Paul Laffoley

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The main thesis of mind-physics holds that consciousness and matter are both manifestations of a more primary entity, and that the processes of manifestation exhibit equivalent invariances for both consciousness and matter. When the program for mind-physics is complete the subject-object dichotomy of modal logic, the polarity of concept-percept, and the antagonism between morality and technology will all come to an end. Then the non-repeatable experiment will be understood to be more primary than the traditional repeatable experiment.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Technology
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I think [Nikola Tesla] was always like that. And so it was inevitable that he would be an inventor. Because it was so easy for him to think fourth-dimensionally, dynamically. It wasn't just a static thing with him. In other words, it isn't the way an architect thinks, which is essentially static.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Thinking
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While often being called transdisciplinary, theonomous reasoning is actually a first step back to ancient wisdom in which methodological sensation [or what we now know as science] has completely merged with methodological revelation [or totally known mystical knowledge in which every aspect of the occult has been overcome]. A true tradition has no occult or hidden phases left in its process. The creators and the audience are in perfect harmony.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Perfect
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I always had a sense of liking diagrams, from the time I was studying architecture. Architecture is built diagrams, basically.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Architecture
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I began to research the concept of dimensionality from the point of view of quality, and not just quantity, as a mathematician might do. Taking my clues from the theosophical use made of the Vedantic levels of reality, I identified the western notion of Energy (as someting which is effecatious by means of motion), with the idea of Time. The more comprehensive dimension 'eternity' I defined as a form of energy which is efficacious without motion. In this manner I began to establish the qualities of dimensions and open out the seemingly monolithic concept of energy.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Mean
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Boston is not an avant garde place. It stays literally 15 to 20 years behind New York at all times.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: New York
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I think it was because [Nikola] Tesla and [Leon] Theremin were part of what made up the movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Klaatu was actually a European among the Americans. And so the person who wrote the story said that Klaatu came from Europa, the fourth moon of Jupiter, which is now being investigated for life. There's water and ice on it and that kind of stuff.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Thinking
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In other words, [ H.P. Lovecraft] was areligious, asexual, neurasthenic, he just didn't want to react to the world. Like Virginia Woolf, who considered religion the ultimate obscenity.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Virginia
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My father knew all about this stuff [C.W. Leadbeater]. I owe a lot of what I'm doing, I think, to him. I'm sort of continuing my father's work.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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[Nikola Tesla] would do it through lucid dreaming. He would, in a sense, dream up the engine, forget about it, come back, and then discover where it was wearing. You know, where the parts were wearing out. Now, that's inner visualization and a half! And that was the secret of why he did so many inventions.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Dream
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My father would conclude his dissertations by saying, "Of course, [Albert] Einstein never believed in gravity. It was a distortion of space." And so my father couldn't believe that an attraction at a distance was a reality.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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I'd had the experience with Giuseppe Conti, I said, "My God, that's my movie!" I kept seeing [The Day the Earth Stood Still] everywhere I could. Then finally, when VHS and DVDs came out, I got that. And I keep watching it all the time.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Dvds
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Stephen Hawking won [Babson Institute competition ] one year with his black hole stuff. It's keeping an open mind on whether gravity exists or not. I think my father believed this because ... when the wind blew on him, he'd get angry, because it was something he couldn't control.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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I like Colin Wilson, mainly because he never went to school. When you don't go to school you can say anything you want like that and not have to worry.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: School
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The Mobius strip is only an analog for the reality of what it is.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Reality
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You know, in the suburbs, most people believe in gravity, but they don't have much of a sense of humor.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Believe
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In other words, you've got a journey as the plot, but it has to be in a lively environment, being able to create the mood. If you read "Pickman's Model," in other words, they're winding their way through the Boston Streets and [H.P.] Lovecraft researched what was there.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Journey
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Walter C. Wright has a more cogent presentation than my father did about [gravity] being a push. But he had the same basic belief, that the idea of magnetism attracting something was not the reason why the effects of what we call gravity occur.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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I was always doing paintings. I actually started painting with oil paints when I was four years old. Not crayons, not pencils and that kid of stuff. I'd paint birds. Anything that moved, stuff like that.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Kids
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I would say [to my father], "Why don't you actually take some courses in physics instead of saying [you are not believing in gravity]?" But he would never do it. Businessmen for some reason or other, think, because they're successful in a single direction, that they know everything. You know what I mean? You ever meet people like that?
