By John Ringland (www.anandavala.info)
Inspired
by conversations with V (the devil's advocate) [2007/03/13-20]
Edited
due to contributions from Glistening Deepwater [2008/04/9-16] - many
thanks :)
Regarding feedback: This document is an ongoing work in progress and is constantly evolving as better ways to express things are found. Feedback is an essential aspect of this process so please, if you feel like it, let me know about your experiences reading this and any ideas that occurred to you (john.ringland@anandavala.info). It is helpful if you let me know what parts you found unclear, unconvincing or incorrect. It is especially helpful if you can explain why you found them so. Then I will take that into consideration. It is also helpful to let me know what parts you strongly agree with, what parts were challenging, what parts you found irrelevant (unnecessary complication) and any ideas you have to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of this discussion. Let me know if it’s just feedback or if you wish to discuss the issues because I do not have time to answer all emails, but I take them all into consideration. Oh and make the subject line clearly distinguishable from spam, otherwise it might accidentally get deleted. If you feel like providing feedback it will help put these ideas to the test and clarify them, thereby honouring truth. Thank you in advance.
See these excerpts from recent discussions about this document and the related ideas. It provides a concise of overview of some of the key issues.
by Glistening Deepwater.
The subject matter covered in this body of work is at once subtle and dense, it makes fascinating yet at times challenging reading. It discusses ways of potentially coming to an understanding of the nature of the mind, the way we relate to each other and the world, and the fundamental underlying nature of reality. Many comparative analogies, drawn from disparate traditions, are brought together and clarified.
This work provides clear insight into newly developed tools that can be employed in order to holistically 'get a handle' on the seemingly divergent scientific and mystical paradigms. It can help one reach a point within ones self where these views come into focus in a unified and coherent manner. It offers an opportunity for the seeker of clear and verifiable Truth to develop the capacity to clearly apprehend that truth in their own way, whatever their background knowledge may be.
Backed up by both rigorous and inspired scientific research and a wealth of references and resource material, it gives a coherent overview of and method of transcending our current limitations in understanding how it is we come to be what and where we are at this stage of evolution, not just as a race but as a phenomena existent in the context of the universal whole. It proposes a way forward toward a Holistic Science, one in which all genuine avenues of approach to the truth are treated equally and with their due respect.
Whilst this work is extensive in its endeavour to elucidate ways of thinking about 'reality', it is concise and presents us with valuable tools and insights with which we can nourish our own understanding. It makes no apologies for being direct and it cuts to the core of some of the deepest fundamental issues facing the world today; the 'way' in which we come to our understandings.
Approaching this work with an open mind and a willingness to leave any preconceived ideas and judgements to one side, one can potentially gain a deeper insight into the true nature of reality and our relationship with it.
This is a sincere attempt to convey an important overview of the metaphysical situation that currently faces us as human beings on this planet. I hope it helps to clarify many minds, as has been my experience in working with it.
Namaste.
Due to the conceptual language and subject matter of this discussion it may not be accessible or meaningful to many people, but to others it can potentially be of profound and far-reaching benefit; it represents a major paradigm shift. To motivate you and help you decide if you wish to read on some hints of what is coming will be given in the introduction, but beware of interpreting particular words or phrases using old-paradigm associations. It can be difficult not to but be aware that this may create many preconceived ideas, and could potentially stir up irrational responses. This discussion describes a 'paradigm shift'; a change in the way we interpret things and thereby derive their meaning and significance. So there is much that needs to be clarified before any words or their interpretations can be taken on face value. Many things can be seen in a new light and the meanings and relations between things can change both subtly and radically.
To use a potentially useful early 21st century metaphor...
This paradigm shift is the red pill that can potentially lift you out of the matrix of worldly illusions, take it and you will see "how deep the rabbit hole goes". Or simply turn away; “take the blue pill and the story ends... you believe whatever you want to believe.” (The Matrix) [Further Reading]. The decision is: “Do you live on in ignorance (and potentially bliss) [but for how long?] or do you lead... 'the examined life'... The question is asking us whether reality, truth, is worth pursuing. The blue pill will leave us as we are, in a life consisting of habit, of things we believe we know. We are comfortable, we do not need truth to live. The blue pill symbolises commuting to work every day, or brushing your teeth. The red pill is an unknown quantity. We are told that it can help us to find the truth. We don't know what that truth is, or even that the pill will help us to find it. The red pill symbolises risk, doubt and questioning.” (In the Matrix, which pill would you take, the red or the blue?) [FR].
This discussion is not geared to take part in a combative discourse whereby it tries to use intricate proof to pin down resistant minds. Such methods are too crude and egoic to be effective in navigating a profoundly transformative paradigm shift that takes one way beyond the realm of ego driven illusions. You must employ effort to understand things rather than just search for things to object to; the ideas are too subtle to be understood without sincere effort. The work does not attempt to use ‘proof’ as a weapon, instead it seeks to inspire people to question things themselves, to look at their world and our accumulated knowledge in a fresh way and see if it makes sense. Although it doesn't use proof as a weapon it encourages people to try and disprove what it says so long as they understand what it is they are trying to object to; because by doing so they will put the ideas to the test from many different angles and also come to understand things in more detail, perhaps ultimately verifying it for themselves; however it does not not seek to impose ideas on minds that are not yet ready. It doesn't want people to believe but to find out for themselves and to develop their own understanding. It simply seeks to share certain ideas with people who are ready. You judge for yourself your level of readiness based on your responses to the ideas.
The document provides a large list of links to further reading on related subjects (usually indicated by [FR]) but they don't seek to prove anything or back anything up. They are purely there to provide a starting point for people who are interested in exploring further; see the index for this list. There is also a glossary of important terms where the meaning significantly differs from the popular meaning. The re-defined words are often hyperlinked to their redefinitions. These are not given as strict definitions; that is too crude for this discussion, they are just given as hints to help you avoid obvious misunderstandings. If you take them as simplistic ‘definitions’ this could crystallise your understanding and make it too rigid to be able to discern the subtler and deeper meanings. For some people a quick look through the glossary will inform them of the depth and the nature of the paradigm shift and they may learn a great deal from this alone; see here for the glossary.
This discussion is
written for sceptical, rational, open-minded people who are willing
to employ intelligent, imaginative effort to follow the development
of ideas
and who are therefore capable of making a paradigm
shift. This work is
not a "walk in the park"; it is more of a serious trek deep
into remote territory. To totally understand these ideas
requires overcoming commonsense realism (also called naive
realism), which is the root of all
delusion.
It is an intrinsic tendency that causes us to unquestioningly believe
in the idea of "out
there". It is the seed illusion from which all
later delusions
grow, thereby causing us to lose touch with and come into conflict
with reality.
When we look at something we believe
we are seeing
some 'thing' "out
there" but what is actually happening is that
information
flows through the senses, it is subconsciously
filtered and interpreted to form a cognitive impression that is
presented to the conscious
mind. The conscious mind succumbs to commonsense
realism and believes that the cognitive impression is actually "the
world". So "with our thoughts we make the
world"
(Buddha) and the ego
is the perceived centre of that world around which we structure all
of our illusions.
In the information theoretic and mystic paradigms, the ego, its countless ideas and beliefs such as in "the world" have no existence beyond our cognitive impressions, but we unquestioningly believe in their absolute reality and thereby operate in a self created fantasy world, which is just the shadow of reality that is cast upon our minds. There is certainly 'something' real, but we must overcome our reflexive beliefs to truly perceive and understand that 'something'. To confuse our subjective objects of perception for being objective objects "out there" is commonsense realism and it is inherently anti-skeptical, non-scientific and irrational because it is an unfounded belief that we impose upon reality without any rational basis. We do so solely because it is evolutionarily conditioned into the mind to provide for basic animal survival. However we are no longer just individual animals, we have become a part of a civilisation that spans the globe and our delusions spread and evolve throughout the culture and come to oppress us and the whole planet.
Ideas such as the world,
objects,
people, places and events are useful analogies
for referring to cognitive impressions so long as one doesn't naively
believe that they are "out
there". Because beyond the mind
made world
there is no such thing as "out there". The only reality is
the flow of pure
awareness or the existential information
process, which quantum physicists are only just beginning to
comprehend and mystics, visionaries and saints have known in various
ways. In its real nature it manifests as consciousness
and it can only be truly known 'within'.
All that we think is "out
there" is actually 'within'
but in truth there is no inner and outer ,there is only existence,
but the mind
creates an arbitrary division into inner
and outer
as an evolutionary strategy. This arbitrary division underlies all
dualistic concepts, especially mind
and matter
or self
and other.
What follows is ultimately just elementary
psychology and information systems theory but the implications are
profound! Unless one overcomes commonsense realism one cannot begin
to comprehend the deeper information theoretic reality. Through a
commonsense lens it would only seems absurd
or totally unrealistic because one's entire concept of what is 'real'
is based on confusing the objects of sense
perception with the idea of ontological, separately existing
material
objects.
However commonsense realism is not trivial to overcome. The most
common method is to practice the process of letting the impressions
arise whilst not believing
in their separate reality; this is meditation. Or with
the method of jnana yoga (pronounced gyan), one can subtly
enquire into the nature of the self until one 'sees' through one's
imagined self and realises the divinity within all.
To totally understand this work one needs to see through commonsense realism, but to effectively question it and overcome it one must be unfailingly skeptical and honest with oneself. Any hint of cynicism or blind acceptance is the imposition of arbitrary beliefs that warp the mind and make it virtually impossible to successfully enquire into the deep seated cognitive habit of commonsense realism. Many people confuse the concepts sceptic and cynic so they are clarified here.
"Some people believe that skepticism is the rejection of new ideas, or worse, they confuse 'skeptic' with 'cynic' and think that skeptics are a bunch of grumpy curmudgeons unwilling to accept any claim that challenges the status quo. This is wrong. Skepticism is a provisional approach to claims. It is the application of reason to any and all ideas - no sacred cows allowed. In other words, skepticism is a method, not a position. Ideally, skeptics do not go into an investigation closed to the possibility that a phenomenon might be real or that a claim might be true. When we say we are 'skeptical' we mean that we must see compelling evidence before we believe." (http://www.skeptic.com)
Hence 'skepticism' implies an open-minded approach whilst the manner in which the word is often used implies a closed-minded approach. This is a confusion of skepticism and cynicism. Many people dignify their cynicism by saying that they are skeptical but it would be more accurate to say that they are cynical.
"Cynicism: An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others."
(The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 11 Jun. 2006. http://www.answers.com/topic/cynicism)
A cynic approaches an enquiry such as this, irrationally convinced that it is wrong and that they already know the answer. They interpret everything in the context of that agenda, subconsciously desiring to attack and destroy the idea. If they argue their position coherently it can be useful to have a cynic around for "destructive testing" of ideas, but generally they confuse the issue in their mind and are resistant to any clarification, seeking only to prevent their unquestioned beliefs from being questioned. Hence a cynic is fundamentally unable to undergo or comprehend a paradigm shift.
But if you approach this discussion sceptically there is a great deal that can be learnt. It contains some mind-blowing ideas (literally). As they flow through my mind and out my fingers they are blowing my old paradigm into tiny pieces - dissolving everything and re-casting it into a new paradigm or vision of reality. So beware if you are attached to your familiar world-view - you will find this discussion threatening. Read this only if you are willing to question fundamental beliefs and assumptions, and you seek a deep rational knowledge of your self, of the world, of the nature of the phenomena and events in the world and how to holistically, harmonious and effectively participate in reality.
"If we truely desire to understand the world, then we are forced to fight constantly for clear vision. We must fight constantly against our expectation bias, against our human tendency to see only what we want to see. Researchers who assume it's easy to avoid self-delusions and wishful thinking... are probably the victims of self-delusions and wishful thinking. It takes quite a bit of effort to avoid these pitfalls. The effort starts with a painfully honest self-examination, wherein we discover just how large our personal capacity for self-delusion can be." (http://amasci.com/weird/wskept.html) [FR]
This discussion touches upon extremely controversial and off limits subjects - subjects about which there is extreme misrepresentation and misunderstanding. Subjects about which many people have hard and fast beliefs and prejudices that they never dare look into and question. It can be surprisingly easy for ones mind to just slide off the subject and avoid ever contemplating it directly. Some people experience strong aversions toward such subjects and yet show neither understanding nor any coherent argument against them. These ideas challenge certain core beliefs that many people have not seriously questioned so they are unable to defend them by rational means so their tendency is to retreat into denial. Be wary of these impulses in yourself and be mindful of your responses. Peer review is a vital aspect of any scientific enquiry, for ideas to be put to the test and found to be reliable or unreliable, but for this to occur people must approach the ideas with a sceptical attitude.
The work says many profound things and is just one voice amongst many, if these things were true the ramifications would have far reaching benefits for everyone and could help us comprehend and avert major systemic crises. Given the vast potential benefit it seems that these ideas should be made available to be independently and rationally assessed to either refute them or to help subject them to closer examination. What is described is detailed extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims however one must clear away many illusions, such as commonsense realism and unquestioned beliefs that cause the mind to slide off the topic before one can comprehend things from a clearer perspective. Then the claims can be properly tested. As you read through the discussion you will hopefully be able to identify the assumptions and illusions, overcome the preconceived ideas and be able to contemplate the topic from a new perspective that will make it much clearer.
There are many profoundly interesting and shocking ideas ahead however it is necessary to clarify many things before certain ideas can be introduced. Even then many will have great difficulty because this is a profound paradigm shift and old cognitive habits can be difficult to even recognise let alone overcome. For some it is relatively effortless but for others there are many subtle stages of deepening clarity before real understanding arises.
The subject itself is the essence of simplicity but because of the complexity of our ideas the work must provide a very complex analysis to make it connect with our world of ideas. Also due to countless trivial misunderstandings and objections raised over the years many stumbling points have been clarified and made explicit, but this has caused the discourse to become rather complex and detailed. Perhaps in the future simpler versions can be produced but until then, apologies for the mass of details but this has been necessary.
The discussion may start off a bit too technical for some and it may get a bit too metaphysical or abstract for others. It is primarily meant for people who are enthralled by the world of ideas (intellectuals) and who are open to exploring its foundations and seeing 'beneath' the world of ideas. It is particularly aimed at open minded, rational, and skeptical, scientists, philosophers, intellectuals and theologians as well as open minded, rational, skeptical and enquiring people of all kinds. It covers vast territory so much of it may be unfamiliar or may seem familiar on the surface but be totally different to what you would expect. This discussion describes a paradigm shift, so if you find parts that sound like utter gibberish or nonsense then this is because your current paradigm is incompatible or even hostile toward the paradigm discussed here. There is no question of being right or wrong, it is just a matter of understanding each other.
"I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as fraud." (Carl Jung [FR])
If understanding becomes difficult then just skim those parts you can’t understand and come back to them later. The important thing is to absorb those parts that you can understand and to be careful of judging things based on misunderstandings due to different associations with words and concepts. In a paradigm shift many meanings subtly and radically change and one must assess concepts based, not on preconceived ideas and beliefs but on their relations with other concepts in the current discourse; it is a matter of learning a new conceptual language. By looking at the glossary you can get an idea of the depth of the paradigm shift. You need to step across to the other side to properly see the view from there; it may surprise you. Only then and not before are you in a position to assess the paradigm rationally, sceptically and scientifically. If you don’t cross the river you can’t know about what is on the other side.
"The reception of a new paradigm often necessitates a redefinition of the corresponding science. Some old problems may be relegated to another science or declared entirely "unscientific". Others that were previously non-existent or trivial may, with a new paradigm, become the very archetypes of significant scientific achievement."(Thomas Kuhn)
It is the nature of a paradigm shift that it can shake things up and stir things into motion in your mind; it can even slaughter your sacred cows and cherished illusions. This can be disturbing at times, but this is cognitive growing pains; if you revere truth and reality then these pains are a part of the process. As you proceed things will quickly settle and reform into a deeper and more holistic understanding. Each time you experience something it is largely a function of your current paradigm, which is the lens that you look through. So during a paradigm shift it is important to use a cyclic approach. For example, after having read this document your understanding of this paradigm will be much deeper and clearer than it was originally. Then spend some time looking through this new cognitive lens at your world and reassess things anew. Then return to this document (or other transcendent writings) and you will see it in a new light and understand it on a much deeper level.
For those who are not technically minded you can skim or skip the technical discussions and read the rest; it is all very simple and intuitive really - it's more about awareness than about intellect. As the discussion progresses its format becomes less technical and once people are able to understand the analogical language that is employed it covers all kinds of topics, shedding new light on them. There are parts of this discussion that develop a rational argument that must be followed through to be understood but most of the discourse is just many different ways of saying the same thing. Towards the end of the discussion there are countless paragraphs that can sum up the entire message contained herein but only if one has successfully shifted one's paradigm enough to be able to understand them. For those already open to the paradigm presented here they could just skip to the latter sections and see the entire message presented in many different ways, each highlighting a particular subtlety but otherwise saying essentially the same thing. But for those unfamiliar with the paradigm it may require many years of subtle enquiry, growing awareness, personal growth and changing life circumstances before things become comprehensible.
Through questioning and deconstructing fundamental assumptions and confusions then exploring the ramifications of this the work seeks to motivate people to clarify and overcome these distortions in themselves and the wider culture so that we can all better comprehend and participate in reality. It does not propose any new ideology, grand theory or belief system, just a 'device' that can assist in clarifying understanding. After that, awareness and reality do the rest.
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” (Carl Jung [FR])
Here we introduce one of the major threads that weaves through this discussion, first lets clarify the concept of skepticism a little more. Skepticism has a specifically philosophical meaning:
"skepticism [Gr.,= to reflect], philosophic position holding that the possibility of knowledge is limited either because of the limitations of the mind or because of the inaccessibility of its object. It is more loosely used to denote any questioning attitude. Extreme skepticism holds that no knowledge is possible, but this is logically untenable since the statement contradicts itself. The first important skeptical view was held by Democritus, who saw sense perception as no certain guide to objective reality. The Sophists were the earliest group of skeptics. Protagoras taught the relativity of knowledge, and Gorgias held that either nothing could be known, or if anything were known, it could not be communicated. Pyrrho, regarded as the father of skepticism, later held a similarly extreme position, seeing reality as inaccessible. Arcesilaus taught that certitude is impossible and only probable knowledge is attainable. In the Renaissance, skepticism is seen in the writings of Michel de Montaigne, Pierre Charron, and Blaise Pascal. For René Descartes skepticism was a methodology that allowed him to arrive at certain incontrovertible truths. At the end of the 17th cent., Pierre Bayle skeptically challenged philosophical and theological theories. David Hume, a leading modern skeptic, challenged established assumptions about the self, substance, and causality. The skeptical aspect of Immanuel Kant's philosophy is exemplified by his agnosticism; his antinomies of reason demonstrate that certain problems are insoluble by reason. To some degree skepticism manifests itself in the scientific method, which demands that all things assumed as facts be questioned. But the positivism [REF] of many scientists, whether latent or open, is incompatible with skepticism, for it accepts without question the assumption that material effect is impossible without material cause."
(The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia University Press., 2003. Answers.com 11 Jun. 2006. http://www.answers.com/topic/skepticism)
This positivism is a core belief that goes unquestioned throughout empirical science and it is the philosophical foundation of empiricism [FR] and empirical science [FR]. It is this sacred cow of science that is questioned here. The following argument and this entire discussion rest upon the idea that reality has a processual [FR], information / system theoretic [FR] nature; that there are no fundamental bits of matter that a priori (miraculously) exist in space and time and interact to construct a physical universe. This outmoded idea is already proven false but it is so deeply ingrained that it lingers on in the philosophical foundations of our thinking. Whether one thinks of information, computation, pure awareness or abstract non-physical ‘physicality’ such as quantum wavefunctions or strings or a unified quantum vacuum, these are all information processes.
"Because it is now a scientifically established fact that less than 4% of the universe is composed of matter as commonly understood modern philosophical materialists attempt to extend the definition of matter to include other scientifically observable entities such as energy, forces, and the curvature of space. However this opens them to further criticism from philosophers such as Mary Midgley who suggest that the concept of "matter" is elusive and poorly defined." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism)
Many of the concepts in modern physics are not ‘physical’ in the traditional sense of the word; whilst a wavefunction gives rise to the appearance of physical attributes such as mass or velocity the wavefunction itself has no mass or velocity or any observable attributes; it has no empirical appearance because it is ‘made of’ probability. A super-string gives rise to physical phenomena but it itself is not ‘physical’ because it is an abstract information medium that represents information using vibrational states. A unified quantum vacuum gives rise to physical phenomena but it itself is not ‘physical’ because, by definition, the vacuum itself is devoid of all physical substance; it is the invisible ‘stuff’ out of which every ‘thing’ comes and within which all events occur, and that is exactly how a computational process would appear from within a virtual reality [FR]. In this manner physicists have already left 'materialism' and the 'physical' universe behind but have yet to explicitly recognise this fact.
"Let us now return to our ultimate particles and to small organizations of particles as atoms or small molecules. The old idea about them was that their individuality was based on the identity of matter in them...The new idea is that what is permanent in these ultimate particles or small aggregates is their shape and organization. The habit of everyday language deceives us and seems to require, whenever we hear the word shape or form of something, that it must be a material substratum that is required to take on a shape. Scientifically this habit goes back to Aristotle, his causa materialis and causa formalis. But when you come to the ultimate particles constituting matter, there seems to be no point in thinking of them again as consisting of some material. They are as it were, pure shape, nothing but shape; what turns up again and again in successive observations is this shape, not an individual speck of material..." (Erwin Schroedinger [REF])
So if it is the case that the physical universe arises from underlying non-physical processes, then that deeper reality that underlies the existence of all things and underlies the process of perception and experience is not accessible to empirical science by its very definition. “Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge” (Rationalism vs. Empiricism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) [FR]) whilst the existential process “underlies the existence of all things and underlies the process of perception and experience”.
Naive realism [FR] claims that the objects of perception are ontologically real external objects that the mind can directly grasp. Whereas phenomenalism claims that the objects of perception are just that, they are perceptual constructs that form in the mind due to the incidence of sensory information and the interpretation of this by the mind. "Edmund Husserl (1970), saw the phenomenologist in Hume when he showed that some perceptions are interrelated or associated to form other perceptions which are then projected onto a world putatively outside the mind." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume)
"Naive realism [FR] is a common sense theory of perception. Most people, until they start reflecting philosophically, are naive realists. This theory is also known as "direct realism" or "common sense realism". Naive realism claims that the world is pretty much as common sense would have it. All objects are composed of matter, they occupy space, and have properties such as size, shape, texture, smell, taste and colour. [It is assumed that] These properties are usually perceived correctly. So, when we look at and touch things we see and feel those things directly, and so perceive them as they really are." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_realism)
"Noumena (the ontological [FR] reality that underlies our sensory and mental impressions of an external world) do not cause phenomena [FR], but rather phenomena are simply the way by which our minds perceive the noumena... we participate in the reality of an otherwise unachievable world outside the mind... We cannot prove that our mental picture of an outside world corresponds with a reality by reasoning... [however] we can participate in the underlying reality that lies beyond mere phenomena." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schopenhauer)
Empiricism does not question the nature of perception but takes it for granted and it uses the objects of perception (which are mistaken to be objectively real objects) to construct the idea of a physical objective world that is made of objects, which are actually objects of perception - in this manner it is inherently naive realist. From this flawed conceptual foundation it builds all of its later hypotheses. It proposes that the hypothetical physical universe underlies the process of perception, hence one of the major paradoxes in empiricism is “how can the process of perception, awareness and consciousness arise from the interactions of inert physical objects (which are really just objects of perception)? This is a fundamental paradox that arises because of assumptions about the nature of perception and the confusion between “objects of perception” and the idea of “ontologically real physical objects”.
What is proposed is a rationalist approach: “Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience.” (Rationalism vs. Empiricism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) [FR]) In this way we can overcome the lingering attachments to ideas derived from arbitrary human sense experience. Rationalism or scientific realism is anti-empiricist. It essentially claims that the fundamental properties of things are more real than their appearances in the mind. So frequency is more real than colour or sound and wavefunctions are more real than particles or waves. So the informatic / systemic entities are more real than their appearances in our minds. That which we experience in our minds is just a cognitive reflection of the deeper reality. This should be quite obvious but because it challenges certain core beliefs people’s minds have great difficulty in thinking clearly about this.
Here is an analogy to explain what is meant when stating that the existential process itself exists prior to perception and experience. Consider a virtual reality world generated by a computational process (the simulator). The computational process underlies the existence of all objects within the virtual universe and it implements all interactions between these objects. Whenever a virtual system perceives another system it is the computational process that underlies the flow of information that implements both that which is perceived and the process of perception. In this respect the VR universe is composed of information systems of some kind that appear as physical objects (with attributes) in spacetime. These systems perceive things from an empirical perspective ‘within’ the virtual world. But underlying these appearances of objects in space, the actual reality is computational in nature. So you may play a computer game and know the game space very well and understand the many objects and phenomena that appear within the game, but you cannot comprehend the underlying computational process in terms of these objects and phenomena because they only arise as appearances within the virtual world and they have no meaning within the context of the computational space and the complex computational processes that create and implement every aspect of the game world. This is just an elaborate analogy to explain what is meant by saying that existence underlies the process of perception therefore a perceptually based theory cannot comprehend questions of existence but only appearances within the mind. The objects and the perceiver don’t miraculously arise from separate roots; they are intrinsic parts of a computational process.
Rather than consider a world of separate objects we must eventually return to considering a universe that is One and Whole, that is unified and coherent rather than fragmented and random.
"Indeed, to some extent it has always been necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, if we tried to deal with the whole of reality at once, we would be swamped. However when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man's notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives, (i.e. in his world-view) then man ceases to regard the resultant divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and this world as actually constituted of separately existing fragments. What is needed is a relativistic theory, to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or building blocks. Rather one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes." (David Bohm [REF])
Because of the fundamental limitations of empiricism [FR] most of empirical science [FR], western philosophy, common sense and general knowledge is fundamentally limited. That’s not to say that the vast accumulation of empirical data and hypotheses are not useful. Within the context in which it arose much of our knowledge is highly accurate and some of it is deep and subtle. But what it means is that outside of the empirical context it has no meaning because the entire empirical context is a perceptual construct – by its very definition. Therefore knowledge derived from a perceptual, empirical perspective can be useful in the empirical context but it has no meaning outside of that. Hence empirical science can never address issues of ontology (what is) [FR] but only phenomenology (that which appears to be) [FR]. Ontology is the “science or study of being: specifically, a branch of metaphysics relating to the nature and relations of being; a particular system according to which problems of the nature of being are investigated” (Definitions of Ontology by Leading Philosophers, [FR]) whilst “Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.” (Phenomenology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) [FR]).
Because existence underlies perception, and empirical science depends solely upon perceptual phenomena, traditional empirical science is fundamentally unable to address issues of existence but only appearance, however the cutting edge of science is stretching the concept of empiricism by going beyond concepts that derive from our sense experiences, going beyond solidity, localisation and so on. In this way science is overcoming empiricism and is approaching a more rationalist and realist perspective (holistic realism rather than common-sense or naive realism) [FR].
Traditional empirical science addresses “the epistemological question [what can be known and what is unknowable] by drawing a sharp distinction between truth and empirical adequacy. [Empirical science claims] that a good theory need only provide an empirically adequate description of observable phenomena. Any unobservables, such as electrons and quarks, are simply empirical tools for describing the observable world... [hence] our epistemic knowledge is limited to the observables.”
However “Scientific realism claims that we can know about objects beyond what we observe with our bare senses, and this knowledge is what allows us to predict phenomena… The realist interpretation [of quantum mechanics] shows that we can make knowledge claims about objects, such as electrons, that are unobservable with our bare senses. This challenges the empiricist claim that quantum objects are simply empirical tools to describe observables. Thus, contrary to what we might at first think, the wave-particle duality of quantum objects provides support for the realists. We now know that quantum objects behave differently from everyday objects, and we can make an experimentally supported epistemological claim about the quantum world, a very realist claim.” (A Critique of the Empiricist Interpretation of Modern Physics (PDF) [FR])
"we have to give up the idea of [naive] realism to a far greater extent than most physicists believe today." (Anton Zeilinger)... By realism, he means the idea that objects have specific features and properties — that a ball is red, that a book contains the works of Shakespeare, or that an electron has a particular spin. For everyday objects, such [naive] realism isn't a problem. But for objects governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, like photons and electrons, it may make no sense to think of them as having well defined characteristics. Instead, what we see may depend on how we look.” (Physicists bid farewell to reality? Quantum mechanics just got even stranger. [FR])
Any attempt by traditional empiricist theories to make ontological claims is like a computer game player saying that the computational process actually consists of objects in space and time, whereas the computational process is really an information process wherein there are no empirical phenomena at all. Therefore when empirical science projects its empiricist ideas beyond the empirical context (which is a construct of perceptions and appearances) then it is attempting to operate in a context in which it has no meaning and is therefore illogical. This is the situation with Scientism.
"Sociologists coined the term "scientism" back in the 1940s, when they realized that many scientists unthinkingly accepted many scientific theories as simple, unquestioned Truths, just like believers in any "ism," and thus we often acted like any prejudiced "believer," especially outside our immediate areas of expertise." (The Archives of Scientists Transcendent Experiences (TASTE) [FR])
To a large extent physics has moved in the right direction by letting go of its billiard balls and plum pudding models of matter and it has gone into relativistic spacetime, quantum wavefunctions and fields, strings, processes and information. By hanging onto empirical ideas that are inherently derived from sensory experience within the virtual reality we are trapped within an empirical understanding of things. But by letting go and going deeper into the abstract information processes we can comprehend the underlying process of existence and thereby comprehend our experiences on a much deeper level. Rather than just take our experiences for granted and enshrine them as core beliefs in an empiricist approach, we can rationally question those beliefs and subtly penetrate to a much deeper understanding.
That is what is proposed here. I describe a general information systems theory [IST] based upon matrix algebra and discrete mathematics that is used to explore the underlying existential process and thereby comprehend the empirical (experiential) world from a deeper perspective [FR]. This document is not a technical discussion; it is more descriptive. For details refer to the website (www.anandavala.info) or follow these links [overview], [metaphysical approach], [VR metaphysics], [IST], [SMN], [sys theory], [unification], where there are mathematical and software models illustrating how one can use matrix algebra and discrete mathematics to create existential processes that generate virtual empirical worlds where systems interact and experience being in a world of systems in interaction. This mathematical methodology is called system matrix notation [SMN]. There are also metaphysical and general essays and long lists of assorted comments and even poetry and images; all trying to make the ideas accessible to people.
In the SMN approach all the principles of system theory naturally arise within the virtual realities. The models can implement quantum, pseudo classical and relativistic phenomena. The quantum and relativistic effects arise due to the constraints of discreteness. There is an inherent arrow of time, which is of a processual nature [FR] so there is no ontological “dimension of time”, there is only an ongoing process-of-the-real that exists in the present moment. This means that any equation or theory relying upon a time variable ‘t’ is an empirical description of observed appearances and events from within the VR simulation when it is running. This is also the case for any spatial coordinate (x,y or z), because SMN has only process time and state space; it is from these that empirical time and empirical space arise within the simulation. Whilst all the virtual systems have an inherent present moment existence, to empirical science [FR] this is an inexplicable anomaly; this is because empiricism relies on the flow of countless present moments of existence as its conceptual ‘ground’. It takes experience as an a priori (miraculous) starting point and thus can only comprehend the virtual experience of existence and not the actual mechanism of existence. Furthermore, all virtual systems have input, internal state and output, these are primitive precursors to perception, experience and response. Complex systems can have very complex structures, behaviours and appearances as well as highly complex ‘cognitive’ processes with countless internal feedback loops and internal processes.
This indicates that our consciousness may be a highly complex manifestation of a universal principle. What we call ‘consciousness’ is a high level experience of the existential process itself as it looks through our perspective and experiences the “virtual world.” So it could be said that all things are made of consciousness and the ‘objects’ are appearances; they are the content of consciousness. This resolves the mind/matter paradox that arises within empirical science. Consciousness is an inexplicable anomaly in empirical science for the same reasons that empirical science cannot comprehend present moment existence. Because empiricism takes the process of experience as an unquestioned ‘given’ and it builds all of its ideas upon that assumption, it is therefore unable to use its later ideas to coherently comprehend consciousness. One cannot comprehend the mechanism of consciousness by using concepts solely derived from the contents of consciousness.
There are many other profound and striking parallels between everyday experience, scientific knowledge and the perennial philosophy [FR], which I discuss later once certain fundamental confusions are cleared up. The current limitations of SMN [FR] are here clarified; it is currently strictly confined to working with ontological processes and the general properties of the virtual reality and not on the contingent processes that give rise to any particular virtual universe. To explain, SMN provides a new context of enquiry, a new mathematical / computational approach with new system simulation techniques. It provides a general model of the structure and dynamics of the existential process; it models the metaphorical cosmic ‘simulator’. SMN gives us a general model of the simulator and its fundamental constraints but any kind of system model or VR universe can be run on this simulator. There is still a great deal to be learnt about how to create a ‘seed’ model that evolves into a universe very much like our own. The nature of the simulator imposes fundamental constraints on the nature of the VR universe; it must be finite, discrete, quantised, relativistic, systemic and so on, but within these constraints any type of system model or VR universe can be created and simulated. So the question remains, which particular types of models evolve into universes much like our own?
Using SMN as the mathematical foundation this work contemplates the information system theoretic principles that naturally arise in the virtual worlds. It seeks an understanding of how they connect with our own personal experience of existence and with our accumulated knowledge. From this arises, what in the context of this work is called “information system theory” (IST) [FR], which is a general theory of systems [FR] and their interactions. It is not presented as a formal theory but rather as a way of thinking that subtly uses the flow of the mathematics [FR] to comprehend the flow of information that is the existential process that underlies our empirical experiences. In this way one is not fixated wholly on the objects of perception, assuming that they are the reality, because within one’s mind’s eye one also sees the connectivity and the flow and one understands the complex empirical appearances and their behaviours on a much deeper level. It subtly informs one’s understanding of the holistic situation. It is analogous to playing a computer game when you are the one that programmed the game; you have a far deeper understanding of the information flows underlying the objects, places and events in the game, whereas an unfamiliar player could only respond to sense impressions and would not perceive the underlying dynamics.
Whilst empirical scientific enquiry has done much to clear up many of our surface confusions, the empirical scientific method is itself distorted by some of our deepest, most profound and far-reaching assumptions and beliefs. It is most definitely NOT a truly skeptical approach. It must let go of its sacred beliefs before it can be truly skeptical. These beliefs are buried deep within the philosophical foundations of empiricism, thereby distorting the whole of empirical science. It is a matter of great importance that we recognise these distortions, comprehend their effect on us and work to correct them. We need to understand the mind first before reliably contemplating the contents of the mind otherwise we are open to illusion, delusion (persistent illusion), fanaticism, oppression and holistically destructive behaviour.
The mind is the foundation of our knowledge; it responds to the stimuli of existence and generates cognitive experiences and ideas. It is the fundamental link between reality and our knowledge of reality. It is the 'instrument' by which we experience and know anything at all and all good seekers of knowledge should understand and master their most fundamental instrument. In order to see clearly through the lens of the mind one must understand the nature of mind and its complex non-linear property whereby the view influences the lens, which influences the view, which influences the lens and so on. In this way we come to look through our own ideas. Because of this one must master one's own mind before one can derive reliable knowledge through it. Otherwise everything is coloured and distorted by preconceived subconscious ideas and attitudes that reinforce each other and evolve into complex, subtle and compelling illusions. If an illusion is enduring and pervasive it is difficult to identify as an illusion, hence within what we normal consider to be “just the way things are” there dwell many unquestioned illusions.
