GOD AND IMMORTALITY
FOR THE
RATIONAL MIND

SUMMARY

The ancient sages were right: it does work and it is harmonious with science (as it always was). The new element here is an answer to: HOW does it work? Unfortunately, the answer also confirms that to get all one has to give all. There are no shortcuts and no way to cheat. This game is mercilessly honest.

An earlier version of these notes was presented in a CIS discussion.
FEEDBACK: rtomic@omegapoint.com,
Compuserve 75030,1044 (Ratko Tomic)


INTRODUCTION

For several years I wondered what is the basis in (physical/biological) reality of the mystical gestalt of God and immortality (e.g. Gospel of Thomas, Jesus saying #1: ``And he [Jesus] said "Whoever finds the meaning of these sayings will not taste death."''). I knew with certainty (of a personal non-verbal gestalt) that it wasn't merely a hallucination, it is true and it means exactly what it says. But how can it be? Since I also knew that laws of nature must be harmonious (self-consistent) at all levels -- God doesn't (and cannot) cheat, and at our level it must play by (or in harmony with) the rules/patterns/laws of our level.

So, whatever the (higher level) patterns of mystical gestalt might be, they can still only be another angle on the patterns/laws uncovered by natural sciences (arrangement similar to a crossword puzzle - physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, psychology,... fill in rows, mystical gestalt fills in columns, but the two sets of patterns must be perfectly harmonious [of course, we can always only know the partial patterns in either set, but to the extent they are known, they must agree]).

Educated as a theoretical physicist I had to know not only that it (God, immortality) is possible, but also how is it possible, how does it and how could it work at all in terms of the other set of patterns (those of natural sciences). Since leaving the academic world I had worked for several years on pattern recognition, neural networks, genetic algorithms etc, the topics which in mid-1980s became unified (along with some results of non-linear dynamics, far-from-equilibrium statistical physics, cellular automata, fractals, etc) into a new discipline, the complexity science.

Interestingly, this science cuts across several other sciences, or in the crossword puzzle analogy, it's the 'vertical' pattern, just like the mystical gestalt. The common thread it follows across many different sciences is the realization that various adaptible complex systems appearing on all levels of complexity (from genetic engines to economies, societies and ecosystems) have a common mathematical core: they all utilize mathematically the same kind of natural computing scheme (the network with adaptible links under punishments/rewards), only implemented on different "hardware". This insight is already being utilized in practice by new families of computer algorithms, immitating various complex adaptable systems (genetic engines, gene pools, neural networks, economies, social networks), and they all exhibit uncanny spontaneous intelligence (anticipatory ability).

As I became aware of this 'perpendicular' relation of complexity science vise analytical sciences, it dawned on me that the 'Intelligent Presence' of the mystical God-gestalt is precisely the vast intelligent network of intertwined social and eco webs (and beyond), identified by complexity science as the same kind of intelligent system as our brain, except that this one is a giant brain of unimaginable capacity and intelligence.

From the human perspective, the dominant outer network is the social organism, that's the outer network where most in/out connections emanating from one human (the "cell" or "neuron" of the social organism) are hooked into. So, as a good approximation, one can identify the God of monotheistic religions, the God of people, with the social organism (indeed, the ancient texts about God deal mainly with the social organism, ethics, laws and history of social harmonization). The mind of God, or the holy spirit, corresponds thus to the "neural" process unfolding in the social & eco networks, in the same manner as person's mind corresponds to the neural process unfolding in the network of neurons, brain.

From this angle, the ancient immortality recipes translate into the RECODING of the pattern of "self" (which starts out in the local & fragile network, brain) into the pattern of "Self" in the more durable outer network (social organism and beyond).

This strategy for immortality of self-pattern is based on the ancient wisdom of not putting all eggs in one basket. Or, on even more primal wisdom already utilized by the brain itself to preserve memories and mind algorithms despite deaths of billions of neurons over person's lifetime -- brain spreads each memory over many links, each memory changes slightly the strengths of thousands of links (and each link is shared by thousands of memories). So no important memory or mental process is critically dependent on any one or few neurons.

The LIFE, DEATH, LIFE section (below) follows up this basic and simple idea in more details, showing that the mystical gestalt of God and immortality (and relation to the ethics of love) was right on the target -- it is a tangible and 'speakable' reality, not a hallucination of a sensory deprived mind stuck alone in a desert thirty nine nights too long.

The only "catch" is that it's not really a matter of internally believing or disbelieving any particular images or stories, complying with some ossified rites, reciting the right verses, etc, but it's a matter of consistently doing the things which appear quite at odds with the conventional wisdom about self-interest, it's not in talking the talk but in walking the walk. So, the "bad" news is that there are no shortcuts or clever tricks here, this game is mercilessly honest, and you truly get what you pay for, you reap as you have sown. To get all one has to give all. The "good" news is that it is real and it works, we do get the Lifeseed, the rich land to plant it in, the water to water it,... but it's up to each of us what we'll do with it.


MYSTICAL GOD GESTALT & COMPLEXITY SCIENCE

While there is a great diversity of religions and their prescriptions, the mystical insight (which is at the root of all religions) seems to have a common core across the cultures, continents and millenia -- the existence of an intelligent live presence. In recent years science (complexity science) has arrived to realization that there actually is an intelligent live presence, a kind of higher lifeform on Earth.

Although the complexity science is a new discipline, its name and present scope emerging only in 1980s, many of its results were scattered among mathematics, physics, biology, computer science, economy for decades (some going back to 19th century). The crystallization seed for the new discipline was the insight that there is a common core shared by great variety of complex systems, such as genetic engines, gene pools, ecosystems, immune systems, brains, economies, societies, natural languages, webs of scientific theories, cultures,... The common core is the network structure, with nodes interconnected via adaptable links, where the links change in response to the punishments and rewards acting on the system.

Complexity science shows that such systems spontaneously develop anticipatory behaviors, they internally model their environment, run these models 'in their head', as it were, in order to anticipate the responses of their actions and select the optimal one (which tries to minimize punishments, maximize rewards), like a chess player looking several moves ahead to pick the best one. This property is purely a mathematical result for these kind of networks, independent of what links or nodes are made of, of what kind of messages/items are passing through the links, what are the punishments & rewards.

Computer science has been using for several decades artificial neural networks, a simplified imitation of brain, as a powerful tool for difficult optimization and pattern recognition problems. That seemed an obvious choice. But in recent years the genetic algorithms (immitating genetic engines & gene pools) and Holland classifier (immitating society of traders, simplified economy) have proven equally powerful in solving same kind of problems.

In brain the nodes are neurons, linked by dendrites, axons and synapses which carry electric charges and neuro-transmitters. In genetic engine the nodes are nucleotides and links are implemented as diffusion carrying enzymes, proteins, nucleic and amino acids,... The gene pools are networks which link genetic engines as sub-nets through links of sexual reproduction, genetic crossover. Human societies contain many types of nodes (e.g. humans, machines, animals) richly interconnected through all types of adaptible links in all types of communications, relations, law, trade, production,... passing words of natural and artificial languages, information (pictures, figures etc), goods, services, money...

But regardless of the particular kind of "hardware" implementing the links, nodes and punishments/rewards, all such systems act as intelligent/anticipatory creatures. Looking at the overall system, it consists of innumerable intelligent networks (in material and conceptual/symbolic domains), nesting, overlapping, intertwining, permeating each other, all unfolding simultaneously, sharing cells and motions with each other, each in relentless pursuit of its own happiness, continuously harmonizing with all others permeating it -- a picture similar to an infinitely dimensional crossword puzzle, creating and solving itself in all directions at once, through infinitude of busy motions from the tiniest to the largest, shuffling all letters in blocks of all sizes, in all places, all at once.

The human societies, which are the most advanced kind of intelligent networks (the most powerful natural computers) on Earth, are a new kind of intelligent higher lifeform (with humans as its cells), social organism, which has evolved on Earth within last ten millenia, and is still evolving at an exponential pace, already million times faster than genetically evolving lifeforms (such as humans and other less complex ones). The evolutionary quantum leap to social organisms parallels the earlier quantum leap to multicellular organisms which lead to the explosion of speciation and complexification.

Most people perceive the large motions of the social organism as some kind of blind natural forces, on par with winds, river flows, forest fires, or as pendulums and machinery run by the 'leaders' (an industrial age metaphor). The subtle purposes and patterns of these motions, glimpsed at in a flash of gestalt, are attributed to gods or God, invisible hand, dialectics of class struggle, morphogenetic fields,... Now we know they are of the same kind of purposes and patterns as those produced by our brains, except that this brain is billions times larger and unimaginably more powerful (also, the social organisms are only the subnets of the wider ecosystem networks, which in turn are subnets of the biosphere).

The natural question is, if this brain is the same intelligent presence that gestalt of mystics calls God -- how do death, Kingdom of God (or equivalent) , immortality of soul, enlightenment,... fit into this perspective? Well, there is no Paradise and Hell after death, only 'to be or not to be', and although the Gate can be crossed (via the formula best expressed by Zen as 'All is One, One is None, None is All'), getting into 'to be' is a bit harder and more rare than commonly believed,... but that is the subject of the main section: LIFE, DEATH, LIFE.

For those intrigued by complexity science, here are few titles I enjoyed reading:


ILLUSTRATION FOR AN INTELLIGENT NETWORK

Q: can you simplify it at all...

Let's look a specific example, a network which can learn to recognize letters.

The network consists of few hundreds cells. The cells are very simple: each cell has few dozens of input lines and few dozens of output lines. When the cell receives signals/pulses (e.g. electric pulses) on some of its inputs, it responds by sending pulses to all its outputs if the total number of pulses received is greater than half of total number of input lines. So, this works like voting - if the number of votes for 'pulse' (as opposed for 'quiet') is above half, it sends out a 'pulse', otherwise it sends out 'quiet'.

An important feature of the lines carrying the pulses is ADAPTABILITY - the link strength (or the resistance of the lines) is adjustible so they can be set to pass through anywhere from the full strength of the pulse to the complete cutoff (no pulse goes through). So the network will look like a web of light bulbs interconnected via wires, and each wire carrying a light- dimmer knob which can be tweaked continuously from the complete dark to the full brightness. When cells 'count their votes' for ON or OFF, they use the NET VALUE of the pulses (resulting after the attenuation), thus some inputs are 100% on (value 1.00), some 35% on (value 0.35), etc. So, it's like voting by shouting, where not only the content of the vote counts, but also the loudness of the voter.

