13)  TODAY

Enough of the teaching, explaining my belief system.

Now I want to share with you what is going on today.

I read Scientific American every month, but actually I am a few months behind
because of having to get them shipped down to Grenada previously.

So the July 2019 edition has a cover-article called “How the Mind Arises”. This really
attracted my attention because it has to do with consciousness. I finished reading the article this morning and then reread it later. My initial reaction was to ignore it
because it doesn’t fit my belief system, but I overcame that and checked it out from
a neutral point of view, almost.

Anyway, they have done brilliant science and gone beyond modules and connections and neurons, and have figured out that these all interact through what they have discovered are about 300 nodes, connecting the modules. And it is these nodes that create our “mental states” they conclude.

I have no doubt that what they say is true, with the usual skepticism that allows
for modifications in the future to this new science. But it sounds like a good
and accurate scientific discovery to me.

Then this afternoon I saw an online article about this “Blob” just being displayed in
the Paris zoo. It isn’t any family we know, animal, plant, fungi, a new one evidently.
Actually they describe it as a single-celled organism. And this blob has no nervous
system, no brain. And yet it has the ability to learn and solve problems, and pass
on that information to its clones.

So “coincidence”? The same day for gods’ sake. One article is leading to “complexity creates consciousness” and the other to “complexity doesn’t matter”.

Now which is right?

As usual, I’ll bet they both are. It all depends on how we look at it. Either from the view that materiality creates consciousness or that consciousness creates the material.

Sounds a lot like quantum mechanics, viewing a photon as a particle or as a wave. Both are correct, it just depends on how we measure it. Strangely however, the result is different based on how we view it.

Interesting. My metaphysics belief system states that consciousness creates matter, but not the reverse. What if that is incorrect? What if they arise together and it is just how we look at it? I’ll have to work on that.

Getting back to the articles, neither of them explained the origin of consciousness nor did they give any meaning. I don’t believe we will ever really know those, they are “off the table”.

In the Carlos Castenada books about Don Juan, he explains that knowledge is like a
table top with a single placemat on it. The placemat is everything we know. The table top is everything that is knowable, and if not in the placemat, we probably will figure it out someday. But off the table is all the information that we will never know, the “nawal”, the unknowable. He says that asking how or why about our origin is in the nawal, don’t bother to ask.

Materiality versus spirituality, science versus religion, which is right? They both
must be, just how we look at it.

Is it possible for an individual to look at it both ways at the same time, not just to look at it, but also to appreciate it? Of course it is.

I guess that explains something I have noticed for the last year, and that is that no matter how high I get, the physical reality continues normally, no consideration at all for how the moment becomes more real and the meaning is thrust upon me.

And yet, what result changes if I look at it one way and not the other?

What is the difference in the results of the particle/wave experiment? The pattern of light on the resultant wall is either dots or waves, depending on how we measure the photons.

I don’t see any difference in beauty, in function. Maybe function.

What if a light sensor was placed where a wave would show up, but not particles. Then it would be a consciousness meter showing how the scientist wanted the result to come out. Then if the scientist could vary the measuring technique with a button, then he could send Morse Code to a distant reader, at the speed of light.

Oh, guess what. We already have that, it’s call “radio”.

But there is a difference in the on/off mechanism, one is a switch and the other is a
technique, sort of.

I don’t know. Another puzzle.