Poetic History
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I don't know for sure when I first read Père Teilhard de Chardin's
The Future of Man;
probably more than 30 years ago, but this gentle and deeply passionate
vision of purpose and possibility for human beings rang true, and
settled deep within. Even though it may be premature to expect the
full measure of our potential, we are growing fast, and as Chardin observed, long before the
age of the Internet, we are becoming one world; we have no other choice:
"The Age of Nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the
Earth."
The idea of doing something like the GCP began
to gestate almost four years before the apparent birth of the project. The following is
quoted from logbook "FieldREG #9", started December 1, 1994, just before a very
stimulating Esalen meeting on intentionality and consciousness. Not only the meeting, but
the time surrounding it had striking synchronistic interactions which led to unusually
extensive insights and intellectual extrapolations. In a premonitory
description of the GCP, some of these thoughts were noted a couple of weeks later, pg. 42 in the logbook. Dec 26 01:30 (1994)
How much web linkage would be
required to to create an aware
consciousness à la Chardin?
If Hameroff is right, the fundamental necessary (and sufficient?)
requirement is coherence of quantum optical events,
which should be ...
analogous to quantum coherence of other physical/electrical events. ...
The web analogy needs a
fundamental unit, which might be a node, more likely a personal page,
which has a self-organzing capacity, under the influence of the
web field, i.e., the possibility of connectedness.
The conditions need to be right to establish coherent
ideas, or maybe even to establish a coherent EM field phenomenon...
In either case, if the coherence length and hence the capacity to
interact with and stimulate relevant activity [is present] in ...
microtubule analogs in the web, then a larger scale
coherence will result, leading to an increase in the global coherence
until a collapse [into consciousness] is self-induced ...
We experience the world with beautiful immediacy,
and with a quality of direct participation that seems completely natural.
And yet it is quite magical.
We take meaning from music, we know our loved ones from afar, and we leap in thought to the stars.
Sometimes we sense that we have dissolved ourselves into a group or a larger whole.
And we always have prayed as if it could make a difference.
Three years after the Esalen meeting, at a mini-conference in Freiburg in
late November 1997, several of us were talking with
psychophysiologists about anomalies of
consciousness, and thinking about measures, and trying to get
closer to the live subtleties.
During a hallway break conversation, Dick Bierman, Dean Radin, and I were
playing with the links of psychophysiology and REG
technology and consciousness,
and Dean
produced a fine concentration of notions in the suggestion that
"we could make a World EEG".
With a little planning, mainly talking with
Greg Nelson, Dean, Dick, Jiri Wackermann,
and John Walker,
we decided it not only could be done, but would be fun.
We began building an "electrogaiagram," to trace
coherent thought and feeling in the world.
Even when it was most difficult, it was fun. And there are allies to help make
matters including paradoxes and contradictions understandable,
dreams, for
example, and ancient wisdom like that of the
I Ching, to help us
stay on the path with a heart. There's modern wisdom too, as some simple
reccomendations attributed to the Dalai Lama help us see. Indeed we can touch
the perennial wisdom. Or consider
A Congressman's Prayer, by Dennis Kucinich
(D-OH). And then there is
Talking with Angels,
who say "What could be more natural than our talking with
each other?" And what could be more natural than a poem to ask a deeper question?
- - Jimi Hendrix
According to the 20th-century American philosopher Susanne
Langer,
- - From ODE
Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of
certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable.
The very fact that serious and conscientious men and women treat them as
existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the
possibility of being born.
- - Hermann Hesse
Religion is hard. But then you begin to lose the hard edges of yourself
and start to glimpse the other. All of the Axial Agers practiced what
the Chinese called jian ai or concern for everybody. Not just for your
own group, but for everybody. And if we don't do that, I don't see how
we can save our planet.
- - Karen Armstrong
When you put a thing in order, and give it a name, and you are all in
accord, it becomes.
- - From the Navajo, Masked Gods, Waters, 1950
A human being is part of the whole, called by us "universe," a part
limited in time and space. He experiences his thoughts and feeling as
something separate from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his
consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting
us to our personal decisions and to affection for a few persons nearest
us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening
our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole
of nature in its beauty.
- - Albert
Einstein
There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from
the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be
atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality.
- -
Werner Heisenberg
Now, if the cooperation of some thousands of
millions of cells in our brain can produce our consciousness, a true
singularity, the idea becomes vastly more plausible that the
cooperation of humanity, or some sections of it, may determine
what Comte calls a Great Being.
- - J.B.S. Haldane
Père Teilhard de Chardin's Phenomenon
of Man is, as are his other writings, filled with poetic expression, even for simple and
scientific understandings. Here he speaks of elemental matter:
"Observed from this
special angle, and considered at the outset in its elemental state (by which I mean at any
moment, at any point, and in any volume), the stuff of tangible things reveals itself with
increasing insistence as radically particulate yet essentially related, and lastly,
prodigiously active.
