10 - The Human Condition

This chapter considers humanity as a whole.

• First considered is the apparent age of mankind on Earth.

• Then, the three races of mankind are shown to correlate with gender difference, and the origin of this gender difference, at least in part, is traced back to the Caretakers.

• Next, the reason for sleep, and its universality, is explained in terms of intelligent particles.

• Then, a modern-day god-man, Sathya Sai Baba, is examined.

10.1 The Age of Modern Man According to Cremo and Thompson
Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson are the authors of The Hidden History of the Human Race.¹

The basic case made by Cremo and Thompson, is that since the Darwinian theory of man’s evolution became the dominant theory in the 19th century, the validity of archeological finds - including issues of dating - are judged based on their fit into the Darwinian theory.²

For example: This pattern of data suppression has been going on for a long time. In 1880, J. D. Whitney, the state geologist of California, published a lengthy review of advanced stone tools found in California gold mines.

The implements, including spear points and stone mortars and pestles, were found deep in mine shafts, underneath thick, undisturbed layers of lava, in formations ranging from 9 million to over 55 million years old.

W.H. Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution, one of the most vocal critics of the California finds, wrote:

“Perhaps if professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of human evolution as it is understood today, he would have hesitated to announce the conclusions formulated [that humans existed in very ancient times in North America], notwithstanding the imposing array of testimony with which he was confronted.”

In other words, if the facts do not agree with the favored theory, then such facts, even an imposing array of them, must be discarded.
 

1 Cremo, Michael, and Richard Thompson. The Hidden History of the Human Race. Govardhan Hill Publishing, Badger CA, 1994. (The Hidden History of the Human Race is the abridged version of their larger work, Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race, published in 1993.)

2 The basics of Darwin’s theory of evolution (section 8.3) do not require that the appearance of modern man be recent. However, because the fossil record shows different ape-like creatures alive during the last few million years, and because modern man is assumed by the theory to be an evolution from ape-like predecessors, the assumption is made that modern man appeared only recently, so as to allow as much time as possible for the randomness of Darwinism to make changes in the apelike predecessors.

Thus, the first appearance of modern man is typically dated within the last 100,000 years (first-appearance dates of 30,000 years ago in Europe, and 12,000 years ago in North America, are common).

Assigning a recent date for the appearance of modern man, besides conforming to Darwinian thought, also has the advantage of avoiding an unpleasant question: If modern man has been on Earth for millions of years, then what has happened to all the previous human civilizations that one might expect to have existed during the course of those millions of years?

Unfortunately, it turns out that there is a very good answer to this question: in the form of civilization-destroying comets and asteroids, that hit the Earth on a more or less regular basis. For example, astronomer Duncan Steel roughly estimates a civilization-destroyer - an impactor that would, in effect, blast mankind back into the stone-age - as a comet or asteroid 1 to 2 kilometers in diameter (the impact energy for a 1-kilometer object is roughly 100,000 megatons); and these civilization-destroyer impacts happen roughly once every 100,000 years (Steel, Duncan. Rouge Asteroids and Doomsday Comets. Wiley, New York, 1995. pp. 29–31).

Also, over the last 20,000 years, there has been an ongoing breakup in the inner solar system, of a giant comet - the fragments of this breakup constitute the Taurid meteor stream (Ibid., pp. 132–136). The presence of this Taurid stream has increased the likelihood of a civilization-destroying impact.

And, apparently, from this stream, two civilization-destroyers impacted in the ocean roughly 13,000 and 11,000 years ago. Among other things, these ocean impacts explain the Atlantis myth, the many flood myths, and why mankind was recently in a stone-age (Hancock, Graham. The Mars Mystery. Crown, New York, 1998. pp. 250–258).



This supports the primary point we are trying to make in The Hidden History of the Human Race, namely, that there exists in the scientific community a knowledge filter that screens out unwelcome evidence. This process of knowledge filtration has been going on for well over a century and continues to the present day.³

Drawing largely from papers published in the scientific literature, Cremo and Thompson present a wide variety of evidence - including stone tools and complete skeletons - for the existence of modern man in remote times. According to Cremo and Thompson, the physical evidence shows that modern man has been on Earth for many millions of years.

In a follow-up book, Forbidden Archeology’s Impact, Michael Cremo comments on the big picture, as to why the “knowledge filter” has been so pervasive, concealing the great antiquity of the human race:

The current theory of evolution takes its place within a worldview that was built up in Europe, principally, over the past three or four centuries. We might call it a mechanistic, materialistic worldview…

Historically, I would say that the Judeo-Christian tradition helped prepare the way for the mechanistic worldview by depopulating the universe of its demigods and spirits and discrediting most paranormal occurrences, with the exception of a few miracles mentioned in the Bible. Science took the further step of discrediting the few remaining kinds of acceptable miracles, especially after David Hume’s attack upon them.

Essentially, Hume said if it comes down to a choice between believing reports of paranormal occurrences, even by reputable witnesses, or rejecting the laws of physics, it is more reasonable to reject the testimony of the witnesses to paranormal occurrences, no matter how voluminous and well attested. Better to believe the witnesses were mistaken or lying… the presentation of an alternative to Darwinian evolution depends upon altering the whole view of reality underlying it.

If one accepts that reality means only atoms and the void, Darwinian evolution makes perfect sense as the only explanation worth pursuing.⁴
 

10.2 The Gender Basis of the Three Races
There are three commonly recognized races:

• african

• caucasian

• oriental

And there appears to be a strong correlation between the comparative traits of these three races, and the comparative traits of the two genders: man and woman, male and female.

Briefly, the correlation is that on a scale from masculine to feminine, the three races are ordered: african, caucasian, and oriental. Consideration for specific traits follow - and when speaking of specific traits, as they appear in each gender and race, the average case is assumed.

Regarding physical size and strength, obviously men are larger and stronger than women. For the three races, obviously the oriental race is the smallest and weakest.

Less obvious, but still quite apparent, the african race has the largest - not counting fat as contributing to size - and strongest bodies.⁵
 

3 Cremo and Thompson, op. cit., pp. xvii–xviii. (The bracketed note is in the original.)

4 Cremo, Michael. Forbidden Archeology’s Impact. Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing, Los Angeles, 1998. pp. 337–338. (Michael Cremo is quoting himself, from a letter he wrote in 1993.)

5 When nutritional conditions are the same for both races, as found in 20th century America, the size and strength advantage is clear. For example, in American sports, at the end of the 20th century, africans dominate overwhelmingly in basketball, football, and boxing - three sports that reward size and strength - despite being outnumbered in America by caucasians roughly six to one.
 

Regarding life expectancy, women have a longer life expectancy than men.

For the three races, when nutritional and sanitary conditions are the same, the african race has the shortest life expectancy, the oriental race has the longest life expectancy (for example, at the end of the 20th century, the Japanese have the longest life expectancy in the world), and the caucasian race is in-between.

Regarding coloring, men tend to be darker than women. For the three races, obviously the african race is the darkest (a fraction of this race is completely black, which is not seen in the other two races). Note that the gender bias for coloring is dominated by organic needs, and a resulting geographic bias: living in sunny lands tends to darken the skin, and vice versa.

Thus, for example,

• the caucasian Finns, who live further north than most people, are very light-colored (very pale)

• whereas the caucasians of the Indian subcontinent, are dark (much darker than the oriental Vietnamese, who live at the same latitudes; but not as dark and black as the africans at those latitudes)

Once the geographic bias of coloring is discounted - by comparing races at the same latitudes - it becomes apparent that the caucasian race is darker than the oriental race.

Regarding a tendency for violence, obviously men are more violent than women. For the three races, an examination of worldwide crime statistics shows the african race as the most violent, the oriental race as the least violent, and the caucasian race is in-between.

Regarding general intelligence, women are obviously more verbal than men (verbal ability is a major component of general intelligence); and as mentioned in section 4.6, general intelligence seems to be inherited through the mother.

For the three races, the african race scores lowest on IQ tests, the oriental race scores highest (for example, the Japanese score highest in the world on standard IQ tests), and the caucasian race is in-between.

Although much more could be said to make the case that there is a gender basis for the three races, the above is sufficient. And given this gender basis, it seems likely that the three races are, more or less, a constant and permanent feature of humanity - instead of being some ordinary development of Lamarckian evolution, that could disappear as a result of environmental change, natural disaster, or warfare.

In effect, the three races represent the large-scale range of gender-difference that the total population of intelligent-particle beings who are human, want to express.

It is interesting to note that slanted eyes, which is an identifying characteristic of the oriental race, is a prominent feature of the Caretakers, when they assume the small gray-alien form, commonly reported by American caucasian abductees. Given the discussion of the Caretakers in the previous chapters, it is reasonable to assume that the Caretakers are more intelligent than the most intelligent human nation (i.e. more intelligent than the Japanese).⁶

And note that it is common for abductees to claim that they can tell the gender of one or more of the beings involved in their abductions, even though abductees typically report no visible difference between what they claim are male and female beings. And note that many of the gender differences in humans - such as the degree of talkativeness, and the desire to socialize - are mental differences that do not require for their realization a physical body.

Thus, given these considerations, it is probable that at least some of the human gender differences that are mental differences, are contained in whatever learned programs were copied from the Caretakers, back in the remote past when humanity began.
 

10.3 The Need for Sleep
Sleep - in the sense of an organism becoming periodically inactive - is widespread throughout nature, and not limited to the higher animals.

For example:

“many insects do rest during the day or night. These rests are called quiescent periods.” ^7,8

And:

“The authors of the book The Invertebrates: A New Synthesis write: After activity there continued on next page is need for rest, even for ‘busy bees’. Honey bees enter a state of profound rest at night, with remarkable similarities to the phenomenon of sleep.” ⁹

6 The implication is clear: on the gender scale, the Caretaker civilization is more feminine than the oriental race. And besides the assumed correlation of intelligence, there is also an apparent correlation regarding violence, because the Caretakers appear to be very nonviolent. And even though the Caretakers have no organic body, and no fixed body of any form, note the apparent correlation regarding size, as the Caretakers typically adopt a comparatively small size when they assume a form for interacting with people.

7 The web citations in this section are all from a website called The MAD Scientist Network, provided by the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The purpose of this website is to provide a forum in which people can pose questions to be answered by scientists. The quoted selections - three of these quotes are slightly edited for improved readability.

8 From the post RE: insects, made by Kurt Pickett (Grad Student Entomology, Ohio State University). At http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/dec96/840907460.Gb.r.html

9 From the post RE: ants and sleep, made by Keith McGuinness (Faculty Biology). At http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/dec96/841965056.Zo.r.html (specifically, three commas, and a missing to, were added) - are from answers to questions posed by other persons (none of the questions were posed by this author).


And:

“Fish do have a quiescent period which can be called ‘sleep’. Tropical freshwater fish in home aquaria can be observed resting immediately after turning the lights on in a room which has been darkened for several hours.”¹⁰

And:

“Yes, frogs and toads sleep with their eyes closed. … Snakes, like all reptiles, do sleep. They are capable of doing this quite soundly despite the fact that they have no moveable eyelids. Moving your hand in front of the face of a sleeping snake will often not cause it to wake up for several seconds.”¹¹

And:

“Sharks don’t sleep as we know it, but they do rest. Often they will come to a quiet bottom area and stay there motionless.”¹²

As to why sleep happens, the mathematics-only reality model has no explanation, because there is nothing about physical particles that implies the need for periodic shutdowns.

However, unlike the mathematics-only reality model, the computing-element reality model does have an explanation for sleep, in terms of the nature of intelligent particles: For an intelligent particle, its sleep period is the time during which its learned programs have stopped running, and, instead, the computing-element program’s learning algorithms (section 4.6) are running against those learned programs.

Thus, in effect, all changes to an intelligent particle’s learned programs (including any additions or deletions of learned programs) are made when that intelligent particle is asleep.

Given that sleep is a part of each intelligent particle - irrespective of the presence or absence of a common-particle body - it follows that all intelligent-particle beings sleep. Thus, for example, the Caretakers sleep. And, for example, people in the afterlife sleep. And each organic life form - assuming it has at least one bion - sleeps. Thus, for example, bacteria sleep.

For a complex organism with many bions, the periods of sleep for those bions can be synchronized and/or unsynchronized as needed, in accordance with the needs of that organism. For example, each bion in a plant -  which lacks a nervous system and associated mind - can probably sleep according to its own arbitrary schedule, without causing harm to the plant as a whole (at any one time, roughly the same percentage and distribution of the plant’s bions would be asleep).

But for those organisms that have a nervous system and associated mind, which controls the organism’s movements in its environment, a more or less synchronous sleeping of those bions would be the case: during which time, the organism is perceived to be asleep, resting, quiescent.

For any bion, a longer sleep period represents more time for the computing-element program to apply its learning algorithms to that bion’s learned programs.

By the time a child is born, that child has many learned programs that collectively form its mind (in the typical case, probably at least some of these learned programs were copied from the child’s parents), and, in effect, these learned programs need to be integrated with each other, along with the soliton, for that child. It seems likely that the need for modifications to a child’s learned programs, would be greatest at its earliest age, and then decline with age.

And this appears to be the case:

“It is well established that infants and children need much more sleep than adults. For example, infants need about 16 hours of sleep, toddlers about 12, and school age children about 10… during puberty our need for sleep actually increases again and is similar to that of toddlers.”¹³

10 From the post RE: Do fish sleep?, made by Bruce Woodin (Staff Biology. Woods Hole). At http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may96/827165604.Zo.r.html

11 From the post RE: Do snakes eat their own eggs?, made by Kevin Ostanek (Undergraduate, Lake Erie College). At http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/mar97/853172239.Zo.r.html

12 From the post RE: Sharks, made by Roger Raimist (Prof. Biological Sciences). At http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may97/863470221.Zo.r.html

13 From the post RE: You are right, children are much more active in their sleep, made by Salvatore Cullari (Professor and Chair, Lebanon Valley College). At http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/aug97/866216598.Ns.r.html
 

10.4 Sai Baba According to Haraldsson
Psychologist Erlendur Haraldsson (a professor at the University of Iceland) has written a study of the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba (born November 23, 1926), in his book Modern Miracles.^14,15

Haraldsson’s personal experience with Sai Baba included witnessing several materializations, which is the type of miracle for which Sai Baba is most famous.

Haraldsson’s first interview with Sai Baba was in 1973:

We told him we were researchers of psychic phenomena and had heard many accounts of miracles occurring in his presence. As we were talking, he again made with his right hand the typical small, circular movements that last for two or three seconds, and lo! - there was a large, shiny golden ring in his palm. He put it on Dr. Osis’ ring finger and said it was for him.

 

It fitted… [Haraldsson then argues with Sai Baba in a futile attempt to get Sai Baba to agree to controlled experiments, and in this argument Sai Baba uses an apparent Indian colloquialism: double rudraksha (referring to a rare malformation of the seed of a rudraksha plant). Haraldsson then becomes insistent as to what exactly is meant by double rudraksha, having been dissatisfied with Sai Baba’s initial explanatory attempts.] …

 

Sai Baba closed his fist and waved his hand for a second or two. As he opened it, he turned to me and said: ‘This is it’.

 

In his palm was an acorn-like object about three centimeters at its widest point, brownish, and with a fine texture like an apricot stone… It had the particular freshness and cleanness that I later observed to be characteristic of the objects he produces… [After Haraldsson and Dr. Osis handle the object, Sai Baba takes it back for a moment, saying that he wants to give Haraldsson a present.] …

 

He enclosed the rudraksha in both his hands, blew on it, and opened his hands towards me. In his palm we saw a beautiful piece. The double rudraksha was now covered, on the top and on the bottom, by two tiny, oval-shaped, golden shields…¹⁶

The potential explanation that Sai Baba is just a magician, who uses sleight-of-hand to fool people, is dealt with at length by Haraldsson in his book, and the interested reader who doubts the validity of Sai Baba’s materialization ability is referred there.

As mentioned in section 9.8, the Caretakers have subject to their conscious control, learned programs that make them look like gods with marvelous psychic powers.

Sai Baba’s materialization ability is probably due to the relevant learned programs having been copied from the mind of a Caretaker into the mind of Sai Baba.^17,18
 

14 Haraldsson, Erlendur. Modern Miracles: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sathya Sai Baba. Hastings House, Mamaroneck NY, 1997.

15 Besides Haraldsson’s book, there is a large literature on Sai Baba, much of it in English.

16 Ibid., pp. 25–27.

17 Citing the Sathya Sai Baba biography, written by Kasturi, Haraldsson gives the following sequence of events for Sai Baba: On March 8, 1940, at about 7 at night, at age 13, Sathya, “gave a shriek and leaped up grasping his right toe as if he had been bitten! Although no scorpion or snake was discovered, he fell as though unconscious and became stiff.” (Ibid., p. 56; Haraldsson is quoting Kasturi). Sathya remained unconscious for the night, and began behaving strangely thereafter (his parents took him to a doctor, who declared the boy to be suffering from “fits” and “hysteria”). Then, on May 20 (about ten weeks after the beginning event of March 8), Sathya called his family together, materialized candy and flowers for them, and then materialized more candy and flowers, and rice, for the neighbors who came. Sathya’s sister, Venkamma, told Haraldsson that the family had not seen any miracles from Sathya before then. Besides doing the materializations that day, Sathya also declared himself to be the reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi, a famous Indian guru who had died in 1918 (Ibid., pp. 56–57).

It seems likely that the assumed copying of learned programs, from a Caretaker to Sathya, took place on March 8; and the resulting unconsciousness, followed by the “fits” and “hysteria” that lasted for roughly ten weeks, were all part of the process of integrating those learned programs into the mind of Sathya. After the ten weeks, the integration was sufficiently complete so that Sathya could exercise conscious control over his new materialization ability, and give his first public demonstration.

Since his first pronouncement, Sathya Sai Baba has consistently maintained that he is the reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi. And this past-life identity is reasonable, because the Caretakers are not going to give their learned programs for materialization and dematerialization (Sathya Sai Baba can also dematerialize small objects) to just anyone - instead, it seems that the recipient must be someone who will display the given abilities openly, in a religious framework, and with minimal abuse of those abilities. Thus, it appears that with his previous life as Sai Baba of Shirdi, the Caretakers judged Sathya as one who could be trusted to use the abilities as they wanted them used.

Regarding possible abuse, note that besides simply materializing gold or money to directly enrich oneself, there is also the possibility of harming others: by materializing or dematerializing p-common particles, in the amount that Sathya Sai Baba can do, and doing so in someone else’s body, that person can be killed or disabled in a moment. To date, there seems to be no evidence that Sathya Sai Baba has, by using his given abilities, either directly enriched himself, or harmed anyone. Thus, it seems that the Caretakers chose wisely when they chose Sathya.

18 Sai Baba’s materialization ability is limited to physical objects: there are no reports of Sai Baba having materialized a living plant or animal. And this inability is to be expected, because the underlying learned-program statements for materialization and dematerialization, apply only to common particles.

That the computing-element program does not include learned-program statements for either materializing or dematerializing intelligent particles, is reasonable, because intelligent particles differ from one another based on their learned programs and associated data. Thus, for example, if a new intelligent particle were created, what would be its state information (learned programs, etc.), if not simply empty? Given the potential complexity of intelligent particles, and given the degree to which they can differ from one another, any learned-program statements for either materializing or dematerializing intelligent particles, would be unsafe. Thus, one can assume that such statements are not available in the computing-element program -  and this assumption is consistent with the evidence.

