Paul Schmitendorf flew off to Iceland last week to experience the “Midnight Sun” there, and he sent us these photos taken between 12:15 – 12:30 AM on June 15th!
Midnight Sun in Iceland 2015 PHOTO: Paul Schmitendorf
Iceland ponies around midnight June 2015 PHOTO: Paul Schmitendorf
Dam a river in one place, and the water will work its way into another, and break through it like a torrent. One of such universal aspirations, the strongest perhaps in man’s nature, is the longing to seek for the unknown; an ineradicable desire to penetrate below the surface of things, a thirst for the knowledge of that which is hidden from others. … The man in whom the metaphysical element is stronger than the physical, is propelled by this natural aspiration towards the mystical, to that which the materialist is pleased to call “superstitious belief in the supernatural.” The Church, while encouraging our aspirations after the holy—on strictly theological and orthodox lines, of course—condemns at the same time the human craving after the same, whenever the practical search after it departs from its own lines. … In the present age both Church and Science, the blindly-believing and the all-denying, are arrayed against the Secret Sciences, … ~H. P. Blavatsky
“Most of us are seekers of one type or another, or we were at some time in our lives. Babies are born with a natural curiosity and investigate every object, every sound, every taste, every texture. It is why they learn so rapidly (many don’t realize that we probably learn more in our first year of life than in four years of college). Some of us, fortunately, maintain that curiosity throughout all or our lives. Others seem to lose it rather quickly.
“There seems to be two main reasons why people lose that sense of curiosity: They feel that have learned all that is worth learning, or they got burned when too much curiosity applied incorrectly got them in trouble.”
< Read the entire blog online at spiritsun.net. >
by Harold Boulette
Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception—this ‘ordinary contemplation’ as the specialists call it—is possible to all men; without it, hey are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. ~Evelyn Underhill
“Underhill is trying to tell us that mysticism, or spiritual development if you prefer, is not something reserved for a few living in mountaintop monasteries. It is practical and it is for everyone, or just about everyone. Underhill also points out that we need to train our latent faculties. We can’t just declare ourselves saved or reborn. We can’t just join a church and put money in the collection basket and declare ourselves enlightened and saved. We can’t just join a Spirits Is Us group on Facebook or Twitter (I’ve noticed recently that the subjects discussed n many such group pages have absolutely nothing to do with spirituality!) and declare ourselves mystics. That works just about as well as reading a diet book and expecting that alone will make us lose weight or buying a scalpel and declaring that we are now surgeons! Ms. Underhill also tells us that we need to do this now, while we are still on the material plane, because we are not full conscious, fully alive until we have awakened those spiritual faculties.”
< Read the entire blog online at spiritsun.net. >
by Harold Boulette
Week 12
This presentation by Alok Jha, a correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardian, is a summary discussion with some elements from previous weeks. This panel discussion is novel, as the second half of the presentation entertains questions from an audience that is highly informed and educated in the subject at hand.
In this final segment, I would like to point out an affect that may not be conspicuous. If you have gone through each week of this Tour and made time for each citation, you may have noticed that: the presenters have a passion, a confidence, an eloquence for speech, and a well-honed knowledge of their subject matter. Simply exposing yourself to the abundance of these exuberances will raise the standard by which you relay any information for which you have a passion.
Alok Jha, “Consciousness: The Hard Problem?,” panel discussion, published March 20, 2013: 63 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Z3dR2BSyc&index=38&list=PLbnrZHfNEDZz256ho3Q4gt7YrF2xApo5g
Or on Vimeo:
The following link is to a written document by Karl Simanonok as I could find no video on the subject:
Karl Simanonok, “Endogenous Light Nexis Theory of Consciousness,” September 2000; updated November 2008.
by Michael McIntyre
Think of Intuition Age attention as something that fills the present moment fully, encompassing the entirety of your sphere. It allows you to perceive any amount of time and space, any frequency or dimension, and any depth of understanding you need. Your attention matches the scope of your sphere and bring you the understanding of a complex pattern of information all at once via direct knowing.
