Social development is neither a result of technological determinism nor of random processes, or even as a capitalist drive, although all these factors do, in varying degrees play a part of the whole process. At a fundamental level the development of any system is based upon a drive towards increasing complexity, whether it be a living or social system. Such a complexity pushes towards increased connectivity within its component parts, and thus towards a greater wholeness of all the constituent parts of a system. The source behind this drive is the flow of energy.

The energy that flows through such systems is that of information. Whether it be DNA transfer, cellular transfer, or digital transfer – the bottom line is that information seeks its transference within a network in order to spread the relevant signals whereby a system is able to maintain its collective cooperation. When the level of information, or the degree of component parts of a system reach a threshold limit, then the system bifurcates into a higher system that incorporates its recently-left now sub-system. Information seeks to increase the intelligence of a system. Information increase leads to greater complexity, networking, and connectedness. This heightened connectedness in turn allows information a greater flow or access to all the component parts of the system, which in turn allows each part the chance to share in the information/intelligence of the whole. This then leads to the emergence of an intelligent system that is greater than the intelligence of its separate parts. No longer do we need to say that two heads are better than one: now we should be saying that millions (billions?) of heads are better than one.

This may correspond to the processes behind intelligence increase - as Leary himself stated:

“The biological “master plan” of organic evolution located in DNA directs the unfolding of the circuits of the nervous system. One major goal of life is for the individual to becomes Increasingly Intelligent in order to decode somatic signals within the body, within the nervous system itself, signals from the DNA code and metaphysiological neuro-atomic energy patterns. The history of life and of humanity is best defined in terms of the evolution of the nervous system and of knowledge technologies.” (Leary – ‘Info-Psychology’)

Yet it doesn't go any way to answering the question of consciousness. What is consciousness and how are we conscious?

If there are problems accessing the article for the transhumanist webpage, then go directly to the source at http://www.aleph.se/Trans/index-2.html

As always, the debates concerning whether the future evolution of humankind will lead to an evolved biological species, or a cyborg-synthesis, or even to complete AI, are ongoing. Recent research is now trying to synthetise DNA within nanotechnology - and one experiment was to place rat neurons into a robot. There is a large body of people who call themselves the 'Transhumanists', and they take this issue very seriously. The way forward, they say, is definately within a mixture of human and machine parts to produce an organic, human-engineered species with vastly increased intelligence.

To read up on this debate, check out this recent Transhumanist article.

Now that the excesses of the festive period are over, its time once again to put life into balance. Life itself requires harmony, otherwise small unbalances can tend to build up and accumulate. They're not 'visible' in the normal sense, yet they get stored within the body's energy centers. Over-consumption of foods and drink; over-stimulation of external inputs (sights + sounds) drain one's energy. It is then so much harder just to do what used to be considered as regular activities. Even thought becomes sluggish, and it's harder to concentrate and focus.

(Wo)Man is a finely tuned apparatus. Everything works together: the body, mind, and emotions. Any one aspect out of balance will affect the rest. Since we are a conscious self-evolving species it is within our own responsibility to sort this out - to monitor and regulate oneself. This is not about being a dictator to the self. On the contrary, it requires further tact and care towards oneself. It requires a knowing, a taste of one's own balance, of one's own needs. Listen to yourself: listen daily. Either in meditation or contemplation. Choose a quiet time: register your own thoughts, feelings, emotions, the body. Trace your body in your mind - find where the taste is a little off and make a mental note of it. The work towards correcting this.

We are our own repairers as well as our own consultants. We're quite miraculous really... if we listen.

Excerpts from the archives: selected poems from 1992-1995



OUT OF THE SMALL THINGS



I like you
But the world does continue

And we cannot remain
Upon temporary desires

Or dreams born from
The restless mind.

We cannot make
A world

Out of the small things
That absorb us

Only for the moment
And then are gone

Or we would never
See the world

Through the false thickness
Of the air.




THE BUTTERFLY'S TALE



And the butterfly
started to die ;

he didn't know that
what he wanted was
also killing him.

And the butterfly
started to die
as he burnt himself
against the light.



SHELL


Like little sea creatures
In a shell we lay

pressed against
the pressured air ;

too silent to be moved,
showing ourselves

as the layered rock
shows earth's growth
from youth.

