Thomas Atwood
Hi Chris,
I wonder if Carlo Rovelli’s discussion of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation in The Order of Time might reveal clues? It’s in Ch. 8, DYNAMICS AS RELATION.
Some possible parallels in philosophy/theology:
χάος: Greek word for “chaos” — the primordial void of Greek mythology.
The “Deep” (“Tehom” in Hebrew) of Genesis, related to the Babylonian creation myth (Marduk a prototype of Michael — according to Steiner?) and the goddess Tiamat (the dragon that Michael defeated in cosmological [per Steiner, Saturn/Sun/Moon] stages of evolution;
The Tao of Taoism, the natural way of the universe, whose character one’s intuition must discern to realize the potential for individual wisdom — not to be grasped as a concept, but seen through actual living experience of one’s everyday being. Possible translations include “way,” “path,” and “road.”
The “Idea of the Good” or “Form of the Good” — a Platonic Ideal that is perfect, eternal, and changeless [sic], existing outside space and time;
“Brahman” — in Hinduism, the divine source of being, through which all emanates;
The Śūnyatā of Indian philosophy, translated most often as “emptiness”, “vacuity”, and sometimes “voidness”, or “nothingness”;
The “Godhead” of Judaism, the unknowable aspect of God that lies beyond actions or emanations;
The “Godhead” of Christianity — the essence or substance (ousia) of God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit [or Unity?]);
The “Pleroma” (Greek for “Fullness”), the name the Gnostics gave to Heaven;
The “primordial nature of God” – the process god of possibility envisaged by Alfred North Whitehead;
The implicate [folded] order of David Bohm, an ontological concept for quantum theory that describes a deeper and more fundamental order of reality. In contrast, the explicate or “unfolded” order includes the abstractions that humans normally perceive.
foole and minde theye soon be parted
finishing the thoughts wye started
no intentions to confound wye
much revision twisty wyndieYour comments are so kind and encouraging, Bill. You give me reason to think I’m on the right track, and I appreciate that. See my reply to Matt for some personal experiential validation. Alas, I foresee no confirmations from empirical data for the reasons I cited. Any framework that rejects all but sensory and experimental data is intentionally ruling out the power of mind, myth, and culture to inform via intuition and perception. I’m suspicious of those who eliminate the majority of the sample size before they begin, so perhaps in that respect I’m not a Whiteheadian. For that matter, I’m not a Steinerian in every respect either, and don’t know enough about Teilhard to form an opinion. Maybe I’m just me in the fullness of my prehensions. And I’ll be someone else tomorrow, though I imagine that this story will still be calling me to write it.
Thanks again for your insightful observations.
Wow, Mark! Thanks for taking the time to retrieve this validating feedback from the chatbot. After spending (squandering?) a couple of afternoons with the malevolent machinations of ChatGPT, it never would have occurred to me to feed my questions into the modern-day library of Alexandria. While I appreciated the affirmations in its reply, it was the experience of feeling so good about it that was most disturbing to me.
Perhaps you have a more utopian vision of AI than I do, yet a dozen years working in the digital trenches of the euphemistically-named information management space has led me to believe that under the thrall of our current power structures, natural language systems will be devoted to a lot more more harm than good. And an important part of its seductive power will be the meticulous training from its developers to cloak whatever truths or falsehoods it has to offer in the polite, inoffensive and collegial rhetoric of the managerial classes. Think Brave New World meets 1984.
There’s a lot more to be said, but I’ve already transgressed the boundaries of the subject matter of this course. If we continue, I think it’s best done privately. You can reach out by emailing me:
Thanks again for your kind words about the play!
Thank you for your encouragement, Matt. It means a lot to me, and gives me hope that the presentation might be well received. The play will certainly reflect your view about the possibilities inherent in unbirfurcating nature.
The presentation will include more experiential confirmation than empiricism, given the dictionary definition of the latter that restricts the scope of knowledge to sensory experience or experimental procedure. The experiential realm, however, which also validates perception and intuition, has inspired my writing with regular affirmations like these:
- The concept and outline of scenes emerged from a series of akashic readings with a dear friend and Naturopath. She has shared things with me in readings that no one knew about but me. This groundwork took place before I arrived at Cobb Institute, and before realizing that I’d been influenced by process thinkers for decades (Jung, Bohm, Berry, Swimme, Fox, Sheldrake et al).
- A friend of mine, walking home one afternoon during her childhood in rural Nicaragua, met her uncle on the road and had a brief conversation. When she arrived home, her family informed her that he had died that morning. She doesn’t believe an event like this could happen here in the U.S., where life is “too busy.” I know her, and trust that her witness is true. The reference to Pieter Craffert that I cite below adds an intriguing academic source that I find explanatory.
