Non-Verbal Free Association

durabone

Jedi Council Member
I found some priors here,

"Seeing with eyes closed?"
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=5319.0

(Particular quotes below)

The forum software said that thread was over 120 days old
in red lettering, and what I discuss it different enough from
the original direction of that thread that I decided to start a
new one.

_______________________________________________________

Hi Everybody;

I thought I would share a consciousness phenomenon that I have experienced, with the thought that you might find it interesting or have insights.


BACKGROUND

In 2000, I took a fancy to the notion of archetypes. In programming Virtual Reality applications, archetypes sometimes play a role, as it is necessary to use techniques for reducing the complexity of 3D models to lower the processing load, so that a smooth experience can be maintained. A common technique used is to reduce the complexity of distant models, eg. there’s no point in drawing the BMW logo on a car that is being drawn as two kilometers away. Common terms used in describing these methods are “reducing polygon count” or “level of detail control.”

During my researches at the time, I ran across evidence that seemed to indicate that the most bare level of detail could be problematic. In particular, flight simulators often need to represent distant airplanes successfully to a pilot in training, and the generic methods of computationally reducing polygon count automagically, ie. decimation, semantic culling, etc. would produce non-intuitive simplifications that were often a distraction.

I discussed this at length with one NASA researcher who had done studies with reducing model complexity deliberately towards archetypes. Think of a stick figure of a plane. She had data that showed that if she matched color, the mind would accept the archetypal visual more easily, particularly in the periphery, where so much of a pilot’s attention is and isn’t.

All of this took me back to Ed Dames and his original lectures about remote viewing which he prepared as a series of training tapes in 1998.

_http://www.psitech.net/

In the introductory video, Dames describes experiments where two ‘psychics’ would sit in different rooms. One would look at a picture while another in a far-off room would try to draw it. He claimed that the the ‘drawer’ would draw elements of a picture, say a hat, as simple cartoon representations, and that several of these elements would be drawn for each image attempted, though they would be drawn in incorrect position and relative size to each other. Dames claims that these experiments repeatedly produced this same result often enough that they could not be dismissed.

He goes on then to speak of them as archetypes, and focusses in on four specific ones for training purposes: ground; water; mountains; and buildings. (Dames also claims that the access time where the mind can do remote viewing is on the order of 0.3 seconds.)

Later, I became aware of Carl Jung, and his work with archetypes, and began to try and design ways of making computer databases that use the archetype method of storing data. But that is a whole ‘nuther nut.

(Oh, one of the more interesting things I ran across in those days is the work of Michael Leyton. I think this work is important in general, but also for classifying archetypes:

http://www.amazon.com/Shape-Memory-Architecture-Information-Technology/dp/3764376902/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226672454&sr=8-4

http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Paintings-Michael-Leyton/dp/3211357394/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226672490&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Generative-Theory-Lecture-Computer-Science/dp/3540427171/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226672520&sr=8-3

being three notables.)


FREE ASSOCIATION

Anyways, I have given the background, and now I discuss what seems to me as an engineer to be a crazy notion, but one that persists.

If Dames is correct that Remote Viewing is the process of accessing some sort of large universal database, and if Jung’s work with archetypes is valid, then it might be reasonable to conjecture that this ‘universal database’ is organized around archetypes.

I got interested after experimenting with Remote Viewing in the way in which the images would flash before my mind as I whipped the pencil across the page. The first time I was successful at it, the scene was a snowy mountain and an icy river. That image still haunts me to this day. Not the photo that I was later showed, but the essence of the image in my mind before I saw it, the cold, the clean, the clear, the white. And like Dames said, it happened fast, and all out of proportion.

So one night I decided to experiment a little to see whether I could produce this type of recall or visual without the Remote Viewing stimulus. The answer was a stunning, ‘oh yes.’

How to describe it is the hard part. With the famous quote in mind “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn’t exist,” I have often tried to conjecture in the mode of suspecting that much of what we believe is a lie, and that these lies are extant across thousands of worlds.

What about the simple idea that we can’t see when our eyes are closed? True or false?

False. Even in dim lighting, one can see their hand, blurred albeit, through the eyelids.

But what about with the lights off? Wilhelm Reich claims to have seen Orgone emanations after many minutes in the dark. But that is a side note entirely. I am speaking here of the sparkles that one sees in the eyelids when closed. We can press our eyelids inwards and make more sparkles. That is where I left this matter many years ago as a child.

This time though, I approach it from a different angle, entirely. If the mind is seeing during the process of remote viewing, then what is that exactly? Is it:

A) Accessing pre-existing information

or

B) Creating information

? Very interesting question. Dames claims A.

If A be the case then, this database apparently holds ‘everything’ and is absolutely huge?

