Every UC carries this inward toroidal force. When groups of UCs "hold hands" to work together to build larger/more complex manifestations, this force helps them hook up with each other, coherence. This inward force would be additive, so the more aggregates clumped together, the stronger the "gravity."

Let's talk this over. Could this inward force be gravity? Wouldn't it operate empirically the way gravity operates, and affect those around it the same way  gravity is said to affect time and space? What am I missing here?

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".

A Simple Explanation of Reincarnation

Reincarnation is a meme common to most world religions and spiritual traditions, with the notable exception of contemporary Christianity. Many ancient as well as modern philosophers also incorporate the reincarnation meme into their philosophies.  

Wikipedia defines reincarnation as "entering the flesh again." Depending upon the particular memes held by one's belief system, it is said that after a human dies they may reenter their next life as a newborn human, or possibly an animal or some other form.

The Simple Explanation defines reincarnation this way:

Death breaks the bonds of a Self UC's current material instantiation, but not its karmic pattern. The freed UC continues its existence at a non-material level until its karmic pattern causes it to reattach to a particular newly instantiating aggregate, at which time it is born again into Creation.

A previous Simple Explanation article, Who Am "I" After Death?, describes the process this way:

The "me" that continues to influence the fate of the Self UC after death is nothing but the holographic pattern of all the choices ever made by my UC. In life, this karmically generated vibratory pattern attracts or repels the memes associated with my meme bundles. The memes I think of as "me" are not a part of my Self UC, but are drawn to me by my karmic pattern. It is my karmic record that attracts and repels the patterns of memes surrounding my life at any moment. That the "you" that exists between material incarnations is nothing but your karmic record is proved by one of our basic assertions that all UCs are fundamentally one and the same, and that all UCs begin their individuated journey as perfect echoes of God. Then it follows that "I" develop as a result of my choices and the choices of others--"I" am my perfect UC enshrouded in karma and the memes that my karma attracts.


The Simple Explanation suggests that reincarnations are not random events, but the continuation of karmically-mandated cycles of consequence that do not end with death. It is not logical to expect the consequences of one's actions to end at one's death; if you cut off someone's ear and then die, does the person's ear suddenly grow back? No. Consequences of behavior are not affected by the death of the doer.
 
The memes that one favors in life also continue to live on in the shared transpersonal field after one's death. They were not the UC's property or invention to begin with, therefore it is safe to assume they also continue on after death.

In the Simple Explanation model, “I” consist of my karmic pattern, the memes I hold onto, and the "aggregate UCs of my material body, from the subatomic particles to molecules to cells, all the way up through the UCs of the body’s organ systems" overlaid upon my Self's perfect UC.  In terms of reincarnation, it is only the aggregate UCs and their associated material bodies that change from incarnation to incarnation.
 
In practical terms, here's how I see reincarnation playing out. This person, Cyd, is composed of a Self UC that is a fractal replication of the Universal UC, and virtually identical to the Universal UC. Overlaid upon the Self UC is Cyd's personality, which is largely defined by the memes Cyd holds onto, plus Cyd's karmic record which inclines Cyd's choices this way and that, plus Cyd's physical body and its desires and limitations.
 
When this particular physical body is no longer able to sustain the constellation of UCs that make up "Cyd," this particular hierarchical collection of UCs will disband their union, and all UCs more complex than the molecular level will also "die" along with the governing Self UC. This means that at death, not just one soul passes away, but the souls of millions of aggregate UCs, too. (The molecular, atomic, sub-atomic UCs do not pass on at this time, because they are still able to do their respective jobs.)
 
Every newly instantiating piece of creation needs a UC to oversee its life. At every conception, be it a leaf or a seed, a cell, an organ, or an egg, perhaps even a planet or a galaxy, nature's karmic computer attaches a governing UC. "Cyd's" UC will probably cycle into another newly aggregated body of UCs who all, in the most perfect way imaginable, "deserve" one another. This new Cyd will resemble old Cyd to the extent that new Cyd adopts old Cyd's memes. These memes will be drawn to new Cyd by way of old Cyd's karma, which attracts some memes and repels others. Cyd's new body may also carry some physical traits forward from the previous life in the form of epigenetic patterns that cause genetic traits to turn off and on, as karmically determined. It's likely that new Cyd will be a human, not just because Cyd was human before but, more persuasively, because Cyd's particular karma and meme bundles best instantiate a human form. (If Cyd loved to swim and surf and thought about surfing nonstop and spent all her time on the water, she might as well reincarnate as a porpoise.)


