1.45 Deja Vu

Section 33 (first updated 2.1.2021)

Quantum Eraser, Dreams, and Time

The hypothesis of the so-called quantum eraser experiment is a further development of the famous double-slit experiment. The quantum eraser aims to demonstrate whether events in time can be adjusted or determined after they have already occurred. This challenges the linear conception of time and brings to light another function of the observer—one that has deeper implications than the simple claim that the observer “affects” the phenomenon. To say that the observer affects the phenomenon is incomplete, because we still must explain how the observer effects the phenomenon. The quantum eraser experiment suggests that the observer determines the phenomenon as a duration in time, not merely as a localized interaction.¹

The perplexity raised by the double-slit experiment can be expressed in the following question: how can the firing of electrons—assumed to be tiny bits of matter—through a controlled space such as a slit produce interference patterns characteristic of waves? How can discrete pieces of matter generate a wave-like distribution? This appears to contradict ordinary physical intuition. For example, if one shoots a paintball at a wall, it produces a round splatter corresponding to the shape of the projectile. This is consistent with classical expectations. But if an electron, treated as a particle like a paintball, were to strike a screen and produce a distributed interference pattern instead of a localized mark, this would appear deeply strange.

What experimental physics reveals is that this behavior depends on the conditions of observation. The observer does not merely register the outcome but plays an inverse and structuring role within the phenomenon itself. The observer’s involvement does not simply distort a pre-existing reality; rather, it helps determine which aspect of reality becomes actual.²

The quantum eraser experiment supports the ontological claim that knowledge of an event which has not yet occurred can retroactively determine how that event appears to have occurred. If a future measurement is made possible in advance, then the very availability of that knowledge reshapes the event’s temporal structure. In this sense, knowledge transforms a potential future into a past condition for the present. Hypothesis operates in this way: a result is anticipated, and then the process is carried out to determine whether that anticipated result is realized. Thus, the event is treated as if it has already occurred, and the past is, in a sense, recognized from the standpoint of the future.³

The knowledge of something alone can render an event past, even if it has not yet occurred in experience, because mind itself operates as a temporal substance. The quantum eraser experiment suggests that when an event is determined too narrowly—when it is isolated from its wider environmental relations and conceived too precisely—it ceases to appear as a stable particle and instead manifests as a blurred wave-like activity. This is not merely a matter of visual focus, but of conceptual fixation: the more one attempts to localize an object absolutely, the more it opens into a spectrum of potential variations extending into future durations.

In this way, the object becomes a portal into its own potential processes. The wave-form disclosed in quantum experiments represents not confusion, but the structured openness of the event’s future. This wavelength is not added from the outside; it is a built-in feature of the object’s temporal constitution. To zoom too closely into a thing is to open up the field of possible durations through which it may actualize.

Inside every thing there is an “in-between”—a spacing that allows for the conception and emergence of other things. This in-between is not empty but charged with potentiality, much like a dream state, where events are not fixed but hover between actuality and possibility.⁴

Footnotes

1. See Wheeler & Zurek (1983), Quantum Theory and Measurement, for early discussions of delayed-choice experiments and temporal nonlinearity.
2. Niels Bohr, “Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics,” emphasizes complementarity rather than disturbance.
3. This aligns philosophically with Whitehead’s notion of prehension, where future possibilities condition present actualities (Process and Reality).
4. Compare Bergson’s concept of duration and Freud’s analysis of dream temporality, where sequence is governed by meaning rather than clock time.

Imagine a transparent object—not transparent merely in the visual sense, but transparent in its temporal structure. To see through it is to see not only what it is now, but what it is in the process of becoming. Its future actions are not hidden behind the present; they are already spatially and temporally laid out as a duration, like a path faintly visible before it is fully walked.

Now imagine zooming in on the Earth. From a distance, the Earth appears as a stable, unified object. But as you zoom closer, continents dissolve into terrain, terrain into particles, particles into fields, and fields into motion. The closer you zoom, the more the Earth ceases to be a solid thing and becomes an infinitesimal extension of activity. What looked like a bounded object becomes a continuum of events. There is no final “thing” you arrive at—only finer and finer processes.

This is the sense in which the object is infinitesimally extended. It is not a point without size, but an entity whose apparent solidity dissolves into a spread of potential motions when examined closely enough. The object’s present state is only one cross-section of a much larger temporal field. What you are “seeing through” is the object’s future folded into its present, distributed across time in the same way a spatial object is distributed across space.

From this perspective, an object is never fully contained in the present moment. Its actions are not waiting somewhere outside it; they are already implied within its structure as tendencies, constraints, and directions of motion. To see an object transparently is to perceive it as a duration rather than a point, as something whose identity consists in how it extends itself forward in time.

Thus, when you zoom in far enough—whether into the Earth, an electron, or any ordinary object—you do not find a static core. You find pure motion, an infinitesimal but continuous unfolding. The object is not merely in time; it is a way time is taking shape at that scale.

In-Between Moments

Our ordinary measure of how one moment changes into another is derived from changes in motion within a spatial extension. If you change your position within a plane—moving from point A to point B—new events occur at point B that were not present at point A. For example, if you leave a subway station and enter a café, there are events happening in the café that were not happening during the subway ride. Much of daily life is organized around this familiar relation between change of place and change of events.

However, there is a more subtle form of change that we are often unaware of. Within what we ordinarily call the same present moment, events still change. Elementary physics explains this by pointing out that objects are always in motion: they change position, orientation, velocity, and relation to other objects. For instance, if I am watching a car race down the road and it suddenly makes a late turn onto a side street and is struck by another vehicle, the change in position—combined with speed, mass, density, and force—produces the event we recognize as a car accident. The event emerges from the conjunction of these variables, not from position alone.¹

We usually describe this by saying that a change in an object’s position within the same space causes an interaction—what we then call a collision. But in order for an observer to witness what has happened, the observer must also be aware of the variables involved. The observer must know where they are in relation to the event and must possess some understanding of the nature of the interaction—whether it is dangerous, harmful, or significant. This awareness is often treated as a secondary byproduct of the event, as if the event were fully complete without it and consciousness merely “reacted” afterward.

Upon closer examination, this assumption becomes unstable. Consider another observer: a squirrel sitting in a nearby tree. The squirrel has no concept of cars, traffic laws, or accidents. For the squirrel, the car collision does not exist as an event in any meaningful sense. It lacks the conceptual framework and awareness required to constitute the interaction as a car accident. In this sense, the squirrel inhabits a different world of events altogether.²

The squirrel may hear a loud noise and briefly react, but the meaning of the event as a collision is entirely absent. On the other hand, a nut falling from the tree is a very real and significant event for the squirrel. For the human observer watching the car crash, that falling nut may not exist as an event at all—it carries no relevance or recognition. Whether it happens or not makes no difference to the human observer, who is focused on what appears to be a far more important occurrence.

This contrast raises a deeper philosophical question: if conscious awareness is an implicit and invariable aspect of how an event is constituted—of how it begins, unfolds, and ends—then do events have a temporal order independent of the way they are conceived by an observer? Or is temporal order itself, at least in part, structured by the modes of awareness through which events are recognized?³

In other words, between moments there is not only physical motion but also a transition in meaning, and it is within this in-between—where motion and awareness intersect—that events truly take shape.

Footnotes

1. Classical mechanics explains such events through the interaction of mass, velocity, and force; see Newton’s laws of motion.
2. This aligns with Whitehead’s claim that nature is known to us as a complex of events, and that objects and events are abstractions from experience (The Concept of Nature).
3. Compare Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness and Whitehead’s doctrine of prehension, where awareness participates in the constitution of events.

A Lack of Conception

Consider the difference between a conception and a lack of conception. Between every moment there is, strictly speaking, a lack of conception of that moment. Our ordinary awareness fills this lack too quickly with another moment for it to be noticed. The mind is therefore constantly perceiving different moments while remaining unaware of the gaps between them. Yet we know that the mind significantly lacks the capacity to conceive every possible event occurring in its environment at once. As noted earlier, the man witnessing the car crash is indifferent to the nuts falling from the tree—events that are decisive for the squirrel.¹

This shows that events are not merely there independently of awareness; rather, events are selectively constituted according to the modes of conception available to the observer.

The Event Before It Happens

Before an event happens, we have no knowledge of it. Once it happens, we know it only as something that has passed. At this point a contradiction arises in our ordinary way of thinking. We assume that once an event is past and no longer occurring in the present, it is nothing more than a completed fact. However, the present itself is not a static instant; it is a continuity that is always happening.

When an event occurs, it becomes past relative to a present moment. But that same past event, because the present is always changing, becomes a potential event for a future present. The question then arises: how can a past event—already completed—be future-relative again? The answer lies in recognizing that every past has its own future, depending on the standpoint of the present from which it is considered.²

From one present, an event has already occurred and can never happen again. From another present, earlier than that occurrence, the same event lies in the future. It is only from a particular standpoint of the present that the past is fixed as “never again” and the future as “not yet.” The present itself is always a mediating point, constantly shifting, such that what is now present will itself become past.

Thus, the claim that a past event “can never happen again” is true only relative to a given present. It is not an absolute claim about the event as such.

Memory and the Enduring Substrate

Once a scene occurs, the mind recollects it—whether immediately after or long before a similar experience. We usually assume that memory only operates retrospectively, but memory is more fundamentally a system of stored relations. When we define memory as something belonging to the past, we forget that the past itself is always defined in relation to a present.

An event that occurred three days ago is equally past relative to today and relative to yesterday. The difference lies not in the event itself, but in the present standpoint from which it is recalled. This shows that the past is not tied to a single privileged present moment.

From an enduring substrate—whether biological, psychological, or physical—all events appear as variations in the conduct of that substrate. An individual passes through childhood, adulthood, and old age; it is the same person, yet profoundly different at each stage. The continuity does not lie in static identity, but in processual transformation.³

From Objects to Processes: Organicism

The transition from objects to processes is the central concern of organicism, also known as process philosophy. Organicism challenges the atomistic assumption that reality is ultimately composed of discrete, self-contained units. Atomism treats the smallest unit of matter as localized and complete in itself. Organicism, by contrast, understands even the smallest unit as a happening, inseparable from its relations.⁴

Even systems of interacting parts can be too static an abstraction. We often describe a process as having a beginning and an end, framing it as a recognizable activity that changes into another recognizable activity. But this framing already imposes artificial boundaries on what is, in reality, a continuous flow.

Time, Indivisibility, and the Quantum Limit

Time, in its indivisible feature, has often been described as eternal, not because it is endless in duration, but because it cannot be broken into fully self-sufficient instants. Atomistic thinking assumes that any moment can be divided into smaller moments ad infinitum, each with its own beginning and end.

