injunjane | Entries tagged with inner ireland

Aldous Huxley - The doors of perception

One of the greatest and the most influential books I've ever read.

"The schizophrenic is a soul not merely unregenerate, but desperately sick into the bargain. His sickness consists in the inability to take refuge from inner and outer reality (as the sane person habitually does) in the homemade universe of common sense - the strictly human world of useful notions, shared symbols and socially acceptable conventions.

The schizophrenic is like a man permanently under the influence of mescalin, and therefore unable to shut off the experience of a reality which he is not holy enough to live with, which he cannot explain away because it is the most stubborn of primary facts, and which, because it never permits him to look at the world with merely human eyes, scares him into interpreting its unremitting strangeness, its burning intensity of significance, as the manifestations of human or even cosmic malevolence, calling for the most desperate countermeasures, from murderous violence at one end of the scale to catatonia, or psychological suicide, at the other. And once embarked upon the downward, the infernal road, one would never be able to stop. That, now, was only too obvious."

Here he speaks about mental illness and it's similarity to his drug use experience. Also, Huxley interpreted his psychedelic experience according to the concept that our mind is a regulator (a valve) between an individual consciousness and so-called Mind in Large (if I understood it right, that should be something similar to the conscious universe of Buddhists).

The problem is, Huxley would probably have the same or similar experience if he would suddenly acquire the vision of an insect or sense of smell of a hunting dog. Or just went into a state when all neural filters between his 5(?) senses and his brain would suddenly stop working.

The world around us (not only inside us) contains immense amount of information, but if we could perceive it all at once, we'd gone mad.

Ah, have just found something really interesting about Brighton.

Long, long ago, in a news galaxy some considerable distance from reality, we reported on attempts to get Jedi recognised as an official religion in the UK census.

After some concerns that anyone entering their religion as Jedi would be thrown down a very deep well, the government eventually - and certainly with a sigh of resignation - conceded that Jedi could express their faith on the census form.

Well, we have just found out something moderately interesting about the UK distribution of Jedi: there are more Luke Skywalkers in Brighton than anywhere else.

Also, The Kooks are from Brighton too. My favourite Jedi Knights of music :)

Lost spaces between bits.

I do not really believe in miracles (with the exception of the current war situation) and my everyday life usually goes by the principle "Danger foreseen is half avoided".

However quite often, when I think about the future and my plans and necessary steps for them, I do not use reasoning or formal logic, but try to listen to the entirety of my inner self, which includes my life experience in the form not of only conclusions and principles, but full length "audio, video, smell, touch and anything beyond it I was absorbing at a moment".

( Read more... )

"For me, when I say spiritual, I'm referring to a feeling you would have that connects you to the universe in a way that it may defy simple vocabulary. We think about the universe as an intellectual playground, which it surely is, but the moment you learn something that touches an emotion rather than just something intellectual, I would call that a spiritual encounter with the universe."

Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson

This largely sums up my out-of-scientific-point-of-view experience with the surrounding world. Largely, but probably not completely so - I believe not all our perceptional channels process logical information or emotions, a large residual portion of the info acquired from the outer world cannot be attributed to these two.

I can say a large part of the connection to the Multiverse I sense is emotional, but there is something for which I do not have words and it's like spaces between bits which are lost in an analogous audio after it's converted to digital form. Or what is lost in .raw after it's converted to .jpeg

I wouldn't call it 'spiritual' though, the word I use is 'intuitive'.

For the narrator in St. Exupery's Le Petit Prince the mentioned image with something of a weird shape was a test if it's worth to communicate with a 'test subject' on a deeply personal level or not.

But all the people except The Little Prince were seeing a hat instead of a giant snake who has swallowed an elephant.

For me such test (since the time I was a kid) was this book written way before I was even born:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chrysalids

Not a single person has passed yet - although one French individual really tried and almost got it.

After talking to a friend (a real close friend whom I know more than 10 years), a brilliant scientist and a person very prone to introspective analysis, I realized (once again): a lot of our personal conflicts, if not most of them, are coming from the inability to understand how another person's mind works.

We are all locked inside our sculls and the only way for our brain to contact reality (a tiny part of it) are the 5 standard senses...though some people including our former research group thinks there are minimum 6 (magnetoreception), that's still not enough.

Each brain is unique and the neural connections in it are formed by the unique genetic makeup and then even more unique individual life experience.

I often wonder how the hell people understand each other at all - they do understand those parts which are common knowledge, machines, programs, more or less all that functions based on universal laws.

But when it comes to the individual perception modes and styles of thinking, we seem to be lonely islands divided by the ocean expanse.

"I can't understand her, her motives, because what you describe is a mechanism which is literally non-existent in me".

To watch the new Saint-Ex film on a big screen in 2025 - check.

Mon Dieu, it's gorgeous. Especially in French (and a bit Spanish) original version with subtitles, not ruined by voice translation.

I've just found a living breathing piece of myself from 2019, buried deep under COVID pandemic and the following cursed war. Me watching fair mountain peaks of South America from the airplane window, flying across the Andes from Lima to Cusco.

I feel alive. So alive.

I've always loved, do love and will love French movies for their ability to drive the most subtle and exquisite emotions from very mundane and real-life situations. From our usual everyday life put on a screen without special effects, fantastic monsters, aliens, spaceships and cities of several million habitants falling down in a fire or storm.

