The following POSTSCRIPT to, and COMMENTARY on, ‘The WEST’s Mistaken Concept of Reality’ is reposted here starting with the POSTSCRIPT since the POSTSCRIPT summarizes the contents.of the original COMMENTARY.

The COMMENTARY explores the very different concepts of ‘REALITY’ that arise in the cultures of EAST and WEST, showing how the reality of the EAST coincides with the modern physics reality wherein ‘everything is in flux’

 

* * * POSTSCRIPT TO  … WESTERN CULTURE’S MISTAKEN CONCEPT OF ‘REALITY’ * * *

In retrospect, I think it would have added clarity to my ‘WESTERN CULTURE’S MISTAKEN CONCEPT OF ‘REALITY’, … to  have pointed out that BOTH WEST AND EAST use short-cuts or ‘reductions of the ineffable Tao to effable’ such as the double error that exploits the simplicity of the abstract concept of LOCALITY in spite of the reality of NONLOCALITY.   In other words, the problem is not PER SE, in reducing the ineffable to the effable by way of the ‘double error’, the problem is only in the WEST where, instead of using the reduction as INFERENCE of something that lies beyond the effable, the reduction to effable is employed, in the WEST, as the ‘operative reality’

This is not difficult to understand, but for a WESTERN culture conditioned intellect, it is an ‘automatic intellectual habit’ that is difficult to ‘let go of’; i.e. the ‘reality’ of our actual sensory experience is of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, a WAVEFIELD reality that is NONLOCAL, ALL-INCLUSIVE and RELATIONAL and thus INEFFABLE.   THIS IS WHAT WE DIRECTLY EXPERIENCE; I.E. INCLUSION IN THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM, … but we WESTERN CULTURE adherents have EGOs and we like to talk in PRODUCER-PRODUCT terms about ‘building houses IN THE PLEASANT VALLEY as if THIS were the REALITY, and we proceed in great detail REDUCING everything to LOCAL terms, describing WHAT WE HAVE CONSTRUCTED, and all the while, we experience, IN REAL REALITY, inclusion in a transforming RELATIONAL SPACE aka WAVEFIELD aka TAO.

How can we talk in PRODUCER-PRODUCT terms about ‘constructing a town in the valley when we dig holes all over the countryside mining it for stone and sand and gravel for construction, chopping down woodlands for lumber for construction, digging aqueducts to deliver water and to get rid of our sewage, excavating coal and mining iron ore to produce steel for our high-rise buildings, and generally PARTICIPATING with bears, birds, termites and other forms, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, sandstorms, in the dynamic of RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION …. AND THEN WE REDUCE AND CAPTURE THIS WHOLE INEFFABLE RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION THAT WE ARE INCLUDED PARTICIPANTS IN, IN TIME-ABASED ‘PRODUCER-PRODUCT TERMS’ such as “We began the construction of this town in in 1776”.   WHAT???!!! WHERE DID THE ALL-INCLUSIVE, TIMELESS TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM DISAPPEAR TO IN OUR LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR ARTICULATIONS THAT WE ARE TRYING TO PASS OFF AS ‘REALITY’?

Yes, of course, LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR have been a great invention that allows us HUMANINGS to CAPTURE in EFFABLE terms CRUDE REDUCTIONS OF THE INEFFABLE, so that we can LEARN from one another’s harmonious and dissonant relational experiences.  BUT WE MAKE A SERIOUS MISTAKE IF WE LET THIS REDUCTIONIST TOOL RUN AWAY WITH THE WORKMAN (EMERSON) AND RE-DEFINE OURSELVES IN PRODUCER-PRODUCT TERMS.

IN FACT, THIS IS WHAT DISTINGUISHES THE SPLIT INTO ‘EAST’ AND ‘WEST’;

EAST: Employs language and grammar to reduce the ineffable to effable as a TOOL OF INFERENCE  (e.g. the PRODUCER-PRODUCT abstracting tool) that constructs an IMPLICIT reality as in Bohm’s IMPLICATE ORDER and as in the modern physics ‘Surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ and as in Wittgenstein’s LADDER … where the utility of the tool is to construct EFFABLE INFERENCE which the ‘user’ can employ as a kind of INTELLECTUAL launching pad for making an INTUITIVE LEAP to the ineffable reality that lies innately beyond it. . In this case, the ‘town in the valley’ is useful intellectually imagined pseudo-reality that does not ECLIPSE the ineffable reality of inclusion in the Tao (Wave-field).

