Ingo Swann (22Jan97)
There's a good chance I'll flub the message and the "text"
of this particular essay -- the MESSAGE being whatever you can
make out of the words; the TEXT being what is not put into words,
but is being said anyway, the sort of read-between-the-lines thing.
But if I flub, there are two good reasons: We all are "victims"
of the consensus realities among which we live; and it is necessary
to utilize consensus reality concepts and nomenclature of the
consensus reality in order to talk about it. So, plop! One ends
up back in it.
*
However, consensus-reality formation,
and thinking with or via its contexts, patterns, concepts, ideas
and nomenclature, constitute the single biggest deterrent with
regard to activating any of the superpowers.
Everyone of course has some idea about what a consensus reality
is, if only from their mindset perspectives. But the idea is usually
vague, and even so most feel they are free of consensus reality
influences.
*
Allowing for differences at the individual
level, the general consensus about consensus realities seems to
be that they involve the majority who have trouble thinking for
themselves and thus ape or imitate each other. But we, ourselves,
are not like that, and even if influenced by consensus realities,
we can escape from them any time we want.
After all, we are individuals with freedom of thought and choice,
right?
Well, not if the language you are using is the same as the one
the consensus reality is using. For when you speak or read the
language and words the consensus reality is using, you are actually
participating in the consensus reality format.
*
Before getting into what follows, I must
alert you that it will appear I'm being very negative and condemnatory
about consensus realities, and am probably targeting specific
ones.
Well, nothing of the kind is the case.
Although I may be in error so far as
I understand them, the manufacturing of consensus realities is
an ongoing artifact of our species which needs to fabricate thinking
patterns that make community possible.
So, not only are consensus realities NECESSARY, they are here
to stay as long as specimens of our species are group-minded and
interdependent.
Aside from the above disclaimer, I love to wallow within this
or that consensus reality, simply to exercise my curiosity.
*
It will be obvious to just about everyone
that consensus realities are always SOCIAL consensus realities,
and that they can contain factors that boost any number of activities.
But it is well known that they can prevent or deter any number
of activities also. These deterring factors can be overt. Or they
can be subtle and merely implicit. And they can have nearly invisible
spin-offs. The deterring factors can also emanate from misconceptions
not realized as such.
*
Social consensus realities are perpetuated
by cloning their basic concepts into others via association with
them, or by the tried and trusted method of educating, conditioning,
convincing, or propagandizing.
But the single, surest method of the cloning is one few could
imagine -- language itself. For when one learns language, one
learns its nomenclature PLUS the meanings assigned to it BY the
consensus reality that determines what the meanings are.
*
With this prelude having been stated,
here we go into a topic that is flubbable no matter who addresses
it.
In sociology, a SOCIAL CONSENSUS REALITY refers to what the greatest
number of people (i.e., the consensus majority) think or believe
is real.
*
A general consensus reality should be
distinguished from mindsets, in that a given consensus reality
can contain any number of mindsets, right down to and inclusive
of the individual level.
Mindsets are more likely to be found among social sub-groups formed
of individuals whose "inclinations" are compatible with
those of the others. Mindset groups can indeed form their own
particular consensus realities, but these are "local"
to the group and seldom achieve a general universality.
*
Although proper science considers it
to be a mindset of fools, the "field" of parapsychology
possesses a general consensus reality, but also a number of contrasting
mindset groups within it.
This social arrangement is true almost everywhere and regarding
all activities.
*
The usual result of a consensus reality
formation is that what the consensus thinks is real takes on some
kind of stability, often becoming immovable, enduring, habitual,
unquestioned and cement-like -- and thus exhibiting various degrees
of resistance to any kind of alteration or change.
Even if things are not all that stable, what is more or less an
illusion of it serves the purpose of making community possible
and maintainable. The other option is what people refer to as
"chaos."
*
Consensus reality formation seems to
be a trait of our species as a whole, for consensus realities
are everywhere formed -- and usually perpetuated to their last
gasp, especially if they have become "prevailing" ones.
The length of their prevail reinforces the idea of their correctness
and efficiency.
*
Much can be said for and against consensus
reality formations, usually without getting anywhere in the longer
run of things.
On the favorable side, it is obvious that consensus reality formation
is THE basis for social coherency.
But somewhat on the questionable side is that social consensus
realities are utilized to beat up on the social consensus realities
of others' groups -- often with the result that members of two
consensus reality groupings, neither of which have ANY hold on
real realities, can mess around with each other in rather deplorable
ways.
*
Consensus reality formations are so complicated
that I personally would like to lift the panorama of the superpowers
up and out of them altogether.
But this cannot be done, for reasons that ahead will be torn apart
and beat up on.
