Web auditing in any place on the planet https://timecops.net/english.html
TOWARDS ACTIVATING
THE SUPERPOWERS
OF THE HUMAN BIOMIND
IN TWELVE PARTS
Ingo Swann (21Jan97)
INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION
The materials in the following twelve essays will help introduce a category of topics that need to be considered as preventing or defeating understanding that would lead toward the activation of at least some of the superpower faculties.
. . . . . .
All of the topics discussed in this category were discovered to be structurally important within the psychoenergetics project at Stanford Research Institute which endured from 1972 through 1985 - and I have worked toward fleshing them out since then.
Most of the topics were brought together as early as 1979 in a rather extensive paper requested by the principal leadership of one of the agencies that funded the project.
. . . . . .
The identification of the topics that resulted in the extensive report was provided to answer a two-part question posed by the funding agencies, but which never before had been addressed.
1. Are there any factors that PREVENT the development and realization of the superpowers?
2. And if so, what are they?
These questions had come about because of earlier efforts at various institutions to test advertised developmental (or enhancing) methodologies, but which efforts had ended up with insignificant results.
. . . . . .
The urge to enhance or learn or discover is always very strong, especially within the cultures of the modern West, since these are learning cultures whose basic premises regarding progress are based in organized educational methodologies. This is the "you can do it if you learn how" kind of thing.
. . . . . .
However, various areas of potential learning don't respond very well to this positivistic approach. And in general, learning how to "become psychic" constitutes one of these non-responsive areas.
This statement needs quickly to be quickly qualified, however.
. . . . . .
The existence of "natural psychics," as it were, can be documented quite easily, as can occasional Psi experiencing among the broad populations in general.
However, how and why, and what internal factors result in natural Psi capabilities within given individuals have not been isolated or comprehended, even though a tremendous effort to do so has been attempted several times in at least five major nations, and several minor ones.
Thus, the general idea circulated in the public that such attempts have never taken place is not true - and in fact never will be true, since it is acknowledged behind the scenes that such "powers" exist in our species, although latently so.
. . . . . .
Thus, the existence of natural psychics, some of them very good at what they do, is not an issue in these database documents, and nothing in this database should be misconstrued as prejudicial to them.
. . . . . .
However, social issues that arise because of their existence can be an issue, at least in terms of social tolerance or intolerance toward them and what they are representative of because of their natural abilities.
. . . . . .
In any event, if a positivistic approach toward "learning how to" yields little in the way of progress, then it is quite justifiable to begin considering the possibility that unidentified deterrents may be present, and be stronger than expected.
The theory here is that once the preventing factors are identified and, well, "removed," it should become possible to better isolate and work with the key structural elements of the superpowers themselves.
To be clear here, the idea is this: OK, if we can't get it to work, let's shift focus to what's keeping it from working.
. . . . . .
It was found that a very large portion of the preventing factors were social or sociological in origin. And as such, the preventing factors were embedded in the consensus realities that characterized the social or sociological environments to which individuals had adapted.
Most of the preventing factors could be equated with information processing viruses that became cloned in members of a given society or social sub-grouping, and which thereafter distort or negate mental information processing grids at the individual level.
. . . . . .
It can be thought, then, that natural psychics somehow escape such negating factors, whatever they may consist of, and so presumably early in life - or perhaps undergo a Metanoia shift later on (Metanoia being a topic of one of the essays ahead.)
. . . . . .
As the preventing factors were isolated and took on visibility and understanding, a number of unexpected developmental fall-outs resulted.
Major among these fall-outs was that the superpower faculties apparently, and automatically, commence better functioning to the degree that the preventing factors are identified and understood.
. . . . . .
The evidence regarding this more than suggested that once the mental information processing viruses, and their origins, are understood as such, they cease their deterrent functioning within the entire sensorium systems.
It would appear, then, that the entire sensorium systems undergo MICRO-CHANGES OF STATE once the information viruses are deactivated.
. . . . . .
The change-of-state phenomena are consistent with the ancient Greek concept of METANOIA - translated into English as when the brain-mind suddenly shifts from a lower to a higher condition of functioning.
. . . . . .
In any event, it is quite logical and rational to assume that when information viruses are deactivated within given information processing systems, then something IS going to happen along the lines of enhancing those systems. In this sense, "enhancing" would imply restoration of processes which had been depressed or distorted by the viruses.
. . . . . .
The human biomind almost certainly IS an information processing system - rather, is an interlocking, interdependent series of them.
. . . . . .
The most expedient and direct way to deactivate information processing viruses is simply to beat them to death.
. . . . . .
This seems to be the case for two basic reasons:
1. that the viruses, once transmitted and cloned into individuals, are highly resistant to change of any kind; and
2. that to begin with they are invisible within cognitive systems that contain them, and so it is difficult to spot them via of cognitive introspection and "self-discovery."
. . . . . .
One very expeditious way to beat an information processing virus to death is to cease processing information through it, or to construct new pathways around it.
. . . . . .
Now, to move expeditiously on and to begin the beating-to-death process, in this database the phrase "How can I learn to become more psychic," is permanently replaced by the more effective concept of "ACTIVATING the superpower FACULTIES of the human biomind."
. . . . . .
The term PSYCHIC will be utilized only with regard to dipping back into those consensus realities which have adapted to that term.
. . . . . .
Gradually, all other psychic or parapsychological nomenclature that has any viral-like nature will be ejected - and replaced with concept-nomenclature more appropriate to the superpower processes themselves.
In all cases, evidence and rationales will be fully and openly presented and discussed, even though there is the possibility of putting some readers to sleep.
Some of the evidence and rationales opened up in the essays ahead are complex. I'll do my best to make it generally accessible, but will not simplify or over-simplify it - because over-simplification can easily act as an information processing virus.
. . . . . .
As has been noted in other essays, the superpowers can be thought of as existing not because of psychics per se, but because a variety of the faculties spontaneously function in a very large number of people who don't believe they are "psychic." The manifestations might be temporary, as they usually are within the species populations in general.
. . . . . .
Statistically speaking, the information processing grids of only an extremely small percentage of the human population are structured and organized in such a way as to permit more or less continuous performance of this or that superpower faculty. And even in the case of most natural psychics, they are limited regarding the larger spectrum that the sum of the superpower faculties seem to represent - while many faculties along this spectrum have not been conceptualized or discovered.
. . . . . .
Naturally psychic people are called psychics, seers, shamans, clairvoyants, and etc., and they are treated according to the social environments in which they dwell.
. . . . . .
But about 90 per cent of all human populations occasionally experience a superpower manifestation of some kind, and then usually within some kind of emergency necessity or as a result of deep, concerted thinking about something that has taken on extraordinary meaning or importance for them.
. . . . . .
Theoretically speaking, then, it can be assumed that the superpower faculties exist within our species since their spontaneous manifestations occur far and wide, in all cultures, and throughout our species history.
. . . . . .
It is because of the continuous historical presence of the manifesting faculties that we can conclude justifiably that the superpowers are as old as is our species.
. . . . . .
Their existence, then, pre-dates any subsequent social treatment of them, and pre-dates as well the very many conceptual treatments of them that have come and gone through the centuries and the many social enclaves that also have come and gone.
. . . . . .
This may explain one consistent phenomenon regarding the appearance of superpower functioning among children before they have become fully adapted to their social environment programming and the transmission of information processing viruses within that programming.
. . . . . .
Accordingly, and if only for purposes of theoretical speculating, it can be postulated that the most effective way of activating one's own faculties is to study the actual nature of the faculties at the species level, not at the individual or within the socio-cultural levels.
. . . . . .
The functional reason for this SHIFT OF FOCUS is that the superpowers are treated and thought of in different ways with regard to individuals, social groups and sub-groups, cultures, nations, educational adaptations, and so forth.
Few of these ways are consistent with another.
In any event, the different ways are constituted more of sociological parameters, most of which divert (or can destroy) direct cognitive approach to the faculties.
. . . . . .
At this point, it is somewhat mandatory to introduce the conundrum of social tolerance versus intolerance toward the superpowers.
. . . . . .
Archaeological, historical and anthropological evidence is very strong regarding the high tolerance of the superpowers among ancient cultures.
This tolerance must have been based on knowledge of the superpowers, a knowledge via which the superpowers were EXPECTED to emerge at least within a certain percentage of people.
This knowledge, whatever it consisted of, has become lost, distorted, degraded, mythologized, or over-simplified.
. . . . . .
Lost also are the consensus reality structures which encompassed the knowledge and must have in fact stimulated it into existence.
It is highly improbably that the lost knowledge can be reconstructed or reconstituted within the constraints of modern consensus realities.
We, therefore, are largely on our own - with the exception of discovering contemporary concepts which correspond to the ancient ones. The difficulty here is that the nomenclature utilized will probably be radically different.
. . . . . .
In any event, in earlier cultures the expected activation of the superpowers (at least in some form) was accepted when it did occur, and the high frequency of the occurring often needed institutional formats to manage it - such as the seer systems of ancient Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, China, the Amerindian cultures, etc.
Thus, the ancient cultures of our species are particularly littered with evidence that if tolerance for the superpower exists, then they do manifest on a higher rate of frequency.
. . . . . .
On the other hand, social parameters that are intolerant of the superpowers would not only suppress the frequency of superpower emergence, but would confuse the important issues involved so that cognitive functioning of the faculties would become difficult, or not possible.
. . . . . .
But even so, such social parameters of intolerance could not erase the faculties themselves, since these appear to be a continuous endowment of the species rather than of any given social or psychological parameters.
. . . . . .
Thus, various of the superpowers continue to emerge spontaneously even within social vectors that are intolerant of them.
. . . . . .
Persons who for some reason have acquired various types of cognitive interaction with THEIR superpower faculties can be called "a psychic," as they are in English. But in other cultures they are, and have been called by a number of other identifiers, meaning that they have been conceptualized differently.
. . . . . .
And it is here that we can meet with a staggering problem most are unaware of, but which is one of the most important problems regarding ever achieving any real understanding not only of the species superpower faculties, but of all our species faculties including those which produce "creativity."
. . . . . .
In explaining the nature of this great problem, the blunt fact of the matter is that different conceptualizations lead to and yield different results - while some conceptualizations don't yield any results if they are off the mark regarding what is being conceptualized.
. . . . . .
Different conceptualizations also lead to different expectations, and to different predictions not only regarding results, but regarding what is or is not needed, or required to obtain the results.
. . . . . .
A conceptualization is a MODEL which people utilize as a basis for their think-functioning, and also use to interpret or judge the same regarding others.
. . . . . .
It then must follow that a number of different specimens of our species who are adapted to a variety of different conceptualizations will comprehend, interpret or judge a given superpower phenomenon in a variety of different ways.
It will also be found that the different concepts extruding from the different models will be exceedingly hard to correlate.
. . . . . .
Thus, if we attempt to look at the superpower faculties through our models and concepts, we will achieve only what our concepts permit. And whatever THAT is probably will not correlate with conceptualizations of others.
. . . . . .
What is being emphasized via the above is that individual and social conceptualizations govern the mental lenses THROUGH WHICH the most visible of the superpower phenomena are judged in turn.
. . . . . .
It is very important here to emphasize that hardly anyone ever "sees" the superphenomena directly and purely, so to speak.
What IS actually seen are (1) the phenomena, PLUS (2) the concepts through which they have been filtered, with the sum being 3, the combined result of 1 + 2.
In this sense, then, 1 + 2 = 3 whatever that may be. And 3 is more likely to be composed more of 2 than of 1.
. . . . . .
It is almost certain that the phenomena will be reduced or altered to fit the conceptual lenses through which they are being viewed, judged or "understood." And direct experimental evidence accumulated over a long period of time shows that FUNCTIONING will correspond more with 2 than 1.
. . . . . .
As will be discussed (rather endlessly) in this series of essays, the English identifier "a psychic" is a difficult and usually foggy conceptualization because those utilizing it are usually doing so as a label or a stereotype - without understanding that the label itself will not reveal much about the functions behind it, save perhaps to say that THOSE functions are "psychic" ones, too.
The same was and is also true of the labels of seer, shaman, soothsayer, oracle, clairvoyant and so forth.
. . . . . .
In other words, the way we refer to an individual who has achieved some kind of cognitive contact with THEIR arrangement of the superpower faculties, well, the referent itself tells us nothing about the functioning processes involved.
. . . . . .
Throughout my years, it has been my good fortune to have met a fairly large number of "natural psychics," and I developed long-term associations with some of them. I was very impressed with their "products," and I tend to hold "natural psychic talent" in high esteem.
. . . . . .
But, and as in my own case, all but three of them resented being called "a psychic," and usually for one or both of two reasons.
It denied them their individuality, i.e., depersonalized them by lumping them together with all "psychics" - whether real, questionable, idiotic, stupid, money-grubbing or ego-mongering.
The other general reason was that everyone has their own idea of what "a psychic" is, must or should be - and so each person has different expectations, values, and judgments about "a psychic."
. . . . . .
There is nothing worse than being caused, as a discrete individual, to disappear behind a stereotyping label - and for no other reason than its widespread social usage as a pidgin-hole identifier.
. . . . . .
Now, there is always a real person behind such a label, and so I can tell you that all of the "psychics" I had the good fortune to meet were exceedingly different from one another.
. . . . . .
The individuals I've met and who did claim the identity of "a psychic" did so because they gave "readings" to public clients who paid for the readings.
Generally speaking, the public expect psychics to be, well, PSYCHIC, and will not pay anyone for a reading who is not identified as one. But this involves entrepreneurial economics, a topic which is not relevant to this database. However, I HAVE encountered some rather good "psychic readers," for example, a tea-cup reader in a sleazy club but who blew me away.
. . . . . .
Now, a CONCEPT which has achieved broad stereotype usage usually acts as a pidgin-hole identifier, even though it applies to something other than a person. What's behind the label-concept can disappear, even if we know what we think we have identified by utilizing the label-concept.
"Ah, yes," I've often heard it said, "that [phenomenon or experience] MUST be psychic."
People do say this, you know. But if you ask them the details of what they are talking about, things usually drift off into a cloying ambiguity.
. . . . . .
The fact that different people, cultural groupings, nations, etc., assign an identifier to individuals who demonstrate this or that type of superpower functioning, well this is a reductionist SOCIAL function, not an investigative one.
But the actual process-functions of the superpower faculties can ALSO disappear behind concepts that have merely become social stereotype concepts.
. . . . . .
One of the more informative things about the superpower faculties being a species thing is that people who spontaneously experience and report them tend, in their "raw" narratives, to describe them in nearly identical ways, no matter what their cultural or environmental backgrounds might be.
However, WHAT they say they have experienced is then subjected to social conceptualizing patterns. The concepts and nomenclature used by the social process are assigned to the raw reports of the experiencers.
. . . . . .
I like to use the term "digested" here - in that the raw narratives of the experiencers are digested by social processes. In this digesting, identifiers typically used in those processes are assigned, and thus everyone who uses the identifiers think they know what happened to the original experiencer.
Accounts or interpretations of the raw experience are then based on the digested outputs, written up for others to read - meaning that readers read the pre-digested forms.
And since the readers, too, utilize the concept-identifiers, they end up thinking they understand what the original experiencer experienced.
. . . . . .
Then, some few readers think they would like to "develop" the same experiential capacities, and so they utilize the pre-digested versions as their guidelines - and tend to be a little disappointed when the "guidelines" don't produce much of anything.
And which is to say, more or less, that nothing or little gets ACTIVATED in the way of superpower faculties which people nonetheless experience species-wide.
. . . . . .
In Part Four ahead, under the topic of Information Theory, we will encounter an observation of one of the principal founders of the theory first published in 1948. This observation establishes that NONE OF US are free from entrapment in consensus realities of one kind or another.
Although probably shocking at first take, this conclusion is firmly supported by semantic studies, linguistics and nomenclature analysis.
. . . . . .
The conclusion is this: ". . . about half of the elements in writing or speaking are freely chosen, and the rest are required by the structure of the language."
Those working in the discipline of semantic studies sometimes opine that the required elements constitute more than 50 per cent.
. . . . . .
In any event, a large portion of the "required" elements, if not the whole of them, can be found to correspond with concept-nomenclature itself utilized as the basis for achieving consensus realities.
If this concept-nomenclature is NOT utilized, then one might just as well be speaking the language of planet alpha-X in star system NYKD40.
. . . . . .
The implication here is quite clear. If the concept-nomenclature of the "required elements" contains misconceptions no one realizes are misconceived, then these misconceptions will probably be cloned into all who utilize the required elements.
And information mentally processed through or via those misconceptions surely results in some form of distortion no one realizes is a distortion.
. . . . . .
The concept of ACTIVATING [something] is a particular challenge, especially when it is known to exist, but stubbornly refuses to get up and do its stuff - because the wrong concepts are being used in the attempt to bring about activation.
Expert problem solvers know there are two major routes to take: to learn how to activate it on the one hand, and to find out what's preventing it from activating on the other.
You see, problems can be solved by learning how to solve them. This may or may not work. But problems can also be solved by finding out what's preventing their solution.
. . . . . .
For reasons never made entirely clear to me, the majority put faith and trust in the learning-how-to method - and where the superpower faculties are concerned, they have my best wishes.
. . . . . .
On the other hand, spontaneous manifestations of the faculties have been around for a about six millennia. And very many ideas and concepts regarding how to "develop" them by learning-how-to methods have been tried down through the centuries.
The major result here is that our species, although possessed of the faculties, is today not yet swarming with those faculties in activated forms.
. . . . . .
So, the better part of valor is: if Plan A (learning-how-to-activate) doesn't seem to work all that well, let's move to Plan B (learning-what-prevents-the-activation.)
. . . . . .
Organized psychical research was first established and undertaken in 1882, but was displaced during the 1930s by the emergence of parapsychology. While these two entities are generally considered the same or similar, they are distinct because their central theories and methodologies differed.
But both established concept-nomenclature that became utilized in general, and which contributed what turned into the consensus-reality nomenclature utilized almost worldwide. Thus, when anyone speaks or writes about "paranormal phenomena," so-called, the concept-nomenclature of the two fields falls into the category of "required elements."
In other words, we are obliged to utilize the concept-nomenclature of those two fields, or no one will know what we are talking about.
. . . . . .
A full part of the resulting problems is that both psychical research and parapsychology evolved as rejected sciences, with the result that they were ghettoized within the much larger scenarios of the other developing sciences.
Any collective that is ghettoized usually introverts into its own ways and means, into its own concepts and understanding - and this usually reinforces and solidifies the contours of the ghettoization rather than ameliorating them.
. . . . . .
Once the contours have become solidified, a two-way exchange of information and concepts between the ghetto and the larger scenarios is usually unlikely.
This is to say that conceptual information, developments and discoveries in the ghetto and in the larger scenarios are not likely to be exchanged or correlated.
. . . . . .
The basic reason is that if the exchange, if it took place, would tend to dissolve the ghetto contours resulting in some kind of integration. This integration is usually desired by the ghettoized populations, but is also usually rejected by the larger scenarios which brought about the ghettoization.
The overall result ends up as some kind of a stand-off. But this is not the end of the story.
. . . . . .
All intrusions from the ghetto into the larger scenarios are defensively repulsed by forces within the latter, since those intrusions are seen within the larger scenarios as virus-like in nature.
This is to say that the intrusions will be interpreted as undermining the consensus realities of the larger scenarios that brought about the ghettoizing in the first place.
. . . . . .
Collective Psi research has produced the concepts and nomenclature utilized by the public and media, and various generalized consensus realities have been formatted around them.
The public of course realizes there is an on-going fracas between Psi research and science proper. But what is not generally visible is how the on-going fracas is maintained and kept ongoing.
. . . . . .
On the part of science proper, the fracas is maintained by sanitizing proper science of all concepts and nomenclature emanating from ghettoized Psi research.
That this sanitizing is possible, much less enforced, may seem unreal to the public. But then the public usually does not consume hundreds of scientific papers. And it is only by doing so that one can realize the complete absence of Psi nomenclature in them.
Further, although some of those aspiring to find a place in proper science might wish to consider the contents and implications of Psi research, they can do so only privately and quietly. Any open consideration will end up in some kind of career disaster for them.
. . . . . .
The dimensions of the fracas are maintained on the part of ghettoized Psi research for reasons that are a little more complicated. But the complexities can be summarized as the tendency to introvert into one's own basic operating realities, and which are maintained within the intra-ghettoized system because they seem meaningful and appropriate to the core work of that system.
The basic operating realities of the core work are rooted in concepts and nomenclature appropriate to them, and thus constitute the consensus realities within the ghetto.
. . . . . .
Via these mutual defensive methods on both sides, an information exchange barrier takes shape between the two parties of the stand-off. Psi research will not "go away," largely because aspects or elements of it are experienced on a worldwide basis.
Yet Psi research cannot be admitted into science proper - without the cost of dis-establishing some of its own fundamental, conceptual constructs.
And it is this "complaint" I, personally, have been directly apprised of by a number of eminent scientists who have dared to talk with me. The same complaint, however, has often been seen in print.
. . . . . .
Now, there has been a significant point in reviewing these certain aspects of the stand-off, a point that has required the format and contexts of the foregoing descriptions.
. . . . . .
This important point has to do with the information-exchange barrier between science proper and the bad-child ghettoized in its scientifically isolated playpen.
The organized ghettoization of Psi research was in effect as early as the 1890s, and has been maintained ever since, along with the information-exchange barrier.
Psi research and science proper have thus evolved along their own pathways, and have remained divided with respect to the information-exchange barrier.
In other words, we are talking about a barrier that, if wobbly at times, has endured for at least a hundred years.
And this, in my sardonic opinion, is one of the silliest things ever, especially in Western democratic cultures where freedom of information is considered a fundamental, inalienable right.
. . . . . .
In any event, the maintenance of the information-exchange barrier has worked to make it nearly impossible to correlate advances in science proper with advances in Psi research - and which advances are applicable to each other.
And these advances remain divided because in the two sides of the stand-off they have been arrived at via different theoretical and conceptual approaches - and which are identified by nomenclature so radically different that it is extremely difficult to see any relationship between them.
. . . . . .
As but one example of many, information theory and the basic concepts of information transfer (which ushered in the overwhelmingly powerful Age of Information) became available in 1948, nearly forty years ago.
. . . . . .
Yet, the fact that so-called "clairvoyance," "telepathy," and "remote viewing" are, at base, problems of information transfer seems to have dawned neither on Psi researcher nor proper scientists.
And so Psi researchers in general have not adapted to information theory precepts, while science proper never has adapted to precepts of clairvoyance, etc., no matter the gargantuan, well-documented evidence for it.
And the public in general is totally unaware of anything in this regard.
. . . . . .
In the essays now to follow, I will discuss WHY activation of any of the superpowers is unlikely UNLESS they are first and foremost conceptualized as INFORMATION TRANSFER situations.
It will also be discussed that the superpowers are matters of PERCEPTION only in some secondary or third sense - in that in proper science it is now understood without question or challenge that perception itself is a matter of information flow and transfer.
