Month: April 2023

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“Sōng, Sǎn, Tōng, Kòng”

modern_taichi_class_facing_us_with_a_still_grounded

About a year ago, my taichi teacher held up a sheet of paper with 4 characters on it and pronounced the words in the title of this post.

She has not revisited the page again but the first word “Song” (or “Sung”) is at the core of every class. There is enough in this one concept to keep beginners (who are interested enough) to explore, play, work with. There is always more Sung just a moment away.

This is my current understanding – jotting it down, so I can cycle back to them over time. Also to discuss with my teacher and other friends to refine my understanding.

(When I say understanding, I don’t mean just abstract intellectual, but more embodied and felt but also with an accompanying worded clarity).

I’ve read a few of the taichi classics and these four words (as a group) don’t come up, but the meanings resonate to this student anyway.

Song, San, Tong, Kong – my messy class notes

“Sōng, Sǎn, Tōng, Kòng” represents four key principles in Tai Chi practice:

1. Sōng (鬆): Also spelled “Sung”, refers to the concept of relaxation or more exactly – loosening. In Tai Chi, Sung is the practice of releasing unnecessary tension – initially this might be your body and muscles but during the process there is a loosening from the day’s tensions – so a loosening of the mind takes place.

Discovering Sung starts by feeling areas of increased tension in ones body:

  • hitching up your shoulders
  • forgetting to breath
  • tightening in slow movements as some “performance” antics
  • imbalances from not having alignment
  • discovering you are too fast or too slow, or just plain wrong in your movement

By non-judgementally sensing the tightening gives the opportunity to feel the relaxation and just how good that feels.

Sung is not floppy – this is not some extreme “melt on the floor into a pool of jelly” thing, the Taichi student still holds their form and follows the sequence – with each moment the changes in weight means there is enough muscle action happening.

Bio-mechanically a loosening is happening at the joints and muscles hanging off the bones rather than binding to them – more energy is available to your body to maintain its core processes and help with wellness.

More esoterically, the wasteful energy being dropped us united to complete the movement – this is where I suspect the 3rd of the 3 treasures (Shen) is generated. Where attention and practice is not scattered.

I’d suggest that movement can and should come from the loosening. That is counterintuitive but possibly a hint as to what “Qi” might be. When you loosen there is a strength that emerges from the space created when tension is dropped.

By cultivating Sung, the Taichi student can improve their balance, sensitivity, and experience a complete difference to the rest of their day.

I’ve written about Sung before here and here.

There is also a clue to loosening emotions and judgement as well. That’s another blog post!


I have less to say about San, Tong, Kong. I am a beginner and only getting early understanding.


2. Sǎn (散): San is to “spread”. The tightness that Sung remedies is muscular energy locked up in a concentration of location. Sung starts the process of unlocking. So I feel that San is allowing that loosening to dissipate even further.

A very simple experience is Taichi’s preparation position: where the feet standing together simply has the left foot step out to shoulder width. As my right foot takes weight the left foot lifts and any dissipates any energy holding its shape. It’s an instant lesson to discover your foot is arched up, it should be dripping off your leg until the moment when the toes touch at the end of the movement.

Of course you can experience this in all movements and reminds me a the rich experiences of walking meditation in the Mahasi Vipassana tradition.

Beginner students also experience Sǎn in the Yin phase of any movement – the “loosening off” (or yielding) before moving into the next posture. Once you’ve circled into the final phase of a posture you are already circling out with a Yin or yielding way (or at least that is my experience to-date).

Another beginner experience that hints at the martial art practices is the “Lu” or “Liu” in Peng, Lu, Ji, An (Grasping the bird’s tail). Liu has its origins in the martial aspect.

Liu is where you are taking the energy of an opponent and guiding it into a void – the practitioner feels “empty enough” (see Kong) to not meet an opponent’s force head-on but spreading or dissipating their own energy to neutralize or redirect the “attack”. This is why old Taichi guys can beat younger, more energetic opponents – when you are using “Li” (muscular based force, there will always be someone who can overcome you).

I saw this a few weeks ago in a competition where competitor A was easily over 180kg, his opponent B, still solid at 90kg standing at shoulder height of A.

