Tag Archives: Consciousness

Be Indomitable

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Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, November 8, 2024.
Created February 16, 2024

Being indomitable is consciously favoring the approach mode.

The day my mother died, Jewish customs would have been for the whole family to do nothing else but “sit shivvah” for several days. Therefore, they were shocked when my father, MC and orchestra leader in a big NYC nightclub, went to work that night. His eyes briefly met mine, and without his having to say it out loud, his eyes told me what they had both always taught me about moments like these. The show must go on.

In moment-to-moment living, we each have our ups and downs. It occurs to some of us that we are being dominated by the inputs we receive from moment to moment, without having the ability to resist the invisible strings on our puppet selves being pulled by outside forces, and this stiffens our resolve to not be jerked around by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We then go inside to find or to build the control systems that will make us each master of our own self, impervious to outside control by anyone and anything.

This discovery of one’s inner abilities to overcome one’s own negative emotions and not to be excessively carried away by one’s own positive emotions goes back long before spoken or written language, long before humans were able to clarify the processes involved enough to pass along how-to instructions. One of the earliest schools of philosophy on record is stoicism. This philosophy was all about understanding and inculcating these control abilities in human beings. Epictetus, in my estimation the greatest stoic philosopher of them all, was born as a slave. Enslavement gave him a fertile ground of unhappiness to deal with, and instead of caving into a life of misery, he faced squarely up to his situation and found out how he could modify his reactions to that situation. His book The Enchiridion, when I first discovered it as a teenager, blew my mind because stuff I had been working on within myself had actually existed before.

The need to become more fatalistic and resilient may not be greater than ever before in human hisandherstory but it is certainly much greater now than ever before in my lifetime. I need not list the litany of threat vectors currently present on our dance card. Possibly the one that is most disheartening is the attitude of young people who feel they have been gypped, and those who feel that way do so, not without good reason. The world needs a lot of fixing and we are just the species that can do that fixing in the highest and most heroic manner. Soon there will be a realization of a need to shift into that mindset, rising to the challenge. As we did, as a species, in WWII. That same right stuff still resides within us. It’s time to call upon it, to draw it out, to become the indomitable selves that we are and have always been. It’s what we are here to learn how to do, and to demonstrate that we have learned it. Then perhaps we can graduate to the next classroom.

I find it very interesting to learn from latest neuroscience the underlying computational functions of the brain. My special interest comes from a lifetime of introspection with concentration in which I have always attempted to understand how I make decisions and to improve upon the methods I observe myself using. Now in the light of current neuroscience I can link up my experiential evidence with the revelations of fMRI and EEG. For example, Richy Davidson, one of my many neuroscientist mentors, back in the 1980s when we had a company together, discovered that emotional valence could be measured based upon asymmetrical energy use in the left and right lobes of the frontal cortex, a method that is still prominent today. In the brain, this valence is understood to be based on the concept of approach versus avoidance. Positive emotion comes along with approach, whereas negative emotion is part of avoidance.

Being indomitable is consciously favoring the approach mode.
Stepping forward to engage with the challenges.
Fixing rather than worrying.

One cannot simply decide to do this, and then it is done. The effort involved is primarily one of self-discipline. This is hardest in the beginning and then becomes easier and easier with practice.

Whatever we choose to focus on internally becomes a stronger force in our lives.

When one is thrown into the pool as a babe, one swims, and instinctively swims with the current if there is one. Given little time to think the modern child is rushed into play with other children, sports and then studies, with daily doses of media, creating masses of questions and thoughts from all these impressions. Processing time to contemplate all of this is not built into the daily regime of our culture yet. In a subtle and generally unnoticed way, the child proceeding into adulthood adopts a somewhat defensive coping lens as the main way of thinking. What could go wrong, fear, plans to deal with feared situations, doing this planning in snatches between externally assigned priorities which must be coped with moment to moment.

The most dangerous aspect of this condition is that if a person spends most of their time focused on what could go wrong, they are actually mentally rehearsing for those things to go wrong. To repeat, whatever we choose to focus on internally becomes a stronger force in our lives. If we are focusing on the downside scenarios we are increasing the probabilities of those scenarios occurring.

