The Negative Equals Access to the Positive

Animal consciousness is a tension/release dynamo. Tension is energy, its manner of acquisition and release is information. Release from a uniform state of tension is the experience of emotion.
Animals are at all times attracted to that which can release tension and conduct emotion, but before they can go forward, the “negative” (a point on which to focus) has to be “defined” by which I mean perceived as a point of access to the positive. In other words, the negative has to be held in mind simultaneously with the positive as if they are two poles on the same continuum, thereby completing a circuit.
Every mammal has two brains, the Big-Brain-in-the-head (central nervous system), and the little-brain-in-the-gut (enteric nervous system). Each brain operates from a different agenda and this creates tension. For example, the Big-Brain seeks stasis, for things to stay the same. It equates unfamiliar stimuli with danger as its primary concern is balance. External circumstances must fit within familiar parameters before it will execute an action and so it demands a “point” of equilibrium so that an action can unfold on stable footing. This fixation ensures survival. Meanwhile in opposition, the little-brain seeks constant input. It is always in flux and craves fluidity. It equates stasis with blockage and change with ingestion because its primary concern is process. This ensures growth. Both nervous systems produce electrochemical energy and in animal consciousness serve as opposite terminals of the body/mind, a biological action potential that stores energy as tension and then releases it as action, just like a battery powering a device (not to mention informing the action).

While only the Big-Brain can flex muscle, tendon, bone and move the body around, either brain can supply motive and they can combine to render a range of settings as a complex motive that can fall at one end of a spectrum to another. When a dog is wholly motivated via a Big-Brain orientation, actions are implemented to achieve immediate stabilization. In this mode, change is perceived as “bad.” At the opposite end of the spectrum when a dog is acting via a little-brain orientation, it is concerned with the experience of being-in-process rather than attaining equilibrium. In this modality, change is perceived as “good.” In the Big-Brain balance frame of reference, a moment of change is experienced as pressure and this makes the dog feel separate from its surroundings. In the little-brain hunger frame of reference, change is experienced as potential and the dog feels a positive pull to its surroundings. Below the function of supplying motive, the counterbalancing function of the two nervous systems in juxtaposition to produce tension is more vital and fundamental a role than either the Big-Brain’s neurological function or the little-brain’s digestive function. This built-in contradiction inherent in a two brain makeup renders a dynamic state of tension diffused uniformly throughout the body.
Therefore emotion is a “force” of attraction, the more tension released; the stronger the force of attraction. Release from tension is the number one “hunger” in animal consciousness and is the underlying motive to all behavior. Even eating food is fundamentally an act of resolving tension more than it being an act of nourishment.

To digress a moment the most important thing to understand about animal behavior is that the two brains are reconciled through the hunger circuitry. When a stimulus can be ingested, either into the body or into the mind, and without upsetting the parameters of balance, both brains have their specific mandates satisfied and the animal perceives that it is safe to go toward the object of attraction (things feel right because it can proceed and remain up-right). The energies of both brains can confluence and be transmitted into a physical action that makes the individual feel released from a uniform sense of tension, but only the hunger circuitry (this necessarily involves the Big-Brain but that doesn’t make it the source of the resulting behavior even though it executed the action) can be the reconciling mechanism. The reason hunger has evolved to be the reconciling mechanism in animal consciousness is because the predator/prey dynamic is the oldest relationship between living beings and solves two basic problems of every animal’s evolution, what is danger and what is food. All other relationships from parent/offspring; breeding partners, or between social peers, evolved from and are therefore based upon this primordial platform.
However, because complex things (as opposed to simple food items) cannot be directly ingested into the body and easily reconciled through the hunger circuitry, therefore a more complex manner of reconciliation is available via a third frame of reference, the heart. The heart is the preeminent organ of tension and release in the body given its mechanical action of pumping blood. This powerful muscle of contraction and release radiates a uniform sense of pressure throughout the body via veins, arteries and capillaries. The heart beats out a constant sequence of tensionreleasetensionreleasetensionrelease which the animal mind in an emotionally conductive moment construes as flow, i.e. a sustained apprehension of release.

Therefore, if when dealing with a complex situation or stimulus, an individual can subliminally focus on its heart while simultaneously focusing on the object of attraction, it can thereby apprehend a uniform sense of tension and a persistent impression of release and this feeling of flow renders a sense of wholeness, well-being and resonance with everything in its surroundings. As long as the individual can hold onto a sense of a uniform state of tension this affords a feeling the time to elaborate into its higher reaches of a multi-party state of synchronization. When interacting with complex things, such as animals and especially others of its own kind, the mechanical action of the heart pumping blood is a physical statement of bipolar satisfaction. The uniform pressure is always there since the heart is always pumping blood; the question is whether or not the animal can “tune in” to this internal statement of reconciliation when displaced by a change in its perceptual environment. This capacity segregates species of organisms into their respective niches and specialized network functions.
In this heightened state of attention, a uniform diffusion of tension as the basis of consciousness makes the body/mind a displaceable medium that “vibrates” with neuro-chemical energy at both poles (Big and little brain) when disturbed. Every perception of change, even internal physical states such as hunger, causes a displacement of the prevailing state of tension and this generates neuro-chemical energy in both brains. The animal mind is a self-charging psycho-somatic battery with two terminals, to repeat, one end of the organism is a pole that ionizes towards output in favor of stasis while the other end is a pole that ionizes towards input in favor of change. (Perceptually this means that the Big-Brain is fixated on form; whereas the little-brain discerns essence within the form.) Subliminal attention on the heart will turn sensory input into a uniform sense of tension in the animal’s mind.

This ultimately means that any two animals can communicate and potentially connect if they can both apprehend a uniform state of tension in the other, and this can only happen if they can apprehend a uniform state of release within their own body, i.e. if they can reference their heart. To do this, they must calculate the negative as a point of access to the positive by sensing the object of attractions’ center mass. This requires that the animal must be able to hold in mind simultaneously and in equal juxtaposition the positive preyful aspect of what it’s attracted to with its predatory aspect, typically the eyes. Another way of saying this is that the individual must be able to transpose its emotional battery onto a complex form in order to perceive it as a Being and thereby be able to compute a coherent response by way of becoming its emotional counterbalance so that ultimately they can both act in accord with the principle of emotional conductivity, with this being in service to the underlying network agenda. Unless an animal deals with a complex object of resistance (in this case the car) as its emotional counterbalance, then it doesn’t have a point of access and in the interaction and if it is not able to synchronize it will end up acquiring more charge than it is able to discharge and ends up feeling more incomplete than before the interaction. Therefore there is an inborn inclination to conform to the principle of emotional conductivity if an individual is endowed with the capacity to do so. The net effect of this calculus is that the eyes of the being become the pivot point around which a sense of a stable footing feels ensured.
Because of this constitutional makeup on which a “psychology” is predicated, this means that release for one constitutes release for the other. This will then prove to be the basis of a subsequent sociability because this will motivate them to align around a common object of release so as to find mutual satisfaction for their attraction to each other since when there is subliminal attention on the heart one can’t find release unless their counterpart finds release. If a dog can “tune into” its heart, it will forge a bond and cooperative relationships as it seeks to align around a common object of attraction that can absorb and reconcile their combined energies. This more complex understanding of the nature of Drive explains why the criticisms of Drive as being inadequate to explain complex behavior are in error. Drive compels organisms toward the path of highest resistance (via the principle of emotional conductivity as well as toward a feeling of attunement with complex objects and a coordinated style of being deflected onto a common object of attraction) rather than the pursuit of simple pleasures. Drive is fundamentally about achieving a state of resonance and the highest expression of this compulsion is the human drive to experience beauty as a means of feeling resonant with the surroundings.

Neotony And Sexuality
However if it is true that every animal experiences emotion as the release from tension, and given that every mammal has a heart, why has only the dog become integrated into human society?
The fundamental distinction between species of animal is how much tension their body/mind as an emotional battery can accommodate before this build up of energy breaches an individual’s capacity and then triggers a genetically hardwired instinct, or a habit, or, in the case of humans (and perhaps even apes and chimps) a thought. The ability to apprehend a uniform state of tension when excited or under duress is a carrying capability, an “emotional capacity.” The higher the species or individual’s emotional capacity the more it can “go by feel.”
This is a critical distinction because an animal can only learn something new, in other words adapt to change, if it can frame a situation in terms of release from a uniform whole-body state of tension. If on the other hand, the experience of change is too much for the capacity of the individual, then a uniform state of tension collapses into a concentration of sensations and this obscures the potential for release and under such circumstances the individual cannot go by feel but must respond by instinctive reflexes or by habit and this will always be in service to the Big-Brain balance mandate, which itself is in service to servicing a species specialized-niche participation in evolution. Therefore, the more pronounced the biological hunger in a species of animal, most vividly characterized by the urge-to-ingest, an overwhelming oral fixation that persists into adulthood, the higher the emotional capacity of a species and therefore the more it can adapt in real time to changes in its circumstances because it can combine and deflect their collective energies onto a common object of resistance.
Species of animals vary, and individuals vary from situation to situation, depending on which polarity of their body/mind is predominant in their perception of change. It can’t be both; it must be one or the other. (I liken this to the quantum essence of nature, as in one cannot know both the location and the momentum of a subatomic particle at the same time. In animal consciousness, either the individual attends to the form of a thing, or to the essence of the thing. If it goes by form, then it proceeds from an already established value either from its direct experience in the past or from its genetic endowment. Whereas if it goes by essence because it can discern the essence by way of its subliminal focus on its heart, then it feels the internal vibration within the form, its emotional center-of-gravity now serves only as an emotional counterbalance rather than dragging into this particular frame of reference the particulars of how the physical memory was acquired. In other words, if the dog can project its emotional battery in toto onto the form by being able to discern its negative-as-access-to-its-positive then it can FEEL THE OBJECT-OF-ATTRACTIONS’ CENTER MASS, and this high level of apprehension allows its emotional ballast to move freely through its body AS A FEELING, the exact epicenter of its mind now being its heart.
One way to directly experience the distinction in a dog’s mind between form and essence in terms of physical memory is the following simple exercise. For example, dealing with problem dogs I show the dog a piece of food and clasp it in my hand. Then I swing my hand rapidly toward the dog’s face. If the dog has been hit, it attends only to the form of my hand rushing at it and a reflex and habit related to fear comes up. Whereas if the dog has not been hit then it may blink and retreat a bit out of reflex, but it doesn’t flinch with a lifting of its lips, or cower in an exaggerated manner as it can still perceive the food within my hand despite the sudden motion and it readily opens its mouth for the treat. Its muzzle is SENSUALIZED by essence rather than SENSITIZED by form.
So in complex interactions, if balance is too strong, then the Big-Brain takes over and sensations overwhelm the feeling of tension/release and the animal conforms to ingrained habits and/or species-specific gene-driven reflexes. Whereas if orienting from the little-brain/hunger perspective, then the two brains are reconciled and it is safe as well as pleasurable to proceed with any given interaction so that the interaction can elaborate into higher expressions of feelings as a more complex statement of the simple principle of emotional conductivity. Due to a two brain makeup, species of animals segregate into their specific environmental niches according to their emotional capacity, all of this stratification in service to the network, not to any individual species particular genetic agenda.
The capacity to adapt to novelty is dependent on referencing the little-brain-in-the-gut over the Big-Brain-in-the-head. When two dogs meet in a park and they are stressed by the presence of the other, they will eat grass. They are orienting from a little-brain perspective and they are feeling release by eating the grass, and they attribute this experience of pleasure to the presence of the other dog that has triggered sensations attendant to being displaced but then reconciled through the grounding experience of eating something. In short order they will make direct contact and get along. A little-brain orientation inevitably leads to the physical action of the heart becoming the predominant frame of reference thus providing a template by which the individual can successfully negotiate a complex response to a complex situation. In other words, even when the rate of change becomes very intense, by maintaining subliminal attention on its heart the dog can continue to perceive the essence within the form of a thing or situation because it is always conscious of the experience of flow via the mechanical action of its heart.
Dogs are remarkably adaptable because the number one characteristic of the canine makeup is a profound constitutional and temperamental state of hunger, i.e. a little-brain manner of orientation, an oral impulse that persists into adulthood. For example, I have never known of a cat that managed its way into a bag of cat food and then eat much beyond a state of satiation whereas I once lived with a Doberman that broke into a 50 lb bag of dog food and ate 40 pounds before being discovered. The dog almost died. Many dogs dig up and eat rocks necessitating emergency surgery. Dogs have been known to chew slippers, sofas, cameras, steel belted radial tires, galvanized metal buckets, to oblivion. I heard of two labs that got into the refrigerator and ate everything inside; meats, milk, butter, cheese, eggs, containers and all: a spectacular feat of consumption that was only to be surpassed by a spectacular feat of elimination. A man once told me that he returned home from work and found his young dog sitting on his front step; problem being that the dog had been locked inside when he left. Next to the stoop was a gaping hole with insulation and wires dangling, the dog had eaten and ripped through moldings, sheetrock, plywood, studs and siding.
A prodigious physical appetite as the basis of a high emotional capacity spills over into an overwhelming tactile, sexual and social appetite as well. Hungering for the forms of things IS SEXUAL ENERGY. The owner of every puppy soon runs into this conundrum of the canine makeup in the first months of their dog’s life and dealing with this “biotonus” lust for all things fluffy, crushable or penetrable is the relentless focus of the modern behavioral marketplace as puppies grab everything with their jaws and anything it can fit into its mouth. This basic constitutional fact is the source of all so-called disobedience and behavioral “problems” in the domestic dog; which by way of contrast the domestic cat doesn’t manifest.
A particularly vivid manifestation of this canine hunger for release-from-tension is the fact that an owner can play tug-of-war with their dog, even lifting it off the ground and flinging it about, the dog loving every moment of being airborne. This kind of play turns out to be the reward of choice when training a dog for specialized duties such as the detection of drugs, contraband, cadavers, gas leaks in underground pipes, gypsy moth larvae, felons hiding in buildings and even cancer. This serviceability has been mischaracterized as a canine desire to please and as the result of human design; when it really is an innate capacity within the dog by dint of a little-brain orientation to pick up and align with the tension/release dynamic within the dog’s trainer.
Neotony the retention of infantile characteristics into adulthood as it is presently entertained in scientific circles is not enough to account for the domestication of dogs because all species of animals are cute and endearing as infants and elicit the human care giving impulse, and all animals have enjoyed scavenging access to village dumps as per the Coppinger thesis, and over the course of civilization human beings have consciously tried to domesticate all species of animals without success on the order of the domestic dog. The real reason infantile traits can migrate into adulthood and become fixed features of a mature disposition is because sexuality is BUT AN ELABORATION OF the neotony phenomenon, and this is because fundamentally sexuality exists in service to synchronizing highly coordinated group activity more than it is about reproduction. And the reason that only wolves (or a wolf-like ancestor) begat the domesticated dog is because of a little-brain orientation as the basis of hunting, reconciling complex objects of resistance via subliminal attention on the heart and thereby deciphering the essence within the form of a large prey animal and then collectively synchronizing around this complex object of resistance so that by intuitive and coordinated team work they can bring it to ground.
There are many behavioral ramifications of a two-brain makeup in general and a little-brain orientation in particular. A high emotional capacity (hunger-over-balance—little-brain predominance) means a dog can transpose its internal two-poles onto its surroundings. This is critical because if an animal is to adapt to something novel, it must be able to externalize and affiliate these poles with corresponding elements of the environment so that a uniform state of tension can be achieved. In other words a dog must simultaneously perceive a “negative” (the source of tension) SIMULTANEOUSLY IN CONJUNCTION with a “positive” (object of release) in order to “know” by feel what to do in terms of tension/release and this is the key to emotionally aligning with a complex object of attraction. Without tension there can’t be release, and if the source of tension isn’t simultaneously affiliated with a hunger for release, then the Big-Brain takes over and along with this, habits, instincts, and in the case of humans, thoughts take over. If an animal can apply this bipolar perspective to its environment by way of a little-brain orientation (thus paving the way for a heart frame of reference), this allows it to sense the wholesale state of tension distributed uniformly throughout its body, which is a fine and subtle kind of apprehension existing below the intensity of nerve sensations and Big-Brain focus on form. Therefore the stronger its constitutional state of hunger, the more the individual can transpose the emotional battery onto a situation. This for example is why when a dog is on a walk in the woods with its owner, it frequently turns around and makes eye contact with its owner; it’s re-acquiring the sense of tension (owner as source i.e. the “negative”) that then makes the act of going forward into the unknown and the higher rate of change resonant with the feeling of release. Otherwise, in the absence of apprehending the negative-as-access-to-the-positive, an animal’s species-specific instincts and acquired habits will govern its actions and this limits its capacity to adapt. Because a dog can transpose its emotional battery onto a human being under the wider array of circumstances and under a high rate of change, it is able to sense how to connect with a human being in any kind of lifestyle. It can feel whole by being in the company of human beings.

