This page doesn't appear to be an article and therefore may not display well in the Article View. You may want to switch to the Full Web Page view.
Awareness and the Superpowers
vs
A Conspiracy (?) to Suppress
Knowledge of Awareness
Ingo Swann (20Oct99)
The central purpose of this essay is to BEGIN to bring to light an extremely subtle and hidden situation that continuously surrounds the essential nature of the superpowers in an on-going and prevailing cocoon of disinformation.
This situation is so strange, and so seemingly unlikely, that at first take the following considerations might seem outrageously off the wall.
And so I hasten to refer to an ancillary situation that is entirely credible because it is generally understood to exist, and is broadly confirmed by relevant and available documentation.
It is a well-known fact that research and discovery regarding the nature of the superpowers is neither encouraged nor supported within the workings of the more powerful societal mainstreams.
As a result, organized forms of psychical and parapsychological research have been left dangling at the fountains of funding and needed academic interaction. They have been continuously distressed with regard to any authenticity of their accumulated work over the last 120 years of the so-called Modern Age.
The exclusion and condemnation of Psi, etc., by the powerful societal mainstreams is so obvious that it really should be considered as deliberately purposeful in its general intent.
Obviously, the societal mainstreams do not want constructive increases in parapsychological knowledge, perhaps especially with regard to telepathy. If developed into high states of functioning, telepathy would be considered as invasive of minds. And most societal power structures depend on power-making secrets being KEPT secret.
There are other considerations about the reasons, some of which have been partially considered in the essay herein entitled "Remote Viewing and Its Skeptics."
The foregoing having now been said, it can be pointed up that societal worries about possible Psi superpower enhancing have a history that stretches back anterior in time before the last 120 years of the Modern Age.
In this anti-Psi history, throughout which cognitive development of Psi knowledge has not been wanted, it stands to reason that ANY knowledge regarding factors that might contribute to its development must themselves be culturally suppressed or permanently suspended in ambiguous confusions.
There are many subtle, long-term knowledge vacuums that have been perpetuated to that end.
The term AWARENESS is used all the time, and so it is difficult to think that information regarding its dynamic and extensive nature is encapsulated in a knowledge vacuum.
As that may be, however, it is clear that kinds of awarenesses and the kinds of superpowers are not only ancillary but are fundamentally interactive with each other.
Thus, if effective knowledge about the superpowers is to be suppressed, or at least distorted in some counter-productive sense, then effective knowledge regarding awarenesses must also be treated likewise.
To help drive home this point, the term IMPEDE is defined as "to interfere with the progress of, to block, to hinder."
In this sense, we can think not only in terms of impeded and unimpeded knowledge regarding the superpowers, but also in terms of impeded and unimpeded awarenesses.
Societal Suppression of Knowledge
About Awareness Faculties
There are two central reasons for entering into the strange topics of this essay.
First, it can be thought that the superpowers and the spectrums of awareness are so basically and closely interrelated that it is virtually impossible to consider them apart from each other.
Second, it is true that the word "awareness" is used all the time. But if one makes a determined effort to discover the existence of any in-depth research and accumulated knowledge regarding it, one might become aware of rather extensive information and knowledge vacuums in this regard.
Awareness faculties and abilities are exceedingly strategic to the superlative functioning, and even to the basic survival, of our species entire, and, of course, to each of its individuals.
Indeed, without what is called AWARENESS we would be little more than darkened, blind, stimulus-response critters that only react to stimuli but are unable to discriminate anything.
Because of this strategic importance, knowledge vacuums regarding the dynamics of awareness really should not exist as such.
Therefore, the existence of the knowledge vacuums regarding awareness faculties must be seen as representing an invisible, but profound situation of some kind - one in which a lack of awareness-knowledge seems to be important and with purpose.
It is broadly understood that scientific and philosophic minds, as it were, should take active interest in all matters that are of extreme and significant importance.
But science and philosophy are not independent of the societal environments in which they occur, so much so that without the positive support of those environments neither science nor philosophy can exist very well.
When one speaks of "societal environments," one is of course, and in the first frame of reference, speaking of societal power structures, within which power and the maintenance of it always represents the first order of business.
