Intention: Reality’s Hidden Force

We normally exist within a narrow band of the greater spectrum of The Matrix – or All That Is – wherein our faculties have evolved so as to discern what is necessary for survival and reproduction. Otherwise, we are blessed with profound ignorance. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman observes:

“We're blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We're not designed to.”

Yet occasionally we do catch glimpses of other parts of the totality within which we are submerged. Other dimensions, as it were. And one is not only naturally constrained by Nature’s sensory endowment, in many cases our construal of reality is conditioned by our upbringing, education and social context. This brings us to the problem of personal and group ignorance. Our minds have evolved so as to give us answers, and often the answers are based on incomplete bits - like connecting the dots on a partial image of an animal, to thereby see it as a cow or a donkey. Our minds fill in the gaps; and it follows that the gaps may be the stuff of superstition, myth and leprechauns. Only years or centuries later are humanity’s former gaps re-etched with fact, reason and science. In the meantime, we make do with the self-constructed stuff between the dots, until such time as the attendant anomalies create such a mass of dissonance that we are force to explore and experiment deeper. Many things that we take as factual and ‘common sense’ are fallacious yet become part of our consensual, group-think reality. One’s practice of Perennial Dialogue (aka focused independent thinking) may somewhat offset the downside of group-think so as to better deal with the surrounding sea of ignorance and deception; but only to a degree, since our internal dialogue selves are each only individually able to de-code reality within their own discrete Matrix ‘groove’ of awareness. While it is comforting to ‘think like others’, there is an implicit danger in the group ignorance dynamic, since all might go over the cliff together in the next bubble, ponzi scam or war.

We also have personal built-in biases as to what we want to ‘see’ – this is defined as ‘analytical overlay’, wherein one already knows too much to permit alternative interpretation of thoughts and influences flowing into one’s consciousness. Perhaps the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis had this in mind when he wrote:

"Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them - never become even conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?"

Or Aldous Huxley:

“Each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbols which we call languages.

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things. That which – in the language of religion – is called "this world" is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed and petrified by language. The various "other worlds," with which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large.”

Aside from our own genetic and cultural limitations, there are also interests that aspire – for their own purposes – to keep us ignorant, so as to enhance their own power, control, profit or political gain. We will go into this in detail later. Let us now explore some aspects of the role of Intention in determining our Reality, Life and Consciousness:

· INTENTION:

I am not an island
I am not alone
I am my intentions
Trapped here in this flesh and bone.
Melissa Etheridge

Carlos Castaneda taught: “In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.”

It is the force of intention that moves energy and that translates vision into invention whose fruits are physical and psychic well-being. Conscious intention is at the core of all sentient life, and it colors and moves everything. When we reveal our intentions to others, they can sense our truth, the power of our minds and the love of our hearts. Intention condensed into words has magical power, and reveals both our ethical ground and the intensity of our commitment. Although it is said that actions speak louder than words, it is our intentions that reveal our soul.

Goethe alleged that: “In the moment that one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred... unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”

Dr. Wayne Dyer wrote: "Intention is not something you do, but rather a force that exists in the universe as an invisible field of energy- a power that can carry us. It's the difference between motivation and inspiration. Motivation is when you get hold of an idea and don't let go of it until you make it a reality. Inspiration is the reverse – when an idea gets hold of you and you feel compelled to let that impulse or energy carry you along. You get to a point where you realize that you're no longer in charge, that there's a driving force inside you that can't be stopped. Look at the great athletes, musicians, artists, and writers. They all tap into a source."

So let us explore a few aspects of this marvelous thing called Life, and see how Intention emerges from its invisible realm and affects our subjective lives – for better or worse. Caution: As might be expected, the attainment of the best ends for one may not be felt as best by another.

· COSMOLOGY:

The late 20^th Century University of London physicist David Bohm taught that:

1. We inhabit a vast ocean of energy that is outside the reach of our senses and our measuring instruments. This ocean of energy could be thought of as an ocean of light – light being the fundamental activity in which existence has its ground. Matter is like a small ripple on this tremendous ocean of energy [the implicate domain]; the ripple has some relative stability during its manifestation.

2. The phenomenal world that we observe in our ordinary state of consciousness represents only one aspect of reality – this is the explicate or unfolded order from which our coordinate-based experience of 3D space and time is just a derivative, temporary projection. We experience only this ‘explicate order ’ but never consider that that coordinate frame for our experiences is itself a projection, an experience arising from the deeper ‘implicate’ order. Its generative matrix – the implicate or enfolded order comprises a template from which emerge the dynamics of both matter and consciousness; this implicate order exists on another level of reality and cannot be directly observed, except possibly in episodes of non-ordinary consciousness, such as deep meditative, mystical or psychedelic states. The implicate domain could equally well be called Idealism, Spirit, Consciousness; the separation of matter and spirit is an abstraction, since the ground is always one.

3. The implicate order is not static but is basically dynamic in nature, in a constant process of change and development. Its most general form is the holomovement. (The terms holo and movement refer to two fundamental features of reality. The movement portion refers to the fact that reality is in a constant state of change and flux; the holo portion signifies that reality is structured in a manner that is very similar to holography). All things found in the unfolded, explicate order emerge from this holomovement within which they are enfolded as potentialities, and ultimately all things fall back into it. Things endure only for a period of time, and while they last their existence is sustained in a constant process of unfoldment and re-enfoldment, which gives rise to their seemingly relatively stable and independent forms in the explicate order.

4. It is doubtful that scientists can ever bring their enterprise to an end by reducing all of nature to a single fundamental phenomenon (such as infinitesimal particles called super-strings). Bohm: "At each level we have something which is taken as appearance and something else is taken as the essence which explains the appearance. But there's no end to this. What underlies it all is unknown and cannot be grasped by thought."

5. Despite its apparent solidity, objective reality does not exist. The universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

6. The implicate order is the quantum potential, a field consisting of an infinite number of fluctuating waves. The overlapping of these waves generates what appear to us as particles: these constitute the explicate order. Even such seemingly fundamental concepts as space and time may be merely explicate manifestations of some non-local, deeper implicate order. The implicate order points the way to a resolution of that perennial conundrum of philosophy: the mind-matter problem.