How does this happen? There is a continuum of explanations, schools of thought. Physicalists (believers in materialistic accidentalism) may admit that this occurs but insist that it is because the individual is giving off micromomentary signals which telegraph their fears in a way that provokes others to manipulate them, all on an unconscious level. Two of our greatest physicists of all time, Wheeler and Hawking, posit what Wheeler named the Participatory Anthropic Principle, by which our consciousness helps cause reality. This theory rests on Wheeler’s theory that underlying what we dub as physical (“its”) are “bits” of information, and that both consciousness and matter/energy are therefore reducible to information, out of which everything is made. This is a short step away from my theory that a single self-aware consciousness is where all this information resides.

In both versions of reality, physicalism and cosmopsychism, there is adequate support for the true existence of the programming of reality by the thoughts and feelings of the individual. However one explains it, it is there, and ignoring it and giving in to wallowing in pessimism, what we might call brain avoidance rather than brain approach, is self-sabotaging.

So here we all are as a species wallowing in pessimism. Remaining this way cannot have a happy ending. The stoic response to this situation is to unlock concern about the probable bad landing ahead, to fatalistically accept it could easily happen, but to make oneself focus courageously on bringing about the happy landing anyway. Once understanding the way the feedback loop works, this is the only sane response, taking active conscious control of where the mind is allowed to go.

Realism requires that a small allocation of time is spent on making contingency plans for how to avoid the undesired outcome, and how to deal with it should it occur, so long as first and last the mind is mentally rehearsing and pre-experiencing the desired future of the individual. Meaning that contingency planning should be done seriously and carefully but not dwelt upon, instead gotten over with, so as to resume consciously telling the universe the way the movie happy ending is to be for oneself.

Chemicals and electrical trickery is used within the brain and body which makes it hard to get out of bad moods such as fear, anxiety, grief, resentment, and so on. It helps me to realize that the sodium pentothal and other psychometric drugs used to interrogate and brainwash are the same sorts of chemical agents my own brain whips up to give me these overwhelming feelings that dissolve my ability to focus on fixing. Knowing this enables me to see my brain as trying to force me into feeling certain ways I know to be against my best interests, and gives me the gumption to force back those feelings.

“Yes, that could happen, but why do I care so much?”

“Yes, that could happen, and I’ve prepared myself to deal with it if it does happen, including not showing it’s gotten to me, but meanwhile, I might as well enjoy every second to the max, and it may never happen and I may get away with it to the very end.”

“Or if it eventually does happen, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I had fun without fear for such a long time, I got away with all of that, and so if it all ends badly at least I will know that I did what was right, what was good, and I can authentically admire myself for it.”

Self-admiration is a much healthier thing to experience than pride. Pride is not self-admiration because it goes too far and mixes it with vanity. This is caused by the needy defensive stance of the ego which is the sense of not having caught up with integrating all the clashing parts of myself (integrity).

There are other practical ways one can increase the ability to remain in the approach mode. Time alone especially in nature, paying attention internally, seeing the good, counting the blessings, seeing the beauty all around, remembering all the good in people, being grateful, opening the mind to all possibilities, recapturing the awe and wonder of existing as a consciousness in a vast universe, realizing the wellsprings of creativity inside which can be tapped to solve anything, remembering all of the love one has for this person and that thing, and understanding the scientific possibility that we are all one benevolent loving self, manifesting as many for the fun and learning. All of these are powerful inhibitors of the avoidance reaction.

You may still decide to avoid certain things that you conclude just bring you down, but you will do so indomitably rather than fearfully. You will find a smile on your face when you look in the mirror rather than a grim visage. Your sunny disposition will draw and uplift other people making it faster for this wave of indomitability to ripple out across the pond until herd immunity to fear and pessimism has been achieved.

Each of us shall then be a mensch.

Love to all,
Bill

Superfluous Superstructure of the Self

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June 7, 2024
Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog

We all pay some attention to our inner lives. But for some of us this means sustained micro-observation and for most of us it is occasional flashes in between slavish addiction to the endless rushes of information coming in through our five fascinating physical senses.

This tsunami of infobits roaring in has itself escalated over time, causing even more outward focus.

But even 2500 years ago, Aristotle made the same observation, commenting that the unobserved life is not worth living. He was trying to get more people to turn inward. His teacher’s teacher Socrates had started the whole thing by his exhortation “Know Thyself”. (Socrates had inspired Plato with whom Aristotle studied.)

The greatest philosophers and psychologists of all time were all practiced at inner micro-observation. This was especially true in ancient India, and for example, metacognition is at the core of Buddha’s teachings. In the modern era this includes William James, perhaps the best of them all at concentrated introspection, as well as Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Abraham Maslow. Freud however was more of a rationalist, deducing things logically, whereas Jung was more of an intuitionist, taking the original feelings arising in his cognition without embellishing them with rational overlays as much as Freud did.

