archived as
(also …Pitkanen_75.pdf) =>doc pdf URL-doc URL-pdf
more TGD physics-related articles on the /Pitkanen.htm page at doc pdf URL
note: the following was archived from private emails on 12/27/2011.
Consciousness and the Soul
Dr. Matti Pitkänen
December 27, 2011
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Köydenpunojankatu 2 D 11
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From: Matti Pitkänen <>
To:
Date: Mon, December 26, 2011 11:14 pm
Subject: "What Darwin Never Knew"
> I watched the last part of PBS/NOVA's "What Darwin Never Knew" ( ) . If myinterpretation is correct, the central theme seem to give new DNA evidencefor Darwin's "Tree of Life" -- i.e., that all Life (with brains) evolvedfrom the same fundamental unit. It was mutations of DNA along the way that caused the differentspecies. These mutations could include a different "letter" in a gene or someletters missing altogether.
> The Human Genome Project (HGP) ended somewhat unsuccessfully. Rather thangive medical practitioners a new tool to cure all disease, itpointed to adeeper level of gene "switches" (e.g., methylation, histones) thatcan beturned 'on' or 'off'. So even if you knew what gene caused a certaineffect (the HGP), you still didn't know why it got turned 'on' or 'off'.
> Furthermore (as shown in the NOVA documentary), sometimes genescan beturned 'on' for a specific interval and then turned 'off' (eithercompletely or for another specific interval). I didn't find out iftheseon/off intervals were one-shot acts or if some involved a periodicwaveform.
> They gave an example of comparing brain sizes in humans and apes. Thereis(are) some gene(s) that control(s) when to prevent the skull (orwhatever contains the brain) from growing any larger. In humans, thisgrowth stops around age 30. But in apes it stops much earlier,suggesting that it is this that prevents apes' brains from getting larger (and asintelligent as we are?).
> There are at least 2 levels of gene-controllers. One switchesparticulargenes on-and-off. And the other controls these gene switches (sort ofMaster gene-switch controllers). They are still searching for whatcontrols these Masters. Is this too Macroscopic (i.e., not quantum-sized) for your TGD-inspiredQuantum-Biology to explain?
My proposal would be that the controller of gene switches is the Magnetic Body. I donot, however, believe that this is all that is involved.
The Magnetic Body is the newlevel in control. What we call cultural evolution would be evolution of the Magnetic Body which began already when eukaryotes (multi-cellulars) emerged and brought in incollective gene expression at the level of the cell group. It brought in larger unitsthan individual organism and collaboration and unselfish behavior emerged.
Merry Christmas,
Matti
From: Matti Pitkänen <>
To:
Date: Mon, December 26, 2011 11:14 pm
Subject: what controls the Magnetic Body?
> There are a lot of layman-type questions regarding Consciousness andBiology. The most primary one would be how does Consciousness ("soul"?) fuse with a biological body?
● Is there something in a soul-lessbiologicalform that acts as a "lightning rod" of sorts to allow it to fusewith the body?
● When during the birth process does this occur (i.e., at the exactmoment of conception or somewhat later in the embryo)?
● Doesknowledge ofone's mortal existence get carried along into the afterlife with Consciousness? If so and if reincarnation exists, why does it seemnot toget passed into the new existence 100%?
● If reincarnation happens,does ithappen for everyone or just some of the time? (And if the latter, thenwhy? Are there some afterlife rules unknown to morals that are involvedhere?)
● If Consciousness exists forever in a StarTrek "Q-type continuum" (whichSarfatti favors), why is communication so difficult between thatrealm andthe biological mortal one in which we live?
● If we have receivedmessages(e.g., crop circles) either from that realm or the Future, why are theyalways so cryptic and not straight-forward? Again, some sort ofafterlife rules?
● If remote-viewing theoretically allows viewing at any time andspace within the Universe, why can it not all allow communications withthose in the Consciousness realm (or does it?)? I've only heard ofNear-Death Experiences communicating with past souls (unless RV-ing isvery similar to NDEs).
> I've only had 2 experiences with past deaths. I have 2 sisters(Cathy andSusan). Cathy was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. Whilewaiting in the hospital room to go through some formalities after Cathyhad died, Sue said that she heard Cathy's voice tell her that shewas okayand to take care of her kids. I need to get some details of that (e.g.,was Sue dreaming or awake etc.) That was 30+ years ago.
> I had a beloved pet cat who finally passed away after 16 years. She had ahabit of jumping in the bathtub and hiding behind the plastic showercurtain so that I can poke at it with a rod and she would respond bypawing at it (much like if you would drag something underneath a rugthatwould resemble something like a rodent). Her paw would always make aSmack! when she tried to grab/impale my rod which was tracing outpatternson the other side of the plastic.
