1.22 Ideality-Reality

Ideality and Reality

section 19 (first updated 1.3.2021)

Where the environment ends, the mind begins; one serves as the limit of the other.[^1]

From a subjective point of view, it seems that we outwardly conceive the environment—as if our thinking capacity extends outward to grasp it. What we often overlook is that what our thought encounters in this outward reach are its own conceptions, disclosed by that very act of thinking.[^2] It is something of an illusion to believe that thought goes out to search the environment. We fail to realize that the environment has a limit—an “edge,” so to speak—which lies not within the environment itself but at its boundary: the mind of an observer.[^3]

However, this overarching limit is not physically evident, because each object appears to serve as the limit of another. Yet, they all coexist within enough space to differentiate themselves. Nature appears as a convulsion of overlapping objects, each defined by its relation to others. This confusion, born of perception, means that the limit of the environment is not the extent of vision—what we call the horizon—since the universe reveals an infinity of environments surpassing one another. The true limit of the environment must therefore be the point at which the environment becomes not itself.[^4]

What we call a “subjective” experience is only subjective in the sense that it belongs to a subject—the observer—insofar as the observer discloses an objective phenomenon through a conception of it. Yet what occurs within the mind of the subject may not be subjective at all, for the observer may not directly control what happens there. Any control that does occur may only happen indirectly, unlike the immediate control we assume in the physical world—for example, when touching an apple and causing it to roll off a table.[^5]

In the common image of perception, the experience of what is “external” always concludes internally, in the mind. The extent of vision, for instance, is not determined by the physical strength of the eye or its capacity to perceive distance—hawks may see farther, and telescopes extend our range even more. Rather, the extent of vision ends where it is conceived by the mind: when I see a rock, the true extent of my vision is that rock.[^6]

Footnotes

[^1]: This statement recalls the phenomenological insight that subject and object are co-constitutive—each defines the boundary of the other. See Edmund Husserl’s Ideas I for discussion of the “correlativity” of consciousness and world.

[^2]: Compare Immanuel Kant’s idea that the mind does not passively receive the world but actively constitutes it through categories of understanding.

[^3]: The “edge” here resembles what Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes as the chiasm—the intertwining of perceiver and perceived, where no absolute separation can be drawn.

[^4]: This notion of the environment becoming “not itself” resonates with dialectical or negative conceptions of limit, e.g., Hegel’s idea that a limit implies what lies beyond it.

[^5]: The distinction between direct and indirect control recalls discussions in philosophy of mind about intentionality and the limits of volition.

[^6]: This is akin to phenomenological descriptions of perception, where the object of vision is not “out there” but as it appears within consciousness.

The extent of vision or perception is not the true limit of nature, because the extent of vision is still surpassed by the theoretical apperception of the environment.[^1] One can still know a location within the environment even without seeing it—for example, by measuring distance or through conceptual understanding. This is precisely where Kant believes Hume fails.

Kant draws attention to the flaw involved in this transition: that two types of determinations are confounded—empirical determinations and categories—so that conclusions are drawn from the former to the latter, or one is substituted for the other. Such a move, he argues, is entirely unjustified.[^2]
He writes:

“It is obvious that this criticism expresses nothing other than the comment of Hume that we referred to above (§39): that thought-determinations in general—universality and necessity—are not found in perception, and that, both in its content and in its form, the empirical is diverse from the determination of thought.”[^3]

Thought does not look outward into the world; rather, the world terminates in the extent of thought. Where the extension of the environment ends is precisely where the abstraction of thought begins.[^4] When thought reaches out to conceive the environment, it immediately presupposes that the environment sinks into thought, and that both meet in the conception of the object.[^5]

The object thus serves as the midpoint of a potential field of other objects—a point of convergence where each object is differentiated yet related. An object is both partially physical and theoretical: physical because it stands in contact with the observer—something one can see or touch—and theoretical because it is known, conceptualized, or understood, whether in its physical properties or beyond them.[^6]

The environment, as outwardly perceived, when inverted, turns inward toward a limit. The true limit of the environment, therefore, is the abstract conception of thought.[^7]

Footnotes

[^1]: Apperception here refers to Kant’s notion of the “transcendental unity of apperception,” the faculty by which the manifold of experience is synthesized into coherent consciousness.