There are THREE major reasons why the superpower faculties cannot
be lifted up and out of consensus realities:
*
Thus, anyone who might chance to want
to activate their superpower faculties is obliged, without question,
without release, to turn rather exacting attention to consensus
realities (yes, you can take a deep sigh if you want).
These might at first seem very far removed from anything to do
with the superpower faculties. But the two are right up next and
against each other, no farther apart than two sides of a coin.
*
Now, any examination of consensus realities
tends to be quite boring, complicated and thorny. So, to get into
this I'll do my best to hack a path with the hope it won't immediately
get filled in behind me merely because of boredom.
Since the onset of my participation in research in 1971, I've
found that people most frequently ask one or both of two questions.
And since the inauguration of this website database, and the enormous
amount of gratifying email resulting, the same two questions are
still those most frequently asked:
*
Not long after this website got underway,
I decided to address these questions in an essay.
But I soon got bogged down -- because there simply was too much
to put into it by way of preparing the reader for comprehension.
*
For example, the consensus realities
regarding psychic stuff are relatively antiquated. Some, but not
all, of the most important concepts applied are either misconceived
or are ambiguous. The consensus reality does not notice the misconceptions.
Ambiguity might serve for easy and superficial think, but is not
constructive otherwise.
*
But most importantly, significant discoveries
in other branches of science have been made during the last thirty
years, discoveries that are entirely relevant not only within
those other branches, but to the overall situation psychic problems
represent.
Yet these new discoveries have not been transferred into Psi research,
while the other branches of science haven't made the connection
either. If these new discoveries are integrated into Psi research,
then the entire conceptual basis of that research will have to
undergo radical shifts. But this will also mean that consensus
reality formation regarding Psi will have to undergo radical reconceptualizing.
*
For example, the signal-to-noise-ratio
concept has been in existence for a number of decades, but never
applied with gusto to Psi "perceptions." And indeed,
those "perceptions" cannot be fully understood without
that concept.
Thus, in order to prepare the reader for THIS series of essays,
I elected to introduce into this database essays focusing on important
information not contained in the consensus realities regarding
Psi stuff. And so you will find an essay regarding the signal-to-noise
ratio already entered into this database, along with a number
of other essays that expose and discuss important factors that
are alien within the Psi consensus reality.
*
And here we encounter a tremendous, even
over-sized situation which is intensely problematical in many
ways.
*
The central fact regarding this situation
is that if one wishes to discuss or communicate about something,
anything, one has to do so via the use of concepts and words that
stand a chance of being comprehended. In other words, one has
to communicate via familiar contexts, not alien ones.
The concepts and words best suited for speaking and writing within
the familiarity are those that enjoy a large consensus reality
about the topic of interest, and which is shared and sharable
among the many who utilize the same language.
*
In this sense, then, concepts and words
constitute the "currency" that is utilized in order
to offer and obtain information. But the "currency"
has to be standardized, recognizable and agreed upon.
*
As it happens, though, the larger this
consensus reality, the smaller and smaller, and more simplified,
are the number of concepts and terms that can be used. And as
the number of sharable and familiar concepts DECREASE, many more
complex concepts needed tend to become not just unintelligible,
but absent altogether.
*
Another way of putting this, and as many
editors and publishers have told me, is that one cannot talk above
the heads of the mass market audience and hope to achieve a successful
mass market book.
*
The above paragraph constitutes a consideration
everyone seems to think is logical. And logical it is -- IF it
regards only producing a mass-market book.
But in considering this, we can begin to see that one of the definitions
of a general consensus reality has to do with the "mass-market"
concept, in that a consensus reality becomes one by the increase
of simplicity regarding fewer and fewer concepts, and not by the
increase of number of them. The increase of the number of concepts
introduces prospects that might lead to social instability, and
also introduces the likelihood that people won't understand them
anyway.
*
You see, in order NOT to talk above the
heads of the mass market or the mass consensus means that one
has to utilize only those concepts and nomenclature most familiar
to them.
*
In this sense, then, familiar and recognizable
concepts PLUS nomenclature appropriate to them constitute the
"currency" of the information exchange or transfer at
the mass market, mass consensus level. But this also constitutes
the concept-nomenclature basis of any language and which incorporates
everyone who speaks it. And so the concept-nomenclature is the
real basis for the "currency."
*
I have more faith in the understanding
minds at the mass market level than publishers do. But none-the-less
this rather naive publishing overview echoes something which IS
true -- in that social consensus realities ARE tightly locked
into and contained within familiar and recognizable concepts and
nomenclature, and the more simplified or over-simplified they
are the more widely recognized they become.
There is another difficulty that is always encountered in writing
for consumption within the larger consensus reality. The larger
the consensus reality, the more likely it is that what is traded
as information packages among it will consist of over-simplified
information packages, more commonly known as stereotypes.
There is a distinct deficit in this regard. Over-simplified information
might not be information at all, but merely consist of fashionable,
stereotype chit-chat which makes it easy to engage in conversation.
