Tuesday, April 24, 2012

a separative lesion in consciousness...,


The process which we are considering may be regarded as the development of individual personality and it was only during the first millenium B.C. that this degree of self-consciousness became widespread. It is to this new mental-egoic substitute self to which we must turn our attention because there is one common characteristic that underlies the overwhelming majority of mental-egoic activity. It is a very simple characteristic. Most mental-egoic activity refers to and is based on the past. That is to say, mental-egoic activity is based on the memory of past actions, past experiences, past events. As you are now thinking about all this, you are working largely with and from memories - because it is from memories that you draw words, names, and concepts. (why I said "lying" is harsh word for it, but often useful)

The nature of mental-egoic processes are not bad in-and-of themselves, it is through this attentive use of memory that you humans have been able to pull yourselves up out of the archaic cameral state. Odd as it sounds, memory and the mental-egoic attention to the same is a form of transcendence inasmuch as it has allowed you humans to escape the panoramic fluctuations of the moment. As the human "self" began to shift away from the cameral sympathos toward mental-egoic thought and language - it likewise began an inevitable shift away from the present moment and toward memory. The mental-egoic self is a memory self, and that is what allows it to rise above cameral sympathetic fluctuation.

What you humans refer to as "consciousness" is before everything else just memory.

There are three basic problems with that.

First, after the mental-egoic self is formed, it is very difficult to escape. Attending to word/name/concept memory becomes all that you have, and all that are. Short of chemically induced submergence into the cameral sympathos, i.e. forced attention to otherwise subliminal fluctuations of the moment, you are sound asleep to what is present and real. The mental-egoic attention to memory becomes so stable and strong that it not only escapes the subconscious cameral sympathos.

Second, the mental-egoic also begins to deny or even destroy access to the superconscious, i.e., conscience or the memory of emotion, the all important recollection and experiencing of the cameral sympathos or feeling "all at once" that is the next step in possible human evolution. The mental-egoic has to be very badly shocked in order to open itself to momentary glimpses or experiences of conscience or "feeling all at once".

Finally, as if the above wasn't bad enough, the mental-egoic has one other fundamental disability derived from working with memory, it tends to be static and to deal most effectively with unreal, unnatural static constructs. As these humans began forming static Euclidean notions about fundamental reality - and paying attention principally to the recording, thinking, and remembering aspects of mind, it began to separate from the spontaneous, impulsive, moving world from which it emerged.

Mental-egoic human awareness followed a path of developing thought based on static concepts of nature and of the self which long ago ceased to conform to the underlying living matrix from which it arose. The mental-egoic "self" is a separative lesion in consciousness.

47 comments:

Tom said...

It's interesting.  Been keeping up with my meditating.  I have to pick up Jaynes again, I've never ground all the way through it, just hunt and peck.

CNu said...

You might try to put your hands on a copy of The Next Development in Man by L.L. Whyte as well. I checked out a copy from the open library and am busily reacquainting myself with it in my current reading rotation. I find it particularly intriguing that he pre-dates and anticipates Jaynes by nearly 30 years (I think the book was written in 1943 and published in 1950)

CNu said...

Suggestion - as a operative rule of thumb, try thinking about full consciousness of any given subject as having/experiencing complete access to everything you know about that subject all at once.

Full conscienceOTOH is having or experiencing complete access to everything you feel about that subject all at once.

Conscience is the most profoundly misunderstood and underdeveloped aspect of human cognition, and the primary functional deficit precipitated by the european dissociation. As it also happens, conscience is the indispensable gateway to 4D qualia and experience. IT IS NO ACCIDENT that the "religious" have always appeared as the gatekeepers/proponents/exponents of higher consciousness - because ONLY the religious have maintained a canon of methods and a corpus of knowledge regarding the development and use of conscience.

Ignant, skeptical, and smugly arrogant cognitive cripples have no idea whatsoever the purpose of religious praxis is, naively imaging it all to be nothing more than superstitious belief in a flying spaghetti monster....,

Sabrinabee said...

