Just as Einstein�s equation of E=MC2 explains the relationship of matter and energy in the universe and there is, assuming that the equation holds to be true, no getting around this relationship, so to with my �equation�. My phrase records the relationship of ideas and sense data or any other in coming data to our mind/brain/body/soul/spirit. There is no getting around my equation. It is true for all sentient thinking beings of which we humans are one example. Anyone you choose to name, George W. Bush, Osama Ben Laden, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Martin Luther, Aristotle, Plato, Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Immanuel Kant, Robert Pirsig, Ken Wilber, Arthur Koestler, Alfred Korzybski, B. F. Skinner, Abraham, Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Muhammad, Siddhartha Gautama who became the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Moses Maimonides, Gary Jaron, etc., every human who ever lived and will ever live, everyone. There are no exceptions.
Although we interact through our senses directly with the world around us, when it comes to conscious interaction with the world, in a very real way, they did not, and we do not, experience the world directly, but only through our sunglasses, those ideas we come to incorporate. All of them, and all of us are, were shaped by ideas and upon, and with those past acquisition, we, like they, shape our own current and future ideas. We literally may only see and hear what we believe we should, and want to, see and hear.
Knowing that the ideas, values and beliefs we hold have been shaped by our enculturation process and our personal experience, gives us a valuable tool to analyze what it is we think we see and experience, and to analyze what we believe. It enables us to know that this shaping process has created within us previously unconscious bias that affects what we see.
Knowing this process does not mean that our choices are limited. I am not saying that we will inevitably believe what we were taught. We can and do consciously shape our own ideas. Knowing this process does not enable us to completely predict our future actions. The future is potentially open ended and filled with options and possibilities. We can always choose to act in a manner that seems to be �stupid� or �foolish� or �ignore our best interests�. These pejorative terms may not be valid, they only may be biased from our conscious perspective. We can choose to listen to our intuition, our unconscious. Our unconscious and our intuition is our reservoir of beliefs, needs, desires, and even a possible connection to the Divine. Many times when we make an �irrational� choice what we have done is made a rational choice based upon one or many of our unconscious beliefs, needs, and desires. This process of being shaped and shaping ideas, illuminates and helps us to understand the outcome, the past. This process helps us to realize the possibility that these unconscious ideas exist and thus to widen the scope of �rational� options facing us in the present. After we choose in the present moment, then that choice becomes a fact of the past that we, or others, can examine and try to understand. Knowing that this process is a fact can help elucidate the possible reasons behind the choices we made, by finding those ideas that have consciously and unconsciously shaped us.
As Franklin Merrell-Wolff [19] stated: �The value of a theory or of any conceptual formulation lies in the fact that it gives the intelligent consciousness a basis for orienting itself and for achieving either purposive control of, or intelligent understanding in, the sea of existences.� [20] �Nor, on the other hand, can experience prove the truth or falsity of any fundamental theory, though it can check the various derivative theories.� [21] �These fundamental theories are based in faith and really form part of the essential religious belief of a given culture. In order to think, we must always start with something that we cannot prove either by logic or by reference to experience. This something defines the form of experience as it becomes the material of thought, but it is not a derivative from experience. �In psychological terms, the fundamental theory wells out of the unconscious.� [22]
�In fact, it is entirely possible, nay more, quite probable, that scientists of an entirely different culture, although of comparable capacity and supplied with comparable resources for investigation, would none the less construct an entirely different theoretical structure for the organization of their corresponding experience. Yet, this would not discredit the relative validity of the foregoing theory for our present culture.� [23]
�Experience as raw immediacy does not define its own meaning. A given �raw immediacy� cast in the framework of traditional Christian theology arouses a meaning that is quite different from that afforded when the base of reference is such as is assumed by the physical science. Neither of these frameworks are derived from nor proved by experience. Logically, they are simply presuppositions from which observation, analysis, and interpretation proceed. Historically, each has supplied human consciousness with positive values, and for that reason has persisted over considerable periods of time.� [24]
Knowing our unconscious processes is knowing our potential biases. This can enable us to filter them out if we decide they need be. Knowing we are shaped can enable us to avoid the tool trap. The ideas that shaped us have left us with a set of tools that we have been using all along.
