To whom it may concern

     I am the author of a book entitled “La Naturaleza del Tiempo” (the nature of time) and I would like to invite anyone interested in constructing a functional “time machine” to join me in this project. There have been others “time machine projects”, such as the one led by Ronald Mallett. This Physicist, from the University of Connecticut, says that, if we use a “black hole” we can travel to the past. His formula to create a black hole is to generate a beam of light so powerful that it would “bend” the space and make it “twirl”. As time –according to him- is affected by space, the time will itself “twirl” with the spinning laser beam. The problem is that the energy required for constructing this artificial “black hole” is enormous. Destroying the entire Earth and transforming it into energy will only give us enough “fuel” to go back in time for one single minute. Besides, even if we could make a “black hole”, it will still remain the question of how we can go through it alive and how we can control its final destination. If a machine of this kind could ever be done, the whole solar system will be wiped out before we can send out its tenth passenger for his one minute trip to the past. Of course, if they want to travel to a most distant time, you will need to burn up an entire galaxy. 

     Fortunately my project is simpler and a lot more feasible. In fact, so feasible that a “time machine” was partially constructed by accident around 1964, but it was not recognized as such. In that year Dr. Jule Eisenbud started testing the alleged capacity of Ted Serios to imprint mental images on a polaroid film. As photography was plagued, from its very beginnings, with tricks, Eisenbud, a serious investigator with no history of forgeries, was very cautious, and tested Serios himself extensively before believing in his ability.

      After he was convinced in the trustworthiness of Serios –even if he seemed to score better whenever he was drunk- he arranged, to prove the phenomenon without a question, that a team of professional photographers of the prestigious Magazine Time-Life attested the aptitude of his pupil. In a run of 800 photographs Serios scored at least a 10% of clear images which the specialists could not explain. To avoid tricks the experts never allowed Serios to touch directly the camera, except for a paper rolled in the form of a tube, paper which the Time-Life professionals examined carefully before handed it down to him. But, no matter that every possible scam was prevented, Serios was able to imprint on the film some clear images of scenes which he had witnessed. In one of them, we can see the porch of Serio’s house with some cars parked in its front. There can be no doubt that the camera had access to a scene, which is clearly depicted in the film. “If we have to believe our eyes –said one of the photographers- then the whole theory of optics has to be rewritten.” At that point Time Life Magazine ceased to test Serios. In fact, they accepted this assignment only because they were sure that the whole thing was a fake and that their photographers would can easily discover the fraud. But 800 photographs without reaching any conclusion were more than enough. Getting into proving the genuineness of “thought photography” was starting to sound like an esoteric theme and the editors decided that this was not the magazine’s field.

     With the withdrawal of the back up that Time Life could have provided, Eisenbud lost impulse and Serios lost interest. After all, the photographic sessions were exhausting, and Serios evidently strained himself a big deal during them, gaining nothing. At the beginning he did just for fun, but getting himself within the constraints of scientific rigor was becoming unbearable. The last good photography was taken in May 27, 1967. Eisenbud had taken Serios to the Natural Museum of Denver, his own city. The photograph showed a diorama of a Neanderthal man actually located at the Field Museum of Chicago, the city in which Serios dwell. Obviously Eisenbud did not have the least idea of how of where from Serios got his “mental” images and surely he was disappointed that day. Maybe he expected a photograph of a distant past, and the other was showing him a scene of his own past, because Serios certainly had been at the Field Museum.

     But that day should be a milestone for science, if we can grasp what was accomplished then. Serios was doing a traveling in time, because the scene was taken from his own past. But he was also doing a traveling through space, because the scene depicted was located in Chicago, Illinois, whereas Serios was actually in Denver, Colorado. We can see here not only the possibility of a “Time Machine”, but of another device which could be a lot more important, commercially wise: a Tele-transportation Machine. After this last session Serios never scored any better, and his photographs lost quality and color. He was through with his scientific work, which had lasted for four long, excruciating, years. The whole affair didn’t give, to its main participants, any recognition. Everything was encased in a veil of suspicion. But Serios’s prints still exist, and could be easily seen in the net just by typing the name of Ted Serios. Many magicians have written of how they could reproduce what Serios did, but none had even dared to suggest that they could do their trickery in the relentless presence of a team of professionals just looking to find them in fault, as Serios did it for hundreds of times.

     But there is a way to explain those facts without doubting of the honesty of Serios, and also without rewriting the laws of optics. But this way puts in trouble a “sacred cow” of Classical Physics: space and time. Even in science, with all its methodology to obtain objective results, dogmas are difficult to get uprooted. This happens especially with theoretical aspects, which are sustained more by a consensus than by any logical explanation. Time is a dogma of this kind. Remember what St. Augustine said about time: “If nobody asks me what it is, I know what it is. If somebody asks about its nature, testing my certainty, then I don’t know.” Socrates said something of that sort: “Most of the people think that they know things which really they don’t.”

     We think that we know what space and time are. They are practical things in which we all agree and we think we know what they are because everybody agrees with us. It is just a thing of common sense and a necessary framework for our daily activities. But in 1925 Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg suggested that the very act of observation changed the results of any atomic observation. “Electrons, Bohr said, seem to know how and where we expect to find them, and they appear to us in that precise way and place.” Bohr issued his Complementarity Principle, which says that the observer and his observations are interdependent. Heisenberg gave out his Uncertainty Principle, which says that we could never know the past of any atomic experiment, because the results change if we observe it or if we don’t. Incredible enough, this uncertainty still exist at the base of the most successful theory of science nowadays, quantum mechanics. But we keep in using it as a tool, without asking ourselves the question Bohr himself should have asked, based on his results: Is the world real?

     The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says: “As the theory of the atom, quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory in the history of science. It enables physicists, chemists and technicians to calculate and predict the outcome of a vast number of experiments and to create new and advanced technology based on this insight into the behavior of atomic objects. But it is also a theory that challenges our imagination. It seems to violate some fundamental principles that eventually have become a part of western common sense since the rise of the modern world view in the Renaissance” The common sense tell us that the world is a place which exists independently of ours. But Quantum Mechanics tell us that the world is, at the least ,of an uncertain nature.

     Bohr said that Classical Physics were taking many things for granted, and that it worked on idealizations. It is obvious that the image of the world we perceive is just an interpretation made by our senses and our mind to adapt ourselves to the ambient. It’s a façade, a front, a make-believe. The real world cannot be that way.

     The main proposal of Bohr was that Quantum Mechanics required of a new interpretation of the world. His disciple, Heisenberg, made a Declaration (which was called the Copenhagen Interpretation of Reality), which only says that the Principles which Bohr elaborated for the atomic Micro-world, those of the observer affecting the result of the observation, should also be valid in the Macro-world of the everyday life. Of course, this is not an “Interpretation of Reality”, because he did not propose any new scheme for Reality. It is only a statement.

     To contravene Bohr and Heisenberg’s proposal, in 1935 Albert Einstein announced what was later called the “Princeton Interpretation of Reality”, which succinctly said that the world is “as we see it” because God has no flaws, He is incapable of a deception and He just cannot try consciously to fool us. Of course: this is not a scientific Interpretation, but a religious one. Science is basically an objective enterprise, whether we like its results or not, whereas religion is faith, subjectivity, and we always come around to a predetermined end.

    Einstein successfully introduced religion into science by adopting the theory of Georges Lemaitre, a catholic priest, about a primordial “egg” which exploded and created our universe. Lemaitre was trying to recon ciliate religion and science by providing a mechanism for the biblical creation. Incredible as it could seem, this religious idea of a creation by “explosion”, without having to explain what exploded, became the all popular “Big Bang”.

     Space and time were created in that explosion. This farfetched idea had very flimsy foundations. If Edwin Hubble’s discovery, in 1929, “That the distances to far away galaxies were generally proportional to their redshifts…was taken to indicate that all very distant galaxies and clusters have an apparent velocity directly away from our vantage point: the farther away, the higher the apparent velocity”, do that mean, then, that if every galaxy, all around our celestial sphere of observation, seems to be escaping from us, because the “farther away, the higher the apparent velocity”, then we are just at the center of the explosion, at the hub of the universe?

     No matter how ridiculous was this interpretation of the redshift, which occurs in all directions from our Earth, the absurd idea achieved what everybody wanted: explaining the origin of the universe with a fantasy which left everything unexplained. In the effervescence created by the media, nobody noticed that space and time were not touched. Space kept being a separation and time a uniform advance of a course of events. Due to the massive acceptance of the idea, all discrepancies were easily buried. This is how science advances nowadays: making huge fantasies to fill up gaps without defying common sense. This “revolutions” leave things as usual. For some reason, the common individual only wants to hear “science” which tells him what he already know.

     But fortunately, neither Bohr nor Heisenberg were the first to cope with those strange aspects of Reality. There have been many others. In fact, so many that an “Interpretation of the Real World” is by now available. The most interesting thing is that it can explain how Serios did what he did whenever he felt he could do it.

     We were also lucky that the Serios’s affair ever happened, no matter that Eisenbud could not understand its significance. Blaise Pascal once said that the greatest discoveries always happen by accident, because our mind is so stiff looking in the ordinary way that only an accident could make us to look in another direction. So, that we have to be prepared when an accident happens. Francoise Jacob added to this: being “prepared” means having a theory able to cope with the facts, because a fact without a theory which can incorporate it is useless. We are always searching for facts to prove our own theories, not for theories which could prove any fact. But, fortunately, we do have enough theories with which to explain Serio’s feats without the need of new ones.

     John Locke, a graduate in Medicine from Oxford, published, in 1690, a revolutionary Interpretation of Reality. In order to explain some facts of memory, such as persons which never could forget anything which they have ever witnessed, such as “Monsieur Pascal”, Locke suggested that the world we see is not really a “place”, but a moment of time, a Now. He wrote: “The mind has a power to revive perceptions which it has once had.. a power to bring (them) in sight, and make (them) appear again...without the help of those sensible qualities that first imprinted them there…with this additional perception annexed to them, that IT HAS HAD THEM BEFORE. And in this sense it is that our ideas are said to be in our memories, when indeed they are actually nowhere.” In other words, if the mind has the “power to revive perceptions” this means that those perceptions already exist somewhere, intact, in the “spirit” (whatever this word means, basically, as Locke said, in a “nowhere”) and that the mind can bring them to the present, only with the “additional perception annexed to them, that IT HAS HAD THEM BEFORE.” This gives to the Present a quality of being an “actualization” of many possible moments which were theoretically coexistent. And there was a mechanism located in our mind which could bring them to life again, but only partially, allowing us to distinguish between past and present images (by its “vivacity”); and such a mental mechanism gives a temporal arrangement to something which, by itself, has no time and is coexistent. In every possible sense which we could imagine, the world we see is a creation of our mind.

     Augustine of Hippo, 1,300 years before Locke, seems to agree in full with him in this same conclusion, when he wrote: “Nor is it properly said, "there be three times, past, present, and to come": yet perchance it might be properly said, "there be three times; a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future." For these three do exist in some sort, in the soul…they are not there as future, or past, but present…When then things to come are said to be seen…(they) already are. Therefore they are not future but present to those who now see that…and those who foretell those things do behold the conceptions (in the) present.” If the three times (present, past and future) are co-existent in the “soul”, then the Now is a mental creation which keeps artificially apart things which exist but which are not pertinent to this precise moment.

     Am I twisting the words of Locke to prove my point? I do not think so. Because our next philosopher, David Hume, seems to have understood Locke’s idea in the same way. Obviously Locke explained himself better in other papers, but these works, that contained ideas which were unfit for our present theories, have been lost or forgotten. But Hume, closer in time with Locke, must have had access to those his last remarks on the subject.

