Curious Reality

I have gotten so many responses to my posts about non-verbal communications with dogs that I decided to provide some excerpts from The Conceptual Dog to enhance our understanding of how such an ability is not only normal and quite natural, it's something we can all experience.

Electromagnetic Harmony

Consciousness is a quality that lacks any clear and collaborative definition, its neurological basis is unknown, but it is measurable, at least in part, as electromagnetic energy. When we think, whether or not we are conscious of our thoughts, we produce energetic emanations that are measurable. What we say and think about provokes negative and positive feeling responses that are communicated throughout the body via electromagnetic field interactions. The structures that originate these electromagnetic waves are the brain and the heart. The heart generates the body’s most powerful and extensive electromagnetic field – estimated to be 5,000 times stronger than that of the brain. It has been found to have its own “brain” which enables it to independently learn, remember and make decisions. Research demonstrates that the heart’s pulsing waves of energy affect the body’s organs and influence the function of higher brain centers involved with perception, cognition and emotional processing. These waves of energy change as our thoughts and feelings change. When we have thoughts that inspire feelings of frustration and anger, the heart’s rhythmic pattern is erratic, disordered and incoherent. When we have thoughts that lead us to feelings of love, peace, joy and appreciation, its pattern is smooth, ordered and coherent. And in this state of coherency or electromagnetic harmony, our physical and mental functions are enhanced; the body’s systems show an increase in efficiency and compatibility. Our perceptions of stress decrease while our emotional balance, mental clarity and cognitive and intuitive acuity increase. We experience a marked reduction of internal mental dialogue and greater awareness of and sensitivity to others.

This state is referred to as "psychophysiological coherence” – the harmonious nature of mind and body and as we will soon see, the effects of our words, thoughts and feelings reach beyond our physicality.

Where is Mind?

Humans and canines inhabit very similar physical structures; both have hearts and brains. And both species demonstrate thought, perception, memory, imagination, reason and understanding – this generally describes “mind.” Most people believe that there is a distinct difference between body (or matter) and mind. In the philosophy of mind, this is known as dualism. But a growing body of evidence from multiple fields of study demonstrates that mind and body are not separate. The mind, previously thought to be focused in the head or even to be the brain itself, has been found to actually disburse throughout the body by way of signal molecules to which most of our cells are receptive. Our thoughts can also transfer by means other than the five classical senses. There have been many reports of instantaneous non-verbal communications between humans, between humans and animals and between animals. We can now operate computers, wheelchairs and artificial limbs using only our thoughts. This might suggest that things other than bodies, including the “space” in between things, is also mind or receptive to mind. In fact, modern science seems to be arriving at realizations that ancient societies recorded on stele and in pictograms, creation myths and sacred texts. There aren't separate "things" here, each possessing a separate and individual "mind."

One or Many?

It was once believed that consciousness was a secondary phenomenon of material reality. In other words, it emerged from materiality or existed as a result of bodies and things. It is now understood to be the field of energy that is antecedent to all phenomena – coming before, as source. Therefore, mind and body are manifestations or expressions of a single, all-encompassing field of conscious energy. We constantly affect this field with our words, thoughts and feelings, feeding it waves of coherent and harmonious energy or incoherent and chaotic energy. In fact, the effects of our verbal, mental and emotional creations can be measured some distance away from the body and they have been found to have an immediate impact upon the inert things and living beings within that distance. In a very real sense, as Nicola Tesla suggested in the late 1800's, our bodies simultaneously act as energy transmitters and receivers.

Over the past 300 years, our understanding of the universe as an entirely physical phenomenon has changed. Quantum physics has demonstrated that matter can be simultaneously defined as solid and as an immaterial force or field of energy. "Things" are nothing more than waves of possibility until they are observed by a conscious being when they "collapse" into space-time phenomena. Reality became quite curious with the discovery that essentially, there is no distinction between something we think of as real and the space between “real” things. Within the scientific world, the duality of mind and matter as separate constructs has collapsed into singularity. All known phenomena are actually waves of unlimited potential, existing in multiple places at once, denying the laws of the known reality. We and the world we inhabit are a web of interconnected and inseparable energy patterns. In this understanding of reality, there would be no such thing as a separate or individual “part.” There is no difference between a thought form and a human form. All are waves of energy. Albert Einstein recognized that energy and matter are the same when he concluded that E = mc2 (energy is matter or mass multiplied by the speed of light squared). Max Planck, the Nobel-Prize-winning father of Quantum Theory, describes all matter as originating and existing “only by virtue of a force…we must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind."

We arise from a creative and conscious field of energy and we influence it. Our current ability to know the full range of that influence is limited by the limitations of our current measuring capabilities. But scientists, spiritualists and metaphysicians agree with ancient understandings – our thinking, feeling energy emanations extend every "where" and to All - to beings, things and no-things, to the whole of the universal reality. There is one mind here, a unitive force imagining.

Our material-reality worldview issues from the concept of a mechanical universe of “things” reacting in response to certain immutable laws. We perceive a subject-object split and understand ourselves to be separate from all else. Our adherence to these tenants has erased our ability to perceive the interplay between our thoughts and feelings, this conscious field of energy and the world of matter. It has detached us from the divine energetic essence of our reality. It has created in us a separation from nature, from animals, from other humans and from all else. Science proves the existence of a single unitive force that creates the world and gives it meaning. But we have gotten into the habit of "knowing" by looking outside ourselves. We gain "information" about the dog through the flat reality of a computer screen and the pages of a book. We develop understandings and interpretations of the dog that are developed and guided by conceptual understandings and by rational thought and inference and all of this relies on what’s already “known.” We follow our avatars of canine behavior and education philosophy and application and all the while, the real master lies prone at our feet, waiting for interaction.

Other ways to "Know," "Be" and Gain Wisdom

We seem to have forgotten that "knowing" can arise through introspection – a reflective looking inward, and through intuition or quick and ready insight. It can be gained through inspiration – the divine influence and reception of sacred revelation. These origins of wisdom become acute when we are willing to release our propositions of fact – our coveted beliefs and the things we think we know, and when we enter states of psychophysiological coherence or electromagnetic harmony. They can become acute when we practice them and when we train our minds to be receptive to them. They are not weird or magical powers to which only gifted individuals have access. They are natural and organic, ancient and innate. And it is through them that we can experience unity, oneness, the one mind and...the genuine dog.


(c) 2009 Madison Moore, The Conceptual Dog. All rights reserved.