"Introduction"

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"A different language is a different vision of life."

Frederico Fellini

Inheritance

The ancient Egyptians, prominent though not singularly unique among all our cultural forebears on this planet, gave us some wonderfully fundamental ideas and insights about life, existence and the nature of being. What captures my imagination and that I hold in high esteem has come down to us as the word Ahnkh, which means both "mirror" and "life". Those early ancestors experienced, recognized and linked by name two encounters that had a striking connection with each other. They obviously knew and understood "life", yet when they experienced the visual panorama reflected from a perfect flat surface, they called the duplication of what they saw as being tantamount to the something which they already knew.  The "mirror" showed them what was already around them, so for all practical purposes it was the same thing.  What they saw with their eyes they resaw in the mirror.  They saw "life" in the mirror, and so "life" and "mirror" were conjoined with the common name:  Ahnkh.

With the same consideration, this book is meant to be an Ahnkh.  It too will show you a particular reflection thoughtfully expressing a special vision about life and being.   It is not the standard vision you are used to but, as you read on, it will seem immensely familiar.  It is not a rule or law of nature, though it is a clear pattern of universal behavior.  It is not a spiritual edict connected with any one faith, though it embodies profound majesty and the inspirational awe to be drawn from recognizing the holism of Creation (achieved from yet an other point of view).  It is not a scientific injunction, but it is a pervasive principle based on careful perceptions deduced from observations and evaluations.  Hopefully, it is a mirror with a surface better polished than we've ever had before.

This work is therefore an exploration and an exposition, using experience, thought and language to reevaluate everything we know, thought we knew and should be aware of if we aren't already. We will review the totality that we call "reality". You will be presented with ideas that are already part of your experience, but which hopefully you will come to appreciate anew. We are going to take a step back from where we usually see things, to take in a larger view and look for new patterns. We'll do this because that's what we as thinking beings do best. We experience the world, bring information into our being, and organize it as "knowledge". Knowledge that we in turn use to gauge successive experiences and encounters, for as long as we have the energy and as the opportunities arise. Even the word we use (in English) comes from and conveys the essence of this process. The Latin root meanings are ex- "out of; from" and peritus "to try; trying". Experience is "the something we educe from actively trying". Conceptual essences are the subsequent created results of connected physical histories. It is a process that enables us to survive in this world; to persist and continue; to endure and prevail.

Eventually the process itself will become a core representative, joining with all other examples and supportive details, illuminating the sublime dynamic that is part and parcel of the entire fabric of existence. You will read myriad instances that illustrate the one quintessential quality that is connected with our ability, or anything's ability for that matter, to stably and energetically remain viable and active in the Universe; to be itself (no matter what form or arrangement a thing may take), singly or connectedly. This quality embraces the notion that autonomy, identity, and the ability to coherently interact with other entities can result in the formation of new and different systems and levels of organization - which take on and display their own autonomous holistic identities.

The prime denotable quality of anything, of allthings, of everything that exists, is that there is a pervasive uniform and relational nesting of dynamics and of behavior. In one sense, existence is synergistic: the whole is more than the sum of its parts. In another (being one of the principle focuses of this work), such a coordination of everything requires that we find the conditions and qualities that reasonably allow us to perceive and apply Synergy no matter where we look in the Universe. At one moment, individual components or systems can be treated as having very distinct boundaries and identities, yet at another, those boundaries blur as we perceive the presence of supra- or sub- components and broader organizations of behavior. Along the way we will touch on many topics significant to human existence, from the most fundamental mathematical principles to the vagaries of psychological and social interaction. With new insight we will have the maturity to amend the conceptual foundations we use every day, recognizing how far we have already advanced with them and by improving them give us a vision of the far horizons of potential that are open to us.

There is indeed an underlying uniform pattern to the behavior of everything in the Universe regardless of what singular force or combination of forces we talk about. It is a quality of organization, impelled and acted out through the primal dynamic forces science has already identified.  It even appears in the ones we are not quite sure how to explain -- such as the "force" that motivates one person to work in concert with another. At the more complex levels we don't really talk about "forces" anymore (in the sense that physics describes them). Rather, we talk about: needs, concerns, social considerations, power, etc. In point of fact all these activities hover around the same singular ability of an organized form to maintain itself or not as it encounters the rest of existence.

I call this phenomenal dynamic: Integrity.

