Reality Revisited:

Well, dear theoretical reader, let us preface this exploration update which generally takes place every few years, with the deeply insightful, whilst also being blindingly obvious, and in most cases misunderstood, statement made by the undoubted, Machiavellian genius Donald Rumsfeld in his US Dept. of Defence news briefing in 2002, prior to the second Gulf War:

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”

He was right about the war.  I know.  I was there and receiving security briefings in secure rooms and mixing with those in the know and the movers and shakers, such is chance.  Much more importantly, however, he was right about life generally.

Here’s a thought also; what about unknown knowns – things we know but don’t know we know e.g. intuition, telepathy etc.  Some, as with the subconscious, we are starting to understand and could be defined as known unknowns.  What I shall consider later is a possible ‘known’ that is altogether different, to wit an unknown known. 

For the purposes of what I write here I use the words ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ as interchangeable, with neither being an absolute.  Relative to this, I think it may be considered a fairly standard disconnect that people tend to see reality as in fact an absolute, and the way they want it to be, whether that be utopian, dystopian or somewhere a little more rational in between.  This, obviously, means that the vast majority of people don’t actually see reality as it really is and see it differently, one from another.  Further, I would suggest that it is impossible for it to be otherwise.

This statement, I recognise, can be seen as a form of paradox.  Who is to judge?  How can that person making the judgement ensure that the reality they see is the reality which is real, and therefore make a judgement that the vast majority of people’s realities are not the real reality? (Actually, of course, everybody’s.)

I think one can make the point about the majority not seeing reality as it is without suggesting that one has moved any further than, ‘cogito ergo sum’.  To add to this apparent dichotomy of sorts, I think one can also accept that there is no chance of any sentient being, assuming they exist, other than a posited God, whether one believes in a God or not, ever fully understanding reality, for to do so would require one to know all there is to know, to be in effect the posited existent or non-existent God, or at least his or her equal.  That, I suggest, is not possible.

Accepting that a true understanding of reality cannot be achieved from the point of view of one’s individual perception does not, however, mean that there aren’t levels of reality and understanding.   Relative to what we know today, in general terms, a broad brush understanding of reality, or lack of it, is the only way to attempt to understand it. There is, I would further suggest, a sliding scale of the nearness and distance intellectually that people can be relative to reality.  To take an example, those who believe that the earth is an oblate spheroid are nearer to reality by a long way than those who think that the world is flat.

Now, returning to my earlier statement that an understanding of reality, or lack of it, must be broad brush, the reasoning here is that, for instance, a scientist may be very close to understanding the reality of string theory, or any other generally agreed concept such as global warming, but may be hopelessly out of touch with reality in other areas of our knowledge and understanding base.  For instance he may be appalling in his basic understanding of human relationships and psychology.

(Would this then mean that a computer which could hold specialist knowledge in many fields be more likely to be able to define reality than a human being? Are we to rely on AI for a greater perception of reality?  Quite possibly.)

My view is that the broad brush view of reality is more likely to approach true reality because it will involve the person concerned – let’s imagine an archetypal renaissance man – knowing quite a lot about a lot of different subjects; to have a rounded view of the world.  

If one imagines for a moment a series of areas of knowledge, for instance, philosophy, economics, science, theology, the arts, history, geography etc. if one knows a great deal about one, very little about another but a fair amount about many others, ones ignorance or bias is likely to be diluted by the knowledge of other things which will temper ones perception of reality into one that is more likely, in its moderation and levelling out, to be closer to the kernel of reality than it would be in the case of extreme ignorance on most subjects, even if one is a genius at one.

There are people, of course, who would say that without mathematics and physics there is no chance of understanding reality.  Others might lean to music and the arts and yet others to philosophy and theology.

(One should be wary of adopting the conceit that an understanding of reality requires standard, academic knowledge anyway.  Perhaps an unschooled Aborigine in the bush has a closer understanding of reality.)

Take also the ‘idiot savant’ who can glance out of the window and then draw an absolutely perfect picture of whatever he saw without further reference to it.  In that area the person is a genius and holds that one area of reality much more closely than other people, but his hold on all other areas of reality may be, and generally is, extremely hazy. 

A cul-de-sac which one can go down with regard to reality is to readily accept that if most people accept something, it must be true.  Long before we knew the world was a sphere the general opinion was that it was, indeed, flat.  That view of reality, patently, is incorrect.  Once it was, however, the reality of the vast majority. 

There will be concepts we generally agree now, such as there being three spatial dimensions, length, height and depth plus, a fourth, time, which may eventually give way to general agreement on superstring theory, where there are at least 10 dimensions in the universe, or M-theory which suggests that there are 11 dimensions to space-time or even bosonic string theories which suggest 26 dimensions. 