     If the mind is the one which creates time, given a sense of succession to something which, by itself, is coexistent, what is this mechanism which regulates the causal chains of things? Or, in other words: if all “memories” are coexistent, how do we create the Now; how do we make the diminuendo of the past, separating thus the past from the present, diminishing the force of some recalls while increasing the vivacity and liveliness of “present” events? How do we create the world? Hume wrote, in 1739: “It has been remarked by a great philosopher (he is talking about Locke), that our perceptions have certain bounds in this particular, which are fixed by the original nature and constitution of the mind.. Time arises altogether from the manner in which impressions appear to the mind. Time can plainly be nothing but different ideas, or impressions, disposed in a certain manner, that is, succeeding each other....For after a frequent repetition, I find, that upon the appearance of one of the objects, the mind is determined by custom to consider its usual attendant, and to consider it in a stronger light upon account of its relation to the first object. It is this impression, then, or determination, which affords me the idea of necessity. I doubt not but these consequences will at first sight be received without difficulty, as being evident deductions from principles, which we have already established, and which we have often employed in our reasoning’s. I think it proper to give warning, that I have just now examined one of the most sublime questions in philosophy, viz. that concerning the power and efficacy of causes... The idea of necessity arises from some impression. There is no impression conveyed by our senses, which can give rise to that idea. It must, therefore, be derived from some internal impression, or impression of reflection. There is no internal impression, which has any relation to the present business, but that propensity, which custom produces, to pass from an object to the idea of its usual attendant. This therefore is the essence of necessity. Upon the whole, necessity is something that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, considered as a quality in bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of the thought to pass from causes to effects, and from effects to causes, according to their experienced union...Thus as the necessity lies only in the act of the understanding, by which we consider and compare these ideas; in like manner the necessity or power, which unites causes and effects, lies in the determination of the mind to pass from the one to the other. The efficacy or energy of causes is neither placed in the causes themselves, nor in the deity; but belongs entirely to the soul, which considers the union of two or more objects in all past instances. It is here that the real power of causes is placed along with their connexion and necessity. I am sensible, that of all the paradoxes, which I have had, or shall hereafter have occasion to advance in the course of this treatise, the present one is the most violent, and that it is merely by dint of solid proof and reasoning I can ever hope it will have admission, and overcome the inveterate prejudices of mankind. Before we are reconciled to this doctrine, how often must we repeat to ourselves, that the simple view of any two objects or actions, however related, can never give us any idea, of power, or of a connexion betwixt them: that this idea arises from the repetition of their union: that the repetition neither discovers nor causes anything in the objects, but has an influence only on the mind, by that customary transition it produces: that this customary transition is, therefore, the same with the power and necessity; which are consequently qualities of perceptions, not of objects, and are internally felt by the soul, and not perceived externally in bodies? There is commonly an astonishment attending every thing extraordinary; and this astonishment changes immediately into the highest degree of esteem or contempt, according as we approve or disapprove of the subject. I am much afraid, that though the foregoing reasoning appears to me the shortest and most decisive imaginable; yet with the generality of readers the bias of the mind will prevail, and give them a prejudice against the present doctrine.”

     According to Hume, “Time can plainly be nothing but different ideas, or impressions, disposed in a certain manner” by the mind. Is the mind the one which supply the power or a “necessity…which unites causes and effects” If all memories (being a “memory” a recall of a past circumstance or happening) and its images are coexistent, the mind puts them in a sequence only by a customary way to unite causes and effects. It is our logical process, and nothing else, which causes that transition to pass from causes to effects, a movement which is caused by a determination of the mind, based in “their experienced union”. As all images coexist, then “the simple view of any two objects or actions, however related, can never give us any idea… of a connexion betwixt them:

     Hume will insist on this: any image of the objects, by itself, since it is coexistent, cannot be the cause of this determination of the mind to place or put forward first the causes before the effects which such causes will normally produce. It is the mind, according with a learned arrangement, which causes the sense of “time”.

     Hume adds: “(On this theory) It is evident that the memory preserves the original form in which its objects were presented, and that wherever we depart from it in recollecting anything, it proceeds from some defect or imperfection in this faculty…It is evident, that time consists of different parts.. It is also evident, that these parts are not co-existent.. Now if any cause may be perfectly co-temporary with its effect, it is certain, according to this maxim, that they must all of them be so; since any one of them, which retards its operation for a single moment, exerts not itself at that very individual time, in which it might have operated and therefore is no proper cause. The consequence of this would be no less than the destruction of that succession of causes, which we observe in the world; and indeed, the utter annihilation of time. For if one cause were co-temporary with its effect, and this effect with its effect, and so on, it is plain there would be no such thing as succession, and all objects must be co-existent.. (So, what causes the priority of one idea over another?)..How can we conclude that such particular causes must have such particular effects?...All kinds of reasoning consist in nothing but a discovery of those relations, either constant or inconstant, which two or more objects bear to each other. It is only causation, which produces such a connexion, as to give us assurance from the existence or action of one object, that it was followed or preceded by any other existence or action... everything, it is said, must have a cause, for if anything wanted a cause, it would produce itself, that is, exist before it existed, which is impossible.”

     Of course, “time”, once it has been produced by the mind, consists of different parts (which) are not co-existent. But it is the mind which produces time, because those images or objects, which by themselves cannot cause that “necessity” to put them into a serial, causal order (causes first, and effects of the causes later), because all those objects, before being put in a “customary” sequence by the mind, were perfectly coexistent in the spirit.

      I hope that Emmanuel Kant will clarify more this argument. He, in 1781, wrote: “Time is not something which subsists of itself, or which inheres in things as an objective determination, and therefore remains, when abstraction is made of the subjective conditions of the intuition of things...Time is nothing else than the form of the internal sense, that is, of the intuitions of self and of our internal state. For time cannot be any determination of outward phenomena. It has to do neither with shape nor position; on the contrary, it determines the relation of representations in our internal state…Time is the formal condition a priori of all phenomena whatsoever…On the other hand, because all representations, whether they have or have not external things for their objects, still in themselves, as determinations of the mind, belong to our internal state; and because this internal state is subject to the formal condition of the internal intuition, that is, to time --time is a condition a priori of all phenomena whatsoever— the immediate condition of all internal, and thereby the mediate condition of all external phenomena. If I can say, a priori, "All outward phenomena are in space, and determined a priori according to the relations of space," I can also, from the principle of the internal sense, affirm universally, "All phenomena in general, that is, all objects of the senses, are in time and stand necessarily in relations of time...If we abstract our internal intuition of ourselves and all external intuitions possible only by virtue of this internal intuition and presented to us by our faculty of representation, and consequently take objects as they are in themselves, then time is nothing. It is only of objective validity in regard to phenomena, because these are things which we regard as objects of our senses. It no longer objective we, make abstraction of the sensuousness of our intuition, in other words, of that mode of representation which is peculiar to us, and speak of things in general. Time is therefore merely a subjective condition of our human intuition (which is always sensuous, that is, so far as we are affected by objects), and in itself, independently of the mind or subject, is nothing. Nevertheless, in respect of all phenomena, consequently of all things which come within the sphere of our experience, it is necessarily objective. We cannot say, "All things are in time," because in this conception, we abstract and make no mention of any sort of intuition of things. But this is the proper condition under which time belongs to our representation of objects. If we add the condition to the conception and say, "All things, as phenomena, that is, objects of sensuous intuition, are in time," then the proposition has its sound objective validity and universality a priori. What we have now set forth teaches, therefore, the empirical reality of time; that is, its objective validity in reference to all objects which can ever be presented to our senses. And as our intuition is always sensuous, no object ever can be presented to us in experience, which does not come under the conditions of time. On the other hand, we deny to time all claim to absolute reality; that is, we deny that it, without having regard to the form of our sensuous intuition, absolutely inheres in things as a condition or property.”

     Kant, as Hume did, insist: It’s our mind, our “intuition, in other words, of that mode of representation which is peculiar to us” which “determines the relation of representations in our internal state.” He states emphatically “We cannot say, "All things are in time," without mentioning our “intuition of things”, that is without mentioning our mind, because it is our mind which causes time. Time has an “empirical reality”, because everything which is perceived by our senses is put under the framework of time (all things are in time), but that frame is set up by our “internal intuition”, our way of representing things. Without us and our mode for representing the objects, then time is nothing. Kant insists on the fact that “time” belongs to our “internal sense” and that it “determines the relation of representations in our internal state.” Space, time and causation were conditions imposed by the human mind in order to create a representation of the world, and these factors were absent from the thing-in-itself: “Space and time are forms of human intuition, and they can only be proved valid for things as they appear to us and not for things as they are in themselves.” Now, what are “the things in themselves”?

     Eventually we have had to come around this prickly question. We have said that many theorists grappled, in one way or another, with the Real World. But, apparently, most of them seemingly could not connect their discoveries with those of others. For instance: Kant speaks of the “things as they appear to us” and asks himself what they really are. How come he did not know that the nature of the things which are beyond the appearances was extensively studied thousands of years before him? After all, isn’t that the matter of the old philosophy?

      Some words of St. Augustine could serve well to us as an introduction to Philosophy: “Great is this force of memory, excessive great, a large and boundless chamber! Who ever sounded the bottom thereof? Yet is this a power of mine, and belongs unto my nature; nor do I myself comprehend all that I am. Therefore is the mind too strait to contain itself?. And where should that be, which it containeth not of itself? Is it without it, and not within? A secret receptacle…(which) belongs unto my nature.. images appear in sight, out of its secret place, which is not a place…Is the mind too strait to contain itself?...Does the memory perchance not belong to the mind? Who will say so? Great is the power of memory. It is a true marvel, O my God, a profound and infinite multiplicity! And this is the mind, and this I myself am. What, then, am I, O my God? Of what nature am I? A life various, and manifold, and exceedingly vast…Memory is a power of my mind, and it belongs to my nature. But I do not myself grasp all that I am. Thus the mind is far too narrow to contain itself. But where can that part of it be which it does not contain? Is it outside and not in itself? How can it be, then, that the mind cannot grasp itself? The memory doubtless is, so to say, the belly of the mind…It is ridiculous to consider this an analogy; yet they are not utterly unlike…as long as whatever is in the memory is also in the mind.”

     Philosophy, since ancient times, has been the investigation of the Real World, taking for granted that the world we see is just a façade made by our senses and our mind to make coherent all sensorial information. Being a Philosopher means having doubts about the nature of what we are. It is grasping that we are not an isolated, self-contained, auto-sufficient unit, but a piece of bigger machinery. The mind is a vase too narrow as to produce all the things which apparently can pass through it. “Mind” is just a constricted sphere of attention, which situate us in the Now. Hanging onto that sphere of attention while we try to associate present situations with past experiences, without getting engulfed by all kind of non-pertinent information is not a small feat.

  Being us, here and now, require more restrictions than a frank openness. To keep being us while recalling past experiences, in an amount without paragon in the animal kingdom, is at the base of the consciousness.

     We will explain now how it is that the three times (present, past and future) are co-existent in that “place- which-is-not-a-place” in which memories are kept intact, ready to be “revived...as it were painted them anew on itself”. Locke called that place “the spirit”, but its nature is not metaphysical, and it has been fully described.

     The theory was already old when Aristotle walked the corridors of the Academy, the school of Plato. He wrote: “It is probable that each art and each science has often been developed as far as possible and has again perished, and that these opinions have been preserved until the present like relics of an ancient treasure which our forefathers in the most remote age have handed down to their posterity in the form of a tradition”.

     The theory was already many centuries old when the Greek Anaximander heard it from his teacher, Thales, in Miletus. In fact we do not know who made it, or when or where. It probably was the product of many individuals along countless ages, each one adding something to a corpus which kept increasing and improving constantly. If it kept its coherence through thousands of years this must have been due to some practical applications which apparently proved the whole theory. We can only conjecture at what those applications where, but as the basic conclusion of the theory is demonstrating the unreality of space and time, the only practical application which could prove their point was the building of a machine with which we could travel through them. Apparently that contraption, called “the gate” (Babyl, in Accadian), was built around 2,300 b.C.

     The principles on which that “gate” was constructed are not really difficult to understand, if you can follow closely the arguments. I guess it could help you in your task to take them seriously being aware that many generations of scholars, during the 1,500 years the Academy lasted, and easily the double of that age before the Academy was founded, received the same arguments with the same perplexity that you will receive them now.

    Parmenides says that there are two “worlds”, the Real World, and the “World of the opinion, of the appearances.” In the first, revealed by “The way of Truth” (the philosophical arguments) “the existence is timeless, uniform and unchanging.” By The way of Opinion (the manner in which people think), is born “the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful.”

     The first world is revealed by our reason, the second by our senses. So, the first world is invisible.

     Titus Lucretius Carus (which evidently is following the same argument) on his book: “On the Nature of things”, says: “I know how hard it is in Latian verse to tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks, chiefly because our pauper-speech must find strange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing...Nothing from nothing ever yet was born. Nothing can be create, but only Nature’s aspect and her law, which, teaching us, hath this exordium: Nothing from nothing ever yet was born...Confess then, naught from nothing can become, since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow...Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves into their primal bodies again, and naught perishes ever to annihilation. Nothing returns to naught; but all return, at their collapse, to primal forms of stuff. And now, since I have taught that things cannot be born from nothing, nor the same, when born, to nothing be recalled, doubt not my words, because the eyes no primal germs perceive; for mark those bodies which, though known to be in this our world, are yet invisible.”

     In agreement with this exordium nothing can be created nor destroyed. This is the first philosophical argument. Parmenides will explain the second and last argument: in order to become existent things have to be transformed, passing from the invisible region to the visible one. I think it is obvious that our senses only give us a sensorial interpretation of things which could not be that way. Of course, beyond this facade, disguise, front or fascia which makes the world familiar to us, the universe still goes on, no matter that this real world does not ends right where it becomes undetectable, and we have not developed a sense that could give us a representation of its true nature. Even more: we can be sure that, in order to have an image of this world, we have had to make serial what is not, fragmented what is not, and changeable what is not. Since the senses detect primarily changes in the environment, then it is understandable why they cannot detect the real world, which is basically changeless.

