Every Friday morning, I plan to read a few pages of Joseph Chilton Pearce’s Crack in the Cosmic Egg. I will share my notes as I move through the book each week.
Reality is not a fixed entity
There is a relationship between what we think is out there in the world and what we experience as being out there. Specifically there is a rough mirroring that takes place between our mind and our reality. We cannot stand outside this mirroring process because we are the process. It’s important to regard the mirroring process as the only fixed element and all of its products as relative. Said another way, what is discovered by man is never the “universal” truth; rather, the process by which the mind brings about discovery is itself the “universal.”
It is commonly thought that the “world out there” informs the mind through our senses. Although true, a critical insight is missing. Our concepts and basic assumptions actively direct our precepts. The “selective program of the mind” directs what we see, feel and hear. We must learn that our mind directs our sensory apparatus every bit as much as our sensory apparatus informs the mind. JCP refers to the pattern as concept-precept interaction.
The world to view is determined by our worldview
If we accept that reality is not fixed but represented, then how does our representation come about? According to Jerome Bruner, the way we represent the world arises from our whole social fabric – the rich web of language, myth, history, ways of doing things, unconsciously-accepted attitudes, notions and so on. Our “reality-adjustment” begins in childhood and goes forth as we become cooperating threads in the social web.
My final thought on the matter
If our worldview is arbitrary, then why don’t we recognize it as such? Probably because considering our worldview as arbitrary places our entire reality in the same questionable position.
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