Self organizing neural networks are the only kind that can be utilized by living biological brains.
So how did human culture evolve in the face of the biological limitation imposed by self organization?
As have been described in mathematical theories of neural networks, self organizing means that supervised behavior and learning from teachers or other sources outside of the confines of our brain, cannot directly manipulate or influence or compel or stimulate any desired outcome that has not first been organized within the brain. Thus, the brain can only respond or act upon its own map of the world. So how did human culture evolve in the face of the biological limitation imposed by self organization? Humans developed and evolved maps of the world and maps of the maps [metamaps] that can be shared as if all humans are inside of a single skull. These representations and maps are human language!
The switch to the use of language to represent intelligence in not without drawbacks: humans had to start all over almost from scratch in development because the intelligence that started language is self organized and language is group organized. Thus humans introduced a new direction of evolution controlled by a very ancient and highly advanced Animal Mind. To say the structure of early language may have had the capacity of insects or fish may be giving it too much credit. Yet the leverage humans gained by this advance far outshone these disadvantages in the ability to pass on skills and information thru generations of development.
Within very recent time, about 7 to 10 millennia, humans saw language and group mind grow in such complexity that it engulfed the individual by becoming the root of a self or personality which was used to define and confine the individual. Humans no longer followed their self organizing mind, but allowed themselves to be defined only by their self reflective description mirrored in and by the group Mind. Humans no longer connected with the intelligence that had first developed language, but gave that intelligence many names that made it "other". Yet all the levels of evolution are concurrently present including their procedures used to deal with their reality: we have within us the fish, snake and monkey to name a few. So being human is the connecting within the group mind, yet not limited to the use of this shared brain by earlier versions of intelligence that are totally self involved.
These conclusions were reached thru my study of the mathematics of neural networks, fractals and theories of the use of holographic distribution of information in the brain. Yet these ideas have been anticipated by all religions and spiritual traditions. The gathering of people for religious purposes in a temple, church, mosque and other structures directly points to sharing this one mind and language within a virtual skull. Attributions of all-knowing or all knowledge contained in a grain of sand points to a holographic process and fractal generators. The word "Buddha" directly means self organizing. The Hindu tradition that we have all forgotten that we are gods points to cultural enmeshment of the individual as does the expulsion from the garden of Eden where self creation is removed even further to a creator God. The usurping of power by earlier forms is indicated by the serpent in the Garden.
This book is about how new areas of science can bring precision and structure to the intuitions contained in the spiritual traditions of the world, and that these intuitions can open up new directions in science. I examine how the structure and behavior of social systems, which includes the scientific and religious community, is an externalization and duplication of brain / mind process / procedures. This has been anticipated for thousands of years by Buddhists in their statement "that all you see [know and understand] in the world is nothing but your own mind". Modern philosophers of science have pointed to the problems of introspection, the failure of subjective theories of knowledge and the importance of clearly stating the metaphysics and assumptions that underlie science. With the advent of the mathematics of fuzzy systems, Fractals, iterated systems and neural networks, I offer an explanation and model of how this externalization takes place. This model includes re-examining our assumptions about the connectivity of the material universe, either from the point of view of the universe and mind as a hologram or from non-locality introduced in quantum physics. My model develops the idea that evolution and the search for knowledge is generated [driven] from a connectivity of the universe including living structures that was first presented [as incomplete systems] in Astrology and the Taoist I Ching as well as other sources [Kabbalah for one].
I will present for the first time anywhere a new, complete model that takes the place of Astrology that includes charts for the female personality, the energy of alertness [QI] of the reptilian brain, the differences of the nurturing and intellectual, and the chart / map of the group mind for each individual which shows how others actually change the placement of "planets" in our chart. I show how the real time planetary cycles affect us and determine the structure of culture. I show how the drift of the elements of the solar system generates cultural evolution.
Awareness of these elements is embedded in our "animal minds" and produce different intelligences which can begin to be understood by understanding the evolution of the underlying neural networks. This is new pioneering work for which I invite all those in the world community thru use of the WWW to participate.