. . . . . .
It then must follow that any conceptualization and nomenclature for it that is not based in the now-understood nature of information and its transfer processes will act as mental processing virus deterrents.
. . . . . .
But there are numerous other deterrents as well, and it is the most notable, and most easily identifiable of these which now constitute the topics of all of the following essays.
(End of Introduction)
TOWARD ACTIVATING
THE SUPERPOWERS
OF THE HUMAN BIOMIND
Ingo Swann (22Jan97)
PART 1:
NON-CONSCIOUS PARTICIPATION IN
SOCIAL CONSENSUS REALITIES
There's a good chance I'll flub the message and the "text" of this particular essay - the MESSAGE being whatever you can make out of the words; the TEXT being what is not put into words, but is being said anyway, the sort of read-between-the-lines thing.
But if I flub, there are two good reasons: We all are "victims" of the consensus realities among which we live; and it is necessary to utilize consensus reality concepts and nomenclature of the consensus reality in order to talk about it. So, plop! One ends up back in it.
. . . . . .
However, consensus-reality formation, and thinking with or via its contexts, patterns, concepts, ideas and nomenclature, constitute the single biggest deterrent with regard to activating any of the superpowers.
Everyone of course has some idea about what a consensus reality is, if only from their mindset perspectives. But the idea is usually vague, and even so most feel they are free of consensus reality influences.
. . . . . .
Allowing for differences at the individual level, the general consensus about consensus realities seems to be that they involve the majority who have trouble thinking for themselves and thus ape or imitate each other. But we, ourselves, are not like that, and even if influenced by consensus realities, we can escape from them any time we want.
After all, we are individuals with freedom of thought and choice, right?
Well, not if the language you are using is the same as the one the consensus reality is using. For when you speak or read the language and words the consensus reality is using, you are actually participating in the consensus reality format.
. . . . . .
Before getting into what follows, I must alert you that it will appear I'm being very negative and condemnatory about consensus realities, and am probably targeting specific ones.
Well, nothing of the kind is the case.
Although I may be in error so far as I understand them, the manufacturing of consensus realities is an ongoing artifact of our species which needs to fabricate thinking patterns that make community possible.
So, not only are consensus realities NECESSARY, they are here to stay as long as specimens of our species are group-minded and interdependent.
Aside from the above disclaimer, I love to wallow within this or that consensus reality, simply to exercise my curiosity.
. . . . . .
It will be obvious to just about everyone that consensus realities are always SOCIAL consensus realities, and that they can contain factors that boost any number of activities. But it is well known that they can prevent or deter any number of activities also. These deterring factors can be overt. Or they can be subtle and merely implicit. And they can have nearly invisible spin-offs. The deterring factors can also emanate from misconceptions not realized as such.
. . . . . .
Social consensus realities are perpetuated by cloning their basic concepts into others via association with them, or by the tried and trusted method of educating, conditioning, convincing, or propagandizing.
But the single, surest method of the cloning is one few could imagine - language itself. For when one learns language, one learns its nomenclature PLUS the meanings assigned to it BY the consensus reality that determines what the meanings are.
. . . . . .
With this prelude having been stated, here we go into a topic that is flubbable no matter who addresses it.
Major Characteristics of A Consensus Reality
In sociology, a SOCIAL CONSENSUS REALITY refers to what the greatest number of people (i.e., the consensus majority) think or believe is real.
. . . . . .
A general consensus reality should be distinguished from mindsets, in that a given consensus reality can contain any number of mindsets, right down to and inclusive of the individual level.
Mindsets are more likely to be found among social sub-groups formed of individuals whose "inclinations" are compatible with those of the others. Mindset groups can indeed form their own particular consensus realities, but these are "local" to the group and seldom achieve a general universality.
. . . . . .
Although proper science considers it to be a mindset of fools, the "field" of parapsychology possesses a general consensus reality, but also a number of contrasting mindset groups within it.
This social arrangement is true almost everywhere and regarding all activities.
. . . . . .
The usual result of a consensus reality formation is that what the consensus thinks is real takes on some kind of stability, often becoming immovable, enduring, habitual, unquestioned and cement-like - and thus exhibiting various degrees of resistance to any kind of alteration or change.
Even if things are not all that stable, what is more or less an illusion of it serves the purpose of making community possible and maintainable. The other option is what people refer to as "chaos."
. . . . . .
Consensus reality formation seems to be a trait of our species as a whole, for consensus realities are everywhere formed - and usually perpetuated to their last gasp, especially if they have become "prevailing" ones. The length of their prevail reinforces the idea of their correctness and efficiency.
. . . . . .
Much can be said for and against consensus reality formations, usually without getting anywhere in the longer run of things.
On the favorable side, it is obvious that consensus reality formation is THE basis for social coherency.
But somewhat on the questionable side is that social consensus realities are utilized to beat up on the social consensus realities of others' groups - often with the result that members of two consensus reality groupings, neither of which have ANY hold on real realities, can mess around with each other in rather deplorable ways.
. . . . . .
Consensus reality formations are so complicated that I personally would like to lift the panorama of the superpowers up and out of them altogether.
But this cannot be done, for reasons that ahead will be torn apart and beat up on.
The Relationship of Consensus Realities to the Superpower Faculties
There are THREE major reasons why the superpower faculties cannot be lifted up and out of consensus realities:
1. Such realities are everywhere, and the thinking-apparatus of each and everyone of us is linked into a variety of them. The link may be because of educational programming, but if not that then at least via language and nomenclature.
2. Many of the concepts that characterize a given consensus reality act as deterrents, sometimes permanent, to the activation of the faculties, and without much conscious awareness on our parts that they do so.
3. The THIRD reason mentioned here, but which will be discussed ahead in the second essay is "mental information processing viruses." This third reason is the most powerful - and unavoidable - of all. And it is THIS reason which, in my opinion, necessitates this somewhat over-long and possibly tiring essay.
. . . . . .
Thus, anyone who might chance to want to activate their superpower faculties is obliged, without question, without release, to turn rather exacting attention to consensus realities (yes, you can take a deep sigh if you want).
These might at first seem very far removed from anything to do with the superpower faculties. But the two are right up next and against each other, no farther apart than two sides of a coin.
. . . . . .
Now, any examination of consensus realities tends to be quite boring, complicated and thorny. So, to get into this I'll do my best to hack a path with the hope it won't immediately get filled in behind me merely because of boredom.
Two Typical Questions
Since the onset of my participation in research in 1971, I've found that people most frequently ask one or both of two questions. And since the inauguration of this website database, and the enormous amount of gratifying email resulting, the same two questions are still those most frequently asked:
1. What can one read to understand more about the superpowers? and
2. Are there any (inexpensive) documents, books or courses one can utilize as sources for self-development procedures?
. . . . . .
Not long after this website got underway, I decided to address these questions in an essay.
But I soon got bogged down - because there simply was too much to put into it by way of preparing the reader for comprehension.
. . . . . .
For example, the consensus realities regarding psychic stuff are relatively antiquated. Some, but not all, of the most important concepts applied are either misconceived or are ambiguous. The consensus reality does not notice the misconceptions. Ambiguity might serve for easy and superficial think, but is not constructive otherwise.
. . . . . .
But most importantly, significant discoveries in other branches of science have been made during the last thirty years, discoveries that are entirely relevant not only within those other branches, but to the overall situation psychic problems represent.
Yet these new discoveries have not been transferred into Psi research, while the other branches of science haven't made the connection either. If these new discoveries are integrated into Psi research, then the entire conceptual basis of that research will have to undergo radical shifts. But this will also mean that consensus reality formation regarding Psi will have to undergo radical reconceptualizing.
. . . . . .
For example, the signal-to-noise-ratio concept has been in existence for a number of decades, but never applied with gusto to Psi "perceptions." And indeed, those "perceptions" cannot be fully understood without that concept.
Thus, in order to prepare the reader for THIS series of essays, I elected to introduce into this database essays focusing on important information not contained in the consensus realities regarding Psi stuff. And so you will find an essay regarding the signal-to-noise ratio already entered into this database, along with a number of other essays that expose and discuss important factors that are alien within the Psi consensus reality.
. . . . . .
And here we encounter a tremendous, even over-sized situation which is intensely problematical in many ways.
. . . . . .
The central fact regarding this situation is that if one wishes to discuss or communicate about something, anything, one has to do so via the use of concepts and words that stand a chance of being comprehended. In other words, one has to communicate via familiar contexts, not alien ones.
The concepts and words best suited for speaking and writing within the familiarity are those that enjoy a large consensus reality about the topic of interest, and which is shared and sharable among the many who utilize the same language.
. . . . . .
In this sense, then, concepts and words constitute the "currency" that is utilized in order to offer and obtain information. But the "currency" has to be standardized, recognizable and agreed upon.
. . . . . .
As it happens, though, the larger this consensus reality, the smaller and smaller, and more simplified, are the number of concepts and terms that can be used. And as the number of sharable and familiar concepts DECREASE, many more complex concepts needed tend to become not just unintelligible, but absent altogether.
. . . . . .
Another way of putting this, and as many editors and publishers have told me, is that one cannot talk above the heads of the mass market audience and hope to achieve a successful mass market book.
. . . . . .
The above paragraph constitutes a consideration everyone seems to think is logical. And logical it is - IF it regards only producing a mass-market book.
But in considering this, we can begin to see that one of the definitions of a general consensus reality has to do with the "mass-market" concept, in that a consensus reality becomes one by the increase of simplicity regarding fewer and fewer concepts, and not by the increase of number of them. The increase of the number of concepts introduces prospects that might lead to social instability, and also introduces the likelihood that people won't understand them anyway.
. . . . . .
You see, in order NOT to talk above the heads of the mass market or the mass consensus means that one has to utilize only those concepts and nomenclature most familiar to them.
. . . . . .
In this sense, then, familiar and recognizable concepts PLUS nomenclature appropriate to them constitute the "currency" of the information exchange or transfer at the mass market, mass consensus level. But this also constitutes the concept-nomenclature basis of any language and which incorporates everyone who speaks it. And so the concept-nomenclature is the real basis for the "currency."
. . . . . .
I have more faith in the understanding minds at the mass market level than publishers do. But none-the-less this rather naive publishing overview echoes something which IS true - in that social consensus realities ARE tightly locked into and contained within familiar and recognizable concepts and nomenclature, and the more simplified or over-simplified they are the more widely recognized they become.
Stereotypes Within Consensus Realities
There is another difficulty that is always encountered in writing for consumption within the larger consensus reality. The larger the consensus reality, the more likely it is that what is traded as information packages among it will consist of over-simplified information packages, more commonly known as stereotypes.
There is a distinct deficit in this regard. Over-simplified information might not be information at all, but merely consist of fashionable, stereotype chit-chat which makes it easy to engage in conversation.
This leaves people thinking they have "communicated." But over-simplified ideas and concepts are virtually value-less as information except within the over-simplified contexts in which they are used.
. . . . . .
Individuals comprising a given consensus reality may have radical differences in the quantity of vocabulary at their disposal. But consensus realities are not formatted on the amount of vocabulary per se, but on simplified and simplifying concepts via which the majority can comprehend easier and faster. The less one has to think, consider, and extrapolate, the better.
This, however, is not actually the fault of the individual. It is demanded by the social consensus reality, and the demand leads to adaptation of or the cloning of whatever is demanded.
. . . . . .
If you feel bogged down by now, don't worry too much.
If you dig very deeply beneath their surfaces, consensus realities all tend to be swampy, and so it isn't your intelligence which has become boggy, it's the topic of this essay.
Questions Can Be Answered Only If the Answers Pre-Fit
Into the Consensus Realities Within Which the Questions
Have Been Formulated
In considering how the two most frequently-asked questions can be answered, I got the idea of asking those who asked them how THEY would answer them. Why, of course, they would direct the questioner to sources that would provide the information they are asking for.
In other words, the consensus reality within which the questions have been formulated seems to hold that one can turn to sources outside of themselves in order to obtain the information they are looking for.
In the case of the superpower faculties, then, what is being sought, then, is outside information that will help "turn on" the faculties the questioners are interested in turning on.
. . . . . .
This seems perfectly logical, doesn't it? Especially since all learning theories of the twentieth century have been mounted with exactly this in mind. And especially since there ARE a great number of things that can be learned via this approach.
And so there is a "prevailing" consensus reality that this is the way to go, and the predictive expectation is that with enough outside information acquired that information will rev up the abilities they are after.
. . . . . .
However, there is a category of human activity that does not respond, at least on a one-to-one basis, to this "outside stimulation." For example, one can sometimes read all one wants about the creative processes - and can even accumulate a vast expertise regarding what has been read and studied.
But one's creative faculties can quite easily remain in a stupor or somnolent - and so the activation of creative faculties is not really answerable within the learning-from-outside-sources stereotype.
. . . . . .
And here is the very great contrast between "awakening" and merely reading-learning about a faculty. Indeed, creativity often "awakens" in those who never crack a book about how the creative processes function and don't even care about them.
. . . . . .
The direct implication here is that certain faculties are self-starting in some kind of self-internal way while others respond to stimulation from outside sources. In this sense, the methods of the latter are not all that effective regarding the former.
Thus, we can rationally expect "enhancement" with regard to those faculties that do respond to stimulus from the outside, such as learning how to type. On the other hand, the self-starting faculties may be resistant to outside stimuli, no matter how much one slogs away with them.
. . . . . .
Now, whether or not anyone has experienced any enhancement of their superpowers via or because of some kind of external stimulus is for them to say. My position in this regard is: if it works, go for it.
. . . . . .
But the vast bulk of data in the collective archives of psychical and parapsychological research firmly establishes that hardly anyone developed significant abilities exclusively from outside stimuli.
Indeed, most if not all natural psychics whose faculties endure over time will say that their faculties have occurred not because of any outside stimuli, but that they just "awakened" all by themselves.
. . . . . .
In any event, and since the above is more or less the case, and also the confusion, I got to wondering why the dependency on outside stimuli has become so paramount, and why the concept of self-starting faculties is not active in our present consensus realities.
. . . . . .
Now, this particular question fell within the boundaries and goals of the project I have referred to in the Introduction. And so the question was researched with some gusto.
. . . . . .
With regard to the absence of self-starting faculties, an astonishing, but probable reason was found - and this in turn shed light on the problem of learning only from outside sources. I'll be as brief as possible, but the details involved require an unavoidable length.
. . . . . .
I'll begin simply by saying that the nineteenth century saw the greatest "outbreak" of "paranormal" phenomena ever directly recorded and documented by history.
Indeed, it was because of this outbreak, astonishing in all ways, that the first psychical research societies finally became organized to investigate "psychic phenomena." For anyone who wants to read up on this, and the history of the superpower phenomena in general, I recommend Natural And Supernatural: A History of the Paranormal by Brian Inglis (1977).
. . . . . .
I'll next say that the outbreak dwindled into almost nothing after about 1920 - even though the amount of information about "psychic" powers and abilities INCREASED many times over, and did so in organized ways.
To put this into perspective, we can say that the gross increased many times over, but the net in the twentieth century decreased beneath what it was in the nineteenth, the century when LESS information was available, and what there was of it was disorganized.
If you were an accountant, you would get alarmed and leave no stone unturned as to the reasons why.
. . . . . .
I'll next state that my perhaps somewhat wobbly understanding of consensus realities led to the consideration that the consensus realities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries might have something to do with all of this - for consensus realities, although desirable in themselves, also contain deterrents with regard to which and what phenomena can emerge.
. . . . . .
My general overview of the superpowers is that they are self-starting. So I looked into the nineteenth century for the existence of consensus realities that permitted and expected self-starting activity of any kind.
And then I looked into the consensus realities of the twentieth century for consensus realities that did not reflect the self-start concepts, and which advocated the outside stimulus kind of thing.
. . . . . .
And you can believe it or not. The shift from self-start concepts to learn only from outside stimuli was found to involve only ONE WORD, but from which countless conceptual spin-offs arose.
. . . . . .
ONE F - - - G word, but one whose general consensus reality meaning in the nineteenth century shifted to the exact opposite in the twentieth.
And THAT word was
Dynamic
There is a great deal to be known about electricity, and all of which learning is compartmentalized and identified by a large assortment of terminology beginning with the prefix "electro."
But the largest consensus reality responds not to fifty-five terms beginning with "electro," but only to one which means "power," "energy," or "juice" to light up bulbs, or to activate something.
. . . . . .
At the most over-simplified consensus reality, therefore, electricity, energy and "juice," are thought of as equivalents. But the source of electricity is a dynamo somewhere, and so energy-juice is obtained from an outside source.
. . . . . .
This has led to the somewhat hidden consensus reality concept that it takes an outside source of energy to "energize" something, to turn it on, power it, juice it up, or to activate it.
. . . . . .
And so in a simple, but social-consensus powerful way, people are always looking outside themselves for something to "turn them on," and the context and expectation revealed in this phrase is unmistakable.
. . . . . .
If social consensus realities are based in recognizable concepts and nomenclature, then the going gets rough when there is an ABSENCE of needed concepts which exist outside of the parameters or boundaries of the consensus realities.
After all, there are many horrendous gaps in knowledge and which NEED new and/or different conceptualizations, even new nomenclature perhaps - and which absent knowledge cannot really be comprehended by relying on existing concepts.
. . . . . .
Absent knowledge might consist of knowledge that has not yet been discovered, or consist of knowledge that has not been simplified to enter into the consensus reality.
But another form of absent knowledge occurs when a nomenclature bit meant one thing in the past, but the meaning of which has somehow been converted into its exact opposite. In this case, the former meaning has become "absent."
. . . . . .
For example, based on the all-available evidence, all life forms are self-starting, self-turning-on, and in their raw state don't really need outside energy to turn them on. Upkeep may demand energy from outside sources, but the essential life "thrust," so to speak is, by comparison, self-starting.
Knowledge of how life forms START UP is completely absent in our knowledge pools. Food or nutrients are converted to growth and maintenance "energy," but the system that converts them belongs within the self-starting thing.
. . . . . .
However, if the consensus reality into which one becomes immersed holds and, more importantly, SHARES the "reality" that one can do nothing without an outside energy stimulus, then that concept will be non-consciously cloned far and wide - and the concept of self-starting will become devitalized and non-recognizable, even if one hears the words.
. . . . . .
The vitalized and shared concept of self-start-up belongs to what might be called the Age of Dynamism which began roughly during the High Renaissance and dwindled into relative non-existence during the 1920s.
. . . . . .
During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Dynamism was not yet associated with electricity or electrical power, but was a concept that belonged to VITALISM - a concept-philosophy which held that all animate organisms are vitalized by a "life principle" distinct from psycho-chemical forces.
The psycho-chemical forces were energy-expending forces, and so THEY needed outside sources of "fuel" that could be converted into it. But to the vitalists, the life principle was different in that it was interpreted as being self-animating, therefore self-powerful and self-starting as well.
. . . . . .
The "animating" principle had to do with MOTION. Whatever had motion because of some self-contained interior set of factors was considered to have self-motion, and therefore was animate, an animate organism, a living organism. Any growth and development process of a living organism also had motion, and so these processes were seen as animating motion, too.
Hence, the vitalists expected to find that the growth and development processes of the life principle would have structure and patterns of internal organization of their own.
These structure-patterns would be different from the structure-patterns of the psycho-chemical forces. But it was expected that these self-vital patterns could be mapped much in the same way that the structure and patterns of the psycho-chemical forces were being mapped in the material sciences.
. . . . . .
The term assigned to this life principle, self-vitalizing, self-motion kind of thing was DYNAMIC, most probably intended as an adverb or adjective.
The term DYNAMIC seems to have been introduced into German and English from the French DYNAMIQUE at about 1692, especially in the writings of Leibnitz.
The early conceptualizing meaning associated to it had to do with force-producing-motion in some kind of self-making sense, as contrasted to STATIC things that did not self-produce motion, but were inert or non-self-moving.
. . . . . .
But the term DYNAMIC was derived from a Greek term, DYNA, and which referred to TO BE ABLE in a sense that was opposite to the Greek STATIKOS which meant NOT ABLE to be in SELF-MOTION.
Hence the English connotations of STATIC are motionlessness, stopped, non-changing, frozen up, or cement-like. Even today, TO BE ABLE is implicitly associated with motion, since what is motionless is not able.
. . . . . .
To link DYNAMIC-STATIC to the superpower faculties, IF they belong in the self-start-up category, then they are dynamic. If they are not started up, then they are static, but for reasons that have prevented or deterred their starting up.
. . . . . .
There is much justification for thinking about them this way, for when they occur spontaneously, they do so of their own accord. When we try to deal with them according to our intellectualizing will to do so, they stubbornly refuse to strut their stuff.
. . . . . .
The only conclusions is that our intellectualizing about them is not consistent with their actual structure and functioning - in which case the faculties just yawn and go back to sleep.
. . . . . .
Additionally, when our intellectualizing faculties are drowsy, asleep or in some "altered state," we experience traces of the superpower faculties. Our intellectualizing will is principally formatted by consensus realities. Are you getting the bigger picture here? And an idea of why an examination of consensus realities, although boring in the extreme, is meaningful?
. . . . . .
I've not been able to identify just when the term DYNAMISM came into full usage, probably somewhere between 1725 and 1800. In its original sense then, it referred to the philosophic-theory that sought to explain the phenomena of the universe by some immanent force or energy.
IMMANENT means "inherent." INHERENT refers to self-containing, self-perpetuating, self-changing, self-processing, self-moving, self-motivating - all in some kind of pre-existing way, and all without the need of any outside forces or energies.
. . . . . .
In the sense of all the above, then, the vitalistic life principle was dynamic-active, defined as "self-full of power, or self-power" (sorry for the redundancy here.) And as such, it was marked by self-continuous, self-productive activity - and that therefore all life forms were themselves internally dynamic-active in self-start-up kinds of ways.
. . . . . .
The whole of this seems to have been broadly formulated into a consensus reality that "prevailed" during the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. THIS consensus reality seems to have produced innumerable conceptual spin-offs that justified individual self-starting activity of all kinds, since that activity was seen as inherently present within the remarkable human species - and the universe as well.
. . . . . .
For example, the maxims "rely on oneself" and "improve one's own mind by virtue of one's own dynamic-inherent factors to do so" belong to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We retain the words today, but have lost their nineteenth century substance.
These maxims are the famous "lift oneself by one's own boot straps" ideas. And those ideas and were very luminous during the nineteenth century, whose societies were just freshly released from the concepts of feudalism - in which everyone was born into the status in which they were to live their life thenceforth without any hope of what we today call "upward mobility."
. . . . . .
The boot-strap maxims were also entirely compatible with the fundamental concepts of capitalism - the freedom of anyone to compete and make money who had the self-starting aptitudes to do so - and to do so WITHOUT looking for outside guidance.
Indeed, although I'll paraphrase it for convenience here, many noted early capitalists have been noted to say something like: "Screw outside guidance, which, if followed, will doom one to poverty."
