The Ganzfeld effect

The  Ganzfeld effect (from German for “complete field”) is a phenomenon of visual perception caused by staring at an undifferentiated and uniform field of color. The effect is described as the loss of vision as the brain cuts off the unchanging signal from the eyes. The result is "seeing black"^[1] - apparent blindness.

History 

 

In the 1930s, research by psychologist Wolfgang Metzger established that when subjects gazed into a featureless field of vision they consistently hallucinated and their electroencephalograms changed.

The Ganzfeld effect is the result of the brain amplifying neural noise in order to look for the missing visual signals. The noise is interpreted in the higher visual cortex, and gives rise to hallucinations. This is similar to dream production because of the brain's state of sensory deprivation during sleep.

The Ganzfeld effect has been reported since ancient times. The adepts of Pythagoras retreated to pitch black caves to receive wisdom through their visions^[2], known as the prisoner's cinema. Miners trapped by accidents in mines frequently reported hallucinations, visions and seeing ghosts when they were in the pitch dark for days. Arctic explorers seeing nothing but featureless landscape of white snow for a long time also reported hallucinations and an altered state of mind.

The effect is a component of a Ganzfeld experiment, a technique used in the field of parapsychology.
The artist James Turrell (partly inspired by clear blue skies) has created many such "Ganzfelds" throughout his oeuvre.

See also

• Sensory deprivation
• Ganzfeld experiment
• Dark retreat
• Floatation tank
• Hypnagogia

 

References

1. ^ Ramesh B. Ganzfeld Effect.
2. ^ Ustinova, Yulia.Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind: Descending Underground in the Search for Ultimate Truth, Oxford University Press US, 2009. ISBN 0199548560

• Wolfgang Metzger, "Optische Untersuchungen am Ganzfeld." Psychologische Forschung 13 (1930) : 6-29. (the first psychophysiological study with regard to Ganzfelds)

 EGG: Did you reach this conclusion through more traditional media, like painting or sculpture?

JT: I haven't had anything to do with either sculpture or painting. I have done works that look painted or works that have form and look like sculpture. I make these spaces that apprehend light for your perception. In a way, it's like Plato's cave, where we are sitting in the cave looking at the reflection of reality with our backs to reality. I make these spaces where the spaces themselves are perceivers or in some way pre-form perception. It's a little bit like what the eye does. I mean, I look at the eye as the most exposed part of the brain, as something that is already forming perception. I make these rooms that are these camera-like spaces that in some way form light, apprehend it to be something that's physically present.

EGG: What happens when you use space this way?

JT: This results in an art that is not about my seeing, it's about your direct perception of the work. I'm interested in having a light that inhabits space, so that you feel light to be physically present. I mean, light is a substance that is, in fact, a thing, but we don't attribute thing-ness to it. We use light to illuminate other things, something we read, sculpture, paintings. And it gladly does this. But the most interesting thing to find is that light is aware that we are looking at it, so that it behaves differently when we are watching it and when we're not, which imbues it with consciousness. Often people say that they want to touch some of the work I do. Well, that feeling is actually coming from the fact that the eyes are touching, the eyes are feeling. And this happens because the eyes are quite sensitive only in low light, for which we were made. We're actually made for this light of Plato's cave, the light of twilight. See: Interview with James Turrell

psychomanteums

The room is set up to optimize psychological effects such as trance. Its key features are low light or near-darkness, flickering light, and a mirror. The dimness represents a form of visual sensory deprivation, a condition helpful to trance induction, the undifferentiated colour without horizon producing the Ganzfeld effect^[4], a state of apparent "blindness". The Ganzfeld experiment replicates the conditions of a psychomanteum where a state of trance may be induced by a uniform field of vision. In the way of strobe or flashing light, stimulus is provided by indirect, moving light in the psychomanteum. Flickering candles or lamps are sometimes recommended to induce hallucination. It is supposed the indeterminate depth of the mirror’s darkness allows the eyes to relax and become unfocused, a state that reduces alertness.^[2]

Dr. Raymond Moody, author of the 1981 book about near death experiences, Life After Life, included the psychomanteum in his research trialling 300 subjects which he recorded in his 1993 book, Reunions. Moody viewed the room as a therapeutic tool to heal grief and bring insight.^[2]

The Science of Consciousness: Consciousness as a Phase Shift?

Ya okay...all these opinions....it still begs the question of "What makes you you?"

Cells are just the building blocks of our body, like the bricks of a house, but who is the architect, who coordinates the building of this house. When someone has died, only mortal remains are left: only matter. But where is the director of the body?What about our consciousness when we die? Is someone his body, or do we “have” a body? About the Continuity of Our Consciousness

Even though there is a logical explanation for any argument saying "death is death" it can run to the contrary unless consciousness is understood?



See:Science of Consciousness
An interview with David Chalmers discussing his theory of consciousness, the hard problem, and the explanatory gap.

So David offers the point of view of recognizing all the constraints of communication as being eliminated except for what results as the book, listed here from Amazon, is written from the perspective of a "blink of the eye."

