Psychology generally, and the scientific study of cognition more specifically, have tended until quite recently to focus more on past-oriented cognition (<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/memory">memor</a>y) and present-oriented cognition (perception) and less on future-oriented/prospective cognition (expectation, anticipation).This has been changing. Increasingly, there is interest in how the brain is oriented to, and perhaps even organized around, forming predictions. And there is interest in developing an evolutionary understanding of why anticipatory cognition is so crucial.

Past-, Present- And Future-Oriented Cognition

The <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-purpose/202009/what-actually-is-consciousness-and-how-did-it-evolve">brain evolved </a>as an adaptation enabling organisms to better perceive and control <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/environment">the environment </a>and their own internal state. Consciousness further enhances this ability by modeling the environment and the self. The ability to make predictions, guided by prospective representations—“if-then” possibilities, greatly enhances this modeling ability. A system that can model the environment and itself well can form simulations of the future environment and its adaptations to that environment.

The Brain Models The Environment And Itself… Into The Future 

In attempting to resolve the seeming enigma of how the brain produces consciousness, it’s important to first understand <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-purpose/201902/what-actually-is-thought-and-how-is-information-physical">"What Actually Is a Thought? And How Is Information Physical?" </a>Thoughts are physical representations or maps. The mind is a kind of map. The brain, and its functional product, the mind, evolved as a map of the body’s relation to its external environment.More evolved brains, such as human ones, can integrate past sensory experiences to form representations of things that are not presently “out there”—predictive simulations.<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-purpose/201810/what-actually-is-belief-and-why-is-it-so-hard-change">Beliefs </a>are a form of predictive modeling.

Consciousness, Thoughts And… Maps?

Anil Seth, a <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/neuroscience">neuroscientist </a>at the forefront of the serious science of consciousness, explained and developed the concept of the brain as a prediction machine in his book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness .Seth suggested that even our perceptions of what is presently “out there” are, in a sense, just predictions or simulations (what he refers to as “controlled hallucinations”). These are formed by a continual process of updating predictions or assumptions (“best guesses”) as to what the sensory data are perceiving.

From Best Guesses To Controlled Hallucinations

As Seth explained in his popular TED talk:“Perception—figuring out what's there—has to be a process of informed guesswork in which the brain combines these sensory signals with its prior expectations or beliefs about the way the world is to form its best guess of what caused those signals. The brain doesn't hear sound or see light. What we perceive is its best guess of what's out there in the world.”According to this theory, what we perceive is strongly shaped by top-down expectations / predictions, not just by bottom-up sensory input.

When You’re A Brain Inside A Dark Skull, You’re Guessing

In his book, A Thousand Brains, Jeff Hawkins elaborated on how the brain’s knowledge is stored as numerous models or maps of the world. Research by Hawkins’ group has focused on how the brain has thousands of complementary models of each object it perceives.He calls this the “Thousand Brains Theory of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/intelligence">Intelligence”</a>. Each model operates as a reference frame, physically stored in a tiny cortical column. These complementary reference frames provide “what” and “where” information; acting all together, they provide information about how the different aspects of the object relate to each other.

A Thousand Models Or, A Thousand Brains

So how come we don’t feel like we’re composed of a thousand brains, each with their own independent little model of the world? How come our consciousness feels unified? This is known as the binding problem. Hawkins’ “Thousand Brain Theoryproposes that the cortical columns work together through their connections with each other, some of which are long-range connections crisscrossing the entire neocortex.

The Binding Problem

Through a process akin to “voting,” the different simultaneous models established by different cortical columns encoding perceptions from different reference frames reach a “consensus” best guess (an algorithmic inference) as to what the object is that is being perceived, based on prior learned information (e.g. “the only thing that is consistent with what we’re all perceiving right now, based on the input from all the different senses and from all our different reference frames, is a coffee cup.”).