. . . . . .
In other words, the general consensus realities of the nineteenth century were entirely saturated with self-dynamic concepts accompanied by an enormous variety of conceptual spin-offs. And historians have remarked on the sheer volume of discovery, creativity and inventions that were TYPICAL of that century.
The Destruction of the Consensus Reality Concept of Self-Dynamism
The concept of self-dynamism has not really been distorted at the individual level, of course, and many individuals today are self-made because of it.
But it has become considerably weakened in terms of general consensus realities - especially during and after the 1920s when the concepts of VITALISM were wrecked and debunked as having no "scientific" or "philosophic" value.
One of the results of this wrecking was that the terms DYNAMIC and DYNAMISM became unfashionable and politically incorrect by the 1950s.
. . . . . .
How this came about is a rather amusing sequence. But it's worth noting before going on that IF we can become fashion "victims," then we clearly can become victimized by general consensus realities.
. . . . . .
The inverse of the concept of pre-existing, self-immanent, self-mobilizing dynamism would be the idea that one has to go outside oneself not only for energy, but for learning, guidance, and models regarding how to do something or anything.
In this sense, then, we would have to utilize outside sources with regard to shaping our own intellects - this a factor which sucks one INTO consensus realities and often into a near complete cloning of them.
. . . . . .
Shortly after 1831, a mechanism was invented that could convert mechanical energy into electricity. It was known as the GENERATOR, but was dubbed the DYNAMO.
However, a generator is not a self-dynamo strictly speaking, since IT needs an outside source of energy or motion in order to make its parts move and thus produce electricity. In this regard, a true dynamo would be the fabled perpetual motion machine which itself did not need outside power or fuel, but which none-the-less would produce electricity, etc.
. . . . . .
One of the more amusing, but now forgotten, facets of the nineteenth century was that the terms GENERATE or GENERATION were a bit overloaded with consensus reality concepts having to do with procreation and SEX, SEX, SEX and the various formats of it - this being one of the few areas of those nineteenth century consensus realities that did not permit much in the way of self-starting-up and self-realizing.
. . . . . .
Serious public relations problems thus arose regarding the electric generator - and it appears that these were quickly remedied by linking the machine to the concepts of dynamic and dynamism which the then-consensus-reality understood as self-productive of energy.
After a series of manufacturing failures and stock frauds, the Dynamo Corporation was formed and which dubbed generators as dynamos, a concept that detached from the sex connotations, fitted neatly with consensus realities regarding energy, and which aided in sales of the contraptions.
. . . . . .
The inappropriate but hyped use of the "new" term caught on, as might be expected, and it was generally used until about the late 1950s when the concepts and contexts of dynamism became unfashionable. But by then it was permissible to refer to dynamos as electrical generators - although I believe the enormous generators at Niagara Falls and at Hoover Dam are still called dynamos - dynamos that mean energy from outside sources.
. . . . . .
The shift of the meaning of DYNAMIC from self-internal starting-up to the need for external energy to start-up is easy to understand. You see, it releases the individual from the absolute necessity to self-start-up by increasing the concept and value of getting started-up via learning from outside sources.
And this results in a general consensus tendency to become dependent on outside sources that might effect the start-up for them. And to the degree THIS concept comes to prevail in general consensus realities is the degree the self-start-up concepts decline almost to the point of banishment.
. . . . . .
Finally, there is that particularly difficult but widespread phenomenon present among our species already outlined: the intake of information by reducing it to fit with one's existing realities, group consensus levels, cultural cohesion processes - and, last but by far not the least, to fit with one's ALREADY INSTALLED belief systems. (A very good example of this will be found ahead in the essay on PERCEPTION.)
. . . . . .
For example, those that already believe that only outside stimuli can result in, well, stimulation of energy or knowledge will expect questions about how to get knowledge/understanding to fit that consensus reality.
. . . . . .
The shift may be very subtle regarding the meaning of dynamism as self-start-up, self-motivating, to a meaning that refers to something obtainable from an outside source.
And I certainly am not insisting on anything in this regard. This essay, as are all those in this database, is offered for what it is worth to each individual who chances to come across it.
I'll only note in passing that during the nineteenth century "self-help" referred to one's bootstraps. Today it means "go buy a self-help manual," or consult some other external source.
What Governs Output and Input of Information
So, among consensus realities there are many overt, covert, subtle and non-conscious factors which somehow govern the output, transmission and intake of information at various levels. One encounters these limiting and limited factors everywhere and in any kind of mix or combination.
The most direct, but usually non-conscious, link is the language a society and all of its members are required to utilize, no matter their status or educational backgrounds.
Even if someone has a new idea, to communicate it verbally or in writing requires use of the nomenclature shared and utilized at the consensus reality level. As we shall see in an essay ahead, this factor is a very important regarding theory and information transfer processes.
. . . . . .
In this sense, then, nomenclature is the first governing factor regarding information transfer, and the concepts behind the nomenclature are the second factor - whether these concepts be exact, explicit, assumed, imagined, taken for granted, or whatever.
And one usually finds these governing factors running on automatic in various social echelons - with very few ever realizing that their innate and wonderful thinking processes are being reduced and victimized by them.
. . . . . .
Even way before I began acting as a research subject, I had gotten some idea of the limitations resulting from the major concepts central to psychical research and parapsychology.
I had realized that some of those major concepts were not correct either in theory or in demonstrable fact.
I had thought, even since childhood, that some of the nomenclature used as a basis for consensus reality regarding psychic stuff was in fact silly and stupid.
. . . . . .
For example, take the word PSYCHIC - a term used with wild abandon so much so that everyone assumes they and all others KNOW what is meant by it.
As I remember it, I think I was about six when someone indicated to my parents that some of my experiences were PSYCHIC. I overheard this, and immediately chimed in by asking what it meant.
. . . . . .
What then followed (and which went on for about two weeks and came to involve our extended family, various friends of my two grandmothers, my Sunday School teacher, and finally the local minister) was a great deal of psychobabble accompanied by an entirely disproportionate amount of ill humor.
. . . . . .
Kids are noted for asking embarrassing questions, probably because they haven't yet fully adapted to the no-speak, absolute silence aspects of the consensus realities they will ultimately clone.
And in my case, after asking what SEX was all about, asking what PSYCHIC meant was the next single biggest nomenclature bit to cause a very unreasonable amount of upset.
The Useless Nature of the Term "Psychic"
I don't particularly care if the term "psychic" is used or not. After all, one has little control with regard to consensus realities, or regarding the mighty social forces that establish them. And so I'm not going to grind my dilapidated mental gears over "psychic."
. . . . . .
But "psychic" is a good exemplar of consensus reality nomenclature that achieves wide usage - but which has never had a stable definition. And so I'll use this word as exemplary of the other many definitionless terms encoded into this or that consensus reality.
I will only say that the word has never been adopted in a number of countries, precisely because it has no definition - Germany, China, Japan, for example, while the French resisted its usage until just recently. The term was used in pre-Soviet Russia, but was eradicated during the reign of the USSR.
. . . . . .
Of course, one then wonders how psychic matters are discussed in those countries without the term "psychic." Well, quite creatively, actually.
. . . . . .
As to the term PSYCHIC, there IS a formal definition for it having to do with human mental phenomena "which lay outside of the boundaries of science." But this "definition" induces ambiguity which is shifty and unstable.
So, much beyond that ambiguity, PSYCHIC can mean anything anyone wants it to mean (including abnormal, wacko, crazy, illusory, imagination, unscientific, irrational, illogical, paranormal, transcendental, non-material, the work of the devil, a gift of God, an ability, an exceptional human experiencing - and on and on) until one DOES realize why it exists as an over-simplifying stereotype the exact or detailed meaning of which is absolutely unnecessary.
. . . . . .
So, discussing psychic stuff with someone who believes it the work of the devil, with someone else who believes it to be scientifically illogical, and then with a transcendentalist, actually consists of dealing with THREE confusions, of which ambiguity is the chief characteristic.
Here it would be obvious to all but a high-density dimwit that the conceptual information packages the three are utilizing are completely different - although all three are utilizing the same word: PSYCHIC.
. . . . . .
Indeed, there are many words utilized for which meanings are vague and ambiguous. And these are usually very popular - such as the words "stupid," "groovy," "nerd," or "abnormal" which can ardently be utilized every which way, and much to the glee of those who do so.
. . . . . .
In any event, stable meanings for an ambiguous term are "unnecessary," because each of us anyway reduces whatever it MIGHT mean so that it fits with our own "realities." This IS true at the individual level, and true as well of the vaporous realms of human activity I won't dare to point up because doing so might erupt in volcanic overflows.
. . . . . .
It is little wonder, then, that as the conceptual contours of parapsychology began to take on concrete formats (during the 1930s) that the term PSYCHIC was more or less expunged from it.
It was replaced by the "concept" of "PSI," this nothing more than a letter of the Greek alphabet. But this was a step out of one ambiguous frying pan into one hotter and bigger.
. . . . . .
It could have been replaced by the letter "X" with just as good avail.
But I've often wondered why it wasn't replaced with something more dramatic and fetching - such as "the Adelphus Factors" of human awareness.
. . . . . .
At any rate, if one wishes to write about "the Adelphus Factors," one might get away with the neologism, but thereafter one must do so via EXISTING concepts and nomenclature - such as utilizing terms as perception, awareness, mind, and etc., and all of which have established, over-simplified and somewhat ambiguous "definitions."
And PLOP, there one is back into the consensus realities which utilize and depend on those terms.
Concepts Missing or Absent Within Consensus Reality Formats
There is one additional category within consensus reality formatting that is of importance so supreme that few can even notice its egregious existence.
I'll pick up this category in another essay in this series, because before taking it on we need to examine at length a few examples of it and its overall implications - always, of course, with regard to discussions leading to the activation of the superpowers.
. . . . . .
But a very brief note here is required.
One of the primary or principal signatures of a consensus reality is that the string or interlocking of its fundamental over-simplifications are thought to have no holes or blank spaces in it.
If it is THOUGHT to contain such holes or blank spaces, the "consensus" tends to become shaky and even unglued. Even if such holes may be apparent, still it is thought that whatever they represent "will ultimately be explained within and by" the fundamental concepts of the consensus reality.
. . . . . .
As but one example, when the modern sciences "went" totally materialistic, beginning about 1845, and then firmly so during the 1920s, it did so on the basis that science "expects to find materialistic explanations for everything." A noted encyclopedia (published during the 1930s, even states as much - that science has already discovered basic materialistic explanations for everything. And what was left was only, to quote, "a mop-up job."
. . . . . .
Unfortunately for THIS much vaunted and hyped "scientific" consensus reality, the electron microscope was in process of being invented at about the same time as the encyclopedia was published. Holes and blank spaces were thus discovered, and new mops were bought and employed, even though the electron microscopes showed that the mops themselves were, at a certain level of their atomic structure, not composed of material matter at all. Alas. I drift in my attempts at sardonic witticism.
. . . . . .
And alas, again. If holes and blank spaces DO exist within given consensus realities, they none-the-less are looped over so as not to be all that visible. And if push comes to shove, they are merely stereotyped as the "unexplainable," and so everyone thinks they know what they are - unexplainable.
The "alas" part of this is that when one clones into a consensus reality format, one also clones the holes and black spaces, too, and usually with "unexplaining" nomenclature readily at hand.
. . . . . .
One very good example of this looping over all the holes that need to be mopped up was the consensus reality which "explained" that humans have only five physical senses and no others. Most frontier people, miners, sailors, and the early aeronauts knew this was sheer idiocy.
But for the masses, it "explained" the scientifically confirmed limits of the human senses, and also established why it was useless or neurotic or psychopathic to propose there were more senses, much less to utilize scientific funding to do so. All of which, of course, amounted to nothing more than a heaping pile of mierda del toro.
. . . . . .
I will now postpone continuing this major discussion regarding the structure of consensus realities, and will pick it up again in two essays ahead under the headings of Paradigm Shifts Relevant To The Activation Of The Superpowers and Performance Versus Knowledge.
The Answer to the Two Most Frequently Asked Questions
Each specimen of our species is a fabulous specimen, naturally endowed with very many impressive faculties, most of which have never been identified, but many of which have - and are defeated anyway.
. . . . . .
Some portion of these faculties DO respond when outside stimulation is applied to them, the stimulation achieved by the inflow of information and by practical exercises pertinent to their enhancement.
. . . . . .
Other of the faculties, however, apparently are of the self-start-up kind. Evidence for the existence of these faculties is not only voluminous, but convincing.
The issue then is, if they are not activating, the resolution then more or less falls into the category of discovering what is preventing them from doing so.
. . . . . .
Well, anyone who desires to do so is urged to search for THIS kind of information. I'd be interested in receiving notification from anyone who discovers the existence of something along these lines. I have nothing to recommend along these lines, at least regarding the activation of the superpowers.
. . . . . .
However, many sages of the past have indicated among their separate selves, often divided by centuries, a consensus reality that makes remarkable sense.
I crudely collect this consensus reality by paraphrasing it: that if one wants to understand something, one needs to construct mental concepts that are compatible with IT - not develop and depend on concepts that constitute - well, consensus realities that are full of looped over holes.
For if a concept that is being utilized to comprehend something is not as exactly compatible as possible with it, then that concept is, in one sage's terms, an "erroneous thought-form."
. . . . . .
I am very partial to the general context of THIS consensus reality, but am uncomfortable with the phrase "erroneous thought-form."
This is because everything is what it is, even thought-forms, and as such is "correct" within itself - "error" only being possible relative to something else.
. . . . . .
I will therefore take what is a possibly unjustified liberty and shift the nomenclature of "erroneous thought-form" into "mental information processing viruses" - this in an experimental or hypothetical sense only.
This concept-nomenclature was not possible even twenty years ago, but the concept of "viruses" has now been widely proliferated into the consensus realities of ComputerLand, and computer realities.
. . . . . .
In that now monolithic Land we can see and have feedback regarding what an information virus can do to the information processing functions of computer software and even to computer hardware.
I dare to adapt this concept into the contexts of the faculties superpowers of the human biomind - because all of them can easily be conceived that at base they are information processing and information transfer systems.
. . . . . .
Furthermore, and as will be discussed in detail in a following essay, the concepts of information theory ARE compatible with them as information-processing systems, especially in that information transfer is mitigated by the signal-to-noise ratio.
The increase of "noise" in an information transfer process or system can be likened to "viruses" - loosely speaking anyway. The decrease in "noise" enhances transfer, reception, and more exact duplication of signal.
. . . . . .
If the superpower faculties can be conceived of as signal receptors or signal monitors, whatever they transfer in the way of information to the cognitive mind/intellect is usually processed through its already-installed concept networks or concept "grids."
. . . . . .
If the pre-installed concepts are not exactly compatible then the end product will be signal + the noise introduced by the misfitting concepts. If the pre-installed concepts not compatible at all, then the end product will probably consist of noise with the signal so buried in it that it can neither be located or decoded by the mind/intellect.
. . . . . .
A central question then emerges: wherefrom do we get our pre-installed concepts that might be noisy ones?
The answer here is twofold. We can formulate them ourselves, and which is entirely possible, even though many doubt it of themselves.
But there is a "process" which, in some sense, is geared to "help" us NOT formulate our own concepts, and it is one process that all of us adapt to in many ways from day one.
. . . . . .
And this process is called consensus reality making.
And we adapt to the elements of consensus reality making, for if we do not all hell descends from a wild assortment of directions.
. . . . . .
Anyway, we have to learn our local language, and THAT language consists not only of its nomenclature, but the meaning-concepts that go with the nomenclature.
Zippo!
There you are (all of us, including my overly humble self, a CR Clone of some kind).
. . . . . .
Two of the major deterrents or preventives toward the activation of the superpowers are:
1. information viruses inhabiting consensus realities and which distort and clog the grids (arteries) of our thinking processes; and
2. needed but missing information concepts - which cause mental information processes to act like they have viruses
(End of Part 1)
TOWARDS ACTIVATING
THE SUPERPOWERS
OF THE HUMAN BIOMIND
Ingo Swann (22Feb97)
PART 2:
INFORMATION PROCESSING VIRUSES
AND THEIR CLONES
Digging into consensus realities tends to be a boring occupation if one considers only what they represent to those incorporated into them.
But if one investigates how information is processed because of them, they tend to become very interesting indeed.
. . . . . .
As a general rule of thumb in this regard, it can be seen that information that can be fitted into a given consensus reality is processed, at least in some kind of way. But information that cannot be fitted is usually NOT processed at all.
. . . . . .
There are very many examples of this that can be identified. But many of them, if they were pointed out, cause vigorous emotional responses that sometimes can be lethal.
So I'll select an example that will merely confuse rather than elicit emoting.
. . . . . .
The general consensus reality about "paranormal" perception conceives that this IS basically a matter of PERCEPTION.
But if one says that paranormal perception is neither paranormal nor a matter of basic perception, the chances are that the consensus reality won't shake all that much - because the message of that statement is simply routed through those concepts that processes it as "idiotic," "stupid," or "he doesn't know what he is talking about." End of that tiny story.
. . . . . .
However, if one goes on to say that the basic issue involves information transfer and the signal-to-noise ratio BEFORE perceptions are constructed out of them, then another thing happens. The eyes of those people firmly locked into the perception concept are likely to wobble. The wobbling is caused by the person's mental information processing grids attempting to find a suitable conceptual basis via which to process THAT message.
If no pre-installed concepts are found, then the message is shed from the grids like water off a duck's back. End of that story.
. . . . . .
The above might be a bit crude as an example. And so it might sound rather far-fetched at first - because most people think they can and do process all information they encounter. Others observing them, however, often can spot which information is not being processed, or which information is being mis-processed.
He or she "is not getting the point," as its often said. Or, how he or she "came to THAT conclusion is beyond belief."
. . . . . .
However, if a given consensus reality shared among many does not contain concepts relevant to something, the chances are that NO ONE within the consensus reality will perceive it.
If whatever it is does get processed, it will be routed over to the nearest similar concept and processed through it.
. . . . . .
For example, the neo-term REMOTE VIEWING has gained popularity and is even verging on entering into a very wide consensus reality.
But all evidence to date shows that the "meaning" of RV is being routed through the familiar concept of "psychic perception." And so "remote-viewing" is being accepted as an updated replacement term for psychic perception.
. . . . . .
However, RV in its intended original usage was as an adjective merely to distinguish a particular type of clairvoyant experiment; and then later used as a concept involving a process having to do with a refined form of INTELLECTUAL INTEGRATION that depended on dealing with the signal-to-noise ratio.
Now intellectual integration is considered a normal process that does or can occur in anyone. And so it is far removed from psychic perception which is thought of as paranormal.
So the whole of this is like unknowingly getting on the wrong train or bus.
. . . . . .
Almost all consensus realities hold that everyone can mentally process, at the most basic physical level at least, the elements of everything that is in that physical level. And so no one ever thinks to look for examples indicating that this is not true.
But such examples can be found, and I will now digress to consider one of them so that it won't seem I'm simply talking that stuff which comes out of a bull's back door.
. . . . . .
When Charles Darwin set sail as a naturalist abroad the BEAGLE, he embarked on a voyage that was to last six years (1831-1836.) Prior to this, the theory of ORGANIC EVOLUTION had been around for a few decades, but Darwin was to firmly establish it - and shift the orientation of many consensus realities. For it was on this long voyage that Darwin felt he had found proof of the theory of evolution.
But he encountered another kind of thing that was so alien to any consensus reality that hardly anything has been made of it.
. . . . . .
As the BEAGLE wended its way southward along the east coast of South America, it came to what was then known as Patagonia, a region of some 300,000 square miles, now divided into southern Argentina, the extreme south-east part of Chile, and northern Tierra del Fuego.
And it was in Patagonia that the Beagle's crew and Darwin encountered an exceedingly strange phenomenon - one which, in my somewhat overworked opinion, was more important than the theory of organic evolution.
. . . . . .
Unable to moor the big ship, the BEAGLE, close to shore, it was anchored at some distance from land out in a bay, and some of the crew and Darwin went ashore in a small boat.
Once ashore they were welcomed with excitement by the local Patagonians of that particular region. In all this excitement, it soon transpired that the locals were amazed that Darwin, et.al. had traversed the great ocean in such a small boat.
. . . . . .
Now, the BEAGLE was anchored out in the bay, but it was plainly visible. And so the crew said that they hadn't crossed the great ocean in a small boat, but a far larger one. And they pointed to the big ship anchored in the bay.
Try as they might, however, the local Patagonians COULD NOT SEE the big ship - and so a period of confusion ensued. The BEAGLE was literally INVISIBLE to the Patagonians, not only conceptually so, but eyeball so.
. . . . . .
As it turned out, there WAS one person among the Patagonians who COULD SEE the ship. This was the local shaman, whose credentials imply the sighting of things and stuff others do not perceive - although it is quite possible for them to do so, and as we shall now see.
. . . . . .
Apparently the shaman set about describing the BEAGLE, its location, the shape of the hull and sails, and did so by comparing the forms to what was otherwise familiar to the Patagonians.
Soon, and as Hollywood lingo might have it, the BEAGLE "faded in," and thus all the Patagonians ended up with eyeball sight of the ship.
. . . . . .
This remarkable incident might never have entered historical sources, except that Darwin noted it in his diary - after which it has persisted in existing in that rational limbo of the "unexplained."
. . . . . .
But it does need to be explained, at least in some kind of theoretical way - in that what it implies is completely relevant toward activating any of the superpowers.
I'm not saying that the following is the only way, being merely one experimental way that chances to be somewhat consistent with similar situations.
. . . . . .
Roughly speaking, although the Patagonians had a consensus reality regarding small boats, they did not have one regarding large ships that might traverse the immense Atlantic Ocean.
One will have difficulty believing that the ABSENCE of this consensus reality could literally prevent eyeball vision of the BEAGLE, since we believe we see what does exist whether we understand it or not.
In other words, the "normal" consensus reality of the Patagonians had a gaping hole in it regarding big ships. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?
. . . . . .
There is another more precise way of putting this - that the mental information processing grids of the Patagonians had this hole in them. Meaning that there was no prior established mental grid which contained information points regarding large, ocean-going vessels. (Here, please note that an essay regarding mental information processing grids (MIPGs) is already contained in this database.)
. . . . . .
The explanatory activity of the shaman did either one of two things. By comparing the shape-recognition required to things the Patagonians did include in their consensus reality, the BEAGLE thus faded up into visibility. Or, perhaps, the activity of the shaman caused a new grid to form up.
In either case, the Patagonians finally could eyeball if not completely understand the BEAGLE, accompanied, it might be expected, by wonder and awe.
. . . . . .
In leaving this incident, it is worth noting that the original theory of evolution was the theory of ORGANIC evolution - and hence applied to organic (biological) systems. "Organic" was later dropped, and the theory became the theory of EVOLUTION, since mistaken as applicable to all things.