Speaking in metaphor, then, power structures do not like the emergence of information and knowledge that might weaken or threaten their assumed authenticity and realities, and within which societal power forces are vested.
Thus, determination of what knowledge is to consist of, or not consist of, is almost always a societal concern before it can be handed down into scientific and philosophic minds.
And indeed, ever since Francis Bacon (1561-1626) pronounced his famous axiom that "Knowledge itself is power," thereby connecting the two, it can be understood, with some certainty, that various power structures soon began keeping an eagle eye on emerging knowledge that might either support or disrupt them.
In other words, societal power structures first, THEN science and philosophy - provided those two workhorses of knowledge confine their efforts within societal power guidelines.
Indeed, knowledge is power, or at least can help make and sustain power to those who have it. Therefore, non-knowledge or lack of it gives depowerment to those, the powerless, in whom certain kinds of power-making knowledge are caused to be absent by intent and design.
It is certainly clear enough that awareness is very closely related to power and to power status. What is not so clear, though, is that certain kinds of awareness are more power-pertinent than other kinds.
To somewhat grok the nature of what is involved along such lines, one has only to consider what, at the individual level, various INCREASES of functional awareness might portend in societal systems and their stratified power structures.
Any competent examination of such power structures quickly reveals that their continuing existence does depend on maintaining this or that extent of non-operative awareness factors of the masses.
There are many ways to achieve this, of course, and on many different levels. But one really efficient way is simply to suppress and remove the entire topic of awareness from constructive study - so that, simply put, knowledge of pro-active awareness cannot dribble down into the depowered intelligences of the masses.
In any event, while much of the information in this Website can be considered within hypothetical contexts, the direct relationship between awareness and the superpowers is so obvious that it is cast in factual cement.
If, however, one wishes to locate information packages relevant to this factual cement, one will ultimately discover three factoids:
- A great deal of information is available regarding the existence of the superpowers; but
- Information regarding awareness is so scant as to be almost non-existent; and
- In the conventional societal approaches to the superpowers, and via parapsychology itself, there is no linking of awareness to the superpowers - even though clairvoyance and telepathy, for example, can be thought of as different specializing kinds of awareness.
But beyond the parameters of parapsychology, there is a larger and identifiable reason for this.
At the societal levels, beyond a few rather brief and obviously truncated dictionary definitions for AWARE and AWARENESS, there are no in-depth studies regarding their essence, nature, workings, and multitudinous phenomena in science proper, in philosophy, in sociology, and even in anthropology.
Thus, the information vacuum regarding the nature of awareness goes beyond its implications to parapsychology. Indeed, the vacuum is universally present in all modernist approaches to knowledge, and especially with regard to endeavors that have anything at all to do with power and empowerment.
Awareness and the Superpowers
of the Human Biomind
There can be little doubt that in their first or primary instance, the various kinds of superpowers consist of various kinds of naturally indwelling "units" that can exist in at least three identifiable states: (1) active; (2) inactive; or (3) blocked, impeded, or desensitized.
Thus, if one examines to examine the phenomena and functions regarding the superpowers, but does not examine the awareness spectrums that intimately go along with them, the end product can manifest as very little regarding superpower activations.
The whole of this results in two simple equations:
(a) The lack of awareness activation equates to no superpower recognition or activations.
(b) Organized awareness knowledge and expansions equate to increases of superpower recognition and activations.
In the light of the above, if a school or center for superpower development were ever established, its Basic Course 101 would focus on the nature of awareness, and include methods for enhancing and expanding not only its spectrums, but its entire panorama.
As it is, then, there are precise reasons for introducing this subject of awareness into these essays regarding the superpowers of the human biomind:
- The superpowers involve those biomind awareness-faculties that can transcend the known limits and physical factors of space, time, matter, and energy;
- It is entirely difficult to comprehend how the biomind faculties can achieve the transcending IF THEY DO NOT INCORPORATE ESSENTIAL AND SPECIFIC AWARENESSES consisting of a number of kinds and varieties;
- If one subtracts awareness from the superpowers, one will NOT have the superpowers;
- If one discusses and studies the superpowers as anything other than specific kinds of awareness modules, the superpowers will not become volitionally active;
- Those who possess some "natural" kind of superpower functioning obviously also have a "natural" activation of the appropriate awareness modules.