WEST: Employs language and grammar to reduce the ineffable to effable as a tool of EXPLICIT REALITY CONSTRUCTION (e.g. the PRODUCER-PRODUCT abstracting tool) where the utility of the tool is to construct EFFABLE SURROGATES which the ‘user’ can employ to INTELLECTUALLY CONSTRUCT AN EXPLICIT OPERATIVE REALITY.  This is the READ-MY-LIPS explicit “effable reality” of the WESTERN rational intellectual thinker where one comes to ‘take explicitly and for real’ producer-product reality constructions, so that we WESTERN culture adherents come to believe that the ‘town we are construction, producer-product fashion, on the hill’ is MORE REAL THAN the ‘transforming landscape’ (transforming relational continuum).

As is evident from the above, WEST is full of ego via belief in the REALITY of the producer-product abstraction which leads to artificial-but-acted-upon egotist elation (supported by WESTERN culture ego-inflating praise and adulation for ‘producer-product sorcerers of good results’ as well as artificial-but-acted-upon egotist depression (supported by WESTERN ego-deflating derision and contempt for ‘producer-product sorcerers of bad results’.

EAST, meanwhile, along with modern physics, understands the producer-product abstraction as a LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR based TOOL that, in the case of the EAST, HAS NOT RUN AWAY WITH THE WORKMAN, but is accepted as a tool of inference pointing to the INEFFABLE that lies innately beyond the effable constructions of language and grammar.

WHILE the reality-understanding of the EAST is supported by modern physics, the reality-understanding of the WEST is NOT supported by modern physics (this difference in reality-understanding is what DEFINES ‘EAST’ and ‘WEST’)

The WEST is ‘locked-in’ to its aberrance inducing belief in the LOCAL EXPLICIT PRODUCER-PRODUCT REALITY (‘double error’ based pseudo-reality) by ‘high switching costs’; i.e. by the swollen egos of those who the WEST have exalted and made guardians of the WESTERN definitions of ‘what is real’, which includes the producer-product abstraction that is the source of swollen WESTERN ego.

So, let’s be REALLY REAL, … and acknowledge that there is no such producer-product activity as ‘constructing a house on the hill’, … the only REAL REALITY is the all-including relational transformation aka ‘the Tao’ aka ‘the WAVE-FIELD’ .

However, in doing that, the WEST would become one with the EAST and the conservative – liberal split would dissolve.  That is, both ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ are based on belief in sorcery (producer-product abstraction) and since such ego-anchored polarizations preoccupy many if not most people in the WEST, they are a major distraction that is preserving the schizophrenic WESTERN culture popular ego-based belief system.

* * * END OF POSTSCRIPT * * *

 

 

ORIGINAL COMMENTARY (to which the above POSTSCRIPT has been added);

 

A brief discourse on how WESTERN CULTURE’s conceptualizing of ‘reality’ is screwing up, sharing the same perspective as BOHM et al that ‘there is no such thing as ‘TIME’ (A discourse that triggered by an exchange with a friend.) … i.e. this discussion homes in on the bogus concept of ‘TIME’ as Bohm and Nietzsche and others have pointed out, albeit without their (and others’ similar) criticism having much impact on the WEST’s confused conceptualizing of ‘reality’ which is ‘locked-in by high switching costs’.…

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The basic ‘givens’ for this discussion are;

REALITY is inclusion in the transforming relational continuum (the Tao).

REALITY is thus ineffable since it is continually in flux and we are part of this flux.

There are, meanwhile, ‘ineffability work-arounds’ that deliver reduced, but at least effable and therefore shareable portrayals of reality.  Effable-izing comes in two flavours; that of the EAST and that of the WEST

The challenge is to overcome, in effable construction, the inherent NONLOCAL nature of reality where EVERYTHING IS IN FLUX, the condition that makes reality ‘ineffable’.  In order to extract an effable reduced surrogate of reality, EAST and WEST have adapted two different effable-izing approaches.  By ‘effable-izing’, what is intended is that one employs inference based on the invented abstractions of LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES and “THEIR” MOVEMENT.  Both of these ABSTRACT PROPS that conjure up visual impressions in the mind, are unreal abstractions that are not found in the Tao (wave-field), but they do EMULATE (trigger in our mental awareness through abstraction-based intellectual re-presentations) fluid forms in the transforming relational continuum; i.e. in the reality of our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum (the Tao aka the Wavefield).

