January 9, 2009
- The Informational Body (or, Quantum Alchemy) -
“Tao”, “Yana”, “Merkaba”, “Chariot”, “Centaur”…
All are vehicles and paths to divinity. In fact, I could probably argue that any concept of “God” or “the divine” is the same thing, but I don’t have the time to do so here. Joseph Campbell called them Masks of God.
Gurdjieff called them Kesdjan Bodies, I believe.
Perhaps these are not all quite the same thing, but, they are all fingers pointing to the same moon.
For the sake of this post, I’m going to call my “finger” the informational body. Information is the energy and building block of the noosphere. We build these informational bodies out of the impressions and sensations that we take in from the world, in order to best surf the tides of information that make up the noosphere.
Analogies can be made here between water and electromagnetic fields…
Also, note that what you’re doing right now is surfing the inter-net (indra’s net)
Cognitive dissonance is one way of describing any flaws that are present within our informational body. This is caused by our inability to coalesce two polar opposites into the same matrix of information (the information body can also be seen as a functioning matrix of information).
Metaphorically (if not actually) our consciousness works the same way as quantum particles do. When not being observed, our consciousness will wander off and explore other states. We call this thinking, and it’s not bad in itself.
However, when we suffer from cognitive dissonance, we contain within our information body two contradictory ideas which we bring together (hence the discomfort). I would hazard a guess that all psychological suffering functions this way. Such information stops us from ever collapsing our informational body back to a single “particle” (to use the quantum physics metaphor again). “The origin of suffering is attachment” to things which contradict other things.
Acceptance of impermanence is the only thing within which such contradictions can be solved.
Otherwise, the frequency of our movement through time-space at the speed of light is disrupted. Our signal contains useless noise. Static.
Yet when this is fully resolved, we can then serve our true purpose. The bringing of the divine into the mundane. Squaring the circle. Potential dissonance here is the conflict between what the divine wants and what we want, but this is negated by the realization that there is no separation between what the divine wants and what we want, if we are honest with ourselves. (do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, eh?)
This is a search for subjective truth, a science which takes into account the consciousness of the observer. All previous bets are off. It doesn’t necessarily have to be true in all places and all times. It just has to be true in all places and at all times for you. And it has to function in the world as well, so the world must be taken into account for within your information body. Thus is the CosmOS broght to the EarthOS…
Jainists, too, believe there are many paths up the same mountain. The key, I suppose, being that it is in fact the same damn mountain we’re all climbing. Although I may be stuck at basecamp.
Comment by CJ — January 10, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
Ain’t no other mountain, as far as I’m concerned. We just have to make sure the map matches the territory, and all that…
Anyway. Better basecamp than somewhere in the flat-lands.
Comment by Ian — January 12, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
This is massive stuff. Stop me if I miss the point, I’m still playing catch-up.
I like the idea of entities built out of information, creatures of the imagination if you will.
And I intuit that they come in several kinds, which can contradict each other. Specifically: what one /must/ do vs. what one would /like/ to do, and what one ‘should’ do vs. doing something new. These feel to me like parts of a mandala, like the elements (of which there are of course five). And reconciling them is the path. So actually turning up contradictory ideas is a big signpost that the mind is close to something really important.
Comment by speedbird — January 16, 2009 @ 5:24 am
@ speedbird:
Well, I was going to reply here, but my thoughts kept growing and growing. So I’m turning my reply into a post. Will be up momentarily…
Comment by Ian — January 16, 2009 @ 10:49 am
> there is no separation between what the divine wants and what we want, if we are honest with ourselves
Handel’s ‘Messiah’:
http://bible.cc/matthew/11-30.htm
Comment by speedbird — January 19, 2009 @ 4:51 pm
Because “he” helps us carry it!
(or “she”, if you prefer)
Comment by Ian — January 19, 2009 @ 5:19 pm