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Chapter Three
Mind and Matter
The Nature of Knowledge
The immanent reference term of reflexive knowledge is
the conscious self which can also become transitively aware
of both the notself and its otherself. From this arises the
whole spectrum of phenomena, observed and classified
from the dual viewpoints of distinction and union.
Within Aseity’s selflife, whilst distinction and diversity
abound, there is seen a marvellous system of systems.
Mother Nature seeks order in her unity whilst abhorring any
sterile uniformity that would turn her fertile womb into a
barren waste or lifeless tomb. The act and art of her drama
of an evolving cosmic love-affair knows elements of both
comedy and tragedy.
Distinction and union figure in all psychic processes, not
the least being that of laughter. Persons count and persons
laugh and a fount of humour is blessed ambiguity. We are
amused by expressions admitting several possible and quite
different comical interpretations. Entertainers rely to quite a
great extent on the double-meaning joke. In a singular unit
of word or phrase, we perceive a plural distinctioning of
meanings and we laugh at this seeming contradiction or
paradox. The two-in-oneness of this psychical positioning or
novel interpenetration brings comic relief to the brain's
twin-lobed activity.
We must take our laughter seriously. It is one of Nature's
most effective medicines. A body full of laughter, can
experience a very profound cleansing and healing. It is in
the analysis of why we laugh that mirth's two-in-oneness
spree becomes a symbol and leading theme opening up and
revealing patterns which give added meaning and unity to
human activity.
We laugh at absurd situations. Among the greatest in the
world of entertainment are the Circus clowns. They make
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little children laugh. It is in the comic association of seeming
opposites and contrasting situations when things by nature
apparently incompatible, are found together in spite of their
rugged differences, that the self enjoys itself become both
at once. Such is the actual nature of knowledge.
To know is to become self’s other kind
and love wills self’s becomingness in mind.
Through and with and in knowledge, the self becomes
now more than what it was before. The I-self becomes
intentionally identified with its complement, the known
other-self. Something of the latter becomes inside the being
of the former. The known has a new or added existence in
the knower.
The sensory display unit of the self's cerebral computer
perceives the otherness of the conceived information whose
data is stored and processed in the brain's hardware. Such
other-self-ness may be either a personal other or it may be
just an impersonal thing, with or without life. Self's being
wills to grow in becomingness through self-functioning
iterative feedback other-dependence.
Human beings are questionable animals. Questionable,
because they are able to question. They are conscious of
many kinds of relations. Aware of distinction and union,
they study and question relationships in order to better
understand the way one thing in itself stands with respect
to an other. The search for and discovery of more
meaningful answers to the most important and basic
questions that humans ask is wisdom and the lovers of
wisdom, as their name implies, merit being called
philosophers.
For Aristotle, perhaps the most famous of the early Greek
thinkers Philosophy began with wonder. As long as people
continue to wonder they will continue to seek wisdom.
Philosophy is rooted in the desire of the conscious mind to
understand the world, in the desire to find meaningful
patterns in human relations and to find solutions to the
problems which continually arise, teasing the mind and
demanding its reflection on them. The most universally
pondered subjects would seem to be those concerned with
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the meanings that selves give to the mystery of love in
selflife and the purpose of their own existence.
The ability to question in wonder is not an attitude that
is acquired nor can it be taught. Rather it is a basic
manifestation of emerging consciousness. Little children live
in a world that is for them still a wonderland, and they ask
questions continually, often to the point of being tiresome
and even annoying.
They ask questions of their elders fully expecting that
there are answers. Where do they come from? What is to
become of them? How? Why? Far too often it is a pretended
prudence that gives them the misleading replies of popular
convention and convenience and they are left frustrated in
enforced ignorance. The scandal thus done to little ones by
placing obstacles in the path of their quest for
becomingness deserves punishment by submersion in the
sea, necklaced with a millstone. The blind continue to lead
those whom they have blindfolded, and the ditches never
lack for filling.
Maturity is reached when humans become childlike again
in their questioning, but grown-up and experienced enough
to know that, though their questions may seem to concern
absolute things and values, the complete answers must
forever remain in patterned webs of relativities. The human
self is consciously knowledge-able. It is not agnostic by
nature but only by circumstances. It has an intuition of
truth, but more often than not self-interest has resort to a
stand-over approach in its regard, rather than trying to
understand where and how truth is to be found.
The reflexive self is the reflecting subject and reflected
object of its own conscious self-activity. Absolute truth is
known only in the quiet, still depths of the self's inner
consciousness, where its true other self speaks in silence. A
self's witness to integration's real and consistent becomingness is true, is truth. Disintegration is unbecoming and self's
willed acceptance of such bears an untrue witness.
Consistency demands freedom from all contradiction while
any real becomingness implies positive growth. The latter is
made evident by a togetherness-change in our human
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species of spaced time and which itself is the great cosmic
mystery in which all our selflife is confined.
