Science and the Collective Unconscious

science and the collective unconscious After I finished my previous post Cycles and Timelines I wondered what period in history I would focus on next. Tarnas in his book used the Saturn/Pluto and the Uranus/Pluto cycles a lot to point to some very interesting data in history.

Aspects between Pluto and Uranus as well as Saturn are very often pointers to major events in the world history. Pluto provides the depth and the worldwide part, Uranus the sudden and unexpected and Saturn the oppression and the very specific dates that gave the start of those disruptive historical events.

Examples were the French revolution that happened with a Uranus/Pluto opposition, World war 2 that started with a Saturn/Pluto square and the attack on the Twin Towers with an opposition between Saturn and Pluto.

A form for Consciousness

But at this point I decided to focus on the Saturn/Neptune cycle instead for several reasons.

The first one was that I was looking for the now in history. What planetary alignment of the outer planets is most pressing at this point? And with Saturn leaving Scorpio and entering Sagittarius in a few weeks and then coming into a square with Neptune, that was the one that is going to happen at first.

sat sq nep

The second reason was that both planets reflect very good what I want to write about on this blog. A mind versus matter theme. In the case of Neptune of a subconscious mind as in Carl Jung’s collective unconscious. And Saturn as the reflection of time and form and matter.

The third reason is that I think that the stress of Pluto and Uranus have settled a bit after their recent alignments (Saturnus opposite Uranus, Saturn square Pluto and Uranus square Pluto) to give space to Neptune.

2015-09-10-09-36-08-1-1

The fourth reason is that the square of Saturn/Neptune now is the last phase of the cycle. The cycle started around 1989 with a conjunction of not only Saturn and Neptune, but also with Uranus, which is very rare. Then an outgoing square around 1998, to an opposition around 2007. And now that incoming square in a few weeks that will be active during the whole of 2016 or so.

sat nept cycle

The fifth reason finally is one that I just found out. David Bohm is born in the year of a Saturn/Neptune conjunction (1917) and if someone is a real reflection of those two planets, it is him. And somehow he is for me the person that could make sense of consciousness and give it a form.

Or actually I think it was the other way around. The form already was obvious to him (he was a scientist at heart) but he wanted to make sense of the latest discoveries in science (quantum mechanics) and the only way that made sense to him was to look deeper in the material world, beyond the borders, and at the same time make it intelligible.

bohm and krishnamurti

His connection with Krishnamurti (who was born in 1895 just after the very rare Pluto/Neptune conjunction) lasted for decades and changed his whole view on science. Or maybe not so much change his view but more get to the surface what he already unconsiously knew. And in turn I think that the insights of Bohm make sense of the interconnectedness of science and consciousness.

Saturn in aspect with Neptune

Neptune is about vision, belief and imagination. It is spirituality, unity and empathy. But also delusion and deception.

Saturn on the other hand is about concrete reality, empirical science and sceptical judgment. But it also provides structure and order.

So when they are in hard aspect (conjunction, square and opposition) it will be about confronting illusions and unmasking deception. And the other way around by dissolving bounderies and structures to see the underlying unity.

For me personally, that cycle very much had to do with finding images and words that reflect how I see things. How I see process and development. The first square was when I found astrology and was fascinated by the picture of my own chart in how it completely reflected who I am.

Further back, in the time of the conjunction, I designed clothes for a project based on a book I once read, The Mists of Avalon. It is a book about the Arthur legend from the female perspective. Reading now on Wikipedia what that possibly could mean regarding this cycle. Not sure yet but it seems relevant …

The opposition was the time that I found blogging. The reason for starting a blog was to find a shape, a form to communicate my views. At that time there were very heated discussions online between ‘believers’ and ‘sceptics’ of many topics that I was interested in, which seems to be a perfect reflection of that Saturn/Neptune opposition.

So I was looking for an online space where I could explore, develop and structure my views and thoughts.

I started this blog in August 2009 with the Saturn/Uranus opposition and wrote my most viewed post (and still my favorite post called The Meaning of Values) in februari 2010 with an exact Saturn/Pluto opposition.

And maybe now the dynamics of the last square of Saturn/Neptune will help to find ways to structure the collective unconscious and make it possible to communicate about it.

Anyway, not sure where I am heading with all this. Just looking at certain meaningful points and find in the Ephemeride to see where these 4 planets were standing at that time. And as a result, amazed!

Cycles and Timelines

At the moment I am totally fascinated by a book called Cosmos and Psyche by Richard Tarnas.

In the book he writes about the aspects of the outer planets and the resemblance with the world history.

I read the book shortly after it came out in 2006 or so and found it really interesting. But somehow all the data and all the different planet aspects made me a bit dizzy. I remember constantly looking for timetables and graphics to get a bit of an overview of what I was reading. And after that, other interesting books came along.

But recently I came across a video of Richard Tarnas. He said some very interesting things about what was happening in the world and the aspects of the outer planets that resembled those processes.

I wanted to go read the book again but I could not find it anymore. I guess I never bought it and maybe read it from the library. Anyway, I just had to have the book myself and bought the ebook. Which is great actually because now I could easily search for certain parts.

But still I got dizzy from all the data and all the events. So I looked for a way to make it more visible. I started with what I am doing all the time on this blog, by making a visual in cycles.

But somehow I also needed a timeline. I tried out several ways of making one, but it did not work very well. I wanted to make a visual from at least around 1900 to now. But in those more than 100 years a lot happened and I could not get it all on one clear visual. In my mind a timeline was horizontal, and to get enough data in, I would have to scroll from left to right. Which is not a very comfortable way of reading online.

Until my husband asked me why I did not make a vertical timeline!

Of course that was the solution. A vertical timeline is fantastic, I can make it as long as I want. Scrolling down is no problem on a blog and also on mobile it works great.

So I started with the conjunction of the 500 year cycle of Pluto and Neptune. The conjunction was just before the start of the 20th century, around 1892. Very soon after that was a Uranus/Pluto opposition and in between, Saturn made important aspects with all three of them.

timeline 1890-2020

In the book, Tarnas covered a lot of history. Which was very interesting and gave me a real good idea of certain processes and the big picture. But at this point I wanted to focus mainly on the more recent history and also our time and a few years ahead. So I took the timeline from 1890 until 2020.