Quantum experiments—such as delayed-choice and quantum eraser experiments—challenge this picture. When photons are isolated and further magnified, they no longer behave as localized particles but disclose a spectrum of possible processes. The “particle” becomes a portal to a field of potentiality rather than a fixed entity.⁵

When an observer predicts that a photon will behave in a certain way based on prior physical assumptions, the photon may exhibit an inverse or unexpected behavior. This does not mean that consciousness magically alters reality, but rather that measurement is itself a physical interaction embedded in time, one that participates in determining which potential becomes actual.

Footnotes

1. Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (1920), on events and selective recognition.
2. This reflects Whitehead’s view of time as relational rather than absolute.
3. See Whitehead, Process and Reality, on enduring objects as societies of occasions.
4. Organicism contrasts with classical atomism; see also Henri Bergson’s Duration and Simultaneity.
5. Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiment and Scully–Drühl quantum eraser experiments.

Light, Perception, and the Photonic Basis of Interaction

Within a materialist framework, perception is understood as a physical interaction, not as a mysterious or immaterial act. When we see an object, light reflected or emitted from that object enters the eyes and interacts with the visual system. Importantly, this interaction is bidirectional in the sense of physical causation: photons originating from the object interact with the atoms and molecules in the retina, triggering chemical and electrical processes that propagate through the nervous system.

At the most fundamental level of extension—approaching the infinitesimal structure of spacetime—objects are stripped of their macroscopic qualities such as color, texture, weight, and solidity. What remains is bare matter-energy interaction, governed by quantum electrodynamics. In this respect, the essential medium of interaction between observer and observed is photonic. Light is not merely a passive carrier of information; it is an active participant in physical processes.

Photons interact with electrons in atoms, changing their energy states. When light from an object reaches the eye, it excites photoreceptor molecules in the retina, causing electron transitions that generate neural signals. In this sense, light from the object literally moves matter at the atomic level—not by pushing objects around macroscopically, but by altering the energetic configuration of atoms and molecules.

At this infinitesimal scale, differences between objects—such as mass, density, chemical composition, or biological organization—no longer function in the way they do at macroscopic levels. A photon interacting with an electron in iron follows the same fundamental laws as a photon interacting with an electron in organic tissue. The physicality of the interaction is the same, regardless of the larger structure to which the atom belongs.

Thus, when matter is reduced to its most basic operative layer, the distinctions between different objects are not differences in how photons interact, but differences in the patterns and probabilities of interaction. The photonic field does not recognize “chair,” “tree,” or “eye” as such; it recognizes only charge, energy, momentum, and probability amplitudes.

From this perspective, the world can be described as fundamentally photonic—not in the sense that everything is light, but in the sense that light-mediated interactions are the primary means by which reality is disclosed, structured, and stabilized for perception. Vision is one mode of this disclosure, but conception—mental perception—is another. Both rely on patterned interactions that ultimately reduce to physical processes governed by the same underlying laws.

Therefore, whether perception occurs through vision or through thought, the materialist claim is that both are grounded in the same fundamental interactional fabric. Reality is not divided into physical objects on one side and mental representations on the other; rather, it is a continuous field of interactions in which photonic exchange plays a central organizing role.

In this sense, the world is “photonic” not merely because we see with light, but because light is the universal mediator through which material differences become perceptible at all.

When one watches photons, they appear to behave in a way opposite to what one intends them to do, as if they take on the capacity to negate the observer’s intention. The quality of the generative principle at work here is novelty. Science is already acquainted with this type of physical interaction in the elementary structures of nature—attraction and repulsion, action and reaction, cause and effect.¹ However, these opposing forces do not, by themselves, directly indicate the function of consciousness. It would be a stretch to say that one force behaves oppositely to another based on a primordial awareness of the other.

With quantum experiments, however, we now possess direct empirical knowledge that the phenomenon actively responds to the observer’s intervention.² Whether this response is understood as a purely physical interaction—such as photons interacting with atoms and measurement devices—or as something that also implicates consciousness, the process remains inseparable from the observer’s involvement. Even when the act of observation is delegated to a detector rather than a human physicist, the same collapse or reconfiguration of the system occurs.³

This fact does not imply that consciousness lacks self-awareness, nor does it suggest that consciousness is merely a chemical or technical byproduct without fundamental standing in nature. Instead, it supports the idea of entanglement: the phenomenon is not localized exclusively within the subjective constitution of the observer, nor within the object alone. Rather, observer and observed are always already related, regardless of context. They share a more fundamental relational framework that precedes any specific environment or circumstance.⁴

The notion that observer and environment are fundamentally entangled—beyond any particular situation they happen to share—is often presented as a perplexing discovery of modern physics. Yet it reflects something entirely familiar about how the mind ordinarily operates. The mind does not need to be in direct physical contact with an object, nor within a specific spatial distance, in order to think about it. Perception requires proximity and physical mediation; thought does not. One can think about a person while sitting in a doctor’s office, or worry about work while on vacation.⁵

We often assume that these are merely ideas about real objects, as if the objects themselves are fully real while the ideas are secondary or illusory. But what counts as “real” depends on definition. Relations we normally treat as real—distance, position, orientation—when altered, change the object itself, while the conception of the object can remain unchanged.⁶

A geometric analogy clarifies this point. The concept of distance from a plane to a point explains how thought can conceive an object independently of its immediate context. As one moves farther away from a plane, more of that plane is encompassed within a single point of view; the plane becomes condensed into a point. This principle is practically exploited in aviation: an airplane ascends vertically to a higher altitude, where the horizontal distance between continents becomes shorter relative to the Earth’s surface, and then descends. The vertical displacement allows a vastly greater horizontal traversal in less time.⁷

In the same way, thought operates at a level where spatial and contextual constraints are compressed, allowing relations to be grasped independently of immediate physical proximity.

Footnotes

1. Isaac Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica — formulation of action–reaction and classical force relations.
2. Niels Bohr, “The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory,” Nature (1928).
3. John Archibald Wheeler, “Delayed-Choice Experiments and the Bohr–Einstein Dialogue,” Physics Today (1978).
4. Erwin Schrödinger, “Discussion of Probability Relations Between Separated Systems,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (1935).
5. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Book I.
6. Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (1920).
7. Euclidean geometry; applied aeronautical navigation principles.

The Non-Locality of Intent and Observation

In other words, the fact that a detecting device and a physicist yield the same result in collapsing a wave function does not mean that their consciousness is identical in qualitative measure. Rather, it means that wherever intent is situated, it is translated into the effect it produces in the final outcome of the phenomenon that is the object of conception.¹

Consciousness, therefore, is not a thing or an object, and the quality of its conception cannot be pinned to a specific location. It does not matter where an intention originates, but only that the intention possesses a certain character that relates to an effect. An analogy from law clarifies this point: intent alone—or even the lack of explicit intent—can be punishable. Whether one hires a hitman or commits the act oneself carries comparable consequences; likewise, negligence is punishable even in the absence of deliberate intent.² This demonstrates that intent is not localized to a particular action but is implicit in action as such. Actions always involve intent directly or indirectly; intent determines actions, but is not reducible to them.

Quantum phenomena appear to take on an opposite logical determination to the observer’s expectations. This can be approached technically by considering the nature of light itself. Light is fundamentally reflective: it reproduces, multiplies, and discloses itself. At its most basic level, light reveals a quality identical with itself—light is self-identical—yet it reflects that quality in an inverse or complementary manner.³ This is why we observe color: color is not a property added to light, but a differentiation of reflection within the same energetic continuum, ranging from black to white.

When consciousness observes light at this fundamental level, it is, in effect, observing its own conditions of disclosure. Consciousness encounters itself indirectly through the reflective structure of light. In this sense, consciousness appears to “trick” or challenge itself—not as deception, but as a structural necessity of self-awareness. To know itself, it must encounter itself as other.⁴

Between the generation of an atomic event and its conception lies an indeterminate interval, an unknown space governed by uncertainty. Both generation and conception occur within the same overarching field, yet they are distinguished as antithetical moments only through abstraction. The Copenhagen interpretation articulates this by asserting that, within the uncertainty of a single photon, there is no determinate knowledge of position or path.⁵ A particle existing in such indeterminacy is therefore better described as a wave—a distribution of possible properties rather than a localized object.

Determination occurs when observation takes place. Observation, understood as direct knowledge, forces the wavelength of possibility to resolve into a definite actuality. The wave does not “collapse” because it is physically pushed into a state, but because the conditions of knowledge require a concrete determination. The particle becomes real as the reality that the conception happens to disclose.⁶

Thus, non-locality does not imply that consciousness magically controls matter, nor that matter is independent of observation. It implies that conception and physical determination are inseparable aspects of a single process, one that unfolds beyond localized space and linear causality.

Footnotes

1. John Archibald Wheeler, “Law Without Law,” in Quantum Theory and Measurement (1983).
2. H. L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility (1968).
3. James Clerk Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism; see also modern quantum electrodynamics.
4. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, esp. the sections on self-consciousness.
5. Niels Bohr, “The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory,” Nature (1928).
6. Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (1958).

Coherence

Conception is always an invariable quality of possible wavelengths, because it exhibits waves of form—peaks and valleys—that remain consistent as they advance through the mediation of one moment by another.¹ The wave persists as a structured continuity, even as its specific expressions vary.