Two terms are needed to form a relation, namely, a first
or alpha term, the term from which the relationship begins,
and a second or omega term, the term to which the
relationship is directed or ends. The two terms are not the
relation but the things related. The relation is really a third
term, being the specific oneness or togetherness link (or
modification of it) between the distinct terms and is
positioned by the unifying activity of the mind. It is the
conscious self that looks for and discovers relations between
distinct things through personal identification with both at
once.
Another name for two-in-one is biune, and for three-inone triune; their abstractions follow as biunity, and triunity
or trinity. Already on Page 9 in considering the relations of
freewill, we have introduced four-in-oneness as a
quaternity. In a biune relation, two ones, i.e., a one and a
one, become a one two. Two unit atoms of hydrogen join
together to become one unit hydrogen molecule. In and
through their unity, a new one proceeds. The two related
terms remain distinct but unified and a third one emerges.
Three ones are now involved, the two ones we started with
and the one these two become. Every biune relation is by its
very nature also triune. Every biunity is also a triunity or
trinity. The trinity of knowledge comprises three terms, the
knower, the known and the knowing-act of the knower
becoming the known.
Knowledge is a relation of a special sort. Inasmuch as it
is basic to the very nature of psychical existence, it might
well be called a self-other existential relation whose simple
harmonic functioning may be reflexive or transitive or both.
All thought's act and art proceed in a self-other-functioning
feedback system whose identity can be expressed as an
infinite set where self ≡ {self, otherself}. Cognition is the
two-in-one-ness of a conscious being and its becomingness,
the biunity of the I-self and its notself or otherself. The
conscious surfacing of this psychical conception is expressed
verbally in what is termed an idea or concept.
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I am conscious of my “I am” self as oneself, grammatically a first person, the person speaking. When I become
aware of an other self outside of my own “I am”, I
acknowledge this otherself as “Thou art”. “Thou” and “you”,
being the person or persons spoken to, are said to be in the
category of the second person. Though this objective
outside otherself may be physically distinct from me the
subject self, nevertheless when I knowingly accept its
reality, it is because it has become a psychical unit in
intentional union within my psychical existence. The object
of knowledge takes on a new dimension of existence when it
is known by the knower. The knower and the known both
subsist in the Existential Relativity of human self-otherconsciousness. Is it possible to have such an existential
relationship of this nature with an otherself within one’s own
inner space?. Children gain much pleasure and satisfaction
in dialogue with an imaginary indwelling otherself.
One of the most intriguing situations of this nature to
contemplate is that of the relationship of a pregnant woman
and her offspring in her womb. What is the nature of this
self-other-life shared in human pregnancy? This has been
discussed already in Ch. 2, Page 56. The foetus is physically
consubstantial with its mother. They are not merely joined
by the umbilical chord, but the sense of withinness is
ingrained in the mental data of both. Without being
consciously aware of it, the cerebral computer and memory
of the foetus is programmed with an otherself’s soporific
rhythmic heartbeat as well as its own and with the coziness
of being immersed and floating in a warm friendly space.
The I-Mother can monologue with the potential Youotherself in her womb. The growing brain of the latter is not
yet sufficiently evolved to reciprocate such psychical coconsciousness, but the dual lobe circuitry is already being
established whereby the Existential Relativity of self and
other, of “I am” and “Thou art” can function.
Can we imaginatively act out and relive the experience of
being once again in a mother’s womb? Can we reverse the
cutting of the umbilical cord and return, analogically, in our
minds to experience the biune love togetherness of selflife?
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Experiences may or may not be verbalized internally andor externally. Words are the spaced time representations of
ideas and are the sight-sound signs with which a self relates
to an other. Whilst all language takes place in the psychical
now-continuum of a self's consciousness, it is relativistic
and quantized, being made up of discrete particles, namely
words, and continues to evolve. New words are coined to
stamp new experiences and new meanings are associated
with old words and their combinations.
Meaning itself is an elusive thing to define. Like
knowledge with which it is associated, it is an relation, the
relation between words and a self's experience of its known
becomingness. Each self's experience and knowledge is
unique and is conditioned by the selective programming of
its brain’s cerebral computer. Genetic inheritance, parental
influence, formal instruction, education, environmental
factors, cultural milieu, all leave their software imprint
stored in the brain's hardware memory. Hence different
shades of meaning become associated with different ideas
and words. Many words now exhibit a plurality of meanings,
and ambiguity can be both a real blessing and also a curse.
At times, selves achieve a more effective communication
of their inner experiences by means of literary devices
which make use of a play on words to stimulate psychical
activity, as in the pun, paradox and various other figures of
speech. In the latter class and of special importance, is the
metaphor. In metaphor, a word or phrase in common use
and literally denoting one kind of object or idea, is used by
way of suggesting a likeness or model for new depths or
heights of experience. Poetry makes extensive use of
metaphor,
Selflife as ”I” is Woman, Man as “Thee”
and She’s enough of everything, save He.
Prose too can be made more imaginative by it. In the
language of metaphor, this book is the author's brainchild,
conceived years ago and after a long gestation finally come
to birth.
