Tao of Resilience
CHAOSOPHY 2002
"Empathy, Resilience and Consciousness"
THE TAO OF RESILIENCE
by Peggie Southwick & Iona Miller
Asklepia Foundation, ©1998/2002
"Empathy, Resilience and Consciousness"
THE TAO OF RESILIENCE
by Peggie Southwick & Iona Miller
Asklepia Foundation, ©1998/2002
Jung on Life After Death - http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/C.G._Jung_-_On_Life_After_Death.pdf
"...man has no choice but to live by 'fictions'; as if the illusory world of the senses represented ultimate Reality; as if he had a free will which made him responsible for his actions; as if there was a God to reward virtuous conduct and so on. Similarly the individual must live as if he were not under sentence of death, and humanity must plan for its future as if its days were not counted. It is only by virtue of these fictions that the mind of man fabricated a habitable universe, and endowed it with meaning. ...the simple fact is that our species is now living on borrowed time, from decade to decade as it were, and the signs indicate that it is drifting towards the final catastrophe, yet we are still dealing in probabilities and not in certainties. There is always a hope of the unexpected and the unforeseen. Since the year zero of the new calendar, man has carried a time bomb fastened around his neck, and will have to listen to its ticking - now louder, now softer, now louder again - until it blows up, or he succeeds in de-fusing it." p.4 Janus, A summing up, Arthur Koestler
THE TAO OF RESILIENCE
Part I
Let go and fall into the river.
Let the river of life sweep you beyond all aid
from old and worn concepts.
I will support you.
Trust me.
As you swim from an old consciousness,
blind to higher realities beyond your physical world,
trust that I will guide you
with care and love
into a new stream of consciousness.
I will open a new world before you.
Can you trust me enough to
let go of the known
and swim in an unknown current?
--quoted in Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology, and Applications By Clark E. Moustakas
Part I
Let go and fall into the river.
Let the river of life sweep you beyond all aid
from old and worn concepts.
I will support you.
Trust me.
As you swim from an old consciousness,
blind to higher realities beyond your physical world,
trust that I will guide you
with care and love
into a new stream of consciousness.
I will open a new world before you.
Can you trust me enough to
let go of the known
and swim in an unknown current?
--quoted in Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology, and Applications By Clark E. Moustakas
THE TAO OF RESILIENCE
Redefining Resilience in the Consciousness Restructuring Process (CRP)
Resilience helps us bounce back or recover our spirit, energy, and harmonious way of being. Psychological resilience is that factor which heals us from the traumatic stress of modern life that we are all subjected to in a variety of forms. Resilience has many facets. In honor of the resilience process at work in all of us, the overall format of this paper represents a harmonious shuttling back and forth between the vertical logic of Logos and the more horizontally integrative experience of Eros as it weaves the fabric of its new resilience metaphor upon the loom of these pages. Resilience is an implied state of being rather than any concretely definable "thing."
Yet, this resilient "state" also seems to represent the cohesive and stabilizing elemental matrix through which a unifying life force is resonantly evolving within us. It is made up of many underlying processes, as well as a quality or state of being. In those for whom this quality is in short supply, therapy can foster first its emergence, and then its stabilization as an intrinsic quality of being, by connecting us with the source of resilience. What reduces or facilitates the resilient nature of consciousness?
Each field of inquiry has its own theories and models of psychophysical resilience. Humanistic and Transpersonal psychologies offer "missing, invisible" factors that contribute to resilience and are described with psychodynamic metaphors.
The "Consciousness Restructuring Process" (CRP) goes a step further than Humanistic and Transpersonal psychologies by offering more than a metaphor. It provides a means of direct participation in the emergent process of creating ever-newing resilience through psychophysical healing by facilitating REM and neural restructuring. CRP is an interdisciplinary artform. Aspects of this living process can be described, modelled or experienced through such scientific concepts as Relativity Theory, Quantum Theory, Chaos Theory, the Holographic Model, Systems Theory, Synergetics, REM Dynamics, Personal Mythology, Genetics, Neurotheology and Physiology.
The practice of CRP therapy is essentially Humanistic; it is rooted in Transactional Analysis and Gestalt Dreamwork, but takes these disciplines into the Transpersonal Realms where we connect with Source, with Creativity, with Healing, with Spirituality. CRP draws inspiration from the mythical roots of the Asklepian tradition. The ancient Asklepian dream priests never interpreted dreams, but fostered a direct epiphany of the seeker with the archetypal shamanic healer, Asklepios.
CRP connects with this ancient current through the dreamhealing process and the shaman/therapist model or co-conscious mentoring procedure. By directly entering into and engaging our dream imagery, symptoms, and emotions we can tap that healing energy by plumbing our depths and soaring to our own heights of potential. This immersive experience produces direct conscious participation in the stream of consciousness which brings psychophysical change, feelings of renewal or rebirth, and connection with Spirit; all of which help us bounce back from the chaos and tragedies life brings our way.
For example, dreams of the 911 destruction, or nightmares of other disasters provide immediate opportunities to enter directly into the source of those fears and insecurities, into the depth of the problem or symptom. Rather than contemplating what you believe, or what you know, the process allows you to travel into the very jaws of death in the journey, to make a pilgrimage into the "underworld" to retrieve our lost and suffering souls.
What we find there we know to be True...to reflect our essence. Many people avoid thinking about death, much less voluntarily undergoing a symbolic ego-death experience. But we are supposed to think about it, to contemplate our personal dissolution, for that is what highlights what is important in life. Many people near death report that the most important issues for them are, "Am I loved; and have I loved well?"
We might ask ourselves, "What is it that death doesn't take?" We don't need to wait for terminal illness to ask. And one answer to that is the capacity to love. Instead of actively trying to avoid Chaos, we embrace it and dive into its very depths for the renewal it promises. We must look at the face of insecurity; it is always there but sometimes it just explodes, personally and/or collectively.
Resilience is a function or quality of our consciousness and conscious participation in the universal flow state, whose essence is pure undifferentiated chaos, (also known scientifically as vacuum potential, zero-point energy, in CRP as consciousness field or chaotic consciousness). It is more fundamental than either energy or matter, psyche or soma. It is the groundstate from which all forms, order, and self-organization arises.
In CRP, the ego and personality structure, and with it any dis-ease structure, undergoes a process of dissolution back to our most primal state, and the resurrected personality emerges holistically re-organized with a generally healtier disposition and outlook which is the optimistic hallmark of resilience. Trying times, both personal and collective, challenge our faith and existential resolve. The world can come to us in devastating and frightful ways. That is when we are especially called upon to work at faith, to find value and meaning. We need to reach deep within ourselves, listen to what emerges from inside, and find our resilience -- the ability to bounce back and press on.
One way we find this resilience is through service, the active expression of compassion. In difficult times, when troubles persist, we may come to suffer from compassion burn-out -- eventually shutting out the world with defense mechanisms. Yet, compassion is the absolute test of any spirituality. Only our own suffering, our own journey, our own quest for healing, gives us insight into the suffering of others; empathy for the suffering of others. But suffering for its own sake, without pro-actively seeking transformation is essentially not having compassion for ourselves. Unremitting suffering leads to depression and hopelessness.
However, through suffering consciously, we learn to go with the catastrophe and find the natural healing on the other side. In "Empathy and Consciousness," (JSC, 2001), Evan Thompson makes five main points:
(1) Individual human consciousness is formed in the dynamic interrelation of self and other, and therefore is inherently intersubjective.
(2) The concrete encounter of self and other fundamentally involves empathy, understood as a unique and irreducible kind of intentionality.
(3) Empathy is the precondition (the condition of possibility) of the science of consciousness.
(4) Human empathy is inherently developmental: open to it are pathways to non-egocentric or self-transcendent modes of intersubjectivity.
(5) Real progress in the understanding of intersubjectivity requires integrating the methods and findings of cognitive science, phenomenology, and contemplative and meditative psychologies of human transformation.
We can experientially come to realize that our consciousness of ourselves as embodied individuals in the world is founded upon empathy -- on our empathic cognition of others, and others' empathic cognition or grasp of oneself. This is the antidote for the poison of mutual projection of negative traits onto others, which happens both personally and culturally. This projection of animosity lies at the root of war, which can only be weeded out individual by individual through experiential confrontation with Shadow elements.
Empathy is a basic emotional faculty. Empathy is an evolved psychobiological capacity. Empathic grasping of another, especially by sensing them as animated by their own fields of sensation, means sharing the same field of experience -- essentially a shared virtuality. According to Depraz (JSC, 2001), there are at least four possible kinds of empathy:
1) The passive association of my lived body with the lived body of the Other;
2) The imaginative transposal of myself to the place of the Other;
3) The interpretation or understanding of myself as an Other for you;
4) Ethical responsiblity in the face of the Other.
In empathy and compassion the values in question transcend personal concerns, sometimes transcending even the concern for our own continued existence and nonexistence. Compassion is not merely an expression of nonegocentric value-feeling, one that can emerge only as a result of inward meditative disembedding. It plays a guiding role in moving from one mode to another, in the expansion of the value-sensing repertoire. This is the reason that practices of compassion, benevolence, or love are emphasized so strongly right from the start in the practices of many wisdom traditions.
Empathy is not limited. The extension of empathy and compassion to the nonhuman world seems rather foreign to the Judaeo-Christian tradition (at least until recently), but is central to the Buddhist ideal of compassion for all sentient beings, and to the Neo-Confucian ideal of "forming one body with the Universe." This understanding is the root of philosophical choices which are fundamental to continued quality of life on our planet. With empathy for the Earth we respond positively to such issues as vegetarianism, recycling, "living small" or "lightly on the land," humane treatment of animals, human rights, population control, conservation, environmental protection, deep ecology, right livlihood, health care and spiritual practice, among others.
CRP helps us identify with a myriad of forms from the inside out to experience first-hand what that is like. Compassion is the heart of interbeing, and is the superlative expression of the human capacity for empathy. The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity. We've seen this commiseration in the U.S. since '911' in a myriad of ways, sharing fears and small triumphs. Somehow this disaster has brought us closer, and it is more than a trauma bond. People seem more open and inclined to speak with strangers on the street, to help one another. The question is, "What was preventing this easier flow prior to that time?" But it is rhetorical. Suffering is universal -- resilience is not. Sharing the burdens of our suffering and finding a way through fosters resilience.
Neuroscientist Arnold Mandell (Omni, 81) reports results from his own research that suggest agreement with the foundations of CRP. He cites the Hindu sacred poem, Bhagavad Gita as saying that transcendent action is possible through detachment with empathy. He goes on to assert that,
"Maybe dragging around yesterday's messages, maintaining old order in thought forms, is a lot sicker than reality that's an existential randomness. The whole idea underlying, say Buddha's enlightenment, transcendence, "no mind," may be a return to randomness, to a lack of order. Maybe letting go, religious surrender is the feeling equivalent of a loss of order -- the order Eastern philosophers say is, was, artificial in the first place. Is this the unconscious, the disordered part of oneself? Before Homer, it was thought to be the voice of God. It's William James's mystical experience, the Quakers' inner light, Jung's universal unconscious, Hinduism's "that," St. Theresa's ecstasy, Roger Sperry's right hemisphere. There is order in randomness. The brain is unstable and we all live on the edge of disorganization, whether we allow ourselves to be conscious of it or not. Knowing the limits is wisdom."
So, whether we like it or not, we all live an atmosphere, both inside and out, that can be characterized as the edge of chaos. William James's preconscious stream is back in full force. It's tumbling through our minds like the weather, and we're left in a position to observe, to explore, negotiate maybe, but not control. We are complex organisms and chaos theory best describes this.
In the new paradigm, our structure of self emerges from chaos in an environment of complex interacting systems, responsive to and shaped by that environment. What else is the moment of our conception? Eventually, the structure grows brittle, doesn't respond to the ever-evolving and changing environment and disintegrates back into chaos from which emerges new structure.
At the personal level we experienece this process as a life crisis or a disease, particularly if we fight the change, when the framework of our reality changes. It is this dance of evolution that is reality and healthy, not the temporary forms and structures that we fix on, nor the chaos that we avoid. They exist only in passing as our existential perceptions. Our true health is in being, becoming, and accepting this ever-evolving self -- in a word resilience. Fundamental to CRP is that it works in REM with sensory elements of our dreams.
Healing, as are dreams, is a sensory not an intellectual process. Senses inform us when we are sick or well. Our dreams also reveal disease, often before symptoms appear. Mind and intellect only deal with symbols of reality. Dreams alone are healing, as the havoc wrought from dream deprivation shows. The deep illness image, when experienced, spontaneously self-destructs into chaotic and unbound consciousness.
The new emergent sensory self image that is found in chaotic consciousness is a new easeful structure that has replaced the disease, for example, a deep-felt sense of warmth, flow, and boundarylessness. The CRP teaches a new way of flowing through life, philosophically and experientially. It provides the experience of doing so in a virtual reality experience of wakeful REM, and directly alters self-image and reality perception that empowers us by making us more resilient.
PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF RESILIENCE
Developmental Theories of Resilience
According to most child-development experts, we are all born with no concept of "self." We construct a self-image, and our Primal Existential Self Image (PESI) is based in our earliest psychosensory experience, according to the Consciousness Restrucutring Process (CRP), (Swinney, 2001). We construct a self-image first of our bodies and their capacities and limitations through experimentation, and then of our essential nature as we gaze into the "mirrors" of our caregivers.
A child who generally receives positively reinforcing images of himself as they are reflected in the tender, loving gestures of his primary caregivers soon begins to associate these reflected subliminal messages with his own state of being in the world. In other words, he correlates being loved with being lovable; having his needs met as being worthy of having his needs met. In troubled families, however, the mirroring process goes awry, and children are at risk of forming an inner self-representation that feels defective and unwanted. When they are psychologically "twisted" and "bent out of shape" themselves, dysfunctional caregivers can be like distorting mirrors that reflect grotesquely distorted images of reality onto their children, (Wolin & Wolin, 1993).
CRP, which incorporates the traditional re-parenting and mirroring processes of Transactional Analysis, Jacqui Schiff and Virginia Satir, helps remedy any distortions from childhood through the mentoring process. However, the spontaneous, self-organizing healing process facilitated by CRP can completely restructure the PESI at the most fundamental level, rather than simply "filling in the blanks" a child failed to receive. The PESI is the primal experience of beingness; the primal self-image (hologram) that holds the primal dis-ease structure. It is existential in that it defines, at a very fundamental level, the nature of the self, the world and the relationship between them.
Our beliefs conform to this dynamic image, and these dynamics of the PESI also limit or filter our sensosry input. It is the deepest level of consciousness dynamics in which there is still a defined self and not-self. It shapes our perceptions based on the input of our senses and nervous system. Our earliest sense-images were experienced on the edges, or periphery of sensation and seem to go far beyond ordinary sensation. Our earliest awareness consists of these sensations, including those of conception and gestation.
Dis-easful dynamic consciousness patterns can shape the more superficial levels of somatic and psychic structures. They lead to deeper state of self/not self, into which a dis-eased self disappears or dissolves, and arises transformed out of the underlying chaos. This type of renewal, restructuring, or rebirth of the deepest sense of self is precisely a demonstration of resilience. Developmental theory maintains that occasionally a child will manage to distract himself from distorted images and will be drawn instead to more positively reinforcing image of herself in relation to her environment.
For example, she might look to others outside her immediate family for emotional support (despite negative parental legacies), or might develop interests in activities which help develop a sense of personal efficacy and competence. When this happens the child transcends effects of the poor parenting skills of her caregivers by essentially learning to parent herself in order to get many of her emotional needs met, (Wilson & Gottman, 1995).
This resilient child and others like her teach us that psychopathology and neurosis are not the inevitable result of growing up in a troubled family. Children can also grow to be increasingly resilient as they encounter adversity, as the following developmental theorists will attest and attempt to further explain.
Piaget and Vygotsky
These classic developmental theorists laid the foundation upon which most subsequent psychology is based. Piaget, in particular, introduced several useful information processing concepts, and the three that this paper will look at are stimulus assimilation, accomodation, and equilibration.
Assimilation refers to the ways in which people transform incoming information so that it fits within their existing frames of reference. Accomodation, the reciprocal of assimilation, refers to the way in which people adapt their frames of reference in order to process and store new information. Equilibration encompasses both of the above terms. It refers to the overall balancing-act that occurs between existing frames of reference and novel experiences, ideally leading to a sense of coherent equilibrium between the child's subjective inner and objective outer world. This developmental concept, key to Piaget's "stages"-theory of child development, would predict resilient life coping skills from a child possessing an innately adaptive, harmoniously balanced internal frame of reference, (Siegler, 1991).
Wolin and Wolin
From THE RESILIENT SELF (1993) came "the seven resiliencies" that the authors claim are often developed by the more adaptive survivors of troubled families: insight, independence, relationship skills, initiative, creativity, humor, and morality. One can imagine Piaget explaining these traits as by-products of the children's "equilibration" processes. Others describe these kinds of traits as evidence of an "internal locus of control", also known as "learned optimism," (Seligman, 1968, 1995); the result of innate, "positive personality characteristics," (Garmezey, 1983); or evidence of evolved "ego strength," as referenced by the following theorists.
John Curtis Gowan
Based on his work in creativity and with gifted children, John Curtis Gowan developed a model of development which bootstrapped off Piaget and Erikson, but included adult development beyond the ordinary or "normal" adult successes of career and family building, extending into the emergence and stabilization of extraordinary development and mystical states of consciousness. He described the entire spectrum of available states in his classic Trance, Art, & Creativity (1975), with its different modalities of spiritual and aesthetic expression. He devised a test for Self-Actualization, called the Northridge Developmental Scale.
Gowan outlines a developmental theory whereby we may tap our latent creative potential and self-actualization, organically growing toward the psychedelic or soul-revealing and illuminative states. He describes these states most fully in Development of the Psychedelic Individual (1974) and in Operations of Increasing Order. His use of the term 'psychedelic' does not connote drug use; quite the contrary he is strongly opposed to the developmental forcing and disintegration drug-use brings. He describes how dyplasias between cognitive and affective growth can bleed off developmental energies, resulting in dysphoria and displacements, leaving us feeling unintegrated, blocked or stuck.
He carries developmental theory past the concept of a strong coping ego. Fearing the loss-of-control by our egos, we may be reluctant to enter the soul-revealing stage of psychedelia and remain content to re-experience successes at our familiar or comfortable level of experience--usually expressed by the metaphor of "the American Dream,"--a cultural myth. Gowan considers plateauing out before these upper stages to be akin to lack of sexual maturation in an adolescent. Clearly, resilience as the ability to continually redefine oneself and experience are fundamental to this life-long process of connecting with Source and Spirit.
Developmental Self Psychology
Although it was Kohut (Rowe & MacIsaac, 1995) who authored the self-mirroring theory discussed above by Wolins, it was Wilson & Gottman (1995), among others, who investigated the concept of self-distraction, or attention shuttling as a positive coping mechanism in resilient children.
Their work focuses around the idea that "attentional processes play executive roles in organizing both cognition and emotion...provide a "shuttle" between the cognitive and the emotional realms, and that the abilities involved in being able to attend and to shift attentional focus are fundamental to emotion regulatory processes. Furthermore, we suggest that attentional processes not only organize both cognitive and emotional processes, but that there is a dual physiological basis for this organization, parasympathetic tone and the ability to self-soothe from sympathetic activation." (p.1)
The coalesced line of reasoning might go something like this: Since the parents did not fit the child's grandiose-mirroring-needs frame of reference, she did not identify with them as appropriate, dependable self-objects and their skewed reflections of her were not assimilated and accommodated into her psyche. Instead, she equilibrated, or "self-soothed" her imbalanced (possibly anxious) cognitive-emotional internal state by examining other available options for ones that might better meet her needs.
The related concept of objective-subjective self-reference as an adaptive "shuttle" mechanism was originally expounded upon by Vygotsky (1962) as he disagreed with Piaget's theory that children's self-talk was just so much egocentric babble whose usefulness dissipated with maturity. Vygotsky spoke of this "inner speech" as an important tool for children's and adults' problem-solving as it provides them with their own objective frame of reference from which to evaluate their subjective states.
Mary Watkins (1986) says that, "Far from revealing themselves as a primitive form of thought, these dialogues reveal the complexity of thought as it struggles between different perspectives, refusing to be simplified to a single standpoint," (p. 174). Blachowicz (1997) calls this healthy form of talking to oneself "The Dialogue of the Soul with Itself" (pp. 485-508). And Jung (Campbell, 1971) says that "The capacity for inner dialogue is a touchstone for outer objectivity" because, to the extent that one acknowledges the "other" within himself, he will be able to acknowledge it in the outer world (p. 297).
Summary
It would seem that although many children enter the world without adequate self-objects through which their emotional needs can be met, some of them somehow fail to internalize or identify with the neglect and/or abuse to which they are subjected. Instead, through adaptive attention-shuttling mechanisms such as self-dialogue, then later, self-reflection, they resourcefully learn to somewhat objectively parent and thus subjectively soothe themselves, and grow up to be emotionally strong and healthy adults. What is it that gives these children their resiliently resourceful, attention-shuttling edge?
Cognitive Theories of Resilience
Cognitive science has revealed many means by which individuals can develop more resilient ways of processing information. Emotional and Spiritual Intelligence are gaining equal respect as essential for our individuation. They are fundamental to our relationships to self, others and universe. Daniel Goleman's (1996) best-seller, Emotional Intelligence broke ground for Zohar & Marshall's (2000) Connecting with our Spiritual Intelligence.
Goleman tagged emotional intelligence as an "invisible third" phenomenon at work in our psyches. He explained how some of the brain's parts combine their energies in order to synergistically give rise to this new facet of resilience, which can be briefly summarized. When incoming stimuli are of sufficient salience and/or novelty to alter the body's arousal mechanism, the brain signals the adrenal glands to secrete hormones which then prepare the body for "fight or flight" via the vagus nerve, which in turn increases the heart rate and triggers a cascade of other physiological events.
Feedback from all of these events, comprising information about the current state of the body at any moment in time, is sent to the amygdal portion of the brain's limbic system. There, it is associately connected with similar kinds of information already stored there as "emotional memories" in order to assess the intensity of emotional valence. Meanwhile the factual content of this incoming information from the amygdala is associately sorted, evaluated and stored within the nearby hippocampus.
Since the September attacks, many of our systems are signaling us that we are in a perpetual state of emergency, and the body is kept in a continual state to respond to this perception. Thus, we suffer the legitimate and self-inflicted results of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We may become subject to the symptoms of that disorder, including a sense of loss of control, unresolved fears, nervousness, anxiety, sleeplessness or hypervigiliance.
Much of the basis of how we are reacting to this change in world order and disorder comes from our childhoods and those traumas we sustained then and afterwards, as well as how we learned to grow beyond them. Our experiential associations condition our present and future responses. They condition the rationality with which we assess the amount of fear we feel and its relative proportion regarding the risks we are exposed to in our lifestyle choices. It conditions how we respond to chaos.
Based on feedback received from the body, these two aspects of associative memory work in tandem to provide both the emotional tone and the perceptual distinctions which define and categorize human experiences. If incoming information is interpreted as an emergency by these two limbic partners, an "automatic" stress response is triggered which causes the body to respond in preset patterns of behavior before the rational functions of the neocortex have been allowed input into the situation.
Emotional intelligence is demonstrated by the individual who is able to interrupt the emotional feedback loop as needed in order to allow the brain's logical functions to assess the situation. The techniques by which this is adaptively and intelligently accomplished are what psychology calls "positive coping mechanisms."
Maladaptive coping mechanisms include those which succeed in circumventing emotional over-reactions at a cost of psychophysiological health to the individual, (Goleman, 1995). Goleman's expanded model of intelligence thus presents a compelling argument that it is actually intelligent emotions rather than intelligence alone which forms the core of human coping skills and thus makes it a "master aptitude," (p. 80). One reason some humans seem to possess more of this aptitude from birth, he explained, is because of genetic variance within the neural circuitry which controls arousal thresholds.
These thresholds in turn determine limbic-cortical and left-right-hemispheric attention-shuttling capacities which regulate emotions. However, these variances play only a part in the overall development of dispositional traits which, like the coping mechanisms to which they give rise, can be either adaptively or maladaptively shaped. So, what is it that controls the neurophysiology of emotional resilience and how can we make it work for us rather than against us? We have two distinct hemispheres of our brains, termed Left and Right Brain, connected by a dense network called the corpus callosum.
Springer & Deutsch (1993) have devoted themselves to studying the physiological mechanisms which underlie psychological processes by researching the specific effects that brain injuries have on mental processes. Data is gathered through the use of split-brain experiments which test the cognitive skills of those who have had a part of one of their hemispheres removed or damaged or the tissue connecting them severed. Their extensive research dealing with left or right cerbral dominance effects has led to some fascinating findings about the hemispheric lateralization functions of the brain.
For example, Left hemisphere-injured patients have been reported to display feelings of despair, hopelessness, or anger (often referred to as a catastrophic-dysphoric reaction), whereas right-hemisphere damage produces what is known as an indifference-euphoric reaction, in which minimization of symptoms, emotional placidity, and elation are common...ordinarily the two halves of the brain exert inhibitory effects on each other in the area of emotional expression, thereby resulting in a normal balance that is free of uncontrollable outbursts of any kind. In the event of damage to one side, however, this mutual inhibition is disrupted and the damaged side no longer exerts the same degree of inhibition on its partner; hence, the other hemisphere is disinhibited, (pp. 194-196).
A summary of some of these relevant findings shows that individuals with right-hemispheric dominance (in the past, usually females) are more skilled at perceiving and conceptualizing spatial relationships, and are more attuned to their subcortical systems which are involved in arousal and attention, thus are more receptive to emotionally-charged stimuli. On the other hand, those with left-hemispheric dominance (previously, usually males) have deficits in these areas, but seem superior in perceiving and categorizing sequential, emotionally neutral stimuli. Further research showed "an association between right hemisphere pathology (thus, left-hemispheric dominance) and abnormal heart rate response and skin conductance changes, both autonomic nervous system components," (p. 200).
Later in their book, Springer & Deutsch (1993) discussed recent data gathered demonstrating left and right directional biases ("spin") predominant in the life-generating activities of molecules and atoms. They quote French biologist Louis Pasteur as speculating that "Life is dominated by asymmetrical actions. I can even imagine that all living species are primordially, in their, structure, in their external forms, functions of cosmic asymmetry," (p. 320).
They cite evidence that DNA's asymmetrical qualities might be a significant factor in genetically influencing other asymmetrical aspects of the human body, such as hemispheric differentiations, organ placement, and so on. Their rationale is as follows: "The double strands of each DNA molecule encode genetic information in terms of the sequencing of component amino acids. The two long strands are wound around each other in a clockwise spiral; thus, the DNA molecule cannot be superimposed upon its mirror reflection," (p. 321).
In other words, its mirrored reflection represents a reversed image of the original DNA molecule rather than an image that could be placed identically onto its original; its right helix would be on the left, and its left helix would be on the right and its genetic codes would be read backwards. The laws of physics claim to work the same for any phenomenon's identically mirrored image as they do for the original phenomenon.
Only sequencing information, such as written information--like the DNA codes--do not reflect symmetrically, and thus introduce asymmetry into the application of natural laws. The authors cite evidence of other research that there is an "underlying cytoplasmic gradient operating during embryonic development that favors the left side of the body." They conclude that systematic asymmetries of morphology, molecular biology, and sub-atomic interactions are ultimately linked, and that there is, after all, an absolute, universal distinction between left and right, (p. 323).
So, our question becomes, "can we use this information about our brains' asymmetrically functioning "parts" to become more resilient?" The "triune brain" concept posits that we have three functional brains, not just--or two halves of one. The most primitive reptile-brain appeared in birds and retiles a hunred million years ago. It is the vicious, repetetive, instinctive territorial brain, that Pavlov and Skinner learned to condition. The mammalian brain, or limbic system was deposited over it, and originally tied in with olfaction. The neocortex is the third brain of higher primates and has produced human culture. De Beauport (1996) divides "behavioral intelligences" into three categories: basic intelligence, pattern intelligence, and parameter intelligence.
Later on in evolution, as creatures evolved from reptiles into mammals, the limbic brain as center of emotional intelligences came into being: affectional, mood and motivational intelligences. With development of the neocortex came a consciousness-generating partnership from which our rational, associative, spatial-visual and intuitiveintelligences were derived. She speaks of the cerebral cortex as "having a split personality"--her way of pointing to the hemispheric asymmetries through which the functions of the other two parts of the brain usually filter their incoming sensory stimuli.
Throughout her book, she describes a highly variable path of "learned" life experiences, from basic brain to limbic brain, to left and/or right cerebral hemispheres and then back out into the body, all of which, she implies, is designed to guarantee that information processing would be a highly variable and personalized phenomenon, not necessarily one that fits within the norms of someone's arbitrary IQ bell curve. The point is that engaging the emotions facilitates the learning process as alternative areas of intelligence come online.
Cogitive neuroscience speaks of Mirror Neurons asthe driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution. V.S. Ramachandran claims that the discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution is the single most important "unreported" (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. He predicts that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.
According to Ramachandran, there are many puzzling questions about the evolution of the human mind and brain:
1) The hominid brain reached almost its present size — and perhaps even its present intellectual capacity about 250,000 years ago . Yet many of the attributes we regard as uniquely human appeared only much later. Why? What was the brain doing during the long "incubation "period? Why did it have all this latent potential for tool use, fire, art music and perhaps even language- that blossomed only considerably later? How did these latent abilities emerge, given that natural selection can only select expressed abilities, not latent ones?
2) Crude "Oldawan" tools — made by just a few blows to a core stone to create an irregular edge — emerged 2.4 million ago and were probably made by Homo Habilis whose brain size was half way (700cc) between modern humans (1300) and chimps (400). After another million years of evolutionary stasis aesthetically pleasing "symmetrical" tools began to appear associated with a standardization of production technique and artifact form; a smooth rather than jagged, irregular edge. And lastly, the invention of stereotyped "assembly line" tools (sophisticated symmetrical bifacial tools) that were hafted to a handle, took place only 200,000 years ago. Why was the evolution of the human mind "punctuated" by these relatively sudden upheavals of technological change?
3) Why the sudden explosionin technological sophistication, widespread cave art, clothes, stereotyped dwellings, etc. around 40 thousand years ago, even though the brain had achieved its present "modern" size almost a million years earlier?
4) Did language appear completely out of the blue as suggested by Chomsky? Or did it evolve from a more primitive gestural language that was already in place? 5) Humans are often called the "Machiavellian Primate" referring to our ability to "read minds" in order to predict other peoples' behavior and outsmart them. Why are apes and humans so good at reading other individuals' intentions? Do higher primates have a specialized brain center or module for generating a "theory of other minds" as proposed by Nick Humphrey and Simon Baron-Cohen? If so, where is this circuit and how and when did it evolve?
The solution to many of these riddles comes from an unlikely source... the study of single neurons in the brains of monkeys. Rama suggests that the questions become less puzzling when you consider Giaccamo Rizzollati's recent discovery of "mirror neurons' in the ventral premotor area of monkeys. This cluster of neurons, holds the key to understanding many enigmatic aspects of human evolution.
Rizzollati and Arbib have already pointed out the relevance of their discovery to language evolution . But the significance of their findings for understanding other equally important aspects of human evolution has been largely overlooked.
Commenting on the emergence of language, Ramachandran says: Unlike many other human traits such as humor, art, dancing or music the survival value of language is obvious — it helps us communicate our thoughts and intentions. But the question of how such an extraordinary ability might have actually evolved has puzzled biologists, psychologists and philosophers at least since the time of Charles Darwin. The problem is that the human vocal apparatus is vastly more sophisticated than that of any ape but without the correspondingly sophisticated language areas in the brain the vocal equipment alone would be useless. So how did these two mechanisms with so many sophisticated interlocking parts evolve in tandem? Following Darwin's lead I suggest that our vocal equipment and our remarkable ability to modulate voice evolved mainly for producing emotional calls and musical sounds during courtship ("croonin a toon."). Once that evolved then the brain — especially the left hemisphere — could evolve language. But a bigger puzzle remains. Is language mediated by a sophisticated and highly specialized "language organ" that is unique to humans and emerged completely out of the blue as suggested by Chomsky? Or was there a more primitive gestural communication system already in place that provided a scaffolding for the emergence of vocal language? Rizzolatti recorded from the ventral premotor area of the frontal lobes of monkeys and found that certain cells will fire when a monkey performs a single, highly specific action with its hand: pulling, pushing, tugging, grasping, picking up and putting a peanut in the mouth etc. different neurons fire in response to different actions.
One might be tempted to think that these are motor "command" neurons, making muscles do certain things; however, the astonishing truth is that any given mirror neuron will also fire when the monkey in question observes another monkey (or even the experimenter) performing the same action, e.g. tasting a peanut! With knowledge of these neurons, you have the basis for understanding a host of very enigmatic aspects of the human mind: "mind reading" empathy, imitation learning, and even the evolution of language. Anytime you watch someone else doing something (or even starting to do something), the corresponding mirror neuron might fire in your brain, thereby allowing you to "read" and understand another's intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated "theory of other minds." Mirror neurons can also enable you to imitate the movements of others thereby setting the stage for the complex Lamarckian or cultural inheritance that characterizes our species and liberates us from the constraints of a purely gene based evolution.
Moreover, as Rizzolati has noted, these neurons may also enable you to mime — and possibly understand — the lip and tongue movements of others which, in turn, could provide the opportunity for language to evolve. (This is why, when you stick your tongue out at a new born baby it will reciprocate! How ironic and poignant that this little gesture encapsulates a half a million years of primate brain evolution.) Once you have these two abilities in place the ability to read someone's intentions and the ability to mime their vocalizations then you have set in motion the evolution of language. You need no longer speak of a unique language organ and the problem doesn't seem quite so mysterious any more.
Mirror neurons were discovered in monkeys but how do we know they exist in the human brain? To find out we studied patients with a strange disorder called anosognosia. Most patients with a right hemisphere stroke have complete paralysis of the left side of their body and will complain about it, as expected. But about 5% of them will vehemently deny their paralysis even though they are mentally otherwise lucid and intelligent. This is the so called "denial" syndrome or anosognosia. To our amazement, we found that some of these patients not only denied their own paralysis, but also denied the paralysis of another patient whose inability to move his arm was clearly visible to them and to others. We suggest that this bizarre observation is best understood in terms of damage to Rizzolatti's mirror neurons. It's as if anytime you want to make a judgement about someone else's movements you have to run a VR (virtual reality) simulation of the corresponding movements in your own brain and without mirror neurons you cannot do this .
The second piece of evidence comes from studying brain waves (EEG) in humans. When people move their hands a brain wave called the MU wave gets blocked and disappears completely. Eric Altschuller, Jamie Pineda, and I suggested at the Society for Neurosciences in 1998 that this suppression was caused by Rizzolati's mirror neuron system. Consistent with this theory we found that such a suppression also occurs when a person watches someone else moving his hand but not if he watches a similar movement by an inanimate object.
Ramachandran points out two major bifurcations in our evolutionary history:
The hominid brain grew at an accelerating pace until it reached its present size of 1500cc about 200,000 years ago. Yet uniquely human abilities such the invention of highly sophisticated "standardized" multi- part tools, tailored clothes, art, religious belief and perhaps even language are thought to have emerged quite rapidly around 40,000 years ago — a sudden explosion of human mental abilities and culture that is sometimes called the "big bang." If the brain reached its full human potential — or at least size — 200,000 years ago why did it remain idle for 150,000 years? I suggest that the so-called big bang occurred because certain critical environmental triggers acted on a brain that had already become big for some other reason and was therefore "pre-adapted" for those cultural innovations that make us uniquely human. (One of the key pre-adaptations being mirror neurons.) Inventions like tool use, art, math and even aspects of language may have been invented "accidentally" in one place and then spread very quickly given the human brain's amazing capacity for imitation learning and mind reading using mirror neurons. Perhaps ANY major "innovation" happens because of a fortuitous coincidence of environmental circumstances — usually at a single place and time. But given our species' remarkable propensity for miming, such an invention would tend to spread very quickly through the population — once it emerged.
Once you have a certain minimum amount of "imitation learning" and "culture" in place, this culture can, in turn, exert the selection pressure for developing those additional mental traits that make us human. And once this starts happening you have set in motion the auto-catalytic process that culminated in modern human consciousness. If its simply a matter of chance discoveries spreading rapidly, why would all of them have occurred at the same time? There are three answers to this objection. First,the evidence that it all took place at the same time is tenuous. The invention of music, shelters, hafted tools, tailored clothing, writing, speech, etc. may have been spread out between 100K and 5k and the so-called great leap may be a sampling artifact of archeological excavation.
Second, any given innovation (e.g. speech or writing or tools) may have served as a catalyst for the others and may have therefore accelerated the pace of culture as a whole. And third, there may indeed have been a genetic change, but it may not have been an increase in the ability to innovate but an increase in the sophistication of the mirror neuron system and therefore in "learnability." The resulting increase in ability to imitate and learn (and teach) would then explain the explosion of cultural change that we call the "great leap forward" or the "big bang" in human evolution. This argument implies that the whole "nature-nurture debate" is largely meaningless as far as human are concerned. Withthe genetically specified learnability that characterizes the human brain and culture that can take advantage of this learnability, human culture and human brain have co-evolved into obligatory mutual parasites — without either the result would not be a human being. (No more than you can have a cell without its parasitic mitochondria).
THE SECOND BIG BANG
My suggestion that these neurons provided the initial impetus for "runaway" brain/ culture co-evolution in humans, isn't quite as bizarre as it sounds. Imagine a martian anthropologist was studying human evolution a million years from now. He would be puzzled by the relatively sudden emergence of certain mental traits like sophisticated tool use, use of fire, art and "culture" and would try to correlate them (as many anthropologists now do) with purported changes in brain size and anatomy caused by mutations. But unlike them he would also be puzzled by the enormous upheavals and changes that occurred after (say) 19th century — what we call the scientific/industrial revolution. This revolution is, in many ways, much more dramatic (e.g. the sudden emergence of nuclear power, automobiles, air travel, and space travel) than the "great leap forward" that happened 40,000 years ago!! He might be tempted to argue that there must have been a genetic change and corresponding change in brain anatomy and behavior to account for this second leap forward. (Just as many anthropologists today seek a genetic explanation for the first one.)
Yet we know that present one occurred exclusively because of fortuitous environmental circumstances, because Galileo invented the "experimental method," that, together with royal patronage and the invention of the printing press, kicked off the scientific revolution. His experiments and the earlier invention of a sophisticated new language called mathematics in India in the first millennium AD (based on place value notation, zero and the decimal system), set the stage for Newtonian mechanics and the calculus and "the rest is history" as we say. It certainly did not happen because of a genetic change in the human brains during the renaissance. It happened at least partly because of imitation learning and rapid "cultural" transmission of knowledge. (Indeed one could almost argue that there was a greater behavioral/cognitive difference between pre-18th century and post 20th century humans than between Homo Erectus and archaic Homo Sapiens.
Unless he knew better our Martian ethologist may conclude that there was a bigger genetic difference between the first two groups than the latter two species!) Based on this analogy I suggest, further, that even the first great leap forward was made possible largely by imitation and emulation. This system of cells, once it became sophisticated enough to be harnessed for "training" in tool use and for reading other hominids minds, may have played the same pivotal role in the emergence of human consciousness (and replacement of Neandertals by Homo Sapiens) as the asteroid impact did in the triumph of mammals over reptiles.
Thus Ramachandran regards Rizzolati's discovery — and his own speculative conjectures on their key role in our evolution — as the most important unreported story of the last decade. Mirror neurons certainly bear on our discussion of the critical importance of mirroring in infancy, empathy, "mindsharing," and our innate ability to adapt and change: resilience.
Further, we see that technologies can facilitate resilience. And, not all technologies, such as language or consciousness engineering, are in themselves hardware or require hardware. The Consciousness Restructuring Process is one such "soft" technology.
Summary
We can fulfill the developmental process and develop our emotional intelligence to help us become more resilient. This facilitates information-shuttling between left and right hemispheres which intuitively facilitates the intelligent sequencing of information so that we more resiliently make use of our human emotions. From this enhanced state, intuitive information-sequencing facilitates evolution of resilient personality traits and adaptive coping styles.
We become increasingly conscious of our own ability to effect positive outcomes within our worlds. We can mirror the optimistic positive attitudes and aptitudes of our mentors. The process of co-consciousness or mindsharing involves a shared reality in which the integrity of the mentor stabilizes the journeyer even though they may be moving through the fear and pain in a highly emotional state. The empathic sensing, "mind reading," and compassionate reassurance of the mentor sustains the dynamic momentum of the process as it moves spontaneously toward natural healing.
Mindsharing comes down to us from the ancient shamanic tradition of spiritual healing.. "A shaman is someone whose specialty is induction of a well state, someone who may help either through research or treatment to induce a state in someone else's brain that will produce health," according to psychiatrist Arnold Mandell. "But the brain is an open, instrinsically unstable system, and its higher level order may be not just the wires and connection of a switchboard but all the turbulence and eddies of streams and waterfalls. And yet it has a statistical stability, an inertia. If it's perturbed enough, it gets more and more turbulent. It fractures, then organizes into a new regime. The brain is my cosmology. I sometimes think the rest of science is the brain's picture of itself."
CRP's dream journeys facilitate this restructuring through experiential process work. Inner journeys, using our dreams, symptoms, feelings, fears and pain as doorways to deeper levels of ourselves, allow us to exercise our right-brain functions much as intellectual pursuits exercise the rational mind. They also help us find and share our joy. We connect directly with our emotions, our non-linear irrational elements and the sensations that arise in our psychophysical being.
By directing our attention toward our inner process we connect with the eternal source of wisdom and our intuition comes to the fore. An inherent part of the process of changing from the inside out is that as the deepest self transforms, downline faculties such as beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behavior, as well as psychosomatic condition, automatically change as well.
Thus, resilience can be seen as the ability to dynamically change at the most fundamental level toward a more adaptive way of being in the world.
Psychodynamic Theories of Resilience
This conscious resilience initiates change at the most fundamental levels of our psychophysical being, including the genetic, morphological, and quantum field levels of observation. This is the realm where psyche and matter meet, where physics and psychology merge. A variety of depth psychologies and sacred psychologies address the meaning of these microscopic, even subatomic processes for our very souls as well as for the personality.
