I have found that it is
extremely difficult to have an original thought or idea. When I think that I have perhaps stumbled
onto one, I google it and, alas, several hundred possibilities emerge. But, WOW, isn’t that amazing! When I google “internet” the following paragraph
emerges:
The Internet is the
global system of interconnected computer networks that use
the Internet protocol suite(TCP/IP) to link devices
worldwide. It is a network of networks that
consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of
local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and
optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of
information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents
and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing.
Alas! Man has developed an “artificial
intelligence” that anyone who has access to a computer can access at any
time. We now take it for granted.
But what if we are just
now modeling a model of intelligence that precedes homo sapiens? Could that model be “The Gaian Mind”?
Brief history lesson
Homo sapiens originated
in Africa around 200,000 BC. Written
language is believed to have begun around 7000 BC. The first recorded scientific findings date
from the Ionion Era (circa 580-490 BC).
By the thirteenth century, the power of the Catholic Church dictated
Christian doctrines and kept rational “laws” of nature at bay. Galileo (1564-1642) believed that observation
is the basis for science, but it was René Descartes (1596-1650) that formulated
the concept of the laws of nature.
Hypothesis
In an earlier post, I
referred to a dialog
I read in a short book entitled, Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness, ISBN 0-89281-977-4, by Ralph
Abraham, Terence McKenna, and Rupert Sheldrake, in which the three men discuss Divine Imagination and Gaian Mind.
But before we delve into
that hypothesis, let’s check out the word “Gaia’. According to https://www.behindthename.com/name/gaia, the word “Gaia” is a Greek word meaning
“earth”. In Greek mythology, Gaia was
the mother goddess who presided over the earth.
Rupert
Sheldrake, Ph.D., former director of studies in
biochemistry and cell biology at Cambridge University writes, “What I suggest
is the existence of a king of memory inherent in each organism in what I call
its morphogenetic or morphic field. As
time goes on, each type of organism forms a specific kind of cumulative
collective memory…This hypothesis also suggests that in human learning we all
benefit from what other people have previously learned through a kind of
collective human memory. This is an idea
very like that of Jung’s collective unconscious.” McKenna, an ethnobotanist, picks up on the
concept and writes, “I see each of us as a cell in communication with the
Divine Imagination, which is sending images back into the past to try to direct
us away from areas of instability. The
Gaian Mind is a real mind; its messages are real messages, and our task—through
discipline, dreams, psychedelics, attention to detail, whatever we have
going—is to try and extract its messages and eliminate our own interference so
that we can see the face of the Other and respond to what it wants.”
As I was writing this
blog, news came of Stephen Hawking’s death (1/8/1942-3/14/2018). Synchronicity. I climbed the stairs to retrieve my copy of
Hawking’s The Grand Design, reread it, and found that the basic
questions we are trying to address here, was in essence, the same ones being
addressed in his book. Hawking:
“…our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a
model of the outside world. We form
mental concepts of our home, trees, other people, the electricity that flows
from wall sockets, atoms, molecules, and other universes. These mental concepts are the only reality we
can know. There is no model-independent
test of reality. It follows that a
well-constructed model creates a reality of its own.”
According to Hawking, if
a complete theory of the universe exists, “it will be a model that creates
itself.”
Perhaps it is time to
divert this theory of a Gaian Mind away from a Mother Earth intelligence to a
symbol that represents an omnipotent intelligence, let’s call it “Ο”. Whether
we refer to O as God, Allah, Yahweh, The Almighty, Collective Consciousness,
The Great Spirit, Other or The Gaian Mind, the question is, “How do we
communicate with O and reciprocally O to us?”
Hawking: “According to
quantum physics, no matter how much information we obtain or how powerful our
computing abilities, the outcomes of physical processes cannot be predicted
with certainty because they are not determined with certainty…Given the
state of a system at some time, the laws
of nature determine the probabilities of various futures and pasts
rather than determining the future and past with certainty.”
Let’s consider the individual, the
observer/participant.
