Senses as transmissions through the “self” and “non self” aspects of the communicating medium which is reality.

• A fundamental point of disagreement between science and spirituality regards the relationship between “mind” and “physical reality”.

Yet there must be a form of understanding capable of producing an experience of non conflicted certainty that is sharable between open minded non coerced minds which can connect any truthful content which these thought systems may contain.

The encounters which “Mind” has with “physical reality” are clearly mediated by a system of relatedness via the senses.

Anytime knowledge is gained it only occurs to this abstract quality of “experience”.

There is nothing aside from this that we can use to “sense” the truth or falsity of anything.

This system appears to proceed in two stages: Firstly as a system of relationship between the physical aspects of reality which the mind “observes”, and those aspects of physical reality doing the “observing” (i.e the physical senses leading into the brain), and secondly:

A continuance of this system of relatedness from these “physical” relationships ending at the brain, into the experience which mind “has”.

• Of these, the first stage is easily the most straight forward, consisting of the system of relationship between those aspects of physical reality comprising the brain and associated senses (given the name “observer” aspects of reality), and the rest of reality (given the name “observed” aspects).

In other words, “Observer” and “observed” are names given to the perceptual aspects of a sentient “self” and “it’s environment” respectively.

Yet as we have seen “self” and “environment” are a fluctuating boundary zone between two aspects of one reality. The transmission of perception occurs in the same way as anything else – through the communicating medium of reality.

“Experiencer” and “experienced” are one connected system.

The ideal of empirical observation is to watch the functioning of reality as a “separate outside observer” in order to apprehend the true patterns by which reality functions, a method of investigation which is extremely effective and yet:

Investigation of the very small quantum aspects of reality demonstrates that the act of observation affects the observed.

This is fundamentally because “observer” aspects of physical reality and “observed” aspects, are both aspects of the same reality connected as a system of relatedness.

In this situation not only do organism and environment shift and change together, but so do “observation” and “being observed”.

“Visual perception” for example is a direct transmission through the communicating medium of reality which generally “starts” with light being emitted from the sun and “ends” with an impression of what is taken for reality in the mind.

Dividing this perceptual “machinery” up into those aspects of it which are “self” and those which are “non self” creates an artificial division within the communicating medium of reality which does not exist.

The sun emits photons, and around 8 minutes later they enter the atmosphere, interact with an “object” which alters both the light and the object – those frequencies of light transmitted through the medium into the object are “absorbed”. The remaining frequencies are diverted or “reflected” as light with altered characteristics of color and intensity.

The reflected light continues as a transmission through the communicating medium of reality, it’s characteristics now manifesting as the result of relatedness between the aspect of reality which is “the sun” and the aspect which is “the observed object”.

Some of this transmission enters the eye where it continues as an accommodating response within the eye’s mechanisms. This is then transmitted on through the communicating medium of reality via a flow of electrochemical cause and effect into the brain.

In an absolutely real sense there is no discontinuity at the level of the eye. Rather the communicating medium is unbroken and continuous throughout reality including from “inside” to “outside” the body, and perceptual mechanisms are simply an adaptive utilization of this medium.

The mind uses this for the detection of environmental fluctuation:

The related interaction of “sun light” (or other light source) and “object” simultaneously affects the light and the object (which “absorbs” (i.e. accepts) and/or “reflects” (i.e. redirects) transmissions). This in turn represents environmental fluctuation to the “self”, which the eyes and mind can detect as “shape” “shade” and “color”.

It cannot detect this by any means other than by interacting with and altering it further. This manifests as the eyes capturing and manipulating a small portion of this environmental fluctuation into “focus” on the back of the retina.

Mind sees what is not absorbed by an object and in this sense “sees” what the object is not. The mind essentially detects light reverberating about this place we take to be “Earth” which was recently emitted by the sun. Yet it is only the reverberations of the emanations of the sun which are “seen”, just as radar detects reflections of recently emitted sound.

When the light source is gone, the object becomes “invisible”.

It is in other words not the “self” of the object which the mind directly apprehends, but the fluctuations it causes in the “light environment” through the combined interaction of the light and the object, and the fluctuations this creates in it’s transmission to the brain.

Interpretations are then made regarding what the nature of the object must really be.

That which we perceive as the world around us is in reality a “shell of light” around what is really there.

Inferences regarding the characteristics of aspects of reality such as light and matter can only therefor be made via the manner in which one alters the nature of the other, and so such interpretation is also relationship dependent.

This includes an interpretation of them as separate aspects of reality.

• It has already been discussed in detail that nothing exists as a “separate self”, but only as a process of intimate accommodations of the various expressions within the communicating medium of reality. This has now been extended into the very process of “sensing” the world.

There is something distinctly discordant about using a mechanism which operates only via a process of unbroken transmission between sunlight’s (or other light source’s) reverberations and the mind interpreting aspects of reality as being “separate”.