looking up during yesterday's walk in the woods

Quantum Entanglement and Karma

Matter behaves differently at the very small level than it does at our ordinary, visible level. At the smallest levels of material instantiation, two objects can be "entangled," meaning that what happens to one object affects what happens to its partner. For quantum particles to be entangled, they must both have been part of the same larger system/object at one time. When the larger object to which they both belonged no longer holds its integrity, its parts are no longer physically yoked. These now freed quantum particles may relocate to entirely different places in the universe, but they never forget their original family, so what happens to their previous family members continues to affect them. That's a simple explanation of quantum entanglement.

 

To read more on the subject, you may start with following article about Quantum entanglement on wikipedia:

 

Quantum superposition refers to the universe's unending balancing act that preserves perfect poise amongst entangled quanta. So let's say you have a pair of entangled photons and that these two photons know how to spin right and left. What happens with superposition is this: if you cause entangled photon A to spin to the right, photon B will, of its own accord, and without you touching it, spin to the left. 

This quality of superposition makes "action at a distance" possible because you don't have to do anything at all to photon B to make it do something. You only have to affect photon A.

Furthermore, it turns out that if A is entangled with B, and B becomes subsequently entangled with C, then A and C are now also entangled. This is known as entanglement swapping. You can read more about it at the wikipedia article on Quantum teleportation.

The new field of quantum computing takes advantage of these properties of entanglement to transfer and store information. In quantum computing, entangled particles are created by blasting apart their family unit and trapping the subsequent quanta in a computer matrix, called a "register." The quanta trapped in the register then respond to stimulation and perform calculations (i.e. make choices).

The principle behind teleportation works off these same principles: it is possible, theoretically, to prompt changes amongst entangled objects, so that it appears as though information or an object has "travelled" from one place to another. But nothing travelled anywhere. It is the relationship amongst the entangled objects that causes manipulations at A to result in predictable changes in B and C.  

Quantum Superposition refers to the fact that entangled objects will not reveal their superposition outcomes until one of them makes a choice when prodded to do so ("observed"). Up until that choice point, either one of the entangled pair may be the one to, for example, spin right, which would force the other to spin left to maintain universal balance. If, on the other hand, the object was made to spin left, then its entangled partner would be the one to spin right. Quantum Superposition is the attribute of open-endedness prior to the prompted choice.

 

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Here we can see a dynamic mechanism for karma. The Simple Explanation suggests that physical manifestation is simply a fractal order of magnitude step-up from dynamic patterns which are themselves fractal step-ups from the universal Unit of Consciousness. Sub-atomic quanta share these energetic patterns of the very small.

The Simple Explanation's definition of karma is this:

"Karma is the mechanism through which the consequences of behavior inform future potential. Karma is a force of influence that arises out of the decision-making history of every unit of consciousness in the universe. Each UC generates its own karma. We are all affected by one another’s karma. The more a unit of consciousness has in common with another UC, the more it is affected by the other’s karma. Our aggregate karma affects all of creation."

To this definition we can now add quantum entanglement:  Your actions affect not only you, they affect me to the extent we are "entangled." And, because of entanglement swapping, not only am I affected by you, but so is everyone else who is entangled with me, and everyone else entangled with them. And so on, and so on, and so on.

And we are affected not only by actions, but also by each other's memes, which cycle into and throughout our shared transpersonal consciousness.

This principle is probably the reason why all separation is so difficult, especially divorce--"what God has joined together let no man put asunder." The reason is that we cannot separate what was once joined; when we do, entanglement continues, whether we are aware of it or not. Perhaps this is why divorce is so very sad when it occurs; what was once two became one; and once that happens, the bonds are never truly dissolved.

How about this? As we are all fractal replications of the Universal UC, we are in an entangled relationship with the Origin. This is why all UCs not only affect one another, but feel the pull of Consciousness. The continual cycling of information from the metaverse affects us all, all of the time. This is "information" in its truest sense--laying webs of consciousness throughout creation through principles of karmic entanglement.