Thank you for your interest. Below is a short announcement on our foundation and in a separate message my essay entitled Science Can Become Holistic. I hope to hear from you. David S. Devor Project Mind Foundation Just as the restriction of mind by matter occludes mind, the restriction of matter by mind reveals mind. - T.Kun ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PROJECT MIND FOUNDATION ANNOUNCEMENT The Project Mind Foundation is based on the book of the same name by T.Kun and has founding members in Canada, France, India, Israel and the U.S.A. Our preliminary statement of purpose is: "to free the human spirit from the crushing illusion of materialism by using the transformative genius, latent in all humans, to eliminate real and addictive lack." Our foundation is in the process of forming a "radical, breakthrough, creativity think tank" to realize this purpose. The essence-theory behind Project Mind is itself a creativity breakthrough and makes possible the first hard proposal for reconciling outer and inner paradigms ("science and spirit") in a balanced, high-energy synthesis that preserves the essentials of both. The back cover of the book, Project Mind, reads: What is life? What is death? What is the secret of the cosmos? Had the great minds of the past found all the answers, would there still be such suffering? The author claims to have found the key to the cosmic riddle and declares open war on death & taxes! Earth stewardship and population control are urgent problems, yet current thinking fails to address root causes of global crisis or the inevitability of scientific and technological expansion. While knowledge cannot be contained, science can become more vision-driven and holistic. Progress can be fueled and channeled by esoteric principles of creativity that truly empower and validate science and industry rather than emasculate them, which environmentalism is often perceived as trying to do. We were each created for a purpose. Working toward that purpose is a privilege and a joy. Otherwise, work, in spite of conventional satisfactions, tends to drudgery and wage-slavery. True purpose ultimately implies compassionately creative world transformation. Project Mind seeks the cooperation of those who share this vision. Interested parties may contact: David S. Devor, Exec. Director Project Mind Foundation 8 Mevo Hamaavak French Hill tel: 972/2/814941 Jerusalem 97877 fax: 972/2/823276 Israel email: marshlu@vms.huji.ac.il PROJECT MIND - The Conscious Conquest of Mind & Matter Through Accelerated Thought - by T.Kun, softcover, 304 pages including appendix, glossary, index and references, $17.45, postpaid, foreign $19.45, from Unimedia Publishing, Box 247, Indian Rocks Beach, FL 34635. Available through most bookstores. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCIENCE CAN BECOME HOLISTIC A Possible Utopia by: David S. Devor 8 Mevo Hamaavak French Hill Jerusalem 97877 Israel tel: 972/2/814941 fax: 972/2/823276 email: marshlu@vms.huji.ac.il SCIENCE CAN BECOME HOLISTIC A Possible Utopia Let no one deceive you. Your capacities, aspirations and conceptions prove that you are not formed for time, but for eternity. (Max Theon) New Age attitudes condemning science can no longer be ignored. Increasingly these attitudes influence popular thought and especially the attitudes of youth who lean easily toward philosophies of nihilism, protest and rebellion. New Age philosophies accuse science and technology of betraying the utopian promise of peace and abundance that the pursuit of knowledge has always implied. This so-called "betrayal" is seen to be reflected in third world misery, in the specter of global ecological, economic and military disaster, and in the degradation of the human spirit through materialism. New Agers often cite the very advances of science that many fear (e.g., discoveries in quantum mechanics), as proof that the world is fund amentally spiritualized while others, if not actually adhering to the "back to nature" school of thought, are only willing to tolerate science provided its applications are screened and supervised through a kind of technological assessment that would require clairvoyance to work. The word that perhaps best expresses New Age aspirations is "holism." Holism includes many things but, most generally, advocates returning to a sacred, tribal-like respect for the ecosphere, earth, nature and life. It envisages the unification of body and spirit, usually in the framework of a world or earth consciousness included in the notion of "Gaia." In some minds, the notion of holism includes the idea of integrating outer and inner reality and of reconciling science and spirituality. In this context, many would accuse conventional science of being mechanical, unconscious and polluting. In return, many scientists fault metaphysicians for their lack of empiricism, accountability and for their alarmism. Despite the schism between the extreme pro and anti- science factions, many scientists are espousing what would have to be called "New Age perspectives" while many young New Agers continue to become scientists. Still, on the whole, the factions remain separate and, sadly, there is still very little to suggest how one might define the problem in a way to satisfy both sides let alone dissolve within each of us that which separates mind and spirit. This commentary is based on extracts from the recent book, PROJECT MIND - The Conscious Conquest of Man & Matter Through Accelerated Thought[1]. The author points to matter and the real and addictive forms of deprivation that matter engenders in the human spirit as being the most fundamental of mankind's problems. Accelerated