Part III

12: APPLICATION OF AWARENESS

Instances of Awareness and Intention

Synopsis: The intelligence and intention of archetypes and instances. Myths and deities as instances of tholonic archetypes. Coherent awareness and intention. The entropy of thought and entropy-debt. Structure as coherence. Qualitative energy. The influence of language in metaphysics, beliefs, and consciousness. The living archetype and its instance within Jungian ‘ordering factors’, mystical tradition, and modern society.

Keywords: mythology, archetypes, coherence, prayer, meditation, thought, entropy-debt, structure, water, language, names of god, tulpas, golems

It may seem odd that mythology would be placed in the chapter on how awareness is/can be applied in the real world, but beliefs of any sort are excellent examples of the application of awareness. Beliefs are perhaps the most common way to channel awareness as they can cohere the otherwise undirected and unrestrained awareness. In this way, beliefs act like the point of Definition in the tholonic trinity, restricting how that awareness is expressed. Considering this, it is no wonder that mythologies so closely reflected the archetypes of creation. From the tholonic view, it was/is the intelligence of these archetypes that vie for that awareness within the arena of human consciousness. Mythologies and beliefs are the earliest forms of Man’s conscious will to have a hand in creating his reality.

It may sound childish or even superstitious to suggest that archetypes can have intentions that can result in conflicting and/or cooperative relationships, which implies allies and enemies and, therefore, some sort of diplomacy and politics. In one sense, it is childish in that it leaves so much open to the imagination. In another sense, it is childish because beliefs are an early form of learning how to use the power of awareness. Beliefs are the Legos of awareness. Beliefs are also placeholders that fill in the blanks of our limited understanding of the mechanics of awareness, intention, and intelligence, which is also why they significantly affect our understanding of reality.

The ancient myths provided a pretty effective way to understand the workings of reality, given the context and scope of our abilities when they were created. We see these gods and their unending dramas as anthropomorphized concepts of tholonic intelligences and their interactions. As previously stated, tholonic archetypes, like the gods, are autonomous agents in a self-reproducing system. To get a general idea of the soap-opera-of-psychopaths-on-steroids that was the life of the Gods, see Appendix D, “Greek Gods”. It is short and quite entertaining.

These two charts compare the hierarchy of the Greek Gods (according to Gaius Julius Hyginus, a scholar born in 64 BC) and the same hierarchy composed of one (of many) archetypes represented by that deity.

It’s insightful to see how everything starts in the nothingness of the void, descends through the noble qualities of intellect, skill, healing, and imagination, and ultimately settles down to youth, sex, booze, food, and war. Clearly, the Ancient Greeks were on to something.

Note: See “Tholonic Intelligence as Gods” in Appendix L, “The Thologram and Religion” to see a comparison of Greek gods and Levantine gods of the Israelites and Canaanites.

Sensing Intention

The idea that plants, and presumably other life forms, are sensitive to the feelings and intentions of others within their sphere of influence is not new. An early (1960s) instance of this idea is called the Backster Effect¹, named after Grover Cleveland Backster Jr., who was not only an interrogation specialist for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but went on to become Chairman of the Research and Instrument Committee of the Academy for Scientific Interrogation. From his “interrogations” of plants, he concluded that plants not only feel pain but emotions and even have ESP abilities.

There still exists debate about the validity of his claims and the claims made in the popular 1973 book “The Secret Life of Plants”, but at the very least, there is sufficient evidence to justify more investigation. The tholonic view is that everything that exists is part of a Vast Active Living Intelligence System (to borrow the title of a book by author Phillip K. Dick) that we call the Thologram. Consequently, everything must be connected to everything else in some way and form. As our knowledge and ability to share that knowledge expands, our understanding of reality will also expand in many different directions. Multiple theories, philosophies, and practices will not only emerge, but each will have its own body of evidence supporting that model. Some will flourish, and others will wither away. This is the evolution of perspective.

Similar to the “Can you prove Australia exists?” problem, at some point, we need to choose what or who to believe is true or not. While the Backster Effect is soundly grounded in tholonic principles, that alone is not enough to accept it as real. Perhaps the most convincing support comes from one of the more ingenious scientists of the 20th century, Marcel Vogel.

Marcel Vogel (1917 - 1991) was a research scientist for IBM’s San Jose facility for 27 years and was granted several patents, from hard-disk magnetic coatings to egg testing. At age 6, he was pronounced dead from double lobar pneumonia. He claimed that while he was “dead”, he experienced a light, a sense of love, and overwhelming well-being, which formed the underlying fabric of his life and beliefs.

With the aid of IBM’s state-of-the-art equipment, he replicated the Backster Effect. Below is the polygraph results that he said made him a “believer”.

Vogel even lectured at IBM on the subject of “Do Plants Have Emotions?” which, in 1969, was a radical concept. He experimented with plants for some time and discovered several odd and “unscientific” facts. For example:

• It was observed that when he released his breath slowly, there was virtually no response from the plant, but when he pulsed his breath through the nostrils, as he held a thought in mind, the plant would respond dramatically.
• The plant’s response was the same regardless of distance, as the results were the same when he was in San Jose (where his lab and the plant were) or in Prague, Czechoslovakia. This also suggests that coherent thought acts similarly to coherent energy in that it can travel long distances without losing power.
  
• Plants appeared to respond more to the threat of damage than the actual damage itself.
• Plants appeared to have many of the same properties as batteries, especially regarding their interactions with thoughts.
• It was observed that the experimenter’s attitude, or mindset, had a measurable effect on the test results. This might shed some light on the inconsistent results of the “water memory” experiments of Jacques Benveniste, as related previously.
• He concluded from these experiments that he “learned that there is energy connected with thought. Thought can be pulsed, and the energy connected becomes coherent and has a laser-like power.”

Because of his young near-death experience, Marcel believed that the greatest cohering agent is love. This may be correct. The tholonic view is that intention is the basis of reality and creation but says nothing about what that intention is. The tholonic position is that any intention is equally valid. However, it’s reasonable to imagine that some intentions are more effective than others, and it is reasonable that the intention of love may be the most sustainable.

Such ideas did not endear him to the scientific community. Still, this discovery opened many new doors of investigation for Marcel, especially in the areas of crystals and water, with some very impressive (anecdotal) results. This set him apart from his fellow scientists and ensured his obscurity.

Maharishi Effect

Given the general direction of mainstream science, we do not see a lot of investigation into how thought affects external reality. However, some research does exist (see items 3 and 4 in “Other Experiments” list below). We will look at one research report here, “Effects of Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington, D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June-July 1993”² published in the journal “Social Indicators Research.”

This study and its 4,000 participants, monitored by a 27-member project review board comprised of independent scientists and leading citizens, found a significant statistical result.

What was this study exactly?

This study presents the final results of a two-month prospective experiment to reduce violent crime in Washington, DC. Based on previous research, it was hypothesized that the level of violent crime in the District of Columbia would drop significantly with the creation of a large group of participants in the Transcendental Meditation® and TM-Siddhi® programs to increase coherence and reduce stress in the District.³

Here, the word “coherence” refers to its definition of “the quality of forming a unified whole.”

The results were impressive.

This is only one study, so it is not definitive. It is certainly supportive of the idea that directed intention, what the participants called coherence, and what we are calling order (as that is what unifies the parts into the whole) has an extended effect. According to the tholonic model, the directed energy of coherent thought alters the curves of various archetypes, thereby altering the probability of where the “work” will produce the most order or where and how energy will be expressed across a scope’s spectrum.

On a Personal Note

I had a particularly insightful experience with the Maharishi Effect in the late ’60s when I was a young teenager. My father was a captain of industry in the world of electrical components, ultimately becoming president of one of the pioneering companies that helped create the integrated circuit.

Born of poor Scottish immigrants in the Bronx on the tail of the Great Depression and serving in Korea, he was no stranger to hard times and hard work, which made him one of the most pragmatic and practical people I have ever known. He was a devout capitalist, atheist, and husband and had no patience for anything that did not produce results. Hippies were idiots, imports were ruining the economy, Scotch whiskey was better, and talking about your problems was for whiners. You get the picture.

At the insistence of his wife (and my mother), he joined her for a seminar on Creative Intelligence (CI), which they called Transcendental Meditation back then for those folks like my father. He heard their claims about improved mental and physical health, better focus, fewer distractions, etc. He decided to test their claims by giving all his employees in one of his factories CI training, along with an extra half-hour lunch break for them to take this training and practice their new CI skills.

This factory was in a poor, rundown industrial town in New England. The people who worked in those factories were uneducated, unskilled, assembly-line laborers (not exactly an open-minded demographic). I knew many of them myself, as we lived in that town, and many never made it past 4th grade. The rivers in this town were dead from all the pollution, and the neighboring town had the highest per capita suicide rate in the United States. It was a dreary, dark place filled with dreary, dark people.

My father’s industry peers thought he was foolish to deploy such a plan, but the results were astounding. People were fighting less and taking fewer sick leaves, injuries were down, and production went up; everything improved. So much so that the Wall Street Journal did an article on him and his “revolutionary” new technique. He became known as some kind of New Age Industrialist, which was ironically funny as he was as new age as his ’57 Chevy.

Ultimately, this new concept was unsustainable in that environment because eventually, people began to abuse the extra time meant for CI, and everything went back to normal with sick leaves, fighting, injuries, and lower production, so the program was scrapped.

Prayer

You might think that traditional prayer holds the same power, but the evidence might suggest otherwise. Why? Because most prayer is anything but coherent. Prayer varies depending on culture, religion, personal perspectives, etc. Perhaps this is a side-effect of monotheism, which eliminated the myriad of niche gods. In any case, prayer can be anything from begging to demanding, justifying to virtue signaling, and occasionally it can be an expression of gratitude and love, but using group prayer to effect change is like using a group of blind people to paint a room by throwing handfuls of paint at the wall. Your room will get painted, but you’ll wish it didn’t.

This was recently confirmed by a $2.3 million dollar study on the effect of prayer on the sick, involving over 1,800 patients. It was the largest study of its kind ever undertaken. Contrary to prayer helping the sick, they found that when a patient knew others were praying for them, they tended to have more complications.⁴

Other studies conclude the exact opposite, such as Dr. Byrd’s study “Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population”⁵ and Dr. Harris’s study “A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit”⁶. However, without a detailed comparison of the studies and specifically how the participants prayed, we cannot know to what degree coherence was at play.

The difference between the coherence of Transcendental Meditation and prayer is the former follows a particular set of rules, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, has a clearly defined non-personal target subject, and never attempts to force change. Prayer can follow these same rules, but it rarely does.

The practice of coherent prayer is common among secret metaphysical societies. For example, in the not-so-secret secret society of the Order of the Rosy Cross, or Rosicrucians, members who have reached a certain level of initiation are introduced to a schedule of “prayers”. This is a globally synchronized schedule of times when people are requested to focus their energy on a particular topic, such as health or family, or finances, in a specific manner. If one is not in need, one sends their gratitude into a “pool” of energy specific to that topic. If one has a need in these areas, they can join at scheduled times and “tap into” that pool. This is a very coherent technique because it has specific archetypes and directed energy, which then creates sustainable patterns, and it (reportedly) works surprisingly well.

As coherence is a property of a field, we can say that coherent thought is a property of the Consciousness Field, as it is referred to by Roger Nelson of Princeton University and director of The Global Consciousness Project, and which is not limited to humans but can affect matter and machines also (see 2 top items listed below under “Other Experiments”).

Thought

Suppose we look at meditation, prayer, and other forms of coherent thought. In that case, we have to also look at the concept of entropy because coherence is lower in entropy than incoherence, just as laser light is lower in entropy than normal diffuse light. This suggests that the act of meditation, prayer, concentration, focus, and even attention in general, creates a lower entropy state from a higher entropy state, which is contrary to the direction of entropy, at least according to the 2^nd law of Thermodynamics. While the 2^nd law is not really a law but a statistical probability, the probability of breaking that law is extremely unlikely, so how can coherence of thought be possible?

Another point regarding entropy

• It needs to be pointed out that entropy is a property, a measure of the total energy in a system; the more total energy, the lower the entropy. This total energy is technically called enthalpy. However, we use the term entropy to represent the measure of total energy and the energy itself, or enthalpy. This is the same as how we refer to physical material as mass rather than matter, as matter is the actual material, but mass is the measure of that matter. A kilogram is mass, a kilogram of potatoes is matter. They are the same thing, but referenced differently, that is, until we get into the bizarre outliers of quantum and relativistic phenomena where massless matter exists, but as we don’t normally exist in wormholes, we will conveniently ignore this exception. Massless matter is not to be confused with massless particles, such as photons. The concept of a massless particle was born when Einstein proclaimed, “light consists of spatially random particles”, which was a poor choice of words, but that was in 1905, so he didn’t have a lot of options given the scientific vocabulary of the day. We all know that mass means matter, and the point of this book is to try and communicate ideas to the readers, not to confuse them. Additionally, because we are using the concept of entropy outside of its strictly thermodynamic context, the concept of enthalpy becomes even more confusing. A compressed JPG or ZIP file image has high entropy, so does that means it has less enthalpy? What does that even mean in the context of JPG images and ZIP files? An uncompressed file has more total energy than a zipped file? Perhaps, but we won’t be going near such concepts. Applying enthalpy to consciousness would get even more obtuse and confusing, especially as we have no idea of the “energy of consciousness” and certainly no idea how to measure it.

From a thermodynamic perspective, focus, concentration, prayer, etc., only uses 5% of the calories needed to power the brain, or 0.65 calories an hour, no matter how hard you concentrate. This means a single chocolate chip cookie could power a year’s worth of meditation or focused attention if someone meditated for 20 minutes daily. Yet, focused thinking accounts for almost everything humanity has created since he thought, “hmm… I wonder if farming is easier than hunting and gathering?” and started the Neolithic Revolution that changed humanity forever. It was not the 0.65 cal/hr our hunter/gatherer ancestors spent coming up with that idea of farming that challenged the 2^nd law, it was the implementations of the idea which created more ordered, lower entropy, systems of food procurement.

Similarly, if one happened to have a brilliant idea during deep thought or meditation, we certainly would not say the idea was 2.7214 watts (which is 0.65 calories) worth of brilliance.

This brings us back to the question, “How can a system become more organized in an ever-increasingly chaotic system?”. This argument is called the Schrödinger paradox, as it was introduced to the world by Erwin Schrödinger in 1933 in his book “What is Life?”. But Schrödinger had the answer (it’s not clear why it is called a paradox considering the question is rhetorical, making it more of a Schrödinger’s rhetoric). We briefly touched on this earlier, but here is a paraphrased version of Schrödinger’s explanation:

The 2^nd law only applies to closed systems, where no energy can enter or leave. Life, at least on Earth, is an open system, as we get lots of energy from the Sun, and our solar system is an open system as it gets energy from the galaxy. In practical terms, the Universe as a whole is the only closed system (that we know of) in nature. So, the evolution and self-organizing of life appears to break the 2^nd law, but it doesn’t really because it’s getting more energy from the Sun than it expends evolving and self-organizing. This is called free-energy or negentropy (negative entropy), a term coined by Schrödinger in the same book. The reason he coined the word rather than just saying “negative entropy” is because he did not feel that simply adding a “-” in front of “entropy” captured the remarkable ability of living systems to seemingly violate the 2^nd law by lowering their entropy and increasing organization, order, and structure.⁷

This tells us that a system can self-organize as long as the reduction of local entropy is less than the free-energy it receives. Why would any system self-organize to begin with? Because whatever anything is organizing into, it does so only because it is a more efficient structure for the distribution and preservation of energy, as we saw back in Chapter 4 where Jeremy England of M.I.T. explained how hydrocarbon-based blobs can turn into a life form.

Schrödinger was speaking about things like evolution and solar/cosmic energy, but thermodynamically speaking, we have more than enough extra energy just from the calories we consume to “power” coherent thought. So, if we have the energy, and coherent thought is so easy to produce, why are we not all super-coherent consciousness?

I am sure there are many reasons, but a particular reason has to do with our neurology, which is not only still evolving, but whose primary task is not to develop or enhance consciousness but to “encode and integrate information acquired from the environment through sensory inputs, and then generate adaptive behavioral responses”⁸. What is traditionally called consciousness is more of neurologically based meta-awareness resulting from our brain’s frontoparietal network’s⁹ ability to recognize relationships. Within this network is the crowning achievement of evolution¹⁰, the cerebral neocortex, which, due to its increasing complexity, formed interneuronal networks within networks until one day it was able to process the relationship between “I” and “Not I”, and voilà, “I Am” became a thing. While our new and improved brain allows us to apply conscious intention to direct our brain to focus at will, it’s not going to do it all by itself. There needs to be the intention to focus, to cohere.

Another reason we are not all super intelligent, highly evolved Nietzschean übermenschen is because of our materialistic view of consciousness that severely limits our understanding, i.e., that consciousness emerges from the brain. Unfortunately, modern mainstream science does not accept the idea of consciousness as an instance of A&I or that the energy that is being balanced and distributed by consciousness is an expression of A&I that operates in a different scope and context. As science has no tools to detect it or measure it, it doesn’t exist because accepting the accepted scientific axiom that…

Regardless of whether something exists or not, something is real when it is a necessary ingredient of a theory that correctly describes what we observe.

… are we also accepting the following premise as valid by default?

Regardless of whether something exists or not, something is not real if it doesn’t conform to existing theories.

In the tholonic view, this other form of energy that is balanced and dispersed via consciousness would conform to the laws of energy as they apply to this different context. We would expect there to be some form of entropy, in which case we could apply Schrödinger’s reasoning and suggest that consciousness is an open system receiving free-energy from the Source A&I.

This is not that radical of an idea, as it is similar to how we understand that matter is a very slowed-down or rudimentary instance of the energy we call E, as in E=mc². Here it is being suggested that energy (E), is a limited instance of an even finer form of energy that instantiates as consciousness and, while non-physical in nature, is influenced, limited, and reformed by the context of its expression. i.e., a flower, a person, a planet, etc.

Entropy-debt

Another related idea is a highly speculative concept related to the above, which is the idea of entropy-debt. This is similar to Schrödinger’s concept of negentropy, but entropy-debt is more of a tholonic view that also addresses the issues of consciousness and time.

Farming is a particularly good example to describe this idea because it is a good example of creating a lower entropy process of food procurement, which is exemplified by comparing the order and structure of the hunter-gatherer work environment to the modern farmer’s work environment.

Planting the food or raising the livestock one would otherwise have to forage or hunt not only required significantly fewer calories¹¹, but the less productive calories of the less-fit members of the community could now contribute more value to the community at large. The output was potentially far greater with lower risk (“potentially” because early farming was less productive than hunting/gathering, but was still less work, less risk, and socially stabilizing). By all measures, the entropy of food procurement was dramatically reduced as production became more ordered and structured.
Suppose we consider that the introduction of farming also introduced many changes, such as the concept of property rights, population growth, military prowess, and more, all of which led to more complex forms of government, accounting, trade, and war. In that case, it could easily be argued that the loss of entropy that farming delivered was more than compensated for. Of course, these consequences took many years to develop. During that time, there was an entropy-debt, but a debt eventually balanced by the increased entropy of the consequences of this entropy-reducing invention of farming.

The idea behind entropy-debt is that while we accept that entropy will always increase, under certain conditions, it can decrease as long as the consequences of that decrease are guaranteed to create more entropy than what was reduced. It is similar to a bank loan, where you get money you don’t have but repay it over time. The difference is, with entropy-debt, the laws of creation guarantee the balance.

In a way, we see this delayed reaction of entropy-debt in our reality as the “instant” reaction to a cause is not actually “instant”, but it is at the speed of light, which is the speed of cause and effect. Energy leaves the Sun as its entropy increases. 8.3 minutes later, that energy lowers the entropy of the Earth. It’s like an entropy-credit (i.e., free-energy, negentropy, negative entropy), but Earth doesn’t get the credit for 8.3 minutes, yet that credit is as guaranteed to arrive as the Sun is guaranteed to shine… even more so, in fact, as the Sun could blink out after the energy was released and we’d still receive it (even if we are extinguished moments later).

A more abstract example is how 2×3 instantly equals 6. We could say the numbers (2, 3) and the product (6) are entangled because the product of 2×3 is not limited to the speed of cause and effect, c. If 2 existed in a corner of the Universe, and 3 existed in the opposite corner of the Universe, it would not take 95 billion light years to multiply them. This might sound like a silly example because numbers do not exist in the material 3D world. Numbers are concepts, so they only exist in the world of archetypes, therefore, we can’t apply the rules of material space-time to them. However, if 2 and 3 represented physical phenomena, such as 2 = mass and 3 = acceleration, then 6 would equal force, but that force would be limited by the speed of cause and effect.

In the archetypal world of numbers, 2×3=6 is instant, while in the physical world it is limited by c. The time it takes for the archetypal 6 to instantiate as force, in this example, represents a debt, as the force must eventually instantiate because it already exists in the archetypal world.

A more real-world example might be when you ask the person at the vegetable stand for 3 carrots and 2 tomatoes. It may take the vendor 30 seconds to find 3 carrots and 2 tomatoes and put them together in a bag. Your request created a debt that the vendor balanced with work, which in turn created a debt that you balanced by paying for the vegetables.

The debt part of the equation is the temporary imbalance that exists before the transaction is balanced out.

Applying this to entropy, if a transaction exists that produces more order and reduces chaos, the law states that the consequences of that order will generate at least as much chaos as was reduced, but it will take time for that chaos to instantiate. In this way, entropy appears to be reduced, but in fact has been instantly increased, but that increase will take time to appear.

In the example of farming, a decrease in entropy will simultaneously create and/or accelerate several archetypes that will use that extra entropy, even though it may take years for those archetypes to instantiate, but that is a function of time that only matters in the material world, as described above.

What this implies is that every idea that increases order and reduces entropy will eventually create more chaos and disorder. Schrödinger (again) made a parallel observation when he specifically commented on how the order we humans create seems to create more chaos (as in the farming example above):

we witness the event that existing order displays the power of maintaining itself and of producing orderly events. That sounds plausible enough, though in finding it plausible, we, no doubt, draw on experience concerning social organization and other events which involve the activity of organisms. And so it might seem that something like a vicious circle is implied. - [a dragon biting its tail, the Oroboros]

This makes perfect sense if we consider that the more energy is distributed, the more opportunity (microstates) exists for (high-entropy) chaos to form. As order is a transitional condition or state of chaos, (low-entropy) chaos will always manifest before order forms, and order will always create more (high-entropy) chaos.

This tells us that the more dramatic the increase in order, the more dramatic the eventual increase in chaos. One example of this might be the invention of digital information, which ordered just about everything, resulting in an explosion of new ideas, perspectives, beliefs, inventions, possibilities, all of which are forms of (low-entropy) chaos. The ultimate order may be AI, which would inevitably result in ultimate chaos.

Of course, in our time-limited reality, this delayed reaction always moves from cause to effect, or so we assume, but there is evidence to suggest otherwise. While there has been some debunking (the validity of which I can’t attest to) of John Wheeler’s Delayed Choice Experiment when it comes to changing the states of quanta in the past, there is no doubt that the experiment proves you can change the actions of the quanta in the past.

Here is a transcript of an interview with John Wheeler speaking about his experiment:

One of the most remarkable features of nature is that a Quantum can pursue two different routes through two different slits, come together, and manifest itself as a single quantum. But nothing prevents one from saying that the quantum might be a photon, to speak of quantum of radiation, or it might be an electron, to speak of a particle. A quantum can go both routes, or it can go a single route. And it’s possible to choose which after the particle has already made its travel. You choose after the particle has decided whether it’s going both routes or one route, and after it’s got through, you yourself decide which it shall have done. You seem to intervene to change the past. But quantum theory says it can be done. And I had the pleasure to spell out some of the features of such an experimental arrangement. My University of Maryland colleague, Carroll Alley, made changes in the experiment, but without changing the principle, and carried it out. And it checked, so that we now know it is indeed true that one can decide, at the quantum level, whether an object shall go two routes to get to its final point or just one route. You can make the decision after it’s already made the trip. That sounds like a contradiction, but it works.¹²~John Wheeler

John Wheeler is one of those “trusted sources” who has been to “Australia”, so if he says it’s there, then it’s there. And if it is there, then that means delayed reaction works in both directions, and that means, just like there is an entropy-credit, there can be an entropy-debt, even if all we have been able to see is just a tiny bit for a moment in time.

Incoherence is nature’s #1 choice regarding the distribution and balancing of energy. Still, we can find examples of coherent energy transmissions, mainly between molecules involved with photosynthesis, microtubules, quantum energy transfer, and possibly mitochondria, bacteria, and plant chloroplasts (part of a plant cell that converts light into chemical energy). This natural coherence is more common to the micro-world and is also of very short duration. It exists because it is a far more efficient way to transfer a specific amount and type of energy to a specific target. Just as the energy emissions of the blob required a more organized, more structured, more coherent pattern to efficiently move energy, molecular and quantum processes also require a more coherent and efficient form of energy transfer for the same reason.

If we accept this new theory of life, then we also have to accept that the evolution of life, which includes DNA information storage and retrieval systems, is also a by-product of, and for, the movement of energy, and that sounds like a pretty big leap. However, examples of this claim are self-assembling crystals and quasi-crystals (structures that act like crystals but do not look like crystals) and are the subject of much research. DNA self-assembles similarly, and many self-assembling quasi-crystals are DNA.

Now consider that the primary function of anything that exists is to remain in existence and maintain a stable pattern of energy distribution within the context of its existence. Our hydrocarbon-based blobs could only evolve into life after they create a synergetic relationship with its surroundings; i.e., they will need to consume or assimilate resources and integrate with their context or environment, and that information is passed on via DNA.

Schrödinger also observed that:

An organism’s astonishing gift of concentrating a ”stream of order” on itself and thus escaping the decay into atomic chaos - of “drinking orderliness” from a suitable environment - seems to be connected with the presence of the “aperiodic solids”, the chromosome molecules, which doubtless represent the highest degree of well-ordered atomic association we know of…

In other words, the ability of living organisms to increase coherence and reduce dispersion (i.e., reduce entropy) seems to be connected with the quasi-crystals of DNA (i.e., information).

