BEFORE getting into the main topic of this post, I would like to share a comment on my previous post by my poet friend, Don Hynes, along with his songful poem of blessing:
“This is a beautiful post. The historical scheme may be questioned but the vibration is perfect. In this air cycle of awakening our purpose is to accelerate human conscious-ness that it may rise with the ascending vibration of the Sun enveloping the Earth. Of course the specific consciousness is my own, the individual always, but also to befriend each other in this task, those seen and unseen, known and unknown, that all may rise in this new day. If you will allow, I’ll close with a few poetic words that might add to your masterwork:
“We are an old people, the stories say among the first, who walked the land when fresh with the Creator’s touch. Though scarred with years of trouble we still sing the blessing songs, greeting the Sun each day with the thankfulness it deserves. And so I sing for you this morning a song of your belonging, child of a distant Light and ancient Mother, may you walk in beauty all your days, and if forgotten may this song remind you.“
* * *
THANK YOU DON. We are indeed “an old people” . . . and we live on an old planet in an even older universe. How old nobody can really know, though scientific estimates have been made. What is time anyway? Everything happens in this eternal now. There is, however, great but simple method to the ongoing unfolding evolution of the universe as it moves forward through cycles of chaos-to-order and dissonance-to-consonance.
As George Gurdjieff reminds us in his Law of Seven (also called the Law of Octaves) — which I explored in my previous post — “nothing continues forever.” Creation unfolds within an energetic and musical continuum. Or as Russell Walter postulates, “Everything that is, is of everything else that is. Nothing is of itself alone. All created things are indissolubly united”. . . and sing together the “Music of the Spheres,” as George Gurdjieff demonstrates in his “Ray of Creation.” And there’s no one more articulate and comprehensive in unpacking Gurdjieff ‘s complex and profound vision of “worlds within worlds” than Episcopal prelate and author, Cynthia Bourgeault. So I will share excerpts from her book THE EYE OF THE HEART in bringing you Gurdjieff’s cosmogony in the context of her life’s journey in search and discovery of the “Imaginal Realm”. . . and its location and function within the Ray of Creation. This first excerpt if from chapter two “Worlds Within Worlds.”
The Ray of Creation
Gurdjieff actually makes use of two cosmic maps, and to situate the imaginal sphere of operations within his teaching, you have to overlay them.
The first, and probably more widely known of these (because of its close tie-in with the enneagram and the Law of Seven), is his Ray of Creation, which, as I have mentioned already, is the Gurdjieffian version of the Great Chain of Being. In most respects this follows the standard processionary model of traditional [religious] sophia perennis metaphysics, with progressively denser and colder kingdoms emerging out of that initial fiery explosion of the divine will-to-form that sets the whole thing in motion. The counter-entropic trajectory is not at first clearly visible.
What is immediately interesting about this map, however, is that the entire ray is located within the physical universe — although of course, the word physical here must be expanded to the widest and wildest reaches of our cosmological imagination. Gurdjieff’s “Megalocosmos,” the vast celestial canvas on which his map is drawn, stretches even beyond the fourteen billion years of our present “universe story,” reaching back into that implicitly endless matrix from which big bangs emerge like virtual particles. It is on the grandest possible cosmic scale that his vision plays out.
So too, the realms on this ray are not named by spiritual or theological names, as is typical of sophia perennis metaphysics. You will not find here logoic realms, angelic realms, heaven and hell realms — or for that matter, imaginal realms. Instead, you will find actual inter-planetary locations, named in an order that some of you may find strangely familiar: dominus (Holy Absolute), siderum (all galaxies), lactera (Milky Way, our galaxy), sol (our sun),fatum (fate, our own solar system or sphere of planetary influence), mixtus orbis (“mixed realm,” our planet earth), regina coeli (queen of the heavens, the moon) — or do, si, la, sol, fa, mi, re, do. (bold emphasis added)
Wait a minute! Isn’t that our modern Western musical scale?
