The passing of Steve Jobs has produced an avalanche of tributes, most concerning his profound contributions to consumer technology. No doubt the man’s innovations — from personal computing to desktop publishing to portable music listening — impacted lives around the globe. But it was his view of his own life and its impermanence that I find the most interesting.

Since the news of Jobs’ death was announced, my Facebook wall has been inundated with tributes and anecdotes about the genius behind Apple. One persistent post includes a snippet of Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs was a Zen Buddhist. An early pilgrimage to India may have been the catalyst for his spiritual investigations, which he apparently continued even as he scaled the peaks of enterprise. Jobs didn’t advertise his Buddhism, but it very clearly informed his views of death (and life). I can only hope his practice brought him a modicum of peace as he transitioned out of this existence.

I am not going to sanctify Steve Jobs as some kind of technological Bodhisattva. He was a capitalist, first and foremost, and one who had an interesting relationship to control. Yet what we imagine Steve Jobs to be — aesthetic wizard or industrial authoritarian — are merely our own projections. If there is anything to be observed from his creations, it is an emphasis on cutting through the clutter. This is a uniquely Zen approach to Buddhism, which in turn can only be described as the technology of non-attachment. Interesting, then, that Jobs’ legacy is built on creating desire for mechanical devices. How to reconcile these attributes?

We will never know what it is like to have been Steve Jobs. But we can admire his views on impermanence, which seem to have motivated him to not take a single moment for granted. Perhaps his work was merely ego-fulfillment. Maybe it reflected a deep understanding of form and function within multifaceted manifestation. The important thing is to see the above as ephemeral states within an equally ephemeral continuum. And it seems as though he did.

I want you all to read a story in The New Yorker, called “How to Be Good,” which concerns the work of moral philosopher Derek Parfit. You will need a subscription to read the full article, or you can pay for one-time access. I think it’s worth it, particularly for those inclined to self-awareness but averse to mysticism. Heavy stuff, but necessary if we are to overcome the fundamental neurosis that affects our species, namely an awareness of mortality and a need to find a purpose behind our existence. Because we all die. How can we figure out how to live?

I write this post on a Mac laptop, with two mobile Apple devices next to me and a desktop iMac in the other room. I suppose that is a testament to how Steve Jobs’ innovations have become a part of my life. But that’s just window dressing. I prefer to think that he understood something more fundamental about what connects us: impermanence. No one knows but Steve, and he’s not talking. I suppose he already has.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dHUfy_YBps

We’re playing those mind games together
Pushing the barriers, planting seeds
Playing the mind guerrilla
Chanting the mantra, peace on earth
We all been playing those mind games forever
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil
Doing the mind guerrilla
Some call it magic, the search for the grail

Love is the answer and you know that for sure
Love is a flower, you got to let it, you got to let it grow

So keep on playing those mind games together
Faith in the future, outta the now
You just can’t beat on those mind guerrillas
Absolute elsewhere in the stones of your mind
Yeah we’re playing those mind games forever
Projecting our images in space and in time

Yes is the answer and you know that for sure
Yes is surrender, you got to let it, you got to let it go

So keep on playing those mind games together
Doing the ritual dance in the sun
Millions of mind guerrillas
Putting their soul power to the karmic wheel
Keep on playing those mind games forever
Raising the spirit of peace and love

Love…
(I want you to make love, not war, I know you’ve heard it before)

Gary Lachman

We at The Contrarian are huge fans of Gary, as are many of our readers. Which is why we’re so delighted that he took time from his ridiculously busy schedule to answer a few questions about his new book and its perennially enigmatic subject.

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The Contrarian: There’s not a shortage of books about Carl Jung, with each subsequent entry purporting to be the definitive biography. What about your book stands out in this crowded field?

Gary Lachman: Rather than avoid talking about Jung’s “mystical” or “occult” inclinations, as some books on him do, or use them as a stick to beat him with, or applaud them uncritically, or explain them away, I take them seriously, and try to place Jung in the context of other “mystical” teachers, like Rudolf Steiner and Gurdjieff. I also ask why Jung seemed to have had a profound ambivalence about them, why publicly he insisted repeatedly that he was a scientist and not a mystic, yet among his close circle presented a different attitude.

TC: Individuation is Jung’s term for an alchemical-style process in which the components of one’s “spirit” and psyche are melded in a more holistic comprehension of self. How much of a believer are you in this transformation?

