How does consciousness change as it shifts from green to teal and turquoise and indigo altitudes? Consciousness researches often say that the mode of cognition becomes more oriented to “vision logic”. While searching online today, I found this 1999 e-mail by Thomas Jordan helpfully summarizing Ken Wilber’s thought like so:

In the Atman Project (ch 7), Wilber doesn’t use the word “vision-logic”, but talks quite extensively about “high fantasy” or “vision-image.” He talks about it as integration of the primary and the secondary processes (non-verbal imagination and verbal thinking). The authors he cites are a different set in relation to authors cited in later works. After Atman Project, Wilber seems to have oriented the concept “vision-logic” away from imagination and towards the perspectives developed in cognitive-developmental literature. This literature talks about postformal development in terms of dialectical and systematic reasoning (formal operations=rational thinking; postformal operations=beyond rational thinking)…

An example I’ve heard Ken Wilber use is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous speech “I have a dream…” Simply put, King saw the world in a different way from most people. He saw possibilities, he inspired change, he visioned the arising tensions presaging future reconciliations in the world order. Vision logic is when a dream is not just a dream, but a profound grasping of the world as it truly is, a more harmonious and unified whole than meets the average person’s eye.

Today I also stumbled upon a fantastic example of vision logic insight. In “Brazil: The Black President Before Obama” , Jose Murilo Junior describes the uncanny visions of a 1928 Brazilian science-fiction writer. Here are a few of the stunning visions …

The sweeping Obama phenomenon has caught Brazil, and it comes as no surprise in the country with the world’s largest population of African descendants. Blogs are commenting on all things Obama, from his stand on ethanol to the ‘rumors‘ of his appraisal of Brazil’s free software policies. An especially notable thread is the one reporting on the resurgence of a weirdly interesting 1928 Brazilian sci-fi novel — ‘The Black President’ — that predicted a US election matching a black, a feminist, and a conservative candidate in the then remote year of 2228….

‘The Black President’ is a scary book. Frightening in many ways. Firstly, by the prescient character of the piece. In 1926, Lobato forecasts the invention of a kind of data radio transmission that would make it possible for human beings to accomplish their tasks from their home, without having to relocate to work. He also anticipates the disappearance of the printing press, for the news will be “radiated” directly to the houses of the individuals and will appear in bright letters on a screen — exactly how it is happening with whoever is reading this very text. [It is] in one modern word — the Internet. But the premonitions don’t stop there. By the time he was moving to the US as commercial attaché at the Brazilian embassy, Monteiro Lobato foresaw the election of a black president in the US. The specific political moment in the year of 2228 that bore such a situation would be due to the split that occurred in the white race, between a candidate from the Masculine Party (Kerlog) and a candidate from the Feminine Party (Evelyn Astor). The neo-feminist Evelyn Astor has the victory almost guaranteed, but then the black leader Jim Roy surges and ends up being elected President. The Black President. A Scary Book - Acerto de Contas

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.

Technorati Tags: Brazil, cognition, consciousness, indigo, integral, Ken Wilber, Obama, politics, prophecy, sci-fi, teal, turquoise, vision-logic

Michael Petrelis is outraged (but not shocked) at the latest evidence that the Human Rights Campaign, the gay rights lobby, seems to have put all its eggs in the Hillary Clinton basket. He writes:

FEC records show which 2008 Democratic contenders were lucky enough to take in dollars from the top people at HRC:

Hillary Clinton: $4,300
Chris Dodd: $3,000
John Edwards: $ 750
Bill Richardson: $ 500
Barack Obama: $ 0

Commenters make a good case that Petrelis is letting an anti-HRC bias show. First, he neglects to search the FEC records for the HRC’s Board of Directors. Second, he neglects to mention that the FEC doesn’t track donors who give less than a few hundred dollars. It may well be true that the HRC missed its chance at securing influence with Obama at a time of political risk (during the primary season), but Petrelis’s case isn’t rock solid.

If it’s true that the HRC missed its opportunity to curry favor with the Obama campaign, then I think that decision is political negligence. It’s a foolish gamble that will cost the organization — and may cost the entire gay rights movement — leverage with the future Democratic administration. Petrelis reports (hilariously) that the HRC was so unmoved by Obama’s victory that it actually gave the task of reporting its official endorsement to a college intern. Not an encouraging sign.

Technorati Tags: Gay, HRC, Petrelis

You know that same-sex couples have begun to marry in California. At Spirit Under Transsexual Cover, Colin writes:

Remarkably, transgender people also win this week. The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) reported today that the American Medical Association passed a resolution [PDF] calling for the removal of exclusions to health insurance that unfairly target the transgender population. Such exclusions prevent people from receiving medical care related to “Gender Identity Disorder,” the beloved moniker assigned by the American Psychiatrists Association in the DSM…

These are small victories that seem to affect only a small percentage of the population; what we see here, though, is an example of the continued evolution of human consciousness.

Technorati Tags: consciousness, Gay, GLBT, transgender

“I hate diversity workshops,” Michelle Obama tells the New York Times. “Real change comes from having enough comfort to be really honest and say something very uncomfortable.”

According to the profile, when Michelle has had to navigate the tumultuous waters of race relations, she has sometimes taken the approach of “dialing up the heat before turning it down.”

But as her husband’s presidential campaign continues, there are those who would like to mute the discussion of race.

Technorati Tags: Obama, race

Lakshmi Tatma, the “baby born with eight limbs”, is walking and thriving. The Indian child gives a human face to an unusual and, some would say, divinely inspired condition. From a scientific, rational perspective, the existence of such a child is unproblematic: she suffers from a birth defect. But from a mythic perspective, could the existence of such a child (say, thousands of years ago) have inspired the imagery of countless gods and goddesses?

Technorati Tags: goddesses, gods, Hindu, India

It seems that coffee is a simple, natural, and legal inhalant that can alter a person’s state of consciousness. Scientists have determined that you can stimulate your brain without caffeine or calories by just smelling coffee.

Technorati Tags: books, brain, coffee

The new DaVinci Code movie has been banned from filming in Roman churches. The Vatican’s reason? The film doesn’t conform to “common religious sentiment.” No word on whether the film conforms to uncommon religious sentiment.

Technorati Tags: Catholic, movies