Author: randolphdible

Sphere-visualization exercise in Plotinus: 

Then let us grasp this world by means of discursive reason, with each of its parts remaining what it is without confusion, brought into one whole ‘all together,’ as far as is possible, so that when any one part appears, for example the sphere which is outside the world, there immediately accompanies it a representation of the sun as well, together with the other stars; and the earth, sea and all living creatures are seen, just as everything could in fact be seen in a transparent sphere. Let there be in your soul a luminous representation of a sphere, containing in it everything whether moving or still, in fact definitely what is both moving and what is still. And while you keep hold of this representation take another beside you [into your self], but with the mass removed. And remove both the places and the image of matter in yourself; and do not be tempted to take another sphere that is smaller than it in mass, but call on the god who made the sphere whose image you have and pray for him to come. May he come, bringing his own world with all the gods which are within it, he who is one and all; and each of them is all coming together in one; they are different powers, but all are one by that single multiple power. Rather, the one is all; for he himself is not deficient by the fact that all those gods come into existence. They are all together and each is separate as well in a non-spatial fixity since none has any perceptible shape – if it did one would be here and another there, and each would not be the whole in itself; nor does any have parts different from other parts or from itself [as a whole]; nor is each like a power that has been cut up and is co-extensive with the enumerated parts, but each one is the entire power, extending to infinity and powerful to infinity. And that god is so great that even his parts are infinite, for where can you name anything that he has not already reached?. …

– 𝘌𝘯𝘯. V.8.9.1-28 [‘𝘖𝘯 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘺’], trans. A. Smith, 2017.

“In 𝘌𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴 V.8 Plotinus presents a thought experiment involving visualization of the sphere: 

 “Let us grasp this world by means of discursive reason, with each of its parts remaining what it is without confusion, brought into one whole ‘all together,’ as far as is possible…”

Here, Plotinus suggests that the reader try to perceive the world as unified within thought, to think of the world as a single object of thought, yet as retaining all of the features of its different members. Consider, he tells the reader, how any conditions of awareness whatsoever are confronted by you, the knower. These directions are a way of calling attention to the most general features involved in any encounter with the world, any possible object of awareness. We might paraphrase these instructions as follows: consider the total possible field of objects of awareness – that same field is simply what I mean by ‘world.’

It is fair to call this passage a meditation because it involves two features often employed in meditation techniques: the active but directed use of the imagination, and the sustained presence of this imaginative construction as a method of changing habitual modes of thought or self-awareness:

“So that when any one part appears, for example the sphere which is outside the world, there immediately accompanies it a representation of the sun as well, together with the other stars; and the earth, sea and all living creatures are seen, just as everything could in fact be seen in a transparent sphere.” 

This meditation involves a very careful direction of the mind and imagination of the student. Holding the simple image, the sphere, before the mind’s eye, the reader is to fill up the space of that image entirely, exerting herself to the utmost to picture the entire universe of sentient and non-sentient beings in all of their diversity. Certainly one would need at least some practice and effort to carry out all of the conditions of the meditation successfully.

All of these components of the picture must be held in an even gaze. All sentient beings are visible within the diaphanous sphere at a single glance: 𝘦𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘴. An important feature of the meditation is the training of the student’s concentration and attention. The practice of this exercise leads both to a focusing capacity, an intense direction of the mind’s eye to a single object, without letting any feature of that object dominate in the moment, and to a detachment. None of the beings, either animate or inanimate, either human or nonhuman, is to have priority within the meditation. All are equally and completely subsumed within the general category of content of the sphere. All are, we might say, equidistant from the center. This equidistance is what Plotinus is hinting at by saying that the elements are, as it were, upon the surface of the sphere.

~ Sara Rappe, 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘕𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘮: Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius (CUP, 2000), p.79-80.