Furthermore, since a dog hungers for human contact with more force of attraction than can be directly consummated, it is predisposed to align with where its owner is focused, not only on the conscious level, but on an unconscious visceral level as well. A dog picks up the tension in what it is attracted to, such as its owner, and then where this object of attraction directs its attention, most especially on the subconscious level of focusing energy, becomes the dog’s definition of release. It is a transfer of information from one mind to another, information that ultimately organizes the dog’s behavior and even its personality, a tension/release dynamic of which the owner is mostly unaware since one’s animal consciousness arises from involuntary, autonomic functions of physiology, and respiration completely below the cognitive capabilities of the human intellect.
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Another way of saying all of the above is that in the animal’s mind, by transposing its two-pole internal battery onto its surroundings, it feels as if it is dealing with a living being even when it isn’t. Note how a puppy first perceives a puddle of water for the first time, or a door swinging on its hinges that stubs its paws as the puppy is being let outside. To the young dog the novel object is a living being. Even though as the dog matures its response to puddles, and especially the door as something scary, will become muted which leads one to think that the dog has changed its mind about puddles and doors, however that frame of reference remains fully intact it’s just that it has become enfolded into other apprehensions of living things, for example, the door becomes an extension of its owner’s being which is why a dog will seek out its owner when it has to go outside. It becomes attracted to the door as an extension of its owner. The owner becomes the “negative” (-) source of tension to the door as release component (+).
Dogs perceive objects or even a situation as construing a living being whether or not there is a living being present. And if there isn’t a living being present, the animal mind has evolved so that the physical memory of a living being will rise to the surface of its awareness and the animal will project the physical memory of such a being onto the inanimate object because its hunger for form is so strong.
The two brain makeup with a little-brain orientation is the basis of a group mind which is why the young animals of almost every species, can entertain themselves by playing with an object. In their minds they’re playing with another living being, with its negative being perceived as access to its positive. And because during the first weeks and months of life the little-brain orientation is at its strongest so that a young animal construes every object of interest to be a living being, is also why the young of every species are at their most malleable and social during this early phase as well. Dogs however, more than any other species can carry this orientation into adulthood and while we are amused when a dog mistakes an inanimate object as a living being, I’m proposing that this speaks to a profound adaptive capacity because in order to adapt in a new way to a novel situation an animal must first sense a “being” present in its surroundings so that this can then trigger a uniform state of tension. If something is completely negative, then there is no uniform tension (there is a rapid collapse into a concentration of sensations) and therefore there cannot be the apprehension of pure release, i.e. emotion. And if something is completely positive, then there is no tension and likewise there cannot be the apprehension of release. (This is the addictive cycle, the organism reflexively invents a negative and now confuses relief with release and since it can never get to a true state of satisfaction because it’s not going by feel, the system constantly self-charges, never hits the stop signal, and the organism fries.) The two must be conjoined with the little-brain as reconciling mechanism so that the negative is apprehended as source of release and this generates a sustained state of attraction that can hold up in the face of resistance and change. An animal is orienting through its little-brain can project its internal two brain, two pole emotional battery (and the memory of a living being, the essence within the form) onto the moment so that it doesn’t perceive the source of tension as something “negative” but rather as inextricably coupled with release and therefore as something positive, negative-as-access-to-positive. The resulting persistence makes it possible, if indeed it is dealing with a like-minded living being, to communicate with another being through its own tension/release dynamic because this is a universal feature of every animal’s consciousness. Therefore rather than being limited by a simple on/off response to a stimulus, such a high capacity individual is thereby inspired to be circuitous, indirect; circumspect and able to graft one apprehension of a living being {door as predator (-) that opens to outdoors (+)} onto a larger apprehension of a living being {owner as negative (-) that opens door to release (+).}This frame of mind allows an individual to hang around long enough to work out how to align with the tension/release dynamic in whatever emotional context or group it finds itself in. Otherwise instincts and habits will run the show and these are only adaptive under a very narrow range of circumstances and solely in terms of survival rather than building networks of social affiliations beyond the species barrier. (Cats are capable of making this linkage as well, but not under the level of intensity that dogs can.)
Unlike cats and deer, dogs look into the car because they are able to project their bipolar emotional battery onto its form and this allows them to be able to persist in order to intuit the negative which thereby grants them access to the positive within the form.

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For example in Billy’s statement — “The first domesticated dog’s would have responded much the same way dog’s do now, and that is mostly from a hierarchical pack mindset. All it has to do with feelings, is where the dog feels it fits into the pack.”—is blending feeling and thinking into one thing. If a dog feels its way into some kind of order then it cannot be thinking and therefore this can’t be a pack that is headed by a leader. So is it feeling or is it thinking its way into its place within the pack? Is it overriding a feeling in deference to a thought, if so then what about the instinct component? Is it overriding the feeling plus an instinct with a thought? That would mean you can’t say dogs are pack animals according to a dominance/submissive instinct because with the injection of thoughts into the formula the pivotal issue now becomes whether the dog or wolf is thinking about overriding an instinct or not, and in that case therefore thoughts are preeminent over instinct. So if Billy is arguing that it’s thinking about the prospects of achieving dominance relative to settling for submissiveness, and then choosing between these alternatives, then why can’t a group of dogs or wolves all choose to be submissive like African Wild Hunting dogs? Why can’t they choose to be neither, is dominance and submission all they can think about? In these thought-centric models we’re presented with endless self-contradictory logic loops. The biggest one being the use of the term energy everywhere in the discussion on dogs on the web, be it pack theory or positive camp, but which apparently no one actually believes.

The presumption that Billy is working from, and yet without a critical examination of this assumption, is that there is not a universal operating system to animal consciousness, which would be odd in the natural scheme of things because for example we find photosynthesis is the universal operating system of all green plants, a pretty broad range of diverse life forms occupying all environmental niches, and we find that all genes of every organism are composed from the same two pairs of amino acids, and here we are on the internet communicating because all computers no matter their make or model run on the same binary digital system. So if Billy believes in making an argument for animal behavior based on evolution by way of common descent, then he is going to have a tough time coming up with a consistent model for animal and human consciousness without a universal operating system because that is the only possibility logically consistent with the fundamental tenet of modern evolution by way of common descent. This logical shortcoming is why in modern behaviorism/biology there isn’t a coherent explanation for sexuality, personality or the nature of emotion, it’s constantly tripping over its thought-centric interpretations of behavior since it hasn’t critically examined the notion it has taken as self-evident that there isn’t a universal operating system of animal consciousness.
On the other hand a coherent model is immediately available in an energy theory. While I don’t claim to be an expert with any animal other than the dog, the topic of all animal behavior is germane to any discussion of dogs because I’m maintaining that there is a universal operating system to animal consciousness, the human animal as well, with dogs being the easiest specimen to examine in this regard because dogs go more by feel, less by instinct (and not at all by thinking) than any other animal. This lends to an innate capacity for adaptability because dogs are able to devolve complex situations to their primal emotional values (via the neotony/sexuality phenomena) of predator relative to prey, and therefore they are able to generate coherent responses in real time and in perfect context to the emotional nuance of any group dynamic they find themselves in. In other words, they operate more generally from the universal operating system of animal consciousness which gives them a greater emotional capacity to communicate and connect with the widest array of other species and under a very high rate of change (and thus only the dog has proliferated in every aspect of human life and civilization.)

In an energy model, all behavior is a function of attraction and always proceeds from predator to prey, from that which projects emotion to that which can absorb it, be it a Robin on a worm, a horse eating grass, two lovers, a mother and her baby (“You’re so cute I could EAT you up.”) or two blue jays looking at each other. It’s impossible to have an emotional response to something without occupying either the predator or the preyful polarity, and all you have to do is examine the intuitive use of language to see this operating system functioning within the highest reaches of the human intellect. One cannot hold a conversation without alternating between projecting and absorbing energy.
Every animal has a predatory aspect relative to a preyful aspect, just as every atom has a ratio of a negative charge relative to a positive charge. A bunny rabbit is in the overall what we call a prey animal, but it still has a predatory aspect (just ask Jimmy Carter). So blue jays have both a predatory aspect relative to a preyful aspect.

Billy states that predatory energy is only concerned with procurement of food — ” The blue jay has NO predatory “energy” unless it is actually in the act of seeking food.” — this is an illogical statement if one has ever worked a protection or police dog. The strongest urge is to bite, not to eat. Dogs don’t chase cars in the hopes of eating one and neither do wolves kill the moose with the intention of eating it. To grasp the overarching importance of the prey drive one might want to reexamine the nature of sexuality, it’s too ribald a discussion for these pages but it sure looks like prey-making to me. Consider that the oldest relationship between living things on earth isn’t parent/offspring, male/female, peer to peer, but predator to prey, as in an amoeba, protozoa, bacterium, or virus making prey on other amoeba, protozoa, bacterium and ingesting something. Again if your argument is based on the evolution of animal consciousness by way of common descent, you might want to consider that the predator/prey dynamic is the only logical overarching template for all subsequent relationships that then evolved from simple organisms to complex ones, such as parent/offspring, male/female, peer-to-peer.

