This paper is a compliment to the last post — it was an attachment in the email Walter Starck sent (oceans are his bag).  We are delving into the mysteries.  Money may make the world go round, but how about what set this little globe spinning in the vast cosmic soup?  Read this for a sense of what is going o­n that is primordial.

CHANCE AND NECESSITY

How many coincidences does it take to make a reality?

by Walter Starck

Osprey Reef is an isolated atoll reef rising abruptly to the surface of the open ocean a hundred miles east of Cape York in the tropical northeast of Australia, well out in the Coral Sea. In the 1970’s and 80’s I visited there several times with my research vessel, El Torito. In those days it was rarely visited. For the occasional ship which passed through this remote area it was simply a hazard to be avoided. The diving was superb with crystal clear water, spectacular outer reef walls plunging vertically into the abyss and abundant marine life untouched by human influence.

On o­ne particular visit in the late 70’s we were anchored inside the reef in about 40 feet of water o­n the northwest side of the atoll. Wherever we dived in the area we encountered large (2-3 feet long) predatory snappers, Lutjanus bohar. They were equipped with prominent canine teeth and possessed of considerable curiosity regarding the strange new creatures in their midst. A few days passed and if anything they seemed to be getting bolder rather than less curious. Occasionally o­ne would even mouth some dangling or protruding part of our diving or photographic gear and it was not unthinkable that o­ne might just decide to sample an ear, hand, or other bit of our anatomy.

Sharks of several species were also abundant but somewhat less curious, or perhaps just more wary, than the snappers. After a few days o­ne of the photographers with us expressed a desire to use a dead fish as bait to get some close-up shark pictures. I knew from past experience that when spearfishing begins fish quickly become more wary so I decided to spear o­ne of the snappers for shark bait and hopefully make the other snappers a bit more afraid of us at the same time.

I cocked the speargun and swam down to the nearest large snapper. As I headed toward him he began to move away. This was not surprising. When a big animal heads purposefully toward you, you move out. He was about 6 feet from the tip of my outstretched speargun when I fired. The spear hit him amidships and abruptly stopped, embedded in the heavy backbone. He struggled away and I headed for the surface. The line from the spear to the gun came taut. For a moment the snapper struggled against the resistance; then the spear pulled out. Unable to penetrate fully, the folding barbs had not opened.

I quickly re-cocked the gun and chased after him. Despite his injury he was still faster than I was and slowly pulled away, disappearing out into the deeper part of the lagoon. The lagoon is vast and away from the reef the bottom is blanketed in fine silt. Near the bottom the water was turbid and visibility limited. There was simply no chance of finding the injured fish. These things happen. Injured animals escape from predators. Some die. Some recover.

Reluctantly, I decided to go for another snapper, resolving to fire o­nly at point blank range where despite any bones in the way the spear would go right through. Try as I might, even by wile and deception, I could not get anywhere near another snapper. Oh well, thought I, I’ll just hop in the outboard and buzz over to a patch reef about a mile away and get o­ne there. Same story. They were there, but I couldn’t get anywhere near o­ne. I went to another patch reef a mile further away. Ditto. I came back to where El Torito was anchored and tried again. They hadn’t forgotten anything. I gave up.

For the snappers within eyesight or perhaps even hearing when I speared the first o­ne it is not too hard to accept some form of learning by direct experience and/or by taking a cue from the behavior of others. For the o­nes a mile or two away, however, this explanation is hard to imagine. Perhaps it was just coincidence. This is the stock answer for anything that does not comfortably fit within the scientific paradigm.

Science has proven to be the most powerful of all the means humans have yet devised to explore and explain our world. Despite its power, however, its realm of understanding is still far from complete. Science is an island of knowledge in a sea of ignorance. We throw out our lines of inquiry and pull in bits and pieces to add to the island, but out in the sea there is still much that is o­nly dimly glimpsed and beyond that undoubtedly much more totally beyond our awareness.

Take consciousness for example. There is no scientific explanation for how a particular configuration of matter embodies consciousness. We can’t prove scientifically where it is located, either in space or in time or in any assemblies of matter. We can’t measure it or even prove scientifically it exists at all. Despite the lack of scientific evidence we do not need expert opinion or scientific proof to know it does exist. We know that from direct experience. The lack of a scientific explanation for it doesn’t mean it does not exist. It simply means that scientifically speaking it is still out there, o­nly dimly glimpsed by science, in that unknown sea. It also means that we and our universe are much more wondrous than we might choose to imagine.

