Norman Allan
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Alternative Thinking: search for the mind page


The Search for the Mind

notes for four talks
given at Alternative Thinking
in 2013




www.alternative-thinking.com

758 Bathurst
(just south of Bloor)


"We can search for the mind with the intellect, and indeed there is much to say. We can search for the mind with awareness, attention, to experience… : the sages say this is the way home.
"

 Norman Allan (Ph.D.), who has been looking his whole long life, will lead a discussion, (and share what he’s found). 

 

 

 These are links to some of the spirtual resources and teachers that I (Norman) feel are kosher (as it were).  
     
(some) other dimensions




 Lacey was asking where the mind recides: my answer, beyond that many teachings place mind/self/soul in the heart, and that I (and many of us) tend to reference visual awareness behind the eyes, auditory awreness between the ears, feeling in the body (heart and gut), was to the other, the inward dimensions of string theory.
      See: the String Thing: Concerning the cosmic mote, for a fairly full textual discussion: or click on the video for a brief oral presentation.
 
     
"Mirror neurons": neurons associated with "activities", "ideas", "intentions".  
     
 
wiki_says: "... so'ham is an emphatic form of aham, the first-person pronoun ("I"), ..."         so, soham is "I" (and not "I am")
  
     
compexity and
emergent phenomena

At our first talk (8th March) we did not have a accompanying graphic presentation (we will in future). I spoke about "complexity" and "emergent phenomena". You can read about this (with pictures) at Complexification; dialectic, mandelbrot, and emergence.

  
The eight match problem (or "walking camels") demonstrates that we have evolved, not to see logic and truth, but rather to somehow muddle through and survive socially.  
     
neural
processing
 The most detailed information we have about complex neural function comes from Hubel and Wiesel's work (from the mid-20th century) on vision.  

Wilber's World
I think that some of the teachings of Ken Wilber are germain to the study of mind..     see Wilber's World for a discussion of levels and realms.  
     
a broad outline of what I think science presently knows about the brain...
     
"mind"
just found an old page on my website called "mind" (for what its worth): which will take you to an article on "The Animal Mind".  
     
     
mind: the poem
 Mind


There is a realm of the mind.
This dimension, the domain of the person,
cannot logically be denied.

The Tibetans say,
a mind may be a perceiver…
It is a sensing, knowing, doing, thinking thing.

What is it that sees, knows, wills?
The Tibetans say, be still.

  
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
     
a few short poems
(concerning "mind")

mind is...

mind is in time
all things are
were


if so: then a circle

if mind arises from matter
an epiphenomena
a tag on
emergent
is it not here born
in its primacy



mind makes muchness

(mind makes muchness)
links things
brings them together
through space and time
births oneness