Itzhak Bentov's "From Atom To Cosmos"

[Human]

Hope I haven't picked the wrong board for this topic, if so, please move it where appropriate.

Some time ago I came upon, on one Croatian blog, a post about Itzhak Bentov's video called "From Atom To Cosmos". It was described as "one of the best videos about consciousness and creation ever made".

_http://svjesnost.blogspot.com/2008/12/itzhak-bentov-od-atoma-do-kozmosa.html
(unfortunately it's only in Croatian, but there you can find link(s) for downloading this video)

Well, last night I finally managed to watch it through its entirety. And it's really very nice piece of work (although the video and audio quality are very poor).

It's based on two books of Bentov's: "Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness" and "A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness: A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation".


Did anybody read these (I haven't)? Or seen the video? I searched the Cass forum for Itzhak Bentov and couldn't find anything except in bibliography of one of D. Icke's books.
If somebody did read them or watched it, I would appreciate any comments and impressions about them (both books and the video).


Anyway, Bentov is regarded as the father of holographic model of reality, but he also had a dark spot in his resume, imo, because among other things he "designed Israel's first rocket for the War of Independence".
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itzhak_Bentov

He died in 1979, in O'Hare Airport disaster in Chicago, "the deadliest single airliner accident on U.S. soil".
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191


Besides this video, you can find two youtube videos with him (or his ideas) on internet:
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM_nCFugdkw
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJmBgnHsJ-A
Which, imo, are taken out of context (e.g. only one third of the interview is shown) and don't give proper picture about Bentov's ideas and work, and try to emphasize mainly MS New Age things in it.


I won't be retelling the whole video, just some quotes from it that I found interesting:

"We don't have Soul, but it's other way around, Souls have us."
"The Soul is repository of information that we gather during a lifetime."

"Bentov looked at reality as a whole as consciousness itself... consciousness in the state of evolution of unfolding itself to itself to know itself and there's nothing outside it."
"Physical reality is only another expression of that reality which is consciousness (or existence) itself, aware of itself... Matter is then another expression of consciousness at different levels of evolution... Reality is perceived by those who are experiencing it only on the level of their own evolution of the nervous system (mechanism in physical body that perceives reality)."

There are some interesting diagrams and structures shown in the video, e.g. quality vs quantity of consciousness diagram, cosmic egg structure and explanation of contemporary astronomic data, "consciousness is modular" theory/hypothesis and structures that come forth from it...
and Bentov's analogies, from 1970s, look pretty modern to me, even today.

On the other hand, when I heard the word void it was "Oh no, not again", but there was a very unexpected twist with this void thing at the end:

"...you are the consciousness which is the void... and that part of you that had never left had always been the void, and that observer that was watching through your eyes and guiding you through this obstacle course to go back to your (higher) self was the observer that had never left and was watching you creating this whole phantasmagoria for yourself... we each create our own!... we are the creators (producers) and the consumers of our own reality, because we are the consciousness itself. "

And yes, there is a slight taste of YCYOR idea in this (and also in some other parts of video), but I can't say if it's originally contained in Bentov's work or it is a touch of Mirtala (Bentov's wife) and director of this video (H. Jessup).
Also, what I find seriously lacking in Bentov's work is the concept of Free Will and everything else that goes with it (although there was some implicit indication when describing Cosmic Law and Love-Will relationship).


At the end, I think that he was onto something, and it's a real pity that he was already gone two years after publishing his first book.

 

[Azoth]

Hi, I've both those books. His take is not unique in any way and we subscribe to it in general. The underlying strata or aether Sea is consciousness. The rest is aether physics. Magnetic flows and nesting... we are it.

He relates an out of body trip to the edge of the universe, where he saw both hebrew and sanskrit letters. Odd, but this seems to tie into Dan Winter's work.

His main point was that it's all (levels of) vibration, cycles and consciousness.

So the universe will fall back on itself. Not quite a big crunch but a, cosmic recursion. I suppose all the details won't matter much then.

