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Exploring the Fractal Mind and Fractal Consciousness

Gary Z McGee
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28
Exploring the Fractal Mind and Fractal Consciousness

“Why is geometry described as ‘cold’ and ‘dry?’ One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline, or a tree. Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line… Nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether different level of complexity.” ~ Benoit Mandelbrot

The vacuum of space connects us all. Atoms consist of 99.9999999% empty space. That means everything from the chair you’re sitting on, the computer you’re staring at, even you, are only 000000001% there.

Even the Planck Length is simply a renormalization of the infinitely dense vacuum of space. As such, matter does not define space, space defines matter. Matter is just a perceptual division of the vacuum itself.

However, matter does inform space. Reality creates us. The vacuum creates us, but we inform the vacuum. We are interacting with the structure of the vacuum over and over again in a fundamental way.

All the electrons and positrons in the atoms that make up our bodies are constantly interacting with the vacuum like a game of hide-and-seek: appearing and disappearing, over and over again.

We are informing the universe about our unique point of view of the structure of reality. We are recursive, self-similar structures of consciousness at arbitrarily small scales that represent the universe as a whole; like a wave represents the ocean, or a water-drop represents the wave.

Fractal feedback loops are a prime example of this. The functioning architecture of the human brain is a fractal feedback loop in itself. Brains are water-drops representing a cosmic wave that represents a cosmic ocean.

As the research of Wai Tsang proposes the organization of the brain is fractal not just in structure but in process, similar to the way a tree is fractal in structure and process. It is through this feedback loop that we inform the universe that created us.

Wai H Tsang talks about the Fractal Brain Theory

Our eyes are a literal extension of the universe seeing itself. Our ears are an extension of the universe hearing itself. It’s the same with the other three senses, even the sixth sense of imagination.

Our imagination is an extension of the universe imagining itself. These are all phenomenal faculties of our miraculous fractal brains. In the universe of fractal structure, infinity is the final answer. Infinity is not only horizontally and vertically infinite but also infinitely infinite, where even seemingly finite structures are inherently infinite at all points.

Context is to object as horizon is to boundary. Full conscious awareness requires both objective and subjective balance and perspicuity, a self-aware equilibrium between the vacuum and the feedback loop.

This can be experienced indirectly through the opening of the Crown chakra. When the individuated-self possessing absolute, decisive and divisive boundaries evolves into the transcendent-self, there is a broadening of scope that unravels and absolves the illusion of self into a permeable, flexible, horizon of infinite possibilities. From which a fractal consciousness emerges.

The deepest zoom animation of the Mandelbrot set

Each and every conscious observation is a microcosmic butterfly effect that has macro cosmic consequences. A fractal brain begets a fractal consciousness begets a fractal cosmology.

Conscious observation is a water drop interpretation of an infinite wave. Without conscious observation, there is merely an infinite wavefunction with only the potential to be collapsed into an objective reality.

With conscious observation, however, the infinite wavefunction collapses into a finite objective reality; giving us perceivable objects. Consciousness is the medium by which reality, as we know it, exists.

fractal_mind
Fractal mind

But it goes beyond this. Each and every unique conscious observation creates a domino-effect of alternate realities which are collapsing and re-collapsing ad infinitum throughout the fractal universe (or multiverse). It’s enough to make our brains do backflips in our skulls.

But the beauty of the fractal cosmological perspective is the understanding of the infinite interconnectedness of all things. It can be explained in a multitude of ways: from mathematics to geometry to chaos theory, while it is elegant enough that it correlates with such far-reaching scientific ideas as Hugh Everett’s Many-worlds interpretation of the quantum enigma, Cantor’s Set Theory, Godel’s Incompleteness theorem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and Zeno’s paradox

And it is personal enough that it resonates strongly with what’s occurring during acts of meditation and other altered states of consciousness.

Blaise Pascal once challenged us when he wrote, “Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges as the infinity in which he is engulfed.”

Fractal cosmology, and the fractal consciousness that comes from it, may be just the passage we need to bridge the gap between the nothingness from which we emerge and the infinity in which we’re engulfed. One could even go as far as to call it Fractal Enlightenment.

