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

Claus Janew

Mind-Expanding

Can we trace back consciousness, reality, awareness, and free will to a single basic structure without giving up any of them? Can the universe exist in both real and individual ways without being composed of both? This dialogue 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. Although decisions ultimately involve the whole universe, they are also free in varying degrees here and now. 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. A contrary impression originates only in a narrowed awareness. But even the most conscious and free awareness can neither anticipate all decisions nor extinguish individuality. Their creativity is secured. 

"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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Also in this book:

The Reality of Free Will

The uniqueness of each standpoint, each point of effect, can only be "overcome" by the standpoint changing to other standpoints and returning. In such alternation, which can also appear as constant change, lies the unity of the world. The wholeness of an alternation, however, is a structure of consciousness due to the special relationship between the circumscribing periphery and the infinitesimal center. This process structure brings determinacy and indeterminacy together, unifying them completely. Therefore, everywhere we are dealing with forms of consciousness that have more or less freedom of choice and an increasingly unknown depth. We live in a world of choosing consciousness, or rather awareness. In this respect, our environment expresses a deep truth about ourselves.

"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

How Consciousness Creates Reality. The Full Version

Claus Janew

Profound

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.

"A fabulously good work. Arguments and expositions are coherent. Fascinating!" 

Karin Kuretschka, Germany

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"Claus Janew's undertaking to put down on paper mental processes and procedures that we cannot always analyze, recognize, or follow with our external senses, and especially the depth with which he treats the subject, is simply admirable." 

Ingomar Doering, United States

"Again and again I open it, reread passages, chapters, and follow your thoughts, smile, thank you inwardly that you wrote it, spent years finding words and ways for it, and realize in everything the perfect solution..." 

C. I. M., Germany

The Self, Emptiness, and Awareness

In this exploration of self-identity, I argue that the self is not a standalone entity but an integral part of a broader consciousness. Deep meditation reveals the self as a construct beyond egoistic confines, interlinked with the external world and others' experiences. Decisions arise from an awareness that transcends individual ego, suggesting that our sense of self is an inexhaustible center of dynamic consciousness rather than an ultimate emptiness.

This is a chapter of the book Truthfulness. The Consciousness that Creates Reality.

How Consciousness Creates Reality

Claus Janew

Most Read

This is the abridged version of the book of the same title, written 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. It begins with seemingly simple interactions in our daily lives, examines how they originate on a deeper level, comes to understand the essentials of consciousness, and finally recognizes that we create our reality in its entirety. In the course of this quest, the reader will uncover little-heeded paths to accessing the 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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Omnipresent Consciousness and Free Will

This article is not an attempt to explain consciousness in terms of quantum physics or neurobiology. Instead, I would like to place the concept of “consciousness” on a broader foundation. I will therefore start from everyday reality, from precisely the point where we experience ourselves as conscious beings. I will define the concept so broadly that the question of whether only humans possess consciousness or whether a thermostat does as well is resolved; the difference is considerable, but not fundamental: every effect consists in the perception of consciousness. Accordingly, I will address its freedom of choice, which I consider the most important source of creativity. The problem of a truly conscious decision does not disappear by mixing determination with a dash of chance. Both must merge into a higher unity. It will then become clear that a certain degree of freedom of choice is just as ubiquitous as consciousness – an inherent part of reality itself. 

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.

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

Radical constructivism - a hollow shell?

On focus dynamic

Awareness Meditation Template (World Formula)

From zero to infinity and from free will to anything and vice versa. The metaphysical "world formula."

Click here to view the PDF slides. The center and the unfamiliar symbol are both clickable.

The Original German version is here.

Alternation and Approximation: Notes on the Foundations of Consciousness

This is a collection of unpublished reflections on the structural conditions underlying consciousness, agency, and perception. Central is the concept of infinitesimality structure, a theoretical framework that aims to reconcile determinacy and indeterminacy in decision-making processes and perceptual experience. Building on my major work, How Consciousness Creates Reality – The Full Version, I assume that consciousness emerges through dynamic processes of condensation, approximation, and alternation.

Higher harmony – fulfilling suffering?

There were times when suffering was considered good because it served a higher purpose, later heavenly happiness. From another perspective, it would be a more comprehensive happiness because it would last much longer. Not illogical, just one-track.

For behind the perceived disharmony of suffering there are also immediate harmonies: Beneath sorrow lies love, financial narrowness cries out for spiritual agility, and in sickness there is the silence to recognize new things. It is only when we do not want to admit it, when we deny the higher harmony of the whole, that we are seized by despair.

Does happiness make sense?

Some people would rather ask what meaning life should have if not the purpose of becoming happy. Really? Is that all there is to it? 

As I said, perhaps a clever drug would be enough to give you perfect feelings of happiness until the end of your life. Wouldn't it? 

That would be too dull for me too. But what are we looking for instead?

What Does Love Have to Do with Creativity?

Creating is an endless game of separating (projecting, i.e. changing) inner aspects in order to obtain a new individuality, which we can then rejoin (and enjoy again). A moment later we separate a new form of our infinite inner reality, and so on. We integrate all these "objects" in a new way as our awareness expands. This awareness also means going into limited experiences and coming back to the bigger "picture" that has now become more comprehensive, both consciously and subconsciously.