Tiny thumb prints of some desire
we wish to encapture

and keep between the flesh,

to seep from our pores
on every embrace

to smell the skin
on every kiss

like honest things.





MY NAME ( UNDER FRAGILE HANDS )



My name

like scattered glass splinters
amidst the snow

waits to be found
and cupped together

under fragile hands.

My name

with each syllable
transparent
and cracked with
uneven edges

waits to be called

and held together
under
fragile hands.







A STRANGER WITHIN


A man who lives on the outside of his skin
forever
is he who dies being a stranger within.

LIKE A HIGHWAY




I bought myself a book,
but not the time to read it.
Love – I can’t buy time.

I spend my nights in knowledge,
immersed in the words of others.
Love – I can’t buy wisdom.

I walked the ways of others,
my foot following their prints.
Love – I can’t buy truth.

The world doesn’t give us the ways
to reach our ends; it only posts
signs like an open highway.



21.11.03

The harmony of any system requires a selfless cooperation. It requires a recognition that separation is a facet of our own imaginations. We are not any more separate than the sun is separate to life on this earth. We think in terms of geographical space: the moon turns our moods – yet dare we imagine that non-local events may influence our daily selves? This is comic. There is no fundamental separation.

Every thought/action/desire is as if written in the sky in red cloud: our growth is recorded as a part of our evolution. Everything that goes out from us also returns to us – we decide its fate. The world we live in is deeply rooted in how we choose to interpret that world. Trust our own hearts – our own intentions.

The human nervous system is the evolutionary agent. It carries programming structure, in the form of DNA, and is itself the hardware for DNA software. It works with electrical impulses and so is affected by, and influences, other electrical fields. Thus, the new generation of humans being born into the ‘Information Age’ of an electronic environment are being impacted upon with electrical signals that must have some effect upon the human nervous system. To what degree can the human nervous system mutate under these new environmental impacts, knowing how we do that evolutionary change is dynamic in accordance with such impacts?

Are we thus agents of our own evolutionary change? The new direction seems to be towards the interior, encouraging a development of psychic, or psi, faculties that enhance a ‘beyond-soma’ consciousness.

The Earth as an intelligent self-regulatory body (ie. ‘Gaia Theory’) requires the functioning participation of its subsequent parts. This includes humankind as well as other animal and plant species. The present anthropomorphic view that humankind dwells in is a serious obstacle in maintaining these functional processes as we believe ourselves to be apart from rather than a part of the planetary processes around and within us. We believe ourselves to be greater than we are in the sense that our belief in superiority is seriously disenabling our capacity for responsibility and guardianship of our milieu, and thus the custodianship that is a part of our duty as a self-conscious reflexive species is being ignored and arrogantly overlooked.

Biological evolution is slow compared to the vastly increasing acceleration of technical and social evolution – this is fuelled by an ‘intellectual evolution’: or conscious evolution – our next stage towards unification/planetisation as information flows progress towards unifying us. Some thinkers see a future biotic interface between the brain and the virtual world that will mark a new stage in the emergence of a collective consciousness: 'a meta-consciousness capable of outliving the individual consciousnesses that make it up.’ (de Rosnay)

If we allow ourselves to consider evolution as a creative drive - then we may ask ourselves: is it goal-orientated? And if so, how can we address this question without the 'God' argument coming into play?

What is the purpose of convergence?

-Nature indeed abhors a vacuum. Thus, nothing exists in isolation – this concept is becoming more widely recognised due to findings in quantum physics and the notion of non-locality. Everything – it seems – is connected. Everything is in communion. This may be fine for those philosophically minded who recognise that consciousness can be ‘everywhere’: as Willis Harman said – ‘If consciousness is anywhere – it is everywhere’. Yet what if we push this idea towards terrestrial contexts: eg. Can human societies have non-local connection?

The answer due to modern technologies is – yes. Beginning with the Internet we are moving towards wireless connectivity: we can carry the World Wide Web around with us. Once we were only contactable – or found! – by mobile phone. Now we are contactable by video chat and by access to Net information wherever we may be. This leads us to ask – is human intelligence connected and what are the emergent properties of this? Will this lead to a collective global intelligence – or evolve into a collective consciousness? (see Peter Russell).