The network can be initially connected completely randomly, but in practical applications one often uses layered structure (they're the simplest to analyze). In the picture below the signals propagate UP, from the cells in A layer to the cells in Z layer:

0 1 0 1 1 The answer pattern (output of Z cells)
Z Z Z Z Z Z-cells are the "result" layer
Y Y Y Y Y Y
........... other layers
C C C C C C
B B B B B B B layer of B-cells
A A A A A A A A layer of A-cells
* * * - * - - * Light dots (from scanner)

Each A-cell receives ON or OFF signal from a light sensor (e.g. a page scanner), and sends a pulse (if light dot is ON) to few dozen of B-cells. The connections (and their strengths or resistances) from the A-cell to its pulse destination B-cells are chosen randomly, so that each B-cell will typically receive inputs of different strengths from dozens of different A- cells. Each B-cell will count the votes (accounting also for their strengths ) it gets from A-cells, and send the outcome to dozens of C-cells. Similarly, each C-cell will count the net votes received from dozens of B cells and send the outcome up the ladder to D-cells, ...etc.

Finally, when the voting wave reaches Z-cells, they only count the net incoming vote and each Z-cell posts its outcome as 0 (off) and 1 (on), which some external program reads as the result-pattern. With 5 Z-cells in the picture there are at most 32 result-patterns (i.e. 2^5=32 combinations of five 0's and 1's: 00000, 00001, 00010, ... 11111), so 32 different letters and punctuation signs can be recognized.

The external program (which runs the simulation) will, using some convention, require that, say, letter 'a' (on the scanner) produce result-pattern (on Z-cells) 00000, letter 'b' to produce 00001 on Z-cells, etc. Since the cells are initially connected randomly, when a pattern of light/dark dots for letter 'x' is presented to A-cells, and the signals finally reach Z-cells, there will be some random result-pattern of 0's and 1's on the Z-cells, say 01011, and not the required one, say, 11000 designated as a code for letter 'x'.

Now comes the LEARNING part: the leftmost Z-cell has produced 0, but the 'correct' answer was 1. To correct this, the Z-cell will look back at the votes from the Y-cells which advised it, and for all those Y-cells which had signalled it "vote 0" (which was the 'wrong' advice) it will DECREASE SLIGHTLY the link strength. For all the Y cells which had sent it something in between 0 and 1 (due to attenuation/resistance of the links), the Z cell will decrease the links proportionately to the error (e.g. for Y-cells which had sent it 0.25, the link strength will be decreased, but not as much as for 0 vote, since the error is now 0.75, not 1.00; and for Y-cells which had sent it 1, i.e. no error, there will be no change of the link strength, i.e. don't fix if it ain't broken).

So, the Z-cell will reward and punish the Y-cells by decreasing their link strengths proportionately to how "wrong" (relative to Z-cell's target output value) they were. Similarly the Y-cells will propagate their punishments/rewards down to X-cells which had advised them, proportionately to how "wrong" the X-cells were. But since each Y-cell had sent its output signals (advice) to many Z-cells, the Y-cells don't have a sharp target output value (such as 0 or 1, as Z-cells do), but rather their target value is some averaged value between 0 and 1 (a weighted average from target values of Z-cells they had sent signals to). After X-cells receive their punishments & rewards from Y cells, they proceed the same way, punishing and rewarding their advisors (W-cells) proportionately to how wrong W-cells were, and so on, until the punishment-reward wave reaches the A-cells, where it stops.

So the picture of one learning pass looks like this: a pattern of light & dark dots for some letter 'x' is presented to the layer of A-cells, then a wave of votes (signals) propagates upward, from A to Z, then the wave of punishments & rewards bounces back, propagating from Z to A.

To have the network learn all letters one has to present to A-cell layer sequentially dot patterns for 'a', 'b',...'z', then if necessary the whole series is repeated several times. Namely, by the time the dimmer-knob tweaking is done for the last dot pattern (e.g. image 'z') in the series, the cummulative changes in link strengths may have wiped out the results of the knob tweaking for the first pattern (e.g. image 'a') in the series. This is why the knobs are tweaked very lightly (i.e. the punishments-rewards are as gentle as possible). And as the learning cycles continue, the errors decrease, thus the level of dimmer-knob tweaking decreases (since it is proportionate to the magnitude of errors), and we're done when an entire pass went on without a need to tweak a single knob. Or, in the wave-picture, the bouncing wave going up and down will smooth out the sharp rocks on the bottom.

The knowledge the network has acquired is thus stored in the link strengths. But although there is no single link which stores letter 'a', and the knowledge is spread out, there is a STRUCTURE to this knowledge:

As network learns, one first notices that some cells in the lower layers (e. g. B,C) SPECIALIZE -- they respond (activate strongly) to specific features in the dot patterns presented to the A-layer, e.g. some may become active if there is a horizontal line in the dot pattern, some trigger on vertical lines, some on curved, some on horizontal lines at the top of dot rectangle, some at the bottom, etc. With speech recognition networks one can see cells specializing in phonems. In social networks one can also see the specialization at all levels and in all human activities.

The specialization means that the network is in effect ANALYZING the patterns from its environment by breaking them into simpler fragments, the building blocks. But since each specialist-cell feeds its output to many cells in the next layer up, and since each higher level cell receives many fragment-signals from the lower level specialists, the higher level cells will start SPECIALIZING IN COMBINATIONS OF ELEMENTARY FRAGMENTS (just as the lower level specializes in the special combinations of their inputs, the light/dark dots). For example, some middle-level cells will become active if there is one horizontal line at the top (received from one of horizontal line specialists) and one vertical line in the middle (like letter T). In speech recognition networks on sees higher level specialists combining phonems into common word fragments.

In social networks one can see the same kind of process everywhere, e.g. in science biologist combining results, instruments, techniques from chemists, physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, other biologists; or in manufacturing a computer maker combining parts from chip, chassis, keyboard, monitor,... makers. Or pick any object around you, say, a toothpaste, read all the labels, check all materials involved -- there are probably hundreds or thousands of people down the chain linked to you via that toothpaste, and your punishments-rewards (money you paid for it) has been spread out down that web, a bit to each of them.

As you go up the layers, the cells will specialize in higher and higher level patterns, made up of various combinations of lower level patterns. In other words, the lower layers act as ANALYZERS of the environment, they break it apart into building blocks, and the higher layers act as SYNTHESIZERS, putting together the building blocks into the SCALED MODELS of the environment. If you look at the speech recognition network, where the temporal patterns are recognized, the synthesizers are putting together the building blocks (phonems) into various temporal sequences, i.e. they are creating scale models from the building blocks, and running them in their head (unfolding in time), as it were, in order to select the one which works "best" (relative to whatever punishments/rewards they're exposed to). In a network learning to play chess, the synthesizers will combine several moves, looking ahead for the "best" sequence.

Although for concreteness sake, I had described a highly structured network (resembling a bit some government agency), the same behaviours (learning, specialization, analysis, synthesis, model creation & running, look ahead, etc) hold for great variety of network structures, link updating procedures, signal propagation and "voting" rules.

More importantly, the mathematics (& simulations) used to prove such capabilities of the network, does in no way depend on what are the links or nodes made of, what are the things passing through the network links, what are the punishments/rewards. So, these network properties are quite general -- they follow purely mathematically, as soon as one can identify that the network has adaptabile links, the nodes receiving inputs and producing outputs based on inputs (via some voting/weighing-like function) and punishments & rewards affecting the links.

So, it is not necessary at all to have literal neurons hooked up into a network, such as brain, to have a network give rise to intelligent processes , such as analyzing patterns in their environment, breaking them internally into building blocks, hooking together these blooks into the scaled models of the environment (including the network itself, i.e. there is the ego- actor as a part of the model), running (internally) these models in order to look ahead and select the optimal actions for the ego-actor based on predicted outcomes.

We tend to notice such processes only in our own network, brain, since we can introspect them directly, but the same kind of processes go on in innumerable other networks, such as genetic engines, immune systems, gene pools, social organizations, news media, industries, sciences, economies, government agencies, political movements, social organism as whole, wider ecosystems (including social organisms), etc. They are all intelligent networks (adaptible complex systems) with the general features described above, only implemented on different "hardware", with their intelligence attuned to different perspective of the "environment" (different from the sensory perspective of the human brain & senses).

The human brain tends to exaggerate dominance of its form of intelligence compared to others around and within human organism, and it gets away with it since its job is to form the words and sentences to "explain" and communicate what's going on (like a spin doctor evaluating a TV debate of his candidate). The AIDS epidemic shows quite clearly that there is another intelligent network within us, the immune system, which all of our brains and technology put together can't quite match in its specialty - outwitting the gene pools (another intelligent network) of microbes around us. Working quietly in the background, the immune network learns vast numbers of microbe patterns over person's lifetime, and destroys the intruders efficiently and wisely without provoking the backlash in the microbe gene pools. The quicker , but shallower network, brain, in the meantime had discovered antibiotics and within decades had managed, with its hasty arrogant actions, to spur the microbe gene pools into the high speed crunch, and they're now outwitting the scientific and farmaceutical behemoths, and antibiotics are rendered useless one after the other (one scientist said recently in Time magazine that he has concluded that microbes are smarter than us). If the immune network had been as dumb and short-sighted, the microbes would have wiped us out long time ago. And when the immune network fails (goes senile, as it were), as in AIDS, they do wipe us out, despite all of our arrogant high tech medicine. OTOH, the intelligence of the immune network, without any help from the high tech brain-centric medicine, has somehow pulled us through for hundreds of millenia of microbe assaults (while the high tech medicine, left to its arrogant self, can't pull through 1 life worth against the microbe assaults on an AIDS patient).


LANGUAGES -- INTELLIGENT BEINGS

So, the intelligent networks are by no means restricted to the brain. More interestingly, they are also not restricted to networks made up of 'matter'. The math demonstrating their properties doesn't care what are the network nodes and links made of. Thus the abstract worlds of natural and artificial languages, cultures, conceptual structures of sciences, religions, etc are intelligent networks in their own abstract worlds, they learn, they model and anticipate, just as brain or other 'matter' networks do.

For example, a natural language is a vast network of words, phrases, quotations, concepts, with huge number of adaptible links (semantic, stylistic, historical, grammatical, etc), exposed to continuous stream of punishments and rewards (based on how well it serves the communication, writing, speaking, creativity, etc). And over millenia the natural languages have evolved into very smart networks. For example, you may be toying with some ideas in your head for hours, then you decide to write them down, and as you write, one thing leads to another, words and phrases associate with others, and, as if by magic, you end up with a wisdom you never knew was in you. You have in fact tapped into the wisdom and intelligence encoded implicitly into the language network (encoded in its vast web of constanly adapting links, which you absorbed as you learned the language, but without being aware of the content of its implicit wisdom and intelligence; these come to life most strongly in writing since writing quiets down the noise and limitations of the short term memory trying to cope with forming the sentences [when speaking or thinking without writing], and the subtle semantic links can then reverbrate in full strength and over longer span of text, awakening thus the intelligent giant of the language network).

