Book 1:4: The Silent, Listening, Observer; the Conscious Awareness and Dualisms

1:4:1 Introduction

The mind, the mental essence of "the self", is a poorly understood phenomena. For most people, the functioning and qualities of the mind are rarely a basis of serious self reflection or examination. And most people just assume they have a mind and end considerations there. Likewise, most assume they possess bodies, and possess real biographic and mental identities, never questioning the bases by which the assume, as if our minds, our bodies, and our identities were real. In the understanding of one's life, grasping how the mind functions and awareness of the mind's fundamental qualities are each of critical importance; even though one may not acknowledge so.

As Socrates' adage states in An Apology, "An unexamined life is not worth living." Admittedly we can only assume that the converse of Socrates' adage is true, that an examined life IS worth living; and we will move forward on from this assumption, taking it to be true from this point forward. Thus, were the reader not believe that a reflective life would at least be MORE WORTH LIVING, the reader will not find utility or ease in moving forward with the alleged powers of Philosophic Perspectivity.

1:4:2 Minds Essential Function is to create Binary Dualisms, Like Computer Minds.

Essentially, the Mind functions to create reality, usually in dualisms. Yes or no, 1 or 0. There are other kinds of contrasts, but Eastern Philosophers have been captivated with Dualisms for good reason.

Importantly, dualisms, in fact, "do not exist" outside of the minds that create them. In other words, where IS the conceptualized dualism of "up" in "up and down"? Where is the "Good" in "good and bad"? Where is the "Half empty" or "half full"? Do these things exist in the world, or do they rather exist in the minds of consciously-aware brains that imagine concepts such as left and right, up and down? In P-theory (Perspecticity Theory) Dualisms exist only in the mind, caused by or as a result of cognitive abstractions (to be discussed later).

Clearly, thinking through the philosophical, scientific, and spiritual notions of "mind" can lead to contact with a lot of conceptual mumbo jumbo; and terms such as the following abound: Self, other, dualism, time, space, and conscious-awareness. Nevertheless, the important thing for our purposes is to recognize that one has some sort of mind, with some sort of uniqueness in experience, that makes Me different from You; Him different from Her; Tom different from Shaqueema..etc. But understanding the insidious nature of dualisms is important. And it is important to acknowledge that Dualisms are a product of the mind, not the outside environment.

Certainly, dualisms do not exist in the non-intellectual, amoral world of nature and animals -- the world in which Life commonly rips itself to shreds for survival on a daily basis. Thus, Perspectivity Theory will assume that the external Universe is not where dualisms arise. This-that, Yes-no, good-bad, left-right, Yin-Yang -- these terms and dualisms can only exist in the mind of the Human, and at the level of cognition and language. Perhaps this is what sets Humans apart from animals in the abrahamic traditions?In any case, cognition and language are semiotic systems which constrain, simplify and abstract reality into a manageable form of mental concepts; concepts acceptable to our conscious-awarenesses as contained within the Human organism.

1:4:3 Cognitive Geometries Provide for Simplification of external realities into mental models; models which can later be processed for the sensation of (a) present thinking; (b) "past" memory-recall, and (c) "future" prediction.

The level of detail that our sense-perceptions make available to our conscious-awareness is truly staggering. Imagine if our minds could for a moment, actually perceive the totality of the complexity of all leaves in a forest that an observer might see. Imagine the multitudes, in detail, the millions upon millions of leaves flickering about int he breeze -- there would be too much information for us to process, and we would be likely to robo-lock like a computer that is overloaded. Sometimes we can have the feeling of this overwhelming inability to process information, as when we are in a large crowd of people, or when we are inundated with too much information to quickly resulting in an inability to function: as in traffic accidents.

Dualism can help up negotiate the infinitudes and continuums of nature by compartmentalizing into manageable chunks the oneness of the universe surrounding us. A concept which will be expounded upon in a later book.

Compartmentalization can be seen in the the idea of the LIght spectrum from ultraviolet to infra-red light becoming divided first into colors, then into light and darkness.

Sciences have conceptually reduced an infinite continuum of energy frequencies to the small range we perceive -- the visible light perceivable by the functioning human eye; We only consider visible light "there".

Light has been even further conceptually reduced by language to a smaller subset of finite and discreet "colors" (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) and shades; and is sometimes even further reduced into blackness and whiteness, substance and nothing, black and white. Dualism, Yes or no; Light or dark, Zero or One. Presence or absence of visual stimulation.

So, our minds commonly exhibit the feature of reduction; Minds reduce the Universe as sets of simple models; thus there are straight lines where in reality no straight lines exist in nature. There are spheres, where no spheres exist. Perfect infinite planes, where no planes exist.