GL: If you’re asking if I believe in self-transformation, the answer is yes. I think you can understand individuation as broadly alchemical, in the sense that it involves bringing together opposites and creating something new out of the encounter. I don’t think you need to use alchemical language or concepts in order to do this, though. Individuation is about “becoming who you are” — it’s the same as Abraham Maslow‘s notion of self-actualization. It means becoming “you” and not merely a copy of the people around you.

TC: Jung is also known for his theory of the collective unconsciousness, or “world psyche,” in which the contents of our individual minds correlate at a deeper level through communal archetypes. Is there a dissonance between the idea of a shared spirit-map and the subjective experience of individuation, in which transformation is different for different people? Did you find any evidence in your studies of Jung attempting to reconcile these potentially contrasting ideas?

GL: I don’t see them as conflicting. It is precisely the collective unconscious that one individuates from, as it were. You individuate by becoming aware of the influence of the collective unconscious, the deeper forces at work in the psyche. By becoming aware of them and incorporating them consciously, one becomes an individual.You are not then pushed around by them without a clue, as most of us are most of the time.

TC: Jung seems to have spent a great deal of energy trying to dodge the mystic tag he was so often flagged with. How do you think he’d have dealt with the Aquarian-age co-opting of his concepts? If he were around today, would he be Grand Poo-Bah of Burning Man or an embittered shut-in?

GL: I think Jung would have been pleased that his ideas have become so fundamental to modern spirituality, but he would have shaken his head at raves and such. Individuation is hard work and it means confronting yourself, society, and the cosmos on your own. He enjoyed a good party but like anything of value, individuating is something one does on one’s own. I’m sure Burning Man and so on are great fun, but I don’t know how useful mass events are in “becoming who you are.” Jung, remember, spent a great deal of time in solitude in his famous tower at Bollingen.

TC: To me, Jung is the preeminent cartographer of the human mind. In fact, I’m always puzzled that he has so many critics who are quick to dismiss his work while swooning for far nuttier stuff. Why do you think he’s had such difficulty being accepted by either the scientific or spiritual mainstream?

GL: I don’t know that he hasn’t been accepted by the “spiritual mainstream,” whoever that means. He opposed the reductionist, materialist “scientistic” view, so it’s no surprise many scientists consider him a flake. I think Jung is a rare character, someone who applied scientific rigour to spiritual concerns. Sadly many “spiritual” people are disinclined to think, so they may adopt Jungian ideas like synchronicity without really thinking about them, or about anything else for that matter.

TC: Leading neuroscientists have embraced the idea of brain plasticity as a means of dealing with the “reformatting” of troublesome mental “programs,” i.e., neuroses. Plasticity is not a new concept; Buddhists have for centuries advocated for practices that allow thought to be neutrally observed and new mental habits established. In light of meditation, mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy, are Jung’s self-initiated breakdowns perhaps unnecessarily messy?

GL: Jung didn’t offer his “method” as one appropriate for everyone, and he often said that most neuroses were probably better treated by other means, even Freudian ones. But if you want to discover your unconscious and have some idea what’s going on in it and how you can develop a vital, creative, and surprising relation to it, he believed you needed to meet it face to face, as it were. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted active imagination to be seen as a “technique.” Becoming who you are isn’t something you can do when necessary. You either become who you are or you don’t.

TC: Speaking of self-initiation, Jung was also big on highly personal information, whether it be drawings, sculptures, mandalas or secret linguistics. Does sharing the semantic code with others somehow lessen its alchemical potency?

GL: I think some symbols discovered in dreams etc can have a collective meaning, but many are metaphors about your own life and are surprisingly specific, as if the intelligence responsible for them is speaking directly to ‘you’. At least in my own case I have always been stunned by the aptness of imagery in dreams and how they use jokes, plays on words, visual gags, to make a point. I am repeatedly reminded that what I call “my unconscious” is an independent, living intelligence that more times than not knows more than I do. Jung also believed it was important to have a ‘secret’, something of deep significance that you kept to yourself. This creates a kind of inner pressure that fuels individuation. It’s something he shares with most esoteric teaching. We all know the devaluing effect of telling a particularly important dream to someone else, how it often loses its “charge.” Pearls before swine, and all that.

TC: What do you think of the Red Book? I have it, but feel like I need to take a vacation in order to properly experience its contents.

GL: I think it is a remarkable record of one remarkable person’s encounter with a formidably remarkable living intelligence that just happened to have resided in his head.

TC: When it comes to transformations, you’re certainly no slouch. Going from punk rock star to distinguished esoteric historian is hardly a typical career arc. Could you offer a word of advice or encouragement to others on a less-than conventional path?

