The Fractal Structure of Time

Time manifests as a fractal structure. The smallest unit of time is also the smallest unit of matter. Every atom has a frequency, a cyclic tone that represents one unit of time. Each cycle or unit of time takes input compares it to memory and outputs the result. This memory is not a static pattern, but is dynamic, vibrating in sync with the environmental variables. If the pattern of the input matches the pattern stored in memory, the field doesn’t react, it continues to vibrate normally, but if the input doesn’t match what is anticipated by memory, a perturbence is created in the field. Like a stone pitched in a pond, the waves spread out through the system, carrying information about the mismatch to all points. Not only is the location of the mismatch clearly stated by the arc of the wave, but the “shape” of the mismatch is carried by the shape of the wave. In this way, the whole keeps track of its units in real time.

What makes time a fractal is that this cycle of input, comparison and output is repeated throughout biological systems, regardless of scale or implementation. All cells, organs, creatures, social organizations and ecosystems, use this fundamental process to interact with their environment. The fundamental vibrations are in harmony from atoms all the way up to galaxies and beyond.

For those who want a more scientific explanation, The Fractal Topology of Time,

A dissertation defense by Kerri Welch at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Feb. 12, 2010.

The Jigsaw Puzzle of Life

My sweetheart and i like to do jigsaw puzzles. Putting one together is satisfying on several levels. We have fun.

I get an extra kick out of seeing the pieces as packets of information, also on different levels. The shape of the pieces is information that determines how they fit with their immediate neighbors. On each piece you have bits of information as brush strokes, lines, shapes and color, that also needs to match its neighbors. This is a separate level of information from the shapes of the pieces themselves. Both of these levels pertain to the assembly of the puzzle. When the puzzle is solved, the assembled bits produce a new level of information: the picture. The picture, in turn can produce another level of information by telling a story.

In the jigsaw puzzle we have levels of information woven together to support a system of encrypted data storage.

Atoms are packets of information limited to their connections by their shape. They also carry another level of information in their charges, spins and wave function, variables separate from the molecular shape. These internal variables are connected to externals through the laws of quantum mechanics. It looks to me like data storage with relational links, like a database.

There are infinite levels of information woven into biological systems, each one representing a web of quantum connectivity with its own level of functionality, the levels immediately above and below, and to all levels ever interacted with. It is a living breathing hyper-relational database that acts like it is a super quantum computer solving for the most efficient growth, reproduction and dispersal through adaptation.

That’s my idea of fun. =-)

What to expect

This presentation is based a couple of concepts at odds with some of the basic assumptions of science and religion. The first is that the biosphere as an intelligent entity. What makes it intelligent is that it communicates. The system intakes, processes and distributes information to and from all agents within its system. That relates to the second concept, that evolution is not a random process, but one controlled by intelligent, goal oriented communication.

Once you accept that you and i are agents within an intelligent system, new explanations for the life’s anomalous occurrences present themselves. Once you start to explore those anomalies, armed with this new perspective, a very different picture of human history emerges. It is also a liberating experience to find out that we can communicate with other entities within the system.

What do psychedelic aliens have to do with forests anyway, you may ask? Seems like too many unrelated subjects are being included. Well, you have heard it before, everything is connected to everything else. Herein i will show that it is not merely a romantic metaphor as some would like you to believe, but an overriding property of reality. Exploring the connections between religion, psychedelics, symbiosis in complex adaptive systems and alien encounters, can lead to some interesting revelations.

Besides, we now know for sure that space travel is possible, by both man made vehicles and spores carried by the solar winds, therefore we all may be aliens.

Just as science needs a unified theory to bring together its many disciplines, the rest of us need a unified theory of reality. This one works for me.

Throughout there will be tips on how to expand your natural communication skills. I will give you exercises that you can use to verify my conclusions.

Life is Communication

When we combine the findings in the field of biology with general systems theory we find an unexpected mathematical synchronicity. The formulas that govern the formation of networks in complex systems are the same for the growth of biological systems and our beloved internet. The blood flowing through your veins is following the same fractal power laws as your email. It has taken the smartest people on the planet decades of study, trial and error to figure out how to run a truly complex communications network, but these laws governing the efficient transfer of information have been in use in biological systems all along.

In short, biological systems are constructed as if they are meant to be communication networks. Everything from tree trunks, roots, branches, leaves to coastlines and watersheds is built as if for the transfer information. Some coincidence. If we honor this evidence and look at biological systems as if they function primarily as information processors, a whole new model of reality begins to take shape.

When we look at matter as information stored in physical form, like memory in a computer, the network like construction of biological systems makes perfect sense. Biological systems process and transfer matter/information with great efficiency.

Matter as information is more than bits, it is more dynamic than that, more like strings of bits that have coherence. The information of reality is organized in the form of stories. The physical world is current state of all of the stories being told. Stories aren’t random, but unfold in very predictable ways. Stories follow rules, laws of communication that run through all living systems.