Artificial langauges of sciences are even more subject to sharp competitive pressures (punishments & rewards), and have accumulated extremely powerful creative intelligence. Some of greatest discoveries in science come from this intelligence. For example, the electromagnetic waves were discovered when Maxwell used particular form of differential equations to express the previously known laws of electromagnetism, and in that particular format, guided by purely aesthetic reasons, he felt the equation would look nicer, more symmetrical, if there was an extra term. So he added the prettifying term, and when he worked out the consequences of the addition, it was an electromagnetic wave. Similarly, mathematicians stumbled into an odd feature of Maxwell's equations - when you rewrite them by substituting original variable letters X1,Y1..., with particular odd looking expression of some new variable letters X2,Y2,... then you expand it all, then collect the new labels into compact form, and the equations look the same in the new labels (X2,Y2,...) as those in the old labels (X1,Y1,...). That oddity (Lorentz transformations) lingered for several decades until Einstein explained that this "lingustic" oddity is in fact the theory of relativity. This kind of magic wisdom, comming seemingly out of nowhere, has happened time after time , and a physicist Eugene Wigner got so puzzled by it (after it sprung its intelligence in his discovery which earned him Nobel prize) that he wrote a paper about this strange phenomenon, and he gave it a name: the UNREASONABLE EFFECTIVNESS of mathematics.

Glancing at the bigger picture -- there are innumerable intelligent networks, on all scales, in all domains, nesting, overlapping and permeating each other, unfolding through myriad of little motions, each motion serving many networks simultaneously, while each net is pursuing its own happiness (intelligently optimizing the motions relative to its rewards & punishments) , and harmonizing the shared motions with all other nets permeating it in pursuit of their own happiness. Therefore asking for The Purpose and The Cause of any little motion is meaningless, since each serves numerous intelligent networks, each is a part of many anticipatory/intelligent processes each unfolding purposefully toward their own anticipated goals, and each motion is a part of many different patterns/laws each defining its own causes and effects (e.g. is bee heading toward the flower to collect the nectar, or is the flower attracting the bee to pollinate it, or is it the bee cells interacting by electro-chemical processes, or is it just a pile of atoms following Schroedinger equation... etc). Similarly, asking "who is in charge here," say, is it human brain (human will, mind) or is it the brain (will, mind) of social organism (the approximate God of monotheism) is as meaningless as asking who is in charge of you, is it your will and mind, or is it the electro-chemical processes of your cells.

-----

Returning now briefly to the thesis of this thread -- the pattern of 'self' (say, person's mind, will, affection) get initially encoded into a single fragale network, brain, which lasts few decades, then perishes, taking with it the precious 'self'. But this fragale network is a subnet of a vast outer network, the social organism (and beyond), and it is attached to the outer network via tens of thousands of links. So, the possibility I suggested is to recode the live 'self' pattern from the fragile network, brain, into the live 'Self' pattern in the outer network, social organism. The conventional wisdom of self-interest conditions all of us to direct most of our actions toward pleasing the biological network in which the 'self' pattern originated. Thus we fail to develop sufficient feedback with the outer network to grow the Self. The ancient immortality recipe, the ethics of unconditional love, is precisely the method for developing this feedback needed to recode the mortal 'self' pattern into the immortal 'Self' pattern (see LIFE, DEATH, LIFE section for more).

Q: ...where do we plug in Chaos theory?

The chaos plays important role in the complexity science (the two books among those I listed (in the intro) have "chaos" in the title).

At the moment it is only an empirical observation that the complexification occurs at the very edge between chaos and order.

This edge is a point of phase transition, like the point (on temperature scale) of ice melting into water. (In complexity science the scale isn't the temperature but the average probability [per some unit of time] that a building block in a complex system will change its state during the time unit; this parameter is called lambda patrameter, e.g. lambda=0 means totally frozen system, lambda=1.00 means totally chaotic system; for 1-dimensional 2-state cellular automata the lambda=0.273 [i.e. odds of change per time step are 27.3 percent] is the edge of chaos and order, and at that lambda the systems start evolving intelligence.)

Intuitively this is plausible since on the 'ice' (order) side of the edge, the system is frozen out and very few new things are tried out to move complexity forward, and on the water/chaos side, too many new things are tried out to allow any created structure to stick around long enough so the more complex things could build upon the things built so far. At the very edge the new structures are created and destroyed on all scales.

An interesting mathematical result for these systems (at the point of phase transition) is self-similarity, which is also reflected in a common intuition that nature seems to enjoy reusing its tricks on different levels of complexity.

Another mathematical property of the systems at the edge of order and chaos is the presence of power laws, such as Zipf law for natural languages and many other complex systems (e.g. if you rank words by frequency of usage, then the usage frequency of the k-th word on the list will be approximately proportional to 1/k, i.e. the top ranking word will be used twice as often as the second ranking, three times as often as the third ranking,... etc; or similarly, if you rank cities by size, then the population in k-th city will be proportional to 1/k). This provides a useful quantitative criteria for testing various systems for being at the edge of order and chaos, and therefore for systems undergoing spontaneous complexification (for systems becoming more intelligent, anticipatory etc).


LIFE, DEATH, LIFE

Feedback: Of course, consciousness makes inspiration possible, but I am not unduly impressed by consciousness in and of itself...

However, I agree with your point that there -seems- to be a social organism. Certainly this can be discussed in behavioral terms, I'm not sure if it has a physiological basis (a la slime mold). Again, the social aspects are interesting, but for me not very inspiring.

As long as one looks at the two (self and the social organism) and their relations within the safe, albeit shallow, waters of conventional wisdom ("behavioral terms", "social aspect" etc), one will catch only the small fish.

The (inner) self of conventional wisdom (e.g. consciousness, or mind, affection, will, or any other verbal schemata) rests on our biologically inherited neural network, brain, and our body. We draw the conventional boundaries of our (biological) self from our birth on, as we extend our will from eyes and mouth, down through neck, arms and the rest of our body. That phase goes fairly quickly (although, looking at a child learning to walk, not without hard struggle). But as we reach our biologically connected boundaries, we quickly learn that extending our will and senses beyond is much harder, others simply won't do what one wills. As result of the increased resistance to our expanding self we create an internal model of reality consisting of self (the obedient, easily accessible, part limited by our biologically inherited network) and others (the disobedient, hard to access, part/the outer network/social organism, interacting with the obedient part via language, physical actions, exchange of goods, services, money, etc).

Most people never outgrow that model and their entire life effort is centered on gratifying the obedient part of the network, self. They are like a child who found that extending its will to legs is much too hard and painful experience, and so it decided that it doesn't really need to learn to walk, after all food and toys seem to come to it anyway, so what's the problem. Luckily for the child it doesn't get to choose; the ancient wisdom of the built in biological program drives it to keep trying, falling, crying , trying again and so it eventually learns to extend its will to its legs, mastering at last its biologically connected domain.

As springs and Christmases go by, we realize one evening, perhaps after inadvertently letting our glance rest on our dust covered high school trophies for few seconds too long, or while satisfying an inexplicable sudden urge to dig out from basement the faded photo album of our childhood, that the obedient part, the all-imporant priceless self, jealously protected, rewarded and pleased with the best we can offer all these years, isn't going to be obedient to our will for much longer, and from all that science and common sense tell us, myths and fairy-tales notwithstanding, all will be gone, and there is nothing beyond the Gate but a dark horrifying nothingness.

After all that investment of the best I can do, after all the gifts brought to its insatiable altar, the ungrateful treacherous self will simply dissolve on me, perishing into the horrifying void, for ever. Maybe I ought to have my body frozen into a liquid nitrogen, and some day science may figure a way to revive me? But, science also tells me that the water crystals will rip apart all my cells, all my neurons and memories will be destroyed, and the priceless self with them. It's almost better getting cremated and have my ashes scattered over woods and meadows to feed the grass, and cows will eat the grass, and they will make milk from the grass, and children will drink the milk, and there will be few of my atoms in there , in these kids as they joyfully play and grow. But that still ain't it. I've probably got now in me a few atoms of Democritus and I don't really think that does any good to poor old Democritus. Also, most of my "own" atoms now are not the same atoms which made 'me' ten years ago, and I'm still the same self. So atoms won't do much for getting a piece of self through the Gate.

The self is encoded in the neurons, as live/active memories and action algorithms we accumulate over years. Curiously, thousands of your neurons have died since this morning, several while you're reading this sentence, and yet the self seems to go on. You don't loose a chunk of self as hundreds of millions of neurons die, you don't forget self, it actually seems to grow and get richer as years go by.

The primeval wisdom built into your brain design, which allows your core memories and mind algorithms, the self, to survive the natural death of billions of your neurons over lifetime, is a spreading of each memory over thousands of neural links, with no single or several links being critical for that memory, i.e. it's the ancient wisdom of not putting all the eggs in one basket. Each memory is encoded by gentle modifications of thousands or millions of neural links (their strengths), and any link is modified by thousands of memories (a scheme analogous to hologram). And the more some memory is spread out, the more resistant it is to any random cell death or localized or random damage. The self is thus fairly safe.

Well, until the Gate. Since however widely we spread the self within our biologically inherited network, however many neuron links we use for its most valued core, none of them will get through the Gate, all our cells, including all our neurons, die shortly after we die, and the self, however wisely encoded into our neural links, will perish into the void.

Thus the cause of the ultimate fragility of conventional self when it reaches the Gate is the fact that it is entirely encoded in a single fragile network, the biologically inherited network, brain, which cannot pass through the Gate.

But we know (from complexity science) that there is a vast, intelligent, outer network around us, the social organism (and beyond), using the same kind of natural computing machinery as our brain, but of unimaginably greater capacity and natural computing power than our brain, and more importantly in the context of the biological Gate, of much greater durability than our brain and our body.

So, the strategy for getting the self beyond the Gate of our biological organism is the same one the self already uses to persist in face of deaths of billions of neurons which carry it, the old eggs in the basket trick -- the self must be spread out beyond the particular biological network (brain & body) in which it started, it must be ENCODED INTO THE VAST OUTER NETWORK, the social organism (and, of course, into the outer networks beyond the single social organism, human race, ecosystem, ...etc).

But how does one encode self into the outer network? Has anyone done it? Yes, but before rushing into "how to" (the 1 minute guide to immortality), let's step back and glance at the bigger picture.


