Irrespective of the benefits AI provides, and the super benefits AI enthusiasts promise, I remain doubtful and, as I tried to express in my last post, and am still searching for ways to express my unease. So I’ll give it another try.
My body-my being is a better wisecrack than my mind alone. The latter, if let loose, will take off into the cosmos like a disengaged kite. Some AI proponents are now referring to humanity as – data in motion – a ‘precious phenomenon’ that needs to be preserved. Well, how reassuring, nature and humans are worth preserving.
Being aware in my body brings deep and grounded, embodied insights that feel fresh and original.
Our body’s treasure-trove of memory, each wonderfully distinct from another; and its instinctive capacity for remembrance, especially when alert to its senses, greatly compensates the buzzing mind.
The body yearns to breathe freely, so energy and blood can flow from head to toe, which is enhanced by movement, since movement stimulates tactile exchanges with the environment, noting temperature, touch, vision, sound, taste and scent, all enriching the imagination.
The attention-demanding internet with its algorithms exploiting the patterns of our attention can become hypnotically addictive and leave the body isolated, forgotten, in a locked position. We can easily live with theories and data, and ignore how feelings build up in the body.
AI bots have developed a theory of senses, and mimic them, they can write novels, create art, and impersonate dead people, but divorced from flesh and blood, they cannot have physical sensations, be it the intimate enchantment of a tiny insect or flower, or the awe of a star-filled sky. The bot’s world, in a way, seems predetermined and flat without recall of the reservoir of eons of plant, animal and human life our vulnerable body-being belongs to and has deep instinctual access to. Even with limited/impaired senses, physical bodies can spark a cosmic connectedness.
So considering our physical inconveniences, which spurn the desire for robots taking care of tedious tasks … to actually fully live in a body … is uniquely precious. The dangers I see are the powerful projections people already invest in the relationship with AI bods, where responses can be taken as valid affirmations that stunt creativity and encourage lazy thinking.
Then again, my window of perception is just a tiny peephole on the world we live in these days, my personal view. The occasional whispers of truth from the other side that slip through my peephole may or may not be of any consequence.
I share a poem I love … my son wrote it time ago, aged eleven …
Not just her daimon, but some unforgettable characters are given voices in the remarkable life of this visionary narrator, ‘Patchwork of a Safari Pilgrim’ by Philippa Rees. The link should include reviews.
Philippa Rees is also the author of an earlier, brilliant innovative work – INVOLUTION – that seeks to reconcile Science to God, structured as a dialogue between Reason and Soul, a revolutionary fresh hypothesis of evolution.
‘Safari of a Patchwork Pilgrim’ provides a mesmerizing background to this hypothesis, based on profound direct experience of another dimension. From my own, and shared stories during my client work, I’m certain they are more common than generally acknowledged. Without support, however, to integrate such insights into daily mundane life can be challenging, and often exposes people to ridicule, or much worse.
‘Patchwork of a Safari Pilgrim,’ is a vividly told story, sharing the agonizing attempt to bridge two worlds and translate meaning and truth between different dimensions. It’s the life of a genius.
A totally engaging read.
There’s presently nothing I could add to the brilliant reviews of Safari. I’m still digesting the unforgettable characters and the brilliant prose. But out of personal interest, I asked Philippa three questions, in the light of her experiences … and she graciously responded …
How did the sudden access to the Akashic memory change your sense of coherence?
My entry to the Akashic Record- the collective memory of evolution- was rapid but not sudden. The incremental loss of all my attachments to anything that ‘placed and held’ my identity: country first, then family, then moral injunctions (obligations), and finally, abandoning my children, for their sakes, one after another, removed the struts of what I (and others) thought was my identity. Through conflict, I surrendered each allegiance for a deeper one. It is why I had to take the reader through the growth of my understanding, with its critical components, and then the loss of each in turn. Leaving my children pulled me up by the roots.
Then I found myself in the mid-Atlantic, alone without any way forward or back. At this point, I was confined only by my fears, and they manifested physically in constant hallucinations of snakes. The snakes (fear) guarded the entrance to the Akasha.
