Waving Flags as Physical Processes, or Arthur C. Clarke in A Vacuum

Waving Flags as Physical Processes, or Arthur C. Clarke in A Vacuum

"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum." Arthur C. Clarke
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Two monks were arguing about a flag in the wind. One said, "The flag is moving."

The other said, "The wind is moving."

The Sixth Patriarch happened to be passing by. He told them, "Not the wind, not the flag. Mind is moving."

Mummon's comment: The Sixth Patriarch said, "The wind is not moving, the flag is not moving. Mind is moving." What did he mean? If you understand this intimately, you will see the two monks there trying to buy iron and gaining gold. The Sixth Patriarch could not bear to see those two dull heads, so he made such a bargain.

Wind, flag, mind moves.
The same understanding.
When the mouth opens
All are wrong.
----From the ancient collection of koans, The Gateless Gate, or Mummon, by Ekai

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Ferdinand Waldo Demara, the Great Imposter

Ferdinand Waldo Demara, the Great Imposter

He was the Great Imposter, and his exploits became a bestselling biography, followed by a 1961 movie. Bold, downright audacious, Ferdinand Waldo Demara pretended his way into challenges that would leave others drenched in sweat.

He didn't choose small deceptions. He was often drawn to situations in which discovery was quite dangerous to him. The danger itself seemed to whet his appetite for life on the edge. Consider these:

He faked his way into becoming a surgeon in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Korean War.

He doctored credentials and bamboozled interviewers so that he became a guidance counselor in an American maximum security prison.

With a phony PhD he taught applied psychology at a Pennsylvania college.

The list doesn't end there. He was also civil engineer, sheriff's deputy, assistant prison warden, hospital orderly, lawyer, child-care expert, and Trappist monk, editor, cancer researcher. These are only some of his roles.

In the Royal Canadian Navy, his role as physician Joseph Cyr was perhaps his most challenging. He performed risky operations at sea during the Korean war. Under severe battle conditions, he worked on patients needing tooth extraction, amputation, and a bullet removed from a lung. He was blessed with keen intelligence and a photographic memory, and before the operations he retreated to his quarters, intensely studying medical books. He also administered heavy doses of penicillin to guard against patients' infections. Eventually the Canadian Navy learned of his false identity but didn't doubt his credentials as a physician. The ship's captain, whose tooth Demara extracted, was among those attesting to his character. He was discharged honorably.

Did he lie and defraud because of an amoral personality? No, strangely, his quest was partly spiritual. A faithful Roman Catholic, as a boy he had fallen in love with the Catholic church and its trappings. He mouthed the names of priestly vestments, Amice, Alb, Cincture, Maniple, Chasuble, and dreamed some day of becoming a bishop. When feeling troubled or in need, he prayed with different words, those describing a bishop's clothing: miter, gloves, ring, surplice, cassock, tunic.

His life of course took a different direction, though he did pretend to be a Trappist monk who had sworn to vows of silence. This, because he desperately wanted to live the pious life of a monastic. How did a man who would turn from the tranquil world instead assume some highly tense roles?

He also sought respectability, however temporary. He seems to have been conflicted, wanting peace on the one hand while seeking power and authority on the other. He entered monasteries, desperate for a pious life, only to be kicked out because of his troublesome behavior. The rejection sent him seeking elsewhere, this time for the respect and attention he craved, which came from positions of authority.

This craving seems the key to understanding him, and is illustrated by one situation which combined both aspects of his personality, the spiritual and the cynical, the would-be contemplative and the arrogant anti-authoritarian.

The situation. Although he finished only the ninth grade, he faked his way into graduate theology courses, and earned straight A's in them. Of that experience he says,

"I knew I could do it but I had to have it proven to me. That experience really changed me. No matter how I might feel I still can't work up any respect for acquired learning. I can for character but not learning. A man with a good mind who trusts it can learn anything he needs to know in a few months."

Certainly his achievement is remarkable, but he took theology, not graduate physics courses, and he assumed that "acquired learning" is falsely based on the authority of institutions, which he sees fit to unmask as so much pretentiousness.

