The Sapwood of Synchronosophy 16/18
Acts of Knowing
Organisms do not passively receive information
from their environments,
they enact a world.
〰 Francisco Varela 〰
Bringing Forth a World
We create our own experiences by our recognition and imagination,
and we modulate the energies with our emotions.
〰 Kenneth Schmitt 〰
One of the apparent paradoxes of the human condition is that we are both interdependent and independent. Looking at this ‘paradox’ with the Taoist mind ~ Wuji ∞ Taiji and Yin ∞ Yang ~ we can begin to see that this is no paradox at all. Independence and interdependence can be viewed as a pair of individuality and community ~ like being and belonging, or me and we, or autonomy and wholeness.
Having explored the principles of wholeness of living systems (Chapters 11 + 12) and the interdependence of living beings populating those systems (Chapters 13 – 15), now let’s turn our attention towards autonomy.
In the 1970s and 80s, Humberto Maturana (1928-2021) and Francisco Varela (1946-2001), observed via experiments in neurobiology that every living organism has autonomy. They came to the conclusion that living creatures create their own environment. At the biological level this is even true for individual cells.
In their seminal book The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding they explain that “the nervous system does not ‘pick up information’ from the environment, as we often hear. On the contrary, it brings forth a world by specifying what patterns of the environment are perturbations and what changes trigger them in the organism.”
Maturana and Varela even declared, “The popular metaphor of calling the brain an ‘information processing device’ is not only ambiguous but patently wrong.”
That these to neurobiologists from Chile were sidelined by their colleagues in neuroscience and declared as ‘crackpots’ is not surprising.
But what if they had a point? What do they mean when they say “every living organism brings forth a world”? It’s a big statement. And they knew what they were talking about.
Maturana and Varela say it has something to do with knowing. “The phenomena of knowing cannot be taken as though there were ‘facts’ or objects out there that we grasp and store in our head.” Instead, our experiences are determined largely by our biological structure.
We already know that subjective experience is generated through interactions between outer events and internal impressions. (See Chapter 10)
With their discoveries of the two Chilean scientists rattled the very foundations of the scientific approach. Their book was published in 1992, when most scientists were still used to observing the world as if there were facts and objects ‘out there.’
Autopoiesis
The being and doing of an autopoietic unity are inseparable,
and this is their specific mode of organization.
〰 Humberto Maturana 〰
Twenty years after publication of The Tree of Knowledge, the German quantum physicist and prolific author Hans-Peter Dürr (1929-2014) was popularising scientific discoveries which confirm the findings of these two neurobiologists.
“A consistent explanation of quantum phenomena came to the surprising conclusion that an objectifiable world, in other words a factual reality as it is presupposed in our objective observation, doesn’t actually exist, but is merely a construction of our thinking” Dürr wrote in his book, Das Lebendige lebendiger werden lassen (Letting the Living Come More Alive).
The experiments Dürr is referring to were made in the 1960s, three decades before Maturana and Varela published their work.
Dürr explains not only that a separation of subjective observer and objective perception is not possible, he also shares his realisations about matter. “I have spent fifty years as a physicist asking the question what actually lies behind matter. The end result is simple: There is no matter!” Geist, Kosmos und Physik (Mind, Cosmos and Physics).
What we perceive as matter is, according to Dürr and the discoveries of quantum physics, the result of living processes. Those processes, which ultimately belong to the spiritual realms, are the foundations of our reality. In other words, process is primary, matter is secondary.
“Matter doesn’t really exist. There are only relationships, constant movement, aliveness.” Dürr told his audiences.
We live in a non-material world. The primary matter of the universe is ultimately a creative substance which is difficult to grasp and from where all life originates.
Maturana and Varela researched and revealed this phenomenon by experimenting with the living structure of living beings, which makes their results relevant to you and me and all fellow humans.
They showed that there is indeed an inseparable connection “between a particular way of being and how the world appears to us,” and this inseparability “tells us that every act of knowing brings forth a world.”
Moreover, because the inseparability goes all the way to the roots of our biological structure, “this bringing forth of a world manifests in all our actions and all our being.”
We could say that, our world appears, through our ‘acts of knowing’, in the form of outer ‘solid experiences’ of our reality, reflecting inner experiences, which produce further acts of knowing, which bring forth our world over and over in an ongoing feedback loop.
These findings are exciting for the human ‘work of creation’ in general, and encouraging for our work with the Noctarine in particular. At the same time, they open the sluice gate to a tidal wave of new questions, such as…
Ok, sounds great, but what does it all mean?
What are acts of knowing?
How do they bring forth a world?
And how do I know which acts of knowing create the world I want?
