Chaosophy
CHAOSOPHY 1993
A Journal of Chaos, Consciousness, and Philosophy
Iona Miller, Ed. O.A.K., Asklepia Foundation, ©1993
[email protected]
"Yea verily, I say unto you
A man must have chaos yet within him
to birth a dancing star." --Nietzsche
"To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of life for better or worse."
--Carl Jung, 1961
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Click links below or read easier from drop-down menu above
A Journal of Chaos, Consciousness, and Philosophy
Iona Miller, Ed. O.A.K., Asklepia Foundation, ©1993
[email protected]
"Yea verily, I say unto you
A man must have chaos yet within him
to birth a dancing star." --Nietzsche
"To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of life for better or worse."
--Carl Jung, 1961
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Click links below or read easier from drop-down menu above
Chaos Theory describes the behavior of non-linear dynamic systems, fractal geometry, and the complex, systematic behavior of nature as well as our nature, consciousness and health. It describes in eloquent equations deterministic ordered randomness, dimensionality, reflexive feedback loops, boundary conditions and integration. It is the realm of the irrational, paradoxical, of rich values and structure, self-generative and self-iterating, of self-organizing (autopoietic) emergent creativity, stretched time and folded space, inherent unpredictability, yet boundaried and geometric. The domain of global behavior, open systems, criticality, sensitive dependence, strange attractors, fluctuations, turbulence, perturbations, thresholds, trajectories, bifurcations, phase transitions, temporal density, reiteration, synchronicity, resilience, the "butterfly effect," subquantal chaos (ZPE), dynamic geometrization, probability, relativity, disruption, coherence and stochastic resonance, synergetics and tensegrity, self-reflection, nested cycles, the breakdown of order with sudden transitions, the creative and evolutionary "edge." Chaotic systems are apparently acausal, inherently qualitative, sustained by complex feedback loops, and disproportionately responsive. -- Iona Miller
“Chaos” – Anthology
The struggle with the unformed, with the chaos of Tiamat, is in truth a primordial experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 286
He [Jung] replied, "Yes. God spoke and created from the chaos-and here we are all gods for ourselves.
~E Harding, Conversations with Jung, Page 8
He cannot overcome the conflict on his own resources; after all, he didn't invent it. He has to rely on divine comfort and mediation, that is to say on the spontaneous revelation of the spirit, which does not obey man's will but comes and goes as it wills. This spirit is an autonomous psychic happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the darknesses of man's mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his soul. The Holy Ghost is a comforter like the Father, a mute, eternal, unfathomable One in whom God's love and God's terribleness come together in wordless union. And through this union the original meaning of the still-unconscious Father-world is restored and brought within the scope of human experience and reflection.
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 66
The conscious mind must have reason, firstly to discover some order in the chaos of disorderly individual events occurring in the world, and secondly to create order, at least in human affairs. We are moved by the laudable and useful ambition to extirpate the chaos of the irrational both within and without to the best of our ability. Apparently the process has gone pretty far. As a mental patient once told me: "Doctor, last night I disinfected the whole heavens with bichloride of mercury, but I found no God." Something of the sort has happened to us as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 104A
The intellect may be the devil, but the devil is the "strange son of chaos" who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother. The Dionysian experience will give this devil plenty to do should he be looking for work, since the resultant settlement with the unconscious far outweighs the labours of Hercules. In my opinion it presents a whole world of problems which the intellect could not settle even in a hundred years—the very reason why it has so often gone off on a holiday to recuperate on lighter tasks. And this is also the reason why the psyche is forgotten so often and so long, and why the intellect makes such frequent use of magical, apotropaic words like "occult" and "mystic," in the hope that even intelligent people will think these mutterings really mean something. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para119
The love-episode is a real experience really suffered, and so is the vision. It is not for us to say whether its content is of a physical, psychic, or metaphysical nature. In itself it had psychic reality, and this is no less real than physical reality. Human passion falls within the sphere of conscious experience, while the object of the vision lives beyond it. Through our senses we experience the known, but our intuitions point to things that are unknown and hidden, that by their very nature are secret. If ever they become conscious, they are intentionally kept secret and concealed, for which reason they have been regarded from earliest times as mysterious, uncanny, and deceptive. They are hidden from man, and he hides himself from them out of religious awe, protecting himself with the shield of science and reason. The ordered cosmos he believes in by day is meant to protect him from the fear of chaos that besets him by night —his enlightenment is born of night-fears! ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 148
Nowhere and never has man controlled matter without closely observing its behaviour and paying heed to its laws, and only to the extent that he did so could he control it. The same is true of that objective spirit which today we call the unconscious it is refractory like matter, mysterious and elusive, and obeys laws which are so non-human or suprahuman that they seem to us like a crimen laesae majestatis hiimanae. If a man puts his hand to the opus, he repeats, as the alchemists say, God's work of creation. The struggle with the unformed, with the chaos of Tiamat, is in truth a primordial experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 286
The old idea of chaos was that it held everything in potentia including man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
In the center is the individual where the opposites are united, the one peaceful spot in man, the space where nothing moves embedded in a world of chaos. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 263
We have no way of knowing whether the world is Cosmos or Chaos, for, as we know the world, all the order is put into it by ourselves. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 134
Without his emphasis on the dark side of man and the chaos of his chthonic desires, I could not have found access to the "Mysterium Coniunctionis." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 469-471
In this chaos of chance, synchronistic phenomena were probably at work, operating both with and against the known laws of nature to produce, in archetypal moments, syntheses which appear to us miraculous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 493-496
Too strong a dependence on the outside and too dynamic a view of the inside stem essentially from your desire, intention, and will, which you should push into the background a little for the sake of what really concerns you: holding your own in the chaos of this world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 456.
We may think of the Irish monk as a man who still has one foot in the animistic world of nature-demons with its intense passions, and the other in the new Christian order symbolized by the Cross, which condenses the primordial chaos into the unity of the personality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-388
In Buddhist art, as in the Celtic illuminated manuscripts and sculptures, the complicated designs and intricate rhythms of the border pattern serve to coax the frightening, pullulating chaos of a disorganized psyche into harmonious forms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-388
Concentration is necessary whenever there is the possibility or threat of psychic chaos, i.e., when there is no central control by a strong ego or dominant idea. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-388
So you see, in a moment during a patient's treatment when there is a great disorder and chaos in a man's mind, the symbol can appear, as in the form of a mandala in a dream, or when he makes imaginary and fantastical drawings, or something of the sort. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 21.
Komarius teaches Cleopatra that the dead who stay in Hades [that is in chaos) are transformed into Spring flowers by the miraculous dew. This is the idea of the living elements in chaos or Shunyata waking and uniting through being contained in the lotus. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 101.
In the East the Void represents a psychic emptying of all conscious contents through the practice of Yoga. In the western series the chaos, or nigredo, is not thought of as a psychic condition but as a condition of the materia. This is the great difference between the East and the West. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.
The elements are of an earthly nature, the physical and chemical constituents of our bodies. These are the earth in us, so to speak, and the stars represent the beginning of psychical life, the influence of the stars in the condition of the chaos. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 229.
We think of a chaos as complete confusion, but to the alchemists it was a confusion of definite qualities and of special factors. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 201-202.
The "art of gold making" is a sort of creating of the world, or it is based on the pattern of the creation of the world, and, as in Genesis, a cosmos is fashioned from the chaos. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
With a disordered consciousness order can come out of the unconscious, just as conversely unconscious chaos can break into the too narrow cosmos of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
[Uniting symbols] arise from the collision between the conscious and the unconscious and from the confusion which this causes (known in alchemy as ‘chaos’ or ‘nigredo’). Empirically, this confusion takes the form of restlessness and disorientation. ~Carl Jung, CW 9 II, §304.
This primary substance [the chaos] is round (massa globosa, rotundum), like the world and the world-soul; it is in fact the world-soul and the world-substance in one. ~Carl Jung, CW 9 II: §376
[Uniting symbols] arise from the collision between the conscious and the unconscious and from the confusion which this causes (known in alchemy as ‘chaos’ or ‘nigredo’). Empirically, this confusion takes the form of restlessness and disorientation. ~Carl Jung, CW 9 II, §304.
The intellect may be the devil , but the devil is the "strange son of chaos" who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 90.
This spirit is an autonomous psychic happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the darkness of man’s mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his soul. ~Carl Jung; CW 11; Para 260.
In alchemy the egg stands for the chaos apprehended by the artifex, the prima materia containing the captive world-soul. Out of the egg — symbolized by the round cooking vessel — will rise the eagle or phoenix, the liberated soul, which is ultimately identical with the Anthropos who was imprisoned in the embrace of Physis. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; Page 202.
The one eye of the Godhead is blind, the one ear of the Godhead is deaf, the order of its being is crossed by chaos. So be patient with the crippledness of the world and do not overvalue its consummate beauty. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 231.
But for him who has seen the chaos, there.is no more hiding, because he knows that the bottom sways and knows what this swaying means. He has seen the order and the disorder of the endless, he knows the unlawful laws. He knows the sea and can never forget it. The chaos is terrible: days full of lead, nights full of horror. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 299.
If you marry the ordered to the chaos, you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness. Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 235
“Chaos” – Anthology
The struggle with the unformed, with the chaos of Tiamat, is in truth a primordial experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 286
He [Jung] replied, "Yes. God spoke and created from the chaos-and here we are all gods for ourselves.
~E Harding, Conversations with Jung, Page 8
He cannot overcome the conflict on his own resources; after all, he didn't invent it. He has to rely on divine comfort and mediation, that is to say on the spontaneous revelation of the spirit, which does not obey man's will but comes and goes as it wills. This spirit is an autonomous psychic happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the darknesses of man's mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his soul. The Holy Ghost is a comforter like the Father, a mute, eternal, unfathomable One in whom God's love and God's terribleness come together in wordless union. And through this union the original meaning of the still-unconscious Father-world is restored and brought within the scope of human experience and reflection.
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 66
The conscious mind must have reason, firstly to discover some order in the chaos of disorderly individual events occurring in the world, and secondly to create order, at least in human affairs. We are moved by the laudable and useful ambition to extirpate the chaos of the irrational both within and without to the best of our ability. Apparently the process has gone pretty far. As a mental patient once told me: "Doctor, last night I disinfected the whole heavens with bichloride of mercury, but I found no God." Something of the sort has happened to us as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 104A
The intellect may be the devil, but the devil is the "strange son of chaos" who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother. The Dionysian experience will give this devil plenty to do should he be looking for work, since the resultant settlement with the unconscious far outweighs the labours of Hercules. In my opinion it presents a whole world of problems which the intellect could not settle even in a hundred years—the very reason why it has so often gone off on a holiday to recuperate on lighter tasks. And this is also the reason why the psyche is forgotten so often and so long, and why the intellect makes such frequent use of magical, apotropaic words like "occult" and "mystic," in the hope that even intelligent people will think these mutterings really mean something. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para119
The love-episode is a real experience really suffered, and so is the vision. It is not for us to say whether its content is of a physical, psychic, or metaphysical nature. In itself it had psychic reality, and this is no less real than physical reality. Human passion falls within the sphere of conscious experience, while the object of the vision lives beyond it. Through our senses we experience the known, but our intuitions point to things that are unknown and hidden, that by their very nature are secret. If ever they become conscious, they are intentionally kept secret and concealed, for which reason they have been regarded from earliest times as mysterious, uncanny, and deceptive. They are hidden from man, and he hides himself from them out of religious awe, protecting himself with the shield of science and reason. The ordered cosmos he believes in by day is meant to protect him from the fear of chaos that besets him by night —his enlightenment is born of night-fears! ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 148
Nowhere and never has man controlled matter without closely observing its behaviour and paying heed to its laws, and only to the extent that he did so could he control it. The same is true of that objective spirit which today we call the unconscious it is refractory like matter, mysterious and elusive, and obeys laws which are so non-human or suprahuman that they seem to us like a crimen laesae majestatis hiimanae. If a man puts his hand to the opus, he repeats, as the alchemists say, God's work of creation. The struggle with the unformed, with the chaos of Tiamat, is in truth a primordial experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 286
The old idea of chaos was that it held everything in potentia including man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939
In the center is the individual where the opposites are united, the one peaceful spot in man, the space where nothing moves embedded in a world of chaos. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 263
We have no way of knowing whether the world is Cosmos or Chaos, for, as we know the world, all the order is put into it by ourselves. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 134
Without his emphasis on the dark side of man and the chaos of his chthonic desires, I could not have found access to the "Mysterium Coniunctionis." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 469-471
In this chaos of chance, synchronistic phenomena were probably at work, operating both with and against the known laws of nature to produce, in archetypal moments, syntheses which appear to us miraculous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 493-496
Too strong a dependence on the outside and too dynamic a view of the inside stem essentially from your desire, intention, and will, which you should push into the background a little for the sake of what really concerns you: holding your own in the chaos of this world. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 456.
We may think of the Irish monk as a man who still has one foot in the animistic world of nature-demons with its intense passions, and the other in the new Christian order symbolized by the Cross, which condenses the primordial chaos into the unity of the personality. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-388
In Buddhist art, as in the Celtic illuminated manuscripts and sculptures, the complicated designs and intricate rhythms of the border pattern serve to coax the frightening, pullulating chaos of a disorganized psyche into harmonious forms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-388
Concentration is necessary whenever there is the possibility or threat of psychic chaos, i.e., when there is no central control by a strong ego or dominant idea. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-388
So you see, in a moment during a patient's treatment when there is a great disorder and chaos in a man's mind, the symbol can appear, as in the form of a mandala in a dream, or when he makes imaginary and fantastical drawings, or something of the sort. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 21.
Komarius teaches Cleopatra that the dead who stay in Hades [that is in chaos) are transformed into Spring flowers by the miraculous dew. This is the idea of the living elements in chaos or Shunyata waking and uniting through being contained in the lotus. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 101.
In the East the Void represents a psychic emptying of all conscious contents through the practice of Yoga. In the western series the chaos, or nigredo, is not thought of as a psychic condition but as a condition of the materia. This is the great difference between the East and the West. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 175.
The elements are of an earthly nature, the physical and chemical constituents of our bodies. These are the earth in us, so to speak, and the stars represent the beginning of psychical life, the influence of the stars in the condition of the chaos. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 229.
We think of a chaos as complete confusion, but to the alchemists it was a confusion of definite qualities and of special factors. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 201-202.
The "art of gold making" is a sort of creating of the world, or it is based on the pattern of the creation of the world, and, as in Genesis, a cosmos is fashioned from the chaos. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
With a disordered consciousness order can come out of the unconscious, just as conversely unconscious chaos can break into the too narrow cosmos of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
[Uniting symbols] arise from the collision between the conscious and the unconscious and from the confusion which this causes (known in alchemy as ‘chaos’ or ‘nigredo’). Empirically, this confusion takes the form of restlessness and disorientation. ~Carl Jung, CW 9 II, §304.
This primary substance [the chaos] is round (massa globosa, rotundum), like the world and the world-soul; it is in fact the world-soul and the world-substance in one. ~Carl Jung, CW 9 II: §376
[Uniting symbols] arise from the collision between the conscious and the unconscious and from the confusion which this causes (known in alchemy as ‘chaos’ or ‘nigredo’). Empirically, this confusion takes the form of restlessness and disorientation. ~Carl Jung, CW 9 II, §304.
The intellect may be the devil , but the devil is the "strange son of chaos" who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 90.
This spirit is an autonomous psychic happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the darkness of man’s mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his soul. ~Carl Jung; CW 11; Para 260.
In alchemy the egg stands for the chaos apprehended by the artifex, the prima materia containing the captive world-soul. Out of the egg — symbolized by the round cooking vessel — will rise the eagle or phoenix, the liberated soul, which is ultimately identical with the Anthropos who was imprisoned in the embrace of Physis. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; Page 202.
The one eye of the Godhead is blind, the one ear of the Godhead is deaf, the order of its being is crossed by chaos. So be patient with the crippledness of the world and do not overvalue its consummate beauty. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 231.
But for him who has seen the chaos, there.is no more hiding, because he knows that the bottom sways and knows what this swaying means. He has seen the order and the disorder of the endless, he knows the unlawful laws. He knows the sea and can never forget it. The chaos is terrible: days full of lead, nights full of horror. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 299.
If you marry the ordered to the chaos, you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness. Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 235
http://qz.com/866352/scientists-say-your-mind-isnt-confined-to-your-brain-or-even-your-body/
Scientists say your “mind” isn’t confined to your brain, or even your body
Olivia Goldhill
December 24, 2016
You might wonder, at some point today, what’s going on in another person’s mind. You may compliment someone’s great mind, or say they are out of their mind. You may even try to expand or free your own mind.
