As a baby-boomer of post world war two conception this image reminds me of Pink Floyd’s song Another Brick in the Wall and contemplating how my beliefs were built up from infancy. Along with the memory of an old monk saying “words are not reality and only experience reveals the nature of being.” As well as Socrates’ “true knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” And writing this paragraph I'm singing “we need education to thrive, not just survive,” in harmony with the remembered melody of Pink Floyd’s song.
The Walker Percy quote heads the list of quotations opening the epilogue of Iain McGilchrist’s challenging book with its apt subtitle; Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World. While this chapter/post title, Humanity’s Reification Redemption Challenge reflects the idea that human history will repeat itself until we all notice how our unmaking of the world is caused by a conscious reification-fallacy.
Suggesting we need a synthesis of knowledge to increase our depth of understanding and awareness of the unseen reality of our body and the cosmos we inhabit. While inside my skull Pink Floyd song-line “we don’t need no education” has become “we don’t need no reification.” As I build on the last chapter/post idea that humanity needs a perceptual wisdom revolution to face mounting global challenges and save itself from itself.
By making sense of human history through access to transformational information that rectifies our illusions of knowing and frees humanity from a Pedagogical Prison. The pedagogy (teaching) of an existential prison R. D. Laing put an intuitive finger on with these salient words “we are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy.”
A trance of substitution (substituting one thing for another) we all perform whenever we assume that any word or group of words defines the reality of any object we see or any sound we hear, or any experience we describe without realizing we’re not defining reality. As our speed of thought substitutes ideas about reality for the elemental nature of reality, as we satisfy our social nature need of communication.
A subconscious process, I believe underpins Einstein’s puzzling comment “reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. An optical delusion of consciousness, a kind of prison for us.” A wise comment reflected McGilchrist’s sub title: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World. Through the peculiarly human way we imprison our innate powers of perception with the civilizing process of our social adaptation.
Creating the paradox of perception we explored in Recognizing Optical & Cognitive Illusions as we moved towards resurrecting reality by deconstructing the meaning of Jesus’ last sayings. Sayings, I argue, are based on the more embodied sense of reality our wisest ancestors inhabited. Because they developed a sense of the human body and cosmos that transcends our vernacular (spoken by ordinary people) understanding of reality.
While my question, “can the adaptive-realizations experienced by embodying a confluence (flowing together) of science and spirituality bring clarity to humanity’s confusion about the past and the present?” Informs the idea that generation alpha, the largest, most ethnically diverse and globally connected generation in human history, will need more balance in their education.
A balance that creates more awareness of the subconscious orchestration of their behaviors and conscious realizations of how they were raised to adapt their imagination into the communication medium of language. As they become the generation that is aware of the mistake we all make of using imagination to reify reality in a make-believe way.
Suggestions inspired by my decades of seeking scientific information to understand my embodied experiences of the earth turning in space and unravelling experiential meaning of ancient wisdom sayings and stories. Making sense of why my cosmic experiences were at odds with the reification-fallacy that paradoxically underpins humanity’s progress and limits the growth of civilization, past and present.
While heart-centered experiences of cosmic embodiment created an awareness of how the perceptual limits of language prompted the building of grand structures and stories in the ancient world. Grand creations of a material and metaphysical (myth-making) nature designed to warn the world-to-come about the paradox of well-being and the personal suffering involved in self-transcendence.
The suffering involved in facing the harsh truth about the spoken sense of reality parents teach their children, unwittingly helping them to use make believe to craft a psychological fabrication. The suffering involved in realizing how world-wide systems of education compound a peculiarly human form of blindness that only perceptual wisdom can cure. A going against the grain cure involving a suffering that contradicts the material gains people derive from their education and the escalating metacrisis civilization has created.
And the challenge of this chapter/post is to point people towards the self-transcending experiences that recreate our ancestors’ more embodied grasp of reality. As we explore how history’s reification redemption challenge is a generational pattern that has lasted for thousands of years. A pattern that explains the reason for wisdom sayings and stories and a pattern that needs to be broken for civilization to survive and thrive.
By facing inconvenient truths about our personal grasp of reality and our responsibility to future generations, by realizing our own part in a global meta-crisis. Which this perceptual wisdom perspective offers as a single factor alternative to current thoughts about creating a third attractor. Expressed in this Rebel Wisdom perspective on our species future and video presentation:
"Where are we headed as a species? What is the landscape of risks and challenges that we need to confront over the next decades, and are there a small number of key factors that we need to solve to avoid catastrophe? These are the questions Daniel Schmachtenberger is laying out in a new two part series on Rebel Wisdom, called 'In Search of the Third Attractor'"
And the single factor solution to where our human species is heading. Is the global recognition of a problem with human perception and ancient wisdom practices that gave birth to the religious doctrine of original sin. Which Wikipedia describes thus:
"Original sin is the Christian doctrine that holds that humans, through the fact of birth, inherit a tainted nature in need of regeneration and a proclivity to sinful conduct. The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3 (the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden), in a line in Psalm 51:5 ("I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me"), and in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 5:12-21 ("Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned")
The belief began to emerge in the 3rd century, but only became fully formed with the writings of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD), who was the first author to use the phrase "original sin" (Latin: peccatum originale). Influenced by Augustine, the councils of Carthage (411–418 AD) and Orange (529 AD) brought theological speculation about original sin into the official lexicon of the Church."
