Prometheus 6

Welcome to the first day of the 375th Annual Convocation of
Quantum Griots. I am delighted that you've chosen to join
us in our sharing and exploration of the Ways of Power.
Please remove all your personae and put them in your Griot
bag, for you won't be using them until you leave here
tonight and they will just get in the way of our work.

Normally at this point, humans would review to the plan
of the evening. From the material distributed at the door
you already know we have an exciting program for you this
year, so I feel no need to go into that…we are
here, ready to work, and that is what is important. So
rather than distract you, let me simply cede the platform
to our Keynote Speaker so that we may begin. I give you
he whom we all know so well…Chaos Lord,
Bodhisattva Master of Time and Space, True Man,
Manifestor through Speech…his titles are endless
and fully appropriate. I give you…Alim Ra.

(Alim Ra walks onto the stage. He goes to the podium,
reaches behind it, pulls out a wooden soap box, places it
in the center of the front edge of the stage and stands on
it).

Welcome, my people. It's good to be here where I can relax
…walking the world amusing, but it's also strenuous.
It is pleasant to abide in the Real once more.

We often wonder why people don't see the things we do, know
the things we know, when it's all so obvious to us. We
rarely reflect on the fact that our wondering means there
is a gap in our knowledge as well. Though humans may be
fools, they are a wonder as well and not to be lightly
dismissed. After all, they have created most of the world
on which we work our wonders. Yet many of us seem to want
to dismiss them…which is a different matter than
simply not joining them…and this indicates the lack
of a comprehensive understanding of the nature of humans,
even of that part of their nature that we share.

This is understandable. We tend to see the world as though
from a great altitude, attempting to dispassionately map
the patterns we see. This effort serves us as well as a
street map of this city would…it guides us from
place to place, but is useless once we are in the place.
Once in the place, we need a floor plan more than a street
map. And even then we have the same conceptual problem. A
street map can't help you find the bathroom in the building
in which you stand. A floor plan can…yet it won't
keep you from stumbling over the furniture on your way
there, especially if it's dark Any number of differently
furnished buildings can be found with a given floor plan
(those of you whose personae live in a suburban housing
development or urban apartment building know what I'm
talking about). So light, and knowledge of the particular
layout are needed to keep from banging your shins
painfully, no matter how well you know the city.

Stepping briefly away from metaphor, then, we find that our
understanding of humanity doesn't help us understand
humans. This being the case, we should explore the nature
of humans. This is still of limited benefit in
understanding particular people…it's like studying
architecture, whereas dealing with individuals is like
exploring a building. But the study of architecture makes
you understand some of the bizarre, flying buttress-like
structures humans create to maintain their structural
integrity…though there's still no real need for all
those gargoyles on the parapets.

Each of us has our worldview by which we explain the
creation of humans. I do not intend to discuss them; as you
know, that simply leads to useless disputation. I mention
them to point out the one thing they all have in
common…the body came first. It was completed prior
to mind. This is important to recognize, because it means
that mind inherits the full complement of physical
capabilities and liabilities. Because they both form and
filter our field of knowledge, I would like to discuss the
perceptive abilities by which we navigate on the planet.

Because our bodies need material and energetic input from
the planet, the first senses to develop were touch and
taste, in order to determine the presence and nature of
substances and energies in our environment. The olfactory
sense developed as an extension to the sense of taste to
allow operation at a distance…some substances being
toxic, the ability to chemically analyze molecular amounts
at a distance is of great benefit. Touch, meanwhile,
differentiated twice…into hearing (to perceive
mechanical energy at a distance) and sight (to perceive
radiant energy at a distance).

Our body is the prime determinant of the nature of our
respective worlds. We know we have a limited view of the
planet. Consider what your world would look like if you had
a terrapin's sonar. A deep pulse, essentially a sonogram,
would tell you more about your friend's condition than the
ritual response to a "Yo, how you livin'?" ever could.
Suppose you could discriminate body sensations as clearly
as you can musical themes? Suppose you could sense magnetic
fields, like sharks. Suppose you had a bird's homing
instinct, or could see into the ultraviolet spectrum, like
bees? Even an expansion of your current senses, say
acquiring a bloodhound's hearing and olfactory abilities,
would present aspects of the planet that humans are unaware
of…aspects that would significantly change human
behavior were they but perceivable.

Bodies are connected to senses by a neural network. This
network is issued with some fairly sophisticated pattern
matching capabilities, and heuristics for information
acquisition and processing. The network self-modifies in
response to repetitive stimulus, so that its processing
power is directed toward the type of input it receives. In
other words, the body can, and does, learn.

Actually nothing said so far is unique to humans. Even a
flatworm, possessing no more than a few hundred neurons,
learns. The spatial senses are essentially the same
mechanically in all living beings. They all perform the
same function…converting the outside world into the
inside world so that the body may operate on it. It is the
particular aggregation of them that determines what the
world looks like.

Our temporal senses are more interesting to investigate. As
vision depends on the eye, our temporal senses depend on
our nervous systems, and just as a high level of structural
complexity was required to transform phototropic cell
patches into eyes, temporal sensitivity requires a certain
minimum level of neural complexity because it is actually
patterns in neural firings, rather than time directly, that
is being detected. Then we infer direction, causality,
force, etc. It may be that the neural development makes
temporal senses useful, rather than possible.

Unfortunately humans suffer a form of synthenasia, the
blending of sense data, as regards the temporal senses. As
a result the most common words for these senses…
intelligence and memory…define concepts that don't
quite accurately map to the actual senses. In particular,
thought is perceived as part of intelligence when it is
actually a response of memory, and knowledge is perceived
as a part of experience when it is actually an action of
intelligence. Learning the true extent and use of the
temporal senses is the initiation of a Quantum Griot and
the root of our power, because memory and intelligence are
active senses…as neither past nor future truly
exist, discrimination of possibilities is an act of
creation. Any number of possible futures can spring from
this point, just as any number of possible pasts could have
led to this point, so by using the full power of
intelligence and memory, we can select our past in order to
determine our future. Not using these senses forces others
to create our past and future.

Here, at the annual Convocation, we gather to reinforce and
extend the knowledge that grants us the ability to choose.
We also gather to transmit the knowledge, because the
creation that accompanies the application of intelligence
means the more people think the same way, the less
localized will the effect be. So we welcome all of you,
regardless of the level you have attained. In fact, three
of you just wandered here by accident…I hope you
stay. As they say, 'There are no accidents.'

This year's theme, "Sensory Interfaces", is a second level
theme. In the first of our three days together we present
"Empty Mind" so that each perception can be seen clearly,
in sharp relief against the self. At this point, the
speakers will be happy to discuss first level themes to the
degree necessary to make the topic at hand clear. As
masters of time and space, we can be sure of covering all
the material and so do not need to consider such
explanations a delay.

On the second day, with Empty Mind fully engaged, we watch
the transformation of substance into perception, perception
into thought, thought into idea. This day is the most
difficult, and the most critical. Because the work done
here lays the groundwork for the third day, where we watch
the transformation from idea into thought, thought into
perception, perception into substance.