What was the next step? But to recognize that consciousness may or could be communicated in some way beyond the blink of that eye? So we recognize a departure point needed for ways in which such communications may be attempted if all these means of expression had been removed. How could you communicate if someone was in a coma/ mentally expressive, is still consciously living and viable according to the measures given to the brain measure when activated but still having no way physical way with which to communicate?

Life After Death Question

It's obvious that some humour can make light of a dead situation?:)

Stephen Hawking dismisses belief in God in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. Photograph: Solar & Heliospheric Observatory/Discovery Channel

In the interview, Hawking rejected the notion of life beyond death and emphasised the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives. In answer to a question on how we should live, he said, simply: "We should seek the greatest value of our action." Ian Sample, science correspondent

Seriously though how is it Stephen  can invoke the after life in order to concertize what they are saying about their science. Is this just an affirmation of their scientific position? Later on I raise the question even further with Lee Smolin.

In the quoted paragraph above I agree with the writer when he writes of Stephen Hawking that he," emphasised the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives ."

I must admit the thought of Meno with regard to Lee Smolin creep into my mind. This in regards to Plato's Problem.

LEE SMOLIN
Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, The Trouble With Physics

Thinking In Time Versus Thinking Outside Of Time

One very old and pervasive habit of thought is to imagine that the true answer to whatever question we are wondering about lies out there in some eternal domain of "timeless truths." The aim of re-search is then to "discover" the answer or solution in that already existing timeless domain. For example, physicists often speak as if the final theory of everything already exists in a vast timeless Platonic space of mathematical objects. This is thinking outside of time.

Scientists are thinking in time when we conceive of our task as the invention of genuinely novel ideas to describe newly discovered phenomena, and novel mathematical structures to express them. If we think outside of time, we believe these ideas somehow "existed" before we invented them. If we think in time we see no reason to presume that.

The contrast between thinking in time and thinking outside of time can be seen in many domains of human thought and action. We are thinking outside of time when, faced with a technological or social problem to solve, we assume the possible approaches are already determined by a set of absolute pre-existing categories. We are thinking in time when we understand that progress in technology, society and science happens by the invention of genuinely novel ideas, strategies, and novel forms of social organization. See:A "scientific concept" may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous conceptual tool that may be summed up succinctly (or "in a phrase") but has broad application to understanding the world.

See Also: Experiments On Life After Death

Quantum suicide and immortality

But for the first time, quantum physicist Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that memories of entanglement can survive its destruction. He compares the effect to Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights: “the spectral Catherine communicates with her quantum Heathcliff as a flash of light from beyond the grave.”Where Susskind leaves off, Seth Lloyd begins

In Max' Tegmark's assessment of Quantum Immortality, "Although quantum immortality is motivated by the quantum suicide thought experiment, Max Tegmark has stated that he does not believe that quantum immortality is a consequence of his work,"I thought to trace some perspective about what happened with the thought experiment of Susskind's versus the telling tale of what happens inside the blackhole based on the idea of something that is left outside the blackhole for consideration.

***

The consequence of sound in analogy serves to help us not only orientate causal action from direct contact, but the realization that such contact has consequences. It is befitting such thought experiments or analogies can help push the mind toward accepting the world in a different light so it understands that there is more to the world in which we see as observers, but also of what we meet through such contact as a manifestation through experiences.

Savas Dimopoulos

Here’s an analogy to understand this: imagine that our universe is a two-dimensional pool table, which you look down on from the third spatial dimension. When the billiard balls collide on the table, they scatter into new trajectories across the surface. But we also hear the click of sound as they impact: that’s collision energy being radiated into a third dimension above and beyond the surface. In this picture, the billiard balls are like protons and neutrons, and the sound wave behaves like the graviton.See Also: The Sound Of Billiard Balls

***

How Quantum Suicide Works

by Josh Clark

***

In quantum mechanics, quantum suicide is a thought experiment. It was originally published independently by Hans Moravec in 1987 and Bruno Marchal in 1988 and was further developed by Max Tegmark in 1998.^[1] It attempts to distinguish between the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the Everett many-worlds interpretation by means of a variation of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. The experiment involves looking at the Schrödinger's cat experiment from the point of view of the cat.

Quantum immortality is a metaphysical speculation derived from the quantum suicide thought experiment. It states that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that conscious beings are immortal.^[2] Hugh Everett is reported to have believed in quantum immortality, although he never published on either quantum suicide or quantum immortality.^[3]

Contents 1 The quantum suicide thought experiment 2 Quantum immortality 3 Surviving the quantum thought experiment 4 Required assumptions 5 Arguments against quantum immortality 5.1 Max Tegmark's work 5.2 David Lewis's work 5.3 Derek Parfit's work 6 Other criticism and controversy 7 In fiction 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

The quantum suicide thought experiment

Unlike Schrödinger's cat-in-a-box thought experiment which used poison gas and a radioactive decay trigger, this human version involves some sort of lethal weapon and a machine which measures the spin value of a photon. Every 10 seconds, the spin value of a randomly passing photon is measured. Depending on the orientation of the spin, either the weapon is deployed and the man is killed, or it is not and he lives.

With each run of the experiment there is a 50-50 chance that the weapon will be triggered and the experimenter will die. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the weapon will (in all likelihood) eventually be triggered and the experimenter will die. If the many-worlds interpretation is correct then at each run of the experiment, the experimenter will be split into several worlds in which he dies and a few worlds in which he survives. In the worlds where the experimenter dies, he will cease to be a conscious entity.

