(2) The Exploration of Consciousness
A tree, a table, a cloud, a stone - all are resolved in twentieth century science into one similarly constituted thing: whirling particle
waves obeying the laws of quantum physics. That is, all the objects we can observe are three-dimensional images formed of standing and moving
waves by electromagnetic and nuclear processes. All the objects of our world are 3-D images formed thus electromagnetically - super-hologram images if you will.
solid, neuro wired holograms - a world of simulacra. Thus what appears to our senses as a table or a vase, say, is - we are now told - actually a configuration of
minute whirling particle waves, all these components constantly involved in complicated patterns of motion vying in velocity with the speed of light.
That, we are told, is the reality of the table and the vase - as well as of the leaf and the sunset.
It is as if we were told while witnessing a cinema of some beautiful building that the projection machinery and lights were the
ultimate reality of what is being depicted on the screen. It is merely a series of coloured dyes on some plastic film being
projected at sixty-four frames a second by a thus-and-so specified apparatus and that is all. So we are told.
Yet here we demur, saying, But that is not all at all; for that scene existed somewhere or exists somewhere, and the projection
apparatus is, if anything, the more illusory of the two - certainly not the ultimate reality of what is being depicted on the screen.
It is thus obvious that whatever physical science tells us is simply about the substances of the images and not about the substance
of whatever realities to which those images refer. It would be as futile to expect that science could tell us the significance of
the world - the point of it, its so what - as to expect that the cinema projectionist or television engineer could tell us about
the meaning of a scene projected on the screen simply by virtue of being a projectionist or an engineer.
Thus the facts of science (insofar as they are not theories to be changed tomorrow) are correct but any claim to reveal final reality or
significance is not warranted. Physical science has revealed the imagistic modus operandi but not ultimate reality - much less
meaning on the point of life itself. Once we begin to be aware of the fact that our hologram type of matter is not the last word in
substance, we cannot accept that the projection mechanism for such superholograms is ultimate reality. We can then begin to understand that the admittedly highly intelligent and complex manner of referring to this reality by means of moving particles and their standing wave patterns is simply the means appropriate to our kind of body - and understand that such means do not exhaust reality at all.
Men change their cars yet are not educated to realize that they could acquire a much better model body, with notable improvements
in the reproductive and digestive systems.
Next Chapter