He strikes an interesting contrast between character and learning, as if they are distinct attributes. He disdained scholarship almost as if it called into question the character of the professor, which is strange, twisted logic. His conception of character is curiously unfortunate: the man behind a mask has less suspect character than the fellow without a mask. It seems he would undermine authority while seeking it himself.

Given the pretension he saw in the world, he became a pretender, somebody who put the lie to authority by showing how easily it can be assumed as prison warden, surgeon, or whatever. Demara observed that

"In any organization, there's a lot of unused power laying around which can be picked up without alienating anyone."

"If you want power and want to expand, never encroach on anyone else's domain; open up new ones."

Demara operated under two cardinal rules:

The burden of proof is on the accuser.

When in danger, attack. For example, after being accused of a forgery, he explained "The ordinary faker would at least try to explain his way out at best. But I managed to plant a doubt, and once there was that doubt, for the time being, at least, the moral advantage was on my side. So I was outraged, of course." By the time anyone's suspicions became serious, Demara was off to his next role.

He offers simple advice for the aspiring imposter:

[Use an] innocent bumpkin opening [and] ask such simple and naïve questions that the person would have to have an especially dismal view of humanity in order to figure this was the first step of chicanery.

Always use the biggest names [because] people are reluctant to bother important people on routine matters. And they don't suspect a fraud to use obvious names.

The irony is that Demara could exploit basic human decency while regarding this as a test of his character.

At least two books were written about Demara: The Great Imposter, by Robert Crichton and The Rascal and The Road, a sequel also by Crichton. A film, The Great Imposter (1962) appeared with Tony Curtis as the fraud. Demara believed himself slighted by Crichton's rendering of his life and planned an autobiography, but he died, lonely and deeply depressed, of a heart attack on 8 June 1982 at age 59. Dr John Zane, a friend and physician, said of Demara that he died a "broken man who felt his talents were wasted."

At the time of his death he was employed as a hospital priest in California.

The Korean Veterans Association of Canada has an interesting page on him.

Yoruban-, Sports-, and Zen-Consciousness

Yoruban-, Sports-, and Zen-Consciousness

In the southwestern Nigeria rain forest live the Yoruba, some twenty million people. Their shamanism is called Wisdom of Nature, or in their term, Ifa.

Ifa holds that consciousness inheres within nature, plants, animals, trees, rocks, people. In it lies a reality of many dimensions. To tap this consciousness the Yoruba sit under an Oroko tree, massive in trunk, with its neighbors forming a canopy to hide the sky. Under the tree live moles, nematodes, microbes; above ground, birds fly, monkeys scramble, leopards stalk. The Yoruba find here the relentless cycle of death and rebirth and expect an altered state of consciousness to arise when they sit under the tree.

Anthropologists term their state possession, although the Yoruba have different words: ini and ogun. The first means I am, the second, medicine. They believe that merging with this consciousness allows them to influence future events. For example, empathy with plants can help crop prediction or foster future harvests.

I do not doubt that their way of knowing would prove a revelation to Westerners who practiced it. That is, pride in highly vaunted Western common sense would be tarnished, although not unseated. (Nor should it be.)

Still, would I take a Yoruba tribesman to a horse race to help me pick a winner? No. Not that I doubt his ability to predict but that, as a scientific experiment, it could not be repeatedly verified. Assume that such prediction has hits and misses, with probability greater than chance that predictive hits outnumber misses. That is good, but not enough to place five grand in the Trifecta on Whodunnit and other thoroughbreds.

Is Yoruban belief alien to Western culture? In a way, no. Sports psychology has rendered a discipline out of views long held by top athletes. They have always understood how to muster mental abilities to win a boxing match, baseball game, or golf tournament. This includes self-picturing successful punches, swings, or strokes. Now highly paid sports psychologists coach them. Among several, one difference between ini & sports is that the Yorubans relate their view to a world as organically conscious while athletes focus on their own minds. Yorubans vis a vis Descartes.

Zen Buddhism has never doubted abilities such as those possessed by the Yorubans. Buddhists even have a term for it, gedo Zen, literally the outside way. It is often practiced to develop supranormal powers or skills, or to master arts beyond the reach of ordinary people. Tempu Nakamura was said to make people act without himself moving a muscle or uttering a word. A gedo practitioner might, in his bare feet, walk on sharp, upturned sword blades. Gedo, however, is not regarded as ultimate Zen practice. Rather, it is often viewed askance as turning the student away from the finger pointing at the moon, the obviousness of Consciousness, and toward personal exploits.

