"July, she will fly, And give no warning to her flight." --from the Simon and Garfunkel song, "April, Come She Will," 1966, "Sounds of Silence" July did fly past for me in important ways. It seems I wasn't able to post anything last month, and there was no warning for me that it would be … Continue reading July…She Will Fly…
Some of the most personally compelling spiritual experiences of my life took place long before I could even identify them as being spiritual. My earliest memories of childhood were punctuated periodically with moments of a kind of "unconscious awareness" of energies or forces beyond my direct experience of the world; occasionally precipitating unplanned and unexpected … Continue reading Avenues to Spirituality
"The working hypothesis of this book is that consciousness emerges from neuronal features of the brain. Understanding the material basis of consciousness is unlikely to require any exotic new physics, but rather a much deeper appreciation of how highly interconnected networks of a large number of heterogeneous neurons work. The abilities of coalitions of neurons … Continue reading Quest for Consciousness
The evolution of life on our planet has produced an extraordinary variety and diversity of species, and the paths followed by many of the branches on the tree of life have held sway for millions of years before ending completely or splitting off into whole new species. The ability of each branch to continue into … Continue reading Evolution of Cognition
Memory Is Feeling Some months ago, I wrote a few brief remarks to share for the memorial service marking one year since my Mom's passing, and while preparing to deliver the remarks, I recorded myself reciting them in order to review them before the service. The first attempts with just my voice were helpful in … Continue reading Memory is Feeling
http://www.layoutsparks.com/1/239152/summer-love-beach-waves "Understand that the body is merely the foam of a wave, the shadow of a shadow." -- Buddha Eric Kandel, who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons in 2000, in his book, "In Search of Memory," emphasized the "biology of … Continue reading The Foam of a Wave
"Many theories of the origin of life have been proposed, but since it's hard to prove or disprove them, no fully accepted theory exists," --Diana Northup, a cave biologist at the University of New Mexico. Robert Shapiro, a chemist at New York University thinks "...life started with molecules that were smaller and less complex than … Continue reading In The Beginning
Michelangelo Buonarroti - The Dream of Human Life Writing about "Life," or rendering artistically the everyday scenes of our temporal existence goes on all the time in every culture and it has become commonplace in our time to read about or to see the results of those efforts everywhere we go. Actually "living our lives" … Continue reading The Fulfillment of Life
As the morning light bestows its first sweet caress, It stirs my waking dream to life, Loosening the reluctant grasp of Yesterday's liquid night; The stillness of the dark water, In the wee hours before dawn, Slowly yields to the tides within me. They ripple gently in steady, rhythmic response, As my heart reclaims its … Continue reading From Morning Light To The Next Liquid Night
"Finally we must make use of all the aids which intellect, imagination, sense-perception, and memory afford in order, firstly, to intuit simple propositions distinctly; secondly, to combine correctly (compare) the matters under investigation with what we already know, so that they too may be known; and thirdly, to find out what things should be compared … Continue reading Our Human Powers
John's Consciousness 