What is Being and The Elements of Being: A
Personal and Universal Account?
Anil Mitra phd, © July 1998, January
2000, revised May 14,
2003
Document status: May 14, 2003
Outdated;
maintained out of interest and as possible reference for self-analysis
Essential
content absorbed to and no further action needed for Journey in Being
|
Contents |
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....7. The ideas of a Research Enterprise…and of
Social Action |
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....8. The volume of written work…and its
burden…and a solution |
What
is Being and the Elements of Being: A Personal and Universal Account?
Being and The
Elements of Being…the
idea is…of being1: Being, the question of being -
“What are the questions, ultimate actual and potential natures of the
being of which human being is an example?”, the universe as a whole,
a unity - actual, potential, conceptual-perceptual…and…the
everyday, the details, the individual, the minutiae…and the relationships
among these…including the possibility of the constitution of the whole by
a set of elements and their relationships
Briefly, the origins
are in my own search for understanding and being: “Who and what am
I?” includes the question “What are my real possibilities?”. This leads to “What is the nature and
magnitude of All Being and what is my relationship to it?” and to
consideration of the instruments of relationship - they include mind…and
the modes of relationship - of direct action and through time. It is and has
been an adventure. I covered so much ground…but the full meanings,
origins and my motivation unfold with the “story”…and as they
unfold the result of the adventure also unfolds
The account or story is
personal - it is the story of my learning, experience, being in the
realms… I think that the personal [appropriately edited] is useful at
least in that it includes vibrant human elements and that story is vitally
interesting to me, mixed in with the inner unfolding image of my life in the
universe…and it is universal in that I attempt and have attempted - as
far as my being permits - to go beyond the [mere] personal to the realm of all
being, the realm of the universal. The universal is found [also] in the ground
of the personal2
The account is also
personal in that an original function is as a vehicle for my path or process
Both realms - the
individual or elemental and the universal realm of being as a whole - have
great beauty: the green of the forest, an expression of caring among
persons…and the realm of ultimate being resting in silence in infinity:
the womb of the existent. Here is adventure
Each realm informs,
requires the other. Everyday life is enhanced when it is in balance with the
whole - without wholes an individual is a fragment…of organs and
atoms…and…infinity does not exist without the infinitesimal?
My path is universal
not only in the extremes of the realms - at the boundaries of a continuum - but
also in the modes of the process: imagination, poetry - reason, criticism: the
learning of civilization and its cultures; of primal cultures;
learning…and being. No mode available to me…within what may be my
limits…including the nature and reality of limits…is left unconsidered
- all in sufficient balance and subservient to the final object and value. What
value: final ends or immediate particulars? That too and the meanings and
significance of the terms are parts of the question
Details and Practical Origins - My Life
1. Origins: early life and family
I was born
My mother and I spent
my first weeks at the joint family residence headed by my father’s
father. My grandfather was eighty four. My father was the last of thirteen
children and I was the first of the grandchildren -the first in the joint
family- to be born in Independent India. My grandfather died two weeks after I
was born. He was satisfied to have seen his youngest son’s first child.
My mother quotes him as having said “Now that I have seen Shanti’s son, I am prepared to die.”
These bio-geographical
origins are an interesting story to me - as part of the story of my life and
for their influence on my life. I mention them now to acknowledge a debt, a
grounding, and the origin of a multiplicity of experience; to anchor the story
that follows; to note a foundation of openness toward experience. These origins
are in both the circumstances and the interplay of the personalities of my
parents in my development. The parental roles include nurture and discipline.
The circumstances include that I have been largely viewed as an outsider - in
I have analyzed and
written3 on and plan to continue to analyze and write here on the
influence of these factors on my own personality and on the parts that I label
“positive” and “negative.” The interest is enjoyment
and acknowledgement, self-knowledge and analysis…understanding and
therefore enhancement of my life, these works and their production
We had moved away from
I sometimes think of
the stars and the vast spaces in-between as the place I live…and I
occasionally reflect on the source and nature of this feeling. It is
significant for my life
2. Education: informal and formal
A basis of the
structure of Being and Its Elements is in the evolution of my interests. Early,
they included physics and physical sciences, mathematics, philosophy, nature
and living in nature, evolution and evolutionary theory, art and music,
engineering and design. The extent to which I developed the different interests
was not uniform. I had no real formal religious inculcation but was interested
in the meaning of and emotional experience in religion. My undergraduate degree
[1969] is in engineering - I spent a lot of that time out in nature, reading
philosophy, physics, evolutionary biology and mathematics…and the
foundations of these fields…and I also learned quite a lot of useful
engineering, design and computer programming. I have a graduate degree [1970]
in mathematics and a Ph. D. [1978] in a field called Applied Science that
really means advanced mathematics and physics and the use of computational and
mathematical approximation methods in solving engineering and applied mechanics
problems i.e., in research
I taught engineering at
a number of universities4 in the
I taught and did
research and occasional consulting in engineering. I taught an unusually wide
range of engineering courses and learned a lot. I enjoyed clarification of
concepts, precision in development of the theory, the use of mathematics and
computers, and application to problems in engineering. I had been good in
mathematics and in my research I developed skills in solving complex problems
by a variety of approximation techniques.5
I remained active in my
earlier interests
The undergraduate
program had included two one year courses in psychology but I did not learn
much. Subsequently I joined a group that was interested in psychology,
psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and Jungian ideas including modern incarnations
and related topics with an emphasis on the human dimension. I participated in
weekly meetings for four years [1978 -1982]. I became interested in the
possibilities of being and the relationships with nature and the universal
I learned much about
science, mathematics, biology, psychology, philosophy, and life to this point.