Underlying the use of metaphor and conjoined with the
very nature of meaning itself is that special kind of relation
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between experiences brought about by what are called
symbols. Symbols are things, physical or psychical, which
suggest something other than their mere selves by reason
of relationships, associations or conventions. They may be
in the form of words, ideas, actions, pictures, sounds,
dreams, anything. They serve the self well as models and
catalysts for a more profound sounding of levels and
richness of meaning. They speak, by insinuation, for our
unconscious and subconscious activity. They help stimulate
and perfect conscious communicative relations between
persons, often with meanings which are known only to the
initiated, as the fish symbol for the early Christians. Myths
are cultural symbols of cosmic realities.
Symbols are more than mere signs. A sign just denotes
the object to which it is assigned, as does a badge, a
trademark, or an abbreviation. Mathematics uses signs. The
numerals 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, are signs of numerical
experiences called numbers. Symbols act intuitively without
and beyond the grasp of reasoning and motivate and
channel self's being into the becomingness of something
other. Religion, Art, and Science make extensive use of
symbols, indeed they would be completely impoverished
without them. Symbols catalyse and fertilize, begetting new
meanings and enabling a self to transcend its own limiting
singularity by simulating and suggesting an enriched
plurality of experiences.
There are degrees and types of knowledge. There is
simple sensory perceptual knowledge. This is intuitive, i.e.,
without any conscious process of reasoning. Through our
senses we become linked with the physical world by virtue
of the complex psychical images in our imagination, which
as a sensory display unit, is a necessary adjunct to the
brain's cerebral computer. This faculty of the imagination
must not be confused with the ability to fantasy and is what
human beings have in common with all animals and living
things which enjoy sense perceptions.
A higher type of human knowledge is meditative and
conceptual with ascending levels of understanding and
abstraction. Conscious reasoning forms part of this and the
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conclusions arrived at are the results of both deductive and
inductive processes. Meaning is linked with understanding
and experience. Often plausible new meanings like scientific
models are conceived, not as arising from laboured manly
reasoning, but as flashes of womanly intuition.
Finally, there is contemplative experiential knowledge.
The self listens, hears, sees, feels and knows its distinction
of being in the phase of becoming an implosive union with
all other. Not only does the self know, but it knows that it
knows. It is here in self's mothering queendom within that
words are made flesh afresh and psyche's eternally
indwelling child grows in wisdom and stature, full of grace
and truth.
Contemplation is not just the name for a peculiar type of
thinking as practised by the initiates of some esoteric cult.
In the traditional and technical sense of Western Culture,
and as used in this book, it is contrasted with discursive
meditation. Both words are equally at home in secular as
well as in sacred contexts. Both deal with modes of thought
and types of knowledge. Meditation is active, transitive,
ratiocinative, reductionist, concerned with analysis and the
multiplicity of parts as parts. It tries to distinguish the
various instruments of an orchestra; it hears the different
sounds that each produces; it appreciates the technique of
composer, conductor and player. It is preoccupied transitively with the external differentiation of parts. Symbolically,
it has overtones of the masculine.
Contemplation is more passive, reflexive, intuitive,
holistic, concerned with synthesis or the building of a whole,
a unity of parts, a oneness of togetherness. Contemplation
enjoys the unique aesthetic experience of total music. It
becomes absorbed reflexively in internal integration. It has
innertones of the feminine.
In meditation, one looks at the individual pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle, their shape and colour and multiplicity. In
contemplation they are all put together as a unified or
melded whole. Matter's particle-wave duality finds its
reflection here. Meditation deals with discrete particles.
Contemplation, on the other hand, tries to capture reality as
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a continuum, a whole, a unity of units. Contemplation
perfects and transcends meditation. In the Western
tradition, what is now popularly called T M, Transcendental
Meditation, is really a type of contemplation and modern
meditation movements, in an historical sense, are
misnomers.
The act of contemplation involves a unique experience of
wholeness in the unity of the alpha-self's “I am” with its
complement, the omega-other-self, not merely as a surface
concept, but as an in-depth or volumed perception as well.
By its inner personal nature this unique implosive awareness of unity is not communicable. It cannot be directly
shared with another person. The discursive fruits of surface
meditation can be shared verbally, but the act of contemplation is different.
It can only be described symbolically, in a roundabout
and suggestive way with analogy, metaphor and paradox.
Some techniques to dispose the mind and body for its
development can be explained and useful background
factual knowledge can be assimilated.
Though some simple kind of direction may be useful, it is
not absolutely necessary, since it remains up to the virgin
self to follow the path of enlightenment, through
contemplation, as a lone traveller. Because it involves the
self in a new, redeemed, liberated, higher or more intense
state of consciousness, progress in it can only be achieved
by the self's systematic and assiduous practice of it. Under
the guidance of an inner other, the self teaches itself how to
use a Do-it-yourself Kit.
Figuratively speaking, in meditation one swims, in
contemplation one floats. In meditation one rows, but in
contemplation one sails. Though vastly different, yet they
are not opposites in the sense of having conflicting
interests. They are complementary. True meditation is not
an end in itself. Its left-lobed, cerebral father-activity is
meant to be as a passing fertilizing factor and to be
transcended slowly as a step-by-step ladder serving to scale
the heights of contemplation. The latter's grand finale is
acted out on the stage of the redeemed and risen self's
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ascended experience to right-lobed, maternal brain activity,
whence all things are conceived again and born anew.
