In the Rational-Mechanical Paradigm certainty is the only thing that matters – we have no time for anything else. We are interested in hard facts (rather than being interested in subtle nuances of meaning that hint at a reality that goes beyond mere facts and figures, that goes beyond mere ‘positive assertions’). Facts and figures are a vanishingly trivial affair, no matter what facts we may field, no matter what figures we might like to throw around the place, it’s all just arbitrary imposition on our part. It’s all just a game – there’s nothing deep here at all.

Definite statements – which is to say, ‘facts and figures’ – constitute what we might call a second-order reality: first we put a framework in place to allow us to organise the world, and then – secondly – we proceed to read off the data that this action generates for us. We derive ‘the world of facts and figures’ from this framework, which means that the world in question can’t exist without that assumed framework (which means that it has no existence of its own). This being the case then of course we can say that the domain which is made up of definite statements has nothing deep about it. It’s as shallow as shallow can be; to say that it’s shallow is misleading. The Positive World (the world that is expressed ‘in relief’) isn’t just ‘shallow’, it’s 100% illusory…

What we can say about the conditioned world – which is the world that is founded upon definite statements of fact – is that it is ‘true in relation to the measures that have been assumed’. It possesses what is referred to in Buddhism as relative reality and the key point to note here is that relative reality isn’t any kind of reality at all. What we’re saying here is that if A exists then so must B. A doesn’t exist however, and so the chances of B ever existing are precisely ZERO. On the other hand, if we go ahead and say that A exists (just for the hell of it) and if we then – after doing this this – contrive to lose sight of the fact that the statement <A exists> was only ever propositional in nature then the result of this manoeuvre is that we can’t see the illusion to be an illusion. This is ‘the clever trick’; this is how we ‘do it’ – this is how we ‘make the real unreal and the unreal real’.

As we have said, the basic constituent unit making up the Positive Reality is the definite statement (which is a statement that is ‘true no matter which way we choose to look at it’, which is a statement that is ‘true all by itself’ (without the need for any judicious spin-doctoring on our part). This basic constituent – the building block that the Known World is assembled out of – doesn’t itself exist, however – it’s like a unicorn, centaur or mermaid or some equally mythological creature in this respect. We can listen to as many stories as we like about unicorns, gryphons, centaurs, gorgons, werewolves, etc., but we’ll never actually meet one. No matter what arguments we might resort to, the bottom line is that there is not – and could not ever be – such a thing as a ‘definitely true statement’ (such a thing as an undeniable ‘statement of fact’). The notion that there could be such a thing is absurd; the statement that <X equals Y> (or anything like that) is meaningless (since nothing ever ‘equals’ anything). Nothing ever equals anything since in order for this to be the case, in order for this to be a meaningful rather than meaningless proposition, there would have to be some sort of fixed or immutable essence within things, such that the immutable essence of the one ‘thing’ matches that of the other, which would then allow us to say that X either equals (or doesn’t equal) Y. Our language (or our way of thinking) doesn’t fit reality therefore – in order to operate at all thought needs to impose conditions that simply don’t (and can’t)  exist in the real world, which is clearly nonsensical. Nothing is gained as a result of such an exercise.

 This is a truly bizarre thing to consider, therefore – the everyday world – which seems so solidly, so self-evidently real, which seems so relentlessly and oppressively concrete – is a composite (or ‘modular’) structure that is made up from purely imaginary building blocks. The humdrum world of our daily, run-of-the-mill, matter-of-fact type experience is completely opaque to us (meaning that we cannot but see it as a fundamental, immutable reality) but – notwithstanding this perception of ours – it is a world that is assembled out of building blocks that are strictly virtual in nature. This is a conundrum therefore – the walls that hem us in on all sides are as solid a solid can be, as impermeable is impermeable can be, and yet when we look into the bricks that make it up what we see is that they are actually figments of our own over-zealous imagination. We’re filling in the gaps ourselves. On the ‘macro-level’ the walls making up our prison cell are fundamentally impassible (impassible by definition) whilst – on the micro-level – it’s abundantly clear (to whoever is interested in looking) that there’s nothing there. There was never anything there – we invented the Positive World just for kicks.

What makes the difference to whether we are subject to the tyranny of a determinate reality or not is simply awareness, therefore – when we take the definite statements that make up the positive world for granted then they do indeed determine everything about us – we experience ourselves to be what the rules unequivocally say we are. To see the rules (or instructions) that are governing us for what they are – which is to say, rules that we can obey or not obey as we please – immediately causes the determinate picture of things to ‘dissolve into infinite relativity’. Awareness always causes whatever forms we previously took seriously to dissolve into infinite relativity: the process of becoming aware opens us to ‘what’s really there’ whilst the converse process is one where our consciousness is closed down by a determinate (or formal) reality which ISN’T there, by the assumptions we have made, and then taken for granted ever since. ‘Taking stuff for granted’ means ‘falling asleep’ – we could say – only this type of falling asleep is more like going into a permanent coma. We get turned into stone. Falling asleep in this way is pragmatically irreversible since once we forget, we also ‘forget that we have forgotten’. When our world shrinks so too does our capacity to know that it has. Once the door closes then we forget that there ever was a door – our subjective reality thus shrinks all the way down to nothing without us being any wiser to the fact. We get ‘zilched’ and from then on carry on ‘living only in our imaginations’.