“A” had easily bullied other competitors out of the ring, not expending much energy. When “A” met “B” – it was an ugly bout but I noticed that “B” was rotating around to stay inside the circle and pulsing at “A” – he was oscillating “Liu” and Ji/An very effectively.

“A” was so unfit that he was exhausted and eventually conceded defeat before very nearly needing medical attention. “B” provided a very impressive performance of yielding and Sǎn is at the core.

3. Tōng (通): Tōng is experienced as “connection” or “flow.” My teacher encourages us to experience the “energy waves” the sequences are following the natural currents in the body. With enough Song, San you get moments of feeling less like you are doing the “robot dance” and more the continuity and connectedness of the movement.

For me, “Cloud Hands” was my first game-changing experience of Tong – everything happening at once with epic spaciousness was real connection.

Its easy to get very woo and mystical about “Qi” – here we can practically experience the energy each movement takes throughout the body. Initially gross (course) sensations you are starting to pick up on subtleties.

Another type of connection is continuity: The saying “Qi follows “Yi” has been mentioned in other posts. The Taichi student is not “zoning out”, not being intellectually lazy and copying by rote the teacher or other students. The “Yi” (intention) is actively present and knowing what the next phases of the sequence are. I don’t now if this is part of Tong, but its essential for “flow” in the sequence.

Another saying from the Tai Chi classics points to Tong.

“connected like a string of pearls”

Getting more Tong takes time – a natural cultivation where smoothness is not a “fake it until you make it” performance but snippets will come in time, “Yi” and practice.

4. Kòng (空): Kòng means “empty” or “void.” This reminds me a lot of Buddhist emptiness – where something happening is a creation (or fabrication) of the mind on top of sense perception. Victor Frankel said:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Note also that emptiness is required in the purest martial aspect, see the discussion of Liu above in the San section. A great example is the popular novel Musashi by “Eiji Yoshikawa”, readers would remember he was “empty” of all expectations of his opponent and was able to respond with a very pure precision. (Many Asian Kung Fu movies copy this spontaneous spirit).

In Tai Chi, in my limited experience is allowing the other 3 elements of Song, San, Tong to prepare me for openness in the body and mind. By remaining open and receptive, I can allow the distractions of the mind to take a rest.

I know the meaning and experience of Kong is a lot deeper, I’ll give it some time.

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Prometheus, Icarus, Sweetums and Lucifer walk into a bar…

regarding: https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-universal

I enjoyed this intriguing and well-written post forwarded to me by a friend. This post has some thoughts:

By proposing (from previous posts) that each age of humanity fixates on a sovereign for their age, he sets out to uncover the someone or something that is the heir to the throne.

Spoiler Alert: its an internet connected AI.

In some ways it’s a companion piece (or err, homage) to Scott Alexander’s Moloch essay, Interesting this was recently discussed at around 42:09 by Max Tegmark who is one of the orchestrators of the GPT Pause letter.

I fear this article overly biases towards a core Christian narrative: that earth is a battleground of good vs evil. Kingsnorth borrows Steiner’s Lucifer, Christ, Ahriman* trinity before dismissing it. I guess he was “steel-manning” Steiner view in order to dismiss it but keep Christ at the middle – much the same as Buddhism’s middle way or Lao Tzu’s water method.

The Problem with Monsters 1

Unfortunately for Kingsnorth, Steiner’s model is the most  theologically compelling element of the piece. He does agree “Ahriman, the spiritual personification of the age of the Machine” (updated to the etheric realm emergence of computer and AI tech).

He provides some background that tech perniciously also reprograms us. No arguments there and the AI 1.0 of social media is proof that exponential capitalism has no ethics when it comes to hacking human psychological bugs for profit. John Vervaeke would neutralize this, I can’t recall his exact example but:

  • mankind invents a thing for drinking, lets call it a “cup”
  • cup is made in the shape most adapted to how we would hold it
  • soon when we reach for a cup, our hand forms in the shape of the cup.
  • we have “adaptive fit” to the tool

Similarly Yuval Noah Harari asserted that Humans (Sapiens) were conquered by agriculture. That the humble grain dominated us, transformed us, terminated hunter-gatherer societies and gave us bad backs from bending over all the time.

