Being in the World
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The word 'empirical' means "pertaining to experience", thus the empirical world is the world that we experience and thereby come to believe in as "the world". To understand the "world experience" we must enquire into what is the context within which experience arises, what is the cause of experience, what is its mechanism, what is it that is experienced and what is it that does the experiencing? The following is not a derivation, if such a thing is even possible in this context, it is a descriptive exploration.
Ultimately there is only a field of fluctuating transcendent information that underlies the coming into being of the empirical context (see The Computational Paradigm for a detailed discussion of this). This field or network of transcendent information evolves according to underlying coherent and causal computational processes. Within this field there are fluctuations that give rise to patterns. These patterns are the foundation of what we later come to think of as empirical objects and phenomena. There are possibly holographic complexities involved here.
As a pattern of information flows through the transcendent computational space and flows into another pattern this changes the state of that pattern; if this pattern has identified itself as a being in a world then these changing states will be experienced as changes to its state of being, which generally means a perturbation of its perceptual and experiential apparatus. The incoming patterns of information appear to the senses, and as they dance about they weave the illusion of a world of things and places and events; just like virtual reality goggles or a movie they create an illusion in consciousness that is compelling. It is the voracity of this perceptual illusion that produces the tendency toward identification, which increases the voracity of the illusion, which leads to a deeper identification and so on until there is a fully individuated and isolated egoic entity in a world.
From this process of identification the patterns are partitioned into 'I' and 'The World', into inner and outer with interfaces between them. In absolute truth there is no separation, but once identification has arisen the unity is seemingly fragmented from the perspective of the individuated being. In the primal and ever present underlying absolute reality there is no inner and outer, no subjective or objective perspectives, these arise only through the process of identification with a particular pattern in the cosmic field, hence all concepts of 'subjective', 'objective', 'I' or 'world' are relative truths that arise via an act of identification and perception which fragments the underlying unity into countless interacting fragments. There are deep metaphysical assumptions that confuse these issues for many people; there need not be separate ontologically existing subjects which are inherently separate from "the world", there is only the underlying field of transcendent computation or low-level consciousness and all things, both subjects and objects emerge from or co-create within this field. This is where the analogy of simulation helps to cut through the confusion; the computational space and the simulator are the underlying transcendent field that 'simulates' or gives rise to both an "artificial world" and "artificial intelligences" within that world, both of which are formed out of the underlying computational processes.
To quickly summarise, all events are mediated by the flow of information so imagine a vast cosmic information network; asymmetries in interaction bandwidth (or communication energy) within this network mean that some regions are more closely interacting and tightly integrated than others. Via an entropic perceptual process (information is lost so details are blured) the high bandwidth interactions seemingly bind systems into single high level objects whilst low bandwidth interactions are perceived as the space between these separate objects. When sub systems are tightly interacting then when an incident signal impinges upon one it is distributed amongst many of the sub systems which respond to that signal and thereby produce collective behaviour. When sub systems are loosely interacting then the incident signal will dissipate or be deflected without impinging upon most of the sub systems so they will be perceived to be independent. During the entropic perceptual process most of the information is lost; pixelated surfaces seem smooth, quantised systems seem classical and collectives of many sub systems seem to form into higher level systems.
This is the process described as a Meta System Transition (MST), it is the apparent transition from an ensemble of sub systems into a single higher level system; it is a perceptual phenomenon. In this way the undifferentiated cosmic network is fragmented and perceived as separate entities which are objects within an empirical world. As the patterns evolve and change in a coherent dance and impinge upon the senses of a being that has identified with its sensory experiences, this weaves a "world illusion" around that being and it experiences itself within that world as an object amongst other objects. It perceives other beings via their outer empirical states and it perceives itself via its outer empirical state. It experiences its internal states as sensations or feelings but it is swayed by the voracity of its senses into belief in the hypothesis of a physical objective universe and assigns more reality to sensory forms outside itself than to subtle experiential forms inside itself, except when pain and disease arise, then the inner realm makes itself known.
