The Reality of Free Will

Journal of Consciousness
Exploration & Research

The uniqueness of each viewpoint, each point of effect, can be "overcome" only by changing the viewpoint to other viewpoints and returning. Such an alternation, which can also appear as constant change, makes up the unity of the world. The wholeness of an alternation, however, is a consciousness structure because of the special relationship between the circumscribing periphery and the infinitesimal center. This process structure unites determinacy and indeterminacy at every point also totally. We are dealing, therefore, with forms of consciousness everywhere, with more or less freedom of choice and an increasingly unknown depth. We live in a world of choosing consciousness or better: awareness. In this respect, our environment expresses a deep truth about ourselves.

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Truth, Harmony, and Free Will

The stem of the Reality Funnel "perspectively" summarizes the alternation of the less conscious standpoints. But if they don't just jump around there, they also retroact on each other more closely and in places are wound into cores, which harmoniously combine many perspectives. (Without harmony, they fell apart again.)

Such a comparatively harmonious core as, for example, our inner self can hold our Awareness (I) together, and it is likely that it will emanate more comprehensively harmonizing think and action impulses than the adapting roles of our small ego. On the other hand, this ego can often deal better with everyday situations. Therefore, both of them are best dedicated to their own topic and benefit only from the skill of the other. A harmony of this kind we can feel like a beautiful concert. Instead, once the ego is completely in line with the inner self, one can speak of unity, but hardly of harmony: The connection is too rigid and the duet probably short.

Is There a Constant Reality?

If we can exist only in the constant alternation of perspective (sensory, psychic, mental) and this has to apply analogously to any place of effect (just worked, just different), how then does stability, something permanent, emerge?

Of course by repeating the alternation: of the thought, the point of view, the mutual confirmation, the effect. The alternation can be exactly repeated, however, only for an infinitely short moment; then it must reach beyond the repetition so as not to cancel itself out. That is, it changes as a whole and remains open. For stabilization an approximate repetition is sufficient, though. So for a long time we believe almost the same thing, for example.  

Alternating Consciousness. From Perception to Infinities and Back to Free Will

Alternating Consciousness

Can we trace back consciousness, reality, awareness, and free will to a single basic structure without giving up any of them? This book founds consciousness and freedom of choice on the basis of a new reality concept that also includes the infinite as far as we understand it. Just the simplest distinction contains consciousness. It is not static, but a constant alternation of perspectives. From its entirety and movement, however, there arises a freedom of choice being more than reinterpreted necessity and unpredictability. The unity and openness of the infinite enables the individual to be creative while this creativity directly and indirectly enters into all other individuals without impeding them.

Great Read. Thank you for putting your work out into a conscious space for all. Much appreciated. 

Marcel P. Londt, PhD, South Africa

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I am impressed by the comprehensiveness of your interdisciplinary approach. There are some major philosophical concepts which you weave very well into a necessary system of reality: potential, the one and the many, alternation, constant change, the reality and uniqueness of oneiric experience and the whole, interdependence, infinity, the mandate of opposites and many more. The combination of these ideas cannot be attributed solely to any other of the established classical and modern thinkers of whom I am aware. I thank you for your enlightenment.

E W Ralph, UK

 (The reader comments above and below are related to the main part Alternating Consciousness, not to the recently added introduction The Reality of Free Will.)

Contents:

The Reality of Free Will 

Individuality and Reality

What is Consciousness? (I)

How is Freedom of Choice Possible?

What is Awareness? (I)

The Reality Funnel - What is Consciousness? (II)

All That Is - What is Awareness? (II)

Subconscious - Free or Not?

Probability Thinking

Is There a Constant Reality?

Truth, Harmony, and Free Will

Alternating Consciousness

Day 1: What is a Consciousness Unit?

"Something on which everything else is based on must be as simple as possible."

Day 2: Choices Everywhere

"We choose constantly between old and new way, since we always consider the new more or less."

Day 3: Awareness in Alternation

"Physicalists will be tearing their hair out!"

Day 4: The Unlimited Potential

"The 'tracks' of the alternation to the Other are becoming denser and denser and only resolvable if consciousness follows them."

Day 5: Indestructible

"However, if the coffee turns out awful this may change temporarily."

Day 6: All-Encompassing Creativity

"If we consider our entire focus hierarchy as what makes us up, 'we' decide about literally everything that happens to us."

