The following was inspired by a video published on Youtube by KrKwd.

Humans like linear thinking. If you tell someone a vehicle is moving at 50 m/s and ask them how far it will go in 1 minute, most people can give you the answer pretty quickly. Tell them that it is decelerating with a constant rate of 1 m/s/s and they will choke up. Even a well-practiced physicist will have to reach for a pencil and paper.

This is why I think that the concept of “stochastic resonance” is so poorly known, and why those who have heard of it treat it like magic.

Let me explain.

Common-sense, linear-thinking will tell you that the lower the amount of noise or corruption there is in a signal (a picture, an internet data-stream, a whisper, an audio recording, etc.) the clearer the signal will be. More noise means that fine details will be obfuscated and lost. The aim of all good data-transmission mechanisms would be to reduce the noise to as low as possible.

This makes intuitive sense. How could it be otherwise? Well, let’s consider a very basic scenario.

Seeing in black & white

Imagine you are a creature with a very sophisticated, yet slightly flawed, visual system. Your eyes are packed with minute sensors that can pick up the smallest of details, but they have a weakness. These cells are strictly binary. That is, they don’t detect a range of shades of colour or brightness. If the light falling on them is bright enough they detect it: otherwise they remain inactive.

Not gray-shade. Strict black and white.

When I show you the image on the left, you see the image on the right.

You are, I would argue, only a little better than blind.

But what if we took the clean, almost noise-free image, and fuzzed it a little? What if your visual system added noise before the light hit the black/white binary detector cells?

Adding noise to the original image makes it look like this:

This is clearly worse from our perspective. Grainy and ever-so-slightly miscoloured. But now those not-so-dark dark patches have bits of light in them that may push them over threshold of detection. What does it look like when you observe it with your strange high-resolution low-colour-depth system?

Common sense says that the result will also be worse. How could it ever be the case where adding noise can improve matters? Well, here is that image processed with exactly the same threshold.

Amazing! Almost all detail has been recovered! You can see the boards of the deck that the table is standing on, and the chair on the left close to the photographer. It is still sub-standard compared to the original full-colour image, but I would argue that you could easily navigate through life with such a system.

A side-by-side comparison underlines the improvement.

Remember that the only difference between these images is that the one on the right had noise added to the signal before it was detected by your thresholding system.

The addition of noise made the signal visible. This effect is called “Stochastic Resonance”.

Note that this isn’t just a trick for manipulating images. Stochastic resonance is found in many biological systems, in particular neurological systems. Additional noise added by the nerves allow sub-threshold signals to be detected and propagated onwards. Thousands of papers have been published on this phenomena in measurable systems.

Zooming out

But is it just on these scales that stochastic resonance might be found?

As a mystic I try to remain alert for messages and signals from the Real. One technique to accomplish this, used for as long as there have been humans, is meditation. Stilling your body and mind and quietening the buzz and noise of daily life so as to allow you to detect the subtle hints and signs that are intended for you.

But as we have just learned, this may not always be optimal. For below-threshold signals it may be necessary to add noise, and this is where I believe Tarot, dice, casting of bones, etc., comes into play. The randomness of these systems is, in effect, noise and this noise is added before attempted detection by the mystic.

For most Tarot readers, I believe that a typical session will involve invocation or calling-upon a spirit or spirits to assist with the reading. Perhaps some energy work is involved in making sure the querent is connected to the cards. The reader will then carefully and thoroughly shuffle the deck, perhaps paying special attention to any cards that “jump” during the shuffling process. Given the previous discussion, you might think about this as tuning in to the weak signal, and pre-conditioning with noise in order to bring it above the threshold of perception.

Of course, there is such a thing as too much noise. I could have processed those images by adding a huge amount of randomness, and the thresholded image would have been simply a mess. But this isn’t surprising — it seems obvious that more noise leads to a degraded image. The surprising part is that the optimal amount of noise is definitely greater than zero!

Silence and then noise

This little essay is not an attempt to convince you to abandon your meditation cushion and devote your time to Tarot.

No.

Stilling of the mind, relaxation of the body, and quietness are vital components of the mystical path. I do not think there is any way to approach the Centre without prayer and meditation.

What I am attempting to describe here is a possible mechanism by which certain divination techniques work. Through intention and prayer the mystic approaches the Real with a query. The answer is subtle enough that it may fall below the threshold of our sensory apparatus, so the addition of just the right amount of noise — shuffling the deck, casting the bones, swirling the leaves in the last drop of tea — allows the signal to climb into our range of sensation.

It is yet another example of how the Universe in which we find ourselves is a lesson from the Divine as well as a quality of the Divine. I have written about that here and here.

It is another consideration to add to your planning and preparation for spiritual work. Take the time to thoughtfully consider whether you want to craft the chaos and noise in such a way that they benefit the intended purpose of your exercise. Tune the environment and your spiritual tools appropriately.

Before the Flambeaux

Avidha-wa