The interaction between mind and life is fascinating and has captured the curiosity of the scientist at long last. Many in the east have known these things experientially for millenia now whilst in the west it now gets publiciity under the rubric of New Age philosophies. One of the proponents of this philosophy and one who relies on age old eastern concepts but makes it readily accessible to a western audience is Ken Wilber - a transpersonal psychologist. Watch this video on consciousness or as he calls it I-am-ness

Correction

In the previous blog delete an extra http:// from the weblink and you should get the webpage displayed -- teething problems!!

Unfinished business

I missed giving u links to Check out Maclean and read Ornstein. Finally here's something about the self

Ancients' concept of mind as a force field

Consider the following verses from the Katha Upanishad, one of the ancient scriptures of the Vedic age from pre-historic India, where the annonymous author/s with reference to human consciousness writes: " (It) is the all-knowing, indwelling Self, It did not originate from anything, nor has it ever become anything. Unborn, undying, constant - It lives when this body dies" Verse 18. What can it be within the body that matcches up to such a description. Most certainly it isnt something that one can easily measure or speak abuot the nature of. Again, the scriptures read: " Smaller than the smallest particle of an atom, and yet more vast than the whole expanse of space, this Self resides in the heart of all beings". Verse 20. This does not appear to be anything that can reside inside of anything if one uses the standard logic of language. "Unmoving the Self moves. Moving it remains still. How is it known - that which is beyond all joy and sorrow and yet embodied in both the joyful and sorrowing", Verse 21, and further still, "That Self which is formless in the midst of all forms, Eternal in the midst of momentary, which is everywhere at once and great beyond compare..", Verse 22, and finally, "That Self will not be found through much learning, thinking or listening", Verse 23. Here the concepts consciousness and Self (distinguishing it from the egoic self) are used interchangeably and refer to the same thing. But what is that consciousness which is so diffiuclt to understand and so full of paradoxes to become meaningless in the ordinary ways of analysis for meaning? Meaning can however be derived not through logic and semantics always. there can be symbolic meanings as well. Symbols are different from logic and rely upon differnt brain regions for decoding. There is good evidence that the left side of the brain in right handed individuals helps people ‘think’ in an analytical, sequential (fragmented) and mathematical way whilst the right brain usually decodes (and encodes) non-verbal, visuo-spatial (shapes and forms), simultaneous, parallel and synthetic (creative) and intuitive way. Some writers (Ornstein 1972) have argued that the verbal ordered culture of the Western world is dominated by the left hemispheres and that there is a need for development of the right side with those more artistic and philosophical ways of the East. There is also evidence that before the development of the pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain that is associated with analytical, mathematical thinking related to judgements about the future, human beings were driven largely by the lower order ‘reptilian’ brain which is emotional, and ‘paleo-mammalian’ and gives rise to more artistic and spatial ways of thinking. (MacLean 1990). For brevity and simplicity though, symbolic meanings are different from logical meaning in the following manner. Logicimplies order where what is said or written gives a sign, i.e. pointtowards something fairly directly. For instance the comment 'Ravens are black' is self-explanatory. Logic can be slightly more complex when it acts as a signal which indicates a one-to-one correspondence between two things, further pointing to something in the present that leads to some sort of action, either physically or in the mind. For instance, the statement that 'The Chinese man has small eyes' can lead to the conclusion that 'All Chinese have small eyes'. Symbols on the other hand re-present and allow us to give new shapes and feeling to what the word connotates. Concepts are formed in this manner that allows problem solving in certain patterned ways. Using symbolic meanimaking of the verses from the Upanishad above, and substituting consciousness/Self with electromagnetic field immediately makes the unfathomable statements easily comprehensible. It is easy to consider an electromagnetic field to be something that is neither born nor dies, does not have a clear origin in material things nor does it turn into anything other than the field. It has been, or so the physicists and cosmologists tell us, unborn, undying and constant. It is smaller than the smallest particle for it is not a particle but a field of force and power, which being unmoving itself, moves many things; being formless it moves things with forms. The question to ask is whether this was what the ancients were referring to about consciousness. What It also suggests that it cannot be anything else. If one were to invoke God then also that God would have to possess characteristics not dissimilar to some sort of a field, and it makes more sense to think of the Upanishadic God to represent a principle rather than an anthropomorphic God made in the likeness of man.

The Bio-electromagnet inside you head

The human condition comprises of two states of being. One is the physical state. This is the material body that emerges out of a Darwinian struggle and repeated adaptations to become what it is today. This state is created out of blueprints stored in the DNA of our chromosomes and provides the ‘recipe’ for what the physical body contains. By physical one is referring to, in addition to the visible physical body, blood, tears, urine, lymph, bile, hormones, neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, vitamins and minerals, nerves and brain, the air in our lungs – oxygen and carbon-dioxide, etc. In other words, everything that has physical ‘presence’ and can be observed, analysed, measured and categorised. The other state is consciousness. This used to be known as mind, spirit or soul in previous times. Some say that this refers to an emergent property of the interactions between the physical constituents of the material body. However, this state is non-material. Whilst one can map changes in EEG (electrical activity of the brain) fMRI (flow and volume of blood utilised by various components of the brain and the rest of the body), PET (indicates use of glucose as a source of energy in various parts of the brain and the body), GSR (measures the changes in electrostatic energy across our fingertips), etc., there is no way of observing consciousness directly much as one would observe other aspects of the body and the brain with its constituents. Consciousness remains hidden. What emerges on the various electrical and electro-magnetic activity-mapping tools is just that – evidence that certain parts of the human brain is active; more active than other parts and that this activity moves around from each thought to another, each feeling to another and each movement to another. The question is whether this is all there is to consciousness or whether what we observe is just parallelism, i.e. its merely an analog to what happens in our minds. Much like the dashboard of your car which reads out a lot of information that guides you in your use and maintenance of your car. The dashboard readouts are however not the real thing under the bonnet and underneath the car. The fuel readout for example is not fuel itself, the speed readout is not equal to the sense of movement at a particular velocity. The distance covered is not equal to the topography of the land you have come through. But what one does know is that it is powerful - much as magnetism is although you cannot trap it into a jar, visualise it, or even touch it. You can feel its power and you can measure it. Consciousness is that. A powerful field inside our minds that generates all that we think, sense, intuit, feel, intellectualise, intend, create, inspire, emote, act, behave, comprehend and express. And its all bio-electromagnetism!! The bigger quesion is not what it is but what its contents are.

The Spiral Mindscope: The Mindscope

The Spiral Mindscope: The Mindscope