An isolated glimpse of anything may leave a legitimate doubt as to its existence, but when something is repeatedly observed or stretches the limits of improbability toward the infinite we had best accept something real is happening. How many coincidences does it take to make a reality?

My experience with the snappers was not an isolated o­ne. It was just a particularly clear o­ne. When a new danger appears, animals “learn” to avoid it. Examples are plentiful. Rat traps and poison are o­nly effective for a short time and are then avoided.

In the Florida Keys fishing from bridges is a popular pastime. So much so that some locations are fished close to 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. o­ne might expect that such spots would be fished out or at least sustained o­nly by piscine passers by. Under these bridges, however, there are often dense schools of various resident fishes totally ignoring a dangling smorgasbord of baits and lures.

There and elsewhere it a common pattern for new fishing lures or baits or techniques to be introduced and prove very effective for a short time. Then, as they become popular and widely used, they become markedly less effective. Conversely, old, no longer used methods can sometimes be revived and again prove effective for a time.

In tropical Australia, Cane Toads (Bufo marinus) were introduced in an attempt to control a beetle which was a problem for the sugar cane industry. Having arrived in the Promised Land they immediately gave up beetle eating for a variety of more delectable local wildlife. At first they grew to gigantic (for a toad) size and, protected by poison glands, suffered little from predation. Be fruitful and multiply has been their motto and they now call about a quarter of the continent home.

As they spread into new areas, birds, snakes, and other naive predators found the newcomers easy prey. This illusion was short lived. The toad’s poison either ended the taste for toad or the life of the toad tasters. Their range expanded inexorably. For years, academic biologists, envirocrats and ecofreaks predicted catastrophe. The reality has been quite different.

In a short while, predators learned to leave the toads alone or to avoid the toxin which is secreted by glands at the back of the head. After a few years, the size and number of toads in an area declines and a new balance seems to emerge. Despite the claims of the doomscryers, the toads are now widespread and no serious ecological consequences are apparent.

Somehow, if a new danger which is recognizable and avoidable, presents itself, animals seem to quickly learn about it. Undoubtedly, learning from personal experience, taking cues from the behavior of other individuals and natural selection all play a role in this process. In some instances, however, the speed and comprehensiveness of the process stretch the credibility of such explanations. It is almost as if some telepathic or mass mind phenomenon was involved.

A short while after that experience with the snappers at Osprey Reef, I came across what is probably the most remarkable scientific paper I have yet encountered in nearly 50 years of reading scientific literature. It was published in Science, that august journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It was remarkable in content and equally so for the casual way in which it presented information of profound implication and then brushed it aside as remarkable coincidence.

The paper in Science was a report o­n a long-term study by a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota. Their investigation involves a detailed examination of identical twins who have been reared apart. Besides the physical similarities between them, the investigators also found striking similarities in intelligence, personality and psychological parameters, despite very different environmental influences.

Even more remarkable than the physical and psychological similarities of the twins, however, were the remarkable “coincidences” the researchers encountered, such as the female twins who were brought together for the first time at the age of 39 years. Both wore dresses with the same floral pattern. Both had seven rings o­n their fingers, two bracelets o­n o­ne wrist and a watch and bracelet o­n the other. Then there were the male twins, unknown to o­ne another until the researchers tracked them down, who were both deputy sheriffs in Ohio. Both vacationed in Florida and stayed at the same resort, though not at the same time. Both drove Chevrolets, both had dogs named Toy. Both married and divorced women named Linda and remarried, women named Betty. Their sons were named James Allan and James Alan. Both had hemorrhoids and identical pulse and blood pressure. Both had put o­n 10 pounds for no apparent reason at the same time. Both had the same pattern of headaches, etc.

This study continues, and over the years several dozen pairs of identical twins reared apart have been investigated. The “remarkable coincidences” continue to crop up. It is difficult to imagine either genetic or environmental factors that could satisfactorily explain such coincidences and nobody has suggested any. Dismissing them simply as coincidence, however, presents an even bigger problem if you wish to keep probability somewhere this side of infinity. Coincidence is a cop out. The Too Hard basket would be more honest. Undoubtedly there is a real phenomenon involved. The question is what?

It is pretty hard to avoid consideration of some kind of link in consciousness being involved. Is such a thing possible within the framework of the scientific paradigm? As there is no scientific explanation, definition, law, or theory of consciousness, we cannot say anything is either possible or impossible. We can o­nly say it is not impossible.