However, from the point of view of the non-dead copies of the experimenter, the experiment will continue running without his ceasing to exist, because at each branch, he will only be able to observe the result in the world in which he survives, and if many-worlds is correct, the surviving copies of the experimenter will notice that he never seems to die, therefore "proving" himself to be invulnerable to the killing mechanism in question, from his own point of view.

If the many-worlds interpretation is true, the measure (given in the many-worlds interpretation by the squared norm of the wavefunction) of the surviving copies of the experimenter will decrease by 50% with each run of the experiment, but will remain non-zero. So, if the surviving copies become experimenters, those copies will either die during their first attempt, or survive creating duplicates of themselves (copies of copies, that will survive finitely or die).

 Quantum immortality

The idea behind quantum immortality is that, in running the quantum thought experiment, the experimenter may remain alive and, thus, be able to experience at least one of the universes in this set (even though these universes form a tiny subset of all possible universes). Over time, the experimenter would therefore never perceive his or her own death.

Surviving the quantum thought experiment

The small-probability remaining branches are in effect, though unlikely to be experienced by most of the copies of the experimenter that started out. Most of the observer-moments in the universe will not be in such low-measure situations because measure is proportional to the number of copies and therefore the number of that type of observer-moment.

However, the rareness of an observer moment has no relation to presence or absence of experience; if the many-worlds interpretation is true, all non-zero observer moments are experienced, even rare ones. Believers in quantum suicide think it gives a recipe for entering into rare observer moments. The experimenter indeed knows that this type of observer moment is rare, which is why it would be unlikely to occur in interpretations of quantum physics that don't have many worlds.

In the branching worlds, the observer has one of two possibilities, live or die. If he is alive, then presumably he does not recall the death. In the other reality, he is dead (and ceases to exist in that reality). If the experiment is repeated over and over, there will always be a reality where the observer never dies. This reality will finally convince the observer that it is impossible to die.

Required assumptions

Proponents of the quantum immortality point out that, although it is highly speculative, the theory does not violate any known laws of physics—but only if certain controversial assumptions are made:

1. That the many-worlds interpretation is the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics, as opposed to the Copenhagen interpretation, the latter of which does not involve the existence of parallel universes. Note, though, that parallel universes may be possible through other mechanisms in the Copenhagen interpretation.
2. Not dying some finite number of times (perhaps in parallel universes) constitutes immortality.
3. Permanent cessation of the consciousness, along with the ability to observe, occurs at physical destruction (death).

Arguments against quantum immortality

David Papineau argues against the quantum suicide argument thus: "If one outcome is valuable because it contains my future experiences, surely an alternative outcome which lacks those experiences is of lesser value, simply by comparison with the first outcome. Since expected utility calculations hinge on relative utility values rather than absolute ones, I should be concerned about death as long as the outcome where I die is given less utility than the one where I survive, whatever the absolute value."^[4]

Jacques Mallah expands on this "utility" argument,^[5] suggesting that quantum suicide cannot give a recipe for "entering into" rare or "low measure" observer moments. This is because the amount of consciousness or "measure" of these rare observer moments is exactly as much as it would have been without the quantum suicide; in that case quantum suicide merely removes the other observer-moments. This is equivalent, in Mallah's view, to a single-world situation in which one starts off with many copies of the experimenter, and the number of surviving copies is decreased by 50% with each run. Therefore, according to this argument, the quantum nature of the experiment provides no benefit to the experimenter; in terms of his/her subjective life expectancy or rational decision making, or even in terms of his/her trying to decide whether the many-worlds interpretation is correct, the many-worlds interpretation gives results that are the same as that of a single-world interpretation.^[5]
Mallah also gives a "general argument against immortality" which argues that if people are immortal, then it is vanishingly unlikely to find oneself to be of a normal age rather than abnormally old.

It has been countered that in a many-worlds interpretation, the amplitude of being the living experimenter can be halved repeatedly without ever reaching zero. However, this point is not disputed by opponents of quantum suicide; rather, they claim that it is not the issue, while Mallah claims that the decrease in measure is the issue.

Max Tegmark's work

Using logic similar to that of Greg Egan's Dust Theory, Max Tegmark argues that under any sort of normal conditions, before someone dies they undergo a period of diminishment of consciousness, a non-quantum decline (which can be anywhere from seconds to minutes to years), and hence there is no way of establishing a continuous existence in this world to an alternate one in which the person ceases to exist.^[6] Although quantum immortality is motivated by the quantum suicide thought experiment, Max Tegmark has stated that he does not believe that quantum immortality is a consequence of his work^.

David Lewis's work

The philosopher David Lewis, in "How Many Lives Has Schrödinger's Cat?", remarked that in the vast majority of the worlds in which an immortal observer might find himself (i.e. the subset of quantum-possible worlds in which the observer does not die), he will survive, but will be terribly maimed. This is because in each of the scenarios typically given in thought experiments (nuclear bombing, Russian roulette, etc.), for every world in which the observer survives unscathed, there are likely to be far more worlds in which the observer survives terribly disfigured, badly disabled, and so on. It is for this reason, Lewis concludes, that we ought to hope that the many-worlds interpretation is false.^[7]

Derek Parfit's work

In Reasons and Persons Derek Parfit used thought experiments ranging from teleportation to gradual changes to your psychology to argue that personal identity isn't a deep fact about the world. After quantum suicide there would be worlds with persons that shared your memories and there would be worlds without such persons. There is no Cartesian ego which does or doesn't survive.