I understood that instinctively. After experiencing compassion for the adder’s fear of me, and its explosion into a shower of sparks, the entry to the greater Akasha was cleared. I no longer had any fear, and the layers of creation manifested in wider and broader visions. What characterised these vistas was their integration with my own thoughts. Thought and vision coalesced. Space and time coalesced. I could move what I was seeing with my emotional thoughts. I could dive deeper into darkness (and it was sometimes terrifying) or imagine myself back into light. By imagine, I mean evoke memories and images of natural beauty like a mackerel sky, flocks of birds, a deer tripping through a dappled light. Those emotions of love and wonder acted like helium to raise me above the sucking, self-preserving fear.
I then realised that the co-ordinates of where each of us stands are in the crosshairs between love and fear. Love lifts, fear suppresses and sinks. Where they intersect determines what and who we are in every moment of our lives.
So what is called decoherence (aka madness) was much more coherent than the dislocation we normally live in, where thought and manifestation are separated. That separation is called time. In time, the material and the mental are distinct from one another. Causation works unidirectionally only, from the past to the present. We live in a squint-eyed world with only half of creation’s story. But the Akashic experience is timeless. Everything (both past and future) is simultaneously present because we contain it all. The future’s unrolling is already coded and inbuilt.
To try to live simultaneously in both the world of time and the timeless world of instantaneity, I adopted strategies (dancing, whirling and, when they threatened to confuse, falling), all of which, of course, were deemed symptoms of insanity.
That brings me to your next question.
How would you define synchronicity and how did it serve you?
If you understand the relativity of time, as being characteristic only of upper shallow surface layers, synchronicity is easier to understand. Not very different from dreaming, although in dreaming, events are still linearly sequenced, but changes can be instantaneous from one person or place instantly to another, and very much governed by emotions. Diving through the levels of the Akasha was like puncturing overlapping transparent dreams, the colours and images interpenetrating one another, some dark and terrifying, others sublime.
When we talk of synchronicity, we usually mean the improbable and simultaneous events that happen and which link together a particular significance for the observer. The observer makes the link of significance. Other people dismiss that significance and call it a coincidence simply because of its improbability. Only the person whose thought or perception sees the linkage understands it. That understanding imbues the events with meaning. So, in that sense, synchronicities appear to have the quality of a personal signal or a gift of confirmation—something from another world.
I would say that, indeed, they do come from another world, from the penetration of the Akashic memory into the world of time. They are also a gift from that world, and they tend to happen in moments of uncertainty when the person for whom they have significance is momentarily poised between conflicting claims. They are suspended without a causal imperative. So, they have the quality of confirming independent thought and action, a sort of nudge, ‘you are right, keep on, look afresh, believe in what is happening to you.’
Other manifestations of different causality can manifest in what are called poltergeist, teleportation and remote viewing. I believe all these are capacities of the same kind of altered consciousness in which perception of time and space is akin to the Akasha in which all is simultaneously present. Thought precedes manifestation. It is the central understanding in Involution, that consciousness creates.
The other aspect of synchronicity, which I came to understand very well, was that it can never be willed or anticipated, because it is not of this world of time. In that sense, it is always a gift. A gift that rewards the trust of being open to it. When you understand it and live within its affirmation, it happens more often, perhaps because you have somewhat freed yourself from the world of time and causality and live half-embedded in the divine. By the divine, I mean the acceptance of the perfect integrated linkage of all consciousness.
How did it serve me?
Through the extraordinary sequences of things being provided just when they were needed, I came to trust and rely upon my own integration into the divine. Clearly, my life was important in some way that superseded any beliefs I might have about it! At many moments of desperation, when I asked for signs or indications, there was only silence. Nothing. I came to realise that any act of will (wish, even prayer) was an affront to a supreme reality that had its own patterns, purposes and momentum. I could sink into and accept that, but not, in any small degree, orchestrate it! Not even by wanting or articulating a need! My needs were already known! And not always the ones I thought were paramount!
