It might be that the representational model of mind is the source of the existential feelings of separation, isolation and alienation that are so common in our world. Let me explain, most of us would readily admit that what we perceive as reality is not exactly accurate. Our perception is made up partly of things which are objectively real and partly of interpretations that we add to the picture. But doesn’t this view disconnect us from the real world?
When we talk about objective reality what we commonly mean is that which is real even if we are not around. Objective reality – or the real world – has a reality independent of us. That means that if something is objectively real I will see it the same way that everyone else does. If two or more people see things differently they can’t all be seeing what is objectively real. To get to what is truly real we would have to strip away any errors in perception or biases that anyone of us might be holding.
And that is the way we tend to think about reality. Reality, we imagine, is what is left when we are not adding anything to the picture. It already exists and we just need to see it clearly. To get from our interpreted picture of reality to an accurate picture of reality all we need to do is strip away all of the interpretation and then we move closer and closer to the real world. We find out what is real by stripping away what is false. In a sense we are stripping ourselves out of the picture to find reality. But that seems to place us outside of reality. Hmmmm… is reality really something that exists independent of us? Are we outside of reality looking in at it?
This is how we most commonly think about it, but it is not how the American Pragmatists did. In the conception of reality that I just explained reality is what is there first and our thoughts and ideas are just representations –often erroneous – about reality. We are outside of reality looking at it. To the Pragmatists our ideas are as much a part of reality as are the objective things that we think about. We are not separate from reality thinking about it – we are part of it. This means that our ideas about reality are also a part of reality and so as our ideas grow so does reality. Reality grows! The growth of consciousness and awareness is part of the growth of the universe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose influence on the Pragmatists of the next generation was significant, talked about “a second nature, grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree.”
We do not find reality only by stripping away our ideas from it; we actually add more to reality by thinking about it. We start with a bare object and it grows as ideas attach to it and add more meaning and significance. If you think about this you can find metaphorical examples of it in your own experience. Imagine that you see something in the distance – maybe it is just a gleam of reflected light. At first it looks like nothing significant, but it catches your eye. You approach it and you begin to see that it looks like some metal object – hmmm maybe it is more significant than you at first thought. Coming closer you see that it is a coin. You pick it up and find that it is rare silver two dollar piece. Which is more real the initial gleam at the edge of sight or the rare 2 dollar silver piece? Both are equally real, but in the second case reality has grown in richness and in texture and in meaning. Reality has become ‘thicker’ as William James would say. Rudolf Steiner spoke about the growth of reality as the growth of thought. In Steiner’s own words…
“The task fell to the human spirit to bring the world process itself to a conclusion, so to speak. What existed there without the human spirit was only half of reality, was unfinished, was everywhere patchwork.”
William James would make a similar statement when he wrote…
“The world is in so far forth a pluralism of which the unity is not fully experienced as yet. But… The universe continually grows in quantity by new experiences that graft themselves upon the older mass; but these very new experiences often help the mass to a more consolidated form.”
Our ideas are not ideas about reality – they are a part of reality. We are not separate from reality looking at it, we are part of it. We are part of this universe and our ideas are part of this universe. In effect they are not truly our ideas, they are the universe’s ideas and we just happen to be the thinking organ of the universe.
Thanks for writing this article and for sharing your thoughts, Jeff. I believe beneath some of humanity’s depression is an unacknowledged dysfunctional relationship with what ‘reality’, at the core, really is.
I found this piece useful in my everyday life and my everyday spirituality.
Thanks again
Hello Kristian, You are very welcome and I agree with you that our understanding stands at the core of our deepest feelings about life.
Excellent post. Jeff, I just love and really appreciate how you boil down these thorny, expansive topics to their clearest, most simple terms. Thanks! Reposting, tweeting and all that! Leisa
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Thank you for your comment – I love thinking about these ideas until I can express their essence in my own language.
When I started reading the introduction of Steiner’s book on Goethe’s theory of knowledge, I remembered Christian de Quincey. What I wrote down some time ago is all about ‘knowing’, that is why I put it in here again. It is clearly ‘knowing from within’…
In the introduction to Steiner the writer mentions the ideas of Kant and followers which connects to the blog: ‘the mind alone is the source of knowledge, human consciousness could only know itself. How much humans can know depends on their mental pictures and representations.
Steiner looked for a non-reductive epistemology, founded in the wholeness of spirit and of the human being, a unity of consciousness and cosmos. He wanted to unite the cognitive world of the thinking mind with both the physical perceptual realm and the suprasensory realms that possesses a higher of reality (and thinking). He studied Brentano’s writings of the relationship between sensory- and noetic consciousness.
Noetic science is described by Christian de Quincey. He describes consciousness as knowing. For knowing ‘a thing’ the mind is needed which is connected with the evolving brain. Before that there is the potential to know, which is Intelligence, which is there already in the smalles particle there is, the quantum. According to De Quincey the sequence is: Quantum void /light> elementary forces > atoms > matter > life > minds (ego’s) > spirit.
He describes (Deep spirit, page143) the start of evolution, the ‘zero point energy’ as a ‘vast, infinite sea of quantum potential -emptiness brimming with creativity. He describes a quantum as ‘a package of energy, a bundle of pure energy’ –it is the smallest possible unit of physical existence. One can think of it as the source of everything- an inexhaustible well of potential energy giving birth at every moment to all that is. It has no mass, no charge, occupies no space and experiences no time. It exists in a weird wonderland beyond the grasp of reason or imagination –a world where matter seems to evaporate into wisps of possibility.
At a quantum level, everything is interconnected. The universe is an unified web of unbroken wholeness. Physicists call it non-locality. Non-locality means there is no such thing as empty space separating everything.