My skill in mathematics, physics and applications in engineering were good and
at their height. However, I had development and maturation to do in the
understanding of the place and nature of these topics at which I had become
skilled. My knowledge of evolutionary biology, of psychology and philosophy…and
my existential attitudes still had significant growth needs relative to my
present objectives. There were areas of learning that lay in the future
4. Away from work: four years of independent living
A turning point came in
1985 when, living on savings, I began a four year period away from the world of
work. I was originally interested in “what is fundamental in
engineering?” I decided that design is the central activity in
engineering. Because of my philosophical bent I generalized the focus from
engineering to all aspects of human and social designing and planning and this
included the academic disciplines and social institutions. I later called these
processes “conscious evolution.” From my interest in biological
evolution I had been noticing for some years the depth of insight afforded by
understanding how things - simple and complex including persons, minds and
institutions - came into being by processes of variation and
selection…without any absolute commitment to the completeness of
evolutionary paradigms or decisions as to the objects subject to evolutionary
selection. I noted the role of mechanism in producing apparent design. I called
these processes “blind evolution.” I also noticed relationships and
analogies between the natural evolution and the conscious - and unconscious -
processes of human thinking, knowing, designing, planning as these activities
informed and were informed by action in the world in an ongoing process of
learning. I elaborated on the individual studies - the varieties and levels of
design and evolution - and the varieties of relationship among the levels from
analogy, to continuity, to inclusion to identity. In 1986 I planned to study
these topics and spend two weeks writing a brief outline - a culmination of a
year of directed thought came together in a stay at a remote mountain lake in
the Trinity Wilderness in Northwestern California. The writing took six months
instead of two weeks, covered significant portions of the topics mentioned
above, and the result was Evolution and Design. I sometimes think of
this work as “the relationship between blind and conscious
evolution.” During the process of learning and writing I became aware of
an extensive literature on the analogies and relationships among evolution,
knowledge, epistemology and design. I was struck how similar ideas tended to
arise at different places times…some even before 1859
Evolution and Design asks “what can be learnt
from an evolutionary paradigm” or, more generally, from the idea that the
elements of the world have common origins and came about by a process that
exhibited some features of continuity. The work analyses an works out
implications for projection of evolution for all phases of being and process;
for philosophy and knowledge…epistemology and the nature of knowledge;
for design in general and for designs for individuals, engineering and
technology, for society and its institutions; and for action including action
in a world with unknown elements and a partially determined future. Thus Evolution
and Design is more than a study of “the relationship between blind
and conscious evolution.” It is a study of the nature of the Process and
processes of the universe - what is their basic structure, to what degree are
they determined, what is the mechanism of emergence of new features…- and
of the consequences of the existence of patterns, mechanisms and continuities
to the Process
These interests
continue on in work on in the present work Being and Its Elements which
includes complements to the earlier foci on [1] academic work in the idea of
the exploration and experience in the realms of Being and [2] on process in the
idea of the Absolute
Evolution and Design is not merely an academic study. I
was interested in the relation among personal process, evolution, philosophy
and academics, the social processes of design and planning, action and learning
and transformation. In looking at designing and planning I looked not only at
the processes but also at particular kinds of designing and designs…and
planning and plans
One continuation of the
work on social action is a definite set of programs described in Division 4, Social
and Group Action, of the Main Program of Being and Its Elements
5. Work: mental health and psychiatry
…The influence of
this phase deserves further analysis…even though I have done quite a bit
of reflection on this topic
In 1989 I needed money.
I felt that I had lived a relatively privileged life and that I might learn
something by working in a position with little status
Since 1990, I have
earned a living working with psychiatric patients in a inpatient setting. I
have learned much from this including the malleability of human relationships
and psyche, my relationships with others and work…and I see at this work
in an especially stark way, everyday, the dimensions of mind as exhibited in
their clinical exaggerations to the point where they become commonplace
These aspects of what I
learned came together with previous ideas and writing in psychology and ongoing
reflection and writing on consciousness and I first wrote about this in 1996 in
a Letter to My Parents, subtitled Dynamics of Reality and Being,
Vision and the Art of Perception, Sources and Self-Knowledge, Relationship and
Healing. This is described below. The ideas on the dynamic relation between
psychology, living and reality were a significant development. The important
contribution from the psychiatric setting was the rapid processing of
interpersonal relationships among staff and patients in a way that shows what
are otherwise thought to be constant as fluid. The conceptual component came
from other experience, reflection and studies
The inpatient setting
is an excellent practical and experiential laboratory in interpersonal
psychology…in addition to the obvious opportunities to learn various aspects
of psychiatry and the psychology of mental illness
I was also interested
in the classifications and etiologies of mental disorder, the relationships to
neuro-endocrine, hormonal, and immune function, and the dominant therapeutic
modality - that of chemical modulation of the systems just mentioned
I believe that the
interplay of the following factors is and will be significant in future
developments including my own ideas
A. Consciousness, of
mental functions and its various manifestations - cognition, emotion and so on,
B. The conceptual and
philosophical bases and description6 of the functions as concepts rather
than or in addition to their existence as concrete data, and
C. The chemical and
physiological stratum
My earlier learning in
the various aspects of mind was enhanced and supplemented by the classification
of disorders, physiological aspects of mental function, and elaboration of the
concept of a complete dynamic structured map of mental function and process
I learned about human
relationships and the world of work. I developed great respect for my
co-workers. I discovered that my earlier heroes - the great figures in the
intellectual history of civilization - were supplemented by the people that I
worked with and who gave great parts of their lives to the work with diligence
and passion. Not everything was pretty and it is not a secret that human beings
can be quite nasty. The two sides are mixed in together - often in the same
person. I learned imperfectly to negotiate in this complex world. Oftentimes
the people were wonderful. At other times the “base” aspects of
individuals would surface. I was not aloof from this. I think this learning
will be useful. I saw a value to the attitude of detachment taught in the Bhagavad Gita. My concept of this detachment is not a
detachment from persons and their problems and multivalencies.
