Unraveling Physis
I had some free time as we were driving around along the coast this week to contemplate on reality in a half dazed sleepy state of mind you oft times get in the back seat of a car driving along a silent road on a partly sunny day, staring at the ocean meeting the sky.
I was first thinking to myself how beautiful the scenery was. How the blue ocean appears to stretch upwards towards the sky, and how the blue sky seems to stretch down to meet the ocean. I thought to myself that if it weren’t for the thin line of the horizon which served as a junction between the two, I would not be able to tell where one began and the other ended.
Eyes In The Sky
The junction between the sky and ocean naturally led me to briefly think about the junction of a synapse of our neurons. Especially that day because it was partly cloudy, and I imagined rain drops to be like the whatever-chemicals crosses that junction from one tentacle of a neuron to another. Which got to wonder to myself where the junction between what I was looking at outside and my inner experience of what I look at was?
I mean The Junction between the outer world and the inner world. Not my lens on my eyes. Not my retina or cones and rods. Not my optical nerve fibers. Not even my visual cortex. I wanted to look for that Junction that takes place between a world I assume to be real and Consciousness. Why do I experience what I see consciously? And specifically, what is the junction point between reality and consciousness where the actual transaction of data takes place? What is taking place in that mysterious junction? There are big and goofy words for what I am trying to talk about. But I will refrain from using them to keep things on the real and simple, for myself and some others.
I tried to trace my steps backwards. My eyeballs to my retina. My retina to my optical nerves. My nerves to my visual cortex. My cortex down to their individual neurons. From there down to their synaptic gaps. And there I could rationally go no further. Because here in the synaptic gaps what transaction happens occur between two tiny neurons, and not between Outer Reality and my own Conscious “Self.”
Clever Waves
After trying to find my way down to finer levels to find that junction of transaction between reality and consciousness, I thought to myself how it was all like us looking for the missing link between apes and humans in the process of evolution. I know from this that there is no missing link between monkeys and humans, because both monkey and human originated from a same ancestral source. Therefore, I concluded that perhaps I was looking for a Phantom Junction that was not there? But why was it not “there?” Does reality and consciousness/awareness/experience also originate from a same common “source?”
As I was contemplating how bizarre Perception was I recalled that something I learned reading things on Quantum Physics: that sometimes what we look at is altered or affected or influenced just by us looking at it. This got me to think about the famous double slit experiment.
Basically in the experiment you have a divider with two slits. A source of photons radiates photons towards the slits. That’s all that we want to look at. The bizarre part of the experiment to consider is that as soon as you try to observe what dark mysterious thing is happening at the divider, the Waves bead up into photons and suddenly acts as photons. Then when you turn around they go back to being waves. You put instruments to try and trick the waves, and they still bead up into photons. The sciences would ask themselves: what’s going on at that weird place at the divider?
I accidently asked myself: How do the waves “know” they are being looked at by something in the first place? Surely waves and subatomic particles aren’t alive or intelligent enough to “know” that something is Observing it. And so, there I was on a quest to find the Junction between the Wave and Consciousness. Where was the transaction between the Wave and Consciousness [its observation]? And what was going on at that junction. How does Consciousness affect the Wave, or better yet, how does the Wave react to being observed by Consciousness?
I couldn’t wrap my giant head around it. There was something amiss or not quite right I thought. The reaction between the two vectors is simultaneous, there is no time for one to react to the other. And we can’t assume that the waves “know” when consciousness is looking at it, neither can we just assume that consciousness magically influences the Waves by looking at it. I realized that I may have stumbled onto another Phantom Junction. Meaning that I was searching to understand something that was not there to begin with.
Which was when I also realized that the finer down the gradation of reality we go, the more weirder things get. Weird as in the transaction between two vectors in reality are so blurry we have a hard time figuring things out.
Money Drop
Back when I was much younger and dumber [early years of high school] I had one of my older boy cousins play a trick on me. He and our other cousin had come into the room I was sharing at grandma’s house with another cousin. So this boy cousin pulls out a crispy new $100 bill, as the cousin he came with was snickering. The cousins with the money said to me: “I’ll make a bet with you. I’ll let you keep this $100 bill if you catch it with your fingers,” as he said that he demonstrated by dropping the bill out of his left hand and catching it with his right, then he added: “But you owe me $10 for every time you miss.”