7. A pilot wave guides a particle in the way that thought guides the movements of a dancer. The movement of the body is coming from thought-derived intention, and similarly the movement of an electron is coming from something very subtle, this pilot wave.

Hmmm… A background “pilot wave” that guides the dual wave-particle from a state of pure energy through the collapse of the wave function to its alter-state of matter (particle). Guiding?? Sure sounds like intention at work here, folks. And Bohm is not a ‘one-off’. When in the ’50s he sent his findings on pilot waves – together with confirming equations – to several of his peers, he was surprised to learn that his ‘discovery’ had already been deduced by a French physicist n/o Louis de Broglie 30 years prior. The theory later became known as the de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave formulation of quantum theory. The pilot wave model was further developed by Bohn into the hidden variable theory, which asserts that there is no wave-particle duality, but rather particles are guided, in a deterministic fashion, by the pilot wave which directs them to areas of constructive interference in preference to areas of destructive interference.

As an analogy of the wave-particle deterministic process, the example is given of an airplane guided by radar waves. The radar waves don’t apply mechanical pressures upon the airplane, but rather, the navigator is given information concerning the whole environment, with this information being enfolded by the radar waves and carried across space. The airplane thus responds actively to the form of the waves, and this form endures and is not altered as the intensity falls off with distance. A similar response to the form of the quantum potential is seen to be characteristic of the behavior of the electron, which indicates that – in the microworld – the concept of active information is relevant, since – scaled up – the entire universe can be regarded as self-determinate, with any part thereof only being ‘independent’ for a limited period of time.

In the mid-60s, the British physicist John Bell published a highly acclaimed paper proving that any hidden-variables theory must be non-local, and that pilot wave theory combined quantum uncertainty with definitive reality. Since then, many others have explored the ramifications of pilot wave theory including, recently, Mike Towler (Royal Society research fellow of the University of Cambridge) and Anton Valentini (The Perimeter Institute).

· LIFE CAPSULES, THEIR FREQUENCIES AND GUIDANCE SYSTEMS:

The implicate order concept applies even more directly and obviously to mind than it does to matter. In the mind, there is a constant flow of evanescent thoughts, feelings, desires and impulses, which flow into and out of each other, and which – in a certain sense – enfold each other. For example, we may say that one thought is implicit in another, noting that this word literally means ‘enfolded’. (David Bohm)

One of the most startling assertions by David Bohm was that the tangible reality of our everyday lives is really a kind of illusion, like a projected holographic image; that underlying the ‘illusion’ is a deeper order of existence, a vast and more primary level of reality that gives birth to all the objects and appearances of our physical world in much the same way that a piece of holographic film gives birth to a hologram. He observed that a piece of holographic film and the image it contains are examples of an implicate and explicate order: the film as the implicate order because the image encoded within its laser interference patterns is a hidden totality enfolded throughout the whole; and the hologram projected from the film as an explicate order because it represents the unfolded and perceptible version of the image.

[To construct a hologram one requires two laser beams of light. One beam will bounce off the object that you want as a hologram, and the other beam will shine directly onto the special photographic plate or film. The interference patterns of those two light sources will interact on the film plate. They swirl around and do not look like anything in particular if you are looking directly at the plate itself, but if you shine a laser beam through the plate of film, the object will be reproduced in the 3-dimensional form of a hologram. Also, if one tears the plate apart and shines the beam of light through any of the pieces, each part contains the patterns for the whole picture and the whole object can be reproduced, but only indistinctly.]

At the same time that Bohm was conceiving the concept of holomovement, Stanford neuro-physiologist Karl Pribram was working independently in the field of brain research, and he also became persuaded by the holographic nature of reality. He’d been drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of how and where memories are stored in the brain, in that numerous studies had shown that rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are dispersed throughout the brain… Eventually he saw that memories are not encoded in neurons, nor small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. He thus determined that the human brain can be modeled as a hologram decoder.

Concurring with Pribram’s findings, Bohm stated that our brain-minds are smaller pieces of the larger implicate order hologram, and as such they potentially contain the whole knowledge of the universe. As in the case of a sectioned hologram, each separate brain-mind always contains the whole picture, but with limited, reduced resolution. Each brain’s individual perspective is somewhat valid, yet incomplete as to the whole. Our individual brain-minds are our windows of perception - each with a limited perspective of the universal hologram. Also, the holographically-operating brain is challenged in discerning external from internally generated images, and an imagined or remembered image can have as much impact on the senses as the thing itself. Bohm came to see the implicate order as a deeper and non-local level of existence from which our entire universe springs, and that every action started from an intention in the implicate order. Creation proceeds from the subtler levels of the implicate order, ultimately manifesting as form in the explicate order. The mind’s imagination is already part of that creative form, and it already has the intention and the germs of all the movements needed to carry it out. In the implicate order, as in the brain itself, imagination and reality are ultimately indistinguishable, and it should really come as no surprise that images in the mind can ultimately manifest as realities in the physical body.

[Perhaps there is something behind what traditional shamans and healers have alleged: that our brain-minds are very powerful, and that through intentionally projecting internal images, we can instruct our bodies in the making of image-patterns for more holistic bodies for ourselves. In this regard, there is also a great deal of ongoing scientific interest in the bio-medical placebo effect, and the results of our research on this topic will be shared in a future essay.]

Somewhat akin to the concept of the de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave formulation mentioned above in the Cosmology section, since the early ‘80s the Cambridge biochemist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake has developed the Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance, which proposes that any organic (living) form belonging to a certain group that has already established its collective morphic field, will tune into that morphic field for its developmental plan. The nascent form will read the collective information on its species through the process of morphic resonance, using the group’s information field to guide its own development. The development and maintenance of the particular form will then provide, again through morphic resonance, feedback to the morphic field of its group, thus strengthening the field with its own experience, resulting in new information being added (i.e. stored in the species’ morphic database). Sheldrake observes that DNA comprises – in effect – a parts list that provides neither the blueprint nor construction-maintenance guides for the end form. He regards the morphic fields as a universal database for both organic (living) and abstract (mental) forms:

“I think that we – humankind – are connected to everybody we think of and to all the places we are attached to through our extended minds. Our minds are vast, far-reaching, and spatially extended networks of connections in space and time – networks of immense scope in which the brains inside our heads are but a portion… It is important not to envisage this connection as some amorphous field, a kind of Universal Mind. I don’t think we should make a large leap from the concept of a contracted mind to a boundless universal mind. The extended minds are not God. In fact, for the morphic fields of the extended mind to have a mental connection I believe there has to be something that links you to the other person… In Indian culture, the idea of what we might call ‘other realms’, the supernatural or spiritual, was simply taken for granted by practically everybody… There is a sense of another dimension to life, everywhere you looked, and everywhere you went.”