Expanding on a current understanding of metaphysical beliefs in a section named History of the doctrine. While this 'first attractor' proposal suggests a simple solution to an accelerating meta-crisis is a return to the sentient, (endowed with a feeling consciousness) that every human being is born with. And a universal recognition that language IS humanity's original sin in the way our personal need of social attachment creates our experience of detachment from solar reality. Specifically, the circular nature of time for all forms of life on earth.
Simply because our human need to communicate sees us conflate the abstract nature of a consensus-reality taught by our parents with the elemental nature of cosmic reality. Creating the illusions of consciousness we experience as, 1. The earth turning cause of the circular reality of time for life on earth. 2. The illusion of knowing reality caused by our autobiographical memory. Hence this proposition that humanity can save itself from itself by facing up to the self-transcendence purpose of one of the most influential stories in human history.
The consensus-reality transcending purpose implied in Jesus saying, “Therefore speak I to them in parables; because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand” (Matthew 13:13). A parable purpose that begs two FIRST ATTRACTOR questions, “do we all suffer from an unwitting affliction in our perceptual experience of reality?” And, "will this affliction become more conscious as our species faces a meta-crisis of its own making?"
Will a need to become more conscious of how humanity has been it’s own worst enemy involve Einstein’s mind-bending puzzle “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Or Orsan Scott Card’s “This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question?”
And just as the last chapter/post cross-examined the last seven sayings of Jesus, we can examine these words “all these things spake Jesus in parables unto the multitudes; and without a parable spake he nothing unto them: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 13:34-35), through the perceptual frame of reification:
How we unwittingly conflate and confuse a too literal sense of words and subjective ideas about reality, with the objective nature of reality. For example, do the words “hidden from the foundation of the world” allude to the way the true nature of reality hides behind the reified nature of a 2nd level of consciousness?
Are these words hinting at two levels of consciousness, within our body’s sensory experience of the world and our mind’s make-believe ideas about the world? With the early life development of our mind becoming a 2nd level of consciousness that creates a subtle, veil-like psychological fabric covering our eyes and ears? Is this the cryptic meaning of; "at that moment the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom" (Matthew 27:51).
Are the automatic-states of perception we experience within our mind-space, the trance-like state of a 2nd level of consciousness? And is this 2nd level, a make-believe form of consciousness that humanity needs to transform as we face the existential dilemma of saving ourselves from ourselves? Was that the intention and salvation purpose of two of the most influential stories in human history? The story of the Buddha and the story of the Christ?
As a sentient species does humanity need to suffer the psychological trial of awakening from the perceptual illusions created by the make-believe nature of a reification-fallacy? And has the method for experiencing this personal trail been developing for decades through the steady growth of a mindfulness revolution? Will this form of revolution take us to the next stage in the evolution of consciousness, as we continue to correct the Cartesian error of I think, therefore, I am?
An error of imagining we are our mind’s corrected through the adaptive realization that our make-believe ideas about reality are not reality? Can people afford to lose the sense of certainty consensus-reality creates when informed about a more balanced mode of perception? Through a whole-of-life self-cross-examination of how we human beings experience consciousness and our relationship with reality?
Particularly in an age that seems to worship the idea of the new because the world has changed in so many ways from the one our ancestors knew. Yet, as many ancient wisdom sayings allude to and 21st-century science confirms, the internal way we perceive the world has not changed in at least 40,000 years.
The personally relevant realization about the anatomical foundations of perception that, along with learning to embody the optical illusion of sunrise and embodying the make-believe nature of ideas. Acts as a staging ground for a movement towards the next stage of human consciousness.
A stage that uses the innate power of intuition to examine and question the validity of our beliefs, with more heart-centered judgments of what feels true. A feels true judgment of whether the image of young people before a wall and Pink Floyd’s song suggests we learn to imprison ourselves within walls of make-believe ideas early in our lives? What is perceptual freedom? Please watch:
A heart-centered intuition does create perceptual freedom oriented questions about the historical development of humanity’s beliefs? Like, “was the paradoxical and problematic nature of human perception understood during the Bronze age development of the earliest forms of written languages, at the beginning of the History of writing?”
Was there an unfathomable period of human history when an oral tradition of perceptual wisdom sayings and stories arose through examining the way we reify reality? A long forgotten period of history when cryptic sayings emerged, like wisdom being more excellent for those who see the sun and advice about not mistaking your finger for the moon? And did these wisdom sayings emerge within a whole-of-life context on how human beings create an inner map of reality by learning to map words onto our sensory experience of life?
Did a forgotten history of self-cross-examination explore how our body’s need for security creates our mind’s need for certainty, and fashions optical illusions of consciousness? Like the illusory belief that clocks and calendars represent the truth of how we humans experience time? Was much of ancient wisdom’s cryptic advice based on an embodied experience of how the sun, moon and stars appearing to rotate around the earth, is an optical illusion caused by earth’s constant rotation?
And will the global catastrophe of climate change force our species to save itself from itself with the return of a more embodied sense of reality? A return that brings balance to centuries of expectation of the new via a reexamination of perceptual wisdom stories like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the Ascension of Jesus? A return to examining first causes, like our first heart-beat, our first thought, our first spoken words, our first footsteps, and the cause of experiencing night and day.
Especially during an era when our smartphones will confirm the truth of our vulnerability to optical illusions and our need for a conversion experience, as a relevance realization about how we’re afflicted by an addiction to reification. If we have the heart to face up to the paradox of how true wisdom can be devastatingly simple and how we reject that proposition with an automatic assumption of complication to justify our literacy skills?