De Quincy talks about the difference between ‘ materialist thinking’ (brains produce thoughts) and ‘ mind is everywhere in the cosmos’; we are estranged from the core of our own consciousness. That brings to mind the explanation of Eckart Tolle: he woke up on day -after long days of heavy depression- and then he suddenly realized that he was able to ‘see’ the depression, so that the depression was not him. And then he dissolved in the freedom of limitless consciousness.
De Quincey writes that we observe (also as scientific method) with our five senses. We focus on parts of reality that can be known. But how do we know what we know is real?. We do not know how the brain ‘transforms’ nerve signals into experience. Science is based on the senses, it happens in consciousness, but consciousness is extrasensory. ‘The world we live in is not the real world, it is a system of images and ideas. Noetics’ refers to knowledge beyond normal senses and reason. It is immediate, direct, powerful; it is about being or becoming, it is directed inward at the unfolding of consciousness or experience itself. It dives in the heart of reality by tapping into the universal web of connections. Here De Quincey points to Plato, Plotinus, Jung and Teilhard de Chardin and William James.
It means being completely ‘open’ for whatever happens, to ‘free yourself up to experience deeper intelligence and creativity; this is where we know that choice is consciousness and consciousness is choice. Every moment of every life is a moment of creation. We’re an expression of the ‘ nowhere’ of pure potential, a creative expression of intelligence and creativity.
Great post Jeff. This kind of penetrating inquiry really starts to chip away at the deep unquestioned assumption we all have about the nature or reality itself.
I’ve been reading Robert Kegan’s theory of developmental-constructivism and I’m struck by the similar themes that connect to what the pragmatists were intuiting about how the world is not given – that there is no “objective reality” out there – and that we are in a continual process of constructing reality in ever more complex, subtle and nuanced ways. Developmental-constructivism sees that we are constructing our world and making meaning of our experience both individually and collectively, and that the way that we are doing this develops and evolves over time through fairly distinct and universal stages.
But this idea that reality is being made by us – by me – in every moment, in the most direct and nondualistic way, is quite mind-blowing. it puts us/me right at the center of the process of creation which is a very different place to be than on the outside looking in. I find incredible resistance in myself to accepting this as my true location, but I can’t deny that it’s true, which leads me to wonder what the implications are, and will be, for the reality we are co-creating when more of us begin to accept this as true?
Hi Jeff.
I love this piece… it gets at the little itchy place where we are both “individual”, and “organism”. Our epistemology, or the framwork through which we see the world is always there, as a filter it is our perception, our culture, language, religion, and so on. But, is it separate from reality? Which reality? Will the real reality please stand up!
My reality and your reality are different and as such they have lots to share. It’s the difference that makes a difference… that offers the infinite opportunity for learning, learning to learn and delighting in the magnificence of the dynamic interrelationships and wiley streams of communicaiton that bubble between us… this is the narrative.
does reality exist independently of our perception of it?
what is “reality”? what is “real”? so much to define and consider in a dialogue of this depth… humans are perceiving organisms. Does that mean what is perceived would not exist without the perceiver – yeah yeah if a tree falls… I think when we wake up to be one with the planet (before we even get to one with cosmos) – as a species we might just notice that our sentience is a piece of a larger puzzle – an intricate one of different organisms, species, processes, all interplaying with each other. so when we sit and ponder “that” as “outside” “me” – we have constructed a story – but all of that is within this larger field of being – of both an inner consciousness occurrence – evolving and the outer splendor of this planetary and universal “world” of life ebbing and flowing growing and dying – I say let us see ourselves within the context of being both an awareness but also an embodied species with a specific purpose as part of this biosphere and ecosystem… inseparable? altho’ not indestructable… as perhaps we may destroy ourselves and much of this planet… if we don’t see ourselves “right size” – not outside looking in – and not at the center either – but as a part – of a process… with a specific purpose tied to our sentience and capacity – to seemingly look from outside when actually we are so far in… we have no idea who we are and what reality really is…
perhaps, Gail, we can never be objective. all we can do is attempt to formulate a perspective, from which to relate to those of others, without being too compliant with the status quo or agreeable to others, thus creating a tension, and without being too fixed and identified with our view that we cant allow it to grow and change. always to be open to seeing things differently
i find it hard to accept that there isn’t one Absolute Reality which we can experience, even very briefly, as being who we are, which doesn’t seem to include thoughts, feelings, or the body, but perhaps this is because there is no identification
Hi Nora, are you the “daughter” in the metalogues, the one who gave such a hard and wonderful time to her “father ”?
what strikes me in this wonderful blog, is the following question : “ when I read it “now” do I address the blog itself from the inside or from the outside ?”
I mean I could say well, this is a mind blowing “idea”, this “looks great”, it is a fantastic “idea”? but by doing this I again instinctively put myself outside of what my thoughts contemplate.
Things start to change when I ask myself “do really believe in this stuff ? do I really believe my thoughts are part of the cosmic process and as such can influence it in a very mysterious way. When my beliefs enter in the game, then the situation is completely different.
I am starting to act, to try to see whether it is true or not. I can even challenge God there [ I did !] and say : OK let’s see whether thoughts are really alive, really linked to the big tree of life. Let’s see how they can germinate…
In the Philosophy of Freedom, it is indeed the next step Steiner invites us to; at this stage thoughts start to get alive since they begin to be fed by my belief system and in the next stage through our power of Free Will; there is indeed a threshold beyond which thoughts are animated, come and go, have a life of their own, which we can maneuver through our beliefs and will.
In sense, if I really believe that what is said in the blog is true, I shall immediately try to check it, and then do precisely what the blog say : let my thoughts, inhabited by my beliefs and will enter and transform the reality around.
Thoughts with no beliefs are not complete ?