Although the sphere is envisioned as transparent, it is not empty. Holding the simple image, the sphere, before the mind’s eye, the reader is to fill up the space of that image entirely, to picture the entire universe of sentient and non-sentient beings in all of their diversity. The reader has before the mind’s eye a vast field consisting in the panoramic sweep of the entire cosmos that is simultaneously intricate in its detail and specification. The purpose of this interior visualization is to call attention to the quality of interior vision itself, and in particular, to its capacity to be at once unitary and multifaceted in a way that exterior vision is not. This facet of the image, its appearance as an integral totality, functions as a balance upon the monolithic quality of the initial visualization. It also introduces a third stage in the developing vision:

“Let there be in your soul a luminous representation of a sphere, containing in it everything whether moving or still, in fact definitely what is both moving and what is still. And while you keep hold of this representation take another beside you [into your self], but with the mass removed. And remove both the places and the image of matter in yourself; and do not be tempted to take another sphere that is smaller than it in mass…”

The reader, trying to contract the teeming morass of all sentient beings into this tiny sphere, must ruthlessly compress the entire universe. Instructions for this form of imaginary compression are included in the exhortation to ”remove [the places].” Here Plotinus suggests that the student try to picture the world as existing within his imagination, that is, to confront the world solely as it is apprehended in awareness.

– ibid., p.104-5.

—-

You have to remember Plotinus’ doctrine of the undescended soul/self here – that is why the soul does not need to leave the body as such – as we are already ‘in Nous’ (in effect, we are Nous; cf. the sphere-visualization exercise at 𝘌𝘯𝘯. V.8.9.1-28) and so “ascent”  is an inward turn; there was no need for theurgy, etc. This view of the soul/self was categorically rejected by Iamblichus/Proclus (and subsequent later Platonists) for whom theurgy was needed – among other things – in order to purify the soul’s pneumatic vehicle (𝘰𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘢 𝘱𝘯𝘦𝘶𝘮𝘢) precisely so that the soul could ascend in this lifetime (albeit temporarily); for them the soul was fully descended. 

And, that which is most astounding of all, that although the theurgists order [us] to bury the body except the head in the most mystical rites, Plato, moved by the gods themselves, has anticipated this: ‘Being pure,’ he says, ‘and not entombed in this thing which we now carry around with us and call a body [𝘗𝘩𝘢𝘦𝘥𝘳𝘶𝘴 250c4-6], we obtained this most blessed initiation and highest initiation being full of intelligible light. For the pure ray symbolically shines the intelligible light on us. Thus, we possess the life in the Intelligible, which is completely separated from the body.’ Raising the head of our charioteer toward the place outside we are filled with the mysteries there and intelligible silence. [cf. 𝘗𝘩𝘥𝘳. 248a2-3].

~ Proclus, 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 4.9. 30.17-31.5 (trans. Finamore 2004).

The gods have a wondrous knowledge of the universe of figures and a potency capable of generating and supporting all secondary things; the figures in the realm of nature have the power of creating appearances, though they are devoid of knowledge and intelligent comprehension; individual souls have immaterial thought and spontaneous knowledge, but not the generative and activating cause. Therefore just as nature stands creatively above the visible figures, so the soul, exercising her capacity to know, projects on the imagination, as on a mirror, the ideas of the figures; and the imagination, receiving in pictorial form these impressions of the ideas within the soul, by their means affords the soul an opportunity to turn inward from the pictures and attend to herself. It is as if a man looking at himself in a mirror and marveling at the power of nature and at his own appearance should wish to look upon himself directly and possess such a power as would enable him to become at the same time the seer and the object seen. In the same way, when the soul is looking outside herself at the imagination, seeing the figures depicted there and being struck by their beauty and orderedness, she is admiring her own ideas from which they are derived; and though she adores their beauty, she dismisses it as something reflected and seeks her own beauty. She wants to penetrate within herself to see the circle and the triangle there, all things without parts and all in one another, to become one with what she sees and enfold their plurality, to behold the secret and ineffable figures in the inaccessible places and shrines of the gods, to uncover the unadorned divine beauty and see the circle more partless than any center, the triangle without extension, and every other object of knowledge that has regained unity. Clearly, then, the self-moved figure is prior to what is moved by another; the partless is prior to the self-moved; and prior to the partless is the figure which is identical with unity. For all figures attain consummation in the henads, the source from which they all entered into being.’

