As Above, So Below

God-consciousness

Well, I'm not sure we needed a study from Johns Hopkins to show that peyote encourages a mystic experience; nevertheless, this series by Barbara Bradley Hagerty was a thought-provoking listen this week: The God Chemical: Brain Chemistry And Mysticism.

Wu Li

Wu Li

As patterns of organic energy
we think we move
Wave functions interacting
may be closer to the truth
Dancing with the shadows
on the wall of the cave
You get used to being excited
by another wave

But wave functions today
interact less lastingly
The fourth dimension is dynamic
and so are we
So many opportunities
for us to explore
You left me outside the domain
when you found a new door

Wu Li
The ripples just crossed my mind again
I remember being in love
My God, how we rippled the universe
forever somewhere in love

When once two wave functions have met
in harmonic convergence
They set up ripples that describe
that cosmic event
Throughout the universe our love
is transmitted
As the fourth dimension echoes
forever unlimited

Wu Li
The ripples just crossed my mind again
I remember being in love
My God, how we rippled the universe
forever somewhere in love

Now and then the wave function
that is me
Finds itself at a junction in
fourth dimensionality
An echoing valley
in the landscape of time
Where I'm swept by ripples of passion
that you and I defined

Wu Li
The ripples just crossed my mind again
I remember being in love
My God, how we rippled the universe
forever somewhere in love

Zen Physics

I'm a dualist -- can't help it, always have been -- no matter how eloquently Hofstadter tells me that I am a strange loop. And I just don't buy the bit about reincarnation. I've studied reincarnation from every angle, and it has simply never made sense to me.

Until now, that is.

I recently opened David Darling's 1996 book titled Zen Physics: The Science of Death, the Logic of Reincarnation prepared to defeat any and all of his arguments in support of reincarnation, but then he goes and blindsides me with this:

We are the products of our life stories. [...] So, inevitably, a lot of what we remember is not what actually happened--whatever this may mean--but rather a kind of myth or confabulation that helps us sustain the impression that we know what is going on. [...] We maintain a sense of continuity and so provide a basis for our feeling of personal identity at the cost of never knowing what is true. We are as much a myth as the stories we tell ourselves. (35-36)

This makes perfect sense from a Campbellian perspective, and from there Darling continues to chip away at every wall of incredulity. He goes on to show how the brain is a memory device, nothing more, and certainly not the source of consciousness as Hofstadter would contend. It is, in fact, a filter that limits our awareness of the singular consciousness that is the universe at large. Moreover, the brain seems to have a built-in storyteller that puts everything (i.e., the insignificant amount of data actually processed and stored by the brain) into a "single coherent narrative." With a nod to Hua-Yen Buddhism and Indra's Net of Gems, Darling advances into a discussion of Zen and quantum mechanics to show how upon death we will each undergo secular reincarnation into a new and previously unknown example of fragmented consciousness, each with a new story to tell.

If all the world's a stage, then the universe must be a multiplex theatre.

Maybe God's just a film buff.

The Myth Known as Elizabeth Edwards Prepares for Life after Life

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Life after Life

In previous posts, we have noted that consciousness is a matter of recursive symbol processing in the brain. One of the most important symbols will be the one named I; moreover, as Hofstadter puts it, "your brain is inhabited to varying extents by other I's, other souls" (Hofstadter, 2007, p 248). The more faithfully your own consciousness represents and resonates with that of another soul, another I, the more affinity you are likey to share with that other soul.

And an affinity of souls means that the people concerned can rapidly come to know each other's essences, have great potential to live inside each other. (250)

So, what becomes of a soul after the physical body has died? For myself, that remains to be seen, but at minimum, the soul lives on within the consciousness of every other soul it has inhabited, or as Hofstadter puts it:

When the sun is eclipsed, there remains a corona surrounding it, a circumferential glow. When someone dies, they leave a glowing corona behind them, an afterglow in the souls of those who were close to them. (258)

Their myth--the story that gives so much meaning to the souls that they inhabit--lives on.