Billy said: “Corvids (such as Jays) use tools to solve problems, acting like a hawk would be a very useful tool.”
I’ll venture an opinion on tool use in birds in a later article, but consider the logic of what you’re saying. If a jay can use tools to solve problems by way of thinking, and can mimic a hawk to scare off its fellow jays in a strategy of subterfuge, how do you keep that thinking genie in its bottle? The only logical response is that the thinking, problem solving bird is constrained by its anatomy and physiology so that it can’t think its way outside its niche box because of physical constraints. But that argument immediately contravenes the central tenet of evolutionary biology that every component of the system has to pull its weight or else it’s discarded due to an unnecessary drain on its resources and ultimately losing out to its competitors. According to mainstream evolutionary theory, if the organism can’t expand its niche by developing an adaptation, then it doesn’t need the adaptation. In the eighties the evolutionary mantra of mainstream science was the big brain, the big brain, the big brain: and also all the dog experts and scientists were looking for the genes for aggression. (Natural Dog Training is the only model not predicated on gene-centric theories, anticipating epigentics) But now modern biology confronted with the problem that bigger brained species than homo-sapiens (Boskopf and possibly Neanderthal) went out of existence, are postulating the evolutionary advantage of the lesser sized brain over the bigger brain since it’s less a drain on physiological resources. It’s constantly contradicting itself because it has no model for animal consciousness when it should be saying, “Uh-Oh, if birds with a brain the size of a walnut are using tools, maybe the use of tools is a no-brainer. Maybe Birds aren’t actually “solving problems” in the way the human intellect reflexively thinks of such instances. Maybe we’re seeing what we think we should see just as one it sure did seem self-evident that the sun goes around the earth.
Prey drive IS the most important thing to a dog, it’s why we call them “canines” after the teeth for holding onto the prey. The purpose of sociability is to facilitate the hunt, not companionship. No other interpretation of the canine nature can encompass the phenomenon of canine evolution, the domestication of the dog, the nature of canine service in the employ of man, the adaptability of the modern pet dog to the emotional nuance of its family so as to render companionship. Natural Dog Training is an intellectually rigorous synthesis of the evidence and the criticisms of NDT and an energy model are never substantive, merely declarative. To substantively critique this energy model one must define emotion, sexuality, neotony, personality, drive, sociability, evolution, domestication, consciousness in a straight line synthesis of the evidence.

Dog training has indeed changed over the centuries. The domestic dog evolved through the hunt. Then the modern dog training industry in the sixties lost sight of it, and now all training systems are migrating back to the prey drive while simultaneously resisting the logical conclusion of what this reveals. A self-defeating logic loop.

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KB: Yes, while the laws of motion are simple, the actual computations are vast and too complicated for most of us, especially me. Nevertheless our body and specifically our heart does all of this computation automatically, and so to see the heart in action one just has to feel the answer in something simple and then practice holding onto it. For example, the physics of two dancers in motion is extremely complicated, but after all the “data” has been entered into their physical memory banks (emotional battery) through what we observe as their practicing together, they can easily compute where their partner is going to be and be in perfect position to complement them. So after your eye is trained and you acquire the feeling for what’s going on, soon you will be able to see it by feel in complex behavior as well.

2) Heather: “But once 2 dogs have made “contact,” their interactions then would be like the induction motor, the dogs flipping polarity (to get the motor to turn)…if the flipping polarity got out of synch you could go back to look at things from the “stationary” analysis of BB/l-b?”

KB: Exactly. They are flipping polarities just as in an electric motor wherein the rotor is made to spin by alternating the magnetic poles that then push the rotor along a circle to the opposite side of the arc wherein the polarity will flip at just the right time to keep it spinning. And if the rate of intensity gets too much for the emotional capacity of the bond between the two of them, then they revert to the “stationary” question of getting the BB energy grounded back into the lb so that they can resume the flipping of polarity motoring.
When you watch two dogs meet prior to play you can see they are trying to get a wave going, pushing in on one, then feeling the push back, sometimes it just fizzles out and they can’t get it going. But when they can then the collapse of electrostatic pressure into the hunger/magnetic circuitry, that then collapses into the electrical current that recreates the magnetic field, which then again collapses into the electrical and on an on, is just like the propagation of light. The epicenter of all this consciousness is each other’s heart, that then physically manifests outside their body eventually when they project it onto a midpoint or an object of resistance that can ground out their combined energies.
Now you can see that young wolves in play are not practicing how to hunt (because even deer perform these actions when they feel safe enough and deer certainly aren’t practicing how to hunt) but rather they are creating an emotional connection that can handle a higher and higher rate of intensity that eventually will be strong enough so that it can encompass the rate-of-change that a high object of resistance (the moose) will offer and then the wolves are informed so as to conduct a syncopated approach toward the moose and this coordinated activity can ultimately bring it to ground.
Now you can see that learning in animals is a process of evolution, gravity (the initial impulse of displacement) evolving into electrical evolving into magnetic evolving into an overarching light wave evolving into adding new energy to the network, and this process of elaboration has nothing to do with the mental acquisition of facts or extrapolation from ideas. They are creating a wave function with a frequency within which the intensity of the moose can fit. A group of wolves in the hunt equal one heart. Then when the moose is weak, they can bring it to ground. (The only reason they can’t bring a healthy moose to ground is that in early imprinting the adults put a governor on how strong an emotional bond the wolf cubs can generate by putting a whooping on the cubs ala a pack instinct. So when they encounter a strong moose, they see in its resistance their overbearing mama. Too much pack instinct is also what limits a dog’s capacity to cooperate with a human as well and unlike their wild counterparts, everything we want a dog to do is the path of absolute highest resistance. Not chasing the neighbor’s cat but remaining calmly by our side is emotionally the equivalent of bringing a healthy moose to ground.)

3) Heather: “What if the dogs have not made physical contact, but see each other from a distance – if they have previously established an emotional circuit, are they still able to resolve their respective arising emotions into feelings? Or even in the case of the established dog-owner group mind, the example you or Lee gave regarding the owner’s plane landing and the dog becoming excited – does the owner sense this emotional displacement too?”

KB: If they have previously established an emotional circuit, then they are energized on sight through the bodily affects of physical memory, just as a magnetic force can transmit energy over a distance between a radio and a magnetic antennae even though the two devices are not connected by wires. And then there are special states of attunement when a dog is in a rarefied state and not dealing with the material reality of friction, when I believe that a paired photon is created by syncopation of the two brains and which takes up residence in the heart. I believe that this is a state of quantum entanglement which can account for the telepathic moments of attunement.

4) Heather: “Finally, do you think the experience for each dog is similar, or different, depending on temperament or other factors?”

KB: After the nervous systems of two dogs have been displaced and electrochemically ionized, think of two dogs as being electrolytes so that if one is positively ionized the other must be negatively ionized in order to fit into that frame of reference.(One can’t be in hunger while the other is in hunger, or balance when the other is in balance, and when forced to be there will then be a fight/flight response. So it is axiomatic that eventually they will become different but in a complementary way.) Since every dog’s temperament is a ratio of a preference along the hunger/ balance continuum, one will be inclined to absorb energy (pick up an electron) the other inclined to reflect energy, (give up an electron). The one that picks up energy via hunger circuitry reliance will feel an internal current and become magnetically inclined and will be deflected into a circumspective manner towards the other dog, whereas the one that reflects energy is now more electrically inclined and will be more static-like and tentative because it is “feeling” incomplete, but this suits the network parameters just fine because it allows for the next phase of elaboration so that the former ends up calming the latter (by acting prey-like thereby triggering the electrically charged dog’s hunger circuitry), and not through any signaling intention whatsoever. The interpretation of “calming signals” is the projection of thoughts onto the principle of emotional conductivity.
The basic differentiation between breeds is what I call “prey threshold” which can be envisioned as a frequency, i.e. how high the peak/valley and long the wavelength that a wave function has to be to propagate a state of attraction that can evolve in sync with object of attraction. Bull baiting dogs have high prey threshold, bird hunting dogs low prey threshold. Low prey threshold dogs are typically “friendly” because it takes very little for them to generate a wave function (mere flutter or a wing, quiver of a body), whereas at the opposite end of the spectrum are the guarding breeds of dogs. But, within any given litter, you find the same pattern of differentiation as well but in case of the guarding breeds, when a wave function cannot be created there is a greater degree of fear as well (so we see sharp/shy trait) as the complement to the stronger force of drive in those of that litter that orient through the hunger circuitry.Then there is the style of hunting, kill the prey (terrier) or herd the prey wherein the latter I feel is a higher prey threshold than the former because the dog has to be able to allow the wave to propagate at a higher frequency and amplitude in resonance with the domesticated needs of the sheepherder and economy, which is the highest prey threshold possible. Thus GSD are better at police work than pit bulls, but pit bulls are better fighters than GSD because the process of elaboration will collapse into the strike/shake/kill reflex sooner. At any rate, a network consciousness is infinitely nuanced because it is constantly elaborating in terms of the other components to the system, nothing stands in isolation from the other parts of the system.
Breed traits, personality dispositions, difference between species of animals, the variation between sexes, (male/female/homosexual), and the variation between races, are in my view simply more complex elaborations of this simple template of differentiation. In other words variability (and not by random) is the nature of information because there cannot be information without the network.

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Thus, when another being looks at a dog, this stare travels into and within the dog along this subliminal beam, intensely amplifying its strength in the dog’s consciousness and displacing the dogs sense of its physical center of gravity and thus he feels knocked off balance which profoundly activates the dog’s central nervous system. (This is why dogs are electrified by the sound of their names. It’s because our focused energy when we say their name is synonymous with our stare and doubles up exponentially on the strength of the subliminal beam of attention.)

The dog perceives being looked at (or called) just as if it is being pushed, just as if its mother is knocking it over and rolling it around on the ground. It’s a force of accelleration, a degree of momentum that demands a terminus. And because its body/mind is constructed so that the electro-chemical pressure in its Big-Brain has to be digested in its little-brain wave function, it also feels a pull towards that which knocked it off balance. So the dog climbs up into the lap of Christine on the couch to get as close as possible to her eyes and then licks her lips and face for the bodily essence (tears/saliva) that is an emotional ground for the sensation of displacement caused by eye contact. Thus a dog can satisfy being pushed off center by being pulled toward a beings’ essence. This will of course trigger regurgitation in the adult wolf toward the cub that mobs it, but this isn’t why the cub is attracted (initially) to the adult’s mouth.

Furthermore, when the dog’s physical center of gravity is displaced by being the object of attention thus creating a “force” of attraction, the dog will necessarily experience resistance as it attempts to ground out this energy of attraction. (Even if it merely must travel over smooth flat ground.)

It thereby acquires unresolved emotion as a physical memory of the experience.

Unresolved emotion as physical memory acretes around the physical center-of-gravity thus producing the “emotional center of gravity” {e-cog = p-cog + physical memory} that is then projected onto complex objects of attraction so that the physical memory of experience is automatically projected onto the complex form of things, such as another dog.

If the hunger circuitry is stronger than the balance, then the dog will experience a magnetic state of attunement with the complex object of attraction.

But if balance is stronger, then there will be an electrostatic kind of interaction.

Thus the dog is projecting its “self” onto other things and if it can ingest its “self” by grounding out with this other being, then these two individuals can ultimately form one “emotional body,” what we otherwise recognize as a profound emotional bond.

What’s amazing is that the kernel of a dog’s self is immaterial, it doesn’t actually exist, there’s no physical center-of-gravity organ or structure, we can’t ask a doctor to surgically remove our center-of-gravity, not to mention it can move anywhere in the body therefore releasing via Pavlovian conditioning naturally produced opiates. Yet everything about an animal’s anatomy, physiology and neurology evolved in response to this immaterial kernel that constantly recapitulates in the animal’s body/mind to form complex social structures. The physical center of gravity is how consciousness interfaces with nature in order to organize life into a network so that new energy is continually added back into the network.

The most powerful and deepest physical memory of the physical center-of-gravity is in the deep gut/loin region because in the first days of life the rear legs of the newborn pup were a useless drag on forward motion, like an anchor the pup had to drag around. In adult life, this area will be the “pivot” point of the poised position so that the dog is free to go in any direction. This deep seated imprint is important since this region is proximal to the genitals and deep hunger pangs and these faculties of arousal will be the means of aligning magnetically (sensually) with complex beings later in its life.