It leads one toward ego, personal consciousness, rather than toward his true nature.

Confederates in Brazil

Confederates in Brazil

At Santa Barbara d'Oeste each year they hold their Southern heritage festivals. Descendants of Os Confederados, they play the part at these events. Visitors will find the men dressed in Johnny Reb uniforms, the women as Southern belles. An American visitor will notice a certain irony, as some of these men and women are of mixed parentage. Some of them still speak English with a Southern accent, although most speak only Portuguese. . . More

Brain in A Vat

Brain in A Vat

Assume that a brain could live in a vat of chemicals and, wired by external electrodes, it would have all the normal experiences: childhood, sex, falling in love, parenting, even skiing, or sky diving. It imagines itself a person capable of a full range of activity. It has beliefs: it is a person with a name, say, Harvey Smedlap; it has a family; it enjoys food; it has orgasms; a god created it and protects it. It regards all this evidence as reliable.

Now, a question: how can one differentiate his own beliefs from that of the brain in the vat? How can one say that his evidence is more reliable than that of the brain?

Peter Lynds on The Physics of Time

Peter Lynds on The Physics of Time

Another, this one antique: How do you reach a goal? You cover half the distance, then half of that, then half of it. You keep halving your distance but always another half remains.

In fact, we do reach goals, but the above paradox has stumped philosophers for centuries. (Newton was able to predict the goal, but his calculations were inferred from a universe quantum physics undermines.) A 28 year old New Zealander and college drop out thinks he has an answer, and he has many physicists impressed with the boldness of his theory.

A tutor at a broadcasting school, Peter Lynds believes that his idea is quite simple and should have been recognized by other thinkers much earlier. Of course, he has uncommon sense. The problem has been with common sense, which gets in the way of understanding and has done so for centuries.

Peter Lynds believes that the mistake lies with thinking of time as a series of moments. From antiquity to the present, philosophers and physicists have assumed that objects in motion have determined positions at any instant in time. It's not true, Lynds says. In an interview with Astroseti.org, he says "People have wrongly assumed that an object in motion has a determined position at any instant in time, thus rendering the body's motion static at that instant and enabling the impossible situation of the paradoxes to be derived." One can infer from this that we believe in time because our brains are hard-wired for us to do so. Neurobiology.

Of course, the implication of his idea is that time has no flow as it would require progression through definite instants. If no progression, and no flow, then there is "freeze." We don't move, you and I. We are frozen in time.

This, too, seems paradoxical but reason offers at least one way out. There is no you or I, at least not in the usual, the common, sense. This requires exploration of one's own mind, as philosopher David Hume did, wherein he found no sufficient empirical evidence for the existence of a self. Of course, he was preceded in this by millennia of consciousness explorers from the Buddha and before.

In brief, can Lynds' theory make sense? Yes, but uncommon sense is required. After all, among the adults, a little boy pointed out that the emperor was naked.

The paradox is enhanced by the evidence of physics. Time does not seem to be inherent in nature, which, so to speak, has no need for it. Einstein's Special and General Theories have demonstrated that

a present moment, or "now," does not underlie physical processes.

judgments of simultaneity depend on position. Recall the relativity thought experiment in which (inside a train) a thrown ball reaches its target sooner for an outside observer than for a passenger on the train.

the mathematics of relativity suggests a block universe in which events don't occur but, rather, are mapped out in space-time so that nothing "happens" because all is rather like "here": one person's "here" (read: "now") may be a cafe on the Left Bank in Paris; another's might be an espresso house in North Beach, San Francisco. The "here"/"now" is "location" rather than "event." Events haven't happened in the "past"; don't happen in the "present"; nor will happen in the "future."

Albert Einstein: "There exists, therefore, for the individual, an I-time, or subjective time. This in itself is not measurable." Time as flow, as progress, is a product of our perceptions, our neurobiology, and has no basis in nature.

All of this is counter-intuitive. It defies common sense.