Notable among them are Psychodynamics, Jungian and Transpersonal psychologies and Consciousness Studies. They provide useful models for illuminating the nature of resilience. Psychoanalytic theory was the first modern view of the psyche to bring order to the chaotic world of the psychiatric patient. It provided a means of plumbing the depths of normal and atypical behavior by cataloguing symptoms and using diagnostic labels for mental disorders.
Pyschodynamics includes three inter-related theoretical parts:
1). the classical ego psychology of Freud,
2). the objects relations theory of Klein and others, and
3). the self psychology of Sullivan and Kohut.
Ego psychology conceptualizes the intrapsychic world as one of tension between the energy dynamics of the unconscious demands of the "superego," the conscious volition of the "ego," and the instinctual drives of the "id." This conflict produces anxiety, which brings forth a compromise between the needs of the id and the ego in the form of a defense mechanism such as a repression, suppression, denial or projection of the true facts of the situation to a place in the psyche where they no longer have to be consciously dealt with. Object relations theory differs in that it views the conflicts as being generated more within the context of relationships with others rather than strictly within oneself. In the sense of this external agency of conflictual tension, it uses the term "object" to mean "person."
According to Gabbard (1994), "object relations theory encompasses the transformation of interpersonal relationships into internalized representations of relationships." It is theorized that the individualized perceptions of these relational representations are psychically internalized, or "introjected." Thus, "at any one time different constellations of self-representations, object representations, and affects vie with one another for center stage in the intrapsychic theater of internal object relations."
Self psychology, on the other hand, focuses more on how the external relationships in one's life help develop and maintain a sense of self-esteem and self-cohesion through interaction with one's inner relationship with oneself. It is more of a "two person," self-object" psychology. In Jungian psychology, science meets mysticism. The "missing, invisible third" seems to begin to reveal itself. The universe merges with the individual in notions such as the collective unconscious transcendent function, synchronicity and cosmic consciousness.
Psyche and substance are seen as two aspects of more fundamental energy, which forms a universal substrate. The delineation between mind and body blurs. Jung superceded traditional psychodynamic theories by pursuing five assumptions:
1). the autonomy of unconscious psychic contents;
2). the teleological significance of the dynamics involving those contents.;
3). our memories, personal and transpersonal, are contained in our unconscious;
4). the unconscious is a highly receptive intuiting agent for the conscious self, and 5). there is a "patterning force" inherent in the human unconscious psyche, (Campbell, 1971).
Jung's work provided a whole new frame of reference through which human behaviors can be explained. This more mystical branch of psychology made friends with other sciences and developed interdisciplinary field theories which bridged the gap of the Cartesian mind/body split. It focused its understanding on the apparently acausal, non-linear connecting principle which unites mind and body into one seamlessly coherent wholeness.
Perhaps this more holistic paradigm can help explain how the dynamics of various resilience phenomena all fit together. Transpersonal psychology went a step further, incorporating participation in spiritual practices as part of a healthy, holistic lifestyle. They drew from the currents of humanistic theory (Maslow), existential philosophy (Gestalt, Transactional Analysis), and the pernnial philosophy of the wisdom traditions.
They emphasize beingbecoming. Like Jungian psychology they are process-oriented, largely experiential practices which reflect the complex interaction of aspects of the dynamic whole. Creativity, growth, and emergence of potential are valued highly. over This more holistic spiritually-oriented theory represents a somewhat "neo-Jungian" way of experientially reframing the energy dynamics of life as "a healing endeavor that aims at the integration of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of well-being," (Vaughan, 1993).
Thus, individuals can develop a sense of wholeness on all three levels of their identity:
1). the egoic, which requires a more adaptively cohesive sense of self identity with and yet separate from the world;
2). the existential, which while encompassing the egoic state, also requires a more coherent sense of one's individuated state within the human conditions; and
3). the transpersonal, which requires that one transcend the egoic, existential identities and enter into a heightened awareness of essential unity with all human beings, living things, and perhaps the cosmos.
Thus the healing dynamic in transpersonal psychotherapy switches from one based on the beliefs and values of the therapist into a reciprocally interactive healing dynamic where the content of therapy is the client's experience. In the interaction both therapist and client participate in a healing process.
This orientation is very close to that embraced in the Consciousness Restructuring Process. Both mentor and journeyer share a co-consciousness during which both enter the mindscape and sojourn deeper into primal recesses of the psyche. On the journey each is subjected to both the chaos and emergent creativity and deep healing inherent in the process. Healing does not come through the therapist, but through contact with the deep well-springs of life which brings rejuvination.
The resilience-enhancing function of transpersonal healing lends greater meaning to the contents of one's life experiences. It provides a greater context for one's life and its meaning and honors the values of the soul. Life experiences are transpersonally assimilated as its dynamics are therapeutically processed and equilibrated. In CRP, the old, outworn existential self-image is dissolved and a new healthier self-image emerges from the deepest unstructured part of us, repatterned by primal creative forces.
Psychodynamics helps us understand where we are wasting our limited energies in life--in neuroses, in useless worry, in self-defeating patterns, in pathologies, in obsessions, in projections, anger, greed, vanities, denial and other negativedefences and habit patterns. Our psychic energies are distributed among many demands being placed upon them, from both without and within the body.
Equilibration coping skills, such as defense mechanisms, help us budget our energy reserves so we can resiliently adapt to stressors as they arise. But when they outlive their usefulness, when they encroached when they are inappropriate, we feel stuck in developmental plateaus, depressions, or even may develop physical illnesses designed to disrupt or reinforce the status quo.
Consciousness Studies
Running concurrent with the thread of psychodynamic therapies is the current of Consciousness Studies which lately has taken the bedfellow of Complexity and Chaos Theory.
Consciousness Studies are multidisciplinary inquires into the physical, psychological and social nature of consciousness, spirituality and the cosmos. The realm of consciousness studies has shed light on the seamlessly welded relationship of mindbody, therefore many physicists, psychiatrists, and medical doctors have a strong presence in the field.
The most avante-garde in this arena postulate, with the ancient Vedas, that it is ALL consciousness--that all we perceived and experience is a form of maya, the construct of our filtering senses and mind. The latest finding in Quantum Cosmology, for example, tell us counter-intuitively that at the cosmic scale nothing moves--rather, space is expanding rapidly from every so-called 'point.'
Physics ran into the same conundrum regarding subjectivity decades ago in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, which required the observing presence of the experimenter to collapse the wave-function. This led to the development of the Uncertainty Principle, and the relationship has not yet been satisfactorily resolved. Now we find that chaotic systems do not respond statistically to probability, but with unpredictable yet deterministic turbulence.
Among the chief players are David Chalmers, Henry Stapp, Daniel C. Dennett, Karl Pribrahm, David Bohm, Charles Tart, Jean Houston, Stuart Hammeroff, Stanley Krippner, Alan Combs, Ben Goertzel, Ervin Lazslo, F. David Peat, Sally Goerner, Ruth Inge-Heinz, Jack Sarfatti, Timothy Leary, Jeffrey Mishlove, Rick Strassman, Michael Persinger, C.M. Anderson, Antonio Damasio, David Deutsch, Arnold Mandell, Arnold Mindell, Charles Laughlin, Eugene d'Aquili, Fred Alan Wolf, Roger Penrose, Ken Wilber and a host of others.
Perennial favorite journals include Journal of Consciousness Studies and PSYCHE, an online journal, as well as Proceedings of the Society for Chaos Theory in Life Sciences. Another notable conclave is the Tucson Conferences. Psychologists working in this field are bringing older concepts into the consciousness dialogue by updating their descriptions with new metaphors.
For example, Jung's concept of archetypes (as primal foci for certain kinds of energies in ourselves, society, the world and universe) are now spoken of as "Strange Attractors," the cores of cohesion around which non-linear processes orbit in unpredictable yet deterministic fashion. Perhaps the most progressive group is Dyna-Psych, hosted by Ben Goertzel, a founding member, like Graywolf Swinney of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences.
Complexity and Chaos
Theory describes the behavior of non-linear dynamic systems, fractal geometry, and the systematic behavior of nature as well as our nature, consciousness and health. It describes in eloquent equations deterministic inherently unpredictable yet ordered randomness, dimensionality, reflexive feedback loops, boundary conditions, and integration.
It is the realm of the irrational, of rich values and structure, of self-organizing emergent creativity, stretched time and folded space, global behavior, open systems, criticality, sensitive dependence, strange attractors, fluctuation, turbulence, perturbation, thresholds, trajectories, bifurcations, phase transitions, temporal density, reiteration, synchronicity, resilience, the "butterfly effect," subquantal chaos (ZPE), dynamic geometrization, probability, relativity, disruption, coherence and stochastic resonances, synergetics and tensegrity, self-reflection, nested cycles, the breakdown of order with sudden transitions, the creative and evolutionary "edge."
The new self-organizing order always emerges from chaos. The relationship of Consciousness and Chaos is being explored by psychonauts such as mathematician Ralph Abraham, biologist and morphogenetic fields proponent, Rupert Sheldrake, and psychedelic guru, Terence McKenna. They have spoken on the relationship of chaos and creativity and the resacralization of the world in Trialogues at the Edge of the West (1992) and the Evolutionary Mind (1998).
David Chalmers has pointed out, quite rightly since it has been a sticking point for decades, that the so-called 'Hard Problem" in consciousness studies lies in the realm of human subjective experience. This non-linear, non-quantifiable, yet tangible phenomenology has perplexed science, since science likes to deal with measurement and repeatability. To compound the subjectivity problem is that researchers are split in their commitment over whether to participate in experimental projects or not, just as during the 60s psychedelic revolution.
Experiments can become hopelessly influenced by experimentor-bias, which must always be guarded against. Added to this mix comes a host of new brain/mind material from the emergent specialty of Neurotheology, where new technologies which allow us to "tweak" the brain are beginning to show how our spirituality may be hardwired. Scientists now know what types of mystical experiences are associated with which parts of the brain and neural pathways, or circuitry. See Iona Miller's, "Neurotheology 101," for a summary and update. http://neurotheology.50megs.com/
The relationship between brain physiology and human behavior is notoriously difficult to understand and easy to misapply. Obviously, consciousness, subjectivity and human religious experience isn't reducible merely to an explanation of neural pathways. It is a mystery whether our hard-wiring creates the God-Experience, or whether God creates our psychophysical wiring. Today many researchers pursue both science and spirituality ignoring dictates that they are mutually exclusive. A false-dichotomy undergirds the dualistic perception of Dionysian vs. Apollonian, holistic vs. cognitive. It is the same dichotomy which falsely separates art and science, intuition and logic, spirituality and science.
Neurotheology and Consciousness Studies, in general, respect both science and spirit. It is a move toward holism, not a reductionistic analysis. Only when we embrace the functionally interconnected whole brain (dubbed Odyssean by physicist Murray Gell-Mann), not one artificially split in its functions into right and left can we move beyond mere conceptualization of a seamlessly welded quantum mindbody wedded or embedded in Cosmos.
This, of course is the ineffable realm of mysticism and Mystery, reachable experientially only through the suspension of reason and intellect, by God's mercy and Grace. The psychodynamics being developed in this complex field may eventually reveal even more deeply hidden aspects of resilience of the human body, mind, and spirit. Here, we tread on sacred ground, which has traditionally remained immune from the proddings of science.
Chaos Theory shows us that forms, including our forms, emerge, dissolve and reform through the creative process known as autopoietic self-organization. This is the new direction in evolutionary forces. New mind/brain technologies such as electromagnetic manipulation show once again that technological interventions can facilitate resilience. In this pursuit of the deepest secrets of Nature and our nature, we may in fact find the way to our own soul, facilitating our own resilience.
Experiential therapy sessions have shown that as consciousness journeys deeper and deeper into the psyche, it eventually encounters a state characterized either as "chaotic" or void of images. Those emerging from this non-ordinary state of consciousness report an increased sense of well-being ranging from mood alteration to profound physiological changes. We know that research has shown that imagery can affect the immune system. Imaginal journeys in the autonomous stream of consciousness may activate, through REM dynamics, psychosomatic healing forces, such as the placebo effect and the resilience response.
Summary of Psychological Resilience and CRP
Cause effect relationships about mental illness would seem to be the province of psychology, but how can that be when a plethora of theories prevail, and all these seemingly disparate models "work" to a greater or lesser degree. In psychology it is even difficult to define the terms sufficiently to even begin a reduction of mind to the underlying substrate of brain. However a deductive cause and effect explanation for how higher cortical processes translate in "thoughts" is not the limit of the purview of the psychologist. Nor are inductive correlationist explanations the mainstays of psychology either. The successes of psychology are the many and myriad practical ones, some of which we are aware of from our daily lives. Yet, to be sure, like psychiatry, psychology holds a very powerful position in modern society.
One practical model from the repertoire of psychology is the concept or phenomenon of learned helplessness. Animals, can be experimentally discouraged from leaving their cages even with open doors after certain negative treatments and instilling fears. They narrow their sphere of response and freedom options creating an emotional response pattern. Learned helplessness is the opposite of resilience. More resilient cognitions are translated into their functional, neurophysical equivalents in the body when we relearn or cognitively reframe our emotional response patterns. Somehow this functions to rearrange corresponding neurological structures in order to better compensate for their innate and learned asymmetrical imbalances.
This equilibrative act of emotional intelligence allows the energy tensions within the body to become more resiliently balanced and the emotions to be more intelligently managed. In this therapeutic model, the transpersonal process is facilitated by the balanced energies of the therapist providing an equilibratively therapeutic, empathic "container" within which the contents of the patient's experiential history can be placed, and from which newly assimilated, healing, transformative energies can emerge. While this outside/in method is useful for healing at superficial levels, CRP operates in an inside/out process. The move inward comes when an emotionally intelligent choice is made to seek healing through the journey process, often beginning with a dream.
The positive results, emotionally and cognitively, as well as behaviorally are the result of a fundamental shift in self-image which automatically gives rise to different thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The therapist assumes the role of co-adventurer or mentor at best to facilitate and deepen the process, to lead the client passed their fear and pain, so natural spontaneous healing can take place. CRP bootstraps off the "alchemy" of Jung's transference and transcendent functions. Jung noticed that certain images and stories kept reoccuring in human experience and the myths of all cultures.
Jung also discovered the healing power of the shamanic or "mana personality" or healer archetype and its potential to influence psychic change at a primordial level; he practiced the mentoring process as well. He postulated the existence of a "collective unconscious" from which archetypal or mythic patterns emerge. He noticed the correlation between the medieval language of alchemy, with its imagery of cooking and refining base metal into gold and the process of psychological transformation. Jung identified archetypal images that play an important role in our psychological and cultural make up. These include such pervasive principles as the Shadow, anima-animus (female-male principle), and the Self.
When these dynamics become unbalanced, Jung resorted to a variety of analytical and dream techniques, intuitively balancing left and right hemispheres. Comprehending the nature of archetypes as they play through our lives, helps us look at our ups and downs with a certain degree of philosophical detachment, such as that known in Buddhism as the Observer Self.
Jung pioneered exploring this level of consciousness dynamics; yet CRP goes even deeper all the way into undifferentiated chaos, though often exploring imagery related to these powerful psychic forces. CRP allows these emotional tensions a way to be heard, deeply felt, discharged and transformed in experiential process work, in a safe healing atmosphere. CRP invites full participation.
Campbell (1988), Krippner & Feinstein (1997) have pointed out how personal mythology can shape a life, at a level even deeper than that of the belief system. Journeys often cross the realms of both personal and collective mythology, and sometimes milestones of the higher levels of spiritual journeys or mystical experience appear spontaneously, even when the person is unaware of their archetypal meaning. Journeys often reflect a spiritual essence, which transpersonal psychology attempts to embody. Sojourners often report experiences corresponding with descriptions of cosmic consciousness, of feeling at one with nature, God, or the universe.
CRP invites full participation, and may be done on a regular basis to process issues as they arise...almost as a meditation. As this deeply transformative process works, the client experiences healing and becomes more highly conscious and individuated, more integrated, self-realized, more harmoniously balanced and possibly spiritually-oriented, and resiliently whole. It is more than an image or a metaphor; it is a new lived reality, a new sense of being. What began as an exploration into developmental, cognitive and psychodynamic resilience frames of reference has now become an equilibrating act of conscious accommodation of, participation in and assimilation of the rich contents of a conceptual and experiential buffet.
PART II: THE TAO OF RESILIENCE by Peggie Southwick and Iona Miller
Asklepia Foundation, ©1998/2002
PHYSIOLOGICAL RESILIENCE
Evolution and Natural Selection Human Ethology
- Ethnology and Mythology --[Brain symbol & Experience; ritual soothing]
- *Punctuated Equilibrium
- Summary
- Somatotypes
- Genetic Alternations
- Summary
- Homeostasis an the Autonomic Nervous System
- Stress Vulnerability of Infants
- Stress Vulnerability in Children and Adults
- Summary
PHYSIOLOGICAL RESILIENCE
The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from these laws and reconstruct the universe. (Phillip W. Anderson, 1972)
What at first may appear to be evolving into another reductionistic view of our human origins is not what it seems. While it is the goal of this paper to establish a lowest common denominator, so to speak, of what makes the universe resilient, this is not meant to imply that any actual human comprehension of such a force, or entity, or set of laws, is possible. It is meant, rather, to clarify somewhat what it is that we do not know. That having been said, the second leg of this exploration into the jungle of resilience theories can now begin--a journey along which many useful twigs, branches and vines have already been gathered upon which to structure yet another theory.
This next section begins in the jungle with mankind's earliest ancestors and journeys onward along the evolutionary ladder to examine the more specific effects that natural selection has had on determining who among humans would be born resilient, and who would be given the opportunity to work at becoming that way. Evolution and Natural Selection Elaine de Beauport (cited in Andrews, 1977) reminded readers of the primitive, usually repressed, instincts to which humans are subject:
We have to remember that we carry in us a whole evolutionary zoo. When we react in a given situation, we are not the sane, rational creature we would like to be. We are reacting just like turtles, alligators, and lizards to our physical boundaries, like dogs, rabbits, and horses to issues of bonding and affection. (p. 42)
Put another way by Dostoevski, "Don't let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them" (from placard; source unknown). In other words, history doesn't repeat itself; historians repeat each other.
Human Ethology Structural functionalism.
Darwin's theory emphasized that in living things, as in architecture, form follows function. He claimed that all of an organism's characteristics have, or at some time had, functional significance (Carlson, 1994).
In light of this, it is interesting to note that [r]esearchers now think biological evolution began in layers of clay, rather than in the primordial sea. Interestingly, clay is... a porous network of atoms arranged geodesically within octahedral and tetrahedral forms. But because these octahedra and tetrahedra are not closely packed, they retain the ability to move and slide relative to one another. This flexibility apparently allows clay to catalyze many chemical reactions, including ones that may have produced the first molecular building blocks of organic life. (Ingber, 1997, p. 57)
The mutually interactive effects of structural flexibility and energy catalyzation, as this paper will later demonstrate, are critically important aspects of our evolutionary resilience. Regarding Darwin's process of natural selection, mutations are changes in the chromosomes of sperms and eggs that join together and develop into new organisms...Most mutations are deleterious: The offspring either fails to survive or survives with some sort of deficit. However, a small percentage of mutations are beneficial and confer a selective advantage to the organism that possesses them. (Carlson, 1994, p.8)
In other words, those elements or forms that are the most stable or functional will be the most likely to continue to exist and pass on their more resilient traits to future generations. This includes instinctive behavior patterns as well as physical characteristics. Thus, as form has followed function in this manner over the generations, clues to original forms and functions have been passed along also, --but only those of the most resilient sorts. Not all patterned behavioral responses are carved in genetic codes, however. "Many of them are learned through interactions of the organism with its environment during its lifetime. ...However, the ability to learn [those] new behaviors...must surely be genetically determined" (Petri, 1991, p. 26).
Petri goes on to explain that ethology is involved in the study of the biological evolution, development and function of behaviors, some of which are conceptualized as "consummatory" and others which are seen as more "appetitive." Well-coordinated and established patterns of stimuli and responses fall into the former assimilative category, while more flexible and adaptive, or accommodative, learning behaviors define the latter. It is further theorized that each learned behavioral response has its own state-dependent energy-pattern memory called its "action specific energy" which is only triggered or "released" by the "fixed action pattern" within which it was originally learned. These automatic behavioral responses can be triggered by environmental, "key" stimuli, or by their interactive "social releasers."
A renowned ethologist named Tinbergen (Petri, 1991) proposed a somewhat Freudian-Maslowian (libido-needs) hierarchical model of these instinctive and learned behavior patterns in which each level of the hierarchy could be triggered only after enough energy had built up within the structure preceding it to create an imbalance. This on-going feedback-loop, or equilibrative process, was portrayed as reversible, so that when the lower levels had expended their built-up energies, they would no longer be triggerable and thus would help create a reciprocal build-up of tension within the higher-ranking structures.
Ethnology and mythology
Ethnology is the anthropological study of the comparative cultures of different peoples. Mythology is the study of the stories that people of various cultures have used over time to explain life and proscribe behaviors in a manner consistent with their beliefs and values. In essence, myths are living metaphors of meaning for those through whom they are created and preserved (Campbell, 1988).
Cytowic (1993) gives an example of how this process works: A metaphor is often defined as experiencing one thing in terms of another...Metaphoric understanding is the ability to perceive similarity among seemingly dissimilar objects....{For example] the structure of our spatial concepts emerges from our direct physical experience {of our physical orientation in space]....By switching metaphors, we alter how we comprehend something and thus alter reality. (pp.207, 209)
Thus it can be inferred that as proscribed motivators of human behavior, mythic metaphors can be said to provide a behavioral learning function similar to the conditioned social releasers described above. In other words, one of the primary evolutionary functions of myth must have been to provide a cultural repertoire of pre-programmed behavioral responses, or coping skills. In addressing the more personal implications of individual, as opposed to collective, mythological experiences, Campbell (1988) says dreams are manifestations in energy form of the energies of the body in conflict with one another. That is what myth is. Myth is a manifestation in symbolic images, in metaphorical images, of the energies of the body in conflict with each other. This organ wants this, that organ wants that. The brain is one of the organs. (p. 39)
Thus, he implied that the function of myth followed the form, or patterns, of the energy from which it arose in the human body. Put another way, one's personal myth is an outer-world reflection of its inner-world state. Thus it can be assumed that, according to Tinbergen's model, whichever levels of one's inner state-of-affairs has the most built-up tension within it will be the one exerting the greatest influence on its outer world in the form of dream and images and the behavioral responses their stimuli might be likely to trigger.
Summary
Thus it can be deduced that human evolution has been greatly facilitated--or, made more resilient--by the creation and maintenance of individual and collective myths. By serving as a rather unconscious kind of objective-subjective self-referencing, or inner dialog of humans with themselves, ideally, myths enabled them
(a) to somewhat unconsciously alter, as needed, their conscious frame of reference so that increasingly complex levels of new stimuli could be more easily assimilated and accommodated, and
(b) to learn to consciously accept and honor the "other" in the outer world as they were able to learn to consciously accept and honor the "other" within themselves. It is in this sense that mankind has been able to create metaphoric forms and functions paralleling his own physical form and its function,-- "metaphorms" (Siler, 1997, p. 8), if you will. From the energy patterns formed within his body and mind, he has metaphorically re-constructed himself within the outer world, thus effectively facilitating his own evolution.
Morphogenetic Engineering
So, what kinds of individual mythologies must be evolved in order to help "metaphorm" a more resilient myth for our current global collective?
If the outer-world symbols from which personal mythologies arise originate from within the energy dynamics of the body, might therapeutic intervention at the mind-body level actually be able to reverse this mythology-creating process? Can we actually consciously facilitate the mind-body evolution of mankind's resilience, or are we simply the linear by-product of evolutionary genetics as classical science steadfastly maintains?
Dispositional Types
Chess & Thomas (1986) have done a very thorough job of researching the temperaments that people are born with, and have concluded that none of the types are immutable; all are amenable to change over time. What kinds of dispositional energies, or archetypal characteristics, need to be formed before they can function to metaphorm culturally into symbols depicting, for example, the value of harmony and order?
The following "shopping list" provided by Chess & Thomas remind readers that these dispositional characteristics are not "all or nothing" phenomena, but exist on mutually interactive continua (p. 116). Thus, (a) one's innate energy level manifests through his characteristc activity level when other motivational factors are minimal or absent: (b) Rhythmicity is correlated with the regularity with which one daily lives, with one's habituality, or tendency to maintain stable behavioral patterns over time; (c) Approach/withdrawl is about one's typical response to novel stimuli such as new events or people; (d) Adaptability speaks for itself, but (e) threshold level requires more explanation: it is involved with one's innate sensitivity to arousal, as discussed earlier in this paper; (f) The intensity of one's reactions is about emotional regulation; (g) mood quality is self-explanatory; (h) distractibility, as discussed earlier, has to do with one's ability to selectively attend to incoming stimuli; and finally, (i) persistence and attention span measure's one's ability to maintain focused energy over time. (Chess & Thomas, 1986)
So, a flexible, homeostatic balance of each of these innately or purposefully acquired inner-reality personality states would be needed in order to provide the archetypal matrix which a harmoniously resilient personality type could evolve. Just as humans inherit various combination of these temperament traits, they are simultaneously subject to the throw of genetic dice before they are issued a body. It is because of the strong mind/body connection to cultural archetypes and myths that research related to body types will now be examined.
Somatotypes
Over 60 years ago Sheldon (cited in Hall & Lindzey, 1970) wrote about constitutional psychology, asserting that human behavior is related in important respects to observable physical aspects of the individual's psychological make-up. Actually, this school of thought has been around for centuries, (usually in the for of social prejudices and racial bigotry) and was openly shared by Hippocrates. In defining his terms, Sheldon explained that ...constitution refers to those aspects of the individual which are relatively more fixed and unchanging-- morphology, physiology, endocrine function, etc. --and may be contrasted with those aspects which are relatively more labile and susceptible to modification by environmental pressures, i.e., habits, social attitudes, education, etc... (p. 339)
Sheldon's work spanned decades and involved thousands of first-hand observations of variations and somatotypes, thoroughly documenting and categorizing each significant correlation between physique and temperament found to be consistent over time (Hall & Lindzey, 1970). A brief summary of his findings can best be undertaken by first explaining some basic morphogenetic facts of life. At about the 16th day after conception, a fertilized human ovum becomes implanted in the uterine wall and begins differentiating into its embryonic stage by developing the three primary "germ" layers from which three kinds of cells evolve in the body as dictated by its unique genetic codes. From the ectoderm are formed, among other things, all of the nerve tissues of the body, and all epidermal tissues such as skin and hair cells; from the mesoderm are formed, among other things, skeletal, smooth, and cardiac muscle tissues, and cartilage, bone and other connective endothelial tissue; and from the endoderm is formed, among other things, the epithelial tissues of most of the body's organs and glands. (Marieb, 1989)
It was from these three embryonic tissues types that Sheldon derived the descriptors for his somatotypes. As ectomorph, whose ectodermal development was predominant, "is linear and fragile...usually thin and lightly muscled...but the largest brain in proportion to his size". A mesmorph's body, whose mesodern had become most highly developed "is hard, rectangular, with a predominance of bone and muscle". An endomorph, whose endodermal tissues were genetically favored, "is characterized by softness and a spherical appearance...an underdevelopment of bone and muscle, and highly developed viscera".
Sheldon described the various components of temperament that he had observed in relation to somatotypes, including the correlation strengths found among them. For example, he found viscerotonia most closely correlated with endomorphy in that is characterized by what he called "a general love of comfort" (Hall & Lindzey, 1970, p. 359) implying a rather sensuous person. He went on to describe this type as relaxed, even-tempered, and sociable. He most strongly associated somatotonia with mesomorphy because it was characterized by "love of physical adventure, risk-taking, and a strong need for muscular and vigorous physical activity" (p. 359).
He noted strong parallels also between cerebrotonia and ectomorphy, describing this type as having an introverted, often self-consciously withdrawn, inhibited, "cerebral", -- perhaps more studious or analytical -- nature. From all of these variables, Sheldon developed elaborate rating scales for both temperament and somatotypes, taking into consideration, of course, the many kinds of combinations that occur in any single individual and the manner in which they are combined. Because of his strong belief that the connection between one's physical composition and one's temperament has powerful influences upon character development, he strongly encouraged psychotherapists to include his findings in their diagnostic procedures. He suggested that "the success or reward that accompanies a particular mode of responding is a function not only of the environment in which it occurs, but also of the kind of person (type of physique) making the response" (Hall & Lindzey, 1970, p. 364.
Sheldon was apparently somewhat of a radical thinker, in many way ahead of his time. For example, while "unconscious processes" were becoming hot topics in his field, he was inclined to matter-of-factly equate those functions to their underlying biological forms. He hypothesized that "the unconscious is the body" and that "the reason there is so much difficulty in verbalizing the unconscious is simply because our language is not geared to systematically reflecting what goes on in the body. Thus Sheldon intuited what science is just now beginning to see: that psychophysiological processes are not merely the random result of genetics, but involve many complex interactions on all levels of reality, which all seem to metaphorically reflect one another.
Genetic Alterations
"The answer seems so tricky 'til you catch it in a flash," says Shapiro (1991, p. 1) of the excitement of unravelling a biochemical mystery with his students. He then continues: The secret of human identity now seems equally clear. The general human plan is stored in a language of four letters. Some modest spelling variations provide for our individual differences. We each carry two copies of the plan: One is taken from our mother and one from our father. When we reproduce, we shuffle and splice our two copies as if we were shuffling a deck of cards, then we donate half of the mixture to our child. (p.1) Ideally, each child is born with 23 pairs of chromosomes as a result of this parental shuffling, splicing, and donating process.
Shapiro (1971) compared these information-hearing entities its a massive 48-volume encyclopedia set composed of over three billion bits of information. He joked that if a human's genetic information were indeed published someone would risk a hernia to try to lift even one of the volumes. That fact is made all the more impressive, he reminded readers, when it is recalled that there are only four "letters" in the genetic alphabet.
It is not the intention of this paper to try to explain how genetic mutations occur; as Rossi (1993) has explained, "It is a very rare evolutionary event based upon chance errors in copying the information structure of the gene from one generation to the other" (p. 150). Besides, short of genetic engineering of our offspring, just knowing which genes makes a person more resilient is of little practical use. It is sufficient to know that our destinies are greatly influenced by genetics; the more those influences are consciously acknowledged, the more efficaciously we can learn to either change them or cope with them. Instead, here is some more information about the modulation of the expression of genes, since that is something quite different.
As Rossi continues: it involves gene transcription, the process of making copies of certain genes or groups of genes every second of our lives. These copies act like blueprints which are sent out in the form of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) to the "protein factories"...of the cell where they serve as templates for the manufacture or "translation" of the mRNA into new proteins. Some of these proteins, called "transcription regulators" return back to modulate the expression of other genes" ...Other proteins serve as enzymes that facilitate all the major functions of the cell, such as energy production...and the basic processes of growth, respiration, healing, etc. A third major group of proteins serve as the building blocks for the continual remodeling and replacement of the informational network of the cell as it communicates back with itself...and the rest of the body. (1993, p. 151)
Rossi (1993) explained that there are many inner and outer environmental factors which can interrupt the smooth transcription of genes in this manner. Therefore, because of the reciprocal nature of the body's interactional dynamics, simple events like developmental processes, hormone changes, stress, and even learning are all potential sources of modification to the genetic transcription process. On the other hand, Rossi speculated that about 30,000 of the body's 100,000 or so genes are available for modulation by mind methods.
Thus, Rossi and others have developed therapeutic hypnosis techniques which they believe can help individuals "retrain" the transcription of selective genetic codes by altering the neurochemical events which thoughts and behaviors are capable of inducing via their influences on the autonomic, endocrine, immune and neuropeptide system.
[The same is true of CRP]. indeed, his book presented some very compelling examples as evidence of this "mind-becoming-matter" phenomenon's potential for healing at any--and ultimately all--human levels of being. [Again applies to CRP]. A fascinating example of how easily genetic transcription can be altered was provided by Shapiro (1991). One effective way to destroy the meaning of a gene is simply to remove a letter. Genes are read in protein-coding areas in units of three. If one letter is taken out, all triplets to the right suffer "frame-shifting" and lose their original meaning. This comes clear with an illustration. Take the following English three-letter word sentence THE BIG CAT ATE THE FAT RAT Remove the B of BIG, and shift every other letter to the left, keeping the three-letter word structure, and you get THE IGC ATA TET HEF ATR AT (p. 136)
Summary
Now it seems evident that archetypes not only come into the world in different modifiable personality "flavors" but they also simultaneously manifest themselves genetically though different shapes and sizes of human forms. Extrapolating from the above findings, it seems that human forms arrive genetically customized with various combination of predominances. These include
(a) viscerotonic functions which take the form of softly rounded endomorphs with what Elain DeBeauport would describe as manifestations of the limbic brain's emotional intelligences, and Jung (See, for example, Campbell, 1971) might describe as evidence of "feeling" personalities;
(b) somatotonic functions which take the form of athletic mesomorphs manifesting a predominance of basic brain intelligences and "sensing" personality traits: and (c) cerebrotonic functions which take the slender form of intellectual ectomorphs demonstrating more of the neocortical functions characteristic of the "thinking" and "intuiting" personality types. The more resilient, emotionally intelligent person would possess the ability to skillfully shuttle her energies between these many brain/body states in order to maintain a stable balance of homeostatic life functions. But what would this balanced life state look like if we saw it?
Vagal Tone Measures of Resilience
Exploring the physiological substrates of temperament variations has brought forth some ground-breaking scientific research into possible neurological origins of resilience. Among the leaders in this task has been Stephen Porges (1992), who reported that "[m]easurement of cardiac vagal tone is proposed as a method to assess on an individual basis both the stress response and the vulnerability to stress" (p. 498). His methods involve monitoring the neural control of the heart via the vagus nerve, as indicator of homeostasis.
Homeostasis and the Autonomic Nervous System
In order to clarify the operational definitions of terms used in his paper, Porges emphasized that
[h]omeostasis as a construct was never meant to reflect a static state. Rather it defined the dynamic feedback and regulation processes necessary for the living organism to maintain internal states within a functional range....Thus, status of the PNS state parallels homeostasis. Alternatively, withdrawl of PNS tone is response to a challenge may define stress, and PNS tone in prior to the challenge may represent physiologic or stress vulnerability. (1992, p. 500; emphasis Porges')
He explains how the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) regulates all of the body's homeostatic (visceral) functions by (a) activating its "accelerator" (the sympathetic nervous system, or SNS) in order to marshall its defenses on behalf of the body's internal systems, and/or (b) applying its "brakes" to that system in order to calm things down and return the main flow of energy to the body's inner processes. Usually these two ANS systems function synergistically, one the reciprocal of the other.
Occasionally, however, they are characterized by dual activation, as they are during sexual arousal, or by dual inhibition as in situations involving states of high physiologic stress vulnerability and low levels of SNS protection from stressors. Because of its role in mediating the action of the "gas" and the "brakes" on the heart muscle in response to the demands placed upon the body, Porges (1992) demonstrated how the variations in tone, or responsivity rate, of the vagus nerve can reliably be used as a measure of a person's ability to cope with stressors. Since the body's "default setting" is in the PNS, or resting mode, high vagal tone would indicate a body at rest. Conversely, a low vagal tone would depict a stress-response by the SNS.
Stress Vulnerability of Infants
Even in the womb there are critical periods of vulnerability to suboptimal conditions (Nathanielsz, 2001). Growing bodies, even as simple societies of cells face special challenges. Shortages in exercise, nutrients or oxygen, or too many toxins, and problems in the development of sexual identity can cause the fetus to makes choices that may haunt it in the future, altering genetic blueprints.
Brain development takes priority, but may rob the organs of nutrients and create undesirable structural changes. Symmetrical growth retardation, normal growth and ultimate body size are related, as well as age of onset of sexual maturity. Each cell makes a choice to divide or specialize at some point, and the process is irreversible. Making up fetal deficits is difficult if not impossible. The stress-response (stress axis) in the brain and endocrine system is programmed for life in the womb. The stress-depression link or stress vulnerability is programmed before birth. Those who over-react to stress, pre- or post-natally tend toward depression, blunting the daily ebb and flow of cortisol. Optimal, not perfect, womb environments require a well-nourished, low stress atmosphere, soothing the 9-month ride.
Even then, birth-order (or premature birth) makes a significant difference.
1. Vulnerable periods occur at different times for different organs in the body.
2. Programming has permanent effects that alter the body's response in later life and can modify susceptibility to disease. 3. Fetal development is activity dependent. Normal development is dependent on the baby's continuing normal activity in the womb.
4. Programming involves several different structural changes in important organs.
5. The placenta plays a key role in programming. It is a hormone-producing gate-keeper.
6. Compensation carries a price. In an unfavorable environment, the developing baby makes attempts to compensate for deficiencies. However, the compensatory effort made by the baby often carries a price.
7. Attempts made after birth to reverse the consequences of programming may have their own unwanted consequences. Problems may arise when postnatal conditions prove to be other than those for which the fetus prepares.
8. Fetuses react differently to suboptimal conditions than do newborn babies or adults.
9. The effects of programming may pass across generations by mechanisms that do not involves changes in the genes. 10. Programming has different effects in males and females. (Nathanielsz, 2001, pp. 14-15)
Porges' (1992) study measured the cardiovascular reactivity of neonates. About half of the infants were full-term, healthy newborns, and the other half were high-risk preterm babies who had reached the approximate age of a full-term infant. All measurements were taken while the infants slept in order to screen extraneous effect from the readings. It was found that the high-risk infants had a significantly lower pre-stressor vagal tone than did the full-term infants, indicating that the preterm babies had limited PNS energy-resources with which to regulate their internal state when subjected to stressors. In other words, these babies were functioning with a limited or defective PNS braking and accelerating system, placing their health at risk from both interior and exterior stressors.
Some of Porges' other findings in relation to resilience included the observation that high vagal tone in infants is strongly associated with
(a) development of young babies' visual recognition memory;
(b) more rapid habituation of novel stimuli, or learning; and, (c) more sustained periods of attention. Researchers have found these skills to be "sensitive, prophetic signs of later intelligence" (Kagan, 1995, p. 555) Porges continues,
Moreover, the limbic system, assumed by psychophysiologists to modulate autonomic arousal solely through sympathetic excitation, has direct inhibitory influences on the cells of origin of the vagus...Parallelling this increase in vagal tone are increases in self-regulatory and exploratory behaviors. (1992, p. 503). Thus it would appear that, as Goleman (1995) similarly predicted, high vagal tone, as a measure of one's stimulus-threshold, and thus one's attention-shuttling ability, (Wilson & Gottman, 1995) facilitates intellectual and psychological development processes in children leading to potential higher IQ scores and a scholastic advantage as they approach school age.
Stress Vulnerability of Children and Adults
Porges (1992) extended his resilience research to include several related physiological effects of vagal tone's influence on body functions in adults. He found that hypertension involved people "with lead feet," so to speak, who kept the SNS "accelerator" pushed to the floor with little or no "braking." Diabetes, in keeping with this metaphor, is often suffered by those more easily overwhelms individuals with low vagal tone who chronically "ride" or "depress" their PNS brake. He could generalize like this from the neonate studies to the general population because [t]he quantification of vagal tone provides a standard instrument with statistical parameters that are comparable between patients and throughout the life span. The method is not dependent on stages of motor or cognitive development and thus is practical for use [at all ages] even with neonates. (p. 503)
Summary
Later we will return to Porges' work to examine the more intricate details of his research methods and finding in regard to this amazing system of energy "checks and balances." We will then be looking at how it all ties in with universal patterns of energy distribution management. For now it is sufficient to have some idea of what resilience looks like as a function of our body's responses to stressors and to know that some people are born with more efficient PNS acceleration and braking systems than other, giving them a distinct evolutionary advantage in the area of psychophysiological resilience. By extrapolation from the above findings, we now have a more efficient way to "drive," or modulate, our PNS-regulated bodies.
Summary of Physiological Findings
The causes of human behavior are varied and complex, and do not lend themselves to a purely reductionistic explanation. This is the circuitous path we followed in order to reach our present destination:
(a) From Darwin we concluded that because form follows function evolution has promised survival of the fittest functions;
(b) We then learned from ethology's "hierarchy of needs" model that man has indeed increased his chances of survival by learning new, more adaptive behaviors in order to maintain a more homeostatic energy balance;
(c) Then, ethnology and mythology illustrated that adaptive behaviors can be metaphormed from their body-state to their mind state by symbolically reflecting inner conflicts and resolution into the outer world;
(d) The subsequent exploration into variations in dispositional types showed how one's innate temperament is modifiable by consciously reframing "threats" into "challenges";
(e) We then saw how the characteristic behaviors, thoughts and attitudes of an individual appear to be influenced by his morphogenetic types, subject to possible modification through modulation of gene expression in the body.
(f) Porges' work gave us a more concrete way to conceptualize and measure how the body's physiology influences its psychological functions, and how those functions can in turn influence behaviors which can modify the body's physiology.
This now brings us to the place where mind and body meet: Psychophysiological Resilience.
References
Porges, S (1992, September) Vagal tone: a physiologic marker of stress vulnerability. Pediatrics, 90 (3), 498-504.
Nathanielsz, Peter (2001); The Prenatal Prescription; Harper Collins Publishers: New York, New York. Rossi, E.L. (1993). The psychobiology of mind-body healing (Rev. ed). New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
PART III: THE TAO OF RESILIENCE by Peggie Southwick & Iona Miller
Asklepia Foundation, ©1998/2002
PSYCHOPHYSICAL RESILIENCE
The Psychobiology of Resilience Information Transduction
- State-Dependent Memory, Learning & Behavior
- Ultradian Healing Response
- Summary
- Bio-mechanics of the Body-Brain
- Quantum Mechanics of the Body-Mind
- Summary
- Something-for-Nothing
- Alchemical Therapies, Holistic Remedies
- Summary of Psychophysical Resilience Findings
PSYCHOPHYSICAL RESILIENCE
There is no pure sorrow.
Why? It is bedfellow to lungs, lights, bones, guts and gall!
--Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
It has become increasingly clear throughout this paper that the facilitation of evolving consciousness seems to be both a primary function and a subsequent determinant of human resilience. It is to gain a better overall understanding of the mind/body dynamics underlying this concept that we now turn to the biological sciences. The Psychobiology of Resilience Rossi (1993) seems most qualitied to lead the next leg of this exploration into yet another way of conceptualizing this topic of resilience: the communications forms it takes on as it functions maintain a healthy range of homeostasis within the cells of the body.
To begin, Rossi explains that [b]efore life invented nerves to specialize in rapid communication between brain and body in large-size organisms, messenger molecules were the original form of communication. Even today, the activity of every single nerve in our body and brain is modulated by messenger molecules. This is the new and profoundly deep insight that makes a modern science of mind-body communication possible: Messenger molecules are the ultimate common denominator or "bottom line" of psychosomatic communication between mind, emotions, behavior, and the expression of genes in health and illness. (Pert et al, 1985; Kandel, 1989; Rossi, 1987b, 1990a,b as cited in Rossi, 1993, p. 136; emphasis Rossi's) Rossi's book began by citing the placebo response as evidence for a common, underlying mechanism of mind/body healing.
Since science admits that about a third of the population experiences an average of 55% of the healing effectss of analgesics "in their minds," he pointed out that it seems self-evident that there must be a corresponding phenomenon which can account for this 55% of the healing process that some patients experience outside the observed effects of their other treatments.
Information Transduction
Next, in order to lay groundwork to support the major premise of his work, --that consciousness is "a process of self-reflective information transduction mediated by the messenger molecules of the minf-body", (Rossi, 1993, p. 10)--he emphaized the importance of understanding that "and its transformations"all forms of organization on the psychological, physical, and biological levels actually are expressions of information and its transformations (p. 23; emphasis Rossi's).
Rossi provides an example: Wind energy is converted into the mechanical energy provided by the windmill blades that it turns, which--in tun, can be connected to a generator and converted into electrical energy, which can power appliances, and so on. Rossi further defined and explained some of the major terms and concepts of this theory: "The transformations between mind and body are called information transduction.
Tranduction refers to the conversion or transformation of matter, energy, and information from one form to another". Next he outlined how the limbic hypothalamic system functions as the major mind-body information transducer by converting neural impulses (the mind's informational units, or "codes") into their corresponding hormonal messenger-molecule communication codes through which all the major processes of the body are ultimately regulated. He explained that this process is called "neuroendocrinal transduction."
Candace Pert (1997) describes this process as an ongoing communication of the body's emotional states which begins at the neuropeptide level and works its way up the communication chain and back down again in a large, continuous feedback loop of many smaller feedback loops of information patterns. Another critically important level of information transduction takes place via the brain's ascending reticular activating system (ARAS), where sensory information coming in from all areas of the body is received through the brain stem.Arriving at the ARAS, information is filtered and distributed throughout the rest of the brain according to its relevance and/or novelty.
Thus the ARAS functions as the "wake up" call to the rest of the brain, alerting it to pay attention, focus, and learn whatever it needs in order to cope with, or adapt to, the incoming stimuli. This is also the area of the brain responsible for "attention shuttling" between the cerebral hemispheres, described earlier in this work as potential emotional intelligence. Specifically, it is locus coeruleus in the pons area of the brain stem which transforms novel stimuli into the heightened psychobiological states which set off the SNS arousal mechanisms via the ARAS. Dull, repetitive, incoming stimuli, on the other hand, lull the locus coeruleus and thus the rest of the body into a state of PNS relaxation, and if continued long enough, to sleep. (Rossi, 1993, p. 31)
State-Dependent Memory, Learning & Behavior
Abbreviated "SDMLB," this next major conceptual element to be explored by Rossi was briefly described as follows: "What is learned and remembered is dependent on one's psychophysiological state at the time of the experience....Since memory is dependent upon and limited to the state in which it was acquired, we say it is 'state-bound information'" (p. 49). In other words, every time a memory is formed in the brain, that memory encdoes within it the entire relevant quantum-psycho-physiological states that the body was experiencing at the moment that memory was encoded. Thus it is that when any particular body state is experienced, it can trigger any memory, or chain of memories, which happened to be encoded with similar SDMLB features.
On the other hand, many times a memory cannot be consciously retrieved from storage because a person has split himself off from awareness of his body's related feeling states; it has become state-bound. These blockages of memory from consciousness can be corrected by either spontaneous or induced trance states wherein the person relaxes and emotionally detaches from his consciously interfering ego state. This trigger a shift in ANS balance from sympathetic to parasympathetic control. It allows alpha and theta waves to be generated, and facilites a corresponding transcendence of the logical, linear, left hemispheric functions to the more holistic, experiential functions of the right hemisphere. There, the person can consciously access the memory/information state previously "lost" to him, because the energy oscillations of his body state are now in synchrony with the energy oscillations of the memory state being recalled.
The mind-body "split" has been reparied; holistic healing has occurred. (Rossi, 1993)
Ultradian Healing Response
The final concept that this paper will use from Rossi's same work is that of the body's natural ultradian healing response. On the average, ultradian energy rhythms peak about every 90 minutes with approximately 20 minute resting phases between them. Rossi and others have studied these 20-minute resting phases extensively, and have concurred that it is during this time that the body is naturally programmed to "reset" itself. Resting the left-hemisphere for a brief time allows the right hemisphere to experientially process the rational energic output from its partner and "give it a break." Ideally, it is during this break from dealing with the stressors of daily life that the body heals itself.
But since our world is not always so ideal, often these critical resting periods get phased out of our hectic schedules, throwing us to some extent psychically "off tilt." Rossi further explain an interesting related observation that supports the hemisphericity of the ultradian rhythms: When the resting phase "kicks in" the left nostril opens and conducts a major portion of the air flow to the lungs. This nasal process reverses for the 90-minute non-resting part of the cycle. [Ref. alternate breathing in hatha yoga]. Since the right hemisphere controls the left nostril, and the left hemisphere controls the right nostril, it follows that those phases must alternate between left and right cerebral hemispheric functions. Indeed, EEG testing does show that to be the case.
Thus it is theoried that one way to predict and control one's ressting phase is to pay attention to nasal breathing patterns, alternating them in order to adjust the ultradian cycle as desired. This can be accomplished, for example, by closing one nostril until the breathing pattern changes, or, if lying down, to utrn onto the left side in order to open up the right "channel," or the right side in order to activate the left one. "Thus the whole body goes through the Rest/Activity or Parasympathetic/Sympathetic oscillation while simultaneously going through the 'Left Body-Right Brain/Right Body-Left Brain' shift", as cited by Rossi, quoting Wernts et al.
Rossi explains how this left-right cycling of energies helps facilitate psychophysiological health.
[A] recent Ph.D. dissertation by Darlene Osowiec (1992)...found that "(1) there is a significant positive correlation between self-actualizing individuals having low trait anxiety and stess-related symptoms and a regular nasal cycle...and (2) non self-actualizing individuals with high levels of trait anxiety and stress-related symptoms exhibit significantly greater irregularity in the nasal cycle."
These results are reminiscent of the ancient texts that emphasize that an irregular nasal cycle, particularly one in which the person remains dominant in one nostril or the other for an excessively long period of time are associated with illness and mental disorder. (Rama Ballentine, & Ajaya, 1976, as quoted by Rossi, p. 183)
Summary
It could be inferred from the above findings that Porgas' (1992) high vagal tone indicators detected present resilience in neonates and predicted their future resilience as adults because he was actually measuring correlations between the magnitude and regularity of their ultradian SNS-PNS healing cycles and their nasal breathing cycles.
If this indicates, as Rossi claims and other research seems to confirm, that those whose ultradian rhythms/ANS functions are more psychophysiologically synchronized and are better energy transducers. That is to say, because of a more stable overall energy state within which they can process novel information, they are less anxious, develop better coping skills, and are generally more self-actualizing individuals. Thus, it would appear as though our search for the "lowest common denominator" of reislience phenomena has indeed been found. But recent findings in the field of psychoneuroimmunology will now take the phenomenon of resilience to a whole new level of energy transduction.
The Neurochemistry of Resilience
Neuroscientist Candace Pert is best known for her part in the discovery of opiate receptors in the brain, a finding which revolutionized biological science 25 years ago. She begins her book, The Molecules of Emotion (1997), with a brief overview of the mechanics involved in neurochemistry, the first part of which will now serve as an introduction for this section. Ligand is the term used for any natural or manmade substance that binds selectively to its own specific receptor and slips off, bumps back on, slips back off again. The ligand bumping on is what we call the binding, and in the process, the ligand transferes a message via its molecular properties to the receptor.
Though a key fitting into a lock is the standard image, a more dynamic description of this process might be two voices -- ligand and receptor, striking the same note and producing a vibration that rings a doorbell to open the doorway to a cell. What happens next is quite amazing. The receptor, having received a message, transmits it from the surface of the cell deep into the cell's interior, where the message can change the state of the cell dramatically. A chain reaction of biochemical events is intiated as tiny machines roar into action and, directed by the message of the ligand, begin any number of activities. ...In short, the life of the cell, what it is up to at any moment, is determined by which receptors are on its surface, and whether those receptors are occupied by ligands or not.
On a more global scale, these minute physiological phenomena at the cellular level can translate into large changes in behavior, physical activity, even mood. (p. 24)
Biochemistry of the Body-Mind
Pert (1997) continues to explain that ligands, much smaller than the receptros they may activate, are divided into three different chemical messenger categories:
(a) The smallest, simplest molecules are called neurotransmitters, and have been ggiven individual names such as acetylcholine, norepinephrine, dopamine, histamine, glycine, GABA, and serotonin. Constructed mainly of amino acids, these ligands are usually made in the brain to carry information between its neurons.
(b) The cholesterol-derived category of messenger molecules is known as steroids, such as the sex hormones found in the gonads as regulators of the body's sexual and reproductive functions, and cortisol, found in the outer layer of the adrenal glands as the regulator of stress responses.
(c) Peptides, (or as Rossi calls them, immunotransmitters), make up the third and largest category of chemical messengers, which provides about 95% of the body's total ligand activity.
Thus, according to Pert, those busy little strings of amino acids are involved in the emotional regulation of nearly every life process. Neuropeptides are now known to regulate emotions through their overall influence on the many reciprocal processes which drive the homeostatic mechanisms of the ANS, such as the activities of the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. The relative levels of these synergistic body-brain neurotransmitters are regulated according to available cellular energy resources and the demands being made upon those resources. (Pert, 1997; Rossi, 1993)
According to Blum (1997), "If serotonin is the Zen-master among neurotransmitters,...linked to tranquility, reason, and calm...dopamine is Pollyanna, responsible for the highs of infatuation, new love, joy, self-confidence, and motivation." It seems that the manner in which this neurotransmitter team functions in order to regulate homeostasis may be another related, key factor in asssessing -- and readjusting -- innate levels of human resilience. Dopamine, for example, initiates motor activity and influences attentional abilities because of its critical role in the regulation of emotions as discussed by Per and others, earlier. From its location within the limbic system, it is essential for rewarding behaviors with feelings of pleasure -- for reinforcing those behaviors which make us feel good.
Current implications are that people born with highly responsive dopamine systems would in all likelihood be more highly motivated, extroverted, goal-seeking, problem-solving individuals. In fact, researchers have located a gene that shapes the brain's responses to dopamine, resulting in what they describe as an extroverted, novelty- and reward- seeking person (Pool, 1997). Blum elaborates on this heightened dopamine responsivity by quoting Richard Depue, professor of human development, as saying that "goal directed behavior (or the lack of it) tends to stand out as a major personality trait" which helps determine how strongly one is innately motivated to pursue goals. Depue continues, "We have strong evidence that feelings of elation [that occur] because you are moving toward achieving an important goal are biochemically based, though they can be modified by experience," (p. 48).
In summary of these findings, it seems that some people are just naturally exhilerated by challenges; their dopamine resources are high and their stimulus thresholds are low, --they actually crave the stimuli of problems for which they can creatively find the solutions. Generally speaking however, dopamine responsivity levels vary as a function of situational demands being placed upon the body over time, and therefore are also subject to conscious modulation, cognitive-behaviorally or pharmacologically. Many recent findings, such as Porges (1992) seem to imply on the other hand, that serotonin-responsivity levels which are implicated in the regulative functions of the PNS, remain fairly constant within the individual, varying primarily as a function of fluctuating levels of SNS-facilitated dopamine.
Serotonin helps one to feel calm and serene as it works in tandem with dopamine in the regulation of mood states. Imbalanced interactions between the two are implicated in psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia; predominance of dopamine underlies attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorders; and undersupply of serotonin leads to depression. (Blum, 1997) More specifically, geneticist Dean Hamer has linked "neuroticisms" such as "anxiety, depression, hostility, and impulsiveness," to a gene involved in the production of serotonin. So perhaps some people, who are genetically deficient in the calming effects of serotonin and might thus be high in what Porges earlier called stress vulnerability, are more prone to develop anxious personality traits and their resultant pathologies.
Carlson (1977) chooses to metaphorize the dynamics of these reciprocally functioning neurotransmitters by describing them as the independent "volume controls" of the brain which act by "increasing or decreasing the activities of particular brain functions" (p. 63). He further explains that serotonin, mainly by inhibiting the actions of its receptors, is involved in regulation of mood, the control of eating, sleep, and arousal, the regulation of pain, and the control of dreaming.
Dopamine, on the other hand, functions as described earlier, by exciting and/or inhibiting its receptors. So, serotonin functions mostly by turning various brain "volume knobs" down, while dopamine can turn them up and/or down. Thus they seem to serve as dual ANS "frequency modulators," with dopamine, in effect saying, "Go for it!" and serotonin in essence saying, "Take it easy."
Bio-mechanics of the Body-Brain
According to Pert (1997) any point in time, some 50 to 60 neuropeptides, made in the brain's nerve cells directly from print-outs of its neural DNA, can be found traversing down axons and waiting "for the right electro-physical events" to occur which will set them into motion (p. 149).
This enormously complex system is kept in order by the high specificity of each of the receptors for its respective ligand and vice ersa. As Pert goes on to explain, The striking pattern of neuropeptide receptor distribution in mood-regulating areas of the brain, as well as their role in mediating communication throughout the whole organism, makes neuropeptides the obvious candidates for the biochemical mediation of emotion. It may be too that each neuropeptide biases information peocessing uniquely when occupying receptors at nodal points within the brain and body. If so, then each neuropeptide may evoke a unique "tone" that is equivalent to a mood state (p. 152).
The highlights of her work with neuropeptides as "emotional" body process modulaators involves the intimate relationship that these intra- and inter- cellular-state messengers have with the immune system. As her book explains in detail, it is through their mutual communications that the overall state of the body's health and well-being is thought to be regulated. This new "intelligent emotions" theory would seem to suggest that within a resilient, homeostatic mind-body state which is located somewhere between serotonin's blissful "absence of pain" and dopamine's euphoric "presence of pleasure" would lie optimum levels of psychphysiological health.
Given that emotions do have direct control over mind-body processes, the question that come to mind now is: What actually connects all of these emotional mind-body states at the sub-molecular level so that they can do their jobs? How does energy transduction take place at this level of functioning?
Quantum Mechanics of the Body-Mind
In her 1990 paper, Pert outlined her theory of how this translation of information codes occurs.
There are thousands of scientists studying the opiate receptors and the opiate peptides, and they see great heterogeneity in the receptors....However, all the evidence from our lab suggests that in fact there is only one type of molecule in the opiate receptors, one long polypeptide chain whose formula you can write. This molecule is quite capable of changing its conformation within its membrane so that it can assume a number of shapes. I note in passing that this interconversion can occur at a very rapid pace--so rapid that it is hard to tell whether it is one state or another at a given moment in time. In other words, receptors have both a wave-like and a particulate character, and it is important to not that information can be stored in the form of time spent in different states. (pp. 155-156)
To help clarify this image, Pert reminded her readers that receptors "are proteins consisting of a long sequence of amino acids, but the chain is all twisted up because of electrical and physical forces that cause it to assume a shape" (p. 156). She further explained the process showing that the molecular substance of all opiate receptors, in all animal life forms, is the same, --implying that each is just rearranged in the order and pitch of its sub-quantum vibratory frequency values.
Reframing this concept within its suggested metaphor, it can be assumed that all opiate receptors hum the same notes, just in 50 to 60 different melodies and rhythms. And thus, each of the 50 to 60 different peptides traveling throughout the brain-body are attracted to the receptor humming a tune like its own. When they hum together, they set off cascades of other vibratory compositions which eventually culminate in the opus magnum of a life's song. [Add Deepak Chopra Quantum body model]
Summary
In this section we have transduced information about human resilience all the way from its neuromechanical/biochemical manifestations in the body-mind to the sub-quantum realm of our existence. We have tracked this information flow (a) from the incoming stimuli's electro-chemical message to the pons of the brain stem, where it was evaluated and then relayed to the ARAS which, via the thalamus, alterted the emotional limbic-brain and/or the rational frontal lobes of the neocortex where (b) neuroendocrinal transduction occurred as the electro-chemical chain of reactions from the hypothalamic-adrenal pathway set the ANS in motion to secrete needed hormones, cytokines, neurotransmitters, and neuropeptides to carry its messages between the systems of the body in order to (c) set in motion the behaviors which will meet the needs of the body-mind. One could say that "(a)" above describes the function of the mind, "(c)" refers to the functions of the body, and "(b)" is where the body-mind meets via the process of neuroendocrinal transduction.
The Alchemy of Conscious Resilience
As the above theorists have shown, these mind-or-body categories ae useful only for purposes of intellectual dissection; the mind-body is one immensely compex dynamic of energy/information-transduction, or inter- and intra-modal communication patterns, that we call life. Many now regard human consciousness as the evolutionary apex of this dynamic process. One such theorist is mathematician-philosopher Alwyn Schott (1995), whose intriguing insights introduce this section with a metaphor of consciousness evolving along a "spiral staircase." Moved by the image of [a] ladder in [an] orchard, I propose a related image, a metaphorical stairway, that is equally practical. This stairway is a hierarchy of mental organization in which most of us, as we go about our lives, unqittingly stand at the two top steps or levels: consciously aware of the realities of our culture. But the lower steps are every bit as important to pir ci;tire as tje uppermost level. (If you don't agree, try taking them alway!) Thus, I suggest, consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, one born of many discrete events fusing together as a single experience....One might image this...hierarchy thus (p. 3):
- Culture
- Consciousness
- Brain
- Assemblies of Neurons
- Neurons
Smaller than the neurons, themselves made up of even smaller structures, other biological building blocks occupy the lower steps of the stairway. Hence the lower levels of the hierarchy might include:
- Nerve impulses
- Biochemical structures
- Molecules
- Atoms
Scott clarifies that this list is not dogmatic; it can change with the perspective of the observer to include any imaginable number of "steps."
Dynamics of Reciprocal Causality
So it is that Scott (1995) launched into an exploration of the "steps" which most likely lurk below the atomic level of his hierarchy; not coincidentally the same point at which this paper has just recently arrived with its quantum queries. Scott argues convincingly that "the most basic computational power of the brain derives from certain structures, quantum structures, that do not follow the laws of classical physics" (p. 8). The basic reason for this is because in the new physics, "space is not three dimensional, time is not linear, and space and time are not separate entities. Rather, they are integrated into a four-dimensional continuum known as 'space-time'" (Grof, 1993, p.7).
Within this space-time continuum, as Scott elaborates, the nature of causality is no longer simply linear, but is reciprocally derived from the multiple, mutually-interactive dynamics of the four dimensions of our existence. In classical physics, for example, Scott explains that energy is conceived of as existing in discrete functional units of energy, each of which has a specific frequency value which is added and subtracted back and forth in a complicated manner within its particular, collective wave packet of energy. He compared this phenomenon to the way "tones from the strings of a piano add and subtract to form the rich and satisfying chords of which we are conscious" (p. 13).
Elaborating on Scott's metaphor in order to clarify this linear versus non-linear schism further, most of us do not hear the individual notes of which the tones are composed, but rather, experience them as the continuous, smoothly blended flow of music. Classical physics can thus be seen as concentrating on the sequential aspect of the individual notes that are being played, while quantum mechanics examines the relationships involved in the interwoven vibratory elements of the music, itself.
Scott procedes to compare and contrast the exponentially-immense probability statistics of modern quantum mechanics with the linear computations of classical quantum physics where everything is presumed to be a direct function of something else. He demontrates that the most fundamental laws of our know universe do not hold true after a certain level of probability breaks down, or, in other words, after a certain levelof reciprocal complexity has been reached. At that point, everything becomes speculative, --a matter of predicting what will happen next, based on what has been happening. Thus, it is that the new physics transduces information from the limited, linear logic of the classical laws, or "notes of the piano," into the non-linear, highly probabilistic way of thinking about the reciprocal dynamics of its "musical interpretation."
As mentioned before, the numbers with which physicists now represent these quantum relationships are immense. This new, expanded way of undersstanding sub-atomic phenomena is based on (a) observations of molecular dynamics, and (b) calculations of chemical rate equations based on these dyamics. These calculations in turn are based on such huge numbers of molecules that their predictions ae, on the average, valid. And, so far, Scott (1995) admits, that seems to be the best that science has to offer in the way of exploring phenomena of immense proportions. He thus describes human consciousness as an emergent function of that unfathomable quantum dimension where '1' plus '1' does not necesssarily equal '2'. After all, as the next section will show, it is "only the effects of sub-atomic pheomena [that] are available to our senses" (Zukav, 1979, p.20).
Something-for-Nothing
Gray Zukav (1979) agrees that there seem to be "some evidence that consciousness, at the most fundamental levels, is a quantum process" (p.222). As he demonstrates in his own quantum physics treatise, it has been mathematically shown that sub-quantum particles/waves can perform some pretty amazing "dance steps" as they wiggle and jiggle about in attempts to connect and disconnect in ever new and more creative ways in their intimate interactions with one another. In describing how life works on the quantum level, Zukav explains that, basically, all energy is "created" from a "nothingness" that we call virtual photons. [actually this is the argument of physicist Jack Sarfatti, as told to Zukav who popularized it; see Sarfatti at Stardrive.org]
This notion can be summarized briefly. Cells are made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of atomic particles like electrons, protons, and neutrons, which are in turn made up of sub-atomic particles like leptons, mesons, and baryons. Each of these particles is also simultaneously an energy wave, and each of these particle-waves has an opposite "twin" somewhere in the universe. Actually, it is theorized that "an anti-particle is a particle moving backwards in time" (Zukav, 1979, p. 218). [again, a Sarfatti description from his Post-quantum physics, which should really be credited to him; he claims Zukov 'stole' all this weird science from him] When a quantum particle and its anti-particle collide, they mutually vanish in opposite directions in a "puff of light" called a photon.
A photon has what is called "zero-rest mass," because at rest, it has no mass. It's resting energy is always equal to the speed of light, which (from within our reality demension) can be neither slowed down nor speeded up. As Zukav explains there is another way that photons manifst in our universe, and in this, their "non-being"--being state, they are called virtual (as opposed to actual) photons. These virtual energy quanta, from our finite perspective, are continusously being simultaneously emitted and absorbed by electrons. This is the process whereby the electromagnetic force which holds all of life together is created and maintained.
In Zukav's words, "First there is an electron, then there is an electron and a photon, and then there is an electron again...but only for one thousand-trillionth of a second" (p. 223). It is during this leap into infinity--a state from which irtual particles never actually escape, but only seem to--that our finite reality shakes hand with infinity. "The electromagnetic force is mediated by virtual photons" (p. 225). The point here is that empty space is not really "nothing." Empty space has infinite energy....{a} virtual process gets triggered by a superliminal (faster-than-the-speed-of-light) jump of negentropy (information) which briefly organizes some of this infinite vacuum energy to make the virtual particle(s). (p. 223)
Zukav also describes two other characteristics of quantum particles which are that they (a) carry either a negative, positive or neutral charge, and (b) have a metaphoric characteristic known as angular momentum, or "spin." Spin actually describes "a particle's idea of spatial orientation as it moves away from its point of origin rather than any actual rotation" (Talbot, 1991, p. 36). Similar kinds of electrical charges repel one another because of their equal saturation of virtual photons, and opposites attract because of an unequal saturation of virtual photon energy. Neutrons are neutral. Zukav concludes, This dance of attraction and repulsion between charged particles is called the electromagnetic force. It enables atoms to join together to form molecules and to keep its negatively charged elctrons in orbit around positively charged nuclei. At the atomic and molecular level it is the fundamental glue of the universe. (1979, p. 206)
It seems as thogh Alwyn Scott (1995) best summarized the main point of this section when he said earlier: "Thus, I suggest, consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, one born of many discrete events fusing together as a single experience" (p. 3). He, like Zukav, was pointing to the wondrous complexity of quantum mechanical events occurring within each molecule of each cell of our human bodies, all of which are held together by the emergent, resiliently centering pull of infinitude as it exerts its forces over the push and pull of our finite states of being. Thus it can be seen that life exists not merely on the temporo-spatial plane of our linear reality, but also is suspended, somewhat simultaneously, within a timeless, massless, dimensionless level of reality. We are particles; we are probability waves. We are matter; We are energy. We are body; We are mind.
Or, as Grof (1993) says, "matter and consciousness are both aspects of the same undivided whole" (p. 10).
Alchemical Therapies, Holistic Remedies
Returning to the mind-body resilience paradigm, the non-scientific world has intuited and made use of these paradoxical forces of the universe for centuries--perhaps as long as mankind has existed--or longer, in nature (Whitmont, 1993). Naturopathic and homeopathic remedies have long been around in the form of shamanic and other religious and cultural healing practices.
Modern medicine is just now beginning to acknowledge the validity of holistic healing practices such as acupuncture, network chiropractic, holotropic breathing, therapeutic hypnosis, prayer, meditation, and empathic attunement (Lytle, 1996).
According to Whitmont, each of these healing remedies in their own way utilizes the mysterious power of what might be described as the world-mind to modulate the mysterious energies of the human body-mind.
Homeopathy confronts us with the seeming paradox of non-substantial substance, a paradox that modern physics is barely beginning to help us understand. It reveals the whole spectrum of potential for human and animal disease (as well as the parameters for its healing), spread our and mirrored in the various substances that constitute the material body of our planet. The morphology of one not only reflects but functionally expresses the dynamic of the other. It is as though our conflicts and illnesses and their cures are aspects of the "stuff" of which our earth itself is made, and that they are perhaps incorporated in such a way as to become conscious of themselves through human self-awareness. Thus, what we call consciousness is the focal point upon which psychic, somatic, and outer world events seem to converge in what might turn out to be a shared evolutionary transformation. The planet and our own nature may evolve through dramatic crises and their resolutions. (p. xi)
The manisfestion of this universal energy source, within which holistic healing energies are intuitively or consciously aligning themselves, seems to vary as a function of the specific energy-state message transduced by each kind of messenger, which, in turn varies as a function of the energy-state messages of other organisms around it. That is why, for example, some find healing through prayer, while others achieve it through rituals, and others through the ingestion of natural remedies.
As Grof (1993) has concluded,
the universe of everday life, which appears to us to be composed of solid, discrete objects, is actually a complex web of unified events and relationships. Within this new context, consciousness does not just passively reflect the objective material world; it plays an active role in creating reality itself. (p. 6)
Summary of Psychophysical Resilience Findings
Since we now are aware that we live in "a universe that is an infinitely complex system of vibratory phenomena" (Grof), fluctuating levels of consciousness can be metaphorically viewed as the oscillating energy conduit through which information is both sent and received between vibratory domains of our existence.
Thus, since energy transduction occurs at all levels of reality with or without the aid of conscious attention, it follows that it is the efficacy, or the stable, efficient regularity with which any life form is able to redirect, or shuttle, its energies in order to access its needed higher energy resources that constitutes that life form's level of resilience. Conscious awareness facilitates the redirection of energy flow in order to get its life needs met. As Jung was quoted by Sharp (1991), the psyche in general behaves simultaneously as the "scale" along which consciousness 'slides'" and as the "totality of all psychological processes, both conscious and unconscious" which slide along that scale (p. 107). Also, on the human level, the psyche is aware of both of these aspects of its own being. Since we humans are (theoretically) more highly conscious than other life forms, it seems that we must function somewhat as the sensory organs and brain of Mother Earth; as such, we seem to represent its supreme energy-transducing life form.
Summary of the Spectrum of Psychophysical Resilience Findings and CRP
So, putting this together with an analogy borrowed from the finding of Candace Pert (1997),it would seem that just as the earth contains life forms as its energy transduction messengers, the soma is the material container for the workings of its messenger molecules, and the psyche contains the ultimate energy "messenger particles" through which information is to be transduced between its states of finitude and infinitude.
The message that the psyche shuttles between these states seems to be written in vibratory codes through which its information is transmitted as it meets and communicates with its mutually resonant cosmic world-mind, energy-wave "receptor." And in making this on-going holistic connection with the universal energy source, the psyche and soma become more harmoniously balanced. By extrapolation, the ultimate message-messenger function of the human psyche seems to be that of helping us to become more adaptive by enlarging our homeostatic comfort zone, which in turn makes us more resilient to the stresses of future challenges. This involves inevitable conflicts between stasis and change. In other words, the wider the range of our adaptive comfort zone, the more change we can resiliently adapt to. And that sounds a lot like the lowest common denominator, or the one common thread which we were looking for at the beginning of this paper. So, the mind-body state of human resilience can now be operationally defined as the range of variability within which one's psyche can function in order to maintain a stable, harmoniously adaptive balance of its life energies.
The more flexible the range of psyche's "functional comfort zone," or the larger the capacity of the informational conduit, or the more stable the oscillations of one's holistic, vibrational energies,--the more healing energy/useful information can be transduced along it. Thus, if it is true that consciousness is an information-shuttling process of energy transduction between existential states, and if we can agree that "psyche" is but another word for "soul," then we can conclude that (a) As the human mind-body increases the information-processing capacities of its consciousness states, it strengthens the resilience of its energy-transducing soul; and (b) Reciprocally, as its soul grows more resilient, its consciousness increases.
* * *
In the next part, we are going to look at resilience as an emergent function of the creative conflicts inherent in the stresses of the life process. After a philosophical integration of some of Carl Jung's ideas and terminologies, we will return to each of the theories discussed in order to examine how this "emergent" process works within the framework of our "new" terminology. Finally, we will imagine what the underlying information structure of stable, resiliently repeating energy patterns might look like when transduced into a new model illustrating the entire, reciprocally holistic process, rather than merely the elastic by-products of, the phenomenon of resilience.
PART IV: THE TAO OF RESILIENCE by Peggie C. Southwick & Iona Miller
Asklepia Foundation, ©1998/2002
PART IV: THE TAO OF RESILIENCE: A NEW RESILIENCE METAPHOR
On the Nature of Metaphor
Reply to Jung: Quantum Sermons to the Living
A NEW RESILIENCE METAPHOR
Heuristic passions is ...the mainspring of originality --the force which impels us to abandon an accepted framework of interpretation and commit ourselves, by the crossing of a logical gap, to the use of new framework. --(Polyani, 1962, as cited in Moustakis, 1990, p.123)
On the Nature of Metaphor
How is it possible to know something, even about ourselves, that is radically new? Metaphors are one of the cognitive mechanisms that lead to the discovery and advancement of new theories. Often, in science, they appear spontaneously in dreams which are then applied in real time. Metaphor and analogy help us create mapping between two domains in a one-to-one correlation.
Metaphor still plays a role in the articulation of new scientific theory. In cognitive psychology, metaphors are drawn from the terminology of computer science, in transpersonal psychology from mysticism, in Consciousness Restructuring Process from Chaos Theory, QM, Holographic and other theories. Thus, science recycles its metaphors in self-referential strange loops. Alchemists made use of symbolic metaphors, but ascribed causal powers to metaphorical similarities, (creating the so-called "doctrine of signatures."). In this way they tried to satisfy their wish to manipulate nature rather than know it.
But, metaphors may be nature, our nature; or certainly phenomenological expressions of our existential nature. They provide a reference point without defining reality. The problem becomes not one of how to know something radically new, but how to learn something radically new. Thus metaphors are instructive. They are a central Way of leaping the epistemological chasm between old and new knowledge, old and new ways of essential being.
Metaphors help us make this leap. They help us enter a problematic situation in order to solve it, to explore it, and explore the world restructured by the metaphor. We can tap the source of creativity, healing and holistic restructuring through imagination and metaphor. The possibilities for concepts and for thought are shaped in very special ways by both the body and the brain that evolved to control it, especially the sensory-motor system. Conceptual metaphors appear to be neural maps that link sensory-motor domains in the brain to regions where more abstract reasoning is done. This allows sensory-motor structures to play a role in abstract reason (Lakoff, 1999).
The mind-body split or dualism vanishes when bodily control mechanisms are being used in abstract reasoning. Conceptual metaphorical mappings are not primarily matters of language, they are part of our conceptual systems, cross-domain mappings, allowing us to use sensory-motor concepts and reasoning in the service of abstract reason and holistic perception. This metaphorical mapping ability is automatically acquired unconsciously in our everyday functioning in the world.
In fact, when metaphors are synchronistic, emergent, spontaneous, self-organizing expressions of our dynamic stream of consciousness, they are an imaginal encoding of information that bridges the domains of conscious and unconscious worlds, material and transpersonal realms. Such metaphors can be deeply transformative--more than mere language, a technology for changing our behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Intentional contact and immersion in these metaphors can transform our spirit and soul.
How can we know or describe anything about the changes we have not yet experienced, change that by universal consensus takes us beyond the realm of everyday reality, for which our words and concepts have been fashioned? Metaphors contain a subtle communication by containing meaning in a delicate net of imagery.
In psychotherapy and mysticism, both, it is characteristic of the Self to speak to the ego-personality in the language of myth and metaphor. It allows us to grasp some image of that which remains as-yet-unknown. Classical metaphors of transformation are embodied in the primordial wisdom traditions. Metaphors are strongly related to process-oriented psychotherapy and immersion in the stream of consciousness [itself a metaphor]. The notion and phenomenon of metaphor raises as many questions as it answers.
Metaphors do not directly describe perceptual reality, but its language helps us imagine an "as if" reality. For example, in Metaphor Therapy (Grove) we ask what an experience is like. The replies about the nature of feelings and traumas come automatically couched in somato-sensory metaphor: "like a rock on my chest, like a stab in the back, it leaves me feeling breathless, disembodied." Following the 'trail' we might ask, "Disembodied like what?" "Like a cloud, like smoke, like a vaporous nothingness"...
The metaphorical possibilities or replies are virtually endless. They embody that which is still unknown and possibly unknowable, yet explorable through imagery and dialogue. Metaphor is an artifact of language--saying this to mean that. They function as tools. That leads us to suspect it is a technology. As such, it is an aid to understanding. Metaphor represents the convergence of figurative language, imagination and consciousness. There is a fundamental distinction between literal and metaphorical language. John Searle, in his well-known essay Metaphor asserts that there is no semantic difference between metaphoric expression and literal, because "sentence and words have only the meaning that they have...Metaphorical meaning is always speaker's utterance meaning."
Even poetic metaphors can muddle or clarify comprehension by distorting truth conditions. You say one thing to mean something else. So talking of metaphor as a kind of meaning may be false. Yet, the role of conscious and unconscious processes in metaphor production and interpretation is ubiquitous. The role of "seeing as" permeates the development of consciousness. It reflects interactions between imagination, perception and cognition; how bodily and neural processes create and constrain imagination. Language, concept and world are the three realms of metaphor which is a mode of cognition. But metaphors are events, not objects. And generative-metaphors can be viewed as problem-setting scenes and problem-solving situations. [Tacit generative metaphors may underlie our perceptual patterns much as personal and collective mythologies do].
Metaphors describe the internal structure of domains and how they are represented; the nature and organizational structure of information. They follow the information processing approach and propose a spatial representation in which local subspaces can be mapped into points of higher-order hyperspaces, and vice versa. The distance among concepts in these mental spaces is the main parameter for establishing the comprehensibility and aesthetic pleasure of metaphors. Conceptual metaphors are more than semantic representations; they imply deep action, even though the locus of metaphor is thought. They directly reflect our metaphorical understanding of experience. This dual coding is based on more than a theoretical point of view based in imagery and verbal association.
Metaphor is not merely a superficial phenomenon of language, but shapes our judgments, and structures our language. Displaying many facets, metaphor pervades our everyday non-theoretical language. A metaphor is a holistic schema, a unifying framework that links a conceptual representation to its sensory and experiential ground. It embodies the gestalt and ecological properties of thought. The network of underlying metaphors form a cognitive map, a web of concepts organized in terms which serve to ground the abstract. This cognitive topology, by which we impose structure on space, gives rise to spatial inferences and images. The subjective ego-centric properties of the individual are projected onto the world via this cognitive mapping. Even the same metaphor of 'time' can produce different interpretations, depending on the relative position of the observer within his cognitive topology.
Mental pictures and verbal processes meet in metaphor which promotes retrieval of images and verbal information that intersects with information aroused by the topic. Language is a conduit for this force by transferring or conveying thoughts and feelings to others. Therefore what is literal can also be metaphorical; only the literal use of language can be true or false. These facts underlie or form the dynamical basis of all talk therapies. George Lakoff and others have developed contemporary theories of metaphor. Undeniably, there are a great many irreducible metaphorical concepts in our everyday life which function in a systematic way and are grounded in our physical and cultural experience.
But what is metaphor a metaphor for? How do metaphors work? How can we interpret two levels of understanding, novel and classical metaphors for comprehension and understanding? Can we learn without metaphors? Epistemological metaphors help us relate "how we know what we know." They help us frame and describe our experience and its meaning at both the personal and collective levels. However, when do our epistemological metaphors become more than models?
When we "know," how do we "know that we know," and "what is it like?" This bears on the confusion surrounding the process and products of linguistic understanding. How do psychological processes figure in metaphor comprehension and memory? When we think in metaphors, do they create similarity, or state some pre-existing similarity? Do they produce new knowledge by projecting the "known" into an unknown domain? How do they emphasize, suppress, and organize features of cognition and awareness? How do we incorporate novelty through similar differences, and different similarities? What are the educational uses of metaphor? How can we tap directly into multidimensional metaphoric process?
What is beyond metaphor: what is the role in cognition and consciousness of synecdoche (inclusion) and metonymy (contiguity)? Metonymy describes extension involving Whole-Part relations in contrast to synecdoche, which involves Part-Whole relations. Or, it is a figurative extension of meaning involving concomitance. It is arguably possible to distinguish between metaphor and metonymy and between non-figurative implication and metonymy. The distinctions are cognitively based and have linguistic relevance, which improve our understanding of the dynamic role of language in consciousness.
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) claim that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical. But metonymy and synecdoche may be just as holistically basic. Expressions in simile are even more common than metaphor; both follow literalisms. They provide a context for our experience. Metonymy is implied meaning without restriction to the figurative uses of words. It is a figurative extension of meaning involving concomitance. Expressing what we sense, feel, think and believe about things and our existential condition, they form the ground of our synergetic cognition about self, others and universe.
Ultimately, what would metaphors of resilience, such as "bouncing back," or "pressing on," "come back," "rebirth" mean to us unless they originate in a spontaneous, emergent way? What metaphors form the tacit webwork of resilience?
Reply to Jung: Quantum Sermons to the Living
Harken, I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In eternity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. As well might ye say anything else of nothingness, so for instance, white is it, or black, or again, it is not, or it is. A thing that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities. This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the external and infinite possess no qualities. In it no being is, for he then would be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as something distinct from the pleroma. (Jung, Seven Sermons to the Dead)
Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961) was one of those pivotal reading experiences which radically change the course of my (Southwick's) thinking and my life. Tucked away discretely in an appendix in the back of the book was his "Seven Sermons to the Dead." Since Jung admitted regret over having written the piece, I could not understand why it had such a profound effect on my autonomic nervous system when I read it.
With my heart rate elevated and my breathing nearly stopped, I sensed one of those rare aha! moments from which is would never fully recover. Thus it was that my conflicted feelings about this "sinful" work of his younger years came about: I had been profoundly moved, -- metamorphosed in thinking by words which, for some reason unknown to me, had evidently embarrassed their author. [perhaps because of its "channeled" quality]. Now, after years of filtering down through the apparatus of my own thinking, it is time to allow the distilled spirit of these messages, as I have heuristically experienced it, to be poured onto page.
The remaining arguments of this chapter will more logically flow from this initial, philosophical offering as concepts from Jung's Sermons are reviewed as useful metaphors for explaining (a) the source from which have emerged all life functions and (b) as the foundational elements upon which the effects of these reciprocally emergent functions are framed. The previous chapter concluded with a brief sojourn into the "something-for-nothing" realm of quantum physics. There it is was theorized that at some point beyond the temporo-spatial limits of our human comprehension, lies an infinite source of finite energy.
We had an infinitely brief glance at the point where "virtual reality" and "actual reality" merge as infinitude cloaks itself within the energy patterns from which all of life is formed. The underlying motivation for this intellectual quest was to discover the ultimate whys and wherefores of resilience, which is the point to which we now return. If the whole point of evolution is survival of the fittest, (or the most resilient) then it would seem that the lowly bacterium, from whose functions all higher life forms have theoretically sprung, may well represent nature's supreme creation. It descendants are still around, basically unchanged after perhaps three billion years, while the relatively recently evolved human species already seems determined in one way or another to destroy itself and most other life along with it. What resilience lessons can be learned from these microscopic life forms through whose organic functions the evolution of life and all of its on-going processes are possible and by whom the containers of all of these life processes are ultimately reclaimed for recycling?
Is the earth really made up of many indifferent, different life forms, resiliently evolving to ever higher levels of form-function complexity? Or might we all be, as Jung and other (see for example, Campbell, 1988) have implied, the distinctively evolving mind-body whose infinite function it is to become more wholly conscious of its own paradoxical nature so that it may more fully exist in its infinite state?
