Fundamentals of Being
Intro to Chaos Theory
March 1999

There are infinite paths
There is only one thing
The broadest sense of reality
As simple as relativity

Abstract:  This report will be based on a practical conceptual model which demonstrates the potential for communication within a hyper-dimensional state space.  My aim is to devise some method for testing the sensitivity among subjects to a non- physical, or immaterial field.  This cannot easily be represented visually, or verbally; however, the properties of lower dimensional reality may aid in the conceptualization of hyperspace.  Chaos theory, in the broadest sense, is the religion of the Gaian mind, a concept which emphasizes the force of life in terms of these morphic fields.  The goal is to raise awareness so that our perception of higher-dimensional realities can be clearly understood and communicated without the burden of projecting down to lower-dimensions, as is the case with using the English language.

Chaos theory is relevant to everything.  Every thing can be seen as part of the same complex dynamical system.  Chaos theory is still in its infancy as a physical science, and it is important to keep in mind the vast potential for human understanding.  This paper is hopefully a primitive step in the right direction for developing a field theory of consciousness, and awareness.

            What are thoughts?  Where do they come from?  These questions pose some of the most elusive mysteries the human race has ever attempted to comprehend.  Around 350 years ago, Rene Descartes developed several general hypotheses of they way in which we sense, percieve, and form thoughts.  His models for the human brain and nervous system are seemingly primitive by today’s leading scientific theories in psychobiology; however, we really don’t know that much more about consciousness itself than did Descartes and other scientists and philosophers of his time.  The modern theories of consciousness have revolved around a view that thoughts and perception could be explained by mechanistic and reductionism methods.  This has been the general trend in many fields of science, including sociology and psychology.  However, a new paradigm shift is underway in the form of the Chaos Revolution.  This social bifurcation is leading to a new understanding of the way in which we view the entire universe.  This new understanding requires new concepts and metaphors to explain complex dynamical systems.

Nature of Morphic Fields

            One theory which has been gaining strength in the biological sciences is Rupert Sheldrake’s Hypothesis of Formative Causation.  This hypothesis is based on a concept called morphogentic fields.  This theory is used to describe the process of morphogenesis, which means the coming into being of form.  The main idea is that there is an inherent memory in nature.  Each kind of thing has a collective memory.

            Another idea is that the structure of these fields is not determined by transcendent Ideals or timeless mathematical laws.  Rather, fields for a particular species, for example, are formed by all the previous members of that species.  Each member contributes to the fields and in turn influences future members of that species.  This hypothesis also implies that DNA is not the only determinant in the ways in which organisms develop.  DNA does not carry all the information needed to shape the system, but it can act as a “tuning seed” that tunes in the morphogenetic fields of previous systems of the same type.   The foundation of this idea of collective memory depends upon another concept called morphic resonance; however, I will come back to this a little later. For the purposes of this report, we will broaden this idea of morphogenetic fields to include other organizing fields such as the organizing fields of animal and human behavior, of social and cultural systems, and of mental activity.  This abstracted version of morphogenetic fields is referred to simply as morphic fields.   These fields are the underlying organizing forces of nature.  Morphic fields are somewhat analogous to other fields such as gravitation and electromagnetism.  The gravitational field is all around us, yet we cannot see it because the field itself is immaterial.  Likewise, the elecro-magnetic field is unable to be detected directly, yet it underlies the functioning of our brains and bodies, and is essential to the operation of all our electric machinery.  These fields can only be detected through their physical effects, for example, the moons orbit around the Earth or the motion of iron filling near a magnet.

            It is important to realize that the exact nature of fields is still a scientific mystery.  The main reason for this is that they cannot be explained in terms of matter; rather, matter is explained in terms of energy within fields.  An important distinction to be made between gravitational and elecro-magnetic fields in comparison to morphic fields lies in their medium.  For example, gravitation is dependent upon mass and distance.  Likewise, electric fields deal with charged particles and distance in relation to that field.  Morphic fields, on the other hand, are completely immaterial in that their force is independent of space, time, and matter.