It is in the psychical realm of developing and perfecting
the self and its consciousness in inner space that evolution
is still inexorably proceeding. In continues in this only with
both the active and passive cooperation of each individual
self, freely involved and dedicated to its consummation.
All human endeavour should be directed primarily to this
end. Physical well-being, sensual satisfaction, knowledge,
whether factual, fictional, scientific or philosophical are only
means to this objective and merit but secondary consideration. Not growth in external personal possessions, but the
possession of internal personal growth, should motivate and
direct all truly worthwhile human ambition. All personal
growth is still self-functioning but also other-dependent.
The learning process requires the assimilation of
knowledge. Food for our bodies must be chewed, swallowed
and digested before it can become part of our physical
being. In a similar way what is presented to our minds as
food for thought must be subject to a kind of similar cudchewing process. We must reflect on our superficial
knowledge in order to experience, in the inner senses of our
being, a more profound perception of what we already know
only conceptually.
This is what understanding really means. When we try to
under-stand something we try to make sense of it within
ourselves through recollection and reflection, and not just
content with factual information. Chewing our psychical cud
enables symbolism to extend and deepen the meaningfulness of our existing ideas. In discursive meditation, we
try to enlarge our factual conceptual knowledge about
things. In intuitive contemplation we know things by
experiencing them in their psychical actuality within our
own whole physical selves. The difference is simply like
knowing about another person by hearsay or through
reading, and then meeting such a person in the flesh. It is
like reading a play or watching a stage performance of it
and then being an actual performing actor on stage
creatively interpreting the role.
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It must be insisted that the act of contemplation, which
perceives and conceives all being and becoming as a lovable
whole, a togetherness or unity of units, is the goal of
biological and psychical evolution and climaxes human
cultural development.
Voluminous love wills the self-other becomingness of
surface thought. Contemplation is the perfection and
highest level of personal knowledge and experience. It is
the act-art of self making love to its other, perceptually,
within the inner spaced time of the human mind.
The Knowledge of Nature
One of the mind-boggling aspects of modern Information
Technology ( IT ) is the realization that all knowledge data
can be expressed, using binary arithmetic, as a sequence of
ones and zeros. Binary Arithmetic is the basic babylanguage of all numbering. Just the two signs of 1 and 0,
standing in for self and other, are all that are needed to
effect a positional notation system that can be the vehicle
for all word-processing and graphical digital representation.
The modern computer world, being structured on the unity
or togetherness of distinction and union, manifests the
reality of the Existential Relativity which governs the selfother-functioning Cosmos.
Already in this book, use has been made of the
grammatical distinction of personal pronouns from the point
of view of speech. The First Person is the person speaking
“I”, “We”. The Second Person is the person spoken to
“Thou”, “You”. The Third Person is the person or thing
spoken about “She, He, It”, “They”.
The acronym IT from Information Technology is
fascinating in as much as it sums up also what Grammar’s
Third Person pronoun It verbally expresses in the wordprocessing of the human cerebral computer. The art of
contemplation, or the human mind’s verbal intercourse with
the Mother Self of the Cosmos, is perfected through being
on personal speaking terms with Aseity’s Selflife named
pronominally “We Us Ours”.
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The physical world and the psychical realm are
existentially related and complement each other. It is
convenient to refer to them as matter and spirit or mind and
matter. They have structures in common, at least we so
interpret them that way. They both exhibit hierarchical
complexity and a multiplicity of dimensions.
We simulate and draw analogies between operations. It
is the self which perceives these similarities. We both name
and also call the tunes to which we think and say Nature
dances. In intuitively reflecting on the external world we
create models which on further reflection help better our
understanding of ourselves. We breathe in and out, inhale
and exhale. The heart pumps blood out and in. Self-other
consciousness makes us aware of psychical activity that is
both immanent and transeunt, reflexive and transitive,
implosive and explosive, distinction and union.
It was noted on Page 66, that whilst all language takes
place in the continuum of a self's consciousness, it is also
relativistic and quantized, being made up of discrete
particles, namely letters or characters and word-signs. A
set, as a unity or oneness of distinct ones in a onecontinuum, epitomizes the wave-particle duality. Under
some circumstances matter seems to behave like sets of
discrete particles and under other circumstances like
continuous waves.
Light, radio, television, x-rays and so on, exhibit wave
properties. They are part of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. The latter, as its name suggests, is a
biunity of two distinct fields or types of force, namely
electric and magnetic. A continually changing or pulsing
electric field generates at right angles to itself a
pulsing magnetic field. This new latter pulsing magnetic field
regenerates again at right angles to itself the original
pulsing electric field. Once a first pulse is initiated,
electromagnetic radiation is truly self-propagating or selfsustaining. The electric field itself begets an other field,
namely, a magnetic field and this latter in turn begets an
other electric field which perpetuates the iteration. The
process would go on for ever, until the same self-sustaining
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burst of radiation or radiant energy is taken in by some
other entity.