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Now if emotion were to be recognized as a “force” of attraction, it would quickly become clear that nature is not random, but is digitized into predatory (-) and preyful (+) aspects and that the flow of emotion proceeds according to a principle of emotional conductivity from (-) to (+). So the body/mind is like a semi-conductor designed to turn that which cannot conduct, into that which can conduct, by virtue of like-minded organisms aligning around a collectivized flow of energy. One wolf confronting a moose doesn’t get the moose to move. Five wolves confronting a moose don’t necessarily get it to move either. But five wolves emotionally aligned so as to approach in a synchronized way, can get the moose to conduct their emotional energies.

In the show the panel is very ambivalent about aggression which I suggest is because they are confused about its true nature. In an energy interpretation, aggression is blocked attraction, this builds up force in order to do the work of overcoming resistance. So if two things are alike, this creates a block that begets friction (misinterpreted as competition) and the purpose of the subsequent “heat” is to differentiate the two organisms so that they can complement each other (misinterpreted as dominance and submission) so that their emotional batteries can be coupled (high social virtues mis-attributed to the higher centers of the Big-Brain) so that they can overcome higher and higher forms of resistance (cooperation misinterpreted as intelligence). This capacity to merge batteries and align together (sexual/sensuality) to turn non-conductive objects of resistance into conductive objects of attraction is what allows the network to become more complex and continue to evolve by making more energy. In other words, the nutritive energy of the moose has been turned into information, i.e. how to align to get an object of resistance to conduct emotional energy.

In regards to fear, when we see a bear, our current state of resonance (an advanced form of attraction that has elaborated into a uniform sense of tension/release with everything in our surroundings) is collapsed and the intensity of the resulting sensations of collapse is what produces the physiological/neurological affects, not the fear per se. There is no fear without the collapse. And there can’t be a collapse without a state of attraction/resonance. For example, if someone is hunting bear (therefore they are processing via their hunger/prey-making circuitry) the sight of the bear is an arousing stimulus by virtue of the same collapse, but in this context the hunter is grounded into bear-as-prey frame of reference so the sensations of collapse (the bear suddenly appears) into bear-as-prey are exhilarating. In another frame of reference when we go to the zoo, we (the non-bear hunters) are not frightened by the bear but are oddly awestruck. The sight of the bear, while shocking to our sense of resonance within our normal frames of reference, nevertheless we feel grounded into the place where we stand due to the high fences, thick walls, deep moat etc., so that our footing feels secure. We can in this context parse apart the state of attraction from the sensations of collapse so that these sensations can go on to elaborate into a feeling of resonance with the sight of the bear that we then apprehend as a feeling of awe given that our footing is secure. Whereas if we see a snake writhing on the ground, especially a multitude of harmless garden snakes, or a bunch of rats, which are small and therefore constitute preyful aspects, nevertheless because the ground is quite literally moving given the snakes/rats are the objects of attraction within that particular frame of reference, they therefore affect our balance circuitry and so we feel “queasy” hence the quasi motion sickness as the basis of our perception. We say they “disgust” us and are more violently repulsed by these harmless creatures than by the sight of the bear which can in fact truly hurt us. Unlike the very big bear, we’ve involuntarily imported the small animals into our gut given their smallness on the ground and we want to purge ourselves since we’re not in fact feeling on terra firma since we see the ground moving beneath us when we look down at them.

Charlie Rose asks a particularly insightful question about a soldier who acts both courageously and yet impulsively, which is actually in contradiction to the model offered in the show that the higher cortex region has to moderate the autonomic responses into more exquisite expressions of high social virtues. This in fact is the panel’s prescription for social harmony and they are eager to use drug therapies to implement this Utopian ideal.

For example, a soldier throws his body over a grenade to shield his comrades and of course without taking the time to think about it. How then is this possible since according to the Big-Brain model as source of high social virtues, the sensory input of the grenade is a direct feed from the thalamus to the amygdala to the autonomic responses of paralysis or flight? And we should note that unlike the Secret Service infantry soldiers are not conditioned to use their body as a shield, they are taught to take cover when exposed to danger. Whereas in my model, when rage rises into the heart, (and the panel mistakenly labels rage a negative emotion) this allows the individual to act for the higher good in abject defiance of genetic encoding and a lifetime of built up habituated responses to terrifying stimuli and this is because of a highly evolved state of resonance that has elaborated over the course of his experiences and bonding with his comrades during boot camp and combat. He is more deeply bonded with his comrades by virtue of rage having been activated by the intensity of sensations of his combat experiences, then finding grounding into his combat unit, all that sensory input of warfare increases his attraction/resonance with his comrades, and then it ultimately rises to his heart if he believes in his comrades, or commanding officer or their mission. So the soldiers’ frame of reference includes all his comrades as one vibrating membrane so that the sight of the grenade inspires a desire to release its energy into his body so as to not disturb the overall membrane of tension encompassing the entire group, which is where his consciousness truly resides. It was the rage that took root in his heart that inspired him, and likewise this is the only way any deep seated unresolved emotion, and this is always tagged with fear, can be resolved. I argue against these drug therapies because I believe they numb the individual to their rage, which is a necessary component to a true feeling.

The show concludes with Rose asking each panelist for the top priority on their wish list to be solved. Damasio says he wishes to explore what makes a feeling either good or bad. I propose that where one feels connected to their group, in other words where on the circle does their temperament resonate, determines how they will subjectively feel, and then the extent to which they feel resonant and grounded into their surroundings determines whether the feeling is good or not. For example, a number of people are on a Ferris Wheel, but their perspective, their frame of reference, will vary dramatically by virtue of where they are on the circle when it stops. Everyone will have a different subjective perception, but it won’t be at random. Someone stuck at the top will become the most susceptible to fear, someone near the bottom can get off whenever they want simply by hopping to the ground. The latter is grounded the former is less grounded and so their state of resonance is most easily collapsed.

I believe the panel’s error is that they don’t recognize that emotion is a group (Temperament as a circle) rather than an individual phenomenon. They interpret emotion as a series of programs designed only to maintain the individual’s homeostasis in service to the genes propensity for survival and replication. This narrow perspective misses that emotion is the operating system of animal consciousness in order to effectuate a network. The homeostatic programs are really emotional ionization, the organism capturing physical energy. The group dynamic is emotional polarization, the harnessing of the energy that’s been captured. All of this is in service to a network so that physical energy can be turned into information, i.e. new energy, a.k.a. a feeling, or true consciousness.

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The first thing to say of course is compassion for the unspeakable horror the victim must have endured, as well as for the suffering of her family. The trainer was obviously full of life, she loved her work, and the world needs more people like her who fearlessly pursue their life’s dream. And I’m also not going to drum away on the obvious point that keeping a highly social animal, adapted to the vastness of the open ocean, in a small tank might be a bad idea. As one Orca advocate put it, “We don’t belong in their world and they don’t belong in ours.” And finally in cases such as these, for any of us that work with animals, humility rather than sanctimony is always in order. On a much smaller scale I’ve been through my share of training disasters, like the time a dog bolted from me, sunk its teeth into a cow, and started a stampede that drove over twenty tons of cattle back and forth across a quiet country lane (and this was during the pre-SUV era of tiny cars such as the Pinto and Honda Civic) and it was only sheer luck that no one was killed. So I know all too well that sinking feeling of helplessness and morbid dread when everything goes south in one split second, accompanied by the futile feeling of desperation that can so clearly be seen in the trainers at poolside, frantically slapping the water and trying to entice the Orca to them for a “cookie”. My sympathies are with them as well.

But there does unfortunately remain an important lesson to be drawn. As we all know there’s usually more to be learned from failure than success. One motivational speaker put it this way: it’s okay to fall, just make sure you always fall forward. And over the course of my career in dogs I’ve learned to always “fail” forward by never indulging in the luxury of telling myself a dog story. So one of the main reasons I’m writing this commentary is because it seems to me that in the aftermath of this incident, the PR machine at Sea World is hard at work crafting a whopper of a fish story.

The usual spin on these kinds of animal acts gone awry is a poly-sided bromide, one side being a dose of hard cold wild animal realism: “These (bears/Orcas/tigers) are wild animals and wild animals are unpredictable.” Therefore we should view trainers of dangerous predators such as Orcas as if they are aquanauts, the theme park equivalent of astronauts; and as such they knowingly assume the risk and understand the danger, all of which is in service to advancing the general public’s awareness and appreciation of the animals of the deep, just as astronauts quicken the public’s awareness and appreciation of space exploration.

And then another side of the spin is the romanticized version, as in: “That tiger wasn’t attacking Roy; it was trying to stop him from falling and hurting himself.” (I want to point out just how precise a control of its body an animal can have. I once took care of a large, overweight border collie/cross “Columbo” that would run across the yard and if I wasn’t paying attention, leap from the ground and delicately “buss” me on my eyeball. All I felt was a little smudge of wetness on my eye being that he was so gentle at the moment of making contact. And if it happened when I was wearing sunglasses he would slightly knock my glasses askew because the point of impact apparently remained perfectly calibrated for the lens of my eye. It was annoying, but I couldn’t help but marvel at the kind of physical dexterity Columbo manifested that an NFL wide receiver or principal dancer in the Russian Ballet would envy. So needless to say I don’t think a tiger would try to break someone’s fall by crushing their skull and I don’t think the Orca was playing with the trainer either.)

Eventually, the third side of damage-control, PR spin will end up being “pilot error”, although the reports seem to be conflicting. Was the trainer violating prescribed policy by being in the water with the Orca, or in the shallow pool, or was she outside the pool and on the coping when the attack occurred? I’m not sure what actually happened. However, the official version from Sea World seems to be in: the Orca seized the trainer by her hair and then violently thrashed her around and dragged her under because it was “curious” about her pony tail.

So does injecting the energy perspective into all of this shed any light? Yes I believe it does.

What strikes me the most when I watch the videos of Sea World performances, is the incredible degree of sensory stimulation to which these animals are exposed. In the audience’s mind the trainers are just dancing, – entertaining. But to the Orcas, arching out of the water and facing them on the fantail, it might seem that the trainers are writhing provocatively in black and white shiny wetsuits (if I’m not mistaken a human being is about the size of a seal). Perhaps the input isn’t being absorbed as simply good theater that it’s intended to be. Just as I always advise dog owners not to let their children wave their hands in a dog’s face or run past the puppy’s crate, I know I’d feel very uneasy sashaying around in the face of a killer whale. So the question is: since sensory input energizes the nervous system, and Orcas are bombarded with huge doses of it, where does all this energy go? I do know that in the deepest most primal recess of animal consciousness, when there is a high rate of sensory input, it means either danger or dinner; predator or prey; and either way the “computer” commands BITE.

The other thing that strikes me from watching the performances is what might the Orcas be experiencing as they perform their various routines. In the trainers mind they are conditioning the Orca to perform tricks, simple conditioned responses. The “cue” is the input, the behavior is the output. And in the trainer’s mind the output of behavior, no matter how complex the linked chain of behaviors, it nonetheless merely equals the input: in short the animal mind is basically a learning machine. But behavior is fundamentally about the transmission of energy, and energy has a quantity as well as a QUALITY to it, and so the relevant question becomes: what is the Orca FEELING when the trainer riding on its back points at people in the audience and then it flicks water in their faces by a sudden swoosh of its powerful tail? For example, if I were to condition my cat to flick its tail at a dog, I would worry if I’m inciting the cat toward feeling “aggressive” toward that dog.

Of course, the vast majority of times, with the greatest percentage of Orcas, the performance routines go off beautifully, and so this supposed primal command to bite by computer apparently isn’t being given. Or is it?

It’s my contention that the question, ‘why are Orcas the stars of aquatic amusement parks’ – - is also the answer to the question a to why most Orcas don’t maul their trainers while some do. Killer whales excel at these performances for the reason some attack, and most don’t. In other words, so far “Tilikum” has been characterized as a 12,000 pound Orca with a big problem; this may be his third victim, whereas an energy theory characterizes Tilikum as a big Orca with a 12,000 volt problem.

THE ANIMAL MIND IS AN ENERGY CIRCUIT; it absorbs sensory input and converts it into physical and psychic energy. Physical and psychic energy evolved to do work, to overcome resistance so as to move energy throughout an ecosystem. This is what truly drives evolution. It is more fundamental than the matter of gene replication or even survival. If an organism can capture, harness and move energy through an ecosystem, it thrives.

And in order for an energy circuit to reliably repeat itself, there must be an “emotional battery”, its purpose being as a reservoir for the sublimation of simple, pure emotion (pure emotion is attracted to a preyful essence) so as to be converted into unresolved emotion and stored as stress, with this stored energy being a built-up degree of force that can do work, but it is simultaneously information on how to align with others in order to do such work. (I.E. synchronize with others so as to overcome more complex and stronger forms of resistance.) This means that the purpose of sociability isn’t for companionship and for the pleasures of affection, as wonderful derivatives of sociability as these indeed are. Rather, the purpose of emotion, affection, love and its first cousin stress, is to do the work of evolution.