As I perceive it, the notion of Integrity is pertinent to every possible phenomenon, relationship and level of existence.   It is both cause and effect.  It permits us an understanding of behaviors which are at one moment in compliance with our current concepts, yet also may run counter to our traditional intuition about things.  It gives us a new framework for perceiving that a single activity can simultaneously embody constructive and destructive characteristics; or other types of opposites, because the defining context of an action is as equally crucial as an event itself, where we may or may not have complete information about the contexts involved, and, where we may or may not appreciate the diverse simultaneous impacts that are flavored or prioritized by the possible panorama of those contexts.

To pose an example: when we see an activity where something appears to be spreading out and dispersing, we may in fact be seeing an activity that is simultaneously bringing things together and congealing them.  If two people walking freely around a room with their arms gently swinging close by their sides then find themselves near enough to each other so that by spreading their arms away from their own bodies to reach around and embrace the other person they can join in a hug, then we can say that their individual actions of moving their arms away dispersingly from the normal position is, in the larger frame of reference, a gathering together of the 2 individuals who had been freely moving around the room. If we focus discussion on what the arms alone were doing, they were de-localizing and spreading out.  If we focus on the people, they were clustering.  The first behavior is entropic.  The second is neg-entropic. Current scientific methodology treats the cases separately. That may not be the best way of doing things.  A synergy and simultaneity is at work here, because a single activity is more potently interconnected with the rest of existence than simple evaluations might show us.

To open ourselves to the awareness of these ideas - to the broadest extent attainable - means we have to look into all possible sources of knowledge (ones we familiarly know and even ones which are so much an ingrained part of us that we might inadvertently take them for granted). We have to co-explore not only what we are observing but also how we are making such observations, such as the transmission and incorporation of ideas via language.   Because it is eminently probable that language and other information processes are constrained and channelled by this universal dynamic, whether the linkage is by way of our biochemistry, our biology, our social interaction, or the physics of the atoms we are made of.

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Personal foundation - Building the New Perspective

In fact, the linkages are much more extensive than that. So much more, that it would be useful to give you a brief account of my personal background and the people and situations that led me to endorse this paradigm of existence. It will give you a firmer foundation for the conceptual journey you are about to embark on. In the main text I will be expecting you to mentally endure the unexpected, to juggle in your thoughts an encyclopedic collection of facts and notions, to relate things that you might never have assumed were connected before, to see the world through re-born eyes of comprehension, to journey into topics that you never even imagined you might ever understand, and to take the next step in the evolution of your personal thought.  So, to retrace my own earliest steps for you is only fair. After delving into the main body of this work you might think that I've pushed you off the cliff of a mountain of knowledge, when in fact I'm just guiding you along a well worn track that I've traversed myself many times.

The ideas in this book are anchored by some of my earliest experiences. In the many years following my father's death (when I was not quite 2 years old) my family continually spoke about him with fond reminiscence.  Milton Xerxes had been a brilliant individual who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania in just three years, and went on to be the youngest partner in the most prestigious accounting firm in Philadelphia before his untimely passing in 1948 at 27.  My family was obviously shaken by the loss of this vital man because a life with so much promise had been cut short. Besides making me appreciate the kind of man my father was, their conversations also made me very aware of "death", the limitations it imposes on our lives.

In many ways his passing became a seminal focus around which I would gauge my own life and life in general. I came to believe that a person's life shouldn't be relegated to being valuable only while we are present in the world. Our lives may unquestionably be valuable for what is achieved while we are alive, but just as important are the designs and results we set in motion which survive beyond our lifetimes. By the time I reached 8 or 9 years old I became focused on imbuing my life with value, on finding some achievable goal that might give me a long standing voice in human history. I settled on what seemed the most reasonable to me: with so many different peoples and cultures and ideas in the world I thought it only right to find out why things can be so different yet so similar. To my way of thinking, to truly understand life, must be the reason we exist in the first place. We have minds that experience and comprehend, but our comprehensions are not and should not be limited to narrowly focused tasks and daily routines. A methodical and unexamined life is worth living (there is joy and satisfaction in effort and accomplishment), but an examined life warms the soul and places us that much closer to the heart of the cosmos.