No matter the particular form a wave takes, it maintains coherence as it propagates along a trajectory. When one zooms into a photon, it appears not as a singular, isolated entity, but as a wormhole of possibility—a field in which other potential photons are implicitly contained. Each photon, in this sense, can be understood as a wavelength composed of, or related to, other photons.²

This phenomenon—where the many are implicit in the one, and the one gives rise to the many—is a recurring theme throughout nature. For example, each fiber that makes up a rope replicates, in miniature, the same general pattern found in the rope as a whole. The structure repeats across scales, preserving form through variation.³

Misunderstanding arises when ontological principles are displaced in logical order, resulting in apparent contradictions. For instance, we arrive at the concept of infinity through finite entities by assuming that finites can always be extended—that there are always more finites beyond any given set. This conclusion, though valid, is only assumed as true because any conceived collection, regardless of size, is necessarily finite.⁴

Conversely, how does one arrive at a finite through an infinity? The answer cannot be simply an indefinite accumulation of finite objects, because that presupposes the very infinity in question. Rather, infinity arrives at a finite by manifesting itself as a finite duration or instance. The sun, for example, may be conceived as possessing infinite energy in principle—yet this infinity is disclosed only through finite moments of radiation across time. The fact that there is a limited temporal duration does not negate the infinity disclosed within that duration.⁵

It is therefore crucial to explain how infinity constitutes a moment in time—or more precisely, a duration in time—and consequently a spatial localization. The sun’s energy, though potentially infinite in its applications, is concentrated at a finite point in space. At that point, it is infinitesimally differentiated: the sun consists of an immeasurable gradient of photons, each participating in the same energetic continuum.⁶

(Here one may add the function of a black hole: a black hole disperses an object into its possible actions, with each action effectively becoming a different object, distributed across spacetime according to gravitational and quantum constraints.)⁷

When an object is blurred, it appears as a wave spectrum. Every object is part of a process, but quantum mechanics deepens this claim: during a fundamental process, the object is not necessarily isolated as a definite entity that maintains its own ground. Instead, it appears as a moment within a field of possibilities, a detail within a broader scene disclosed through conception. What we call an “object” is thus a stabilized coherence within an ongoing process, rather than a self-sufficient thing.⁸

Footnotes

1. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, on continuity and mediation.
2. Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.
3. Benoît Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature.
4. Georg Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers.
5. Aristotle, Physics, Book III, on potential infinity.
6. Max Planck, The Theory of Heat Radiation.
7. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time.
8. Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge.

Delayed Choice

Delayed choice refers to a class of quantum experiments—originally proposed by John Archibald Wheeler—that show how the type of measurement chosen later can determine how a quantum system must be described earlier in time. It does not mean that the future literally changes the past, but it does challenge the classical idea that physical properties are fixed independently of how and when they are observed.

In quantum mechanics, entities like photons or electrons can behave like waves (showing interference) or like particles(showing localized impacts). Which description applies depends on how the system is measured.

In a delayed-choice experiment:

• A quantum particle (say, a photon) is sent through an apparatus.
• The experimenter waits until after the photon has already entered—or even passed—the critical part of the setup.
• Only then does the experimenter decide what kind of measurement to perform.

The result is:

• If the later measurement is wave-like, the photon behaves as if it had always been a wave.
• If the later measurement is particle-like, the photon behaves as if it had always been a particle.

This is the “delayed choice.”

What is delayed?

What is delayed is not the particle, but the context of determination. Classically, we assume: The particle already was a particle or a wave before we looked. Quantum mechanics shows instead: The system does not have a definite classical identity until the measurement context is fixed. The “choice” made later determines how the earlier process must be described, not by rewriting history, but by completing the conditions under which the event becomes fully defined. Why this challenges classical time In classical thinking:

• Causes come first
• Effects come later
• Observation merely reveals what already exists

Delayed choice undermines this by showing:

• The meaning of an earlier event depends on a later experimental arrangement
• The past event was not fully determined until the measurement was completed

Time is not just a linear chain of already-fixed facts. Instead, quantum events are temporally open until the whole interaction—including observation—is complete.

Delayed choice does not mean:

• Consciousness magically rewrites the past
• Human intention alone causes physical change
• Reality is an illusion

It does mean:

• Physical events are defined by relations, not isolated properties
• Measurement is part of the physical process, not an external afterthought
• The distinction between “what happened” and “how it is known” is not clean at the quantum level

Relation to wave–particle duality

Delayed choice strongly supports this principle:

The wave is inherent in the particle.

The particle is not first a particle and later a wave, or vice versa. It is a process capable of multiple expressions. The measurement selects which aspect becomes actual.

• Wave behavior = extended possibilities
• Particle behavior = localized actualization

Both belong to the same underlying process.

Delayed choice shows that:

• Events are not fully real at a single instant
• Reality unfolds as a duration, not a snapshot
• The observer is not outside the event, but part of the conditions that complete it

This fits closely with:

• Whitehead’s process philosophy (events become, they are not simply given)
• Peirce’s law of mind (reality unfolds through habit, anticipation, and relation)
• The idea that internal and external relations are inseparable

Delayed choice shows that a quantum event is not fully determined at the moment it “happens,” but only when the entire relational context—including later measurement—is completed.

The Wave Is Inherent in the Particle

The wave is not something added to the particle from outside; it is inherent in the particle itself. What appears as a particle is already structured as a set of relations extended in time, and these relations disclose themselves as wave-like when examined beyond ordinary scales of perception.¹

Mind as an Organ of Internal Relations

Most of our bodily organs operate internally and perform processes that are not directly accessible to perception. Only when the spatial relation between the observer and the phenomenon is altered do these internal operations become translated into sensation. What was previously only a theoretical or abstract process becomes perceptible as a concrete external activity. In this way, perception reveals a more minute level of coordinated operations acting toward a common aim.

Behind their static physical structure, organs function as filters and selectors. They sort the variabilities of the environment and channel them into specific passages of nature. The organs do not merely receive information; they actively organize it. They are mechanisms of selection rather than passive receptors.²

Internal and External Relations

The link between internal and external relations is implicit in both. Their subsistence lies in conception, which has already been determined by mind at a different moment in time from the moment of observation. The phenomenon of déjà vu—an imperfect but common term—points toward this structure: the sense that an event has already occurred reflects the way mind anticipates and structures reality before it is consciously perceived.³

Charles Sanders Peirce provides a clearer account of this process through his law of mind. Mind operates by forming hypotheses that become presuppositions for each subsequent step it takes. Matter, which we know to be corruptible, continues to exist only insofar as it is maintained. Mind, likewise, continues by ordering what is initially indeterminate.⁴

Mind, Indeterminacy, and Motion

The persistence of mind resembles an economy of ordering: it organizes a primarily indeterminate activity—an uncertain field of events in which distinctions are initially muddled. This indeterminacy forms the basis of the concreteness of matter as a substrate. At this level, matter is not yet a clear and distinct thing, but it nonetheless exists.

Mind does not “imagine” events in the ordinary sense. Rather, it imposes an image upon a set of abstract relations, and these relations take on physical form. Motion, for example, is not merely an object traversing space; it is the mediation between two distinct positions. An object leaves one location and acquires another, and this transition—the distinction between departure and arrival—is the act of motion itself.⁵

The deeper question is what makes such distinctions possible at all. This principle appears in nature as light, which is inseparable from energy, heat, and electricity.

Electromagnetism and Light

Electromagnetism describes how motion maintains identity through differentiation. Light, for instance, remains connected to itself across a wave spectrum while also exhibiting the elasticity characteristic of electricity. This elasticity defines the electron as the capacity of matter to resume a stable pattern after being stretched, compressed, or otherwise altered.

What is being manipulated in such processes are light particles—photons. We know their form but never their content, because their content is pure form itself. Since this content is not directly conceived, it is treated as abstract and interchangeable. Thermodynamics shows that light first differentiates into color, and that color further condenses into weight and solidity. Differences in density and energy become differences in material form. When two atoms collide, the first instance of physical contact is an exchange of energy.⁶

Strings, Structure, and Collective Order

String theory, in this context, examines the elastic structure of substrates—the warp and woof through which conceivable images form and through which change is determined. The structure itself provides the conditions for transformation.

An anthill provides a useful illustration. It is not bound to a specific environment; it can appear on grass, soil, or concrete. Unlike many organisms, it does not require a narrowly defined habitat. Ants emerge one by one and enter one by one, yet this process occurs continuously and simultaneously. Each ant acts individually, but the collective result is a stable and coherent structure.

This exemplifies a fundamental geometric principle of reality: if each particular takes its turn in time to perform a single function, the accumulation of these actions produces a simultaneous order. The whole emerges from the temporal differentiation of parts, and each part distinguishes itself precisely by participating in the shared structure.⁷

Footnotes

1. Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge.
2. Jakob von Uexküll, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans.
3. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory.
4. Charles S. Peirce, “The Law of Mind,” The Monist (1892).
5. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World.
6. Max Planck, The Theory of Heat Radiation.
7. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, on many becoming one.

Mind Indirectly Foresees

The mind during sleep can only indirectly foresee what the mind in waking life directly perceives. It is easy to confuse what the mind encounters in dreams with what will later occur in waking life. Many dreams never correspond to any later external event; however, this does not mean that the dream itself is unreal. Rather, it may express how the mind has internally registered what is externally occurring, or what it anticipates as a possible configuration of events.¹

For example, one may dream of something that later appears to have been “foreseen,” when in fact the dream captured a thought that the waking mind later entertained in response to external circumstances. Because waking consciousness perceives what is happening externally, a dream can align with an external event insofar as it expresses a thought about that object. The dream is therefore not a prediction of the external event itself, but a prior internal articulation of a relation that later becomes explicit in perception.

Observed-Phenomena Philosophy

The effect of the observer on the observed phenomenon in quantum mechanics suggests a rational basis of the universe. Rationality here also implies substance, since something rational is that which provides an explanation or cause of something else. Aristotle makes this distinction clear when he states:

“Irrational potencies are single; rational potencies are twofold.”²

Rational and irrational potencies are simultaneous, because a thing is always itself and capable of being otherwise. A rational potency is defined by its capacity to produce opposite effects, whereas an irrational power produces only one effect. Science, therefore, is a rational structure because it explains both a thing and its privation, though not in the same manner.

For example, in geometry, a relation either holds or does not hold between two elements. The power of the relation includes both affirmation and negation. Aristotle introduces potency (dynamis) as the capacity to act or to be acted upon. This demonstrates that relations are logically prior to their parts, and that the positive principle is prior to negation—since something must exist in order to be negated.³

There is no such thing as a complete lack of action, because refraining from action is itself a mode of action. In ethics, temperance is precisely the virtue of restraint. Lack of action thus becomes an alternative action, or a contrary form of activity. Aristotle consistently places ethics as inseparable from intellect and aesthetics. As Hegel later formulates it, “Education is the art of making man ethical.”⁴

Love, Truth, and Beauty as Temporal Forms

The tripartite unity of love, truth, and beauty functions as a temporal structure. Each captures a different dimension of time that together constitute a duration.

• The ethical principle corresponds to the future, because it contains the potency of action. To act, one must be capable of acting, and this capability always lies ahead of the present moment.
• The intellectual principle corresponds to the past, because all knowledge is, in a broad sense, recollection. Even scientific truths concern states of the universe that precede the moment in which they are articulated.
• The aesthetic principle corresponds to the present, because any action performed takes on a form that is immediately experienced. Beauty is the experience of a necessary action occurring.⁵

Potency, Privation, and Action

Primary potency is the originative source of a thing’s capacity to act or be acted upon, either by another thing or by itself through another. Privation has two meanings: (1) the absence of a quality in something that could possess it, or (2) the absence of a quality altogether.