Knowing in Action
When you reach the end of what you should know,
you will be at the beginning of what you should sense.
〰 Khalil Gibran 〰
Any activity of any of the eight Faculties of the organism of human Consciousness can qualify as an ‘act of knowing’. The notion that humans create their own world by somehow activating something in our Consciousness is ~ in the 21st century ~ neither new or ‘off the wall’.
Many practitioners of ‘manifestation techniques’ ~ including dreamers, visionaries, olympic champions, and business people ~ argue that we all create our world according to our own thoughts, beliefs, and intentions all the time anyway. Therefore, ‘we can manifest the world we want by changing what we think, believe, and intend’.
Many manifesters would also confirm that thoughts, beliefs, and intentions are ‘acts of knowing’. This means ~ in line with the theory of Maturana and Varela ~ they are ‘bringing forth their world’.
The practice of Synchronosophy, working with the Noctarine, confirms this theory. We don’t call it ‘creating our world’ though, since the word creation is entangled with the divine Act of Creation, it sounds too grand and gets a bit messy.
We also don’t call it ‘manifestation’, because the word is loaded with manipulation and deeply embedded in the anthropocentric paradigm. Instead, we can say that every thought, belief, emotion, and intention makes a contribution to the symbiopoiesis of our world. [I have introduced Symbiopoiesis on Symbiopædia]
In brief, we need to remember that manifestion can't help but perpetuate the existing (anthropocentric) paradigm. Progress remains an illusion and unfulfilled promise. Nothing fundamental can change because the intention itself is already known and embedded within the existing paradigm.
Apparent changes achieved via this route are always temporary and don’t solve any real problem. The strategy is therefore also called ‘moving the deckchairs on the Titanic’.
True change requires a paradigm shift. Symbiopoiesis tunes into the holorhythm and draws individual human Consciousness towards the holopoietic universe. Authentic (symbiocentric) shifts can only happen through authentic new understanding and unfoldment.
Nevertheless, the work of bringing forth a world gets a bit tricky and unpredictable at this point. The process is not as straightforward as it seems, because in the current Zeitgeist we find ourselves caught between two worldviews ~ the anthropocentric and the symbiocentric paradigm.
Picking desirable ‘positive & constructive’ thoughts and other ‘good acts of knowing’ to bring forth a desirable world ~ as the anthropocentric worldview would suggest ~ can serve a temporary purpose. But it’s not enough and never delivers the expected beneficial results (for obvious reasons mentioned above).
Alongside handpicked voluntary thoughts and desirable constructive beliefs, human Consciousness gives birth to a multitude of autonomous acts of knowing, some of which can be destructive, undesirable or incoherent.
Your Consciousness generates fears, worries, doubts, suspicions, irritation, self-sabotage… the list is endless – many of which you don’t even register. These involuntary acts of knowing are ‘bringing forth their version of a world’ at the same time. A world which is likely to be entirely different from the world you intended to ‘create’ through carefully selected beneficial acts of knowing.
The inner conflict set up with the pick and choose approach of manifestation in the anthropocentric sense is inevitable and pre-programmed. Trying to ‘manifest’ a certain outcome for the fulfilment of a specific wish or intention is one thing ~ and it might ‘work’ occasionally, temporarily.
Bringing forth a world in alignment with the whole of your being is a challenge of a different order. Bringing forth your world ~ the world that is truly yours to incubate, birth, and nourish in every way ~ is a life’s work.
In any case, the concept of manifestation helps to understand the basics of what the two Chilean scientists discovered. Even if it’s only a most basic and incomplete version of this living process of unfoldment.
The idea of manifestation is correct, in principle, but it doesn’t always work practice ~ or I should say, when it does work in practice, it’s more like winning the lottery, rather than a reliable method, since only part of our Consciousness responds to our voluntary acts of knowing.
Other significant activities of Consciousness are governed by autonomous processes, just like the physical organism. Moreover, the distinction between voluntary and autonomous are not clear cut either. Consciousness is a lot more complex than that, as you might expect.
Immature Acts of Knowing
Children are very wise
intuitively;
they know who loves them most,
and who only pretends.
〰 V.C. Andrews 〰
I have introduced the Faculties as either voluntary/masculine or autonomous/feminine. These features show only one side of the whole. On the other side, each of the Faculties carries their complementary qualities. Like Yin ∞ Yang or Yang ∞ Yin.
For example:
The Will is voluntary/masculine in his primary expression ~ willpower
and autonomous/feminine in his secondary expression ~ willingness.
The Intuition is autonomous/feminine in her primary expression ~ mystery
and voluntary/masculine on the complementary side ~ loyalty.
The two sides allow each Faculty to participate in the dance of the holorhythm, which regulates the life force within the inner universe.
