Fractals, Coincidence, Prophecy, New Agey Weirdness

Coincidences happen, yes? “Do they have meaning?” is a more difficult question. Synchronicity, and by association the fractal nature of reality that is such a common vision for psychonauts, and is such a recurring motif for New Agers, intuitively holds the key. For this post, the question will be reworded as Is reality fractal? with the collarary being “Are coincidences meaningful in that they refer to a higher system of meaning?”

A constituent element of a fractal is the ability for the part to mimic or represent the whole. Any arm in a spiral fractal can be found to contain spiral arms of itself which in turn contain their own identical spiral arms, and so on.

Is reality much the same?

For example: I see the like/dislike spectrum of human experience to be very associated with negative and positive charges inherent in atoms themselves. Even on the smallest level, matter divides itself into “attract/repel”, two opposites with no consciousness of their own, but which perceive, and act on perception.

Also, I sensed it while tripping. So did Jeff.

Similarly, you see this in studies by which humans instantaneously are attracted to or repelled by an object or concept, only after which are they able to find reasons for the attraction of repellence - a type of reverse causality in consciousness. Perception is the true king, with rational thought following nude and silly as the Emperor.

Matter knows matter. On what level? According to astronomy, gravity entails every particle affecting every other as space-time bends. According to quantum mechanics, particles become entangled and never part perception, despite distance or time - it is possible that the entire universe is one entangled mess on the sub-sub-sub-atomic level. We’re all connected by the forces that govern the universe. What forces and laws do we not yet know? And what implications may they have?

This, incidentally, makes prophecy theoretically possible, if you accept that reality is fractal, and that the fractals can be perceived (usually in altered states of consciousness). By being able to sense the greater pattern’s rhythm and form (which has to be done on an intuitive level, considering the greatness and complexity of existence on our one planet, much less the universe), it may be possible to see how the lowliest and most mundane phenomena can be related to the future and past events on a grander scale. Reading such signs... is most likely impossibly difficult without using a different form of consciousness. Dreams? That's where a lot seem to come from, and it's where all my deja vu has its genesis.

Other people’s beliefs in these phenomenon give me hope. I‘d rather not divide the world into “rationals” and “others”, considering how the definition of rational has changed throughout history. It is a short-sighted person indeed who believes that not only can all be known, but that reality can be extrapolated by the things we’ve figured out in the last couple hundred years.
I think I’ll put my faith in what has been figured out in the last couple thousands of years.

And finally, do coincidences have meaning? THE ANSWER!!!!: maybe.

Rider on an elephant's back

"[The rational part of our mind] is a rider placed on the elephant's back to help the elephant make better choices. The rider can see farther into the future, and the rider can learn valuable information by talking to other riders or by reading maps, but the rider cannot order the elephant around against its will. I believe the Scottish philosopher David Hume was closer to the truth than was Plato when he said, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."

In sum, the rider is an advisor or servant; not a king, president, or charioteer with a firm grip on the reins. The rider is Gazzaniga's interpreter module; it is conscious, controlled thought. The elephant includes the gut feelings, visceral reactions, emotions, and intuitions that comprise much of the automatic system. The elephant and the rider each have their own intelligence, and when they work together well they enable the unique brilliance of human beings."

Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis, pg. 16-17

Illusions

"The I is a thing of the moment, and yet our lives are ruled by it. We cannot rid ourselves of this inexistent thing. In our normal awareness of the present moment the sensation of selfhood is unshakeable. This is the primordial human error, in virtue of which we pass our lives as in a dream." pg 78

"If what is at issue is not truth but happiness and freedom, why must philosophy have the last word? Why should not faith and myth have equal rights? Formerly philosophers sought peace of mind while pretending to seek the truth. Perhaps we should set ourselves a different aim: to discover which illusions we can give up, and which we will never shake off. We will still be seekers after truth, more so than in the past; but we will renounce the hope of a life without illusion. Henceforth our aim will be to identify our invincible illusions. Which untruths might we be rid of, and which can we not do without? -- that is the question, that is the experiment."pg 83

John Gray, Straw Dogs

Jill Bolte Taylor: My Stroke of Insight

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jilltaylor

Mystery of life

"As humans, we are well acquainted with the needs and capacities of the human body--we live our own bodies and so know, from within, the possibilities of our form. We cannot know, with the same familiarity and intimacy, the lived experience of a grass snake or a snapping turtle; we cannot readily experience the precise sensations of a hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower or a rubber tree soaking up sunlight. And yet we do know how it feels to sip from a fresh pool of water or to bask and stretch in the sun. Our experience may indeed be a variant of these other modes of sensitivity; nevertheless, we cannot, as humans, precisely experience the living sensations of another form. We do not know, with full clarity, their desires or motivations; we cannot know, or can never be sure that what we know, they know. That the deer does experience sensations, that it carries knowledge of how to orient in the land, of where to find food and how to protect its young, that it knows well how to survive in the forest without the tools upon which we depend, is readily evident to our human senses. That the mango tree has the ability to create fruit, or the yarrow plant the power to reduce a child's fever, is also evident. To human kind, these Others are purveyors of secrets, carriers of intelligence that we ourselves often need: it is these Others who can inform us of unseasonable changes in the weather, or warn of us of imminent eruptions and earthquakes, who show us, when foraging, where we may find the ripest berries or the best route to follow back home. By watching them build their nests and shelters, we glean clues regarding how to strengthen our own dwellings, and their deaths teach us of our own. We receive from them countless gifts of food, fuel, shelter, and clothing. Yet still they remain Other to us, inhabiting their own cultures and displaying their own rituals, never wholly fathomable."

-David Abram The Spell of the Sensuous

Life of human invention

"Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It's run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghost and more ghost. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living." [Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]