Would a global desire for perceptual wisdom through informed realizations uncover a truth, that our need to create a consensus-reality is a manifestation of our species’ immaturity? And will this notion of species immaturity preface humanity’s reification redemption challenge over the coming years and decades? Will this blog/book contribute to a First Attractor philosophy antidote to our assumptions of a complex reality? Are there limiting horizons within our conscious attention + awareness that need to experience adaptive relevance realizations?
Horizons of Attention & Adaptive, Relevance Realizations
This image is another example of the 3+1 challenge of attention + awareness we explored in The Perceptual Wisdom Experience of Heaven. And how it takes the 4th element of time to discern the 3-dimensions of space (height, width, depth) present before our eyes even before we think of a single word to describe our experience. One of those gestalt images (a whole perceived as more than the sum of its parts) that challenges the attention + awareness elements of consciousness, plus, as introduced above, the make-believe nature of ideas.
The challenge implied in Merleau-Ponty’s statement about the nature of perception being a judgment unaware of its reasons, whenever we try to perceive the wholeness of anything, whether it be the complete reality of an object or a process, especially the subconscious processes within the whole reality of a human self. A challenge to perceive the wholeness of reality that has been a stumbling block for our species since our journey to the present era began.
And if this argument that humanity now needs to save itself from itself is correct, we can discover salvation in understanding our ancestors’ more embodied grasp of reality? By examining how that grasp, in its wisest form, involved a cultivated awareness of the 4-dimensional nature of reality, beyond the make-believe nature of a consensus-reality. Going backwards through the history of time to explore whether an ancient focus and inner cultivation process is etymologically (origin and history of the form of words) embedded in the words “horizon of the Aten?”
Do these words denote (stand as a name or symbol for) a process within the human body that forms a deeper awareness about the reality of our human experience, especially its cosmic nature? Like the wholeness of creation implied in the golden image worth a thousand words, of Akhenaten’s family and a perception inspired, religious revolution? And is this revolutionary need repeated throughout human history, as seen in the latest efforts to develop a religion that is not a religion and ideas of humanity needing a Game B?
Was Akhenaten’s historical movement based on a perceptual revolution that expands our personal horizons of attention + awareness? Did that long forgotten religious revolution concern a self-transformation of consciousness towards the more nuanced grasp of reality produced by a balanced state of our brain’s twin-hemisphere functioning? The hemisphere-balance that produces the spontaneous state of consciousness human beings experience as an epiphany?
And during an era that takes pride in its AI technological powers of creation, while still practicing the ancient art of winning hearts and minds with the sound of resonating words. Could the reorganizing shift in attention + awareness required for humanity’s salvation begin etymologically with an online campaign that re-frames the experienced meaning of “horizon of the Aten?” The memes led (the cultural counterpart of genes) revolution that might sweep the planet like a new dawn?
Facing the challenges of this cross-roads moment in human history by expanding our inner horizon of attention + awareness through the experience of adaptive, relevance-realizations? With global humanity facing up to the self-inflicted catastrophe of climate change by heeding mother nature’s golden rule, adapt or die? After generations of following her fitness agenda and adapting to the social environments that have seen us lose touch with the cosmic reality life is embedded within.
And is the embedded reality of life implied in the ancient culture meme, “horizons of the Aten?” Was this meme cultivated through a well-practiced awareness of the horizon-bound nature of attention and the paradox of psychological projections? Those momentary perceptual events we explored in Our Twice Born Experience of Being & Belief, as an entwined process of physical presence and psychological projections? While this whole of life context of human consciousness having two levels and created by a twice born experience that is as old as the origins of modern humanity, is explored in this perceptual freedom video:
This video uses footage from the Australian TV series DNA Nation and the Studio Canal movie BE’BE’S to ask perceptual wisdom questions such as: Who are we? What are we? What is consciousness? What is human consciousness? A twice born experience? As old as humankind? The twice born experience of every human being?
Was Africa where humanity was born? Where humankind first developed spoken language? Is learning to speak how our consciousness becomes twice born? Is learning to speak how every human being develops beliefs? No matter where we live or the language we speak?
Is science shedding light on our human origins and the origins of speech? Is the way we humans learn to speak an adaptive behavior unchanged for thousands of years? Does mother Africa contain the fossil records of the first humans to speak? With a maternal record of humanity’s DNA and a maternal record of speech?
Are women, especially mothers, the primary care givers of humanity? Are mothers the primary teachers of speech? Do you remember when and how you learned to speak? Do you remember your first thought and spoken word? Are spoken words first of all, thoughts? Or the ideas that begin to form our mind, when we first begin to speak?
What is human consciousness before we begin to speak? Is the adaptive way we learn to speak how consciousness becomes twice born? Is this universal experience the secret of the resurrection philosophy of creation?
NOTE: Since making this video in 2022 the idea of a resurrection philosophy of creation has evolved into an understanding of the Christ narrative as an experience based philosophy of ascension. An experiential philosophy based on the much older initiation practices of living resurrection in Africa, I believe. And was all about our conscious experience of attention + awareness. Whether our attention is experiencing the 4-horizons of a walled in room or 4-horizons of the world.