Symbiopoiesis of our world cannot be translated into a technique to follow by taking a certain number of steps and expecting guaranteed results. It is an intimate interaction with everyday life, personal environment, and subjective experience. Simultaneously, it is also a process of growth towards becoming yourself ~ the person who you can fully identify with.
The practice of Synchronosophy is designed to support the process of symbiopoiesis by bringing immature acts of knowing to our attention.
In the anthropocentric doctrine ~ fertilised by a misinterpretation of the myth of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ~ countless acts of knowing are classified as ‘evil’ products of humans and their minds. Here are some ‘arch-evil’ categories:::
› troublesome emotions
› inauthentic self-image
› self-sabotaging beliefs
› adverse events
› abnormal behaviour
› negative thoughts
› disturbing experiences
Based on the symbiocentric paradigm, Synchronosophy suggests a radically different assessment. The above listed expressions of human Consciousness are not ‘undesirable effects’ produced by the mind (or environment). All acts of knowing are viewed as sentient beings populating the inner world. We call them Acknows.
We distinguish between negative and positive Acknows, without burdening this distinction with moral judgement. Positive Acknows aren’t morally ‘good’ and their counterparts are not ‘evil’. We understand negative Acknows as immature creatures.
Negative Acknows are born in the inner world of human Consciousness as a result of traumatic experiences, which tend to happen in early childhood. In response to the overwhelming event, the young organism drops into a kind of paralysis known as ‘freeze-response’.
In contrast to animals, humans don’t have the ability to shake off the memory of a traumatic event. The paralysing effect remains active until the organism of Consciousness is able to process and integrate the experience.
During this period, which can last many years or decades (or life times), the negative Acknows who inevitably came into being as a healthy reaction to the incident remain stuck in the developmental stage appropriate for the organism at that time.
In Synchronosophy, negative Acknows are understood as immature inner beings. These young sentient creatures all have the same basic need. They are like inner children yearning to grow up. They are desperate to become fully functioning members of the inner world. And they need our help.
Wild Inner Children and Their Magic
Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses
waiting to see us beautiful and brave.
Perhaps everything terrible
is in essence something helpless wanting help from us.
〰 Rainer Maria Rilke 〰
The negative Acknows populating our inner world are not only immature. They are also wild. Having been left to fend for themselves ~ often for decades ~ what else do you expect?
In Chapter 7 you have come across the inner permafrost. It is the most inhospitable area in the inner world where emotions frozen by trauma huddle together. But they are not meant to stay there forever. They are destined to reconnect with their tribe, always waiting for an opportunity to return to where they belong.
To stay alive, they dive into the deeper layers of the permafrost zone. They survive in clusters in those warmer dark zones, keeping each other company, in relative permanent discomfort.
As you might imagine, surviving in the dark wilderness is not easy for anyone. And some of these are very young children. Newborn babies among them. How do they manage to survive at all?
They get frozen in time. While these emotional infants, kids and adolescents find ways to survive, they don’t develop or grow any further. Their development stalls exactly at the age they were at the moment of the trauma-experience.
In his book Healing Trauma, Peter Levine, one of the leading pioneers in Western trauma research since the 1970s, writes, “According to several Buddhist and Taoist traditions, sex, meditation, death, and trauma share a common potential. These are the great portals—catalysts for profound surrender and awakening.”
At first sight, this statement is really confusing. Trauma as a portal for awakening?!
How can that be, if our young hypersensitive emotions slip into the inner permafrost and stay there forever?
The answer is, they don’t! This is not meant to be a permanent solution or home. They are waiting for an opportunity to return from this dark and half frozen remote place in the inner wilderness into the warmer zones of internal comfort. They are continuously living in hope that one day someone will come and carry them home.
That someone can only be one person. The owner of the organism of individual human Consciousness. You, me, each of us, ourselves.
Now you might wonder, how does this work? What can you do to bring your inner wild children, lost deep in the dark inner permafrost, into the relative comfort of your inner home?
Well, it’s not as simple as going on a roadtrip, packing all those wild frozen kids into a bus and returning them all safely all at once. I don’t believe there is one strategy that works for everyone.
What is true for all of us, is that our negative Acknows are inner children frozen by trauma. To recognise this in principle is the all important starting point. Once you realise and accept this concept as true, the recovery of these wild inner kids is relatively straight forward.
Start treating them the way you would have wanted to be treated as a baby, as a child or adolescent. Give them the love and attention they need, and they will thrive and grow into mature Acknows.
Remember the list of the arch-evil categories above?
When you learn to handle your negative Acknows in the appropriate way ~ and this is almost exclusively an internal process you can do by yourself ~ magic begins to happen in your outer world.