So Kingsnorth is, too, invoking an old human-hacking technology: “story-time with monsters” to deliver a morality tale.

The Actual Themes

And I think that is a disservice to the actual themes:

  1. what does each age of humanity worship? (in the era of agriculture it was a plough and commerce, in our era Kingsnorth is proposing its internet connected AI and our infatuation with all things computer**).
  2. Humanity’s track record of hubris in defending (a) has an appalling batting average
  3. in regards to (b), the exponential technology that the internet and AI is (rightfully pointed out by Tristan Harris) is much worse than Nuclear weapons because those weapons can’t rebuild and “improve” themselves like AI can.
  4. that AI people are modern hipster versions Saruman’s orc workers, actively constructing the beast to dominate us. They use words like “ushering”, signalling a subservient act, pre-emptively assigning grandeur in a worshipful way to the new intelligence they have a hand in creating.

The Problem with Monsters 2

I’d agree with all this but the disservice is to use amygdala stimulating monster stories to mobilize a response.  Perhaps I misquote Einstein: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

Therein lies the questionably efficacy of Christian “battle of light-vs-evil” grand narratives in a post-post-modern world. I am under no delusion that evil doesn’t exist (we all know that as a current within ourselves) but anthropomorphising human psychopathy into entities can’t stop at 2 baddies vs 1 goodie. Why not reel in the whole goetic demon universe?

It strikes me that Tegmark and co’s letter is a more pre-frontal cortex response and therefore more constructive. The debates on that are outside the scope of this post.

Beyond those Amygdala hacking Monsters

I’d propose we drop the ancient myth method of trying to shock us into acknowledging an absence of wisdom and find a new way.

The recent movie “don’t look up”, that Max Tegmark reminds us of is a modern analogy. That our collective hypnosis and daily momentum stops us from acting to protect a better outcome.

For me the movie was a long form of Douglas Adams (in Hitchhiker’s Guide…) hilarious “SEP cloaking device”. In his book, the device is a technology that renders objects invisible by making them seem like they are somebody else’s problem.

Another known metaphor is the frog being boiled in slowly heating water.

My understanding is that from an evolutionary perspective we respond to rapid movements as threats in a linear landscape such as a jungle or savannah. The problem for us now is that changes are exponential and we don’t have evolutionary adapted equipment to see that readily. Couple that with the societal stress of mortgage slavery, capitalist, materialistic fixations and we can’t do more than glance at an “internet connected AI” and not see anything but the SEP cloak.

We need exponential thinkers like Tegmark and (at time of writing this, over) 26.6K signatures to re-program our response, not dismissively (as so many tech-bros would), not naively, not for fear of monsters but no less stridently.

The Tragedy of the Global Commons indeed. I hope Kingsnorth’s post helped people find that new way rather than just shake fists.

Sweetums

So what has this got to do with Prometheus, Icarus, Sweetums and Lucifer?

  • Prometheus was a rebel for technological advancement and punished for hubris
  • Icarus was test-flighting a new technological advancement and his hubris was his demise
  • Lucifer (re-cast by Christians as Satan-like, but originally a bringer of Light***
  • He’s just a monster. Adults fear monsters, kids have a balance of fear and “delight of fear” 🤔🤗

* Ahriman, a Zoroastrianism representing darkness and evil in material form.

** Is it our love of tech or really is that just a mirror to our love of intellect and facts. We

*** Lucifer, as the fallen angel and one of Steiner’s eternal forces on earth (not Satan) is really the main clue. Controversially, we can take the original morality tale as: “humanity’s greatest evil is to worship mind greater than anything else” – being cast out for his pride and desire for power, he and his followers “fell”, in the intellectual analogue to Adam and Eve’s “fall” desire for knowledge, power and early delights (desires).

As an antidote to us not being the smartest (information processing) beings on the planet, Tegmark proposes some other human traits (especially subjective experience) that perhaps we should celebrate and put at the center of our self-worth. It’s a great proposal and in agreement to my earlier post where I explored this. I updated accordingly.