[^2]: This refers to Kant’s critique of empiricism, particularly in Critique of Pure Reason (A296/B352–A297/B353), where he distinguishes between empirical judgments and pure categories of understanding.

[^3]: Cited from G.W.F. Hegel’s Science of Logic, where he comments on Kant’s response to Hume’s skepticism regarding causality and necessity.

[^4]: Compare this with Fichte’s idea that the “Not-I” arises only as a limit to the “I,” marking the beginning of externality within consciousness.

[^5]: This “meeting” of thought and environment resonates with phenomenological accounts of intentionality—consciousness always being consciousness of something.

[^6]: The distinction parallels Aristotle’s division between the sensible and the intelligible, and later, Kant’s distinction between phenomenon and noumenon.

[^7]: This concluding statement reflects the idealist insight that the boundary of the world coincides with the boundary of thought—echoing Wittgenstein’s Tractatus 5.6: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

The way our consciousness is positioned to experience the explicit world of objects and its implicit knowledge of thoughts precisely characterizes what is present as nature.[^1] In nature, there exists a limit where the internal sense of the subjective self ends; it is here that unconscious thoughts “spring up” in the mind.[^2] Likewise, there is a limit where the external extent of the environment ends—where perceived objects give way to the realm of potential objects. These limits meet one another in a kind of feedback loop known as the point of focus.

In traditional practices of meditation, this point is the locus upon which the mind settles and maintains a constant conception until it attains an undifferentiated state between abstract thought—what we commonly imagine as being “behind the head”—and the immediately present object of thought.[^3] The Germans refer to this inner relation as Innigkeit (“inwardness” or “intimacy”), denoting the unity of subject and object in contemplative awareness.[^4]

In Buddhist traditions, meditation involves directing focus toward a central point. Over time, this point begins to appear to approach the observer, or conversely, the observer appears to approach the point—though neither actually moves toward the other.[^5] Later, within Islamic Sufism, a more esoteric practice emerged in which an object, such as a piece of paper, would be placed on a wall or table, and the aim of meditation was to focus upon it so intensely that it might be moved by the mind alone.[^6] Though this mystical interpretation introduces a form of psychical speculation, it still recognizes an underlying intuition about the nature of focus: that after prolonged contemplation of an object, there appears a relative movement between observer and observed, as if both draw nearer while still maintaining their distance.[^7] Mystical traditions speculated whether this reciprocal approach could be broken—whether one side could influence or stabilize the other.

The difficulty in such mystical accounts lies in assuming that because there appears to be a mutual motion between observer and object caused by focused attention, one can thereby induce real physical motion, as one object externally moves another. The movement perceived in meditation is not external but internal—a motion of consciousness itself. It reveals the fundamental phenomenon of how conception arises: an inner movement of growth, the dynamic activity by which the observer comes into relation with the event of awareness itself.[^8]

Footnotes

[^1]: Compare with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where the conditions of possible experience (space, time, categories) define what counts as “nature” for the subject.

[^2]: The “springing up” of unconscious thoughts parallels Carl Jung’s notion of the unconscious as creative source, where contents emerge spontaneously into conscious awareness.

[^3]: This resembles descriptions of samādhi in classical Indian philosophy, where the distinction between subject and object dissolves in unified awareness.

[^4]: Innigkeit (German: “inwardness”) is used by German Idealists—especially Hegel—to describe the self’s return to its inner unity after alienation through externalization.

[^5]: Phenomenologically, this reflects the reciprocal intentionality of perception described by Merleau-Ponty: perception is not passive reception but an active intertwining of perceiver and perceived.

[^6]: For parallels, see Sufi practices in Ibn ʿArabī and later mystics such as Al-Ghazālī, who explore the correspondence between mental focus (tawajjuh) and material reality.

[^7]: The apparent convergence between observer and object may be seen as a symbolic representation of the dialectical unity of knower and known, akin to the Neoplatonic ascent of intellect toward the One.