I suppose this is why worry and stress is so bothersome. Anyone who has been afflicated by either knows that during those periods it is hard to turn one's mind off. What is the mind doing? Rehashing the events (via memory) that were the source of the mental state they are now in. Makes sense. I can bu that most of your thinking activity is based on past events, experiences, perceptions. How can it not be? Considering we adjust our lives and the decisions we make based on memories of what we have experienced to be positive or negative or whether we were told that a particualar path was positive or negative. I do know that there is another level of consciousness because of my brief stint with meditating. A level where you are present in the moment, whee your actions and reactions are removed from over emotionalism. However, for me that was long ago and despite my attempts to reach that place again, it's been overshadowed by disrtaction. Could this be the second example of your post? Is it taking over now? Hopefully not. Besides, i think i've found the next best thing. I put my headphone on and o out in the yard.

CNu said...

Sister Bee, welcome!!!

Because work often integrates feeling, thinking, and moving - it is a "best", not a "next best" approach for dealing with mechanical or automatic associative activity in the brain. {and that's not even mentioning its productive yields}

What is the mind doing, well, it's using the precious energy of emotion to uselessly drive automatic and repetitive associative activity and self-talk. That's negative emotion and it's a profound misdirection of emotional energy. Once established as a habit, however, it's very hard to break. The body/brain/mind produces only a finite amount of energy daily. If by analogy, your iPad or your car did any such thing, you'd quickly get it checked out because its malfunction is indicative of a badly broken machine.

We are no different. We just don't think about and operate ourselves with the same level of competence we do our machines.

Of course there are other levels of consciousness potentially available to us, but in order to access these, we must correct the habitual waste which plagues our daily operation.

Sabrinabee said...

Thanks for the welcome. Well thank goodness that what I've come to find solace in is a "best" that's heartening and yes the yeilds are gratifying.

You're right, if our machine drained energy, power, too quickly we'd have it serviced. I totally get that negative emotion is drained energy. The hard part is the correcting. It seems one has to always be paying attention, as potentially negative onslaughts from outside oneself, that can affect one's well being ( not just emotionally but physically, as well ) are a constant threat.

What other's do or the decisions they make, be it at work or in the actions of our decision makers have real consequences, whether we partake or not. It is in our best interest to try to foresee and if possible prepare. Wouldn't this be considered worry?

CNu said...

What other's do or the decisions they make, be it at work or in the
actions of our decision makers have real consequences, whether we
partake or not. It is in our best interest to try to foresee and if
possible prepare. Wouldn't this be considered worry?

There is scripting and there is worrying. I will explain.

My 12 year old has started competitive tennis play with teenage boys. He beat the top ranked teen boy at a club in our vicinity last week. When his game is on, it's a thing of beauty. We're now down to pure refinements, more aggressive slicing, footwork, fitness, and strategy. It's the last, the "strategy" that I refer to as "scripting". He has to learn to script combinations of shots and practice these like martial arts forms, working them out against me or other practice opponents. This gives him a framework in which to literally rehearse his footwork, as well.

To spice things up, I bet him money on a match weekly, significant money. He in turn, bets lawn-mowing services. The wager adds an element of stress or "worry" that never fails to disrupt his game. He starts thinking about that money, worrying about that money, instead of getting into his zone and playing for all he's worth as if he's already dead. to borrow a term from samurai combat parliance. But, playing like you're already dead is the only way to have your game fully on.

He hasn't yet realized that the wager is my way of getting into his head, inducing worry and degrading the quality of his play. Of course, he hasn't yet beaten me when a wager is involved, and he hasn't figured out what I'm perpetrating. When he does figure it out, and stops "worrying" about that money, then that'll be all she wrote for me, and I'll likely be unable to beat him again - until and unless I make significant fitness gains and restore my level of quickness to something resembling what it was in my 20's or 30's.

Bottomline, worrying or dwelling on imaginary possibilities triggers negative emotional energy leakages, and is a definite mindkiller.

Sabrinabee said...