Our brief review of one of Rupert Sheldrake’s books The Presence of The Past is here.

For over 40 years Harold Saxton Burr, Professor of Anatomy at the Yale University of Medicine, increasingly focused on what came to be referred to as Fields of Life, or L-fields for short. Burr taught that the Universe in which we find ourselves and from which we can’t be separated is a place of Law and Order. It is not an accident, nor chaos. It is organized and maintained by an electrodynamic field capable of determining the position and movement of all charged particles. For nearly half a century, the logical consequences of this theory have been subjected to rigorously controlled conditions and has met with no contradictions. Electrodynamic fields are invisible and intangible – hence it is hard to visualize them. But the following analogy may help to show what the fields of life do and why they are so important:

Most people who have taken high school science will remember that if iron filings are scattered on a card held over a magnet, they will arrange themselves in the pattern of the ‘lines of force’ of the magnet’s field. And if the filings are thrown away and fresh ones scattered on the card, the new filings will assume the same pattern as the old. Something like this happens in the human body. Its molecules and cells are constantly being torn apart and rebuilt with fresh material from the food we eat. But, thanks to the controlling L-fields, the new molecules and cells are rebuilt as before and arrange themselves in the same pattern as the old ones.

Until modern instruments revealed the existence of the controlling L-fields, biologists were at a loss to explain how our bodies keep their shape through ceaseless metabolism and changes of body material. Now the mystery has been solved: the electrodynamic field of the body serves as a matrix or mold which preserves the ’shape’ or arrangement of any material poured into it, however often the material may be changed. … In the growth and development of every living system there is obviously some kind of control of the processes. As a zoologist commented “The growth and development of any living system would appear to be controlled by someone sitting on the organism and directing its whole living process.”

The L-field theory suggests that it should be possible to determine the polarity and direction of the flow of energy transformations in the living system. The organism, as a whole, depends on such directives for its continued existence; so also does atypical growth.

In 1972, just prior to his death, Harold Saxton Burr wrote Blueprint For Immortality: The Electric Patterns of Life; our brief review of that book is here.

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· GEOPOLITICAL:

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power…. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. (George Orwell - “1984”)

Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind. (Edward Bernays – Propaganda - 1928)

These sectors of the doctrinal system serve to divert the unwashed masses and reinforce basic social values: passivity, submissiveness to authority, the overriding virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of concern for others, fear of real or imagined enemies, etc. The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered. (Dr. Noam Chomsky - What Uncle Sam Really Wants –2001)

The masking of intentions has been a time-honoured tradition when it comes to inter-tribal, international or – for that matter – domestic governance. See the importance of deception in Sun Tzu’s 512 BCE classic The Art Of War; or in that by Machiavelli, Nicolò entitled The Prince, published in 1515; or currently as the world’s current super-power intentionally clear-cuts its way through others’ sovereign domains on its way to “Full Spectrum Dominance”. The intentions now are as always, but with the passage of time the means of attaining power have matured to the point of almost unimaginable weapons of mass destruction. Today’s unstated but implicit foreign policy credo becomes “We’ll do what we want against whoever we want, ’cause we are strong enough to get away with it”. Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in hand… Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, etc, etc in the sights. The real intention of the dominant aggressor in these atrocities that destroy the life support systems of other much weaker nations is taboo to name publicly, so it is deceptively hidden behind euphemisms such as ‘War on Terror’, or ‘bringing democracy to the oppressed’ or R2P (responsibility to protect) others – others that always unfortunately seem to be living on lands containing coveted resources. The outcome of these criminal aggressions are promoted as ‘slam-dunks’, and in the aftermath the losers’ leaders are summarily executed or subjected to show trials and then exterminated; winners write histories and bask in the after-glow of missions accomplished. All lesser mortals bow to the system, and the system does not permit questioning of what is worshipped. Sometimes the systemic resources under control of the dominant rulers are so vast that outside intervention is implausible, and self-correction can only come from within the citizenry of the dominant nation itself as a collective conscience emerges and evokes the realization that “the inhumane business of unproved war-as-usual is no longer an option”, giving rise to the rebirth of consensual integrity and social justice.

To attain global dominance, not only staggeringly asymmetrical military weaponry is employed, but also the weaponry of economics and geo-finance. In past decades, dominant economies intentionally employed the World Bank and IMF to overdevelop third world countries’ infrastructures and productive sectors; later, when the countries invariably ran into trouble because of facilities developed beyond sane economies of scale and thus they couldn’t pay back the loans on time, the lenders would strangle the debtor economies and demand the draconian rending of the debtors’ social systems. In time, developing countries understandably became leery of ‘help’ from the World Bank and IMF, and refused their ‘assistance’. Now, in today’s interlocked global village where virtually all economies are dependent on the US Dollar as reserve currency, (there being no currency today that is backed by hard assets), nation after nation can be reduced to dependency and its people to poverty, at a few computer keystrokes. And not only are the sociopaths who are in control now able and eager to destroy other nations, their yearnings for power and dominance are such that they are reducing their own countrymen to destitution and immiseration. And it was so simple: all they had to do is destroy the capacity of the middle-class to earn a living by allowing corporations to export their factories to cheaper labour markets, leaving the public only the options of welfare, service employment or becoming cannon-fodder. What of self-fulfillment and sense of self worth from pride in one’s work?? Gone! But hey… for a few years people could acquire cheaper goods (until their house ATMs were empty). And then??

