This is the stuff of Reality discoverable through our senses. The realm external to our mind. It is the realm of our physical aspect of everyday life and experience.
But this External aspect of Reality is not everything. We humans live not only in a physical environment, made up of things, but also in a symbolic environment. Our physical environment, of three spatial dimensions, is a geographical location which may have rivers, valleys, flat plains, hills, mountains, trees, plants, buildings, roads, etc. We, and all that stuff, also exist in a fourth temporal dimension and environment. Time seems to start when we are born and stop when we die. But we are not so egocentric as to ignore the fact that everything has existed before we got here and will continue to do so after we are gone. We know this and we experience the effects of time on our surroundings and on ourselves.
But, we humans also live, colloquially speaking, through our heads, through our minds. Everything starts off entering our bodies through our physical senses, but when it comes to understanding any of it, we are trapped in our mind, in our limited first person perspective. We live in a fifth dimension. This fifth dimension is the most important of all, the dimension of humanly crafted symbols. We live through words. We can think thoughts which are images, we can feel emotions, but anytime we try to understand any of it, we come up against words. We all live in our own world of words. A world of our making which is contained in the world of our culture�s language system. The language we think and speak with is itself an environment which can also be described by using the metaphors of space and time.
One of the most important thing that happens in our mind is the process that goes on inside of us to construct our �sunglasses� that I mentioned at the beginning of this book. Those �sunglasses� are the means through which we experience the world around us. Those sunglasses are the ideas, the beliefs, the values that we hold to be significant. They help determine what we notice, and how we notice the world around us. They help determine the conclusion and the understandings we reach concerning our external world. Those sunglasses filter the data and out of that filtered data we construct our understanding of our external world. This process of filtration is hardwired into all our sensory preceptors to use a computer metaphor.
This process of filtration and construction is also built into our mind/brain software system. Our mind/brain primary program is to filter and extract data for our physical survival. That primary program through both cultural evolution and personal evolution is expanded upon and made to encompass and to accommodate a definition of survival that goes beyond the merely physical. That software program is built up over time by our mind/brain by the process of enculturation in our mini-society known as a family and by the greater family known as our culture that our family is a part of.
The universe is made up of energy and matter, does this make the Universe a lifeless and meaningless place? I believe not. What makes for the rich diversity of existence, including life and meaning, is structure. Matter and energy is interconnected and structured in an almost infinite variety of ways and configurations on an incredible multiplicity of levels. This structure is present from sub-atomic particles all the way up to galaxies. I do not believe that the universe is devoid of life, mind, spirit. I believe the source of this structure is the Infinite Divine known by many names, amongst these are Ayn Sof, the Tao and Quality.
The human word �Tao� (which has the literal translation into English as a way, a path, a road.) and the human word �Quality�, I believe are equivalents. The choice of words are the products of two individuals working within the maps of two cultures. When the two are compared to each other, China�s map/culture, and thus the world, as experienced by Lao Tzu, seems more of a Romantic Quality culture. The other, the United States, and thus the world, as experienced by Robert Pirsig, seems in contrast a more Classical Quality culture. Having said this, I will start with both terms for final emphasis and then drop the use of the word �Tao� and switch to Pirsig�s term Quality, since this part of my book is more about Classical Quality map making than Romantic Quality map making.
I believe that all of these things, life, mind, spirit, evolve from the complexities contained within the internal and external attributes of the structure of energy and matter.
I believe that Tao/Quality is the Internal aspect and the cause of the diverse configuration of structure Externally and Internally of all energy and matter in the Universe on all levels. I believe that mind and spirit are the internal experience and the internal attributes of the external arrangements of all energy and matter.
The Tao/Quality is the ultimate object that we can speak about and the ultimate territory that we can try to map. But everything that we say is �not the true Tao� it remains only human words. The Tao/Quality is before human words and human maps. Human words and human maps come after and are not the same as the pre-verbal/non-verbal reality and experience of the Tao. So, what follows is a map in the form of words. It can never be the same as the Tao, but it is all we humans can do . We are map makers and word users.
I believe that Tao/Quality is the ultimate Holon, and all Holon�s exist not in absolute isolation but in a Holarchy And by saying this I therefore am asserting that the totality of everything, all non-verbal objects and all verbal objects are Holons. The assertion that Quality is a Holon is something that is inherent in the nature of and the reality of Quality. It is not a mere human map.
An analogy: The word �gravity� is a human invention and everything that can be spoken to describe �gravity� in what ever symbol system used is still a collection of human effort. Yet, Gravity is a force which exists in the workings of Reality before any human every noticed its presence.
Reality, as we humans have experienced it, exists because there is Quality. Without Quality there would only be pure, uniform, undifferentiated energy quantum particles. Because there is Quality the Universe exists and is structured as it is. Energy and Matter continually dance and flow in a continuum of Dynamic and Static manifestations all in accordance with Quality. Quality is what makes for organization in a structural pattern of Holon�s in a Holarchy. That flow of energy and matter has formed into many things, some of which are a form of life which is sentient. (Theoretically humans are not the only such species in the Universe, hence this reference. But for the sake of simplicity I will henceforth only address this discussion to our own species.)
All human beings interact with the Universe and within themselves. We are born interacting within ourselves and with a point of contact our current context, a small place within the Universe/Tao that is our ultimate environment. We have within us, hard wired into our bodies, the tools to find our way in the Universe/Tao. These biological tools will become the models for Ideas, the mental tools which will we will use to construct our map of the Universe/Tao.
These Ideas come from our linguistic heritage the means by which the culture we are born into is preserved and transmitted. We learn from our parents and teachers, and all who shape our enculturation. They gives us our sunglasses, our first tool box. From them we are shaped. Those early Ideas shape our sunglasses, become our tool box and thus give us our first tentative map by which we live. We are shaped by these early map/sunglasses.
So long as we fail to recognize this fact, that early map/sunglasses will bias our encounter with the Universe/Tao. We will unconsciously warp the incoming data to conform to our beliefs as laid down by our map/sunglasses. So long as we fail to recognize this fact we will have difficulties, may even never recognize, and more than that, we will deny what seems anomalous according to the preconceived rules of our map/tool/sunglasses. We will fail to observe, and thus fail to comprehend, that before our eyes there is a playing card that shows an ace of heart whose color is black.
