Symbol 7
Presented on: Saturday, November 16, 2002
Presented by: Roger Weir
Symbols 7, Realization Mnemonics. The memory function of the mind uses memory symbolically. But memory when it first occurs, occurs as a function of the process of consciousness which is distinctly different. Memory, when it appears functionally in the process of consciousness is a differential operator and it opens up as possibilities open up and occur. And this is a very special quality and property of memory. But when memory comes into the mind and performs its function formally, symbolically in thought, it acquires in its differential capacity the ability to be an operator in the integral cycle of Nature. And so memory becomes one of the great synthesizing functions of the way in which forms gain wide application in the natural functioning cycle. Were this not to happen life would indeed be simply a billiard game of inorganic material.
At the same time that the differential function of memory goes from a process to a form, the formal operator, imagination, goes from a form to a process and imagination now uses its integral formal stability in the differential mode. And so memory and imagination exchange places, as it were, by assuming each other's functions as operators. This symmetry interpenetrative capacity is the trigger of all transforms. Transformation is real because this happens. And that this is always occurring is indicative of the way in which reality occurs, even deeper than is, occurs. Because this happens, even before things existentially are. And one of the curious things in nuclear physics is the realization that finally came after dealing with certain mysterious functions in high energy physics; one of them was an insight had as early as 1290 by Ernest Rutherford, Lord Rutherford. He was just put in charge of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge right after the First World War. He had been one of the great geniuses in developing the early atomic theory and he had an insight that out of the three kinds of radiation that had been worked with since the late 1890's; an alpha radiation, a beta radiation, a gama radiation - A B C, alpha, beta, gama. That the alpha radiation were largish particles and we know today that they are helium, the nucleus of the helium atom. The beta radiation was much finer, much more refined and we know today that it is a high powered beams of radiant radiation of electrons; quite different from the alpha. The gama is very high energy, like not just electrons but electrons raised to the very high energy of like muons and other particles. Or even higher, sometimes gama radiation is called Cosmic Rays since they were discovered to actually occur in nature from high altitude balloon experiments. A man named Hess was the first to go high enough to find that Cosmic Radiation, gama rays occur all the time in the Universe. And that as they come into our atmosphere they strike the atoms, the nuclei and the electrons of atoms in our air and our atmosphere and these produce all kinds of collisions so that by the time most of the energy gets to the earth it is absorbed by the atmosphere. And only really high energy particles like nutrinos or muons and so forth keep going and they actually go straight through the Earth.
At the South Pole of our planet, since about 10 or 15 years ago, they're using hot water to drill holes about a half mile down and they're putting Cosmic Ray counters into these holes. And by the end of this decade there will be a 2 kilometer long detector at the South Pole, half mile down in the ice to measure the exact energy of cosmic radiation which our planet has, not just been subjected to but within which it is real.
We're used to thinking of radiation as being life threatening, actually it is one of the transform triggers that helps organic life step up its energy levels into consciousness.
When Rutherford realized that beta radiation were these electrons that his forerunner at the Cavendish had discovered and named, J.J. Thompson, as early as 1896-97. He surmised that the beta radiation, the electrons, must be inside of the nucleus. But it was towards the end of the 1920's that a young mathematician named Paul Durac, in England, realized that the mathematics meant very clearly that the electron carrying the negative energy must have a symmetrical balance in, if not in nature at least it's there on the mathematical pages. And he was the first to surmise that there was a positive electron - the positron which was found about 4 years later by Carl Anderson.
And in this time period, from about 1928 to about 1932, it became apparent that there were many mysteries and that it isn't that electrons are inside the nucleus but that the nucleus, when it radiates electrons, they are created instantly at the membrane interface of the nucleus with the ambient space within what would be an atomic structure. They're literally created, not out of nothing, but they are created out of what is real beyond assigning it a label of nothing.
And as the 1930's progressed, unfortunately Rutherford died in his mid sixties in 1937, but his last little book was called The Newer Alchemy. That we had come to re-understand that reality is not empty, though it doesn't register as something for us, its active process must be that it is a fully energized saturation. Not just that the Universe has invisible saturated energy but that reality does. And that any energy that's added to the ambient real whole, the Pleroma, the fullness, that that energy does not stay there and become absorbed there or lost there, but reemerges as a new kind of particle. Comes back into emergent existence instantly and that all of the energy is accounted for in various - someone once said it's like monetary exchange, all the denominations are covered to the last cent. And that because one can't have fractions of a penny, quarks don't by themselves materialize, but they always come generally in pairedness. But all other energy denominations reoccur instantly if a high energy electron goes into a collision with a particle what will rematerialize likely will be a loss of momentum from an energy from the muon, it will become an electron and will send off a foton to make up for the change.
