dharma blues

Eluding Consciousness

zakoops — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:19:00 +0000

Some hard-core scientists want you to believe that the notion of being conscious is pure trickery from a sophisticated network of synapses and firing neurons that produce thought. From a materialist’s perspective, we are essentially our own pattern of firing neurons. You probably know that research is carried on with fever and argumentative competition in this quest for the Holy Grail.

Alas, if we stand back a little, we are witnessing here the elimination of humanity’s hope, salvation and freedom. Resting upon the still smoking ruins of beliefs, morals and joys, you have some nobelists and guests clinking their glasses, and patting themselves on the back for having destroyed the enchantment of the world. And after that, those people —you and me included— will be thrown into garbage bins like old computers. Amen.

Hello Houston, tumultuous dharma approaching here!

Rescue on the way

Like eager kids wrestling for the last few kernels of popcorn while glued to the screen, confidence is building up that an happy ending may still be conceivable in this historical odyssey.

With the demeanor of old faithfull Doc Brown, some physicists and philosophers do believe that these ongoing materialistic inquisitions are paving the way to a dead end. For be asssured that decoding the very source of consciousness is yet on the to-do list of those Dr. Strangelove’s pundits.

A layman’s view of the arguments made known by materialists are listed below:

Hard-core materialists’ dogmas:

The immaterial character of the mind is denied
Most of the mysteries of the mind are reducible to biochemical mechanisms
According to some, specific neurons do subserve consciousness
There is no homunculus of a self sitting in the theater of the brain and observing, or even directing, the ongoing show [1]
Consciousness is like hardware

You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. [2]

This is what I’ve meant over the years when I’ve said that the brain is a syntactic engine mimicking a semantic engine. [3]

Behind the wall of illusion

As science made its headway in modernity, it became increasily clear that the elementary components of the material universe were much smaller than the atoms prefigured by the Indian and Greek philosophers of the past.

Ironically, the word atom derives from the Greek átomos for uncuttable, something that cannot be divided further. But as of today, we know that:

an atom is made of a positive nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negative electrons
the nucleus is made of positively charged protons, and neutrally charged neutrons
protons and neutrons are composed of even smaller particles called quarks
…and these quarks could be strings —provided the String Theory is correct
basically, the whole universe would be made of vibrating strings that can be closed, like loops, or open, like a hair
most peculiar, String Theory entails a space-time that has at least ten dimensions

The following illustration (a modified version of the work of MissMJ) sums up the different levels of magnification of matter:

To that point, we’re not even sure if strings are material. The further we go down in physical reality, the more things appear evanescent and seem, ultimately, to consist of nonmaterial information. At the small end of this spectrum, we enter a sea of microscopic weirdness, warps and ripples of abstract objects. This is not science-fiction but the very edge of real science.

While I’m not a scientist, it feels obvious to me that this rarefaction of matter points to an emptiness quite evocative of the central Buddhist philosophy. For such emptiness is not a nihilistic view of the world but a vibrant fabric of potentialities, not alike the world presented by quantum mechanics.

Hard-core scientists may get what they want — but they may not want what they get. That is, confronted with a wall of complexity that may take many years or decades to decipher, they could discover that consciousness is the very fabric of the whole universe! In a top-down fashion, they could realize that it’s from consciousness that the physical universe emerges.

Many soft-core scientists and humanists have close affinity with that view and do support such an approach that reconciles our dignity with hard facts. At stake in this epic showdown:

Humanists’ dogmas:

Fully embracing quantum physics means that we accept that the observer affects that which is observed. This also implies accepting that everything exists as superpositions of waves of probabilities until observed, that the universe is non local and that we are not separate from our environment.
Also, consciousness is not simply the result of underlying brain activities but an interactive event where intention and attention of the observing mind also have effects on the brain
Consciousness may be the interface between the quantum fabric of the universe and the Newtonian mechanics (classical physical world)
To some extent, German Idealism (philosophical movement of the 18th and 19th centuries) views the attributes we find in things around us as the result of our observing act (how they appear to us) and not as fixed attributes in an outside objective world.
Information embedded at the Plank scale would be the fundamental level of the universe
Quantum physics has essentially demolished material realism through overwhelming evidence

Reconciling traditional belief systems with the above points becomes, suddenly, a funny adventure where the main ideas and concepts of established religions converge to the same ultimate reality; missing puzzle pieces being, quite often, the artefacts of obsolete mythologies still entrenched in those religions.