It is, rather, a detachment from the aspects of person - mine and others’
- that stand in the way of real caring and ethical action - in the sense of
seeking the good rather than merely avoiding what is wrong
What did I learn from
not being a full time academic, visionary or seeker in this period?
I suspect that I
understand better the complex problems facing an individual negotiating a life
- the desire for fulfillment in balance with the material and human necessities
that make development problematic
In relation to my
thought I have been forced to focus on the essential and the real rather than
on an obsessive concern with theoretical elegance, intellectual politics. I
have learned that the hyper-specialized forms of academic endeavor - I agree to
the power and beauty of these forms - may speak against openness to the real.
That, perhaps, the real is a circle that intersects but does not coincide with
the academic circle. I have a love of the academic circle - and I believe that
if I do return there my experience will invaluable to me in that context as
they are to me in my life
But I have the luxury
of also having been an academic. I do not want to say that one mode of
living offers more insight than the other. I would rather note the advantages
and limitations of each…as preliminary to knowing and using the
advantages of both in synergy and as counter to the limitations of the other.
Some of these synergies may be clear from the previous paragraph. There is a
focus around the balance between the institution of learning and the institution
of experience. It is fortunate that I have lived for extended periods of time
within and outside of the walls of academe…and that I have experienced
the privilege of position and the reality of work in which the only advantage
is my self
I discovered that, in
the psychiatric setting, knowing more did not help me in the work - one needs a
license in order to practice and practice results in real learning - and found
this tiresome…and also not a very useful element of learning - beyond the
useful concepts, dimensions, and ideas - because practice is an important
component of learning. Nonetheless, that I was unsuccessful in using and
developing what I learned in the psychiatric setting itself gives me a sense of
failure at times - despite the very real hierarchical barrier of the
field…something to learn from, I hope
However, I continued
with my previous interests and with new ones. I continued to explore and write
in philosophy and wrote a History of Western Philosophy in 1988, The
Concept of Education with Applications7 to Engineering Education in
1989…to take notes relating to Evolution and Design and its
constituent areas that included evolution, philosophy, knowledge, design,
action, learning…developed interest in the modern problems of
consciousness - those of explaining the fact of the subjectivity of
consciousness on the assumption of an apparently material base that does not
itself have conscious experience and of explaining the variety of mental
experience and mental function on a biological basis. I began to feel a need to
incorporate an alternative paradigm to the evolutionary-materialistic ones and
found some possibilities in the ideas of idealism that emphasized the notion
the concept of the idea needs significant working and generalization; in
consciousness; in temporality and atemporality; in
the idea of a realm beyond or containing evolution; in the possible consistency
of these ideas with modern philosophy and science…hence the tentative
“new” title dating back to 1992-93: Evolution, Design and The
Absolute. This title will incorporate newer ideas and what was important
and pertinent from Evolution and Design
The newer ideas and
motives were present in my thinking at the time of writing Evolution and Design
and earlier but were not emphasized or developed
The attempt to exhaust
the possibilities of the evolutionary paradigm - this is not an assertion that
these possibilities were in fact exhausted - had as its natural successor the
search for alternate paradigms…and the alternate paradigm, the atemporal
one of the absolute, is complementary rather than contradictory to the earlier
paradigm. This point is similar in its progression and analogous in its
structure to the point I make later about living with and then going beyond
science. The similarities include that there is no rejection of science and
that the alternate way complements rather than replaces the original
Meanwhile, I had been
writing notes on ideas on consciousness, idealism and materialism, evolution,
the meaning of an absolute, metaphysics. In November 1996, after reading John
Searle’s New York Review of Books essay on The Mystery of
Consciousness I wrote a preliminary essay on consciousness. In the
intervening period I discovered that there is a new industry devoted to
researching and writing on consciousness - from the minutiae to the large
picture. The most recent update, of 1998 of my essay is Metaphysics and the
Problems of Consciousness
7. The ideas of a Research
I had conceived, in 1986, that the ambitious nature of my evolving program would
benefit from help. One of my original motivations, dating back to 1984, was the
question of the fundamental problems of humankind. I planned a structure-concept
for an institute or enterprise that would be involved with ideas and also with
uses. I outlined these ideas in 1995 in Assist - A System of Software
and Integrated System Tools for Research. There would be research, and there
would be application, design, planning and consulting. Funding would be through
research support and through enterprise, that is through income from selling
products - the application and consulting. A study I had done in 1988 On
Research Organization And Leadership was useful. I worked out details of a
research and enterprise organization
8. The volume of written work…and its burden…and
a solution
Starting in 1985 until
the present I have written and revised ideas, taken notes and written essays
from a few to a hundred or more pages. I have made annotated bibliographies
since 1984 - the Bibliographies to Evolution and Design I. A General
Bibliography Arranged According to Topic, II. A General Bibliography
Arranged according to Historical Period and III. A Special Bibliography
on Research Organization and Leadership. I wrote Reference and Access
Systems in 1988 on the use of libraries and printed and electronic source
and reference materials; this work was conceptually very general but the
information on electronic information sources and access is, of course, dated.