I will first examine three types of process used in the brain that are externalized in social behavior: resonance, competition and production of rules - knowledge. Bi-directional Adaptive Resonant [between layers] networks are my leading contender for an explanation of the behaviors called worship, tradition, compatibility, cooperation and love as well as separation, uniqueness and diversity if the resonance is destructive [orthogonal 90 degrees]. All-or-nothing competitive lateral [on a single layer] inhibition explains competition, aggression and even "ethnic cleansing". The holographic mind distributes and duplicates from different "viewpoints" the same information in these "layers" which then "compete" as to which "viewpoint" location within the information space will represent the situation. The mind does not need to translate the interference patterns which make up the holographic structuring back into remembered or reconstructed images for some mysterious "self" to view and act upon, but works directly within the phase space of the coherent sources that make up the context for the creation of the interference patterns of a physical hologram. Even action and procedures can be transformed into interference patterns which merge together the "self and other". The creation of dogma, ideologies, and "Laws of God" as well as explanations and knowledge is understandable behavior when one considers that neural nets are described as "data in - rules out" This also supports the [Buddhist] understanding that by the time humans experience consciousness of a exterior "world" a map of possible actions and responses is completely formed. Thus "thoughts and thinking" are organizational and resonant behaviors that "sit on top of" or happen "after the fact" as comments - rules and have an inhibitory effect on "original mind".
What is the process of spiritual development? Light implies seeing, enlightenment implies seeing within or in a place that previously had no light. Awakening implies reorientation to a visual reality and leaving an unconscious state where only dreaming is available. Rebirth implies a first time or new experience, but also a emergence from a dark, wet tunnel into the light and breathing for the first time. For me, this all became a reality at age 22 when I had a personal enlightenment experience which "in light" of my present research can be described as having the illusion of self created by group mind vanish in an instant to be replaced by self organization and origination which commenced immediately.
What information is made available "in the light"? Dimensional orientation to up/down, front/back and left/right, which implies that prior to enlightenment awareness was in a 1 dimensional sound sequences or location as 0 dimensional "feeling" including sounds as impact in a bark, growl or purr. Organizations of this lower dimensional information can be made that appear to be in more dimensions, but they are actually in a phase space referring to cyclical information. The complex organization is still accessed in 1 or 0 dimensions, and access in 3 and 4 dimensions is instantaneous and multiple. We see everything at once [within our field of vision which varies with different animals] that was there all along as being at separate locations.
To show the new spirituality, I will first show current spirituality based on life impact emerging from old "religions" and current science / technology. The old religions provide stability and the resonance of tradition by "following", obeying, and believing the laws and dogma. Thinking and deciding for oneself as the self regulating, self organizing being that characterizes human nature is problematic. By separation of science and religion contemporary life can be lived in two separate domains. But the actual impact on our life as we live it everyday is strongest from science and technology rooted in Newtonian view of the universe as random matter moved by forces which collide, not connect. Organization is in "orbits" from planets to electrons and problems are caused by infections to mention a few myths.
To understand the new spirituality that is in front of our eyes I will present in the next chapter some of the science background and resources, especially with WWW links. Next I present the general structure of my model connecting life and the cosmos. Next I present how the preceding material helps me clarify the "old" religious and spiritual traditions and last I offer applications in human development, education and social interaction as the new spirituality that is already present and all around us.
My model introduces many new structures that for me results in a synergy with our modern scientific understanding of psychology, therapy, and consciousness with "older" spiritual traditions. Current thinking is considered to have passed thru an "age of enlightenment" where the old religious beliefs regarding the universe were replaced with the new science which during the 18th century was Newtonian. I see this as a move up a single dimension, but I do not discard or reject the connections / ideas made to the same universe only because these connections were made in fewer dimensions. Moving to access the old religious connections from more dimensions allows me to reframe them within the "new" spirituality. This includes the cosmos as modeling levels of resolution also known as fractal scaling, a real time structure of cycles with the start points not fixed in a "Zodiac", with separate charting for the "three brains" of reptilian, mammal and human with applications in acupuncture, psychology and an explanation of the source and generators of language.