Which is where this notion of salvation involving saving ourselves from ourselves, meets the perennial paradox of human perception. Where attention becomes horizon-bound by two forms of perception, as argued by Plato thousands of years ago. With one form defined by our optic nerve capacity to see and a second form defined by the abstract, metaphysical nature of our make-believe ideas, projected onto what we see? Raising the question, was psychological projection understood and used to create hugely influential stories like Jesus, the Christ?
And just as the 4-horizons of a walled in room create feelings of security for our body’s, do our make-believe ideas about reality create feelings of certainty for our mind? Do our conscious mind’s ideas create boundaries or horizons of perception, fueled by a subconscious need for security? Is this the intuitive meaning of Merleau-Ponty’s “perception is a judgment, but one that is unaware of its reasons?” Just as the earth-axis rotation is the primary cause of our experience of night and day, is the need for security the primary cause of our make-believe human psychology and therefore, our addiction to reification?
Is a fundamental need for a subconscious/conscious sense of security the cause of reification, and why we veil the nature of reality with a psychological fabrication? Is this why we read; “And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake; and the rocks were rent; and the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised; and coming forth out of the tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared unto many” (Matthew 27:50-53).
Were these words written with a conscious awareness of the perceptual paradox of psychological projections and the problem of reification? Are the words “the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom” an allegory of the temporal (of fleeting moment) nature of perception? Are the words “Jesus cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit” about the spirit of creation that we see, yet don’t see, as we veil the true nature of reality with a psychological fabrication? The fabric of a conceptual straitjacket we explored in Practicing Perceptual Wisdom & Realized Being.
And are the rapid changes to civilization over recent centuries a reasonable frame for questioning our species maturity and our need for a reification redemption? For example, have we, from at least the industrial revolution period of human history, steadily detached ourselves from a reality our ancestors called creation? And what would be the most practical and useful way to make the addictive nature of reification and increased detachment become conscious?
Do we pay too much attention to human creations and unwittingly restrict the inborn nature of consciousness? Within the secure walls of our homes, do we pay too much attention to the simulated sense of reality presented to us on the flat surface of our home entertainment screens? Have you noticed the difference between the colors of the sky on flat-screen TV’s and the experience of colors outdoors? What about the screen simulated size of the sun and moon in popular movies and TV series compared to experiencing the sight of the actual sun and moon?
Do electronically simulated images upon the flat surface of screens mimic the surface impressions of reality our minds create with ideas? Does the hypnotic power of television mimic the post infancy trance state of consciousness R. D. Laing suggested? Does the way reality is represented electronically mimic the substitution process involved in the way reality is represented ideologically within our private mind-space? Those ideas we project onto the undefinable and ultimately indescribable nature of reality, creating a psychological fabrication that acts like a veil before our eyes?
And given the way we resort to analogy when explaining our ideas, would the parallels between technology and our nervous system explored in The Seen & Unseen Nature of Our Own Reality be a practical way of making the problem of reification conscious? For example, in context of perceptual wisdom, has our technological era replicated the consciousness stumbling block humanity has struggled with since our journey to the present began?
Do the electronically projected images we see on our flat-screen TVs replicate the psychological fabrication we project into reality? The psychological screen we create within our minds with the surface impressions of reality we call ideas? Effectively flattening or diminishing the essential nature of reality within what some cognitive scientists suggest is a sphere of obviousness?
Obvious in the way the sight significant word tree, maps onto our sensory perception of an entire tree, for example. Or the way the significant for sight alphabet letters TV, map onto our perception of a flat-screen television, as we organize our five senses in a hierarchically fashioned, pyramid-like way? An analogy that takes us back to ancient structures and stories signifying humanity’s need for a conversion experience. And this essay’s effort to map a cross-roads moment in history onto the redemption challenge of making our addiction to reification conscious?
The Reward of Certainty in Our Addiction to Reification
Hopefully, this image and the curious quotes stimulate an intuitive orientation to the puzzle of our addiction to reification and why we need redemption― (atone for a fault). Particularly the primary cause of our addiction to reification, as a repetitious pattern in human history. A pattern created within the unseen, subconscious reality of being human, and why it makes humanity less conscious than we believe ourselves to be.
And as most people accept, when solving problems, context is everything, whether it’s a riddle composed of the metaphysical substance of ideas or a jigsaw puzzle composed of matter. While for me, myself, and the elusive, non-autobiographical ‘I” within my body, this image represents a light bulb moment in time when I managed a balance of thought and feeling awareness, to realize the make-believe nature of my mind. And people will make their own intuitive judgment on whether this image and these quotations fit within this argument.
“Okay, so how does addiction fit with reification to explain humanity’s
redemption challenge?” I imagine you thinking?
It depends on our depth of understanding of addictive (of a substance or activity) behaviors, especially the reward payoff, as the primary cause of their habitual nature. And increasing our depth of understanding by seeking informed realizations about the subconscious reality of being human, like the reward seeking neural networks within our brain, for example.
Context sensitive information that affects the way we perceive our immediate environment and how we experience our own reality. Specifically, the relatively recent information enabled by our emergence into a technological era and the intellectual challenge of synthesizing it and bringing it into the attention + awareness realm of humanity’s public arena.
While some people suggest that the reflexive habits involved in the way we have to move our fingers while engaging with all the smart devices has caused an addiction to social media. A reflection on reflexive behaviors (responses to stimuli that are involuntary or free from conscious control) that take us into the subconscious (non-autobiographical) realm of our reality and a more intuitive grasp of meaning.