Within this new model many of the claims of the ancients take on new significance, many of the anomalies uncovered by science disappear and a pathway to a truly sustainable future reveals itself. This is the real significance of the Information Age. It is not only that we have learned to use these formulas to build our networks, but that we have found the best model for reality we have yet discovered, and it is virtual.

This Path Isn’t for Everyone

This path isn’t for everyone. There those who really fear the forest. They have been brought up to think of Nature as the enemy, to be conquered and managed. To go into the forest is an act of bravery that takes planning, special equipment and most of all, courage. The idea of a benevolent goddess of the forest is foreign or even repulsive to the western warrior mentality. If she exists, she must be fought and beaten, says the warrior. To the mainstream of this industrial/consumer society, She doesn’t exist unless She can be sold for profit. To most environmentalists she is nothing more than a convenient metaphor.

On the other hand, even for the most hard core of the survival of the fittest practitioners, the forest is the only road back. It is the forest goddess, through her plant spirit messengers, that can reconnect lost souls with their source.

Mother Tree

While i’m writing about the forest goddess this video explains the science behind Her.

Out of the Loop

If bio-systems are all about communication, how and why have human beings been cut out of the loop? In one version it has something to do with god, a tree, and a serpent. In another it was the loss of the rich biochemical soup we were fed in a mature forest that caused our mental capacities to diminish. In yet another we met a mind altering mushroom that stimulated our cultural development. In still another, aliens from deep space altered our DNA to make us a slave species. To indigenous people around the world, westerners have simply chosen not to listen to the spirits and have cut themselves out of the loop.

Each of these scenarios is dependent on a specific world view, but they have some common elements the indicate they might each have part of the story. It could be that each is a separate description of the same phenomenon? Could there be a simple biological explanation? I think there is. It requires no new knowledge, simply a new way of looking at human history.

Mimicking Nature

We have learned to mimic Natural systems with our language, art and music, then claim we invented them. With all of our acquired skill and knowledge we are late comers to the game. For example, the fractal power laws we have discovered that build our most complex communications networks have been in use in biological systems from the beginning. DNA is a fundamental language more sophisticated than anything mankind has cobbled together. Our most sophisticated information processing technology is nothing when compared to what our nervous system provides for us: a living, breathing, feeling, human experience.

This remarkable thing we call consciousness is the product of billions of interacting information processing subsystems combining their considerable output into a single, realtime, interactive, dynamic, but wholly virtual environment. This feat has been accomplished 100% by Nature.

Somehow the human body’s trillions of cells and trillions of nonhuman microorganisms produce the illusion of self as a single entity. Billions of bits of incoming information blend into a coherent interior model of the outside environment. This is a Natural phenomenon. Apparently this phenomenon is repeated in smaller and less complex organisms. Even single celled creatures interact with their environment in ways that show a semblance of sense of self. It would seem that the phenomenon might be universal. If that be the case, then the concept that trillions of seemingly separate entities might generate a similar super entity is not so far fetched. The forest acts as if it were a single organism. The Planet acts the same way. This is the way of adaptive complex systems.

Uncomfortable with the Term, “Goddess”

Some folks might be uncomfortable with the term goddess to describe the forest ecosystem. They’re afraid they might be accused of being superstitious or worse. However, terms like ecosystem or higher level complex system don’t really do it justice. In fact they fall short of describing the dynamics of communication and fundamental sentience that characterizes a living forest. The forest is the physical network while the goddess is the dynamic flow of information that drives the system.

The ancients knew that they lived in an intelligent system of communication, cooperation and memory. They personified the aspects of the system by giving them names and attributes. Science does the same thing, hanging names on invisible and even unknown objects, at will. They continue to crank out their own brand of mythology, unrelated to reality.

The mythic events the ancients recounted were meant to show relationships between invisible forces. Just as the descriptions put forth by our modern science, part of the motivation has always been to manage the behavior of the masses.

What our western civilized science has so foolishly discarded as superstitious myth is really a sophisticated description of the invisible information processing system that monitors and controls the behavior of all species, including human beings. The difference is that science shows no respect for the sentience of other living things. In our present state, nothing short of renewed reverence for Nature will get us back into the system.

Biological Eden

We have intruded on the forest system, causing a stir, so we look for a place to sit and let the murmur of alarm die down.

Here we find a good spot, beneath one of the oldest trees, one with the many rings of memory, a large network connecting Sky and Earth, many symbiotic partners, many descendants and thus a main communications hub in this local expression of the Forest Goddess System.

Slowly the sounds change as some creatures forget we are here. Others aren’t alarmed as long as we remain still. Listen to the sounds, creatures large and small singing their songs, shouting their location, crying the news of their neighborhood. Close your eyes and let the sounds wash over you in waves of meaning. “Here I am, Life is good, Let’s get it on”, repeated over and over, in countless forest dialects.