Just as the genetic network of a single fertilized egg unfolds its implicit pattern into the order of a more complex multicellular network, as a growing embryo rooted into and nurtured by the mother's womb, entirely dependent on it, but ultimately having to leave the womb, passing painfully through the Gate where its lifeline, the umbilical cord, will be cut off -- so does the "fertilized" (enlightened) self unfold its implicit pattern and grow, spreading out its pattern into the order of the social organism, encoding itself into the outer network as Self, while its lifeline stays rooted in the nurturing womb (the individual brain & body). But eventually, the Self (the pattern in the outer network) must leave the womb, step into the dark void, then the light of the Gate is seen (NDE witnesses describe it as light at the end of a tunnel), but shortly thereafter the lifeline to the womb is cut off (the cellular death of the brain), the Gate is crossed irreversibly and the Self is born.

The only thing which survives past the Second Gate of Light (the physical death) is the Self, which is the pattern unfolded from the self (self is the order/pattern encoded in the biological network, brain) into the outer network of the social organism (and beyond).

The process producing the "fertilized" self (the mystical enlightenment) has the same ecstatic attraction built in as the more familiar process leading to the fertilization of an egg (although, reportedly, the mystical ecstasy vs sexual ecstasy is like sexual ecstasy vs chocolate ecstasy). That's the carrot kept in front of the donkey, to get it to go and do what is needed, to get it across the uphill road (to drive the self out of its biological boundaries). And in both cases, there is the whole little game and ritual leading to it, competition, struggle, selection, disappointments and suffering to find just the right life mate; we go through similar games, selection, suffering, etc, to find just the right formula for immortality.

And just as most eggs never get fertilized (or, similarly, as most species get extinct), and are doomed to perish forever in pains of ignoble death at the First Gate (literally), most selves never get enlightened, and are doomed to perish forever in an utmost horror as they step across the Second Gate dissolving into the total and eternal void (after the light show of visual neurons dying en masse is over, the spectacle of NDE is finito, and the rising sea of dark ice mercilessly closes in around the last tiny island, with the shivering core of self burning the last remaining spark, in a last-ditch scramble toward the only high point of the island, and having just enough time to Realize and attempt The Scream into the echoless deaf void).

What the 'self' has Realized, as the sea of dark ice closed in, is that nothing, not a bit, of 'self' will get through, and what will go on is the tiny ripple outside, left there inadvertently, as a side-effect of 'self' pursuing its own gratification. How it wishes now it had nurtured that ripple, that seed of eternal life. But the time is up, and the seed neglected on the stony ground cannot be reached any more, and it will turn to dust.

Isn't this 'ripple' or 'seed' same thing as "legacy" one leaves behind? No. The "legacy" won't help, "legacy" is not you. What one wants is the true live self somehow to get through, to see somehow the body and all its cells die, and still continue. That is what the promise of religion is, not some abstract memory or gratitude of others about the deceased.

The task is to somehow transfer the coherence (self) present in the localized network (brain) into the coherence (Self) of the outer network (social organism). As the Self pattern unfolds into the outer network according to its nature and the guidance from self, the self has at each stage to dissolve into It completely, without any reservation without anything held back. The tiniest crack of separation between self and Self will turn the Self into "other", into "legacy", entity distinct from "me". One has to give all in order to be all.

Naturally, no one is required to be perfect. One can learn from a child expanding self to legs as it learns to walk - it does it with all its little heart, it tries and fails, and hurts and cries, but doesn't give up. The errors and the hurt are as much the part of the scheme as are the successes and the joy. The networks learn through punishments and rewards, the better the feedback, the better they learn.

The Self has to grow 'organically' from self, not through forced artificial schemes of 'how things ought to be'. The self doesn't know what is it like to be Self in the next phase of its unfolding, just as child doesn't know what is it like to walk, until it walks. The self is like a genetic engine, operating at the level of chemical reactions, while the Self is the shape of the embryo. Although one has to use all foresight one has, all wisdom and knowledge passed down to us from the sages of old, the process is far too complex (relative to our brain) for any final shape/outer design of Self to be imposed upfront. The key is the efficient feedback and self-correction. Child doesn't sit and think upfront how the walking ought to work, but opens up and goes for it in earnest, the best it knows how, now, and corrects the actions & strategy as it receives the feedbacks. The self knows no more of what the ultimate Self will be like, than child the knows what it will be like as a grown-up.

Since Self will have to encompass many individuals beyond the original 'self', the feedbacks to all its cells must be nurtured. And since the original 'self' will be expanding without reserve into the growing Self, the self has to feel equally all the cells of Self. The dissolved 'self' must feel any pain or pleasure of all humans participating in Self (whatever its current domain is) equally, the best that all its senses and all its nerves and all its sympathy can offer, no preference must be given to the pain & pleasure of the originating human. The self cannot allow a gap to develop with Self, it must be It throughout and completely. The other humans included in the unfolding Self may not know of or see the subtle pattern enfolding them and changing them gently, they need not return any of what they are receiving, they may take any advantage of the giver, the giver does not expect or ask anything from them in return, it gives all in order to be all.

As the Self unfolds and expands and gradually acquires affection, mind and will of its own, the self must shed commensurately, but without any holdovers, their biological equivalents (which the self had brought into the process), and open to receive the new ones without reservation. Thus the guidance of the unfolding of Self by the (biologically/neurally rooted) compassion, mind and will of the original self gradually fades away as the Self acquires the Lifeforce of the new kind. Of course, the lower level guidance of the originating biological organism continues to be serviced mainly by its original neural network (for their duration as a coherent biological structure).

This all may sound cold and harsh to the conventional wisdom, "But you wake up in the morning and the world seems so beautiful you can hardly stand it" (as one post-enlightenment Zen practitioner described the process). Looking for analogy among more familiar experiences, one can liken how the 'self' feels as it dissolves into its unfolding Self to the euphoria which overcomes one when his/her first child is born (with similar gradation as in the comparison between the ecstasy of mystical enlightenment, the fertilization of "self", and the sexual ecstasy, as noted earlier; both types of processes are forms of immortalizing, one of genes, another of self).

There is no single best recipe for everyone or for all of the time. Many mystical systems have evolved, usually carrying one through the enlightenment (done often in isolation from the social organism), after which one returns to the organism and does what one has to do, guided by the built in algorithms (just as pregnancy procedes by itself, while courting follows variety of socially/culturally/personally dependent rituals).

Love thy enemies, although a necessary milestone, may not be the best starting point for the initial unfolding of Self. Starting with ones children and spouse, then parents, siblings, friends, colleagues,... might be a more natural progression. Important things are child-like openness to Self and all experiences it brings, readiness of self to acknowledge its errors and fallability, flexibility and earnestness in trying and exploring the new ways, new things, building & accepting the feedbacks (listening and helping others with as much interest and sincerity as for oneself, perceiving and sharing their joy and sadness as ones own, thinking of self and feeling self in third person helps in setting all within the web of Self on equal level,... etc).

One is not trying to impose or force in any way other people to change their ways. Rather one is imperceptibly, almost inadvertently, nudging at the edges of Self by mere example of actions of self. Any subtle change of others should be entirely their own wish, they ought to feel it and think it as a preferrable change, filling their need and in accordance with their nature. The Self enfolds people (and other organisms) by accepting them, the "good" and the "bad", since each is needed for a balanced, hardy live being; Self conquers by submitting to the nature of things. The self must accept and always be what Self is, as Self gradually sheds away its dependence on the originating biological network and gains the full Lifeforce. Since only the Self, Its Mind and Its Body, will effortlessly flow past the Gate (of one of its cells).

And some day, as Self matures, one of its cells will receive its distilled 'genetic' essence, the one its wise little originator had encoded into it long ago, putting in all of his little heart and mind, and the human being will awaken, as if it had slept for all these centuries, now feeling rested and full of life, and then some day it, too, will recall the Gate ahead...


QUESTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS

Q: It is based on absolutes. I.e., I must accept it, I must view the world a certain way, or forfeit all.

There is no ideology or philosophy in what I'm saying. Any system of enlightenment is fine, the event of mystical enlightenment (gestalt of One) being a starting point for the process of recoding the mortal self of the inner network into the immortal Self of the outer network. I am only suggesting the underlying natural basis, the natural mechanism by which various mystical/religious paths to immortality could actually deliver on their promise.

The ethical implications here are not based on some higher principles, ten commandments, or what someone very important said, or any such. They are simply necessitated by the constraints of the distributed nature of Self and the nature of its building blocks (individual humans). If one were to try to force on others some pattern originating from some powerful 'self', some kind of cult of personality, that does not create a live Self being, but a dead machine, a legacy, "other" which is not "me". The magic of life is in those enfolded by the Self doing what they wish to do, what they find good to them, filling what they need, so that Self can truly grow, learn, adapt to any new situations, persist and propagate. The Self must be a full network with adaptible, soft links, adapting on their own, now and forever, in order to learn and be alive like the original fragile network (brain) which gave it rise. No fixed scheme, much less some cult of personality imposing fixed human image onto others, can be a live network. Such schemes are like wax figures, they seem like alive, but only so for a short glance.

This has nothing to do with my notions of "good" or "bad", or some philosophy, it's simply a matter of what does it take to make a network be an adaptible, intelligent, live being. What I am saying is of the same nature as someone telling you what does it take to grow wheat, based on experiences of many who grew the wheat before, and say, explaining that tugging the wheat up by force won't make it grow faster or bigger (analog to forcing others to fit your pattern), it will only harm it or kill it; or, say, that separating the wheat from the ground will probably kill it (analog to separating self from Self, failing to dissolve self into Self, i.e. rejecting Self because self doesn't like some of Self being's features),... etc.

Q: This certainly isn't very conducive to questioning, postulating and skepticism, i.e., the scientific way. For example, the following statements presume absolute knowledge:

That's an ancient wisdom about this technique, e.g. the famous Zen master Seng Ts'an expressed it as: "Make a hairsbreadth difference, And heaven and earth are set apart." Or Jesus (Mat 6:24) "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

I did add, though, right after that paragraph that no one can be perfect all the time. Our ego will fight back (it's a hardy weed to uproot) and there may be lots of lapses, but one normally has several years or several decades to keep correcting any problems, the best one can.

The key for the timely corrections is to develop as good FEEDBACK from the entire body of Self (all humans and other beings enfolded by it) as possible , to feed the outer links (from other humans) into the inner receptors of pain and pleasure, so they are indistinguishable (to the highest degree one can reach) from pain and pleasure signals originating in the original biological body. Most of us have a reasonably good feedback of this kind for those we love most. So, nurturing the same kind of love toward all of Self, however wide it expands (even if Saddam or your boss ends up inside), helps develop the feedback.

Besides the feedback to affections, one needs general feedbacks to intellect , and these are nurtured by listening others with full attention, remembering what they said, by truly trying to understand their angle as ones own, by being open to and genuinly interested for what they wish to say, turning effectively into the person speaking... etc., and doing all that only so one can be of more help to them and others. I know, it seemingly goes against the grain, but in reality giving is more rewarding than getting (just for a test, try sometimes giving, say, $300 to an old woman digging for leftovers in the garbage cans).