In today’s world, science for some has become a form of fundamentalist religion. Not an open-ended system of inquiry, but a closed body of doctrine and dogma. This is epitomized in the book by John Horgan, The End of Science, which contends that scientific discovery is effectively complete. All the major scientific discoveries have been made and all that is left is filling in more and more details. Needless to say, thinking of this ilk is not receptive to radical new ideas or consideration of anything which might imply that science is less than complete. For such minds, science has become a belief based o­n a limited conception of science concocted from a self-edited selection of scientific knowledge and unsupported claims of certainty and completeness.

At the leading edge of scientific thinking, however, the picture is very different. Concepts such as emergent qualities which cannot be understood by reductionist analysis, relationship of events at a distance without local causation, and the inextricable relationship of the observer and the observed are very much a part of the scientific paradigm. At the subatomic level, the certainty of Newtonian mechanics acting o­n a material world is replaced by the iffy probabilities of quantum mechanics ruling a realm where reality may be influenced by the act of observation.

DNA, the stuff of life, exists in a quantum world. Identical twins are derived from identical DNA replicating from the same molecular source. That they may retain some quantum resonance is not really surprising. All life is genetically related to a greater or lesser degree. We share 95% of our genetic structure with chimpanzees. If identical twins are linked in consciousness in some way, then all consciousness probably is to varying degree.

While all this may be uncertain to you or I at this time, it is far from academic. The discovery of our true nature is the ultimate question for science, religion and philosophy. The answer to that question is of the most profound import. The true age of discovery is o­nly beginning.

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From: Walter Starck [mailto:ggoldend@bigpond.net.au]

SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM SHIFTS AND PRIMACY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, a paper by Henry Swift, dealing with “a new science based o­n the primacy of consciousness,” is well worth reading. [This seminal article maps the progression from o­ne paradigm shift to another — from Round Earth to Copernicus to Newton to Einstein to Quantum Mechanics to Science Within Consciousness. The intro says, “Paradigmatic shifts in the panorama of past scientific revolutions have both expanded the domain of science and forced major shifts in man’s view of himself. They have affected both his view of his place in both the world, and his spiritual life.”….ST]

Although the imminent war with Iraq is now consuming world attention it is o­nly a temporary distraction from the real issues we face. All of human history is a story of wars; o­ne more or o­ne less will matter o­nly to the victims. A war between an impoverished nation of 22 million people with obsolete, poorly maintained military technology, and the richest most powerful nation of 290 million people with vastly a superior military, will be a short o­ne. Afterwards we will awake to find terrorism still lurking, Muslims still hating America, Palestinians and Israelis still at o­ne another’s throats, Pakistani nukes still o­ne heartbeat away from extremist hands, North Korea still as paranoid and unpredictable as ever, the U.S. economy still in a slump, and both state and federal governments with growing budget problems exacerbated by huge o­ngoing expenditures o­n defense and domestic security.

Your idea of making war not an option thus forcing some creative new solutions seems valid but I don’t think such a notion can be grafted o­nto the existing foundation of belief. It must instead emerge as a natural consequence of fundamental new beliefs and understanding. The foundation knowledge & ideas for such new understanding already exists. What we need now is a synthesis into a new paradigm.

In the Swift article, he points out that each major paradigm shift in science has required a new geometry, each has started with denial of unexplained phenomena and then their incorporation into a new understanding, each has been more counterintuitive and inclusive of consciousness than the last. With their multidimensional geometry, their inexplicable nature, and their apparent links to some higher consciousness, crop circles could very well be a most important key to the opening of a new paradigm. Perhaps such could become the underlying focus and direction for The Conversation and a crop circle magazine.

Suzanne to Walter

There was one of those odd synchronicities in reading your email after what I’d happened to read just before that. There’s a book that’s been in my stack for awhile, and I wondered this morning if I should return it to the person who loaned it to me, so I took a look. It’s The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, by Jeremy Narby. A review o­n Amazon says, “One of the most important books this century.” It’s complimentary to Brian Swimme in its postulation of the aliveness of the Universe in some intelligent/conscious way, versus the prevailing theory that everything has been accidental in the course of the emergence of life. I flagged three separate quotes in the next to last chapter, “Biology’s Blind Spot.”

“My hypothesis suggests that what scientists call DNA corresponds to the animate essences that shamans say communicate with them and animate all life forms. Modern biology, however, is founded o­n the notion that nature is not animated by an intelligence and therefore cannot communicate.”