     What are the bases on which rests the first philosophical argument? Lucretius says that in the apparent world we see change and destruction. This annihilation should be only deceptive, because, if it were real, the world had come to an end long ago. So, something of the things remains and will reconstitute things again and again.

     Of course, Classical Physics will say that this that remains would be atoms or molecules. But this would be also equal to a total destruction, because, how can a thing are reduced to its atoms without being destroyed?

     Something must remain that rearranges all atoms and molecules into a growing, entirely functional form. According to Parmenides that which persist are the Models (parádeigma), also called the Elements or Principles. They act as a “pattern” from which the Copies, the things that Exist, are continuously regenerated.

    As expected, the dogma has found a way to circumvent this hecatomb, this certain destruction. This bypass says that, although all forms are definitely reduced to its atoms or molecules, the genes had instructions which could reconstitute them. This is more a wishful desire than a theory. In my 2003 book “Reconsiderando a Darwin” I sustain that genes are only blueprints, models, casks or husks for making proteins. They cannot hold the plan for constructing a whole organism. When each gene copies itself, in 10% of the occasions occurs a mutation. As there are species that have not changed for at least 300 million years, such an imperfect mechanism, which commits too many mistakes, cannot be the blueprint for reproducing an organism which requires millions of steps which should be copied in a perfect sequence and timing. And others biologist think alike:

     Rupert Sheldrake says: “Thanks to molecular biology, we know what genes do. They enable organisms to make particular proteins. Other genes are involved in the control of protein synthesis. Identifiable genes are switched on and particular proteins made at the beginning of new developmental processes…Just making the right proteins at the right times cannot explain the complex skeletons of such structures without many other forces coming into play, including the organizing activity of cell membranes and microtubules…Most developmental biologists accept the need for a holistic or integrative conception of living organization. Otherwise biology will go on floundering, even drowning, in oceans of data, as yet more genomes are sequenced, genes are cloned and proteins are characterized…I suggest that morphogenetic fields work by imposing patterns on otherwise random or indeterminate patterns of activity. For example they cause microtubules to crystallize in one part of the cell rather than another, even though the subunits from which they are made are present throughout the cell...Morphogenetic fields are not fixed forever, but evolve. The fields of Afghan hounds and poodles have become different from those of their common ancestors, wolves. How are these fields inherited? I propose that that they are transmitted from past members of the species through a kind of non-local resonance, called morphic resonance…The fields organizing the activity of the nervous system are likewise inherited through morphic resonance, conveying a collective, instinctive memory. Each individual both draws upon and contributes to the collective memory of the species. This means that new patterns of behaviour can spread more rapidly than would otherwise be possible. For example, if rats of a particular breed learn a new trick in Harvard, then rats of that breed should be able to learn the same trick faster all over the world, say in Edinburgh and Melbourne. There is already evidence from laboratory experiments that this actually happens…The resonance of a brain with its own past states also helps to explain the memories of individual animals and humans. There is no need for all memories to be “stored” inside the brain…I believe that the natural selection of habits will play an essential part in any integrated theory of evolution, including not just biological evolution, but also physical, chemical, social, mental and cultural evolution .. Habits are subject to natural selection; and the more often they are repeated, the more probable they become, other things being equal. Animals inherit the successful habits of their species as instincts. We inherit bodily, emotional, mental and cultural habits, including the habits of our languages.”

     What Sheldrake did not know was that Charles Darwin fully agreed with him, regarding the inheritance of habits. The Origin of Species (6th edition) contains 69 references to the importance of the inherited habits, much in agreement with Darwin´s ideas, as they are stated at the end of the Chapter II of his book on Man: “In my Origin I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to shew that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the main agent of change, though largely aided by the inherited effects of habit.” In his Autobiography he says: “all beings have been developed through natural selection, together with use or habit.” In his book On Man he says: “We should bear in mind that modifications in structure or constitution which do not serve to adapt an organism to its habits of life...cannot have been thus acquired (Through natural selection plus use and disuse)” Darwin only improved the idea of Lamarck: “He says: habits becoming hereditary form the instinct in animals –almost identical with my theory –(but he gives) no facts & (his ideas are) mingled with much hypothesis.” In the Origin’s “Recapitulation” it reads: “I have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which had thoroughly convinced me that species have been modified, during a long course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the natural selection of successive, slight, favourable variations, aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of use and disuse of parts; and in an unimportant manner, that is in relation to adaptive structures, whether past or present, by variations which seem to us, in our ignorance, arise spontaneously.” Darwin calls mutations “sports of nature”, and says that they are “unimportant” for adaptation. But Neo-Darwinism, no matter its name, sustains that they are all important.

     So, somebody has to be wrong: either Darwin or neo-Darwinism. Maybe it could help us to decide on this matter that it has never been proved that mutations, in a multicellular organism, can be of any advantage under natural conditions. What we know of mutations is that they are diseases, and the struggle for life will wipe them out in no time at all, unless they are taken under the care of man, becoming then a domestic production.

     And, what would be the problem with a domestic race when it faces natural conditions? Darwin can tell us: “due to this struggle..we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. …We may safely conclude that very many of the most strongly marked domestic varieties could not possibly live in a wild state…when run wild, gradually but invariably revert in character to their aboriginal stocks.”

     Alfred Russell Wallace was even more emphatic on this: “(There is) the assumption that varieties occurring in a state of nature are in all respects analogous to or even identical with those of domestic animals.. But I want to show that this assumption is altogether false. The life of wild animals is a struggle for existence. The full exertion of all their faculties and all their energies is required to preserve their own existence and provide for that of their infant offspring. The possibility of procuring food during the least favorable seasons, and of escaping the attacks of their most dangerous enemies, are the primary conditions which determine the existence both of individuals and of entire species.. The essential difference in the condition of wild and domestic animals is this, -that among the former, their well-being and very existence depend upon the fully exercise and healthy condition of all their senses and physical powers, whereas, among the latter, these are only partially exercised, and in some case are absolutely unused. A wild animal has to search, and often to labor, for every mouthful of food. –to exercise sight, hearing and smell in seeking it, and in avoiding dangers, in procuring shelter from the inclemency of seasons, and in providing for the subsistence and safety of its spring. There is no muscle of its body that is not called into daily and hourly activity; there is no sense or faculty that is not strengthened by continual exercise. The domestic animal, in the other hand, has food provided for it, is sheltered, and often confined, to guard it against the vicissitudes of the seasons, is carefully secured to guard it against of its natural enemies, and seldom even rears its young without human assistance. Half of its senses and faculties are quite useless; and the other half are but occasionally called into feeble exercise, while even its muscular system is only irregularly called into action.. (Also)Those kind of variations which would decidedly render a wild animal unable to compete with its fellows and continue its existence are no disadvantage whatever in the state of domesticity. Our quick-fattening pigs, short-legged sheep, pouter pigeons and poodle dogs could never have come into existence in a state of nature, because the very first step towards such inferior forms would have led to the rapid extinction of the race; still less could they now exist in competition with their wild allies. The great speed but slight endurance of the race horse, the unwieldy strength of the ploughman’s team, would both be useless in a state of nature. If turned wild, such animals would probably soon become extinct, or under favorable circumstances might each lose those extreme qualities which would never be called into action, and in a few generations would revert to a common type, which must be that in which the various powers and faculties are so proportioned to each other as to be best adapted to procure food and secure safety, -that in which by the full exercise of every part of his organization the animal can alone continue to live. Domestic varieties, when turned wild, must return to something near the type of the original wild stock, or become altogether extinct. We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observations of those occurring among domestic animals. The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature: their very existence depends altogether on human care; so far are many of them removed from that just proportion of faculties, that true balance of organization, by means of which alone an animal left to its own resources can preserve its existence and continue its race.”

     Francis Hitching says: “ Darwinism is under assault on many fronts ...It is an academic row of far-reaching (and frequently entertaining) proportions - potentially one of these times in science when, quite suddenly, a long-held idea is overthrown by the weight of contrary evidence and a new one takes its place. It happened when Darwinism itself initially triumphed; and in this century when geologists, after years of saying that continental land masses were immovable, suddenly changed their minds and agreed that Africa and South America had indeed been joined together at one time. Darwin’s theory of how evolution had happened may now be equally vulnerable, and a concept even more profound (is) waiting to come on stage...The theory (only subsists) because no one has come up with a better explanation consistent with known biological facts.. Yet for all its acceptance in the scientific world as the great unifying principle in biology, Darwinism, after a century and a quarter, is in a surprising amount of trouble...At the end of the past (XIX) century Darwinism had a serious problem of credibility. But shortly after the turn of the (XX) century, Darwin´s theory suddenly seemed plausible again. Next, it was found that once in a while, absolutely at random, the genes make a copying mistake. These mistakes are known as mutations and are mostly harmful. They lead to a weakened plant, or a sick and deformed creature. They do not persist within the species, because they are eliminated by natural selection. However, followers of Darwin have come to believe that it is the occasional beneficial mutation, rarely though it happens, which is what counts in evolution. They concluded that new forms were produced entirely by chance. But, how can a blind and automatic shifting process like mutation produce organs like the eye or the brain, with the almost incredible complexity and delicacy of adjustment? How chance produce elaborate design? The role of natural selection is usually a negative one: to destroy the few mutant individuals that threaten the stability of the species. Can we be sure that the known rate of random gene mutation is sufficient in itself to account for macro-evolution? Random step-by-step mutations at the molecular level cannot explain the organized and growing complexity of life.. The primary puzzle is how the genes acquired a meaningful code of information in the first place; and the secondary puzzle, how the code elaborated itself, also in a meaningful way... Biologists, it seems fair to conclude, are unanimously ignorant about the origin of the genetic code, and of the mechanism that allowed it to elaborate itself.. .If nothing can come from without –if the barrier is total and permanent, and can never, without exception, be penetrated- biology is forced into a precarious assumption: the first living creatures must have had within itself the entire genetic potential to grow into -to create- every one of the trillions of plants and creatures that have lived since…But seeing in this turmoil the death-throes of Darwinism may be underestimating the monster´s capacity for survival. It has been long a criticism of Darwin’s theory that by seeming to explain so much it actually explains very little. The efforts to teach the facts of evolution within the straitjacket of a single theory have led repeatedly to fudging and fixing the evidence. The biggest casualty, all too often, has been the truth.”

     We can see here the power of dogmas. Once they have been started, they keep their power no matter how much evidence there is against. Thomas Henry Huxley (the one which believed in “jumps”) took over Darwin’s theory and turned it on what it is today. During the last century there has been too many data about genes that everybody thought that this proved Darwinism, when in fact it proved nothing. And with the all-powerful genes came along its capacity for serving as storage of all information necessary to construct a whole organism. This impossibility led Sheldrake to propose his “Morphogenetic fields”, which are a fair equivalent of the patterns.

    So, Lucretius wrote that all things were reduced to its “atoms”. But the atoms of Lucretius are not the same atoms of which Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr talked about. For Lucretius an “atom” was the indivisible, the undividable, exactly as the Principles of Parmenides were. The atoms of Lucretius were his Elements.

     The theory of the “One and the Many” (as some have named it), is plagued with false interpretations. For instance, Aristotle found unbearable that a single element can act as a pattern to many substances as we see in the apparent world. But the text mentions the “absolute One”, and we have to think that there are, of course, its counterparts, the “relative Ones”. In the Invisible Side of Reality only the Absolute One is single.

     Once we fall upon the relative Ones, we are talking of multiplicity. There is multiplicity and diversity within the general framework of the One. The main characteristic that the relative Ones share with the Absolute One is their lack of time and space. This feature is only acquired when the Model (which is already multiple) crosses the barrier that places him in that “point of change” (exaíphnes), where it acquires Existence during a brief moment.

     Before explaining what the exaíphnes (a total correspondent to the Now of Locke) is, let us examine the properties of the Absolute One. To be better understood, I will start with the Wikipedia: “Parmenides deduced that what really exists must have certain properties—for example, that it cannot come into existence or cease to exist, that it is a coherent whole, that it remains the same eternally (in fact, exists altogether outside time)”.

     The fact that there is an area of existence which is invisible to us does not make it impossible to be investigated. Using the reason, can we discover the attributes of the invisible region? If all that exists are the “primal bodies”, Lucretius says that those bodies have to be eternal, unchangeable and simple. And this is because, if they cannot be created nor destroyed, they have to be eternal. Being eternal makes them being also changeless, because any change will be against its eternity. And, if they last forever this only could mean that they are so simple that they cannot be decomposed in several elements. This is why they could last.

