Dreams 0.3000 "Cybernetics is the biggest bite out of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that mankind has taken in the last 2000 years." Gregory Bateson Archetypal Cybernetics A dream is the product of a biological cybernetic system, your body, and a psychological cybernetic system, the producer of dreams. The logic of the body is infused with cybernetic systems that regulate energetic and receptive systems, so it would come as no surprise that dreams are an extension of the cybernetic architecture of the body. Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary approach for exploring circular causal processes such as regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. Cybernetics is the study of mechanical, physical, biological, psychological, and social systems. Cybernetics is the study of change, both internal and external, while also studying response systems to change that bring about a desired equilibrium. Cybernetics is the study of feedback informed dynamic correction towards a desired state of affairs. The notion of an ecology can be regarded as a cybernetic system. Cybernetics explores the art of maintaining equilibrium. I am here interested in exploring the psychological and social aspect of cybernetic systems. The archetypes of regulation come into play, represented for instance in the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the three bears. Too much, too little and just right. The archetype of three arises when you are thinking of a range of possibilities and where in that range do you choose to identify. The choice in the range of course, affects the system, the change in the system is an effect of the choice in a circular causal manner, which creates a new context for a new choice. One way of understanding this is through the metaphor of driving a car. If you notice the car veering to the right, your choice often is to turn the steering wheel to the left which changes the attitude of the car to the road. If you chose to turn the wheel too far to the left, then the car will start veering to the left, if you react to the irony of your over-correction, you will find that now the car is veering to the right. Someone who has been drinking too much will find themselves unwittingly manifesting the pattern of over correction, and soon find themselves in the position of being in a car that is fishtailing. As you can see this image is a manifestation of an archetypal pattern, that is, a pattern of over correcting is common to many different kinds of cybernetic systems. In the psychological context, it is called bipolar disorder. The individual goes through two different kinds of over correcting swings, one which they are overly confident, ego centric, arrogant, a state in which one's certainty of one's interpretation is highly exaggerated. This of course, has an effect on the system of friendships, or it has an effect on loved ones who recognize the exaggeration, the environment then sends a message back, the message breaks the individual's confidence, sometimes it happens because the individual sees the error in the exaggeration, and the individual collapses in on himself or herself, this represents the deflation cycle of the bipolar dynamic. Often the individual comes to a point where they cannot bear the deflation, and they over correct with another inflation. As this condition gets worse, the inflation half of the cycle develops as one persona, and the deflation half of the cycle develops as an alternate persona, each compensating for the other. In the worst case scenario, they actually split and become autonomous personalities, in this case, one half of the whole ego that is associated with inflation does not know of the other ego's experience, and things like lapses of memory begin. That then is called a schizophrenia. What I have shown you here is how the archetypes become psychological phenomena. How the number 3 is an archetype that represents the choice in the range. I have also pointed out how alcoholism can produce bipolar phenomena and schizophrenia. This is something you will have to meditate on to understand. A great deal of psychology today is unaware of the archetypes and how they relate to certain disorders. This partly has to do with the fact that Jung only dimly understood what they were. In some of his texts he was more aware of the meaning of the archetypes and how we recognize them, and in other texts, he confuses them with images. Though images can be imagistic references for archetypes, just as the image of the cybernetic system of an inebriated individual fishtailing a car on the road is an image of the archetype of over correction. Archetypes are numerical, geometrical patterns in a cybernetic system. I say it this way, because that is the archetypal way to say it. You do not begin to look at numbers through the lens of a static system. Though it appears intuitive, it soon becomes a misdirection. We do not have the luxury of thinking in terms of static frameworks, the real world is cybernetic and never ceases to be cybernetic, we live in living systems, not dead ones. Schizophrenia is not to be understood as merely a split from reality, it is an energetic circular phenomena. Bipolar disorder, the very name suggests two, but because psychologists think in terms of geometry, they often miss the cybernetic aspect. The resulting treatment is therefore incomplete, which results in a chemical solution that becomes an addiction, and often results in damage, sometimes permanent, to the whole cognitive system. As you may be able to see, a meditation on a few archetypal concepts which describes the phenomena, suggests, of itself, the necessary healing perspective. My suggestion is that you understand these archetypes