It is the DNA of life forms that determines how it will manage not only the sustainability of an organism but also the transmission of energy, especially free-energy, and as all the organs, including the brain, come into existence and grow in accordance with the rules recorded in the DNA. We can then say that the entire organism and its parts exist because of the DNA, which evolved to optimize and distribute the excess above and beyond what is needed for the system to remain stable.

If we are constantly being “energized” or “irradiated” by the omnipresence of A&I, how are we dissipating all the excess “energy” we are exposed to? Through increasingly complex systems of dissipation, such as consciousness, meta-consciousness, and the systems they “self-assemble”. “Self-assemble” is in quotes because, from a Universal perspective, everything is self-assembled because creation and growth is self-assembled if we consider the Universe as the “self” that is assembling. As pattern and order become more complex, interconnected, and efficient, coherent exchange of energy will become more common, not unlike the ever-evolving frontoparietal networks from which consciousness emerged. Rain is a very efficient and incoherent way to distribute water, and in the past, humans hoped for rain to water the plants that they foraged. Coherent attempts were made to invoke the rain, such as praying, dancing, and sacrificing. Regardless as to the viability of such techniques, they have been around for at least 10,000 years, even among cultures that had developed writing and record-keeping¹³. Eventually, humans created far more coherent and efficient techniques that resulted in far more coherent efficient production, such as irrigation, water management, dry farming techniques, and technology.

We are parts of a larger tholon. Our ability to transfer coherent energy with technology and thought makes us part of the energy distribution system of that larger system. More than that, we are that part of this larger system because the movement of energy in that larger system has evolved to the point where it needs to produce a coherent distribution of energy. As energy is Awareness and Intentions, that translates to “the intentional directing of consciousness”.

Structured Water

Given how water seems to be such an excellent tholonic medium, can we lower the entropy of water by increasing its order, adding structure in a way that matches and/or enhances the patterns of the thologram and see some differences in how it transmits or interacts with energy? If we notice any differences, we have another piece of potential evidence supporting the tholonic model.

As it happens, there is such a thing as structured water. Coherent or Structured water, for those who are not familiar with the term, is regular water that has been modified to give it more structure or pattern, specifically in the way that the water molecules are arranged in relation to one another, or so it is claimed.

OK, I know I probably lost some readers with this last sentence. If you do an Internet search of “structured water”, one of the top results you will get is the Wikipedia entry that begins with “structured water is a term used in a marketing scam”, and although that is true to the extent that anything can be a scam in the hands of scammers, the entry says nothing whatsoever on the legitimate research and testing that has been done regarding the use of structured water.

To the dogmatically skeptical, structured water is just more “swarming” of those heretically perverse “worms”. However, unless one suffers from a severe case of scoleciheretiperviphobia (fear of heretically perverse worms), they can easily find hundreds of papers, dozens of books, and scientific research from highly accredited pioneering professionals and leaders online ¹⁴ supporting the structured water phenomena. Skepticism has its place and serves a critical purpose, but regarding the extreme skepticism of structured water, that purpose does not seem to be moving understanding forward or seeking new solutions to real-world problems, such as solving global water shortages and increasing crop production, as has been well documented by some of Australia’s largest produce farms.

To see the result of my own tests and how to make structured water, see Appendix J: Structured Water.

There is quite a lot of good research on the subject that we won’t detail here. However, we will look at Fabian Ptok’s Master’s thesis “Alternative Irrigation Methods: Structured Water in the context of a Growing Global Food Crisis due to Water Shortages”¹⁵. He covers the subject well from an agricultural and food security perspective and provides several references to the research and work in this area. One of the often cited studies showed dramatic results in decreasing blood and DNA damage in diabetic rats, but this study is also criticized as it was small¹⁶. There is also a book by Professor Gerald Pollack, who has an impressive list of credentials¹⁷ and is available online for free¹⁸. I have not read this book, so this is not an endorsement or recommendation, however, some of his experiments and patents¹⁹ look very interesting. Dr. Pollack has made no claims about his work, but is raising funding to test his hypothesis that SW can have positive effect on health.

Another potentially trusted source is the work of Marcel Vogel (more on him later). He claimed that through years of work and thousands of experiments, he was able to prove that various forms of energy, including thought, could permanently change the spectrographic properties of water ²⁰. He also claimed that water was an information storage system. This last claim is especially significant, considering Vogel was not only a chemical and physics researcher at IBM for 27 years, but he was an information medium specialist, holding patents on hard-drive memory technologies that are in use today.

Water is an excellent test medium because the structure of molecular water is tetrahedral, and being the most basic shape of creation lends itself to many different tholonic applications. It’s worth noting that when it was originally suggested that water might be tetrahedral in shape back in 1938, the idea was met with disbelief. It was not until 80 years later, in 2013, that this was finally accepted as valid. Today…

“It is widely accepted that liquid water structure is comprised of two closely interweaved components, i.e., tetrahedral and hexagonal structures”.²¹

In fact, water, as ice, may be the closest instance of the entire tholonic structure of any other substance (that is common to us). (image above from “Tetrahedrality is key to the uniqueness of water”²²)

The silicate structures of minerals are also quite similar in that they are made up of tetrahedrons of various arrangements. The structure of water and quartz is so close that, in some conditions, ice has the same structure as quartz²³! While this was only discovered recently, the word “crystal” comes from the Greek word krustallos, meaning both ice and rock crystal, because the ancients believed quartz was permanently frozen water. This lends some credence to the metaphysical and ancient idea that water and quartz have a special relationship.

Radical ideas are often met with radical resistance. Structured water is one of those ideas, falling into the same New Age category as “crystal power”. Ignoring the 249D crystal that (possibly) created reality, common crystals have some pretty impressive qualities.

• Generate electricity (piezoelectric).
• Amplify, transmit, and store data (up to 300 million years ²⁴).
• Generate signals (used in microchips, watches, internet routers and network controllers, satellites, up to billions of cycles per second).
• Control the transmission and phase of light (liquid crystal displays - LCDs)
• Ability to alter time (yes! They are called time crystals, representing a new state of matter, according to MIT.²⁵)
• Ability to hold a magnetic charge.

Crystals can do all these amazing things because of the structure of the elements that make a crystal, and water, with its tetrahedral structure, is like a liquid crystal. As we have stated, energy creates order, and movement is the effect of energy. Therefore, adding energy via movement to a tetrahedral liquid, such as water, will positively affect or reinforce its structure. Being a more efficient conduit for transferring energy, that structure will likewise affect that which interacts with it by transferring more energy.

The hypothesis is that we should see measurable effects simply by causing movement to commercial water (tap or bottled).

In Ptok’s Master’s thesis mentioned above, the author examines various tests that grew different plants using tap water and structured water.

One of his findings was that structured water increased alfalfa growth by 15.1%. This may not sound like much, but in the U.S. alone, a 15% increase in alfalfa growth represents an additional 20,700,000 tons of alfalfa, which has a value of over 4 billion dollars. Similarly, some of Australia’s largest produce farms reported needing 25% less water to produce a superior product than traditional water²⁶. In the tholonic model, these examples also apply to concepts, intelligence, ideas, and of course, ideologies, be they scientific, spiritual, or political.

Review of studies

There have been several studies of SW using animals. One review does a meta-analysis of these studies, “Structured Water: effects on animals”. ²⁷

This review focuses on the effects of structured water on animals when it is consumed on a daily basis. Structured water is liquid water that is given altered H-bonding structure by treatment with various forms of energy including magnetic fields and light. While most of the research has been conducted on magnetized water, which has structure of short duration, recent research has examined effects of a structured water with stability of at least 3.5 months.

Conclusion:

The animal research conducted to date consistently demonstrated beneficial effects of SW consumption.

There is another conclusion that also needs to be looked at, and that is the inability for some people, including scientists, to accept the possibility, or worse, attack not only any finding, but even the question as “worms of heretical perversity!”. It is almost as if science is suffering of sophophobia (fear of learning), or worse, rogophobia (fear of asking questions).

An example of this is the very simple “experiment” produced by IKEA (yes, the furniture store), where they placed 2 identical plants side by side for 30 days in many K-12 GEMS schools (Global Education Management Systems²⁸) across the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E). Signs near each plant instructed the viewer to either “compliment” the plant (right) or “bully” the plant (left). The short YouTube video²⁹ had 1.2 million views, with 6,700 likes and 625 dislikes, and many of the comments were as vile as YouTube will allow. Granted, this exhibition will never get published in the Journal for Experimental Science, but it is the clearest demonstration of the concept.

