Markings

March 2012

27 posts

“We’re blind to the observation of the Scottish naturalist, John Muir, who wrote,

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

Part of our growth as individuals has to involve healing the psychic fractures we have created between humankind and nature—and thus contemplating how our bodies are tied in to the great cycles of the elements is a necessary development.

But in the end, what we’re doing is pulling the rug out from under our belief in a separate self.” —

Bodhipaksa, Living as a River

 

Mar 17, 20121 note

“Consciousness therefore lies at the heart of both our documentation and our appreciation of the Universe, for without consciousness, the Universe, as we know it, would simply not exist.” —Simon G. Powell, Darwin’s Unfinished Business: The Self-Organizing Intelligence of Nature

Mar 16, 20122 notes

“To acknowledge the presence of natural intelligence within Nature, to seek to learn from that intelligence, is to begin placing oneself in a right relationship to all else; so poised, balance and health are maximized.” —Simon G. Powell, Darwin’s Unfinished Business: The Self-Organizing Intelligence of Nature

Mar 15, 20123 notes

“To state that we are intelligent but that the process that sculpted our brains was not, seems a tad suspect. As does the notion that the vast systems of brain neurons underlying our minds lack any intelligent activity of their own.” —Simon G. Powell, Darwin’s Unfinished Business: The Self-Organizing Intelligence of Nature

Mar 14, 20121 note

“Thus, the irrepressible pop cultural meme “the survival of the fittest” faces immanent extinction, and a new and much more apt meme can take its place, namely the survival of that which makes sense.

It is this sensible aspect of genetic change—the fact that Nature repeatedly favors the survival of genetic information that elicits sensible biological behavior—that characterizes the intelligence intrinsic to the process of evolution.” —Simon G. Powell, Darwin’s Unfinished Business: The Self-Organizing Intelligence of Nature

Mar 13, 20121 note

“Only when we look at the bigger picture and see Nature as a single coherent sensibly behaving system can we properly divine natural intelligence.

This realization suggests that Nature can be viewed as a system of self-organizing intelligence in which life, consciousness, and information are all falling into place according to some unstoppable natural imperative.” —

Simon G. Powell, Darwin’s Unfinished Business: The Self-Organizing Intelligence of Nature

 

Mar 12, 20121 note

“At first glance it would seem as if there were some “thing” there, some kind of self, some kind of entity—but only for a moment.

The kaleidoscope would continue turning, and the “self” that I thought I had glimpsed would vanish, to be replaced by a new constellation of experiences. It seemed at times that I had an endless succession of momentary selves. Every time I looked closely at my experience there would be that initial sense that there was some “thing” there, some static picture at the far end of the kaleidoscope. But the rotation would continue and the elements of my experience would slide into a new configuration.

Every time I looked, there was that same sense—a momentary illusion of “something” being there, followed by a perception of flow and change.” —Bodhipaksa, Living as a River

Mar 10, 2012

“What I mean is that intelligence is essentially an information-gaining capacity in which learning takes place, problems are solved, and sense is made—and that this kind of clever sense-making capacity is not restricted to the brain/mind.

Nor is it restricted to robots and other examples of artificial intelligence.

On the contrary, Nature, the Universe, can be seen as one vast system of self-organizing intelligence, biological evolution being one particular way in which this intelligence gradually but inexorably expresses itself.” —Simon Powell, Darwin’s Unfinished Business: The Self-Organizing Instelligence of Nature

Mar 9, 20123 notes

“More strenuously than almost any previous philosopher, Emerson advocated self-examination as the key to liberation and well-being, the precondition for human flourishing.” —James Miller, Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche

Mar 8, 20121 note

“Written twenty-five years before Darwin’s The Origin of Species, Emerson’s words show a keen appreciation for the chaotic unity of nature as a whole, which he beholds with the serenity of a mystic contemplating the One.” —

James Miller, Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche

 

Mar 7, 20121 note

“What Descartes is showing us is something dramatically different from how he has been interpreted:

He is showing us that in the capacity of the mind to concentrate its attention toward itself in pure thought—in that capacity there is a central element of Man that is not merely separate from nature, but beyond nature! Beyond earth!” —

Jacob Needleman’s forthcoming book, An Unknown World: Notes on the Meaning of the Earth. 

http://jacobneedleman.com/blog/?p=357

Mar 6, 20121 note

“The intuitive idea—hardwired into our brains—that only one “now” exists and is shared by everyone lies at the heart of much of human social thinking. We all sense that we live in the same present and act accordingly.

