Navigational Map Part 2

  Contractions in the Infinite Womb

   

 

Tweezin' The Strands of Infinity

 
It seems what is “fundamental” is not some discrete element, but rather an unbroken and undivided wholeness -- an integrated event that is the sum total of everything. All this bottomless rabbit-hole searching for a fundamental part just-a-bit-smaller than our current technologies can reveal seems a bit misguided...or at least eternally frustrating. Each “part-whole” (both a discrete node in a larger process and a semi-autonomous whole) we try to define as primary seems to be merely a secondary event extracted from this primary undivided wholeness and brought into view so as to be examined. All the part-whole’s examined comprise a larger process called “the unfolding”. This process works to bring the Infinite Enfolded Order (primary unbroken and undivided wholeness) into the Finite Unfolded Order (secondary broken and divided fragments). 


The whole universe can be seen as one giant computer that has within it many other computers (galaxies, stars, planets, atoms, quarks etc.) Each computer has localized hardware that exists at a distinct here and now location. This is what I’m calling the “finite unfolded order” (Bohm “explicate order”). Each computer also has a non-local software that exists at an indistinct everywhere and everywhen. This is what I’m calling the “infinite enfolded order” (Bohm's “implicate order”). The software is a sort of multi-dimensional totality that each computer’s hardware only percieves in a limited manner, based upon its computational capacity. Although we cannot know it fully with our localized computer’s, we cannot call the software meaningless because we observe its effects as the non-local correlations of universe. Our experience of a four-dimensional world is part of the limited computational capacities of our computers (aka brains). The software, however, is an infinite enfolded order that includes and transcends this 4-D barrier within its geometric web of higher dimensions. 

The Unfolding 

David Bohm, and others, think that we should be viewing reality as an unbroken and undivided wholeness, what he calls the “implicate order”. This totality “unfolds” itself into the “explicate order”, the spectrum of autonomous phenomena we experience and measure. These structures only have autonomy to a degree and become subsumed into the holomovement (the movement of the whole) of the implicate order. In this understanding, our investigation of the “seperate” parts is seen as a temporary lifting up of those structures from the totality (a mental process he calls “re-levating” in order to make “relevant”) NOT an actual study of “isolated” events. This is the view of the web, of entangled wholes-within-wholes. The implications of quantum non-locality, where seemingly “seperate" parts have an instantaneous faster-than-light connection across VAST distances seems to give credence to this view of a fundamental unbroken wholeness.

The assumption being made here is that Consciousness, which has been referred to as the Infinite Enfolded Order, becomes unfolded into the spectrum of the Finite Unfolded Order known through our brain and percieved as “my experience”. 


To clear up some confusions, the initials I.C. will be used to refer to “Infinite Consiousness” (the infinite enfolded order that is an undivided and unbroken wholeness) and the initals F.C. will refer to “Finite Consciousness” (the fininte unfolded order that appears as a divided and broken fragmentation). So the working assumption is that the human brain recieves I.C. and creates F.C. through a process of creation by subtraction, it constricts the infinite to create the finite. How does it do this? 

   

Above and Below

A uni-causal view of consciousness holds that what's "below" in the hierarchy of organization explains and determines what is "above". This causes neuroscientists to look at biochemistry in order to understand large-scale brain structures. This seems half-true, for what's "above" can also shape what's "below", brain structures can influence underlying biochemistry. A mutual exchange occurs, this is known as the principle of bi-causality. An understanding of both levels, the smaller and larger, would be fundamental to constructing any comprehensive view of how consciousness works. 

At least two views arise: quantum operations within the brain create the foundations of  consciousness as we study it in the larger brain structures or quantum operations within the brain recieve I.C. and constrict it to within a finite capacity. This becomes the phenomena of F.C. that we study and experience. A few interesting correlations between quantum mechanics and F.C. warrant a deeper look at this level of organization being the possible interface between the Infinite Enfolded Order and the Finite Unfolded Order we experience most of the time.  

Emerging

The phenomena of quantum coherence (when a unified field emerges from disjointed bits) resembles the sense of a unitary self, the inherent quantum indeterminancy and the breakdown of the detached observer resembles our feeling of free will, and the levels of conscious states (-un, -sub, -non) resemble the process of quantum possibilities becoming actualities. Although promising, within the realm of biology it has traditionally been thought impossible (or highly unlikely) that the hot world of neurons, with all its instability, could support quantum coherence effects. However, some (most famously Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose) theorize that cytoskeletal microtubules, nanometer sized cylindrical structures found within neurons, could be possible sites for quantum effects. These structures would constrict the infinite potential of the enfolded order into the finite actuality of our unfolded order.


To constrict I.C. into F.C. the brain needs to discern background noise from meaningful signal, it needs to parse out the chaos of incoming information. It’s through this process that the phenomena of consciousness we normally experience arises. It seems that no one localized area of the brain is responsible for this task, rather a sort of phase coherence emerges in which neural circuits resonate in similar ways, creating a island-like frequency of order amongst a sea of chaos. The brain seems to thrive on the edge of chaos, it’s always in the process of collapsing chaos (Infinite Consciousness) into order (Finite Consciousness) by way of exploring phase spaces, or possible arrangements of information, before an attractor gains momentum and organizes a coherent frequency.

On the pre-perception stage, a high energy state of chaos reigns and all phase-spaces are explored to see what would be the most optimal attractor to organize the island of order we call perception. 

On the level of neurons, we come to a domain of open-mouthed-holyshit complexity where 10^10 neurons with 10^4 synapses using multiple neurotransmitters regulate the flow of electrochemical information, creating the perception we so often take for granted. Like most actions in the brain, neurons form a type of community in which a population resonates at similar frequencies, creates coherence from background noise, contributes to the emergence of global brain states on higher levels of organization. The individual neurons themselves, like much of the brain, are fractal in nature and composed of branching dendrites and axonal terminals that allow for multiple synaptic connections to occur with other neurons.  

Bio-organization within the brain operates in a very permeable manner. A heterarchical structure allows for non-linear interplay between the various levels (molecular, supra-molecular, global brain state etc.) This points towards the possiblity that small changes, like quantum fluctuations, can interact laterally in the heterarchy to eventually effect a global brain state; one route could be through the activation of sensitive ion channels in the membranes of all cells and the consequences of this on the dynamism of the whole brain.  

Inside of our brains seems to be where the “outside” physical universe (however vast it may be) interacts with brain material so as to be known by us. If we take the non-local effects of quantum mechanics into consideration, then it seems that the quantum bits in our brains could be interacting with a physical universe unimaginably far away.