Regarding Sai Baba’s materialization ability, his materialization ability is limited to small physical objects, or to repetitions of small physical patterns. For example, Sai Baba has never materialized a car, nor a car engine, nor a car engine’s carburetor. To produce such a comparatively large single object, the relevant learned programs would have to have as input data a complete scan of a sample object from which to model the object to be materialized. To minimize the complexity of the learned programs, this scan data would be at, or near, the p-common particle level.

This implies a very large data-storage requirement. Thus, within that group of intelligent particles that is hosting the relevant learned programs, the available memory for storing the scan data is probably the limiting factor on the size of the objects that can be materialized. In other words, what probably limits the learned programs from materializing larger objects, is the lack of enough memory to store the data that models the objects to be materialized. Note that the data-storage requirement, per object, will be roughly proportional to the volume of that object (and volume grows with the cube of length).

The jewelry items that Sai Baba typically materializes, are only a few cubic centimeters in volume. But the volume of a car is on the order of a million cubic centimeters. Thus, in the memory space needed to store the scan of a single car, one could, instead, store the scans of roughly a hundred-thousand completely different small objects, of the size that Sai Baba typically materializes (the number of object models that Sai Baba has in memory, at any one time, from which he can base a materialization, is probably at least in the hundreds, if not thousands). Although a scan-store-copy algorithm is presumably at the core of the relevant learned programs, these learned programs are more sophisticated than being a mere copy machine, because, for example, Sai Baba can size rings to fit, and include his likeness on materialized objects.

Besides materializing small objects, Sai Baba can continuously materialize repetitions from a single, small, physical pattern. For example, the vibhuti (ash from burned cow dung) that pours from Sai Baba’s hands, is his most common repetitious materialization. And the various foods that Sai Baba materializes, are at least sometimes repetitious materializations. For example, Haraldsson recounts a number of cases in which Sai Baba materialized large quantities of food, into various containers, from which many people were then served. For example, Haraldsson quotes Krishna Kumar as saying that he saw Sai Baba fill a number of food containers, one at a time, filling each container with food in a matter of seconds (Ibid., p. 118; Krishna Kumar says that he actually saw the food rising up in the containers, thereby filling them: this observation is consistent with repetitious materialization). From such accounts as these, it seems that, at best, Sai Baba can do repetitious materializations at a rate of no more than a few kilograms of p-common particles per second.

It is perhaps interesting to note that there are European legends of peasants having grain stores filled by fairies, so that, for example, they could survive the winter. Given that the fairies of legend are the Caretakers, and given that Sai Baba has their learned programs for materialization, and given that Sai Baba was able to repetitiously materialize enough food to feed many people, then these legends may well be based on actual happenings.

The Hindus - at least some of them - call men like Sai Baba, god-men.¹⁹ This is a good term, in the sense that such god-men, who are a great rarity, have at least a few of the powers attributed to the gods (the Caretakers). One reason for the rarity of these god-men, is probably that so few men can, in effect, be trusted with telekinetic, materialization, or dematerialization powers, because of the potential of such powers to harm and kill others (the human body is very fragile). Each genuine god-man is more than a man, but less than a single Caretaker.²⁰

One problem with being a god-man, is that the Caretakers apparently do not enlighten the god-man as to exactly who and what they are; nor do they teach the god-man about their civilization and its science. Thus, the god-man is ignorant, and has no real understanding as to why he can do what he can do.

 

For example, as Haraldsson says about his attempt during that first interview, to get Sai Baba to explain how he could do such materializations:

“It was dawning on us that the discourse of Sai Baba was in the realm of religion, not empirical science. Our sympathetic swami was not a man of science.”²¹

To explain his abilities to himself, Sai Baba, who by all accounts is an intelligent man, has drawn from the Hindu religion into which he was born.

Although, through ignorance, many Sai Baba devotees exaggerate his place in the scheme of things (more or less in the same way that the god-man Jesus was exaggerated by his followers into being one-third of the Christian religion’s one-and-only God), Sai Baba, himself, is at least sometimes guilty of having imagined himself to be more than he is.

 

For example, Haraldsson quotes the experience of M. Krishna, who was close to Sai Baba during the mid 1950s (in this example, Sai Baba, roughly thirty years old at the time, wrongly imagines that he is competent to perform a minor operation):

Once I had myself tonsillitis and a very sore throat. Then swami said he would operate upon my tonsils… He waved his hand, and a knife came seemingly out of nowhere…

 

[Sai Baba then “operates,” causing some bleeding. That evening, after the operation, Krishna went to a friend who was a doctor, and Krishna told the doctor that Sai Baba had operated and removed his tonsils. Krishna then says what that doctor’s response was:] …

He remarked something like this:

‘What do you say? You are a fool and he is a liar.’ [Krishna still had his tonsils, and they were removed in a hospital a few years later.]^22,23

19 Ibid., p. 211.

20 Being a genuine god-man is not without its risks. For example, assuming Jesus was a god-man, the Caretakers did not intervene to prevent his murder. And in 1993, Sathya Sai Baba survived an apparent assassination attempt that left two of his personal attendants dead (four knife-armed men had killed the two attendants in an effort to gain access to the room in which Sai Baba slept; these apparent assassins were then killed by police who were called to the scene).

21 Ibid., p. 27.

22 Ibid., p. 176.

23 Although it seems that Sai Baba has helped some people with physical ailments, he was unable to help the mentally ill. For example, Krishna Kumar, an early devotee, is quoted as saying: “Many mentally sick people came to Baba, but none of them were healed.” (Ibid., p. 123)

Assuming that the cause of many mental illnesses is within the learned programs and/or associated data, in the mind of the individual who is mentally ill, and not merely the result of some organic problem, then, an inability to directly heal such mental illness is to be expected for any god-man, and for the Caretakers as well, because the learned programs and/or associated data, in the mind of another person, are not directly accessible.

10.5 Karma

from JohMann Website - 2006 (11th ed.)
The basic idea of karma is that one’s actions have consequences. Good actions have good consequences, and bad actions have bad consequences. Also, the death of the physical body is not a barrier for karma. Some consequences may, in effect, be deferred until one’s next incarnation in a p-common body.

Given the computing-element reality model, one can dismiss any suggestion that karma is some universal law of the universe that operates in some impartial and perfect way.

Instead, karma is personal and subjective.

Negative karma (karma for bad actions) operates in two ways, both of which are highly subjective:

• External attack:
  In general, if you harm someone else in a way that is judged unfair by that person (this recognition and judgment can be either consciously made or unconsciously made), then, in effect, that person, either during the current incarnation or during the next incarnation, may at some point try to pay you back and harm you in return. In a word, this is revenge.
   

• Internal attack:
  This is a consequence of our structure: a single soliton (one’s awareness) ruling a large, cooperating population of bions (one’s mind). In effect, if one fails to be a good ruler, there may be a rebellion of the ruled.
  
  Just as your awareness (the soliton) is a member in a larger society (the bions composing your mind), so is your person a member in a larger human society. Harming human society is analogous to harming your mind, and can encourage rebellion.

   

  Thus, to be a good ruler over one’s own mind:

  • Do things that tend to be socially constructive, and avoid doing things that tend to be socially destructive.

Note that this guideline does not necessarily mean that one should not attack or disrupt the society in which one lives, because not every society is just or fair, and even a good society can probably be improved.

Also, construction sometimes requires a preceding destruction.

Note that one’s own family is the smallest and most immediate society in which one lives. And, as the saying goes: charity begins in the home.

As a worst-case example of how the rebellion can manifest itself in the next incarnation, consider the case of schizophrenics who are tormented by voices that accuse them in various ways. These voices are from the person’s own mind, and are independent but “low,” having an extremely limited mental range.^[133],[134]

Although some of the misfortunes that befall one may be the result of karma, one should avoid oversimplifying and assuming that all misfortunes are the result of karma.

We are finite, and our minds are limited. Real accidents do happen (although some apparent accidents may be unconsciously arranged by one’s own mind and/or other minds). Also, one may be caught in some larger social process which has nothing to do with one’s karma but has a negative effect on one’s life. And, of course, the experience of ill health touches all, and the misfortunes of old age befall everyone who lives long enough.

In general, because of our own complexity, life is complex, with many often-conflicting influences. Karma is only a part of what influences our lives.

And, as the saying goes: you have to take the good with the bad.
 

Footnotes

[133] Just as all that one sees is a construction of one’s own mind (section 3.6), so is all that one hears a construction of one’s own mind. Thus, all voices that one may hear, are constructed by one’s own mind, regardless of whether the text (what the voice is saying) has an internal origin (from within one’s own mind) or an external origin (from one of the sensory sources: either one’s physical hearing or telepathic hearing).

A typical person is familiar with two kinds of voices: the voice of one’s own thoughts (this is the same as the voice one hears when reading), and voices heard thru one’s physical hearing (whether hearing oneself talk or hearing others talk).

 

Apparently, given the unerring ease with which one distinguishes between hearing the voice of one’s own thoughts and hearing voices heard thru one’s physical hearing, and given the fact that both types of hearing can take place simultaneously without interference between them, it follows that there are two different non-overlapping allocations of awareness-particle input channels (section 9.6) for carrying the two kinds of hearing to the awareness: one allocation carries the voice of one’s own thoughts, and the other allocation carries all the sounds, including voices, heard thru one’s physical hearing.

As a rule, the text for the voice of one’s own thoughts has an internal origin, and this voice has a soft and unobtrusive sound. A person may also have experience with hearing voices in one’s dreams. In this case, the dream voices have the same sound quality as voices heard thru physical hearing. In other words, they sound like normal voices, instead of sounding like the voice of one’s own thoughts. These dream voices are probably carried to the awareness over the same allocation used for carrying the sounds heard thru one’s physical hearing.

In the case of psychics who claim to hear normal voices, which they believe are telepathic communications from other minds (typically from the dead), such telepathic communication is certainly possible. However, alternatively, in at least some cases, the text may have an internal origin or a mixed origin. In either case, if the voice sounds normal (in other words, the voice sounds like voices heard thru one’s physical hearing) then that heard voice is probably carried to the awareness over the same allocation used for carrying the sounds heard thru one’s physical hearing.

Apparently for some people - typically women - who take their religious beliefs too seriously about submitting their will to God, Jesus, or whatever, they may find themselves being ordered about by their own unconscious mind masquerading behind a normal-sounding voice. In effect, they abdicate the natural right of their awareness as ruler, and give that right to their unconscious mind, imagining that the voice they hear is the voice of God, Jesus, or whatever.

Schizophrenics who are tormented by accusatory voices claim to hear those voices as normal voices. But it should be clear that the text of the voices, regardless of how they sound and regardless of which allocation is carrying those voices, has an internal origin, given such reported characteristics as the extreme monotony and repetition of the text.

 

For these schizophrenics, the rebellion that they caused in their own mind has a voice (this rebellion, typically, is a consequence of actions in their previous incarnation).

 

[134] Although it appears that schizophrenics tormented by accusing voices are, in at least the typical case, suffering karmic consequences, one should not conclude that every serious mental malady is karmic.

As a specific example of a non-karmic mental malady, consider the case of mongoloid idiots (aka Down Syndrome).

 

Martha Beck tells the story of her Down-Syndrome child, Adam (Beck, Martha. Expecting Adam. Times Books, New York, 1999):

I started dreaming about dolphins when Adam was about two, right after his younger sister was born. It was always the same dream. It began with me standing on the shore of a glassy-clam sea, watching the sun rise. Then suddenly (and no matter how many times I dreamt it, this always startled me), a dolphin broke the surface of the water in front of me, throwing itself skyward.

 

Drops of water scattered from its fins and flanks like a shower of diamonds in the slanting light. The dolphin seemed to hang in the air for a moment, then arced downward and disappeared into the sea again.
…

Then I would always look up again, out at the sea, and notice that Adam was in the water as well. He would be playing with the dolphin, his bright blond head shining like flax just above the waves. I could hear the two of them talking to each other, a strange, squealing, clicking chatter that meant nothing to me.
…

This [dream] went on for a couple of years. Every time it happened, I’d spend hours trying to figure out what it meant. … In the end, I always came back to the same conclusion: the dolphins in my dream represented… dolphins…

One day, when Adam was four, a neighbor of ours dropped by for a visit.

 

When she saw Adam, she said,

“I just read the most interesting article about a little boy with Down syndrome. After he was born, his mother started dreaming about dolphins. Couldn’t get them off her mind.”

[Ibid., pp. 319–320]

This connection between Down-Syndrome children and dolphins is apparently real, and is not limited to Martha Beck’s experience. The explanation for Down Syndrome, given both the apparent evidence and the computing-element reality model, is that a Down-Syndrome child, in at least the typical case, was a dolphin in his previous incarnation.

 

(Note that this explanation implicitly rejects the explanation that Down Syndrome is caused by trisomy 21. Although trisomy 21 strongly correlates with Down Syndrome, correlation by itself is not causation. Instead of being the cause, trisomy 21 can be just one of the effects of a different cause, as is suggested here.)

The reason such a child has the kind of mental retardation characteristic of Down Syndrome, is because the jump from being a dolphin to being a normal human in one incarnation is too big a jump to make. In effect, there is too much that is different in terms of all the learned programs involved and the integration that needs to be done to produce a normal child.

 

The part of the dolphin that incarnates is not able to do everything needed to produce a normal child. The end result is the characteristics of Down Syndrome. Thus, the transition from being a dolphin to being a normal human takes more than a single incarnation.

 

However, considering how much is accomplished in that first incarnation, my guess is that by the second incarnation that new human is either normal or nearly normal.

9.6 Orgasm

from JohMann Website - 2006 (11th ed.)
My sister’s son (born 1980) has Tourette Syndrome. In December 2001, knowing of my interest in his condition, he sent me an email in which he gives,

“a general synopsis that I wrote that covers some of the subtleties about TS that I will use when it is necessary to educate those around me”:

What is Tourette Syndrome?
Tourette Syndrome (TS) is a nervous system disorder characterized by involuntary, rapid, sudden movements or vocalizations called tics that occur repeatedly in the same way. TS is not degenerative in any way; it is not a sign of mental illness; it is not caused by poor parenting or abuse of any kind.

TS usually begins in childhood and often continues throughout life; it is found across all ethnic backgrounds and at all socioeconomic levels; although socially awkward its expression is largely cosmetic.
 

About Tics
The expression of tics is unlimited and is unique to each person. The complexity of some tics sometimes makes it hard for others to believe the strange actions and inappropriate vocal utterances are not deliberate.

Examples are:

• facial grimaces, eye blinking

• head jerking

• shoulder shrugging

• throat clearing

• yelping noises

• tongue clicking

• snapping

• touching other people or objects

• self-injurious actions

• copraxia (obscene gestures)

• coprolalia (obscene language)

• echolalia (repeating a sound or word just heard)

• mimicking someone’s mannerisms

Tics occur many times a day usually in bouts waxing and waning in their severity and periodically changing in frequency, type and location.

Complex verbal tics are often triggered by a completely unrelated thought and do not represent what the person is thinking about. Tics are suggestible. Merely the mention or sight of a specific tic may induce it. Repressing tics is difficult and only increases the tension making the tics come out worse later.

Most of the time in situations where it would be socially inappropriate for certain tics the person with TS will not have any tics or ones that are not disturbing, but as soon as they move to a less restricted environment they will often experience a major tic bout.

When someone is told to stop ticking or if they are in a place where they know they can’t tic they will sometimes feel the compulsion even more strongly.

Stress, positive or negative emotional excitement, fatigue, Central Nervous System stimulants, unpleasant memories or lack of understanding from others can all significantly increase tics.

Being in a stimulating or new environment, involved in conversation, meeting new people, concentrating on a task, relaxation, and acceptance by others can all significantly decrease tics.
 

What I Ask of You
Now that I understand what TS is, I accept it and it’s not a big deal to me.

Most of the time I will be fine, but sometimes it can be overwhelming so when I do tic please ignore them as they are harmless. However if I offend you or you can’t handle seeing me this way then talk directly to me about it and I will try to accommodate you by redirecting the tic into something less threatening to your sensibilities, but note that I will not ostracize myself because of this. If you have any other concerns or questions please ask me.

His above synopsis is drawn from his study of the TS literature, and from his own experience with TS. During a two-week visit by my nephew in July 2001, I had the chance to observe his TS characteristics: he has both movement tics and vocal tics, including both copraxia and coprolalia. Near the end of his visit I developed an explanation for Tourette Syndrome that I believe is correct:

Briefly, my explanation for Tourette Syndrome is that for a person with TS, a part of the mind that for an average person of that nation and gender outputs to n input channels of the awareness particle (the soliton), has instead substantially fewer input channels of the awareness particle to which it can output, because those input channels, at some stage during that person’s previous development, were, in effect, allocated to one or more other mind parts.^[135]

Then, over time, that mind part that is missing its normal allocation of awareness-particle input channels, compensates, proportionate to its loss, by sending its outputs elsewhere, ultimately resulting in the tics of TS.^[136],[137]

In terms of tics, TS cases range from mild to severe. For example, a person who just does a lot of eye blinking or throat clearing would be a mild case; my nephew, with his copraxia and coprolalia, is a severe case. As far as what determines TS severity, the primary determinant is probably the mind part involved and the extent to which that mind part has lost its normal allocation of awareness-particle input channels: the fewer the number of lost channels, the more mild the TS; the greater the number of lost channels, the more severe the TS.

In theory, the mind part that suffered the loss may be different in different TS cases. However, in at least many TS cases, and, I believe, in the case of my nephew, the specific mind part that suffered the loss is that mind part - here called the sexual mind part - that is heavily involved in sexual feeling, desire, and attraction. The primary reason to believe this is because TS tics, in a typical severe case, often have a strong sexual content.^[138]

In addition, another reason is the similarity between the strong insistence of TS tics and the strong insistence of sexual desire.^[139]

One may assume that each soliton has the same total number of input channels, and that each input channel is identical in terms of its data-carrying characteristics. Given the central governing role that the soliton plays vis-a-vis the other intelligent particles that collectively form the mind, it stands to reason that a soliton’s input and output channels are not wasted: they are all utilized.

Thus, if some mind part does not have its normal allocation of awareness-particle input channels, then those awareness-particle input channels have been allocated elsewhere. Regarding Tourette Syndrome, it is interesting to note that the TS group as a whole has a reputation for being intelligent.

For example, there are many statements like the following on the internet:

Many of my patients with Tourette syndrome are of above average intelligence, frequently intellectually gifted.^[140]

…most people with TS appear to have above average intelligence.^[141]

Many people believe there is a link between intelligence, creativity, and Tourette syndrome. Certainly in my experience, children with Tourette’s are often quite intelligent …^[142]

Given that general intelligence seems to be inherited from the mother, I expected my nephew to have an intelligence similar to my own, since we are both on the same female tree (his mother’s mother is also my mother).

However, what I have noticed about my nephew is that in some intellectual areas we are about the same, but in other intellectual areas he either clearly exceeds me (example: writing ability) or far exceeds me (example: mathematical ability). Thus, regarding my nephew, he fits the pattern of having TS and being intelligent; in his case, very intelligent.

Given the association of Tourette Syndrome with intelligence, it seems safe to assume that for a typical person with TS, the mind parts that, in effect, account for intelligence, have received more than their normal share of awareness-particle input channels.

Thus, in effect, the loss of the sexual mind part has been the gain of the intellectual mind parts. In general, the greater the loss for the sexual mind part, the greater the enhancement of intelligence. The extent of the loss for the sexual mind part, and its consequent effects, varies from one TS person to the next. In the case of my nephew, his loss appears to have been sufficiently great enough to cause, among other things, a complete absence of orgasm.