GL: Well, in the first case I never was a “star.” I made a not inconsiderable contribution to pop music, but was never a celebrity. But my basic advice is to listen to your “self” and do your best to become who you are. Don’t be afraid of taking risks or of disappointing other people, especially your friends. My interest in music and performing is part of the same impulse that later led me to write. It’s a need for self-expression combined with an appetite for ideas. I was always interested in the kind of thing I write about now, but I needed to mature in order to do it. I have nothing against pop music, but there’s only so much you can say in a song. Now I have 80,000 – 100,000 words. You may not be able to dance to it, but it is very satisfying to collect all your thoughts on, say, Jung and organize them into a book that, with any luck, others will get something out of.

Well, I finally saw Inception. I hadn’t planned on writing about it, however, as everyone from fanboy to critic to armchair PhD has already weighed in. Still, Christopher Nolan‘s latest certainly squeezed my mind grapes, so I figured I’d throw some ideas together.

++Dream a Little Dream++
Artists of all kinds have long been fascinated with dreams — from painter to playwright to composer to filmmaker. The connection should be obvious: dreams are nearly synonymous with imagination itself. Artifacts from the sleep state can be inspiring or disturbing, but the true nature of dream remains an enigma. Inception makes a noble attempt at cracking the cipher, but Nolan’s airtight aesthetic fails to convey the mind’s deepest and most anarchic interiors.

The film is hardly a failure, however. Nolan seems to understand that Hollywood is America’s dream factory — that to step into a theater is to enter the headspace of the filmmaker. This an environment where your own reality is no longer of primary concern (plus it’s air-conditioned!). We moviegoers are willing participants in a ritual of sensory subjugation, and cineplexes exist to enhance this ceremony via giant screens, stadium seating and potent sound systems.

This dream extends in multiple directions. Like the subconscious projections in Nolan’s film, movie actors, sets, wardrobes and so forth are but ancillary expressions of the director’s imagination. Which means that, metaphysically speaking, Inception can be seen as a facet of cinema itself.

Grad-school grandstanding aside, Inception is basically a big summer movie. So the lofty stuff ultimately takes a backseat to elaborate effects and action sequences. To his credit, Nolan maintains a cogent sci-fi narrative while simultaneously exploring the nature of loss. Dialogue and exposition are nonetheless sacrificed on the altar of audience comprehension, yet these faults can be forgiven due to Nolan’s heroic balancing act. I mean, you try making a movie like this.

One complaint I wholly agree with is that Nolan’s dreamworld isn’t terribly… well, dreamlike. There’s no doubt that Nolan is a gifted cinematic architect who has shown himself capable of wrenching powerful performances from his actors. Still, he’s more watchmaker than imagineer, which is why his slumberland feels clinical. It’s not the fault of technology — as was the case in The Dark Knight, Inception goes light on obvious computer trickery. And directors like Stanley Kubrick and Stephen Spielberg have crafted far more evocative worlds with less.

Consider the nature of the sleeping unconscious. Even those dreams with high a degree of detail contain plenty of shifty elements when we recall them in the light of day. And that shiftiness extends to pretty much every aspect of the dreaming experience. The interrelation between objects, places and events are nothing less than fluid. Meaning is multilayered, enigmatic and “extra-logical.” None of this lends itself to moviemaking, but Nolan seems to duck the challenge entirely. Inception‘s only hints of elasticity are in its architectural elements, and these are ultimately more mechanistic than mutable.

Such criticisms aren’t solely limited to set design and FX — they apply to Inception‘s characters and concepts, as well.

++Interpolation and Identity++
Though an original work, it’s impossible to consider Inception without recognizing the kaleidoscopic imagination of sci-fi scribe Philip K. Dick, whose intertextual tales have eluded translation by several gifted filmmakers. To some degree, Inception mirrors the concepts in PKD’s The Minority Report, as well as the Spielberg-helmed adaptation. It’s a powerfully freaky thing to think that someone can get inside your head for the purpose of extracting information. In Dick’s story, it’s a preemptive law enforcement technique — the mere thought of committing a crime being justification for arrest. Nolan’s yarn is more about mindjacking as corporate espionage, but it’s certainly in keeping.

What scared PKD most wasn’t ubiquitous authority but rather the porousness of identity. Even his protagonists that are agents of “the system” (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) experience the paralyzing and pervasive fear of losing themselves across multiple layers of consciousness. Another occupational hazard is the danger of being subsumed by one or more cover identities (A Scanner Darkly) — a literary fascination shared by William S. Burroughs.

