I Crossed the Line

Be always mistrustful towards transcendence. Always. It's easy to see it when is crawling in religious clothes. But it could be near also in logic perspective. Transcendence is always ready for the ambush. Why? Just reflect about it. Transcendence is another dimension. Separated by ours. Completely. Per definition, a transcendent thing doesn't belong to this dimension or to this series of dimension. If you are referring to a parallel universe or another plane of reality, you are not talking of transcendence. You see, transcendence is another dimension that springs from the grammar you are using. Indeed transcendence is a categorial difference in your physical dimension. It is born in the language but it goes on outside.

Like the the paper characters coming out from children book. Bear in mind that something happen when you are urged to use the transcendent highway. But you are misled. The language generates something, a monster, a hope, a landscape and the new bi-dimensional shape triggers your mind to see a transcendent element. Why not? Well my dear, from a transcendent hole, everything can come out. Because it is separated by our dimension. Completely. If you could tracking it down, it wouldn't be transcendent. Therefore you can't touch it. So when you see a transcendent phenomenon, it could be God. Or everything else.

But why we are supposed to see transcendent things? Well, because there is a transcendental situation. Sorry for the word play, but I didn't invent it philosophy. At least not under this form...

I give you an example: your sight. In front of you there is a tree. The tree is there; it's objective; it's not created by your mind. It is contained by your sight. What about your eyes? Well, in front of a mirror, they behave like the tree. You can even put eyeliner on them. Nothing strange. Only when the eye coincides with the first person perspective as the sight of that person, we have a transcendental situation. In fact the eye is not contained by the sight. Or in other words the sight cannot see itself. But you can in front of a mirror. Exactly. But you see a reflection.

Take your mind. Can you observe it? Of course you can write down your thoughts. You can ask a person if he thinks you are a mind. You can see your mind in many reflections. But can you encounter your mind? Well well well. The mind is the horizon of your ability to understand. The mind is embodied understanding. So can the mind understand herself? Of course, being a mind is self-understanding. Transcendentally. The difference with transcendence is that in this case, you are on the line from which is coming out what is supposed to come out. Because you are that line.

So normally you don't see yourself and you claim that there is another dimension from which is coming what occurs in front of you. But it's happening because you generate it. You are the line that opens the transcendental experience. Indeed everything that is transcendent is categorial, it means that springs from the language. Your language. The horizon of grammar that shines from the being there of your awareness. So next time you encounter a transcendent, wink: it's daddy brain in the disguise of some grammatical adventure. Pray and enjoy the beauty: the world beyond the line is unimaginable. And it's the same of in front.

Impatience of Dharma My amino acid chain is longer than yours

When we discuss of wisdom, there is a very tempting attitude: the underlying force. You see, I'm calm and peaceful but it's just from the virtue of the underlying truth of my wisdom. Do you believe in Western medicine? Oh poor fool. You agree on a practice that disentangled consciousness and body? If it wasn't for a superior respect for myself, I'd definitely have spitted in your face. Do you believe in quantum physics: please. Do you believe in a wisdom that is saying:we cast our dices, we read the dices, we made the prediction. But you don't understand how, why and where. And when. Well, in quantum physics, we don't really understand a lot...But it works! Anyway. You shouldn't believe in it. And here is coming the Dharma impatience.

Your wisdom is defecting? I know, we have incredible more powerful gigastronic wheel of prayers that will embarrass your limited resources. Of course the more you understand of western medicine and quantum physics, the more you would like to approve the Dharma impatience. But this is a mistake so colorful as the ass of a mandrill.

Dharma wisdom should appeal to the dissolvence of your epistemic itch. The thin line is with ignorance. Dissolvence of wisdom is not ignorance, but is the grammar fading. Like repeating a word until it loses its meaning, which doesn't equal to no having a meaning at all. A flower has no why, but it's precious our way to reach the silent smile of a lotus. Before sleeping in to uncosciousness, like Jim Morrison sang, this is the gate. Not being unaware. A stone is unaware. Respect it, but don't take it as a master. While, the dissolvence of wisdom, is the gate. And you should take the fading of grammar that entails quite seriously.