Day 7: Free Will

"We cannot want conflicting things without having to leave the other an

alternative."

Probability Thinking

If we weigh two alternatives, say job A and job B, then we weigh their respective priority. Each job has a certain probability of realization, which may change while we are weighing, whereupon the probability of the other one immediately adapts. That is, if we prefer job B, job A becomes less probable but remains accessible for a while in the background. With Job B we choose an individual probability hierarchy as such to our reality.

What about the other applicants? They are also part of our probability hierarchy along with their decisions. They are aspects of our individual Awareness, which as a whole chooses a new individual reality, a new probability hierarchy. Conversely, this means that the other applicants have their own awareness and choose their own probability hierarchies. In the respective awareness, we all meet, but do not merge.

Subconscious - Free or Not?

If we combine the results of Consciousness I and Consciousness II as well as Awareness I and Awareness II, the following picture emerges:

• That which exists for us in the circumscribing alternation of perspectives as their common approximation is conscious to us.
• If perspectives slip away from the approximation, we still can be aware of them. They exist as such in constant alternation.
• Everything that exists dynamically (that is in alternation), transitions funnel-like from the most conscious "opening" through a perspective "narrowing" channel into an awareness that we can call subconscious.
• This subconscious ultimately extends to All That Is.

How Consciousness Creates Reality

How Consciousness Creates Reality

The present text is a very abridged version of a book I wrote out of the desire to examine the structure of our reality from a standpoint unbiased by established teachings, be they academic-scientific, popular-esoteric, or religious in nature. We will begin with seemingly simple interactions in our daily lives, examine how they originate on a deeper level, come to understand the essentials of consciousness, and finally recognize that we create our reality in its entirety. In the course of this quest, we will uncover little-heeded paths to accessing our subconscious, other individuals, and that which can be understood by the term "God". And the solution to the classical problem of free will constitutes the gist of the concepts thus revealed.

There is no book that explains consciousness in such a clear way as it is given in this book.
Rajagopalan Madasami, India

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Also in this book:

Omnipresent Consciousness and Free Will

This is not an attempt to explain consciousness in terms basically of quantum physics or neuro-biology. Instead I should like to place the term "Consciousness" on a broader footing. I shall therefore proceed from everyday reality, precisely where we experience ourselves as conscious beings. I shall use the term in such a general way as to resolve the question whether only a human being enjoys consciousness, or even a thermostat. Whilst the difference is considerable, it is not fundamental. Every effect exists in the perception of a consciousness. I elaborate on its freedom of choice (leading to free will), in my view the most important source of creativity, in a similarly general way. The problems associated with a really conscious decision do not disappear by mixing determination with a touch of coincidence. Both must enter into a higher unity. In so doing it will emerge that a certain degree of freedom of choice (or free will) is just as omnipresent as consciousness - an inherent part of reality itself. 

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Dynamic Existence

What is real? What is creation?
Everything is in motion. "Inertness" arises from (approximative) repetition, that is, through rotation or an alternation that delineates a focus of consciousness. This focus of consciousness, in turn, must also move/alternate (the two differ only in continuity). If its alternation seems to go too far - physically, psychically or intellectually - it reaches into the subconscious. In this way, interconnection is established by the alternation of the focus of consciousness. Therefore, in a world in which everything is interconnected, all focuses must reciprocally transition into each other. "Reality" is a common "goal", a focus which all participants can switch into and which is conscious to them as such, as a potential one. Its "degree of reality" is the probability of its fully becoming conscious (or more simply: its current degree of consciousness). Thus, a reality is created when all participants increase its probability or, respectively, their consciousness of it.

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All That Is – What is Awareness? (II)

When every perspective is individual and when structures only arise from circumscribing alternations, then alternation cannot be restricted to the Awareness (I) of a human. Rather, any standpoint, any point of effect, must alternate and must result from alternations. (Ultimately, it is the alternation of infinitely small points of an i-structure – defined in What is Consciousness? (I).

