MIND ALIVE

Michael Faraday introduced the concept of a physical field to explain his experiments in electricity and magnetism. James Clerk Maxwell put it into mathematical form with his set of electromagnetic equations, giving us an understanding of light and leading to radio and everything following from that. Albert Einstein made the equations covariant, that is, the same for all observers in four dimensional space-time. Scientists continue to seek extension and unification of electromagnetic and other physical fields.

I suggest another approach.

Experience has finally brought me to consider, more than consider, to almost be convinced, that our thinking/awareness/consciousness is essentially a field phenomenon, perhaps electromagnetic, perhaps otherwise.

The primary reason for suggesting the mind field is not abstract but experiential. As described in the texts on Thought there are more subtleties and varieties of thought forms and patterns than seem feasibly explainable as synaptic connectivity. In addition there are the experiences of people who can see the mind field, if that is what we can all the aura, or something like it. Also there is the great and vast reported experience of humans about connections, information flow and possible also causation, that connects different minds, different individuals. There is also religion which describes a universal being, either of all of us or above us; a majority of humankind do seem to agree with this, comprehensible for the mind field.

Even preliminary to a physical demonstration, the mind field is an ethical necessity. With it, all of humankind’s spiritual and psychic experiences are comprehensible, without it, not. Consequences follow from the existence of the mind field. First of all, it does not necessarily have a finite boundary, an exact edge. This also points to the possibility of interconnected mind fields, cothinking or telepathy between individuals. Furthermore, there may be something like a universal mind field (God?) with which the individual can connect or even contribute. As a weaker version of this possibility there may well be an extra individual or external mind field, either in the singular or the plural. These things are part of human experience as described by countless witnesses; they are very reasonably to be expected in the mind field but hard to understand or accept from the point of view of the purely biochemical and biophysical synaptic mind.

The idea of the mind field has been flickering in and out of my consciousness for many years. It always seemed to make sense but then I would be pulled back to Earth by the biological theory of the mind predominant among scientists. However, after looking directly into consciousness for many years and into the logic of consciousness and finding the results which are presented in the Awareness texts, something like the mind field seems have been always implied, although not directly stated. The mind field provides, for example, a plausible physical mechanism for the fact that awareness is ontologically prior to being and also the mechanism through which unitary awareness can be envisioned.

We can look at development of the mind field in four areas: personal, philosophical, structural and mathematical, experimental. You will notice that the categories overlap; what is personal is sometimes structural and philosophy, in principle scans all the forms. The use of the categories is for convenience and the relative easing which can be brought to hard problems by dividing up into smaller units.

1. Personal

First is the practice of the mind field. Of course we all use the mind field, but I am thinking in particular of the meditators and philosophers who have made exploring and, in some cases modulating or purifying the mind field, which they have called by other names, a primary personal goal. Many others, outside of these categories, have also developed the mind field.

One way to approach the mind field is through personal experience. This would include the subjective exploration of one’s own mind field, as well as exploring connections to external mind fields. Among the possibilities of external mind fields would be connection to the mind fields of other individuals and connection between one’s personal mind field and any general mind fields which might exist. You should note that these connections might include the possibilities of a general sense of connection but also some degree of information transmittal or reception and may include transmission or reception of a stronger form than information exchange.

Each individual has a personal mind field. The individual mind field continues in duration at least through the physical lifetime of the individual. Unlike the synaptic mind, the individual mind field may continue in existence after leaving the body or have been in existence, or some sort of being, before entering the body at birth. Perhaps also, the individual mind field gradually enters the person through childhood. These remarks indicate that the individual mind field need not be entirely associated with the body, either in extent or location, although it generally seems to be located largely in the vicinity of the body.

The personal mind field has some distinctive properties. It is self aware. Even prior to that is the fact that the individual mind field is aware. It is conceivable that it could be aware without being self aware; we often, for example perceive without paying particular attention to ourselves as perceiving. The priority of awareness itself is discussed in detail in Awareness.

I sometimes imagine my own mind field as a three dimensional array of small cups in the vicinity of my body. Each cup contains some aspect of my mind, conscious or unaware, some body of thought, feeling or belief. In a practical aspect I have been working to transform the contents of some of the cups, especially those which seem dark or negative by beaming or allowing to beam, a light or clarifying agent upon them. It seems good. But this is just personal imagery, not the objective mind field we are looking for.

