The Tao is empty
but inexhaustible,
bottomless,
the ancestor of it all.

Within it, the sharp edges become smooth;
the twisted knots loosen;
the sun is softened by a cloud;
the dust settles into place.

It is hidden but always present.
I do not know who gave birth to it.
It seems to be the common ancestor of all, the father of things.

–

Infinity is very difficult concept for humanity. Numerous mathematicians have sought to quantify it, and in doing so eventually lost their minds and committed suicide. When I read this verse, so many other fields of interest spring to mind; Zero Point Energy – the infinite power source the world desperately needs, the work of Marko Rodin, the Measurement Problem, it all seems to hang off these simple words, first written over two thousand years ago by Lao-tzu. I could write hundreds of words on these topics alone, but I have chosen to brush over them in the interest of spirituality.

If the Tao is the infinite source of creation, ever present and within us all, then it safe to assume that we are all products of the Tao. The Tao connects us, and though we may appear and feel separate, I think we all know deep down that we are all connected.

I’ve spoken about the Measurement Problem before, about the power of the observer in Quantum Mechanics. It has been shown that nothing exists in reality, until it is observed. As observers, that makes us all co-creators of this universe. This may not be exclusive to humans, it may be possible that the very energy that makes up the atoms that our bodies are made up of is conscious. That the brain is actually some kind of recording device allowing us to record observations made by the greater consciousness in the interest of physical survival.

If there was no observation, then everything we think of in reality – the ten thousand things referred to by Lao-tzu – would exist everywhere and nowhere. In the real reality, all of us, and everything does exist everywhere, and nowhere. The probable truth is that the universe we think of is a hologram, a projection of ourselves. We are the Tao. In this superposition there is no time, and no things, just an infinite realm of relationships between thoughts. It’s so difficult to get your head around that I’m waffling now, unable to grasp the infinite as so many before.

The frustration of man (or so it would seem) is this: Our hardware is ill equipped to sense the infinite. We are led by our senses, and our senses (in most cases) only perceive the manifestations of our observations.

Is the Tao the Chi, the Zero Point energy, the Spirit? Lost to science due to its immeasurability perhaps. But for how long?

Verse 3.

Putting a value on status
will create contentiousness.
If you overvalue possessions,
then people begin to steal.
By not displaying what is desirable,
you will cause the peoples hearts to remain undisturbed.

The sage governs
by emptying minds and hearts,
by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.

Practice not doing…
When action is pure and selfless,
Everything settles into its own perfect place.

—

Whilst seemingly obvious, there is a depth to this verse that is not immediately apparent. Overall, it is a verse about priority and contentment.

Lets start at the beginning:
We are prone to seeking out higher status, be it social, monetary or intellectual. But status ultimately leads to separation, and isolation from the eternal, spiritual, and from unity with all.
How many times has your judgment prevented you from getting to know someone who could have changed your life? You will probably never know.
By valuing status, we condemn ourselves to solitude. And limit the pool of positive experience available to us. After all, when the day comes that you are about to pass on, will your status or possessions really matter to you? Or is it the memories and experiences that will truly matter? I know I would rather look back on my life knowing that I did what was necessary to bond with all, indiscriminately, secure in the knowledge that I found happiness in places that superficial judgment may have prevented me from.

Consider this notion: Does desire condemn you to slavery? What happens when you want to buy something? You either spend, and need to replace the money it took from you, or you work your arse off – most likely doing a job that does not inspire you – until you have enough money to achieve your desire. Right up until something else comes along that you want, wherein the cycle starts over. You enslave yourself, in order to further your materialistic sense of status. And likely miss out on opportunities to share in the experiences of others, all because ‘you have to be up for work early’.

The notion of ‘practice not doing’ is not an advocation of laziness. Rather in acting – devoid of ego – in the interest of creativity. By ignoring ego and trusting your true self, the motivation will materialize to spend your time sharing, being creative, and inspired.

Wayne Dyer put it nicely in his book ‘Change your Thoughts, Change your Life’ when he said of this verse;
‘There is no way to happiness, rather happiness is the way’.

Trusting yourself and your instinct is important. Practice being happy and grateful that you have the chance to experience happiness, and start finding it everywhere! Don’t let your ego run the show.

Thank you for reading x

Consider teleportation. If the vessel is demolecularised, sent via the internet or some other form of transport, and remolecularised at the destination then the individual is merely ‘copied’. The information or consciousness (in its current state) lives on, but the original vessel is quite dead.