~ Proclus, Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s 𝘌𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 [𝘐𝘯 𝘌𝘶𝘤.] 140.22 – 142.7, trans. Morrow, 1992, p.112-3.

Corpus Hermeticum, XI, 20. [‘𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘥 [𝘕𝘰𝘶𝘴] 𝘵𝘰 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘦𝘴’]:

Become Aiôn, and you will understand God [Αἰὼν γενοῦ καὶ νοήσεις τὸν θεόν]… Gather all the sensations of creation in yourself; fire and water, dry and moist, and that you are at once everywhere; in earth, in water, in heaven, that you have not yet been born, that you are in the womb, young, old, dead, beyond death; and when you have understood all of this at once—times, places, things, qualities, quantities—then you are able to understand God.

~ trans. C. H. Bull, ‘𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘛𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘮𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘴’ (Brill, 2018), p.282.

– see also Rappe (2000), p.128-9.

The gods that guard the poles have been assigned the function of assembling the separate and unifying the manifold members of the whole, while those appointed to the axes keep the circuits in everlasting revolution around and around. And if I may add my own conceit, the centers and poles of all the spheres symbolize the wry-necked gods (τῶν ίυγγικῶν θεῶν) by imitating the mysterious union and synthesis which they effect; the axes represent the connectors (συνοχάς) of all the cosmic orders … and the very spheres are likenesses of the perfecting divinities (τῶν τελεσιουργῶν θεῶν) …

Geometry and the Gods: Theurgy in Proclus’s Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements – Robert Goulding

A. PHRASES:

1. “figurative force of the sphere” (52)

2. “in spherics…we are nearly blind intuitively…” (53)

3. “ancient spherics…since Aristotle…merely figurative” (54)

4. “the recovery of a lost continent of the history of philosophy.” (56)

B. CONTEXT:

1. “… he has lost access to the figurative force of the sphere…” (52)

“Against the misunderstanding of their definition implied in this refutation, the Pythagoreans can only exclaim, “Not the revolution of the sphere; the sphere itself is time!” What Aristotle separates off and treats as a rather silly subvariant of an amateur astronomical thesis is, in fact, the formal intuition behind a phenomenological insight about time and the soul in earlier Greek physics. In his own way, he draws from the same intuition himself, in his discussion of the Now and of time and the soul in the Physical Lectures on Time. But he has lost access to the figurative force of the sphere, and would have blocked it for us too, if we didn’t have recourse to Plotinus and Iamblichus” (52).

2. “in spherics…we are nearly blind intuitively…” (53)

“In σφαιρική, ‘spherics’ as it used to be called, we are nearly blind intuitively, a phenomenon which is not unrelated to the fact that few educated moderns actually see the sky in the same space in which they theorize about it.“ (53)

“The ecstatically completed sky sphere which is also the Soul of the Whole includes everything in a timelike way, and not merely in so far as it is a spatial container. Greek astronomy is credited with having discovered that the earth is a sphere (as early as Anaximander). To us, this seems to be an intuition that is separate from the projection of the heaven of the stars as spherical. But because it is the ecstatic phenomenon of time, not a shape in space, the sphere itself, αὐτὴ ἡ σφαῖρα, is both of these and neither. It becomes the central object in the speculative logic of Parmenides. And though it is there meant to be the logical model of a physical object, it is neither a ball seen from outside, nor a containing firmament seen from within, but an all-encompassing self-referential equality of an intentional kind—a disclosure space” (53).

3. “Instead of the direct leap into ancient ‘spherics’ with which we have been experimenting here (a mode of thinking that since Aristotle has struck us as merely figurative), we can…” (54)

“Our doorway into this extended reflection on phenomenal time—the one that runs from Anaximander and Heraclitus through Aristotle into Plotinus and to a full theory of disclosure space, of “time and the soul”—is Iamblichus’ interpretation of the double intentionality of the Now. It relies on Archytas’ version of the Figure of Double Continuity. Instead of the direct leap into ancient ‘spherics’ with which we have been experimenting here (a mode of thinking that since Aristotle has struck us as merely figurative), we can connect with a mathematical representation whose phenomenological implications are familiar to us from Husserl. It is precisely this mathematical sensibility that makes Iamblichus such a rewarding juxtaposition to Husserl. And in this juxtaposition we can find a definition of transcendental phenomenology that is applicable to both sides of Cartesian ‘consciousness’” (53-4).

