Bo Atkinson
4th February 2012, 22:00
I have seen Tesla attributions which seemed vague and not searchable online. The full copy-able text of this article is on line: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/res/res_art10.html (This quote seems identical to my paper book containing articles by Tesla, published in 1956 by Nikola Tesla Museum).
The full 1915 article is quite remarkable and titled "How Cosmic Forces Shape Our Destinies"... However some parts are difficult to integrate with one's own immediate thoughts. Nevertheless Tesla is worthy of closer study and reflection.
Start Quote-
1. The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.
2. There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.
3. It is not true, as Descartes taught, that the brain is an accumulator. There is no permanent record in the brain, there is no stored knowledge. Knowledge is something akin to an echo that needs a disturbance to be called into being.
4. All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.
5. Contrary to the most important tenet of Cartesian philosophy that the perceptions of the mind are illusionary, the eye transmits to it the true and accurate likeness of external things. This is because light propagates in straight lines and the image cast on the retina is an exact reproduction of the external form and one which, owing to the mechanism of the optic nerve, can not be distorted in the transmission to the brain. What is more, the process must be reversible, that in to say, a form brought to consciousness can, by reflex action, reproduce the original image on the retina just as an echo can reproduce the original disturbance If this view is borne out by experiment an immense revolution in all human relations and departments of activity will be the consequence.
End Quote
My Thoughts--
This automaton-characterization could fit with theories of soul-less-ness. It might even allow for a gradient from really clunky-machine-like-people on upwards through highly evolved and refined souls.... The soul evolution implying more involved memory-experience levels, archetypes .... Not to forget additional needs to explain one's concepts of the veil or matrix.... Tesla's words might sound a bit too mechanistic for most people, but actually #4 above, could apply various to types of perception, (not exclusively the common form of human vision).
The full 1915 article is quite remarkable and titled "How Cosmic Forces Shape Our Destinies"... However some parts are difficult to integrate with one's own immediate thoughts. Nevertheless Tesla is worthy of closer study and reflection.
Start Quote-
1. The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.
2. There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.
3. It is not true, as Descartes taught, that the brain is an accumulator. There is no permanent record in the brain, there is no stored knowledge. Knowledge is something akin to an echo that needs a disturbance to be called into being.
4. All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.
5. Contrary to the most important tenet of Cartesian philosophy that the perceptions of the mind are illusionary, the eye transmits to it the true and accurate likeness of external things. This is because light propagates in straight lines and the image cast on the retina is an exact reproduction of the external form and one which, owing to the mechanism of the optic nerve, can not be distorted in the transmission to the brain. What is more, the process must be reversible, that in to say, a form brought to consciousness can, by reflex action, reproduce the original image on the retina just as an echo can reproduce the original disturbance If this view is borne out by experiment an immense revolution in all human relations and departments of activity will be the consequence.
End Quote
My Thoughts--
This automaton-characterization could fit with theories of soul-less-ness. It might even allow for a gradient from really clunky-machine-like-people on upwards through highly evolved and refined souls.... The soul evolution implying more involved memory-experience levels, archetypes .... Not to forget additional needs to explain one's concepts of the veil or matrix.... Tesla's words might sound a bit too mechanistic for most people, but actually #4 above, could apply various to types of perception, (not exclusively the common form of human vision).