The brain only does one thing, unify or summarize. It’s a one trick pony really. This has even been proven in the lab, even complex tasks are processed as unitary pictures or representations.

So our brain pushes us to monism? Indeed it does, and since this is what it naturally does it’s fine to let it do that, but we have to be aware that is exactly what it’s doing and be careful because it can be carried too far, to the point of entirely self/reality destructive conclusions.

Like racism. This one person did something, therefore all people similar are like that. Yes.

Even my own brain, as broken as it is from one point of view, is still trying to unify it’s processes. This is why I am prone to hyper systematization, because for myself the unification process is fractured, like a skipping record, and my brain tries to draw the connections that aren’t easily being made. I offer this as an illustration of the normal process going wrong.

I ponder swallowing the whole fish. I also ponder meditation as a vehicle to a monistic worldview — perhaps mahamudra?

Simplify, simplify, simplify?

Actually, meditation counters conventional monism. During meditation you systematically accept diverse experiences as they arise in your consciousness, in the weird and diverse way that they naturally occur, and you make no effort to sort them.

As a meditator, I often prefer to start at the end (nirvana, perhaps)….

It relaxes that process in the brain.

It’s one short step from meditation to shamanic awareness. If you project your innate instinct for theory of mind, it can seem as if all the diverse experiences don’t come from one mind but many.

That short step being a powerful drug? Actually, no drugs necessary. Perhaps helpful but not necessary. Lightning strike does it naturally. As you allow the streams of consciousness to bond even more loosely, you can come to see that the substance of these streams is actually borrowed. It genuinely belongs to someone or something else, and that being also borrowed from others, creating a vast web of consciousness as diverse as the objects of experience.

Near death experiences do this also. Is it clear how this is the opposite of our customary thinking?

I think we’ve returned ( recursively, perhaps) to Indra’s Net. Indeed, looking at it from the other side. Can even look at it floating in the cosmic waters, in our day to day experience at least.

Diversity is key to natures survival. Indeed, diversity is even the key to intelligence it seems. This is why the dreaming brain does what it does. Making such seemingly nonsensical connections, it does actually enable novel thought, creative action.

Now I have to ask, does the brains normal monism allow for that?

Not usually. Is why true creativity is rare.

Nope. This is why people keep saying ‘out of the box’ thinking is needed.

It’s been noted that we have the same few thousand thoughts on a daily basis, at least normally. It is maybe why so many have come to swear by the cognitive and conscious value of psychedelics, though I would emphasize that they are not necessary. I see people too often excuse themselves from exploration with the notion they would need chemical help to discover what I describe. The spirit world is governed by a rule of divergence. It’s divergence that is the essence of the creative or growth drive as it manifests around us. This is why we see so many mutations. We mistake them for errors, and superficially in a sense they are, but they still reflect a profound fundamental truth of reality.

Not even change is as fundamental as divergence in truth. I offer that what we call change is just looking at our reflection on the surface of an ocean of divergence, a shallow seeming that might distract us from a more profound and nourishing depth.

Any questions about monism, have I covered it adequately? Have I made it any easier to understand?

I ponder this divergence/change thing as having great potential for paradox.

I would think that divergence is a form of change, but you are saying change is a reflection of divergence? Yes, and it’s important not to confuse the order. There is in fact no such thing as change, because there is no such thing as time, only divergence. Things can diverge on paths of physical space as well as equally physical probability and will along all such axis as the forces governing their motion operate beyond any single plane of this metaphorical graph.

Like a surface that cracks and breaks up…hopping from tile to tile is what causes change and the illusion of time? Exactly. There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

Yes, but I also think I’m going to put in for a quantum CPU… My binary- based software is simply not up to the job. Well it’s looking very probable that we will have access to those on some level in our lifetimes, and I foresee them being able to model some of the truths I have been trying to describe in a very concrete way, running simulations and mapping out exactly how all this manifests, or at least it has that potential. A genuine artificial general intelligence using quantum technology may indeed seem very god like. Hopefully that will help us understand that the same is true of us. What do you think of that?

That we are god like? Yes.

Something in me has known that all along…

Yes, I think so.

Solidify the notion, then diversify it, that is breathing god into the world. The essence of the shamans channelling act, all mysticism perhaps.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~