We will see in this discussion that the concepts of ‘reality’ and ‘illusion’ are not at all clear-cut. That which many call ‘real’ is actually illusion in the strictest sense, and will generally be described as such, but it is illusion in the same way as a virtual reality is an illusion; for characters that dwell in that virtual reality it seems ‘real’ because it is all illusion and all as real as they are. Hence the illusions discussed can be thought of as processes that manifest a virtual reality [FR]. This has also been described as relative reality, as opposed to absolute reality. But in general this work will simply refer to absolute reality as reality or objective reality and to relative reality as illusion or virtual reality or pseudo objective reality (that which we believe to be the objective reality but it is actually a construct of shared subjective experiences).
A major feature of this discussion is an analysis of the information flow from reality, through perception, interpretation, experience, ideas, expression, communication, cultural consensus and finally arriving at collective knowledge; and then the many feedback loops through which our awareness and understanding is conditioned. Using this understanding it deconstructs many common illusions and assumptions. This creates profound and far-reaching cracks in one's belief system. It shows how loosely our collective knowledge is related to reality and how the mind has an incredible ability to construct experiential worlds based upon our preconceived subconscious ideas. It is a literal fact that, as Buddha said, "with our thoughts we make the world" [FR]. Not the objective reality of course, but our own personal experiential world. For most people, that is the only world they have ever known.
For example, consider some object in front of you; you cannot ever see or experience the object "as it is". All you ever experience is your subconscious interpretation of the signals that stimulate your senses; these produce a response in your mind and that is what you actually experience. A simple example is a person who is hypnotised then handed an onion and given the subconscious suggestion that it is an apple - they will eat it gladly and experience it as an apple. You can never experience or know anything directly. Whilst our own responses do depend on the incident signals coming from reality, the actual form that they take in the conscious mind, which is what we experience, depends primarily on our particular way of interpreting and representing the signals to ourselves. So people with different subconscious cognitive filters actually experience different worlds.
That's just one of the many confusions that are clarified in this discussion. They are systemic perceptual illusions, i.e. illusions that arise because we are systems within a universe of systems and we only interact via the communication of information. We are not material objects in space that miraculously exist with innate solidity and behaviour, and we don't have a perfect "God's eye view" of reality or even an objective view, as people tend to assume. We experience many perceptual illusions that we accept as reality; these lead to experiences such as objects in space, around which we have woven ideas and allege the existence of a world "out there". But all we ever know is our own personal subjective experience that is totally constructed by our own minds.
Many people have primarily been looking through the mind naively assuming it to be a perfect objective window on reality and that we all experience the same objective world. Many people intellectually know better but still carry this subconscious assumption, which permeates their entire experience and knowledge of the world. Many people look through the mind without understanding the nature of the mind and thereby confuse the contents of mind with objective reality. This is a profound and far reaching error that opens us up to unending illusion, confusion, delusion (persistent illusion), agitation and suffering. We become prone to take our illusions as reality, to base all our knowledge and actions upon them and to thereby experience and operate within what is essentially a fantasy world that is loosely based upon an underlying reality.
These illusions are all pervasive in our experience; they initially arise from fundamental principles of information, systems and perception, but through biology and culture they have become reinforced and woven into what is generally considered to be the bedrock of incontrovertible self-evident facts of experience, that we never question because they are never recognised as a position or a theory that could be questioned, they are just assumed to be the way things actually are. On top of this we have built civilisation, a vast and intricate structure of knowledge, belief, tradition, roles, dependencies and the status quo of the world. From this vantage point we uncritically contemplate the world that presents itself to the conscious mind, assuming that we have a clear, undistorted and objective perspective on reality.
Because of this fundamental error most of empirical science, western philosophy, common sense and general knowledge rests upon a false foundation and does not represent reliable knowledge about reality. It is only reliable knowledge about the appearance, structure and behaviour of our particular systemic, biological, historical and contemporary cognitive illusions. These illusions are ultimately based upon an underlying reality but the lens is often so distorted that the illusion exhibits only superficial resemblance and relevance to reality, thus leaving most of reality incomprehensible and most of our actions inappropriate in the wider context. We may act rationally within a narrow context but this can be highly destructive and irrational within the wider context. The vast majority of information is filtered out by the subconscious and the remainder is heavily interpreted and distorted by deep-seated assumptions and misunderstandings.
In many respects science is becoming skeptical on its cutting edge with quantum physics [FR], string theory [FR], process physics [FR], process philosophy [FR], information physics [FR], system theory [FR], computational metaphysics [FR], cybernetics [FR], and so on. But on the whole there still remains an irrational and unquestioned attachment to an arbitrary but naively compelling belief that dwells within concepts such as empiricism [FR], positivism [FR], empirical science [FR], materialism, commonsense/naive realism [FR] and Scientism. Note the capital ‘S’ for Scientism, this is because it is a religion and these are usually capitalised. Scientism is a product of the gradual cultural distortion of science, just as popular religion is a product of the gradual cultural distortion of mysticism; it is when direct and subtle knowledge is taken out of context and it devolves into confusion and results in unfounded belief or dis-belief, which are both just assumptions.
""materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself." (Schopenhauer)... an observing subject can only know material objects through the mediation of the brain and its particular organization. The way that the brain knows determines the way that material objects are experienced." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism)
By uncritically accepting the contents of mind as objective reality we are prone to illusion. These illusions distort the lens of our mind thus distorting our experiences and if these too are uncritically accepted as objective reality the illusion is further reinforced. These illusions bring us into conflict with ourselves, with each other and with the holistic context, our total environment. To see clearly, understand coherently and participate effectively we need to understand the mind and make direct clear contact with reality. Just as illusions reinforce, so too does sincere and open-minded questioning of things lead to greater and greater clarity and awareness. Then we are in a position to clarify the many fundamental errors in our conscious and subconscious understanding; to straighten the lens; to see through it and get a fresh perspective. From this perspective we can then follow through the ramifications of those changes, to work from the re-aligned foundation all the way up, through the structure of our knowledge, renovating it and re-aligning it with reality. This is not as difficult as it sounds if one uses one's whole mind effectively.
Only then can we develop reliable personal and collective knowledge about reality. No collective knowledge can be perfect, but it can at least be comprehensive enough and accurate enough to overcome much of the dire confusion, agitation, imbalance, conflict, suffering and destruction that threatens the very survival of life on this planet. If science is to become skeptical and not devolve into Scientism it must openly, rationally and sincerely re-examine its roots and realise that the mind is its foundation and not a naive belief in the objective reality of the contents of the mind.
"The old foundations of scientific
thought
are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether,
electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern,
function, all require reinterpretation. What is the sense of talking
about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by
mechanics? The truth is that science
started its modern career by taking over ideas derived from the
weakest side of the philosophies of Aristotle's successors. In some
respects it was a happy choice. It enabled the knowledge of the
seventeenth century to be formulated so far as physics and chemistry
were concerned, with a completeness which lasted to the present time.
But the progress of biology and psychology has probably been checked
by the uncritical assumption of half-truths. If science
is not to degenerate into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses, it must
become philosophical and must enter upon a thorough criticism of its
own foundations."
(Alfred North Whitehead
http://www.alfred.north.whitehead.com/witwiz/witwiz4.htm
[FR])
This discussion first introduces some basic concepts of information systems theory, then describes the mathematics and its ramifications. Then it analyses the process of perception leading through experience, ideas, communication and resulting in collective knowledge, which then feeds back upon our minds and influences the whole process. This shows that not only is our knowledge limited by empiricism but that accurate awareness and knowledge is highly dependent on a good understanding and mastery of the mind. It is a highly complex and non-linear process by which we experience and know anything at all. In this sense the mind is the true foundation of empiricism, not a fervent belief in objects in spacetime. The mind is the instrument of experience and knowledge, which we must understand and master if we are to experience and know coherently, but the mind cannot be understood within a purely empiricist paradigm because the mind precedes experience and therefore cannot be explained in terms of the objects of experience. We then explore some of the implications of having many minds, integrated through culture and resonating together and some of the systemic phenomena that arise from this. This sheds light on issues of enormous relevance to current global events and crises. The work then explores some of the many parallels between information system theory and the perennial philosophy, it then discusses the role of religion in this context. Then it discusses some things that you can do to improve your own clarity and awareness. It then discusses what can be done to renovate and re-contextualise our empirical knowledge within the wider holistic context and generally re-establish ourselves as seekers of knowledge within the wider context. It then ends with a challenge to all people who seek deeper understanding and a more harmonious life to take a fresh look at themselves and their world and to sincerely tackle the illusions and irrationalities that go unquestioned in our minds and to strip away outmoded ideas that impair our awareness, understanding and judgement.
Essentially, it is proposed that science, which “in the broadest sense, refers to any system of knowledge which attempts to model objective reality” is capable of far more than empirical science implies. Here it is proposed that a holistic science is possible, achievable and desirable (indeed vital for our survival). This work describes a path that leads toward a holistic science, which is a profoundly skeptical science (devoid of sacred cows) that comprehends the nature of mind and uses it effectively, rather than a naive science that assumes that the experiences and ideas in the mind are representative of objective reality. It is not just an intellectual science, but also one that requires deep introspection, self-awareness and self-mastery. It is a science that comprehends both the personal and the mystic experiences of existence. The central principle of mysticism [FR] is "know your self". "The effort to understand yourself is Yoga" (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj [FR])
"The concepts of science show strong similarities to the concepts of the mystics... The philosophy of mystical traditions, the perennial philosophy, is the most consistent philosophical background to modern science." (Fritjof Capra [FR])
“Mysticism … is the pursuit of achieving communion or identity with, or conscious awareness of, ultimate reality…through direct experience, intuition, or insight; and the belief that such experience is …an important source of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism)
“Science, in the broadest sense, refers to any system of knowledge which attempts to model objective reality. In a more restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science) [FR]
This discussion does not propose a fragmented and limited science based upon 'mechanical' assumptions but a deep and holistic way of knowing that unifies all the fragmented disciplines of empirical science and all the mystic traditions. An understanding that elucidates the deep nature of ourselves and civilisation, that reconnects religion with its mystic roots and science with it skeptical roots and that opens up a vast new field of technological innovations and solutions to systemic problems that plague our lives and threaten our survival.
"General Systems theory should be an important means of instigating the transfer of principles from one field to another (so that it would) no longer be necessary to duplicate the discovery of the same principles in different fields." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy [REF])
"There is this hope, I cannot promise you whether or when it will be realized - that the mechanistic paradigm, with all its implications in science as well as in society and our own private life, will be replaced by an organismic or systems paradigm that will offer new pathways for our presently schizophrenic and self-destructive civilization." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy [REF])
The ‘device’ that can take us to this holistic science is information system theory (IST), either as discussed here or in some form. The approach discussed here unifies all of the other paradigms within a single elegant and holistic paradigm that derives from pure mathematics and the concepts 'information' and 'system'. There are no introduced assumptions and beliefs; its foundation is clear and simple, yet powerful enough to underlie all of our knowledge of the universe. But information system theory is only a device; it is not the holistic science itself or even the foundation of the holistic science. Clear and open minds are the foundation and IST gives us motivation and guidance in attaining such a thing and also a conceptual language within which to express our deeper holistic understanding.
In particular IST identifies a general process for the clarification of assumptions and illusions, the overcoming of habitual and compulsive thought patterns, reconnecting with ourselves and our minds because we are the foundation of all culture and knowledge, then through ourselves to connect with reality and then a renovation from the ground up of our individual and cultural paradigms. Only then resulting in a holistic, re-aligned cultural domain, with clear and open minds connected to reality and not trapped within compelling and competing illusions. The resulting holistic science can assist us in re-aligning with reality by motivating us and directing us to re-connect with ourselves, to come to know ourselves and through this to know reality.
The factual re-examination of some general principles brings to light some of their implications and reveals the fundamental limitations of the currently dominant paradigm. By looking through the cracks and exploring deeper, we discover profound parallels between cutting edge science, information theoretic metaphysics, existential philosophy and the perennial philosophy or mystic wisdom. They are all talking about essentially the same thing but coming from different angles and using different analogies. By identifying and distilling the common underlying structure of these analogies this work elucidates the general structure of a unified paradigm that seamlessly encompasses them all. Each particular paradigm is a particular analogical expression of the common underlying paradigm and concepts from one are mirrored in the other. Given such a unified understanding we can translate from one to the other and each can learn a great deal from the others. The resulting understanding is that the assumptions of common sense realism and the unquestioned beliefs that arise from it, such as empiricism and positivism, are fundamentally flawed, limited and limiting. The actual range of possibilities inherent in existence is vastly greater than that which the current paradigm can comprehend.
Ultimately all collective ideas are of the nature of illusion to varying degrees, they are not the actual reality but just ideas about it, so if you are wondering if this discussion and the proposed path to a holistic science is some kind of illusion; you can be assured that it is to some degree. But it can show how it is an illusion and elucidate the exact relationship between ‘illusion’ and ‘reality’. The mathematics and information systems theory are part of the illusion, everyday experience of the world is part of the illusion and also common sense, mystic wisdom, religious dogma and scientific knowledge too; the whole of human civilization is a part of the illusion. Described here is an illusion that unifies all other illusions; that elucidates the nature of illusion and shows that all ideas, theories and beliefs are all ultimately an illusion. The actual reality “is what it is” and we weave ideas around it to comprehend it, but in doing so, due to the nature of mind, we can subtly and radically distort our experience and understanding of it. The deconstruction of the phenomenon of illusion reveals that which isn't an illusion; it is the reality that produces the stimuli that we interpret, experience and form ideas about, it is the reality that the mind can only reflect and never hold or capture and it is ourselves as the bridge between reality and ideas.
For those who dwell in a world of cognitive impressions and ideas the actual reality seems to be something remote and abstract. If IST was not itself an illusion, it could not be recognised or comprehend by such people. But it is an illusion that dispels illusion. So it does not proclaim itself to be any truth, the truth is ultimately beyond words and ideas, and only approachable through direct contact and clear open awareness. We are the weavers of illusion and only by turning back on ourselves and mastering the mind can we disentangle ourselves from our web of illusion and come to know and fully participate in reality.
"My friend, all theory is gray, and the Golden tree of life is green." (Goethe)
Firstly here is given a brief introduction to information systems theory (IST) [FR] to clarify the context of this analysis. The term "information systems theory" has been used in several related contexts, usually involving computers that process information or organisations that use information in their management processes [FR]. For example a common definition of "an information system, ... is a technologically implemented medium for recording, storing, and disseminating linguistic expressions, as well as for drawing conclusions from such expressions" (Langefors [REF]). Another definition is that "an information system consists of three components: human, task, application system" [REF]. These are very specialised applications of IST that are defined within very particular contexts, however here we discuss general information systems theory [FR] that is applicable to all systems and to all forms of information exchange and processing. Just as 'energy' is far more general than just electricity or fuel used for technological applications (matter itself is energy), so too we will see that the concept of an "information system" is vastly more general than just information exchange within applications of interest to humans.
Some questions to keep in mind are: What is a useful way to think about the fundamental ‘mechanism’ of existence? And what about all these objects, people, places, events that we experience in the world? And the universe itself? What about when something happens, what is the cause? And what exactly is a system?
This discussion uses information system theory because it provides two universal metaphors, 'system' and 'information'. Any manifest form can be meaningfully thought of as a 'system', whether a particle, a person, a meme (idea), a process, a cultural phenomenon, a society, a planet, a galaxy and up to the whole cosmos as a single closed system (the only truly 'closed' system). This is the reason for the usefulness of system theory [FR].
"In contrast to the mechanistic Cartesian view of the world, the world-view emerging from modern physics can be characterized by words like organic, holistic, and ecological. It might also be called a systems view, in the sense of general systems theory. The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude of objects, but has to be pictured as one indivisible dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process." (Fritjof Capra [FR])
There are certain general properties of all systems, regardless of their form, their behaviour or the medium within which they exist and interact. A general property of all systems is that they interact via communication of some form [FR]. Not just social interactions between people or documents in a computer; for example, particle interactions when modelled by particle physicists are thought of as communications that are mediated by virtual particles, or mechanical systems communicate by directing force through levers, pulleys, gears etc. Each system has an outer observable form through which it is perceptible to other systems and an inner observational process by which it perceives other systems. Each system is embedded in an inter-connecting network of communication paths and thus has a unique localised perspective. Signals flow between systems and through systems and this is conceived of as 'information'. Information is defined as "discernible difference". It requires some medium that can support different observable states and an observer that can discern these states; it unites both outer and inner in the one substance. When information is perceived it is as signals (outer observable form) but when it flows within a system this flow is experienced as an inner observational process. Furthermore, because of its generality information can manifest in any medium, it can be transformed from one medium to another and can flow through any network of systems. The approach of information theory is to model the flow of information through communication channels [FR].
Because of the generality of the concepts 'system' [FR]
and 'information' [FR]
and 'network' [FR],
the approach of information system theory [FR]
is a form of general system theory GST [FR].
"General systems theory in the narrower sense (G.S.T.), ...
is trying to derive from a general definition of 'system' a complex
of interacting components, concepts characteristic of organized
wholes . . . and to apply them to concrete phenomena."
(Ludwig
von Bertalanffy [REF])
"While each scientific theory selects out and abstracts from the world's complexity a peculiar set of relations, philosophy cannot favor any particular region of human enterprise. Through conceptual experimentation it must construct a consistency that can accommodate all dimensions of experience, whether they belong to physics, physiology, psychology, biology, ethics, etc.." (Alfred North Whitehead [FR])
However IST goes much further than traditional system theory, whilst GST is conceived of as an analytical tool within an empiricist context, which defines what the “concrete phenomena” are, IST relies on no preconceived assumptions and it makes definite scientific realist or rationalist ontological claims that go beyond the scope of empiricist science. IST is what arises when one takes GST (also quantum physics) seriously, not just as a useful tool within a preconceived context but as a genuine and accurate science and metaphysics of the nature of the universe. When one takes systems as the reality and objects as just the appearance of systems within another system’s perceptual process then one overcomes the attachments to sensory beliefs and bases one’s ontology on the systemic structure of reality and not on the subjective perceptual experience of reality.
Each system perceives the incoming information and responds thus producing outgoing information. I.e. discernible difference is incident on a system and produces a discernibly different change in the system's observable state, which is then perceived by other systems as their incident discernible difference. This process occurs only in the present moment thus only the present moment can be said to 'exist'. In this context the past is memory and the future is expectation. In general there is more to it involving concepts such as the quantum multiverse or the permutation space within which all existential configurations exist as potentiality but are not temporally ordered (not formed into sequences of successive moments), hence all past and future states exist as part of a probability distribution within an abstract space of potentiality and our path through that space creates our experience of past, present and future. So only the present moment exists as an actuality but the present moment contains all potentiality. But this is beyond the scope of this discussion, as it requires going deep into the mathematical foundations of IST to elucidate the phenomena. See the website for more details on this.
As systems communicate and interact within the complex network of interaction paths there are feedback loops and resonances. These result in some systems interacting strongly and others weakly; i.e. high and low communication bandwidth. When systems strongly interact and integrate together into a functional whole they are perceived as a higher-level system by other systems and for most intents and purposes they 'create' a higher-level super-system; they become sub-systems within the super-system. This phenomenon is referred to as a meta-system transition (MST) [FR]. In this way systems are "made of" sub-systems and they interact to 'make' super-systems. But all of this is a construct of appearances; when all the details are lost (entropy) then the ensemble of systems seems to be a single whole system. There is no ontological change from ensemble of systems to super-system, there is just degrees of integration leading to the perceptual appearance of a single whole super-system. MST is discussed at length later on.
Due to the MST process and the constantly changing patterns of interactions, complex systems appear and disappear, they integrate and disintegrate, they are born and they die. But all appearances and disappearances are just high-level perceptions of a constant and unbroken information process. The outer form seems to appear, it seems to remain constant for a time and then it seems to disappear. However the observable forms undergoing this process of change and stability are just the outer appearance of an underlying information process; they rise and fall like waves on the ocean. This process is not centred on any particular system; it flows throughout the entire cosmos and intricately integrates all things. The information process is a single unified 'dance' of information. As the information flows we perceive forms that appear, interact and disappear, and the coherence and integration of this activity rests upon the coherence and integration of the underlying information process. This ultimately implies that what happens regarding one system is a function or a 'movement' of the whole cosmos. For example, consider Feynman Paths [FR].
"The probability amplitude for the particle to be at [position] xb is the sum over all paths through spacetime originating at [position] xa at time ta" (http://www.physics.umanitoba.ca/~souther/compsim/lect8/tsld004.htm)
The important thing to note here is that a simple movement from point a to point b that can be arbitrarily close still involves the "sum over all paths through spacetime"; even paths that snake their way around, looping around the moon, going off to a distant galaxy, coming back to Earth and into your house then going back to wherever it is that we perceive a particle moving a minute distance from a to b. The entire cosmos takes part in every single interaction and the information processing isn't just confined to the trajectory between a and b but rather, the perceived localised event is an aspect of the cosmic information process; it is a ‘gesture’ in the ‘dance’ of information.
“For anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide. It is wrong to believe that anything in particular can cause an event. Every cause is universal. Your very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation and survival...” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I am That", p371 [FR])
It is the dynamic flow of information that binds the sub-systems together into a super-system hence systems are composed of a set of sub-systems and an inter-connective information process. Now let us delve down the complexity hierarchy through the sub-systems then through their sub-systems and so on. Examine a system, step into its inner space and see that it consists of sub-systems plus an information process. Then examine each sub-system in the same way and so on.
At some point we reach a limit, either in our own ability to resolve the details or in the details themselves. Experience shows that manifest forms are finite (not infinitely large); quantum physics shows that they are discrete (not infinitely detailed) [FR] and relativity shows that dynamical quantities such as velocity, mass and energy cannot be infinitely large. It is also a property of well-defined information spaces that they must be finite and discrete [FR], for example, binary data.
At the lowest level there are systems that have no sub-systems and are composed solely of a trivial information process. There is no network of sub-systems for the information process to flow through; there is only the one system's inner space. This trivial information process can hold a state and can be influenced by incoming information. Hence these primitive systems are state variables or primitive observables or fundamental existential states. For example, in a computer the primitive systems are 'bits' that can exhibit the two states 0 and 1.
From this analysis we see that all systems are composed of primitive systems (fundamental existential states) woven together by a network of interaction paths and animated by a flow of information. There may be many levels of systems within systems so the network is very complex and the information can be thought of as flowing on many levels. A system is therefore entirely defined by the set of existential states, the structure of the network of interaction paths and the behaviour of the flow of information throughout the network. Thus a system is a pattern of structured (network) information (states) that processes information (flow).
"In a comprehensive view of nature, the physical world is
seen
as a patterning of patternings..."
(Amy
Edmondson)
This simple idea of a system as a pattern of structured information that processes information captures all the essential properties of a system. In the table below are the parallels between IST and the five fundamental conceptual aspects of any system according to Klir [REF]:
|
Klir |
IST |
|
state variables |
Existential States |
|
range and resolution of state variables |
Finite Discrete nature of Existential States |
|
permanent behaviour |
Network and Information Flow |
|
universe and coupling description |
Manifest forms and Relations |
|
state space description |
Permutation space (multi-verse) |
Hence, complex systems are generalised patterns from which we perceive 'objects'. When the details are lost dense collectives of systems are perceived as objects and sparse collectives of systems are perceived as the intervening space. This implies that it is fundamentally inaccurate to conceive of a system as a separate independent object. Any complex system is a complex pattern of dynamic processes where the 'object' is merely a focal point for our awareness; it is only the outwardly observable form.
"Imagine yourselves in terms of a moving-picture scenario. You've all seen moving pictures run backwards, where people undive out of the swimming pool back onto the board. I'm going to run a moving picture of you backwards. You've just had breakfast; ... all the food comes out of your mouth onto the plate; ... and into the cans, and they go back to the store; ...then they go back to the factories ...and they finally get back to pineapples in Hawaii. Then the pineapples separate out, go back into the air; the raindrops go back into the sky, and so forth.
But in the ... reversal of a month practically everything has come together that you now have on board you, gradually becoming your hair and your skin and so forth, whereas a month ago, it was some air coming over the mountains. In other words, you get completely deployed. I want you to begin to think of yourselves in an interesting way as each one of these.
... you would see chemical elements gradually getting closer and closer together, and, finally, getting into those various vegetable places and into roasts and, tighter and tighter, into cans, into the store, finally getting to just being you or me-temporarily, becoming my hair, my ear, some part of my skin-and then that breaks up and goes off and gets blown around as dust.
Each of us is a very complex pattern integrity with which we
were born."
(R. Buckminster Fuller, 1975)
In this discussion there is given only a purely descriptive introduction however these concepts have a rigorous mathematical foundation that in the context of this work is called “system matrix notation” (SMN) [FR]. In fact the mathematics is the only truly reliable way to approach these concepts without bringing too many false or unnecessary associations into play. Each concept/word has a long history and many meanings, some useful and some totally confused and confusing, but when one derives the concepts directly from the mathematics their only meaning is that which arises from their context and state of integration into the mathematics. Thus the best way to understand the subtle subject matter is to visualise the mathematics as a dynamic information process in your minds-eye and to derive and/or clarify all concepts in relation to this 'vision'. Going into the mathematics is beyond the scope of this discussion it will only comment on its form and function but not its details. See [SMN] for more.
Some questions to keep in mind are: How can mathematics represent the flow of information? How can it represent the structure of the flow? How does it represent the moment-by-moment structure of the objective reality? How does it model the moment-by-moment change and dynamical process of objective reality? How does it generate the virtual existence of systems in time and space? How does it model the process of perception, experience and response? How does it implement quantum behaviour and classical experience?
System Matrix Notation is primarily a general algorithm or information process. It can be efficiently implemented in mathematics or software and it models a generalised information process. There are many ways of conceiving of what SMN is but here are described three related perspectives. Firstly it is an algorithm that implements a "distributed event-processing regime" that can manage all of the information logistics within a complex dynamical system. Secondly it is a model of a "general system" and thirdly it is a model of "general distributed massively parallel computation".
For a more detailed and structured introduction to SMN and explanation of how matrix mathematics implements information systems, see Modelling General Information Systems. Briefly, what this mathematical process represents in terms of information systems is this; There is a state vector that defines the full set of primitive existential states and a matrix of causal inter-connections. ( A t this point we should include a ref. Link to “Getting a Grip.”) These combine to implement each iteration moment, in which the current state information flows through the causal network to produce the next state thus producing a state space that evolves over time. See [FR] for more on SMN. The state vector implements the common existential space. Each matrix row implements an input interface through which a system perceives the entire existential space, i.e. the state vector.
Each element in a row is an input filter through which that system perceives another system (or itself, diagonal). Each column implements the output interface through which a system is made perceptible and observable to other systems. Each element in a column is an output filter through which that system expresses itself to other systems (or itself, diagonal). So a particular element in the matrix implements a particular information channel linking two systems; there is an output filter flowing into an input filter and creating an information channel but with only one direction of flow. The transpose pairs (mirrored around the diagonal) implement the bi-directional flow (note that symmetries in the matrix and vector show up as symmetries in the structure and behaviour of the virtual universe).
Between the systems there are information channels linking every system with every other system (the network), thus any conceivable interaction scheme is possible. Furthermore the state vector can represent ‘classical’ data such as the integer 3 or it can represent quantum data (wavefunctions) as a probability distribution over the states, such as a qbit {p(0)=0.3 , p(1)=0.7 }; it is neither ‘0’ nor ‘1’ but 30% ‘0’ and 70% ‘1’. This indeterminism is the nature of all quantum systems. Note that for engineering purposes the state vector can also represent any general binary data and the matrix elements can be anything that takes input and produces output, any function, procedure, program or even electronically controlled equipment. In this way SMN can be used as a general systemic computational paradigm, discussed shortly.
There are two principal ways of visualising the SMN virtual-reality generative process in action. First is the classical way, which will probably be more familiar. As the matrix is multiplied with the vector the existential states (observables, discernible difference, information) flow through the information channels, being interpreted by input filters, being experienced as internal state change and being expressed via output filters. The existential states are quantum in nature and the systems experience particular classical realities by sampling the probability distributions, thus resulting in particular states, which they perceive as attributes or qualities of a system. In each moment each system potentially experiences and responds to every other system, so when the cosmic existential state goes into flux and flows through the matrix it is an extremely complex dance of information streaming in every possible direction. This state of flux then resolves back into the state of the next cosmic moment and in this way the dance of information cycles from the vector through the matrix and back into the vector.
The other way is the quantum way. Consider a particular state vector as a particular configuration of a systemic universe (frozen in time). This configuration is one possibility amongst a large set of other possibilities. This larger set of possibilities is represented as a single quantum state (the cosmic wavefunction) a probability distribution over every possible cosmic configuration. This is a multiverse or a permutation space where every point in the abstract state space represents a particular configuration of the entire cosmos. This state space is permeated by a probability distribution, which serves as a pattern of existential potential. It is this potential that flows through the matrix and implements the cosmic quantum dance of potential. All there is, is this dancing sea of potential. There are no classical systems and experiences, only the dance. All classical forms and events are represented virtually; they are encoded within the quantum wavefunction.
Any information system has these two aspects. These are its classical and quantum representations. If one is the actual representation then the other is virtual, but still very much existing in a virtual sense. If a classical universe were implemented as a quantum model the empirical systems would not be able to discern which particular representation is being used; they are totally equivalent. However, even though both are equivalent models, they are not equivalent methods. The quantum method is capable of far greater complexity. The set of all classically realisable configurations is an almost infinitesimal part of the larger quantum state space. The range of possibilities is far greater. Rather than just exert force from particular classically localised sources, and relate via classical signals using well defined data, instead there can be an intricate and subtle spread of information, not just pushing on points but influencing wholes, by not just pushing for a particular state but influencing the whole dance of potentiality as it shimmers like waves on the ocean thus giving rise to virtual classical existence. The evidence and even widespread use of quantum phenomena categorically indicate that we exist in a quantum universe. This combined with the findings of SMN / IST indicates that there is a dance of potentiality within a cosmic state space, the multiverse.
Back to SMN... Because the existential space is maximally connected (every system can interact directly with every system) it is non-dimensional (or maximally dimensional) and different restricted inter-connection patterns create different dimensional spaces [FR]. Within this network of interaction channels each system has an individual localised perspective and in each existential moment each system perceives, interprets, experiences and responds to the observable states of other systems. I.e. in each iteration each system receives input, interprets this using an input filter, experiences state transitions and responds thereby producing output. In this manner the systems interact and form higher-level systems - thus producing more complex systems. This constitutes what some call a semantic self-excited circuit or a self-configuring self-processing language (SCSPL) [FR] that can give rise to emergent phenomena. It is within the realm of these emergent phenomena that the whole virtual reality (simulation universe) arises as dynamical patterns of existential information. The circuit is the simulator and the universe is the simulation.
In SMN there is no explicit space-time within which you model; it is rather a dynamic state space or process space [FR] based upon states and iterations, and manifesting system theoretic properties. The concepts of time and space are based upon empirical experiences of things from a perspective embedded within the simulation universe and therefore describe the appearances of things, but not necessarily the underlying nature of things. In process-based approaches time is considered to be our experience of an existential process that is happening in the moment and the idea of time as a dimension, like in virtually all of physics and empirical science (equations that are a function of 't'), is just an abstract description of our experiences. Underlying these experiences there are observable states and an ongoing process of change, these are considered to be more fundamental than time and space.
The virtual-reality generative process operates only on present moments; ontologically there is no string of moments forming time, it is only from an empirical perspective and through traces in memory and the mind that we imagine a time-line stretching from past to future, but that is a story in the mind and in reality there is only the Now. So there is no "dimension of time" beyond the mind, and reality is like an automata [FR] (an iterative mathematical entity). Hence any equation that is a function of space or time is just a description of empirical appearances in the mind. The variable 't' lets us move through the story and x, y & z let us move about in the perceptually constructed empirical world that we experience. These variables allow us to move amongst our impressions of objects in space and time by projecting a coordinate grid over things. But in reality there is only a particular configuration of existence in the Now and this changes iteratively. In each iteration data flows through computation or perceptions flow through awareness and the state of 'that which is' changes. At the fundamental level there is only existence and change and from these all else arises.
So in SMN there is no built in geometric space or linear time, only state space and process time are fundamental – only the state of ‘that which is’ in the ‘Now’.
"The process metaphysics elaborated in Process and Reality (Whitehead) proposes that the fundamental elements of the universe are occasions of experience. According to this notion, what people commonly think of as concrete objects are actually successions of occasions of experience. Occasions of experience can be collected into groupings; something complex such as a human being is thus a grouping of many smaller occasions of experience. According to Whitehead, everything in the universe is characterized by experience (which is not to be confused with consciousness); there is no mind-body duality under this system, because "mind" is simply seen as a very developed kind of experiencing." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy)
“I have often said God is creating this entire world full and entire in this present now... There where time never penetrates, where no image shines in, in the innermost and highest aspect of the soul God creates the entire cosmos.” (Meister Eckhart [FR])
In this SMN based information system theoretic context there is no fundamental solidity or uncaused existence for a system; they do not a priori (miraculously) exist and interact as is assumed in the outdated classical materialist paradigm. There are no particles in space that simply exist and behave without any underlying cause. Both particles and space are very high-level complex systems that have a much deeper quantum [FR] / information system theoretic [FR] origin.
Each system in the systemic universe is immersed in a 'sea' of information that flows into it, is channelled, transformed and interpreted by its complex inner network and flows out to other systems. It is this process that 'moves' the information through each system and since the systems are inter-connected in a network of systems, this process 'moves' the information through the entire system network. This process 'drives' ALL the system dynamics. It is this phenomenon that is implemented by the SMN process, it is in this sense that SMN manages all information logistics within complex systems.
Because 'meta system transition' (MST) is an entropic (loss of information) perceptual phenomenon then each super-system is a perceptual illusion. The perceptual information plus the entropy is the true reflection of reality, but the perceptual information alone is a distortion that creates the impression of whole systems when they are really integrated ensembles. However in the perceptual illusion there are systems within systems, creating illusions within illusions and objects within objects. All manifest forms from particles, atoms, molecules... up to planets and galaxies are perceptual MST illusions. So too for the inner aspect of systems; the experience of single high-level awareness such as our own is itself an MST illusion, it is in fact a vast ensemble of occasions of experience that combine through successively higher MST levels of complexity and form a seemingly single unified point of awareness. This process of MST illusions permeates the whole systemic structure of reality, it is not just we high-level beings that succumb to these illusions, but every system resolves system boundaries based upon its perceptions and then acts as if those systems were actually real. General systems are fundamentally naïve realist, it takes a high level self-reflective consciousness to be able to recognise and overcome naïve realism.
In the SMN algorithm each information system has an inner space of sub-systems that is an inner information space or existential space. But this is only virtual; there are no strict or ontological system boundaries. In engineered systems we try and create fixed system boundaries, for example, all the ‘innards’ of a computer are contained in a box and we only interact with it via interfaces. But in reality there are cosmic rays and other systems interacting with those ‘innards’ directly without going through the interface. The system boundary demarcated by the ‘box’ is just a boundary from some perspectives and it is totally non-existent from other perspectives. So system boundaries are perceptual phenomena because the process of MST that creates them is itself a perceptual phenomenon.
Furthermore, the nature of the system boundaries that you experience depends on the nature of your perceptual apparatus. For example, to us the Earth seems like a vast, solid and all containing system, but a neutrino passes through it without being aware of its existence; they both experience very different systemic views. Because system boundaries are virtual it seems that there are information spaces within information spaces, but really there is just the one universal information space (state vector) and all virtual forms arise due to patterns of communication bandwidth between systems.