as well as you can, because all around you, people are suffering from archetypal cybernetic disorders, and if you understand the disorder, you naturally have some power to assist the healing process. The goal is to bring a system from one that over corrects to one that responds to both the inflation dynamic and the deflation dynamic, in a way that is 'just right'. If you know how to bring a car that begins to fishtail into equilibrium, then you also know how to bring your cognitive system out of a fishtailing dynamic into one that safely preserves equilibrium. Let us look again more deeply into the alcoholic phenomena. This way of looking can be applied to any drug. How does the drug change the system when you take it, that is one side of the swing, how does the system change as the drug wears off, that is the other side of the swing, and it represents another dynamic. The two dynamics, the inflation dynamic and the deflation dynamic describe the two polarities that the drug energizes. Alcohol helps you relax and helps to dissolve inhibitions. If you drink too regularly, then you eventually develop a relaxed persona, one that is more relaxed then your median persona. Again we are talking about 3 personas. The inflated persona, the deflated persona, and the median persona, the one between the two extremes. When the individual no longer consumes alcohol, the system stabilizes to a persona that usually exists between the two extreme personas. How does the system swing between these personas? Is the median persona in the middle? This is where we have to look at the archetype of two to understand the dynamic of the swinging, and the archetype of three to understand the dynamic of the choice in relation to the two extremes of the swing. Often alcoholics develop an identity at one end of the swing, which is kinder and more relaxed, and in that state, relationship is more important than ideas of order. This is why in the Yehudi tradition, wine is considered a sacred sacrament. If you go back to Sumerian culture, which is undoubtedly the ancestor of Yehudi culture, you find that wine and beer are considered sacred sacraments. Many poems have been written about wine. Wine has been compared with the ecstasy of love, and the ecstasy of divine revelation. This is no accident. The maturation process requires periods of relaxation. Anyone who cannot manifest periods of relaxation, eventually creates a breakdown. That is because we cannot resist the cybernetic dynamic, it is part of life, and if you try to repress it, you will find your whole body in reaction, and these reactions will appear as a bipolar disorder. If you accept the bipolar disorder and you tempt fate, you will be dealing with a schizophrenia, and eventually, a breakdown. Psychology today pathologizes natural patterns of being, and this is sad, because it shifts the picture of the problem from a mismanagement of energy problem to one of a chemical imbalance that is biological, perhaps inherited. People give up control of the disorder and rely on a chemical solution which often only serves to numb the sensory system in order to prevent over correction. This numbing eventually crystallizes the numb state as the median state, and the results are not pretty. Your psychology is dynamic and is forever changing state to some degree. Drugs create the possibility of change, and in doing so, they create two possible outcomes, and they are crystallization outcomes, and that is that you crystallize into a median state that appears as an inflation, or you crystallize in a median state that appears as a deflation. Both of them have their own dangers. If you crystallize close to the median, then you have found a place that is just right, that is, you have chosen a place that is in equilibrium. How does the concept of crystallization integrate into a cybernetic system? For crystallization refers to a static geometry. How does the notion of a static geometry interface with the notion of a cybernetic system? No matter where in the swing cycle your median personality is situated, it still 'vibrates'. Even when you are in peace, in equilibrium, that equilibrium will be defined by a set of interventions that reflect the architecture of a cybernetic system, they will be small corrections in a particular range. That range can be thought of as one thing, and could be looked at as crystallization within a range. The same is true in the driving metaphor. It is not that the car never swings from left to right when you are driving well, and you are staying in your lane, it is that your corrections are within a certain range, and that range can be identified and described mathematically as a quality of your cybernetic system. If you are deeply meditating on these questions, you will realize that this whole metaphor applies to music, and the art of making music as well. A distortion in the artist's cybernetic system can be heard as a distortion in the music that artist makes. Because I have developed the conceptual apparatus, and a sensitive ear, I can hear these things, and they tell me a great deal about the nature of the person playing. This is why art is so important to healing process. You want to help the client identify cybernetic habits through the activity of producing art, which produces a recording or an artifact of the activity which can be examined as 'proof' of awareness. That is why great artists can mature without the assistance of others, they simply regard the art as feedback about the nature of their cybernetic system. In truth, it is unsafe to practice art separate from the feedback of others. One always develops blind spots in relation to the proof. And contradictions are fuel for growth. When someone speaks from a position