wikipedia | The interdimensional hypothesis (IDH or IH) is a hypothesis advanced by ufologists such as Jacques Vallée,[1] which states that unidentified flying objects
(UFOs) and related events involve visitations from other "realities" or
"dimensions" that coexist separately alongside our own. It is not
necessarily an alternative to the extraterrestrial hypothesis
(ETH), since the two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive so both
could be true simultaneously. IDH also holds that UFOs are a modern
manifestation of a phenomenon that has occurred throughout recorded human history, which in prior ages were ascribed to mythological or supernatural creatures.[2]
Although ETH has remained the predominant explanation for UFOs by UFOlogists,[3] some ufologists have abandoned it in favor of IDH. Paranormal researcher Brad Steiger wrote that "we are dealing with a multidimensional paraphysical phenomenon that is largely indigenous to planet Earth".[4] Other UFOlogists, such as John Ankerberg
and John Weldon, advocate IDH because it fits the explanation of UFOs
as a spiritual phenomenon. Commenting on the disparity between the ETH
and the accounts that people have made of UFO encounters, Ankerberg and
Weldon wrote "the UFO phenomenon simply does not behave like
extraterrestrial visitors."[5] In the book UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse published in 1970, John Keel linked UFOs to folkloric or supernatural concepts such as ghosts and demons.
The development of IDH as an alternative to ETH increased in the 1970s and 1980s with the publication of books by Vallée and J. Allen Hynek. In 1975, Vallée and Hynek advocated the hypothesis in The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects and further, in Vallée's 1979 book Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults.[6]
Some UFO proponents accepted IDH because the distance between stars makes interstellar travel impractical using conventional means and nobody had demonstrated an antigravity or faster-than-light
travel hypothesis that could explain extraterrestrial machines. With
IDH, it is unnecessary to explain any propulsion method because the IDH
holds that UFOs are not spacecraft, but rather devices that travel
between different realities.[7]
One advantage of IDH proffered by Hilary Evans
is its ability to explain the apparent ability of UFOs to appear and
disappear from sight and radar; this is explained as the UFO entering
and leaving our dimension ("materializing"
and "dematerializing"). Moreover, Evans argues that if the other
dimension is slightly more advanced than ours, or is our own future,
this would explain the UFOs' tendency to represent near future
technologies (airships in the 1890s, rockets and supersonic travel in
the 1940s, etc.).[8]
Use of these audio files requires good quality headphones or ear buds. The files are in .flac format for highest possible audio fidelity. Two .flac files per CD and 3 CD's per zip file except for the Experience Discovery zip file which also contains a detailed usage manual as well as most of the books referenced in the DoD Analysis and Assessment document. These .flac files should play with sufficiently high fidelity using any contemporary smartphone or PC audio player. They're zipped and average 900 MB per zip file except for Experience Discovery which is 2GB. They were created using 7zip.
According to the theories of psychologist Ronald Stone and the biomedical engineering models of Itshak Bentov, hypnosis is basically ·a technique which permits acquisition of direct access to the sensory motor cortex and pleasure centers, and lower cerebral(emotional) portions(and associated pleasure centers) of the right side of the human brain following successful disengagement of the stimulus screening function of the left hemisphere of the brain.
The left hemisphere of the brain is the self-cognitive, verbal and linear reasoning component of the brain. It fulfills the function of screening incoming stimuli by categorizing, assessing and assigning meaning prior to allowing passage to the right hemisphere of the brain. The right hemisphere, which functions as the noncritical, holistic, nonverbal and pattern-oriented component of the brain appears to accept what the left hemisphere passes to it without question.
Consequently, if the left hemisphere can be distracted either through boredom or through reduction to a soporific, semi-sleep state, external stimuli to include hypnotic suggestions are allowed to pass unchallenged into the right hemisphere where they are accepted and acted upon directly. The result may involve an emotional reaction originating in the lower cerebral region, sensory/motor responses requiring involvement of the cortex, and so on.
Both the sensory and the motor cortices of the right cerebral portion of the brain contain a sequence of points known as the "homunculus" which corresponds to points in the body(see Exhibit 1, next page). Stimulation of the corresponding area on the cortex causes intermediate response in the associated portion of the body. Consequently, induction of the suggestion that the left leg is numb, if it reaches the right hemisphere unchallenged and is referred to the appropriate area of the sensory cortex, will result in an electrical reaction being generated that will induce the feeling of numbness.
Similarly, the suggestion that the person is experiencing a general feeling of happiness and well being would be referred to the appropriate pleasure centers located in the lower cerebral portion or in the cortex of the right hemisphere, thereby inducing the suggested feeling of euphoria. Finally, suggestions such as one that informs the hypnotic subject that he enjoys enhanced concentration or powers of memory would be responded to in the right hemisphere by accessing unused information storage capacity normally held in reserve as a result of left hemisphere selection and control processes. This aspect will become significant in the context of the Gateway process when attention is given to examining the way that hypnosis may be used to accelerate progress in the early stages of the Gateway Experience.
Transcendental Meditation. On the other hand, transcendental meditation works in a distinctly different fashion. In this technique, intense and protracted single minded concentration on the process of drawing energy up the spinal cord ultimately results in what appears to be creation of acoustical standing waves in the cerebral ventricles which are then conducted to the gray matter in the cerebral cortex on the right side of the brain.
As a result, according to Bentov, these waves "will stimulate and eventually 'polarize' the cortex in such a way that it will tend to conduct a signal along the homunculus, starting from the toes and on up." The Bentov bio-medical model, as described in a book by Lee Sannella, M.D., entitled:Kundalini-Psychosis or Transcendence, states that the standing acoustical waves are the result of the altered rhythm of heart sounds which are occasioned by prolonged practice of meditation, and which set up sympathetic vibrations in the walls of the fluid filled cavities which comprise the third and lateral ventricles of the brain.
In addition, according to Bentov: "The states of bliss described by those whose Kundalini symptoms have completed the full loop along the hemispheres may be explained as a self-stimulation of the pleasure centers in the brain caused by the circulation of a 'current' along the sensory cortex." Bentov also notes, "that most of the described symptoms start on the left side of the body means that it is mostly a development occurring in the right hemisphere." Although normally a period of meditation involving intense concentration and practice for five years or some is required to "bring up the Kundalini," Bentov states that exposure to mechanical or acoustical vibrations in the range of 4-7 Hertz(cycles per second) for protracted periods may achieve the same effect. Bentov cites as an example "repeated riding in a car whose suspension and seat combination produce that range of vibrations,_or being exposed for long periods of time to these frequencies caused, for instance, by an air conditioning duct."
He also notes that:"The cumulative effect of these vibrations may be able to trigger a spontaneous physio-Kundalini sequence in susceptable people who have a particularly sensitive nervous system."
futurism | David Bohm’s influence extends beyond
physics to embrace philosophy, psychology, religion, art, and
linguistics. Interestingly, his ideas have been received more
enthusiastically by the arts community than by the scientific
establishment. The Tibetan Master Sogyal Rinpoche once remarked that
there are striking parallels between Bohm’s model of the universe and
the Buddhist *bardo* teachings, as they both “spring from a vision of
wholeness.”
