A Cranial Throughput of Just Ten bits per second

According to a report in Science Alert, in a recent paper, neurobiologists Jieyu Zheng and Markus Meister from the California Institute of Technology found that “[T]he speed of the human brain's ability to process information has been investigated in a new study, and according to scientists, we're not as mentally quick as we might like to think.”

Read the full report here.

“In fact,” the report goes on, “research suggests our brains process information at a speed of just 10 bits per second. But how is this possible, in comparison to the trillions of operations computers can perform every second?”

Of course, those conversant with information technology will know that input and output to and from peripheral devices in computer systems is far slower, especially if it processes data sequentially rather than in parallel, than the speed of a central processing unit (CPUs); and specialist graphics processing units (GPUs) are lightning fast.

Habit and improvisation, and Sufi Necessity

One of the early aims of the Sufi teachings is to regain the flexibility of mind that is lost as we grow out of childhood. Almost inevitably in this abode of decay, we humans become creatures of habit. But it needn't be this way.

To quote Arthur Koestler in The Ghost in the Machine in a chapter on Habit and Improvisation:

“[Regarding] Lindauer's study of the honey-bee. Under normal conditions, there is a rigid division of labour in the hive, so that each worker is occupied on different jobs in different periods of her life.

A Topical Experiment in ESP Using Wordle

Here's a topical experiment in telepathy that might be fun for someone like Rupert Sheldrake to carry out:

Have one set of candidates with no knowledge of the current day's New York Times Wordle puzzle try to guess the answer (perhaps allow them two or three guesses, to counter any internal delinquency,  or “being in two minds” and not listening to intuition), with no feedback about success or failure, unlike the real puzzle.

As the (US) day progresses, more and more non-participating people will discover the correct answer or, if they fail the puzzle, will be told the correct answer.

A second group of candidates could also attempt to guess the answer to the same day's puzzle, but the day before, so the answer would not be “floating in the air” at that time.

The Science and Art of Dreaming: Book Review

 

★★★★★ I really can’t do better than point the would-be reader to the publisher’s description at the top of the book page, because from reading and thoroughly enjoying The Science and Art of Dreaming by Mark Blagrove and Julia Lockheart, “it [really] does what it says on the tin.”

This book is a blend of rigorous documentation of scientific research and theory from dreams researcher Mark Blagrove, and more intuitive appreciation of dreams that are presented, with Mark guiding discussion with the dreamer (primarily using the eminently practical Montague Ullman dream appreciation method and free association, which we can all use at home or in groups), and the resultant and inspired artwork by Julia Lockheart (performed live on camera as each session progresses), which brings the process full-circle from the original dream imagery back to the visual; wonderful artwork that the dreamer gets to keep for further exploration by them and with friends and family.

The Secret Teachers of the Western World: “The Master and His Emissary” Meets the Esoteric

For those of you who have read Iain McGilchrist's epic, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, you'll know that it is “a fascinating exploration of the differences between the brain's right and left hemispheres and their effects on society, history and culture”; that “the left hemisphere is detail-oriented, prefers mechanisms to living things, and is inclined to self-interest, where the right hemisphere has greater breadth, flexibility and generosity”, and that “despite its inferior grasp of reality, the left hemisphere is increasingly taking precedence in the modern world, with potentially disastrous consequences” (though there have been periods when the pendulm has swung back and the right hemisphere or an integration of the two modes of being have briefly flowered, such as the Renaissance, the Romantic, and the 1960s). In view of the many crises we are currently facing, however – even what has been called the ongoing Sixth Extinction – I think we can safely scrub out the qualifying word “potentially” here.

And for those of you who don't know about Iain McGilchrist's work, you can get an entertaining, informative and thoroughly worthwhile taster by watching the short RSA Animate video entitled “The Divided Brain”.