Further to this, all SMN systems seem to have their own individual inner aspect or proto-awareness. All are the same essence but they are totally individual. The algorithm takes a single computational thread (information process) and a memory space (information medium) and it structures these such that there arises any number of information systems within an abstract non-dimensional virtual space. The single computational thread is distributed equally amongst all systems thus giving each system an inner aspect or proto-awareness from an individual (subjective) perspective embedded within the network of systems. Between each moment of empirical time the single thread weaves through all systems and animates each system in turn. This activates its inner perceptual / experiential process and transforms input information into output information. Once every system has been animated all the existential information has been transformed from the present moment configuration into the new present moment configuration.
The SMN algorithm creates a virtual systemic universe of systems within systems, each with inner awareness and outer form. These create virtual worlds within worlds or virtual existential contexts. In these worlds systems exist and tangibly experience and interact with each other. As discussed later, they seem physical to each other because they are made of the same information flowing in the same information space. Each system looks out onto a world of appearances. They have occasions of experience, the content of which is observable states in relation, which produce the experience of forms in space. These forms undergo change, thus systems experience time and events. The structure of the forms and the flow of events are coherent. The underlying nature of the systems is quantum [REF] and there are distinct relativistic constraints [REF] on all empirical quantities.
Underlying this complex experiential space there is just a single information space and a single thread of computation or proto-awareness that is a spark of light in the void of potentiality. As the spark weaves through the space it creates one single moment in time, actualising the potential. So it looks to the mind’s eye like a complex tangle of light frozen in time. With each iteration the spark weaves slightly different tangles and as the moments blur together we have a dance of light (information) that changes in time. In this dance there are abstract forms that arise, evolve, interact and then dissipate.
All of this arises naturally out of the mathematics, all due to fundamental properties of matrix algebra, discreteness, information and systems. There are no assumptions, arbitrary premises or arbitrary additions (except for the many and varied engineering applications, however the metaphysical model is pure). There is just finite discrete data, memory (universal information space), a single thread, the SMN algorithm using matrix algebra (M*v) – the vector describes the existential state as a quantum wavefunction and the matrix describes how the probabilities flow between existential states. From this we get a permutation space (multiverse), a network of state transitions and a thread that weaves through this by iterating a simple matrix multiplication (v = M*v) so the new existential state is produced by the previous existential state flowing through the intricate paths of the matrix. It is an automata [FR] that acts as a virtual reality generative process.
The iterations drive the outer observable forms through the inner experiential processes and countless virtual systems experience each other from subjective empirical perspectives. The SMN modelling space can be structured in any way to create any kind of existential context with any kind of systems. It is a pure existential space that does not constrain the nature of the systems that can exist in it, other than the fundamental constraints that they must be finite and therefore representable, they are quantum or classical, they are relativistic, they operate in discrete time (in the Now), they are unified, potentially maximally interconnected (no separation), animated by a single unified dance of ‘light’, there is a transcendent and empirical context (an empirical context alone is impossible, it needs a transcendent context to animate it), there are countless points of subjective proto-awareness, there is systemic behaviour such as MST, self-organisation, etc. These constraints define the general context but within these very broad constraints the resulting empirical experiential virtual reality can take on any form whatsoever and exhibit any behaviour whatsoever.
This approach provides a general system simulator based upon clear mathematical and system theoretic principles, which provides a virtual-reality generative modelling ‘language’.
There are simple proof-of-concept prototypes of the software at www.anandavala.info/TASTMOTNOR/SMN%20Code.html. When implemented in software it has efficient implementations using sparse matrices and energy flow processing [REF] that provide maximum flexibility and minimum overhead; it can also be used for modelling, designing and testing systems and then translating the model into executable code for deployment. It is capable of providing a metaphysically rich and realistic operating system and general computing environment that provides a deep and coherent metaphysical foundation for the phenomenon of ‘cyberspace’, thereby making it far richer, more reliable, flexible and powerful.
If developed as a general computational operating system it could harness all of the functionality of the computer and present it via a virtual environment of countless interacting systems, the programs are just information systems within the information space (operating system). It can turn a single computational process into any number of maximally interacting virtual computational processes all interacting within the same information space. It can turn any number of separate computational processes interacting only with a common data base (e.g. many CPU’s and common memory - using only read and exclusive write, so NO clashes) it can turn these into a single unified information space or simulation universe. Hence multiprocessor VR computers, using SMN as the metaphysics of the cyberspace, within which we construct virtual interactive environments, simulations, games, programs, multimedia and all kinds of phenomena. SMN could be implemented directly in silicon, instead of using traditional CPU’s running an SMN program there could be SMN chips that use a common memory space to generate a virtual systemic space in which we can create and participate. It can create virtual worlds or general software or any system whatsoever so long as one knows how to model it. The modelling can be done in code or using an interface much like CAD or 3D modelling programs, except that one doesn't model in space and time but rather in state space and process time.
By providing cyberspace with a deep metaphysical underpinning SMN transforms our understanding of computers. A computer is no longer seen as a fancy calculator but as a portal into a virtual systemic universe.
The idea is free of any intellectual property constraints, the source code is free of any copyright and is offered freely to the world, in the hope that interest will arise within the open source and free software communities; however commercial development is also good. The current work only provides the basic foundation of this technology, it is up to others to decide if they wish to make anything with it. Assistance will be provided to people to help them understand it if they are interested in developing and using this technology.
Now we have a clear and subtle conceptual framework within which to think about the fundamental systemic ‘mechanism’ of existence and all the objects, people, places, events and the universe itself. So now consider general systems that are not just participating in existence but are actively enquiring into it and trying to understand it; such as many human beings. Such a system develops complex internal representations (ideas) with which they mirror their experiential world. They also use collective codes or symbolic languages (whether verbal, written, body language, etc) to produce external representations. These are then disseminated and subjected to collective consensus that results in collective knowledge.
This collective knowledge then influences the individual ideas, which then influences how the systems interpret and comprehend their perceptions and experiences. The structure of the network determines how the information is channelled (interpretation) and the resulting flow of information plus the state changes that it produces are the 'experience'. When conceived of from the 'outside' it is a flow of information but when conceived of from the 'inside' it is experience itself. Just like from the outside a neurologist conceives of a 'brain', "nervous system" and "neuronal signalling", whereas each of us from the inside conceives of it as mind, consciousness, feelings, thoughts. As we adopt certain conscious and subconscious attitudes the structure changes so the interpretations, experiences and resulting ideas change. This indicates the deeper subconscious aspect of a paradigm shift. When the way we interpret incoming information fundamentally changes all the resulting experiences and ideas change. Hence a paradigm shift is not just an extension or modification of existing ideas, it is a quantum leap, a radical change of state that can change our experience and knowledge of existence. Things once thought impossible may become the norm; whilst things once thought 'normal' may be later seen as outmoded illusions based on inadequate understanding. Through a paradigm shift we literally shift between worlds.
It is in the context of such a paradigm shift that this work analyses the process of perception, how paradigms arise and evolve and how to manage and encourage a paradigm shift. Not toward any particular paradigm, but towards a paradigm that is built upon clear, rational, direct, holistic experience and not upon systemic, biological or historical assumptions, preconceived ideas or cultural agendas. Whilst this analysis applies to the formation of all collective ideas, in this discussion it focuses primarily on the "idea of the objective world" or “the physical universe”. This is because it is one of our deepest and far-reaching assumptions.
The idea of an "objective world" underlies our ability to comprehend and communicate about our subjective experiences. We recognise the common features in our communications and distil from this the idea of the objective world. The common features clearly indicate the existence of an objective reality of some kind; anyone but a solipsist [FR] would agree. But what is looked into here is a systems analysis of the process by which we form the particular ideas that people have of the objective world and what possible inaccuracies could arise through that process.
All we can ever directly experience and thereby know about our world ultimately rests upon our present moment subjective experience. This is the foundation upon which all our knowledge rests. Although the content of our subjective experiences is purely subjective, the actual process of subjective experience is an objective phenomenon in the sense that we all experience it occurring. What is the nature of this process? We will look into this from the perspective of system theory.
Underlying experience there are certain phenomena such as: perception, interpretation, response; a single localised perspective; the phenomenon of present moment existence and the interactions between systems, which manifest the universe. These are low-level phenomena that underlie our ability to experience and know anything at all. These are the existential process that underlies the process of perception and thereby conceptually precedes empiricism.
So we see that the process of subjective experience has an objectively real basis that we all experience by the very fact that we experience anything at all. But what about the collective "idea of the objective world"? Like all collective knowledge it is an idea that arises through the communication of subjective experiences. The existential information is perceived, interpreted, experienced, comprehended, represented, communicated, deliberated and formed into collective knowledge.
The direct 'pipeline' (see diagram below) has seven transformations in which information is lost and distorted. Each stage is a filter through which the information must pass so any loses or distortions are passed down. If some information is lost or distorted at some stage it remains lost or distorted to all down-stream processes. Furthermore, in general there is an intrinsic loss and distortion at each stage; in any transformation from one information-medium to another the information can only be represented by the states or symbols available within the medium. For example, when transforming a sentence between human languages the meanings can become distorted because a word cannot be perfectly translated, or when transforming from light rays to pixels in a digital camera information can be lost because of the limited resolution of the pixel array.
The fundamental limitations of our perceptual / experiential process are related to the seven transformations:
Objective reality to Perception via
Signals.
(external process)
We cannot perceive the full range of
signals. Our senses are attuned to receiving signals within only a
very small range. But that is not all; it is a fundamental
limitation of signal detection that the detector requires some form
of prior knowledge to discern signals as being signals and not just
noise. When things are very 'quiet' and a large obvious signal comes
it is obviously a signal, like someone shouting out your name in an
otherwise silent moment. But say you are at a cocktail party and
there are many voices chattering; this is known as the cocktail
party problem in the field of signal processing [FR].
It is a highly subtle and complex issue, exactly how do "listeners
segregate and analyse a sound-producing object in a complex acoustic
environment" (Neural
correlates of auditory fill-in [FR]),
i.e. how do you recognise people's voices, listen in to
conversations and filter out all the other noise? The subconscious
mind / brain is remarkably good at this in most circumstances. But
when the signals are unfamiliar, perhaps a foreign cocktail party or
perhaps noises produced by different pieces of machinery or strange
instruments; as one loses familiarity the sounds very quickly merge
into a cacophony from which it is impossible to detect particular
'voices' or sound objects. This applies to all signal detection and
all sense perception; including the way that we discern and track
'objects' in our visual field based upon an in incoming cacophony of
light rays. Another particular example is the attempt to detect
gravity waves. The problem is that there are the most sensitive
detection devices ever built [FR],
costing tens of billions of dollars each; even passing clouds and
distant traffic hundreds of kilometres away create a huge amount of
noise. Furthermore, the actual shape of a gravity wave isn't well
known, and there are many possible waveforms that could arrive at
the detector, which we don't know about. But in order to resolve
these signals out of the noise floor we need some prior knowledge of
the signals. Furthermore, the nature of our prior knowledge
influences the manner in which the signal is resolved from the noise
floor, perhaps only detecting part of the actual signal or perhaps
including bits of other signals that get mixed in with the one we
resolve. So in essence, we cannot detect a signal that is totally
new to us; there is always the constraints of the detector and of
our prior knowledge and our prior knowledge can influence the exact
form of the signal that we perceive; so to an extent we can only
perceive that which we are built to perceive and that which we
already know or assume to some extent.
Perception to Experience via
Interpretation.
(subconscious process)
Our subconscious interpretations
of our perceptions do not perfectly reflect the full range of
perceptions. For example, in India where there
are rickshaw drivers that park in particular places overnight and
sleep in their rickshaw in the hope of getting some overnight
business, late one night I went to one
of these places where there was a sleeping rickshaw driver. I walked
up and said "hello, hello, HELLO"; quite loudly in the
end, but he was fast asleep and didn't stir. But then I said, in a
fairly quiet voice "rickshaw" and he immediately woke up.
His subconscious mind had filtered out the ‘hello’, which was
just a word in a foreign language and didn't have very deep roots in
his mind. But the word 'rickshaw' was his job, it signalled the work
that he was hoping to get overnight and immediately his subconscious
related that signal through to his conscious mind. In this way we
are constantly receiving billions of subconscious signals but only a
very small number of them are deemed 'meaningful' to the conscious
mind and only those signals are passed on and present themselves to
our conscious mind. All the other signals are invisible to us.
As the existential information flows through the subconscious filter, most of it is discarded and we are oblivious to its existence. If it cannot be comprehended as meaningful within our current paradigm it is treated as noise. Furthermore, those signals that do get through are represented to consciousness using the expressive range of the current paradigm. We cannot experience the raw signal but only the cognitive state that we associate with that signal. Hence the flow is selectively filtered for recognisable patterns, which are then represented using an idiom (language) of experiential states. Hence the flow of signals is reduced and transformed into a stream of events or occasions of experience that are entirely constructed from pre-existing thought forms.
Consider an analogy with an 'optical character recognition' OCR program. The idiom of experiential states is the letters of the alphabet (only a range of 26 experiential states). The flow of signals into the subconscious is the flow of input images into the OCR program. The transformation of signals into experiences is the recognition of characters, words and sentences. Now consider the case where an image of someone's face is the input image. The OCR cannot recognise any characters in this input so the entire signal is discarded and no written output (experiential state) is produced; so it is invisible to consciousness. If the input is a mixture of text and drawings, then only the text is recognised and transmitted to consciousness (written output) and the drawings are discarded as unrecognisable noise. If the input is text written in Greek but the OCR is English then some characters will be recognised but many will not and the resulting output will be a mess of nonsense words with many gaps. This is analogous to the case of a right wing politician listening to a mystic; some words and concepts will come through, but on the whole the listeners experience will be full of gaps and very garbled. That is their experience and people generally take their experience as the reality, so they assume that the mystic is deranged and incoherent, however it is simply a matter of incompatible paradigms.
Or if the input is just English text, but say it is hand written. Most of it will be recognisable as writing but many of the individual characters may be misinterpreted and the resulting output is a bit garbled e.g. 'garbled' may become 'garhled'. But the conscious mind is unaware of this and all that it knows is that it experiences 'garhled' and it takes that as its empirical reality. Only when the input is printed English and the OCR is optimised for this, only then is there good signal to noise ratio, but still not perfect. So only when the paradigms are very similar and compatible can there be reliable coherent communication.
These issues always arise whenever engaging with people with different paradigms, or when confronting new ideas and especially new paradigms. They usually sound strange and incoherent to begin with but once you have taken the shift it is the old paradigm that sounds strange and incoherent. The entropy (lost information) is simply that which is invisible to downstream systems, it was either filtered out or misrepresented by the mapping between input signal and output symbol.
In this case of information transformation and in the following cases, we see that the richer one's paradigm is the better it preserves the information flow. If one had a very simplistic paradigm, with a very small range of distinct states then very little information can pass and one's perceptions, experiences, ideas, expressions are all very simple and not representative of the underlying reality. Most of the information has been lost and that which remains has been represented using symbolic states that don't truly represent the original signal. For example, if one records music on a pocket dictaphone then plays it out loud and records it again on another dictaphone and so on, the signal will eventually devolve into noise. For good quality recordings we need high fidelity microphones and digital copying.
Experience to Ideas via
Comprehension.
(sub/conscious process)
Our personal ideas do not
perfectly reflect our experiences. Similar to the above discussion,
our experiences can only be represented using the ideas that are
available to us. There are millions of subtle cognitive experiences
but only very few ideas such as 'hot', 'tired', 'happy', 'angry',
etc. So when we reduce our vast range of cognitive experiences into
ideas we filter out any that cannot be expressed and we group many
different experiences under common ideas. I.e. there are many
possible states that can be described as 'happy', so all the
subtlety is lost when we categorise them all as ‘happy’.
Ideas to Representation via
Code.
(conscious process)
The representational code or language
only allows us to express our ideas using a certain set of symbols
and relations. The range of words is even more limited than the
range of personal ideas. Hence many ideas are inexpressible and
therefore filtered out or they are distorted in the process of
representation.
Representation to Communication via
Dissemination. (external
process)
The external representations are not uniformly
distributed so everyone gets a different exposure to these
representations.
Communication to Culture via
Synthesis.
(external process)
There are many different people with
different agendas, beliefs and degrees of influence, all of whom
partake in a collective discourse that we call 'culture'.
Culture to Collective Ideas via Social Consensus
making. (external process)
Within the cultural discourse
a consensus making process determines what is considered to be
'fact'. This is not a straight forward rational consensus, it is
usually a complex and confusing struggle
between different interest groups with different agendas,
generally not at all related to discerning truth but more related to
economic gain, academic standing, protecting unquestioned beliefs
and all manner of vested interests.
“The traditional view of science is that scientists are searching for the truth in a disinterested and objective way. It is generally admitted that there are occasional dishonest scientists, but these are regarded as highly exceptional... This self-image of scientists has been subject to much skeptical analysis in recent years. Sociologists of science studying scientific controversies have found that evidence is only one of many factors that influence what is accepted as authoritative. These other factors include funding, prestige, rhetoric and political influence.” (The Objectivity of Science: Does it stand examination?) Also see more [FR].
"The unfortunate reality is that there is a complex sociology of science. Scientific truth is frequently not determined by right or wrong, but by ego, prestige, authority of claimants, conflicts of interests and economic agendas. Scientists who propose research that threatens the viability of basic theories on which authorities in the field have built their careers, and governments and corporations have bet lots of money will find themselves out of a job very soon. The list of great scientists who became scientific outcasts after they published research that contradicts establishment dogma is long" (Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Skepticism [FR])
There are also five principle feedback loops that make the process a highly non-linear complex adaptive system.
Interpretation is influenced by personal
ideas.
(subconscious process)
Our subconscious personal ideas
and attitudes influence how we interpret our perceptions, thus
influencing our experiences of those perceptions.
Comprehension is influenced by personal
ideas.
(subconscious process)
Our subconscious personal ideas
and attitudes also influence how we comprehend our experiences, thus
influencing our ideas about those experiences (understanding).
Personal ideas are influenced by collective
knowledge. (sub/conscious process)
Our
personal ideas are influenced by collective knowledge/ideas,
especially via subconscious suggestion that bypasses our rational
discrimination, such as is used in advertising and propaganda. But
also through conscious attempts to learn and understand collective
knowledge.
The Representative Code is a cultural
construct.
(external process)
The representational codes (languages)
are cultural constructs that evolve through cultural influences and
are permeated with collective ideas that influence how personal
ideas are represented.
Dissemination is influenced by
culture.
(external process)
The dissemination of information
influences our exposure to collective ideas and the pattern of
dissemination depends up many cultural, logistical and political
factors; e.g. the scarcity of accurate information or the prevalence
of manipulative advertising or propaganda.
The content of our awareness is determined by the input perceptions, interpretations, experiences, comprehension and finally personal ideas. Our actual experiences are totally determined by our interpretations of our perceptions. An example of this is hypnosis where, through hypnotic suggestion a person can be handed an onion and told, "this is an apple, the most delicious you have ever tasted", and they will eat it gladly. But when handed an apple and told, "this an onion, but try and take a bite anyway", their eyes will water and they will fully experience it as an onion.
Furthermore, our personal ideas or understanding is totally determined by our comprehension of our experiences. An example of this is the case of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", and other cases of visual agnosia [FR]. It "is the inability of the brain to make sense of or make use of some part of otherwise normal visual stimulus and is typified by the inability to recognize familiar objects or faces...Commonly, patients can describe objects in their visual field in great detail, including such aspects as color, texture and shape but are unable to recognize them. Similarly, patients can often describe familiar objects from memory despite their visual problems." (Visual Agnosia (Wikipedia) [FR])
Both of these last points taken together compellingly indicate that the totality of our experiences and understanding is a construct of the mind. We can neither see things nor know things "as they are". In the final analysis we can only ever experience ourselves.
The greatest feat of the subconscious mind is the way that it takes incoming signals, filters them and represents them to consciousness as a richly detailed and coherent subjective experience of a world; an experiential context. The richer, more complex and more accurate one's subconscious paradigm (interpretive idiom) is the richer, more complex and accurate one's world is, whereas a simplistic and distorted subconscious paradigm will result in a simplistic and distorted world experience. One's own subjective world experience is entirely a construct of one's mind that is either closely or loosely based upon reality. So our experiential world is like a mind puppet; the puppet is made of experiential states or ideas or memes and these are 'driven' by an underlying flow of existential signals. It is actually a meme complex, but this is discussed later. Don't think of it as an object in front of you, in one sense it is an immersive virtual reality that we dwell in and in another sense it is a meme complex within your mind, but it dances to the tune of incoming signals so I'll call it a puppet. We cannot experience the signals themselves; all we experience is the mind puppet as it dances to the tune of the signals.
If the puppet is closely driven then it moves with the music and artistically represents the music (flow of existential signals), but if it is loosely driven its movements may have little or no relation to the music. If the puppet is internally very 'simple' then it is just a veil that covers the signals and moves with them, but if it has great internal complexity then a small stimulus may result in a cascade of internal states and the puppet may go on dancing wildly just from a small initial impulse. This occurs when the puppet isn't just composed of ideas arising form experience but also ideas about ideas that form a complex 'logic'. So an experience creates ideas but ideas flow into ideas and result in conclusions, which then become the final experience of 'knowing'. If this logic closely mirrors the nature of reality then the puppet dances due to incoming signals and internal logic but stays in tune with the music, but if the logic is false, flawed or too limited then the music stirs up many wild movements. For example, a simple gesture such as a smile can be taken as just that, but to some it resonates in their minds and becomes a "sexual advance" or a "sinister smile" or a 'grimace'. Each person experiences the existential signals very differently depending on the nature of the mind puppet. So that which drives the puppet is reality but people generally assume that their personal puppet is reality, but the puppet is just a virtual reality constructed by their mind and in which they experience themselves as a being in a world.
So now we have analysed the main 'pipeline' from perception to collective knowledge but each feedback loop is itself a complex 'pipeline' of transformations. We will briefly discuss each of these.
Interpretation is influenced by personal
ideas.
(subconscious process)
The manner in which a person's
personal ideas, thoughts, attitudes and knowledge influence their
subconscious interpretive process, which transforms perceptions into
experiences, is very subtle and depends on the prior state of their
conscious and subconscious minds. It is a gradual assimilation of
impressions and symbolic images into the subconscious. It is a
complex restructuring of the memetic [FR]
'ecosystem' that is their "inner space". It can change
everything about what we perceive.
Comprehension is influenced by personal
ideas.
(subconscious process)
In its general properties this
process is similar to the one just mentioned for interpretation.
Personal ideas are influenced by collective
knowledge. (sub/conscious
process)
This is a very complex process that is fraught
with loss and distortion of information. Collective ideas are only
experienced via concrete representations, such as a research paper,
an essay, an advertising slogan, body language and customary ways of
inter-relating and so on. These are all symbolic representations
within which an underlying message or meaning is implied. But the
symbols must be decoded to derive the meaning and this occurs on
both conscious and subconscious levels. The decoding is a process of
taking in the main symbols (e.g. words in an essay), allowing them
to resonate within one's mind (memetic ecosystem) thereby
associating meaning to them and then using this to then derive the
combined meaning of the sequence of words. However the meanings of
these symbols can be vague and even though words may have exact
dictionary meanings, in general the way that they are used is based
upon subconscious associations; that determines the actual
experience of a word. Hence a person may wish to express an idea so
they use a set of words, but these words carry very different
associations for the reader so the derived meaning may be totally
different to the intended meaning.
It is through this game of "Chinese whispers" that we convey knowledge through our minds and throughout the cultural domain. For example, to one person the concept 'government' is the central custodian of all social goodness, responsibility, duty of care, ideology, justice and so on; it is the provider of social services and the impartial arbiter in any dispute. But to someone else the government is just the institutionalisation of corrupt authoritarian delusions, they are metaphorically the biggest "gangster on the block" who dominates and legitimises many other gangsters. It seeks its own advantage, pursues its own agendas and it conditions and uses the population in order to do this. There are many other attitudes but these are two extreme ones. Both of which are true to an extent, in the sense that the analogy captures some aspect of the actual nature of 'government'. But given these two very different associations with the word 'government', any sentence using that word or concept will be interpreted very differently. This is particularly the case with words such as God [FR], spirit, etc. If the basic symbols are misunderstood then the whole message is distorted. An extreme example is trying to read Greek but interpreting it as Russian; it can only result in nonsense.
Hence the same article of collective knowledge can produce very different personal ideas. For example, a news report about a riot may be interpreted as the police subduing a raging mob and bringing peace and order back to the streets, or perhaps as the police acting as the government's henchmen to suppress the justified resistance of people who are acting to protect themselves from the atrocities of the government's agenda. Given the wide range of possible interpretations all articles of collective knowledge can result in a wide range of personal ideas. The actual knowledge or original personal ideas that the collective knowledge tries to capture can in many cases be totally lost or distorted beyond all recognition as it is transformed into countless derivative personal ideas. This confusion then feeds back into the process and cycles around throughout the entire non-linear perceptual / experiential process. If people naively confuse their personal interpretation with "what the article is actually trying to say" then everyone will understand it differently and assume that their understanding is the only understanding. Hence they act as if everyone else understands it the same way and this creates more confusion in countless subtle ways.
The Representative Code is a cultural
construct.
(external process)
Language has evolved haphazardly in
the context of pragmatic human interactions within the cultural
domain. Hence language is very unsuited to representing things
outside the cultural domain. Hence the need for analogies. Different
cultures have different focuses, for example, in Sanskrit there are
thousands of words describing subtle states of awareness and ways of
connecting and uniting with reality. In Inuit languages there are
countless names for types of snow and ice. In English there are
countless words and concepts relating to separatist power struggle,
domination, oppression, to swindle and cheat, to opportunistically
seek one's one advantage, to be a winner or a loser. English has a
deeply egoic
foundation. 'Ego' is understood to mean the 'I'-thought, the concept
of separate individual existence within an external world; this
leads to concepts of competition and cooperation, to struggle and to
success or failure. Each language creates the ground or the field
upon which all discourses within it take
place. Different fields allow for different types of discourses and
they inhibit and distort any other type of discourse. For example,
when one is simply going with the flowing and acting natural there
is no 'agent' or 'doer' who chooses or decides to act, but in
English it is difficult to describe one's actions without the
implied introduction of a 'doer'. For instance
when someone says that they are digesting people assume that
they are just commenting on an event, but when they say that they
are working, one assumes that they have a goal, an agenda, that they
are deliberately working toward something or for someone, but there
is always the idea of an individual isolated ego that is
deliberately engaged in 'doing' something. But what if one goes with
the flow and simply reports that work 'happens' and that the work is
related to the perceived entity that we refer to as 'I'.
Furthermore, languages are very open
to manipulation, thus constraining the scope of potential discourses
or fundamentally distorting the field of discourses. Examples are,
the current blurring and redefining of words such as 'freedom',
'liberty', 'democracy', 'security', 'terrorism', 'guerrilla' and so
on. By manipulating the meanings within the political discourse
people are unable to think about these things except through the
political discourse. Hence open minded enquiry and critical analysis
become impossible. Another example is 'newspeak' in George Orwell's
novel 1984 [FR]
where "The government's most brilliant and most appalling
project is the actual deconstruction of the English language into
Newspeak, the language of the Party. Each successive edition of the
Newspeak Dictionary has fewer words than its predecessor. By removing
meaning and nuance from the vocabulary, the government hopes to
eradicate seditious and anti-social thinking before it even has the
chance to enter a person's mind. Without the vocabulary for
revolution, there can be no revolution. For those who persist in
thinking for themselves, so-called Thought Criminals, Ingsoc's
stormtroopers, the Thought Police, are there to intervene,
incarcerating the free-thinkers in the Ministry of Love, where they
will be re-educated, or worse."
(quoted from
newspeak.com/1984.htm)
"Don't you see, the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought. In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought as we understand it now."
"By 2050-earlier, probably-all
real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole
literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Milton, Byron-they'll exist only in Newspeak versions,
not merely changed into something different, but actually
contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the
Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a
slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of
freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be
different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now.
Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is
unconsciousness."
(George Orwell, "1984")
"The intensity of the squabble showed the corrosive effect the president's subversion of language has had on our larger culture... we have all taken to following Mr. Bush's lead in retreating from English as we once knew it. It's been a familiar pattern for the news media, politicians and the public alike in the Bush era. It took us far too long to acknowledge that the 'abuses' at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere might be more accurately called torture. And that the 'manipulation' of prewar intelligence might be more accurately called lying." (Civil War? Abuse? Manipulation? Really? [FR])
Dissemination is influenced by
culture.
(external process)
The dissemination of ideas is a major
point of leverage for the manipulation of the cultural domain by
various agendas and power structures. The growth and penetration of
the mass media is a classic example. In many ways we now live in a
system where one has the right to say whatever one likes, but the
status-quo is protected because there is virtually no likelihood
that anyone will listen. Most minds are turned toward and entangled
within the mass media discourse. Whilst in that trance, all other
ways of thinking seem alien and abstract and only the media
propaganda message seems real. It is this manipulative abuse of the
media that makes us live in 'pseudo' democracies. It is true that we
have a consensus based governing system but when the consent is
manipulated the entire system is subverted and open to abuse [FR].
"Control over the flow of information emanating from the political center will be our most important weapon...." (Edward Luttwak, Coup d'Etat [FR])
"The extraordinary measures that the White House planned to undertake in its war against crime depended heavily for their success on the organization of public fears. If Americans could be persuaded that their lives and the lives of their children were being threatened by a rampant epidemic of narcotics addiction, Nixon's advisors presumed they would not object to decisive government actions, such as no-knock warrants, pretrial detention, wiretaps, and unorthodox strike forces-even if the emergency measures had to cross or circumvent the traditional rights of a suspect. To achieve this state of fear required transforming a relatively small heroin addiction problem-which even according to the most exaggerated estimates directly affected only a minute fraction of the population in 1971-into -a plague that threatened all. This in turn required the artful use of the media to propagate a simple but terrifying set of stereotypes about drug addiction: the addict-dealer would be depicted as a modern-day version of the medieval vampire, ineluctably driven to commit crimes and infect others by his insatiable and incurable need for heroin. The victims would be shown as innocent youth, totally vulnerable to the vampire-addict. And the federal law-enforcement officer would be shown as the only effective instrument for stopping the vampire-addicts from contaminating the rest of society. The most obvious medium available for projecting these stereotypes on the popular imagination was television." (Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America [FR])
"Today, tight and selective control over media licences has prevented independent groups and organisations from starting their own publications and broadcasting stations. This state of affairs has allowed only vested political and economic interests to consolidate and perpetuate their control over society through their compliant media." (A Malaysian citizens' media initiative [FR])
"Although media outlets can be actively used to promote conflict, media can also contribute to conflict involuntarily. Such passive incitement to violence most frequently occurs when journalists have poor professional skills, when the media culture is underdeveloped or when there is little or no history of independent media. Under such circumstances, journalists can inflame grievances and promote stereotypes by virtue of the manner in which they report, even though their intentions are not necessarily malicious and they are not being manipulated by an outside entity... media have generally been overlooked in analyses of conflict because, on their own, they are rarely a direct cause. Nonetheless, as part of a larger matrix of factors, media can be extremely powerful tools for promoting violence, as witnessed in Rwanda, the former Republic of Yugoslavia, the former Soviet republic of Georgia and elsewhere [US, UK, Australia, etc]. As Jamie Metzl (1997) observes, 'mass media reach not only people's homes, but also their minds, shaping their thoughts and sometimes their behavior." (The use and abuse of media in vulnerable societies [FR])
“With all that ideological money, institutional heft, coordination, and credentialing, the right has perfected what the CIA used to call a "mighty Wurlitzer" -- a propaganda machine that can hone a fact or a lie, broadcast it, and have it echoed and recycled in Fox News commentary, in Washington Times news stories, in Wall Street Journal editorials, by myriad right-wing pundits, by Heritage seminars and briefing papers, and in congressional hearings and speeches. Privatization of Social Security, vouchers for school, Vince Foster's supposed murder, Hillary's secret sex life, you name it -- the right's mighty Wurlitzer can ensure that a message is broadcast across the county, echoed in national and local news, and reverberated in the speeches of respectable academics as well as rabid politicians.” (The Mighty Wurlitzer [FR])
“The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an "Independent Press."
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” (John Swinton, editor of the New York Tribune, in the 1880s, at a banquet of his fellow editors, quoted from Media Watch [FR])
Another vital aspect of the control of the flow of information is censorship, but in particular self-censorship that is conditioned into people, that is the only effective form of censorship otherwise the very attempt to enforce censorship simply draws attention to that which you do not want people to give attention to. However if it is internalised and subconscious it operates far more effectively and without the people even being aware of it. They identify with the conditioned attitudes and believe that they are exercising their judgment when in fact they are being conditioned and controlled. This form of self-censorship is accomplished via memetic inoculation; foreign memes are taken and horribly disfigured to make them seem pathetic or repulsive, then wrapped in other memes of ‘taboo’ or ‘heretical’ or ‘crackpot’ and then introduced into your memetic complex (mind) where they are immediately rejected and remembered. Then whenever you are exposed to the foreign memes your memetic complex immediately recognises them as being one of the disfigured memes and they are either ignored or rejected by the subconscious without you even consciously becoming aware of this. You develop habitual reflexive aversion toward these ideas that is beyond your conscious awareness and control; this is the underlying dynamic of cynicism.
Cynical memetic inoculation produces a reflexive ‘jeer’ that is programmed deep into one’s meme complex (mind). It can be overcome through awareness, which can catch the reflex as it is triggered and subtly apply the will. If you catch a meme in action they lose their power to control you, only when you are absent and on autopilot do they have power, then they are your mind. Indeed your mind is a meme complex and has a will of its own, but the real you is the pure awareness. Whenever the true king (awareness) steps up to the throne (control) the impostor (mind) steps down. The mind makes an excellent minister if held in check but it makes a tyrannical dictator when it usurps the throne.
Furthermore, due to the non-linear nature of the perceptual / experiential process the distortions produced by preconceived ideas tend to reinforce those ideas. For example, if a person is deeply alienated from society they approach any social situation with their psychological barriers up. They appear to others to be distant and unapproachable so people do not respond in a friendly relaxed way; they too are guarded. The person sees this and due to their subconscious attitude they interpret this as meaning that the people are cold and uncaring. This can spiral into total alienation. Or conversely, a person who instinctively believed that everyone loved them could spiral into social integration and perhaps fame. This is an example of what is called a schizmogenesis, which is a general phenomenon that is observed in regards to "the structural aspects of social conflict" and was first defined by Bateson as "a process of differentiation in the norms of individual behaviour resulting from cumulative interaction between individuals" [FR]. Due to these feedback loops cynicism breeds closed minds and skepticism breeds open-minds.
Each time one accepts an illusion one reinforces it. If one challenges it and brings awareness into it then one has a chance to break through it. For example, if a person's mind is closed (memetically inoculated) to a way of thinking, say science ( many people are fearful and prejudiced in this way), then at any mention of science they experience only their associations and naively take these to be the reality. Perhaps they experience evil, deceitful, men in white lab coats lost in a complex and ludicrous delusion and systematically forcing their destructive agenda on the world. A person with that attitude would never listen to a scientist except to find fault with them, they are incapable of actually 'listening'. They only ever hear their own prejudice. The scientist genuinely seems to them to be evil and delusional. They confuse their distorted objects of perception with reality.