I remember watching the people around me, seeing who led and who followed, who had knowledge and who didn't, who taught and who ruled - conveying and implementing ideas that were both "good" and "bad", conditional under different circumstances. I compared the ideas of children with the ideas of adults, and noted that we learn by imitation as well as by innate spontaneous connection. "Acceptable" was whatever local social groups felt comfortable with. Nominally, though learning pertinent information and behaviors is part of our maturation process and great import is placed upon the transitioning from child to adult, I was astonished that many "mature" and educated adults seemed to act so "childishly" in their so-called "grownup" ways, even persons having responsibility for maintaining the societies and cultures at large. Therefore, I realized that the mere accumulation of information does not confer wisdom (nee maturity). It struck me that "maturing" was not so much a matter of leaving behind outmoded or useless childhood behaviors (or finding "totally" new ones) as it was a matter of fine-tuning behaviors we already expressed as youngsters, even as newborns. A "continuity" was at work here. Individually and collectively. I began to search for what that "continuity" might be.

My mother Lillian Frost played an important part in fermenting these ideas. We would talk for hours about many things and while doing so she nurtured a very specific vision in me - both as framework and challenge. She guided me toward appreciating that most people are so preoccupiedly focused in life that they may only appreciate the world in ways they were educated to see it or pragmatically need to in order to deal with it. But people and things and life are more than that. We can't simplisticly categorize things by some singular concise definition and nothing more just for convenience or utility. One point of view is not every point of view.

"Look at a tree", she would say. An artist "sees" the colors, the forms, the textures. A botanist "sees" the cell structures and how water and nutrients move inside it. An engineer "sees" the form and strength of the timber. An ecologist "sees" the land, the water, the environment that helps the tree thrive. A person working in the hot sunshine "sees" shade and rest and comfort. A farmer "sees" a potential food crop. A homesteader or a bird "sees" haven and home. And so on.  "You should be able to "see" all these things", she would say. "Don't just see one part of something. Try to appreciate everything that a thing or person might be. Remember that all these kinds of things go into making a tree...or anything else...what it "is". She told me that this way of "seeing" - simultaneous completeness - wasn't going to be easy, but that it was an important skill. Something worth practicing and striving for.

Her confidence and guidance were a springboard.  I began to examine "me"... and what I felt to be "human potential".  To have a "mind", to be born with the abilities of self awareness and conscious interaction, to have something so special, cannot be assumed to have limitations.  I reasoned that, if I can think and understand, then I can potentially understand anything.   I came to believe that if I studied, absorbed and learned all I could then I would be able to figure out why I was born, why all of us - any of us - are here. At least the functional "why", whether or not an ultimate "Why".  That is, we can understand the "how" of existence. I believe in who we are and the abilities of our species. We may have some sorts of limitations, but our abilities can be no less than our realizations and dreams. We see, and yearn to know of, Universe.   That is the goal of our lives.  Not just as a philosophical notion, but as a very pragmatic function...every day.  Regardless of how narrow or broad our personal lives, each and every person encounters the world with the ability to absorb and respond to some kind of information and energy, that makes it possible to endure and continue.  We live in anticipation of the information yet to come. And every new encounter reinforces and exemplifies our orientation towards that future, towards the next day's social activities or daily meals, towards who the next child will be, towards the next crop reaped from today's sowing, towards the next generations' wonders and achievements, towards the exploration of the planets and stars.

Ultimately, the nature of all of existence became exceedingly clear to me, so that just a few years afterward I was able to organize my perception with the phrase:  "We are the Universe, seeing itself and understanding itself".  As simple as that.   We are fortunate enough to be one of the sentient portions of the Universe that can examine, understand and appreciate the rest of our co-existence. When we focus our attention on any portion of experience, we see qualities embodied even within us, and vice versa. It's a wonderment to me that such small and relatively insignificant creatures as we should have certain capacities greater that the vast and powerful stars and galaxies, while made of the same material. Yet, to recognize and appreciate that basic "sameness" is to rely upon it as the base for discerning how such operationally different things may - at the core - have an underlying similarity of functions and behaviors; a common dynamic, expressed and displayed and carried out through the myriad activities we observe in the universe. In a very real sense, conscious perceptive sentience is the Universe looking at itself. We may at first think that we are distinct and separate from the rest of creation, but in fact we are not. We are the special piece of creation that "knows" the rest of it. We are part of the mind of the Universe ... a universe exploring its own existence. The challenge is to discover the machinations of how all this grandeur is connected.

