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We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. Anais Nin
Schelling of course did not have the benefit of this kind of information for problem definition and resolution. He did however believe that there was a deeper answer to the dualism problem via intuitive feelings than what our analytical minds told us about the reality which surrounds us. This has also been proven to be correct as well. We know from the neuroscientists work that the amount of data our senses bring tour mind is radically reduced in order for the brain to maintain our survival mechanisms. Therefore optics data is reduced as are sensations from sound and touch. Therefore our ability to experience reality outside of the dualism problem is immediately compromised. As the event progresses further our minds immediately engage our memory (experiences) and tries to classify what the level of threat is and if there is any threat at all. If we label everything after our autonomic responses from our synaptic firings to be post processing, we are actually in reality getting farther away from discerning reality. Our experiences are very limited and therefore comparing anything to our personal experiences serves only to further reduce our perception of reality.
One might conclude that dualism problem is simply a condition which can not be escaped from. The gravity of our mind is simply too great to escape from the dualism problem as a result of what the neuroscientists have mapped in terms of brain function. This may in fact be true; however, this is where Einstein's quote provides insight into potential solutions.
Religions have adopted practices and rituals which serve to reduce the autonomic response of individuals to the world in which we live. Deep prayer and meditation have been shown via fMRI and SPECT scanning to calm the Amygdala and produce increased positive mental states of mind. In this way classical religions have attempted to breach the dualism problem through a kind of lowering our flight or fight circuits sensitivity. For brief periods of time, our minds do not so closely orbit survival instincts as is typically the case with those who don't pray or meditate. Religions further preach broad acceptance of the world instead of making personal judgments of it and therefore you can see this as a kind of reduction or removal of event post processing patterning which are also somewhat automatic. Those who focus on the dogma within religion, become increasingly judgmental which serves to heighten flight or fight response and therefore those individuals get little of the benefits from deep prayer and meditation. However for those that take the experiential aspects, they are serving to somewhat reduce the dualism problem. There are in fact experiencing more of reality than most others can or do.
Schelling did not seek temporary glimpses of reality but rather a sustained life inside of a non-dualistic experience. He proposed a very different approach. Through the arts and literature he sought to suspend the post processing limitations of the mind, as the reality bits of data which the mind strips from the senses can not be brought back once discarded. He did this at the center of the group called the Romanticists, who painted, sculpted and wrote in an attempt to engage nature as directly as possible. They worked to experience reality without any editorializing. 150 years later, you can see this clearly in the work of the Impressionists, who tried to paint what that moment in nature they were experiencing actually felt like. Monet's Impression Rising Sun demonstrates this effort very clearly. In fact Monet's painting did this so well that the entire group of artists working in this manor were named after his painting. They were called Impressionists. Through the removal of post processing they were experiencing reality more fully though as you can see in Monet's painting, very differently than how we see a sunrise. The problem with this approach was exactly this; it became a very personal experience which was difficult to interrelate with other individuals slices of reality. That problem would go on to virtually kill painted art as subsequent painters devolved into what were Rohr shock types of self analytical paintings. The paintings became subject-less and therefore other than the artist people found it hard to experience that slice of reality.
Today we see what is termed as New Age spirituality on the rise and much of it simply is experiential aspects of classic religion stripped of dogma. It has been gaining in popularity for over 20 years now. I believe the reason for its rise in popularity is because individuals who dampen their judgment flight or fight circuits are on average happier individuals. They feel less threatened and therefore on a purely physical plane they have less anxiety. I think on the meta physical plane they also believe that they are experiencing a more continuous non-dualistic life experience. As I have never meditated in my life I can't make any personal statement as to the validity in their approach. Not that my dualistic based mechanisms could produce any statement which could be deemed reliable or of any value to anyone other than myself in any regard. What these people are working towards is actually quite logical in light of the scientific support via laboratory testing. Further I suspect that there is even a kind of intuitive emotional agreement from those who practice the experiential aspects of classical religion and the New Agers. Their methods are quite similar in many respects.
After having reviewed historical trajectories, philosophy, the arts, scientific advances and the like I have also come to the belief that there is a third method to completely breach the dualism problem. I am referring to a breach in both the post processing analytics as well as the discard for the information bits which the brain trashes after your eyes, nose or ears sends the data onto your brain. That being an intuitive method of experiencing life where you experience the limbic systems derived sensations. People call those feelings that the limbic system produces gut feelings. There is ample evidence to suggest that those gut feelings are not simply slices of reality but very high percentages of reality.
If you look at almost all of the significant breakthroughs in every field, and I say almost because I have not reviewed all them, you will find that an individual feels at a gut level that there is a deeper understanding in reality than those which existed in their time and or in their field. Let's look at a few quick examples. Einstein after high school did not go onto college. He had a gut feeling that there was something in the properties of light which had not been addressed by Newtonian physics. He would work in a patent office in Switzerland while he refined his thinking relative to this feeling. Those initial gut feelings would go onto to produce not only his own theories for general relativity but would launch the study of quantum physics as well. Not bad for a gut feeling. Having not attended college his theories would land him as a college professor so that he could work with specialists to further refine his thinking. The traditional route for becoming a college professor is an undergraduate college degree, then a masters and then a PhD demonstrating not only what you have learned but what your idea is which could enlarge the field you are working for PhD within. Einstein's gut feeling served to leapfrog all of that based on his neural cells firing with his limbic system.