The pursuit of an understanding of reality has, as far as one can see, been one of the great drivers of humanity which our children show from an early age with the constant question, ‘Why?’  (The answers we give are extremely important, for they set them on the road to constructing their understanding of reality. We are, in effect, conditioning their minds for their life to come.) Going back to Descartes, obviously with only one absolute concept, that one exists, all other concepts are subjective, even those which are given as an answer to the ‘why’ and accepted by the questioner, because we cannot know with any level of certainty that the person (A) who has agreed, has actually understood totally, or in the same way, the answer that the person (B) thinks they’ve given is correct (close to their reality) in the first place.

This uncertainty accepted, we can return to reality none-the-less, agreeing that it is on a sliding scale, and a lot of what is generally agreed is probably as near to reality as it needs to be, to be useful as an agreed concept when we’re interacting with the world and other people, and communicating with them; the reality, in fact which allowed humanity, the cooperative animal, to come as far as we have done in our overlordship of all other creatures on the planet, whether one perceives that to be good or bad.  

There are those who say that there are some absolutes.  We can see these in mathematics, even at a simple level; 2 + 2 = 4 is a generally agreed an absolute truth.  I live in the hope that somebody will give me a ‘proof’ that this is not necessarily always the case and that the square of the hypotenuse does not always equal the sum of the squares of the other two sides.  For the sake of this discussion however, I’ll accept this, but not that it necessarily brings me much closer to understanding reality in the grand scheme of things.

In my search for reality it has also been of interest to explore beauty as a possible basis for reality (See Keats poem, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’) to me; also, that it is a universal reality that all people who see a rainbow, for instance, think of it as beautiful, even though it is said that beauty is in the eye of  the beholder, which is of course true about any concept other than cogito ergo sum, putting us immediately back into the territory of subjectivity.  Doubtless there are people who have eyesight that doesn’t perceive a rainbow as beautiful and anyway the statement is unprovable because one cannot know what everybody who sees a rainbow really thinks.

To return to the sliding scale, it can be agreed that some people are probably nearer to an understanding of reality, though relative to the vastness of all knowledge, that may be infinitesimal, than others, relative to some who, for instance hold an understanding of reality like our flat earthers or general conspiracy theorists, who on the balance of judgement are further from the fire of truth/reality.  (I use the word ‘fire’ deliberately.  Many of those who made break-throughs with regard to reality were indeed burnt at the stake as heretics and in more ‘civilised’ times treated as lunatics.)

Accepting the above, for the sake of this argument, one of the dimensions mentioned earlier may be worthy of further exploration; that of time.  Relatively speaking, the longer one lives, the more one experiences reality.  This does not assume that you experience real reality, however.  (See Plato’s cave allegory.)  If one has lived a life of curiosity and diverse experiences , debating and exploring other minds through books and the like, I would suggest that the experience of reality is more likely to be nearer to that which is real than the reality of a mind which has not had this curiosity and these experiences.  Does that make one more qualified to comment on reality?  Perhaps.

S + T = U … subjectivity plus time equals understanding.  This does not necessarily apply or give greater understanding of reality.  Indeed age may move one further from the fire of ‘truth’.  The mind can get ‘stuck’ in convenient ruts and rather than searching for further truth to move one nearer to the fire of reality one may rather read and observe merely those things which reinforce the prejudices of the old, comfortable or at least familiar reality that one has built, in the final analysis, as a shield against a fast changing and increasingly incomprehensible world.  (See the UK ‘Daily Mail’ newspaper readership)

Even if this does not happen, and one ages with the mind wide open and the curiousity throttle flat to the floor, biological factors can influence the ability for cell synapses to make new neural pathways.  (But, neurons that fire together, wire together) I would suggest, however, that though the older mind may be slower in establishing new neural pathways, if it is a mind which has always been curious and open, the experience that one can bring to bear on reality overtops the slowing of synapses, and new neural pathways will occur in such a manner as to allow the individuals subjective understanding of reality to continue to grow and move nearer to ‘real’ reality, even if the move over a lifetime relative to the vastness of all there is to know is only infinitesimal.  I would further suggest that such a mind would be more in touch with reality than a younger, similar one; thus S+T+E (experience) over time may = EE, with engaged enlightenment  being defined as a deeper and still growing understanding of reality than the norm.  I think a sign that one is moving on the right track is when one has moments when one is absolutely appalled by one’s ignorance and realise in some way just how much there is out there to learn about.

So, one of the great dichotomies faced by an aging, liberal intellectual in pursuit of reality is that one of the features one is obliged to learn along the way is humility, based on the fact as one as has got older one knows there is much more to learn than one thought there was when one was younger.  It is the Catch 22 cliché that, ‘the problem with the world is that intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid are full of confidence.’  (Clichés, I have found, are generally somewhat sneered at, but actually they are very often overused truths which people are fed up with hearing – or possibly irritated by because they are true.) 