Every process of perception is a convergence of information channels into a point of subjective experience whereby the surrounding information space is sampled then the vast majority of the information is lost as entropy and the remainder produces a perception that is interpreted in order to produce an experience. Once "the world illusion" has come into being the experience of the 'outer' aspect of a system is what we perceive, it is the appearance in the world or objective form that arises in our consciousness due to the flow of transcendent information through the field and our interpretation of this via the belief in "the world". The experience of the 'inner' aspect of a system is consciousness or subjective experience, hence the inner aspect is singular, subjective and private. We can only experience the inner aspect of ourselves so long as we are identified with 'ourselves', however through other forms of identification one can experience the inner aspect of other systems, including the cosmos as a whole.
Because we have identified with a particular region of the cosmos we experience the flow of information or the cosmic computation as our own private consciousness, but in truth it is simply a part of the cosmic computation and is not restricted solely to that small region. Thus ones own consciousness IS the consciousness of the cosmos itself since the transcendent information process animates and sustains all empiricial forms within the 'simulation', however through egoic identification we do not experience the whole but only that part which is the inner aspect of the fragment that we are identified with. Just as a dream character is animated by ones mind but acts as if it was a separate fragment in a dream world or similarly for a computer game character; ultimately its innermost consciousness is the computational power of the CPU but it has been fragmented into a separate character.
So every perceptual experience is singular, it is uniquely defined by its perspective and context, and every perceptual system experiences the world only from its own singular or subjective perspective and one cannot 'look' into the perceptual stream of another since perception only reveals the outer aspects of systems but the experience is an inner aspect.
It is through identification that one tunes into inner experience, thus through identification we may come to “see through another's perspective”. Or from a transcendent vantage point one can see into the details of any and all singular empirical perspectives but one cannot experience them from that vantage point unless one identifies with them an thereby immerses oneself in the information stream. To use a computer game analogy, one must become a character (identification) to enter into the game world, or one can observe all of the transcendent aspects of the characters but this is on the level of information flowing through the program so one cannot thereby experience being that character, and one can change characters by stepping out of the game world and identifying with a different character.
Furthermore, fiction is remarkable in its ability to transport us into other perspectives and all communication is in a sense an orientation toward the other's perspective, but this process is very unreliable due to its dependence on perception and interpretation. Non-fiction communications such as this also provide a window into another's world; for example, it is through these discussions that I hope to give some taste of what it is like to see the world through my mind although it is only a rough sketch and a brief glimpse.
The empirical being is bound within a network of information channels and the flow of information is all that an empirical being can ever experience through their sense so this illusion or mirage is believed to be reality to them; the perceived phenomena such as things, places and events are as real as they themselves are, they are all patterns of transcendent information. They are made of the same stuff and just as a virtual computer game bullet can kill a virtual computer game character the world around us is 'real' but it is also an illusion; in an absolute sense it is only as real as the identification that one has with it, hence it is virtually real. Without the suspension of disbelief a movie doesn't contain characters and things and places and events, it is only a dance of light upon a silver screen. And without ones identification with the world of ones senses, one isn't located inside a body within the world, one is the world; one's consciousness IS the cosmic computation, one's body is a transcendent pattern of information that has no distinct location or form or physical solidity, these all arise through the act of empirical perception.
Due to the voracity of the appearances of things and ignorance of the underlying metaphysics, perceptual systems identify with their perceptions and thereby come to dwell as empirical beings in an empirical world. This process of individuation is complex and subtle, it can be seen at work in the forming of personality in a child, the forming of a group identity amongst a group of peers, the forming of national identity in a nation, or government identity, or corporate identity and so on. Within a collective of systems patterns arise and perceptual sub systems form and then an entropic perceptual feedback loop creates the phenomenon of an individuated system that is single and whole. We come to believe we are one because we come to perceive ourselves as one. This produces a “being in the world”; although on a transcendent level it is just a resolved pattern in the cosmic network that has persistent form and acts as if it was separate because it perceives and believes itself to be separate. It has undergone a meta system transition (MST), which is a perceptual phenomenon and thus has no absolute grounding in reality, but neither do any empirical forms, the whole of the empirical world is a perceptual phenomenon, "the universe is virtual" and the countless MST's build up the successive levels of the world, illusion atop of illusion, thus creating the various high level forms that populate this cosmos.