If the human body is a vessel for information then is the vessel only as important as the information it is transporting at any given moment in time? If it was possible to assimilate the thoughts and experiences of others then what would be the value of one particular consciousness? Rather the value would be placed on the information carried, or the programs (or functions) processing that information and the further information resulting. Are we only special as individuals whilst we have limited interface capability? I have a strong feeling that the technology in question here would meet strong resistance from the vast majority of the human race should it come to fruition.

The other issue here is copying (or forking) consciousness. With the capability of total interface, a copy (or infinite copies) of an individual consciousness could be made and assigned to vessel anew. Of course the consciousness would not be a copy and more of a ‘fork’ due to its emergent nature – within a matter of seconds the consciousness would build new information based on new perceptions – of environment, and perhaps change of vessel – and over time the two consciousnesses would diverge and share only past memories in common. The new information would colour the old, resulting in changes of opinion and behaviour in the two (or more) subjects.
Unless of course some kind of synchronisation occurred at regular intervals between the copies in order to keep them as copies, rather than forks. At this point, no singular consciousness needs to exist. And the information is spread amongst many, significantly reducing the cost of vessel death.

On a more unfounded note. What if we were to discover in fact that ‘death’ as we know it was only the assimilation of our experience to an unseen consciousness. We become little more than reconnaissance drones. Do you still feel special?

The curious mind suffers a great imperfection. The curiosity generates the knowledge which perpetually changes the mindset of the individual, and leaves them with the constant nagging question; ‘Who am I?’ An empty feeling inside that we subconsciously attempt to fill. In some cases by seeking out others who might appear to know the answer to that one crucial question and bring us the inner peace we so desperately seek.

Is it so difficult to see why ignorance is so widespread amongst out kind, when this is perhaps the condition that allows us to find the answer to the question? Or does time show us the way to inner solace eventually. In calm desolation, in the ruins of failed relationships and long forgotten friendship – can the curious mind then find solace in isolation?

I’m a little confused as to why identity is something we cling to so desperately. Does it start with the naming? Or is it the defining? ‘What kind of person am I?’ – why do we ask these questions? As if its something permanent. Perhaps it is really a question of being able to trust yourself. Perhaps we don’t like the idea that we would be more inclined to engage in behavior that we currently dislike if we allow too much to change our perceptions. This would certainly enforce the idea that we learn more when we are unhappy.

This wasn’t immediately obvious to me. But it really did get my head going. Regardless of what you have seen or heard of David Icke, the man speaks a lot of sense. And I personally have a great respect for him and the way he seeks to open the minds of the masses.

Lets just have a think about what is being said here.The number one limiting factor in human life is insecurity. This is true for so many aspects of human life, but it has devastating effects for society on the whole when applied to philosophy and science. I yanked this from Wikipedia:

Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three “laws” of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Point 3 is one that I always keep in mind when thinking of possibilities that I may hesitate to share with friends and family. It may seem harmless when you quickly dismiss ideas based on the fact that people might laugh at you. But imagine what kind of world we might be living in right know if people were not so quick to ridicule the ideas that have brought us the greatest technological advances of our time. I have to admit that a great deal of my own experiences in the esoteric field go unsaid for this exact reason! For worry that a potential employer or friend with a particular mindset will think less of me because my thoughts and ideas are well beyond the line of what is deemed as mentally stable.

Process this: Everything you experience in your life that you consider to be ‘external’ to yourself is nothing unless it is processed by the brain. Therefore reality is a construct that has been put in place by your limited five senses. If there is something out there – and there is a hell of a lot of stuff that is scientifically proven that humans have absolutely no way of sensing – that you can’t smell, see, touch, feel, or hear then it goes unprocessed by the brain and initially falls into the category of mystisicm. Therefore it is left to thoughts and ideas to give us a better understanding of how the universe ‘really’ exists. Your thoughts are your most powerful tool, draw your security from this. For the people who are laughing are the ones who are missing something.

Verse 2.

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty,
only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.

Being and nonbeing produce each other.
The difficult is born in the easy.
Long is defined by short, the high by the low.
Before and after go along with each other.

So the sage lives openly with apparent duality
and paradoxical unity.
The sage can act without effort
and teach without words.

Nurturing things without possession,
she works, but not for rewards;
she competes, but not for results.

When the work is done, it is forgotten.
That is why it lasts forever.

–

The first two paragraphs of this verse lay the groundwork by offering real life examples of paradoxical unity. Definitions that oppose each other require each other to be defined.
The introduction of good and evil is perhaps the most important thought. If we continue from verse one, the notion of definition reducing or limiting the ‘thing’ applies just as much to adjectives as it does to nouns.