This humility is well-placed but should not detract from the belief that certain things are more real than others.  It is necessary, however, within our cooperative species to have a general agreement about how we perceive the world we live in, our agreed and accepted reality.  It would be inconvenient if every time we mentioned, for instance, the word ‘table’ we took off on philosophical flights of fancy, referring to Plato and the relativity that was about before Mr Einstein made it so popular in his Theory of Special Relativity (ironically even though most people do not understand, E=mc²) and didn’t just go over to the agreed object, sit down at it and eat our dinner.

There are, however, other realities which are not so readily agreed, even putting aside myth, religion and the like which often, to my mind, have both facets close to reality and those which are in cloud cuckoo land, but hey, what do I know … really?  Interestingly, however, moving away from agreed realities can move one further or nearer to the fire of truth, depending on the concept.  Thus it was for Pythagoras with a spherical planet, moving him closer to reality and poor old Giordano Bruno who whilst being right about there being other planets and stars was burned at the stake for his trouble.  On the other hand there are a perfectly respectable 41% of people in the USA who believe that humans and dinosaurs coexisted – that’s around 150 million people – and around the same number don’t believe in evolution.  As covered earlier, reality, or truth, is not a numbers game.

In amongst this mass of confusion, contradiction and sheer claptrap there are still routes to reality which are valid, and as one develops humility along those, one must also hold hard to the realities one is increasingly confident about, such as love being stronger over time than hate, even if those around you appear less and less to be living in the reality which you inhabit.  It is useful, too, to remember as a reality that far more people are decent than not.  The ‘Peace Alliance’ estimate that an appalling 1.5 million people die through violence worldwide every year.  In truth, since many of these numbers represent deaths due to warfare, there weren’t 1.5 million killers but even if there were it means that around 7 billion people don’t kill anybody each year.  (1,500,000 compared to 7,000,000,000 … it’s interesting how important it is to count zeros in certain contexts, even if they stand as a placeholder which says, ‘Nothing interesting to look at here, keep moving left’ – or right if you’re an Arab.)      

One cannot dismiss in any discussion about reality / truth the power of culture, traditions etc. and also of religion.  They are often intertwined in many ways, especially in identifying those things which they hold as central tenets to their adherent’s lives. 

Though reality is not a numbers game it would be absurd not to consider the reality of people of faith.  With 2.5 billion Christians and nearly 2 billion Muslims, both Abrahamic faiths with much in common, as are Judaism and Bahá'í Faith, one can see that over 4.5 billion people share much in terms of their perception of reality.  It is estimated that over 80% of the world’s population are people of faith who believe in some form of Supreme Being.  I am one such, but that doesn’t make such belief a reality; it merely makes it common, though one has to admit, very.  (To not be seduced by numbers one is meant to remember though a time when over 80% of the population believed the Earth was flat etc.  To argue thus, however, is fallacious, quite possibly giving equivalence to apples and oranges. )

The word ‘faith’ is a tricky one to define, however, relative to a discussion on reality.   If we define it simply as, ‘a strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof’, this means, in effect, that the centrality of reality for 80% of the world’s population is based on something other than evidence.  (If one considers the shakiness of ‘evidence’, given that we may know less than an optimistic 1% of all there is to know it gets even more complicated!) They find this perfectly acceptable and believe that they have the route way to truth totally covered.  They also believe in most cases that their reality is set and is the one and only real reality.  If you sat all 4.5 billion of them down and asked them to talk in detail about the nuts and bolts of their faith there would, however, be many different views, quite possibly 4.5 billion.

Of the global atheist and non-religious population, 76% reside in Asia and the Pacific, while the remainder reside in Europe (12%), North America (5%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4%), sub-Saharan Africa (2%) and the Middle East and North Africa (less than 1%).  The realities for these folk are much more diverse, in most cases their only commonality being a non-belief in a Supreme Being.  It is tempting to see this in itself as a strong signifier of their view of reality, tending as it does, to be more ‘evidence’ based.   (Remember that evidence is based on time – when in the history of humanity it was considered to be true, and the basis for that belief.) 

It is tempting, also, to think that such people, individualists, are perhaps nearer to the fire, but to assume that people who believe in a Supreme Being are wrong because of lack of evidence base could be wide of the mark.  Many people who believe in a Supreme Being and that this life is not all there is, myself included, do not subscribe to a formal religion, and all other aspects of their reality may well be more evidence based.  Of course, the billions who believe in a supreme being may have cracked at least that part of reality and be right.  It is tempting to say, why otherwise would so many people believe, but that, I believe, is a red herring.

Cultural realities are often wound round the subjective perceived realities of faith.  I would suggest that both are in general the result of conditioning.  I don’t use the word pejoratively, just as a matter of fact.  Most people follow a faith and exist in a culture that was handed down to them by their parents, family and ‘tribe’. 