This leaves people thinking they have "communicated."
But over-simplified ideas and concepts are virtually value-less
as information except within the over-simplified contexts in which
they are used.
*
Individuals comprising a given consensus
reality may have radical differences in the quantity of vocabulary
at their disposal. But consensus realities are not formatted on
the amount of vocabulary per se, but on simplified and simplifying
concepts via which the majority can comprehend easier and faster.
The less one has to think, consider, and extrapolate, the better.
This, however, is not actually the fault of the individual. It
is demanded by the social consensus reality, and the demand leads
to adaptation of or the cloning of whatever is demanded.
*
If you feel bogged down by now, don't
worry too much.
If you dig very deeply beneath their surfaces, consensus realities
all tend to be swampy, and so it isn't your intelligence which
has become boggy, it's the topic of this essay.
In considering how the two most frequently-asked questions can
be answered, I got the idea of asking those who asked them how
THEY would answer them. Why, of course, they would direct the
questioner to sources that would provide the information they
are asking for.
In other words, the consensus reality within which the questions
have been formulated seems to hold that one can turn to sources
outside of themselves in order to obtain the information they
are looking for.
In the case of the superpower faculties, then, what is being sought,
then, is outside information that will help "turn on"
the faculties the questioners are interested in turning on.
*
This seems perfectly logical, doesn't
it? Especially since all learning theories of the twentieth century
have been mounted with exactly this in mind. And especially since
there ARE a great number of things that can be learned via this
approach.
And so there is a "prevailing" consensus reality that
this is the way to go, and the predictive expectation is that
with enough outside information acquired that information will
rev up the abilities they are after.
*
However, there is a category of human
activity that does not respond, at least on a one-to-one basis,
to this "outside stimulation." For example, one can
sometimes read all one wants about the creative processes -- and
can even accumulate a vast expertise regarding what has been read
and studied.
But one's creative faculties can quite easily remain in a stupor
or somnolent -- and so the activation of creative faculties is
not really answerable within the learning-from-outside-sources
stereotype.
*
And here is the very great contrast between
"awakening" and merely reading-learning about a faculty.
Indeed, creativity often "awakens" in those who never
crack a book about how the creative processes function and don't
even care about them.
*
The direct implication here is that certain
faculties are self-starting in some kind of self-internal way
while others respond to stimulation from outside sources. In this
sense, the methods of the latter are not all that effective regarding
the former.
Thus, we can rationally expect "enhancement" with regard
to those faculties that do respond to stimulus from the outside,
such as learning how to type. On the other hand, the self-starting
faculties may be resistant to outside stimuli, no matter how much
one slogs away with them.
*
Now, whether or not anyone has experienced
any enhancement of their superpowers via or because of some kind
of external stimulus is for them to say. My position in this regard
is: if it works, go for it.
*
But the vast bulk of data in the collective
archives of psychical and parapsychological research firmly establishes
that hardly anyone developed significant abilities exclusively
from outside stimuli.
Indeed, most if not all natural psychics whose faculties endure
over time will say that their faculties have occurred not because
of any outside stimuli, but that they just "awakened"
all by themselves.
*
In any event, and since the above is
more or less the case, and also the confusion, I got to wondering
why the dependency on outside stimuli has become so paramount,
and why the concept of self-starting faculties is not active in
our present consensus realities.
*
Now, this particular question fell within
the boundaries and goals of the project I have referred to in
the Introduction. And so the question was researched with some
gusto.
*
With regard to the absence of self-starting
faculties, an astonishing, but probable reason was found -- and
this in turn shed light on the problem of learning only from outside
sources. I'll be as brief as possible, but the details involved
require an unavoidable length.
*
I'll begin simply by saying that the
nineteenth century saw the greatest "outbreak" of "paranormal"
phenomena ever directly recorded and documented by history.
Indeed, it was because of this outbreak, astonishing in all ways,
that the first psychical research societies finally became organized
to investigate "psychic phenomena." For anyone who wants
to read up on this, and the history of the superpower phenomena
in general, I recommend Natural And Supernatural: A History
of the Paranormal by Brian Inglis (1977).
*
I'll next say that the outbreak dwindled
into almost nothing after about 1920 -- even though the amount
of information about "psychic" powers and abilities
INCREASED many times over, and did so in organized ways.
To put this into perspective, we can say that the gross increased
many times over, but the net in the twentieth century decreased
beneath what it was in the nineteenth, the century when LESS information
was available, and what there was of it was disorganized.
If you were an accountant, you would get alarmed and leave no
stone unturned as to the reasons why.
*
I'll next state that my perhaps somewhat
wobbly understanding of consensus realities led to the consideration
that the consensus realities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
might have something to do with all of this -- for consensus realities,
although desirable in themselves, also contain deterrents with
regard to which and what phenomena can emerge.
