Character Notes

The website is all about his life and work; here, let us focus on defining and celebrating his outstanding personal qualities.
Paul S.
Sr. Rabbit Chaser
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Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:11 pm
Location: Psych Ward

Character Notes

Post by Paul S. »

I'll just put this here... and I think I'm going to change the title of this section of the forums. It's now "The Character of Townsend Brown" instead of "The Life of..." This entire website deals with the "life," we need a place where we can focus on "the character."

Since posting that last chapter (37) I have spent most of my waking hours really combing through all my notes. Enough with the holes already, I'm nibbling on the cheese. It has been a very concentrated effort to get all my notes organized and lined up in a way that, ultimately, I hope, will accelerate the writing of the rest of the book. Urgency lurks in every corner.

Among the notes I've encountered buried in my (mostly digital) files is an exchange I had with Linda Brown back in November of 2003, well after our relationship had taken root -- and Linda had gotten the ability to send me great tracts of her innermost thoughts via e-mail.

Somehow, we got into a discussion of John Forbes Nash, the central character in Sylvia Nassar's book (and the Ron Howard/Russell Crowe movie) "A Beautiful Mind." Reflecting on Nash, Linda shared with me these insights about her father, which I am posting here, now, because we have been talking about "the character" of Townsend Brown, i.e. "what was he really like?" and I think this excerpt from my correspondence with Linda speaks directly to that question:

On November 19, 2003, in a message entitled "Love and Oneness," Linda wrote to me:

"Dads character was so different than what I have so far read of [John] Nash.

"Primarily, he would NEVER have done anything to make another human being uncomfortable. No matter what he thought of him personally. It was so rare for him to get angry at someone or something that I could count the instances on one hand. He was raised to be a gentleman and he always was -- a true gentle man.

"And, though I think that Dad felt he was somehow gifted with a special intellect ... he never felt that put him above anyone else. He valued each person and told me many times that no matter what I chose to do in life, as long as I followed my guiding passion, my life would be purposeful and a joy. He didn't just talk about those thoughts, he acted on them. I am particularly reminded of that conversation he and I had after that trip to the U of Penn when he turned off the car and said, "what do you want to do?" I wonder if he had been John Nash what advice would I have gotten? I wonder if he would have even talked to me!

"He only ever spoke of Nash once and his words were a puzzlement to me then. He likened "inspiration" to a "charge" on a human mental battery. "Some of us can take it" he said "and some of us can't and simply explode." To me that was a chilling description.

- - - - - -

A chillng description, indeed. I can relate. Thank you, head, for putting yourself back together after each spontaneous combustion...

-PS
Paul Schatzkin
aka "The Perfesser"
"At some point we have to deal with the facts, not what we want to believe is true." -- Jack Bauer
Elizabeth Helen Drake
Sr. Research Asst.
Posts: 1742
Joined: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:11 am

Nash downloads and Dr. Browns

Post by Elizabeth Helen Drake »

Thats a great thought Paul, to give us all this particular post.

I just have one comment. In reading about John Nash some of his associates are quoted on camera (can't remember exactly whre, but I know I can back this up) anyway .... they are quoted on camera as saying that they seemed to get their inspiration of the sweat of work .... coming from the base up ... or from others over to their conciousness ..... whereas, they all agreed .... Nash was invested with the ability to get his thoughts from the "top down". Now this is what they all thought, maybe what he himself thought also .

And here now you have Lindas testiment that Dr. Brown was saying basically the same thing. That the "information" was coming to him from "somewhere else" .... strangely particularly from "above" ...."down" to him. He recognized this when he spoke of it to Linda and he also recognized that some human brains did not have the capacity to accept the "charge". He is speaking from experience I think folks.

What made Nash a weaker battery for this kind of download? Thats a good question. What made Townsend Brown a stronger container? I submit that he might have been strengthened by the people who were closest to him, particularly his wife Josephine, who seemed to understand what was happening. Or at least if she didn't understand the technicalities of it she ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD RIGHT FROM THAT FIRST SAILBOAT RIDE ... that here was a great man, a wonder of nature .... and that she could protect and care for him , because he would need her.

And thats where my mind has gone today. Wheres yours? Jump in here folks, the waters fine.

Sounds to me that Townsend Brown was agreeing, in fact Nash was also agreeing, with inspriation as it has been known and recorded for centuries. Nothing new under the sun about that. All the wise men of our past global history have credited the "higher power" for their information.

So now all of the sudden Paul has stood up and said ......TOWNSEND BROWN WAS IN COMMUNICATION WITH A HIGHER INTELLIGENCE.

OK .... you might be saying ...... whats REALLY new about that?

Well, the first thing new is this.

After four years of dilligent work Paul HIMSELF .... has come to that conclusion and is willing to put his name out there ... showing that he has the guts to make that statement! Thats a new page in this book! And I can't wait to see what happens now! Elizabeth
Trickfox
The Magician
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And here is my part in all of this

Post by Trickfox »

The Social Psychological implications of declaring a supernatural phenomena to "exists in reality" immediatly creates controversy between Science and Philosophy and ends up leading to religions and marginalism.

This is exactly why everyone wants to know about Dr. Brown- the man himself. People have heard the supernatural rumour and are simply curious about how the real life events unfolded in an objective and acurately documented biography which will be regarded as a great scientific contribution if it is well written.

Paul will present you with this part. I will act as a quality assurance representative to make sure that the Physics, math, psychology, and sociology foundations are well researched and understood, and that the readers are not all self deluding themselves into some sort of cult.
This is what happend to L.Ron. Hubbard. That is why Al kitsleman has to escort him out of the place.

We are all trying to understand the past and present so that we can see towards the probable future. If we begin to create future reality on a newer higher scale in the tools of consciousness then global awareness is a good start.

This book is a mental challenge to the readers. It reminds me of another very challenging book called "Satan, Cantor, and infinity" by Raymond Smullyan. There too, the reader is being asked to go into the rabbit hole and study alice in wonderland using nothing but logic and science. The same logic and science Dr. Brown was playing with.

We know that you will hear and enjoy the man and his sociology, and we wish to attrack those of you who wish to explore the rest of his science too.

I have a lot of work to do and I am looking for people to help me read, understand Plan, develop and organize continued scientific exploration of the technology which was once the passion of this Man Thomas Townsend Brown. I have been bitten by the same bug, as he was and I am slowly but surely acheiving continued progress.

Trickfox
The psychopropulsier (as pointed out in the book The Good-bye man by Linda Brown and Jan Lofton) is a Quantum entanglement project under development using Quantum Junctions. Join us at http://www.Peeteelab.com
grinder
Senior Officer
Posts: 694
Joined: Wed Apr 05, 2006 6:20 am

appointing yourself

Post by grinder »

Whoa, hold on here Trickfox. Thats a bit bold isn't it? The effect isn't even freshly our of Pauls mouth with a name and you have already assigned yourself the head priest in charge of explaining it to all of us so that we "don't get it wrong"and "become a cult" Back up there just a bit.

I think I get your drift and I think I understand that your motives are good but re-read your last bit. We are all quite able to see things for ourselves and though I know you are far more capable to understand some of the science, I believe that Paul isn't really talking about the power of science here.

Lets just see what develops and what all of us can learn. Science is important but its not everything. I may be dense sometimes but thats sort of the drift I am getting from Pauls story here. grinder
Trickfox
The Magician
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ok what is it then?

Post by Trickfox »

Grinder
I've got plenty of important information to contribute to help establish a foundation in the epistemology of the work, if you feel that I'm declaring myself "a head priest" then I suppose every teacher you ever came across might be misconstrued as having been just another "head priest" to you.

The "Head Priest" of anything necessarilly implies "religious authority" or is my english comprehension of your term incorrect here Grinder?

I'll tell you what, if at any time you feel as If I'm trying to create anything religious about this, just go ahead and point it out. Otherwise please tell me why I should not try to learn and point out any and all technological issues including my own observations pre-conceptions, and interpretation about the background science. That's exactly what I'm trying to do here.

I am not going to sit here in the dark and remain ignorent or silent about anything having to do with this science. I've been involved too long and I have worked too hard just to end up keeping all to myself. OTHERS want to know and others have asked me to go forth and I believe they deserve answers.

Yes, I need healthy debate and continued input from everyone because I'm certainly not done yet, so quite frankly if you still feel like I'm out of place then please, get someone else to agree with you and the two of you should just tell me to buzz off and I will bow out gracefully and you will never hear from me again I assure you.

Right now I'm being asked to try and explain what I've learned in this section of the forum. I'm still willing to do that but please DO NOT ACCUSE ME OF TRYING TO BE A "HEAD PRIEST" because I consider that to be a slap in the face of my ethics.

Raymond
The psychopropulsier (as pointed out in the book The Good-bye man by Linda Brown and Jan Lofton) is a Quantum entanglement project under development using Quantum Junctions. Join us at http://www.Peeteelab.com
grinder
Senior Officer
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wrong words

Post by grinder »

Trickfox, Thats what I like to see, the flare of passion!