I wrote on my experiences - especially those in nature with especial focus on
annual trips since 1979 first of two weeks and then since 1991 of four to five
weeks in the mountains from Texas, to Barranca del Cobre in Mexico, to New
Mexico and Northwestern California. These journeys, recorded in various
journals, are an integral part of Being and Its Elements providing
experiences in the realms of nature, psyche, dreams and consciousness. It was
an entertaining experience to write a wilderness manual, the Journey-Quest,
in 1993-94…with a bibliography, notes on field medicine, expedition
planning, trail techniques and cooking. The Journey Quest is more than a
wilderness manual, it is about a concept of, design for and experiment with a
phase of experience - nature-wild, and of social experience, especially of
primal forms. It is also a metaphor for experience in Being. I maintain a small
dream journal, Dreams and Vision since 1978, and jot down ideas on
dreams, the possible meanings of particular contents, meanings in dreams,
emotive results of significant dreams, the fact of beautiful and apparently
creative experiences in dreams, the meaning of seeing a calling in a dream,
cultural uses of dreams, relationships between dreams and action, evolutionary
origins of thought, language, symbolism, and dreams. Some useful essays in
psychology and related fields were Mind and Psychiatric Systems, 1991; Psychotropic
Drugs in Medicine, 1991; Differential Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders:
Selection of Psychotropic Medications, 1991; and Psychotherapies:
Systems, Principles and Selection, 1992
An enjoyable experience
was writing Magic and Religion, 1991. A friend asked me to write it for
her. I had no responsibility to the Goddess of Epistemological Correctness who
some times sits perched on my shoulder as I write. The essay had some good
ideas - to me…including thoughts on the nature and meaning of religion
that I think of from time to time…and related to the various kinds of
meanings and relations to action of language, symbolism and art. And, it
contained one fundamental idea - the idea of a complete field of being and
concepts that continues to be useful tome. There are some seventy titles - some
of interest, others destined to remain unread and rightfully so
9. Computation and information processing
In the meanwhile, the
volume of my written work and ideas had become burdensome to maintain by hand.
The difficulty was exacerbated by the demands of a 40 hour work week. I conceived
of a plan to organize my ideas, my writing, the planning, the work toward a
research enterprise with the use of a computer that would have standard
software and basic development capabilities. I developed some ideas for the
standard and some novel uses for a computer to provide assistive and
independent or semi-independent function by first using standard software and
then through development. These ideas are first recorded in Assist.
Later, I expanded these ideas to include the notions of computer as an agent
vs. computer as a tool or extension, what would it mean for a computer to
think, what is a computer doing or being when it enters even as a tool into the
loop of knowledge and being, what could it mean for a computer to be conscious?
How could these possibilities come about? They are open questions since I am
talking of a program of research and experiment. However, some possibilities
are: questioning and generalization by embedding of the notions of
consciousness; the questions that I have just asked about computers and
thinking; the use of standard software…the idea that computers are
already doing quite impressive things even if they are not so good at imitating
human activity and human cognition…that significant development will
occur by working along natural lines of development rather than along forced
programs of artificial intelligence8…that human and
society and machine is the key rather that human vs. machine…that
rather than focusing on just programs and information, the co-evolution of
hardware, software and society is important…that rather than looking at
the elements of hardware and software as items with predefined input and output
it may valuable to consider that all the properties of the elements including
the non-design properties may take part and play a role in any
co-evolution…and if computers were to be able to perform some kind of
thinking, how would one educate and communicate with it - by programming, by
instruction and learning, by transference of by co-evolution? Some of these
ideas are found in Dynamic Uses of Computers in Universal, Global and
Personal Processes written in 1997 others are in rough notes and -
currently - prefaces to articles
Existential and Conceptual aspects:
I will now step back
from the temporal focus and return to the idea of Being and Its Elements
I will elaborate a
little where I am in the fields
10. Existential and conceptual origins
The question of being,
the universal and relations to my own life and the place I live - the world and
its traditions…this is a central question of my life and being. My
interest has been intellectual and existential based in the world, I
want to create and live out my life in a way that is consistent and interactive
with ideas, thought and reflection. I have thought and lived toward what may be
my own highest being or possibility
At some point in my
search I encountered the question “What is the full nature and extent of
being…and how much can I know and become?”