Other criticism and controversy

Critics^[who?] contend quantum suicide fails as a thought experiment to achieve its intended purpose. Nonetheless, there are arguments^[specify] involving anthropic considerations among entire universes which do provide evidence^[specify] for the many-worlds interpretation.^[8]
Quantum suicide and quantum immortality remain controversial because a number of thinkers^[who?] disagree on its success or failure and, particularly, its relevance to life expectancy and decision making.

In fiction

Main article: Quantum suicide and quantum immortality in fiction

Authors^[who?] of science fiction have used themes involving both quantum suicide and quantum immortality. The idea that authors exploit is that a person who dies in one world may survive in another world or parallel universe.

Quantum suicide

Quantum suicide themes have been explored in the following works:

• Larry Niven's short story "All the Myriad Ways", collected in a collection of the same name (1971)
• Dan Simmons's novel The Hollow Man (1992). Simmons also describes a quantum execution mechanism in his Hyperion Cantos series.
• Greg Egan's novel Quarantine (1992)
• Greg Egan's novel Permutation City (1994), in which one character repeatedly had his mind uploaded and his copy eventually terminated, but found out that he always "ended up" in another world, where his survival was explained by increasingly improbable circumstances.
• Robert Charles Wilson's short story Divided by Infinity (1998)
• Denis Johnson's novel Already Dead (A California Gothic) (1998)
• Jason Shiga's book Meanwhile (2004)
• Greg Bear's short Story "Schrodinger's Plague" found in his book Tangents deals with a doomsday version of this experiment in which instead of a single scientist dying, a deadly virus is released into the populace.

Quantum immortality

Quantum immortality themes have been explored in several works:

Books

• The Greg Egan novel Quarantine explores topics related to quantum immortality.
• In the Greg Egan short story The Infinite Assassin, the title character explicitly defines himself this way: "'I' am those who survive, and succeed. The rest are someone else."
• Other science fiction stories exploring these and related ideas include All the Myriad Ways by Larry Niven, and Divided by Infinity by Robert Charles Wilson.
• Terry Pratchett's short story Death and What Comes Next has a philosopher arguing the principle with Death, who has come for him.
• Steven Hall's novel The Raw Shark Texts contains references to Max Tegmark and the Quantum Machine Gun (an alternate name for the quantum suicide thought experiment) suggesting a possible quantum immortality -related reading of the story.
• In Neal Stephenson's 2008 novel Anathem, the concept of quantum immortality factors significantly, if under different names.

See also

• Final anthropic principle
• Multiverse
• Quantum mind
• Quantum mysticism

References

1. ^ Tegmark, Max The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Many Worlds or Many Words?, 1998
2. ^ Goertzel, Ben; Bugaj, Stephan Vladimir (2006). The path to posthumanity: 21st century technology and its radical implications for mind, society and reality. Academica Press, LLC. p. 343. 
3. ^ See Keith Lynch's recollections in Eugene Shikhovtsev's Biography of Everett [1]
4. ^ Papineau, David "Why you don’t want to get in the box with Schrödinger's cat" Analysis 63: 51–58. 2003
5. ^ ^{a b} Mallah, Jacques Many-Worlds Interpretations Can Not Imply 'Quantum Immortality', 2009
6. ^ Tegmark, Max Quantum immortality, November 1998
7. ^ David Lewis. How Many Lives Has Schrödinger's Cat? The Jack Smart Lecture, Canberra, 27 June 2001. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 82, No. 1, pp. 3–22; March 2004, pp. 21.
8. ^ Observational Consequences of Many-Worlds Quantum Theory, 1999.

External links

• "Does the 'many-worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics imply immortality?" by James Higgo
• The 'Everything' mailing list (and archives), A "discussion of the idea that all possible universes exist".
• How Quantum Suicide Works
• Dying to know

The Golden Rule: Heart as Feather, is a Heart in Measure

Der Barmherzige Samariter(The Merciful Samaritan) 1632-1633Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn 15 July 1606, Leiden – 4 October 1669, Amsterdam) was a Dutch painter, engraver and draftsman.

The Good Samaritan

"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead with no clothes. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, and he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, he too passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and looked after him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' "Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

Ethic of reciprocity

Der gute Samariter (nach Delacroix)1890 Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)

The ethic of reciprocity, also known as the Golden Rule, is an ethical code that states one has a right to just treatment, and a responsibility to ensure justice for others. Reciprocity is arguably the most essential basis for the modern concept of human rights, though it has its critics.[1] A key element of the golden rule is that a person attempting to live by this rule treats all people, not just members of his or her in-group, with consideration.