In its early days, physics wanted to separate the psychological from the evidentuary or traditionally theoretical. It finally accepts that these aspects are hopelessly intertwined. This takes me back to common vis a vis uncommon sense. All calculations, all theories, all experiments ensue from ways of seeing. If the emperor seems clothed, then he will be described thus. What do I mean? Henri Bergson said that time is merely a personal construct (read: psychological) that we force as fact.

I might as well end, then, on the psychological. Marcel Proust exquisitely explored his own psychology, to include how tea tasted in his childhood. I will close with part of a lovely passage, one that opens Swann's Way, of In Search of Lost Time (or Remembrance of Things Past, as I learned it):

"And as I would lay in bed, I would listen to the whistle of trains. At which point I would try to reckon the passage of time."

Terence Grey/Wei Wu Wei

Terence Grey/Wei Wu Wei
Here is a radically different note on happiness, by Wei Wu Wei (literally, "doing without doing"). Born as Terence Grey, an Irish aristocrat, later become a Taoist/Buddhist philosopher, his profound essays reveal a life-long quest for answers:

"Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 % of everything you think, and everything you do is for your self, and there isn't one."

Between 1958 and 1974, Grey published a series of eight books under his nom de plume, Wei Wu Wei. Profound in their insights, the books indicate somebody who had extensively studied Eastern and Western thought. They suggest a man who not only knew the teachings but was adept at living them.

Although born in Ireland in 1895, he was raised in England on an estate outside Cambridge, and studied at Oxford University. He became interested in Egyptology, and in 1923 published two books on ancient Egyptian history and culture. During the 1920s and 1930s he was an arts theorist and theatrical producer. He also created radical dance-dramas, and published several arts magazines, as well as books. His cousin Ninette De Valois was a founder of the Royal Ballet, which originated from Grey's dance troupe at the Cambridge Festival Theatre, leased by him from 1926-33. He died in 1986.

This excerpt is from Ask The Awakened, 8 and is titled That I Am:

"When I have looked at a jug I have supposed that eye-subject was looking at jug-object. But eye-subject is itself an object, and one object cannot be the subject of another object. Both eye-supposed-subject and the jug are objects of I-subject. That is apparent transcendence of subject-object.

But only when we realise that, in split-mind, I-as-subject must always be itself an object while it also has its own supposed-object, do we understand that this constitutes an infinite regression, and that final transcendence is the understanding that I am not-subject, for, since in reality there are no objects, there cannot be a subject.

No-objects and no-subject constitute impersonality, the resultant of the negation of each member of every pair of opposites, or No-Entity.

Only whole mind can know this, and that is 'that I am'."
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Hong Kong University has an extensive collection of his works, which had been publicly available, although since British departure I can no longer confidently ascertain its location.

Descartes and Prozac

Descartes and Prozac

Descartes split the modern world into mind and body. He imagined thought as an activity apart from the non-thinking body. The modern variants of that notion: the mind as the software program run in its computer, the hard-wired brain; or the view that brain and body are related but only in that what's above the neck cannot survive without what's below it.

The most famous statement in the history of philosophy: I think, therefore I am. Or, Cogito,ergo sum. This suggests that thinking and awareness are fundamental to being.

But what about beings before the dawn of man? When did elementary consciousness begin? What about the first simple mind? Only as layers of brain developed did it become complex enough to enable thought. Consider, too, that babies begin with being; adults think. Not I think, therefore I am, but I am, then I think.

But I think, therefore I am: this has the ring of certainty. How can it be doubted? It has been adopted by generations as the first principle of philosophy.

Compare it to St Augustine's Fallor ergo sum: I am deceived, therefore I am. Both he and Descartes indicate an awareness, a consciousness, that precedes the logical proof of existence.

Descartes took it further, however, by asserting that his being, what he was, was distinct from his body. This, his true being, was easier to know than Brother Ass, as St Francis of Assisi called the body. In it lay the seat of soul, and even if the body is buried, the soul continues.

To modern minds, this view has caused a fundamental disjuncture in philosophy, one that many modern thinkers have come to regard as a mistake. In particular, the view imparts to the body a mechanistic category and to the mind an exalted category in which suffering, morality, emotions, and pain occur. Biology was severed from psychology.