    What other attributes belong to the invisible area? If the elements are simple, then they have to be homogeneous. If they are homogeneous they cannot have parts, because they do not exhibit any difference along its entire unity. It also goes without saying that, if it is homogeneous, each element or simple body is unique to its own type, because, if they were multiple, they would lose its homogeneity and lose its simplicity.

     So, each element is unique and identical all over. Also, if the elements are simple and without differences among its own substance, then they are unmovable, because any movement requires going from one part to another, going from some area to another which should show some difference, and we have said that they have no parts. But, having no movement does not mean that they are at rest, because being at rest implies that they occupy a definitive place, and this cannot be because, as they have no parts and its homogeneity and pureness are absolute, it cannot be said then that the element can stay in any specific place.

     Moreover, if the primal bodies are homogeneous, they have no limits, because any limit would disrupt its homogeneity. Parmenides says: “That which is one and indivisible cannot be contained by nothing else but itself, for that which contains must be other than that which is contained.”

     If the primal bodies have no limits, they cannot have any centre, nor any shape, nor form. Parmenides say: “The one cannot have parts, because, if the one would be made of parts, the one would be many, not one. And if it has no parts, it will have neither beginning, middle nor end, for these would, of course, be parts of it. And, the one, having neither beginning nor end is unlimited, and therefore formless..”

     Aristotle expresses all this in this way: “If the infinite body is homogeneous it will be unmovable. Because every movement is a change, and an homogeneous body cannot change.. Can an infinite body have parts?...No, the infinite body cannot have parts...Because, how will you divide it? Or, how will part of the infinite be down and part up, or part extreme and part middle? Further, every sensible body is in a place, but these cannot exist in an infinite body.. For that which is in a place is somewhere, and this means either up or down or in one of the other directions, and each of these is a limit, and the infinite is boundless.”

     What we can see here is that Lucretius and Parmenides followed the same arguments that the Milesian school, without any deviation, because all of these were the same characteristics that Anaximader assumed that his “Apeiron” exhibited: “indefinite, infinite, boundless, unconstrained.”

     Aristotle continues: “Parmenides, being forced to follow the observable facts...allowing for the fact that every sensible substance is changeable and perishable...but, at the same time, bearing in mind that this is paradoxical, for how is there to be order unless there is something eternal, independent and permanent?...So, he thought that there must be principles or elements, that are neither generated nor destroyed... and that this sort of entity is always conserved. Because, it is impossible that the first cause, being eternal, should be destroyed.. So he is supposing the existence of something that is One in definition, but more than one according to our sensations... something that passes from non-existent to existent, passing between its two contrary states without being both at the same time. Something which is a unique element, for everything changes only from contrary to contrary, the two forms of the same element... therefore the same thing will be pattern (parádeigma) and copy...But it would seem impossible that the substance and that of which it is the substance should exist apart...How, therefore, could the Ideas, being the substance of things exist apart? So, there should be no distance between the copy and its pattern...So, all contraries are reducible to being and not being, and to unity and plurality, as for instance rest belongs to unity and movement to plurality...We must say that everything changes from that which is potentially to that which is actually, a change that does not imply any creation nor destruction of any of the contraries. Parmenides claim that every movement is a change from something into something, and that things change into things that are opposed in certain ways. A thing will change when it passes from a certain state into that contrary to it in several respects. The contrary are attributes, and things change back into one another, for the destruction of either attribute is the generation of the other...for the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect. It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be. This is the most certain of all principles. So he says that everything changes from contrary to contrary, passing between its contrary attributes. But it is only the matter which changes into the contrary state, because the state does not change…the matter, which changes, must be capable of both states.”

     Maybe Parmenides himself could instruct us more about this change which occurs when a Model passes from the invisible side to the visible side, a change which “does not imply any creation nor destruction of any of the contraries. Parmenides claim that every movement is a change from something into something” This change of “something into something” is the Second and last Philosophical Argument: the “transformation”.

      “Being, not being, the Ideas themselves had these opposite qualities. If all is One by partaking of One and at the same time many by partaking of many, may not all things partake of both opposites, by reason of this participation? -True. -What is meant by the participation of other things in the ideas is really assimilation to them...Things pass from one to many, from not being to being.. When we say that the One is, that is equivalent to saying “partakes of being...We say that the One partakes of being and therefore it is? –Clearly. -And in this way the One, if it has being, has turned out to be many? –Yes. Anything which becomes the same with the many necessarily becomes many and not one. One and the same thing will exist as a whole and, at the same time, in many separate individuals. -Clearly - And will not all things that are not one be other that the one, and the One other that the not-one? -True. - But consider: Are not the absolute same, and the absolute other, opposites to one another? -Of Course. –And since there is nothing other besides the One and the others, and they must be in something, must they not be in one another, the one in the others and the others in the One, if they are to be anywhere? –That is clear. –But that which is in anything will be less, and that in which it is will be greater; in no other way can one thing be in another. Then the whole Idea is one, and yet, being one, is in each one of the Many. The One attaches to every single part of being, and does not fail in any part, whether great or small, or whatever may be the size of it. But reflect: a One cannot be in many places and, at the same time, still being One in its entirety. –No; I see the impossibility of that. -And, if not in its entirety, then the One is divided, for it cannot be present with all the parts of being unless divided...-One idea is really divisible and yet remains one? –Certainly. The ideas themselves will be divisible, and things which participate in them will have a part of them. So each idea, instead of being one, will be infinitely multiplied. And that which has parts will be as many as the parts are. –What? -The One itself, having been broken up into parts by being, is many? -Certainly –Then the One, if it has being, is one and many, whole and parts, unlimited and limited? -Of Course. -And because having limits, also having extremes? –Yes. –Then the One, as it appears, will have beginning, middle and end. –It will. –Then the One will partake of figure? –Yes. -Also the one, being of this nature, is of necessity both at rest and in motion? –The One is at rest since it is in itself, for being in One, and not passing out of this, it is in the same, which is itself. –True. –And that which is ever in the same, must be ever at rest? -Yes. –Well, and must not that, on the contrary, which is ever in the other, never be in the same; and if ever in the same, never at rest, and if not at rest, in motion? –True. –Then the One, being always itself in itself and other, must be always both at rest and in motion. But anything which comes into being in anything, can neither as yet be in that other thing while still coming into being, nor be altogether out of it, if already coming into being in it. And therefore whatever comes into being in another must have parts, and then one part may be in, and another part out of that other; but that which has no parts can never be at one and the same things neither wholly within nor wholly without anything. –True -Then, the One, when partaking of being, has parts. But, does the One also partake of time? And is it and does it become older and younger than itself and others, by virtue of its participation in time?.. -Clearly. -For must not that which is in time be always growing older than itself? –Yes. –That happens when things are in time and partake of time. But the One does not partake of those affections. Then the One (when not being) does not partake of time, and is not in any time. But, when the One “is” (when Being), to be (einai) is only participation of being in present time (as well as) to have been is the participation of being at a past time, and to be about to be is the participation of being at a future time. Time is always moving forward... and the One (when being) moves also forward in time.. and it becomes older than itself and, when in becoming, it gets to the point of time in between “was” and “will be”, which is “now”; for surely in going from the past to the future, it cannot skip the present.. and when it reaches the present it ceases to become and “is” (and then) it goes on, (first) touching both the present and the future (and then) letting go the present and seizing the future, while in the process of becoming between them... becoming older than itself.. But the present is always present...for the One, whenever it is, it is always now.. but inasmuch as that which came into being earlier and that which came into being later must continually differ from each other…and, since the One partakes of time, and partakes of becoming older and younger, must it not also partake of the past, the present, and the future? --Of course it must. -Then the One was and is and will be, and was becoming and is becoming and will become? -Certainly. -And there is and was and will be something which is in relation to it and belongs to it? -True. -Once more, let us consider: If the one is both one and many.. must it not...at times partake of being, and at times not partake of being? -Certainly. -But can it partake of being when not partaking of being, or not partake of being when partaking of being? -Impossible. -Then the one partakes and does not partake of being at different times, for that is the only way in which it can partake and not partake of the same. -True. -And is there not also a time (metaxú) at which it assumes being and relinquishes being, for how can it have and not have the same thing unless it receives and also gives it up at some time? -Impossible. -And the assuming of being is what you would call becoming? -I should. -And the relinquishing of being you would call destruction? I should. -The One then, as would appear, becomes and is destroyed by taking and giving up being (metalambánei). -True. -And being one and many and in process of becoming and being destroyed, when it becomes one it ceases to be many, and when many, it ceases to be one? -Certainly. -And as it becomes one and many, must it not inevitably experience separation and aggregation? -Inevitably. And whenever it becomes like and unlike it must be assimilated and dissimilated? -Yes. -And when it becomes greater or less or equal it must grow or diminish or be equalized? -True. -And when being in motion it rests, and when being at rest it changes to motion, it can surely be in no time at all? -How can it? -But that a thing which is previously at rest should be afterwards in motion, or previously in motion and afterwards at rest, without experiencing change, is impossible. -Impossible. -And surely there cannot be a time in which a thing can be at once neither in motion nor at rest? -There cannot. -But neither can it change without changing (metalambánein). -True. -When then does it change; for it cannot change either when at rest, or when in motion, or when in time? -It cannot. -And does this strange thing in which it is at the time of changing really exist? -What thing? -The Moment (exaíphnes). -For the moment seems to imply a something out of which change takes place (metaballó) into either of two states; for the change is not from the state of rest as such, nor, from the state of motion as such; but there is this curious nature, which we call the Moment, lying between rest and motion, not being in any time; and into this and out of this what is in motion changes into rest, and what is at rest into motion. -So it appears. -And the One then, since it is at rest and also in motion, will change to either, for only in this way can it be in both. And in changing it changes in a Moment, and when it is changing it will be in no time, and will not then be either in motion or at rest. -It will not. -And it will be in the same case in relation to the other changes, when it passes from being into cessation of being, or from not-being into becoming, then it passes between certain states of motion and rest, and, neither is nor is not, nor becomes nor is destroyed. -Very true. -And on the same principle, in the passage from one to many and from many to one, the one is neither one nor many, neither separated nor aggregated; and in the passage from like to unlike, and from unlike to like, it is neither like nor unlike, neither in a state of assimilation nor of dissimilation; and in the passage from small to great and equal and back again, it will be neither small nor great, nor equal, nor in a state of increase, or diminution, or equalization. True. -All these, then, are the affections of the One, if the One has being.”

     Dealing with this passage has been difficult for me. I understand the concepts, but I do not speak Greek. In the other hand, those who speak Greek and are in charge of the usual translations don’t understand the concepts.

     Even more: they play with the concepts. I have checked not less than five different translations carefully, comparing them, and in crucial passages not even two of the five used the same word for the same thing in the same paragraph. Apparently, “Ontology”, as they think that is, is an open field in which everybody could imprint his own thinking. That is what present day “Philosophy” has become: a treatise on whatever crosses one’s mind.

     The main thing is: “the One (when being) moves also forward in time.” When “not being” the Relative Model, sharing the properties of the Absolute One, is not in time. But the entity (the Eidos, or “ideas”, the things or images of things) pass from “being to not being” in the Now: “for the One, whenever it is, it is always now.”

     Parmenides “Now” (exaíphnes) is identical to Locke’s Now. What is lost in translation is the definition of the several steps involved, which, for the paid Greek speaking translators, made no sense and didn’t label them.

     My best guess will be this: Metaxú , which is often translated as the “Interval” between the Model and the Copy, as that interval does not exist and both Model and Copy are one and the same, I think it means the very act of getting into the Model being by then in the side of the Copy. This will be a “backward” movement in time.

     Others translators say that Metaxú is a moment in which the same thing changes. A time “at which it assumes being and relinquishes being”. This will amount to the same: it is the moment in which a thing passes between his two states. If we are in the existential side, that of being, when the thing “is”, Metaxú will imply the passing to the other side, that of Not-Existence, Not-being or “when the thing is not”.

     Metaballó seems to refer a general state in which all the things which pass through the exaíphnes are located. It is like the content of the exaíphnes, the Now. To it seems that the word “átopos” (a No-Place, or a “Place- (topos)-which-is-not-a-place) is applied. Metalambánei and Metalambánein I guess are words which refer to the act of “taking up being” and that of “relinquishing being”, possible in that same order.

     Anyway, whatever the real translation is, the idea is pretty clear: Kant´s “things-in-themselves” are the Models (parádeigma). They have neither space nor time. Now the main problem is to know if the properties which Locke assumed for his images of things can be kept there intact and untouched, ready to assault the Now.

     Locke supposed that the past images remained unbroken, unscathed, in the “spirit”, and that the mind had a “power to revive them anew”. That is, to take them from the past and put them into the present, but adequately dimmed, attenuated, so they do not disturb the vividness, the intensity, of the present images. Now, is there, in the theory of “the One and the Many”, an explanation of how past images can be kept complete and coexistent?