A “Consensus” Best Guess And Vote

The fact that expectations fundamentally shape perceptions and beliefs explains many of the brain’s most successful features, as well as its many problematic bugs.Seeing is believing. But our perceptions are sometimes wrong. This may lead us to form mistaken (and often, intransigent) beliefs. Equally, believing is seeing—that is, our perceptions are shaped by top-down expectations/assumptions about what we are seeing, hearing, etc. When our prior expectations are mistaken, they powerfully influence us to perceive things in mistaken ways.

Seeing Is Believing. Also, Believing Is Seeing. 

Magicians skillfully exploit our perceptual expectations to entertain and amaze us, as do psychics—some of whom are charlatans, others are themselves true believers—victims of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/deception">self-deception </a>as much as they are responsible for deceiving others.We, humans, are highly <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-purpose/202103/fashion-suicide-why-we-imitate-each-other">suggestible</a>, which, for many, combines with an incomplete understanding of science and other complex subjects (and an overestimation of that understanding), leading to beliefs in paranormal phenomena, mystical experiences, and other weird beliefs (including conspiracies), confused as to what is real and what is not.

Optical Illusions And Delusions

Mistaken expectations play a role in many mental disorders. <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/anxiety">Anxiety </a>and <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/depression">depression</a>, the most common mental disorders, are characterized by, and some would say partly caused by, faulty expectations of, or predictions about, the future—overestimation of threat or failure.Furthermore, expectations and <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/unconscious">unconscious </a>biases in processing bodily sensations play an important role in functional neurological disorders (conversion disorders), and in other psychosomatic disorders. And expectations most certainly play a central role in the ubiquitous phenomenon of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/placebo">placebo </a>response.

Mistaken Expectations And Disorders

<ul><li>Psychology has focused a lot on how the past causes our present behavior. But the future can cause the present too, via prediction / simulation.</li><li>The brain is constantly making predictions. Consciousness enhances the brain's ability to form predictive models of the environment and the self.</li><li>Faulty top-down influence of expectation on perception shapes illusions, weird beliefs, anxiety, depression, psychosomatics, placebos, and more.</li></ul>

The Takeaway

When you’re a brain inside a dark skull, guessing what’s presently “out there” is a form of prediction. What happens when you believe what you predict?

Part 1: Expectations shape many key features of brain and behavior.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

philosophy

Philosophy

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

mindfulness

Mindfulness

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

The Brain as a Prediction Machine: The Key to Consciousness?

1. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” - Aristotle

2. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” - Aristotle

3. “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” - Aristotle

4. “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” - Aristotle

5. “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” - Aristotle

6. “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” - Aristotle

7. “Patience is bitter, but it’s fruit is sweet.” - Aristotle

8. “Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” - Aristotle

9. “He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.” - Aristotle

10. “The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.” - Aristotle

11. “It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.”- Aristotle

12. “To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.” - Aristotle

13. “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” - Aristotle

14. “The more you know, the more you know you don't know.” - Aristotle

15. “The energy of the mind is the essence of life.” - Aristotle

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

15 Life changing lessons from Aristotle

Say you need to learn a complicated skill: physics, French or computer programming. How much time should you spend building your background knowledge before you start practicing the actual skill?
Consider machine learning. One way to learn this field would be to master first the underlying math. Then, when you encountered the programming commands for certain mathematical functions, you’d know what they are doing behind the scenes.

Pre-Knowledge

At a basic level, we can contrast two ways of learning. One way is to memorize, by rote, the answer to every possible question in a domain. The other way is to learn a process for generating solutions in the domain.Children seem to do exactly this when learning arithmetic. They begin with a procedure, like counting. As they gain experience, they memorize more and more of the exact answers. Eventually, they are able to solve most arithmetic problems through recall alone, and the procedure of counting fades away.