Whether the driving ideology is that of ‘God’s Chosen’, or ‘Manifest Destiny’, or ‘Free Enterprise’, all means are on the table to win at others’ expense. Under the euphemistic masks of “strategic challenges”, “humanitarian intervention”, “protecting national interests”, or “serving democratic principles”, the underlying ruling value mechanisms are hidden, untracked and unexamined. The intentional forces of destruction inexorably work upon the unsuspecting, from behind the scenes. As the American Pulitzer prize journalist, Ron Suskind, wrote:

The [Bush] aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Where does science and technology fit into a life-coherent approach in today’s society? To the extent that life-blind ‘science’ destroys life and life support systems through time, it is evil as well as false. In monstrous cases where the threat of such destruction may be pleaded as necessary – as Einstein argued for, so as to ensure the discovery of the A-bomb before the Nazis – this is not an exception to the principle, but a realization of it. That is, it was the prior discovery of the atomic bomb, not the destructions by it that Einstein supported. He was opposed to dropping the nuclear bomb on Japanese cities once his own mission was accomplished. His position remained in accord with the life coherence principle, but not policy. As for homicidal war in general, it can be consistent with the life-coherence principle only if more inclusively life-enabling results are accomplished by waging such war than not.

· ECONOMIC CRISES and THE PROBLEM OF FIAT MONEY:

A private businessman directs his industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value; he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it. (Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations -1776)

Contrary to accepted wisdom, the rules and governing institutions of a social system – ancient, feudal, capitalist, or socialist at the highest level of abstraction – are not given by Nature nor God. They are constructed by societies with what they have to work with through generations. Currently, the conflict is between social Darwinism (capitalism) and humanity’s quality of life: How to determine ‘better’ developmental and economic growth from ‘worse’ gross materialism and inequality – qualitative improvement from resource depletion and environmental and social degradation. This points to the deep contradiction between the ruling system – and life and the life support systems themselves. Magical thinking as expressed by Adam Smith’s quasi-religious ‘invisible-hand’ prose of 1776 – when encased within today’s consensual consumerist lifestyle – reveals a system supported by the mantra of pro-value terms, without principled substance. Smith’s free market of local and independent artisans (said as not directly affecting macro supply or demand) – when scaled up to the transnational-corporate oligopolist system regulating the 21^st Century world – reveal a world wherein the universal human life needs and related life support systems which lie at the base of the economic enterprise are being incrementally blinkered out.

The problem deepens in that the system itself becomes idolized and its irrationality is invisible to its agents and proponents because they presuppose it as a-priori necessary and/or good. The ends may seem to justify the group-think means, yet not satisfy the essential test of human society: does the system honour the life-coherence principle, or is it essentially irrational in that only 1% benefit, and 99% exist in varying degrees of immiseration? The capacity to acquire commodities is increasingly equated in the public consciousness to an increase of utility or happiness, although the commodities may cause ill-being. ‘Consumer choice’ by individuals possessing money is thought to be the meaning of ‘freedom and democracy’, yet the majority have less. In these and other instances we may see how the reigning thought system has locked into life-blind circles. While the elites by their privileged existences enjoy very high standards in terms of life goods, universal human life goods for the vast majority inexorably deteriorate the lower and less secure one’s position is within the global system whose extremes of wealth and impoverishment escalate at the same time. At root is the concept of ‘Money’ itself, if the exchange medium is backed by nothing other than fiat-faith, as the pernicious influence of unbacked fiat currencies distort the derivative-value bases of all so-inflicted societies.

The macro mechanism of the system is intentionally structured and state-subsidized to grow corporate capital rights and demands first, while life-protective-and-enabling standards of others are simultaneously pre-empted or overridden as ‘barriers’ to this growth. As more and more of the world is made destitute, public sectors and services are privatized for profit, ever more of the younger generation have no vocational prospects, general exposure to deadly diseases increases by de-regulated working conditions and commodity toxins, and a global culture of increasing violence-entertainment, waste and military spending proliferates. Yet neither the catastrophic meta-pattern nor its causal mechanism are defined … results are felt, but the causal forces are invisible. A universal monetary system that is not backed by physical values, but only by the dominant governmental fiat and mandated public faith, is one that will be increasingly ripe for universal disaster.

The ultimate issues are not whether socialism or capitalism are overthrown, or technology produces more than before, or whether markets are free, or whether commodity productivity rises. It does not ultimately matter whether more technical and artistic feats are left behind in history or in astrodust. While these dimensions may be taken into account as aspects of human life value, the deeper issue to be understood is that of life substance, as measured by the extent to which universal human life goods – including ultimately life support systems themselves – are in better or worse ways provided through generational time. A sound, tangibly backed currency system is essential to those ends.

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Now let us turn from the Big Scene to those wherein one is more intimately affected – the arenas of personal and societal dynamics – as we now consider the challenges in dealing with still more forces of intention:

· INTER-PERSONAL INFLUENCE

To set the stage for appreciating the day-to-day universality of the hidden force of intention, let us look to the work of Robert B. Cialdini, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. Cialdini spent three years going undercover to observe real-life situations of persuasion – the art of getting others to do what you want them to do whilst believing it to be their own idea. In research for his book Influence, Cialdini applied and trained for jobs at used car dealerships, fund-raising organizations and telemarketing firms – and later was in a position to report on the ways whereby marketers and salespeople establish rapport with others for the purpose of ‘helping’ them make the right decisions. His book INFLUENCE sold two million copies (26 languages) and led to the staging of ongoing seminars in US & Europe. Cialdini compiled six basic social and psychological principles (eg. the Rule of Reciprocity, consistency, etc … see above link) that form the foundation for successful strategies used in influencing and exploiting others. Understandably there is a lot of interest in both learning the techniques of influencing others… and in defending oneself from the influencers.

· THE DANCES OF DECEPTION

F Deceiving Others

Deception is a very deep feature of life. Viruses practice it, as do bacteria, plants, insects and a wide range of other animals. It is everywhere. Even within our genomes, deception flourishes as selfish genetic elements use deceptive molecular techniques to over-reproduce at the expense of other genes. Deception infects all the fundamental relationships in life: parasite and host, predator and prey, plant and animal, male and female, neighbour and neighbour, parent and offspring. Viruses and bacteria often actively deceive to gain entry into their hosts: for instance, by mimicking body parts so as not to be recognized as foreign. Or, as in HIV, by changing coat proteins so often as to make mounting an enduring defence almost impossible.