On that fondamental conscious fabric of the universe, intuition tells me that the ultimate ground of being would then be an omniscient and everlasting energy.

But omniscient entails a connotation of a personal god. But again if I can enjoy personal relationships on a meaningful and emotional basis with my family and friends, I suspect I can enjoy at least the same kind of relationship with that ultimate ground of being. But that’s an introspection for a further post where pantheism and panentheism could be analysed.

Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. [4]

Refresher course

Emerging intuition of the psychedelia did provide some clues as to our relation with the cosmos. The following is presented as a refresher course of insights glimpsed through meditation techniques practiced for millennia…

…and life flows on within you and without you

References

1: Dennett, Daniel (1991), Consciousness Explained, retrieved on December 31, 2008.
2: Crick, Francis (1994), The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search For The Soul. Scribner reprint edition. 1995. ISBN 0-684-80158-2.
3: Dennett, Daniel (2006), who is cited in Jay Tolson’s article “Is There Room for the Soul?” posted 2006-10-15, U.S.News.com. Retrieved on December 31, 2008.
4: Chalmers, David J. (1995), Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, (Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1995, pages 200-219), retrieved on December 31, 2008.

——

All things must pass

zakoops — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:11:56 +0000

In the words of George Harrison:

Krishna said « There’s no time when we did not exist and there will be no time when we cease to exist »

The only thing that changes is the body.

Our soul will stay in our other astral body.

Hierarchical Keyword Madness in Digital Photos

zakoops — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:12:26 +0000

Context

Digital Asset Management (DAM) is becoming a hot topics these days. When you’re having thousands of photos on your system and that you want tagging your souvenirs, you wish to do that once as it is quite a tedious job.

But you do not necessarily want a large bunch of tags for the same reason that having a lot of sister folders on your system does not help. More probably, you will want to nest these folders in an orderly manner.

For instance, instead of having your photos tagged as « Maricler, California, San Francisco, trees, streets and sidewalks », you may want instead having:

people
   Maricler
USA
   California
      San Francisco
      Los Angeles
      Santa Barbara
nature
   trees
city
   streets and sidewalks

Tools

In the realm of digital photos, some popular applications that enable photo tagging are:

Picasa 2.7
Picasa 3 (beta)
Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery
Microsoft Pro Photo Tools
Microsoft Expression Media 2
Adobe Photoshop Elements (versions 5, 6 and probably 7)
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

But now, you have to read that carefully:

Your tagging system will not survive the tools that use proprietary catalogs to store your tags

As I said, you want tagging your thousands of photos only once. Fortunately, standards exist that permit you to embed these tags directly into your jpeg images. You may not have noticed but a lot of information is already inserted into your photo files. For example, your digital camera will include that kind of information in your jpeg files (extract only):

0220
1/320
8321928/1000000
56/10
4970854/1000000
2007-10-06T18:49:18-04:00
2007-10-06T18:49:18-04:00
...

0100
1


   1
   2
   3
   0


5/1

And along with this kind of information, your tags can also be embedded in a likewise manner.

If you just want a bunch (or bag) of tags, you are probably fine. Problems start when you want hierarchical tags!

Hierarchical tags

Semi-standards appear to exist for preserving hierarchical tags. For instance, Microsoft is suffering from a kind of disorderliness as Expression Media 2 uses the symbol « | » as a tag separator to reflect hierarchy whereas the popular Windows Live Photo Gallery will use « / » (…). The default in Adobe Lightroom will retain the « | » symbol.