Here is a dictionary definition of orgasm:

orgasm:

The climax of sexual excitement, marked normally by ejaculation of semen by the male and by the release of tumescence in erectile organs of both sexes.^[143]

This dictionary definition describes the physical events that coincide with the orgasm experience, which for a male is the ejaculation of semen.

Its description of the orgasm feeling is limited to a statement about the feeling’s relative strength and its placement on the pleasure-pain scale (climax of sexual excitement: presumably the most pleasurable). In general, describing a feeling is limited to stating such things as the feeling’s strength or intensity; its duration; its placement on a scale that ranges from pleasure to pain; its comparison to other feelings.

As a rule, reading a written description of a feeling does not cause one to experience that feeling, because the data sent to the awareness particle for reading comprehension is different than the data sent to the awareness particle for causing that feeling. Likewise, the act of remembering a feeling does not cause one to experience that feeling, because the data sent to the awareness particle for remembering is different than the data sent to the awareness particle for causing that feeling.

Drawing on my own experience with male orgasm: it came in waves, with each wave coinciding with each ejaculation of semen; it was a feeling that was strong but not overwhelmingly so, at least for me; it definitely felt good; nothing else in my life has felt like an orgasm.^[144] Note that for a typical male in his physical prime (younger than middle-aged), from the first ejaculation to the last, typically less than ten seconds elapse, so the accumulated duration of the orgasm feeling is even less than this.

In November 2000, my nephew, during a phone call, surprised me by asking about my orgasm experience. As I then learned, he has never had an orgasm during ejaculation (nor at any other time), and he was asking me about my own experience, because he was trying to find out if he had inherited his no-orgasm condition from his relatives. His no-orgasm condition is a rarity for young males.

However, the loss of orgasm by older males is more common, as I was to find out for myself, a mere six months later, in May 2001: at age 45½, over a period of about a month, my orgasm experience, being noticeably weaker each successive time, faded away to nothing; and yet, everything else, including the ejaculation, was the same - it was just the orgasm feeling itself that had disappeared.

My orgasm loss, I assume, was a consequence of my advancing age. The male-orgasm experience is obviously a reward, whose ultimate purpose is the production of children. As a male ages, his value as a potential new father declines for many reasons. Thus, the withdrawal of the orgasm reward is understandable.

At the time of my orgasm loss, I was not expecting something positive to result in consequence; but that is what happened. About three months later, in August 2001, while replaying a computer game, I noticed that the game seemed much easier for me (beyond what I had experienced before when replaying computer games).

Then I replayed two other computer games, and, among other things, I noticed that I was playing in a way that I had never played before with any such game: I was actually planning my movements, and, for the first time, I was able to shoot accurately while moving; I also found myself thinking about movement strategies at other times of the day when I was not playing.

Overall, I was much more focused on, and interested in, how I moved during combat encounters, than I had been in the past. My combat strategy in the past consisted of little more than trying to find the best spot to be in at the beginning of the encounter, and then just standing still, firing the best weapon I had at the targets; complex movement sequences during combat were simply beyond me: I did not think about them, and I did not make them.

Regarding my past game play, I have known about my weak game play since the early 1980s, based on my experience with coin-operated video games. In recent years, playing 3D first-person-shooter games on my computer, I would choose the easiest game-difficulty settings out of necessity, and I would also use cheats as needed, such as god-mode (invulnerability), to get thru game sections that I could not otherwise get thru. Now, however, with my newfound movement abilities, I play typical shooter games on normal difficulty, and I get thru them without cheats, so I appear to now be about average, compared to other males who play these computer games.

Regarding my loss of orgasm, the following explanation seems likely: My sexual mind part had a substantial number of awareness-particle input channels that were dedicated to carrying the data that causes the orgasm feeling.^[145] With my advancing age, my sexual mind part gave up these input channels, which were then acquired by a different mind part that up until that time had a below-normal allocation of awareness-particle input channels (as demonstrated by my weak game play compared to other males).

Regarding how my orgasm faded away over a period of about a month, being progressively weaker each time, the following explanation seems likely: The strength of the orgasm feeling - and of feelings in general - is proportional to the number of awareness-particle input channels carrying the data that causes that feeling.^[146],[147]

My progressively weaker orgasm was caused by having progressively fewer awareness-particle input channels carrying the data that causes the orgasm feeling.

Overall, the allocation of the awareness-particle input channels among the different mind parts is a major determinant in how one differs from other people. Thus, for example, differences in intelligence between two persons, in the typical case, is primarily due to different allocations of the awareness-particle input channels.^[148]

Also, how the awareness-particle input channels are allocated among the different mind parts is a major determinant in how the two genders, men and women, differ from each other; and how the three races of mankind differ from each other; and how the various nations of mankind differ from each other.^{[149],[150],[151],[152]}

For example, the average woman has a weaker orgasm experience than the average man. Thus, the allocation plan for the average woman allocates fewer awareness-particle input channels to orgasm, than does the allocation plan for the average man.^[153]
 

Footnotes

[135] Based on the size of our visual field, and assuming each pixel in our visual field uses one awareness-particle input channel, the total number of input channels that the awareness particle has is in the millions. Thus, the value of n could easily be in the thousands.

 

[136] That a mind part can establish new connections for its outputs and/or inputs when its normal connections are lost is demonstrated by the fact that many people who suffer serious brain damage - as a consequence of such things as head wounds, strokes, and brain tumors - and initially lose one or more of their mental abilities, are able to regain some or all of their lost mental abilities in the following months or years as the affected mind parts learn to make use of different neural pathways to carry the affected input and/or output data.

That a mind part can establish new connections when its normal connections are lost is also demonstrated by the phenomenon of phantom limbs. Developing a phantom limb is a typical result for someone who has had a limb amputated. In the case of a limb amputation, there is no brain damage. Instead, because of the amputation, the normal neural pathways that used to carry the signals from that limb have fallen silent. The affected mind part then compensates - regaining sensory input for that limb - by remapping the lost limb onto an adjoining area of primary motor cortex, and interpreting the sensory input from that adjoining cortex area as sensory input from the amputated limb.

 

For example:

… touching the stump of an amputated arm often causes two sensations: one is the normal sensation you expect from touching skin; the second is … a feeling that the phantom hand is also being touched. [Hoffman, op. cit., p. 173]

V.Q. was seventeen when his left arm was amputated six centimeters above the elbow. Four weeks later he was tested by Ramachandran and colleagues, who found a systematic map of his phantom hand on his left arm, about seven centimeters above the stump.

 

They also found a map of the phantom hand on his face, on the lower left side … [Ibid., p. 175. Hoffman also describes another amputee with a similar amputation, who likewise had a map for his phantom hand on both his face and on his arm above the stump. And, as Hoffman notes, the cortex area for the hand, adjoins the cortex area for the rest of that arm, and also adjoins on the opposite side the cortex area for the face.]

 

[137] This explanation for Tourette Syndrome - that a mind part that is missing its normal allocation of awareness-particle input channels, compensates, proportionate to its loss, by sending its outputs elsewhere - offers a similar explanation for the condition known as tardive dyskinesia. Here is a brief description of tardive dyskinesia:

Tardive dyskinesia is a neurological syndrome caused by the long-term use of neuroleptic drugs. Neuroleptic drugs are generally prescribed for psychiatric disorders, as well as for some gastrointestinal and neurological disorders. Tardive dyskinesia is characterized by repetitive, involuntary, purposeless movements. Features of the disorder may include grimacing, tongue protrusion, lip smacking, puckering and pursing, and rapid eye blinking. Rapid movements of the arms, legs, and trunk may also occur. Impaired movements of the fingers may appear as though the patient is playing an invisible guitar or piano.

There is no standard treatment for tardive dyskinesia. Treatment is highly individualized. The first step is generally to stop or minimize the use of the neuroleptic drug…

Symptoms of tardive dyskinesia may remain long after discontinuation of neuroleptic drugs; however, with careful management, some symptoms may improve and/or disappear with time. [Tardive Dyskinesia Information Page, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, at: http://www.ninds.nih.gov/health_and_medical/disorders/tardive_doc.htm]

Neuroleptic drugs interfere with normal brain chemistry and can block neuron signal transmission in one or more brain areas. If some mind part has the neural pathways that it normally uses for its outputs blocked for a long time, then that mind part is going to try to compensate, proportionate to its loss, by sending its outputs elsewhere, which may ultimately result in the movement tics of tardive dyskinesia.

 

[138] For example, a man with severe TS, commenting about his spoken vocal tics, asks: “Why is it always sexual?” (from the one-hour TV program Tourette’s Syndrome: Uncensored, BBC, 2000).

In the case of my nephew, his spoken vocal tics were often sexual in content, but not exclusively so. One way to explain this is that he may have besides the sexual mind part reacting to channel loss, an additional non-sexual mind part also reacting to channel loss. In other words, some TS cases may be caused by multiple mind parts that have each suffered substantial channel loss.

 

Alternatively, a different way to explain the variety in my nephew’s spoken vocal tics is to suggest that the sexual mind part - which cannot by itself understand what a given spoken phrase means (language understanding is accomplished by a different mind part) - selects the verbal phrases it will output based on data from other mind parts; and this selection criteria - whatever it is - sometimes results in non-sexual phrases being selected, because they have the same signature as sexual phrases.

 

[139] For example, as my nephew says in his TS synopsis:

• Tics are suggestible. Merely the mention or sight of a specific tic may induce it.

• Repressing tics is difficult and only increases the tension making the tics come out worse later.

• Most of the time in situations where it would be socially inappropriate for certain tics the person with TS will not have any tics or ones that are not disturbing, but as soon as they move to a less restricted environment they will often experience a major tic bout.

• When someone is told to stop ticcing or if they are in a place where they know they can’t tic they will sometimes feel the compulsion even more strongly.

To make the similarity to sexual desire clear, here is my rewritten version of his points (I am assuming a typical young man):

• Sexual desire is suggestible. Merely the mention or sight of an attractive woman may induce it.

• Repressing sexual desire is difficult and only increases the tension making it come out worse later.

• Most of the time in situations where it would be socially inappropriate for overt sexual actions, the person will not do anything overt, but as soon as they move to a less restricted environment they will often have a major sex-satisfaction bout.

• When someone is told to suppress sexual desire, or if they are in a place where they know they are not supposed to have sexual desire, they will sometimes feel the compulsion even more strongly.

[140] At: http://www.doctorjudith.com/disorder_info.htm
 

[141] At: http://www.tourettesyndrome.co.uk/information.htm
 

[142] At: http://www.bestdoctors.com/en/askadoctor/b/brown/lwbrown_061200_q9.htm
 

[143] Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1984.

 

[144] Unfortunately for me, I was circumcised as an infant, as were roughly 70% of the other American males born in 1955. This book is not about America nor about circumcision (on these two subjects see my other writings, such as my essays American Culture and The Psychological Harm of Male Circumcision).

 

However, I am mentioning this fact about my being circumcised because my study of the circumcision subject has made me aware of the fact that circumcision - in addition to its many other negative sexual effects - tends to suppress and lessen the orgasm experience.

 

For example, the results of a poll titled Cut vs. Intact vs. Restored/Restoring, created in December 2002 by razniq, shows the harm that circumcision does to the orgasm experience (the poll is at http://www.misterpoll.com/poll.mpl?id=803956922; the poll results are at http://www.misterpoll.com/results.mpl?id=803956922; the bracketed [notes] are mine, added for clarity):

Describe what you feel when you come [orgasm].

• I’m cut [circumcised] and I feel barely anything. (6%)

• I’m cut [circumcised] and I feel something in my ‘equipment’ [genitals] only. (13%)

• I’m cut [circumcised] and I feel it in my whole body. (24%)

• I’m intact [natural; not circumcised] and I feel barely anything. (0%)

• I’m intact [natural; not circumcised] and I feel something in my ‘equipment’ [genitals] only. (1%)

• I’m intact [natural; not circumcised] and I feel it in my whole body. (21%)

• I am restoring/restored and what I feel has improved. (24%)

• I am restoring/restored and there is no change in what I feel. (2%)

• I am restoring/restored and what I feel has decreased. (0%)

• I am a USA female. (2%)

• I am a non-USA female. (2%)

353 total votes

[For each person taking the poll, choosing from the above eleven choices, the poll allows only a single answer. But note that the total of the above percentages adds up to 95% instead of 100%, presumably because the poll results are rounded down to the nearest integer.]

[Note that I saw a post by razniq in an anti-circumcision forum that I like to read, telling about his poll; I assume the high percentage for “restoring/restored” (totals 26%) is a direct consequence of the places where razing advertised his poll, because men who have done foreskin restoration tend to congregate in foreskin-restoration and anti-circumcision forums.]

The above poll results make clear the negative effect that circumcision has on the orgasm experience. As the poll results show, circumcision can steal from its victim the experience of a full-body orgasm. Additional evidence for this conclusion is the fact that some men who have restored their foreskins (only a partial restoration is possible) report making the transition from a localized orgasm to a full-body orgasm.

 

For example, a foreskin-restoration forum post by zac0212, dated April 15, 2003, says:

I would describe my circumcision as loose with a partial frenulum (damaged during circ). I have been restoring for a little over a month. Before restoring my orgasms were very localized. In the short time that I have been restoring, my orgasms have changed significantly. My inner foreskin remnant and frenulum have become much more sensitive. I am amazed at how much more I can experience during sex, and my orgasms take over my whole body. Amazing!

[At: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/ForeskinRestoration/message/3232]

As for myself, exactly what is meant by a full-body orgasm I do not know, because I never had one; I only had the localized kind. Thus, my orgasm description is that of a circumcised man who has never had a full-body orgasm.

 

[145] Having dedicated channels to carry the data for a specific feeling means that there are no channel-sharing conflicts and no need for arbitration, which would otherwise be the case if a given channel were used to carry other data besides the data that produces that feeling.

In the case of orgasm, those channels allocated to carry the orgasm-producing data will be unused most of the time. If one were to assume that all awareness-particle input channels are more or less dedicated, then the channels allocated to carry the orgasm-producing data are probably among the least used channels. As an example of high utilization, consider the channels dedicated to vision.

 

[146] The reason that the strength of a feeling would be proportional to the number of awareness-particle input channels carrying the data that causes that feeling, is because this is a simple and reliable arbitration method for the awareness particle: in effect, the strength of a feeling is proportional to the number of votes for that feeling, with each input channel counting as one vote. The alternative, having the strength of a feeling encoded as part of the input data for that feeling, would be dangerous, as it would mean that a single input channel would have the capability to deliver a very strong feeling.

 

[147] Note that the orgasm feeling differs from most other feelings in that the orgasm feeling - based on my own experience before my loss, and based on how others describe it - has much less variation in its perceived intensity range. Each orgasm feels the same as the previous orgasm. Given this sameness, this means that when the orgasm feeling is sent to the awareness, of those awareness-particle input channels allocated (dedicated) for carrying the data that causes the orgasm feeling, the same or nearly the same fraction of those allocated awareness-particle input channels are utilized for carrying the orgasm-producing data to the awareness. Assuming the orgasm feeling is not suppressed by some external cause such as circumcision, the typical orgasm feeling probably utilizes all or nearly all of the total allocation for carrying the data that causes the orgasm feeling.

For most other feelings, including emotional feelings and also the feeling of physical pain, the mind part that sends that feeling to the awareness typically utilizes only a fraction of the total allocation for carrying the data that causes that feeling, with the size of that fraction depending on the wanted intensity of that feeling.

 

[148] Given that general intelligence seems to be inherited from the mother, it follows that this inheritance, at least in part, is in the form of an allocation plan, that allocates the awareness-particle input channels to the intellectual mind parts.

 

[149] This explanation for human mental differences, that they result primarily from differences in how the awareness-particle input channels have been allocated, means that humanity as a whole can share the same underlying programming of the mind parts. This greatly lessens the burden placed on the learned-program mechanism and its associated sharing mechanism (section 3.6), because there is no need to suggest that there are many substantially different versions of human mental programming, and likewise there is no need to suggest that human mental differences result from localized evolution of an individual’s mental programming over a short time frame.

One implication of this explanation for human mental differences is that the limiting factor for consciously expressed intelligence is the limited number of awareness-particle input channels, which is insufficient to fully connect all the various mind parts so that each mind part is connected to its maximum potential, assuming that a mind part’s maximum potential is represented by the extent to which the most capable people have the mental abilities associated with that mind part.

 

Thus, if there were no limit on the number of awareness-particle input channels, each person could have the math ability of a great mathematician such as Newton, the writing ability of a great writer such as Dickens, the inventiveness of a great inventor such as Edison, the graphic-arts ability of a great artist such as Michelangelo, and so on (note: feel free to replace the names of Newton, Dickens, Edison, and Michelangelo with the names of those you recognize or revere as the most capable in those areas).

 

[150] The explanation that we all share the same underlying mental programming but the limiting factor for its conscious expression is the limited number of awareness-particle input channels, explains the commonly observed truism that excelling (compared to the average) in one or more ways is accompanied by deficits (compared to the average) elsewhere. For example, when I was a teenager in high-school, it was a commonplace truism that the jocks (athletes) were stupid, and the smart kids were unathletic.

 

Well, it was true about myself and most of my friends (smart and unathletic), but there was an exception in that one of my friends was smart and also very athletic, which only means that his deficits were elsewhere. In effect, the allocation of awareness-particle input channels is what is known as a zero-sum game, where the gain of one player is a loss by the same amount for the other players. The players are the various mental programs (mind parts) that have outputs intended for connection to the awareness particle. Each of these mental programs is a potential recipient of an allocation of awareness-particle input channels, and this allocation defines the extent to which the mental program can connect its awareness-intended outputs to the awareness particle.

There are many players in this allocation game (I estimate more than 50 players), and the number of channels to be allocated is large (at least several million), so there is a very large number of different allocation plans for humanity that are sufficiently different enough from each other that an outside observer would be able to see differences between people having these different allocation plans.

About the truism that excelling in one or more ways is accompanied by deficits elsewhere, I have long been aware of many of my own various deficits (compared to the average). My sensory and motor deficits include: a weak sense of smell; a below-average sense of taste; low athletic ability. My intellectual deficits include: no artistic ability and a below-average memory for many of the things that the average person remembers, such as remembering details of one’s own life; I also have a poor sense of direction. My emotional deficits, as far as I know, are somewhat typical for a man (men on average have a more limited range of emotions than women).

For most people, their allocation plan, regarding how it allocates to the various intellectual abilities, spreads the wealth, so to speak, and is not so one-sided that one intellectual ability is far above average while most of the other intellectual abilities are far below average, which appears to be the case for those persons known as idiot savants. Psychologist David Gershaw gives an overview regarding idiot savants:

Leslie Lemke - born mentally retarded, blind, and suffering from cerebral palsy - sat down at the piano for the first time and played an almost perfect rendition of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto!

Bob, now in his sixties is a “calendar calculator” - he can name the day of the week for any given date since 1947. He gives most of his answers in less than 8 seconds! Yet Bob is mentally retarded. He lives in a foster home, because he cannot even manage simple daily living skills.

Although these people would perform below normal on any conventional measure of intelligence, they have fantastic abilities in very limited areas. In the past, psychologists have referred to such people as idiot savants - a term that literally means “learned idiots.”

However, this term is not really correct. First, although they are mentally retarded, they are not idiots - those at the lowest level of intelligence. Also they are not savants - people with great knowledge. Their amazing talents - most often in the areas of music, art, mathematics, calendar calculation or memory for obscure facts - are in sharp contrast to their low levels of general functioning. Psychologists estimate that less than one percent of mentally retarded people have some sort of “savant” talents.