And it is a given that any reciprocal relations may be exploited by cheats. So deception comes as a very natural part of the life process, but for we humans it is admittedly very cognitively demanding to intentionally deceive others. One must suppress the truth and at the same time construct a falsehood that is plausible on its face, does not contradict anything possibly now known by the listener, plus is not likely to be known later. One must tell the lie in a convincing way and the teller must remember the tale, to ensure consistency in retelling. People who are lying have to think very hard, and maintain control of physiological incongruence cues. It is therefore quite cognitively expensive to lie, and there is no obvious way to reduce the expense other than to increase one’s control of other normally-unconscious physiological cues. Mechanisms of denial, self-deception and repression may serve to reduce one’s immediate expense, but with potential heavy costs later on.

F Self-Deception:

Together, our sensory systems are organized to give us a detailed and fairly accurate view of reality, exactly as we would expect if truth about the outside world helped us to navigate it more effectively. But once this information arrives in our brains, it is often then distorted and biased by our own conscious minds. Simply expressed, we may deny the truth to ourselves. We may also project onto others certain traits that are actually truer of ourselves - and then attack the others. We repress painful memories, we create completely false ones, we rationalize immoral behaviour, and we act repeatedly to boost positive self-opinion and cultivate a personal suite of ego-defence mechanisms.

Why?? Surely these biases could be expected to have negative effects on our biological welfare. Why degrade and destroy the truth? Why alter information after arrival so as to reach a conscious falsehood? Why on the one hand should natural selection have favoured our marvelous organs of perception, only to have us systematically distort the information gathered, on the other? In short, why practice self-deception?

Advantages gained from the deception of others provide exactly the motivation to drive deception of self. We deceive ourselves so as to better deceive others. To fool others, we can internally reorganize information in all sorts of improbable ways and do so largely unconsciously. Self-deception evolves in the service of deception, sometimes by saving on cognitive load during the act of lying, as the actual process of deception is cognitively less expensive through keeping part of the truth in the unconscious. Hence the brain can act more efficiently when it is itself unaware of the ongoing contradiction, and the self-deceived subject doesn’t give off the cues that go with consciously mediated deception, thus escaping detection. Self deception also provides an easy defense against accusations of deception, namely, ‘I was unconscious of my actions’ – thereby the deception, if detected, is more easily defended against, through rationalization.

But self-deception harms not only the other, but also oneself. Whatever the gains made from lying to others, lying to ourselves carries its own suite of costs to ourselves, since we are basing conscious activity on subjective distortions and this can turn around and bite us. Through self-deception, people find themselves time and again involved in romantic disasters or domestic and family disputes – consequences that could be expected when people have alienated themselves from reality. And not only can individuals fall into the trap of self-deception, but whole groups as well. One or more committed plotters – if successful – can sway a whole populace, say through influencing them into ramping up more needless, stupid offensive wars, or the necessity to give up their rights in the patriotic interests of ‘national security’.

By deceiving yourself, you are spoiling your psychic temple or structure. You are agreeing to base your behaviour on falsehoods, with negative downstream effects that may be very hard to guess, yet intensify with time. Self-deception is often experienced as a series of minor benefits followed by a major cost. One may be overly self-confident and falsely project that image and enjoy some of the benefits related to the illusion, only to suffer a sharp reversal later on, based in part on the blindness induced by this overconfidence. While the benefit of self-deception may be immediate, the cost of self-imposed ignorance inexorably kicks in.

· TRANS-DIMENSIONAL INFLUENCE?

Shortly before his own death, Albert Einstein commented on the death of his old friend Besso:

"Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us ... know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

Death, I am told, is as easy and as simple as going to sleep and then awakening. Our etheric body slips out of the physical body, carrying the mind with it, and we awake to our new surroundings to find our friends and relations ready to help and instruct us in our new life. Death is simply the severance of this etheric body or structure from the physical body. The physical body returns to earth, and the etheric body – controlled by the mind – continues to function in the etheric world which, though within and also without the physical, cannot be appreciated by us so long as we are inhabitants of the physical body. Our range of sight and touch is too confined for us to appreciate these finer vibrations. (Arthur Findlay - On the Edge of the Etheric)

It is by the scientific method alone that we may make progress in the search for truth. Religious belief must not take the place of impartial analysis. We must be constantly on our guard against illusions. Spiritism is not a religion but a science. … I have no hesitation in saying that he who states that spiritist phenomena are contrary to science does not know what he is talking about. Indeed, there is nothing super-natural in nature. There is only the unknown: but what was unknown yesterday becomes the truth of tomorrow. (Camille Flammarion)

Everything that we can directly observe from the physical world happens inside our heads, and consists of mental events that form part of the physical world. The development of this point of view will lead us to the conclusion that the distinction between mind and matter is illusory. The stuff of the world may be called physical or mental or both or neither as we please; in fact the words serve no purpose…. It seems conceivable that what is true of perceived objects may also be true of perceiving minds; just as there are wave-pictures for light and electricity, so there may be a corresponding picture for consciousness. When we view ourselves in space and time, our consciousness is obviously the separate individuals of a particle-picture, but when we pass beyond space and time, they may perhaps form ingredients of a single continuous stream of life. As it is with light and electricity, so it may be with life; the phenomena may be individuals carrying on separate existences in space and time, while in the deeper reality beyond space and time we may all be members of one body. In brief, modern physics is not altogether antagonistic to an objective idealism like that of Hegel. (Royal Astronomer Sir James Jeans - Some Problems of Philosophy)

Caution: any natural occurrence can be spun by influencers into profit/ power ends, whether it be global warming (carbon credits), global cooling (bunker-survivalism), economic theory (capitalism – the idealizing of ‘greed as good’; communism – ‘from those who are able, to those in need’); energy scarcity (profiteering); and the deep processes of life itself (what priest or imam doesn’t claim to have the only truth as to how to lead our temporal lives and the keys to our subsequent salvation). The symbolic fields of authority and control are rank with the weeds of suppression and exploitation. Some things are unknowable until one personally passes through the departure gate, and – notwithstanding the assurances of others – perhaps we all just naturally survive the death of our physical bodies, irrespective of accepted or revealed beliefs or their absence.

