Yesterday I spent the day in Boulder Creek, visiting my friend Nick Herbert. I have a picture of him plus a discussion of one of his ideas about consciousness in the “Quantum Soul” section of my Lifebox tome.
For that matter, Nick also helped me dream up some of the material in Saucer Wisdom, not to mention the notion of “tekelili” telepathy at the center of the The Hollow Earth. He’s always had this idea that we might be able use physics to bring about something like actual telepathy in the real world. And once you can read the mind of a plant, you’ll have to recognize that all along the plant was conscious. Why not?
Nick is living something of a hermit’s life these days, though since he still gives talks sometimes he says he’s been called a “performance hermit.”
Once a week, Nick goes to work out at the garage/gym of his friend Reno, also in Boulder Creek.
I went along and had fun. I’m a yoga guy not an iron-pumper, but I did some stretches with the light hand-weights.
Nick’s friend Allen Lundell and his wife Sun joined us for lunch at the Blue Sun Caf in Boulder Creek.
Sun seemed like a classic hippie; in the 80s she lived in a famous commune in the Haight. Last year she was the Bad Witch at the Emerald City camp at Burning Man, and she was telling a story about how the Elves from the Elf camp brought them a jar of Elf Magic beads and treated them to some Elven Jello. She joked that everyone in Boulder Creek has learned to levitate, and that the ground of Boulder Creek has levitated as well, which is why people don’t notice.
A couple of other guys joined us for lunch too, including Brooks Blanchard, an electric flutist who sometimes runs the multimedia feeds for performances by the Maui rave band “Lost at Last”. He talked about going to the annual gatherings of the Rainbow Family, a loose affiliation of hippies who meet on National Forest Lands every year — I think this year’s meeting will be near “The Ned,” that is, Nederland, Colorado.
Allen Lundell gave me an incredibly cool toy made by a local Boulder Creek man, who has a website of similar cool inventions. If you read my novel Saucer Wisdom, you might recall that Frank Shook was selling “Lotus Lights” — these were modeled on the “Liberty Lights” available at this site. I didn’t see this cool little fan on the site; what makes it awesome is that there’s four little diode-type lightbulbs on the blade, and the flick on and off in some wonderfully complex and nonrepeating algorithm, which means that the spinning lights makes ever new mandalic designs.
At lunch with these pleasant people, I felt a very long way from yuppie Los Gatos and bustling Silicon Valley.
Nick and I took a long walk through the woods, Nick talking about his eternal quest to make a big discovery relating consciousness and quantum mechanics.
He always brings me back to panpsychism, the notion that all sorts of things might be conscious: ferns, rivers, air currents. That’s the San Lorenzo River, by the way.
I’m working to make this science-fictionally true in Postsingular. The universal computation is already present in nature, even in cracking paint, but most processes don’t have RAM and my friend John Walker has argued, I think convincingly, that in order for natural phenomena to “wake up” they really need memory.
I bid a fond au revoir to Nick, leaving him with the bathtub he keeps on his porch: he calls it his “Neo-Archimedean Research Vessel.”
June 24th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
Rudy–
Is that a reissue of “The Hollow Earth”? I haven’t seen that cover before. (Coincidentally, I just checked out the original — the one with the flying pig-like critter on the cover — from the local library.
June 25th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Speaking of consciousness theories. Mentioning Nick Herbert reminded me that Tim Leary quoted from Nick in the last three pages of his last update of the book, Info-Psychology.
June 25th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
The Hollow Earth is coming out in a reprint edition from Monkeybrain books this fall; see the link for it under the new cover picture in the post.
June 26th, 2006 at 6:55 am
You forgot to mention that Nick Herbert wrote “Quantum Reality”. The book is almost 20 years old and is still the most accessable book on quantum theories. The last chapter on Bell’s Theorem is something I’ve read and reread trying to grok the amazing implications. He also published the “shortest proof” of Bell.
June 26th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Re: the memory of natural phenomena.
In the story I’m presently working on entitled Markov Chain a man is trapped on an ancient galleon after he dies. The wood on the galleon contains memories of the forest in its sap and knots.
I have posted some excerpts on my blogspot ‘The Far Queue’
June 27th, 2006 at 3:59 am
Hey Rudy,
I just discovered this blog while I was looking up the name of “The Hollow Earth” which I was refering to a friend. I haven’t read the book since it came out in 1990. It left such a vivid impression on me, as have many of your other books.
I was please to find this blog and read of your day.
It gladened my heart to see that we share a common love of nature and belief that most all things could be conscious.
Well thank you for brightening my evening here in Shanghai.
July 24th, 2006 at 7:32 am
I notice this east vs west notion about consciousness. In western thought when consciousness is put everywhere, pantheism, it still belongs to the individual things, whereas in eastern thought there is only one awarenss looking through many eyes. Of course these views are dual as in a dual spaces. It seems to me that westerner often forget the unifying possibility.
I’m in the middle of reading “Programming the Universe” and from that perspective it seems easy to have memory hanging out all over the place, there are lots of bits to go around.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Rudy: Pls let me post this plea….
HELP: My dear wife and I have just recently moved to Shanghai (reason=hard to explain but it was unavoidable). Regardless….we MUST find a sympatico crowd/friend/place…ANYTHING.
Someone wrote from Shanghai. And/or if anyone KNOWS anyone in Shanghai who is even remotely not-straight…hippie…with it….enlightened….concious….semi-concious…ANYTHING. If so…pls connect me (boyvey@gmail.com)
We have been here 6 weeks and plan to stay at least 2-3 years (teachers….jobs). Just moved here from glorious Kathmandu. And Kathmandu…Shanghai just aint.
Feeling…bleh. Smothered in Superficial hell. Anyone? Anyone out there in Shanghai or know anyone in Shanghai at least the slightest bit tuned in turned on and or dropped out.
Peace and Love
Bill
September 11th, 2013 at 2:50 am
First off I want to say superb blog! I had a quick question which I’d like to ask if you do not mind.
I was interested to find out how you center yourself and clear your thoughts prior
to writing. I have had a tough time clearing my mind in getting my thoughts out there.
I do enjoy writing but it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes are usually lost simply just trying to figure out
how to begin. Any ideas or hints? Cheers!
September 11th, 2013 at 7:25 pm
Dooraniapl, the best way to start is to just write anything at all. Get a few pages of whatever passes through your mind, and print them out and then mark them up and start changing them. Like kneading dough.