In this sense, then, evolution is seen as a one-way route, always evolving, always evolving upward and onward.
The concept of DEVOLUTION is obscured this way - this a concept we will need to deal with in other essays since it is pertinent to the superpower faculties.
. . . . . .
Due to the Worldwide Web, the days when isolated cultures "clashed" with others is over with, of course, save in the possible case of extraterrestrials. And so it is hard to notice gaping holes in their consensus realities.
Yet anthropologists earlier in this century spotted quite a number of them, while those working in the diplomatic services have encountered many more.
I will take the time here to give one example of each kind.
. . . . . .
Take the concept of SNOW. We utilize the term SNOW to denote snow, and so snow is snow - that cold white stuff, made up of frozen, crystallized water molecules.
So we call snow snow, and that's the end of it, right?
Well, not exactly.
. . . . . .
The consensus realities of those living in warmer climates have no need of knowing, or even believing, that there are many different types of snow. But such was important to indigenous people living and existing north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia, Alaska and far-north Canada.
You see, in those far north climes different types of snow (to say nothing of different types of ice) could be used in different ways, while the different types permitted various kinds of expectations and predictions to be made.
. . . . . .
Depending on which sources one consults, the indigenous peoples of the northern Arctic Circle "evolved" seven to twenty-one different terms that conceptualized, identified and specified different kinds of snow and/or ice.
Thus, their understanding of the types of "snow" was very much intellectually integrated in a number of refined ways, and which enhanced their understanding of snow over those who merely have one consensus reality concept for it.
. . . . . .
One of the most probable meanings here is that the Arctic dwellers understood the very many multiple FUNCTIONS of snow/ice, could discriminate uses, and discriminate STRUCTURAL forecasts of what the different types implied in terms of weather, building materials, and so forth. And knowledge of these types often meant whether survival would be easy, difficult or deadly.
In other words, they had not only definitive consensus realities about the types of snow, but also possessed intricate MIPGs which permitted more exact analyses of the implications of different kinds of snow.
. . . . . .
As it is today, we have only residual echoes of this kind of thing. Expert skiers have some knowledge about different types of snow, mostly regarding whether it will pack up or remain fluffy. Park rangers also like to know if a given snowfall will pack up and melt steadily, or be loose enough to pile up and avalanche.
For most of us, though, snow is something to put up with and shovel into piles - and we need only one bit of nomenclature for that, the result of which is the beginning and end of the snow story.
. . . . . .
So, you may be wondering by now what all this snow stuff has to do with the superpower faculties of the human BIOMIND.
Well, for example, we have but one nomenclature bit for TELEPATHY - which is, of course, telepathy.
Thus, IF it should be that there are many DIFFERENT TYPES of telepathy, we are still reduced to utilizing only one consensus-reality making term for them - and that is the beginning and end of the telepathy story within our present consensus reality.
. . . . . .
On the other hand, and assuming there just might be different types of IT, if one wants to activate one's own telepathic faculties, well, one needs to know WHICH type to activate.
In this instance, TELEPATHY as a single generalization will be useless, much in the same way that snow as a single generalization was useless to earlier Arctic dwellers before prefabricated dwellings, welfare subsistence and the benefits of tourist trade.
. . . . . .
If one examines in detail the literature and anecdotal information available about "telepathy," one can begin to espy the factual existence of different types of it.
The research method to be utilized to identify the types focuses on the apparent FUNCTION of each type - i.e., what does this type DO versus that other type? Or what can be done with this versus other types? Or, which kind of information is transferred via one type versus the other types?
There can be little doubt that the different types of snow were identified by employing some such similar method - with the end result that each type fell into a more exact functional category.
In other words, the earlier Arctic dwellers DID NOT just learn about snow as a conceptual generalization, but about different kinds of snow which enabled the conceptualizations of different kinds of application.
. . . . . .
The meaning here is rather straightforward. If one partakes, so to speak, of a consensus reality within which only one generalized conception exists for telepathy, it is quite likely that the existence of TYPES of telepathy will remain as invisible as the BEAGLE was to the Patagonians.
. . . . . .
Now jumping the gun a little here, and referring to a topic to be enlarged upon in subsequent essays, all of the superpower faculties appear to have one thing in common.
Each seems to be designed for a specific function - meaning that if mental information processing grids are not set up (installed) to match each of those specific functions, then the different functions will be invisible and/or dysfunctional to their potential users. And this more or less exactly matches the BEAGLE syndrome of the Patagonians.
. . . . . .
In other words, and as we shall see just ahead, the ABSENCE of such grids will function in ways quite similar to information processing viruses.
Another way of putting this, although more simplistic, is that the utilization of a single concept regarding telepathy will probably disable identification of its many different types. So, you see, if telepathy is JUST telepathy, then that is the beginning and end of that story, too.
. . . . . .
The remedial ACTION (toward activating the superpower faculties) regarding all of this is not complicated. Merely by assuming, if only for entertainment purposes, that TYPES of telepathy exist, the types tend to become more noticeable.
. . . . . .
In the past, I've belabored my suffering MIPGs a great deal, but finally was able to identify thirty-five or thirty-six different types of telepathy.
I'll not provide this list - because I think people accept and believe more in what they themselves can become aware of by upward pulling of their own bootstraps.
. . . . . .
But one type of telepathy consists of "sensing," as it is put, sexual availability of others.
This is a rather broad-based telepathic format TYPE pre-existing throughout our species. And it is noticeable because it has an undeniably SPECIFIC FUNCTION hardly anyone can miss.
However, this type of sensing should go hand-in-hand with careful diplomatic approaches - for reasons that should be obvious to those who did not arrive on Earth just twenty minutes ago.
. . . . . .
This type of telepathy, however, is not usually referred to as TELEPATHIC at all, due mostly to its licentious characteristics, all of which have been edited out of psychical and parapsychological consensus realities in order to make their consensus contexts appropriate to "proper" think.
This humble author, for example, wrote yet another manuscript entitled Psychic Sexuality - which was rejected by so many publishers I lost count of them. You see, our present consensus realities about psychic stuff do not permit connecting up any of that stuff to sex.
. . . . . .
Above, I have mentioned the term "diplomacy." My research into the nature of diplomacy revealed that one of its main functions is to comprehend consensus realities and try to figure out how to get around or trick them.
Thus, diplomatic "skills" are valuable in many ways, if only to try to prevent things going up in flames.
. . . . . .
The worst diplomats ever are those who remain completely unaware of the finer points of consensus realities that both strategically and tactically contrast with their own.
This was the 1950s conceptual basis, for example, of "the ugly American" who bounced into contrasting consensus realities (i.e., into other "cultures") and who either did not realize very much or didn't care either which way.
. . . . . .
As but one somewhat humorous example, detailed by the venerable diplomat, historian and author, George Kennan, the Arabic-speaking countries share a consensus reality conceptualized around the idea (referred to by the nomenclature bit "Kismet") that the future is in the hands and determination of Allah, and that mere humans shall not mess around by trying to shape the future to their own ends and designs.
. . . . . .
Having attempted to comprehend the concept of Kismet the best I can, I am somewhat partial to it because it does have some interesting and beneficial merits - if one tries to entertain the larger picture of things.
. . . . . .
That aside, during a great part of this century, the Western world, and especially the United States, tended to view the Arabic nations as feudalistic - which more bluntly meant "backward."
Hence those nations were seen as potential consumers of modernization products, especially with regard to "building better futures" for themselves.
. . . . . .
Transliterated, this means that Western entrepreneurs foresaw the merits of causing the Arabs to purchase implements, plans, designs, equipment, methods and whatnot under the guise of building a better future - a concept which the Western entrepreneurs themselves place much faith and assuming foresight.
Also noted by the entrepreneurs, most of the Arabic nations had scads of money to effect such future-oriented improvements, for they had mucho fossil fuels the rest of the world was desperate for.
In this sense, the Arab nations were a bank of unused, but presumably accessible, money reserves.
. . . . . .
The first wave of Western entrepreneurs, their diplomats and representatives, appear to have been considerably unaware of the existence of the concept of Kismet, and subsequent waves of them thought that rational economic logic they themselves pursued would put the concept somewhat into abeyance.
. . . . . .
Now, I've no desire to get into the egregious details of what thenceforth transpired within what then became known as "world tensions" because of this "conflict" of dramatically opposing consensus realities, or to discuss the merits and demerits of either.
The issue here is the often unalterable STRENGTH and POWER of consensus realities as might be applied solely to the problems and situation of the superpower faculties - given into creation either by God, Allah or the Ascending Evolutionary Steps.
. . . . . .
The point here is that IF a consensus reality is really locked into itself, it is then really hard to deal with or even to get around it - without also setting into action a very dramatic paradigm shift.
Everyone utilizes the basic consensus realities they are part of, from the fundamental language-nomenclature foundations on upward to sophisticated versions of them.
And everyone utilizes these consensus realities because that is all they have to think and communicate with.
. . . . . .
If you take a moment here to get the idea of a funnel, for example, as an implement utilized to get liquids into a narrow-topped bottle without spilling much, you might grasp all this somewhat better.
Into the wide-open brim are poured the liquid elements of life and all its very many processes, and which liquid elements are narrowed down at the tight spout, and thence gotten into the bottle. If we can conceive of the bottle as a consensus reality, we can use bottles as handy metaphors.
. . . . . .
But to complete the metaphor, we do realize that consensus realities differ. And so we have to put a filter somewhere in the funnel so that the elements and processes of life are filtered into the bottles in only such and such a way.
Now, we can put a label on the bottle, using this or that linguistic nomenclature for purposes of common identification among those who utilize it for communicating.
. . . . . .
And there you have it - in a somewhat weak metaphorical sense anyway: a prepackaged consensus reality, and each society drinks from THEIR bottle, and causes others also to drink from it. Naturally, all consensus realities think that their bottle is the best one.
. . . . . .
However, to comprehend what actually is in the bottle, we have to pour out the contained liquid and submit it to detailed analysis, molecule by molecule, atom by atom, or concept by concept.
As it THEN would happen, we can find only what we already have concepts for and expectations of finding, since it is easiest to find what fits into the consensus realities we are utilizing to do so.
When we find something totally unexpected, well, as is said in the sciences, we are "surprised."
No consensus reality filter can completely filter out all aspects of life. Aspects of life inconvenient to the other contents of the bottle sometimes get through the filter - especially if those aspects are indigenous to our species.
You see, each babe born is a container of life, and no one is ever born a prepackaged format of a given consensus reality bottle. THAT has to be installed or cloned into each specimen and always requires some kind of reductionism or another.
. . . . . .
For its filters, each consensus reality depends on its approved concepts - with the result that if the concepts are not truly compatible with aspects of life itself, then it will filter only those aspects which the filters permit. In this sense, then, the concepts that are incompatible with life will achieve the function of information viruses which distort, wreck or destroy the aspects of life itself.
And, regarding the "bottles" of predigested consensus realities, the chances are very good that upon analyses of them we will find information processing viruses - this because the "digestion" of any kind of information always contributes the preconceived conceptual "juices" utilized to digest them.
. . . . . .
It's a good thing the somewhat shaky metaphors gotten up here are only for hypothetical purposes. So "chill out" a little. You'll probably need to "chill" a little in regard to what now follows.
Information Processing Viruses
ALERT! Here we have a topic that can be seized upon and used to beat up on others regarding their beliefs, the condition of their knowledge or expertise, and their supposed intelligence or stupidity if they have any of either.
The "best" people, of course, are those that are not thought of as being too extreme with regard to either their intelligence or stupidity, in which case they can be considered among the so-called "normal," or as "one of us." Each consensus reality establishes a so-called "normal" band used to determine deviation away from the fundamental concepts of the consensus reality itself.
. . . . . .
Something now depends on which consensus reality is being utilized as the "proper" one, and which band in it is thought of as the "normal" one.
Then if one falls out of the up end or the down end of the "normal" curve, one is therefore considered too intelligent or too stupid to fit into it.
. . . . . .
One of the situations relevant to this, though, is that intelligence and stupidity cannot really be nailed down unless there are "normative," consensus reality standards to utilize in doing so.
. . . . . .
For example, via the prevailing consensus reality characteristic of the scientific discipline of physics between 1905 until about 1927, Albert Einstein was bombarded with vocal and PRINTED condemnations regarding his congenital stupidity and similar invectives.
On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of those hailed as marvelously intelligent, thereafter proven quite stupid, and whose names usually end up getting vaporized in historical memory. I won't mention any names here, for fear of treading on someone's icons.
. . . . . .
In any event, one is considered sane (and rational and logical) if one fits snugly into a given normal band of a consensus reality. And in this sense, one is a "proper" exemplar not only of the consensus reality, but surely of our species as well.
If one doesn't fit in, one is thought of as different, deranged or impaired, or challenged; as psychologically unbalanced, disturbed, or whose mind functions are resulting from some kind of pathological condition; or as marching to a different drummer - for lo and behold there seem to be different drums to march to; or as needing help - the BIG "help" economy to relocate into the normal band - and on and on and on some more, up to and including being politically incorrect as well as out of fashion, a retard, a retro, fringey, perhaps nerdish, wacko, or NOC (not of our class, which applies equally to the wealthy and the poor, the latter, too, having its collective consensus reality frameworks).
. . . . . .
However, if one develops a larger picture of all this, it can be seen on the one hand that everyone WILL fit into some kind of consensus reality somewhere; and that all of us will NOT fit in to some kind of consensus reality somewhere else.
What one wants to do is find "my people" so as to fit oneself in with them - and to avoid all those others which are "not my people."
. . . . . .
However, in order to fit in anywhere, one has to clone not only the concepts, but the concept viruses, the two altogether being perpetuated as "reality."
. . . . . .
At the brink of sermonizing a little, we are all of the same species, a species which preoccupies itself with setting up, or inventing or imagining, consensus realities in the first place.
It seems possible that we could therefore modulate a species level consensus reality which would incorporate most specimens born.
But I digress too far, except to note that SHOULD such a species level consensus reality EVER "evolve," it would have to include admission of the existence of the superpower faculties.
. . . . . .
The dimensions of existing knowledge regarding the superpowers is not all that large, and what there is of it is pretty much clogged with information processing viruses. And so it is necessary to examine their nature, characteristics and effects on human thinking processes.
The references to information processing viruses in this database refer specifically to the central topic of this database and to no other topic.
And to get good mileage out of this topic, it should be stated that one can profit only by taking interest in the possibility of one's OWN information processing viruses - since those of others are irrelevant to one's own self-activation of the interlocking networks of superpower faculties.
Virus
The term VIRUS is generally thought to be a bit of biological nomenclature identifying "submicroscopic infective agents."
But the term is descended on the one hand from an ancient Sanskrit term, VISA, meaning "poison or venom in the senses," and on the other hand from the Greek term, IOS, meaning "poison."
. . . . . .
Our English term is taken directly from the Latin VIRUS, in which language it officially referred to slimy liquid, poison or stench, but was also probably utilized as Latin slang meaning something like "really smelly shit."
The third definition given in my trusty Webster's is "something that poisons the mind or soul."
. . . . . .
It was apparently first utilized in English in 1599 in the context of heaping venomous and poisonous abuse on another person.
The earliest definition in terms of pathology date only from 1725 - at which time it more or less referred to "A morbid principle or poisonous substance produced in the body as the result of some disease, especially one capable of being introduced into other persons or animals by inoculation or otherwise and of developing the same disease in them."
It is from this definition that I have adapted and adopted the term "cloning" with reference to exactly reproducing something in oneself taken or absorbed from others.
. . . . . .
The term VIRUS has been seized from its modern biological contexts and entered into Computerese. There it refers to a nearly undetectable micro-package of information which can be introduced into software programs and/or hardware systems with the result of disorganizing, adulterating or obliterating them.
. . . . . .
In its Computerese sense, a virus is actually an information virus which distorts or erases other kinds of information - more or less along the same lines as the filters in the funnels of consensus reality bottles.
Clone
Our English term, CLONE, was taken from the Greek word meaning "twig or slip." Its first noted use in English was in 1903 in a scientific paper having to do with chrysanthemums and their clonal characteristics.
A later scientific paper of the same year pointed up that "the clones of apples, pears, strawberries, etc., do not propagate true to seed, while this is one of the most important characteristics of races of wheat and corn."
In this sense, a cloned information processing concept or a clone's information processing virus may not propagate true to seed either.
. . . . . .
In any event, the first definition of CLONE dating from ancient Greece, etc., referred to a group of cultivated plants the individuals of which are transplanted parts of one original seedling or stock, the propagation having been carried out by the use of grafts, cuttings, bulbs, etc.
In this sense, then, CLONE was the term given to all bud grafts taken from a parent tree.
. . . . . .
This can be extended into the analogy that a given consensus reality is the parent tree of conceptualizations, and that each of us specimens can be grafted onto it. As we are, of course.
After the tree is recognized, and communicated within, by the nomenclature central to the tree, not just the bark of the tree, but the flow of information inside the tree and which makes it a tree.
The bark of the tree constitutes only its superficial protective layers, three layers of quite simplified cells which harden - something like the hard glass of the bottle that contains whatever is filtered into it.
All the above for whatever it might suggest.
Warning
It is not correct to call a concept an information virus simply because one disagrees with it.
For one thing, all of us completely assume that OUR concepts are correct and virus-free. And so if we enter into discriminating the existence of information viruses, we will normally assess the concepts of others - not those we might just chance to contain.
. . . . . .
The only purpose of entering this topic into this database has to do with locating information processing viruses within the general consensus reality we have cloned into - and must subscribe to in order to speak, write and read in its unifying language.
. . . . . .
Whether an individual or a group of them possesses cloned information processing viruses is irrelevant - with one exception. And if you cannot identify that one exception, then you are already reading this essay from a viewpoint not at all intended.
. . . . . .
Finally, the ENTIRE context of this essay is aimed only at the possibility that information processing viruses exist and which might deter or prevent one's own approach toward activating their own share of the superpower faculties. This is a specific area of possible interest only for some, not a general one applicable to all or any other area of human species activity.
. . . . . .
In any event, we must move on.
If we search for the singly, largest common conceptual denominator regarding the superpowers, we will easily find that the concept of PERCEPTION is most likely to be it. This is specifically to say that in the English language, perception is assigned to all psychic matters.
This assigning is, of course, over-simplified to the extreme - in that there are many different TYPES of perception in both the quantitative and qualitative sense.
. . . . . .
But beneath that slight confusion is another more fundamental one - an almost universal mis-understanding regarding what perception is and is all about.
And so in Part 3 now coming up, we will attempt to beat that misunderstanding to death - and do so without overtly stipulating that this egregious misunderstanding is virus-like in nature.
(End of Part 2)
TOWARD ACTIVATING
THE SUPERPOWERS OF THE
HUMAN BIOMIND
Ingo Swann (23Feb97)
PART 3: THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION
As discussed, however imperfectly, in the Introductory materials to this series of essays, it was discovered that consensus realities and their broadly-shared concepts are sources of the greatest deterrents and distortion regarding the superpower faculties.
. . . . .
The principal reason seems to be that certain concepts are misconceptions or are absent - and in either case the mental information processing grids of the individual so affected respond as if they have viruses in them.
The result can consist of anything imaginable - from the highest, most vaporous kinds of illusion down to and including complete closure or black-out of the cognitive processes.
. . . . .
There is the added complexity that viruses can mutate with wild frequency, or become immune to conceptocides in the way cockroaches can do.
So the best way to deal with them is not to rationalize in their presence, not to try to correct them in anyway, but by the simple cave-man tactic of pounding them to death with the proverbial club of increased and more exact understanding.
. . . . .
If this tactic is successful, one is somewhat likely to experience Metanoia shifts - Metanoia to be extensively treated in a following essay.
. . . . .
In any event, when the misconceptions or absence of correct ones are cloned into the think-processes of everyone, anyone, the misconceptions , etc. act as viruses that either confuse or misdirect various kinds of information in ways that seem entirely appropriate, logical, rational, correct and so forth.
If something like this is not possible, then the think-systems are caused to shut down. In familiar terms, this is often expressed as "my mind is drawing a blank" or "I haven't the foggiest notion of what is meant."
. . . . .
Since most consensus reality information is simplified and generalized with regard to larger and larger consensus realities, the confusions and misdirections are not usually noticed.
. . . . .
It isn't just that misconceptions come into existence or that some of them are inadequate. Perhaps the biggest of the central problems is that they are "understood" as if they ARE adequate and well conceived.
In this state of false understanding, they are then cloned into the think processes of others where they function like information viruses.
Most people will abandon false understandings if and when they realize their falseness. But this seems to be linked in some direct proportion to whatever complexity is involved.
. . . . .
Having realized something about the deterrent nature of conceptualizations, it then seemed necessary to isolate those most fundamental with regard to the superpower faculties, and then inspect how they were understood.
Various lists of nomenclature were produced as a result.
. . . . .
For example, certain fashionable terms were found to be oxymorons, but which are none-the-less understood as if they make real sense - PRE-cognition, and POST-cognition, for instance.
Another kind of list contained terms drawn from theories, not from direct evidence, but which terms became broadly utilized as if they represented direct evidence, not theory - TELEPATHY and PSYCHO-KINESIS being two of these.
(NOTE: A number of terms that fall into these two categories will be dissected in essays ahead.)
. . . . .
Then, and as we have already seen, there were terms extremely ambiguous regarding their definitions, but broadly utilized anyway - presumably not because anyone really understands them, but simply because they are verbal currency which fit into and reflect the major consensus realities everyone seems to have cloned. An "everyone is using it, so it must be OK" kind of thing.
. . . . .
Finally, there was a list of terms taken as reflecting extremely obvious and self-evident truths, so much so that everyone utilizes them with a cast-in-cement conviction of their correctness and their utterly unchallengeable reality as well.
What these particular terms refer to and conceptualize is completely taken for granted, and all of them underpin consensus realities extending far outside of the much smaller ones typical of superpower phenomena.
This is to say that such terms are broadly based in overall cultural usage in that they are closely associated with "basic images" of the human being is .
. . . . .
Even though their meanings are taken completely for granted and thus hardly ever inspected, two of these particular terms are entirely troublesome - so much so that unless they are properly defined and understood they will derail any and all cognitive approaches to the superpower faculties.
The second of these terms will be considered elsewhere. The first will now be examined.
Perception
That term is PERCEPTION - and everyone, absolutely everyone takes it for granted that they understand perfectly well what it means.
Right? Well, if anything is understood about perception, it is only the via consensus reality format of it.
. . . . .
IT MUST BE EMPHASIZED THAT VERY FEW OF THE FACTORS DISCUSSED BELOW HAVE ORIGINATED FROM MY OWN STRESSED BRAIN - WITH THE EXCEPTION OF WHAT CONSTITUTES MY ATTEMPTS AT SARDONIC HUMOR.
. . . . .
Most people utilize the concept-term PERCEPTION as if they comprehend what it means and refers to, and most people will say they do understand it.