Aristotle observes that:

“He who does a thing well must do it, but he who does it merely does not need to do it well.”

Doing something well presupposes doing it at all. It is only once an action occurs that the possibility of failure or inadequacy arises. Potency thus always includes its own negation.⁶

Myth, Distance, and Reality

Something is called mythical when there is genuine curiosity about it, despite the absence of direct observation. Pandas were once regarded as mythical because reports described a vegetarian bear that had never been seen. Once pandas were discovered, they entered shared empirical reality.

Similarly, certain animals described in indigenous traditions—such as the “rain deer,” said to possess such acute perception that it can never be approached—occupy a threshold between existence and non-existence for human observers. If an object is never perceptible within human experiential limits, it effectively does not exist within that shared reality. Reality, in this sense, is inseparable from conditions of access.⁷

Substance as Subject (Hegel)

Hegel writes:

“The true shape of truth is conceptual and notional.”⁸

He further insists that the Absolute must not be conceived merely as substance—something simply present—but as subject. Substance is undifferentiated universality, whereas subjectivity is the activity through which substance differentiates itself and recognizes itself as such.

A corrected formulation of Hegel’s claim is as follows:

True substance is a being that is truly a subject—that is, it is itself only insofar as it externalizes itself, confronts itself as other, and then returns to itself through the negation of that otherness. It cannot exist as a simple positive unity, but only as a self-departing and self-returning movement.⁹

This element of consciousness introduces spontaneity and surprise into being. Being must rediscover itself in order to confirm itself as itself. Consciousness is therefore not an addition to reality, but the dynamic through which reality becomes determinate. In this ongoing process, substance proves itself only by becoming subject.

Footnotes

1. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory.
2. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Θ.
3. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book V.
4. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Education.
5. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality.
6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.
7. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning.
8. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §51.
9. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §18 (corrected paraphrase).

Psychedelics

The mechanics of nature ordinarily appear clear through the natural functioning of the sense faculties. However, when the mind is altered by psychedelics and receives more reality from nature than it is normally accustomed to, the distinction between nature and reality beyond nature becomes more apparent. At the same time, the connection between mind and reality appears intensified. This altered state leads one to question whether what we ordinarily call “nature” is in fact a subset produced by the interaction between mind and reality, rather than an independent domain existing fully on its own.¹

Whitehead captures this shift in perspective with the following passage:

“For example, if we could imagine some lowly type of organic being thinking and aware of our thoughts, it would wonder at the abstract subtleties in which we indulge as we think of stones and bricks and drops of water and plants. It only knows of vague undifferentiated feelings in nature. It would consider us as given over to the play of excessively abstract intellects. But then if it could think, it would anticipate; and if it anticipated, it would soon perceive for itself.”²

This suggests that perception deepens as anticipation emerges, and anticipation itself already presupposes a form of mind. Altered states may therefore disclose not new objects, but new relations of anticipation and perception within reality.

Psychedelics challenge the extent and true potential of our sense organs. As substrates of experience, it appears that our senses are capable of far more than what they ordinarily express under natural conditions. Their depth and complexity in conceiving reality may be a product of the developmental state of the mind itself. As rare and highly organized structures, sense organs—whether the eye, which functions through crystalline refraction, or any rational organ directed toward a discernible function—are sublations of nature.

In their capacity, sense organs are at once limited by their physiological and psychological structure, yet within that same structure they also contain greater potential than the level of mental development that typically makes use of them. The developmental state of the mind may be less advanced than the potential structure of the organ itself, such that if the mind were to develop further, the organ could be employed more fully, closer to its total potential capacity.

In this sense, altered states do not create new senses, but rather reveal latent capacities already present within the existing organs—capacities that remain dormant under ordinary modes of cognition.

Life as the Present

Intelligence is commonly equated with problem-solving. Contemporary psychology often treats problems as involuntary situations imposed upon the observer, circumstances with which the subject must cope. This reflects a common error in modern logic: the subject and object are treated as antagonistic, such that the observer is viewed as a victim of circumstances in which they had no initial participation.

In ancient and monotheistic traditions, the body was considered the problematic object confronting the soul. In modernity, the body is less burdensome due to improved material conditions, yet existential anxiety persists. This indicates that the problem lies not in material hardship but in a misunderstanding of the relation between subject and situation.

Problems, properly understood, are not involuntary conditions imposed on the subject, but rather tasks—voluntary engagements that arise from the subject’s own participation in a situation. A task is a form of work to be undertaken, and therefore belongs to intelligence itself. In this sense, problems are the positive communicative expression of intelligence, not its limitation.

A Problem and Contradiction

A problem is defined by what Hegel calls a contradiction. The distinction between observer and phenomenon is a unique development in the universe, and this distinction becomes explicit with the introduction of death as a factor in reality.

Life, taken more generally than biological existence, refers to being alive—that is, something occurring in real time, in the present. A “live” event is one that unfolds now, such as a live performance. This quality of liveness characterizes all living organisms: to live is to conceive events in the present.

There is no present outside a particular perspective. The present exists only within a living conception. Outside an observer, what we call the present is merely a potential event. From the standpoint of uncertainty, the present is always potentially past or future. Even if we name this potentiality “the present,” it must belong to an observer who determines it.

To be present is to be there. But if no one is there, there is no present. The present is thus a function of real time as lived, not time as an abstract sequence. Time, considered as a field of possible events, contains no present—only potential moments.³

This reasoning can also be applied to spatial extension. When a set of objects is conceived by an observer, they appear as a continuous whole—for example, rocks forming the ground. But from an indeterminate standpoint, where objects are not unified by a single conception, there is no necessity that objects form a continuous whole at all. Each object may exist within its own conception, floating independently rather than as parts of a single unified field.

Death, Potentiality, and the Observer

Death is not universally applicable to all states of being. There are incorruptible principles, such as time and space. Yet time and space are inseparable from observers who undergo change, and it is within this changing relation that death becomes meaningful.

This condition corresponds to a state of pure potentiality, in which the present is not fixed but remains open as either past or future. Only from the standpoint of a particular organism participating in a live event does a determinate present arise.

Historically, the corruptibility of matter has led philosophers to ask whether mind is more fundamental than body—not in the sense that mind exists without body, but in the sense that mind may be ontologically prior. This question opens inquiry into the diversity of matter itself.

Objects are not limited to dense, impenetrable things with weight and mass. Quantities such as size, speed, and distance—though physical—are not directly felt in the same way weight is felt. A person inside a jet experiences speed differently than an observer on the ground watching the jet pass. Yet these quantitative relations govern density and mass.

Thus, quantitative measures are inseparable from the frame of reference that discloses them. The observer’s reference frame is not entirely distinct from the form the object takes within that frame; it is a structured relation among objects.⁴

States of matter illustrate this relational character clearly. Gas is penetrable by solids—I can walk through air but not through a wall. Yet if one were reduced to a size smaller than the molecules composing the wall, there would be sufficient space between them to pass through. Penetrability is therefore not an absolute property but a relational one.

Observation and Quantum Determination

The proposition in quantum mechanics that the observer changes the phenomenon does not imply subjective illusion. Rather, it indicates that conception reveals dimensions within an event that were previously indeterminate. To determine a phenomenon is to bring forth a specific actuality from a field of possibilities.

Observation, in this sense, is not passive reception but an act that discloses structure within reality itself. The observer does not merely record what is there, but participates in the articulation of what can be known.

Footnotes

1. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.
2. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 163.
3. Henri Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity.
4. Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory.

Mind as an Efficient Principle

Mind is the proper subject matter of pragmatism because it functions as the most efficient principle in nature. This efficiency is most clearly exhibited in its evolutionary realization within the brain as an organ. Mind is efficient not because it merely reacts to beginnings, but because it starts from an end and uses that end as a guiding principle for its operations.

Mind does not begin from an absolute beginning; rather, it makes the end its starting point and advances toward the beginning as one of its premises. In logical terms, the beginning functions as the first axiom in a proof whose result is already implicitly anticipated. If the beginning were taken as an absolute starting point for mind, then it would imply that something is unknown to mind at the outset—namely, the conclusion. But this contradicts the defining feature of mind: to know.

The end therefore functions as the true beginning for mind, because it represents the extent of what mind can know. Mind begins at the limit of its capacity and works backward toward what is most distant from that limit. The end is valid precisely because it is a limit, and a limit provides structure, orientation, and direction. In this sense, mind is teleological: it is guided by what is to be achieved rather than merely by what has already occurred.¹

The Past and the “After” (Quantum Eraser Problem)

Before a present event occurs, we do not know why it happens in any determinate sense, because we lack knowledge of its very existence. Only after the event has occurred can we know it as past. An event becomes identifiable as past only once it has happened, and it is only at this point that it becomes fully intelligible.

This produces an important temporal paradox: only after an event has passed does it become available as a possible event for the future—for example, as something remembered, repeated, anticipated, or avoided. A purely future event, by contrast, has no basis for explanation until it has occurred. This structure explains why one can sometimes know that something is the case without yet being able to explain it. Science, however, demands that knowing be identical with demonstration: to truly know something is to be able to explain it.²

This paradox is closely related to the logic behind the quantum eraser. From one perspective, everything appears to be already determined by the past. In this sense, the observer has already determined, through prior conditions, the situations they will encounter in the future. Yet at the same time, it is only in the process of undergoing the experience that the future becomes determinate and the past is constituted as past.

Thus, a contradiction emerges:

• From the standpoint of the past, the future appears determined.
• From the standpoint of experience, the past only comes into being through the event.

These two perspectives are not mutually exclusive; rather, they describe different aspects of the same temporal process.³

Event, Past, and Potential

We pass through an event, and only afterward do we say that it is past. Yet once it is past, it also becomes—paradoxically—a potential future, insofar as it is no longer occurring in the present. Because it is not present, it can recur in altered form: as memory, anticipation, repetition, or causal influence.

Thus, the past is never simply gone. It is idealized and becomes available as potential. Time is not a linear sequence of fixed moments, but a dynamic structure in which past, present, and future continually redefine one another relative to the standpoint of mind.

Footnotes

1. Aristotle, Physics II.3; Metaphysics Θ.8. Teleology as explanation by ends rather than by mere origins.
2. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics I.2: knowledge (epistēmē) requires demonstration.
3. J. A. Wheeler, “Delayed-Choice Experiments and the Bohr–Einstein Dialogue,” in Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory (1978).