Q: Lastly, it appears to contradict itself. You have just told me that the slightest of gaps or the tiniest cracks of separation are fatal, but that we must also exhibit "flexibility and earnestness in trying and exploring the new ways, new things...."

Not at all. Growing Self is like being a child again, seeing everything afresh, sheding stereotypes, ossified likes and dislikes brought in by self. The separation occurs precisely when the old self starts rejecting the new life that expanding Self opens up, and starts making judgments from some worn out empty labels, selecting "good" and "bad" based on calcified viewpoints.

This again is a part of the ancient immortality recipes, an advice on how to grow wheat from those who had done it. For example, check the Gospel of Thomas, #22:

There are many other of his sayings (in canonical gospels, too) linking child-like nature to oneness. Compare 'inside/outside' fragment with feedback discussion above (making outside network like the inside one), or 'above/below' or 'male/female' with the non-judgmental, open, fresh mind etc. discussion. The 'eyes in place of an eye...' etc is describing a single Self with each human enfolded within being felt and accepted fully and equally, as same, identical as oneself (also the fragment 'inside/outside' refers to the same). The Prologue (Jesus saying #1) of the Gospel of Thomas, has ''And he said, "Whoever finds the meaning of these sayings will not taste death." ''

Q: As long as we accept the Complexity theory, that is.

There is no complexity theory (not yet). It's a research field, a branch of science, which deals with general complex adaptible systems, investigates their properties, how they work, identifies their occurence in nature, etc. There is nothing to believe or disbelieve about it, its' just a large collection of interesting results (mostly of mathematical nature) about such systems. The connection between social organisms of complexity science (or complex systems beyond them) and the mystical gestalt of the large scale purposeful patterns (traditionally labeled as God or gods), as well as the implications of that identification for the related questions, such as the one we're discussing, is something that occured to me, didn't see it yet elsewhere.

Q: It requires me to accept that human life is unique from other life forms.

Although one can look at the human organism as differing from nearest animal relatives only in degree, as you know from physics, substances have a point of phase transition, so that a degree of T(emperature) makes all the difference. Similarly, if you have a solution of some substance, change concentration beyond certain level and the crystal will form. So, while it is true that homo sapiens differs from the nearest apes only in degree of various facilities, it is also possible that there is a point (or area) of "phase transition" in the space of these facilities, where something qualitatively new can occur when these facilities cross the point. In fact human societies, social organisms, are qualitatively new kind of organism (looking on any measures).

Similar qualitatively new creatures emerged when the cells reached the level of complexity, the ability to synchronize (through electro-chemical signals) their operation, sufficiently to form societies of cells, the multicellular organisms. Apes lack richness of communication sufficient to glue together individuals into anything comparable (in complexity) to human societies.

On another evolutionary track, the ecosystem & gene pool networks did try out the multi-organism natural technology with social insects, which are much simpler individually than apes, thus require less complex control & less rich communication to form multi-organism lifeforms (more complex behaviours of individuals require more complex control & communication mechanisms to harmonize them into social organism). That try ended up in blind alley, stuck in a local optimum (regarding the future development of multi-organism lifeforms). Similar pattern can be observed in the transition from single-cellular to multi-cellular organisms - the eco/genetic networks did invent several times the multi-cellular technology (over couple billion years) but only in Cambrian explosion half a billion years ago have they managed to invent the right building blocks to proceed and develop virtually all of todays multi-cellular organisms. The earlier tries, although not all extinct, were essentially dead ends as far as future complexification.

You can see similar evolutionary patterns of many tries, precursors terminating in dead ends, and breakthroughs which carry on with novelty in develeopments of various technologies in human societies (e.g. DC current for electric power was a dead end, vacuum tube computers, too; some dead ends go extinct, some persist in some niches). Or, similarly in human culture, in arts and sciences. Or even in mental development of a single person (sort of mini evolution of individual's brain). You will also notice similar evolving-universe-like pattern in classical music (or in good movies or novels) where the main theme appears first in several subtle precursors which die out, until one of these takes off into its glorious unfolding.

The human societies have crossed the phase transition threshold (mentioned above) ten millenia ago and have entered exponential spiral of evolution using qualitatively new technology (compared to much slower genetic technology) to transmit information and accumulated knowledge across generations. Such explosions of development occur via positive feedback loops, i.e. the development of human technology speeds up development of even more effective technology, which speeds the next level even more, leading to exponential growth of novelty. But no positive feedbacks and their exponential growths last for ever, they either burn out and perish or end up in a stasis, a (nearly) harmonized state of fixed, interlocked loops (e.g. insect societies). [of course, any statis is only a drastic slowdown, not an eternally unchangeable state]

In summary, although individual human organisms differ from the nearest relatives only in the degree of their facilities, the human societies are qualitatively new type of lifeforms relative to multi-cellular lifeforms, just as multi-cellular organisms are qualitatively new type of lifeforms relative to single-cellular ones or as sexual reproduction is a qualitatively new gene propagation mechanism relative to asexual modes.

Obviously, all semantic lines (such as those above) are matter of conventions, but my proposition isn't particularly sensitive to the semantics -- the proposition is that the 'self' (however you understand it) encoded in our fragile individual neural network (brain) can be recoded (by individual's actions) into the surrounding network of the social organism into a more durable live being. For such recoding to be possible the outer network must have richness and flexibility comparable to those of the inner network (individual brain). The animal societies seem to lack such richness and flexibility relative to their individual brains (although I can't really state that as a certainty).

But for humans and their social network, such recoding (to a substantial degree) of the mortal 'self' to essentially immortal 'Self' does seem possible, as testified by many individuals throughout the history. The testimonies come both from those who had transformed their original 'self' beings into the live multi-organism Self beings (which had persisted beyond the death of the originating single biological body) and from many more of those who can gestalt these live Self beings from the past centuries and millenia. It is also possible that even our own inner world, the self, is itself some kind of collective Self of our brain cells immortalizing their little self beings (whatever these might be).

The question is NOT WHETHER something intelligent & live can be encoded into the outer network (these two networks are esentially same kind of natural computing machinery, just different hardware), BUT only HOW MUCH of the (mortal) patterns within one brain [self] can be encoded into the (immortal) patterns within the social organism [Self], in a single lifetime. From all the historical, religious, mystical & biographical data it seems (to me, at least) that all that matters can be recoded into the outer network, thus immortalized. Other than historical testimony, expressed through a great variety of religious, mystical, philosophical and poetic schemes, I don't have any direct scientific proof that the substantial recoding is possible. No one has ever done such quantification (I've never even seen anyone else formulating this question into a specific, quantifiable and falsifiable natural mechanism, much less quntifying it).

Q: It is a self-contained perpetual motion machine. The "distilled genetic essence" as you put it, or "seed" is passed from one individual life to the next.

Attribute "genetic" was in quotes in the original message, thus it was used as a metaphor (explicitely elaborated as a metaphor in several places), not literally genetic/DNA code. The idea of the metaphor was to compare relation of self-pattern in brain and Self-pattern in social organism with the relation of genetic pattern (genotype) and organism pattern (phenotype), in order to emphasize that Self is NOT some kind of enlarged REPLICA of self (but something, although tightly related to self, which manifests as something very different), just as embryo (or human) isn't some kind magnified replica of DNA or fertilized egg.

Assumming you took it as a metaphor:

Q: Is this an integer function? If so, how do you account for population growth? Or do some new baby humans get these "seeds" while others grow from scratch? ...

The model here is an adaptible network (brain or social organism). In the brain each memory is coded by slight modifications of thousands of links. When originating human encodes self (patterns in his brain) into Self (patterns in the social organism), he is only slightly changing the numerous links within social organism (using feedback for guidance, just as child uses feedback to learn to walk, without worrying about 'network' links).

The gentle change of links among many other humans (some of these include the originator directly, most don't) DO AFFECT other humans, but DO NOT TAKE OVER OTHER HUMANS. Most of those enfolded into the Self pattern don't see it and aren't even aware they're affected at all (people don't have time or mental patience for subtle large scale patterns). Any change to them induced by the Self pattern enfolding them is either imperceptible or, when perceived, it apperas as something they wish to do on their own, something preferrable, some gain to themselves (e.g. consider receivers of the actions of Jesus, Mother Teresa etc).

Important thing is that Self does not take over entire humans making up Its body, only touches a fraction, some aspect, some relations, some actions of these humans (they all do it of their own volition; no force can be used if Self is to come alive). Many other Self beings can share the same cells (individual humans) and even the same changes/actions of individual cells can be shared by many Self beings, just like the same boxes and the same letters in a crossword puzzle are being harmoniously shared by several words, or the same molecules of water and the same oscillations are being shared by many waves spreading from different centers, all permeating each other. Everyone gets a chance, but few take it.

Q: The quotations from the Gospel of Thomas support your position but are a little strained unless reference is made to the idea that the Nag Hammadi scripts are basically Coptic and Gnostic traditions which of course stressed the pursuit of knowledge...

The few Jesus sayings from the Gospel of Thomas quoted in my essay do have parallels in the canonical gospels. For example, the saying #1 in Thomas (immortality promise) appears in John 8:51 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." The saying #22 in Thomas (about nursing babies, kingdom,...) is a bit scattered and fragmented through the cannonical gospels (Mt 18:1, Mk 10:13, Lk 18:15) lacking the full connection and clarity of the Coptic/Gnostic version.

Q: I am not sure why you use the term RECODING of self unless it has some special significance in Complexity Science. Seems to me that you are presenting what we in psychology would call stage development. Werner's spiral development theory fits well here. But then I do not object to the term transcendence especially if one sees that the 10 year old girl or boy transcends themselves and become a teenager.

You're right that what was described is also captured by the concepts of development, transcedence, unfolding (as the several analogies used in the essay suggested e.g. biblical style lifeseed or child's development of self or embrional & genetic unfolding).

The "recoding" perspective is useful when one wishes to describe the process in terms of complexity science, while staying away from philosophical/ontological questions (such as what is the mind-stuff). Within complexity science the adaptible complex systems (intelligent networks) are seen as natural (spontaneous) distributed computers. That allows complexity science to compare their 'computing' capabilities, information storage & processing capacities (or overall system complexity), to extract general characteristics (such as networks with adaptible links exposed to punishments/rewards etc), conditions of their spontaneous emergence (edge of order & chaos), indicators of their presence (Zipf & other scaling laws and fractal aspects).

