Epistemological Questions

Foregoing implications present of course a challenge for scientists to ask, therefore, just how objective are external appearances? Are they configured—within intervals of distance and duration—only by some apriori function of the internal mind (interacting with a reflecting medium)? As an hypothesis the subjective solipsism implied by these questions can be surpassed under a New Paradigm for science. It could include some analytic tools proposed herein as preliminary opinions inviting further discussion.

A More Wondrous World

Another challenge is suggested by my impression that the surrounding Aesthetic Continuum is energetically alive—in some sense of the words "spiritual" and even "animistic"--perhaps pervaded by primeval consciousness (prevailing intelligently at-large?). It also seems suffused with the great collective mind postulated by Carl Jung as humanity's Common Unconscious. In any event its operation is downright miraculous, contrasted to ordinary expectations about perception as passive receipt of the rather lifelessly mechanical mundane.

Moreover the functions of this continuum can be characterized—for want of a better technical term—by the natural magic which scientists have, in effect, been discovering as the still enigmatic trickery of quantum physics. Consider now Jung's theory of Synchronicity: there is something magical too about common coincidence; and "super"natural patterns ironically unaccounted for by normal causation. (Jung, THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE PSYCHE ((20^th century).)

Style Note (December 31 '03): It may be noticed, incidentally, that my writing disregards the rule against passive-voice sentences. I figure it was spun out of the classically "clockwork" assumption that our "material" surroundings are downright dead. (Only we have an "active" voice.) Anyway this disregard allows a more flexibly direct approach to whatever point I am trying to make:

Thus a psychic—or any of us—might peer into the apparent vastness for connections of time and space confounding the usually linear expectations about sensory perception. (Remote-viewing is maybe merely a magical extension of the senses into surprising ranges.)

Magic Mirror

Pomme de Terre River (Polk County, MO)

The whole perceptual apparatus seems to operate with interlacing reflections. One way to visualize it is to say that our minds perceive on one side of a Magic Mirror. Everything else—within and without us (as the Beetles sang after studying Hindoo mysticism)--comprises the other side.

The latter is manifestly more plastic than our old verbal supposition allows that surroundings are impermeably fixed as solid matter and things-in-themselves (differentiated by "objective" relations of time and space).

Unified Field Found

External plasticity seems less challenging, of course, when it is remembered that classical physics has long postulated—since Democritrus—that matter consists of atomic units; the energetic turbulence of which is cancelled when the mind perceives "solid" objects (as abstractions).

One is taking no big leap in conceptualization to preliminarily suggest, therefore, that 1) the classically Cartesian/Newtonian distinction between "mind" and supposedly separate "matter" is an artificial function of words; that 2) matter can be reduced accordingly to an effect of mental processing; and that 3) simply all of this is congealed in and around us (magically) from the turbulence of spiritual energy animating a continuum—comprising an oft-sought unified field—which is primordially sourced somewhere beyond our present ken. This solution slides in a simple matter of streamlining the semantics involved.

Indian Lore And External Plasticity

Anthropologist Carlos Castaneda reported about 30 years ago (in eg. JOURNEY TO IXTLAND) some penetrating questions asked by Mexican descendants of the Toltec Indians. Suppose, notably, that all occupants have left a house. Is its interior appearance still there? (Similarly, are sounds real with no one around to hear them?)

The Indians also spoke about a collapse of the familiar world having solid surfaces. I witnessed this myself 30 years ago while at work on a painting of Lucas Valley (north of San Rafael, California. The painting is now owned by Doctors Steve and Carol Christiansen of Springfield, Missouri.)

Seawind Lyre

The painting's "hard" surfaces suddenly dissolved into a transcendental state of mind (evidently entailing expansion in the usual spectrum of visible light; which also occurred in my perception of "pictures" described previously). My brush was flowing down into—and through—a fluid medium. It drove me to an edge of madness; with fury at being tricked about the supposed solidity of matter. It seemed more like the ephemeral "maya" described by Hindoos.

This concept led them to suppose—perhaps unfortunately—that the material world is an unreal illusion. I was finally saved from that conceptual extreme—solipsism—by Abelard's intractable Ontology: the world is still really there even if it is only dreamed up in a way. It is just that its composition is more involved than previously supposed; evidently entailing active (more than passive) participation of our minds in the process: generating the visible Cosmos as a fabricated artifact of nature operating thusly through the human nervous system.