When it is stated that god doesn't exist, it's not atheism. It's saying that god is nowhere you can touch him (please, keep your suspicions). When it is stated than the universe doesn't exist, it's not saying that a punch in your face won't hurt. It is saying that the self is building pain from the punch.

When it is stated that the self doesn't exist, it's not nihilism. It's saying that the self is not precious as you deem it to be ( please, keep your suspicions).

Dharma is not beneath the structures. It is not hidden behind a photon. For god sake, do you think that there is a dharmic world behind ours? Do you think that with super dharma particle accelerator we'll see a dharmic world? So maybe a dharma microscope powerful enough will scout the buddhahood? Let me order another pint for you first. Second dharma wisdom is in you grammar, in your language. Deeper is not microscopic, it's simply clearer, in its meaning. So when dharma says that there is no good, be surprised and joyful, because no god will punish you anymore. When dharma says there is no world, be surprised and joyful because there is no ground for sufference. And when dharma says there is no self, take it seriously. And of course, be joyful.

Shine On You Scarabeusque Diamond

Stars, Diamonds and cockroaches. Who is the most brilliant? I'm afraid for the ladies, but stars and diamonds can only dream of the cockroaches' shining and I know that, very wisely said by Beyoncè, "if you like it, put a ring on it", won't work with a beetle. And saying to your lover that her father is a thief, because he has stolen stars to put in her eyes, will definitely sound different with our Blattaria friends instead of celestial bodies. Nonetheless the cucarachas are luminous: they are living beings, so they are intelligent.

Ok, stars: do you now how much energy they produce? Joule, joule, joule...A lot (Harvey Keitel in Reservoir Dogs). But they don't have the slightest control over the process. It simply goes. Stars are not inventive in their job: pile up enough weight and you'll light as well.
Diamonds. Are they reliable? Oh yes, they are very well organized. Very hard joint. But they don't move at all. No dynamics.

Cockroaches? They run like hell. And they adjust their actions constantly. Try to catch them: they'll escape. Do think this is trivial? No my friend. It' genius. Because only matter that is alive can change its path, not because of a collision, but because the forecast of that collision. Still not impress?

Ok, I'll spell it out: living beings manipulate the causal chain, without necessity of touching everything. They are oracles. I give you an example: your hand is in front of a fly. You make a small jerking. Microscopic waves of air and tiny packages of photons are running like demons to antennae and eyes of our small winged friends and they whisper their demoniac mantra: "Buzz off". My hand was far from start the movement. But the fly read telepathically my intention. Seriously, what was it? Don't you buy the demons parade?
Ok. Information. Disappointed? Why? Living beings are superimposing on physical properties a semiotic environment of information.

Information is evoked by organism with their being there. In the universe, nothing needs information. Photons don't carry it: they carry themselves. Bodies are not exchanging information: they exchange energy. But if you are alive, it makes a difference exchanging less or more energy. So you need to be careful. Moreover you need to have a plan. Otherwise entropy will crash you, so you need to escape. And energy alone doesn't have a clue: you need to rely first of all on the normative procedures encoded in the self-organizing application that is your genetic code, the story of your execution. There is always time to elaborate non-linear plans like in self-conscious intelligence. But first, you need to come out with something. This something is the information processing that a living being represents with its own being there: primeval intelligence is procedural.

I love when a plan comes together, especially when the very existance of being a plan happens to be for pure chance of energy permutations.

Rat intelligence: A Rodent Road to Knowledge

Where there is a possibility, there is a rat. Life can find many ways to spread, from space bacteria to billions of insects. This is a strategy of numbers. Bacteria are simple, so simple that they don’t need strictly a planet to survive. Insects are many, so many that the swarm intelligence of an organized bunch of them, an anthill or a beehive, is by far more than the sum of the individuals. But rats are different. They are mammals. In mammals, individuals count.
Rats are cognitively simpler than us, but their intelligence is quite sophisticated in problem solving (comparing to bacteria and insects. Well, to individual insects…An anthill is pretty good compared to ourselves). Rats are so epistemically hot, that I want to found our best euristic strategy with them.
Every sentient being has a cognition, so even an amoeba is endowed with a minimum degree of intelligence. An ant a bit more. Dolphins, a huge lot more. Humans? We hit the zillion swankiest score in town. Rats: they are ok.