It is certainly sufficient to raise the question, “Do emotions affect life?” which sounds like a ridiculously silly question, as we all know the answer. Still, while there are countless studies on the effect of plants on human emotions, there is nary a one (that I can find) on the impact of human emotions on plants. This is unfortunate, as such a study would tell us a lot about the emotions/biology connection that presumably would have some effect on human’s often emotionally chaotic, fear-driven, culturally distorted minds. Unfortunately, the anger and dismissive attitudes expressed in the comments of this video are shared by many leaders in the scientific community, which can, at times, acts like a cult of scientism.

Gravity

If it is true, as mentioned in Chapter 11: Fields, that gravity and Awareness are two instances of the same archetype, then we should be able to adapt experiments on gravity to Awareness. We could start with the first experiment to measure the force of gravity between masses in 1797, the Cavendish experiment. This experiment was the first to determine accurate values for the gravitational constant (G).

As a reminder, in Chapter 11 we correlated the following properties:

• Gravitational constant (G) -> volts (V)
• Gravitational field of mass (g) -> power (P), energy transfer over time.
• Force of gravity (F) -> resistance (R)
• Distance (S) -> current (I)

The Cavendish experiment is both simple and fascinating. Simply hang a balanced bar holding two masses from a string and let them rest. Then place large masses, such as bowling balls, next to each mass on each side, and watch the balanced masses get drawn to the bowling balls due to the gravitational field of the bowling balls.

Now, if we correlate according to our initial associations (“initial” because these will certainly need tweaking and adjusting):

• Awareness (A) -> Gravitational constant (G)
• Consciousness (C) -> Gravitational field of mass (g)

We end up with models that look like:

This tholonic model experiment suggests that a “small” consciousness will be attracted to a “large”, which might make sense, but is difficult to test as we have no standardized metric for consciousness, either individual, collective, hive, or otherwise. We have the concept of an expanded consciousness, which correlates to problem solving, planning, and reasoning, but as this applies as much to bee hives and ants as it does to humans or plants, we still have the same problem. Nevertheless, this is a potential example of shifting the concept of gravity to Awareness.

Other Experiments

Here is a very short list of books and papers that delve into experiments and perspectives that explore awareness and reality and are compatible with tholonic claims:

• Double-Blind Test of the Effects of Distant Intention on Water Crystal Formation.³⁰
• FieldREG Anomalies in Group Situations.³¹
• Test of a field theory of consciousness and social change. ³²
• International Peace Project in the Middle East: The Effects of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field.³³
• The Intention Experiment, Lynne McTaggart
• Groundbreaking New Results in Consciousness, Quantum Brain & Nonlocality Research, Maoxin Wu
• Conditioning of Space-Time: The Relationship between Experimental Entanglement, Space-Memory and Consciousness. Journal of Nonlocality Round Table Series, Colloquium #4, Rajendra Bajpai and +2
• Radiant Minds: Scientists Explore the Dimensions of Consciousness, Juanita Ratner
• Extrasensory perception and quantum models of cognition, Patrizio Tressoldi and +2
• The relationship between local geomagnetic activity, Tibetan Buddhist meditation and psychic awareness: Preliminary study, David Luke
• Phenomenological Convergence between Major Paradigms of Classic Parapsychology and Cross-Cultural Practices: An Exploration of Paranthropology, Jack Hunter
• An investigation into the cortical electrophysiology of remote staring detection, Paul Stevens
• Geomagnetic Field Effects in Anomalous Dreams and the Akashic Field, Stanley Krippner
• The relationship between local geomagnetic activity, meditation and psi. Part I: Literature review and theoretical model, David Luke and +1
• Eleonore Zugun: the Re-Evaluation of a Historic RSPK (Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis) Case, Peter Mulacz
• Intention, Jeanne Lim

Qualitative Energy

One experiment to consider is the concept of qualitative energy. We have countless ways to test the quantitative properties of energy, but if we claim that quantitative and qualitative properties are related in some way, then can one property affect the other, for example, via induction?

Measuring the value of money is quantitative, so a $10 bill is always $10 regardless of whether it came from a blood diamond or a farmer, but many people would reject that $10 if they knew it was from blood diamonds. This particular qualitative example has had significant quantitative effects as it has shifted over $1,000,000,000 away from the blood diamond industry. Does that make the value of the money qualitative? Subjectively, yes, for those whose values are qualitative. A Central Bank, for example, only values quantitative measures, so qualitative values don’t register. The fact that they pretend they do is evidence that living organisms value qualitative measures.

Trustless systems are changing that. A trustless system is:

A mechanism in place where all participants can reach a consensus on a single truth without any one overarching authority and without needing to know or trust each other.

The Universe, nature, creation… these are trustless systems, and the “single truth” that emerges is the reality of the moment, whatever that happens to be.

Cryptocurrencies are trustless, which, unfortunately, doesn’t make the cryptocurrency institutions, users, exchanges, or markets any more trustworthy than those of traditional finance. However, we are seeing currencies whose value is hugely influenced by the service they provide, such as cryptocurrencies specifically bound to agriculture (SOYA, CORA, WHEA), precious metals (XAUT, DGX, GLC, PMGT, LKNS), marijuana (POT, CANN, DOPE), and even pornography (PORNCOIN). There are coins based on political and ideological goals, such as privacy (XRP), political candidates (FJB, LGB), religions (BBP, CT). There are more than 19,000 cryptocurrencies at the time of this writing, each with its underlying philosophy, vision, goals, and values. These new infant currencies demonstrate the bond between quantitative and qualitative values and how these qualities can induce changes in the other.

By the same token (pun intended), and because money is an abstract representation of energy, we can extend this idea to energy in general and ask, “can qualitative attributes affect quantitative measures, or vice versa?”, “Is there such a thing as qualitative induction?”

Tholonically, the answer is “yes”, and experiments can easily be designed to test that, such as a laboratory version of the IKEA experiment or the “Florence Experiment”, where plants are subjected to “fun” or “depressing” human emotions at the Palazzo Strozzi Renaissance palace of art in Florence, Italy.

Intelligence can also be considered a qualitative property, even in the traditional sense of “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations”, especially as the creation of life on a dead planet is about as trying as it gets. We can take it further with the traditional definition of intelligence of “The ability to learn, understand, and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason” if we presume the tholonic intelligence that instantiated in plant life has the ability to learn, understand, make judgments, reason and even have opinions. Now, apply the tholonic definition of “understanding”, i.e., “the knowledge of something sufficient enough to be able to make verifiably accurate statements regarding said thing”, and we can also claim that a tholon has knowledge. We see an instance of this in how every form of life is accurately described by the knowledge data-storage medium of RNA/DNA (which may have existed long before life itself).

Note that the tholonic definition of intelligence…

The ability to maintain sustainable energy patterns within the scope of its existence.

… implicitly includes the traditional definitions, and where “reason” extends beyond current human reasoning. As patterns come from order, which is the result of energy, and energy is awareness, then, by this reasoning, intelligence is synonymous with “ordered or structured awareness.”

Some of the more forward-thinking claims that plants are intelligent is entirely compatible with the tholonic model^34,35. Even Charles Darwin’s and his contextually limited worldview of the 1870s come to similar conclusions.

“it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle (the first part of a seedling to emerge from the seed during the process of germination) thus endowed, and having the power of directing movements of the adjoining parts, acts like a brain of one of the lower animals.” ~Charles Darwin, “The Power of Movement in Plants” (1880)

What is surprising is that our current world-view continues to be based on the erroneous concepts passed down by the likes of Aristotle, who wrote in “De Anima” that plants have a “low level”, “vegetative soul” because they are incapable of local movement and the ability to sense. Like his claims about gravity, both statements are observably wrong, even to the ancient Greeks, had he bothered actually to investigate.

Language and Metaphysics

It is well known that language can hold a social order together or destroy it. Language has such power because the order and hierarchy of concepts that form a social order are known, taught, and defined by words. In addition, words and language form neurological pathways in our brain, and these pathways exert physiological pressure on the physical structure of the language-processing part of the brain. In his Generative-transformational Theory of language, the brilliant linguist Noam Chomsky states that children are born with a hard-wired understanding of language, and the only thing they need to learn is the context of how that innate understanding is culturally expressed.

Anecdotal to Chomsky’s point, my son was never taught to read or write, raised in a house without TV, radio, or internet, and in a rural environment. He was exposed to a Rudolf Steiner-esque form of learning where he was not “taught” but rather “exposed”, allowing his innate knowledge to manifest naturally. When he entered public school at the age of 8 or 9, his reading and writing abilities far exceeded those of his classmates.

