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Can we map the mind?

YellowPolkaDotHalo

YellowPolkaDotHalo

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mindchart.png


This is intriguing me at the moment. The diagram shows the medieval understanding of spheres of the cosmos, derived from Aristotle, and as per the standard explanation by Ptolemy. It came to be understood that at least the outermost sphere (marked "Primũ Mobile") has its own intellect, intelligence or nous - a cosmic equivalent to the human mind.

To all psychonauts out there.. Does this chart resonate with you at all?
 
Yes we can map the mind to some degree we already have, the diagram is a diagram - it does not resonate, but the concept of primu mobile is vaguely interesting, don't imagine that it physically occupies the space indicated on the chart but as metaphor for consciousness it's ok.
 
My eyes are dimmed with age & it's fucking upside down - I imagine it's Latin & I haven't yet looked it up - so at a guess electorum is related to latent energy.


FFS it's to do with voters according to wiki, erm it's where the voters live :D
 
Ive just found some info on it. The outer circle is the Empireum or highest heaven. Its described as a firey place full of pure light so I think that was a good guess.
 
What's Dei ?


I sometimes feel there's a thread that relates the massive to the miniature & what resonates from the large can affect the small & what the small do can effect the large - I mean this in a vague way - so I think I buy into the concept but reckon the cartography to be very different
 
the relationship of the microcosm to the macrocosm :D.. Hindus call the soul 'atman' and God Brahman. They say atman is Brahman. The small is the big so to speak.
Thats a medieval map so in terms of cosmology they would see the heavens revolving around the eartj. I think that center circle depicts earth.
But surely they didnt see as the 7th heaven or the place that God resides as revolving around the earth or the individual?
 
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Ahh the vestiges of Neoplatonism lol (I had a high school project about this diagram)...Since Aristotle of course, the humanism that guided the traditional notion of consciousness has been attacked left and right. I prefer Hegel's schema of consciousness (Hegel by the way is one of the few Western Philosophers that has found a following in some schools of Hinduism)

Euth-10-06.gif


I recommend Hegel or some introductory book covering him, by the OP if he/she's interested in different concepts of consciousness.

"Brothers, stop thinking like children...in your thinking be adults." 1 Cor 14:20
 
I was thinking about that verse this morning Pindar :) Thanks I will look at Hegel.

So what is that illustration saying.. That Absolute creates being or becomes being and so on?
 
Well, in a crude interpretation, it shows how the world exists through Reason through its myriad contradictions, Rationality is in the world; that reality can only become understandable and is binded only through reason and that Being is in the end Reason itself. The Absolute is Being that is a "fixed and unchangeable" whole, which remains throughout the coming and goings of appearances that characterizes world history and everyday experience (Hegel thought). The only way he saw that he could reconcile the concept of Being as being unchangeable and beings (things) coming, disappearing, changing, becoming, is by saying that what is changing is not "the Absolute" but our reason, which comes from the notions of Essence (what holds from fleeting appearance) and Ideas, into our notions of Science and culminating into the notion of subjectivity (Spirit).

Mind you that this but a brief introduction into this complex thinker (Who I think rivals the Greeks in terms of significance)...some students in desperation has often stated throughout the decades:

hegel-y-u-no-make-sense.jpg


But I assure you it is rewarding in the end in my view.
 
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I find that chart intruiging, i'm not sure if this has anything to do with the original post and im sure some here would disagree with me but i have found the AQAL integral map of consciousness to be interesting which expands on the concept of spiral dynamics - http://vajrakrishna.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/aqal_map_screen.jpg

I don't have much time to write out a proper reply before work, i'll be back.
 
We haven't even come close to mapping 1% of the physical dimension.. just a thought to consider when suggesting mapping the dimension of Mind too ;)
 
It used to be fun to try and read every map and try and understand everything conceptually but I found it was just my search for answers, which always brought new questions and left me where I started. Not that its futile to seek answers but eventually my furious search for knowledge of everything slowed as I realized no intellectual map or answer was ever going to satisfy my deepest urges.
 
I think the mind is gonna be more like a billion spheres, all contracting and expanding and wizzing around, vanishing and reappearing all over the place, but with some universal constant governing them.

But mapping the brain is an inevitable part of technological process. And an inevitable part of learning the exact workings of the brain, will be to learn the exact workings of the 'mind', and of human thought, and so eventually, all human action and thought would be able to be predicted from simply looking at someones brain.

Some people tend to think that this is impossible, that this is one of those lines that you cannot cross, that science will never be able to understand the 'soul'. Well, 2000 years ago i'm sure they thought that illness would never be explained, that it was mysterious powers from mysterious gods that were best left unsolved.

I can't wait for the future.
 
YellowPolkaDotHalo said:
as per the standard explanation by Ptolemy.
Click to expand...

I suppose it wouldn't interest you to know that everything about the Ptolemaic model was proven to be incorrect over time, though it was never thought to be correct for any real length of time, and is simply mistake piled upon mistake?
The reason for the ever increasing number of "spheres" is because they were trying to account for the movements of the stars and planets in the sky, but couldn't do so accurately, and thus the term "wheels within wheels" was dubbed as a derisive way to talk about something that is overly complex and new layers of complexity are added to try and rectify the fact that the idea is fundamentally wrong in the first place.

Ptolemy's model was what the Catholic Church leaders were trying to defend when they persecuted Galileo and his observations made through his telescopes.

Not to mention the fact that this has nothing to do with the mind whatsoever other than the fact that it is an essentially useless byproduct of it.
 
oh ok coffee drinker. This was just a diagram I happened apon. I had no idea of its history apart from it being medieval. If Id known how 'awful', 'fundamentally wrong' and 'useless'the pic was I would have written a stiff letter to wikipedia.

In fact I jolly well will! This kind of thing is misleading and must be stopped!

Not to mention the fact that this has nothing to do with the mind whatsoever other than the fact that it is an essentially useless byproduct of it.
Click to expand...

You know I wonder if the guy that drew this worthless illustration was just theorising about the minds workings. If it has
some relation to the rest of the universe, if perhaps it is influenced by the stars or if we are in someway a microcosm.

I do hope in the future we find some way to stop all this dreaming. It just causes confusion. Science and evolution can do with out it!
 
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Well I suppose it's useful in illustrating the ways our medieval ancestors thought about the universe, and how they preferred structural order, the geometric perfection of the circle, and how they were trying to theorize that in heaven above there exists nothing but perfection, but on the earth they knew well that perfect circles and the like were almost no where to be found.

So I think that the guy who drew it was trying to make it seem more perfect than anything our human minds were capable of, but in reality it was actually too perfect.

They didn't even like ovals, it had to be circles for them, in order to be worthy of the heavens.
 
I think the metaphor is surprisingly accurate actually, insofar as any. The mind, in the sense that we are our mind, could be depicted on any map individually; same as how we could see patterns or big pictures in any setting.

Also, I believe that the Thought Reality is actually the interacting reflective bend of the fourth plane into the third, creating what we think of as dark matter. This would mean that thought is tangible and physical (which illustrates how the mind dictates sensation).
 
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