FORMAL ESSAY SUBMISSION 2: How to Approach the Rules of Subjective Reality

[Tony Budding]

The purpose of this essay is to describe approaches to determining and defining the rules of subjective reality. In a previous essay, I suggested that we separate the rules of subjective reality from the rules of objective reality because of the structural limitations of human cognition. 

The specific rules of subjective reality are not particularly cumbersome to define, and would fit within a 3,000 word essay. The problem is that we’re describing the framework of how experiences arise, which cannot be directly conceived of by the human mind. So, the rules alone would leave us with problematic and unacceptable outcomes: you dismiss them out of hand because normal “proofs” don’t work or you don't agree, we debate “opinions,” we use terminology inconsistently, or you accept the concepts simply because you trust me. Any would be a shame.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” --Abraham Lincoln

I apologize in advance to those of you who are sophisticated in epistemological argumentation, as I’m going to state things that are quite obvious. It is necessary though, given the inherent challenges in--and broad variety of approaches to--describing the inconceivable. Furthermore, this argumentation is necessarily interconnected and self-referential (tautological), but remember that tautology is a flaw in evidence and proof, not an indication of falsity. 

Proofs are absolutely critical in the scientific process, but as the physicist Richard Feynman stated, “A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.” Furthermore, we can establish that the human mind is incapable of conceiving of anything outside time and space. This is a hard limitation of the constructs of human cognition, so there is no way to prove anything that is beyond conception. If we limit our exploration to that which can be proven, we are doomed from the start.

In fact, we cannot get away from being self-referential, especially at first, since there are no generally accepted operational definitions of consciousness and the subjective realities for us to rely on. We will end up taking each component to its limit, so eventually there will be a network of evidence and strong logical reasoning underlying the framework.

So, what is this subjective reality we’re attempting to understand? Subjective reality is the experiencing of life in any form. By definition, to experience means to be aware of the experience. Therefore, subjective reality is anything that has awareness as its foundation. 

We are starting with an acceptance that awareness exists instead of trying to describe how awareness arises in the first place. About 400 years ago, Rene Descartes famously wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” This, of course, is a true statement. You cannot think if you do not exist. But what do these two phrases really mean? What does it mean to think? What is a thought? Who is this “I” that thinks and therefore exists? Can “I” exist without thinking, or is the “I” itself a creation of the thinking mind? What is the relationship between thinking and consciousness? Is consciousness a byproduct of thinking, or is consciousness a prerequisite for thought?

Answering  these questions directly is impossible because they extend past the limits of human cognition. The human mind is only capable of thoughts structured as subject-object-action within three dimensional space and linear time. We simply cannot conceive of additional dimensions or any kind of non-dimensional or non-temporal reality. As soon as we try, we inevitably convert the concept into three dimensions and linear time because that’s how the mind functions. 

A metaphor for this is night vision goggles that use thermal imaging to convert infrared light into visible light. The patterns in the visible light generated by the goggles represent patterns in the infrared light sensed by the goggles, and thus we are able to identify objects in the dark. At no point, though, are we actually seeing infrared light. Instead, we only see the visible light generated by the goggles. 

In the same way, we cannot perceive or even conceive of anything outside space and time. Instead, we have to create concepts that allow us to identify patterns and functional understandings for things that can’t be directly known.

Now let’s go the other way. Since every thought, perception, sensation, emotion, and experience we’ve ever had or will ever have is structured by our minds into three dimensional space and linear time, it’s very natural to assume that the universe itself is structured in three dimensional space and linear time. But, this is not the case. 

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” --Abraham Maslow

Our only tool we have for thinking, conceiving and experiencing life is the mind. But the limitations of a human function do not in any way limit the reality. Going back to visible light for example, the human eye is only capable of perceiving wavelengths between about 380 and 740 nm. Yet we know that the entirety of the electromagnetic spectrum is many times greater than the visible spectrum. 

Therefore, the question, “what do gamma rays look like?” is nonsensical because they are not visible to the human eye. In the same way, questions like “what exists outside the universe?” and “what happened before time started?” are nonsensical because our minds are incapable of conceiving of anything outside three dimensional space and linear time.

This is a conundrum. How do you discuss that which can’t be described or even conceived of because it’s outside the mind’s capabilities? 

You can’t, at least not directly. What we can do, though, is explore the nature and characteristics of the mind, with a particular emphasis on its outer limits, to understand exactly how knowledge and experiences are created. Using the mind to explore the mind is tricky, so we need a very careful methodology, combined with rigorous and honest inquiry. 

