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A common Windows computer is always set up to recognize and
act upon a number of different file types representing perhaps
Word documents (.doc), Windows Media Player files (such as .wmv
movies), Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), web pages (such as .html), and many others depending on your preferences and
customizations. Each time the user adds a program to the computer,
the 'file association' list expands and so with the machine's
functionality.
If, say, a more exotic sound file type such as ".ogg"
or ".flac" is presented the machine will produce an
error message saying it cannot process the file. The
user can add another program which gives the
computer instruction on handling these new file types and so
on. Most computer users are familiar with this little dance.
The file associations collectively are labels for the
machine's internal "key ring" for opening
functionality as desired by the computer's user.
If the computer were a conscious being, that label set would
denote the machine's temporal aperture - its functional
opening through time. It is a mostly static temporal aperture
as it were and is visible on a Windows computer in Windows Explorer at
Tools -> Folder Options -> File Types. This may be
a more easily visualized view for the temporal aperture metaphor.
In a far more complex context, the human mind and body are
infused with an enormous number of associations.
"Association" is a
working
term in psychology. Associations constitute the vast
constructs we live by in the same way the computer's file
association list denotes its own functionality.
The association metaphors primarily address the local
life of the computer as with the internal life of the human mind and
body by analogy. However, for outside world connectivity the allied
network encryption key metaphor was used on page
16. This is a form of external association not
unlike the encryption key system used to connect a computer to
a wide area network such as the Internet The encryption key
associates a computer within that external network.
While the file associations are a local methodology, the
encryption key is a wider outside area mechanism just as with
the computer.
Our set of
available associations and keys denote our temporal aperture
extent. Much more interesting however are these cases at
boundaries and beyond.
Let's speculate on psi phenomena ("ESP") in this
context. It was proposed earlier that there is much incoming
data with which we can neither connect nor associate in the
computer sense. While the mechanoid computer may simply
present an error message on meeting an unsupportable
association, the more dynamic mind may attempt to provide the
nearest reasonable substitute. We can try proposed real world
examples.
Suppose a person were marginally but genuinely clairvoyant.
There was a recent tragic prison fire in the Dominican
Republic where more than 100 persons died. Our
hypothetical person was startled to get a remote clairvoyant
viewing of this. However, the image took the form of a
dreamlike fire in a 19th century Old West jail house. It was a
realistic and disturbing psi event. However, the connection to
the actual prison fire was poorly formed. It turns out
that our example person is often absorbed with enjoying
Western serials and movies, and so their mind presented the
nearest association it had on hand to the actual remote view
as clairvoyantly experienced. In this scenario, the mind
was not unlike a
MIDI controlled musical instrument that produces an
output derived from its sound sample database. Another
instrument may get the same MIDI data stream, but it's
audible output will have a different timbre due to a
different internal sound database.
Similarly there could have been an
unsung example where during the September 11, 2001 attack an
American Indian thousands of miles away had a fleeting vivid
image of a huge eagle flying into a window and thereby dying
in a large splattered mess. The hypothetical Indian had a
clairvoyant vision, but given incomplete "data"
their mind substituted imagery from own personal experience
and concerns rather than a literal video style movie of the
event. Again, our MIDI instrument analogy.
Consider the not uncommon experience
where in a face-to-face conversation, one suddenly knows
exactly what the other person will say next. In this instance
both persons are immediately sharing the experience of a
conversation, and both minds are on the topic. Hence there may
be a much greater odds that the ESP experience will be
literal. It is proposed that the further the separation
in time, space, and experience, the less likely a given psi
event will have literal - easily understood -
content.
In other words, our own psychological
associations and keys that are reasonably accurate in common
everyday experience may gradually fail to provide literal
meaning as incoming "data" becomes more removed from
local or immediate experience. The larger and therefore more
inclusive one's temporal aperture surround extent may be, the
larger the acceptance of psi events in more remote time,
space, and experience.
The bottom line is proposed to be that
the mind's association and key collections provide
functionality on a continuum of time, space, and experience
unlike the computer example where the machine either works or
it doesn't. Therefore the more inclusive a given mind is
- larger temporal aperture, the more likely it can accurately
cognize remote psi experiences from which a statistically average person
could never derive any meaning.
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