Uranus Pluto cycle

My next focus was on the Uranus/Pluto cycle. Tarnas calls Uranus the Promethean archetype of rebellion, progression, disruption and unexpected change.

And Pluto is the Dionysian archetype of instinctual and compelling power, extreme in its intensity and arising from the depths and on a massive scale.

Together in hard aspect (conjunction, square and opposition) they reflect radical social and political change. Destructive, rebellious, revolutionary and intense.

Also unusually rapid technological advance, restless experiment, drive for innovation, urge for freedom and revolt against oppression. Mixed with massive demographic shifts, violent intensity and excitement.

Saturn Pluto cycle

The Saturn/Pluto cycle goes together with challenging historical periods marked by the pervasive quality of intense contraction: international crisis and conflict, empowerment of reactionary forces and totalitarian impulses, organized violence and oppression.

An atmosphere of gravity and tension. Profound transformation, as with the Uranus/Pluto cycle, but here the transformation is through contraction, conservative reaction, crisis and termination.

Other cycles

Although maybe just as important, the cycles that include Neptune are not that visible in events in the outside world. So in my timeline I gave all aspects with Neptune a soft grey color. This seemed to fit better with the more nebulous and subtle archetype of Neptune.

In this timeline I did not include Jupiter, as that would make the timeline too full at this point. But I certainly want to include it in future timelines as it is a very important aspect in relation to expansion and creativity, certainly in combination with Uranus. Tarnas gave some interesting examples of that.

Also the squares of Saturn are not included here as that would give to much data at this point. But also for future timelines I certainly want to include them as they point to rather exact data, like the Saturn/Pluto square at the beginning of the second worldwar. But that is for another timeline in another blogpost.

cycles and timelines

Always Together but Not the Same

basic In my previous post I wrote about values as being transitions from one phase of life into another, that I placed in a model of development.

In this post I want to write a little more about the model of mind and matter where the model of development is based upon. How the four elements relate to each other. Where they are similar and where they differ.

Structure

Structure is the visible world of matter and concepts. Although concepts might not look as visible as matter, in a way they are just as visible. Every object we can observe is at the same time a certain concept for the person that is observing it. A chair is something to sit on for us, but for a small child it might just be an obstacle in his discovery of the world, or an exciting climbing frame.

So something is a blob of matter until the concept we make of it determines what it is. But we hardly ever seperate those two, because as a child we learn from others what it is and what we should be doing with it.

Potential

Potential is the invisible world of energy and information. Energy and information are kind of locked up in matter.

Information as in an acorn that knows it has to become an oak tree and not a willow. And energy which can be released, as in an atomic bomb or an exploding star.

But at the same time, energy and information are outside, everywhere. Where it has the potential to be used (energy) and known (information).

Passive

passive Passive is the world of matter and information. Both are inert and need the active part to do something.

If all the energy is locked up inside the matter, it will not move, like a rock. If no concepts are used to do something with the information, it just stays still, like a deep silent lake.

Active

active Active is the world of constantly moving energy and concepts.

Energy that needs matter to be constructive. And concepts that need information to stay connected with the world around.

Two sides of one coin

The coin being all four together. With matter/energy on one side and concepts/information on the other side of the coin.

Matter/Energy

matter-energy Side one is the side of matter and energy. That side that according to some, is all there is.

I did an attempt in the post Is our world dualistic after all, to find out how that works.

Concepts/Information

concepts-information But I think there is another side, the side of concepts and information.

Like matter/energy, they just differ at a certain moment in time. Information is like the sea, while concepts are like bottles of water.

Always together but not the same

Like a coin, both sides (matter/energy and concepts/information) will always go together. But they are not the same. So information can not go over in energy.

But it can inform energy.

Always together but not the same

About Development, Values and Transitions

So, I think a lot about development. And I wrote several posts about development on this blog.

It fascinates me how things move along a certain pattern. A pattern that might look very different from any other pattern, but what might be similar on a certain level.

Most of those posts and most of my thinking about development was before I heard and read about David Bohm.

I used the zodiac as a model, together with a model of integral theory and a model about mind and matter.

But I could not get the right words to describe the developing steps. And the visualization of the models I used was not quite right yet either.

After a few years of getting into the thinking of David Bohm, and making a new and more abstract model, I want to rewrite a couple of those previous posts.

The meaning of values

The one I want to start with, is a post that was based on another post that has been on my mind a lot lately. That one was called The meaning of Values.

That post was about different kind of values. And based on that post, I wrote the post Beneath the World of Logic.

That is the one I want to rewrite first. Well, not so much rewrite, as use a new and more clear (at this moment) and abstract model to go with it.

In that post I tried to place 3 different type of values into a model of development.

A model of development that places a very large emphasis on the individuality of a human being. The process of what Carl Jung called Individuation.

The 3 types of values from the previous posts are the following:

The cultural background that makes values look like facts
Experiences that make certain values very personal
The amounts of time you had to defend those values

Each of those three types are placed at the three essential transitions in life.

Transitions

Transitions go from universal into primordial, from primordial into individual, from individual into universal. And finally again from universal into primordial, where a new cycle starts.

The primordial can be seen as the cultural background of where a child is born. And what is called universal is the world as a whole at a certain moment in time.

And in between is the development of the individual.

It is a cycle that is constantly repeating itself. On all kind of levels. But it is a cycle in the form of a spiral. Every time it starts with the beginning again but on another level.

I will place each one of the values at the transition from one phase of life into another. A transition that is not actually visible and plays its role beneath the visible world, the visible world of matter and concepts.

Beneath the visible world

basic The matter and concepts that I call in the context of this blog structure. Structure as opposed to potential. The concept of potential is what I use here for a place that can hold the different types of values.

Also in this model, information is to concepts what energy is to matter. Both are invisible and just potential. (there is a difference in one being active and one being passive, but that is for another post) and both are a transion from the world we all know of matter and concepts.

Values as transitions

The cultural background that makes values look like facts

The first set of values can not so much be called values. It has not much to do with the individual, not even with the family. It is the cultural background a person is born in.

It is what I call here, the transition from the universal phase into the primordial phase. The universal phase is culture that is built over time. Our western culture has certain values that most people will agree upon.

But those values are not the same as they where 400 years ago, not even the same as 40 years ago. They evolve over time and are defined by events and laws.