Consider very weak but intricate fluctuations of the electromagnetic field in and surrounding our bodies. These fluctuations may have an intrinsic feedback kind of stability, always changing, but not necessarily dissolving. This is not scientifically proven, to my knowledge, but can perhaps be expected from advances, recent and future, in nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory, catastrophe theory and the like. This raises both theoretical and experimental questions; how to describe, predict or observe them, then interpret them as thought forms. Since we do not have yet a specific category for thought forms, let us make one and call them twists.

Some of the twists may form and immediately evaporate, some may form and join with others, some may recur as regular patterns, there should be classes of related twists, some twists may be long term, some twists would be expected to occur in more than one individual or even more than one species, some twists might exist in the external field as well as in individual awareness. Some twists might be transmitted from one individual to another, or shared between multiple individuals, some twists might be transmitted from the individual to the external mind field and some twists might be absorbed by the individual from the external mind field. Some twists may be more or less permanent and perhaps there are even absolutely permanent twists and associations of twists. Herein might be found the soul.

Another distinctive aspect of the individual mind field is its unity. Even though we might be very interested in phenomena where the mind field abridges this unity, either as an interior part or in trans or extra individual connection; even though the unity may be not entire or absolute, nevertheless unity is an intrinsic aspect of individuality.

It might be useful to have a term for a mind field entity with continuity and unity, let us call this a pod. Is every pod aware? I think so because awareness appears to be the essential essence of the mind field itself. Is every pod self aware? Perhaps or perhaps not. Are their nonhuman pods? I would suggest at least the more highly evolved animals. Another example might be found among the social insects. Is it not likely that the inhabitants of a beehive have a collective consciousness, a pod in the mind field, which may or may not be self aware? An immensely important arena of mind alive research would be to discover new pods, as well as finding links between them and humans.

2. Philosophical

A second area is to develop the philosophical basis for the mind field. No doubt there are many forerunners and contemporaries who can be said to work toward this, but the writings included here, Thought and Awareness do provide this philosophical foundation. Each of these was written as an independent work. More recently it has become clear that the mind field would be the capstone of their construction.

3. Structural and Mathematical

The third need is to develop a structural picture of possible mind field forms. I would suggest two directions for development. One would be an investigation of the structural phenomena which can be observed or deduced from the mind field itself. Another direction would be the search for equations of the mind field, either in pure mathematics or, probably, in electromagnetic theory as well as generalized dynamics. Magnetic knots have already been discovered in the sun and more general electromagnetic knots have also been calculated

I am going to try to describe the mind field as it appears from personal experience, logic and the reports of other people.

The mind field is self reflective. It knows itself. Not in full understanding but it can see itself.

The mind field is associated with individual people.

The mind field resonates between people. I look at a picture my son drew of an old man meditating and I can feel a connection with the subject and the artist.

The mind field has logic. We do not even know what logic is, really, but we know it when we see it. And we can disagree about it. Yet there it is.

The mind field is associated with awareness. It might not be the same thing but there is a connection. What would a mind field be like without awareness? Is this a computer possibility? What would awareness be like without mind? It depends upon the narrowness of our concept of mind. (Is there an uncertainty principle like relation here?)

The mind field feels like it is centered in the body but not necessarily entirely of the body. What does this imply about life and death?

People report experiences of awareness, perhaps the mind field, out of or disconnected from their body. I know some of these people personally; they are not generally untruthful.

People also report communication with otherness, whether communication with other living beings via telepathy or other psychic processes. Would language be possible without the mind field?

Each of us has dreams. What is that world? Those worlds?

The mind field connects all or most of these phenomena.

Suppose the mind field is like this:

Self organizing webs of electromagnetic fields, perhaps generated originally by the neural system. These webs are always weaving, in and out of time, transforming themselves and exchanging structure (information) with other webs, with other parts of the web. Subtle, low energy but high stability phenomena, these webs have a partially hierarchical structure, some webs are part of larger webs and some webs are shared by other webs and some webs are transmitted from web to web. Some webs may be temporary and some webs permanent. There is both transformation and stability, change and endurance. Much is flexible, some is fixed. Some small webs may be intrinsically fixed as also larger webs. Some webs may come and go, in time or in connection. Some webs may be minute particles of coherent thought, other webs may be larger structures – consider a mathematical theorem and its proof- consider a personal identity. Some webs may be vast and transpersonal.