Sigmund Freud was infatuated with biology because he had a gut feeling about basic psychological operations in the human brain. Since biology was at that time to immature a science he switched to psychology to refine his gut feeling. Fifty years later Eric Kandel upon attaining his doctorate in psychology wanted to find Freud's ID in the brain. He was told that there was not evidence yet and therefore he dove into laboratory research to refine his gut feeling. He produced the mapping of the human brain which has been instrumental for the process of reverse engineering the brain as well as all of the adjacent build out in study and knowledge which constitutes where we are today in neuroscience. For this he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.
What these three people show us that they had a limbic system driven understanding in fundamental realities. The deeper insights these individuals gave us could never have been realized had they simply discarded their gut feelings and said I can't translate this feeling into logical and valid scientific expressions at this moment. But by not discarding them eventually were able to turn their gut feeling into scientific realities which have been subsequently validated over and over again.
These examples are breaches of dualism which originated in their limbic systems. I suggest that while in the limbic system the post processing and the data stripping mental process had also not yet occurred. What is common to all three of these individuals was first in their emotional embrace for a specific subject. Second they all studied, either formally or informally, the data available. I have a hunch that what they subsequently produced in breakthrough understanding was as a result of the interplay between their intuitive gut feelings and the information which was available from their fields. It was from this friction where they gut feeling said “no no, this is not quite correct.” They then went and invested themselves in order articulate what was the correction. This is significant from the perspective that there may likely be within the limbic system a moment where clearly there is a non-dual view of the world. A moment of the utmost clarity in reality. This is the 3rd approach which I referenced above as a complete escape from the gravity of our dualistic minds. So far very few have been able to experience such a strong gut feeling to be able to produce the escape velocities required to spring clear from our dualistic trap. But those few examples are enough to show us that this is not only possible but probable and very likely in the future repeatable.
Today I can't say how. I will have to spend a great deal of time thinking through the problem to define it further. Perhaps it may come from the reverse engineering efforts for the human brain. Perhaps they can show in the future that somewhere in the limbic system all of this information comes together in a tiny fraction of moment. Who knows, maybe the brain compacts all of that reality via some algorithm in order to produce the feeling. When the event is recalled the compacted data produces that identical gut feeling which the experienced in the very first moment. That tiny moment produces vistas of reality which are so large that they escape the data stripping and post processing to become literally driving forces which propel individuals throughout their entire lives. This is where Schelling and Kandel, to name but a few, have shown us that incredible tree which Einstein references as the root of all subjects. This is what you could term my philosophy, which I think we all share in various forms.
I invite you to review the standard model for human history which I am working on as well as my paintings where I am applying my limbic system resources towards my philosophy. I include the links below.
Philosophy is the act in taking the broader view of the very conceptions as to who we are and what it really means to be a human being. In my work in the I/T services industry, I recognized over ten years ago that I wasn't just imaging that life was speeding up. I was experiencing the effects of that new technology, the Internet, and the impact it was having on my work life in designing new services to support businesses which were consuming that technology. As a result of the impact in what they then were calling Internet speed, I began to search for the answer in other ages as to what the impacts had been and how they had handled the core technologies which had changed their world. Working at the epicenter for the computing technologies which are still powering this age we are living in, I felt finding that answer would help me with my work. I did find a macroeconomic answer which described and helped me solve my problems at work but then that search became something much more.
The research I had done lead me to believe that if the industrial automation cycles for new technologies were in fact cycling, that this fundamental reality must apply to all of human history. I proceeded to research that theory and subsequently constructed a model which reflects the fact that we are not only speeding up in terms of technology development but are in fact doing so at exponential rates. I invite you to review my think piece for a standard human history model at the link below.
My personal laboratory for the testing of intuitive limbic system derived slices of reality spanning the past four decades.
The painting galleries
For those of you who are familiar with some of the New Age theoretical models and are wondering how the human domestication cycles model integrates with Ken Wilber's (AQAL Integral), Steve McIntosh's theory and Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics Models (broadly evolutionary philosophers), please see the following presentation. Please click on the cover image below
or here to review the presentation.
You can also view the presentation either as a Power Point file or as a PDF file.
I realize there are several variations and versions of Beck's and Wilber's work floating around the web; therefore, for those who are interested how I decided on the colors and definitions I will provide a link to an overview of the Spiral Integral. You may find it at this web link.
The results from working on the standard model had some very unintended effects on me. You are invited to review the spiritual journey which I experienced as a result of the research. I had never previously considered myself to be the least bit spiritual. In fact whenever I was asked about my religion I always responded to them my religion was my work in I/T services. In order to make the writeup for the unusual journey even more interesting, I have put that writeup together using photos from the web. Here is the link to the writeup for my spiritual journey.
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Reference Books for the model:
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