Because of the effects that peoples actions have on others, there have to be certain rules to let people live together in relative peace. Some might call them values, others laws. And some might just call them common sense.

But because they are common sense to us, does not mean they are common sense to everyone. Other cultures have other laws and values that they see as common sense. But what we see as offensive or rude or just plain wrong.

Experiences that make certain values very personal

The second set of values are those that are very personal. Those experiences in our youth that have a huge impact. Where something happens that shapes our vision of the world.

Growing up in a family that is violent gives you a different perspective of the world than growing up in a family that is loving and caring, even in the same society with the same cultural background of values. Here also, you might not be aware that they are actually values.

It just is what it is.

But in this transition from primordial into individual, the person has to start an individual life. Independent of his family and cultural background.

To actually start with this and actually make decisions, you need a set of values. You need a context to know what to do and what to avoid.

In order to live an authentic life and build upon your own values, you have to choose. Every day you have to make decisions. And if there were no guidelines that you can more or less hold on to, it would be almost impossible to choose.

At the start that set of guidelines might not be so very strict. But the further you go, the more it becomes clear that they are not the same as those of others. In many cases it is not that obvious, just a minor disagreement. But as time goes by, your own set of guidelines increases.

You said ‘no’ to something and ‘yes’ to something else. And because you acted in some way, the next time it is easier to go that way.

You start to build a personality, an identity, an ego. Or like in business, you build a brand. Something others will recognise and relate to (or not). Something that provides room for major improvement and development in a certain direction.

Some of the values will be removed because they get in the way of your own development.

But some of them get stronger, much stronger. Especially those that are a combination of cultural background and personal experience that are used to build your personal identity on.

And the stronger the personal identity gets, the stronger you have to defend the values the identity is actually based upon. And these become the third set of values.

The amounts of time you had to defend those values

The third set of values are a combination of unconscious values (cultural background and personal values) and conscious values (chosen to build our identity) which together make you who you are.

Your personality that is unique to you, that what sets you apart from all the others. It is how you want to be known. It is how others will easy recognise you. It is where you are proud of. What you achieved in life.

But the more strong that identity is, the more unique, the more successful, the more you might have to defend yourself against attacks. Which might be not that bad, it only improves your skills. The more you have to defend yourself, the more clear it all becomes to yourself.

But the real problems set in if those core values get attacked, those that are the foundation of who you are, that what made you capable of building your identity. And if that happens, your emotional reactions might get very strong. And make those values even stronger. A vicious circle.

Unless you can take a step away and look at it more objective.

Some day the moment has to come to realise your set of values is not universal. Other cultures have other values. Other people have other values. And they all depend on the context.

But that does not mean it was unnecessary to build upon those values.

Actually it was very important. It is what the world needs, strong, unique and powerful individuals that are capable of being a success.

Those individuals that shape the future. That provide a cultural background for future generations.

And so we are back again with the beginning. But this time it is a cultural background we were part of. Either conscious or subconscious. But the way we lived according to our own set of values shapes the future. And makes our values common sense to those who are born in that future.

So in summary (how I see it at this moment :)

The cultural background that makes values look like facts.
In the model of development it is the combination of Universal Information together with Primordial Energy.

Experiences that make certain values very personal.
In the model of development this is a combination of Primordial Information together with Individual Energy.

The amounts of time you had to defend those values.
In the model of development this is a combination of Individual Information together with Universal Energy.

About development values and transitions

Human Development of Energy, Matter, Concepts and Information

Energy – active potential
Matter – passive structure
Concepts – active structure
Information – passive potential

Matter is the passive structure of the active potential energy as
concepts are the active structure of the passive potential information.

Primordial Energy – Action
Primordial Matter – Manifestation
Primordial Concepts – Interaction
Primordial Information – Emotion

Individuation – transition from primordial to individual

Individual Energy – Creation
Individual Matter – Function
Individual Concepts – Reflection
Individual Information – Integration

Universation – transition from individual to universal

Universal Energy – Vision
Universal Matter – Construction
Universal Concepts – Invention
Universal Information – Compassion

Development of Perception

The way we perceive the world is totally different from the way a young child perceives the world.

I always understood that was the case, but I could never really imagine how that child would perceive the world.

Or how that would develop into how we, as adults, view the world.

David Bohm describes that development of perception in the appendix of the book The Special Theory of Relativity. That book itself was too difficult for me to read, but as I heard him mention that appendix in an interview, I wanted to read that and see if it would make sense to me.

Well, it did. I found it very interesting to follow the development of perception, that Bohm writes about the research of Jean Piaget.

That research suggests that a young child views the world as a state of flux. The child does not see anything as permanent, he does not see cause and effect, he does not know things can be undone, he does not have our memory, he does not see itself different from the world, and so on. All that is coming into existence in a certain follow up.

I tried to distil the development into several steps, so I differentiated 16 stages. But there could just as well be more or less. There is no cut and dry separation, but for myself, I found it more clear to make a certain differentiation, in order to understand the development better.

Stage 1 – Functional aspects

This first stage is nothing more than inborn reflexes. These reflexes develop to fit different aspects of the environment. The environment gets recognised by functional aspects, like food to satisfy the hunger.

Stage 2 – Impulse followed by sensation

The next stage is the development of the circular reflex. The circular reflex is an outgoing impulse followed by an incoming sensory impulse. This is the beginning of perception. Impulse followed by sensation.

This circular reflex is carried along all further development. At a certain stage there is pleasure in the reflexes that are produced. The child does not yet understand the causal connection between the impulse and the sensation.

He discovers that by doing something he gets a pleasant sensation that is recognizable. Recognition that a past event has been repeated comes first. The ability to call up this event in the memory comes only much later.

At this stage there is only the knowledge that a certain impulse will lead to a certain pleasure.

Stage 3 – Permanence and coordination

To recognize a similarity is necessary before seeing something as permanent in the flux of process.

Another thing is being able to coordinate many different reflexes that are associated with a certain object.

So at first there is no realisation that the object that the child sees, is the same as the object that he hears. But later on comes a coordination. And with that the understanding that he sees what he hears and grasps what he sees.

Stage 4 – Recognise patterns

There is still no notion of a permanent object. When he is presented with something familiar, he makes an abstraction of recognizable totalities of sensation.