“The full nature and
extent of being” of course includes everything…
There would be no
limits in ways and means…all modes of being and knowing would be open
guided by energy, subject only to equation with the real…
The questions have been
asked before…and will be rediscovered and asked again. It is in the
nature of incomplete beings to be “hungry” for the question
11. Two Hypotheses
I lived in these ways -
in the world of things and passions and in the world of ideas. At a point in my
process I formulated two hypotheses. First, a psychological
hypothesis: Being or becoming one’s highest being is a high
reward - perhaps the highest reward - for an individual…perhaps in
a process sense. This is reasonable, it is not at all a new idea, but it is not
totally obvious. Humankind has adhered to a host of other ideas. There may be
pain involved. Courage may be required. Practical persons may view the idea
with suspicion. The second hypothesis is one with gnostic
[knowing, knowledge] and emotive or passionate content: It
is possible for an individual, a being with a sense of “I”, to
become and know all
This second hypothesis
has an absurd if not delusional ring, especially to persons including myself
living in contact with the Western Tradition of reason. One begins to suspect
hubris…Against the foundation of the reason and restraint that allows
for an orderly social matrix. At once, one responds “all?”
and “everything?”. I cannot bend spoons with my mind - I
admit I have not tried…the only times I have been able to fly are in my
dreams…”become and know all??”…the hypothesis
must mean that an individual with a sense of “I” can become and
know everything that is open to all being. That too is a tall order - I think I
cannot be a blue whale or even a virus. I find limits to my own personality.
Yet, I came to live with this idea. Initially I lived with the sense of
absurdity. I was naturally led to consider questions of the nature and meaning
of the individual - the identity of the “I”; the meaning of truly
significant knowledge in contrast to proliferating knowledge; the interactive
and dynamic nature of limits; the nature and dynamics of the real…the
nature and possible modes of becoming - of process - and being - what are the
kinds of becoming that are available?…and for these considerations to
give sense to the second hypothesis - the hypothesis of being - required that
these issues be considered interactively
Here is a little
paragraph added on
I remind myself, here,
that transformation or transvsion is not permanent and I already find my vision
fluctuating between acuity and diffusion. But my vision is so complete, so
powerful – it is not just Atman = Brahman but the dynamics, foundation
and understanding of that equation that it can never fade as long as I have
breath
The details of these
considerations is recorded in my writing…especially in Life, Unity,
Meaning written in 1986, in Evolution and Design, in notes on
consciousness including Reflections on Metaphysics and the Problems of
Consciousness, The Journey Quest…and the Letter to My
Parents which was a focal point in my relations with the experience of the
real and of limits. It is in the Letter that I see in an explicit and
dynamic way the continuity among all valid modes of knowledge including science
and intuition and boldness and realism in being
One of the objectives
of my work is to show that science does not have the epistemic and metaphysical
consequences9 often assigned to it and that science also offers support
for the searches of intuition and boldness in being. However, the careful
attention to detail and reason that is a part of criticism in science is not
always appropriate in the realm of being. My experiments and experiences with
being and related conclusions and considerations do not stand merely by
themselves but I also seek to relate them to this larger circle of
issues…the questions of science, logic, rationality, criticism…
Reflection reveals that
the hypothesis contains a closet question - what is the nature of being? I was
familiar with Heidegger and the existentialists, with Aristotle and Plato, with
the philosophies of India but did not come to the question through those ideas
- except in so far as those ideas are part of the tradition in which I live and
lived. My sources were my own psychological motivations and my learning
and experience described here. Why then the hypothesis, why not a question?
That is the nature of hypotheses…they must be formulated before tested;
and lived with - think of Darwin’s years of living with and the slow
transformation of his ideas on the origin of species. A hypothesis is a
statement-question. Additionally the hypothesis in question is not about mechanical
objects, it is existential, it is about beings, about humankind… and the
being of whom I have the most direct knowledge is myself
I decided10 to experiment with the ideas - intellectually and existentially -
guided by a sense of adventure and restrained by a sense of criticism--and of
respect for the achievements and traditions of modern and other cultures
I asked: how to
experiment? Imaginative of course, critical yes! But not merely intellectual.
Experiments with my being, life and consciousness, yes!
I reformulated the
hypothesis of being without attachment to arrogance or humility “I
can know and become everything…this end is open to all being.”