outside of your limits of perception or outside the limits of your interpretations, they appear as contradictions. The individual then has two choices in relation to contradictions. They can repress the contradiction in order to preserve their tautology. Or they can allow the tautology to expand in order to include the contradiction in a system that is more 'whole' and inclusive. Tautology refers to hermetic sealed systems, they belong to the archetype of one, and by association, they have a strong relationship to the notion of a crystallization. One of the images associated with tautology is the image of the cyclops, a mythical figure in many traditions, and shows up quite clearly in the myth of Ulysses. The cyclops is a one eyed creature. The cyclops can be male or female, and what characterizes their nature, is they see the world from the point of view of one eye, which results in an inability to see things in depth. The double use of the word depth (cognitive and spatial) is intentional and is an archetype. The myth tells us that the one eyed creature is a brutal monster that steals from others and collects treasure, and it eats human beings. The one eyed monster has no sympathy for others because it is one centered, and sympathy is connected to the archetype of two. Sympathy is a function of plurality, while the vision of the cyclops is singular. In every robotic system of perception, it is necessary to have two points of view, which is why so many animals have manifested two points of view as an architecture for seeing and hearing. Evolution has chosen plurality of perception, evolution has chosen the economy of the archetype of two points of reference. That is why symmetry appears natural in the heads of animals and human beings. You could describe this architecture as two points of reference creating one model of the world. 2=1. On many of my paintings I have written that particular equation, because it is connected to the archetypal goal of alchemy, the sun and the moon integrated as one. The sun represents the interpretive aspect of cognitive process, and the moon represents the sensing aspect of cognitive process. When you drink alcohol, your median psychology slides towards the feeling archetype, the moon, and as you sober up, your median slides towards the interpretive aspect, the sun. As the individual drinks, it important to notice in which way the individual slides towards the moon, and as they sober up, it is important to note how they slide towards the sun. These two habits of transition describe the full gestalt of the individual. And it is in these two transitions that you will be providing insight for the individual. The interpretive aspect of consciousness has a masculine quality, while the sensing aspect has a feminine quality. These distinctions are not arbitrary. They represent two different relations to the movement of energy. Energy comes into our system in a cybernetic context, and energy leaves our system in a cybernetic context. You yourself are the reference point, so what goes into you is feminine, so listening is feminine, and what comes out of you is masculine, so talking is masculine. A musician that over emphasizes action and under emphasizes listening, often sounds rigid and out of tune. To be a good musician, you must develop a cybernetic equilibrium that listens as well as it performs. A writer that likes to talk a great deal, but has not acquired the taste for hearing, manifests a distortion in the writing that is readable. You represent your inner cybernetic dynamic in whatever you do. A painter represents it in a painting, a musician represents it in the music, a writer in the writing, a designer in the designing, a singer in the singing, and a dancer in the dancing. What you are always looking for in the art is the relationship between sensing, how the artist takes information in, and interpretation, how the artist interprets the sense information and represents it as artifact or as change in the environment. These two archetypes are also deeply connected to the sexual experience, how does the individual sense your choices, and how are these choices interpreted, and what choices the individual makes in relation to the sensing and the interpretation. You have probably noticed that there is an odd relationship between sensing and interpretation, where interpretation seems to be a value holder for both interpretation and action. The action is the interpretation, in fact the action or the choice is a function of the sensing, the interpretation and the choice. The choice is directly related to the interpretation. If this is getting too abstract for you, think of the basic architecture of the neuron, it is composed of a dendrite, a cell body, and an axon. The dendrite brings information into the cell, the cell interprets the sensing and projects action through the axon. The nerve cell is a little microcosm of these two archetypes, sensing and action through the interface of an interpretation. The nerve cell is an image of an archetypal pattern that is cybernetic in nature, it shows a circular causal pattern, if you study the specifics of cell biology, you will see that the nerve cell uses materials and recycles material at a particular frequency. That frequency can go up and down within certain limits. Each cell is like a microcosm of the driver in the car, each cell is a holographic member of the whole, when the driver is drunk, they are all drunk! When you think in terms of archetypal activity, you can apply it to many different studies of nature and art. And you can apply it to an examination of your own habits of frequency, your own pattern of swings, your own patterns of sensing, interpreting, and choosing. thecrownoutofwhichdreamsaris…