But what is a mind? Defining the concept is a surprisingly slippery task. The mind is the seat of consciousness, the essence of your being. Without a mind, you cannot be considered meaningfully alive. So what exactly, and where precisely, is it?
Traditionally, scientists have tried to define the mind as the product of brain activity: The brain is the physical substance, and the mind is the conscious product of those firing neurons, according to the classic argument. But growing evidence shows that the mind goes far beyond the physical workings of your brain.
No doubt, the brain plays an incredibly important role. But our mind cannot be confined to what’s inside our skull, or even our body, according to a definition first put forward by Dan Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine and the author of a recently published book, Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human.
He first came up with the definition more than two decades ago, at a meeting of 40 scientists across disciplines, including neuroscientists, physicists, sociologists, sociologists, and anthropologists. The aim was to come to an understanding of the mind that would appeal to common ground and satisfy those wrestling with the question across these fields.
After much discussion, they decided that a key component of the mind is: “the emergent self-organizing process, both embodied and relational, that regulates energy and information flow within and among us.” It’s not catchy. But it is interesting, and with meaningful implications.
The most immediately shocking element of this definition is that our mind extends beyond our physical selves. In other words, our mind is not simply our perception of experiences, but those experiences themselves. Siegel argues that it’s impossible to completely disentangle our subjective view of the world from our interactions.
“I realized if someone asked me to define the shoreline but insisted, is it the water or the sand, I would have to say the shore is both sand and sea,” says Siegel. “You can’t limit our understanding of the coastline to insist it’s one or the other. I started thinking, maybe the mind is like the coastline—some inner and inter process. Mental life for an anthropologist or sociologist is profoundly social. Your thoughts, feelings, memories, attention, what you experience in this subjective world is part of mind.”
The definition has since been supported by research across the sciences, but much of the original idea came from mathematics. Siegel realized the mind meets the mathematical definition of a complex system in that it’s open (can influence things outside itself), chaos capable (which simply means it’s roughly randomly distributed), and non-linear (which means a small input leads to large and difficult to predict result).
In math, complex systems are self-organizing, and Siegel believes this idea is the foundation to mental health. Again borrowing from the mathematics, optimal self-organization is: flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable. This means that without optimal self-organization, you arrive at either chaos or rigidity—a notion that, Siegel says, fits the range of symptoms of mental health disorders.
Finally, self-organization demands linking together differentiated ideas or, essentially, integration. And Siegel says integration—whether that’s within the brain or within society—is the foundation of a healthy mind.
Siegel says he wrote his book now because he sees so much misery in society, and he believes this is partly shaped by how we perceive our own minds. He talks of doing research in Namibia, where people he spoke to attributed their happiness to a sense of belonging.
When Siegel was asked in return whether he belonged in America, his answer was less upbeat: “I thought how isolated we all are and how disconnected we feel,” he says. “In our modern society we have this belief that mind is brain activity and this means the self, which comes from the mind, is separate and we don’t really belong. But we’re all part of each others’ lives. The mind is not just brain activity. When we realize it’s this relational process, there’s this huge shift in this sense of belonging.”
In other words, even perceiving our mind as simply a product of our brain, rather than relations, can make us feel more isolated. And to appreciate the benefits of interrelations, you simply have to open your mind.
Scientists say your “mind” isn’t confined to your brain, or even your body
Olivia Goldhill
December 24, 2016
You might wonder, at some point today, what’s going on in another person’s mind. You may compliment someone’s great mind, or say they are out of their mind. You may even try to expand or free your own mind.
But what is a mind? Defining the concept is a surprisingly slippery task. The mind is the seat of consciousness, the essence of your being. Without a mind, you cannot be considered meaningfully alive. So what exactly, and where precisely, is it?
Traditionally, scientists have tried to define the mind as the product of brain activity: The brain is the physical substance, and the mind is the conscious product of those firing neurons, according to the classic argument. But growing evidence shows that the mind goes far beyond the physical workings of your brain.
No doubt, the brain plays an incredibly important role. But our mind cannot be confined to what’s inside our skull, or even our body, according to a definition first put forward by Dan Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine and the author of a recently published book, Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human.
He first came up with the definition more than two decades ago, at a meeting of 40 scientists across disciplines, including neuroscientists, physicists, sociologists, sociologists, and anthropologists. The aim was to come to an understanding of the mind that would appeal to common ground and satisfy those wrestling with the question across these fields.
After much discussion, they decided that a key component of the mind is: “the emergent self-organizing process, both embodied and relational, that regulates energy and information flow within and among us.” It’s not catchy. But it is interesting, and with meaningful implications.
The most immediately shocking element of this definition is that our mind extends beyond our physical selves. In other words, our mind is not simply our perception of experiences, but those experiences themselves. Siegel argues that it’s impossible to completely disentangle our subjective view of the world from our interactions.
“I realized if someone asked me to define the shoreline but insisted, is it the water or the sand, I would have to say the shore is both sand and sea,” says Siegel. “You can’t limit our understanding of the coastline to insist it’s one or the other. I started thinking, maybe the mind is like the coastline—some inner and inter process. Mental life for an anthropologist or sociologist is profoundly social. Your thoughts, feelings, memories, attention, what you experience in this subjective world is part of mind.”
The definition has since been supported by research across the sciences, but much of the original idea came from mathematics. Siegel realized the mind meets the mathematical definition of a complex system in that it’s open (can influence things outside itself), chaos capable (which simply means it’s roughly randomly distributed), and non-linear (which means a small input leads to large and difficult to predict result).
In math, complex systems are self-organizing, and Siegel believes this idea is the foundation to mental health. Again borrowing from the mathematics, optimal self-organization is: flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable. This means that without optimal self-organization, you arrive at either chaos or rigidity—a notion that, Siegel says, fits the range of symptoms of mental health disorders.
Finally, self-organization demands linking together differentiated ideas or, essentially, integration. And Siegel says integration—whether that’s within the brain or within society—is the foundation of a healthy mind.
Siegel says he wrote his book now because he sees so much misery in society, and he believes this is partly shaped by how we perceive our own minds. He talks of doing research in Namibia, where people he spoke to attributed their happiness to a sense of belonging.
When Siegel was asked in return whether he belonged in America, his answer was less upbeat: “I thought how isolated we all are and how disconnected we feel,” he says. “In our modern society we have this belief that mind is brain activity and this means the self, which comes from the mind, is separate and we don’t really belong. But we’re all part of each others’ lives. The mind is not just brain activity. When we realize it’s this relational process, there’s this huge shift in this sense of belonging.”
In other words, even perceiving our mind as simply a product of our brain, rather than relations, can make us feel more isolated. And to appreciate the benefits of interrelations, you simply have to open your mind.
ABSTRACTS
Introduction
I. CHAOS AND POSTMODERN PSYCHOTHERAPY
Chaosophy
Chaos Consciousness in Psychotherapy
Chaos As the Universal Solvent
Chaos Theory and Psychological Complexes
The Creative Flow of Meaning
II. POLYPHASIC CONSCIOUSNESS
The Un-Named Dream and Parallel Universes
The Varieties of Virtual Experience
Dream Wave
The Unborn Dream
Have You Been to the Paradox?
III. THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM
The Holographic Paradigm and CCP
Fractal Therapy
The Holographic Concept of Reality
Embryonic Holography
Self-Organization in Biological Systems
IV. CHAOS CULTURE
Disruption: Life Beyond the Circle
The Empty Medicine Bag
Relativity of Body and Soul
Virtual Therapy
The Guide Wave
V. INFORMATION THEORY
An Information Theory of the Universe and Neurodynamics
Ode to White Noise and Strange Loops
Image Processing
The Self-Aware Universe
ABSTRACTS
I. CHAOS AND POSTMODERN PSYCHOTHERAPY
CHAOSOPHY:
An Imaginal Perspective on the Nature of Reality, Consciousness, Experience, and Perception; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Our notions about ourselves and the nature of the world (worldview) around us are filtered through our prejudices about "the way things work". We never apprehend reality directly--only our world-simulation which is congealed from the convergence of our sensory input channels and the information-creating processes of chaotic neural activity. The brain filters and creates reality. Brains are chaotic systems which create internal perceptual patterns that substitute directly for sensory stimuli. These stimuli are evoked potentials or evoked fields--standing waves in the brain. Imagination has the ability to induce real-time changes in the psychophysical being. Imagination embodies the power of transformation. It may be accessed through obvious imagery, such as dreams, vision, and other sensory analogs, or viewed directly in symptoms, behavior patterns, emotional patterns, mental concepts, and spiritual beliefs. The imaginal process is our primary experience and it permeates and conditions all facets of human life. During experiential psychotherapy, the sensory-motor cortex system is influenced through imagination. Psyche affects substance at the most fundamental level, through chaotic neural activity.To go directly to the article click here.
CHAOS CONSCIOUSNESS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY:
An Experiential Approach and Application to Dreamwork, Creativity, and Healing; Graywolf Fred Swinney and Iona Miller, 1991
ABSTRACT: Experiential therapy sessions and mysticism demonstrate that as we journey deeper and deeper into the psyche we eventually encounter a state characterized either as "chaotic" or void of images. In a therapeutic context, chaos is experienced as a consciousness state--the ground state. This state is related to healing, dreams, and creativity. Shamanic approaches to healing involve co-consciousness states which lead to restructuring both physical and emotional-mental senses of self. Dreams, creativity, and healing arise from this undifferentiated "chaotic consciousness." Dreamhealing uses images as portals for consciousness journeys to facilitate transformations ranging from mood alteration to profound physiological changes. Imagery (virtual experience) affects the immune system, activating psychosomatic forces, such as the placebo effect. Chaos-oriented consciousness journeys suggest these states reflect complex phase space, fractal patterns, strange attractors, "the butterfly effect," sensitivity, complex feedback loops, intermittency, and other general dynamical aspects suggested by chaos theory. More than an experiential process, this is a philosophy of treatment--"Chaosophy."To go directly to the article click here.
CHAOS AS THE UNIVERSAL SOLVENT: Re-Creational Ego Death in Psychedelic Consciousness; Iona Miller, 1992 ABSTRACT: There is a generic process in nature and consciousness which dissolves and regenerates all forms. The essence of this transformative, morphological process is chaotic--purposeful yet inherently unpredictable holistic repatterning. The Great Work of the art of alchemy is the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, a symbol of wholeness and integration. The liquid form of the Stone, called the Universal Solvent, dissolves all old forms like a rushing stream, and is the self-organizing matrix for the rebirth of new forms. It is thus a metaphor or model for the dynamic process of transformation, ego death and re-creation. The alchemical operation SOLUTIO, called "the root of alchemy," corresponds with the element water. It implies a flowing state of consciousness, "liquification" of consciousness, a return to the womb for rebirth, a baptism or healing immersion in the vast ocean of deep consciousness. It facilitates feedback via creative regression: de-structuring, or destratification by immersion in the flow of psychic imagery through identification with more and more primal forms or patterns--a psychedelic, expanded state. Chaos Theory provides a metaphorical language for describing the flowing dynamics of the chaotic process of psychological transformation.To go directly to the article click here.
CHAOS THEORY
AND PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPLEXES: Jung's Notion of the Complex as "Strange Attractor" Iona Miller, 1991
That people should succumb to these eternal images is entirely normal, in fact it is what these images are for. They are meant to ATTRACT, to convince, to fascinate, and to overpower. They are created out of the primal stuff of revelation. --C.G. Jung, COLLECTED WORKS, Vol. 9 If the charge of one (or more) of the "nodal points" becomes so powerful that it "magnetically" (acting as a nuclear cell") ATTRACTS everything to itself and so confronts the ego with an alien entity...that has become autonomous--then we have a complex. --Jolande Jacobi, COMPLEX, ARCHETYPE, AND SYMBOLTo go directly to the article click here.
THE CREATIVE FLOW OF MEANING: An Introduction to Nonunitarian Philosophy; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: In nonunitarian, discontinuous transformations, a system opens itself to novelty and potentiality by dissolving into a state of nonlocal communion with the whole and reforms unconditioned by the past. Nonunitary transformation is based in the dissolution of all forms and structures, and creative emergence of unconditioned creativity--metamorphosis. In this organic model of multiple universes and states of consciousness, everything is involved in a pattern of continuous rebirth, and everything is the manifestation of the underlying creative potential, transcending physical and spiritual boundaries.To go directly to the article click here.
II. POLYPHASIC CONSCIOUSNESS
THE UN-NAMED DREAM
AND PARALLEL UNIVERSES: A Multistate Paradigm; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: In the Creative Consciousness Process (CCP), participants frequently encounter typical archetypal imagery at the threshold of chaotic consciousness. One of these reiterating images is that of grayness, black/whiteness, amorphousness. There are analogous reports from mystics and physicists about a fundamental cloudiness to the perception of ultimate realities. Relevant associations include parallel universes, the scientific notion of "observer effect", and the mystical notion of "the witness" or observer self.To go directly to the article click here.
THE VARIETIES OF VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE: Virtual Realities Beyond the Dialogical Self; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: The basis of the human psyche seems to be a collective of selves--a multimind in a multiverse. Independent and autonomous, they relate with one another mostly unknown to the outer awareness. The extreme form of splintering seen in Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) simply reflects an extreme form of multiplicity with conflicting perspectives. The "multistate paradigm" of human nature extends toward a psychology and spirituality that is polytheistic, even pantheistic. Dialogue is a form of imagery which creates and sustains a worldview through the means of imaginal conversations. Within the fabric of multiple centers or vortices within the psyche, an on-going dialogue emerges which ranges from selftalk (ego to ego), through "group" discussion (ego with subpersonalities), to spiritual dialogue (ego with transpersonal entities). Beyond the dialogical realm lies the unspeakable experience (untranslatable) of the Void or Clear Light, the realm of archetypal light and sound as pure consciousness. The "Word" helps us create and define reality. Conversation as well as observation defines our reality. Dialogue of the self with its various conscious and unconscious forms creates a series of "virtual realities" which form the basis of self-simulation and world-simulation. These forms are limitless in number, far beyond the classic archetypes such as persona, anima/animus, etc, suggesting the notion of "radical pluralism."To go directly to the article click here.
DREAM WAVE: Primal Imagery in the Creative Consciousness Process; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Consciousness appears as the urge toward manifestation or embodiment and an equal but opposite urge toward formlessness. This interplay creates the imaginal flux of representational and nonrepresentational perception. These clashing currents in the stream of consciousness create "standing waves" of informational content which may be unfolded from their implicate to explicate state through direct participation in that stream. The premise of the consciousness journey is that this "dream wave" may be followed backward/forward toward more primal representations into the nonrepresentational mode of perception. Certain typical, recurrent patterns occur at the further limits of these journeys. Particular phenomena are reiterated at the threshold of chaos--the threshold of dissolution--including amorphous clouds, black holes in psychic space, spirals and vortices, as well as dead and fertile voids.To go directly to the article click here.
THE UNBORN DREAM: Thriving on Chaos Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: If the implicate order is analogous to the frequency domain, as Bohm-Pribram have shown, the image/object domain unfolds from this invisible reality. That which is enfolded within the undivided whole is the "Bornless One," the unborn dream of our infinite possibilities. Unity-in-diversity is the direct experiential/existential goal of the Creative Consciousness Process in its experimental form. Complex dynamics is implicated in the energetic translation of the "waves of unborn nothingness" which constitute the unborn dream, the relentless flow of consciousness in search of embodiment and formlessness. Consciousness journeys are the "reading" or explication of the formless domain of Spirit. Following Nature to whatever abysses she leads, they reveal a way of thriving on chaos.To go directly to the article click here.
HAVE YOU BEEN TO THE PARADOX? Chaos Theory and Fuzzy Philosophy; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: The notion of paradox comes from a consciousness conditioned to think in terms of opposites, dualistic paradox. Self-referential paradox feeds back and annihilates itself. Such bivalence (binary logic: this or that; true or false; black or white) can be superceded by multivalent consciousness which perceives in terms of degrees. Multivalence more accurately reflects the complex dynamics of consciousness. As in the case of fractal generation, solutions are not found in terms of this or that, but in terms of degrees of fractional transformation, relationships. Fuzzy philosophy is based on acceptance of degrees of truth, the "grayness" of most propositions (truth values), the fractional solutions of fuzzy logic. Human consciousness is a self-referential system which embodies this principle of a connection between logic and chaos, in holistic ("whole brain") awareness.To go directly to the article click here.
III. THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM
THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM AND CCP: Explication, Ego Death, and Emptiness; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: David Bohm suggests psychological "atom-smashing" as a way of radically destructuring the ego, opening it to wider experience of the undivided whole. The holographic paradigm is one of reciprocal enfolding and unfolding of patterns of information (explication). The stream of images in CCP functions analogously to the unfolding of the stream of consciousness and the enfolding and de-structuring of the ego (ego death). Consciousness and matter share the same essence; their difference is one of degree of subtlety or density. "Emptiness" is an integral aspect of mind/matter. Chaos theory links all these elements as aspects of the archetypal healing process, which is facilitated by CCP.To go directly to the article click here.