Our society is (supposedly) built on the ideals of justice; therein judgment is a prerequisite. We cast judgment every day, when we see another as fat we judge them instantly, attaching the negative almost as if as a conditioned response, limiting the person and reducing their other qualities. Can we as human beings – live in harmony with duality, see that fat could not exist without thin, that all is part of a greater whole, accept that oneness is devoid of judgment? This belief system of black and white is blinding us from unity.

I envy the sage, who is enlightened enough to live openly with duality. The sage that can see all of the particular as smaller parts of the eternal. Yet I wonder whether this reflects a personal desire to live a more stoic existence. But while this verse to me, sometimes conveys a less emotional – perhaps even cold – world view it also conveys warmth, acceptance, and unconditional love.

The part of this verse that never truly spoke to me is ‘effort’. As a man who suffers from a severe lack of general motivation – laziness some might say, and who has suffered the judgment (self directed as well as otherwise) of this term. This is the part I really wanted to find an answer in. I started to ask myself ‘what is effort?’. And of course, only when drawing upon Verse 1 the notion that desire is limiting did I realize that I was asking the wrong question all along.
Something becomes an effort to me when the work does not justify the reward, when the results do not justify the action. If we are to work not for reward, then what is it that we are to work for?
It was Andy who lead me to this thought in an earlier note – ‘the result is the hunger, but the enjoyment is in the eating’. Perhaps it is time for me to start enjoying the ‘eating’ (an appropriate metaphor, but a metaphor non the less) without being hungry.

Will letting go of the results (or rewards) allow me to act without effort, to teach without words, to find my motivation in the absence of motivation?

Perhaps I just found my answer.

Thank you for joining me today

I’ve been experiencing some kind of mental block recently that has prevented me from getting any serious thinking done. I am in fact, ashamed to say that I have done little more than drink excessively, smoke enough to kill a small elephant, and play on Guitar Hero World Tour (drums FTW – I’m coming for you Jonno). Well it ends today, Tadaima.

Helen,
When you asked me about consciousness a long time ago in your note, I feel I may have vastly underestimated the depth of it. Its been playing on my mind a lot, and whilst reading Excession by Iain M. Banks I came across something rather thought provoking. I’m starting to think you were about 100 steps in front of me. And hopefully the last point I make in this note will illustrate why.

Some background:
The ships (space fairing) in the book are not piloted by humans, they are sentient – and vastly more intelligent than us. So intelligent in fact, that time for them passes far slower than it would to your average ex-cave man. This is due to the sheer speed at which they can process information.
The nice thing about this book is that sometimes you find yourself reading what are effectively MSN conversations between ships. And it was when reading one of these that something interesting came up; Metamathics.

Metamathics: (n) (short form of ‘metamathematics’)
The investigation of the properties of realities intrinsically unknowable by and from our own, but whose general principles can be hazarded at.

I’m a bit of a n00b when it comes to physics, but at a very basic level there are four forces that shape our universe: Gravity, Electromagnetism, and the Strong – and Weak nuclear forces. Gravity is very weak in comparison to Electromagnetism – a small magnet for example, is more than capable of picking up a paper clip from the floor.
If however, the strength of gravity (or any of the forces for the sake of argument) was any different it is possible that the universe would be wildly different.Stars and Galaxies, well – even atoms may not have been able to form. Making it impossible for life as we know it to even exist. Anyway this is veering off topic.

The majority of the machines in the book spend most of their spare ‘clock time’ running simulations. Toying with, and tweaking the universal constants (strength of the forces), and creating virtual universes in their… minds – I suppose this explanation will have to do. Two things spring to mind whilst I ramble aimlessly:

1. The chances of the universal constants establishing themselves the way they did are absolutely astronomical. Which brings to light many questions that mess with my world view.

And if it wasn’t a fluke..

2. Could a being of immense intellectual capacity actually create life in its mind? Spawning – or forking its own consciousness. This is a scary thought indeed.

And thus, the idea of a divine creator – at least as far as our universe is concerned becomes more acceptable to me. Damn you Andy.

This note is written specifically to address the use of the possessive pronoun in referral to people (’my wife’, ‘my husband’, etc), and the behavior it inherently breeds in humans.

My theory is rather simple: ‘Allowing people to refer to someone as belonging to them in any way makes it subconsciously acceptable for them to treat that person as a possession.’

Thus objectifying the individual. To me this is demeaning. And I have to wonder just how far the effects of this could be reaching. Domestic violence? Crimes of passion? Overly possessive and jealous behavior?