Indeed, it is. And this is where the second fascinating feature of the Ray of Creation comes in. According to Gurdjieff, our modern major scale actually preserves in the names of its notes and the arrangement of its intervals a vestigial memory of an ancient esoteric teaching about the “cosmic solfeggio,” not only in the way in which the created order originally came into existence but also in the way in which energy is continuously transmitted and replenished along the Ray of Creation. That knowledge is still there, hidden in plain sight in the musical scale, to be dug out by those so inclined; its articulation dovetails precisely with what in the Gurdjieff work is known as the Law of Seven, the Law of World Maintenance.
This is not the place to get sidetracked into a lengthy discussion of the Law of Seven. . . . But from the point of view of imaginal exchange, it does yield up one very interesting piece of data, again a stable feature of the Law of Seven. If you look at the schematic that follows, you notice those two lines cutting across the map, between do and si near the top and between fa and mi closer to the bottom. These correspond to the “hesitation” points on the ray — half steps on the musical scale — where a new infusion of energy, or a different kind of energy, must be introduced in order to keep the whole ray flowing on trajectory. Otherwise the whole thing will veer off track or be halted at a threshold it cannot cross. In Gurdjieffian terminologies, these are the “shock” points, the places where the entire progression is the most vulnerable but, equally, the most permeable.
GURDJIEFF’S RAY OF CREATION
In the case of the higher (do-si) shock point, that bridging energy is provided by the will of the Holy Absolute, still close enough to ground zero to easily span the descending gap. In the latter case, as we will see shortly, the shock point falls right between fa, the traditional endpoint of the so-called subtle realms, and mi, the beginning of those “dense material realms.” And this is exactly the place where traditional metaphysics and I locate the imaginal realm. In other words, the mi-fa shock point falls right in the middle of the imaginal intertidal zone. In and of itself, if you ponder it deeply, this realization will tell you most everything you need to know about the primary cosmic function of the imaginal realm and our specific human contribution to this sphere of operations. But since these ideas may be very new to some of you not previously familiar with Gurdjieffian metaphysics, rest assured that I will circle back in chapter 3 and unpack them much more systematically.
I like this first map because it is real. Not only does it accord with a more contemporary understanding of the relationship between matter and energy, it also situates the whole unfolding here (admittedly a huge and vast “here”) rather than in some mirage-like “spiritual” realm that floats “above” our visible solar system like a huge celestial theme park. It calls us to order, to a path of transformation that does not lead us away from materiality but straight into it and through it. Particularly when we enter those two lowest realms, mi and re, we are talking about our actual earth and our actual moon, and we are discussing planetary evolution along lines strikingly parallel to Teilhard de Chardin’s. Nor will Gurdjieff let us off the hook here. For him, the major vehicle mediating that mi-fa shock is the biosphere — yes, organic life on earth! — and its ultimate recipient is the moon, not our eternal souls. And yes, our conscious attention and willing participation will certainly make a huge difference in how our contribution is mediated and in which realm it is received. But willingly or unwillingly the tribute is exacted, and it is paid in the coin of this realm, in flesh and blood. Our inner work exists within the Megalocosmos and for the sake of the Megalo-cosmos, not the other way around; it is important never to forget this.
MIXED REALM
Our own Earth realm has long been known on the cosmological maps as mixtus orbis, the “mixed realm.” While the full explanation for this designation is complex, something does seem to get mixed and mingled here. We humans are curiously bilingual; we speak the language of this world with all its charms and nuances, but we also strain toward that invisible other that seems to hover right beyond us in those dazzling glimpses and visions: that intuition of “another intensity,” in the words of T. S. Eliot, to which we know we also belong. That invisible but always interpenetrating other is the imaginal realm.”
The earlier metaphysical roadmaps, as mentioned, tended to draw a sharp dividing line between matter and spirit, with the result that the imaginal, hovering just on the horizon of our mixtus orbis, often appeared to be a world in itself, with no obvious commerce with our own. As the last outpost of the “spiritual” realms, how and why would it bridge the divide into the material realms? In the previous chapter I tried to recast this traditional metaphysical habit in terms of the more contemporary under-standing that there is in fact no such “divide” but rather a single continuum of energy manifesting in various degrees of subtlety or coarseness. Transposing the metaphysical map from its original Platonic milieu to this more Einsteinian one in fact takes us far beyond traditional esoteric understandings of the imaginal, which focused on the personal and elusive nature of this realm, into a new appreciation of its collective and evolutionary importance.