The question – when does non-local connectivity become conscious of itself? When does connectivity become intelligent? If information increasingly self-organises into greater arrangements of complexification – doesn’t this manifest an intelligence? And if so – what is the goal of such global connectivity in terms of species and social evolution? We are indeed at the edge of a significant leap in the human condition: the trouble is, if we don’t leap far enough, the abyss awaits below.

Although progress is deemed dynamic, at times unstable and complex, it nevertheless requires some degree of harmony. An orchestra is a complex dynamic whole: despite the kinetic contribution of each member, the emergent sound - in a functional orchestra - is harmonious. Just as in a balanced and functioning individual, both the left and right hemispheres should be in a balanced relationship. Both sides of the brain should be transferring signals, information, and be actively participating.

When great thinkers have stated that we should 'bring the wisdom of the East into the science of the West', they are symbolically referring to the entwining capacities of the brain hemispheres, such that the abstract wisdom teachings of Eastern traditions (which work upon activation of the right creative hemisphere) should be aligned with the linear, rational and analytic left-brain activity. Thus, the overall capacity should be greatly increased since the brain can function under emergent properties of a dynamic whole. EEG scans validate this as they show that participants undergoing meditation display a mirroring of brain waves between the two hemispheres: ie. they are in communication and alignment. This is what creates a sense of well-being in the individual.

If we are to examine the global brain metaphor of global communication technologies as mirroring the functioning of a biological living system in the capacity as the nervous system, then the left-right brain scenario could be said as representing the 'West and the Rest' - or the 'West-East' generalised split. Like a brain that is not functioning to true/full capacity, or even with a tumor?, it can be seen that unless the developing world is brought into line with the progress of developing countries a harmonious dynamic whole will not be achieved.

In a global body, all organs constitute a working network of interdependent participants. Would our hearts deny to pump blood to our lower regions because they couldn't afford the asking price? Would the stomach stock-pile food rather than donate it to less fortunate areas of our bodily metabolism? This would be absurd as it would affect the health of our entire body.

Yet in a global environment we do just this. The well-being of our whole planet, and our species, is being jeopardised by the greed of mechanistic thinking.

Intelligence increase requires greater complexity. Complexification leads to accelerated intelligence through increased speeds of information transfer and associated-thinking. Information is itself an energy-flow, as in all open systems. In order to retain more of the energy, which can be utilised in an interior manner for fueling conscious development, conscious lifestyle decisions must be made. Energy is constantly being wasted as thought and behaviour; through stress, negative thoughts, and uncontrolled physical movement.

Self-discipline is required to maximise one's quota of energy. Energy retained can be used for conscious thought processes that wire-up and connect further neural pathways. The greater the complexity of neural connections, the greater the potential for increased thought, intelligence, and associative (abstract) thinking.

In a work published in 1999 titled EARTHDANCE: Living Systems in Evolution by Elisabet Sahtouris - available online - she writes the following:

"DNA is virtually the oldest thing in Earth's evolution still alive on its surface -- propagating itself from the beginning in an unbroken chain, as surface rock transformed into endless creatures, who recycled it in turn into sediments that were subducted back into the magma of origin by great tectonic plates. All the while, DNA's species came and went, playing their roles and then disappearing, while it continued the dance.

There is little reason to think, from a biological perspective, that humans will change the pattern of species flux and survive for the rest of the life of our planet without further evolving. We haven't even the patience to wait for natural evolutionary changes, but are impatient to redesign our own DNA. What does this urgency signify? Do we sense that we are on the brink of a huge new leap in evolution? Do we think altering our own biology, rather than exercising our consciousness, is the way to get there?"

This questions our method of achieving accelerated change, or growth in consciousness/intelligence - yet it also, like other works highlighted previously, acknowledges the wealth of information that is now pointing towards this 'huge new leap in evolution'. The signs can no longer be ignored. Instead we should endeavour to learn how to incorporate them into an ethical path for accelerated conscious evolution.

How to go about this is where we need discussion. Finally, we are in an age where the barriers between religion and science are merging. Science is bringing to the fore new understanding that only a century ago would not only be thought of as heretical but also as mysticism. Lets drop our primate conditioning and learn to learn again, through wider lens.

