STRUCTURE OF REALITY – HOW CAN THEY BE FUNCTIONALLY DEFINED AS PER OBSERVER?
Ayad Gharbawi
February 22, 2010 – Damascus, Syria
We have seen, in our studies, so far the numerous functional entities that exist within the Mind of any person. I choose to give these ‘entities’ the collective name of Constituents of the Mind or – (com).
We have seen that the CoM are directly affected by the Awareness Factor (AF) because when an Observer has a low or declining level of AF then his consciousness/awareness/understanding of what is going in his mind and/or in his surroundings will be equally diminished. And the same goes for increased AF, then Observer will be that much more conscious/aware to what’s going on in his mind and/or his surroundings.
(Please note that AF can and does affect, at times, any number of Constituents of the Mind and therefore, the Observer will be conscious of ‘parts’ of his mind and/or surroundings, whilst less aware of other parts of his mind and/or his surroundings – we shall leave this topic for another paper).
We have also seen that when we talk of our Observer we are not talking on a person with a ‘unified one Mind’, for within that person’s Mind, there are an unknown number of functional mental entities that act and interact with other CoM and with the exterior of Observer’s Mind – that is, his surroundings.
Thus, for each Mind, there are functioning mental entities, whose ‘origins’ are unknown, that can and do, affect the person in question. This, of course, raises the issue of the centrality, unity of each individual person? We take it for granted that ‘sane’ people have a ‘one mind’ whilst it is only those afflicted with mental problems who do not have a ‘one mind’. But, in truth, that thought is false.
No person has a ‘one mind’. We are all a thoroughly changing collection of numberless functional Constituents of the Mind that act in harmony at times and act in antagonistic ways with other Constituents of the Mind – with and without our knowledge and control.
It is, in a way, like an extreme form of democracy – where the parliament (your Mind) has an endless number of political parties (Constituents of the Mind).
Now it does to be said here that the (so-called) ‘sane’ person is the one who keeps reigns and control over these mental actions and interactions, whilst the (so-called) insane/unbalanced/troubled person is one who cannot control his CoM, and, in fact, allows or surrenders to the situation whereby the CoM control the Mind of the said person.
(Note: these categories ‘sane/insane’ are unacceptable to me, and will properly be discussed in another study, but for our present purposes, we will need to ‘accept’ them).
Within the scene I have been discussing thus far, we need to go back at some of the more fundamental/essential roots of our studies in order for us to get a better understanding of what it is we are talking about.
What are these ‘fundamental/essential roots’ of our studies that I am talking about?
I believe, that if we were to try to understand ‘Reality’ of the Mind, Vision or any of the other such-like aspects, then we must necessarily go back to the most basic question and that is: what are the fundamental building blocks of Reality, Vision, Mind and so on?
Just as any physicist will ask a similar question – what are the basic building blocks that form the atom? – then, we too must ask the same type of question, albeit in a different context.
Fine. So what are the basic building blocks of Mind, or Vision?
We have already discussed this in my earlier papers – see ‘A Study of Vision In Relation To The Mind’.
However, let us quickly review what we have already been through.
I have argued that the basic constituents of Vision – for example – are made of a numberless amount of ‘units/points/areas’ that are, in themselves, defined as indefinable, hazy, formless, indistinct, imprecise in their essence.
So, when we say that the constituents of Vision are fundamentally imprecise, unrelatable, elusive and hazy as per the Observer, then what does that exactly mean?
It means that the Observing Person who is ‘looking’ at any one point on an observed Object will find nothing that he can define to be understandable or meaningful.
And, what does mean?
That means, that the Observer will have no functional, meaningful relationship with the constituents of what he is looking at. In other words, and here we come to the crux of our argument, our Observing Person, in fact, is seeing a ‘nothingness’ when he ‘looks’ at the constituents of the Observed Object.
(Now the reader will appreciate why I have been putting the verb ‘to see’ or ‘to look’ in inverted comas, because, in truth, he is actually ‘seeing a nothingness’!)
Next, we can say but how does that square up with the fact that our Observer does actually see an Observed Object and can relate to it – meaning he knows what it is and can define it and it may well produce emotions, memories and/or thoughts in his Mind if the constituents of the Observed Object are made of a numberless set of nothingnesses?