*
My general overview of the superpowers
is that they are self-starting. So I looked into the nineteenth
century for the existence of consensus realities that permitted
and expected self-starting activity of any kind.
And then I looked into the consensus realities of the twentieth
century for consensus realities that did not reflect the self-start
concepts, and which advocated the outside stimulus kind of thing.
*
And you can believe it or not. The shift
from self-start concepts to learn only from outside stimuli was
found to involve only ONE WORD, but from which countless conceptual
spin-offs arose.
*
ONE F-----G word, but one whose general
consensus reality meaning in the nineteenth century shifted to
the exact opposite in the twentieth.
And THAT word was
There is a great deal to be known about electricity, and all of
which learning is compartmentalized and identified by a large
assortment of terminology beginning with the prefix "electro."
But the largest consensus reality responds not to fifty-five terms
beginning with "electro," but only to one which means
"power," "energy," or "juice" to
light up bulbs, or to activate something.
*
At the most over-simplified consensus
reality, therefore, electricity, energy and "juice,"
are thought of as equivalents. But the source of electricity is
a dynamo somewhere, and so energy-juice is obtained from an outside
source.
*
This has led to the somewhat hidden consensus
reality concept that it takes an outside source of energy to "energize"
something, to turn it on, power it, juice it up, or to activate
it.
*
And so in a simple, but social-consensus
powerful way, people are always looking outside themselves for
something to "turn them on," and the context and expectation
revealed in this phrase is unmistakable.
*
If social consensus realities are based
in recognizable concepts and nomenclature, then the going gets
rough when there is an ABSENCE of needed concepts which exist
outside of the parameters or boundaries of the consensus realities.
After all, there are many horrendous gaps in knowledge and which
NEED new and/or different conceptualizations, even new nomenclature
perhaps -- and which absent knowledge cannot really be comprehended
by relying on existing concepts.
*
Absent knowledge might consist of knowledge
that has not yet been discovered, or consist of knowledge that
has not been simplified to enter into the consensus reality.
But another form of absent knowledge occurs when a nomenclature
bit meant one thing in the past, but the meaning of which has
somehow been converted into its exact opposite. In this case,
the former meaning has become "absent."
*
For example, based on the all-available
evidence, all life forms are self-starting, self-turning-on, and
in their raw state don't really need outside energy to turn them
on. Upkeep may demand energy from outside sources, but the essential
life "thrust," so to speak is, by comparison, self-starting.
Knowledge of how life forms START UP is completely absent in our
knowledge pools. Food or nutrients are converted to growth and
maintenance "energy," but the system that converts them
belongs within the self-starting thing.
*
However, if the consensus reality into
which one becomes immersed holds and, more importantly, SHARES
the "reality" that one can do nothing without an outside
energy stimulus, then that concept will be non-consciously cloned
far and wide -- and the concept of self-starting will become devitalized
and non-recognizable, even if one hears the words.
*
The vitalized and shared concept of self-start-up
belongs to what might be called the Age of Dynamism which began
roughly during the High Renaissance and dwindled into relative
non-existence during the 1920s.
*
During the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, Dynamism was not yet associated with electricity or
electrical power, but was a concept that belonged to VITALISM
-- a concept-philosophy which held that all animate organisms
are vitalized by a "life principle" distinct from psycho-chemical
forces.
The psycho-chemical forces were energy-expending forces, and so
THEY needed outside sources of "fuel" that could be
converted into it. But to the vitalists, the life principle was
different in that it was interpreted as being self-animating,
therefore self-powerful and self-starting as well.
*
The "animating" principle had
to do with MOTION. Whatever had motion because of some self-contained
interior set of factors was considered to have self-motion, and
therefore was animate, an animate organism, a living organism.
Any growth and development process of a living organism also had
motion, and so these processes were seen as animating motion,
too.
Hence, the vitalists expected to find that the growth and development
processes of the life principle would have structure and patterns
of internal organization of their own.
These structure-patterns would be different from the structure-patterns
of the psycho-chemical forces. But it was expected that these
self-vital patterns could be mapped much in the same way that
the structure and patterns of the psycho-chemical forces were
being mapped in the material sciences.
*
The term assigned to this life principle,
self-vitalizing, self-motion kind of thing was DYNAMIC, most probably
intended as an adverb or adjective.
The term DYNAMIC seems to have been introduced into German and
English from the French DYNAMIQUE at about 1692, especially in
the writings of Leibnitz.
The early conceptualizing meaning associated to it had to do with
force-producing-motion in some kind of self-making sense, as contrasted
to STATIC things that did not self-produce motion, but were inert
or non-self-moving.