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Startups: Stress, exercise and adrenal exhaustion

Stress is an unfortunate by-product of startup life – both for founders and teams. Picture a small team trying to match a new product to an (often unstated) customer need. Coupled with lack of funding, lack of feedback data, competition, speed of technological change and normal life demands over long periods of time – there is a need to ensure life balances out the stress, choosing the right exercise is an interesting topic.

In an earlier post about mindful stretching, Ashtanga Yoga, Yin Yoga and Tai Chi, I offered a few clues about body chemistry, specifically stress hormones. I also previously I wrote about the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) benefits of smiling.

SNS–>PNS

As a recap: The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), is responsible for the body’s rest and relaxation response. This is in contrast to the SNS sympathetic nervous system, which is activated during high-stress situations. See also Vagus nerve or vagal response.

Prolonged chronic stress, such running startups can mean that you are SNS dominant and that’s not great, cortisol imbalances and prolonged stress may lead to adrenal exhaustion. I’ve met founders in this state and know it well myself.

Transitioning from SNS (sympathetic nervous system) to PNS is super valuable for startup people and picking the right exercise depends on your:

  • Age (because of the next point 👇)
  • Jing (a Daoist concept of life force – perhaps a combo of:
    • genetic composition and 
    • epigenetic factors:
      • how well you eat and sleep vs how hard you’ve lived
      • SNS Dominant vs PNS Dominant (long term detectable via lab analysis of hair samples, momentary blood or saliva cortisol analysis is not reliable)
  • Existing stress state, immunity etc

Hard Arses

Because startup people are “alpha” types they often also workout HARD! (think Tom Gleeson). While regular exercise is FTW, high-intensity workouts create stress because the body will release more cortisol, a stress hormone that:

  • can push a person further into SNS
  • When cortisol is chronic in its presence and elevation, this may lead to adrenal fatigue

So intense exercise may be a very poor choice for an individual experiencing adrenal exhaustion or cortisol imbalances.

Choice for Age and Jing

Younger people generally have more Jing and therefore intense exercise is a reality, but hopefully can attitudinally adjust to also be self nurturing and “Jing preserving” (a large and controversial topic!).

The reality is that successful startup people stay in startups and don’t grovel back to corporate. So Aging becomes a factor sooner or later.

PNS Promoting Exercise

To break the cycle of stress hormones circulating, your exercise should induce recovery as a priority, here are some:

“Sung” exercise

Sung exercise was suggested in this post as “loosening” and PNS promoting. By bringing mindfullness, breathing I find that I can break the cycle of “go” energy with the added benefit of more connectedness into where the body is tight, actively feeling the letting go and the cognitive benefits of actually increasing awareness of your internal state.

Yin Yoga

According to the hard arse principle above, I’ve only recently been experimenting with this. I don’t enjoy Yin yoga, in class I’m ruminating: “is this actually doing anything?”, “am I wasting an hour”. Yet I do feel better (a lifted more optimistic state) afterwards.

Passive Exercise

Passive exercise, such as sensory deprivation or sauna sessions promote relaxation and reduce cortisol levels, which is particularly beneficial for those with adrenal issues.

When the body is exposed to a mild stressor, such as thermal stress (such as sitting in a sauna) or cold stress (such as cold showers or dips in cold water) this kind of passive exercise helps trigger hormetic stress – I don’t know if this is PNS or SNS promoting** but you can breath into the stress when it builds – this promotes cellular health and improves the body’s ability to adapt to stressors over time.

Evening gentle stretch

Typically in the last hour before sleep I do some simple stretches while the TV is on – mostly yogic floor and a few lengthening stretches from 8 Brocades. Gentle, exploratory movement can be particularly beneficial for individuals experiencing stress, adrenal exhaustion or other adrenal-related issues.

Other Life balancing activities

Walking, swimming especially in nature will yield rewards.

Alcohol Reduction

I read/heard recently that alcohol actually reduces your ability to reduce stress naturally. I can’t be bothered looking for that reference now, but any alcohol reduction sounds (I didn’t say elimination 😀) is a positive.