Although one shouldn't take 'natural computer' as a variation of digital computers, they do share a common feature of being universal computers i.e. they can compute anything that is computable, deduce anything that is logically deducable, provided you give them enough memory and time. But unlike digital computers (when used for conventional programming, not e.g. their simulations of neural networks), the intelligent networks/complex systems do not require intelligent outside programmer, they emerge and learn spontaneously based on feedbacks (punishments/rewards), and, what is essential for creativity, they can compute with errors (e.g. when an answer is required quickly, before it can be deduced logically in full, or when no answer logically follows from data/axioms seen before, the network will gamble and use potentially wrong answer as long as it optimizes its punishments/rewards), transcending thus the limitations of Goedel's incompleteness theorem (as well as the more common limitations in time and resources available for producing some answer).

While keeping in mind these distinctions from the artificial/digital computers, the immortalization recipe prescribing the "recoding" of the 'self pattern' (encoded in the individual's brain network) into the 'Self pattern' (encoded in the outer network, mainly in the social organism, but also in the wider eco-webs & biosphere) is similar to transporting the mission critical computer program onto several backup computers which will kick in when/if the main computer breaks down during the mission (with our 'main computer', brain, there is no "if" but only "when").

But, as suggested in several places in the original essay, this "recoding" is not merely a replication (although there is a replication or imitation component) of the mission critical self-program since the two systems between which the recoding occurs (network of neurons vs network of humans) are implemented in substantially different medium/hardware. Thus this "porting" or "conversion" of the "self-program" is more like trying to 'recode' a smell of a new grass into a poem, or a life dispair or joy into a symphony. Another analogy is unfolding of the genetic code from a fertilized egg into an organism -- the organism (or embryo) doesn't look anything like magnified DNA molecule, although its shape and other attributes are strongly correlated with the attributes (genetic code) of the DNA (the corresponding analogy used in the Bible and Gnostic scriptures is that of a seed growing into the plant). Therfore growing/unfolding the Self-being into the outer network is a completely novel experience to the 'self-being' (orginating pattern in the inner network/brain).

Obviously, all that discussion sidesteps the question of existence of the 'mind-stuff' (inner thought world). Although it does so not only for the Self-pattern in the outer network/social organism (which is the key question of the survival of the 'mind-stuff' beyond the 'gate'), but also for our regular self-pattern in the inner network (brain & body). The reason I left out the ontological issue from the 'scientific perspective' is that natural science does not provide (as yet) an answer to the question of what is this 'mind-stuff'. We only have a direct experience of it, we know 'what is like to be' such and such system (as our organism or neuron network/brain). But we (normally) do not know 'what is it like to be' a being consisting of 260 millions humans in a highly interconnected social network, or 6 billions humans of the entire mankind, or entire biosphere. The mystical God-gestalt does provide a glimpse at 'what is it like to be' [it], but our everyday languages, which have evolved to transmit mainly the conventional experiences and thoughts (presumed to have been already internally experienced in a somewhat similar form by our listeners) fail us when we attempt to transmit 'what is it like to be' [it] to somone who had never had an experience of that sort. The difficulty is of the same nature as when trying to explain what does rose smell like to a listener who has an inborn lack the sense of smell (or to explain colors to a daltonist or light to a person born blind). Poetry, and especially the classical music, are better able to guide listeners mind toward that direct sense [of the God-gestalt or immortality sense], but few of us are another Shakespeare or Beethoven. And, of course, neither form of transmission qualifies as a 'rational' or 'scientific' perspective on such questions. The scientific perspective is therefore always incomplete, be it in explaining 'what is it like to be in love' in terms of hormones and electro-chemical processes, or in explaining the God and immortality in terms of interpersonal communications and personal and economic relations and behaviors in the social network (the brain & body of the social organism). The best one can do with the scientific approach is to show consistency (or compatibility, parallelism, isomorphism) of the direct experience and the scientific laws. And in this process one can often enrich and better understand & guide the direct experience. Having another angle, a compatible answer from another perspective to the same questions is always useful (someone said that you don't know something unless you know it in several ways). Borrowing from Plato, our perceptions of the world is like watching the shadows - the more shadows (from different light sources) of the same object you have the better you can imagine/reconstruct how the object looks like.

Although I'll return a bit later to the ontological issue in the context of another comment from your post, the summary of the approach in the orginal essay is that, like behaviorism in psychology, it sticks to the "observable" side of the phenomenon in its explanations. Thus it addresses mainly the 'self-pattern' as an "observable" electro-chemical activation patterns in brain, without explaining how the 'mind-stuff' (accessible as direct experience via introspection) "comes out" of these patterns, and similarly, regarding the Self-pattern, it deals mainly with the human interactions without explaining the associated higher order 'mind-stuff' (accessible as direct experience via the mystical God-gestalt). The "observable" here includes observations with conventional scientific instruments, such as readings of mechanical/electronic instruments, computer printouts etc. That restriction is a presentday convention in the natural sciences. One should realize, though, that this is merely a convention and that human (and in some ways of other animals) brain is a highly sophisticated instrument itself, an unrivalled (by a long shot) pattern recognizer. No hi-tech conventional instrument or computer can match it (not even remotely) in the gestalt of large scale patterns. Even the pin-head size brain of a digger wasp is still beyond our best pattern recognition algorithms running on the fastest computers in the world in the task of terrain recognition.

Q: In your example of an intelligent network. Specifically, there seems to be some sort of feedback from more organized "higher" structures.

You're right that (higher structure as a teacher) is not a necessary component of the natural complex system. It is merely an artifact of the example of an artificial network, as commonly simulated on digital computers, made to solve 'artificial'/useful tasks of interest to the human progammer. The layered structure and the top-down feedback algorithm (for punishments & rewards) facilitates mathematical analysis of the network (e.g. estimates of its computational capacity, nature and speed of convergence to its 'knowledge' etc). It is also an efficient way to implement a parallel analog system (such as real neuron network) on a serial digital computer, allowing human programmer to extract the most performance out of such hybrid by providing programmer with straightforward method for separating which parts of the job are done by the network and which by the conventional algorithms (by choosing the parameterization of the input pattern, e.g. pixels vs skeletons vs toplogical features ...etc; and also by choosing the punishment/reward function at the output end).

All such 'engineering approach artifacts' are inessential for the general features (which I outlined in the essay following that example) of the intelligent networks. The term or visualisation as a 'network' (instead of genetic engines, gene pool, eco-systems, economies, social organisms, languages, cultures), is also unnecessary, although it captures quite nicely and visually the essential identifying features of such systems i.e. the adaptible links (of whatever nature, matter links or abstract links, and with whatever kind of itmes transmitted along the links and transformed at the nodes) among nodes responding to a hierarchy of punishments/rewards (acting at the whole system and its parts).

Q: Benign neglect is more parsimonious...

The 'punishment' terminology is another engineering artifact, a mere verbal convention. Mathematically 'absence of punishment' is same thing as 'reward' and 'absence of reward' is same as 'punishment'. The prevalent 'punishment' terminology is chiefly a verbal convention, reflecting more on the domineering/patriarchal/macho mentality of the scientific & engineering enterprise in the field than on the mathematical essence of the procedure.

The essential aspect is the efficient feedback ("positive" and "negative" i. e. strenghtening and weakening of the links in response to their effects, local and global). Networks with distorted or inefficient feedbacks are 'dumber' (worse at optimizing their behaviour to the external punishments/rewards via modelling & anticipating environment's response) than networks with efficient feedbacks.

A good example of such 'dumb' network at the social level was Soviet Union, with centrally regulated economy defeating most economic feedbacks (implemented normally via money & exchange of goods & service), distorting the internal punishments/rewards relative to those from the outside environment (other competing and co-evolving nations and natural/eco forces & resources) and to the key features of imperfect human behaviour (such as greed). So, even though, individually Soviet engineers or scientists were no dumber (genetically or educationally) than their western counterparts, the system as a whole was dumber, incapable of learning and anticipating in order to optimize to the ultimate external punishments/rewards, thus it couldn't compete. The individuals within such system did optimize to their local punishments/rewards (as they do everywhere else), but the fact that these forced internal feedbacks did not correspond (or respond) to the system level punishments/rewards (as imposed by the competition with other nations and struggle with natural forces & resource limitations), had caused failure of the system to optimize to these ultimate system level feedbacks, and had caused it to implode under such pressures. Of course, western social organisms aren't overly immune to their own parasitic entities (also in the form of the hypertrophied government bureaucracies, with ever growing statist & social engineering tendencies needed to justify their ever more expensive existence & size) distorting their punishment/reward systems.

In the context of 'immortality recipes', the original essay emphasized that nurturing of the feedbacks is the key element for growing a live, healthy, adaptible & durable Self-being. That doesn't mean trying to please everyone about everything (when dealing with emotional level feedback), or nodding & agreeing with everything everyone says or does (when dealing with intellectual/mind level feedback). For example, Jesus had no problem arguing with the establishment clerks & clergy or overturning the tables of moneychangers in the temple of God. Namely, just as a person doesn't have to always approve and agree with ones own actions and previous conclusions, or to gratify/please oneself on every oportunity and every manner available, so it need not do so in relation with others and need not promote such behaviour between others. The guiding principle is not absence or avoidance of conflict, but that persons actions and intentions do not single out ones own gratification & interests (of any sort, emotional, intelectual, material ...) over those of someone else, and similarly, nor should persons actions & words promote/approve of such motives in others (or in short the golden rule, do unto others as you would them do unto you). Obviously, no one is error-free or all-knowing and any concrete application of such general guideline still requires the best judgment and compassion one can muster for a given decision.

Q: The "sub/un- conscious" ... I cannot come to a conclusion about the hierarchical organization.

Regarding the overall hierarchy, from my angle (and in its particular jargon) it goes as follows. First the origin of structure: the intelligent (anticipatory) networks are internal model builders - they break the input from their environment into elementary blocks (analysis phase), then put internally these blocks together (synthesis phase) into working 'scale models' of the environment. By running these internal models in "their head", they can 'look ahead' and anticipate the responses of the environment and pick out the "best" next action for themselves ("best" within the imperfect look-ahead horizon and the totality of punishments & rewards acting on the system or its parts at any level; ultimate reward is 'survival' and ultimate punishment 'extinction').

But in order to play such what-if game the internal scale model must include the EGO-ACTOR (e.g. our regular ego), the representative of the network itself, so that it can test various potential actions of the ego-actor and examine the responses from the rest of the environment. As network learns, its internal models become richer and more accurate. For example, the ego- actor of the model, in order to mimick more accurately the entity it represents, the network itself, will refine its structure to contain its own 'littler' internal model consisting of the environment & ego-actor, just as the network itself has them. Similarly, the other subsystems within the internal model of the environment will be refined in the maturation/learning process to contain their own internal models (ego-actor + environment which contains, among others, model of our net, and all inside it). And so on, ever smaller models nesting within models, nesting limited only by the overall capacity of the network. Hence any fact & mental algorithm you have is effectively replicated among thousands nested models across your brain, and so a physical damage to one locus is overcome by reconstructing much/all of its content from thousands of fractally scattered & nested replicas.