His modern legacy is the view of mind as a software program energized by binary circuitry in the brain. Many today still believe that Descartes' Cogito is self-evident and nothing remains but to pursue its logic. Think, too, of neuro science where many believe that mind can be investigated without accounting for anatomy. Brain events are explainable without the rest of the mouse, or rabbit, or human being.

For that reason only recently has mental disease come to be seen as real as body disease. In fact, mental illness still carries stigma. If one has paranoia, schizophrenia, or obsessive compulsive disorder, he has a problem with will power and nothing else. With enough volition, the mind can cure itself, so conventional wisdom goes. This view is rebutted by the splendid help to mental patients by pharmaceuticals. If it were merely a case of will power, then why does adjustment of the brain's chemistry cause such marked improvement in so many?

Until Descartes, from Hippocrates to the Rennaisance, patients had been treated wholistically, as mind and body. Aristotle wouldn't have liked what Descartes did to philosophy.

Bobby Fischer and 9/11

On 11 September 2001, the day thousands died, some by leaping out of eightieth story windows, chess genius Bobby Fischer was interviewed on Bobo Radio, a public station in Bagnio City, Philippines. "This is all wonderful news. . . ." More

Zen Fighter Planes and WWII

Zen Fighter Planes and WWII

On Zen as another social structure that supports its status quo: One. Are Buddhists pacifists? For the Japanese WW2 war effort, of Zen Buddhists, the Soto sect raised money for 2 fighter planes; the Rinzai, for 3. (From Brian Victoria) Two. During WW2, Kanzeon, bodhisattva of compassion, was renamed Kanzeon Shogun by the Japanese (Jesus General). (From Brian Victoria) Three. In DT Suzuki’s works, Japanese Zen has no clear moral position. Suzuki says that Japanese Zen teaches to merge with circumstances and be loyal. Hence, if you work for Tojo, Hitler, Mussolini, or Franco, be a good fascist and don't make waves.
More.

Looking for Reality: Billiard Balls, Einstein, and Nisargadatta

Looking for Reality: Billiard Balls, Einstein, and Nisargadatta

A billiard ball strikes another and moves it across the table. The proximity of the one effected a change in the second. Right?

Einstein said so. He, of course, took it further and asserted that the speed of light is an absolute, a constant, that determines physical effects, none of which can be transmitted faster than its own speed, 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second). Things happen locally, not across great distances, he added. Although Einstein didn't put it in the same manner, his principle also holds that when nobody is in a forest to hear a tree fall, there is sound nonetheless.

Then along came Quantum Theory and a physicist named Werner Heisenberg who challenged Einstein's theory. Einstein's view had reality as something with falling trees making sounds, and particles giving simultaneous position and velocity--something like a car crossing a railroad track at twenty miles an hour. (This is not a good comparison, but it helps impart the idea of position and velocity.) Heisenberg found that he couldn't have it both ways. He could either "snapshot" a particle's velocity or its position, but not both, which is akin to saying that we can describe that the car travels at twenty miles an hour or that it crosses a railroad track, but not both. On the quantum level the world simply didn't behave as Einstein conceived it on the large, gravitational level.

The point here: if things happen locally, if the local implies the real, then why can't both position and velocity be described at the quantum level?

Things happen locally?, somebody might ask, then reply, Why of course they do. Reality is based on conditions right in front of us. Things, and the conditions for an event, can't happen anywhere else but where we see an occurrence. Right?

Not necessarily.

John Bell had problems with this. In 1965 he wanted to determine whether reality could be described by a theory supporting local variables. For this purpose he developed an Inequality Theorem. This didn't work as it, too, implied non-locality. Subsequent experiments by other physicists indicated that reality, if there is one, cannot be local. (This, of course, comes as no surprise to a Zen master who teaches Big Mind, or a Hindu sage who speaks of Consciousness with a capital C. That art thou, as an ancient Sanskrit saying has it.)

In 1982, Alain Aspect conducted experiments at the University of Paris-South to determine if reality is non-local. His photon detectors were forty feet apart (12 meters) in order to record events at Track X and Track Y, sufficiently distant from one another. For purposes of this explanation, here is a key element of his experiments:

They were measured so that they could not "talk" to one another across Tracks X and Y. (Thus if reality is local, then the photon in Track X is independent of that in Track Y.)