Roughly half of human life is spent sleeping, or at least in a state that should involve dreaming. Whether a person remembers dreaming or not depends largely on the level and health of their mind. Everyone dreams, unless the dreaming function is chemically suppressed or displaced. In such cases—most notably through the use of drugs—dreaming becomes subordinate, because the dream-like state is no longer reserved for sleep but is introduced directly into waking reality.

Under the influence of drugs, individuals often deploy dopamine and other neurochemical intensities during waking life that would otherwise be reserved for dreaming. In the natural course of mental functioning, the brain uses these heightened levels to access deeper or more abstract layers of thought during sleep, while consciousness remains largely unaware of them. In contrast, psychoactive substances bring these normally unconscious experiential layers forward into conscious realization.

It is within the dream state that we encounter one of the most promising and least understood phenomena of mental life—commonly referred to in popular culture as déjà vu. This aesthetically appealing term hints at a far deeper phenomenon for which we do not yet possess an adequate concept.

What is experienced during déjà vu is not merely a repetition of perception, but the actualization of a potential eventthat was previously overseen during a dream. Days, months, or even years later, this potential is realized in waking life. During the moment of its realization, however, we are so fully entangled in the event that we are often unable to reflect upon it and recognize that it had already been foreseen in a dream.

This raises a fundamental question: how is it possible that we sometimes encounter events in waking life that appear to have already been lived, imagined, or anticipated? If we are capable of apprehending future events during dreams, does this imply that the future is already determined to the extent that it can be seen from the past?

These questions reveal something essential about time itself. Time is not experienced uniformly across different mental capacities or states of consciousness. The linear sequence of past, present, and future may be less a fundamental structure of reality and more a product of our naturally adapted brain development.

This leads to a further speculative possibility: might there exist parallel temporal frameworks beyond our ordinary linear experience of time—frameworks in which events are not strictly ordered as past, present, and future, but are instead accessible according to different modes of mental participation? In this sense, déjà vu is not a glitch in cognition, but a brief disclosure of a deeper temporal order in which potential and actuality are not rigidly separated.

Event Has Already Happened — Déjà Vu — Event Before It Happens

From the present moment, how is it possible to conceive an event prior to its having already happened? The reality of a potential event actually occurring is not limited to its happening in the present moment. The present moment merely confirms that a potential event has happened; but an event is a real occurrence insofar as it is already a potential.¹

For example, in dreams we encounter the phenomenon of déjà vu, where an event is roughly conceived prior to its occurrence in the present, and then—after an indeterminate but finite amount of time—actually happens during waking life. The potentiality of an event becoming present cannot be understood independently of the physical conditions that sustain the continuity of the present moment into a potential one.²

Potential events form the physical conditions and the environment within which a present moment becomes a real instance. What we ordinarily mean by the “present” as the only real moment is derived from a limited capacity to disclose the minute details composing the entire environment in which the present moment resides. The present moment is reducible to a conceivable slab of nature—an abstraction that allows time to be experienced as moving forward.³

The present moment is always a limit to the arrangements a set of relations can assume in order to form the conditions for a given set of events. The unity between potential events and a real present instance results from a preconfigured complex geometric structure and the infinite possibilities of its rearrangement. In other words, a potential event exists in the capacity of a complex system to rearrange itself.⁴

Consciousness in the present moment already presupposes a certain symmetry of structure—or, in the limiting case, the absence of structure altogether. From the standpoint of the present, the real occurrence of a potential event lies in the possibility of rearranging the relations that constitute the environment harboring the present. The environment is to time what space is to position: it is the field of conditions that allows an event to occur.

For example, if my present moment consists of sitting at home watching television, my potential moment might be being at a coffee shop. For that potential to become real, the physical arrangement of my environment must change: I must stand up, leave the house, walk down the street, catch a bus, and arrive at the café. These changes constitute a structural reconfiguration of relations such that the once-potential event becomes the actual situation of the present.⁵

The reality of potential events becoming present is thus subsumed within the potential arrangement of the physical conditions of the event itself. The model of the electron illustrates this structure: a present moment physically contains the possible arrangements upon which particular events depend, and the potentiality of a given event demands a transformation of the present for its actualization.⁶

The present moment is the locus in which a single event is real, identical with its physical conditions—whether that be a man, a dog, or a tree. This real instance functions as a centre point around which the total set of possible events is arrayed. Actualization depends on the relational changes the present undergoes.

It is counterintuitive to speak of moments of time as if they were spatial objects, yet it is precisely this characterization that determines the corruptibility of objects. Commonly, time is said to determine how long a material object maintains its composition—its lifespan. In this view, the object is what subsists against the erosive power of time. Less commonly acknowledged is that the coming-into-being of physical form is also determined by activity occurring through duration.⁷

For example, the body of a human being is determined by age: the physical form of a child differs drastically from that of an adult. A flash of light has a physical composition that lasts only fractions of a second; a mayfly lasts a single day. The duration of a substance, at some level, determines the form of its physical composition, because duration is inseparable from the nature of the activity involved.⁸

“Also location in the timeless space of some time-system is a relation derivative from location in instantaneous spaces of the same time-system.”⁹

What Whitehead Means by a Time-System

A time-system is not time itself, but a way of ordering events—a coordinated framework that allows us to say:

• which events are earlier or later,
• which are simultaneous,
• and how spatial relations are measured relative to that ordering.

A time-system is therefore relational, not absolute. It is constructed from events and their relations, not imposed from outside nature.

“Timeless Space” vs. “Instantaneous Spaces”

Whitehead distinguishes two ways of talking about space:

(a) Instantaneous Space

An instantaneous space is a snapshot of spatial relations at a particular moment in a time-system.

• It is the spatial layout of events at one instant.
• Each instant has its own spatial configuration.
• This space is inseparable from time—it exists only at that moment.

Think of it as a single frame in a film.

(b) Timeless Space

Timeless space is an abstraction formed by stringing together all those instantaneous spaces.

• It is the space we treat as if it exists independently of time.
• It allows us to say things like:
  • “This object is at the same place yesterday and today”
  • “Cleopatra’s Needle occupies a fixed position”

But for Whitehead, this “timeless” space does not exist on its own. It is a conceptual construction.

When Whitehead says that location in timeless space is derivative, he means: It is not primary, not fundamental, and not given directly in nature. Instead:

• We first have locations in instantaneous spaces (event-by-event).
• Only afterward do we abstract from these many momentary locations.
• That abstraction produces the idea of a single, enduring spatial position.

So timeless space is built from instantaneous spaces, not the other way around.

This explains why objects are not static things for Whitehead. An object:

• does not occupy a timeless space directly,
• but is a stream of events whose spatial positions are slightly different at each instant.

We call those positions “the same place” only because:

• the differences are negligible for practical purposes,
• and our minds impose continuity.

This is exactly the point he makes with Cleopatra’s Needle:

• The Needle “stays in the same place” only because we abstract from constant microscopic change.
• In reality, each instant has its own spatial configuration. Relation to Irreversibility and Becoming because spatial location is built from successive instants: Time cannot be reversed without changing space. No event can occur twice in the same place, strictly speaking. What we call “the same place” is already a historical construction. This ties directly to:
• the law of irreversibility,
• the uniqueness of events,
• and the idea that becoming is more fundamental than being.

Whitehead is saying: What we call a fixed position in space is actually an abstraction made by relating many momentary spatial positions across time; space divorced from time is not fundamental, but constructed from events as they occur.

Footnotes

1. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Θ (Theta), on potentiality and actuality.
2. A. N. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature, on potential events and realization.
3. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, on the abstraction of the present.
4. Whitehead, Process and Reality, on concrescence and relational structure.
5. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, on embodiment and action.
6. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature, lectures on electrons and events.
7. Aristotle, Physics, Book IV, on time and change.
8. Bergson, Creative Evolution, on duration and form.
9. A. N. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature, Part IV.

Dreams: The Positive Dialectic of Consciousness and the Unconscious

Dreams disclose the unconscious formulation of reality. Although these formulations initially appear irrational, psychoanalysis shows that they possess an internal rational structure once interpreted. The unconscious does not produce chaos; rather, it organizes experience according to a logic different from conscious reasoning.

The unconscious derives its content from what Freud called the Id—but this should not be understood merely as a repository of blind impulses. The Id represents the immediate nature of the human being, that is, the human as a natural organism embedded in biological and evolutionary processes. In this sense, immediate human nature is not yet human in the full sense. What is properly human is the ego, understood here not narrowly as self-interest, but as conscious rational mediation.

Consciousness represents the implicate form of truth: truth as mediated, structured, and reflective. The unconscious represents the explicate form of truth: truth expressed directly, symbolically, and affectively. This appears paradoxical, but the paradox is internal before it is relational. Consciousness contradicts itself; the unconscious contradicts itself. Their opposition is not external but immanent.

Dualism or Dialectic?

This contradiction should not be understood as a simple dualism between two separate substances. Rather, it is a dialectical contradiction that originates within a single process. The unconscious expresses our immediate relation to nature, while consciousness expresses our mediated relation to that same nature.

Psychoanalysis reveals that the unconscious registers the struggle between the human being and nature. Nature sustains life, yet it also determines finitude, suffering, and death. This contradiction is the foundational tension of the unconscious.

Human beings have emancipated themselves from immediate natural determination. Reproduction, survival, and instinctual repetition are no longer absolute ends. This emancipation, however, does not abolish instinct; it suppresses and internalizes it. Immediate nature becomes implicit—as the unconscious—while its sublation becomes explicit as consciousness.

Consciousness is therefore not opposed to nature but is nature reflected and reorganized. Consciousness makes explicit what is implicit; yet in doing so, it becomes implicit in a higher sense, since it now depends upon what it has internalized.¹

Evolutionary Sublation and the Psyche

At the level of species evolution, Homo sapiens represents the stage at which the contradiction between organism and environment becomes internalized. What was once an external struggle between species and nature becomes an internal struggle within the psyche—between unconscious instinct and conscious rationality.

This internalization produces universality within individuality. Each individual human being becomes a site where the universal contradiction of nature and reason is played out. Sexual instinct contradicts love; individuality contradicts sociality; desire contradicts ethical restraint.²

At first glance, these contradictions appear destructive—what might be called a negative dialectic. But this is a misunderstanding. The contradiction between consciousness and the unconscious is in fact a positive dialectic, because it is productive. It generates development, culture, ethics, and self-understanding.

