[from Mary Powers (971209)]
Bruce Abbott:
#10. In the absence of all disturbance to all controlled
perceptual variables, a person would do nothing -- not even
daydream.
From what I have read, heard, experienced, and think, this is not the way it
works. Our friend Sam Randlett, known to those on the net who went to the
CSG conferences in the 80's, collected narratives of experiences of "cosmic
consciousness". Samadhi in yoga might also describe the state of no
disturbance - or rather "no conflict", or "no error". The float tanks of
the 70's were intended to produce this state. Csikszentmihalyi called it
"flow" or the "autotelic experience". I think some people reach this state
when experiencing Bill's "method of levels". It happened to me while
walking along in the mountains on a beautiful day.
None of these are states of nothingness. They are states of wonderfulness.
In this state one does not do anything, for sure, or daydream. One simply
experiences.
But even in a state like this, there are disturbances actively being
opposed. At the very least, metabolism continues. The heart beats,
breathing continues, gravity is resisted. It's a fallacy to even consider a
state of no disturbance in a living control system. To be alive is to be
controlling in thousands of different ways. It's a delicate, complex
balancing act that cannot stop for an instant. The name for the absence of
all disturbance is death.
"The greatest disturbance of all is entropy -- WTP"