It may well be that the scientist is actually sincere, coherent and caring. Nobody is free from delusion but within the context of their delusion they may be very well meaning and compassionate people. If the "anti-scientist" person challenged their personal prejudice and listened they might realise that what the scientist is saying may even be meaningful or useful to them, even though it may be expressed in a way that is foreign to them. But if they experience only "evil, deceitful men..." and don't challenge that but instead naively accept that as the reality then that experience only adds to that persons weight of evidence, which further convinces them that their opinion is correct. It simply reinforces the preconceptions and strengthens the illusion.
Some people have this particular prejudice, and prejudices of various kinds, but one of the most common is against mystics. It leaves one to wonder what these people actually experience and think when they encounter mysticism [FR]. Generally their minds are totally closed and they are unable to listen or comprehend, instead they only respond to their prejudices and become derisive or aggressive.
To use the previous example of the scientist, it is as if the scientist was simply trying to point out that 1+1=2 (or anything that is obvious if one only stops and thinks about it). But people are so caught up in their prejudices that they are irrationally defensive and hostile. They fail to even listen to what was said but they unanimously join together to denounce the scientist. This is a rare experience for a scientist but a very common one for a mystic. This discussion seeks to break through the irrationality to some degree so that people are able to listen long enough to realise that 1+1=2 isn't a strange incantation or a plot to deceive you, it is just a simple, coherent and useful observation.
These examples illustrate how our deepest subconscious attitudes and beliefs can subtly and radically influence the nature of our experiences and understanding. It can cause people to dwell in radically different worlds (experiential / conceptual contexts) even though they perceive the same existential information (objective reality). Due to the subtle and complex nature of the perceptual / experiential process our subjective responses to reality can vary greatly.
By operating through the five senses we experience an 'outer' world. That "world experience" is formed by an 'inner' perceptual/experiential process. If the inner process distorts the information flow then the experience and personal ideas become distorted. If the personal ideas are distorted the process becomes more distorting. This can become a feedback loop where confusion breeds confusion, eventually resulting in the total breakdown of the process (e.g. psychosis). Or understanding can breed understanding resulting in greater knowledge and effective participation in reality.
Furthermore, when enquiring into the nature of reality you must be very aware of your agenda because it can subtly and radically influence everything. A person's agenda creates a subconscious context that influences all of their values, associations and the meanings they attach to things. Do you seek validation for a belief system? Do you seek acceptance within a collective discourse and thereby security in an academic career? Do you seek to invent some lucrative technology? Or do you seek truth for truth's sake, regardless of the consequences? Only this last agenda can open you up fully to reality. Reality may shatter your cherished illusions or may make your colleagues turn against you out of confusion or it may have no obvious and immediate commercial application; but you must risk everything and be attached to nothing to open up to reality, because any preconceived idea will distort the lens, which distorts the image, which distorts the lens, and on and on.
If you naively accept that the "appearances of things" is their "whole reality" then the spiral into illusion can be swift since there is "no brake". However if you accept that your experiences are just your interpretations of your perceptions and that your understanding is just your comprehension of your experiences, and neither of these is infallible, then you are able to apply awareness and penetrative insight that has a corrective influence on your interpretations and comprehensions, thus clarifying your mind.
From this we see that the flow of existential information from the "objective reality" to the "idea of the objective world" is complex and subjective, there are many stages in which information is lost (entropy) and many feedback loops making the system non-linear (thus having HIGHLY complex behaviour). Hence our experiences, personal ideas and representations are conditioned and do not necessarily provide an accurate perspective on the existential information. The process from perception to collective knowledge is NOT a simple system and most historically accepted assumptions are grossly inaccurate.
In the above diagram of the perceptual / experiential pipeline we see that the existential information originates from the objective domain. This is the underlying 'reality' that "is what it is" regardless of what we may think of it. The information then passes into the subjective domain as particular perceptions, experiences and ideas depending on the nature of our perceptual / experiential process. This is an experiential domain of mind, thoughts, feelings, sensations and so on. From here our personal ideas flow through the cultural domain and merge into collective knowledge. This is a conceptual domain, the space of concepts, words, names, measures, theories, research, experiment, evidence, proofs, logical argument, and so on. It is also the domain of the "idea of the objective world".
When a person experiences through the 'lens' of the "idea of the objective world" they interpret, experience and comprehend their existential experience as "being in an objective world". This experience looks and feels like they might think objective reality should look and feel like, but that is because this perspective is the only one that they have used to form their expectations. Whilst the world that they experience is very tangible it is ultimately an illusion constructed by the distortions of the "idea of the objective world". There is an underlying objective reality 'behind' the appearances, which is the 'substance' of things, but they cannot see it for what it is. Hence they dwell in a pseudo objective world.
These three domains correspond to the "three worlds" in Vedic metaphysics:
Bhur, (Outer world, cultural Domain, pseudo objective world, physical plane)
Bhuvah, (Inner space, subjective domain, perceptual / experiential process, astral plane),
Swaha, (Actual process of the real, objective Domain, holistic information process, celestial plane),
The subjective domain separates the objective domain and the cultural domain because culture arises from shared subjective experiences. The traditional scientific approach is to deny and attempt to avoid all forms of subjectivity; hence it operates entirely within the cultural domain and the pseudo objective world (discussed shortly), which is conceptualised as "the physical universe". Science is a system of ideas that have close correspondence to those aspects of the objective domain that manage to filter through the complex process from perception to collective ideas. But the process is heavily distorted by systemic, biological and historical assumptions that feedback into the non-linear process and drive it far from being a clear and open channel of awareness. Much of the objective reality gets distorted by preconceptions and is therefore incomprehensible, or it does not flow through so it is invisible from the current scientific perspective. Because of this science has great accuracy and relevance in very small and isolated domains but it cannot comprehend anything outside of these; it cannot see the bigger picture.
"Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones.
But a collection of facts is
no more a science than a heap of
stones is a house."
(Jules Henri Poincaré, 1908) [A
unified 'foundation' and coherent structure is required]
Because of the fundamental systemic, biological and historical limitations of our perspective many collective ideas about the world and life are highly inaccurate representations of the objective domain (actual reality). For example, materialism is an accurate and compelling analogy and a useful working hypothesis but as a dogmatic orthodox belief system it is very limiting. Anyone who looks into it deeply enough will reach a point at which it breaks down, as quantum physicists, many philosophers and countless mystics have shown. This is because it is based upon many assumptions with their roots in our systemic nature, our biology and our history. Two important assumptions are that "sensory perception does not just inform us of the appearance of things but also of the real nature of things" and that "the mind is a perfect 'lens' through which we experience the 'objects themselves' and not just our own interpretation of the objects of perception". These are a form of naive realism [FR] and have been shown to be false but the assumptions are buried so deep in the foundation of our collective knowledge, language and individual ideas that they generally go totally unquestioned. It would take a great deal of work to clarify the assumptions with a deeper more accurate understanding and then to work upwards and rectify the entire structure of human knowledge; both within one's own subconscious and conscious mind and within our collective knowledge. But if a building is resting on an unstable foundation and is about to fall, making high-level changes makes no difference; the whole structure must be realigned.
When you are a system analyst creating a system you can see the entire system clearly; the primitive systems, the network of interactions, the information flows and the many levels of systems within systems (left image). You have an objective view into the entire information space within which the systems exist and interact. But if you happen to be a system embedded within the information space that you are studying then you only have a subjective view. The image on the right only indicates the nature of the subjective view not its actual form. If you were system S1 then your view would actually look more like two objects in space. The shaded components on the right are invisible to the subjective system S1 and the diagram simply indicates what aspects are visible and invisible. In the objective view we can see all of the details but in the subjective view system S1 can only see the outer forms of systems S2 and S3, everything else is 'invisible'.
In the context of a VR computer game the objective view is like using an advanced 'debugger' to analyse the program itself as it is running whilst the subjective view is like playing the game and perceiving it from the perspective of being a character within the game. This is a fundamental duality that applies to all information systems. It can be more generally described by the concepts, transcendent (objective) and empirical (subjective). For example, a computer game can be an information process within a computer and also an experiential space. A movie can be a reel in a projector, which is pointed at a screen in front of an audience and also a captivating story that we imaginatively experience. So too any system is both a structured information process within an information space and an entity within a world, which has particular properties and it experiences a particular perspective on its world.
In the transcendent (objective) view a system's 'inner' aspect is a structured network of sub-systems and their interactions. However in the empirical (subjective) view a systems inner aspect is it's perceptual / experiential process that gives it it's present moment experiences. All systems have both transcendent and empirical aspects - these are just two different ways of interpreting the same thing.
From within a subjective view a system has only a 'surface' experience of its world and from these surface impressions it derives its understanding. If one takes the objects of perception as ontologically 'real' objects then we inevitably arrive at the concept of matter and physicality because those surface impressions are 'tangible'. For example, when a rock is thrown and strikes you on the head the experienced form of the rock-head interaction is very tangible. Information passes from rock to head and into the system we call the body where we experience that information flow as pain, bruising and so on. Now let us look into the idea of physicality.
A major difference between that which we consider to be physical and non-physical (information) is that physical substance (matter/energy) is conserved whereas information is not; it is just pattern. In information there is entropy (loss of information leading to loss of structure) and negentropy (self-organisation resulting in a gain in complexity or information); information is just 'pattern' whereas physical matter/energy is always conserved. This is a fundamental aspect of nested information spaces in relation to 'simulation'. In the transcendent context the information is not conserved but it can represent quantities that are conserved. For example, consider a simple computer simulation of the conserved flow of fluid between various inter-connected reservoirs. This is equivalent to an SMN system model with normalised matrix columns, where normalised means that the probabilities in the column sum to one. (link to “Getting a Grip”?) The transcendent computational process creates and destroys data in the CPU and memory thereby creating information loss or entropy that manifests as heat (that is why CPU's get so hot). But at the same time, within the empirical simulation world all the quantities are conserved; this is a necessary condition for a stable enduring empirical world. It requires some conserved 'substance' out of which to be formed.
So the transcendent information process creates a sim-universe composed of sim-substance. This is a world within a world and we will see that this can go to any depth. Within the sim-universe the sim-substance underlies the arising of sim-forms of all kinds. These sim-forms can be structured and patterned into sim-symbols and used to encode or represent sim-information. These sim-symbols can be used to record and transmit sim-information and can also be combined with other sim-forms into sim-information processes such as a sim-computer that operates on sim-information by manipulating sim-symbols. Within this sim-computer there is a sim-computational space where sim-information is not conserved. This sim-computer can sim-simulate a sim-sim-universe, which is composed of conserved sim-sim-substance.
So a transcendent information process underlies empirical substance and empirical substance can represent information and be formed into a sim-transcendent information process. So there can be worlds within worlds where each empirical context has 'tangible', conserved substance and each transcendent context has an information system (computational) essence. Whenever empirical forms are used as symbols to represent, transmit, transform and process information we are creating a type of transcendent context within which an empirical context arises and within which virtual forms exist. For example, a book is just paper with patterns of ink, but through language and imagination a novel can create within our minds a rich and compelling 'story' or virtual world that we can experience to some degree. All writing, art, mathematics and all symbolic technologies rely on this property of information spaces and worlds within worlds. Although so far we have only explored the potential of this to a small degree.
In fact, the whole of our empirical existence relies upon this aspect of information systems; otherwise there would be no conserved sim-substance (matter/energy) and no empirical context (physical universe). But let us examine the relation between information and physicality a little closer by considering a long standing puzzle in the empirical sciences; i.e. the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences [FR].
It seems to scientists that "the enormous usefulness of
mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the
mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it".
(Eugene
Wigner)
“How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?” ( Albert Einstein [FR] )
So if mathematics was considered as the science of pure information; a science of symbol, relation and transformation, then this would explain the age-old puzzle. If the physical universe is actually a virtual reality within an information process then mathematics is the ideal science to use. In fact the utility of mathematics is compelling evidence for the information theoretic nature of the universe. Let us clarify things.
First it is proposed here that mathematics is the science of information. Furthermore it is a property of information that any information process/pattern can be represented in an equivalent process/pattern. For example, eiπ + 1 = 0 are both equivalent (=) representations. Or consider two computer programs, each written in different but logically equivalent languages, where the two programs are logically equivalent in their structure and behaviour. They are different but equivalent information processes. Because of this equivalence one information process/pattern can be used to 'model' another information process/pattern. If the model is perfectly equivalent then they are fully interchangeable and the question of which is the 'real' one and which is the 'model' is just a matter of identification or labelling of one of them as 'real'. This relies on assumed "primitive thisness" [FR] and memory. But there is no intrinsic difference between them.
One important difference that doesn't affect their logical equivalence but could indicate which one is more fundamental is the concept of algorithmic complexity (also known as computational complexity or Kolmogorov Information). The simplest possible representation is thought to be the most realistic one. In this respect it is thought that reality is maximally compressed so any arbitrary but equivalent model of it would necessarily be larger than the actual reality. Hence reality is its own best model and any model that was to truly represent reality would also have to be maximally compressed. [algorithmic complexity]
Now consider 'physical' systems and the 'physical' universe. For centuries science has been leveraging "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences" and has discovered a profound, meaningful, accurate and fundamental equivalence between mathematics and physical processes/patterns. We can perform ab initio calculations of many physical systems. "A calculation is said to be 'ab initio' (or from first principles) if it relies on basic and established laws of nature without additional assumptions or special models." [FR]
This equivalence between mathematics and physical systems is compelling but we do not yet know for sure that it is an exact equivalence, but that is the general belief of many scientists. For instance, if a grand unified theory (GUT) is possible then this implies an exact equivalence.
Given the nature of information processes/patterns and 'equivalence', it is not unreasonable to wonder; if mathematics is a generalised information process/pattern and the physical universe is equivalent to mathematics (can be completely represented by mathematics) then it is possible that physical processes/patterns are actually information processes/patterns.
But what about 'physicality'? It is a general property of all information systems that they tangibly interact with systems within their own information space and perceive systems in other information spaces as "just information". For example, material objects tangibly interact in a common physical space, software programs tangibly interact in a common computational space and bureaucratic documents and decrees tangibly influence each other within a bureaucratic system and so on. So could it be that 'physicality' is just the tangibility of our experience with systems in a common information space? If we are made of the same empirical 'substance' and information flows through us as part of the same collective information process then we are physically interacting with those systems. Just like a computer game bullet can kill a computer game character but is just information to us, so too a 'physical' bullet can kill us but it is just information to a computer game character. This implies that 'physicality' arises in all empirical contexts and not just in the 'physical' universe.
The phenomenon of MST implies worlds within worlds, information spaces within information spaces, minds within a collective mind and in general information systems within information systems. There are different inner and outer forms at each MST level but the same fundamental principle applies throughout. There is one transcendent foundation then an empirical world, which acts as a sub-transcendent context for a sub-empirical world and so on. Civilisations don’t experience galaxies directly as tangible physical things, people don’t experience civilization as a tangible physical thing and cells don’t experience organisms as physical tangible things. They can’t accidentally bump into one or pick one up. Try and fight a civilization and you only experience fighting people because to us on our MST level a civilization is just an abstract idea. Sub-systems within a common super-system all occupy a common interaction space and can interact directly and tangibly, so people experience people, atoms experience atoms, civilizations experience civilizations and so on. In each of these cases the interactions are experienced as being ‘physical’ because they are tangible. The information flowing is the same ‘stuff’ that the systems are made of so it impacts them very tangibly. Each information space seems to its occupants to be the only ‘real’ space, the space where things are thought to actually happen and all other spaces are thought to be “just information”. So IST teaches us that all experiential contexts seem ‘real’ from within and ‘virtual’ from without; but in fact none of them are actually real, they are all virtual.
This should inspire us to look into our concept of 'physicality' and how we could distinguish a physical process/pattern from a model (an information process/pattern). Other than the fact that they / we share the information space with the physical process/pattern (and have a subjective view of it) and we observe the model in a sub information space (and have an objective view of it). But other than that there is no intrinsic difference!
If there is equivalence then the two processes/patterns are identical. There is no essence that pervades one of them and thereby endows it with the quality of 'physicality'. Each can be tangibly experienced by systems depending on which information space the perspective is embedded. To the systems in the model, other model systems are tangible and 'physical' and systems that we think of as physical would seem to them to be separate, abstract information (e.g. a computer program monitoring a room via a camera; the chairs and people etc are just patterns of information flowing through the camera).
Therefore the only reason that we have to believe in 'physicality' as something unique to this 'physical' universe is the narrowness of our perspective and the limitations of our experiences; in short, because we are systemically, biologically and historically conditioned to think this way. There is no other reason. So if science is right in its use of mathematics and if a grand unified theory is possible then this indicates that the physical universe is in fact an information universe.
The idea of primitive thisness [FR] mentioned earlier raises another point. At the quantum level the fundamental articles totally lack primitive thisness. If one takes two electrons and swaps them around one cannot discern the difference. Even the particles and the universe cannot discern the difference, it is not just our limited perspective. They have no intrinsic identity that inheres in them. But in contrast one can take two seemingly identical coins and swap them around; even though they seem identical they are still distinct coins with unique identities and histories. However, if one moves 'bits' around in a computer one zero is identical to another zero and the individual zero's have no primitive thisness. In general a symbol is identical to another equivalent symbol so they lack primitive thisness; this is a general property of information. So a copy is identical to the original in every way. It is impossible to discern which is the original and which is the copy.
This is an important difference between information technology (IT) and manufacturing industries. You cannot just build one car and then create millions of copies, but with software you can. However at the quantum level matter is just information; it can be teleported [FR] from place to place (transmitted as quantum information) and the quantum wavefunctions can be operated on just like light waves, giving rise to quantum optics [FR], atom lasers, matter holograms and so on. This all implies that 'physical' processes are fundamentally information process.
So what is the difference between 'physicality' and 'information'? Why use two words when they are equivalent; the reason is historical. A physical process is just an information process that you are embedded in and that is therefore 'tangible'. So we can think of these things as physical processes or as some kind of information process. However in the past we have had countless materialist concepts but information theory, computational science and system theory had not been developed back then, so many abstract substances were proposed or different empirical phenomena. These were used as analogies to describe the non-empirical (information theoretic) aspects of reality.
Nowadays many physicists are speaking about relativistic matter/energy equivalence, quantum processes and "strings" and so on as if they were "abstract physical" processes. By this it is meant that they are still thought of as "physical" in that they underlie our 'tangible' experience of reality, but they are not 'material' in the sense of the old ideas of ontologically existing particles in space that a priori (miraculously) exist and function with complex behaviour. Nowadays there are also many people speaking about information, computation and other information theoretic phenomena that may underlie the universe. In all times people have spoken of 'light', 'spirit', "ethereal substance", "mystical substance" and so on. They are analogically describing the universe as a virtual information theoretic construct but using non-information theoretic terminology.
They are all speaking about exactly the same underlying vision of reality, but using different analogies and concepts to represent their ideas to themselves and others. Hence they seem very different but they are equivalent. Because the concept 'physical' arises from information processes operating in a common information space it doesn't matter whether one thinks about things as being "abstract physical", "information theoretic" or 'spiritual', the principles are the same. They are all fundamentally in agreement but they interpret things differently. However the mystic, spiritual discourse [FR] has become seriously misrepresented in the general discourse due to confusions arising over time through the various cultural and cognitive feedback loops. This essay seeks to uncover this confusion, clarify the concepts and elucidate the parallels between the various paradigms.
The only approach that stands apart from these is the naive realist (commonsense realist) [FR], materialist, objectivist perspective that goes unquestioned in the backs of many people's minds. It subtly or radically influences our general attitudes, interpretations, experiences and ideas. Even those working with 'spirit', or 'information' or "abstract physicality", who theoretically should know better, and may even consciously know better, are still influenced by habitual and subconscious naive realist thought patterns.
"Karl Popper [REF]
pointed out that although Hume's idealism appeared to him to be a
strict refutation of commonsense [naive]
realism [FR],
and although he felt rationally obliged to regard commonsense realism
as a mistake, he admitted that he was, in practice, quite unable to
disbelieve in it for more than an hour: that, at heart, Hume was a
commonsense realist."
(quoted from David Hume on
Wikipedia [FR])
Naive realism is the most common philosophical outlook throughout society even though it is known to be fundamentally misguided. But in general it is not considered to be a philosophy; "True naive realists would never sum up or analyse their views, because they do not consider them views but the way things obviously are."
In its most common form a naive realist thinks "I ... am a
human being. There is this one physical world, the space where
everything exists and the time in which everything happens. There are
many things in this physical world, each largely separate from the
other and persisting over a span of time... My senses give me direct
knowledge of reality. If I see a chair, it is because there is a
chair physically where and when I see it. There are exceptions, like
when I am dreaming or watching a movie, but these are rare and
obviously not real. I can know things through my senses, through
thinking about things, and through communication with other people.
Other people's beliefs may be correct or not, but beliefs of people I
respect, and beliefs held commonly by most people in my society, are
usually true."
(quoted from Born Yesterday [FR])
So we see that virtually all philosophical / metaphysical views can be seen to be equivalent except for those that are based upon naive acceptance of illusions and assumptions. Any sincere enquiry that goes deep enough converges upon the same vision of reality, but too often they tend to misunderstand the others and to cling to their own analogies whilst disregarding the others.
We also learn that the structure of systems is highly complex. There is no simple inner and outer; they are not like melons with well-defined outer skin and inner flesh. Each system within system has its inner and outer so systems are filled with a kind of complex dynamical ‘foam’. That is the nature of inner space and what we call outer space is just the inner space of a larger system. So we are foam within foam and the general nature of a systemic existential space is foam-like.
Each subsystem is a being in a world to some degree (that is its perceptual illusion), but the potential depth of involvement in illusion depends on the complexity of the inner space, its internal cognitive space or its intricate inner foam of feedback loops and self-referential awareness. Lets consider the case where there are sub-systems integrating to form a super-system; each sub-system has its inner ‘foam’ and it operates within the inner foam of the super-system, which integrates the sub-systems together. If like us the systems have extremely complex inner spaces – mind, consciousness, sentience, self-awareness, intellect, imagination, visualization, etc and they are integrated into a very simple outer foam of tribal cultural interactions; like pre-historic humans. Then they experience a complex inner space and a very simple outer space of interactions. They experience themselves as being the most complex, aware and powerful beings in the situation.
If the sub-systems are very simple and are caught up in a very complex and integrated super-system foam, then they are totally swept up by the super-system and they become like molecules in a cell or cells in an organism. Now consider the case of pre-historic humans but start to rapidly increase the complexity of their cultural interactions and dependencies so that the super-system foam becomes more complex and integrative. As the balance of the relative complexity difference between ourselves and our cultural environment shifts the whole dynamic shifts. As culture and civilization and organizations in general become far more complex, those of us who become simple are easily assimilated and those who grow in inner complexity and integration remain individuals. It is in the interests of the organizations to simplify us, it makes us easy to assimilate, easy to comprehend, easy to program with memes and easy to control. It is useful for organizations to keep a few complex individuals but the masses must be kept simple and compliant. This general process is the underlying dynamic of ‘individuation’ that underlies the process of MST, the process of ego formation in humans and the process of organisation formation such as nationalism in human populations.
So we see that tightly integrated inner foam and loosely integrated outer foam leads to a compelling systemic illusion of individual, separate, self-awareness as a “being in a world”. Another illusion that arises through individuation and identification with one’s body and mind, the 'I'-thought, is related to the phenomenon of same MST level interactions, for example when one person touches another person. If a person or any super-system is a systemic perceptual illusion and not an ontological reality, then how can a person touch a person? If ‘I’ can’t touch cells (only cells would actually make contact with cells) but ‘you’ are made of cells the how do ‘I’ touch ‘you’? The ‘I’ and ‘you’ are ideas (memes) in the mind, and 'my' identification with 'my' sub-systems assimilates all 'my' sub-systems into the acquisitive ego, the 'I'-thought, so that the ego believes that they are a part of it. The ego acquires everything it can, from your body and mind, ideas, possessions, wealth, power, glamour, enslaving other people and controlling their egos and our collectively ego is trying to acquire and assimilate the entire planet including ourselves and all life forms.
Individuation can be a blessing for a system, giving it an integrated, unified perspective and a focused awareness and identity but if this results in egoic delusion and separatist struggle it is a curse that brings only suffering.
The egoic acquisition creates identification, so when my sub-systems interact then ‘I’ interact, so when my hand touches ‘you’ ‘I’ touch ‘you’. When it touches your hand 'I' project the same kind of egoic identification onto the ‘you’ that 'I' experience in my mind and 'I' assume that ‘I’ have therefore touched ‘you’. So when riot police and protestors stand off it is people against people on the level of people, it is cell against cell in the push and shove on the level of cells and it is also the ego of a population repressing an inner urge within its body and mind. There is no correct level to consider things, they are ALL equally valid.
This experience of identification combined with complex inner and simple outer foam leads to another interesting systemic illusion. That is the experience of being at the pinnacle of creation. We think “there is nothing more complex, subtle and alive as I and we are”. We think things are ‘solid’ beneath us in the system hierarchy (sub-systems, we only experience their outer aspect) and that things above us are just ideas that we control (super-systems, we only experience their inner space). That is how it seems to all systems in similar circumstances. So truth yet again diminishes our pride. We now know that we are not at the centre of the universe, things don’t revolve around us, the world wasn’t ‘made’ for us, we don’t have perfect access to reality through the mind, nor even perfect control over ourselves, we are not separate or different from animals, we are not even fundamentally separate from what we call ‘inanimate’ matter – it too is alive and aware in its own way (all things have life and awareness as part of their ability to exist and interact) and we are not at the pinnacle of creation, we are just far more integrated than our environment and this leads to egoic identification. So the sub-systems that we think of as a body is actually a vast civilization of individual living cells and the human civilization that we think is just an idea is actually a vast organism that assimilates us as its cells. A nation is just as tangible to other nations as we are to each other. And we are just as tiny and incomprehensible to a nation as our cells are to us. It is just a systemic perceptual illusion that civilization is just an idea; to our cells we too are just an idea that is abstractly encoded in their DNA and their cellular processes. In this parallel, a cell’s RNA / protein cycle is like its mind and it’s DNA is like its belief system, which is usually fixed, but it can learn and it can also fray and become 'cynical' and cancerous.
This section goes into detail regarding the depth and the nature of our conditioning. It elucidates just how far from reality we really are, and the deeper systemic processes driving the current global crises; the social, ecological, political, moral, individual and existential crises that plague us and threaten our survival and sanity. There is dis-ease in the world and here we do a systemic diagnosis of that dis-ease. This could be extremely difficult for many people to accept; there are some very challenging revelations ahead. They will quite likely seem unreal at first; too bizarre to be possible. But if you think it through clearly and skeptically you will see the truth of it. In this sense it is like quantum physics; for most people it is too bizarre to be considered ‘real’, but that is just an empiricist / naïve realist prejudice. It is by far the most accurate description of the universe yet developed.
If this diagnosis of our conditioning will be too challenging for you on the first reading then I suggest skipping to the next section for now. And if you are already aware that you are conditioned and you wish to know more about overcoming it, rather than going into a deep analysis of it then you too should skip ahead.
The nature of our conditioning can subtly or radically affect the nature of our experiences and our understanding of everything. Different conditioning causes people to dwell in different worlds (experiential / conceptual context, not an 'objective' context). An example of this, to a limited extent, is the effectiveness of propaganda, advertising, peer/social pressure, 'education' and other forms of manipulation aimed at conditioning people into different societal roles. It can condition people to interpret, experience, comprehend, understand, express and interact in very specialised ways that 'customises' them to fill certain roles from politician to criminal to CEO to factory worker to scientist to movie star and so on [FR].
But this example only illustrates a limited range of states of being because they are all cultural/social/empiricist/objectivist paradigms. However some other extreme states of being are mystics, some artists, geniuses, lunatics, trippers (LSD) and so on. It is impossible to describe these states of being to someone who has never experienced anything like them. They can potentially result in totally and radically different 'world' experiences.
There are two other important systems that co-exist in a symbiotic relationship with humans, which further complicate the situation and therefore cannot be overlooked. They are memes [FR] and organisations [FR]. A meme is like a cognitive virus. It originates within individual minds as a compelling and self-perpetuating idea. These memes evolve as they interact with other memes. They can be transmitted via any communication medium and they permeate the cultural domain. In fact the cultural domain can be thought of as an ecosystem of memes in which our individual minds are micro-environments. The cultural 'network' connects our minds together into a collective cognitive 'environment' within which memes propagate, compete and evolve. Activities such as advertising and propaganda are a form of biological warfare, using cognitive viruses to manipulate and exploit people’s minds.
“You put an idea out there and seed it, and people carry it for you” (president of advertising firm, quoted from The Asian Age, Mumbai, 2007/04/09)
These memetic (cognitive) ecosystems operate in many ways like biological (carbon based) ecosystems, with chains of dependencies, population dynamics, antagonism or cooperation between various memes, meme populations or meme complexes. When exposure to a new meme occurs this can result in a complex cascade of events.
Perhaps the ecosystem is totally hostile to this meme in
which case it is rapidly destroyed
(incredulity, cynical doubt,
closed mind).
Perhaps the ecosystem is already populated with similar and
related memes in which case it may be welcomed warmly into the
fold
(credulity, belief, receptive mind).
Or perhaps things are held in a complex and diverse balance,
a dynamical equilibrium of all available memes where no memes are
given "royal treatment" and none are "demonised and
persecuted", but each is allowed to find it's niche within the
complex network of dependencies and antagonisms. In this way the
overall structure grows and evolves,
(skepticism, holistic
enquiry, open mind).
Furthermore, organisations are systems that evolve 'around' us in the sense that we are the subsystems that integrate to form them. There is a natural process of self-organisation or meta-system transition [FR] that arises in any complex system where the systems communicate and cooperate. Cells communicated and cooperated for mutual benefit and thereby evolved into organisations that we call organisms. Similarly, human development has been a process of increasing communication, cooperation and dependency leading to the growth of organisations such as empires, nations, religions, corporations and so on, up to civilisation as a whole [FR].
Lead in comments then link (Link to or quotes from guided meditations)
In this way the complex dynamical system that we are a part of and which we call 'civilisation' has developed the art of domesticating and customising human beings, extracting their productive potential and channelling this to allow the organisation to pursue it's own organisational agendas. This is analogous to the manner in which we organisms channel the productive capacity of our cellular civilisation (body) and use it to pursue our own agendas.
For example, in a nationalist context:
Individuals are analogous to cells (called 'citizens') and thought of by the nation as microscopic units of production and consumption that drive the metabolic processes of the nation.
Society is analogous to the body (including all domesticated animals, resources and equipment, analogous to bacteria, minerals and mechanical structures within an organism).
The military is analogous to the claws and fangs of the collective organism.
Industry is analogous to the guts and glands.
The police and internal surveillance are analogous to the immune system.
The overall social discourse and flow of information through the nation is analogous to the mind.
The national identity and social history is the personal identity and the life-story or the collective organism.
The grapevine of informal, untraceable social communications is analogous to the subconscious of the collective organism.
The media is analogous to the psychobabble that continuously goes on in the back of one's mind and sometimes leaps to the fore to sweep you away with some particular idea or passion or illusion.
The intelligentsia is analogous to the intellect.
The Government is analogous to the ego; the centralised "I-thought" that assumes that it 'is' the nation, just as the 'I' in each individual tends to assume that it is the body/mind/being. It is a centralised point of control that serves an integrative role but it is also a point around which many perceptual illusions gather, so it has a tendency to fall for the illusion of its own 'power' and "individual existence" hence it can create much confusion, agitation and disruption to the holistic system. This is a vitally important point to apprehend.
A single cell is a whole living being, it possesses in microform, every basic functionality and mechanism of life that we organisms possess. An organisation, when complex and highly evolved, also possesses in macro-form, every basic functionality and mechanism of life that we organisms possess.
For more on this phenomenon of meta-system transition within human organisations see this extended analogy between biology and civilisation [FR], which is another example of an information system theoretic analysis of a phenomenon that provides deep insights into the complex nature of that phenomenon. This idea may seem very abstract and remote from the 'normal' discourse on civilisation however that is due to the limitations of the normal discourse. This is a meta-system transition phenomenon that occurs in ALL complex systems and is driven by growing communication, interaction, cooperation and dependency. Just as gravity effects ALL material systems, including human beings, so too does MST effect ALL complex systems including human beings. Just as cells are whole living beings that integrate to form organisms such as ourselves, which are whole living beings, so too are we integrating to form organisations that have the potential to evolve into whole living beings with their own delusions, agendas, appetites, desires and fears. This is a matter of utmost importance to contemporary humans and the systems analysis sheds deep and penetrating insight into the situation and makes sense of many of the events in the world today. It is strongly recommend that you read the detailed essay [FR].
An important connection between memes and organizations is that, just as all systems have both inner and outer aspects, the ecosystem of memes is the inner aspect of an organization, and what we experience when interacting with organizations is the outer aspect of an ecosystem of memes. When a particular type of meme complex influences people’s minds they are caused to interpret, experience, understand, express and respond to things in ways that assimilate them into some organizational niche. The many minds animate the flow of memes and the many bodies build and operate the equipment that animates the outer aspect of the organization. From families to nations, this phenomenon arises. By controlling the flow of memes one can control the formation and destruction of organizations. This is the power of the media in human civilization; and advertising and propaganda are its two main uses; entertainment and education are of a low priority. The motivation behind the invention of television was a desire to deliver advertising messages into people’s homes so as to further the agendas of corporations, but governments and other organizations have learnt to take advantage of the this powerful memetic syringe that injects ideas directly into billions of minds every evening.
"Coercive Persuasion is the methodical – often subtle or even clandestine - application of psychological manipulation. Coercive Persuasion coerces its targeted audience into ‘perceiving’, ‘learning’ and ‘adopting’ a prescribed set of thoughts, beliefs, values, attitudes and/or behaviors... Coercive Persuasion operates by undermining the individual’s defense mechanisms, their perceptions, their values and their attitudes. Coercive Persuasion alters the otherwise expected personal conduct and the person’s ability to reason - without resorting to physical force. In the current time frame, "coercive persuasion" cleverly and covertly overcomes an individual's decision-making by impacting the individual’s judgment. The victim gradually loses the ability to make independent decisions or to insist on the information necessary to make an informed and intelligent decision." (PSYOPS and "Coercive Persuasion" [FR])
So watching television is like an injection of memetic viruses designed to subvert your self-control and self-awareness, to reinforce your ego, program the ego with desires, aversions, attitudes, paradigms, ways of thinking, ways of responding, ways of interpreting and experiencing, ways of communicating, ways of acting and in general to condition and determine your concept of ‘normality’. These are all memes, there is no reality here, only a complex ecosystem of memes that permeates and conditions our minds and then filters and constructs our experience of reality. The ego is the root meme and all the others build on top of it. A common socially productive way to strengthen the ego is to condition it with feelings of deep inadequacy and a need for MORE. To make people feel isolated and cut off. In truth they are cut off, from reality and the source of all genuine ‘nourishment’. Hence a slow process of existential starvation creates deep and inexpressible emptiness, cravings and despair that are agonizing and provide a driving force that keeps people moving and consuming and producing. Happy, satisfied and content people don’t make productive cells in the 'man machine'( ref link). In this model people must be in despair but also in denial of their despair and only trying to alleviate it by responding in conditioned ways, by repressing it if it isn’t productive for the organisation, or losing themselves in pursuing it if it is; buying more, doing more, taking drugs (especially the pharmaceuticals) and constantly trying to fill a hole that never seems to fill up. What they need is connection to reality but that is the last thing that the organization will let them have because they might escape from the meme stream and the collective dream (nightmare). The organization simply wishes to hold onto ‘its’ vitality. It has acquired us within its ego and considers ‘us’ as just bits of ‘it’.