Bohm had
doubts about the theory of quantum mechanics and its ability to fully
explain the workings of the universe. Despite having written a classic
textbook on quantum mechanics, Bohm, agreed with Albert Einstein that
“God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” While working on plasmas at
the Lawrence Radiation laboratory in California in the 1940s, Bohm
noticed that once electrons were in a plasma (which has a high density
of electrons and positive ions), they stopped behaving like individual
particles and started behaving like a unit. It seemed as if the sea of
electrons was somehow alive. He thought then that there was a deeper
cause behind the random nature of the subatomic world.
Bohm
came up with an idea of the quantum potential to suggest that subatomic
particles are highly complex, dynamic entities that follow a precise
path which is determined by subtle forces. In his view the quantum
potential pervades all space and guides the motion of particles by
providing information about the whole environment.
For
Bohm, all of reality was a dynamic process in which all manifest
objects are in a state of constant flux. By introducing the concepts of “implicate order” and “explicate order”,
Bohm argued that the empty space in the universe contained the whole of
everything. It is the source of explicate order, the order of the
physical world, and is a realm of pure information. From it, the
physical, observable phenomena unfold, and again, return to it. This
unfolding of the explicit order from the subtle realm of the implicate
order, and the movement of all matter in terms of enfolding and
unfolding, is what Bohm called the Holomovement.
Bohm believed that although the universe appears to be solid, it is, in
essence, a magnificent hologram. He believed in the “whole in every
part” idea, and just like a hologram, each part of physical reality
contained information about the whole.
Bohm was not the only scientist who
arrived at this conclusion. In neuroscience, Karl Pribram, who was
working on the functioning of the brain, concluded that memories are
encoded not in specific regions of the brain, but in patterns of nerve
impulses that crisscross the brain in the same way that patterns of
laser light interference crisscross the area containing a holographic
image. Together, Bohm and Pribram worked on developing the so called
“Holonomic Model” of the functioning of the brain.
Bohm
believed that his body was a microcosm of the macrocosm, and that the
universe was a mystical place where past, present, and future coexisted.
He postulated the existence of a realm of pure information (the
implicate order) from which the physical, observable phenomena unfold.
Unlike classical physics where reality is viewed as particles of
separate, independent elements, Bohm proposed that the fundamental
reality is the continuous enfoldment (into the implicate order) and
unfoldment (of the explicate order) from the subtle realms. In this
flow, matter and space are each part of the whole.
In stark contrast to Western ways of thinking about the nature of reality as external and mechanistic, Bohm considers our separateness an illusion
and argues that at a deeper level of reality, we, as well as all the
particles that make up all matter, are one and indivisible. For Bohm,
the “empty space” is full of energy and information. It’s a hidden world
of the implicate order, also known as the “Zero Point Field” or the
“Akasha”.
archive |MISHLOVE: You're very well known in
psychology
and in neuropsychology as the developer of the holographic or
holonomic
model of the brain. Can you talk about that a little bit, and how
it
relates to the mind -- or rather, to the mind-body process? I have to
be
on my toes with you today. PRIBRAM: Yes. The holonomic brain theory
is based
on some insights that Dennis Gabor had.
He was the inventor of the hologram, and he obtained the Nobel Prize
for
his many contributions. He was a mathematician, and what he was trying
to do was develop a better way of making electron micrographs, improve
the resolution of the micrographs. And so for electron microscopy he
suggested
that instead of making a photograph -- essentially, with electron
microscopes
we make photographs using electrons instead of photons. He thought
maybe
instead of making ordinary photographs, that what he would do is get
the
interference patterns. Now what is aninterference pattern?
When light strikes, or when electrons strike any object, they scatter.
But the scatter is a funny kind of scatter. It's a very well regulated
scatter. For instance, if you defocus the lens on a camera so that you
don't get the image falling on the image plane and you have a blur,
that
blur essentially is a hologram, because all you have to do is refocus
it.
MISHLOVE: Contained in the blur is
the actual
image.
PRIBRAM: That's right. But you don't
see it as
such. Soone of the main principles ofholonomic brain
theory,
which gets us into quantum mechanics also, is that there is a
relationship
here between what we ordinarily experience, and some other process or
some
other order, which David Bohm calls the implicate,
or enfolded, order, in which things are all distributed
or
spread -- in fact the mathematical formulations are often called spread
functions -- that spread this out.
MISHLOVE: Now what you're talking
about here
is the deep structure of the universe, in a way. Beneath the subatomic
level of matter itself are these quantum wave functions, so to
speak,
and they form interference patterns. Would I be wrong in saying it
would
be like dropping two stones in a pond, the way the ripples overlap? Is
that like an interference pattern?
PRIBRAM: That's certainly the way
interference
patterns work, yes.
MISHLOVE: And you're suggesting
that at that
very deep level of reality, something is operating in the brain itself.
PRIBRAM: Well, no. In a way, that's
possible, but
that's not where the situation is at the moment. All we know is that
the
mathematical descriptions that we make of, let's say, single-cell
processes,
and the branches from the single cells, and how they interact with each
other -- not only anatomically, but actually functional interactions --
that when we map those, we get a description that is very similar to
the
description of quantum events.
MISHLOVE: When you take into
account that there
are billions of these single cells operating in the brain.
PRIBRAM: That's right. And the
connections between
them, so there are even more; there are trillions of connections
between
them. They operate on the basic principles that have been found to also
operate at the quantum level. Actually, it was the other way around.
The
mathematics that Gabor used, he borrowed from Heisenberg and Hilbert.
Hilbert
developed them first in mathematics, and then Heisenberg used them in
quantum
mechanics, and Gabor used them in psychophysics, and we've used it in
modeling
how brain networks work.
MISHLOVE: So in other words, in the
brain,when
we look at the electrical impulses traveling through the neurons, and
the
patterns as these billions of neurons interact, you would say that that
is analogous, I suppose, or isomorphic to the processes that are going
on at the deeper quantum level.
PRIBRAM: Yes. But we don't know that
it's a deeper
quantum level in the brain.
MISHLOVE: That may or may not be
the case.
PRIBRAM: Analogous isn't quite the
right word;
they obey the same rules. It's not just an analogy, because the work
that
described these came independently. An analogy would be that you take
the
quantum ideas, and see how they fit to the data we have on the brain.
That's
not the way it happened. We got the brain data first, and then we see,
look, it fits the same mathematics. So the people who were gathering
these
data, including myself, weren't out to look for an analogous process. I
think it's a very important point, because otherwise you could be
biased,
and there are lots of different models that fit how the brain works.
But
this is more based on how the brain was found to work, independent of
these
conceptions.
MISHLOVE: Independent of any model.
PRIBRAM: Yes, essentially independent
of any model.
MISHLOVE: So you've got a
mathematical structure
that parallels the mathematical structures of quantum physics. Now what
does that tell us about the mind?
PRIBRAM: What it tells me is that the
problems
that have been faced in quantum mechanics for the whole century --
well,
since the twenties --
MISHLOVE: Many paradoxes.
