 In the beginning was the flow, before the flux, before the chaos, before the complexity of crossings and connections, then a particle sense, then the ascendance of the singular. Now we seek a release from the egoic singular to the relational sensibility within the flow. In the dark, in the silence, in the cessation of external sensation, it appears. What is it that appears? The human spirit, spirit as an aspect of self. I begin by describing the triple helix model based on the triple helix of the collagen molecule, a structure which provides great strength and plasticity and also acts as a conduit for flow and information in the human body. We take the overused conceptual model of body-mind spirit and recreate it as a functional model body-mind spirit, the three strands of the self, interwoven firmly yet flexibly. Either strand aberrated, you have an aberrated self. We most understand this related to body in medical, clinical, health and wellness. In mind, despite our inability to pin down or define consciousness in neurology and cognitive science, which are both greatly enhanced by dialogue with meditators, most notably the Dalai Lama in the Mind Life Institute. Our least defined and articulated strand is spirit as aspect of self. We mostly know spirit through religion and other faith and belief systems, which may have produced wonder, profundity and good but also conflict and confusion. We three, Anthony, Bryant and myself, represent this triple helix. Anthony, a true theta knot, pushing the boundaries of consciousness in an often radical direction. Bryant, whom you just heard insightfully showing us the energetic subtext of mind, brain waves and especially the theta wave with its clinical, therapeutic, mystical and magical possibilities. The three of us hopefully going beyond relaxation, inspiration, insight to hope. The spirit strand is the binding strand. It is about connectedness, resonance, buoyancy and becoming. We live in a world of becoming, which is open and in which cracks and fissures run through every meta narrative, dogmatic structure or final perspective. It is within these cracks in the interstitium that one enters in the float tank. This becoming questions, unquestioning beliefs and humanities break with nature. The link between humanity and nature seems to be broken. This link, which we intuit in the float tank, must become an object of belief. This in part is the function of spirit. Due to resonances and vibrations that fall beneath the threshold of attention, we see our potential sensitivity to the world exceed the range of sensory experience. This experience itself opens to a flux in which past and present fold or flow into an open-ended future. And the float experience is a radically imminent experience of the now, which is open and flexible enough to view the transcendent. Thus it becomes a bridge between a higher reality and a broader perception. And as one's perception shifts and opens, it begins to deconstruct the power structures which limit our perception and thus limit our spirit. In sensation, a spatiotemporal association of sensations is established. Then it is in place in an interwoven network where it turns into an impression. In the float environment, this impression is dissolved, freeing us of the spatiotemporal matrix. We are out of time, out of space, right hemisphere dominant, and set on a theta wave fueled exploration of the transpersonal. In the float experience, we move from gross sensations to subtle sensations, which in Buddhism are called kalapas, a polyword meaning smallest things. They are not units of matter, but units of experience. When kalapas appear, the body perceived in gross sensations disappears and you enter bhanga, a state of detachment. You transcend body, objective world, space, and self. You are in the interstitial, the in between. You have entered an undefined experiential state in zen, the plenum void in which all is potential. I would like to introduce you to the spirit assemblage, a non-profit educational forum for the definition and exploration of spirit as an aspect of self and its manifestation in the individual and in culture. There are three planes of inquiry that we explore, the science spirit interface, eco-spirituality, and somatospiritual practices. The question of our time may no longer be how to take things apart, but how to work responsibly in reassembling them. The first of these, which I will briefly go over, is the living matrix, most articulated by Dr. James Oshman. It's a relatively new model which is expanding scientific methodology as we know it. And essentially from nuclear proteins through the cytoskeler proteins, through the integrin transmembrane proteins, to the extracellular matrix proteins, to the collagen matrix, to the skin surface, we are interconnected, adhesively protein connected. And these proteins associate water molecules with them, making us a liquid crystal matrix. This also makes us a semiconductor of numerous types of energy. And it reveals our essential porous nature. Compensatory densifications or blockages in this matrix create an inert or static area which can lead to a condition of dis-ease. This is being used to prove the efficacy of energy work, homeopathy, herbalism, manual therapies, and much more. From Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute on spirit. They say that spirit, the spirit of an entity is the dynamic organization of that entity over its full dimensionality. But there is something more to the universe that what appears to us in our daily activities more than we can perceive, more than we can manipulate, the ineffable. Philip Clayton, philosopher, theologian, emergence theorist, creates an emergent monism stating there is only one natural world and as this one stuff becomes more organized in more complicated ways new properties emerge. At each level of emergence, new structures and causes are at work. We can extend this downward to physical laws and upwards to consciousness and ultimately to spirit. In other words, mind is an emergent property of body and spirit is an emergent property of mind. Stuart Kaufman is a bio complexity theorist and he uses emergence as well as his platform. He writes of the natural creativity of the universe as the sacred. He calls it emergent creativity. He states, conscious mind is a persistently poised quantum coherent decoherent system. Here mind consciousness is identical with quantum coherency and yet via the decoherent state becomes classical behavior. His goal in this is to show how mind has consequences for matter. To decoher, to dance, to reassemble into structure. The particle dance is essential to objectness. To float is to put oneself into the dance pre-object. To increase connectivity across fields and plains. To open in relation and response. Eco-spirituality. We have the ability to think outside of nature but I think it is nature doing the thinking. We are beings with the capacity to feel comprehensive compassion. This is in part a function of the spirit as is the refinement of ethics as ethos. To be in as to dwell. In the float tank we experience a fluidity of boundaries and edges. We feel the breakdown between inner and outer, self and other. We learn to dwell in more ease. We are embedded in the world. Merleau-Ponty states we are the flesh of the world. This means we sense because we are of the sensible itself. Within this unceasing sensing it is vital that we become still, that we reflect, meditate, and float. To subvert our privileged boundaries between human and non-human. And to increase the perspective of our innate connectedness. Must we not attempt a theology of opening, a theta-ology wherein a mantra of leaves, a poetics of water, celebrate a mind of wind and a body of earth. Somatospiritual practices. We need reasons to believe in this world. It is the function of somatospiritual practices to open us to our spirit in action. Where our connection to and belief in nature and world is the focus. In Latin there is a phrase salvator ambulato, which means to solve by walking. I submit another, salvator natare, to solve by float. Most activities can become somatospiritual practices. What is needed is the intent to open. Use awareness and compassion and grace in movement and response. Some practices are designed to be somatospiritual practices. Yoga, Tai Chi and Jigong, structural integration, craniosacral work, Feldenkrais and biosomatics movement, dance and many others. But maybe the most important are meditation and floating. And it may be that floating is the most important due to its initial ease. It becomes more pointed as a practice. But the ease of flow into alpha and into theta and thus into spirit is less effortful and more efficient. What may be most important about somatospiritual practices is their crossover to other activities. With the possibly naive hope that business, finance, political, religious and other primary activities of culture will be affected. May we all float. And in the water ease of cellular reflection, thought becomes image, becomes awareness, becomes abstraction, becomes wave, becomes spirit, which may change us. The float experience can be and often is a spiritual practice which can lead to spiritual living. One of the aims of this practice in its widest sense is to address the fragmentation and alienation which haunts existence and through sustained practice come to realize a different more integrated way of being in the world. I make some grandiose and possibly controversial claims and yet we are responsible for continuity in the world. And we need to become a life enhancing species, not a life destroying one. And the float experience as simple and as profound as it is allows us to experience that continuity, that connectedness. In the words of the essential and insightful folk at Float On, enter the nothing. But of course within the nothing is everything. Thank you.