Impeded vs Unimpeded Awareness Modules
One of the central functions of this present essay is to hypothetically consider the possible, but very subtle, existence of three factors. Their existence is of enormous importance to the superpowers of the human biomind.
The three factors are:
(l) The hypothetical existence of something that, for lack of more precise terms, might be called unimpeded or noiseless awareness.
(2) If it can be supposed that unimpeded awareness can or could exist, then it can be shown that the present compilations of modern knowledge are constructed in ways that navigate around it. The result would be that knowledge of it is not only consistently avoided but obliterated.
(3) In that ways and means must be contrived to avoid knowledge as well as to discover it, then the use and meaning of the term CONSPIRACY cannot be disallowed - although the exact sources of such conspiracy not be entirely groked via conventional suppositions.
(NOTE: With reference to concepts of impedance regarding (1) above, one might refer to the essays herein entitled "Remote Viewing and the Signal-to- Noise Ratio," "Mental Information Processing Grids and Meaning Transducers," and "Information Processing Viruses and Their Clones.")
Our Species As An Awareness Life Form
vs
Our Species As a Stimulus-Response Mechanism
Here we might pause to wonder again what our species, and its downloaded individuals, would be like if it DID NOT possess various kinds of awareness spectrums each of which may be quite extensive.
Indeed, without its vast arrays of awareness factors, any palpitating biomind would be not much more than a palpitating blob. In fact, one could delete the mind part from consideration, ending up with the bio part being little more than a non-aware stimulus-response affair, if even that.
Along those lines of thought, efforts to establish that the human is only a stimulus-response affair are thickly woven into modernist knowledge packages via which attempts are made to codify what is knowledge about ourselves and what is not.
Attempts to erect a picture of humans as being only stimulus-response affairs are grouped together under the general heading of "behaviorism," or the "behavioristic" sciences and philosophies.
Definitions of BEHAVIORISM differ slightly, but are nevertheless consistent in concept.
WEBSTER’S (1967) indicates that BEHAVIORISM is "a doctrine holding that the data of psychology consist of the observable evidence of orgasmic activity to the exclusion of introspective data or references to consciousness and mind. [I.e., to the exclusion of awareness faculties.]
As the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY (1967) further indicates:
". . . behaviorism, as a philosophical theory, is as old as reductive materialism [and is defined as an attempt] to interpret all mental states in terms of matter in motion."
Additionally, the fifth edition (1981) of the PSYCHIATRIC DICTIONARY (R. J. Campbell, Ed.) indicates that:
"Behaviorism claims that ‘consciousness’ is neither a definable nor a usable concept, that it is merely another word for the ‘soul’ of more ancient times. . . Classical behaviorism asserted that all behavior is to be understood in terms of stimulus-response formula; the organism [i.e., the human being] is thus essentially passive and can only react to stimulation."
(NOTE: In the context of the above, do be pleased to remember the use of the words "essentially PASSIVE and can only react to stimulations.")
In their collective sense, the three definitions above can be simplified in the following way.
It would be obvious that awareness and consciousness have something to do with each other. If we substitute AWARENESS for the term CONSCIOUSNESS, we can conclude that awareness is also "not a usable concept within the behaviorism model."
It is at least partially legitimate to make this slight replacement, since consciousness is given as one of the synonyms for awareness, as we will see shortly ahead.
Beyond behaviorism, an overall, and larger, picture of human history clearly establishes that smaller and bigger parameters of awareness frequently have played exceedingly important survival roles, and continue to do so.
This is highly suggestive of the perfectly logical premise that however the human "organism" might be explained or conceived otherwise, it would seem necessary to incorporate the elements of awareness rather than abolish or trash them.
This is to say, those elements would necessarily need to be incorporated - if we are to assume a picture of ourselves as something beyond the stimulus-response states of toilet training and eating dirt because the stimulus of hunger requires a response.
As a somewhat delicious aside here, it does seem that specific human specimens suffer from deletions and subtractions of awarenesses - and which subtractions might be inherent in not a few behaviorists.
Be that as it may, the desirability of enhanced parameters of awareness is not denied by other specimens - for example those obtaining to street smarts, etc., and those intent on climbing corporate ladders.