Thought, as the basis of a new holistic and comprehensive science, is envisaged as the solution. Science can be likened a wood-burning steam locomotive entering a long, unventilated tunnel. The limited and thus polluting character of the technology of its locomotion virtually guarantees suffocation and stoppage. Only mid-tunnel transformation into a higher, less polluting form of combustion (e.g., diesel) can assure safe passage. Like the caterpillar, science has the capacity to metamorphose into a more evolved, more encompassing, more intelligent form. A more holisitic, more vision-driven science will give birth to more benevolent, more efficient, less polluting technologies. At the heart of our existential dilemma lies the incompleteness of our understanding of matter and its place in the cosmos. Matter is like a small ripple on this tremendous ocean of energy. (David Bohm) What is the matter? "Matter" is the matter. Matter - the substrate of our daily existence - is the object of our needs and cravings, hopes and dreams. Matter sustains us, it is true, but it also divides and alienates us from ourselves and others. It forces us to compete and ultimately to conflict with one another. What would happen in a world where matter and its attendant manifestations of greed, envy, passion, vice, and injustice became irrelevant - actually neutralized by unlimited material abundance, security, universal health, longevity, and well-being? Is it possible for the negative influence of matter to be neutralized? "Mind over matter" is not just a metaphysician's dream, it is the basis of all innovation. When you think about it, miniaturization - the art of getting equal or better performance from a smaller package - involves replacing matter with intelligence or "mind," in the sense that a 1950s room full of tons of electronic tubes, heavy equipment and miles of wiring (representing much matter indeed), is today reduced to a chip that will sit comfortably on the tip of your little finger. That "silicon" chip, seen exclusively from the perspective of matter, is basically a pinch of common sand. The rest is intelligence - mind. Just as the restriction of mind by matter occludes mind, the restriction of matter by mind reveals mind. The intelligence of the chip consists of very special dispositions of matter, including highly specific material compositions, circuitry and other complex, functional patterning, all of which could be included under the term "form." It is this form embedded in the "silicon" of the chip that constitutes the essence of its intelligence. While the composite substance of that chip is the best material that could be found for the job until now, it is inevitable that newer and more "intelligent" materials (e.g., gallium-arsenide) will soon replace it. With technical progress, the marriage between form and substance grows more and more intimate, and the resulting "matter" expresses more intelligence and becomes more lifelike. "Functional complexity" is form imbedded in matter. We see that, as matter becomes more "intelligent," the form that it embodies becomes more intricately structured. As matter and the form contained within it become ever more compatible and more perfectly mated, they eventually become indistinguishable from one another, until we can no longer discern where one ends and where the other begins. As intelligence becomes manifest, the aspect of matter seems to recede into the background. The most perfect union between matter and form is to be found in the phenomenon of life, and more particularly, human life. Undoubtedly we will someday learn to measure and quantify intelligence. I believe this will then make possible the elucidation of a formula at least as elegant as Einstein's famous E=MC2, to show the spectacular inverse relationship between matter and mind. Observe the diversity, flexibility, richness, and subtlety of function in the human being - a truly miraculously compact package of capacities. Yet, in material terms, we are mostly water, and the rest merely biological precursors to an urn full of ashes. The essence of this "package" is the intelligence innate to our humanness - truly a triumph of mind over matter. Technology - the increasing embodiment of intelligence in matter - problematic as it is from other standpoints, has raised standards of living and relieved us of much drudgery. Many New Agers overlook that, while ancient forms of inner, spiritual work indicate a desirable direction, these forms do not offer a challenge to which most modern people can relate. It is hard to imagine the masses sacrificing illusions and physical comforts for the uncertain and protracted pursuit of spirituality or even for the obvious merits of environmentalism. While our lives are inescapably molded and conditioned by the discoveries of science and the products of technology, it is not a simple matter to influence research priorities even when we believe we know what those priorities should be. Our frustration before this seeming impotence tends to mask the fact that the problem is not so much which scientific inquiries we pursue or even a question of being more careful in the research we do pursue. The problem is hiding behind the seldom asked, more fundamental question of how to approach science altogether. While New-Age-type philosophies have long claimed that science tends to be "Cartesian," ignoring metaphysics, it has been a long time since anyone seriously questioned what we call the "methodology of science" or proposed a new methodology. Notwithstanding widespread disillusionment with science and technology, our failure of planetary stewardship is increasingly attributed to a