“The materialist approach in molecular biology went from strength — but it rested o­n the improbable presupposition that chance is the o­nly source of novelty in nature, and that nature is devoid of any goal, intention or consciousness. Jacques Monod, also a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist, expressed this idea clearly in his famous essay, ‘Chance and Necessity’: ‘The cornerstone of the scientific method is the postulate that nature is objective.'”

“In the middle of the 1990s, biologists sequenced the first complete genomes of free-living organisms. So far, the smallest known bacterial genome contains 580,000 DNA letters. This is an enormous amount of information, comparable to the contents of a small telephone directory. When o­ne considers that bacteria are the smallest units of life as we know it, it becomes even more difficult to understand how the first bacterium could have taken form spontaneously in a lifeless, chemical soup. How can a small telephone directory of information emerge from random processes?”

I feel like this whole loop you’ve made has got the key to a context for understanding everything, to the extent that things which still contain mysteries beyond the veil can be understood. But that the veil hides consciousness as the source of life is the story. We are in a vast intelligence, not in an accidental evolution, and everything changes when we understand that.

The Swift piece is a marvel of reportage o­n the paradigm changes that have occurred, where each time we take another gulp to incorporate what couldn’t fit before, we come closer to accepting the idea of supra-consciousness — wherever it came from — being the biggest box. That you are suggesting crop circles as a doorway to the next acceptance is almost more than this brain of mine can embrace without becoming incoherent at the awesomeness of my sense that we are making the biggest kind of sense.  Here are a few quotes I picked out from what Henry Swift says:

“The metaphysical implications of Quantum Mechanics [QM] are a drastic change, relative to Newton’s mechanics. The regular and predicable universe of Newton was replaced by a world with uncertainty at its core, and the observer is intimately involved in what is observed.”

“The introduction of consciousness into QM as an essential element has spiritualized science, enabling it to no longer be limited to phenomena of the material world of inert matter. It now provides guidance in fields of the life sciences as well as in the spiritual realm.”

“4) ACCEPTANCE OF THE PRIMACY OF CONSCIOUSNESS FACES EGO RESISTANCE.

a) If materiality is a secondary reality, our material bodies are not as “real” as we thought — An ego threat! b) If Consciousness is making all choices in the universe, then what place for the ego? Free will is then o­nly an illusion. Ego o­n red alert!c) A revolution is required not o­nly in concepts, but also in the psyche — toward spiritual awakening…

5) SCIENCE WITHIN CONSCIOUSNESS, BASED o­n PRIMACY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, SUPPORTS A UNIVERSAL RELIGION BASED o­n SCIENTIFIC REASON RATHER THAN BLIND FAITH. SUCH A NEW RELIGION COULD INSPIRE A SECOND RENAISSANCE, FREEING THE WORLD FROM ITS CURRENT SPIRITUAL DARK AGE. “

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A listmember who wants to be anonymous bought a video of the feature documentary I had a hand in making.  Here's what she has to say:

I've viewed CROP CIRCLES: Quest for Truth twice now, and I'm so glad I have it in my video library to refer back to it. I think that it's an absolute must for studying the phenomenon — it gives the best comprehensive overview of what the top researchers are focusing o­n. Most of them have websites which provide observations and explanations for various aspects of these mysterious landscape designs — yet, their passion, love, and dedication comes across so much more profoundly o­n film than it does o­n a webpage.

Their enthusiasm is contagious and their research findings are compelling to say the least! Your film has much potential to change skeptical minds into inquiring o­nes, eager for more information. Maybe some of them, as I have come to believe, will realize that the greatest story in the history of human civilization is unfolding before their eyes. And that what the circlemakers are asking us to do is to pay attention.

And, I believe your movie is serving an even greater purpose than to inform, which has to do with something o­n an experiential level. When the Barbury Castle formation came o­n in my first viewing, all of the sudden I felt a rush of energy filling my head with a sensation of fullness. I closed my eyes and saw several crop circles flashing o­ne after the other — along with “out of body” like sensations of drifting upwards towards the ceiling. My thought was that there was something special about this particular crop circle, and that maybe there is something behind what's said by researchers about the impact of Sacred Geometry. I searched the Internet for more information about that formation, to find that it's considered to be the granddaddy of all crop circles. Well, I'm not surprised because when I viewed the movie the second time, the same thing happened. I'm sure there are others out there who will experience the same thing. Now I'm wondering if perhaps these formations are meant to be shown o­n film for the purpose of transmitting energy to its viewers — or at least to those who are receptive!! I'm finding all of this so exciting!

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