In addition, an estimated 10% of autistic people have these “savant” abilities. Autism is a disorder that affects communication, learning and emotions - and sometimes includes mental retardation. Autistic people shun human relationships but may become completely absorbed with mechanical objects. [Gershaw, David. Islands of Genius, 1988. At: http://www.members.cox.net/dagershaw/lol/GeniusIsland.html]

In the case of idiot savants, besides having a severely unbalanced and one-sided allocation, it may also be the case that the total number of awareness-particle input channels that are allocated to the various intellectual abilities is substantially below average. In the case of a mentally retarded person who has no savant ability, his allocation plan is more balanced, but for whatever reason his allocation plan simply allocates too few awareness-particle input channels to the various intellectual abilities.

Autism, mentioned in the above quote, is another condition that is understandable in terms of being the result of an allocation plan that allocates a substantially below-average number of awareness-particle input channels to those mental programs involved in providing what the condition is deficient in. According to the Autism Society of America:

Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life. … Children and adults with autism typically have difficulties in verbal and non-verbal communication, social interactions, and leisure or play activities.
…

The overall incidence of autism is consistent around the globe, but is four times more prevalent in boys than girls. Autism knows no racial, ethnic, or social boundaries, and family income, lifestyle, and educational levels do not affect the chance of autism’s occurrence. [What is Autism?. At: http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer?pagename=whatisautism]

About the much greater incidence of autism in males, there is a simple explanation: Women are known to be on average much more social and communicative than men. Thus, the allocation plan for the average female allocates many more awareness-particle input channels to those mental programs involved in socializing and communicating, than does the allocation plan for the average male.

 

Thus, more males than females will have autism. More specifically, if one were to see the distribution curve (it is probably a bell curve) plotting for the entire female population the distribution of the number of awareness-particle input channels allocated to the mental programs involved in socializing and communicating, and compare this distribution curve with the same distribution curve for the entire male population, then, given that autism is “four times more prevalent in boys than girls,” this mean that the area under the male distribution curve between point 0 (no awareness-particle input channels allocated to the mental programs involved in socializing and communicating) and point x (the maximum allocation - to the mental programs involved in socializing and communicating - that is still likely to result in a diagnosis of autism; likely means at least 50% probability) is four times the area under the female distribution curve between those same two points (0 and x).

 

[151] In section 10.2 it was mentioned that the Caretakers apparently have the same two genders as mankind. Given this current section, one can outline the evolutionary process that would over time result in the Caretakers having two genders. This same evolutionary process also explains the two human genders (supplementing and in addition to the organic reason involving sexual reproduction):

Assume that at some point in their evolutionary development the Caretakers reached the same situation that currently applies to mankind, in which the limiting factor for their consciously expressed self (including their senses, feelings and emotions, personality, and intelligence) is the limited number of awareness-particle input channels, which is insufficient to fully connect all the various mind parts so that each mind part is connected to its maximum potential.

 

In this situation, each newly formed Caretaker - assuming they undergo a rebirth process, albeit without a physical body - is faced with a winner-take-all choice, because, as a rule, the allocation of awareness-particle input channels, once done, does not change, except for certain age-related changes such as the age-related orgasm loss in my own case, and the other changes that happen at different stages in one’s growth to adulthood and one’s decline into old age (see the discussion in the next section about how the allocation plan changes for humans at different stages in their development as they grow and age).

As sociologists have already noted, it is known in human society that a winner-take-all election scheme eventually results in only two major political parties that capture most of the votes. Similarly, one may assume that the evolving Caretaker society would eventually have only two major allocation plans for allocating the awareness-particle input channels - resulting in their two genders, which are apparently similar to our own two genders.

 

Each newly formed Caretaker, in effect, typically chooses one of these two major allocation plans (presumably this choice is made unconsciously), and then makes adjustments to that allocation plan as wanted and/or needed according to whatever influences are involved (presumably these adjustments are also made unconsciously).

 

[152] Of these three subdivisions of mankind - gender, race, and nation - nation is the smallest subdivision. In effect, each nation has two different allocation plans that each allocate the awareness-particle input channels. One of these allocation plans defines what an average man of that nation is like (in terms of mental qualities), and the other allocation plan defines what an average woman of that nation is like (in terms of mental qualities).

 

[153] Given the gender basis of the three races (section 9.2), one may infer that the african race has the strongest orgasm, the oriental race has the weakest orgasm, and the caucasian race is inbetween.

9.7 Allocation Changes during Growth and Aging

from JohMann Website - 2006 (11th ed.)
Regarding how the awareness-particle input channels are allocated among the various mind parts, different changes happen at different times in one’s life, with most or all of the substantial changes (changes that are noticeable) happening during growth and aging.

The in-between period, between the allocation changes that happen during growth and aging, begins sometime after puberty and extends until one reaches the first substantial allocation changes that happen during middle age.

Puberty - defined as the period during which one becomes capable of sexual reproduction - has both physical changes and allocation changes. The allocation changes include giving the sexual mind part a substantial share of the awareness-particle input channels. Among the allocations to the sexual mind part are allocations for carrying the feelings of sexual desire and attraction, and also allocations for feeling sexual pleasure, including an allocation for the orgasm feeling.^[154]

Prior to puberty, children have much fewer awareness-particle input channels allocated to the sexual mind part. However, given that there are many statements by mothers remarking how their infants and young children like to play with their genitals, this suggests that prior to puberty at least some awareness-particle input channels have already been allocated for carrying feelings of sexual pleasure.

Some of the other parts of the sexual mind part may also have non-zero allocations prior to puberty, although these allocations are much smaller than what is allocated at the time of puberty.

Puberty is when the single largest increase in allocations to the sexual mind part happens, but there may be additional allocation increases that happen in the years immediately after puberty, since it seems typical for sexual desire and attraction to grow and blossom in the immediately following years. However, regardless, any additional allocation increases to the sexual mind part are probably completed well before the sexual peak is reached, which for average caucasian males is said to be roughly age 19 (puberty for them happens at roughly age 12).

As was explained in section 10.6, the allocation of awareness-particle input channels is a zero-sum game. What is allocated to one mind part must be taken from one or more other mind parts. This means that the allocation increases for the sexual mind part are offset by allocation decreases in one or more other mind parts.

A likely candidate for the source of a substantial fraction of the awareness-particle input channels that are shifted to the sexual mind part is the mind part involved in learning new spoken languages.

Very young children easily learn whatever spoken languages they are exposed to, and this implies a substantial allocation of awareness-particle input channels to the mind part involved in learning new spoken languages. For the average person, this ability to learn a new spoken language is substantially less after puberty, and continues to decline in the following years. By adulthood, this ability to learn a new spoken language is mostly gone.^[155]

There are certainly more allocation changes that happen as one grows from an infant to an adult, at different points along the way, involving various mind parts, but the two allocation changes described above - allocation increases for the sexual mind part, and allocation decreases for the mind part involved in learning new spoken languages - are easy to see and understand, and they happen to most people.

During the growth period from an infant to an adult, there are physical changes, allocation changes, and other changes that are neither physical changes nor allocation changes (for example, the higher average rate at which data is fed to the soliton when one is a child - mentioned in section 7.3 - is neither a physical change nor an allocation change).

Similarly, during the aging period from middle age till death from old age, there are physical changes, allocation changes, and other changes that are neither physical changes nor allocation changes.

In 2001 (at age 45) I wrote about my own entry into middle age as follows:

With middle age comes changes: both the mind and the body decline in various ways. I entered middle age about a month after my 41st birthday, undergoing the various bodily changes - such as a decrease in how much the bladder can empty - that are described in the medical literature.

Also, in my first month of middle age, my former ability to do mental work about 70 hours per week - in my case, programming work - rapidly declined to about 40 hours per week (after I had experienced this mental-work decline, which has remained unchanged since then, I understood where the 40-hour work-week came from).

Although for the most part the big middle-age changes that I experienced happened to me in that first month of middle age, there have been a few lesser changes that have happened in the last few years.

One thing I remember telling people the first year or two after my entry into middle age, is that during my 20s I had an excess of physical energy; during my 30s the excess energy was gone but nothing was missing (there were no deficits, and everything still worked the same); but upon my entry into middle age, that was my first big experience with the negative effects of aging.

I had substantially less physical energy, and I had specific physical deficits in the sense that certain specific body functions were no longer working as well or effortlessly as they used to.^[156],[157]

Roughly one and a half years after my entry into middle age, at about age 42½, I suddenly lost my interest in listening to music and watching movies. At the time of that loss, there were no physical changes, illnesses, dietary changes, or other changes happening in my life. Thus, my previous interest in listening to music and watching movies simply disappeared with no apparent cause, other than that I was getting older. This loss of interest has remained with me unchanged for the last seven years (I am writing this at about age 49½).

My current thinking about that loss is that it was probably due to an allocation change. More specifically, before my loss I probably had an allocation of awareness-particle input channels for carrying a pleasure feeling whose intensity was based on whatever criteria the relevant mind part was using to judge how good a piece of music was. Thus, I listened to music I liked because I was getting pleasure from listening to that music.

But once that allocation was gone, so was the pleasure, and my reason for listening to music.^[158],[159]

The simultaneous loss of my prior interest in watching movies - more specifically, I had a decades-long habit of going at least once a month to a movie theatre to watch a movie - was probably also due to my loss of interest in music, since the movies I watched typically had a lot of music in them, and those movie theatres all had good sound systems.

At about age 45½ my orgasm disappeared, with noticeable reallocation effects afterwards, as described in section 10.6. At about age 48½ (around late March/early April 2004), I underwent another big change.

Knowing that I would probably want to write about it in the next edition of this book, I wrote the following account on August 16, 2004 (edited for improved readability and clarity):

I finally came to the conclusion that the smells in the kitchen refrigerator and elsewhere in the house, starting roughly two months ago, is because my sense of smell has improved compared to my previous sense of smell.

Note that around late March/early April I knew I was changing in some negative ways, because it seemed that my sexual interest had dropped down greatly compared to my previous level of sexual interest (this drop did not recover, it is still there now, five months later). This drop reminds me of the much smaller sexual-interest drop that coincided with or followed my orgasm loss at age 45½. So, since my entry into middle age, this is the second time my sexual-interest level has undergone a significant noticeable decrease that is permanent.

So, I have now put 2 and 2 together, and I understand that the improvement in my sense of smell, which became noticeable roughly two months ago, is a result of a re-allocation of awareness-particle input channels that were previously allocated to my sexual mind part. And so, like for the time between my orgasm loss and noticing game-playing improvement, roughly three months had elapsed.

 

So, in both cases the reallocation process took roughly three months.
 

Added August 27, 2004:

I also think my ambition drive (trying to be descriptive) is weaker now (I had already noticed this when I wrote the August 16 comment, but I had no description for it). So, given my sexual-interest decline and ambition decline that happened back around early April, I can see how I am heading toward becoming how old men seem: sexual interest at 0 (like was described in Plato’s dialog), and a mild manner (ambition and competitiveness are at 0).

It is now mid-April 2005 as I write this, and I want to comment on a few things in my above statement.

My sense of smell did indeed improve greatly compared to what it was previously. Many times last year, both indoors and outdoors, I was actively walking around, investigating, smelling different things, and noting smells and scents that were new to me.

The newness of my improved sense of smell has since worn off, and I am used to it now. Note that my statement in section 10.6 - my sensory and motor deficits include:

• a weak sense of smell

• a below-average sense of taste

• low athletic ability,

- was written by me in March 2004 for the 9th edition of this book. I no longer have a weak sense of smell, but I did when I wrote that.

I guess my sense of smell is now close to being average, or at least a lot closer to being average than it was, since I can now smell the same things that other people smell and talk about, which was not the case before. Note that I had learned early in my life that I had a weak sense of smell, because many times in my life I have been in the company of other people who were talking about smells, such as food smells, that either I could not smell at all or could only smell weakly if I got close enough.

About the decline in my ambition: Either coincident with, or shortly after the late March/early April 2004 changes that happened to me, I knew I had changed in a big way, but it took time for me to understand and verbalize to myself how I had changed.

The sexual-interest decline was quickly apparent and easy to state. But I had also changed in a way that was not easy for me to see and state. Thus, it was not until roughly five months after those changes that I was ready to explain that other big change as being a substantial decline in my ambition.

In terms of allocation changes, middle age includes a reallocation away from the sexual mind part. There may also be reallocations away from certain other mind parts, which in my case included the music-pleasure and ambition mind parts.

More recently, around the beginning of 2005 at age 49, I had a reallocation away from my concentration mind part.^[160]

It is said that one grows wise with age. When I was young, I just assumed that insofar as this saying is true, the reason for it is simply accumulated life experience. Certainly, life experience is an important factor in being wise.

However, given that middle age sees a reallocation away from the sexual mind part, this means that as men and women pass thru middle age, they are going to see increased allocations for one or more other mind parts, some of which may be mind parts involved with wisdom, including whatever mind parts are involved with understanding, judgment, and being knowledgeable.

Although the large allocation losses for the sexual mind part during middle age are easy to see, typically less obvious and easy to see are where the de-allocated awareness-particle input channels are re-allocated to.

Based on my own experience so far, it seems that re-allocations tend to go where one has the greatest allocation deficits compared to what an average person of one’s gender, race, and nation would have in terms of their allocations. In my own case, it was only because I had some big allocation deficits compared to the average, and two of these big allocation deficits were each largely erased in their entirety by a single reallocation, that I experienced such big and easy-to-see reallocation changes.

Thus, after my orgasm loss at age 45½ and the consequent reallocation, I quickly went from being a long-time very-weak first-person-shooter computer-game player who had to use the lowest difficulty settings and god-mode cheats to have any chance of being able to get thru the game, to being a good player of about average ability who was able to consistently get thru these games with his newfound skills and abilities, playing at normal difficulty settings without any cheats.^[161]

Similarly, after the large decline in my ambition and sexual interest at age 48½ and the consequent reallocation, I quickly went from having a weak sense of smell to having a sense of smell that is much closer to average than it was. But besides these reallocation-caused changes in my game-playing ability and sense of smell, I also had a few smaller and less-obvious reallocation-caused changes elsewhere.^[162],[163]

After middle age comes old age, during which there are probably additional allocation changes for those who live long enough to experience them. At some point during old age, if not sooner, comes death and the afterlife.

During the afterlife there are probably allocation changes on a scale that make the allocation changes of middle age and old age seem small in comparison. Specifically, after first the physical body and then the bion body are abandoned, the previous allocations that were used for carrying all the body sensations and feelings are probably reallocated elsewhere.

Similarly, the previous allocations that were used for carrying the sense of taste and the sense of smell are probably reallocated elsewhere.

So, where do these reallocations go?

Note that out-of-body projectionists cannot answer this question from their own experience, since by definition they still have both their physical body and bion body, even when their awareness is projected away from these two bodies as during a lucid-dream projection. Thus, no person can say from experience how greatly his conscious mind is enhanced in the afterlife, until sometime after his death.

However, when I think of how large the total allocation must be for carrying to the awareness all the body sensations and feelings that can be felt simultaneously at many different points on the body, including carrying the sense of touch which has a large intensity range, carrying the feeling of bodily pain which has a very large intensity range, and carrying the feeling of how the parts of the body are currently positioned relative to each other even as they move, my own guess is that after the discard of the bion body, and after the passage of whatever time is then needed for the consequent reallocations, that, as experienced by the awareness, there are large increases in the areas of intelligence, memory recall, visualization, and emotion.^{[164],[165],[166],[167],[168],[169]}
 

Footnotes

[154] In this section, as a literary convenience, allocated awareness-particle input channels are said to carry the perceived end-result of the data they carry to the awareness, instead of being said to carry the data that causes that perception in the awareness. Thus, for example, “carrying the feelings of sexual desire and attraction” instead of “carrying the data that causes the feelings of sexual desire and attraction.” Doing this avoids excessive repetition of such phrases as “the data that causes”.

Also in this section, each instance of the word reallocations (and likewise for the singular reallocation) has one of two meanings:

1. The word reallocations is referring to both sides of the allocation ledger: the mind piece or pieces that had the allocation decrease (loss); and also the mind piece or pieces that had the consequent allocation increase (gain). Regarding the number of awareness-particle input channels involved in this reallocation, the total allocation increase equals the total allocation decrease.

2. The word reallocations is referring to only the gain side of the allocation ledger: the mind piece or pieces that had an allocation increase (gain). This allocation increase is a consequence of an earlier allocation decrease (loss) by one or more other mind pieces.

   The intended meaning for each instance should be clear from the context or larger context. Or, if it is not clear, assume whichever meaning is most reasonable for that context.

 

[155] I’m like most people in that I lost my ability to easily learn a new spoken language as I grew older (the Spanish courses I had in high-school, and the four semesters of German I had in college, were both a complete waste of time as I quickly forgot what I had learned, and I never could say that rolling-r sound that Spanish has, nor pronounce German too well; I was already too old).

 

However, given the explanation that this loss was due to a reallocation of awareness-particle input channels elsewhere, away from the mind part involved in learning new spoken languages, this implies that the unconscious mind still has the capability to support easy learning of a new spoken language, since there is no reason to presume any changes in the underlying programming and algorithms that were involved when one was young and able to easily learn a new spoken language.

Presumably, if my awareness-particle input channels were reallocated so that the mind part involved in learning new spoken languages had the same allocations it had when I was a child, then my ability to easily learn a new spoken language would return. Well, no such allocation changes have happened, and no such allocation changes are expected, at least not before my next rebirth.

 

However, in late 2004 I got an unexpected personal demonstration that my unconscious mind can still do what is needed for the easy learning of a new spoken language, at least for that part of learning a new spoken language for which I still had an abundant allocation of awareness-particle input channels, which in my case was simply my hearing. In anticipation that I would probably want to discuss this personal experience in the next edition of this book, I wrote a detailed account of my experience about a week after it happened (the written account is dated November 16, 2004, which means I wrote it on my 49th birthday). Here it is (edited for improved readability and clarity):

In early July 2004 I got a broadband internet connection. Soon afterwards I tried file-sharing for the first time, and I soon discovered a huge world of Japanese anime that I could download and watch. I have long been a fan of Japanese anime, but my only experience with it up until that point had been some series and movies that I had seen on TV, and they had all been translated and dubbed into English.

Initially, I just downloaded Japanese anime that had been dubbed into English, because that is what I was already used to, and English is the only language I know, but soon I was downloading and watching fansubbed anime (the original unedited Japanese-language version, with English subtitles added by anime fans, hence the word fansubbed).

Watching fansubbed anime was my first exposure to the spoken form of the Japanese language. Initially, spoken Japanese sounded musical and beautiful to me, but that impression soon wore off after watching a few episodes and hearing roughly an hour total of spoken Japanese. Also, spoken Japanese all ran together: when a character was speaking, I only heard a continuous stream of sound with no word breaks; the only noticeable breaks happened when the speaker briefly stopped speaking, at what I guess was an occasional phrase or sentence break (people often pause when speaking, if for no other reason than to catch their breath so they can resume speaking).

This condition of hearing spoken Japanese as a continuous stream persisted and I got used to it. But in early November 2004, after having watched in total what I later estimated to be somewhere between 30 and 40 hours of fansubbed anime, while in the middle of watching an episode, I suddenly got quite a surprise when all of a sudden I went from hearing spoken Japanese as continuous, to hearing spoken Japanese as having what I presume were word breaks (at least, that is where my unconscious mind thought the word breaks were), as if a switch had suddenly been turned on.