Quite a big accusation for such an innocent turn of phrase right? Or is it? The more I think about this the more I see the effects everywhere.
In an effort to purify my life somewhat, I decided to stop referring to people this way (at least during thought). The difficulty arises when trying to find a suitable english alternative. People I have spoken to about this theory usually respond with the following:

‘If I don’t refer to him as “my husband”, how should I express it?’

I usually respond with something along the lines of ‘The man I love’. I think our language is severely lacking in what I like to call ‘the relationship indicator particle’.
An enlightened, and possibly synthetic (or emergent) language would allow for much easier use of explaining something ‘in relationship’ to yourself, rather than ‘as possessed by’. Think of all the misunderstandings that arise between men and women over the whole ‘girlfriend/boyfriend tag’, not to mention the natural feeling of entrapment that labeling yourself as a possession of another subconsciously expresses.

Thats my thought for the day. Look forward to hearing your opinions!

Karlo

Lets begin..

Verse 1.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realise the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
The source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

—

I really like this verse. To me it enforces a personal view that in the action of naming, or defining something you are inherently limiting it in some way or another. And to further that, that things cannot be conveyed in their entirety simply by speaking of them. A true understanding can only be obtained by the individual,

I also like the separation between the eternal, and the particular. And also the singularity that the eternal conveys. My current personal view is that outside of our space and time there is a void, an absolute nothing that can not be named or defined. And that this ‘nothing’ is the source of all things. I like the idea that everything non-eternal (at least to us) is still part of this eternal void. And that the empty feeling we feel, and the longing for us to be near life stems from the ‘naming’. By identifying ourselves and other things, we define, and mentally separate. And although I understand the lingual importance of such an action. I can’t help but think we can have both language, and unity – it’s just unfortunate that unity with our surroundings is something rarely spoken of, or frowned upon. After all, everything on this planet, and indeed the planet itself is made from the same building blocks.

The second half of this verse is somewhat more difficult for me to interpret. But to me it conveys that desire is another limiting factor to understanding. That in some way by desiring certain ‘goals’ is to limit oneself from a greater understanding. By letting go of desire, and with no goal (and by this I mean answer) to be found, a true understanding can be obtained. Opening the door to more questions, like branches on a tree, will often provide the bigger picture, you may even realise that the answer you were initially searching for is irrelevant.

The end of this verse, while beautiful, is not easy for me to comment on. Reading it makes me feel closer to the void. It makes me feel less alone, and more connected – not only with others, but with the universe itself.

I will meditate on Verse 2 for the next week and share again on Saturday.

Human beings (and more specifically one’s personality) is/are a summation of all your sensory input. On a basic level, your ‘free will’ is only as free as the opportunities presented to you, or as your current level of knowledge will permit.

Television, for the most part – in it’s current form is used to distort your value system. Its used to perpetuate inferiority, and amongst many other things, and more importantly – consumerism. Whatever you may believe about your desire to possess ’shiny things’ such as new shoes, designer sunglasses, fancy mobile phones, etc; this is a conditioned reaction to the sensory input pelted at you from television, bill boards, magazines, and the like. This then has a knock on effect, as people are also conditioned to ostracize others who do not ‘fit’, or desire the same things. Breeding a mass inferiority complex that encourages cyclical consumption and ultimately – a severe waste of the Earth’s resources.

The profit system falls apart if people are not buying. Therefore in every line of manufacturing there is an element of what Peter Joseph so adequately puts as ‘Planned Obsolescence’. This means that (as an example) cars are built with sub-optimal parts, so that they eventually break down and need repair – or in the most extreme cases – need scrapping. This results in a continual profit generation for the corporations, and therefore keeps the system afloat. This is known as ‘Cyclical Consumption’.

Imagine if you will, a world where technology was put together from the highest quality resources. There is no reason why your microwave, oven, or any other appliance cannot last for 150+ years. Next time you feel the desire to buy something, ask yourself how much you actually need it. Ask yourself ‘where does my desire to buy this handbag stem from?’, ‘Do I actually need another handbag?’. A more important question to ask yourself is this: ‘Does this purchase ultimately represent a waste of our planet’s resources?’

Consumerism is a sickness. Not just to the human mind, but to our beloved planet, and all life inhabiting it. Combat it today by filtering your sensory input, mute the adverts, ignore the billboards, question everything you read in the paper, ask yourself ‘who benefits from this?’ – in most cases you will find that it is most definitely not you.

Thats my thought for the day.

Karlo