It is a matter of life and death for organizations to keep us in the meme stream, to keep us reliably and predictable programmed, docile to organizational power (myth of authority is a central meme in this), receptive to organizational memes and resistant or inoculated against memes that are not part of the organizations agenda. If we stray or return to ourselves, these become diminished, they lose the vitality that our minds and actions gave them. And a competing organisation / meme-complex might assimilate us whilst we are unoccupied cognitive territory and an un-utilised resource, (from the viewpoint of the organisation).
If you overcome the mind you step out of the cultural domain entirely, the memes cannot manipulate and control you any more. They may still flow through the mind but the mind no longer controls you, you control the mind. Once the 'I'-thought loses control all the various things that it has ‘acquired’ and identified with are set free, including you, the real you. Your ego can longer be used as a puppet dictator that controls you and is itself controlled by the collective ego. Instead the flow of existential information cleanses the mind and body, you are guided from within and dwell in reality.
Our current organisations are the initial 'phyla' [cells] or basic organisational structures. However they are evolving within the constraints of the environment, the society and the planet as a whole. Given that our fundamental constraint is the finite size of the planet it is perhaps likely to evolve into something like a higher-level planetary cell, where the sub-organisations are like organelles [FR]. Organelles are the cell's metabolic 'machinery', e.g. nucleus, mitochondria [FR], etc.
So you see that we operate within a complex environment where an ecosystem of memes permeates our minds and the culture whilst organisations condition and constrain us into specialised roles and perspectives as part of their own metabolic processes. We are inhabited by memes whilst we inhabit organisations, and we metabolise memes whilst organisations metabolise us. These forces heavily condition our experiences, our understanding and the whole culture.
From this analysis it is clear that when there is a systemic dysfunction (or any systemic event) there is no clear and identifiable subsystem of sub-group that is ‘responsible’. All take part, each in their own way. When you get into a fight your cells may be ‘innocent’ but your nose still gets a fist thrown into it. It is not totally innocent because it is a part of you. All parts of the systems take part in the dance of existential information and memes, that is the holistic situation. In countless subtle ways a person sitting on their couch watching a war on TV and a soldier actually doing the killing are intimately linked and implicated in the same systemic process. All systems fully exist and operate on all levels, so when nations go to war all the people involved are intrinsically implicated in the unfolding of events. It is just a systemic illusion that underlies the attitude of “who is responsible”. This illusion leads to the formulation of many conspiracy theories that are actually misinterpretations of systemic forces [FR].
"Those who argue for a U.S. state conspiracy are proposing a massive, multi-agency conspiracy of a kind which has never been seen before. All the U.S. state agencies hate each other and barely co-operate, engage in endless turf wars. The kind of inter-agency operation you are proposing simply has never existed in peace time. It is inconceivable to me that such a group could be got together. And this is probably the main reason that the official U.S. state organisations and politicians have never taken the conspiracy theories seriously. They know how the U.S. state operates and thus dismiss this idea at the outset." (Robin Ramsay, Editor of Lobster magazine - http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/)
“For anything to happen, the entire universe must coincide. It is wrong to believe that anything in particular can cause an event. Every cause is universal. Your very body would not exist without the entire universe contributing to its creation and survival...” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I am That", p371 [FR])
When we perceive through our senses we get a subjective view from which we form the "idea of the objective world", which then influences our perceptual / experiential process so we come to believe in and experience ourselves as existing within an objective world. So although all we have is a subjective view, we have formed within our minds a pseudo objective view of our environment. It is a pseudo objective view because it is built entirely from whatever information is available through our heavily distorted subjective experiences and not from existential information flowing from the objective domain. It is therefore a construct formed by communication of countless subjective views, which is formed into an idea of an objective world, which is then confused for the actual objective reality. From an empirical subjective perspective we cannot perceive the inner aspect of other systems, nor the information network and flow of information and the primitive states that permeate the systems. So the pseudo objective view cannot comprehend the actual objective view with all the ‘unseen’ information system theoretic dynamics; it is just a subjective view that is assumed to be the objective view. So many things cannot be experienced or comprehended within the pseudo objective world. This is why the idea of the "physical universe" is such a limiting belief system that leaves most of existence classified as paradoxical or unreal.
“Q: What is false, the world, or my knowledge of it?
M: Is
there a world outside your knowledge? Can you go beyond what you
know? You may postulate a world beyond the mind, but it will remain a
concept, unproven and unprovable. Your experience is your proof, and
it is valid for you only. Who else can have your experience, when the
other person is only as real as he appears in your experience?”
(Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I am That", p510 [FR])
“To Sankara [FR] the world is only relatively real [virtual] (Vyavaharika Satta). He advocated Vivarta-Vada or the theory of appearance or superimposition (Adhyasa) [theory of virtuality]. Just as snake is superimposed on the rope in twilight [when one mistakes a rope for a snake], this world and body are superimposed on Brahman or the Supreme Self [objective reality]. If you get knowledge of the rope, the illusion of snake in the rope will vanish. Even so, if you get knowledge of Brahman or the Imperishable, the illusion of body and world will disappear. In Vivarta-Vada [theory of virtuality], the cause produces the effect without undergoing any change in itself. Snake is only an appearance on the rope. The rope has not transformed itself into a snake, like milk into curd [this is implied in the concept ‘virtual’, the simulator doesn’t ‘become’ the simulation world yet it causes it]. Brahman is immutable and eternal. Therefore, It cannot change Itself into the world. Brahman becomes the cause of the world through Maya, which is Its inscrutable mysterious power or Sakti [simulation, virtuality]. ” (http://www.shankaracharya.org/advaita_philosophy.php)
The unified dance of existential information is like a computational context, we are information systems within it; this is the objective view. But we heavily interpret the input signals as the existential information flows through our inner space and we transform it into an experiential context that we experience as being “out there”. Out there, there are objects in space with attributes; these take part in events that occur in time. Some of the objects are people who we communicate with and collectively we form the idea of an objective world into which we all have subjective views. This is quite reasonable, but the error arises when we construct our idea of that objective world solely out of the information available through our subjective views. In this way most of reality, the unseen part, is neglected and we operate on the assumption that it does not exist. This is a profound and far reaching limitation that constrains us to a world of appearances.
All of these objects, people and so on arise when we experience the existential flow as it is channelled by our inner subsystems resulting in experiences and ideas. The objects are actually perceptual forms that arise in consciousness and to which we associate the idea ‘object’ or ‘person’. The actual reality underlying those objects is the dance of existential information that animates the information system whose outer observable form we experience. So although the objects are generally, but not always, based upon an underlying reality, it is actually more accurate to describe them as memes that operate within our minds and propagate through our culture. These memes respond to the existential stimuli and then dance about in the mind, creating a pantomime of thought forms. One could call this a mind puppet.
The memes spread and evolve within the interconnected web of minds that forms the basis of the cultural domain. The activity of our minds animates that context, which in turn assimilates and integrates our minds to form its internal structure or its inner space. So our minds become embedded in a network that channels a cultural memetic flow; just as information systems are embedded in a network that channels existential information. Ultimately all things are animated by the flow of existential information, but by heavily interpreting and distorting this in our minds we come to be animated by the cultural memetic flow. These memes are reflections of the underlying reality and they are often serious distortions or complete fabrications or deceptions. The more confusion and agitation there is in the cultural domain the more confusing and disruptive the memes become. Whilst the existential information is like pure bright white light containing all colours in abundance, the cultural flow has many shades and colours; some so devoid of reality that they form shadow worlds of deep confusion and agitation.
This process of minds connecting to form a cultural memetic ecosystem is related to the formation of worlds within worlds. By channelling the cultural memetic flow we animate that virtual cultural reality and by identifying with it we come to inhabit it and live within entirely culturally constructed worlds. If our culture is in harmony with the underlying reality this can be a creative expression of life, but if the culture is corrupted by destructive memes that oppress, exploit, deceive, manipulate and disempower us, then that cultural world can be a nightmare. The pseudo objective world is just such a cultural construct, it is the world that we believe to be objective, for some it is blissful, for others it is hellish, but for all it is an illusory virtual reality that we collectively create and sustain by giving our attention to it. Collectively we are like a massively parallel mind-matrix that simulates a virtual cultural pseudo-objective world.
"One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to instil in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for social change." (David Barsamian, journalist, Media Watch [FR])
This creation of virtual mind-made worlds is also related to the formation of super-systems via a meta system transition MST. Each level of systems channels the existential information and integrates this into a unified inner space for the super-system. The super-system perceives and experiences its world by using the sub-systems as its experiential process. So the super-system exists and operates at a higher level. For example, your cells experience subtle chemical and electromagnetic signals, but you experience sight, smell, taste, touch and sound. At each higher level the absorption and meaningful assimilation of information occurs at a higher level. There is therefore more entropy or information loss, because the low-level details cannot be discerned. Hence each MST level filters the existential information and things become gradually denser. So high-level systems have very structured experiences based upon all the countless experiences and responses of their sub-systems within sub-systems. They cannot in any way experience reality ‘directly’ but only in their high level conditioned form. If all the entropy or lost information had been retained then they would get the full view, but such a view is not possible because all system interactions involve some degree of entropy.
The existential information filters through countless MST levels, through matter, life, mind and then culture. By this time most of the original information has been lost and the rest heavily transformed and interpreted in very high-level ways. We experience taste, pleasure, pain, fear, shame, hatred, loyalty, trust, doubt, philosophy, music, science and so on. These are extremely high-level phenomenon and operate only within minds that are identified with and function as subsystems within the cultural domain. The culture is therefore a high level symbol processing system (a type of computer). It has a parallel-mind architecture and it channels memes not bits. It simulates a virtual reality and our minds, being embedded in its very computing matrix are intrinsically embedded in the virtual reality. We are like the SMN primitive systems. We exist in the virtual world and experience it from an embedded subjective perspective. In this way the pseudo objective reality is a virtual reality that we inhabit and as the Buddha said: “with our thoughts we make the world” [FR], our personal experiential contexts. And furthermore, with our cultural memetic activity we create the pseudo objective world.
Within the cultural context the pseudo objective world is a virtual objective world; horribly limited compared to reality but nevertheless it is assumed to the objective so for all intents and purposes it is objective to people dwelling within the cultural domain. Within this virtual objective world there exist many virtual systems, things such as corporations, nations, religions, ideologies, movements, traditions and so on. These systems interact and experience that virtual world in their own way just as tangibly as we experience it. When a nation fights a nation they physically clash, to them it isn’t about people clashing, it is they who clash. Just as when two people clash, it isn’t about cells clashing, it’s about two people or two egos to be precise. When fearful ideas haunt our minds our personal pseudo objective worlds become dark and threatening and when fearful memes haunt a nations cultural collective mind its personal pseudo objective world also becomes dark and threatening. So just as the ideas in our minds construct our worlds, so too the memes in a culture construct it’s world. If one’s ideas become delusional then eventual suffering and destruction is inevitable, so too if a nations culture becomes delusional then eventual suffering and destruction is inevitable.
So the ideas, memes, attitudes, interpretations and so on going through our minds and propagating through the culture are the inner life and inner awareness of organizations. They are capable of great coherence such as waging war or massive civil projects. However they are normally not very focused. It is mainly when under threat that the memetic flow of propaganda truly integrates the organization. Our minds are the real estate (territory) in the memetic ecosystem and our input / output capacity is the fundamental resource or energy source that drives organizations. By conditioning our minds to flow with their memes and our behaviours to manifest certain input / output activities, organizations assimilate us like cells within their bodies. To the degree that we are infected by their memes and show symptoms, that much are we assimilated. We can have many ‘allegiances’ but the memes are constantly struggling for dominance over territory (minds) and resources (our life forces). Memes tend to integrate into meme complexes that contain many diverse mutually supportive memes. For example, egoism, empiricism, common sense realism, positivism, desire, fear, greed, capitalism, consumerism, authoritarianism, economic rationalism (not actually rational in the wider context) and so on. All these memes cooperate and support each other in their dominance and control of your mind, and the meme of ‘cynicism’ seals it all by closing your mind, making sure that no other memes can ever get a foothold.
<<Here or elsewhere? Discuss New Science, REG, PEAR, Strings, etc>> [FR] for now here are some brief comments and links:
Quantum physics is rapidly leading us to a mystic perspective and since 1979 there have been experiments that incontrovertibly prove that consciousness has direct influence over physical processes, thus shattering the illusion of materialism. Not only has it been shattered by philosophical argument and psychology and information systems theory but now empirical data proves it. These experiments are analogous to the photoelectric effect that signalled the dawn of quantum physics and the end of classical physics. The experiments categorically prove that there is something fundamentally wrong with both the materialist and Cartesian dualist perspectives on reality.
The REG (Random Event Generator) experiments at the Princeton
Engineering Anomalies Research lab prove beyond doubt that
consciousness has real measurable effects on physical processes and
that roughly 80% of those tested, all 'normal' people, had a
measurable influence on the output of the REG's. These effects are
not attenuated by distance and they have the same strength whether
the events are simultaneous with the intentional influence or whether
the events are in the past or the future! They are magnified by
psychological bonds such as love and by cognitive discipline such as
focused non-agitated awareness (e.g. via meditation). The measurable
effects also arise without intentional influence and can be used to
monitor the coherence of the ambient field of consciousness. There is
currently a network of machines monitoring the moment by moment
fluctuations in the global consciousness; the overall statistics for
the Global Consciousness Project (GCP), after nine years of data
accumulation, indicate a probability of about one in ten million that
the correlation of the data with the specified global events is
merely due to chance. These aren't vague crackpot experiments, there
is NO DOUBT about the data, the only thing in contention is the
interpretation of the data. There has been resistance to interpreting
these experiments because core materialist beliefs are fundamentally
challenged by them.
The results are "empirical facts that
are anomalies from the perspective of standard (mainstream)
scientific models."
(http://noosphere.princeton.edu/conclusions.html)
The
PEAR REG experiments: (The modern equivalent of the photoelectric
effect)
First some background:
REG
Experiments: Equipment and Design (A brief
abstract)
http://www.princeton.edu/~rdnelson/reg.html
Details
of the
methodology
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/methodology.html
Paranormal
Meets Physics (General non-scientific
article)
http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa062298.htm
Then
some data:
List
of PEAR Publications (Over 50 available directly on the
net)
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/publications.html
Correlation
of global events with reg data: An internet-based, nonlocal
anomalies experiment - Statistical Data
Included
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_3_65/ai_83262438
The
MegaREG Experiment: Replication and
Interpretation
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/pdfs/jse_papers/MegaREG.pdf
Field
REG Experiments of Religious Rituals and Other Group Events in
Paraná,
Brazil.
http://www.kisc.meiji.ac.jp/~hirukawa/paper/FieldREG.doc
Analysis
of Variance of REG Experiments: Operator Intention, Secondary
Parameters, Database Structure
http://www.princeton.edu/~rdnelson/anova.html
The
Global Consciousness Project: (GCP or the Electro-Gaia-Gram
EGG)
Main GCP
website
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
Introduction
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/science2.html
The
primary results
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/results.html
EGG
data archive
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/gcpdata.html
Also
see some informal
comments:
http://www.anandavala.info/TASTMOTNOR/The%20New%20Science.html
Ultimately there are only two fundamental approaches or fundamental paradigms. One is to overlook the role of consciousness and contemplate the objects of consciousness as 'objects' (e.g. perceptions, thoughts, etc). This leads to an empiricist, materialist, objectivist, naive realist, logical approach through which one must laboriously struggle to see through the thick veil of confusion (but after many centuries people are succeeding). Or one can contemplate consciousness itself and interpret the 'objects' as modifications of consciousness; this can lead to realising the true nature of things in a single life. This leads to a mystic, subjective and intuitive approach. Both approaches give valid perspectives on reality but mysticism [FR] is more fundamental because we cannot ever know the object "as it is", we can only experience the modifications of our consciousness and infer equivalence between the object of consciousness and the alleged object "as it is". Though due to the influence of preconceived ideas the object of consciousness may bare little resemblance to the object "as it is", or the object may not even exist at all in the sense that we think it does. Materialism, empiricism and objectivism did not make this subtle distinction and became entangled in a knot of confusions from which they are only now disentangling themselves.
It is more coherent to first contemplate consciousness and its role in 'constructing' our experiences and then to contemplate the 'content' of our experiences. This is a vitally important point. Consciousness is the most fundamental 'instrument' in any scientific, philosophical or mystic enquiry; we could not experience or know anything without it. It influences all of our experiences and ideas so first we must comprehend and master this powerful tool and then we can use it safely and effectively. Once consciousness is understood, many of the other 'problems' and questions are seen to be artefacts of a flawed understanding. Hence they simply dissolve like a shadow when the light of knowledge and awareness is cast upon it.
Many people's misconceptions about subjectivity and objectivity keep them bound in a pseudo objective world, dwelling solely in the cultural domain of ideas whilst they believe they are perceiving and experiencing an objective reality. They are experiencing objective reality to some degree, but their experience is heavily distorted by collective and individual ideas. Whereas the mystics and visionaries who clarify their consciousness and delve deep, coming to know the true objective domain, they are often considered suspect or delusional from the perspective of the cultural discourse because they are perceived to be behind the subjective domain. From the cultural domain one must cross the subjective domain to get to the objective domain because the cultural domain is a construct of communicated subjective experiences. So the mystics and materialists both see each other on the opposite side of the subjective domain and each claims that the other is dwelling in a world of ideas that are separated from reality. This analysis indicates that it is the mystics, who go deep within and clarify their consciousness, who are closest to reality. Whilst the empiricists and objectivists who confused their experiences and ideas with reality, and the scientists who have neglected the role of consciousness and spent centuries in denial of subjectivity but who are highly educated and knowledgeable about collective ideas, these people are separated from objective reality by the subjective domain and are thus further from reality. The objectivity they seek lies behind the subjectivity that they fear.
Mysticism [FR] is commonly associated with superstition and wishful thinking or with fanatical religion but mysticism is actually holistic and open-minded enquiry into and participation in reality. It represents thousands of years of deep experience and growing wisdom of such a subtle and profound nature that it is only now beginning to be understood by the cutting edge of philosophy and science.
"Process philosophy identifies metaphysical reality with change and dynamism... favoring "Becoming" over "Being" and "Non-being" which logically follows from Being, that is to say, it does not characterize change as illusory but as the cornerstone of metaphysical reality, or ontology... Whitehead's ideas were a significant development of the idea of panpsychism (also known as panexperientialism, because of Whitehead’s emphasis on experience)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy) [FR]
<<quote I Ching about ‘Change’>>
"Panpsychism, in philosophy, is either the view that all parts of matter involve mind, or the more holistic view that the whole universe is an organism that possesses a mind... This is not to say that panpsychism believes that all matter is alive or even conscious but rather that the constituent parts of matter are composed of some form of mind and are sentient.
Panpsychism claims that everything is sentient and that there are either many separate minds, or one single mind that unites everything that is. The concept of the unconscious, made popular by the psychoanalysts, made possible a variant of panpsychism that denies consciousness from some entities while still asserting the ubiquity of mind.
Panexperientialism, as espoused by Alfred North Whitehead is a weaker variation, which credits all entities with phenomenal consciousness but not with cognition, and therefore not necessarily with fully-fledged minds.
Panprotoexperientialism is a weaker variation still, which credits all entities with non-physical properties that are precursors to phenomenal consciousness (or phenomenal consciousness in a latent, undeveloped form) but not with cognition itself, or with conscious awareness. " (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism)
The SMN mathematical model and the resulting IST philosophy are closest to Panprotoexperientialism. But they recognise the other variants as valid perspectives but which use too high-level analogies such a 'mind', 'cognition' and 'consciousness' to be able to be taken literally. This work likens the inner aspect of systems or their proto-awareness to computation; however it does not mean just the kind of activity that physical computers engage in; that is just one very particular case of computation. Computation is a general principle that involves the coherent input, transformation and output of information. E.g. when any two particles interact they exchange information, they experience each other and respond, hence they are engaged in a computation. Any act of perception or cognition is also a computation in some form. Physical computers perform very simple logical computations very quickly so they have become intimately related to the concept of computation but they represent just one type of computation. Hence IST "credits all entities with non-physical properties that are precursors to phenomenal consciousness".
Furthermore, SMN and IST both indicate the existence of a deep unity within consciousness. At the deepest levels there is only a single stream of computation, which manifests as many individual streams of proto-awareness and eventually consciousness. The underlying framework of unity is similar to concepts of intersubjectivity. For example:
Intersubjectivity in its strongest ontological meaning implies "mutual co-arising and engagement of interdependent subjects, or intersubjects, which creates their respective experience. It is ontological. Strong or ontological intersubjectivity relies on co-creative nonphysical presence, and brings distinct subjects into being out of a prior matrix of relationships." (Christian de Quincey [FR])
“Q: Are you a part of the world that I have in consciousness,
or are you independent?
M: What you see is yours [cultural
domain] and what I see is mine [objective domain]. The two
have little in common.
Q: There must be some common factor which unites us?
M: To
find the common factor you must abandon all distinctions [detach
from the world of ideas]. Only the universal is in common [the
objective domain underlies the world of ideas].”
(Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I am That", p510 [FR])
Only at the deepest level of existence are we all One. The world of ideas is created by confusing the illusion of separated existence in a world of objects, space and time, as one’s reality; then one experiences being a separate consciousness in a world. But the world and everything in it has a common unified foundation.
In this holistic context one can just apply objectivist scientific methods and produce useful results but one remains entirely within the cultural domain and working within a conceptual framework that is built upon systemic, biological and historical assumptions about the nature of perception and experience. If one seeks deep understanding one must pass through the subjective domain to approach objective reality. The goal is true objectivity but we must be both objective and subjective to approach it. We cannot help but be subjective, we are fundamentally subjective beings, and science is no longer in denial of this but it has yet to unravel the full ramifications of this realization. In the early 20th century the photo-electric effect was just a minor unsolved detail and physicists believed that they had already discovered everything of importance, and that minor detail then unravelled into quantum physics! So too the minor detail of the nature and role of consciousness unravels into mysticism, metaphysics, spirituality and a path toward a holistic science.
When a person's subconscious interpretations and comprehensions are heavily influenced by collective ideas they experience and dwell in the cultural domain. The maze of preconceived ideas channels experience and thought to produce a seemingly complete and compelling illusion. If they adopt a materialist paradigm they dwell in a physical universe as an object in space. If they adopt a mystic paradigm they dwell in a spiritual universe as a free flowing manifestation of the cosmos. Each captures an aspect of reality but both of these are ultimately just cultural constructs.
“The light of consciousness passes through the film of memory
and throws pictures on your brain. Because of the deficient and
disordered state of your brain, what you perceive is distorted and
coloured by feeling of like and dislike. Make your thinking orderly
and free from emotional overtones, and you will see people and things
as they are, with clarity and charity.”
(Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj, "I am That", p397 [FR])
Only when distorting ideas do not influence interpretation can they experience and come to know and dwell in the true objective reality. By returning to direct experience through "inner awareness" and dropping the distortions of inaccurate ideas we can better channel the existential information through our subjective experiences without distortion and feed this through to the cultural domain.
"In the final analysis our compass must be
our
relationship with a central order . . . "
(Werner
Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond, 1971, one of the founders of
Quantum Physics)
"We have fallen into a place [cultural
domain]
were everything is music....
[appearances, impressions, sensory stimulation, ideas, theories]
The singing art is sea foam. [it builds
out of itself vast complex structures]
The graceful movements
come from a pearl [a single unified
source]
somewhere on the ocean floor... [deep
within, the foundation, the innermost essence of things]
They derive
from a slow and powerful root
[the process of the real is unstoppable and enduring]
that
we can't see.
[it is the 'seeing' within sight and not an object of sight]
Stop the words now.
[disentangle yourself from preconceived ideas]
Open the
window in the center of your chest, [clarify
your awareness]
and let the spirits fly in and out."
[participate in reality and not in mind made pseudo
reality]
(Jelaluddin Balkhi aka Rumi)
The process of "turning within" is a process of getting acquainted with our own perceptual/experiential process and thereby clarifying our processing of existential information. Meditation, renunciation or devotional practices of some kind are the usual method but there are countless approaches. It involves developing a deeper understanding and command over our inner space. This is similar to a child developing command over their body through play. The "inner space" or perceptual/experiential process is the mechanism by which we experience and know the universe so by developing it we can better comprehend and participate in the universe.
"Cut the root of a tree and the leaves will wither; cut the root of your mind [naive, habitual interpretation and comprehension] and samsara [world illusion] falls. The light of any lamp dispels in a moment the darkness of long kalpas [aeons]; the strong light of the Mind in but a flash will burn the veil of ignorance.
Whoever clings to mind sees not the truth of what's beyond the mind. Whoever strives to practice dharma [spiritual path] finds not the truth beyond-practice.
To know what is beyond both mind and practice one should cut
cleanly through the root of mind and stare naked. One should thus
break away from all distinctions and remain at ease. "
(Tilopa's
Song of Mahamudra [FR])
The 'root' is both the subconscious interpretation of our perceptions that conditions our experiences and also the subconscious comprehension of our experiences that conditions our understanding.
The "veil of ignorance" is the influence of collective knowledge on personal ideas and then on interpretation and comprehension.
"Staring naked" is equivalent to ‘awe’; it is to experience one's perceptions without cognitive distortions.
Samsara is dwelling in a world that is a construct of personal and collective ideas. It is the cultural domain, in particular it is the pseudo objective world that people experience when their experiences are distorted by the "idea of the objective world".
The phrase “cut cleanly through the root of mind and stare naked” does not imply killing the mind. It is re-identification with the deeper awareness that underlies the mind. By not identifying your self with the content of the mind but rather with the underlying essence of awareness then the content does not affect you, ‘you’ go beyond the mind and dwell in the reality that is beyond all words, ideas, thoughts and experiences – it is the essence of all of these.
“Q: If the immovable [objective reality] cannot be
known, what is the meaning and purpose of its realization?
M: To
realize the immovable is to become immovable. And the purpose is the
good of all that lives.
Q: Life is movement, Immobility is death. Of what use is death
to life?
M: I am talking of immovability, not immobility. You
become immovable in righteousness. You become a power which gets all
things right. It may or may not imply intense outward activity, but
the mind remains deep and quiet.
Q: As I watch my mind I find it changing all the time, moods
succeeding moods in infinite variety, while you seem to be
perpetually in the same mood of cheerful benevolence.
M: Moods are
in the mind and do not matter. Go within, go beyond. Cease being
fascinated with the content of your consciousness. When you reach the
deep layers of your true being, you will find that the mind's
surface-play affects you very little.
Q: There will be play all the same?
M: A quiet mind is not a
dead mind.
Q: Consciousness is always in movement - it is an observable
fact. Immovable consciousness is a contradiction. When you talk of a
quiet mind, what is it? Is not mind the same as consciousness?
M:
We must remember that words are used in many different ways according
to the context. The fact is that there is little difference between
the conscious and the unconscious - they are essentially the same.
The waking state differs from deep sleep [due to] the presence
of the witness. A ray of awareness illumines a part of our mind and
that part becomes our dream or waking consciousness, while awareness
appears as the witness. The witness usually knows only consciousness.
Sadhana [path leading to realization] consists in the witness
turning back, first on his conscious, then upon himself in his own
awareness. Self awareness is Yoga [union with existence].” (Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I am That", p508-9 [FR])
"Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which the sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced. The mystics... endeavour to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls." (Abraham Heschel [FR])
"And we, with our unveiled faces reflecting like mirrors the glory of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect." (Bible, 2 Corinthians, 3:18)
"...To bring Peace to All, one must first discipline and control one's own mind" (Buddha [FR])
By making direct contact with reality the confusion, agitation and consequent distortion of our perceptual / experiential process gives way to wisdom, harmony and clarity. The deeper coherence of the Cosmos flows through us and we come to 'reflect' this deep coherence in our own lives.
"Mahamudra or the "Great Seal" ["Great Symbol" or "Supreme Gesture"] refers to a Mahayana Buddhist system of meditation on the nature of the mind and is undertaken for realizing Enlightenment - the complete elimination from the mind of all delusions and obstacles...
[It involves] meditation to develop mental quiescence (samatha) and penetrative insight (vipasyana). The former is the achievement of single-minded concentration in which you reach the mind's basic or natural level of blissful, clear, bare awareness, free from mental dullness, agitation and wandering. Penetrative insight is into Voidness or the true, transparent-like nature of reality in terms of this pure, mirror-like mind. With the joint achievement of both, you eliminate the darkness of ignorance that had been obscuring your realisation of what had been the case all along. By familiarising yourself with your innate, pure, pristine awareness of reality, coupled with an Enlightened Motive, you eventually become a totally awakened being, a Buddha with the full ability to help others." (Alexander Berzin, trans "Mahamudra: Eliminating the Darkness of Ignorance", by the Ninth Karmapa {1556-1603})
"Buddha gave this as the ultimate / final teaching. It
leads to a direct experience of the mind."
(Topga Yulgyal
Rinpoche [FR])
"In Mahamudra all one's sins [delusion, agitation] are burned; in Mahamudra one is released from the prison of this world [entrapment in illusion]. This is the dharma's supreme torch. Those who disbelieve it are fools, who ever wallow in misery and sorrow...
To transcend duality is the kingly view. To conquer distractions is the royal practice. The path of no-practice is the way of all buddhas. He who treads that path reaches buddhahood... [FR]
If without effort you remain loosely in the natural state, soon Mahamudra you will win and attain the nonattainment.
To know what is beyond both mind and practice one should cut cleanly through the root of mind and stare naked. One should thus break away from all distinctions and remain at ease.
The supreme understanding transcends all this and that. The
supreme action embraces great resourcefulness without attachment. The
supreme accomplishment is to realize immanence without hope. At first
a yogi feels his mind is tumbling like a waterfall; in mid-course
like the Ganges , it flows on slow and gentle; in the end it
is a great vast ocean where the lights of son and mother merge in
one."
(Tilopa's Song of Mahamudra [FR])
This does not describe a ‘technique’ or something you should ‘do’ and it doesn’t result in some abstract ‘heightened state’; it merely returns you to your natural state. It directs you toward being yourself: “If without effort you remain loosely in the natural state, soon Mahamudra you will win and attain the nonattainment.” i.e. the state of being your Self in reality, rather than being a confused and agitated individual in a pseudo objective world of your own imagining. To see through the illusion or the world of appearances requires no effort, just be “loose and natural”.
“Q: Must I not use effort to arrest the movements of the
mind?
M: It has nothing to do with effort. Just turn away, look
between the thoughts, rather than at the thoughts. When you happen to
walk in a crowd, you do not fight every man you meet - you just find
your way between.
Q: If I use my will to control the mind, it only strengthens
the ego.
M: Of course. When you fight you invite a fight. But when
you do not resist you meet with no resistance. When you refuse to
play the game, you are out of it.
Q: How long will it take me to get free of the mind?
M: It
may take a thousand years, but really no time is required. All you
need is to be in dead earnest. Here the will is the deed. If you are
sincere, you have it. After all, it is a matter of attitude. Nothing
stops you from being a gnani [knower of the Highest Knowledge]
here and now, except fear. You are afraid of being impersonal, of
impersonal being. It is all quite simple. Turn away from your desires
and fears and from the thoughts they create and you are at once in
your natural state.”
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I
am That", p333 [FR])
"The ego and vanity in man often stand in the way of his acceptance of the position that super-ordinary consciousness, to which he is a total stranger, can be possible for some members of the species to which he belongs. This frame of mind is often pronounced in scholars who fondly believe that more and more extensive knowledge of the world and its infinitely varied phenomena provided by poring over vast libraries of books, is the only expansion and advancement possible to the human mind. It cannot but be repugnant to a polymath to be told that there is a learning beyond his grasp, that the very nature of the mind can change and can soar to normally super-sensible planes of being, which are inaccessible to the keenest intellect, however well informed and penetrating it might be." (Gopi Krishna from ‘The Wonder Of The Brain’)
“To Sankara [FR], the Jiva or the individual soul is only relatively real [virtual, exists only in the world of appearance]. Its individuality lasts only so long as it is subject to unreal Upadhis or limiting conditions due to Avidya [ignorance]. The Jiva identifies itself with the body, mind and the senses, when it is deluded by Avidya or ignorance. It thinks, it acts and enjoys, on account of Avidya. In reality it is not different from Brahman or the Absolute [objective reality]. The Upanishads declare emphatically: ‘Tat Tvam Asi—That Thou Art.’…the Jiva or the empirical self becomes one with Brahman when it gets knowledge of Brahman. When knowledge dawns in it through annihilation of Avidya, it is freed from its individuality and finitude and realises its essential Satchidananda nature. It merges itself in the ocean of bliss. The river of life joins the ocean of existence. This is the Truth.
The release from Samsara [dwelling in the world of appearances] means, according to Sankara, the absolute merging of the individual soul in Brahman due to dismissal of the erroneous notion that the soul is distinct from Brahman. According to Sankara, Karma [FR] and Bhakti [FR] are means to Jnana [FR] which is Moksha [liberation].” ( http://www.shankaracharya.org/advaita_philosophy.php)
“M: The perceiver of the world, is he prior to the world, or does he come into being along with the world?
Q: What a strange question! Why do you ask such strange
questions?
M: Unless you know the correct answer, you will not
find peace.
Q: When I wake up in the morning, the world is already there,
waiting for me. Surely the world comes into being first. I do, but
much later, at the earliest at my birth. The body mediates between me
and the world. Without the body there would be neither me nor the
world.
M: The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content
of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of
consciousness, which changes eternally without changing you in any
way. Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it.
Have a good look at yourself and all these misapprehensions and
misconceptions will dissolve. Just as all the little watery lives are
in water and cannot be without water, so all the universe is in you
and cannot be without you.
Q: We call it God.
M: God is only an idea in your mind. The
fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: ‘here and now I
am’. Remove the ‘here and now’, the ‘I am’ remains,
unassailable. The world exists in memory, memory comes into
consciousness; consciousness exists in awareness and awareness is the
reflection of the light on the waters of existence.” (Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj, “I am That’, p190 [FR])
“The main purpose of jnana [FR] meditation is to withdraw the mind and emotions from perceiving life and oneself in a deluded way so that one may behold and live in attunement with Reality, or Spirit.” (yogaworld.org /jnana.htm)
Return to direct experience (staring naked) cleanses the confusions that have arisen over time; it removes subconscious impressions that distort our interpretation and comprehension of perceptions and experiences. To cleanse and illuminate the mind ultimately one cannot use the mind, because the mind embodies the very distortion that needs to be clarified.
"Do nought with the body but relax; shut firm the mouth and silent remain; empty your mind and think of nought. Like a hollow bamboo rest at ease with your body.
Giving not nor taking, put your mind at rest. Mahamudra is like a mind that clings to nought. Thus practicing, in time you will reach buddhahood.
The practice of mantra and paramita [various practices],
instruction in the sutras and precepts [ancient writings], and
teaching from the schools and scriptures [mystic wisdom], will
not bring realization of the innate truth. For if the mind when
filled with some desire should seek a goal, it only hides the
light."
(Tilopa's Song of Mahamudra [FR])
Once the channel of the mind is cleared the existential information is less distorted and flows through to the cultural domain, giving rise to mystic paradigms [FR], cutting edge scientific and metaphysical paradigms, countless writings and practices. However the feedback loops and transformations dissipate and distort the information over time. Because of this decay process we need continuous connection to objective reality and dissemination of information to avoid spiralling into illusion. This is especially important when there is much confusion, agitation and deliberate misrepresentation, all of which hasten the process of decay into illusion.