In the total flux of experience, he can now recognize a certain pattern. These combinations itself are experienced as totalities. The object is not recognized outside its normal context.

Stage 5 – Perceive out of normal context

When the child begins to follow a moving object with this eyes, he is able to recognize the invariance of its form, despite its movement. He is building up the reflexes to perceive objects apart from its normal context.

Stage 6 – Something can be undone

The next step is the realisation that something can be undone by a second operation. But he still has no idea of a permanent object, that exists when he does not see it.

He also does not see himself separate from the world. But he is building up the reflexes that are needed to see the difference.

Stage 7 – Cause and effect

He is now developing the notion of cause and effect.

At first it is a kind of sympathetic magic, because there is still no difference between internal and external, and all aspects of his experience are still seen as a single totality.

Later he begins to recognize other people, animals and objects as the cause of things that are happening.

Stage 8 – Coordinate visual with tactile and movement

At this time the notions of space and time are being built up. If the child handles objects and moves his body, he learns to coordinate his changing visual experiences with the tactile perceptions and bodily movements.

Stage 9 – Notion of permanent places and objects

At this stage he discovers that he can always return to a place in many different ways. There is the notion of permanent places and permanent objects.

Stage 10 – Start of memory

The child is gradually learning to call up images from the past, not just recognize something as familiar only as he sees it. Now true memory begins. With the difference between past and present. And later also future when he starts to form mental images of what he expects.

Stage 11 – Form an image of absent objects

This point in development is crucial, as the child is able to form an image of an absent object.

Stage 12 – Form image with perceived and unperceived things

Now he starts to form a mental image of the world, with both perceived and unperceived things. He is able to create or produce something.

Stage 13 – Distinction between self and world

This is the stage of distinction between the self and the rest of the world. Until now there was only one field of experiencing. Because of the ability to create a mental map of the world (to imagine) he sees places that are occupied by permanent objects. And one of these objects is himself.

Everything on the map falls into two categories, what is inside the skin and what is not. And now he forms the concept of a self, distinct from the rest of the world.

And he also sees other selfs. Now a general picture is formed. A picture of a world in space and time, where separate and permanent entities can act on each other causally.

The child does not know it is making a mental map of the world. They find it difficult to distinguish between what is imagined or remembered in thought and what is actually perceived through their senses. They may even think that other people see what they are thinking about.

Stage 14 – Mental map as reality

At this point the mental map is seen as reality. What we see often depends on what we know about it. So we learn to see the world through a certain structure of ideas. We react immediately to each new experience before we have time to think.

That way we might believe that certain ways of perceiving the world cannot be otherwise. But in fact it was the way we discovered and build it ourselves when we were children. It often became habits that are only true in certain domains of experience.

Stage 15 – Translate perception into language

The next stage is about translating the perception of the structure of the world in thought and language. But that is very confusing as the ideas and words often contradict what is perceived. And the learning is a gradual process, step by step.

Stage 16 – Need for logical thought

And finally he learns the need for logical thought. With the wish to reflect on the structure of the world, and to communicate with other people. But also when he wants to apply his ideas to a practical problem.

This is a continuing process of development that builds up knowledge and understanding of the world. Mental images, ideas and words are getting a structure similar to the world as it is perceived.

From perception in a state of flux to the structure of a mental map

So the child begins with some kind of totality. A totality of sensation, perception and feeling. All in a sort of ongoing flow.

No recognizable structure with permanent characteristics.

The development of intelligence arises in a series of movements, which is how the child learns about the world.

What he learns is always based on his ability to see certain kinds of relationship. A correspondence between what he sees and what he hears. Between cause and effect. The possibility of undoing certain things.

The perception of some relationships is then followed by a corresponding mental image which functions as a kind of map. A map that represents the relationships.

Very soon immediate perception takes on the structures of these maps and he is no longer aware that the map only represents what has been perceived before.

Development of perception

Image: source

The Difference between a Problem and a Paradox

One of the most interesting, but at the same time hard to grasp, subjects that David Bohm wrote about, is inner conflict.

I talked about that in some earlier posts. The first one was a post called When the Mind is Trying to Escape the Awareness of Conflict, where it became clear that, according to Bohm, ignoring our inner conflict is the most important threat to creativity.

The next post was called Will Confusion Really be our Epitaph which I wrote after I started reading the book On Creativity. Somehow I sensed the importance of his observations and thoughts on the subject of inner conflict, and at the same time realised how common, but yet immensely difficult to handle, it is.

The third post was called How to Confront Inner Conflict Instead of Ignoring it, and it was about one sentence of Bohm, where he gives several examples of how we tend to ignore our inner conflicts. Examples that are so common and used by all of us all the time, without realising that we are doing it.

And now I was again reading in the book On Dialogue. I like the book a lot and wrote about the first chapter, On Communication, before in the post Dialogue as Creating something New Together. But this time I was especially struck by the chapter The Problem and the Paradox.

I feel like I could understand that on a deeper level now, after certain other views on the subject that I wrote about in my previous post called The Paradox of Civilization and the Shadow Carried by All.

In that post it became clear that, according to Carl Jung, the development of the collective has to go through the development of the individual. The development of the individual, independent of their native background, is of crucial importance. Of crucial importance for the individual itself, but also for the society as a whole. So with that in mind I read the chapter about The Problem and the Paradox again.

Careful Attention to the Paradox

The essence of that chapter is Bohm’s differentiation between the words ‘problem’ and ‘paradox’. He says that we often treat something as a problem and we want a solution. But some things, or even many things, especially those that have to do with the human psyche, are not a problem but a paradox. Which means they have no solution.

They have to be understood by paying very close attention. Or what he calls ‘sustained, serious, careful attention’. Not putting it forward, but stay with it. This goes for the individual psyche, but also for the total of society.

For ages, men have generally realized that thinking and feeling are commonly infected with greed, violence, self-deception, fear, aggressiveness, and other forms of reaction that lead to corruption and confusion. For the most part, however, all of this has been regarded as a problem, and thus men have sought to overcome or control the disorder in their own nature in countless ways. For example, all societies have instituted a set of punishments, aimed at frightening people into the right behavior, along with a set of rewards aimed at enticing them toward the same end. Because this has proved to be inadequate, men have further set up systems of morals and ethics, along with various religious notions, with the hope that these would enable people, of their own accord, to control their ‘wrong’ or ‘evil’ thoughts and feelings. But this, too, has not really produced the desired result.