Teaching and culture itself are not directly realizable in biological neural networks. Then how did culture evolve and what is it? Language is a set of pointers to real neural net structures with fuzzily identical outputs which creates a fully connected neural network across individual human boundaries. The boundaries of this energy surface is the entire population of that ethnic language group: everyone in that group shares their mind with all others as if they were functional inside a single brain. This has been directly described by many traditional cultures for thousands of years. The gathering of people for religious purposes in a temple, church, mosque and other structures directly points to sharing this one mind and language within a virtual skull. This definition, based on real biology, shows how the same map can be shared by everyone allowing functional diversity in daily activity that is not present in any other species: humans can specialize without loss of food and shelter resources. Thus humans can leverage their intelligence while at the same time fragmenting their wholeness. I will discuss what I see as the implications to education, social, and family systems of this shared "One Mind", which is uniquely self originated and self regulating in every individual. I will map how the computational processes are expressed in individual and social consciousness. This includes the adaptive resonance between neural layers and the all or nothing competition within layers of neural networks. These computational processes can be modeled by other mathematical structures which are identical with mystical tradition. This includes the I Ching of Taoism, and the Star of David which are types of fractals [fractional dimension]. With this model as well as cellular automata and holography, Astrology can be seen as first attempt at describing how life forms have utilized the cosmos as information structures with which to become more organized. This is utilizing what is now being recognized as self organizing systems which uses the cosmos as a source of coherence needed in generating holographic interference patterns as well as chaos in the service of neural network procedures to ensure that the "best fit" or solution is arrived at. This is not a rehash of traditional Astrology which proposes a model of outside influences, which as was stated above, is impossible in the brains' neural networks. The decay and entropy of the "ONE MIND" makes it appear "as if" there is a set of influence somewhere. These illusory influences were named Fate or God in early traditions and heredity or environment in present culture. I will discuss how science is used to "prove" cultural belief in the service of political power as was done in the behavioral sciences in stimulus / response theories. Thus when individual self organized maps are not recognized as beliefs they can have immense Social Implications because the one shared mind is locked into a single generating pattern of the cosmos. Thus many individuals come to have similar beliefs, but that does not make it valid scientific knowledge. This discussion is actually positive in outlining why I think that the scientific method is the next big leap in human spiritual evolution.
What is my involvement and qualifications for writing this book? My personal experience of enlightenment. This led to seeking the answers to the why and wherefore of this experience and how others describe it. Before this experience, I had little confidence in religious thought. My interests were in mathematics and science, especially fundamental particle physics. After this experience I knew that there is more to reality and Mind than what is presented in models of a mechanical universe, and I began to look for connections between what is labeled spiritual and esoteric and the exoteric world of science. At that time, 1958, Fractals, Neural networks, Computers and a connection between holograms and the brain had not been uncovered. Since their discovery, I have approached these mathematics with the mind of enlightenment by asking the question of where is the organic fit or resonance with what I experience as well as traditional spirituality. This does not mean that I wholly accept the writings and religious traditions, but I look beyond the surface to a deep core that resonates with the deep core that I am now in touch with, that began in 1958.
This deep core is not found in the language areas: it is non-verbal, but it can use language to point to new language descriptions and models of this deep meaning and structure. One of these structures that was unexpectedly revealed to me is the connection between the structure of mind and the cycles of the cosmos especially in our solar system. This was as unexpected as my enlightenment, since I was not searching for it, and even rejected any connection with the cosmos as Astrological superstition. After this understanding emerged, I studied the traditions of Astrology in all cultures and found very science, but mostly I found corrupt data methods by which almost anything can be derived from the same positions of the solar system and the same answers can be linked to many positions. There is little separateness of clear meanings. My efforts to use scientific general systems theories helped only a little: I was able to describe levels of resolution which made sense of the traditional meanings of signs and planets, and I was able to derive and fit new levels of charts to the triune structures of our brain. Only after the development of neural networks, Fractals and fuzzy logic do I feel comfortable in presenting my findings in a book. I have tried to keep my model which involves a connection with the cosmos separate from a synthesis of presently accepted science and what I understand as the core of global spiritual traditions. I hope that my model can enhance this synthesis enough that some scientists will join in an effort complete this model. The model is incomplete, since science is correctly done by a community, and I do not have the full resources necessary to finish by bringing this model to the level of a theory. I found little interest when I brought my findings to the attention of the "New Age" and Astrological community and mostly rejection by those few in the scientific community that listened to me, but none have really examined my findings fully. I hope that after 30 years the time is here to look beyond the bias of both the scientific and "New Age" communities toward a working together. My "vision" is that science fulfills most of the definition of a spiritual search for truth and that traditional spiritual practices have much to offer as intuitive guidance for new frontiers of science. I will discuss this "bias" in later chapters, but it is enough to point out that this non-verbal core must be given verbal expression thru a culturally conditioned personality, and one of the effects of my enlightenment experience was to reveal that my personality was constructed from cultural elements whose importance disappeared during this experience which allowed me to reconstruct myself in the Now. I can continuously grow and develop and discard what is dysfunctional, even those ideas that seemed so attractive a few years ago. This is also included as part of the scientific method.