"Plurality, unity, energy: the three faces of matter."
Our most prodigious thinkers have seen us, humanity, as the culmination of
creation, and this may be an acceptable view if we somehow fulfill our creative destiny.
But there may be very little time, really, for growing up and reaching for the best we
can be. The Earth, the beautifully balanced ecosystem, is badly damaged already
from our point of view (whenever we look beyond the ends of our material noses to our future).
Ironically and sadly, all the responsibility for the damage is ours -- we have grown too quickly
capable and too slowly wise -- and rescue and repair
are up to us, entirely.
And here, a more recent note expressing a deeply felt dismay
that we can hope will stimulate more and more of us to turn away from the
Mauling of America
that we have been teaching ourselves as if it were a good way of life.
Buckminster Fuller maintained, eloquently, that we have the power
to think about and understand where we live, and ultimately to organize
the materials of our world so that there is plenty for all of us, even
for more of us if we intelligently decide that's what we want.
And Erwin Schroedinger regarded science as the best bet for our
future:
... But most ecophilosophers focus on the thousand
other things that need to be done, and utterly ignore the major and first
problem: how to get people to see the other problems and agree on a course of
action.
... And the only way we can do that is by developmental evolution of
consciousness from egocentric to sociocentric to worldcentric (or global)
modes.
- - Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything
A Mother's Day Proclamation, by Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870, according
to Suzanne Taylor
It is written with deep conviction that it is far too late and things are
far too bad for pessimism. In time such as these, it is no failure to
fall short of realizing all that we might dream -- the failure is to
fall short of dreaming all that we might realize.
We must try.
- - Dee Hock, introduction to Birth of the Chaordic Age
- - Albert Einstein
- - Mahatma Gandhi
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one"
- - John Lennon, Imagine
No sweat. Just contemplate the heart. Works for me.
- - Wayne Jonas, July 6, 2002
Everything is about direction and consciousness. You can be wrong about
the details. ... I don't know what it will look like 200 years from now.
But I know if we keep moving towards -- again, it is somewhat spiritual,
but if we keep moving toward a recognition of our common humanity and
the necessary conscquences that flow from that, ... [the world]
will certainly be more integrated.
- - Bill Clinton,
Fortune, Nov 11, 2001
Does the whole world have to be crying for us to know we are one?
- - Artist at the Smithsonian reflecting on
Sept. 11, 2001, as recalled by Greg Nelson
After a couple of years in the growing communication network that is the Global
Consciousness Project, it became beautifully clear that
there are many rivulets of conscious
intention to effect necessary changes in culture. They
are beginning to flow together into streams that may may become a river
that will make it to the sea in time. To foster this flow we
need to become more
compassionate and less self-serving, and we need to laugh together!
- - Carl Jung
- - Robert Kennedy, Capetown, 1966
- - T.E Lawrence in "Seven Pillars of Wisdom"
- - Shuchorita Bose, Finals poem, Middletown HS
- - Baba Dioum, Plaque in Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo
- - Ugis Oskars Ziemelis, Riyahd, SA
-- Stephen S. Hall, You Are Here
Church leaders letter to Clinton, September 6, 2000, in part:
And finally, we appeal to you and the negotiators to accord Jerusalem a
special statute for its governance with international guarantees to ensure
its implementation. In November 1994, the twelve Patriarchs and Bishops of
Jerusalem wrote, "It is necessary to accord Jerusalem a special statute
which will allow Jerusalem not to be victimized by laws imposed as a result
of hostilities or wars and which will allow Jerusalem to be an open city
which transcends local, regional or world political troubles.
The letter was signed by Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza, President of the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops; The Hon. Andrew Young, President of
the National Council of Churches in Christ of the USA; and the Heads of the
Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, Catholic
Conference of Major Superiors of Mens' Institutes, Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ), Church of the Brethren, The Episcopal Church,
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Friends United Meeting, Mennonite
Central Committee, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reformed Church in America,
Unitarian Universalist Association, United Church of Christ and the United
Methodist Council of Bishops.
- - Nikola Tesla, 1919
- - Cheryl Haley, Mill Valley, CA
- - Ervin Laszlo, in Systems View of the World
- - Rachel Bagby, in Shift, No. 6
- - Roger Jahnke, Esalen, July 2000
Breathe OUT love, light and gratitude...into Mother earth, out to Father
Sky, and into the hearts and minds of every living thing...friend and
foe...experiencing the space in me and around me being conditioned by
the love-light-gratitude as a gift from the I AM Presence.
- - Flesymi, InfinityAffinity.org
- - Traditional Vedic blessing
- - From the Navajo, Masked Gods, Waters, 1950
R.D. Laing said, according to Bill
Eddy, "The range of what we
think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that
we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to
notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."