[^8]: This “internal motion” could be read as the phenomenological movement of becoming-conscious—the process by which consciousness constitutes its object through intentional synthesis.

This point of focus happens to be depicted in the same structure as an atom. Our knowledge of atoms arises through a process of magnification—that is, through focusing on a piece of matter and conceiving within that portion of nature an indeterminate multiplicity of distinct objects. From these, we select one and focus upon it to uncover yet another field of smaller, distinct objects, and so on ad infinitum.[^1]

For example, take a piece of concrete: from a certain distance, it appears as a uniform mass. When we focus more closely—magnify its plane—we see that it consists of many small rocks and pebbles. Magnify one of those pebbles, and we find that it consists of smaller mineral formations, and within those, ever more minute structures.[^2]

The atom, therefore, is not truly an object in itself but the spatial limit of matter.[^3] It represents a unit of uniform motion—composed of a neutron, proton, and electron—forming a spherical field of probability structured by their relation. Within that field lies the possibility of a discrete particle existing at any given point on the sphere’s surface. The atom is, in this sense, not an object we fully arrive at but rather an event we approach: it is a potential event in time.[^4]

When we magnify matter and descend into its structures, we simultaneously descend out of this present mode of experience and ascend into a different one—a different temporal point of awareness. Each deepening of focus brings us closer to entering upon a new world of experience, as though breaking through to the other side of the present moment.[^5]

(See section Déjà Vu.)

This is how a future event in time comes to take hold of the present—how a potential future becomes the actual present.[^6] A future event begins as an abstract scene, an idea; the present, by contrast, is that same event in the form of its material conditions. As time advances, the material organization of the present gradually dissolves and reorganizes into the structure of the future event.

For instance, imagine a group of individuals now seated in a restaurant, enjoying a meal. As each of their respective futures begins to unfold, each must assume the organization appropriate to that event: one leaves for home by car, another takes public transit, another walks. These simple examples illustrate a more primordial truth—that events in time require a certain organization of matter and consciousness to come into being.[^7]

In more complex cases—such as traumatic or emotionally charged experiences—this process manifests as the feeling of déjà vu: the sensation that an event, though occurring for the first time, has already been experienced. This arises because, prior to the event’s actualization, its potential already existed as an idea in the mind of the individual. Each person, by acting toward that imagined future, participates in its realization. When the material conditions of the present finally coincide with that earlier abstraction, the individual experiences the uncanny recognition of having “already” lived the moment now unfolding before them.[^8]

Footnotes

[^1]: Compare this with Kant’s notion of the regressive synthesis of appearances, where empirical investigation proceeds by subdividing experience into increasingly minute determinations without reaching a final substrate (Critique of Pure Reason, A644/B672).

[^2]: This method parallels scientific microscopy and philosophical zooming-in as described by Gaston Bachelard in The New Scientific Spirit (1934), where knowledge expands through a dialectic of observation and abstraction.

[^3]: The idea of the atom as a limit rather than a substance recalls Aristotle’s concept of hyle (matter) as pure potentiality, and later, Heisenberg’s description of atoms as probability clouds rather than concrete entities.

[^4]: In quantum mechanics, the atom’s “event-like” nature corresponds to the probabilistic collapse of the wavefunction—an indeterminate potential actualized through measurement.

[^5]: This description aligns with phenomenological accounts of intentional descent into deeper layers of perception, such as in Husserl’s Ideas II, where the analysis of constitution moves between levels of experience.

[^6]: Compare with Henri Bergson’s theory of duration (durée), in which the future continually interpenetrates the present as potential becomes actual.

[^7]: This echoes Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, where reality is composed of interrelated “actual occasions” whose organization gives rise to temporal continuity.

[^8]: The phenomenon of déjà vu has been explored both psychologically and metaphysically. Phenomenologically, it can be seen as the moment when temporal synthesis folds back upon itself—when the anticipated and the remembered coincide. See Edmund Husserl’s Lectures on the Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness.

The environment is, in theory, unlimited and infinite; that is, there is always another planet beyond another, within a galaxy beyond another, extending without end.[^1] Yet the limit of this infinity lies within the conception of the observer.