Perspectivity Theories offers a concrete, acceptable and approachable manner for understanding the substance, existence and functioning of such mentalizations and even the perceived experiences of "Space" and "Time" -- as direct consequences of the way the Conscious-Awareness cognitively creates dualisms of "Self" and "Other."

Yes; thats right. This theory portends to explain the observable qualities of space and time as cognitive consequences of self-perceptions which constitute the basis for self-other binary dualism. In fact, the entire logical mind of the Human thinking, conscious-awareness is a dualistic calculator serving to separates parts from a whole, parts that are not in actuality separated, but for the mental processes which separate.

In other words, what makes a bike a bike? If the handle bars were stripped off the bike, would it still be a bike? What about one of the wheels? At what point would one recognize, or fail to recognize the "bikeness" of a bike that had 100 pieces -- after 50 of them were missing? 85? 10? 1? Whatever the answer would be it is the mental conceptualization of what a bike is that allows us to recognize.

Most frequently, people experience their aware-consciousness as if it were some narration or narrator, running on verbalizing in our minds. To many, this self-identity coheres as the form of an internalized, silent language, or a running monologue within which we constantly comment, critique, justify, guess, or predict our experiences in the world.

1:4:4 THE SELF THE MIND THE IDENTITY THE VOICE

This collection of chatter in our minds is often referred to, in Western Philosophical circles, as "the Self" or "the Self-Identity." However, in Eastern philosophical practices, the very purpose of meditation is to become aware of the underlying voiceless, silence of the unidentified, unrecognized chattering mind -- Meditation makes apparent to some indescribable silent viewer, the "true nature" of the mind's chatter-box, "monkey-mind" -- the delusional contours of the illusory self which. Eastern philosophical thought, in particular Buddhism, usually determines that "dellusionary" identification with object thought-forms or (ideas) thought-forms that are "mis-identified" are the false root of the sensation of the self, the other, and all that is and is not the self.

At the center of our "identity" is some poorly understood conscious-awareness which views the dualisms created by our cognitive processes. Thus widely agreed upon scientifically is that the organic physical brain exhibits electro-chemical processes which are associated with cognition, thought, perception, and sensation, awareness, and consciousness. In other words, all mental activity is composed of brain (the container) and a conscious awareness in which the mind and identities are "contained". And these come to perceive the outside Universe, including the container of the brain, the body.

In Perspectivity theory, we imagine these diagrammatically as four concentric circles, with the Conscious-Awareness (CA) in the inner-most circle; the Mind wrapping around the CA, and the Identity covering and encapsulating both the Mind and the CA at the third, outermost circle. The last outer-most circle is "the brain" which contains all the rest, and outside that, the body and Universe.

MEMORY:

The "Memory" is important and is conceptualized as a purely a set of mental-models based on purportedly real sense-perceptions of actually experienced events. The memory, as a repository of our biographic and past socio-cultural experiences is but one part of our cognitive Idea Making Machine, our brains. And the experience of remembering, immagining, or predicting the future are, in fact, indistinguishable processes on the inside of the mind, irrespective of whether they refer or not to records, or evidence in the real world.

The connections between Brain, Conscious-Awareness, the Mind, and the Identity are among the most interesting subjects of cognitive, philosophical, biological, chemical, neural sciences, as well as some spiritualities. Much is known about the connections at the scientific level; however, there is certainly much more to be learned. The details of the relations and the mechanisms which co-produce them are clearly important. Nevertheless Perspecticity Theory does not require a precise understanding of these connections in order for the theory to explain the world, and our lives in ways that can improve them.

Importantly, the brain-mind system engages memory and learning as the system creates conceptual identity from biographical experiences of memory, learning having occurred in "the Past." However, as those with flawed common sense usually discover, the way we commonly think of and idealize of the world, is not the way the world is. Many people, for example have no idea why the believed


Philosophic Perspectivity (PP) does not claim to know more than what is currently recognized by the cutting edges of natural and social sciences. Additionally, Philosophic Perspectivity requires only open-mindedness -- not omniscience, as well as the commitment for initiates in the philosophy to exhibit a degree of self reflection.


One main reason why Philosophic Perspectivity will always be limited in its diffusion across the populations of the world relates to the ignorance or education of the person, the people, or the culture or society in question. Poorly educated, non-thinkers may be disinclined to think seriously about anything, especially their current approaches to life -- even if these approaches create mental, emotional, psychological anguish in their lives. Moreover, it is unlikely that mono-theists will ever even question their religious pseudo-philosophic foundations. Even those thesists that are achieving even the lowest levels of life satisfaction, even those who are the most likely to commit suicide from depression, will be very unlikely to entertain any notions of Philosophic Perspectivity.