(Suppose there is the web of a person A and the web of another person B. Suppose some smaller web c is generated by A and transmitted to B. Suppose some smaller web d is co-created among A and B. Suppose there is a collection of webs {e} shared by A and B. Suppose the Cartesian product AXB of the webs of A and B, what would that mean?

Suppose the webs of A can be a structure upon a basis {f} in that each web of A can be supposed a construction built upon {f}. Suppose the same for B with basis {g}. What can be said of the webs built upon bases {f} union {g}? Upon {f} intersection {g}?

Suppose we extend this beyond two individuals to A, B, C, … , countable or otherwise. Consider similar questions as asked or implied in the last paragraphs.

Is there a maximal set of webs? Is there a basis for that set? What of intermediate structures?)

(If you have two events A and B it may be that event A followed by event B will have the same effect as event B followed by event A or it may be that these two alternatives are not equivalent

An example where they are not equal includes 90 degree rotations around different axes of a parallelepiped (e.g., a matchbox). Try it. An example where they would be equal is that of a 90 degree rotation about an axis followed by a 270 degree rotation about the same axis versus doing the 270 degree rotation first followed by the 90 degree rotation.

In mathematics, the case where they are equal is written AB = BA and A and B are said to be commutative. The case where they are not equal is written

AB != BA and A and B are said to be noncommutative. ( != means not equal)

Nowhere have we said A = B but you can deduce what would happen in that special case.

Are mental events, twists, commutative or not? In some sense they are always not, simply because they occur at different times: say, A at 9:46 followed by B at 9:47 versus B at 9:46 followed by A at 9:47. However, it may be that two thoughts or events are, aside from that clock difference, effectively commutative. It is easier to describe actions, but done or experienced by humans, actions are mind events also. Suppose you are eating a meal of soup and bread and in the middle of the meal. Does it make much difference whether a bite of bread is followed by a spoonful of soup or vice-versa? And does it often matter whether you put the left shoe on first or the right shoe first?

On the other hand, pushing the on button of a computer and then plugging the power cord into the wall socket results in ‘computer off’ while doing these things in the opposite order results in ‘computer on’. At least in my experience.)

Another, largely pictorial, model we might want to consider in searching for the mind field, is in the atmosphere, particularly clouds. Consider a large cumulonimbus, an anvil thunderhead. It may have hundreds of thousands of convection cells, each being a rising vertical tower of cloud as the warm air rises, cools and condenses. All of these conglomerate to produce massive and complex phenomena, often resulting in rain, lightening and sometimes even tornadoes. While each convection cell may have a lifetime of minutes, the whole cloud can last twelve hours or more. And who knows what the subjective experience of cloud time may be?

And everywhere in the cloud are currents of air and moisture, updrafts and downdrafts, winds and whirlpools. The cloud always has an electrical component, and often internal discharges, light and sound. Moving charges also produce magnetic fields which in their turn distort the flow of charge. And consider the water, perhaps the essence of cloud; it is always there as vapor, often supersaturated, it condenses upon cloud nuclei, particles of dust, salt or ice. And in any big cloud there will always be weighty droplets of liquid water falling, as well as ice crystals, snowflakes and hail, each interchanging with the other as the thermal conditions mix both vertically and horizontally. Always changing from growth to dissolution. But of course the air survives; so does the water

This is just an illustration of possible considerations, a hint of the deep rich field to be explored.

There have been discoveries where a mathematical theory predicted experimental results which later confirmed the theory. Maxwell’s discovery that light is electromagnetic radiation was confirmed by Hertz’ experimental demonstration of radio waves. The general theory of relativity was confirmed by the discovery of gravitational lensing. There are other cases where experiment and observation prefigured and led to theoretical advances; classic cases include Faraday’s electrical researches and spectroscopy guiding the development of quantum mechanics.

Some areas of mathematics and mathematical physics are particularly suggestive of results which might apply to the mind field. These include differential geometry, knot theory, the old but still essential Maxwell equations, generalized dynamics, including its ill named children: chaos and catastrophe theory (which are both very much more about forms of metastability than about the opposite). Quantum mechanics may also play a major role. So might things like string theory (which this author does not yet know much about).

There are already some thinkers who project specific equations of the mind field. I am not yet convinced that they have proven results but the interested reader can find several items by doing an internet search of ‘mind field’

4. Experimental

The fourth and culminating event would be the experimental detection and observation of the mind field. This is where the mind field would enter the realm of science rather than speculation. Once this is accomplished we will have a new world.