My point is this: to effectively evoke dream reality, there must be at least passing attention paid to the mutable nature of identity. Nolan’s film deals with three layers of dream consciousness, each a further step removed from the rules of waking reality. Yet his protagonists remain rooted even as they descend further into raw strata of mind. This is especially odd considering that they’re occupying another person’s dream and therefore susceptible to said individual’s subconscious idiosyncrasies. PKD would’ve thrown everybody’s physical, mental and emotional characteristics into one big psychic Cuisinart until the mission was either a paranoid shambles, or an entirely new plotline emerged. Why do I feel like me, but look like you? Is this my memory or yours? How do I know I haven’t already been compromised? Which reality is the “true” reality, if that can even be ascertained? And does it even matter?

Nolan expresses some of this by having his characters struggle with the idea that their current reality is a mirage. To me, this is the most powerful aspect of the film, touching as it does upon mental illness and the effects of consensus reality. Those unwilling or incapable of entertaining this shared consensus suffer tremendously, as did PKD in his own life. I wish more of these themes were addressed in Nolan’s film, but I understand the difficulty of building a summer blockbuster using madness as the cornerstone (we’ll see what Del Toro does with Lovecraft).

++Neurosecurity and Mindfulness++
I’m surprised that the geek overlords on Boing Boing, etc. haven’t brought up mindhacking in their discussions about Inception (or maybe they have, and I missed it). To me, the idea of establishing a defense against brain invaders is interesting, especially in light of new discoveries in neuroplasticity and the battle to maintain computer network security.

Fascinating stuff, but I’m pretty sure our psyches are less in danger of being harmed by outside forces than our own mental habits.

One of Nolan’s most original ideas is that the subconscious can be trained to act as a built-in police force during synaptic security breaches. The director seems to gravitate towards characters who exhibit tremendous martial/intellectual/transcendental discipline on the road to exceptionalism (Batman, The Prestige). This includes certain mental technologies.

Buddhism has for centuries been aware of the the mind’s plasticity. It teaches (among other things) that we can shape the function of our neural networks by observing our thoughts and establishing new patterns. In therapeutic psychology, this is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) — a remarkably effective treatment for a host of mental afflictions. Borrowing from Buddhism, it prescribes mindfulness as a method for rooting out “bad code” and establishing a healthier psyche.

Remapping the mind requires a great deal of discipline, but it can be done. Brains are far less rigid than stone, and even stone can be shaped by water. In this view, our thoughts are similar to ripples on a swift-moving river. Like thoughts, these ripples spontaneously and constantly appear and disappear. By not fixating on the origin of the ripples, but rather accepting the simple fact of their existence, we can begin to see the river as a whole and even influence its flow.

Inception takes a more martial approach to mindfulness, but it does offer hints as to how we can keep our shit together in the midst of chaos. In the film, one of the characters experiences acute panic when he realizes the reality he thought was solid is in fact quite the opposite. (We experience similar feelings of disassociation when someone close to us dies, we lose our job, get divorced, etc.) The character is told to focus on his breath and remember his training. The particulars of instruction aren’t revealed, but I’m guessing it involves meditation and mindfulness.

It’s easy to dismiss all of this as pop-culture exotica. And that might be true of the mystical kung-phooey on display in The Matrix, but this is different. Keep in mind that neuroplasticity and mindfulness training are hardly the core of Inception, but since it takes place almost entirely in people’s heads, there’s no way of avoiding some of these concepts.

If you haven’t seen movie yet, I definitely recommend it. Less as an artistic achievement and more as an incitement to cognitive investigation. Popcorn and Milk Duds optional.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyErfpJRvqo

I love it when he starts screaming “the quark is real!” Oh, and what do I need to do to become a “spoken word, poetry, philosopher and performance artist?” Sounds like a good career move.

Topics I plan to cover include neurodiversity, neuroplasticity, meditative comprehension and cognitive liberty. I may also talk about the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation and von Neumann probes. You know, for fun.

My first post it up, and it reveals a — gasp! — not-so-secret revelation about yours truly. I’m a debutante!

If you haven’t already, bookmark SD or add it to your RSS reader or whatever. It’s totally Busey. (“Totally Busey” is the new “awesome.” Right, Chris?)

Anyway, this series, called “The Big Bang Never Happened” looks fascinating. I’m currently knee-deep in atomic theory, what with my dual reading of The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet and Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. So I really want to watch these videos as a “macro” accompaniment to my quantum investigations.

Maybe you can tell me if it’s cool?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yTfRy0LTD0

Greetings. Dr. Cox here. Apologies for my absence; there were sundry concerns to attend to on the astral plane which conspired to pull me away from our cherished correspondence. Alas, I am back — at least temporarily (and aren’t all phenomena temporary?) — and have at my disposal a few moments to spend with you.

