100th monkey - Sri Aurobindo

[Guest guest]

I received this this morning from another friend, it happens to fall in line

with the "who am I?" and "fear" threads. If enough of us begin to trust

the field of awareness, the Divine, we begin to permeate the entire field.

Divine gives me my own daily fear to cope with just like the rest of us.

Sometimes I can recognize it as another opportunity to have faith in

Divine, and sometimes I just stress out. period. <g>

 

This is exceptionally interesting but long: (love bo)

>From another list...re: morphogenetic fields.

>>>For those on the list who may not know of Sheldrake, he is a brilliant

theorist who developed the concept of "Morphogenetic Fields". He has a

Ph.D. in biochemistry and was director of studies in Biochemistry and Cell

Biology at Cambridge.

 

Dissatisfied with the way classical mechanistic theories explained living

organisms, Sheldrake began to speculate about the existence of an

undiscovered factor which was responsible for order in systems of higher

complexity. He called this new factor "Morphogenetic Fields" and

hypothesized that they were responsible for the form and organization of

systems at all levels of complexity including the realms of biology,

chemistry and physics.

 

According to Sheldrake's theory, "...the structures of past systems affect

subsequent similar systems by a cumulative influence which acts across both

time and space. In other words, systems are organized the way they are

because similar systems were organized that way in the past. A Monkey, for

example, behaves the way it does because other monkeys behaved that way

previously. One of the most interesting aspects of Sheldrake's hypothesis

is in its evolutionary application. In Morphogenetic Field theory, if an

animal learns to carry out a new pattern of behavior, there will be a

tendency for any subsequent similar animal to learn more quickly to carry

out the same pattern of behavior.

 

One of the best examples I have seen of MF theory was set forth by Ken

Keyes in his story of the 100th monkey.

 

"The Japanese monkey, "Macaca fuscata", had been observed in the wild for a

period of over 30 years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were

providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked

the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant. An

18-month-old female named 'Imo' found she could solve the problem by

washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her

mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their

mothers too.

 

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before

the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys

learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only

the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement.

Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

 

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain

number of Koshimam monkeys were washing sweet potatoes -- the exact number

is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were

99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes.

Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned

to wash potatoes.

 

THEN IT HAPPENED! By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing

sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth

monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

 

But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that

the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea...Colonies of

monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama

began washing their sweet potatoes. Thus, when a certain critical number

achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to

mind. Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon

means that when only a limited number of people know of a 'New Way', it may

remain the conscious property of these people. But there is a point at

which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is

strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!"

----------------------

 

Few people appreciate it, but Sheldrake's "Field Theory" is the occult

basis of Sri Aurobindo's "Integral Yoga". Each member of the Solar Line is

associated with an evolutionary task which must be executed within a

specific "field" of consciousness. And each is obliged to live the yogic

process, to himself be the field of the divine consciousness in evolution.

The Avatars real work, said the Mother, is not a teaching, not even a

revelation; but "a decisive action direct from the Supreme". Their yogic

work is based upon a principle of resonance and is designed to influence

the evolutionary process at its "Core".

 

In the 'Synthesis of Yoga', Sri Aurobindo explains the representative

nature of the individual struggle.

 

"...The Integral Yogin has to bear not only his own burdens, but a great

part of the world's burden along with it, as a continuation of his own

sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of

a battle than others'; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a

collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to

conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to

conquer them as representative of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces

in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more

obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence.

Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal

battle, he has still to win it over again in a seemingly interminable war,

because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only

it contains his own being with its well defined needs and experiences, but

is in solidarity with the beings of others because in himself he contains

the universe..." <<<

 

Going for a walk in the woods to Kelpius' cave, a few blocks from my house.

My own yoga is the golden rule in practice, and it's not so easy these days.

But I manage to laugh and be crazy in love with living most of the time.

 

Angela