            Morphic fields organize self-organizing systems.  Almost all things in nature are self-organizing: animals, plants, ecosystems, snowflakes, and even molecules.  Morphic fields have been described as being probabilistic.  They work by modifying probabilities of truly random events.  Instead of wide spread randomness, the fields focus the system, so that some things occur instead of others.  This is very similar to the idea of chaotic attractors in dynamic systems theory, which is now referred to as chaos theory.  The fields organize the things, morphic units that lie within them.   It is useful to think of morphic fields as a nested hierarchy of fields, that is morphic fields contain other morphic fields within them and so on.  These fields can be thought of as fields of information.  By this hypothesis it is reasonable that all information within the collective conscious, and unconscious for that matter, of all things is accessible to us individually through the process of morphic resonance.

            The idea proposed earlier that there is a memory to nature is fundamental in building a theory of consciousness.  This memory is cumulative.  It is the summation of all perception.  There is coevolution between this memory and the consciousness of mankind, along with all other organisms and ecosystems.  A useful concept to describe this collective memory is that of the Gaian Mind.  Gaia, traditionally referred to as the Mother Earth, is actually a much broader concept that extends far beyond this planetary reality.  Earth can be seen to exist as a product the Gaian mind, but is not the definition of Gaia.  This is especially obvious during one’s travels through the psychedelic experience.  One percieves alternate realities, other worlds, which may never be incorporated into what we experience in terms of life on planet Earth.  In this context, the present day emergence of the Chaos Revolution marks an important shift in math and science which attempts to embrace the fullness, or oneness, of the Gaian Mind.  The structure of the Gaian Mind is comprised of morphic fields, invisible ley lines, or lines of force.  These are the invisible connections that link together all things.  Or if you will, the “interconnectedness of all things.”  This can be perceived directly while interacting within hyperspace, another concept which I will be coming back to. 

Processes of Morphic Resonance

          For now let us turn our attention to the processes of morphic resonance.  According to Sheldrake’s hypothesis of formative causation, morphic resonance occurs on the basis of similarity.  For example, two similar species will have a stronger resonance with each other than two species which are completely foreign to each other.  Likewise, past activity of morphic resonance influences the resonance of subsequent similar systems.  This theory of morphic resonance also implies that the influence between systems does not decline with distance in space or time.

            This type of resonance can be demonstrated within the context of social systems and the morphic fields which organize their development.  Consider first the collective behavior of certain insect colonies such as ants, termites, or bees.  These insects construct massive colonies, with numerous passages, and many chambers.  The progression of the colony’s construction maintains its structure and organization, in spite of the turnover of individual workers, whose life-span is much shorter than that of the colony as a whole.  The question is in what form are the blueprints of the colony retained?  The hypothesis of formative causation suggests that the structure of the nest is organized by an associated morphic field, which embraces the nest as a whole.  Thus, the fields, or blueprints, for the colony are not inside the individual insects.  Rather, the insects act in accordance with social fields, and receive the information necessary for the colony’s construction through morphic resonance.

            Similar behavior can be noted within schools of fish, or flocks of birds.  How do birds and fish maintain such tight formations while turning and maneuvering as a whole without running into each other?  Vision, obviously, plays a role; however, taking into account the field of vision and accuracy of fish eyesight, for example, one seemingly needs more to explain the phenomenon completely.  The case is the same for birds which are capable of moving in formation too fast to be relying completely on sensory perception.  Here too, the organization of the group can be thought of in terms of morphic resonance.  The members of the collective are seemingly all tapped into the same overmind, which in turn, allows many individual organisms to behave as a single entity.

            This concept of the overmind is another useful tool in understanding behavior within complex systems.  It too can be visualized as some sort of chaotic attractor, which contains the morphic fields inherent in collective behavior.  In relation to human thought, the overmind can be compared to a mainframe computer which is the head of a vast network of individual computers, each of which is connected back to the hub of the network.  In this way, thoughts are obtained by a process of morphic resonance with the collective consciousness.

            In order to demonstrate other characteristics of morphic resonance, let us consider the process of synthetic crystallization.  Fields of crystals that have already occurred many times in the past are greatly influenced by morphic resonance.  However, a newly synthesized crystal formation will have no morphic resonance with previous crystal fields because no morphic fields have ever been created.  In laboratory research, scientists have found that it can prove to be extremely difficult to synthesize new crystal structures.  However, once the crystal comes into being, so does the crystal field.  Therefore, the second time that specific crystallization process is attempted, the synthesis of the crystal will occur with less difficulty beacause it is being influenced by morphic resonance from the first cyrstals, and so on for each generation.  Likewise, once a newly synthesized crystal formation has been created, it will be easier for researchers around the globe to produce the crystal.  Each time they are created, their morphic field intensifies.