Functions of Distinctiveness
In the pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution. CREATURA is not in the pleroma, but in itself. The pleroma is both beginning and end of created beings. It pervadeth them, as the light of the sun everywhere pervadeth the air. Although the pleroma pervadeth altogether, yet hath created being no share thereof, just as a wholly transparent body becometh neither light nor dark through the light which pervadeth it. We are, however, the pleroma itself, for we are a part of the eternal and infinite. But we have share thereof, as we are from the pleroma infinitely removed...in our essence as creatures, which is confined within time and space. Yet because we are parts of the pleroma, the pleroma is also in us. Even in the smallest point is the pleroma endless, eternal, and entire, since small and great are qualities which are contained in it. It is that nothingness which is everywhere whole and continuous...nowhere divided. We are also the whole pleroma, because, figuratively, the pleroma is the smallest point in us and the foundless firmament about us. (Jung, Seven Sermons...).
Because Jung (1961) wrote "Sermons" in the paradoxical language of the Gnostics who inspired it, dissecting it for clarity of meaning is itself somewhat paradoxical, since ambiguity is Sermons' strength as well as its weakness. Thus, I confess a measure of trepidation as I attempt to explain in more linear terms and quantum metaphors, the necessarily ambiguous concepts, somewhat circular reasonings, and often archaic terminology from which I wish to borrow for purposes of this paper. Jung intimates that to explore the pleroma means self-dissolution, liquefying or dissolving one's sense of self, the de-construction of ego-death, primordial restitution leading to re-emergence.
The first of these concepts is called by the name "pleroma" (Jung, 1961, p.379), a useful term which encompasses at once all that is and is not in the aspect of one grand paradox of unified paradoxes. I believe that we experienced a virtual taste of this pleroma when we sampled from Zukav's (1979) quantum something-for-nothing menu in the previous chapter. Virtual energy particles in general have the paradoxical quality of being and not being at the same time, which from our limited perspective within time and space logically cannot, but yet seems to, happen. Jung's (1961) Sermons taught that distinctions such as being and not being exist only in our minds, where we create them in a valiant attempt to understand about our infinite nature that which is unknowable in our finite state.
Thus, even though--and because--we are confined within the paradox of our own mind-body duality, our very nature requires us to examine and try to make sense of our existence by noting differences and similarities in everything we experience. Jung's (1961) Sermons asserted that "we die in such measure as we do not distinguish" (p. 382). If this is true, then the very essence of life itself should consist of making distinct that which is indistinct. Throughout nature, in fact, this does seem to hold true.
Furthermore, distinction-making can be broadly interpreted as the basis for all evolutionary processes. It is what we "intellectually superior" humans seem to do the best, and most poorly--at. Intellectually, we excel at making distinctions at the quantifiable levels of our existence. Our proficiency wanes dramatically, however, as we approach intellectual understanding of the infinitely macrocosmic or microcosmic levels of our being. While it seems that it is the apprehension of this most unknown and unknowable aspect of our being which holds the ultimate key to all life's explanations, ironically, it is just this very distinction which cannot be intellectually deciphered from within our finite dimension.
The question ariseth: How did creatura originate? Created being came to pass, not creatura; since created being is the very quality of the pleroma, as much as non-creation which is the eternal death. In all times and places is creation, in all time and places is death. The pleroma hath all, distinctiveness and non-distinctiveness. Jung quickly gets to the heart of the philosophical distinction between any Creator and the Creation. In invoking "distinctiveness and non-distinctiveness" we are reminded of the metaphors of quantum mechanics, and its wave-particle ambiguity surrounding the nature of sub-atomic matter/energy.
Distinctiveness is creatura. It is distinct. Distinctiveness is its essence, and therefore it distinguisheth. Therefore man discriminateth because his nature is distinctiveness. Wherefore also he distinguiseth qualities of the pleroma which are not. He distinguisheth them out of his own nature. Therefore must he speak of qualities of the pleroma which are not. ...When we distinguish qualities of the pleroma, we are speaking from the ground of our own distinctiveness and concerning our own distinctiveness. ...What is the harm, ye ask, in not distinguishing oneself? ...We fall into indistinctiveness, ...we fall into the pleroma itself and cease to be creatures. We are given over to dissolution in the nothingness. This is the death of the creature. Therefore we die in such measure as we do not distinguish. ...Hence the natural striving of the creature goeth towards distinctiveness, fighteth against primeval sameness. This is called the PRINCIPIUM INDIVIDUATIONIS.
And so the youthful Jung laid out his own lifework, and that of mankind as the process of individuation -- a process whose differentiation is largely coded in terms of metaphor and metaphorical transformations through the union of opposites. He realized we create all qualities and distinctions through thinking. Not just our thinking but our being is distinctiveness. He suggests not thinking about differences, but striving after our own being.
Because we are equally skilled at making new, creative, intuitively connective distinctions, the human is now beginning to see itself as functionally indistinguishable from the trillions of distinctive cellular energy universes within which it functions as an information transducer. As we are able to apply this newly created distinction, or discovery, to increasingly larger classes of information, we find even more similarities and connections between our nature and the nature of life in general. These are reflected in the self-similar complexity of fractals in nature, in the notion of embedding at various degrees of magnitude or levels of observation. It is the metaphor-making capacity of the human mind, the "flip side" or reciprocal function of making logical distinctions, which have elevated our species above all others to its present (although somewhat wobbly) position atop earth's evolutionary ladder.
As we will soon see, when framed within Jung's (1961) Sermons, the function of life seems to be that of reassembling finite, paradoxical reality into a state of logical order and esthetic harmony so that it may in effect ultimately validate, or complete, the state of perfection within which it exists simultaneously as its own pleromal antecedent. "Everything which we do not distinguish falleth into the pleroma and is made void by its opposite," (Jung, 1961, p. 328).
At the sub-quantal level virtual photons continuously pop into and out of existence from the groundstate of nothingness--the virtual vacuum, quantum flux or Zero-Point Energy. This also brings to mind again the interactions of quantum particles and their anti-particles. As discussed elsewhere in this paper, it has been mathematically shown that every particle in the universe seems to have a mirror opposite somewhere, with which it shares mutual instantaneous annihilation should they meet. It is thus assumed by some quantum physicists that our reality consists of all the particles which have not (yet) met with anti-particle annihilation.
And although such random merges seem to be occurring continuously, for some reason yet unknown to science, there are never enough anti-particles around to cause any noticeable annihilations of our universe. The key word here is "noticeable," and that is the point. Perhaps Jung's intuition about the function of the void was correct when viewed from its quantum backside: non-distinguished particles do not exist within this reality to be banished to the void by our ignorance of them (as he proposed).
Rather, they are already in an infinite state from which they need to be made distinct by finite beings if they are to have finite existence. That is what distinguishes them as anti-particles. Put another way, it does seem logically possible that the nature of our universe is infinite non-existence (as pleroma) unless and until a created energy form gives it a finite identity, or distinctiveness, by somehow focusing its own creative, attentional energies upon it, thus drawing it out from the void.
Perhaps our reality is not the accidental, random result of some universal particle/anti-particle annihilation as science would have us believe, but is being creatively evolved over time through the infinite numbers of distinctions being made by life forms from among the effects that living particles have upon one another. To compound this, modern cosmology (Goldsmith, 2000) shows that space is in a process of infinite acceleration from every 'point' in spacetime, and most of the gravitational force of the universe comes from non-luminous 'dark matter,' and 'dark energy' of whose nature we know virtually nothing. The universe is speeding up, suggesting some sort of powerful anti-gravity force at work, separating galaxies. The seemingly empty vacuum of space is seething with this strange dark energy. Again, we are reminded of Jung's gnostic language, and the battle of opposites in gnosticism between forces of light and dark.
The Creative Evolution of Evolutionary Creation
We must deal with the problem of where original life energy came from if it is true that pleromal non-life is the infinitely natural order of things.
Jung (1961) called life and all of its many elemental energy pattern manifestations "creatura", which he equated with a state of distinctiveness. In other words, he implied that "to be" is to exist as a state distinct from all other states. Given this as a truth, Shakespeare's "To be or not to be, that is the question," was amazingly astute. Taken to its logical extreme, it should seem as though the pleromal state would, of necessity, require an opposite state in order to comprise a paradox perfectly completed within its own paradox. If perfect, complete "not-being" were its only possible state, there would be no potential for a "being" state. This is embodied in the vacuum potential gradient inherent in the groundstate of the virtual vacuum. Virtual photons 'boil' into existence because they can, therefore they must; they also evaporate back into the primordial non-being. Thus is the inactive realm which generates activity.
The pleromal state has to have some way it can remain in complete union with its perfect self, yet manifest simultaneously in another distinctively opposite state. It expresses in one in which its opposites are simultaneously free to imperfectly exist as conflicting paradoxes. These paradoxes are also free to creatively merge into wholeness states, and then re-emerge into their divided states, evolving all the while into increasingly complex combinations and divisions of paradoxical states. For example, at our current apex of intellectual evolutionary process, it is mathematically estimated that each individual human brain is capable of "more possible mental states than there are atoms in the known universe" (Sagan, 1977; Rossi, 1993).
Therefore, we can operationally define pleroma as the state of all possible dimensions of reality states, including (but not limited to) those infinite dimensions of reality which exist beyond the limitations of our spacetime continuum as supraliminal (faster-than-light) energy, and those subliminal energy states which exist as "the invisible dark matter and energy" of the universe.
Based upon this definition, we also suggest that it is possible that in some manner, and at some non-time in non-space, the pleroma "impregnated" itself with its own paradoxical energy "child" whose destiny it has been to grow and develop within the womb of life, which we know as our own timespace continuum. We might call this the "Om-niverse." In other words, within the speed-of-light limits presented by our four-dimensional reality zone, perfect supraliminal energy is effectively "slowed" to an imperfect temporal state where, like a newly fertilized ovum, it becomes separated into two paradoxical, incomplete halves of its whole self.
Or, as Jung put it: "The pleroma is rent in us." The first new life states created from the division of the pleroma within our reality Jung (1961) named "Abraxas," or the ultimate energy-state he called "god" and from which all other subsequent god-states have since been created. As described below, this god seems to have characteristics very reminiscent of the virtual energy state which both encompasses and divides finitude and infinity: Had the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. ...Abraxas is effect...it is a force, duration, change...it is improbable probability, unreal reality...Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing....It is the appearance and the shadow of man. It is illusory reality. (pp. 383-385)
As such, Abraxas seems to represent that aspect of our reality which is always just beyond the reach of our comprehension, our life force, itself. It is that which makes us more than the sum of our parts. It seems to be that which at once separates us from and unites us with our infinite states. Pleroma seems to be that energy field which contains both our life and our death states and everything that exists in between those two states. It is a metaphor of the creative edge of creation.
In effect, Abraxas seems to represent the source of all possible states of being, or interactional energy patterns, that life energy can create. As such, it is the collective soul, or psyche, or consciousness from which all other souls, or psyches, or consciousness in the form of god-as-man have evolved. Dividing themselves out from the energy field called Abraxas were the two lesser, opposing -- but equally effective -- energy states which are called god and devil. These energy patterns are less distinct than man, but more distinct than Abraxas. Therefore, they represent a state of energy somewhere between the ultimate god and man, symbolically comparable, for example, to Christ and Satan in the Christian Bible.
This new god is described as that state which promotes fullness and generation of life; the devil is characterized as that state which ultimately diminishes, or uses up life energy. Thus, it is the job of the negative force to keep the machinery of embodiment and death (disembodiment) in motion. From this perspective, Jung seemed to be subtly implicating these oppositional good-versus-evil states as the origins of all possible combinations of energy patterns, or archetypal states, that could be existentially made distinct within our divided reality state. These fundamental god-devil archetypal energy states are given form, and thus made distinct, via the living effects through which they are made manifest within our existential domain.
Jung's Sermons name these effective states Eros and The Tree of Life. These two states are described, respectively, as that "flame" which "giveth light because it consumeth energy, thereby diminishing the fullness of life, and that "Tree" which "in growing it heapeth up living stuff" (p. 185). These dynamics sound a lot like the quantum "something-for-nothing" that is gained from life's virtual energy exchanges within infinity -- which hold all of life together as the electromagnetic force.
Jung even states that "Good and evil are united in the flame" [of their paradoxical, life-sustaining ("effective") roles within our reality dimension] (p. 385). From that point, it is implied that divisions and redivisions occur in the energy field of our reality until "[i]nnumerable as the host of stars is the number of gods and devils....The multiplicity of the gods corresponds to the multiplicity of man....Numberless gods await the human state" (p. 384-385). In other words, returning to our quantum metaphor, the number of probable (and improbable) energy patterns, or particle-wave formations, available for interaction with one another within our reality state, is immeasurably immense.
The pleroma, or quantum foam is beyond the statistical probability of quantum mechanics, and is an example of complex dynamics, or Chaos. In terms of human consciousness, this Chaos is manifest as the intangibility of the collective consciousness. The concept of Abraxas as collective consciousness can be operationally metaphormed as the evolution of quantum energy states from their pleromal-Abraxas state to their human-being state and back again, within a continuous re-cycling of finite-infinite energy oscillation patterns. These patterns would simultaneously represent, or convey information about, all of the distinctive particle states and the distinct energy wave interference patterns which had been created from these states during the creative act of finitely distinguishing their existence.
This universal consciousness state, or creatura psyche, would necessarily, then, be composed of the creative energies of all of its life forms, including the reified forms assigned to its gods and devils (Jung, 1961). Perhaps running this concept through Zukav's (1979) virtual energy metaphor in yet another way can help to illustrate how this universal consciousness might function as a unitive force: When a finite, pleroma-reflecting life-energy state eventually merges with its own infinitely reflected image, both become completed in one another and "disappear" over the infinity horizon in a burst of virtual life energy. They are "united in the flame" (Jung, 1961) created from their own unity. But just as quickly, they reappear in our timespace zone.
Thus, it seems that it is during the infinitely brief amount of time (from our limited perspective) that man's virtual energy "rests" in its pleromal state that his collective-Abraxas energy-state micro-momentarily becomes infinitely perfected. And likewise, it follows that during the overlapping of these virtual energy exchanges between particle states, pleromal-Abraxas for a fraction of a millisecond (eternity, from its perspective) becomes completed in man. As Zukav's (1979) virtual energy-exchanges show, it can also be assumed that during all of these transactions, new particle-wave patterns are being re-created as virtual-energy "vapor-trails", instantaneously recycled into other energy fields, --the eventual material manifestations of which our entire observable and experiential universe is composed.
Thus, Sermons concludes, somewhat paradoxically: "In this world is man Abraxas, the creator and the destroyer of his own world" (Jung, 1961, p. 189).
Summary: Life is a Hologram of Holograms
The popularization of the Holographic Paradigm as conceived by physicist David Bohm and neurologist Karl Pribram began in the 1970s, and carried into the '80s with the publication of Bohm's WHOLENESS AND THE IMPLICATE ORDER. Based on the work of Northrup & Burr, the less well-known, yet concurrent development of "A Holographic Concept of Reality" (1973), by Miller, Webb, Dickson was published in Krippner's PSYCHOENERGETIC SYSTEMS. A follow up, "Embryonic Holography" (1973, Miller & Webb] suggests that DNA is the projector of the biohologram, both at the cellular level and the whole-organismic level.
The holographic theory's evolution in scientific and philosophical thought was followed by ReVision Journal, and summarized by Ken Wilber in the classic of New Science literature, THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM AND OTHER PARADOXES (1982). Consciousness Restructuring Process is related to this theory in Iona Miller's "The Holographic Paradigm and CRP: Explication, Ego-Death and Emptiness" published in CHAOSOPHY '93.
The gist of the holographic theory is that: "Our brains mathematically construct 'concrete' reality by interpreting frequencies from another dimension, a realm of meaningful, patterned primary reality that transcends time and space. The brain is a hologram, interpreting a holographic universe." Pribram postulates a neural hologram, made by the interaction of waves in the cortex, which in turn is based on a hologram of much shorter wavelengths formed by the wave interactions on the sub-atomic level.
Thus, we have a hologram within a hologram, and the interrelatedness of the two somehow gives rise to the sensory images. There is a more fundamental reality which is an invisible flux that is not comprised of parts, but an inseparable interconnectedness. In this dynamic model, there are no "things" only energetic events. The holoflux includes the ultimately flowing nature of what is, and also of that which forms therein. Bohm speaks of "the source" as beyond both implicate (enfolded) and explicate (unfolded) realms.
We can imagine Source as the coherent Light which illuminates and objectifies the implicate realm. In a more recent commentary, Fred Alan Wolf (1991) comments on the possible roots of "shamanic physics" and the holographic concept in relation to two shamanic notions: visionary or mythic reality, and the sense of universal connection. In brief, according to the transactional interpretation of quantum physics, these invisible quantum waves of probability originate in the present, in the past, and in the future.
For any event to manifest, these waves coming from the future and the present or from the past and the present must interfere with each other in the present. The pattern of that interference then creates matter and energy as we perceive them. Somehow shamans were able to see to either the past or the future source of those waves. In this manner they were able to construct visions that had mythic proportions and appeared to them as archetypes in the Jungian sense.
Above it was suggested that perhaps supraliminally coherent energy oscillations, when "slowed" within the temporal limitations of finite reality (ranging from 186,000 miles per second to near-zero velocity), would lose their coherency and separate into their polar opposites forming interference waves. This idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds because a subliminal version of such a phenomenal process is currently being accomplished in research laboratories.
Physicists have found that particles can be "trapped" using a combination of laser beams and magnetic energy field, and thus slowed-down, or cooled to a temperature approaching absolute zero. At this point, which seems to represent the infinitely slow, dark end of our spacetime continuum, energy oscillations seem to stop and particles all merge into one large particle-soup, the subliminal energies of which the "cold, dark matter" (the void) of our universe is composed. In this energy state, known as the Bose-Einstein condensate, "the wave nature of each atom is precisely in phase with that of every other."
These condensates were created in the lab winning the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics. Quantum mechanical waves extend across the sample of condensate and can be observed with the naked ye. The sub-microscopic thus becomes macroscopic (Cornell & Wieman, 1998, p. 40). Another interesting and useful finding is that physicists are also currently developing communications technology using laser-beam-split particles, each half of which is known to carry and "aware of" the same identical energy-state information as its twin.
In this coherent light beam, not only the beam is split but each photon. Thus, it is hoped that someday we will be able to send these microcosmic bits of energy zooming around inside computer chips serving in effect both as transmitters and receivers of information, much the same as do the messenger molecules of our mindbody (Smale, 1997). Other physicists have actually succeeded "proving" that particles do not have distinctive properties until those properties are made distinct. In essence, they sent split-halves of particles flying off in opposite directions, a distance of nearly seven miles apart.
They found that each time one of the halves was secretly detected and measured by a researcher at one end, the observing researcher at the other would see the half at his end "magically" manifesting itself at the same time with the same identical informational characteristics. In effect, it instantaneously experiences the same energy-pattern changes as its mate. This two-slit experiment has been replicated thousands of times by different researchers (Pool, 1998).
In other findings relevant to our claims, physicists have actually succeeded in creating a minuscule amount of matter from an enormous amount of energy by focusing an incredibly intense laser pulse of electromagnetically charged photons at a field of electrons moving at nearly the speed of light. As the laser beam approached the electrons, its photons absorbed so much energy from the interaction that they ricocheted off into what very quickly evolved into an electron and its anti-particle twin, a positron. "The action is the reverse of the usual matter-antimatter annihilation: the blaze of energy [in this case] becomes matter" (Winters, 1997, p. 40).
Furthermore, in another laboratory, researchers have developed an immensely durable mirror which could withstand the force of incredibly high-powered laser beams, out of "hot, electrically-charged has, also known as plasma....[I]t will behave the same way as a metal mirror"...but only for two-trillionths of a second at a time (Saunders, 1998, p.95). And finally, behind all the observable light and matter in the universe, astronomers have now discovered a "faint, nearly uniform glow...about 2.3 times as bright as the visible universe" which they speculate seems to emanate from "some unidentified source...which generates two thirds of the light in the cosmos" (Wusser, 1998, p. 18). Thus, overall, modern science does seem to be distinguishing itself as a wonderful metaphor for its own creative origins; it seems as though researchers are peering into their microscopes and telescopes, perhaps "seeing" evidence of an infinite, pleromal "eye" staring back.
In his book, The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot (1991), among other things, explained three very important concepts reminiscent of Jung's Sermons and which consequently justify the above sojourns into the realms of science. The first topic was covered when parallels were drawn between the infinite and finite functions of pleromal and virtual energies. The second is that of interference patterns, which Talbot describes as "the crisscrossing pattern that occurs when two or more waves....ripple through each other" (p. 14).
In Sermons, for example, the very first interference patterns could be seen as those primordial energy wave frequency patterns which were created when the pleroma divided unperturbable, infinite energy into its mirrored, negatively- and positively-charged, life-and-death generating polarities. Others would have increasingly followed over time, as a natural consequence. The third concept of this integrative summary encompasses the dynamics of the first two.
Talbot offers up the following metaphor for the emergent phenomenon of our holographic universe, as seen from the perspective of a physicist's laboratory: A hologram is produced when a single laser light is split into two separate beams. The first beam is bounced off the object to be photographed. Then the second beam is allowed to collide with the reflected light of the first. When this happens they create an interference pattern which is then recorded on a piece of film. To the naked eye the image on the film looks nothing at all like the object photographed. In fact, it even looks a little like the concentric rings that form when a handful of pebbles is tossed into a pond. But as soon as another laser beam...is shined through the film, a [lifelike] three-dimensional image of the original object reappears. (pp. 14-15) This parallels with Jung's Sermons.
First of all, laser light is also known as a "coherent light source in which all waves in the beam are in step [in perfect synchrony]" (Benton, 1998, p. 115). Imagine the pleroma as the source of all infinitely coherent light, "shining" itself into its own entropic womb where our temporo-spatial universe is given its life-potential as a single laser beam (Abraxas). As it enters through the "beam-splitter" of this new temporo-spatial domain, its infinitely coherent energy is divided into its electromagnetically-charged paradoxical energy state distinctions, "god" and "devil."
These magnificent energy beams are now independently oscillating at mutually reciprocal frequencies, each with the potential to "cancel" or diminish the effects of the other through the interference effects of their positive versus negative wave crests and troughs. As these crests and troughs initially encounter one another's equally powerful effects, the tremendous tension between them generates the explosion from which our universe evolves. This "big bang," in effect represents an act of ultimate equilibration between infinitely coherent and finitely incoherent forces, the source of all known and unknown (all actual and virtual) equilibrative forces of our universe.
Meanwhile, the individual particles given birth during these events are now zooming around in different directions, each still containing the "remembered" reflection, its wholeness state of perfect energy coherence. Thus compelled by their own need for re-equilibration, they begin to interact vigorously with one another, each seeking to join up with others which can help it re-achieve a state of balanced wholeness. When their interactions finally electromagnetically attract those particle-partners whose energies create that perfect balance, they euphorically "disappear in a cloud of virtual light" for a tiny fraction of time before being recycled back into the imbalances of our asymmetrical, four-dimensional energy state.
Given this hypothetical set of events, the first holographic interference pattern created would have been reflected onto the ethereal "holographic film" of our finite universe. It then develops into the lifelike, three-dimensional, "god-like" qualities, or "effects" that infinite energy takes on within our finite reality (as Abraxas) when illuminated by the pure light of its own omniscient, infinite, pleromal energy source.
Thus, returned to our Sermons' metaphor, all of Jung's creatura, --god, the devil, and their "children," Eros and the Tree of Life -- can now be better understood as pleroma-Abraxas created holograms, whose functions and forms were intended to be made distinct from one another so that they could thus reciprocally interact as interference waves, and thereby regenerate themselves into increasingly complex developmental levels of distinctions. Over time and space, it can be similarly imagined that the emergent function of the "rippling" effects of immense numbers of criss-crossing interference waves must have been -- must be-- one of making mutually interactive, or reciprocal, holographic projections of holographic projections.
Talbot (1991), bootstrapping his thought from Pribram/Bohm, also implicates the unfolding of this kind of underlying "holomovement" dynamics within the universe. Our brains mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and time: The brain is a hologram enfolded in a holographic universe (p. 55).
Put another way, the universe can now be understood as a continuously evolving, interactively dynamic hologram whose function it is to explicitly reflect through time and space the emergent effectiveness of its implicitly enfolded, infinitely holographic nature. In "The Enfolding, Unfolding Universe," Bohm suggests that, "Consciousness is basically in the implicate order as all matter is, and therefore, it's not that consciousness is one thing and matter is another, but rather consciousness is a material process and consciousness is itself in the implicate order, as is all matter, and that consciousness manifests in some explicate order as does matter in general."
Further, 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 CRP 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 CRP. (Miller, Holographic Paradigm in CRP, 1993).
Remember, Jung said that we die in such measure as we do not distinguish. Weber is a little less ambiguous suggesting in the Holographic Paradigm that, Psychological death occurs when consciousness keeps step with the ever-moving and self-renewing present, allowing no part of itself to become caught or fixated as residual energy. It is residual energy that furnishes the framework for what will become the thinker, who consists of undigested experience, memory, habit-patterns, identification, desire, aversion, projection and image-making. This is not a purely personal process but the energy of aeons of such processes sclerosed through time, persisting on both personal and collective levels. Ego-death dismantles this superstructure...
Ken Wilber cautions us not to jump on the mystical bandwagon which confuses the implicate order as the Source, the Tao, or even the mystic void. While the implicate reveals the holoarchy of the material level, this is as far as it goes--except as an analogy. The implicate is not transcendental to matter, but underlies it, as a coherent unity--it is still matter. It is analogous to "ecology" on the biological level.
Wilber states that,
"the problem is that the quantum potential is merely tremendously huge in size or dimensions; it is not radically dimensionless, or infinite in the metaphysical sense. And you simply cannot equate huge in size, potential or actual, with that which is without size, or prior to any dimensions, high or low, subtle or gross, implicate or explicate."
To "worship" nature or mistake the immanence of wholeness in matter as the Ultimate Reality does not account for transcendent realities--it mistakes the creation for the creator. This is pantheism, reification of matter, animism. Arguably, pantheism is a confusion of two radically different domains--matter and spirit, according to Wilber's vision of the "perennial philosophy." We could compare four aspects of the nonrepresentational voids as the
1). "Dead" Void: physical void (implicate order, frequency domain; QM's dynamic void; interstellar space);
2). the Emotional Void of the derepressing unconscious, with its empty trances and transitive moments between explicate states;
3). the mental or Existential Void, the imaginal realm, with its bliss states, ecstasies, and inspirations; and,
4). the spiritual or Mystic Void of objectless contemplation, transcendental unified state. In some mystical schools even this state is the not the Ultimate.
They represent embedding, or progressively deeper phases of implication within a Reality which supercedes explication in any form. Wilber notes that, There is a world of difference between the pre-temporal consciousness, which has no space and no time, and trans-temporal consciousness, which moves beyond space and time while still embracing it...This in no way proves that the holographic blur is not a transcendent state; it demonstrates that one cannot judge so on the basis of language correlations.
What physics has found is actually a unified interaction of material shadows; it discovered that various physical particulars are interrelated processes--but interrelated shadows aren't the Light. As for the implicate order, we saw it was actually a huge energy dimension; it wasn't radically dimensionless or metaphysically infinite. Consciousness is information -- consciousness-in-forming -- the process of unfolding. The intensity of consciousness at any level is a function of the amount of information at that level (Battista, 1978).
All of the potential information about the universe is holographically encoded in the spectrum of frequency patterns that constantly bombard us. Through destructuring in meditation or process therapy, one quiets the brain becoming sympathetically in tune with (entrained to) this universal frequency pattern. When this occurs, the encoded information about the universe becomes holographically decoded, and the individual experiences a state of unitive consciousness with the entire universe.
Bohm suggests that we transform as eternity unfolds in us, but that eternity may also transform, as it returns to itself enriched by our participation. Bohm contends that the nonmanifest frequency realm is n-dimensional and atemporal, inconceivable to 3-dimensional thought. Bohm likens n-dimensional space to phase space, (ref. polyphasic consciousness). He asserts that only when the individual has dissolved the 3-dimensional self consisting of gross matter, can the ground of our being flow through us unobstructedly. He extends this notion to psychology, urging us to dissolve the "thinker" as the highest priority the seeker for truth can undertake. He advocates a kind of "psychological atom-smashing," in which countless illusory egoic clusters (analogous to spasms that reduce the flow within the whole) are dissolved.
Knowledge consists in this theory of the process of tuning in on the manifestation (phenomenon) of the nonmanifest in order to make it accessible, through a state of consciousness which lies outside the barriers of the finite senses. Bohm maintains that this capacity exists in the universe, not in us strictly speaking. However, "the challenge for the individual locus of consciousness is to provide the condition that allows the universal force to flow through it without hindrance. The result is not knowledge, in the Kantian sense, but direct nondualistic awareness..." Its precondition is emptiness, as Bohm repeatedly insists, which entails a suspension of the Kantian categories and of 3-dimensional space-time. Such emptiness brings about the cessation of consciousness as the knower and transforms us into an instrument receptively allowing the noumenal intelligence to operate through us, irradiating our daily lives and those of others.
Consciousness & the Biohologram
Consciousness may be seen as a frame of electrical charges in motion such as electrons bombarding a television screen; personality is a time series of these scintillating frames of consciousness. Personality becomes a reverberating input-output pattern of self creation seeking information or patterns of energy from the environment as well as from its own memories. The personality never recreates itself but creates only a close approximation which is accepted due to the principle of constancy as being the same (Miller & Webb, 1973).
The phenomena of unique individuality and personal continuity depend on memory. Consciousness involves the most recent memory and thereby the most subject to erasure and loosening. Personality transformation becomes energy pattern modification of not only scintillating consciousness but also of recent circulating memories and older stored memories. Thus consciousness can be conceptualized as an electronic phenomena occurring in the brain that involves both dynamic charges in motion and also stored structure (Tien, 1969).
Referring to the mechanisms mentioned earlier, a very close connection between electronic activity and structure can be seen. A good deal of work on human psychological processes indicate that human beings are extremely sensitive to the various electromagnetic events in their environment. It has been shown that stress can uncouple synchronized and harmonious biological rhythms resulting in pathological conditions for the organisms (Burr and Northrop, 1935).
We are proposing that these biological systems can be resynchronized and recalibrated through conscious effort. The proposed mechanism for this influence has to do with the indicated coupling of these various external events to biological processes. The amplifying effect of consciousness has also been seen to be relatable to the various electromagnetic occurrences in the brain. At a deeper level of analysis, it can be suggested that the field phenomena which we have been studying and working with are in fact more real, if that term can be used, than the particulate matter and various objects of which we have been speaking (Wheeler, 1959).
Briefly stated, the fields and particles may be themselves composed of empty curved space, trapping lines of electromagnetic force. This is the holographic concept of reality. The structural configurations themselves or the geometry of the fields and the particles are more fundamental than either the fields or the particles themselves. The personality never recreates itself, but creates only a close approximation which is accepted due to the principle of constancy as being the same. The phenomena of unique individuality and personal continuity depend on memory, of which consciousness is the most recent and, thereby, the most subject to erasure and loosening.
Personality transformation becomes energy pattern modification of not only scintillating consciousness but also of recent circulating memories and older stored memories of childhood. According to the holographic model of reality, all the objects we can observe are three-dimensional images formed of standing and moving waves by electromagnetic and nuclear processes. All the objects of our world are three-dimensional images formed electro-magnetically, i.e., holograms. This concept and the models of human information processing based on the hologram, throw interesting light on the philosophical tradition which holds that the world of objects is an illusion. With the triumph of relativity and quantum physics, the interpenetration of the philosophical and the scientific is possible.
We propose that the "reality hologram" which appears as a stable world of material objects is the elementary particle which has a long-term existence and fairly simple rules of interaction. We also propose the existence of a "biohologram" which appears as mobile and evolving, through the DNA molecule. This "biohologram" projects a dynamic three-dimensional image that serves as a guiding matrix for the manipulation and organization of the "reality hologram." Thus we have mobile self-organizing holograms moving through a relatively static simpler hologram. The possibility exists that such "bioholograms" could achieve sufficient coherence to continue existence as a pattern of radiant energy apart from a material substrate. We feel that such an occurrence could form the scientific basis of such psychoenergetic phenomena as psycho-kinesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition. (Miller, Webb & Dickson, 1973).
Researchers have found that at the moment of ovulation there is a definite shift in the electrical fields of the body of the woman. The membrane in the follicle bursts and the egg passes down the fallopian tubes. As a sidenote, we feel that the phases of the moon quite probably influence the permeability of the membrane in the follicle, making it more likely that the egg will pass down the fallopian tubes at certain periods of time. The sperm is negative with respect to the egg. When the sperm and the egg unite, the membrane around the egg becomes hyper-polarized. It is at this moment that the electromagnetic entity is formed. The fertilized egg cell contains all information necessary to create a complete operational human being.
And furthermore, the biohologram begins to function at conception, and only ceases to function at death. So, perhaps conception is the proper place to mark the beginning of the individual. The zygote begins to divide as it travels down the fallopian tube. It is quite possible that it navigates its passage partially by sensing the biohologram of the mother. And this may actually assist in approaching and attaching to the wall of the uterus. As soon as attachment to the wall of the uterus is complete, the zygote begins the process of establishing the linkage with the mother's circulatory system that will permit the passage of blood carrying important nutrients into the zygote.
The womb is a special electronic environment in which an electrolytic solution provides an excellent framework for electromagnetic effects which are necessary in the development of the egg. With the formation of the neural tube, one end (the end that is in the center of the embryonic disk) begins to expand and enfold, twist, and develop itself into a system of complex tissues in complicated geometrical structures, which will become the structure of the brain of the creature. It is our contention that the brain is necessary and the nervous system is necessary for the development of the creature. It is one of the earliest formations and is prior to the generation of most of the structure of the body. Our contention is that the DNA at the center of each cell creates the multi-cellular creature hologram by influencing the DNA in the center of the cells. Initially, the problem of development centers around the flow of materials through space, and the establishment of material structure at discrete locations in space. (Miller & Webb, 1973).
We believe that the biohologram projected by the embryonic nervous system forms a three-dimensional pattern of resonant structures; including points, lines, and planes that electromagnetically behave as the acoustic waves - the material waves - of the drumhead. In other words, these electromagnetic points, lines and planes form locations of no movement. Essentially the matter that is flowing, the electrolytic solutions that are flowing, that have been drawn from the blood of the mother, are caused to move rhythmically through the developing embryo. As they reach certain points, lines and planes their motion stops.
This is where structures are laid down and built up. This process is the key to embryonic holography. The zygote acts like a three-dimensional nozzle. Electrolytes from the blood stream of the mother flow through this nozzle and into the cymatic structure of standing wave patterns distributed through space inside the embryo and becomes fixed, solidified structures. This accounts for the different zones and the separation of the zones of the different kinds of tissue groups. The picture is completed by the effects of the biohologram on the DNA of the cells that have formed along with the migration of the substances.
You have an actual migration of cells, and a migration of substances throughout the embryo that take up locations dependent upon resonant structures of standing wave patterns. The cells, having arrived at their proper location and beginning to involve themselves with the materials and the fluids that are flowing in the three-dimensional nozzle are then specified in their particular tissue nature by the biohologram being projected by the nervous system. They are refined and developed as their genome is shut down until only the DNA that operates in a particular cell is just that DNA which defines the structure and operation of that particular kind of tissue group.
So, through a complex interaction of three-dimensional electromagnetic fields rapidly dividing cells and a flow of electrolytes that is directed by the field but also feeds back on the field and influences it, a multi-cellular organism achieves the proper structure that will permit it to exist apart from the specialized environment of the womb. As long as the biohologram is functioning properly, as long as the nervous system is continuing to coordinate and project the complex three-dimensional fields that support the biological processes in the organism, the organism survives. When the biohologram ceases to function properly, the organism suffers. And when the principle action of the biohologram stops, the organism dies.
If there is any scientific correlate to the concept of Soul, it is most probably this bioholographic pattern system. It is composed of the ultimate stuff of the universe, electromagnetic field energy. Which does not die in the sense that creatures die, so it fulfills the attribute of the Soul of being immortal in that sense. However, the pattern does change with growth, with learning, with experience, and with age. So there is a development of the Soul or the electromagnetic field entity. It is conceivable, although a great deal more research needs to be done, that the electromagnetic field entity might be capable of an independent existence which would form the basis for the concept of life after death. However, a free electromagnetic field entity without a biophysiological matrix might have a difficult time in interacting with creatures, such as ourselves, that are still utilizing the biophysiological matrix. (Miller & Webb, 1973).
Consciousness: A Reciprocal Function of Resilience
Physics is the study of the structure of consciousness. --Zukav, 1979, p.31
It seems that Jung's (1961) Sermons metaphorically implied that all concepts and their "anti-concepts" such as good and evil eventually evolved of logical necessity as a self-ordering function of the pleroma's most complex living (thus most distinctive) mind-body paradoxes. It is important to emphasize here that even in the human act of discriminating between a pair of paradoxical ideas, whichever is selected as the focus of one's energies will assume for him the characteristics he assigns to it. In science, this is known as experimenter bias. In ethics it produces the tremendous variations in values and belief systems over time and space on our planet. It exemplifies the eternal schism between perceptions of good and evil.
Making the Indistinct Distinct
The basic psychological problem here is metaphorically contained within what is called Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle." This is the physicists' way of admitting that, because we are all concurrently moving around in space, there is no way scientists can know simultaneously, with certainty, both the position in space and the momentum of a particle.
Thus science can only make predictions about one of these aspects based on what the other aspect is doing and what similar others have done in the past. Thus, a researcher must first choose which aspect she wants to attend to. Then, once that she has attuned her energies to the aspect of her choice, those focused and thus biased energies in turn appear to exert a mysterious, influential force upon the particle being observed, as though altering its character in order to meet her expectations.
Indeed, by shaping the focus of our conscious energy to selectively tune out some irrelevant stimuli while necessarily holding onto that which is salient to the moment, it seems as though a perceptually-biased energy pattern is formed in order to establish a state of resonation with those energy patterns being attended to. This is how we make distinct that which is in reality, indistinct. This is also a long version of why quantum mechanics maintains that there is such a thing as pure objectivity in this universe. Einstein showed us that all is relative. Quantum evidence seems to support the notion that it is from our distinctively-biased energies that our material reality is created.
Plugging this concept back into our pleroma-holograph metaphor of reality, it can be said that energy wave patterns which intersect via the attentional energies of the mind-body are holographically altered for what can be seen simultaneously as "good" (life-energy enhancing) by one person and as "bad" (life-energy diminishing) by another. At some level of efficacy, this adaptive process of altering the holographic projections created within our personal energy fields is occurring continuously throughout our lifetimes.
As both the introjection and the projection (interpersonal mind-body-receiving and -sending) of innately- valenced and morally-biased energy states, it is the fundamental "good" versus "evil" functions of information transduction between humans. Thus one can imagine those holographic interference patterns that represent the most stable or resilient qualities: through replication and amplification they survive most successfully over the longest periods of time. They are life-enhancing (good) energy patterns, --kind of like a cosmic "bell-curve."
Energy begets energy. When more distinctively life-stabilizing energy that is made available within the overall global energy pattern, more distinctively stable energy is available to be used in the creation of subsequent life-enhancing interactions within the human community and its individual members. The following section will propose how this process might be able to cycle "simultaneously" between the individual and the collective.
Creating Adaptability
Earlier in this paper, we touched on the fact that levels of resilience can be empirically measured by vagal tone, or cardiovascular reactivity. We have also seen how the highly interactive dynamics of the resilience process are closely tied to one's ability to learn positive coping skills, which in turn depend on his ability to learn to develop a sense of self-efficacy within his environment. This resilience was shown to be directly correlated with his ability to regulate his arousal levels via his autonomic nervous system. This in turn helps expand the range of his attentional abilities, which enables him to more resiliently adapt to the demands of his environment.
All of these life skills involve this person's ability to focus his energies intently enough in order to effect desired, positive outcomes in his life. Positive outcomes, or emergent effects of resiliently adaptive attitudes and behaviors can be associated with the functions of Jung's Tree of Life, which were all related to life-enhancing behaviors and thoughts, --or coping skills.
Negative, maladaptive outcomes leading to various pathologies can be associated with those which are born of egocentric desires for self-validation at the expense of one's own (or another's) well-being. The point of this detour into the psychological evolution of moral polarities is this: The choice of which of these energy patterns a person is tuned into is a moment-by-moment, individual one.
It is not a fate predetermined by some either good or evil force exterior to one's own mind-body state, even though it often seems so. It can be and often is influenced by other nearby fields of energy patterns, but the ultimate choice of which patterns of energy that we resonate with, is within the conscious control of most human beings. Once this level of moral individuation is consciously achieved, holistic healing begins within that person's sphere of influence. It begins within the body as an enhanced state of physical, mental, and emotional health, then spreads transpersonally outward into other relationships.
We examined some of these life-enhancing, therapeutic phenomena in the previous sections, and saw that although the manner in which they manifest in the world takes on many different forms, ultimately all holistic healing is the result of (a) making some level of conscious choice to positively alter one's thought patterns (b) which similarly alters one's characteristic attitudes, (c) which alters arousal levels and neurotransmitter levels within the body, (d) which accommodates the ultradian-quantum healing responses that (e) regulate breathing rhythms and brain waves in order to (f) modulate the mind-body's neural energy frequencies which (g) instruct its hormones to (h) alert the messenger molecules to (i) tell the genes which proteins to transcribe in order to (j) restore harmony and balance to the system. And in some cases, all of this can happen within minutes--virtually instantaneously.
Expressed within a wide range of variance within and between individuals, these many reciprocally interactive dynamics somehow all connect together into one seemingly seamless, flowing process which we call life. For centuries, man has been trying to unravel the mystery of how it all fits together; how its immensities and minutia are interconnected and inter-communicate in a way that hold the universe and all of its functions together. Now, with metaphors such as those provided by holography and quantum mechanics, we are in the best position ever to more discriminately separate out those things which we can name from among those which we must simply accept on theoretical faith. We seem to be moving over closer towards our virtual natures.
The Holographic "Enchanted Loom"
The conscious brain has been described as an "enchanted loom," and as such, can be metaphorically framed within the four dimensions of its finite universe. Its attention-shuttle is empowered by various combinations of energy frequencies as they equilibratively oscillate back and forth across the warp-threads of its neural net. "Enchanted loom" takes on a whole new meaning , however, when it is incorporated into the holographic paradigm. A holographic enchanted loom would simultaneously record each of its state-dependent memories across the entire warp and woof of its structure and upon each single thread on the loom.