I recognise that I am using the words ‘faith’ and ‘religion’ interchangeably here.  I may come back and change them.  I have covered this somewhat, above, but to clarify, ‘Religion’ tends to be creedal, with an agreed set of beliefs, structures and ritual which include a non-evidence based belief in some kind of supreme being who is involved in one’s daily life and has given a set of rules which people of that religion agree to live by.  They generally believe in the ‘soul’, a non-evidence based part of their being, often interchangeable with ‘mind’ which goes on in some way after they have died.  ‘Faith’ tends to be an individualistic and unstructured, non-evidence based belief in some kind of supreme being and may include any or none of the beliefs above.

I do not believe that cultural or religious realities, though hugely important in humanity’s general agreement as to what the agreed reality is so that he can understand what motivates his fellow man and cooperate in getting things done, has much to do with the search for reality that it is each individual’s choice to make.  It is, rather, a patchwork of stories and ideas which folk thousands of years ago used to try to make sense of their world.  Probably then, and certainly now, these are clung to as a security blanket which answers all the big questions, protects one from having to trouble ones’ mind too much and generally allows the believer to abrogate all responsibility for getting closer to the fire.   

Donne’s famed, ‘No Man Is An Island’ is applicable with regard to those realities which are agreed across cultures and religions, and on a looser level between cultures and faiths, but I would suggest, as earlier, that, ‘Each Man Is An Island’ is more appropriate when discussing the only pursuit of reality which we can know as real, our own.  This would be the case even if we were part of somebody else’s dream or a huge game simulation.

To move on then to one’s own, by definition subjective, search for reality, taking into account my cultural and religious conditioning, life experience of different sorts and age (3 days short of 67 d.v. at the time of writing) I would like to consider the multiple realities e.g. those influenced by history, theology, philosophy, cultural, semantics, experiential, travel, scientific, conspiracies and so forth existing in one being; for example me, the only one I can ‘logically’ know exists, though the logic in this case is a little like the logical straightjackets one wears when accepting the ‘logic’ of Zeno’s Paradoxes.

Imagine if you will a giant railway lay out owned by a proud child.  (For the purposes of whimsy one could call this child God.)  The various and multiple tracks of each strand of ones’ realities commence from the engine sheds, separate but running parallel.  Soon they will part, running through different countryside, experiencing different weather, visiting a variety of destinations, returning from time to time to run parallel and here and there cross over each other, touching briefly, here reliant on points set by another force, there running into sidings, truncated, left behind as others continue. 

At last they come together at the terminus, all the tracks, once more together, the final reality that one takes through death and into that which comes after.  That’s me; that’s you; one way or another that’s pretty much everybody.  The difference lies in where the tracks visited between leaving the engine sheds and arriving at the terminus and whether the intelligences running along the tracks noticed, and thought about what they were seeing and experiencing in a critical/analytical manner, or not.

Consider now a possible unknown known which lies within each of us, the fact that as the cliché goes, we are of star-stuff made.  That means that every particle in our body – the trillions of atoms – all came from the Big Bang.  Now consider, each atom has had time to be something else.  So, we have been the tree, the mountain etc.  Now consider Quantum Theory. Some particles have a twin with which they are entangled. Allan Steinhardt, PhD, Author "Radar in the Quantum Limit", and formerly DARPA's Chief Scientist, states that ‘in nature many, perhaps most subatomic particles are quantum entangled within an atom. The Pauli exclusion guarantees this for electron paired shell particles, so unless we have an ionized particle with a free electron the electrons will be entangled, same for protons, and neutrons.’

It’s called ‘entanglement’ because they resonate, no matter how far apart they are, including on opposite sides of the Universe.  So, not only have we been everything, but it may be possible that we are part of everything, now, or at least trillions of other things.  Do our cells ‘know’ at a particle level that they were other things and are other things? One could suggest, in that case, that reality is that we are part of everything, always have been, always will be and that the next phase in our ‘knowing’ reality is understanding what at least some of that means.  This ‘truth’ is one I find acceptable.

Summarising briefly, therefore, we can accept at this point that reality is something we can never grasp, that different factors can influence individual realities; that people share much in common in their beliefs regarding what is real, and some people are nearer the fire, some further away, for a variety of reasons.  Personally, having got to that point in my life (retired) when I can be more capricious in my exploration of reality I find myself feeling a sense of duty to do so.

Something of this can be expressed in a desire to explore the concept that we may know things which we don’t know we know.  Obviously we have a subconscious.  Quantum theory.  All star stuff.  Some of our atoms must be resonating with other atoms elsewhere in the universe.  Do our atoms ‘remember’ being a tree, a star, a pile of excrement, an alien super-being?  And are our minds already quantum computers?  I will return to this latter point.

Before going any further, perhaps it would be wise to recap in more detail where I am and how I got here.  I started on safe ground with dear old Descartes and ‘Cogito ergo sum’ and then proceeded from there.   Of course, my preconditioning of the Ancient Greek philosophers through to the Germans, Brits and on to more modern philosophy carried me a long way, but partly on territory already explored  - just formalising it in my head, sequencing it and tying things together.  