As Arthur Koestler stated: �Words are essential tools for formulating and communicating thoughts�but words can also become snares, decoys, or strait-jackets. A great number of the basic verbal concepts of science have turned out at various times to be both tools and traps: for instance, �time�, �space�,��purpose�, �will�, � �consciousness�, �conditioning�,�For these were not simple verbal tags, as names attached to particular persons or objects are; they were artificial constructs which behind an innocent fa�ade hid the traces of the particular kind of logic which went into their making.� [25]
Koestler is explaining that the most essential tool we use to process thoughts � language, is a tool that can trap us. By ignoring the history of the words used to describe an idea we can end up believing those words are an assumed fact, a thing that is a truth about how things work, instead of what an idea actually is, a hypothesis of what may be going on. The abstract words we use are not labels for a sensory observable object but an assumption that someone invented to describe how objects are interrelated and work together. These ideas which are the definitions of such abstractions as �space�, �time�, �consciousness�, �good�, truth�, etc., are not facts but a hypothesis. But we are lulled by the very ordinary and repeated use of these abstract words into thinking the idea that defines them have been proven for all time � which has never occurred. Science, philosophy, etc., are all ongoing processes constantly having to re-define the meanings behind these abstract words. We just forget this process by how ordinary it all seems � we use these words all the time. That is the snare Koestler is informing us about.
�When Aristotle drew up his table of categories which to him represented the grammar of existence, he was really projecting the grammar of the Greek language on the cosmos.� [26]
Koestler presented the above citation in order to explain that : �Western science took a full two thousand years to liberate itself from the hypnotic effect of Aristotle, whose encyclopaedic philosophy penetrated the very structure of our language. It determined not only what was �science� but also what was �common sense�.�[27]
Our first analytic tool is language. The next foundational tool in the Western influenced systems of thought and methodology of analysis is the logic and system devised by Aristotle. Our idea of what it is to think logically and what �common sense� thinking is, are both forged by Aristotle�s systems. Yet, because he had no idea of the People are shaped by ideas principle, and the results of this concept which is the principle of unconscious bias of fundamental primary ideas, he could not foresee the effects of his bias�s being projected into his systems and thus projected into and onto the cosmos -- our view of the world around us, the world we inhabit.
Knowing this process has and will occur we can consciously decide to keep or modify our tool collection. The best way to avoid being tool trapped is not to posses and rely on only a single tool, the hammer as our paradigm example, but to have in our toolbox a multitude of tools at the ready.
Merrell-Wolff remarked: �Knowing is a Light that drives away the darkness, and thus forever fails to comprehend the darkness.� [28] And it is equally difficult, but none the less important, to try and be aware of and to know the light of knowing � the process of being shaped by ideas.
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[19] Who is Franklin Merrell-Wolff, you may ask? He was born in 1887. His father was a Methodist minister. He graduated in 1911 from Stanford University Phi Beta Kappa with a BA, majoring in Mathematics and minoring in Philosophy and Psychology. He began the doctorate program in Philosophy program at Harvard University. Merrell-Wolff is a modern academic western mystic, and it is this reason that I find his writing so insightful. Merrell-Wolff�s mystic communion occurred in 1936. His mystic union came after a time of intense study of the Hindu � Vedic teachings of Shankara through the writing of Paul Deussen�s book �The System of the Vedanta.�
[20] Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Experience and Philosophy: A personal record of transformation and a discussion of Transcendental Consciousness, pg. 325 , 1938 and 1944, reprinted together 1994.
[21] Merrell-Wolff, pg. 325
[22] Merrell-Wolff, pg. 353.
[23] Merrell-Wolff, pg. 325
[24] Merrell-Wolff, pg. 318
[25] Arthur Koestler, Act of Creation, pg. 176
[26] Sidney Hook, �Consciousness in Japan�, Commentary, New York, Jan. 1959, pg. 33.
[27] Arthur Koestler, Act of Creation, pg. 176
[28] Merrell-Wolff, pg. 329.