Sunday, May 08, 2005
More on "Beyond Human"
Once again, thank you Patricia for posting my earlier message on this site.
Elizabeth Reninger, whose poetry I have often reprinted here, wrote the following interesting response to my earlier post on the interface of human energy and computers for medical purposes. (By the way, Elizabeth has just published a wonderful new book of poetry called "Now the Story Lives Inside You" (from WovenWord Press in Boulder, Colorado. It will be available from Amazon.com as well. I strongly recommend it as an excellent collection of writings on the "interface" of nature and spirit.)
Here is Elizabeth's reflection on the new areas of investigation:
"The inter-face between a human nervous system & computer technology
is used also, I believe, in a surgery being employed to resolve
symptoms of Parkinson's Disease, with "miraculous" results.
Computer technology as a "metaphor" for the workings of (human and/or more general) consciousness is something I've seen a lot of recently. Kam Yuen, the founder of the "Yuen Method" of chinese energetics (the form of qigong healing that I've been learning) refers to the human system (which in his way-of-seeing includes six "bodies," from the physical (most densely vibrating) to the spiritual (most rapidly vibrating)) as a "bio-computer." In his understanding, the whole thing (the manifest universe, the phenomenal world) is based upon a binary system (like the series of "zeros" and "ones" which are the language of computer programming) ... How this works at the level of the individual is that we each are either "strong" or "weak" to any event, phenomena, belief, etc. This combination of "strong" and "weak" responses determines what is projected onto the "screen" of our awareness (which we then perceive and name as our "world"), in the same way that the combination of "zeros" and "ones" used by a computer programmer determines what appears on a web-site, or whatever. The "problem," as Dr. Yuen sees it, is that most people don't have access to the user's manual for their bio-computer ...
Once we do, he claims (and seems to have "proven," based upon the
success he has had "healing" people), it's actually quite easy to
change the programming, and so shift, more to our liking, what is
appearing as our "reality." Now perhaps the biggest question that
comes up for me in relation to this system is: how does it relate to nondual approaches, which seek to transcend all polarities? I
somehow feel that they needn't be mutually exclusive, but haven't
quite worked it out, on the level of intellectual understanding.
There's also the issue of collective as well as individual karma ...
(how much "free will" do we, as "individuals" really have?)
Ponlop Rinpoche also makes use of the computer metaphor to describe
the workings of the human mind, refering, as Kam Yuen does, to
appearances being the result of the pattern of "zeros" and "ones"
that has been "inputted." He also uses the related imagery of
television: how at a certain level we have "chosen" (via past
actions) the program that we're now watching. (i.e. we are the ones
who hold the "remote control," not some external "god" ...)
And to the extent that what we perceive as being "outside" of
ourselves is "actually" a projection of still-unconscious aspects
of "ourselves," perhaps the entire "explosion" of computer technology could be understood as our way, as humans, of beginning to "remember" how consciousness really works ... by exploring it, first, "outside"
of us?
Re: healers, etc. having vast energy fields ... This certainly is my experience (or how I have interpretted my experience) of being in the presence of certain people ... so I say: "that person has a lot of energy," or "wonderful shakti" In terms of the effect it has on me, I've been experimenting with thinking of it less as a "transfer" of some sort, and more as though they were a "tuning fork," a being who has awakened certain vibratory possibilities which are still dormant within me ... and being in their presence helps my system
to "remember" those possibilities, in the same way as a tuning fork
that is resonating at a certain pitch can induce that same pitch in
another instrument, nearby.
Re: the opening of the crown chakra ... I had an experience, about
ten years ago (when I was living in Madison, WI), in which I "saw,"
on the screen of my inner eye, a lotus-like flower (many petals)
blooming continuously (kind of like those films which are able to
show usually "slow" processes, speeded up) ... like a fountain but
instead of rivulets of water falling over the edges, there were
petals, being constantly "shed," after opening out from its center.
And in that moment I thought: "oh, so this is what is meant as the
thousand-petaled lotus: the "thousand" refers somehow to this
continuous blossoming, not to some one-time event (installing a lotus with exactly one thousand petals)" Who knows?!"