Just to have fun, look at this short extract from the metadata section embedded in a sample picture (original tags in French):


 
    
       Maricler sur Haight Street
    
 
 
    
       Californie
       Maricler
       San Francisco
       USA
       arbres
       lieux
       nature
       pays
       personnes
       rues et trottoirs
       règne végétal
       thèmes
       urbains
    
 
 


 
    
       personnes/Maricler
       lieux/pays/USA/Californie/San Francisco
       thèmes/nature/règne végétal/arbres
       thèmes/lieux/urbains/rues et trottoirs
    
 



 
    
       lieux|pays|USA|Californie|San Francisco
       personnes|Maricler
       thèmes|lieux|urbains|rues et trottoirs
       thèmes|nature|règne végétal|arbres

For those of you having a codewise mentality, it’s not too hard to understand that a complete mess resides in this metadata. For instance, the last section of this extract is issued by Adobe Lightroom 2 (despite the « lightroom/1.0 » appearing in the xmlns). When you want to save the metadata of an image, Lightroom 2.0 will put the above information in your jpeg file. For sure, Microsoft Expression Media 2 will understand and show the tag hierarchy properly. But not so with Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery nor with the quite recent Pro Photo Tools.

In fact, Lightroom 2.0 will issue a bunch of those tags (without hierarchical information) for the rest of the universe that does not see the symbol « | » as a keyword (tag) separator.

On the other hand, Picasa 3 seems to be agnostic in this regard. It has a new feature hidden in the menu “Tools/Experimental/Show tag as album…” that will show “tag/subtag1/sub-subtag2″ as well as ”tag|subtag1/sub-subtag2″ without any complaint, but not really in a serviceable manner.

Why fussing about this matter?

In our family, we have 2 desktops and one laptop (all PCs) linked to a network attached storage (NAS) Apple Time Capsule (works well by the way!).

Should my wife decide to tag a photo, I want to be informed of that on my system or on the laptop. But if our tagging system is dependent of a proprietary catalog, I will not be able to see that change unless there is a way to share that catalog, which is quite difficult with the actual applications. But if we know that the photo has been tagged inside the image file then everything is fine as the information for that photo (tags, caption, title, author, etc…) will travel whatever the application we use.

That’s why Digital Asset Management (DAM) is important. You work once for a said photo and that’s all.

In the meantime, big players in the field will have to talk together to synchronize their acts.

Should you have any recommendation for those of you who had to battle with this tag madness, do not hesitate to leave your comments —as I’m still pending on this matter!

Some words worth remembering

zakoops — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:01:06 +0000

Context

But first, the words of imetthewalrus (link):

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 39 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.

The animation adds a whole new dimension to the genius of John Lennon. In retrospect, this simple conversation held some 39 years ago becomes a real piece of history.

Awesome!

On War and Peace

Today, we can only realize that the words of Lennon have not aged a bit. However, political tensions, wars and atrocities have just become footnotes and sidebar entries in our newspapers —virtual or not. What’s more, images of those atrocities —now in full HD— grasp people’s attention like a passing fly.

If everybody does his share in a rightful manner, then that big obscure machine embodied by the military-industrial complex of all nations will vanish as snow in the sun.

Someday, that dream will come true. That’s for real!

Ram Dass “Soulness”

zakoops — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:43:32 +0000

On his mother’s soul…

His speech and composure make him authentic. But on reincarnation, my feelings are mixed. Do we enter this endless trip or are we transported to a different and unknown universe?

You will note that my interrogation implies that something goes on, for I do believe life cannot stop here. The universe is too mysterious to forsake a grander scheme.

Ram Dass is not the last to come in this game of seft-help development. To that effect, the section called “About Ram Dass” on his website will testify eloquently of his endeavors or adventures.

Alan Watts: A Conversation with Myself - 2

zakoops — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:28:10 +0000

A 1971 television recording with Alan Watts walking in the mountains and talking about the limitations of technology and the problem of trying to keep track of an infinite universe with a single tracked mind. Video posted by Alan’s son and courtesy of alanwatts.com.

If not already done, you should see the first part before —also for additional information and context.

Alan Watts: A Conversation with Myself - 1

zakoops — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:07:03 +0000

This video has been posted by Alan’s son and courtesy of alanwatts.com.

Apart from a book called “Yoga” from Ernest Wood, the writings of Alan Watts were the ones that really helped me understand what was then for me the curious universe of spirituality.

Alan Watts had the peculiar talent of explaining with simple words the obscure and indecipherable intricacies of the place we live in. Just viewing and listening to the above video track should testify of this talent.