FRACTAL THERAPY: Information Theory and the Vortex of Internal Structuring Process Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Because of its very nature a chaotic system cannot be decomposed. If consciousness is pure information it is not limited to physical form; its patterning may emerge from chaotic dynamics operating at the quantum level, where the "no-thing" of pure information becomes a structured "some-thing," through intentionality coupled with chaotic determinism (self-organized emergent order). The so-called "software of consciousness" is unlike the matter and energy of classical understanding, but exerts a measureable effect on the physical world, apparently through quantum chaos. Fractal therapy allows us to penetrate deeply into the psyche--into the vortex of the internal structuring process--through progressively de-structuring patterns of organization. The undecomposable level of chaotic consciousness is experienced as the pure, unconditioned imprint of the whole, resulting in a new primal self image and sense of relationship to the greater whole which emerges through nonunitary transformation.To go directly to the article click here.
A HOLOGRAPHIC CONCEPT OF REALITY Richard Alan Miller, Burt Webb, Darden Dickson, 1973-1993
ABSTRACT: The organization of any biological system is established by a complex electrodynamic field which is, in part, determined by its atomic physiochemical components and which, in part, determines the behavior and orientation of these components. The holographic model of reality emerging from this principle may provide a scientific explanation of psychoenergetic phenomena.To go directly to the article click here. EMBRYONIC HOLOGRAPHY: An Application of the Holographic Concept of Reality;
Richard Alan Miller and Burt Webb, 1973-1993 [Presented at the Omniversal Symposium, California State College at Sonoma, Saturday, September 29, 1973. Reprinted in the journal Psychedelic Monographs and Essays, Vol. 6, 1993. 137-156. Boynton Beach, FL.]To go directly to the article click here.
SELF-ORGANIZATION
IN BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS: The Holistic Patterning Process of Chaos and Antichaos, Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Self-organization is an emergent property of systems and organisms, including human beings. Chaotic dynamics governs the emergence of this new order from apparent randomness. The deep coherence of the overall process implies hidden or missing information for holistic patterning within the apparent "noise" or randomness of chaotic processes. To go directly to the article click here.
IV. CHAOS CULTURE DISRUPTION:
LIFE BEYOND THE CIRCLE; Graywolf, 1990 To go directly to the article click here.
THE EMPTY MEDICINE BAG; Graywolf, 1989 To go directly to the article click here.
RELATIVITY OF BODY AND SOUL; Iona Miller, 1992 ...we are not concerned here with a philosophical, much less a religious, concept of the soul, but with the psychological recognition of the existence of a semiconscious psychic complex, having partial autonomy of function, [anima]. C.G. Jung, TWO ESSAYS The soul loses its psychological vision in the abstract literalisms of the spirit as well as in the concrete literalisms of the body. James Hillman, RE-VISIONING PSYCHOLOGY Psychic and somatic symptoms express the soul's painful wounds and obstructions. The rational mind is incapable of deciding what is bet for the soul. The mind can discover what is needed only by listening to and reflecting upon the subtle movement of the soul as it expresses itself in bodily sensations, feelings, emotions, images, ideas, and dreams. Robert M. Stein, "BODY AND PSYCHE" To go directly to the article click here.
VIRTUAL THERAPY: Speculations on a New Modality, Iona Miller and Burt Webb, 1992
ABSTRACT: The advent of virtual reality technology opens up a whole new dimension for therapy. Psychotherapist and client may enter an electronic simulation which allows them both to occupy a shared imaginal space. The parameters of the system and environment can be programmed to display specific archetypal imagery which is known to influence the deep psyche. The ability to interact with the system provides a means of intervention and transformation. The therapist, as electronic shaman, either guides or follows the client's process. He chooses from a repertoire of archetypal encounters those images which fit most closely, thus amplifying the "cybernaut's" imagery experience. Distinctions of inner vs. outer become experientially moot. Therapeutic interventions, impossible in consensus reality, become readily available without standard ethical considerations. The shaman's flight into the netherworld to retrieve a "lost" soul becomes a literal reality experienced as a co-conscious journey. The discernment and non directive attitude of the therapist insures that the client will not be traumatized. The perception of universal and personal metaphors is enhanced and amplified, rather than imposed. As in hypnosis, the client maintains the possibility of "escape" back into consensus reality, simply by closing their eyes. To go directly to the article click here.
THE GUIDE WAVE: Synchronized Chaos and Co-Consciousness,by Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: In a Bohm/de Broglie theory, the guide wave (or pilot wave) governs or patterns the whole quantum experiment--the observer as well as the observed. This nonlocal guiding principle also acts as a morphogenetic field for the structuring of atoms and cells. An analogous structuring of free flowing energy appears in the stream of consciousness. The on-going stream of imagery manifests the process of co-evolution which is not distinct from our psychophysical being. Imagery and the entity it shapes are not separate. They are different dimensions of the same energy. The guide wave is something of a cosmic memory which holistically conditions the present moment through complex feedback and feedforward phenomena. The guide wave maintains specific forms as new moments unfold. Research shows that synchronized chaos may be engineered through perturbation and operational amplification, creating flexibility among many different behaviors. Isolated chaotic systems cannot synchronize, but parts can synchronize through supporting subsystems, like a phase-locked loop. Thus, chaotic signals are generated which drive stable periodic behavior. The presence of chaos appears to be an advantage in controlling dynamic behavior, leading to flexibility and stability. Just as small disturbances in chaotic systems radically alter their behavior ("butterfly effect"), tiny adjustments can stabilize behavior. To go directly to the article click here.
V. INFORMATION THEORY
AN INFORMATION THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE AND NEURODYNAMICS: The Interface of Consciousness and Information Quanta, by Iona Miller, 1993.
ABSTRACT: Information Theory has been employed to model dynamic processes ranging from the entire universe (Ed Fredkin, 1988) to human neurological functioning (Karl Pribram,1991). Pribram's research on human perception has culminated in a theory of neurodynamics based on nonlocal cortical processing--holonomy. According to Pribram, "space-time and spectrum provide the dimensions within which information occurs." The information theory of the universe models bits of information as fundamental, while neurodynamics conceives of quanta of information. Holonomy supercedes general systems theory and thermodynamics as models of brain/mind/consciousness. To go directly to the article click here.
ODE TO WHITE NOISE AND STRANGE LOOPS The Concepts of Form and Intentionality in Information Theory, by Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Physics deals with the energetic aspect of the world. Information theory deals with the communicational aspect, the message from the external world (universe) to the individual and his reactions. Information is a quantity whose value depends on its usability, what it adds to a representation--its originality, unforeseeability. The general study of information theory can be applied to perception in the human receptor. The emergence of imagery from white noise--the figure/ground distinction of Gestalt--is one implication relevant to process-oriented therapy and certain philosophical considerations about the nature of chaos and order in reality. Wave fronts exhibit a fractal nature, including sound waves. Meaningful sound, such as music and speech lies in between total white noise and the monotone of indefinitely held pure notes We tend to take the constant imaginal flux of the stream of consciousness for granted, rarely focusing our conscious awareness in that direction. But we can experientially "decode" the universal "message" it contains for us in terms of potential holistic repatterning. No universal message is really "transmitted" because it is a nonlocal quantum phenomenon of consciousness. There is no channel or receiver, but the classical ego interprets it that way--as information. To go directly to the article click here.
IMAGE PROCESSING: The Fractal Nature of Emergent Consciousness by Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Transformations can be effected within the autonomous stream of imagery, through imagery processing via experiential therapy. The essence of this transformative process is revealed in the fractal nature of imagery and symbols--i.e. their ability to encode, enfold, or compress the informational content of the whole. Strange attractors condition and govern the transformative process through the complexity of information in dynamic flow. Emergent consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the brain. Rather it is the transformational process of non-manifest, undifferentiated consciousness emerging into manifestation. To go directly to the article click here.
THE SELF-AWARE UNIVERSE : A Synopsis of Amit Goswami's Theory of Physics and Psychic Phenomena, by Iona Miller, 1993
SUMMARY: Amit Goswami, Ph.D. has proposed a theory of consciousness, rather than atoms, as the fundamental reality of the material world. Based in the philosophy of monistic idealism, he claims to obtain a consistent paradox-free interpretation of the new physics. He suggests a quantum mechanical, as well as classical nature for mind, which accounts for nonlocal psychic phenomena. To go directly to the article click here.
CHAOSOPY '93 INTRODUCTION
The modern myths of our times are those scientific theories which foster our sense of mystery and awe when we gaze into the deep heart of Nature. The Anima Mundi--Soul of the World--the soul of matter, is alive and well. All we need do to connect with her is turn an imaginal eye on our relations with self, others, and world. There is a therapeutic value in deliteralizing our theories about the way things work. We can view theory poetically, metaphorically to illuminate the natural process of creation and dissolution of pattern and form. Nature repeats herself at all levels of organization. Therefore insight on the fundamental nature of matter and the relationship of interacting systems reveals analogies with human existence and behavior.
Whatever nature is, we are that. As the ancient alchemists noticed, the transformation of matter is analogous to transformation in the psyche. This is not to say that consciousness cannot transcend its physical substratum. If we concur with David Bohm, positing consciousness as pure information, it not only transcends the human sphere but the entire domain of physical manifestation. Chaos theory provides an interesting philosophical basis for exploring this relationship of psyche and matter--the interface of mind and matter. Perhaps one of its primary virtues is that it allows us to formulate a theory of consciousness and healing based on an organic model of transformation, rather than a mechanistic or cybernetic process, which form the basis of some other current theories.
Unfolding the analogies of the Creative Consciousness Process with Chaos Theory is not intended to bind the two together as a final picture of the way things are. CCP was not developed from nor structured around Chaos Theory. It is just the best state-of-the-art scientific metaphor we have to describe the transformative process in nature's terms. Most of the nuts and bolts "how to" of CCP is covered in DREAMHEALING: CHAOS AND THE CREATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS PROCESS. The science behind what Graywolf later called CRP (Consciousness Restructuring Process) is in HOLOGRAPHIC HEALING, by Graywolf Swinney. Since this journal is being developed essentially as a "house organ" for practitioners of CCP or CRP, or dreamhealing, it refers to this foundational work as the source of the basic theory and method of practice.
CHAOSOPHY '93 explores the philosophical implications and assumptions underlying that practice. It is rooted in the notion that imaginal representation is the fundamental experiential reality of human existence, and that these representational systems can be radically deconstructed and creatively repatterned holistically. Psyche is not separate from matter. Consciousness is not separate from matter. But this philosophy is neither dualist nor materialist--it is functionalist; it works. Yet it also adheres to the romantic traditions of shamanism, philosophy, the arts, and depth psychology. Chaos is ubiquitous throughout nature, yet has largely been ingnored by science in the past due to the overwhelming complexity of detecting its underlying pattern and purpose. Much the same could be said for its appearance in human psychology and philosophy. Yet chaos has always been recognized as a primal or fundamental condition from which all systems emerge and into which they dissolve. This statement holds as true for the ego as it does for the creation of any form of order.
Chaosophy, as a philosophy of treatment, is based in the notion of following the creative flow of meaning which emerges continually as the stream of consciousness--an upwelling river of imagery. When there are blocks to this free flow of energy--frozen states of consciousness obstructing the flow--they can be deconstructed, "liquified." As the ego encounters the powerful flow of autonomous imagery, consciousness can ride its waves back to their emergent source. Creative regression into more fundamental (less-structured) states of consciousness ranges from representational forms to nonrepresentational patterns, from the phenomenological to the nonphenomenological. In this process the ego is deconstructed--temporarily dissolved--relieved of its fossilizations and rigidities, and prepared for holistic repatterning by "chaotic consciousness," the holistic ground state.
This "RE-CREATIONAL EGO DEATH" paves the way for the new emergent order which repatterns the whole person, radically altering self image and relationship to the world at large. It is a direct experience of an enlarged sense of self and participation in the greater whole. It restructures the belief system and personal mythology. Creativity and healing are emergent properties of self-organizing systems. Several other scientific theories are relevant to an amplification of the nature of this natural transformative process. CCP just facilitates and follows nature's way. Other relevant concepts include relativity and quantum mechanics, theories of the holographic nature of mind and universe, parallel universes, virtual realities, nonunitarian transformations, general systems theory, and information theory. Part I, CHAOS AND POSTMODERN PSYCHOTHERAPY, introduces a worldview which serves as a philosophical basis for experiential therapy with an organic deconstructionist orientation.
Part II, POLYPHASIC CONSCIOUSNESS, presents the case for a model of consciousness rooted in radical pluralism of infinite states or phases of consciousness. Part III, THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM, provides further links from physics and cognitive sciences which embed CCP in holistic models of reality. Part IV, CHAOS CULTURE, is meant to suggest applications of this philosophy in daily life.
Part V, INFORMATION THEORY carries us into even more arcane areas of applications in psychology and philosophy. Though these articles build on one another, they are not necessarily to be studied in a linear manner. They build on one another in a reflective, recursive fashion. Therefore, they may require more than one reading, as the later material illuminates notions presented earlier in more cursory fashion. Like iterating fractals, these articles present multiple views of the same self-similar process over and over again from slightly different perspectives. As poetic or metaphorical speculation they are meant to provoke and evoke deep thought and awareness in the reader, helping perhaps to clarify the reader's own worldview. We hope they will shed some light on the nature of the archetypal healing process and creativity as they emerge in therapeutic interaction. Hopefully, those of you who are practitioners or "armchair" philosophers may be moved to make your own contributions. Chaos theory has been one of the most fertile venues of interdisciplinary study of the nature of consciousness and reality, and we welcome all comments for revue. --Iona Miller, 1993
"...the idea of psychotherapy grounded in philosophy is different from the idea of psychotherapy grounded in healing, medicine, shamanism." James Hillman,
We've Had A Hundred Years of Psychotherapy
Introduction
I. CHAOS AND POSTMODERN PSYCHOTHERAPY
Chaosophy
Chaos Consciousness in Psychotherapy
Chaos As the Universal Solvent
Chaos Theory and Psychological Complexes
The Creative Flow of Meaning
II. POLYPHASIC CONSCIOUSNESS
The Un-Named Dream and Parallel Universes
The Varieties of Virtual Experience
Dream Wave
The Unborn Dream
Have You Been to the Paradox?
III. THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM
The Holographic Paradigm and CCP
Fractal Therapy
The Holographic Concept of Reality
Embryonic Holography
Self-Organization in Biological Systems
IV. CHAOS CULTURE
Disruption: Life Beyond the Circle
The Empty Medicine Bag
Relativity of Body and Soul
Virtual Therapy
The Guide Wave
V. INFORMATION THEORY
An Information Theory of the Universe and Neurodynamics
Ode to White Noise and Strange Loops
Image Processing
The Self-Aware Universe
ABSTRACTS
I. CHAOS AND POSTMODERN PSYCHOTHERAPY
CHAOSOPHY:
An Imaginal Perspective on the Nature of Reality, Consciousness, Experience, and Perception; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Our notions about ourselves and the nature of the world (worldview) around us are filtered through our prejudices about "the way things work". We never apprehend reality directly--only our world-simulation which is congealed from the convergence of our sensory input channels and the information-creating processes of chaotic neural activity. The brain filters and creates reality. Brains are chaotic systems which create internal perceptual patterns that substitute directly for sensory stimuli. These stimuli are evoked potentials or evoked fields--standing waves in the brain. Imagination has the ability to induce real-time changes in the psychophysical being. Imagination embodies the power of transformation. It may be accessed through obvious imagery, such as dreams, vision, and other sensory analogs, or viewed directly in symptoms, behavior patterns, emotional patterns, mental concepts, and spiritual beliefs. The imaginal process is our primary experience and it permeates and conditions all facets of human life. During experiential psychotherapy, the sensory-motor cortex system is influenced through imagination. Psyche affects substance at the most fundamental level, through chaotic neural activity.To go directly to the article click here.
CHAOS CONSCIOUSNESS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY:
An Experiential Approach and Application to Dreamwork, Creativity, and Healing; Graywolf Fred Swinney and Iona Miller, 1991
ABSTRACT: Experiential therapy sessions and mysticism demonstrate that as we journey deeper and deeper into the psyche we eventually encounter a state characterized either as "chaotic" or void of images. In a therapeutic context, chaos is experienced as a consciousness state--the ground state. This state is related to healing, dreams, and creativity. Shamanic approaches to healing involve co-consciousness states which lead to restructuring both physical and emotional-mental senses of self. Dreams, creativity, and healing arise from this undifferentiated "chaotic consciousness." Dreamhealing uses images as portals for consciousness journeys to facilitate transformations ranging from mood alteration to profound physiological changes. Imagery (virtual experience) affects the immune system, activating psychosomatic forces, such as the placebo effect. Chaos-oriented consciousness journeys suggest these states reflect complex phase space, fractal patterns, strange attractors, "the butterfly effect," sensitivity, complex feedback loops, intermittency, and other general dynamical aspects suggested by chaos theory. More than an experiential process, this is a philosophy of treatment--"Chaosophy."To go directly to the article click here.