The Universe is pregnant with invisible force fields, with
waves of radiation and also sets of discrete particles, atoms,
molecules, some radioactive, and others simply like
fundamental sub-atomic particles. Any part of our World
can be made present to us, by sight and-or by sound and
almost instantaneously, with the touch of a computer key.
It is not enough that there should be light which
distinctions day from night and enables our eyes to see. We
are either blind or walk in the dark if we do not perceive the
awesome revelation of the light of this world. It is selfsustaining. It is self-regeneration through the generation of
an other. It is being and becoming, self and other,
distinction and union, evolving existential relativity begotten
by Nature’s reciprocating self  other life in the physical
Cosmos.
Such relational unity suggests postulating a first basic
Law of Cosmology. All growth and subsequent sustainability
in any evolved or still evolving system of the Cosmos is both
self-functioning and simultaneously other-dependent.
We think we know what space and time are. We measure
with a ruler the three dimensions of space, length, breadth
and depth. We measure time arbitrarily with various kinds
of clocks linked with regularly recurring spatial phenomena.
Living in the present, we only really time past events, for to
time is to emit backwardness.
For the “I am” self who IS, time always IS, without
beginning or end, eternally the ever-present tense of now.
We cannot separate, but only distinguish time and space.
The three dimensions of self's outside space and the one
dimension of self's inside time are a quaternity, a four-inoneness continuum. Spaced time is a deliberate ambiguity.
The spaced can refer to the divisibility of time and also to
time's association with space. The divisibility of our notional
time depends on its association with space.
Above the entrance to Plato's Academy in ancient Athens
was an inscription which read "Let none without Geometry
enter here." Similar advice, though for a different purpose,
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applies here. The concepts we have of space outside us
serve as starting points for our intuitive perception of the
nature of the inner space within our conscious being.
Thrown or kicked, a rounded ball serves well as a
plaything. As an object of study, it can make sport for the
conceptualizing mind. For the ancient Greeks, the circle was
the secret of beauty in design: the sphere was the shape of
perfection. To have a sphere we need a first term or alpha
point with which to begin. From this point, by reason of a
radial relation of fixed distance, there is begotten a second
or omega term. In doing so, the two terms are now named
centre and surface. The centre spatially begets its surface.
From the biunity of the one centre and the one surface
proceeds another term, a third one, the volume, their
embracing togetherness in universal relativity.
It is one thing to play mathematical games in the mind
with the concepts of these three distinct but mutually
interdependent terms, centre, surface and volume. It is
quite another experience to close our eyes, curl our bodies
up physically and imaginatively turn ourselves into a human
ball, simulating the foetus in the womb, and acting out a
unique inner sense perception of our own one self, now
become a three-in-one, an inner spaced trinity of centre,
surface and volume.
The relations of the physical sphere suggest possible
analogues in the psychical. In the psychical sphere, the
reflexive centre-self "I" begets its transitive surface-self
"me" as the conscious expression and becomingness of its
own being. This takes place in the unity of the volume-self's
"mine" inner complexity of self-conscious and unconscious
activity.
The sphere is not a geometrical shape in its own right. It
is the limiting position of the egg-shaped ovoid or ellipsoid.
Oval-shaped footballs can usually be kicked just as far as
round ones, but it requires more skill and understanding.
The ovoid is more basic and only seemingly more complex
than its spherical counterpart. In two dimensions we can
make a comparison between a circle and an ellipse. Both
are plane sections through a cone. A circle can easily be
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drawn by taking a piece of string, fixing one end to a point
functioning as centre and fixing the other end to some
marking device, such as a pencil, which now moves around
keeping the string taut. The path thus generated is the
circumference of a circle. The two dimensional space thus
proceeding from the biunity of the centre point and the
curvilineal circumference we call area. Thus our trinity is
complete. We go at the same time both around and in, in a
circuminsession. Circular motion, like swinging a stone in a
sling, requires a going around as well as a pulling in towards
the centre. Whenever the centripetal force is relaxed, the
stone flies off at a tangent.
To draw an ellipse, we take the same piece of string, but
now whilst keeping it quite loose we fix each end to a
separate point called a focus. The string is then stretched
out and made taut with a pencil which now moves around,
always keeping the string extended, and generates a curved
path which is such that for each point on the curve, the sum
of its distances from the two foci is constant. The oval shape
thus generated is called an ellipse: in three dimensions the
egg-shape is called ovoid or ellipsoid.
As the two foci get closer to each other the oval shape
becomes more circular. When they are about to coincide or
become a two-in-one, we obtain the limiting position of an
ellipse which is a circle.
When the two foci repel each other to their maximum
separation, a straight line becomes their limiting position.
With the ovoid, the archetypal trinity becomes a quaternity
of two focal terms, a surface term, and a volume term.