     If we go through the theory carefully, we can see that the exaíphnes, the Now, is like a “show window” in which the Models are being copied. Models are not the Absolute One, because they are not simple, but very complex. They had evolved, possibly due to its passing through the exaíphnes, in which they had to follow all rules of evolution and of the survival of the fittest. Let’s remember what Sheldrake said: “Morphogenetic fields are not fixed forever, but evolve.” Being this “fields” the same as the Models, how is that the latter can evolve? This could only be by testing themselves in the exaíphnes. This is the arena in which they evolve.

     But, when those evolved, advanced, complex, models are being copied, as they are not simple, they have to be copied in a strict sequence. This copying is what creates time. And, as in the exaíphnes are being copied many Models, as they have evolved exactly in the same arena, the exaíphnes, then the Models pass from being homogeneous to heterogeneous, because many Models appear at the same time. This is what creates space.

     Remember why the Absolute One cannot have space? Because it is homogeneous and it does not ha parts which are different. Movement and space can only happen by going from one part to other which is different.

     But, during the exaíphnes, many Models are in contact and, during that time, as many heterogeneous substances or elements get to be together, space (and the capacity for movements) appears as a result. Maybe an analogy could help to understand this concept. Let’s suppose a huge factory, whit many lines of assembly for different products, all aligned side by side. Let´s suppose that, alongside our line of assembly, there are four more lines, two at our right and two at our left. They are lines for a rock, a rose, an alligator and a dog.

     Of course, we all five objects partake of the Oness of five different Models, and evolve differently. But in our exaíphnes, our moment, our point in the line of assembly, we interact with the other four objects: we feel the rock, smell the rose, fight the alligator and pet the dog. We could think that we all share the same “place”, but that does not happen. We are just interacting with the projections of those Models in our exaíphnes, our Moment of the process of being copied: our Now. It is in that time in which we experience the properties of the other copies.

     Do you remember the Complementarity Principle of Niels Bohr? It states that the observer definitively affects the observation. We cannot do that if the world that we see is a place. Or, can we? But if the world we see is a Now of course our observation affects our field of observation, because that field is exclusively ours.

     The objects which we see do not exist until we see them. But we do not create them. They have their own Model and its own assembly line. But in our exaíphnes they appear, not as they are, but as they are to us, now.

     The rock will not feel us, the rose will not perceive us, and the alligator and dog will react to us. The alligator will try to eat us, the dog will wriggle its tail to us. We are phantoms in a phantom world. In this arena in which the projections of the copies interact everything seems real, and we think that we share the same place, when really we only share a moment in time, different for each one of us, as our assembly or copying process is varied.

     Let’s see it in this way: there are four Models, besides ours, and all they meet at our exaíphnes. But they are only projections of “the things-in-themselves”. They interact with us in such a phantom world, our exaíphnes.

     But, in the analogy of the assembly line, what is “us”? We are what we remember about us. Memory, as St. Augustine said, is “the belly of the mind”. In that point we differ from the other lines. A rock is not alive; a rose has no psychological process and only is following a program for development. An alligator and a dog only follow their instincts. Remember Sheldrake assertion, that “Animals inherit the successful habits of their species as instincts.” So both animals don’t need to have a memory of their own, and use that of their species.

     If their Eidos, the archetypical images to which those two animals react to, are already in their Models, why ours, even if they are not archetypical, should not be in the same place? Where else could they be?

     Because there is only the Now and the past moments. For animals the “past” moments do not exist, or are not theirs, but they belong to the species. Maybe the dog, as a species more evolved than an alligator, can have some limited recall of past experiences, at least enough to call those recalls as personal past experiences.

     But definitively the dog does not have, as we do, enough recalls to have a sense of selfness, of identity. Animals cannot go but to very limited areas of their past, not enough to gain reasoning. They cannot learn from its experiences, due to its limited recall from their own past, as we do, due to our increased memory.

    Thing is: if we do have those recalls, in enough number as to gain a consciousness of ourselves, where do they are located? We have just said: there is only the visible region (the exaíphnes) and the invisible region, that of the Absolute One and that of the Relative Models. The only place they could be “stored” is in this latter region. There is nothing else left. And, if in there, they have to share the Oness properties: the lack of time.

     In other words: we are an uninvited and unexpected guest. We keep our personal memories exactly where the rest of the animal kingdom “store” its instincts, its archetypical Eidos. And it is because the memories are in there that they share the properties of the Models: their lack of space and time. Of course: whenever we die all those personal Eidos will die with us, and they will disappear from the archetypical baggage, the instincts. Our personal memories will never become instincts, as they will die with us. Of course, our habits, if they get repeated likewise by an enough number of succeeding generations, will become instinctive programs. But, as far as our personal memories goes, as long as they share the Eidos properties, the Oness of the Models, they have no time, and they are kept untouched, intact, and, when we recall them from our exaíphnes, they appear as if they were “revived”.

     The eidos recalled are not really coexistent. This would mean that they share the same time. But the fact is that they have no time at all. Another startling conclusion is that there is no a general past, but only there is a past limited to the copy. We have a “built in” time machine, but a machine which only goes through one single life.

    But, as a sort of compensation, that machine can travel to the future of that single copy. Let me explain how this happens (and this do happens, because the art of divination dates from countless ages). We have access to our past, because each exaíphnes which has passed by is kept in our Model, intact. Why? Because the exaíphnes is only a “show window” for the parádeigma, the Model. And this, as it has no time, it is complete. There are no moments “disappeared”. They acquire “time” during the process of copying of in the exaíphnes, but when they “cease to exist! they come back to the Model, which is timeless. We are a kind of uninvited passenger. Nobody planned that our personal moments were kept untouched, because we were not supposed to have any “personal moments”. Nature only have Models and its copying, during the exaíphnes. But, as long as we have a customized Model, just for ourselves, and, as our Model share the properties of the One, especially its lack of time, then our personal moments (but only those moments which could be recalled by language associations) can be kept intact in our tailored made Model. Of course, those moments were not supposed to exist. In their Models all the animal kingdom only keep the Eidos, the archetypical images. But now our personal memories occupy its place.

     Let me say it again: the Models, being multiple, share the properties of the Absolute One, specially its lack of time and space. But, for the rest of the animal kingdom, their Models are the species. They do not have a personal life and have only a collective, unchangeable “soul” (the species). But we do have, due to our increased memory, a personal life, and the memories of that life are in our “personal Model”. We have added too much things to the collective Model as to make it to contain many memories of us, which will disappear, of course, with our death.

     In other words: we have a Model, as any animal or object has. But we have “customized” our own Model. Anyway, our “personal Model” shares the properties of the rest of the Models: when one of them is being copied, the total plan, the complete instructions for it are already finished, completed. The exaíphnes is just a copying show-window of a Model which is already finished. And our entire life, mounted on a Model, is finished also.

     I was born in 1945 and by now I am 67 years old. If I live to be 70, in the same way that all my past 66 years are already “stored” in my “personal Model”, by the time of my 70tht birthday all my 70 years of existence will also be stored in there. As, in my Model, time does not exist, it follows that all experiences which I still have not lived, but which I will live in the next years, are also there already. I am living in an exaíphnes now. I am being copied. That means that I am living my life sequentially. But if I get to be 70, any day before my last day will be a past experience, and it will be accommodated in my Model. If every memory is kept stored in the same receptacle, which has no time, it should be reachable from any part of that hypothetical assembly line. Whatever will happen to that copy is already stored in there, where all personal memories share the Oneness of any Model.

     If my entire life is there, from “cradle to tomb”, and if my entire life fulfills all the requirements of being a Model, then, in my personal Model my life is already complete and reachable from any exaíphnes of mine.

     In other words: I am being copied in my own assembly line, being copied from a Model. And that Model is customized, personalized, modified by my experience. And that Model is not the species, but my own life. If my Model has the properties of any other Model, then is timeless and already complete. My future is in there already.

     Before leaving the analogy of the “assembly line” we could use it for a last thing. We have said that the exaíphnes is a moment in time. But we have to ask ourselves: how long does this moment last? What I mean by this is: if a Now tries to resist the assaults of the past Now’s, what are those Now’s and how much do they last?

     Let´s go back to our analogy of the assembly lines. But now, instead of a rock, we will have a wall clock, with a big dial and three “hands”. And, instead of the Rose, we have a pendulum clock with a large swinging weight. We have said that “time” is created by our mind, but both clocks measure “time” independently of us.

     We can see the second’s hand moving faster than the minute’s hand. In the pendulum we can see the weight moving back and forth. Their movement is irreversible, and we have no intervention on it. But, is that “time”?

    At least it is not the “time” we are subjected to. Both clocks are physical processes which are developing its potentiality, transforming it to a useful act. The potentiality is the power which moves them: a spring or a weight. This power is restrained so that it natural development can be calibrated to move the hands accordingly with an external cyclic occurrence, such as an Earth revolution on itself, or of an Earth revolution around the sun.

   As this is not the time we are talking about, the time of ours. This is only “exaíphnes”, the “No-Place” (Átopos) in which the projections meet our own exaíphnes. We have said before that “when those evolved, advanced, complex, models are being copied, as they are not simple, they have to be copied in a strict sequence. This copying is what creates time.” A clockwork could seem complicated to us, but its metal is no more complicated than a rock. This metal has been skilfully worked so that it can measure an external cyclic even.

     We could think that the clock measures time, but in fact it only measures the developing of a force or power. This force is, of course, suffering an actualization during the exaíphnes, surely in the way of higher entropy, as all physical forces do. But this is no the “time” we observe. This is a physical incident, with no more “time” than that time which its Model collects from being such a simple Element, almost as timeless as the Absolute One.

     The “time” we are talking about is the time as we experience it. This time belongs to complex structures which are being copied in a strict sequence. If the Model is complex and intricate, then there is a lot of Metaxú, a lot of information passing continuously between Copy and Model, in order to copy that elaborated sequence.

     The “time” of us is a mixture of exaíphnes and Metaxú. The “time” of the rock, or of the clocks, is only a pure exaíphnes, an actualization of a very simple element. We see or feel all objects which coexist with us: the rock, the clocks, the rose, the alligator and the dog. That is the part of the exaíphnes. But we have to identify them as being such things. We have to interpret the, based in our past experiences in which we have had contact with the same objects. That is the part of the Metaxú. Rocks and clocks have no Metaxú, because their simplicity.

     The Metaxú, as we have said, is a “movement” backwards in time (being this last “time” the exaíphnes, so that it could be also said, that it is a travel” past” the exaíphnes, or “outside” it). The thing which is “us”(already described as: the entity or thing that we remember or think we are) travels backwards (and sometimes forwards, as in precognition) the exaíphnes. This capacity of moving backwards of forwards that point of reference, the exaíphnes, is what we call time, as it is experienced by ourselves, and all this due to a high Model complexity.

     Now we can answer the question: how long does the “Now” lasts? In simple things no time at all, since its actualization, its exaíphnes, has no time. And indefinitely when we talk of complex things which have Metaxú.

    Think about a spider. Some Models are 300 million years old. And when they act by instinct, their Metaxú goes all the way though the very beginning. Think about a Monarch Butterfly. We see the little insect flying, but what we see is just an exaíphnes, an actualization of a Model. Its “mind”, even if she has no brain, is its Metaxú, and this carries her outside its exaíphnes, its copying, backwards in time, and, even if we only see its physical body, its mind is soaring in the past, seeing all the things the butterfly has seen since the beginning of its species.

     We are not a butterfly. And yet we can use also the Metaxú to get access to our customized, made to order, tailored Model. We all have experienced it, but when it presents itself, in an ordinary way (such as when we remember anything all around the clock) we do not recognize it as such. Only when there is an unexpected occurrence the Metaxú appears with all its magnificence unhampered. It is the “instant which last for hours”. In Buddhism (which seek to cultivate those moments) is called “living an eternity in a second”.

    Darwin, in his Autobiography, says: “Once, whilst returning to school on the summit of the old fortifications round Shrewsbury, which had been converted into a public foot-path with no parapet on one side, I walked off and fell to the ground, but the height was only seven or eight feet. Nevertheless the number of thoughts which passed through my mind during this very short, but sudden and wholly unexpected fall, was astonishing, and seem hardly compatible with what physiologists have, I believe, proved about each thought requiring quite an appreciable amount of time.” I think this proves Kant’s point: the setting of time is due to a customary way.

     We have “tamed” time: we have made it sequential when it is not, continuum when it is not, correspondent with the clocks when it is not, and quite familiar, when it is not. But I think that in this bargain we have lost a lot.

     In order to gain familiarity we have lost the incredible magic of the “moment”, the exaíphnes. When we see a bird, or a butterfly, we only see it as it appear to us. We are seeing a body, a casket. But its mind is not “here”. Its mind is traveling to the past, recalling all the experiences of the previous generations, as if they were his own.