The golden rule has its roots in a wide range of world cultures, and is a standard which different cultures use to resolve conflicts[2]; it was present in the philosophies of ancient India, Greece, and China. Principal philosophers and religious figures have stated it in different ways, but its most common English phrasing is attributed to Jesus of Nazareth in the Biblical book of Luke: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The "Do unto others" wording first appeared in English in a Catholic Catechism around 1567, but certainly in the reprint of 1583.[3]

The Soul=λόγος,θυμος,ἔρως

21 Grams

The title of the movie comes from the work of Dr. Duncan MacDougall, who in the early 1900s sought to measure the weight purportedly lost by a human body when the soul departed the body upon death. MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material, tangible and thus measurable. These experiments are widely considered to have little, if any scientific merit, and MacDougall's results varied considerably from 21 grams, but for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul's mass [1].

When garnered to thinking about the soul, it's value in weight, always seems to occupy my mind. Even though the topic has been deemed foolish, by historical debate. It is the cornerstone of my relating "emotive colourations" to a value of our mind, tied to the current state of being.

Hall of Ma'at

In art, the feather was shown in scenes of the Hall of Ma'at. This hall is where the deceased was judged for his worthiness to enter the afterlife. The seat of the deceased's soul, his heart, was weighed on a balance against the feather of Ma'at. If the heart was free from the impurities of sin, and therefore lighter than the feather, then the dead person could enter the eternal afterlife. Other gods in the judgement hall who were part of the tribunal overseeing the weighing of the heart were also pictured holding a feather.

See:Egyptian Myths

You had to know of course what this picture above means from my own soul interpretation to understand what this blog is about. While of course speaking to everything science is and does, it never did answer the deeper questions I had about the soul. You had to know that given the set of circumstances in my youth that such motivation can be like Einstein's own, that this degree and direction of life, can have it's motivational factor determined. See "Einstein's compass"


God's Equation, by Amir D. Aczel, Pg 14

From a early age, young Albert showed great interest in the world around him. When he was five years old, his father gave him a compass, and the child was enchanted by the device and intrigued by the fact the needle followed a invisible field to point always in the direction of the north pole.Reminicing in old age, Einstein mentioned this incident as one of the factors that perhaps motivated him years later to study the gravitational field.

So you see such factors in our youth can determine something about our future. Is this quest "motivational and soulful enough" for such time to be taken. Sought as the soul's quest in this lifetime?

The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. In these traditions the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for sapience, rather than the brain or any other material or natural part of the biological organism. Some religions and philosophies on the other hand believe in the soul having a material component, and some have even tried to establish the weight of the soul. Souls are usually considered to be immortal and to exist prior to incarnation.

The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an afterlife, but opinions may vary wildly, even within a given religion, as to what may happen to the soul after the death of the body. It also shares as a PIE root of spirit.

Socrates and Plato

Plato, drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, considered the soul as the essence of a person, being, that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence as an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. As bodies die the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies. The Platonic soul comprises three parts:

1. the logos (mind, nous, or reason)
2. the thymos (emotion, or spiritedness)
3. the eros (appetitive, or desire)

Each of these has a function in a balanced and peaceful soul.

The logos equates to the mind. It corresponds to the charioteer, directing the balanced horses of appetite and spirit. It allows for logic to prevail, and for the optimisation of balance.

The thymos comprises our emotional motive, that which drives us to acts of bravery and glory. If left unchecked, it leads to hubris -- the most fatal of all flaws in the Greek view.

The eros equates to the appetite that drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs. When the passion controls us, it drives us to hedonism in all forms. In the Ancient Greek view, this is the basal and most feral state.

So in a sense we have a historical construction of the valuation being, that while developed from a philosophical view, I had found some relation to the way I'd awaken, my own Mind map. So by developing this model I wanted to be reminded of the integration of what lies outside of us physically(what is this field of endeavour?)

Logos (Greek λόγος) is an important term in philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion. It derives from the verb λέγω legō: to count, tell, say, or speak.[1] The primary meaning of logos is: something said; by implication a subject, topic of discourse or reasoning. Secondary meanings such as logic, reasoning, etc. derive from the fact that if one is capable of λέγειν (infinitive) i.e. speech, then intelligence and reason are assumed.

Thumos

(also commonly spelled "thymos") (Greek: θυμος) is an Ancient Greek word expressing the concept of spiritedness. The word indicates a physical association with breath or blood. The word is also used to express the human desire for recognition.

In Homer's works, thumos was used to denote emotions, desire, or an internal urge. Thumos was a permanent possession of living man, to which his thinking and feeling belonged. When a Homeric hero is under emotional stress he may externalize his thumos, conversing with it or scolding it.[1]

Plato's dialogue Phaedrus and longer work The Republic discuss thumos as one of the three constituent parts of the human psyche, along with logos and eros. In the Phaedrus, Plato depicts logos as a charioteer driving the two horses of eros and thumos (i.e. desire and will were to be guided by rationality). In the Republic's Book IV, the soul is divided into nous ("intellect"), thumos ("passion"), and epithumia ("appetite"). Thumos is the emotional element in virtue of which anger and fear are felt.[2]

Eros

(ἔρως érōs) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Modern Greek word "erotas" means "(romantic) love". The term erotic is derived from eros.

See: Thematic Resolutions

The center and the whole-what it means?