Especially if you are prepared to suspend your disbelief and contemplate the metaphysical substance of your thoughts and pair them with your physical activities? Using a smart device as a meditation tool for examining the habit-formed and therefore addictive nature of typically human activities? Like the habit-formed nature of thought-naming everything you’re seeing right now and transforming those thought-names into written words.
Was the physical activity of using your fingers how you transformed or transcribed your thoughts into written words? Was the activity of thinking about what you saw and how to name what you saw, physical? Or does it feel right to describe your thought processes, your ideas, as a metaphysical activity? As we get into the puzzling realm of Scott Card’s “This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question?”
Do you see where I’m going with this word association game of pairing our typically normal sense of addiction, using a substance or an activity for a reward payoff, with the reality of human behaviors and perceptions? Or like people who are aware of my Grandfather’s letters titled Master Bates, are you judging my words, as intellectual masturbation?
Alas, tiz the curse of being a Bates and how friends would seek the laughter reward payoff of introducing me as Mrs Bates’ little boy, “masterbates.” And I agree with the intended spirit of the saying “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me,” yet I wrestle with the paradox of how “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Corinthians 3:6), and how such cryptic wisdom relates to the generational experience of being human.
I mean, how exactly do any words composed of the letters within a spoken English alphabet manage to hurt anyone? Are we humans the only species on the planet that hurt ourselves with the metaphysical nature of thoughts? Does every other form of life suffer only from physically inflicted pain and do other species retain traumatic memories of violent assaults?
Researchers into such questions marvel at the way traumatic events like being mauled by a predator can be shaken off and life resumed as-if the event never happened in the animal kingdom. Are humans crazy for allowing the sight of written words or words we hear to disturb our equilibrium and cause feelings of outrage and revenge, as-if words have a predatory nature? And is that what we see happen all over the planet, within the kingdom of social media? Its so paradoxical, don’t you think?
And if we had the heart and guts to self-cross-examine our own behaviors and perceptions, in the context of paradox? The fertile soil, metaphysically speaking, of the whole history of wisdom and its “riddle-me-this?” Teachings. Would we find ourselves falling into an adaptive relevance realization about the non-autobiographical nature of our reality?
Would an intuitive sense of Iain McGilchrists’s book title The Matter With Things: morph into The Matter With Thoughts As Things? Is that what reification boils down to? Humanity’s uncanny ability to become our own worst enemy? Because we lack the kind of self-knowledge and awareness that enables an intuitive grasp of the paradoxical nature of ancient word puzzles about experiencing perceptual wisdom?
Puzzling aphorisms (short pithy comments full of meaning) like “words are not reality and only experience reveals the nature of being?” A riddle-me-this aphorism spoken to me over a decade ago that now sees me spontaneously fishing within my inner well of make believe, and thinking “The Matter With Words as Things” as an adaptation of McGilchrist’s book title. And I can’t help wondering if this spontaneously serious play with words is an experience of what cognitive science calls a convergence to relevance realization?
My relevance realization about how reifying reality with the make-believe nature and metaphysical substance of ideas is a reward seeking addiction driven by the way my subconscious need for security creates my conscious need for certainty.
A realization emerging from seeking relevant information to better the self-regulation of my behaviors and perceptions. Steadily emerging scientific information about the unseen and non-conscious processes that make us human, which paradoxically makes generations of certainty about our autobiographical memory and sense of self, less certain. And what creates my addiction to reification and my need for redemption is my reflexive intolerance of uncertainty.
The paradox of the subconscious and therefore involuntary nature of behaviors and perceptions, that are so difficult to be consciously aware of when engaging with any addictive substance or activity. Like the activity of arguing for humanity’s reification redemption challenge while my intolerance for uncertainty is reflexively reflected in the self-defense activity of denial.
With my desire to improve my self-regulation mindful of Alan N Schore’s maxim: The attempt to regulate affect - to minimize unpleasant feelings and to maximize pleasant ones - is the driving force in human motivation. The well-spring, so speak, of the self-deception in my autobiographical memory informed, sense of self. My elusive, vernacular (spoken by ordinary people) sense of me, myself, and “I” in the context of my subconscious need for security and science revelations on Affect regulation.
While making experiential blindness fit an addiction context also hangs on the habit-formed nature of behaviors and perceptions. With an intuitive judgment on the habitual nature of human experience acting like the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle we see in the image above. I mean, how many people would nod their heads in agreement with the comment “we are creatures of habit,” especially in the context of how well practiced skills become reflexively automatic?
An external sense of behavioral skills repeated within our body’s by the reflexive beating of our hearts and the reflexive motions of our lungs, for example. As we delve deeper into the meaning of descriptive terms like addiction with this context frame of reification. Challenging ourselves to form a depth of insight and understanding about the illusion of knowing reification creates, as a peculiarly human form of blindness.
Like the illusion of knowing within our autobiographical memory sense of self, which scientific research has been steadily eroding for decades now. Yet, is this erosion of our spoken sense of reality paradoxically creating a convergence (moving towards union) era of human history? And is a conscious awareness of our reification-fallacy the key to unifying our mind’s subjective sense of reality with the objective reality of the cosmos?
Are we living through a period of time that is creating a confluence (flowing together) of science and spirituality, as humanity’s still evolving consciousness moves towards a global awareness of the purpose of our creation? Is the cyclical nature of time for life on earth bringing a need for ancient wisdom around again? And can our increasingly urgent need for wisdom be classified as humanity’s reification redemption challenge?