My cousin Tiff – whom I shared the room with – said not to do it because it was a trick. I knew it was a trick of some sort because they were giggling to themselves like dummies; but I still thought I could catch the money. I couldn’t catch the $100 bill! It wasn’t until I owed them $70 that I finally realized that it was impossible to catch the money even when it was an inch away from your fingers.
I was far too retarded back then to pay much attention to the finer details of this trick. There were those times when I would drop credit cards from my left hand and catch it without thinking in my right hand, and I always wondered why I could catch things when I dropped stuff, but I was not able to when others dropped things.
That flashback faded into a bright light that hit me as I was trying to figure out what was wrong with reality and the Phantom Junction. I couldn’t catch the money when someone else dropped it because the other person and I were two unconnected systems! Being two unconnected systems there must be a transaction that occurs between the two systems. Causation right? Action and Reaction between two separate systems. I can catch money I drop myself because both my left and right hand were part of a Single Whole System. Being One System, there exists no real Junction of Transaction because causality is a Single fluid flow or Continuum or Field, within a single continuum.
The Phantom Junction
Which was when I realized that my first Phanton Junction between things I observe and my consciousness or the experience of things; and the Phanton Junction between Wave and Consciousness are the same Phanton Junction.
That Phantom Junction and the “Problems” associated with it only exists in a dualistic world-model of the universe. Meaning that when we assume reality and us/consciousness are two separate things, then there must be a transaction point where one affects the other. So we look for that junction and ask ourselves Problematic questions that arises from this worldmodel of the universe.
We ask ourselves what “experience” is. How experience arises. How outside things stimulates “consciousness” to have an experience. And so we look for that mysterious junction point between what is Being Experienced, and That Which is Experiencing.
We look for that same mysterious junction between the Conscious Observer and Waves and other finer quantum elements in the lab. Things that our mathematics can’t explain, with the current dualistic worldmodel of the universe we are using.
But when we switch to a single system model, where “reality” and “consciousness” are either the same “Thing” or indivisible parts of the same Whole, then that Phantom Junction vanishes along with the Problems.
We no longer have to ask how a wave “knows” it is being looked at, because the wave and the looker are the same fluid continuum. We no longer have the weird Problem that exists between the Object of Experience, and the Experiencer experiencing the experienced, because its all one fluid motion of a single field or continuum. It’s like asking ourselves: How does the down part of the river know to move in harmony to the up part of the river a hundred miles away? Because they are the same fluid system.
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From the looks of things, to me it seems as though we are looking at three reific factors or parts of a whole: 1) The Experiencer; 2) The “Object” of Experience; & 3) The Experience. If I were to say that the first two factors were the same “Thing,” can this same Thing interact with itself to give rise to the third factor? Can something interact with itself to produce an additional vector or variable? This got me thinking about lasers and holograms.
Basically the way a hologram works is that you have a laser beam. You split that beam into two different beams. Then you make those two beams interact with each other through a holographic film. The interacting beams – which essentially are the same Thing – transmutes or converts the information on the holographic film into a 3D image; which is a third vector or variable. Laser = first factor; Film = second factor; and Hologram = third. The data contained in that film exists in its Potential State: Raveled/Folded. The Laser Expresses that Potential: Unfolding the Folded. Therefore, if I were asked what exactly “consciousness” is when I use it, I would briefly define it simply as the “Expresser or Unfolding Factor of Information in its Potential State; both of which are part of the same Whole System.”
Information like Energy, in theoretical physics is a big deal. Like Energy, Information can never be created or destroyed. In fact, not too long ago [before I was born] there was some huge geek spazz attack in the theoretical physics community when Locutus Stephan Hawking of Borg held a greatly tedious meetings of nerds and university faculty to unveil the mysteries of the universe.
Now, Locutus Hawking spent his whole life fascinated with something he calls “Black Holes” which he is the foremost expert on; being that he probably made the things up himself. This meeting was to unleash into the universe his next great discovery which he came up all by himself in his mind, since he was too handicapped to work math equations out.
At the meeting Hawking stated to an audience in much suspense that he had been working things out in his head, and has come to discover that Black Holes are so destructive that eventually they devour themselves into NOTHING!