*
But the term DYNAMIC was derived from
a Greek term, DYNA, and which referred to TO BE ABLE in a sense
that was opposite to the Greek STATIKOS which meant NOT ABLE to
be in SELF-MOTION.
Hence the English connotations of STATIC are motionlessness, stopped,
non-changing, frozen up, or cement-like. Even today, TO BE ABLE
is implicitly associated with motion, since what is motionless
is not able.
*
To link DYNAMIC-STATIC to the superpower
faculties, IF they belong in the self-start-up category, then
they are dynamic. If they are not started up, then they are static,
but for reasons that have prevented or deterred their starting
up.
*
There is much justification for thinking
about them this way, for when they occur spontaneously, they do
so of their own accord. When we try to deal with them according
to our intellectualizing will to do so, they stubbornly refuse
to strut their stuff.
*
The only conclusions is that our intellectualizing
about them is not consistent with their actual structure and functioning
-- in which case the faculties just yawn and go back to sleep.
*
Additionally, when our intellectualizing
faculties are drowsy, asleep or in some "altered state,"
we experience traces of the superpower faculties. Our intellectualizing
will is principally formatted by consensus realities. Are you
getting the bigger picture here? And an idea of why an examination
of consensus realities, although boring in the extreme, is meaningful?
*
I've not been able to identify just when
the term DYNAMISM came into full usage, probably somewhere between
1725 and 1800. In its original sense then, it referred to the
philosophic-theory that sought to explain the phenomena of the
universe by some immanent force or energy.
IMMANENT means "inherent." INHERENT refers to self-containing,
self-perpetuating, self-changing, self-processing, self-moving,
self-motivating -- all in some kind of pre-existing way, and all
without the need of any outside forces or energies.
*
In the sense of all the above, then,
the vitalistic life principle was dynamic-active, defined as "self-full
of power, or self-power" (sorry for the redundancy here.)
And as such, it was marked by self-continuous, self-productive
activity -- and that therefore all life forms were themselves
internally dynamic-active in self-start-up kinds of ways.
*
The whole of this seems to have been
broadly formulated into a consensus reality that "prevailed"
during the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries.
THIS consensus reality seems to have produced innumerable conceptual
spin-offs that justified individual self-starting activity of
all kinds, since that activity was seen as inherently present
within the remarkable human species -- and the universe as well.
*
For example, the maxims "rely on
oneself" and "improve one's own mind by virtue of one's
own dynamic-inherent factors to do so" belong to the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. We retain the words today, but have
lost their nineteenth century substance.
These maxims are the famous "lift oneself by one's own boot
straps" ideas. And those ideas and were very luminous during
the nineteenth century, whose societies were just freshly released
from the concepts of feudalism -- in which everyone was born into
the status in which they were to live their life thenceforth without
any hope of what we today call "upward mobility."
*
The boot-strap maxims were also entirely
compatible with the fundamental concepts of capitalism -- the
freedom of anyone to compete and make money who had the self-starting
aptitudes to do so -- and to do so WITHOUT looking for outside
guidance.
Indeed, although I'll paraphrase it for convenience here, many
noted early capitalists have been noted to say something like:
"Screw outside guidance, which, if followed, will doom one
to poverty."
*
In other words, the general consensus
realities of the nineteenth century were entirely saturated with
self-dynamic concepts accompanied by an enormous variety of conceptual
spin-offs. And historians have remarked on the sheer volume of
discovery, creativity and inventions that were TYPICAL of that
century.
The concept of self-dynamism has not really been distorted at
the individual level, of course, and many individuals today are
self-made because of it.
But it has become considerably weakened in terms of general consensus
realities -- especially during and after the 1920s when the concepts
of VITALISM were wrecked and debunked as having no "scientific"
or "philosophic" value.
One of the results of this wrecking was that the terms DYNAMIC
and DYNAMISM became unfashionable and politically incorrect by
the 1950s.
*
How this came about is a rather amusing
sequence. But it's worth noting before going on that IF we can
become fashion "victims," then we clearly can become
victimized by general consensus realities.
*
The inverse of the concept of pre-existing,
self-immanent, self-mobilizing dynamism would be the idea that
one has to go outside oneself not only for energy, but for learning,
guidance, and models regarding how to do something or anything.
In this sense, then, we would have to utilize outside sources
with regard to shaping our own intellects -- this a factor which
sucks one INTO consensus realities and often into a near complete
cloning of them.
*
Shortly after 1831, a mechanism was invented
that could convert mechanical energy into electricity. It was
known as the GENERATOR, but was dubbed the DYNAMO.
However, a generator is not a self-dynamo strictly speaking, since
IT needs an outside source of energy or motion in order to make
its parts move and thus produce electricity. In this regard, a
true dynamo would be the fabled perpetual motion machine which
itself did not need outside power or fuel, but which none-the-less
would produce electricity, etc.
