I Know What You're Thinking...

“What I hate is ignorance, smallness of imagination, the eye that sees no farther than its own lashes. All things are possible. Who you are is limited only by who you think you are.”

~ Egyptian Book of the Dead, written between 2000 – 1500 B.C.

Yesterday I watched two amazing videos. One was the Ted Talk, “Can we create new senses for humans?” by speaker David Eagleman on the technological developments being made that allow us to expand our human sensory systems. From his sensory vest to prosthetic limbs, neuroscientists are pairing with engineers to completely change the way we live in this world.

As humans, we can perceive less than a ten-trillionth of all light waves. “Our experience of reality,” says Eagleman, “is constrained by our biology.”

The same goes for the electromagnetic frequencies that surround us. Every living thing continuously emits signals. Our bodies have developed in such a way that we tune much of it out. Yet as neuroscience progresses, what we discover is that much more is going on around us than our brains are letting on.

The second video I watched is one about Smartstones: Headsets for the non-verbal. This short video is one of the most heart-warming advertisements I’ve seen in a while. Click on it above and see what I’m talking about. Essentially, people who have no voice can wear an EEG headset that will transmit their thoughts to a smart device that will then use a speech app to send texts and messages to others, allowing those who’ve been left out of our communication, a place in society in a whole new way.

Essentially, our brains are base stations, transmitting and receiving data at a constant rate. That stream of consciousness that runs through your head, guess what? It’s not just in your head. Every thought creates an analog signal that can be read by any device tuned into the right frequency. Right now you assume that those thoughts are private, but soon, they won’t be private at all.

This isn’t a new idea. There are plenty of documented cases of people being able to read another’s mind. While most of us write these cases off as nonsense, it appears that perhaps what these people have is an expanded sensory system. That instead of needing machines to take the analog signals emitted from people’s minds, their own brains have the ability to tune into the spectrum in which the frequency of thoughts exists. Perhaps it’s a genetic thing, some gene is flipped that gives them this extra-sensory experience.  If this is the case, then our thoughts really haven’t been private from the start. It’s just that only a few of us have had access to them.

For now.

But if we can create headsets that convert these brain signals into frequencies that our machines can receive, like cell phone signals, then we won’t even need to be concerned with ESP or clairvoyance as a fact. Instead, any one of us will be able to access one another’s minds. Which means our thoughts will become very, very important.

Sages through the ages have long taught us that our thoughts create our reality. From the Tao Te Ching to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, books so old we’re not really sure when they were written, the ability to control the mind is applauded. Later we have the Buddha advising us to cultivate, Right Thought. And even Jesus states, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” Oh, that quote is also found in the Temple of Luxor. Perhaps he got the idea there?

Regardless, to know thyself has never been more important. What does the Kingdom of Heaven really mean? Perhaps it means that the way you experience life is directly related to the way you talk to yourself. That the messages floating around in our brains all day long actually shape our reality. If we see life as positive, it is. If we see life as fearful, it is. This is truly the most powerful human skill—the ability to change our minds.

The only thing you can change is your mind, not someone else’s mind, nor their behavior. This is the way of things. Get pissed a lot, life is full of piss. Let go of the need to control, life is pretty good. And it all starts with how you think.

For millennium, we’ve been taught to think upon these things. To take the time to sit with one’s thoughts and observe them. This will eventually lead you to knowing who you are and what you stand for. But it will also make you question the very core of what you believe. To participate in Right Thought, as the Buddha prescribed, is to be disciplined enough to see your thoughts, and know that even they don’t represent your true self, rather they represent your opinions in that moment in time. Eventually, even your thoughts can be let go and instead, one becomes a receiver and observer, rather than a transmitter spewing their stream of consciousness out on the airwaves without regard.

As we’ve seen with the online troll phenomena, when humans think they have some sort of anonymity, they spew trash. Cruel, evil nonsense. The stuff of madmen. But when we all have the ability to read one another’s minds, anonymity is gone. Poof! The separation between us will disappear, and what we considered private will be open source for all to know. Of course there’ll be some sort of permission granting that takes place, and you can always take off the EEG. But with time, I can see this technology taking flight in a whole array of products and it will be next to impossible for any man to think he’s an island unto himself.

This scares people shitless. Most of us are ashamed of what goes on in our minds. Perhaps this is why we’ve rejected the idea of ESP or telepathy for so long—because the mere idea that someone could have that ability violates the most intimate part of our lives. Better to believe it’s impossible, and call anyone who claims the ability, insane or a fraud.

Yet with advancements in neuroscience, and the related sensory enhancing technologies that are starting to come of age, the impossible will become reality. And that’s really what technological development does—what was once considered magic becomes a part of everyday life.

Want to be prepared for the future? Then start within. Listen to your mind, and begin the work of programming it to reflect the world you wish to see.