If conceived as a series of ever-wider experiential contexts, nested one within the other like a set of Chinese boxes, consciousness can be thought of as wrapping back around on itself in such a way that the outermost 'context' is indistinguishable from the innermost 'content' - a structure for which we coined the term 'liminocentric'.

Part of the understanding here is that in having "touched that centre," realize that it is the source from which any theory will begin it's emergence into the reality of our modelled and wakeful world.

Now Peter LYnd makes talk of the Black/White hole. It is part of my understanding for such a thought to occur, realizing from a source it could manifest into our daily world, why not that "this creation" impel any thought construct into manifestation as well? The universe the same?

From the Buddhist perspective there are at least two senses that we can give to this phrase 'being with creation' that Von Franz uses in this context. First, according to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, if we have developed the requisite skill in meditation, at the moment of death we are presented with a unique opportunity to connect with this 'central hole where creation takes place' - that is, with the 'emptiness' or 'plenum' or 'fullness' that is at the center of things. According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it manifests at that time as a 'clear light'. If we are capable of realizing what is going on at that moment we also gain control over the creative process in which emptiness manifests in form, and conscious reincarnation becomes possible. But, secondly, we can also take all of this in a less literal, more figurative, PSYCHOLOGICAL sense - as a description of what must take place within the individual in order for her to become a conscious participant in her own inner creative processes, an agent of personal change, and skilled at what is sometimes called 'paradigm shifting'.

I mean how many in science have this standard by which they must work? Have this other side to them and their life? The "questioning and wanting know" of this other mystery to life? What is this mystery I am talking about?

Well to me I have this "indirect way of answering" that reveals this uncertainty, yet, I have this innate sense of "knowing without knowing how I know." That's not really a good answer is it?:) Some will attach themselves to this previous statement. I have seen it before, and I know they will answer accordingly.

I've talked about the centre many times on this site.

I've open up this post with the information that lead me along never really knowing the direction, yet fully confident that in time it would fall into place.

Visual Imaging.

I can't go into a whole lot here other to say that the source of these images are intriguing to say the least.

I am presented with a "paradoxical situation" that is confusing for me, until, I seen this process in action. The "inner/outer" somehow being explained within the confines of our beings. So while I see things happening on the outside, they were first implemented within. I don't feel happy with what I just wrote. Ihave to show you what I mean by way of images that show this paradoxical situation.

Figure 8 [replaced by our Figure 2] is to be conceived three-dimensionally, the circles being cross-sections of spherical shells in the plane of the drawing. A man is climbing about on the huge spherical surface 1; by measurements with rigid rods he recognizes it as a spherical shell, i.e. he finds the geometry of the surface of a sphere. Since the third dimension is at his disposal, he goes to spherical shell 2. Does the second shell lie inside the first one, or does it enclose the first shell? He can answer this question by measuring 2. Assume that he finds 2 to be the smaller surface; he will say that 2 is situated inside of 1. He goes now to 3 and finds that 3 is as large as 1.

How is this possible? Should 3 not be smaller than 2? ...

He goes on to the next shell and finds that 4 is larger than 3, and thus larger than 1. ... 5 he finds to be as large as 3 and 1.

But here he makes a strange observation. He finds that in 5 everything is familiar to him; he even recognizes his own room which was built into shell 1 at a certain point. This correspondence manifests itself in every detail; ... He is quite dumbfounded since he is certain that he is separated from surface 1 by the intervening shells. He must assume that two identical worlds exist, and that every event on surface 1 happens in an identical manner on surface 5. (Reichenbach 1958, 63-64)

It would not be complete without introducing another paradoxical situation that Brian Greene himself presented. But before I do that I wanted to write here something else for consideration. It will speak to the Garrett Lisi's and their idea about imaging that comes deep from within them. How they organize a "whole structure of creation" from within themself. Model it, outside themself. It's more then just a fingerprint.

One harmonious possibility is that string enthusiasts and loop quantum gravity aficionados are actually constructing the same theory, but from vastly different starting points. That each theory involves loops-in string theory, these are string loops; in loop quantum gravity, they're harder to describe non-mathmatically, but, roughly speaking, they're elementary loops of space-suggests there might be a connection. This possibility is further supported by the fact that on a few problems accessible to both, such as blackhole entropy, the two theories agree fully. And on the question of spacetime's constituents, both theories suggest that there is some kind of atomized structure. Page 490, Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene

Take note on that last part of Greene' statement Garrett. The paradox as follows,

Greene:

it turns out that within string theory ... there is actually an identification, we believe, between the very tiny and the very huge. So it turns out that if you, for instance, take a dimension - imagine its in a circle, imagine its really huge - and then you make it smaller and smaller and smaller, the equations tell us that if you make it smaller than a certain length (its about 10-³³ centimeters, the so called 'Planck Length') ... its exactly identical, from the point of view of physical properties, as making the circle larger. So you're trying to squeeze it smaller, but actually in reality your efforts are being turned around by the theory and you're actually making the dimension larger. So in some sense, if you try to squeeze it all the way down to zero size, it would be the same as making it infinitely big. ... (CSPAN Archives Videotape #125054)

Well not to be undone, and more explicit in this example,

In fact, in the reciprocal language, these tiny circles are getting ever smaller as time goes by, since as R grows, 1/R shrinks. Now we seem to have really gone off the deep end. How can this possibly be true? How can a six-foot tall human being 'fit' inside such an unbelievably microscopic universe? How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above? (Greene, The Elegant Universe, pages 248-249)

So I am not sure if this hits home for any of you? I will push on here in a bit. Life is calling me here.

