Rec­og­nize: Sub­chap­ter I.

Interconnectivity

All crea­tures of exis­tence share fun­da­men­tal qual­i­ties through the virtue of exist­ing. Each species occu­pies a fun­da­men­tal place in what is described by Native Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties as the sacred hoop of life—a cir­cle, with­out end, in which all of the Earth’s species live in balance.

Humans are but one aspect of a greater inter-being and con­sti­tute a small sec­tion of a much larg­er, cos­mic com­mu­ni­ty. We exist with­in a thought that is con­stant­ly expand­ing. We are always chang­ing, always in motion. To rec­og­nize the con­nec­tions between the myr­i­ad forms of life is to rev­el in won­der­ment and to access the divine.

Categories
Recognize Interconnectivity

Consciousness Is the Foundation for Everything

Con­scious­ness is inti­mate­ly involved in all phys­i­cal and meta­phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na; a fun­da­men­tal truth and orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple of the universe.

“Con­scious­ness isn’t some­thing we have; it’s some­thing we, and the whole world, are.”— Jude Cur­rivan

Does a dog know it’s a dog? How does a bird know to sing in the morn­ing? How do we come to ask our­selves: Why are we here and where are we going? Con­scious­ness plays a pri­ma­ry role in these ques­tions. While no one has yet been able to prove what con­scious­ness is or where it comes from, we can all feel its effects. If we take the hypoth­e­sis that con­scious­ness is not a prod­uct of the brain, but instead a facet of being alive, then the con­ver­sa­tion begins to open up…

What even has con­scious­ness? A liv­ing sys­tem cer­tain­ly has con­scious­ness, a more spe­cif­ic ques­tion is: what kind? A plant is con­scious of where sun­light shines and it reach­es in the direc­tion of that light. This kind of plant behav­ior is well under­stood on a bio-mechan­i­cal lev­el and through the lens of per­cep­tive behav­ior. Per­haps a more appro­pri­ate ques­tion to ask might be: How can we, as humans, adapt our con­scious­ness to con­nect on more of the myr­i­ad fre­quen­cies chan­nel­ing through­out the web of life?

The Music of the Plants research began at Daman­hur in 1976, when res­i­dent researchers cre­at­ed an instru­ment that was able to cap­ture the elec­tro­mag­net­ic vari­a­tions of the sur­face of plant leaves and roots, and turn them into sounds. It took the find­ings on plant intel­li­gence and plant per­cep­tion to anoth­er level.

Ron Cobb, 1969

Around the world, researchers con­tin­ue to explore where con­scious­ness comes from and how it evolves. For the last twen­ty years, at the Ernst Strüng­mann Insti­tute in Ger­many, neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gist Pas­cal Fries has been inves­ti­gat­ing how the elec­tri­cal pat­terns of gam­ma, theta, and beta waves work togeth­er in the brain to pro­duce dif­fer­ent types of human con­scious­ness. The hypoth­e­sis of Fries’ research is that rhyth­mic syn­chro­niza­tion between net­works of neu­rons is linked to how the human brain has evolved over time to process infor­ma­tion.6 In look­ing into his research, we won­der how the under­ly­ing mech­a­nisms of neu­ronal syn­chro­niza­tion might be under­stood and lever­aged in the future to fos­ter enhanced cog­ni­tion and deep­er con­nec­tions between individuals.

Illus­tra­tion of con­scious­ness by sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry physi­cian and occult philoso­pher Robert Fludd

We are fas­ci­nat­ed by how brain func­tion relates to the mind’s abil­i­ty to move beyond the bound­aries of phys­i­cal space and time. With this capa­bil­i­ty, the mind can tru­ly become our

Tarot Cards by Suzanne Treister

most pow­er­ful means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­veyance. Per­haps one way to begin to under­stand how the mind might even learn to con­trol mat­ter in the future, is to first rec­og­nize how every­thing in the phys­i­cal world is always in motion. As with all mat­ter, the var­i­ous parts of our bod­ies com­prise chan­nels of ener­gy that vibrate at var­i­ous fre­quen­cies. If we can learn how to syn­chro­nize the fre­quen­cies occur­ring through our bod­ies and minds with the fre­quen­cies of oth­er mat­ter, then per­haps we can actu­al­ly learn to make that mat­ter change its fre­quen­cy and cor­re­spond­ing motion.

At UC San­ta Bar­bara, Jonathan School­er (Pro­fes­sor of Psy­cho­log­i­cal and Brain Sci­ences) and his col­league Tam Hunt (an Affil­i­ate Guest in Psy­chol­o­gy in the university’s META Lab) devel­oped a “res­o­nance the­o­ry of con­scious­ness”.7 Their the­o­ry posits that syn­chro­nized vibra­tions com­prise not only human con­scious­ness, but all phys­i­cal real­i­ty. As Hunt explains,

“Even objects that appear to be sta­tion­ary are in fact vibrat­ing, oscil­lat­ing, res­onat­ing, at var­i­ous fre­quen­cies. Res­o­nance is a type of motion, char­ac­ter­ized by oscil­la­tion between two states. And ulti­mate­ly all mat­ter is just vibra­tions of var­i­ous under­ly­ing fields.”
— Tam Hunt 8

In light of every­thing in the uni­verse being in motion, the phe­nom­e­non of res­o­nance offers a frame­work for how dif­fer­ent ele­ments are brought togeth­er through a shared vibra­tional state of exis­tence. We can feel when we res­onate with anoth­er per­son by how we are drawn to that indi­vid­ual; how our con­ver­sa­tion with them can feel instant­ly effort­less and expan­sive. Or, we might res­onate with a cer­tain place, whether it’s a city puls­ing with quick ener­gy or a peace­ful and idyl­lic coun­try­side. Res­o­nance expe­ri­enced through cer­tain fre­quen­cies reveals how con­nec­tions are formed and cul­ti­vat­ed. If con­scious­ness is a uni­ver­sal con­stant between all that exists, and if all that exists is always mov­ing, then we can think of con­scious­ness as the ever-chang­ing con­duit through which every­thing is expe­ri­enced by everyone.

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