Mother Nature has a predilection for her egg-shape and
for ovoid relations. In the physical Solar System of outer
space, all the planets revolve around the sun in elliptical
orbits with the sun at one focus.
In our understanding's trying to make sense of the
psychical realm of our mind’s inner space conscious activity
we can have resort to the ovoid's analogue terms. At the
self’s primary focus is the now conscious I-self subject. The
actual perceptioned object of its self-reflection, the me-self,
is transitively at the secondary other focus. Their surface
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continuum implosively envelopes the integral volume of
mine-self's inner spaced time unity of self-consciousness.
Mirrors and the images that they produce are very
meaningful likenesses of psychic processes. When I look
into a plane mirror, I do not see my self, but only an
external image of it in spaced time. Technically in Optics,
the image that the eyes see is only virtual. It is not real.
Strictly speaking, when I face a plane mirror, there is no up
and down change, nor is there a real directional sideways
change, but only a front to back reversal. The observer self
and its mirror image otherself stand face to face. The image
goes as far behind the mirror in the opposite direction as
the object does in front and the imaginary image faces the
opposite direction now to the face of the observer.
There are also other sorts of mirrors or reflecting
surfaces. There is the parabolic mirror as used in spotlights,
searchlights and reflecting telescopes. All parallel rays which
strike it are reflected to a single point, its focus, and a light
at this focus has all reflected rays parallel.
By far the most intriguing mirror for both simulating and
stimulating psychic reflection is the oval shaped or
ellipsoidal reflecting surface. A light at one focus has a real
image of itself on a screen placed at the other focus. It is
not a virtual imaginary image as in a plane mirror, but a
real image, unchanged in any direction. The rays of light
emanating from the focal source actually converge again at
the focal image, which is not self-luminous but otherilluminated.
A thin strip of metal can be bent into the shape of an
ellipse and immersed in shallow water. Ripples, when
generated at one focus, converge at the other, which then
proceeds to regenerate the original ripples and the process
would repeat itself over and over again were its energy not
soon dissipated. One can only speculate on such iteration in
a frictionless field continuum.
An essential characteristics of psychical activity is the
ability to reflect in processes analogous to the physical
reflection of light. What light is to the eye of the body
enabling it to see both real images in ovoid mirrors and
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virtual ones in plane mirrors, so reflexive knowledge is to
the image-forming realm of the psyche, enabling its I-self at
one focus to beget and become its reflected true living
image me-self at the other focus. In this queendom within, I
do not see I-to-I with my self. I see I-to-me. Self, when the
subject of relations, is named "I". Self, as the object, is
named "me". Nothing is becoming of the knower-I except
through its known-me.
Conscious reflection gives evidence of personal
individuality. Self's spaced time knowledge of its own self in
self-consciousness involves three terms as a trinity. One
subject, the I-knower-self, and one object, the me-knownself, become one unity or being-set now in the possessive
mine-knowing-self. Ovoidally, maiden self mothers her twin
foci, the alpha-I-self and the omega-me-self. Though the
latter are self-functionally distinct in spaced time, their act
does not engender a distinction of persons. "I-me-mine" is
self's first person, the person speaking.
This unity of knowledge admits only a logical precedence
of the spaced time knower to the known. Each brings the
other into existence. There cannot be a knower without
something known, just as there cannot be a parent without
a child. Begetting its child-other, the self becomes a parent
to it. The two become one relation.
The sphere is the limiting shape of the ovoid. As the two
foci of the latter get closer together, the spherical shape is
revealed. We should remember that, considered this way, at
the centre of the sphere there is the superpositioning of two
real but spatially coincident or conjugate points.
When we talk of the psychical sphere and human selfcentredness we are speaking figuratively and to maintain a
logical sequence we must remind ourselves of the dual-foci
ovoid-nature of consciousness. I can try to bend my own
consciousness, psychically and physically back on itself, on
its self, in a reflexive relation. I can be introverted and
introspective to the point of insanity, but I can never isolate
and comprehend what is at the centre of my own alpha Iself or of what it is made. I can never know my I-self in its
act of being a factual subsistent "I", but only in its spaced
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time act as becoming an actual existent "me". In knowing
its omega-me, the self knows its alpha-I, for they are one in
a real existential relation. The "I" is one with and in the
"me" and the "me" is one with and in the "I".
There is a recently unveiled phenomenon in the
domain of Physics which throws added light on some wholepart, unity-in-diversity, set relationships in the Cosmos. It
goes under the name of Holography and is a system of
photographic storage which does not use the refraction
properties of lenses but rather is effected when the wave
field of light scattered by an object is recorded on a
photographic plate as a diffraction or interference pattern.
Though the mathematics of holography had been worked
out by Dennis Gabor in 1947 and subsequently earned him
a Nobel prize in 1971, it was not until the laser was
invented that his theory could finally be satisfactorily
demonstrated.
The photographic recording of the image is called a
hologram. The latter appears as a meaningless pattern of
whorls. When the hologram is placed in a coherent beam of
light like a laser, the original wave pattern is regenerated as
a three-dimensional image.