It was Gurdjieff who really got the ball rolling here by adding in the key puzzle piece (undetectable through the lens of traditional sophia perennis metaphysics), which he called “reciprocal feeding.” He proposed that along the entire Ray of Creation (his equivalent term for the Great Chain of Being), there is a continuous, active exchange proceeding in both directions — not only from higher realms to lower but also from lower to higher — in order to maintain the entire ray in a state of dynamic equilibrium according to a cosmic principle to which he gives the rather unwieldy name “Trogoautoegocrat.”
Mouthful though the term may be, the idea itself is a remarkably prescient attempt to view the entire created order as what we would nowadays call a “self-specifying system,” a whole greater than the sum of its parts, whose chief metaphysical feature is no longer involution — the gradual loss of energy as the lower end of the chain plunges steadily toward entropy — but rather an elaborate homeostasis that preserves (and even increases) the energy of the total system as each realm makes its required contri-bution to the whole.
Gurdjieff referred to this system as “reciprocalfeeding” for good reason: the exchange he has in mind involves the actual transformation of cosmic substances based models—more like digestion than the simple information-sharing favored in contemporary consciousness . . . .
But the idea itself is fairly straightforward and so flagrantly timely for a planet careening toward ecological catastrophe that I believe it’s simply no longer conscionable to allow it to be held captive in a maze of Gurdjieffian Fourth Way esoterica. More to our immediate concern here, this broader vision of what amounts to a vast intergalactic bootstrapping is utterly essential if we hope to have some true feeling for what the imaginal realm is all about, beyond just some allusive bandwidth of inner guidance and bedazzling intensity. If exchange is indeed the principal business of this realm, we must picture this exchange from the outset as a two-way street. (All bold emphasis added)
WHERE IS ALL THIS LEADING?
That’s a very appropriate question to ask at this point in the series. My destination, after laying the groundwork, is the creating ground of the “Imaginal Realm” and the “reciprocal feeding” that takes place in the “exchange between the realms.” This is the realm where we’re destined to ascend in consciousness, where the two realms meet — and from whence we, as a “conscious circle of humanity,” co-create and recreate the “mixed realm” of the New Earth . . . andour moon, which is included in Gurdjieff’s Ray of Creation. Our fascination with going to the moon is significant at this time . . . but are we in position, mentally and spiritually, to take on the re-creation of our moon while our Home planet goes neglected and raped for her resources? I think not. We would treat Her Majesty no differently. But then, maybe not!
I do hope you enjoy flowing with Cynthia’s stream of consciousness as much as I do. I will share more in my next post, “Worlds Within Worlds.” As always, I welcome your thoughts, insights and inspirations. Until next time,
“In all living nature (and maybe even in that which we regard as dead) love is a force inciting creative activity in the most varied directions.” —P.D. Ouspensky
“We are definitely on a ‘new’ frontier!”exclaims poet and author Don Hynes in response to my previous post “Visionary Activism.” And so we are. That frontier is the vibrational gateway to the “Whole Holy World,” as contemporary prophet and visionary Lloyd A. Meeker (Uranda) describes the Inner and Outer Realms of Universal Realty—which includes the inner heavenly realms of Creator Beings and the outer earthly realms of Creation, where lords and angels incarnate to exercise dominion and steward the Creative Process.
We are currently moving through the second quarter of the 12th Creative Day, an Air cycle, the second of the Four Creative Forces of Water, Air, Earth and Fire, and rising up to the next octave in the score of the Music of the Spheres, which is an Earth cycle (1 Day = 25,872 yrs). So, something is coming to bear in the planet itself of renewal and upgrading to a higher vibratory frequency, which includes the earth of our physical bodies as well. How harmoniously we transition with the Earth is largely dependent upon the degree to which a critical mass of Humanity is restored to true harmonization with the Cosmic Plan of Restoration in this Air cycle — air signifying spirit. Our harmonization with the Spirit of God is critical to our evolution to a higher vibratory frequency and subsequent ascension out of the darkness of the olden days and into the Light of the New Day dawning. (Click on the image below to enlarge)
CREATION BY THE WORD
The “Spirit of God”— the One Tone of Love — was all there was before the heaven and the earth were created, in that order, along with all else that followed. “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters; and God said, Let there be light.” The Word, a Vibration, moved out into the formless “void” that would soon be filled with the earth and all of its vegetation and living creatures: the birds of the air and fish of sea and creeping, crawling critters . . . and Man, male and female, made in God’s image and likeness. And with that light of the Word of God, and the assistance of Man’s manifesting capacity of Consciousness, We manifested this Solar Entity as a dwelling place in the darkness of the deep of space, a Home among the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy for God and Man to dwell together as One, in peace and harmony.
