Chaos, the Solvent & the Stone

Biopsychosocial Health

The alchemist leads him/her self and follows nature. The alchemical world is composed of Mercury, Sulphur and Salt. Natural and human processes are the matrix of action. Recognizing action, bipolar opposition, and connection as the three components of creation in natural processes provides tools for creation and the incentive to take the initiative. They are the raw materials of Mercury, Sulphur and Salt of chaos theory.

Mortality (and suffering) is the overarching strange attractor, a vision of life after death that improves living in the here and now whether it is "true" or not, for death/rebirth is with us in each and every instant as our primordial awareness. Each moment arises and passes yet somehow we remain.

More than abstractions, self-organizing processes and fractal organization are results of dynamic interactions. Alchemy is a self-organizing activity and artform that epitomizes open-ended process, intentionally engaging the natural tendency toward self-organizing process.

This poetry-science recognizes the universe in man and man in the universe. We learn to know our own nature. The universe is reborn within us in various forms, including our image being, pre- and post-existence, and the secret medicine Azoth. The 'Crystalline Chaotic Sea' of alchemy is synonymous with the Dirac Sea of virtual vacuum fluctuation. It is the root of our being in the gaps or void between our particles [sic]. We are part of Eternity and it is part of us.

An archetype is a "dynamic action plan" shaping consciousness, emotions, behaviour and relationships as well as the realm of matter. Creation myths describe the evolution of an archetypal system from the undifferentiated homeostasis of equilibrium to the symmetry-breaking perturbation of the primordial matrix and on through the increasing differentiation, coupling and complexity of the unfolding system. Psychologically, creation myths symbolize the origin of consciousness, the process of individuation, and the dynamics of creativity, each closely associated with the archetype of the self, regulator of the human psyche (von Franz, 1972).

Creativity is characterized by psychological openness to inner and outer experiences. We engage this tendency in a purposeful way and learn to flow with the energy and creativity within the system leading to insights and applications by breakthroughs in information barriers. Reducing the dataglut of massa confusa to alchemical channels of information flow expedites the process. Tiny inputs can lead to cascades of events -- embodying logically necessary relations.

Alchemical operations delineate discontinuous levels of consciousness as robust methods for seeking novel solutions with non-consensus coherence via synchronized chaos. Finding such adaptive solutions demonstrates survival and system resilience by maintaining tension of opposites, rather than resolution. In the coherence model learning is a process of transformation, or self-organization. Complexity and freedom are actually coextensive with one another.

Engagement Learning

A discipline such as alchemy engages us in a way that promotes a deeper understanding of the concepts, issues and ideas that drive us, including sensitive dependence on initial conditions, iteration, fractal nature, and the presence of strange attractors. Commited to the irrational process, we are "in over our heads." We embody our internal transformation states.

Alchemy is not an orderly, single-path progression to a conclusion. Emergence is naturally a self-transcending construct. The creative individual in the process of alchemical acceleration must experiences states of disequilibrium. We must and do trust the process that we are at the creative edge, not the verge of obsession or psychosis.

1. Creativity develops under conditions of emotional fluctuations, tensions, and external as well as internal conflicts. 2. Creativity is "self-organizing dissipative structure," an open system that can survive only through a constant exchange of matter/energy and information with its environment. 3. Creativity continuously creates disequilibria and bifurcations, breaks barriers of routine, to liberate from automatic experiences in order to achieve inner autonomy. 4. Creativity can be regarded as desire to build a new reality through an expanded awareness. 5. Creativity is an important outlet for the increased tension of inner conflicts and defense force against mental illness. (Laycraft)

Alchemy is a virtual training environment where nature shows the nonlinear, interactive way. Noise can be embedded signal in nonlinear feedback systems. Control mechanisms operate over many time scales. Thus, what first appears as sporadic or emergent qualities can stabilize over time. There is a connection between arts skills learning and broader learning.

What we learn in the alchemical art compliments, validates and suppliments what we learn elsewhere. The mind normally follows learned trajectories. But a change in parameters or modification of the link structure produces bifurcations leading toward novel organizational states. These dynamical networks present idiosyncratic organizations, involving more or less lability and chaos, ranging from spiral-point attractors to chaotic ones.