So let’s us investigate the notion that it is organized by archetype, that it is fast, that is accessible via consciousness, and that it is indeed huge.

In thinking about all of this, I asked: What if those sparkles in my eyes are like a dial tone? What if it’s what we get because we are not using one of our basic faculties? I know, you may be thinking ‘baked noodle’ right now, but this is a thought experiment. I invite you, please come along!

Question: Can this ‘database’ be accessed at will? Such would certainly go a long way towards answering this skeptical mind.

Plan: Eliminate physical visual stimulus, and try.

Observations:

1) The signal-to-noise question. As the lights are dimmed we are reducing signal, and we see more noise. This looks a lot like the snow on television, but it is more static. Try it in a dark room, with pillow over head, etc. After a while, the various levels of darkness can be seen easily. The noise however, while always there, does not ever seem to rise to the level of white regardless of how dark we make things.


2) The noise position. If the noise source was the retina, one might expect it to move when we roll our eyes in the dark. But it does not - at least in me. It remains fixed within view, much like the objects in a lit room do when we hold our head still and move our eyes around. The noise could be at the place where we form images in our mind. How this is significant could then be a big question.


3) The shifting patterns and sparkles. My plan was to allow free associations to be triggered by the patterns in the noise. It worked. I would see a pattern, grok its existence, and it would instantly change when I did so. Causal? Perhaps. But lets lay that one aside for the moment. I began following this flow. As I focussed in on one element of a visual, it associated to another, and another, and still another. And it became amazing. Very fast patterns, shifts, ideas, flavors, on and on. As I repeated the experiment over subsequent months, I began to see that my attention to detail increased, and so did the quality of the visuals. I became able to start the process as soon as I close my eyes. No drugs were ever used.


4) Toys in the attic. I worried briefly that I was ‘losing it.’ Was I manufacturing what I saw? If so, then I state here and now that I have just found an amazing source for new digital art themes! So no, not losing it. But if my consciousness is that fast, then so is everyone else’s, and no one can easily overstate how strictured our minds have become. I see multiple themes, rolling into multiple other themes, connected in many ways. So my tendency for a while has been to assume that I am simply goading my visual cortex into action.


5) Exhaustion. I began to have wider experiences. But I came to a limit. My mind cannot do it for too long unless I am well rested and well fed. It is a form of concentration that happens at clip speed and requires courage. The rate of archetypal flow can be dizzying.


6) Letting go. Once I had a dark sequence with blood and mean faces. Simply accepting it, and not wincing, was the key to allowing it to conclude and move back into a happy experience. It seems that both being ‘in-control’ and being ‘not-in-control’ have advantages. Though in free association, the distinction is arguable.


I have spent a significant amount of time pondering the above six results lately. Given the density of the information in the visuals and the sometimes utterly foreign content, I am now starting to lean away from the idea that my mind is creating them.

If I am accessing pre-existing information that is new to my consciousness, then the way that my point of view shifts when I focus in on some archetypal aspect of a visual suggests that I am altering the ‘query.’ If I am creating the visuals on the other hand, then I am altering the basis of their creation. Alas, I am still not as yet certain about the origin of the visuals.

Arguably, the technique of Freud’s “free association” looks into what archetypes people insert into their surroundings, and how they relate these to each other. So whether my mind is creating or viewing information, the experience seems to qualify as non-verbal free association.


CONCLUSIONS

1) Ed Dames' words and my experiences convinced me that Remote Viewing is about accessing pre-existing information, not creating it. The type of archetypal association involved in Remote Viewing can be created in the mind at will, at least by the method I have described above.


2) It is not easy to discern whether the visuals and their associations are created, or whether they are pre-existing and being viewed.


3) It is a gratifying experience nevertheless, that has triggered realizations and insights into aspects of my/the ‘real world.’


4) I am driven by curiosity, but won’t get much further as an island, and I need (cautiously) to get help and guidance from others.


For some reason, all of this keeps making me think of G’s discussion in “The Fourth Way” about remembering one’s self. I read it in 1976, so I guess I need to go back and do it again to try and understand this association that I feel.

Also, I feel an overall sense of relief from the experience. Somehow I get a sense from it of a much finer order than I learned in school. And that is soothing. It was science after all that led me back to believing in God, but that’s a story for another day.

Thanks for reading my blather!

db


Quotes from the "Seeing with eyes closed?" thread.

[quote author=aurora]Well, what I will describe is a bit different. When I close my eyes and look into the back of my eyelids, I see peculiar images that change shape very quickly transforming into another image. Sometimes the images are humanlike sometimes rather bizarre ones.[/quote]

[quote author=CLONIX]One thing that happens to me a lot when i lay down, is seeing scenes or events pretty clearly. Like watching a movie screen.[/quote]
 
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