Practicing Discipline in Scientific Endeavor

In 518 BC, the Greek mathematician, Pythagoras, founded a school in which the topics of mathematics, music and philosophy were studied with great discipline and secrecy. Men and women were welcome to live in community and study together, and eventually this group of individuals would contribute much to the subject of mathematics, including:

1. The sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles.
2. The theorem of Pythagoras - for a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. The Babylonians understood this 1000 years earlier, but Pythagoras proved it.
3. Constructing figures of a given area and geometrical algebra. For example they solved various equations by geometrical means.
4. The discovery of irrational numbers is attributed to the Pythagoreans, but seems unlikely to have been the idea of Pythagoras because it does not align with his philosophy the all things are numbers, since number to him meant the ratio of two whole numbers.
5. The five regular solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron). It is believed that Pythagoras knew how to construct the first three but not last two.
6. Pythagoras taught that Earth was a sphere in the center of the Cosmos (Universe), that the planets, stars, and the universe were spherical because the sphere was the most perfect solid figure. He also taught that the paths of the planets were circular. Pythagoras recognized that the morning star was the same as the evening star, Venus.  (Source)

Most mathematicians would agree that the work of Pythagoras and his followers changed the subject forever. When looking at his school and the pedagogy, it’s obvious that the schooling was about more than math. Music and art, especially geometry in art, were very important. Pythagoras felt that these subjects were intimately linked to mathematics, and to study one meant to study all three.

Most peculiar were the philosophical aspects to this training. The School maintained that every human had a soul and that through math and music, the soul could be purified. In addition, strict procedures were in place to facilitate the growth of each person’s soul, from giving up their possessions to being vegetarian, to regular meditative practices. All of these things were part of the curriculum.

Of course, this spiritual aspect of the school’s training is often seen as religious, and rightly so. For the ancients, God and Science were one. This remained up through the Reformation and Enlightenment, when Science finally broke free from superstition and set about to conquer the world and take it from God. Overall, we have countless reasons to give thanks for this—from the Inquisition, to the discrediting of Galileo, to the burning of libraries, to the witch hunts—religious dogma has proven itself dangerous, not only to science, but humanity in general.

Yet here we are, about three hundred years into Science without God, and I sense that we might have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. While superstitious beliefs often stand in the way of progress, the “spiritual” discipline that religion brought to the scientist was not without its merits. We may teach that we are just a bunch of atoms and molecules randomly bopping around in the universe, but it doesn’t take a PhD to see that something else exists within us—call it consciousness if we must. Or the observer. That part of our system that decides what to do. That part of humanity, and many other animals as well, that lives and is obviously not there at death. This could just be energy, but it’s a force none-the-less and when left unchecked, can wreak havoc on those around it.

Angry children are annoying. Angry adults are terrifying. When we maintain that our physical bodies are the only real part of us, we run the risk of letting that emotional, conscious part of us, run amok. The “soulful” practices in Pythagoras’ curriculum made sure that each scientist took the time to understand themselves, their deepest selves. To know their weaknesses, to see their instincts of fear and domination, and overcome them. Discipline is the way towards “knowing thyself” and in many ways the lack of this practice in our scientific pedagogy is partially to blame for the various negative ways we’ve used technology over the centuries. It’s easy to use our inventions to dominate others if we have no control over our own greed, anger, fear and frustration.

I believe that the heart of Pythagoras’ curriculum was to first see yourself for who you really are, identify your threat to others, and overcome that, all while studying the wonders of mathematics, astronomy, architecture and music. He believed that studying these subjects, when coupled with fasting, the giving up of belongings and living in community, would create the ideal school from which new innovation and ideas would come forth. Ideas that would change the world for the better.

We now hold in the palm of our hand the ability to modify our genes, create super-children in labs, nuke an entire city and blow a hole in the atmosphere. We also hold the keys to solving global hunger, sheltering every human being, and extending life while curing most disease. When our scientific training is devoid of any hint at truly knowing thyself, and actually denies the importance of practices such as meditation, exercise, eating well and serving others as key to any good pedagogy, what sort of direction will our scientific innovation take?

We don’t have to go to church, or believe in Jesus, Allah or God to know that within us lies a power beyond mere atoms. Call it what you will—consciousness, soul, spirit or, for those of you who have read my eHuman novels, the Lux—there’s a part of each human making decisions. It’s the part we hope to download into computers someday. That part of us is every bit as important as our memory or ability to learn advanced technological concepts. Modern practices such as learning a new instrument, meditating every day, exercising, and serving in the community at large helps to discipline our nature and get us in touch with who we really are. Life is more than getting a good degree at our top universities. As scientists, we owe it to the world to take the time to invest in getting to know our deeper nature, and ask the questions that are so hard for science to answer.

“Who am I?”

“Why am I here?”

“What is my purpose?”

“How might I serve?”