All of a sudden all the old people and theoretical physicists had this spastic reaction to the horror of this draconian revelation. “No! It’s not true! This is war!” They protested. The problem the other scientists had was that Black Holes – according to the math – sucks up not only stuff and energy, but also Information. And when Hawking said that Black Holes become nothing eventually, he broke the laws of physics – as if current big bang cosmologic isn’t criminal in this regard – because where did the Information of all the stuff GO?
But no matter how loud and how many theoretical physicists protested to this idea, Hawking refused to give in. He was sure he was absolutely right because the math doesn’t lie. That’s when his friends and associates went on a 30 year quest to try to prove him wrong.
During those 30 years, some theoretical physicists came up with some wonderfully imaginative “theories” based on wacky math. Some scientists theorized that the information did not go into the black hole, but instead somehow got suck on the egg shell of the black hole called the event horizon. So that way, when the black hole devours itself, the information doesn’t vanish, thus saving the universe from doom and peril.
Other scientists theorized that everybody was wrong because all the stuff in the universe going to a black hole is a hologram anyways. The information was encoded on some far away membrane and everything we see in of the universe is a holographic projection of that information etched on that distant membrane.
Then after 30 years, Stephen Hawking call an emergency meeting to reveal that he was WRONG! Hawking gave a lecture that he had spent the last 30 years pondering about the problem of the vanishing Information, and he has come to realize that he may not be completely correct. He told his fellow scientists that he has solved the riddle, thus saving the universe. He says that with just a few minor additions to his equation, it was revealed that other parallel universes existed. And that when a black hole forms in one universe, the universe splits like an amoeba so that a new universe is born perfectly identical to the one with the black hole, minus the black hole. Therefore, when the black hole in one devours itself and the information is gone; the information still exists in that parallel universe!
There’s a point to all this somewhere relevant to what I originally talked about. The point is that we give a lot of attention to “energy” because its mysterious and can’t be created or destroyed. But we neglect to give attention to Information which is just as mysterious, immortal, and indestructible. It’s beyond my civilian abilities to figure out where energy and information originates from.
But I do understand that like energy, information has two state of “being” which are Potential and Expressed. So when we see or observe energy being expressed, we can say that such energy is a “property” of whatever expressed it. For example we know that photons are energy packets that arises when an electron “jumps” energy levels. The Difference of energy level is released as a photon. The energy which the photon is existed in its Potential State of being as a part of that electron. And the photon that arises from this same electron jumping energy levels is that Potential in causal Expression and Properties of its “expresser.”
If information comes in an raveled and an unraveled state of being, then what we experience or what we see and are surrounded with – you, me, stuff – are that Potential State of information in Expression, a resultant property of its expresser: consciousness. In the same sense – but not in the same way – that we can say a hologram is the resultant expression and property of holographic film [Unexpressed Information] and laser [the expresser]. The expresser and the unfolded potential being the same single Whole System.
But still, it can be asked: “Even if reality/dhammakaya [Body of Phenomena] and Mind [chitta/mana] are the same “thing” why is there perceived to be a difference? And what might that difference be like?” Coherency I think is the fundamental idea here. It’s like a laser. If you shine a flashlight at a holographic film, it won’t work, even though the photons of the flashlight and the laser are both photons. What’s the difference? Coherency.
So what is the most basic and observable activity or behaviour of Consciousness? It Fixates/Focuses/Concentrates. And we call that act “awareness.” That’s like when you take a magnifying glass out into a sunny day and you were to Focus that sun’s light into a Concentrated spot of Fixated point to burn something. If you blew smoke at the magnifying glass you can clearly see that the sun, it’s light, and the Fixated Point burning leaves and ants are the Same Fluid Continuum. What’s the difference than? The difference is that the light of the sun is discoherent, whereas the burning spot is that same Field of Light in a Coherent manifestation. And because of its coherent condition, the “buring potential” of the sun’s light is Manifest or Expressed causally/physically.
So, I would say that the sun’s light in its ubiquitous unexpressed state is like dhammakaya/reality and things like consciousness/nexions are coherent manifestation of that ubiquitous stuff, focused, concentrated, and fixated on little spots to Express and Unfold potential.
