The Vision

We live not in a post-Modern world, but a post-civilized world: a global community. Civilization was based on agricultural societies and the dominance and patriarchal order they required. That time is over. 

Since the 18th century, technological and scientific advances have consistently undermined the idea that anything exists besides fundamental particles and fundamental physical forces.⁽¹⁾ But there are other ways of perceiving the universe. For example, we can begin with consciousness, rather than with matter. Some philosophers maintain that even fundamental particles have some form of consciousness: 

"According to the definition of consciousness that is dominant in contemporary analytic philosophy, something is conscious just in case there is something that it’s like to be it; that is to say, if it has some kind of experience, no matter how basic…. If the notion of “having experience” is flexible enough, then the view that an electron has experience—of some extremely basic kind—would seem to be coherent."⁽²⁾

Further, there are levels of consciousness. Here, we’ll limit the definition of consciousness to “self-consciousness”:

Self-consciousness. A third and yet more demanding sense [of consciousness] might define conscious creatures as those that are not only aware, but also aware that they are aware.⁽³⁾

For convenience’s sake, let’s call everything that falls short of self-consciousness, down to the “extremely basic” experience of an electron ‘protoconsciousness.’

Further, there are levels of self-consciousness. For example, if one identifies as consciousness, the definition of ‘self’ is different than if we identify as the organism.

thezone.earth is based on the view that consciousness is the basic reality. The physical world was constructed from that of which proto-consciousness was aware. From the humble electron, which was aware of little, quite complex consciousness has eventuated. Actually, it can be reasonably maintained that consciousness constructed the humble electron. 

From this, some implications follow. Together, they are

• Consciousness comes first.
• The universe is one and many.
• There is no death.
• There is a purpose.

It is difficult for humans to get beyond assuming that reality is more or less the way human senses perceive it. This “commonsense realism” is the greatest barrier to an accurate perspective of existence. While humans currently identify as the organism, it seems absurd to exclude all that has contributed to the organism from our full identity. For example, the elements of which the organism is composed, its genetic lineage, and the experiential-cultural contributors to its perception. The idea of the organism as a freestanding unit separate from these things makes sense for some limited purposes – such as examining the activities of the individual organism. But it makes no sense if we are interested in understanding the nature of the individual organism. In fact, the individual organism is an artificial abstraction, from which the organism is in fact always inseparable. We will not make that error here.

It is maintained here that it is far more accurate to identify as consciousness than as a heap of fundamental particles that somehow went from dead, nonsentient physical objects to conscious beings. We will explore consciousness itself, free of concepts and words, unmediated, and free of filters between experience and explanations of experience.

There are two very practical reasons for this. First, only by tuning in to the ‘still, small voice’ without translating it into symbols, words, and concepts, can we have an accurate sense of who we are and what the universe is. Humans are extremely immature beings, limiting their identity to the organism, and floating in a sea of emotions, motivations, and other internal experiences of which we are not even aware. This unawareness is no longer acceptable. The other practical reason for focusing on consciousness from within is that the power humans have developed in the past two and a half centuries – let’s say, since the steam engine was perfected in the late 1700s – is so great that if we continue identifying as separate autonomous organisms, the gap between reality and our model of reality is so great that it threatens the viability of life on this planet.

After all, the very word “ecology” was coined only in the mid-nineteenth century. Human activity was so limited until then that it wasn’t necessary to be concerned with our interrelatedness with the entire system. But in the twenty-first century, if we continue to ignore that interrelatedness, we will create destruction that will worsen in proportion as our power and influence on the physical world increases.

No doubt, there is much in this vision and its presentation that will be inaccurate. But it can’t be more inaccurate than physicalist/materialist monism.

To be continued

Addendum
It’s not easy for most of us to get close enough to the joy and wonder of existing in the zone to have any idea what we’re missing. It truly is the still small voice that is only heard when the mind is sufficiently quiet. There are many loud demands, pleasures, pains, desires, and fears to occupy us. We can spend our entire lives with these, and never contact the zone. Matter, in itself, drowns out the world within. 

The external senses developed for the survival of the organism, with no thought of the nature of reality. This is the root of illusion. Let us begin with direct, unfiltered perception, returning to the world of messages. 

The organism is a tool that developed through the perception of differences in the universe. The organism is not the starting point. It’s not a very accurate perspective from which to view reality. Matter and the physical world are constructs from awareness. These constructs have come to appear undeniably real and basic. But they are merely ways of perceiving and working with the distinctions that dim, faint consciousness discerned, and that have evolved over billions of Earth years.  

We will place attention on the primary perceptions that create senses. It’s the vibes we seek. Everything is communicating. This communication created the “material world” we are seeking. 

Imagine a world of perceptions without the labels – words and concepts. All separations are abstractions – that is, somewhat arbitrary distinctions. These are not the necessary or the only distinctions that exist – they are the ones the organism (aka unit of perception) is capable of discerning. 

For example, we are focusing on the desires and fears, rather than the objects of desires and fears. In this way, we perceive we are not the body, and that when the body ceases to function, it is only the organism and its particular consciousness that ceases to exist. That which creates the organism – awareness – does not cease. Human consciousness is relatively sophisticated, but it is not the only consciousness.  

Let’s say consciousness is awareness. In this way, an electron is aware of a proton and of another electron. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be able to react to them. Let’s call such awareness proto-consciousness. It operates more or less mechanically, without being aware of its perceptions and response. 