From this consequence there follow more:

1. In principle, we must be able to posit ourselves into the individual awareness of other people (and even into nonhuman awareness). In fact, we empathize with others, or we would not be able to agree on something. We approximate their standpoints again and again at least and by that talk to persons who resemble them. If we would posit ourselves completely into them, our consciousness would quickly be overwhelmed and had to suppress the most into the subconscious.
2. The change of a standpoint is the change of the whole reality (a rearrangement of the Reality Funnel), namely from a foreseen, probable reality to an even more probable, the actual reality. While one reality takes priority, the others fall into their subordinate position. They become or remain potential, just as the currently prior reality was. But they do not disappear: They continue to be standpoints within awareness.

The Reality Funnel - What is Consciousness? (II)

In What is Consciousness? (I) we have considered the formation of i-structures by circumscription and in "What is Awareness? (I)" the alternation of perspective as such. But basically, both are one and the same.

Circumscribing movement – consciousness – is of course an alternation of individual viewpoints. And perception of an alternation – awareness – also circumscribes a constant center. The difference between emphasized circumscription and emphasized alternation lies in the density of the circumscribed central area. If the circumscribing alternation (for example, between facades) forms an object (a house), the content-dense center symbolizes its unity ("being inside"). If the alternation is perceived more as such, the object character is thin ("Are there several houses or one?").

The maximum of the unity lies in the intuitive center point, whereas the maximum of the alternation consists in the alternation itself. That is, the alternation is authoritative and the circumscription derived. (Without facades no inside.)

What is Awareness? (I)

The uniqueness of each viewpoint, each standpoint, can obviously be "overcome" only by changing the viewpoint to other viewpoints.  And returning. Such an alternation alone, which can also appear as constant change, makes up the unity of the world.

Apprehending this dynamic unity exceeds mere consciousness because Consciousness (I) always tends to circumscribing condensation, which is creating symbolic, quasi-static objects. In contrast, the change to other viewpoints – other individual attitudes – is of course more open. I call the perception of this alternation awareness.

How is Freedom of Choice Possible?

The question of whether we can freely choose between several possibilities without just imagining this freedom or confusing it with chance leads us to the truth about our responsibility. For if we had something to answer for, which came from us, but was not decided by us, it would be no more than the responsibility of a cloud for its rain.

To find the solution, we consider the simple choice between two continuations of our day, for example whether we go to the cinema or the theater. Actually, we like both, though sometimes we feel more like one thing than the other. Today we really do not care; we could as well throw a coin. But we do not - that would be too cheap. We are pondering. We are putting ourselves in the cinema, then in the theater, and back in present, and so on. In this way we are circumscribing the wholeness of the decisive situation, the present being its center. Strictly speaking, this center is infinitely small, right in the middle of the whole circumscription with all its details. That is, in us.

What is Consciousness? (I)

Whatever consciousness is, it must have structure. Even emptiness can be defined only in contrast to abundance and nonduality versus duality (as the word says). Or it's just "Mu". And that would be the end of this paper - and everything else.

I suggest we allow ourselves some more time and try to start from a consciousness that is as concrete as possible, from a conscious object, say a glass of water. We perceive something that we distinguish from ourselves. We also differentiate it from its environment (table, cupboard, room) and determine it in relation to other known things (table, cup, plate) to what it "is". That is, we circumscribe its existence by comparisons. It is also being stabilized by external and internal interactions (pouring and drinking, molecular attraction and repulsion).

Individuality and Reality

Your Individuality is far more than a little peculiarity. It is a view that nothing and nobody has except you. Otherwise it/he/she would be you.  Also, you will have changed your perspective – yourself – in the next moment, and you cannot turn back time.

For convenience we come to an agreement about "common" objects, which allegedly everyone perceives, although each views from his own standpoint. If you watch me rolling a pen across the table, you may believe it being the same pen I see. However, I see something completely different than you. There is not the slightest match between my perception and yours. Because otherwise I would sit in your place, have your thoughts, memories, and emotions, connecting them with a shape rolling towards me.

Conclusion of the German book Die Erschaffung der Realität (The Creation of Reality)

Die Erschaffung der Realität

The main argument in this book is the undeniable openness of every system to the unknown. And the fundamental question goes: What does this openness produce?

We are a part of the infinite universe and an incorporation of its wholeness. Both for us means an individualized reality, through which the universe expresses itself and on the other hand through which it is built up with. It also means our necessity, importance and indestructibility for the sum of its incorporations. Most connections among ourselves are hardly conscious for us. Meanwhile the infinitesimality structure of all consciousness guarantees not only the logical lack of inconsistency of these connections but also the freedom of choice of every individual.
Our goal by no means can be to decide completely consciously. Responsibility contains spontaneity or rather trust in a meaningful working together of the forces. We increasingly become aware of our role in the entire relationship and we learn to contribute optimally to the value fulfillment of all individuals, ourselves included. Beyond the supposed differences between objective and subjective reality, we at some point of awareness comprehend that we create our reality out of our innermost depths.