But if you ASK a few people what it means, well, now occurs a pause, sometimes followed by: "Well, let' s see ... (a hiatus of verbiage) .... " .
Sometimes someone will respond: "It means what I perceive, that's perception." Or: "It's what I see." Others might say: "OK. I guess I'd better look it up."
. . . . .
Looking it up might not get you anywhere - except back into the general consensus reality regarding what perception is thought to consist of.
But something now has to do with where you want get to, want to achieve. And so something must be distinguished here.
. . . . .
That our species has perceptions is not the issue, for it IS self-evident that we have them - unless they are dysfunctional, at which time we are blind or oblivious in this or that regard. And here it should be admitted that certain misconceptions can "blind" us to any number of things. If, for example, we think that psychic perception is BASED in perception, then this will blind us regarding any realization that it is NOT.
. . . . .
In any event, it is obvious that living organisms that depend for survival on acuity of certain gross perceptions would not survive unless they had them. Just try to imagine a living organism with no perceptual faculties, and zippo, almost certain extinction.
. . . . .
In other words, PERCEPTION is so fundamental to our species that it is practically synonymous with FUNCTIONAL LIFE itself - and that life, or at least the living of it, becomes increasingly dysfunctional as the perceptual faculties themselves become (or are).
And since perception is so fundamental, we think that perception must be the answer to everything.
. . . . .
This remains a convincing truism - until the question arises why we DO NOT perceive something when enough evidence is present to indicate that we should. Regarding this I refer back to the Patagonian thing narrated in Part 1{INSERT LINK HERE}.
. . . . .
In the contexts of all of the foregoing, then, it would appear that without perception we are nothing. And so the CONCEPTS regarding perception may be the most fundamental ones upon which ALL other concepts are extended from. This, unless and until one comes to learn and accept that there is more to perception - at which time it becomes apparent that perception is NOT perception, but something entirely different.
. . . . .
In any event, such certainly IS the case regarding the whole of psychical and parapsychological research in which perception holds center stage, and as is also the case regarding creative, inventive and problem-identification activity.
If you DELETE the concept-term of PERCEPTION from psychical research and parapsychology, their entire cognitive edifices will go poof, having instantly vaporized.
. . . . .
If you delete perception in any kind of wholesale way, there also go the arts, science, certainly any hope of diplomacy or any other kind of information transfer, and there goes any contact with the past or the future.
About the only thing remaining will be one's immediate appetites, and even these won't be perceived for very long.
. . . . .
Thus, perception is a f - - -g serious issue. And this is the reason why I will lean completely on published scientific documents, omitting entirely my own perception of perception.
. . . . .
If perception is not what is generally thought, it thus follows that a simple definition of PERCEPTION is not only not sufficient or meaningful, but that it will act as a virus, as all simplified information packages usually do.
To establish that our species does have perceptions and let it go at that is nowhere enough - and, in demonstrable fact, might be dangerous.
And in any event, anyone hoping to "develop" access to their superpower faculties and activate them doesn't stand one chance in Hell of doing so in the absence of very refined comprehensions of the nature of perception.
In this sense, Superpower Development 101 WILL necessarily consist of learning everything known about perception, of which there is quite a lot - but hardly any of which can be stuffed into an over-simplified format.
. . . . .
The research involving collecting together what has been known, what is known, and what is yet to be known about perception has been excruciating and taken a great deal of effort.
But in the researching one occasionally runs across various condensed statements such as: "You ARE your perceptions...", "What thine perceptions are so shall ye be...", and so forth, until one can get the approximate idea that one's perceptions maketh one, and that one's non-perceptions non-maketh one.
. . . . .
The enduring axioms "I think, therefore I am" or "As I think therefore I have been and will be" are not quite on the mark. You see, thinking takes place after perceptions do, and so what more matters is the quantity AND the quality of how many perceptions one has or doesn't have in activational status. And it is this which makes one into an I AM entity.
. . . . .
This becomes somewhat understandable by jumping the gun a little here.
The only information our systems can make perceptions out of is the information ADMITTED into those systems. If our information transferring systems are somehow barriered against admitting certain kinds of information, then that information will not be perceived.
. . . . .
In converting all of the above considerations to the issue of the superpowers of the human biomind, all of them in the primal or first instance of their activity are some kind of information-dealing faculties - as are ALL of the biomind's powers per se. All other attributes must then be drawn from these information-dealing faculties, for if those didn't exist, then neither would the attributes.
It must then follow that if certain of the superpower faculties are inactive, then all of their possible attributes and extensions will also be inactive.
And perception is an attribute of the information-dealing systems, and in no case is a primal or first instance of anything.
All Perception is Indirect Perception
Among the first of the gargantuan problems to wrestle with is that it is commonly thought and accepted that there is a direct connection between the perceiver and what is perceived.
And indeed, one can often hear people saying something along the lines of "Well, I had direct perception of it, and so I know what I saw."
. . . . .
No one who has cloned this idea can be blamed for having done so. It is a cultural artifact (in the modern West at least), and no effort is taken to correct it, at least as regards public consumption.
On the other hand, what perception actually consists of IS more or less known in scientific realms devoted to studying it. But this knowledge is more or less sequestered to certain kinds of specialists some of which I'll discuss after the working parts of this essay have been completed.
. . . . .
In English, the concept of "direct" perception seems to go somewhere back in time to a point that seems unidentifiable.
However, most modern definitions do not specify that perception is direct. Such is implied, or assumed, or taken for granted.
For example, the original 1828 Noah Webster's gives for TO PERCEIVE:
"To have knowledge or receive impressions of external objects through the medium or instrumentality of the senses or bodily organs."
"To know: to understand: to observe."
"To be effected by; to receive impressions from [something]."
All of which, of course, are referred to as PERCEPTION(S) - but without any reference as to how the perceptions come about.
. . . . .
In English, the general concept of perception has not changed very much since 1828 - even though accumulating evidence and knowledge since then has established that the general concept is complete nonsense. For example, to merely observe or receive impressions does not automatically equate with knowledge or understanding.
. . . . .
The pre-1828 actual etymology in English of TO PERCEIVE and PERCEPTION has not been established very well.
The approximate dates of the earliest noted uses in English of these two terms are the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries - but which seems a bit late for such fundamental conceptualizing nomenclature.
If we carefully inspect the earliest recorded etymological basis, we can find not one, but two major concepts regarding what we today have collapsed into just one, and which is entirely misconceived.
. . . . .
One the one hand, there was a similar archaic term, PERCEANT (apparently derived from Old French PERCER (to pierce)) which meant penetrating, keen, piercing - the "keen" motif implying some kind of penetrating/piercing/discriminative faculties.
On the other hand, the two terms PERCEANT and PERCER are later thought to have been derived from the Latin PER + CAPERE -, PER meaning "by or through," CAPERE meaning to take - ending up with "to take by or through" (something?).
. . . . .
However, to "penetrate-pierce keenly" and to "take [in?] by or through" are two entirely different concepts, the first being an active-like out-flowing, the second being a passive-like in-flowing.
. . . . .
Now, the standard definition of A PERCEPTION is an attainment of awareness or understanding, while the most used definition of TO PERCEIVE is to become aware of through the senses.
And so some dreaded complexities arise, whether we like them or not.
. . . . .
First off, in common parlance, one can hear others saying that he or she (or IT if it be a pet or animal) "has piercing perceptions." On the other hand, sometimes people say that others are "a victim of their perceptions" - with the proviso, of course, that oneself is not such a victim either of one's perceptions or lack of them.
. . . . .
Furthermore, awareness of and understanding are really two different things - for one can be aware of something and not understand it at all, or understand something in the complete absence of awareness about what is being "understood."
. . . . .
But in spite of this essential confusion regarding awareness and understanding, both the active out-going and the passive in-taking formats of perception imply direct routes between the perceiver and what is being perceived.
The active out-going format also implies a "search, discover, and pierce" activity. The passive take-in-through (the senses) format implies a "sit back and receive" activity.
As these two concepts stand, then, a direct link out to or receiving into is implied.
. . . . .
In any event, if we persist in utilizing the same word after realizing there may be THREE kinds of perception states or conditions, we should enumerate the three as general types of it.
1. Passive, in-flowing perception
2. Active, out-going perception
3. Not much of either
And if the existence of the third type above is admitted and plotted on the standard Bell curve, it might turn out that the majority of the so-called "normal" are made up of this type.
You see, having perceptions either of type 1 or 2 might mean that one perceived too much, or perceives what others do not. And in either case, one would tend to depart from the "normal."
. . . . .
In this sense, then, we would be obliged to posit the existence of at least two types of superpower faculties which function differently:
1. The passive PERCAPERE type where the experiencer simply in-takes perceptions (this type would consist of a one-way flow into one).
2. The active PERCEANT type where the experiencer out-goes in the way of piercing and keenly obtaining perceptions of - and then, of course, along a return route of some kind of in-flowing regarding what has been pierced and keenly obtained.
. . . . .
To digress for just a moment, in this regard, the processes of Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV) are of the active PERCEANT type as distinguished from the passive PERCAPERE type.
When the essential downfall of CRV occurred about 1988-89, it did so because of the failure to maintain the two seminal distinctions - i.e., by retreating back into the dominant concept of perception as only in-flowing.
But the reasons for the failure to maintain the distinctions are very easy to account for. You see, the conceptual consensus reality regarding perception is that it consists only of in-flow "of impressions." (I'll unfold ahead and in other essays the humorous and comic aspects of this failure.)
. . . . .
Meanwhile, back in the main theme of this essay, it's worth pointing up that since in-flow of perceptions IS the prevailing conceptual reality, when anyone submits to "psychic" or "RV" tutoring, one naturally anticipates that their passive in-flow perceptions will be enhanced. If one reads a book about how to become more psychic, one will unknowingly expect to read about in-flowing perceptions. And to be sure that is what the book will deal with.
You see, psychics RECEIVE perceptions.
. . . . .
It's also worth noting that those "psychics" who say they "receive information or pictures" must be the passive type of PERCAPERE perceptionists. So if they are any good at their "craft," then their perceptual systems must be well-rigged along the passive receiving end of perceiving.
However, a "psychic" asked, for example, to locate a missing person or a dead body hidden probably would have to be well-rigged regarding the active out-going PERCEANT type, i.e., the "pierce, search and keenly-find thing."
Functional examples of this type seem a rarity, and which may be why not many have emerged to aid law enforcement activities. Some do exist, however.
. . . . .
In any event, one can now see that all perceptions may not equal all perceptions, since there are at least two different kinds of them, with more to follow.
In this sense, then, a very important distinction begins to appear on the horizon of the over-generalizing concept of perception: how, or in which manner, the perceptions come about or result.
Is Perception a Thing In Itself, or
Is It the Result of Processes that Make It Possible?
Obviously, perceptions of any kind do NOT just come about and that's the end of that story.
Functions and processes are involved, and it is the nature and character of these which is almost totally missing within the general concept of what perception consists.
. . . . .
The most prevalent consensus reality concerning perception is basically modeled upon concepts regarding what eyesight was once thought to consist of - and still is in most over-simplified reality formats.
The seventeenth-century French mathematician and philosopher, Rene Descartes, seems to have been the first to put in print the idea that the eye acts as a lens that focuses on the elements of the external world and directly projects them to a kind of projection screen somewhere at the back of the brain where they are "seen" as reflections of what is out there.
In this concept, then, a direct, one-to-one relationship between outer and inner images was thought to be the case - and what is "seen" via this one-to-one relationship was thought of as "perception."
. . . . .
The first noted uses of "perception," however, are dated during the twelfth century and used in forms meaning "receiving, collecting rents." So a perception back then referred to rents, or to anything received. "Perception" also referred to receiving of the Eucharist or sacred elements.
It wasn't until about 1611 that the term had become converted into meaning a perceiving, apprehension, understanding. But even then, a perception also meant "perception of profits."
. . . . .
The inner core meaning of perception, then, has focused on receiving, and in general consensus realities to this day we "receive perceptions" however else PERCEPTION may or may not be defined. And perception IS defined in quite a number of ways - which ultimately leads to ambiguity as with all words that have an increasing number of meanings, some of which may be the opposite of others.
. . . . .
In that eye-perception has been the dominant model for perception during the modern period, it's worthwhile walking step-by-step through its so-called "mechanics" or "mechanisms." "Functions" would be a far better term as we shall see ahead.
. . . . .
To begin with, it is commonly thought that the eye sees images of the objects they scan or focus upon.
However, the eye itself does not form images. Rather it is composed of a collection of extremely tiny light-sensitive parts, called rods and cones, etc., that detect various kinds of light reflecting off of various kinds of objects and things. Taken altogether, these can be called "photosensors."
What the light-sensitive parts are thus "seeing" is not an image but interactions between the objects and the light they are reflecting. The interactions of the reflecting light are known as "interference patterns."
. . . . .
So what is actually going on, as step 1, is that interference patterns of light bouncing off of objects are taking place, and is these patterns that are picked up by the light-sensitive parts of the eye - and which at this point should be referred to as a "light interference pattern detector." So, the light-sensitive parts of the eye are also light interference patterns.
That reflecting light patterns are the essential ingredient becomes quite clear if you step into a completely darkened room and close the door behind you. Zippo! No interference patterns, no "eye vision."
. . . . .
As step 2, the light-sensitive parts of the eye are not actually "parts," but at least a hundred million light-sensitive cells, each of which, or teams of which, are precisely geared only with regard to this or that particular kind of light within the light-interference patterns.
This is to say that the patterns themselves have now been broken down into a hundred million separate light segments or aspects. Another way of putting this is that the light has now been broken down and divided up into a vast number of extremely minuscule "dots."
. . . . .
As step 3, EACH of the dots is immediately converted into a particular kind of electrical signal pattern, a hundred million of them.
. . . . .
As step 4, all of these minuscule electrical signals are transmitted in a rapid but hyper-organized way via a complicated system of "relay" cells to another complicated set of relay cells alongside the brain-stem.
A complicated set of nomenclature for these relay-transmitting cells has been developed. But basically they belong to the ganglion system of cells, each of which, or sets of which, are interested solely in specific signals. Some of these have to do only with dividing differences of contrasts of light and shade; others have to do with dividing the signals into further categories of color.
. . . . .
As step 5, at this point each of the signal dots have been "cued" as to where they belong and interface among all of the signals.
. . . . .
As step 6, the whole of this is now forwarded or transmitted to the cells of the cortex lining the surface of the back parts of the brain - i.e., transmitted to the back of your "head." The sectors of the cortex having to do only with "vision" are referred to as the visual cortex - even though what we refer to as vision doesn't exactly take place among them.
. . . . .
Even though the mass of signals have arrived at the visual cortex, "vision" does not yet take place.
If all this is complex enough so far, what now takes place gets really complex.
. . . . .
As step 7, the more "simple" cells "respond" to particular simple features of the incoming signals, at which point the signals begin to take on what we refer to as information.
Some of the cells respond to straight lines, curves, given kinds of angles, or a dividing line between areas of light and darkness.
. . . . .
If these have more complex or more specific relationships arrangements, more "complex" counterparts to the "simple" cells are required. The complex cells respond, for example, to given shapes of given colors. Other specializing complex cells are interested in whether no motion is involved or if motion is involved. Some of the complex cells only respond to motion moving to the left; others only to motion moving to the right. Others have to do with up/down motion. And on and on and on. Some cells are interested only in what is signaled is dead or alive.
However, even though the "information" is somewhat organized into "bits" at this point, "image" or "image-perception" does not yet occur.
. . . . .
As step 8, the whole of the output of the simple and complex cells is forwarded to MEMORY STORAGE where, apparently, the bits are compared to bits stored in memory. This process goes on until the incoming bits find a "match" in memory storage, or a "match" that is nearest to/similar to the incoming bits. When compatible bits are located and compared to the incoming bits, what is called "recognition" now begins to take place.
. . . . .
As matches are found, and as step 9, what apparently is somewhat akin to a hologram begins to form, in which all of the incoming bits compatible with memory storage bits are now...
Reconstructed or Fabricated...
into, as step 10, the "image" that is now formed or projected into the hologram - and which in our modern epoch is referred to as "mental image picture."
. . . . .
If all goes well enough from step 1 through step 10, then we have what we mistakenly call "eye vision" - but which, beyond any scientific doubt now, is an interiorily reconstructed "hologram" of some kind - "hologram" being the best term to date. The holograms that don't completely form up (for any number of reasons) are what we call "impressions" in order to distinguish them from an "image."
. . . . .
But there IS one factor that makes it seem there is a one-to-one relationship between the actual object being "seen" and the hologramic reconstruction of it.
This factor is the utterly mind-boggling speed that incorporates steps 1 through 10. Although the speed of the "recognition" sometimes varies in minuscule ways, the whole of all this takes place within nanoseconds or even in fractions of them.
. . . . .
Now, there remain some enormous complexities. The entirety of what happens via steps 1 through 10 is scientifically understood, mapped and predictable.
At least two important factors are yet missing.
. . . . .
1. In spite of the enormous research funds to discover what it is, no one knows what MEMORY is or where it is "stored."
2. Not known either is where the reconstructed holograms form, and why they do.
. . . . .
What IS known, though, is that everything we "perceive," absolutely everything, is "information" that has been reconstructed into formats recognizable only against memory storage.
And what is also known is that step 10 is the LAST step in this processes, not the second step. And whether concerning eye vision or not, everything that manifests in our heads takes place because of all ten steps, whether concerning our ideas, imagination, illusions, concepts, "understanding," and ALL other perceptual whatnot.
. . . . .
When, then, a psychic (or anyone) says they are receiving impressions or images, nothing of the kind is the case. They may indeed be receiving "signals." But the impressions or perceptual images are reconstructions based on (a) the signals that can be matched with (b) similar signals already in memory storage.
If the matches are only partial, then an "impression" results.
If the matches can fit together easy enough, then a perception-image or thought-idea results.
If no matches occur, then whatever the incoming information consists of, it simply drops "out of sight," is not "recognized," or remains invisible not even stimulating fractional conscious awareness. Except regarding that phenomenon we like to call "intuition" - and intuition is most usually spoken of as "feeling," not perception.
. . . . .
It is well worth noting here that "recognize" in its most literal sense actually means to RE cognize something. RE cognize actually means to RE formulate in "the mind." And in fact this is an entirely suitable definition for a perception - something that has been re-constructed so as to be re-recognizable and hence cognizable.
A perception, then, is a re-recognizable formulation made possible by a reconstruction of information - the reconstruction, however, being in accord, and ONLY in accord, with each individual's memory storage.
. . . . .
In any event, what we call "perceptions" don't exist as such. What CAN exist, however, are reformulations and reconstructions of information "in our heads" the end-products of which we call perceptions.
. . . . .
Well, has the foregoing been complicated enough? Wait until you "perceive" what lies ahead in about or four paragraphs.
The Distrust of Perceptions
Very little of the foregoing has dwindled down into general consensus realities (since it can't really be simplified). But the fact that ALL perceptions are NOT direct ones, but ARE indirect reconstructions in and by "the mind," has been scientifically understood for quite some time. And understood as well by scientific intellectuals and philosophers, even in the two decades just prior to the turn of the twentieth century.
From this understanding emerged the mysterious maxims: "One's perceptions are not to be trusted" or, "Don't put too much faith in your own or anyone's perceptions," etc.
These maxims were, and still are, opposed within more fundamental consensus realities by posing the following question: "Well, if we can't trust our perceptions, then what can we trust?"
Since familiar consensus realities incorporate the majority, and even large parts of unsuspecting subgroups, well, the business about "receiving" perceptions goes on as usual.
More Complexities
In an earlier essay, the Patagonian syndrome was reviewed. The source of this syndrome can now somewhat, but possibly not completely, be explained by referring to steps 8 and 9 of the perception-making processes, these steps having to do with matching incoming information to similar elements in memory storage.
. . . . .
The Patagonians literally could not visually see the larger ship anchored out in the harbor.
If the elements of the pre-conscious perception-making processes can be trusted, then one can say that the Patagonians had no memory storage regarding the topics of large, ocean-going vessels.
The incoming information signals then could not be matched to anything in memory storage, and so the signals themselves could not be formatted into images that could achieve conscious awareness.
The shaman remedied this by referring to similar shapes, etc., with which the Patagonians were familiar - which meant he rerouted the invisible and invisibilizing information through information points already in memory storage. This apparently allowed the information processing systems of the Patagonians to remix and rematch - and the BEAGLE faded up into view.
. . . . .
Whether this constituted a conversion of already installed information processing grids or formatted a completely new one is of interest, but somewhat irrelevant to the larger picture - as will be discussed in an essay yet to come in this series. It is far more to the point to consider image stocks in memory and how they are acquired.
Image Stocks In Memory
The general prevailing idea regarding perception is that everyone is capable of "seeing" the same thing, at least relatively speaking.
But the evidence is very good regarding two factors that are always pertinent:
1. What is in stock in memory is very likely to consist of a "dictionary of possibilities" or "slide library" intimately associated not with one's mind potentials, but with one's conceptualizing LANGUAGE basis. As the little-known French philosopher and student of perception puts it: ". . . it is from an electrical pattern taken from this personal slide-library that, with only marginal amendments, eventually appears in your 'mind's eye'."
2. On the other hand, what is not in stock in the memory library is quite likely not to have a linguistic nomenclature, but will also result in invisibility of information.
. . . . .
Our nomenclature stock is established and maintained by the consensus realities that do so - with the exception of "street-talk" and fashionable but unofficial ways of referring to something. For example, "vibe sensing," and to "psyche out" someone or something.
These two unofficial nomenclature bits represent quite valid potentials, but usually it isn't realized that the end-products of these also will consist of reconstructions, not direct one-on-one perceptions.
. . . . .
Anyhow, to get more directly to the point, we have already reviewed the issue of SNOW. Can you identify ten types of snow?
In English we refer to a camel and know what THAT creature is, a camel, right? Well, we do have in our memory slide-libraries two stored images of a camel. And so when we see one of the creatures or hear a camel mentioned either of the two electrical patterns taken from our slide-library will appear in our minds' eyes.
The first stored image will be of a camel; the second, less official image, will be of "humping" - whatever that means to any given individual - because camels have humps and also hump all the time.
. . . . .
In the case of Bedouins, however, the sight of or reference to a camel can trigger off any one of dozens of different mental images. These correspond to a consensus reality containing different Arabic words corresponding to different types of camels, their age, size, sex, whether they spit a lot or not, whether their temperaments are agreeable for human usage, what their droppings can be used for, their different kinds of stubbornness, and so forth.
Yet, in English-speaking realities, a camel is a camel, except of course in those sciences which map the distinctions among them.
. . . . .
And what of clouds? Can you identify ten types of them? An experienced and learned meteorologist sees as many as he has names for. To most Americans, all Chinese look alike at first, as do Americans to Chinese. These Chinese however can identify as many types of Chinese as there are provinces.