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Brain of a Fractal Addict
Fractal Mind

Everybody is a Guru: Cyclic Teaching and Nonlinear Learning

Gary Z McGee
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6
Everybody is a Guru: Cyclic Teaching and Nonlinear Learning

“We are beings whose distinguishing purpose, indeed whose distinguishing delight, is that we understand first what is not ourselves and, by that means, understand ourselves also.” – James Schall

upanishad-master-and-pupilupanishad-master-and-pupil
Master and pupil in the Upanishads

Most of us are aware of the traditional Indian greeting, Namaste, which means: the divine within me recognizes and honors the divine within you. But if we’re truly honoring the divine within others then we must accept that there is something we can learn from the individual divinity of every person that crosses our path. When it comes down to it, this recognition is the ability to listen. And when we know how to listen, everyone becomes a guru.

Think about it: everybody knows something that we don’t. Because of this, we are daily torn between acumen and nescience. We come to realize that we are equal parts puppet and genius. Our inner-genius hears the calling of our unique authenticity; our inner-puppet gives into the culling of an inert culture.

Our inner-genius has the capacity to transform us into polymaths of the highest order. Our inner-puppet, on the other hand, creates spoon-fed monomaths, at best. Monomaths defend linear thinking. Polymaths branch out into nonlinear learning. Monomaths are inflexible and rigid in their ways. Polymaths are flexible and question their ways. Monomaths have a one-track mind. Polymaths are multiscious in nature.

But we are all teachers, just as we are all students. Life is what we teach, and life is what we learn. So when we’re open to learning from others, we open ourselves up to a particular flavour of knowledge that only that specific person can give us. If we’re open to this kind of learning, then we are polymaths by default. This can be a magical experience.

everybody is a guru
Aristotle was Plato’s best student.

The divine is a frequency that lies within us all. It exists within you; you have only to tap into it. It exists within others as well; you only have to listen to it. It speaks a language older than words; we have only to relearn that language. And when we can tap into these frequencies we begin to see how teaching is cyclical, and learning does not have to be of the traditionally linear variety. It can be nonlinear and prolific in nature.

Here’s the thing: human beings are social creatures. We need each other. We are each walking mirrors for each other. What we reveal to each other in these “mirrors” is very important for both our health as individuals and our health as a species. Scientists have long wondered why it is that people act at such an instinctive, gut-level response to the actions of others. Now, with the discovery of mirror neurons (reference), such reactions are becoming clearer.

When we see another person suffering, we can feel their suffering as if it is our own. This constitutes our powerful system of empathy, which leads to our thinking that we should do something to relieve the suffering of others.

It also leads to our thinking more deeply about what others are going through, which can lead to some profound learning. “Mirror neurons,” writes Lea Winerman, “are a type of brain cell that respond equally when we perform an action and when we witness someone else perform the same action.”

Everybody is a Guru? How can this type of understanding make us more guru-like?

It instills in us a higher sensitivity toward compassion and empathy. The more compassionate and empathic we are, the more likely we are to be polymaths. The more polymathic we are, the more likely we are to recognize the divine within others. And the more we recognize the divine within others, the more likely we are to learn from what only their particular “flavor” of divinity can teach us.

In the video below Indian Spiritual Guru, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, talks about enlightenment ~

Here’s a brilliant video of a student giving a pep talk to students and teachers, must watch!

In the end, we realize that true mastery is not about mastering others but about mastering our former self. We master our former self by understanding how everything is connected, how we’re all in this together, how we are all gurus. We master our former self by learning from others and then “paying it forward” through a recycling of our mastery.

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Plato & Aristotle as central figures in Raphael’s The School of Athens (1510)
Master and Pupil

Fractals a Part of African Culture

Bhavika
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1
Fractals a Part of African Culture

Fractals are a part of nature, they are a part of us. Undeniably, fractals also form part of different cultures, long before computer generated fractals were discovered – from the architecture of Indian temples that resemble fractal structure to indigenous African villages where fractals are embedded in their architecture, textiles, art and religion.

