Reality
This chapter reveals what the game of life really is and why. Comprehending the philosophy of reality is inessential to becoming mentally healthy. But this chapter helps you by drawing a map of the territory you are traversing: how Nature is constructed and perceived, and why. Understanding why you have been suffering helps you set your resolve to rid yourself of the ridiculous disease inside you.
What cannot be denied is that mentation happens. 18th-century British philosopher George Berkeley stated it well: “Existence is perception. All those bodies which compose the world have not any subsistence without a mind.”
We experience our lives as a dualism. From infancy, our minds tell us that we reside in a body amid a physical world. We have consciousness, a mind, and a body.
Under dualism, actuality is reality. Physicality is objectively true: its veracity authenticated by social discourse. Any construal is merely subjective interpretation. As dualism comes naturally, it has been the conventional conception throughout history.
There is an alternate to dualism, which is a monism. A monism posits that reality has a single source from which Nature emerges. Either matter creates a mystical mind (matterism), or the mind makes a mirage we call matter (energyism). Matterism and energyism are antithetical.
The 3 reality paradigms are mutually exclusive. If dualism is a deception, a monism must be true: either matterism or energyism.
How to know which paradigm is correct? 18th-century Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith concluded, “The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts is the one that must rule all observation.” If what is known to happen cannot be explained by a reality paradigm, that paradigm cannot be correct. The correct view is comprehensive, its explanatory mechanics flawless.
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There is a decisive question about mind-body dualism. What is the interface between the mind and the body? How does the inner (mental) world connect with the perceived outer (physical) world?
No one has ever had a decent answer to the mind-body problem. Beyond taking it for granted, the transformation of bodily sensation into mental perception is inscrutable. There is no mechanism for matter to mind, no reconciliation of the tangible into abstraction. The mind-body problem is a critical chasm that cannot be bridged, only glossed over or ignored.
Scientists who bothered to think about the nature of existence ditched dualism as unsolvable. They embrace matterism. Under matterism, Nature is purely physical: mechanistically constructed from the quantum level on up. Atoms are the building blocks of matter. The conventional science you read espouses matterism.
Under matterism, the brain creates a mirage of a mind. Mentation is an electro-chemical activity. The school of psychology that most firmly embraced the matterist dictum was behaviorism.
Behaviorism gained popularity in mid-1900s. Its most ardent advocate was B.F. Skinner, who was considered the most influential psychologist of the 20th century. Skinner said, “Mental life is invention. Thinking is behavior. The mistake is in allocating the behavior to the mind.” Behaviorism lost the public’s favor because it could not describe what brains did without referring to mental activity. Denying the mind put behaviorism in a bind.
Dualism is downed by the mind-body problem. But matterism fares even worse on this count.
How does a brain mentate? No one has given a credible explanation of matter-to-mind mechanics. The gap between molecules and symbols cannot be bridged.
Animals, which have brains, are just the beginning of matterism’s cerebral breakdown. Plants are aware of their habitat, as are cells and microbes of every sort.
Plants do not have brains. Yet plants are conscious and solve problems, such as growing toward light, managing their water supply, and smartly deciding which way to grow roots to get the minerals they need.
Cells are another instance of mysticism under matterism. Matterism has no explanation for how cells and proteins go about their conative business of living.
Well-known dynamics of Nature are inexplicable under matterism. Normal is all paranormal because there are no mechanisms for awareness or mentation.
A virus is not even a cell. It is just a macromolecule: meticulously packed proteins and DNA.
Infecting is a wily business. There is a daunting obstacle course in entering the host, navigating to a specific part of the body housing the cells of interest, all the while evading the immune system. Getting into a chosen cell is itself tricky. Then, once inside, a virus hijacks the machinery inside a cell to manufacture working replicas. Let us not forget that viruses determine their own evolution. Matterism can explain none of that.
Nature is resplendent with wondrous life in astonishing variety. Ingenuity is strikingly apparent.
Biological evolution is adaptation. Life evolves via proposals for traits that better adapt an organism to its habitat, thus raising the odds for survival and perpetuation. 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume said about evolution, “A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.”
Matterism has no account for the amazing designs in life. The common matterist refrain about how life evolves is genetic “random mutation”: that life and biological traits are just accidents. Matterism does not even rise to “the most stupid thinker.”
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Biology is a bummer for matterism. Physics obliterates it.
Einstein’s indelible equation was “E = mc2: energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.” In summation, Einstein said, “Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it.”