The double error whereby we REDUCE the fluid flow-forms of transformation to named-things-in-themselves (first error) using grammar to impute to them their own powers of sourcing actions and developments (second error) the abstract basis for a FIGURE and GROUND “reality” construction wherein FIGURE and GROUND are understood as separate and mutually exclusive ‘things-in-themselves’.  While the FLOW (the Tao, the wave-field) is ONE THING in which the TWO-NESS of FIGURE and GROUND is only ‘APPEARANCE’, the language and grammar based double error NOT ONLY IMPUTES ONTOLOGICAL TWO-NESS TO ‘FIGURE’ AND ‘GROUND’ (‘INHABITANT’ AND ‘HABITAT’) BUT FORCES UPON OUR INTELLECTUAL REASONING, A THIRD ONTOLOGY OF A CONTAINING FRAME THAT SERVES AS A ‘CONTAINER’ FOR THE ‘FIGURE’ AND ‘GROUND’.  One might say that the ‘double error’ gives rise to a ‘third error’, the error of inventing the abstract of a Cartesian reference frame to satisfy the psychological need for a dwelling space for FIGURE and GROUND.

That is, while the understanding of forming-in-flowing wherein FIGURE and GROUND are distinguished by ‘APPEARANCE’ is consistent with the understanding of the transforming relational continuum as WAVE-FIELD, the WEST’s abstract language and grammar based imputing of ONTOLOGICAL EXISTENCE to FIGURE and to GROUND requires us, when speaking of action and development, to SPLIT our conceptualizing of such dynamics, imputing POWERS OF SOURCING ACTION and DEVELOPMENT, to EITHER FIGURE OR GROUND.   This is the origin of the abstract concept of ‘TIME’, the invention of which is put in context by considering the two systems of logic that separate pre-modern physics logic from modern physics logic;

-1- EITHER/OR LOGIC OF THE EXCLUDED MEDIUM, applied to the movement of FIGURE and GROUND as distinguished as ontologically separate entities (this, in turn, implies a non-participating holding tank space]

-2- BOTH/AND LOGIC OF THE INCLUDED MEDIUM, applied to the movement of FIGURE and GROUND as APPEARANCE is consistent with understanding them as relational forms in the ONE WAVE-FIELD aka transforming relational continuum.

NOTA BENE: The concept of ‘TIME’ is not required in this case (-2-)   In other words, the NEED for the concept of TIME arises when our use of language and grammar imposes the abstraction of EITHER/OR LOGIC OF THE EXCLUDED MEDIUM.   The Zen FIGURE AND GROUND koan of ‘wind’ and ‘flag’ emerges here, from our applying the question DOES MOVEMENT OF THE AIR SOURCE THE FLAPPING OF THE FLAG OR DOES THE FLAPPING OF THE FLAG SOURCE MOVEMENT OF THE AIR?

What appears to be an innate ambiguity here points to the  (it is the same ambiguity that divides conservative and liberal political definition; i.e. “does one bad apple source the spoiling of the whole barrel of apples” (conservative) or “does it take a whole community to raise a [good/bad] child? (liberal)”

HOW IS THIS AMBIGUITY RESOLVED?

ANSWER: there is no such thing in our real life sensory experiencing of inclusion in the Tao aka ‘the transforming relational continuum’ as ‘sourcing’ aka ‘sorcery’, there is only relational transformation, thus the binary ambiguity that gives rise to the WEST’s conservative-liberal SPLIT never arises in REALITY, it is delusion based on the double mistake of FIRST using NAMING to psychologically IMPUTE the existence of LOCAL things-in-themselves, and SECOND, using GRAMMAR to impute the power of sourcing actions and developments to the name-instantiated LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF (the first error).

WHERE DOES ‘TIME’ COME INTO THIS?

