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a monograph by Mike McDermott ~ For other writings, visit the author's website, The Star Key ~
I start from the premise that during our evolution we had no choice in surviving in this staggeringly complex world but to make approximations, and that the increasing accuracy of the process is manifest in the very structure of our brains, which are described as pattern- makers and reality inhibitors (Grove), able to apprehend reality by relating to it in ‘bite-sized chunks'. This undertaking of this process creates a feeling of ‘flow' or happiness (Csikszentmihalyi) - a dance to the music. But too large a bite, and we become anxious and regress; too small a bite, we become bored and stagnate. From this process of survival in ‘fact-space'(to use Rudy Rucker's terms), an increasingly clear access to the ‘mind-scape' has emerged. Seen this way, a mind-body duality is no more implied than is a foot-liver duality, both mind and body being part of the same process, the same patterning-in-action. While absolute knowledge is accessible within parts of the mindscape (one and one make two), without confining it to a scale everything in fact-space is fuzzy and relative (where does a ‘one-something' begin and end?), but is nonetheless capable of being focussed upon with increasing accuracy and complexity through this process of approximations parallelling the brain's structure - reptilian, mammalian, and bicamerally mental. I draw parallels with, and glean lessons from, the series used to uncover two mathematical ratios, pi and phi (there being ever-increasingly, but never absolutely, accurate approximations along the series). I contrast this approach with the potential for pi and phi's absolute expression in the mindscape (by two-dimensional geometry), and assert that both approaches are also accessible to us in addressing reality-at-large. However, reality (the term enfolding both fact-space and mindscape) is multi-dimensional (levels or dimensions are identifiable by the new properties/patterns emerging at each higher level of complexity). I submit that the integrated, multi-dimensional addressing of reality that can emerge from the open, integrated functioning of our whole selves expresses as wisdom and compassion, and is our highest expression of self, and our home. In the final chapter, what I believe to be a new word - eusynthesis - is coined, and I tentatively suggest a first step towards the general facilitation of the process ‘eusynthesis' is intended to describe. I consider this to be a work-in-progress, and am posting it on the net not only to be corrected where necessary (remembering that we are dealing with very broad approximations here), but also to seek the advice of others in how to facilitate this concept of eusynthesis. [editor's note: The later chapters of Mike's monograph employs mathematical symbols and complex charts that we were not able to reproduce in HTML. Therefore only the Chapter One is posted for online reading. After reading the first Chapter you have the option of downloading the entire monograph to your computer as a Zip file, in either WordPerfect or Microsoft Word format.]
(revised and corrected May, 2000)
(revised and corrected May, 2000)
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Internet: Calvin: William Calvin's talk, "Competing for Consciousness" is posted on the Third Culture Homepage, with a graphical version at http://williamcalvin.com/1990s/1998TucsonConsciousness.htm
Collins: Peter Collins' Holistic Mathematics Homepage is at http://www.iol.ie/~peter/index.html
Knott: References to the Fibonacci Series are at http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci
Gebser: The work of Gebser is overviewed (with further references) in a paper on the web by Ed Mahood, Jr at http://www.gaiamind.com/Gebser.html, and also in Wilber, 1995.
Torbert: William Rockwell Torbert's Homepage is at http://www2.bc.edu/~torbert Maturana & Varela: Dr Randall Whitaker's tutorial can be found by way of his autopoiesis bibliographic reference page at http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~jwjhix/ap-bib.html.
Books
Arieti, S. 1967. The Intra-psychic Self. New York. Basic Books.
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