Atomic bombs explosively proved Einstein’s point: that matter is made of energy. The atomic decay of nuclear weapons (fission) has an opposite: fusion. Stars turn matter into energy by fusing atoms, creating tremendous energy which lights and warms the planets which orbit them. Matter is born of energy and releases energy thunderously in its death throes.
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If we understand exactly what energy is, we are on our way to solving the reality paradigm problem.
Energy is traditionally defined as the relative ability to put matter to work. As matter is transposable energy, that definition is a tautology.
Physicist Carlos Calle cautiously described energy thusly: “Energy is an abstract concept introduced by physicists to better understand how Nature operates. Since it is an abstract idea, we cannot form a concrete picture of it in our minds. We find it very difficult to define energy in simple terms.”
The formal terms used to define energy do not improve the situation for matterism. Further, the prim definition of energy has been contradicted by evidence.
Rigorously, “energy” is a conserved extensive property of a physical system. Parsing that definition for content leaves an irreducible void.
A physical system is a mathematical model of chosen phenomena. A system may range from the quantum to the cosmic. A physical system is portrayed numerically.
In physics, a property is a quantifiable characteristic. A property may be intensive or extensive.
Whereas an intensive property does not depend upon system substance or size for its value, system size matters for an extensive property. Extensive means additive. An example illustrates.
The mass and volume of an object are extensive properties, as their measures are proportional to system size. But hardness is intensive, as it is scale-invariant. Like hardness, which is the ratio of mass per volume, ratios of extensive quantities are typically intensive.
In that energy is an extensive property, the scope of the selected system is crucial to energy’s characterization. Wrongly define Nature, as matterism does, and you get an inaccurate measure of energy.
Conserved means preserved. In a physical system, conserved also means self-contained. Physicists assume that the amount of energy in a physical system is fixed: no leakage nor injection. Conserved means energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed.
In 1797, English physicist Benjamin Thompson showed that an endless amount of heat could be generated from a finite amount of material. Thompson’s work was instrumental in establishing modern thermodynamics, which ushered the conception of energy as a manifold phenomenon.
Contrary to Thompson’s finding, physicists decreed that the energy in our universe is conserved. Energy conservation is the 1st law of thermodynamics.
Without assuming energy conservation, physicists had no hope of making their equations work. Energy that cannot be tallied is mathematically insufferable to matterist physicists.
Still the equations fail. The black holes that propel galactic rotation are blatant violations of energy conservation. Black holes are spherical voids in the cosmic fabric that comprise infinite energy. The discards of black holes, called quasars, are among the brightest and most energetic objects in the heavens.
Further, modern physicists cannot explain the level of light we see in outer space or how the cosmos hangs together.
In the matterist account of astrophysics and quantum mechanics there is not enough mass nor energy. To fill the yawning gap, physicists concocted concealed forces from hidden dimensions which hypothetically feed vital energy into existence. The buzzwords dark matter, dark energy, virtual particles, and vacuum energy provide mystic mortar.
The secretive sneaking of energy inputs decimates the laws of thermodynamics upon which modern physics is founded. Nature is stranger and more extensive than matterist physicists can reckon, as they themselves admit. By absurd self-contradictions, physics has shown that matterism is a house of cards.
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Energy cannot be directly observed. Energy can only be comparatively measured by its effect on matter. In of itself, energy has no presence. Energy is just a relative mathematical reference, without existence.
Energy can be related mathematically to matter, as Einstein did. But matter is made of energy, and energy has no more subsistence than an idea.
What is energy? An abstraction that appears phenomenal because the mind is driven to make sense of what it perceives. Whereas we sense matter, energy is a myth made in the mind.
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Consider the quantum realm, from which existence continuously emerges, all the while keeping its intricate order. Matterism has no explanation for how coherence is maintained.
Coherence is a conception of comprehensibility: an implicit imagining of structure. We cannot escape the conviction that there is an order to Nature. All of science is based upon this very assumption. From a matterist perspective, the order of existence is inexplicable. Einstein said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
The subatomic is a restless gyre: nervous nucleons inside an atom with electrons dancing in a distant cloud about them.
Electrons are quantized energy impulses. American physicist Richard Feynman quipped, “The electron is a theory so useful that we can almost call it real.”
The motion mojo of electrons – electromagnetism – is how existence manifests. Electrons are the minuscule makers of Nature by their interrelations.
Electrons exemplify that the force of Nature is of fields: local areas of influence. All phenomena emanate via electromagnetism. Existence is of interaction and relations, not particles.
