There are only two ways in which we can be – two distinct states of being that are open to us – and to say this is not to indicate that there is a ‘spectrum’ where one end imperceptibly shades into the other. There’s either the one way of being or the other, with nothing in-between. One way things can be is ‘folded’, whilst the other is unfolded; either we ‘fold reality’ or we leave it as it is – unfolded, with no kinks or bends in it
We fold reality every time we think. That’s what thinking is, that’s what it involves – it involves a ‘folding-type operation’. If there is to be thinking taking place then two things need to be there, not just the one. The two necessary things are – [1] The information that we’re receiving, and – [2] the standard by which the information in question gets to be organised. We need to be able to compare the former with the latter before we can do anything, before we can proceed with whatever it is we want to proceed with. No ‘comparison-making’ means no thinking.
We don’t acknowledge reality unless (or until) we compare it with our criteria; we only register it as reality after we have folded it, but what we don’t see in this process is that when we fold our perceptions or cognitions of ‘what is real’ in this way what we end up with is a simulation. We end up with a faithful copy of what we think reality is. Folding our perception of the world back on itself in this way – so that we are, without realising it, regulating or controlling it – is how we create the Domain of the Known (which then becomes a trap that we can’t see). We can’t see that ‘the Known’ isn’t really the Known, and that there isn’t actually any such thing as that. We can’t see that ‘knowing’ doesn’t actually mean anything.
Instead of talking about folding ‘reality’ we could equally well talk about folding space – we said that when we fold space back on itself (which we do by only paying attention to the space that falls within the remit of an arbitrarily chosen framework of reference) we continue to see it as stretching on and on forever – which is the general perception we have of space, and which gives us the impression that we’re still free, that we’re not contained, confined, trapped or anything like that, but – crucially – this impression is no longer true after space has been folded back on itself. When we put space into a framework then what we’re doing by this is that we’re making it measurable – we’re organising it in such a way that there isn’t any bit of it that can’t be precisely located. ‘Lack of location’ (‘non-locality’) simply isn’t a thing when it’s the Domain of the Known we’re talking about.
There’s a paradox going on behind the scenes here, however – it all sounds very straightforward and non-problematic to say that we can have this type of ‘space’ (or supposed space) where every last bit of it – without exception – can be located and can therefore be turned into matrices of data, can therefore be tabulated or classified. But there’s an anomaly here that we’re not able to rationally or logically focus on. The anomaly perpetually eludes us. The paradox (or ‘invisible anomaly’) has to do with the fact that we have replaced space with its antithesis, which is ‘measurement’, or ‘counting’. We have replaced wide open space with a ‘system of quantification’, we have replaced openness with a ‘set of metrics’, and we don’t see the absurdity in what we’ve just done. We don’t see anything peculiar (or actually downright mad) about it at all.
There’s a big fat illusion that comes into play here, we might say – an illusion that has to do with this business of counting and measuring and ‘parcelling out’. When we get involved in this business of counting then we feel that we’re progressing, advancing, getting somewhere – we feel that we’re getting further and further away from where we don’t want to be, and closer and closer to where we do. This is the ‘thrilling illusion’. A countdown is exciting for this very reason – we get the tantalising sense that we’re approaching something very great and we can hardly wait to close the distance. We are highly incentivised to do so by the system of thought. It is therefore counterintuitive to learn that ‘counting’ (or ‘measuring’) is only the surface level appearance of movement (or – as we could also say – the rule-based simulation of change rather than being the real thing). This is the situation exactly however – ‘linear’ change is no change at all.
Whether we count to ten or count to ten billion makes no difference – essentially, we’re just repeating the same step over and over. We’re ‘jogging on the spot’. What difference is there between counting from one to two, or counting from ten thousand to ten thousand and one? We’re not doing anything new, we’re just reiterating the same thing; the difference is only nominal – it has the name of ‘being different’, but the name is all it has. For there to be real change there would have to be a break in the continuity since the logical continuity – which is the number line – is the logical development of the starting-off point, and nothing more. That’s what linearity means – it means that there is never any break in continuity, it means that nothing new is ever allowed in.