PRIBRAM: And very many paradoxes --
that those
paradoxes also apply at the psychophysical level and at the neuronal
level,
and therefore we have to face the same sets of problems. At the same
time,
I think what David Bohm is doing is showing that some of the classical
conceptions which were thought not to apply at the quantum level,
really
do apply at the quantum level. Now, I'm interpreting Bohm; I'm not sure
he would want to agree to my interpretation of what he's doing. But to
me that seems to be what is going on. So that the schism between levels
-- between the quantum level, the submicroscopic almost, subatomic
level
and what goes on there, and the classical, so-called uncertainty
principle
and all of that -- that all applies all the way along; but you've got
to
be very careful in -- how should I put it? You've got to apply it to
the
actual data, and not just sort of run it over.
MISHLOVE: To the average layman,
why would they
be interested in this? Is there some significance to people in
their
everyday lives, or in their workaday worlds, in the business of
life?
PRIBRAM: Sure, and this is the critical
thing --
that if indeed we're right that these quantum-like phenomena, or the
rules
of quantum mechanics, apply all the way through to our psychological
processes,
to what's going on in the nervous system -- then we have an explanation
perhaps, certainly we have a parallel, to the kind of experiences that
people have called spiritual experiences. Because the descriptions
you
get with spiritual experiences seem to parallel the descriptions of
quantum
physics. That's why Fritjof Capra wrote The Tao of Physics,
why we have The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and all of this sort of
thing
that's come along. And in fact Bohr and Heisenberg already knew;
Schroedinger
talked about the Upanishads, and Bohr used the yin and yang as
his
symbol. Because the conceptions that grew out of watching the quantum
level
-- and therefore now the neurological and psychophysical level, now
that
it's a psychological level as well -- seem to have a great deal in
common
with our spiritual experience. Now what do I mean by spiritual
experience?
You talked about mental activity, calling it the mind. That aspect of
mental
activity, which is very human -- it may be true of other species as
well,
but we don't know -- but in human endeavor many of us at least seem to
need to get in contact with larger issues, whether they're cosmology,
or
some kind of biological larger issue, or a social one, or it's
formalized
in some kind of religious activity. But we want to belong. And that is
what I define as the spiritual aspects of man's nature.
off-guardian | Whereas power stands on its own, without the need to move against
anything at all, force always moves against something. Force is
fragmented and therefore has to be fed energy constantly. Force consumes whereas power creates. While force requires sustained input, power acts without effort.
Newton’s third law teaches us that force always creates counterforce
and therefore it is limited by definition. While force must struggle
against opposition, power stands still. Power effects change through its
own field of influence, without the need to expend energy.
Force is associated with friction and conflict. This point is perhaps best explained by Dr. David Hawkins himself:
“Force always creates
counterforce; its effect is to polarize rather than unify. Polarization
always implies conflict; its cost, therefore, is always high. Because
force incites polarization, it inevitably produces a win/lose dichotomy;
and because somebody always loses, enemies are created. Constantly
faced with enemies, force requires constant defense. Defensiveness is
invariably costly, whether in the marketplace, politics, or
international affairs.”
Hawkins, R, D., 1995. Power vs Force. Hay House, Inc. 2012 reprint.
Thinking about the concept of power and force within the context of
the current global crisis leads us toward some profound conclusions. For
one, agendas that center around inequality, control, profit and
material gain are always driven by force.
Force is a tool used by those who lack power. When your motives go
against the good of humanity, when your intentions fail to support life
itself, your only option is to use force. Force includes all manner of
fear-mongering, manipulation, coercion and violence. Force may work up
to a point but as we discovered, it requires a constant input of energy
and therefore, results are obtained at a cost. Propaganda campaigns
require vast amounts of money, coordination and tireless censorship.
Vaccine mandates require bribes, threats, and the covering up of adverse
events.
This energy input is immense and, most importantly, unsustainable.
As force creates friction, it must constantly be fed with more and
more energy. But as the force becomes stronger, so does the friction.
Force, due its polarizing nature, increases entropy. As entropy rises,
the available energy decreases, until, eventually, momentum ceases and
the entire thing grinds to a halt.
While the source of power is self-evident, indestructible and
inarguable, force is subject to ‘proof’ and requires constant
justification. While true power emanates from consciousness itself,
force is driven by the ego.
Those who use force to impose their will on humanity always succumb
to power. As history has shown, all totalitarian regimes eventually come
crashing down – not on account of some divine intervention, but because
each of us is born with inalienable rights that are intrinsic to human
creation.
Therefore, it is only a matter of time before the transhumanist force
implodes. However, the time it takes for that to happen is dependent on
our ability to reduce disorder and increase power. A lower entropy
consciousness means more energy available to do work which results in
more power, freedom, happiness and love. As our power collectively
grows, we create an immovable wall able to repel any and all negative
influences and nefarious threats.
On the other hand, the ego-mind is constantly asking unanswerable
questions and worrying about unlikely futures. As our minds become
cluttered with fear-laden media, our power decreases and we find
ourselves at the mercy of “authorities”.
off-guardian | Vanessa Beeley sits down with researcher, economic reform activist,
free speech advocate & soul singer Ian Jenkins, to discuss the worst
of the impact of Covid-19 lockdown on the most vulnerable of society.
Governments do not care about these marginalised communities and the
measures imposed upon them do nothing to alleviate their suffering,
rather it is compounded by draconian, nonsensical restrictions. What can
we do as human beings to preserve what it means to be human in the face
of a tsunami of tyranny.
Enough of the tyranny of experts in narrow fields, with
no concept of the broader and quite disastrous consequences of their
inability to think outside their range of knowledge. Scientific
qualifications bestow absolutely no added ability to behave ethically or
to form policy.”
Ian Jenkins
I care far more how humanity lives than how long.
Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual
lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a
contemptible ideal.”
C S Lewis, from ‘Is Progress Possible?‘
salon | There were three main categories of unethical medical experiments
carried out by Nazi scientists, most of which were done under the
supervision of Sievers and the Ahnenerbe (as well as, famously, by Josef
Mengele at Auschwitz). Prisoners were used as some laboratories might
experiment on animals.
The first category was survival testing. The idea was to determine
the human survival thresholds for Nazi soldiers. One example was an
experiment to determine the altitude at which air force crews could
safely parachute. Prisoners were placed in low-pressure chambers to
replicate the thin atmosphere of flight, and observed to see when organs
began to fail. Sievers’ most infamous experiments at Dachau were to
determine the temperature at which the human body would fail, in the
case of hypothermia, and also how best to resuscitate a nearly-frozen
human. A body temperature probe was inserted into the rectum of
prisoners, who were then frozen in a variety of manners (for example,
immersion in ice water or standing naked in the snow). It was
established that consciousness was lost, followed quickly by death, when
body temperature reached 25 C. Bodies of the nearly-frozen were then
brought back up in temperature through a variety of similarly unpleasant
manners, such as immersion in near-boiling water. Himmler himself
suggested the most bizarre, but least cruel, method of reviving a
hypothermic — by obliging him to have sex in a warm bed with multiple
ladies. This was actually practiced (and seemed to work, at least better
than the other methods). But the very idea that experiments were
undertaken to kill or almost kill, humans through freezing, and then
determine how best to resuscitate them, bring them back to life, is not a
long leap to the reanimation of the clinically dead.