The external contradiction with nature is not eliminated; it is transformed into an internal process. Nature is taken up into the psyche. The next stage of this emancipation occurs not outside the mind but within it. Even at the level of physics, quantum phenomena mirror this structure: indeterminacy, relation, and observer-dependence reflect the same logic that governs mental life.³

Dreams, Reality, and Illusion

Dreams are reality as it appears to the unconscious. Conversely, consciousness also contains non-reality—what we ordinarily call illusion. The distinction between reality and illusion does not map neatly onto the distinction between unconscious and conscious. Both contain truth and distortion, but in different forms.

Freud’s limitation lies in treating the unconscious as the final truth of human nature. In doing so, he failed to recognize the unconscious as a developmental moment—a stage within a larger dialectical process.

Rational Instincts and Habituation

Instincts are not abolished by reason; they are rationalized. Sexuality does not disappear when it is resolved as love; it persists, but in a transformed form. Love is not the negation of sex, but its ethical and relational sublimation.⁴

Habits (habitus) are the mechanisms by which this transformation stabilizes. Through habituation, instinctual energies are reorganized into social, ethical, and aesthetic forms. This is the concrete realization of the positive dialectic: instinct becomes rational without ceasing to be instinct.

Art and “eye for beauty”

Art is objective not because it mirrors the external world, but because it develops the subject. It cultivates perception, refines feeling, and educates desire. To acquire an eye for beauty is to acquire a new organ of objectivity. Art is therefore not subjective fantasy but a mode of truth-disclosure.⁵

A genuine Marx quote that explicitly uses the idea of an “eye for beauty” appears in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, where Marx discusses the historical formation of the human senses.

“The forming of the five senses is a labor of the entire history of the world down to the present.”
— Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Marx then explains this point more concretely with examples that directly include an eye for beauty:

“The sense caught up in crude practical need has only a restricted sense. For the starving man, the human form of food does not exist, but only its abstract existence as food… Thus the objectification of the human essence, both theoretically and practically, is necessary in order to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance.”

In several translations and commentaries, this is paraphrased as:

“An eye for beauty, a musical ear, are not natural givens but historical products.”

Senses are not merely biological—they are historical and rational

For Marx, having an eye for beauty is not a natural instinct but a developed capacity. This aligns directly with your claim that: organs possess greater potential than the level of development the mind has reached. The eye, as a biological organ, exists prior to culture—but the eye that sees beauty exists only after a historical process of:

• labor
• social relations
• art
• education

Thus, perception itself is a sublated form of nature, not raw immediacy. Beauty emerges when instinct is liberated from necessity. Marx contrasts need-based perception with human perception:

• Hunger sees food only as calories
• Utility sees objects only as tools
• Survival sees nature only as resource

An eye for beauty appears only when necessity is mediated, not abolished. This matches your dialectic:

• instinct is not destroyed
• it is raised into universality

Beauty is therefore freedom within perception, not outside it. Positive dialectic: instinct → culture → perception:

• unconscious instinct = immediate nature
• consciousness = rational sublation

Marx describes the same movement materially:

1. Nature gives raw senses
2. Labor transforms nature
3. Transformed nature transforms the senses

This is a positive dialectic, not a repression. The eye becomes capable of beauty because the world itself has become humanized through social production.

Art is objective because it develops the subject

Marx’s claim supports our statement directly:

Art is objective because it develops the subject. For Marx:

• Art is not subjective fantasy
• It is a real force that reshapes perception itself

A sculpture does not merely represent beauty—it produces the capacity to see beauty. Thus, art:

• alters the observer
• expands sensory depth
• reorganizes instinct

Why this matters for mind, dreams, and reality

In our broader philosophy:

• perception is not passive
• mind and world co-develop

Marx’s “eye for beauty” shows that:

• reality is disclosed according to the historical level of mind
• what appears “natural” is already mediated
• consciousness is not separate from material conditions
• psychedelics (expanded sensory reality)
• dreams (unmediated perceptual synthesis)
• quantum observation (disclosure through interaction)

For Marx, an “eye for beauty” is the historical sublation of biological sense into rational perception, where instinct is not denied but elevated into a universal human capacity shaped by labor, art, and social life.

Footnotes

1. This reflects Hegel’s notion of Aufhebung (sublation): negation, preservation, and elevation in one movement.
2. Compare Aristotle’s analysis of desire and reason in Nicomachean Ethics.
3. Parallel to Whitehead’s process philosophy and Bohr’s complementarity.
4. Resonant with Plato’s Symposium and Hegel’s account of ethical life (Sittlichkeit).
5. See Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics: art as the sensuous appearance of the Idea.

The organ of the mind, the brain, has evolved as an analytical tool in relation to the environment. It examines the environment for food sources, dangers, potential mates, and other survival-relevant information. These analytical functions are especially prominent among mammals. Sleep is particularly interesting in relation to the mind as an analytical tool because during sleep, the mind’s engagement with the environment is largely suspended. The environment “goes dark,” reducing the operation of perceptual faculties. At this point, the mind either ceases to function as an analytical tool or redirects its analytical capacities inward. During the night, the mind does not stop being analytical; rather, it turns its attention away from the environment and onto itself. During sleep, the mind becomes self-analytical.¹

The hypothesis is that the development of self-awareness in human beings began during sleep. Humans evolved not only to analyze their environment for survival but also to reflect on their own thought processes regarding that environment. Self-reflection—thinking about one’s thinking—likely emerged during sleep. Dreams, for example, allow the mind to reflect on events, desires, and relationships, such as the pursuit of a potential mate. Whereas most animals act directly on environmental stimuli, humans reflect on their own reflection of those stimuli.²

During REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the eyes move rapidly, stimulating nerves connected to the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain associated with abstract thinking and executive functions. The images and narratives experienced during REM sleep constitute what we recognize as dreams.³

When the mind analyzes itself during sleep, it is not simply confronting subconscious desires or anxieties, as Freud suggested, often relating to repressed memories. Jung challenges Freud’s purely wish-fulfillment interpretation of dreams, arguing that dreams are messages or revelations for the dreamer. He believed that dreams could reveal insights capable of resolving emotional, spiritual, or psychological issues. Recurrent dreams, for example, often highlight neglected issues, as seen in cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).⁴

Both Freud and Jung indicate an indirect relation between dreams and temporal experience: Freud emphasizes childhood memories, while Jung discusses “compensation,” where recurring dreams bring neglected matters to attention. The issue of time in dreams is particularly complex. During sleep, the mind appears to operate outside the linear division of past, present, and future. Dreaming may represent the mind simultaneously processing events across different temporal dimensions, calibrating the present toward the future using insights from both past experiences and potentialities.⁵

During REM sleep, the eyes turn upward and begin scanning the sensory systems connected to the retina. With reduced input from daily vision, the retina receives flash points of images generated internally by the mind. These images are then reflected to the unconscious aspect of the observer. The dreamer, therefore, perceives images originating from their own mind.

We often describe these images as random, or, as Freud suggested, as expressions of wish fulfillment. However, as Jung hinted, they are messages from the mind—aperçeptions of potential future events. Dreams can only allow the perception of future possibilities if those events, in some form, have already been experienced in the past. Consequently, during dreams, the distinction between past and future is suspended and convulsed, unlike daily waking life, where events follow a strict linear sequence of before and after the present.

Footnotes

1. On self-analysis in sleep and the redirection of attention inward: See Stickgold, R. (2005). Sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Nature; Jung, C.G., Psychological Aspects of Dreams.
2. On the evolutionary significance of reflective cognition: See Dunbar, R. (1998). The Social Brain Hypothesis.
3. REM sleep and the prefrontal cortex: See Hobson, J.A. (2009). REM Sleep and Dreaming: Towards a Theory of Conscious States.
4. Freud, S. (1900). The Interpretation of Dreams; Jung, C.G. (1960). Dreams.
5. On simultaneity of temporal processing in dreams: See Revonsuo, A. (2000). The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Complexity Rolatum

The term “freedom” is often loosely defined and does not have a specific meaning of its own. It is generally used as a broad concept encompassing a set of ideas that more precisely relate to the notion of determination.¹ For example, in liberal philosophy, freedom is often described as “doing whatever one wants,” but this alone does not explain the conditions that make action possible. With the concept of determination, freedom takes on the specific meaning of actualization.

The capacity for freedom is determination—it is the content of freedom. Freedom is not merely acting independently of other things; it does not explain how a thing can act as a thing or how it uses its capacities to act. For example, the soul does not act independently of the body; it acts in accordance with it.²

Unconscious and Conscious Time

There is a distinction between unconscious and conscious time. Events are determined unconsciously but become actualized at the conscious level. After an event occurs, we know it has happened and classify it as the past. However, before an event occurs, there is no way of knowing that it could happen—unless the moment in which the event did not happen has already occurred prior to the event’s happening.³

In other words, in the present moment, there is no way of knowing a future event that has not yet happened—unless that event has already occurred in some past moment. The past and the future happen simultaneously in relation to the present in the sense that neither occupies the present: the past already happened and is therefore not present, while the future has not yet happened and is therefore also not present. The common idea that the past comes before the present and the future after is only an abstraction.⁴

For example, if I am looking out onto the road and suddenly witness a car crash, before it happens there is no way of knowing it could occur. After the crash, it is impossible to imagine it not happening. But what if the car crash had already happened in a dream months ago? In what sense was it merely a mental occurrence if it later happened in reality? When it happened in the dream, it was real in the sense of the dream, but after the crash occurs in waking life, was the dream not real all along, only confirmed by actual events?⁵

This raises questions about reality and time: what is more real—the car crash in the dream or the crash happening in front of me now? Does the dream gain originality or authenticity once confirmed by reality? Could the crash occur before I witness it, meaning the moment of witnessing itself happens after the event has “already happened” unconsciously? If so, internal time could run inversely to external time, but they converge at the present—a point where time is no longer a duration with direction but a sequence of events recorded on an eternal plane.⁶

The Event Has Already Happened

At the unconscious level, an event has already happened. What occurs in the present for the conscious mind is already past for the unconscious. This is why events cannot be known before they happen: from the perspective of the present, they may not have occurred, but in the future, they have already happened. Consciously, events occur in the present; unconsciously, they may exist as memories, anticipations, or intuitions.⁷

For example, in post-traumatic stress disorder, many memory processes are unconscious. Similarly, unconscious intuition—or a “gut feeling”—is an awareness of an event or outcome that is only consciously recognized later. The unconscious mind, therefore, experiences events in a temporal framework distinct from conscious time, where the future, past, and present can intersect.