We experience matter as substantial. Look carefully at what physics has irrefutably shown and physicality itself is inscrutable. Matter is as solid as a phantom. Only our minds make materiality.
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Let’s recap. We perceive dualism, but it cannot be true. There is no way to reconcile intangible mentation with tangible physicality.
That leaves the choice of a monism, which means that reality has a singular source. Either matter creates the mind (matterism), or the mind makes a mirage that we call matter (energyism).
Dualism and matterism are easy to expound in a cursory way. Just don’t peek behind the curtain about how they might work. It blows their cover.
In assuming matter matters, conventional science got the fundamentals wrong and went from there. By contrast, energyism explains all that is known, and further weaves why into the saga.
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A universal field of Cönsciousness/cöherence (Cöcö) localizes to populate the fields which comprise Nature. Keep in mind that existence emanates from a singular force: a monism. We speak of Cönsciousness and cöherence as distinct only for comprehension’s sake.
The ö in Cöcö signifies from unity diversity emerges (a circle to dots). ö also represents ouroboros.
The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The ouroboros first appeared contemporaneously in ancient China, Egypt, and India over 3,000 years ago. The ouroboros later inhabited the philosophies of cultures worldwide. Interpretations have varied, but the ouroboros denotes the eternal soul and its perpetual cycle of incarnation.
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Cönsciousness is the universal field of consciousness. Its localization is consciousness. Every entity has consciousness.
While your mind deceptively insists on objects for actuality, reality is of fields. Some fields are local influencers which work behind the scenes.
This construal corresponds with conventional physics. Recent advances in quantum mechanics have come from considering quanta as fields (topological regions) rather than particles per se.
With energy just an idea, a field is a gyre of data at work. A gyre is an interacting dynamic. A mind rendering a field meaningful is a transformation of data into information.
In short, a field is data. A mind makes sense of fields by turning them into information. Cöherence is the process by which Nature is fabricated and perceived, keeping the proceedings tidy in being comprehensible.
Whereas matter is a field which may be perceived (by virtue of being quantized), a cöforce is a local field which has an effect but yields no direct display: localized but unquantized. Particle-prone physicists call cöforces at the quantum level bosons. Unlike the standard construal of bosons, cöforces work at all levels of Nature in distinctive ways.
Quantization is a cöforce creation. The analogy in conventional quantum theory is that bosons shape the properties of fermions, which are matter quanta.
Existence appears as a nested hierarchy of interacting fields which behave as gyres. The fields which form quanta swarm into atoms via cöforce sway. Atoms congregate to form molecules, and so on up, into the ambient scale of objects and bodies which we perceive, then on to astronomical and cosmic scales. Nature is an intricate nesting of fields within fields and fields among fields, each field gyrally acting its role.
Conventional conception is that perception captures a material world in the mind: a turning of matter into symbols. The opposite is true. Perception converts symbols into the appearance of matter.
We perceive a physicality which intricately matches the way we construe cause and effect. This is a miracle of deception.
The realm of reality is a universe of abstraction: a data dimensionality. The hierarchy from the elemental is of symbols that pile into concepts, not quanta that form atoms. The material world is just Cöcö putting on a science fiction show.
The mind is a set of cöforces which store and recall memories from experiences, concoct scenarios via imagination, and solve problems. You cannot examine the interlinked cöforce processes which comprise mentation. You can only perceive the mind’s products, which are pregnant thoughts and emotive gestures.
Evolution in all its realms, from cosmic to organic, emanates from a symphony of cöforces. Biological cöforces adapt to their habitat in their evolution.
The local incarnations of Cönsciousness witness the creations of cöherence. Anything needing to be aware of its environment has consciousness. Which means everything has consciousness, from quanta on up. This is the hoary theory of animism, which had been the common comprehension among prehistoric peoples.
There is a fundamental distinction between living beings and nonliving entities. The vital difference is a life force. Philosophers termed this distinction vitalism.
The cöforces of lifeless fields lack imagination. They do not need to solve problems. They just need to behave according to the intrinsic rulebase that defines their behaviors. Quantum mechanics, inorganic chemistry, and tectonics are examples of inorganic cöforces.
Nature is the exhibition of existence which comprises actuality. Actuality is the world experienced through the senses. To be is to perceive.
The idea of “laws of Nature” is a naïve conceptualization of cöforce cöherence. Science to date has only scratched the surface of Cöcö in its awesome intricacy.
Cöforce cöherence is Nature’s creator. Cönsciousness in its innumerable incarnations of consciousness is Nature’s witness. Reality is a unity that expresses an actuality of diversity. Nature is a showtivity: an experience that is perceived subjectively.