Human individuation has arisen as an evolutionary artefact whereby a mind has evolved that is a control system in order to protect and enhance the underlying apparatus to improve its survival prospects but it has since been swayed by the voracity of appearances and has identified with the apparatus and assumed ownership of it. This has evolved further by the extension of this ownership into the surrounding network of systems causing these beings to become control systems within a larger system consisting of objects, places, events, ideas and other beings, all of which are supposedly owned and controlled. From a transcendent perspective this is all still only the flow of information through a network and the changing dance of patterns, but from an empirical perspective these aggregate systems have a mind as their control system with senses as its interface and an organic body which has been augmented by the accumulated body of external systems such as houses, land, cars, businesses, careers and so on. They combine and form vast networks of property, commerce, belief systems, laws, organisations and all kinds of phenomena which we call civilisation and these control systems have combined and individuated to form collectives, such as nations, which attempts to own and control their entire world illusions.
Without the identification there are only patterns of information propagating through a vast network of information channels, there is no I or world, there are no boundaries separating a body from an environment, all these things are part of the world illusion, there is only That which Is and nothing else. So the transcendent frame is an information space within which patterns exist. Then from this an illusion is woven and the patterns within the simulation space experience the world illusion and believe this to be reality. This is the essence of simulation, without which nothing could be simulated or modeled using computers or mathematics or imagination or any other information space. All systems are essentially, interwoven information channels or networks of interaction paths, so by weaving these networks within different information spaces we may manifest these systems within those spaces. This is also the essence of metaphor and analogy whereby a concept is a pattern of relations and this same pattern can be exhibited in different contexts.
There is a subtlety that is often overlooked in regards to the simulational creation of systems and it relates to the concepts of 'inner' and 'outer'. When one creates a simulation, say of some particles in space that interact, we look on those simulated systems only from the transcendent perspective so they are simply patterns of information that flow and causally evolve. But from their perspective embedded in that simulated world the information flow is real and tangible, when a force impinges on them they are pushed along, and from 'within' their perspective they experience that as being 'real'. Furthermore, from a transcendent perspective on this physical universe we too are simply patterns of information flowing and evolving. Because we experience ourselves from a perspective embedded 'within' the information flow we say that the "physical universe" is 'real' and because we experience simulated systems from 'outside' their information flow we say that they are 'virtual'. But this is a profound assumption based upon the narrowness of our own experience of "being in the world". Through dis-identification with ourselves we can experience ourselves as being virtual and through identification with the simulated systems we can experience them as being real. Hence the universe IS virtual.
All physicality or tangibility is a part of the empirical illusion and in terms of absolute reality there is only a dance and flow of information through the cosmic network. This information processing or transcendent computation is the essence of the phenomenon that we experience as consciousness so in absolute reality the fundamental substance of existence is consciousness or pure awareness or computation. This consciousness is not disembodied, there is the network of information channels that makes possible the flow of information but this is not segmented into distinct and isolated bodies like we perceive; the cosmos has only one body [the transcendent context] and one consciousness [the transcendent process] but through the entropic perceptual process and individuation it seemingly fragments into countless bodies and individual consciousnesses. Given that the fragment of the cosmic network that we identify as our self can manifest the phenomenon of consciousness and life with such voracity, the whole universe itself is vastly more alive and conscious than we are and we are like a fragment of a dream that manifests within that cosmic mind.
Now there are beings in the world and these beings experience an empirical existence or samsara. Stories and myths are woven to describe the sequences of perceptual events, and within these stories characters exist and the central character in every perceptual being's story is the 'I' which is believed to lie at the centre of that perceptual world. The ego arises out of this false identification and believes "I did that", "I am going to do this", "I want that", "I must do this" "I suffered an injustice", "I am a winner", "I am unworthy" and so on. Through these stories that these egos weave about themselves the whole subjective world of each being is ordered and made meaningful. The ego says "I am a philosopher" or "I am a rock star" or "I am a victim" or "I want comfort and security" and these stories form the agendas of the lives that are experienced by the individuated patterns of information that have come to experience themselves as separate beings in a world.