The Vibration of the One Tone set into motion a vast multitude of overtone and undertones that composed the “Music of the Spheres” and the Matrix for Creation — “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” We shout for joy once again as we hear and listen to the morning stars singing their celestial music together, joining our voices in the refrain: “Glory to God in the Highest and peace on earth to all people everywhere.”
This, my dear and faithful readers, is the New Frontier upon which we have embarked and are being required to embrace fully . . . new, that is, to us, and only by reason of its absence from our conscious awareness all these thousands of years (28,183 to be exact) . . . and we’ve only begun awakening to the vastness of our cosmic environment and context in the last 400 years since Galileo gave us the telescope. Now we can peer deeply out into the Universe of stars and galaxies, nebulae and black holes with powerful telescopes and roving satellites launched into outer space . . . even as the veil between the realms thins and opens a sacred space for beings in both heaven and earth to commune and communicate with one another. That space is the “Imaginal Realm” that Cynthia Boureault explores in The Eye of the Heart.
COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE REALMS
Coming back to my poet friend Don Hynes and his comment on a post by Will Wilkinson on Visionary Activism, referencing his commentary on how he responded to a seemingly random thought about his deceased mother, Don wrote:
I’m interested in the origin of the “thought” of your mother. Could that “thought” be a “communication” with “higher” intelligence, that “voice” a direct link to a “guidance” within and without? Rather than a “random” thought, an intentional prod toward a depth of feeling contained in the synapses of memory? A “feeling” as you put it, that urges toward compassion. Perhaps we have partners in “activation” that we might access when we consciously open up the lines of communication and link our incarnate Self to Source. Might our minds be the access tool for this connection, our hearts be the instrument upon which “We” play, and this “activation” as you term it, be the next frontier in conscious evolution?
I am reminded of words I wrote in the foreword of SACRED ANATOMY three decades ago:
What if we sang songs of praise and thanksgiving to the Creator all day long in harmony with our fellow angels in the invisible Realms of Light, whom we could hear and see, and the “lost chord” would once again resound in heaven on earth?
What if we actually knew each other as angels and called each other by our tonal, angelic names and that we loved one another so much that we could do no harm but only blessing toward one another? What if we knew only oneness and isolation were not even possible?
I believe that we experienced these things at one time in a garden state and that we are destined to return to this state collectively. I believe that the kingdom of heaven is truly at hand, not only within us but all around us, and that we have the equipment in our sacred human anatomy and physiology to see it and enter into it to bring heaven into our experience on earth now. I believe that ascension is not only possible for us but is already in process and will shortly begin manifesting as a natural part of our life cycle here on earth. This I know: the Way of ascension is available to us now.
That technology originates from a level or three above the earthly level of our anatomy and physiology. Let me introduce you to the vast scope of this new frontier as mapped out by George Gurdjieff in what he called “The Law of Three” and “The Law of Seven.”
“The “Law of Seven” is described by Gurdjieff as the first fundamental cosmic law. This law is used to explain process. The basic principle of the law of seven explains why nothing in nature and in life constantly occurs in a straight line, that is to say that there are always ups and downs in life which occur lawfully.”
LAW OF SEVEN
Everything in the universe is created and sustained by vibrations — energy enlivening matter produces vibrations. Thoughts and feelings are vibrations, the wind rustling in the leaves is vibration, light reaching us from the sun and the stars is vibration. The whole of our life is vibration, everything that we perceive through our senses and everything we think feel and do.
Music is vibration – the emotional vibrations of a violinist’s inspiration, transmitted through the bow that enlivens the strings to vibrate and move an audience to tears, all this is vibration at every step. Understanding vibration is one way to grasp the essential unity that gives meaning to life.