Formatting A Concept-Making/Image-Making Memory Library
In the light of all the foregoing, perception is not perception, but the result or end product of all those non-conscious processes that end up with what we call "perception" - and the whole of which is not anything direct, but rather a re-experiencing made possible by one central factor. Memory comparisons. And the whole of this is so complex that we will dissect its most important pieces via essays ahead.
Neurobiologists and neuropsychologists are somewhat agreed that there are at least three major kinds of memory formatting, each of which is complex enough, but each of which can be described in general.
1. Universal memory formatting, "universal" meaning present in everyone. This, however, does not mean intellectual or experiential acquisition. Rather it refers to a type of memory that seems inherent at the species level, is somehow genetically transmitted. It forms the general basis, for example, of general if simple recognition of external factors, all languages, and the inherent pattern in each individual to format a basic memory library in the first place.
It is out of this formatting that our general "perceptions" can be reconstituted and reconstructed so as to take on concept-image formats.
The basic distinction of this memory formatting is that it is NOT acquired after birth. It is inherent at birth.
2. The first level of acquired memory formatting is based on experiencing, on what happens to us after birth, providing the experiencing "stimuli" are strong enough and repeated enough. Experiencing is usually encoded into memory storage as emotions or emotional content, and usually divided into two basic sub-formats: painful and pleasurable.
3. The second level of acquired memory formatting is achieved, if it is, via learning about something indirectly. The first step in this formatting apparently has to do with cloning the language of one's environment, and which means cloning not only the nomenclature but its meanings assigned by the consensus reality involved. If the language basis cloned itself consists only of over-simplifications, then these too will be what is cloned. In any event, whatever IS cloned seems to be entered quite easily into permanent memory storage - and for better or worse.
. . . . .
It is the two levels of acquired memory, largely of and via the emotions and intellect, which can be a help or a hindrance regarding many things and many matters. For they are largely responsible for what is or is not recognized or recognizable.
. . . . .
With regard to the central topic of this series of essays, the faculties of the superpowers apparently belong not to any format of acquired memory, but to the general and inherent species memory.
All the evidence in this regard is very strong
One of the most fundamental clues is that the superpowers often spontaneous emerge into activity and then resubmerge regardless of any acquired experience or learning.
. . . . .
Two other clues are also available, if time is taken to notice them.
Acquired experiential memory can either reinforce or negate contact with the superpower faculties, depending on how, to what degree, and within whatever consensus reality environment they are experienced.
Acquired learning memory via the intellect can also reinforce or negate them, depending on whether such learning can be conceptually engineered to match the inherent structure of the faculties, or if such learning induces conceptual displacement or cognitive noise regarding the inherent structure, thereby causing malfunction or cognitive invisibility.
. . . . .
In any event, at their most basic levels of activity, all three of the memory formatting categories enumerated above appear to be NOT matters of "perception" in the first, most primary instance. Perception can be the RESULT of all three separately or combined. But, and as the maxim goes, if one works only with and via results, then one has put the cart before the horse. Horses don't push carts.
. . . . .
At base, all three of the major categories (there are many other sub-categories) regarding the all-important memory "library" are information processing and information transfer categories.
This clearly implies that each specimen born of our species is an information processing being, body, mind, experiencer, receiver, entity, evolutionary product, spirit, soul, idiot, genius, or whatever one wants to IMAGE.
. . . . .
Since this is abundantly the case, we will temporary leave behind the bedraggled term "perception" for a while, and turn much needed attention to information theory and information transfer processes and their problem.
(End of Part 3)
TOWARD ACTIVATING
THE SUPERPOWERS OF THE
HUMAN BIOMIND
Ingo Swann (01Mar97)
PART 4:
INFORMATION, INFORMATION THEORY
AND INFORMATION TRANSFER
If we think in terms of PERCEPTION, then we are most likely to think in terms of THINGS - because things are what we perceive and have mental-image pictures of stored in our memory library. The incoming signals through the eye are processed as signals through a number of systems before they end up as thing-images.
It is relatively certain that our "understanding" processes undergo something quite similar, if not identical.
. . . . .
When we think in terms of THINGS, then we think in terms of objects, their shapes, sizes, colors, their meaning as an IT. We also think in terms of the distances between objects, their placement with regard to each other.
If we think of subjects or topics, we do so by first converting them into an IT-THING: for example, consider biology. IT is a science, as most know whether they know anyTHING more about IT.
. . . . .
The most fundamental basis of most consensus realities consists of IT-THINGS, and the most essential nomenclature utilized is set up to identify it-things. And this is the case even regarding philosophical abstractions, which, too, are it-things - e.g., IT is an abstraction whatever IT is .
. . . . .
The general purpose of the first organized psychical research organizations set up during the 1880s was to witness, inspect, identify, separate and categorize what later came to be called "paranormal" phenomena.
But in order to proceed, the phenomena first had to be given identifiers, and which turned the phenomena into IT-THINGS. "IT is clairvoyance," for example. "IT is levitation," "IT is mediumship," "IT is thought-transference" (a term-concept later replaced by "IT is telepathy"), and finally "IT is psychic" whatever it is .
. . . . .
Phenomena are not just phenomena, but different kinds of them, and which need to be differentiated, distinguished and identified one from another. But sometimes this differentiation doesn't work very well if one doesn't really understand what IT is in the first place.
For example, in spite of about 100 years to do so, exceedingly great confusions continue to persist in making differentiation between clairvoyance and telepathy.
. . . . .
But generally speaking, differentiation is achieved by making an IT out of different kinds of phenomena and then assigning a nomenclature bit (or byte) in order to talk or write about any of them. When this is accomplished, we can thenceforth "know" what is being referred to because it has been rendered into an IT-IS kind of THING.
. . . . .
The first essential goal of organized parapsychology (circa the 1930s) was not only to inspect ESP phenomena, but to do so only within the parameters of recognized and approved scientific methods.
Extra-sensory perception (ESP) was an it-identifier of "perceptions" that could not be attributed to any of the five physical senses, and so it could be said those perceptions were external to or outside the physical senses.
. . . . .
To test for the presence of ESP in given individuals or subjects, "targets" were utilized, and there came into existence standardized forms of targets (among them the famous Zener cards) which mostly consisted of pictures of geometric shapes or colors. A "target" is always an IT.
The goal of the testing was to determine if the subjects could perceive the "targets" via senses other than the physical five.
The targets, of course, were IT-THINGS - expressed as "It is a circle," "It is a square," or "IT (the target) is the wavy lines."
. . . . .
Now, in the "universe" of IT-THINK, there is only one basic way to judge "success" - whether one perceives-sees IT or doesn't see IT.
Thus, the parapsychology ESP subjects either "got the target" or didn't get it." Or, "hit" the target, or "missed" it.
. . . . .
As we shall see in later essays, the "hit-miss" paradigm that arose in parapsychology led to some rather dreadful situations regarding comprehension, morale and defeatism.
But nonetheless it was a perfectly logical approach within the contexts of IT-THING-THINK, and which contexts are universal everywhere and in all cultures.
. . . . .
The concepts of PERCEPTION are intimately and permanently linked to IT-THINGS, because if you examine any of them very carefully one can only perceive an IT. And even then, as has been reviewed in Part 3, the IT-PERCEPTION is a mental-image reconstruction, the sum of which is of the perceiver, and not exactly of the IT itself.
. . . . .
It is worth the time to review a few of the numerous definitions of THING:
a separate and distinct individual quality, fact, idea, concept or entity;
a material or substance of a given kind;
a piece of information or news;
an event, deed, act or circumstance;
a state of affairs in general, or within a specific or implied sphere.
. . . . .
The five definitions of THING given above can and do account for almost, but not quite, everything - and which is why we refer to everything AS every-thing. And so our perceptions are geared to perceive, identify, and discriminate among THINGS - and which then emerge in conscious awareness as reconstructed images.
. . . . .
There is absolutely nothing wrong with basic IT-THINK, and indeed it permits survival on about a 90 per cent basis - except when there are holes or gaps in it.
. . . . .
But IT-IS gaps can be somewhat corrected within the contexts of consensus realities in that IT-IS perception that is consistent with consensus reality is considered proper or successful perception, while perception that is not is considered improper or aberrant-undesirable - or at least non-conforming.
. . . . .
In general, however, any gap-difficulties along these lines are sort of smoothed over in that the nomenclature of a given consensus reality is the concepto-nomenclature everyone within it speaks and writes with - and tends to think with, too.
. . . . .
Just outside the enormous, collective IT-THINK syndromes of our species is a slightly different THINK format.
This "level" of thinking has to do with RELATIONSHIPS between and among IT-THINGS.
Identifying it-things, and identifying them as it-things, only goes so far, although that process is entirely serviceable to a certain degree.
. . . . .
One can identify it-things, endlessly so, but only because they become perceptually concrete in some form - even an idea takes on a sort of concrete-ness if it becomes shared and approved of.
. . . . .
Relationships among it-things, however, are usually of a far different matter because, in the first instance, they have to be deduced. For example, the relationship between hydrogen atoms and hydrogen bombs is not readily apparent, and thus had to be deduced before it became identifiable.
. . . . .
This is to point up that although the arrangement of IT-THINK to IT-THINGS is usually on a one-to-one basis, the arrangement of IT-THINK to relationships among and between IT-THINGS is not on any kind of one-to-one basis - excepting the most gross and familiar samples of it.
The reason for this difficulty is that relationships between it-things can be many and varied and include anything from the imaginable to the unimaginable, from the boring to the fantastic.
. . . . .
Another difficulty arises because once IT-THINK becomes properly installed it tends to run on automatic with the mind-boggling speed encountered in Part 3 regarding the basic ten-step processes of perception.
. . . . .
DEDUCTIVE-THINK regarding relationships, however, usually never runs on automatic unless the deductions have themselves been pre-reduced to common understanding, at which time those particular deductions have taken on the clothing of IT-THINK.
. . . . .
Relationships of it-things to one another can be explicit or implicit, with the explicit ones being easier to identify, this type of thing usually being referred to as logic.
. . . . .
Implicit relationships, however, are identified as such because there is very little in the way of objective or explicit cues involved.
Thus, the deducing (detecting) of implicit relationships can escape the deductive processes of almost everyone - with the exception of those who somehow chance to "notice" them.
And those who DO notice them are quite likely to be attributed as intuitives. And, indeed, if it were up to me, I'd itemize the deduction of implicits as the basic and most broadly-shared type of intuition's many other types. And here is a basic clue regarding "enhancing" one's intuition - by first enhancing one's deductive processes regarding implicit relationships.
As it is in our present consensus reality, we reinforce the processes regarding explicit relationships, but pay very little attention to strengthening the much more wide parameters of implicit relationships.
. . . . .
One of the more recent definitions of "genius" is that a genius is one "who sees what others cannot." Although this clearly involves a lot of factors, the deducing of implicit relationships probably is fundamental here - since most rely on explicit rather than on implicit deducing.
. . . . .
Now to move speedily on.
The relationship, for example, between ESP and perception seems explicit enough, and therefore seems logical - especially when a long line of "psychics" say "I perceive" thus and so.
They are correct in saying that they do perceive. But what they perceive is in fact whatever has been processed through their perception-making systems, the sum of these processes being the perception.
And as we have seen these end products are not at all one-to-one images. And so what they report "seeing" may or may not correspond with the actual facts or conditions of what they have "seen" as perceptions.
. . . . .
This is a situation that has not gone unrecognized in parapsychology.
In testing for ESP, researchers encounter many more "misses" than "hits" and the frequency of the misses has condensed into the theory of "Psi-missing." It is thought that Psi-missing is somehow related to "avoidance" of the "target," and as such constitutes some kind of unidentified psychological factors.
. . . . .
You see, "paraPSYCHOLOGY" is, after all, majorly conceived of as a branch of psychology - not as a branch of perception study. And when it was understood by the rest of science that "perceptions" mostly consisted of "cognitive" versus physiological factors, perception, too, began to be thought of as predominantly having a psychological basis.
. . . . .
In any event, ESP and perception of IT targets are thought to go hand-in-hand, and all explicit and implicit considerations along these lines are shared not only in parapsychology, but throughout science, philosophy, and in our present general consensus realities as well.
. . . . .
Furthermore, the web of Psi-Perceptions is linked throughout by the IT-making nomenclature commonly utilized.
If, then, one refers to Psi or ESP, it is automatically understood everywhere that you are referring to special formats of perception that have been assigned IT nomenclature: psychic, clairvoyance, telepathy, intuition, and etc.
It is even commonly understood that "special" refers NOT to perception per se, but to the unusual other-than-sensory ways it is achieved - if and when it is achieved.
. . . . .
Well, this "prevailing paradigm," as it should properly be termed, has actually prevailed for about 100 years, and has been unsuccessfully approached and tested in the light of every angle conceivable.
The only thing that has been achieved is to document beyond any shadow of doubt that ESP processes do exist, but whose presence by parapsychological methodologies are found at only very low statistical levels (which will be discussed in a later essay).
. . . . .
So, "psychic" perceptions have been tested for from every angle possible - which is to say, very angle consistent with the prevailing consensus reality hypotheses that ESP and Perception are interrelated both explicitly and implicitly, so much so that you can't have the one without the other.
. . . . .
But what if this consensus reality concept isn't complete enough? In other words, what if it has a "gaping hole" in its interconnecting line-up of conceptualizing - one of those invisible gaping holes that are not at all obvious because the apparent picture seems complete and logical enough?
. . . . .
And what if what is needed to fill this hole has been around for about fifty or more years, but has been excluded because the prevailing concepts are considered sufficient unto themselves? And because if the needed factors were to be included, the entire consensus making nomenclature appropriate to Psi-Perceptions would either explode or be useless and vacated.
. . . . .
This would mean that everyone has cloned the wrong stuff, so to speak, and what they have cloned in this regard has been acting as mental information processing viruses all along.
Ye gads! This would imply a radical reality shift - one which, in its first instance, would big-time EMBARRASS those possessed of the cloned viruses - not only in parapsychology, but in science and philosophy as well, to say nothing of the consensus realities involved.
Information
The essential definitions of the verb TO INFORM, and the noun INFORMATION, never have been ambiguous, but quite precise and clear.
. . . . .
INFORM is said to have been derived from the Latin verb INFORMARE from IN + FORMA.
However, the Latin FORMA was a noun, and even though the preposition of IN is added to it, it still remains a noun. And nouns, of course, refer to and are meant to identify it-things, not activities which verbs indicate.
. . . . .
FORMA referred to the shape and structure of something as distinguished from its material or constituent parts.
The preposition IN refers to inclusion of some kind, most usually a spatial inclusion, but also inclusion in something that does not have spatial-material form such as belief, faith, opinion or assumption (i.e., in the faith, only in belief, in his or her opinion or assumption, etc., and of course, IN his or her conception or misconception.)
. . . . .
The key concept of FORMA refers to shape and structure, and so INFORM refers to what has structural shape, has taken on structural shape, or been put into structural shape.
So, technically speaking INFORM remains a noun with regard to whatever form a form is in, becoming a verb only when referring to an activity which puts something into shape-structure.
. . . . .
In English, however, IN + FORM as referring to structural shape has been used only rarely, this meaning having early been replaced with the concept of MESSAGES - meaning that messages convey information, and that information is used to convey messages.
If the above seems mildly confusing, it's because it is . So don't worry too much at this point.
You see, on the receiver's part, the actual message is what one deduces from the words (or "signals") which the sender believed represented the message he or she was trying to send. This "process" takes a good deal of "encoding" on the sender's part and a good deal of "decoding" on the receiver's part. But I digress.
. . . . .
Additionally, when we think of something formed we tend to think in terms of FORM only, not that something has PUT whatever it is INTO form or format.
. . . . .
I now caution each who chances to read the above to slow down, focus a little, and notice two important factors:
1. that there is a vast and very incompatible raw difference between messages and the structure and shape of something; and
2. when we think of form as form, we tend to think of it as an IT object or subject, not as something which has been brought into or put into form by various shape-making, structure-making processes of some kind.
In other words, something which is formed or has achieved form is the RESULT of whatever has caused it to take on shape-structure.
. . . . .
In English, then, the concept of "into form" has been dropped or vacated, and so we tend not to think in terms of how and why something has come into whatever form it has.
But this is somewhat typical of English nomenclature, which tends to IT-identify end products as things in themselves, not as the result of processes - which is to say, formative processes that have to be structural in order to arrive at any given in-formed state.
This is best perceived not via words, but by a diagram. I'll provide one in the context of a more refined essay further on. But anyone can make one for themselves by diagramming how an IT does take on form.
. . . . .
To help in enhancing clarity here, when we think of those superpower faculties that result in some kind of clairvoyance, we tend to think the images the clairvoyant "sees" ARE the clairvoyance.
I.e., he or she "sees" things that others don't, and by means other's don't have active - hence the clairvoyant angle. We mistake WHAT the clairvoyant sees as the clairvoyance, and fail to notice that the informative processes which permit the seeing are the real clairvoyance.
. . . . .
In other words, into-form-making PROCESSES always precede the resulting images.
Thus, if clairvoyance is possible, the IN + FORM clairvoyance-making processes pre-exist what they yield - for what they yield is what the clairvoyant sees. If the processes are not active, then the clairvoyant will not see anything.
If we compare this to perception-making processes, we know that the perceptions are the sum result of whatever they have been processed through. The superpower faculties apparently "work" in the same exact way.
. . . . .
It is interesting, and important, to trace the ENGLISH etymologies of INFORM and INFORMATION. The OXFORD DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE summarizes when and under what conditions English nomenclature can be noted as first in use.
. . . . .
With regard to INFORM, the OXFORD identifies the primary ancient Latin sense of INFORMARE (to give form to, shape or fashion), but notes: "The primary sense had undergone various developments in ancient and medieval Latin, and in French, before the word appeared in English."
This is a clever way of saying that when INFORM came into English usage it did not mean putting into a form.)
. . . . .
This appearance in English seems to have taken place during the 1300s, but seems more than anything else to have referred to "formative principle, or formative character."
. . . . .
Used in this sense, the first ENGLISH uses of INFORM were probably drawn from French rather than directly from Latin.
It is certain that the word INFORMATION is drawn from French, not directly from Latin. Its first usage's in English, again during the 1300s, are exactly those of the French:
"The action of informing [specifically as] forming or molding of the mind or character, training, teaching or instructing; communicating of instructive knowledge."
. . . . .
In this sense, then, from French into English, INFORMATION referred to mind-shaping, out of which would emerge "character" - such having been a particularly French preoccupation ever since.
. . . . .
After this shift in usage-meaning, in English INFORMATION then appears to have separated into two components, both utilizing the same nomenclature term, INFORMATION.
. . . . .
The first component remained the same, almost up until the 1930s when it began to be identified as "mind-programming."
. . . . .
The second component had to do with providing evidence, either for or against someone, and usually the latter regarding criminal court cases, heresy examinations and trials.
It would appear that "evidence" found acceptable or logical in the light of certain consensus realities was accepted as "information" - while "evidence" found unacceptable was rejected as something else.
. . . . .
INFORMATION was still being thought of in exactly this way among the world's intelligence agencies and systems when I chanced to fall into the government-sponsored "Psi-spy" research project at Stanford Research Institute in 1972.
Also, during that same epoch, the then hopeful and exceedingly well-funded realm of "scientific" futurology (now generally defunct) also had adapted to this same concept of information, and was being tortured by it - which is to say, adapted to the concept that information consists only of whatever is found acceptable, or logical within a given consensus reality.
. . . . .
"Consensus reality," however, was considered by futurologists to consist of the majority opinion of "informed specialists" and/or their vote. Since majority opinions can be wrong at least as often as right, one does wonder how futurology every got off the ground. However, one doesn't need to wonder why it "failed."
. . . . .
During the 1600s, and specifically as the result of certain Renaissance activities, a new concept-context regarding INFORMATION was added into this or that drift of meanings.
The earliest noted uses of this meaning occurred about 1649, and we find the gist of this meaning more or less unchanged in WEBSTER'S of 1828, the original edition of the first American dictionary of the English language.
In that dictionary this meaning is given as the FIRST meaning of INFORM. And I quote:
"INFORM, verb transitive: - Properly, to give form or shape to, but in this sense NOT USED. [Emphasis added.]
"1. To animate; to give life to; to activate by vital powers.
"2. To instruct; to tell to; to acquaint; to communicate knowledge to; to make known to by word or writing."
"INFORM, verb intransitive: - To give intelligence, as in: 'He might either teach in the same manner, or inform how he had been taught.' And: "To inform against, to communicate facts by way of accusation."
"INFORMATION:
"1. Intelligence via notice, news or advice communicated by word or writing.
"2. Knowledge derived from reading or instruction.
"3. Knowledge derived from the senses or from the operation of the intellectual faculties.
"4. Communication of facts for the purpose of accusation."
. . . . .
As of 1828, then, long gone is the concept of IN + FORMA, as is indicated by WEBSTER'S 1828 itself - and not reactivated until the advent of Information Theory, as will be discussed ahead (save to mention here that information theory cannot survive without that concept.)
. . . . .
In WEBSTER'S 1828, the first definition of INFORM - to animate; to give life to; actuate [i.e., activate] by vital powers - reflects the central hypothesis of VITALISM, which we have already encountered.
However, the term VITAL-ISM apparently had not evolved as of 1828, since it is not given in that same dictionary. (The concept of an ism itself seems to have surfaced only in about the 1780s.)
. . . . .
However, a brief review of this topic is important - because there are significant links between essential vitalism, information, and activation of the superpower faculties. (An individual essay regarding vitalism will be provided within this series of essays.)
. . . . .
You see, IF information (intelligence) is accurate enough, it is broadly accepted that it can activate or vitalize activity, and which would be akin to animating or reanimating them.
On the other hand, if information (intelligence) is cluttered with information viruses, one would not normally expect activation. Rather, one would anticipate de-activation, or devitalization - and which, if it could happen, would result in all sorts of de-evolutionary stuff.
. . . . .
VITALISM was crushed and beat into non-existence about 1920, at which time the consensus realities of philosophical materialism acquired the contexts of science proper and thenceforth prevailed. And any science based in philosophical materialism simply has to be an IT-MAKING science.
. . . . .
Prior to that, philosophical vitalism (technically in existence roughly since about 1533 during the Renaissance) and philosophical materialism (technically in existence since about 1845) had been seen as sister sciences.
The advocates of the two philosophical orientations were soon antagonistic to each other. An enormous conflict, now quite forgotten, ensued, lasted for about eighty years, with the materialists being the ultimate victors. Vitalism was snuffed in academia, and references to it were deleted from consensus reality sources which then prevailed as logical and rational.
. . . . .
In spite of all the philosophical imbroglios that are brought forth to explain the victory, the actual reason is quite simple.
By 1920, the material sciences had demonstrated they could produce products of enormous, even fabulous economic value. The vitalism sciences did not produce much of economic meaning. Funding therefore went to the material sciences. End of that story.
. . . . .