Aww poor thing. What if he doesn't get what you are doing? Do you speak to him about this sort of manipulation when you are not in those situations? My next question was going to be, so we are talking a sort of personal faith? Then I read your post directly above mine.

Tom said...

CNu, sounds like my problem with online chess.  Problem is, the chess sites always give me a "rating" all the time, and it leads to the worry, etc.  Ends up, I don't own it.  Like the kids who get grade-focused in school.

CNu said...

What if he doesn't get what you are doing?

He will.

Are you familiar with Edwin Abbott's Flatland? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland

Here's the Cliff's Notes version with "Dr. Quantum" taking a little trip to the Flatland http://youtu.be/BWyTxCsIXE4

It takes a great deal of energy supersubstanialem to perceive around/beyond the boundaries of our conventional awareness, whether to experience what is just below the threshold of awareness, or, to experience what is just above/beyond the ordinary threshold.

CNu said...

 What we're looking for above and below is what our correspondent John Kurman referred to as "jamming" on this thread http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2012/04/eowilsons-verbose-cluelessness-on.html#comment-509666578

Tom said...

Sabrinabee & CNu sorry to cut in, I get all overexcited when I think about chess.

John Kurman said...

Understandable. You dig chess, I dig go.

http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/ 

CNu said...

Quick question and explanation.

Can you use "the force" in online chess? (In person I can see it in either chess or go, but online seems a stretch, and frankly it's a far greater stretch for me than its application in tennis which depends so strongly on the processing of inductive cues taken from the other player's position, game style, strengths and strategy)

Explanation: Breaking it down so that a flatland conversant 12 year old can fully understand, my son grasps the concept of a "change of being" required to go from a 2-dimensional to a 3-dimensional consciousness. (the cartoon Dr. Quantum jes gots it like that)

To illustrate change of being required to go from 3-dimensional to 4-dimensional consciousness, I resort to George Lucas illustration of the force being very strong in the child Anakin Skywalker and even in the full Jedi Anakin as he pilots various craft with an uncanny speed and "luck" for lack of a better term. The uncanny speed and skill is derived from being able to operate from below, i.e., his piloting skills have been fully sublimated into his instinctual right-brain operations and flow smoothly without delay or interference from his mental-egoic overseer.

Concurrent with his "seeing from below", Anakin see's above, or, in Flatland/Dr. Quantum terms, he see's and operates a split second into the future - and this ever so slightly extended consciousness of the 4th dimension accounts for his uncanny good "luck".

That is in fact precisely how I believe "luck" as opposed to sheer "dumb luck" operates. It is the basis for the assertion in Star Wars about the "force being strong" in someone, it is what was ascribed to Mushasi in accounts of his being unnaturally "strong" - and it is what will distinguish the next generation of superb tennis players from the  super conditioned and rehearsed endurance athletes currently dominating mens professional tennis - now that "jamming" in this combat sport has taken on a whole new meaning from what used to prevail in the comparatively soft and genteel country club game of tennis.

Tom said...

Maybe. 
There are streaks when I play much better than normal, and when I play much worse than normal, and everybody talks about this.  It seems to happen both online and over the board.
It's not just streaks of dumb luck, I'm pretty sure.  (Some disagree.)  But it tends to come 20, 30 or more games in a row, or I've had it every morning around a certain time.  Since I read your thing about "as if he's already dead" last night, I've been trying out that attitude in 5-minute chess at chess.com.  (Except "play as if you've already lost the rating points," which I admit lacks the commitment of the Samurai.)  A winning streak started, and my effective rating for that streak has been 1680.  Past couple weeks my rating has fluctuated around say 1380.    Three hundred points is gigantic, if it's real.  With a 300-point rating differential I'd be favored to win almost 90% of the games.  So right now I could probably offer 9:1 odds against myself a few days ago.Players (at my level at least) generally experience these wide fluctuations, but we're probably pretty much helpless to control them.  That was my interest in the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain;" I've also tried out "The Inner Game of Tennis."   Can't tell whether either book helps though.  Most things seem to help at first, then trail off.---Tangential story on "genteel" sports: I know a guy who teaches at my alma mater, which is a bit of a lacrosse power.    Friend  knows the head coach.  Head coach is discussing the perennial claim that you have to play lacrosse lifelong, and that's why it's been dominated by prep school kids etc.   Head coach says yeah right.  He says "gimme the Florida State football team and two weeks, we'll win the championship."