With spherical-holographic perception, everything you need to know is with you already. … You aren’t in a hurry because there is no future to reach, in which you will know more, so cramming multiple activities into one moment to know more, faster, seems silly—an artifact of a less dimensional era. ~Penney Peirce
“Whether you call it the Enlightened Age, the New Golden Age, or the Intuition Age, the new age that is coming, that is already dawning, is definitely an age or greater knowledge. But for those who are now overwhelmed by the overload of data modern technology has brought us, data that often has only a little knowledge buried within it, the good news is that won’t be a problem in this new age.”
< Read the entire blog online at spiritsun.net. >
by Harold Boulette
Week 11
This week’s presentations are by Cristof Koch, a neuroscience researcher and professor who has taught in Zurich, Jerusalem, Seoul, and currently works at Cal Tech. He also held a position at MIT for four years, and in 2013 spent a week with the Dali Lama.
Cristof had a long-term relationship with Francis Crick, who won the Nobel Prize as codiscoverer of DNA. Together, in a father-son type friendship, the two men investigated “consciousness” for over two decades. The pair was so close that on the last day of Crick’s life, as he lay bedridden in a hospital, he hallucinated that he was in conversation with Koch on their recent work. Cristof once remarked on that episode, with tears in his eyes, struggling to contain his emotions, “[Crick] was a scientist to the very end.”
In his book Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist, Koch writes, “Consciousness is a fundamental, an elemental, property of living matter.” Like Susan Greenfield (see week 9), Koch is a fast-paced speaker. So, there are two talks, similar in nature, with the second talk delving into more detail. Among other ideas, Koch speaks about the work of Giulio Tononi and his theory of integrated information and at 29:28 in the first lecture Koch remarks, “So, essentially each of your experiences, ultimately, in this theory is sort of, um, this geo-trope, this high-dimensional poly-trope in a very, very, high dimensional space. The theory says, ultimately, this equity is; this is the essence of consciousness.”
The Neurobiology of Mathematics of Consciousness, Cristof Koch, Oct 24 2011: 58 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i9kE3Ne7as
The Integrated information theory of consciousness; Christof Koch, Oct 4 2014: 1 hour 17 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGd8p-GSLgY
Roger N. Shepard could be considered the Isaac Newton of Cognitive Science. Unlike many scientists he finds it useful to employ geometric explanations rather than calculus. It was not usual for him to have hypnopompic (semi-dream state) visions of geometric forms. I could find no videos concerning his work. The article is based on a talk he gave in 2002, and is technical at times but worth the read.
How a cognitive psychologist came to seek universal laws; Roger N. Shepard, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review February 2004, Volume 11, Issue 1, pp 1-23, an article based on the keynote address presented at the November 2002 meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Kansas City.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03206455#page-1
by Michael McIntyre
< WEEK 12 >
If the base of a felled tree that has grown old in earth and rock “will bud at the scent of water … like a young plant” (Job 14:9), it is also possible for us to be awakened by the power of the Holy Spirit and to flower with the incorruptibility that is ours by nature, bearing fruit like a young plant, even though we have fallen into sin. Sometimes our soul grows despondent at the huge swarm of its sins and temptations, and says, ‘Our hope is gone and we are lost’ (Ezek. 37:11.LXX). Yet God, who does not despair of our salvation, says to us: ‘you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord’ (Ezek. 37:6). To the soul that doubts how it can ever give birth to Christ through great acts of holiness, these words are said: “The Holy Spirit shall come upon you” (Luke 1:35). ~The Philokalia
“I once cut down a tree in the back yard of the house where I was living in Virginia. There were just too many trees there and that one didn’t seem to be getting much sunlight. But after I cut it down, it quickly started to regrow sending out new shoots from the top of the stump. I decided if it was that determined to grow, I should leave it do so.
“During a drought, trees in some places may dry up and die and fall over. Other may be knocked over by hurricanes and tornadoes or burned down in forest fires. Yet when the conditions are better, some of them will grow again. In desert areas, some flowers and plants have adapted to the environment to the extent that they can become dormant for several years if necessary, then grow green, blossom, and produce seeds in a matter of a few days, or even hours when a rare rain occurs.
