KB: However because of the special problems of evolution we should nevertheless regard the real field as subordinate in importance to a virtual field. I believe this is because the primary problem in evolution is to turn change into information.

LCK: From my understanding of morphic (or morphogenetic) fields, they’re informational as well as energetic in nature. I remember you telling me years ago that you were walking in the woods one day and had an epiphany that everything in nature was a hologram of everything else. If that’s so (and I think it is), then morphic fields would be the data bank for all behavior and evolution, past, present, as well as future poetentials. Meanwhile, I don’t see how a virtual field could in any way affect actual physical behavior. There is no virtual tail-wagging, virtual leash-biting, virtual squirrel chasing, or virtual peeing on fire hydrants.

KB: in order to [turn change into information], the animal mind must be set up so that the emotional energy the individual projects onto objects of attraction, reflects back to it so that ultimately this mirroring process will render them emotionally different from each other … and yet complementary to each other. In this state, they are governed by the laws of physics rather than in terms of an evolutionary history (genes) as overwhelmingly strong as this can be, or individual life experiences (habits of mind) as overwhelmingly powerful as this can be. Therefore it’s just as if the animal is an object of mass in a gravitational field invested with an inherent momentum that then due to the interaction evolves into electromagnetic energy so that they can connect with other. Sociability is a recapitulation of the unified field. (And it might even be that there is no unified field, other than how it exists virtually within the domain of animal consciousness.)

LCK: I understand the idea of virtual gravity — it’s just as if the animal is an object of mass — but again I don’t see how a virtual form of energy or anything else could affect physical behavior. What’s wrong with just calling it emotional gravity? From what I understand there are still many, many questions to be answered about what gravity is and how and why it works. There’s string theory, torsion physics, and more. So while the general consensus in the minds of most people is that mass = gravity, that may not be the whole story. Is the behavior of a black hole due to its enormous mass or its enormous energy, or both? On a certain level aren’t mass and energy the same thing? If emotion can be stored in the body as electro-chemical energy, why does it have to be virtual?

KB: Another way of saying this is that the nature of information is to guarantee that organisms interact in order to render sociability, this process being most visible in the nature of dogs. If animals went primarily by a real field and were exclusively telepathic, they would be infallible from the point of view of their individual self-interests and it would be hard if not impossible for individual motivation to be fundamentally dedicated to turning-change-into-information in service to the network.

LCK: I don’t think a real, rather than a virtual, field would have to be in complete control of anything. It would be part of the feedback/tuning mechanism, acting both as a template and a potential catalyst.

KB: Yes telepathy makes sense. However I believe that in terms of the virtual field, for the most part, dogs pick up our feelings over time as our emotional currents slowly play out through our actions as we come and go here and there, as if we are a transmitter putting out a radio wave with a frequency many miles (and years) wide and moving in super slow motion. So we have an immediate-moment degree of emotional conductivity that dogs pick up in an instant, perhaps they even see it in our aura but also I believe in our body language. But this internal state can fluctuate minute by minute, hour by hour, and I believe what’s more important is that we are semi-conductors that over the long term these fluctuations play themselves out in order to render larger currents.

LCK: Telepathy doesn’t of itself control anything. It simply gives the animal mind access to one stream of information, emotion: tele/distant, pathy/feeling. So it’s just one part of a very real, not virtual, communications system.

Certainly the idea that dogs might be able see the human aura (something I hadn’t thought about till now) might explain how dogs are able to “sense” when someone is sick or dying. It might only be part of the puzzle.

But when you talk about fluctuations in internal states, and that we’re semi-conductors; I don’t see that as virtual, but very real, but from a purely emotional angle.

KB: In the long term, the decryption occurs from being immersed in our currents, as if the dog is dealing with a code nested within a code. For example, it takes my dog about eight years to pick up and then manifest my deepest stuff. Never fails. So the question we have to ask is what is the purpose of feelings from the evolutionary point-of-view? In my view it’s not primarily about point to point communication, but rather turning change-into-information. For this reason telepathy does not prove to be particularly therapeutic when it comes to training or solving most dog behavioral problems.

LCK: I agree that it’s not very practical to try to communicate telepathically to a dog who’s scared of thunderstorms not to worry, that “everything’s going to be okay,” or to telepathically tell a dog to sit (though I’ve done that, accidentally). Telepathy is just one informational stream. The question is, why is it there?

At any rate, if the purpose of feelings is to turn change into information — and I’m not sure that’s the whole story; I think feelings motivate an animal to take action, they create tension but they can also create, or at least foster, harmony –, then I would have to say that since telepathy is a normal biological function in animals (and in some humans if they can turn off their brains and tune into their gut feelings), it must play some role in doing all that.

KB: I believe that once the cells of the body are aligned around the heart and that the heart has effected the environment as a virtual field: then the telepathic can come into play and be part of the emotional dynamic.