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The core

The core of my work can be seen as the well-known unity of opposites, but applied in a new manner and with the strongest consequence possible.

However, it seems not really helpful to conclude from there as a starting point, for every "application" has to be (and has been) reasoned independently to prove its validity. So the unity of opposites itself is more a result and becomes a “starting point” just in this way. Nevertheless, it provides a connection to philosophical traditions (Yin/Yang, Heraclitus, Cusanus, Hegel).

Competent readers can also try to lead up from Alfred North Whitehead, Ernst Cassirer or structuralism by thinking their basic ideas more strictly and synthetically. -Satori

Laws of Form: Why Spencer-Brown is missing the point

In his famous book Laws of Form, George Spencer-Brown tries to construct the world from the most simple. He begins with a simple distinction, a circle on a structureless plane for example. He does not say that this is the only way to begin, but makes the reader simply do it and see what is developing. In addition, he gives more handling instructions, which reduces the most possible to the least possible.

I focus on his beginnings – the distinction – and the way how this is interpreted by him (indeed): ”… every duality implies triplicity: what the thing is, what it isn’t, and the boundary between them.” By this the world is digitalized. Subsequently, he examines extensions (“… to recross [the boundary] is not to cross [the boundary]”) and reductions (“What a thing is and what it is not are identical in form”). In any case, the boundary remains only boundary, i.e. distinction.

Individuality and the physical paradigm

The physical paradigm contains serious distortions or inconsistencies:

1. The Brain is seen as the ultimate "perceiver". But who perceives the brain? The brain again? This is a circle, where my concept of circumscription comes in.
2. Reality is seen as physical after all, and by "physical" our paradigm is meant. From this a limited view of information derives. Here, my infinitesimality structure suggests a deeper view from which "information" derives.
3. "Physical" also means "objective", and objectivity is considered to be "not part of the observer" (the term "observer" contains this misunderstanding in itself). So where in this world is the observer? Observed by whom? Or not observed at all?

Focus dynamic

Excerpts from the summarizing chapters of my German book Die Erschaffung der Realität (The Creation of Reality). This topic is developed and explained with many examples in the regular chapters of the book and also to a certain extent in its abridged version How Consciousness Creates Reality.

Perception of any object is an unique entirety, the summit of an individual maximized in a vanishing small center, and it is only through the transition into its own until then subconscious, how this individual reaches another entirety (another object). The transition can entail an effect after all, something of the preceding object, and the way back a repercussion. This way a new individual, a new summit is being circumscribed, to whom the two former ones are different or not conscious.

On the four quadrants (perspectives) of consciousness by Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber's system of four quadrants is a workable concept to put worldviews in an order, I think. Anyway, the reduction from second person to first person plural ignores the essential quality of a dialogue: When I say "you", I do not mean "we", and I also do not mean "I" or "he". These are mere aspects of the "you". The main point is the change of perspective as such, that creates the dialogue, the perception of another individual as itself and so the second-person view. I change my viewpoint to the viewpoint of the other (partly at least) and come back to a new own one and so forth.

Definition of infinitesimality structure

Multitude cannot exist without its oneness and oneness cannot exist without determination by multitude.

Oneness however means identity and identity in its last consequence through all „stages" is a zero point. On the other hand this infinitesimal center needs circumscription by details. So despite the details’ identity in oneness, they as individuals have to find their way into circumscription. And as individuals they contain infinitesimal centers by themselves etc. Hence the circumscription of such a center is the changing between single points.

That means an existing structure includes both extremes, the absolute identity and the absolute separation. Their unity then also has to be constituted by change - now between this common point of identity and being separated. Both are nothing at all without this change by which they are determined only. The unity built that way of oneness and multitude in turn has its infinitesimal center of identity...

The same is valid for every area on every scale. A continuum of this kind is the precondition of permanent objects. Through the omnipresent change between the extremes of identity and separation any point is immediately joined with each other as well as continuously mediated and also apart from the others.

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