4. “…the recovery of a lost continent of the history of philosophy…” (56)

“These are real difficulties, reflected as we shall see in systematic complications for which the scholastic Neoplatonism that begins with Porphyry and Iamblichus is well known. But an even greater difficulty is created by my intention in this project to profit from Plotinus in the area of phenomenology. My goal is only incidentally the recovery of a lost continent of the history of philosophy, which in any case is already well underway in contemporary Neoplatonic studies, where the basic editing of sources and preliminary philology is mostly done and the properly philosophical work of exposition and engagement has begun. In other words, my aim here is not to learn, from the theme of time, about Plotinus, but to learn from Plotinus about time“ (56).

Manchester on Participation (μέθεξις)

“The Noetic Triad in Plotinus, Marius Victorinus, and Augustine,” in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism (ed. Richard Wallis and Jay Bregman), p. 210:

i. the factor unparticipated (amethektos), “in itself,” absolute;

ii. the factor participated (metechomenos), which involves a self-disposition and action by the factor, not a reaction to what participates in it; and

iii. the factor as participant (kata methexin, en tois metechousi, enschesei), that is, as enacted in the derived hypostasis and now its action, no longer that of the higher hypostasis.

image: art installation for Thinking the Float Tank, part of the group exhibition Gödel, Escher, Bach, at West Den Haag

Thinking the Float Tank: A Unique Philosophical Experience

Philosophy aims at conjuring pure intelligence (Greek: νοῦς, nous), with the fallout being dianoetic activity or mere thinking. Ordinary thinking is sufficient for most purposes, and it is certainly enough for an academic institution and for contemporary civilization, but it is not enough for philosophy.

Art aims at conjuring invention, novelty, and creation (look to the Greek ποίησις, poiesis). Contemporary art is not only contemporary, but so far as it is true to the newness of art’s spirit it is future-facing. Contemporary artistic creations may partake of the newness of the now, of the present, but the deeper and higher presence of art in such manifestations is teleological, eschatological. The new proper to art is the elusive essence of the now and it is the ephemeral yet fixed omega point of the future.

What would be the confluence of the nous and the new? How could we capture some of its essential meaning and give it to everybody?

At summer’s end, at the contemporary art museum West Den Haag, the group exhibition Gödel, Escher, Bach will conclude its term (May 19 to August 27, 2023) with an interdisciplinary academic conference called Thinking the Float Tank: AUM Fiftieth Anniversary Conference; Cybernetics, Float Tanks, and Phenomenology Since the 1973 Esalen Institute Conference (August 24-26, 2023). 

Like the famous book by Douglass Hofstadter of the same title, Gödel, Escher, Bach is about self-reference. Escher’s art manifests self-reference in all its glorious imagination and intelligence, beyond the paradoxes and contradictions of thinking the self dianoetically and of imagining the self plainly as in a mere mirror. That paradigm of self-reference shines through Escher, through Hoftstadter, and all along its path it gives a metaphysical light on such themes as subjectivity and objectivity, the absolute infinite, nothingness, higher-order processes, transcendental reflection and speculation, and so on. That light can be caught in any curve, in any cup, especially a conceptual cup, and finally in the ancient and perennial idea of the infinite sphere. In the real reality of the human world, the cup has a rich symbolic heritage, for instance the alchemical tank, and today we can look to the history of the isolation tank, or flotation tank. This is the intention of Thinking the Float Tank. Metaphysical light will be brought to earth through the confluence of intelligence and imagination and conferred in a conference.