A better way to explain how I see the “difference” between “reality” and “consciousness” is by using a long silk fabric of a sari. You get a friend and you stretch that fabric out. Then you make waves by flipping your end of the fabric so that the waves moves across the fabric to your friend’s side. So in this scenario we can ask ourselves: “What is the difference between the fabric and the Wave?” There is no difference really. Because both the fabric and the wave; or the wave and the medium doing the wave; are in fact the same thing. It’s just that the fabric contains the potential energy/motion and the waves themselves are that Potential in Kinetic Expression. The Wave and its Matrix are indivisibly the same “Thing.” Like waves or the undercurrent of an ocean.
Because you are a “wave” on that fabric or ocean you move at a different rate relative to the motion or motionless state of the matrix/medium you exist in, you perceive differentiation. It’s akin to the idea of moving very fast in a space ship in outer space. If there is nothing by your space ship, you can’t really perceive motion or tell how fast you are flying. In the same way that we can perceive a difference between sunlight and a concentrated point of light through a magnifying glass. Same fluid flowing of light, just different states of coherency. But using all of these mechanical things is deceptive, because it makes us ask the question: “What then is concentrating the ubiquitous stuff of everything into the concentrated thing you and I are?”
The Substance of Mind itself – in its own medium/matrix – does not need something to focus in on itself. Of all the thousands of ideas and memories we have “in” our minds, where do they “exist” when we do not pay mind to them? In a “dormant” Potential/Folded State. It’s only when Mind focuses in on certain and specific ideas and memories that such ideas and memories become Expressed and Experienced. Otherwise we remain unaware of them. We can be so focused on ourselves of something inside of us that the outside world literally fades. And we can be so absorbed in something outside of us – concert, car accident, sports game – that our bodies and “self” fades out of awareness. We can be so engrossed in a dream or day dream that we are not even consciously aware of the outside world. Mind does not need anything to concentrate itself onto things. Focus is a natural or inherent habit of Mind.
The Problem of Dualism
On a “macrophysical” level there is no real problem or issue with the dualistic worldmodel of reality. I am here and a tree is over there. No problem. Things are as they are meant to be on this level. Just like when you enter a movie theater you know you will be watching a movie on a movie screen. The point is to enjoy the movie and your time with friends. The real point is not to nit pick and micromanage the plot and ask where the images come from and how everything works. You could if you wanted to. But when we begin to ask such questions, and those questions draws us to a much finer and deeper level, we run into the problem of the Phantom Junction.
Because if I am here, and a tree is over there, then where exactly in reality or consciousness do I and that Tree meet and touch? And how do we touch? If when I “touch” this tree in the deep dark recesses of reality and consciousness I gain the experience of the tree; does the tree also gain the experience of me too? If the tree does not experience me on such a fundamental level of reality, then why does it exist at all? Only to give this human that I am a human experience of trees? Can we then say that all things exist on a fundamental level to give us humans sensation and experience? Isn’t that a little arrogant and anthropocentric? To believe that reality exists just to tickle our human synapses?
The Problem arises in a dualistic model of reality/consciousness when we peer deep into the finest levels of physical reality. For on that very fine level, we come to learn that the most finest elements of our physical world reacts to us merely observing it. What is happening? How does a photon Wave know exactly when to bead up into a particle if and when we look at it? How does it react that way? Why must it react? If it is a wave, what is doing the wave? Where does consciousness and the wave “touch?” And what happened at that mysterious place of interaction between two supposed separate things? Why does the most fundamental parts and pieces of “reality” we have thus far come to know react to being observed? Why do those fundamental elements/waves-things bead up in the first place? To give rise to bigger elements? Which gives rise to atoms, that make molecules, and thus the world and all stuff for us to live in and enjoy? Isn’t that a little homocentric?
This notion of “objective” and subjective” universe is also fine on a big level. Sure there is a difference between the two. What exists in my mind is not what exists in the streets and the city. But on a more finer and fundamental level, where do those two worlds “touch” and how do they interact? On this fundamental level why does the so called objective universe exist in the first place? To stimulate and give rise to human subjective universes? Why? Isn’t that a little self centered?