The language and grammar separation of FIGURE AND GROUND AS ONE that only “APPEARS” as TWO as in forms-in-flow, imputes ONTOLOGICAL ‘thing-in-itselfness’ to FIGURE AND TO GROUND so that where there is relational transformation, we INSTEAD (thanks to intellectual abstraction kindled by language and grammar) assume that changes are arising EITHER from the actions of the FIGURE, OR, from the actions of the GROUND.   In other words, we ask ourselves;  Was it the ‘dune’ that sourced its own shift in form and position? …. or was it the ‘desert floor’ that sourced the undermining of the dune, inducing its shifting and changing in form and position?

What’s wrong with what’s implied, intellectually, in such talk?  I will repeat the sentence with ‘what’s wrong’ highlighted in bold italics and background colour;

Was it the ‘dune’ that sourced its own shift in form and position? …. or was it the ‘desert floor’ that sourced the undermining of the dune, inducing its shifting and changing in form and position?

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SORCERY IN A TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM!

NOTE THAT THERE WAS NO NEED FOR THE CONCEPT OF ‘TIME’ AS LONG AS WE WERE UNDERSTANDING THINGS IN TERMS OF A TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.  THE CONCEPT OF ‘TIME’ WAS ‘CALLED UP’ BY OUR INTELLECTUAL IMPOSING OF THE ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ OF LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR; I.E ‘NAMING’ TO IMPUTE THING-IN-ITSELF EXISTENCE CONFLATED WITH ‘GRAMMAR’ TO IMPUTE THE ABSTRACT POWER OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS TO THE ABSTRACT NAME-INSTANTIATED THING-IN-ITSELF.

So long as FIGURE AND GROUND WERE ONE (and only had the ‘appearance’ of two), there was no need for the concept of ACTION SEQUENCE.  This notion of SEQUENTIAL ACTION as in ONE EVENT THAT FOLLOWS ANOTHER EVENT is what DEFINES TIME.   there is no ‘sequence of actions’ in the transforming relational continuum; i.e. there is no sense of TIME in the transforming relational continuum.

“TIME” COMES INTO BEING when we split FIGURE and GROUND into TWO as if they are TWO THINGS-IN-IN-THEMSELVES , each, NOTIONALLY, with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments as in the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar pointed out by Nietzsche.

The TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM aka the Tao aka the Wave-field, has no need of the abstract, language and grammar FORCED concept of ‘time’.  The concept of ‘time’ arises from the abstract psychological, language and grammar triggered ONTOLOGICALIZATION and SPLITTING APART  of FIGURE and GROUND.

‘Duning’ is a NONLOCAL phenomena associated with the TIMELESS transforming relational continuum that is the manifesting of relational transformation wherein the abstraction of TIME does not arise.  But once we use grammar to reduce ‘duning’ by to the abstract NAME-imputed thing-in-itself concept of DUNE, we have ONTOLOGICALLY split the FIGURE out of the GROUND and given both of these two their own ONTOLOGICAL INDEPENDENCE, an error which we further conflate with GRAMMAR, by imputing to BOTH of these naming-instantiated ontological entities, THEIR OWN POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS.  Here are again at the Zen koan of wind and flag.  In this case, ‘is the desert the source of the dunes or are the dunes the source of the desert?  Which comes first, ‘chicken’ or ‘egg’?

WE DON’T NEED TO PONDER THIS QUESTION IF WE FIRST UNDERSTAND WHAT IS GOING ON HERE IN TERMS OF THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.

WHERE DID THE TALK OF ‘DUNES’ COME FROM ANYHOW?  OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE SCREAMS OUT TO US, WHILE IMMERSED IN WINDBLOWN SANDFLOW THAT IS IN THE PROCUESS OF BURYING US, THAT ‘THOSE “LOCAL” THINGS WE NAME-LABEL ‘DUNES’ OUT THERE IN FRONT OF OUR VOYEURIZING EYES are convenient talking piece referents that we can animate with grammar, THAT IN NO WAY CAPTURE OUR EXPERIENCE OF SITUATIONAL INCLUSION in the transforming relational continuum.