LCK: You’re right, except that I don’t think it’s a virtual field. Plus not every dog owner (or dog trainer) has enough “heart” to stimulate such changes in their dog’s energy field. (Meanwhile, it took Freddie less than 24 hours to tap into my stuff; I just wasn’t paying very close attention until after I’d read Natural Dog Training.)

KB: The balance imperative is invoked anytime output (behavior) doesn’t equal input (stimulation)… This is the body/minds’ means of dissipating energy in order to satisfy the balance mandate which is the tuning component of animal consciousness as an auto-tuning/feedback dynamic in order to implement the ever present principle of emotional conductivity by which any two organisms differentiate relative to each other. … the balance imperative is always just below the surface moderating its conductive capacity.

LCK: I know you’ve spent a lot more time working out these ideas than I have. I’m more or less riding on your coat tails, so to speak (though I have been thinking along parallel lines for a long time). I was also smart enough to understand that the dominance and behavioral science paradigms were flawed, and was just lucky enough to be looking for a new model of dog training that worked, and found it in Natural Dog Training. (I was also lucky enough that the first dog I tried it with reflected all his aggressive energy back to me in the form of “obedience,” which was, frankly, so thrilling it became one of the most amazing experiences of my life.) And I agree that there’s an engine and a steering wheel, if you will, in canine behavior. And I agree that the solar plexus is the driving mechanism and that the brain does the steering, and that as a whole this is a tuning/feedback loop. I also agree that maintaining one’s balance, both physically and emotionally, are important characteristics of canine behavior, and that when either the driving mechanism or the steering wheel are out of whack, that’s one way that problem behaviors develop.

It just seems to me that when you describe the need for balance in terms of the “fear of falling,” and relate it back to a puppy’s experiences of being knocked down by his littermates, there’s a subtle implication, at least for me, that the dog is “thinking” about this stuff. “If I’m not careful I might fall…” It’s too linear for me.

If two animals feel a combination of attraction and resistance, and one can see that playing out in how they interact, where does the fear of falling come into it? They may be looking for ways to achieve internal balance, both physically and emotionally, but neither is afraid of suddenly falling down, which is what I think is being implied.

KB: I don’t believe that a binary system of on/off is enough to constitute information in animal consciousness because the fundamental issue is that energy must be made to reflect back on itself in the animal’s mind so that they become different yet complementary. So if two beings are both in a real electrostatic field, there’s no guarantee they will perceive it in an organized way that complements the others’ perspective. It must be a virtual field so that their minds will be collectively organized.

LCK: We have different ideas of what binary means. Yes, in computers it’s on or off. In consciousness Eros (life, sex, and creativity) and Thanatos (aggression, conflict, death wish); they oppose and compliment each other. Besides, for any change to take place — any real, lasting change, that is — there has to be a third force acting on the first two, the way a catalyst is necessary for a chemical reaction to take place.

I also don’t think morphic fields are electrostatic in nature.

KB: So hunger and balance are always inter-relating so that the animal’s mind always functions as a semiconductor so that simple binary logic can be implemented but always in response to the emotional climate that the dog perceives itself as being in. So just as two objects can’t be in the same place at the same time because they have physical mass, two animals can’t perceive each other exactly the same because they have emotional mass as a result of resistance experienced in terms of emotion as the confluence of hunger and balance. When A goes forward out of hunger, it will effect B’s balance circuitry. And then when B needs grounding via its hunger circuitry and goes toward A, this will trigger A’s balance circuitry. They will evolve to be mirror images and the virtual gravitational field will evolve into a virtual electromagnetic field.

LCK: I agree with everything you said except your use of the words virtual and hunger circuitry. (Note: I have no problem with balance circuitry.)

KB: If the little-brain-in-the-gut can apprehend preyful aspects from visual input, then the hunger circuitry is engaged and this is the primary function of sexual energy.

LCK: Again I agree with everything except the use of the word “hunger.” Eros and Thanatos are the two sides to sexual energy. In Darwinian terms the urge to reproduce is worth nothing without a commitment to protect one’s young at (nearly) any cost. So sex and aggression are just two different forms of the same energy; one is creative, the other destructive. The two may co-exist, though, so they’re not binary in computer terms. Again, this is your theory; I’m just along for the ride. (And I’m just using Freud’s terms as a way of explicating what I mean by binary, or opposites, as opposed to on/off; I don’t think they should be foundational to your theory all.) But it seems to me that if you want to reduce this to its purest essence, neither hunger nor ingesting are the right words, just as “fear of falling” isn’t quite right.

I would say that fear and desire should do the trick, or perhaps instinct and drive. That’s because in the auto-tuning/feedback loop the nervous system is the safety mechanism (fear/balance) while the gut is the driving mechanism (desire/hunger). The third force is probably the morphic field.

LCK