Meanwhile Sea World is peddling a Disney story that “love makes the world go round,” “We are one with the Killer Whales”, and “Orcas just want to be friends”. “We’re really good to these animals, we love them.” However, the fact remains that because Orcas are predators, this is how they are equipped to perform as they do. I’m no fan of the circus but at least old time Lion tamers cracking the whip, brandishing the chair (and we all knew there was a sniper off stage with a high power rifle) were selling honesty.

When animals are emotionally bonded, such as Killer Whales living in their pod, two, three, four or more synced up into a complex energy circuit, their many emotional batteries become one emotional battery, with this collectivized energy being for the purpose of overcoming more and more complex objects of resistance, – which is really what a complex routine of tricks represents. And interestingly as alluded to above, the featured star players at parks like Sea World are the oceanic equivalents of wolves, i.e. group hunters, such as dolphins and killer whales, and they evolved to herd schools of fish for efficient killing or disorient huge whales that are much larger than they are.

The emotional battery is “ionized” by environmental/sensory inputs so that the body/mind becomes “polarized” in a complementary manner. Thus the animal can align and synchronize with its peers in order to hunt collectively. I would guess that killer whales love synchronized activity for the same reason that dogs love car rides. And the higher the capacity of the emotional battery, the more adaptable the organism because its capacity for synchronization is higher. This then means all stimulation, be it gently petting and stroking the Orca’s tactile sensory regions; visual arousal; audio inputs such as blaring guitar solos and driving bass rhythms, is – in the final analysis – emotional energy. Neurons fire, bio-chemical energy is generated and so we return to the fundamental question: what is this energy “designed” to do? In my view, it is designed to do work, and the work that Orcas evolved to do is to pool their collective batteries in order to hunt.

I’m reminded here of an impromptu experiment Dr. Mech conducted when filming the “White Wolves of Ellesmere Island” with Jim Brandenburg. One can see this for oneself on the National Geographic video of that title. Mech and Brandenburg were set up above the wolf’s den and one afternoon while the wolves seemed fast asleep, Dr. Mech whispered to Jim that he was going to sneak down wind a couple of hundred yards and then let out a howl. Jim got excited; this was going to be an interesting field experiment.

When Mech got into position he began to howl, and he was very good at it because the wolves arose and became very excited. But then to Jim’s amazement, they began to fight, several of them biting and locking up and then tumbling into an alder thicket before they came to their senses. When Mech returned, Jim filled him in and recounted blow by blow what had just happened. And then he turned to Mech expectantly and waited for the interpretation of the results to the experiment. Oddly, Mech had nothing much to say. We had just observed an experiment, the results had been tabulated, and yet no interpretation was forthcoming.

So then, what happened? In my view, the wolves were summoned to a hunt that wasn’t. They got all dressed up but had nowhere to go. Their prey-making impulse, which in social interactions is sublimated into emotionally deflected behaviors via the emotional battery (i.e. mounting, posturing, rub-a-dubbing, rolling, flipping polarity, chase-and-be-chased, deflection  onto a common bite object), was in this context not available because they had been suddenly energized for the hunt and yet no prey was available to absorb this sudden arousal of energy. This meant that the only way out for the “charge”, – which is made of compressed prey-making arousal and normally reserved for the large, dangerous prey animal, – was each other, which is why they ended up fighting, or making-prey on each other. Between wolves, this not too big of a problem given that as canines they are endowed with the reflexes of a ninja and can avoid tooth to sensitive body parts, and then even when bitten their tough hide and thick pelt can virtually resist a leather punch. So no harm no foul. Whereas when a dog “flashes” a human, we can’t get out of the way, our soft skin easily tears and a relatively harmless pinch and twist of the incisors can need 20 stitches to close. In other words, over-stimulation can fry the circuitry and cause the batteries to violently dump energy as a survival response.

Currently in dogdom, everyone’s on the lookout for the abusive dog owner, – animal rescue 911 is all the rage on TV. Everyone thinks that the remarkable increase in aggression in dogs is due to abuse, but I believe it’s primarily due to over-stimulation of the emotional battery in conjunction with a romanticized version of what it is to be “one with an animal”. Dogs used to be tied to dog houses in the back yard, and now they’re invited on the bed if not under the covers. And yet the purpose of sociability is not companionship; it’s to move energy, and when no outlet for synchronized group action that can channel all this energy, stored up in the battery, is provided, instinct finds its own way out.

A further clue to what’s going on with the Orcas might prove to be the curled-over dorsal fin that is characteristic of a killer whale in captivity. It has been suggested that this is a physical condition of deterioration, however in a number of videos on-line where the Orca is actually making prey, the fin appears to be firmly upright. One clip shows three Orcas taking out a hapless Pelican that alighted in their pool, and then the videos of the various attacks on people that have been captured, in particular the scene of the Orca taking a “victory” lap with the trainer in its jaws being held by his ankle (2006), – again the fins appear to be perfectly upright. My hunch is that the disposition of this fin might very well correlate to a dog’s tail, with its set and action being configured around a dog’s physical (as well as its emotional) center of gravity: the core of the body/mind as an emotional battery. This would then suggest that being in a small enclosure, especially a hard reflective surface such as a concrete or metal pool brightly painted, would make the Orca feel compressed and curl the tail over, much like a dog with a tucked tail. It doesn’t feel “grounded” but then after the tumultuous download of its battery, just like a dog with the prey in its mouth and trotting along with an unmistakable bounce in its stride, the fin rises as does the dog’s tail. In all these cases, the emotional circuitry, which evolved in service to the fundamental purpose not of sociability, but of moving energy through an ecosystem (which in Orcas as in canines means the hunt), has run to ground. In the Orca’s mind, all that stimulation finally arrived at its energetic endpoint; the hunt has finally hit the stop signal.

I believe that the synchronized actions mimics for Orcas the experience of hunting, just as playing fetch with a dog, or taking a dog for a car ride, does for canines. Group synchronization is the basis of Orca motivation and why they enjoy performing their tricks. But apparently it must prove to be an exercise in frustration, like always praising a dog and getting it worked up and excited so that one day, seemingly out of nowhere, it bites. This is why I stress the concept of an emotional battery, as you can only fill it up so much with energy before it has to start downloading or crash. All input that can’t be conducted through the pure channel then goes into the emotional battery and is stored, – it doesn’t just go away after the lights dim and the crowd goes home. I’m suggesting that performing a back flip for a fish doesn’t constitute resolution of a 12,000 volt problem.

Sea World and learning theorists characterizes the system of training they do as being purely positive, but in the animal mind, the negative equals access to the positive. So even when we’re being 100% motivational (from our point of view), our dog is giving our “eyes,” i.e. our predatory aspect, credit. We are becoming increasingly negative, and if this isn’t grounded in purposeful work from an evolutionary point of view, things can run aground. (If I were to design the costumes at Sea World I would appropriate my design from the rubber workers in Burma. I would outfit the trainers in a garish wet suit with harsh right angles as the design pattern, and shockingly bright colors that hold in graphic relief two menacing eyes prominently featured on the trainers’ back. This might more effectively reflect the energy they project onto the trainers, back at the Orca’s and keep their energies on track and deflected toward the fish in trainer’s hand.)

Over-stimulation, rather than abuse, is why I believe there is a rising rate of aggression in domestic dogs. Owners are pouring so much energy into the relationship, and it’s got nowhere to go. The fact that most dogs can sublimate the energy and become even more intensely friendly is what confuses the real picture of what’s going on. If being positive could stand on its own, if it were possible to be purely positive in a way that meant something to the animal mind, then dolphin training as practiced at Sea World would work in the wide open ocean on free Willy. But the animals must be constrained so that they can perceive the trainer as the negative-as-access-to-the-positive. This is why the social hunters such as dolphins and killer whales are so readily motivated and able to perform amazingly synchronized activities. The hunt is what makes it worth it to an Orca to rocket out of the water, spin three times and then dive back in through a hoop for a fish. This is as close to hunting as it’s ever going to get, unless another unlucky Pelican wanders into its pool.

Orcas are constantly being summoned to a hunt that is never to materialize. And sadly, in some tragic instances, it becomes trick training run amok.

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Our hand moves to our heart because the middle of our chest is the focal point in our body/mind as the place where we feel our projected physical center-of-gravity (our emotional c-o-g) that physically connects us to our surroundings. This is not a mental phenomenon, it is a visceral one. Physical organisms evolved complex nervous systems in order to render complex elaborations of simple physical phenomena (energy) as the invisible architecture of social structures. In a state of resonance with others or with our surroundings our heart becomes the epicenter of our emotional consciousness. Referencing our heart we are induced into a state of emotional suspension. One can only feel flow in a state of suspension. Flow is the perception of a virtual current of energy between the individual and the surroundings, not that it actually exists, but that it is an elaboration of the internal current (physical affects of emotional experience which Damasio interprets as integral to homeostasis) connecting the two poles in the body/mind. The feeling of flow softens the experience of the e-cog moving through the body after it has been projected onto external objects of attraction so that the movements and impacts of these external elements are likewise being apprehended as part of that overall sensual experience. And if the feeling evolves to be strong enough we feel “swept off our feet” because we are quite literally suspended by our heart (in our animal mind) in a field of mutual attraction.

Heart is where we feel potential energy. Heart orients us to the exact midpoint around which two entrained individuals achieve symmetrical alignment so as to turn their surroundings into a conductive medium. In other words, feelings evolve from emotion in order to turn the environment BACK INTO EMOTION, i.e. a field of mutual attraction that induces its constituents (via their feelings that make them feel conductive) to exploit their setting and thereby add new energy to the system.

The substratum of a subjective experience is not thoughts, but is due to one’s relationship with their physical memory, (the physical cog being the seed of all physical memory) which is simultaneously a feeling of where in the circle, or group, one feels connected. So one hundred people could be riding on a Ferris wheel and as it goes round, some are rising and some are descending and this universal spinning motion is nevertheless rendering a unique subjective impression within any given individual based on where on the circle one happens to find oneself in any given moment. The same energy, the same experience, depending on where in that frame of reference one is, determines the basis of a subjective experience and well before any thought or self-evaluation can ever take place.

It’s imaginable therefore that a subjective view of experience can be rendered far below any mental awareness and which will percolate up at some point, often slowly, until expressed in some kind of action and in the case of humans, can also potentially be grist for self-reflection (but not necessarily). Nonetheless whatever actions result will to some extent move the emotional momentum that’s been invested in the organism and this energy will run its course no matter what the human intellect might come up with as a means of interpreting what they are experiencing. This is because despite whatever thoughts are being pondered, there remains a thermodynamic reality to emotion in conjunction with the principle of conservation, with feelings being its means of implementation by way of syncing up with other like-minded beings, and these laws of nature will do the work they evolved to do no matter what a human being might think about what he is experiencing.

We can think about emotion in any way that we may choose, but nevertheless it will still act on us as if it is a virtual force of attraction, like gravity. We will have absorbed a charge of momentum and until it reaches terminus, it motivates us. And we may think about a state of suspension (feeling) in any way that we may choose, but it still affects us as if we’re suspended within a field of electromagnetism buffeted by arriving waves like a radio receiver and we will be differentiated in its course simply by virtue of our very nature. Our thoughts may distort or deny this energy but this can only serve to build up a charge and sooner or later, and nature has all the time in the world, it will come out on its own terms just as every drop of rain inexorably reaches the ocean no matter how many dams might be erected to hold it back.

So Damasio is studying the nuts and bolts of the neurological machinery by which this emotional dynamic is implemented into action and solely on the level of the individual; but he’s not actually studying the emotional dynamic, i.e. the heart. (To do that one must look at animals and their behavior as an expression of energy. There’s no other way.) We must remind ourselves that there is necessarily neurological machinery because heart can’t move a muscle and so it does indeed require nerve and a central coordinating apparatus to flex tendon, bone and muscle but this doesn’t therefore mean that the neurological mechanics is the source of the emotion or feelings. For example, I believe I could design (with the help of engineers) a doggy robot that could respond to other dogs and people in a way that would perfectly mimic how dogs respond and without any software or preprogramming whatsoever in regards to the core formatting of how the doggy robot would conduct itself and “know” what to do. My doggy robot would manifest complementary traits in response to the situation (or not if the moment was not conductive) and which would conscript other dogs and people into its “wave form” so that as an ensemble they could evolve into complex social actions and structures. The core computation would take place in real time and without preprogramming and would be based on states of energy evoked by batteries, magnetos, compasses, capacitors, and so on embedded in the robot. The process for robot dealing with an actual dog or person would be “written” on the spot in perfect compliance with the emotional conductivity and energetic parameters of the moment and yet even though this would be happening in the deepest recesses of the doggy robot’s “consciousness,” nevertheless I would still need a CPU and software layered on top of all this so that all these energy states could be fed into each other and then mirrored in the “higher” nerve centers in order that this underlying dynamic of “consciousness” could be executed into actual behavior via the hydraulics and appendages of the robot. This software/CPU “nerve center” would constitute the mechanics of implementation but it would not therefore be the source of the doggy robot’s core “consciousness.”

