GRGR(7)-Points of Light : Outside/Inside

[David Morris]

Trying to recap/regroup some of the points from that last post from
"David&/orJane" (me) re. "Points of Light," which was all over the map,
but purposely so, grasping for those connections:

Those Points of Light are the patterns of on/off lights on the brain's
cortex.  Their sequences can be read, signified, but they appear
different, signify different things, depending on whether the are seen
from the Outside or Inside.  When Pointsman dreams of the dancing white
light, it is as if he's viewing it from Inside his brain.  The change in
the pattern is disturbing, because it _means_ something, but what?
Roland, who had also studied those lights, is all disoriented when he
"crosses over" and sees them from the "other side."

Main Entry: cerebral cortex
Function: noun
Date: 1926
: the surface layer of gray matter of the cerebrum that functions
chiefly in coordination of sensory and motor information 

For Pavlov the cortex, the surface, is all important.  He understood it
as the organ of perception.  It "interprets" the data coming from
without, then to be "stored" inside, creating a "world" within.
Pathology occurs when the switches short-circuit and create a "crazy"
world within.  In order to CONTROL the subject, alter his perception of
reality (and his responses to stimuli based on that perception), one
need only tinker with those surface wires and switches.

Selena warns against Control:  It is an illusion to view Outside and
Inside as separate.  They are parts of a continuum.  The brain is not a
machine to be tinkered with.  When we do so, we are messing with
ourselves.

Another aside:
When Blicero talks of embracing the change, might he mean viewing the
world from the other side?  Which other side?  Death?  The
Ultraparadoxical? Any others?

David