The second category of tests included those with pharmaceuticals and
experimental surgeries, with inmates used like lab rats. Doctors tested
immunizations against contagious diseases like malaria, typhus,
hepatitis and tuberculosis, injecting prisoners and exposing them to
diseases, then observing what happened. Procedural experiments, like
those involving bone-grafting without anesthetic, which took place at
the Ravensbrueck concentration camp, could also fall into this category.
Antidotes were sought to chemical weapons like mustard gas and
phosgene, with no regard for the well-being of those experimented upon.
Keeping in mind the Nazi policy of using prisoners of “lesser” races for
economic benefit (this is why concentration camp victims were often
kept just alive enough to provide free labor, rather than universally
being killed upon capture), this prisoner-as-guinea-pig approach fits
into this perverse logic.
November 1944 saw an experiment with a cocktail drug called D-IX, at
the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. D-IX included cocaine and a
stimulant called pervitine. The Luftwaffe (Nazi air force) had been
supplied with 29 million pervitine pills from April-December 1939 alone,
with the pill codenamed “obm.” Its use left the soldiers addicted, but
did succeed in extending attention spans, reducing the need for sleep
and food and giving a dramatic increase in stamina. 18 prisoners were
given D-IX pills and forced to march while wearing backpacks loaded with
20 kilos of material — after taking the pills, they were able to march,
without rest, up to 90 kilometers a day. The goal was to determine the
outer limit of stamina induced by the pills. The D-IX pill proper,
launched March 16th, 1944, included in each pill 5 mg of cocaine, 3 mg
of pervitine, 5 mg of eucodal (a morphine-based painkiller) and
synthetic cocaine. It was tested in the field with the Forelle
diversionary unit of submariners. The experimentation and use of the
pills, both on prisoners and soldiers, was considered very successful,
and a plan was put in place to supply pills to the whole Nazi army, but
the Allied victory months later stopped this. These pills sought to
create super soldiers, in a contorted interpretation of the Nietzschean
übermensch.
The third category was racial, or ideological testing, famously
overseen by Josef Mengele, who experimented on twins and gypsies, to see
how different races responded to contagious diseases.
Mass-sterilization experiments on Jews and gypsies provided a sort of
photo-negative to one of Himmler’s pet projects, called Lebensborn. It
was a breeding program in which racially-ideal Aryan men and women
(tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, strong Nordic bone structure) were
obliged to breed, in order to produce more, and purer, Aryan children.
This was part and parcel with the belief that the Aryans of the 20th
century were descended from an ancient race with superhuman powers —
and that these powers had been gradually lost through interbreeding with
“lower” races. If the “pollution” of these other races could be bred
out, through generations of Aryans mixing only with other Aryans, then
perhaps these powers could be regained? This, too, has an echo of
resurrection to it. Resurrecting the lost purity of the original Aryans
from Thule, and bringing back their superhuman powers, through breeding
programs with pure-blooded Aryans.
aaroncheak | The Lubiczs returned to France in the early 1950s, retiring to Mas du Coucagno at Plan-de-Grasse. In 1952, on the day of St. John the Baptist, Schwaller penned an intriguing text entitled Verbe Nature (Nature Word), perhaps one of his most deeply revealing works.[61] The subtitle of the work is: Quelques réponses de la Nature et de ses Sages aux questions de l’auteur, porte-parole des inconnus (Some responses from Nature and her Sages to the questions of the author, spokesperson of the unknown). Bearing the distinct stamp of Schwaller’s mysterious daimon, the premise of the text is the transcription of a series of answers given by ‘Nature and her sages’ to questions posed, but not recorded, by Schwaller. It is thus composed solely of responses. One of the more important features of the text is the insight it gives into Schwaller’s broader theories of biological and spiritual transmutation. Nature Word makes the startling claim that there is a fixed alchemical salt—an immortal mineral ‘nucleus’ that neither fire nor putrefaction can destroy—residing in the human femur.
With unusual specificity, Schwaller held that the incorruptible salt in the human femur is the mineral ‘register’ upon which the most vital moments of human consciousness could be permanently ‘inscribed’. This salt or nucleus was, in comparison the chromosome, ‘extremely fixed or even indestructible’.[62] Schwaller regarded it as more permanent than DNA and accorded it a key role in his esoteric theory of evolution (genesis). Contrary to the Darwinian theory (where only the characteristics of the species are able to be preserved through genetic transmission), Schwaller maintained that the fixed salt located in the femur is the precise mechanism by which individual characteristics—the vital modes of consciousness—are able to be preserved and transmitted beyond the death of the individual. This salt was therefore central to the alchemical process of rebirth (palingenesis). Within the wider framework of Schwaller’s cosmology—in which material genesis is conceived as the visible index of the evolution of consciousness—the alchemical salt forms the ‘magnet’ that draws primordial matter through the existential vehicles of the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms towards the ultima materia (or telos) of ‘spiritual concretion’. As such it formed the hidden link—the invisible bond in the chain of continuity—in the otherwise apparently discontinuous process in which the generation and corruption of evolving forms is situated.
In 1956, Schwaller published Le Roi de la théocratie pharaonique (The King of Pharaonic Theocracy), a work which, among other things, traces the deviation and distortion of Egyptian consciousness through Greek rationality, highlighting the Egyptian rather than Greek basis of the intellectual ‘miracle’ than transformed antique civilisation. In this work, Schwaller reveals important insights into the alchemical process of ‘qualitative exaltation’, a term he compares to the occurence of ‘teratological proliferation’ (mutational phenomena) in plants. Pointing to the images of the proliferous lotuses depicted on the ‘Botanical Gardens’ of Thutmose III at Karnak, he reveals how authentic alchemical mutation emerges not from the purification of the material body of an entity, but from the intensification of its spirit or consciousness.[63] In short, consciousness shapes form, and it was precisely the qualitative exaltations of consciousness that were registered in the immortal mineral remains (the fixed salt) and carried over between kingdoms and species, thus forming the Ariadne’s thread in de Lubicz’s esoteric theory of evolution.
It was in Plan-de-Grasse, however, that Schwaller finally completed and published his three-volume magnum opus, Le Temple de l’homme (1957-8), the magisterial synthesis of his many years of on-site study in the temples of ancient Egypt. On the eve of Le Temple, Schwaller presented some papers at the Congrès des Symbolists in Paris.[64] Just after his chef d’œuvre appeared, a Belgian-American by the name of André VandenBroeck encountered Schwaller’s work and, over a period of eighteen months, became his last, and perhaps most important, ‘disciple’. The account that VandenBroeck left of this period (1959-60), published some twenty-seven years later on the centenary of Schwaller’s birth (Al-Kemi: Hermetic, Occult, Political, and Private Aspects of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, 1987), remains the single most important memoir of Schwaller de Lubicz to date.