And everybody is listening as well. One creature’s mating call sounds the dinner bell for another. This wall of sound is just one level of the communication going on in the forest. And we humans can hear only a very narrow band of sound vibrations at that.

Then take color. Here is a totally different spectrum of communication. Color has meaning by itself; it is used for identification, signaling ripeness, time for mating and other environmental cues. Another instance of only a narrow band of vibrations being available to our consciousness. The communications continue up and down the scale in wave lengths invisible to us.

The air around us is filled with molecules of fragrance and stench, pheromones attracting and repelling. On every level the forest is a sea of information woven into a tapestry of meaning: alerting, selecting, advertising, camouflaging, promising and deceiving.

On the microscopic level, every cell of every life form communicates with the cells around it. They respond to messages brought to them by hormones through blood streams, electric impulses from nerves and by way of their wireless connections. All input is compared to its history. Every action is remembered, every failure flagged, every success reinforced. That’s going on at the cellular level in all living things. The process is reflected in behavior at the creature level as well. Every physical entity within an ecosystem compares their input to their history and remembers their successes and failures. So do the symbiotic relationships.

Our brain works the very same way. Our neurons communicate with other neurons, respond to neurotransmitters and fire in waves that we interpret as experience. Communication is a fundamental aspect of living things.

Because language seems to set us apart from the animal world, we have concluded that it is only the advanced human brain that can create and communicate information. That’s our claim to fame as intelligent beings, we communicate. However, its is intelligent communication that makes all living systems alive. Communication is fundamental to biological systems.

Besides the communication networks we can see and hear all around us, there are more. Beneath our feet the soil is laced with bacterial and fungal growth intertwined into a multilevel communications network. This thick mat of interwoven microbial fibers interconnects trillions, upon trillions of nodes, in a complex network of neuron-like connections. Modern science claims that plants do not have a nervous system because they can’t find anything that looks like one. If what it looks like is to be our criteria, then we must consider the possibility that this bacterial/fungal mat acts like the nervous system for the forest.

Recent experiments have shown that this underground network passes information throughout the forest. What could the microbial underground have to talk about? For one, when a tree is attacked by a species of beetle, neighboring trees begin taking protective measures, secreting substances that repel the pest. Another example, if you were to die here in the forest, this CSI team would take you apart cell by cell, and report to the system exactly what you are made of.

In fact, the information gathered by every living thing in the forest eventually ends up being deconstructed by the microbes dominating the forest floor and soil beneath. When there is a fatality or someone defecates, it is the microbes who dismantle the fallen and investigate the internal information stored in their tissue and memory. When we plot the feedback loops active in the forest system we find they all cycle back through this microbial mat.

For example, one loop begins with water and nutrients being provided to the roots of a tree by the microbial mat. This mat is the combined growth of fungi and bacteria that services the roots of all plants

The tree pumps the solution up to the leaves where photosynthesis occurs. Light energy is used to make sugars which are transported to building sites, where growth takes place. The leaves eventually die and fall to the ground where they are disassembled by the fungal mat, completing one loop. Some of the sugars are used to entice and feed pollinators, while still more sugars are used to build fruit and seed. The fruit entices and feeds the seed distributors. All of this activity produces a steady stream of leaves, flowers, bark, feces and dead bodies that fall to the forest floor. This litter is a constant flow of information about the state of the forest that is disassembled and analyzed by the microbial mat. Each bit of litter carries the information of its path through the system. The mat furnishes the input and then analyzes the output of each loop.

An important note: About 65% of the energy gathered by the leaves ends up nourishing the microbial mat. If you are familiar with the “follow the money” concept in economics you will notice that following the energy serves the same function in an ecosystem. The idea that this layer of decay on the forest floor was composed of scavengers that depended leftovers for their livelihood is not completely accurate. Not only does this microbial mat benefit the more from photosynthesis than any other segment of the forest, they were here first. It is as if the entire forest was created to build a beneficial habitat for the mat. As we go on, i will show that this underground network is made up of a system of control mechanisms that manages the forest ecology.

This is where the story of humanity begins. Science and religion agree that this was a turning point in the history of the human kind. The transition from a relatively carefree existence within a biological Eden to the harsh life of a hunter gatherer on the savanna undoubtedly took place. It is easy to say that the shrinkage of the forests was the cause, but there is more to the story. Beside human beings there were countless other species of plants, animals and microorganisms that also underwent profound changes during this transition. Long established symbiotic relationships were broken and new ones forged. We didn’t make the changes alone. We were then, and are now, members of a community.

Our story begins deep in the forest, immersed in a sea of information. Our every action involved an interaction with another forest species. All of our food, shelter and stimulation were provided by the forest. Then, for reasons unknown, the forests began to shrink.