general failure of creativity, of vision. Some are beginning to conjecture that the breakthrough we need will of necessity be revealed through the faculty of creativity. Harman and Rheingold, in their Higher Creativity[2], go into this at some length. While today's visionaries and prophets of transformation are still far too vague, they do consider possible and even necessary, a world that is alive and conscious - without limits or boundaries. Yet they fail to be explicit about how even the best intentions can change deeply ingrained, centuries-old beliefs concerning the limitations that govern our lives. The new methodology mentioned here and outlined in PROJECT MIND plans to reconcile science with spirituality and make science whole and "holistic." It is called "Accelerated Thought." It is a vision-driven, contemplative method that obviates long, expensive, tedious cycles of hypothesis and experimentation. By using more of the mind than ever before, the scientist will be able to penetrate more deeply and more quickly into the secrets of matter. Although it will use special psychological techniques, environmental aids and sophisticated computerization, the key of Project Mind - the project - is its understanding of the fundamental nature and importance of essential individuality. To generate the ultimate expression of individuality is to release the incredible creative potential hidden at the deepest levels within human essence (man's fundamental form and substance) and reveal the relationship of essence to consciousness, reality and truth. Just as the Eureka experience provides brief moments of brilliant insight - the divine sparks of genius and inspiration that have fueled the sudden advances in scientific progress until now - Accelerated Thought will provide sustained creative vision. This will establish an ongoing link with higher consciousness, producing a powerful cosmic current channeled through essence from a higher dimension. This will fuel the transformatory breakthrough-science of the future and render it holistic and comprehensive. Although the Eureka experience is not exactly Accelerated Thought, it is very closely related, and its habitual exercise is the trademark of creative genius. Just as, to a prepared mind, a salutary shock can at the right moment produce a Eureka experience, a series of Eureka experiences can under favorable conditions induce, in a properly prepared psyche, a chain reaction which can develop into Accelerated Thought. Accelerated Thought is a high-energy mental process whereby realizations (consisting of problems and solutions) arrive second by second in rapid-fire sequence rather than once a week, once a year or once in a lifetime as is typical with Eureka experiences under a regime of conventional, reflective thought. The discovery of each new possibility suggests, at least unconsciously, the prospect of removing all that limits us and bars our way to "Paradise." (i.e., a poetic euphemism for unlimited joy, omnipotence, omniscience and above all, immortality). At the slightest hint of these prospects, one's spirit soars as a great energy of hope and anticipation begins to circulate. Thus true creativity is the immediate, ongoing, waking vision of a unified intelligence quickly overcoming all forms of restriction. Yet, traditionally, creativity is seen to be a tool for "problem solving," comprised of discrete stages including self-application, incubation, Eureka, elaboration, etc. - depending on the point of view. This insistence upon separate phases rests on the almost universal misconception that the run-up or ignition phase forms an integral and inseparable part of the creative process, and thus must be repeated anew for each creative thought or act. But the ignition of a process or engine is, or at least should be, nothing more than incidental to its running. In these terms, the process of creativity, as popularly perceived, is likened to an automobile that stalls every few inches and never actually gets going. "Elaboration" similarly presumes that the process is soon over and that the details are worked out in a prosaic frame of mind. Creativity is almost universally considered to be an inherently brief condition and not the continuing state of Being that, potentially, it is. What is it that constrains genius and the discovery of breakthroughs? There is no formal policy or elitist conspiracy to hold back progress. Quite to the contrary, there is plenty of rivalry, competition and incentive to egg scientists on. Yet no artificial constraints need to be imposed upon thought when that thought is already fettered by conventional, distracted consciousness. "Distraction," the term used by T. Kun. in Project Mind, Charles T. Tart's calls "consensus trance" in his book Waking Up[3] which explains the phenomenon at some length. Conventional living siphons off our energy and conditions us to a low grade, "reflective" form of thought that we mistake for real, conscious thought. This is the key to understanding why things rarely go exactly the way we want them to and how we are so easily deflected from our purpose no matter how resolved we believe ourselves to be. Conditions of existence around us provide little opportunity for the unbridled development of the spark of creative consciousness with which we are all born. Culture soon infects us all with the virulent infirmity of distraction through the good services of our distraction- afflicted families and the servile and sclerotic complicity of the educational system. Yet human intelligence, fundamentally, is one. That there seem to be distinct as well as higher and lower forms, including automatic skills of mind and body