Communicating experiences with others yields an impression of objectivity. As your mind is unique, your experiences are never selfsame to anyone else. Yet conformity by consensus molds a pseudo-objectivity. “Reality is socially constructed,” observed Austrian sociologist Peter Berger.
Just as memory are symbolic sketches of events, beliefs are lazy generalizations. Practicing skepticism aptly disposes beliefs for the tool of knowledge.
Knowledge is the idea that something works a certain way. Knowledge is useful for the skill it affords.
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Your mind sings a song of dualism: Nature is out there while you are in here, nestled inside a body.
You now know that cannot be so. Dualism is a deception. Perceiving is deceiving. Your mind is lying to you. The reason why can be found by delving down the rabbit hole of reality.
In accounting, let us jump to the bottom line. The game of life is rigged. You are like a puppet, with biology pulling the strings.
This is shown by the situation you find yourself. Look at your circumstance.
What do you live for? Whatever you name is the same: entertainment. You just want to have fun.
What must be done for you to have fun? First, you have to be awake for the action. You must be aware. Living requires consciousness.
Awareness implies there is something to be aware of: a show to witness and participate in. For that to work, you must be able to make sense of the show. That requires a mind that can comprehend the show.
The stage is set. You are an actor in the show titled Nature. You are there to have fun. What exactly is fun?
Fun begins with wanting. You want to have fun.
Will to live is driven by the desire for fun. Desire defines your life.
“Nothing good comes easy” is practically a cliché. Easy gaiety is not as gratifying as hard-won fun.
Challenge is essential to satisfaction. A challenge is a desire that is imagined as difficult to achieve.
Only in overcoming obstacles do you feel you have won something. If getting it done was always easy there would be no sense of accomplishment.
It naturally follows that surmounting the hardest challenge would bring the utmost satisfaction. What would be the greatest challenge? Let us take another look at the landscape of life.
What enlivens our adventure in living is jeopardy. Fear of loss fosters a sense of jeopardy. Human psychology is rigged with a keen sense of loss.
Jeopardy only works if you believe risk is real. Risk requires substantial hazard. Whence the primordial illusion: that you are living in a material world, with serious stakes. In the game of life, death is the ultimate loss. But not having fun is no laughing matter.
Presiding over negativity in all its forms is none other than nattermind: ruler of the land of Risk, where the Collective live.
As nagging nemesis and vile deceiver, vanquishing nattermind is the greatest challenge. Sublime joy comes from victory over this most treacherous villain. Bliss is a hero’s celebration for the ultimate triumph.
If this sounds like a fairy tale, that is because it is. Physicality is a figment of the mind. There is no jeopardy. Nothing really lives or dies.
Being awake is no more real than dreaming. The world with your eyes open is just more detailed and persistent.
The Collective believe in materiality: in life, gain, loss, and death. As such, the game is set for the ultimate challenge: to disabuse yourself of your illusions and thereby attain realization.
Indian guru Nisargadatta Maharaj advised, “All you have to do is to see the dream as dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world and stop looking for ways out.
“The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that need be done.”
In realization you perceive the dream as it is and live the dream for what it is.
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Your consciousness is an incarnation of a soul in an endless cycle. In each turn the game changes but the rules remain much the same.
There are numerous proofs that consciousness is integral to a transcendental soul. Here are a few.
An afterlife has been a central tenet in all religions. Reincarnation figures in creeds worldwide.
The most direct evidence of reincarnation comes from tales told by innocent children: recalled glimpses of past lives, describing places they have never been, knowing a language they never learned (xenoglossy).
Youngsters between 3 and 5 years relate the most vivid memories of past lives. Children at this age converse, and nattermind is still nascent. Among its other perversions, monkey-mind manipulates memory as part of its reign.
A common myth about reincarnation is that it is progressive: that a soul matures through lifetimes. This concept, commonly called karma, originated in Hinduism around the 8th century BCE, when a faction took to moralizing to advance its political agenda.
From early childhood, people perceive morals as objective. Part of this mindset is belief in a moral universe: a cosmic order imbued with immanent justice. Immanent justice is the idea that Nature enforces morality: that bad people will eventually experience misfortune and good people will receive good fortune. Moralizing religions exploit people’s naïve sense of a moral universe.