This simple reflex-awareness can become more sensitive and more multifarious in its responses “instinctually” – operating via response to its context without forethought, without conscious choice – blindly following an inner urge to persist, an urge which it obeys as it obeys gravity. Nature provides the urges; the unit has no choice but to follow.

At some point, the unit becomes aware of its separation from its context; it knows itself to be responding, to have options. Aware of its own impermanence. It identifies as the unit, the organism, and perceives a fundamental difference between the organism and everything, not the organism. It no longer recognizes its inseparable connection with its context but has become alienated from it. Formerly, it was its context unproblematically. Now it has realized a distinction but assumes that this distinction is complete and absolute. 

This is immature consciousness. Consciousness comes forth, like the flower on a plant, when the unit perceives both its inescapable bond with its context (genetic, material, cultural, etc.) and its individuality as a sort of facet of the context. 

This consciousness has been gestating on Earth for perhaps two hundred human generations, gradually becoming clearer. With the development of significant material power – consciousness of separation from its context, yet unaware of its simultaneous embeddedness in its context – consciousness has become ripe, ready to be born as the default mental mode of humans.⁽⁴⁾

⁽¹⁾ E.g., CERN, 2023, The Standard Model. “The theories and discoveries of thousands of physicists since the 1930s have resulted in a remarkable insight into the fundamental structure of matter: everything in the universe is found to be made from a few basic building blocks called fundamental particles, governed by four fundamental forces.” <https://home.cern/science/physics/standard-model> My emphasis. Accessed 8/11/2024.

⁽²⁾ Philip Goff, William Seager, and Sean Allen-Hermanson, "Panpsychism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/panpsychism/, p. 12.

⁽³⁾ Robert Van Gulick, "Consciousness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/consciousness/, p. 8.

⁽⁴⁾ RHT, “The vision”, thezone.earth, 8/28/2024

Our generation inhabits a different world from that in which our grand-parents were born and raised, at the beginning of the 20th century. Now we live in a global sci-tech community in which it is no longer necessary for ninety percent of the population to sacrifice their full development in order to produce enough to survive.  The basic split, however, that between rural and urban society, still holds. That occurred around WWI. In the 1920 census for the first time there were more people classified as living in urban areas in the US, as opposed to rural areas. This happened in France at the same time, and a generation earlier in Britain and Germany. This was the big change, ending at least 6,000 years of agricultural-based societies, otherwise known as civilization, based on class domination: nobles, army, and peasants.  We at last have the ability to produce the necessary goods of life in quantities adequate for all humans to develop as complete, mature human beings. We have ended, as John Maynard Keynes observed a hundred years ago, humanity’s eternal problem: scarcity. At least potentially. We lack distributive justice. And we will have that or live enslaved. A change of worldview is necessary, because, as odd as it may sound, a worldview is behind the existential threats to a sustainable, livable planet. That is, the Modern worldview, stating that only matter and physical forces exist. This belief is likely to lead to nihilistic implications in which exploitation is the natural result. If everything is just stuff, what is the reason not to use it any way we want? And now a new factor has entered the picture: the entire system, unstable from its beginnings in revolutionary wars and the ending of the traditional world, is in danger of collapsing. Worse still, it has long been rotten and the recent economic and populist stresses assure that the majority of the world’s people (and living beings) will not lament its passing. However, this raises a bit of a challenge for those Earthlings who would like to survive and live in a relatively stable, sustainable world. That is the game. Not all are interested in playing! At mydelululife, and for the Companions, the game is to see that the dominating scientific-materialist worldview is replaced by a more accurate holistic, ‘consciousness precedes matter’ worldview. The Companions in Constructing a Life, and in the forthcoming My Delulu Life and The Land Beyond Thought are involved with attuning humans more closely to the vibrations of the cosmos, which is ruled by – which is – consciousness that creates worlds as a way to distinguish the differences it notices. But to switch from scientific materialism – which is commonsense realism with powerful tools – to a holist perception has never been done. Maybe a few ‘enlightened beings’ have done so. But they are certainly rarities. We could say they are forerunners of what all of us will perceive in the course of healthy human development. So this little delulu is meant to form a bridge from commonsense realism to a holistic, consciousness-comes-first perspective.  We will have to be ‘bi-worldview’ for a while. I can’t see abandoning the material model any time soon, or even demoting it to a subordinate position. Commonsense realism is in a position analogous to Newtonian physics, which still is valid for technical material problems, although it does not account for all of reality. Parts of reality that are becoming more important every day.  Another bloguette: in a way the blogue has become my life. As I’ve said, this writing project requires me to initiate some ascetic practices, which I MUST not defile. The blog will be both an outlet for exploring mental experiences, and an anchor, or a sponsor in AA terms, to keep me on the strait path. If I have to face my readers the next day – even if there aren’t any, actually – I cannot do so having violated the conditions of the blogue – and expect them (or me) to care about the ‘experiment’ any more. People have survived far more difficult things than doing without their little vices and so will I. People have followed sublime visions that brightened the darkest day and so will I. We all must pass through life one way or another.             Generations of men are like the leaves. In winter, winds blow them to earth,              but when spring comes, the budding wood grows more.              And so with men–one generation grows, another dies away.  (Iliad 6.181-5)