Truth, Harmony, and Free Will

The stem of the Reality Funnel summarizes the alternation of the less conscious points of view "perspectively". But if they don't just jump around there, they also have a closer effect on each other and are wound up in places to cores that harmoniously connect many perspectives. (Without harmony, they would fall apart again.)

Such a comparatively harmonious core, such as our inner self, can hold our Awareness (I) together, and from it probably emanate more comprehensively harmonizing impulses for thought and action than from the adjusting roles of our little ego. On the other hand, this ego can often handle everyday situations better. Therefore, it is best if each one devotes itself to its own subject and benefits only from the skills of the other. We can feel such a harmony like a beautiful concert. If, on the other hand, the ego is completely in tune with the inner self, we can speak of unity, but hardly of harmony: The connection is too rigid and the duet probably short.

Probability Thinking

When we weigh between two alternatives, say between job A and job B, we weigh between their respective priorities. Each job has a certain probability of realization, which can change during the weighing, whereupon the probability of the other job immediately adjusts. That is, if we prefer job B, job A becomes less probable, but remains available in the background for a while. With job B we choose an individual probability hierarchy as such to our reality.

What about the other candidates? They and their choices are also part of our probability hierarchy. They are aspects of our individual Awareness, which as a whole decides for a new individual reality, for a new probability hierarchy. This means in reverse: The other candidates have their own awareness and choose their own probability hierarchies. We all meet in the respective awareness, but we 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:

• We are aware of what exists for us in the circumscribing alternation of perspectives as their common approximation.
• When perspectives slip away from the approximation, we can still be aware of them. They exist as such in constant alternation.
• Everything that exists dynamically (i.e., alternately) transitions in a funnel-like manner from the most conscious "opening" through a perspectively "narrowing" stem into an awareness that we can call subconscious.
• This subconscious ultimately extends to All That Is.

All That Is – What is Awareness? (II)

If every perspective is individual and if structures arise only from circumscribing alternations, then alternation cannot be limited to the Awareness (I) of a human being. Rather, every point of view, every place of effect must alternate and arise from alternations. (Ultimately, it is the alternation of infinitely small points of an I-structure - defined in What is Consciousness? (I)).

This consequence entails others:

1. We must basically be able to put ourselves into the individual awareness of other humans (and even non-humans). Indeed, we empathize with others; otherwise we could not communicate with them. We at least repeatedly approximate their points of view and thus converse with persons who are similar to them. If we were to put ourselves completely in their position, our consciousness would quickly be overwhelmed and would have to repress most of it into the subconscious.
2. Changing a point of view is changing the whole reality (a rearrangement of the Reality Funnel), namely from a foreseen, probable reality to an even more probable one, the present reality. As one reality takes precedence, the others fall into their subordinate position. They become or remain potential, just as the one that now takes precedence was before. But they do not disappear: They are still aware standpoints 

The Reality Funnel - What is Consciousness? (II)

In What is Consciousness? (I) we considered the formation of i-structures through 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 points of view. And the 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 ("Is it several houses or one?").

The maximum of unity is in the intuitive center point, while the maximum of alternation is in the alternation itself. That is, the alternation is authoritative and the circumscription is derived. (Without facades, there is no interior.)

What is Awareness? (I)

The uniqueness of each standpoint, each point of view, can obviously only be "overcome" by changing the standpoint to other standpoints. And returning. In such alternation alone, which can also appear as constant change, lies the unity of the world.

The grasping of this dynamic unity goes beyond mere consciousness, because Consciousness (I) always tends to circumscribing condensation, i.e. to the formation of symbolic, quasi-static objects. In contrast, the change to other points of view - other individual attitudes - is naturally more open. The perception of this alternation is what I call awareness.

From the land of milk and honey

A world in which our every wish was immediately granted would obviously not make sense to us, but would simply be arbitrary. We wouldn't even need to have a specific wish, because we could just as easily have any other wish. We wouldn't need to understand our desires, in fact there would be nothing to understand. What we now know about ourselves, and what could serve as the basis for our desires, would have no connection to any more comprehensive reality. So we might as well wish for our dissolution. And why shouldn't we?

Reality and creation in a nutshell (dynamic existence)

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.

• Perception of dynamic existence is awareness.
• Awareness is infinitesimality-structured.

Focus dynamic

Excerpts from the summarizing chapters of my book How Consciousness Creates Reality – The Full Version. 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.

The perception of any object is a unique whole, the summit of an individual maximized in a vanishingly small center, and it is only through the transition into its own until then subconscious that an individual reaches another whole (another object). The transition can entail an effect after all, something of the preceding object, and the way back, a retroaction. In this way, a new individual, a new summit, is circumscribed – one that is conscious of the two earlier ones differently, or not at all.

Definition of the infinitesimality structure

Multitude cannot exist without oneness, and oneness cannot exist without being determined by multitude.

Oneness, however, means identity, and identity, in its final consequence, through all "stages," is a zero point. On the other hand, this infinitesimal center needs to be circumscribed 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. Therefore, the circumscription of such a center is a changing between single points.

This means that an existing structure includes both extremes: absolute identity and absolute separation. Their unity must also be constituted by change – now between the common point of identity and separateness. 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.