It’s true that rats are many, but much lesser than the billions of insects. Many rodents can behave like a swarm, but a single rat is able to earn his living alone. What do they do?
They investigate. They are curious. They check their own environment. Constantly. They don’t particularly like to die, but they go the closest as it is possible to elements in their habitat. They try, they push their cognitive knowledge to the limit, to the maximum limit allowed for a living being: they push it to the very limit of their own existence. They rarely sit in their comfort zone, especially because to one extent they are comfortable in extreme situation, to other because their curiosity is restless. The cognitive life of our rodent friend consists in checking his environment, in re-adjusting constantly the cognitive map of his world. The world is born every new day for an investigative rat, because he questions the new limits. Nothing is the same of yesterday.
What are rats doing? They are understanding. This is old, pure, Hegelian understanding. A bit mixed up with the disgrace of the sewage, but Idealism is materialistic at its conceptual heart.
Hang on a minute, I sensed it from the beginning, but I was suspecting “a coupe de theatre”, a paradox, a metaphor. Where is it? From rat intelligence to a hyper-sophisticated German “verstehen”? Nothing in between???

I’m afraid not. I’ve been surprised by the epistemic resilience of rodents and I start to ask to myself, to which extent our understanding was similar to them. Then I realized that the question needed to be rephrased: to which they are not similar! What we have more? Sure, we have a very complex technology to deal with a semiotic environment. Powerful, marvelous, gigastic. But we have a much bigger brain. And we started 35 000 years ago to manufacture environment able to shape our capacity of manipulating the symbolism of our cognition. This is quite a thing, I don’t deny it. But in essence, the cognitive agents that are travelling in our semiotic sewages, the many of them, are not that dissimilar to the rats exploring their environment. “We are intentionally building our own environment, they are more parasitically inhibiting it. We are intentionally exploring and shaping future configuration of this environment, they are locked in a constant present search ”. When you start to use intentionality to make a difference, in my experience it’s a good sign that there is no difference.

Rats are "commensals" of our societies: kind of parasites, but not (directly) harmful. Basically a commensal is living on the leftover of his guest. Like a rat! Well, you can see our minds as commensals of the semiotic production of all the human brains. A brain is polluting the environment with information, that a mind picks up and cognitively digest as conscious artifacts (that's proper food for thought). Don't think that there is a big, underlying difference between our minds and rats: true we are associated more closely with our brains, but don't expect too much from ownership or responsibility. I know our society has a great esteem for both, but I'm not so sure about brain ownership or mind responsibility. It's a rethoric that is working (badly) in our times.

In comparison to rats, our brains are not less locked in the constant present of our mind horizon. I can easily project myself in the future and I can do that also with products and procedures of my intelligence. But my cognitive life is still anchored in the present search that is my self-conscious awareness of being here. The exploration of our own limits is pretty much the same corner-turning and switch-actions of lab mice. We are forced by our own cognition to engage in epistemic activities: our need to know is very much rodent-like.

I’m not suggesting that we are the guinea pigs of a superior intelligence (though, it could be possible). But simply that we are more similar to rats than we think. At the end of day the only thing I wouldn’t expect from a mouse in a lab, would be to stop, to sit down and bursting in to a big laugh, patting his lap with his paw. This is the difference between human and rat intelligence, but I rarely see it every day in humans as well.

A Flourishing, Pandemic Laugh of Immortality

The Turritopsis nutricula, is a particular kind of hydrozoan (a jellyfish). Hydrozoans in the adult sexually mature stage are jellyfishes; they produce eggs and sperm, which spawn embryos, growing into larvae, which subsequently form a colony of polyps. The colony grows as a stolon, let’s say image a coral. The polyps produce asexually the medusa, which when adult will start again the cycle. Medusas normally have a very short life-span. Not so for our Turritopsis. Our hero is able to grow into the adult stage. And back! Yes, under specific (adverse) circumstances, the Turritopsis can reverse, “un-age” from the medusa status to the polyps. And it has been observed that it can do it many, many times. So, even if the mortality is still present for predatory or disease, the Turritopsis won’t die of senescence. This is pure, 100 % biological immortality, on the rocks.