The nervous system is wired up through synaptic connections – electro-chemical bonds that are ‘fixed’ during early imprinting. Reality is thus the result of the patterns in our neural connections. Rather than a Newtonian view of biological reality it is one of networking and flow. Reality is formulated through patterns and dynamic processes that are themselves open to re-imprinting, change, and thus evolution. Reality then is not static but rather a neural-negotiation. And the Internet?

Timothy Leary, although overlooked in his work due to adverse publicity regarding his experimentation with LSD, was ahead of his time in some of his social comments. As a result of his research into mind/consciousness expansion through reimprinting of neural circuits he was made to be aware of both the power of social conditioning and, more importantly, the power in the human species to self-advance their own evolution. In his work titled 'Info-Psychology' we have the following insightful passage:

“The biological “master plan” of organic evolution located in DNA directs the unfolding of the circuits of the nervous system. One major goal of life is for the individual to becomes Increasingly Intelligent in order to decode somatic signals within the body, within the nervous system itself, signals from the DNA code and metaphysiological neuro-atomic energy patterns. The history of life and of humanity is best defined in terms of the evolution of the nervous system and of knowledge technologies.”

Evolution is an inherently dynamic process, never static. It is in constant interaction, or cognition, within its whole milieu. The human body is thus in a dynamic state with its environment, be it actual or virtual – and adapts accordingly. The new mutation of the human species is through an inward dynamic rather than an outward move. The human nervous system is key here: as digital information is absorbed, new synaptic connections are developed.

The West has developed by isolating a person’s sensory development: community has been lost; art is not longer a ‘communal immersion’ but rather an individual onanistic experience. Thus, we have been starved of developmental input and the dynamism of collectivity.

In the ensuing years there will be a rise in chaos and upheaval. These are largely the manifestations of cosmic influences and the results of a shifting planetary evolution in line with a developmental harmonic of our solar system. Although this will be largely misunderstood by our species, it will nevertheless be manifesting more openly in the next several years as planetary adjustments are made. More will be said on this later - this is not the time to reveal the details. Suffice to say that as strife increases on our planet it should be more imperative that we exercise our inner functions of balance, non-attachment to events and things, and stay away from rash judgments and decisions.

Continuing from before: the access to greater information has consequences. One approach to this rise in conscious attunement is, in the words of Eric Chaisson, leading to the need for an ethical and global consciousness. Others have urged for process thinking rather than the Newtonian mechanical approach - synergism calls for the emergence of properties greater than the whole. This is achievable if we realise that the connectivity of people on a global scale can give rise to shared traits of altruism under reciprocally 'shared', or transferred, information.

We are all open systems that use information as energy - little do we realise that this energy can be used to fuel further much-needed self-development. Discipline is required so that this energy is not lost through wasted emotions or anger, fear, and other menial manifestations that get enlarged and exaggerated.

Remember: the negative also seeks to embolden itself - to present itself as being greater than it is. This is because there is always less negative inside us at all times in comparison to the positive - thus, it needs to pretend it's more negative than it actually is if it is to have any chance of influence over the person at all. Don't succumb to it.

With information-awareness comes responsibility. That responsibility is to oneself first, then to others, and to our earthly and cosmic environment. Don't build your house on sand, or too much information may blow one's fuse.

As was stated in an earlier blog - 'Information is the Key'. This is a primary statement. Harvard astrophysicist Eric Chaisson has also maintained in his work 'The Life Era' that information is the key principle behind cosmic evolution. Yet information is not simply the bits and bites of electronic language - information embues all that is around us.

Living systems upon this planet take in information by means of solar energy, and secrete in such ways as waste (animal kingdom) or as, for example, oxygen (plant kingdom). Thus, living systems use information as an open system, whereby it is a process of transference in order to decrease entropy and maintain life functions.

Information also exists as waves and physical forces - as radiation especially. Such waves, be they electromagnetic or other frequencies, can be better assimilated if the receiving-capacity of the person (ie. the human brain) is more attuned to finer frequencies. Such attunement has been taught down through the ages as meditative practicies, or through 'action teaching' using both physical exercises as well as mental. It is not for 'religious' purposes, if we must use this vague label, but rather for human attunement to universal, and cosmic, information that is accessible through activation of, generally dormant, brain functioning.