Yet who amongst is so dull as to have not wondered about the purpose of their existence, and to what ends? Regardless of ‘intelligence’, philosophy or profession, we naturally wonder. And should, for that wondering keeps us vigilant for cues as to not only making this life more meaningful, but if there is extended life beyond this dimension, we should be ‘pointed’ to advancing into that life too.

The pivotal question of life is "Who am I? What is my identity?" And the more one introspectively studies that question, it becomes clear that a major component of one's identity is one’s physical body. Our awareness is dominated for the most part by mental images of who we are physically. There is a constant pattern of sensations from our body that we are not even normally conscious of, but which nevertheless molds our consciousness, which in turn reinforces habits of thinking, feeling, perceiving and acting. Unfortunately, this can be a problem for us when we come up against the issue of what happens to us when one’s body necessarily goes the way of all physical form.

More and more it became apparent to me as a student of life that each of us has vast potentials. Quite apart from questions of post-life survival (which will probably be resolved for us in any event), we have enormous potential to create our spiritual self-image. But because we are socialized and acculturated into sets of beliefs and behaviours, each one of us has been squeezed down to a tiny fraction of our potential, and the great tragedy is that we have been conditioned to believe that this tiny fraction is all that we are or that we can be. We therefore live in a cramped psychological space, in what the Armenian mystic, Gurdjieff, called a "false personality", wherein we no longer remember ourselves. We think that false personality is who we are, that that is our personality; but it is a false image in the sense that it ignores so much of the reality of what we could be.

Thus one of our major challenges is to deeply realize how artificially cramped we are, to stop identifying so closely with the limited self, and begin to discover some of our other potentials – in effect to live a more ‘spacious’ life. Let me personalize this to illustrate what I mean. I'm manifesting right now as a crotchety retired banker in his ‘golden years’. But that's only one of many possible manifestations; if I were totally immersed in that persona, I'd be trapped. If, however, I can maintain a certain kind of spaciousness, I can realize that a greater aspect of who I am is that of somebody who can – and should – study and explore the forces of life, reality and mind. By allowing myself to be curious, to study and to wonder, I can open to the spaciousness and potential of the Quester that I actually am.

[To this end, I’ve found Taoism and Buddhism with their concept of ‘no-self’ to be helpful in breaking out of imprisoning shackles of artificial identification with a limited self, since the latter tends to concretize and promote too much identification with the pathological habits of what has no permanent existence anyway. Thereby one can wonder, i.e. be open to the deeper, broader existential spectrum associated with self-spaciousness. Being relaxed and comfortable with life is also important, and such feelings arise applying the Chinese Taoist philosophy – what philosopher Alan Watts called the "watercourse way" – where everything flows unrestricted, at its own pace, to its own level.]

So…. we can view ourselves as physical bodies moving temporally through space. Or – as implied in the ‘Life Capsules’ section above – we can view ourselves as a blur of interference patterns enfolded throughout the cosmic hologram, with one’s brain being a laser beam shining through the implicate holomovement, interpreting the patterns as best it may. In this latter view, the brain is a hologram decoder enfolded in the holographic universe, and our brain-minds mathematically construct objective reality through the interpretation of frequencies that are ultimately projections from another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond our temporal space and time.

[As it turns out, one can preserve the interference patterns of more than one hologram on the same film by using various different angles of projection of the laser beams. Then, depending on the direction and frequency of the beam sent through the film, a different hologram will appear. Thus, if applied to the brain, consciousness literally becomes the co-creator of the reality imaged, depending upon its angle of perception; if the decoder brain is tuned to different states or frequencies of consciousness – then one might sense alternate dimensions of reality.]

So now… what about trans-dimensional influence?? Logically, it would seem that – for there to be trans-dimensional influence – there would have to firstly be inter-dimensional progression, which is to say there would have to be something that survives or endures after the demise of the physical body. Across human history there has of course been much interest in these matters, giving rise to many teachings. More recently deep thinkers have suggested various scenerios:

In their book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, Dr. Robert Lanza and Bob Berman allege that Reality isn't a thing, it's a process that involves our consciousness.

“Life is a melody so vast and eternal that human ears can't appreciate the tonal range of the symphony. Time is the mind's tool that animates the notes, the individual frames of the spatial world. Our consciousness animates the universe like an old phonograph. Listening to it doesn't alter the record, and depending on where the needle is placed, you hear a certain piece of music. This is what we call ‘now’. The songs before and after are the past and future. In like manner, you, your loved ones and friends (and sadly, the villains too) endure always. The record doesn't go away. All nows exist simultaneously, although we can only listen to the songs one by one”.

On the other hand, the authors also observe that neither space nor time are objects – they are simply the mind's tools for putting everything together; with our individual worlds thereby being observer-created, we shouldn't be surprised that our world is destroyed when we die. Nor should we be surprised that space and time similarly vanish, and with them all Newtonian conceptions of order and prediction. With loss of the glue of consciousness upon death, time essentially reboots, leading to all potentialities. We crash, and are rebooted, or restored in new time. Hmmmm.

The usual mechanistic view of time says that material things – once formed – exist only in discrete instants and afterwards they don’t exist anymore. But recall the experiments of physicist David Bohm that pointed to an Implicate Order out of which discrete aspects of the Explicate Order unfold in time and are later re-enfolded with their discrete properties intact; he also indicated that this process applies not only to matter – but to consciousness as well. The analogy given was that of notes of music heard some time ago which – while no longer existent – continue to exist as enfoldments, as active transformations of the original notes, and in this way can be present and perceived in conscious experience. This allows us to think of existence in a new way.