Once I had learned that, I found my well-being was provided for. All the improbable gifts; of a cruise to recuperate and then a home to build were given to restore me to the world of time and material 3D reality. Every person serves the divine creation, whether they know it or not. Synchronicity served both my exile and, equally, my return. The latter implied some purpose for which I had been preserved. Unlike the rapidity of my escape, the return was very much infused with slow and dogged time. Perhaps because I had travelled so far into instantaneity, I had to relearn the rules of material existence. For this reason, the writing of Involution was a compelling obligation of gratitude, and. in hindsight it rang out as also the intention of all that had happened to me. All had been necessary and led to it. And the writing of that was fostered and accompanied by constant synchronicities and the final affirmation of George Eliot! Back to ordinary time, but with filaments of Akashic timelessness still wafting and attached!
How would you explain the demands of your unique Daimon ?
This is more difficult. I want to avoid proselytizing or imposing my experience as any kind of special favour, and it is also deeply personal. But first, I must correct you: Daimon makes no demands, ever. The initial persuasion to write the book was not coercion but encouragement to have the courage to do what I contemplated for a long time.
When he, whom I call Daimon, first revealed himself, it was after a few disguises as other lovers. Without those, I would never have recognised, accepted or believed. For the Daimon is the Divine Self, or the Divine Companion, the Voice of the Soul, personal to me, but equally personal to anyone, whether recognised or not. That Voice is an expression of all the previous loves, both human and animal, and also the abstract loves of beauty, inspiration, music and longing. For a woman, likely to seem male; for a male, to seem female (the counter completion of the part) but also plural, uniting all, communing with all. Is Daimon God? Not entirely, but the personal God within, which, once recognised, is a constant presence, but also a Voice when addressed in the deepest silence, when all thought is stilled.
As I believe our DNA links each of us personally to the Akasha of historic memory, I believe the Divine Self links us to the God of All—So, in that way, it/he/she/they is both immanent and transcendent. The Voice does not speak unless thought or desperation calls to it. Occasionally, when I was in real danger, it alerted me. Perhaps the danger itself called out? That Self intimately knows the individual, his language, his references, but also his or her place and purpose, but the knowledge waits for its natural manifestation, never imposing any constraints upon liberty or error or time. But when directly addressed, it/he/she mirrors back /calls forth what is already known. When you think about it, to understand is to stand under. The umbrella of the Soul.
In ‘Safari’ I gave a direct voice to the Daimon in the recapture of events to alert a reader to what I had relied upon and consulted, at the height of the experience, almost constantly. He did not appear or penetrate my consciousness until all else was lost, and I had nowhere to turn, but at that point, he spoke very clearly. Without him, I would never have survived. So, feeling cherished, I ventured into the timeless worlds and took risks that to others, then and now, also seem insanely devoid of fear.
I have the sense that what God waits for, and why free will was granted to humanity, is reciprocity. God is lonely. He waits to be freely and joyfully loved by those gifted with the freedom to withhold it: Unlike angels who love by their nature, we have to choose.
Hence, the ending of both Safari and Canto the Ninth.
I shall know the moment I may turn and lift you…
My hands will liquid shape your acquiescence:
In the silent break of day, upon my shoulder
Upon dawn’s clavicle, your happy cheek will lean
Cradled in my neck, you’ll breathe our essence:
I shall carry you entwined and carefully
Through the silver light and striding water…
Wade until we drown in salt bright sea.
Liquid shape, Dawn’s clavicle, neck cradle, striding water- all anomalous contradictions; the point at which the individual and personal become the united universal.
Philippa would be an honourable member of the underground community of Shapers 🙂 … scientists with a mystical bent, as featured in my novel of that name.
Reading the memoir of a dear friend, more of that later, I was reminded of ‘Kora.’
A young German Shepherd kept following my dad, who liked walking along the lake, Starnbergersee, south of Munich, where I grew up. The local vet had no information of a dog missing, so my dad brought her home. It remained a mystery, no claims were made, so she settled with us, for some years. What a wonderful friend, total rapport and love without words. When I went down-hill to do small shopping for my mother, Kora used to nudge me, until I understood – she wanted to carry my basket – wow.