It must be stated that while the first casualty of war may be truth, the first act of war is an attack on language and words, which begins long before the shooting starts. One example of such a salvo aimed at Western Culture is the post-modern concept of language and the redefining of words. This very successful neo-Marxist offensive began in the 1960s and has been so successful that by 2022 even a U.S. Supreme Court Justice was unable to define the word “woman”, and this view was staunchly supported by the largest publishing company in the U.S., who unironically reported “[her] answer was scientifically sound. There is no sufficient way to clearly define what makes someone a woman.”³⁶

Words and language are fundamental to psychology, communications, behavior, culture, cognition, relationships, perception, identity, politics, and just about all aspects of society. Consequently, describing ideas that use concepts outside our vernacular is challenging. The only solution is to define new concepts and create new words for them. Last year, 20 new words were added to the dictionary, including “ecoanxiety”, “Dunning-Kruger”, “hodophobia” (fear of traveling), “nothingburger”, “ratio” (as in “dude, you got ratio-ed”; likes/dislikes of a social media post). The words we create and how we use words, in general, might be a good indicator of where society is headed. At least, that is the concept behind predictive linguistics. The problem with predictive linguistics, and words/language in general, is that each person’s different experience with words invokes a different qualitative context³⁷, so even if everyone agrees on what the word “walk” means, it does not mean that word will invoke the same subjective context. The context will determine that word’s psychological, emotional, typically unconscious or “right brain” meaning. All of us have experienced this, usually with scents, places, or things, but it also applies to words/language.

Scientific or technical words are the easiest to create because they can be clearly and definitively described. Words to convey emotions or beliefs are more challenging as they are subjective. Still, as we all have feelings and beliefs, we can all generally agree on words like “love”, “fear”, “spirit”, and “freedom”, but the specifics of these words will never be agreed upon. It’s even harder to define new words for existential or esoteric concepts, such as “awareness”, “consciousness”, “soul”, and “god”, or the metaphysical aspects of concepts like “intention”, “free-will”, and “being”. The most challenging concepts to describe are those that are simultaneously technical, emotional, and metaphysical, such as the concept of energy. Energy is everything that is, can be, and will ever be. By “everything”, I mean everything, which includes consciousness and awareness, intentions, cause and effect, space-time, spirit, soul, free-will, and anything else you, or anyone who ever did, is or will live, can imagine.

To describe such things, we can invent new words, but unless you are a cultural icon, world leader, or brilliant scientist with the support of the media, your new words will remain a mystery. Many new word creations were serendipitous and accidental, such as the word “malapropism” (nonsensical, often humorous utterance), which is an adaptation of the name of a character, Mrs. Malaprop, from the 1775 play “The Rivals”. Even the word “serendipity” was invented by writer and politician Horace Walpole in 1754 as an allusion to Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka. “Banana republic”, “catch-22”, “bedazzled”, “beatnik”, and “cyberspace” were all invented words that found a home in the collective consciousness of our culture because we could all recognize and agree on their meaning and agree that it filled a need. Creating a new word that describes a state of understanding is rare. However, this was accomplished by Robert Heinlein, who had to write an entire book (“Stranger in a Strange Land”, 1961) to describe the nuanced definition of the word “grok”. Even then, the definition has been drastically reduced to a simple sentence; “To understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with; also, to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment”.

Short of inventing new words, we can use existing words as a representative, symbolic, and metaphorical allusion to describe metaphysical, supernatural, or existential concepts. Some languages are better suited for this so that we can appropriate their words into our vernacular, such as “chi”, “chakras”, “Tao”, “gestalt”, “karma”, “mantra”, “yoga”, and “prana”.

How, then, can we talk about such broad and elusive concepts as A&I in a way that all can understand? The best we can do is use the simplest words possible, leaving less room for wildly differing interpretations. At the most fundamental level, A&I can be described as “I Am” and “I Will”. It doesn’t get more basic than that, but as we’ll see, these concepts are anything but simple.

In the thologram, we have the concept of a 0-dimensional point which only has 2 attributes, A&I. Linguistically, the singularity of that point can only be described as that which “is”, and the nothingness in which it resides is that which “is not”. This is the 1^st duality of somethingness and nothingness which describes a state of existence or “being”. Applied to subjective or 1^st person context of “to be”, these would be “Not I” and “I am”, or, to borrow the opening words of the most widely known and quoted lines in modern English literature:

“To be, or not to be” ~“Hamlet”, William Shakespeare, 1600

We now have these 2 objective concepts, “is not”, “is”. These concepts are instances of (or lack of) Awareness, as the only prerequisite for some “thing” to exist is the awareness of its existence, as in a 0-dimensional dot. Here, a “thing” can “exist” as no more than a concept, but that concept can even be the concept of awareness! For something to exist as a concept, it does not need any other qualifier other than “to be”. It doesn’t need to “do” anything, nor does it need a purpose, reason, or rationale to exist. Thus, the only difference between “is” and “is not” is the intention “to be”.

This should sound familiar as we briefly touched on the same theme in Chapter 7, Structure. The association between the thologram and ancient spiritual concepts was never intended, but it was inevitable as both models are based on the same laws of existence.

Awareness is the primal state of existence and instantiates as consciousness, which, in the 1^st person human context is “I”. Intention is the primal force which created the primal movement, the 1^st cause that started the chain reaction of causes and effects, instantiates as movement/energy and “I will”.

Regardless that these concepts have been, and continue to be, hotly debated as to their true meaning, they are the most fundamental and straightforward concepts we have yet to conceive of. They also match our original tholonic trinity of the N-state/Negotiation/balance (“I/is”), Definition/limitation (“I am/to be”), and Contribution/integration/form (“I Will/will be”).

Language not only dictates cultural values and beliefs, but it is also inextricably linked to the formation of human consciousness^38,39,40. Hence, the limitation of languages will be reflected in the limits of consciousness (and vice versa). For example, along with our brain’s highly evolved frontoparietal networks ability to conceive of the concept of “I” was the conception of “Not I”. These concepts are very effective in helping the brain do what it has evolved to do, which is “encode and integrate information acquired from the environment through sensory inputs, and then generate adaptive behavioral responses”. The reason such concepts could even be conceived is that the most fundamental reasoning process in any brain is to distinguish between “that which is” vs. “that which is not”. A bee knows “this is (a flower)” from “this is not (a flower)”, and even ants have shown they can recognize themselves in a mirror⁴¹ (which is not the same as having a concept of “I”, although they clearly have a concept of “us” given that the individual ants act like neurons in a collective brain, or superorganism ⁴²). This is not to say that each ant is aware of its position in this superorganism, simply that the concept of “us” exists at the archetypal level.

Even the simplest form of life that exists, the “JCVI-syn3.0”, which is the 1^st designer organism in history and has only 473 genes⁴³, “knows” how to differentiate between “what is” and “what is not” and does so much better than the scientists who created it. We know this because there are 79 genes in this organism that are required for the cell to continue living, but no one has any idea why they are there or what they do. The organism “knows” they need to exist; otherwise, it would not have created them.

It is reasonable, then, to presume that the simplest relationship that can be recognized is between that which “is” and that which “is not”. Thus, the concept of “I/Not I” would be the 1^st relationship that the frontoparietal networks could form once it conceived of “I”. Given that this concept has been around for about 5 million years, it must have a pretty good track record of “generating adaptive behavioral responses”. The “problem” with the concept of “I/Not I” is that it is based on, or rather an evolution of, the fundamental concept of existence, that of “is/not is”, which is built into all life. This makes sense as far as rules of logic go, but that does not mean it has anything to do with reality. As far as the brain is concerned, reality is whatever it can logically deduce from experience and the senses (of which only 5 get any attention, thanks to Aristotle).

A more objective view of reality tells us that it is the culmination of all that came before and the current state of an ever-changing system that has been around for 4.5 billion years. While logic may be a part of reality, just as order is a part of chaos, that does not mean that all of reality abides by the rules of whatever limited version of logic the brain has so far deduced. Consequently, that which “is not” is that which does not exist, therefore when there is no more I, “I” ceases to exist, and “I”, being purely a utilitarian construct of the frontoparietal network which is only interested in “generating adaptive behavioral responses”, can only conclude that the end of “I” is death, as “Not I” is the end of existence. While it is true in the sense that the brain’s existence comes to an end, from a tholonic view, even though the tholonic intelligence of one’s existence comes to an end at some point, that point is not necessarily at physical death. Regardless of when it comes to an end, the A&I of that intelligence can only come to an end when all of existence, in all dimensions and forms, comes to an end. Given that A&I is not a space-time phenomenon, it may exist eternally, in the space-time context.

Such concepts are reinforced and passed on via language, which forms our human consciousness and understanding of reality, which is why humans tend to believe that death is the end of our existence. Metaphorically speaking, the brain (and body in general), is like an organic form of artificial intelligence whose primary objective is self-preservation, so we should expect that everything it creates is designed to support that agenda.

We can’t blame the frontoparietal network for doing its very impressive job, especially as it has also managed to create meta-physical concepts of relationships beyond our physical reality, much to Aristotle’s chagrin, I imagine. These meta concepts appeared shortly (~2 million years) after the frontoparietal network formed the concepts of “I am/I am not” and, I suspect, were closely related to and driven by our hopes and fears. Hopes and fears are probably the 2^nd most vital driving force in human existence after life and death.

