[ExI] Lem, solaris & PSI

[Tomasz Rola]

On Fri, 4 Jan 2013, ablainey at aol.com wrote:

> Odd that you posted this. Must I assume it was from some googlepath 
> wandering from the mention of Lem in Ander's post to my thread about 
> "1"?

Yes. I knew the site before, even wrote some on their forums (as Setaur 
Saves if you're interested). But it's ages since I was there, so when 
Anders gave a link I felt an urgent need to poke around... It is a place 
worth poking, plenty of nice graphics (if one likes such stuff, of course) 
etc.

> Here is the "bake your noodle" bit, call the comfy wagon to take me 
> to a comfy white room. I had a powerful lucid dream a few decades ago of 
> a luminous blue world floating in space.

Mhm... I don't know what is this business of "baking my noodles". It 
sounds soo painful. Maybe I'd like mine unbaked? Actually, you guys keep 
your hands off my noodles, will you.

> A place suspended in the abyss 
> and where I traveled unbound by shape or form. I drifted through the 
> pale energetic clouds of plasma and sparks interacting with the energy. 
> It had consciousness which I shared as we melded through one another. 
> Not a single entity per se, instead incalculable number of minds each 
> distinct yet each partly merging into a singular whole. Like clouds of 
> energy passing through each other, each with separate will and mind but 
> all an inseparable part of the whole. As I drifted I can only describe 
> encounters of myself with these others as a "cool embrace" A coolness 
> that was felt through to the core like the comforting heat of a warm 
> hug. The same comforting envelopment yet the exact opposite thermal 
> sensation. At the same time a willing sharing of minds, consciousness, 
> knowledge and wisdom. Accompanying these discrete and constant and what 
> I can only describe as selfless platonic-loving encounters there was a 
> constant awareness of the whole entity created by the mass. There was a 
> sense of safety, belonging, understanding of everything and above all a 
> sense of home. It was something of a profound life changing experience. 
> Which came from nowhere, wasn't prompted by any exposure to fiction or 
> deep theological thought the night before or even a large quantity of 
> cheese. It just happened and I awoke stunned by it.
> 
> Some years later I was channel hopping and came across a film about to 
> start that I hadn't seen. It was Solaris. I instantly recognised the 
> visuals of the world as that I had seen in the dream. While this was the 
> remake and the plot is somewhat deviant from Lem's vision, It was 
> without doubt the same single energetic super entity comprised of 
> multiple beings that I had experienced. I later watched the original 
> film and while both have the essence of the place, they are obvious 
> cinematic interpretations.
> 
> I have always believed that we do share some level of single 
> consciousness which is exhibited now and again in PSI. Although we 
> appear to be exceptionally bad at utilising any such ability. The way I 
> have rationalised it is that my dream, Lem's vision and various other 
> similar accounts are probably the basis for the religious "oneness" or 
> God. In my case It could perhaps easily be explained away by some kind 
> of hypoxic episode during sleep??? Whatever the cause, It was truly 
> profound. Looking back that was a point where I found a certain calmness 
> in my self that had been missing.

This was quite interesting, thanks for sharing. I wouldn't call for 
ambulance for you. On the other hand, I am not much into PSI and similar 
things - I mean, compared to some folks I consider myself open to such 
phenomena, but in a manner that I am not going to judge them in either way 
before I am able to research. And as you know, PSI is very elusive when it 
comes to research. At least this is what I heard.

What you have seen could have happened exclusively in your head... 

...or you could have made a false memory of this episode after learning 
about Solaris (from what I have heard such things happen, maybe more 
frequently than we would like to acknowledge, we are definitely not 
masters of our reasoning, we just ride on it like on a wild angry bull, 
and some of us realise this enough to pray to stay in a saddle for a 
while)... 

...or, who knows, maybe a being so potent as to form a planet-sized brain 
found a way to explore space, time-space perhaps, by the force of its 
mind? For some this may sound as gobbledygook, for me this sounds like a 
hypothesis extremely hard to prove or disprove, so I couldn't dismiss it 
just because "the book does not say so" (rather than deciding right now, 
I put such hypotheses on a shelve, where they wait, maybe forever, until 
I gather some more facts).

Well, what actually is force of such planetary mind? Could it make streams 
of particles by shaping its dreaming (which is, maybe, modulated 
radiation, EM waves, plus quantum effects which I am unable to name)? The 
idea is not mine, it comes from another Lem's book, Golem XIV. There are 
two AIs in it, Honest Annie and Golem XIV, and HA is a bit indifferent 
about humanity while Golem seems to feel kind of sympathy to us, or at 
least towards those of us who resemble Lem (by education, not by bald 
head) :-). So, it happened some junkies decided to blow up HA, but Annie 
decided otherwise, and the freaks had all kind of misfortunes and 
accidents. They never made it, of course. Their car blew up, there was 
fire in a garage, and so on. And only then some people realised what was 
at stake (only some people had access to this information).

Anyway, I want to draw a picture - we only know that we really don't know 
too much. So what was your experience - I really have no idea. Too many 
explanations, not enough data.

On a bright side, be happy - maybe a copy of yours is uploaded "there" and 
enjoys marvels of Universe :-). Pity IT took a copy from you, but when it 
came to sharing, whatever IT shared, IT took away before hanging up. Heh. 
Smart-ass planetary sized bastard IT is...

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **