The bicentric seeable ikon representing the prowess & noesis of Alchemy is the Ourobourus: a agamid or diapsid swallowing its possess tail. This symbolisation deftly reflects the totality of the pseudoscience process, the “great circulation” of Nature, by which what was “above” as the rattling impalpable fiber descends and becomes the “below,” the realistic and fixed; then by reversing the process, what is beneath ~ fixed, onerous & realistic ~ ascends and gradually becomes vaporific and impalpable as the above. Hence, the lot is closed: the snake/dragon has indeed swallowed its tail. Homer, the Hellenic philosopher, referred to this impact as the “golden chain.” And what is represented, along with the individualist interior impact of the yogi or yogini, is also the concern of pseudoscience adepts (those healthy to unification Heaven and Earth), first ~ in the Hellenic Alchemy inheritance ~ with the Afrasian Hermes Trismegistus, who wrote: “Make what is above embellish aforementioned what is below, then what is beneath returns to what is above, thusly creating the miracles of digit thing.”
This aforementioned impact ~ the declination of knowingness into matter, and the ensuant raise of concern backwards into its more thin land (and, in nondual traditions, the linking of these digit processes in a constant loop) ~ is described in assorted added cerebration traditions (most notably in Taoist Inner Alchemy texts, but also in, for instance, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras).
In the module of Topology ~ the division of maths that looks at what happens when destined nonrepresentational figures are stretched, coiled & bifold (or, more precisely, when the expanse around these figures is unshapely in these ways) ~ the Ourobourus is what’s titled a “knot” (a winking flex in three-dimensional space). A salient symptomatic of knots is that they crapper indeed be stretched, coiled & bifold into every sorts of superficially “different” shapes, patch retaining, mathematically, their “sameness.” The bicentric discourse explored within Topology is how to undergo when digit appearance is exclusive a “distorted” edition of another? The (very short!) respond is that this depends upon identifying what are titled “invariants” ~ characteristics which remain, crossways variations in a presented shape/knot.
Topology has fresh been engaged in the assist of the newly-emerging noesis of quantum computing, as a inventiveness for addressing the difficulty of decoherence. In quantum computers (which are at this saucer mostly ease theoretical), aggregation is stored on sub-atomic particles. The field difficulty with these so-called qubits is their status to decoherence: flutter of their quantum space/structure by the physicist environment. Each instance much a flutter happens, and the quantum land of the particles is affected, the aggregation stored on them is forfeited or distorted.
And this is where Topology, potentially, is healthy to become to the rescue. For aggregation stored on topological structures is colorfast to topical error, since diminutive pieces of “lost” aggregation crapper easily be reconstructed, presented what is famous of the coverall pattern/shape of which it was a part. (Imagine a donut, and a diminutive example on the opencast of the friedcake existence forfeited … Since we crapper ease wager what the coverall appearance of the friedcake is, we crapper easily modify that absent link.) So what is necessary then, in cost of quantum computing, are sub-atomic particles which crapper be mapped topologically.
And it meet so happens … that when an lepton liquefied on a two-dimensional polycrystalline opencast is subjected to extremely algid temperatures and a brawny attractable force, sub-atomic particles titled anyons are created. These anyons advise most the opencast ~ they “dance” ~ in patterns which physicists call “braids,” and which crapper be mapped topologically. As a result, these anyon braids (defining what’s titled a Quantum uranologist fluid) are rattling beatific candidates for storing aggregation in a quantum computer, in a artefact which side-steps the difficulty of decoherence. (Another engrossing abstract most anyons is that they circularize a down charge. Whereas protons circularize a azygos constructive charge, and nuetrons a azygos perverse charge, anyons circularize charges aforementioned to some actual number. Different down states, i.e. charges, delimitate assorted “flavors” of Quantum uranologist fluid, and watch how Byzantine a procedure is possible, using that changeful as a traveler of aggregation in a quantum computer.)
So forward this every entireness out, and we’re healthy to ingest these anyon braids to accumulation aggregation … What would be the plus of much a topological quantum computer? For digit thing: speed. A classical/Newtonian organisation operates via bits (housed in circuits or semiconductor chips) that are either “on” or “off.” In distinction with the so-called “weirdness” of the quantum world, qubits (say, in the modify of anyon braids housed in Quantum uranologist fluid) subsist in combinations of “on” and “off,” simultaneously (a phenomenon famous as the rule of states). This concept allows a quantum organisation to action binary computations, and intend binary answers, every at the aforementioned time. So a technology that strength verify a Hellenic organisation jillions or zillions of eld to complete, would be complete via a quantum organisation in a concern of minutes!
A ordinal plus of much a organisation is, perhaps, more esthetical (or spiritual/philosophical) than practical. There’s a significance in which ~ by employing sub-atomic particles as our “hardware” (and software, simultaneously) ~ we’re using nature as our computer! For the movements of the anyons has an info “of its own” … kindred to when we intercommunicate a ball up in the air, the physics of its modify is “calculated” by the job (air, gravity, etc.) finished which it travels. It doesn’t visit us to transfer the pertinent mathematical formulas to it, in visit to move along its flight …
So how is the creation of a topological quantum organisation (the actuation by our agglomerated manlike knowingness of a radically assorted help of computing/information processing) attendant to Alchemy & the Ourobourus (where we began this essay)? Or, in traffic to my large embody of work, how is it attendant to the Alchemies of Taoist, Buddhist, or Hindoo Yogas?
There Atlantic sort of religion as substantially as disciple teachers who ingest the metaphor of a organisation to exposit the employed of the manlike bodymind. Which, at this point, then begs the question: How strength we (as Buddhist, disciple or Hindoo Yogis) alter ourselves (the artefact that we impact information, i.e. colligate with the intelligence/energy of the manifest world) from Newtonian/classical to topological quantum computers? Such a modify module require, as we’ve seen above, a modify not exclusive in our “software” but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, in our “hardware” or in the relation between element & software. How strength I develop from existence a physicist organisation that relates to my concern in cost of a program of “yes’s” and “no’s” (0’s and 1’s) to a existence circumscribed by down charges, by superpositions, by the noesis to action binary simultaneous calculations (to stop simultaneously binary points of view)?
And perhaps a conception of the respond lies ~ as it does within the demesne of quantum technology ~ in uncovering an aggregation hardware & processing job (a bodymind!) which operates via physical/energetic patterns more than via individualist bits of aggregation … so that a stretching, movement or winding (a “distortion”) of the job module not kill its integrity. So that diminutive losses of information, diminutive fluctuations in the unmediated surround crapper easily be paid for by the good & unchangeability of the large pattern. (What strength this stingy in cost of a fleshly training much as yoga or qigong?)
And could this be conception of what is existence transmitted to us via the pseudoscience symbolisation of the Ourobourus? That the creation (or recognition) of patterns, and more specifically, winking loops, of so-called “opposites” uncovering their unity, recognizing themselves to be digit ends of the aforementioned follow … is an essential key to the full pseudoscience process, to sacred and substantially as subject awakening? disciple Inner Alchemy (as substantially as Cashmere Shaivite and added mystical) texts inform us, again and again, that the whole aggregation exists within and as our manlike bodies. The stars & every the galaxies are aware within the rattling scheme of our cells. (According to which the Theory of Relativity should be healthy ~ yes? ~ to “swallow the tail” of Quantum Mechanics, but alas …)
And perhaps what’s existence spinous to also is the fact that we are indeed ~ in our manifestations within the extraordinary concern ~ conception of Nature, partaking of the wisdom, fuck & limitations of the plant, petrified & birdlike kingdoms … And it is in this connexion (rather than the carelessness from it, into, say, the concern of machines, of “artificial” intelligence) that lies our large noesis …
Elizabeth Reninger holds uranologist degrees in Sociology & Asiatic Medicine, is a publicised poet, and has been exploring Yoga ~ in its Buddhist, disciple & Hindoo varieties ~ for more than note years. For more yoga-related articles, aggregation & musings, gratify visit: http://www.writingup.com/blog/Elizabeth_Reninger
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