What would be most valuable would be to find experimental evidence of the existence of the mind field. What we have now is anecdotal evidence as well as philosophical correlation. There are also mathematical and physical predictions and calculations, as well as extensive experimental evidence, that stable and self stable structures are not only possible but exist. There is no question of the possibility of the mind field. The challenge is to devise and carry out experiments which substantiate the ‘physical’ reality of the mind field. Furthermore we would like to be able to experimentally or theoretically investigate the forms, energies, time evolution and connection to the rest of the physical world, for the mind field. This will be a long and interesting process.

We can at least ask some questions about the mind field. We have already introduced the question of its existence as well as the question whether the mind field is an electromagnetic field or not. If it is, we should be able to measure it with electromagnetic devices. Perhaps some of the measurements of synaptic activity could be reinterpreted as measurements of the mind field. If so, one preliminary would be to more carefully distinguish between the concepts of the mind field and the biochemical synaptic events as currently viewed.

TIME AND THE MIND FIELD

These reflections did not seem to fit easily into any of the four categories.

The relationship between time and the mind field is likely complex. Is the mind field itself temporal or is it only time like because of its engagement in the physical world? Obviously if the mind field is itself physical, say electromagnetic, then it shares the temporality of the physical world.

We might divide the temporal question of the mind field into two main contexts: present time and deep time.

In deep time, did the mind field have an origin? Here are some possibilities. The mind field is primordial; it has always existed and was the precursor and perhaps cause of the existence of the physical universe. This is more or less how some religions describe the situation. As another possibility, perhaps the mind field is the fairly recent and still developing outgrowth of the biological evolution of neural systems; this seems to reflect a common attitude among many scientists. And then again, the deep time of the mind field might be of an entirely different nature, something perhaps unsuspected.

Looking again, what can we say about the history of the mind field? Does it correlate with biological evolution? Did it gradually grow as complex nervous systems evolved? Is that part of the truth but not all of it? For the mind field seems to be growing and evolving at a much faster pace than biology. Perhaps it is something like this: the early mind field did originate as an emanation of biological thought. However, it also accumulated it own being and somewhere along the line it has become or is becoming at least partly independent of a biological substratum. Perhaps a critical event was the beginning of urban civilization about six thousand years ago. On the other hand, the development of the mind field seems to have accelerated much more recently, with science and the internet as two main features.

Whatever the deep time truth may be, we can observe the mind field in present time. It appears to be more or less a continuum but not exactly. That it does have an aspect of continuity is clear to anyone as they think along. But at least in subject matter, the mind field also has discontinuities; quite commonly, our thoughts and our perceptual awareness switch from one content to something entirely different, not to speak of such alterations of form as sleep and wakefulness. This is discussed in some detail in Thought.

But what about the local relationship between time and the mind field: the present and presently occurring memories of the past and expectations of the future? Time is certainly perceived by the mind field, primarily as ever present, although déjà vu is a clue to another possible connection to time. Do we have déjà vu of the future? This is an opportunity to note the advantages of the mind field for explanatory power; in a purely biosynaptic version of mind, déjà vu is an aberration to be explained away; for the mind field version, it is a hint of connections, evidence of connections, to be explored, with possibly very wide ramifications. (Is this a circlet or possibly more knotted returning of time? These speculation lead into alternative time ways, although perhaps they should not be called by the name of time. If we can discover the experimental mind field, we may be able to find that, what that is, in actuality.)

POSTSCRIPT

You may have noticed the multivalencey of this work. If it were simple we might call it duality. The mind is written of in two different distinctions. Near the end of Thought mind is introduced as the higher organizing form or principle of thinking. In this texts on the Mind Field, mind is generalized almost to awareness itself. More fundamentally, perhaps, the mind field is described as subjective or experiential – that at least we know to be true. But then the mind field is called into question as physical entity, perhaps an arrangement of electromagnetic fields, perhaps something else that needs to be detected by independent experiment. It is a decision of the author’s, thought and understanding being in flux, to write what needs to be written using the words which come to hand, rather than squeezing everything into rigid boxes.

So we have proceeded for a few pages as if the mind field exists, aside from our attempts to establish its existence. What follows in subsequent sections of this book are philosophical investigations, originally and logically independent of the physical existence of the mind field, but so very suggestive, that their consequence and explanation may well lie with the mind field.