Did I insult you by accusing you of trying to take on the role of a head priest? Obviously. hum.

Perhaps I just misunderstood what it was that you were saying. It came across to me that you meant that because you had such a good grip on the technicalities of the science that somehow you felt obligated to clarify it to all of us, so that we would not be misled into some kind of a cult. That sounds alot like the early Catholic Church to me. was I wrong?

You may have a bias against religion that you don't even recognize because I was merely pointing out that sort of what you sounded like with that particular sentence. All the heat from your response tells me that I insulted you by saying that and for that I am extremely sorry. It is obvious from everything that you have posted that you are very serious about your work.

Truce? grinder
Trickfox
The Magician
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No Problem Grinder

Post by Trickfox »

I was born Catholic, I converted to Protestant Baptist Religion. My mother converted and became a baptist missionary and took off for South America. I've studied dozen of religions and philosophies and I am fascinated by all of it, but the one thing every single religion seems to claim is that they have the only license on reality. I cannot accept this.

I figure that reality is something that those of us who wish to experience it must a-priory determine through mutual agreement. To do that we must agree on the common terms, definitions, and quantifiers/qualifiers. The only tool we have to even TRY to do this is itself riddled in asymtotic limits.
(the GSE units of measurements)
Trying to define this whole science may even be a completely futile effort, but by god I'm still going to try.

I promis this to everyone, I'm not going to try to start another religion.
Trust me!

Raymond
The psychopropulsier (as pointed out in the book The Good-bye man by Linda Brown and Jan Lofton) is a Quantum entanglement project under development using Quantum Junctions. Join us at http://www.Peeteelab.com
Elizabeth Helen Drake
Sr. Research Asst.
Posts: 1742
Joined: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:11 am

words

Post by Elizabeth Helen Drake »

Grinder and Trickfox,

I just happened to watch an interview with John Updike who has written sort of an unusual book for him ... called the "Terrorist". He mentioned that he had been studying the Koran for background understanding for his characters and the one thing that he noted was the difficulty some translators had in translating some of the words in the Koran because there is truly no translation IN ANY LANGUAGEFOR SOME OF THOSE WORDS. Therefore the scholars still don't know, and can only guess what those words actually mean.

And thats sort of where we are going. Townsend Brown ventured into a land where there were no words in existance for what he needed to describe. "Electrogravitics" was one of his words. "Electrohydrodynamics" was another. Thats what you are forced to do when the language you speak does not encompass the experience you are trying to capture and relate. But when you start trying to describe a quantum experience,( and that is what we are talking about here folks), then our language is going to fail us in some of these moments. We might as well understand that from the beginning.

And when you have a situation where someone has not even experienced the true meaning of a word in use in our language ....(and that is going to be a common problem for us!) you still run into problems ...for a small example ..... the word "love" .... as in I "love you" put poor Morgan into a tailspin in the earlier chapter 36.

I am thoroughly convinced that he had never really experienced real love, his family life had not been all that hot. Like alot of kids that age he was estranged from the emotions that others would call "Love". So when Linda said so boldly that she "loved " him he absolutely freaked out. He didn't know how to respond. She knew what love was .... but he wasn't so sure what it was for him.

He said to Linda " The fact that you attach so much importance to verbal expression of something that ESCAPES VERBAL EXPRESSION, SOMETHING VERBAL EXPRESSION COULD NEVER DO JUSTICE BY ........ So you see .... if you really have an understanding of how important that word is you also have the understanding that it can not be jammed into the box of our language. And that was just one word. Morgan knew that the word stood for something that was beyond his understanding ... he just knew it was too important to be bandied about.

Long story really short. can we agree everybody? We have to be careful with our words. And we should try to understand that we must search for words that come as close as we possibly can to the real meaning of what we want to express. and also we must realize that sometimes we will fall short. We are entering a different land here with a different language. Elizabeth
James Barrett

Re: Character Notes

Post by James Barrett »

Paul,

Perhaps when you get back from your trip, or maybe even before you leave, you should take a very good look at this particular post. A VERY GOOD LOOK.

And to Mikado especially, your father of course, recognized you.

Radomir.... only you know the importance of the hand on your shoulder

And Linda ....... costing not less than everything. James
Paul S.
Sr. Rabbit Chaser
Posts: 1361
Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:11 pm
Location: Psych Ward

Slurp Slurp

Post by Paul S. »

Yah, James, thanks. See? Sometimes you CAN lead a horse to water, and sometimes the horse will drink, and his thirst will be even more satisfied with the sweet knowledge of the shared effort. So thanks for reminding us of this post, it's a valuable one.