Gary Lachman's own work, The Secret Teachers of the Western World might, then, be described as “The Master and His Emissary” – and our evolution through Jean Gebser's structures of consciousness – meet the esoteric. Though we might quibble over details, The Secret Teachers of the Western World wonderfully complements McGilchrist's work, and puts an additional useful slant on our sadly-forgotten or rejected knowledge. The loss of this knowledge (not least the faculty of real imagination) has brought us to the sheer horror that we currently face, from the individual and group, the cultural and societal, and now the global. Climate emergency, biodiversity loss, and the rise of fundamentalism, populism and fakery – huge issues that these undoubtedly are – are really just the symptoms of a more deeply-rooted disease – what Gebser dubbed the (late-stage) deficient mode of the mental-rational structure of consciousness that we are now experiencing, which is now breaking down and has brought us to the brink of an existential crisis.

“This is the Home Service calling”: The Sufi Way

“This is the Home Service calling; Home Service calling. Are you receiving us?”

We live in a world inundated with information – of fact and fiction, opinion masquerading as fact, misinformation, disinformation, and misguidance, and we exiles from the Real World are in constant and growing danger of drowning in it, and of being buried and lost, like a hidden treasure, beneath an ever-growing mountain of egotism and globalized sham-materialism.

Perhaps we are not in a position to do much, at the present moment, about the all-pervasive beast of sham-materialism, but as the wise saying goes, “If you want to change the world, first change yourself”. As a part of that more manageable, but nevertheless difficult task – not least the question of how to get in touch with our own self at our authentic core and discover its real needs (as opposed to its desires) – we can turn our attention to how we communicate – with ourselves, with others, and with something transcendent that has risen above our own miserable difficulties.

So, we turn first to facts.

Of course, facts are very useful as correctives to misconceptions or misguidance (if we can sift out fact from opinion, falsity and fake news), and to provide pointers to remedial material and growth – I don't doubt that for a minute. But it needs to be emphasized that knowing a fact such as “Apples are nutritious” is not at all the same thing as actually eating, digesting and deriving nutritional benefits from a fruit. As Alfred Korzybsk is reported to have once said, the map is not the territory, or more accurately in his own words: “A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” So the fact that certain fruit are nutritious might be useful in getting us to actually research nutrition and locate and consume suitably nutritious foods; though its limitations would be disclosed if it were to lead a person instead to binge on crisps and chocolate biscuits and eventually become obese.

The inspired self, and intuition: The Sufi Way

“How will I know if I'm being inspired and intuitive?”

“How will I know if I'm being inspired and intuitive?”

In individual instances, you may every now and again realize that something you've thought, or said, or done, was in some way inspired, and you may congratulate yourself on what you take to be *your* inspiration, or you may assign congratulations to some “other”, perhaps someone who has influenced you, or to a psychic Muse.

Overall, however, you may not think “I'm inspired” or “I'm intuitive” and label yourself as such, in the early stages of such mastery. These instances may be few and far between, apparently random, or sporadic, and the process may well be prone to error.

Let's move on a few years, though, and say that one of your interests is computer programming, which most people would take to be a logical or “left brain” task. After that time, you may be able to look back, and see that in the initial stages, the tasks you set yourself were all very mechanical, approached in a very logical and methodical way, and perhaps that you surrounded yourself with a wall of reference books that you frequently consulted, out of necessity, to “borrow” material, or “just to be sure”. But now, years down the line, instead of being unsure about your abilities, when you are presented with a task, you may know instantly that some way or other the project is feasible, and even if you don't yet know how to complete it, you know whether or not you're likely to be able to find a solution either by yourself or with the aid of others who have already completed similar tasks. While initially it was more a matter of theoretical “know what” (which you can now see is “ten a penny”), now the primary approach is practical “know how”, and you can rest on the assurance that you have successfully completed similar, complex tasks before, and at the same time you realize that you may have to attempt several different approaches to the task, and often hit “brick walls” that you cannot get over, before you eventually complete the task.