There were two essential definitions regarding vitalistic principles, to which a number of other concepts were derived. Be sure that I am not digressing or drifting here.
1. That the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from physical-chemical forces;
2. That the processes of life are not explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry alone - and that life is in some part self-determining and self-informing.
Please read self-informing as IN + FORM, meaning self-making into form.
. . . . .
For conceptual clarity, any use of the term VITAL within vitalism's contexts should immediately be replaced with ANIMATING - at least to discriminate between animate and inanimate conditions.
. . . . .
In the end, all of the nomenclature that might be associable to vitalism and/or its two essential concepts was stringently, and with something akin to a vengeance, expunged from modernist consensus reality-making literature. Any even glancing reference to those terms was enough to occasion loss of professional standing, potential funding, and etc.
Thus, cutting-edge scientists have to walk gingerly, and talk around such concepts if and when they chance to encounter any possibility of their real existence.
. . . . .
In any event, this brief review of the etymological history of INFORM and INFORMATION indicates that only one concept of them prevails, the concept that information is what one reads and learns from.
We can note, too, that two important concepts have more or less fallen into disuse and oblivion: IN + FORMA, and INFORM as it relates to animating principles.
And it is in this consensus reality condition that information theory arose.
Information Theory
So, what IS information theory?
And why might it be of fundamental importance with regard to activating (vitalizing) the superpower faculties?
. . . . .
Most sources dealing with information theory are somewhat or completely inaccessible (unintelligible) to those who haven't developed the mental information processing grids or nomenclature to deal with it.
However, THE NEW COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPEDIA (1975) has a rather neat rendering, at least as regards the early developmental hypotheses.
. . . . .
The theory is indicated as a mathematical one, principally formulated as of 1948 by the American scientist Claude E. Shannon, to explain aspects and problem of information and communication ("communication" later being thought of as information-transfer, especially in the psychoenergetic research of the former USSR.)
. . . . .
The entry in the encyclopedia is worth quoting in its entirety, and I'll do this first.
I caution you not to get confused if you don't understand parts or all of it.
After quoting it, I'll lift out the signal, easy to conceptualize, part and clarify it with respect to opening new cognitive channels toward activating the superpowers.
. . . . .
I never recommend anything, but sometimes I "suggest." If you have any desire at all to approach an activation of any of the superpowers, I suggest you pay serious attention to the quoted materials below, even to the point of memorizing them (i.e., installing them quite firmly in your memory library.)
. . . . .
One preliminary note, though. Shannon et. al. seized upon the term ENTROPY and included it in the discursive part of the theory. This is a term properly belonging to thermodynamics, and has otherwise since been defined in a number of different ways. In information theory it means "noise," and so I'll replace "entropy" with noise, indicating that I did so.
Synopsis of the 1948 Information Theory
"In this theory, the term INFORMATION is used in a special sense; it a measure of the freedom of choice with which a message is selected from the set of all possible messages.
"Information is thus distinct from meaning, since it is entirely possible for a string of nonsense words and a meaningful sentence to be equivalent with respect to information content.
"Numerically, information is measured [via the theory] in BITS (short for binary digit; see Binary System.)
"One bit is equivalent to the choice between two equally likely choices. For example, if we know that a coin is to be tossed but are unable to see it as it falls, a message telling whether the coin came up heads or tails gives us one bit of information.
"When there are several equally likely choices, the number of bits is equal to the logarithm of the number of choices taken to the base two. For example, if a message specifies one of sixteen equally likely choices, it is said to contain four bits of information.
"When the various choices are not equally possible, the situation is more complex.
"Interestingly, the mathematical expression for information content closely resembles the expression for ENTROPY in thermodynamics. The greater the information in a message, the lower its randomness, or 'noisiness,' and hence the smaller its entropy [i.e., the smaller its noise content.]
"Often, because of constraints such as grammar [language, and the way it is expressed], a source does not use its full range of choice. A source that uses just 70% of its freedom of choice would be said to have a relative noise ratio [entropy] of 0.7. The redundancy of such a source is defined as 100% minus the relative entropy, or, in this case, 30% [meaning 30% message-signal adulterated by 70% noise].
"The redundancy of English is about 50%; i.e., about half of the elements used in writing or speaking are freely chosen, and the rest are required by the structure of the language.
"A message proceeds along some channel from the source to the receiver. Information theory defines for any given channel a limiting capacity or rate at which it can carry information, expressed in bits per second.
"In general, it is necessary to process, or encode, information from a source before transmitting it through a given channel.
"For example, a human voice must be encoded before it can be transmitted by radio.
"An important theorem of information theory states that if a source with a given entropy feeds information to a channel with a given capacity, and if the noise in the source is less than the channel capacity, a code exists for which the frequency of errors may be reduced as low as desired.
"If the channel capacity is less than the noise source, no such code exists.
"The theory further shows that noise, or random disturbance of the channel, creates uncertainty as to the correspondence between the received signal and the signal transmitted.
"The average uncertainty in the message when the signal is known is called the equivocation.
"It is shown that the net effect of noise is to reduce the information capacity of the channel. However, redundancy in a message, as distinguished from redundancy in a source, makes it more likely that the message can be reconstituted at the receiver without error.
"For example, if something is already known as a certainty, then all messages about it give no information and are 100% redundant, and the information is thus immune to any disturbances of the channel.
"Using various mathematical means, Shannon was able to define channel capacity for continuous signals, such a music and speech.
"While the theory is not specific in all respects, it proves the existence of optimum coding schemes without showing how to find them. For example, it succeeds remarkably in outlining the engineering requirements of communication systems and the limitations of such systems." SEE C. E. Shannon and Warren Weaver, THE MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION (1949).
Formats of (or regarding) Information
When we begin to think of what information IS, most of us probably will think it is what we hear or read in some kind of printed or visual format. We think this because this concept "dwells" in consensus realities as such, and we have cloned it quite nicely. And from any number of aspects that concept is serviceable - as far as it goes.
But. By the time "information" reaches a spoken, printed or visual format, it is an end-product of the processes which have organized and produced it in those formats.
Nonetheless, this end-product can act as a "source" of information and we can more or less duplicate it in our own heads.
. . . . .
"Duplicate," of course, means reproduce or copy it into our own heads, the ostensible goal being to understand it. In this sense, then, the information we in-put into our heads has been CONVEYED by the spoken, printed or visual format.
After the in-put, however, the "conveyance" of the information continues getting into our heads by being filtered through the mental information processing grids of the recipient. The grids are extensions of the memory library earlier referred to.
. . . . .
In THIS processes, the "information" will ultimately reach steps 8 and 9 of the perceptual processes. Meaning that the "information" that finally comes out as understanding will be the sum of the in-put plus whatever the in-put gets filtered through in the case of each individual.
If matches to the in-put "information content" are found in the memory library, THEN a kind of duplication can take place. The duplication is called "understanding."
. . . . .
But if matches are not found, then the information content probably will be routed through the nearest similarity in the memory library. In this case, we are now one-step or more removed from duplication (and removed from "complete understanding.")
If no matches are found, then the recipient of the in-put information content will "draw a blank" - for example, regarding twelve types of snow, camels, telepathy or clairvoyance.
. . . . .
In other words, INFORMATION is what we understand, even if only in a partial way. If the in-put does not result in "understanding," then it is NOT information.
Information Transfer
The whole of the above, and its obvious problem areas, is what some information theorists refer to as the information transfer process.
One of the central concepts of information theory is that all information is available all of the time.
Some of the theorists mitigate this all-inclusive concept by saying that information sources are everywhere.
Others opine that information can be drawn from everything and anything.
. . . . .
In the sense of all of the above, the EXISTENCE of information is not in question. What is problematical, in big-time ways, is the TRANSFER of it into a system wherein it can be duplicated, misduplicated, or blanked out.
In the sense of the human, the prevailing consensus reality concepts usually hold that the "system" being referred to is "the mind" and its mental information processes.
. . . . .
"The mind," however, when spoken of this way is applicable as a generality to every human specimen, and which is good enough for a theory.
In matters of actual PERFORMANCE, though, the "individual mind" should be substituted for the all-inclusive generality - because even if information does exist everywhere, it is the individual mind that produces duplication, misduplication, or the blanking out, and which in turn result in understanding, misunderstanding, or nothing at all.
. . . . .
Please note that the term PERFORMANCE has been emphasized above because it is entirely relevant toward activating the superpowers, "activating" having to do with performance. And here I foreshadow a topic that will require at least two essays among those several more to come.
Information Signals
Information transfers via speech, print or in visual formats, actually contain two MODES or MODULATIONS of information content.
But to get at this, it must FIRST be comprehended that the words of speech or writing/print the images, charts, etc., of the visual formats are NOT the information content itself, but merely symbols and signs for it.
In this sense, the symbols and signs are the OBJECTIVE "carriers" of the information content - which is to say that they are SIGNALS that will stimulate duplication of the content simply because the receivers associate MEANING to the signals - IF the meanings of the signals are shared in common.
If the meanings are not shared among the recipients, then the signals will be "inaccessible" to all those who do not.
. . . . .
And here is one of the most apparent bases for language and its concepto-nomenclature - to establish a shared and sharable basis for the sending and receiving of information content.
This is to say that pre-set meanings are encoded into nomenclature and images, and the consensus reality learning networks transfer the encoded meanings into the memory storage of their citizens so that there can be a mutual basis of information transfer and exchange. An intrasocial collective or group is thus formatted regarding transfer of information within it.
. . . . .
The best pre-set words or images to effect this information transfer unity are those that have precise meanings encoded into them, since the meaning-information-content can be "recognized" most easily.
. . . . .
Any increasing permutations of meanings regarding a given information transfer signal tend to decrease the cohesion of the unity within the collective, and tend to permit distortions of meaning within individuals.
. . . . .
One would therefore think that precise and exact meanings for signals would be stringently established by social consensus necessity. And indeed this IS the case where an absolute need to do so is apparent, the "need" being intimately related to performance, and especially where it is found to be dangerous not to be precise.
For example, no one becomes an electrician based only on the general consensus reality that electricity lights up bulbs and turns the toaster on.
A suitable and precise nomenclature has to be evolved and become shared among potential electricians - or else they can get fried all too easily. Airline pilots can not become one simply because airplanes fly. Arctic people cannot deal with snow simply if it is snow, and Arab Bedouins will be out-maneuvered in the economics of the camel market if they think a camel is a camel.
. . . . .
However, within any given social unity where there is no perceived absolute need to INCREASE nomenclature, that kind of effort is not usually undertaken - because the average citizen within the unity, and with regard to average performance within it, can function quite well via a lesser rather than an increase in signal-carrying nomenclature.
And, to begin with, the so-called average citizen probably won't ever "acquire" a nomenclature in terms of quantity that extends beyond his or her recognized need to do so, or beyond what it takes to fit into the consensus reality they desire to fit into (or, sometimes, are trapped within.)
. . . . .
So the average citizen within any given consensus reality had no explicit or necessary need to add more specific nomenclature; but there is also a need not to have too little, either.
The way this is apparently resolved is to establish a number of IT-IDENTIFIERS that do not require much further break-apart into it-TYPES, into increasing refinement of comprehensions of types of something, and which would require the increase of nomenclature.
In this way, then, people who do not need to use different types of snow for survival can be content with snow as something that falls in winter and needs to be shoveled when it interferes with traffic or might crush the roof in. So, among such people, SNOW is snow. It is a perfectly good information signal, and the need for any increasingly refined differentiation beyond that probably has to do only with amounts of it.
. . . . .
So, among such people "SNOW" is a "clean" and "clear" signal regarding information transfer, whereas among the Arctic peoples barely fifty years ago it would have been as "noisy" as Times Square at New Year's Eve.
In much the same way, people who don't realize that different types of clairvoyance exist will not have any need to identify them - meaning that the single use of this one nomenclature signal is perceived by them to be sufficient.
But not to anyone who wants to learn how to be clairvoyant. The best instructors of clairvoyance I am familiar with have to begin, as they do, by breaking the single concept apart, at least into "aspects" of clairvoyance.
. . . . .
So, here we now approach the concept of "clear" and "noisy" signals, this concept revolving around whether or not the carrier (word or image) of a signal is a precise, thus a clean one, or whether it induces noise into the signal load.
. . . . .
And it is at this point that the essential problems of information transfer integrate with the basic information theory offered up by Shannon in 1948, the basic problem regarding information transfer OF ANY KIND having to do with the ratio between "signal" and "noise."
Please note that in preparation for this series of essays, an earlier essay dealing exclusively with the SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO has been available in this database for several months. That essay can now be appended to this series' essays as Part 4A.
Information Noise
As stipulated within information theory by Shannon, a message (information content) proceeds along some channel from the source to the receiver.
In line with our interests, information is in-put via some kind of "channel" to the receiver, who then out-put it in terms of information encoded into concept-nomenclature for further information transfer.
But the in-put itself is an information transfer from "a source" wherever or whatever it might consist of.
. . . . .
We are thus dealing with TWO information transfers:
(a) the in-put transfer, and
(b) the out-put transfer.
Between (a) and (b), however, is "a channel," and after (b) is concluded another "channel" is necessary to further accomplish an information transfer.
. . . . .
So we can think in terms of the in-put channel and the out-put channel, the in-put channel having to do with reception of the information, the out-put one having to do with what we call "communication."
. . . . .
In the human sense of all of this, the out-put transfer (the "communicating") must first be encoded into concepto-nomenclature that can be transferred to others simply because their mental information processing equipment is already encoded to receive and duplicate it.
All of this seems clear enough, doesn't it.
. . . . .
However, there is one serious glitch. You see, the in-put transfer ALSO has to be processed INTO the same mental information processing equipment in order that it CAN be "received."
. . . . .
If that mental information processing equipment (which now has to do DOUBLE duty regarding in-put AND out-put) is not pre-formatted with some exactness regarding both quantity and quality of the in-put, then the "channel capacity" will be LESS than it needs to transfer the full information load into the receiver system.
If this is the case, then the out-put transfer will be only a partial one, or perhaps hardly anything at all. If it would be the case that the in-put and out-put channel cannot MATCH any of the signal, then the signal will disappear into the blanked out thing.
. . . . .
In basic information theory, anything that hampers, distorts, confuses, obliterates the signal is referred to as "noise."
In this sense, if the noise "in" the channel is less than the signal, then a code exists (or can be established) for which the frequency of errors (noise) may be reduced as low as desired.
If the "noise" in the channel is greater than the signal, then the signal may not be identified; it can still exist in the channel, although so embedded in the noise that it cannot register, be picked up, or identified.
. . . . .
In the sense we are interested, the human sense, it turns out that human mental information processes ending up in "perception" can produce not only signal-laden but noise-laden conceptualizations and mental image pictures with hardly any way to discriminate which is which.
Where Does Information Processing Noise Come From?
In answer to this question, the daring among us will assume that the noise originates in our own heads - and which is usually the case.
But a deeper inspection of noise sources reveals that what's in our heads and which contributes to the noise may not be innately present to begin with.
. . . . .
A better part of the noise sources in our mental information processes is ACQUIRED - usually by the enculturization processes that make us fit in our given consensus realities.
This understanding is rather broadly accepted in some echelons of human inquiry, especially if the consensus reality social processes drift into mind-programming rather than overall efficient education.
. . . . .
But there is another far more powerful, but far more LESS obvious, noise source, and it is one we all adapt to in order to learn to communicate.
Language itself.
. . . . .
As Shannon pointed up in his information theory (and much to the shock of many at the time) that one is "constrained" to utilize language - and with language comes the concepto-nomenclature that becomes lodged, by necessity, into our memory library.
I'll paraphrase how Shannon put it.
. . . . .
Regarding English, some fifty per cent of the concept-nomenclature we lean upon is required by the structure [and familiar usage] of the language. The other 50 per cent is open to free choice of concepts and nomenclature.
Shannon's implication was that if the language-determined part was inhabited with noise-making redundancies, then any adaptation to the language would induce these into mental information processes of ALL those who utilized it.
So, you see, we are not at each individual level "guilty" of faulty information processing - at least 50 per cent of the time.
. . . . .
But whatever their source, even the 50 per cent presence of noise-making viruses can easily decrease or prevent performance ever activating.
. . . . .
As it turns out, although noise-making redundancies can be identified in every area of human endeavor, some are more prone to a larger percentage than others, especially those that have become adapted to ambiguity. Dare I mention politics and over-bloated administrations? Or the present conditions of the "fine" arts? Or the parameters of "love," "hate," "sex?" Of course, I'll not mention the realms of "psychic phenomena" - since everyone knows what they are.
. . . . .
In any event, it might be said that where over-simplification and ambiguity prevail, so too do noise-making redundancies - all of which bury the signal within the noise, no matter how fashionable is the noise.
It's somewhat worth mentioning, generally speaking anyway, an area of human endeavor thickly populated with noise-making redundancies tends to be "volcanic" in nature. Such areas can exist peacefully within their own parameters, stabilized by their own consensus realities. But if intruded upon, or if THEY intrude upon, things begin to heat up.
. . . . .
The topics of information and information transfers will be picked up again in additional essays.
It is now desirable to devote Part 5 to a correlation of what has been discussed in Parts 1 - 4.
In Part 6, we'll discuss not only the noise-making redundancies embedded and perpetuated within ambiguities, but their utterly destructive viral effect on clean, clear "signals." Ambiguous concepts induce structure-lessness, hence they wreck any signal-awareness of STRUCTURE, and without knowledge of the structure of anything very little else can ever be known about it. As we shall see in subsequent essays, STRUCTURE is the IN + FORM, or the format, of something - and as such is what needs to be worked with or within, not against.
. . . . .
In any event, any real attempt to activate any of the superpowers must encompass the reality that signal-to-noise ratios are intimately involved. Thus, the presence in any system of disinformation or misinformation can act as if it is infected with viruses.
(End of Part 4).
TOWARDS ACTIVATING
THE SUPERPOWERS OF THE
HUMAN BIOMIND
Ingo Swann (01Mar98)
PART 5: SENTIENCY AND SENSITIVITY
During the last twenty-eight years, one of the questions most commonly asked of me had to do with what people might read or study that would help them develop their "psychic powers."
If I was in a sardonic mood at the time, I'd point up that a great deal has been written, and most of which is very interesting. None the less, the undeveloped psychic powers, in any activating sense, have stubbornly remained more or less undeveloped.
In other words, the great heap of the whole that has been written and studied has not yet resulted in the world becoming thickly populated with developed superpsychics.
AN ADMITTEDLY FRUSTRATING ISSUE
If one observes this frustrating issue as calmly as possible, it would appear that there is some subtle difference between reading and studying about the powers on the one hand, and the actual, real-time activation of the powers on the other.
That one can read and study (even undergo some kind of training) and still not have their superpowers activated can easily be interpreted as evidence that the powers don't exist in the first place.
IN-PUT OF INFORMATION/OUT-PUT OF PROFICIENCY
People automatically expect to positively benefit from what they read and study. Indeed, the way that teaching and learning have been institutionalized in the modern West leads one to assume as much.
One of the most central computations of Western styles of teaching and learning is based on providing the intellect with organized formats of information, usually in step-by-step ways - after which various states of competency can be expected to manifest.
In other words, the Western styles of teaching and learning postulate that there is a direct and automatic relationship between in-take of organized information and out-put of competency and efficacy.
There can be little doubt that this in-put/out-put schematic DOES yield high results in very many areas of endeavor - so much so that it is taken for granted that it will work regarding all things.
But one verifiable fact about this schematic is that it works best where some kind of rote learning is involved. It doesn't work very well, or not at all, where, for example, creative development is involved.
One of the major, but subtle, constituents of rote learning is that the in-put proceeds via organized in step-by-step ways that do not require the in-put information to be recombined. Indeed, the efficiency of rote learning can easily suffer if it is messed about.
One of the major, but subtle, constituents of creative learning is that the elements of all in-put information need to be recombined - to the degree that if not then creative manifestations might be very minimal.
In other words, creative learning involves high mobility of recombinant factors - whereas rote learning generally does not.
There is no intended attempt here to imply anything negative about rote learning. The intent is simply to indicate that two different areas of learning activity do exist. In fact, an important third category of learning also exists - but which will be addressed in other forthcoming essays.
RECOMBINANT INFORMATION
RECOMBINANT is a term principally arising out of genetic studies, and refers to "the formation of new combinations of genes via cross-overs through fertilization."
In the sense of information theory, then, recombinant refers to the formation of new combinations of information via cross-overs through what may best be called "inspiration."
An important characteristic of rote learning is that all information specifically meaningful to the learning is identified and included in the teaching-learning package. This is to say that rote-learning is pre-packaged, and does not require cross-overs. In fact, the efficiency of the rote learning completely depends upon this.
The chief characteristic of creative teaching and learning is two-fold: it breaks apart various categories of pre-packaged information in order to recombine the manifold elements; and it also recombines those elements with cross-over information best acquired by original deduction and/or "intuitive insight."
But there is a quite large problem involved with creative learning.
This has to do NOT with what information IS available to be reintegrated into new formulations.
Rather it has to do with the absence of information whose participation is needed to help in cross-over fertilizations - and thus to achieve effective levels of functioning.
For example, if it chances in genetic recombining that the genes responsible for eyes, ears or genitals somehow drop out of the cross-over fertilizing process, then the resulting product will not "develop" those important organs.
It can easily be said that activation of any of the superpowers falls into the creative type of teaching and learning. But it could benefit even from the pre-packaged rote type of learning - IF that type included all that was needed to aid in effective cross-overs of recombinant information.
THIS database is somewhat filled with categories of information that are nowhere included in the typical rote-learning concepts of "psychic empowerment."
The function of this particular essay is to introduce yet another set of information that has fallen into absence not only with regard to the substance of this database, but with regard to just about any kind of awareness and thinking.
SENTIENCY & SENSITIVITY
This information has to do with SENTIENCY from which various levels of SENSITIVITY are dependent. The concept of sentiency has, as it might be said, more than almost completely vanished within all modernist contexts. Indeed, there is no rote learning package regarding "psychic development" that even mentions the term.
But it can surely be said that if one wishes to develop any of their superpower faculties, it must be taken for granted that unless one expands or extends their sentiency thresholds not much is going to happen.
To be effective, however, the vital topic of sentiency needs to be entered into rather obliquely at first.
"DOORS" OF SENTIENCY
The development or enhancement of any human faculty appears to be almost completely dependent on two primary factors.
It is somewhat difficult to articulate the more exact nature and elements of the two factors - largely because of a lack of concepts and terminology that would be precise enough to reduce ambiguity and induce clarity.
However, we can utilize the device of a metaphor to help arouse at least a general, if still quite gross, recognition of the two primary factors.
Thus, the two factors might approximately be described by leaning on the metaphor having to do with "doors" of perception, and which indirectly carries a four-fold connotation:
(1) whether the doors are open;
(2) whether the doors are shut;
(3) what opens the doors;
(4) what keeps them shut.