The Philosophy of Death is one of Life?

Yes of course the entries like this one are philosphical in nature.

So I thought I would try and explain it as I understood it? Whether it's right or not, is how much you want to believe it? That's up to you.

Instructions for Vision 1: The Source (Eyes closed, external stimuli ignored)

O nobly-born, listen carefully:
The Radiant Energy of the Seed
From which come all living forms,
Shoots forth and strikes against you
With a light so brilliant that you will scarcely be able to look at it.
Do not be frightened.
This is the Source Energy which has been radiating for billions of years,
Ever manifesting itself in different forms.
Accept it.
Do not try to intellectualize it.
Do not play games with it.
Merge with it.
Let it flow through you.
Lose yourself in it.
Fuse in the Halo of Rainbow Light
Into the core of the energy dance.
Obtain Buddhahood in the Central Realm of the Densely Packed.

Each of the quoted paragraphs are directly linked. I wanted the science mind to be considered here, so I linked to my site in paragraph below and what liminocentrically structure means. A circle, with a dot in it, is a transcendant figure, once you move to the center?

If conceived as a series of ever-wider experiential contexts, nested one within the other like a set of Chinese boxes, consciousness can be thought of as wrapping back around on itself in such a way that the outermost 'context' is indistinguishable from the innermost 'content' - a structure for which we coined the term 'liminocentric'.

I guess it might depend on how we live life now? :)

If we imagine history running back in time, we inevitably come to the epoch of the "big squeeze" with all the galaxies, stars, atoms and atomic nuclei squeezed, so to speak, to a pulp. During that early stage of evolution, matter must have been dissociated into its elementary components.... We call this primordial mixture ylem.

Having this kind of information at hand, and being lead by the basis of "interpretations of death," can we not die and are born many times in life? Change?

If you had lost the ability to grasp the physcial processes in our real(illusive) life, and moved the spirit, thinking, it was physically capable, to only find that you pass through, what are you to surmize?

If such physical process was the corner stone of our thoughts, then such a shock, that "the transferance" from the "waking mind" that sees around now, would have passed onto the subsconcious mind(deaths mind)and that once, it was where we dreamed, now sees, it is this dreams that is "the mind" of the soul.

Shall life had been so scattered, and the events disenchanted as "events," one from another(discrete), then what use the outcome of interpretation of the dream world, and the chaoticness with which we had been effected and dreamed in life?

The subsconscious then, becomes the mind of the soul?

Finally, we also hope that this series furthers the discussion regarding the nature and function of 'the mandala'. In the spiritual traditions from which Jung borrowed the term, it is not the SYMMETRY of mandalas that is all-important, as Jung later led us to believe. It is their capacity to reveal the asymmetry that resides at the very heart of symmetry. By offering a new view about how consciousness itself is structured - in a fundamentally paradoxical fashion - and how these structurings are reflected in principles according to which the mandala is organized, we are able in this series to show how personality itself may be thought of as having an essentially 'liminocentric' design.

You need a map? :) So you learn to see how structure is applied in the consequence and outward expressions, also, holds the "transcendant value" to where we see the light again. In our center?

How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above? (Greene, The Elegant Universe, pages 248-249).

I always reiterate the "koan in life" that was most troubling, in regards to Greene's statement? By turning something inside/out, such a collapse to such a singuarilty has consequences for "information loss."

A new birth of "something old or in need of rejuvenation?) that is ready to turn? I don't see any of you, as any different.

See:

Books for the Dead are Really, Books for Life?

A Myth Created: Truth Felt, and a Life to Accomplish?

More thoughts on Enlightenment?

While that book is not available there, it has many other books listed for inspection.

Richard Maurice Bucke(pdf) and Cosmic Consciousness was one of the first books that I read about almost 35 years ago. It was long ago assimilated, so I could not tell you much, other then I question now the role might be presented to our awareness, for those developing and being responsive to intuitive moments. Or what, a enlightened individual might be, after having met moments that may correlate to what enlightenment might be, "more then once," for the initiated?

As I said I am not a very good meditator, although I do look quietly and focused in my intentions as to what such quiet moments could produce, after working to understand.


In the Third Person?

It was in the early spring at the beginning of his thirty-sixth year. He and two friends had spent the evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman. They parted at midnight, and he had a long drive in a hansom. ...His mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images, and emotions called up by reading and talk of the evening, was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-coloured cloud...he knew that the light was within himself. Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exaltation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe... he saw and knew that the cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one in the long run is absolutely certain.

I'm thinking out loud. :)

Does such an elevation really make the individual any different remembering and being respectful, of the life they are currently living/others?

I personally don't think these constructs change in which we had to learn to use in how we assess/work life. Means, that the job is ever more difficult and the responsibility to living life ever more complicated/greater. We are now supposed to be more aware?