Elizabeth Reninger, whose poetry I have often reprinted here, wrote the following interesting response to my earlier post on the interface of human energy and computers for medical purposes. (By the way, Elizabeth has just published a wonderful new book of poetry called "Now the Story Lives Inside You" (from WovenWord Press in Boulder, Colorado. It will be available from Amazon.com as well. I strongly recommend it as an excellent collection of writings on the "interface" of nature and spirit.)
Here is Elizabeth's reflection on the new areas of investigation:
"The inter-face between a human nervous system & computer technology
is used also, I believe, in a surgery being employed to resolve
symptoms of Parkinson's Disease, with "miraculous" results.
Computer technology as a "metaphor" for the workings of (human and/or more general) consciousness is something I've seen a lot of recently. Kam Yuen, the founder of the "Yuen Method" of chinese energetics (the form of qigong healing that I've been learning) refers to the human system (which in his way-of-seeing includes six "bodies," from the physical (most densely vibrating) to the spiritual (most rapidly vibrating)) as a "bio-computer." In his understanding, the whole thing (the manifest universe, the phenomenal world) is based upon a binary system (like the series of "zeros" and "ones" which are the language of computer programming) ... How this works at the level of the individual is that we each are either "strong" or "weak" to any event, phenomena, belief, etc. This combination of "strong" and "weak" responses determines what is projected onto the "screen" of our awareness (which we then perceive and name as our "world"), in the same way that the combination of "zeros" and "ones" used by a computer programmer determines what appears on a web-site, or whatever. The "problem," as Dr. Yuen sees it, is that most people don't have access to the user's manual for their bio-computer ...
Once we do, he claims (and seems to have "proven," based upon the
success he has had "healing" people), it's actually quite easy to
change the programming, and so shift, more to our liking, what is
appearing as our "reality." Now perhaps the biggest question that
comes up for me in relation to this system is: how does it relate to nondual approaches, which seek to transcend all polarities? I
somehow feel that they needn't be mutually exclusive, but haven't
quite worked it out, on the level of intellectual understanding.
There's also the issue of collective as well as individual karma ...
(how much "free will" do we, as "individuals" really have?)
Ponlop Rinpoche also makes use of the computer metaphor to describe
the workings of the human mind, refering, as Kam Yuen does, to
appearances being the result of the pattern of "zeros" and "ones"
that has been "inputted." He also uses the related imagery of
television: how at a certain level we have "chosen" (via past
actions) the program that we're now watching. (i.e. we are the ones
who hold the "remote control," not some external "god" ...)
And to the extent that what we perceive as being "outside" of
ourselves is "actually" a projection of still-unconscious aspects
of "ourselves," perhaps the entire "explosion" of computer technology could be understood as our way, as humans, of beginning to "remember" how consciousness really works ... by exploring it, first, "outside"
of us?
Re: healers, etc. having vast energy fields ... This certainly is my experience (or how I have interpretted my experience) of being in the presence of certain people ... so I say: "that person has a lot of energy," or "wonderful shakti" In terms of the effect it has on me, I've been experimenting with thinking of it less as a "transfer" of some sort, and more as though they were a "tuning fork," a being who has awakened certain vibratory possibilities which are still dormant within me ... and being in their presence helps my system
to "remember" those possibilities, in the same way as a tuning fork
that is resonating at a certain pitch can induce that same pitch in
another instrument, nearby.
Re: the opening of the crown chakra ... I had an experience, about
ten years ago (when I was living in Madison, WI), in which I "saw,"
on the screen of my inner eye, a lotus-like flower (many petals)
blooming continuously (kind of like those films which are able to
show usually "slow" processes, speeded up) ... like a fountain but
instead of rivulets of water falling over the edges, there were
petals, being constantly "shed," after opening out from its center.
And in that moment I thought: "oh, so this is what is meant as the
thousand-petaled lotus: the "thousand" refers somehow to this
continuous blossoming, not to some one-time event (installing a lotus with exactly one thousand petals)" Who knows?!"