And that all this occurs as if it were magically occurring out of nothing. But it isn't occurring out of nothing, it is realizing itself because energy cannot be lost. And matter is energy that is brought into play because of a time dynamic that has been added to it; E=MC2. That the energy has a mass times the speed of light quality to its matrix whereby it is realized. It is realized out of the real, which not only permits this to happen but always encourages by actuality that reemergence into form happens, out of process.
When it comes to trying to understand ourselves in the early 21st Century, it's importance for us to understand that we are realizable exactly in this way. To consider that we would disappear into oblivion is thinkable, but not rational, nor is it realizable. Our reoccurrence is like the reoccurrence of particles out of an energy that even if it disappears momentarily in some kind of a particle/anti-particle oblivion, reoccurs and reappears instantly.
There is a difficulty in following these processes and modern computer systems are made to go at 4 millionths of a second in their selective decision making of how to track what is going on, and that has been just recently increased to less that billionths of a second. A billionth of a second is a femto chemical level and lower than that is the ato second where atomic reactions can now be seen. And this shows the reoccurrence that matter constellates itself as energy brought into objective form and that this happens instantly all the time everywhere and if one is looking for a rule or a principle in the Universe, this is real; it always happens. It is not something that has begun at some point and will end at some point but is the condition, "the way things are," as they used to say.
So when it comes for our education to learn about the mind, the mind becomes capable of not only learning about the world and the objectivities of existence and the aspects of experience and the processes of all of this characterized by feeling, by language, by our relational humanity in communities or families or individuality. But that all of that when it interiorizes in a deeper integral, in thought, into form, into the objectivity of the imagination and of ideas, into Symbols in the mind, it's important to follow that realization is not again like emergence, something that just happens and then is, but constantly iterates. Not reiterates, but iterates.
So that realization, instead of being some final period, some final end to all of the puzzlements and all of the variations and all of this brought to some kind of quiet center where it finally is. One has dotted all the I's, one has crossed all the T's, the classic Buddha once described it in language saying, whatever had to be set up as been set up and whatever had to be taken down has been taken down. That it is all over in both kinds of ways and that at that particular point the mind itself becomes, the Sanskrit word for it was ekigrata. It means one pointed. And that that one pointedness reflexively blanks out instantly and blanks back in instantly. And when it comes back into play it comes back into play with a dimension of consciousness that is co-structural with all the forms of time/space. That is co-process with all of the modes of emergence, whether they're natural emergence or whether they're experiential emergence.
So that nature and experience as processes now have a further process of visioning that occurs with them all the time as another dimension. And that the forms of existence and the forms of essentials, symbolic thought forms, the forms of existential things, the materia of the Universe and of mind objectivities has a third kind of objectivity that also can now exist for the very first time; that couldn't exist before because it was a form that took more dimensions than time/space had, it took a process that nature didn't have. And out of that new process emerges a new form. So one has a new tandem. Just like nature and existentials were like a tandem; just like experience and symbols were a tandem, now there's a third process with a third form, but the third form is not integral but differential. And that third form is the Spiritual Person, who now functions as a form, but as a special kind of a form. Not as a form that is integral or integrates, but as a form that is differential and differentiates.
The ancient classic way of speaking of it was the jeweled self; the self as a jewel. Or the soul as a pearl. These were the classic kinds of ways. We would today say it's more like a prism. It's a prismatic lense that is able to see, not just the integral way in which nature comes to have visibility, narrow band of electro/magnetic energy, but now one is able to see consciously the entire wave band, all of electro/magnetic energy and all of magneto electric energy.
And so one has a visionary capacity to see anywhere that one would care to look. And one has to learn again how to educate oneself because never before in nature or existence or experience or the mind was this addressed. And classically when this kind of wisdom dimension comes into play our species has found, for the last 40,000 years that art is the very best way to use a prismatic form to allow us to explore through those differential forms. Not only what there is to find out and what there is to see but recursively also to recalibrate what we thought we knew into more dimensions than were there before. And in this way the exchange of memory and imagination carry with them, not only the functions that each had originally and now are performing in each others mode, but the whole interpenetration of capacities enlarges and the Universe becomes literally a Cosmos, with the ancient Greek understanding - the first persons to use Cosmos in the way in which we still understand it were the Pythagoreans. And what they meant by Cosmos is a prismatic harmonic of possibility that can be mastered in the sense of living by it, living with it. That one's whole life then is changed because everything that you did before is capable of a jewel like refinement into indefinite possibilities.
