Unconscious Communication and Astrology
[originally posted 12 May 2007 to aam, see also replies then...]
This post is based on this simple assumption:
People that are close can feel each other directly,
even if they do not see, hear, smell, each other,
and (to some degree) even if they are miles apart.
That assumption, although (like astrology) at odds
with contem****ary wisdom in the exact sciences, is
one that is often made implicitly in everyday life:
- If your lover is out of the house, does the felt
connection suddenly disappear ? Is all that remains
of your lover once she/he leaves the house just a
bleak memory ? Could you not tell if something did
happen to her/him once she/he left the house ? Would
there be no difference if suddenly a heavy accident
or even death occurred ?
- Or what about the same with mother and child, etc.?
Is there no real connection, is it just a naive wish
of being connected, just something we would like to
believe ? Just a naive superstition (like astrology)
in the eyes of modern science ?
- More astrologically formulated, feelings are about
the element Water, i.e. about Cancer, Scorpio and
Pisces. Do feelings remain in the "crab's shell" or
are they universally connected (Pisces) ? Probably
a bit of both, one would assume (Scorpio)...
But let me take a step back and simply assume that
people can feel each other directly (without a need
to communicate explicitly via speech, vision, etc.),
and see where that would lead...
This means simply that people's brains are connected,
just like individual brain cells in people's brains
are connected to each other. In other words, the brains
of all people form a large brain, an entity of its own,
with not unlikely its own intentions and feelings, etc.
But that is maybe a bit too simplistic: Any individual
is mostly closest to just a few people, family, lover,
close friends, then colleagues, casual acquaintances,
and so on. So, you would expect not to have just one
large "megabrain", but different "clusters" at different
length scales.
So there would often be a "family brain",
composed essentially of the members of the family. Also,
one could assume that certain interest groups, like, say,
even a usenet newsgroup, could develop its own identity,
with its own intentions, feelings, even fate.
That is, of course, a concept that is not so unfamiliar
to astrologers. Any entity like a family or a newsgroup
has some kind of creation/foundation moment that (via
the chart for that moment) gives that unity an individual
soul and an individual fate (via planets at birth, and
then transits, synastry, and so on).
I will come back to astrology in a moment, but let me
think the consequences of people feeling each other
directly a bit further...
Any such "larger brain" composed of many people's brains
would know more things than each individual that is part
of it. Some private thoughts of members of your family,
for example, would not be available directly to yourself,
but would be to the "family brain" as a whole. And, if
you would somehow touch a theme that stirs up a "family
secret", you would still feel something, maybe shy away
from it, maybe get angry, etc.
Now, the "family brain" might also have intentions that
you are not aware of, maybe even intentions that are more
complex than you can understand with your little single
person brain. (Imagine maybe ants. They can solve quite
complex tasks as a group, but the individual ants have
no chance at all to understand these group purposes.)
Such collective intentions can appear as *precognition*
to individuals. For example, two "family brains" might be
in contact and might arrange some meetings between some
members of the family. For example, a guy and a gal could
meet "by chance" somewhere in the middle of town, so that
the meeting would appear like "fate" to them, and via
emotional feedback from their environments, they would
maybe think that it "was meant to be".
And, in a way they would be right!
That is, if you count family (or other group's) intentions
as a miniaturized, limited form of fate.
Face it: You can sometimes do things that you do not feel
like doing for some time, but mostly you do what feels
good and try to avoid what feels bad. ;)
Thus, if feelings are not local, but directly influenced
by what others feel about what you do, what you end up
doing is quite heavily influenced by what others feel and
want. Of course, that can be somewhat schizophrenically
turned around, too: The family could want you to be sort
of an individualistic person who strives away from how
things are usually handled in the family, i.e. as it often
is with feelings, different and even opposite trends could
mix up and result in some quite ambivalent situations. For
example, the strict self-control of a Capricorn is often
fueled by fun derived on the inside (i.e. via feedback from
the family etc.), from not doing what one likes. (This is
what Freud called "Triebumkehr", reversal of instinctive
drives).
So, thus far the simple idea explains things that resemble
"telepathy", "precognition" and even "fate".
Let me add two more or so before returning to astrology.
Why stop at humanity ? People often also feel quite a bit
connected to their pets. Why not include also animals and
plants into the picture ? Living and loving (feeling) are
etymologically so close that there might be more to it
than just mere superstition (like astrology in the eyes of
contem****ary science). And then, maybe all of nature is
alive to some degree as often assumed in the past, and
maybe even these connections reach out into space...