These problems and issues fade away in a non-dualistic world model. Or not non-dualistic, but non-separated. Non-separate is slightly different than non-dualism. Your right and left hand are different things, but they are first a part of One-Thing, and they originate from a single-same source and continue to exist as parts of a single continuum of Being. Whereas non-dualism in my mind feels like were talking about mud, or the stuff I ate yesterday where all these different foods are mushed together into a gastric soup of sameness.
But whatever, non-dualism still works. Because on a fundamental level, me and the tree are the same field or continuum of the One-Thing. Thus there exists no junction point where one touches the other because we are on such a fundamental level the same supernal and sublime substance. On this fundamental level, the Wave and Mind are indivisible aspects of the same Flow, the same Tao, the same Field, the same fluid Contiuum. There is no touching or transaction. It is the dance of Shiva and Shakti, two halves of the Whole Ardhanari in a cosmic dance with itself. The Unmanifested and the Manifested. The Potential and the Kinetic. The Acausal and the Causal. The Raveled and the Unraveled. The Folded and the Unfolded. The Mystery and the Gnosis. The Dhamma and The Buddha. And the Abyss where the fabric one twists into the other is the nexion of Mind. Mind – chitta/psyche – the Norns that Weave the Fabric of Wyrd.
Coincidently – or maybe not – as I was contemplating all of this, this whole week, an associate of mine of the ONA sent me a message concerning something he had come across in the Mahabarata Epic regarding the topic of “Potential Infinity,” and the Unfoldment of such. The meaning of which was very relevant to what I was trying to do and what I was thinking about.
My mother had told me random little stories from the Mahabarata growing up. But I had never heard it all. The Mahabarata isn’t a story book you can just read to your children as a bed time story. It’s a huge story. When I was growing up we all even watched the old hindi version of the whole entire epic with its cheap special effects.
But the brother in question found a very interesting part of this epic tale that would often be over looked and showed it to me, which I found very, very relevant and fascinating at the same time. As I received the note:
[Quote the Brother]
1) As related to “potential infinity” or enfolded potential, and ariya vs anariya:
there is a story in Mahabharata about how [anariya] Kauravas decided to disgrace Draupadi, the wife of 5 Pandavas, and tried to take of (unfold) her sari. Draupadi prayed to Vishnu, so that those ignoble people would not be able to disgrace her, and her sari became “potentially infinite”, in a sense that Kauravas tried to unfold her sari to see her naked, but the sari unfolded forever, seemingly having no end.
I feel there is a deeper essence in that story. Draupadi was in fact Kali/Shakti, and this whole act may be interpreted as mundanes/anariyas trying to see the Nature “naked” = to get to the root of Physis, w/out having any necessary qualities/inner wisdom/intuitive perception, but as DM wrote “it is in the essence of Nature to conceal itself/its inner working/core”, therefore the sari (= Maya) of Draupadi unfolded endlessly, and Kauravas were not able to strip Her. Conclusion: anariya do not possess intuitive perception. (But ariya do. Proof? Of course five Pandavas, who were ariya, saw their wife naked!)
[End Quote]
The note the Dreccian brother made a lot of sense and came at the right time for me to understand the symbolism. Draupadi’s sari is the fabric of reality. Who is in fact Kali [Time]. The act of trying to uncover Draupadi’s nakedness has two meanings. First that such nakenness was never unfolded or unraveled because more sari fabric was underneath symbolizes the concept of “Potential Infinity,” think Pi. The more you unravel pi, the more numbers comes out. You will never reach the end to see its nakedness. Because their simply is no “end,” but yet all those numbers exists nicely in a simple equation that needs you to unravel its potential. The Unmanifested becoming Manifested.
The second meaning is as the brother pointed out, that the anariya without ‘inner wisdom,’ and/or ‘intuitive perception [acausal knowing] do not understand this state of Potential Infinity. The more we materialistically try to dig deeper into the universe in finer levels for answers, using a dualist model of reality, the more question we have rather than answers. The mundanes will continue to try to uncover the sari, level after level, like peeling the layers of an union to get to the “core,” the “source,” “The Answer.” But the answer they are searching desperately for is hiding where the Olympians said they hid it: inside humanity, the last place they/we will ever look. Meaning that we ourselves, if we would just try to Know Ourselves, are the answer to the riddle, the very nakedness of Physis wrapped in a dark shroud of infinite Mystery.
Chloe 352
Order of Nine Angles
122 yf