Another Brit, engineer/ physicist Ronald Pearson, proposed an “Exact Classical Mechanics” (ECM) wherein all motion and energy (the ultimate building substance of the universe of matter) was platformed on a background medium called the “i-ther”. Since matter had to emerge as a construct of the i-ther, that ultimate level of reality had also to be made from the same stuff. This i-ther structure formed a source of power that could only manifest as waves, hence at the quantum level it had to operate on wave mechanics, which needed evolutionary organization (an aspect of intelligence). This meant that at least the sub-conscious mind had to exist as an i-theric structure. It would need to contrive matter by the clever organization of its quantum waves, after which a sub-atomic particle would be formed by the repeated focusing of waves at points chosen at random but confined to regions of constructive wave interference patterns. Pearson claims that our universe has evolved as a semi-virtual reality, built from real energies that are intelligently organized…

Pearson also proposed that each i-theric mind would have to be separated from the universal sub-conscious by some form of information filter-barrier programmed into the i-ther, so that it could interact with other minds in meaningful ways; hence at least one matter system (body) had to be organized to provide a temporary housing in which such interaction could occur. Then on the demise of that housing, another one based on different laws of physics was provided so that development of individual minds could continue. The i-ther could build several interpenetrating universes all occupying the same space but tuned to different quantum wave frequencies. Then each discrete i-theric mind could tune into just one at a time. Each brain has its own consciousness but a copy is carried in the i-ther. [Pearson’s theory emerged having trans-dimensional survival as its core feature]

- - - - - - -

ENFOLDMENT: A LOVE STORY

Their early post-retirement years were difficult. He had thought he was ready for the transition – early, voluntary departure from a very rewarding career involving those things which he’d deeply cherished – writing, monetary projection and trouble-shooting/ consulting with others within society’s key driver: business. Almost 30 years’ involvement in many, many aspects of business life … with the aim of running his own. But there had been no consultation or prepping of her, and it had been a shock to her when she had been told that he would no longer be a salary slave, but that henceforth they would be working together, for their own account. During their marriage they had prospered modestly, and – at his push – had diligently scrimped and saved – and now she saw with some shock that his undeclared intention all along had been to attain independence by setting up a business of their own. Together they looked at several businesses and came close – but always at the end he had indicated that – based on his experience with businesses ran by couples – they would be heading for disaster, and the feeling inferred by her was that – based on their particular blend of personalities and attitudes – the problem was not so much external, as between, or within. For a while they considered a downsized business for her, while he established a new career centered on facilitating business changes of ownership – at least with him out on the road they wouldn’t be directly in a day-to-day contest with each other. The problem here for him was that it was a far cry from his initial meta-goal… an operation of sufficient scale as to really challenge both and for the first time in their 30 year relationship require their very close day-to-day coordination and co-operation. In the end, they collapsed the business option, qualified themselves for realty sales, and relocated back east to a small city.

Notwithstanding having no prior social network nor associations in the new environment, the couple possessed adequate financial resources, and initially things went well, superficially. She enjoyed the give-and-take and manipulations required to be successful in residential sales, but he felt challenged by old fashioned, ingrained integrity ideals … and thus became increasingly dissatisfied. One day a client pointedly referred him to a book by Harriet Lerner entitled The Dance of Anger and as he read it he came to the profound realization that – notwithstanding his business experience – he was very ignorant of the intra-personal forces that influence and guide human life. He also faced up to the fact that he was profoundly burnt out (all the years of trouble shooting others’ business problems – rather than having prepped him – had just worn him out). With little formal education, he also discovered that he had a deep hunger for classical knowledge in the humanities, and a desire for extended travel to see the marvels of Nature and the products of human genius. This would necessitate a very different path for the couple and corresponding austerities, and understandably it was another in a series of upsetting plan changes for her. In the end, they collapsed their realty sales initiative, packed up the Coleman pop-up camper and spent three months traveling the Southwestern United States.

On their return, he seriously picked up the challenge of deep self-education, and she settled into related studies, painting and gardening. The following winter they packed a tent and camping gear and for three months circumnavigated Mexico ... in those days Mexico was relatively safe, and their extended sojourn became the honeymoon that because of their initial impoverishment they’d never had earlier. And always present in the old Ford trunk was his book-box, and under the palm trees he’d select from his prized cache of Plato, James, Emerson, Rajneesh, Lao Tzu or Dostoyevsky… and day-by-day increasingly he came to realize what he needed for self-completion. The following year the couple returned to Mexico, and this time as a Christmas gift they flew in their two youngest (adult) children, to share with them over two weeks the marvels of the Caribbean seashores, the different tropical way of life and the Mesoamerican cultural heritage. The couple subsequently made their first visit to Guatemala, and then to the Baja, and it seemed that everywhere they wandered, amazing new vistas were encountered, fascinating acquaintances met, and ideas acquired that opened their minds in ways inconceivable short years before. Their family fell away from them, unprepared to understand nor willing to accept their parents’ bohemian lives and although perhaps initially their children’s tactics were applied for leverage purposes (and brought much suffering to the parents), eventually both sides realized they could better get along without each other.

Now devoid of social shackles, the couple assessed their circumstances and decided to pull up stakes, sell their waterside home, and then??? After listing their home, they talked between themselves about another couple they’d known who had – after retirement – relocated several times until their equity had been wiped, and they’d had to eke out their ‘golden’ years in virtual impoverishment. Why, it had been often wondered, could that other couple not have reasoned together and built a lifestyle within their means, instead of driving each other along paths of anxiety and upheaval to financial ruin – circumstances from which only mortality released them. Then he revealed his knowledge of an infidelity within that relationship, unconfessed to the partner thus not forgivable, yet sensed by the other and used as a guilt-driver [and even though the couple could not grapple with the issue themselves, their unresolved dysfunction could be felt intuitively by others and exploited]. And then – with a ‘for sale’ sign on their lawn and no destination or plan – one of them suggested that they would have to be very vigilant lest some similar hidden force be operant within their own relationship, a force that would continue to so operate and ruin their best hopes and plans – until such time as that which had earlier evaded their conjoint grasp was confronted. Thereby the couple began a series of extremely intense discussions that lasted several months – a series with many twists and turns and that sometimes nearly drove them apart. Yet it was clear to both that they had always deeply loved each other, having been through many challenges together (even the crib-death loss of an infant son; and, Gentle Readers, if a couple can cope together on that one, they’ll be able to cope with almost anything.) So they persisted in their exploration, and during one of their intense discussions he found it necessary to reach very deeply into himself to find the loving words whereby to assure and comfort her, and voila!! Suddenly his upper lip ballooned … an event somewhat distracting and disruptive to the flow of conversation. A few days later it occurred again, and then again, and again.