According to Ron Eglash, university professor and author of African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design, this was not simply unconscious or intuitive. Africans linked these fractal designs to concepts such as recursion and scaling that exists in African indigenous knowledge system.

ba-ila-africa-fractal-design-of-the-village
Aerial view of Ba-ila settlement in southern Zambia shows fractal pattern

Architecture

Many villages, constructed over many generations without anybody being in charge, formed an intricate fractal pattern as a whole.

Fractal pattern in Ba-Ila village in Africa
Fractal pattern in Ba-Ila village in Africa

Like in southern Zambia, the Ba-ila housing settlements are designed like enormous rings. Each extended family house is like a ring-shaped livestock pen with a gate at the front of the ring. Near the gate are small storage buildings, and moving around the ring, the buildings become progressively larger dwellings, until the largest, the father’s house, is opposite the gate (back of the pen). Thus front to back measures a status gradient for the home. At the back of each family’s house is the household altar.

Similarly, the front of the settlement is the gate. Near the gate are smaller home rings, progressing to larger as we go around the settlement ring. Inside, which is also the back of the settlement is the chief’s house. The front of the chief’s house is the gate, with progressively larger buildings around the ring, until the largest, the chief’s home, at the back.

It is a ring of rings and a status gradient increasing with size from front to back, reflected in every scale of the settlement. The relation of the chief to the tribe is described by the word “kulela,” means “to nurse and to cherish.” He is like the father of the community, and this relationship is echoed throughout family and spiritual ties at all scales and is structurally mapped through self-similar architecture.

Eglash began this research in the 1980s when he noticed the striking fractal patterns in aerial photos of African settlements. He explains this further in the video below –

An African Mokoulek
An African Mokoulek

In the Mandara Mountains of Cameroon live various ethnic groups commonly referred to as Kirdi. Their Mokoulek’s follow fractal design, with small circular granaries and larger circular granaries spiraling within 3 large stone enclosures, which themselves spiral from a central point which is the square part in the blue print.

There is a sort of recipe or algorithm that determines how the system expands to accommodate growth. It is determined by knowledge of the agricultural yield. This volume measure was then converted to a number of granaries and these were arranged in spirals. The design is not simply a matter of adding on granaries randomly, but rather the expansion of a quantitative and deliberate process.

Culture

African gods of cyclic change represented using fractals
African gods of cyclic change represented using fractals
Log spirals in Ghana symbolize the spiritual force of life
Log spirals in Ghana symbolize the spiritual force of life

Not only architecture, but fractals are also seen in African textiles, sculptures, masks, religious icons and cosmologies.

In Ethiopia, fractals can be seen in crosses (with a three-fold iteration) and also in the Lalibela churches.

Fractal imagery is used in African religions to show gods with the most and the least spiritual power. Gods representing orderly, cyclic patterns (such as Nummo in Mali and Dan in Benin, shown above) tend to have low power. Gods associated with the power of life like (Nyame in Ghana, Mawu in Benin) have higher power.

Ethiopian cross showing use of fractal shape
Ethiopian cross showing use of fractal shape
Fractal patterns in cornrow hairstyles, every braid is a fractal in itself
Fractal patterns in cornrow hairstyles, every braid is a fractal in itself

The same principle of construction based in a fractal shape can be applied to designing Cornrow or braided hairstyles. Africans have been using fractals to create beautiful and intricate hairstyles for a long time, braiding iterations of a same form.

african blanket
Design on a African Blanket

Even their wedding blanket, which is primarily woven from camel hair, has an interesting story attached to it. The weavers say that the blanket has spiritual energy woven into each pattern and that every successive iteration shows an increase in this energy. They believe that if the work stops in the middle (where the pattern is most dense, and hence the spiritual energy is greatest) they would risk death. So the wedding couple has to keep the weavers awake until its complete by giving them food and kola nuts.

The African focus on fractals emphasizes their own cultural priorities: it can even be heard in their polyrhythmic music (similar simultaneous rhythms at different scales).