The final book published by de Lubicz was Propos sur ésotérisme et symbole (On Esotericism and Symbol, 1960), a short text actually written during the Christmas of 1947, and dedicated to his ‘friends from the Luxor group’. Propos sur ésotérisme et symbole distils many of the themes explored in the wealth of notes and unpublished papers that Schwaller wrote throughout the 1940s, and remains one of his most concise meditations on metaphysics, containing specific insights into the Hermetic mystery of salt.[65]
NYTimes | Relations between master and disciple were always difficult. Mr.
VandenBroeck already had some background in the occultist philosophy of
Ouspenkyism and in the hardly less bizarre Chicago-based general
semantics movement, which opposed traditional Aristotelian logic. De
Lubicz for his part was suspicious and cryptic. Knowledge had to be
worked for.
R. A. Schwaller was born in 1887. In his youth he worked as a chemist
and studied art and theosophy. The aristocratic Lithuanian poet and
occultist Oscar Milosz conferred the title of de Lubicz on Schwaller. At
around the same time, Schwaller de Lubicz claims to have met the
enigmatic alchemist Fulcanelli. Fulcanelli later became famous for his
book ''Le Mystere des Cathedrales'' (1925), an alchemical reading of the
symbolism of Gothic cathedrals.
Soon afterward, Fulcanelli (certainly a
pseudonym) vanished mysteriously. De Lubicz claimed that Fulcanelli had
not only pirated his (de Lubicz's) ideas on the symbolism of cathedrals,
but had also attempted to make gold without fully understanding the
procedure. This last had fatal consequences, and Mr. VandenBroeck tells
us that, when de Lubicz visited Fulcanelli on his deathbed, the
alchemist had turned black.
After
World War I, de Lubicz was largely responsible for the formation of the
Veilleurs (the Watchmen), a group dedicated to preserving higher values
in a demoralized postwar world. The higher values were those of
hierarchy and discipline. The elite of the Veilleurs sought to evolve to
a higher state of being. The group's ambitions were esoteric and
protofascist. Subsequently R. A. de Lubicz went to Egypt, where he spent
years studying the temple at Luxor. ''Le Temple de l'Homme,'' published
in 1958, was his exposition of the inner meaning of Pharaonic
architecture, which boring mainstream Egyptologists with their profane
readings had failed to penetrate. Finally, de Lubicz moved to Grasse,
where Mr. VandenBroeck found him a couple of years before his death.
This
is all quite interesting, but the reader has to work hard to extract
the interest. The book is clogged with abstruse lectures on secret
harmonies, mystical chemistry and whatnot. The style is rigorous, but
the content is ultimately meaningless.
Eventually,
Mr. VandenBroeck left the temple of mysteries at Grasse. It is to his
credit that an important motive for his doing so was that he found de
Lubicz's political ideas objectionable. It would have been even more to
his credit if he had gone further and had recognized that most of de
Lubicz's theories were junk. His ''archeology'' at Luxor failed to take
account of the ascertainable circumstances of the temple's building. His
''history'' was a farrago of nonsense about racial destiny and the
secret histories of Templars, tarot cards and so on. His ''geography''
had space for a manmade Nile and a Sphinx up to its neck in seawater.
His ''science'' was an ill-tempered polemic against Darwin and Einstein.
It is odd, then, to find Saul Bellow's foreword giving endorsement to
de Lubicz as ''a source of revolutionary insights.''
EMG can be used to show the degree to which one is subvocalizing[5] or to train subvocalization suppression.[9]
EMG is used to record the electrical activity produced by the
articulatory muscles involved in subvocalization. Greater electrical
activity suggests a stronger use of subvocalization.[5][9]
In the case of suppression training, the trainee is shown their own EMG
recordings while attempting to decrease the movement of the
articulatory muscles.[9] The EMG recordings allows one to monitor and ideally reduce subvocalization.[9]
In concurrent speaking tasks, participants of a study are asked
to complete an activity specific to the experiment while simultaneously
repeating an irrelevant word.[6] For example, one may be asked to read a paragraph while reciting the word "cola" over and over again.[8] Speaking the repeated irrelevant word is thought to preoccupy the articulators used in subvocalization.[6]
Subvocalization, therefore, cannot be used in the mental processing of
the activity being studied. Participants who had undergone the
concurrent speaking task are often compared to other participants of the
study who had completed the same activity without subvocalization
interference. If performance on the activity is significantly less for
those in the concurrent speaking task group than for those in the
non-interference group, subvocalization is believed to play a role in
the mental processing of that activity.[6][7][8][9]
The participants in the non-interference comparison group usually also
complete a different, yet equally distracting task that does not involve
the articulator muscles [7][9](i.e.
tapping). This ensures that the difference in performance between the
two groups is in fact due to subvocalization disturbances and not due to
considerations such as task difficulty or a divide in attention.[7][9]
Shadowing is conceptually similar to concurrent speaking tasks.
Instead of repeating an irrelevant word, shadowing requires participants
to listen to a list of words and to repeat those words as fast as
possible while completing a separate task being studied by
experimenters.[6]
Techniques for subvocalization interference may also include counting,[7][8] chewing [10] or locking one's jaw while placing the tongue on the roof of one's mouth.[10]
feldenkraisresourcesformusicians | This description is marvelous because it captures the effect of integration through listening.61 Trough listening, something happens that Ephram does not ‘know’. He is given a taste of the pre-symbolic Real for a moment. He does not speak, but instead acknowledges this internal, placeless ‘fnding’ (between visible activity) with chirruping laughter; this giddy delight and uncertainty refect the trauma of the Real and the way in which the senses are unifed in this domain. Nancy attempts to come to grips with the way in which laughter mediates the senses.