Can humanity break the cyclic rise and fall of civilizations and make good the prophecy of a messianic age of peace and prosperity for all the peoples who call earth home? Can this messianic ideal be achieved by recognizing the philosophic love of wisdom (as qualified by experience) in one of humanity’s most influential stories? If we experience the story through an awareness of reification that resurrects an embodied grasp of reality older than language?
How Awareness of Reification Resurrects Reality
For me, this image is worth more than words because it represents my mind’s eye sense of reality and the way my five senses operate in a fluid yet pyramid-like fashion. It captures my minds seeing is believing grasp of reality with sight at the top of a sensory hierarchy. Reminding me of the story of prisoners set free by a conversion of sight, in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Which I’ve come to believe is a story about the perceptual wisdom involved in the ascension of Jesus.
Self-transcendence experiences I believe were retold in a personal story of crucifixion, resurrection and ascension that curiously gives no details of a bodily resurrection. A paradox that makes me question “was Jesus the supernatural son of a supernatural creator or a superior philosopher, a true lover of wisdom?” If so, how can I understand the biblical quotation within the context of reification, resurrection, ascension and my own experiences perceptual wisdom?
“Is this story about resurrecting a body from the lifeless state of death or resurrecting a psycho-spiritual grasp of reality within my skull?” I ask myself. A question raised by an intuitive, aphoristic metaphors of meaning, judgment of these words; And they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, the place of a skull (Mark 15:22). I mean we can all tell good stories about life but truly wise, universal storytelling is something else.
Yet how can I make this 2nd quotation fit with the 1st one, as I wrestle with the historical puzzle of perceptual wisdom and the way people wrote about such experiences 2000 and more years ago? I mean, what could “Jesus uttered a loud voice, and gave up the ghost” mean in the context of experiencing perceptual wisdom?
So I type ‘what does Jesus gave up the ghost mean’ into a Google search box and read the, top of the list, Collins Dictionary definition; If someone gives up the ghost, they stop trying to do something because they no longer believe they can do it successfully. If a machine gives up the ghost, it stops working. “Is this definition about the illusion of knowing inherent in beliefs and the automatic, non-consciously machine-like nature of behaviors and perceptions?” I think, after reading.
And Google serves up a question; What does giving up the ghost mean in the Bible? Which reads, to expire or die: To give up the ghost means to expire or die, or in the case of a mechanical object, to stop working. The phrase give up the ghost may be traced back to the King James Bible, printed in the early 1600s.
So did Jesus physically die when he gave up the ghost? Or is this a very wise word puzzle? A universal teaching story about experiencing self-transcendence? I mean, do the words; “the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom,” mean that Jesus was the supernatural son of a supernatural God?
Or is this story about the temporal (of fleeting moment) nature of human perception? Based on an embodied understanding of how spoken language creates a misconception of reality? I mean, why does the 4th gospel say: "Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. But he spake of the temple of his body" (John 2:19-21).
Why does the Cambridge Dictionary describe misconception as; an idea that is wrong because it has been based on a failure to understand a situation? “Are my ideas a failure to understand the nature of reality?” I think as I wrestle with the meaning of the word concept, and a feeling the socialized idea of God is a misconception of creation.
As I try to feel how the words “uttered a loud voice, and gave up the ghost” are about humanity's reification-fallacy and a socialized consensus-reality. Or am I seeking the confirmation bias of making the story fit into my reification theory? Am I assuming a simile (layers of meaning) use of words by associating the word temple with temporal in a way that does not fit the context of the story?
Have I done enough in previous post/chapters to show how our ideas create an illusion of knowing? And am I showing with these ideas how this wisdom story was about the experience of ascension and a non-reified, non-dual, not two, reality?
Showing readers hat it was about expanding our conscious horizons of attention + awareness of the miracle of life within the hostile environment of the cosmos and why our still evolving human consciousness is the glory of creation. And that the veil of reification, is a psychological fabrication, preventing the embodied experience of ascension this story so cryptically describes. With its clever narrative of post resurrection appearances and Jesus' experience of ascension.
A story about humanity’s generational need to renew our covenant with creation, through the earth turning experience of dawn's birthing of daylight. And why I believe humanity’s reification redemption challenge is a renewal of our covenant with creation, as spoken of metaphorically throughout the Bible.
The challenge of generational renewal underpinning the story of Jesus the Christ, in which the word Christ can be felt to symbolize Creation Consciousness. With the suffering of crucifixion within this word painted story, setting the scene of how to embody an embedded sense of creation. How to feel that all is creation and develop a felt-sense of the binding purpose of humanity's feelings of religiosity?
Arguably, the reason Catholic culture speaks of Jesus voluntary self-emptying, the spirit of the first creation and a baptism of the HolySpirit? Yet, does self-emptying involve an awareness of how reification works by satisfying our need for feelings of certainty and security? Does this idea of self-emptying imply a self-baptism into the spirit of creation through the self-emptying of our autobiographical memory?
And does the personal challenge of baptizing oneself in the spirit of the cosmos involve overcoming an involuntary resistance, as a conscious sense of uncertainty floods the body with painful feelings of insecurity? Was this personal process of self-transcendence deliberately exaggerated in the story of Jesus the Christ, to imprint an ascension methodology onto humanity’s long-term-memory?