A linear progression is one in which the basic ‘message’ (or ‘set of ratios’) is preserved – the ratios remain the same no matter what. This is (of course) precisely what we mean when we use the word ‘continuity’; measuring is all about proportionality and proportionalities – before measurement take place (before there can even be any possibility of it) there has to be some sort of ‘agreed upon’ standard or yardstick to work off and from this point on from the point at which the art stickers obtained and pressed into service or subsequent measurements are of course going to be ‘proportions of that very same yardstick’. No matter what the measurement comes out as it’s always going to be a ratio of what we originally started off with. This is how logic works and it’s also how the ‘rational’ mind works…
If everything comes down to the very same standard unit, the very same yardstick (and if there can never be such a thing as ‘a measurement that isn’t a ratio of this basic unit’) then there really is nothing there but this unit. Multiplicity is thus nothing more than an effect, a consequence of our lack of perspective on the matter. All measures come down to the same measure and that means that there is no measure. If <YES> is the only answer to all our questions then this is no answer. Measurement as a ‘thing’ becomes meaningless, which brings to mind what Alan Watts says about the word ‘measure’ (or ‘metre’) and the Sanskrit word ‘maya’ having a common root. If all metrics boil down to the same metric then there is no metric and thus the world that is constructed out of all our apparently diverse measurements collapses. The tautological bubble which is ‘the Known World’ deflates – it shrinks away to nothing, just like a mass of polystyrene foam or plastic wrapping does when thrown into an open fire.
The measured world (AKA the Domain of the Known) has no basis; maya has no basis. The original unit of measurement is only meaningful when the Known World it gives rise to is real and not a spoof, and – contrariwise – we can say that the Known World itself can only be real when the standard that it has been constructed out of is real. What we have here is a two-sided situation where each side relies on the other. After the collapse there’s no residue, therefore. What we have here is ‘a construct that depends upon itself’, ‘a proposition that validates itself as being true because if it doesn’t then there’s nowhere else for it to get its validation from’. What we have here is an illusion that ‘proves itself’ by referring ‘to itself’.
The same deconstructionist argument can be applied to ‘the number line’, to ‘the axis’, to ‘the linearity’; the trick here (as we have already said) is that the action of counting (which seems to be so very progressive) is really just the very same meaningless action endlessly repeated such that the step from ‘one’ to ‘two’ is the very same thing as the step from ‘one thousand’ to ‘one thousand and one’ – there is only this one repetitive / mechanical action and nothing else. Any territory that we think we might have gained thereby is therefore pure illusion, pure ‘moonshine’. We’ve got a big handful of nothing. Counting isn’t a progression – it’s a reverberation, it’s a ‘back and forth rocking motion’. Nothing new is happening and if nothing new is happening then nothing is happening. If the basic component is a non-event, then so too is the whole damn thing. So too is the whole damn lot of it. The number line is a phantom appearance therefore, and it’s not as if it all reduces to the number ‘ONE’ either because – as Aristotle says – ‘one is not a number’. ‘One’ is not a metric of anything and for this reason the phantom appearance which is the straight line doesn’t reduce to any unit (like a geometrical point, for example). It just vanishes.
The ‘Tick-Tock Mind’ (to use Wei Wu Wei’s term) has no basic constituents (much as it loves to think in strictly granular terms) – there is no <TICK> motion only <TICK-TOCK> and <TICK-TOCK> – by its very nature (which is a ‘returning nature’) – always brings us right back to where we started from. ‘To cross twice is not to cross’, says mathematician Spencer-Browne. Where we started from isn’t the <TICK> and neither is it the <TOCK> (because neither the one nor the other is primary, because neither the one nor the other ‘exists by itself’); when we fold space back on itself however then we create the situation where the <TICK-TOCK> movement of thought isn’t (or rather, doesn’t seem to be) a ‘self-cancelling vibration’ therefore; we have created a situation (however illusory) where this action is actually accumulating ‘territory’ for us in a positive way, where we are actually achieving something real. Territory is what we want, what we’re hungry for – territory spells existence for us – nothing less. To have territory is to exist and to so lose it (or have it taken away from us) is to lose everything. The notion of ‘territory’ is however purely imaginary – territory can only exist (in appearance at least) when space is folded back on itself in the way that we have been describing; we can only have territory – which is to say, ‘certainty about things’ – when we fold space, but the problem here is that the operation of folding space is itself unreal, is itself imaginary. Just as long as we ignore the null nature of the operation that gives rise to the World of Duality – and thus the possibility of being certain about things (which we crave) – then the certainty which we cling to will seem real, will seem substantial to us. It isn’t, but it will seem this way….
Image credit – aiartuniverse/posts