Expanded awareness does come in handy. One cannot climb a corporate ladder solely as a stimulus-response mechanism.
The Relationship of Awareness
Modules to Human Intelligence
The existence of awareness is assumed to be one of the major criteria for designating our species as sometimes manifesting rather impressive attributes of generic intelligence - the functioning of which is rather dependent on some quanta of awareness however minimal or minuscule.
It is almost impossible to attempt to consider intelligence without also considering the NECESSARY attributes of awareness upon which any form of it can be mounted.
Even the stimulus-response routines of toilet training require a modicum of intelligence so as to enable continuous awareness-recognition of certain facilities established for such purposes.
Considered this way, it is clear that awareness and intelligence go hand-in-hand. It is entirely possible that one doesn’t exist without the other.
It is even ethically and rationally possible to suggest that awareness and intelligence are two sides of the same coin.
In this sense, then, while enormous amounts of cultural, philosophic, and scientific research during the Enlightened modern period have been specifically devoted to TRYING to examine the nature of intelligence, hardly any investigative attention has been directed to the needed concomitants of awareness (this, of course, being another knowledge vacuum regarding awareness.)
The Societal Avoidance
of Awareness Issues
To reiterate, there is an old saying that something can occasionally be recognized by its voluminous or thunderous absence. The topic of awareness clearly falls into the category of subtle absenteeism.
As but a few examples of the prolific absenteeism, no reference to AWARENESS is found in any scientific compendiums or authoritative scientific resources.
The topic of AWARENESS is likewise absent from psychological compendiums and resources, while the term itself hardly ever appears in their indexes.
With regard to philosophic theories and studies, the extremely inclusive ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY (1967) does not have an entry for awareness. However, the term is mentioned five times in the cumulative index of the Encyclopedia’s eight volumes.
But since the eight volumes taken altogether amount to some 4,000 double columned pages, five mentions of awareness in the index can only be taken either as evidence of extreme marginalizing or as a gaping hole in overall philosophical mind-bending.
As another, perhaps somewhat smelly aside, one possible reason for the absenteeism of AWARENESS in overall philosophical perspectives is that philosophers, somewhat akin to behaviorists, might not necessarily need excessive quantities of it.
Returning briefly to the topic of parapsychology and etc., while much can be said about the many and quite varied topics that have surfaced in such research, the hidden thread that obviously binds them all into one unwinding spool are the different forms of awareness, and their various states and conditions.
And so, here to it can be pointed up that although the various categories of Psi obviously consist of a variety of awareness parameters and little else, no entry for AWARENESS is found in any organized compendium of psychic or parapsychological terms and nomenclature.
What all of this adds up to is that the more intimate concepts of AWARE and of AWARENESS are so generally taboo that they are not even mentioned as being taboo.
This, it seems, would more or less equate to a taboo taboo, the whole of which is ultra-taboo.
Thus, the history of awareness phenomena is almost completely and consistently marked not only by efforts to deconstruct the topic itself, but also to condemn, distort, and torture-punish it, and likewise to deconstruct and erase any organized approach to study of it.
Discussion of Existing Definitions
of Awareness
In order to move ahead, two factors might be carried in mind in review of what has already been discussed.
- There is almost nothing with regard to historical studies of awareness to which one might gladly refer in order to increase in-take of information packages regarding empowerment of it.
- Thus, one is more or less in the position of attempting to locate relevant information packages via tugging at one’s own boot straps.
In the sense of the above, tugging at one’s boot straps can begin by identifying something or anything about awareness that is obvious.
One obvious element that has tremendous importance to each specimen of our species is that awareness does exist in many different formats. Without those formats, discernment of different things would soon resemble something like a murky soup.
If this tremendous and obvious importance is accepted as self-evident and unarguable, then it would seem that the nature and functions of awareness would long ago have been pointed up as one of our species chief and necessary characteristics.
This, in turn, would mean that awareness would have been submitted to in-depth, systematic study over time - and that studies specific to the nature of awareness would ultimately be housed in a hefty resource library resembling those that accumulate around all other important topics.
Well, all we have is the word AWARENESS and its exceedingly brief definitions. These are interesting enough in themselves.
