On this page, I will show an interesting analogy between "prayer" processes and the detailed functioning of a particular kind of electronic circuit.
There is an electronic circuit which keenly illustrates a fundamental life principle, which might be called "regenerative experientiality", in which one creates a small sample of that which is sought, then offers that sample to the environment in seeking the presence of external energies like it... and inspects to see what it finds as a result. This electronic circuit is called the "regenerative receiver", or in a repetitively recalling mode, the "superregenerative receiver."
The principle had been taught by sages in ancient times, such as in the bible's beatitudes, the 23rd Psalm, indeed perhaps is an essense generally of proyer processes themselves; yet perhaps is more thoroughly functionally specified in its electronic circuit counterpart.
The superregenerative receiver is the receiver, input, portion of a radiated energy communications system. Exploring the qualities of this communications device, I noted the circuit's striking analogies with ancient sayings such as by Jesus and Sophecles, as described later here. In fact, it may be fundamental to basic human higher-level experience.
The regenerative radio receiver was invented in the early days of radio. However, since it creates noise contaminating the very radio frequency spectrum it listens to, it is currently used only in such things as inexpensive walkie-talkie receivers, and car alarm receivers. It also is even yet poorly understood by electronics engineers, who find the more modern and quiet "superhetrodyne" type receivers more clearly defineable.
One of my tasks in a former job was to test/repair such superregenerative receivers and design/build/use test equipment for that task; being a creative person, one day I awoke to the similarities of this circuit's basics to other questions I had sought answers for in the distant past.
So here I will first describe that electronic circuit's qualities, then show how it exemplifies sage's sayings in ancient times, and then generalize it to a basic illustrative principle in contemporary human life experience.
The regenerative radio receiver "looks" for the signal it is set to receive, by creating that same signal in itself first. In that level of positive feedback where it almost breaks out in wild oscillation, if it has that same frequency added to it from the outside world, it will then oscillate more quickly and powerfully than if there were no "outside" signal present. The relative strength of its oscillation at that moment of start of oscillation, observed over a long series of such attempts to oscillate, provides a measure of the presence (or absense) of the selected signal. This observed pattern of relative regenerated strength over passage of time, then, is the signal being received.
A basic part of the principle here is that the carrier signal to be received must first be created in the receiver itself. It involves use of a nonlinear amplification component which has part of its output connected back to its input in a form of feedback that reinforces the original input: it is a kind of oscillator. The feedback path is designed such that it not exchanges energy with the outside environment, but also is "resonant" at the desired carrier frequency... resonation being achieved by parallel circuit components, one of which stores potential, the other stores flow (in electronic terms, one component stores voltage potential, within capacitance, the other stores current flow, within inductance), and at the resonant frequency the two most easily hand the energy back and forth between themselves.
Another basic part of the principle is that the message carried by the signal consists of variations impressed upon the transmitted carrier signal. The regenerative receiver sorts out this message back out of the carrier by sending the received signal through a "non-linear" device, then disposing of the remaining high frequency carrier signal and cherishing the relatively slow variations discovered in the process. These variations are the message elements. (A "non-linear" device time-synchrously produces a voltage potential across it that is not in direct proportion to the current flow driven through it; electronic circuit element examples are vacuum tube diodes and the semiconductor junctions of transistors.) So in a regenerative reciever, the message out of itself consists of the steady level of the signal which it is producing itself, plus any correllated signal found also from the surrounding environs. Ignoring the steady portion (which it itself made), the remaining variations are the message elements from the outside world. The message elements in the analogy are the physical manifestations of that which was sought.
Sophecles sagely said "Look and you will find it -- what is unsought will go undetected." David said "Thou settest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." Jesus said "Seek and ye shall find, ask and it shall be given you, knock and it will be opened unto you." And one of the basic principles of contemporary spiritual practice is that of first visualizing oneself experiencing that which is sought in physical expression. An envisioned sample of what is sought, is first created by the person, then offered to the greater environment ... a seed to gather to itself into its specific pattern insofar as the ingredient resources are to be encountered out there.
There is more than just a cute similarity here between sage's quotes and electronic circuit function. I believe a basic principle is involved, one worth researching.
The superregenerative receiver has some characteristic qualities in its functioning, such as that it creates specific signal noise around itself which affects other receivers if they are too close. This "noise" is normally somewhat disruptive, but has the potential for being used intelligently for synchronizing a group of receivers to a common source. Masers and lasers function by the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation, creating intense narrow-band coherence. Such characteristics may well be applicable to the analogies in human life experience.
Copyright © 1996 James Edward David Cline
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