At the time, I recognized the significance and underlying reason for this event, because just about a week earlier during my daily web-browsing habit, which includes checking Slashdot, I had seen How Infants Crack the Speech Code, which referred to Early Language Acquisition: Cracking The Speech Code, which says:

Infants learn language with remarkable speed … New data show that infants use computational strategies to detect the statistical and prosodic patterns in language input, and that this leads to the discovery of phonemes and words. …

Each language uses a unique set of about 40 phonemes, and infants must learn to partition varied speech sounds into these phonemic categories. …

There is evidence that infants analyse the statistical distributions of sounds that they hear in ambient language, and use this information to form phonemic categories. They also learn phonotactic rules  -  language-specific rules that govern the sequences of phonemes that can be used to compose words.

To identify word boundaries, infants can use both transitional probabilities between syllables, and prosodic cues, which relate to linguistic stress. Most languages are dominated by either trochaic words (with the stress on the first syllable) or iambic ones (with the stress on later syllables). Infants seem to use a combination of statistical and prosodic cues to segment words in speech.

Ever since that moment when I started hearing what I assume were word breaks in spoken Japanese, I have no conscious control over this process, and I cannot turn it off, just like I cannot control or stop the word breaks that I hear in spoken English. This is like so much of the mental processing that takes place in our unconscious minds, in that we have no conscious control over it. Instead, we just get the final product of all that mental processing, sent to the awareness in a form that causes the perceptions that we experience.

At the time I am writing this footnote, in late March 2005, which is about 4½ months after I began hearing spoken Japanese with word breaks, I am still watching Japanese fansubbed anime (I watch roughly 1 to 1½ hours a night, when I eat my dinner), and nothing has changed in how I hear spoken Japanese, other than that I quickly got used to hearing it with word breaks, although I guess my unconscious mind is now doing a better job of deciding where the word breaks are, since I have heard many more hours of spoken Japanese in these last few months (it wouldn’t surprise me if my unconscious mind is still making mistakes, but I wouldn’t know since I only consciously recognize and know the meaning of maybe half-a-dozen spoken Japanese words; my tiny Japanese vocabulary was learned by matching the English subtitle with the heard Japanese word).

 

[156] Regarding my entry into middle age, the decline in how many hours of mental work I could do per week certainly had a cause, but I do not see this cause as involving or requiring allocation changes.

 

[157] Regarding the cause of aging, there are many reasons to believe that aging is programmed, including the following:

• programmed cell death (aka apoptosis)
  Within multicellular organisms, it is commonplace for cells to die deliberately. For an organism during its development, apoptosis is used in different places at different times to remove and/or sculpt tissue into the wanted final form. An oft given example is the apoptosis of tissue between the wanted digits of what will become a terminal appendage such as a paw or hand. At times other than early development, such as for an adult organism, apoptosis is ongoing as an offset to ongoing cell division which adds new cells. The idea is to keep the total number of cells of the given type constant. In healthy adult humans, high rates of ongoing cell division and offsetting apoptosis happen in a number of different places, including the blood and its associated bone marrow, the skin, and the intestinal lining.

   

• childhood progeria
  This is a very rare condition, described as follows by The Progeria Research Foundation:
  
  Although they are born looking healthy, children with Progeria begin to display many characteristics of accelerated aging at around 18-24 months of age. Progeria signs include growth failure, loss of body fat and hair, aged-looking skin, stiffness of joints, hip dislocation, generalized atherosclerosis, cardiovascular (heart) disease and stroke. The children have a remarkably similar appearance, despite differing ethnic background. Children with Progeria die of atherosclerosis (heart disease) at an average age of thirteen years (with a range of about 8 - 21 years). [What is Progeria?. At: http://www.progeriaresearch.org/what_is_progeria.shtml]
   

• the appearance of a consistent aging plan for the species, instead of the appearance of random breakdowns and failures
  The only real alternative to saying that aging is programmed is to say that aging is the result of an ongoing accumulation of random breakdowns and failures in the organism’s various systems (these systems are composed of cells). The causes of these random breakdowns and failures would be whatever physical causes one wants to imagine for them, such as imagining the buildup over time of poisonous molecules in the cells, or imagining random errors in such things as DNA transcription, resulting in defective proteins being made.

   

  If aging were the result of an ongoing accumulation of random breakdowns and failures within cells, then one would expect to see randomness regarding which systems are affected, how they are affected, and when they are affected, when looking at a large population of a given species, such as the human species. However, as I know from my own aging experience so far, the physical changes I have experienced were just those very specific physical changes that are described in the medical literature as typical for a man of my age.
  
  For those who are familiar with the large number and variety of different physical systems in the body, if aging were caused or mostly caused by an ongoing accumulation of random breakdowns and failures in the organism’s cells, then one would expect to see much more randomness as to which systems are affected, how they are affected, and the ages at which they are affected. But this is not the case. Instead, one sees an aging plan for the species that targets specific systems for specific kinds of degradation at specific ages as one grows older.
  
  The suddenness of many aging effects is another thing that seems inconsistent with the idea that aging effects are the result of an ongoing accumulation of random breakdowns and failures in cells. My own experience with certain physical aging effects, including the decrease in how much my bladder can empty, the decrease in my ejaculate volume, and the appearance of age lines on my face, is that for each of these aging effects, when that aging effect happened, it happened over a very short time frame of at most a few days, and then that specific degradation remained unchanged for many years afterwards, neither lessening nor worsening.
  
  Given that aging is programmed, and given bions, our aging plan is obviously carried out by our bions. Regarding the form and residence of our aging plan, our aging plan may be in our DNA, encoded somewhere in the so-called “junk” DNA whose language is presently unknown (section 2.6). Or, if not encoded in our DNA, then our aging plan only exists in the memory of our bions and/or the bions of other members of our species.
  
  The aging plan for our species has presumably evolved over the life of our species into its current form, with variants depending on gender, race, nationality, and individual factors. When our species began, it probably copied much or all of its original aging plan from one or more other animal species that preceded it.
  
  Regarding the reason for aging, the reason must ultimately trace to our finite nature, including the finite memory storage and finite processing speed of each computing element. The idea of living forever in some constant form is inconsistent with finite memory. The end result of our finite nature is the life cycle that we and other intelligent-particle beings experience. The life cycle both begins and ends in rebirth. The time of rebirth is a time of renewal, when among other things there is a system-wide reset that clears out at least most of the old memories, making room for new memories in the new life.
  
  This basic pattern of a life cycle that begins and ends in rebirth, has probably evolved early in the history of intelligent-particle beings in our galaxy, with parallel evolution of this same basic pattern everywhere in our galaxy where intelligent-particle beings have separately evolved. The finite nature of intelligent-particle beings is independent of whether or not there is any physical embodiment at any stage in their life cycle. Indeed, physical embodiment like what we see on our own planet is probably a rarity and late development in what is already an old galaxy.

Given that we and the other physically embodied intelligent-particle beings on Earth - including all animals that have a soliton - follow a life cycle that begins and ends in rebirth, it appears that each species’ aging plan has evolved as the preferred transition method by that species when moving from the physically embodied state to the physically disembodied state, assuming the transition is not forced by some other means such as accident, illness, or predation.

 

[158] Back when I lost my interest in listening to music, I was reminded of the commonplace stereotype of old people who only listen to music that they heard when they were young. I soon found myself in the same situation. After I lost my interest in listening to music, I rarely listened to music, but when I did listen to music, I wanted to listen to music that I heard and liked when I was young, in my teens or 20s.

Since my loss, I don’t feel any pleasure when I listen to the music from my youth, so why do I have that preference? Well, I no longer feel any pleasure from listening to any music, but I used to have that pleasure, so one reason for my preference is that I am returning to what used to give me pleasure, even though it no longer gives me pleasure. The other reason, and this reason is often mentioned by old people, is that it brings back memories of their youth. In my own case, when I listen to music that I liked when I was young, I tend to recall and think about my life from those times.

Even though I no longer feel any pleasure from listening to music, I can still listen to new music and judge whether it is good or bad. For example, about ten days before writing this footnote - I am writing this footnote in early April 2005 - I got an email from someone who sent me some links to some music he had created. In his email he said he was a musician and he wanted to give me some of his music in exchange for my writings which he liked. Well, since he put it like that, I kind of felt like I should listen to his music even though I didn’t want to. So, I listened once to each of the four pieces of music he had given me links to.

Those four pieces of music were a kind of music I hadn’t heard before. He had described it as “acid techno and industrial”. Three of the pieces sounded good to me (surprisingly good), and one piece sounded bad, and I knew what I didn’t like about that bad piece. But after fulfilling my self-imposed obligation, I had no desire to listen again to any of his music, since listening to music no longer gives me any pleasure.

Given my own experience, and also given the need for dedicated allocations to avoid channel-sharing conflicts (section 9.6), it follows that the allocation of awareness-particle input channels for carrying music-listening pleasure is separate from whatever allocations are involved in carrying a rational judgment and critique of that music. However, presumably the same mind part is the dominant source for both the explicit rational judgment and the implicit judgment of felt pleasure, so that they always coincide and agree.

 

In the felt-pleasure case, that mind part sends that feeling directly to the awareness, but in the rational judgment and critique case, that mind part is just an input to some other mind part that constructs the rational judgment and critique and sends it to the awareness.

 

[159] Given the gender basis of the three races (section 9.2), and given the strong association that the african race has with music, it seems likely that the african race has the biggest allocation of awareness-particle input channels for carrying the music-listening pleasure feeling, the oriental race has the smallest allocation, and the caucasian race is in-between. This also agrees with my own observation that men on average are more into music than women.

 

Presumably, men are more into music because they are getting a bigger reward from music, feeling more pleasure when listening to whatever their minds judge as good music. Note that the pleasure one feels from listening to music is also a motivator for creating new music. Thus, africans on average are more motivated to create new music than the other two races, and men on average are more motivated to create new music than women.

 

[160] Around the beginning of 2005 at age 49, I lost my previous ability to intensely concentrate. At the time, this change went largely unnoticed by me, because its primary effect was that I was simply no longer concentrating like I used to when I did my work. At the time it just seemed to me like I didn’t want to concentrate any more.

 

Thus, for most of 2005 I didn’t see the change as an actual loss, although it was, because, as I write this footnote in June 2006, about 1½ years have passed, and the state of intense concentration that prior to 2005 I used to enter easily when doing certain intellectual tasks - including such things as my programming work and in general whenever I wanted to think deeply about something - is now just a memory for me, because I can no longer concentrate like that, and I haven’t done so for the last 1½ years. Just to be clear, I can still concentrate, but just not intensely like I used to.

I guess my current ability to concentrate is about average for a man of my nationality, whereas before 2005 it was well above average, because I’ve known for a long time that most people couldn’t concentrate like I could. Prior to 2005 it was routine for me to concentrate so intensely that I had to take precautions so that I wouldn’t be disturbed while in that state, because if I were disturbed by such things as a phone ringing or someone unexpectedly talking to me, I would have what I called the startle reaction where I would kinda jump with shock as my intense concentration was broken.

Apparently, the ability to concentrate requires an allocation of awareness-particle input channels. In my own case, around the beginning of 2005 I lost much of my previous allocation for concentration. This allocation loss was apparently reallocated elsewhere in a way that greatly lessened a memory deficit I had: my memory deficit was a very below-average ability to remember text sequences. In June 2005 I noticed the memory improvements enough to write about them. Here are the notes I wrote on June 5, 2005 (edited for improved readability and clarity):

This morning, prior to getting out of bed, I was recalling some sentences from my book [I mean this book, for which I had just finished work on the 10th edition about a month previous], and I knew I was recalling those sentences verbatim. It soon occurred to me that this was something new for me, because in the past I could never recall anything from my own writings verbatim unless it was a very short phrase of at most a few words.

As I thought about it, while still lying in bed prior to getting up, I tried to remember how long this had been going on, and I thought I was also recalling sentences verbatim prior to today, but I’m not sure. Regardless, this morning is the first time I noticed this verbatim recall of more than a few words. As I sit here writing this now, it occurred to me to do a simple test of my memory, so I picked up a sheet of technical documentation that I last read a few months ago, and I selected and silently read once to myself, at my normal reading speed, a sentence I chose at random from the middle of that page.

 

I put the page down and then tried to recall that sentence I had just read, and I was surprised to see that I was able to recall what I thought was the entire sentence. I immediately checked my recall by rereading that sentence (the sentence is 20 words long). I had made a few mistakes, but even so, this level of recall is definitely new for me, because I could never do anywhere close to this good in the past.

Up until now, prior to this improvement in my recall ability, I used to tell others that I could never recall anything verbatim, which was true. This inability to recall verbatim included my own writings and all other writings, and also anything spoken or said by myself or others. So, up until now I always had to paraphrase when I remembered something I had read or heard, because I could never recall anything verbatim no matter how little time had passed, even if only seconds had passed since reading or hearing it and then trying to recall it verbatim.

 

I think my previous verbatim recall ability was far below average, but now it seems I got a reallocation from somewhere (I don’t know where), and my verbatim recall ability is now closer to being average. Actually, it just occurred to me that I did notice once or twice while I was doing that three-week [programming] job, which I finished two days ago, that my memory seemed better, but I didn’t think any more about it at that time, perhaps because I was very focused on doing that job. So, this improved recall looks very real, but I have no idea where the reallocation came from. What mind part lost the allocation that my recall mind part [more specifically, the mind part responsible for recalling a sequence of symbols] ended up getting? Well, whatever. But I’m glad to have this improved recall, because I always knew I was weak there.

The above notes talk specifically about a substantial improvement in my ability to remember word sequences, but my recall improvement is for any sequence of symbols, including sequences of letters and digits. For example, before this recall improvement, I was unable to read a several-digit number and remember that number long enough to type it into the computer a few seconds later (even a two-digit number was a problem for me). Thus, I was in the habit of always reading the number and typing it in at the same time, digit by digit, and then I would double or triple check that the number I typed in and see on the screen matches the number on the printed page.

 

Now, after my recall improvement that happened no later than May 2005, the situation is very different, as I can now read an arbitrary sequence of characters up to about six or seven characters in length, and still correctly remember that sequence several seconds later, giving me more than enough time to type it into the computer without having to look back at the printed page from which I read that sequence.

In late 2005 I finally realized that the offsetting loss for my memory gain was my concentration. Here are the notes I wrote on November 9, 2005 (edited for improved readability and clarity):

Around the end of September 2005, more than a month ago, it finally occurred to me that the counterbalancing loss for my memory gain was my concentration.

I remember that in late 2004 I was growing reluctant to desk-check my programming. [My habit was that I always concentrated intensely when I desk-checked my program code. As a rule, this allowed me to find any and all errors in that program code.] If I recall correctly, I stopped doing desk-checking in very-early 2005, but I’m not too sure about exactly when.

More tellingly, as far as I can remember, I haven’t had the startle reaction at all in 2005, and it’s certain that I can no longer enter the state of concentration that I used to enter on a routine basis when I did my work. I can’t recall when I last entered that state of concentration, other than that I was still doing it in late 2004.

In early 2005 when I got the new phone - [actually, it was the same old phone, but with a new phone number and an internet connection] - I left the ringer on and was no longer startled by it when it rang unexpectedly. [Prior to 2005 I always had the ringer on that phone turned off, forcing whoever was calling me to leave a message, because, if my phone were to ring when I was concentrating, I would have the startle reaction, which is something I wanted to avoid having, since it was always a big shock for me.]

Also, in early 2005 I noticed that my movements when fixing my dinner had become faster but less careful and deliberate. In the past I moved more slowly and deliberately. I guess my previous higher concentration level meant more was under my conscious control, hence I was more slow then.

This faster but less careful and deliberate way of fixing my food is paralleled with how my programming work has become faster but less careful and deliberate. The thought of having errors in my programming code [aka bugs] no longer seems as important to me as it used to be, and I certainly no longer carefully desk-check like I used to.

Besides preparing my dinner faster and with less care than I used to, another similar speedup that I noticed in the first half of 2005 - I no longer remember exactly when I first noticed it - was that I was typing on my computer keyboard substantially faster and less carefully than I used to. In the past, prior to 2005, I was a slow hunt-and-peck typist, and I almost never made a typo. However, ever since this typing speedup began, I’ve been typing substantially faster than my pre-2005 typing speed, and I often make typos which I quickly correct. Note that this typing speedup happened without my consciously wanting it to happen. I wasn’t trying to type faster. Instead, it just happened.

I think the reason that the loss of my previous ability to intensely concentrate also resulted in my faster and less careful body movements when fixing my dinner and also when typing, is that the decreased allocation to my concentration mind part meant not only a decrease in my maximum concentration level, but also a decrease in my average concentration level for when I do such ordinary tasks as fixing my dinner or typing at the keyboard. Thus, after the allocation decrease that happened around the beginning of 2005, my concentration level while doing a given task is on average lower than what it was before 2005.

Regarding why having a bigger allocation for symbol-sequence recall resulted in my being able to remember symbol sequences longer, I think the reason is the commonplace observation that memories, especially short-term memories, tend to weaken and fade with time. This weakening and fading away of memories as they age is what the awareness perceives, but this weakening and fading away is probably only a simulated effect, because the actual data on which the recalled memory is based, is stored somewhere in one or more of the intelligent particles that compose one’s mind, and this stored data will presumably retain perfect fidelity until it is eventually overwritten or erased, at which point it is truly lost and can no longer be the basis for a consciously recalled memory.

 

Regarding how this time-based weakening and fading away of consciously recalled memory is done, probably the mind part sending the recalled memory to the awareness gives that sent memory an intensity proportional to its age. More specifically, given the total allocation of awareness-particle input channels for that mind part, the fraction of that total allocation used to send a recalled memory to the awareness is proportional to the age of that memory: The more recent the memory, the larger the fraction; the older the memory, the smaller the fraction.

In my own case, before the allocation increase that happened to me in 2005, my symbol-sequence recall mind part had an allocation of awareness-particle input channels that was small compared to the average for a man of my nationality. With my small allocation, the fraction of that small allocation used for sending to my awareness a several-seconds-old memory of a sequence of just a few characters, resulted in an awareness-perceived memory that was already too weak for me to know with any certainty its content (in other words, I couldn’t remember it).

 

Presumably, the underlying algorithm first determines the fraction f for a given symbol-sequence memory based mostly on its age, and then simply multiplies f by that mind part’s total allocation to get the number of awareness-particle input channels used to carry to the awareness that symbol-sequence memory. Since my total allocation for that mind part was substantially increased in 2005, I can recall a given symbol-sequence memory for a longer time than was the case before that allocation increase.

Besides the symbol-sequence recall mind part, there are other recall mind parts that presumably have their own allocations of awareness-particle input channels. This is consistent with how some people are strong in certain kinds of memory and weak in others. For example, in my own case I was weak in symbol-sequence recall, but at the same time my visual recall was good (I believe my visual recall was, and still is, at least average, and maybe a little better than average).

 

[161] In the course of 2004 my interest in playing first-person-shooter computer games disappeared, even though my ability to successfully play thru them remained intact. I simply lost interest. I attribute this loss of interest to my ambition decline that happened earlier that year.

 

[162] After the large decline in my ambition and sexual interest at age 48½ and the consequent reallocation, besides the big change in my sense of smell, there were also a few smaller changes for me. In summary, as I reflect upon those smaller changes, it seems that I’ve gotten allocations for a few things that on average are more heavily allocated to women than men.