The occasion for this universal sense of the idea of a conference is the anticipated 50th anniversary of a magical occasion at the Esalen Institute on the coast of California in 1973. John C. Lilly, the inventor of the flotation tank, and the philosopher Alan Watts invited the mathematician George Spencer-Brown to lecture on his 1969 book Laws of Form, which Lilly had been using in the tank as a guidebook to other universes. Dubbed the American University of Masters Conference (the AUM Conference), this occasion marked a “second-order” revolution in the history of cybernetics and systems thinking, and implicitly in formal ontology as well. Laws of Form is at once advanced and basic, sophisticated and ultra-simple. A similar second-order revolution was happening in phenomenology around the same time, and both of these as well as other revolutions in contemporary civilization indicate the dynamism of cosmic forces operating world-historically over human spiritual evolution. The place of the fascinating utility of the float tank as a technology of the self (Foucault) and ritual object of meditation in this history of recent philosophy gives a face to the invisible forces of invention and intelligence underlying contemporary extra-mural philosophical activity.

In his books and in the conferences of the years following the AUM Conference, John Lilly identified his inner-tank methods built upon Spencer-Brown’s architecture as “the void method.” The 1974 and 1975 Form and Void Conferences continued the AUM momentum, and fifty years later we hope to do the same. With a workshop aimed at reconstructing the void method, with a work of contemporary art that erases its traces, Gustav Metzger’s NULL OBJECT, and with its very own flotation tank built by Nikolai and Lorenz Beckmann exclusively for this conference, Thinking the Float Tank intends to conjure in fullness that momentum and siphon it into the contemporary and future now and the dianoetic relevance of the pure philosophical nous. 

The news today features not only the increasingly familiar holy grail of the Information Age that is artificial intelligence, but now we are also seeing a revolution in reality and virtuality on the horizon, given for instance in the Apple Vision paradigm. Philosophy of immersion, ontology of reality, and new philosophical cosmology are no longer passive museum pieces on display for philosophers, but are inviting active participation (μέθεξις) in the philosophical and meta-theatrical sense. Theosophy and theurgy are not far from this ancient and perennial sense of philosophy.

Academic philosophy conferences capture too little of the light of pure self-reference, but if an academic philosophy conference becomes an interdisciplinary work of conceptual art about that mysterious meta-object that is the float tank, then the coalescence of invention (ποίησις) and intelligence (νοῦς) in a way that invites the highest and deepest spirit of each and every human being to participate (μέθεξις) in a new kind of thinking, we will discover something wondrous.

The path to your greatest discoveries will be by way of your greatest inventions. Come learn, invent, with us, and embark on a new direction of discovery. Thinking the Float Tank exists in a dimension parallel but perpendicular to the ordinary academic philosophy conference. Each and every person is in their deepest and highest essence a genuine philosopher and a true artist, and this truth is amplified in the float tank, where the deepest depth and the highest height coalesce.

Thinking the Float Tank: AUM Fiftieth Anniversary Conference; Cybernetics, Float Tanks, and Phenomenology Since the 1973 Esalen Institute Conference

Date: August 24-26, 2023

Location: West Den Haag, Lange Voorhout 102, 2514 EJ, Den Haag, The Netherlands

For more information, check out: Thinking the Float Tank.

Thinking the Float Tank: AUM Fiftieth Anniversary Conference; Cybernetics, Float Tanks, and Phenomenology Since the 1973 Esalen Institute Conference

Date: August 24-26, 2023

Location: West Den Haag, Lange Voorhout 102, 2514 EJ, Den Haag, The Netherlands

Description: Thinking the Float Tank is an interdisciplinary conference that will keynote the group exhibition Gödel, Escher, Bach (May 19 – August 27, 2023) at the contemporary art museum West Den Haag in The Hague, The Netherlands. The artistic exhibition Gödel, Escher, Bach is based on the theme of self-reference, which Douglas Hofstadter’s famous book of the same title highlights. Thinking the Float Tank is a float-tank think tank existing in a space devoted to the history and the continuing development of the science and philosophy of flotation. See pictures of the exhibit here: Gödel, Escher, Bach. Thinking the Float Tank exists in a dimension altogether different from that of the ordinary academic conference.

Note: All proceedings will be recorded and published to YouTube.