Now, with that picture, assume you take a few yarrow sticks
and toss them to do some "divination", to query the ancient
Chinese oracle "I Ching". The results are often in the eyes
of the querent more than just "chance" or a "random result",
but a meaningful description of the situation at hand.
What if the result is influenced directly by feelings, by
your feelings and by the feelings of people close to you,
and extending to humanity, living beings, nature at large ?
I cannot get much into quantum mechanics here, but what is
an integral component of quantum mechanics is that what
happens, what is measured (like when tossing yarrow sticks)
is fundamentally indeterminate (with qualifications that
would lead too far here), has some element of "chance" or
"randomness" in it that is not explainable by lack of
knowledge of an internal clockwork. But, if that element is
covered by individual and collective intentions and feelings,
it would become clear why the querying the I Ching or other
divinations techniques just "work", as follows.
The result of "divination" would then simply be the sum of
all influences, with individual and close groups having often
more influence (depending also somewhat on the question asked).
Now, the word "divination" hints also at religion. What if
the plethora of ancient Greek gods and myths was just a way
of expressing the existence of different interest groups
and concepts of collective psychology? That concept is not
too unfamiliar, think C.G. Jung and psychological astrology.
Taking it even further, what about a shell model of "God",
with small gods ("family", "bridge club", "work pals") and
then up to living nature in its entirety and self-created
(the invisible, unique god jewish/christian/muslim religion)?
But let me get back a bit more to the ground and try to
explain something that maybe many astrologers will not like
too much, because it detaches astrology somewhat from the
stars. However, logical evolution of the presented idea
leads quite naturally to it.
Remember planet Pluto ? Discovered in 1930, it was initially
thought to be as big as planet Earth, but today we know that
it is just a small lump of ice and dirt, smaller than even
that our moon, and just one of several similar lumps of ice
and dirt in a similar orbit beyond Neptune. (Pluto is now,
by a narrow margin, the second largest Kuiper Belt Object,
the largest being Eris). And last summer in Prague, as a
logical scientific consequence of the literal facts, Pluto
lost its status as a planet.
But that is only half of the story. People liked Pluto, many
school kids wrote letters to keep Pluto in the NY planetarium.
And, astrologically, Pluto has certainly strongly shaped the
20th century, with its wars and other im****tant transformations,
and, of course, also strongly influenced individual lives.
But, in light of the idea of people feeling each other, what
if people just collectively *made* Pluto that strong, because
its properties summarized some common needs and desires, at
least for the time between about 1930 and now ?
But, in that case, why not consider astrology as a whole as
being mainly driven by collective wishes and intentions ?
Maybe humanity as a whole has chosen to accept the balanced
diversity of astrology, because it helps to survive in the
world and to evolve ?
Let me try to reformulate that in a bit more simple words:
What if astrology is mainly driven by collective wishes ?
What if astrological systems are just too useful for life
that they are kept intact by collective feedback, even if
they have somewhat detached from what actually happens in
the sky above ?
For example, there is no 12 constellations on the zodiac.
There is just a bunch of stars scattered around the ecliptic
that can be grouped into signs by cultural preference (for
example, Western and Chinese constellations differ). And
even if you would take the Western zodiac constellations
as given, they are *far* from forming 12 equally spaced
sectors on the ecliptic, and (due to precession) do not
coincide with actual constellation in any significant way.
Face it, astrology as it is used today, is largely a more
abstract, psychological concept that has already largely
detached from the actual stars. (That is not to say that
there are no more natural connections to the stars, only
that astrology as it is practiced today, has largely
detached from nature in the concrete sense). ;)
[...]I first published the above idea 2002, see discoveries.pdf
contained in www.exactphilosophy.net/odyssey.zip . That
do***ent is denser and I am much more specific about the
details of how the connection is structured, in ways that
go beyond what has even been said before about the subject.
Liz Greene apparently saw the do***ent in 2002 and called
it "too theoretical" (private communication), which is both
true and completely wrong in a way: It is *abstract*, but
very much based on experience and the deductive mind of an
experimental physicist (me).
Alain Stalder - )o+
PS: a few posts by me to aam got stuck somewhere in cyber-
space since mid May (nothing too special), they might show
up eventually, or maybe not... ;)
PPS: The Journal of Chinese Philosophy will publish an
article in its June 2008 edition in which my web site is
quoted. The article is about mathematical structures in
the Yi Jing, and my observation that inside things tend
to move if one is passive in contrast to outside, where
things tend to come to rest (at human length scales),
has influenced the article...
--
http://www.exactphilosophy.net
Something different...
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