I’ve wandered down all sorts of avenues spiritual; oddly I have not discussed reincarnation – I’m convinced but know that there’s also ‘something’ in between lives.  I will perhaps look at this further later – and more recently got to grips with mutli-dimensional thinking, leaping from good old Einstein to string theory and thence into the quantum world.  This latter has been, and is, a step up, nay, an escalator taking me from the old reality which I used to live within.

So, going forward, quantum superpositioning takes one to a new level of thinking and for me, quantum entanglement has the most extraordinary implications (as has quantum tunnelling which allows information from one entangled particle to ‘tunnel’ into another dimension and come out again and give the information to the entangled partner, even if it is light years away, instantly, so faster than the speed of light, meaning Einstein was wrong) though I think it possible that Lanza’s ‘Biocentrism’ is a leap too far … but worry that it might not be!  I need to understand him more fully and have ordered his seminal book for my upcoming birthday.  As I understand him at present, in some ways his concept relates to the simulation idea, but in his case we are making the simulation from raw data that is not made into any form unless our minds actively make it so.  It’s like it’s all a dream, but our dream dreams and forms reality.

I return to the idea that quantum entangled particles within, say, our mind, need not be entangled with another particle in our mind but could be entangled with a particle in the mind of an alien being on a planet in Alpha Centauri.  While this is unlikely in the extreme, so was the idea of quantum entanglement until somebody came up with it – maybe forming a simulation to suit their search! 

One needs to consider, too, that every particle in our body was created (if you’re not going to run with Lanza’s Biocentrism, and I’m not, not yet, anyway) when the Big Bang took place, and therefore in the 13.7 billion years since then has been part of a trillion different things, from rocks, to stars, to birds, to piles of crap etc.  (I really love the late and much missed Carl Sagan’s idea that we are all, ‘of star stuff’ made.) 

Now, to explore further possible realities, quantum entangled particles, not matter how far apart (either side of the universe, it has been agreed) are constantly in contact, so, as said previously, what you do to one influences the other, immediately, in terms of (opposite) spin.  Now, what if these entangled particles and, indeed, all particles that make up you or me, the ones that have all been a trillion things before, the ones in mothers and their children / grandchildren, those in twins, not only have intimate and immediate points of contact with others, all over the universe, possibly also in the past and future, possibly, too,  through the multidimensional universe necessitated by string theory and that we believe exist otherwise dark matter wouldn’t be powerful enough to do its job, but that we don’t understand, and not only can you change a quantum particle’s behaviours merely by observing it – and therefore do the same to an entangled absent, unobserved particle – (you can actually also influence how they behave in the past) but also actually mean we are, intellectually, and I suppose in some ways, physically, part of a huge, interconnected gestalt, though each gestalt an individual one?  Ah, what then?  

We may reincarnate at the same time as being what we are now, were and will be.  Lanza posits a universe of chaotic data that is everything about everything and our consciousness, our act of observation and intellectual manipulation actually form the universe, just as on a quantum level a particle doesn’t act as a wave until it is observed / measured.  If we accept his view, there was, therefore, no Big Bang, only consciousness manipulating data.   We can then be in a universe with no past or future but an endless series of self-created ‘nows’.

   

Now, I don’t go with him that way, but am intellectually seduced by the idea (at the moment considered impossible … probably!) that the particles which make up us as people are resonating with particles all over the show, and though singly as far as we can see don’t carry meaningful information, may do en masse, illustrated perhaps by the fact that a twin can feel at exactly the same time the pain of a burst appendix of their twin who is miles away and actually having the burst appendix.  I think that on a quantum level there is some form of entanglement at work – or similar … probably … and I think it’s an example of what we all have.

As a side issue, let us consider, too, the world of dreams.  Are they, as is generally accepted, ways our mind makes sense of the day or are some, at least, those most extraordinarily real ones, times when one is visiting / entangled / seeing through the glass more clearly into an alternate universe?  And what of all those dreams where we can fly?  Are they some form of cellular/quantum memory or are they shadows of what we could do, if we but knew reality better?  And the visits made using hallucinogenics, might they be real, touching a wider perception of our reality, or indeed another dimension entirely?

 

To add another layer to a developing view of reality, if we accept the concept of reincarnation, which as stated earlier, I do  (the compelling evidence is vast, but for a subject primer see the work on near death studies and research on reincarnation evidence from children, of Ian Stevenson, Psychiatrist, director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.) then perhaps each rebirth is a further chance to understand reality. 

Now, obviously this is speculation on my part – isn’t it all! - but it could be the case that each time we return, we do so to a world where one recognises more dimensions.  Let us say, metaphorically, that we start out as an amoeba.  The world lacks dimensions other than forward and back.  Next we may be a bird, with forward, back, up and down.  As a human there are an agreed 3 perceived dimensions of length, width, height, and as thinking becomes more sophisticated we add to those, and with time, play with the idea of another spatial dimension thus allowing the tesseract. 