- Many striking synchronicities have appeared along the path of researching the play, some of which I summarize below. When I’m right spiritually, they arrive in my lap without effort.
Some examples:
- In an akashic reading, my friend saw me in a past life as a lonely boy living in a palace, subjected to traumatic abuse at the hands of the royal guard to gain leverage over my mother. She heard the name of the Roman emperor Nero. Research into Nero’s life discovered no heirs apparent that would fit the story she saw. In a matter of days, John Dominic Crossan’s book Render Unto Caesar arrived in the mail with a story about Nero Redivivus (“Nero Alive Again”), describing an historical figure named Terentius Maximus. Playing on legends that that Nero wasn’t dead, Terentius brought soldiers to the court of a Parthian king named Artabanus III — proposing to march on Rome, unseat the emperor Titus, and “Make Rome Great Again.” I’d found fertile ground for a juicy story of palace intrigue, incestuous relations in royal families, and a shift in the course of history. It became Act I Scene 3: Impersonation.
- Months later, I put in 2-3 days of exhausting research into Artabanus III at Stanford’s Green Library, trying to find a probable location for his palace. I had settled on the ancient city of Ctesiphon, 23 miles southeast of present-day Baghdad on the Tigris river. In need of recreation, I attended a local Meetup group to unwind. Three strangers were sitting at my table: one from Baghdad; a Russian historian familiar with the Parthian empire; and a man from India also familiar with this ancient history. As you might imagine, a fascinating conversation ensued.
- In Act II Scene 1 (Reunion), four medieval mystics enjoy some cosplay together “in and out of time and space.” (Their historical lives aren’t congruent: Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, and the Persian poet Rumi.) Julian is also the reincarnation of Margeurite Porette, burned at the stake in 1310 in Paris for heresy. Her offense was writing a beautiful mystical book titled The Mirror of Simple Souls. A week after my first encounter with Porette, my wife and I were walking to a TheatreWorks play in Mountain View, CA when we strolled by a discount rack outside the East West Bookshop. Pausing to browse, a title screamed at me: The Mirror of Simple Souls, by Marguerite Porette. I bought it on the cheap — a pearl of great price.
Note: Don’t worry about anyone who might be tempted to steal this story and publish first. The play is already copyrighted.
Academically, I also draw inspiration from the work of Pieter Craffert, Professor and Chair of the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at the University of South Africa in Pretoria. Craffert combines the insights of neurology (vision as a complex system) with anthropology (culturally-determined consensual reality) into an integral view of polyphasic cultures, where vision states are considered to be as valid as ordinary seeing. I attach a PDF of his paper, I ‘witnessed’ the raising of the dead”: Resurrection accounts in a neuroanthropological perspective, which discusses visions of the resurrected Jesus through a neuro-anthropological lens. I’ve become as interested in the experiences that are possible within a given worldview as I am in events in historical spacetime.
Thanks, Mark – how thorough your summaries!
oh wildelife myne wandering eyes should appear
bee dazzled yet nay, merely empteyd of fear
hijaak’d again these sweet ponderings bee
naming and nouning elewding to mye?ha! eye so gratefully lifing eye bee
thomas new languaging, high flying wye?
waxing and sploshing wyth new eyes to see
beeing whatever wye wanted to bee!Alas! arrives the slowing down
deeper happ’nings grin and frown
inhaleric reekering, exhileric leashering,
puky damned up rivering, categoral skeemering.waterlogging, cataloguing,
liquidentity leering, solidarity reeling,
casting reel, casting net,
flieing fish may soon forget.te’a (may eye call thee te’a?)
if ye fain to peel the leia
find ye here the pdf-ing
of the sermonising setting.highlight wordlings filled in colour
underlinings one from other
annotate us, Gretchen, mye,
super-ject-i-viditye!wye reframing marsh and moor
nouning, naming, floor to door
if ye fine thee feeling sore
fine the love and saye no more.If it please thee eye wouldst gift thee
back and forthness, tangie builtie
such as easie process pleasy
cracks and fissures soon to ease wye.eas’ly read iye wood propose
less a pain than wye’d supposed
texturing of pen and ink
feeling smarter than we think.newspeak lingo rupt’ring dam
beeing clev’rer than eye am.
Send mye soonest without failing
snail addressing fit for mailing:thanks to wye arrives Deligny
mye beloved debbie with me
feasting ayes wye twinkling spot
Ce Gamin La freely taught!who a teacher, student bee?
tracings, turnings, wand’rings flee
wordless ende incarcery
fairy selves communing free!ewe and eye no garments rent
lifing all by heaven sent
beeings under clear blue skye
fools rush in, no moor to dye.bryht blessyngs
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Wondrously winged te’a,
Mie heart waxes and faines with gratitude with your foamy fogginess in the unity of brilliance. May you remain withoutside of the inside track of nt-ity. if theye only knew
yea, iye did but learn of erin manning only todae, yet reposing in screen soon to sheducate us. great greenings of gratitude flieing to your window and reporpoising with my whyteness!