These agendas and stories and persona's form an organising principle through which all the incident information is interpreted and responded to, they form perceptual filters that cause the beings to perceive and experience their world through the lens of their belief and this further reinforces their beliefs. An organising principle is the overall plot of ones personal story, it structures the flow of action from scene to scene, it gives meaning to events and phenomena, it provides motivation and goals, it is the holistic agenda which determines what is good and bad for the central egoic character.
Many lifestyle disorders that I have experienced and observed I can partly trace back to an inappropriate organising principle or even the lack of an organising principle. Often I have seen people spiral into delusional worlds or apathetic ruts or become entangled in conflicts because of a clash between their organising principle and the surrounding world. Too often organising principles are subtly forced upon receptive minds (especially teenage minds for these are the most trusting and receptive); marketing memes, cultural memes, political memes, sloppy thinking, 'attitude', cynicism, ego driven consumerism, drug consumption, mindless conformity, self deception, empty rebellion and so on all converge within a receptive mind to subconsciously program that person without them ever realising.
Without an organising principle we would have no motive to do anything or not do anything, there would be no values or priorities, we would have no personality nor would we fulfill any roles. An appropriate organising principle is essential for coherent empirical existence.
Over time I have broken down my social programming and my own organising principle has evolved and deepened, giving rise to this metaphysical enquiry and also to this writing and other such activity. An aspect of this organising principle can be illustrated by a significant event many years ago; whilst engaged in High Magic and study of the Kabbalah I made a dedication to the universe along the lines of: “I am a cup to be filled from the fount of eternal knowledge and when full to the brim I am a fountain overflowing into all the worlds”. This dedication set cosmic processes in motion and the underlying organising principle has propelled me upon my path of discovery.
As all these individual beings engage in their singular world illusions they experience each other as entities within each other's perceptual world and thereby respond to each other as objects in a world. They communicate and interact and share their stories thereby reinforcing each other's beliefs and subtly conditioning each other to believe in the concept of an objective world; a world out there that is the common foundation of everyone's perceptual worlds. This is the process of perceptual feedback which creates and reinforces the objective empirical world; it boot straps perceptions into apparent reality by providing each singular perspective with a perceptual mirror on itself. Systems are perceived as entities so they are treated as entities so they respond as entities and eventually become entities. The asymmetry within the cosmic network is accentuated by this feedback and entities are resolved out of the undifferentiated network thereby producing the common fragmented world of separate empirical objects that is the “objective world”.
From this collective interaction and feedback whole cultures and philosophies and mythologies and metaphysics and sciences arise trying to explain the appearances of things out there. This objective illusion then becomes central to every beings story and becomes a central article of faith in every beings belief system so every being then comes to perceive and experience an objective world whose structure depends upon the mixture of belief systems at that time. For example a being may live in a world of devils, witches, saints and sinners, or divine priesthoods and human sacrifices, or imperial powers and monarchies, or consumers and producers, or corporations and markets, or pop stars and fans, or artists and musicians, or sex, drugs and rock'n roll, or laws and authoritarian hierarchies, or mechanistic materialistic "clock work universe" where consciousness is a byproduct of the biochemical functioning of the brain, or any other illusions we wish to partake in; human history is a show case of many intriguing and bizarre states of collective being.
It is at this level that the traditional Western pursuit of truth begins, it is ignorant of all of the preceding dynamics and assumes that "the world" is the reality. Thus it doesn't even seriously look into the nature of reality, it simply seeks to understand the mechanistic functioning of the objective world. But the advent of quantum physics is forcing it to look deeper since it has explored down to the bottom of the objective world and has therein discovered that even matter itself has a subjective component, thus all systems have an 'inner' aspect as well as the 'outer' aspect that Western science had traditionally only believed in. Furthermore, this has forced it to recognise that all phenomena must be 'observed' in order to become known, they do not simply present themselves 'directly' to our rational minds. Thus any situation is composed of an observer, the observed and a process of observation and this brings in factors that mean that Western science can no longer persist in its belief in objectivity.
To continue the exploration of "being in the world", this objective world illusion then becomes a common stage upon which we act out our stories. When multiple people interact collectively within a common agenda they all assume roles. These define the power relations within the collective and they provide an organisational structure within which the participants interact. These games or stereotypical stories with predefined roles have arisen out of numerous interactions which have resulted in habitual ways of interacting. These roles are generally complimentary so if one person manages to occupy one role this tends to induce the others to occupy roles that complement it; for example, if someone plays the game of aggressor then others would play a defensive role, or if one projected loving compassion then others would respond with warmth and openness.