            Another intriguing idea concerning morphic resonance is Lyall Watson’s hundredth monkey principle.  Suppose two isolated islands are inhabited by the same species of monkey.  These two groups of monkeys have never had any contact with each other.  Then suppose that one day a monkey from one island discovers that if he takes a certain fruit down to the ocean and soaks it, it will be easier to peel.  This is an evolutionary breakthrough for the monkeys.  The original monkey shows other monkeys on his island, and the new technique spreads.  According to the Watson’s principle, by the time the hundredth monkey learns it, there will be monkeys doing it on the second island as well.  Obviously, being of the same species, morphic resonance between the two groups is very strong.  When the original monkey made the discovery, he created a new morphic field, and the strength of that field increased as more monkeys learned the skill.  Eventually, the second group was able to incorporate this new skill because they share the same fields as the first group.

            What about human memory?  Traditional scientific theories have maintained that memories exist within the brain and could be explained as physical traces of our experience.  However, no such evidence to support this view has ever been found.  For the sake of argument consider again the hypothesis of formative causation.  In this context our minds are more like sending and receiving stations than like libraries which store memory.  The intensity of morphic resonance is dependent upon similarity, which has already been addressed.  In general, the most intense morphic resonance acting on a given organism will be that from its own past states.  Basically this is because it is more similar to itself in the past than to any other organism.  When considering amnesia, or loss of memory, it is possible that the ability of the mind to tune into these memories is damaged as opposed to views which imply that so called “memory traces” are erased physically from the brain.

            If the ideas presented above are true, then it is conceivable that we could use morphic resonance to tune into the memories and thoughts of other people as well, being that we are similar to all other human beings, past and present.  Here lies the most exciting possibilities for human communication.  An important thing to remember is that these resonant connections would be possible even if the people were light years apart.  But how does one go about sharing thoughts with the rest of humanity?

            Imagine the sphere of your awareness.  Your reality is constructed entirely on the content of your perceptions.  Then, imagine that you could broaden your perception to include the vibration of another person’s consciousness.  Your individual realities become fused together and form a single reality on a broader level.  The broadest sense of any group of beings is just the summation of all their perceptions.  This process of integrating more and more possible perceptions into one unified consciousness, or group mind, is the essence of the broadest sense.  The broadest sense is an extremely useful concept which is based on the idea that a being can expand their individual reality to include alternate possible realities. In this way it is possible to grasp the oneness, or the chaos, of the Gaian Mind.  This chaos has been there all along.  Why is it that the very essence of human nature seems to deny this oneness by promoting ego, and thus the illusion of separateness?

Social Bifurcations and Myth

            I think that the answer to this question can be traced back to the very origins of the human history.  Let us consider the relationship between order and chaos.  In general, many people today associate chaos with disorder, which has all sorts of negative connotations.  However, this has not always been the case.   Early civilizations in Crete, Babylonia, Sumeria, and Egypt all had characteristics of a partnership society.  The partnership was of course between order and chaos, which were accepted together.  The evolution and change of this partnership can be traced through a series of social bifurcations, a fundamental concept in chaos theory and dynamical systems.

            With the birth of agriculture around 11,000 years ago, there came a prominent spread of goddess religions throughout ancient cultures.  This social transformation, or bifurcation, involved a massive shift in the consciousness of the entire human species.  This shift led our species out of the “primordial chaos” which existed prior to the Neolithic Revolution, and into a whole new awareness of the Earth’s natural rhythms.  As we became more conscious of the patterns generated by nature, we began to realize that certain events, such as seasons, occur in predictable cycles.  Even though the concepts of order and determinism began to take hold of the human imagination, the ancient cultures of this era generally regarded the spirit of nature as a conscious entity that was inherently unpredictable, or chaotic.  The early goddess worshiping cultures were based on the belief that nature is sacred and alive.  In this way, the collective awareness of the spiritual dimensions of nature, the intuitive understanding of chaotic systems, and the worship of the goddess were all intimately interconnected.  From a mythological view, the chaotic ideal was represented in the form of serpents and sea monsters, which in turn represented the forms of early goddesses in Sumeria and Babylonia.  This symbolic relationship between chaos and the serpent is also deeply connected to the conception of Gaia, or the Great Mother Goddess.