A picturesque depiction for such system would be as a circle of polished silver spheres, each sphere containing image of other spheres in the circle, and within each such small sphere image there is yet another smaller image of the other spheres, etc, ad infinitum (or to the photon level).

Thus the general structure of our mind-stuff is fractal. Another frequently employed picturesque depiction is that of a holograms and Fourier Transforms, where any element of a hologram contains a scale model of the original image (or each component of F.T. reflects an aspect of the all components of the original data set). These depictions are superficial in the same sense as the circle of spheres, since they're based on artificially regular scaling transformations (be it spheres or harmonic/circular decomposition). The intelligent networks are more general systems with such fractally distributed information. Of course, the fact that F.T's are so good match for quantum physics is suggestive of some underlying physical reality of 'intelligent' networked entities pursuing their own immortality (and have achieved social harmonization at their level), using the same type of distributed 'self' scheme as human sages have been advising for us.

Q: Self, as you are probably aware, is an extremely difficult concept with which to work. Am I who I think I am, what I do, my evaluation of what others think of me, or what I think I should be. All of these and more, I am sure. I am not too sure which, if any, of these I would want to survive and I am not even a Buddhist - but I do think.

The general feature of the transformation involved in the ancient immortality recipes is in fact intentionally induced gradual dying (or atrophy) of much of the conventional ego (which is ultimately fixated on misguided gratification of the fragale biological network of the originating organism; a poor investment strategist), well before the biological organism actually dies. One can compare it to vaccine, where you infect yourself with that which you wish to protect yourself from, only in less harmful/virulent form. Or the recipe can be seen as an instance of the guiding principle of homeopathic medicine - to cure (or prevent worsening of) a disease try an agent which induces the disease symptoms, but use it in miniscule quantity, so it induces them in a mild and harmless form e.g. hot soup, tea, sauna, holding legs in hot water,... etc for common colds, these remedies imitate locally the fever symptom and the heat actually stimulates immune response (by fooling the immune system into gearing for additional immune load from burns it anticipates based on the stress signals from the skin cells, but which will never occur) in addition to killing the viruses in the bloodstream by direct heat (as fever does).

So, the immortality recipes call for milder form of dying in advance, for gradual dying of the old fragile self-pattern (chiefly the internal re- evaluation/re-orderding of the ego-actor, a la Copernicus twist) in order to grow a more durable Self-pattern (which is practically immortal, barring a major catastrophy wiping out the humankind). From the perspective of conventional wisdom of self-interest and while still lulled by a reasonable health and other material comforts, such path appears painful and gain uncertain. So people seek easier ways, pursuing glory and power (money, social position) creating merely a legacy, an entity clearly distinct and separate from their self-being, but which by virtue of ego's control over it, resembles superficially the highly valued 'obedient part' [see the original essay] of the universe in their inner model (model of ones own body, physical self, and aspects of mind-stuff/self-being subject to ones will). But, as if by some cosmic justice, the more glory & power they amass, the more they will have to part with eventually and hence the more they fear of death.

Since the space at the 'top' is narrow, the vast majority doesn't get a chance to pursue that blind alley. Some of these resign to the eternal void awaiting after the 'gate' and pursue self-gratifications the best they can, here and now. Others hoping for a miracle, for something to bail them out somehow, become customers of the commercial immortality enterprise (the organized religions & commercial cults), then blindly and superficially follow the magic self-denial rituals, ruining what little they got left here and now, like poor buying lottery tickets and miracle get-rich-quick tapes from the late night infomercial wealth salesmen, wasting what little money they have, in short, lots of pain no gain. Among the mortal paths, the pure unashamed hedonists seem to be getting the best deal.

Finally, a few, either by conscious efforts (pursuing any or several of the ancient enlightenment paths) or by accident (a close brush with death/NDE, or some other life crisis leading to spontaneous instant enlightenment) become 'fertilized' self-beings ready to start unfolding into immortal Self- beings, they suddenly see directly how it all works and what their biological body and mind have to do for the rest of their coherent existence (over the years following the event they learn how to express better in unsuitable human languages what is it that they see directly, although only their fellow travellers truly understand what they mean, even if they express it using completely different metaphors).

Q: I do not understand where you are going with "surviving" self as a part of a social network. Seems to lead back to simple legacy. I must miss the point here somewhere.

The ontological question is indeed the key one -- what is and what is not the real mind-stuff making up the self-being, how does it "come out" (emerge) from the intelligent-like activation patterns observable at the physical level, be it those in the social web made of neurons (human brain) or the social web made of individual humans (social organism). Science cannot tell you 'what is it like to be' either of these patterns. It can only tell you that both systems exhibit such intelligence-like patterns, which have ways to activate and propagate paralleling (a la isomorphism) what we normally directly understand (via introspection) as mental activity, analyzing, synthesizing, building internal models, anticipating, forming preferences, in pursuit of some kind of happiness (optimizing relative to multiple levels of punishments and rewards). It can also tell you that when you richly interconnect lots of smaller networks (brains) into a larger network (social organism), the total computing capacity, the power of its intelligence-like patterns, increases. Similarly it can tell you that when the richness of the signals passed over the links increases (such as from the simple pulse trains over neural links in brain to the vast spectrum of matter & information passed in the social net via economic, cultural, scientific, organizational, personal... links) or when the link adaptability increases or the signal transformation ability of the network nodes increases (e.g. from a cell-neuron to a cell-human), the computing/intelligence capacity of the network increases. Of course, the exact law & amount of this increase can be mathematically derived (with pencil and paper) only for simpler toy networks, or simulated on digital computers on slightly more complex types of networks, but these all still far away from either of the natural networks of interest (brain and social organism).

But science can't tell you how does the inner mind-stuff, as you or I sense it introspectively, come out of all such intelligence-like patterns. Science can't even tell you whether the way you see red color internally, your inner-red, is the same as my inner-red, or is my inner-red more like your inner-blue. Either way, we would agree to name the objects same way, but we don't know whether our inner sense (e.g. the redness or blueness) of these colors is actually same or some permutation of each other, or something entirely diferent, incomparable in any way. There is also no way to remap exactly our thoughs to detaled observation of electro-chemical activation patterns (even if one can measure entire brain at neuron level of detail, overcoming the shear volume of detail as well as the quantum limitations). Namely, no two brains are connected or activate identically, even when thinking the 'same' thought. Not even the same brain is connected and electro-chemically activated identically to itself of year ago, or of yesterday, even when playing out the 'same thought'. Or, say a memory and thought of the same simple event we observed earlier and agreed to remember, is encoded into the neural links and activates detailed electro-chemical patterns completely differently between two of us (or even among identical twins), even if we report word for word the identical memory (e.g. "It is 10PM."). Hence the detailed mind reading via measurements of brain activity may never be possible and only some crude aspects may be measurable (e.g. "I'm happy", "I'm sad" but what exactly about, what was the exact chain of thoughts and images in the stream of consciousness we report/believe was the cause [whether it is cause or not] of general state may never be decipherable from any future ultra-detailed EEG's or some such, even if the examined person decides to tell everything truthfully, much less if the mind -reading is against the persons' will).

So, no natural science (i.e. perspective based on matter, energy, space-time models) is even close to establishing the detailed parallelism/isomorphism between the specific thoughts and the detailed brain activation & connection patterns (or whatever particular statistical/mathematical derived property of such physical activity ends up someday being assigned as a 'mater-energy' counterpart of thoughts), nor can it tell us what is the mind-stuff which we sense directly, how does it actually come out of any electro-chemical activity at all. And even more so, no natural science can tell you what is the higher mind-stuff associated with the vastly more complex and more intelligent-like activation & connection patterns of the giant network around us (the social organism and beyond). At least with conventional mind- stuff we're still talking of something that most listeners can resonate with in their own conventional mind-stuff.

In brief, what science can tell you is that there are two kinds of intelligent networks, a small one (brain) and a large one (social organism). They are both natural distributed computing systems, the large one of vastly greater computational capacity than the small one, although at present even the small one is beyond reach of digital simulations or any other estimate of its full computational power, thus complexity science has no estimate for actual ratio between their computing powers, only a general idea that it should be some huge number (based on factors & features affecting the computational capacity increase among smaller artificial networks within simulation ranges of present digital computers).

Additionally science can establish (i.e. this is still from simulations on smaller networks) that unique coherence patterns (individuality) of the small network (brain) can give rise to a wider coherence patterns unfolding into the large network (social organism), and although the latter pattern set is not some kind of a magnified replica of the former set (the large one is a much 'softer' software, i.e. much more flexible and much more complex entity), its individuality features are strongly correlated with the individuality features of the seed pattern, in the similar manner that individuality features of an organism or embryo are correlated with the individuality features of the genetic code (in the DNA) of the fertilized egg which gave rise to the embryio/organism.

In fact, from the perspective of complexity science both types of the systems in this comparison (neural & genetic) are mathematically same type of natural computers, intelligent networks (called adaptible complex systems ), only implemented in different hardware, with their intelligence (anticipatory capacity etc) attuned to different environments, different aspects & levels of physical world. Hence the gene to embryo analogy to brain patterns to social organism patterns isn't some vague/poetic analogy but the two are examples of the mathematically same type of natural computation & complexification phenomenon.

More importantly (in relation to our greater question), this larger patern set (in the social organism substrate) - although initially causally dependent for its successful unfolding on the originating small seed pattern set (in the individual's brain substrate) - can reach a phase of development when it becomes autonomous self-sustaining intelligence (and at that, of greater complexity & computational capacity than the originating one), i.e. it can persist and go on unfolding even long after the seeding pattern is destroyed (when the original network/brain dies). This event, the decomposition of the small seed pattern, is a minor event from the perspective of unfolding of the large pattern, one among many such micro-events coming in and out all the time in this autonomous self-sustaining phase of the large pattern. Of course, at the level of individual cells/humans which were directly connected to the perished seed pattern, the event may be significant and requires reconnections to alternate paths (sources and destinations of links ) for communications, exchange of goods & services, etc, but this whole reshuffling is an inherent part of the continuous reshuffling of the connections of the larger pattern, the origin and basis of its very life, adaptability and intelligence.