A long time ago by introspection I realized that thoughts do not arise as thoughts but as feelings, and then the cognitive affective processes embellish those feelings with attributed meanings, interpretations, often involving images, metaphors, and words, at which point they are truly what we all call thoughts.

This has recently been discovered by science, decades and millennia after the same insight was available to each of us by micro-inner-observation.

It will help you attain metacognition to imagine that your inner space has a map. At the pure core of your being imagine that you have a center, something like an energy or a gas, that you can sense. In higher states of consciousness such as the spiritual level of Flow state you can see this self of yours as light, often bluish. Most of the time you can only feel it.

Imagine now in this map that there is another part of yourself that you yourself have built over time, a superstructure that is overlaid on top of the central sphere of your selfness. Suspend disbelief for the sake of argument, and for the moment consider my theory that this part of you is akin to an artificial intelligence (AI) that has a physical underpinning of neurons and their interconnections in your brain and nervous system, specific neurons and interconnections which were caused by your experiences, especially where there were degrees of emotion and assimilated “learning”. The word “learning” is in quotes because much of this was mis-learning.

The entire superstructure taken together corresponds to what Freud termed the Ego.

This superstructure uses a substantial part of your mental energy but the return on that energy investment tends to be negative. The expenditure of this incremental cognitive load tends to do you a lot more harm than good.

Freud said that this appurtenance was called into being when the baby first experiences frustration at not getting what it wants or needs. It functions as the security officer (Worf in Star Trek) and press agent, business manager, negotiation agent, sales rep for what Freud called the Id, and I refer to above as your core beingness.

The reason I say Freud was more of a rationalist is that when I introspect into my Id or core essence self I do not find the animal selfishness and limitation to hardwired instinct that Freud said I would find there. Instead I find a happy lightness of being that is not needy but is caring and fascinated.

Try this experiment and I feel that you will totally get what I’m saying and can add it to your personal strength arsenal.

  • Take your place in your core, the pure witness, the observer.
  • From that vantage point, simply observe the feelings that arise in your superstructure.
  • You will sense the apparent duality in you at that point, probably a realization of your own indifference and yet interest in these ego feelings.
  • This higher feeling is the most important key to metacognition.

You may have experienced this many times in your life, and it may have come about by temporarily hitting bottom. When you have been pushed around by life and have not seen the lesson the universe intended, you may in your frustration, resentment and rage just say to yourself that you give up, you just don’t care anymore.

When this happened to Bucky Fuller – heartbroken by unrequited love – he decided to commit suicide. Once he did that he was in his core self, looking at all of the superstructural self he had built, disillusioned in a good way by all that stuff, having just given it all up. He now discovered no reason to end his life, for a new better version of it was just beginning. He then became the Bucky Fuller genius we all remember.

You can practice this core self-perspective any time you want, for a few seconds or minutes or extended periods, even continuously for the rest of your life.

The essence of the feeling is that you are above all the nigglings in your superstructure. It’s only habit which has made you so vulnerable to those sudden feelings of worthlessness, fear, anxiety, defeatism, hatred, envy, resentment, and so on which have become automatic and super powerful.

Habits reinforced by hundreds of thousands of repetitions in your life do not pack up and go away right away. They will sometimes come back and even overpower you sometimes. But once you have learned to identify with your core and not your superstructure you are on the high road to true freedom. Keep practicing this Observer state and you cannot lose.

My best to all,
Bill

 

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Interconnectedness

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May 31, 2024
Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog

God bless Jerry Zaltman. In my May 17th blog post, I reported that Harvard’s pioneer neuroscientist who introduced the field of subconscious measurement by his creation of the patented ZMET system, is joining with me in a project to introduce methods in schools for thinking more constructively, objectively, clearly, and creatively. In laying the groundwork for this project, Jerry is finding that others are already moving in the same direction, which is inspiring.

Today I received notice from Jerry of a new paper in the Journal of Education for Business  – Mental health among college students: Relationships with Actively Open-Minded Thinking, Spirituality, and Psychological Wellbeing – by educators at two US state universities, Arkansas and Idaho, which proves that:

“Mental health, like many other physical diseases, can contribute to a significant loss of output in our economy. Higher education institutes can play a significant role in enhancing the mental wellbeing of college students. In support of this endeavor, this research investigates how actively open-minded thinking (AOT) and spirituality (SP) relate to psychological wellbeing (PWB). Data revealed that both AOT and SP have a positive impact on most dimensions of PWB and in some instances, SP acts as a moderator. Our study highlights the importance of SP in the PWB of college students.”