 

[denekin]

I knew Itztak Bentov 35 years ago, when I was a Tm teacher. his nickname was Ben and you might try a search under "Ben Bentov" and see what comes up.
He used to hang out with Maharishi, and then later showed up at Muktananda's ashrams.
I read his book Stalking the Wild Pendulum when it first came out, and actually just got a new copy of it a month ago. I have never seen the video you mentioned.
He was a very warm man, I remember that. Had no official orthodox education at all, as I recall. I plan on rereading the book soon.
He was one of the first minds to try to approach "consciousness" scientifically.

 

[1984]

I knew Itztak Bentov 35 years ago, when I was a Tm teacher. his nickname was Ben and you might try a search under "Ben Bentov" and see what comes up.
He used to hang out with Maharishi, and then later showed up at Muktananda's ashrams.
I read his book Stalking the Wild Pendulum when it first came out, and actually just got a new copy of it a month ago. I have never seen the video you mentioned.
He was a very warm man, I remember that. Had no official orthodox education at all, as I recall. I plan on rereading the book soon.
He was one of the first minds to try to approach "consciousness" scientifically.

Hi denekin - As Luthien has previously suggested, it is customary that new members post an intro post in the Newbie section. There is no need for personal info - just perhaps a bit about yourself, your interests and how you found us.

 

[kenlee]

It's based on two books of Bentov's: "Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness" and "A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness: A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation".

Well one thing that might be a clue about Bentov is the title of his book "Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness"
The title tells me right from the start that he sees consciousness, as something "mechanical" (at least that's the impression I get). Then, possibly, from this people will assume that evolution is mechanical as well. That might be his "subtle twist", that is, to make it look as if man's consciousness will evolve mechanically and not consciously.

More about this here (with a small excerpt below):

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=14944.msg120893#msg120893

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=3912.msg25781#msg25781

"Are we able to say for instance that life is governed by a group of conscious people? Where are they? Who are they?

We see exactly the opposite: that life is governed by those who are the least conscious, by those who are most asleep.

"Are we able to say that we observe in life a preponderance of the best, the strongest, and the most courageous elements?

Nothing of the sort. On the contrary we see a preponderance of vulgarity and stupidity of all kinds.

"Are we able to say that aspirations towards unity, towards unification, can be observed in life?

Nothing of the kind of course. We only see new divisions, new hostility, new misunderstandings.

"So that in the actual situation of humanity there is nothing that points to evolution proceeding.

On the contrary when we compare humanity with a man we quite clearly see a growth of personality at the cost of essence, that is, a growth of the artificial, the unreal, and what is foreign, at the cost of the natural, the real, and what is one's own.

"Together with this we see a growth of automatism.

"Contemporary culture requires automatons. And people are undoubtedly losing their acquired habits of independence and turning into automatons, into parts of machines. It is impossible to say where is the end of all this and where the way out- or whether there is an end and a way out. One thing alone is certain, that man's slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.

"Everything I have said till now I have said about the whole of humanity. But as I pointed out before, the evolution of humanity can proceed only through the evolution of a certain group, which, in its turn, will influence and lead the rest of humanity.

 

[Azoth]

From my take of the two books, he was offering mainly a theoretical schematic. Much if not all his words on mystical or spiritual evolutionary aspects seemed traditional. If I recall, there was no mention of somekinda spiritual inertia, matrix, dark force what have you.
Relatively upbeat.

But his lesser know smaller book details the Multiverse. This to seems to follow (Vedic) tradition.
But this...Inconceivable multi universal cosmic being... Our universe is one small speck among countless... it's dizzying. And beautiful. Which makes things like Dunkin Dougnuts all the more ridiculous.

 

[Human]

It's based on two books of Bentov's: "Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness" and "A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness: A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation".

Well one thing that might be a clue about Bentov is the title of his book "Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness"
The title tells me right from the start that he sees consciousness, as something "mechanical" (at least that's the impression I get). Then, possibly, from this people will assume that evolution is mechanical as well. That might be his "subtle twist", that is, to make it look as if man's consciousness will evolve mechanically and not consciously.