What Damasio terms homeostasis, which he sees as being in service to an individual agenda of survival and overall well-being, I recognize as “emotional ionization” which is in service to an interconnected network agenda, a networked-intelligence. These physical affects of emotional experience are in actuality capturing energy and then later during encounters with others, ultimately converting this captured energy into a “wave form” i.e. social energy.

When two dogs encounter each other, the friction between them will polarize them toward preyful or predator poles so that they differentiate from each other in a complementary way. This immutable tendency towards variability, Damasio misinterprets as homeostasis, when in fact it has nothing to do with stasis but is wholly concerned with flow and renders for each individual a distinctive subjective perception of what it is experiencing. But in the overall one dog has transmitted energy onto the other (predator – - > prey), and sure enough months if not years later the one that manifested prey-like traits (generally mislabeled “submissive”) and which absorbed the energy, then as if out of nowhere becomes predator-like (generally mislabeled “dominant”) in deference to this underlying template which prejudiced each other’s subjective impression of what they’ve experienced, and recruited them in the overarching dynamic by which the network moves energy through the environment to suit its purposes. Meanwhile behaviorism/biology says that respect, appeasement, dominance and submission has happened between A and B. And so while we all observed an obvious transfer of energy when A first met B, we then assume that all this energy somehow went into a mental ether; a psychology, and so we therefore miss that two to three years later that internalized energy in B has then finally emerged in some vigorous expression of action. A spring inside dog B was coiled, energy captured, and then released, energy returning to the flow.

Differentiating into complementary traits in order to turn environmental inputs into social energy; causes individuals to affect their environment so as to capture new energy. Feelings are not subjective (unique to that individual) in terms of being dependant on introspection or self-reflection, experience is subjective and unique to an individual because it is immutable that individuals will manifest these primary traits, two beings cannot experience the same moment the same, and then at some point exchange them if they create a true social framework.
The problem Damasio runs into with a top down, thought-centric model is how then to bring animals into the emotional fold because if they aren’t thinking, then they aren’t experiencing a feeling. And so we end up with a bifurcated model with body split from mind, animal from human; and human culture falling outside the domain of natural evolution.

An animals’ sense of its “self” derives from its relationship to its physical center-of-gravity which via Pavlovian conditioning evolves into an emotional center-of-gravity that is then “projected” onto complex objects of attraction so that given the bipolar, two-brain makeup of an animal, complex stimuli can be broken down into simple energetic conductors (what Damasio terms “emotionally competent stimuli”), and this then serves to help the projecting individual become the equal and opposite to such a complex object of resistance/attraction. This means that an animal can’t experience its “self” except through an external source of displacement, in other words, the animals’ identity depends on the external environment affecting it physically rather than via mental thought, or via an impression or reference of its “self” as something distinct and separate from its surroundings and then relative to its surroundings.

Damasio treats fear as an emotion, and as an irreducible aspect of experience, when with but a little introspection one can see that fear can’t possibly be a basic element on the periodic chart of emotions, but rather a compound construct several steps removed from emotion. For fear to be experienced, first there must be a state of attraction (emotion) as well as a sense of flow (feeling) that then collapses by an interrupting agent (construed by animal as predatory aspect) and the resulting sensations of falling (instinct) in the absence of grounding render the composite experience we understand as fear. All one has to do to verify this thesis is simply take note of what they experience when seeing a trooper suddenly looming in the rear view mirror.

A theory of stasis is a two-dimensional linear system that cannot explain the infectiousness of emotion. We can see that if someone laughs or vomits, others (because they involuntarily project their e-cog into the forms of their fellow persons) experience an involuntary reflex to emulate such behavior. Yet a supposition of maintaining stasis would suggest the opposite. How is vomiting in the absence of an actual toxin in the body returning the observing individual to a state of stasis? Rather it is upsetting an individual already in a state of stasis. That would be like riding a bike in a group and upon seeing someone fall off their bike then having to resist an overwhelming compunction to fall off in kind. But emotion is about flow rather than stasis, and so we emotionally project our e-cog into others in order to maximize flow, which is why we feel a simpatico infectiousness with laughter/vomit as an irresistible feature of our emotional nature, and then simultaneously we experience no urge to fall off our bike if our riding companion were to founder. The fundamental purpose of emotion is flow rather than stasis.

The basis of a “self” is resistance to acceleration, the degree to which when some force acts on a self, that self is capable of reflecting that energy back at that acting agent. This services the network’s impulse for complexity. Without that sense-of-self, then a feeling can’t elaborate from the underlying and fundamental state of mutual attraction that is the substratum of all consciousness and which compels organisms to differentiate into complementary traits.

The problem with a mental approach to emotion is that it leads to a sterile and bifurcated model because it is always preoccupied with the machinery of emotion rather than the emotional dynamic itself, which is the inculcation of virtual states of energy (gravity/electromagnetism) in consciousness, perception and experience. So Damasio sees culture as distinct and apart from nature, the brain as distinct and apart from the body – - and so then where is the role of the heart, the physical center-of-gravity, the symmetry of the skeletal arrangement, the tension between the dynamic demands of internal organs – - in the role of the mind?
A mental model of emotion is mechanical and ultimately denaturing and it will logically follow that taking drugs to numb an individual to what they are feeling will be seen as therapeutic since the mental machinery is always reducible to chemicals.

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Occasionally Lee and I get involved in debates with behavioral scientists or at least those that seem to be well informed on the science of behavior since they post anonymously, and the back and forth follows a predictable course that ultimately doesn’t get anywhere because apparently I don’t have any data. I thought I had pretty good data, i.e. the things we see dogs do everyday. But the question persists, and it is at face value a reasonable one, how could a few dog trainers be right about an energetic logic as the basis for learning and complex social behavior, and which stands in complete contradiction with what the very best minds in science have determined? Why, if an energy theory of behavior is so comprehensive and accurate, hasn’t science arrived at the same conclusion? Well, it has, it just doesn’t know it yet.

By this I mean that science is inexorably moving in the direction of an energy theory and there are indications of it emerging everywhere but first it needs to be pointed out. For example, I have caught several episodes of the series “The Human Spark” hosted by Alan Alda. In it some major tenets of the theory are verified by the latest in behavioral experiments and brain research (for example; the human mind processes the ability to entertain another person’s point-of-view, and a point-of-view in the future, in the same region in the brain, and this is a structure animals lack. This is exactly my definition of a “thought,” the basis for how the human intellect constructs a view of reality, the intellect as a “relativity” machine that makes it different from animal consciousness.) Hopefully I will be able to obtain some clips of the various experiments featured on the program and then I will post them with an energy reinterpretation allowing one to decide for themselves which interpretation seems the most reasonable. The “Human Spark” also emphasizes the point that it’s reflexive in the human mind to project intention into everything, even inanimate objects; a proclivity present in young infants. In my view this intellectual reflex is precisely what blinds science to the self-evidence of an energy theory: such notions of competition, survival, territoriality, genes replicating for the sake of their replication, learning by way of reinforcement; are all complex derivatives of this instinctual reflex. Because of this behavioral theory gets more and more complex and based on human reason so that it can’t connect the dots with the research that’s already in hand and which the behavior of dogs and the manner by which they learn reveals every day.

For the last six months I’ve been trying to put enough information on this site to develop the model more fully. And while this will continue because we’re just getting started, however I want to shift my focus toward creating a section that will feature a series of pictures and/or videos to put the model directly into action by learning how to see the energy through the actual behavior of dogs and animals. Also, I hope to flesh out the training/method section more fully for the practical benefit of these understandings.

However, in answer to the question posed above, why is an energy theory considered anti-scientific? in the following article and from time to time I will bring the reader’s attention to an experiment or book that’s directly speaking to an energy model, even though it might not explicitly recognize it as such. One such book that I ran across while searching the web for Darwin’s illustrations of dogs and emotional expression (the subject of a future article on the “principle of antithesis”), is entitled “With Pleasure: Thoughts on the Nature of Human Sexuality” by Paul R. Abramson and Steven D. Pinkerton. I haven’t read the book but have excerpted some important points from some on-line reviews that I think boil the book down succinctly, with the link provided below. My point with this kind of article is that the data for an energy theory is already in hand, we just need to connect the dots. One such linkage is my thesis (which at first might seem radical) that the mechanics and emotional basis of human love-making is identical to canine prey-making. This is relevant because it shows the universal aspects of emotion as the basis for a networked-intelligence, the logic of which is the basis of the animal mind and the manner by which it learns.

One of the most difficult notions for the current marketplace to accept, and which impairs the advancement of the NDT theory and method in the current climate of the modern marketplace, is the idea of sexuality as a social positive, and which I then further argue is actually information as in the form of animal magnetism that informs animals how to self-organize into social structures. Curiously behaviorism has no problem regarding sexuality in a positive light when it comes to Bonobos, but in truth this seeming openness is really in service to a political agenda (From the book notes I suspect that “With Pleasure” is going to muddle itself as well because by not being an energy theory, it will entangle itself in surface political ax-grinding as well.) rather than straight science because behaviorism and biology does a telling abrupt about turn over the issue of neutering in canines.

In 1978 I recognized the direct linkage between the prey drive and the sexual impulse through a remark that Bernhard Mannel made to me: (“The only way one can appreciate the canine prey making drive is through the human sexual drive.”). Upon reflection it then became obvious to me that sexual energy results from the predatory impulse meeting resistance and yet the individual can still perceive the preyful essence at the same time. (Whereas if it can’t perceive the preyful essence: then the feeling collapses and instincts/habits take over and that’s the end of the elaboration process that potentially could have resulted in a state of social alignment.) Thus, when the emotional energy the “predator” (anything projecting emotion onto something, is acting from the predatory aspect of its being, even a bunny rabbit, and this is also why most animals only manifest predatory reflexes and aggression in regards to breeding because that’s the only time they can hold the predatory and preyful aspect in mind at the same time due to hormones, and which then justifies the old paradigm view of neutering as socially calming) is projecting onto an object of attraction, is then reflected back to it by the predatory aspect of the object of attraction (its head/eyes), this internalized energy of stress is then converted into sexual energy by virtue of feeling grounded via the preyful essence into said object of attraction, and this energy is then internally displaced into other areas of the body so that the individual becomes sensually polarized. Now when two individuals move around each other, this animal magnetism releases a sense of pleasure in affected body parts (due to where they perceive their emotional-center-of-gravity) and this is a group circuit which will serve as a physical memory for alignment on sight. And this is not for purposes of procreation but for creation, i.e. to facilitate more and more complex manners of alignment (social structure) in order to create new energy. So the highest expression of sexuality is a sensual state of attunement with an object of attraction so that in tandem neuro-chemical energy in both brains, affects them as if they are magnetized and which thereby enmeshes them into a new emotional dynamic system, two magnets becoming one electromagnetic dynamo.

Since the primary property of energy is to do work, this electromagnetic dynamo is simultaneously the means by which the individuals attune to their surroundings, and in canines, enables the capacity to hunt a prey they couldn’t overwhelm singly or even in numbers but rather through the communication of energy, i.e. “the charge.”
This also means that the secondary purpose of sexuality is recreation, the simple pleasure of tactile contact which I suppose is the focus of the book “With Pleasure,” and which facilitates bonding for the purposes of cementing more and more complex expressions of sociability. Lastly, the business of procreation is not only, not fundamental, but rather is merely the tertiary function of sexuality which is of course necessary so that genes replicate and create the physical hardware necessary to implement more and more complex expressions of sociability.

In short, the experience of pleasure is integral to creating the group dynamic so that the many minded become but one mind.

So in 1978 because I was learning how to not project human thoughts into what dogs were doing, which means that I was developing an energy theory for why dogs do what they do, it became obvious to me that human sexuality was likewise the direct derivative of the predator/prey dynamic as well. In other words, the prey/predator module was the main conduit for the transmission of emotional energy be it between predator and prey, male and female, peer to peer, parent to offspring, child to teddy bear, and then this primal means of transfer and medium for synchronization, elaborates into complex social structures. The higher the emotional capacity of a species, the greater its sexual nature and the greater its sexual nature, the more it can project its “self” across the species divide and create trans-species emotional bonds and social ways of living, dogs and humans being the highest examples of this capacity that’s ever evolved between any two species. This book “With Pleasure” is halfway to seeing this connection, and it’s only halfway because it doesn’t yet recognize that the experience of pleasure through the phenomenon of emotional projection and the principle of emotional conductivity, is the organizing principle of animal consciousness and the basis of all behavior and so therefore precedes any genetic agenda for replication, it doesn’t follow from it. In other words, emotion and the experience of pleasure as the implementation of the principle of emotional conductivity is the basis of evolution, it did not evolve from evolution.