One might wonder how spirituality being taught in public and state schools jibes with the separation of church and state. This paper however addresses spirituality at its core essence as a feeling and as a concept of interconnectedness. The spiritual feeling an individual has is that person’s sense of being connected with others, and possibly even with the universe itself. The Founders who insisted on freedom of religion would probably not deny the teaching of this concept and the feelings that surround it.

In the paper, the authors compare spirituality in this meaning to holistic thinking, starting from the big picture of how a specific subject is connected with other subjects, before drilling down to a micro level within that subject of interest. In this they consciously align with what they call the Eastern philosophical approach, contrasting it with the Western approach of starting from the micro level and studying a subject and possibly never getting to seeing the connections between that subject and all other subjects.

Back in the 70s, someone came up with the idea of adding one more level to Piaget’s model of the evolution of human cognitive processes, Systems Stage, which would appear above Formal Operational Stage in the model. This is where holistic thinking comes in, seeing everything as part of a single interconnected whole.

Prior to that the term “Systems Thinking” was coined by Professor Jay Forrester in 1956 when he founded the Systems Dynamic Group at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

The idea that we are all interconnected was reintroduced in a new way in the modern era by one of Piaget’s influencers, Carl Gustav Jung, who published the idea of the Collective Unconscious in 1916.

Today in the Standard Interpretation of Quantum Physics it is recognized that particles become entangled by association with one another and after that they are able to share information instantaneously regardless of the distance they are apart.

This lays the groundwork for physics to one day include the entanglements of consciousness as part of its quantum entanglement theory. John Wheeler has already established a framework for including consciousness in the quantum physics model, called the Participatory Anthropic Principle (1983), which Stephen Hawking referenced and tacitly endorsed in his final book.

This Principle explains that consciousness, which observes, transforms non-determined probability waves into concrete realities by its act of observation. In my book A Theory of Everything Including Consciousness and “God”, I carry Einstein’s, Wheeler’s, and Hawkings’ ideas further by speculating that a single consciousness is all that exists, and that one of the ways it operates is to “look out from” a multitude of apparent selves (all of us including everything in the universe), and that Wheeler’s Quantum Foam is the substance of that Original Consciousness.

Science consists of theory and experimentation. Experimentation is the way that theories are proven, altered, or disproven. One wonders what sorts of experiments could be run in order to study the relationship of consciousness to quantum physics.

Another brilliant neuroscientist and perhaps the first of the neurophysicists, Dr. Richard Silberstein, is the first to carry out experimentation into the possible quantum entanglement of consciousness.

Science Explores Telepathy from a New Angle

Robert A. Heinlein wrote many great books, one of which is called Time for The Stars. The story is about achieving interstellar travel but needing a way to stay in touch with Earth, a method that is not limited to the speed of light, because when traveling light years away, messages would take years to go back and forth, which is not conducive to providing learning to the people at home.

In the story, the solution found is that some identical twins are able to telepathically communicate with each other, and that these messages happen instantaneously regardless of distance.

My great friend and highly respected neuroscientist, Dr. Richard Silberstein, never read that Heinlein novel. But he got the same idea. He read scientific papers which led him to have the idea. Having invented and patented an improved brain measurement system (steady state tomography, SST) he applied that method (commercially available through the company that Richard founded, Neuro-Insight) to conduct an experiment with monozygotic (MZ, coming from a single egg, “identical”) human twins.

The experiment was written up in the respected neuroscience journal Frontiers in Neuroscience paper published about a month ago.  There is now strong statistical evidence that information was transmitted mind to mind in a significant number of cases within the design.

If and when science was to announce that telepathy is real, that too could have a potentially positive impact on the moods and emotions of the masses.

It would say —

We can be more than we think we can be.

Here’s a ten-minute video piece on Connectedness: Sanity Is an Acquired Taste: Connectedness

My best to all,
Bill

 

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An Interview with Bill Harvey about his latest novel:
THE GREAT BEING

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Created May 2, 2024
Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.

I’m sharing my IndieReader interview with you, my Pebbles readers, as it reveals the motivations behind my latest book, The Great Being, and the other books in the Agents of Cosmic Intelligence series. My editor says The Great Being is my best novel so far and reviewers seem to agree, with IndieReader giving it 4.2 stars and including it in their “Best Books of the Month” listing for April.