That there can be no universally recognized, simultaneous present, no “now” for all creation does violence to our intuition because this is not the time we are born into. The problem, of course, is that the time we do recognize is the one our brains evolved us to see.

Thus we have no hardwired physics modules to provide instinctive understanding of relativity. Our brains evolved to intuit one kind of time. Thousands of years of cultural evolution and material engagement have slowly taken us beyond that hardwiring. With relativity the pathways of our deepest physical reasoning, also born of material engagement, suddenly vaulted us past intuition and revealed an entirely new form of time that would rework the cosmos.” —Adam Frank, About Time

Mar 5, 20121 note

“Einstein’s fundamental insight was that no “right” answer exists for questions about space and time because there is no absolute frame of reference with an absolute space and time from which to judge the answer.” —Adam Frank, About Time

Mar 3, 20122 notes

“Both hemispheres clearly play crucial roles in the experience of each human individual, and I believe both have contributed importantly to our culture. Each needs the other.

Nonetheless the relationship between the hemispheres does not appear to be symmetrical, in that the left hemisphere is ultimately dependent on, one might almost say parasitic on, the right, though it seems to have no awareness of this fact.” —

Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (an excellent book on current understanding of the the hemispheres of the brain)

Mar 2, 2012

“My thesis is that for us as human beings there are two fundamentally opposed realities, two different modes of experience; that each is of ultimate importance in bringing about the recognisably human world; and that their difference is rooted in the bihemispheric structure of the brain. It follows that the hemispheres need to co-operate, but I believe they are in fact involved in a sort of power struggle, and that this explains many aspects of contemporary Western culture.” —Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary

Mar 1, 2012

February 2012

24 posts

“Cosmologist Edward Harrison, echoing Joseph Campbell in Masks of God, spoke of cultures creating “masks of the universe.” Each mask is a kind of filter for the experience of the universe that cannot be removed cleanly in order to see the “objective” reality that lies behind it. Instead, each mask guides our investigations through the process of material engagement.” —Adam Frank, About Time

Feb 29, 20123 notes

“The theologian Keith Ward has written:

“The whole point of talking of the soul is to remind ourselves constantly that we transcend all the conditions of our material existence; that we are always more than the sum of our chemicals, our electrons, our social roles or our genes… . We transcend them precisely in being indefinable, always more than can be seen or described, subjects of experience and action, unique and irreplaceable.”

So, here is where I am driving. For members of the human species to live in a world where people in general have this opinion of themselves—and the opinion is in fact nearly universal—is to live in what we may call the “soul niche.” —Nicholas Humphrey, Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness

Feb 28, 2012

“Human beings need relationships.

But the deepest and best relationships are going to be those between individuals who recognize the existence in others of a conscious self that is as strange and precious—and private—as their own.

Every one a soul in good standing, the equal of themselves.” —

Nicholas Humphrey, Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness

Feb 27, 20125 notes

“As I gazed into my own mind, I saw not a thing but a process.

I saw no substance, but merely activity. I saw no being, only becoming.

As various perceptions, thoughts, and feelings came and went, I saw them as being something like twinkling stars in the night sky. Except, of course, that stars appear in fixed positions. This was more like a night sky where the glittering lights were not fixed objects but merely the sky itself scintillating randomly. I’d never seen anything so beautiful.” —Bodhipaksa, Living as a River

Feb 25, 20121 note

“Whether we are aware of it or not, our deepest need is to be in relationship with the One, the ultimate unifying principle. But the One transcends all distinctions; it cannot be related to in the dualistic mode.
The human mind does have the possibility, however, of connecting with the One through a higher, numinous mode of being, a mode of being that begins with a still mind.” —Shimon Malin, The Eye That Sees Itself

Feb 24, 20122 notes