"The way is for ever
nameless.
[objective reality]
Though the uncarved block is
small
[unified dance of light, no separation, no distance, no
dimension]
No one in the world dare claim its
allegiance.
Should lords and princes be able to hold fast to
it
The myriad creatures will submit of their own accord,
Heaven
and earth will unite and sweet dew will fall,
And the people will
be equitable, though no one so decrees.
Only when it [the
uncarved block] is cut are there names.
[discrimination, concepts, theories, cultural domain]
As soon
as there are names
One ought to know that it is time to
stop.
[don’t get entangled in ideas – stay connected even though
ideas flow]
Knowing when to stop one can be free from
danger."
(Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu [FR])
The "uncarved block" is the objective reality. When the uncarved block is 'cut' and reality is conceptualised and 'named' we get "the ten thousand things" and "the myriad creatures" and thereby enter the cultural domain of abstract ideas where we begin to drift away from reality. But this cannot be avoided, if the world is to rise out of darkness the light must be shed, even if it is dispersed and distorted along the way. So long as we have continual connection and continual flow the stream of light will not stagnate and crystallise into entrenched delusion. Only in regions of the cultural domain where the light has been blocked, does there arise delusions.
The subtle information system theoretic insights are communicated using empirical analogies, such as "God as a being in Heaven who has infinite powers and who knows everything". One can only communicate ideas by taking known concepts and relations and fashioning them into an analogy; that is the nature of communication. For example, one can only speak to you by choosing words from languages, whether spoken or conceptual, that you understand. For many people caught in a world of people, places, things and egoic power struggles analogies such as a "being in a world" that acts like a 'lord' is the only thing that they could understand. But God [FR] is not a being in a world, otherwise where does that world come from? Analogies can be easily misunderstood, especially when taken literally. The concept 'God' refers to the ultimate foundation and substance of existence, the all pervading existential essence that is the inner-most being of all things; all else is just perceptual impressions and ideas about perceptual impressions; nothing would exist without God so to believe or disbelieve makes no-sense; if you exist then you know God exists because God is just an analogy for existence. All belief and disbelief arises from confusion about the analogy. To confused believers God is an all powerful being that they know of through ancient stories that they believe; this being demands obedience to certain laws and worship in certain ways. And to confused dis-believers any mention of the word 'God' and they think only about some delusional story about someone's "imaginary friend". Remember, both belief and dis-belief are forms of belief, i.e. faith based upon trust or distrust. One has faith that the God-being exists or that He doesn’t exist. The only rational approach is to open-mindedly enquire for oneself and to gain direct experience and knowledge of reality. Hence the only rational path is the path of mysticism [FR].
An analogy is like a finger pointing at the moon. If you look only at the finger you will not see the moon. This is what happens when people take analogies literally or consider them as purely literary or poetic expressions. If you look only at the finger and you are prone to belief you will believe that the finger is the moon; or if you are prone to dis-belief you will think the person pointing is delusional – “how can anyone be so silly as to think that their finger is the moon?” These two confusions then fight against each other and lead to endless confusion and agitation, which totally confuses the analogy even further. The meanings of its words become distorted by the ongoing confused and confusing discourse and the analogy becomes unusable.
This is the case with the debate between Christians and scientists over the existence of God [FR]. Generally the debate is entirely bound in the empirical pseudo objective world illusion and it just forms a tangle of confusion and agitation within the cultural domain. It is just ideas chasing ideas around in people’s minds and nobody realises that they are all far from reality and struggling their way through delusion. Neither do they realise that reality is right under their noses and one need only make contact with it to clear up all the confusion. The very methods of debate keep them trapped in the illusory cultural domain, for example, below is a quote, with editorial emphasis, from the introduction to a very lengthy and scholarly analysis of the question “Does God Exist?”:
“If anyone can point out a fallacy in this argument, or show that one of the premises in the argument is flawed, I would like to know about it. I invite anyone to challenge the argument. I only ask that the basic axioms of realistic philosophy be accepted: we exist, the world exists independently of us, the principle of contradiction is true, and our minds are capable of knowing objective reality. With that proviso, this is the argument to be investigated: If the existence of the universe as a whole needs to be explained, and if it cannot be explained by natural causes, then we must look to the existence and action of other than a natural cause for its explanation.” (http://radicalacademy.com/doesgodexist.htm)
The naive realism and empiricism that he calls “realistic philosophy” is the very thing that will prevent him from coherently approaching the subject. From this foundation of extreme and spurious assumptions one cannot build a coherent argument about God. He doesn’t even consider it to be a premise in his argument, it is just “correct procedure” based upon the naive realist, empiricist assumption that this is just that way the world is and anything else is nonsense. This type of approach is typical of purely cultural debates such as Science vs. Religion. It conceives of the pseudo objective world as “the physical universe” which is plainly accessible to the mind and it posits God as some entity in a world, with a mind and a will like ours, who’s world is separate from ours and who ‘created’ the physical universe. An entity that is therefore a separate agent or a separate will outside this universe and is therefore ‘unnatural’ and can only act upon the universe by ‘miracles’ that contravene the laws of nature. For example in the book “The God Delusion” Richard Dawkins refers to what he calls the God Hypothesis as the idea that “there exists a super-human, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us”. Furthermore he refers to Yahweh the ancient Jewish name for God as “arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.” It is quite clear that Dawkins is arguing against a confused and delusional concept of God. It is like trying to disprove Santa Claus. The confused concept of God is the most prevalent one throughout the modern world.
Invariably, mysticism [FR] is misunderstood and misrepresented, thus it turns into religion and superstition and then political/religious institutions and then science as a rejection of the corruption and obvious delusion of the political/religious institutions. These things do serve a purpose and provide an entry point for some but it generally creates confusion. For those who interpret things literally or naively or empirically or with cynicism, it leads to endless confusion and entrapment in the naïve realist empiricist pseudo objective world that we call “the world” or “the physical universe”. So we remain trapped within the world constructed from our ignorance and we remain bound by its constraints; we cannot know ourselves as we are and participate fully in reality.
The ignorant completely underestimate the power of mystic wisdom and when it is misunderstood and exploited within political agendas it can provide a powerful tool with which to manipulate and exploit vast populations, but it leads to endless agitation; as we can see with the political/religious fanaticism and atrocities over the centuries and the growing social, ecological and political crises that are threatening the survival of life on this planet. When disconnected from reality we spiral into delusion and we aimlessly wander towards annihilation.
The abuse of mystic wisdom for political purposes dates back to the earliest times of recorded history; it was instrumental in the arising of what we call civilisation. Throughout the Neolithic / hunter – gatherer societies mysticism was the lifeblood of society. It connected people with the natural world, with each other and with the underlying reality, the spirit world as they conceived of it. However as the growth of organisations progressed the nature of society changed and the immense power of the mystic traditions was channelled into new forms that inspired the growth of civilisation. This growth of organisations has been discussed very briefly earlier and also in the essays The First Cambrian Explosion or the Global Cellular Meta-System Transition and The Second Cambrian Explosion or the Global Human Meta-System-Transition. Here is a quoted passage from the second essay to explain a phenomenon referred to by some as the “man machine”; note the term ‘man’ is used in the old sense of ‘mankind’.
“People became more and more dependent on these organisations and came to identify with their organisational roles and to conceive of themselves from within the discourse of the organisation, thus they were assimilated or harnessed into the organisations. The people became more enmeshed in external cultural forms expressed in terms of an objective external world and they lost touch with their inner subjective exprience of reality.
Around the time of the Sumerian and Egyptian societies these innovations in communication and institutionalisation of power relations led to the invention of the Man Machine. An organisational methodology evolved where a ruling class controlled the masses via intricate traditions and superstitions, which are the source of the myth of authority or organisational power. This had first evolved within the context of the tribe with 'authority' arising from the informal structure (organic society) and then being enshrined within the formal structure (institutionalised society).
A brief aside: although later words such as ‘broken’ and ‘subvert’ are used it does not imply any form of value judgement as to whether this is right or wrong. Such values depend entirely upon ones agenda; if one wishes to remain natural then it is wrong but if one wishes to create beyond oneself and extend the range of the natural then it may be right. But these are a separate issue and here it is simply discussed as general phenomena.
Furthermore, although this discussion touches upon sensitive subjects, such as the treatment of the young; for the sake of clarity polite euphemisms that conceal the truth are avoided and direct terms are used in a descriptive sense. For example, one may speak of breaking-in a horse to make it obedient to human commands and useful within the context of human agendas. Or one may speak of educating it for its own benefit and teaching it to become a useful member of a community. The first statement is far more direct.
To build the man machine the informal structure had to be disempowered, the tribe had to be broken, its processes and traditions had to be subverted [and its traditions distorted and used to deceive and manipulate the people]. Just as when one takes a wild animal and subverts its basic functions in order to extract work from it, such as yoking it to a plough; one takes a natural collective of humans and yokes them into a labour system of some kind. For this the wisdom of the tribe and the personal contact with the world had to be broken. The personal subjective relationship between an individual and their immediate experience of the world was broken, people became isolated physical bodies, able to be utilised by the man machine.
This same general pattern has been seen repeated in numerous colonisations throughout history. Furthermore each new generation that is born is a product of a holistic resonance with the world, the organic collective is trying to counter the imbalance, but the formal structure must break each generation in turn to maintain the man machine. In a healthy organic society adolescents are not as they are in modern societies, in modern societies the young are being heavily conditioned, their minds are being re-programmed, their natural spirits broken, their innate hope and joy are being crushed, they are being alienated from themselves, from others and the whole organic cosmos. They are being assimilated into a cultural construct and in this way they are bound into the man machine and they become useful members of society. Their life energies are diverted from the purpose of living their lives and channelled in ways that are useful for the man machine.
The inner vision of the world as it could and should be that we each hold in our hearts, as this vision was betrayed and replaced by societal myths, expediency and obedience, the man machine grew stronger. As the tribe's contact with the web of life was broken, and so too each child's contact with their inner life was broken , the man machine grew stronger. Just like a horse we have been "broken in". Through rewards and punishments our natural autonomy and sense of self-worth is broken and replaced by a craving for acceptance and approval from others; particularly those who wield the magic of authority.
With the people confused and powerless, and the organisational structure of the tribe shattered the people then become a raw material that can be fashioned into the man machine [any form of mysticism [FR] or ways of connecting with reality had to be carefully expunged through the myth of taboo and through deception, but people’s innate nature cannot be destroyed, it was only suppressed]. The role of shaman evolved to became the high priest who became the media. The role of tribal elder became the pharaoh who became the government/corporate sectors and the role of the people became slaves, workers and consumers. The population is immersed in a system of myths backed up by physical and psychological force; the power is appropriated from the people and a hierarchical system of roles distributes the power and applies it in specialised situations.
Thus a population of humans can be organised into a mass labour system, which can be centrally controlled and has a productive capacity far exceeding that of an individual human (just as eukaryote [single celled] organisations, or organisms, exceeded individual eukaryotes). Thus a single person or single group could wield the power of many as if it was their own. Smaller and less organised populations were overpowered and annihilated or assimilated, and vast works were undertaken, some of which can still be seen today in the form of the pyramids.
This process has only been going on for several thousands of years so it is still in the early stages but it has progressed in marked ways; the institutionalisation of power has become more entrenched, less questioned and more ubiquitous. People conceive of themselves primarily in terms of the organisational discourse, they are citizens, consumers, workers, students, job seekers, employees, officials and so on; not simply organisms or organic systems of experience and reproduction. We are no longer beings in the world but individuals in society.
This is not some conscious conspiracy; it is a self-perpetuating feedback loop. Each generation is broken and in turn breaks the succeeding generation – each is simply doing what it feels to be the best. Questions of right or wrong have no simple answers here. It is an organic process of self-organisation; a restructuring from one organisational principle to another. It is no surprise that the young "act up". In one respect their innate nature is in the process of being betrayed by their society and they are being deceived and alienated from themselves. In another respect they are being educated and refined, civilised and augmented in ways that will extend their latent abilities.
Youths are biologically programmed to be trusting so that they will more easily assimilate into society but they are only given euphemisms and positive propaganda to explain what is happening to them, they are not able to comprehend the negative aspects. But the pain that they feel tells them that something bad is happening, so they are horribly confused by what is going on. This often leads to distrust and cynicism towards society, which in turn causes them to be perceived as trouble makers, thus they are further alienated. In this manner the process of socialisation produces many casualties, but so long as the majority of people accept the conditioning process and the casualties don’t cause too much damage, the process is successful and perpetuates from one generation to the next. With each successive generation we become more dependent upon the societal organisation. We gradually lose touch with one state of being and become more entangled within another state of being.
Over time the mechanisms and paths of communication have evolved considerably allowing for mass control of the mechanism of encountering the world. People now primarily interpret their world via the lens of culture and media dominated discourses rather than via direct experience and word of mouth. The means of production and distribution have evolved to the extent that people are entirely dependent upon the organisation for their necessities of life. The geographical arrangement of people has become rigidly institutionalised with cities encasing people into multi-cellular like structures of apartment blocks and suburban blocks that act like cell membranes encasing the human nucleus and providing an interface into the larger organisation via telephones, television, transportation systems, electricity, water, cable TV, internet and so on.
We are becoming cells within larger organisms and these organisms use us to pursue their own agendas just as we use our cells to pursue our agendas. For some people this can be a difficult concept to accept!!!! When we look out on our world from our human perspective, we primarily see a world of humans engaged in interactions and concepts such as ‘nation’ or ‘corporation’ are just abstract concepts used to organise us into productive configurations. But think about how you would appear from the perspective of a single cell, it would only experience a world of cells engaged in interactions and concepts such as ‘body’ or ‘person’ are just abstract concepts.”
First mysticism [FR] is misunderstood, then the man machine exploits it and transforms it into political/religious institutions, whilst also repressing the original mysticism in order to secure their power. This cuts the man machine off from reality, then confusion sets in and atrocities occur then people attempt all manner of surface adjustments to improve their situation but nothing helps in the long term. Eventually people turned toward empiricism, but they are prejudiced against anything that is not empiricist because they associate it with corrupt political/religious institutions so they effectively turn their backs on reality and remain trapped by their prejudices and delusions. The resulting confusion and agitation are feedback loops that strengthen the dominance of the cultural domain and keep people away from reality. They confuse the ideas and stir up passions and attachments leading to deeper entrapment in and identification with the pseudo objective world.
Western history is a classic example of this. The original Christian movement was a mystic anarchic revolution that circumvented the authority of the Pharisees, the Roman Empire and all earthly egoic delusional power structures. It connected people directly with the divine within themselves and gave them genuine liberation. It was part of a wider civilisational crisis at the time, a crisis very much like our own situation.
"Our age and that age of the first century [Christian era] have more in common than we think... Both times can be characterised as cosmically scared, frightened ages, caught under principalities and powers where tiny little human beings just know that they cannot do much, that they are not in control, that they are just caught." (Krister Stendahl [FR])
This is the extreme point of the downward spiral into egoic delusion, when people feel totally isolated and powerless, fragile and fearful, needing to plan and control and dominate everything that they can. Their very efforts to increase their security by increasing their control ends up strangling the light and life out of themselves and the world around them. By distrusting the universe and trying to seize control of the universe they effectively turn it against them, but by trusting the universe and flowing with it they would grow into ever greater abundance with the universe. They have lost all trust in the cosmos and see it as random and hostile.
Some relevant advice from Lao Tzu describing the subtle stages of
egoic empirical confusion that cause one to lose the Way:
"A
man of highest virtue [connection to the source and inner
brightness] does not keep to virtue [the idea of virtue] and
that is why he has virtue. A man of the lowest virtue never strays
from virtue [is occupied by the idea of being connected and
inwardly bright but conceives of this from an empirical perspective]
and that is why he is without virtue [he is attached to the
‘idea’ hence disconnected from reality so he is without inner
brightness]. The former never acts yet leaves nothing undone
[flows freely with the Way and the holistic dance unfolds].
The latter acts but there are things left undone [trapped in the
cultural domain, believing that they are the doer and acting upon
agendas and illusions arising through the empirical subjective
perspective, thereby out of harmony with the whole].
A man of the highest benevolence acts [acts on the idea of harmony, abundance and goodness but conceived of from an empirical perspective], but from no ulterior motive [not isolationist and agenda based]. A man of the highest rectitude acts [acts in conformity to rules, which are just ideas about correct behaviour], but from ulterior motive [pursuing an empirical egoic agenda, working within the rules].
A man most conversant in the rites acts [acts according to traditions and laws that are cut-off from their meaning], but when no one responds rolls up his sleeves and resorts to persuasion by force. [the obvious thing to do in the mechanistic egoic empirical delusion; there is separation, struggle and use of mechanistic force – which inevitably leads to violence and the principle that “might is right”]
Hence when the Way [connection to reality] was lost there was virtue [the idea of being in contact with reality but conceived of from an empirical perspective]; when virtue was lost there was benevolence [the idea of harmony and goodness]; when benevolence was lost there was rectitude [conformity to rules]; when rectitude was lost there were the rites [meaningless traditions].
The rites are the wearing thin of loyalty and good faith, and the beginning of disorder [people become cynical and lose faith and trust in the universe, and think of it as random, meaningless and dangerous. Hence they turn away from reality and become trapped in their delusion. When the people are cut off from reality they undergo successive stages of degeneration, eventually all that is left is meaningless practices and traditions, countless competing delusions and violent struggle ending only in destruction]" (Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching [FR])
However, like the seasons, the extreme point is where there is a turning point; the delusions breakdown due to their own insufficiency and cracks appear through which the light begins to seep in [REF]. The people are cut off from reality and they spiral into delusion, this creates suffering, which inspires people to look beyond their delusions, to really try hard to wake up. Oppression is the very signal for the return of wisdom. In countless ways wisdom returns to the world to dissolve the hard crystallisations of confusion that forms around the subtle mystic message [FR], to re-connect the people and their institutions with their roots and thereby with reality and to generate new analogies and traditions that are suitable for the times.
Oppression (47): “Oppressed, restricted, confined, exhausted, at the end of your resources, the moment of truth. It suggests a tight, oppressive, devouring structure... oppression by authority and the inherent emotional distress... a precarious position under a tyrannical and exploitative lord... cut off and isolated, mentally and physically, alienated from those around you... being unable to meet the challenges presenting themselves. Communication is blocked, indeed deceptive or deceitful. You do not know who your friends are and words are not to be trusted. Philosophically, however, this oppression is exactly what teaches you about ‘de’, power and virtue [inner clarity and brightness], the power to find what is Great and rely on it. It exhausts the old and awakens you from its collective dream. This oppression also teaches the futility of anger and hatred and shows how the Way opens. Collect the energy to break out of the enclosure [of circular thought patterns that keep you trapped] and re-establish communication [with each other and with reality]. Master the situation from within... find what is truly important to you. The situation is one of outer relations disconnected from the inner flow. Find the mandate for change hidden in this situation and use it to release a sense of your purpose. What is strong and solid is covered and hidden... You will not be believed when you speak. Finding value in what your oppressors tell you to do will only exhaust you... This situation activates your connection to the Way. It can generate meaning and good fortune by releasing transformative energy... Yield to fate, allow it to release a sense of your real purpose. Articulate the new time. ” (I Ching, from “Total I Ching: Myths for Change”, trans, Stephen Karcher)
“In the stillness of my soul,
the voice of
silence spoke to me.
In words of timeless wisdom it said:
Listen not to the voice of fear,
but to the voice
of intuition,
for evil controls you through your fear
and God
guides you through your intuition.
To follow the path of fear is to walk with evil
into
the land of darkness, despair and destruction.
To follow the path
of intuition is to walk with angels
into the land of Light, Love
and Life.
Know that Beauty and Joy are the mark of sacred
Truth,
and ignorance the root of evil.
Engage not in fools
debates and resist not evil,
but rise upon the wings of
wisdom,
radiating the Light of Heaven like a dancing star,
then
the Earth shines with Beauty and All creatures live in Joy.”
In the context of the IST analogy of the physical universe as a virtual reality [FR], like a highly advanced first person VR computer game in which we are evolutionary [ref] / AI [ref] / Alife [ref] beings.
The ‘normal’ thing to do is to play the game, accept the appearances of things as the reality and identify oneself as a character in the game; an individual in a world. From this perspective one pursues an agenda in the world, usually seeking to satisfy one’s desires and to avoid one’s fears.
The empirical scientific thing to do is to generally do the normal thing, especially accepting the appearances of things as the reality - that is the essence of empiricism. One also assumes that the mind has direct access to reality and uses common sense, intellect and scientific and academic techniques and methods to catalogue, categorise, analyse, explain and model the experiential world or the empirical subjective perceptual illusion that we confuse with objective reality and come to call the “physical universe”.
The mystic [FR] thing to do is to know that the game is a construct of occasions of experience that arise within the mind (mind is just a part of one’s “vehicle of manifestation” within the virtual world, so too is one’s body), to know that beyond the mind and the appearances that arise in it there is the real essence of reality, to know that the essence is all that is actually real, it is the content and process of all experiences, to know that pure direct experience is the gateway to reality and not mind made ideas (because the mind has no direct access to reality), to go within and connect with reality, to commune with reality and illumine one’s mind, dissolving all shadows of delusion, to channel the ‘blessings’, the light of wisdom and the life of pure awareness, to fix this influx of spirit in symbolic form as wisdom, knowledge, ritual and practices, to distribute these blessings with love and compassion to all beings and to do this without being the ‘doer’ but as a harmonious gesture of the cosmic dance.
The common religious thing to do is to generally do the normal thing but to misinterpret the mystic teachings, taking the empirical analogies literally and ‘believing’ in them. This is especially troublesome when the analogies themselves have become hopelessly misunderstood and deliberately distorted by organisational structures to deceive people and keep them powerless and confused so that they are easily manipulated and assimilated into the organisation.
The holistic scientific thing to do is to be like a programmer who is embedded in the program, an information system and an information system analyst within the cosmic information system, to know the general nature of information systems and their many perceptual illusions, to understand the manner in which existence manifests and operates both within oneself and throughout the cosmic information system, to know that the inner most awareness that is the substrate of the mind is the computational process, the virtual-reality generative process itself, that creates and animates all things, to participate harmoniously and effectively in the cosmic information system, to know that holistic science is just a device for developing the awareness and growing a connection with reality, to know that the computational process, the virtual-reality generative process is just an elaborate analogy for an existential essence that is beyond all symbols, words and ideas, to know that the essence is all that is actually real, it is the content and process of all experiences, to know that pure direct experience is the gateway to reality and not mind made ideas (because the mind has no direct access to reality), to go within and connect with reality, to commune with reality and illumine one’s mind, dissolving all shadows of delusion, to channel the ‘blessings’, the light of wisdom and the life of pure awareness, to fix this influx of spirit in symbolic form as wisdom, knowledge, ritual and practices, to distribute these blessings with love and compassion to all beings and to do this without being the ‘doer’ but as a harmonious gesture of the cosmic dance.
Christianity was originally a deeply mystic tradition. It was the aim of Jesus to destroy the hegemony and corruption of the hardened institution that had formed around the ancient Judaic mysticism. Judaism was deeply mystical, as seen clearly in the Kabbalah [FR] (there are extensive quotes later). But over time this turned into misunderstanding, naive empiricist interpretations of things, politicisation and the general devolution into injunctions and rituals that are devoid of direct ecstatic contact with reality. It is possible that this influence was accelerated by exposure to “man machine” inducing memes to which they were exposed whilst captive in Egypt. They were assimilated into the Egyptian man machine as slaves and they brought the corruption back with them. It was this that Jesus so often spoke out against, which caused the ‘authorities’ to fear and despise him. He sought to destroy the man machine by destroying the memes that create and sustain it, and thereby return the people to themselves and to reality. This is the main reason why mysticism [FR] has been so suppressed throughout history, it is the foundation of all culture, but it is threatening to the false foundation upon which the man machine is built. It has the power to destroy the man machine and return humanity to a state of natural health and freedom, rather than entrapment of mind, body and life within an artificial social construct that has evolved to exploit them for its own benefit.
To illustrate the mystic nature of true Christianity, below are a few quotes from the "Sermon on the Mount" and some comments to interpret them and bring out the common structure of the analogies.
"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" (Bible, Mat:6:22-23)
The light is truth or existential information; it is the essence of "that which is". The 'world' is a perceptual construct and the eye mentioned above is the perceptual / experiential process that we use as a 'lens' through which to perceive and experience our world. If one interprets things realistically, then one perceives the unity and oneness of all things and one's eye is single (staring naked). One then perceives, experiences and responds to truth and reality, thus "thy whole body shall be full of light". The 'body' referred to is the entire perceptual / experiential process plus our associated ideas, understanding, and the whole mind.
Remember, the “physical body” is just an idea that we wrap around our sensory experience of the appearance of the body in the mind. There is no “physical body” beyond the mind. There is the flow of existence that underlies that which generates the appearance of our physical body, but what we see and know is just a construct of our minds. The actual reality is far deeper and subtler than matter or organs or bones. These are just empiricist analogies for the underlying reality; so long as one doesn’t take the analogies literally or naively they can be useful.
If one interprets things mechanistically, then one perceives the illusion of separation and egoic struggle and one's eye is evil, in that it contains delusion and it propagates delusion into ones world and through one out into the greater world. If one's very eye is evil, then one cannot help but perceive, experience and respond through the lens of the mechanistic delusion and in every way one is bound within that delusion, thus "thy whole body shall be full of darkness", i.e. delusion or ignorance. If even one's greatest and purest knowledge is founded upon delusion (e.g. traditional empirical science) then "the light that is in thee be darkness" and all words are ultimately confusing, all actions holistically inappropriate and all paths eventually lead further into suffering. The impact of traditional empirical science on the life of this planet is compelling proof of its lack of holistic wisdom. Often the harder one tries to channel light, one only channels more darkness since one's very being is composed of darkness. To be a channel for light one must first clear the shadows that obscure one’s Self (cut the root of the mind), then one's eye cannot help but be single and ones whole being cannot help but be radiant with light.
"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Bible, Mat:6:24)
Christ is not talking about any two ordinary masters in the world or any ordinary type of serving; it is just an analogy. The masters he speaks of are the two perspectives or paradigms; the mechanistic and the mystic (i.e. the empirical and transcendent states of existence). These paradigms are mutually exclusive so one cannot hold to both since to hold to one is to reject the other. Either one interprets and experiences through the lens of the mystic paradigm, and one thereby dwells in the transcendent plane or one interprets and experiences through the lens of the mechanistic paradigm, and one thereby dwells in the materialistic or empirical plane.
To dwell in the transcendent cosmos is to harmoniously participate in the dance of existence, to flow through life with a devoted heart and an illumined mind, forever in harmonious communion with the cosmic field, and thus fully participating in the process of creation and thereby serving God [FR] by staying true to one's inner most nature because God is one’s inner most nature. To dwell in the empirical cosmos is to be an isolated, physical, egoic being, a confused and fragile creature, driven by desire and fear, a worldly creature seeking personal happiness and individual benefit, seeking earthly power and wealth, engaging in the worldly struggle and playing the game of life and thereby turning the wheels of the juggernaut within which one has become a cog amidst the mechanism. In this way, regardless of one's intentions, one is forced to compromise one's inner nature and one comes to serve mammon, the god of the mechanistic delusion and the god of greed and lust for earthly power. In the light of this interpretation it is clear that "Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
"Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" (Bible, Mat:6:25)
He is saying, do not be the 'doer' and get caught up in all the things that you think need doing, these are all a delusion arising from a fundamental misunderstanding. If you are true to the spirit within you and within the entire cosmos then everything will unfold harmoniously. There is more to reality than the mechanistic delusion can comprehend, there is the entire transcendent plane of existence as well; "Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?". The mechanistic delusion only comprehends the subjective view and confuses this for the objective view, whereas behind this delusion there is the whole unseen aspect of the real objective view. This is the essence within the form. This essence is a single unified 'dance' of existential information, it is a unified coherent process and each manifest form is an intrinsic part of that dance.
"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" (Bible, Mat:6:26)
You are not isolated fragments cast adrift in a hostile world where you must scratch in the dirt to fend for yourselves; that is just how it seems when seen only through the mechanistic delusion. You are sacred and beloved children of your Father in Heaven who is All Mighty. You are fundamental and essential aspects of the cosmos, gestures in the Cosmic Dance and sparks of the One Fire. That is how it seems when seen in reality, through an 'eye that is single'. All appearance of separation is just the universal Oneness perceived through an agitated and confused mind. In reality there is only One and you are That.
“That which permeates all, which nothing transcends and which, like the universal space around us, fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman – that thou art.” (Sankaracharya [FR])
When Christ was asked by Pontius Pilot, "what is Truth?" he answered "I am the Truth."
"Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his
stature?
... your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all
these things [food, clothes, etc]." (Bible, Mat:6:27-32)
It is pointless to succumb to the delusion of isolated responsibility and to become the controller, since as an isolated ego you have virtually no awareness and no power, and you are starting from a position of error and confusion. "... the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action [flows freely with the Way] and practices the teaching that uses no words [rather than just operate in the cultural domain they connect with reality]." (Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching [FR]). By trying to take control one interferes with the flow and imposes one's delusions upon the reality, but by going with the flow everything happens as it should. That doesn't mean doing nothing, it means acting without the egoic delusion, being real, being natural, being in one's element rather than lost in one's egoic story and trapped in an illusory world constructed out of assumptions, confusions and preconceived ideas.
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God , and his righteousness; and all these things [life, health, food, etc] shall be added unto you." (Bible, Mat:6:33)
First resolve the fundamental misunderstanding and then all the countless agitations, desires, fears and confusions will evaporate and you will then know the Truth. Everything you need will be provided and once you have attained a firm grip on your true nature and your attachments to delusions are broken then you may participate in the world fully without being led astray by the world. One who seeks worldly power will be led into destruction but one who seeks Truth and Reality may be caused to wield great earthly power in the service of God as a channel for the Will of God.
This Christian message of liberation and self-mastery was extremely threatening to all established authoritarian structures, which are the maintainers and operators of the man machine. The empire needed slaves, the church needed followers, authority needed subjects; the powerful demanded free reign to exercise their power and to acquire more power; otherwise the status-quo would be irrevocably destroyed. The slaves would break free of their confusion, docility and subservience and the entire structure of civilization would undergo a radical paradigm shift. The powerful would lose their power as the people empowered themselves. The mechanistic structures of church and state would dissolve as people self-organised into organic and harmonious collectives. The myth of 'authority' would lose its power over the people as they turned toward a deeper source of authority; the Truth that is our inner most essence cannot be spoken or commanded. This is enlightened anarchy, similar to that which functions in the body, where each cell acts according to its inner nature and spontaneously responds to its environment without an over-arching system of laws and enforcement; a system as intricate and alive as the body could not function in any other way. This would be a healthy organic system, but when the ego seizes ‘control’ and tries to ‘organise’ things, it slowly squeezes the life out of the system, turning it into a mechanistic shell, which eventually collapses [FR].
Inevitably the authoritarian structures attempted to destroy the mystic revolution and for five hundred years the Roman Empire waged a genocidal war on the Christians. But faced with the decay of the empire and the uncontrolled spread of the mystic message [FR], the Roman Empire changed strategy. Using the ancient strategy of political/religious institutions to manipulate populations; and a general approach now known as information warfare (a strategy to subvert and dominate vast populations, which has become a sophisticated science over the last century); in one move it subverted the mystic revolution and assimilated the outer form of the revolution into its own state religion, which was in need of a make-over to try and keep the empire from collapsing. It edited the scriptures to produce what we now call the Bible. It misinterpreted and misrepresented all of the subtle mystic analogies as crude literal stories and simplistic injunctions to be docile and passive toward authority. The Roman Catholic Church was formed to purvey the propaganda message and to drown out all other Christian messages. Hence people were cut off from mystic wisdom and direct communion with reality. They were forced to seek salvation through the intermediary of church and a hierarchy of earthly authority and dogma. The mystic message of liberation was subtly turned into an authoritarian message of servitude to church and state. The outer religious form of the mystic tradition was severed from its roots, misrepresented and used for political purposes.
"In orthodox Christianity there is a dangerous inclination
to abandon the ecstatic dimension of our relatedness to God... By
contrast, the great saints kept the fire of ecstasy alive and
understood our capacity to praise God in creation as a form of
participation in life's ecstasy."
(Dorothy Soelle)
Once the religion formed and was separated from its mystic roots (direct experience of reality) it began to devolve into illusion, due to cultural distortions and the action of the perceptual / experiential feedback loops. This was further accelerated by political expediency and growing dogmatism. The results of this isolation from the source can been seen in the dark ages where much wisdom was lost, people spiralled into superstition, fear and helpless servitude. There were also psychotic episodes such as the inquisitions, the crusades and countless other atrocities. It severed people from the source of nourishment that we all instinctively know is there. All paths that might connect one with that nourishment were sealed off by taboo. Any practice or lifestyle that could open one up to one's inner mysteries and the inner mysteries of the cosmos were declared 'sinful'. People were increasingly alienated from their bodies and minds and they were encouraged to look only into the pseudo objective world constructed by religious dogma. People were alienated from the Now, with their minds turned toward future salvation and past guilt. They were focused anywhere but the present moment, because it is only in the Now that reality happens. The past and future are stories in the mind, they strengthen the illusion of individual identity and responsibility, leading to fear, desire and guilt.
“Q: We Europeans, find it very difficult to keep quiet. The
world is too much with us.
M: Oh, no, you are dreamers too. We
differ only in the content of our dreams. You are after perfection -
in the future. We are intent on finding it in the Now. The limited
only is perfectible. The unlimited is already perfect. You are
perfect, only you don't know it. Learn to know yourself and you will
discover wonders.
All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self; all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny yourself nothing - give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond. ” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I am That", p395 [FR])
There were many attempts to either adapt the corrupted Christian message for exploitative purposes or to reform it and overcome the worst of its destructive delusions. Numerous variations have arisen as people struggle to “do something” with the insane monstrosity in their midst. Islam and countless other variations arose such as Protestantism but none of them went deep enough to uproot the fundamental corruption. They met with only partial success in connecting with reality. Except for a small number of individual Sufis and Saints who went very deep, the various religions resisted any attempts to radically reform them and re-connect them with reality; they clung to their cherished delusions and thereby denied God [FR] and ‘His’ mystic message. Throughout the reign of the corrupt political/religious ‘churches’, which continues today, countless mystics were burned, imprisoned, tortured, alienated, derided and ignored but mysticism [FR] is simply direct contact with reality and is therefore intrinsic to human nature so it cannot be eradicated but only suppressed for a period of time.
"In each generation she [wisdom] passes into holy
souls,
she makes them friends of God and prophets."
(Bible,
Wisdom 7:27)
"Wisdom calls aloud in the streets,
she raises her
voice in the public squares;
she calls out at the street
corners,
she delivers her message at the city gates."
(Bible,
Proverbs. 1:20-21)
"In the days to come - it is the Lord who speaks -
I
will pour out my spirit on all humankind
Their sons and daughters
shall prophesy,
your young people shall see visions,
your old
people shall dream dreams."