However, although this "doors of perception" metaphor is suggestive, it has something of a passive quality - if compared with another useful metaphor: that of a sentient dynamo.
This additional metaphor again can carry four-fold connotation, to wit:
(1) whether the sentient dynamo is on line and working;
(2) whether it is off line and closed down;
(3) whether it has been kept well-oiled and in good working order;
(4) whether it has been shut down, allowed to rust, or has been wrecked by any number of wrecking possibilities.
In the sense of these metaphors combined, the two primary factors that can lead to development and enhancement of human faculties concern whether whatever is involved is: (1) open and active; or (2) closed and shut down.
However, these two metaphors, although useful, still don't quite incorporate two additional nuances that are entirely meaningful. These nuances have to do with how the faculties (whatever they are) have been treated within larger-picture sociological scenarios, circumstances or environments people find themselves.
SOCIETAL VECTORS
In the sense of such larger-picture situations, one will always encounter the phenomena of tolerance-intolerance, and the phenomena of constructivity and destructivity.
In the sense of all of the above combined, the two primary factors regarding development or enhancement of any given human faculty can roughly be identified as:
The human faculty: The human faculty:
Constructively dealt with. Destructively dealt with.
Open. Shut.
On line, producing Off line, closed down.
Tolerated. Not tolerated.
Here we now see two line-ups which seem easily recognizable as the traditional dichotomies of:
good vs. bad
pro vs. con
positive vs. negative
THE VANISHMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF SENTIENCY
One of the most fundamental constituents of our species is that it is a sentient one.
Indeed, the existence of our sentiency precedes any and all concepts that become possible because of it - such as awareness, consciousness, sensitivities of all kinds, perception, and last, but not least, powers of ANY kind.
None of these can exist in the absence of the fundamental foundations of sentiency.
If this is understood, then it is rather mystifying to find that discussions regarding sentiency and its awesome potentials are so minimized as to be nil in such important studies as science, philosophy, religion, creativity, and empowerment.
By far and large, this can only mean that the vital issue of sentiency has been plunged into such intolerance that it figures not at all within anything - to the degree that it is not even RECOGNIZABLE as the vital topic that it obviously is .
Sensitivities of all kinds download from species-generic sentiency. But sensitivities can be "contained," as it were, by societal strictures - meaning social systems can determine what sensitivities are permissible or not permissible. This is to say, that the extent and functioning of sensitivities, both quantitatively and qualitatively are linked to various social perspectives.
But sentiency, as a species-wide generic phenomenology, can, by THAT its very nature, easily prove to be trans-societal, trans-cultural, and trans everything else as well.
That this observation might at first seem odd is to be expected - but only because the topic of sentiency has never been opened up, while various social maneuvers have closed down any approaches to it. Thus, although the term can be found in dictionaries, it is not in common parlance - except in some science fiction movies.
As a result, inhabitants of various societies might feel they have sensitivities. But that they are also a sentient life-unit can be quite alien within their thinking processes, and within any rote-learning or creative enhancing activities.
SENSITIVITY
However, since various formats of SENSITIVITY are experienced far and wide, it is useful at this point to refresh the major WESTERN definitions in order to clear the way to a consideration of SENTIENCY.
SENSITIVITY:
Receptive to sense impressions;
Subject to excitation by external agents;
Readily fluctuating;
Capable of indicating or reacting to minute differences or qualities;
Readily affected or changed by various agents, or by exposure or proximity to external factors" - such as, for example, social tolerance and intolerance.
If the above definitions of SENSITIVITY are correlated with various human faculties and activities, we can plot the faculties along a spectrum ranging from less sensitive to hyper-sensitive.
And so we can begin to spot, hypothetically, two general kinds of human faculties that are identifiable, so to speak, by their internal apportionment and need of sensitivity.
This is to say, then, that those human faculties requiring the LEAST amount of sensitivity will probably develop and survive come Hell or High Water. Thus, in each society there will be found, so to speak, a sensitivity norm which can be treated with the aplomb of tolerance - because it IS the norm.
It would be somewhat recognizable, then, that those human faculties needing the least quotients of sensitivity skills are those that tend to be most precisely well-developed among our astonishing species.
However, if we move along the spectrum or scale of faculties needing increasing sensitivity, we can begin to enumerate faculties that are dependent upon a high-signature of sensitivity.
It would be unarguable that the better functioning of such sensitivity-oriented faculties depend on increasing quotients of sensitivity skills.
Thus, as we move along the spectrum of human faculties, we can begin to recognize faculties that need higher or larger sensitivity development and support.
PANORAMIC SENSITIVITY
Finally, we can encounter faculties that absolutely need what might be called "panoramic sensitivity" if they are to function AT ALL.
And among such panoramic sensitivity faculties we would itemize the superpower faculties - almost all of which are understood to be not only hyper-sensitive, but omni-sensitive.
But the ideas of panoramic, hyper- and omni-sensitivity draw increasingly close the extremely wide scope of our species-generic sensitivity.
Indeed, it can be assumed that most of the superpower faculties are those particular faculties somehow DESIGNED for omni- and panoramic sensitivity.
THE LACK OF RESEARCH REGARDING
THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF SENTIENCY
A rather exhaustive search for documented modern research into the nature and functions of sentiency reveals something akin to a vacuum - a research vacuum apparently so ingeniously engineered that hardly anyone notices it.
Some work along these lines was attempted during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth. This seminal work, however, was not pursued much past 1932. And so it can be said that our sentient species does not, as it might, research the nature and extent of its sentiency or the many fabulous echelons and combinations of them at the individual sensitivity levels.
We might grasp around for an explanation of this vacuum. One explanation might be that various increases of applied and functional sentiency have to do with increases in power.
If this explanation is a viable one, even in some small aspect, then the knocking down or wrecking of sentiency development in others is seen as a way to eliminate them as power competitors of one kind or another.
In this possible light, the best way to decrease or suppress increases of applied sentiency, would be to surround the topic with as much ignorance and ambiguity as possible.
SENTIENCY AND SENSITIVITY AS "SMART SYSTEMS"
In this essay, the concepts of SENTIENCY and SENSITIVITY have, by direct implication, been attached to the so-called "paranormal powers" of our species.
But the assignation of them as "paranormal powers" serves mostly to relegate them into those social auspices that are very nervous when it comes to the "paranormal," and which social auspices are usually very concerned and jittery within anything smelling of power and its "potentials."
In any event, it can prove very useful to re-designate paranormal powers as smart systems.
Of itself, the concept of smart systems is usually nerve-wracking to this or that societal status quo, but at least we have the advantage of FINALLY perceiving what primary sentiency and secondary sensitivities are all about. Clearly, the existence of sentient and sensitivity systems within our species would, in the species master plan, not be designed to make us more stupid.
Much to the reverse, it can be said achievement of stupidity is much more the goal of social systems reductive of the sentient and sensitivity systems. By far and large, stupidity is most often achieved by social systems than by given individuals.
DEFILEMENT OF COMPREHENSION BY NOMENCLATURE
It is useful to examine a bit of nomenclature at this point. The concept of PARANORMAL POWERS is quite sociologically useful - because it identifies two topics that can be justified as of sociological concern and condemnation and can easily be rejected.
However, societal concerns would be very hard put, even embarrassed, to condemn smart systems - since there is rather broad awareness in all social systems that smart system are needed, perhaps even merely to survive.
Thus, sensitivity (or certain kinds of it anyway) are accepted, but probably because sensitivities are almost everywhere - somewhat like the air we breathe. But hardly anywhere are increases in sensitivity taught or supported by mainstream social vectors.
Super-sentiency is not taught, either. There is no perceived need to do so - because the topic of sentiency itself has disappeared.
Sentiency.
Most dictionaries define SENTIENT as: "responsive to or conscious of sense impressions, finely sensitive in perception or feeling." There usually is mention of SENTIENTLY as an adverb. These definitions, it could be submitted, are somewhat minimalizing ones - considering the panoramic factors involved. The term SENTIENCY does not appear in most dictionaries.
There are no main entries for SENTIENCY in the following important psychical research and parapsychology sources:
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OCCULTISM & PARAPSYCHOLOGY (1978).
HANDBOOK OF PARAPSYCHOLOGY, Benjamin B. Wolman, Ed. (1977).
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PARAPSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, Berger & Berger (1991).
A short definition of SENTIENCE is found, however, in the PSYCHIATRIC DICTIONARY compiled by R. J. Campbell (1981): "Mere sensation, apprehension, or cognition, without accompanying associations or affect."
The DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS compiled and produced by the American Psychiatric Association, also has no entry for SENTIENCY or SENTIENCE.
There is no mention at all of SENTIENCY in the otherwise wonderful and extensive ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, edited by Paul Edwards, and published by Macmillian Publishing Co. (1967). It seems that most other authoritative encyclopedias follow suit.
Although "psychics" were referred to as "sensitives" before they became referred to as "psychics," there is no reference in the Psi research sources to SENSITIVITY per se - except as an occasional reference to the "exteriorization of sensitivity" analogous to out-of-body experiencing, psychokinesis, telepathy, etc.
Now, it should be said that no Psi function could possibly exist if such functions were not first built upon, or were not extensions of, some form of sentiency and sensitivity.
Thus, if we dare to consider that special formats of sentiency and
and sensitivity are the horses that pull the cart of Psi and associated perceptions, then we are faced with the somewhat astonishing probability that the cart has been dissected and pulled apart in every possible way.
The horses, however, are thought so unimportant that no one has bothered to study them.
SENTIENCY AND MENTAL INFORMATION PROCESSING GRIDS
Early in this database was placed an essay entitled MENTAL INFORMATION PROCESSING GRIDS - and within which INFORMATION POINTS were described.
If one is moved to design an information processing grid that might be somewhat functional with regard to the superpowers, the concept of one as a SENTIENT entity could figure as a centrally important information point within the schematic.
All the other phenomena discussed in this database could then be placed in some aspect around this central information point - and between them all lines could be drawn interconnecting them this way and that.
Humans have a distinct tendency of viewing things through their own inventions. Thus, recognition of the nature of sentiency, and some of its parameters, probably has something in common with sonar, radar, microscopes and telescopes - and maybe even with the Internet. Such hypothetical possibilities will be elaborated in a forthcoming essay.
(End Part 5)
NOTE: If anyone knows of any printed or published sources examining the nature of the sentient being and functions of sentiency, it would be nice to reference them in this database.
Thanks in advance.
TOWARDS ACTIVATING
THE SUPERPOWERS OF THE
HUMAN BIOMIND
Ingo Swann (26Mar98)
PART 6: "REALITY" PROCESSING VS. RECOGNITION
It would be obvious that what people do or do not recognize as real has something to do with:
* Information contained in memory and functioning in mental information processing grids;
* Capacities for observation;
* World views, ranging from tiny to large;
* Blockages or freedoms regarding information acquisition and processing;
* Interest, ranging from none to a great deal;
* Nomenclature available;
* Socially-determined concepts and knowledge;
* Human nature fluctuations, internal and external;
* Tendencies to constructivity and destructivity;
* Types of fear and courage;
* And etc., etc., etc.
Even so, REALTY has an official definition: "the totality of all real things and events; something that is neither derivative nor dependent, but exists necessarily."
"Exists necessarily" turns out to be a kind of philosophical confabulation the meaning of which is that something exists because it does exist - the "necessarily" meaning that no one can do anything about what exists because it continues to do so regardless.
What exists simply because it does exist has always been problematical - in that no one has ever been able to explain why anything exists. Most people are prepared to accept this, and to get on with whatever.
But certain types of thinkers are not, and some of them can even be antagonistic toward accepting what exists because it does exist. Certain of these kinds of thinkers can flagellate their synapses by attempting to organize reality so that explanations can be offered up as to why what exists because it does exist has the meaning it does by virtue of existing in the first place.
This kind of procedure conveniently obfuscates the basic problem of not knowing why anything exists.
This is a sort of generic philosophical process that usually, but not always, requires that certain existing things NOT be considered - - because doing so clutters up the few aspects of existence that are being considered. This is somewhat understandable - because no one has ever been able to simultaneously cope with the whole of what exists, largely because no one so far has managed to discover the whole of it.
Besides, during their whole lives most people only manage to espy a few really existing things, never the whole shebang of existence. And from these few things they select only those that have promises of benefiting their own existence, and which itself exists because it does exist. This leaves the conundrum of people not being able to explain the why and wherefore of their own existing.
So this whole affair gets quite complicated - even more so because, generally speaking, humans don't like complicated things, especially if they are too big.
So to resolve this, a rather dependable way emerged at some point back in history. If limits are placed on reality, then one might never really learn a lot. But the complications of the overly large and apparently endless realities are cut back to manageable size.
Thereafter these reduced complexities are quite likely to be referred to as reality. And if general agreement is obtained about these cut-back realities, then they can utilized, as in a tall building, as steel-like infrastructure I-beam supports for the enormous social edifices that can be erected on them.
The educational processes within the social edifices then set about teaching what is real, so that upcoming citizens can fit properly into the social edifice.
This procedure has proven entirely workable - and indeed it does work best if no citizen ever self-discovers any reality, but merely goes with the flow of the social infrastructure.
Thus, most people never need to self-discover a reality, and many can get through life quite well without doing so. But such are the social enclosures in this regard that if one accidentally trips across a reality, one might not be able to recognize it.
After all, there are hardly any schools that teach what a reality should look like AS a reality. There are schools only to teach WHICH reality should be seen or not seen.
In any event, even if all of the above didn't exist because it does exist, reality recognition is an arduous affair. So it's not unusual for one to accept a reality simply because someone else says it is one. This saves one the bother and the struggle of having to spot realities. If the reality gets into print, then it is broadly accepted as real because the print exists because it does.
One of the not entirely unanticipatable outcomes of all this is that realities slip and slide around a lot, often resulting in a moody sense of insecurity as if one can't really figure out what's really going on or what's really happening.
The whole of the foregoing has been rather sardonically elaborated in an attempt to suggest (1) that trying to determine what reality consists of is the realm of spin doctors and usually a messy polemical affair; and (2) that such is not a profitable way to proceed if one wants to get anywhere - at least in some profound sense.
In any event, if one can't RECOGNIZE realities even if one chances to trip across them, then the whole polemical edifice of trying to determine what they are, what they consist of, is more or less a safari leading to that thickly fog infested land called Nowhere.
IF seen in this light, then the problems attendant upon the nature of recognition ITSELF somewhat take priority over the problems of reality. And this would especially be the case regarding any proposed activation of the superpowers of the human biomind.
Indeed, if one can't recognize what is to be activated, or recognize what perhaps has already been unknowingly activated, then arrival at the misty fogs of Nowhereland draw closer and closer.
In the sense of the foregoing, then, it is somewhat amusing that the modern sciences, philosophies, or psychologies have paid no attention to the phenomena of RECOGNITION.
Since there is somewhat of a vacuum in this regard, there is nothing from them that might resemble a trickle-down effect into the observing-sensing processes of "the masses."
But like all cultural vacuums, this particular one is unnoticed because it is the nature of vacuums not to be noticed - even though they, too, exist because they do.
In the sense of all of this, then, although the nature of recognition might at first seem far removed with regard to any desire to activate any of the superpowers, even a brief discussion of the nature of recognition should take its authentic place within all the other factors pertinent to the superpowers.
Indeed, it is possible to hypothetically suggest that recognition might well be among the most CENTRAL CORE factors involved.
RECOGNITION
RECOGNITION is officially defined as "knowledge or feeling that an object has been met before."
However, why recognition is linked only to objects is somewhat of a mystery - because any simple, raw experiencing of recognition extends into other factors.
So, for the inclusive purposes of this database, this definition can be extended to include not only "objects," but also subjective and qualitative experiencing.
Indeed, recognizing the qualities of objects and subjects goes hand-in-hand with the recognition of objects, and which often cannot be recognized in the absence of their qualities.
As but one example, if the qualitative distinctions between glass and diamonds are not recognized, then the meaning value of both would be somewhat the same.
However, in an ideal or altruistic sense, the official definition is logical. But difficulties arise when it is understood that what has been met before has also been responded to in some way, specifically in that some kind of meaning has been attached to what has been met.
In this sense, if what is recognized is taken to be meaningless, then it is usually consigned to the landfill of the meaningless. In this regard, the human species has a rich tradition of assigning meaninglessness to objects and realities that often turn out to be quite meaningful.
In any event, it is so far possible to recognize that recognition if already composed of not one but two factors, the second consisting of meaning. Indeed, if meaning of something is not recognized, then the something itself may not be recognized.
RECOGNIZE is said to be taken into English from the Latin RE + COGNOSCERE - the Latin combination meaning "AGAIN to know." The direct implication is that one cannot know again unless one has known in the first place.
But the use of KNOW in this sense is superlative, when what is actually meant is EXPOSED to, often without KNOWING and which requires making sense out of what one has been exposed to.
Here we have but a hint that recognition is most likely a tricky business - so tricky that philosophers have elected not to become involved in it.
However, and moving bravely on, it can be said that meaning has to be attributed to things to be recognized - because in large part the things do not have signs on them itemizing their many possible meanings - and, in fact, have no signs at all.
In the sense of our species, then, it can be said that meaning-making is a reality phenomenology of our species that exists because it does exist - while, at the same time, no one has yet understood the whys and wherefores of its existing. The only thing known somewhat for sure is that each specimen born of our species is equipped to be some kind of a meaning-maker.
With regard to the nature of MEANING, here we ARE on traditional philosophical territory.
ENCOUNTERING THE CERTAINTY/UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
Even well before the modern period, philosophers had somewhat sorted out the fact that two basic kinds of meaning can be established: (1) meanings that increase certainty; and (2) meanings that decrease it.
Both of these meaning criteria can be extended to things, subject's qualities, and experiencing - and lead to their recognition either which way.
In this sense, it can be postulated that reality, things, etc., are not first recognized for what they ARE, but whether they contribute to certainty or uncertainty.
This is all well and good, of course. But it can be observed that approaches to whatever increases certainty are well laid out and demarcated and achieve social support. However, whereas approaches to whatever increases uncertainty (such as the not yet known) don't achieve much in the way of social support.
RECOGNITION VIA THE BASIC TWO-FOLD MEANING DYNAMIC
The two-fold MEANING dynamic can be very clear here, at least hypothetically speaking.
Exposure to something that is suggestive of an increase in certainty will be responded to via that meaning.
Exposure to something suggestive of an increase in uncertainty will be responded to via that meaning.
As a third category of meaning response, if something is encountered which can not be recognized as fitting into either of the two above categories, it is usually considered to be of questionable, even potentially dangerous, merit - and is usually shot on the spot.
It would be quite clear in this regard that these two generic kinds of responses are entirely relative to situations and circumstances. But in the larger species-wide picture sense, these two responses have a great deal to do with how realities are recognized and responded to.
In a certain sense at least, it must be assumed that information or data one is exposed to does not equate to recognizable knowledge UNLESS meaning can become attached.
Even modern philosophers have often said that the meaning-less is not knowledge. If this is carried to the social extremes it usually is, the implication is that the meaning-less cannot be recognized as knowledge.
This is rather straightforward so far as it goes. But an attendant implication is that one cannot recognize the meaning-less - because there is nothing there to recognize. Thus, one can not encounter it AGAIN, or meet with it AGAIN.
This is not completely a matter of obscurant double-talk. It simply means that if one encounters something dubbed as meaning-less, the one will have trouble in recognizing it when one DOES encounter it AGAIN.
Indeed, this concept was one of the earliest officially stated reasons for the philosophical and scientific mainstream rejection of psychic stuff. Even if there was the mere chance that psychic stuff - such as clairvoyance and telepathy - really existed, it was meaningless since it had no real uses.
The illogic of this dismissive attitude is obvious, of course, and seems to have been based on a very low order of imaginatory capacities. Behind this, however, can be detected something that appears to have been more than a hint of a certainty that developed Psi would increase the uncertainty of established social orders. The superpowers have always been accompanied by this troubling aspect.
REAL
At this point, briefly touching on REAL can't really be completely avoided - but only with the continuing proviso that nothing in this database is to be taken as an attempt to established any reality.
But in the sense of this essay, certain things might be recognized as constituting hypothetical approaches to the real.
The modern definition of REAL holds that it is "of or relating to fixed, permanent, or immovable things apparent in fact, and [as we have seen earlier] necessarily existent." This definition really should be extended to include phenomena - largely because phenomena as well as things exist because they exist.
One of the more interesting aspects of REAL was that it was not introduced into English until the late 1400s (a rather late date, all things considered.)
In the late 1400s, however, the Oxford Dictionary of the English Languages offers says that the early meanings were "indistinct."
It was only in the later 1500s that REAL began to be used more or less as we try to do today.
The term was derived from the Late Christianized Latin RES (meaning thing), but was said to be akin to the very much earlier Sanskrit RAI (not meaning thing, but particular qualitative essence).
Regarding this, then, something like 5,000 years of human history seems to have gotten on without the term REAL as we define it today - and one wonders how things were managed without this concept.
In any event, we today are irrevocably plugged into this term, because at the bottom line of everything it is felt necessary to establish the reality of all things - and very much depends on the success or failure of this idea.
Rather exhausting examination of REAL can ultimately reveal that, like recognition, there appears to be two major categories of THE REAL. For efficiency here, these can best be illustrated by a diagram rather than by verbal exposition.
The REAL contingent The REAL contingent
upon known facts upon experiencing
. .
. Whereas both converge .
. on .
. RECOGNIZE .
. . . . . . . . . . . REALIZE . . . . . . . . . . .
..
TO MAKE REAL OR APPARENTLY REAL
In sense of the above, then, we could say that REAL and REALITY are contingent or relative only to some kind of unfoldment process having to do with recognition, the nature of which is imploded into some kind of culturally-avoided vacuum.
But even so, that our species is multi-tiered regarding recognition of anything and everything can, by now, seem apparent.
Based on this discussion, certainly only hypothetical, two trend-like phenomena can sometimes (but not always) be observed.
1. What is experienced as real by some is sufficient enough to them;
2. What is thought real because of known facts is considered by others to be sufficient for them.
Both of these major categories, however, have significant complications:
1. Real experiencing is often not contingent upon known facts;
2. Factual reality has to undergo change when new facts are brought to light, and so factual reality is itself not contingent upon known facts.
One is then justified in wondering what role "known facts" play regarding anything.
Well, for one thing, they represent the perceived margins between certainty and uncertainty - and which is the most obvious reason why large segments of social strata place conviction not only IN them but with regard to their necessity.
And it is this that gives recognizable substance to the hearty resistance toward new real facts if they are of such a nature as to radically destabilize old real factual bases.
Thus, it can be seen, if only in vague contours, that the matter of RECOGNITION plays an important role within any approach to activating the superpowers.
However, each aspirant along these lines will have to mull this over within their own reality tents than house their own realities - some new emphasis being on the dynamics of recognition, a matter regarding which few, if any, have hitherto paid much attention.
(The End)
Web auditing at any place of the planet https://timecops.net/english.html