This is an amazing find that shows how fractals play a vital role in forming the fabric of our universe, its not only present in plants, trees, clouds, mountains, rivers, etc., but its present in ancient civilizations across the world that mimic our cosmic design.

References:

African fractals

Sacred Humor: Cultivating a Good Sense of Humor

Gary Z McGee
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5
Sacred Humor: Cultivating a Good Sense of Humor

“Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.” ~ Mark Twain

A good sense of sacred humor transubstantiates the world. It dethrones the emperor in the mind while revealing he’s not even wearing any clothes. By maintaining a healthy sense of humor we avoid the stultifying situation of being in total control of ourselves, and the equally fruitless situation of losing control altogether.

Let us not be serious. Let us simply be sincere. Like Swami Beyondananda said, “It’s time to take humor seriously and seriousness humorously.”

A certain infusion of laughter, even in its least popular form, is a prodigious help towards bearing the hardships of life. Self-seriousness gets us nowhere but closer to a denial of reality. Humor, on the other hand, gets us everywhere closer to a self-actualization of reality.

sacred humor

This is because having a good sense of humor unites wisdom and acumen with foolishness and enchantment. The cosmos opens up, as it opens us up, to its infinite mysteries. No box, no comfort zone, no mental paradigm ever stood a chance against the self-empowering adaptability of a healthy sense of humor.

What is sacred humor?

Sacred humor is a divine self-awareness of the absurdity of the human condition. It is the delighted recognition of our own fallibility and a loving cynicism of our own pretense. It is the full recognition that we are each god-in-hiding. We see how our Soul is playing hide-and-go-seek with our Ego.

Humor debunks the ego’s pride in itself, not masochistically, but in the spirit of cosmic joy. Let us embrace this particular flavor of absurdity, let us hug the hurricane, let us bosom the apocalypse. If we should transcend the paradigm, so be it. If not, at least we’re laughing.

Sacred humor reminds us to work hard, but to play harder. Having a sense of play transforms life into a sacred game, a game that alters the way in which the human soul interacts with the cosmos.

Is it not in the throes and ecstasy of play that we are the most happy? Is it not through the free-flow of artistic non-attachment that true happiness is realized?

Playfulness opens us up to our own unique creativity and capacity for personal fulfillment. One of the keys to happiness is keeping the passion, love, and joyful exuberance of life in the moment: carpe punctum (seize the moment) leads to carpe diem (seize the day) leads to carpe vita (seize the life).

Amidst the absurdity of it all, humor is the glue that binds. It all at once humbles us by knocking us off hand-me-down high-horses, and props us up by providing a platform upon which we can laugh at the “powers-that-be.” All while wearing a goofy hat. It refuses to allow us to get ahead of ourselves, while at the same time it propels us ahead of the “horse and cart” of our expectations.

Having a good sense of humor is having flexibility in the face of life’s demands. It is the realization that our expectations mean nothing, and that sacred laughter can usually break the spell our expectations cast over our lives.

At the end of the day, the cosmos is an infinite musical vibration, a sacred resonance. We are the divine instrument upon which that music gets played. But it is our responsibility to keep our instrument tuned. If our instrument is not tuned then the music that gets played will be inaudible and dissonant.

The video below shows Liza Donnelly talks about how sacred humor can empower women to change the rules.

If our instruments are tuned then the music that gets played will be audible and assonant. It really is that simple. The universe is already tuned. It is waiting for us to tune ourselves so that it can play its sacred music upon us.

The best way to tune the body is through exercise and meditation. The best way to tune the mind is to read and reflect. The best way to tune the soul is to have, and to practice, a good sense of humor.

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Waldo finds himself

Transforming Inertia into Authentic Courage

Gary Z McGee
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8
Transforming Inertia into Authentic Courage

“Belief in truth begins with doubts of all truths in which one has previously believed.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Metaphorically speaking, beasts of burden are incapable of creating new values. They are only capable of carrying old values. They will suffer their entire lives, broken and trod-upon, to carry those old values. There is perhaps no beast of burden more symbolically “weighed-down” than the pack mule.