- - Lynne McTaggart, The Field
-- Hermann Hesse
James
Redfield said, according to Greg Nelson,
"We are all beings of energy, and are connected to one another by this
energy. Once we observe this energy, we can realize that it is on the
same continuum as beauty. These are phenomena that cannot be studied
unless you suspend or bracket your skepticism and try every way
possible to perceive them."
-- Joe McMoneagle
- - Harry Palmer, Living Deliberately
There is another perspective, diametrically opposed in a sense. Werner
Heisenberg showed that it will forever be impossible to know the basic
reality because in attempting to see it, we necessarily change it.
Daniel Menaker (NYT Magazine, Oct 17, 1999, pp. 96)
describes this in human terms:
The greatest impact of the uncertainty principle on the idea of the self
comes not from its implications about free will and determinism, nor
from its suggestion that we can never really know the world, but from
its thesis that we can't know it because our very efforts to do so
change and in a way corrupt the world we are trying to know. When
Heisenberg threw this stone of hard mathematical physics into the pool
of philosophy, its ripples required us to see ourselves, each of our own
selves, as interferers with whatever we run across. Such ideas of the
conscious human self as an automatic interferer, a changer, a polluter
of reality, may have always been part of philosophy and even art, but it
was Heisenberg who for the first time scientifically demonstrated that
our very efforts fully to understand what surrounds us must defeat their
own purpose.
Noam Chomsky thinks that what we know intuitively seems to lie far
beyond what we can understand intellectually. He says, for example,
that modern thinkers simply haven't understood the full
significance of Newton's discovery of gravity:
Fiction leads us, as much as we are willing to be led, and it may be that there is
no better guide.
David Brin's science fiction novel, Earth, is about a future not very
distant, in which it is necessary for a global consciousness to arise and become
aware, to save the earth from the consequences of our unending folly, our destruction
of our nest and thus, ultimately, ourselves. At one point a bright, though uneducated
young man (whose given name is Nelson) says,
Like a person, it too consists of a
myriad of tiny subselves (the eight billion subscribers), all bickering and
negotiating and cooperating semi-randomly. Subscriber cliques and alliances merge
and separate ... sometimes by nationality or religion, but more often nowadays by
special interest groups that leap all the old borderlines ... all waging minuscule
campaigns to sway the world's agenda and to affect their lives in the physical world.
Our Earth Proclamation, contributed by Alan D. Moore
WE ARE ONE PEOPLE...
- - Mary Pipher, Nebraskan
Nearly 70 years ago, a Soviet geochemist, reflecting on his world, made a
startling observation: through technology and sheer numbers, he wrote, people
were becoming a geological force, shaping the planet's future just as rivers
and earthquakes had shaped its past.
Eventually, wrote the scientist, Vladimir I. Vernadsky, global society, guided
by science, would soften the human environmental impact, and earth would become
a "noosphere," a planet of the mind, "life's domain ruled by reason."
Today, a broad range of scientists say, part of Vernadsky's thinking has
already been proved right: people have significantly altered the
atmosphere and are the dominant influence on ecosystems and natural
selection. The question now, scientists say, is whether the rest of his
vision will come to pass. Choices made in the next few years will determine
the answer.
- - Andrew Revkin
Noosphere: The mental envelope of the planet above and
discontinuous with the biosphere.
"The first stage was the elaboration of lower organisms, up to and
including man, by the use and irrational combination of elementary
sources of energy received or released by the planet. The second
stage is the super-evolution of man, individually and collectively,
by use of the refined forms of energy scientifically harnessed and
applied in the bosom of the Noosphere, thanks to the coordinated
efforts of all men working reflectively and unanimously upon
themselves...In becoming planetized humanity is acquiring new
physical powers that will enable it to super-organize matter. And,
even more important, is it not possible that by the direct converging
of its members it will be able, as though by resonance, to release
psychic powers whose existence is still unsuspected?"
-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "The Future of Man"
To sense that behind anything that can be experienced,
there is a something that our mind
cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only
indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness.
-- Albert Einstein
I think over again my small adventures
My fears,
For all the vital things
And yet there is only one great thing,
To live to see the great day that dawns
-- Old Inuit song It will in the end be poems, or beautiful photographs, that give some feeling for this quest to create a meaningful link to Mother Earth in the shape of scientific work. Artists and writers, and indeed nearly all people do have a deep and inchoate understanding that we are connected, in many ways. It is in our poetic arts that some expression can be given to the heart's knowing. There will be time, and there are endless possibilities, to add more material to this page, with the purpose of making a sort of backdrop in poetic form that can express the sources, and perhaps the partially unconscious understanding of a world in which a global consciousness is possible. For now, these are just a few examples of the thin places where we may touch on other possibilities.
From the Lakota. An invocation at the end of each morning
prayer.
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