I owe a great deal to him. Without all those hours of past reading, acquainting myself with that vision of the universe he so eloquently describes, I’m not sure whether the me of today would be the same!

The first book that ignited my enthusiasm was The Book - On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”. To convince you that this is a great book, please read this comment found on Amazon.com!

If you liked that video, you may want seeing the follow-up (part 2).

Madonna, Amy Winehouse and Wolfgang

zakoops — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:18:48 +0000

It’s while driving that I’m most sensitive to music.

These past few days, I had 3 CDs left in my car that I listened, each a few times, in that order:

Hard Candy from Madonna
Back To Black from Amy Winehouse
A sampler of the Complete Mozart Edition

Hard Candy

I’ve got mixed feeling for this dance floor album. I expected more from the new-age Jew protagonist. The CD booklet is uninventive and its cover photograph is yelling you that Sex with you is so incredible. How refreshing.

Bubbly electro synths are plentiful as well as some stereotyped musical schemes like Spanish Lesson — that’s La Isla Bonita with some Wrap-style background vocals to make it in 2008.

Still, nice musical constructs are also plentiful. And, on the highway, I tended to increase the sound on 4 Minutes, Miles Away, and Give It 2 Me.

However, my top track would be Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You. Its intro is quite reminiscent of the Magnetic Fields period of Jean-Michel Jarre: urban desolation in some unknown future. But that’s Timbaland that helped produce that nice cut.

Back To Black

In 2007, this album has consistently figured in the numerous top charts because Winehouse is one hell of an impressive singer and also because it features the style of 1960’s pop soul brought to the 21st century in a fresh manner. As someone said appropriately, who needs love when heartbreak sounds this bloody good?

This is certainly an album you will like —the whole of it— since Amy is more than a one-hit wonder. Keeping on my driving experience, Me and Mr. Jones is outstanding, especially on the highway.

Back To Black is a top one on my personal chart.

Vesperae solennes de confessore

But recently, I felt somewhat tiresome and put that old sampler of Mozart music, feeling it would offset horns and those lights that seem stuck on the red forever.

Cutis Anserina, goose bumps, or more appropriately chill bumps. That’s what I felt when track number 5 started. I grabbed the sleeve for closer inspection and it indicated « Vesperae solennes de confessore (K339) ». What can I say? Maybe you could judge by yourself from that static video:

Well, this track on the video does not correspond to my sampler and it’s not hifi on YouTube, but you get the idea. I tell you, that man captured waves from the universe, deeped from the inside.

With Hard Candy, it’s the Disco Ball, whereas Amy’s soulful voice is dazzling enough on its own. But with Wolfgang, you are in a black hole — a region of space that has so much mass concentrated in it that there is no way for you to escape its gravitational pull. An extrasensory experience where you feel you could meet angelical creatures from outer space.

Köchel 339 has been written in 1780. And still, it resists with boldness and assurance the musical landscape of today.

Should you want hearing the real thing, here’s the info:

Vesperae solennes de confessore, K 339
Laudate dominum
Te Kanawa/London Symphony Orchestra
& Chorus/Davis

Stages of the four yogas of mahamudra

zakoops — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:06:17 +0000

This is my first article on dharma blues. Since I did not know what could be the first subject, I thought that a perennial truth on life would be a good startup.

I don’t know what mahamudra means or what it stands for. But still, the following four stages do ring a bell in my mind, and perhaps yours.

The four yogas of mahamudra:

When the mind is loose and released
It does not waver with the wind of thoughts.
Like an ocean without waves,
without excitement or fogginess.
That is the Yoga of One-pointedness.

When your mind is being looked at
It appears not as two, meditation and meditator.
As in meeting a long-acquainted friend,
Mind simply recognizes itself.
That is the Yoga of Non-projection.

When that becomes familiarized through habituation
All possible appearances - samsara and nirvana -
Will be understood as your own mind.
Mind is primordially pure in and of itself.
That is the Yoga of One Taste.

Like space, Alaya, the mind basis of all,
Neither comes nor goes.
Space dissolves within space.
Thoughts are exhausted, dharma is exhausted, and timeless awareness is exhausted.
That is the Yoga of Non-meditation.