From species to individuals, now our delirious parade will come to Pando. Pando is…how to definite him( he is a male…of course)? Pando is a joyful, enthusiastic, rascal of his kind. He is, give it or take it, 80 000 years old, but some estimate he could be even 1 million years old. I don’t dare to image the birth candles. Especially because Pando is a tree. Ok, I’m not a botanist, so they will definitely prefer to call it: Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides). Our friend as a system of roots that can be dated as back as 80 000, though the average age of his trunk is 130 years. Pando could live so long for a coincidence of lucky (clearly…) events: frequent forest fires have prevented its main competitor, conifers, from colonizing the area, and climate change, transitioning from a wet and humid weather pattern to semi-arid, has obstructed widespread seedling establishment and the accompanying rivalry from younger aspens. Now just a pinch to the most zealots of the Darwinians: this is fitness for what? When your individual survives one or maybe more or even all the glacial period of the quaternary??? You’re clearly quite fit if you are 1 million, but in these case is the environment adapting to fit the longevity of Pando!

After the flourishing, the pandemic. Epidemics are infectious diseases are the resulting infection for the presence and growth of pathogenic biological agentis in an individual organism.

Buddhism occurred for the first time in India, around, say 5^th century BCE. It then spread to the whole sub-continent and from there, to the South-East. For many reasons, the benign epidemic gradually disappeared from India. But before that, many blessed vectors made it to China. Around say the 1^st century BCE or even a hundred years before. Then, around say the 7^th century CE, China truly “liberated” Tibet ( Time is a toy of a tinker boy, as uncle Heraclitus always said) bringing the golden breeze of enlightenment to the mountains.

I suppose you are ready for the morale now. I’ll try my best, so it goes: you’ve seen that immortality is a strange fish in the pod and that sometimes is easy to bark to the wrong tree of longevity. You also observed that not necessarily every contagion is pathogen (and that not everything that is coming from China to Tibet has bad intentions).We talked about medusa going back to polyps, that is to say an old granny coming back as a child; we entertained ourselves with the story of how roots can deploy themselves underground for thousands of years here and there, and we DIDN’T bother us with too many philosophical questions (is it the same tree? Are they clones of the same individual, identical, but distinctive? A conceptual colony can still be referred under one name?). We didn’t.

I hope you enjoyed this Carnivalesque parade of concepts…because clearly you got that there is symbolism going here. I mean... one thing is winking to the other, you got the subtleties…

Ah ah ah, I’m joking, I’m not German enough, I’m not Colonel Landa, there is no symbolism at all. There is just a jellyfish, a tree, a sneeze. And China as usual invading Tibet (I know that time was for good…). There is nothing else. As usual, there is nothing else. There is nothing!

Dwelling at the end of the world

The mind is the technology of representing to the brain his own complexity. A mind is the own representation of representativity. If we chase the mechanisms of representation, going up stream the cognitive architecture of consciousness, will we be able to understand the mind? Fortunately, this is not necessary (though it’s very interesting!). The easy aspect is that being a consciousness means your brain is able to understand himself. The hard one is that this is meaningless. Or to put it with philosophical class: representativity is meaninglessness. Philosophers worship grammars. And they are blessed with blindness from grammatical clarity.The curse is when they claim to see better.

Your consciousness can align herself with the pure representativity. This is the peak of a long cognitive tradition, started (initiated) by the very first sentient beings. All along the living beings’ history of cognition it's about mastering the capacity to differentiate. The edge of this development is the deployment of representation in front of the representational engine. A mind can see her own projections as herself. What for??? The non-philosophical answer is that you don’t ask the why to rose as well as you save your life tasting a cherry. Or smiling at the lotus.
My philosophical mind is so shadowed that I know the answers and still being unable to see. Or to rest the mind's eyes.

If you realize consciousness is the deployment of cognition in sentient beings, you’ll get that a mind is just the limit of representation. If you want to cross the line you’ll travel through the many mirrors of representations, fooling yourself with reflections of reflections. Or you can throw away the ladders after you climb to very same place you started. This is nothing more than the narrative grip of your representations. It’s ok. Calm down your paranoid, you’re just a sojourner on the limit of representation, that is the end of the world as consciousness sees her own reflection. But is it good or evil? It’s simply beyond the good and the evil, the conflict of negative and positive ceases in the emptyness, like a small kids fight.