What implications for the outcome? If reality is local, then measuring the photon in X would have no effect on measurement of the photon in Y. If non-local, then measurement at X can affect measurement at Y.

What did Aspect discover? That measurement at X affected measurement at Y. The findings imply that Einstein was wrong about locality and that the speed of light may be irrelevant to some events, or (horror! heresy!) something there is which travels faster than light. In any event, reality is non-local.

A humble Indian merchant, Nisargadatta, had a different view of the entire matter. This is how he put it in I Am That:

"There is no such state as seeing the real. Who is to see what? You can only be the real, which you are, anyhow. The problem is not mental. Abandon false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true ideas. There aren't any. " (359-60)

Looking for Self: Yogi Berra, Forks in The Road, Benamin Libet and Free will

Looking for Self: Yogi Berra, Forks in The Road, Benamin Libet and Free will

When you come to a fork in the road, take it! said Yogi Berra. Which fork? Why, the one we take. Which one should we take? Should? The question implies an assumption--that we have a choice. Do we?

In 1983 Benjamin Libet and other scientists reported experiments that shed rather interesting light on the issue.

Libet and his cohorts applied a stimulus to the muscles of subjects. What they discovered from subjects' reaction has far-reaching implications for understanding ourselves and our place in the universe.

The stimulus took 550 to 1050 milliseconds before muscles contracted, demonstrating a readiness to react.

Not until 350 milliseconds after contraction did the patient become aware of any will to act on the stimulus. In short, a muscular action occurred before any sense of decision to do it. The patient exercised will to act after the action took place. Muscle response preceded conscious will. Awareness of a decision came after the act had been performed.

In general, a half second must lapse before conscious will occurs.

What does this mean? That human sense of awareness lags stimulus. Put it this way: all events happen before we are aware of them.

So who chooses? That is, who is the chooser? The exerciser of will? By the time sense of will is felt, muscles have already responded.

The sense of will occurs too late, in the past. The I, or exerciser of will, must also be reflected in the past. Your "you" and my "I" then live in the past. We speak about living for the present moment, not the future, not the past, but we, our senses of self, are forever thrown into the past. (See Fait accompli, this same date, below.)

When we discuss the future all words fall into the past before completed. When we snap our fingers to signify the now, by the time snapping is recognized it, too, has fallen into the past.

Libet's experiment implies that we cannot be objective about the present and the future. We can’t be objective because they are beyond control of conscious will.

Responses occur without the sense of a volitional responder, which is another way of saying that doing happens without a doer.

Note, however, in the article, Illusion of Free will: Goswami, Balsekar, Libet, that Goswami says "given the choice of negating the action, they could do it," and Balsekar explains the matter with the phrase "consciousness selects a particular thought." This suggests that some volitional ability remains.

So who is doing what to whom? Does the first baseman tag the runner out, or are they both part of some system that determines tagger and taggee?

Given Libet’s experiment, the first baseman doesn’t will that he tag the runner. Perhaps it is a "system" of stimulus and response, in this case a baseball game.

Beaurieux and Languille, When Is A Head Like A Rock?

Hamlet said that he could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself king of infinite space. And so we all can. We have a three pound universe inside our skulls. Some would argue that we don't stop at the porches of our eyes, ears, and skin, that these receptors are themselves only mental. A sensation, be it visual, tactile, olfactory, cannot refer to anything beyond itself--nothing "out there." Thus the question of boundary, of stopping, is irrelevant. Infinite space, old chap, infinite space is what we are.

"Out there" is itself an idea, some would say. They would add, Oh, sure, we can touch a table, kick a rock, hear a band, see a wall but the touching, the kicking, the hearing, the seeing are only perceptions linked with sensations.

Samuel Johnson tried to prove a rock was real by kicking it. To George Berkeley's theory that all is mental, solipsistic, he said "I refute it thus!" after kicking the rock. He refuted nothing. He felt the rock against his shoe, which was only a sensation. He saw it skitter down the street, also sensation. Etc. The idea of an object is just that--an idea. We must live with assumptions, not validations.