2 days after she died, I was awake onthe couch in the living-room when I heard that telltale Smack! on theshower curtain. I checked. Nothing had fallen. The furnace was not on(i.e., no air was moving). The curtain was not "folded" and so was notspringing back to some former shape. My fiance (at that time) was closeto Ginger. She said that during the day after Ginger passed away,she wassitting on the same couch where Ginger would jump on, then walk overher,and them climb onto the top of the back so she could peer out the largepicture window. Connie said that once she actually "felt" her presencedoing this routine. She said that she even "smelled" her. It seem tounnerve Connie enough that she went home to stay with her mother (we werebroke up shortly after that although it was not due to that incident).
> Bible folklore speaks of 3 days between mortal death and spiritascension. In Ginger's death, that seemed about right. Cathy's "conversation" withSusan was within that timespan as well. I wonder if there is something"magic" about that 3-day interval along the same lines as your0.1-secondsin TGD.
> Returning back to the Darwin/DNA documentary, is there somethingfundamentally basic that controls the Magnetic Body which in turncontrolsthe Master Gene Switch which controls the individual gene switches? Thedocumentary said that changes (environment, predators) led tomutations inDNA which then gave rise to different species. Well, something had to"tell" DNA to substitute a new letter or drop a letter in one gene. Or isit just random chance during the continuous cycle of DNA repairing?
> The documentary told of an example of beak sizes within the same generalspecies of some bird. In the laboratory researchers found that DNAswitches were turned 'on' 24 hours later in the development of one beak(short,stout) than in the other beak (elongated,tapered). Then all beakswitches were turned off in both birds after only 3 days. Somethingfundamental has to be dictating this. I would like to think it is notjust random evolutionary chance but that is just a layman's hope.
> Instead of placing some religious text (e.g., the Bible) next tohospitalbeds, I would hope that someday TGD could be there. That is why Icreated"Highlights" for the layman that claim after-death existence independentof any religion. One's religion is only based on the culture ofwhere youlived. There has never been any proof that one is more true thananother. Einstein supposedly said that the aether may exist but one does notneedit to explain light. The same could be said about religion vs. TGD(IMHO). TGD is the reassuring answer to what we've all been lookingfor.
> Happy Holidays!
> -- Mark
Dear Mark,
Thank you for a thoughtful letter and for the questions. I'll try to comment. Probably I'll repeat what I have said earlier. I find this repetition useful. It creates sometimesa new perspective and I realize that I have not properly defined some notion.
The question about "soul" is not relevant here. The assignment of conscious experienceto the quantum jump means that consciousness is in quantumjump -- i.e., not in quantumstate of any physical system but in the change of quantum state. Only the contentsof conscious experience is about some part of the World -- about biological body, about biological body plus Magnetic Body, also about external World, etc..
Thebasic aspect of conscious experience is to assimilate with the region about whichthe experience is. "Me" is almost by definition the contents of consciousexperience (what else it can be?!) There are simple illusions in which one begins to regard part of external World as a body part.
Therefore it is in principle wrong to say that Magnetic Body as intentional agent orsomething like that. I however do that! It is practical since it would beterribly boring to write equivalent of the above lines when I try to express the role of the Magnetic Body. Conscious experience is also about representation of external World provided by Magnetic Body and the realization of intentions involves inessential manner quantum jumps taking place in the Magnetic Body.
The notion of the "soul" is beautiful. But in TGD view, the notion of "conservation of soul"does not make sense. This picture suggests that biological death does not mean end of consciousness since the Magnetic Body is probably left (but better to not make bets;-).
Reincarnation could have several meanings:
[StealthSkater note: Topological GeometroDynamics (TGD) and its internal parts such as CD, quantum jumps, arrow-of-time, etc. are previously discussed in many essays on the Pitkanen pagedoc pdf URL.]
A. If I take seriously the notion of causal diamond (CD) as correlate for Self, then one can say thatspace-time surface enters into CD from its "Future" (by definition) quantum jump byquantum jump. This gives rise to the experience about flow of Geometric(relativistic)-Time since "news" enter from Future direction.
Generalization of Negentropy Maximization Principle would say that selves arecurious and want to know about geometric of space-time sheet(s in quantumsuperposition). This would give the arrow of Geometric-Time and also the concentrationof conscious sensory experience (population subselves representing mental images) to the upper boundary of CD instead of being about the entire CD.
In this case, reincarnation could mean the direction of attention to any newinteresting target entering from the Geometric-Future. One could say that "soul" chosesa different body to live in. I remember that in Hesse's Glass pearl game there is a beautiful end. The "soul" of the master in the game chooses the body of his studentto live in.
B. The arrow of time is realized also in the structure of zero energy states. Theyare superpositions over products of positive and negative energy states and positive(or negative) energy part has well defined particle numbers as the initial states ofscattering experiment. The negative (or positive) energy part does not. In quantumjump, state function reduction occurs and gives well-defined values for the quantumnumbers of the negative (positive) energy state, final state. As a consequence, the particle numbers of earlier initial state become ill-defined.