Monotheistic moralizing religions emerged during the Axial Age, between the 8th and 3rd centuries BCE, as the state evolved into fuller authority in the aftermath of tribal conquests. Secular authorities endorsed moralizing religions as an instrument for societal control, to promote obedience. Religious authorities were given their seat at the table of political power for wielding their instrument of conviction to the state’s well-being.
All the major religions are moralizing monotheisms: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islamism. Grains of insight from ancient gurus were spun into dodgy dogmas that have been pervasively believed by the iğnorant.
Nature is not a moral accountant. The soul is not a diary of social convention, not a moral ledger. Morality is only about respect for other life.
The evolution of a soul is in its learning from experience over a lifetime. Every incarnation presents a challenge that reflects a previous life.
Life works like a puzzle to be solved. That puzzle is to realize one’s true nature, to progress from iğnorance to realization. Living is a beckoning to higher consciousness, and to the wisdom that comes with awareness.
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Ghosts are a sad exhibit of soul. Ghosts have been noted in every culture worldwide since prehistory.
Attachment to life can be so strong that the shock of its sudden end is unacceptable to a soul. Ghosts show that a soul has will after its incarnation ends.
Normally, at death, one’s spirit is ushered out of the mind-body. A purification process proceeds before a soul reincarnates. That some retain residual memories of a past life shows that soul cleansing is not always thorough.
For ghosts, the soul transition process faltered because their death was traumatic. Ghosts just won’t let go. They linger where their tragedy or emotional attachment was before their physical death.
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An out-of-body experience (OBE) is sensation detached from the physical body. The mind perceives away from its body during an OBE.
OBEs have been reported throughout history. They were known to ancient peoples worldwide. 90% of the cultures in the world have a tradition regarding out-of-body experiences. OBEs have repeatedly been confirmed, as out-of-body travelers reveal details about locations they could not have otherwise seen.
1 in 5 people have an OBE sometime during their life. People who have a near-death experience sometimes report an OBE.
Out-of-body experiences tend to be spontaneous. But some people can leave their body at will. An intentional OBE is an astral projection.
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A presence is an extra-dimensional being. Presences are sometimes called spirits.
Every culture and all major religions have traditions about paranormal presences. Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islamism all have writings on presences. The most well-known and extreme stories of presences are of their exorcism.
All animals are home to many colonies of microbes, which altogether is construed as a microbiome. Your microbiome is involved in most of your bodily functions, including your immune system. Your microbiome helped guide your childhood development.
Your body can only digest simple sugars. All the food you eat first feeds your gut microbiota, which then feeds you the leftovers. This works because your body and microbiome constantly communicate in a commensal relationship. Your appetite for certain foods comes from your gut microbes.
The composition and quality of your gut microbiome depends upon the foods you eat. The microbes in your gut reflect your dietary choices.
A deficient diet leads to poor health because a lousy microbe culture has been cultivated in the digestive tract. Autoimmune disorders, which are involved in (or are) many diseases, are abetted by bad microbiota.
The presences within you are like your microbiome. Your spiritbiome reflects the quality of your psychic energy.
Presences may feed, or feed off, your psychic energy. Benevolent ones help you. Bad ones drain you, sour you.
Presences make themselves felt in various ways, including feelings, moods, thoughts, insights, and in dreams. Spirits sometimes manifest in the mind as an inner voice from a seemingly external source: an outside adviser on the inside.
Madness is the process of being eaten alive by parasitic presences. This commonly takes the form of incessant internal voices. Such insanity has been known in every society since prehistory.
Rage involves presences feeding off the negative psychic energy from monkey-mind inspired anger. Anger stems from a (false) sense of entitlement which nattermind cultivates as part of the self construct.
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Our minds are precociously stuffed with proclivities that are practically indispellable. Among these are natural urges, emotional bents, inborn knowledge, innate heuristics, and belief dispositions. Nattermind uses this trove as its tools in enslaving its occupant soul.
The Collective unquestioningly accept the machinations of their monkey-minds. Only skepticism in higher consciousness is an effective solvent for the biological staining that the iğnorant consider part of being “human.”
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Bliss is the fuel that powers will to live. Bliss is an essential ingredient in the elixir of fortitude.
Life is a struggle by design. Without bliss, suicide would be a norm.
Multicellular life would never have arisen without bliss bracing will to live. Without lust for life, a cell could never rely upon another not to check out at an inconvenient moment.
The regularity and accessibility to bliss is indicative of consciousness level. Frequency of bliss reflects psychospace proximity of consciousness to Cönsciousness.
Cönsciousness showers its offspring with bliss as an incentive, and to show its love of life.
Bliss is yours if you have the will to best yourself.