Thus, each strand of energy patterns from which one's conscious picture of life is woven would contain, in its entirety, the ever-changing consciousness of the whole life-tapestry. And indeed, as will soon be made clear, this does seem to be how our magnificent brain works at its most fundamental level, --as a holographic frequency analyzer.
The process begins with our five senses, which have all been found to process information holographically, according to Talbot (1991) who explains that the transference of new information from one part of the body to another is accomplished via a mathematical language which physicists call "Fourier transforms."
As Talbot explained it, this universal language is used at the quantum level of our existence to communicate descriptions of the dynamically interactive temporo-spatial relationships, or current energy-pattern states, of our wave forms. What [experimenters] found was that the brain cells...responded to Fourier translations of [energy wave] patterns...The brain was using Fourier mathematics, --the same mathematics holography employed, --to convert visual [and other sensory] images into the Fourier language of wave forms. (p. 28).
He went on to describe how physicist Carl Pribram had earlier worked through the problem of how our body communicates with itself by imagining what would happen if it were to convert all of its memories and learned skills into a language of interference wave forms. "Such a brain would be much more flexible and could shift its stored information around with the same ease that a skilled pianist transposes a song from one musical key to another" (Talbot, 1991, p. 24). He further theorized that once something was thus memorized as a particular combination of wave forms, (as a holographic form) it could be recalled and/or examined from about any viewing angle or perspective desired. Much subsequent research has supported his theories.
Talbot goes on to describe the mathematics which were developed in order to describe the functions of wave forms. He explains that Fourier transforms are a mathematically symbolic way of converting any pattern, no matter how complex, into a language of simple wave frequency formulas. These wave formulas can then be converted back into their original wave patterns, much like a television camera converts images into electromagnetic frequencies, and then the television set changes them back into their original image.
Therefore, as Candace Pert (1997; 1990) and others implied earlier in this paper, our mind-body seems to be a magnificently complex, holographic frequency analyzer which has also been observed speaking to itself, by way of its messenger molecules, in Fourier transform "tongues." The phenomenon of energy transduction, in terms of Jung's Sermons via Zukav's quantum mechanics, began way back at the beginning of the universe when pleromal energy waves begat Abraxas energy waves. These in turn begat both the energy waves of which all subsequent life has been composed, and the stressor-- "anti-energies' by which one's life forces are consumed. The key to both the long-term and the short-term survival of this whole energy-transducing process seems to be found in the concept of regeneration, wherein new life energy resources are appropriated for oneself through adaptive mind-body commerce with the Tree of Life.
As Rossi's (1993) theories implied earlier, when one's relaxed energies become focused and centered within this regenerative process, creation of new energy is facilitated in the form of something-for-nothing virtual energy exchanges between one's infinite and infinite states. In addition to what we learned earlier from Rossi about the mind-body's ultradian healing-response, he also explained that when life stress is psychically perceived as the challenge to be met rather than as distress to be escaped from, the body alters its biochemistry in order to meet the challenge presented to it by releasing only the needed catecholamine neurotransmitters.
This is turn creates an optimal state within the body for creative problem-solving. When stimuli are perceived as distressing, however, the body also produces cortisol. It immediately increases arousal within the body-mind to levels which reduce--or completely block--one's attentional focusing abilities, and thus limit problem-solving capacities, ability to disciminate, emotional intelligence, his health, --all levels of resilience. "Cortisol is probably one of the most violent immunodepressants there is" (Sapse, 1977, quoted in Fackelman, 1977, p. 350).
The point here is that when we believe that we are equal to the challenges life presents us (where no cortisol is causing hyperarousal states), we seem to enter into a creative "zone" where the mind-body actually generates more energy reserves for itself. It is as though, at this apex of our human-beingness, or enery-wave frequency distinctiveness, -- the state where mind energy has to creatively stretch itself in order to meet the demands of its body, or body-energy must stretch in order to meet its mind's demands, or where mind-body energy is just generally being stretched by its mind-body challenges, --that we actually seem to become more alive. It is as though accepting the challenge to stretch and grow alters the state of our mind-body in a way that focuses all of our energies on solving the problems at hand, with faith that the energy will be available to meet the challenge. Somehow, this act of staying faithfully focused on our goal communicates that need for energy restoration in a way that actually facilitates its regeneration as needed (Sears, 1995).
It makes sense that increased levels of highly focused energy--or increased energy-wave frequency distinctiveness -- leads to increased levels of quantum energy exchanges, which lead to increased levels of residual virtual energy from which new actual energies can be made. This, in its most fundamental essence is what the ultradian healing response (formerly biorhythms) is all about. It is the regular, daily rebalancing of our mind-body state so that it can holographically regenerate itself. It does this through the creative production --and transduction --of virtual-to-actual energy wave frequencies and interference patterns into better coping skills, or emotionally intelligent, resiliently equilibrative neural structures.
These enhanced neural pathways in turn facilitate the efficacious transduction of information and energy patterns through all the levels of one's being. Looking from another angle, it could be assumed that every time one accepts a life stressor as a challenge and thus in effect lowers his stimulus threshold in order to allow more creative information (energy wave patterns) into his mind-body, he increases his problem-solving, adaptive capacities and along with them his sense of self-efficacy.
Thus, the next time an even bigger stressor confronts him, he will have been effectively "stretched" enough psychologically to take on this even bigger challenge and become even more "alive." This is how moral consciousness grows as one individuates into an increasingly distinct, whole individual, and how that whole individual, in turn, generates increased morally-conscious energy back into the body of the collective. And that, ultimately, is the Tao of resilience.
Resilience as "Tensegrity"
The first two sections of this chapter have dealt with what this paper titled the "reciprocal Causality Dynamics" from which resilience functions (seeing distinctions and making adaptive connections among those distinctions) creatively emerge. It was concluded that the purpose of this whole immensely complex pattern of energy dynamics seems to be connected with our need to become more highly conscious; to become more fully aware of both our distinctiveness and our interconnectedness within the evolving holomovement of some infinitely higher state of energy resources that we call life.
From Particles and Waves to Strings and Membranes
String Theory has enjoyed a vogue in physics and cosmology as 'superstrings.' Yet, it is a prime example of how even an elegant scientific theory which encompasses many 'explanations' may be plausible and yet not necessarily describe reality. In science, camps are divided whether string- and now membrane-theory describes Reality. This theory has its critics. We must always be suspicious when science declares rather than suggests models, as the history of science is one of theories overturned periodically by better, more comprehensive theories.
The ongoing process of revolutions in science will probably continue for some time. Generally, these revolutions come about through improving our ability to observe and test ever finer levels of the macro- and microcosm. Thus, the history of science is one of self-correction and refinement over time, through better insight and modeling. When a scientific model is used as a theory of the way WE are, we can understand it best as a metaphor of reality, rather than an objective description of the true nature of Reality.
If we tie our vision of what we are to any current theory, we are likely to be disabused of that notion at some point. Truth is generally much more complex, and simple, than human modeling can encompass. Science is actually the science of what 'works,' -- the state of the art at any given moment. One reason for this dissonance in what is now called M-theory is that throughout its development, string theory has come up with over 14 solutions to its train of thought, each involving a different number of dimensions for its solutions.
Even though Brian Greene, champion of these hidden dimensions, has dubbed this the "Elegant Universe," (1999) it fails to be an elegant theory. In physics an elegant or beautiful theory is sublime when its equations are simple and clear. Strings, superstring, and membranes have so far failed to meet this touchstone, much less prove itself more than a possible or plausible solution to the Theory of Everything. However, in this work we cannot solve that conundrum.
Our touchstone here is somewhat different, for we are seeking metaphors, "as if" realities which illuminate our understanding of the human condition, which shed light on the nature of the universe as we grope toward truth. We can use string theory, much as the ancients used the discovery of the nature of harmonies, the so-called Music of the Spheres, to light their comprehension of self, others and nature. Even an incomplete theory can function as a useful model and display internal coherence. Whether it expresses in equations the way things really are remains to be seen. Therefore, to begin this section, we will take a look at the architectural energy-pattern structures from which our reality seems to derive its temporo-spatial form.
Among other theorists, Tom Stonier (1990, cited in Rossi, 1995) has identified information transduction as being the organizational principle behind the structure of our universe. Stonier, however, claims he has mathematically established information as the equivalent of matter and energy, each of which he sees as being ultimately transducable into the others. He also explains that organized systems exhibit resonances. Resonances lead to oscillations. Oscillations represent time cycles during which changes may be introduced. Such changes may dampen or amplify the existing oscillations. Alternatively, they may create new resonances and excite new sets of oscillations. The more complex the system, the greater the likelihood of introducing change into the system during any given cycle. Hence the exponential growth of information (p. 41). More on this later.
For now we will make another quantum leap to a related line of thinking called "string theory," or more accurately "the M-theory of Everything." "M" is said to stand for either "Magic, Mystery or Membrane, according to taste (Witten, 1996, cited in Duff, 1998, p. 64). This theory gives us a useful new metaphor as Duff goes on to describe some of its terms. A particle, which has zero dimensions, sweeps out a one-dimensional trace, or 'worldline,' as it evolves in space-time. Similarly a string--having one dimension, length--sweeps out a two-dimensional 'worldsheet.' and a membrane--having two dimensions, length and breadth--sweeps out a three-dimensional 'world volume.' (p. 65)
'Spin,' or inherent angular momentum, which we briefly touched on earlier, is the way physicists describe the way particles appear to be rotating even thought they really are not. It is actually more like the idea of spin which is inferred from the trajectory of particles through space (Zukav, 1979).
According to Duff (1998), laws of "supersymmetry" require that each particle of a particular spin must have "a particle with the same mass but half-integer spin" (p.64) which is a technical way of saying that particles must have anti-particles in order for our universe to make logical sense, which it as yet does not. Since researchers have never found such a symmetrical particle-partner, they assume that is merely because it cannot be seen.
Since the state of supersymmetry implies a balance of gravitational forces, this new paradigm also further validates many of the ontological views expressed earlier in this work, since it proposes that all four of the elemental forces (gravity, the electromagnetic force, the nuclear force, and the weak force) are ultimately just different phenomenal aspects of their mutual, virtual energy-exchange origins.
M-theory proposes a number of possible scientific explanations for the origins of everything, but the one most useful for our purposes here is called the "T-duality" theory. This growing paradigm, in a very concise nutshell, sees the universe as existing simultaneously at both microcosmic and macrocosmic reality levels as parallel universes, one the reciprocal, or inverse function, of the other.
Harking back to the past, the ancients also thought so and expressed this truism in the alchemical maxim, "As Above; So Below." In other words, it portrays the energy of both these realities as existing in two simultaneous states which Duff called the "Duality of Dualities" (p. 67). One of these energy states is called its "vibrating" state and the other is called its "winding" state. Loosely translated, this points back to oscillation frequencies (waves) and their related states of energic tension, called particles, -- or in this case, the energy-pattern traces called strings, which are made by particles vibrating across space and time. Significantly, Duff reports that the physicists are hoping to use "known" characteristics about our observable universe in order to infer the unknown reciprocal characteristics of their proposed alternate reality.
Put in terms even more useful for purposes here, they believe that the energy information which exists in one of these dual reality dimensions is humanly transducable into its paradoxically mirrored, reciprocal state. And that is pretty much what this whole work has been trying to say. As living beings, we exist paradoxically within a dual state of dual states as both the finite, living products of interactions between particle and wave/matter and energy/body and mind, and the infinitely interactive process from which all of those dual-state living products arose.
In other words, the proposed invisible 'reciprocal dimension' has already made itself knowable within our reality as the virtual/actual informational energy-exchange by means of which we communicate as both messenger and receiver in order to become more harmoniously and resiliently evolved. So, in effect, physicists are "reinventing the wheel" here,--but that is okay; they too need to intuit truth via those metaphors within which they are best prepared to see it. The creative interactions of our many paradigms, philosophies, and religions are vital to the evolution of collective consciousness. For example, physicists'' "matrix theory" also provides further validation of our holographic theories of everything.
According to Duff (1998), they evidently imagine the phenomena of quantum energy dynamics as an infinite number of criss-crossings of energy-wave strings forming an immense, hypothetical matrix upon which numerical coordinates are meaningless, and where "points" on this matrix are themselves matrices which "do not commute,--that is, xy does not equal yx" (p. 69). Not only is Cartesian logic being replaced here by something very similar to the holographic, Fourier-transformational reality metaphors discussed earlier, but cutting-edge physics is again supporting a key point of this work: Our four-dimensional reality state seems to be simultaneously gazing into and reciprocally interacting with a quantum mirror-image of itself where sequentially-ordered informational states do not commute.
That is to say, because of the temporo-spatial limitations of finite reality, the energy sequences through which we communicate our information/energy states must oscillate up and down as well as from left to right, at varying frequencies. These sequential properties of matter do not perfectly commute into their energy equivalents within our reality, but rather, they create the reversed, paradoxical mirror image which, in effect, stabilizes life energies in their finite evolutionary state.
This is probably why infinite virtual energy exchanges (of which we, as evolving by-products of their electromagnetic interactions are fundamentally composed), when they are not able to be perfectly completed within their finite, "actual"--mirrored states, return so infinitely quickly to this "actual" state -- for further self-correction. From these quantum energy-metaphors we have now also found a more efficient way of imagining how energy takes on its 3-dimensional shape as it moves through the temporal dimension of our reality: Dimenionless virtual/actual particles vibrate across time, forming two-dimensional waves, which oscillate across time in various geometric shapes, which in turn move about in all four dimensions like invisible duct-work energy tunnels. As energy becomes increasingly ordered into evolving patterns of evolving patterns, it begin to electromagnetically manifest as matter.
This concept of shaped energy will "shape" the conceptual contents of the next section of this paper.
From Strings and Membranes to Struts and Cables
It has been established that a particle has no measurable dimensions in our reality, but is merely a hypothetical entity with the potential to have mass (energy) as one of its characteristics. So, it is really just a symbol that we use to describe the movement, or interactive relationships of energy within our four-dimensional reality.
One of the ways we are here describing life in our reality zone is as an elaborate energy/information-transducing process whose purpose it is to enable us as its chief frequency-modulators, to become more highly conscious of, and thus individuated within, that process. It seems fitting to conclude this theory by also metaphorming a mechanically stable energy-reinforcing structure upon which this process can take shape. And, since energy particles can now be imagined to exist as potential shapes in space, it follows that there must be some rules and regulations that its virtual energy shapes must follow in order to become actuated.
According to the fundamental laws of physics as described by Ian Stewart (1998), nature likes to conserve, or minimize, the energy it has to expend in order to do its work. The original proponent of this view was Buckminster Fuller, who expressed it mathematically and philosophically in his tour de force, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) and Synergetics II (1979).
Fuller discovered Nature's own rules of assembly. His vision was founded on the geometry of close-packed spheres, which can be found in the nuclei of all atoms. In fact, there is much to link the nature of Fuller's primary modules, the self-assembling tetrahedron and the Vector Equilibrium Matrix to the virtual vacuum or quantum foam, Jung's pleroma.
Nature's own economy and minimalism is the reason why: (a) "the surface of smallest area that encloses a given volume is a sphere"; (b) "Without some constraint, the area of minimal surface would be zero"; and, (c) "Minimal surface" is a surface whose area is the smallest possible, subject to the following constraints: the shape's surface must contain some given volume, and its boundary should lie on some given surface or curve, or both (p. 104). Thus it can be said that in its material form, energy seeks to equilibrate itself into a perfectly energy-efficient, completely energy-balanced shape of a sphere.
Its underlying "assimilation and accommodation" dynamics therefore all seem subsequent to this basic geometrically equilibrative law of energy conservation. Therefore, the distinctive shapes which virtual/actual particle/energy wave patterns reciprocally evoke depends upon their underlying energy-redistribution dynamics. In his very notable Scientific American article (1/1998), Donald E. Ingber revitalizes the current of Synergetics by identifying the prominence of tensegrity in geometric shapes in "The Architecture of Life," and its relationship to Complexity.
He states the following as his introduction:
Life is the ultimate example of complexity at work. An oganism...develops through an incredibly complex series of interactions involving a vast number of different components...[which] are themselves made up of smaller molecular components, which independently exhibit their own dynamic behavior...Yet, when they are combined into some larger functioning unit--such as a cell or tissue-- utterly new and unpredictable properties emerge, including the ability to move, to change shape and to grow....That nature applies common assembly rules is implied by the recurrence--at scales from the molecular to the macroscopic--of certain patterns, such as spirals, pentagons and triangulated forms...After all, [everything is] made of the same building blocks: atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus. The only difference is how the atoms are arranged in three-dimensional space (p. 48).
Ingber goes on from there to describe this emergent phenomenon as a process of "self-assembly" (p. 48) into increasingly complex hierarchies of life forms. He stated his observation that nearly everything in our world, including the human body, is constructed using a form of architecture known as tensegrity (p. 48).
He explains, "The term refers to a system that stabilizes itself mechanically because of the way in which tensional and compressive forces are distributed and balanced within the structure" (pp. 48-49). The key point here seems to be that the stability (or resilience) of a tensegrity structure comes not from the strength of its individual member-parts, but from the way that its mechanical stresses are balanced and distributed across all of the parts of the whole. Ingber describes two categories of tensegrity structures, the first of which is made up entirely of "rigid struts," each of which is able to bear either tension or compression, and the second of which is composed of "prestressed" structures which bear either tension or compression even before being subjected to external forces. The compression-bearing rigid struts function to stretch, or tense, the flexible tension-bearing members, or "cables," while the tension-bearing cables, in turn, compress the struts.
Thus, these "counteracting forces, which equilibrate throughout the structure, are what enable it to stabilize itself" (p. 49). [insert figures from appendix here] A closer look at some of the other interesting and relevant features of tensegrity shows that: (a) It is the constructive, architecturally equilibrative use of gravity which gives most buildings their stability by taking advantage of its continuous compression forces; (b) Tension-bearers "map-out" the shortest path between adjacent members, resulting ideally in highly resilient geodesic-like shapes; (c) Tensional forces, in turn, follow these accommodative shortest routes between points so that their tensional stresses become adaptively assimilated as new functions of the structure's resilient, ever equilibrating form (Ingber, p. 49-50).
When studying the functions of tensegrity structures involved in the make-up of cells, Ingber found that when attached to a flexible substrate material, cells contract and become more spherical, thereby "puckering" the material beneath them. So it seems that the tensegrity dynamics of any given structure, even a living one, can have a significant rippling effect on the dynamics of its surrounding neighbors. More significantly, it was seen that pushing down on a tensegrity structure forces it into what appears to be a flattened, disordered state, but as soon as the pressure is removed from it, "the energy stored in its tensed filaments causes the [structure] to spring back to its original, roughly spherical shape" (p. 50).
This demonstrates that when tension and compression ratios are evenly distributed across a structure's member-parts, the structure will resiliently rebound from traumatic stressors. As shown above, in cellular tensegrity structures all the way up to and including the human body, all interconnected structural elements rearrange themselves as needed in response to local stressors.
So, in effect, just as the body varies the stiffness or flexibility of its bones, joints, tendons, and muscles in response to demands made upon it, cellular structures also stiffen or relax their various cytoskeletal parts through contraction and extension of their minute microfilaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments in response to its structural integrity needs. This is important because some research shows this bears directly on our own consciousness, as we shall see in the next section.
Furthermore, molecules too rearrange their shapes in order to communicate their reactions to the electro-chemical dynamics which influence their structural integrity. Thus, all levels of the human body's structure are simultaneously and continuously increasing their tensegrity states as much as possible, within the reciprocal limitations set forth by the corresponding state of the "structural matrix" to which and within which they are attached. Elsewhere in science, the notion of reciprocal limitations is referred to as "rein theory." Ingber and his associates actually observed how it is that these kinds of structural alterations communicate information in order to bring about changes in the biochemistry and genetic activities of the cell and its surroundings.
For example, they found that [b]y simply modifying the shape of the cell, they could switch cells between different genetic programs....Thus, mechanical restructuring of the cell and cytoskeleton apparently tells the cell what to do. Very flat cells, with their cytoskeletons stretched, sense that more cells are needed to cover the surrounding substrate--as in wound repair--and that cell division is needed. Rounding indicates that too many cells are competing for space on the matrix and that the cells are proliferating too much; some must die to prevent tumor formation (pp. 52-53).
It is important to emphasize that it is at some point in between these extremes of shape variation that the living cell functions most resiliently. And thus we return to the topic of our work here. However, we can go into a little more detail on just how this tensegrity not only affects our structural robustness, but also our consciousness.
Microtubules: Where Consciousness and Tensegrity Meet
Quantum theory describes extraordinary behavior of matter and energy which comprise our universe at a fundamental level. At the root of QM is the wave/particle duality of atoms, molecules and their constituent particles. When a quantum system remains isolated from its environment, it behaves as a "wave of possibilities" and exists in a coherent complex-number valued "superposition" of many possible states. Superposed quantum states for which the respective mass distributions differ significantly from one another will have space-time geometries which correspondingly differ.
Microtubules are hollow, cylindrical, tiny subcomponents of the cytoskeleton and transport system of our cells. They are the structural and dynamical basis of the cells, organizing functional activities, including synaptic regulation in the brain's neurons. They are self-assembling and mediate cell division and DNA splitting. Their conformation allows them to make computations--they function as onboard quantum computers.
Within MTs are arranged in a hexagonal lattice which is slightly twisted, resulting in a helical pathway. The cell's bone-like scaffolding appears to fill communicative and information processing roles. They regulate the strength of neuronal synapses. Microtubules can convert incoherent energy (thermal, chemical, or electromagnetic) into coherent photons, in a process known as "superradiance."
Cells get their shape from tensegrity, the architecture of life. Systems stabilize themselves mechanically because of the way in which tensional and compressive forces are distributed and balanced in their structure. Tensegrity structures are stable because they are "prestressed." The cytoskeleton is composed of microfilaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments. They compose a lattice, which stretches from the cell surface to the nucleus. It pulls the cell's membrane and internal constituents toward the core.
In opposition, the two compressive elements are the microtubules (or compressive "girders") and the extracellular matrix. Intermediate filaments connect microtubules and contractile microfilaments to the surface membrane and cell's nucleus. (Ingber). Synergetics stabilizes the cell through continuous tension and local compression. Microtubules, as tension-bearing parts of the structure, connect along the shortest, most economical paths. Because of this synergetic geometry, tensegrity structures offer a maximum amount of strength for a given amount of structure. Changing the shape of cells can switch them between different genetic programs.
Mechanical restructuring of the cell and cytoskeleton tells the cell what to do. Changing cytoskeletal geometry and mechanics affects biochemical reactions, protein production and gene expression. Changing cell shape can make them differentiate, (flat) can make them divide, or (round) activate a death program called apoptosis. According to Hameroff (1995), if quantum theory IS relevant to consciousness, it is at a level of embedding deeper than neurons, and possibly deals with conformational shapes.
Proteins configured in a lattice so that coherence occurs among the superposed quantum states may result in "quantum computing," where outputs regulate neural firing. The role of neurons is more like a magnifying device in which the smaller-scale cytoskeletal action is pumped up or transduced into something which can influence other organs of the body (Penrose, Shadows of the Mind, p. 376).
Microtubules are such geometric lattices of proteins. Its paracrystalline lattice structure promotes long-range cooperativity and order. This crystal-like lattice can function as a quantum wave-guide, which may be one possible biomolecular quantum device in neurons. The most basic cognitive unit is not the nerve cell synapse, but the microtubular structure within cells. Tube-shaped microtubules and tubulins are ideal quantum mechanical resonators. Resonance might support the existence of sub-quantum coherence in the brain. This conformational state occurring throughout significant brain volumes may produce Bose-Einstein condensate (shared quantum state), and/or quantum optical coherence. Coherent, nonlocal order emerges.
The many parts that make up an ordered system not only behave as a whole, they become whole; their identities merge or overlap so they lose their individuality entirely. Thus, they are capable of forming ephemeral but extended structures in the brain. Structures formed by Bose-Einstein condensates are the building blocks of mental life; in relation to perception they are models of the world, transforming a nice view, say, into a mental structure which represents some of the inherent qualities of that view.
Coherence is a matter of phase relationships, which are readily destroyed by almost any perturbation. On the other hand, complex dynamical systems have subtle internal phase relationships, and in some cases the nature of the dynamics protects these relationships through feedback, amplification, etc., especially in the presence of a supply of energy (Hameroff). So the physical dynamics which follow from quantum coherence can assume a significant role. "Superradiance" is an effect which can convert disordered energy of various kinds into coherent electromagnetic energy. Spontaneous emission of radiation in a transition between levels leads to the emission of a coherent radiation pulse which excites "super-radiant" states.
Ordering of water molecules in each microtubule can transform incoherent disordered energy into coherent photons within its hollow tubular core. Through pumping and a further effect called self-induced transparency, coherent photons are allowed to propagate. (Hameroff). Objective reduction means cascades of self-collapse give rise to the "stream" of consciousness, and provide a "flow" of time. ("OR", Penrose, 1994). An intrinsic feature of space-time itself, quantum gravity may be the agent of such collapse.
Self-collapse creates an instantaneous "now" event; sequences of such events create the flow of time and consciousness. Self-selections in fundamental space-time geometry may result in the factor we call subjectivity or subjective experience. OR in brain microtubules is the most specific and plausible model for consciousness yet proposed, according to its authors Penrose and Hameroff.
OR is an instantaneous event--the climax of a self-organizing process in fundamental space-time. Sequences of OR events give rise to our "stream" of consciousness and orchestrate our perceptual experience. The actual choice of state made by Nature is non-computable, a self-selection of space-time geometry, coupled to the brain through microtubules and other biomolecules, (Hameroff & Penrose).
Consciousness may involve a form of quantum computation that occurs in fundamental space-time geometry. At extremely small scales, space-time is not smooth, but quantized. Quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory predict virtual particle/waves (or photons) that pop into and out of existence, creating quantum "foam" in their wake. This granularity has been modeled by Penrose as a dynamic web of quantum spins.
If spin-networks are fundamental units of space-time geometry, they may provide the basis of proto-conscious experience. In other words, particular configurations of quantum spin geometry would convey particular types of qualia, meaning and aesthetics. Specific arrangements of space-time geometry constitute all brain activity. Quantum computation involves the processing of "qubits" as 1 and 0 (and other states) simultaneously. Subunit tubulins act as qubits, switching between states on a nanosecond timescale. Information is superposed and computes in the form of "qubits" in a quantum state which then collapse to definite "bits," or particular results.
Pre-conscious processing of information occurs in the form of qubits, or superposed states of microtubule automata. As the threshold for objective reduction is reached, these qubits collapse to definite states and become bits, resulting in a conscious experience of recognition or choice. While the microtubule quantum superposition evolves linearly, it is influenced at the instant of collapse by hidden non-local variables. The final response or action (or resilience) is determined by the effects of the hidden logic inherent in the space-time geometry of the quantum system undergoing reduction.
Holism and non-locality are features of the quantum world reflected in the quantum nature of awareness. This implies interacting systems have to be considered as wholes; non-locality means spatial separation between parts does not alter the fact we must deal with an interacting system holistically. The sense of self is attributed to temporal correlation (e.g. coherent 40 Hz). Jibu (1990) proposed that gap junction synapses account for synchronized 40 Hz neural activity.
Quantum states and self-collapse in neuronal MT could link brain activities such as thalamo-cortical 40 Hz to experience embedded in "funda-mental" spacetime geometry. Buddhists describe distinct "flickering" in their experience of reality (Tart, 1995). 25 second intervals between 40 Hz depolarizations suggest such "cognitive quanta" as functional entities. When these move from pre-conscious to conscious they orchestrate our moments of experience.
Time doesn't really flow, but appears to flow, because OR events are irreversible and have a direction in time. Thus instantaneous events give rise to the subjective flow of time, our stream of consciousness. Self-organizing quantum activities in cytoplasm may be the missing ingredients in neural-level correlates of consciousness. The instantaneous conscious "now" creates new experience from rearrangements in the fundamental spacetime geometry in which raw qualia, or proto-conscious experience resides. In a volitional act possible choices may be superposed. As the OR threshold is reached, the quantum state reduces to a single classical state -- a choice is made.
Summary: Energy Transducing Tensegrity Structures
Wheeler described a "pre-geometry" of fundamental reality comprised of information. Chalmers contends it includes "experiential aspects" leading to consciousness. Consciousness emerges from a critical level of complexity. Microtubules transduce the experiential aspect of fundamental information. MTs are "electrets" with piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties. MTs assemble and disassemble dynamically, and reassemble. They convey signals and process information. Thus, MTs are linked to learning, memory, and synaptic plasticity. Information is fundamental to the physics of the universe. Matter and mind may arise from consciousness -- the fundamental constituent of reality according to some (Goswami, 1993).
Information has both physical and experiential aspects. The climax of a self-organizing process is fundamental to the structure of space-time. Yes, consciousness has neural correlates. However, brain processes relevant to consciousness extend downward within neurons to the level of the cytoskeleton, in which proto-conscious qualia (subjective experience or inner life) are embedded in the basic level of reality. Consciousness runs deeper than membrane-level functions. "Qualia" (raw feelings or experience) or an experiential medium from which consciousness is derived, may exist as a fundamental component of reality.
For science to demonstrate this empirically, the very nature of physical reality must be re-examined. Only large collections of particles acting coherently in a single macroscopic quantum state could possibly sustain isolation and support coherent superposition in a time frame brief enough to be relevant to our consciousness. Only very special circumstances can support consciousness. In this model, microtubule-associated proteins "tune" the quantum oscillations leading to OR. Ingber has demonstrated mechanical signaling through cytoskeletal tensegrity networks in which MTs are compressed by contractile action and other filamentous structures. Associative learning, memory, and phase transitions occur in simulated MT experiments.
Collective quantum dynamics called super-radiance allows MTs to transform incoherent, disordered energy into quantum coherent photons within its hollow core. Now we can see how all these concepts and terms fit together in the "synergetics of resilience," to produce emergent effects which are greater than the sum of their parts. Resilience, as seen through the lens of the tensegrity paradigm, appears to have the flexible yet stable shape of an elaborately constructed network of on-going energy-distribution information feedback loops. Yet it is also simultaneously the reciprocally interactive process underlying the dynamics of its own self-assembly.
This resilience is achieved in humans through a combined process of creative self-reflection and intelligent self-correction. When the concepts of tensegrity are viewed from the perspective of quantum mechanics, the shape which energy (as a potential particle-function) take sin three-dimensional space evolves relative to the tension and compression dynamics recorded within the interference wave interactions from which it has emerged over time. In other words, the architectural design of a material form emerges as the holographic by-product of its continuously shape-shifting, -- and thus information-transducing function.
This is ultimately how all life forms transduce information about themselves to other life forms. By utilizing an interactive, holographic kind of particle-wave "Morse Code" about their current temporo-spatial state just as Candace Pert (1990) predicted earlier, the human body-mind communicates within its inner environment (it "self-reflects") in order to increase the over-all tensegrity of its immense number of "parts" so that it can adapt ("self-correct") more resiliently to all of its life stressors. Each form of feedback loop can be seen as a separate continuum which is reciprocally interactive with all other feedback-loop continua supporting its life form structure -- which, ultimately is all of them. Every living-energy-information feedback loop is holographically interconnected with all other living energy-information feedback loops.
Resilience, as a tensegrity process, therefore, is the organism's ability to (a) respond appropriately to stressors from within and without its biological structures in a way that allows it to (b) redistribute those stressors equitably across its member-parts in a way that (c) establishes and maintains its many tension-compression ratios within their respective homeostatic comfort zones. Those feedback-loop continua whose ideal "set-points" have been stretched and tempered, or "prestressed" have the ability to creatively adapt to more stressful energy than those whose "zones" remain very limited. Also, some "strut-like" feedback loops allow more for the compressive receiving and holding of stressor energy, while others, -- more "cable-like," allow more for the flexible holding and sending of energy tensions.
On the human level, the former, compressive feedback loops might be compared to one's innate craving for novel stimuli, an intellectual, strut-like strength, and the latter cold be seen as one's ability to evaluate stressors as challenges, rather than as oppressors, an emotional, cable-like strength. [insert Appendix C, fig. 12] When these continua of energy patterns are all interconnected into even one "simple" organ of the body, and complexity of the structure is immense and mind-boggling. The next higher level of complexity after the human body's physical structures upon which the body's mind is shaped. Our metaphor of how the dynamics of the human mind-body fits together with the pleroma, holographs, and tensegrity will conclude this section.
Conclusions to Part IV: Emergence or Emergency?
The basic message from all of this science for us as humans is that when it comes to adapting to our environment, our response can either be based in self-organizing emergence in the face of chaos, or non-adaptive breakdown which creates emergency. Adaptive challenge is what leads to critical states to which we either succumb, or rally with a new sense of self-image, a new higher level of self-organization. This holds true whether the challenge comes at the physical, emotional, intellectual/moral, or spiritual level. We opened many pages ago with a question as to whether or ot we humans are actually separate, distinct life-forms "ruling" this planet, or whether it might be true, as many have suggested over millennia, that we are all fundamentally inextricably embedded "parts" of one huge, organismic whole life form.
The answer to both questions, not surprisingly, is "Yes." The point is how do we respond attitudinally and in real-time to those challenges, in a holistic, synergetic or dissociative manner? Like "the sound of one hand clapping," mankind often seems to have congratulated itself on its achievements far more than observable history has justified. On the other hand, when viewed ontologically as well as epistemologically, -- perhaps there is room in the bigger scheme of things for the many blunders of humanity.
Perhaps, if we choose to learn from our mistakes how to make better choices for ourselves in the future, the "negative" stressors we have brought upon ourselves down through the ages may have actually been helping both our mind-bodies -- and our world-body to become stronger and more consciously resilient with the overall state of our mutual inter-dependence as a whole, living, holographic "tensegrity" structure. However, and this is a BIG however, the planet Earth does not have the luxury of allowing us more time for making further mistakes.
Our impact upon the planet in terms of ecology, resource exploitation, pollution, population, acid rain, ozone depletion and other irreversible factors is changing our environment beyond the point of viability for us, certainly in terms of quality of life as humans have known it since our emergence. And this does not even address the purely humanistic concerns of fair allocations of resources and human rights. We cannot afford to dwell in the ivory-tower of abstract notions about the nature of energy/matter while the planet as we know it is dying around us. Its resilience bears strongly on our own.
Despite our desires to migrate into space we are tied inexorably to its fate; Earth's resilience to our resilience. Even biologically, there is no substitute for good air, good earth, and good water. These are the resources of our real "wealth," from which all else, including our phenomenal science and technology depends. For our planet, "resilience" may mean our extinction. This has happened to myriad species on earth in deep history, for our galaxy is essentially hostile to life, even while fostering its development in this oasis Earth.
Not only the depletion of the planet, but other factors impinging from outside of our solar system challenge our continued existence. Thus it is that energy, at all levels of manifestation within our time-space continuum, can ultimately be distinguished as being involved in some phase of an oscillating process of evolutionary, distinction-making self-reflection and self-correction. Furthermore, this state is continuously being communicated among all other states via the resiliently evolving tensegrity-building life processes.
The sound of one hand clapping is like a person's eternal mind without the information-transducing energies of its finite body. Or, -- it is consciousness without the self-reflecting functions of its life dynamics. As the Jungian-holographic-tensegrity resilience metaphors have shown us, life is a koan within a koan, and we, as participants in its energy dynamics, are the vital, living, energy-shaping metaphors of its ongoing mystery. Thus, the secret of the universe is -- "Its alive!"
Asklepia Foundation, ©1998/2002
PART IV: THE TAO OF RESILIENCE: A NEW RESILIENCE METAPHOR
On the Nature of Metaphor
Reply to Jung: Quantum Sermons to the Living
- Functions of Distinctiveness
- The Creative Evolution of Evolutionary Creation
- Life is a Hologram of Holograms
- Consciousness & the Biohologram
- Making the Indistinct Distinct
- Creating Adaptability
- Summary: The Holographic "Enchanted Loom"
- From Particles and Waves to Strings and Membranes
- From Strings and Membranes to Struts and Cables
- Summary: Energy Transducing Tensegrity Structures
A NEW RESILIENCE METAPHOR
Heuristic passions is ...the mainspring of originality --the force which impels us to abandon an accepted framework of interpretation and commit ourselves, by the crossing of a logical gap, to the use of new framework. --(Polyani, 1962, as cited in Moustakis, 1990, p.123)
On the Nature of Metaphor
How is it possible to know something, even about ourselves, that is radically new? Metaphors are one of the cognitive mechanisms that lead to the discovery and advancement of new theories. Often, in science, they appear spontaneously in dreams which are then applied in real time. Metaphor and analogy help us create mapping between two domains in a one-to-one correlation.
Metaphor still plays a role in the articulation of new scientific theory. In cognitive psychology, metaphors are drawn from the terminology of computer science, in transpersonal psychology from mysticism, in Consciousness Restructuring Process from Chaos Theory, QM, Holographic and other theories. Thus, science recycles its metaphors in self-referential strange loops. Alchemists made use of symbolic metaphors, but ascribed causal powers to metaphorical similarities, (creating the so-called "doctrine of signatures."). In this way they tried to satisfy their wish to manipulate nature rather than know it.
But, metaphors may be nature, our nature; or certainly phenomenological expressions of our existential nature. They provide a reference point without defining reality. The problem becomes not one of how to know something radically new, but how to learn something radically new. Thus metaphors are instructive. They are a central Way of leaping the epistemological chasm between old and new knowledge, old and new ways of essential being.
Metaphors help us make this leap. They help us enter a problematic situation in order to solve it, to explore it, and explore the world restructured by the metaphor. We can tap the source of creativity, healing and holistic restructuring through imagination and metaphor. The possibilities for concepts and for thought are shaped in very special ways by both the body and the brain that evolved to control it, especially the sensory-motor system. Conceptual metaphors appear to be neural maps that link sensory-motor domains in the brain to regions where more abstract reasoning is done. This allows sensory-motor structures to play a role in abstract reason (Lakoff, 1999).
The mind-body split or dualism vanishes when bodily control mechanisms are being used in abstract reasoning. Conceptual metaphorical mappings are not primarily matters of language, they are part of our conceptual systems, cross-domain mappings, allowing us to use sensory-motor concepts and reasoning in the service of abstract reason and holistic perception. This metaphorical mapping ability is automatically acquired unconsciously in our everyday functioning in the world.
In fact, when metaphors are synchronistic, emergent, spontaneous, self-organizing expressions of our dynamic stream of consciousness, they are an imaginal encoding of information that bridges the domains of conscious and unconscious worlds, material and transpersonal realms. Such metaphors can be deeply transformative--more than mere language, a technology for changing our behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Intentional contact and immersion in these metaphors can transform our spirit and soul.
How can we know or describe anything about the changes we have not yet experienced, change that by universal consensus takes us beyond the realm of everyday reality, for which our words and concepts have been fashioned? Metaphors contain a subtle communication by containing meaning in a delicate net of imagery.
In psychotherapy and mysticism, both, it is characteristic of the Self to speak to the ego-personality in the language of myth and metaphor. It allows us to grasp some image of that which remains as-yet-unknown. Classical metaphors of transformation are embodied in the primordial wisdom traditions. Metaphors are strongly related to process-oriented psychotherapy and immersion in the stream of consciousness [itself a metaphor]. The notion and phenomenon of metaphor raises as many questions as it answers.
Metaphors do not directly describe perceptual reality, but its language helps us imagine an "as if" reality. For example, in Metaphor Therapy (Grove) we ask what an experience is like. The replies about the nature of feelings and traumas come automatically couched in somato-sensory metaphor: "like a rock on my chest, like a stab in the back, it leaves me feeling breathless, disembodied." Following the 'trail' we might ask, "Disembodied like what?" "Like a cloud, like smoke, like a vaporous nothingness"...
The metaphorical possibilities or replies are virtually endless. They embody that which is still unknown and possibly unknowable, yet explorable through imagery and dialogue. Metaphor is an artifact of language--saying this to mean that. They function as tools. That leads us to suspect it is a technology. As such, it is an aid to understanding. Metaphor represents the convergence of figurative language, imagination and consciousness. There is a fundamental distinction between literal and metaphorical language. John Searle, in his well-known essay Metaphor asserts that there is no semantic difference between metaphoric expression and literal, because "sentence and words have only the meaning that they have...Metaphorical meaning is always speaker's utterance meaning."
Even poetic metaphors can muddle or clarify comprehension by distorting truth conditions. You say one thing to mean something else. So talking of metaphor as a kind of meaning may be false. Yet, the role of conscious and unconscious processes in metaphor production and interpretation is ubiquitous. The role of "seeing as" permeates the development of consciousness. It reflects interactions between imagination, perception and cognition; how bodily and neural processes create and constrain imagination. Language, concept and world are the three realms of metaphor which is a mode of cognition. But metaphors are events, not objects. And generative-metaphors can be viewed as problem-setting scenes and problem-solving situations. [Tacit generative metaphors may underlie our perceptual patterns much as personal and collective mythologies do].
Metaphors describe the internal structure of domains and how they are represented; the nature and organizational structure of information. They follow the information processing approach and propose a spatial representation in which local subspaces can be mapped into points of higher-order hyperspaces, and vice versa. The distance among concepts in these mental spaces is the main parameter for establishing the comprehensibility and aesthetic pleasure of metaphors. Conceptual metaphors are more than semantic representations; they imply deep action, even though the locus of metaphor is thought. They directly reflect our metaphorical understanding of experience. This dual coding is based on more than a theoretical point of view based in imagery and verbal association.
Metaphor is not merely a superficial phenomenon of language, but shapes our judgments, and structures our language. Displaying many facets, metaphor pervades our everyday non-theoretical language. A metaphor is a holistic schema, a unifying framework that links a conceptual representation to its sensory and experiential ground. It embodies the gestalt and ecological properties of thought. The network of underlying metaphors form a cognitive map, a web of concepts organized in terms which serve to ground the abstract. This cognitive topology, by which we impose structure on space, gives rise to spatial inferences and images. The subjective ego-centric properties of the individual are projected onto the world via this cognitive mapping. Even the same metaphor of 'time' can produce different interpretations, depending on the relative position of the observer within his cognitive topology.