Evan Harris Walker, in his book, The Physics of
Consciousness, explains the relationship between individual will and the
collective consciousness (including a scientific formula) and makes the
following conclusion:
Before an event occurs in quantum mechanics,
objects have interacted and entered into a set of potentialities: the states of
quantum mechanics. After observation, on state vector collapse, everything goes
into one state. Everything. No matter where the objects are. This is the
incredible discovery that the tests of Bell's theorem prove. When a particular
synapse, among the 200,000 possible synapses, fires, everything else-everywhere
in the whole universe-that might be tied to that choice by the will channel
must also go into that same overall quantum mechanical state! Unlike the
consciousness, our will is not restricted to the tiny space of the brain
cavity. Everything we touch, see, or experience in any way that becomes caught
up in that special aspect of the quantum nature of matter will retain a link
back to our mind. And observation of it or our subsequent observation of its
consequences can impact on the state that it is in. The will channel is a link
that transcends space, and because physicists have found that something called
Lorentz invariance always holds, this will must transcend time as well.... What
we are saying is that this will channel causes the events in the brain and
those in the external world to go hand in hand with what happens in our
consciousness. We are saying that our mind can affect matter-even other
brains-and that distant matter and minds can have an effect on us. What we have
here, what is forced on us by the formalism of quantum mechanics itself, is
something that sounds like telepathy or psychokinesis; it is exactly what
Einstein feared to be the implications of quantum mechanics. Why is it so
elusive? Why does it seem so strange? Because the signal, W, is small compared
to the noise of our everyday consciousness given by C. That is, because the
signal-to-noise ratio, W/C, is very small.... In all of this, the observer is
tied to all observers, and these observers collectively select the reality that
occurs. ... Space, time, matter, and energy, -- the very stuff of objective
reality, as it turns out--depend on the perceptual participation of the
observer. ... Our consciousness, our mind, and the will of God are the same
mind. ... Our knowledge of how quantum mechanics works with state vector
collapse on observation ties in with a quantum mechanical picture of
consciousness, consciousness arising out of the very observer-dependent
processes that go on in the brain as they do in the laboratories of physicists,
in the hearts of atoms, and in the cores of stars. And with an observer in the
brain, this consciousness selects the things that happen in the external world.
Out of this arises a special picture of what the
fabric of reality is. Because of that signal- to-noise disparity between the
will and the consciousness of our mind, only about a thousandth of what could
happen happens out of an ostensive correlation with what we would wish for. All
the rest is stochastic or moves inexorably forward under the laws of physics
for microscopic bodies. Matter, objects-a physical domain exists that is
governed by immutable laws. But these laws leave open a range of happenings that
are left to the selection of the mind. Behind this selection is the will. The
will works much like a communications channel that links all of us to a common
control center. Within the power of our combined will lies the power to do
essentially anything. Within the power of this will lies any knowledge-of
anything known, or knowable-of the past or of the future. And it is a power
that is always present. This is the collective will of all sentient beings with
the power of determining the state of all events, with the knowledge of a seer.
This is the Omnipresence, the Omniscience, the Omnipotence of Abraham's God, at
once personal and supreme. This is a God of our collective will and of the
collective will of the universe. This is a God that has the potential of any
knowledge that we know. A God that has the power to make any event occur and
yet is restrained by the limits of our own minds. A God that pervades all
things and yet acts through our vision.
In conclusion, I offer
you words written by two Native Americans, Standing Bear of the Oglala Lakota
and Tecumseh of the Shawnee:
We saw the Great Spirit’s work in almost
everything: sun, moon, trees, wind, and mountains. We loved the earth and all things of the
earth, the attachment growing with age.
The old were wise. They knew that
man’s heart away from nature grew hard and that the lack of respect for growing
living things soon led to a lack of respect for humans too.
Oh! That I could make that of my Red people, and of
my country, as great as the conceptions
of my mind, when I think of the Great Spirit that rules the universe.
God’s speed on this
St.Patrick’s Day!
“Paddy” CPW