CHAOS AS THE UNIVERSAL SOLVENT: Re-Creational Ego Death in Psychedelic Consciousness; Iona Miller, 1992 ABSTRACT: There is a generic process in nature and consciousness which dissolves and regenerates all forms. The essence of this transformative, morphological process is chaotic--purposeful yet inherently unpredictable holistic repatterning. The Great Work of the art of alchemy is the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, a symbol of wholeness and integration. The liquid form of the Stone, called the Universal Solvent, dissolves all old forms like a rushing stream, and is the self-organizing matrix for the rebirth of new forms. It is thus a metaphor or model for the dynamic process of transformation, ego death and re-creation. The alchemical operation SOLUTIO, called "the root of alchemy," corresponds with the element water. It implies a flowing state of consciousness, "liquification" of consciousness, a return to the womb for rebirth, a baptism or healing immersion in the vast ocean of deep consciousness. It facilitates feedback via creative regression: de-structuring, or destratification by immersion in the flow of psychic imagery through identification with more and more primal forms or patterns--a psychedelic, expanded state. Chaos Theory provides a metaphorical language for describing the flowing dynamics of the chaotic process of psychological transformation.To go directly to the article click here.
CHAOS THEORY
AND PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPLEXES: Jung's Notion of the Complex as "Strange Attractor" Iona Miller, 1991
That people should succumb to these eternal images is entirely normal, in fact it is what these images are for. They are meant to ATTRACT, to convince, to fascinate, and to overpower. They are created out of the primal stuff of revelation. --C.G. Jung, COLLECTED WORKS, Vol. 9 If the charge of one (or more) of the "nodal points" becomes so powerful that it "magnetically" (acting as a nuclear cell") ATTRACTS everything to itself and so confronts the ego with an alien entity...that has become autonomous--then we have a complex. --Jolande Jacobi, COMPLEX, ARCHETYPE, AND SYMBOLTo go directly to the article click here.
THE CREATIVE FLOW OF MEANING: An Introduction to Nonunitarian Philosophy; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: In nonunitarian, discontinuous transformations, a system opens itself to novelty and potentiality by dissolving into a state of nonlocal communion with the whole and reforms unconditioned by the past. Nonunitary transformation is based in the dissolution of all forms and structures, and creative emergence of unconditioned creativity--metamorphosis. In this organic model of multiple universes and states of consciousness, everything is involved in a pattern of continuous rebirth, and everything is the manifestation of the underlying creative potential, transcending physical and spiritual boundaries.To go directly to the article click here.
II. POLYPHASIC CONSCIOUSNESS
THE UN-NAMED DREAM
AND PARALLEL UNIVERSES: A Multistate Paradigm; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: In the Creative Consciousness Process (CCP), participants frequently encounter typical archetypal imagery at the threshold of chaotic consciousness. One of these reiterating images is that of grayness, black/whiteness, amorphousness. There are analogous reports from mystics and physicists about a fundamental cloudiness to the perception of ultimate realities. Relevant associations include parallel universes, the scientific notion of "observer effect", and the mystical notion of "the witness" or observer self.To go directly to the article click here.
THE VARIETIES OF VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE: Virtual Realities Beyond the Dialogical Self; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: The basis of the human psyche seems to be a collective of selves--a multimind in a multiverse. Independent and autonomous, they relate with one another mostly unknown to the outer awareness. The extreme form of splintering seen in Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) simply reflects an extreme form of multiplicity with conflicting perspectives. The "multistate paradigm" of human nature extends toward a psychology and spirituality that is polytheistic, even pantheistic. Dialogue is a form of imagery which creates and sustains a worldview through the means of imaginal conversations. Within the fabric of multiple centers or vortices within the psyche, an on-going dialogue emerges which ranges from selftalk (ego to ego), through "group" discussion (ego with subpersonalities), to spiritual dialogue (ego with transpersonal entities). Beyond the dialogical realm lies the unspeakable experience (untranslatable) of the Void or Clear Light, the realm of archetypal light and sound as pure consciousness. The "Word" helps us create and define reality. Conversation as well as observation defines our reality. Dialogue of the self with its various conscious and unconscious forms creates a series of "virtual realities" which form the basis of self-simulation and world-simulation. These forms are limitless in number, far beyond the classic archetypes such as persona, anima/animus, etc, suggesting the notion of "radical pluralism."To go directly to the article click here.
DREAM WAVE: Primal Imagery in the Creative Consciousness Process; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Consciousness appears as the urge toward manifestation or embodiment and an equal but opposite urge toward formlessness. This interplay creates the imaginal flux of representational and nonrepresentational perception. These clashing currents in the stream of consciousness create "standing waves" of informational content which may be unfolded from their implicate to explicate state through direct participation in that stream. The premise of the consciousness journey is that this "dream wave" may be followed backward/forward toward more primal representations into the nonrepresentational mode of perception. Certain typical, recurrent patterns occur at the further limits of these journeys. Particular phenomena are reiterated at the threshold of chaos--the threshold of dissolution--including amorphous clouds, black holes in psychic space, spirals and vortices, as well as dead and fertile voids.To go directly to the article click here.
THE UNBORN DREAM: Thriving on Chaos Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: If the implicate order is analogous to the frequency domain, as Bohm-Pribram have shown, the image/object domain unfolds from this invisible reality. That which is enfolded within the undivided whole is the "Bornless One," the unborn dream of our infinite possibilities. Unity-in-diversity is the direct experiential/existential goal of the Creative Consciousness Process in its experimental form. Complex dynamics is implicated in the energetic translation of the "waves of unborn nothingness" which constitute the unborn dream, the relentless flow of consciousness in search of embodiment and formlessness. Consciousness journeys are the "reading" or explication of the formless domain of Spirit. Following Nature to whatever abysses she leads, they reveal a way of thriving on chaos.To go directly to the article click here.
HAVE YOU BEEN TO THE PARADOX? Chaos Theory and Fuzzy Philosophy; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: The notion of paradox comes from a consciousness conditioned to think in terms of opposites, dualistic paradox. Self-referential paradox feeds back and annihilates itself. Such bivalence (binary logic: this or that; true or false; black or white) can be superceded by multivalent consciousness which perceives in terms of degrees. Multivalence more accurately reflects the complex dynamics of consciousness. As in the case of fractal generation, solutions are not found in terms of this or that, but in terms of degrees of fractional transformation, relationships. Fuzzy philosophy is based on acceptance of degrees of truth, the "grayness" of most propositions (truth values), the fractional solutions of fuzzy logic. Human consciousness is a self-referential system which embodies this principle of a connection between logic and chaos, in holistic ("whole brain") awareness.To go directly to the article click here.
III. THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM
THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM AND CCP: Explication, Ego Death, and Emptiness; Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: David Bohm suggests psychological "atom-smashing" as a way of radically destructuring the ego, opening it to wider experience of the undivided whole. The holographic paradigm is one of reciprocal enfolding and unfolding of patterns of information (explication). The stream of images in CCP functions analogously to the unfolding of the stream of consciousness and the enfolding and de-structuring of the ego (ego death). Consciousness and matter share the same essence; their difference is one of degree of subtlety or density. "Emptiness" is an integral aspect of mind/matter. Chaos theory links all these elements as aspects of the archetypal healing process, which is facilitated by CCP.To go directly to the article click here.
FRACTAL THERAPY: Information Theory and the Vortex of Internal Structuring Process Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Because of its very nature a chaotic system cannot be decomposed. If consciousness is pure information it is not limited to physical form; its patterning may emerge from chaotic dynamics operating at the quantum level, where the "no-thing" of pure information becomes a structured "some-thing," through intentionality coupled with chaotic determinism (self-organized emergent order). The so-called "software of consciousness" is unlike the matter and energy of classical understanding, but exerts a measureable effect on the physical world, apparently through quantum chaos. Fractal therapy allows us to penetrate deeply into the psyche--into the vortex of the internal structuring process--through progressively de-structuring patterns of organization. The undecomposable level of chaotic consciousness is experienced as the pure, unconditioned imprint of the whole, resulting in a new primal self image and sense of relationship to the greater whole which emerges through nonunitary transformation.To go directly to the article click here.
A HOLOGRAPHIC CONCEPT OF REALITY Richard Alan Miller, Burt Webb, Darden Dickson, 1973-1993
ABSTRACT: The organization of any biological system is established by a complex electrodynamic field which is, in part, determined by its atomic physiochemical components and which, in part, determines the behavior and orientation of these components. The holographic model of reality emerging from this principle may provide a scientific explanation of psychoenergetic phenomena.To go directly to the article click here. EMBRYONIC HOLOGRAPHY: An Application of the Holographic Concept of Reality;
Richard Alan Miller and Burt Webb, 1973-1993 [Presented at the Omniversal Symposium, California State College at Sonoma, Saturday, September 29, 1973. Reprinted in the journal Psychedelic Monographs and Essays, Vol. 6, 1993. 137-156. Boynton Beach, FL.]To go directly to the article click here.
SELF-ORGANIZATION
IN BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS: The Holistic Patterning Process of Chaos and Antichaos, Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Self-organization is an emergent property of systems and organisms, including human beings. Chaotic dynamics governs the emergence of this new order from apparent randomness. The deep coherence of the overall process implies hidden or missing information for holistic patterning within the apparent "noise" or randomness of chaotic processes. To go directly to the article click here.
IV. CHAOS CULTURE DISRUPTION:
LIFE BEYOND THE CIRCLE; Graywolf, 1990 To go directly to the article click here.
THE EMPTY MEDICINE BAG; Graywolf, 1989 To go directly to the article click here.
RELATIVITY OF BODY AND SOUL; Iona Miller, 1992 ...we are not concerned here with a philosophical, much less a religious, concept of the soul, but with the psychological recognition of the existence of a semiconscious psychic complex, having partial autonomy of function, [anima]. C.G. Jung, TWO ESSAYS The soul loses its psychological vision in the abstract literalisms of the spirit as well as in the concrete literalisms of the body. James Hillman, RE-VISIONING PSYCHOLOGY Psychic and somatic symptoms express the soul's painful wounds and obstructions. The rational mind is incapable of deciding what is bet for the soul. The mind can discover what is needed only by listening to and reflecting upon the subtle movement of the soul as it expresses itself in bodily sensations, feelings, emotions, images, ideas, and dreams. Robert M. Stein, "BODY AND PSYCHE" To go directly to the article click here.
VIRTUAL THERAPY: Speculations on a New Modality, Iona Miller and Burt Webb, 1992
ABSTRACT: The advent of virtual reality technology opens up a whole new dimension for therapy. Psychotherapist and client may enter an electronic simulation which allows them both to occupy a shared imaginal space. The parameters of the system and environment can be programmed to display specific archetypal imagery which is known to influence the deep psyche. The ability to interact with the system provides a means of intervention and transformation. The therapist, as electronic shaman, either guides or follows the client's process. He chooses from a repertoire of archetypal encounters those images which fit most closely, thus amplifying the "cybernaut's" imagery experience. Distinctions of inner vs. outer become experientially moot. Therapeutic interventions, impossible in consensus reality, become readily available without standard ethical considerations. The shaman's flight into the netherworld to retrieve a "lost" soul becomes a literal reality experienced as a co-conscious journey. The discernment and non directive attitude of the therapist insures that the client will not be traumatized. The perception of universal and personal metaphors is enhanced and amplified, rather than imposed. As in hypnosis, the client maintains the possibility of "escape" back into consensus reality, simply by closing their eyes. To go directly to the article click here.
THE GUIDE WAVE: Synchronized Chaos and Co-Consciousness,by Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: In a Bohm/de Broglie theory, the guide wave (or pilot wave) governs or patterns the whole quantum experiment--the observer as well as the observed. This nonlocal guiding principle also acts as a morphogenetic field for the structuring of atoms and cells. An analogous structuring of free flowing energy appears in the stream of consciousness. The on-going stream of imagery manifests the process of co-evolution which is not distinct from our psychophysical being. Imagery and the entity it shapes are not separate. They are different dimensions of the same energy. The guide wave is something of a cosmic memory which holistically conditions the present moment through complex feedback and feedforward phenomena. The guide wave maintains specific forms as new moments unfold. Research shows that synchronized chaos may be engineered through perturbation and operational amplification, creating flexibility among many different behaviors. Isolated chaotic systems cannot synchronize, but parts can synchronize through supporting subsystems, like a phase-locked loop. Thus, chaotic signals are generated which drive stable periodic behavior. The presence of chaos appears to be an advantage in controlling dynamic behavior, leading to flexibility and stability. Just as small disturbances in chaotic systems radically alter their behavior ("butterfly effect"), tiny adjustments can stabilize behavior. To go directly to the article click here.
V. INFORMATION THEORY
AN INFORMATION THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE AND NEURODYNAMICS: The Interface of Consciousness and Information Quanta, by Iona Miller, 1993.
ABSTRACT: Information Theory has been employed to model dynamic processes ranging from the entire universe (Ed Fredkin, 1988) to human neurological functioning (Karl Pribram,1991). Pribram's research on human perception has culminated in a theory of neurodynamics based on nonlocal cortical processing--holonomy. According to Pribram, "space-time and spectrum provide the dimensions within which information occurs." The information theory of the universe models bits of information as fundamental, while neurodynamics conceives of quanta of information. Holonomy supercedes general systems theory and thermodynamics as models of brain/mind/consciousness. To go directly to the article click here.
ODE TO WHITE NOISE AND STRANGE LOOPS The Concepts of Form and Intentionality in Information Theory, by Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Physics deals with the energetic aspect of the world. Information theory deals with the communicational aspect, the message from the external world (universe) to the individual and his reactions. Information is a quantity whose value depends on its usability, what it adds to a representation--its originality, unforeseeability. The general study of information theory can be applied to perception in the human receptor. The emergence of imagery from white noise--the figure/ground distinction of Gestalt--is one implication relevant to process-oriented therapy and certain philosophical considerations about the nature of chaos and order in reality. Wave fronts exhibit a fractal nature, including sound waves. Meaningful sound, such as music and speech lies in between total white noise and the monotone of indefinitely held pure notes We tend to take the constant imaginal flux of the stream of consciousness for granted, rarely focusing our conscious awareness in that direction. But we can experientially "decode" the universal "message" it contains for us in terms of potential holistic repatterning. No universal message is really "transmitted" because it is a nonlocal quantum phenomenon of consciousness. There is no channel or receiver, but the classical ego interprets it that way--as information. To go directly to the article click here.
IMAGE PROCESSING: The Fractal Nature of Emergent Consciousness by Iona Miller, 1993
ABSTRACT: Transformations can be effected within the autonomous stream of imagery, through imagery processing via experiential therapy. The essence of this transformative process is revealed in the fractal nature of imagery and symbols--i.e. their ability to encode, enfold, or compress the informational content of the whole. Strange attractors condition and govern the transformative process through the complexity of information in dynamic flow. Emergent consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the brain. Rather it is the transformational process of non-manifest, undifferentiated consciousness emerging into manifestation. To go directly to the article click here.
THE SELF-AWARE UNIVERSE : A Synopsis of Amit Goswami's Theory of Physics and Psychic Phenomena, by Iona Miller, 1993
SUMMARY: Amit Goswami, Ph.D. has proposed a theory of consciousness, rather than atoms, as the fundamental reality of the material world. Based in the philosophy of monistic idealism, he claims to obtain a consistent paradox-free interpretation of the new physics. He suggests a quantum mechanical, as well as classical nature for mind, which accounts for nonlocal psychic phenomena. To go directly to the article click here.
CHAOSOPY '93 INTRODUCTION
The modern myths of our times are those scientific theories which foster our sense of mystery and awe when we gaze into the deep heart of Nature. The Anima Mundi--Soul of the World--the soul of matter, is alive and well. All we need do to connect with her is turn an imaginal eye on our relations with self, others, and world. There is a therapeutic value in deliteralizing our theories about the way things work. We can view theory poetically, metaphorically to illuminate the natural process of creation and dissolution of pattern and form. Nature repeats herself at all levels of organization. Therefore insight on the fundamental nature of matter and the relationship of interacting systems reveals analogies with human existence and behavior.