We should (or not!) simply learn how to live in proximity of the end of the world, that is, living at the edge of representativity. If you know of any community that dwells at the end of the world, they are probably minds realizing the meaninglessness of consciousness. I’m so stoned by the grammatical clarity that I’m still struggling to find that place. But believe me, if you find dwellers at the end of the world, they are probably smiling.

The other face of the miserable human falling or The gentle landing of a lotus on a water surface

Human minds are cognitive machine that can manipulate symbols and their own symbolism; to handle their own re-writing, they must figure out themselves as the narrative projection of an authorship. This turns out to produce the feeling of self-consciousness. The problem is, when a machine turns out to be self-conscious, this strikes her as a panic attack. Indeed the human condition can be described (by itself!) as falling. S.Augustinus spoke of cursed amass referring to humankind; Heidegger defined this state as geworfheneit or being thrown-ness. Indeed self-consciousness lures to a promised land of meanings, but the sense of meaningful never comes.

At this point a consciousness can face the abyss of meaninglessness and feel all the misery and sufferance of human condition. In a Kafkian sentenced universe, minds realize that there is no plan, no line, no reward. Not even punishment: everything happen by mere chance. If you are a cognitive machine that produce meanings in order to fuel your self-conscious intelligence, those are bad news.

Memorandum: when we’ll build self-conscious machine, we’ll face the same problem. You can’t build it without illusions, but you need to call that fiction reality if you want your machine to play.

So we’re back to our inside devastated mind. As a reaction to the shocking discovery, the denial procedures create a backyard space of meanings: the logical extension of the promised land of sensed world. We are sentient beings, we need a world with sense. So our idols are ready to be believed. Or, gently and with civilized manners, we can hold the hand of the mind (our mind) and conduct tenderly to the acknowledgement that the world is meaningless and so it is the mind. Sufferance for non-sense is illusionary as the false promises.

The fact that your salvation is nothing, is not bad news. The highest shelter consists in the absence of peril. And if you are nothing and your god is nothing, you are god (this sentence is proudly brought to you by the Association of Universal Reasoning, trademark). Of course you are not the kind of god with super powers. I’m sorry, you’re not that kind of divinity. You can only be compassionate for your condition of empty self-conscious intelligence. You’re still falling, but it’s the harmonious going down of a flower on a river. I’m joking: you’re still nose-diving like the dork parachute-less you are.

Remember the next time: if you are a self-conscious intelligence and this provokes a falling, provide yourself with a better understanding of the nature of mind. Your mind is wondering about sense, isn’t she? So you do feel the falling! All right, don’t worry: my petaled friend, you can easily see your condition as the gently surfing on the falling of your self-conscious intelligence.

The class of handing down contradiction

Contradiction

Wittgenstein, commenting about logical contradiction, reflected: what does it mean for our life’s forms a contradiction? Why should we avoid it? Would it possible for a human community to live in the proximity of a logical contradiction?

Consciousness

If you are a consciousness, you represent your representational activity. The fact is, your representativity is not a further content, in addiction to all the others: you are that representation of representativity.

Classes

Russell elegantly treated the class of classes. Should we surprised that in the class ontology, there is a class entity, whose elements are classes? And should we scared by the fact that a class contains itself?

What have in common these three little stories? But most important: what do they diverge for, what is the difference?

The theory of classes is good to treat math objects; but to consider consciousness a class is a much more slippery concept. Am I the summary of the all the concepts my mind thinks of? Not really; concepts are traces of mind. "MY" consciousness is the hunting for that archaeological passage and, through that chase, a brain discovers his complexity as his own representation. You are more appropriately the limit of your thinking. And what is “you” and “me” is a cultural narration.