You got the right impression about this.

After watching this video I was excited with the things said in it which could have been related to Cass and Work and just wanted to share them here. Although I also noticed some things in video were a way off, I ignored them for the sake of the "good" stuff. I see know that this was just a way of deluding myself, and refusing to see reality as it really is.
And basically it's been a production of noise here by me.

So, I checked my notes taken during watching Bentov's video, and realized that I didn't ignore and hold back just some things, but in fact a very lot of them. I didn't mention almost anything that looked like disinfo or what would go against things written on Cass sites, and of those few things that I did write about in my post here I almost immediately found an excuse not to "blame" Bentov and his system for them.

One of my notes on the issue of Bentov's "mechanical evolution" was that maybe this system describes "a possible way of evolution for OPs" and continues with "but real humans have to do their job to open this possibility for others on this planet." The other one is there is obviously "absence of lateral axis of Tree of Life", ie. "no choice" notion.

So, as my notes didn't include all spoken words, I looked this part (last few minutes of the interview; 17:25 - 19:40) of the video again and here is the transcript of it.

(J stands for Hubert Jessup and B for Itzhak Bentov; emphasis mine; and in italics are two parts I'm not sure that I heard/transcribed properly)

J: In your view, when we see each other as separate entities, that's only seeing on one plane of the reality.
B: Correct. And so whether we like it or not we're all evolving towards godhood. But, you know, it takes eons, so don't hold your breathe.
J: Is that the purpose of the evolution?
B: Naturally. Because at that point you start understanding how this system works and one of the good things about the system is that the system wants to teach you about itself. It's a good system.
J: What does it want to teach you?
B: Well, if you're omnipresent and you're all knowing, that is the state which the system wants you to be in. Because the system is the intelligence or information gadder existive. And it's also freely distributing that information.
J: In your view, we all started of somewhere a long time ago in which there was sort of undifferentiated matter which slowly, millions and millions and millions of eons evolved until a very complex organism that we now call a human being. And it has a nervous system which we've at this particular point in time understanded being sensitive to certain levels of reality; through our eyes, our ears, our nose, other sensory perception; and that sort of we call material ordinary reality that enables us to drive cars and do our work every day. However, there is evolutionary movement that will continue to push us beyond what we are today. And that at the same point we will have these experiences of elevated consciousness in which higher realities are not only seen but lived, and ultimately we come to perfection.
B: Whether we like or not.
J: Yeah?
B: Yeah. (laughter)
J: Can we speed that up by doing anything?
B: Yeah. Well, you use the meditative techniques that push the nervous system a lot faster than the normal evolutionary rate. Those techniques are available, but you don't need to do anything, it's going to happen anyway.
J: What a view! It's a very big, bright view.

This clearly shows that kenlee totally hit the bull's eye just from attentively reading the title of Bentov's book.
And it's also revealing Bentov's system as opposite to Gurdjief's one, which I'm studying at the moment (thanks kenlee for the links).
As for the description of the video as "one of the best videos about consciousnees and creation ever made", I would say that's highly overvalued, and that K&B series would beat it in no time.

Hope that this hasn't been just more noise from me.

 

[kenlee]

So, I checked my notes taken during watching Bentov's video, and realized that I didn't ignore and hold back just some things, but in fact a very lot of them. I didn't mention almost anything that looked like disinfo or what would go against things written on Cass sites, and of those few things that I did write about in my post here I almost immediately found an excuse not to "blame" Bentov and his system for them.

I remember doing the exact same thing after reading Bentov’s book many years ago. I was familiar with Gurdjieff at the time and even though some of those things that Bentov said (regarding evolution) made me feel uneasy, they were overlooked because much of what he said did seem interesting. Only after reading the Wave did I wise up and begin to look at all the new age stuff with a much more critical and discerning eye. What I did learn is that identifying disinformation and being able to find those subtle twists in all that the new age stuff is where the real learning is! Thanks for the quote Msasa, it sure does point out what Bentov says and what he is really saying.