The Prerequisites to Learning a Skill: Cognitive Skill Acquisition

<ul><li>Eventually, many answers are memorized. This results in fast, reliable access and helps us perform complicated skills smoothly. </li><li>The procedure of counting is more compact than an array of memorized facts. Thus the method is learned first, with fluently recalled answers coming only after much more experience.</li><li>The counting procedure can act as a backup. </li><li>The choice to use memorization or a procedure to find an answer depends on the effort needed to perform the procedure, the reliability of the procedure, and incentives surrounding accuracy. </li></ul>

Learning Math: Work Notes

When performing skills, we use a variety of methods, from following a procedure to retrieving an answer from memory. With increased practice, the memory component becomes dominant for routine situations. Even when we can’t get the exact solution from memory, we may find parts of the answer which we can use to solve the problem faster.Digging deeper has two benefits:<ul><li>It can provide a strategy to obtain the correct answer when memory fails. </li><li>It can assist in non-routine situations where no answer is known.</li></ul>

Digging Deeper

<ul><li>Methods that directly assist with learning a domain are necessary prerequisites. Even if a brute-force approach might work, good methods are more reliable than trial-and-error.</li><li>Routine performance is largely handled by drawing on direct experience—not working from first principles. </li><li>If the principles don’t actually lay out the actions needed for routine situations, then they are mainly helpful in non-routine cases. </li><li>These principles will probably only be relevant as your experience within a field grows.</li></ul>

Digging Deep Vs Diving In

Dig deep or dive right in? How much background knowledge do you need before you should start practicing a skill?

productivity

Productivity

education

Learning & Education

problemsolving

Problem Solving

How Much Do You Need to Know Before Getting Started? - Scott H Young

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

Albert Einstein — ‘There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.’

communication

Communication

“There are only two ways to live your life. One ...”

📍 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭.📍 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 ,𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨.📍 𝐆𝐢𝐫𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐠𝐮𝐲𝐬. 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐠𝐮𝐲𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭.

🅔🅧🅣🅡🅞🅥🅔🅡🅣  🅟🅔🅞🅟🅛🅔  🅕🅐🅒🅣🅢

📍 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬.📍 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬.

🅔🅧🅣🅡🅞🅥🅔🅡🅣  🅟🅔🅞🅟🅛🅔 🅕🅐🅒🅣🅢

📍 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐚𝐲.📍𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦.

🄿🅂🅈🄲🄷🄾🄻🄾🄶🄸🄲🄰🄻  🄻🄴🅅🄴🄻  🄵🄰🄲🅃🅂  🄾🄵  🄴🅇🅃🅁🄾🅅🄴🅁🅃  🄿🄴🄾🄿🄻🄴

Extrovert People Facts

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior

The decade from the 2008 global financial crisis to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic has seen a real transformation of the world order. The very nature of international relations and its rules are changing before our eyes. For India, this means optimal relationships with all the major powers to best advance its goals. It also requires a bolder and non-reciprocal approach to its neighbourhood. A global footprint is now in the making that leverages India's greater capability and relevance, as well as its unique diaspora. This era of global upheaval entails greater expectations from India, putting it on the path to becoming a leading power. In The India Way, S. Jaishankar, India's Minister of External Affairs, analyses these challenges and spells out possible policy responses. He places this thinking in the context of history and tradition, appropriate for a civilizational power that seeks to reclaim its place on the world stage.

books

Books

The decade from the 2008 global financial crisis to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic has seen a real transformation of the world order. The very nature of international relations and its rules are changing before our eyes. For India, this means optimal relationships with all the major powers to best advance its goals. It also requires a bolder and non-reciprocal approach to its neighbourhood. A global footprint is now in the making that leverages India's greater capability and relevance, as well as its unique diaspora. This era of global upheaval entails greater expectations from India, putting it on the path to becoming a leading power. In The India Way, S. Jaishankar, India's Minister of External Affairs, analyses these challenges and spells out possible policy responses. He places this thinking in the context of history and tradition, appropriate for a civilizational power that seeks to reclaim its place on the world stage.

S. Jaishankar

The India Way

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced.