Whatever nature is, we are that. As the ancient alchemists noticed, the transformation of matter is analogous to transformation in the psyche. This is not to say that consciousness cannot transcend its physical substratum. If we concur with David Bohm, positing consciousness as pure information, it not only transcends the human sphere but the entire domain of physical manifestation. Chaos theory provides an interesting philosophical basis for exploring this relationship of psyche and matter--the interface of mind and matter. Perhaps one of its primary virtues is that it allows us to formulate a theory of consciousness and healing based on an organic model of transformation, rather than a mechanistic or cybernetic process, which form the basis of some other current theories.
Unfolding the analogies of the Creative Consciousness Process with Chaos Theory is not intended to bind the two together as a final picture of the way things are. CCP was not developed from nor structured around Chaos Theory. It is just the best state-of-the-art scientific metaphor we have to describe the transformative process in nature's terms. Most of the nuts and bolts "how to" of CCP is covered in DREAMHEALING: CHAOS AND THE CREATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS PROCESS. The science behind what Graywolf later called CRP (Consciousness Restructuring Process) is in HOLOGRAPHIC HEALING, by Graywolf Swinney. Since this journal is being developed essentially as a "house organ" for practitioners of CCP or CRP, or dreamhealing, it refers to this foundational work as the source of the basic theory and method of practice.
CHAOSOPHY '93 explores the philosophical implications and assumptions underlying that practice. It is rooted in the notion that imaginal representation is the fundamental experiential reality of human existence, and that these representational systems can be radically deconstructed and creatively repatterned holistically. Psyche is not separate from matter. Consciousness is not separate from matter. But this philosophy is neither dualist nor materialist--it is functionalist; it works. Yet it also adheres to the romantic traditions of shamanism, philosophy, the arts, and depth psychology. Chaos is ubiquitous throughout nature, yet has largely been ingnored by science in the past due to the overwhelming complexity of detecting its underlying pattern and purpose. Much the same could be said for its appearance in human psychology and philosophy. Yet chaos has always been recognized as a primal or fundamental condition from which all systems emerge and into which they dissolve. This statement holds as true for the ego as it does for the creation of any form of order.
Chaosophy, as a philosophy of treatment, is based in the notion of following the creative flow of meaning which emerges continually as the stream of consciousness--an upwelling river of imagery. When there are blocks to this free flow of energy--frozen states of consciousness obstructing the flow--they can be deconstructed, "liquified." As the ego encounters the powerful flow of autonomous imagery, consciousness can ride its waves back to their emergent source. Creative regression into more fundamental (less-structured) states of consciousness ranges from representational forms to nonrepresentational patterns, from the phenomenological to the nonphenomenological. In this process the ego is deconstructed--temporarily dissolved--relieved of its fossilizations and rigidities, and prepared for holistic repatterning by "chaotic consciousness," the holistic ground state.
This "RE-CREATIONAL EGO DEATH" paves the way for the new emergent order which repatterns the whole person, radically altering self image and relationship to the world at large. It is a direct experience of an enlarged sense of self and participation in the greater whole. It restructures the belief system and personal mythology. Creativity and healing are emergent properties of self-organizing systems. Several other scientific theories are relevant to an amplification of the nature of this natural transformative process. CCP just facilitates and follows nature's way. Other relevant concepts include relativity and quantum mechanics, theories of the holographic nature of mind and universe, parallel universes, virtual realities, nonunitarian transformations, general systems theory, and information theory. Part I, CHAOS AND POSTMODERN PSYCHOTHERAPY, introduces a worldview which serves as a philosophical basis for experiential therapy with an organic deconstructionist orientation.
Part II, POLYPHASIC CONSCIOUSNESS, presents the case for a model of consciousness rooted in radical pluralism of infinite states or phases of consciousness. Part III, THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM, provides further links from physics and cognitive sciences which embed CCP in holistic models of reality. Part IV, CHAOS CULTURE, is meant to suggest applications of this philosophy in daily life.
Part V, INFORMATION THEORY carries us into even more arcane areas of applications in psychology and philosophy. Though these articles build on one another, they are not necessarily to be studied in a linear manner. They build on one another in a reflective, recursive fashion. Therefore, they may require more than one reading, as the later material illuminates notions presented earlier in more cursory fashion. Like iterating fractals, these articles present multiple views of the same self-similar process over and over again from slightly different perspectives. As poetic or metaphorical speculation they are meant to provoke and evoke deep thought and awareness in the reader, helping perhaps to clarify the reader's own worldview. We hope they will shed some light on the nature of the archetypal healing process and creativity as they emerge in therapeutic interaction. Hopefully, those of you who are practitioners or "armchair" philosophers may be moved to make your own contributions. Chaos theory has been one of the most fertile venues of interdisciplinary study of the nature of consciousness and reality, and we welcome all comments for revue. --Iona Miller, 1993
"...the idea of psychotherapy grounded in philosophy is different from the idea of psychotherapy grounded in healing, medicine, shamanism." James Hillman,
We've Had A Hundred Years of Psychotherapy
Chaos Theory describes the behavior of non-linear dynamic systems, fractal geometry, and the complex, systematic behavior of nature as well as our nature, consciousness and health. It describes in eloquent equations deterministic ordered randomness, dimensionality, reflexive feedback loops, boundary conditions and integration. It is the realm of the irrational, paradoxical, of rich values and structure, self-generative and self-iterating, of self-organizing (autopoietic) emergent creativity, stretched time and folded space, inherent unpredictability, yet boundaried and geometric. The domain of global behavior, open systems, criticality, sensitive dependence, strange attractors, fluctuations, turbulence, perturbations, thresholds, trajectories, bifurcations, phase transitions, temporal density, reiteration, synchronicity, resilience, the "butterfly effect," subquantal chaos (ZPE), dynamic geometrization, probability, relativity, disruption, coherence and stochastic resonance, synergetics and tensegrity, self-reflection, nested cycles, the breakdown of order with sudden transitions, the creative and evolutionary "edge." Chaotic systems are apparently acausal, inherently qualitative, sustained by complex feedback loops, and disproportionately responsive.
CHAOS THEORY & COMPLEX DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS
Its Emergence in Human Consciousness and Healing
Iona Miller and Graywolf Swinney, ©2001
Yea verily, I say unto you
A man must have chaos yet within him
to birth a dancing star. --Nietzsche
To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of life for better or worse. --Carl Jung, 1961
Chaos Theory and CDS are multidisciplinary approaches employed in divers fields from physics to sociology, from neuropsychology to engineering. Spontaneous self-organizing dynamics is the non-linear basis for a rigorous alternative to linear, reductionistic thinking. As such, it heralds a rebirth of science. Fractal Art, the result of graphically displaying the elegant mathematical descriptions of Chaos Theory, shows us the hidden infinity of forms and structures which unfurl from the infinity of possibilities that mirror and duplicate the shapes unfolding in nature within and around us. Fractals emerge from attractors. An attractor is simply the characteristic behavior of a dynamical system changing over time.
The holistic mind is a complex dynamical system, (CDS). The language of CDS and Chaos Theory is now revealing a point-of-view, or metamodel, which provides a universal language for psychology which is competent to deal with the complexities of interactive change and yet is relatively easy to communicate. The holistic unity involves phenomenology, mind, brain, behavior, and environment. The dynamical systems' point of view extrapolates a worldview: healing emerges by immersion in the undifferentiated state of chaotic consciousness and emerges via creative self-organization. Degree of awareness is related to the magnitude of attractors. Jumps in magnitude result in jumps in awareness. Attractors of the mind may undergo subtle bifurcations or splits among possibilities.
Bifurcations occur when a system rests right between two attractors. A tiny change in the system's state can then push the system in one direction or another. For example, the transition from one state of consciousness to another is represented as a sudden or dramatic jolt which knocks the system out of its attractor, and leads it along a trajectory toward another attractor. Shapes and patterns emerge from the mysterious infinity of chaos. This is also true of the images which can be observed in our stream of consciousness. Sudden shifts in awareness arise from the suddeness of bifurcations in nonlinear dynamic systems. These forms reach deep inside, resonate with our spirit and foster a sense of connection.
In Chaos Theory, forms emerge, dissolve, and reform through the creative process known as autopoietic self-organization. It demonstrates the unfolding of creative process itself, the emergence of form or structure from formlessness and chaos.
Strange attractors, principles or forces that interact with complexity, are hybrids with roots in both chaos and structure which influence and shape the emergent structures. Chaos is ubiquitous in nature, hidden in the most ordered and solid-seeming places. It is found in the following dynamical processes, and more:
* In the eloquent blueprint of dynamic behavior, pure spontaneity, thresholds, beginning with the choatic fluctuation of Zero-Point Energy (ZPE) underlying the formation of all matter/energy;
* in emergent patterns, connectivity, diversity, the self-assembly rules of nature, beginning with the structure of the atom and its particles/waves, to molecular collectives and permeating organic and inorganic matter;
* in the universal set of building rules, networks, events, coherent wholes, dimensional embedding, and the synergetic architecture of life and biological organization from simple carbon compounds to complex cells and tissues, adaptability;
* in the guided design of organic structures, viability, from the unfolding of genetic patterns to tensegrity and cytoskeleton geometry, to microtubule assembly in nerves, to the rhythms of a beating heart and the flow of blood through it, global behavior;
* in global behavior and the dynamical system of the mind, panpsychism, psychological complexity, sentience and emergent properties, pattern recognition, genesis of intelligence, reality discrimination, raw awareness, attention, meaningfulness, perception-cognition loops, refocusing, creative inspiration, consequences, memory, self-sustenance/structure maintenance, perceptual chunking, time distortion, point of view/relativity, significance/correspondence (beliefs, concepts, attitudes, emotions, behavior), attributions, restructuring, adaptive learning, spontaneous healing;
* in the complex interactions of the neural firing patterns of our brain, and the dynamics of thought especially during dreaming, creative imagination, connectivity, even enlightenment--the biology and psychology of consciousness itself with its tightly knit fabric of subprocesses;
* in the infinite complexity of recurrence in wilderness and natural phenomena, such as the hierarchichal organization of tiers within tiers of systems within systems, and evolutionary adaptation;
* in the primordial elemental turbulence and churning complexity of white water, fire, air, and even earth as well as the quintessence, plasma; * in the formation and motion of the planets and their path around the sun;
* in the scattering complexity of the stars and galaxies, and the moment of the Big Bang, from which the universe emerged, in the acceleration and expansion of spacetime from vacuum fluctuation.
Wherever we look, from the Microcosm to the Macrocosm, the sub-quantal to the Cosmic, chaos or non-linear dynamics and complexity is either right in sight or hidden just below the surface. Notions of form, pattern, geometry and structure an be found at the deepest levels of both matter and the psyche. Its domain lies at the edges of knowledge where our perceptions of structure and order end. Yet chaos reveals in its own depths, hidden degrees of order and structure that resonate with the soul and reveal to us the basic forms and structures repeated throughout nature and throughout our nature.
Topology and geometrical relationships are a more fundamental way of understanding both matter and consciousness. Chaos Theory underlies the fundamental laws of nature and natural processes, and implies a universe of evolution and constant re-creation. Structure arises in the moment and is in resonance with its environment. But in a universe of constant evolution each form eventually becomes dissonant as the evolving environment surrounding it changes. Chaos Theory restores the balance to the entropic forces which lead to the decay and death of outworn systems. It is the means of creative self-organization which arises from the undifferentiated disorder that lurks within the processes of creation.
Chaos holds infinite possibilities of new form, and these forms are eventually revealed and emerge from chaos as new structure. This is also an apt way to describe consciousness dynamics, such as thought, spontaneous behavior and creativity. Reality is neither structure nor chaos, but a process in which structure and chaos dance between form and formlessness. This is the eternal cycle of death and renewal, the dance of Shiva. When there is an intrusion or perturbation in a system, centers of dynamic activity are set in motion within the whole system which attract more and more energy toward themselves like mini-blackholes.
Such systems are known in Chaos Theory as "strange attractors." In chaotic systems, time is "stretched and folded" so that events ostensibly separated in time and space are intimately linked in a non-linear way. Under the pressure of constant evolution, each form is constantly stressed by the evolving environment toward beginning a process of its dissolution back into chaos. Periodic chaos purges the old dissonant structures that impede the flow. A dynamical view emphasizes interconnectedness and self-organization. Self-organization creates new information in a dynamical system with the development of increasing complexity. There is growth potential in the self-control of bifurcations to novel attractors.
Anyone can learn to make choices to empower their future and develop new skills, to inhabit new attractors, to explore conjectured attractors, and make informed choices concerning potential trajectories, to affirm and create self. In complex dynamics, divergent features are perceived as being as important as convergent features. There are also gradual changes in degree of awareness and the amount of energy expended in a particular process. In general, the expansion of an attractor requires that more energy be devoted to it; increased forces increase the magnitude; shrinkage of the attractor is accompanied by the lessening of energy requirements by the system.
In Chaos Theory, the notion of psychobiological stability has been considerably liberalized to include psychobiological periodic and chaotic attractors. Ben Goertzel describes the process of transformation of consciousness in a complex dynamical system--the mind: “Psychological structures make no sense considered statically; they have to be considered dynamically, as “attractors” of systems that change over time.
There are three kinds of attractors. There are fixed-point attractors, i.e. equilibrium system behaviors, in which a system does not change over time. There are periodic attractors, i.e. cyclic system behaviors. And there are strange attractors -- a grab-bag category covering everything that is neither unchanging nor periodic. Strange attractors are often chaotic, in that, once a system is locked into a strange attractor, its behavior cannot be predicted in any detail. But, nevertheless, strange attractors need not be “random,” they can be intricately structured.” “In chaos theory terms, the transition between one state of consciousness and another is represented as a jolt which knocks the system out of its attractor, and leads it along a trajectory toward another attractor. This model predicts that transition between states of consciousness should be a sudden and dramatic process -- very much a discrete shift rather than a continuous gradation.”
Fear of chaos manifests as ontological anxiety or existential dread, a fear of being, a feeling there is no meaning in life; since nothing makes sense, why go on? Overcoming the anxiety and depressions of contemporary life requires a drastic change in attitude about what is important and what is not. We can learn to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself.
Experience depends on the way we invest psychic energy--on the structure of attention. This, in turn is related to goals and intentions. These processes are connected to each other by the self, or the dynamic mental representation we have of the entire system of our goals. This process is complex, and the notion of complexity is related to the same concept as used by some evolutionary biologists and also described with poetic insights. Its essence in terms of the psychology of the self is that a complex person is one whose behavior and ideas cannot be easily explained, and whose development is not predictable, but is autopoetic, that is self-organizing emergent order.
Order in consciousness is experienced as flow, optimal experience, healing experience. Following a flow experience, the organization of the self is more complex than it had been before. It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow. The flow state facilitates both differentiation and integration.
The old alchemists used to say, “Only that which has been properly separated can be rightfully joined.”
Complexity also facilitates the integration of autonomous parts. After each episode of flow a person becomes more of a unique individual, less predictable, possessed of rarer skills. The complex self is more likely to avoid both selfishness and conformity.
“The self becomes complex as a result of experiencing flow. Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. . .Flow is important both because it makes the present instant more enjoyable, and because it builds the self-confidence that allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind.” (FLOW; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
Flow helps us to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration consciousness is unusually well ordered. Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all senses are focused on the same goal. Experience is in harmony. And when the flow episode is over, one feels more “together” than before, not only internally but also with respect to other people and the world and cosmos in general.
THE EDGE OF CHAOS
Chaos and Order are two sides of the seamless fabric of Reality. New order emerges from the deterministic, self-organizing properties of chaos. Once known as Chaos Theory, the dynamics of systems far-from-equilibrium, the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos is now known as Complexity, or Complex Dynamic Systems (CDS). Complex, self-organizing systems, and human beings are certainly among them, are characterized as being adaptive.
The ability of a system to move in and out of chaos gives it the greatest creative advantage. Spontaneous self-organization, or autopoeisis, is a creative, emergent property of chaos, and expresses synchronicity and serendipity. The very richness of multiple levels of observable interaction, fractal reiteration, allows the system as a whole to undergo spontaneous self-organization. Thus some genes in a living embryo become nerve cells and other muscle tissue, or bone.
Organisms constantly adapt to the environment and to each other through the self-unfolding of emergent properties--creative evolutionary adaptations. They actively try to turn what happens to their advantage. Darwin didn't know about self-organization, matter and life's incessant drive to create order from chaos even in the face of the dissolving ubiquity of the second law of thermodynamics--entropy.
Complex systems, are spontaneous, disorderly and more alive because of it. The "edge of chaos" is a special balance point in dynamical systems where components never quite synch but also never quite dissolve into total turbulence either. It is a constantly shifting zone between stagnation and anarchy and spontaneous adaptability. There is order even in disorder. There is order, manageable chaos (fractals), and unmanageable chaos. The fractal dimension expresses the complexity of a particular fractal form.