However, one important factor that will not be immediately visible (but will be pointed up ahead) is that definitions of the term have, through time, undergone a curious shift of emphasis.
Most contemporary dictionaries that include mention of a word’s etymology indicate that our present term AWARE is derived from the Old German-English GEWAR - the definitions of which are given as "wary" and "watchful."
The Oxford dictionary of the English language indicates that the term GEWAR was made up of GE + WAR, and is normally translated as "to be-become wary" or "to be-become watchful or alert."
However, GE had several nuances, one of which was taken to mean "to have," but another which was used to indicate "to be with."
Thus, GEWAR most likely meant "with wary," "to be with wariness," or, perhaps, "to be within wariness-cum-watchful-cum-alert."
These early definitions imply some kind of active-awareness state.
After these etymological tidbits, it is then indicated in most dictionaries that the two definitions "wary" and "watchful" are ARCHAIC - meaning that they are obsolete, and which advisory further indicates that they should not be used with regard to awareness unless one wishes to be seen as a retro something or other.
Why "to be wary" and "watchful" in relationship to any definition of awareness should be consigned to the nomenclature trash bins of history is something upon which one can meditate.
Indeed, those two definitions are entirely reflective of a vast spectrum of awareness attributes ranging from street smarts up through and including all organizational functioning where they are required in the contexts of economic, military, diplomatic, and corporate survival.
In any event, the modern definitions of AWARE substituted for the so-called "archaic" ones are:
- "Having or showing realization, perception or knowledge;"
- "Implying vigilance in observing or alertness in drawing inferences from what one sees or hears or learns."
Additionally, modernist dictionary conventions have established certain synonyms for AWARE:
COGNIZANT - implies having special or certain knowledge as from firsthand sources.
CONSCIOUS - implies having an awareness of the present existence of something; it may suggest a dominating realization or even preoccupation.
SENSIBLE - implies direct or intuitive perceiving, especially of intangibles or of emotional states or qualities.
ALIVE - adds to SENSIBLE the implication of acute sensitiveness to something.
AWAKE - implies that one has become alive to something and is on the alert.
While the above definitions suffice for a superficial comprehension of what is involved, they do not result in deeper understanding.
In the first place, the terms given as synonyms are not exactly, or are only loosely, the synonyms they are indicated to be.
SYNONYM is defined as "one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same essential meaning in some or all senses."
If they are examined closely, the chief distinction between AWARE and the given synonyms becomes quite clear if one considers that awareness has to precede the downloading processes of cognizance, consciousness, sensible, alive and awake.
This is to say that the synonyms are products of awareness. If awareness did not pre-exist as a prime factor, then the secondary or downloading manifestations would not take place.
For clarity, one cannot have cognizance of consciousness of something unless awareness of the constituents that will comprise the cognizance has first taken place.
And indeed, the definition for COGNITION reflects this arrangement: "The act or process of knowing including both awareness and judgment."
Here is an an all-to-frequent example of utilizing the definitions of secondary manifestations to define the prime factor involved - and which permits the hidden probability of mistaking the secondary manifestations as the prime factor itself.
The above discussion is not just splitting semantic hairs - but has direct reference to the problems of causes and effects. The foregoing synonyms are describing EFFECTS that download from the causative state of AWARE, and which effects themselves can be mistaken as original causes.
Furthermore, if one examines the second modernist definition of AWARE, then it is possible to conclude that "showing realization, perception, or knowledge" are, themselves, downloaded secondary products of awareness.
Another somewhat more precise and therefore more elegant way of putting all of the above, is that there must exist an awareness prime principle - and from which are downloaded all of the secondary products given in the above definitions.
But if this is considered, at least for hypothetical progress, then we are essentially left WITHOUT a specific definition for AWARE - unless we again consider the so-called "archaic" definitions of "wary" and "watchful."
If we elect to consider the archaic definitions, one can begin to wonder:
(a) Why or how they achieved their archaic status; and
(b) Why the secondary definitions have been officially and culturally substituted for the prime meaning of "watchful" and "wary."
And it is in pursuit of glimmerings of understanding for (a) and (b) above that we can begin to encounter one of the invisible factors that apparently besets our species - and which invisible factor, if groked to its fuller implications, is, simply put, shocking.