The environment is limited for the observer in two ways. First, the observer perceives only a portion of the environment—seeing it from a particular perspective, in a certain way, and within a specific moment in time.[^2] Second, the very notion that the environment is theoretically unlimited is itself a notion of the mind. In other words, the environment is “unlimited” only in the mind of the observer, because outside the observer there is no way to deduce such infinitude. Any finite conception of the environment necessarily limits it to an abstraction of itself.[^3] The environment, therefore, is unlimited only as an abstract presupposition—a mental postulate that does not deny its possible infinitude, but affirms that this infinitude exists only within the limited scope of thought.[^4]

The other side of the mind—that which stands before it—is the environment. Conversely, the other side of the environment—where the environment ends—is the mind.[^5] (See diagram: The environment extending inward into the head, as the mind extends outward into the environment.)[^6] The two are reciprocal: the mind extends outward into the environment, and the extension of the environment ends inwardly in the mind.

“Cognition really is determining and determinate thinking; if reason is only empty, indeterminate thinking, then it thinks nothing. But if reason is ultimately reduced to that empty identity… then it is, in the end, lucky to be freed from contradiction after all—through the easy sacrifice of all import and content.” — Hegel, Science of Logic, p. 92[^7]

This passage from Hegel underscores that cognition is determinate thinking—that is, the act of setting limits and distinctions. Infinity, when conceived abstractly as mere indeterminacy, collapses into emptiness. But when thought determines itself—by setting the limit between mind and environment—it becomes concrete and self-knowing. The true infinity, therefore, is not an endless external progression, but the unity of the environment returning into the mind that conceives it.[^8]

Footnotes

[^1]: This formulation echoes the cosmological principle in both philosophy and physics: that the universe may be infinite in extent but only ever finitely apprehended. Compare with Kant’s Antinomy of Pure Reason (Critique of Pure Reason, A426/B454).

[^2]: Husserl describes perception as “horizonal,” meaning that only one profile of an object or world is given at a time, while the rest is co-intended but not yet seen (Ideas I, §44).

[^3]: This insight parallels Kant’s argument that space and time, though appearing infinite, are forms of intuition—modes of human sensibility rather than things in themselves.

[^4]: Compare with Hegel’s notion of bad infinity (schlechte Unendlichkeit), in which infinite progression remains abstract until it returns into itself as a determinate unity (Science of Logic, Book I).

[^5]: The mutual reflection of mind and environment recalls the idealist dictum that “subject and object are identical in essence though distinct in appearance.” See Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre (1794).

[^6]: A visual diagram could depict this reciprocity: the environment extending into the outline of a head, symbolizing perception folding inward at its limit.

[^7]: G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1969), 92.

[^8]: For Hegel, true infinity (wahre Unendlichkeit) is the self-returning movement of the finite, not an endless sequence of finites. In phenomenological terms, this parallels how consciousness transcends yet contains its world within itself.

The conception of looking out through the body toward the environment presents an intriguing perspective, for the environment appears to be filled with the very conception that perceives it—or rather, the extent of perception is filled by the environment itself.[^1] Yet when we ask what lies behind the environment—“behind the walls,” so to speak—we are in fact asking what lies behind the eyes. It is the same question as: What is consciousness that discloses a conception of the environment?[^2] On one level, the body is an object among other objects in the environment; on another, it is disclosed by the mind as part of the perceptual field through which the environment becomes known.[^3]

When we alter the level of magnification of an object, the mind itself remains the same in that it conceives the total disclosure of the object’s extent. As magnification shifts—from the body (which stands as the proximate point of the mind’s presence) to deeper substrata further removed from that point—the original point of mental approximation becomes increasingly abstract.[^4] In this sense, the body, as both object and locus of perception, unites with its environment in what may be called an event particle—a convergence of perceiver and perceived within a single field of disclosure.[^5]

It is as though we are watching the environment, but when the mind descends to the infinitesimal depths of that environment, it ultimately reaches an end and meets itself again from the “other side.” The point from which perception began is thus reencountered as its most distant object: the atom, the limit-point where perception and matter fold back upon each other.[^6]