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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Forms of energy from nature gave my father trouble. He refused to believe he was going to die. He had these weird delusions. It's amazing. Along with all the great thoughts, he had all this funny stuff.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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The Babson Institute, which is now an actual university, was started by this guy [my father] who also had a problem with believing in gravity. And so he started the Babson Institute in New Boston, New Hampshire, which then moved to Gloucester. Each year they have a competition of one thousand dollars for one thousand words of an essay on gravity. That's the way they do it.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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[My father] had this quirky thing of not believing in gravity. And giving me a constant headache about that one. He would say if I showed any interest in gravity, I was becoming a dupe of the system. He could see indications I was beginning to believe in it.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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Anyway, my father became super-responsible. You know, he was the kind of person that absorbs all responsibility in the family, and then everybody else can act like a child in relation to him.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Children
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[My father] was always saying I'd end up like my grandfather. Okay. My grandfather was an architect, I'm an architect. It's true, certain characteristics are similar.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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Look at all the stuff the Existentialists did. You can start with [Pablo] Picasso, you know, and then Francis Bacon and other guys like that. What they were doing is depicting suffering. And that's exactly what a demon is, he's pretending that he isn't. So he can get more people down there. You know, misery loves company, that's the whole thing. So that's basically the pitch that I'm working on.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: People
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For years [H.P] Lovecraft was defined as an atheist. Well, he wasn't saying anything about what he really was at all. He wasn't even an agnostic. That's exactly what the situation is, in other words, when you enter an eternal realm. You've got to know there is no religion.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Atheist
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Now, we know this is what [H.P.] Lovecraft was into. Because he kept talking about how he wasn't interested in religion. In a heaven state there is no religion, meaning that you're seeing the whole thing ... I mean, to worship something means that it's something beyond you, right? In other words, it's not being revealed to you.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Mean
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The whole theory of what Satan is, it's Lucifer, the highest of the seraphim, the bearer of God's light, who at a certain point comes to believe he is what is being revealed to him.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Believe
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I mean, even New York isn't in any great shape anymore in relation to the rest of the world.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: New York
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I mean, these are really dedicated people [in Lovecraft Society] when it comes to [h.P.] Lovecraft. But in the top floor of the John Hay Library, you have all of Lovecraft's archives. And messing around in there, I noticed, I said, what are these paintings? And the librarian told me, "Well, those are Pickman's paintings." I said, "I thought this was like something he made up, like The Necronomicon, that kind of stuff." And he said no, that the guy actually existed.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Mean
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I belong to the Lovecraft Society, which meets at the University. They do things like follow in Lovecraft's footsteps, just like he followed in Edgar Allan Poe's footsteps. I mean the actual footfalls, you know, like they're going out looking for sasquatch, this kind of stuff.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Mean
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It's called "Pickman's Mephitic Models," based on the story [Pickman's Model by H. P. Lovecraft].Certain things about it many people don't realize. Pickman was a real painter who lived between 1888 and 1926. Now, there's a question mark [gesturing toward the writing in the margins of the painting], because Lovecraft claims that he turned into a ghoul. God knows how old he is now.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Real
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I think [H. P. Lovecraft] knew the whole gamut. He just didn't believe any of it! He probably liked to use the esoteric stuff because he knew it would tick people off and freak them out.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Believe
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I started with "Pickman's Model," because it was about Boston. I mean, what I loved about [H. P. Lovecraft], at first is his sense of scholarship of an area, setting an environment, enlivening it. I think that's one of the secrets of writing.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Mean
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[H.P.Lovecraft] is thrust into some kind of outer space realm, like here [pointing toward the painting in progress]. In other words, he's recognized he's gone through R'lyeh, the Sunken City of R'lyeh, and then Cthulhu, the extraterrestrial, calls his band of worshippers home to recognize him as the anti-christ. This is all in The Necronomicon, something Lovecraft actually did make up.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Home
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I did do, well before Pop Art, all the cartoon characters as paintings.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Art
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We would go on retreats to Florence. The people in the planning team got to be good friends and so we did things like, we'd all go over to the Fort Belvedere in Florence and take that thing over. Because it's up for grabs, you can rent it. And then have New Age meetings and all that kind of stuff. [Buckminster] Fuller loved to go there.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Team
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I started modeling myself on [ Buckminster Fuller], like with the hair. I reached an age where I sort of, kind of, looked like him a little bit, you know? I thought it was great.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Hair
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[Buckminster Fuller] could do four, five hours straight where some people would leave, eat, get a snooze and come back and he's still going. He was like a fireplug.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: People
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[Buckminster Fuller] was quite willing to talk. He'd talk at the drop of a hat.I learned to talk in front of people by listening to the way he did things. Because he would give lessons in how to lecture. He would say, "Never take a note, just stand up and start babbling. And then eventually you're going to be able to make some coherent statements, and so it's like you're vamping. And then people will gradually start to listen to you when this spot of logic shows up in this torrent of verbiage.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: People
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[Buckminster Fuller ] never got past his freshman year [in Harvard], because the guy was an insane womanizer and he did parties every night, never studied anything, never took a note, didn't care about anything and just had a blast. So they said, "We gotta let you go. You get zeros all the time." Today it wouldn't even matter, because they don't care if you can read.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Party
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[Buckminster Fuller] always liked to say that he got kicked out of Harvard three times. Mostly you only got kicked out once, but he kept coming back.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Buckminster Fuller
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Buckminster Fuller was down in Pennsylvania, then he'd come up and go to his island in Maine. He wanted to remain a New Englander. He taught from '48 to '49 and '50 at Black Mountain College. That's where he met Kenneth Snelson. Fuller kind of stayed a Yankee right in the New England area. So it was pretty easy to get him to come on over, and we would have lectures at the Harvard Science Center.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: College
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At one time in the mid-'70s I became the president of the Boston-Cambridge chapter of the World Future Society. Because I'd been in my studio by myself since 1968 on up. And the thing is that my social life consisted of being involved in organizations like that. I would get people to come and speak, and speak myself and that kind of stuff.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Boston
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My father said he did have the mathematics of mind physics, or the physics of consciousness.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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I really wanted to study with Bruce Goff [one of the masters of "organic architecture"] at the University of Oklahoma.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Oklahoma
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My father was an extremely brilliant man. I consider him a genius, and so he probably could have joined Mensa. But why? I got in it with a 79 I.Q. and the first day I said, "I'm getting the hell out of here quick!" They're all losers. All they do is talk about their IQ.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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I met a guy who had the same theory and wrote a book about it. His name is Walter C. Wright Jr. His book is called Gravity Is a Push. I wrote to him and told him about my father, and he said he wished he'd met him. My father died quite a while ago.
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Father
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To have that radical a mind in that bourgeois-looking body was really hard for a lot of people to take, because, when my mother would want to have people over she'd tell [my father], "Don't start with the gravity stuff." And then he would invariably do this and the guests would look at each other and say, "Well, I think it's time to go now."
- Paul Laffoley
Collection: Mother