The fascinating reality of a hologram is the fact that even
the smallest piece of it, when taken separately and enlarged
to the size of the original plate will reconstruct the entire
image and not appear just as an enlargement of a part. The
part is in the whole and the whole is in each part. Such an
intriguing situation when each part has access to the whole
has brought about a most profound Paradigm Shift or new
perspective of reality.
A holographic photo can be taken of a donkey so that its
image fills the whole picture. If now the corner section
comprising just the donkey’s head is cut off and this small
section then enlarged to the size of the original photo, you
will not get a picture of just the enlarged head of a donkey
but a repeated picture of the original WHOLE donkey. Each
separate part of the picture contains the whole picture in an
implicate form. The part is in the whole and the whole is in
each part.
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Einstein's Relativity Theory of space and time, about
energy and matter, took him beyond Physics to Metaphysics
and to seek a comprehensive understanding and consistent
expression of the unity embracing the laws of physical
movement and all force-field interactions in the Cosmos. He
spent most of his subsequent research exploring the topic of
an enigmatic and elusive Unified Field, but without any real
and lasting success.
There are other approaches to this ultimate goal of
understanding the Mathematics of the Universe. Special and
General Relativity in the physical world are projections of
the self  other existential relativity underlying all activity
both physical and psychical.
The childlike enquiring mind of a natural philosopher can
neither wander nor wonder in a metaphysical void. No
Science of Everything can be complete without a rational
and comprehensive solution to the age-old questions
concerning the nature of that which has neither beginning
nor end, yet in whose continuum there is infinite provision
for both retrogressive change and progressive evolutionary
growth. In this quest, a modern restructured and consistent
Set Theory of Unity and Infinity can provide a simple, nontechnical and yet most meaningful revelation of this basic
human intuition of infinity's beginningless past and endless
future in the field unity of the Cosmos.
One of the few gleanings of learning that the author
remembers from his teenage study and that has occupied
his mind ever since is what he read at the end of a book of
Philosophy. It reminded the reader that Philosophy had yet
to come to an in-depth understanding of the concept of
unity. [That would be left to the Theory of Sets as
enunciated in Chapter One.]
The concept of The Set of All Sets had been dealt a
deathblow at the hands of Russell's Barber. The seeming
contradictions or teasing paradoxes which resulted from its
acceptance into a formal system of mathematical logic
rendered the latter's conclusions inconsistent. The best
mathenatical minds declared any solution to be impossible.
Its use had been abandoned but its ghost still lurked in the
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Halls of Academia. Of this, much more is said in the author’s
book Achieving the Impossible. There, using simple
language analysis, this writer's revision of the foundations
of mathematical logic disposes of the troublesome
paradoxes in Set Theory with the bonus of initiating new
outlooks in cultural evolution through the introduction of a
new simple logic of Existential Self-Other Relativity. The
latter is pertinent to all the empirically verifiable phenonema
of the Cosmos.
Quantum Theory
Several times in this book, allusions have been made to
Quantum Theory’s great enigma of wave-particle duality. It
is relevant not only to the physical realm but is even more
demanding for the understanding of the psychical phenomena of the human mind.
It is a convenient, though deceptive simplification to
separate mind and matter. The simple mathematical logic of
distinction and union has already been outlined to present a
consistent theory of unity. Self and other, though conceptually distinct, must embrace and become part of each other
in intentional union, in order to effect the oneness of
togetherness in Existential Relativity.
The human mindset is a unity or continuum of discrete
word units, namely the sight-sound signs of speech. These
are related existentially to their respective waveforms
operative in seeing and hearing. Information Technology is
all in the MIND Sight and Sound are both waveform and
particulate. Just as photons - discrete particles or quanta of
light – can superimpose on each other and be responsible
for the interference patterns of their wave continua, so also
words can be multi-meaning. Their ordered combinations
construe the wealth of Literature. Words are food for the
mind to digest and store in the memory of its cerebral
computer to be used later for self-other communication.
Quantum Theory echoes existential self-other relativity. A
teasing example of such is seen in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
Principle which states that it is not possible to determine at
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the same time with perfect accuracy both the position and
momentum of an atomic particle, like an electron, because
the very process of making the measurement alters the
path of the particle. The observer and the observed interact
in an existential relation.
Randomness intrigues the would-be definers of particle
movement and interferes with their techniques. Particlestates are better understood, not as chaotic disorder, but as
un-order or complete freedom from all constraints. Such
freedom finds a resonant chord in the human mind’s
quaternity of choice relations as outlined on Pages 8 and 9.
The contents of our mindsets, their ideas and word signs,
often behave in an un-ordered manner unless restrained or
directed to meaningful relations in their complex
if…then…implications.
Which came first, mind or matter? In our species of
spaced time, their togetherness is an infinite self-evolving
manifestation of existential self-other relativity.
Existential Self-Other Relativity ≡ {Mind, Matter}
Matter’s quantized mass may be interpreted as the
discrete differentiations of Selflife’s continuum with respect
to spaced time. The scientific mind projects itself onto and
into matter. In spaced time, it eventually comes to discover
that the mind of the pregnant Mother Self of the Cosmos is
already there animating mater matter. The Metaphysics of
Holography rings true. The part is in the whole and the
whole is in each part.