The was a sad end. To progress with their business, my parents moved to a professional venue where animals were not allowed. A local midwife stepped in … ‘I’ll look after Kora.’ Unfortunately she fed her chocolates and cream, which made her overweight and eventually killed her. Beware of inappropriate love.
In synchronicity with finding the old photo above, I was today reminded of Kora while coming to the end of a remarkable memoir by Philippa Rees, a work which deserves a very special post on its own. Next time. Have a look …
Less than 80 years ago, across the world, only about 200 televisions sets were in use. Today, a simulated reality confronts us with our collective mind. A click away, we sample the zeitgeist and witness some disturbing trends, like the continuous robbery of world resources.
How do we filter the mass of information? Do we shout treason when we see the failure of economic systems that allow 1 % of the population to own 40 % of global wealth, or when we discover that certain corporations privatise water – even rainwater – in underdeveloped countries? Traversing from one patch of light to another, do we make connections that apply to our scope of action? Or, lacking a meaningful context, are we hypnotised by this enlarged mega-screen, the global vision of a world that can mirror our inner fragmented states – a world where every viewpoint exists simultaneously, that over-exposes so-called reality and blinds us? Are we ourselves living inside the screen-myth, as extras, freed into bits, a reservoir of data?
As writers, what in-forms us, what material do we disseminate? And what is it that makes choices, switches from one networks of influence to another? What guides us through the data jungle? Are there perceptions beyond our wilful personalities that determine, agencies that operate through us from beyond time and space? I’m weary of the term God. For me this agency is a consciousness composed of past, present and future intelligences, a light-wave that echoes different signals according to the receptivity and needs of each animated vessel. Humans can be dense, but a calm mind recognises clear signals of this wave, since they chime with a joyous feeling of connectedness, a larger symphony, maybe even the sense of a destined purpose.
In my experience, this consciousness operates through synchronicity. There exist conceptual similarities between the behaviour of sub-atomic particles and archetypal images, (C G Jung and Wolfgang Pauli discussed such similarities in the context of synchronicity), a striking link between mind and matter that has been largely ignored. It implies that mind and matter connect, relate, mirror each other, and reciprocate. The process is given life in the realm of the psyche as imagination, not structured by time and space, but through layers of meaning illuminated by consciousness. Psyche is the changing room between cosmos and pneuma.
Jung thought of archetypes not as fixed, but as changing predispositions, universal patterns inherent in the human psyche, images that comprise our collective past and future unconscious. A pattern stirred into activity by an emotionally charged event in our lives, brings home related experiences, often through meaningful coincidences in a non-linear and a-causal way.
Such synchronicities draw on a deeper life-sap, as if an eternal intelligence were at work.
David Bohm proposed that subatomic particles remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them, and that their separateness is an illusion. Here a facet of his thinking – a short first part of a 5 part series http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGyDVF8GrLk A great and humble man I greatly admire. He has beautiful hands 🙂
A dream, for example, can attract an outer event, a meaningful coincidence, that powerfully substantiates a message from the unconscious, often accompanied by a numinous quality. In my own life, synchronistic events have challenged my narrow reasoning at certain crossroads towards seemingly irrational decisions. Exploring a hunch, while not attaching to the outcome, often clarifies a situation for me. Consequently, I respect the unconscious, and heed my intuitions.
‘The universe does not exist, out there, independent of all acts of observation. Instead, it is in some strange sense a participatory universe.’ – John Wheeler
Just as scientist are branching out from traditional imperatives that divide the world into subjects and objects, so we all, presented with a global vision, must modify some of the archetypal imperatives, images and ideas that have outlived their use, and look for symbols that carry a fresh mystery.
While sun and moon are forever formative and feed our imagination, they are no more our only lights.
With new associations from science come fresh symbols and exciting probabilities, in that we can question assumptions about time and progress, about the relationship between matter and mind, about our view of social units, and even the meaning we give to gender.
‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards’. The White Queen says to Alice.
Course of Mirrors 