I spent some of my adolescent years following historically accepted anthropomorphic lines of reasoning. I did this with the intuition that those ideas were incomplete and biased, yet believing that if I measured and evaluated those reasonings and concepts by my very demanding frame of reference it would be possible to locate any conceptual misnomers and absurdities and thus surmount them. Anthropomorphic concepts represent the ingrained way of human thinking - limited and species biased. In order to find more expansive "truths" I had no choice but to retrace historical thinking patterns and then use those ideas as supportive substance to accomplish the next step in perceptive inclusiveness and expand how we understand all, not just human, behaviors. We are made up of all the minuscule panoply of atomic and sub-atomic structure. When mixed together they create synergistic "things" that function and operate in complex ways, and simple activities suddenly transform, becoming "behaviors" and "meaningful" pertinent interactions.  Then what?  Is this consciousness?  Is this life?  Does a molecule that recreates and maintains itself...our currently assigned definition for life...have "conscious" interaction in its environment? On the other end of the spectrum, should we otherwise treat higher order complex behaviors as "only" a more elaborate coordination of the basic mechanisms...and would this attitude encourage us to diminish the value and importance we place in higher order functionings and things like human behavior?

I turned to considering the dynamics of "perception", an activity ascribed to all living creatures regardless of how advanced on the evolutionary scale. I came to believe that consciousness was connected to instinct - the ability of "mindless" creatures and life forms to interact and survive in an environment. In fact, I submit, it is an absurd and egotistic thing to call other creatures "mindless".  If anything, we are only more complex "stimulus-response" beings (in the current clinical sense).  For "interaction ability" (the de-facto operational quality of perception) to exist on any level of functioning, there has to be real precursor foundational forms and functions. We shouldn't be surprised to know that we can find these foundational qualities even as far down as atomic structure and the activities occurring there. Obviously, something exists even at those levels which displays the behavioral qualities on which our own behaviors are built. This is the stuff we are made of, can it be alien to us? Very unlikely.

What of a single celled animus like an amoeba or paramecium?  Does it 'feel' itself?  Does it sense the subtle variations in its shape as it bumps around in its liquid world?  Does it somehow note changes in water pressure around it?  Is it always "hungry"?  What drives a single celled creature to eat?  What "need", if any is fulfilled?  Is it due to an internal pressure gradient in it's chemical metabolism? Is there a resilience to its boundary that not only determines its particular shape, whether amoebic or firm, but that variations in that boundary re-distribute pressures through its form to create a range of responsive actions? And, because it is coherent for that life form, is "this" primal consciousness?   How far down into the structure of existence can we reasonably extrapolate this? An atom's electron cloud responds and interacts with its level of environment, but is this consciousness? We cannot personify, and therefore mystify, all kinetic functions as different degrees of consciousness; at least not at this point. Neither can we specify with any certainty a level where consciousness suddenly appears, where there was none before.

Here I realized that maybe our definitions needed to change.  So, I gathered in the things that I had learned and was in the process of learning, in order to start fresh. I decided to become a "visitor" to our universe, if you will . To help you grasp the concept, consider this.  Imagine that for your entire life you only experience the culture in which you were born.  Then, in an instant, you are transported to another country. You experience a different language, different customs, different mannerisms, different behaviors. Things do seem vaguely familiar, but you can't quite express the quality of that familiarity.  In trying to grasp what this new place is all about, you begin trying to make connections with things you were already acquainted with. Language, with all its short cuts, colloquialisms, idioms, etc. exists here, but what you took for granted in your own mother tongue might now seem strange as you begin to correlate verbal or written expressions with a whole spectrum of new experiences.

What moments before amounted to sure knowledge - useful and absolute - now becomes a collection of interesting information, without sure utility or appropriate application. You bring a naivete' of things yet to be experienced; valuable and worthy information seeking phenomena to connect with. You must learn to re-assign previously presumed assumptions. This new place operates very much the same way as the place with which you were familiar (the planet is still very much just one large place to be) but in this other location a significant diversity of coordinated and fluid sets of customs, language and interrelationships evolved, different from your own but necessarily the "same". Your task is to establish communication, understanding and relevance. Assuming you might have to spend the rest of your life here ... you need to do it just to assure your continued survival.

If you are there long enough to adapt to your new surroundings, at some point years along, imagine yourself as equally and as suddenly sent back to your original community...which might then be as "alien" to you as it was "innate" before. You would begin evaluating your original home with the same detachment as you found unquestionably necessary during the first change of environment. You would no longer take anything for granted, not even the subtlest relationship. Once again, occurrences, events and experiences would be open to equal scrutiny - not subliminal "acceptance".