So people try to control wrong or evil thoughts and feelings. The wrong and evil thoughts of themselves, but also of others. Or maybe in many cases, especially those of others, because it is also in the human nature to experience the others as wrong and evil. We have the feeling that we ourselves are either good or otherwise very well capable of doing the ‘right’ thing instead of the wrong or evil. And so by rules, law, religion, morals and systems of ethics we try to control the behavior of ‘that evil other’.

But as became clear in the previous post, according to Carl Jung, it is not possible to ‘pump morality into a system’. And Bohm says something similar.

The inward work and the outward work go hand in hand. But it has to be kept in mind that through centuries of habit and conditioning, our prevailing tendency is now to suppose that ‘basically we ourselves are all right’ and that our difficulties generally have outward causes, which can be treated as problems. And even when we do see that we are not in order inwardly, our habit is to suppose that we can point fairly definitely to what is wrong or lacking in ourselves, as if this were something different from or independent of the activity of thinking in which we formulate the ‘problem’ of correcting what is in error.

The process of thought, with which we think about our personal and social problems, is conditioned. It is controlled by the content which it seems to be thinking about. So our thoughts influence our problems, but our problems in return influence our thoughts. So they can not really be free or honest.

We need a deep and intense awareness, one that goes beyond the intellectual analysis of our confused process of thought. An awareness that is capable of getting to the root of the conflicting assumptions, where the confusion begins.

Such awareness implies that we be ready to apprehend the many paradoxes that reveal themselves in our daily lives, in our larger-scale social relationships, and ultimately in the thinking and feeling that appear to constitute the ‘innermost self’ in each one of us.

So we need to give full attention to the ‘problems’ that arise. By doing that, we might see beyond the problem and see a bigger whole. See that the mind, because of its conditioning, is caught in paradox.

Understanding that might clear the view to see other patterns. Other patterns that can lead to a way out of the paradox.

The difference between a problem and a paradox

Image: source

The Paradox of Civilization and the Shadow Carried by All

A few days ago I followed the live stream of TEDx Amsterdam.

I really like the concept of TED and have watched many videos of their previous talks.

Those that have my special interest are the ones about the relation between the individual and society. That is why I was especially fascinated by the presentation of the speaker who more or less had to summarise the talks of the whole day, Louise Fresco.

There were a few things in her presentation that I found interesting. The first was her mention of the word ‘learning cycle’ instead of ‘learning curve’, a cycle instead of a straight line as a metaphor for how we learn.

That is very much how I see learning and development and certainly something I am going to explore in some future (hopefully sense making) blog posts.

What I also found very interesting was her mentioning of the third culture. About how we should bridge the gap between art and science. Also something I am really passionate about.

But in this post I want to focus on something else she said. Halfway her presentation she talks about the paradox of civilization.

First she talks about our human capacity to focus, to concentrate on something we personally find important, which requires passion and emotion.

But opposed to that, is another aspect of human nature, the need to control our impulses.

Civilization comes with greater control of impulses. We control violence, the state is there to control ourselves and control others. We also have something called self-control. Inner directed self-control, whereby we know there are certain things we don’t do anymore. You could argue that civilization is increasing control over human nature.

It is this control of our impulses that makes it possible for us to work together, to cooperate, to share ideas, to listen to one another, because if you continue shouting and I continue shouting, we can not listen.

So on the one hand we are, as a society, developing towards more and more civilization, what is characterized by more and more control. But as she points out, this control is getting out of hand.

But here is to the paradox of today, one that we haven’t touched but one that I feel very strongly about and would like to share with you. Yes, we have a learning curve in our societies of increased control. But we also see today in the last few years an increasing move towards uncontrollable things. Uncontrollable behavior, unselfcontroled behavior.

That actually goes against the grain of what has been the great movement of our society of control of human nature.

Many, many thoughts went through my mind when I heard that. Personally I think it all is part of the process, but I am by far not sure how to get that into words. Many of my previous posts were about that theme, but somehow I am not yet capable of bringing my points across in some understandable way.

The shadow carried by all

But this paradox of civilization also made me think again of an article Shadow carried by all, says Jung. It is an article from the archives of the New York Times, and it touched upon this paradox.

In the article, Jung says that morality is not something that can be forced upon someone. We all carry a shadow and it is very likely suppressed and isolated from our consciousness. But along with this shadow, or hidden within, or however that might work, we also have an inherent morality.

But if we force our understanding of morality on someone else it will not work, at least that is what I understand of the following quote.

To live with a saint might cause an inferiority complex or even wild outburst of immorality in individuals less morally gifted. You cannot pump morality into a system where it is not indigenous, though you may spoil it.

The only way things can change, is with a change in individuals.

Such problems can only be solved by a general change of attitude. It begins with a change in individuals. The accumulation of such individual changes only will produce a collective solution.

So we can not force morality upon others. The only way to become moral, is by working through the shadow.

The paradox of civilization

So I guess the paradox of civilization has to do with individual development. The individual needs space to go through this development. Society develops through a gradual increasing civilization, but at a certain point it needs to stop and give the individual the space to go through their own shadow.

And discover their own inherent moral nature.

The paradox of civilization and the shadow carried by all

Image: source

The Map and the Territory

Some time ago I watched the video ‘The divided brain and the making of the western world’ from Iain McGilchrist.

The talk was really very interesting, so I started reading his book, ‘The Master and his Emissary’ that does a very good job in looking at research on the difference between the left and right hemispheres of our brains.

But the book has many pages and in the meantime I was still fascinated by the writings of David Bohm, so I did not finish it yet. Now a few days ago on Googleplus, I saw a quote that made me watch that video again.

At the end of his talk McGilchrist mentioned this quote by Einstein and said that he came across it when he finished his book. Now reading that quote and watching the video again, made me realise how close this research from the book came to the thoughts of Bohm.

Iain McGilchrist’s view on the left and right hemisphere of the brain is very close to David Bohm’s view of wholeness and fragmentation. Very close to many of Bohm’s thoughts about perception, coherence, wholeness, communication and so on.