The Vedanta Philosophy

“What exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious,” Lisel Mueller, who lived to nearly 100, wrote in her gorgeous poem <a href="https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/02/24/immortality-in-passing-lisel-mueller/">“Immortality” </a>a century and a half after a young artist pointed the world’s largest telescope at the cosmos to capture <a href="https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/09/10/john-adams-whipple-moon/">the first surviving photograph of the Moon </a>and the first-ever photograph of a star: Vega — an emissary of spacetime, reaching its rays across twenty-five lightyears to imprint the photographic plate with a image of the star as it had been twenty-five years earlier, immortalizing a moment already long gone.

Existence And Immortality

And yet in a cosmological sense, what exists is precious not because it will one day be lost but because it has overcome the staggering odds of never having existed at all: within the fraction of matter in the universe that is not dark matter, a fraction of atoms cohered into the elements necessary to form the complex structures necessary for life, of which a tiny portion cohered into the seething cauldron of complexity we call consciousness — the tiny, improbable fraction of a fraction of a fraction with which we have the perishable privilege of contemplating the universe in our physics.

Overcoming The Odds

In <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/152474901X/?tag=braipick-20">Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings</a>, the poetic physicist Alan Lightman sieves four centuries of scientific breakthroughs, from Kepler’s revolutionary laws of planetary motion to the thousands of habitable exoplanets discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission, to estimate that even with habitable planets orbiting one tenth of all stars, the faction of living matter in the universe is about one-billionth of one-billionth: If all the matter in the universe were the Gobi desert, life would be but a single grain of sand.

A Single Grain Of Sand

Building on his lifelong passion for harmonizing<a href="https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/03/27/alan-lightman-searching-for-stars-on-an-island-in-maine/"> for absolutes in a relative world</a>, our <a href="https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/05/22/alan-lightman-accidental-universe-impermanence/">yearning for permanence in a universe of constant change </a>— Lightman writes: ”As we have struggled through the ages to fathom this strange and wondrous cosmos in which we find ourselves, few ideas have been richer than the concept of nothingness. For to understand anything, as Aristotle argued, we must understand what it is not. To understand matter, said the ancient Greeks, we must understand the “void,” or the absence of matter.”

The Concept Of Nothingness Or The Void

Because we are self-referential creatures — the consequence of being creatures with selves, itself the consequence of consciousness — no void troubles us more than that of our own mortality: the notion of our absence from the scene of life. It is difficult enough to grasp how somethingness could have arisen from nothingness — how the universe can exist at all. It savages the mind and its animating selfhood to consider that everything — including the subset constituting the particular something of us — could dissolve to nothingness.

From Nothingness To Somethingness And Back

Lightman closes his essay on the science of nothingness with a sentiment of touching, inescapable humanity:“What I feel and I know is that I am here now, at this moment in the grand sweep of time. I am not part of the void. I am not a fluctuation in the quantum vacuum. Even though I understand that someday my atoms will be scattered in soil and in air, that I will no longer exist, I am alive now. I am feeling this moment. I can see my hand on my writing desk. I can feel the warmth of the Sun through the window. And looking out, I can see a pine-needled path that goes down to the sea.”

I Am Here Now. I Am Not Part Of The Void. 

Another essay, titled “Immortality,” explores this irreconcilable dissonance between the creaturely and the cosmic — the dissonance from which we make our most symphonic art as we try to fathom our existence. Lying in his hammock one summer day, Lightman observes:

The Dissonance Between The Creaturely And The Cosmic ex

«A hundred years from now, I’ll be gone, but many of these spruce and cedars will still be here. The wind going through them will still sound like a distant waterfall. The paths that I wander may still be here, although probably covered with new vegetation. The rocks and ledges on the shore will be here, including a particular ledge I’m quite fond of. […] Sometimes, I sit on that ledge and wonder if it will remember me. […] But eventually, of course, even this land will shift and change and dissolve. Nothing persists in the material world. All of it changes and passes away.”