Nevertheless this is a huge breakthrough because for the first time that I’m aware of modern science is entertaining the premise that the foremost purpose of sexuality isn’t procreation. So dear reader if you sometimes think that you must walk the plank of intellectual rationality by subscribing to NDT theory and method, it might be helpful to remember that “Natural Dog Training” presaged not only the demise of the dominance theory, but the compelling thesis of this book “With Pleasure” by several decades. (Also note that the book cover is particularly interesting, picture of woman biting a man’s ear, i.e. “making prey.”)

I’ve included a number of blurbs that summarize the book’s thesis and to indicate that science is taking the thesis seriously, and then after these is a fuller review with link provided.

Quote from the book “With Pleasure”

“From the pristine vantage point of religious, political, and evolutionary doctrine, it is sometimes argued that the sole function of human sexuality is reproduction. As a consequence, non-reproductive expressions of sexuality are deemed illicit, immoral, or illogical. However, we believe the primacy of reproduction to be vastly overemphasized, and the insistence on procreation as the end-all of human sexuality to be inherently misguided.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=Q9Wgak5gl18C&dq=With+Pleasure+Pinkerton&source=bn&hl=en&ei=ErhZS_G6A46isgPJ6rnQBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=4&ved=0CBcQ6wEwAw

Description
Challenging everything from the mandates of the Catholic Church to the hotly debated ethics of pornography, and from the controversy surrounding gay rights to issues of gender and feminism, With Pleasure explores a new theory of human sexuality that ignites every hot topic in the public domain. What role, authors Paul Abramson and Steven Pinkerton ask, does sexual pleasure play in our lives? Is the pursuit of sexual enjoyment in our blood? Our brains? Our very nature? Regardless of the source, it can be agreed that the joys of sex are widely appreciated. Why, then, is pleasure so often overlooked in discussions of sexual behavior, and why do cultural, historical, and religious treatises so often fail to emphasize, or outright ignore, this obvious aspect of human sexuality?
Responding to these and many other questions about our most private affairs, “With Pleasure” provides a profoundly original challenge to the cherished truisms of human sexuality. Abramson and Pinkerton proclaim the paramount importance of pleasure, while at the same time overthrowing traditional ideas about gender, pornography, contraception, homosexuality, abortion, and much more. Supported by rigorous research, With Pleasure argues that human sexuality cannot be understood if its significance is limited to reproduction alone. The authors posit that in humans reproduction itself occurs as a byproduct of pleasure–not the other way around–and that it is the strong drive for pleasure that makes people overcome many obstacles–and even life-threatening dangers such as AIDS–to have sex. Ranging from discussions about the church to current debates about pornography, and from evolutionary theory to questions about the future of sex and pleasure, Abramson and Pinkerton argue persuasively that the pleasurability of sex cannot be restricted to purely reproductive behavior.
Stimulating and informative and written with ample wit…. The authors’ central argument is that sex is for pleasure, not procreation, because it is usually pleasure that provides the motivating force for human sexual activity.”–Scientific American

“A fresh and theoretically enticing approach to the study of human sexuality….Sure to spark intense debate among those concerned with the study of human sexuality.”–Kirkus Reviews

“Abramson and Pinkerton amass an array of evidence that sexuality in all of its myriad manifestations is inherently pleasurable. Moreover, they argue that sex-as-pleasure is primary over sex-as-reproduction as the evolutionary and psychological motivator for seeking sexual outlets. Furthermore, they insist that embracing all consensual, adult sexuality will make sex safer and perpetuate the species but with increased pleasure. Thus, With Pleasure is a scholarly, provocative, and brave book that will both evoke discomfort in the sexual puritan and instill hope in the sexual liberal as it increases the tolerance of all to the celebration of sexual pleasure.”–Donald L. Mosher, Professor of Psychology, University of Connecticut

“With Pleasure is a thought-provoking, insightful examination that takes pleasure out of the closet and challenges us to rethink commonly-held assumptions about the nature of sexuality. It is a welcome addition to my library that I predict will drive public discussion and future academic research.”–Angela Pattatucci, Associate Investigator, National Institutes of Health

Humans evolved to have sex not only for procreation but for pleasure, argue Paul Abramson and Steven Pinkerton, the latter a native of Seattle. As social animals, we use it to enhance love, to make peace after fights, to relieve tension, for social advantage, for recreation and for income.
“Pleasure has evolutionary advantages,” said Abramson.

Natural and necessary

This distinction is important, they contend. If sex is seen only to produce offspring, then anything that does not contribute to that goal – oral and anal sex, masturbation, homosexuality, pornography and prostitution – can be seen as morally offensive, unnecessary and subject to censure, legal prohibition or religious injunction.
The psychologists theorize that humans, as social animals who choose mates for a variety of reasons, evolved sexual pleasure. Natural selection may have favored ancestors who developed pleasure centers –

http://atheism.about.com/od/bookreviews/fr/WithPleasure.htm

Quote From Review:
“Abramson and Pinkerton discuss evidence from physiology, psychology, and culture in order to demonstrate that pleasure is not an irrelevant byproduct of the drive to procreate.”
“It is probably undeniable that pleasure originally developed in order to promote procreation — the more pleasurable an activity is, the more likely individuals are to engage in it. Those who have sex more will produce more offspring, and so the genes that make sex pleasurable get passed on.”
“That, however, is not the final word on how evolution operates. Traits that develop in order to meet one need can be co-opted to fulfill entirely different purposes. In the case of sexual pleasure, it turns out that this pleasure facilitates things such as interpersonal bonding, promoting interpersonal relationships, and reducing social tensions. These may not have been reasons why sexual pleasure developed, but they certainly helped ensure that it stayed with us and spread through the population. Today, perhaps, reproduction is simply a byproduct of sexual pleasure.”
“There is far more sex-for-pleasure than there is sex-for-reproduction, that is indisputable. It is because of this that one can conclude that, for homo sapiens at least, sex exists primarily for the sake of the pleasure it creates rather than the children which are only sometimes created.”
“It is because of this that Abramson and Pinkerton don’t merely present their observations about human sexuality; instead, they also advocate that we all develop a more realistic perspective on sexuality. We have been misled into thinking that sex is just about procreation, but once we recognize it for being about pleasure, we’ll be able to handle it better and live our lives a bit better.”

KB – - > I would like to hark back to the theory of Symbiogenesis which I mentioned elsewhere, the theory that new species are created when one organism is ingested by another and then its genetic material is assimilated rather than consumed. I believe that on the lowest forms of life this is one of the earliest physical embodiments of emotion moving through the predatory/prey module, and that this has continued to evolve into the complex emotional nature that is fully expressed in the sexual nature of animals. This distinction is important because it means that evolution isn’t a process of natural selection by way of random mutations that then produced pleasure as a function of gene replication, but rather pleasure is the principle by which genes mutate in concordance with shifts in the network and then replicate in order to implement itself.

In my book “Natural Dog Training” published in 1992, there is a chapter entitled “The Pleasure Principle.” It states:
“By grasping that pleasure in canines is defined in terms of the prey drive and is the means by which a canine can learn; we see that it isn’t a whimsical or casual state of being in the natural scheme of things. The pursuit of pleasure isn’t an act of hedonism or of selfish indulgence on the part of the individual and nor does it have much to do with trial and error. It only flows in accord with a pulse inherent in the drive to bite. It follows a specific rhythm that is time worn and deeply grooved by the genetic imprint the prey drive has etched in every canine’s temperament.”

“The group dynamic intrinsic to the pursuit of pleasure is incredibly important to us as dog owners for it is the basis of the canine’s ability to learn to cooperate.”
“However, in dogs and wolves there are other and more elaborate releasers which permit action than are to be found in frogs and perhaps any other species of predator – save man. For example, the form of a body, with a bulbous shape and a horizontal back line rather than a vertical line, attracts the drive to bite. And then finally, in the canine species there is available an additional class of emotional releasers which through domestication have been emphasized even further in the modern dog. Without these, which we’ll consider below, the wolf and the dog would be much less flexible in their range of responses to the outside world.”

“When canines are emotionally attracted to one of their own kind and yet there isn’t a releaser of motion to permit biting, they nevertheless remain attracted. The attraction doesn’t just dissipate and go away on its own. As they go forward through the impulse to bite, and they encounter resistance because the object of their ardor isn’t acting like prey, an amazing phenomenon occurs in two stages.”

“Right after the charge to bite is internalized, and right before it has the chance to shock the individual out of his biting impulse, the next phase occurs whereby the charge can next serve to arouse the individual sexually. As a result, emotional energy is diverted away from the jaws and radiates into the body arousing it, particularly of course in the genital area. Therefore, two canines interacting socially, even though they are attracted to each other through the prey/predator impulse, because it can’t come out through its primary avenue of expression, i.e. bite and grip, it is displaced into the sexual circuitry. Their bodies grow “polarized” so that they will position and realign themselves in response to this more complex urge quite like stacking batteries positive to negative ends in a flashlight. When so polarized, dogs studiously smell each other from top to bottom trying to ascertain where and how to “plug in.” A sexual attraction is a latent charge to bite, internalized and stored when the flow of raw emotion is deflected into social activity. This in turn produces all the leg lifting, nasal investigation, and sexual posturing to be observed within the wolf pack and between dogs. The sexual mechanism is how the simple prey instinct becomes the complex prey drive, sexual/sensuality being the means of making contact. The many become integrated into the one, a complex integration which it is vital to note, includes the prey animal as well. In other words, the sexual nature of canines allows for emotional energy to cross the species divide.”

“Often when puppies play and are observed mounting and thrusting with a pronounced pelvic action, it is interpreted in the Pack Theory as being a reflex occurring out of sequence in the normal adult context. It is recognized as a hallmark of immaturity. Presumably the puppy is working the kinks out of his instincts and when he’s an adult he supposedly learns to put the sexual reflex into its proper place in his repertoire. But the reason puppies vigorously mount well before they are able to breed is precisely because sexuality is directly linked to the prey drive and they are responding automatically to this alternative and more complex means of prey making. When they go towards something to bite, and they then meet with a degree of resistance, (the object of their attraction doesn’t act like prey) a puppy will become sexually aroused as his nervous system, being highly stimulated by the prey instinct, will then trip on the sexual circuitry through a feeling of vulnerability. This reflects that the simple urge to bite is being channeled into a new and far more complex avenue of pleasure. And if the other individual if of the same mind, it will be receptive to becoming the prey and the two will play as this complex integration is now the only way either of them can fulfill their complex pleasure circuits.”

“Sexuality in canines is primarily concerned with alignment for the purposes of hunting and only secondarily does it have to do with procreation. It is fundamentally concerned with the processing of resistance encountered in simple prey making into group and pack behaviors: the complex aspect to the prey drive. Because the prey drive has a sexual component, and because the prey drive was amplified through domestication, in my view is why the modern breeds of dogs are so much more sexual than the wolf. Wolves breed once a year and in general are not sexually active until about two years of age. Sometimes they even mate for life. Dogs on the other hand will breed promiscuously, they can breed when as young as six months, and females come into season twice a year. Sexuality in the domestic dog is quite detached from the natural rhythm of the earth’s cycles as it is more attuned to the magnetic attraction between animals inherent in the simple prey instinct. The emotions of dogs are more weighted towards the active aspects of prey making, searching, chasing, and biting. Whereas the wolf’s nervous system remains more attuned to the seasons of the earth and to the migratory patterns of the prey species which themselves are responding to the earth’s magnetic field and influences of the sun, moon, and perhaps stars. Wolves are more limited by instincts.”

“Traditionally, sexual behaviors have been misinterpreted as a drive to dominate, or to submit, or to claim territory, and have been seen as causative and the means by which a pack is formed, but that is far off the mark because it merely reflects the projection of human concepts such as survival, territoriality and dominance onto the behavior of animals. The alignment of the group into the structured order of the pack is due to the influence that the simple prey instinct has on the nervous system and temperament of the individual. When the individual is deeply aroused to bite, he is vulnerable and uninhibited. If in sync through the prey drive, he is freed from stress and able to align. Cooperation and order isn’t created as the Pack Theory has suggested through a dominance hierarchy.”

Natural Dog Training failed to shift the fundamental thinking on dogs because this notion of the prey drive as overarching mechanism for a group dynamic was criticized as being too simplistic, and of course it contradicted the modern notion of dog as learning machine, or dominance/submissive automaton in the opposing school of thought, the tendency toward neutering and just about every other dogma as well. However today, revealingly, absolutely every high end system of dog training is moving toward training by motivating a dog’s prey drive. Perhaps taking stock of the direction mainstream science and conventional training is moving, with such articles as this, it will become easier to consider how Predator/Prey – - > Male/Female – - > Social follows one from the other via pleasure as the group circuitry.

