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Description
Octopi (belonging to the class Cephalapoda) have the ability to change colour. It is generally assumed that they do this for camouflage underwater or to make them appear less palatable to predators but this is in fact only part of the story.

Octopi are molluscs - they diverged from our own evolutionary line 700 million years ago and are related to the Escargot family (snails). Since they have no backbone they are not classified as vertebrates. However, Octupi are considered a wonderful example of parallel evolution because their optical system is very similar to the mammalian optical system. The reason for this is thought to be that they evolved in an reef environment that is as dense and rich in environmental signals and visual stimuli as is also found in the heart of a rain forest where primates and proto-hominids evolved.

An Octopus is soft bodied which means that it can not only change its colour but it can also change its outer surface texture from smooth and rubbery, to bumpy or pimply, or to rugose and ribbed, etc. And also because it is soft bodied in an aqueous environment it can fold and unfold and therefore reveal and conceal different parts of its body very, very quickly.

All of these behaviours and physiological characteristics combine together to make the Octopus an excellent visual communicator.

The colour changes, the blushes and traveling dots and bars which are manifest by Octopi are even considered a language. (For more information on this there is an excellent book called "Communication and Non Communication among the Cephalopoda" by Martin Moyniham. He even goes so far as creating a grammar for this language).

What seems to be happening is that the Octopi are wearing their minds on their skin. They are dressing themselves in their mental state.

It is believed an octopus encountering another octopus can instantly tell each other their moods, how recently they have eaten, how long it has been since they last had sex, whether they are sexually in phase, etc all just by looking at the visual information on each others skin.

It is thought the only way an octopus can have a private thought is by squirting ink into the water and by hiding inside the ink cloud. Essentially, it is believed to be some kind of correction fluid for "misspoken octopi".

Octopi seem to be using these extremely visual and in-depth forms of communication as a kind of virtual reality. In a sense this is what we ourselves are being encouraged towards in modern society. We seem to want to clothe ourselves in language. And the world we live in is a kind of virtual reality just like the spacial environment that we live in - everything present in the the rooms we live in; the fixtures, the architecture, the infrastructure, the monitor you are looking at. These are just ideas thought up by humans.

It was an idea that has then been summoned into matter, by the allotment of funds, the spending of monies and the hiring of craftsmen and designers that have them come into realisation and being.

Our civilization is based on an accreted set of interlocking ideas. We could be just like those Octopi - coral animals, naked and pulpy creatures - but instead we are clothed in denim and other fabrics, then clothed in an even harder outer shell produced and designed by Mercedes or Chevrolet, and then move about in a larger environment produced by the architectural designers of the cities we live in. I think octopi provide an excellent example of what naked mindedness is and how humans are also following this trend and have been doing so for some time.

Octopi evolved in the coastal reef domain but this is a very competitive domain, since every organism in the ocean wants to be there as its the place where all the sunlight and food is and thus attracts the most predators. This fact was probably the evolutionary driving force for some species of octupi to evolve towards inhabiting a more hostile environmental niche where there is less predation. Therefore some Octopi have become benthic or abyssal, which means that they exist in the parts of the ocean where light never reaches yet they have still managed to retain this visual communication ability by switching over to internally generated phosphorescence.

There are species of Octopi which are studded with organs that have the visual equivalent of eyelids over them but which act as phosophescent flash lights. When they descend into the abyssal depths of the ocean, all one octopus sees of another octopus is its linguistic productivity. I think that by producing a Octopi environment like this we could experience this kind of visual experience it would be a kind of proto-telepathy of sorts.

Somewhere during their evolution, Octopi instead of choosing to use verbal communication (even though water is an excellent conductor of sound), instead chose to use a totally nonverbal way to communicate.

Humans still have the remains of this primitive ability that we can use subconsciously. Studies using pairs of people were done. One person was sat in a chair across a room with their back to the other person. The second person was asked to either look at their lap or to look at the back of the other persons head. The first person was asked to record if the other person was looking at them or not. They found in certain subjects they could accurately tell if somebody else was looking at them well beyond any probability of error margin. This effect also carries over into many different fields of unexplained perceptions and phenomenons. For example, some people can instinctively tell if a particular unknown food should not be eaten, and this skill along with many other intangible perceptive skills are believed to be the imprinted basic survival skills stored in our subconscious brains inherited from a point in history where we communicated and lived in a very different way.

Glossary

rugose: Having many wrinkles or creases; ridged or wrinkled.
aqueous: Water
phosphorescence: Emission of light without burning or by very slow burning without appreciable heat, as from the slow oxidation of phosphorous: “He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water” (Ernest Hemingway)
metatheory: A theory devised to analyze theoretical systems.
edifies: To instruct especially so as to encourage intellectual, moral, or spiritual improvement.
accreted: To make larger or greater, as by increased growth.