Is my judgment of the story’s intention and purpose implied in this nature.com review of neuroscience entitled: Pathways of the past: the imprint of memory? Is the motivation for writing a universal story about the paradox of human perception being revealed in current writings about Memory, Imprinting and the Brain: An Inquiry into Mechanisms?
What about research into consciousness as a memory system? Consider these words from the abstract of a recent paper:
"We suggest that there is confusion between why consciousness developed and what additional functions, through continued evolution, it has co-opted. Consider episodic memory. If we believe that episodic memory evolved solely to accurately represent past events, it seems like a terrible system-prone to forgetting and false memories. However, if we believe that episodic memory developed to flexibly and creatively combine and rearrange memories of prior events in order to plan for the future, then it is quite a good system." Andrew E Budson, Kenneth A Richman, Elizabeth A Kensinger.
And is an autobiographical memory sense of self and history so universal it underpins the transcendent purpose of this wisdom story about a mind-space experience of crucifixion? The mind-space within our skull, as our ego? Using metaphor's and a simile use of words, to question our cosmic origins by speaking of memory as a veil and the timeless symbol of a cross? Is our instinctive avoidance of pain made dramatically memorable in the word painted picture of the crucifixion of Jesus?
Is this title "Christ Crucified" a prime example of our well socialized and too literal sense of words? Does it falsely assume the word Christ was Jesus last name? In the same way the word Buddha has historically been conflated with Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha ("the awakened"). Does a too literal sense of words create a peculiarly human form of blindness and miss the mark of meaning in both the word Christ and a timeless story about the perceptual paradox of the human condition? Consider:
"Christ comes from the Greek word χριστός (chrīstós), meaning "anointed one". The word is derived from the Greek verb χρίω (chrī́ō), meaning "to anoint." In the Greek Septuagint, χριστός was a semantic loan used to translate the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (Mašíaḥ, messiah), meaning "[one who is] anointed." From Wikipedia, Christ (title)
Consider the paradoxical way there are no details of a physical recovery from the lifeless state of death. There is only the post-event mentioning of appearances that leave the mystery of an empty tomb unspoken. Symbolizing an unspoken process of self-emptying our autobiographical memory? And an unspeakable form of reality and personal ascension experienced as a psycho-spiritual rebirth?
And if this empty tomb mystery of resurrection is unspeakable, is it therefore, through the tightly coupled nature of thought and speech, unthinkable? Is this the essence of the mystery and the method of ascension into experiencing earth as heaven? Heaven right here, right now, yet paradoxically unseen through our social conditioning to language as a medium of communication? An illusory sense of reality?
Is this why Iain McGilchrist opens a chapter on perception with two quotations: Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but not than looking. ― Johann Goethe. . . To repeat: don’t think, but look! ― Ludwig Wittgenstein. And he describes perception as a reaching beyond a cage of mental constructs to taste, smell, touch, hear and see the living world. The essence of a world we can’t describe without committing the original sin of reification?
In The Undiscovered Self Carl Jung writes about the purpose of self-knowledge and the life-preserving myth of the inner man within the story of Christ, as a Symbol of Self. Suggesting the story of Jesus the Christ symbolizes every human being, past, present, and future. And from my reading of Jung’s collected works, I feel he understood the philosophical purpose of the term Last Adam and Christ as a Self-Symbol.
After all, I symbolize myself with the words David Bates and accept how these signifying terms are the marks of my human nature. My social conditioning as a social creature, however I’m not these two words or any words that describe my appearance. And the fallacy of words as self-knowledge is why I believe reification_(knowledge representation) is the meaning of humanity's original sin. And why the story of Jesus the Christ is about how to experience a reification redemption through a process of self-cross-examination.
Because serious attempts at cross-examining our ideas about reality invites painful truths about the illusory nature of our autobiographical memory. With the personal problem of memory and humanity's perceptual paradox symbolized by the word Adam. As a symbolic term for the whole of humanity became conflated as the name of one male in one of the world’s creation stories.
A biblical story that speaks of human beings committing an original sin that is eventually redeemed in the story of Jesus’ incarnation experience of becoming a Christ. While generations of story-telling transformed the significance of 3 words into 2 and the word Christ took on the appearance of Jesus’ last name. Using the same generational pattern of reification that saw the word Adam transformed into the historical name of one man.
While history has described Jesus in Post-NewTestament symbolism as the Final Adam, the Ultimate Adam, the Second Adam, and the New Adam. And why would people do that? Is it because the Jesus story tells us how an awareness of reification leads to a psycho-spiritual resurrection of perception? The phenomenology of the Christ experience of incarnation and ascension?
Whenever we become mindful of reification, as a psychological fabrication acting like a veil, the mind-space within our skull places over reality? A veil maintained by the millisecond speed of our nervous system and its subconscious orchestration of perception. How it creates feedback loops of external objects seen and internally named in a rapidly flowing sequence of conscious attention + awareness?
A process of visual perception whereby names occupy the foreground of our mind and we diminish reality to mere background because we don’t need to know the essence of reality. Consider thedecisionlab.com ideas about mind-space;
"MINDSPACE: A mnemonic for the nine effects on human behavior, used to explain and intervene in a variety of subject areas: messenger, incentives, norms, defaults, salience, priming, affect, commitments, and ego." From, MINDSPACE Framework
And was this phenomenology of perceptual experience crafted into the story of Jesus as post crucifixion appearance scenes assumed to be evidence of his return from a physical state of death? Is the story about Jesus’ physical death, or is it a rhetorical teaching device? Is it about how reification manifests an experiential blindness? The spiritual nature of a living death?