There are some further interesting observations and
aspects of unity in the subatomic world. The more a particle
is restricted in space, the faster it moves around as if
reacting to confinement. The smaller the space of confinement, the faster it moves, and hence the closer an electron
in its orbiting comes to the nucleus of an atom, the faster it
moves with velocities of the order now of 1000 kilometers
per second. Normally a designed balance or equilibrium
prevails between the electrostatic nuclear attraction and the
natural kinetic reluctance to being confined. The amount of
solid space stuff in an atom is very small indeed, but
because of the high velocities of electrons the atom appears
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as a rigid body.
Almost all the atomic mass is concentrated in the
nucleus, which however, only occupies the tiniest fraction of
the real space of the whole atom. The actual particles which
occupy the nucleus itself, i.e. the nucleons, respond to their
confinement by moving with such high velocities as to
approach the speed of light. Distinction and union are
maintained by the nuclear glue, an extremely powerful, yet
short range attraction force, which only acts when particle
separation is two or three times their diameter. When their
separation is less they repel each other and a dynamic
kinetic equilibrium results.
The former hard and indestructible atoms of Democritus
are no longer relevant to Nuclear Physics, which has
completely revised the idea of elementary particles being
the basic constituents of matter. Most physicists today
believe that none of the far more than two hundred socalled elementary particles known to exist actually merit this
name. Instead the latter present us with the strange
paradox of both destructibility and non-destructibility. With
sufficient kinetic energy, two of these particles in collision
can break themselves up, but only into similar particles of
the same kind and no different from their originals. The
energy of smashing recreates the same kind of particle. We
can divide matter over and over again in high energy
collision processes, but we never obtain smaller pieces,
because we continue to create particles out of the very
energy that we put into the processes.
Mutability is a property of matter. Transmutation of
particles from one sort to another can be accomplished in
the laboratory. They can creatively materialize from energy
and can disappear too back into energy. To subdivide the
quasi-infinitely small particles of matter, we need to make
use of quasi-infinitely large amounts of energy, and then
only to be frustrated. It would seem that all such
reductionist thinking ends with self-other existential
relativity.
In the subatomic world, the classical ideas of an
elementary particle as some material substance or an object
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in isolation, no longer apply in their ordinary meanings.
Nature exhibits here a dynamic matrix web of interconnected, interdependent, inseparable energy patterns and
relations. Relativity Theory pictures the interactions between
particles resulting from the force of their mutual attraction
or repulsion as due to the exchange of still other particles.
The two concepts of force and matter are unified by linking
the forces between the constituents of matter to the
properties of yet other constituents of matter. They are thus
now seen to have their common genesis in the dynamic
patterns of subsistent relativity called particles. The fact that
the latter interact through the exchange of other particles is
even further reason why the subatomic world cannot be
decomposed into further ultimate constituent parts, but
must always be accepted holistically and researched as a
complex web of subsistent relations now integrated into a
cosmic polyphonic unity.
The author would like to comment here on the use of the
words particle and anti-particle. To his way of thinking, they
would be better described as complementary, not antagonistic. They are mutually attractive and their love-making
climaxes in the begetting of quanta of radiant energy.
A new mentality is emerging in Science which no longer
sees the individual parts as coming together in time to form
a whole, but rather that the real entity is the necessary
whole-self-set and that the parts are merely contingent
subset forms, relatively independent, yet at the same time
interdependent and inseparable from the matrix-whole
which gives them birth. The metaphorical lifeblood of the
selflife of the Cosmos is energy whose life, and only seeming
death dance, is responsible for all the rhythmic movements
and harmonic oscillations of the Universe. We humans
cannot escape participation in this drama, but we are not
mere static observers. Nature's programmed revelation of
the pregnant Mother Self of the Cosmos has us in a dual
role. We are both the spectator and also the actor.
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The Electromagnetic Spectrum
Wavelength Frequency
(cm)
(sec-1)
Cosmic ray
photons
Gamma Rays
X-rays
Ultravioletvisible light
Infrared
Microwaves
Radar
UHF, VHF, FM
Shortwave,AM
radio
Longwave
radio
3x10-22
3x10-20
3x10-18
3x10-16
3x10-14
3x10-12
3x10-10
3x10-8
3x10-6
1032
1030
1028
1026
1024
1022
1020
1018
1016
Photon
Energy
(eV)
4x1017
4x1015
4x1013
4x1011
4x109
4x107
4x105
4x103
40
3x10-4
3x10-2
3
3x102
3x104
1014
1012
1010
108
106
0.4
4x10-3
4x10-5
4x10-7
4x10-9
3x106
3x108
104
102
4x10-11
4x10-13
Velocity of Electromagnetic Radiation is
Wavelength X Frequency = 3x1010 cm.sec-1
= 3x108 m. sec-1
As Wavelength decreases and Frequency increases,
wave-functioning gives way to particle behaviour.
************************