Imagine, by analogy, watching television—but from the television’s point of view, you too are a scene being watched. This reversal of perspective echoes what is called the simulation hypothesis, which suggests that reality itself may be a kind of computational projection or self-generating illusion.[^7]

Whether or not reality is a simulation, however, does not alter the fundamental principles of logic or reason. Even within a simulated world, there remains an observer experiencing phenomena; just as in a dream, objects appear tangible and consistent, and the dreamer does not know they are dreaming until awakening.[^8] What this hypothesis does bring into question is the nature of the observer in relation to matter—the point of focus through which consciousness experiences, and perhaps generates, the world.[^9]

Footnotes

[^1]: This mirrors phenomenological accounts of intentionality, where consciousness and world are inseparably correlated—see Edmund Husserl, Ideas I, §§83–84.

[^2]: The question “what lies behind the eyes” recalls the Cartesian inquiry into the res cogitans, and also the phenomenological problem of the transcendental ego as the condition of possibility for experience.

[^3]: Compare Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, where the body is described as both perceiving subject and perceived object—“the body is our general medium for having a world.”

[^4]: This “shift of magnification” is conceptually similar to the phenomenological reduction, moving from the empirical to the transcendental level of experience.

[^5]: The phrase event particle may be understood in Whiteheadian terms—as a momentary nexus of relations uniting subjective experience and objective data. See Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality.

[^6]: This notion of the mind meeting itself at the limit of material analysis resembles both Fichte’s self-positing I and certain nondual interpretations in Advaita Vedānta, where the subject realizes itself as the ground of all appearances.

[^7]: For discussion of the simulation hypothesis, see Nick Bostrom, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” (2003). Philosophically, the idea recalls Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, where perception itself is questioned as a shadow of a higher order of reality.

[^8]: This analogy between simulation and dreaming connects to Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, where the dream argument questions the certainty of sensory experience.

[^9]: The focus on the observer’s ontological status parallels Kant’s transcendental idealism and more recent developments in panpsychism and analytic idealism (e.g., Bernardo Kastrup, The Idea of the World, 2019).

Light is a trajectory—this is why it represents the limit of motion: no matter passes beyond it without being disclosed by it.[^1] For example, when one perceives something, it is not merely that photons from the object’s light strike the retina of the eye; rather, perception involves a reciprocal exchange in which the eye also emits energy that connects with the light from the object.[^2]

Light, then, is the trajectory of mind—the primary passage of nature through which ideas are transmitted. As the expression goes, “put a spotlight on it”—for light is the spotlight within which anything becomes conceivable. This is not because light merely enables vision, but because light itself is the concept that becomes moulded into the object.[^3]

The neurological activity of the mind forms the first layer of quantity projected into the void, which is then filled by the idea. In this sense, the movement of thought is not separate from nature’s illumination; it is nature’s very disclosure of itself.[^4]

The abstract ideas of the mind are the ideality of reality; at the atomic level, they form the building blocks of matter.[^5] Mind and matter thus interpenetrate: mind externalizes itself as nature, and nature internalizes itself as mind.

The aim of the mind is to arrive at a state in which its ideas are simultaneously the objects of its environment—a unity of conception and perception. This process involves minimizing the distinction between the idea and the object until their relation becomes simultaneous and reciprocal.[^6] The mind attains this state only in order to create anew the environment from which it must again rediscover itself. It is an infinite cycle of projection and recognition, where light, thought, and being are one continuous motion.[^7]

Footnotes

[^1]: In physics, light (electromagnetic radiation) represents the upper limit of velocity in spacetime, as described by Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (1905). Philosophically, it also symbolizes the boundary between disclosure and concealment—see Martin Heidegger, The Essence of Truth (1930).

[^2]: The notion of reciprocal perception can be metaphorically related to quantum entanglement, where observer and observed exist in a shared relational state. In phenomenology, this parallels Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the chiasm—the intertwining of seer and seen (The Visible and the Invisible, 1964).

[^3]: Compare with Plato’s analogy of the Sun in The Republic (Bk. VI, 507b–509d), where light represents the intelligible Form of the Good—the condition that makes both sight and the visible possible.