The Societal Conversion of Awareness
Definitions From an Active to a Passive Mode
One way of getting into this is to attempt to perceive what the secondary definitions have in common.
Altogether, there are eight terms that represent the secondary, downloading manifestations of AWARE. These are: realization of, perception of, knowledge of, cognizance of, conscious of, sensible to, alive to, awake to.
Please note that "of" and "to" have now been added to those terms, since all eight of the terms are dependent upon being in some kind of relationship with something.
In other words, although an undifferentiated state of awareness might exist, awareness is usually in relationship TO or OF something.
One of the qualities the eight terms have in common is that their contours can be thought of as passive awareness formats, and which can be managed by factors that are external to the experiencer.
In other words, one can be taught, told, guided, educated, with regard to what is to be perceived, realized, etc. - and also with regard to what is NOT to be realized as well.
In contrast, "to be wary" and "to be watchful" seem more to be pro-active in a species generic kind of way. However, the subtle implication involved here might not be all that visible unless it is somewhat understood that large numbers of people who are wary and watchful might not be easy to socially condition this way or that.
If one can consider the existence of an ideal state of to be wary, or to be watchful, then it is explicit and implicit that that state would have to be composed of unimpeded awarenesses spectrums.
Indeed, it is difficult to think of active awarenesses themselves somehow deciding NOT to be aware of this and that. And so "learning" not to be aware of something can only be a societal artifact, deliberately installed by social conditioning that depends not on active awareness but upon passive formats of it.
If one considers the above with patience, and as calmly as possible, then it is possible to perceive that the eight terms are, in the first instance, NOT nuances of AWARE. Rather, they are properties of MIND or of mentation - as which, as most realize, can be conditioned this way or that by societal forces.
In other words, they are mind properties that can easily be responsive, in behaviorist terms, to organized formats of social and/or societal mind-management - this an easily recognized cousin to mind-control.
If there are difficulties groking the above, they quickly clear up when the definitions of the archaic term WATCHFUL and it’s synonyms are integrated into the overall picture.
WATCHFUL - "vigilant, wide-awake, alert, being on the look-out especially for danger or opportunity."
VIGILANT - according to most dictionaries, "suggests keen, unremitting, wary watchfulness."
ALERT - "stresses readiness or promptness in apprehending and meeting danger or emergency or in seizing opportunity."
WIDE-AWAKE - "applies to watchfulness for opportunities more often than dangers and suggests awareness of accurate meaning or of relevant developments and situations."
With regard to the above terms, it doesn’t take much imagination to grok that they represent awareness states or conditions that directly relate to power-making factors.
In THIS sense, then, it would be understandable that knowledge-managers in the service of societal power structures might easily view "being alert and keen, watchful and having unremitting vigilance" as the gravest of all their possible difficulties.
With regard to the watchful, vigilant definition of awareness, it is possible to connect that definition directly and unambiguously to various kinds of the superpower faculties.
That definition has to do with being alert, but with special emphasis on being alert regarding danger or opportunity, and perhaps other stuff as well, such as stupidity, etc.
Any competent survey of reported occurrences of spontaneous (natural) ESP, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, foreseeing and intuition easily establishes that a very large percentage of them have to do with alerts to danger. The remainder usually have to do with opportunity whether sensed, for instance, via telepathy, clairvoyance, and intuition. The danger and/or opportunity may be present or forthcoming.
Thus, it is apparently necessary to establish that some kind of unexamined situation exists that directly links the watchful-vigilant-alert definition of AWARE to what might be taken as two of the major functions of the superpower faculties having to do with danger and opportunity.
Theoretically establishing the certainty of the existence of those links is easy enough to do, since much of the available data regarding spontaneous functions of the superpowers are unambiguous in this regard.
In that the above statement reflects what abundantly IS the case, it is surprising that the nomenclature link between aware-watchful and the superpowers has not ever been clearly identified - and so, of course, no considerations along that phenomenological line have ever come into existence.
From the foregoing discussions, it can be seen that TWO definitional sets exist for AWARE and AWARENESS - i.e., the active set, and the passive set. For increase of clarity, those two sets should be compared side-by-side.
(
(
(