Most noticeable for me was a new feeling: happiness. My first recollection of when I was feeling happy was back in mid-2004 when I was in a supermarket having this feeling, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was feeling happy. And I was kind of shocked by it, because up until that time I only knew that happiness was a feeling that makes girls bounce around and be cheery with their happiness. That was the extent of my understanding of what happiness was, until I felt it for myself in that supermarket. Many times since then, I have found myself feeling happy at different times, with no apparent cause. This happiness feeling is just a mild feeling for me, but it’s nice when it happens.

It doesn’t look like I got a happiness allocation big enough to make me bounce around and be cheery, at least not to the extent I’ve seen girls do it, but the allocation I got was enough so that I can see from my own experience what the happiness feeling is like, and I can easily imagine that if this feeling were substantially intensified I would be bouncing around all cheery too. Happiness is a nice feeling. For me, most of its appearances have been when I was either acquiring food (in the supermarket) or preparing food (in the kitchen). Also, I have heard statements by women that they often felt happy during their pregnancy, and I have seen women acting happy when they are with their small children.

 

So, it looks like the happiness feeling is given as a reward for actions that are either life-sustaining, such as acquiring and preparing food, or life-perpetuating, such as having and caring for a child. So, it is easy to see why the happiness feeling on average is more heavily allocated to women than men, because, by virtue of their giving birth and being mother, women are more directly involved with life-perpetuating actions than men are. And, regarding life-sustaining actions, women on average are more involved with food acquisition and preparation than men are, and women can also breast-feed after giving birth.

 

[163] Another reallocation-caused change that I am sure of, after the large decline in my ambition and sexual interest at age 48½ and the consequent reallocation, is that I now find myself easily moved to feeling emotional and shedding tears when exposed to certain recalled memories and certain scenes in romance stories. My first conscious realization regarding this change was during a conversation I had in mid-February 2005 when I was telling a personal story that I had recalled and told before in past years without feeling anything, but during this telling I felt myself becoming very emotional and I felt like I was going to cry.

 

After that conversation, as I thought about what had just happened to me, I suspected that an allocation change was responsible, although there was already earlier evidence for this allocation change but I just didn’t see it until shortly before writing this footnote in late April 2005, after all the thinking I did in an effort to better understand how I had changed, so that I could write this footnote.

I mention in another footnote that I began watching downloaded Japanese anime in mid-2004. Prior to the latter half of 2004 I never had any interest in romance stories or shows, and I never watched them. The few romance scenes that I had seen in movies or on TV before that time had never emotionally moved me. Also, from my early teens until the latter half of 2004, I had only cried or felt like crying a few times in my life, and I had never cried or felt like crying for any recalled personal memory or for any scene in a movie or TV show.

 

Well, anyway, without even realizing it, during the latter half of 2004 I was interested in romance stories and I downloaded and watched several anime romance series, and I got emotional at times and shed a few tears while watching them. At that time, I just thought how great this Japanese anime was, and I didn’t make the connection that my having any interest in romance stories was something new to me.

Less than a week before writing this footnote, I downloaded and watched a subtitled non-anime Japanese romance series, and I got teary and emotional at a number of different points in that series. However, I did pay attention to the actual feeling, because I knew I would be writing this footnote. As far as I know, there is no English word for the feeling that goes along with the tears, which is why I’ve been using the word emotional in this footnote when I mean this feeling. Henceforth, I’ll use the phrase crying feeling when I mean this feeling.

My own experience with the crying feeling is that it seems to be a neutral feeling that is neither painful nor pleasant. The lack of an English word for the crying feeling is probably due to the feeling’s close association with being teary. In effect, given this close association, there is less need for a separate word for the crying feeling, because the crying feeling is implicit depending on the context when one uses words for being teary. For example, saying “that story made me cry,” implies that one felt the crying feeling when crying. Saying “I felt like crying,” implies that one felt the crying feeling even though one didn’t cry.

In terms of allocation changes, apparently I got a substantial allocation increase for whatever mind part is involved with causing crying and its associated crying feeling. I guess my newfound interest in romance stories also traces to this mind part, at least partially so.

 

[164] Although I don’t really know what may be typical in terms of specific reallocations during the afterlife, I can think of two possibilities that might be worth mentioning. The first possibility involves music-listening pleasure. Perhaps the reallocations include an allocation for music-listening pleasure, big enough to make listening to good music very pleasurable. Many lucid-dream projectionists have had incidents of hearing fantastic sounding music, and their experiences are a likely source for religious ideas of celestial music and angels singing.

 

In each incident, either the heard music was a construction of the lucid-dream projectionist’s own unconscious mind, or the heard music was originally constructed by one or more other minds and then telepathically copied to the mind of the lucid-dream projectionist who hears and remembers it. In the afterlife, after the reallocations, and assuming a substantial allocation for music-listening pleasure, one is probably a member of a community, many of whom at different times are actively consciously composing in their minds instrumental music or other kinds of music and/or songs, and then sharing their creations with the rest of the community. In such a community, perhaps much of the day is spent listening to music.

The second possibility involves the conscience. What if the reallocations include an allocation for the conscience, big enough to give a strong conscience. The end result could be the popular religious idea of judgment in the afterlife. However, instead of this afterlife judgment being carried out by some imaginary God or gatekeeper angel, the afterlife judgment is carried out by one’s own unconscious mind, specifically by the conscience mind part.

In my own case, I already have a strong conscience, and I learned early in life the kinds of actions I had to avoid so as to not be hounded by my conscience, which would hound me by having me often recall the specific infraction and feel bad about it. Note that the conscience only makes itself known after the fact, in the sense that the conscience only strikes after the action is done (the conscience is only concerned with actions involving others, including what is said to others; the conscience is not concerned with thoughts). Thus, when someone says that their conscience won’t let them do something, they mean that they expect to be hounded by their conscience if they were to do that action, so they are not going to do it.

Because I have a strong conscience, I never had any need to adopt an ethics code constructed by others, since my conscience is my ethics code. But what if my original allocation plan had been different, giving me little or no allocation for the conscience mind part, then perhaps at some point in my life I would have adopted a specific ethics code, and followed it. I have an analogy from my own experience:

I have never felt fear or terror in my life, nor have I ever been scared or afraid, so apparently I have a zero allocation for the fear mind part. Although I have never felt fear myself, I accept that fear is a real feeling that many people - perhaps most people - have experienced. This acceptance is based on the abundance of written and spoken material in this society that talks about fear as if it were a real feeling, and also based on conversations I’ve had with people who claim to have felt fear, been scared, been terrified, and such.

 

(Based on what I’ve been told, English has different words that all refer to the same fear feeling, including the words fright, scared, and terror. For example, I was told that being terrified means feeling fear more intensely than usual.)

 

One of these conversations was in the Fall of 2004, and the person I was talking with repeatedly made the point that fear has a protective purpose. In reply I said “obviously”, but he kept hammering the point that fear has the purpose of protecting the person from possible harm.

So, after that conversation, later that night, I had a sudden insight about the reason for a decades-long habit I had: Since at least my mid-20s I have had the habit of running thru my mind worst-case scenarios as the possible outcome for whatever possible action I was considering, and I then decided on that possible action based on my estimation of how probable a worst-case outcome was. The insight was that I was compensating for my lack of fear.

 

I was doing by conscious rational means what a person who feels fear does by simply feeling fear (the fear mind part probably uses the same basic algorithm that I was consciously using). Thus, I had developed an alternative protective mechanism for myself, because I still had to be protected, since the physical body has many needs - water, food, clothing, shelter - and is structurally weak and easily damaged. Similarly, a person who has no conscience or only a weak conscience should probably adopt an ethics code and try to follow it, to compensate for his lack of a conscience.

Regarding what should be in an ethics code, certainly the golden rule, which implies reciprocity and fair dealing, should be in any ethics code. Also, the golden rule should extend downward to include animals and other creatures, including non-harmful insects (my conscience has hounded me in the past for willfully killing insects, including spiders, so I am careful to avoid hurting these creatures, but my conscience has never bothered me about killing mosquitoes which I actively hunt and try to kill whenever I hear one buzzing about).

Unfortunately, various forms of imperialism, including the monotheist religious imperialisms, push an ethics code that includes anti-sex dictates. I have written in a few of my other writings as to the real reason for imperialism’s anti-sex policies, which have nothing to do with what is right, and a lot to do with suppressing nationalism at its root. My conscience has never hounded me for any sexual actions, although I guess my conscience would hound me if I were to force non-consensual sex on someone, since that would violate the golden rule. If everything is consensual, there is no violation of the golden rule.

Regarding the idea that fear has a purpose, after thinking about it I reached the conclusion that all the various feelings, including good and bad feelings, have purpose, and their purpose is that these various feelings are a primary means by which the unconscious mind influences the soliton without forcing the soliton’s decisions.

 

The soliton is still the ruler, but similar to the situation in a human government, the ruler is subjected to various influences coming from lower levels in that government. Also, the soliton may sometimes get conflicting feelings coming from different mind parts, which is similar to a human government where the ruler may sometimes be subjected to conflicting influences coming from different departments. Note that none of the feelings we experience are generated by the soliton. Instead, all feelings are generated by the unconscious mind and sent to the soliton where they are felt.

 

[165] As mentioned in the previous footnote, I have never felt fear in my life, or, if I have felt fear, it was when I was so young that I no longer consciously remember it (perhaps I had an allocation for fear during my childhood that was reallocated elsewhere as I grew older, but I have no conscious memories to support this possibility). Besides having never felt fear, I have also never felt loneliness nor sadness.

Until recently I didn’t even know if loneliness and sadness were real feelings or not. I had never really thought much about it, and hadn’t done any research. However, because of the new happiness feeling and enhanced crying feeling that were two of the consequences of the reallocations that followed the large decline in my ambition and sexual interest at age 48½ in 2004, I had a lot of interest during the following year (2005) in the whole subject of feelings, and among other things I wanted to know about loneliness and sadness.

To get answers to these questions, I turned to my then 21-year-old niece, Melanie, who I knew was very feminine and had strong feelings. My niece lives in a different state, so I had to call her on the phone. The first thing I wanted to know about was loneliness, because that feeling is mentioned more in American society than sadness, so I reasoned that it was more likely to be real. I called her July 2nd, 2005, asking specifically about loneliness. Here are the notes I wrote two days later on July 4th (edited for improved readability and clarity):

I talked with Melanie and asked her about the loneliness feeling. In answer to my questioning, what she said can be summarized as follows: She said it’s a real feeling, and it has the same kind of intensity range as other feelings (one can feel a little lonely, more lonely, or very lonely). She also said it’s closest to the depression feeling in how it feels, but it’s still a separate and distinct feeling. She has often felt lonely at the same time as feeling depressed, but she has at other times felt lonely without feeling depressed, and at still other times felt depressed without feeling lonely.

Note: She mentioned that she had often been depressed for the last five years. She recently turned 21, so this means her depression started around age 16. This roughly agrees with my own recollection of when I first started hearing about Melanie being depressed.

During the talk, she said that the loneliness feeling was often felt as being lonely for finding the right guy, but sometimes she felt lonely in a non-specific way. Given how she described it, I got the impression that the loneliness feeling as she experienced it, was more often than not, and more intensely so, focused on finding and being with the right guy.

A few hours after I talked with her, the cause of her depression occurred to me: her unconscious mind wanted her to be mated by age 16, and was using negative feelings - the depression feeling and the loneliness feeling - as motivators. The obvious problem for her is that she is living in a crap society (America), which forces an extended childhood on people, and treats sex by teens as a crime.

So, my talk with Melanie was very productive, because not only did I get detailed information about the loneliness feeling, but I also got an explanation for the chronic depression that afflicts many teenaged girls in America. For those who don’t know, in Europe up until a few centuries ago, it was commonplace for girls to marry in their early or mid teens (men typically married at a later age).

 

The transformation of society by such things as industrialization, the imposition of forced schooling in the 19th century, and the anti-national policies of imperialism which include hostility to sex and family, have created an environment that is actively hostile to early-teen and mid-teen marriages for women. Apparently, it is easier to change society than it is to change the unconscious mind, with the end result that a lot of young women suffer like Melanie did.

There must be people who have a zero allocation for the depression feeling, but I’m not one of them. Instead, I apparently have a small allocation for the depression feeling, because I’ve been depressed three times in my life for a total of about five hours of feeling depressed: two different romantic disappointments when I was young, each resulting in a period of depression that lasted about two hours, and one time in my early 40s (actually, the day before my 41st birthday) when I realized that I had been successfully lied to by this American society regarding certain historical matters (I’ve written about this elsewhere as follows: “As this realization hit me, I felt very small and weak, and was depressed for about an hour.”).

 

Insofar as I remember what depression feels like (I am 50 years old as I write this footnote in January 2006), it’s an oppressive, negative feeling, and I was really lethargic while having that depression feeling (I just sat in my chair and didn’t want to move).

On July 29th, 2005, I called Melanie again, as a followup to our July 2nd, 2005, conversation about loneliness. Here are the notes I wrote September 6th, 2005, about that July 29th followup call (edited for improved readability and clarity):

Supplement for the July 4, 2005 notes about Melanie and the loneliness feeling, and my explanation for her depression:

I knew I was going to tell her about my explanation for her depression by reading her my July 4, 2005 notes, but before doing that, without giving her any clue as to why I was asking, I wanted to put my depression explanation to an immediate test, because I had already learned from previous conversations with her, that she had met a man earlier in the year, and she had an active and ongoing relationship with him, and her feelings for him were very strong. So, knowing all this, and knowing that I had what I believed was the correct explanation for her roughly five years of depression, and knowing that she didn’t sound depressed during our recent phone conversations, I expected to hear that her depression disappeared coincident with that recent entry of Mr. Right (the right man for her) into her life.

So, I asked her was she still depressed. She said “No”. I then asked her when the depression stopped, and her answer was exactly what I was expecting to hear: she lost her depression at the same time as Mr. Right entered her life. Thus, her answers agreed with my explanation as to the cause of her previous chronic depression. After this questioning of her and hearing her answers, I then read her my July 4, 2005 notes, and she said my notes were very accurate regarding what she said about loneliness and her experience with it, but she disagreed with my explanation of the cause of her previous chronic depression. Her disagreement is what I expected, since she had already been brainwashed by American society to believe the bogus “chemical imbalance” explanation for depression.

 

During the years she was depressed she had been to different psychiatrists, and she had been taking the various “anti-depressant” pills they prescribed, but her depression - although dulled by the pills along with the rest of her mind - remained. But with the entry of Mr. Right into her life her depression disappeared.

This footnote is already big enough, so my talk with Melanie about sadness is in the next footnote.

 

[166] Continuing from the previous footnote, on October 30th, 2005, I called Melanie asking about the sadness feeling. The following are the notes that I wrote during that conversation (edited for improved readability and clarity):

According to Melanie, sadness is a real feeling that is separate from the other feelings, including the loneliness feeling, the fear feeling, and the depression feeling. Sadness has the usual intensity range for a feeling. However, in her experience, sadness is a less intense feeling than loneliness, fear, and depression. [Apparently, Melanie has a smaller allocation for the sadness feeling than she has for the loneliness feeling, the fear feeling, and the depression feeling, which is why she hasn’t felt sadness as intensely as she has felt loneliness, fear, and depression.]

From her own experience, triggering causes for the sadness feeling include the following:

1. 1.A sudden loss of a possession (for example, a few days ago a pair of earrings she had just bought were stolen from her after she had put the bag down in a different store). Also, just losing things in general that she can’t find, but that’s less sad since it’s not compounded with betrayal by a stranger.

2. Betrayal by a friend (for example, when Melanie found out that one of her friends had lied to her and was talking about her behind her back). Also, she felt sad when a friend was mean to her. She has also felt sad when remembering these things.

3. Getting a bad grade in school on a test she tried hard on. She can also feel sad even if she didn’t try hard.

4. When she got out of the hospital and she was a lot heavier than when she went in, the conscious realization that she was substantially overweight made her feel sad.

5. A car accident she had. She was sad when it happened, and afterwards when she thought about it.

6. An embarrassment or embarrassing situation, such as being made fun of, can bring about sadness.

7. Having a minor physical injury, including when she was bit by a dog, and when she fell off her bike, and when she got a scissors stuck in her foot requiring stitches.

8. She kissed a male friend, and she helped him out, but he didn’t call, and she felt sad as a result. Her feelings were hurt.

9. She felt really sad when her rabbit died, and less sad when her hamster died. She also felt sad when her fish died.

10. She felt very sad when she had bad acne on her face, and when she had to go out in public like that. She felt sad when looking in the mirror, and when she thought about people looking at her.

11. She has felt sad thinking about how her family doesn’t have much money, and yet she’s spending some of it, so she feels like a weight is on her, and she feels sad about it.

12. Someone dies that she knows, or something bad happens to someone she knows. For example, when one of her cousins died in a car accident, and also when she heard about her grandmother suffering from pain caused by shingles. It doesn’t have to be a person close to her. For example, she felt sad about 911 (September 11, 2001), the whole thing.

13. If she breaks something accidentally that has value to her or others, she may feel sad about it, especially if that broken thing meant something to either her or someone else.

14. She’s sad if it’s really cold outside. She doesn’t like the feeling of being cold, and she can’t enjoy being outside when it’s like that. She feels sad (a light sadness) when she transitions from a warm environment into the painful cold. And if she’s stuck in that cold, she can feel sad at different times while being stuck in that cold.

The above list of triggering causes is given in the original order that I wrote them down.

 

I kept asking Melanie for more and more examples of what caused her to feel sad. These triggering causes are listed in the order that Melanie remembered them and told them to me (I wrote each one down as she was talking). Some of the events mentioned were recent events in her life, and others were years or many years in the past. I basically wanted her to tell me everything she could remember about sadness, and our talk only ended when she couldn’t think of anything else that has caused her to feel sad. Thank you Melanie for your help.

The next footnote discusses feelings in more depth, including sadness and the other emotions.

 

[167] There are many different feelings, so it’s helpful to classify them.

 

After thinking about it, here is the classification scheme I’ve come up with:

Body Feelings
Body feelings include all those feelings that report the status of the body to the awareness. These feelings include the following:

• pressure on the body’s surface (the sense of touch)

• internal pressure (feeling bloated, feeling tightness from local swelling, feeling full or stuffed from eating too much, etc)

• feeling how the parts of the body are currently positioned relative to each other

• feeling bodily pain, including such miscellaneous things as soreness, cramps, headaches, etc

• temperature (feeling warm or hot, cool or cold, etc)

• water needs (feeling thirsty)

• nourishment needs (feeling hungry, starving, etc)

• excretion needs (feeling the need to urinate or defecate)

• breathing needs (feeling the need to breathe; typically only felt when normal breathing is either hindered or prevented or insufficient)

• sleep needs (feeling tired, feeling sleepy, etc)

• current health (feeling sick, feeling the need to vomit, feeling good, feeling energetic, etc)

• sexual stimulation, typically involving stimulation of the sex organ (I’m including the orgasm feeling here)

If I’ve left anything out, feel free to add to the above list of body feelings.

 

Emotions
The following table lists ten emotions. Each of these emotions has its own very specific and unique feeling which can vary in intensity but is always the same feeling in terms of how it feels to the awareness. Each of these emotions is distinct and separate from the other emotions and all other feelings, and each of these emotions, assuming one has a non-zero allocation for it, has its own dedicated non-shared allocation of awareness-particle input channels.