appearing to be autonomous and unrelated to creative vision, is distraction's way of throwing sand in our eyes. Sterile, uninspired, mechanical mentation feeling and movement appear, for all the world, to be independent faculties quite free and unrelated to intuition, insight and vision. They are, in fact, all that is left of true thought after the creative core and soul of thought - consciousness - has been compromised. We are thus alienated from the intelligence that, essentially, we are. We are alienated from our potential, from our essence, from ourselves. The generation of Accelerated Thought, described in detail in PROJECT MIND, is accompanied by a spectacular increase in vitality and a feeling of elation. There is an accumulation of awareness for real possibilities that lifts the mind and the individual as a whole (for in these moments one is mind) to a more integrated and conscious level of functioning. Increased integration and increased energy are but two sides of one coin - the coin of consciousness. But even more important than a new vision-driven scientific method fully harnessing creativity, are the results it will bring such as the spectacular acceleration of our already growing mastery of matter. This is not to imply that an unlimited abundance of what we call wealth and power is the whole answer to man's happiness and salvation, nor that satisfying greed or pandering to vice will extinguish human failings. Rather, a growing consensus and consciousness concerning the vanity of materialism will be the unavoidable consequence of unlimited abundance. This implies a devaluation of materialism analogous to that of salt when, in medieval Europe, it became abundant and lost its status as a currency. The commercial exploitation of scientific breakthroughs generated through Project Mind and its clones - replications that will inevitably spring up in science and industry - will follow its natural course. But modes of exploitation and the attitudes of those who concern themselves with commercialization will, in a dynamic atmosphere of hope, increasingly reflect a genuine concern for the welfare of others as the trend away from the covetous and cynical accumulation of wealth and power becomes established. Breakthroughs will increasingly localize and individualize control over the means of production and bring about the true democratization of physical materiality. For example, Drexler, in his Engines of Creation[4], describes how universal abundance could come about. He convincingly speaks of nanotechnology, nanocomputers, molecular engineering, nanomachinery, gene synthesis machines, cell synthesis machines, cell repair machines, assemblers, replicators, etc. He lovingly calls these, "engines of abundance," and deeply regrets their delay. He easily envisages molecular-sized nanomachinery supported by nanocomputers manufacturing or "growing" before one's eyes, a home or car or steak dinner using almost anything, including sewage and garbage, as raw materials. Furthermore, bread, fruit, meat and vegetables, made in this way, will be indistinguishable from the real things except that they will contain all the organic nutrients they should while sparing animal and vegetable life we now destroy so wantonly. Matter synthesizers and replicators are almost visible on the horizon. Regardless of what technical means become available, we must come to realize that it is the limits of our vision - consciousness - that determine the risks of abuse and pollution. While many people pay lip- service to the ideal of rising above materiality, the very real perspective of matter not mattering is hard to imagine. For most of us it is still hard not to consider one another as objects of satisfaction or frustration. Violence, passion and craving are gross distortions of our natural needs and stem from psychological and systemic imbalances induced in us by societies preoccupied with material considerations. By physically eliminating the foundations of these evils - lack and the addictive power of material possessions - the young will be freed to develop without vice and depravity and the old will be relieved of many of the already accumulated stresses and pathologies of envy and competition. Technically backward nations, rich and poor, will be relieved of the corrosive humiliation of craving the advanced products they took little or no part in creating, while social and political adjustments to universal abundance will allow the revelation and expression of their own inner, creative capacities. In a world that awakens our appetite for reality, we will find that vice and escapism lose all meaning. They become obsolete. Thus the abundance envisaged by Project Mind must not only answer our real, immediate, physical needs, but also must be so encompassing as to alleviate the irrational basis for our impulse to accumulate and consume. The need for ownership can represent various levels of attachment to the matter of this world. And while this need can account for legitimate needs and real vulnerabilities that pertain to the physical nature of our bodies, the extent to which we exaggerate these needs suggests how little we acknowledge the non-physical side of our natures. That some can seem completely satisfied by materiality, can be attributed to the anesthetizing effect that the abundance of privilege can have on our personalities. We constantly seek to tranquilize our anxieties by trying to compare favorably with others through the instrumentalities of wealth, power and status - all materially determined and determining. While we know from everyday experience that appetites vanish once they are satisfied and don't return until the feeling of lack returns, complex lacks and appetites, especially when they include artificial and acquired aspects, are more difficult to satisfy. The appetite for ownership has five main drives - comfort, power, jealousy, prestige, and security: 1. Comfort - Behind the obvious fact that a certain degree of abundance can free us of real deprivation and its associated anxieties, the use of material means to cultivate and satisfy acquired needs, artificial needs and vice-related needs engenders the illusions upon which the quest for comfort, power, prestige and security are based. Once the means exist to satisfy all physical needs, real and imagined, the foundation for generating illusions concerning the general importance of such satisfactions will be undermined. 