I recognized that this would be a good stratagem to use, here and now, applicable on an even grander scale.  If we generally hold the technique as viable when we examine "other" places and events, then we can re-evaluate our own "world" the same way.  It is eminently possible to mentally assume the guise of a fully cognizant and sentient being, looking at our universe, our world, with all its behaviors and activities and forms, and see it as a distanced and un-compromised mind would see it.  No precognitions, assumptions or connections.   If two or more observed activities seem to exhibit some similar pattern of functioning, then we should look to correlate those similarities, no matter how otherwise disparate the activities initially seem.  We can even create new words and encompassing ideas to bring them into cohesion. Eventually, we will require that this technique itself be re-incorporated within the totality of understanding, as a most naturally consistent function - part and parcel of/with the complete schema. An activity that can explain itself or stand up to scrutiny as a representative sub-set function in the total order of things.  The goal: include everything ... without exception.

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Whorf - Conceptual Progenitor

At that ceptual point in the late 1960's I came across the work of the Linguist, Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941), in a book titled "Language, Thought and Reality" - salient writings compiled posthumously by his student John Carroll in 1956. Whorf, in conjunction with his mentor Edward Sapir (1884-1939) had developed the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which speaks to the belief that "language" molds and guides the way we think. They discovered so many differences in a spectrum of world wide languages, where the conceptual links and forms were at odds with what Western-Europeans had thought were "universal", that they deduced that language ... as each person is born into a very specific culture with a very specific pre-existing language environment ... is the most formidable molder of how people think. Literally: we learn "how" to think, relying on the words, symbols and conceptual assignments which were created before us. We experience the real and we experience the symbolic. But, no matter what, we always experience.

Our mental images and associations are to a great extent derived from symbols (auditory, visual, etc.) which we encounter and then use to stand for, replace and be the events and relationships we encounter.  Whether in daily conversation, mathematical equations, artistic designs, musical elaborations, et al., given symbols or patterns of them are used as the phenomena we mutually know and communally share. By tacit agreement, conscious deliberation, convention, or convenience of circumstantial historical habit, our words, our notations, most all of our expressings are used to efficiently evoke memories of events.  And, by long standing build up of a large assemblage of these associations, we become reliant on encounters with those patterns, symbols and associations, rather than the original events. All these factors - original and secondary - are still available to re-experience, but we find efficiency and accomplishment in using mainly the symbolic encounters.  Our thoughts and innately used mental connections are keyed by the symbols acquired and how we previously used them.

Whorf labeled this phenomena "Linguistic Relativity" because humanity displayed a broad diversity in concepts, grammar, unusual connections and interrelations.   (Einstein's concepts were exceptionally exciting and new in those days.    Indeed he, as I, latched on to relativity's alternative meaning: all things are relatives, vs., the universe has no primal observation base and therefore all frames of reference are relatively equal to each other.)   Needless to say, I think of Whorf as one of the most brilliant underrated thinkers of our age. His openness and ability to cross so many boundaries, to bring together the panorama of human thought and interaction, is extraordinary.  The sad part is that in his brief life, he focussed most of his energies stressing that "concepts arise from language" and never had a chance to respond (to professionals in his field who found merit in his paradigm) or clarify the rest of what he believed - that the process is openly bi-directional. Most evaluations of Linguistic Relativity limit it to "language first, ideas second". This is not entirely true. Yet, since the 1940's linguistics has gone off onto tangents and missed the broader cogency of Whorf and Sapir's work.

In Whorf's enunciation of general "Linguistic Relativity", it was assumed that he only referred to the idea that "language molds and defines experience".   On the contrary.  He was well aware that experience precedes language.   It was his belief (and the perspective I champion) that we incorporate external experience which then re-emerges as language, and after that, "language" exists as part of the experiential environment! We "experience" our own thoughts and words even at the very instant that we are "creating" them.