Footnotes:

1. For discussion of freedom and determination in liberal and philosophical contexts, see Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (1969).
2. On the relation of mind and body in philosophical action, see Aristotle, De Anima, and Spinoza, Ethics.
3. On the relationship between unconscious determination and conscious actualization, see Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900).
4. For philosophical discussion of time and abstraction, see Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will (1889).
5. Jung, Man and His Symbols (1964) discusses dreams as messages from the unconscious.
6. For ideas of internal vs. external time and sequence, see works on block universe theory in physics.
7. For discussion of unconscious intuition and temporal perception, see Carl Jung, Psychological Aspects of the Unconscious.

Void Déjà Vu

The space of events
Space can be understood as a hollow void that takes on the form of an event. It outlines the event and gives it dimension, allowing us to perceive the potentialities inherent in it. In this sense, space is not a passive container but an active structure shaping the possibilities of events.¹

Space does not only require objects to fill it; it can also be filled with any conception, image, or abstract notion. This means that as long as there is light, an observer’s mind can construct a representation of reality using that light and reflect it back to itself for conception. In this way, the process of perceiving something—passively reacting to what is outside—and the process of actively generating the experience itself are unified into the same action.

The problem of déjà vu – “the feeling of having been here before”

At some level, we experience the present moment in a particular place and suddenly feel as if we have been there before. The present moment of being “here” feels like a memory from a prior experience, yet it is only through being at the present moment that the memory seems to emerge.²

A common critique is that déjà vu is simply a product of repetition and habit. People frequently visit certain places, and the chance of being at the same location again is high. In this view, the feeling of déjà vu occurs when a present experience triggers a past memory. For example, if I am at a supermarket and see a snow hill, I may decide to climb it. Suddenly, I have a memory of having envisioned this exact moment in the past. This could have been triggered the last time I visited the supermarket and imagined climbing the hill. According to this explanation, déjà vu is merely a confirmation bias: a past memory triggered by a present event, mistakenly interpreted as “having lived this moment before.”³

However, this explanation is limited. The term déjà vu hints at a deeper phenomenon that lacks a clear concept. It points to our limited understanding of the relationship between past, future, and present. If every recollection is a memory of a past experience, how do we account for the experience of recalling something seemingly never encountered before?⁴

A memory is generally based on something witnessed, experienced, overheard, or unconsciously conceived. But how can we have a recollection of something that we never consciously encountered? One might argue that the mind unconsciously conceived the event at some point in the past, and now it emerges into conscious awareness. While plausible, this only deepens the question: how can we verify that an individual ever came into contact with the source of this recollection? Is it possible to recall something that has never been in contact with the mind before?⁵

Space, events, and gravitation

The concept of a general graviton suggests that everything exerts a gravitational effect on everything else, or that a single object, taken out of the relation of the whole, affects the whole. By analogy, the way space is warped around the form of an event determines the temporal and spatial relations of events. When we say that an object takes a certain amount of time to orbit a planet, the space itself is proportional to the form and mass of that planet.⁶

In this sense, the forms of objects can be seen as all possible events or reiterations, constrained within a single moment. Each event exists as one of many potentialities at a given time, and space mediates their relational structure, linking the present, past, and future.⁷

Footnotes

1. On the philosophical notion of space as an active structure, see Leibniz, Monadology (1714).
2. On déjà vu as a psychological phenomenon, see Freud, The Uncanny (1919).
3. On confirmation bias and memory, see Tversky & Kahneman, Judgment Under Uncertainty (1974).
4. Jung, Man and His Symbols (1964) discusses unconscious recognition in dreams and waking life.
5. On the unconscious conception of events, see Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900).
6. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory (1916), on spacetime curvature.
7. On potential events and their relation to present consciousness, see Bergson, Time and Free Will (1889).

History Conforms to the Moment

History conforms to a moment because a moment is more fundamental—in other words, more elementary. History is but a series of moments.

The idea that the gravitation of a single thing affects the whole has a deeper meaning when taken in conjunction with the idea that time is malleable; that is, time does not just move in one direction but is curved and determined in many different directions, each with its own time span and timeline. This idea implies that when an individual dies, time does not continue after them in the sense that their children or grandchildren follow them linearly, as if connected in a single sequence. For a timeline to continue after a certain period, there must exist another period relative to that continuity. For example, for Hitler to die and history to continue after World War II requires that there be people relative to that timeline through whom history continues. Because there are always such people, there is a general timeline in this sense.

However, if we pick any point in this absolute timeline and move “forward,” whatever happens at the general timeline must conform and be limited to the present point in relation to it. For instance, if we pick the time of Newton, there is no time in that timeline where a computer exists. The entire development of history culminates at that point, and nothing beyond it occurs until we move further along and see the subsequent developments of history. The point is that the entire history of time, from the individual’s point of view, is entirely determined by the limitation of time to the present moment. The present, meaning “being there,” constitutes the experience of time by being in a place within it.

We often think that life continues after the individual, and this is true in the sense that other people will have further experiences in history that the individual did not witness. But in the actual experience of the present, only the present exists. This means that when an individual dies, there is no limit to where a limitation can be imposed on absolute time. Absolute time can be limited at any of its points. From an absolute frame of reference, one can move backward or forward in time, because everything has already happened; one can choose to manifest at the time of the ancients or the future, as both exist simultaneously in absolute time.

The challenge with absolute time is that it only contains what has happened and what could happen; it does not account for “no happening” or “nothing,” which introduces uncertainty to time and allows it to continue.

For everything to happen means it can never be enough, as there is never enough of everything.

When an individual spirit manifests at a particular time in history, the entire timeline conforms to that present. For example, if humans did not go to the moon during the time someone manifested in 1897, then humans did not go to the moon at that point; the event becomes absolutely unreal in that year. Perhaps a star destroyed later in 2007 still exists in 1897. In an absolute timeframe, both events—existence and destruction—happen and do not happen. In this sense, before 2007, the star existed; after 2007, it does not.

Motion of Going Forward in Time

A moment always appears to be in the present, and while we have a sense of moving “forward” through time, there is no motion in the spatial sense. The motion of time is the dynamical process of event change or event transition, which defines motion as generation rather than duration. Motion is the coming in and out of being rather than maintaining a continuum in being against nothing.

Time is the dimension of quality: the realm where being exists, where all types of potential being exist. Space, conversely, is the dimension of self-externality; wherever there is a being, there is a corresponding non-being equal to the space occupied by that being. Space is the square root of time. If a cube is full of mass, the corresponding cube of space is empty of mass. The cubes are not merely side by side; one is defined in contrast to the other. Space complements time by filling the void with an event. An event presupposes a set of fixed relations, any of which can be picked as a distinct component.

The Law of Mind

Past Idea, Future Event – temporal and spatial extension of the abstract to the concrete.

How does an event “already happen”? Normally, we assume a body endures an experience and becomes a memory once the event changes. Memory confirms that an event occurred, and once it does, it seems inevitable; we cannot imagine it not occurring. Yet, the body’s presence in a past event is only abstract once the event passes. Jordan Peterson explains that the pragmatic function of memory is to inform us about things yet to come^[1].

The temporal concretization of the law of mind faces difficulties: Peirce argued that the mind is always oriented toward the future, while the body lags in the past, catching up through experience. Abstract ideas occur first, and the concrete manifestation follows. The farther the abstract is from actualization, the harder it is to discern the connection between idea and action. Peirce calls this the “loss of efficacy,” though the effect of the abstract on the concrete remains; the loss is only in human understanding.

For example, a long-term goal, such as becoming a lawyer, may seem distant and disconnected from daily effort. Yet persistence gradually reveals the necessity of each obstacle for eventual success. Conversely, immediate goals, like deciding to use the washroom, are self-evident and quickly realized. Déjà vu reflects this process: a dream may prefigure a real event, later confirmed by experience. Modern neuroscience labels déjà vu an anomaly of memory, yet this explanation fails to fully capture the phenomenon, merely locating it in the brain^[2].

Spatial distance also mediates the abstract and the concrete: observing an event from afar feels more abstract; participating directly feels concrete. Watching soccer differs fundamentally from playing it.

Reason and the Order of Events

Potential events occur based on reason. An event happens because there is a purpose; if there is no reason, it does not happen. Rational time is ordered; otherwise, events would occur simultaneously, appearing random. A thought to harm someone may arise but is suppressed because reason dictates a different outcome—walking peacefully. The reason for an event determines its occurrence, not as compulsion, but as its inherent end.

All productive forms of knowledge—art, science—are potent because they originate change in other things. Their origin is self-explanatory and does not require an external cause^[3]. Material substrates do not fully explain origination; Aristotle critiques the assumption that material is necessary for all processes^[4].

Potency, Mind, and Body

The event implicit in an event defines the law of mind-body unity. Time is the dimension for apperception, where multiple possible events unfold within a moment. Peirce posits a distinction between mind and body: spatially unified but temporally distinct. The body occupies the present; the mind recalls past events and conceives future ones. The body provides the space for reality to unfold, while the mind mediates potential events in a quantum-like state. Decisions actualize one potential among many.

Consciousness functions as a particularized infinite: self-consciousness abstracts itself from pure possibility, while non-consciousness constitutes the observed object. Consciousness mediates between these extremes, generating reality through perception.

Knowledge, Recollection, and Experience

Plato’s idea that knowledge is recollection complements the empirical understanding of experience. Recollection verifies the abstract in time, while experience grounds it. Time is present in each of the three spatial dimensions, forming a 4-dimensional continuum. Past, present, and future coexist relative to each other.

Empiricism is limited because experience includes indirect phenomena, unconscious processes, and potential events not occurring in the immediate present. For example, considering extraterrestrial life assumes present existence, while reversing time may reveal different planetary positions.

Every Determination is a Being

Life is abundant; being is universal. Darwinian evolution contextualizes life but should not obscure its universal aspect. Each particular being is a manifestation of the universal principle, sharing in the quality of being yet maintaining individuality. The pre-Socratics recognized being as animate and active, providing the foundation for the scientific study of nature.

The problem is that, in our ordinary view from perception, there is an evident distinction between an object, which we identify as the “being,” and its actions or motions, which we classify as not alive in themselves but as motion caused by that object—in other words, attributes from it. For example, if a spaceship is moving through the sky, we say it is the object, the ship, that is moving, and not the motion of forward movement causing it to move. Therefore, motion is identified without being the object; we say it is distinct.

Yet, in the universal sense, throughout the universe—especially in the quantum state of spacetime—when light propagates, it acts both as a wave and a particle state within the same condition. What does this mean? In terms of physical states, this means there is a discrete measure: the particle is a self-contained unit, an identity, an object; and wavelength is a continuity, several of these objects or their relations, etc. But in terms of time, if we see these states as moments, then light fractals into these particles within a wavelength. for example, there was reports of an experiment Tesla did using high voltage where, for split moments, he felt like he experienced the present moment split into fractal light moments of potential moments.