     But let’s move on and recapitulate the main points of the idea: In the invisible side of reality are the Models. This side is also called “Not-Existence”. The visible side is the Existence, and is occupied by the projection of the Models: the Copies. A transformation occurs when the same thing passes from its two opposite attributes: from the Existence to the Not-Existence; from being a Model to being a Copy. But, no matter the change between its two states, Copy and Model are one and the same. And this is because they participate fully amongst them.

     Metaballó is the act of changing between its two attributes. Metaxú is translated as the “interval” between a Copy and its Form. As this interval is practically non-existent, I reserve the term Metaxú as the actual passage from one state to the other. But the important thing is that this change takes place during the exaíphnes, the moment. That is: the Principles pass from the Not-Existence to the Existence, from Not Being to Being, from “when is not” to “when is” during in the exaíphnes, the instant; a moment of time which is fully equivalent to the “Now “of Locke. The world is not a place (Topos), but a No-Place (Átopos), a “place-which-is-not-a-place.”

     Every Copy is connected to its Model. When the same thing “is”, that means that it enters into our exaíphnes, our point of observation. But, no matter that we see a thing spatially separated, each is united with all copies which belong to the same Model. All copies are united through the space-less One, its common Model.

     Also, the exaíphnes “moves”. A Now is substituted by another Now and the old Now becomes part of the past, which is to say, passes into the Not Existence mode or region. In there all past moments will remain always intact, untouched. And this feature of enduring intact is due to the fact that, when the object passes into this invisible area, being timeless is being changeless. You cannot change if, by lacking time, you get to be eternal.

     The forward movement of the exaíphnes, the actual or present point in the assembly line, produces the “time” of Classical Physics. This is the “time” measured by the clocks, when we, look at the clock’s dial, during the exaíphnes. This corresponds with the “sensuous time” of Kant: "All things, as phenomena, that is, objects of sensuous intuition, are in time-" This “time” adjusts itself to the sensory input. But, as both Copy and Model are one and the same, then each Copy is always in contact with its invisible aspect through a second kind of “time”: its inexistent separation amongst them, or Metaxú. This time goes “backwards”, putting in contact the Copy with its Model. This also could be called “Psychical Time”, as it is the opposite of the Physical time.

     If the world we see is just an “actualization” of the Models (metaballó), then as soon as that actualization ceases being, that moment (metaballó) will now go to the side of the Models, in which it will remain intact.

     Now let´s go back to Serios. He, obviously, gets into a trance. This mental condition (see my book “Las Bases Biológicas del Trance”) corresponds to an “abaissement du niveau mental”, which allows a detachment from the present circumstances. Serios recalls a past state of affairs. And the camera, a physical object, no matter that was steadily held by the photographers, followed him there. The photos were real. The laws of optics were untouched.

     There is a very clear picture of a building which Serios apparently could not account for, explaining its precedence. It was easy to track, as the building had a big painting on its front side, with the words: Canadian Moun... When the picture was shown to the Canadian Mounted Police they recognized the place as being one of his hangars for their Air Division. The fact that Serios could not tell where or how he got the picture did not matter. Usually the medium in trance can direct himself to some specific place, but once there he seems to move around, describing things that he, by himself, has never seen. It is frequent the amnesia regarding what he did or what he saw. The image of the hangar could have been taken from a photograph hanged in a wall or from a book.

     So far, Serios, when taking with him a camera to photograph is own past, is doing a travel in time. But on that occasion, when Eisenbud took him to the Museum in Denver and he took a photograph of a diorama seen in the past at the Field Museum, Serios was making a traveling through space. We already have said why is this: “All copies are united through the space-less One, its common Model”. Serios in Denver and Serios at Chicago are two different moments of the same Model, the custom made Model in which the life of Serios has become.

     If you want to hear this in the words of the Quantum Mechanics, we can say it this way: Two objects which share the same origin or which had been in contact are “entangled.” What more entanglement we could expect to get than that of a Copy with his own custom-tailored Model, even if that model is separated by a fictitious space?

     I have figure out a way to use that property of Serio’s Polaroid camera for being “here and there”, in the “present and in the past”, at the same time. The physical object, the camera, can be transformed into a “gate” with which we can pass from one point to the other, taking us to the “past”. If we can “move around” once there, it ceases to be “our own past” and becomes “everybody’s past”. But there is more, if we do not want to risk that possibility of changing past events, the same “gate” can transport us to distant point in the same exaíphnes.

     Even this application, using the gate as a tele-transporter, is easier than using it as a “time-machine”. Because in this latter application we have to send first to the past a part of the gate, and this means that we cannot go backwards than to the moment in which the other part has been placed. But in the tele-transportation mode we can send the other part to any place along the same exaíphnes, and traverse enormous distances in “a second”.

     Serio’s case in not the only one which can be solved by Locke’s time. Charles Darwin’s theory had two problems: first, he had to find a mechanism for the inheritance of habits, in order to explain the coadaptation of organs while changing and, second, he failed to solve the problem of the neuter insects, which seemingly could pass their beautifully adapted organs to their functions without having a progeny of its own.

     Locke’s time, a kind of “hole” which could pass through several generations (the Monarch Butterfly goes back to a place which she has never seen or in which she has never been, taking two or three generations in its return trip) could explain the inheritance of habits and the entanglement could solve the problem of the neuters.

     This is what Bohr’s entanglement is about. It says that two objects which had been in contact or had a common origin keep being connected somehow. What more contact could we wish, or what more common origin can we get than a biological organism? Two animals or plants, which share the same Model, are united though it.

     In the existence side they look like as if they were separated, but as they are one and the same with its Model, each Copy is united through its participation with it. No matter the distance which apparently keeps them apart in the Existence Mode, they are united in the Non-Existence region. The whole colony is a single individual.

     Biology has been profoundly neglected by physicists. They insist to live in a perfect mathematical world, totally oblivious to any fact which does not fit in. Obviously Classic physics describes a world as “it should be”, an imaginary and idealized world. This keep them focused in appearances, taking them for granted.

     We are convinced that memories are kept engraved in a network of neural synapses, or in proteins in the brain. But in 1938 Nikolas Tinbergen found that a burrowing sand wasp can remember perfectly the image of entrance of each of its several nests, no matter that she disguised perfectly the entrance before leaving it for the last time. Tinbergen and his students, which made careful maps of the location of the burrows, had sometimes more problems than the wasps when locating them. So the insect had a better image of her burrow than humans, without having a brain. The wasp can also recall the state of each nest, in order to know if she would need to bring more food. So, it becomes obvious that the brain does not store the images inside it, as also Sheldrake said, in the same token as the radio or television set does not store the actors whose voices or imagers we see.

     Patricia Churchland wrote: “An enormous amount is known about the structure of nervous systems. We are beginning to understand the behavior of an individual neuron –its membrane properties, the spiking properties of its axon, the synaptic phenomenology, its patters of connectivity, the transport of intracellular materials, its metabolism, and even something of its embryological migration and development. What is not understood is how nervous systems function so that the animal sees or intercepts its prey, remember where it cached nuts, and so forth. The programs that the brain executes and that we currently attempt to describe in folk psychological terms are evidently far more complicated that anything yet devised in computer science. And in the case of brains we do not have a neuroscientific theory in which to couch a machine-level description of what is going on, nor, of course, do we know that folk psychology is a basically correct description of the program. Nevertheless, the salient point is that computers offer a prime example of how it is possible to explain the rule-governed behavior of a purely physical machine, without resorting to nonphysical hypotheses.” I think Patricia means: without resorting to believe in a “soul”. But, do we have to resort only to a pure mechanical view, to rely only in the appearances without seeing what is underlying? I agree with her when she compares the brain with a computer. But I go further than that: if it is a computer, it is a computer connected to Internet. The “mind” is in the web.

    Of course we have dissected many brains. But, how much can we learn from dissecting a radio or a television set? Can we discover the radio station by doing this? Below appearances are things which cannot be dissected.

     In 1952 Carl Gustav Jung Jung invited a physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, to write a chapter for his book “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.” Jung expected that Quantum Mechanics could say something about time that could support his own views, which Jung had exposed in his 1947’ book “On the Nature of the Psyche”. In this work Jung tried to get around the time paradox by saying that the unconscious mind functions outside the physical framework of space and time. He was interested in those precognitive dreams which occurred hours or days before the actual events and in the fact that “they are experienced as psychic images in the present, as though the objective event already existed.” What Jung was expecting from Pauli was a theory of time that could allow him to situate a “cause” of a “present” event in the “future” of that very same event. Of course Pauli did not agreed with that, because he was part of the team which delivered The Princeton Interpretation of Reality. I bet It could have been very different if Jung had contacted Heisenberg, instead of Pauli.

    Jung, deprived of any help from Pauli, wrote: “We must completely give up the idea of the psyche’s being somehow connected with the brain, and remember instead the meaningful or intelligent behaviour of the lower organisms, which are without a brain. Here we find ourselves much closer to the formal factor which, as I have said, has nothing to do with brain activity.” When Arthur Koestler had the chance to read this particular paragraph, he was not short of invectives against Jung: “The term “formal factor” refers to a presumed archetypal consciousness in the amoeba; but this could hardly justify the denial of the connection between human consciousness and the human brain. It is painful to watch how a great mind, trying to disentangle himself from the causal chains of materialistic science, gets entangled in its own verbiage. One wonders whether anybody else had –and whether Jung himself had- even read the proofs. If he had, it remains incomprehensible that he did not amend the flat nonsense about there being no connection between mind and brain. Pauli’s revolutionary proposal was to extend the principle on non-causal events from microphysics (where its legitimacy was recognized) to macrophysics (were it was not). He was more radical in his approach than his colleagues (Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen). He probably hoped that, by joining forces with Jung, they would be able to work out some macrophysical theory which made some sense of paranormal events. The attempt was frustrated by deeply engrained traditions in Western thought, which go all the way back to the Greeks. Western man has been ensnared, for two thousand years, in the logical categories of Greek philosophy which permeate our vocabulary and concepts, and decide for us what is thinkable and what is unthinkable. But apart from tutoring Jung in theoretical physics (of which, at the end Jung made little use), it seems unlikely that Pauli had much influence on Jung’s paper. Pauli’s own essay, turning the mental evolution of Kepler into a paradigm of the limitations of science, is a model of clarity in sharp contrast to Jung’s meanderings. But the comparison is not quite fair because it is much easier for a modern physicist to get out of the grooves of causality, matter, space-time and other categories of thought. The physicist has been trained to regard the world as experienced by our senses as an illusion –Eddington’s shadow desk, covered by the veil of Maya. But this does not worry him unduly, because he has created a world of his own, described in a language of great beauty and power, the language of mathematical equations, which tells him all he knows, and can ever hope to know, of the universe around him. Bertrand Russell did not mean to be ironical when he wrote: “Physics is mathematical not because we know too much about the physical world, but because know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.”

     In other words: Even if the world that we see turns out to be just an illusion created by of our senses and our mind, as we have created a “powerful language” that describes the idealized world we want, then our equations are enough to tell us all that we should know about that world. What is this? A declaration that even an imaginary world could be real if it is fully mathematically described? Bertrand Russell also said something of this sort: “Mathematics is a science in which nobody is really sure of what he is talking about and if this is really true or not.” Because even if Koestler got mad at that “flat nonsense about there being no connection between mind and brain”, Jung was just pointing out to a fact easy to be corroborated: the lesser the brain the better the instinct. In fact, a brain the only things that does is diminishing that formidable memory capacity.