Sadly, modern man has become a pack mule whose reverence for his burden has become a crippling thing. He carries the weight of ages – both religious and political – on his worry-heavy back and grief-stricken shoulders. He is the bearer of existential angst, reverent only to the historic heaviness of prescribed values.

transforming-inertia-into-courage

The most frightening task of a weight-bearing animal is the creation of new values. This causes such a fear in him that his heart clinches in his chest, threatening to suffocate him with fear. What could be so terrible as to cause such inner crises? Is it the unknown, the new motion, the self-propelled wheel, the blank slate of freedom? Or is it simply the fear of change?

A sacred No! is needed; a casting-away of spoon-fed ideologies and parochial burdens, and a seizing of a new dawn. The announcement of “I will!” in the face of “Thou shalt!” But this is no easy task. Much transformation is needed. The spirit must un-burden itself.

Self-questioning courage is needed. What emerges after we allow the cosmos to reorient our mind-body-soul? What replaces the overburdened pack mule? A lion: a creature capable of mighty will, whose roar is a sacred No! in and of itself, whose claws are capable of clipping yokes and cutting away the straps that bind the heavy burden of outdated values.

The lion is a courageous archetype. Sheep vacillate, donkeys trudge, but a lion pounces. A lion acts and reacts, proactive with its decision-making. A lion is a symbol for courage in the face of uncertainty. And what could be more uncertain than the dark night of our culture’s current existential crisis?

And so with our hair wild, and our hearts pressed up against the uncertainty of the world, our being is ready for its becoming. We are ready to be transformed into lions.

Rise like Lions after slumber in unvanquishable number, shake your chains to earth like dew, which in sleep had fallen on you. Ye are many — they are few. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

pack-mule

But, Caveat leonem, lion beware. Courage is the treat but pride is the trick. Every sacred No! must eventually discover a reciprocal sacred Yes! lest hubris lead to tyranny. Pride can cause us to become too hard and rigid in our ways.

When our courage becomes prideful we become hard and our third-eye closes. Our garden dries up and the Spirit Lotus, representative of soft innocence, shrivels up and dies.

As the Kalahari Bushmen say, “you must first get soft before tapping into transformative energies,” into the energy of the universe that they refer to as N|om. It takes the lion’s courage to transcend the pack mule’s burden, but it takes a softening, a return to innocence, for real transformation to occur. Courage breaks the spell, but courage that becomes Power can also be the spell.

When we get out of our own way – that is, when we nip Reverence (the overburdened mule) and Pride (the hardness of the lion) in the bud – we free ourselves to unfold the Spirit Lotus, to kick open the third-eye, to awaken the mysteries that have been hiding within. Having done this we unleash a torrent of creative energies that propel us out of small mind and into Big Mind; out of hard mind and into soft mind. What we discover is a spiritual plasticity that awakens our primordial self, our eternal innocence.

It is the Eternal Innocent that tempers the lion’s ardor. Without it we become stuck in the reverence reaped from the glory that our courage sowed, and we risk becoming tyrants. Wisdom is perishable. Altruism is impermanent. It is all too easy to fall victim to the charm of pride (lion) and reverence (the mule). Even King Solomon the Wise descended into tyranny.

Our eternal innocence is powerful because it is an arrow of humility that pierces our self-serious agenda. It injects a liquid innocence that softens our too-hard, too-reverent hearts, and leaves us open to progressive change. The gift of eternal innocence is eternal becoming.

In the end, transformation is not without risk. Change does not imply enlightenment. And so we must remain circumspect, keeping our lion’s eye focused on the prize but our third-eye open to the vicissitudes of life’s many illusions, especially those of pride and self-deception.

Courage will become pride, pride will become reverence, and reverence will become stagnation unless a newfound courage (found within eternal innocence) can be “reborn” to continue the cycle. Once again, a return to playful innocence is the healthiest bridge toward the numinous wisdom hidden within us.

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Pack mule
Android Jones

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