Personality is a reciprocally-interactive complex system. Recursive distinctions give rise to complex fractals in personality. Recursion relates directly to self-reference, through which logic loops back upon itself like the alchemical Ouroboros as well as fractal geometry. These perspectives are attractor states that divide the observed from the observer. They give rise to the laws of physics, the deep structure of language and the controversies of social science.

Adaptation and adaptive behaviors are central themes of practical importance in the study and function of personality. Adaptation is an important non-linear, dynamic and complex concept and system involved in evolution and survival of our species. It is related to "holding the tension of the opposites":

As a state of being, the uroboros represents fused opposites: self/other, inside/outside, good/bad, feminine/masculine which we modeled well by fractal dynamics. As a cycle of activity, the uroboros symbolizes seeds of creative growth and self-renewal. By looping around and feeding upon itself, the uroboros relates to recursion, whereby the end products of experience are fed back into the beginning. As an ongoing cycle, recursion eventuates in conscious processes of self-reflection and self-control over impulses. Although the separation of opposites, or making of distinctions, is necessary for survival, the symbol of the uroboros suggests that our paradoxical core remains buried deep within the psyche for life. (Marks-Tarlow)

Alchemy creates catastrophe shelves or bifurcation points in a deliberate way. This advances interaction through the first two levels of chaos ultimately reaching the third level, or deep chaos. This enables us to move from the known with its certainties and predictable solutions to the unknown.

We construct our own belief systems and knowledge from direct experience. Anomalous experience emerges from chaotic systems. They inject novelty into the system. They include everything from deja vu to high weirdness. How we react to them, depends on how we contextualize them. Traditions tell us they can be wrathful or beatific, horrifying or blissful.

For example, fear is the driving force behind paranormal delusions because high fear levels invert the effect of experience on fear, thereby creating a positive feedback loop in which belief, experience, and fear mutually reinforce each other in a perceptual "contagion" process. The excellent fit of the cusp model implies that, at least at high levels of paranormal experience, we face the dilemma of choosing between believing in the paranormal or experiencing fear.

Paradox Logic

Play is a crucial element for discovery of fluid connections, physicosocial dynamics and prescriptive information and control for more efficient self-regulation -- adaptive solution finding. Thus, alchemy represents a dynamic synthesis that is always occuring at the critical edge of the merger of inner life and "external" [sic] environment. It is always happening in the NOW, the cusp of self-discovery.

There is only One World. It is our work to see art in all intrinsic form and holographic process - eidetic experience, perceptive transparency. LIGHT is the basis of all appearances and differences. In this view conceptual categories become literally senseless except as heterogeneous interacting agents.

Entropy and dissipation are the core thermodynamic insight, leaving the creation and evolution of living systems as ignorable mysteries. A deeper appreciation of the wholeness of human occupation emerges within a spiritual paradigm reflecting the fundamental complexity, organizational fitness, nonlinear processes, and pattern flow formation of dynamic human occupation.

Individual Innovation

Self-similarity and self-affinity are newly recognized symmetries by which transformations in time and/or space leave the central pattern unchanged. Attending to fractal complexity is fascinating yet effortless. Gell-Mann (2002) defines effective complexity as regularities or schema found or judged to be useful. They appear as equations, genotypes, laws and traditions, and best practices. Chaos is synergistic, guided by preferential attraction.

Multidimensional information implies higher dimensional chaos. The folding dimension can describe time evolution of fractal structure with no relation to time scale. Data or information then appears nonlocal, synchronous, or entangled. A fractal conception of time injects the infinite into the finite, with open-ended possibilities for nested temporal cycles.

Fractal structure is the result of repeated nestings of temporal intervals into the window of the present now. This iterative embedding process shapes the world/observer interface by increasing its complexity with every new temporal nesting. Simultaneity supercedes succession explaining the structure of temporal interface.

Fractal time results in complexification and decomplexification of our perceptions. Fractal time may account for the depth dimension of symbolic perception. Inside/outside are entrained and the outer structure locks onto the internal dynamics of the observer/participant.

From a fractal point of view we can pack an infinite number of activities into the same period of time and still leave room for more. Perturbations of current focus in unfolding existence are fractal catalysts permiting us to overcome structural constraints.