Anyway the quote was the following:

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant but has forgotten the gift.

And the video was this one:

(Animated version of the video)

Instead of transcribing the whole video, I want to highlight those parts that seem similar to the thoughts of David Bohm.

Two models of life

He starts the talk by saying that in our time, there are generally two models of life.

One which lingers in biology is a sort of scientific materialist one which views knowledge as making certain one fact and then adding to that, one builds up a picture of an external world which is independent of our knowledge and which is our duty to become aware. Almost as if were machines that were passively receiving information.

The other view is the opposite that says that reality is just in our heads and we make it all up.

Now the view of McGilchrist is somewhere inbetween.

Attention and Context

He says that reality changes with the nature of attention that we pay to it.

Things come into being through a kind of interactive process, the intention we pay to the world changes what we find there, and what we find there changes the attention we pay. Similarly we can’t understand something by knowing one little thing out of context and adding another little thing out of context.

There needs to be a kind of sense of what it is we dealing with because we need to apply a certain model. We only understand things by comparing them by something else we think we know even better.

Like David Bohm, Iain McGilchrist says context is everything in understanding. We have to understand it implicit, and when we make it explicit, we change their nature.

The difference between right and left

The general view is that the two brainparts have different tasks, like one does emotions and the other reason. But as it turns out, both are very much involved in both. But still there is this division in the brain, and it is very asymmetric.

The right hemisphere gives sustained, broad, open, vigilance, alertness

where the left hemisphere gives narrow, sharply focused attention to detail.

People who lose their right hemisphere have a pathological narrow attention.

Deceiving and empathy

Then he goes on about the human’s frontal lobes. The purpose of that part of the brain is that it inhibits the rest of the brain. It stops the immediate happening, standing back from immediate experience.

That way we can read other people’s mind and intentions. That way we can deceive them. Or we can have empathy.

Both, deceiving and empathy, are only possible because there is a sort of necessary distance. If you stay to close, you would just bite. But if you stand back you see another individual with feelings, values and interests, that you can bond with.

We use our left hemisphere (our right hand) to make things and use language to grasp things. It provides a simplified version of reality. Not the territory but the map.

Right is more integrated with our bodies.

The right hemisphere has this broad open attention. It is more integrated with our bodies. It has the direct experience (I think David Bohm would call that perception) where the left hemisphere takes that information and uses it in a cleaver way by symplifying it. It re-presents it.

Words for realities.

The newness of the right hemisphere makes it a devil’s advocate, it is always on the lookout for things that might be different from our expectations. It sees things in context. It understands implicit meaning. Metaphor, body language, emotional expression in the face.

It deals with an embodied work, in which we stand embodied in relation to a world that is concrete. It understands individuals, not just categories. It actually has a disposition for the living rather than the mechanical.

Left vs Right

So the left hemisphere:

is dependent on denotative language and abstraction, yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are: known, fixed, static, isolated, de-contextualised, explicit, disembodied, general in nature but ultimately lifeless.

And the right hemisphere:

yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnect, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world. And the things never fully graspable. Never perfectly known as we think. And this world exists in a certain relationship, rather than just an objective starts.

Left is a closed system

There is something of a closed system, a selfreferring loop, that is not capable of looking at a bigger whole.

The knowledge that is mediated by the left hemisphere is however within a closed system. It has the advantage of perfection, but the perfection is bought ultimately the price of emptiness, of self-reference. It can mediate knowledge only in terms of a mechanical rearrangement of the things it already knows.

So both hemispheres offer two versions of the world.

Our western world and the left hemisphere

In our modern world we developed something that looks very much like the worlds left hemisphere world.

We prioritise the virtual over the real. The technical becomes important. Bureaucracy flourishes. The picture however is fragmented. There is a loss of uniqueness. The how is subsumed in what. And the need for control leads to paranoia in society and we need to govern and control everything. Everything that should be implicit becomes explicit. And the life is drained.

What is the reason of that dominance? McGilchrist thinks there are three reasons for that.

Self-consistent

One is the left hemisphere’s talk is very convincing because it shaved everything that it doesn’t find fit for this model off and cut it out. So this particular model is entirely self-consistent, largely because it made itself so and is therefore very compelling.

Media

I also call the left hemisphere the Berlusconi of the brain because it controls the media. It is very vocal on its own behalf. The right hemisphere doesn’t have a voice. And it can’t construct these same arguments.

Mirrors

And I also think, rather more importantly there is a sort of hall of mirrors effect. The more we get trapped into this, the more we undercut and ironise things that might have lead us out of it. And we just get reflected back into more about what we know, about what we know, about what we know.

He ends by saying that all this does not mean that the left hemisphere is not important.

Nobody can be more passionate in an age where we neglect reason, and we neglect careful use of language, nobody can be more passionate than myself about language and about reason. It is just that I am even more passionate about the right hemisphere and the need to return what that knows to a broader context.

So the essence seems to be that the right hemisphere is the master. According to the Einstein quote it is what is called intuition. Or what Bohm says wholeness.

The left hemisphere is the emissary. Or what Bohm calls fragmentation.

This left hemisphere (or fragmentation or emissary) is very important. It provides a focus of attention. Or what we did for the last century, getting to know more and more of one subject. Very narrow focus. Specialisation. Which is very important.

But now we need to get in touch with the right hemisphere of our brain. Use our intuition. See the wholeness. Connect the dots. See the bigger picture. Get an overview. Get back to the surface and look at each other’s findings.

And stop confusing the map with the territory.

The map and the territory Image: source

How Matter is Influenced by Meaning

In the book ‘The Essential David Bohm’ is a chapter called Soma-significance and the Activity of Meaning, which was very interesting in how he thinks that mind and matter interact.

Well, actually he says that interacting is not the way it works. And therefore the word ‘Psycho-somatic’ is not right, for explaining what he meant to say.

So he came up with two different words that should better reflect what he saw as the process of this ‘mind and matter exchange’.

In this post I want to write down Bohm’s differentiation between those three words: Psycho-somatic, Soma-significance and Signa-somatic.

Psycho-somatic

The reason for Bohm to come up with two different concepts is that he is not satisfied with the common concept of Psycho-somatic. Psycho-somatic indicates that there is a relationship between the mental (psycho) and the physical (somatic) but they are separate.