And yet, in an echo of one of the book’s subtlest yet profoundest undertones, Lightman challenges our binary view of life and death. With an eye to consciousness — “the seemingly strange experience” that furnishes “the most profound and troubling aspect of human existence” — he argues that death is not the life-switch in the off position but the gradual dimming of consciousness, of our experience of aliveness, through the deterioration of its physical infrastructure.

Death Is The Gradual Dimming Of Consciousness

Ever since Cecilia Payne <a href="https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/05/08/cecilia-payne-harvard-observatory-radio-talks/">discovered the chemical fingerprint of the universe</a>, we have known that the atoms we are made of — seven thousand trillion trillion atoms in each of us, on average — were forged in the furnace of faraway stars. We know, too, that every cell in our bodies — the tendons that stiffen our fists and the cortices that kindle our tenderness — is made of atoms. Lightman writes:

We Were Forged In The Furnace  Of Faraway Stars

“To an alien intelligence, each of us human beings would appear to be an assemblage of atoms, humming with our various electrical and chemical energies. To be sure, it is a special assemblage. A rock does not behave like a person… When we die, this special assemblage disassembles. The atoms remain, only scattered about.”

That special assemblage is what we call consciousness. A century after Virginia Woolf observed that <a href="https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/02/06/virginia-woolf-soul-aging/">“one can’t write directly about the soul [for] looked at, it vanishes,” </a>Lightman writes:

The Special Assemblage That We Call Consciousness

“The soul, as commonly understood, we cannot discuss scientifically. Not so with consciousness, and the closely related Self. Isn’t the experience of consciousness and Self an illusion caused by those trillions of neuronal connections and electrical and chemical flows? If you don’t like the word illusion, then you can stick with the sensation itself. You can say that what we call the Self is a name we give to the mental sensation of certain electrical and chemical flows in our neurons.”

“That sensation is rooted in the material brain. And I do not mean to diminish the brain in any way by affirming its materiality. The human brain is capable of all of the wondrous feats of imagination and self-reflection and thought that we ascribe to our highest existence. But I do claim that it’s all atoms and molecules.

“If someone began disassembling my brain one neuron at a time, depending on where the process began I might first lose a few motor skills, then some memories, then perhaps the ability to find particular words to make sentences, the ability to recognize faces, the ability to know where I was. During this slow taking apart of my brain, I would become more and more disoriented. Everything I associate with my ego and Self would gradually dissolve away into a bog of confusion and minimal existence.”

An understanding of death as “the name that we give to a collection of atoms that once had the special arrangement of a functioning neuronal network and now no longer does so” renders the boundary between life and death more like a shoreline redrawn by the receding tide pool than like a coastal cliff dropping off into the abyss. And yet even as a scientific materialist with no mystical inclinations and no belief in an afterlife, Lightman remains what we all are — fundamentally human — and gives voice to that fundamental humanity with uncommon splendor of sentiment:

The Boundary Or OverlapBetween Life And Death

“Despite my belief that I am only a collection of atoms, that my awareness is passing away neuron by neuron, I am content with the illusion of consciousness. I’ll take it. And I find a pleasure in knowing that a hundred years from now, even a thousand years from now, some of my atoms will remain in this place where I now lie in my hammock. Those atoms will not know where they came from, but they will have been mine. Some of them will once have been part of the memory of my mother dancing the bossa nova. Some will once have been part of my hand.”

”If I could label each of my atoms at this moment, imprint each with my Social Security number, someone could follow them for the next thousand years as they floated in air, mixed with the soil, became parts of particular plants and trees, dissolved in the ocean and then floated again to the air. Some will undoubtedly become parts of other people, particular people. Some will become parts of other lives, other memories. That might be a kind of immortality.”

As if it were not staggering enough how tiny a fraction of space life animates, Lightman observes that it also animates a fraction of time — not merely in terms of the transience of any one life, but in terms of all life occupying only a slender slice of the totality of time in the universe, as the discovery of cosmic acceleration has revealed.

