If there was ever a time when science was catching up and perhaps even overtaking science fiction, it would be now. The courageous explorers peeling back the mysteries of the brain have been at the forefront of this jump-off-the-pages of the fictional universe into the real world. We will never think of thinking, nor the magic box atop our shoulders where it happens in the same way again. “What did ‘they’ do now?” you ask. Well the latest merely entails hooking two monkeys up to a brain computer interface and then connecting them to each other.

This brain-to-brain interface enables a unique form of direct communication between these creatures. If you speak the Star Trekkian language you could call it a ‘mind-meld.’ But this is more than sending ‘my thoughts to your thoughts’ in that these monkeys teamed up whereby a ‘master’ monkey used its thoughts to remote control the actions of the second ‘avatar’ monkey.

For those who saw the movie Avatar (seems like it was half the planet), the idea of a person somehow taking over another living body and inhabiting it, controlling it, experiencing though it, is no stretch of the imagination. The transference was so convincing to the operator of the avatar body, that he began to take on its identity. In the end of the film (spoiler alert), the main character even permanently moves his consciousness into his avatar as his old human body is no longer viable. He has undergone a ‘reincarnation’ of sorts. But can this really happen? Science is moving closer and closer to saying ‘yes.’

Let’s highlight a brief history (if you want a more detailed account you might try Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines by Miguel Angelo Laporta Nicolelis, a pioneer in neuroscience who spearheaded many important brain-computer interface experiments): as the twenty-first century came rolling in, Nicolelis and his team were listening to ‘mind-storms’ (as he calls them) of neurological activity and trying to decipher what it all meant. As progress was made they started working with a monkey named Aurora around 2002 attempting to get her to play video games using a joystick with the reward of a l’chaim shot of orange juice for her successful performance.

After thousands of repetitions whilst watching her ‘mind-storms’ associated with this game play, they were able to develop enough of a lexicon of the patterns of Aurora’s mind to hook her up to a brain-computer interface which would read them directly as electrical signals and send them—not to the joy stick which was now taken away—but to a robotic arm. Amazingly, they were able to prod her into thinking about playing the video game even when the familiar ‘tool’–i.e. joystick–was absent. To everyone’s astonishment, this monkey ended up playing the game with her thoughts alone. The robotic arm was slowing becoming an extension of her own body, a sort of mental prosthesis.

Now if we flash forward over the last ten years, we can read about all sorts of variations on this basic set up. At one point a monkey was getting an entire robot to walk on a treadmill using only its thoughts relayed in this fashion. With other animals, scientists have succeed in implanting false memories or even transplanting skill sets (the expert mouse was able to assist the novice mouse in a task such that it was able to perform at a level comparable to the expert). Now we find that one monkey can simply take over and command the body of another one.

This last revelation could not have come at a better time from a Jewish mystical perspective. In the Hebrew calendar, we are in the month of Adar (there are actually two  months of Adar this year of 5774 [2014] and everybody loves a good sequel). According to the kabbalistic classic Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Formation) and its extensive commentary tradition, every Hebrew month has a Hebrew letter which represents the life-energy or over-arching spiritual quality of that month.

Adar corresponds to the letter Kuf [ק]. Of the plethora of meanings of this letter, the one of greatest interest to our present discussion stems from a slight adjustment in the vocalization of its name. Rather than say Kuf we may pronounce it a kof which is the Hebrew word for ‘monkey.’ A Kuf is a kof. Adar is the month of the monkey.

Yet the associations don’t end there. We find that Jews throughout the world may have varied ways of pronouncing Hebrew letters and vowels. According to Kabbalah, this is itself significant and providential. In particular, there is a noted custom for Teimanim (Jews from Yemen) to say the ‘k’ sound of the Kuf as though it were the Hebrew letter Gimel which makes a ‘g’ sound. In other words, for this ‘minor’ tradition, there exists some ‘slippage’ whereby the letter Kuf could sound like ‘Guf.’ A guf as a word has another meaning in Hebrew; it denotes a body. Thus a monkey is considered like a ‘body’. On some level, as we will attempt to explain, it does not matter whether a monkey is controlling a robot body or another monkey body. From the standpoint of Kabbalah, they are equivalent.

In order to properly wrap our heads around this we have to go a step further and ascertain the abstract significance of the monkey. Ever visit the local zoo and stand opposite one of these charming animals looking through the glass and making faces in hopes of getting a mirrored response? Just as the expression goes ‘monkey see, monkey do,’ our common notion of these primates, when they follow our lead and pat their heads while rubbing their belles (young children like to do this too), is that they are imitators. They copy. There is even some mild suggestion that the word kof (monkey), which is spelled in full as Kuf–Vav–Feh, has the Kuf and Feh letters as its consonants (corresponding to k-f in English). However, a Feh in Hebrew is also known as a Peh which makes a ‘p’ sound. In sum, k-f could be thought of as k-p–that is kof [monkey] is similar to kop which might very well explain the origin of words like ‘copy’.

Etymological speculations aside, the functional meaning of monkeys in Jewish esotericism is precisely a ‘copying’ capacity. Couple this with the notion of a monkey as a body (either robotic or organic) and the copying or imitation of one monkey of another or a single monkey of some transmitted thought-command would place us smack in the center of avataristic technology. Our objective is to operate another body–be it virtual or real–as though it were our own.

In Part Two, we will turn our attention to the dominant event that transpired in the month of Adar which has become celebrated as the holiday of Purim complete with a chief protagonist (Queen Esther) who, according to Kabbalah, made use of an avatar body in order to overcome great adversity.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/brains-monkeys-and-avatars-part-2/

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