Since this “sensing” is such an integrated aspect of “truthful understanding”, the implication is that such understanding can only ever occur via the related activity of a single system, and can only ever come to understand “self” as integrated as an aspect of a single system.

If anything exists outside this communication, there is no way for it to be understood, since the understanding of this reality only occurs through the communication of aspects of this reality.

Mathematics shares this characteristic.

“Understanding” can only operate by relationship, and relatedness is the only thing it can understand. It seems logically satisfying that the operation of the truth seeking feedback loop must inevitably therefor result in an understanding of the “self” as a expression of everything.

This might ultimately equate to an expansion in perception of what the true self is – everything.

More generally the operation of the “truth seeking feedback loop” is an extension of, and has manifested from the prior action of the generalized feedback loop – evolution.

It in turn came about as an expression of simple variation amongst self replicating aspects of reality (organisms).

This in turn came about as the result of the functioning of reality.

It may therefor be a true statement to say that any system which is whole and integrated (which reality is) must inevitably come to understand that this is it’s truth.

Again – spiritually and scientifically satisfying.

• It is only because of the massive disparity in scale between those aspects of reality (such as photons) mediating the relationship, and those aspects of reality which are generally perceived as “observing” and “being observed”, that the act of observation can appear to be an impartial one.

This would not be the case if our only method of deducing the characteristics of billiard balls was by using billiard balls as senses.

This scale disparity therefor, is an essential ingredient in making the ability to perceive the “self” as separate from everything else possible at all since although the relatedness is present, it is concealed from the senses since it is the senses.

The relationship could possibly therefor be more accurately described as “Observer/observed-er”:).

As with all technology, sensing technology can be placed between the self aspects of reality (observer) and everything else (observed) in order to mediate the relatedness between the two.

• The connection between the physical “brain” aspect of reality, and the “experience” aspect is entirely more mysterious, since it is the link between matter and consciousness.

Conscious experience cannot be compared with any analogy within physical reality such as projections onto a movie screen, since all such analogies are easily understood as interactions between solely physical aspects of reality.

Nothing including these analogies can cross into experience until they cross that brain – experience system which seemingly relates substance with non substance.

To state it clearly then, this is a system of relationship which appears to link the substantial to an aspect of reality which seems entirely without substance.

It is also the system of relationship which connects that aspect of reality which appears to unfold according to deterministic patterns – the interactions of physical reality – with the mind aspect of reality where the quality of “free will” appears to have meaning.

There is one aspect of scientific thought which appears to at least get us closer to understanding such a transitional system of relationship, and that is quantum physics.

“Free will” of mind and the deterministic transmission of cause and effect through the communication medium of reality interact as follows:

Mind and associated senses in association with (in the case of humans), thought and through the sharing of beliefs with other minds, forms a set of interpretations regarding the nature of the relatedness between “self” and “everything else”.

It uses this understanding to interpret the meaning of the environmental fluctuations of the “non self” aspects of reality which it senses interacting with the “self” aspects, and thereby determines an appropriate response.

The free will of mind then has the ability to direct that aspect of physical reality which is it’s body to operate according to deterministic patterns of relatedness to further manipulate or respond to the fluctuations it perceives within the of the remainder of reality.

As soon as free will crosses this mind – brain boundary it has transmitted this will into the deterministic physical world – the deterministic chain of accommodation being expressed through that aspect of the communicating medium of reality directed by mind (the body), and through this into the rest of the physical world.

This crossing is not mundane. The ability of the entirely insubstantial mind to direct the movement of the matter of the body is almost as mysterious as it would be if the mind could move “non body” associated matter without using the body.

Although mind can transmit it’s will into the communicating medium which is reality, thereby influencing the deterministic flow of reality, and it’s potential to do so is increasing rapidly, it is and must remain fundamentally limited in it’s ability to extend this to the extent that “different” minds view their interests as being in conflict.

In this situation the actions of one mind, regardless of how sophisticated, must conflict with those of other minds since they are interacting with the same reality.

This conflict occurs at the movement of self / environmental fluctuation equivalences which are the areas within the communicating medium of reality where all movements of apparently separate aspects of one reality inter-accommodate.

This makes physical reality, in effect, a mechanism for mediating relatedness between minds at least where the transmissions through the communicating medium of reality directed by the free will of “different minds” meet.

The deterministic flow of reality is the mechanism of absolute precision for mediating the relationships between the aspects of a single reality and:

This ultimately means that physical reality is also a perfect mechanism for mediating the relatedness between the various free willed minds (which despite appearances are also the expressions of a single reality) and the deterministic influence over the interactions of physical reality which each one instigates.

As we have discussed, minds are the expressions of one reality. That one example of “experience” appears so completely walled off from another seems in many ways a singular divergence from the patterns of relatedness by which reality functions in all other respects.

Yet even in this case, in an entirely real sense, every example of this experience is occurring to a common subject – reality.

2013 Peter Sillifant