            By 3,500 BC another important social bifurcation was under way in the form of patriarchy.  This is roughly the time period to which we can trace our traditional creation myths.  In general, this period is characterized by the further suppression of chaos by the ideals of order.  The suppression of chaos, nature, and the feminine energy, occurred gradually over thousands of years as a dominator culture of order worshiping patriarchs began extending their influence around the globe, institutionalizing their male priesthood authority figures, and destroying all remnants of the peaceful goddess civilization which preceded the patriarchal takeover.

            This shift in human society and consciousness occurred at what we consider to be the birth of recorded history, i.e. the advent of written language.  This collective transformation into history has been remembered in similar ways by many distinct indigenous groups from all over the world.  The specific details of these various mythologies and rituals are individually unique; however, there are common stories and symbols which link them all together.  Strikingly, just about every human culture, which dates back at least 5,000 years, has recorded some version of a mythological tale that describes the defeat of the serpent goddess, chaos, by the masculine form of a younger generation of god, order.  The primary examples of this myth can be found in the representations of the Hebrew Yahweh or God, the Babylonian Marduk, and the Greek Zeus.  Throughout this entire cycle of history, the dominator culture has continued to institutionalize their religious and scientific belief systems around the world.  This has been achieved primarily by forcefully imposing the worship of order upon the indigenous cultures of Earth, which are fundamentally based on maintaining a spiritual connection to the consciousness of the Earth.

            Now, in our present age, we are in the middle of another bifurcation that is taking us into a new era in which chaos and order will rule side by side once again.  This is the Chaos Revolution, which began roughly in 1961.  In the last few millennia, these ideals of order have not only dominated social and scientific views, but have also sought out and conquered societies and religions which opposed their view.  This led the way for mechanistic and reductionist ideas to dominate the sciences.  In the physical sciences, mainstream theories have always held that all things in the universe could be explained if all the conditions and parameters were known.  In the biological sciences, researchers have maintained that life could be explained by categorizing everything into its constituent parts. However, it is becoming more and more obvious that an emphasis on chaotic behavior and wholism is required to further our understanding of the natural world.

            There are many contributing factors which are influencing this revolution.  Probably the most important is the advent of computer graphics, which allows chaotic behavior to be seen as digital patterns on a computer monitor.  Computer graphics allows us to visualize what has always been there, but had previously remained dormant within our unconscious.  Another factor is the women’s rights movement, which has weakened the patriarchal reign of dominance that has existed since the begginning of history.  This movement promotes partnership, a fundamental concept relating chaos and order.  Lastly, the growth of a planetary society has weakened the strength of religions such as Christianity, simply because there is need to accept, or at least recognize, so many different cultures.  This to has allowed new theories to come out without the fear of religious persecution.

            Still, the question that remains unanswered is how the Chaos Revolution will effect society as a whole.  I feel that the biggest advances will come as we break out of the three dimensional sphere upon which the fundamental patterns of human nature are based.  The Chaos Revolution is attempting to grasp the oneness of the Gaian Mind, which consists of many more dimensions than we can percieve directly by our physical senses. 

Maps of Hyperspace and Communication

            Our physical perception is firmly rooted in three dimensions.  It seems to be the limiting domain of our physical senses.  Consider human beings, and other primates as well, running through the trees, gathering food, and using tools; it makes sense why we utilize the spatial dimensions accustomed to us.  However, this does not rule out the possibility that there are higher dimensions that we cannot presently perceive directly.  In fact, these higher dimensions are familiar within the realm of mathematics where dimensions can be easily added or eliminated.  It is within this notion of a hyperdimensional state space in which we can conceptualize the idea morphic fields.

            In essence, the use of the word hyperspace is an attempt to verbalize the nature of an immaterial experience which transcends space and time.  Whether you want to describe it as an infinite number of dimensions; or as a distinction between physical dimensions and non-physical dimensions; or as one supra-dimension, completely indivisible, which consists of nested hierarchies of sub-dimensions, it doesn’t matter.  They are all one.  I want to be extremely careful in how I choose my words.  Simply by attempting to verbalize this type of concept using the English language, I am betraying the full meaning, literally.