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CONCLUSION:  ‘TIME’ is the abstract artifact of the double error of language and grammar as used in FIGURE and GROUND discrimination where such discrimination is NOT merely in the sense of APPEARANCE, but instead based on language and grammar ‘double error’ abstraction where we use ‘naming’ to impose the abstraction of LOCAL ontological thing-in-itself ‘being’ and conflate this with the second error of grammar to impute to the naming-instantiated thing-in-itself its own notional powers of sourcing actions and developments.

ONCE we impute ONTOLOGICAL independence to FIGURE and GROUND and thus liberate them both (in our language-and-grammar stimulated psyche) to do their own thing, we get SEQUENCE since both FIGURE and GROUND are capable of ‘their own separate actions’ as in the similar case of ‘boil’ and ‘flow’, meaning that the FIGURE can source change in the GROUND and the GROUND can source change in the FIGURE.  This is where BINARY LOGIC, the EITHER/OR logic of the EXCLUDED medium comes from.  In modern physics, such logic is no longer viable and the logic instead is the BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium, … meaning that FIGURE and GROUND are distinguished as ‘separate’ ONLY BY APPEARANCE and there is no ONTOLOGICAL separation.

CONFUSING?  It should be confusing to those of us whose everyday language has built into it the EITHER/OR logic of the excluded medium with (1) its abstract name-instantiated concepts of LOCAL independently-existing things in themselves notionally with (2) their own grammar instantiated powers of sourcing actions and developments (1&2 are the ‘double error of language and grammar).

IN CONCLUSION, ‘TIME’ arises from the ‘double error’ of language and grammar wherein we split apart FIGURE and GROUND and impute to each/both of them their own ONTOLOGICAL INDEPENDENCE.  In reality understood as a transforming relational continuum where ‘one can’t step into the same river twice’, the concept of TIME is not needed; i.e. NONLOCALITY characterizes spacetime.

We intellectually ‘package this all up’, starting with the invention of the abstraction of BEING as REASON, … with TIME as part of the mutually supporting intellectual-abstraction based house of cards called REASON which has, in WESTERN culture, ‘wallpapered over’ INTUITION.  As Nietzsche points out, REASON imposes a reduction to Gods’-eye-view absoluteness on the nonlocal phenomena of our sensory experience which are in no way ‘absolute’.

And in India, as in Greece, the same mistake was made: “We must once have been at home in a higher world (instead of a very much lower one, which would have been the truth); we must have been divine, for we have REASON!” Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. “REASON” in language–oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.

The above Nietzsche quote addresses the deceptiveness of ‘reason’ in philosophy — (Proposition 5 in Chapter 5 (Reason in Philosophy) of Twilight of the Idols.  (Götzen-Dämmerung).  In German the sense of Götzen is ‘false Gods’ or ‘Idols’.  The false God of ‘reason’ remains operative in WESTERN culture, occluding ‘intuition’ that is the unredacted path to understanding reality in terms of the transforming relational continuum.

While the NONLOCALITY characterizing the transforming relational continuum renders it ineffable, LOCALIZING in space and time entails the imposing of abstract reductions that prepare the ground for effable inferences of the ineffable.  Vision and pattern recognition give us the opportunity to capture snapshots of a man stepping into a river and language and grammar let us compose stories of the life of the man and of the life of the river, as extending in TIME.  Of course, if we agree with Lao Tzu that ‘it is not the same river and not the same man’, then it makes no sense to speak of ‘the life of the man’ and/or ‘the life of the river’ and the abstract notion of the ‘passage of time’ gives way to ‘relational transformation’.

Cartoon like producer-product word-pictures such as ‘the dune is swallowing the back-pack you left sitting on the desert floor  is a kind of ‘anthropomorphism’ that sidesteps dealing with the NONLOCALITY of RESONANCE (wave-fields) aka ‘duning’.  While this reductive double-error-based language game may seem innocuous, it reaffirms in the abstracting mind the same double-error (name-instantiated thing-in-itself with grammar-instantiated powers of sourcing actions and developments) that gives rise to EGO in those understanding themselves as-human-things-in-themselves-with-their-own-powers-of-sorcery,  nation-things-in-themselves-with-their-own-powers-of-sorcery and ‘corporation-things-in-themselves-with-their-own-powers-of sorcery’, … ECLIPSING in the process, the understanding of reality in terms of the transforming relational continuum.

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