The conventional legacy, although it may share a permanence property with Self-patterns, it lacks this type of adaptible growing intelligence characteristic of a live being. The conventional legacy is more like a fixed object, a monument, or at best a lower kind of incomplete lifeform, in this higher (complexity) level world. If you compare this entire large intelligent network (social organism, eco-webs, biosphere) to the smaller one we are more familiar with (brain), then the Self-beings are analog to growing thought patterns in our mind (spanning decades of our life, such as professional and other wisdom we develop and continue to grow over years). Multitude of such Self-beings (persistent, evloving, intelligent patterns) overlap across the entire the full system sharing same individual humans as the carriers of their activity (like waves from different centers overlapping on the water surface, sharing same water molecules & their motions), just as our different skills, domains of knowledge we nurture through our life overlap in their use of the brain resources, same neurons & links are shared among different skills & domains. The legacy in this analogy is similar to fixed factoids and odd memories we collect over years, useful ones and the other kind, such as what is the tallest mountain in the world, what's the most populous country, what's the radius of the Earth, where was I when JFK was shot,... etc. And the counterpart of our entire self which unifies all the components of the small system, in the large system is what mystical gestalt calls God, Intelligent Presence, the One that is All. Its main human-like attributes come from the numerous Self- beings contributing to Its full personality (the Self-beings in the language of conventional wisdom are spoken of as those great human beings [named or unnamed] of past ages who have enobled and enriched our existence, and whose presence, lifeforce and ideas are still active, guiding and harmonizing the world). And as human societies and their relations and role in the full eco -system have evolved, so have the attributes of this Being, It has grown and matured great deal (as history of religions exhibits, as well). As individuals born into a society, each of us is indeed shaped in Its image (Its human-like attributes, i.e. in conventional wisdom, along the templates left by great human beings of past ages, named & mythical ones), and in the same time we are shaping and enriching It by incorporating new and perfecting the earlier Self-beings into Its human-like aspects.

Science, being incomplete (as it is doomed to always remain), cannot give you any assurance that the higher mind-stuff of the Self-being you may unfold into someday exists at all, or 'what is it like to be' it, just as it can't give you any assurance that your mind-stuff of your self-being (based on your society of neurons/brain) exists now or that it existed at any other time, or 'what is it like to be' it. The natural science can only give you the behavioural side of reality, what kind of anticipatory, intelligent behavours can such systems exhibit, how can they develop, how long can they persist, etc., as seen from outside. All we have from the science side is an assurance that, as far as science goes, it is not only perfectly consistent with the higher mind-stuff of 'Self-being' being real no less than the regular mind-stuff of 'self-being' (which we wish to persist after death), BUT looking from the behavioural side at the comparative complexity and intelligence of the two systems, all indicators/clues from science are that the higher mind-stuff (of the Self-being) is to the regular mind-stuff (of the self-being) what the regular mind-stuff is to the lower mind-stuff associated with the vegetative functions running our organs. This induction is also consistent with the historical records, reports of those who have gone long way toward unfolding into their Self-beings, who have asserted that the higher consiousness of [here labeled as] Self-being is incomparably more real, in the sense of 'what is it like to be it', than the individual body/flesh-bound consiousness of the self-being.

But, you may ask, can one remove any doubt of its reality? No one can do it for someone else and the doubt cannot be removed upfront while standing outside (no matter how much one wishes to believe it is true and no matter how many rational indicators/clues one can line up in support of the belief). One has to become the Self-being to know what is it like to be It, to experience directly the reality and the permanence of Its higher consiousness (e.g. even while you, as biological individual, Its member cell, are deep asleep or for other reason completely unconscious) to remove any doubt. And even as one later lapses occasionally out of It (no one is perfect; the old ego beasty has nine lives, and then some), one always knows that It is, and that one will return since that's the only Game there is.

Q: I basically agree with your concise interpretation of NDEs as probably the most parsimonious explanation of lights, historical review, and affectional content. However, we are left with their paranormal experiences and knowledge that seems to transcend our conception of the world as we know it.

In some way such phenomena do transcend the way we normally think about how the world works. Namely, we normally do not assume (wihin scientific analysis) some higher level intelligent guidance of events, beyond what we (humans) in some way plan/organize by our own individual intelligence.

But we encounter occasionally subtle correlations among events (appearing uninvited, without giving us a chance to take all necessary scientific precautions) which seem to defy the odds and any conventional wisdom type of explanation. But, outside of the human-centric conventional wisdom, when we recognize that there are other higher lifeforms on Earth, more intelligent (in anticipatory powers in certain domains) than a brain of human individual , then one would expect strange correlations, designed/planned not by any individual human, but by the higher lifeforms (social organisms & higher enclosing networks) for their own purposes. The correlation phenomena associated with the Sheldrake's morhic fields are are mainly of this nature.

Additional source of such phenomena defying simple explanations is in common underestimation of the complexity of human brain itself. As outlined in an earlier note, the internal modelling performed by the brain is an extremely complex fractal structure, much of which is impentrable to our conscious logical/verbal reasoning (employed when seeking the natural, scientific explanations). These deeper level models contained in our brain capture numerous rhytms, patterns and correlations not only among data obtained via usual sense organs, but any number of other physical interactions (such as imperceptible EM fields, microscopic temperature and chemical concentration gradients) and subtle patterns/regularities they form. Thus what may look as a random EM noise in an EEG of one brain, to another brain which might sync into it some of its own "random EM noise", the requred synchronizing action by its neurons may be recognizible (decipherable) by the introspector function of the brain as some message, coming into consiousness seemingly out of nowhere, with no logical or verbal link to any previous knowledge or the available conventional perceptions.

Of course, it is conceivable that there are as yet undiscovered forms of physical fields/interactions. But looking over years at the nature of evidence for the paranormal phenomena, and knowing tendency of scientific reasoning to insert flat (or other ergodic, memoryless) probability distributions for anything not known in sufficient detail, thus ignoring the subtle fractal patterns of great complexity routinely revealed after sufficient explorations, then the level of ignorance of details of brain's internal modelling, it seems to me quite premature to seek explanations outside of known fundamental physical fields/forces.

Q: That which is good survives in some form. - that brings us to a definition of what is good. I'll leave that to the religionists.

Well, the "religionists" tend also to be dogmatists on what is "good" and what is "evil". The "good" (survivable, immortal) patterns are more similar to the fitness concept in the conventional genetic evolution. And like specific fitness criteria & attributes, the moral criteria defining 'good' and 'evil' live on a moving fitness landscape, thus there are no a priori givens. It is true, of course, that most of the time the morality of today is very similar to morality of, say month ago, thus what is a given is the precedent and the custom.

Q: Whether it is called legacy or enfolding it amounts to the same thing, does it not?

I touched already on the distinction between legacy-pattern and Self-pattern in another reasoning chain. Another way to see the distinction is that looking at the individual items within the legacy and Self patterns, they would appear indistinguishable. But only looking at the coherence of the total pattern, of the all items left, how they interlock, work together,... the Self pattern is organized as a live, intelligent pattern, capable of growing, learning, adapting to changing circumstances, finding new solutions, while legacy is either completely incoherent at the large scale or is fixed simple periodic finite state automaton (such as Nobel prize, a building or bridge etc).

To illustrate the type of coherence involved, and difficulty in seeing it when looking items in isolation, lets look at the simple analogy from physics. Consider a stationary gas in closed ended tube versus a gas in an open tube flowing at, say 1 meter/second. If you drop to molecular level, and look individual molecules, you'll see in both cases molecules flying every which way at speeds from few hundred to few thousands m/s. The flowing gas will differ from the stationary merely by an 1 m/s bias in one particular direction, applied on the top of random speed variations of thousands of m/s and average speed of say, 1500 m/s. At that level, you would need to measure individual speed with precision of 1 part per several thousands, and over several millions of molecules to barely get beyond the statistical fluctuations and measurement errors. Yet, at the system level, the difference between the flowing gas vs the stationary gas may mean a candle under the glass dome attached to the tube burning vs being extinguished, or a lab animal happy and alive vs cold dead... etc. And all this difference comes from what at molecular level manifests as a subtle added coherence, imperceptible on 1 molecule, or 10 molecules, or 1000, or million, only when measured very accurately and on 2-3 millions molecules you barely start getting a hint of this coherence.

The above gas setup had an amplifying mechanism (candle or a lab animal) which made the subtle difference more drastic. The intelligent networks (complex adaptible systems), be it genetic engines, gene pools, brains, economies, social organisms, etc, operate in a metastable state, at the point of phase transition at the very edge between order and chaos, and as such are natural amplifiers, subject to 'butterfly effect' (or e.g. consider the amplification in the Rodney King case, or any number of minor incidents throughout history or science changing the course of the large scale events).

With the gas example in mind, and looking 'legacy' vs 'live Self' patterns again, you may have two persons A and B, A following some prescription guidebook, doing same kinds of 'good deeds' as person B who lives the Self being and needs no book. And loking at one or few or hundred deeds, and comaparing them you can't tell the difference. Only maybe at few thousands of good deeds, examined extremely carefully, and each dead in relation to the others in the collection, you barely notice some hint of a distinction, some little added coherence in the deeds of B vs A, just at the edge of statistical fluctuations and accuracy of your evaluations. That alone, amplified and reverbrated through the vast social network, makes a difference between live and dead pattern, the live Self-being and the dead legacy-thing.

Now, you wonder, how is one ever to figure out the distinction while forming this pattern? How can one stand a chance of getting some subtle, imperceptible coherence right? In fact, no one, following merely some rules, no matter how specific and numerous, can actually make it right. The situation is similar to the child learning to walk. No one could figure out how exactly to change the neurons (much less actually change them) of a crawling baby to change it into a walking baby, and surely, even if some scientific institute might know it, no one can ever find a way to explain to the baby how to do modify all those neurons by itself. The thing is that no baby learns to walk by consciously going after neurons to change them some particular way. The crowling baby is simply being itself, doing what being itself makes it do, and has no clue of recipes of what and how the neurons ought to change.

Similarly, the only way for Self being to unfold is to be such being and do what comes naturally, nurturing and relying on feedbacks, following some general rules of thumb (such as golden rule of ethics), and the social network connections will change as they will.

In other words, there is no specific and detailed procedure which can be verbalized and followed to produce a live Self-being. Only by being It, earnestly and completely, without reserve, from its "fertilized ovum" stage through its growth, can one nurture the pattern in a manner sensitive enough to all the circumstances and factors, those available to the consiousness mind and those tapping into the unconsciousness store, to produce the needed subtle coherences. Rarely are the real life decisions clear cut picks from all good vs all bad, and one always has to weigh intellectually and emotionally among choices which are almost always similarly mixed bads and goods, and only the pure inner scale, truly free of the ego bias, can weigh it right more often than wrong (in the presence of unavoidable errors due to incomplete knowledge, and always limited opportunity to find out all the information, and limited capacity to figure out all the consequences).


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