I’ve taken pains to read the plentiful missives authored by my associates here at The Contrarian, and I must confess to being particularly moved by a recent entry by Alec W. Bauer, who waxed brilliantly (and lengthily) about nootropics — those neural stimulants reputed to boost cognition and sensory perception without negatively affecting core physiological function.

Mr. Bauer referenced one compound, Piracetam, which I had previously heard about, but never had occasion to ingest. That unfortunate gap in my pharmacopeiac experience has since been closed. In fact, I type this under the punctilious yet voluble influence of this amino-based admixture.

And like it, I do.

Far be it for the Doctor to advocate for the usage of legal dietary supplements, but if you are so inclined, I highly recommend Piracetam.

In other news, I have solved a particularly vexing esoteric riddle involving the unification of Opposites and the kabbalistic domain of the Child-King Tipareth. The flaming sword is held aloft! And not a moment too soon, it seems. You see, the Doctor has of late been besieged by Strange Opposers. Which reminds me of a truism uttered by my late friend and exquisite man of letters, H.L. Mencken: “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”

Yet one must indulge in such violence righteously, like an enlightened Samurai who cuts with a full understanding of karma — which is to say cleanly, and without attachment.

That is all for now, my friends. Trust me when I say that we shall converse sooner rather than later.

Thanks to Tanner for the reminder.

The belief is both ancient and cutting-edge: nothing material actually exists. Everything we can experience is an illusion, because it is a combination of parts, not actually a thing in of itself. A table doesn’t exist because it is built out of smaller pieces: the legs and the flat top, both of which are made of wood. The wood doesn’t exist either, because it is made up of countless atoms. There is no wood, only atoms and space. There are no atoms, only protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons don’t exist, they are built up of quarks.

According to current physics beliefs, quarks, leptons, and fundamental or gauge bozons are the only things that can’t be further broken down (author’s note: The Leptons is already taken as a band name. The Fundamental Bozons, however, is not…). These smallest blocks are known to particle physicists as elementary- or point particles. These are the only things that actually exist, because everything else is made up of them. Electrons, being leptons, are the only part of the scientific atom that do exist. As we are unable to experience elementary particles, nothing we can experience is real.

The idea that everything is made up of smaller particles is not new. Buddhist thinkers have taught this as the true nature of reality for thousands of years. Often known as Buddhist atomism, or just atomism, this is a key aspect of Buddhist thought. Leucippus, the Greek philosopher, wrote about atomism 5th century BCE. The idea that nothing with parts is truly real is referred to as mereological nihilism, mereology being the study of the relations between parts and wholes.

The first stream of Buddhist atomism, and the true source of the discovery of scientific atoms, developed in approximately 4th century BCE. It taught that all we see and experience is made up of atoms, and that there are four basic atoms, each corresponding to one of the elements. These atoms, the physical embodiment of the original elements, are what many magickal traditions believe they are working with when doing their work.

Jeffrey Grupp, who studies atomism, mereological nihilism and Indian Buddhism, points out that the scientific use of the word ‘atom’ is different from the traditional use, in that the old use of the word meant the smallest possible building block, whereas the scientific use refers to a particle that can be broken down, which means, according to the mereological nihilist view, they do not exist.

Atomism and mereological nihilism do not necessarily have to go together. The basic idea behind mereological nihilism is that nothing that is built up of other things is real. It is only our very limited human senses that make us think we see, feel and touch things. We may come in contact with a highly compacted (to our senses) group of elementary particles, but the thing we think is a table is not, it is a collection of elementary particles. Also, the hip that bangs against the chair doesn’t exist, because it is made up of bones, blood, muscles and skin, and each of those is an illusion. The pain we feel when we bump the hip isn’t real, it is just messages warning the brain of danger or the possibility of damage to the body (which doesn’t exist).

Notre Dame philosophy professor Peter van Inwagen argues that even though the table may not exist, it is still ok for us to refer to tables, because we are using our language to more easily describe what is actually a group of elementary particles “arranged tablewise.” All the same, many would argue that whether or not the objects we experience truly exist has no relevance to our lives.

Following this idea brings the question of what it is that we actually are. We are not our bodies, because they all have parts. If we are the brain, which part of the brain are we? What exactly is it that is observing everything we think we see and touch? What is it that makes a certain group of elementary particles alive, while another group is a rock? As science and spirituality grow closer together, we may be working towards an answer to some of these questions.