He states that, Laughter bursts at the multiple limits of the senses and of language, uncertain of the sense to which it is ofered […] Laughter is the joy of the senses, and of sense, at their limit. In this joy, the senses touch each other and touch language, the tongue in the mouth.62
Ephram’s laughter is like a cloudburst. Feldenkrais touches something deeper than just Ephram’s sensorium through touch and listening, and Ephram responds with laughter: he touches Ephram’s uniqueness.63 Feldenkrais states: ‘You know what that laughter is worth? Tat is Eureka!’ Later, when Ephram laughs again, he observes: ‘You see that laughter is priceless; you can’t buy it for all the money that you have in the world.’ Feldenkrais tacitly acknowledges that in this release, Ephram as a listening being has also withdrawn from him.64 Nancy might say that essential to listening is a ‘withdrawal and turning inward’.65 Laughter provides evidence of an essential independence that signals and derives from integration.66
Trough Ephram’s laughter, the external listeners assembled are exposed to a moment when Ephram is on a fulcrum of listening. It is not just that in Nancy’s terms he has become present to (him)self, but that he registers the trauma of the Real; Ephram’s laughter registers the possibility of change in his self-image. In Nancy’s terms this is the ‘reference’ (renvoi) of sound, ‘from a sign to a thing’.69
But what is this ‘thing’? Te making of ‘sense’ within Ephram’s sensorium is the jouissance of precisely that which does not make sense to him, a new self-image which cannot be immediately rationalized or assimilated.70 So when Nancy states that ‘a self is nothing other than a form or function of referral, a self is made of a relationship to self, or of a presence to self’, this can be considered only part of the story.71
One of the functions of FI is to bring the subject into an encounter with what is unknown, moving from the self that is known, founded in gravity and their own body image in the world, to a new image of the self.72 Ephram’s laughter bubbles up; it escapes what is presented to the world as a disabled boy. It is the resonance of an encounter with another self. His listening is an ongoing process of (re-)formation in the irreducible, intimate and non-linear temporal paradigm of ‘making the impossible possible’, as Feldenkrais has stated,73 and it is precisely this which is inscribed in the Lacanian Real.74
His outburst of laughter creates a symbolic cut in the Real that through its diferentiation signals the Real: it is like the tip of an iceberg that appears above the water, but in doing so it also signifes that below the water (apart from the rest of the iceberg, which is already integrated with the symbolic register) is the ocean’s void.75 In Nancy’s terms, Ephram is a paradigm of a ‘subject of listening [that] is always still yet to come’.76 With regard to Feldenkrais’s ‘listening for his next breath’, Nancy’s question is germane here: ‘What does it mean for a being to be immersed entirely in listening, formed by listening or in listening, listening with all its being?’ – and one might add here: ‘listening to all his being’.77 In this spirit of enquiry we might listen with Feldenkrais and ask: ‘Is it indeed possible (or desirable) to listen to all of another person’s being?’
This is a crucial question, and one fundamental to FI, because listening for Feldenkrais is a sensing through his hands of where someone else is stuck; where, through habit or injury, for example, the mind/body entity is momentarily incapable of utilizing a deeper intelligence to improve a function or action. Helping a person to fnd this intelligence within themselves is one of the primary functions of instrumental lessons and indeed of the Feldenkrais Method. Listening, then, as is shown in Feldenkrais’s work with Ephram, is an enactivist engagement with intelligence and awareness, not just with presence to the world or the self (pace Nancy).
Feldenkrais’s ideal of listening is intimately connected to overcoming ‘resistance’, a term borrowed from Freud. In their book The Language of Psychoanalysis, Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis defne this concept: ‘In psycho-analytic treatment the name “resistance” is given to everything in the words and actions of the analysis and that obstructs his gaining access to his un-conscious.’78
Laplanche and Pontalis point out that while Freud first discovered that resistance was ‘an obstacle to the elucidation of the symptoms and to the progress of the treatment’, he realized that ‘resistance was itself a means of reaching the repressed and unveiling the secret of neurosis’ and that ‘the interpretation of resistance, along with that of the transference, constituted the specifc characteristics of his technique’ that was part and parcel of the possibility of a cure.79 Feldenkrais extends this in profound ways elaborated through the examples given in this study.
Resistance is understood not merely as that which obstructs the change in the self-image; Feldenkrais ‘interprets’ this resistance as an active means of gaining access to Ephram’s motor cortex, rather than the psychoanalytic ‘un-conscious’.
princeton | I turned to Feldenkrais because a friend I respected a lot suggested it
as a solution to my hand and arm pain (RSI). I went to ATM classes and
took FI
lessons
from a local teacher in Princeton NJ. Though these whetted my
curiosity, they did not solve my RSI problems.
I found an excellent teacher, Angel DiBenedetto,
during a 5-month stay in
Seattle. She learned from Moshe Feldenkrais, and is herself a trainer
of other Feldenkrais teachers. Eight lessons from her
(over a 3-month period) completely changed my view of my body. My
hand was much better but still not 100%. Also, I sensed the tremendous
potential of this method and wanted to go further. So I took 8-9
Feldenkrais
lessons with
another amazing teacher, Anat Krivine,
during a subsequent 4-month stay
in Israel. Anat is also a trainer of Feldenkrais teachers. It was very
useful for me to learn from multiple teachers, since no two
teachers have
the same perspective. One important thing that Anat finally made me
realize and give up was my
tendency to ask for "the best way to do X"
which I think was limiting my learning. Furthermore, unknown to me, she
had a special interest in scoliosis (sideways curve of the spine) which
turned out to be relevant to my problems. By the end, my hand problems
were completely gone and my scoliosis (which the medical profession
thinks of as a skeletal problem, with no cure) much reduced. (See the
links below for an explanation of scoliosis and the Feldenkrais
approach to it.)
So what can you expect when you get Feldenkrais lessons from a good
teacher? The immediate sensation is one of calm that you
have never known. You may realize that you have lived in a background
of muscular tension that you had never noticed until it went away.
(Kind of like the change in background noise level you might notice if
you moved from Manhattan to Montana.) This
can be a powerful, even emotional experience. It is a good idea
to savor this calm right after the lesson, and to take a
nap. You may feel great, but avoid the temptation to go out and do
something strenuous. (Skip your usual exercise routine for a day or
two.) The calm may dissipate over the next few hours and days, but in
future sessions it will last longer and longer, until it becomes part
of your everyday state.
The FI's implant new ideas into your body, and over the next few days
and weeks it will slowly imbibe them and change. Do not be surprised if
you find yourself doing things differently.
Another thought that might occur to you is that much of what you have
known
about pain
is wrong. You will learn that often pain is caused by faulty movement
patterns,
not any
kind of damage to the body. Thus pain can be produced and
taken away at will, using simple change in movements. This knowledge is
extremely empowering for people who have suffered from chronic pain.
(Update Aug 2008): During the
year since I first wrote my page, I have continued to do ATMs every
week, and felt continuous
and noticeable improvement. However, I also slowly became more and more
aware of the asymmetries still left over from my scoliosis. These were
interfering with my enjoyment of activities I had newly started (Capoeira,
rollerskating, and running). In
Summer 2008 I got a few lessons from another excellent teacher, Reuven
(Robbie) Ofir, in Manhattan. (I heard of him from a friend.) Robbie is
also a Feldenkrais trainer and a
former head of
physical therapy at a leading NYC hospital. Robbie helped me work
out some deep
asymmetries and tensions in my body. Robbie also taught me do
ATMs at an even slower and gentler pace that I used to, which has taken
my learning to a higher level. I feel truly great now. But Robbie
has helped me appreciate that there is no end to the process of
improvement with the Feldenkrais method. (Encouraged by this, I also
took my aged parents to Robbie for a few
lesson, which helped them a lot. They are from
India and Feldenkrais is unlike anything they have experienced.)
I plan to
get an
occasional FI or two in future years to continue this learning. In
particular I plan to explore the use of the method in voice and music.
wikipedia |Social credit is an interdisciplinary and distributive philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas. It encompasses economics, political science, history, and accounting.
Its policies are designed, according to Douglas, to disperse economic
and political power to individuals. Douglas wrote, "Systems were made
for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic."[1] Douglas said that Social Crediters want to build a new civilization based upon "absolute economic security" for the individual, where "they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid."[2][3] In his words, "what we really demand of existence is not that we shall be put into somebody else's Utopia, but we shall be put in a position to construct a Utopia of our own."[4]
It was while he was reorganising the work at Farnborough, during
World War I, that Douglas noticed that the weekly total costs of goods
produced was greater than the sums paid to individuals for wages, salaries and dividends. This seemed to contradict the theory of classic Ricardian economics, that all costs are distributed simultaneously as purchasing power.