The public domain as the core of the scientific community is supported by the common education and common language of science. This is very important as a way of developing from all sources instead of class consciousness. Opinions are natural so the Truth as opinion is difficult to deal with. The public domain supports neither, but points to a single developmental path open to all and equally testable! The real contenders for the soul of humans are science and religion - human traditions. There seems to be no contest except in areas that most people that have examined both sides consider absurd as creationism. So I am entering a debate which was seemingly settled long ago as an Artist with a spiritual and scientific background. Some acknowledgment is made in the role of intuition in science as in the dream of the intertwined snakes that suggested the shape of DNA. But little is spoken of the parallel constructions in Modern Art and science. One example is the beginning of using the infinitesimal in the development of Calculus and the same time development of tempered tuning by altering the tuning of some intervals by an "infinitesimal" amount which led to the possible movement from key to key which is at the beginning of our modern Western musical traditions at the time of J. S. Bach. I will talk about the implications of this in later chapters. The place of language in human culture is central for the way our brains and neural network processing can be shared as culture. My model develops a new explanation of the nature and evolution of language. As life forms evolved and species with large brains emerged, the new developments in intelligence are tied to new uses for and connections with the cosmos. When human language developed it became a "binding" of time as a dimension into a holographic-like structure. Thus a meta computational mapping space emerged in which self awareness is possible. The positions and movements of the Earth, Moon and planets are tracked by non-human life and used, in my model, as resonators that "connect" the entire biosphere. In human language and thought processes we become "Aware" of the processes that constitute behavior necessary for the continuation of life by creating maps. These maps that embody full cycles are available for inspection at a single moment. Language allows humans to step out of resonant synchronization with the cycle and break the cycle down into discrete steps. Consequently we can divide the steps among a community and "share the work". We step out of the garden of Eden of wholeness into a life of "work" which involves fragmentation of our deep cyclical involvement with our "Animal" nature into "selves". No other species does this: each individual is restricted to a subset of the skills of the entire species.
A "primitive" family that is totally self reliant for all their needs has a limit to the "amount" of information that they can learn, and know - retain. According to anthropological studies, this amount was immensely larger that the requirements of "modern families", and with the projection of the information preserved in extended families onto "experts", the total breadth of this knowledge is shrinking. Since the "horizontal" fragmentation is increasing as more and more specialists are being developed, the vertical development time is increasing as each area of specialization develops its own "language" in isolation. In this sense, cultures are following the same logic of evolution in the diversification of species. When isolated from predators as in communist systems, evolution stopped even as it does in natural isolated eclogues. I do not see that an awareness of the cosmic cycles of the seasons and other came before or had any part in language development, but is the "finger pointing at the moon": a emerging awareness that there is some deep connection of the position of the planets and Sun as the nouns and pronouns and the movement vectors as verbs. These are the resonant correlation of the mammal mid-brain, so the emergence of a large neocortex implies that humans were able to make these cycles and positions into meta-positions as maps which can be manipulated independent of a linear process driven by resonance. It is as if humans and higher mammals are able to move the planets to imaginary "if-then" positions to create a future or past map or to divide the cycles by units of measure from other cycles. This last action in effect establishes different levels of resolution for analysis and re-synthesis. Fractals is the math of these meta-positions and the development of language. I see the concrete context of emotion and animal body language of smell, territory and sex, etc. as interrupted by the inhibitory power of the neocortex and reattached to the generating context or to another meta context as a process that generates fractals and fractal computational spaces. The ordinary movement from earth is ordinary rational action and the real heliocentric movements are the computational intuitional curved space. Subject and object are unified in a hologram which is the source of language. This curved space as described by Einstein is not only the geometry of the planets movements but also the geometry of the Sun's movement around the galactic center and the whole galaxy in still another direction. The "speed" of the earth around the sun is in the range of 30 miles per second, but the speed of the