Program for Thinking the Float Tank

DAY 1

Thursday, August 24, 2023

9:00 AM – 9:20 – Registration and Coffee

9:20 AM – 9:40 AM – Randolph Dible – Interdisciplinarity and First Philosophy – (20 minutes)

9:40 AM – 10:00 AM – Akiem Helmling – Introduction to “Thinking the Float Tank” and the Group Exhibit Gödel, Escher, Bach – (20 minutes)

10:00 AM – 10:10 AM – 10 Minute Break

10:10 AM – 10:50 AM – Randolph Dible – Second-Order Cybernetics and Second-Order Phenomenology – (40 minutes)

10:50 AM – 11:00 AM – 10 Minute Break

Keynote: From Mathematics to Metaphysics

11:00 AM – 12:20 PM – Keynote: Claire Ortiz Hill – Metaphysics Seizes Possession of Georg Cantor’s Soul, a Journey through His Psyche – (1 hour 20 minutes)

12:20 PM – 1:50 PM – Lunch

Panel: Kyoto Immersion

1:50 PM – 2:30 PM – Francesca Greco – Shapes of Nothingness—Countless Relations: A World of Floating Boundaries – (40 minutes)

2:30 PM – 3:10 PM – John Krummel – Self-Awareness in Nishida and Beyond: Auto-determination of the Indeterminate as Reflection and Inter-reflection (hybrid) – (40 minutes)

3:10 PM – 3:20 PM – 10 Minute Break

Keynote: Phenomenological Teleology

3:20 PM – 4:40 PM – Keynote: Irene Breuer – Limit Phenomena: Primal Hyle, Consciousness, and God as the Constituents of a Phenomenological Teleology – (1 hour 20 minutes)

4:40 PM – 5:00 PM – 20 Minute Break

Keynote: The Primordial Sphere of Ownness

5:00 PM – 6:20 PM – Keynote: Dermot Moran – The Nature of Self-Experience, Husserl’s Sphere of Ownness and the Experience of the Flotation Tank – (hybrid) – (1 hour 20 minutes)

DAY 2

Friday, August 25, 2023

9:00 AM – 9:15 AM – Coffee

9:15 AM – 9:30 AM – Briefing: Randolph Dible on the “Void Method” – (15 minutes)

9:30 AM – 10:10 AM – Timothy Lyons – Sinking into the Prima Materia – (40 minutes)

10:10 AM – 10:50 – Jerry Swatez – You are Your Own Boundary Condition – (hybrid) – (40 minutes) 

10:50 AM – 11:30 – Workshop: Form and Void: Part I. Moderated by Randolph Dible – (40 minutes)

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM – Lunch

1:00 PM – 1:40 PM – Greg Moss – The Problem of Impure Experience: Nishida and the Origin of Intentionality – (hybrid) – (40 minutes) 

1:40 PM – 2:20 PM – Margaretha Hendrickx on Gestalt Switching – (hybrid) – (40 minutes) 

2:20 PM – 2:30 PM – 10 Minute Break

Panel: Sensory Deprivation and Spiritual Reality

2:30 PM – 3:10 PM – Kirsty Allan on Parapsychological Uses of the Float Tank – (40 minutes)

3:10 PM – 3:50 PM – Callum Cooper on Paranormal Reality – (40 minutes)

3:50 PM – 4:00 PM – 10 Minute Break

4:00 PM – 4:40 PM – James Guy – Metaspheric Perspective – (hybrid) – (40 minutes)

4:40 PM – 4:50 PM – 10 Minute Break

Keynote: The Infinite Sphere

4:50 PM – 6:10 PM – Keynote: Elizabeth Brient – The Infinite Sphere as Think Tank: Suspension (of the finite/ in the infinite/ of the infinite in the finite) as Meditative Praxis” – (1 hour 20 minutes)

DAY 3

Saturday, August 26, 2023

9:00 AM – 9:15 – Coffee

Panel: History of Flotation Science in John Lilly’s Milieu

9:15 AM – 9:55 AM – R. John Williams on the 1973 Esalen Conference – (40 minutes)

9:55 AM – 10:35 AM – Courtney Stephens – John C. Lilly and the Float Tank: From “human agents” to Altered States – (hybrid) – (40 minutes)