“Some people become spiritual at a fairly young age, and that is just fine. Others, however, do not see the value of it until they are in their fifties, sixties, or even older.”
< Read the entire blog online at spiritsun.net. >
by Harold Boulette
Week 10
In week 10 we hear from Stuart Hameroff, who along with his partner, has developed a testable model for measuring consciousness as “qubits,” which when collapsed by a quantum gravity event can trigger tiny proteins within a neuron. They call the model Orch OR. These proteins have a digital processing characteristic that imprint thousands of engrams within the neuron; collectively, millions of these engram events have the potential to translate the “quantum wave of consciousness” into a collective neural episode, which becomes the physiological representation of “a thought.” This week’s videos present some of the work of Hameroff and Nobel-Prize candidate Richard Penrose, who together developed the Orch OR model. Hameroff is an anesthesiologist. Penrose is a British mathematician. The following are some excerpts from an article posted on Science 2.0 on February 2, 2014, concerning the Hameroff/ Penrose Orch-OR model:
“The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?” ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review. “This opens a potential Pandora’s Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, ‘proto-conscious’ quantum structure of reality.”
“The evidence now clearly supports Orch OR,” they claim. “Our new paper updates the evidence, clarifies Orch OR quantum bits, or “qubits,” as helical pathways in microtubule lattices, rebuts critics, and reviews 20 testable predictions of Orch OR published in 1998—of these, six are confirmed and none refuted.”
Stuart Hameroff, “Fractal Consciousness and Orch OR,” University of Arizona Consciousness, February 17, 2013: 62 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp20eWejD6Q
Stuart Hameroff, “How Does the Brain Produce Consciousness?” Psychiatry Grand Rounds, January 8, 2003; posted on June 4, 2011: 58 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb-5Pb9qmPE
by Michael McIntyre
< WEEK 11 >
“With spherical-holographic perception, measuring attention isn’t important. You’re more interested in being responsive to the Flow … You don’t need to focus a long time since full awareness occurs in each moment. Therefore, you don’t need to use intention. … With spherical-holographic attention, you notice an idea you want to understand or materialize without having to attach special force to it. Instead of the hard focus of intent, you simply “be with” the idea softly. … When an idea is on your wavelength, it remains alive in your field without you having to grip it to keep it in place. … With a softer, more expansive focus, you notice that your personal field itself is paying attention, that your soul is continually paying attention to creating your reality in the best possible way.” ~Penney Peirce
“You often see horses and donkeys wearing blinders, especially in urban areas. This is intended to keep the animal focused on the path in front of him and not get distracted or frightened by things off to the side. This may be a useful thing to do with these animals under the conditions found in a crowded city as long as there is someone controlling them who is not wearing blinders. Otherwise, the horse may be heading forward blissfully unaware that a runaway car is approaching from the side and about to hit him!
“The same is true of people who wear blinders. Of course, the blinders we wear are not so literal and not so obvious, but they are just as effective and just as dangerous.”
< Read the entire blog online at spiritsun.net. >
by Harold Boulette
Much of the information concerning the rituals of the higher degrees of the Egyptian Mysteries have been gleaned from an examination of the chambers and passageways in which the initiations were given. … Labyrinths were also a striking feature in connection with the Rites of Serapis, and E. A. Wallis Budge, in his Gods of the Egyptians, depicts Serapis (Minotaur-like) with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Labyrinths were symbolic of the involvements and illusions of the lower world through which wanders the soul of man in it’s search for truth. In the labyrinth dwells the lower animal man with the head of the bull, who seeks to destroy the soul entangled in the maze of worldly ignorance. In this relation Serapis becomes the Tryer or Adversary who tests the souls of those seeking union with the immortals.
The Gnostic Mysteries were acquainted with the arcane meaning of Serapis, and through the medium of Gnosticism, this god became inextricably associated with early Christianity. ~Manly P. Hall
“Most of us are familiar with walking a labyrinth as a religious of spiritual ceremony intended to help one awaken spiritual faculties, or to understand the spirit world better, but I have never heard an explanation of this that made much sense to me until I read this one.”
< Read the entire blog online at spiritsun.net. >
by Harold Boulette