There are probably at least some people who have a non-zero allocation for each of these ten emotions, but that is probably the exception rather than the rule. In my own case (I’m 50 years old as I write this footnote), I have yet to feel four of the ten emotions listed below: fear, joy, loneliness, and sadness.

 

This implies that for my entire life so far, I’ve had a zero allocation for these four emotions (it’s possible that I had a non-zero allocation for one or more of these four emotions during my infancy and early childhood, but I have no conscious memory of those years, so I can’t say).

depression
Assuming one has an adequate allocation to feel it, depression is perhaps the worst feeling to have. Given the conditions under which it appears, and also its potential to be chronic, it seems that the depression feeling is sent to the awareness as a notification or signal that the unconscious mind is frustrated with the current situation. The purpose of the depression feeling is to provoke the awareness to change the current situation, because depression is something that the awareness will want to avoid feeling.

The immobilizing quality of depression makes it harder for the awareness to continue with business as usual. As long as the situation remains unchanged, the depression can remain, becoming chronic.

Changing the situation in a way that ends the depression depends on the situation. In my own life I’ve been depressed three times, including twice because of romantic disappointments, and in each of these two cases, while sitting in my chair immobilized with the depression feeling, I realized things weren’t going to turn out as I wanted and it was time to give up and move on, which is what I did. Thus, I changed the situation by simply giving up, and it worked insofar as my depression ended (in each of these two cases I was depressed for about two hours).

 

Similarly, much later in my life when I was depressed after realizing how this American society had successfully lied to me about a certain historical matter, I accepted that I had been deceived and I resolved to study how I was deceived and learn from that experience (in this case I was depressed for about an hour).

happiness
My own experience with the happiness feeling - described in a previous footnote - is that it is a very nice and pleasant feeling. Based on my own experience and the experience of others, happiness is given to the awareness as a reward for actions that are life-sustaining or life-perpetuating. Thus, the purpose of the happiness feeling is to encourage life-sustaining and life-perpetuating actions.

I have heard of people crying from being so happy. In my own case, I have yet to feel a strong or intense happiness, so my current happiness allocation is probably too small for me to ever cry with happiness (my current crying-feeling allocation is probably adequate, but both allocations are needed). However, I did ask my niece, Melanie, about crying from being so happy, and she said that she herself has cried from being so happy.

 

So, as long as one has a big enough allocation for the happiness feeling, and also a sufficient allocation for the crying feeling, it can happen. Hmm … it sounds rather blissful, being so happy.

fear
I’ve already described in a previous footnote a conversation I had with a friend who repeatedly made the point that fear has a protective purpose. Thus, the purpose of the fear feeling is to warn the awareness of potential danger. More specifically, the fear feeling is a signal to the awareness that the unconscious mind judges the object of the fear feeling - whatever one is feeling fearful of - as something that is potentially threatening or endangering in some way to either oneself or others.

In answer to my question of where the fear feeling lies on the pleasure-pain scale, another friend, my brother-in-law (age 60), described it as follows: “unpleasant to extremely painful, depending on the situation.” He also said in answer to further questioning that depending on the situation, he has felt fear for others, including feeling fear for the well-being of people who were neither close nor well-known to him. However, in general, the closer his relationship to a person, the more intensely he can feel fear if that person’s well-being is endangered. Also, most of his experience with the fear feeling has been in situations where he himself felt threatened or endangered in some way, with his own personal safety and well-being at apparent risk.

Regarding fear, on June 20, 2006, I received an interesting email from a 64-year-old man in Texas who described his own experience with fear as follows (quoted with his permission):

Fear has been my most driving force since I can remember (I was a bed-wetter). Fear is probably responsible for most major decisions in my life - I quit smoking because of fear, I quit drinking because of fear, I avoided many risk-prone pleasures because of fear. The absolute most fearful moment in my life was when I first laid eyes on the lady that would become my wife, and she stared me down - I felt a yellow streak run down my back that I had only read about before - sheer utter debilitating FEAR.

 

I have never experienced that level of fear since, but fear, even heavy-duty levels, have always been ready and waiting. I always despised myself for being so afflicted with fear, but, after reading your page on fear [he is referring to the 10th edition of this book, specifically the same above-mentioned previous footnote where I describe the conversation I had with that friend about fear having a protective purpose], I am now rethinking my attitude - maybe I should be thankful for having been born with such a massive dose of fear.

 

My life has been more or less blessed and charmed, somewhat.

joy
My source for information about the joy feeling is my brother-in-law. During a phone conversation on February 22, 2006, I was asking him where the fear feeling lies on the pleasure-pain scale, because after reviewing what I had written so far about emotions in this footnote, I realized I was missing that detail. However, after getting his answer about fear, I then asked him if I was missing anything from my then list of eight emotions which I read to him, and he said I was missing joy.

Initially I was skeptical about this claim of a joy feeling (as far as I know, I haven’t felt joy myself), but after detailed questioning and note taking, I realized a few things: joy is a real feeling that my brother-in-law has felt at different times, and it’s not the same as the happiness feeling. Although he has an allocation for this joy feeling, apparently he has a zero allocation for the happiness feeling, because his idea of the happiness feeling is the same kind of intellectual idea of happiness that I used to have before I got an allocation for the happiness feeling. His idea of happiness is when everything is going well in his life, then he is happy. Fortunately, in sharp contrast to his ignorance about happiness being a real feeling, he has a lot to say about joy being a real feeling.

About the joy feeling, here are my notes which I took during that phone conversation (edited for improved readability and clarity). These notes record my brother-in-law’s answers to my various questions:

Other English words for the joy feeling: elation, thrilled, cloud 9.

Regarding what triggers the joy feeling, he says there are two essential requirements:

• It has to be something unexpected.
  AND

• It has to be something good that affects you or someone you love directly, with no downside.

Regarding where joy lies on the pleasure-pain scale, he said it is highly pleasurable, intensely pleasurable. When it triggers, it’s usually a 9 or 10 on the pleasure scale (10 is max pleasure). The better the outcome, and the more unexpected it is, the more intense the joy.

Joy is personal. He hasn’t felt joy for unexpected good things happening to others.

Events in his own life that he remembers as causing him joy:

• Just today [February 22, 2006], when a traffic ticket was dismissed. (He had to make a court appearance for a moving violation by his car.)

[I guess the timing of my call was fortunate, because even though I didn’t know about the traffic ticket or court appearance when I called, he had felt intense joy earlier that day as a result of that traffic ticket being dismissed. That made it easy for him to realize that I had missed the joy emotion when I read him my then list of eight emotions and asked if I had missed anything.]

• The first time he won a wrestling match. (In high-school he was on the wrestling team.)

• The time he got a date with a desirable girl who he thought would turn him down.

• He was thrilled the first time he skied down a real hill, but it wasn’t that unexpected. (He says he uses the word thrill to mean a joy that is less intense because the outcome was not completely unexpected.)

So, given the above information about the joy feeling, what is its purpose?

 

Initially I was puzzled about its purpose, but it now seems rather obvious to me: The purpose of the joy feeling is to encourage risk taking by rewarding it with the joy feeling when a good outcome results. Apparently, one of the effects of the joy feeling is that it can act as an antidote for the fear feeling, because my brother-in-law, who also has an allocation for fear, said how he felt some fear while skiing down that hill the first time, but he knew that the joy feeling was waiting for him if he succeeded.

I don’t really know about the prevalence of the joy feeling in the general population or in the two genders. However, given its purpose to encourage risk taking, it seems likely that on average it is more heavily allocated to men than women.

 

Also, as I think about it, on average men like to gamble more than women, and perhaps in many cases a man who likes to gamble also has an allocation for the joy feeling, and he knows that if he wins against the odds he will get a reward: the joy feeling.

loneliness
According to my niece, Melanie, the loneliness feeling can be loneliness for the company of others in general, or loneliness for a specific person or kind of person, and, in particular, loneliness for a mate. She said that loneliness is closest to the depression feeling in how it feels, so this means that loneliness is a painful, unpleasant feeling.

Given the very narrow and specific focus of the loneliness feeling, its purpose is very obvious: The purpose of the loneliness feeling is to promote and encourage socialization and mating.

anger
I have felt anger many times in my life, and I have felt anger at many different intensity levels: ranging from feeling just a little angry, all the way up to feeling so intensely angry that I am almost completely taken over by it and it’s a real struggle for me to retain control over myself. So, I think I have an anger allocation that is at least average for a man of my nationality, and perhaps substantially above average.

Just yesterday (January 22, 2006) I got moderately angry, and after I got home I thought about it a lot, because I was in the middle of writing this footnote about emotions. Here was the triggering cause: I had to drive my mother to a building on the other side of town, and I thought she knew where it was exactly, but it turns out that she didn’t know, and she had me driving around in circles for roughly ten minutes before I got angry about it. In reaction to my own anger, I decided to stop the car and park nearby, with the idea of getting out of the car and just walking into the nearby buildings and asking as needed until we got the right building that she wanted, which is what we did. So, my getting angry served a useful purpose, because it provoked me into changing the current situation of my driving around in circles which was getting us nowhere.

As I thought about it later that day, I realized that anger is similar to depression in that both feelings are expressions of frustration with the current situation. The anger feeling, like the depression feeling, is sent to the awareness with the purpose of provoking the awareness to change the current situation. However, these two different feelings seem to cover different kinds of situations with little overlap, if any, between them.

Regarding what anger feels like, it’s definitely an unpleasant feeling, but not very unpleasant. On the pleasure-pain scale I would have to say that anger, even when I felt extreme anger, was at most only a little painful. Regarding gender difference, anger is more common among men than women. Comparing anger with depression, the low-pain of anger allows one to change the current situation quickly, whereas the immobilizing quality of depression has the opposite effect.

 

Thus, given that anger is more common in men, and depression is more common in women, this adds to the perception of men being active and women being passive.

laughing feeling
English seems to lack a single word for the feeling that goes along with laughing - I’m using the phrase laughing feeling for this feeling. Note that words like funny, humorous, and comical, refer to things that cause this feeling, but not the feeling itself.

 

The reason English lacks a word for this laughing feeling is basically the same reason English lacks a word for the crying feeling: the close association of that feeling with an easily seen outward action (laughing and crying, respectively). This means that the feeling is implicit depending on the context when one uses words for that outward action. For example, saying “that made me laugh,” implies that one felt the laughing feeling when laughing.

Although English is lacking, there is still a need for being able to refer to the laughing feeling directly, and likewise for the crying feeling, because one can have the feeling without its associated outward action, as I know from my own experience. For example, I can feel that something is funny - feeling the laughing feeling - without actually laughing about it, although sometimes I do laugh: The more intense the laughing feeling is, the more impetus there is to laugh. At less intense levels, the laughing feeling can result in just a smile or perhaps some chuckling, or no outward show at all.

Like anger, the laughing feeling is a feeling that I have a lot of experience with. I think I have a laughing-feeling allocation that’s about average for a man of my nationality. On the pleasure-pain scale the laughing feeling is mildly pleasurable.

 

Perhaps you’ve heard the expression that goes like this:

“I laughed so hard that it hurt.”

Well, that has happened to me at least a few times in my life, and the pain referred to is just ordinary body pain caused by the physical strain of prolonged, hard laughing. The laughing feeling itself is never painful.

The laughing feeling has a purpose, of course, so what is its purpose? Arthur Schopenhauer said that finding something funny involves detecting a misapprehension. My Webster’s dictionary defines misapprehension as a failure to interpret correctly; a misunderstanding. I remember analyzing Schopenhauer’s explanation after I first learned about it, back in my mid 20s: I analyzed examples of things I found funny, and I could see that Schopenhauer’s explanation was correct.

In preparation for writing about the laughing feeling, for the last few days I’ve been paying attention to things I found funny. For example, in a subtitled Japanese romance-comedy series that I was watching, here was a scene I found moderately funny: The main character is in a room with several of his friends, and after a setup which I’ve already forgotten, we see him ranting and raving to his friends a completely wrong understanding of something that happened in the previous scene.

 

Of course, for the audience to find that misapprehension funny, we have to be shown in advance what the correct interpretation is - this was done in previous scenes - so that we know with certainty that that main character has gotten things completely wrong. This comedic strategy was used several times in that romance-comedy: The main character was set up for a misunderstanding, but the audience is given the correct interpretation in advance, and then we see that main character emphatically voicing his misunderstanding to others.

A misapprehension can happen in many different ways. For example, an expectation that proves to be wrong is one kind of misapprehension. Last night I watched an anime that had the following scene that I found funny: The main character is told by a second character that he has to join an ongoing battle taking place in a nearby park (these two characters are watching the battle on a video screen). The main character agrees with that suggestion, and the next thing we see is a rocket that out-of-nowhere springs up from the floor, closes around that main character, and then flies him away while he yells and acts surprised at what is happening. I was surprised too, and I laughed a bit.

 

Of course, I was simply using my own expectation for how that main character was going to get to that park, and my expectation did not include a rocket. Thus, I was laughing at my own misapprehension, which was also the misapprehension of that main character, since he was yelling and acting surprised.

This comedic strategy of an expectation that proves to be wrong, has been excessively overused when it comes to exploiting the expectations that we all have of how people move the parts of their body. For example, in past years on American TV, I have seen way too many exaggerated physical movements for me to still laugh at such things.

 

The already mentioned Japanese romance-comedy series, had several such attempts at humor. For example, one scene had two guys in an office spreading out on the floor many pages from a report they had to prepare. Then we see another character walk into that office, and without seeing those pages he starts to walk on them until he is loudly told to get off, at which point we see him react with wildly exaggerated movements, trying to get off those pages on the floor, with the end result that he makes a complete mess of them. I guess if I hadn’t already seen that kind of joke - wild exaggerated movements - a thousand times before on American TV, I might have laughed at it.

In addition to the above examples, a few days ago during my web browsing I came across a joke that made me laugh out loud even though I was in a room by myself. The joke was part of the write-up for a fund-raising auction of a single t-shirt by the file-sharing guys who run The Pirate Bay, which is located in Sweden. The winning bidder has to fly to Sweden at his own expense to collect the t-shirt, but he gets to meet, talk, and have drinks with The Pirate Bay crew.

 

The joke was in the form of a question-answer pair, with a quasi-serious question being answered with a pseudo-serious joke as follows:

Q: If I were to win this shirt, and fly out to see you, wouldn’t you then, in return, have to fly back to visit me to keep your ratio at 1:1?
A: Actually, we would have to travel and visit several people (especially your sister) as we prefer to keep our ratio well above 1.

This question-answer pair has several misapprehensions in it, all of which are deliberate: The first misapprehension is that both the question and answer parts treat the file-sharing upload-download ratio as if it also applies to visits between people.

 

The second misapprehension (in the answer part) turns the idea of reciprocal visits between people (introduced by the question part) into the idea of the guys from The Pirate Bay showing up to have sex with the questioner’s sister. So, this question-answer pair has a real one-two punch in terms of misapprehensions, with the first misapprehension in the question part serving as the setup for an even bigger misapprehension in the answer part. Well, anyway, it certainly made me laugh.

Note that the mind part that determines what is funny is not influenced by whether the misapprehension is deliberate or not. After all, people laugh at jokes all the time knowing full well that they are contrived. Given that the purpose of the laughing feeling is to signal to the awareness, and also to the awareness of others when one outwardly laughs, that there is a misapprehension, this ignoring of the intent of the misapprehension is understandable, because the intent is left for other mind parts to deal with.

crying feeling
The crying feeling, which I have already described in a previous footnote, is a neutral feeling that is neither painful nor pleasant. In terms of its purpose, the crying feeling is like the laughing feeling: both feelings signal something to the awareness, and also to the awareness of others when one outwardly does the action that is closely associated with that feeling.

 

For the laughing feeling, the action is laughing; for the crying feeling, the action is crying or becoming teary eyed. The laughing feeling signals detection of a misapprehension, but the crying feeling is harder to pin down regarding what it is signaling, because, based on my own experience with the crying feeling, it has many different triggering causes, including good things, and also bad things.

It seems that most everyone starts out with a substantial allocation for the crying feeling, because most babies will cry as a signal to others when hungry, or in pain, or experiencing discomfort. Small children are also prone to crying, especially when they suffer physical hurt or injury. For a typical person, probably no later than puberty, at least some of that crying-feeling allocation is reallocated elsewhere, and the things that trigger that crying feeling also change, at least to some extent. In my own case, from my teen years onward, considering how rarely I felt the crying feeling, it seems that by my early teens at the latest, most of my previous allocation for the crying feeling had been reallocated elsewhere.

From my teen years onward, prior to the large decline in my ambition and sexual interest at age 48½ and the consequent reallocation which included a large increase in my crying-feeling allocation, I had only cried or felt like crying four times in my life, and each time it was about something very bad.

After that large increase in my crying-feeling allocation, I have felt the crying feeling many times, sometimes also becoming teary eyed or crying a little, when watching certain things in Japanese anime and non-anime shows. As a rule, at least in my own case, triggering causes seem to be almost exclusively moments when either family togetherness wins against obstacles, or friendship wins against obstacles, or lovers win against obstacles. These are good things that I have the crying feeling for, in sharp contrast to when I had a much smaller allocation for the crying feeling and only certain very bad things were sufficient to trigger that crying feeling.

Based on my own experience with the crying feeling, and also after thinking about examples of when others cry, it appears that the crying feeling is signaling to the awareness that the unconscious mind considers the triggering cause as something important that affects survival within a community. Thus, the purpose of the crying feeling is ultimately to promote community development and stability. Typically, the community is some local community of two or more people, such as family, friends, lovers, fellow workers (a workplace community), and so on.

The neutrality of the crying feeling, being neither painful nor pleasant, is consistent with that feeling being triggered by both good things (things that promote survival within the community), and bad things (things that work against survival within the community). Note that it would be inconsistent if the crying feeling were painful when triggered by a good thing, and likewise inconsistent if the crying feeling were pleasant when triggered by a bad thing.

 

Thus, it’s appropriate that the crying feeling is neither painful nor pleasant.

sadness
Given Melanie’s list of triggering causes for the sadness feeling (see the previous footnote), it seems that the common element is a loss of some kind. So, Melanie has felt sad over different kinds of personal loss, including such things as loss of physical possessions, loss of trust (betrayal by strangers and friends), loss of social standing (embarrassment, poor grades), loss of normal physical appearance (being overweight, having acne), loss of normal body integrity (suffering an injury), loss of pets (deaths), loss of freedom (lack of money), loss of other people (deaths), and loss of physical comfort (being cold).

So, the sadness feeling is a signal to the awareness that there has been a loss of some kind, and its ultimate purpose is to encourage the awareness to make decisions that will tend to avoid or lessen future losses. According to my niece, sadness is always painful. This is consistent with the sadness feeling always signaling something bad.

Sadness is an emotion that on average women have more than men. Regarding this gender difference, I recall a quote from a subtitled Japanese drama series I recently downloaded and watched:

Women choose life, and men choose death.

The context for the quote was the following: A high-school girl is in love with her math teacher, and he is in love with her, but he has a brain tumor that will soon kill him, and he is against having a low-chance-for-success operation that could keep him alive but leave him with serious brain damage and resulting mental losses.

 

So, he’s against having the operation, but in the end, when he is close to death, his girlfriend, along with an older woman, successfully work together to get him to agree to have the operation (this older woman is the one who says the quote; the story ends with hints of a final happy post-operation outcome in which the two lovers are ultimately together again).