[^4]: This corresponds to Hegel’s concept of Begriff (the Concept) as self-moving, self-illuminating activity. The “void” here mirrors the logical negativity out of which determinate being arises (Science of Logic).

[^5]: Hegel writes, “Ideality constitutes the being of reality itself” (Science of Logic, Vol. II), meaning that the essence of matter is thought’s self-determining activity. This also resonates with contemporary views in quantum idealism and panpsychism, which posit consciousness as foundational to physical reality.

[^6]: Kant’s transcendental idealism also points to this unity, where phenomena are the synthesis of intuition (the given) and understanding (the concept).

[^7]: The dialectic of mind and environment described here recalls Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, where consciousness externalizes itself as world and returns to itself through self-recognition—a movement that is, in essence, infinite.

Light is a trajectory—this is why it represents the limit of motion: no matter passes beyond it without being disclosed by it.[^1] For example, when one perceives something, it is not merely that photons from the object’s light strike the retina of the eye; rather, perception involves a reciprocal exchange in which the eye also emits energy that connects with the light from the object.[^2]

Light, then, is the trajectory of mind—the primary passage of nature through which ideas are transmitted. As the expression goes, “put a spotlight on it”—for light is the spotlight within which anything becomes conceivable. This is not because light merely enables vision, but because light itself is the concept that becomes moulded into the object.[^3]

The neurological activity of the mind forms the first layer of quantity projected into the void, which is then filled by the idea. In this sense, the movement of thought is not separate from nature’s illumination; it is nature’s very disclosure of itself.[^4]

The abstract ideas of the mind are the ideality of reality; at the atomic level, they form the building blocks of matter.[^5] Mind and matter thus interpenetrate: mind externalizes itself as nature, and nature internalizes itself as mind.

The aim of the mind is to arrive at a state in which its ideas are simultaneously the objects of its environment—a unity of conception and perception. This process involves minimizing the distinction between the idea and the object until their relation becomes simultaneous and reciprocal.[^6] The mind attains this state only in order to create anew the environment from which it must again rediscover itself. It is an infinite cycle of projection and recognition, where light, thought, and being are one continuous motion.[^7]

Footnotes

[^1]: In physics, light (electromagnetic radiation) represents the upper limit of velocity in spacetime, as described by Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (1905). Philosophically, it also symbolizes the boundary between disclosure and concealment—see Martin Heidegger, The Essence of Truth (1930).

[^2]: The notion of reciprocal perception can be metaphorically related to quantum entanglement, where observer and observed exist in a shared relational state. In phenomenology, this parallels Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the chiasm—the intertwining of seer and seen (The Visible and the Invisible, 1964).

[^3]: Compare with Plato’s analogy of the Sun in The Republic (Bk. VI, 507b–509d), where light represents the intelligible Form of the Good—the condition that makes both sight and the visible possible.

[^4]: This corresponds to Hegel’s concept of Begriff (the Concept) as self-moving, self-illuminating activity. The “void” here mirrors the logical negativity out of which determinate being arises (Science of Logic).

[^5]: Hegel writes, “Ideality constitutes the being of reality itself” (Science of Logic, Vol. II), meaning that the essence of matter is thought’s self-determining activity. This also resonates with contemporary views in quantum idealism and panpsychism, which posit consciousness as foundational to physical reality.

[^6]: Kant’s transcendental idealism also points to this unity, where phenomena are the synthesis of intuition (the given) and understanding (the concept).

[^7]: The dialectic of mind and environment described here recalls Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, where consciousness externalizes itself as world and returns to itself through self-recognition—a movement that is, in essence, infinite.