References

Thomas Coon: "The Structure of Scientific Revolution"
Martin Moyniham: "Communication and Non Communication among the Cephalopoda"
Terence McKenna: "Food of the Gods"

Description
Octopi (belonging to the class Cephalapoda) have the ability to change colour. It is generally assumed that they do this for camouflage underwater or to make them appear less palatable to predators but this is in fact only part of the story.

Octopi are molluscs - they diverged from our own evolutionary line 700 million years ago and are related to the Escargot family (snails). Since they have no backbone they are not classified as vertebrates. However, Octupi are considered a wonderful example of parallel evolution because their optical system is very similar to the mammalian optical system. The reason for this is thought to be that they evolved in an reef environment that is as dense and rich in environmental signals and visual stimuli as is also found in the heart of a rain forest where primates and proto-hominids evolved.

An Octopus is soft bodied which means that it can not only change its colour but it can also change its outer surface texture from smooth and rubbery, to bumpy or pimply, or to rugose and ribbed, etc. And also because it is soft bodied in an aqueous environment it can fold and unfold and therefore reveal and conceal different parts of its body very, very quickly.

All of these behaviours and physiological characteristics combine together to make the Octopus an excellent visual communicator.

The colour changes, the blushes and traveling dots and bars which are manifest by Octopi are even considered a language. (For more information on this there is an excellent book called "Communication and Non Communication among the Cephalopoda" by Martin Moyniham. He even goes so far as creating a grammar for this language).

What seems to be happening is that the Octopi are wearing their minds on their skin. They are dressing themselves in their mental state.

It is believed an octopus encountering another octopus can instantly tell each other their moods, how recently they have eaten, how long it has been since they last had sex, whether they are sexually in phase, etc all just by looking at the visual information on each others skin.

It is thought the only way an octopus can have a private thought is by squirting ink into the water and by hiding inside the ink cloud. Essentially, it is believed to be some kind of correction fluid for "misspoken octopi".

Octopi seem to be using these extremely visual and in-depth forms of communication as a kind of virtual reality. In a sense this is what we ourselves are being encouraged towards in modern society. We seem to want to clothe ourselves in language. And the world we live in is a kind of virtual reality just like the spacial environment that we live in - everything present in the the rooms we live in; the fixtures, the architecture, the infrastructure, the monitor you are looking at. These are just ideas thought up by humans.

It was an idea that has then been summoned into matter, by the allotment of funds, the spending of monies and the hiring of craftsmen and designers that have them come into realisation and being.

Our civilization is based on an accreted set of interlocking ideas. We could be just like those Octopi - coral animals, naked and pulpy creatures - but instead we are clothed in denim and other fabrics, then clothed in an even harder outer shell produced and designed by Mercedes or Chevrolet, and then move about in a larger environment produced by the architectural designers of the cities we live in. I think octopi provide an excellent example of what naked mindedness is and how humans are also following this trend and have been doing so for some time.

Octopi evolved in the coastal reef domain but this is a very competitive domain, since every organism in the ocean wants to be there as its the place where all the sunlight and food is and thus attracts the most predators. This fact was probably the evolutionary driving force for some species of octupi to evolve towards inhabiting a more hostile environmental niche where there is less predation. Therefore some Octopi have become benthic or abyssal, which means that they exist in the parts of the ocean where light never reaches yet they have still managed to retain this visual communication ability by switching over to internally generated phosphorescence.

There are species of Octopi which are studded with organs that have the visual equivalent of eyelids over them but which act as phosophescent flash lights. When they descend into the abyssal depths of the ocean, all one octopus sees of another octopus is its linguistic productivity. I think that by producing a Octopi environment like this we could experience this kind of visual experience it would be a kind of proto-telepathy of sorts.

Somewhere during their evolution, Octopi instead of choosing to use verbal communication (even though water is an excellent conductor of sound), instead chose to use a totally nonverbal way to communicate.

Humans still have the remains of this primitive ability that we can use subconsciously. Studies using pairs of people were done. One person was sat in a chair across a room with their back to the other person. The second person was asked to either look at their lap or to look at the back of the other persons head. The first person was asked to record if the other person was looking at them or not. They found in certain subjects they could accurately tell if somebody else was looking at them well beyond any probability of error margin. This effect also carries over into many different fields of unexplained perceptions and phenomenons. For example, some people can instinctively tell if a particular unknown food should not be eaten, and this skill along with many other intangible perceptive skills are believed to be the imprinted basic survival skills stored in our subconscious brains inherited from a point in history where we communicated and lived in a very different way.

Glossary

rugose: Having many wrinkles or creases; ridged or wrinkled.
aqueous: Water
phosphorescence: Emission of light without burning or by very slow burning without appreciable heat, as from the slow oxidation of phosphorous: “He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water” (Ernest Hemingway)
metatheory: A theory devised to analyze theoretical systems.
edifies: To instruct especially so as to encourage intellectual, moral, or spiritual improvement.
accreted: To make larger or greater, as by increased growth.

References

Thomas Coon: "The Structure of Scientific Revolution"
Martin Moyniham: "Communication and Non Communication among the Cephalopoda"
Terence McKenna: "Food of the Gods"