The term psycho-somatic suggests two different kinds of entities, each existent in itself – but both in mutual interaction. In my view such a notion introduces a split, a fragmentation, between the physical and the mental that doesn’t properly correspond to the actual state of affairs.

So that is why he suggests the introduction of a new term that he calls Soma-significance.

Soma-significance

This concept emphasizes more the unity of the mental and the physical. The meaning of the body.

To bring out how soma and significance are related, I might note that each particular kind of significance is based on some somatic order, arrangement, connection and organization of distinguishable elements – that is to say, structure.

Then he goes on with an example.

The printed marks on this piece of paper carry a meaning which is apprehended by a reader. In a television set the movement of electrical signals communicated to an electron beam carries meaning to a viewer. Modern scientific studies indicate that such meanings are carried somatically by further physical, chemical and electrical processes into the brain and the rest of the nervous system where they are apprehended by ever higher intellectual and emotional levels of meaning.

But it also works the other way around, which he gives a different name.

Signa-somatic

Signa-somatic is the other side of the same process. Every meaning at a certain level is affecting the body at a more manifest level.

Consider for example, a shadow seen in a dark night. Now if it happens, because of the person’s past experience, that this means an assailant, the adrenalin will flow, the heart will beat faster, the blood pressure will rise and he will be ready to fight, to run or to freeze. However if it means only a shadow, the response of the soma is very different. So quite generally the total physical response of the human being is profoundly affected by what physical forms mean to him. A change of meaning can totally change your response.

So the meaning of something (shadow), affects the physical (metabolism). Which is different from something physical (marks on a piece of paper), that affects the meaning (mind of the reader).

A change of meaning is a change of being

So this is different from psycho-somatic. With psycho-somatic you say that mind affects matter as if they were two different substances. But there are no two different substances, there is only one flow.

But if the meaning changes, so does the flow.

Therefore any change of meaning is a change of soma and any change of soma is a change of meaning.

As a given meaning is carried into the somatic side, you can see that it continues to develop the original significance. If something means danger, then not only adrenalin, but a whole range of chemical substances will travel through the blood, and according to modern scientific discoveries, these act like ‘messengers’ (carriers of meaning) from the brain to various parts of the body. That is, these chemicals instruct various parts of the body to act in certain ways. In addition there are electrical ‘signals’ – they are not really signals – carried by the nerves, which function in a similar way. And this is a further unfoldment of the original significance into forms that are suitable for ‘instructing’ the body to carry out the implications of what is meant.

Bohm talks about levels. Levels of somatic unfoldment of meaning. Each level goes toward a more manifest somatic state. And this goes on until the action finally emerges as a physical movement of the body that affects the environment.

So there is a two-way movement of energy. Each level of significance acts on the next more manifest somatic level. And the perception carries the meaning of the action back in the other direction.

How matter is influenced by meaning

Image: Source

Serious about Creativity

Recently I came across a very interesting woman, Paula Scher. I saw a Tedtalk from a few years ago where she talked about design, play and being serious. In that talk she differentiates between being solemn and being serious. Differentiating between those words is not natural for me, because I have a general feeling of […]

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We bring up our children with too much conceptual abstractions, that they have to memorize. They have to learn concepts without realizing the underlying reality. Learn concepts without understanding the meaning. They have to learn what others think is important. And slowly along the way, they lose the ability to think creative. It is like […]

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Ken Robinson on Aesthetics and An-Aesthetics: An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak. When you are present in the current moment. When you are resonating with the excitement of this thing that you are experiencing. When you are fully alive. An an-aesthetic is when you shut your senses […]

Thumbnail image for The Artist and the Scientist in Dialogue with the World

David Bohm on Art, Science and Dialogue: Artists are not just ‘expressing themself’, not just ‘pushing outward what is already formed inside of them’. The first thing the artist does is only similar in certain ways to what they have in mind. As in a conversation between two people, they see the similarity and difference, […]

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Living in a certain place and time, we tend to think within a certain set of values and act upon them as if they are universal. And we use our critical skills to judge ‘everything’. It is a set of values that is a sum of the whole society, and living by its rules is […]

If the definition of art has developed over time, and if it is defined as ‘a product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses, emotions and intellect’ and also says that the word art was traditionally used for skill or mastery, but later as an intention […]

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David Bohm on Power and Incoherence: We cannot grasp the totality but we can have a feeling for the whole. We can have the attitude of not restricting ourselves to parts, but to allowing our consciousness to be based on the whole of whatever we can experience. Turn to the whole of reality as far […]

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David Bohm on Thought: Thought has developed traditionally in a way that claims not to be affecting anything but just telling you the way things are. Therefore people can not see that they are creating a problem and then apparently trying to solve it. The ecology has not in itself a problem, it works perfectly […]

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David Bohm on Coherence and Consciousness: If we can have a coherent approach to reality, then reality will respond coherently to us. But nature has been tremendously affected by our way of thinking. There is very little left on earth, that isn’t affected by how we were thinking. The major source of unhappiness is that […]

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David Bohm on Creativity: Creativity is essential, not only for science but for the whole of life. If you get stuck in a mechanical, repetitious order, then it will degenerate. One of the problems is, that every civilization got stuck in a certain repetition. The creative energy gradually died away and that is why the […]

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David Bohm on Dialogue: If the meaning of communication is to convey information or knowledge from one person to another, then the essence of communication is ‘to make something common’. Dialogue as a special kind of communication, is ‘to make something IN common’. Or creating something new together. But in most cases there is a […]

Thumbnail image for Time and the Meaning of Life

The first part of the meaning of life, is to build a personality with strong values. Values that are worth defending. Use them to choose a direction, stick with it and make it a succes. Challenge the cultural background and make decisions on personal experience. Keep what works and improve it. Defend your decisions if […]

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Creativity has an inherent order that grows on insight and understanding. It has to develop according to that. It might need rules and boundaries to keep growing in a certain direction. It might need ideas from others to grow even further … but … only after a certain amount of independent growth. Without interference from […]

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There can be honesty without integrity, but no integrity without honesty. Although integrity needs honesty, it does not mean you always have to be absolutely honest to others. It just means you have to be absolutely honest to your self. Being honest to others is many times just giving a personal opinion. And that opinion […]