Mental pictures and verbal processes meet in metaphor which promotes retrieval of images and verbal information that intersects with information aroused by the topic. Language is a conduit for this force by transferring or conveying thoughts and feelings to others. Therefore what is literal can also be metaphorical; only the literal use of language can be true or false. These facts underlie or form the dynamical basis of all talk therapies. George Lakoff and others have developed contemporary theories of metaphor. Undeniably, there are a great many irreducible metaphorical concepts in our everyday life which function in a systematic way and are grounded in our physical and cultural experience.
But what is metaphor a metaphor for? How do metaphors work? How can we interpret two levels of understanding, novel and classical metaphors for comprehension and understanding? Can we learn without metaphors? Epistemological metaphors help us relate "how we know what we know." They help us frame and describe our experience and its meaning at both the personal and collective levels. However, when do our epistemological metaphors become more than models?
When we "know," how do we "know that we know," and "what is it like?" This bears on the confusion surrounding the process and products of linguistic understanding. How do psychological processes figure in metaphor comprehension and memory? When we think in metaphors, do they create similarity, or state some pre-existing similarity? Do they produce new knowledge by projecting the "known" into an unknown domain? How do they emphasize, suppress, and organize features of cognition and awareness? How do we incorporate novelty through similar differences, and different similarities? What are the educational uses of metaphor? How can we tap directly into multidimensional metaphoric process?
What is beyond metaphor: what is the role in cognition and consciousness of synecdoche (inclusion) and metonymy (contiguity)? Metonymy describes extension involving Whole-Part relations in contrast to synecdoche, which involves Part-Whole relations. Or, it is a figurative extension of meaning involving concomitance. It is arguably possible to distinguish between metaphor and metonymy and between non-figurative implication and metonymy. The distinctions are cognitively based and have linguistic relevance, which improve our understanding of the dynamic role of language in consciousness.
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) claim that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical. But metonymy and synecdoche may be just as holistically basic. Expressions in simile are even more common than metaphor; both follow literalisms. They provide a context for our experience. Metonymy is implied meaning without restriction to the figurative uses of words. It is a figurative extension of meaning involving concomitance. Expressing what we sense, feel, think and believe about things and our existential condition, they form the ground of our synergetic cognition about self, others and universe.
Ultimately, what would metaphors of resilience, such as "bouncing back," or "pressing on," "come back," "rebirth" mean to us unless they originate in a spontaneous, emergent way? What metaphors form the tacit webwork of resilience?
Reply to Jung: Quantum Sermons to the Living
Harken, I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In eternity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. As well might ye say anything else of nothingness, so for instance, white is it, or black, or again, it is not, or it is. A thing that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities. This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the external and infinite possess no qualities. In it no being is, for he then would be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as something distinct from the pleroma. (Jung, Seven Sermons to the Dead)
Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961) was one of those pivotal reading experiences which radically change the course of my (Southwick's) thinking and my life. Tucked away discretely in an appendix in the back of the book was his "Seven Sermons to the Dead." Since Jung admitted regret over having written the piece, I could not understand why it had such a profound effect on my autonomic nervous system when I read it.
With my heart rate elevated and my breathing nearly stopped, I sensed one of those rare aha! moments from which is would never fully recover. Thus it was that my conflicted feelings about this "sinful" work of his younger years came about: I had been profoundly moved, -- metamorphosed in thinking by words which, for some reason unknown to me, had evidently embarrassed their author. [perhaps because of its "channeled" quality]. Now, after years of filtering down through the apparatus of my own thinking, it is time to allow the distilled spirit of these messages, as I have heuristically experienced it, to be poured onto page.
The remaining arguments of this chapter will more logically flow from this initial, philosophical offering as concepts from Jung's Sermons are reviewed as useful metaphors for explaining (a) the source from which have emerged all life functions and (b) as the foundational elements upon which the effects of these reciprocally emergent functions are framed. The previous chapter concluded with a brief sojourn into the "something-for-nothing" realm of quantum physics. There it is was theorized that at some point beyond the temporo-spatial limits of our human comprehension, lies an infinite source of finite energy.
We had an infinitely brief glance at the point where "virtual reality" and "actual reality" merge as infinitude cloaks itself within the energy patterns from which all of life is formed. The underlying motivation for this intellectual quest was to discover the ultimate whys and wherefores of resilience, which is the point to which we now return. If the whole point of evolution is survival of the fittest, (or the most resilient) then it would seem that the lowly bacterium, from whose functions all higher life forms have theoretically sprung, may well represent nature's supreme creation. It descendants are still around, basically unchanged after perhaps three billion years, while the relatively recently evolved human species already seems determined in one way or another to destroy itself and most other life along with it. What resilience lessons can be learned from these microscopic life forms through whose organic functions the evolution of life and all of its on-going processes are possible and by whom the containers of all of these life processes are ultimately reclaimed for recycling?
Is the earth really made up of many indifferent, different life forms, resiliently evolving to ever higher levels of form-function complexity? Or might we all be, as Jung and other (see for example, Campbell, 1988) have implied, the distinctively evolving mind-body whose infinite function it is to become more wholly conscious of its own paradoxical nature so that it may more fully exist in its infinite state?
Functions of Distinctiveness
In the pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution. CREATURA is not in the pleroma, but in itself. The pleroma is both beginning and end of created beings. It pervadeth them, as the light of the sun everywhere pervadeth the air. Although the pleroma pervadeth altogether, yet hath created being no share thereof, just as a wholly transparent body becometh neither light nor dark through the light which pervadeth it. We are, however, the pleroma itself, for we are a part of the eternal and infinite. But we have share thereof, as we are from the pleroma infinitely removed...in our essence as creatures, which is confined within time and space. Yet because we are parts of the pleroma, the pleroma is also in us. Even in the smallest point is the pleroma endless, eternal, and entire, since small and great are qualities which are contained in it. It is that nothingness which is everywhere whole and continuous...nowhere divided. We are also the whole pleroma, because, figuratively, the pleroma is the smallest point in us and the foundless firmament about us. (Jung, Seven Sermons...).
Because Jung (1961) wrote "Sermons" in the paradoxical language of the Gnostics who inspired it, dissecting it for clarity of meaning is itself somewhat paradoxical, since ambiguity is Sermons' strength as well as its weakness. Thus, I confess a measure of trepidation as I attempt to explain in more linear terms and quantum metaphors, the necessarily ambiguous concepts, somewhat circular reasonings, and often archaic terminology from which I wish to borrow for purposes of this paper. Jung intimates that to explore the pleroma means self-dissolution, liquefying or dissolving one's sense of self, the de-construction of ego-death, primordial restitution leading to re-emergence.
The first of these concepts is called by the name "pleroma" (Jung, 1961, p.379), a useful term which encompasses at once all that is and is not in the aspect of one grand paradox of unified paradoxes. I believe that we experienced a virtual taste of this pleroma when we sampled from Zukav's (1979) quantum something-for-nothing menu in the previous chapter. Virtual energy particles in general have the paradoxical quality of being and not being at the same time, which from our limited perspective within time and space logically cannot, but yet seems to, happen. Jung's (1961) Sermons taught that distinctions such as being and not being exist only in our minds, where we create them in a valiant attempt to understand about our infinite nature that which is unknowable in our finite state.
Thus, even though--and because--we are confined within the paradox of our own mind-body duality, our very nature requires us to examine and try to make sense of our existence by noting differences and similarities in everything we experience. Jung's (1961) Sermons asserted that "we die in such measure as we do not distinguish" (p. 382). If this is true, then the very essence of life itself should consist of making distinct that which is indistinct. Throughout nature, in fact, this does seem to hold true.
Furthermore, distinction-making can be broadly interpreted as the basis for all evolutionary processes. It is what we "intellectually superior" humans seem to do the best, and most poorly--at. Intellectually, we excel at making distinctions at the quantifiable levels of our existence. Our proficiency wanes dramatically, however, as we approach intellectual understanding of the infinitely macrocosmic or microcosmic levels of our being. While it seems that it is the apprehension of this most unknown and unknowable aspect of our being which holds the ultimate key to all life's explanations, ironically, it is just this very distinction which cannot be intellectually deciphered from within our finite dimension.
The question ariseth: How did creatura originate? Created being came to pass, not creatura; since created being is the very quality of the pleroma, as much as non-creation which is the eternal death. In all times and places is creation, in all time and places is death. The pleroma hath all, distinctiveness and non-distinctiveness. Jung quickly gets to the heart of the philosophical distinction between any Creator and the Creation. In invoking "distinctiveness and non-distinctiveness" we are reminded of the metaphors of quantum mechanics, and its wave-particle ambiguity surrounding the nature of sub-atomic matter/energy.
Distinctiveness is creatura. It is distinct. Distinctiveness is its essence, and therefore it distinguisheth. Therefore man discriminateth because his nature is distinctiveness. Wherefore also he distinguiseth qualities of the pleroma which are not. He distinguisheth them out of his own nature. Therefore must he speak of qualities of the pleroma which are not. ...When we distinguish qualities of the pleroma, we are speaking from the ground of our own distinctiveness and concerning our own distinctiveness. ...What is the harm, ye ask, in not distinguishing oneself? ...We fall into indistinctiveness, ...we fall into the pleroma itself and cease to be creatures. We are given over to dissolution in the nothingness. This is the death of the creature. Therefore we die in such measure as we do not distinguish. ...Hence the natural striving of the creature goeth towards distinctiveness, fighteth against primeval sameness. This is called the PRINCIPIUM INDIVIDUATIONIS.
And so the youthful Jung laid out his own lifework, and that of mankind as the process of individuation -- a process whose differentiation is largely coded in terms of metaphor and metaphorical transformations through the union of opposites. He realized we create all qualities and distinctions through thinking. Not just our thinking but our being is distinctiveness. He suggests not thinking about differences, but striving after our own being.
Because we are equally skilled at making new, creative, intuitively connective distinctions, the human is now beginning to see itself as functionally indistinguishable from the trillions of distinctive cellular energy universes within which it functions as an information transducer. As we are able to apply this newly created distinction, or discovery, to increasingly larger classes of information, we find even more similarities and connections between our nature and the nature of life in general. These are reflected in the self-similar complexity of fractals in nature, in the notion of embedding at various degrees of magnitude or levels of observation. It is the metaphor-making capacity of the human mind, the "flip side" or reciprocal function of making logical distinctions, which have elevated our species above all others to its present (although somewhat wobbly) position atop earth's evolutionary ladder.
As we will soon see, when framed within Jung's (1961) Sermons, the function of life seems to be that of reassembling finite, paradoxical reality into a state of logical order and esthetic harmony so that it may in effect ultimately validate, or complete, the state of perfection within which it exists simultaneously as its own pleromal antecedent. "Everything which we do not distinguish falleth into the pleroma and is made void by its opposite," (Jung, 1961, p. 328).
At the sub-quantal level virtual photons continuously pop into and out of existence from the groundstate of nothingness--the virtual vacuum, quantum flux or Zero-Point Energy. This also brings to mind again the interactions of quantum particles and their anti-particles. As discussed elsewhere in this paper, it has been mathematically shown that every particle in the universe seems to have a mirror opposite somewhere, with which it shares mutual instantaneous annihilation should they meet. It is thus assumed by some quantum physicists that our reality consists of all the particles which have not (yet) met with anti-particle annihilation.
And although such random merges seem to be occurring continuously, for some reason yet unknown to science, there are never enough anti-particles around to cause any noticeable annihilations of our universe. The key word here is "noticeable," and that is the point. Perhaps Jung's intuition about the function of the void was correct when viewed from its quantum backside: non-distinguished particles do not exist within this reality to be banished to the void by our ignorance of them (as he proposed).
Rather, they are already in an infinite state from which they need to be made distinct by finite beings if they are to have finite existence. That is what distinguishes them as anti-particles. Put another way, it does seem logically possible that the nature of our universe is infinite non-existence (as pleroma) unless and until a created energy form gives it a finite identity, or distinctiveness, by somehow focusing its own creative, attentional energies upon it, thus drawing it out from the void.
Perhaps our reality is not the accidental, random result of some universal particle/anti-particle annihilation as science would have us believe, but is being creatively evolved over time through the infinite numbers of distinctions being made by life forms from among the effects that living particles have upon one another. To compound this, modern cosmology (Goldsmith, 2000) shows that space is in a process of infinite acceleration from every 'point' in spacetime, and most of the gravitational force of the universe comes from non-luminous 'dark matter,' and 'dark energy' of whose nature we know virtually nothing. The universe is speeding up, suggesting some sort of powerful anti-gravity force at work, separating galaxies. The seemingly empty vacuum of space is seething with this strange dark energy. Again, we are reminded of Jung's gnostic language, and the battle of opposites in gnosticism between forces of light and dark.
The Creative Evolution of Evolutionary Creation
We must deal with the problem of where original life energy came from if it is true that pleromal non-life is the infinitely natural order of things.
Jung (1961) called life and all of its many elemental energy pattern manifestations "creatura", which he equated with a state of distinctiveness. In other words, he implied that "to be" is to exist as a state distinct from all other states. Given this as a truth, Shakespeare's "To be or not to be, that is the question," was amazingly astute. Taken to its logical extreme, it should seem as though the pleromal state would, of necessity, require an opposite state in order to comprise a paradox perfectly completed within its own paradox. If perfect, complete "not-being" were its only possible state, there would be no potential for a "being" state. This is embodied in the vacuum potential gradient inherent in the groundstate of the virtual vacuum. Virtual photons 'boil' into existence because they can, therefore they must; they also evaporate back into the primordial non-being. Thus is the inactive realm which generates activity.
The pleromal state has to have some way it can remain in complete union with its perfect self, yet manifest simultaneously in another distinctively opposite state. It expresses in one in which its opposites are simultaneously free to imperfectly exist as conflicting paradoxes. These paradoxes are also free to creatively merge into wholeness states, and then re-emerge into their divided states, evolving all the while into increasingly complex combinations and divisions of paradoxical states. For example, at our current apex of intellectual evolutionary process, it is mathematically estimated that each individual human brain is capable of "more possible mental states than there are atoms in the known universe" (Sagan, 1977; Rossi, 1993).
Therefore, we can operationally define pleroma as the state of all possible dimensions of reality states, including (but not limited to) those infinite dimensions of reality which exist beyond the limitations of our spacetime continuum as supraliminal (faster-than-light) energy, and those subliminal energy states which exist as "the invisible dark matter and energy" of the universe.
Based upon this definition, we also suggest that it is possible that in some manner, and at some non-time in non-space, the pleroma "impregnated" itself with its own paradoxical energy "child" whose destiny it has been to grow and develop within the womb of life, which we know as our own timespace continuum. We might call this the "Om-niverse." In other words, within the speed-of-light limits presented by our four-dimensional reality zone, perfect supraliminal energy is effectively "slowed" to an imperfect temporal state where, like a newly fertilized ovum, it becomes separated into two paradoxical, incomplete halves of its whole self.
Or, as Jung put it: "The pleroma is rent in us." The first new life states created from the division of the pleroma within our reality Jung (1961) named "Abraxas," or the ultimate energy-state he called "god" and from which all other subsequent god-states have since been created. As described below, this god seems to have characteristics very reminiscent of the virtual energy state which both encompasses and divides finitude and infinity: Had the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. ...Abraxas is effect...it is a force, duration, change...it is improbable probability, unreal reality...Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing....It is the appearance and the shadow of man. It is illusory reality. (pp. 383-385)
As such, Abraxas seems to represent that aspect of our reality which is always just beyond the reach of our comprehension, our life force, itself. It is that which makes us more than the sum of our parts. It seems to be that which at once separates us from and unites us with our infinite states. Pleroma seems to be that energy field which contains both our life and our death states and everything that exists in between those two states. It is a metaphor of the creative edge of creation.
In effect, Abraxas seems to represent the source of all possible states of being, or interactional energy patterns, that life energy can create. As such, it is the collective soul, or psyche, or consciousness from which all other souls, or psyches, or consciousness in the form of god-as-man have evolved. Dividing themselves out from the energy field called Abraxas were the two lesser, opposing -- but equally effective -- energy states which are called god and devil. These energy patterns are less distinct than man, but more distinct than Abraxas. Therefore, they represent a state of energy somewhere between the ultimate god and man, symbolically comparable, for example, to Christ and Satan in the Christian Bible.
This new god is described as that state which promotes fullness and generation of life; the devil is characterized as that state which ultimately diminishes, or uses up life energy. Thus, it is the job of the negative force to keep the machinery of embodiment and death (disembodiment) in motion. From this perspective, Jung seemed to be subtly implicating these oppositional good-versus-evil states as the origins of all possible combinations of energy patterns, or archetypal states, that could be existentially made distinct within our divided reality state. These fundamental god-devil archetypal energy states are given form, and thus made distinct, via the living effects through which they are made manifest within our existential domain.
Jung's Sermons name these effective states Eros and The Tree of Life. These two states are described, respectively, as that "flame" which "giveth light because it consumeth energy, thereby diminishing the fullness of life, and that "Tree" which "in growing it heapeth up living stuff" (p. 185). These dynamics sound a lot like the quantum "something-for-nothing" that is gained from life's virtual energy exchanges within infinity -- which hold all of life together as the electromagnetic force.
Jung even states that "Good and evil are united in the flame" [of their paradoxical, life-sustaining ("effective") roles within our reality dimension] (p. 385). From that point, it is implied that divisions and redivisions occur in the energy field of our reality until "[i]nnumerable as the host of stars is the number of gods and devils....The multiplicity of the gods corresponds to the multiplicity of man....Numberless gods await the human state" (p. 384-385). In other words, returning to our quantum metaphor, the number of probable (and improbable) energy patterns, or particle-wave formations, available for interaction with one another within our reality state, is immeasurably immense.
The pleroma, or quantum foam is beyond the statistical probability of quantum mechanics, and is an example of complex dynamics, or Chaos. In terms of human consciousness, this Chaos is manifest as the intangibility of the collective consciousness. The concept of Abraxas as collective consciousness can be operationally metaphormed as the evolution of quantum energy states from their pleromal-Abraxas state to their human-being state and back again, within a continuous re-cycling of finite-infinite energy oscillation patterns. These patterns would simultaneously represent, or convey information about, all of the distinctive particle states and the distinct energy wave interference patterns which had been created from these states during the creative act of finitely distinguishing their existence.
This universal consciousness state, or creatura psyche, would necessarily, then, be composed of the creative energies of all of its life forms, including the reified forms assigned to its gods and devils (Jung, 1961). Perhaps running this concept through Zukav's (1979) virtual energy metaphor in yet another way can help to illustrate how this universal consciousness might function as a unitive force: When a finite, pleroma-reflecting life-energy state eventually merges with its own infinitely reflected image, both become completed in one another and "disappear" over the infinity horizon in a burst of virtual life energy. They are "united in the flame" (Jung, 1961) created from their own unity. But just as quickly, they reappear in our timespace zone.
Thus, it seems that it is during the infinitely brief amount of time (from our limited perspective) that man's virtual energy "rests" in its pleromal state that his collective-Abraxas energy-state micro-momentarily becomes infinitely perfected. And likewise, it follows that during the overlapping of these virtual energy exchanges between particle states, pleromal-Abraxas for a fraction of a millisecond (eternity, from its perspective) becomes completed in man. As Zukav's (1979) virtual energy-exchanges show, it can also be assumed that during all of these transactions, new particle-wave patterns are being re-created as virtual-energy "vapor-trails", instantaneously recycled into other energy fields, --the eventual material manifestations of which our entire observable and experiential universe is composed.
Thus, Sermons concludes, somewhat paradoxically: "In this world is man Abraxas, the creator and the destroyer of his own world" (Jung, 1961, p. 189).
Summary: Life is a Hologram of Holograms
The popularization of the Holographic Paradigm as conceived by physicist David Bohm and neurologist Karl Pribram began in the 1970s, and carried into the '80s with the publication of Bohm's WHOLENESS AND THE IMPLICATE ORDER. Based on the work of Northrup & Burr, the less well-known, yet concurrent development of "A Holographic Concept of Reality" (1973), by Miller, Webb, Dickson was published in Krippner's PSYCHOENERGETIC SYSTEMS. A follow up, "Embryonic Holography" (1973, Miller & Webb] suggests that DNA is the projector of the biohologram, both at the cellular level and the whole-organismic level.
The holographic theory's evolution in scientific and philosophical thought was followed by ReVision Journal, and summarized by Ken Wilber in the classic of New Science literature, THE HOLOGRAPHIC PARADIGM AND OTHER PARADOXES (1982). Consciousness Restructuring Process is related to this theory in Iona Miller's "The Holographic Paradigm and CRP: Explication, Ego-Death and Emptiness" published in CHAOSOPHY '93.
The gist of the holographic theory is that: "Our brains mathematically construct 'concrete' reality by interpreting frequencies from another dimension, a realm of meaningful, patterned primary reality that transcends time and space. The brain is a hologram, interpreting a holographic universe." Pribram postulates a neural hologram, made by the interaction of waves in the cortex, which in turn is based on a hologram of much shorter wavelengths formed by the wave interactions on the sub-atomic level.
Thus, we have a hologram within a hologram, and the interrelatedness of the two somehow gives rise to the sensory images. There is a more fundamental reality which is an invisible flux that is not comprised of parts, but an inseparable interconnectedness. In this dynamic model, there are no "things" only energetic events. The holoflux includes the ultimately flowing nature of what is, and also of that which forms therein. Bohm speaks of "the source" as beyond both implicate (enfolded) and explicate (unfolded) realms.
We can imagine Source as the coherent Light which illuminates and objectifies the implicate realm. In a more recent commentary, Fred Alan Wolf (1991) comments on the possible roots of "shamanic physics" and the holographic concept in relation to two shamanic notions: visionary or mythic reality, and the sense of universal connection. In brief, according to the transactional interpretation of quantum physics, these invisible quantum waves of probability originate in the present, in the past, and in the future.
For any event to manifest, these waves coming from the future and the present or from the past and the present must interfere with each other in the present. The pattern of that interference then creates matter and energy as we perceive them. Somehow shamans were able to see to either the past or the future source of those waves. In this manner they were able to construct visions that had mythic proportions and appeared to them as archetypes in the Jungian sense.
Above it was suggested that perhaps supraliminally coherent energy oscillations, when "slowed" within the temporal limitations of finite reality (ranging from 186,000 miles per second to near-zero velocity), would lose their coherency and separate into their polar opposites forming interference waves. This idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds because a subliminal version of such a phenomenal process is currently being accomplished in research laboratories.
Physicists have found that particles can be "trapped" using a combination of laser beams and magnetic energy field, and thus slowed-down, or cooled to a temperature approaching absolute zero. At this point, which seems to represent the infinitely slow, dark end of our spacetime continuum, energy oscillations seem to stop and particles all merge into one large particle-soup, the subliminal energies of which the "cold, dark matter" (the void) of our universe is composed. In this energy state, known as the Bose-Einstein condensate, "the wave nature of each atom is precisely in phase with that of every other."
These condensates were created in the lab winning the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics. Quantum mechanical waves extend across the sample of condensate and can be observed with the naked ye. The sub-microscopic thus becomes macroscopic (Cornell & Wieman, 1998, p. 40). Another interesting and useful finding is that physicists are also currently developing communications technology using laser-beam-split particles, each half of which is known to carry and "aware of" the same identical energy-state information as its twin.
In this coherent light beam, not only the beam is split but each photon. Thus, it is hoped that someday we will be able to send these microcosmic bits of energy zooming around inside computer chips serving in effect both as transmitters and receivers of information, much the same as do the messenger molecules of our mindbody (Smale, 1997). Other physicists have actually succeeded "proving" that particles do not have distinctive properties until those properties are made distinct. In essence, they sent split-halves of particles flying off in opposite directions, a distance of nearly seven miles apart.
They found that each time one of the halves was secretly detected and measured by a researcher at one end, the observing researcher at the other would see the half at his end "magically" manifesting itself at the same time with the same identical informational characteristics. In effect, it instantaneously experiences the same energy-pattern changes as its mate. This two-slit experiment has been replicated thousands of times by different researchers (Pool, 1998).
In other findings relevant to our claims, physicists have actually succeeded in creating a minuscule amount of matter from an enormous amount of energy by focusing an incredibly intense laser pulse of electromagnetically charged photons at a field of electrons moving at nearly the speed of light. As the laser beam approached the electrons, its photons absorbed so much energy from the interaction that they ricocheted off into what very quickly evolved into an electron and its anti-particle twin, a positron. "The action is the reverse of the usual matter-antimatter annihilation: the blaze of energy [in this case] becomes matter" (Winters, 1997, p. 40).
Furthermore, in another laboratory, researchers have developed an immensely durable mirror which could withstand the force of incredibly high-powered laser beams, out of "hot, electrically-charged has, also known as plasma....[I]t will behave the same way as a metal mirror"...but only for two-trillionths of a second at a time (Saunders, 1998, p.95). And finally, behind all the observable light and matter in the universe, astronomers have now discovered a "faint, nearly uniform glow...about 2.3 times as bright as the visible universe" which they speculate seems to emanate from "some unidentified source...which generates two thirds of the light in the cosmos" (Wusser, 1998, p. 18). Thus, overall, modern science does seem to be distinguishing itself as a wonderful metaphor for its own creative origins; it seems as though researchers are peering into their microscopes and telescopes, perhaps "seeing" evidence of an infinite, pleromal "eye" staring back.
In his book, The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot (1991), among other things, explained three very important concepts reminiscent of Jung's Sermons and which consequently justify the above sojourns into the realms of science. The first topic was covered when parallels were drawn between the infinite and finite functions of pleromal and virtual energies. The second is that of interference patterns, which Talbot describes as "the crisscrossing pattern that occurs when two or more waves....ripple through each other" (p. 14).
In Sermons, for example, the very first interference patterns could be seen as those primordial energy wave frequency patterns which were created when the pleroma divided unperturbable, infinite energy into its mirrored, negatively- and positively-charged, life-and-death generating polarities. Others would have increasingly followed over time, as a natural consequence. The third concept of this integrative summary encompasses the dynamics of the first two.
Talbot offers up the following metaphor for the emergent phenomenon of our holographic universe, as seen from the perspective of a physicist's laboratory: A hologram is produced when a single laser light is split into two separate beams. The first beam is bounced off the object to be photographed. Then the second beam is allowed to collide with the reflected light of the first. When this happens they create an interference pattern which is then recorded on a piece of film. To the naked eye the image on the film looks nothing at all like the object photographed. In fact, it even looks a little like the concentric rings that form when a handful of pebbles is tossed into a pond. But as soon as another laser beam...is shined through the film, a [lifelike] three-dimensional image of the original object reappears. (pp. 14-15) This parallels with Jung's Sermons.
First of all, laser light is also known as a "coherent light source in which all waves in the beam are in step [in perfect synchrony]" (Benton, 1998, p. 115). Imagine the pleroma as the source of all infinitely coherent light, "shining" itself into its own entropic womb where our temporo-spatial universe is given its life-potential as a single laser beam (Abraxas). As it enters through the "beam-splitter" of this new temporo-spatial domain, its infinitely coherent energy is divided into its electromagnetically-charged paradoxical energy state distinctions, "god" and "devil."
These magnificent energy beams are now independently oscillating at mutually reciprocal frequencies, each with the potential to "cancel" or diminish the effects of the other through the interference effects of their positive versus negative wave crests and troughs. As these crests and troughs initially encounter one another's equally powerful effects, the tremendous tension between them generates the explosion from which our universe evolves. This "big bang," in effect represents an act of ultimate equilibration between infinitely coherent and finitely incoherent forces, the source of all known and unknown (all actual and virtual) equilibrative forces of our universe.
Meanwhile, the individual particles given birth during these events are now zooming around in different directions, each still containing the "remembered" reflection, its wholeness state of perfect energy coherence. Thus compelled by their own need for re-equilibration, they begin to interact vigorously with one another, each seeking to join up with others which can help it re-achieve a state of balanced wholeness. When their interactions finally electromagnetically attract those particle-partners whose energies create that perfect balance, they euphorically "disappear in a cloud of virtual light" for a tiny fraction of time before being recycled back into the imbalances of our asymmetrical, four-dimensional energy state.
Given this hypothetical set of events, the first holographic interference pattern created would have been reflected onto the ethereal "holographic film" of our finite universe. It then develops into the lifelike, three-dimensional, "god-like" qualities, or "effects" that infinite energy takes on within our finite reality (as Abraxas) when illuminated by the pure light of its own omniscient, infinite, pleromal energy source.
Thus, returned to our Sermons' metaphor, all of Jung's creatura, --god, the devil, and their "children," Eros and the Tree of Life -- can now be better understood as pleroma-Abraxas created holograms, whose functions and forms were intended to be made distinct from one another so that they could thus reciprocally interact as interference waves, and thereby regenerate themselves into increasingly complex developmental levels of distinctions. Over time and space, it can be similarly imagined that the emergent function of the "rippling" effects of immense numbers of criss-crossing interference waves must have been -- must be-- one of making mutually interactive, or reciprocal, holographic projections of holographic projections.
Talbot (1991), bootstrapping his thought from Pribram/Bohm, also implicates the unfolding of this kind of underlying "holomovement" dynamics within the universe. Our brains mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and time: The brain is a hologram enfolded in a holographic universe (p. 55).
Put another way, the universe can now be understood as a continuously evolving, interactively dynamic hologram whose function it is to explicitly reflect through time and space the emergent effectiveness of its implicitly enfolded, infinitely holographic nature. In "The Enfolding, Unfolding Universe," Bohm suggests that, "Consciousness is basically in the implicate order as all matter is, and therefore, it's not that consciousness is one thing and matter is another, but rather consciousness is a material process and consciousness is itself in the implicate order, as is all matter, and that consciousness manifests in some explicate order as does matter in general."
Further, 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 CRP 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 CRP. (Miller, Holographic Paradigm in CRP, 1993).
Remember, Jung said that we die in such measure as we do not distinguish. Weber is a little less ambiguous suggesting in the Holographic Paradigm that, Psychological death occurs when consciousness keeps step with the ever-moving and self-renewing present, allowing no part of itself to become caught or fixated as residual energy. It is residual energy that furnishes the framework for what will become the thinker, who consists of undigested experience, memory, habit-patterns, identification, desire, aversion, projection and image-making. This is not a purely personal process but the energy of aeons of such processes sclerosed through time, persisting on both personal and collective levels. Ego-death dismantles this superstructure...
Ken Wilber cautions us not to jump on the mystical bandwagon which confuses the implicate order as the Source, the Tao, or even the mystic void. While the implicate reveals the holoarchy of the material level, this is as far as it goes--except as an analogy. The implicate is not transcendental to matter, but underlies it, as a coherent unity--it is still matter. It is analogous to "ecology" on the biological level.
Wilber states that,
"the problem is that the quantum potential is merely tremendously huge in size or dimensions; it is not radically dimensionless, or infinite in the metaphysical sense. And you simply cannot equate huge in size, potential or actual, with that which is without size, or prior to any dimensions, high or low, subtle or gross, implicate or explicate."
To "worship" nature or mistake the immanence of wholeness in matter as the Ultimate Reality does not account for transcendent realities--it mistakes the creation for the creator. This is pantheism, reification of matter, animism. Arguably, pantheism is a confusion of two radically different domains--matter and spirit, according to Wilber's vision of the "perennial philosophy." We could compare four aspects of the nonrepresentational voids as the
1). "Dead" Void: physical void (implicate order, frequency domain; QM's dynamic void; interstellar space);
2). the Emotional Void of the derepressing unconscious, with its empty trances and transitive moments between explicate states;
3). the mental or Existential Void, the imaginal realm, with its bliss states, ecstasies, and inspirations; and,
4). the spiritual or Mystic Void of objectless contemplation, transcendental unified state. In some mystical schools even this state is the not the Ultimate.
They represent embedding, or progressively deeper phases of implication within a Reality which supercedes explication in any form. Wilber notes that, There is a world of difference between the pre-temporal consciousness, which has no space and no time, and trans-temporal consciousness, which moves beyond space and time while still embracing it...This in no way proves that the holographic blur is not a transcendent state; it demonstrates that one cannot judge so on the basis of language correlations.
What physics has found is actually a unified interaction of material shadows; it discovered that various physical particulars are interrelated processes--but interrelated shadows aren't the Light. As for the implicate order, we saw it was actually a huge energy dimension; it wasn't radically dimensionless or metaphysically infinite. Consciousness is information -- consciousness-in-forming -- the process of unfolding. The intensity of consciousness at any level is a function of the amount of information at that level (Battista, 1978).
All of the potential information about the universe is holographically encoded in the spectrum of frequency patterns that constantly bombard us. Through destructuring in meditation or process therapy, one quiets the brain becoming sympathetically in tune with (entrained to) this universal frequency pattern. When this occurs, the encoded information about the universe becomes holographically decoded, and the individual experiences a state of unitive consciousness with the entire universe.
Bohm suggests that we transform as eternity unfolds in us, but that eternity may also transform, as it returns to itself enriched by our participation. Bohm contends that the nonmanifest frequency realm is n-dimensional and atemporal, inconceivable to 3-dimensional thought. Bohm likens n-dimensional space to phase space, (ref. polyphasic consciousness). He asserts that only when the individual has dissolved the 3-dimensional self consisting of gross matter, can the ground of our being flow through us unobstructedly. He extends this notion to psychology, urging us to dissolve the "thinker" as the highest priority the seeker for truth can undertake. He advocates a kind of "psychological atom-smashing," in which countless illusory egoic clusters (analogous to spasms that reduce the flow within the whole) are dissolved.
Knowledge consists in this theory of the process of tuning in on the manifestation (phenomenon) of the nonmanifest in order to make it accessible, through a state of consciousness which lies outside the barriers of the finite senses. Bohm maintains that this capacity exists in the universe, not in us strictly speaking. However, "the challenge for the individual locus of consciousness is to provide the condition that allows the universal force to flow through it without hindrance. The result is not knowledge, in the Kantian sense, but direct nondualistic awareness..." Its precondition is emptiness, as Bohm repeatedly insists, which entails a suspension of the Kantian categories and of 3-dimensional space-time. Such emptiness brings about the cessation of consciousness as the knower and transforms us into an instrument receptively allowing the noumenal intelligence to operate through us, irradiating our daily lives and those of others.
Consciousness & the Biohologram
Consciousness may be seen as a frame of electrical charges in motion such as electrons bombarding a television screen; personality is a time series of these scintillating frames of consciousness. Personality becomes a reverberating input-output pattern of self creation seeking information or patterns of energy from the environment as well as from its own memories. The personality never recreates itself but creates only a close approximation which is accepted due to the principle of constancy as being the same (Miller & Webb, 1973).
The phenomena of unique individuality and personal continuity depend on memory. Consciousness involves the most recent memory and thereby the most subject to erasure and loosening. Personality transformation becomes energy pattern modification of not only scintillating consciousness but also of recent circulating memories and older stored memories. Thus consciousness can be conceptualized as an electronic phenomena occurring in the brain that involves both dynamic charges in motion and also stored structure (Tien, 1969).
Referring to the mechanisms mentioned earlier, a very close connection between electronic activity and structure can be seen. A good deal of work on human psychological processes indicate that human beings are extremely sensitive to the various electromagnetic events in their environment. It has been shown that stress can uncouple synchronized and harmonious biological rhythms resulting in pathological conditions for the organisms (Burr and Northrop, 1935).
We are proposing that these biological systems can be resynchronized and recalibrated through conscious effort. The proposed mechanism for this influence has to do with the indicated coupling of these various external events to biological processes. The amplifying effect of consciousness has also been seen to be relatable to the various electromagnetic occurrences in the brain. At a deeper level of analysis, it can be suggested that the field phenomena which we have been studying and working with are in fact more real, if that term can be used, than the particulate matter and various objects of which we have been speaking (Wheeler, 1959).
Briefly stated, the fields and particles may be themselves composed of empty curved space, trapping lines of electromagnetic force. This is the holographic concept of reality. The structural configurations themselves or the geometry of the fields and the particles are more fundamental than either the fields or the particles themselves. The personality never recreates itself, but creates only a close approximation which is accepted due to the principle of constancy as being the same. The phenomena of unique individuality and personal continuity depend on memory, of which consciousness is the most recent and, thereby, the most subject to erasure and loosening.
Personality transformation becomes energy pattern modification of not only scintillating consciousness but also of recent circulating memories and older stored memories of childhood. According to the holographic model of reality, all the objects we can observe are three-dimensional images formed of standing and moving waves by electromagnetic and nuclear processes. All the objects of our world are three-dimensional images formed electro-magnetically, i.e., holograms. This concept and the models of human information processing based on the hologram, throw interesting light on the philosophical tradition which holds that the world of objects is an illusion. With the triumph of relativity and quantum physics, the interpenetration of the philosophical and the scientific is possible.
We propose that the "reality hologram" which appears as a stable world of material objects is the elementary particle which has a long-term existence and fairly simple rules of interaction. We also propose the existence of a "biohologram" which appears as mobile and evolving, through the DNA molecule. This "biohologram" projects a dynamic three-dimensional image that serves as a guiding matrix for the manipulation and organization of the "reality hologram." Thus we have mobile self-organizing holograms moving through a relatively static simpler hologram. The possibility exists that such "bioholograms" could achieve sufficient coherence to continue existence as a pattern of radiant energy apart from a material substrate. We feel that such an occurrence could form the scientific basis of such psychoenergetic phenomena as psycho-kinesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition. (Miller, Webb & Dickson, 1973).
Researchers have found that at the moment of ovulation there is a definite shift in the electrical fields of the body of the woman. The membrane in the follicle bursts and the egg passes down the fallopian tubes. As a sidenote, we feel that the phases of the moon quite probably influence the permeability of the membrane in the follicle, making it more likely that the egg will pass down the fallopian tubes at certain periods of time. The sperm is negative with respect to the egg. When the sperm and the egg unite, the membrane around the egg becomes hyper-polarized. It is at this moment that the electromagnetic entity is formed. The fertilized egg cell contains all information necessary to create a complete operational human being.
And furthermore, the biohologram begins to function at conception, and only ceases to function at death. So, perhaps conception is the proper place to mark the beginning of the individual. The zygote begins to divide as it travels down the fallopian tube. It is quite possible that it navigates its passage partially by sensing the biohologram of the mother. And this may actually assist in approaching and attaching to the wall of the uterus. As soon as attachment to the wall of the uterus is complete, the zygote begins the process of establishing the linkage with the mother's circulatory system that will permit the passage of blood carrying important nutrients into the zygote.
The womb is a special electronic environment in which an electrolytic solution provides an excellent framework for electromagnetic effects which are necessary in the development of the egg. With the formation of the neural tube, one end (the end that is in the center of the embryonic disk) begins to expand and enfold, twist, and develop itself into a system of complex tissues in complicated geometrical structures, which will become the structure of the brain of the creature. It is our contention that the brain is necessary and the nervous system is necessary for the development of the creature. It is one of the earliest formations and is prior to the generation of most of the structure of the body. Our contention is that the DNA at the center of each cell creates the multi-cellular creature hologram by influencing the DNA in the center of the cells. Initially, the problem of development centers around the flow of materials through space, and the establishment of material structure at discrete locations in space. (Miller & Webb, 1973).
We believe that the biohologram projected by the embryonic nervous system forms a three-dimensional pattern of resonant structures; including points, lines, and planes that electromagnetically behave as the acoustic waves - the material waves - of the drumhead. In other words, these electromagnetic points, lines and planes form locations of no movement. Essentially the matter that is flowing, the electrolytic solutions that are flowing, that have been drawn from the blood of the mother, are caused to move rhythmically through the developing embryo. As they reach certain points, lines and planes their motion stops.
This is where structures are laid down and built up. This process is the key to embryonic holography. The zygote acts like a three-dimensional nozzle. Electrolytes from the blood stream of the mother flow through this nozzle and into the cymatic structure of standing wave patterns distributed through space inside the embryo and becomes fixed, solidified structures. This accounts for the different zones and the separation of the zones of the different kinds of tissue groups. The picture is completed by the effects of the biohologram on the DNA of the cells that have formed along with the migration of the substances.
You have an actual migration of cells, and a migration of substances throughout the embryo that take up locations dependent upon resonant structures of standing wave patterns. The cells, having arrived at their proper location and beginning to involve themselves with the materials and the fluids that are flowing in the three-dimensional nozzle are then specified in their particular tissue nature by the biohologram being projected by the nervous system. They are refined and developed as their genome is shut down until only the DNA that operates in a particular cell is just that DNA which defines the structure and operation of that particular kind of tissue group.
So, through a complex interaction of three-dimensional electromagnetic fields rapidly dividing cells and a flow of electrolytes that is directed by the field but also feeds back on the field and influences it, a multi-cellular organism achieves the proper structure that will permit it to exist apart from the specialized environment of the womb. As long as the biohologram is functioning properly, as long as the nervous system is continuing to coordinate and project the complex three-dimensional fields that support the biological processes in the organism, the organism survives. When the biohologram ceases to function properly, the organism suffers. And when the principle action of the biohologram stops, the organism dies.
If there is any scientific correlate to the concept of Soul, it is most probably this bioholographic pattern system. It is composed of the ultimate stuff of the universe, electromagnetic field energy. Which does not die in the sense that creatures die, so it fulfills the attribute of the Soul of being immortal in that sense. However, the pattern does change with growth, with learning, with experience, and with age. So there is a development of the Soul or the electromagnetic field entity. It is conceivable, although a great deal more research needs to be done, that the electromagnetic field entity might be capable of an independent existence which would form the basis for the concept of life after death. However, a free electromagnetic field entity without a biophysiological matrix might have a difficult time in interacting with creatures, such as ourselves, that are still utilizing the biophysiological matrix. (Miller & Webb, 1973).
Consciousness: A Reciprocal Function of Resilience
Physics is the study of the structure of consciousness. --Zukav, 1979, p.31
It seems that Jung's (1961) Sermons metaphorically implied that all concepts and their "anti-concepts" such as good and evil eventually evolved of logical necessity as a self-ordering function of the pleroma's most complex living (thus most distinctive) mind-body paradoxes. It is important to emphasize here that even in the human act of discriminating between a pair of paradoxical ideas, whichever is selected as the focus of one's energies will assume for him the characteristics he assigns to it. In science, this is known as experimenter bias. In ethics it produces the tremendous variations in values and belief systems over time and space on our planet. It exemplifies the eternal schism between perceptions of good and evil.