            The theory that there exists an internal sense organ, which is able to perceive independently and beyond the limits of our physical senses, is the root of other theories involving hyperspace.  It can be referred to as the mind, the soul, the self, or the being; in the broadest sense, once we look beyond the ambiguities that are inherent to language, these terms are almost synonymous.  Language of course, is the problem.  Words can be thought of as three-dimensional objects.  In trying to communicate the nature of hyperspace, we must project our ideas down into a lower dimension so that the concepts can be communicated in words.

            There are no laws of nature, only habits of nature.  This is the ideal of chaos theory.  Nothing is static, or stable, everything is chaotic.  The English language, along with all other written languages, cannot fully communicate these chaotic ideals.  Words will always betray the meaning of true chaos because they attempt to define something which can only be communicated in higher dimensions.  These ideas concerning hyperspace are very relevant to the curious experiences we call telepathy.

            The concept of telepathy is not referring to some objective 3rd person’s ability to read the thoughts of others.  True telepathy means that my thoughts are your thoughts.  This is the future of communication; pure communication of thoughts, and the passing of written language as well as history itself.  We are all physical manifestations of the same chaotic attractor, or Gaian Mind, and thus pure telepathy is possible.  All thoughts are connected through varying degrees of morphic resonance.  We must learn to broaden our perception and breakthrough the illusion of separateness.  In hyperspace, everything is interactive.  Everything is at your fingertips.  It is all one.

Conclusions

            The purpose of this paper is not to answer metaphorical questions about consciousness; however, the ideas presented are, I would argue, useful tools that can be utilized to expand the sphere of one’s perception.  The acceptance of morhpic fields, organizing fields of information, is becoming necessary to fully understand the dynamics of natural phenomenon. 

            We, as individuals, are able to tap into these fields though morphic resonance.  This demonstrates the power and effectiveness of the mind as a sensory organ. All things, animate and inanimate, are connected.  Moreover, all information is available for free simply by tapping into the Gaian Mind, the overmind of all things.  The interconnectedness of all things is perceivable directly within the realm of higher dimensions.  These ideas are not new.  As a species, our history shows that at one time we were quite familiar with higher dimensional realities.  With the construction of ego, the spread of patriarchy, and the worship of order above all things, the ideals of chaos were suppressed into the collective unconscious. 

            The chaos revolution marks the birth of a new era in understanding.  The male dominant social ideals have left us no other choice than to look again at chaos.  This new understanding will take our species to the farthest reaches of the universe and beyond.  The importance of communication needs to be emphasized so that we, human beings, will be able to build cognitive maps of hyperspace.

            I am confident that the material presented in this paper is very much relevant to the frontier of chaos theory.  I’m asking the reader simply to consider everything as one complex dynamical system.  Many of the ideas presented in this project may seem like lofty ideals with no practical value.  However, I would argue that these concepts might actually be useful in averting the seemingly immanent biospheric collapse of Earth’s life sustaining environment.  By this I mean that the answer to our collective problems lies, not in some new physical invention, but within a shift in our perspective and way of thinking.  These ideas are also vitally important to the spiritual progression towards oneness.  Once the man made distinctions between things are dissolved, everything falls into place.  Only time will answer how the mysteries of chaos will unfold.

Sources

Abraham, Ralph, Chaos Gaia Eros, Harper SanFrancisco, 1994.

Abraham, Ralph, Complex Dynamical Systems, Aerial Press, 1985.

Abraham, Ralph H., Vibrations: communication through a morphic field,
            Synthesis of Science and Religion, Calcutta, 1996

Abraham, Ralph, Vibrations and the realization of form, In: Evolution and Consciousness,
            Erich Jantsh and Conrad G. Waddington, eds., Reading, MA:  Addison-Wesley,
            1976, pp. 134-149.

Abraham, Ralph, and Terence McKenna, Psychedelics and the Chaos Revolution,
            www.vismath.com, Big Sur, 1989.

Banchoff, Thomas F., Beyond the Third Dimension, Scientific American Library, 1996.

Combs, Allan, The Radiance of Being, Floris Books, 1995.

Dupre, John, The Disorder of Things, Harvard University Press, 1993

Sheldrake, Rupert, The presence of the Past, Time Books, 1988.

http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/mckenna/newmaps.html

http://www.mind-field.com/mi00005.htm
 
Return to GaianXaos