"Fractal" comes from the Latin fractus, which means broken or fragmented. Fractals delineate a whole new way of thinking about structure and form. Magnify a fractal again and again and more detail emerges from its infinitely embedded structure. The same self-similar pattern repeats, over and over, no matter what level you care to examine. A single image is infinitely reiterated. Thus, a wealth of structure emerges from simplicity. Tiny variations are amplified on every bounce in Chaos Theory through the phenomenon of the "butterfly effect."
When changes approach the catastrophic level, bifurcation, the whole system reorganizes in a cascade. Thus chance fluctuations can be blown up into gigantic proportions, and change becomes stability. If a system is in a stable attractor state, small imbalances at a point in the system will tend to be damped out by the fluctuating of the system as a whole. If it is in such a state, small imbalances at any juncture will be maintained or amplified.
If we look at the "edge of chaos" which self-organizing systems naturally evolve toward, we find four basic principles, as outlined by Stuart Kaufmann (Sci Amer, Jan, 1993):
1) A system goes through a phase transition from order to randomness if the strength of the interaction between interconnected agents is gradually increased.
2) A system can perform the most sophisticated computation at the boundary between order and randomness. Adaptive agents can develop good solutions to extraordinarily difficult problems.
3) Complex adaptive systems tend to evolve toward the boundary between order and chaos.
4) Organisms change how strongly they interact with others in such a way that they reach the boundary between order and randomness, thereby maximizing the average fitness of the organisms.
There are certain fundamental characteristics of chaotic systems and each has its analogy and application to the nature of human consciousness and therapeutic treatment in consciousness journeys facilitating the natural healing process. Sensitivity to initial conditions. The main feature of self-generated complexity is the presence of an iterative mechanism which transforms the information contained in the initial conditions in a deterministic way. In this sense, it is possible to view complexity as elaborated simplicity. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions means similar causes do not produce similar effects.
Disease is a crisis that is presented to an organism that creates the opportunity to dissolve the old structure and evolve into a new one, better adapted to survival. We are not limited to any specific technique or practice for healing, but use a deeper understanding of the nature of the healing process itself to create whatever technique is needed for the client at whatever level we are working. Butterfly effect. A variance so small it is almost insignificant in the beginning can create vast differences as the system evolves, making it impossible to track or predict. In the Consciousness Restructuring Process of natural healing, just as one traumatic incident may pattern a lifelong disorder, one healing therapeutic event may completely and permanently restructure the whole system from the most fundamental level.
After a bifurcation there can be no return to the old situation. Fractal Embedding. A fractal is an object that reveals more and more detail as it is increasingly magnified, like seeing the universe in a grain of sand. Self-similarity repeats its conformations from the most fundamental to the most complex level. In CRP, the disease image appears in a myriad of self-similar forms revealed through the levels of the consciousness journey. One traumatic event can shape a life; one intense therapeutic event can reshape it.
Strange Attractors.
Investigation of the mechanism of turbulence led to the invention of the term strange attractor. The turbulence that is described by strange attractors is “turbulence in time” -- deterministic chaos, or temporal chaos. Graphic depictions of attractors allow us to map a dynamical system’s behavior in discreet-time or phase-space. Roughly speaking, an attractor is what the behavior of a system settles down to, or is attracted to. A system may have several attractors.
Strange attractors are the core of unpredictable variation with limits. For humans this means any perturbation from conception onward can be a determining factor in structure and personality. Personality traits can be construed as strange attractors of behavior. Natural chaos allows adaptation and self-organization for evolutionary change. Bifurcation. Amplifying a situation, intensifying it, leads to de-stabilization. This leads to a phase transition; phase instabilities or turbulence in a system lead to the possibility of bifurcations. Near bifurcation, systems present large fluctuations. Such systems “hesitate” among various possible directions of evolution. Even little fluctuations in subsystems combine through positive feedback loops, becoming strong enough to shatter any pre-existing organization.
In chaos theory, this crucial moment is known as bifurcation. At this point, the disorganized system either disintegrates into chaos, or leaps to a new higher level of order or organization. Through this means, order arises spontaneously from disorder through self-organization. Healing is an ever-present potential. The Edge of Chaos. When a system is far-from-equilibrium, the slightest flux can be amplified into structure-annihilating waves. Chaos Theory helps us think in terms of these fluctuations, feedback amplification, dissipative structures, and bifurcations. Chance plays its role at or near the point of bifurcation, after which deterministic processes take over once more until the next bifurcation. Thus, nonequilibrium, the flux of matter and energy, is a source of order. The highest mean fitness is at the phase transition between order and chaos. Complex adaptive systems adapt to and on the edge of chaos.
In CRP all the action lies in going just beyond the boundary from the known and comfortable into the fear, pain, and challenge. Chaotic Consciousness. There is a fundamental field of unstructured consciousness prior to energy or form, the bornless field. A return in the journey to this state evokes spontaneous healing and creative self-reorganization. At the quantum level, strange attractors influence the emergence of consciousness and its interactions with other fields to create the essence of self and external reality.
In Bohm’s model, consciousness can be either enfolded as potential structure or a field, or it can be manifested or unfolded as structure in the space-time universe. In enfolded or potential form, it is outside of space-time reality. Autopoietic self-organization; creativity and self-actualization. Human EEG shows significant fractal structure, suggesting the brain inherently resides in a state of self-organized criticality, where a small stimulation can set it into fluctuation where the response distribution is fractal.
In CRP therapy, small changes in this process result in whole person changes in a healthier direction. This process is creative; healing is biological creativity. Freud made the discovery that when man could overcome his fears, face his pathology, and seek to comprehend it, he grew healthier. Rollo May was among the first to carry this insight further: when we willingly choose to face our being in the same manner, seeking to comprehend it, allowing awareness of its terrors, passions and transiency, we become most truly human and self-actualized. Emergence.
Central to any understanding of consciousness and the brain, emergence is a process by which order appears “spontaneously” within a system. When many elements are allowed to mingle, they form patterns among themselves as they interact. When the mind lets go of its rational order and enters into unstructured chaos it emerges later with a new structure. Placebo Effect.
Medicine is just beginning to use the mind-body connection for healing. By giving a dummy drug at least 30% of patients experience the same pain relief as with true painkiller. The same pain-killing “pill” can stop gastric secretion in ulcer patients, lower blood pressure or fight tumors, for instance. But this effect requires no “pill” to initiate spontaneous healing; the pill itself is meaningless. The body has the ability to produce any biochemical response once the mind has been given the appropriate suggestion, which is converted into the body’s intention to cure itself. We can bypass the deception of the sugar pill and directly to the intention, (Chopra, 1989, 1993; Weil).
Dreams/REM. Dreams are complex dynamic systems; they embody the very nature of chaos. They are uncensored messages from the twilight zone of chaos-order and communicating with us at the most basic sensory levels imaginable. Dreaming reflects a pivotal aspect of the processing of memory, and helps us form strategies for survival and adaptation. They are complex, incorporating self-image, fears, insecurities, strengths, grandiose ideas, sexual orientation, desire, jealousy, and love. Their unusual character is a result of the complex associations that are culled from memory. When the mentored recalls a dream thread, it facilitates reentering REM for the rest of the journey.
Chaos Theory and Healing
Graywolf describes Chaos Theory and its relationship to healing
in , Holographic Healing (©2001).
In the early sixties at MIT, a physicist-mathematician Edward Lorenz was commissioned to utilize the new computers entering into our culture in an attempt to model weather patterns in order to make possible better long-range weather forecasts. He failed, but as is often the case in science, noticed some interesting things in this failure. He noted that the factors that create weather are very complex and intricately interrelated and that systems that are this complex are extremely sensitive to even the tiniest variations in initial conditions. A variance so small it is almost insignificant in the beginning can create vast differences as the system evolves, making it impossible to track or predict.
In essence he defined the butterfly effect, one of the better known principles of Chaos Theory. It states that air perturbations caused by the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings in Kansas can, in the complexity of factors affecting weather, hypothetically result in a typhoon in Indochina. He in essence demonstrated that long-range weather forecasting was impossible and for this reason, his data and speculations lay dormant and obscure in a journal paper. But it is just such failures that often open the cracks to later scientific advances, and this one set the stage for Chaos Theory.
The old story about "For the want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost. And for want of the horseshoe the horse was lost . . . " is a message to pay attention to details. Perhaps, however, the real power of the story has more to do with the intricacy, interconnectedness and complexity of things and the butterfly effect. Although obscure, a number of mathematicians and scientist from fields as diverse as biology, chemical engineering, demographics, and those studying stock market and futures price variations and trends, began exploring this chaos theory.
Although operating on the fringes of science, they became convinced that this new study of non-linear dynamics had much to offer to our understanding of how many reality phenomena operate, for example stock market or futures variations. Indeed the realization gradually began to emerge that a new science was being birthed. A major step happened in 1980, when a mathematician at Bell Labs named Mandelbrot, was using computers to explore the mysteries of indeterminate or non-linear equations.
These equations do not have a discrete solution, but instead create an endless string of non-repeating numbers, or have an infinite number of solutions. Pi is an example of the first type. It is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The solution is a value of 3.1417 . . . but the numbers that follow the decimal stretch on to infinity yet never in any observable pattern. By applying simple repeated reiterating mathematical operations to such non-linear equations, plotting the results in graphic form using the speed and patience of newer computers, he discovered that complex and beautiful geometric shapes began to emerge from the complexity of the chaos in the equations.
After only a short time he felt very familiar with these patterns at deep levels of his being. They were somehow fundamentally a part of his reality both inside and out; in his own words they were “part of his subconscious.” This elegant form of Mathematics is known as Fractal Geometry, and can be readily produced on the screens of computers. It is the mathematics of chaos or complexity. Beautiful forms unfold out of the complexity, reach into infinite depths and reveal hidden patterns that repeat and repeat in a familiarity of structure and change that resonates with the soul.
The Mandlebrot set has been called the most complex mathematical structure known. This geometry eloquently unveils the depths of chaos or as it is also known, non-linear dynamics or complexity. It produces a hidden infinity of forms and structures from the infinity of possibilities in chaos that mirror and duplicate the shapes unfolding in nature about us. In a fractal we can watch a cloud form or a tree evolve, or discover an intricacy of shape that resembles the nervous and the circulatory systems in the human body.
If you focus in on a small segment, a tiny piece of a fractal pattern and journey deep within it, expand it, you eventually encounter the segment you entered, only it is not quite the one you entered but slightly changed. This depth of “almost” repetition goes on into infinity, shapes ever evolving and changing. Fractal geometry opens us to a reality of infinite beauty, depth, and complexity in which forms and shapes emerge from the mysterious infinity of chaos. These forms reach deep inside, resonate with our spirit and foster a sense of connection, belonging, and home.
One of the author's (Graywolf) own introduction to this form of mathematics came in 1983, while it was still a relatively obscure mathematical concept: One of my clients, when I had lived in Michigan, was a mathematics professor at a local college. We had terminated therapy when I moved from Michigan to Oregon, but he had traveled west to pursue some further work with me. We chose to do this on a four day hiking journey on the trail that follows the wilderness section of the lower Rogue River. While contemplating the rugged beauty of the mountains and the wild chaotic waters of the river, he told me of a new form of mathematics that was inserting itself into academic circles. “It is the mathematics of indeterminacy,” he told me, “and deals with non linear and complex phenomena.” In our further discussions of it, he went on to predict that it would affect my work in psychology and consciousness and open the doors to understanding many of the phenomena that remained unsolved in nature and human experience. Although I did not reconnect with it for six or seven years he has proven to be correct on all counts. However at that time neither Lorenz's, nor Mandelbrot’s nor the others’ explorations of this field really identified or fully defined the principles of chaos as a fundamental theory about how reality operates. That came in the mid-eighties.
A group of graduate students in physics became interested in chaos and wanted to explore its possibilities. As is not unusual in graduate school, they received little or no support from their academic and doctoral advisors for this unorthodox quest, who suggested they get on with the business of their dissertations and learning science and physics as it was being taught at that time. As is not unusual with graduate students they declined their advisor's advice and met beyond the confines of the university working on their own.
Eventually they formulated much of what is now accepted as chaos theory. They then invited their faculty to a presentation, which was so convincing and well staged that “Chaos Theory” was accepted and soon entered into academic physics. Chaos theory is still very much in its infancy but it is sweeping throughout the scientific world, rapidly finding application not only in hard sciences, such as physics and chemical engineering, but also in economics, psychology, biology, astronomy, demographics, business management, . . . and on and on. It demonstrates the unfolding of creative process itself, the emergence of form or structure from formlessness and chaos.
Strange attractors, principals or forces that interact with complexity, hybrid something's with feet in both chaos and structure influence and shape the emergent structures In this way perhaps they reveal the faces of the creator or some may prefer the term God. In Taoist philosophy from chaos came the one, which became the two, the yin and yang from which all else is created. In Christian cannons it is said that out of the darkness (no-thingness, implicate order or chaos) God first created light (the quantum level of reality that is energy-matter). Once light had been created, the rest of the universe followed.
Chaos is found everywhere, hidden in the most ordered and solid seeming places. Wherever we look chaos or non-linear dynamics and complexity is either right in sight or hidden just below the surface. It takes over at the edges of our knowledge where our perceptions of structure and order end. Yet chaos reveals in its own depths, hidden degrees of order and structure that resonate with the soul and reveal to us the basic forms and structures repeated throughout nature.
Chaos theory implies a universe of evolution and constant re-creation. Structure arises in the moment and is in resonance with its environment. But in a universe of constant evolution each form eventually becomes dissonant as the evolving environment surrounding it changes. The changed surroundings stress the form and begin a process of its dissolution back into chaos. This latter is known in conventional science as the Law of Entropy which mathematically states that all systems and structures in the universe are tending to increasing states of disorder or chaos.
Chaos Theory restores the balance by showing that within this disorder lurk the processes of creation. Within it, chaos holds infinite possibilities of new form, and these forms are eventually revealed and emerge from chaos as new structure. This also seems an apt way to describe consciousness dynamics such as thought, spontaneous behavior and creativity. This is, in part, how my thoughts seem to emerge and operate. Reality is neither structure nor chaos but a process in which structure and chaos dance, one revolving into the other in a constant cycle of death and renewal. Much like the dance of Shiva. The models of disease and wellness that we have identified from the CRP, illustrate these principles at work in the human experience. For example: psychologists have long debated why the same experience can result in pathology in one individual yet strengthen another and with a third pass unnoticed. New sciences provide answers.
First with respect to chaos theory and the butterfly effect, humans are indeed complex systems and except in a few instances do not operate in linear fashion. Thus minor perturbations in initial conditions can cause considerable changes in the development of the personality or system, or on the other hand may be damped out having no effect. In other words the butterfly effect. So a minor trauma at an early age in one individual, due to other small differences in the complexity of his being and experience, may heavily affect him and result in a severe neurosis. Another individual might experience a relatively severe trauma at an early age that has little or no effect on his development. In such complex systems there is no clear linear cause-effect chain. The systems interconnecting with other systems are far too complex A variance so small it is almost insignificant in the beginning can create vast differences as the system evolves, making it impossible to track or predict.
We have noted in our explorations that the basis of every symptom of disease including psychological ones represents an attempt to resolve or heal an issue. For example from the physical side consider the symptoms of a cold. The fever and sweating, the sneezing and coughing, all force fluids throughout the organism which flushes the virus from it. The tiredness assures rest to strengthen the immune system. Today's healing, and the structure it assumes, may define tomorrow's disease Applying this in the field of psychology, consider also the following example.
Mary, a small female child, is verbally and physically abused, yelled at and struck by her uncle one evening while her parents are out. Mary is hurt and confused by this and becomes frightened. In her mind the sound becomes a roaring stream of rage and the unexpected pain shocks her. She begins avoiding him in family situations. He is tall, skinny and has a beard. She soon begins avoiding all tall skinny men with beards. By the time she is grown, she feels faint and passes out one day while riding an elevator with a tall, skinny bearded man who has just become her new boss.
Chaos theory would suggest the following. As a small child much of her mind set was unformed potential waiting to take shape. As at the quantum-chaos level, a nothingness waiting to be sensed and give form. The shock and pain of the incident with her uncle captured her full attention and awareness, and became the perception or strange attractor that helped structure some of this unformed mind-set or undifferentiated (free) consciousness into Mary's perceptions (frame of reference) about men. It became a rather rigid consciousness and emotional structure as her organism reacted to the danger and established neural circuitry to remember the threat to her safety and well being. These type memories are strongly retained, (not necessarily remaining in awareness,) by the organism as a sensory structure or pattern of neural firings to activate and avoid similar dangers in the future.