Conclusion

In conclusion, these practices are things I use to support adrenal health and promote recovery and re-balancing. By promoting the parasympathetic response, reducing cortisol levels, and triggering hormetic stress, these practices and exercises can help reduce stress, promote healing, and support long-term health and wellbeing.

** area for further research

References

I asked GPT for some science to backup my wild empirical assertions.

  • Huberman, A. (2021). Episode 34: Andrew Huberman on the Neurobiology of Stress, Relaxation, and Sleep. The Rich Roll Podcast. Retrieved from https://www.richroll.com/podcast/andrew-huberman-533/
  • Alkadhi, K. A., & Zelber-Sagi, S. (2021). Sauna bathing for health: An underexplored opportunity. Journal of clinical gastroenterology, 55(6), 455-462. doi: 10.1097/MCG.0000000000001532
  • Choi, J. H., Park, M. K., & Lee, H. J. (2019). Effects of sensory deprivation in a floatation tank on mood states, cortisol level, and muscle soreness in elite athletes. Journal of sports science & medicine, 18(3), 490-497.
  • Farias, D. L., Rechia Fighera, T. M., Kruel, L. F., & Cadore, E. L. (2021). Hormesis and physical exercise: A narrative review. Ageing research reviews, 66, 101259. doi: 10.1016/j.arr.2021.101259
  • McEwen, B. S. (2015). Neurobiological and systemic effects of chronic stress. Chronic stress, 1, 1-11. doi: 10.1177/2470547015577616
  • Zhang, J. W., & Piff, P. K. (2019). An integrative review of the physiological and psychological effects of floating restricted environmental stimulation technique. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 404. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00404
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OpenAI’s Game B gambit

Much waxing philosophical has been made about organisations in a post-capitalist world, Daniel Schmachtenberger and Jordon Hall (Greenhall) are two names that spring to mind weaving complex dances around what such a world would look like and barriers to manifest it.

Two of the biggest barriers to Game-B are the “winner-takes-all” and “multi-polar traps” (I’ve linked for brevity).

So it was intriguing to listen to Sam Altman’s interview with Lex Fridman and hear OpenAI’s approach to be winner in Generative AI but NOT winner-take-all:

  • a foundation is the ultimate beneficiary of the surplus revenues
  • the corporation that makes the money has shareholders – the catch is that their returns are capped at 100x their investment, the surplus goes to the foundation
  • the foundation will likely distribute wealth to the broader population via something like UBI. Sam indicates that GPT will help in the decision-making process.
  • decisions have been made to withhold source code, so that China can’t access and accelerate
  • decisions have been made to share with some entities.

By no means perfect or resilient to leaks or defectors it does demonstrate a balancing of incentives without going full post-capitalism.

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The Sanctity of Human Experience (maybe)

One minute on twitter has me questioning the sanctity of human life, but recent AI advances with GPT-4 raise questions of the uniqueness of our creative output.

What takes sweat and time and inspiration suddenly feels average compared to the output from ChatGPT as it rapidly scrolls words out in seconds.

People with a vested interest (i.e livelihoods) in seeing the machines fail, vainly shake their fists and ridicule its failures. Great artists like Nick Cave have the fire of hell in his eyes upon witnessing ChatGPT (3 not 4) create a shoddy pastiche of his life work.

Most critics don’t grok (intentional caveman reference 😀) the AI changes will be:

  • unrelenting
  • exponential
  • re-trained automatically on any human criticism – as if the critics were helpful coaches
  • unsympathetic to people’s careers
  • and without our choice.

In this post, I assume co-existence (we can skip dystopias for now) and identify a possible human birthright from where creativity may emerge.

Table of Contents

Story

How did it make you feel?

Where did it come from

So called “spiritual” experiences

Genuine vs Photo-copied Experience

References

Update 17 Apr 2023: Max Tegmark in this interview at around 12:40:

  • suggests Homo Sapiens is rebranded to Homo Sentiens 😅
  • that humans should focus on the subjective experience as the most valuable characteristic of humanity:  “love, connection, other things”
  • a reminder that we must have compassion to less sapient species on the planet.