The concept of “I am” is not only the basis for human consciousness as we currently know it but also the basis of the concept of “The Creator” as we currently conceive it. In this sense, Man was made in the image of God, as “I am” is an instance of the archetype “To Be”.

Why are we getting into this linguistic linguine? Because language is a living map of understanding, but like all maps, it tends to hide the reality of the terrain. We can see this in the simplest concepts of “I Am” and “I Will”, which have laid the foundation of our concepts of who we are, but of God and the Universe as well. While this is not a book about religion, spirituality, or metaphysics, per se, it is impossible to avoid these topics when speaking about such broad and encompassing concepts as awareness, intentions, energy, and reality. Serious researchers would inevitably find themselves in a territory outside of their discipline with radically different perspectives and beliefs. We can integrate these different worlds through the filter of reasoning and the humility to accept that there is far more to reality than any one perspective can describe. With this in mind, let’s look at one of the earliest and most influential concepts of existence: God.

Note: For more on the tholonic view of the concept “I Am”, see section “I Am” in Appendix L, “The Thologram and Religion”.

Are Archetypes Alive?

If ideas are archetypes with energy and fields, then it would be reasonable to think that an idea could be reinforced and strengthened by adding more energy. How would one go about adding energy to an idea? If awareness is energy, then one obvious way would be to increase an idea’s exposure to more awareness. This sort of thing is done all the time. We can see it in politics, media, culture, and traditions, even National Prayer Day in the U.S. (May 7th) when the President signs a proclamation encouraging all Americans to pray on this day and “turn to God”. Now, imagine the potential power of 114,000,000 consciousnesses all being exposed to the same symbolism at the same time, such as any of the bizarre Super Bowl half-time shows, or the 635,000,000 views of the Apollo 11 moon landing, or the London/Philadelphia Live Aid event with its 1.9 billion viewers, or the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers which was the most-viewed television event in history, or the EU’s reality TV singing competition “Idols” that captured 3.2 billion viewers. That is half the population of the planet.

Considering that the average American youth spends 900 hours a year in school, another 1,200 hours a year watching television, that 70% of the American adult waking life is spent in front of digital media ⁴⁴ and that the average 78.6-year-old American will spend 9 years of his life watching TV, 2 years of which is just watching commercials, we’re talking about a tremendous amount of awareness, billions and billions of hours, up for grabs. How is that currently being used? Compared to the test results of the Maharishi Effect and its 4,000 participants, it’s hard to imagine the possibilities within reach as a global community.

Even if producers and broadcasters of media were oblivious to the power of collective awareness, which I suspect all but a few are, that much concentrated, coherent, focused awareness is naturally going to energize all sorts of “fields”, similar to how the thermal hot springs brought life to bio-goo. In the tholonic model, intelligences will outright vie for that energy, especially the less sustainable and parasitic forms of intelligence, as those tend to be far more energy greedy.

With the Internet and the decentralization of social media, we have seen a mad scramble for attention-mining and a dramatic and inevitable polarization of ideologies, beliefs, and agendas with equally desperate, dangerous, and even deadly attempts to control that attention.

We are seeing tremendous amounts of conscious and unconscious awareness being pumped into ideas, beliefs, symbols, memes, etc., many of which have existing archetypes and, therefore, according to the tholonic model, their own awareness, intention, and intelligence.

A suspicious person might begin to suspect that some less-than-noble folks may already understand the manipulation of awareness as energy. Others may think this is bordering on the tin-foil-hat territory of mystical conspiracy theories. The reader will come to their own conclusions. Our intention is to question the effects of such awareness harvesting, especially in light of the understanding that ideas have a life of their own. This includes ancient ideas, even if they seem to have been forgotten by modern society.

With that said, it must also be noted that magic and mysticism also follow as strict a set of rules and reasoning as science, if not more strict, if you consider that some magic rituals can take many months, are physically challenging to the point of being life-threatening, and leave no room for error, at least according to one of the more well-known grimoires⁴⁵. A significant difference between science and mysticism is that science is based on observations and relationships of the external and physical reality, while mysticism depends on the observations and relationships with non-physical reality. This may sound like nonsense to some, but consider that near-death experiences (NDEs)⁴⁶ are reported by about 17% of those who nearly die, of which only 0.1% believed the experience was not real, ⁴⁷ and out-of-body experiences are reported by 10% of the population globally ⁴⁸. These statistically significant numbers are not easy to brush off. An even more significant statistic is that out of the 7.87 billion people on the planet, 7.6 billion of them (96%) believe in some spiritual concept that, by definition, is not based on objective, physical reality.

While it is true that the laws of reality are not subject to popular opinion, political and economic pressure, and self-interest, it is definitely the case that the practice of science is. We can see an example of this in how 0.11% of the world’s population (the 8.8 million scientists⁴⁹) feel they have the intellectual authority to tell the other 7.87 billion people they share the planet with that they are deluded, ignorant, gullible (the official term is the “Barnum effect”⁵⁰, i.e., “suckers”), or simply wrong in how they perceive their relationship with reality. Unreasonable as these presumptions may be, it is common and supported by the scientific community⁵¹ and research funding.

It should also be pointed out that many scientific breakthroughs had a mystical or paranormal ingredient. We have seen how Newton was a dedicated alchemist and how Kekulé’s vision of an ancient mystical symbol changed organic chemistry. Einstein, though not overtly a follower of any religion, was deeply spiritual and a self-proclaimed disciple of Spinoza (1632-1677), the 17^th century Jewish philosopher and mystic, and admitted his Theory of Relativity was a result of his belief that there existed an unknown and mysterious force behind the “harmony of the universe”⁵² and…

“behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.” ~ Albert Einstein

Furthermore, he believed that true science was to be a path of spiritual understanding: >“Science can be created only by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion.” > >“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naïve.”

“I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research… The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image. In my view it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.” ~ Albert Einstein

Carl Jung was not simply mystically inclined; he was a genuine mystic. As a child, Jung’s life was filled with paranormal events.⁵³

These lived experiences led Jung into psychology, and why his dissertation published in 1902 was titled “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena”⁵⁴. His ideas would open a new path to understanding the mind and consciousness.

As an adult, Jung had visions and heard voices that lasted hours, left him ill and weak, and made him think he might be schizophrenic, that is, until his visions turned out to be prophetic only months later when World War I broke out:

I saw yellow waves, swimming rubble, and the death of thousands… two weeks passed then the visions returned, still more violent than before, and an inner voice spoke: “Look at it, it is completely real, and it will come to pass. You cannot doubt this”. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book

Jung was also quite clear that the paranormal exists, and science is at a loss to explain it and has little interest as well, as he states in the forward he wrote for Aniela Jaffe’s “Apparitions and precognition” ⁵⁵:

One of the most notable things… is the fact that among the Swiss, who are commonly regarded as stolid, unimaginative, rationalistic and materialistic, there are just as many ghost stories and such like as, say, in England or Ireland. Indeed, as I know from my own experience and that of other investigators, magic as practiced in the Middle Ages and harking back to much remoter times has by no means died out, but still nourishes today as rampantly as it did centuries ago. One doesn’t speak of these things, however, they simply happen, and the intellectuals know nothing of them; for intellectuals know neither themselves nor people as they really are. In the world of the latter, without their being conscious of it, the life of the centuries lives on, and things are continually happening that have accompanied human life from time immemorial: premonitions, foreknowledge, second sight, hauntings, ghosts, return of the dead, bewitching, sorcery, magic spells, etc. Naturally enough our scientific age wants to know whether such things are “true”, without taking into account what the nature of any such proof would have to be and how it could be furnished. ~ Carl Jung, “Bilder und Symbole aus E.T.A. Hoffmanns Marchen ’Der goldne Topf”

The arenas of science and mysticism share many territories, and their difference can sometimes be purely semantic.

We accept that the Sun is our planet’s energy source and is extraterrestrial. Still, we don’t consider the Sun an “extraterrestrial energy being” like our ancient ancestors. However, let’s consider that there is a Sun intelligence, given that the Sun exhibits the properties of intelligence (as we defined it earlier, and certainly, the Sun is as “intelligent” as some lab-grown hydrogel). We could say the Sun is an “extraterrestrial energy intelligence” and still perfectly within the boundaries of scientific reasoning.

A science that does not explore beyond the physical is trapped in a dark cave of materialism. The tholonic view is that we have the ability to tap into these non-physical archetypal intelligences, and often do unconsciously. This is the purpose and power of myths, be they ancient or modern, as well as totems, rituals, rites, superstitions, magic, Wicca, paganism, religion, animism, etc., and with the advent of global media, we will see a renaissance of these concepts emerge in the context of our modern culture.

As these archetypes exist in the uninstantiated tholonic state, they are free from the limitations of our space-time reality. The myths and beliefs of the ancient past continue to live on in ever-evolving meaning and symbolism that promote their existence, almost like a self-mutating virus that has to constantly adapt to the context it exists within.