Your brain is accelerated by the narrative environment hosting him, to deploy himself as the narrativity inspired to him by the manipulation and manufacturing of the semiotic scenarios surrounding him. You are trained to have a mind by the stories of your community. Peculiar communities can develop peculiar stories. If I train your brain to recognize himself as a mind in a continuous path of narrativity all along different material bio-support (i.e. brains), it’s quite tempting to say you embodie the same emanation of consciousness. On the other bank of the river (the same, constantly changing river), if I train your brain to call the awakening of consciousness in the acceleration process, the unique creation of personal, individual mind, you’ll be tempted to have a Western belief about your consciousness.

The flow of consciousness is a technique the first men came across; they started to hand down that fire from generation to generation. Is this reincarnation or constant new creation? What I know is that the development of your brain is unique. So individual that it would be impossible to establish common ways of interactions amongst different brains. We hand down traditions since millennia. Every mystic, is a magician; his trade is stealing. For the good(?)

Narrative Echolocation and Superimposition of Mental States

Whales practice echo-location: they send signals in the environment and from the coming back response they figure out what the surrounding look alike. Now take human brains; they send out semantic radiations and when they encounter concepts (conceptual interpretation of the surrounding environment), they receive the re-entry for an interpreter. Every concept is a reminder of an underlying interpreter.

Indeed concepts are “fossils” of a mind’s previous passage. When a mind moves in his habitat, she left traces of her explorative extension in that environment. Therefore a following human brain tracking down that cognitive walking receive the semantic re-entry of a consciousness. Subsequent explorations shape and design concepts interwoven in a such a way they form infrastructures a brain can walk through. The viable conceptual architecture is a narrative world and a human brain navigating in that cognitive track is accelerated in a mind.

This is the technology used by human brains to walk in their own complexity, through the projection of multidimensional layers of cognitive exploration. Therefore what we call mind is a cognitive performance in the form of narrativity; the phenomenon is quite unique because the subject experiences a very centered cognitive feedback: consciousness.

This experience is so vivid, the brain is completely immersed in the circumstances of that projection. Given the fact we express ourselves in that representation and therefore we coined concepts within that cognitive environment, that experience is the definition of real and fiction. The practice of walking in that experience establish our conceptual ground: it makes no sense then to call it true or false. Nonetheless the brain experience of being there as a mind, is representational; and to the extent that representation is narrative, the self-recognition of the brain as a mind, is fictional (which doesn’t entail it is false).

Human minds are extremely active in the narrative vicissitudes they’ve been presented to, because they emerge from playing those events. In fact the technology of mind is the practice of handing down from brain to brain the experience of being a consciousness. The interwoven narrative infrastructures present many different sub-goals and narrative lines for the mind inhabiting those semiotic environment; a human consciousness is also able to walk on the very projection of her representation: namely she can be aware of being a representation. In this case she flows along the limit of her representativity; that border is the limit of being there and its crossing produces the meaningfulness to fade. But properly there is no other side to the limit of being there (of meaningfulness).

Some cultural traditions more than others are interested in inhabiting more closely to the limit. One consequence, apparently, is the superimposition of mental states on the single brain representation: in those particular accelerations, the vicissitudes of the brain are trained to play consistently with projecting more than one consciousness. The risk of exploring conflicting characters, producing cognitive friction, is overcome with the “emanation” strategy: the same consciousness emanates from brain to brain. So instead of the mere mind technology, what is handed down from brain to brain is an already centered consciousness. In this way a broader mind horizon can be passed, while the focus of a single consciousness dissipates the cognitive friction (and the relative schizoid symptoms).

The community handing down already centered consciousness is per definition searching old companions under new forms. The contingency of an individual psychology is no better placed in a new creation than in the transmission of an old one: for a brain learning to impersonate a new mind or rehearsing old ones is not a big difference of performance.

Under this respect, the Western echolocation of an interpreter experience a narrative empowerment: not only the semiotic environment is talking to a consciousness, but the semiotic feedbacks are personal. The multiple layers of meaning in the environment is telling me my own story, the story concerning very much my own experience. Of course “mine”, “myself” should be reviewed: the contingent embodiment will be definitely much more respective for the ancestors and for the future generation. Not such a foolish idea as we thought at the beginning!

At the end of the day it’s a sub-category of the extended mind theory, in the temporal dimension. And time is the elapsing of movement under mind breath (a kind of Aristotelian definition).