Whorf's concept is fully encompassing: experience creates language which reintegrates as experience, creating more ideas, more connections, more language, which makes more experience, and so on. This extraordinary repertoire, this recognition, can open up infinite horizons for us. At the core of our language and thought are the experiences which evoked them. In the exposition that follows this introduction, I will explore mathematics, psychology, sociology, economics, physics, biochemistry and a mélange of interconnected subjects.   All re-evaluated in new ways, looking behind terminology, behind language and grammar, to recognize the processes that other original investigators -- including the founders of humanity's cultures -- saw and created new words to label and describe.  I will discuss how those labels and descriptions might have over simplified and rigidified what we have come to appreciate about those phenomena.  Impressively organized within each subject category, yet partially deficient in exploring or expressing the overwhelming similarities between and among them en mass.  I hope to expound on and enlarge what Whorf started, and show the true extent to which all this is expressed in human-universal behavior.

To quote briefly from his writings:

"The familiar saying that the exception proves the rule contains a good deal of wisdom, though from the standpoint of formal logic it became an absurdity as soon as "prove" no longer meant "put on trial." The old saw began to be profound psychology from the time it ceased to have standing in logic. What it might well suggest to us today is that, if a rule has absolutely no exceptions, it is not recognized as a rule or as anything else; it is then part of the background of experience of which we tend to remain unconscious. Never having experienced anything to contrast to it, we cannot isolate it and formulate it as a rule until we enlarge our experience and expand our base of reference that we encounter an interruption of its regularity."

"For instance, if a race of people had the physiological defect {ed. note: "limitation"} of being able to see only the color blue, they would hardly be able to formulate the rule that they saw only blue. The term blue would convey no meaning to them, their language would lack color terms, and their words denoting various sensations of blue would answer to, and translate, our words "light, dark, white, black", and so on, not our word "blue". ... The phenomenon of gravitation forms a rule without exceptions; needless to say, the untutored person is utterly unaware of any law of gravitation, for it would never enter his head to conceive of a universe in which bodies behaved otherwise than they do at the earth's surface. ... The law could not be formulated until bodies which always fell were seen in terms of a wider astronomical world in which bodies moved in orbits or went this way and that." ...

... "When linguists became able to examine critically and scientifically a large number of languages of widely different patterns, their base of reference was expanded; they experienced an interruption of phenomena hitherto held universal, and a whole new order of significances came into their ken. It was found that the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but ... is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual's mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade." ...

... "This fact is very significant for modern science, for it means that no individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality but is constrained to certain modes of interpretation even while he thinks himself most free. The person most nearly free in such respects would be ... familiar with very many widely different ... systems. ... We are thus introduced to a new principle of "relativity", which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe .... unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in someway be calibrated."

I take the liberty of highlighting the above remark, and especially Whorf's casual closing phrase, because it is the single most crucial concept Whorf shares with us.  What he probably saw as simply a technique for evaluating languages and ideas together is, superiorly, the fundamental key for appreciating the reality of holism.  Things can only be calibrated vis a vis each other if there is some pre-extant quality that permits information encounters and translation in the first place, enabling relational possibilities to even occur.  That is, ideas can be cross topically translated only when an underlying mutuality exists, strongly links the events, the analogues, the terms!

Whorf exposed a totally new way to see the universe and ourselves.  He stood at a doorway, beckoning us through.  I have been there, and am awed and overwhelmed by what I have seen.  So, I ask you too, come with us on this great adventure exploring humanity and knowledge and experience.  Participate, add your own insights.  I'm sure you will find all these ideas interesting.  Doubtless, you'll find them challenging.  But best of all, with what you bring to these readings, you'll experience the exhilaration of personal creation.  "Understanding the Integral Universe" is only a framework. You bring to it embellishments, knowledge and feelings and connections which I can infer but not know.   You make the ideas fuller and richer and meaningful - as viable as you desire.

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Integrity - Its History and Future

In the spring of 1973 I wrote an initial concept paper while attending the State University of NY at Stonybrook, titled "A Discussion of the Four-Plane Universe Conundrum".  The ideas and premises presented there were the distillation of everything I had learned and observed about complex systems and multi-directional gradients displayed in the interactions of those processes.  The fundamentals of "Integrity" are described there.  This work will elaborate on them.

Please keep in mind that this is a true attempt at a T.O.E. ....a Theory Of Everything.   I feel no rigorous proscription for limiting discussions to one field, such as biological eco-niches, or human motivation, when the energetics of these things have natural connections and analogues in wave functions, plate tectonics, quantum mechanics, philosophies of mathematics, corporate and social organizations, linguistic consciousness, manufacturing plant design, religions, and so on ad infinitum.