10:35 AM – 10:45 AM – 10 Minute Break

10:45 AM – 12:05 PM – Workshop: Form and Void: Part II. Moderated by Jerry Swatez and Randolph Dible – (1 hour 20)

12:05 PM – 1:35 PM – Lunch

Panel: Recent Psychedelic Work

1:35 PM – 2:15 PM – Carl Hayden Smith – DMTx as a Form of Transhuman Technology – (40 minutes)

2:15 PM – 2:55 PM – Andres Gomez Emilsson – Neural Field Annealing – (hybrid) – (40 minutes)

2:55 PM – 3:05 PM – 10 Minute Break

Panel: On George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form

3:05 PM – 3:45 PM – Graham Ellsbury on Gödel, Wittgenstein, and Laws of Form – (40 minutes)

3:45 PM – 4:25 PM – Lou Kauffman – Laws of Form and the Cheshire Cat – (hybrid) – (40 minutes)

4:25 – 4:35 PM – 10 Minute Break

Keynote: The Infinite Whole

4:35 PM – 5:55 PM – Keynote: Ion Soteropoulos – The Inductive Construction of the Universe qua Infinite Whole – (1 hour 20)

5:55 PM – 6:10 PM – Closing Remarks – (15 minutes)

image: J. J. Hurtak, The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch, 1977, p. 219  

Extended Conference Description

Thinking the Float Tank: AUM Fiftieth Anniversary Conference; Cybernetics, Float Tanks, and Phenomenology Since the 1973 Esalen Institute Conference

What frame of reference is self-reference? The isolation of self-reference, the limit-experience of embarking upon the formless void, and the re-entry of the form into itself, are all key themes in the history and philosophy of flotation. These themes of self-reference, void, and re-entry, as well as space, infinity, awareness, completeness, reality, dimensionality, cosmology, eternity, and creation, are all powerfully operative in the frame presented by the float tank. The float tank, isolation tank, or sensory deprivation chamber, is a technology of the self, but also a means of phenomenological reduction. It can also be a vehicle or a portal.

Historical Context

Fifty years ago John Lilly and Alan Watts brought the mathematician George Spencer-Brown to the Esalen Institute in California for a conference called the American University of Masters Conference, or AUM Conference. Audio recordings of the conference are available on SoundCloud here, and a recent publication of the transcripts can be found in the Journal of Cybernetics and Human Knowing here. The AUM Conference, and the Form and Void Conference series in the following years (1974 and 1975), marked a turning point in the history of cybernetics and systems science because it was the place where many luminaries gathered and received the wisdom of Spencer-Brown’s 1969 book Laws of Form. Alan Watts was already into Laws of Form, having written a chapter about it in his mountain journal Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown (1971), but it was John Lilly’s use of Laws of Form in the float tank as a guidebook to traveling between universes that established the AUM Conference as the founding event of a new kind of scientific culture. This revolution knocked science of consciousness into the first person, and Lilly captured that spirit in the frame of the float tank.

Workshop: Reconstructing the “Void Method”

Thinking the Float Tank includes a workshop component dedicated to the reconstruct of Lilly’s use of Laws of Form in the float tank, which is what Lilly referred to as the “void method.” The workshop, led by the conference curator Randolph Dible and by one of Lilly’s original workshop participants, Jerry Swatez, will aim to regenerate the essence of Lilly’s void method as well as a more robust cybernetic and phenomenological version of Lilly’s flotation science by harnessing advanced philosophical techniques that were not available to Lilly in the early days of flotation.

NULL OBJECT

Thinking the Float Tank will conclude the Gödel, Escher, Bach group exhibit as one of five sections devoted to self-reference. The conference exists within this larger context, and so does its corresponding flotation museum exhibit. The artistic exhibit will feature pictures, schematic drawings, and other artifacts from the history of flotation, and will also share its space with the NULL OBJECT by Gustav Metzger: http://londonfieldworks.com/Project-2-NULL-OBJECT%3A-Gustav-Metzger-thinks-about-nothing. 