Making the Indistinct Distinct
The basic psychological problem here is metaphorically contained within what is called Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle." This is the physicists' way of admitting that, because we are all concurrently moving around in space, there is no way scientists can know simultaneously, with certainty, both the position in space and the momentum of a particle.
Thus science can only make predictions about one of these aspects based on what the other aspect is doing and what similar others have done in the past. Thus, a researcher must first choose which aspect she wants to attend to. Then, once that she has attuned her energies to the aspect of her choice, those focused and thus biased energies in turn appear to exert a mysterious, influential force upon the particle being observed, as though altering its character in order to meet her expectations.
Indeed, by shaping the focus of our conscious energy to selectively tune out some irrelevant stimuli while necessarily holding onto that which is salient to the moment, it seems as though a perceptually-biased energy pattern is formed in order to establish a state of resonation with those energy patterns being attended to. This is how we make distinct that which is in reality, indistinct. This is also a long version of why quantum mechanics maintains that there is such a thing as pure objectivity in this universe. Einstein showed us that all is relative. Quantum evidence seems to support the notion that it is from our distinctively-biased energies that our material reality is created.
Plugging this concept back into our pleroma-holograph metaphor of reality, it can be said that energy wave patterns which intersect via the attentional energies of the mind-body are holographically altered for what can be seen simultaneously as "good" (life-energy enhancing) by one person and as "bad" (life-energy diminishing) by another. At some level of efficacy, this adaptive process of altering the holographic projections created within our personal energy fields is occurring continuously throughout our lifetimes.
As both the introjection and the projection (interpersonal mind-body-receiving and -sending) of innately- valenced and morally-biased energy states, it is the fundamental "good" versus "evil" functions of information transduction between humans. Thus one can imagine those holographic interference patterns that represent the most stable or resilient qualities: through replication and amplification they survive most successfully over the longest periods of time. They are life-enhancing (good) energy patterns, --kind of like a cosmic "bell-curve."
Energy begets energy. When more distinctively life-stabilizing energy that is made available within the overall global energy pattern, more distinctively stable energy is available to be used in the creation of subsequent life-enhancing interactions within the human community and its individual members. The following section will propose how this process might be able to cycle "simultaneously" between the individual and the collective.
Creating Adaptability
Earlier in this paper, we touched on the fact that levels of resilience can be empirically measured by vagal tone, or cardiovascular reactivity. We have also seen how the highly interactive dynamics of the resilience process are closely tied to one's ability to learn positive coping skills, which in turn depend on his ability to learn to develop a sense of self-efficacy within his environment. This resilience was shown to be directly correlated with his ability to regulate his arousal levels via his autonomic nervous system. This in turn helps expand the range of his attentional abilities, which enables him to more resiliently adapt to the demands of his environment.
All of these life skills involve this person's ability to focus his energies intently enough in order to effect desired, positive outcomes in his life. Positive outcomes, or emergent effects of resiliently adaptive attitudes and behaviors can be associated with the functions of Jung's Tree of Life, which were all related to life-enhancing behaviors and thoughts, --or coping skills.
Negative, maladaptive outcomes leading to various pathologies can be associated with those which are born of egocentric desires for self-validation at the expense of one's own (or another's) well-being. The point of this detour into the psychological evolution of moral polarities is this: The choice of which of these energy patterns a person is tuned into is a moment-by-moment, individual one.
It is not a fate predetermined by some either good or evil force exterior to one's own mind-body state, even though it often seems so. It can be and often is influenced by other nearby fields of energy patterns, but the ultimate choice of which patterns of energy that we resonate with, is within the conscious control of most human beings. Once this level of moral individuation is consciously achieved, holistic healing begins within that person's sphere of influence. It begins within the body as an enhanced state of physical, mental, and emotional health, then spreads transpersonally outward into other relationships.
We examined some of these life-enhancing, therapeutic phenomena in the previous sections, and saw that although the manner in which they manifest in the world takes on many different forms, ultimately all holistic healing is the result of (a) making some level of conscious choice to positively alter one's thought patterns (b) which similarly alters one's characteristic attitudes, (c) which alters arousal levels and neurotransmitter levels within the body, (d) which accommodates the ultradian-quantum healing responses that (e) regulate breathing rhythms and brain waves in order to (f) modulate the mind-body's neural energy frequencies which (g) instruct its hormones to (h) alert the messenger molecules to (i) tell the genes which proteins to transcribe in order to (j) restore harmony and balance to the system. And in some cases, all of this can happen within minutes--virtually instantaneously.
Expressed within a wide range of variance within and between individuals, these many reciprocally interactive dynamics somehow all connect together into one seemingly seamless, flowing process which we call life. For centuries, man has been trying to unravel the mystery of how it all fits together; how its immensities and minutia are interconnected and inter-communicate in a way that hold the universe and all of its functions together. Now, with metaphors such as those provided by holography and quantum mechanics, we are in the best position ever to more discriminately separate out those things which we can name from among those which we must simply accept on theoretical faith. We seem to be moving over closer towards our virtual natures.
The Holographic "Enchanted Loom"
The conscious brain has been described as an "enchanted loom," and as such, can be metaphorically framed within the four dimensions of its finite universe. Its attention-shuttle is empowered by various combinations of energy frequencies as they equilibratively oscillate back and forth across the warp-threads of its neural net. "Enchanted loom" takes on a whole new meaning , however, when it is incorporated into the holographic paradigm. A holographic enchanted loom would simultaneously record each of its state-dependent memories across the entire warp and woof of its structure and upon each single thread on the loom.
Thus, each strand of energy patterns from which one's conscious picture of life is woven would contain, in its entirety, the ever-changing consciousness of the whole life-tapestry. And indeed, as will soon be made clear, this does seem to be how our magnificent brain works at its most fundamental level, --as a holographic frequency analyzer.
The process begins with our five senses, which have all been found to process information holographically, according to Talbot (1991) who explains that the transference of new information from one part of the body to another is accomplished via a mathematical language which physicists call "Fourier transforms."
As Talbot explained it, this universal language is used at the quantum level of our existence to communicate descriptions of the dynamically interactive temporo-spatial relationships, or current energy-pattern states, of our wave forms. What [experimenters] found was that the brain cells...responded to Fourier translations of [energy wave] patterns...The brain was using Fourier mathematics, --the same mathematics holography employed, --to convert visual [and other sensory] images into the Fourier language of wave forms. (p. 28).
He went on to describe how physicist Carl Pribram had earlier worked through the problem of how our body communicates with itself by imagining what would happen if it were to convert all of its memories and learned skills into a language of interference wave forms. "Such a brain would be much more flexible and could shift its stored information around with the same ease that a skilled pianist transposes a song from one musical key to another" (Talbot, 1991, p. 24). He further theorized that once something was thus memorized as a particular combination of wave forms, (as a holographic form) it could be recalled and/or examined from about any viewing angle or perspective desired. Much subsequent research has supported his theories.
Talbot goes on to describe the mathematics which were developed in order to describe the functions of wave forms. He explains that Fourier transforms are a mathematically symbolic way of converting any pattern, no matter how complex, into a language of simple wave frequency formulas. These wave formulas can then be converted back into their original wave patterns, much like a television camera converts images into electromagnetic frequencies, and then the television set changes them back into their original image.
Therefore, as Candace Pert (1997; 1990) and others implied earlier in this paper, our mind-body seems to be a magnificently complex, holographic frequency analyzer which has also been observed speaking to itself, by way of its messenger molecules, in Fourier transform "tongues." The phenomenon of energy transduction, in terms of Jung's Sermons via Zukav's quantum mechanics, began way back at the beginning of the universe when pleromal energy waves begat Abraxas energy waves. These in turn begat both the energy waves of which all subsequent life has been composed, and the stressor-- "anti-energies' by which one's life forces are consumed. The key to both the long-term and the short-term survival of this whole energy-transducing process seems to be found in the concept of regeneration, wherein new life energy resources are appropriated for oneself through adaptive mind-body commerce with the Tree of Life.
As Rossi's (1993) theories implied earlier, when one's relaxed energies become focused and centered within this regenerative process, creation of new energy is facilitated in the form of something-for-nothing virtual energy exchanges between one's infinite and infinite states. In addition to what we learned earlier from Rossi about the mind-body's ultradian healing-response, he also explained that when life stress is psychically perceived as the challenge to be met rather than as distress to be escaped from, the body alters its biochemistry in order to meet the challenge presented to it by releasing only the needed catecholamine neurotransmitters.
This is turn creates an optimal state within the body for creative problem-solving. When stimuli are perceived as distressing, however, the body also produces cortisol. It immediately increases arousal within the body-mind to levels which reduce--or completely block--one's attentional focusing abilities, and thus limit problem-solving capacities, ability to disciminate, emotional intelligence, his health, --all levels of resilience. "Cortisol is probably one of the most violent immunodepressants there is" (Sapse, 1977, quoted in Fackelman, 1977, p. 350).
The point here is that when we believe that we are equal to the challenges life presents us (where no cortisol is causing hyperarousal states), we seem to enter into a creative "zone" where the mind-body actually generates more energy reserves for itself. It is as though, at this apex of our human-beingness, or enery-wave frequency distinctiveness, -- the state where mind energy has to creatively stretch itself in order to meet the demands of its body, or body-energy must stretch in order to meet its mind's demands, or where mind-body energy is just generally being stretched by its mind-body challenges, --that we actually seem to become more alive. It is as though accepting the challenge to stretch and grow alters the state of our mind-body in a way that focuses all of our energies on solving the problems at hand, with faith that the energy will be available to meet the challenge. Somehow, this act of staying faithfully focused on our goal communicates that need for energy restoration in a way that actually facilitates its regeneration as needed (Sears, 1995).
It makes sense that increased levels of highly focused energy--or increased energy-wave frequency distinctiveness -- leads to increased levels of quantum energy exchanges, which lead to increased levels of residual virtual energy from which new actual energies can be made. This, in its most fundamental essence is what the ultradian healing response (formerly biorhythms) is all about. It is the regular, daily rebalancing of our mind-body state so that it can holographically regenerate itself. It does this through the creative production --and transduction --of virtual-to-actual energy wave frequencies and interference patterns into better coping skills, or emotionally intelligent, resiliently equilibrative neural structures.
These enhanced neural pathways in turn facilitate the efficacious transduction of information and energy patterns through all the levels of one's being. Looking from another angle, it could be assumed that every time one accepts a life stressor as a challenge and thus in effect lowers his stimulus threshold in order to allow more creative information (energy wave patterns) into his mind-body, he increases his problem-solving, adaptive capacities and along with them his sense of self-efficacy.
Thus, the next time an even bigger stressor confronts him, he will have been effectively "stretched" enough psychologically to take on this even bigger challenge and become even more "alive." This is how moral consciousness grows as one individuates into an increasingly distinct, whole individual, and how that whole individual, in turn, generates increased morally-conscious energy back into the body of the collective. And that, ultimately, is the Tao of resilience.
Resilience as "Tensegrity"
The first two sections of this chapter have dealt with what this paper titled the "reciprocal Causality Dynamics" from which resilience functions (seeing distinctions and making adaptive connections among those distinctions) creatively emerge. It was concluded that the purpose of this whole immensely complex pattern of energy dynamics seems to be connected with our need to become more highly conscious; to become more fully aware of both our distinctiveness and our interconnectedness within the evolving holomovement of some infinitely higher state of energy resources that we call life.
From Particles and Waves to Strings and Membranes
String Theory has enjoyed a vogue in physics and cosmology as 'superstrings.' Yet, it is a prime example of how even an elegant scientific theory which encompasses many 'explanations' may be plausible and yet not necessarily describe reality. In science, camps are divided whether string- and now membrane-theory describes Reality. This theory has its critics. We must always be suspicious when science declares rather than suggests models, as the history of science is one of theories overturned periodically by better, more comprehensive theories.
The ongoing process of revolutions in science will probably continue for some time. Generally, these revolutions come about through improving our ability to observe and test ever finer levels of the macro- and microcosm. Thus, the history of science is one of self-correction and refinement over time, through better insight and modeling. When a scientific model is used as a theory of the way WE are, we can understand it best as a metaphor of reality, rather than an objective description of the true nature of Reality.
If we tie our vision of what we are to any current theory, we are likely to be disabused of that notion at some point. Truth is generally much more complex, and simple, than human modeling can encompass. Science is actually the science of what 'works,' -- the state of the art at any given moment. One reason for this dissonance in what is now called M-theory is that throughout its development, string theory has come up with over 14 solutions to its train of thought, each involving a different number of dimensions for its solutions.
Even though Brian Greene, champion of these hidden dimensions, has dubbed this the "Elegant Universe," (1999) it fails to be an elegant theory. In physics an elegant or beautiful theory is sublime when its equations are simple and clear. Strings, superstring, and membranes have so far failed to meet this touchstone, much less prove itself more than a possible or plausible solution to the Theory of Everything. However, in this work we cannot solve that conundrum.
Our touchstone here is somewhat different, for we are seeking metaphors, "as if" realities which illuminate our understanding of the human condition, which shed light on the nature of the universe as we grope toward truth. We can use string theory, much as the ancients used the discovery of the nature of harmonies, the so-called Music of the Spheres, to light their comprehension of self, others and nature. Even an incomplete theory can function as a useful model and display internal coherence. Whether it expresses in equations the way things really are remains to be seen. Therefore, to begin this section, we will take a look at the architectural energy-pattern structures from which our reality seems to derive its temporo-spatial form.
Among other theorists, Tom Stonier (1990, cited in Rossi, 1995) has identified information transduction as being the organizational principle behind the structure of our universe. Stonier, however, claims he has mathematically established information as the equivalent of matter and energy, each of which he sees as being ultimately transducable into the others. He also explains that organized systems exhibit resonances. Resonances lead to oscillations. Oscillations represent time cycles during which changes may be introduced. Such changes may dampen or amplify the existing oscillations. Alternatively, they may create new resonances and excite new sets of oscillations. The more complex the system, the greater the likelihood of introducing change into the system during any given cycle. Hence the exponential growth of information (p. 41). More on this later.
For now we will make another quantum leap to a related line of thinking called "string theory," or more accurately "the M-theory of Everything." "M" is said to stand for either "Magic, Mystery or Membrane, according to taste (Witten, 1996, cited in Duff, 1998, p. 64). This theory gives us a useful new metaphor as Duff goes on to describe some of its terms. A particle, which has zero dimensions, sweeps out a one-dimensional trace, or 'worldline,' as it evolves in space-time. Similarly a string--having one dimension, length--sweeps out a two-dimensional 'worldsheet.' and a membrane--having two dimensions, length and breadth--sweeps out a three-dimensional 'world volume.' (p. 65)
'Spin,' or inherent angular momentum, which we briefly touched on earlier, is the way physicists describe the way particles appear to be rotating even thought they really are not. It is actually more like the idea of spin which is inferred from the trajectory of particles through space (Zukav, 1979).
According to Duff (1998), laws of "supersymmetry" require that each particle of a particular spin must have "a particle with the same mass but half-integer spin" (p.64) which is a technical way of saying that particles must have anti-particles in order for our universe to make logical sense, which it as yet does not. Since researchers have never found such a symmetrical particle-partner, they assume that is merely because it cannot be seen.
Since the state of supersymmetry implies a balance of gravitational forces, this new paradigm also further validates many of the ontological views expressed earlier in this work, since it proposes that all four of the elemental forces (gravity, the electromagnetic force, the nuclear force, and the weak force) are ultimately just different phenomenal aspects of their mutual, virtual energy-exchange origins.
M-theory proposes a number of possible scientific explanations for the origins of everything, but the one most useful for our purposes here is called the "T-duality" theory. This growing paradigm, in a very concise nutshell, sees the universe as existing simultaneously at both microcosmic and macrocosmic reality levels as parallel universes, one the reciprocal, or inverse function, of the other.
Harking back to the past, the ancients also thought so and expressed this truism in the alchemical maxim, "As Above; So Below." In other words, it portrays the energy of both these realities as existing in two simultaneous states which Duff called the "Duality of Dualities" (p. 67). One of these energy states is called its "vibrating" state and the other is called its "winding" state. Loosely translated, this points back to oscillation frequencies (waves) and their related states of energic tension, called particles, -- or in this case, the energy-pattern traces called strings, which are made by particles vibrating across space and time. Significantly, Duff reports that the physicists are hoping to use "known" characteristics about our observable universe in order to infer the unknown reciprocal characteristics of their proposed alternate reality.
Put in terms even more useful for purposes here, they believe that the energy information which exists in one of these dual reality dimensions is humanly transducable into its paradoxically mirrored, reciprocal state. And that is pretty much what this whole work has been trying to say. As living beings, we exist paradoxically within a dual state of dual states as both the finite, living products of interactions between particle and wave/matter and energy/body and mind, and the infinitely interactive process from which all of those dual-state living products arose.
In other words, the proposed invisible 'reciprocal dimension' has already made itself knowable within our reality as the virtual/actual informational energy-exchange by means of which we communicate as both messenger and receiver in order to become more harmoniously and resiliently evolved. So, in effect, physicists are "reinventing the wheel" here,--but that is okay; they too need to intuit truth via those metaphors within which they are best prepared to see it. The creative interactions of our many paradigms, philosophies, and religions are vital to the evolution of collective consciousness. For example, physicists'' "matrix theory" also provides further validation of our holographic theories of everything.
According to Duff (1998), they evidently imagine the phenomena of quantum energy dynamics as an infinite number of criss-crossings of energy-wave strings forming an immense, hypothetical matrix upon which numerical coordinates are meaningless, and where "points" on this matrix are themselves matrices which "do not commute,--that is, xy does not equal yx" (p. 69). Not only is Cartesian logic being replaced here by something very similar to the holographic, Fourier-transformational reality metaphors discussed earlier, but cutting-edge physics is again supporting a key point of this work: Our four-dimensional reality state seems to be simultaneously gazing into and reciprocally interacting with a quantum mirror-image of itself where sequentially-ordered informational states do not commute.
That is to say, because of the temporo-spatial limitations of finite reality, the energy sequences through which we communicate our information/energy states must oscillate up and down as well as from left to right, at varying frequencies. These sequential properties of matter do not perfectly commute into their energy equivalents within our reality, but rather, they create the reversed, paradoxical mirror image which, in effect, stabilizes life energies in their finite evolutionary state.
This is probably why infinite virtual energy exchanges (of which we, as evolving by-products of their electromagnetic interactions are fundamentally composed), when they are not able to be perfectly completed within their finite, "actual"--mirrored states, return so infinitely quickly to this "actual" state -- for further self-correction. From these quantum energy-metaphors we have now also found a more efficient way of imagining how energy takes on its 3-dimensional shape as it moves through the temporal dimension of our reality: Dimenionless virtual/actual particles vibrate across time, forming two-dimensional waves, which oscillate across time in various geometric shapes, which in turn move about in all four dimensions like invisible duct-work energy tunnels. As energy becomes increasingly ordered into evolving patterns of evolving patterns, it begin to electromagnetically manifest as matter.
This concept of shaped energy will "shape" the conceptual contents of the next section of this paper.
From Strings and Membranes to Struts and Cables
It has been established that a particle has no measurable dimensions in our reality, but is merely a hypothetical entity with the potential to have mass (energy) as one of its characteristics. So, it is really just a symbol that we use to describe the movement, or interactive relationships of energy within our four-dimensional reality.
One of the ways we are here describing life in our reality zone is as an elaborate energy/information-transducing process whose purpose it is to enable us as its chief frequency-modulators, to become more highly conscious of, and thus individuated within, that process. It seems fitting to conclude this theory by also metaphorming a mechanically stable energy-reinforcing structure upon which this process can take shape. And, since energy particles can now be imagined to exist as potential shapes in space, it follows that there must be some rules and regulations that its virtual energy shapes must follow in order to become actuated.
According to the fundamental laws of physics as described by Ian Stewart (1998), nature likes to conserve, or minimize, the energy it has to expend in order to do its work. The original proponent of this view was Buckminster Fuller, who expressed it mathematically and philosophically in his tour de force, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) and Synergetics II (1979).
Fuller discovered Nature's own rules of assembly. His vision was founded on the geometry of close-packed spheres, which can be found in the nuclei of all atoms. In fact, there is much to link the nature of Fuller's primary modules, the self-assembling tetrahedron and the Vector Equilibrium Matrix to the virtual vacuum or quantum foam, Jung's pleroma.
Nature's own economy and minimalism is the reason why: (a) "the surface of smallest area that encloses a given volume is a sphere"; (b) "Without some constraint, the area of minimal surface would be zero"; and, (c) "Minimal surface" is a surface whose area is the smallest possible, subject to the following constraints: the shape's surface must contain some given volume, and its boundary should lie on some given surface or curve, or both (p. 104). Thus it can be said that in its material form, energy seeks to equilibrate itself into a perfectly energy-efficient, completely energy-balanced shape of a sphere.
Its underlying "assimilation and accommodation" dynamics therefore all seem subsequent to this basic geometrically equilibrative law of energy conservation. Therefore, the distinctive shapes which virtual/actual particle/energy wave patterns reciprocally evoke depends upon their underlying energy-redistribution dynamics. In his very notable Scientific American article (1/1998), Donald E. Ingber revitalizes the current of Synergetics by identifying the prominence of tensegrity in geometric shapes in "The Architecture of Life," and its relationship to Complexity.
He states the following as his introduction:
Life is the ultimate example of complexity at work. An oganism...develops through an incredibly complex series of interactions involving a vast number of different components...[which] are themselves made up of smaller molecular components, which independently exhibit their own dynamic behavior...Yet, when they are combined into some larger functioning unit--such as a cell or tissue-- utterly new and unpredictable properties emerge, including the ability to move, to change shape and to grow....That nature applies common assembly rules is implied by the recurrence--at scales from the molecular to the macroscopic--of certain patterns, such as spirals, pentagons and triangulated forms...After all, [everything is] made of the same building blocks: atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus. The only difference is how the atoms are arranged in three-dimensional space (p. 48).
Ingber goes on from there to describe this emergent phenomenon as a process of "self-assembly" (p. 48) into increasingly complex hierarchies of life forms. He stated his observation that nearly everything in our world, including the human body, is constructed using a form of architecture known as tensegrity (p. 48).
He explains, "The term refers to a system that stabilizes itself mechanically because of the way in which tensional and compressive forces are distributed and balanced within the structure" (pp. 48-49). The key point here seems to be that the stability (or resilience) of a tensegrity structure comes not from the strength of its individual member-parts, but from the way that its mechanical stresses are balanced and distributed across all of the parts of the whole. Ingber describes two categories of tensegrity structures, the first of which is made up entirely of "rigid struts," each of which is able to bear either tension or compression, and the second of which is composed of "prestressed" structures which bear either tension or compression even before being subjected to external forces. The compression-bearing rigid struts function to stretch, or tense, the flexible tension-bearing members, or "cables," while the tension-bearing cables, in turn, compress the struts.
Thus, these "counteracting forces, which equilibrate throughout the structure, are what enable it to stabilize itself" (p. 49). [insert figures from appendix here] A closer look at some of the other interesting and relevant features of tensegrity shows that: (a) It is the constructive, architecturally equilibrative use of gravity which gives most buildings their stability by taking advantage of its continuous compression forces; (b) Tension-bearers "map-out" the shortest path between adjacent members, resulting ideally in highly resilient geodesic-like shapes; (c) Tensional forces, in turn, follow these accommodative shortest routes between points so that their tensional stresses become adaptively assimilated as new functions of the structure's resilient, ever equilibrating form (Ingber, p. 49-50).
When studying the functions of tensegrity structures involved in the make-up of cells, Ingber found that when attached to a flexible substrate material, cells contract and become more spherical, thereby "puckering" the material beneath them. So it seems that the tensegrity dynamics of any given structure, even a living one, can have a significant rippling effect on the dynamics of its surrounding neighbors. More significantly, it was seen that pushing down on a tensegrity structure forces it into what appears to be a flattened, disordered state, but as soon as the pressure is removed from it, "the energy stored in its tensed filaments causes the [structure] to spring back to its original, roughly spherical shape" (p. 50).
This demonstrates that when tension and compression ratios are evenly distributed across a structure's member-parts, the structure will resiliently rebound from traumatic stressors. As shown above, in cellular tensegrity structures all the way up to and including the human body, all interconnected structural elements rearrange themselves as needed in response to local stressors.
So, in effect, just as the body varies the stiffness or flexibility of its bones, joints, tendons, and muscles in response to demands made upon it, cellular structures also stiffen or relax their various cytoskeletal parts through contraction and extension of their minute microfilaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments in response to its structural integrity needs. This is important because some research shows this bears directly on our own consciousness, as we shall see in the next section.
Furthermore, molecules too rearrange their shapes in order to communicate their reactions to the electro-chemical dynamics which influence their structural integrity. Thus, all levels of the human body's structure are simultaneously and continuously increasing their tensegrity states as much as possible, within the reciprocal limitations set forth by the corresponding state of the "structural matrix" to which and within which they are attached. Elsewhere in science, the notion of reciprocal limitations is referred to as "rein theory." Ingber and his associates actually observed how it is that these kinds of structural alterations communicate information in order to bring about changes in the biochemistry and genetic activities of the cell and its surroundings.
For example, they found that [b]y simply modifying the shape of the cell, they could switch cells between different genetic programs....Thus, mechanical restructuring of the cell and cytoskeleton apparently tells the cell what to do. Very flat cells, with their cytoskeletons stretched, sense that more cells are needed to cover the surrounding substrate--as in wound repair--and that cell division is needed. Rounding indicates that too many cells are competing for space on the matrix and that the cells are proliferating too much; some must die to prevent tumor formation (pp. 52-53).
It is important to emphasize that it is at some point in between these extremes of shape variation that the living cell functions most resiliently. And thus we return to the topic of our work here. However, we can go into a little more detail on just how this tensegrity not only affects our structural robustness, but also our consciousness.
Microtubules: Where Consciousness and Tensegrity Meet
Quantum theory describes extraordinary behavior of matter and energy which comprise our universe at a fundamental level. At the root of QM is the wave/particle duality of atoms, molecules and their constituent particles. When a quantum system remains isolated from its environment, it behaves as a "wave of possibilities" and exists in a coherent complex-number valued "superposition" of many possible states. Superposed quantum states for which the respective mass distributions differ significantly from one another will have space-time geometries which correspondingly differ.
Microtubules are hollow, cylindrical, tiny subcomponents of the cytoskeleton and transport system of our cells. They are the structural and dynamical basis of the cells, organizing functional activities, including synaptic regulation in the brain's neurons. They are self-assembling and mediate cell division and DNA splitting. Their conformation allows them to make computations--they function as onboard quantum computers.
Within MTs are arranged in a hexagonal lattice which is slightly twisted, resulting in a helical pathway. The cell's bone-like scaffolding appears to fill communicative and information processing roles. They regulate the strength of neuronal synapses. Microtubules can convert incoherent energy (thermal, chemical, or electromagnetic) into coherent photons, in a process known as "superradiance."
Cells get their shape from tensegrity, the architecture of life. Systems stabilize themselves mechanically because of the way in which tensional and compressive forces are distributed and balanced in their structure. Tensegrity structures are stable because they are "prestressed." The cytoskeleton is composed of microfilaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments. They compose a lattice, which stretches from the cell surface to the nucleus. It pulls the cell's membrane and internal constituents toward the core.
In opposition, the two compressive elements are the microtubules (or compressive "girders") and the extracellular matrix. Intermediate filaments connect microtubules and contractile microfilaments to the surface membrane and cell's nucleus. (Ingber). Synergetics stabilizes the cell through continuous tension and local compression. Microtubules, as tension-bearing parts of the structure, connect along the shortest, most economical paths. Because of this synergetic geometry, tensegrity structures offer a maximum amount of strength for a given amount of structure. Changing the shape of cells can switch them between different genetic programs.
Mechanical restructuring of the cell and cytoskeleton tells the cell what to do. Changing cytoskeletal geometry and mechanics affects biochemical reactions, protein production and gene expression. Changing cell shape can make them differentiate, (flat) can make them divide, or (round) activate a death program called apoptosis. According to Hameroff (1995), if quantum theory IS relevant to consciousness, it is at a level of embedding deeper than neurons, and possibly deals with conformational shapes.
Proteins configured in a lattice so that coherence occurs among the superposed quantum states may result in "quantum computing," where outputs regulate neural firing. The role of neurons is more like a magnifying device in which the smaller-scale cytoskeletal action is pumped up or transduced into something which can influence other organs of the body (Penrose, Shadows of the Mind, p. 376).
Microtubules are such geometric lattices of proteins. Its paracrystalline lattice structure promotes long-range cooperativity and order. This crystal-like lattice can function as a quantum wave-guide, which may be one possible biomolecular quantum device in neurons. The most basic cognitive unit is not the nerve cell synapse, but the microtubular structure within cells. Tube-shaped microtubules and tubulins are ideal quantum mechanical resonators. Resonance might support the existence of sub-quantum coherence in the brain. This conformational state occurring throughout significant brain volumes may produce Bose-Einstein condensate (shared quantum state), and/or quantum optical coherence. Coherent, nonlocal order emerges.
The many parts that make up an ordered system not only behave as a whole, they become whole; their identities merge or overlap so they lose their individuality entirely. Thus, they are capable of forming ephemeral but extended structures in the brain. Structures formed by Bose-Einstein condensates are the building blocks of mental life; in relation to perception they are models of the world, transforming a nice view, say, into a mental structure which represents some of the inherent qualities of that view.
Coherence is a matter of phase relationships, which are readily destroyed by almost any perturbation. On the other hand, complex dynamical systems have subtle internal phase relationships, and in some cases the nature of the dynamics protects these relationships through feedback, amplification, etc., especially in the presence of a supply of energy (Hameroff). So the physical dynamics which follow from quantum coherence can assume a significant role. "Superradiance" is an effect which can convert disordered energy of various kinds into coherent electromagnetic energy. Spontaneous emission of radiation in a transition between levels leads to the emission of a coherent radiation pulse which excites "super-radiant" states.
Ordering of water molecules in each microtubule can transform incoherent disordered energy into coherent photons within its hollow tubular core. Through pumping and a further effect called self-induced transparency, coherent photons are allowed to propagate. (Hameroff). Objective reduction means cascades of self-collapse give rise to the "stream" of consciousness, and provide a "flow" of time. ("OR", Penrose, 1994). An intrinsic feature of space-time itself, quantum gravity may be the agent of such collapse.
Self-collapse creates an instantaneous "now" event; sequences of such events create the flow of time and consciousness. Self-selections in fundamental space-time geometry may result in the factor we call subjectivity or subjective experience. OR in brain microtubules is the most specific and plausible model for consciousness yet proposed, according to its authors Penrose and Hameroff.
OR is an instantaneous event--the climax of a self-organizing process in fundamental space-time. Sequences of OR events give rise to our "stream" of consciousness and orchestrate our perceptual experience. The actual choice of state made by Nature is non-computable, a self-selection of space-time geometry, coupled to the brain through microtubules and other biomolecules, (Hameroff & Penrose).
Consciousness may involve a form of quantum computation that occurs in fundamental space-time geometry. At extremely small scales, space-time is not smooth, but quantized. Quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory predict virtual particle/waves (or photons) that pop into and out of existence, creating quantum "foam" in their wake. This granularity has been modeled by Penrose as a dynamic web of quantum spins.
If spin-networks are fundamental units of space-time geometry, they may provide the basis of proto-conscious experience. In other words, particular configurations of quantum spin geometry would convey particular types of qualia, meaning and aesthetics. Specific arrangements of space-time geometry constitute all brain activity. Quantum computation involves the processing of "qubits" as 1 and 0 (and other states) simultaneously. Subunit tubulins act as qubits, switching between states on a nanosecond timescale. Information is superposed and computes in the form of "qubits" in a quantum state which then collapse to definite "bits," or particular results.
Pre-conscious processing of information occurs in the form of qubits, or superposed states of microtubule automata. As the threshold for objective reduction is reached, these qubits collapse to definite states and become bits, resulting in a conscious experience of recognition or choice. While the microtubule quantum superposition evolves linearly, it is influenced at the instant of collapse by hidden non-local variables. The final response or action (or resilience) is determined by the effects of the hidden logic inherent in the space-time geometry of the quantum system undergoing reduction.
Holism and non-locality are features of the quantum world reflected in the quantum nature of awareness. This implies interacting systems have to be considered as wholes; non-locality means spatial separation between parts does not alter the fact we must deal with an interacting system holistically. The sense of self is attributed to temporal correlation (e.g. coherent 40 Hz). Jibu (1990) proposed that gap junction synapses account for synchronized 40 Hz neural activity.
Quantum states and self-collapse in neuronal MT could link brain activities such as thalamo-cortical 40 Hz to experience embedded in "funda-mental" spacetime geometry. Buddhists describe distinct "flickering" in their experience of reality (Tart, 1995). 25 second intervals between 40 Hz depolarizations suggest such "cognitive quanta" as functional entities. When these move from pre-conscious to conscious they orchestrate our moments of experience.
Time doesn't really flow, but appears to flow, because OR events are irreversible and have a direction in time. Thus instantaneous events give rise to the subjective flow of time, our stream of consciousness. Self-organizing quantum activities in cytoplasm may be the missing ingredients in neural-level correlates of consciousness. The instantaneous conscious "now" creates new experience from rearrangements in the fundamental spacetime geometry in which raw qualia, or proto-conscious experience resides. In a volitional act possible choices may be superposed. As the OR threshold is reached, the quantum state reduces to a single classical state -- a choice is made.
Summary: Energy Transducing Tensegrity Structures
Wheeler described a "pre-geometry" of fundamental reality comprised of information. Chalmers contends it includes "experiential aspects" leading to consciousness. Consciousness emerges from a critical level of complexity. Microtubules transduce the experiential aspect of fundamental information. MTs are "electrets" with piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties. MTs assemble and disassemble dynamically, and reassemble. They convey signals and process information. Thus, MTs are linked to learning, memory, and synaptic plasticity. Information is fundamental to the physics of the universe. Matter and mind may arise from consciousness -- the fundamental constituent of reality according to some (Goswami, 1993).
Information has both physical and experiential aspects. The climax of a self-organizing process is fundamental to the structure of space-time. Yes, consciousness has neural correlates. However, brain processes relevant to consciousness extend downward within neurons to the level of the cytoskeleton, in which proto-conscious qualia (subjective experience or inner life) are embedded in the basic level of reality. Consciousness runs deeper than membrane-level functions. "Qualia" (raw feelings or experience) or an experiential medium from which consciousness is derived, may exist as a fundamental component of reality.
For science to demonstrate this empirically, the very nature of physical reality must be re-examined. Only large collections of particles acting coherently in a single macroscopic quantum state could possibly sustain isolation and support coherent superposition in a time frame brief enough to be relevant to our consciousness. Only very special circumstances can support consciousness. In this model, microtubule-associated proteins "tune" the quantum oscillations leading to OR. Ingber has demonstrated mechanical signaling through cytoskeletal tensegrity networks in which MTs are compressed by contractile action and other filamentous structures. Associative learning, memory, and phase transitions occur in simulated MT experiments.
Collective quantum dynamics called super-radiance allows MTs to transform incoherent, disordered energy into quantum coherent photons within its hollow core. Now we can see how all these concepts and terms fit together in the "synergetics of resilience," to produce emergent effects which are greater than the sum of their parts. Resilience, as seen through the lens of the tensegrity paradigm, appears to have the flexible yet stable shape of an elaborately constructed network of on-going energy-distribution information feedback loops. Yet it is also simultaneously the reciprocally interactive process underlying the dynamics of its own self-assembly.
This resilience is achieved in humans through a combined process of creative self-reflection and intelligent self-correction. When the concepts of tensegrity are viewed from the perspective of quantum mechanics, the shape which energy (as a potential particle-function) take sin three-dimensional space evolves relative to the tension and compression dynamics recorded within the interference wave interactions from which it has emerged over time. In other words, the architectural design of a material form emerges as the holographic by-product of its continuously shape-shifting, -- and thus information-transducing function.
This is ultimately how all life forms transduce information about themselves to other life forms. By utilizing an interactive, holographic kind of particle-wave "Morse Code" about their current temporo-spatial state just as Candace Pert (1990) predicted earlier, the human body-mind communicates within its inner environment (it "self-reflects") in order to increase the over-all tensegrity of its immense number of "parts" so that it can adapt ("self-correct") more resiliently to all of its life stressors. Each form of feedback loop can be seen as a separate continuum which is reciprocally interactive with all other feedback-loop continua supporting its life form structure -- which, ultimately is all of them. Every living-energy-information feedback loop is holographically interconnected with all other living energy-information feedback loops.
Resilience, as a tensegrity process, therefore, is the organism's ability to (a) respond appropriately to stressors from within and without its biological structures in a way that allows it to (b) redistribute those stressors equitably across its member-parts in a way that (c) establishes and maintains its many tension-compression ratios within their respective homeostatic comfort zones. Those feedback-loop continua whose ideal "set-points" have been stretched and tempered, or "prestressed" have the ability to creatively adapt to more stressful energy than those whose "zones" remain very limited. Also, some "strut-like" feedback loops allow more for the compressive receiving and holding of stressor energy, while others, -- more "cable-like," allow more for the flexible holding and sending of energy tensions.
On the human level, the former, compressive feedback loops might be compared to one's innate craving for novel stimuli, an intellectual, strut-like strength, and the latter cold be seen as one's ability to evaluate stressors as challenges, rather than as oppressors, an emotional, cable-like strength. [insert Appendix C, fig. 12] When these continua of energy patterns are all interconnected into even one "simple" organ of the body, and complexity of the structure is immense and mind-boggling. The next higher level of complexity after the human body's physical structures upon which the body's mind is shaped. Our metaphor of how the dynamics of the human mind-body fits together with the pleroma, holographs, and tensegrity will conclude this section.
Conclusions to Part IV: Emergence or Emergency?
The basic message from all of this science for us as humans is that when it comes to adapting to our environment, our response can either be based in self-organizing emergence in the face of chaos, or non-adaptive breakdown which creates emergency. Adaptive challenge is what leads to critical states to which we either succumb, or rally with a new sense of self-image, a new higher level of self-organization. This holds true whether the challenge comes at the physical, emotional, intellectual/moral, or spiritual level. We opened many pages ago with a question as to whether or ot we humans are actually separate, distinct life-forms "ruling" this planet, or whether it might be true, as many have suggested over millennia, that we are all fundamentally inextricably embedded "parts" of one huge, organismic whole life form.
The answer to both questions, not surprisingly, is "Yes." The point is how do we respond attitudinally and in real-time to those challenges, in a holistic, synergetic or dissociative manner? Like "the sound of one hand clapping," mankind often seems to have congratulated itself on its achievements far more than observable history has justified. On the other hand, when viewed ontologically as well as epistemologically, -- perhaps there is room in the bigger scheme of things for the many blunders of humanity.
Perhaps, if we choose to learn from our mistakes how to make better choices for ourselves in the future, the "negative" stressors we have brought upon ourselves down through the ages may have actually been helping both our mind-bodies -- and our world-body to become stronger and more consciously resilient with the overall state of our mutual inter-dependence as a whole, living, holographic "tensegrity" structure. However, and this is a BIG however, the planet Earth does not have the luxury of allowing us more time for making further mistakes.
Our impact upon the planet in terms of ecology, resource exploitation, pollution, population, acid rain, ozone depletion and other irreversible factors is changing our environment beyond the point of viability for us, certainly in terms of quality of life as humans have known it since our emergence. And this does not even address the purely humanistic concerns of fair allocations of resources and human rights. We cannot afford to dwell in the ivory-tower of abstract notions about the nature of energy/matter while the planet as we know it is dying around us. Its resilience bears strongly on our own.
Despite our desires to migrate into space we are tied inexorably to its fate; Earth's resilience to our resilience. Even biologically, there is no substitute for good air, good earth, and good water. These are the resources of our real "wealth," from which all else, including our phenomenal science and technology depends. For our planet, "resilience" may mean our extinction. This has happened to myriad species on earth in deep history, for our galaxy is essentially hostile to life, even while fostering its development in this oasis Earth.
Not only the depletion of the planet, but other factors impinging from outside of our solar system challenge our continued existence. Thus it is that energy, at all levels of manifestation within our time-space continuum, can ultimately be distinguished as being involved in some phase of an oscillating process of evolutionary, distinction-making self-reflection and self-correction. Furthermore, this state is continuously being communicated among all other states via the resiliently evolving tensegrity-building life processes.
The sound of one hand clapping is like a person's eternal mind without the information-transducing energies of its finite body. Or, -- it is consciousness without the self-reflecting functions of its life dynamics. As the Jungian-holographic-tensegrity resilience metaphors have shown us, life is a koan within a koan, and we, as participants in its energy dynamics, are the vital, living, energy-shaping metaphors of its ongoing mystery. Thus, the secret of the universe is -- "Its alive!"
PART V: THE TAO OF RESILIENCE
Conclusion
by Peggie Southwick & Iona Miller
Asklepia Foundation, 1998/2002
The Harmony and Order of Things
- What is Resilience?
- Tensegrity: The Finite Tension of Infinite Intention
- Summary of the Known and Unknowable
Conclusions and Projections:
CHAOS THEORY AS THE META-MODEL OF RESILIENCE
QUANTUM BIOHOLOGRAPHY
- Appendices
- REFERENCES
- CONCLUSION
Having made a discovery, I shall never see the world again as before. My eyes have become different; I have made myself into a person seeing and thinking differently. I have crossed a gap, the heuristic gap, which lies between problem and discovery. -- (Polanyi, 1962, cited in Mousakis, 1990, p.56)
We should now proceed to find a neutral, or unitarian, language in which every concept we use is applicable as well to the unconscious as to matter, in order to overcome this wrong view that the unconsciousn psyche and matter are two things.
--Professor Wolfgang Pauli
The Harmony and Order of Things
The opening quest of this work was for a new way of heuristically experiencing, and thus more wholly understanding, the essential meanings and fundamental functions of the phenomenon resilience. Application of the CRP process allows us to enter these conceptual worlds for a first-hand experiential journey through these states. We've theorized that perhaps resilience is really about the successful communication of information back and forth between all of life's existential states. The answers to this reseach question have ubiquitously appeared in our long journey through this work. They will continue to emerge in relation to the CRP or dreamhealing process throughout the commentaries which constitute the rest of this journal Chaosophy 2002.
