Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Others

"I can't tell you what it really is, I can only tell you what it feels like."

"Everyone will not discover the same clues in his perceptions, but in our common humanity and in our shared experiences we may find hints about the meaning of life and existence."

"A person eventually learns that his or her own personal fulfillment is tied up with the fulfillment of others, and he or she comes to recognize the need to work cooperatively with others in order to build a more harmonious society."

Some time ago a few things crystallized for me in a way that I knew would only make sense to someone else who had had the same type of experience. For whatever it's worth, I'll put it out there anyway.

Objectively, I had just written a blog post. From my perspective, there was no objective evidence that anyone else had read the blog post. Subjectively though, I was awash in the psychic backlash that follows when my blog post has been/is being read. (And you wonder why I need to take a break from blogging... Or why the thought of writing a book scares the crap out of me.)

[For the skeptics - yes, I've done more comparisons than you can imagine. I compare objective evidence to subjective experience. I vary what I produce, and where, to attempt to manipulate readership and potential reactions, with the hope of becoming better at identifying the relevant 'signals' within my subjective experience. Ultimately it's all about what's going on in my head, so I'll understand if you don't find that to be appropriately 'scientific'.]

Anyway... in my subjective experience, layer upon layer of meaning for the fortune cookie is revealing itself. And I know that these were not my initial interpretations of the meaning of the fortune. (Most of them amused me nonetheless, and were valid to reasonable degree, although I admit nothing.) But what crystallized during that time what the picture of how my experience of getting that fortune was the sum of all those influences.

What further crystallized in the weeks that followed was a more-complete picture from the perspective of 'state exclusion'. [Yes, I know that term refers to something else. I'm going to use it anyway. Deal.] You may have caught hints of what I'm getting at in some of my previous posts (too many possible links to choose from at this point), but I don't think I every explicitly stated it because I don't think that I had previously seen the pervasiveness of it.

All of this began for me when I understood (from a subjective perspective) how it was possible to forcibly exclude certain outcomes from the set of all possible outcomes. The idea that a subjective experience at one point in space and time could preclude such an experience from happening at another point in space and time was reinforced to me through other experiences, though I was a little slow to make the connections. What was becoming clearer to me now was that exclusion underlies everything. I attempted to explore this idea further earlier this year, until the backlash got to be more than I could handle. (Ahem.)

If there is a fundamental substrate to everything in the universe (and I'm not willing to call that substrate God or the Omega Point), then perhaps the unity of all things might best be seen when we understand how what is 'held' in one moment of subjective experience forces other points/moments of subjective experience to take complementary states. Moving in five dimensions is about understanding option space - the set of all possible options/outcomes. You become used to thinking about what's not there, as well as what is there. Eventually you also start to ponder the question - Well, if it's not here, where is it?

Maybe it is held in the 'others'. Maybe there is no line between 'self' and 'other' because 'other' is simply what 'self' is not. The 'other' changes as the 'self' changes.

Which brings me to the point of practicality. If there is a fundamental way to be a more compassionate human being, I think it is reflected in understanding this idea.

"Master, why must they suffer so? Must they always?"
"Only until you learn what they are here to teach you."

This is the perception that drives me at the moment and about which I hope to write/explore in this blog. I hope I've done a decent job of explaining it thus far. Of course, as always, you are free to mutter 'Crazy woman!' and go back to a world not permeated with metaphysical babble about 'self' and 'other'. I'm also going to get on with the business of living and get some chores done before this weekend is totally gone. :)

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