All this relates to how we began today. The electron carries a different kind of integral from the proton or the neutron. So that the atomic nucleus is a different kind of integral structure from the electron. There is such a thing as generating an electron tree. You can take a small cube of special plastic called syntilator and, not sneezing too much so that you don't jiggle it, you can put electrons into this block so that they will accumulate. And when they have accumulated to a certain point you can take a small instrument like a pen or a little hammer and you can strike that block and all the electrons will release their energy at once and remain in the fractal array within that syntilator block. And you can actually hold and see that the electrons all avoid each other all the time in a fractal - it looks like, and it is, a sub atomic fern. They constantly are going off. Because they are in a way self avoiding all the time. Now this is a curious thing because one of the mathematical definitions of a knot is a one dimensional self avoiding line that also has this kind of electron tree form as well.
In a way if it weren't that there are two different genders of integration in the Universe, there would be no stability and no exchange possibilities whatsoever. Electron integral and nucleus integrals (proton for normal discourse); if it weren't that protons and electrons integrate in completely different ways there would be no way for stability of atomic structure to obtain and to be there.
What is a curious thing about our presentation today, its title Realization Mnemonics, is that memory and imagination are different in exactly the ways and orders that electrons and protons are different. When memory occurs in consciousness it is a differential function in a process. And one would then say that there is no such thing as a memory or the memory but rather just using the blank forthright English term memory occurs. And it works. But it doesn't work as a form, it works as a function, as a differential function within the process of conscious vision. Yet when that function comes into play in the mind it achieves an operative function as a form.
And so one can then speak for the first time of the memory. And it is that memory which then forms the basis of indexing and ordering. Not only integrals in a cardinal way but integral processes in an ordinal way. And it gives the mind a capacity, not to delegate this to other lower things so much, but to bring into play that capacity in the natural cycle. So that it eventually happens throughout the entire cycle. In this way any kind of transformed realized intelligence participates then as an operator guide of these further dimensions in nature.
No it sounds metaphysical, it really isn't. What it is for us is educational. It means that learning is possible to be refined indefinitely. That we can use our capacities to learn about learning. And as we learn about learning we are able to go through the cycles of finding out with increased refinement. We can find out and then come back again with better capacities and re-find out and keep doing that indefinitely. We can learn to be not only refined to a certain point but we are refinable indefinitely.
Now this is an extraordinary thing to realize that one is the kind of being that holds not that promise but holds that actuality. Holds it not as a content but as what we are when we are doing what we are. And so this is a very special kind of a process.
Now in History, in the history of this planet, one of the most peculiar examples of discovering this and bringing it into play was the historical Buddha, about 2554 years ago. So that in terms of dating from the historical Buddha, we're living in the 26th century, not the 21st. And there are many other traditions, many other dates. But what interests us today here, in our education because we're moving by pairs of texts that we change every month, every lunar cycle we get a new pair. And one of them is Journey to the West, Monkey. And we're using Monkey which is a Ming Chinese novel, we've talked about it. But the Ming Chinese novel is set at the beginning of the Tong Dynasty a thousand years before it. And that this Ming novel from the 1500's set back in the early 600's goes back to the very long tradition of folk tales that was there in Asia, not only in East Asia, in China and Japan, but also there in India and all of South Asia. And one of the traditions that was there from the time of the Buddha, because in Journey to the West, the monk Chuan Song must go from China to India to get the original Buddhist documents, the original Buddhist writings and bring them back to China so that the Tong Dynasty can be founded and all this is set in the Ming Dynasty which wanted to bring back the classic Chinese understanding that had been obviated by centuries of Mongol rule.
So that you have stories within stories within stories, but the ultimate base of it is the realization mnemonic of the historical Buddha. Because in between all of the levels of action in Journey to the West, which involves not only this monk that's got to go on this long 10,000 mile journey, but because of his nature of being a very fearful timorous bookish sort of character, he can't make it on his own, he has to have companions. And his companions are animals; a monkey, a pig, a few other animals, a horse - and these animals are his companions, they have capacities that will help him to make it all the way through and so they form a community, they form a questing community, a searching community. And this pairing of animal capacities with human capacities to achieve the heroic adventure of bringing back something supernatural so that natural life can be reestablished on a more dimensionally firm basis.