The Law of Three determines the character and nature of a vibration and the Law of Seven determines how vibrations develop, interact and change. An octave is a repetitive motion. A succession of waves may be building up or dying away — forming an ascending or a descending octave. Each wave is similar but different to the one before and the one after.
The Law of Seven also shows the points in the scale [Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si-Do] where the rate of increase or decrease of frequency of any vibration slows down. Between Mi-Fa and Si-Do are ‘intervals,’ where a different, extra energy is required to maintain the original impetus. These ‘intervals’ are responsible for the frequent unpredictability of human aims and endeavours.
Different processes, according to the Law of Three, determine which intervals will be filled naturally, so that the progress continues uninterrupted to completion, and also reveal those that require an extra force to be given, without which the progress of the octave will halt or change direction.
We are most conscious of our failures when dealing with new situations, where often ‘things don’t work out’. But lots of things in human society do work out, at least usually. Houses, ships, cars get built; food gets produced and marketed; money gets earned and spent; laws get passed; babies get born. Many other things, new plans and initiatives, just peter out and fade away from lack of the right energy or turn into something quite different from the original conception. Understanding the law of seven is the key to learning how to finish what we start and what to expect along the way.
Depending on whether the octave is ascending or descending and knowing the time scale that applies to any particular example, the intervals can be expected and seen quite clearly. Waiting to cross a busy road it may seem that the stream of traffic will never ease up. Knowing that an ‘interval’ will always occur can avoid much impatience or even a nasty accident.
An ascending octave is like going uphill; it needs effort at every step. Descending octaves are like going downhill; the process is more automatic and goes on by itself after the first step is taken . . . .
The physical world is interpenetrated by the subtle world and the subtle world by the causal world as inner octaves of vibration. . . .
If you get the impression that the new frontier has something to do with music, then you’re spot on. It is about music — the “Musica Universalis” or Music of the Spheres — inaudible but deeply impactful to our lives on planet Earth . . . as well as to our audible music, as we shall see. “This celestial music is everywhere and nowhere; it is the music of movement between the planets, the members of our solar system”. . . and between suns, solar systems and all heavenly bodies, and between partners in activation on this new frontier. It’s the music of love.
“LOVE NEVER FAILETH”
Man has been mostly in a descending octave ever since his first step out of the Garden. Failure has been too prevalent in past cycles of restoration all down through the ages, symptomatic of a lack of love of God and of neighbor in the lives of human beings. Love never fails, as Paul wrote in his epistle to the Corinthians:
Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.Love never faileth.
The ascending cycle we are currently experiencing, initiated by the Lord of Love himself two-thousand years ago, shall not fail. As stewards of the ongoing cycles of evolution and restoration, much of our work lies in providing the impetus through our “Love casting” — upward as a tithe to the One and outward in blessing to our world — that will move the ascending process forward and upward across the Si/Do bridge interval and on up to the next octave. This takes a certain amount of conscious effort to act deliberately.
Creative vibrations, emanating in the Tone of the Word, ascend and descend along the path of the scale of musical tones moving energy — all of which provides us with a segue to the next level of consideration: Gurdjieff’s “Ray of Creation.” For this I will bring in Cynthia Bourgeault as a guide through “worlds within worlds.” I welcome your thoughts and insights. Until my next post,
I TRAFFIC WITH VISIONARIES — and there seem to be many in these historic days of awakening who are serving up a banquet of food for serious thought, much of it conveying nourishing energy for ascension of consciousness out of the dark and depressing mode of modern-day madness and fear-driven despair that’s imprisoning the spirits of human beings the world over and into the light of a New Day dawning.
One of these visionaries is my longtime friend and colleague energy healer and lightworker Will T. Wilkinson, currently living in Hawaii, author of NOW OR NEVER — A time-traveler’s guide to personal and global transformation; and co-author with Master Charles Cannon of AWAKENING from the AMERICAN DREAM: From Crisis to Consciousness. Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism, writes in the foreword of Will’s book, “Now or Never reveals how to balance authentic mystical experience with radical, urgent, wise action in the world.” This is the theme I wish to explore in this blog series.
In a recent posting, Will offers insight into the controversial and problematic technology of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). I encourage you to read his previous post of April 2nd The Activation Intervention for an introduction to this one.