Whereby the 4-dimensional, multifaceted essence of reality is flattened into 2-dimensions by psychological projections? And are assumptions we make about appearances and our generational pattern of reification, shown in the way the word man was originally non-gender biased and meant thinking animal?
Hence, the words man and woman are descriptive terms that do not define the reality of any woman or man. And does being unaware of how reification works in our perception of reality impose a subtle form of living death upon us? I believe so, and that’s what I think, the story of developing Christ consciousness invites. Inviting all adult humans to self-cross-examine our capacity to comprehend the 4-dimensional nature of reality.
And is this why Jesus’ teaching career begins at age 30? Even if you’re skeptical about the historical existence of this man, can you doubt the historical existence of the story and its impact on humanity’s civilization process? Will you consider the possibility that the story describes a personal experience of ascension? The need to overcome the perceptual paradox of our experiential blindness?
A phenomenon of human perception that is being researched under various headings like inattentional blindness for example. And includes debates on our human cognition, like early versus late forms of attention explained here. While other headings for research into our peculiarly human form of blindness are repetition blindness, semantic satiation, and visual masking.
So I guess it depends on how you feel about the meaning and purpose of life and how certain or uncertain you are of how words define reality? And as humanity faces the increasing certainty of climate change, would a global understanding of truly wise story-telling help Gen Alpha deal with that reality? Would the Buddhist “words are not reality and only experience reveals the nature of being,” help them discover a better form of sense-making?
And with millions of people believing that without the resurrection there is no Christian faith, should we cross-examine what the word resurrection means? Online there are many dictionary and thesaurus websites to explore and here is just one: Noun: resurrection,re-zu'rek-shun 1. A revival from inactivity and disuse "it produced a resurrection of hope"
Type of: miracle, resurgence, revitalisation [Brit], revitalization, revival, revivification
An online explanation of the term resurrection that I find quite revealing for the written words in this famous story. An explanation that makes me wonder if wisdom teachers and writers were aware of the Buddhist caveat all those years ago? I mean, historical writings mention Socrates having a deep mistrust of written words, for example. A mistrust we read when others wrote “true knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.”
Of course, I may be completely wrong about how the story is a mytheme attempt to summarize the problematic nature of the human condition. Wrong in my understanding of the term Son of man as a rhetorical device symbolizing the whole of humanity? Yet, through experience, I believe the story not only summarizes the human condition; it provides the answers to overcoming our optical illusions of knowing via the primary level of consciousness we call feeling. Hence, is the Passion of Jesus is a graphic allusion to our visceral sense of reality?
A viscerally gripping scene, as illustrated in the movie The passion of the Christ (2004) that sets the scene for resurrecting our felt-sense of the first light of day and sunrise. Ideas that flow from my reading of wisdom literature and an intuitive sense that the Christ story represents the pinnacle of Axial-Age philosophy and ancient mystery school experiences of living resurrection. As a way of experiencing the rapture of being alive on the physical plane, the great mythologist Joseph Campbell speaks of here.
And if you suspend your disbelief for a moment is it really so hard to imagine the word God as a 3-letter symbol of Creation? Is there another word you can think of that encompasses anything and everything you can think of, like the word creation? Is this why Christians believe Jesus of Nazareth incarnates God? Consider:
"Jesus, also called Jesus Christ, Jesus of Galilee, or Jesus of Nazareth, (born c. 6–4 BCE, Bethlehem—died c. 30 CE, Jerusalem), religious leader revered in Christianity, one of the world’s major religions. He is regarded by most Christians as the Incarnation of God." From britannica.com biography of Jesus
Is this clever perceptual wisdom story really about how we are all cosmic creation become flesh? How our species is creation incarnate? And are global threats to civilization and survival our coming of age experience? Is this the existential truth of Gen Alpha's reification redemption challenge?
Is the reality of climate change dawning on our distracted mind’s and is the increasingly urgent need of resolution pressuring us to adopt a new, yet paradoxically old philosophy of life? A ascension philosophy that stood against the heresy of consciousness contained within our socialized attitude to creation?
Our two senses (sight & sound) attitude that actively blocks our comprehension of reality and sees us experience conscious states of dissociation? As we unwittingly assume our mind-space, 2-dimensional map is a definitive sense of reality. And if you suspend immediate assumptions and can tolerate the uncertainty involved in perceptual wisdom experience, does the purpose of ascension philosophy become obvious?
As a thought experiment, imagine our planet described as a garden called Eden and ask yourself if you experience gardens as words or the combination of a five senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, & hearing) appreciation? And within such a five sense appreciation of any garden’s reality, are there seeds of comprehension and the possibility of resurrection? Can you apply descriptive words to the all at once, five sense comprehension of a beautiful garden?
And can this notion of a five sense comprehension of reality apply to the experience of creation we call a day? The constant cycle of daylight and dark night we all experience as the cosmic background of our lives. Which might dare us to imagine the ultimate question of a resurrection philosophy that was disguised as history. Is the cosmos a womb or a tomb? If we dare to plunge our hands beneath mother earth’s soil to experience how she is always pregnant and giving birth to life?
Here the writing of this blog/book must give birth to a more visual medium in my efforts to show how perceptual wisdom can cure experiential blindness and what the historical purpose of ascension philosophy was.
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