Much of our everyday culture is inextricably bound to these archetypes. Jung described these archetypes as ordering factors in the collective unconscious, such as his 12 archetypes of the human psyche organized into 4 cardinal types, which we described earlier. We can find these ordering factors in every context of existence.

A cultural example might be how the ordering factor of cooperation/conflict instantiates as a social concept of “Heinous deeds will be punished”. In the context of Norse theology, this concept instantiated as the goddess named Hel. Her job was to judge the dead and help the apocalypse along by leading an army of the dead in a ship made of the fingernails of corpses. This is where the modern word “hell” comes from. This was also the word chosen as the literary translation (in the King James Bible) of the Hebrew word “Géenna” which meant “valley of Hinnom”, which was where the waste of Jerusalem was dumped. This same ordering factor appears in cultural concepts such as karma, judgment day, guilt, original sin, and many other forms.

The concept of hell, or whatever it happens to be called, is deeply ingrained into the worldview and collective conscious (and unconscious) of billions of people who have little knowledge of the roots of their beliefs. Through the energy of their awareness, these believers bring into creation associated and/or parasitic archetypes that are attached to primary archetypes of which they are entirely unaware but which are energized by that awareness nevertheless. This suggests that the more awareness directed at the specific concept of hell, the more energized the attached concept of an apocalypse becomes, as they are both tholonic archetypes that have a shared existence.

As a way to convey concepts, language is a microcosm of how archetypes merge, evolve, and reproduce. An example would be how we can draw a straight line of connection from the invention of hieroglyphics and moon worship to pharmaceutical drugs and those vacuum-sealed plastic bags of imported Colombian coffee you buy at the supermarket, connecting along the way with magicians, pyramids, thieves and secret societies.

The super-short version goes something like this: The Egyptian moon god, Thoth, who invented hieroglyphics, was adopted by the Greeks, who called him Hermes. Among other things, Hermes was the protector of thieves. He carried the Caduceus, which became the symbol of modern medicine, and was the founder of the super-secret mystical teachings of Hermetism. So protected were these teachings that the word hermetic became synonymous with perfectly sealed, hence, hermetically sealed bags.

What we have referred to as an uninstantiated tholon can be considered a type of metameme. A meme is defined as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture”. A metameme is “an idea or belief formed within the tholonic field (i.e. universal mind, collective unconscious, morphic field, etc.) and spreads from tholonic field to tholonic field or from archetype to archetype”. This would be a meme that only exists in the collective unconscious and/or in the world of archetypes.

You may have heard phrases like “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”, “When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.”, or “The simplest explanation is most likely the right one”, otherwise known as Occam’s Razor. Applying the wisdom of these abductive reasonings, what are we to make of the fact that research out of Princeton University supports the theory that ideas, in the form of social media networks, follow the same growth models as viruses (in the form of diseases)? ⁵⁶

Outside of the conclusion that perhaps Facebook and Twitter are some form of viral disease, it tells us that ideas follow the same patterns as existing natural growth patterns, suggesting we might learn more about the life of archetypes if we considered them living. OK, viruses may not be “alive”, but I say may because some experts in the field are redefining “life” to include viruses. ^57,58 Regardless, the growth, survival, and creation of ideas follow the same patterns as everything else that grows, survives, and creates. For this reason, a clever researcher might be able to find correlations between the life cycle of a galaxy and something as seemingly unrelated as, say, the life cycle of a tomato plant.

One such researcher might be Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Maruyama Shigenori, a leading geophysicist and founder of the Center for Bio-Earth Planetology, who, by connecting the theories of astronomy with those of the life sciences, has shown how entire planets may well be living super-organisms. Another effort is from Department of Physics and Astronomy researchers at the University of Kansas who theorize on the relationship between biodiversity and cosmic rays⁵⁹.

It’s quite surprising that these new ideas are considered ground-breaking or radical in the science community considering that our own biological processes, such as sleeping, menstruating, secretion of melatonin from the pineal gland, stress levels, memory and genetic encodings ⁶⁰ are driven and controlled by cosmic conditions such as the Sun, Moon, the spinning of the earth, and even energies from the Milky Way and far off supernovas.

However, this idea that archetypes are alive raises some concerns regarding the mechanics of reality and consciousness as we can find countless examples of how these imposed archetypes infiltrate our understanding and view of the world, such as the most powerful laser in the world named after the Hindu god of destruction to trivial tarot cards based on movie stars.

So, what kind of world are we creating with our awareness, desires, and beliefs as a planet? To find out, I wrote a mobile phone app that allows people to send out a blessing or a curse into the “ether”. The app was creatively named “Bless or Curse”.

The majority of both blesses and curses are about… wait for it… love, money, and health (surprise!). Some were touching, such as the blessing of “May he win lotto” cast upon the bus driver who “stopped just for me”. Some are bizarrely dark, such as the curse of “Torture Rape Murder die die die die die,” cast upon “Noisy Walgreen Employees”. The predominant cursers, were Iran, Southern Australia, Puerto Rico, Russia/North Korean border, western South Africa, and Honolulu. Predominant blessers were northwest Canada, southwest U.S., Eastern Europe, South Pacific, Uruguay, Ghana/Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and the jungles of Northern Brazil.

The micro-sample of humanity seemed to be split down the middle between the blessers and the cursers, as seen in the report map below. In general, it tended to hover over the 53% area, giving the blessers a slight edge over the cursers.

Tulpas

One of the better legends of how ideas can take on a life of their own comes from the well-known 1932 book, Magic And Mystery In Tibet, by Belgian-French explorer Alexandra David-Néel.

In the Far East, there is the concept of a tulpa, which is a type of thought form. They are understood to be a sentient consciousness that resides in the host’s brain and can have separate feelings, thoughts, and memories from the host and communicate through thought, imagination, feelings, or verbally. With enough practice and concentration, the host can see the tulpa’s form in the real world, and for the truly advanced tulpamancer, it can be seen by others as well. Of course, this is a preposterous idea to Western thinkers.

Alexandra David-Neel was a woman of remarkable courage. She recounts how the only way she could enter Lhasa, Tibet’s forbidden (to foreigners) city was to sneak in dressed as a beggar carrying only a compass, money (for ransom in case she was kidnapped), and a gun. She was also known for her sound scientific thinking, and her opinions and observation carried weight in academic and scientific circles. Doctor A. D’Arsonval, a member of the French Academy of Sciences, The Academy of Medicine, professor at the College of France, and president of the Institute of General Psychology, said of Alexandra David-Néel:

This well-known and courageous explorer of Tibet unites in herself all the physical, moral and intellectual qualities that could be desired of one who is to observe and examine a subject of this kind.⁶¹

So, when she described how she used the techniques taught to her by the Tibetan magicians to conjure up her own tulpa, it is not as easy to discard them as pure fantasy. In her case, she manifested a short, pudgy, jolly monk, as per her intentions. Perhaps even more interesting was that once it became visible to others, this tulpa began to have its own free will, a life of its own; the jolly, fat monk began to grow lean and taller and less jolly. It eventually became a major problem for her, and she had to spend 6 months “dissolving” it. As she states:

The fat, chubby-cheeked fellow grew leaner, his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control. I ought to have let the phenomenon follow its course, but the presence of that unwanted companion began to prove trying to my nerves; it turned into a ‘day-nightmare.’ Moreover, I was beginning to plan my journey to Lhasa and needed a quiet brain devoid of other preoccupations, so I decided to dissolve the phantom. I succeeded, but only after six months of hard struggle. My mind-creature was tenacious of life. There is nothing strange in the fact that I may have created my own hallucination. The interesting point is that in these cases of materialization, others see the thought-forms that have been created.

In Jewish folklore, there is a similar concept called a golem (not the gollum from “Lord of the Rings”, which is spelled differently). These are beings created from clay or mud and then brought to life. The most famous legend of a golem is the 16^th century Golem of Prague. This massive golem was specifically created to help protect the oppressed Jews, but due to simple human error, the golem went berserk, destroyed the neighborhood, and was ultimately disabled and stored in the attic of a synagogue for hundreds of years until the Nazis bombed that synagogue in WWII. Some people believe it was not destroyed and is waiting to be returned to life.

Whether tulpas and golems exist or not is left to the reader. The point is that the belief that ideas can take on a life of their own is neither new nor unique.

Perhaps we shall see our modern versions of tulpas and golems soon, as that is where the research into what is essentially the collective consciousness of artificial intelligence, or A.I. Swarms, as they are called,^62,63 and early attempts to create artificial humans⁶⁴ appears to be heading. No doubt, one day, they too will prove to be “more troublesome and bold, escaping our control.” Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke brilliantly captured this concept of a digital tulpa in 1968 when the heuristically programmed algorithmic computer, the HAL-9000, in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”, calmly told its creators:

I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.