*
One of the more amusing, but now forgotten,
facets of the nineteenth century was that the terms GENERATE or
GENERATION were a bit overloaded with consensus reality concepts
having to do with procreation and SEX, SEX, SEX and the various
formats of it -- this being one of the few areas of those nineteenth
century consensus realities that did not permit much in the way
of self-starting-up and self-realizing.
*
Serious public relations problems thus
arose regarding the electric generator -- and it appears that
these were quickly remedied by linking the machine to the concepts
of dynamic and dynamism which the then-consensus-reality understood
as self-productive of energy.
After a series of manufacturing failures and stock frauds, the
Dynamo Corporation was formed and which dubbed generators as dynamos,
a concept that detached from the sex connotations, fitted neatly
with consensus realities regarding energy, and which aided in
sales of the contraptions.
*
The inappropriate but hyped use of the
"new" term caught on, as might be expected, and it was
generally used until about the late 1950s when the concepts and
contexts of dynamism became unfashionable. But by then it was
permissible to refer to dynamos as electrical generators -- although
I believe the enormous generators at Niagara Falls and at Hoover
Dam are still called dynamos -- dynamos that mean energy from
outside sources.
*
The shift of the meaning of DYNAMIC from
self-internal starting-up to the need for external energy to start-up
is easy to understand. You see, it releases the individual from
the absolute necessity to self-start-up by increasing the concept
and value of getting started-up via learning from outside sources.
And this results in a general consensus tendency to become dependent
on outside sources that might effect the start-up for them. And
to the degree THIS concept comes to prevail in general consensus
realities is the degree the self-start-up concepts decline almost
to the point of banishment.
*
Finally, there is that particularly difficult
but widespread phenomenon present among our species already outlined:
the intake of information by reducing it to fit with one's existing
realities, group consensus levels, cultural cohesion processes
-- and, last but by far not the least, to fit with one's ALREADY
INSTALLED belief systems. (A very good example of this will be
found ahead in the essay on PERCEPTION.)
*
For example, those that already believe
that only outside stimuli can result in, well, stimulation of
energy or knowledge will expect questions about how to get knowledge/understanding
to fit that consensus reality.
*
The shift may be very subtle regarding
the meaning of dynamism as self-start-up, self-motivating, to
a meaning that refers to something obtainable from an outside
source.
And I certainly am not insisting on anything in this regard. This
essay, as are all those in this database, is offered for what
it is worth to each individual who chances to come across it.
I'll only note in passing that during the nineteenth century "self-help"
referred to one's bootstraps. Today it means "go buy a self-help
manual," or consult some other external source.
So, among consensus realities there are many overt, covert, subtle
and non-conscious factors which somehow govern the output, transmission
and intake of information at various levels. One encounters these
limiting and limited factors everywhere and in any kind of mix
or combination.
The most direct, but usually non-conscious, link is the language
a society and all of its members are required to utilize, no matter
their status or educational backgrounds.
Even if someone has a new idea, to communicate it verbally or
in writing requires use of the nomenclature shared and utilized
at the consensus reality level. As we shall see in an essay ahead,
this factor is a very important regarding theory and information
transfer processes.
*
In this sense, then, nomenclature is
the first governing factor regarding information transfer, and
the concepts behind the nomenclature are the second factor --
whether these concepts be exact, explicit, assumed, imagined,
taken for granted, or whatever.
And one usually finds these governing factors running on automatic
in various social echelons -- with very few ever realizing that
their innate and wonderful thinking processes are being reduced
and victimized by them.
*
Even way before I began acting as a research
subject, I had gotten some idea of the limitations resulting from
the major concepts central to psychical research and parapsychology.
I had realized that some of those major concepts were not correct
either in theory or in demonstrable fact.
I had thought, even since childhood, that some of the nomenclature
used as a basis for consensus reality regarding psychic stuff
was in fact silly and stupid.
*
For example, take the word PSYCHIC --
a term used with wild abandon so much so that everyone assumes
they and all others KNOW what is meant by it.
As I remember it, I think I was about six when someone indicated
to my parents that some of my experiences were PSYCHIC. I overheard
this, and immediately chimed in by asking what it meant.
*
What then followed (and which went on
for about two weeks and came to involve our extended family, various
friends of my two grandmothers, my Sunday School teacher, and
finally the local minister) was a great deal of psychobabble accompanied
by an entirely disproportionate amount of ill humor.
*
Kids are noted for asking embarrassing
questions, probably because they haven't yet fully adapted to
the no-speak, absolute silence aspects of the consensus realities
they will ultimately clone.
And in my case, after asking what SEX was all about, asking what
PSYCHIC meant was the next single biggest nomenclature bit to
cause a very unreasonable amount of upset.
I don't particularly care if the term "psychic" is used
or not. After all, one has little control with regard to consensus
realities, or regarding the mighty social forces that establish
them. And so I'm not going to grind my dilapidated mental gears
over "psychic."
