Hi Anna, There are many working in the field of integrating consciousness back into science. I write about it on my website: http://ingienous.com/?page_id=13173 In Rupert Sheldrake's latest book Science Set Free (The Science Delusion - UK title), Rupert repudiates the common and unsupported claims of mainstream scientists, exposing the weakness in their arguments. Others like Amit Goswami and B Alan Wallace argue with Sheldrake for a replacement of materialistic and dualistic paradigms - with consciousness and awareness as the alternative replacement. The mind that observes its external reality is the same mind that observes its internal realities and as Sheldrake points out in his talks and his books, materialist scientists may deny consciousness til they are blue in the face but after they leave behind their narrow academic job and return home, their way of thinking reverts to the common everyday person's - which is that awareness and consciousness ARE real. Hence, they inhabit a strange world in which they must take artificial views at their job that are diametrically opposed to views they embrace when they are just themselves and not donning the mental suits of their day job. When I was in University, I read a book that changed my perspective on things. The book was Godel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid, the pulitzer prize winning book written by computer scientist Douglas Hofstaeder. That book began by journey from a purely intellectual perspective to a more inclusive non-intellectual perspective. In that book was a chapter on Zen Buddhism, which Hofstaeder included because this book dealt with infinite loops and the methods of Zen are a way to eject awareness out of a narrow, dualistic, intellectual perspective. Science will always reach its limits in its abilities to probe life. There are infinite facts that can be discovered about the world. It's inexhaustible. Perhaps Sheldrake's morphic fields, if true can offer a reason for that - because from that paradigm, laws themselves are not fixed and forever, but are themselves in flux, depending on how often conditions allow them to persist. Words split the unsplittable world up into abstract categories. Concepts built upon these words are therefore unreal entities - as unreal as a perfectly round circle is. Stringing words together continually and in realtime creates realtime categorization of the world. Our minds become habituated to these realtime abstract categorizations. Yet they are both real and unreal at the same time. They are real in the sense that they have an equal ability to be experienced by our awareness as any other appearance. Yet they are unreal because they are ghostly images that dissect an always-whole reality. To think that there are 2 alternatives, totally subjective or totally objective gives us an illusion of choice since both are abstract, both are like two sides of a coin. Is any side of a coin any more real than the other? The reality is far more simple (or complex) than one would imagine. The simplicity/complexity depends on which view you currently see from - from dualistic, intellectual, conceptual view or from the view that's not really a view at all, but the natural state of being. From the dualistic view, it will appear complex because dualism is a trap that continually generates more questions. From the view of non-view, it will appear simple and self-liberated. The intellectual mind will never find satsifaction because concepts give rise to more concepts. There is no hard limit that can stop the mind from finding ever more combinations of abstract symbols, of seeing ever more patterns in nature. Even as we partake in our favorite pastime of symbolic engagement which fills so much of our lives, at the same time, there is another side of us that knows the futility of it. There is another side that knows that any explanation is intrinsically inexplicable. We are used to using symbols to generate more symbols in the mind habit we call "explaining". Yet, we do not know how to use the silence to penetrate itself. It is the same instruction from great contemplatives the world over: rest in awareness, not unlike the stainless mirror surface that reflects everything that is in front of it. The many perplexing and seemingly intractable problems that confront the intellect are not problems when we aabide in non-thinking awareness. We must revisit the Bishop Berkeley problem with a different awareness. There is something unfathomably deep when we are told that problems vanish when thoughts are not present. From the intellectual perspective, it can never make sense. The trick is to try to absorb that from the space of abiding in pure being. The world's social problems are really a reflection of a mass forgetfulness of this sacred principle of awareness found in each one of us. Until we have personal transformation that brings beings back to the sacred nature of our awareness, we will continue to distract ourselves with consumerism and continue not to care for others - all leading to the demise of our civilization. Kindest Gien On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 1:18 AM, Anna Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Michel,

There is a distinction which perhaps needs to be made between the *complexity of consciousness*, and complexity of social design. While organisms and societies appear to increase in complexity as they evolve, consciousness (I would suggest) appears to remain one and singular -an untestable hypothesis since consciousness is invisible. What evolves is our ability to tap into it.

The quote from Jorge Ferrer in the article on Equipotentiality you mention is a beautiful description of how unconditional love can be embodied in social relationships. The call to do that comes from the urge to live up to our full potential as human beings. But it is a personal choice, based on a subjective experience.

The desire to find a method to assess in a scientifically rigorous way, ie objectively, how humans should live, is an attempt to by-pass subjectivity, which often (inevitably?) results in assumptions of superiority. The system of equipotentiality appears to be more *effective* in encouraging creativity, but that is still a personal choice. Subjectivity, which is our relationship to the invisible - consciousness, needs to be admitted back into the scheme of things.

Anna

Mobotix Ticket 27283

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]>wrote:

...

Interesting comments Anna.

I think this is a general difficulty with evolutionary schemes; whether they are true or not, they easily lead to interpretations of superiority,

at the same time, I do think there is such a thing as the evolution of the complexity of consciousness, which has been noted by many researchers (even if the need for such complexification may be a result of disfunctions of the society in which they occur)

my way out of this conundrum is the concept of Equipotentality, http://p2pfoundation.net/Equipotentiality, i.e. the social design of contributory projects where everyone brings something to the table which is exactly right for the particular project, and hence can and has to be honoured,

Michel

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