Tom said...

Gah, for some reason Disqus seems to lose my paragraphing a lot.

Tom said...

I've wanted to learn Go.  We even got a set, but my wife won every game and I got too mad to play.    See most of these games is experience, not intelligence, so in chess which she doesn't play I can whup her.  But when our (in)experience is equal, unfortunately then the intelligence factor seems to come into play ....

Tom said...

Shorter best guess: The force seems to be able to use me, but not the reverse so far.

CNu said...

I wish a strapping, roidbeast american football playing jamoke would attempt to set foot on today's Wimbledon, as well, an NBA baller, MMA brawler, and/or any other extremely fit, highly coordinated, athletic shot-caller.

We don't even have to go to the 5 set endurance marathon aspects of the contemporary game..., muhphukkaz would straight die even trying!

Tom said...

LOL  ... yeah I hate to picture one of them trying to take on Michael Chang on clay in his prime.  Tennis is serious, no argument.  I'm not a good player but I just introduced my daughter to it.  Every time we go she is better--that early-on thing, but it's just incredible to watch.

But so the "force" --the good end of the ability fluctuations--does seem to operate when I'm playing chess online.   But there's one more thing.  I HATE playing online.  When I lose, it makes me furious.  I hate it.  Don't have that problem face to face at all, and I'm not averse to telecommunication.  I used to use phones to go through lots of technical complexity, people were always surprised it was even possible.  So I'm not sure what's up with how much I hate online chess.  Could be the ratings, imagine a college kid getting his grade updated every time he thinks about how linked lists work.  Rat/dispenser-genic, not mastery-genic.

CNu said...

On Chang - Bingo!

Worse, functioning at the peak level of play prevalent in their era, IMOHO - Chang, McEnroe, Agassiz, Lendl, etc..., could not survive the rigors of the contemporary game.

Very interesting that business about the force operative for you in chess and even more - at a distance...,

CNu said...

Tom, do you think of chess as a wargame?

Is your attitude towards it, "your valuation of it" in any way warlike?

John Kurman said...

Yeah, well, I suck at chess.

John Kurman said...

I disqualify myself as I don't play anything online. 

Tom said...

So you have a real-life opponent for Go?  Because nobody I know, even Japanese people, know how to play.

Tom said...

CNu, 

Yes.  More like a duel than a war, but yeah.But it's also a social thing for me, I work at home and can get starved of face time with people.  And I didn't say, but in chess, and even more in 5-min chess, what you're saying about tennis going by right-brain, seemingly w/o thought, is surprisingly true.  When I'm playing my best game, yeah, I'm aware of thinking, but a surprising number of good moves just jump out at me. 

CNu said...

John ain't know how to play either, but to a certain demographic of impressionable young females, it's an interesting accoutrement   http://youtu.be/L30QiONyCBY

John Kurman said...

Yeah, and we usually played after hitting the bars after work, and it sometimes involved a lot of the clear liquors until 3am or so. And maybe a little herb to make it challenging.

But now the guy and his wife are in the Peace Corps, stationed over in Botswana.

As to play, well, as a visual person it just seemed a natural thing for me. I'd start out doing fractal placement on the board, smaller and smaller self-similar structures. Then, you look to see where you can race to the edge to capture territory. As to "the force", well, I can always tell early on when I'm gonna lose, sometimes after only a few dozen moves. I just sense that the placements aren't kosher, and then, yup, sure enough, it's all downhill. 

John Kurman said...

Stay thirsty my friend.

CNu said...

Truthfully, I'm the rank Go amateur here, but thanks to your summary of how it's done, both Chess and Go are clearly amenable to application of a peep above and below, either in person or at a distance. I feel very foolish not having grokked that in advance of my kwestins.