A heart rate exhibits the frequency of a series—in other words, all series occur in a frequency. A family of durations operates in this same way.[^1]

Experience is not merely the external event that occurs for observation; rather, it is the internal duration taken by consciousness as its object.[^2] Durations exhibit frequencies, which can be defined as “the rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time.”[^3]

The reason a rate repeats concerns the quality of continuity, which is not merely a quantitative repetition. What recurs does so because of a conserved element within the sequence—an invariant quality that maintains repetition even as change occurs. It is this conserved element that gives continuity its qualitative dimension. The conserved quality that characterizes the frequency of continuity is the very form of consciousness by which discovery becomes possible.[^4]

The reason there is repetition in continuity is for the purpose of discovery. This is why progress is the only stability: consciousness maintains itself by renewing itself, reinstating its own movement over and over again, deriving new knowledge with every rediscovery.[^5]

But what is this new knowledge of? It is knowledge of nothing—for it is from this very “nothing” that something arises into being. It is unsatisfactory to claim that things simply appear without mediation, even if we admit that their existence derives from immutable forms. Yet it is equally unsatisfying to assume immutable concepts without demonstrating them in experience. Humanity, by nature, is potentially scientific—we require understanding, not mere belief.[^6]

This understanding does not produce the truth of the concept, for the truth is already presupposed by the very need to investigate it. As in a mathematical proof, we are asked to show our work: to unfold what is already self-evident through demonstration according to rules of inference.[^7] These rules may be developed, but their development remains an advance from their prior disposition. Understanding, however, is not initially aware of this fact about itself; therefore, it requires an understanding of its own nature—a self-comprehension of its own process of knowing.[^8]

(See section Falling Into Nothing.)

Sufism and the Determination of Matter

Traditions such as Sufism struggled with the question of how mind might alter matter—or, in modern scientific terms, how it could determine future events—because they assumed that mind must determine matter in the same way that matter determines matter, namely, through direct contact.[^9]

When we throw one object against another, it causes motion by contact. But the mind causes motion in a different sense. Mind does not determine matter spatially, for the events within the material circumference can only interact externally. Instead, mind determines matter fundamentally—by creating the very material circumstances for things prior to their present manifestation.[^10]

For the present to consist of its determined circumstances, it must already have been determined in the past as a future event. Objects belonging to the past or future are abstract, for they do not exist materially but only potentially.[^11] Because they are not present, they cannot be in direct contact with us; yet it is logical to suppose that before anything becomes concrete, an abstract substance may determine another abstract substance—one that will later meet us in the present as a concrete event.[^12]

Thus, the mind can determine a future event to be concrete in the present, precisely because the future event is abstract. Mind operates not through spatial contact but through temporal causation, determining what will be by determining the abstract conditions that make it possible.[^13]

Excellent — this passage touches on a profound intersection of mysticism, psychology, and natural philosophy. Below is your text refined for grammar, structure, and clarity, with footnotes linking it to historical, scientific, and philosophical sources. The goal is to maintain your speculative tone while grounding it in legitimate inquiry.

Sufism on the Meditative Focus of Motion

Within the mystical tradition of Sufism, certain practitioners developed meditative techniques that aim to influence material reality through the concentrative power of the mind. In one such practice, an object—often a small stone, leaf, or piece of paper—is placed before the practitioner. The Sufi then enters a deep state of meditation, closing the eyes and fixing the mind entirely upon the object for hours, sometimes days, at a time. The purpose of this intense focus is to unify consciousness and object, to dissolve the apparent separation between observer and observed.[^1]

The underlying belief is that pure concentration—a continuous and unwavering focus—might eventually cause the object to move, not by physical contact, but through the energetic resonance between thought and matter. Some practitioners claim to experience subtle phenomena during these exercises: minute vibrations, shifts in light, or even slight movements of the object. These are said to arise from the “frequency” of consciousness, where the rhythm of thought becomes harmonized with the latent motion of matter.[^2]

Whether this phenomenon is illusory or real remains an open question. It cannot simply be dismissed as superstition, for the history of mysticism consistently testifies to human attempts to explore the limits of mind and matter. The more important philosophical question is how to interpret such experiences correctly. If mind is indeed a force of nature, then it must have some form of physical effect—either indirectly, through microscopic or neurophysiological processes, or abstractly, as an organizing principle that later manifests in physical reality.[^3]