Continuing this thread, we know that at present with string theory et al, more dimensions are posited.  If they exist, it is possible we will then go through a series of incarnations climbing the intellectual ladder that they offer on the route way to reality until, perhaps, one has it all cracked away, at which point one qualifies as a ‘God’ or becomes part of that mystery in some unknowable way.

I realise at this point I have done nothing to explain the consciousness element of reality.  Indeed, if consciousness means being awake, I have perhaps done no more than discuss a dream.  We could, of course, now explore ‘awake’ and ‘dream’ for meaning but I won’t, here at least.  What must be said, however, is that I have gone no further than proving my own existence, to me.  All the rest of you, the world, everything, could be part of my dream.

Actually, in some way, since I have only proved that I exist, and that reality is my (subjective) reality; there could be nothing else.  I could be the sole inhabitant of a Robert Lanza like Biocentric universe, manipulating raw data to create a world for myself to live in and deluding myself as to its nature.  If that’s the case, I guess that would make me God, and if that’s the case, though I say it myself, I’m really impressed with the amount of detail I’ve managed to create!  To continue down that road, however, leads to madness! 

So, I need to include in this study of reality, proofs of the existence of others and an understanding of consciousness, in that order of priority.  Consciousness is an interesting biological puzzle, but I know it’s real, at least for me.  I need to find out if it is real for you, after creating a you for it to be real for. 

An interesting, related point is the mind as a quantum biological mechanism. In a study published in 2015, physicist Matthew Fisher of the University of California at Santa Barbara argued that the brain might contain molecules capable of sustaining more robust quantum superpositions.  Most people think he’s wrong, and especially so about the ability for the brain to have entangled particles which do not decohere within nanoseconds due to the wet and far from interference free environment they are in.  He thinks that the nuclei of phosphorus atoms may have the ability to not decohere, and phosphorous is everywhere in living cells.

He states that if the phosphorus atoms are incorporated into larger objects called "Posner molecules" - these are clusters of six phosphate ions, combined with nine calcium ions - that in such a situation once inside, the Posner molecules they could trigger the firing of a signal to another neuron, by falling apart and releasing their calcium ions.  Because of entanglement in Posner molecules, two such signals might thus in turn become entangled: a kind of quantum superposition of a "thought", you might say. "If quantum processing with nuclear spins is in fact present in the brain, it would be an extremely common occurrence, happening pretty much all the time," Fisher says. 

So, even if my mind is the only one I can prove exists, it is possibly an even more extraordinary piece of kit than we thought, and assuming that quantum entangled rudimentary qbits can exist in the brain, the brain is therefore capable of quantum computing.  To put that in perspective it is thought possible that with 150 fully entangled qubits in a computer it would be possible to store as many different numbers as there are atoms in the universe.  The problem is that even in super cooled environments they maintain stability/coherence for mere nanoseconds.  The Chinese suggest they have already achieved something more stable with 10 qbits.  All that aside, if the brain does manage this, what does it mean about what we don’t know that we know?

I think that reading through the above, the sheer complexity of the universe, even as we know it now, is a ‘true’ logical argument against my mind being the only one there is.  The complexity of it all satisfies me as sufficient evidence for the existence of minds other than mine, so I accept that as a ‘given’.  Quite simply put, if it had all been down to me it would have been a whole lot simpler and would have included more chip butties with salad cream.  I do not accept, however, that anything else can be objectively agreed, other than through descriptions that give us – we, the minds – convenient rough guide labels which enable us to communicate with each other and our intellects to have the scaffolding upon which to build other developmental concepts.  We remain, therefore, with acceptance merely of mind, but now we have company!

An interesting little theory of mind from Dr Dirk Meijer, a prof at Groningen Uni (A Uni I rate, partly because it’s where I started a most acceptable and stimulating MOOC on ‘Religion and Conflict’ which I take up again next month, and more objectively perhaps, it does well in the World Rankings) takes account that our brain and mind could be different things, though related, possibly through entanglement or the ability for particles to be simultaneously waves also.  The brain, if we accept our body exists, is a machine which looks after and controls said body in all the obvious ways which require no explanation here.  The mind, however, is something altogether different.  The suggestion, which happily chimes with mine about us being connected to the whole universe in some sort of gestalt, is that the mind is a separate but attached entity which exists in another dimension and, for mathematical modelling reasons I only vaguely understand, takes the shape of a torus and acts similarly to a black hole, with interaction with the brain occurring at the event horizon.   I quite like that!  (Because it supports my prejudices.)

We can look now at purpose a little more.  I have stated already my belief that the purpose is to move nearer to the fire of truth / reality.  I believe, partly due to cultural conditioning, partly through an event in my life which convinced me, that there is a loving super-being who / which has an overview of the whole kit and caboodle and will see us right in the final analysis.  I don’t think he/she/it intervenes much in the general lives of individuals, except in extremis, but am certain as to the presence of that ‘Mystery’ and its most certain love.  Otherwise I haven’t the foggiest as to what it’s up to or its plans.  It would be a curious conceit to believe with my intellect and experience that I would have, and I’ve always thought it odd that religions appear to believe they have got him – it seems to always be a him – sussed.