Sun is in the range of 1000 miles per second and is shared by all the planets. Yet this is reality a "Geometry of curved space". So it seems to me that the ideas of gods pointed to the emergence of awareness of the resonance of these spaces of the planets and the creator monotheism of the galactic space and maybe the emergence of science as awareness of the Geometry of all of the galaxies. These computational spaces provide the coherent sources for the construction of the holographic mind with different dimensions and Chakras or bodies as indicated in various spiritual traditions. Now I am beginning to connect this with the possibility of scientific investigation which can unify the scientific reality of the cosmos with spiritual intuitions. Since space is contained by and within dimension, then movement within a fractal dimension - space is a solution to the connectivity and resonance of that space. This fractal space sets the limits and energy of our "being". The interaction of levels of resolution within other levels or spaces within spaces may be what is seen as Fate. A space is a set of connections which is also a hologram. Light moves in all directions in space, but if some directions did not exist in a fractal space, then light would only move in that space connecting only those points of the space. So what would a hologram in a fractal space be like? Could it be the relationships and intelligence we call intuition? Neural nets use fuzzy logic which is really different levels of resolution beyond the Yes/No excluded middle. [of mars/Venus]. Thus fractals are fuzzy dimensions and fully connected spaces whose dynamics are solutions. Thus gravity is the dynamics of curved space-time. As a force it is Mars, but as a curved space it is a solution. Objects do not fall or are manipulated by other objects, but the total connectedness of the objects curves space in which movement is related as the objects connect to the space in which they are found. Their unaided movement is a solution to the connection space called gravity. The solutions as the property of "Force" of a certain space "seems" fully free within that space, but the space itself is limited. This would fit with or explain why humans had the experiences of "God" and a higher power: we saw a space of a higher power going to a fully connected next dimension of complete freedom. This is the evolution of language itself as in the time dimension and as meta time binding. Neural nets function as "data in rules out". The rules are the shape - structure of the space! Light or resonance that fills space has levels of resolution and shows the shape - limits of intellect. We cannot see below certain levels, not due to light of visible wavelengths, but to human computational space of manipulation and movement. We need microscopes and telescopes to "transcend" our spaces and expand possible solutions. Dogs cannot "see" TV because it is outside their "space" and level of resolution. They do not have the rules or mapping with which to "see" the meaning of the images. Religion and science have in common the externalization and projection of inner mental processes and structures onto "reality". This "reality" is subjective because everyone is self organizing and cannot directly use knowledge or facts or beliefs without first making a personal inner representation / model or map of the ideas and the meaning of the words or pictures. [The experts or priests are quality control to assure that what is subjectively formed matches within tolerances "The Tradition".] This "Reality" is real insofar as humans can use it to navigate or act or deal with an outer world to get our needs met. It is not an illusion in the sense of unreal or hallucination, but is not real anymore than a paper map of the world is the world. For the purposes of movement with our unassisted biological body, it is very accurate, but when we move thru the air or drive at high speeds, we would do better to have the vision of eagles or a bats radar. So for most normal operations this "Reality" is not recognized or dealt with as our internal self created representation. Since the human mind and mental process is creating this representation, much of the structure of the mental processes that generate our map of reality and some of the content is mixed or [con] fused with reality. In fact much of the reason that science "split off" from religion in Western Europe is due to a high degree of contamination of reality with untested beliefs. Yet at the time this belief was considered a "God's sacred Truth" and so fused that acceptance or exploration of any alternatives was a rejection of "God". Now with science much of this subjectivism is under control so that with the results of new research into mental structures and processes science can reflect on how much of science is still fused with subjective mental processes. Not only can we clarify science and religion by pointing out the fusion, but I can use the areas of fusion to clarify mental process and structure. I argue that life and brain reveal and project information about their own structure that cannot be easily obtained given the remaining anti religious and spiritual bias. The point is that humans can discover ourselves in our traditions and maybe even things that are still a mystery to science by reading the language of "myth" not as a fairy tale, but as the mind pointing to itself by itself.