“FOLLOW YOUR INTUITION AND DON’T EDIT UNTIL LATER.
LET IT FLOW AND ENJOY THE PROCESS.” — Bill

indie Reader Approved s
The Great Being received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.

Below you will find IndieReader’s full interview with me.

“What is the name of the book and when was it published?
The Great Being. March 1, 2024

What’s the book’s first line?
[Circa 14 Billion BCE]

The Nothingness felt surprise upon realizing itself.

What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
The Great Being combines science fiction and alternative history to tell a story about how the universe might have started, with a single Consciousness, and how that Consciousness could have created all of us out of Itself.

Episode 1 in the Agents of Cosmic Intelligence series, The Great Being chronicles from the beginning of the Multiverse through Melchizedek’s teaching of Abraham. A Great Rebellion is going on in Heaven and therefore throughout the Universe, all of which is a single Mind at play. The Rebels have taken their final stand on Earth. Two Agents of Cosmic Intelligence, Melchizedek and Layla, are dispatched to infiltrate the Rebels on Earth. However, the Rebels have interfered with evolution on Earth, so that the human brains the Agents step into suppress knowledge of their true identities. They lose track of their Mission, getting sidetracked into identifying with the human bodies they inhabit while on Earth.

What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?

I had a sense of spiritual realization that came about as a result of a long history of amazing hunches in my life—which helped me innovate and invent things, get patents and an Emmy and other awards—and people often called me a media visionary and a futurist. I felt very strongly a desire to share my potentially scientific and perhaps accurate view of reality. I wrote nonfiction books and articles about it, and then I decided to create a series of novels, which in my dreams will become movies someday. The Great Being is where the whole saga of the series Agents of Cosmic Intelligence begins.

What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?

I hope it’s for their enjoyment and possibly the expansion of their consciousness in that they sense the story might be a clue as to what is actually going on here on Earth. Ideally, they’ll feel a new excitement about life, which I have felt ever since realizing that we might all be a single Consciousness.

What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who—real or fictional—would you say the character reminds you of?

The main character starts out as The Great Being, HisandHerSelf. Then the storyline follows two of the avatars created by The Great Being, Melchizedek and Layla. The most distinctive thing about The Great Being is that HeSheUs is, for all intents and purposes, God, and has the familiar Godlike qualities of love, compassion, honesty, egolessness, nobility, and nurturing. The most distinctive thing about Melchizedek is, to me, his humility, despite being one of the very first avatars in the universe. The most distinctive thing about Layla is that she is extremely playful for a genius—kind of reminds me of Einstein in that way.

When did you first decide to become an author?

At four years old, I wrote a vignette about a man who invents an injection that can transfer his consciousness into other things. He finds himself in the body of the cat and has to jump on the hypodermic needle to get out of the cat. He moves his consciousness into various things and eventually becomes the planet Earth itself. The second trumpet player in my father’s orchestra told me I was destined to be a writer, which was the first thing anyone told me about my future that made me happy. I decided to become that thing, whatever it meant, wherever it would take me.

Mind Magic: 1st edition cover

Is this the first book you’ve written?

I’ve been writing my ideas and drafts for books since I was sixteen. I published my first book, Mind Magic: The Science of Microcosmology (original subtitle), in 1976. I now have seven books published, four fiction and three nonfiction.

 

 

What do you do for work when you’re not writing?

I’m a media research consultant, well-known in the industry.

How much time do you generally spend on your writing?

Not enough, probably about 30 hours a week. Some of that is business writing. Each year, I plan to spend more time writing, and I am following that plan.

What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?

The best part is having total control of the content (with my trusted editor) and cover design. The hardest part is getting into bookstores.

What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?

Follow your intuition and don’t edit until later. Let it flow and enjoy the process. Don’t have any expectations as to making money or becoming famous, do the writing for its own sake because it expresses who you are. Stendahl had been dead a hundred years before he was discovered and added to the list of the world’s greatest novelists.

Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?

To get into bookstores—but it would largely depend on the publisher and their vision for my work.

Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)

Helping people see the upside possibilities for their own lives, not just the downside ones.

Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?

William Shakespeare.

Which book do you wish you could have written?

Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Trilogy. Neal lists Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Thomas Pynchon as among his influencers, and they are also among mine. My list also includes F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert A. Heinlein, and many other amazing writers and thinkers too numerous to mention.“

You can read a free chapter, read reviews, and more when you visit 
THE GREAT BEING webpage.

All my best,
Bill

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