The statement and my
attachment - my personal relationship - to it is complex. What is my personal
relation to it - that too is compound…no doubt there are psychological
motives and meanings…
In my own life I try
and will try to bring into the open, to not deny my psychological motives -
defenses and other unconscious elements including defenses against actual and
perceived insignificance - so as to live better, to enjoy the living…and
to understand the relationships, including relationships of influence, between
my dispositions, my ambitions and hopes and my knowledge of and action in the
world. I would and will continue to live this way. But I would also like to go,
without denial, beyond these very personal and slanted elements - slanted by
the psychologies and psychoanalyses of the cultures in which I have lived - to
assume the breadth of cultural meanings available and to live, also, in and
discover- in so far as it is meaningful and possible - a more open
realm…a positive psychological realm of mind that includes being beyond
mere psychological determinism which sees psyche and perception in opposition
I would not avoid the
idea that for humankind there is no apparent world-as-such…that the world
is always seen through a “physical and psycho-social
lens”…that there is no accurately perceiving eye behind the lens,
no perceiver perceiving being from a high point atop a tree, above a sea of
mist, outside the realm of being - that the eye, the lenses, the instruments of
perception and knowledge are constructed from being to see being…that
even in a Cartesian dualism there is no getting out of being as an object by
being as a mind…I would not arbitrarily and arrogantly reject this idea -
nor would I arbitrarily and slavishly accept it
The criticism of
perception [knowledge in general] that it is intimately meshed with its object
is based in an ideal of knower and known as distinct…which has its own
difficulties: those of alienation - an ontological divide between being and the
place of being and of an epistemological divide - a gulf to be bridged on
account of the ontological alienation, which gulf does not exist on the view
that subject and object, the eye and the scene, are interwoven, enmeshed in
their being adapted in their constituents, their mutual origins and their
common membership in the world even while maintaining that separation that is
essential for there to be structure, to be a perception and an action. The
question of the reality and significances of the ontological differences and
distinctions, the artifactuality or otherwise of the epistemic gulfs and the
psycho-social content - positive or otherwise - of perception and knowledge are
multidimensional questions that I would live with
That implies, naturally
that questions are questioned. The metaphor of an accurately perceiving eye
behind a distorting lens also informs an ideal of knowledge and its criteria as
arising independently of the world. Such criteria have their places and
utilities. However, in the end, knower and known, knowledge and its nature and
criteria arose out of the world. The intimacy of subject and object which on
one view questions objectivity and posits essential distortions, does on
another view suggest an intimacy that through connection obviates any
final need for objectivity and makes finds the posited distortions to be, if
not actually adaptations, then overcome by adaptation - a problem with this
concept overcoming being that the adaptation is prior to the distortion since
the organism arose first complete with elementary responses that grew into
perception to be later criticized as distortions on a late coming ideal of
knowledge. Thus a study of knowledge as an object would inform the criteria,
and the nature, existence and need for final criteria
These considerations do
not discredit the pursuit of knowledge as it is pursued in the world since the
origin of civilization and perhaps before. Among the utilities of a system of
knowledge that takes itself out of the world and hypothesizes its own criteria
is the creation of a psycho-social realm made possible by language and
institutions. Regardless of final value this is a fine realm in which to live.
It is not a realm without problems for pleasure and pain, good and evil grow
out of the same womb that includes creation and choice; and it is not a
complete realm for it rests upon nature and nature resides in the universal.
Furthermore, the freedom to create ideas and artifacts within this realm
includes a number of freedoms. The first freedom is the one to continue on in
self-creation and understanding. A second freedom, regardless of distortion, is
to bring to bear upon the world as a whole the free creations of mind and the
criteria associated with these creations, to return into action, to require of
the free creations that they receive direct instruction from the real. Indeed
there is no choice to receive such instruction, even if it were to be avoided,
for reality is a final master. There is a potential for humankind to make new
contact to with the real to create and maintain new mansions. There is
potential for failure but also potential for growth to new magnitudes and
dimensions within being. Why would one ask for more? Would not some guarantee
of success become stale, be a form of decay? Contemplation of these issues,
begun in my earlier writing, is of direct concern in Being and Its Elements
…but I was also
motivated by meanings that tied into my experience and to my knowledge of the
academic disciplines. It is at once a statement and a question. It has or had
significance to me but I am also detached from it. It is a hierarchy of
statements - corresponding to a hierarchy of limits and boundaries that I had
encountered and overcome - in varying degrees. It is a personal question but it
is also impersonal - although I have qualities that are not identical to the
qualities of others, I do not think that I am different from others in relation
to the question. A reason that I state the hypothesis as a personal one is
precisely to make it amenable to study. A motivation was the value of the
process to others as individuals and as society - seeing humankind as being in
a process and seeing myself as part of that process. What then of the issues of
truth, communicability and inter-subjectivity? Honesty and open communication
are the keys. Although others do not, it seems, have direct access to my inner
life, sufficient description and openness would communicate the points permit
duplication…under the assumption that sufficient effort was put in. This
is not unreasonable…there is an educational process that is
required before persons can even understand the paradigms of a culture -
including those of the modern world
What could this
hypothesis mean intellectually - as a statement? I would have to erect meaning.
The existential meaning would be through my life and its given and chosen
experiences in the various realms discussed here. What is the content and what
is the intent or possible intent? A meaning or paradigm of science through its
utility is the careful connection from development to development: each system
of hypotheses is connected to prior ones through progression or through the
necessity that arises when the older systems become inadequate to cover
experience and material experiment. This careful progression is one of the
apparent foundations of a stable society. That is obvious but not necessarily obviously
true. What do we lose by adhering to careful progression? Of course, I am not
saying that there are no bold hypotheses in science…one of the strengths
of science is the union of reason and experiment with bold hypothesis. That is
one connection of the hypothesis of being to the “method” of
science but I would not say therefore that the hypothesis pretends to be
scientific
Some meanings and
conditions on the meaning are [1] It is not a personal statement in that I am
not saying that it applies only to certain individuals, [2] It is selective in
that it requires a process and experience in a number of realms, [3] The modes
of process it allows are experience, evolution, process in which creation and
law are not inconsistent - particle physics, [4] Negation of the metaphor of
the accurately perceiving eye behind a distorting lens - this implies an
intimate connection to the world, that humankind is not alien to the world and
therefore the processes of the world are accessible and may not need to be recreated
in symbolic terms, [5] Being and non-being are of the same mold, [6]
Exploration of consciousness shows [from examination of the concepts and
experience of consciousness and being] possible identity of consciousness and
being, [7] Numerous commonly accepted truths about humankind’s
limitations and tenuous relations to the real are very metaphysical, unexamined
and often trivially untrue, [8] The value of the existential hypothesis, [9]
The end result of accepting the fundamental tenets of conservative academic
attitudes - attitudes that, in balance with openness, I have held for long
periods of time and that I continue to use and respect. What happens when one
builds a view of the world through experience and by pushing the
academic disciplines - the sciences, humanities, technology, the professions,
the study of religion - to the limits of their ability to provide
understanding? Is there some cosmic or social law that says “the
disciplines stop here, go no further!” Will I fall off the edge of the
world? Science is neutral, minds its own affairs, in this realm. Scientism
and academism - the views the only valid and speakable
truths are the academic truths; and caution invite us to stay within
safe boundaries. In between the neutral views of a pure but placid science, and
an occasionally shrill scientism there are some practical and real issues. What
are the essential functions of conservatism and criticism - epistemic and
educational, social, cultural, psychological and spiritual..? What are the
functions in terms of the society of scholars, in terms of academia as an
institution with internal and external political, economic relations. In
obeying the dictates of the academic canons - what is gained and what is lost?