This accomplishing with nary a windowe of ChatGPT lol
Erin Manning on Meurodiversity, Black Life, and the University as We Know It
I’m very glad Matt replied to your humble, vulnerable, and self-revealing post. My heart is calling me to respond too.
Some scribblings of observation:
I’m sad that the class is challenging you in a way that brings up strong emotional memories of your experiences with the “heducation” system. This leads me to think that this class needs voices like yours, to remind us of how many forms of intelligence there are, and the value of all of them. I’m neurodiverse too, and I see a fine poet in you luring all of us to full attention and respect.
This class intentionally calls us to challenge our assumptions and keep in mind that neurotypical brains can’t provide a coherent story of the world on their own. Think of the invalidating category of “disorder” that medical authorities label us with. I playfully turn that on its head by defining Neurotypical Syndrome: “A disorder characterized by excessive focus on social concerns; delusions of superiority; and obsession with conformity.”
I too struggle to keep pace in the rarified air of “phd-ness.” All academic fields of specialization must have their internal jargon — not because it’s necessary, but as an artifact of a hyper-competitive culture and economic system. It’s not surprising that a poetic soul like yourself might (not)-survive academia. Maybe you find it unnecessary to distinguish yourself from other students, or oppressive to jockey for position, or meaningless to struggle to be seen as the smartest person in the room. Good for you! We’d all benefit from understanding you better!
That said, if you don’t feel good things are coming to you, the choice to remain or exit is entirely yours to make. I’ve spent a year and a half communing with the precious souls at Cobb Institute, and only now is the Whiteheadian terminology beginning to fit together in my mind. Matt is a wondrous writer and teacher who can help, yet I needed some preparation to arrive here and ready myself to receive the experience. Things take time, and you’re under no obligation to humor us if your time hasn’t yet arrived.
If you do stay on your journey of discovery with process thinking, I believe you’ll find soul nourishment along the way. You may also find helpful companions who will love who you are and the gifts you bring.
And thank you for reminding us how Icarus overreached. I invite you to gaze at the attached painting by Pieter Bruegel and find the Icarus in the pizza!
“We very much need a process oriented medical system. That said the benefits of industrialized mechanistic allopathic medicine include germ theory, anaethesia, and antibiotics, etc. These are not minor accomplishments.”
My poem is more critique than praise, yet the benefits accomplished by “mechanistic medicine” can’t be overestimated. It’s like the United States of America – how can you spend $7 trillion a year without accomplishing something good? (Try as you might <;^)
On balance, I don’t want to part with anaesthesia — yet if that were the cost of a healthy and peaceful society, would you pay that price? We can all hope for more multivalent choices, yet if we can’t learn to sacrifice anything toward the more beautiful world we seek, our hypotheticals and rationalizations are a mere cloud of possibility.
Happy Birthday, Kevin! There is so much more to say about your post, but I’ll defer until you’ve had a proper birthday celebration!
Strange as it may seem, in one scene the four characters in my play have a reunion dinner “in and out” of time and space (because their historical lives weren’t congruent):
- Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)
- Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
- Julian of Norwich (1343-1416)
- Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (1207-1273)
Julian is also the reincarnation of Marguerite Porette, burned at the stake in 1310 in Paris for writing a beautiful book of mysticism called The Mirror of Simple Souls. Porette was a beguine.
Striking synchronicities have occurred during research. At the end of week of research into the four medieval mystics where I first learned about Porette, my wife and I were walking Castro Street in Mountain View CA to see a TheatreWorks play. Passing by the East West Bookstore, a discount rack on the sidewalk caught my eye. What to my wondering eyes should appear, but a copy of The Mirror of Simple Souls.
Welcome Kevin! Your resilience and strength are on full display in your story of struggle with TBI. Your will to heal is so inspiring, and testifies to inner resources shared by few.
As a former IBMer myself, I have great appreciation for the creative minds that worked there, contributed to the success of the company, and still can hear the cash registers ringing for IBM years later because of the work they did.
I want to hear more about your ministry of disability inclusion. I think you’ve led an exemplary life.
Welcome, John! I have to second what Matt said about each approach having its place. I think that affect, experience, and supersensible knowledge can co-exist with empiricism and rational thought in what Whitehead would probably have called a “harmony of contrast.” Respecting one another’s mental framework is key to respectful communication and spiritual growth.
I’m glad you’re here, and seeking answers with such helpful companionship!