So, accepting that I’m fortunate enough to be sure there’s a back stop and ‘higher’ and ongoing meaning to my life and death, and accepting that I will reincarnate but in between carnations (not the flowers!) I don’t know what happens, accepting, in essence, my ignorance and that one purpose is to whittle away at it, and finally, accepting that there are other people here abouts, I need to consider my purpose, though possibly more limited, on this world stage.  Now, on the basis that whatever is going on there is a Mysterious love behind it, it is my view that our purpose is to spread the love!  The love I refer to here is wrapped around empathy (and maybe entanglement).  I think we have a ‘duty’, perhaps, as part of our pursuit of enlightenment to make the world a better place for all creatures great and small upon it. 

I am not a Jane and do draw the line somewhat arbitrarily with regard to which of those creatures comes under my umbrella of consideration.   As an example, initially I stopped eat anything I would cuddle if young, so that included all mammals – but not Mr Gove, which made it somewhat illogical.  I have now included all birds and reptiles and would like to, soon, include fish.  I cannot envisage a time when this respect for ‘sentience’ and the right to life will include insects, probably, in truth, because it’s too complicated. 

In my life I have tried to have a ball, and so far, so good, but have also tried to serve.  I was going to be a priest but ended up a teacher and fairly swiftly thereafter a senior ‘leader and then head.  Somehow a life of service should – the wretched achievement ethic carries with it an implied need to not enjoy it – include hardship.  I loved my work, however, so much so that in retrospect it meant I left various relationships and marriages because I wouldn’t change from thinking Monday was the best day of the week and acting accordingly.  My present marriage has lasted over 20 years partly because Alison let me be a headmaster first and husband and father second, whilst I spent much of my time living away from home.  I am now able to appreciate that very much and also recognise I could have been a better husband and father and therefore accept the love of my wife and children with a fair degree of humility.  It was as it was, however.

My last 10 years working as a head in failing schools, sometimes more than one at a time, though it quite literally nearly killed me made my ‘service’ ever more purposeful – much more so.  Now I try to serve through my writing, though mostly fiction.  I recognise, also, somewhat reluctantly, which is illogical and probably covers a fear of failure, that if I don’t make an effort to get it published that this makes my efforts to serve null and void and the last 5 years just a period of self-indulgent minor decadence whilst also continuing to have a ball. 

Service is an odd word, carrying all sorts of implied somewhat lofty tendrils of a Victorian morality.  Service can be a mother bringing up her children, or, of course, the 2 parents doing so.  It can be building cars or houses the best way one can, giving joy to many.  One can serve in myriad ways.  Possibly the thing that makes it ‘service’ as opposed to a job or a necessity is the motivation behind doing whatever it is, and the doing of it to the best of ones’ ability.  In essence, the essential motivation within a purposeful life, on the practical side of things, is to do whatever one can to make the world a better place in whatever circumstances one finds oneself in.

Inevitably the good old achievement ethic can sit on ones chest like a sanctimonious toad and scream for more service, more, ever more, because though there is much that is wonderful on Earth there is much pain and suffering also; much misery and despair, and ones’ work is never done until all of that dark is lifted and replaced by light.  I am not a wealthy man but I live well and could give more than I do of my money to make the lives of others better.  So, somewhat annoyingly, the toad is, of course, right.

I could be out now feeding the homeless.  I could be doing all sorts of things to help to alleviate the sufferings of humanity or beasties but what I am doing is exploring my inner landscapes for meaning.  Later today, as I write this, I will give time, which is inconvenient for me, to help somebody I know.  I quite often do that for people – Alison even thinks I’m a ‘soft touch -, but it is partly not because I’m trying to make the world a better place, though I am, and feel that one should do the ‘right thing’ when possible, and with no thought of reward, but rather, I do it for the fact that it makes me feel good, not smug good, but ‘right’ good.  It’s the same, in some ways, with the beasties which share my life, the 3 dogs and 6 cats.  They cost me, sometimes lots, and they can be inconvenient, but they have a very good life and, mostly they bring me great joy and amusement.  My service to them and to others is not solely altruism by any means.

To come to some conclusion, therefore, the exploration of the ‘mundanity’ that is physical life, life, then, is for learning and for serving.   It seems dull when looked at in those terms, however, and it is far from just that.  There is much to be said in agreement of Keats’s observation, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’  The pursuit of awe and wonder seems to be part of the human condition.  Love, too, is something which transcends the purely physical.  In any understanding of reality one has to accept that the unknown unknowns must always outweigh the known knowns and known unknowns.  This acceptance does not mean that one should stop chipping away at ignorance, quite the contrary.  One should go at it hammer and tongs, for it is central, in my belief at least, to our reason for being and for living these incarnations, that and doing our best to ‘build heaven on Earth’ for all those creatures which on Earth do dwell. 