Being How to Be: The Sufi Way

In the course of his lifetime, the thinker and teacher in the Sufi mystical tradition, Idries Shah wrote many books, including Learning How to Learn (a preparatory stage of study); Seeker After Truth; The Commanding Self; and Knowing How to Know. Some of these works alternate between more-didactic passages and narratives, poetry, and specially-designed teaching stories which, like an onion, contain layers of deeper meaning. Other works such as Tales of the Dervishes are collections of traditional teaching stories.

"Learning how to learn", "seeing how to see", and "knowing how to know" are abilities to develop and goals along the way, I would say, toward a more distant and yet immanent goal experienced in the here and now, which is "closer than your jugular vein", as the Sufis would say — awakening and "being how to be", which is a way of Being.

One of the tales first introduced in Shah's seminal work, The Sufis features the wise-fool Mulla Nasrudin, who is tasked with ferrying a pedant across a stretch of water.

Never Know When It Might Come in Useful

Nasrudin sometimes took people for trips in his boat. One day a fussy pedagogue hired him to ferry him across a very wide river.

As soon as they were afloat the scholar asked whether it was going to be rough.

‘Don’t ask me nothing about it,’ said Nasrudin.

‘Have you never studied grammar?’

‘No,’ said the Mulla.

‘In that case, half your life has been wasted.’

The Mulla said nothing.

Soon a terrible storm blew up. The Mulla’s crazy cockleshell was filling with water.

He leaned over towards his companion. ‘Have you ever learnt to swim?’

‘No,’ said the pedant.

‘In that case, schoolmaster, ALL your life is lost, for we are sinking.’

Exercises: The Sufi Way

"Did the writer Idries Shah give people exercises?" someone recently asked, while another asked rhetorically, "What is the value of merely accumulating data points from reading?" Elsewhere, someone contributed to this question, as it relates to the teaching stories, an important element of "the course", like the poetry, that is sometimes neglected.

Please forgive me, I certainly don't mean to teach our good friends here how to suck eggs, nor preach to the highly experienced and talented choir! But someone did ask these questions.

Zikr (an exercise used in other traditional circles) is a repetitive, iterative exercise in remembrance, that helps you connect, and leads to improvement in certain senses.

In certain early groups, Shah had everyone chant "Om mani padme hum" at the commencement of group meetings, just as Alfredo Offidani, a one-time responsible of Omar Ali-Shah, gives a "rosal of the new phase" to all neophytes, so at a certain level there can be exercises given to all-and-sundry, as well as individually-prescribed exercises, such as those involving the lataif.

Squaring the Circle: The Sufi Way

A friend who was a mathematician once remarked, in relation to my Sufi studies, that I was "trying to square the circle". What this is in his field of work is to construct a square equal in area to a given circle, a problem that you can't solve using geometry alone, though what he meant, of course, in layman's terms was that I was trying to do something that is considered to be impossible, or even insane. The Sufis' use of the octagonal symbol may, in one sense, represent an approximation, or half-way house, for Squarelanders who need to understand circles – the Sufic materials, according to the writer, thinker and Sufi teacher Idries Shah, being half way between "mere literature", shall we say, and active Teaching.

In the case of the constant, pi – which is the numerical value of the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter – we simply cannot calculate the exact value of this irrational number, because even if we calculated pi to a million digits (and this has been done, indeed some can even recite the first hundred or so from memory), the answer will still, and always, be no more than an approximation of pi. "It's turtles all the way down," as someone once remarked.

There are ways around such difficulties, however, and we need not despair. pi expressed as the fraction 22/7 will be sufficiently accurate for many everyday uses, while those with more precise needs might use 3.142 or 3.14159. These values will be perfectly adequate "for most practical intents and purposes".

In a similar way, even something as simple at first glance as calculating the square root of a number like 2 is not a trivial task, since it is also an irrational number, 1.4142135623730950488016887242097... (ad infinitum), but again we can satisfactorily make use of an approximation like 1.4142.

In a sense we could say that the task of attaining Sufihood, or of coming to comprehend the answer to "life, the universe and everything", is a similarly boundless and irrational task.

The divided brain

Here's an RSA Animate video taken from a lecture on the divided brain by Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and his Emissary:

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+