Using language to address that which is beyond language brings up important questions about evidence and proof. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. What does it mean to know something? What is true? How do we know truth? How do we know that we know something? How do we know that what we know is true?

These questions are at the core of all philosophy and science. The scientific method is the process of proposing what the causes are of observable phenomena, and then figuring out how to test that relationship between cause and effect. We say that a theory is true if it accurately and consistently predicts the outcome of various inputs. 

In our case, most of the phenomena being considered aren’t easily observed. The primary method I have used to develop these definitions and understandings is stopping the mind’s activities in order to examine the layers of thought individually. Normally, the mind has tremendous momentum and operates on many levels simultaneously. At first, it may appear impossible to slow the mind down (not to mention stop), but I assure you it can be done (and has been done).

Slowing the mind down is necessary to study the nature and origin of thoughts, along with the means by which the mind creates experiences. A metaphor for this is riding a train and wanting to study the plants you see alongside the tracks. Whatever you can learn about them as you zoom by is a small fraction of what you’d learn if you got off the train and observed the plants up close for as long as necessary. 

The mind is like the train. In normal life, layers and layers of interconnected thoughts zoom by all day. The mind’s nature is to be active, and the only way to slow and then stop its activity is to remove all the causes of its activity. This is a daunting task in practice, but it can be achieved in stages. Eventually, the mind can be slowed down so much that the causal forces of thoughts can be perceived. 

As these causal forces are recognized and then eliminated (temporarily at first), the mind slows even more until it is capable of holding just a single layer of a single thought for long periods of time. This is a practical process, not just theoretical. The real causes of mental activity must be purged or the mind will continue to churn. Once the causes of activity are removed, the mind can explore a single thought for as long as needed like a jeweler examines a diamond under a magnifying glass.

Several critical understandings become clear when the mind is able to focus like this. The first is that the sense of who you are (the identity) is created by the mind, and there can be hyper-focused states of concentration after the activity of creating that identity is arrested. This means our sense of self is not the origin of the mind. Second, there can be no experience outside the mind. Third, the mind is capable of undifferentiated awareness with no sense of space and time. And finally, when that state of undifferentiated awareness can be held uninterrupted, it becomes clear that the mind reflects awareness instead of creating it. All this will be explained in detail in future essays.

*  * *  * *

In order to have a productive dialog, we need to understand both the utility and limitation of language. We humans communicate ideas primarily through words, and the words I’m using now are English. The English language is simultaneously robust and limited, powerful and biased. All words are references to other things, and thus a means to an end, not the end itself. For example, you understand the phrase a dog scratching an itch because you know what an itch feels like and why a dog would scratch it. 

But what if I’m trying to describe something you haven’t experienced. For example, several of the early astronauts had life-altering experiences looking at the earth for the first time from space. Today, we’ve all seen so many pictures of our planet from space that we can imagine what they saw, but it takes a clever imagination for us to get a sense of what they must have felt in that moment. 

Going one step further to the hyper-focused state of mind in which the experience of space and time is suspended, you may not even be aware that this is possible, not to mention what it is like. Space and time comprise the structural framework for all experiences of life, and as such, the mind’s first task is to establish them before everything else. 

“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” --Carl Sagan

Let’s go back to the itch. The word itch is commonly and safely used because we all know what an itch feels like. Few of us care about the etymology of the word itch, and accept it unquestionably. But what would happen if you had never experienced an itch. You could look up the word and get a definition like “an uncomfortable sensation on the skin that causes a desire to scratch.” This would be helpful if you saw a dog scratching, for you could assume it had an uncomfortable sensation on the skin. But it wouldn’t help you understand specifically what the sensation feels like because a word only refers to a phenomenon. It cannot give you a phenomenal experience that you haven’t had. 

This is why metaphors, similes, allegories and stories are so widely used. We start with some common or general experience, and then tie it to a specific experience the reader, viewer or listener didn’t have. This works great until we try to explain something where there is no common experience. As Thomas Nagel famously wrote, “What is it like to be a bat?” This is something we humans can never know. 

Language, therefore, has very important limitations that we must first acknowledge and then work carefully with if we are to explore how the mind works and what consciousness is. There are aspects of the mind that language cannot touch, yet language is the only tool we have to discuss the mind. We have to optimize and maximize our use of language, while simultaneously being very realistic about what language cannot do. Fortunately, there are concepts and metaphors that help.

