Negotiating relatedness between the “self” and “non-self” aspects of physical reality.

• The physical capabilities of (at least relatively complex) organisms are un-useable without a mind capable of directing them.

Abilities of mind are therefor joined in a direct one to one bridging relationship with the abilities of the body. They mediate between “environmental fluctuation” and the accommodations the body makes to this.

Since the body manifests and changes as one aspect of the relating processes transmitted through the communicating medium of reality, so too therefor do the abilities of mind.

Theses abilities directed according to “free will” appear to be the one phenomena within reality capable of influencing it’s deterministic flow. This free will however, is only useable for mediating relatedness between the “self” aspects of physical reality, and all the other aspects of the system of which it is a part (wider reality). It cannot be used to sever itself from this in any conceivable way.

All it can hope to do is to create safe and satisfying existence within and relatedness with this system. It’s current abilities to direct relatedness between the “self” aspects of physical reality and the “non self” aspects represent the cumulative result of adaptive evolution to this end.

Abilities of mind have come about as the net result of all the “selective” (e.g. natural selection) transmissions through the communicating medium of reality from “non self” into “self” and the “strategic” transmissions from “self” into “non self”.

As already discussed, one ability of the human mind, is the ability to have “experiences of non conflicted certainty”.

These experiences pertain to the relatedness of reality and occur to minds which are themselves aspects of reality.

The certainties themselves are the product of relatedness (sharing) between mind aspects of reality.

This sharing is in turn an expression of wider evolutionary processes, which are in turn an expression of the functioning of reality.

This means that understandings regarding “evolution” ultimately help place the very grasping of truth itself within the web of relatedness of all aspects of reality.

Experience of understanding is translated into symbol such as language, transmitted and then retranslated back into experience.

This process can reinforce certainty or induce a re-appraisal of previous certainties.

When done between many minds in an open minded non defensive non-coerced fashion, using the experience of being, intuition, logic, and when at all possible, other scientific methods, it provides mind with it’s best approximation of what is true in a given moment.

In this sense qualitative thought resembles quantitative systems of thought, since one relies on “shared meanings”, the other on “proof” yet both are capable of transmitting  such experiences.

This approximation of truth can be thought of as “belief”, since certain aspects of it will be true and others not.

Current truthful understandings regarding the relatedness of reality exist only as one component of belief, another being false belief.

The manner with which adaptation proceeds is highly diverse, and beliefs are themselves expressions of these evolutionary relating processes.

Truth as a component of belief can also only be developed and sustained through transmission from one impermanent mind or repository to the next, via the communicating medium which is reality.

Understandings of truth cannot be fully held by any “self” within reality, but flow through reality and are an expression of the functioning of reality (like everything else).

Since the entirety of reality represents the related functioning of a single system where “separation” has no absolute existence, it seems logically satisfying therefor that understanding of “truth” itself, as essentially a mirror of reality, would share these characteristics, manifesting as a single system of inter-relating understandings, satisfying to both intellect and experience. (This is the justification promised earlier.)

The experience of reality/experience and thought about reality/experience are two aspects of the approximation of truth aka belief.

Personal experience is fully relevant to understandings of reality since it is itself the most accessible of the expressions of reality – that which we experience as “ourselves”. It is also the only place where truth can be apprehended.

That it is relatively inaccessible to the scientific aspects of investigation cannot alter this.

The two aspects of understanding can be thought of as interacting as follows: The experience of “being” is accepted as fundamentally “true” and “proof” in and of itself, although not understood. This experience is then examined by thought about experience / reality.

This thought can then in turn modify personal experience. For example, the experience of the sun moving across the sky must be very different to a mind which believes the sun is a god compared to that resulting from our current understandings.

In other words, this process can alter how we experience our relationship to reality. The greater the alignment of approximation of truth with actual truth, the more “truthful” will be experience.

The process can also move in the other direction, where new experiences can influence thought about reality. Here is a beautiful example.

2013 Peter Sillifant