I know that many people may not yet readily perceive these connections, let alone accept that they exist.  And even though you might be familiar with or have only fleetingly heard of quantum theory, relativity, chaos theory and fractal math - the various mathematical descriptions which can model and even pictorially mimic many of the events and behaviors we observe in the universe (including some of the intricate systems of geology, economics, fluid dynamics, heart rhythms etc.) - still, for most of us, these complex mathematical manipulations only exist in the far edges of our consciousness and experience.

Regardless, each of us brings to life our human behavioral desire (and need) to learn, and, the capacity to learn, to incorporate more knowledge, thereby maintaining secure safe and continuing lives - individually and connectedly.  We pursue this process at each moment of our lives regardless of the specific social groups or organizations we happen to be born into, or even, "create" by extension of gained "realized understandings" of who we are on this planet and in this universe.  We may live our lives within a basically uniform environmental collage that we find experientially comfortable, but, we always remain open to non-typical life experiences ... and here perhaps, open to another way of perceiving and understanding the universe we share.  The goal is a holistic synergetic ceptualization of Being.  Definable in mathematics, and most certainly, experiencible without it.  I will reference mathematics time and again, but please don't be miss led. I am concerned with imparting a sense of existence more than anything else.  Fluid and free interpretations about how the parts of existence dance with one another -- in every way that you can think of.

Ancient pundits and visionaries have been sharing that perception with us for thousands of years.  Modern science and mathematics are struggling to prove it.  The one-ness of existence.  It is more than something we simply experience, it might now be consciously definable and consciously conceivable - an active conception via an act-of conception.

On a personal level, these ideas are not just some intellectual exercise for me.   When I experience all these connected "understandings" my mind free floats in an expansive stream of consciousness.  Words and images and physical impressions. Experiences concurrent with "now" and "memory" and "anticipation".  Simultaneous with multitudes of places and peoples and things and occurrences and vaporous sensations.  I feel incredible joy and pleasure in being able to literally fly conceptually from one topic or subject to the next, because of the overwhelming similarity of functioning and activity I perceive there to be, and how wondrous and beautifully orchestrated they appear to me.

A Theory-of-Everything is not a cognition limited to only extremely educated people.   As the theoreticians who are typically delving into these matters should admit (if only grudgingly, because this aspect of the theory could tend to threaten the social haven, authority and sanctity of academic organizations), this is just the premise that they are so actively trying to prove and mathematically formalize.  The hypothesis being that: a single set of formulae will be applicable for every level or topic of existence, whether simple or complex.

The undeniable logical conclusion of such a tenet is: Even the simplest cognitions we can think of must be uniform with the most complicated.    Therefore, even the humblest and least "educated" of us will be able to relate to these ideas... on some level... no matter what our own personal experiential net or knowledge or frames of reference may be.

Everyone has the capacity to at least appreciate if not detailedly understand the elegant beauty of what is going on in the universe.  Eventually human experience can tend towards spiritual heights, but, please remember that it is not so high a level of understanding that it should humble or even cower any person as being "too much to understand".  Even as my writings attempt to tackle the most expansive concepts humans are capable of, the ideas are accessible to everyone, and no amount of cryptic or enigmatic language can deprive a single individual of appreciating and recognizing the marvel of Creation.

All these scientific efforts are just another path toward affirming the "oneness" of the universe.  Existing as the physical beings we are, we may never literally be "one" with creation - actually being in touch with every atom and energy quantum everywhere.  But, a sense of oneness is available never the less, to each and every one because of how we are and what we are. Part and parcel of universal dynamics. Capable of interaction, perception and appreciation.  Acting out phenomena that are a reinforcement and validation of Connection.

As far as what might be the most appropriate way to express and explain these things, even the western Biblical reference says "my Father's House has many Mansions", and, as the Tao relates...there are many paths to Truth. What you are about to read is no less a plausible vision of existence, even as it remains open to the most careful scrutiny and evaluation.

To help make my ideas easier for you to understand I offer this gentle direction. Besides giving you line by line renditions of kernel ceptual ideas -- along with scenario applications of the Ceptualist Perspective and the Integrity Paradigm, the "hypotheses" and "proofs" per se -- I think it important to periodically share with you the ways I first experienced them. Not just to invoke insight into who I am, or to express how my experiences helped illuminate the specific concepts, but more importantly to kindle and encourage a new openness and perspective in you.   Because, to understand and appreciate the depths and extent of my ideas requires your personal ability to ceptualize.  To open your thoughts. Your ability to take in new ideas, to actively consider new possibilities in perception.  To adapt the framework of what you already know and are comfortable with.