*  * *  * *

Besides the limitations of language and conception, there is the problem of cause and effect. In everyday life, which we can call the Newtonian realm, cause and effect are at the center of everything. Gravity, inertia, momentum and thermodynamics (along with other forces) work together to keep our earth and solar system operating in a way that sustains life. In everyday life, fire causes smoke and lightning causes thunder. Friction in our brakes slows and stops our vehicles. Studying leads to learning, and exercise leads to fitness. Being a good person increases happiness, while sloth increases misery.

The principle of cause and effect states that all effects are caused, and there can be no such thing as an uncaused effect. We assume all effects have their cause(s), even if we don’t know what they might be. It is important to note that understanding exactly which causes lead to what effects is a separate issue from the premise that every effect has been caused. All of science is based on this principle, and no one has ever been able to prove an uncaused effect. But, there are many effects for which the causes are not completely understood (like weather) or are completely unknown (like the universe itself).

When we leave the boundaries of everyday life, though, the normal principles of cause and effect seem to break down at times. At the largest, smallest and fastest boundaries of the universe, the rules of Newtonian physics fail to explain observable phenomena. Relativity and quantum mechanics are required to get closer to explaining the observable phenomena. But then it turns out that the observation itself influences the outcome, which throws a whole new wrench into the problem.

In the same way, the experiences of everyday life, which occur entirely in the mind, operate within the principle of cause and effect similar to how life on earth operates within the principles of Newtonian physics. In the hyper-focused states of concentration, the normal explanations of cause and effect break down. 

Therefore, it is important to recognize both the validity and limitation of cause and effect in everyday experiences. The fact that there are extreme situations within quantum mechanics does not invalidate the utility of Newtonian physics in everyday life. For example, there have been quantum experiments in which the linear nature of cause and effect seems to break down (A causes B and B causes A), but this does not mean that thunder could somehow cause lightning on Earth. 

There is great utility in applying the principle of cause and effect to how the mind creates all the experiences of life, and most of the approach here is based on this. In the extreme, the absolute nature of consciousness does transcend this principle in a way that exceeds our ability to conceive, yet without invalidating the application to the majority of experiences.

*  * *  * *

The biggest advantage of this approach is that it works independent of your beliefs about the nature of objectivity. Every human experiences life as the subject of their interactions with objects. It doesn’t matter if you believe those objects are physically real, completely imagined, regularities in the perceptual screen, units of consciousness, or any other position. It also doesn’t matter what you believe about subjectivity. Whether it’s the only reality, just an imaginary trick of the brain, or anything in between, the experiences of life are created according to knowable principles.

It all starts with you existing, for if you didn’t exist, you wouldn’t be reading these words. It doesn’t matter what that means to you, but it is where we start. You know you exist because you are aware of objects. This means that in your mind, you differentiate between you and the objects in your awareness. And, you are aware of change. Objects come into your awareness and objects depart from your awareness. 

When the mind is active in the normal waking state, there are many layers of awareness and change happening simultaneously. So much that it is very difficult to identify and differentiate the causal forces driving experience. It is only by slowing down the activities of the mind that individual elements and causation can be separated and clarified.

There are, though, four core aspects or functions of the mind that always work together to create every experience. They are the identity, the will, the theater, and the sensory processing / gatekeeper (known as manas in Sanskrit). Each of these merit extensive explanation, but for now, identity is the sense of self, or subject and owner of all experiences. The will is volition or the force of life that drives every experience. The theater is the framework or arena in which all experiences take place. And manas processes and presents sense objects to the theater, either by assimilating fresh data from any of the senses, reusing old data from memory, or creating data from the imagination.

The mind is incredibly creative. It filters, organizes and augments the raw data of its awareness so that a meaningful life can be experienced. This requires layers of perception, interpretation, grouping, imagination, reasoning, explanation, organization, and ascribing meaning to be working together full time. 

The details of all these layers and interactions will be covered in a separate essay. The purpose of this essay was to explain and justify the approach of slowing the mind to identify and explain the rules of subjective reality.

[Scott Roberts]

Since there are controversial elements to essay 1, which as far as I can see do not need to be resolved to set the stage for this essay, why not drop essay 1 and insert some simple note like "While science is the way to go for exploring the physical world, a different approach is needed to study mind."

I also think you can assume more knowledge on the part of readers of BK's blog, such as being aware of the representational nature of sense perception and of mystical notions like undifferentiated consciousness and the value of meditation, so it is possible that this could be shortened a bit. 