She begins avoiding him because each time she sees him this neural firing pattern activates and she becomes frightened. It is an attempt by the organism to resolve an issue and protect itself. In a large sense it is a healing of the incident with the limited resources available to a small child. As long as the abusive uncle is in her life it is probably a useful survival behavior and attitude to have. A structure arises out of the chaos in resonance with the existing environment. From this point on, any sensory input that conforms to the stored structure, a smell, the appearance of a tall bearded man, or even a background sound is enough to activate the circuitry and shape her perception of the situation. The Child’s resolution is to flee and in the elevator this is not possible so she flees by fainting. It is embarrassing since the tall bearded man in her current world is a new vice president in her company with whom, as her boss, Mary will have many future dealings.
Each time she is in his presence she feels great anxiety and so she is inclined to avoid him, but cannot do so. It is stressing Mary and she fears losing her job and high position in her company if this anxiety cannot be relieved, because her business forces her into daily contact with him. It is expected of her. She is confused and feels great pressure to act differently and does not understand this strong aversion to him. She might even develop physical illness and call in sick for work as a means of avoiding him. In actual fact, he is a well-liked and respected gentleman in every way, and revered by his colleagues.
Mary's life, however, is unraveling. Her childhood structure is no longer serving her and in fact threatens her continued well being. She is losing sleep, her appetite is off and she's losing weight. Her life is slipping into chaos and she is in crisis. But in a universe of constant evolution each form eventually becomes dissonant as the evolving environment surrounding it changes. The changed surroundings stress the form and begin a process of its dissolution back into chaos. We do have a mixed relationship with complexity or chaos. My white water river running experience also illustrates it. The river, as does life, presents stretches of slow and still waters interspersed with chaotic white water of varying intensity.
Among other things the aeration of the water in the rapids acts to purify it. In more general terms this may parallel the role of chaos in life. Each set of rapids purifies the water but inspires fear because in the turbulence is danger, the boat could flip, we could get hung up on a rock, or tossed into the maelstrom, or perhaps even embrace death. But to get down the river we have to go through them. The idea is to stay in the current and avoid the obstacles. This is often easier said than done as the chaotic waters toss us around unpredictably and often control is wrested away from us by the hydraulics of the currents and tossing waves. Then inevitably we come out on the other side of the rapids, most often still in the raft, but occasionally not.
As we come out the calm waters welcome us and the fear recedes. We regroup, climb back in the boat if necessary, and begin rowing again. But if the calm stretch between rapids is too long, we start getting bored. In its own way the rowing on still waters is just as hard in its monotony as the challenge and fear of the rapids. We only make headway with the effort of our heavy pulling on the oars. We look forward to the next set of rapids and the excitement, and welcome its challenge. The river is the stream of consciousness that is life. It too is full of the challenges and fear of the chaos and the boredom of the stillness. Staying in the current is the journey. The periodic chaos serves to restructure our life as the rapids purify the water. It serves to purge the old dissonant structures that impede its flow from our consciousness just as the rapids eventually move the rocks that create them.
Copyright 2001, Iona Miller and Graywolf Swinney; All Rights Reserved
CHAOS THEORY & COMPLEX DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS
Its Emergence in Human Consciousness and Healing
Iona Miller and Graywolf Swinney, ©2001
Yea verily, I say unto you
A man must have chaos yet within him
to birth a dancing star. --Nietzsche
To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of life for better or worse. --Carl Jung, 1961
Chaos Theory and CDS are multidisciplinary approaches employed in divers fields from physics to sociology, from neuropsychology to engineering. Spontaneous self-organizing dynamics is the non-linear basis for a rigorous alternative to linear, reductionistic thinking. As such, it heralds a rebirth of science. Fractal Art, the result of graphically displaying the elegant mathematical descriptions of Chaos Theory, shows us the hidden infinity of forms and structures which unfurl from the infinity of possibilities that mirror and duplicate the shapes unfolding in nature within and around us. Fractals emerge from attractors. An attractor is simply the characteristic behavior of a dynamical system changing over time.
The holistic mind is a complex dynamical system, (CDS). The language of CDS and Chaos Theory is now revealing a point-of-view, or metamodel, which provides a universal language for psychology which is competent to deal with the complexities of interactive change and yet is relatively easy to communicate. The holistic unity involves phenomenology, mind, brain, behavior, and environment. The dynamical systems' point of view extrapolates a worldview: healing emerges by immersion in the undifferentiated state of chaotic consciousness and emerges via creative self-organization. Degree of awareness is related to the magnitude of attractors. Jumps in magnitude result in jumps in awareness. Attractors of the mind may undergo subtle bifurcations or splits among possibilities.
Bifurcations occur when a system rests right between two attractors. A tiny change in the system's state can then push the system in one direction or another. For example, the transition from one state of consciousness to another is represented as a sudden or dramatic jolt which knocks the system out of its attractor, and leads it along a trajectory toward another attractor. Shapes and patterns emerge from the mysterious infinity of chaos. This is also true of the images which can be observed in our stream of consciousness. Sudden shifts in awareness arise from the suddeness of bifurcations in nonlinear dynamic systems. These forms reach deep inside, resonate with our spirit and foster a sense of connection.
In Chaos Theory, forms emerge, dissolve, and reform through the creative process known as autopoietic self-organization. It demonstrates the unfolding of creative process itself, the emergence of form or structure from formlessness and chaos.
Strange attractors, principles or forces that interact with complexity, are hybrids with roots in both chaos and structure which influence and shape the emergent structures. Chaos is ubiquitous in nature, hidden in the most ordered and solid-seeming places. It is found in the following dynamical processes, and more:
* In the eloquent blueprint of dynamic behavior, pure spontaneity, thresholds, beginning with the choatic fluctuation of Zero-Point Energy (ZPE) underlying the formation of all matter/energy;
* in emergent patterns, connectivity, diversity, the self-assembly rules of nature, beginning with the structure of the atom and its particles/waves, to molecular collectives and permeating organic and inorganic matter;
* in the universal set of building rules, networks, events, coherent wholes, dimensional embedding, and the synergetic architecture of life and biological organization from simple carbon compounds to complex cells and tissues, adaptability;
* in the guided design of organic structures, viability, from the unfolding of genetic patterns to tensegrity and cytoskeleton geometry, to microtubule assembly in nerves, to the rhythms of a beating heart and the flow of blood through it, global behavior;
* in global behavior and the dynamical system of the mind, panpsychism, psychological complexity, sentience and emergent properties, pattern recognition, genesis of intelligence, reality discrimination, raw awareness, attention, meaningfulness, perception-cognition loops, refocusing, creative inspiration, consequences, memory, self-sustenance/structure maintenance, perceptual chunking, time distortion, point of view/relativity, significance/correspondence (beliefs, concepts, attitudes, emotions, behavior), attributions, restructuring, adaptive learning, spontaneous healing;
* in the complex interactions of the neural firing patterns of our brain, and the dynamics of thought especially during dreaming, creative imagination, connectivity, even enlightenment--the biology and psychology of consciousness itself with its tightly knit fabric of subprocesses;
* in the infinite complexity of recurrence in wilderness and natural phenomena, such as the hierarchichal organization of tiers within tiers of systems within systems, and evolutionary adaptation;
* in the primordial elemental turbulence and churning complexity of white water, fire, air, and even earth as well as the quintessence, plasma; * in the formation and motion of the planets and their path around the sun;
* in the scattering complexity of the stars and galaxies, and the moment of the Big Bang, from which the universe emerged, in the acceleration and expansion of spacetime from vacuum fluctuation.
Wherever we look, from the Microcosm to the Macrocosm, the sub-quantal to the Cosmic, chaos or non-linear dynamics and complexity is either right in sight or hidden just below the surface. Notions of form, pattern, geometry and structure an be found at the deepest levels of both matter and the psyche. Its domain lies at the edges of knowledge where our perceptions of structure and order end. Yet chaos reveals in its own depths, hidden degrees of order and structure that resonate with the soul and reveal to us the basic forms and structures repeated throughout nature and throughout our nature.
Topology and geometrical relationships are a more fundamental way of understanding both matter and consciousness. Chaos Theory underlies the fundamental laws of nature and natural processes, and implies a universe of evolution and constant re-creation. Structure arises in the moment and is in resonance with its environment. But in a universe of constant evolution each form eventually becomes dissonant as the evolving environment surrounding it changes. Chaos Theory restores the balance to the entropic forces which lead to the decay and death of outworn systems. It is the means of creative self-organization which arises from the undifferentiated disorder that lurks within the processes of creation.
Chaos holds infinite possibilities of new form, and these forms are eventually revealed and emerge from chaos as new structure. This is also an apt way to describe consciousness dynamics, such as thought, spontaneous behavior and creativity. Reality is neither structure nor chaos, but a process in which structure and chaos dance between form and formlessness. This is the eternal cycle of death and renewal, the dance of Shiva. When there is an intrusion or perturbation in a system, centers of dynamic activity are set in motion within the whole system which attract more and more energy toward themselves like mini-blackholes.
Such systems are known in Chaos Theory as "strange attractors." In chaotic systems, time is "stretched and folded" so that events ostensibly separated in time and space are intimately linked in a non-linear way. Under the pressure of constant evolution, each form is constantly stressed by the evolving environment toward beginning a process of its dissolution back into chaos. Periodic chaos purges the old dissonant structures that impede the flow. A dynamical view emphasizes interconnectedness and self-organization. Self-organization creates new information in a dynamical system with the development of increasing complexity. There is growth potential in the self-control of bifurcations to novel attractors.
Anyone can learn to make choices to empower their future and develop new skills, to inhabit new attractors, to explore conjectured attractors, and make informed choices concerning potential trajectories, to affirm and create self. In complex dynamics, divergent features are perceived as being as important as convergent features. There are also gradual changes in degree of awareness and the amount of energy expended in a particular process. In general, the expansion of an attractor requires that more energy be devoted to it; increased forces increase the magnitude; shrinkage of the attractor is accompanied by the lessening of energy requirements by the system.
In Chaos Theory, the notion of psychobiological stability has been considerably liberalized to include psychobiological periodic and chaotic attractors. Ben Goertzel describes the process of transformation of consciousness in a complex dynamical system--the mind: “Psychological structures make no sense considered statically; they have to be considered dynamically, as “attractors” of systems that change over time.
There are three kinds of attractors. There are fixed-point attractors, i.e. equilibrium system behaviors, in which a system does not change over time. There are periodic attractors, i.e. cyclic system behaviors. And there are strange attractors -- a grab-bag category covering everything that is neither unchanging nor periodic. Strange attractors are often chaotic, in that, once a system is locked into a strange attractor, its behavior cannot be predicted in any detail. But, nevertheless, strange attractors need not be “random,” they can be intricately structured.” “In chaos theory terms, the transition between one state of consciousness and another is represented as a jolt which knocks the system out of its attractor, and leads it along a trajectory toward another attractor. This model predicts that transition between states of consciousness should be a sudden and dramatic process -- very much a discrete shift rather than a continuous gradation.”
Fear of chaos manifests as ontological anxiety or existential dread, a fear of being, a feeling there is no meaning in life; since nothing makes sense, why go on? Overcoming the anxiety and depressions of contemporary life requires a drastic change in attitude about what is important and what is not. We can learn to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself.
Experience depends on the way we invest psychic energy--on the structure of attention. This, in turn is related to goals and intentions. These processes are connected to each other by the self, or the dynamic mental representation we have of the entire system of our goals. This process is complex, and the notion of complexity is related to the same concept as used by some evolutionary biologists and also described with poetic insights. Its essence in terms of the psychology of the self is that a complex person is one whose behavior and ideas cannot be easily explained, and whose development is not predictable, but is autopoetic, that is self-organizing emergent order.
Order in consciousness is experienced as flow, optimal experience, healing experience. Following a flow experience, the organization of the self is more complex than it had been before. It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow. The flow state facilitates both differentiation and integration.
The old alchemists used to say, “Only that which has been properly separated can be rightfully joined.”
Complexity also facilitates the integration of autonomous parts. After each episode of flow a person becomes more of a unique individual, less predictable, possessed of rarer skills. The complex self is more likely to avoid both selfishness and conformity.
“The self becomes complex as a result of experiencing flow. Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. . .Flow is important both because it makes the present instant more enjoyable, and because it builds the self-confidence that allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind.” (FLOW; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
Flow helps us to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration consciousness is unusually well ordered. Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all senses are focused on the same goal. Experience is in harmony. And when the flow episode is over, one feels more “together” than before, not only internally but also with respect to other people and the world and cosmos in general.
THE EDGE OF CHAOS
Chaos and Order are two sides of the seamless fabric of Reality. New order emerges from the deterministic, self-organizing properties of chaos. Once known as Chaos Theory, the dynamics of systems far-from-equilibrium, the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos is now known as Complexity, or Complex Dynamic Systems (CDS). Complex, self-organizing systems, and human beings are certainly among them, are characterized as being adaptive.
The ability of a system to move in and out of chaos gives it the greatest creative advantage. Spontaneous self-organization, or autopoeisis, is a creative, emergent property of chaos, and expresses synchronicity and serendipity. The very richness of multiple levels of observable interaction, fractal reiteration, allows the system as a whole to undergo spontaneous self-organization. Thus some genes in a living embryo become nerve cells and other muscle tissue, or bone.
Organisms constantly adapt to the environment and to each other through the self-unfolding of emergent properties--creative evolutionary adaptations. They actively try to turn what happens to their advantage. Darwin didn't know about self-organization, matter and life's incessant drive to create order from chaos even in the face of the dissolving ubiquity of the second law of thermodynamics--entropy.
Complex systems, are spontaneous, disorderly and more alive because of it. The "edge of chaos" is a special balance point in dynamical systems where components never quite synch but also never quite dissolve into total turbulence either. It is a constantly shifting zone between stagnation and anarchy and spontaneous adaptability. There is order even in disorder. There is order, manageable chaos (fractals), and unmanageable chaos. The fractal dimension expresses the complexity of a particular fractal form.
"Fractal" comes from the Latin fractus, which means broken or fragmented. Fractals delineate a whole new way of thinking about structure and form. Magnify a fractal again and again and more detail emerges from its infinitely embedded structure. The same self-similar pattern repeats, over and over, no matter what level you care to examine. A single image is infinitely reiterated. Thus, a wealth of structure emerges from simplicity. Tiny variations are amplified on every bounce in Chaos Theory through the phenomenon of the "butterfly effect."
When changes approach the catastrophic level, bifurcation, the whole system reorganizes in a cascade. Thus chance fluctuations can be blown up into gigantic proportions, and change becomes stability. If a system is in a stable attractor state, small imbalances at a point in the system will tend to be damped out by the fluctuating of the system as a whole. If it is in such a state, small imbalances at any juncture will be maintained or amplified.
If we look at the "edge of chaos" which self-organizing systems naturally evolve toward, we find four basic principles, as outlined by Stuart Kaufmann (Sci Amer, Jan, 1993):
1) A system goes through a phase transition from order to randomness if the strength of the interaction between interconnected agents is gradually increased.
2) A system can perform the most sophisticated computation at the boundary between order and randomness. Adaptive agents can develop good solutions to extraordinarily difficult problems.
3) Complex adaptive systems tend to evolve toward the boundary between order and chaos.
4) Organisms change how strongly they interact with others in such a way that they reach the boundary between order and randomness, thereby maximizing the average fitness of the organisms.
There are certain fundamental characteristics of chaotic systems and each has its analogy and application to the nature of human consciousness and therapeutic treatment in consciousness journeys facilitating the natural healing process. Sensitivity to initial conditions. The main feature of self-generated complexity is the presence of an iterative mechanism which transforms the information contained in the initial conditions in a deterministic way. In this sense, it is possible to view complexity as elaborated simplicity. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions means similar causes do not produce similar effects.
Disease is a crisis that is presented to an organism that creates the opportunity to dissolve the old structure and evolve into a new one, better adapted to survival. We are not limited to any specific technique or practice for healing, but use a deeper understanding of the nature of the healing process itself to create whatever technique is needed for the client at whatever level we are working. Butterfly effect. A variance so small it is almost insignificant in the beginning can create vast differences as the system evolves, making it impossible to track or predict. In the Consciousness Restructuring Process of natural healing, just as one traumatic incident may pattern a lifelong disorder, one healing therapeutic event may completely and permanently restructure the whole system from the most fundamental level.
After a bifurcation there can be no return to the old situation. Fractal Embedding. A fractal is an object that reveals more and more detail as it is increasingly magnified, like seeing the universe in a grain of sand. Self-similarity repeats its conformations from the most fundamental to the most complex level. In CRP, the disease image appears in a myriad of self-similar forms revealed through the levels of the consciousness journey. One traumatic event can shape a life; one intense therapeutic event can reshape it.
Strange Attractors.