Generally we interact within this shared belief construct assuming that everyone is perceiving basically the same objective world. It is assumed that they must be because it is assumed that there is only one "objective world" and there are only minor cultural and psychological differences which themselves are little understood and usually overlooked. This combined with a general denial of the reality of inner experience (take behavioural psychology for example) it is assumed that all experiences of the world are virtually identical. So long as there is a high degree of uniformity between each being's perceptual apparatus and interpretive apparatus (i.e. beliefs) this assumption is reasonable. However when beings who actually perceive and experience very different worlds interact and each is assuming that the other perceives the same world that they do and each tries to interpret the other within their own context, this leads to serious misunderstandings and may spiral into dysfunctional interactions leading to conflict and disharmony for both. Such as cycle of misunderstanding is called a schizmogenesis; it need not be negative, many instances of romantic love are based upon serious misunderstandings that form into a cycle of unwarranted devotion but generally the results are obviously negative. For example, it may have been that two entities were trying to be open and accommodating to the other but because of misunderstandings a schizmogenesis arises where each perceives the other as being rude or arrogant or hostile and thereby responds accordingly, which then rapidly spiral's into open conflict via the feedback of repeated interaction cycles. When separation is possible, such as for free individuals, estrangement is the outcome, however if separation isn't possible, such as for neighbouring nations or people sharing a workplace, the problem worsens. If neither is able to comprehend the other's perspective and thereby uncover the misunderstanding and neither is willing to submit to the others perspective, this then leads to direct confrontation whereby each attempts to force their perspective on the other or to disable or destroy the other so that their perspective is the only one remaining.
This type of scenario often leads to a situation that is described as a Le différend where the nature of perception, or ignorance thereof, is exploited to maintain a power imbalance whereby the powerful may dominate the less powerful by controlling the discourse and thereby causing their particular perspective to prevail. For instance when the judicial system describes someone as being a 'criminal', this is entirely from the perspective of the judicial system but it is portrayed as being an objective fact; the person may in fact have been attempting to protect themselves from an authoritarian system that was acting 'criminally' from the person's perspective. But the person's perspective is totally neglected and the only perspective to prevail is that of the judicial system, which assumes that it is totally correct and that it's perspective of the world is the only valid perspective. This form of ignorance lies behind the delusional concept of peace through full spectrum dominance, where one entity's delusion overpowers everyone else's delusion and no one gives any thought to the Truth of the matter.
The objectification of the world too often causes us to objectify life. When we look out into the world through our senses and we perceive the outer surfaces of other beings we often objectify them to the point where they have no life in our experience of them. They are objects in our world, characters in our stories or simply vermin; our treatment of animals and our relations with strangers bely our objectification of others. This is unavoidable to some extent due to the limitations of empirical organic existence but it does not align with truth; each of us is ourselves a sentient being, we each tangibly feel the raw pulse of life within us and the impact of the world upon us. The experience of life seems real to us, to each of us, and to ALL systems; each experiences the world just as tangibly, that is the nature of the causal computation that manifests the world.
Each singular perspective on the cosmos is unique and whole but through the cult of objectivity we deny this and we open ourselves up to the possibility of unlimited abuse. The objectification of factory farm animals leads to the most horrific abuses in the name of 'productivity' and 'profit'. This same mind set is gradually objectifying every one of us and the entire world to a greater and greater degree. Thus the ignorance of the egoic I-thought gives rise to the objective world illusion and these two together drive us down the road to Hell. But an opening up to the life within oneself and a recognition of the life within all beings and the Life of the cosmos itself brings us into harmony with the world and leads to compassion rather than oppression, unity rather than isolation, and love rather than fear.
{{I should provide a general analysis of the process of evolution from this point of development, I have explored the descent into delusion and now for the ascent into reality... I.e. from egos in an objective world, onward toward reality and holistic systemic health, that will provide a fuller analysis of Being in the World}}
Related discussions:
Metaphysical
Context
Related: metaphysical ideas
in other people's work.