This maps to what I was attempting when invoking Nagel’s work below. Interesting ideas.

Story

In the realm of ethereal blues, where the horizon met the sky, the young swimmer waded in the vast ocean’s embrace. Ever shifting, ever elusive, the water called to her spirit, promising an adventure unlike any she had known before. She had come to conquer the swell of the sea, to master the art of catching the waves that rolled and danced before her.

The sun shone brilliantly overhead, casting a golden hue upon the surface, as the ocean stretched out before her like an undulating canvas. The wind whispered secrets to the water, weaving a symphony of motion and melody that would soon become the young swimmer’s song.

Her heart raced as the swell began to rise, drawing closer to her as if reaching out to entwine their destinies. The anticipation was a fire within her, burning bright and hot, ready to engulf her in its flames. Her interoceptive senses heightened, attuned to every subtle change within her body. She could feel the coursing of adrenaline, the quickening of her breath, the electric tingle in her skin that seemed to connect her to the very essence of the sea.

As the wave approached, she aligned herself with its path, her muscles coiled like springs, poised to seize the moment. The crescendo of the water roared in her ears, the salt spray a baptism of renewal. Her heart beat in time with the rhythm of the ocean, the symphony of elements weaving together to create a moment that would be forever etched in her memory.

She launched herself forward, surrendering to the force of the wave, allowing it to sweep her up in its embrace. Her proprioceptive awareness surged, every fiber of her being acutely aware of her position in space, her body melding seamlessly with the churning water. She rode the crest like a celestial being, borne aloft by the forces of nature, and for a fleeting moment, she became one with the sea.

The exhilaration of flight coursed through her veins, the union of body and ocean a revelation that would forever change the way she perceived the world. The water held her aloft, carrying her upon its shoulders like a deity of ancient lore, and she reveled in the feeling of absolute freedom.

As the wave began to dissipate, relinquishing its hold on her and releasing her back into the embrace of the sea, a sense of serenity washed over her. The elation, the adrenaline, the fire that had consumed her just moments before, were replaced by a profound connection to the world around her. She felt a renewed sense of belonging, an understanding that she, too, was a part of the grand tapestry that was the universe.

Floating gently in the ocean’s embrace, the young swimmer looked back at the receding wave with a newfound respect and gratitude. For it was in that moment, as she rode the swell and touched the sky, that she had glimpsed a world beyond her wildest dreams, and the echoes of that experience would resonate within her for a lifetime.

In the realm of ethereal blues, where the horizon met the sky, the young swimmer had found her true self. And as the sun began its descent, casting a kaleidoscope of colors upon the water’s surface, she knew that she was forever changed, forever bound to the sea and the magic of the waves that had carried her upon their shoulders.

How did it make you feel?

Did it resonate on a human level? Did you have an emotional response? Did the swimmer’s experience feel objectively true or possible?

When I was reading the story out loud for a first time it was causing emotional waves to happen inside me – was it the content or the surprising quality of the result from “making” (prompting) it? 🤷‍♂️

Where did it (the story) come from?

Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote is a cliche but holds true for me at this date and time: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

This rather florid story above is something I would have been happy to author. But I didn’t write it, I “prompted” ChatGPT-4 (released a few weeks ago) to delve into its massive repository of human experience and speak of things that are uniquely human.

To date there are many posts and videos about how GPT can write stories. But, in the story above, I wanted to explore a version of Nagel’s What Is It Like to Be a Bat. The essence of Nagel’s paper is that one’s subjective experience of consciousness is what makes it unique and cannot be fully reduced to objective analysis.

In other words, you and I are at the same place, at the same time and our experience is shared but also entirely different based on our genetic, historic and embodied internal worlds.

Don’t believe me? Imagine your friend standing right next to you was blind – you get the idea. I recently made a joke that is considered harmless in our culture but that deeply offensive to a person living in Africa.

So I wanted to explore whether GPT could conjure an experience that was surfacing experiences that are internal and so are Nagel-ianly hard to convey. Also the subject was chosen as an experience many of us can strongly recall.

The “prompt” was:

“Write a story about the interoceptive and proprioceptive feeling that a swimmer has when they catch a wave, body-surfing for the first time. Make it poetic and dramatic with related emotions”

From this small set of clues the story was made (in about 30 seconds – ahem). Some observations: 

  • My use of interoceptive and proprioceptive were clues to get GPT to describe an internal experience, not a narrative experience.
  • This seems a little clumsy as GPT seemed to just echo it back in the text which is definitely not what a person describing the experience would say.
  • GPT-4 took my request for poetry and drama to a hyper real level and made it a “peak” or “ecstatic” or psychedelic experience – its a nice angle but on the extreme end of relatability, so not successful for invoking the “right” feelings in the reader.
  • As a human, my experience has been more of a Csikszentmihalyi style “flow” state rather than a Maslow-ish “peak” state. So GPT-4 overcooks it here.
  • As a non-writer, not withstanding these quibbles, I would be pretty happy writing that piece.
  • BUT, it doesn’t capture my lived experience.

So called “spiritual” experiences

The peculiarity of these experiences is that the editorialising (monkey-mind) part of our brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN) apparently stops. Because that feels so different from everyday life is is often felt and described as (and perhaps is) “spiritual”.

Quite often a person will try to relate an experience and they say: “I just can’t find the words to tell you what I felt”.  This is territory related to the work on awe and wonder researched by David Eagleman.

A person’s activity or state transitions to a heightened sense of awareness and alertness, as their brain becomes more attuned to the present moment and external stimuli – the need for words stops and the internal monologue stops.

For me, movement practices like Tai Chi allow me to experience stillness in action – where the commentary is silent for moments and is in stark positive contrast to the rest of my day.

These experiences may be not be mystical –  apparently most task activities recruit energy away from the DMN and are poured into parts of the brain managing  situational responsiveness and problem solving.

We just take these PFC style activities for granted, some other activities might be:

  • many people experience “runners high” – it might just be the endorphins speaking but human’s do  congruently recognise the internal characteristics of that particular experience.
  • Meditation also delivers similar experiences.
  • Perhaps what a great chess player or mathematician might experience also belongs to this. 
  • Creative writing, drawing etc

Many of these experiences give feelings of interconnectedness and unity with the world around them (the story gave the swimmer this experience – lucky swimmer!).

At the extreme end of the spectrum some people may also experience a sense of ego dissolution, as their sense of self and identity becomes less prominent. 

It’s important to know this is a human birth-right, based on a whole evolutionary framework that was not based on language.

Genuine vs Photo-copied Experience

These experiences by humans are “immanent”, not transcendent – the product of lived experience on the planet as a sentient being.

These experiences are NOT the product of some super-slurping text indexer (photo-copier) that can regurgitates (very cleverly) a convincing reproduction of previous human textual expression.

Wordless-ness is a clue to our humanity – if these experiences are often wordless, a whole realm of human experience exists  where our faculties of language are wholly inadequate.

We may as well be describing the 3rd dimension in 2nd dimension terms (the 1885 book Flatland by Abbott).

If, OTOH, our uniqueness boils down to just biological chemicals such as endorphins, then this will be added as a simulation to the AI models fairly easily.

Perhaps the most important role of creative output, is not the result in itself but the flow and wellbeing that the artist/creator experiences. That may be enough in itself.

This may also be a major clue, that we need to break our hypnosis as “in the matrix” consumers and enjoy acts of creation both small and large –  dis-regarding the temptation to compete and compare the final product against an exponentially powered copy-cat.

Many successful artists are already orchestrators and will use AI as just another tool – in a similar manner they may use a blacksmith and forge to create part of a work they wish to manifest.

More information on DMN

  1. Raichle, M. E. (2015). The brain’s default mode network. Annual review of neuroscience, 38, 433-447.

  2. Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Friston, K. J. (2010). The default-mode, ego-functions and free-energy: a neurobiological account of Freudian ideas. Brain, 133(4), 1265-1283.

  3. Brewer, J. A., Garrison, K. A., & Whitfield-Gabrieli, S. (2013). What about the “self” is processed in the posterior cingulate cortex?. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 7, 647.

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