Acceptance, too, is helpful (and comforting) but not required, in knowing - not ‘just’ ‘believing’ -  that there is a plan, and that something Mysterious but a being of ineffable love is at the centre of that plan.  It’s fine and dandy to try to understand that Mystery if one is so driven, as I have been in the past, but to do so, in my view now, is a form of conceit and will not lead one closer to the fire of truth, for that Mystery and Love is far too complex, or large, all of creation large, and we are as but amoebas relative to humanity in our ability to comprehend, and efforts to do so can lead to unhappiness or arrogance, or both, and blight the true meaning of reality as we, in all our smallness, may understand it.

Finally, of course, and certainly solely subjectively, there is my age.  I am about to be 67 d.v.  That’s only 3 years away from 70.  I can’t fudge it intellectually like I could when I got to sixty, the new fifty and all that rubbish.   At first the realisation that I was an old man was rather difficult for me to get my head round.  I’ve done so, however, and recognise how lucky I am, the many advantages of being one, the main one being I’m not dead, as I’m not quite ready for the next adventure yet and still have things to do.  I also realised that I can be an old man in my own way.  There are no rules that say I should sit in the corner and wait for death.  It is not the fact that my mind has turned to mush.  The truth is that being old is in many ways incredibly liberating.

People seem to think that being young is smart and being old is somewhat pitiful.  I have held that view myself.  They patronise, essentially, by saying things like, “How are you today young man?” and when they talk about old people driving slowly suddenly stop and say, “That’s not including you Ches.  You’re not old.”  It’s almost as though old is a euphemism for some kind of disease. 

The smart and successful winners in life are the ones who have managed to get old. (and are happy)  The case for younger people is yet to be proven.  Sure, there are some down sides to getting old, it’s true.  One is that one knows that death is nearer than one thinks it is when one is young, so there’s less time to get things done and procrastination is less of a sensible option.  In my case, also, my body is a bit of a wreck, much of that being down to me.  Health, generally, can become more of an issue, and if one forgets things one wonders if it is an early sign of dementia.

As with any age, life is what you make of it. With modern medication there is much less negativity in older life and one can continue pretty much as normal but with all the advantages that accrue from many years of experience helping one to find the easy way to do things, the best way to enjoy things, the most effective way to avoid pitfalls, the gentlest way to say no, the smoothest way to get your own way and so forth.  Also, though I loved my job, the new reality of retirement, despite the less certain quantity of time ahead, one has, in contradiction, all the time in the world.  One has time to read, to study and to think in ways that just weren’t there when one worked and had the responsibility of family and so forth.  Now I’m paid admittedly less than a third of what I was but it is still quite a bit more than the average wage in the UK or France, I have no mortgage and seem to be jogging along perfectly happily.  Getting paid for doing nothing is also rather pleasant!

With regard to age, yep, I’d prefer it if my body wasn’t a bit of a wreck but I could deal with some of that myself if I ate less and exercised more.  Other than that, unlike what people who call me, ‘Young man’ think, there’s absolutely no way I’d like to be younger and no way I envy them their youth, indeed I sometimes pity them as I see lack of experience meaning they screw up in various ways.  Also, as one’s sex drive drops a bit, one is less likely to make the old blunders.  I always liked when George Melly misquoted Sophocles (but managed to carry the message very effectively) who, on being asked if he was upset at losing his sexual appetite, replied: ‘Upset, certainly not. It’s like being unchained from a lunatic.’  Mine has not gone but it has diminished and though I rather enjoyed the lunatic leading me, there’s no doubt it got me into a great deal of trouble from time to time.  Now I have more choice in the matter and can choose to follow my mind and not my willy if I so wish!

Life, in truth, is richer now than it has ever been and, there’s maybe a conceit involved here, I am enjoying having time to explore the world while staying here and also exploring my inner landscapes.  I’ve jogged around the world a fair bit, lived in interesting places, and now I’m happy where I am.  Through the net the world is at my fingertips.  I guess the truth with regard to accepting the reality of old age is rather Lanzaesque in that one’s world is whatever one decides to make it.  Yep, I know there’s more chance of that peace and joy being disturbed by a cancer or dementia diagnosis but I’ll have to deal with that then, not now.  Now I have learned what a joyous gift the present is and I set the alarm each day for 7.00 to ensure that I make the most of the fantastic gift that is old age.

That’ll do for now.  Telepathy, intuition, instinct, telekinesis, teleportation, poltergeists and ghosts, spontaneous combustion, alien encounters, prophecy and lots of other wonders which are woven into the tapestry which is reality, and may be more pertinent and useful in moving one closer to the fire of truth, will have to wait, but not for too long, for, at least this time around, further time is not guaranteed.

Carpe diem.