In time, the issue they’d been so intensely discussing was resolved, and they decided to rent out their home for a year and travel throughout the USA, Mexico and Central America. As part of the trip, they spent a couple months in Virginia Beach, soaking up the esoteria of the Edgar Cayce library (A.R.E.- Association For Research and Enlightenment). There, he tried to get to bottom of the ‘lip’ phenomenon, but drew a blank; however much else was learned from the library collection – findings from both West and East – about mind, belief systems and consciousness.

Over subsequent years he also received much valuable assistance from Norm, an older friend who after retirement from a distinguished career in the chemical industry, had incurred a form of spiritual emergence that had almost necessitated his institutionalization, but from which he’d emerged after two years of personal struggle … deeper, stronger and wiser. Norm also possessed an extensive library, and the two exchanged many books, some of which – by Charles Tart, Paoli Soleri and Ouspensky’s record of his work with the Armenian genius, Gurdjieff – are reviewed here. One morning over breakfast the couple entered into an in-depth conversation with Norm and his wife Joy, concerning reincarnation, and he told the older couple of how he’d learned at the A.R.E. that that belief had been part of the Christian system until expunged by the Council of Nicea in 325CE as Emperor Constantine strove to reconcile conflicting beliefs in his kingdom, to better bind and control his domain. Suddenly the ‘lip’ phenomena manifested, much to the consternation of Norm and his wife, and Norm – who had been deeply immersed in Carl Jung’s teachings for years – blurted “That’s your Mom warning you to be careful as to what you talk about”. Norm was reminded that ‘Mom’ had been deceased for 15 years hence could hardly be communicating anything to anyone. Then he recalled that – back on the old farm – at a time when he’d wondered aloud as to what the purpose of life was – there had been a caution from the mother “Not to think deeply”. Norm jumped on this, saying “There...that’s what is going on. Her caution has been etched in your mind as a toxic loop, and it’s physically manifesting when you are getting into deep issues with others; then she comes through in a manner that will distract others and defuse the intensity of the conversation. You’ll have to take care of her.” To which the response was “Well, admittedly she’s certainly screwing up things presently, but if the interaction is occurring as you suggest, it’s only because of her concern over her son’s well-being, so one can’t very well take a stick to the dear old lady.” Norm said “No. No…You misunderstand me. Just go for a walk and mentally address your Mom and tell her that now you’re well qualified to speak as you yourself deem necessary, without her censorship.”

And thus it was. On his next dawn walk, he addressed the Spirit of his Mother with deepest love, and expressed true gratitude for her abiding care and compassion across the years, and for her protective presence during the long intense resolution discussions with his beloved wife, but now she should absolve herself of her son’s issues, and focus on her own work.

Several months later the two couples again met, and Norm took him aside and enquired as to the aftermath of the earlier breakfast discussion. Norm was informed that the Spirit talk had transpired as has been suggested. To which the elder pressed “But the lip?? What happened about the lip?” and he was advised that the lip never disfigured again, but that there had initially been a tingle that had been addressed mentally “It’s OK, Mom”; then later on over the months there’d been increasingly fainter tingles until now there were no signals at all. The old man shook his head in amazement, saying that it was the strangest damn thing he’d ever encountered, and that when he’d blurted his “Mother” assessment over breakfast that day he’d had no idea what he was talking about … it had seemed to him at the time that the words had came from elsewhere, yet through him.

- - - - - -

Now that was a strange story, but then there is much about Life that – at the time – is very strange and wondrous. Yet one’s experiences continue to speak to the experiencer over the years, and there is an ongoing striving to understand the deep forces and meanings of happenings across one’s arc through time.

· EPILOGUE

OK, then … Perhaps one’s personal world (aka reality) comprises narratives, or stories in the form of one’s interpretations of experiential sensory inputs; in other words, one’s reality is internally structured on the basis of the construed meanings of one’s experience. One’s world is comprised of one’s personal stories, derived from their sensory inputs. As an example, consider the processing of sense inputs relating to simple sight. One takes in light waves that flow to the back of the brain where they are turned into images; one’s brain learns to read the frequencies of light waves through a form of calculus called "Fourier Transforms." In this way, one’s eye-brain mechanism decodes incoming, externally produced waves of information, then reads the information data frequency inputs by transforming them into 3-dimensional images. The viewing screen isn't ‘out there’; it's in the back of one’s head, in the brain area specializing in the production of optical images. As the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said in the 13th century:

"does the Soul wish to know the essence of a leaf or a man, She creates an image."

And this example refers only to the sight sense; we also construct our reality though our secondary senses of hearing, touch, smell and taste, in the same way. Our brains are marvelous interpreters of that which they can sense, yet much surrounds us that the brain cannot directly sense and decode.

For instance, science says nothing about how our brains can decode and convert sense data based on wave frequency patterns, into feelings of love and hate, good and bad, pleasure and pain, tastes and colors, all the higher sensual, emotional and moral representations of our minds. As Emerson taught:

“We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm”.

Seemingly, Nature provides its creatures with only those frequency-interpretive faculties necessary for normal existence and reproduction, and many things fall outside that narrow slice of the total spectrum of total information fields: the Matrix. Perhaps other dimensions do exist within which other sentient existence occurs. Perhaps such discrete dimensions are elsewhere, yet perhaps they are enfolded within our own world, but not normally recognized by our senses. Sometimes, in reverie, others’ remote influences can be intuitively sensed, as when one sometimes feels the presence of a friend from afar, a friend with whom the portals of caring are momentarily open on either side. Perhaps sometimes – with intentionality – human love and compassion even transend mortality, and we ‘touch’ and comfort each other through interdimensional conduits that defy rational description. Perhaps, like entangled particles, those who – having once loved deeply but having been forced apart by circumstances – still meet, time and again over the years, in dreamspace; and such dreams – to the dreamers – may be as real as anything in the waking world.

Perhaps it’s time to dream; for – with the combination of dream and intention – what wonders may await …

Posted on December 11^th, 2011

Keith and Marnie Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site

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