(Bible, Acts 2:17-18)
Many generations of people have been born into entrenched delusion, collective sickness, suffering, oppression, corruption, social degeneration, the slow agonising death of the spirit for individuals and for that society, and decay of its collective mind and body. The oppressive structure inevitably broke down as people lost their misplaced faith in the church, "The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church." (Magellan [FR]). But the underlying alienation from reality and empiricist confusion still permeated the culture so people turned away from religious superstition and became caught up in materialist rationalist superstitions based upon commonsense realist and systemic, biological and historical assumptions such as the "physical universe", 'objectivism', "clockwork universe", "mind / matter Cartesian dualism", 'Scientism' and so on. This new paradigm allowed some access to the source of nourishment and truth, through experiment and observation, so the light of wisdom began to flow. However the approach was still caught up in empiricist illusions so this distorted the flow and we have been moving further and further into a pseudo objective world based upon empiricist beliefs. Whilst it is far superior to a pseudo objective world based upon corrupt political/religious dogma, still the foundation of the empiricist scientific belief system contains many unquestioned assumptions, in particular commonsense realism, and takes some of these from the previous corrupt political/religious belief system. What is needed is a clear and rational revaluation of the holistic situation, to drop all beliefs, whether religious or materialist and to reconsider the situation.
Although the institution known as the Christian church is corrupted by politics and empirical science is corrupted by empiricism, the light still flows through them. Even in the most corrupt system, if it still exists it still channels light because the light is existence. Where there is light there is hope of reconnecting with more light. It is the light that illumines people’s hearts and minds and in this way the light has been striving within us to overcome the confusion and delusion. Within the ranks of Christianity and science there have been many profoundly aware and even enlightened beings; even in politics there have been some. The light within each of us inspires us to overcome delusion and connect with reality. In this respect, even though Christianity, science, politics, capitalism, etc have in their turn brought great delusion and suffering to the world, they themselves can be reformed from within. By overcoming their delusions and re-connecting with reality they can play an important role in the spread of wisdom throughout the world.
However the spiral into egoic delusion has been continuing and worsening throughout history as we move deeper into delusion and further from reality. The crisis of the first century CE was never resolved but only delayed and deepened. In our current age we grapple with these same issues and forces. Now many people in the western/modern world are either caught up in corrupted and distorted religious dogma or are caught up in shallow and distorted scientific dogma or are so jaded and cynical that they seek only personal advantage and pleasurable illusions. These are the various denominations of the empiricist 'religion' that worships Mammon. Very few religious, scientific or hedonistic people penetrate the "veil of ignorance" by overcoming their commonsense realism and come to know the deeper mystic essence of religion, the skeptical essence of science or the ecstatic essence of sensual experience. Such people's minds are trapped in the cultural domain and attached to particular paradigms, they are unable to be open-minded, and anything outside their belief system is considered to be incomprehensible nonsense. It is mysticism [FR], the most suppressed and derided path of all that underlies religion, science and meaningful experience. Mysticism is direct, holistic and reliable experience of reality, which opens us up to the mysteries of existence, rather than trapping us in cultural belief systems. Things may seem bad at present, we are deep in delusion and the world is never far from a psychotic episode, but paradoxically, everything is just as it should be. Whilst winter brings death and the decay of the light, so too does spring bring life and the return of the light, see this message from the I Ching [REF].
"Be at peace and know there is a clear pattern
that
runs through all things.
Nothing is by chance." (Eileen
Caddy [FR])
This brief history gives a glimpse of the general long-term trend in civilisation. First a disconnection from the Source through commonsense realism leading to egoic delusion, then delusion feeding upon delusion, then agendas arising amidst the confusion and agitation, then the dark ages with its psychotic episodes and suffering that forced us to try and regain our senses (the period called the Enlightenment), to try and get to the essence of the delusion “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am), then working toward higher levels and renovating confusions and superstitions and reconnecting ideas with reality, detaching from delusion and demonstrating the limitations of reason (cultural domain, world of ideas). A great deal of profound philosophy occurred during this period; people were deeply motivated and sincerely wishing to escape delusion, having only recently come out of generations of nightmarish delusion. But empiricist delusions lingered in the heart of science; it lifted us from the swamp of corrupt political/religious delusion but we have eventually found ourselves sliding into apathy and sloppy philosophical thinking and becoming trapped in the swamp of naive realist, materialist and empiricist delusions. We have succumbed to a modern dark ages, with the expulsion of wisdom from the cultural discourse, replaced by narrowly conceived and little understood ‘facts’ which are just the new dogma of Scientism (science as a crude religion). We have had our psychotic episodes with world wars, massive conflict and oppression within and between nations, fascism, authoritarianism, coercive and manipulative information warfare against our minds (propaganda, advertising, distortion of words and ideas, etc), social decay, growing anxiety and despair, ecological destruction, growing intrusion corporate, political and political/religious agendas into our minds, bodies and lives, increasing objectification, commodification and harvesting of people’s lives, deepening delusion, fanaticism, cynicism, confusion, and apathy.
To escape this swamp we must question the deepest and most sacred article of faith in the empiricist religion of Mammon. “the positivism [REF] of many scientists, whether latent or open, is incompatible with skepticism, for it accepts without question the assumption that material effect is impossible without material cause." (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia University Press., 2003. Answers.com 11 Jun. 2006. http://www.answers.com/topic/skepticism)
We must skeptically enquire into the nature of ‘matter’, ‘abstract physicality’, ‘information’ and ‘spirit’. We must overcome the materialist delusion or else it will eventually destroy us either in a frenzy of violence, through massive ecological catastrophe or through slow and agonising personal, social and ecological decay. All wisdom and evidence points toward one source of hope; the ongoing process of the real, that which is the bedrock upon which we build our delusions; it is the ultimate “reality check”. Those trapped in delusions seeks a delusional way out of their troubles, a technological quick fix so we can get back to enjoying our delusions. Most of the information flowing through the global culture and hence through our individual minds only points back into the delusion. The looming crises force us to look for new alternatives.
The corruption of the mystic message has indeed progressed a long way and produced immense confusion. In the west and the middle east the mystic wisdom has been corrupted and abused for political/religious purposes to the point where its meanings and message has been totally changed and there is a dangerous degree of confusion and agitation. Hence the debate between science and religion [FR] is actually between science and a corrupted and politically interfered with mystic analogy that has become horrible distorted over the last 1500 years. Science is wrestling with a ghost from the past and much of the world is still tormented by this ghost. Scientific arguments will have no effect on the power of this ghost, neither will political measures or military measures. Mysticism is a deep and powerful spring of life giving waters, it is connection with reality, but even when cut off from its roots and polluted beyond recognition it is still a far more powerful force than intellectual argument, governmental intervention or physical violence. All human beings are mystics in their deepest, innermost instincts, so even if political/religious institutions are corrupt, they still resonate with that instinct and still command the hearts and minds of billions of humans. When the mystic message flows with purity, power and vitality the result is a flowering, flourishing and abundant civilisation. The only way to exorcise the ghost is to illuminate it with light from the Source, to transform it into a being of light that is our greatest hope. Either corrupt mysticism destroys us or re-vitalised mysticism liberates us; there are no other options.
To some degree mysticism [FR] has remained alive in some eastern civilisations, although only as a vibrant minority within a larger framework of naive empiricist ignorance and confusion leading to common society. Although just a tiny minority, it still maintains the connection to the source that feeds through and protects the entire civilisation from spiralling too far into delusion. So long as the mystics stay connected and stay true to the cosmic essence, and the majority retain enough understanding or at least respect to remain open to the blessings that flow, then civilisation can avoid destruction. However due to the majority being confused, there is still great agitation and confusion but it doesn’t generally blow out into psychosis and total insanity as it did in the inquisitions and world wars. The way to avoid psychosis is to maintain a primary focus on direct experience and direct knowledge and to only use theories and ideologies as guides and reflections of reality and not confuse them with the actual reality itself. Hence in Yoga there is a vast and intricate metaphysics, a deep and profound science of the holistic structure and behaviour of the cosmos, but these are descriptions made by those who have penetrated the illusion and known reality directly. At all times the emphasis is on practical approaches that lead one toward direct experience. Only when you have tasted food can you truly understand what people are saying about food, otherwise it is just fantasy in the mind.
When we are clearly and directly connected to the flow of existential information by an un-distorted perceptual / experiential process and the "veil of ignorance" is burnt by "the strong light of the Mind" (universal consciousness) then we know ourselves and all things to be of the nature of 'light'; not physical light, but the essence that is analogous to 'light'. Information is another such analogy; so we can know ourselves and all things to be of the nature of information. Information has an outer and inner aspect; when information is perceived it is signals (outer observable form) but when it flows within a system this flow is experienced as an inner observational process, so it implies form and awareness. So the outer aspect of existence can be thought of as ‘light’ but the inner aspect is pure awareness, hence we can directly experience this if we still our minds and overcome the distortions of cultural preconceptions. If one sees past the modifications of the mind, beyond its content, one experiences its substrate of pure awareness. This light or awareness or 'information' (representation (outer) and awareness (inner)) is also analogically referred to as the "word of God", 'wisdom', 'spirit', 'Self', 'seeds', the 'Way', 'Truth', ‘Life’, ‘Love’, etc. For example:
"That which is the subtle essence, in it is the self of
all that exists. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou ... art
it."
(Chandogya Upanishad 4:10:1-3)
"In the beginning was the Word:
the Word was with
God
and the Word was God.
This Word was with God in the
beginning.
Through it all things came to be,
not one thing had
its being but through it.
All that came to be had life in it
and
that life was the light of the people,
a light that shines in the
dark
a light that darkness could not
overpower.
..................
But to all who did accept this
Word
it gave the power to become children of God"
(Bible,
John. 1:1-5,12)
“God is constantly speaking only one thing. God's speaking is one thing. In this one utterance God speaks the Son and at the same time the Holy Spirit and all creatures.” (Meister Eckhart [FR])
"Wisdom is eternal, for it precedes every beginning and
all created reality... [It is] everywhere... in every tastable
thing... burning in all things... the animating power of things...
[Wisdom] tastes us. And there is nothing more delicious to
comprehend."
(Nicholas of Cusa [FR])
"[Wisdom] pervades and permeates all things...
[She
is] a breath of the power of God [and] a reflection of the
eternal light,
untarnished mirror of God's active power, image of
his goodness...
Although alone, she can do all;
herself
unchanging, she makes all things new."
(Bible, Wisdom
7:24-26)
"Without the Word of God no creature has meaning.
God's
Word is in all creation, visible and invisible.
The Word is
living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity.
This
Word manifests in every creature.
Now this is how the spirit is in
the flesh - the Word is indivisible from God."
(Hildegard
of Bingen [FR])
"The whole world... [is] a certain representation
of the divine wisdom conceived within the mind of the
Father."
(Thomas Aquinas [FR])
"the seeds, [are] the spirit and the symbol, shen and xiang, that unfold into events. [i.e. inner/outer, consciousness/form, computation/representation, proto-awareness/primitive state - these are the spirit and symbol, which combine to manifest all phenomena and events in the virtual existential space]" (I Ching, trans Stephen Karcher)
Below is a brief summary of some parallel terms from different traditions. These are all conceptually equivalent.
|
Metaphysics |
Transcendent |
Empirical |
|
Christian |
Heaven |
Earth |
|
Vedanta |
Brahman |
Maya |
|
Kabbalah |
Land of Edom |
Land of Israel |
|
Daoism |
Hundun (Uncarved Block) |
Ten Thousand Things, Myriad Creatures |
|
Computational |
Simulator |
Simulation |
|
IST |
Virtual-Reality generative process |
Experiential context |
In terms of Vedanta:
“Brahman is not an object, as It is
Adrisya, beyond the reach of the eyes [there are no objects other
than sense objects wrapped with the idea ‘object’]. Hence the
Upanishads declare: “Neti Neti—not this, not this....” This
does not mean that Brahman is a negative concept, or a metaphysical
abstraction, or a nonentity, or a void. It is not another. It is
all-full, infinite, changeless, self-existent, self-delight,
self-knowledge and self-bliss. It is Svarupa, essence. It is the
essence of the knower. It is the Seer (Drashta), Transcendent
(Turiya) and Silent Witness (Sakshi)...
The world is not an illusion according to Sankara [FR]. The world is relatively real [virtual] (Vyavaharika Satta), while Brahman is absolutely real (Paramarthika Satta). The world is the product of Maya [appearances] or Avidya [ignorance]. The unchanging Brahman appears as the changing world through Maya [outer (representation) flows through inner (awareness) creating observable forms within consciousness]. Maya is a mysterious indescribable power of the Lord which hides the real and manifests itself as the unreal [simulation is a veil of appearances that conceals the simulator]: Maya is not real [it is a virtual reality], because it vanishes when you attain knowledge of the Eternal [the underlying virtual-reality generative process]. It is not unreal also, because it exists till knowledge dawns in you. The superimposition of the world on Brahman is due to Avidya or ignorance.” ( http://www.shankaracharya.org/advaita_philosophy.php)
For thousands of years people have metaphorically seen the moon and pointed it out to others but generally people only look at the finger. If you look at the finger you don’t see the common moon, you see countless fingers and people saying “look moon”. It is not that their fingers are all different moons or that all the pointers are delusional. The moon is there to be seen if you only look where all the fingers are pointing. If you never look you will never know; nobody can bring the moon down and hand it to you, they can only point. If you never look you can only believe or dis-believe, both of which are assumptions, one based on trust and the other on distrust. If you look you will experience it for yourself and then you will know.
Countless mystics have penetrated the veil of illusion and experienced reality but those caught in an earthly ground based illusion only see the finger, they can’t even imagine what that finger is pointing at and they don’t look. It is not that there are many Gods or Heavens or Universal Essences, and it is not that somehow all of these mystics have had common delusions; it is the non-mystics who have the common naive realist empiricist delusions and on top of that they build vast edifices of illusion. The fact is that reality is there to be 'seen' if you only look where the analogies are pointing.
God [FR] precedes all worlds; God is the universal essence that underlies all worlds. Rather than an all-powerful being in the world, a more accurate analogy is that "God is like an information process that sustains, manifests and permeates a virtual reality and we are beings within that virtual reality". Note that our own consciousness is an information process so this analogy for God can also be described as a Universal Consciousness. Below are some mystic analogies that illustrate this. They are interspersed with IST analogies to draw out the parallels and elucidate the common structure.
"Earth, water, fire, air, ether [elements], mind, reason and sense of self [empirical egoic identity]: these are the eight divisions of My nature... This nature is of a lower order [empirical or virtual nature]... know that there exists besides, My other superior nature [transcendent or computational nature], which is the essence by which the world is maintained... Realise that all created beings take birth in both these [the virtual space is a projection of the computational space and each subjective experience takes place within an objective context]. I am the origin of this cosmos and also its end... there is nothing else higher than Me. Like a row of beads strung together, so is all which is here strung on Me...
I am the life in all living beings... know Me as the eternal seed in all created things, I am the intelligence of the intelligent, and the magnificence of the magnificent... I am the strength of all the strong...
Those without wisdom regard Me, who am imperceptible, as being
perceptible, failing to realise my superior, supreme, immutable form
[they think of God as an empirical being that exists in space and
time] ... Being enveloped in My mysterious power (Yoga-Maya)
[simulation], I am not manifest to all. The ignorant do not
realise that I am unborn and immutable... I know all created beings
in the past and present... and those that will be, but no one knows
Me... All creatures in the world are immersed in ignorance... the
result of the delusion caused by the dualities arising from desire
and hate [attachment leading to immersion in the world illusion]
... But the virtuous, whose sin [confusion, agitation] has
ended, escape from the ignorance caused by the dualities... those who
realise me as existing in the physical plane [empirical], the
divine planes [transcendent], and also in what concerns
sacrifices [not being the 'doer', the universal essence is the
only doer, e.g. a VR character only appears to act, ultimately it is
the computational process that does everything], have a mind which
is focussed and know Me even at the time of death [in one's
deepest subconscious]."
(Bhagavad Gita, chpt 7
[FR])
"The absolute, Divine Mind, is all that is in everything that is... Divinity is the enfolding and unfolding of everything that is. Divinity is in all things in such a way that all things are in divinity... There is only one mirror without flaw: the Divine, in whom what is revealed is received as it is. For this mirror is not essentially different from any existing thing. Rather in every existing thing it is that which is: it is the universal form of being." (Nicholas of Cusa [FR])
"It is God whom human beings know in every creature." (Hildegard of Bingen [FR])
"Though words are spoken to explain the void, the void as such can never be expressed. Though we say "the mind is bright as light", it is beyond all words and symbols. Although the mind is void in essence, all things it embraces and contains." (Tilopa's Song of Mahamudra [FR])
"This very body... is called the ksetra [field or information space], and he who knows it is called the ksetrajna [the knower of the field or the computational process]... Know that I am the ksetrajna in all ksetras... I hold that, knowledge of the field and of its knower is true knowledge.
... who its knower is and what his powers, I shall explain briefly.
I will tell you what is to be known... [the ultimate goal of knowledge] It is the Supreme Brahman [the transcendent virtual-reality generative process], without beginning, said to be neither imperishable nor perishable... He pervades everything, abiding in it...He gives the impression of having the qualities of the senses, yet is without the senses ['information' depends upon perception but transcendent computation precedes empirical perception]. Though unattached [not believing in the world illusion], He still supports everything [it is analogous to the computational process that sustains a simulation]. Void of qualities, He enjoys them nevertheless. He is outside and within all things. He is immoveable and yet moveable. Subtle, He is incapable of being known [occupies a different information space]. Far away, He is still near. Undivided, he is still broken up among all things [transcendent computation is One at its source but distributed throughout the empirical simulation]. He must be realised as one who, supporting all things, destroys them and refashions them again. He is said to be the Radiance among radiances, beyond darkness, Knowledge, the object of knowledge, and that which can be known only through knowledge [cannot be perceived by the senses but only inferred, intuited and experienced as one's inner-most awareness]. He is seated in the hearts of everyone [transcendent computation is the inner essence of all things].
Know that prakriti [nature, mechanical existence, causality, outer aspect] and purusha [soul, consciousness, will, inner aspect] are both without beginning [prakriti is the representational aspect of information and purusha is the computational aspect]. Know also that all forms and constituents arise from prakriti [the base information medium is the ultimate foundation, it is pure semantic representation, which underlies the potential for existence. Purusha or computation then animates this and together they combine to form information systems in ever higher-levels of complexity]. Prakriti (nature) is said to be the cause behind the act, its instrument and its doer, while purusha (soul) is said to be the cause behind the experience of pleasure and pain. When purusha is positioned in prakriti, it enjoys the constituents born of prakriti [immersion in the perceptual stream, identification with the information stream, partaking in the simulation through the suspension of disbelief and thereby experiencing the phenomenal world or the 'virtual' reality]. This marriage with the constituents is instrumental in its taking birth in good and bad wombs [empirical manifestation or samsara].
This Being [the simulator or virtual-reality generative process that operates within the transcendent context] who, close to prakriti, witnesses its constituents, consents to them, adds to them, and experiences them [operates on the existential data], is termed the Great Lord, the Supreme Soul, the Supreme Purusha [the 'Supreme' computational process] which dwells in the body [transcendent information space].
Whatever is born, moveable [empirical forms] or immoveable [transcendent processes], comes into being through the union of the ksetra and the ksetrajna [computation within an information space leads to computational processes such as the simulator that manifests the virtual simulation world within which empirical forms arise and dissipate (hence moveable or impermanent)].
He who sees the Supreme Lord [transcendent process], who is present equally in all creatures [simulated systems manifested by the transcendent process], who is not destroyed even when they are, he may be said to have truly perceived. Perceiving the Lord as equally pervading everywhere, he does not let his self-sense [empirical egoic delusion] destroy his true Self [awareness of ones transcendent nature] and, in that way, he attains a state of excellence [true understanding and alignment with reality]. He who perceives that all aspects of actions are performed only through prakriti [everything is information and we are dynamical patterns of information] and also that the self is a non-doer [universal consciousness is the only doer], he may be said to have truly perceived. On perceiving that the multifarious aspect of things is located in one point [the transcendent process], from where it extends severally, he attains the Brahman [union with reality].
Without beginning, devoid of qualities, the Supreme Self, imperishable, though stationed in the body, neither acts nor is touched in any way [separation of information spaces]... Just as ether, pervading everything, is unsmeared on account of its rarefied nature, in the same way the Self, present in everybody, is not besmirched. [a computer screen cannot be defiled by an image that is shown on it, it is just a pattern of information]
Just as the Sun, alone, lights up this entire world, so also does the Keeper of the field light up this entire field... those who in this way, through the eye of wisdom, perceive the difference between the field and the one who knows it [between simulation and the simulator], and the manner of release of all beings from prakriti [overcoming the objective world illusion through detachment, transcendent knowledge and unconditioned awareness], they obtain the Supreme." (Bhagavad Gita, chpt 13 [FR])
"All created things are absorbed into My prakriti [transcendent nature, the metaphorical cosmic computational process itself] at the end of a kalpa [one complete cycle of transcendent creation] and, when a kalpa begins, I recreate them... Seizing hold of My own prakriti, I fashion again and again this great number of beings which is helpless, being subject to prakriti [they cannot but act out their nature]... since I exist as if indifferent, unattached to My action, these actions do not bind Me [God does not fall for the illusion]... Under My direction, prakriti creates the moveable and immovable universe [the base information medium is structured and animated so as to manifest a simulator and an empirical universe]." (Bhagavad Gita, chpt 9 [FR])
"There is a thing confusedly formed,
[deepest cosmic computational essence,
Born before heaven
and earth.
that is quantum in nature hence 'confusedly']
Silent and
void
It stands alone and does not change,
Goes round and does
not weary.
It is capable of being the mother of the world.
I
know not its name
So I style it 'the
way'.
[transcendent computational context]
The way is empty, yet use will not drain it.
Deep, it is
like the ancestor of the myriad creatures. [the nature of reality
is not material, it is empty in that sense, but its use is
inexhaustible]
Darkly visible, it only seems as if it were there.
I know
not who's son it is.
It images the forefather of
God. [simulator within the transcendent
context]
Heaven and earth are ruthless,
and treat the myriad
creatures as straw dogs; ... [honoured as an
offering then discarded and trampled on; empirical beings are not
ontological beings with "innate rights", we are patterns of
information that the simulator creates and destroys]
Is not the space between heaven and earth like a bellows?
[simulation membrane, unified vacuum]
It is empty without being
exhausted: [it is an interface between the dynamical creative
information space and the simulation world]
The more it works
the more comes out. [heaven is the computational context and
earth is the empirical context, which arises from the former via
'simulation' and manifests all the myriad creatures.]
The spirit of the valley never dies. [computation, flow of
information, the ability to 'channel']
This is called the
mysterious female. [the primal existential potential that
nourishes all things]
The gateway of the mysterious female
[primordial computational thread, analogous to the role of
CPU]
Is called the root of heaven and earth.
Dimly visible,
it seems as if it were there, [only its effects can be perceived
because it is the inner most essence of perception and awareness]
Yet
use will never drain it. [It is forever yielding to the demands
of the simulator and simulation, it is the root of heaven and earth]
It gives them life and rears them.
It gives them life yet
claims no possession;
It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude;
It
is the steward yet exercise no authority.
Such is called the
mysterious virtue. [it manifests the entire cosmos but it doesn't
act as an entity 'within' the world, it is the inner essence 'of' the
world]
Its upper part is not dazzling;
Its lower part is not
obscure.
Dimly visible, it cannot be named
And returns to that
which is without substance. [information]
This is called
the shape that has no shape, [like a 3D computer model]
The
image that is without substance. [like a computer image]
This
is called indistinct and shadowy. [information system theoretic]
The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects. [the Way is the most shadowy ruler, it is intangible but it causally manifest everything that is and happens, it is the ultimate ruler, not an ego driven empirical ruler]
When his task is accomplished and his work done
The people
all say, 'It happened to us naturally.'
As a thing the way is
Shadowy, indistinct.
Indistinct and
shadowy, [information theoretic rather than physical]
Yet
within it is an image;
Shadowy and indistinct, [virtual
world]
Yet within it is a substance.
Dim and dark, [not
matter but energy]
Yet within it is an essence.
[information, computation, pure awareness]
This essence is
quite genuine [ontologically exists unlike empirical forms, i.e.
consciousness exists and all observed forms and ideas are
modifications of consciousness]
And within it is something that
can be tested. [i.e. amenable to direct experience, it is our
innermost Self]
The way in its passage through the mouth is without flavour.
It
cannot be seen, [computation is the 'seeing' within sight]
It
cannot be heard,
Yet it cannot be exhausted by use. [it is not
a physical substance that is diminished by use, it is information]"
(Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu [FR])
“The Valley Spirit never dies. [computation, flow of
information, the ability to 'channel']
It is named Dark Animal
Goddess. [the primal existential potential that nourishes all
things]
The door of the Dark Animal Goddess
Is called the
root of heaven and earth. [primordial computational thread,
analogous to the role of CPU]
Like an endless thread she
endures. [like the SMN thread weaving through all
things and ceaselessly animating the simulated world]
You can
call upon her easily.
[it is our inner most essence, the substrate of pure
awareness]
He who has found this mother understands he is a
child. [the egoic isolated illusion
disappears and we see that we are totally dependent on ‘her’]
When
he understands he is her child and clings to her.
[drops the false identification with the body and re-identifies
with pure awareness]
He will be without danger when the body
dies.”
[the body is a transitory pattern of light but awareness is the
light]
(I Ching, Total I Ching: Myths for Change, pg87)
""The Book of Concealed Mystery" is the book of the equilibrium of balance.
For before there was equilibrium, countenance beheld not countenance.[no computation so no perception]
And the kings of ancient time were dead, and their crowns were found no more; and the earth was desolate. " [the disordered computations are ended, the computational data structures and functions are gone (the kings are dead, see next Kabbalah quote), even the prior class hierarchy is destroyed, its not just the instantiations or particular kings, their crowns too are found no more]
This equilibrium hangeth in that region which is negatively existent in the Ancient One. [potentiality as opposed to actuality, quantum/classical]
Thus were those powers equiponderated which were not yet in perceptible existence. [computation has not yet given rise to simulation so nothing is perceptible since there are no empirical perceivers and no empirical perceptual processes]
In His form ... existeth the equilibrium: it is incomprehensible, it is unseen.
... the kingdom of the restored world [this simulation run] was formed from the kingdom of the destroyed world... [the kingdom of the destroyed world is that of unbalanced force, unstructured computation and chaos]
It was formless and void, and darkness upon the face of the deep, [prior to the simulation] and the Spirit of the Elohim vibrating upon the face of the waters [pure computational potential (spirit) combining with representational potential (the waters)]
But there are excavations of excavations. (The excavation is the receptacle, like that which is hollowed out, or carved out, like a cave... [the excavations are dynamical information spaces or worlds within worlds]
"And the Elohim said let there be light, and there was light" [perception leading to empirical dynamics, or animation] ... since He Himself spake, and it was done.
Like as it is written: "And the Elohim saw the substance of the light, that it was good."
Microprosopus [simulator] was at first alone ( ...
separated from his bride [the simulation world]). But all
things returned into the unity. (... Microprosopus returned to his
bride [the simulator starts and the simulation begins]"
(Kabbalah
Denudata, Book of Concealed Mystery [FR])
"... the Arcanum of the Arcana is what men can neither know nor comprehend, nor can they apply their rules of science to it." [the ultimate Source "is what it is" and cannot be defined by anything less than "what it is" it cannot be 'compressed' and held in one's mind]
It is said that before the Ancient of the Ancient Ones, the Concealed One of the Concealed Ones, instituted the formation of the King (under certain members and paths of Micropsrosopus) [the simulator] and the diadems of the diadems (that is, the varied coverings whereby the superfluity of the Lights is circumscribed) [the data structures and functions that harness the representational and computational capacity of the computational space]; beginning and end existed not (that is there was neither communication nor reception) [prior to the operation of the simulator and the manifestation of the simulation cosmos there can be no existence and no change]
Therefore He carved out (that is, hollowed out a space by which he might flow in) [the transcendent computational space through which transcendent information flows] and instituted proportions in Himself (in as many ways as the Lights of His Understanding could be received, whence arose the paths of the worlds), [the proportions are the finite discrete data types] and spread out before Him a certain veil (that is, produced a certain nature, by which His infinite Light could be modified, which was the first Adam); [this is like the foundational 'program' in the computational space, its "operating system"] and therein carved out and distributed the kings and their forms by a certain proportion (that is all creatures under a condition of proper activity; by which He Himself might be known and loved); [the various data structures and functions that combine to manifest the simulator] but they did not subsist... [once the simulator begins functioning the data structures no longer 'reign', it is the simulator that is the new king]
That is the same thing which is said, Gen xxxvi. 29: "And these are the kings which reigned in the land of Edom , before that there reigned a king over the children of Israel ." [the simulator is the new king, where the land of Israel is the simulation world, and the children are empirical forms or systems]
The land of Edom "is the place where all judgments are found [the computational space]
The Keeper of Israel [simulator] neither slumbereth nor sleepeth.
as it is written Exod. iv. 22 " Israel is my first-born son." [the first fully manifest creation of God and also a likeness of God, implying fractal multi-levelled self-similarity]" (Kabbalah Denudata, Greater Holy Assembly [FR])
These quotations are getting rather extensive, so refer to the Lesser Holy Assembly, which goes into some very interesting details, such as:
"He hath been formed, and yet as it were He hath not been formed. He hath been conformed, so that He may sustain all things; yet is He not formed, seeing that He is not discovered. [the Ultimate has no outer aspect so "He" is not an object in any world but is the origin of all worlds, and "He" has a definite form like an automata [FR] that sustains or simulates all things. There are definite information theoretic constraints but no empirical constraints.]" (LHA 42)
As seen in the preceding analogies, the actual details of an analogy are just points where understanding can flow into the network of concepts and relations. It is the structure of the conceptual network that conveys the real message, not the particular details that are used. IST and computational analogies have been used to help elucidate the common structure. Information system theory is useful because it is a universal analogy and it models pure structure. The particular details depend on time, place, culture, history, language, politics and so on, whilst the underlying structure of the analogies can be seen in all mystic traditions throughout the world [FR]. Quantum physics and computer science have also begun to produce similar analogies and conceptual structures [FR].
All systems have inner and outer aspects. Manifest forms are systems that interact so all have input/output (perception/response). Therefore all manifest forms have subjective experiences of some form depending upon their perceptual and experiential apparatus and their particular perspective or relation with the whole. All interactions are mediated by communication, where each system perceives the outer form of systems in its environment, interprets this in some way and responds. Hence outer form flows through inner awareness to influence outer form. This perceptual process 'drives' all system interactions.
"The myriad creatures carry on their backs [spine, nervous system, chakras] the yin [inner aspect, being, mind, computation] and embrace with their arms [outer activity] the yang [outer aspect, doing, matter, representation] and are the blending of the generative forces of the two."(Tao te Ching 94 [FR])
Every system has an inner perceptual / experiential process which is an aspect of the holistic information process that flows through the whole system network. The 'content' of the incoming signals determines everything that the system can perceive and experience, and the 'functioning' (structure and behaviour) of the perceptual / experiential process determines how that information is received, interpreted, experienced and comprehended. This is radically different from the idea of a disembodied consciousness with an objective view into an 'inanimate' physical universe. Hence IST can resolve the many confusions that arise from Cartesian Dualism [FR] and thereby shed light on the nature of 'mind' and its relation to 'matter'.
"Materialism arbitrarily excludes the possibility that
reality has a meaningful nonmaterial aspect, objectivism arbitrarily
excludes the possibility that reality has a meaningful subjective
aspect, and although Cartesian dualism technically excludes neither,
it arbitrarily denies that the mental and material, or subjective and
objective, sides of reality share common substance."
(C.M.
Langan) [FR]
The low-level proto-awareness animates all systems and as the systems interact forming more complex super-systems this proto-awareness becomes more complex. When the systems have a massive degree of complexity and integration they are not aware of low-level stimuli (e.g. the charge on an electron) but are aware of high-level stimuli (e.g. visual perception). When the complexity and number of feedback loops increases the system is not only directly aware of external stimuli, it is also aware of its state of awareness and even aware that it is aware of its awareness. This is the kind of high-level awareness that sentient life forms experience. Whilst an electron can experience the charge of another electron it cannot experience the fact that it is experiencing something. See [consciousness] for more.
"Our bodies are physical, but life is metaphysical. Housed in a temporary arrangement of energy as cells, life is a pattern integrity far more complex than the knot or the wave. Remember that all the material present in the cells of your body seven years ago has been completely replaced today, somehow showing up with the same arrangement, color, and function. It doesn't matter whether you ate bananas or tuna fish for lunch. A human being processes thousands of tons of food, air, and water in a lifetime. Just as a slip knot tied in a segment of cotton rope, which is spliced to a piece of nylon rope...(and so on) can be slid along the rope from material to material without changing its "pattern integrity," we too slide along the diverse strands supplied by Universe-as "self-rebuilding, beautifully designed pattern integrities." No weight is lost at the moment of death. Whatever "life" is, it's not physical.
The key is consciousness. ... Life is made of awareness and
thought, not flesh and blood. Each human being embodies a unique
pattern integrity, evolving with every experience and thought. The
total pattern of an individual's life is inconceivably complex and
ultimately eternal. No human being could ever completely describe
such a pattern, as he can the overhand knot; that capability is
relegated to the "Greater Intellectual Integrity of Eternally
Regenerative Universe"."
(Amy Edmondson)
All systems have proto-awareness and proto-life, they could not exist and interact otherwise, but this is generally on a much lower level to our own experience of awareness and life although it could be far greater as well. However it is the same underlying phenomenon that animates all systems, whether simple or complex. Just as the outer forms of systems vary greatly from atoms to people to galaxies, the inner aspect of systems manifests in many different forms, from particle interactions to software to sentient awareness. Hence the inner aspect pervades the universe, it is not only we humans who are aware in an otherwise 'inert' clockwork universe; that is just a perceptual illusion from a naive empirical subjective perspective, it is how things might seem from within the pseudo objective world. In reality every point of existence is looking out upon the cosmos and experiencing it from its own unique perspective. So to deny, ignore and misunderstand the inner or subjective dimension cuts one off from the inner dimension of the cosmos, leaving only the outer surface of reality.
That which in the context of this work is referred to as 'computation' or proto-awareness relates to Universal Consciousness in the same way that particles relate to the cosmos. The proto-awareness operates on the micro-scale whilst the universal consciousness operates on the macro-scale. So the outer forms vary from primitive systems (fundamental existential states) to the Cosmos, and the inner processes vary from proto-awareness to universal consciousness. Our own bodies and minds lie somewhere between these extremes.
“God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is
beyond all - being as well as not-being.”
(Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I am That", p252 [FR])
Our senses give us information about the outer aspects of systems and we have access to our own inner aspect, but we cannot normally experience the inner aspect of other systems. A system can only perceive and experience the information flowing into its input apparatus. This information originates from the outputs of other systems. Hence we can only ever perceive and experience the outputs (observables) of systems. We cannot directly perceive and experience the network of communication paths that inter-connect the systems, nor the process whereby the information flows between systems, nor the inner sub-systems and processes within systems. We only have a subjective view of the situation.
"What is that through which, if it is known, everything else becomes known?...