I do find it curious (to say the least) that the post you cite above includes this particular passage:
And when you have a situation where someone has not even experienced the true meaning of a word in use in our language ....(and that is going to be a common problem for us!) you still run into problems ...for a small example ..... the word "love" .... as in I "love you" put poor Morgan into a tailspin in the earlier chapter 36.
Somebody used that expression with me recently, I think I may have missed the meaning, too.

I'll take this one with me, and also remember to look up from time to time at that thin layer separating the surface of the water from the sky...

And now Judy Collins is singing "Suzanne" on the radio: "there are heroes in the seaweed... there are children in the morning... they are leaning out for love, and they will lean that way forever.. while Suzanne holds the mirror...."

--PS
Paul Schatzkin
aka "The Perfesser"
"At some point we have to deal with the facts, not what we want to believe is true." -- Jack Bauer
Radomir
Senior Cadet
Posts: 325
Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 6:51 pm

Re: Character Notes

Post by Radomir »

It may be warm or cold when one steps into the nine-headed dragon river. But yes the water tastes very good.

As the cook once replied when Dogen asked "What is the way"... "The entire universe has never concealed it."

Back on topic, spending time with the Journals, I just have to say that I am coming ever more to adore the character of the man as he expresses himself, especially in times of frustration. As in: "This experiment certainly should be performed without further delay (it has already been 17 years! --- Inexcusable neglect)" Perhaps he is play-acting here, but regardless one begins to sense that he has crafted the Journals with an outer-reaching arc that once encompassed may draw a thread through all these beads and make them whole.

R.
Linda Brown
Resident Mystic
Posts: 653
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2008 5:16 pm

Re: Character Notes

Post by Linda Brown »

Speaking of being whole. The interaction that we all had with our friend AM is a piece of this puzzle that is not supposed to be left out, I think. But thats my personal thought and I don't know how the rest of you are feeling.

I vote that we put out a " welcome home" to AM. Of course nothing really official can be done until Paul gets back from his diving trip. So we have a ten day lag here at least. But ... I am sending the note out there to you AM ... You have my positive vote. If everyone else agrees. It would be good and productive I think if you could come back to the discussion.

But of course all of that is really out of my hands and up to others. Linda
Paul S.
Sr. Rabbit Chaser
Posts: 1361
Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:11 pm
Location: Psych Ward

AM...2?

Post by Paul S. »

I've been having some back-channel correspondence with AM, who of course feels badly about the way he conducted himself over the weekend and has asked to have his account reactivated.

My advice was to take a little more time to let the dust settle -- like for the 10 days or so that I'll be "AFK" starting tomorrow. He agreed that would be better than coming back as suddenly as he signed off.

But in light of Linda's invitation, I've told now him that if he wants to create a NEW account (AM2?) before I go, I'll leave that to his discretion. I do feel however that the old account should be left intact and inaccessible, because there is important stuff there and I don't want to run the risk of that material disappearing in the event another crack opens in the fabric of our little virtual universe here.

On a related note, it does appear that this new version of our phpBB software has killed the "bots" that so plagued our member rolls, so I'm thinking of re-setting the registration routine to 'user activated' which would eliminate the requirement for me to activate new members -- in case somebody wants to join while I'm gone. Anybody got any thoughts on that subject?

--PS
Paul Schatzkin
aka "The Perfesser"
"At some point we have to deal with the facts, not what we want to believe is true." -- Jack Bauer
Chris Knight
Keeper of the Flame
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Re: User account set ups

Post by Chris Knight »

Paul,

If that would save you time, it sounds like a good idea.

The new format took me back for awhile, but I have it set now so that it logs me in every time I visit, and I really like how it calls my attention to any new posts that have been added since my last visit. It's much easier to keep up with all the discussions.
Andrew
Qualight Environmental
(http://www.qualight.com, http://www.qualightenv.com, http://www.qualightscp.com)

"If you think the situation is under control, then you don't truly understand the situation."
Griffin
Senior Officer
Posts: 663
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2007 6:35 pm

AM II

Post by Griffin »

It's good to hear that AM is returning. He not only has a lot to offer but the Flow Forum in turn has a lot to offer him. Poor impulse control is a major problem in human behavior that has plagued everyone. Reflection and a resolve to do better is how we all progress. I didn't comment on this before as I felt it would work itself out and that it was best to let it settle down.

I will be personally happy to welcome AM and anyone else back who has dropped away for whatever reason. But at least certain minimal standards of behavior in keeping with the examples of the characters and behavior of Townsend Brown and Flow are reasonable expectations.

Griffin
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