Negative Acknows gradually decline in intensity and frequency. The inner wild children don’t need to shout so loud anymore to catch your attention.
New talents you never knew you had may sprout in your inner soil. New opportunities dawn on your horizon. Where do they suddenly come from? As the inner wildlings grow up, they develop their gifts and can’t wait to share them.
Your relationships with other people improve and is likely to deepen. You gain clarity about yourself, your identity and boundaries, your purpose and direction in life. Inner conflicts become rare events rather than daily battles.
With the transformation of those inner wildlings, we become more resilient and resourceful. More balanced and centred, peaceful, poised and at ease in ourselves. In other words, as our wild inner children grow up, they are the ones who contribute most to our inner growth and maturing.
Populations of the Inner Territories
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it;
tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
〰 Rainer Maria Rilke 〰
The inner territories ~ or Spheres of Reality ~ introduced in Chapter 14 are not just empty spaces on the map of human Consciousness, to be filled at random with life forms chosen by the so-called ‘rational mind’. Each of these realities is a biotope. A habitat for its own ecological community of living creatures.
Acknows are born within the inner landscape of human Consciousness while we are still in the womb. At birth, our inner world already provides a home for inner populations of emotions, sensations, perceptions, beliefs, gifts, and physical activities, mostly in dormant seedforms.
In the adult organism of human Consciousness the inner Spheres of Reality are buzzing with life. The diversity of their symbiotopes comparable with diverse landscapes in our natural environment ~ woodland, grassland, wetland, seascape etc.
Each of the Spheres is populated by its own indigenous Clan. The members of these Clans are produced by the Faculties themselves. Each Clan communicates in their own Inner Language, which have already been introduced in the Chapter 15.
Some of the Clan members will be familiar to you, others you only know through hearsay, and some you may not be aware of at all. You will meet them in later chapters of this book.
In this chapter, as we look at the inner landscape of human Consciousness from the perspective of external observers, I can only offer an aerial view of the 8 Inner Populations, aka Clans, of the Noctarine.
Inner Clan is the name for the autonomous property provided by the Intuition. Population is a generic term for a species of sentient beings living in a particular territory of the inner world, known as Sphere of Reality.
The word Clan is borrowed from the Gaelic word for tribe, family. All members of a population of any of the Inner Clans are descendants of the same Faculty and can therefore be regarded as close relatives. In other words, all living creatures populating the inner world and belonging to one of the Clans have a shared identity. They have a common lineage of descent and speak the same inner Language.
Missed the earlier chapters? Click the links
The Rootstock of Synchronosophy
Chapter 1 The Mycelium of Synchronosophy, Chapter 2 Sub-Soil of Synchronosophy, Chapter 3 Nutrients for Synchronosophy, Chapter 4 Adjustments to an Unnatural World, Chapter 5 Loss of Self and Identity, Chapter 6 The Destructive Trail of Trauma
The Heartwood of Synchronosophy
Chapter 7 Emotional Messengers, Chapter 8 Love Thyself, Chapter 9 The Birth of the Noctarine, Chapter 10 Subjective Experience, Chapter 11 The Inner Wilderness, Chapter 12 Polarity and Wholeness
The Sapwood of Synchronosophy
Chapter 13 Symphony of Senses, Chapter 14 The Rainbow of Consciousness, Chapter 15 Ancestral Will
We live in a non-material world, yet, we are collectively more fixed in materialism than ever before. And we've taken the ideal of connectivity and tossed the world wide web on it, which feels equal parts freeing and stifling.
There's really something there in the way you explain the result of trauma as immature beings or children yearning to grow up. It's gentle and explains much of how I coped with childhood abuses. But after pursuing a life of the mind (reading, writing, willingness to change and be open), events from the past feel so long ago and, honestly, not to be flippant, not a big deal anymore.
Looking forward to meeting some (all?) of the Clan members. Thought-provoking post, as always, Veronika! 🙏🙏🙏
Hi Veronika, l am going to have to read this a few times ☺️. Yes, trauma most certainly a portal for me … the catalyst. … and in the process of the inner work, has opened other portals (thankfully). Re manifestation … I understand that our experiences can be manifested by our thoughts, in that the experience matches the vibrational frequency of the thought … in basic terms, positive thoughts manifest positive experiences (perceptions of events etc). I understand that wanting something will not manifest what is desired when it comes from a pace of lack? Inner work allows for a greater understanding/acceptance of self (in the space of conscious awareness) which in turn shifts perception …. Results including a broader scope of possibilities (choices) and therefore probabilities … and less lack, be it emotional, physical, spiritual etc? Thanks 🙏😊