Positive maladjustment is a phase transition from chaos to order. Spontaneous multilevel disintegration is described by the chaotic attractor. As soon as a person feels that some modes of thinking, feeling, and acting are higher, conflicts of a vertical nature arise.

Emotional, unconscious and slightly conscious forces dominate the spontaneous multilevel disintegration. Epistemology addresses how we know what we know. A deep question for epistemology is how (without a homunculus) sentient beings discover new ideas that are within their structural capacity but beyond previous experience. Innovative crystallization can be understood as synchronized coupling between two or more chaotic systems.

Nonlinear Thinking

A stable worldview is one that reinforces thought trajectories that enhance individual wellbeing. Many factors can interfere with this stability. Metaphors reflect two parallel systems, each stable in their own right. Mapping across destabilizes each system, leading to entropy and an emergent self organizing system.

This re-organization produces new insights, consciously or unconsciously. Metaphoric meaning produces different perceptions, reframing or a solution to a problem. One metaphor can alter perspective, attitude, self concept, motivation, learning and behavior, just as one trauma or therapeutic intervention can change us utterly.

Chaos theory and alchemy are both about systems trajectories. Chaos and complexity theories merge at the point where they focus on fractals. Developmental stage change has a fractal nature, including increasing task complexity. The sequence of tasks in transition is identical from order to order.

Problem solving is a dynamical process where nonlinearity is expected. Pattern variables are the key to choices. Critical states, small and big disruptions, influence our learning. Bifurcations or changes in pattern, changes in our mind and views, are intrinsic to our stability. Fluid boundaries are critical to growth. Thus, solutio is the key to the alchemical process. Chaos is the Universal Solvent.

A dynamical systems approach to cognitive systems is a multimodal model of creative thinking. The levels include semantics (or sense transformation level), logics and grammar. Dynamical patterns are used as substitutions for representations in cognitive theories. The dynamics of each level, which is supposed to be chaotic, allows for the generation of new information not presented by initial conditions.

The transition steps pattern is also fractal. The transition steps result in increasingly less partial organization of combinations of elements at the next order. At the same time, those elements increase in complexity from one order to another, with fractal similarities to the overall model. Levels of organization, from physics to psychology and alchemy, display homologous features. They are fractal.

Although the concept of ‘a self’ is a hypothetical construct, it has proven useful as a psycho-social construct. Usually perceived as a central or core part of an individual's identity, there are many variations of what the idea of self system is like. The self is almost always considered an organized system.

Recursion gives rise to self-similarity. Since all properties enter consciousness, all of them are in this sense recursive. A particular property emerges as a result of a given combination, or new sequence revealing a new property from the total set available. Emergent phenomena are constituted by and generated from underlying phenomena, and at the same time they are autonomous from those underlying phenomena. Emergent phenomena are ubiquitous in living systems across scales and domains.

As part of human dynamical organization, self-image is considered non-linear. Different initial points of origin lead to different trajectories and outcomes. Fractals may play a significant role in self-concept and self esteem. Developmentally, the self evolves into increasingly complex self-organization continuing through whole-life learning. Alchemy brings infinite possibilities for meaning, so conclusion of an operation or cycle of refinement does not imply closure of fractally reiterating processes, since alchemists are recursive paradoxical thinkers.

Divergent Perspectives

A paradigm is a prevailing point of view or way of thinking about an issue that exemplifies an entire scientific culture, such as the "new" nature of nature. Science changes as our perceptions and patterns change. The universe is a complex web of relations. The radically novel comes into existence through emergence.

Nonlinear wisdom emerges through several important themes: the necessity of living in the dark with chaos; the self-organizing quality of nature, both inner and outer; interpenetrating, fractal boundaries between self, world, and other; and the paradoxical essence of psyche, where only through separation and individuation can we open ourselves to love and vital interconnection with self, others and world.

Chaos and complexity have made militant anti-humanistic models of spirituality obsolete, opening the way for intentional facilitation of emergent positive internal resources. Whether you come to chaos theory from a scientific, artistic or philosophical portal, at some point the concepts take root in you and proliferate. Changes in shared beliefs, expectations, perceptions, norms and patterns of reciprocal behavior among individuals who interact with one another lead toward cultural shift.