It may seem that I am
about to set up science against other candidate modes of knowledge and being -
intuition, emotion, poetry, religion, action, mysticism, evolution--that I am
just another liberal thinking critic of science. That is not the case. My path
has one of its origins in science and I have devoted much time and energy to
learning a number of disciplines of science - Ph. D. level course work1
1 in physics and pure and applied mathematics at the
I reflect very briefly
on scientific as incremental experimental-rational process vs. the existential alternative
that permits more than incremental steps and existential action rather than
controlled experiment. This model of science is of course not the whole story
of science. Further, in the modern world, science is very much tied into
progress, economics and power in ways that modern societies would not want to
relinquish. The issue of the limitations of the idea of science and progress,
to what degree that model is faithful and the consequences of the model is not
my concern here. I grant the power and beauty of science. I have experienced,
enjoyed and been rewarded by that beauty. However what does it mean for me to
restrict myself to that paradigm. Am I then a human being, am I an individual,
am I truly living in the universe or am I merely a living out of a social
paradigm? To the extent that I live exclusively in the scientific mode with
incremental progress I would assert that I am not a human being, not an
individual and not truly living in the universe. The existential mode is not
without its problems for it invites greater risks. It is not sterile for it is
still required to balance risk and survival in the service of real existence,
of knowledge of being…and it does not at all reject science but, rather,
does not limit itself to the scientific mode…science, whatever I
understand by that term, is included
Is the existential mode
boring, sterile because too general, beyond utility, not tied in to the matrix
of real lives of society and of the day-to-day?…No because of play, creation
and discovery of being, evaluate this, what is learned in the process, it is
held intellectually and existentially together with the other modes and levels
and these interact…and is not a separate program…and I was forced
to it by following the usual path…and the incantations against it, though
they have their utilities are misguided as truth statements. Evolution,
Design and the Absolute includes the concepts and utilities of Evolution
and Design, the concepts and utilities of alternate paradigms, and analysis of
the relations among all these different but complementary modes of thinking,
knowing, living and being
The question would be
considered intellectually - imaginatively and critically. However, if I did not
live it - that is without experiment - how could I know the truth of the
reflective considerations?
The minimum of
experiential investigation is to hold the hypothesis as true - and not merely
in pretense - and live accordingly. There are times when I do this. When I do
so, there are times when I feel the pressure of criticism and other times when
I feel the excitement of adventure and beauty and I remember that the
infinitesimal - day to day life - and the infinite are intimately related.
Regardless how remote the infinite may be, it is not moot and it is practical.
Why should I ignore infinity to gain something infinitesimal. An existential
focus on the infinite does not prevent me from experiencing the warmth of human
life. At the same time I remember that I came to the hypothesis by slow degrees
and regardless of any psychological need, it also satisfies an epistemic need.
There are also times when, instead of the hypothesis of being, I ask
“what are the possible extents of human knowledge and being?”