We are saying that the basic constituent building block of Positive Reality is the definite statement (the statement which unambiguously says what is true and what is not true), but this is only half the story. A ‘literal statement of fact’ is one-sided in nature), in other words – it ‘says what it says and that’s all that it says’, but this isn’t the whole story. Any literal / logical statement that we make is always going to be ‘true to the extent that it is false, and false to the extent that it is true’ (as Alan Watts puts it), the thing about this being that this duplicity is never mentioned. The rules of the game preclude our mentioning the paradox. Logical statements are designed to be read in the one way – the ‘presented’ way, so to speak – but in not the other, complementary (hidden) way. The trick only works if we fall in with this convention – if we were to see both the emphasized and the latent faces at one and the same time then the net result would be a big fat zero, a big fat nothing (the ‘trick’ in question being that we are led to believe that there is something there when there isn’t, in other words). Real World structures are duplex, not simplex – they have a front and a back (not just a front). We can therefore say that ‘the basic building block of positive reality’ is a unit of polarity. We may say something to the effect that positive reality depends for its (apparent) existence upon the ostensible (or theatrical) antipathy of two complementary opposites. The constituent unit behind the imposing edifice of the stated reality is a ‘positive / negative pair’, like a bar magnet with North at one end and South at the other. We habitually see all statements as being either ‘positive’ OR ‘negative’ in nature (which – if true – would mean that we are ‘learning something’, would mean that we are ‘obtaining knowledge’) whilst in reality all statements are both asserting and denying to the same extent, whilst in reality all sticks have two ends. It is because all sticks have two ends to them that what we are pleased to call ‘positive knowledge’ can never be any more than a bizarre hallucination (a bizarre hallucination that we have become mechanically habituated to taking seriously’).

What we’re looking at here is ‘invisible complementarity’, therefore – there are two complementary actions taking place, both the denying and the asserting action, and there is of course absolutely no way that we can have the one without the other. To paraphrase Alan Watts, ‘There can’t be such a thing as buying without there also being such a thing as selling’. I can’t buy something from you without you selling me that that very same thing at one and the same time, and this means that ‘buying EQUALS selling’ (it just depends on which way around we choose to look at it). This principle (the principle which tells us that Cosmic Symmetry must always be conserved) also holds good for (so-called) ‘statements of fact’ – I can’t insist that the one thing be <true> without at the same time insisting that all other possibilities be <not true>. I can’t say YES to one thing without also saying NO to the other, and so saying yes is the same as saying no. There’s no difference – it’s the same action, only seen from the other side.

Certainty – the situation where we are 100% definite about something, with zero questions, zero doubts – doesn’t come about all by itself therefore but – rather – it has to be engineered, it has to be contrived. Certainty comes into being purely as a result of contrast, purely as a result of conflict (or disagreement) – the area to one side of the all-important boundary is emphasised whilst the other is not no and it is this contrast (the contrast between YES and NO) that makes the boundary into a boundary. The boundary IS the contrast. According to the way we are supposed to read the logical statements one side of the boundary is not equal to the other, and it is this crucial inequality that generates the certainty that we seek, the certainty that we use to make sense of the world, that we use to navigate or negotiate the world. Focussing on one side of the projected boundary at the expense of the other is what Jung calls one-sidedness and this is the device that allows to be definite about things, to be able to ‘say what things are’. Without the inequality that has been introduced by the boundary nothing can be defined, nothing can be stated; without the ‘break in symmetry’ (which makes one side of the equation appear different to the other) there can be no positive knowledge.

To be ‘psychologically naïve’ is thus to be perfectly obedient with regard to the game that the engine of thought wants us to play. The game thought wants us to play is the game of seeing the front end without having any awareness of the back, the game of attending the foreground as opposed to the background. This obedience creates certainty (and thus the conditions necessary for psychological investment) and it also creates DELUSION – the delusion in question being that whatever we are ‘certain’ about must also be true (which is absolutely never going to be the case). If positive knowledge is to be positive (in the way we want it to be) then there can be no sense of there having been some sort of choice involved and yet – at the same time – there is always a ‘choice’.  What’s going on here is both <yes-saying> and <no-saying> and so clearly there’s a choice being made here – we’re choosing to see the YES but not the NO, we’re choosing to see what is duplex as being simplex, what is nuanced as non-nuanced. We are collapsing reality, which is rounded (or rotund, as an alchemist might say) to produce something which has no roundness to it at all, something that has a PLUS at one end and a MINUS at the other, but which we choose to see in a strictly superficial way as a positive with no negative, an upside with no downside, a front with no back…







Image credit – historyskills.com