What this means: could one imagine that subsequent state function reductions giverise to a time flip-flop? Lower boundary of CD is conscious; upper boundary of CD carries consciousness; lower boundary,... Endless sequence of re-incarnations in time flip-flop? Self would return back to childhood and experience life as singlequantum at highest level and as a sequence of quantum jumps at lower levels inforward or backward time direction? Every life would be slightly different and maybe better in some sense.
There is objection against this view. It makes sense only if the U process in the beginning of each quantum jump has a negligible effect. This assumption might bewrong.
C. One can imagine more science-fiction options. However, it seems that one mightmake progress by more precisely characterizing the notion of attention. Reincarnation in most general sense could be just redirected attention -- new targetof attention with which Self assimilates itself.
But what attention means quantum physically? Directed attention could mean magneticflux tubes connecting the subject and object. Redirected attention could mean thatreconnection process in which the flux tubes from new target reconnect with thoseconnecting subject and old target so that the flux tubes in the final state aredirected to the new target. The old target is now dead!
Magnetic flux tubes could serve as correlate for negentropic entanglement serving as basic signature of Life. For Living matter as we know it, ATP/ADP are carries of negentropic entanglement and metabolism is basically the transfer of negentropicentanglement realized in terms of what one calls high-energy phosphate bond. Standardized directed attention using ATP and ADP as units of attention. Lifeformsare fighting for negentropic entanglement and doing all kinds of tricks to gain,eating each other, fighting for money to be able to buy it, etc... The ATP--ADP processcould be essentially changing the target of directed attention at molecular level.
Maybe during sleep we are in contact with dead relatives and also with living. Isleep very badly since I must visit the toilet once in hour (at least;-). Every time Iwake up from dream. Sometimes the dreams are dull and uninteresting. Just clumsy figments like attempts of ungifted amateur to compose. Sometimes (during lastnight for instance), they are full of deep meaning and are like religious experiences.
I live in dreams my whole life. There are figments from my childhood youthand the present. I meet my dead relatives and friends and also those who are living now. There is kind of loving relationship also between those who are my blood enemiesin daily life. Somehow I feel that our roles in society represent just the surface. [StealthSkater note: Matti's 2 "great personal experiences" came during an out-of-body type episode when he was seriously ill in a hospital. He admits to having had many of these OBEs during his life => doc pdf URL ]
I have personal experiences about the deaths of my father, mother, and brother (at age of 51). In all these cases, I had strange experiences. I will tell only about the death of my brother. The experience was a couple of days earlier than he had died. I heard about it day-or-two later. I was visiting in Helsinki, meeting some fellowswhose only interest was to know whether the effects found by Russian researchers inthe rotating magnetic systems were real and if so whether they could steal the idea andpatent it. [SS note: seedoc pdf URL-doc URL-pdf]It was an extremely unpleasant visit. These fellows even looked like thosegangsters in Donald Duck.
I returned in the evening. To my great surprise, I found that the chair at which Iwas always sitting while writing had collapsed to its lowest position. All the screws keeping it in the usual shape were along the floor.
Could it be that the landlord could have such an insane humor? Could he try tocheat me to believe that something paranormal had happened? This was my firstthought. But this would have required being a psychopath and he certainly was not that. Could it be that my dying brother send a negative energy message to the Geometric-Past to me, getting in this manner metabolic energy that he badly needed? Could it have been my chair which gave the energy returning to lower energy state or -- if the interpretation in terms of negentropy is correct -- returning to a moreentropic state? What if I had been at home? Would my brother still live?
Your magic "3-day" criterion holds true now but in a reverse time direction.
I have had my cat for half-a-year now. I got it from my daughter and am reallyhappy that my daughter realized that I need a companion to my lonely life. Now andthen I really feel its presence, think for a moment that I saw it, and feel evenits touch on my leg and am really surprised that it is not there.
I am happy that you really get the gist of my message. Sometimes I have the feeling that those who show interest are unable to produce any coherent expressionof thought longer than half-a-line;-). I am really irritated from commentators in my Blog who produce sheer nonsense about everything else except the topic of theposting and create the impression that TGD is some funny esoteric teaching. In somecases, it is impossible to know whether they are skeptics writing this nonsensepurposefully to create the impression that the blog is some kind of madhouse.
Mostly what I say are questions. I try purposefully to avoid the mode in which Ideclare truths. I might be wrong but I have the feeling that all this what Isecretly;-) regard as genuine discoveries are genuine discoveries. I would notassign to this any hero or genius cult. I would just compare the situation to thatwhich a little mouse which fell in a pot of milk found itself. It started to swimand swim and eventually the milk transformed to butter.