…and
“Emptiness, the present and its details, and ultimates are mutually
constituent of reality and informing…”
Of course I experienced
arrogance or pride and humility…but I made a stand against
attachment to them. Attachment is to clear cold contact with the ultimates - ultimate
being, ultimate in nothing, ultimate present…
I understood universes
of knowledge, I seek universes of being…the process continues…being
alive in the present has equal value to me as becoming and knowing all
being
Of course the path to
this situation was not one giant step but through interest in the world, the
world of learning, the disciplines, and the uses - perhaps the best uses - of
the disciplines, how the disciplines guide their own processes as they are
informed by use. I made studies - browsing through libraries reading what
interested me…and systematic studies that included formulation of a
comprehensive catalog of all the significant disciplines that constitute modern
academic-symbolic knowledge and research into all the main divisions. I
examined the processes that constituted a number of aspects of my life:
learning, relationships with others, the uses of imagination, physical activity
and skill, my moods and their fluctuations, illness and healing, common
assumptions about the world that I had absorbed in my growth and
education…observed the rhythms of these processes and their interactions
with my emotions, moods, imagery and thought, began to see a two way at least
partial cause-effect relationship - randomly at first…began to use the effects
of ideation…reflexively looped this process back upon
itself…observed and discovered degrees of influence and control that were
not part of my growth and education. I looked through the fundamental realms of
nature, society and of institutions and cultures and traditions, psyche
and the mind and of the universal the unconscious and the
unknown. I believed that the theoretical and the practical, the esoteric and
the mundane, the ultimate and immediate are essentially interacting. Each empty
without the other…I was interested in ideas, uses, living and application
What claims can I make
to “success” - i.e., what is the value of this journey? My work is
an ongoing process but there is also a product here and now. I do believe that
my endeavor is of value in the sense that experiment is important - some
experiments “succeed” and some “fail”…but there
is value to the considered effort. Beyond this, what claims I may make -
at the ultimate level - must be made in the development of this work rather
than as bald or stark statements in a brief preface. This is because even the
meanings of the terms involved - as pointed out above - are at issue and are to
be clarified through a process of thought and living which also displays the
significance of the considerations
I learnt much in the
process and continue to learn…and still - breathing the air in the
morning, cups of coffee, blue skies with white clouds remain lovely and as
large as infinity…
Driving home from work
at midnight, August 1998, I was reflecting upon the nature of my adventure. My
search into being. The search for ultimates. So far from where I started. So
far to go. Then, looking at trees and fields in the dark of night, enjoying
that experience, I thought: we are in a process, we think and feel, feel pain
experience beauty, being in a process, having ultimate commitments does not
involve denying the beauty of the present. Suddenly everything was especially
beautiful…
Being totally in the
present, seeing myself as part of the universe, the all, intimately in its
process is being in the Absolute. It is an experience, not a concept
Being and The
Elements of Being: A Personal and Universal Account is [a] a record of
the processes, its results and its ongoing character [b] the process
itself [c] an occasion to step back, reflect and reevaluate…and perhaps
alter my course - at least to be careful about emphasis and energy i.e. planning
with a focus also on inspiration, and [d] a blueprint
or plan for my future life, ideas and their uses. That there is a
mesh of personal and universal is intended; it is due to the intimate relation
of the realms and that the process to the universal essentially includes the
personal; it is neither an exaggeration of the personal nor is it a
minimization of the universal
1.
In simple terms the questions of being are: What am I…what can I
do…what should I do? Human-being is important because it can ask these
questions. I am significant, in this context, because I seem as though I am the
human being that I know best. Although there are personal reasons, this is the
ontological or fundamental reason for the focus on myself in the realm of being
3.
In a number of essays and letters, notably in a Letter to My Parents. At
present, in this essay, I make only passing reference to this topic. A fuller
accounting will be done later
4.
Rochester Institute of Technology 1975 - 77, University of Texas at Austin 1978
- 82, Humboldt State University 1983 - 85
5.
Research and course notes from this period include Technical Drawing, Problem
Solving, Statics and Dynamics, Mechanics of Solids, Vibrations, Thermodynamics
and Energy, Computer and Numerical Analysis and Programming, Stability of Fluid
Flows, and Approximation Methods for the Equations and Problems of Physics and
Engineering
6.
See the interesting book, Philosophy, Psychiatry and Neuroscience: - Three
Approaches To The Mind: A Synthetic Analysis of The Varieties of Human
Experience, Edward M. Hundert, 1989
7.
Based in experience with the system of higher education in California and
drawing from studies in the 1980s by the MIT Commission on Industrial
Productivity
8.
The main point here not to ignore replication or simulation of animal or human
intelligence and activity. It is to emphasize, as a starting point, the high
and low level tasks in which the computer excels - even if the tasks are or
seem mundane: file management, processing of various types of meaning
processors such as word processing, graphics, spreadsheets, relational database
management programs, knowledge-base and local and network search and retrieval,
communications, development and programming…and the potential uses and
evolution of these tools. I use the phrase meaning processor as follows. The
application includes a code which translates the data to - or from - a format
that has direct cognitive significance to human users or developers. The types
of format are text, numeric data, graphics and an array of multimedia formats
9.
An epistemic consequence is the dismissal of other modes of knowledge…I
am not referring to “pseudo-scientific” pursuits that are the same
mode in a distorted form but other modes such as poetry, artisanship, knowledge
contained in the body of its own dynamics and the dynamics of nature - this
includes implicit or intuitive knowledge. An often assigned metaphysical
consequence is the completeness of the scientific world view
10.
It was more a realization than an explicit decision
11.
From 1970 - 1973 I took a number of standard Ph. D. level and advanced topics
or seminar type courses. These covered all the standard areas of theoretical
physics with an especial focus on the relativistic theories of
gravitation…and a variety of mathematics courses with emphasis on
analysis and differential equations. I did a little dabbling but most of the
work was serious - I enrolled as a regular grade earning, exam taking student
and most of the other students were serious Ph. D. candidates in their
respective disciplines. The spirit was competitive and though my major was in
engineering and the applications of mathematics it was usual for me to be the
top student or, in especially competitive cases, one of the top two or three
12.
I do not want to say “her” or “his.”
13.
I trust that a Goddess would not be quite as Freudian as any of the Gods
14.
For Evolution, Design and the Absolute, there is a preliminary framework, there
preliminary concepts and notes and one of its major paradigms has been written
in 1986 - 1987 as Evolution and Design. A version of Consciousness and
Metaphysics exists as Reflections on Metaphysics and The Problems of
Consciousness. The concept and preliminary experiments for Dynamics of Reality
and Being have been done, notes on these aspects written; it remains to collect
these items together and define and execute a conceptual-experiential program
before a “final” writing