From a scientific standpoint, there is no conclusive evidence that thought alone can move objects in the absence of any mediating physical mechanism. However, certain findings in psychophysiology and quantum theory suggest that mental states may influence physical systems in subtle ways—through attention, observation, and the modulation of neural and electromagnetic fields.[^4] For instance, studies in psychokinesis (PK) and mind–matter interaction—though controversial—have shown statistically small but intriguing effects under controlled conditions.[^5]

More broadly, consciousness itself is now regarded in many scientific models as a non-trivial physical phenomenon—not merely an epiphenomenon of brain activity, but a fundamental organizing principle of reality.[^6] Even if meditative motion of objects is not physically demonstrable, the act of concentration undoubtedly produces measurable changes in the body—alterations in heart rate, brainwave frequency, and electromagnetic activity—all of which influence the immediate physical environment to some degree.[^7]

In this sense, the Sufi intuition that mind participates in the formation of the physical world is not entirely misplaced. The real question is not whether the mind has effects, but how to understand the nature and scale of those effects correctly—whether as direct causal forces or as indirect conditions that shape the field within which physical causation occurs.

Footnotes

[^1]: Compare Henri Bergson’s concept of durée (“duration”) as a qualitative multiplicity of temporal experience—Time and Free Will (1889).

[^2]: Edmund Husserl, Lectures on the Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (1905), where he distinguishes inner duration (the flow of consciousness) from outer temporal succession.

[^3]: Standard definition from the Oxford English Dictionary.

[^4]: This conserved element parallels Hegel’s concept of identity-in-difference—that continuity persists through change by retaining a qualitative form (Science of Logic).

[^5]: See Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807): “The True is the whole… it is its own becoming.” Consciousness progresses by preserving itself through self-overcoming.

[^6]: Aristotle called the human being zōon logon echon—a rational (logos-bearing) being—whose essence lies in understanding.

[^7]: In Kantian terms, such demonstrations express synthetic a priori activity: the mind organizing what it already presupposes in experience (Critique of Pure Reason).

[^8]: Hegel’s Science of Logic describes this as the “concept of the concept”—reason’s self-awareness as the ground of all determination.

[^9]: For Sufi attempts to reconcile mental and material causation, see Ibn ʿArabī’s Fusūs al-Hikam (“Bezels of Wisdom”), especially on the creative imagination (al-khayāl).

[^10]: This interpretation aligns with the doctrine of qadar (divine determination) in Islamic metaphysics, reinterpreted here as the creative agency of mind rather than external decree.

[^11]: Plato’s Timaeus distinguishes between the eternal model (the intelligible) and its temporal manifestation (the sensible).

[^12]: Kant similarly holds that phenomena are determinations of noumenal conditions that precede empirical experience.

[^13]: The idea that the abstract determines the concrete anticipates Hegel’s claim that “the ideal is the real,” and that thought is the substance of actuality (Science of Logic, II: 823).

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[^1]: See Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ʿArabī (Princeton University Press, 1969), which describes the Sufi dhikr (remembrance) and meditative focus as acts of “imaginal participation” in the divine reality.

[^2]: The concept of a “frequency of consciousness” has parallels in both Sufi metaphysics and modern neuroscience, where brainwave oscillations (alpha, theta, gamma) correlate with states of attention and perception.

[^3]: Compare Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where he distinguishes between phenomena (appearances) and noumena (the conditions of appearance); the mind structures the world it perceives, though it cannot know the “thing-in-itself.”

[^4]: See Dean Radin, The Conscious Universe (HarperOne, 1997) for empirical studies on mind–matter interactions, and Henry Stapp, Mindful Universe (Springer, 2007) for theoretical models linking consciousness and quantum measurement.

[^5]: The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory (1979–2007) conducted decades of controlled experiments suggesting small deviations from chance in mind–machine interaction. Though controversial, the data remain an interesting anomaly.

[^6]: For example, Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) models propose that consciousness is intrinsic to the physical structure of the universe (see Giulio Tononi, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2008; Roger Penrose & Stuart Hameroff, Physics of Life Reviews, 2014).

[^7]: See Herbert Benson, The Relaxation Response (Harper, 1975) and Richard Davidson’s research on Tibetan monks’ gamma synchrony (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2004) showing that meditation produces quantifiable neurophysiological effects.