THE OMICS OF THE SACRED

Among the many new disciplines that are born daily is that of “omics” -- which has many subcategories:  the genome (the twirly links of chromosomes with our basic plans on them that is contained in each of our cells except the red blood cells) , the epigenome (which is a kind of sleeve around each gene that can turn individual pairs on or off), the proteome (the molecules that the previous “omes” produce constantly), and the connectome (the zillions of connections among the neurons of the body which collect and sort the sensorium of the body (much more than the five senses).   The sensorium is the interface with whatever is outside of the body.

This is vid is about the connectome as explained by a charismatic scientist, a description which in this case is not an oxymoron.  http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung.html  

The connectome of neurons and floating molecules give us the bodily responses we call “emotions.”  This is the music of the body: we sing with feelings.

Deep experience is a “felt” phenomemon, a whole-body function.  The neural system has grown over the millennia into a cumulative complex of interacting functions and structures, roughly in historical order: the spine, the knob at the top of the spine, the basic body operating structure (the reptile brain), the mid-brain that interfaces with emotion (mammalian), up to the rumpled sheet of neurons under the skull that we call the cerebral cortex.  Behind the forehead in humans are tiny structures, some of them only a scatter of cells, that by mirroring (causing your body to imitate in a faint way what they see in other beings) gives us access to the inner lives of other beings.

The premise I hypothesize is that it is the connectome of deep experience, both the physical connections of neurons and their ability to remember, is the source of the sacred/the holy.  The rituals, liturgies and ceremonies of institutional religion try to create and reinforce their own connectome, but the capacity can be sourced anywhere.  Artists work with the phenomenon through their individual and cultural access to the sensorium of their own bodies.

A connectome is a physical phenomenon that can now be detected by instruments but not produced that way.   It is a product of thought and emotion.  In the past the technology of the connectome has been a matter of inner reflection, conditioned triggers, and sometimes just chance confluence of environmental forces or possibly ingestion of substances.  The content of a deep experience connectome is whatever the sensorium has gathered from the outside world whether nature, nurture or intimacy.

This last statement is where I began an attempt to discover what happens and to provide occasions that trigger deep experience.  The particular art in which my thought is rooted is acting, specifically the Method in all its splendid varieties and off-shoots, because the Method is a way of managing the connectome to access the psychological and cultural world of the character.  Whether it was a heaven or a hell for the character, it created an inner world by compliance or resistance.  In a sense, a play or movie or video or even a painting or song, are connectomes produced with the intention of triggering something like that same pattern in the performer and thus, though mirror cells, the viewer.

We live in a time of challenging chaos.  The cultural constructs of the world -- not just the content but also the styles and methods -- are competing.  In addition to the biomes that used to offer the content of cultures -- whether desert or sea islands or jungle or grasslands -- now we must integrate a landscape of intergalactic star nurseries, black holes and clashing quasars.  At the same time add all the National Geographic landscapes of black fumaroles under the sea, the traffic of blood in our bodies, the constant danger of biological particles that threaten our existence, teeny filaments, spirals and depth charges.

The invention of nations is only a few hundreds of years old -- we are still wired for tribes.  Awareness of famine and geological catastrophe is still growing -- some of us trying to wall it out and others trying to counter it with plastic tarps and sacks of grain.  Individuals still turn against their children and the nations themselves choose which people will live and which to ignore to death, all by manipulating resources.

We seek relief and re-energizing through deep experience, each in our own way.  Some will capitalize on that search by promising contact with some other realm and some will feel that they have achieved it.  Some sources will promise eternal existence, ultimate protection, but human life is built on risk rather than freezing in place.  Some will provide rules for behavior, a ready-made moral connectome that might be of true value, so long as the circumstances stay the same, but what if it doesn’t?  (It won't.)  What if the rule that would have saved your life only a few decades ago will now shrink and distort you, or maybe just eliminate you?  (It has.)

Institutional religion is built on grouped individuals and works best if it is congruent with the consensus culture of a broad area, an ecotome.  Some institutional religions work pretty well even if they move to a whole new context, but most of them buckle and crack and diminish.  When that happens, the institution tries to build a new consensus that works or maybe splinter groups form and leave.  If the institution becomes a bully and tries to force inquisitions and purifications, the consequences become lethal for many individuals  There can never be a return to what was before.  

In the US we try to blunt this by preventing institutional government from using institutional religion as a weapon.  One way to do it is to build a consensus of artistically symbolized connectome called “patriotism.”  Flags, bands, parades, commemorations, and armies that the religious institutions are used to standing with as mutual reinforcement -- supplying chaplains in combat and sonorous prayers at events.  We don’t know how to manage multiple sources of spirituality.  TMI.  No proper sorting categories or even enough experience.  What do we put on the headstones of soldiers who are patriotic but not conventionally religious when the realm of death is usually managed by religion?  What do we do about headstones at Arlington when people choose to be cremated?  (See below.)

Science appears to be a source of relief, not beholden to either country or religion.  NEITHER.  But it is still captured by money and pinched by both national and religious forces.  Science is not a contradiction to art -- it IS an art, and art IS science.  They are an interpenetration.   Both are in pursuit -- through the connectomes of the sensorium -- of constructs that address our humanness.  

Science tells us that our sensorium is the way our bodies manage both memory and hope, indexing what we know by tagging events with the weather that day, the smell of the room, the tension of our muscles, the song in our ears.  This is the actor’s Method, to deliberately kindle their own sensorium in a way that makes their personal connectome echo that of the artistic creation that is the character they portray.  And this is also the method of leaders, who hope to create a deep experience in others that will cause them to follow.  Not because someone is holding a gun on them or withholding meds they need, but because their inner being is connected to the outer world of others.

Here are your current choices for a headstone symbol at Arlington National Cemetery.