I urge you not to feel overwhelmed by the scope of discussions. Even new or strange topics will eventually feel familiar for you. The "Integrity" paradigm is merely another valid way of exploring these topics and proposing answers to humanity's questions.  An alternative way to understand and evaluate mathematical/phenomenal dynamics from the point of view of perceptive sentience .. us .. who are capable of experiencing and conceptually organizing all of these awarenesses and knowledge into a cohesive Thema.  We have the capacity to evaluate ourselves not just in regard to the processes we accustomedly participate in - language, commerce, physiology, ecology, etc. - but also in regard to micro and macroscopic behaviors of everything else that exists. Everything we are capable of acknowledging and conceiving.

The word "concept" especially exemplifies the idea and intent of the active process that we do via all this "thinking" "perceiving" and "pondering". It is a fine representative, as well as descriptive label, of the processes which we use in order to assure our own "Integrity" ... stable dynamic continuation.  "Con-" is a Latin word root meaning "with" or "together". "Cept" (and its variation: "ceive") comes from root word ideas meaning "to take in, to gather" (a dynamic active process). Re-ception, in-ception, de-ception, con-ception, per-ception, ex-ception, ac-cepting, etc., are all related to the activity of "taking inside", where we literally take in and internalize ideas and experiences and synthesize them for our survival and behavioral benefit.  We make ideas part of "us"... of each of our own "me".   Familiarity becomes identity.

I challenge you now to think about things in a slightly different way, from a slightly different perspective than what you are used to. Bring to these readings everything you've personally learned throughout your life, but allow yourself to look at, re-view and re-examine familiar ideas, perceptions, events, understandings and belief cognitions in possibly new ways. Allow your thoughts to drift. Some topics will be discussed in detail, others as temporarily short asides. I will not guide you on a detailed excursion of linear thinking, a single path from innocence to illumination. Rather, I'll bring up a whole panorama of sundry ideas and encourage you to roam freely, building up a sense of holism. We will be forging new interconnections between things and ideas once far removed from each other. At other times ideas and relationships that were brought up in regard to one topic will show up in some other topic that you thought was totally unrelated to the first. Discussions about topics with analogous activities might interrupt some principle train of thought. I'll also skip to seemingly unrelated subjects, in order to build a linkage back towards the main body, rather than constantly reaching outward from a mainframe to a point on a distant tributary.

In a sense, I will be creating a conceptual mental landscape using the pointillist techniques of the painters Seurat and Van Gogh. It's appropriate because their styles parallel quantum mechanics and the universe. Individual splotches of color, light, information and "presence" which are something very individual distinct and definable yet organize into something else yet again, something quite extraordinary, when seen from a distance and appreciated as a whole.

Ideas will be presented to you like an orchestration of melodic chords which will be played out over time in order to be recognized and enjoyed (not the cacophony of all notes being played at once, or the tedium of sequential notes one after the other). I will embellish the elegant concise simplicity of science in splashes of restatement - variations on themes. A line or curve or blend of color isn't found just once on a canvas, a musical phrase isn't played just once in a composition, and a conceptual item or relational connection won't be found once and only once in this narrative. I will discuss exotic concepts interspersing them periodically with practical examples from current events and personal experience.

Relationships and dynamics will remain consistent, but will be considered and treated in broader frames of reference, with different and expanded interconnections. We will even be audacious enough to apply new words to older pre-existing ideas, because we will come to recognize that our very language, as important as it is in giving us appreciation for and access to the world we are part of, can color, redirect and sometimes limit how we see and how we understand. Things and ways of thinking that we take for granted, and assume to be universal, may in fact be placing unappreciated and previously unrecognized limitations on our thought processes and ideations. And their combination and coordination, in wholly new ways, will open up a wondrous world of possibilities for us.

I won't ask you to concur with me just because I say things are such and such a way and require your agreement, rather, I hope to draw together so many diversities and show you how similar they really are that you can't help but recognize -- from the foundation of your own life experiences -- that the Universe does arise from a grand design.

A grand design that we are fortunate participants in and of.

And in the end...this is how it should be:

The experiences of your own life - crossing with a whole new set of words and ideas - effecting a response, that will make you a subtly different person than you were before. You are not required to agree with everything, but just by learning even one new fact, you will be more than you were before.

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