*
But "psychic" is a good exemplar
of consensus reality nomenclature that achieves wide usage --
but which has never had a stable definition. And so I'll use this
word as exemplary of the other many definitionless terms encoded
into this or that consensus reality.
I will only say that the word has never been adopted in a number
of countries, precisely because it has no definition -- Germany,
China, Japan, for example, while the French resisted its usage
until just recently. The term was used in pre-Soviet Russia, but
was eradicated during the reign of the USSR.
*
Of course, one then wonders how psychic
matters are discussed in those countries without the term "psychic."
Well, quite creatively, actually.
*
As to the term PSYCHIC, there IS a formal
definition for it having to do with human mental phenomena "which
lay outside of the boundaries of science." But this "definition"
induces ambiguity which is shifty and unstable.
So, much beyond that ambiguity, PSYCHIC can mean anything anyone
wants it to mean (including abnormal, wacko, crazy, illusory,
imagination, unscientific, irrational, illogical, paranormal,
transcendental, non-material, the work of the devil, a gift of
God, an ability, an exceptional human experiencing -- and on and
on) until one DOES realize why it exists as an over-simplifying
stereotype the exact or detailed meaning of which is absolutely
unnecessary.
*
So, discussing psychic stuff with someone
who believes it the work of the devil, with someone else who believes
it to be scientifically illogical, and then with a transcendentalist,
actually consists of dealing with THREE confusions, of which ambiguity
is the chief characteristic.
Here it would be obvious to all but a high-density dimwit that
the conceptual information packages the three are utilizing are
completely different -- although all three are utilizing the same
word: PSYCHIC.
*
Indeed, there are many words utilized
for which meanings are vague and ambiguous. And these are usually
very popular -- such as the words "stupid," "groovy,"
"nerd," or "abnormal" which can ardently be
utilized every which way, and much to the glee of those who do
so.
*
In any event, stable meanings for an
ambiguous term are "unnecessary," because each of us
anyway reduces whatever it MIGHT mean so that it fits with our
own "realities." This IS true at the individual level,
and true as well of the vaporous realms of human activity I won't
dare to point up because doing so might erupt in volcanic overflows.
*
It is little wonder, then, that as the
conceptual contours of parapsychology began to take on concrete
formats (during the 1930s) that the term PSYCHIC was more or less
expunged from it.
It was replaced by the "concept" of "PSI,"
this nothing more than a letter of the Greek alphabet. But this
was a step out of one ambiguous frying pan into one hotter and
bigger.
*
It could have been replaced by the letter
"X" with just as good avail.
But I've often wondered why it wasn't replaced with something
more dramatic and fetching -- such as "the Adelphus Factors"
of human awareness.
*
At any rate, if one wishes to write about
"the Adelphus Factors," one might get away with the
neologism, but thereafter one must do so via EXISTING concepts
and nomenclature -- such as utilizing terms as perception, awareness,
mind, and etc., and all of which have established, over-simplified
and somewhat ambiguous "definitions."
And PLOP, there one is back into the consensus realities which
utilize and depend on those terms.
There is one additional category within consensus reality formatting
that is of importance so supreme that few can even notice its
egregious existence.
I'll pick up this category in another essay in this series, because
before taking it on we need to examine at length a few examples
of it and its overall implications -- always, of course, with
regard to discussions leading to the activation of the superpowers.
*
But a very brief note here is required.
One of the primary or principal signatures of a consensus reality
is that the string or interlocking of its fundamental over-simplifications
are thought to have no holes or blank spaces in it.
If it is THOUGHT to contain such holes or blank spaces, the "consensus"
tends to become shaky and even unglued. Even if such holes may
be apparent, still it is thought that whatever they represent
"will ultimately be explained within and by" the fundamental
concepts of the consensus reality.
*
As but one example, when the modern sciences
"went" totally materialistic, beginning about 1845,
and then firmly so during the 1920s, it did so on the basis that
science "expects to find materialistic explanations for everything."
A noted encyclopedia (published during the 1930s, even states
as much -- that science has already discovered basic materialistic
explanations for everything. And what was left was only, to quote,
"a mop-up job."
*
Unfortunately for THIS much vaunted and
hyped "scientific" consensus reality, the electron microscope
was in process of being invented at about the same time as the
encyclopedia was published. Holes and blank spaces were thus discovered,
and new mops were bought and employed, even though the electron
microscopes showed that the mops themselves were, at a certain
level of their atomic structure, not composed of material matter
at all. Alas. I drift in my attempts at sardonic witticism.
*
And alas, again. If holes and blank spaces
DO exist within given consensus realities, they none-the-less
are looped over so as not to be all that visible. And if push
comes to shove, they are merely stereotyped as the "unexplainable,"
and so everyone thinks they know what they are -- unexplainable.