Troubled by the seeming difference between the way money flowed and the
objectives of industry ("delivery of goods and services", in his
opinion), Douglas decided to apply engineering methods to the economic system.
Douglas collected data from more than a hundred large British
businesses and found that in nearly every case, except that of companies
becoming bankrupt,
the sums paid out in salaries, wages and dividends were always less
than the total costs of goods and services produced each week: consumers
did not have enough income to buy back what they had made. He
published his observations and conclusions in an article in the magazine
The English Review,
where he suggested: "That we are living under a system of accountancy
which renders the delivery of the nation's goods and services to itself a
technical impossibility."[5]
He later formalized this observation in his A+B theorem. Douglas
proposed to eliminate this difference between total prices and total
incomes by augmenting consumers' purchasing power through a National Dividend and a Compensated Price Mechanism.
According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption,
and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of
consumers. In order to accomplish this objective, he believed that each
citizen should have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the
communal capital conferred by complete access to consumer goods assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price.[6]:4:108 Douglas thought that consumers, fully provided with adequate purchasing power, will establish the policy of production through exercise of their monetary vote.[6]:89–91 In this view, the term economic democracy does not mean worker control of industry, but democratic control of credit.[6]:4–9 Removing the policy of production from banking institutions, government, and industry, social credit envisages an "aristocracy of producers, serving and accredited by a democracy of consumers".[6]:95
The policy proposals of social credit attracted widespread
interest in the decades between the world wars of the twentieth century
because of their relevance to economic conditions of the time. Douglas
called attention to the excess of production capacity over consumer
purchasing power, an observation that was also made by John Maynard Keynes in his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, although he rejected the A+B theorem. [7]
While Douglas shared some of Keynes' criticisms of classical
economics, his unique remedies were disputed and even rejected by most
economists and bankers of the time. Remnants of social credit still
exist within social credit parties throughout the world, but not in the purest form originally advanced by Douglas.
A man who is able to do all
that is demanded of a Christian, both with his mind and his essence, is called a
Christian without quotation marks. A man who, in his mind, wishes to do all that
is demanded of a Christian, but can do so only with his mind and not with his
essence, is called pre-Christian. And a man who can do nothing, even with his
mind, is called a non- Christian.”
G.I.Gurdjieff /Views from the
Real World / Separation of Oneself from oneself
"If instead of religion in general we take
Christianity, then again there exists a
“Christianity number one,
that is to say, paganism in the guise of Christianity. Christianity number two
is an emotional religion, sometimes very pure but without force, sometimes full
of bloodshed and horror leading to the Inquisition, to religious wars. Christianity number
three, instances of which are afforded by various forms of Protestantism, is
based upon dialectic, argument, theories, and so forth. Then there is
Christianity number four, of which men number one, number two, and number three
have no conception whatever. "In actual fact Christianity number one, number
two, and number three is simply external imitation. Only man number four
strives to be a Christian and only man number five can actually be a Christian.
For to be a Christian means to have the being of a Christian, that is, to live
in accordance with Christ's precepts. "Man number one, number two, and number
three cannot live in accordance with Christ's precepts because with them
everything 'happens.' Today it is one thing and tomorrow it is quite another
thing. Today they are ready to give away their last shirt and tomorrow to tear
a man to pieces because he refuses to give up his shirt to them. They are
swayed by every chance event. They are not masters of themselves and therefore
they cannot decide to be Christians and really be Christians.”
G.I.Gurdjieff/
In search for the Miraculous / Chapter 4
"First of all it is
necessary to understand that a Christian is not a man who calls himself a
Christian or whom others call a Christian. A Christian is one who lives in
accordance with Christ's precepts. Such as we are we cannot be Christians. In
order to be Christians we must be able 'to do.' We cannot do; with us everything
'happens.' Christ says: 'Love your enemies,' but how can we love our enemies
when we cannot even love our friends? Sometimes 'it loves' and sometimes 'it
does not love.' Such as we are we cannot even really desire to be Christians
because, again, sometimes 'it desires' and sometimes 'it does not desire.' And
one and the same thing cannot be desired for long, because suddenly, instead of
desiring to be a Christian, a man remembers a very good but very expensive
carpet that he has seen in a shop. And instead of wishing to be a Christian he
begins to think how he can manage to buy this carpet, forgetting all about
Christianity. Or if somebody else does not believe what a wonderful Christian he
is, he will be ready to eat him alive or to roast him on hot coals. In order to
be a good Christian one must be. To be means to be master of oneself. If a man
is not his own master he has nothing and can have nothing. And he cannot be a
Christian. He is simply a machine, an automaton. A machine cannot be a
Christian. Think for yourselves, is it possible for a motorcar or a typewriter
or a gramophone to be Christian? They are simply things which are controlled by
chance. They are not responsible. They are machines. To be a Christian means to
be responsible. Responsibility comes later when a man even partially ceases to
be a machine, and begins in fact, and not only in words, to desire to be a
Christian."
G.I.Gurdjieff/
In search for the Miraculous / Chapter 6
"Generally speaking we know very little about Christianity and the form of Christian worship; we know nothing at all of the history and origin of a number of things. For instance, the church, the temple in which gather the faithful and in which services are carried out according to special rites; where was this taken from? Many people
do not think about this at all. Many people think that the outward form of
worship, the rites, the singing of canticles, and so on, were invented by the
fathers of the church. Others think that this outward form has been taken partly
from pagan religions and partly from the Hebrews. But all of it is untrue. The
question of the origin of the Christian church, that is, of the Christian
temple, is much more interesting than we think. To begin with, the church and
worship in the form which they took in the first centuries of Christianity could
not have been borrowed from paganism because there was nothing like it either in
the Greek or Roman cults or in Judaism. The Jewish synagogue, the Jewish temple,
Greek and Roman temples of various gods, were something quite different from the
Christian church which made its appearance in the first and second centuries.
The Christian church is—a school concerning which people have forgotten that it
is a school. Imagine a school where the teachers give lectures and perform
explanatory demonstrations without knowing that these are lectures and
demonstrations; and where the pupils or simply the people who come to the school
take these lectures and demonstrations for ceremonies, or rites, or
'sacraments,' i.e., magic. This would approximate to the Christian church of our
times.
"The Christian church, the Christian form of worship, was not invented by the fathers of the church. It was all taken in a ready-made form from Egypt, only not from the Egypt that we know but from one which we do not know. This Egypt was in the same place as the other but it existed much earlier. Only small bits of it survived in historical times, and these bits have been preserved in secret and so well that we do not even know where they have been preserved.
"It will seem strange to
many people when I say that this prehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands
of years before the birth of Christ, that is to say, that its religion was
composed of the same principles and ideas that constitute true Christianity.