2. Power - Material advantage confers power, directly through the real and addictive needs of others ("wage slaves") or indirectly, through politics. With universal abundance, no one will need to depend upon the material wealth of others. 3. Envy - There is always someone who has more of what is generally considered worth having. To be the focus of others' admirative attention enhances one's sense of existence. Even he who has most will want to increase his lead and prestige. When material advantage disappears, envy will gravitate to objects of finer materiality such as aesthetics, knowledge and wisdom. 4. Prestige - The adulation of the envied affluent who serve as models for those "less fortunate," creates fashion that provides status symbols - props - which support emulation and amplify envy. When the objects of popular interest change, those who embody higher values will become prestigious. The higher the values, the finer the objects embodying those values and the more difficult to counterfeit and use as props for emulation. 5. Security - Those having material advantage are often better equipped to defend themselves against deprivation, aggression and disease. This encourages the unconscious illusion of immortality concerning those who appear to be privileged in all things. Once the means become available for objectively increasing health and security for all, without distinction, and the prospect of physical immortality[5] becomes real, anything other than reverence for life and the values that enhance life will be inconceivable. Once new conditions of existence, ushered in by Project Mind, deliver us from these aspects of lack and deprivation, we will soon become aware of other, more essential, more spiritual insufficiencies. We will, at last, realize what Socrates actually meant when he said that those who pursue wealth and honor are distracted from the pursuit of truth, wisdom and virtue. Once we have nothing to gain from our neighbor's deprivation and everything to gain from his well-being (virtue, unlike material benefits, cannot be appropriated), loving our neighbor will be our only remaining option. We will discover that each individual's uniqueness complements our own and can help us reveal aspects of higher reality to which, by his very uniqueness, our neighbor is closer. Then together, and acting in concert, we will be able to work toward eliminating the root cause of all slavish attachments, the only remaining objective basis of our vulnerability - mortality - by assailing our primordial Achille's heel - the materiality of our body. The prospect of waking up to reality and taking full possession of their faculties has always interested certain men and women. They deeply intuit that no "virtual"[6] or simulated reality or other fantasy, however vivid, can compare to the natural, holistic reality that awaits us. The utopian conditions postulated by PROJECT MIND will not spell the culmination of humanity or signal a state of stagnation but will be man's first real emancipation. Freed from the obscuring distraction stemming from material lack, man will discover that what he had always called "desire" and "will" was in fact impulse, inclination, appetite, and craving. In feeling the first stirrings of authentic, spiritually oriented, essential desire, he will have begun his odyssey in a world of multi-layered reality - an adventure in which freedom from physical and biological restrictions will be only the first of many steps. Spiritual striving of whatever color will no longer be the uncertain, tedious, interminable, fluctuating, elitist affair it has been for millennia. Instead, it will be a universal, transparent movement in which all will share consciously - each according to his particular essence - thanks to the dissipation of the distracting and confusing influence of material lack and the pettiness it breeds in man's spirit. With unobstructed reality as our teacher, our empowered, individual essences will unfold revealing that all their myriad facets are conditioned by unity and harmony. This will be achieved only by scientifically, technologically, philosophically and psychologically relegating matter to its proper place in the cosmos as the mere crust of existence. References 1. See, Kun, T. 1993. PROJECT MIND - The Conscious Conquest of Man & Matter Through Accelerated Thought. Indian Rocks Beach, FL: Unimedia. 2. See, Harman, Willis and Rheingold, Howard. 1984. Higher Creativity. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher. 3. See, Tart, Charles T. 1987. Waking Up - Overcoming the Obstacle to Human Potential. Boston: New Science Library, Shambala. 4. See, Drexler, K. Eric. 1990. Engines of Creation. N.Y.: Anchor Books. 5. See, Ettinger, Robert C.W. 1965. The Prospect of Immortality. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. 6. See, Rheingold, Howard. 1991. Virtual Reality. N.Y.: Summit Books.