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KB: I think we are using emotion and feelings in two different ways, and I think this is because I’m seeing emotion as the operating system of a networked-intelligence without any thoughts whatsoever being ascribed to the nature of emotion and feelings. I’m treating them solely as energy as I shall attempt to explain below.

I do think feelings can be likened to colors, especially in regards to an electromagnetic wave form, but emotion exists on a far deeper plane, which is why I prefer to say emotion is like gravity, a virtual force of attraction, a field wherein all objects of mass are responsive to all other objects of mass, whereas feelings are more sophisticated (from our point of view) as are the wave functions of the electromagnetic variety such as light. Emotion evolves into a feeling as consciousness’ resolution of the unified field problem. What we perceive of as time; is consciousness’ connection to all the physical energies. In other words, consciousness apprehends how all things are connected even though we don’t.

Feelings (which inform organisms how to evolve) evolve from emotion just as animals evolve from emotion because I see emotion operating on a plane far deeper than our sense of awareness. For example, I go to the store to buy a variety of things and I look at the money I spend, the goods I receive as well as the work I perform in terms of my own particular frame of reference. But as a consumer I’m just one charged particle of the economy and in a way unbeknownst to me, my economic activity contributes quantitatively to such things far beyond my awareness, such as the trade deficit between American and China and the exchange rate between Iceland and Lithuania. All this deep “network” information is embedded in every transaction and exchange of goods and services that I am part of, and yet it exists far below the awareness of any participant in the economy and ends up affecting me so indirectly I (and apparently most economists) can never connect the dots. A feeling is easier to be aware of, but emotion as its organizing principle is far more subtle. If I’m Xenophobic, I have no idea I’m attracted to foreigners. I think I hate them and then I think of all kinds of reasons why my hatred is justified so that I can mitigate my fear which is based on a layer of unresolved emotion held deeper still.

In my mind emotion is a medium that physiology and neurology evolves from so that all organisms are attracted to each other and in order to implement the principle of conductivity so that no matter what they do it will end up in service to the network. In other words, if information only arises from the network, it’s not possible for any organism to generate information that is in contravention to the network. Nature doesn’t leave evolution up to individuals to decide on their own any more than an economy lets consumers print their own money and so emotion can’t be understood as a self-contained phenomenon in isolation from the whole of the network and that arrives at meaning by virtue of what it comes to mean to any given participant. I’m arguing that organisms didn’t evolve to have emotion anymore than they evolved to have gravity. Organisms evolved in response to emotion just as they evolved in response to gravity. Emotion enforces a thermodynamics on every individual, just like an economy puts everyone in debt just by being present in it, and so they must contribute or else, and so emotion works on us in ways far deeper than we can be aware since it’s the principle on which our very viscera is founded.

Emotion has three phases that serve as the logic to the network, Emotion – > Unresolved Emotion – > Resolved Emotion and feelings evolve from this medium to become the message, i.e. how to resolve unresolved emotion by networking with others.

One problem with the color wheel analogy, at least as far as I’ve seen it represented, is that there’s no place for sexuality or personality. Lust is on the same wavelength as love (as in more intense-and yet incongruently at the same time more shallow) but then aggression doesn’t fit in with sexuality on that same color wavelength. We can’t get away from the linear systems of relationships.

The other problem with current ways of looking at emotion is that there’s actually no such thing as emotion, it doesn’t exist as something that can be measured in isolation from the whole body/mind as it’s the confluence of physical and nerve energies into a state of tension, the release from which is emotion, so it’s not actually present as anything tangible. We have to take the whole of the organism to understand the presence of emotion. This is why (according to Jerome Kagan: “What Is Emotion?” his answer to his title being: no one knows) no philosophy, psychology, neurology has a whole model for emotion, especially one that can accommodate animals as well as humans, sexuality, animal behavior/learning, etc.

QUOTE: “William James, in the article ‘What is an Emotion?’ (Mind, 9, 1884: 188-205), argued that emotional experience is largely due to the experience of bodily changes. The Danish psychologist Carl Lange also proposed a similar theory at around the same time, so this position is known as the James-Lange theory. This theory and its derivatives state that a changed situation leads to a changed bodily state. As James says ‘the perception of bodily changes as they occur IS the emotion.’

KB: I agree that emotion on the level of the individual is affiliated with bodily changes, but this is indicative of how change is emotionally ionizing the organism in a network coherent way, i.e. formatting the emotional battery. So in my view perceptions don’t arise from a purely subjective interpretation of what’s transpiring because there is always a heavy network agenda freighted with every interaction. If emotion is how we “explain and organize our actions,” then it seems James is meaning that it’s a mental phenomenon and then there are two possibilities which I could not concur with: either, animals don’t have emotion, or they think and thus are capable of emotion.

“James further claims that ‘we feel sad because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and neither we cry, strike, nor tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be.”

BURL: This theory is supported by experiments in which by manipulating the bodily state, a desired emotion is induced.[4] Such experiments also have therapeutic implications (e.g. in laughter therapy, dance therapy). The James-Lange theory is often misunderstood because it seems counter-intuitive. Most people believe that emotions give rise to emotion-specific actions: i.e. “I’m crying because I’m sad,” or “I ran away because I was scared.” The James-Lange theory, conversely, asserts that first we react to a situation (running away and crying happen before the emotion), and then we interpret our actions into an emotional response. In this way, emotions serve to explain and organize our own actions to us.”

KB: We’re arriving I think at some good points of distinction. So in my view of emotion as energy that works as a “force” of attraction, I’m not attaching any thought to the pure emotion or to a true feeling. Also, I’m suggesting that the phenomenon of perception is involuntarily and subconsciously shaded by the emotional battery well before the thought process (in humans) can get going. As a matter of fact, by the time the “charge” reaches the brain, the real show is over. Something is happening in a discrete patterned way well before the higher processes of the nervous system has anything to deal with. First, the body/mind is displaced by change and there is an involuntary rising of the degree of tension effected upon the individual. If a preyful aspect can be sensed, then the individual senses a release from tension and this is what we perceive of as a “current” of emotion. If a predatory aspect is sensed, then there is a gap in consciousness, this disconnect triggers a fear and accesses a physical memory. Either way, the animal will feel attracted to the source of change, but already its perceptions have been organized in service to the network.

If the individual can still sense the preyful aspect through the influence of physical memory, then a feeling will evolve in order to make contact or connect with this stimulus. The stronger the arousal through hunger (sensing preyful aspect) circuitry then the stronger the feeling and more fully it can manifest as a pure force of attraction (recapitulating the underlying emotion) that simultaneously can facilitate flipping of polarity to fit with object of attraction or magnetic deflection of energy of attraction to calm the object of attraction. If at any point during the experience there’s more energy in the system than the emotional capacity of that individual can handle (and here in regards to carrying capacity is where a feeling of being connected to the network comes in to shape the nature of the perception) then ingrained habits or instincts take over, and even this can happen well before thoughts can make sense of what’s going on, and in this latter case a feeling does not even evolve into being.

In regards to crying, in my model this happens because there’s more energy going through the system than the individual can handle, which is why crying can occur throughout all kinds of states, fear, joy, laughter, pain, sadness. The crying individual is becoming more prey-like, melting the boundary between its form and others, its persona and personality are dissolving; they are moving their basic physical essence, becoming conductive and thereby attracting the emotion of others. People seeing someone crying concentrate on the vulnerability of such an individual (preyful) and this helps them get past the predatory aspect of that person and they divine a new being with whom they can attune; they feel capable of going up and connecting. When dogs smell each others saliva and tear ducts they too get past the boundary erected by the central nervous system as well as physical memories of resistance they are carrying.

Striking out (breaking one’s fall due to the violence of the emotional collapse) or trembling (radiating a lot of energy) are also overloads of the emotional capacity and a true feeling hasn’t been able to evolve into existence in order to channel this energy. Notice how when a football player gets hit on the opening kickoff of a game their nervousness (and perhaps even trembling) immediately dissipates. By being struck they are “back” in their body and their mental perception is wiped clean so that a feeling can begin to evolve. Their will, i.e. a faith in a feeling, can take over.

Since the Big-Brain can harbor mental memories of emotion, and because it is the only agency that can execute physical action, therefore everything about the emotional process is mirrored in nerve function, but that doesn’t mean it is therefore the source of emotion or what renders the deepest sense of meaning. Criminals and psychopaths are able to mimic emotion because they have the math of it in their brains (as do insects, bacterium, and viruses in their manner of organization) and they are able to convince others of the validity of their state, but it’s just the mental mechanics, they aren’t feeling a thing. So I can see how manipulating body states can induce these mental memories of emotion as can an electrical stimulation of some ganglion or brain structure. But other than therapeutic approaches that are designed to keep someone rooted in their body and cultivate their will, I believe these prove to be artificial and short term, like taking a drug to get high and artificially inducing the feeling of weightlessness, but out of context with the E->UE->RE template that must be serviced over the long haul, and therefore drugs prove transitory and self-destructive because it’s not part of a natural, organic process by which true feelings evolve. It’s akin to electrically stimulating a muscle and getting it to react as if by conscious direction, but it’s just an artificial stimulation that isn’t part of a coherent pattern of movement. In the dog world we see owners doing all this technically correct learning theory but it’s out of context of group purpose and the puppys emotional circuits are fried: too much stimulation without grounding.

Also, because emotion is the operating system of consciousness, even thoughts, no matter what they are, always contribute to the force of attraction in the system. On the deepest level of emotion, from the network’s point of view; it doesn’t matter how the individual perceives or interprets the experience. From the network’s point of view, the fundamental question, and this is the one that the individual’s very physiology and neurology is organized around, is: was more unresolved emotion acquired, or was unresolved emotion resolved? Other than this it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things what the individual does with this energy because no matter what happens the individual has been energized and one way or another, sooner or later, maybe not even in his lifetime; it will evolve into a feeling. Humans may hate but that’s merely an incredibly intense form of attraction that has overwhelmed the emotional capacity of the individual thus charged, however from the networks’ point of view: nevertheless there’s more energy (force) available to the system and when it becomes aligned in a more complex manner it will then be able to accommodate the movement of that energy and unresolved emotion will be resolved.

And then there’s another very important consideration here to return to James famous example of being frightened by a bear. Because unresolved emotion potentiates the higher centers of the nervous system, (which means that how we respond to how unresolved emotion makes us feel determines how we construct our network) where we are in the emotional process, in other words where our feelings plug us into our network, another way of saying this is where we feel we are on the circle, are we at the prey or at the predator polarity, predetermines how we will perceive the bear and interpret the experience and this is happening well before any thoughts can be thought. So in my model, a person having been scared by a bear is nevertheless first and foremost energized and thereby attracted to the bear, but in this case, with a force that is more powerful than their capacity can handle and so they run (attraction collapsed into fear). If they cry their tears are an involuntary “appeal” so to speak to the mercy of the bear’s predatory aspect. (The bear as a “being” triggers a physical memory, most likely of an intimidating father figure.) Now on the other hand, to an unarmed Indian Warrior counting coup, because of where he feels connected to his circle, his tribe, he feels an arousal in his attraction to the bear that is stronger than his balance/fear of falling and so he acts like predator going toward the bear as he tries to touch it. By acting like a predator, he can reflect the energy of attraction the bear is projecting at him, right back to bear and this might be more than the bear can handle and so we observe flipping of polarity between them happily increasing the odds of said warrior returning to his people as a hero, with bear alive as sacred totem.

If “emotion is the subjective form of physical feelings;” then this seems to me to be in contravention to the infectious nature of emotion that is such an overwhelming feature of emotion. For example, someone throws up because they have either eaten something noxious or have just learned something violently noxious to their well being, that’s their subjective perception of their bodily changes. Yet others, observing them, and who have no such subjective experience of an internal discomfort be it physical or psychic, nevertheless feel an irresistible urge to vomit. This is because by default as highly social beings they have projected their e-cogs into that individual and so when energy moves in that individual, they feel a corresponding virtual movement within their own bodies that predetermines what they will perceive; their body will change in conformance to how the network has constructed its constituents and this predetermines their subjective experience.

Similarly, we can also note that there are musical chords of universal emotional content; or a universal mathematical expression of symmetry that defines the emotional attraction to beauty in every race and society (a sense of beauty equals release from the specific kind of unresolved emotion that is caused by the instinctual aspect of the human intellect) and again these operate beneath the level of subjective interpretation. So there is a universal principle of emotional conductivity implemented through the nature of every organisms emotional make-up and which determines that all change that is experienced will become part of consciousness as a monolithic force of attraction. Feelings are the auto-tuning/feedback dynamic by which all the elements of the network will end up self-organizing so that this force will ultimately be harnessed to create new energy.

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