See also: Audio Tour of the Exhibition

Our Very Own Flotation Tank, and Publications

Tucked away from the exhibited art lies an isolated isolation chamber–our very own float tank–built by Lorenz and Nikolai Beckmann. This float tank exists for the purpose of granting spectators, participants, and tourists the profound experience of flotation in the context of the conference. Presentations will be recorded and disseminated by the team of philosopher-artists at West Den Haag, the philosophical-scientific texts resulting from this conference will be published in a special issue of the new journal Distinction: Journal of Form (the journal of the George Spencer-Brown Society, published by College Publications, Ltd.), and a booklet or reader more accessible to a general audience will also be produced by West Den Haag (like West Den Haag’s Laws of Form publication).

Here is the West Den Haag page for the Float Tank Sessions: http://www.westdenhaag.nl/exhibitions/23_06_Goedel_Escher_Bach/more3

Register to float at the Eventbrite page here: https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/tickets-floatation-tank-book-your-session-630874130507?aff=oddtdtcreator

Topics

Topics addressed by the conference include: phenomenology, ontology, and metaphysics, Kyoto School metaphysics, history of flotation science in John Lilly’s milieu, sensory deprivation and spiritual reality, second-order cybernetics and second-order phenomenology, recent psychedelic advances, the absolute infinite, universal ontology, and the speculative reconstruction of John Lilly’s “Void Method.”

Sources

Sources for these topics include: John Lilly’s metaprogramming paradigm, Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological metaphysics, Eugen Fink’s second-order phenomenology, Heinz von Foerster’s second-order cybernetics, Theodor Conrad’s phenomenological psychology, Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ ontological phenomenology, George Spencer-Brown’s calculus of indications, techniques of meditative absorption, altered states of consciousness, mysticism, theosophy, philosophia perennis, and novel creative mentations.

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At the periphery of phenomenological philosophy lie powerful connections to the ancient and perennial wisdom indicating philosophy’s greatest vocation.

Some philosophers have emphasized the ancient precedents to pure phenomenology, a phrase coming from Burt C. Hopkins, the permanent secretary of the Husserl Circle. The importance of phenomenology’s ancient roots is also emphasized, for instance, by Robert Sokolowski, who appreciates the significance of the aoristos dyas or Indefinite Dyad for phenomenological philosophy. Philosophers working at the intersection of phenomenology and Ancient Greek philosophy have recognized the paradigmatic place of phenomenological philosophy in the broader history of ideas, but few contemporary scholars have fleshed it all out in a way that recognizes phenomenology itself in the ancient world.

The reduction to essences conveys eidetic insight, but it is important to recognize that the eide were once conceived as the mutually co-arising noetic indications of the total cosmos–the pure actualization of ideal beingness as well as its powers–the kosmos noetos.

Consciousness of essence once indicated a real cosmic structure governing all things: the real central intelligence agency. This direction of research supports convergence of meontological foundations (from the Greek μή-ὄν, me-on; non-being) in diverse areas of being as well as diverse areas of research. The non-distinction of astro-theology from ancient physics, for example, is worth considering very deeply. Contemporary categories of thought tend to be shaped by the distinctively modern secular and naturalistic attitude, which shuts down the dimension of spiritual insight by insisting upon artificial blinders keeping the horizons of the modern mind in its planet-side compartments of functioning. The trans-natural aspects of life itself and its logical power are hidden from view by human artifice. But thanks to a wealth of contemporary metaphysical syncretisms the universal significance of such foundational limit-concepts as nothingness, being itself, and the absolute infinite, are no longer hidden from view. Researchers are already moving in these directions.

Phenomenological scientific philosophy as a spiritual means of revelation and discovery is not unprecedented. Neither is the mathematical mysticism that underlies it, nor the cosmic agency which guides it. All these things are universal and forever universally available.

By sharing the philosophy inspired by phenomenological philosophers—especially four key philosophers: Peter Byrne Manchester, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, and George Spencer-Brown—I will show how contemporary mystical insight into reality can be achieved today and can guide us to the great vision of the overlooked simplicity of ultimate reality.