Now that compute power has reached the advanced stage it has reached, the force will have to be particularly strong in the next hujman chess master that can reliably overcome a machine

John Kurman said...

Possibly, but the one thing, two things, I like about go is,

1) It's a sharing game. That is, at the onset with the territories suggested, and no invasions deemed successful, then it ends peaceably. No need to grind each other's forces into oblivion when it's obvious that no advantage will be gained., and 
2) Playing on despite eventual crushing defeat is considered... impolite at  the least, dishonorable at worst.

Pity the Jap military command did not have this type of war-fighting aesthetic back when. I supposed you can get computers to "get" the above and below shit, but, refinement, good taste, a visual/procedural/tactical/strategic aesthetic appreciation, compassion, gentility, constraint, good manners? 

Tom said...

Playing on despite eventual crushing defeat is considered... impolite at  the least, dishonorable at worst.

This is actually one of the things that pisses me off the most about chess.  At my level at least, people grind on and on, down a rook & 2 pawns, hoping for a lucky mistake.   For me that's not what the game's about.

CNu said...

 How senseless, it's obvious what will happen http://youtu.be/SYE3DJ2IltY

Sabrinabee said...

Believe it or not, I actually have the video, What the Bleep Do We Know... Down the Rabbit Hole, and did watch it, years ago. What I took away from it, from what I can remember, is that we are all interconnected forms of energy. I know, it's not much but that is all I can remember right now. I am going to dig it out and watch it again.

Uglyblackjohn said...

IDK... Chang's win at the French is the experience which most athletes only dream of. Ali's win against Frazier is similar in that each had to go beyond his own known abilities to do what others imagined could not be done. An easy win is most often boring and pointless - a win won on heart alone is one that one remembers and draws upon for the rest of his life.
Could Chang beat Djokovic or Nadal on the regular? Probably not but if he managed to beat these more athletic and refined players - it would be a much more satisfying victory.

Big Don said...

Uh, when online, how do you know who you're really playing?  Your opponent may have hyped-up overclocked second (and third?) computers running with a couple of the better chess programs, maybe even some cat at IBM with access to Big Blue....

Tom said...

It's a problem.  Online players mostly try to address the problem by maintaining a strong attitude of denial.  A lot of over-the-board players just assume there's plenty of cheating online.   

CNu said...

Agreed - and I always root for the player tapping deep emotional reservoirs - while steadily admiring and assiduously working to cultivate my very own Jo Willy with the machinic skills of Federer.

Dale Asberry said...

Feeling the Force happens when the egoic mind gets out of the way and you can feel the system of interest all the way to your bones - without saturating other systems. It is a double balancing act - balance the autonomic systems with one another and then balance the egoic with the autonomic. It is more about rhythm than control, much like juggling. Not until you 'see' the rhythm... trial and error (egoic) doesn't work. As an interesting aside, the best juggler I've known commented that, "juggling is an act always doomed to failure"...

CNu said...

oh he of little faith, the force was not strong enough in him....,

Dale Asberry said...

He had complete and total faith. He could juggle 5 balls until...

CNu said...

father, father, why hast though forsaken me?

Dale Asberry said...

...his arms gave out.

CNu said...

my point exactly, ERRBODY's do, no exceptions..., (which is kinda our embarcation point and why one should worry as little as possible)

Dale Asberry said...

Worry, anger, etc. also directly and measurable saturate and overwhelm all other autonomic systems.

Sabrinabee said...

Which is why you set up the test for your son? To show that worry affects his abilities whether he is conscious of it or not?

CNu said...

Precisely.

He knows what "jamming" or "seeing above and below" is, and, he knows when he's doing it and he knows when he's not. He knows what that state is and that it's most desirable to be in it.

Becoming aware of and hopefully acquiring some control over what prevents/obstructs access to that state is essential.

I was in my 20's before I could play tennis as well as he can. I was in my 40's before I mastered what I'm working to teach him now. If everything goes according to plan, this will be routine for him before he's fourteen, all according to how this summer's contests go...,

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