Isn’t that a paradox?
In general, people do not feel comfortable with paradoxes, but, in truth science, life, reality are full of paradoxes that co-exist side by side, – complimentarity, quantum physicists would term it – so I am not worried about the mere ‘existence’ of paradoxes.
There is, however, a more important inquiry to be studied here: are we to assume that a numberless collection of indefinite, imprecise, elusive, nebulous, blurred constituents of Vision eventually come to produce a perceivable, meaningful ‘final image’ that our Observer can properly relate to?
Answer: yes.
And, so what?
Well, here is my important argument that I wish to be studied.
It is not only the constituents of vision (CoV) that are composed of an unending number of nothingnesses, but it happens to be: that all ‘Reality’s’ constituents are also composed of an equally numberless number of nothingnesses that all – eventually produce an images, thoughts, feelings, emotions that are eventually recognizable and meaningful to the Observer.
And now we may rightly ask, what exactly do we mean by ‘nothingness’?
Apart from the fact that I have already given definitions of what this ‘nothingness’ is, (see previous studies) I wish to add more to our understanding of what exactly this ‘nothingness’ is.
For ‘nothingness’ is nothing more and nothing less than abstract ‘realities/images/truths’. Nothingness is abstraction.
And, what then, is ‘abstract’?
It is precisely that which we human beings cannot humanly relate to in any meaningful way. (See my previous article, ‘Questions Science Can Never Answer’).
The abstract is that which is beyond our human mind’s ability to understand, or to realize or to fully feel the function and structure of whatever the abstract is.
Therefore, the ‘fundamental building blocks’ of Reality, Mind, Vision are composed of a numberless amount of abstractions or nothingnesses.
And it is precisely these numberless abstractions and/or nothingnesses that eventually ‘add up’ to produce the recognizable, meaningful Vision, reality that any Observer can relate to and understand and interact with.
Now, once we accept or understand, the fundamental building blocks of our entire Reality are abstract nothingnesses, then we can come to a better understanding of our own Minds.
The history of Man, from the days of Sumer, Babylon, ancient Egypt, to the Greeks, the Romans, the Islamic philosophers to our European thinkers has been an endeavour to create a Reality that is precise, definable, meaningful, strict in its preciseness (especially as per the mathematical formulas), and rigid like any clockwork system (much to Newton’s taste).
Reality was supposed to be ‘cut and dry’ concept ‘out there’ and all we needed to do, if we wished to understand its Form and Function, was simply to measure its every aspect – from its structure to its motion and to its actions and interactions.
One day, science will be able to ‘measure’ these facets of Reality, and like any MRI scan, we would be able to fully ‘see’ any aspect of Reality.
Obviously Einstein’s Relativity dealt the first blow to that philosophy and next came the Quantum mathematicians/philosophers like Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Bohm, Bohr, de Broglie and others.
Sub-atomic reality is actually far from being precise, definite and clear cut. We can only understand some aspects of the ‘reality’ of sub-atomic particles, and that at the expense of other aspects of the characteristics and attributes of these self-same sub-atomic particles. In other words, we cannot ever see the ‘full picture’ – so to speak – since there does not exist a full, united one picture of any sub-atomic particle.
Today, I believe, that through our present day studies, we too can see, a similar result with our own Mind and Consciousness Studies – albeit, that we are, of course, that here we are dealing in a somewhat different context – dealing with the Mind.
Thus, the ‘Reality’ of the Mind and the outside world, Vision, is composed of nothingnesses and abstractions that cannot ever be meaningful, significant, functionally recognizable and therefore, our effort to ‘look’ at these constituents of Reality will always produce functionally-speaking an absolute nothing, as per our cognizant Mind.
Meanwhile, it is precisely these numberless abstractions that emerge to create a meaningful, understandable Reality.
In other words, functionally meaningful and understandable and recognizable Reality is an Emergent process/phenomenon.
(Note how this emergent property we are discussing is related to the emergent property of the emergence of complex systems in biology as per organisms – this will be discussed later).
Please note that this entire emergence process is completely connected to the Awareness Factor (AF) of the Observer, and, as we have said, the AF is in constant change and motion, and therefore, the Reality and Vision of Observer is in equal constant flux, change and altering ‘truths’ (as per Observer).