The Body as Oracle.

(Revision 1)

In his book, Creative Throw, Andreas Gerolemou makes some interesting observations. According to Tor Norretranders our conscious minds only process up to forty (40) bits of information per second, where as our non-conscious minds can process up to eleven million (11,000,000) bits per second. Our non-conscious minds handle all the microstates that enter through our senses, all the little details that surround us....These details are often too overwhelming and do not play such an important part individually...but form part of the macrostates that our conscious minds use to communicate. Because the non-conscious processes, filters and summarises the incoming information, the original input is lost and we cannot truly experience it first hand, we only experience the condensed macrostate as information. The non-conscious works primarily on the principle of association (I would also suggest pattern making), it associates related and similar subjects....... (the basis) of our ability to create metaphors and symbols. Divination...could allow us to improve the relationship between the conscious and the non-conscious...

I quote from his book to emphasise that our self awareness is such a tiny aspect of consciousness. We take on board so much more information than we are aware of. An example of this in practice is the recall, under hypnosis, of facts that the individual wasnt aware of but had obviously seen. Elizabeth Lawrence, in her article, Ancient Divination Parallels New Media: Cartomancy in an Interactive Context, makes a similar observation: The brain is constantly processing 400 billion bits of information per minute, but our conscious awareness involves only about 2000. This is happening in our minds all the time; were receiving and processing all that information, information that doesnt go away, but just isnt integrated into our conscious awareness. Cognitive scientists believe that, much more than likely, all that information remains in our unconscious. What do we not know that we know? (http://www.dynamicmediainstitute.org/thesis/ancient-divination-parallels-new-media-cartomancy-interactive-context Barbara Tedlock, ph.d., in her article,Toward a Theory of Divinatory Practice, writes the following summary: Recent findings in biophysics indicate that cognition is found not only in the brain and nervous system but also throughout the entire protein matrix of our bodies, most especially in our connective tissues. Divination is a way of knowing that depends only partly on cognitive information from our brains and nervous system. It also depends, perhaps to a larger extent, on the electronic conduction of information stored throughout the tissues of our bodies. The mind/brain/body interaction is currently under the spotlight with many high tech investigations. We already have an awareness of some interactions. Here I am thinking of somatoform illnesses, where mental stress is displayed in the body rather than in consciousness. In these excerpts there is a clear indication that much information is located in the body as opposed to thinking solely in terms of the mind/brain. Divination is a process that aims to access these hidden sources of information. However there is the constant problem in divination, of translating the oracles symbolic and mythical language into terms the conscious mind/ego can understand. Practice and a developing intuition help in this. But there is a way to talk directly with the body. Eugene T. Gendlin in his book, Focussing. How to gain direct access to your bodys 1

knowledge, provides a method to listen to your body as well as ask it questions. His website is: http://www.focusing.org/bios/gendlin_bio.html I suggest that some self-divination becomes unnecessary if this method is used. In other cases it will enable the correct question to be formulated. I have used Gendlins method and found that it enabled me to find an accurate feeling for my mental state, rather than thinking in clichd labels. The book is an easy read and deals with the practicalities of this approach. In a similar vein, although dealing predominantly with symptoms of illnesses as revealing your mental state: Heal your Body. A-Z, by Louise Hay. Your Body Speaks Your Mind, by Deb Shapiro.