An interesting book I found. Of course, you cannot call an enlightened one who tries to walk through walls, to bend metal with their minds, or to kill an animal just by staring at it (by the way, martial arts masters love to make an impression - this is part of their tactics - so you shouldn’t easily take for granted everything they say).
But on the other hand, with the right state of mind, and there's an understanding that it means concentration, you can really achieve a lot: Everything regarding reading people's intentions; the ability to act and make decisions alone, which, in other words, means the ability of each ordinary member to be not only a tactician but also a strategist; and, most interestingly, the ability to coordinate with others without contacting with them - all this, I'm quite certai, is quite achievable. In a word, I have some ideas on this topic, but unfortunately, now I'm in the process of moving to another location, and I don't have much time for the blog.

Now I would just like to point out that if you set such ambitious goals as described in First Earth Battalion Manual, you have to be consistent, and so first of all to ask yourself: 'What are the main obstacles that stand in this way?' It's no accident at all that in the Pentagon in the way of these ideas stood a devoted christian. You should also be very careful when dealing with love; it can serve as a perfect tool to demoralize the enemy, but it as well can return to you like a boomerang.

About One Feature of Our Time

Have you ever noticed that journalists and bloggers tend to post their content on certain days? Indeed, there're days favorable for publication on certain topics, and there're days that are not, and astrology has nothing to do with this. It's the media every day affect and change the public mood so journalists just catch the moment when the mood of their potential readers is most favorable for accepting their ideas, which in turn enhances the effect in question further.

Buddhism actually claims that the present moment is the only thing that really exists - what would Einstein say? - that is, it's not just a property of our consciousness that we can experience only it. Past and future exist in some coded form, but three-dimensional space, as we know it, exists only one moment in present. Perhaps this is the easiest way to understand what is like to be a Buddhist: every moment we come from nowhere and go nowhere like real ghosts. 

Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: The Courage to Be Human: ON THE PATH TOWARD THE HUMANISTIC X EXPERIENCE

One Idea That Occurred To Me

There's one idea that I've been meaning to share: there's one similarity of patterns that can indicate that consciousness is not only a product of natural selection but a manifestation of the very structure of life. In a nutshell, once reading Richard Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype it occurred to me that the three levels of life that Dawkins views there: genes, the organism, and group are suspiciously like Freudian the id, ego, and super-ego.

The analogy between the level of genes and the Freudian id is quite obvious.* [About the id, ego, and super-ego you can find here; and genes, let me remind you, seek to alter the behavior of an organism in such a way as to ensure getting into the next generation ie manifest themselves as instincts.]

The main thing is to understand why the level of the organism (by this Dawkins means primarily a multicellular organism) can correspond to Freudian ego. If we assume that both express themselves as a negation of the context, the environment, and as a means of internal self-organization,** then everything falls into place. In fact, immunologists think of the organism exactly this way; but in the Western tradition, perhaps only Erich Fromm notes that for some Eastern religions (in particular Buddhism), the true self is a total negation.*** I'll add that the negation of the outer world and the images of the inner world (thoughts including), so what Freud puts in place of the ego from this point of view, in fact, has the nature of pure negation.

Dawkins points to the vagueness of the organism's definition - various scientific disciplines mean different things by the organism (pp 250-51) and further notes that this vagueness actually reflects its real illusory nature. Indeed, if you observe how the process develops from the bottom, from the level of genes, in accordance with the time arrow: DNA - RNA - protein, etc, the organism is not detected. For example, effects of genes may end far outside their bodies such as anthills, bird nests, beaver dams, etc; or, for instance, watching from the level of genes, it's impossible to understand whether a given gene belongs to the host or parasite.**** Dawkins has been repeatedly criticized for such a gene-centric view of life and accused of reductionism, but in fact he's just consistent as a scientist: tracing the causal effects from the gene level, the organism cannot be detected.***** Here's how he describes what happens at the genes level: 'turmoil of selfish replicators, battling for their own survival at the expense of their alleles, reaching unimpeded through individual body walls as though those walls were transparent, interacting with the world and with each other without regard to organismal boundaries, we now hesitate' (p 250) - then  I have a question: how, having this, the text (the organism) doesn't merge with the content?

 Meanwhile, some Zen masters noticed a very interesting fact: negation as a manifestation of the true self means the oppositely directed time's arrow (which, in turn, means that the Potential really exists). When you're in such a state of mind, your present state is determined not by the past but by the future, and thus you have freedom of choice. [In this way it's possible to explain not only the emergence of death (due to the limited potential) but also the emergence of sleep: anti-entropy is a limited resource and in the end the balance must be restored allowing chaos to take revenge.]

Finally, the level of the group (or species) corresponds to the Freudian super ego. Most multicellular organisms for some reason are bisexual, and a bisexual organism by definition cannot be a self-sufficient entity: it allows a potential sexual partner as its own part, which ultimately leads to the notion of yourself as a member of a group, as a part of something bigger - through this natural gap in the immune system the individual can be manipulated. So Freud seems to be right that the relationship of the individual with the group are always sexual in nature. [In particular, at the heart of any hierarchy (human or animal) there's always sexual, most often even homosexual, relationships; and this, by the way, is the reason why most religions and authoritarian hierarchies are so opposed to homosexuality: this truth would be too obvious, otherwise.]

So if my guess is correct, the Freudian id, ego and superego as well as their flip side: genes, the organism, and the group are inherent in the structure of life although in each case they manifest themselves in varying degrees. Then it also becomes clear why the organism, looks so vague: the nature of the organism in different species is revealed to varying degrees for the same reason why in different species consciousness is revealed to varying degrees. From this assumption also follow quite interesting conclusions, some of which I might share.

*It's also interesting that according to Freud, libido, 'psychic energy', is of a sexual nature, but for some reason I don't insist that this is always the case.
**If someone insists, I am ready to explain what the last statement may mean regarding the immune system, and why a pair of monozygotic twins for an immunologist should not count as a single organism.
***Erich Fromm: The Courage to Be Human (pp119-28)
****Although in the last chapter, Dawkins to some extent rehabilitates the organism, still from his gene-centric view, the organism is just a vehicle for genes to ensure getting into the next generation.
*****if the oppositely directed time's arrow manifests itself only on a large scale, it most likely cannot be detected empirically.

R. D. Laing

I first learned about R. D. Laing from this documentary (from 19th minute to 27th) And it doesn't matter that his ideas are not in fashion now: sometimes we just don’t want to know the truth preferring to remain caught in old, comfortable myths. But ignoring a problem, you'll never solve it.