We now understand possibly what the emotive development means in how we produce memory and the attitude development granted to reacting in life ( what can be changed in the future). Yet, we are still involved in purifying these emotions, still the uneducated ruler(ego) exists, by the unleashed potentials of a mind who still sleeps, while it should be awake?

Yet, the mind has been synchronized, with the development of the lower centers and the" heart," the place where such development begins? How do all such probabilities come to mind?

Might we now become aware of the responsibility we have for truth to ourselves/others and the illusions we might have perpetuated? The fog and qualities of working towards a "open heart and clear mind" that may be met because of the issues we developed/developing, along in life.

Of course there could be many interpretations caused by my ambiguity of words choosen here, yet, is enlightenment really ever that far away for each of us to experience?

That such potentials could exist if we had thought these things not sacrosanct to mysticism alone, but is really part of developing and working responsibly, in our quest to understand life/science?

Books for the Dead are Really, Books for Life?

The Papyrus of Ani
(The Egyptian Book of the Dead)

Translated by E. A. Wallis Budge

Tibetan Book of the Dead Teachings

with Lama Kusang Norbu

I mean most certainly that if such historical context can be "so clouded" by this introduction of things, aside from the science validation process, how much weight would we apply in such measures? To have found our current state of illusion, so far from the truth? So far interceded by the degration of fog in regards to the color purity of clarity realized? You had to know, that the truth here, had some measure. I relayed "this myth" for a means in which to investigate, your truth, as you have learned it.

In this sense the ultimate judge of who you are, have been, overlays all life experience. Forces us to consider the "emotive content" of that experience in relation to the "ephemeral qualities" I had assigned to such memory induction.

Would it be so free, that we had distanced ourselves from the bias of emotion, that sent this memory into a "resource base" with which we shall measure and speak about all reality? So such an assumption of life before our eyes, as it replays in our day today, has us reflecting on the nature of our life experience? What differences in time, before and after, that we might not say ,that after this journey completed, such measure might not have been used to take stock of?

So is it, our names are not so important? But the understanding, that we create this name?

So what art form would we imbue to such facades and measures of illusion, that we would "be" the life, and recognize the truth, as we have come to deal with it, soul by soul basis. Recognition of "our sins flawed" in the rhetoric of our character, biased and messages sent forth.

Had we forgotten then this tool of measure then, and what it means. The "contrast" to subjective realization, is the distillation of what value the "heart is" and the truth with which we will bear down on the responsibility of our life, as well, as the life of others.

Soul by soul basis, we recognize the freedom with the probability outcome, would have said this resulting soul "choose" this experience, and in this life experience, what was the reality and concrete forming, that all life issued from this result, was to be, the "new" life?

This "cyclical nature" had to be realized?

A Myth Created: Truth Felt, and a Life to Accomplish?

I sometimes have a problem with the thought, that the brain in human beings back 2000 years time, had less intelligent brain matter defined, that we could have had less than the truth of things required?

The plate below speaks to this. Observation maybe on the inherent principals embedded with myth, seems interesting, if held in context of what the emotive truth would have implied. Having given meaning to "lightness in the heart of things."

Maybe new light shed on Einstein's relevance to gravity held in perspective of length of time past with a pretty girl.

Subjective as this may be, it shows some relation to the "time variable recognitions" held in perspective, while looking at the nature of the sphere of earth seen in a new light.

The feather, because of its name, "shut", was a symbol of Shu. Shu was the Egyptian god of the air and the father of the earth (Geb) and the sky (Nut). Shu was often shown wearing a feather in his hair. Occasionally Geb was shown dressed in feathers, a representation of the air which covers him.

Usually, the feather was a symbol of Ma'at, the goddess of truth and order. The goddess was always shown wearing an ostrich feather in her hair. The feather by itself was her emblem.

In art, the feather was shown in scenes of the Hall of Ma'at. This hall is where the deceased was judged for his worthiness to enter the afterlife. The seat of the deceased's soul, his heart, was weighed on a balance against the feather of Ma'at. If the heart was free from the impurities of sin, and therefore lighter than the feather, then the dead person could enter the eternal afterlife. Other gods in the judgement hall who were part of the tribunal overseeing the weighing of the heart were also pictured holding a feather.

A mechanism would have been needed to see such a development in the definitions of those ephemeral qualities. Could have "hidden" within the "emotive content" our subjective life experience. Why do we remember?

The understanding that such reactionary states allotted to experience, would have seen less of the material attachment held to the emotive content necessary? So for measuring our truthfulness to ourselves, rests in our assignment of what purity, and quality of life assigned to our undertaking of this life expressed in thought.

Taking such a stance on the idea of what came before and what came after would then take us to the question of relevance? Why is it necessary outside of these two points of existence, to have them included now.

How well then our understanding, that if such a "emotive quality to truth" had been assigned, then the draw to matter defined states of experience, might not be as strong. Awareness. Thus we will have unleashed the ephemeral quality of mind?

So it ventures forth from the confines of the home, in which it lives. Deals, in the abstract nature. Would we have abandon such a merger of emotive and intellectual qualities risen into a higher recognition necessary. What is the value of that truth personally?

It shed light on a personal experience in nature, with which all experience is remembered?