     This conclusion is not new. Jean Baptiste Lamarck wrote: “Who can now deny that the power of habits over actions is inversely proportional to the intelligence of the individual, and to the development of his faculty of thinking, reflecting, combining his ideas and varying his actions?” Darwin fully agreed: “The role of habit in behaviour is inversely proportional to the role of intelligent thought...instinct appear like a sort of hereditary memory...man has so very few (in adult life) instincts.. This loss is compensated by vast power of reason..(although) the mind of man is no more perfect than instinct of animals.. Lamarck says that habits are prevalent in proportion to intelligence less.. (If) intellect is a modification of instinct...what differs? How man gained reason?.. thinking consists of sensation of images before your eyes or ears. Language mere means of exciting association...The mind thinks with extraordinary rapidity. We may conclude that neither number, vividness, rapidity, novelty of separate ideas cause fatigue to the mind. It is solely the comparison, with past ideas, (which causes fatigue and) which makes consciousness…The fatigue of thinking is (for) keeping up all those parallel trains of thought necessary for every action, (which are) always running in our mind...My father possessed an extraordinary memory, especially for dates, so that he knew, when he was very old, the day of birth, marriage and death of a multitude of persons in Shropshire. And he once told me that this power annoyed him; for if he once heard a date he could not forget it; and thus the deaths of many friends were often recalled to his mind…When one is awake…one is deeply reasoning (and) a crowd of other trains of thoughts are in progress.. keeping one idea present is perhaps hard work...Reason in simplest form probably is single comparison by senses of any two objects. –they by vivid power of conception between one or two absent things. -Reason probably mere consequence of vividness & multiplicity of things remembered.. memory is repetition of whatever takes place in the (mind) when (the same) sensation is perceived...Thought , & not merely instinct, (is) a separate thing superadded…Contrast the invariability of instinctive powers in individuals of the same species with variability of reasoning power in one species: man...Thinking over the scenes which I first recollect, they are all things which are brought to mind by memory of the scenes. (Indeed my American recollections are a collection of pictures) When one remembers a thing in a book, one remembers the part of the page. –one is tempted to think all memories consists in a set of sketches...the mind (function) is to create short vivid flashes of images...early memory consisting of things seen.” “Old people –remembering things of youth, when new ideas will not enter, is something analogous to instinct, to the permanence of old hereditary ideas.- being lower faculty than the acquirement of new ideas…My father says old people first fail in ideas of time, & perhaps of space…In insanity the ideas do not go back to childhood, but in the failing from old age they constantly do…Emma W. says that when in playing by memory she does not think at all, (and) she plays better… old people singing songs of their childhood...Now if memory of a tune & words can thus lie dormant, during a whole life time, quite unconsciously of it, surely memory from one generation to another, also without consciousness, as instincts are, is not so very wonderful...Miss Cogan’s memory of the tune could be compared with birds singing, or some instinctive sounds…Miss Cogan shows that repetition is not necessary.. memory cannot solely be number of times repeated, because some people can remember poetry once read over.. A. Bessy repeated things which none about her have ever before heard, so very probable forgotten…Allen W. & Babington, both half idiotic, & with store of accurate and even profound knowledge…this facts.. renders much less wonderful the instinct in animals...My father says that in old people, in their dotage, who sing the songs & tales of infancy, it is very doubtful whether they could recollect these same things from any effort of will whilst their minds were sound…(an old) man feels pleasure in seeing scenes of his childhood without knowing why...people who can multiply large numbers in their head must have this faculty, yet not clever people ..Jones said that great calculators, from the confined nature of their associations are people of very limited intellects, & in the same way are chess players.- A man at Cambridge, during its time, almost an absolute fool, used to play regularly with D’Arbay of Christ of great genius, & yet invariably used to beat him. The son of a Fruiterer in Bond St. was so great a fool that his father only left him a guinea a week. Yet he was an inimitable chess player (If the) judgment of probabilities gives a man common sense & the highest intellectual powers (and if) in playing chess many contingencies a man has to keep in mind..(then having) half instincts (has to be of some advantage).. Peackock’s remarks about mathematicians not being profound reasoners …Mr. Mayo told me the case of a lady, she was one day reading a book, with ivory paper cutter, which she valued, & she was suddenly called to go on to the lawn to see something, on her return could not find paper cutter, hunted in vain for it.-ten years afterwards, whilst at meal, she suddenly, like a flash... remembered she had put it in branch of tree, & apologizing to party, went out and find it there!!! Erasmus had almost same thing happen to him about a knife, which he had hid some years before.”

    If memory causes no fatigue, and if only “keeping one idea present is (the) hard work” then Locke’s theory for memory is far better than other which requires images which have to be codified in neural synapses in order to get them “stored”, and then de-codified every time we want to remember those things. Especially when animals with no brain at all get perfect imprintings which even a human observer cannot equal. But if memory is just a travel “backwards” in time, then even an animal with no brain can do it. But, do this really happen?

     Hypnosis seems to prove that past experiences are never lost. R. Reiff and M. Scheerer (1959) say: “(Many investigators) were impressed with the apparent genuineness with which certain hypnotized subjects can be regressed to infantile modes of behaviour. They felt that in this regression more is involved than mere remembering, for the hypnotized subject behaves as though he has actually resumed living in an earlier period of his life...Rorschach responses of hypnotically regressed individuals reflects various stages of personality development. The implication of this study would be that the human organism has a capacity to store up successive layers of experiences in such a way that earlier levels do not lose their vitality. Hardfield (1928) commented on the extraordinary feeling tone with which experiences were relived, forgotten details vividly recalled, and that much original affect associated with significant experiences seemed to be recovered in hypnotic age regression...intellectual and emotional changes were found which presumably correspond to previous age periods of the subjects...From this study it appeared that hypnotic age regression involved more than recall or simulation accuracy. With specific reference to intelligence, hypnotic regression seemed to involve the entire person...Moody (1946) observed that rope wheals on both forearms, which the patient had suffered years ago, appeared while the original incident was re-enacted by him under Evipan narcosis. A 35 year old woman re-experienced a riding accident that had happened to her when she was 10 years old. According to reports, she had then fractured some ribs on the right side. Under Evipan abreaction petechial haemorrhages and bruising developed following the line of the right tenth rib, accompanied by sharp pain in the original place of the injury...in a merchant seaman who had suffered a long period of immersion in cold water years before appeared ischemia of the extremities together with generalized autonomic disturbances…A patient had had a colloid cyst removed from the floor of the third ventricle in January, 1943. Prior to this operation the patient exhibited a right homonymous hemianopsia. Following removal of the cyst, his vision gradually returned to normal. When this individual was regressed hypnotically in 1947 to a period shortly before the operation, a right homonymous hemianopsia could be demonstrated...A person under narcosynthesis may “remember” events that occurred at a certain time in the past. But here again he may nor remember them from the present life period but only “as of now”, in the time period which he is living under narcosynthesis. The subject often experiences the event as if for the first time...We cannot reverse the growth of the organism, nor can we go backward into time ...but there are clinical observations which support the idea that certain memory traces can be resuscitated, substantially unchanged...in combat neurosis the patients experiences it as it though he were living it for the first time. There is no awareness of the time gap between the original traumatic experience and the “re-enactment” of it. At the moment the time gap enters consciousness, the experience truly becomes a reliving and takes on the character of what we have called remembrance. A prerequisite for experience this as a “remembrance” is that the restructuring and revaluation of the original traumatic event has occurred, so as to make it possible its integration into the present personality. It is only then that remembering enters the picture. And it is at this point that the meaning of the original traumatic event and its emotional and other psychological effects begin to change. When the patient can experience this as a remembrance, he is often in the way to recovery...When a memory trace become conscious as a remembrance, it is always modified so as to make possible its integration into the structure of the present personality. It thus appears that the act of making it conscious, the very act of remembering, set to work forces which transfigure the previous experience according to the present ego structure and its present schemata. This is in part the function of remembrance as a representation of “my past” in the present…for remembrance either the memory traces proper change considerably or the present personality brings them into consciousness in a changed form, e.g., by reproducing the past in terms of present interest, functions and needs...Schachtel says that “Memory as a function of the living personality can be understood only as a capacity for the organization and reconstruction of past experiences and impressions in the service of present needs, fears and interest”...in hypnotic age regression the subject does not experience the revival of those earlier forms of existence in terms of remembrances. They are acted in the present, namely, in that age period the hypnotized person experiences himself to be...The age- regressed subject may remember events with the experience of an autobiographic index. However, here the reference point is no longer the actual present, but that point in the autobiographic past to which the subject has been regressed. If memoria are revived during hypnosis they may consist in forgotten school lessons, dates, songs, names; previous habits, skills, modes of functioning.”

    This authors are sure that “we cannot go backwards into time” but, if we go by the facts, the hypnosis show us that, if we carry the patient to a particular time, let’s say to a time in which he witnessed an accident or a crime, and we ask him about what he saw, he would totally recall things as if he was taking another look at the same situation, and will see things that, when that event happened, he did not paid any attention, such as faces or plates of cars. The actual theory of memory says that the experience gets codified into a net of neural synapses which gets reinforced by repetition. But, how do we codify something which we were not aware of at the time of our exposure to it and consequently it had been never been reinforced? In this case either we have to suppose that our unconscious mind has an incredible capacity of being aware of many things that will never become conscious, besides the very fact that this inconceivable capacity will have to be extended to our senses, making them more capable of perceiving a lot more details than those we know they can do, or either we have to consider a travel “backwards” in time. Locke´s theory of remembering as a “reviving” of intact past experiences, kept alive in the “spirit”, to bring them to the present, without disturbing it, it’s a lot better than the neural-synaptic theory.

     Time is an illusion. Or the world that we see is an illusion which depends on our senses. We see a wasp returning to her nest. But that is only an arrangement of our senses and of our mind. The wasp goes back and forth along its own unreal world. She is in her past within the framework of our present. But in our Now we cannot see all the manoeuvres she realizes in her own time, and we can only see what our senses can show us.

     Maybe a wasp going back in time for a few minutes and a few meters will not impress us too much. But the Monarch Butterfly, also an insect with no brain, will retrace a road that it will take her months and thousands of miles to traverse. If the individual is nothing and space does not separate two “organs” that belong to the same being –as in the case of the neuters- why does time has to be an actual separation between two “generations”?

    The Monarch, in Summer, lives in Canada, resting during the night in an specific tree, in an specific branch, in a very specific part of that branch. When Autumn comes the butterfly starts a migration to Mexico, to a specific forest, an specific tree and branch. In Spring the butterfly flies back to Canada, to its specific place, but in its way back she stops, constructs a cocoon, becomes a caterpillar, eats, molts again, becomes again a butterfly and continues its flight to a precise place that the new butterfly has never seen and in which it has never been.

    The time of Locke is a perfect mechanism for the inheritance of habits, if the “hole” in time that he proposed go deep enough. If the hole can pass through the multiple generations, as if they really belonged to a single animal, the habits can be inherited because they are memories of a single being which can’t be forgotten.

     The Monarch butterfly show us as generations are not an impediment to the unity of the being. Because, in the way back to its place of departure she spends several generations. It happens also in the cabbage butterfly, that can be seen coming from one point of the sky, landing on a plant, suffering metamorphosis that will give a duplicate that will fly exactly to the opposite point in the sky to that from which she came from, as continuing the same trip of the previous butterfly. If the two generations are both a single individual, then it is the same trip.

    William Beebe says: “Every evening the butterfly goes to sleep in the same branch of the same tree. What guides the butterfly to its sleeping place? It is that locality sense plays the dominant part but it is equally certain that odour is important. If we watch a particular butterfly, say one with a distinctive tear in its wing, we might find that it alights on the same twig and even the same part of the twig on successive evenings. It is not uncommon to see an incoming melpomene or erato waken and drive away one of its fellows and take its place on the perch.” Beebe says “odour is important”. Is this a good answer to the problem of how does the butterfly finds its own branch in its own tree in its own forest? And how does a brainless insects keeps the memory of the right odour? And what does he mean by “locality sense”? A kind of map within its brain? Which brain? The Monarch, for instance, which travels from Canada to Mexico, a route of thousands of miles, does she has to have a map of the whole distance? Is it not easier to think in a travel backwards in time? Even a brainless insect can do that.

    The travelling backwards in time implies that the insect can relive each moment of whole route without the need of making any calculations, with any effort to remember, but just doing a revival of the previous sensations, especially of the last trip, to compensate for changes in the landscape. There is no need either for any “map”.

     Migrating animals, especially those with great capacity for travelling, no matter if they have or have not brains, do splendid things. They can go through thousands of miles, unerringly back and forth from and to the same places. Of course they follow landmarks: the sun, the moon, the stars, the magnetic field, mountains, lakes, rivers, woods, etc.. But that is parts of their memory, kept in there with no effort, as it is a reliving it.

    Konrad Lorenz says: “I know perfectly that my asseveration that old birds excel in recognizing a path could sound as an anthropomorphic interpretation of the fact. But after having corroborated by myself how fast and how securely my crows had found its way in a long traverse that they have been done one only time under my guidance, I am convinced that an old geese is able to recognize any place for feeding or resting from Lapland to the Danube’s delta. It is well known the astounding memory that those birds’ possess of all the sites they visit.”

    But the thing is that, if we expect that a man could do the same thing, even with a compass, he would hardly do that. Then, how an animal with no intelligence can accomplish those feats? The inheritance of habits and Locke’s time can explain this. The inheritance will give the animal the urge to leave, and the exact epoch to do it. It is a matter of numbers. If those which hang about in the same place during winter will fared worse than those which went south the best habit will finally prevail in the whole species, as loo as the interbreeding is possible.

     First it could have happened just by accident. Those which, by chance went South survived and those which stayed home fared badly. But then, why do they have to come back? A place could be very good for surviving, but very bad for nesting. If a place is very good for surviving in a certain epoch of the year it is good also for other animals, including predators. And many birds are totally helpless when moulting (shedding their feathers) or when incubating on bare land. So, if they can go back to his old place, that to which their species had been living and adapted to for countless generations, they will fare better that if they stayed in their winter quarters. The increased numbers will give the motive for travelling back and forth but, what about the means?