That which cannot be seen, nor seized, which belongs to neither
this social order nor that, which has no eyes nor ears, no hands nor
feet; the eternal, the all-pervading, the infinitesimal, the
imperishable, that it is which the wise regard as the source of all
that exists... "
(Mundaka Upanishad 1:1:3-4)
What we 'see' is the outer observable surface of reality but there is a vast 'unseen' aspect. This aspect consists of all the system infrastructure that can be seen in the objective view but not in the subjective view or the pseudo objective view. When the unseen aspect is conceived of from within the empirical universe it seems like an abstract sea of information, a unified quantum vacuum, a universal consciousness or an Akashic Field [FR]. In the context of the computational analogy it is called the simulation membrane (or EP/ES membrane) that separates the empirical process (simulator) and the empirical space (simulation). It is how the simulator appears from within the simulation. It is the abstract membrane that separates the world of manifest forms from the underlying virtual-reality generative process. To use an analogy, consider a first-person virtual reality computer game, the outer appearance of the world is what we see when playing the game, the unseen dimension is all the computation that manages the information flows between systems. When you interact with an object in the game it appears to be a 'physical' interaction but beneath the surface appearance is the computational space where all interactions actually occur through information processes. Furthermore, when manifest forms arise or disintegrate they return into their constituent parts, but if a form was to be 'created', such as virtual particle pairs, they just "appear out of nowhere". That 'nowhere' or void is the vacuum that permeates all space because forms can just appear anywhere. Really it is the transcendent information process creating another 'empirical system' and placing it into the network of interactions. The idea of the physical universe captures only the surface appearance of reality and this gives little insight into the deeper information system theoretic nature of things. However the mystic paradigm [FR] captures the unseen processes and phenomena that permeate the universe and furthermore the information system paradigm captures both aspects and shows how they relate.
"The sages, in meditation and through concentration, have
pierced through the cover [world illusion, Maya, VR, pseudo
objective world] to see that great power [computation,
Universal Consciousness] belonging to that one himself
[transcendent process], what is hidden in its own qualities
[gunas, the veil of simulation]. Being one, he superintends
all the causes, time, self, and the rest."
(Shvetashvatara
Upanishad, 1:3)
"The brahman [the transcendent context] expands (manifests itself) by means of concentration [self-referential computation leading to simulation]; hence is produced matter; from matter life, mind, the intellect, and the seven worlds. And from the works performed in the worlds follow the endless chain of effects of the works [empirical dynamics].
From him who perceives all [the transcendent context] and
who knows all, whose concentration is filled by knowledge [represents
and processes all information], from him is born that first
manifest brahman (Hiranyagarbha or the Golden Egg) [the
Simulator], the name, the form, and the matter [the empirical
context]."
(Mundaka Upanishad 1:1:5-9)
Furthermore, from an empirical perspective we cannot comprehend the inner aspect of systems that are not able to directly communicate their inner aspect to us. Other human beings can communicate with us so it is reasonable for us to think that they, like ourselves, have an inner aspect. Animals at times have been thought to be automatons, and matter is almost always thought of as 'inert'. In the same way that we cannot experience the subjective view of another system because we conceive of them as objective, neither can we experience the objective view of ourselves because we conceive of ourselves as subjective. If one could experience the subjective view of other systems one could experience the world from their perspective and if one could experience one's own objective view one would know oneself as a structured pattern of non-material essence that underlies and defines one's whole existence; i.e. one's individual Soul; the entire transcendent process is the Universal Soul. For this one must comprehend the holistic context via an awareness of the objective domain and not the pseudo objective domain.
"That state wherein the mind is at rest... wherein himself
sees his Self and rejoices in the Self, wherein he experiences that
supreme bliss only realised by the intellect and unattainable by the
senses [the deepest aspects of reality cannot be 'seen' by the
physical senses, but only inferred, intuited and subjectively
experienced as one's inner most awareness] and, steadied there, no
longer diverges from the Truth... This state... severs the union with
pain."
(Bhagavad Gita, chpt 6:20-21, 23 [FR])
"What is it that had birth? Whom do you call a human being? If, instead of seeking explanations for birth, death and after-death, the question is raised as to who and how you are now, these questions will not arise...
The body is born again and again. We wrongly identify ourselves with the body, and hence imagine we are reincarnated constantly. No. We must identify ourselves with the true Self. The realised one enjoys unbroken consciousness, never broken by birth or death - how can he die? Only those who think 'I am the body' talk of reincarnation. To those who know 'I am the Self' there is no rebirth.
Reincarnations only exist so long as there is ignorance. There is no incarnation, either now, before or hereafter. This is the truth." (Sri Ramana Maharshi [FR], re: Rebirth and After-Death)
What can a mathematical scientific paradigm say about such things? I will begin by considering these as mystic analogies and employ the information system analogy to clarify them.
There is the objective reality, the universal virtual-reality generative dance of information that is "all that is". Furthermore, "that which is" is referred to as Truth. This Truth is beyond all symbols, words and ideas - it is simply the actual existential process of "that which is". In the deepest essence of all things, that which is actually real is the Truth. The dance of information as it flows can be visualised in the minds eye as a dance of Light; streaming Light where the information paths are beams of Light, the structures arise out of the glow as patterns of Light arise and dissolve. Everything is streaming in all directions but there is a perfect coherence to the flow.
This is the outer description, but in terms of the inner aspect it is a universal consciousness, a unified coherent pure awareness. It is not many points of awareness and it is not ‘spread out’ throughout the dance, instead it is concentrated in a single point. When one goes within and penetrates through the many layers of illusion and realises one’s inner most essence one experiences the whole of manifest existence concentrated in a single point of pure awareness; just as the whole of manifest existence in a VR world is concentrated in a single computational thread. From this point there seemingly arises all the forms and phenomena of the world, but all that actually exists in the true ontological sense of the world ‘exists’, is that one point. It is the Absolute Reality or Brahman; from it all else seemingly arises. This is an expression or reflection of one of the deepest truth, although it is not the whole truth. It can be known firstly through the mathematics of SMN where a single thread of computation/calculation/proto-awareness is woven into a world of systems within systems, worlds within worlds and a world of virtual appearances that arises in the awareness of the empirical systems. As the thread scans the matrix of systems, it animates each one in turn and the primitive-states flow through the proto-awareness; this happens “between moments of existence”. One complete scan processes one moment of existence, hence this iterative process occurs beyond empirical time, in what is referred to as a timeless realm, or the eternal Now.
However this is just from the inner perspective. By going within we find the inner most and by going into the world of forms and laboriously cutting through the illusion, in the manner of science we discover the outer aspect of the ultimate, However science has yet to get that far. As described by information systems theory, Vedanta, Taoism and Kabbalah at the fundamental level there are two dual concepts that are bound within a non-dual unity. This is the inner and the outer, the single point of pure awareness and the field of potential existence. In the computational analogy these are the CPU and the memory.
“Some theologians and metaphysicians of the great religious traditions will affirm that God, or Brahman, are both beyond and within the universe — in it, but not of it; pervading it and surpassing it at once.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_%28religion%29)
This is also the relationship between the SMN transcendent virtual-reality generative process and the empirical virtual universe. It is “both beyond and within the universe — in it, but not of it; pervading it and surpassing it at once”. The mathematics of 'system matrix notation' SMN is just a mathematical analogy or descriptive device. It reveals certain things but ultimately the Truth cannot be defined by SMN or by anything else but 'that which is'.
The idea that the whole of manifest existence is concentrated in a single point of pure awareness has many implications; It is without attribute or appearance (because there is no separate perceiver), it is without extension (does not exist in space and has no spatially arranged parts), without time (no beginning, change or end), without movement (no space to move in), without ‘other’. This understanding is central to Advaita Vedanta or non-dual Vedanta, the principle philosophy that underlies Yoga, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, etc.
“Sankara’s [FR] Supreme Brahman [Absolute Reality] is impersonal, Nirguna (without Gunas or attributes), Nirakara (formless), Nirvisesha (without special characteristics), immutable, eternal and Akarta (non-agent). It is above all needs and desires. It is always the Witnessing Subject [pure awareness]. It can never become an object as It is beyond the reach of the senses [there are no objects other than sense objects wrapped in the idea ‘object’]. Brahman is non-dual, one without a second. It has no other beside It. It is destitute of difference, either external or internal. Brahman [objective domain] cannot be described, because description implies distinction [that takes us into the subjective and cultural domain]. Brahman cannot be distinguished from any other than It. In Brahman, there is not the distinction of substance and attribute [substance is information, attributes arise through perception of information, which is the flow of information, all is information, pure awareness and pure being]. Sat-Chit-Ananda [existence - consciousness - bliss or representation (outer) - awareness (inner) - flow of outer through inner creating consciousness of existence, which is bliss] constitute the very essence or Svarupa of Brahman, and not just Its attributes.” ( http://www.shankaracharya.org/advaita_philosophy.php)
From the outside we can describe its structure as a dance of Light and from the inside we can describe its experience as a single unified pure awareness that is both single and not multiple and concentrated and not spread, but which also permeates all things. Between moments, in the eternal Now, the point metaphorically traces out the field of Light/Awareness and in each iteration the field changes. As iterations are interpreted as existential moments and moments follow moments there arises ‘time’ and the dance is the flow of changing fields of Light/Awareness through time. Hence the vast intricate dance of Light is the Life of the Cosmos. As it streams it animates systems, it brings existence and awareness; it breaths Life into all things. It is the substance of all things and the Life of all things.
There is only the dance of information/proto-awareness and there are forms or 'gestures' within this dance. All things are patterns within the sea of information/proto-awareness, they are temporary convergences of existential flow. This flow seemingly manifests countless systems within systems, each with outer form and inner experience. The Light streams through all forms, animating them into Life. This Light flows throughout the cosmos. It streams from system to system, integrating, unifying and harmonising all things. Patterns flow into patterns, the dance never stops and it never tires. It spreads the Light in full measure to all that open up to it. It gives existence and Life yet demands nothing. It is the all pervading, all creative Oneness in which there is no separation. This is described as a union of Love, a Cosmic ocean of Love ; perfect bliss and Oneness. This is how it feels if one 'feels' deep within one's 'heart'. Note that 'heart' too is a mystic analogy for a mode of consciousness involved in relatedness and feeling.
The forms or gestures of the Cosmic dance underlie what we have come to think of and experience as objects, beings, places, events, ideas, feelings, words, concepts and "the Universe". These are the symbolic ideas or cognitive states that our subconscious uses to represent those forms to consciousness, and through which we interpret and experience those forms as they are reflected in consciousness. All these are cognitive shadows cast in the mind by patterns in the Cosmic dance. Behind these shadows the dance goes on and sustains the vast and intricate 'foam' of systems within systems.
We are systems (beings) within this sea of existential essence (information / proto-awareness / Truth / Light / Life / Love / Way), we are patterns or gestures within this cosmic existential dance. As the information flows through our subtle structure its inner aspect manifests experiences. All we ever consciously know are "occasions of experience". We only ever know our inner responses to the existential essence flowing through us; flowing from outer observable forms and into our perceptual / experiential process. The outer flows into inner and inner into outer, all things flow into each other and we participate in that dance.
From our experiences we form impressions and ideas about these impressions. They are the countless 'ideas' that make up our cognitive 'lens' through which we come to experience the pseudo objective world. We also communicate and share these ideas with other 'beings' that we experience in our world. These ideas become culture and we come to filter and interpret the same kind of world out of the sea of information. We come to dwell in a pseudo objective world constructed from experiences and ideas about experiences, all of which are subjective, but they are taken to be objective, this ‘assumption’ of objectivity is itself just an idea; it is a particularly virulent meme [FR].
Now we are in a position to understand the common meanings of the words Truth, Light, Life and Love. We instinctively know that Truth exists (i.e. that which is), we wouldn't exist without Truth; we are Truth. So in the context of communicating ideas we have formed the idea of the truth-value of a statement. This is thought of as a measure of the degree to which the statement corresponds to "that which is", but the statement is just a string of symbols that abstractly refer our minds to recall and integrate personal ideas and derive an understanding. The ideas however only connect with reality through our cognitive lens; through our subconscious paradigm or interpretive filter. So in practice truth is a measure of the degree to which the statement corresponds to our personal ideas about "that which is" and this usually derives from our experiences in the pseudo objective world. So if enough people experience similar objective world illusions they come to a consensus and statements about this common illusion are considered to be the truth. They are often called ‘facts’. Because our subjective impressions have been confused with objective reality, they are only facts about the content of the pseudo objective world. It is only knowledge of the structure, behaviour and appearance of our experiential illusion.
When the existential essence flows between systems in a manner that is perceptible to our visual awareness we call it light. Furthermore, within the science of the pseudo objective world we propose the existence of objects and phenomena to which we attach the symbols 'matter' and 'energy'. Within this discourse of the pseudo objective world we have studied the nature of physical light and we feel we know it well. However we only know its appearance and behaviour within the world of appearance. Even so it serves as a useful mystic analogy for the deeper Light; the "Light that shines in the darkness".
As our underlying existential form flows and participates in the Cosmic dance there are many occasions of experience that flow coherently. This coherence derives from the deeper coherence and unity of the Cosmic dance and it underlies the coherence of our subjective pseudo objective worlds. It underlies the coherence of our own existence and our flow through existence. When interpreted through the lens of the pseudo objective world we experience "being in the world", being aware, being in motion, being in the flow, we feel, we know. All this is patterns flowing through patterns, the dance of spiritual Light or Life on countless levels; through systems within systems. We are integrated patterns with the illusion of separate existence and we experience ourselves as beings in the world. We feel 'alive'.
Having formed a centre of awareness and perceived ourselves as separate objects within our pseudo objective world we define other forms similar to us as individual beings. The entire pseudo objective world is a cognitive shadow cast by the ideas within the mind but we give ourselves life and others too. We form societies within the pseudo objective world. Within these societies all the underlying dynamics of the dance of reality filters through and animates our ideas thus modulating the shadow world that we imagine to be reality and thereby come to inhabit. The Light of the Cosmic dance still seeps through and manifests in our lives. It might seep through as intuition, intellect, expression, feeling, personal power, creativity or instinct. When the integrative, unifying 'Universal Love' aspect of the Cosmic dance manifests in our lives we experience the bliss, the Oneness, the pull to come together and unite, to co-create, to create beyond ourselves, to see ourselves as one and not as many. It seeps through depending upon our openness and our state of consciousness. When this unifying aspect seeps through as feelings in the 'heart' and it also flows between two existential forms that have identified themselves as compatible beings of the same kind, then it flows strongly, creating a resonance; a positive schizmogenesis [FR]. There is a union in spirit as the existential reality underlying each 'person' integrates the two forms into a composite form, a super-system with two beings as sub-systems. This is the most common experience of love between beings in the world.
Because our individual love is a reflection of the Cosmic Love, by directing awareness into this reflection and through it and beyond, we can pass through the illusion of separation and make contact with Divine Love, the Cosmic unifying force that holds all things together. This is the path of devotion or bhakti [FR]; it is a path of the ‘heart’. It is the path proscribed by Christ and Krishna ; through love we attain Love and thereby liberation. Another common path is when the Light illumines awareness, consciousness, intuition, intellect and imagination then the shadows are cast out and we know reality directly, we are filled with Divine Wisdom, another aspect of the Light. This is the path of wisdom or jnana [FR] (also gnana; pronounced gyana); it is a path of the ‘third eye’. It is the path that science and philosophy aspire to and will attain once they overcome their objectivist empiricist assumptions. It is the path proscribed by the Buddha [FR] and countless gnani’s such as Sri Ramana Maharshi [FR] and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj [FR]. There is also karma yoga, the path of selfless action [FR]; raja yoga, the path of eight limbs [FR] and tantra yoga, the path of expansion [FR]. These are all forms of yoga [FR], or paths toward union with reality.
When the Light animates the lower nature of a being, described as the "lower chakras" or modes of consciousness (lower as in closer to our organic animal nature) it manifests as sexual or possessive or romantic love. If the being is centred in their higher nature, described as the "higher chakras" or modes of consciousness (higher as in closer to our true non-material essence) it manifests as compassionate, non-attached, universal love.
A recent quiery of the work states "How would you describe Love and Light in mathematics?" Although the reality is beyond all description, beyond all ideas and symbols even so, above, it is described to some extent using transcendent, non-empirical ideas. These can come a little closer to reality than ideas that are totally based on empirical sensory experiences of the pseudo objective world. All ideas are veils that distort the Light and at the same time reveal aspects of its outer form, but some ideas are better than others; for example the idea that “we are matter machines and that is that” leads one into illusion but the idea that “all we ever truly experience and know is the modifications of consciousness” can help one differentiate illusion from reality and thereby peel back the veils. These transcendent ideas arise in mystic wisdom but they also arise independently from the mathematical process arising within a branch of mathematics called 'system matrix notation' (SMN). The philosophy of 'information system theory' (IST) is simply a description and interpretation of the mathematics. The actual mathematics is pure symbol and relation. In itself it means nothing; it is just a patterned process of information. Similarly the Cosmic dance has no intrinsic meaning. The dance of Light that underlies our experience of a chair doesn't have the meaning 'chair'. It is just a convergence of information/Light that stimulates our awareness to experience a form that we interpret as a chair. The concept ‘chair’ is a signifier that triggers associations in our mind. These ideas flow together and form our understanding of the meaning of 'chair'. It only has meaning within the context of our lives within the pseudo objective reality.
The mathematics of SMN creates and sustains a dance of information that exhibits the same fundamental properties as the 'Light', via its channelling of information. Furthermore the dance of information exhibits the same fundamental behaviour as the Cosmic dance in the sense that it flows through all systems within systems, which are just patterns of information flowing into each other in a sea of information. The information flow animates all systems; it is the content of their perceptions and the process of their perception. It is the substance of their experiences and the process of their experience. Although we ascribe the concept ‘virtual’ to these systems and the concept ‘real’ to ourselves, the flow passes through them and they are tangibly influenced by it. We only comprehend these systems from the outside, but to them their experience seems ‘real’ and they can only know about us through information so they would think of us as ‘virtual’.
Hence SMN cannot describe Truth, Light, Life and Love in the usual sense of bringing together symbolic cues that cause us to recall ideas about impression formed from experiences and form these into an understanding that we measure against our personal concepts of reality within our own pseudo objective world. In this sense it cannot 'describe' Truth, Light, Life and Love. However it can model the flow of existential essence, the Truth, the flow of Light, Life and Love. In this way it can describe the inner essence, the subtle principles, processes and structures that underlie the existence of the phenomena themselves. In this way one could conceivably model the entire process and thereby recreate the phenomena within a 'virtual' context; but such a model would be as complex and vast as the Cosmos so only the Cosmos could model itself. In this sense the Cosmos is its own best model. Within that cosmic model there exist people forming consensus on what is truth, there exists physical light streaming into the senses of beings, beings experience being 'alive' in their pseudo objective worlds and there exist lovers falling in love and poets trying to express their love in words. All of this is just the ideas of the beings within that cosmos; ideas formed from their empirical experiences of the surface appearance of reality. In truth there is only the Dance of Light.
“How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?” (Albert Einstein )
Indeed it is because mathematics is “ independent of experience” that it can comprehend the reality beyond the world that we construct from occasions of experience. It is not a language of the pseudo objective world. It has no simple symbol for love or fear or flower or hunger; these things are ultimately not real. Mathematics as we know it is a product of human thought but that is the shadow cast in our minds and culture of the deeper essence of mathematics, which is the language of reality; the language of pure existence and change [FR].
“If God speaks to man, he undoubtedly uses the language of mathematics.” (Henri Poincare)
In contrast it is impossible to describe in empirical words the transcendent nature of reality sufficiently to be able to model it or even understand it in any detail. Words are just symbols relating to subjective experiential impressions and also ideas about impressions and ideas about ideas; whilst mathematics is pure symbol and relation. Words can never truly describe the vast intricate dance of Light where there is no meaning but only pattern and flow, but mathematics is perfectly suited to this. Words convey meaning but mathematics conveys pure pattern and flow. So whilst a love poem in words will be far more 'evocative' to empirical beings such as we, far more than a mathematical model, that is only in the context of an empirical being dwelling in a pseudo objective world. In Truth, in reality, in the "mind of God" there are no objects or experiences or ideas, there is pure existential potential and the flow of existence into existence. The dance of Light, the Universal Consciousness is not a being in a world; it doesn't 'speak' the language of the world. It speaks the language of Truth, Light, Life and Love, its utterance is pure existence and change.
“In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven.” (Edward Everett, (1794-1865) )
When a person's perceptual / experiential process is free from distortions and confusions they can channel the objective existential information coherently. If other people can do likewise then they can all perceive and comprehend each other well (but never perfectly). There is a common 'understanding'; a unified and unifying underlying essence that animates them all and freely flows amongst them with little distortion.
In the words of Anthony R. Ferris from the preface to “Thoughts
and Meditations”; a collection of writings by Kahlil Gibran;
speaking about Gibran’s youthful vision:
“In his youth
[he] conceived the universe as perfect and devoid of evil. He
pictured a joyous world free of suffering, a world of enlightenment
unflawed by ignorance, a world whose great minds rejected
superstition, a world of progress that abhorred corruption. Justice
and wisdom lived side by side... and unity and good will prevailed
among men ... the heads of state and hierarchs of the religions ...
provide examples of justice and wisdom ... their privileges were
their due for the noble services they rendered ... on this account
the people yielded them honour, trust and obedience.”
However once confusions creep in they are like obstacles in the stream of light that cast shadows and thereby distort it as it flows. The unity begins to fragment and misunderstandings arise. Isolationist power structures arise and conflict becomes the norm. In the worst-case scenario the systems cannot coherently experience or understand each other therefore every system seems insane to every other system, nothing makes any sense and every system seeks only its own immediate advantage within the context of its delusion. In general, destructive tensions dis-integrate the overall system before it can reach this state. Power blocks arise and fight their way into mutual annihilation. The subtle web of life that sustains the whole context breaks down and everything dis-integrates into lower level systems. In general, people and populations lie somewhere in between these two extremes and vary greatly in different times and places.
Over time Gibran experienced the corruption of this world of illusory egoic beings struggling amidst their delusions. He began to perceive the realities of life ... and he felt disappointed and embittered ... he saw the rich abusing the poor who lived under the yoke of slavery and despotism ... “tyranny” masked itself under the name of “politics”. Every kind of ruler has won power except the ruler with a mind. The honest man is forced into deceit, the impostor holds sway ... success is gained by the sacrifice of conscience and honour. The man of integrity sinks into the jaws of poverty. The honest man is reviled and the liar admired and rewarded with possessions. The people are chained by custom ... they do not follow the light of their own minds or the dictates of their own hearts. This has led the people into narrow, separated faiths and suspicious, unfriendly, separated nations, instead of a universal faith and a world nation. Thus they remained victims of superstitions.” (Anthony R. Ferris from the preface to “Thoughts and Meditations”; a collection of writings by Kahlil Gibran, translated and edited by A. R. Ferris, The Citadel Press, 1971)
Here we will explore the nature of conflict. As shadows arise in people's minds and the cultural domain they propagate throughout the many feedback loops and accumulate into complex self-sustaining meme complexes. These are the inner aspect of organisations and ‘movements’ in the world; they are like organisations which are formed out of memes rather than people. They operate within the cognitive ecosystem that is the network of individual minds inter-connected via the cultural domain. All ideologies, lifestyles, fashions, and other cultural 'movements' are of this nature. A common form of this is nationalism which manifests countless different 'isms'; including mysticism [FR]. Only the pure objective reality is free from all shadow (illusion). As soon as it is transformed and represented and interpreted and comprehended and communicated and so on it becomes imbued with many subtle layers of illusion. Hence to some degree we are all operating within our own illusory worlds and we can comprehend and cooperate with each other only to the extent that our illusions are compatible.
In some cases there can been individuals and populations that are chronically deluded for various reasons of their own, perhaps a tendency for morbid negative introspection or naive acceptance of their illusions as reality, which decays their inner space, degenerates their paradigm or warps their cognitive lens so they can no longer interpret and comprehend coherently. Furthermore, in very rare cases there can be individuals and populations that are open, aware, wise and free from all delusion. If the delusional are closed to all forms of light and wisdom and they are destructive and aggressive toward the world in general then the wise are drawn into action by the very nature of the holistic process; the light of the world flows through them and inspires them to act. However such cases are very rare; one such case is described in the Bhagavad Gita [FR], (whether this is myth or history is irrelevant; it is the analogy that speaks its timeless wisdom).
In general the antagonists in the conflict are both caught up in delusions that bring them into conflict. Each claims to be the wise and just system but this is just dangerous propaganda and self-deception, which worsens the delusions and conflict. The best way to resolve such conflicts is to shed light on the delusions of all the systems; uncover their confusions, assumptions, dysfunctional agendas, irrational attachments and so on. These are the systemic driving force behind any conflict. The shedding of this light, even if it is freely available is not an easy matter since the systems are attached to their delusions. If they are peaceful they can dream peacefully, but if they are lost in a nightmare and are thrashing about destructively and aggressively then the universe responds in countless subtle ways and light comes streaming into the world.
For the deluded their delusions can be very compelling, self-reinforcing and habit forming. It can be like a maze where all the corridors fold back into the maze. Circuitous logic and leaps of faith can weave a tight knot that is difficult to untangle. For those trapped in the maze it is their whole world. Their mind is habituated to flowing through the circuitous paths and cannot comprehend any other path to explore. They feel “at home” in the familiar surroundings of their maze and they are attached to it. They feel certainty even in the midst of great ignorance; their maze may be small but they are certain that there is nothing beyond it, even though they have never tried to look beyond it. It is all internally connected so by moving through it they feel they know it and they experience no obvious cracks in the maze, even though there may be glaring paradoxes and contradictions, these are covered over and never actually looked at. They feel entirely justified in the correctness of their maze and feel a right and even a duty to force others to move only in this maze. Other people speak of things beyond the maze but they are considered as being only delusional – so the maze dweller thinks; they have never looked beyond the maze because they assume that they already know there is nothing beyond it.
Any theory, paradigm, ideal, attitude or thought construct is a maze. It is just a matter of the degree to which it corresponds to reality that determines whether it traps us in delusion or simply ‘colours’ reality so that we can ‘see’ it with the mind’s eye. Only direct connection and spontaneous response guarantees holistic appropriate and effective action. Direct contact with reality breaks holes in the maze and can even demolish all walls; removing all mind made distinctions. Then one can experience and know the full expanse of existence and move freely without artificial constraints. The growth of urban environments is analogous to the growth of cognitive mazes. They arise haphazardly and come to encase the landscape within a rigidly defined structure of localities, roads and so on (i.e. concepts and relations). Whilst this gives personality it also traps one within a narrow range of states of being whilst reality goes on beneath your maze.
The common approach to alleviating conflict and working toward peace is to aim at having an arbitrary but uniformly dominant delusion. By spreading a common delusion we do get a region of coherence and harmony, where we all see the same illusions and speak the same language of illusion. These bubbles do not last; they can never achieve “full spectrum dominance” [FR, FR, FR, FR] so there is constant conflict between rival delusions. Whilst there is only one Truth and many ways of representing it as truth, there are countless multitudes of arbitrary delusions. Furthermore the domain of arbitrary coherence cannot be imposed universally. It is ultimately a small island of darkness in a sea of light. I.e. one delusion might dominate all peoples and nations but it cannot force its delusion on all aspects of reality. For example, the dominance of materialist, secular, capitalist, pseudo liberal democracies populated by consumers and producers operating in a purely economic context has brought a degree of coherence and harmony to those at the top of that world but the paradigm is narrow and holistically destructive. Even if all humans and organisations believe the illusion we cannot force nature to play along as well; we still depend on reality, only in deep delusion can one think otherwise.
With any delusion there is inevitable conflict with reality; we cannot force the cultural domain onto the objective domain; we cannot force our confusions onto the Cosmos itself. Memes (ideas, illusions) only exist and operate within the cultural and subjective domains; they cannot penetrate the objective domain; they are just reflections of reality and not reality itself. No matter how deep into delusion we may go reality always remains in the background; it provides hard existential limits and serves as a “reality check”. We can align with reality either by opening up to it and growing with it or by fighting it and being defeated. Either way our delusions are shattered. By opening up to reality the universe responds with love and life and by fighting it the universe responds with suffering and destruction.
“When faced with radical crisis, when the old way of being in
the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of
nature doesn't work any more, when survival is threatened by
seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual human - or species -
will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of
their condition through an evolutionary leap. This is the state of
humanity now, and this is its challenge.”
(Eckhart Tolle,
"A New Earth: Awakening to your life's Purpose", Penguin,
2005)
This is just a quick summary, for a much deeper analysis of conflict and peace see [FR].
These are common concepts in the mystic discourse but are generally misunderstood. A brief clarification is provided here. Firstly, immortality; our true nature is the Self that is the Supreme Self, the Atman that is Brahman, the Soul that is God, it is without beginning or end, it is timeless and dwells in the eternal Now. This is immortal and is the substrate of existence; when immortal you may manifest in the body or not but these are just appearances, you are neither born nor do you die. When one flows with the Way and is a harmonious gesture in the cosmic dance then no decay, no disease, no ageing nor death are necessary. They may or may not occur but that is not important when you truly flow with the Way. If the dance flows on in such a way that certain forms persist and deluded people, who are identified with their form, perceive this as ‘you’ then they will say that ‘you’ have ‘life’. You are not identified with those forms, you are the dance, timeless and eternal. The forms will come and go, in other’s eyes ‘you’ may ‘die’ or ‘you’ may ‘live’ for thousands of years. They may say that ‘you’ have everlasting life, but their ‘you’ is just an idea about a perceived form in the world, just a small gesture in the cosmic dance; the real you is the dance itself, timeless and eternal.
“The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment. The real you is timeless and beyond birth and death. The body will survive as long as it is needed. It is not important that it should live long.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I am That)
So in reality you are immortal but you seem to come and go in all manner of forms. If one of the forms is that which we call a ‘human’ and the form persists, then other ‘human’ forms (other manifestation of you, you are the Supreme Self that is the Life within all forms) who are identified with their form will say that the form that they perceive and think of as ‘you’ has everlasting life. You are everything, you are the Ultimate, the Absolute, the immortal Supreme Self, you are God, you are existence itself, you contain the whole cosmos within your being. The reality that lies just behind the veil of the mind-made pseudo objective world is the dance of ethereal light, the dream in the mind of God, the light that shines in the darkness. It is a universe of light, vast, subtle and complex! An awe-inspiring vision of abundance, power and splendour; that is your true body. The cosmos is a body of Light and a mind of Universal Consciousness; that is your true identity when you stop believing that you are a character in the virtual reality and realise that you are the very essence of that virtual reality.
“That in whom reside all beings and who resides in all beings, who is the giver of grace to all, the Supreme Soul of the universe, the limitless being – I am That.” (Amritbindu Upanishad)
There are "two trajectories in current history: one aiming
toward hegemony, acting rationally within a lunatic doctrinal
framework as it threatens survival; the other dedicated to the belief
that 'another world is possible', ... challenging the reigning
ideological system and seeking to create constructive alternatives of
thought action and institutions."
(Noam Chomsky,
Hegemony or Survival [FR])
"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Bible, Mat:6:24)
In the population at large the attitude of naive realism and that of holistic realism are both proliferating. We see the greatest level of delusion and trance inducing memetic manipulation in recorded history right alongside the largest, longest and most pervasive mystic revival in recorded history. In many groups there is rapidly growing naive realism, conditioning, objectification, materialism, authoritarianism, consumerism, fanaticism and so on. Many people are rapidly becoming units of cognitive territory and energy resources for vast organisations. They dwell in a sea of manipulative advertising and propaganda, focusing only ‘outward’ into a totally conditioned cultural domain, totally dependent on the cultural domain for all their information, knowledge, ideas and ways of interpreting, comprehending and responding. They are therefore unable to engage with reality and are even cynical, fearful or hostile towards it. These conditioned beings are assimilated into vast complex collectives through which their productive capacity (life force) is harvested, harnessed, channelled and made available to various power structures. At each nexus, where the lines of power converge there arises a controller. This is basic cybernetics or dynamical system theory [FR] and applies to all complex self-organising systems. Your own sense of unified identity arises out of a civilisation of trillions of cells (most of which don’t even contain human DNA). These cells are whole, complete and individual living beings. What you call your mind, your heart (not the physical organ), and so on are controllers that arise at a power nexus. This could well be the idea behind the chakras, which represent distinct levels of consciousness.
The ego is the highest-level controller that takes control over all other controllers. The I-thought is a unifying power nexus that binds mind, heart, body, ideas, personality, possessions and close relations together into a single identity. It also extends to community, ideology, nationalism and so on. The more that the ego assimilates and identifies with the bigger and stronger it becomes. For those who possess and own a great deal, they are possessed and owned by the ego and they become a lifestyle support control system, driven by the demands of the ego and working to maintain possessions and acquire more.
“Jesus on the lean donkey,
this is an emblem of how the
rational intellect
should control the animal-soul.
Let your spirit be strong like Jesus.
If that part becomes
weak,
then the worn-out donkey grows to a dragon.”
(Jelaluddin Balkhi aka Rumi)
The way to clarify one’s perspective is to disentangle one’s identity from the complex web of confusions, agitations, delusions, ideas, objects, attachments, attitudes, desires, aversions and so on that distort one’s perspective. If one dis-identifies with them, one can then “stare naked” at reality. One does not destroy the controller, it still has an integrative function to perform. The problem is that controllers often become dictators. From their own narrow confused perspective they experience the integrated identity that it is their function to maintain and they succumb to the illusion of individual existence. They give themselves life and form the I-thought around which all the acquired desires, agendas, aversions and other delusions are woven. This occurs in all cybernetic systems with sufficient complexity and can be clearly seen operating in animals, humans and human collectives [FR], [FR]. These countless ego’s form into a collective ego and people are integrated into vast mechanistic structures. The formation of the ego is the first step in losing the Way, the “original sin” and it is the beginning of a downhill slide into destruction
“The reason why heaven and earth are enduring is that they do not give themselves life. Hence they are able to be long lived.” (Tao Te Ching [FR])
On the other hand we are also witnessing an unprecedented mystic revival; thousands of years of mystic wisdom is flowing throughout the culture, enabled by decentralised dissemination such as the internet but also through a growth in independent publishing houses. There is growing profusion of yoga, meditation, alternative therapy and various spiritual centres arising around the globe. The innate tendency of humanity is to connect with reality so even in the midst of massive delusion and manipulation, and especially in the face of oppression and looming crisis, the innate virtue [inner awareness] of humanity is intact and is reaching out to connect with reality and awaken from the collective nightmare of ignorance. Refer to this earlier advice regarding oppression and also this encouragement below.
“Though they [the people] may be deeply trapped and overwhelmed [by egoic delusion] their innate nature is still intact [inner awareness], thus there is no sickness [no permanent disconnection from reality]. When a noble person advances all wise people follow, and friends come. Abandon selfish desires and innate goodness emerges. The petty retreat and the sage advances. This is going and returning to the Way. In this way our innate goodness is fully developed and worldly affairs can be handled with ease. This is how the sages lent their strength to bring about the orderly government of ancient rulers. Thus it is favourable to proceed. When the heavenly course prevails there is grace. Indeed Returning is the way where heaven and humanity are united to complete the natural order of things.”
“Returning refers to the time when the climate is at its
coldest [deep oppression and despair], yet the water in the
wells is still warm [inner awareness]... This is the thunder
of the winter solstice that is stored within the earth [the deep
instinct that inspires us to wake up from our nightmares]. The
power of returning yang energy to the earth is at its highest, yet it
only moves in accord with time... young yang must be kept peaceful
and calm to allow it's growth, do not act to dissipate it [don’t
go on a crusade to change the world, just reconnect within and
nurture your inner brightness and share this brightness with
others].” ( “Yi Jing: Book of Change”, Translated by Gia
Fu Feng, Sue Bailey and Bink Kun Young, Feng Books, 1986)
(quoted
from [REF]
)
The two forces are not defined by particular people and organisations but by particular meme complexes that permeate the entire cultural domain and conduct their struggle within each of our personal memetic ecosystems or minds and within each organisations' collective mind. They arise from fundamental systemic phenomena such as simulation creating the appearance of an empirical world, individuation and ego arising around an empirical subjective perspective, communication creating a collective virtual space or pseudo objective world, meta system transitions creating higher level systems in which we are the cells, introspection or going within and returning to one’s roots reconnecting us with reali