A quibble: I am not convinced that we can't conceive of non-spatiotemporal objects. I would say that there is a difference between conceivable and picturable. Mathematical objects are (I would say) conceivable but not picturable -- can one picture a triangle whose sides have zero thickness? The square root of -1? Well, one might debate this, but the point I would make is that I don't think the straight-out claim that all concepts must be picturable is needed for the rest of the essay.

[Tony Budding]

Thanks Scott. I did apologize in the essay! But, as familiar as these concepts may be in this group or generally, I learned in many years of teaching metaphysical philosophies that there are so many versions of each of these concepts that confusion easily arises if you skip steps.

And thanks for the quibble. This distinction is actually right at the crux of my point. It's like the thermal imaging goggles metaphor. The human mind structures all thoughts as subject-object-action within space and time, so if we want to contemplate anything outside this structure we have to create a concept within this structure that correlates to something outside that structure. 

To picture a triangle with zero thickness, we have to picture a triangle with some thickness and then try to remove the thickness. This doesn't allow us to actually picture the zero-thickness triangle, but it gives the mind something to hold on to. I'm no expert in theoretical mathematics, but the square root of -1 seems like a perfect example. It's an imaginary number that doesn't exist in the same way that real numbers do, so we create a concept that allows us to contextualize the inconceivable. But at no point can the mind picture i in the same way it does 1 or 7.

And taking this point one step further, if we are to understand what the mind is, how it functions, and develop an operational definition of consciousness, we must be very precise and realistic about these boundaries of thought. By knowing exactly what the mind can and cannot do, we're able to clarify the various forces or functions at play. And, the more we understand the forces at play, the more effective we can be at achieving our goals, whether that's performance, healing, enlightenment or liberation.

The main point of this essay is to establish the means to identify these exact boundaries, which is to follow the process of slowing and stopping the mind to its extreme limit. All normal waking experiences are like a 100 instrument symphony. In order to fully understand sound, we have to experience silence. The more instruments you remove, the more clearly you understand the sounds made by each. And when you've removed the last instrument, instead of realizing silence, you now hear all the sounds made by nature. So then you have to figure out how to remove those sounds. And when you remove those sounds, two things happen. You realize silence, and you've thrown the baby out with the bathwater: there is no more experience. So you're left with a choice: return to experience or become completely liberated with no further experience of any kind. (And as you might guess, the details of this are coming in a future essay!)

[Anand Damani]

Hello Tony,

I am trying to add my comments inline in Red.

The purpose of this essay is to describe approaches to determining and defining the rules of subjective reality. In a previous essay, I suggested that we separate the rules of subjective reality from the rules of objective reality because of the structural limitations of human cognition. 

The specific rules of subjective reality are not particularly cumbersome to define, and would fit within a 3,000 word essay. The problem is that we’re describing the framework of how experiences arise, which cannot be directly conceived of by the human mind. So, the rules alone would leave us with problematic and unacceptable outcomes: you dismiss them out of hand because normal “proofs” don’t work or you don't agree, we debate “opinions,” we use terminology inconsistently, or you accept the concepts simply because you trust me. Any would be a shame.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” --Abraham Lincoln

.The Proof can only validate what you have understood.In existence reality remains whether you understand it or not.Understanding is not what is proved but something beyond that.Say water quenches thirst. It does so for the plants for the animals for humans.Now this is so obvious a fact that there is no experiment to prove it.Plants started quenching their thirst long before human beings arrived. We should not be under the false impression that science or its method are the final word.Science is a good analytical way of study by Dissecting.That is its limitation.Science can not study holistically as to how plant and soil coexist.That a human being can understand but science can not explain.

I apologize in advance to those of you who are sophisticated in epistemological argumentation, as I’m going to state things that are quite obvious. It is necessary though, given the inherent challenges in--and broad variety of approaches to--describing the inconceivable. Furthermore, this argumentation is necessarily interconnected and self-referential (tautological), but remember that tautology is a flaw in evidence and proof, not an indication of falsity. 

Proofs are absolutely critical in the scientific process, but as the physicist Richard Feynman stated, “A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.” Furthermore, we can establish that the human mind is incapable of conceiving of anything outside time and space. This is a hard limitation of the constructs of human cognition, so there is no way to prove anything that is beyond conception. If we limit our exploration to that which can be proven, we are doomed from the start.

.We have to understand teh various types of languages.Science can not explain or understand the causal language.Holistic understanding is beyond science and what can be proved is what science can claim to explain.

In fact, we cannot get away from being self-referential, especially at first, since there are no generally accepted operational definitions of consciousness and the subjective realities for us to rely on. We will end up taking each component to its limit, so eventually there will be a network of evidence and strong logical reasoning underlying the framework.