Recently I listened to an interview with the very intriguing title: Is Consciousness Energy? The title made me really curious, as I have been wondering about that for a long time now. It is an interview of Dean Radin with Christian de Quincey, whose final conclusion is that consciousness is not the same as energy. […]

Going through some online tapes of David Bohm, I found a recording where he says something very interesting. Well, actually I find almost everything he ever said very interesting. But the recording made me realise something else. Last week I found an article online that said that his ‘complete lack of ego completely disguised the enormity […]

Finally I started reading the book On Dialogue by David Bohm. I was not sure at first that I wanted to buy the book, as there is so much to find online. Like this Proposal for Dialogue. But although I am fine with reading bits and pieces online, or borrow a book at the library, […]

Coherence is a word that David Bohm used a lot. I noticed it in the video that I wrote about in my previous post. It is a word with a meaning that is rather general. A word that you read without really noticing. But the more I became aware of the word, the more I […]

Recently I found a real treasure! At least that is what I considered the video that I found of David Bohm. It is a video where he talked about his life, recorded about two years before his death. There is a part of this video on Youtube that is called David Bohm on perception which […]

Last week I found some really interesting sites. The first one was Quora. I found a blogpost that highlighted some good reasons to get involved there. I clicked through and was indeed immediately hooked. It is a question and answer site, where anyone can ask and answer all kinds of questions. But apart from that, you […]

Differentiating between the functions of the left and the right hemisphere of our brain. What does each brainside actually do? Chapter two of The Master and his Emissary gives a very extensive description of the differences between the two. One of the first subchapters is about different forms of attention. Which form of attention belongs […]

A few weeks ago I came across a blogpost about a book called The Master and his Emissary. The writer of that post thought the book was very important, maybe even the book of the century. In that same blogpost was a video with the writer of the book, Iain McGilchrist. I watched that video […]

In letter XXIV of his aesthetic letters, Schiller mentions three stages of development. He says there is a development that each individual, as well as the whole of humanity, has to go through. It is also a development that has to happen in a certain order. Each stage can be longer or shorter with each individual, […]

I was planning to write a post about ‘the medium between law and necessity’, another phrase in the aesthetic letters. But looking at the subject, I realised it was something I have been writing about again and again on this blog. Not using the same words, but the essence of those posts was mainly the […]

The previous post was about two different instincts, the sensuous and the formal instinct. Two instincts that are opposed and that make us struggle to integrate in our human nature. This is again a post about The Letters on Aesthetic Education of Man from Friedrich Schiller, like a few of my previous posts. I am […]

At the end of part two of the Letters on Aesthetics, Schiller talks about two opposite roads that depart us from our destination. He calls it false roads and says that only the beautiful can bring us back from this twofold departure. In the beginning of part three (letter 12) he talks about those two […]

Still reading the letters on aesthetic education, I tried to understand the beginning of part two. In that part, Schiller paints a picture of how the individual is blinded by the age in which he lives, the society in which he is born. But also about the struggle of that society itself. That has this […]

Being distracted by the art of language and the definition of art in my previous posts, I now continued reading Schiller’s Letters. At the end of part one, Schiller goes a long way to describe the influence of the culture on the individual. The individual who loses the contact with the whole. The inner union […]

Art is a difficult word to define. Wikipedia defines it as ‘a product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses, emotions and intellect’. It also says that the word art was traditionally used for skill or mastery, but later as an intention to stimulate thoughts and […]

I love it when suddenly things start to make sense, when thoughts come together. I was again reading the book On Creativity, because I was searching for the definition of some concepts. Those of creativity, aesthetics and art. All my previous posts about aesthetics point to the importance of those concepts as an essential step […]

So I started reading Schillers letters on aesthetic education. But it is not what I would call an easy read. If I was not determined to understand what he has to say, I would have already quit. But before I started reading from the beginning, I had a quick overview. And in that overview I got […]

Lately I am fascinated by the concept of aesthetics. What exactly does it mean? Is it subjective or objective? How important is it? I already wrote about the view of Kant, Adorno and Bohm in the posts Beauty is Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder and The Worldview of Aesthetics. And that of […]

Last week I saw another video of Ken Robinson. He had a TED-talk some years ago about how schools kill creativity, which I watched several times because I thought it was great. Well, he had another talk (Changing Paradigms) of which RSA made an animation. Which I also love, I really like to see a […]

Seeing the theme for this years Blogactionday made me think of a story in the book I was reading. The book, On Creativity, is about the importance of creativity. How we all have this inner desire to discover and create something new that is whole, harmonious and beautiful. It is not something rare, it does […]

Sometimes David Bohm says so much with one sentence, that I feel the need to take it a bit apart. It is a line in the first chapter of the book On Creativity. He describes how the mind tries to avoid contradictions. It is often too confusing or painful to stay with a certain problem, […]

Today I started reading the first chapter of the book On Creativity by David Bohm. I already wrote some posts about what struck me most in the preface of the book. And this first chapter made it even more fascinating. Many times, while reading, I wanted to go and write a post about it. But […]

This post is about another block to creativity, a block that prevents us from expressing the creativity that is present in each of us. Self-sustaining confusion of the mind. This not the usual confusion, the confusion we experience if we just don’t understand something from outside. Bohm, in On Creativity, says that this self-sustaining confusion […]

With my previous post I compared different views on aesthetics. It were the views, as I understood them, from Kant, Adorno and Bohm. But I did not compare their totality. Now that is too difficult for me to do, as I only have a very general understanding of each of their views. But even if […]

Creativity has to do with recognizing differences and similarities. Recognize patterns that have a certain appeal to us, patterns in which we see beauty. Now it is often said that beauty is subjective. That beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But according to David Bohm in On Creativity, beauty is not purely subjective. […]

Maybe I can better change the subtitle of this blog. Since reading the book Science, Order and Creativity, creativity seems to be the main focus of my blog. But while thinking about that, I realized it always was the main focus of my blog. Of all the blogging I did so far. My focus was […]

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Structure

Potential

Passive

Active

Two sides of one coin

Matter/Energy

Concepts/Information

Always together but not the same

The meaning of values

Transitions

Beneath the visible world

Values as transitions

So in summary (how I see it at this moment :)

Psycho-somatic

Soma-significance

Signa-somatic

A change of meaning is a change of being

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