The "alas" part of this is that when one clones into
a consensus reality format, one also clones the holes and black
spaces, too, and usually with "unexplaining" nomenclature
readily at hand.
*
One very good example of this looping
over all the holes that need to be mopped up was the consensus
reality which "explained" that humans have only five
physical senses and no others. Most frontier people, miners, sailors,
and the early aeronauts knew this was sheer idiocy.
But for the masses, it "explained" the scientifically
confirmed limits of the human senses, and also established why
it was useless or neurotic or psychopathic to propose there were
more senses, much less to utilize scientific funding to do so.
All of which, of course, amounted to nothing more than a heaping
pile of mierda del toro.
*
I will now postpone continuing this major discussion regarding the structure of consensus realities, and will pick it up again in two essays ahead under the headings of Paradigm Shifts Relevant To The Activation Of The Superpowers and Performance Versus Knowledge.
Each specimen of our species is a fabulous specimen, naturally
endowed with very many impressive faculties, most of which have
never been identified, but many of which have -- and are defeated
anyway.
*
Some portion of these faculties DO respond
when outside stimulation is applied to them, the stimulation achieved
by the inflow of information and by practical exercises pertinent
to their enhancement.
*
Other of the faculties, however, apparently
are of the self-start-up kind. Evidence for the existence of these
faculties is not only voluminous, but convincing.
The issue then is, if they are not activating, the resolution
then more or less falls into the category of discovering what
is preventing them from doing so.
*
Well, anyone who desires to do so is
urged to search for THIS kind of information. I'd be interested
in receiving notification from anyone who discovers the existence
of something along these lines. I have nothing to recommend along
these lines, at least regarding the activation of the superpowers.
*
However, many sages of the past have
indicated among their separate selves, often divided by centuries,
a consensus reality that makes remarkable sense.
I crudely collect this consensus reality by paraphrasing it: that
if one wants to understand something, one needs to construct mental
concepts that are compatible with IT -- not develop and depend
on concepts that constitute -- well, consensus realities that
are full of looped over holes.
For if a concept that is being utilized to comprehend something
is not as exactly compatible as possible with it, then that concept
is, in one sage's terms, an "erroneous thought-form."
*
I am very partial to the general context
of THIS consensus reality, but am uncomfortable with the phrase
"erroneous thought-form."
This is because everything is what it is, even thought-forms,
and as such is "correct" within itself -- "error"
only being possible relative to something else.
*
I will therefore take what is a possibly
unjustified liberty and shift the nomenclature of "erroneous
thought-form" into "mental information processing viruses"
-- this in an experimental or hypothetical sense only.
This concept-nomenclature was not possible even twenty years ago,
but the concept of "viruses" has now been widely proliferated
into the consensus realities of ComputerLand, and computer realities.
*
In that now monolithic Land we can see
and have feedback regarding what an information virus can do to
the information processing functions of computer software and
even to computer hardware.
I dare to adapt this concept into the contexts of the faculties
superpowers of the human biomind -- because all of them can easily
be conceived that at base they are information processing and
information transfer systems.
*
Furthermore, and as will be discussed
in detail in a following essay, the concepts of information theory
ARE compatible with them as information-processing systems, especially
in that information transfer is mitigated by the signal-to-noise
ratio.
The increase of "noise" in an information transfer process
or system can be likened to "viruses" -- loosely speaking
anyway. The decrease in "noise" enhances transfer, reception,
and more exact duplication of signal.
*
If the superpower faculties can be conceived
of as signal receptors or signal monitors, whatever they transfer
in the way of information to the cognitive mind/intellect is usually
processed through its already-installed concept networks or concept
"grids."
*
If the pre-installed concepts are not
exactly compatible then the end product will be signal + the noise
introduced by the misfitting concepts. If the pre-installed concepts
not compatible at all, then the end product will probably consist
of noise with the signal so buried in it that it can neither be
located or decoded by the mind/intellect.
*
A central question then emerges: wherefrom
do we get our pre-installed concepts that might be noisy ones?
The answer here is twofold. We can formulate them ourselves, and
which is entirely possible, even though many doubt it of themselves.
But there is a "process" which, in some sense, is geared
to "help" us NOT formulate our own concepts, and it
is one process that all of us adapt to in many ways from day one.
*
And this process is called consensus
reality making.
And we adapt to the elements of consensus reality making, for
if we do not all hell descends from a wild assortment of directions.
*
Anyway, we have to learn our local language,
and THAT language consists not only of its nomenclature, but the
meaning-concepts that go with the nomenclature.
Zippo!
There you are (all of us, including my overly humble self, a CR
Clone of some kind).
*
Two of the major deterrents or preventives toward the activation of the superpowers are:
(End of Part 1)