The Buddhist stories of animals are collected in a work called the Jatakah. And this big three volume edition done about 100 some years ago edited by professor E.B. Cowell at oxford. 550 stories of the Buddha's previous lives, many of them when he was an animal. Not just an animal like a monkey or a pig or a horse but a fish a god a hero a king a peasant a beggar. Every conceivable kind of life. And especially the animal stories were always foremost in the exemplar of the previous lives of the Buddha. And about 300 AD, 34 of the animal stories of the Buddha were brought together in a thing called the Jatakah Mala by a sage named Aria Surra. Aria means noble and Surra means the written language. So he's the writer of noble written language. And Aria Sura's Jatakah Mala translated by this man Peter Carecce from the University of Chicago Press, Once the Buddha was a Monkey. And one of the most poignant of all of the animal Jatakah tales concerns the Buddha as a monkey.
In Journey to the West, it is the Buddha who was the real background to all of the action. He is the impressario who is financing the show. But the choreographer who is making the show happen is the Bodhi Satva Quan Yin. And she is the one who is doing all the choreography; she's doing the sets, she's choosing the music she's going to put this on, but she's financed by the Buddha. And the Buddha finances her in the way in which reality finances the Universe. Reality because it has all the energy ever already, it doesn't need any more energy and so any energy that occurs is put back into process back into matter instantly so that it can participate in the dramatic play of the Universe. And as it participates in the dramatic play of the Universe there are moments where there are individuals who achieve transform into consciousness and they bring a cosmic sense of art into the play of the Universe. So that the Universe no longer just plays but it actually dances ballets. It can now put on operas, it can now put on choral symphonies, like Nielson's symphony that has two big choirs. There are many forms that can be done now, one can have cycles of operas like Wagner's Ring Cycle. And all kinds of things are possible, even an education like this which in size is fourteen times the size of Wagner's Ring Cycle.
So that there are Choreographers like myself who put on productions that it takes two years just to go through one performance of it. This is a quality that's there in something like Journey to the West and why we're using it. And we're using it paired with Mind an Essay on Human Feeling by Susanne K. Langer. Because it all has to do with the way in which symbols in the mind operate as forms and the master choreographer of forms in the symbolic mind is the memory. No longer just a process function of differential consciousness but now a symbol functioning form in the cycle of nature, in the integral cycle of nature.
And at the same time imagination, which came into formality in thought because of images that constellate themselves out of experience. The images are not things, they're not objectivities in experience but that imagery is a part of the flow of the feeling tone process of experience. And that that feeling toned process of experience is focused integrally in thought, in form. And the orderer of the orders of form is memory.
But because memory has come into play not out of the natural cycle but out of a conscious transform of it, when it orders, it constantly orders in a differential way. It orders so that it can be reordered and reordered and never lose any of its meaning but always gains meaning. So that the more that one uses a differential operator like memory formally the more one increases the possibilities of what there is to learn and what there is to know what there is to integrate. And we literally every time we explore we enrich the Universe constantly. It is called in the Mahayana at Aria Sura's time, it was referred to the Universe as now a Cosmos which is a Jeweled Matrix, that was the phrase that was used. And out of that term after about 500 years was born a special tenser of the Mahayana called the Vajrayana. Vajra means diamond, the Diamond way. And it doesn't mean the Diamond way just in that now one has a diamond and you can refract all kinds of possibilities of nature. That's one way to think of it and look at it. But in our time perhaps a better imagery to use is the imagery from the early development of rockets. In the 1950's one performed different tests with different fuels in order to see if one could get rockets to work and it was found that Hydrazine and liquid oxygen, when they worked together you got a very clear flame that came out in diamond shapes.
So that the exhaust of the first really successful high altitude rockets, late 49, early 1950's, the exhaust of those rockets was a diamond string. And one saw this a new way, never seen before for the Vajrayana, for diamond wisdom to carry one out of this world into the next. Not to the next single world but into worlds without end. Into the heavens. So that literally, not only a new heaven but a new earth. From that kind. And one sees when the Mahayana achieved this kind of stability, this stability of using conscious memory in the symbolic mind to open up the possibilities of integration and to take the imagination that was the formal integral of imagery of experience and bring that into conscious vision. Not only did heaven come through man to operate on earth but earth came through man to operate in heaven at the very same time.
So that it was not only an exchange of above and below but it was an exchange also of future and past. And I characterize it as the future and the new past. Because as one comes back into play the past no longer is something that is set and gelled statically but constantly renews its capacities every time one comes to it. And the term for this is scintillation.
Now when experience becomes able to be brought into the mind's forms, the mind's forms stop being bricks and they start being scintillators that show up the electro magnetic vibratory actions that are happening in the integral world though they were invisible in there, the mind now has the capacity to show it in its scintilater.
Let's come back after a break.
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