We can assume a subjective world with Bishop Berkeley or one of subject and object with Dr Johnson, but assume we must. Unless, through meditation, we learn to see through assumptions altogether, as has been told of Eastern sages.

They pose the question, Who am I? Harvey Smedlap? That's only a name. Spouse, parent, lover? Those are also labels. How about personality or mood--loyal, hard working, angry, sad? These features come and go. The sages say I am not anything described by words; yet, I am. Here is a koan from Zen: What was my face before my parents were born? Think about it. Meditate on it. It becomes quite revealing.

More on this discussion at a later date. Here, though, is a related item, one that addresses the issue of consciousness. Consider it in terms of subject (mind) losing its object (body). Does all consciousness depend on the brain? What is consciousness? Or, what is is?

In the passages which follow, the writers assume that conscious is localized in the brain. They indicate no curiosity toward after-effects on the body. Nor is it the capitalized Consciousness of which sages speak.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Guillotined head opens its eyes! This is the bizarre story of Monsieurs Beaurieux and Languille and a macabre study done in 1905:

Q. Would a guillotined person die instantly or would the severed head live long enough to feel itself hit the ground? How could anyone but those executed ever know?

A. This grisly question is more answerable than one might think. In France in the days of the blade, some of the condemned were asked to blink their eyes to show continued consciousness after decapitation, and a few heads blinked for up to 30 seconds, says Dale McIntyre in New Scientist. "How much of this was voluntary and how much due to nerve reflex action is speculation. Most nations with science sophisticated enough to determine this question have long since abandoned decapitation as a legal tool."

Addressing the reflex issue, one Dr. Beaurieux observed the execution of a murderer in 1905, told in History of the Guillotine by Alister Kershaw. First he saw in the head spasmodic movements of eyes and lips for 5-6 seconds. Then the face relaxed, the lids half closed, "exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to observe every day in the exercise of our profession."

"It was then that I called in a strong sharp voice: 'Languille!' " The lids lifted, and Languille's "undeniably living eyes" fixed on the doctor, after which they closed again. Moments later he called out again, fetching another look by Languille. But a third call went unheeded.

"I have just recounted to you... what I was able to observe. The whole thing had lasted 25-30 seconds."

The above Q and A excerpt comes from the Cincinnati Inquirer (cincinnati.com), 26 August 2002.

The beheading account below, by Cecil Adams, derives from a site called The Straight Dope (straightdope.com) and is dated 12 June 1998:

After Charlotte Corday was guillotined for murdering Jean-Paul Marat, the executioner slapped her cheek while holding her severed head aloft. Witnesses claimed the cheeks reddened and the face looked indignant. According to another tale, when the heads of two rivals in the National Assembly were placed in a sack following execution, one bit the other so badly the two couldn't be separated.

[Can the brain be proven to remain conscious for a duration after decapitation?] This didn't seem like the sort of question that could ever be conclusively resolved.

Or so I thought. Then I received a note from a U.S. Army veteran who had been stationed in Korea. In June 1989 the taxi he and a friend were riding in collided with a truck. My correspondent was pinned in the wreckage. The friend was decapitated. Here's what happened:

"My friend's head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me. He had direct eye contact with me when his eyes took on a hazy, absent expression . . . and he was dead."

I have spoken with the author and am satisfied that the event occurred as described. One can of course never be certain about these things. Nonetheless I repent my previous skepticism.

Cecil Adams
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During my stay in Paris, the sight of a public execution revealed to me the weakness of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head divided from the body, and heard the sound with which they fell separately into the box, I understood, not with my reason, but with my whole being, that no theory of the wisdom of all established things, nor of progress, could justify such an act; and that if all the men in the world from the day of creation, by whatever theory, had found this thing necessary, it was not so; it was a bad thing, and that therefore I must judge of what was right and necessary, not by what men said and did, not by progress, but what I felt to be true in my heart.

Leo Tolstoy
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Of his marvelous invention, Doctor Joseph Guillotin said that it was swift, merciful, and that its victims would only feel a rush of fresh air. Was his confidence based on the testimony of somebody like Languille? ;-)