So, what does this quote have to do with the sadness feeling? Well, if one has an allocation for the sadness feeling, sadness is something to be avoided, because sadness is a painful feeling. My niece was saddened by death. So, on that basis alone she would be inclined to choose life-preserving actions for someone close to her, because she knows from her own experience that death makes her sad. The quote was memorable to me because upon hearing it I realized I was thinking like a man, since in the same situation I would choose death too.

 

Since I have never felt sadness myself, I haven’t had the kind of pro-life reinforcement that Melanie has had as a result of her being saddened by death.

anxiety
In the course of writing this footnote, after I had written the text for the nine emotions listed above, I asked the same friend who more than a year previously had made the point that fear had a purpose, if there was any emotion I had missed. He suggested anxiety, and he made it sound like a real feeling which in his case happens in certain social situations in which he gets this anxiety feeling and wants to flee the scene. Thus, the apparent purpose of this anxiety feeling is to encourage avoidance of certain social situations that pose some kind of difficulty for that person.

I haven’t felt anxiety myself, at least not an intense anxiety like he has sometimes felt, although I do remember having been nervous a few times in my teens when facing certain social situations I didn’t want. For example, I remember that in high-school there were a few times when everyone in the class had to prepare and give a talk to the whole class about some subject approved by the teacher, and I always felt nervous right before having to give my talk. I guess feeling nervous in a social situation is an example of the anxiety feeling.

Regarding anxiety’s place on the pleasure-pain scale, it has to lie on the pain side, because feeling nervous is unpleasant. Presumably, the more intense the anxiety feeling, the worse it feels. Regarding gender difference, it seems that on average the anxiety feeling is more heavily allocated to women than men, because displays of high anxiety levels, including such things as so-called panic attacks, seem to be more common among women than men.

For the ten emotions listed above, seven emotions - depression, happiness, fear, loneliness, the crying feeling, sadness, and anxiety - are each on average more heavily allocated to women than men, and the other three emotions - anger, joy, and the laughing feeling - are each on average more heavily allocated to men than women.

Some readers may wonder why I didn’t include love in the above list of emotions. The reason is that there is no specific unique feeling associated with being in love. In other words, one doesn’t know that one’s in love by virtue of having the love feeling, because there is no specific love feeling. Instead, being in love is typically characterized by such things as thinking a lot about the loved one, and being strongly attracted to that loved one.

 

(As an aside about love: In my latter twenties I read a magazine article in which the author remarked that everyone falls in love 2½ times in their life, and she was basing it on her own experience and the experience of her friends. I have long since forgotten what that article was about, but that remark about falling in love 2½ times has been memorable for me, because it was also true in my own case: I had fallen in love a total of three different times, and my last time was only about half as intense as the first two times. I am now much older than when I read that article, but that ½ love I had in my early mid 20s is still the last time I was in love. I guess the reason the last love is less intense is because it’s a transition from full love to no love.)

In general, this same kind of argument can be used to reject other things that one might think of as being an emotion. For example, hate is not an emotion because there is no specific unique feeling associated with hating something or someone. Anger is probably the one emotion that people will most often associate with hate, but anger is not hate. If one has an allocation for anger, one may feel anger at different times against the hated object. However, one could truthfully say that they hate something or someone even if they never feel anger towards that hated object, because hate is an intellectual judgment in the sense of being a statement of strong opposition or rejection.

In addition to love and hate, by using the same kind of argument none of the following are emotions either: pride, kindness, gratitude, appreciation, veneration, despair, hope, cowardice, bravery, jealousy, envy, affection, friendship. You can probably add to this list of non-emotions, since it’s far from complete.

Other Feelings
This other-feelings category is a catchall category for any feeling that is neither a body feeling nor an emotion. More specifically, other than body feelings and emotions, any feeling that serves as a signal from the unconscious mind to the awareness - alerting the awareness to whatever it is one is having that feeling about - can be put in this other-feelings category.

 

This category includes such miscellaneous items as:

• intuition and so-called hunches or gut feelings

• the feeling that you have forgotten something without being able to consciously remember what exactly it is that you have forgotten

• the feeling that something is different from what you remember, without consciously knowing what exactly is different. For example, feeling that a person you haven’t seen in a while is different, without consciously knowing what is different (perhaps that person’s hair was cut or colored differently, or something like that)

Feel free to add to this list of other feelings as needed.

 

[168] Based on my own experience so far (I am writing this footnote in June 2006 at age 50½), the reallocations that happened to me in my middle age have mostly been used to fill in allocation deficits I had. Thus, as a result of those reallocations I am now closer to being average for a man of my age and nationality.

The reallocations that happened to me were not subject to my conscious control or wishes. But if I had a choice then (and not knowing what I know now as a result of the reallocations that happened to me), I would have used all the allocation losses from my sexual mind part and elsewhere to improve my intelligence. The improvement of my memory was something I would have consciously wanted, but not at the expense of losing my ability to intensely concentrate, which is what happened.

 

Also, I certainly would not have chosen my sense of smell or my game-playing ability for improvement, but that is where a substantial part of the reallocations went.

Given that allocation changes are not subject to conscious control or influence, the question for reallocations is what are the guiding factors that the unconscious mind uses to determine how a given reallocation is distributed among the mind parts. More specifically, which mind part, or parts, get the awareness-particle input channels recently lost by some other mind part. Perhaps the most important guiding factor, which overrides other factors, is what may be called use it or lose it.

 

In effect, for each mind part that can get an allocation of awareness-particle input channels, that mind part will typically get at some point in a given person’s current life cycle a substantial allocation for that mind part, because otherwise, if too much time passes without that mind part getting an adequate allocation, the evolutionary forces at work in that person’s mind may eventually change that mind part to lose its capacity to accept or use an allocation (more specifically, by evolutionary forces I mean the learned-program mechanism described in section 3.6). Thus, in effect, use it or lose it.

Given that the human life cycle begins around the time of birth and ends around the time of rebirth into the next human life, I guess that in a typical life cycle for at least most of us, for all the mind parts that can get an allocation of awareness-particle input channels, each of those mind parts will at some point in that life cycle get a substantial allocation.

As a rule, to avoid the use it or lose it danger, body-related mind parts, especially those mind parts that are inactive in the lucid-dream stage of the afterlife, including the senses of smell, touch, and taste, will need their allocations when the body is still present. For non-body-related mind parts, such as all the intellectual mind parts and the emotional mind parts, substantial allocations for these mind parts can be postponed until the afterlife period, between death and rebirth. It is probably typical for each person in their afterlife period to have maximum allocations for all or nearly all of the intellectual and emotional mind parts, but not necessarily maximum allocations all at the same time or for the same duration.

In general, it is probably typical that the less one has of a particular intellectual ability or emotion during the current embodied life, the more likely that one will have during the afterlife a maximum or near maximum allocation for that intellectual or emotional mind part, and for a longer duration than would have been the case otherwise.

 

Thus, for example, a woman who couldn’t add two plus two when she was alive, is probably more likely during her afterlife to have a maximum allocation for math ability for a longer duration than someone who was good in math while alive. Having a maximum allocation for the math mind part (or whatever mind parts work together to give math ability) would give her a math ability - but presumably not the math knowledge unless she works it out herself or gets it from others - comparable to that of the greatest human mathematicians.

Within the current life cycle, regarding an emotion’s time-averaged allocation level during embodied life, and then during the afterlife: Assuming that the less one has a given emotion in embodied life, the more one will have that emotion in the afterlife, it follows that averaging for all women over their entire afterlife period, and averaging for all men over their entire afterlife period, that in the afterlife, women tend to have more the emotional makeup of men, and men tend to have more the emotional makeup of women.

Regarding gender and the physical body, Ian Stevenson’s book, Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (op. cit.), left me with the impression that it’s typical for a person to have many lives in a row as the same gender, before eventually switching to the opposite gender. Typically somewhere between ten to forty lives before switching.

 

This is my crude estimate based on the limited relevant data given in his book. Note that this very long time between having the other gender’s body is not a problem for the construction of that new body, because, with the possible exception of constructing parts of the brain (assuming the mind’s bions were brain bions in the previous embodiment), the mind that passes from one life to the next is not directly responsible for constructing the new body. Instead, it is probably typical that the new body is constructed mostly by recently abandoned bions that were last used in human bodies of the same gender as the new body.

Regarding having a suitable mental and emotional makeup for the new life as the opposite gender, given what’s said above about how all the intellectual abilities and emotions are fully exercised during a typical life cycle, it follows that whenever one switches to the opposite gender, one’s mind is already fully prepared to support an allocation plan that gives an intellectual and emotional makeup consistent with that gender. Whether or not one actually gets an allocation plan consistent with that gender depends on other factors, including the unconscious mind’s intention for that new life.

Stevenson’s book details about half-a-dozen reincarnation cases where the child was the opposite gender in its remembered previous life (for example, a girl remembering her previous life as a man).

 

In these cases that Stevenson details, typically for that child there is some significant carryover from the previous life in terms of that child’s attitudes and preferences, the most common of which (based on those cases in his book) is a preference for wearing the opposite gender’s clothing (for example, a girl who remembers being a man in her previous life, wanting to dress like a boy).

 

Perhaps this cross-dressing preference is primarily due to that child wanting to identify with its remembered previous life, or perhaps it’s primarily due to that child’s current allocation plan, or perhaps both factors are contributing to that child’s cross-dressing preference.

 

Most children, of course, have no conscious memory of their previous life. So, for most children, even if they were the opposite gender in their previous life, they are probably less likely on average to want to cross-dress than those children who actually remember their previous life as the opposite gender.

Assuming it’s typical to switch genders after many lives in a row as the same gender, it seems reasonable to suppose that on average, due to force of habit from the preceding string of lives as the same gender, that the likelihood of getting an allocation plan that makes one effeminate (if one’s preceding string of lives was female), or masculine (if one’s preceding string of lives was male), or homosexual, or bisexual, is different for a switch life than for a non-switch life.

 

More specifically, if one divides the currently alive human population into the following categories:

1. The current life has the same gender as the most recent previous life.

   1. The current life is male.

   2. The current life is female.

2. The current life has the opposite gender (the current life is a switch life).

   1. The current life is male.

   2. The current life is female.

The rates of homosexuality and bisexuality should be greater in group 2 than in group 1.

 

The rate of effeminacy (having mental qualities considered feminine) should be greatest in group 1b. The ordering, from highest rate of effeminacy to lowest: 1b, 2b, 2a, 1a. The rate of masculinity (having mental qualities considered masculine) should be greatest in group 1a. The ordering, from highest rate of masculinity to lowest: 1a, 2a, 2b, 1b.

 

[169] Presumably, in terms of the underlying mental programs of the unconscious mind, different people have the same or nearly the same programming. The justification for this presumed sameness is given in section 10.6 as follows:

This explanation for human mental differences, that they result primarily from differences in how the awareness-particle input channels have been allocated, means that humanity as a whole can share the same underlying programming of the mind parts. This greatly lessens the burden placed on the learned-program mechanism and its associated sharing mechanism (section 3.6), because there is no need to suggest that there are many substantially different versions of human mental programming, and likewise there is no need to suggest that human mental differences result from localized evolution of an individual’s mental programming over a short time frame.

However, evolution is an ongoing process, so, for humanity as a whole to remain in synch with itself in terms of everyone having the same or nearly the same underlying mind parts and programming of those mind parts, there must be some kind of sharing process involving our unconscious minds, that, in effect, judges evolutionary changes to mental programs and applies a selection process to those changes, with an end result that over time each person replaces some or all of their mental programs with better versions that evolved elsewhere in one or more other human minds.

 

Regarding this sharing process and how it might work, I imagine the following two extremes:

1. no group-level selection
In this sharing process, all sharing is on an individual basis. Each unconscious mind decides for itself the sharing details, including what (which of its mental programs are replaced), when (when is the replacement done), and who (from which other unconscious mind is the replacement code copied; this assumes that the other unconscious mind will cooperate to whatever extent its cooperation is needed for the wanted copy operation to be done).

 

2. maximum group-level selection
In this sharing process, everyone is in competition with everyone else to supply the next update of humanity’s mental programs. In this competition, there is only one winner: whoever is judged as having the overall best mental programming. This winner becomes the source from which everyone else will copy and replace their current mental programs.

 

A few points worth considering:

• The frequency of these competitions would presumably be somewhat dependent on the average rate of evolutionary change in individual human minds. The faster and more quickly human minds on average diverge from each other, the more frequent these competitions would have to be, assuming that excessive fragmentation of humanity due to evolved program differences is to be avoided. I don’t know what the relevant evolutionary rate is, so I don’t know whether the average time between successive competitions is measured in thousands of years, or millions of years, or some other unit.

• Presumably this competition is not subject to direct conscious control or influence. Thus, there won’t be any council of elders in the afterlife deciding who wins, or any such imaginary conscious involvement in the selection process. Instead, the selection process is managed by our unconscious minds which communicate with each other. Note that conscious control over the selection process is impossible, because we have no conscious control of the program-sharing mechanism that would do the actual copying and replacement of mental programs. Thus, no one can consciously force the selected winner’s mental programs to be copied to other minds.

• Presumably, this group-level selection process is itself an evolutionary result, and its programming is in one or more of our mind parts. Thus, if one traces back far enough in the evolutionary history of our mental programs, originally there was no group-level selection. Insofar as when it began, if this group-level selection process was already in the mental programs inherited from the Caretakers at humanity’s beginning, then one would have to trace back before humanity began, and even back before the Caretakers began if they themselves also inherited it.

• After I first thought of this group-level selection process, I remembered something I read when I was much younger, that mankind cycles thru different ages that grow progressively worse: golden age, silver age, bronze age, iron age; and we are currently in the iron age which is the worst age. Although this idea of ages is clearly fanciful, it could be somewhat true if this group-level selection process is real, and we are near the time of the next winner. Presumably, the nearer to the time of the next winner, the more divergent on average human minds are from each other - divergent in terms of their mental programming - and this results in more disunity and conflict between them, in addition to the usual disunity and conflict that results from different allocation plans and different life circumstances.

• Regarding the selection criteria used to pick the winner, your guess is as good as mine. On the surface it may seem that the current competition frontrunners would tend to have notable lives and achievements, such as being rich and famous, or distinguished and extraordinary in some other way. Maybe, but maybe not. Perhaps the real competition frontrunners tend to have very ordinary lives and allocation plans. Well, whatever. There are too many unknowns for me to reach any conclusions about this.

Regardless of whether the actual sharing process for humanity is no group-level selection or maximum group-level selection, or somewhere in-between, any replacement of one or more of one’s mental programs, whenever it happens, would happen when one is asleep (section 10.3).

 

To minimize interference within a given life cycle, the best time to replace mental programs during that life cycle would be around the time of rebirth, at the end of that life cycle and the beginning of the next.

Back to Contents

Glossary

This glossary defines two different reality models, namely the mathematics-only reality model and the computing-element reality model. For the computing-element reality model, elementary particles exist as blocks of information, and are either common particles or intelligent particles. For common particles, there are at least two classes: p-common particles and d-common particles.

For intelligent particles, there are two types: bions and solitons.

• bion
  An intelligent particle that has no associated awareness. Each cell is inhabited and controlled by a bion. Each adult man or woman, has a cooperating population of roughly 50 trillion bions - assuming one bion per cell. The bions of the brain collectively form the mind, and the mind is guided by a soliton.
   

• common particle
  A particle that has relatively simple state information, consisting only of attribute values. This simplicity allows the interactions between common particles to be expressed with mathematical equations. Prime examples of common particles are electrons, photons, and quarks.
   

• computing-element reality model
  The computing-element reality model states that the universe’s particles are controlled by computers. Specifically, the computing-element reality model states that the universe is a vast, space-filling, three-dimensional array of tiny, identical, computing elements. A computing element is a self-contained computer, with its own memory. Each computing element is connected to other computing elements, and each computing element runs its own copy of the same large and complex program - called the computing-element program. Each elementary particle in the universe exists only as a block of information that is stored as data in the memory of a computing element. Thus, all particles are both manipulated as data, and moved about as data, by these computing elements. Consequently, the reality that people experience is a computer-generated virtual reality.
   

• d-common particles
  The common particles observed during a lucid-dream out-of-body experience. These d-common particles do not interact with p-common particles.
   

• intelligent particle
  A particle whose complex state information typically includes learned programs and data used by those learned programs. In general, because of this complexity, it is not possible to express with mathematical equations the interactions involving intelligent particles.
   

• mathematics-only reality model
  The mathematics-only reality model is, at the end of the 20th century, the reality model of science. This is a very restrictive reality model that rejects as impossible any particle whose interactions cannot be described with mathematical equations. Because the equations of physics can be computed, everything allowed by the mathematics-only reality model is also allowed by the computing-element reality model.
   

• p-common particles
  The common particles of physics. Specifically, the electrons, quarks, photons, and other elementary particles of physics.
   

• soliton
  An intelligent particle that has an associated awareness. Each person has a single soliton, which is the location of the separate, solitary awareness that each person experiences. The soliton in each person interacts with the bions of the brain that collectively form the mind.

Back to Contents

Bibliography

Behe, Michael. Darwin’s Black Box. Touchstone, New York, 1998.
Cooper, Paulette, and Paul Noble. The 100 Top Psychics in America. Pocket Books, New York, 1996.
Cremo, Michael. Forbidden Archeology’s Impact. Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing, Los Angeles, 1998.
Cremo, Michael, and Richard Thompson. The Hidden History of the Human Race. Govardhan Hill Publishing, Badger CA, 1994.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Edge of the Unknown. Barnes & Noble Books, New York, 1992.
Fowler, Raymond. The Allagash Abductions. Wild Flower Press, Tigard OR, 1993.
Fox, Oliver. Astral Projection. Citadel Press, Secaucus, 1980.
Hancock, Graham. The Mars Mystery. Crown, New York, 1998.
Haraldsson, Erlendur. Modern Miracles: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sathya Sai Baba. Hastings House, Mamaroneck NY, 1997.
Hill, Paul. Unconventional Flying Objects: a scientific analysis. Hampton Roads Publishing, Charlottesville VA, 1995.
Hume, Robert. The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, London, 1934.
Jacobs, David. Secret Life. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1992.
Jovanovic, Pierre. An Inquiry into the Existence of Guardian Angels. M. Evans and Co., New York, 1995.
Korff, Kal. The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don’t Want You to Know. Prometheus Books, Amherst NY, 1997.
LaBerge, Stephen. Lucid Dreaming. Ballantine Books, New York, 1987.
Lovelock, James. Gaia. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982.
Lutyens, Mary. Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening. Avon Books, New York, 1983.
Muldoon, Sylvan, and Hereward Carrington. The Projection of the Astral Body. Samuel Weiser, New York, 1980.
Randles, Jenny. Alien Abductions. Inner Light Publications, New Brunswick, 1988.
Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies. Dell Publishing, New York, 1997.
Schneider, Stephen, and Penelope Boston, eds. Scientists on Gaia. MIT press, Cambridge, 1993.
Steel, Duncan. Rouge Asteroids and Doomsday Comets. Wiley, New York, 1995.
Stevenson, Ian. Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. Praeger Publishers, Westport CT, 1997.
Story, Ronald. Guardians of the Universe?. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1980.
Stringfield, Leonard. Situation Red: The UFO Siege. Fawcett Crest Books, New York, 1977.
Thompson, Keith. Angels and Aliens. Addison-Wesley, New York, 1991.
Vallee, Jacques. Anatomy of a Phenomenon. Ace Books, New York, 1965.
 - Dimensions. Ballantine Books, New York, 1988.
 - Messengers of Deception. And/Or Press, Berkeley, 1979.
 - Passport to Magonia. Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1969.

Back to Contents