Emergent perceptions about life-meaning, purpose, and identity are understood through the model of intention, meaning, and perception, influencing the system-wide changes that occur during spiritual occupation. Complexity is the mother of new ideas and forms. Alchemy opens flows of information across scales, from smaller biological processes up to larger scale social processes.

We can view spiritual occupation as both the creative process (means) and as engagement in spiritual activities (ends), which sustain and support life and health. This is a nonlinear view of the spiritual dimensions of personal growth through the process of self-organization and self-transcendence.

Hyperdimensional Experience

Hyperdimensional experience (HDE) is psychological awareness of a dimension beyond that experienced previously, or normally and in everyday life. Sometimes it is unexpected or fleeting, the result of a drug, temporary circumstances or a physiological state such as illness. Sometimes it is sought as an abiding frame of mind by means of a program of training like alchemy, religious discipline or meditation, or as a successful outcome of psychotherapy. (Marks-Tarlow)

By its nature the experience of hyperdimensionality means the sense of a further or higher dimension in perception, thought and feeling. As such it may be distinguished from other altered states of consciousness (ASCs), which may be positive, negative or even pathological in their effect. As distinct from ASCs in general, the HDE is felt as a liberating, expansive or life-changing experience.

Often it is linked with intellectual and/or emotional insights, which again may be evanescent or may be capable of subsequent articulation and elaboration in a productive sense. Coherent narratives of our life-journeys is a reiterated aspect of self-concept. We gain the capacity to sink beneath everyday surface events to the very origins of consciousness. In this zone of expanded awareness, external events of life are seen as meeting and fitting the internal contours of psyche like hand and glove. Oceanic experience leaves a sense of expanded perception in its wake that is more or less persistent..

Elimination of all clear distinctions between inside/outside, self/other, mind/matter, grants a wholeness to experience, a sense of "rightness" about how character and destiny intersect, even when this fit appears perfectly horrific. A state of "primordial confusion" at the base of consciousness can be modeled via re-entry dynamics by fractal boundaries between psyche and world. Within this paradoxical state, boundaries are simultaneously opened and closed, and opposites are equated. This is the stuff either of madness or higher consciousness, depending upon the strength of the therapeutic container (alembic, retort).

Chaos theory and alchemy are aligned methodologies. Emergent wholeness is qualitatively different than holism. Critical dynamics are "constructed" according to a specific meaning. Positive and negative hedonic categories are perceived as subjective categories of distress (fear, anger, sadness, etc) and eustress (joy, love, wonder, etc).

Their accompanying approach/avoidance action tendencies offer perceptual guidance concerning self-preservationary and self-developmental adaptive responses to environmental changes. Our behavioral choices must align to ensure optimal biological harmony---a naturally harmonious state of homeostatic balance with cognitive and emotional fluctuations.

The transitional conditions at each interpenetrating operative level may be identified as phase states, occurring by analogy within nonlinear dynamical systems, and involving iterations, feedback, and strange attractors. They may also be represented as fractal loops. The resulting condition of wholeness unfolds a fractal or "in-between" ontology which hyper-dimensionally marries living and dying, order and chaos. Alchemy and chaos means levels without hierarchy and wholes without holism.

Rationality is not always capable of dealing with the complex situations we encounter in the real world. Irrational decision-making processes have evolved over time and are rooted in the deepest functions of the brain/mind. Nonlinear dynamic systems modeling of broad and deep spiritual occupations further validates the theory and practice of alchemy by addressing the full complexity of occupation as an embodied process of spirit-mind-body and world. Linear and nonlinear thinking are required for creativity, healing and innovation.

The traditional scientific view is to regard matter, information and energy as basically different. Knowledge from the theory of relativity, and especially from quantum physics, shows that at the micro-level, matter appears to be energy if considered from the appropriate point of view. Information has not yet been considered or discussed in this connection, or at least not adequately.

For the process of self-organization, every complex system requires, in addition to matter, (materially compressed energy), various types of energy, as well as information of appropriate quality and quantity. No system can function or exist without this information. (Karl, Toifil).

.