Nobody is blowing up huge things in this film, there are no car races and no sex scenes.
Just a lot of rocky mountains, sky and snow. And two very old airplanes.

I'm pretty sure critics are already putting this piece of art down, but if people continue filming this in our crazy times, I'm still having hope for the humanity.
Because it means that life, struggle, suffering, and joy of just one "ordinary" but authentic and brave person outside a big crowd do have value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Flight_(novel)

Watch on YouTube

"...Emain Ablach (also Emne; Middle Irish Emhain Abhlach or Eamhna; meaning "Emhain of the Apples") is a mythical island paradise in Irish mythology. It is often regarded as the realm of the sea god Manannán Mac Lir and identified with either the Isle of Man or, less plausibly, the Isle of Arran."

I have never been to the Isle of Man, but I've visited Northern Ireland (a magic place with the greenest green grass and the wavefront separating North Sea from the Atlantic Ocean).

However, my personal Emain Ablach, surprisingly, have always been England - mostly London and its surroundings. I've spent 5 months studying and working in Imperial College London after my first doctoral study, and these were the best 5 months in my life ever. From that time I've got a metaphore 'The Inner Ireland" - it's analogous to The Inner Mongolia of Victor Pelevin (a place of power for Buddhists) in its European sense.

That is, my Inner Ireland is always inside, but when outside - it's London. In particular, London Hammersmith, where I was attending lectures on Irish Traditional Music by Brendan Malkyer, and London West Kensington tube, when I was playing that music.

This photo is from the day of the most strong snowfall recorded in UK in preceding 11 years, shot at St. Catherine's Docks in London.
The backstory from it is as follows: one day in February I was looking outside from my patio, thinking that it's the very end of winter but still not a single snowfall, how sad. I have complained about this disturbing fact in my LiveJournal...next morning I tried to open the door and understood that there is so much snow outside that the door didn't move(!)

The whole day I was roaming around London taking photos. The Tube stopped working and all ground transport including taxi stopped too. They simply didn't have the equipment to fight the snow which was thicker than 10cm, because normally it doesn't happen in England :)

As a professional zoologist of course I've always had a scientific answer to that question.

Biologically speaking, we are nothing more than just another species of animals inhabiting Earth. We are not even the only species of the genus Homo (actually, a crossbreed between at least two species of that genus), but the only one remaining because the rest were either extinct or exterminated. We are a species with the biggest (relative to the rest of the body) and the most complex brain among animals, and to that, we have highly developed forelimbs adapted to perform complex work, and a vocal apparatus capable of making a wide range of sounds to successfully communicate the skills and other knowledge to each other.

We are also the only species who invented alphabet to communicate with each other in writing, the ability that enormously accelerated our mental, although not so much physical, evolution.

Our children, unlike those of other animals, are born with an incredible brain in which most instincts (apart of two or three in the early infancy) are virtually non-existent. That's one of the reasons why it takes so long for a human baby to grow into a fully independent individual. Animals don't have that luxury, not all but a large amount of their behavior is genetically predisposed, an animal baby being born with plenty predefined neural paths. That's why when we work, participate in leisure activities, choose a partner - it's very much not an instinct but a result of free and often unpredictable brain activity. Hormonal factors seem to play a great role in our mood, thus shaping our motivation to do (or not) anything, but that is much less strict than truly instinctive behavior.

Still...what do we mean when saying 'we have to be humane', 'humanism', 'humane actions'?

I grew up in a society where the general opinion was that the 'humane' qualities were empathy, kindness, tenderness, nobleness (clever, educated but still kind comportment), capability of self-sacrifice for others, forgiveness and mutual support.

Same people considered 'animals in general' and 'animalistic' all the opposite. Also adding to that examples of hyper-sexuality - which is not really an animal thing, since they are having hormonal pleasure from sex but eventually use it, not much for their own choice, for reproduction. And also very much for BONDING, forming amazing life-lasting couples.

As far as I'm concerned, modern humans are using sex as much to be free from any bonds as for everything else. And so many of them hate cuddles without sex - although animals can be quite the opposite.

Later, when I graduated and started working with actual animals, I was astonished by how often they demonstrate what we considered specifically humane. They can be aggressive but also extremely friendly and gentle - both to their species and the others (I wish racists would learn from them, they can't even stand other populations of their own species). Animals can be very much altruistic and self-sacrificing. The astonishing thing is that their self-sacrifice is born from emotions (and instincts and hormonal bonds, yes) but not from the IDEOLOGY produced by the rational mind.

What seems to be exclusively human (and not at all 'humane') is abusing their very large brain for inventing means of climbing to the top of the social food chain. Weaponry, state apparatus, bureaucracy, social statuses and of course, MONEY.

Humans are the only hoarders of these damn pieces of metal and paper on the planet. Many of them are following the urge of hoarding it as if it would be a true blind instinct and not a matter of choice. Because they don't want to make that choice, and being creatures with a gigantic brain, seem not to be using it for the right purposes.

A new trend is to collect not money but points - in computer games, in ratings etc etc. Same useless habit that was meant to demonstrate swift intellect but instead demonstrates nothing.

From that point of view, I prefer to be an animal. Having my emotions, tenderness, my bonds and quiet admiration of the beauty of the nature outside the human anthills.

Because without it a human is not a person but a BIOROBOT. An organic AI with the glitching software.