Life Animates But A Fraction Of Space And Time

The cosmic brevity of “the era of life” is bookended on one end by the slow condensation of colossal gas clouds into the first stars that forged the first atoms large enough to form complex structures, after the universe had already existed for about one billion years, and bookended on the other by the eventual death of all stars when they burn out in several thousand billion years, leaving behind a dark lifeless expanse of pure spacetime.

A Lifetime Next To The Lifetime Of Stars

And yet even in these cold unfeeling cosmic facts, Lightman finds reason to swell the brevity of existence with the warm feeling of kinship that makes life worth living. With an eye to his grain-of-Gobi-sand analogy, he writes:“Life in our universe is a flash […], a few moments in the vast unfolding of time and space in the cosmos… A realization of the scarcity of life makes me feel some ineffable connection to other living things… a kinship in being among those few grains of sand in the desert, or present during the relatively brief era of life in the vast temporal sprawl of the universe.”

A Kinship With The Others Grains Of Sand

“We share something in the vast corridors of this cosmos we find ourselves in. What exactly is it we share? Certainly, the mundane attributes of “life”: the ability to separate ourselves from our surroundings, to utilize energy sources, to grow, to reproduce, to evolve.

“I would argue that we “conscious” beings share something more during our relatively brief moment in the “era of life”: the ability to witness and reflect on the spectacle of existence, a spectacle that is at once mysterious, joyous, tragic, trembling, majestic, confusing, comic, nurturing, unpredictable and predictable, ecstatic, beautiful, cruel, sacred, devastating, exhilarating. The cosmos will grind on for eternity long after we’re gone, cold and unobserved. But for these few powers of ten, we have been.We have seen, we have felt, we have lived.”

Beginnings and endings, or what we see as a beginning and an ending, like the coming of a New Year and the going of the “Old” one, unnerve us all. Here is an idea to foster and to share: “What exists is precious not because it will one day be lost but because it has overcome the staggering odds of never having existed at all.”

Probable Impossibilities: Physicist Alan Lightman on Beginnings, Endings, and What Makes Life Worth Living

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

In The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Dr. Joseph Murphy gives you the tools you will need to unlock the awesome powers of your subconscious mind. You can improve your relationships, your finances, your physical well-being. Once you learn how to use this unbelievably powerful force there is nothing you will not be able to accomplish. Join the millions of people who have already unlocked the power of their subconscious minds. I urge you to study this book and apply the techniques outlined therein; and as you do, I feel absolutely convinced that you will lay hold of a miracle-working power that will lift you up from confusion, misery, melancholy, and failure, and guide you to your true place, solve your difficulties, sever you from emotional and physical bondage, and place you on the royal road to freedom, happiness, and peace of mind.- Dr. Joseph Murphy

Joseph Denis Murphy was an Irish author and New Thought minister, ordained in Divine Science and Religious Science.

Joseph Murphy

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

If you also think that - every one is your enemies and nobody cares about you and jealousy etc. Then you must have to note few things by which your thinking will be change and you can handle all that kind of Stuff very Finely. Every natural occurring carbon containing particle wants to be in stable state in world but why we are not giving wnoughlight on it.

Enemies......😈

Look there are many things happening around you and our life is so precious and brief that if you are happily enjoying then it will seems to be like a super sonic rocket you can't able to notice that is it day or night, is it good or bad you will always be in the Shower of happiness but if you are depressed or tensed it fells like a long slow train which is moving somewhere. Just think in which state do you want to be in life.

The Best Way To Deal With Yourself 👇

So what other mocking is all depends upon our state of mind, also all the powers are in our hands you can be sad, depressed, angered or you be like a blossom like a flower every day. Choices your !!!!

Make Your Own State Of Mind 

.TRY TO MAKE EVERYBODY SMILE.NOBODY KNOWS WHEN THE DEATH APPROACHES TO US.

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