A.I. vs N.I — We are visionary activists and it’s now or never time on planet earth. (April 9, 2023)
Many of you who watched the video I linked last week on Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) have reported in. “Wow. OMG. I didn’t know. We’re screwed. What’s going to happen? Etc.” Here’s the link again for those who’d like to catch up. And, the audio for listeners. Big thanks to my contributors, so grateful my writing has value to you. Spread the word!
The key takeaways for me from the video are:
The creators of A.I. don’t understand how it really works, especially how it learns and programs itself.)
Safety protocols are not in place so we can’t know what A.I. might do as it continues to exponentially x exponentially increase its intelligence.
There’s no way to know for sure if the answers that A.I. gives us are just information gathered from available data or developed by A.I. according to what it determines that we want to know. In this latter case, that would indicate conscious manipulation.
“Who might be in there?” is a question some A.I. engineers are asking, raising the wild possibility of a resident intelligence pre-existing in the technology, in which case we are discovering rather than inventing. The Big Question then changes from “When might A.I. become sentient?” to “When do we realize that A.I. is sentient?” What a thought.
Meanwhile, life.
What’s to be done about something we can’t do anything about, something that can very easily take over control of every system in civilization everywhere on earth in the same instant? Well, for starters, how about replacing that question with a vision? As one of my mentors loved to say in moments like this: “The truth is true and all is well, unconquerable life prevails.” A.I. stands for Artificial Intelligence, which is what it is. The reality that predates A.I. is, of course, life, which we might call Natural Intelligence or N.I. And guess which one is and will always be superior?
Think nature. Think your beating heart, the regulated procession of sun and moon and planets and stars, choreographed perfectly in every moment by something I call N.I. If we’re witnessing a competition or even an impending war, A.I. doesn’t stand a chance. Because it’s not plugged in to source.
But, the grim reality is that we, the human race, could end up as collateral damage. I believe with all my heart that what determines that is just how plugged in we are? And how many of us are transmitting Life / Love in every moment of our lives. This can’t be a new age concept anymore… it needs to become our urgent priority, making every minute count.
I received a stellar comment from an old friend that opens a magical doorway of understanding for us relative to just who “we” might be. Don wrote in response to last week’s essay on visionary activism, raising an intriguing possibility. It’s highly relevant as we consider how focusing our energy can meet the threats of the moment. Referencing my commentary on how I responded to a seemingly random thought about my deceased mother, Don wrote:
I’m interested in the origin of the “thought” of your mother. Could that “thought” be a “communication” with “higher” intelligence, that “voice” a direct link to a “guidance” within and without? Rather than a “random” thought, an intentional prod toward a depth of feeling contained in the synapses of memory? A “feeling” as you put it, that urges toward compassion. Perhaps we have partners in “activation” that we might access when we consciously open up the lines of communication and link our incarnate Self to Source. Might our minds be the access tool for this connection, our hearts be the instrument upon which “We” play, and this “activation” as you term it, be the next frontier in conscious evolution?
I zoomed this morning with a dear friend who just “lost” her partner. He was one of my best friends and we’ll celebrate his life in a ceremony next month. She told me that he visited her, about three weeks after his death. He communicated in the strongest terms that he was more present than he has ever been, that he’s just been absorbed back into the trees, the sea, the birdsong, and the wind. I feel that, I feel him with me. So, our wonderful opportunity at his celebration is not to let him go but to let him be, and to welcome him to be with us as he chooses.
Does this apply to everyone all the time? What if that line between life and death is not as absolute as we’ve believed? Yes, the body is de-activated. But is that the end for the person? Do they live on in another dimension and could they continue interacting with us? Many would say “Yes!” based on dramatic personal experience, including me. I would also add that we’re all visiting each other all the time, whether we’re still in our bodies or not. Can we share love in those moments? Is this our contribution, an amplification of N.I., broadcasting to sustain stability in our world?
Perhaps this is our real community, a tribal assembly in consciousness that is constantly dancing together around the campfire of the moment.
The blessings and threats of A.I. are real. We can’t know how it will develop, for our benefit or our destruction. But we are not powerless. We are visionary activists and it’s now or never, here on this planet we call home.
INTELLIGENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
Chris Waldberger, South African writer, teacher and student of literature and philosophy, weighs in on the “illusion” of AI:
But contra the sentiments expressed by Musk et al, even in a hipster publication, I managed to express an opinion that because consciousness is immaterial, some kind of humanoid computer can never be built. This would be true even if an ‘organic’ machine mimicking a brain were to be possible. And obviously a mechanical, metal machine could not even get close. I referred to atheist philosopher of mind Thomas Nagel in this regard, who had famously abandoned materialist Darwinism as he concluded the mind was not reducible to the brain and was thus not a product of blind and random mutations.
Much of this illusion of AI comes to us from the fallacious ‘mind body’ problem, begun by Descartes. But the truth is there is simply no reason to imagine your body as a kind of machine with a ghost pilot lodged within. ‘We’ do not live in a fleshly cabinet. We are beings in the world and our souls are, as per Aristotle, the forms of our bodies. This is why Christianity has always taught the necessary resurrection of the body if we are to live eternally.
Additionally, we know now that our guts are a kind of second brain, and that nerves will register electrical activity before the brain apparently sends a signal.
This all means that to build a human mind, you first need to build a human being. Therefore you cannot build a mind, because you cannot build a human being.
INTELLIGENCE or COMPUTATION?
This begs the question “What is intelligence?” Webster’s second definition is “Superior mental powers.” It’s an intangible capacity of Mind to process thoughts; a function not an entity or “thing” that can be made. It’s a verb not a noun. There is only one Mind shared by all living beings, including human beings, as all things are One. “There are no two things,” to borrow a phrase from the writings of Walter Russell.
One of the tenants of Chiropractic Philosophy differentiates between “Universal Intelligence” and “Innate Intelligence,” the first being Divine Intelligence governing Creation throughout the Universe, and the latter being that aspect of Universal Intelligence with which we are born that governs the many functions of our physical bodies. Both need a means for manifesting creation and governance. Consciousness is that vibrational plasma by means of which Divine Intelligence transmits creative design and control into the various realms of manifestation. Another name for this vibrational substance is pheumaplasm, or spirit substance.
Another word for consciousness is heaven. There is a heaven, a layer of consciousness, for every level and realm of Creation. The substance of consciousness is vibrational or spiritual in nature, created by Universal Intelligence. Another name for Universal Intelligence is God, who is Spirit, life itself. Since man cannot create life, nor give life to forms, man certainly cannot create Intelligence. Man can only generate electrical current to move in and throughout forms, such as computers. But electricity is not life, no matter how well it mimics life. It’s artificial; humanly contrived. Its ability to be so directed in gathering information (data) from memory storage in silicon chips and then to create computations and narratives is not intelligence. It’s pure and simple electrically controlled and directed computation.
“THE CONSCIOUS CIRCLE OF HUMANITY”
I do resonate with Will’s perspective with regard to artificial intelligence compared to natural intelligence. There simply is no basis for comparison. A.I. cannot exist without N.I. in the human beings who developed it. Will’s vision of “real community” is worth exploring further.
Switching gears a bit to bring into this consideration one of my favorite authors and visionary herself, Cynthia Bourgeault: this excerpt from chapter eight of her beautiful and insightful book EYE OF THE HEART: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm, sets the tone for this series.
“There’s an old piece of Hasidic folklore that claims that our world at any point in time is held in its planetary orbit by thirty-six conscious human beings. They don’t know each other, and they don’t even know if they’re among the thirty-six. But the quality of their work, rising like incense into the earth’s atmosphere, creates around our fragile planet a sturdy bandwidth of protection, blessing, and guidance.”
This comprises the gist of George Gurdjieff’s notion of what he called a “conscious circle of humanity.” Cynthia elucidates Gurdjieff’s notion:
Essentially, the conscious circle is an intense zone of imaginal interchange in which advanced beings on both sides of the form/formless divide—i.e., some still in their physical bodies, others no longer so—join hands across the realms for a mutual exchange of wisdom, tempering, blessing, protection, and occasional course correction.
I will explore this “imaginal interchange” further in this series with Cynthia Bourgeault’s insightful vision and guidance. So, if this topic interests you, stay tuned. Until my next post,
Healing Tones 