So, what is this subjective reality we’re attempting to understand? Subjective reality is the experiencing of life in any form. By definition, to experience means to be aware of the experience. Therefore, subjective reality is anything that has awareness as its foundation. 

We are starting with an acceptance that awareness exists instead of trying to describe how awareness arises in the first place. About 400 years ago, Rene Descartes famously wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” This, of course, is a true statement. You cannot think if you do not exist. But what do these two phrases really mean? What does it mean to think? What is a thought? Who is this “I” that thinks and therefore exists? Can “I” exist without thinking, or is the “I” itself a creation of the thinking mind? What is the relationship between thinking and consciousness? Is consciousness a byproduct of thinking, or is consciousness a prerequisite for thought?

.That which can experience is the one that can know itself as well as the other material things in the world.The fact that there is something can be easily understood by looking at a dead body which has teh frontal cortex intact but lifeless minus the soul/life atom. I have described the structure of the life atom (SOUL) and how the 61 particles in the concentric rings 2,8,18,&32 perform the 122 activities and the whole circle of understanding and experiencing works. This is in existence and can be understood but not argued or proven.

Answering  these questions directly is impossible because they extend past the limits of human cognition. The human mind is only capable of thoughts structured as subject-object-action within three dimensional space and linear time. We simply cannot conceive of additional dimensions or any kind of non-dimensional or non-temporal reality. As soon as we try, we inevitably convert the concept into three dimensions and linear time because that’s how the mind functions. 

A metaphor for this is night vision goggles that use thermal imaging to convert infrared light into visible light. The patterns in the visible light generated by the goggles represent patterns in the infrared light sensed by the goggles, and thus we are able to identify objects in the dark. At no point, though, are we actually seeing infrared light. Instead, we only see the visible light generated by the goggles. 

In the same way, we cannot perceive or even conceive of anything outside space and time. Instead, we have to create concepts that allow us to identify patterns and functional understandings for things that can’t be directly known.

Now let’s go the other way. Since every thought, perception, sensation, emotion, and experience we’ve ever had or will ever have is structured by our minds into three dimensional space and linear time, it’s very natural to assume that the universe itself is structured in three dimensional space and linear time. But, this is not the case. 

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” --Abraham Maslow

.The eastern philosophers have many subdivisions of the mind which is a very abstract concept for the western scientist.There are parts like mann,vritti,chith, buddhi and aatman which are divisions of what we call as mind. The brain is independent and separate from the brain is something all now agree.The location of the mind is still not clear but there is something over and above the physical brain is what we can conclude .Even that is unknown and research is still ongoing.

Our only tool we have for thinking, conceiving and experiencing life is the mind. But the limitations of a human function do not in any way limit the reality. Going back to visible light for example, the human eye is only capable of perceiving wavelengths between about 380 and 740 nm. Yet we know that the entirety of the electromagnetic spectrum is many times greater than the visible spectrum. 

Therefore, the question, “what do gamma rays look like?” is nonsensical because they are not visible to the human eye. In the same way, questions like “what exists outside the universe?” and “what happened before time started?” are nonsensical because our minds are incapable of conceiving of anything outside three dimensional space and linear time.

This is a conundrum. How do you discuss that which can’t be described or even conceived of because it’s outside the mind’s capabilities? 

You can’t, at least not directly. What we can do, though, is explore the nature and characteristics of the mind, with a particular emphasis on its outer limits, to understand exactly how knowledge and experiences are created. Using the mind to explore the mind is tricky, so we need a very careful methodology, combined with rigorous and honest inquiry. 

Using language to address that which is beyond language brings up important questions about evidence and proof. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. What does it mean to know something? What is true? How do we know truth? How do we know that we know something? How do we know that what we know is true?

These questions are at the core of all philosophy and science. The scientific method is the process of proposing what the causes are of observable phenomena, and then figuring out how to test that relationship between cause and effect. We say that a theory is true if it accurately and consistently predicts the outcome of various inputs. 

.Knowing is more than what science of physics chemistry or biology can imply.Time as a concept requires us to have some base frame say the earths revolution on its imaginary axis.In reality Time is always Present.There is no past and no Future. Once you understand the concept understanding the universe the reality and the coexistence of the soul and the body becomes easy.It is not scientific in the real sense of the word as we know but the fact remains whether we understand the same or not.

[Bernardo]

As a sequel of the previous essay, this can't stand on its own.