The current model of resilience is shown to be psychologically rooted in metaphors depicting competition of available energy resources. With "rebounding" and "elasticity" being described as its predominant characteristics, the image created is that of one force being resiliently stronger than its opposing force. This is a mythology whose potential usefulness seems to have expanded over the course of our competitively-waged human history.
We proposed that the application of a more harmoniusly integrative psychological model of the life process might thus help facilitiate a new kind of resilience within the world community; one which would simultaneously enhance, --one increasingly consciously resilient individual at a time, --the conscious evolution of the whole. Humanity's fundamental pathology was envisioned as a potentially terminal imbalance of its logos (rationality) and eros (feeling) functions which are in need of the holistic healing that a new, more constructive way of experiencing its polarities could provide. The goddess Harmonia is the archetypal image whose inspirations synchronistically appeared to guide this heuristic search for whatever truths we were ready to receive.
The archetypal healer Asklepios will inform our further applications of these discoveries in non-interpretive, experiential healing journeys in waking REM. Thus we are armed with the firm conviction that resilience is about the ability of each of life's being states to become more whole through mutually meaningful interactional dialogue and commerce between all of its other being states. We set out to logically define the functional boundaries of the resilience process and creatively describe its many emergent manifestions into that functional form. The underlying question was: "What is the essential nature and fundamental function of human resilience?" The following sections provide brief summaries of our conclusions from evidentiary clues. Our investigation has hopefully provided a clearer view of the conceptual and experiential aspects of the resilience phenomenon.
What is Resilience?
I've come to believe that science at its very core, is a spiritual endeavor. Some of my best insights have come to me through what I can only call a mystical process. It's like having God whisper in your ear...It's this inner voice that scientists must come to trust. -- Candace Pert, quoted in Neimark, 1997, p. 74
Not satisfied with the theoretical limitations posed by science's current "nature versus nurture" paradigm, we set out in Part I and II to find a missing third, invisible factor, which might actively be involved in the resilience process. We found one which could acknowledge the reality that life is a process composed of more than the sum of its resilient parts. Piaget (Seigler, 1991) gave us the terminology we needed to connect all of the psychological models into their basic underlying theme.
Ideally, life is an ongoing equilibrative process of accommodative assimilation of sensory information and its eventual development, through its necessary evolutionary stages, into resilient coping skills and adaptive behaviors. Variations in the efficacy of this information transduction process have been shown to be the result of several kinds of incoherencies created through energy-diminishing interference effects of both nature and nurture upon a person's overall life-energy state at any given point in time. We have also suggested that through various therapeutic techniques, holistic healing could be effected in these areas of energy-blockage by holistically re-organizing habitual neural patterns through focused intentionality. Self-organizing emergence of a new self image automatically changes beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behavior.
This restructures, reframes and re-equilibrates the life-draining effects of pathological wave-patterns into more life-enhancing ones. It reduces the dumping of autotoxic metabolic by-products of stress into the bodymind. The holographic language of quantum mechanics, describing the various relationships of energy movements through spacetime provide an effective way of conceptually reframing, or transducing, the theoretical information that eventually seems to be emerging from within the non-linear, pre-linguistic states of the collective unconscious.
We resolve that the very existence of the mysterious third force (inclusive of and yet supraordinate to the forces of nature and nurture) is evidently quite intimately involved in the evolution of this resilient process that we call life. A working definition of the qualitative state of resilience shows a range of variability within which our psyches can function in order to maintain a stable, harmoniously adaptive balance of life energies. It is in search of the function of this resilient state that we began our philosophical journey through Part IV.
Tensegrity: The Finite Tension of Infinite Intention
We are at this moment participating in one of the very greatest leaps of the human spirit to a knowledge not only of outside nature but also of our own deep inward mystery.-- Joseph Campbell, 1988, p. xviii
Part IV refined psychological and biological information discussed previously. Its more ethereal, spiritual aspects were defined in terms of mystical concepts of life's origins presented in Carl Jung's (1961) "Seven Sermons to the Dead." The gnostic terminology was translated into contemporary scientific models from cosmology, quantum physics, chaos theory, synergetics and holography. Within the infinitely expanded horizons provided by this new resilience frame of reference, we discovered that all of life seems to exist as an infinitely finite cycling in and out of the balanced states of wholeness. This is perfectly coherent energy, from which we, as potentiated life energy must continuously escape, and paradoxically, into which we, as potentially living beings, are continuously reborn.
We emerge from Chaos into order, and our consciousness dissolves into that chaotic state for rejuvination and renewal. Thus, we exist resiliently at the creative edge of chaos. We can see, looking back at the point where mind and body connect via these virtual energy exchanges, that our psychic and somatic states are modifiable by one another at this juncture of potential energy with its potentiated form. It is thus our responsibility, as we become increasingly individuated, to modulate as necessary areas which are in need of a holistic tune-up. One manner of doing this is by intentionally choosing to journey toward chaos for creative re-structuring, letting old outworn patterns dissolve.
We can self-manage the distribution and management of energy-draining life stresses on the whole mind-body by attending to the primal creative process. It is not an issue of mind-over-matter nor conscious will exerting its agenda over the subconscious. Rather, it is an approach of "mind-as-matter." And this individuation process of self-reflection and self-correction is resilient to the extent that its effects enhance the ongoing life process rather than diminish it. And so, at the end of our life process, when our temporal body is separated from its infinite energy source, its physical remains are, of logical and practical necessity returned for recycling into the larger energic scheme wherein is planted "the Tree of Life."
Likewise, we can assume, the infinite life energies over which our bodies temporarily have dominion, must also be returned for recycling within the infinitely larger "pleromal-Abraxas" scheme of things. And somewhere in the middle, the energy demands of being alive (the self-adaptive needs of "Eros") give rise to the "devilish" conflicts upon which our life energies must creatively break themselves in order to adapt and grow stronger, to evolve into ever higher forms of conscious energy.
Summary of the Known and Unknowable
The different intelligences are like the various tones that make up a scale. When we bring them into harmony, we have richer and more resonant experience. Life becomes a symphony that's full of meaning. --Elaine DeBeauport, quoted in Andrews, 1997, p. 26
And this, in a few words, is the Tao of resilience: Eternal answers to life's questions are already wrapped like gifts within the individual, consciousness-channelling, information-transducing mind-bodies of their living participants. It only remains for each of us to expand our conscious life-energies in order to claim those gifts which we already possess and through whose guidance we may continuously become more resilient and harmoniously recreated within the womb of our own evolutionary process.
“... But, as old nature is transformed into new Nature, a prophet can now foretell that dogmatic faith in anti-magic will revive blind trust in magic; and that science will become occult, while occult becomes science. James Joyce, who foresaw this outcome, asks mythic, tribal Finn, the rhetorical question: ‘Who gave you that numb?’ Joyce then listens
to‘what the thunders said’ as the gods replied in FINNEGANS WAKE. In this primer for prophets, Joyce reveals through the multisensuous language of the gods how archetypal Finn reacts psychically and socially to his own technological innovations, from paleolithic barbarism to modern civilization. Finn is alternately awakened to consciousness by the ‘thunder’ of each innovation, and lulled to unconsciousness by the environment that each creates through continued use. But, at the end of the First Cycle of merely reacting to the psychic and social consequences of innovation, he is prepared to enter the Second Cycle by anticipating them; first, he had the experience before its meaning; now he can have the meaning before the experience. ‘Finn again!’ has discovered ‘The keys to. Given!’ - the KEYS (not only mechanical, but musical) to GIVEN (both data and Heaven) - in the magical intervals between sleeping and waking.” - Barrington Nevitt, ABC OF PROPHECY, 1980, p.56 (quoted by Bob Dobbs, nlc post, 11/2001).
The world is many things, and no single framework can hold it all, neither science nor art, neither analysis nor intuition. We need harmony between science and the spiritual, between the subjective and the objective. (Richard E. Cytowic, 1993, p. 227)
As a proposed new way of seeing the phenomenon of resilience, the Jungian-holographic-tensegrity model offers not only a logically and spiritually coherent solution to the creation-versus-evolution controversy, but also promises useful new ways of understanding the living dynamics of harmony and order from which all of life is continuously being composed. Resilience as tensegrity, tension with integrity, is the intelligent product of its own creative process. Where resilience is lacking, intelligent creativity is lacking.
Thus, it remains for us as a society to follow the lead of people like Daniel Goleman (1995) and Elaine DeBeauport (1996), who walk their talk by putting into practice their own intelligently creative ideas about helping the world become more resiliently adaptive. In her article on resilience, Butler (1997) warns of the dangers of going to extremes with our programs to help at risk populations. She explains that [t]he reality that some children beat the odds is attractive to conservatives, because it suggests that inner strengths may be more crucial than expensive programs. Risk research, on the other hand, leads liberals to argue for changing the odds that children face, rather than making them beat them, (p. 25).
Instead, she lists several innovative ways people are helping one another become more resilient around our country. For example, in Mississippi, resilient stories of older men are being collected and handed down to younger generations. In other areas, children from disadvantaged families are being helped to develop self-confidence-building life skills through school and community-sponsored activities.
Butler's article echoes the reality that our answers come through learning to cooperatively develop and focus our full attention onto the areas where increased resilience is needed in our communities. In so doing, we also facilitate the evolving conscious resilience of the global collective. The more clearly we begin to see that all of life is interconnected, that no one action is truly separate from the interactions around and within itself, the more holistic healing can occur, individually and collectively. The better we understand how the functions of mind and body are interconnected, the more consciously we can work towards finding creative solutions to their respective pathologies.
Resilience is actually a holistic model of a consciousness-expanding process, involving the mutual interactions of self-reflection and self-correction at the individual and collective levels of our existence. Thus it is incumbent upon us to pause and reflect how each of us is influencing, for better or for worse, the structural integrity of the global tensegrity structure within which we are a tension-bearing member. Returning to our original harmony metaphor, each of our lives can be seen as a song composed of combinations of energy patterns which, if experienced holographically-- as synesthesia, for example --would be transduced into a four-dimensional "musical" tensegrity structure.
Research has shown that moreso than with other sensory stimuli, nearly every part of the brain is involved in the perception of music (Glausiusz, 1997). Thus, each of us, as we construct the energy patterns from which our magnum opus is being formed, can choose to learn to listen more consciously in our souls for logical notes which are off-key or otherwise discordant. An energy pace that is out of rhythm or synch can be readjusted by neural restructuring.
Emotions that are too loud or too quiet can be modulated. Then, as each of us is able to more harmoniously blend our individual lifesong with the lifesongs of others, we will become more resiliently whole through conscious participation in the more holistically balanced composition of our blended lifesong. The mystic Rumi said, "Your living pieces will form a harmony."
These closing words of Talbot's Holographic Universe provide a salute from quantum shamanism to resilience: We are indeed on a shaman's journey, mere children struggle to become technicians of the sacred. We are learning how to deal with the plasticity that is part and parcel of a universe in which mind and reality are a continuum, and in this journey one lesson stands out above all others: As long as the formlessness and breathtaking freedom of the beyond remain frightening to us, we will continue to dream a hologram for ourselves that is comfortably solid and well-defined. But we must always heed Bohm's warning that the conceptual pigeonholes we use to parse out the universe are of our own making...and when we outgrow any given set of conceptual pigeonhjoles we must always be prepared to move on, to advance from soul-state to soul-state...We are, as the aborigines say, just learning to survive in infinity (p. 302).
CHAOS THEORY AS A META-MODEL OF RESILIENCE
Clearly, the human race is resilient or we would not be here. How has nature developed this robust quality in us that allows us to adapt and evolve and develop technologies? Chaos Theory and Complexity offers perhaps the best metaphor to subsume all of our previous threads of investigation. Chaos Theory models nature's dynamics in non-integer fractal dimensions. This complements our Synergetics whose geometries model atomic structure in whole numbers. Chaos permeates all scales of observation including macro-, meso-, and microscopic. Quantum mechanics describes the unpredictability of rampant uncertainty at the tiniest scales. Chaotic systems are likewise unpredictable yet deterministic. They depend intimately on the system's initial conditions. Imperceptible changes in the beginning value of a variable can make the outcome of a pocess impossible to predict.
When these two models merge, quantum chaos emerges. Research suggests events inside atoms and molecules display chaotic features. Scientists expect aspects of chaos to emerge repeatedly throughout the quantum realm. We suggest that quantum chaos may be a means of "mind over matter" or wherein mindbody synchronizes in psychophysical restructuring.
A model is described in which subjective consciousness is generated through an unusual property of quantum non-locality. Chaos and bifurcation serve to link quantum transactions to global brain dynamics through the fractal architecture and dynamics of the central nervous system. The resulting process operates at the boundary between quantum computation and wave-particle reduction, thus combining optimality and free-choice. It is concluded that subjective consciousness has an evolutionary role as a non-computational predictive faculty, first emerging from chaotic excitations in single celled-organisms and that conscious anticipation, rather than computation, has been the principal factor promoting selective advantage in the development of the brain (King, 1997).
Consciousness and the Discovery of Quantum Mechanics
Despite the vast and diverse development of twentieth century science, one small dark cloud remains unchallenged and unsolved on the horizon of human understanding, the subjective nature of the conscious mind. One key to unravelling this paradox lies in our understanding of the principles of operation of the human brain. In this context, there has been a growing interest in both quantum mechanical ideas and chaos as possible answers.
Several of the pioneering quantum physicists, including Heisenberg, noticed that the uncertainty principle provides a physical basis for the brain to manifest free-will. If the brain is a quantum system, rather than a classically deterministic one, its states are not entirely determined because of quantum uncertainty. A single particle can occur anywhere within its wave function, despite the behaviour of many settling into a probability distribution determined by the wave. In the same way, free-will in a single brain could correspond to quantum uncertainty in the ongoing brain state.
Eddington (1935) showed for example that the uncertainty of position of a synaptic vesicle was as great as the width of the membrane thus constituting a possible trigger for an unstable cascade, leading to a global change in brain state.
Chaotic Neurodynamics
More recently, there has been interest in the idea that the brain may utilize transition in and out of chaos (Schuster, 1986; King, 1991; Barton 1994, West, in this special issue) in its processing to form a complex system (Ruthen, 1993), displaying self-organization (Barton 1994), capable of generating new types of structure through bifurcation - a sudden qualitative change in structure occurring at a critical value of a continuously varying parameter.
Experimental evidence for chaos has been found in the electroencephalogram (EEG) and in the excitation of individual cells. Walter Freeman (1991), (Skarda & Freeman 1987) has formulated a chaotic model for olfactory sensory recognition. In the olfactory cortex, excitations are globally distributed wave forms, much like a hologram in which coupled cells oscillate together, however the cell assemblies can oscillate chaotically in time. Chaos permits the exploration of dynamical or phase space without the system becoming locked in an inappropriate mode. Sensitive dependence guarantees sensitivity to input.
The system will eventually bifurcate to create a new attractor. In addition to ensuring plasticity, responsiveness and full exploration of the space of possibilities, the model is tuned so that a decisive end state is guaranteed. The use of 'holographic' distributed wave forms is also consistent with studies in which phase decoherence occurs with unexpected stimuli, to be replaced by coherent states once the brain has developed a stable representation of the situation. An evoked potential of a randomly omitted regular stimulus displays decoherence when the pattern cannot be anticipated and coherence when the expected stimulus occurs.
Chaotic systems can cohere through non-linear coupling. Lorenz, the meteorologist who first described dynamical chaos in three dimensions, noted the example of the butterfly effect - the flap of a butterfly in Hawaii could, in principle, subsequently be amplified by a chaotic airflow into a hurricane in Tahiti. Because a chaotic system is sensitively dependent on its initial conditions, arbitrarily small perturbations are amplified into global fluctuations.
Sensitive dependence also ensures that the eventual state of the system cannot in principle be predicted from outside, because any simulation will eventually become inaccurate as a result of the amplification of small errors. In this respect, the chaotic model has similarities to the quantum approach in that future states of the system cannot be determined from outside e.g. by simulation. Neurodynamic sensitive dependence ensures the brain remains optimally responsive both to the environment and its own evolving states. It also provides a basis for quantum perturbation to become inflated into global fluctuations when the neurodynamics is critically poised.
The Fractal Expression of Chaos in the Brain
Many chaotic systems contain fractal invariant sets, which are self-similar on descending scales of size, much like a snowflake. Any fractal has a non-integer fractal dimension associated with it. Both the broad frequency spectrum and the low correlation dimensions indicate the presence of chaos. An added feature of the brain, which separates it from other potentially chaotic systems is that it is specifically constructed from the global level down to individual sub-molecular assemblies as a particular design of non-linear geometric and dynamic fractal.
Threshold tuning of a neuron to its input makes it an unstable bifurcator. The global many-to-many connections implicit in neural nets require the neuron to be a geometric fractal tree. The neurons utilize several distinct neurotransmitters. The varying fractal dimension of distinct neuron types also determines their electrical conduction characteristics. Furthermore the dynamics, not just on a global scale but on descending orders of magnitude, from neurosystem, to cell, to synapse, to ion channel, vesicle or microtubule (Hameroff, 1994; Penrose, 1994), to protein sub-assembly and neurotransmitter molecule all display non-linearities, chaos or fractal dynamics (King, 1991).
The synapse, for example contains complex feedbacks including non-linear reactions. The acetyl-choline ion channel requires two molecules to activate it, thus having quadratic, rather than linear concentration dynamics. Large molecules such as proteins are structurally and dynamically fractals, as a result of interacting on several levels of scale, from atom, through individual amino acids and sub-assemblies such as the alpha helix to global conformation changes. Voltage-gated ion channels have a fractal time delay in the closed state, (Liebovitch et. al. 1987).
The fractal architecture of the brain provides for a structured scale interaction, in which fluctuations at one level can be linked to instabilities at a higher one, if the system happens to be at unstable bifurcation or in chaos. The system can thus over-ride any micro-instabilities if it is evolving toward a stable outcome, but may become arbitrarily sensitive to them if it is unstable. This leads to the hypothesis that the brains of multi-celled organisms have evolved in response to the selective advantage of properties emerging from fractally-organized chaos.
From the point of view of instability, the law of mass action not withstanding, such a fractal architecture provides unique possibilities for the entire neurosystem to become responsive to fluctuations at the level of a single quantum. What particular advantages could accrue from such an apparently noisy process? Noise would normally be an anathema which could corrupt a computational process. We know that artificial neural nets do have a use for random noise in terms of thermodynamic annealing. By shaking the system a little, one can jolt a sub-optimal state and cause it to roll down to a deeper hollow in the energy landscape, representing a better solution. A combination of fractal chaos and quantum mechanical fluctuation may provide qualitative advantages over such a primitive form of plasticity.
The Quantum Foundation of Chaotic and Statistical Fluctuation
At stake may be the very nature of statistical conceptions of the universe. What is the origin of randomness? Theories combining determinism and random variation arise in three contexts: The first is quantum theory, in which deterministic wave evolution is punctuated by reduction of the wave packet, giving a statistical distribution of states whose probabilities are determined by the wave amplitude. Quantum uncertainty thus represents the indeterminacy of a particle within its wave.
The second arises from chemical kinetics and other examples of statistical mechanics. Partial information about individual trajectories of populations of interacting particles results in a description in which the positions and momenta are based on random variables and statistical probabilities. Biological evolution could be included as a sophisticated example. The third case consists of chaotic dynamical systems, whose evolution may be in principle deterministic, but cannot be predicted. Individual trajectories are often ergodic, wandering through phase space in a similar manner to a random variable.
JOURNEY METAPHOR: In the dream journeys, our consciousness "wanders" around phase space, organically self-organizing a variety of sensory metaphors to describe the existential condition of the journeyer and seek creative solutions, much like a random variable with chaotic changes in trajectories]. When we come to consider a real world chaotic system based on molecules, we can see that Lorenz's butterfly effect extends naturally down in scale to a random kinetic encounter growing into a butterfly-sized fluctuation and hence a hurricane. So the underlying source of fluctuation in macroscopic chaos is kinetic randomness. However the matter does not stop there. All such molecular billiards are actually instances of quantum chaos (King 1989) (Mason, 2001).
Molecules are not simple classical billiard balls, but wave-particle assemblies which diffract according to their wave functions. Quantum uncertainty of position is thus amplified by kinetic interaction to form the ultimate underlying source of global fluctuation in macroscopic chaotic systems. Collapse of the wave function thus lies at the core of chaotic fluctuation.
King (1997) calls this amplification quantum inflation. The duality between deterministic and probabilistic processes extends to many levels of organization. Consider biological evolution: Some traits, such as unusual plant alkaloids are clearly the result of historical accident giving rise to unique and varied forms, which need not exist by necessity and have come about opportunistically. Many others, from the existence of photosynthesizers to the parallel forms of marsupial and placental carnivores, appear to be shaped by environmental factors which are influential enough that repeated mutation and selective advantage will almost inevitably lead to the adoption of the trait. The former case is like the behaviour of a single photon and the latter is like a large flux, forming an interference pattern.
We thus have a distinction. On the one hand we have historical processes, in which one of many possible histories occurs. On the other, necessary processes in which causes precipitate effects, despite possibly having a statistical intermediate, through processes such as bifurcation. By extrapolation, one can argue that all historical processes, from flipping a coin to being picked up as a hitchhiker, are indirect consequences of quantum uncertainty and that we walk in an inflated quantum world.
Supporting this world view is the fractal quantum non-linearity of bio-molecular systems. We have already noted that large molecules such as proteins form fractals. The non-linearity of electron charge interaction has, as a direct consequence, the development of a spectrum of bonding types from the strong covalent and ionic links down to residual weak bond effects which permit the formation of the complex supra-molecular assemblies seen in living organisms. These non-linearities consequently support a fractal organization in which systems inherit emergent properties appearing on differing levels of scale.
Computational Intractability and Freedom of Choice
The evolving nervous system has a two-fold computational dilemma: Firstly, predicting the open-environment, the key to survival, leads to computationally intractable problems in which conventional computation requires exponentiating time, clearly impractical to an organism confronting immediate life-or-death decisions. The travelling salesman problem - finding the shortest route around n cities is an example which theoretically grows super-exponentially like (n-1)! Probabilistic, dynamic or distributed processing approaches are required for even approximate solution in polynomial time.
Certain logical propositions can also be formally undecidable. Chaotic dynamical systems are also classically unpredictable. Although they can be simulated over short time scales, and sometimes more rapidly than the original process (rapid simulations), sensitive dependence will ultimately cause a divergence between simulation and reality. Consequently it is very likely that biological nervous systems have found alternatives to conventional computation which do not involve temporal impasse. Recently an efficient form of quantum parallel computing involving wave function superposition has been devised, which is pertinent to the model here (Brown, 1994).
In this approach wave functions are made to interfere so that they represent the results of numerical or logical calculations. Measurements of the wave function averaged over a number of reduction events leads to a calculation of a superposition of states. A large number could in principle be factorized in a few superimposed steps, through periodicities in the wave function, which would otherwise require vast and time-consuming classical computer power. Secondly there is no single strategy for survival - the problem does not have a unique solution. Although survival of each individual is a unique historical process, it has at every point many potential avenues, some of which will be productive and some unproductive. Survival thus has more to do with deciding a viable course of action than finding the optimal solution to a problem.
Antonio Damsio's (1994) Elliot with prefrontal damage affecting decision-making, planning and prediction with no other cognitive impairment illustrates this difference dramatically. Despite scoring normal on brain function and personality tests, his decision-making deficit had led to severe social problems. Returning to quantum mechanics, we have a fundamental problem. Because quantum mechanics can only predict outcomes as probabilities, the theory cannot determine what actually happens. Schrödinger's cat paradox illustrates that we experience what I would term the principle of choice. When a cat is subjected to a Geiger counter device which could trigger its demise from a radioactive decay, we always find the cat either alive or dead. Quantum theory, by contrast, finds it both alive and dead with differing probabilities.
The Everett many-worlds interpretation puts this position at its clear extreme by saying all quantum outcomes become probability universes and all happen. All quantum calculations then become descriptions of a bifurcating universal wave function. There is then no collapse of the wave function, and no principle of choice. However our experience depends on unique histories which are the consequence of choices. We do not experience all the probability universes, but only that the cat is either alive or dead.
Our subjective world thus looks like collapse of the wave function does occur. This suggests that, to fully understand the nature of the conscious mind, we may require a deeper theory of the quantum world which unravels the principle of choice. Without this, quantum theory, despite its potentiality for parallel computing, may not help us understand the mind, because it claims free-will is merely a random variable. Although this might coincide with Edelman's Darwinian view of neural selection, it provides no hint of an answer to the relation between consciousness, cognition, intention and quantum uncertainty.
Transactional Supercausality
Several so-called hidden-variable theories have been developed, which attempt to explain the probabilistic aspect of quantum theory in terms of a deeper causality. Quantum non-locality remains a hot topic in physics in the light of the Bell's theorem experiments. In such experiments, a pair of spatially separated particles in a single wave display correlations which cannot be maintained by information exchanged at the speed of light (Clauser & Shimony, 1978; Aspect Dalibard & Roger, 1982).
Once we know for example the polarization of one of two correlated photons, the other immediately (without requiring the time light takes to cross the apparatus) has complementary polarization. However neither has their polarization defined until the first measurement takes place, because the statistics violate Bell's inequalities governing all locally-causal processes. This gives rise to the possibility that there are many types of non-local association hidden in the probabilities of quantum mechanical predictions.
King illustrates an approach which he believes shows what the conscious brain may be doing, based on the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics (Cramer, 1986, King, 1989). This will require us to explore how space-time may be linked so that information is mutually shared between future and past in a relatively symmetrical hand shaking way which underlies the sequential nature of time we are familiar with. It will involve some elementary modern physics. The four forces of nature are known to be mediated by radiation-particles or bosons which are termed virtual because they exist only for an interval determined by the uncertainty principle. Just like the many-worlds explanation, all possible virtual particles exchanged between the charged electrons add up exactly to the force between them.
By contrast, with a real photon, like the ones we see, the boundary conditions require a single particle of positive energy to be exchanged. The collection of all possible interactions thus reduces to one real interaction upon measurement. In addition to representing the force between the two electrons, each virtual photon must have both an emitter and an absorber to satisfy the uncertainty relation in a finite space-time interval.
A real photon of positive energy can be created from a virtual one, if energy is pumped into the electromagnetic field, for example by oscillating it as in a radio transmitter. Since virtual particles can become real ones, real particles should also be subject to the same rules requiring both an emitter and an absorber. This is consistent with the universe emerging from a single wave function as a quantum fluctuation through the cosmic inflation arising with symmetry-breaking of the forces of nature.
One way of explaining quantum non-locality is through a hand-shaking space-time interaction between an emitter and its potential absorbers. The transactional interpretation does just this by postulating an advanced wave travelling back in time from the [future] absorber to the emitter. This interferes with the retarded wave, travelling in the usual direction from emitter to absorber to form the exchanged particle.
Because both waves are zero-energy crossed phase waves, they interfere destructively outside the particle path but constructively between the emitter and absorber. The emitter sends out an offer wave and the absorber responds with a confirmation wave. Together they form a photon, just as an anti-electron (positron) travelling backwards in time is the same as an electron travelling forwards.
Electron-positron creation-annihilation are actually advanced and retarded solutions to the same interaction. Although the transactional interpretation is completely consistent with quantum mechanics, it leads to some very counter-intuitive ideas. When we see a distant quasar, in a sense the quasar radiated the photon we see long ago, only because our eyes are also here to perceive it. In a sense the quasar anticipated our presence and, despite its vastly greater energy, it may not be able to radiate without that presence and the other potential absorbers in its very distant future.
This would imply that non-locality is observer dependent in a way which prevents any single observer having access to all the boundary conditions and hence logical prediction of the outcomes. This would prevent the universe from being computationally or deterministically predicted, but it would not prevent quantum non-locality from displaying relationships in which future states had an influence through being boundary conditions. In the transactional interpretation, wave function collapse corresponds to a collapse of a transaction between all potential emitters and absorbers to a single transaction between the emitter and the selected absorber.
Although this hand-shaking interaction looks "random" to the observer, it may really be a complex system interaction manifesting the principle of choice, which varies in a pseudo-random manner because it is linked to many other space-time states of the universe. Because it has boundary conditions involving future states of the system, it cannot be predicted from the initial conditions and temporal determinism fails. We are left with a description in which correlations in wave-particle reductions operating in a manner consistent with quantum computation schemes may display an indirect predictive feature, which is unavailable to classical systems, because the initial conditions are insufficient to determine the quantum outcomes.
King (1997) denotes this transactional supercausality, or transcausality. Transcausality differs from Clerk Maxwell's proverbial kinetic demon in that it conforms to the probability interpretation of quantum mechanics for each measurement, despite possibly reflecting non-local correlations. It thus does not violate any physical laws, such as making one side of a barrier hotter and another cooler by selectively letting through the fast molecules (which is anyway made impossible for a Maxwell's demon by quantum uncertainty). Neither can such non-local processes can be regarded as computations, because the initial conditions provided any observer are incomplete boundary conditions. Transaction may also explain the arrow of time as a reflecting boundary condition at the origin of the universe, giving rise to a real retarded positive-energy universe.
The Evolutionary Origin of Conscious Brains
Nervous systems may thus have evolved in the following steps (King, 1996):
(1) Chaotic excitation as a universal sense organ: In terms of the theory, the single eucaryote cell became chaotically excitable, because this provided a universal sense organ, responsive to quantum perturbations by chemical orbital interactions [smell], membrane solitons and phonons [sound] and incident photons [light]. Quantum sensitivity is well known in the senses of modern nervous systems.
Similar arguments apply to sound and the sense of smell e.g. in the detection of pheromones, where a single molecule may be sufficient to provoke a response in the organism. Chaotic excitability would have made the single cell in a direct sense conscious of its surroundings in the sense that its global dynamical state would be sensitively responsive to its environment, however the theory also hypothesizes that chaotic excitation also provided access to a non-computational form of predictivity based on quantum non-locality, in which future states of the system leave their mark on a pattern of related transactions in a coherently excited cell, with a time scale determined by the lifetime of exchanged excitations. Even a time scale in milliseconds would provide a critical advantage. Consciousness thus also becomes conscious anticipation.
(2) Space-time anticipation in nervous systems: Multi-celled nervous systems would then have evolved to utilize this form of space-time anticipation in a manner compatible with and complementing computation. The basis of this is the many-to-many neuron tree structure which provides a holographic transform of the information, and fractal rendering of the system and its instabilities down to the level of the synapse and ion channel. Chaotic neurosystem oscillations allow for linked sub-populations of neurons to enter a coherent oscillation through bifurcation.
Bifurcation into a particular stable or chaotic attractor could thus perform a computation through a superposition of states as outlined in the previous discussion on quantum computation. In the indeterminate or unstable case it could go further and generate a unique anticipatory choice through quantum non-locality. [Relates to the CRP process of natural healing when consciousness deconstructs to the groundstate of chaotic consciusness.]
(3) The quantum-inflated brain: The subjectively conscious brain then emerges from the unusual non-local space-time properties of quantum chaos.
The structure of the brain can be described in terms of three dynamically-interacting components:
(1) The entire cortex is activated by basal brain centres, whose ascending distributed pathways fan out across the cortex and provide the activation that supports waking alertness and modulates light and dreaming sleep. These act in very much the way an energy parameter does in any dynamical system.
(2) The cerebral cortex along with its connections to the thalamus. The cortex is broadly divided by the Sylvian fissure between parietal and temporal sensory and association areas on the one hand and the frontal areas on the other, which involve motor action and its abstraction in terms of intentionality, decision-making and survival aims - all future-directed.
(3) Linking these is a set of feedback loops, broadly termed the limbic system, which provides a central connection
between the frontal areas, emotion and the capacity to store and access experiences in sequential memory as realized in the hippocampus.
The mammalian cerebral cortex supports a distributed representation of reality, in which different aspects of experience are processed in parallel in a modular manner. The independent representation of movement and colour (Zeki, 1992), as well as modular representation of specific attributes such as facial expressions, music, verbal articulacy and semantics, along with the capacity of such areas to adapt and change their functional assignments under stimulation, illustrates how the cortex is organised as a distributed dynamical processing system. Just as spatial representations and sensory impressions are part of an internal model of reality constructed by the brain, our experience of time is similarly a constructive process.
This is illustrated by the experiments of Libet (1989), in which the subjective timing of a conscious sensation refers it backwards in time to the initial sensory stimulus, a short interval before the cortex actually became activated. The use of phase coherence in central nervous processing is essentially similar to making a quantum measurement through beats, the basis of the uncertainty principle. Phase coherence could thus provide globally the space-time relationship implied by the transactional interpretation. Much of cortical structure, particularly including the role of the frontal lobes can be explained in terms of developing a space-time model of reality, in which time is represented, in terms of the past in memory systems and the future in terms of much of prefrontal organization, forming a dynamic model of will, action and choice in much the same way sensory association areas abstract sensory input.
A critical aspect of this space-time modelling is being able to consciously anticipate a prospective situation and comprehend it as a sequential event, spanning past, present and future. Some of this anticipation involves planning and logical choice, but a considerable part is involved in being able to run a smooth simulation of experience from the past, through the present, into the future. MacLean (1991) describes this as follows: "It was as though premeditation required not only the ability to plan, but also the step by step memory of what is planned, or as one might say a 'memory of the future'."
MacLean suggests that the cerebellum might function in coordination with the cerebral cortex as a rapid dynamical simulator. These principles however extend to the cerebral cortex itself just as meaningfully. The nature of choice and decision-making in transactional supercausality requires detailed philosophical investigation. The system is physically indeterminate, and possesses the basis for free-will in the principle of choice.
However, in the transactional interpretation, quantum non-locality allows contingent future states to form part of the boundary conditions. Free-will may thus involve a mixture of genuine freedom to determine future outcomes as a watershed decision is made and a type of temporal sensitivity for the future contingencies in which free-will is another kind of temporal sense, feeling for the possibilities already laid out by the non-local interaction. The nature of such free-will may remain causally paradoxical for a given observer, because free-will is not simply a random variable but a non-local phenomenon partly dependent on contingent future states.
Cognition can be modelled in the following way, which is similar to Freeman's model for olfaction. The problem sets up stable boundary conditions, just as sensory input does in sensory recognition. The brain then generates a chaotic excitation which explores the space of possible configurations. A solution arises when the resulting chaotic excitation bifurcates to form a stable self-consistent attractor.
If a series of small bifurcations occur resulting from successive [quantum] computational steps, we would say the conclusion was arrived at deductively, but if however a major global bifurcation is required to reach self-consistency, an intuitive leap of understanding may result. The transition from chaos thus models the sudden moment of insight - the "eureka", deductive cognition, sensory recognition and decision-making. Computational predictivity is thus complemented by conscious anticipation enabled through quantum transaction and manifested in the transition from chaos.
Conclusion: Conscious Anticipation and the Physical Universe
Consciousness is not just a globally-modulated functional monitor of attention as Crick (1994) might have us believe, but a dual aspect to physical reality. Although subjective consciousness, by necessity, reflects the constructive model of reality the brain adopts in its sensory processing and associative areas, the internal model is not sufficient to explain the subjective aspect of conscious experience.
Conscious experience underlies and is a necessary foundation for the physical world view. Without subjective conscious experience, it remains doubtful whether the physical world would have an actual existence. It is only through stabilities of subjective conscious experience that we come to infer the objective physical world model of science as an indirect consequence. For this reason, subjective consciousness may be too fundamental a property to be explained, except in terms of fundamental physical principles, as a dual manifestation of quantum non-locality, which directly manifests the principle of choice in free-will. The evolution of the brain has depended not only on understanding the environment, but on competing with individuals of the same species and others for survival under unpredictable and changing situations.
To quote Richard Leakey (1994): If .. individuals were able to monitor their own behaviour, rather than merely operate as computerlike automatons ... by extrapolation they might be able to predict the behaviour of others under the same circumstances. This monitoring ability ... is one definition of consciousness, and it would confer considerable advantage in those individuals that possessed it. Chimpanzees ... experience a significant degree of reflective consciousness. ... In humans, mind reading goes beyond simply predicting what others will do under certain circumstances: it includes how others might feel.
Survival in crisis depends as much on hunch, mind reading and quick reaction as on computational deduction. Despite emerging one and a half million years ago, the genus Homo took until approximately 35,000 years ago to begin the explosive manifestation of culture. From the unchanged tool making during the long intervening period, it is difficult to conclude that computation, as such, was even a feature of the human mind until culture developed, let alone a prominent aspect of animal behaviour. It is likewise difficult to reduce the hunting of a leopard or the flight of a gazelle to anything other than conscious anticipation. While one may acknowledge that computation is implicit in the functioning of all neural nets, even humans, despite having 10^10 neurons and 10^15 synapses and representing the pinnacle of cognitive evolution are inefficient computers by comparison with a simple pocket calculator.
The natural conclusion is that evolution has promoted conscious anticipation, rather than computation per se as its principal instrument of selective advantage. The potential quantum basis of conscious anticipation leads to a stunning re-evaluation of our role in the universe. Far from being the most fragile and improbable of physical systems, the conscious brain may manifest the most fundamental aspects of quantum reality. Furthermore these aspects arise from the re-interaction of the four wave-particle forces which originally emerged through cosmological symmetry-breaking, to form their ultimate non-linear interactive structures - the large supra-molecular complexes of cell-biology. It may be that only in such structures can the cooperative effects of quantum non-locality be fully realized, making us, despite our long and tortuous evolutionary history, literally a manifestation of quantum cosmology.
"We almost never think of the present,
and when we do, it is only to see
what light it throws on our plans for the future".
(Pascal )
A model of the mind-brain relationship is developed in which novel biophysical principles in brain function generate a dynamic possessing attributes consistent with consciousness and free-will. The model invokes a fractal link between neurodynamical chaos and quantum uncertainty. Transactional wave collapse allows this link to be utilized predictively by the excitable cell, in a way which bypasses and complements formal computation. The formal unpredictability of the model allows mind to interact upon the brain, the predictivity of consciousness in survival strategies being selected as a trait by organismic evolution.
QUANTUM BIOHOLOGRAPHY
Recent discoveries by Russian scientists Peter Gariaev and Vladimir Poponin shed tremendous light on our proposal that the human being is a transducer of universal energy and consciousness -- essentially a biocomputer. The new feature of this research is the ability to physically demonstrate subtle fields emerging from the quantum foam or vacuum potential. This makes the effect quantifiable and measurable -- objective. This takes the phenomenon and subjectivity of consciousness out of the realm of quantum metaphysics and plants it firmly under the rubric of hard science. It heralds the unification of quantum mechanical and chaotic dynamics in human consciousness.
We can now model the human bio-computer. Poponin boldly suggests that this deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying subtle energy phenomena include many of the observed alternative healing phenomena and includes a physical theory of consciousness. This hypothesis is based on a precise quantitative background and combines both quantum mechanics and complexity or chaos dynamics in a startling and compelling new way. It posits that some new field structure is being excited from the physical vacuum by an intrinsic ability which emerges through DNA. His DNA Phantom Effect demonstrates a dynamic new field in the vacuum substructure by bombarding it with coherent laser light and coupling it to conventional electromagnetic fields. The experimental protocols for this proceedure are rigorous, and have been reproduced in Moscow and at Stanford.
R. Miller, I. Miller, and Webb (2001) are now consulting on the project to suggest the next research directions and applications. Both quantitative and qualitative data are crucial for the development of a new unified nonlinear quantum field theory which includes the physical theory of consciousness. The DNA phantom field effect may be interpreted as a manifestation of a new physical vacuum substructure which has been previously overlooked. It is perhaps a specific example of a more general category of electromagnetic phantom effects.
Results of the experiments described by Poponin showed that when DNA was put in a scattering chamber and bombarded with laser light a phantom was revealed, even when the DNA itself had been removed. Researchers hypothesize that some new field structure is being excited from the physical vacuum. Its origin is related to physical DNA. As yet, they have found no other substance which recreates or emulates the effect of the DNA molecule. They bombard it with weak coherent laser radiation in two frequencies. The intensity of the scattered light is measured, as well as non-linear localized excitations.
This suggests that the electromagnetic phantom effect is a more fundamental phenomenon which can be used to explain other observed phantom effects, though not to be confused with the often misinterpreted secondary emission of electrons seen in Kirlian Photography and dubbed "phantoms." [ref. R. Miller on "The Physical Mechanisms of Kirlian Photography," Psychoenergetic Systems, Stanley Krippner, ed., 1974]. Evidence suggests a relationship to the phenomena of [endogynous] bioluminescence, liquid crystals, and superconductivity, which we intend to pursue. Other research (Childre, 1992; Paddison, 1992) suggests that consciousness is non-localized in the bodymind.
Joseph Chilton Peace in his latest, The Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit, points out that we have five neural centers or brains--and establishes that our fourth and most recently developed brain is located in the head while the fifth is located in the heart. It is the dynamic interaction of this head brain (intellect) and heart brain (intelligence), of biology and spirit, that allows transcendence from one evolutionary place to the next. Pearce declares we are quite literally, made to transcend.
He says, "Transcendence is our biological imperative, a state we have been moving toward for millennia." In less scientific and more mystical terms, we emerge through self-organization from the Void and to the Void we can return for renewal and sustenance. It is, in fact the Heart Sutra that informs us that "Form is not other than Void; Void is not other than Form." Our human form is not other than this void, and biophysics now demonstrates this quantitatively and qualitatively. We are more fundamentally electromagnetic, rather than chemical beings.
The void state, "cosmic zero," is the primal matrix and proportionately our most fundamental reality. In
essence, we emerge from pre-geometrically structured nothingness, and DNA is the projector of that field which sets up the stress gradients in the vacuum or quantum foam to initiate that process of embryonic holography, (Miller and Webb, 1973).
The quintessence of the four cosmic elements of space, time, energy and matter is Light. In some strange way, light is the link connecting them all. At some level, the entire electromagnetic spectrum can be considered transductions of light at various frequencies. Poetically, we can consider matter as "frozen" light. In much the same metaphorical sense, consciousness and our being may be also. Mystics of all ages consider the fundamental principles of creation to be Light and Sound. Now science may be tangibly valiadating that spiritual intuition.
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