Special schools existed in this prehistoric Egypt which were called 'schools of
repetition.' In these schools a public repetition was given on definite days,
and in some schools perhaps even every day, of the entire course in a condensed
form of the sciences that could be learned at these schools. Sometimes this
repetition lasted a week or a month. Thanks to these repetitions people who had
passed through this course did not lose their connection with the school and
retained in their memory all they had learned. Sometimes they came from very far
away simply in order to listen to the repetition and went away feeling their
connection with the school. There were special days of the year when the
repetitions were particularly complete, when they were carried out with
particular solemnity—and these days themselves possessed a symbolical meaning.
"These 'schools of
repetition' were taken as a model for Christian churches—the form of worship in
Christian churches almost entirely represents the course of repetition of the
science dealing with the universe and man. Individual prayers, hymns, responses,
all had their own meaning in this repetition as well as holidays and all
religious symbols, though their meaning has been forgotten long ago." G.I.Gurdjieff/
In search of the Miraculous / Chapter 15
from Gurdjieff's "Views from the Real World," pp. 148-150As long as a man does not separate himself from himself he can achieve nothing, and no one can help him.To govern oneself is a very difficult thing--it is a problem for the future; it requires much power and demands much work. But this first thing, to separate oneself from oneself, does not require much strength, it only needs desire, serious desire, the desire of a grown-up man. If a man cannot do it, it shows that he lacks the desire of a grown-up man. Consequently it proves that there is nothing for him here. What we do here can only be a doing suitable for grown-up men.Our mind, our thinking, has nothing in common with us, with our essence--no connection, no dependence. Our mind lives by itself and our essence lives by itself. When we say "to separate oneself from oneself" it means that the mind should stand apart from the essence. Our weak essence can change at any moment, for it is dependent on many influences: on food, on our surroundings, on time, on the weather, and on a multitude of other causes. But the mind depends on very few influences and so, with a little effort, it can be kept in the desired direction. Every weak man can give the desired direction to his mind. But he has no power over his essence; great power is required to give direction to essence and keep essence to it. (Body and essence are the same devil.)...Speaking of the mind I know that each of you has enough strength, each of you can have the power and capacity to act not as he now acts....I repeat, every grown-up man can achieve this; everyone who has a serious desire can do it. But no one tries....In order to understand better what I mean, I shall give you an example: now, in a calm state, not reacting to anything or anyone, I decide to set myself the task of establishing a good relationship with Mr. B., because I need him for business purposes and can do what I wish only with his help. But I dislike Mr. B. for he is a very disagreeable man. He understands nothing. He is a blockhead. He is vile, anything you like. I am so made that these traits affect me. Even if he merely looks at me, I become irritated. If he talks nonsense, I am beside myself. I am only a man, so I am weak and cannot persuade myself that I need not be annoyed--I shall go on being annoyed.Yet I can control myself, depending on how serious my desire is to gain the end I wish to gain through him. If I keep to this purpose, to this desire, I shall be able to do so. No matter how annoyed I may be, this state of wishing will be in my mind. No matter how furious, how beside myself I am, in a corner of my mind I shall still remember the task I set myself. My mind is unable to restrain me from anything, unable to make me feel this or that toward him, but it is able to remember. I say to myself: "You need him, so don't be cross or rude to him." It could even happen that I would curse him, or hit him, but my mind would continue to pluck at me, reminding me that I should not do so. But the mind is powerless to do anything.This is precisely what anyone who has a serious desire not to identify himself with his essence can do. This is what is meant by "separating the mind from the essence."And what happens when the mind becomes merely a function? If I am annoyed, if I lose my temper, I shall think, or rather "it" will think, in accordance with this annoyance, and I shall see everything in the light of the annoyance. To hell with it!And so I say that with a serious man--a simple, ordinary man without any extraordinary powers, but a grown-up man--whatever he decides, whatever problem he has set himself, that problem will always remain in his head. Even if he cannot achieve it in practice, he will always keep it in his mind. Even if he is influenced by other considerations, his mind will not forget the problem he has set himself. He has a duty to perform and, if he is honest, he will strive to perform it, because he is a grown-up man.No one can help him in this remembering, in this separation of oneself from oneself. A man must do it for himself. Only then, from the moment a man has this separation, can another man help him....The only difference between a child and a grown-up man is in the mind. All the weaknesses are there, beginning with hunger, with sensitivity, with naiveté; there is no difference. The same things are in a child and in a grown-up man: love, hate, everything. Functions are the same, receptivity is the same, equally they react, equally they are given to imaginary fears. In short there is no difference. The only difference is in the mind: we have more material, more logic than a child.
wikipedia | Eshkol-Wachman movement notation is a system to record movement on
paper or computer screen, developed by choreographer Noa Eshkol
(daughter of Levi Eshkol) and architect Abraham Wachman.[2]
It was originally developed for dance to enable choreographers to write
a dance down on paper that dancers could later reconstruct in its
entirety, much as composers write a musical score that musicians can
later play.
In comparison to most dance notation
systems, Eshkol-Wachman movement notation was intended to notate any
manner of movement, not only dance. As such, it is not limited to
particular dance styles or even to the human form. It has been used to
analyze animal behaviour as well as dance (Golani 1976).
Eshkol-Wachman movement notation treats the body as a sort of stick
figure. The body is divided at its skeletal joints, and each pair of
joints defines a line segment (a "limb"). For example, the foot is a
limb bounded by the ankle and the end of the toe.
The relationship of those segments in three-dimensional space is
described using a spherical coordinate system. If one end of a line
segment is held in a fixed position, that point is the center of a
sphere whose radius is the length of the line segment. Positions of the
free end of the segment can be defined by two coordinate values on the
surface of that sphere, analogous to latitude and longitude on a globe.
Limb positions are written somewhat like fractions, with the
vertical number written over the horizontal number. The horizontal
component (the lower) is read first. These two numbers are enclosed in
brackets or parentheses to indicate whether the position in being
described relative to an adjacent limb or to external reference points,
such as a stage.
Eshkol-Wachman scores are written on grids, where each horizontal
row represents the position and movement of a single limb, and each
vertical column represents a unit of time. Movements are shown as
transitions between initial and end coordinates.
groundai | Dance is an art and when
technology meets this kind of art, it’s a novel attempt in itself.
Several researchers have attempted to automate several aspects of
dance, right from dance notation to choreography. Furthermore, we have
encountered several applications of dance automation like e-learning,
heritage preservation, etc. Despite several attempts by researchers for
more than two decades in various styles of dance all round the world, we
found a review paper that portrays the research status in this area
dating to 1990 [1]. Hence, we decide to come up with a comprehensive review article that showcases several aspects of dance automation.
This paper is an attempt to
review research work reported in the literature, categorize and group
all research work completed so far in the field of automating dance. We
have explicitly identified six major categories corresponding to the use
of computers in dance automation namely dance representation, dance
capturing,
dance semantics, dance generation, dance processing approaches and
applications of dance automation systems. We classified several research
papers under these categories
according to their research approach and functionality. With the help of
proposed categories and subcategories one can easily determine the
state of research and
the new avenues left for exploration in the field of dance automation.
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