Investigation of the mechanism of turbulence led to the invention of the term strange attractor. The turbulence that is described by strange attractors is “turbulence in time” -- deterministic chaos, or temporal chaos. Graphic depictions of attractors allow us to map a dynamical system’s behavior in discreet-time or phase-space. Roughly speaking, an attractor is what the behavior of a system settles down to, or is attracted to. A system may have several attractors.
Strange attractors are the core of unpredictable variation with limits. For humans this means any perturbation from conception onward can be a determining factor in structure and personality. Personality traits can be construed as strange attractors of behavior. Natural chaos allows adaptation and self-organization for evolutionary change. Bifurcation. Amplifying a situation, intensifying it, leads to de-stabilization. This leads to a phase transition; phase instabilities or turbulence in a system lead to the possibility of bifurcations. Near bifurcation, systems present large fluctuations. Such systems “hesitate” among various possible directions of evolution. Even little fluctuations in subsystems combine through positive feedback loops, becoming strong enough to shatter any pre-existing organization.
In chaos theory, this crucial moment is known as bifurcation. At this point, the disorganized system either disintegrates into chaos, or leaps to a new higher level of order or organization. Through this means, order arises spontaneously from disorder through self-organization. Healing is an ever-present potential. The Edge of Chaos. When a system is far-from-equilibrium, the slightest flux can be amplified into structure-annihilating waves. Chaos Theory helps us think in terms of these fluctuations, feedback amplification, dissipative structures, and bifurcations. Chance plays its role at or near the point of bifurcation, after which deterministic processes take over once more until the next bifurcation. Thus, nonequilibrium, the flux of matter and energy, is a source of order. The highest mean fitness is at the phase transition between order and chaos. Complex adaptive systems adapt to and on the edge of chaos.
In CRP all the action lies in going just beyond the boundary from the known and comfortable into the fear, pain, and challenge. Chaotic Consciousness. There is a fundamental field of unstructured consciousness prior to energy or form, the bornless field. A return in the journey to this state evokes spontaneous healing and creative self-reorganization. At the quantum level, strange attractors influence the emergence of consciousness and its interactions with other fields to create the essence of self and external reality.
In Bohm’s model, consciousness can be either enfolded as potential structure or a field, or it can be manifested or unfolded as structure in the space-time universe. In enfolded or potential form, it is outside of space-time reality. Autopoietic self-organization; creativity and self-actualization. Human EEG shows significant fractal structure, suggesting the brain inherently resides in a state of self-organized criticality, where a small stimulation can set it into fluctuation where the response distribution is fractal.
In CRP therapy, small changes in this process result in whole person changes in a healthier direction. This process is creative; healing is biological creativity. Freud made the discovery that when man could overcome his fears, face his pathology, and seek to comprehend it, he grew healthier. Rollo May was among the first to carry this insight further: when we willingly choose to face our being in the same manner, seeking to comprehend it, allowing awareness of its terrors, passions and transiency, we become most truly human and self-actualized. Emergence.
Central to any understanding of consciousness and the brain, emergence is a process by which order appears “spontaneously” within a system. When many elements are allowed to mingle, they form patterns among themselves as they interact. When the mind lets go of its rational order and enters into unstructured chaos it emerges later with a new structure. Placebo Effect.
Medicine is just beginning to use the mind-body connection for healing. By giving a dummy drug at least 30% of patients experience the same pain relief as with true painkiller. The same pain-killing “pill” can stop gastric secretion in ulcer patients, lower blood pressure or fight tumors, for instance. But this effect requires no “pill” to initiate spontaneous healing; the pill itself is meaningless. The body has the ability to produce any biochemical response once the mind has been given the appropriate suggestion, which is converted into the body’s intention to cure itself. We can bypass the deception of the sugar pill and directly to the intention, (Chopra, 1989, 1993; Weil).
Dreams/REM. Dreams are complex dynamic systems; they embody the very nature of chaos. They are uncensored messages from the twilight zone of chaos-order and communicating with us at the most basic sensory levels imaginable. Dreaming reflects a pivotal aspect of the processing of memory, and helps us form strategies for survival and adaptation. They are complex, incorporating self-image, fears, insecurities, strengths, grandiose ideas, sexual orientation, desire, jealousy, and love. Their unusual character is a result of the complex associations that are culled from memory. When the mentored recalls a dream thread, it facilitates reentering REM for the rest of the journey.
Chaos Theory and Healing
Graywolf describes Chaos Theory and its relationship to healing
in , Holographic Healing (©2001).
In the early sixties at MIT, a physicist-mathematician Edward Lorenz was commissioned to utilize the new computers entering into our culture in an attempt to model weather patterns in order to make possible better long-range weather forecasts. He failed, but as is often the case in science, noticed some interesting things in this failure. He noted that the factors that create weather are very complex and intricately interrelated and that systems that are this complex are extremely sensitive to even the tiniest variations in initial conditions. A variance so small it is almost insignificant in the beginning can create vast differences as the system evolves, making it impossible to track or predict.
In essence he defined the butterfly effect, one of the better known principles of Chaos Theory. It states that air perturbations caused by the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings in Kansas can, in the complexity of factors affecting weather, hypothetically result in a typhoon in Indochina. He in essence demonstrated that long-range weather forecasting was impossible and for this reason, his data and speculations lay dormant and obscure in a journal paper. But it is just such failures that often open the cracks to later scientific advances, and this one set the stage for Chaos Theory.
The old story about "For the want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost. And for want of the horseshoe the horse was lost . . . " is a message to pay attention to details. Perhaps, however, the real power of the story has more to do with the intricacy, interconnectedness and complexity of things and the butterfly effect. Although obscure, a number of mathematicians and scientist from fields as diverse as biology, chemical engineering, demographics, and those studying stock market and futures price variations and trends, began exploring this chaos theory.
Although operating on the fringes of science, they became convinced that this new study of non-linear dynamics had much to offer to our understanding of how many reality phenomena operate, for example stock market or futures variations. Indeed the realization gradually began to emerge that a new science was being birthed. A major step happened in 1980, when a mathematician at Bell Labs named Mandelbrot, was using computers to explore the mysteries of indeterminate or non-linear equations.
These equations do not have a discrete solution, but instead create an endless string of non-repeating numbers, or have an infinite number of solutions. Pi is an example of the first type. It is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The solution is a value of 3.1417 . . . but the numbers that follow the decimal stretch on to infinity yet never in any observable pattern. By applying simple repeated reiterating mathematical operations to such non-linear equations, plotting the results in graphic form using the speed and patience of newer computers, he discovered that complex and beautiful geometric shapes began to emerge from the complexity of the chaos in the equations.
After only a short time he felt very familiar with these patterns at deep levels of his being. They were somehow fundamentally a part of his reality both inside and out; in his own words they were “part of his subconscious.” This elegant form of Mathematics is known as Fractal Geometry, and can be readily produced on the screens of computers. It is the mathematics of chaos or complexity. Beautiful forms unfold out of the complexity, reach into infinite depths and reveal hidden patterns that repeat and repeat in a familiarity of structure and change that resonates with the soul.
The Mandlebrot set has been called the most complex mathematical structure known. This geometry eloquently unveils the depths of chaos or as it is also known, non-linear dynamics or complexity. It produces a hidden infinity of forms and structures from the infinity of possibilities in chaos that mirror and duplicate the shapes unfolding in nature about us. In a fractal we can watch a cloud form or a tree evolve, or discover an intricacy of shape that resembles the nervous and the circulatory systems in the human body.
If you focus in on a small segment, a tiny piece of a fractal pattern and journey deep within it, expand it, you eventually encounter the segment you entered, only it is not quite the one you entered but slightly changed. This depth of “almost” repetition goes on into infinity, shapes ever evolving and changing. Fractal geometry opens us to a reality of infinite beauty, depth, and complexity in which forms and shapes emerge from the mysterious infinity of chaos. These forms reach deep inside, resonate with our spirit and foster a sense of connection, belonging, and home.
One of the author's (Graywolf) own introduction to this form of mathematics came in 1983, while it was still a relatively obscure mathematical concept: One of my clients, when I had lived in Michigan, was a mathematics professor at a local college. We had terminated therapy when I moved from Michigan to Oregon, but he had traveled west to pursue some further work with me. We chose to do this on a four day hiking journey on the trail that follows the wilderness section of the lower Rogue River. While contemplating the rugged beauty of the mountains and the wild chaotic waters of the river, he told me of a new form of mathematics that was inserting itself into academic circles. “It is the mathematics of indeterminacy,” he told me, “and deals with non linear and complex phenomena.” In our further discussions of it, he went on to predict that it would affect my work in psychology and consciousness and open the doors to understanding many of the phenomena that remained unsolved in nature and human experience. Although I did not reconnect with it for six or seven years he has proven to be correct on all counts. However at that time neither Lorenz's, nor Mandelbrot’s nor the others’ explorations of this field really identified or fully defined the principles of chaos as a fundamental theory about how reality operates. That came in the mid-eighties.
A group of graduate students in physics became interested in chaos and wanted to explore its possibilities. As is not unusual in graduate school, they received little or no support from their academic and doctoral advisors for this unorthodox quest, who suggested they get on with the business of their dissertations and learning science and physics as it was being taught at that time. As is not unusual with graduate students they declined their advisor's advice and met beyond the confines of the university working on their own.
Eventually they formulated much of what is now accepted as chaos theory. They then invited their faculty to a presentation, which was so convincing and well staged that “Chaos Theory” was accepted and soon entered into academic physics. Chaos theory is still very much in its infancy but it is sweeping throughout the scientific world, rapidly finding application not only in hard sciences, such as physics and chemical engineering, but also in economics, psychology, biology, astronomy, demographics, business management, . . . and on and on. It demonstrates the unfolding of creative process itself, the emergence of form or structure from formlessness and chaos.
Strange attractors, principals or forces that interact with complexity, hybrid something's with feet in both chaos and structure influence and shape the emergent structures In this way perhaps they reveal the faces of the creator or some may prefer the term God. In Taoist philosophy from chaos came the one, which became the two, the yin and yang from which all else is created. In Christian cannons it is said that out of the darkness (no-thingness, implicate order or chaos) God first created light (the quantum level of reality that is energy-matter). Once light had been created, the rest of the universe followed.
Chaos is found everywhere, hidden in the most ordered and solid seeming places. Wherever we look chaos or non-linear dynamics and complexity is either right in sight or hidden just below the surface. It takes over at the edges of our knowledge where our perceptions of structure and order end. Yet chaos reveals in its own depths, hidden degrees of order and structure that resonate with the soul and reveal to us the basic forms and structures repeated throughout nature.
Chaos theory implies a universe of evolution and constant re-creation. Structure arises in the moment and is in resonance with its environment. But in a universe of constant evolution each form eventually becomes dissonant as the evolving environment surrounding it changes. The changed surroundings stress the form and begin a process of its dissolution back into chaos. This latter is known in conventional science as the Law of Entropy which mathematically states that all systems and structures in the universe are tending to increasing states of disorder or chaos.
Chaos Theory restores the balance by showing that within this disorder lurk the processes of creation. Within it, chaos holds infinite possibilities of new form, and these forms are eventually revealed and emerge from chaos as new structure. This also seems an apt way to describe consciousness dynamics such as thought, spontaneous behavior and creativity. This is, in part, how my thoughts seem to emerge and operate. Reality is neither structure nor chaos but a process in which structure and chaos dance, one revolving into the other in a constant cycle of death and renewal. Much like the dance of Shiva. The models of disease and wellness that we have identified from the CRP, illustrate these principles at work in the human experience. For example: psychologists have long debated why the same experience can result in pathology in one individual yet strengthen another and with a third pass unnoticed. New sciences provide answers.
First with respect to chaos theory and the butterfly effect, humans are indeed complex systems and except in a few instances do not operate in linear fashion. Thus minor perturbations in initial conditions can cause considerable changes in the development of the personality or system, or on the other hand may be damped out having no effect. In other words the butterfly effect. So a minor trauma at an early age in one individual, due to other small differences in the complexity of his being and experience, may heavily affect him and result in a severe neurosis. Another individual might experience a relatively severe trauma at an early age that has little or no effect on his development. In such complex systems there is no clear linear cause-effect chain. The systems interconnecting with other systems are far too complex A variance so small it is almost insignificant in the beginning can create vast differences as the system evolves, making it impossible to track or predict.
We have noted in our explorations that the basis of every symptom of disease including psychological ones represents an attempt to resolve or heal an issue. For example from the physical side consider the symptoms of a cold. The fever and sweating, the sneezing and coughing, all force fluids throughout the organism which flushes the virus from it. The tiredness assures rest to strengthen the immune system. Today's healing, and the structure it assumes, may define tomorrow's disease Applying this in the field of psychology, consider also the following example.
Mary, a small female child, is verbally and physically abused, yelled at and struck by her uncle one evening while her parents are out. Mary is hurt and confused by this and becomes frightened. In her mind the sound becomes a roaring stream of rage and the unexpected pain shocks her. She begins avoiding him in family situations. He is tall, skinny and has a beard. She soon begins avoiding all tall skinny men with beards. By the time she is grown, she feels faint and passes out one day while riding an elevator with a tall, skinny bearded man who has just become her new boss.
Chaos theory would suggest the following. As a small child much of her mind set was unformed potential waiting to take shape. As at the quantum-chaos level, a nothingness waiting to be sensed and give form. The shock and pain of the incident with her uncle captured her full attention and awareness, and became the perception or strange attractor that helped structure some of this unformed mind-set or undifferentiated (free) consciousness into Mary's perceptions (frame of reference) about men. It became a rather rigid consciousness and emotional structure as her organism reacted to the danger and established neural circuitry to remember the threat to her safety and well being. These type memories are strongly retained, (not necessarily remaining in awareness,) by the organism as a sensory structure or pattern of neural firings to activate and avoid similar dangers in the future.
She begins avoiding him because each time she sees him this neural firing pattern activates and she becomes frightened. It is an attempt by the organism to resolve an issue and protect itself. In a large sense it is a healing of the incident with the limited resources available to a small child. As long as the abusive uncle is in her life it is probably a useful survival behavior and attitude to have. A structure arises out of the chaos in resonance with the existing environment. From this point on, any sensory input that conforms to the stored structure, a smell, the appearance of a tall bearded man, or even a background sound is enough to activate the circuitry and shape her perception of the situation. The Child’s resolution is to flee and in the elevator this is not possible so she flees by fainting. It is embarrassing since the tall bearded man in her current world is a new vice president in her company with whom, as her boss, Mary will have many future dealings.
Each time she is in his presence she feels great anxiety and so she is inclined to avoid him, but cannot do so. It is stressing Mary and she fears losing her job and high position in her company if this anxiety cannot be relieved, because her business forces her into daily contact with him. It is expected of her. She is confused and feels great pressure to act differently and does not understand this strong aversion to him. She might even develop physical illness and call in sick for work as a means of avoiding him. In actual fact, he is a well-liked and respected gentleman in every way, and revered by his colleagues.
Mary's life, however, is unraveling. Her childhood structure is no longer serving her and in fact threatens her continued well being. She is losing sleep, her appetite is off and she's losing weight. Her life is slipping into chaos and she is in crisis. But in a universe of constant evolution each form eventually becomes dissonant as the evolving environment surrounding it changes. The changed surroundings stress the form and begin a process of its dissolution back into chaos. We do have a mixed relationship with complexity or chaos. My white water river running experience also illustrates it. The river, as does life, presents stretches of slow and still waters interspersed with chaotic white water of varying intensity.
Among other things the aeration of the water in the rapids acts to purify it. In more general terms this may parallel the role of chaos in life. Each set of rapids purifies the water but inspires fear because in the turbulence is danger, the boat could flip, we could get hung up on a rock, or tossed into the maelstrom, or perhaps even embrace death. But to get down the river we have to go through them. The idea is to stay in the current and avoid the obstacles. This is often easier said than done as the chaotic waters toss us around unpredictably and often control is wrested away from us by the hydraulics of the currents and tossing waves. Then inevitably we come out on the other side of the rapids, most often still in the raft, but occasionally not.
As we come out the calm waters welcome us and the fear recedes. We regroup, climb back in the boat if necessary, and begin rowing again. But if the calm stretch between rapids is too long, we start getting bored. In its own way the rowing on still waters is just as hard in its monotony as the challenge and fear of the rapids. We only make headway with the effort of our heavy pulling on the oars. We look forward to the next set of rapids and the excitement, and welcome its challenge. The river is the stream of consciousness that is life. It too is full of the challenges and fear of the chaos and the boredom of the stillness. Staying in the current is the journey. The periodic chaos serves to restructure our life as the rapids purify the water. It serves to purge the old dissonant structures that impede its flow from our consciousness just as the rapids eventually move the rocks that create them.
Copyright 2001, Iona Miller and Graywolf Swinney; All Rights Reserved
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