     If the inheritance of habits will give the motive, the means are given for the faculty inherent by Locke’s time. If they can go backwards in time and they depart at the same time of the year, they will find everything exactly in the same place: the position of the sun, the constellations, the winds, the snow in the mountains, the greenish of the forest, the level of the lakes or rivers, the currents of the air or sea (as in the case of salmons), etc.. If all atmospheric phenomena tend to repeats more or less same-wise year by year, and if the animal can remember, like the wasp, every landmark because they can see them again, in total recall, he surely will reach its destiny.

     My best analogy will be this: let’s suppose that Hansel and Gretel lived in Mexico City. One day, their wicked stepmother takes them for a walk, and all three walk for hours, amidst the worst neighbourhoods of the city, until they are in front of a bakery. Then the stepmother gives the kids a coin to buy some bread, and when thet are at it, she leaves in a cab. If Hansel can have a total recall, and if he remembers every house, every corner or odour along the whole route, he can travel easily backwards to his home. Later, if he liked the bread and wished to return to that bakery, he can follow backwards the route and find it. But he cannot change his destination, or travel at will across the big city. And for this he will need no map of the city in his head.

     There is a strong argument that seems to prove that what we have said happens in this way. I reckon that this is a lot easier to say it than to believe it, but its logic and is totally fool proof. Then, believe it or not, there it goes: If the time of Locke is real, and the animal makes a trip backwards in time, the point of departure and the point of arrival will surely be always the same, or at least for some generations, in the case that geographical areas could be changed significantly in a way to force the animal to follow a new route or to choose another places.

     Let say this again: if the animal is a cybernetic machine which moves back and forth in time, then it is obvious that it has to go from one place to the other and exactly back to the same place from which it departed initially, exactly as a pendulum does. Am I wrong? But this is exactly what happens. When migrating, an animal, especially those which are highly movable, as birds, does not just go from North to South in winter or vice versa in Sumer, looking for a best climate. They go from a very specific place to a very specific place.

     Atlantic salmon, when born in Sweden, after two or three years of feeding at sea, they go back to its nesting place. But, if they nest in Sweden they does not go just “up the stream” of the many the country has, but in each fork of the stream they will take just the branch that will lead them to its original nesting place. It has been said they do that by recognizing an “odour”. But the salmon starts its returning trip when they are thousands of miles away from Sweden. Does the odour goes that far? In the other hand, if, when the stage of the program changes to the phase of placing eggs, the salmon, by going backwards in time, will follow its archetypical images and will retrace the way with ease, remembering sea currents, temperatures, odours, salinity, etc., etc..

     Iceland common Puffins (fratércula arctica) will be born in a nest, a burrow in a hill. When capable of flying they will leave for two or three years, fishing, never touching land again, until they need the urge to breed. Then they will come back to its burrow in Iceland. As this is a volcanic land, an fresh eruption could have covered the burrow in the meanwhile. No matter that, the little bird localizes its old nest and lands there, only to get roasted.

     Australian’s Green Turtle can go from a reef located near an Island in the Coral Sea, which is her hereditary feeding area, to a beach in Australia to deposit her eggs. But not to any beach along the extensive littoral of Australia facing that Sea, but to one specific place, which do not seem to be any better than many other places. At the same time, another Australian Green Turtle has its migration in a reverse way: it feeds in a reef near an Australian beach and it goes to deposit her eggs to a beach of a Coral Sea Island. We can see that the same species of turtle has two different instinctive destinations for their movements back and forth. If mutations were the cause of their instincts, we have to suppose two lines of development of the mutations in a single species.

     But if instincts are gotten by Metaxú, by contact with their previous generations, then we can have easily two or more distinct migratory routes within the same species. The fixed destination places, at least while conditions remain the same, indicate that they are following a memory of a past travel route, either personal or ancestral.

     Now we have to examine an important problem: How does the two “times” (Metaxú and Exaíphnes) work accordingly? In an animal without a brain, Metaxú mostly belongs to the species. But the body moves in the Exaíphnes. How the body does adapt to it’s present circumstances, getting from the species personal memories?

     What I mean by this is: a wasp, when acting in automatic, is just copying a program of inherited actions which have been selected by its utility and put into a sequence by the inheritance of habits. But that program belongs to the species, and the wasp lives in an exact site Now. How do the species adapt to the individual?

    To be understood let me put it in this way: let´s suppose a wasp, whose species has not changed for 100 million years. By Metaxú the archetypical memories can go that far back. But, considering only the wasp which lives Now, Here, how can get she get her personal images, those which are not the same as the archetypical ones?

     In other words, in order to adapt the copy to its particular ambient we have to give him access to his own past. Not to the past of the species, but to its own particular circumstances. This is done in the following way:

    Exaíphnes is a point in the process of Copying a pattern or Model. And the copying implies a chain of sequentially coordinated, synchronized, automatic acts. But, in order to adapt itself to the “present” situation, the wasp has to leave, even if for a moment, its automatisms (which were designed in the past of the species) and “actualize” her actions in the Now. By constructing those “windows” in the chain of automatisms, the wasp can have access to personal memories: the site of the nest, its supply of food, the stage of its larvae, etc.

     Tinbergen has called this moment a “visit with empty hands”, and for the same thing, Lorentz has used the name “imprinting”. Both investigators, even if were friends, didn’t put together their minds in the subject. They did not identify their similarity and didn’t discover the true nature of both correspondent actions. Lorenz labeled the imprinting as a special kind memory which the animal “could never forget.” By imprinting in his “mind” a sound, a smell or a figure of his pup, seals, seagulls, penguins, etc., will find him amidst hundreds of others alike.

     They are “windows” in the instinctive chains of actions. Or we can say that they are actions which are totally personal, not automatic. By doing them, the animal goes back in time not to the species, but to its own life.

     This windows allows a sea gull to return to its own nest where awaits her own chicks, recognizing the site and the form, smell and cry of her chick, amongst thousands of others alike in a big colony; And the windows allows a mother seal to recognize its own pup in order to feed them, amongst hundreds of others pups. It is just a sound, a cry, a smell, which can be recalled in an absolute way, the one which leads the animals there.

     This kind of “animal memory” also exists in humans. Some people, often mentally incapacitated, exhibit it. We are talking of those persons called “savants”, which have absolute recalling. The savants, or idiotic geniuses, are “people with developmental delays of the brain, and/or brain injury, demonstrate profound and prodigious capacities and/or abilities far in excess of what would be considered normal. Almost all savants have prodigious memory of a special type, which can be described as very deep, but exceedingly narrow. It is wide in the sense that it is an exceptional memory, but that cannot to be put to any use.”

     If the metaxú can explain how a wasp, without a brain, will recognize its hidden burrow, which means that she could remember some characteristics of the terrain with absolute precision, then it also could explain why savants, many of them unable to care for themselves, have an absolute memory. In fact, explaining these cases was the initial purpose of Locke. If remembering requires no effort, and if a brainless insect can have absolute recalls, just by traveling itself backwards in time, then savants, which are more like animals than normal people are, have to show more frequently an absolute memory, not because they have “areas” of geniality amongst areas of stupidity (which is the common explanation, futile in a brain which works in an integral manner), but because they are stupid enough and cannot keep his mind focused in the Now, constructing a world in the Present tense.

     The reader should have been fully aware, by now, that we are trying to expose Lockes’s mechanism for memory. Of course, this explanation is totally against the present day theories for it. So, how firm are they?

     Alexander Romanovich Luria was a famous neurologist who also had his doubts regarding where was the memory located. According to Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, of great fame, there are two kind of neurons: the afferent neurons, otherwise known as “sensory” or receptor neurons, which carry nerve impulses from receptors or sense organs towards the central nervous system, and the efferent neurons, which carry the response of the associative neurons situated in the brain, which supposedly do the thinking, to the periphery, to the motor organs. Pavlov imagined the human brain as a “black box”, a place in which takes place our associations. The afferent neurons take sensorial information to the “black box” and the efferent neurons carry a response, once the information has been processed in the association areas. But Luria studied a patient, “Zazetsky”, with a big damage in the frontal-parietal area of his left hemisphere (being him a right handed man) who presented an important amnesia regarding his own life. He didn’t’ know who he was, where he lived, and he did not recognize even his closest relatives. But, when writing, memories of his past life came to him, only to disappear whenever he stopped writing. He wrote: “Writing is my only way for remembering.”

     Luria called to this way of remembering “motor analysis”. This analysis happens to piano and violin players, or when signing, singing or speaking. We all are familiar with the motor movements than we do to have recalls associated with those movements. Talking is a motor movement, but we are so accustomed to it than it passes unnoticed to us its close relationship between talking and thinking. Only when people handicapped which cannot talk, such as was the case of Helen Keller, we can see objectively that they need to move their hands (the Perkin’s Sign Language, in this case. After being in an almost animalistic state, or an idiot unable to talk, Keller, in 1904, at the age of 24, graduated from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

    Mark Twain, who visited her in her house, wrote that when Miss Keller walked the corridors of her house (which she knew very well and could walk through by memory) she was wriggling his fingers as if they were “a butterfly”, surely when she was talking to herself while she walked. This was a motor analysis at its most.

     What is the motor analysis? It is the acts that the wasps of Tinbergen did before leaving any of their several nests. It was its “signature”, the not-archetypical movements which will take them out of their instinctive actions, which belong to the past of the species, and situate the wasp in the Now of a single individual. Tinbergen called the “visit with empty hands”. Motor analysis is also a “signature” which could bring the “imprintings” of Lorenz, the “memories which could not be forgotten” to the present, to the exaíphnes. Any not-automatic movement, which surely do not belong to the species and can be adjudicated to a particular individual, is a motor analysis, and help to situate the species in the Now, giving a personal past to a Copy during the exaíphnes.

     Luria asked himself a question that we have not heard from any other researcher: “What is it which is actually localized in the brain?...The statement that the frontal lobe has some form of higher function cannot satisfy no one.. There is no evidence of isolated cerebral centres for any of the complex forms of mental thinking…many speaking defects can be compensate by active speech.. Internal speech is the main mechanism for mental calculations…Vygotsky, in 1934, said that thought is created in a verbal process…the motor area is not an effector, but an afferent apparatus, a special type of analyser.. Internal speech based in condensed verbal kinestesias is the mechanism responsible for the formation of complex mental actions… a patient, if he had to hold his tongue between his teeth said: “I cannot speak, everything is spinning around.. With my tongue held I cannot understand it.. I have read it, but I have not grasped anything…the patient’s difficulty in understanding was not due to a defect of memory, but to a disturbance in the process of internal analysis…we have to abandon the idea of perception as a passive process…it is a final stage of a complex investigatory activity…in which internal analysis plays a big role…In the ontogenic experience this complex process (perception) gradually becomes contracted and during the perception of well-established patterns it is converted into the condensed and almost instantaneous act which leads to the interpretation of visual perception as a simple and passive representation of an object…a change for motor scanning may compensate for the defect.”

     We should focus in the words of Luria: “the motor area is not an effector, but an afferent apparatus, a special type of analyser.” This was his conclusion, but he only stated this in his book “The human brain and psychological processes” (English translation: Harper and Row, New York, 1966.) I have several books of Luria and this conclusion is not stated in them and never was fully developed. In Russia you had to be careful, especially during the early fifties, when the book was written; and more if you are a Jewish doctor. Because you could be accused of anti-Russian activities. How more anti-Russian could you be than openly denying Pavlov?

     Because, if the frontal, motor area, is also an analyser, same as the dorsal, sensitive area, and if it is not an “effector”, but an “afferent apparatus”, then what happens to the “black box”, the associative area responsible for the higher functions? This function has to be located out of the brain, because there is no more sites left in there.

     And where does the “thinking” goes? To the “hole” of Locke, of course. Or to the Metaxú of Plato.

     Trusting the appearances has been a great mistake. But not trusting them will put Luria in front of a firing squad, or to others, to face discredit. Such is the power of dogma and this is why everybody has to agree with such irrational concepts. But not me. At least not me. And Locke, and Hume, and Kant and Parmenides.

     And, who else? If anyone wants to join the endeavour, I am at your service. Many things will have to change, many books will have to be rewritten, but that their fault. Eventually they would have to be changed. I think it was Maimonides who said: The truth does not get to be truer if everybody accepts it, not it get to be any less true if nobody accepts it. You have to take a decision on what theory is right. At least, if you want a tele-transporter built within a schedule of one or two years, at the most. Everything is ready. Others, in the distant past, had already done it and they left all the necessary theory. We have only to re-assemble it.

                                             

                                                                                                                                                        Respectfully yours:

                                                                                                                                                        Carlos Fuentes-Samaniego, M.D.