Footnotes

1. Object vs. motion distinction — This reflects a classical metaphysical view where an object is treated as primary, and motion is a property or attribute rather than an independent entity.
2. Wave–particle duality — In quantum physics, light exhibits both particle-like behavior (photons as discrete units) and wave-like behavior (wavelength and interference), not as separate states but as complementary descriptions of the same phenomenon.
3. Discrete vs. continuous — “Discrete measure” refers to quantized units (particles), while “continuity” refers to wave-like extension across space and time.
4. Time as moments — Interpreting quantum states as temporal “moments” is a philosophical framing rather than a strict physical model, but it aligns with some interpretations of quantum measurement and temporal granularity.
5. Tesla’s experience — Nikola Tesla reported subjective perceptual effects during high-voltage experiments. These accounts are anecdotal and phenomenological rather than experimentally verified measurements of time or light behaviour.

Activities in Non-Linearity of Time

The universal informs the particular: an idea of a building may exist before its construction. Individual objects express the abstract in varied forms, and the activity of the species sustains function across space and time. Potentiality and time determine when events manifest, not merely whether they will.

Tesla’s phenomenological experience hints at the connection between light, which is the physicality of time, and time, which is the essence of light. In this sense, time contains the possible moments of the observer, and light explains how these moments fractal out into branches of possible pathways for the observer in time. Each discrete measure—say, an electron—is a flashpoint, a conception of a possible moment. Its wavelength consists of all these potential moments simultaneously and instantaneously existing at higher dimensions.

However, our sensations are evolved to only experience one moment at a time, moving forward in a linear manner, one right after another, as a continuous state of being. However, you, as an object, are disclosed by a more fundamental subatomic light, such as that emitted from atoms and similar processes, where you, as an object in the present, are only one focal point of an event, and you are fractured into varying moments in time. Spacetime is the spreadsheet of all possible and potential moments.

Footnotes

1. Phenomenological experience — This refers to subjective, first-person experience, especially how time and perception are felt rather than measured objectively.
2. Light as physicality of time — This is a philosophical interpretation inspired by physics, particularly the role of light in defining causal structure, simultaneity, and the speed limit of information in spacetime.
3. Discrete measure (electron) — In quantum mechanics, particles like electrons are treated as quantized entities, which can be interpreted metaphorically as “flashpoints” or events rather than persistent classical objects.
4. Wavelength as potential moments — This reflects the wave aspect of quantum entities, where probability distributions represent multiple possible outcomes existing prior to observation.
5. Higher dimensions — This is not a direct claim about measurable spatial dimensions, but a conceptual reference to levels of description beyond ordinary perception (e.g., Hilbert space or abstract state space).
6. Linear perception of time — Human perception processes events sequentially, which gives rise to the experience of time as a continuous forward flow.
7. Subatomic light disclosing the object — Atoms and subatomic interactions involve electromagnetic processes; philosophically, this suggests that what we call an “object” is a stabilized pattern of underlying events.
8. Spacetime as a spreadsheet — This metaphor aligns with block-universe or eternalist views, where all events (past, present, future, possible) are structured within spacetime rather than coming into existence sequentially.

Footnotes

1. O’Connor, A. (2009). “Déjà vu: Neuroscientific Perspectives.” Frontiers in Psychology.
2. Aristotle. Metaphysics, Book IX, 00:86.
3. Aristotle. Physics, Book II; critique of materialist causation.

Modern neuroscience rejects the explanation of déjà vu as “precognition” or “prophecy,” and instead explains it as an anomaly of memory, since despite the strong sense of recollection, the time, place, and practical context of the “previous” experience are uncertain or believed to be impossible. Stating that it is an anomaly of memory does not explain the phenomenon but only retains its aberration by locating it in the brain. The phenomena of precognition are displaced by locating them in the brain.

On the other hand, the magnitude of spatial extension also constitutes a very interesting relation between the abstract and the concrete. Conceiving an event from a certain distance where no other senses but sight are involved renders the happenings in the event more abstract, as there is a lack of personal feeling involved, analogous to watching a show on a computer screen—it appears more abstract as opposed to being involved in it. Watching soccer is a very different experience than actually playing it.

The spatial approximation of the observation to the event determines a degree of more or less feeling of the abstract. Whereas being actively involved in the event feels much more concrete than merely witnessing it from afar. Watching a fight and being involved in one are very different experiences of abstract and concrete.

Because there is all time…

But because there is all time, eternity, every possibility is present, both good and bad, there is no distinction, and an infinity is present. The problem with having an infinity is that there is no limit to the motion across all these possible events. Having no limit means there is no capacity to determine the motion of infinity; there is no qualitative system of choosing one event over another, as both exist simultaneously. The universe, in order to remedy this problem, draws a limit to infinity. The way it does so is by forming events that can occupy any reference frame and capture them into one reference frame where one event is experienced at a time. And the motion of this reference frame, which is the form of the conception, is the sense of moving “forward” across these events as they pass. The reason why this particularity of the conception developed as a remedy to infinity is so that a choice can be made between good events over bad events, or a different outcome over another outcome in the possibility of all events. The particular conception can pick good events over bad ones or bad events over good ones, but at least there is the capacity now to experience a series of alike events rather than all events being unlike.

The question becomes: why some events and not others? A potential event happens over other potential events if there is reason for it to happen. If there is no reason for an event to happen, it does not happen even if it is a potential. This is what it means for time to be rational, that is, ordered or temporal, which relates to “tempo”—there is a rhythm in time, a pattern, or a habit. Otherwise, if there is no reason for an event to happen, and everything were just happening at once, this is what we identify as random, which is opposite to rational. An event happens when there is reason for it to happen. For example, if you are walking down the street and bypass another man, there is sometimes the thought of the potential event of bashing him on the head as hard as possible, but that thought quickly passes, and you just continue on your path while he continues on his. That potential event, which came in the form of a fleeting thought, did not occur because there was no reason for it to happen. There is, however, reason for walking peacefully by the man, because the end purpose of that action is going home, having a nice shower, and sleeping. If there was a reason to hit the man, then that event would occur over just peacefully walking by him. This is what it means for something to be rational: it has a reason for its occurrence, that is, done for a purpose; it is the reason for something that makes it happen. Moreover, the reason for something makes it rational because it then belongs to an order—time as a tempo, or a series of ordered events following each other. The next question is: how does the observer determine a sequence of events? How do they choose that order from the chaos of all events happening at once? They did not choose per se, but they are that order of time.

The difficulty with proposing that something happens because there is reason for it to happen still brings the problem that there is an infinity of reasons why any single thing can happen. The reason why I chose to walk by the person rather than fight him involves an infinity of reasons, like I would rather take a shower and sleep; it could be that fear stopped the attack against the man, but in some cases, rage is more important than these things, and therefore it happens.

Ultimately, in metaphysics, the ancient idea that things are done for their own sake, and modern interpretations that things are done for no reason at all, at first sight seems to go against the idea that there is reason for things to happen. If there is no reason why something should happen, and therefore this is the reason why it happens—in other words, it is done for its own sake—this means there is no compulsion for it to happen. The idea that there is reason supports this notion and defines it. If we mean by the claim that there is no reason why something should happen, that there is no external necessity for something to be done, then it is a mistake to think that having a reason for something to happen means that it is forced. Having a reason for something to be done defines what it means to do something for its own sake.

We use the term “reason” as the definition for something to be rational, explainable, because the reason why it happens is the same as the cause of it happening. These reasons explain why the thing is the way it is. Reason means there is a necessity for the thing to be the way it is, and this is identical with what the thing is—its determinacy. Why something heavy goes down is because there is reason for it to go down. Change that reason, and the thing now goes up; the reason is because it is light now. In other words, the thing is the way it is because of its reasons to be. Depending on the reason, the thing determines the nature of its reality. However, the reason is not a compulsion; it is not a means but rather the end; it is identical with its reasons. For example, we ask, “Why are you going to that party?” And some answer, “They want to talk to girls” or “I want to get drunk,” and therefore the party is a means for those reasons. However, ultimately, including all these reasons, you are going to that party for its own sake. In other words, the party is the sum of these ends that you take to be the reason why you went. The reason of something is the reality for why it is the way it is.

The reason why this reality is the way it is, is because it has reasons for being this way. This opens the possibility for other relatives to be different, given their different reason.

All productive forms of knowledge, like art and science, are potencies because they are originative sources of change in another thing. This feature of being the origin is what it means to be rational, because an origin does not require explanation or some external reason to come into being, but is rather self-evident; it has its own self for its reason, or rather, its own coming into being is its explanation (Metaphysics, Aristotle ch. 86, 00:86).

In modern times, we are uncomfortable with this notion that something comes about by its own will because we require an explanation for how it comes into being, but assume that because an explanation is required, something else must also be required to bring into being the object in question. The idea that an activity is always grounded in some substrate, namely a material one, is not the same as saying that one object causes another, because what we are explaining as material is itself a form of being that is not grounded in anything else other than its being. We assume that because a material substrate is the ground from which an activity originates, it is therefore the original cause of that activity. What scientific materialism does is take a material substrate as a necessity in any explanation of process, but then by virtue of doing that, excludes the activity as bearing a necessary existence so long as there is substrate, leaving us with a substrate without explanation of its origination, only that it is an origination. Their binary logic makes the proposition that one or the other can exist without the other while beginning from the presupposition that both exist, and therefore one does not while the other does. Aristotle critiques this kind of thinking, still prevalent today, back in the ancient Melgaic school.

The event implicit in an event—
law of mind-body unity. Quantum state of event is mind in time.

Time is the dimension for apperception, where multiple possible events unfold onto each other, occupying a moment as a reality. The law of mind, according to Peirce, states that there is always a distinction between mind and body in time, but unlike the mind-body dualism of Descartes, the distinction between mind and body is not a physical separation, nor is it a difference where they bear absolutely no relation to each other. Whitehead takes the dualism between mind and body as a distinction for a simple unity, in the sense that they approach each other as ideal limits and therefore are only approximately distinct, or bear an approximate distinction.

Peirce finds that the unity of mind and body is in space, but their distinction is in time, though he does not properly complete this thought (find source). Their distinction is not a spatial magnitude but a temporal one, meaning that mind and body are spatially occupying the same dimension and therefore are the same object, not separate from each other, but they bear a distinction in time, in that they are separated by the possibility of alternative events forming a happening of a duration. The body occupies the present event, but the mind recalls past events and conceives future ones. The body is always alien from past and future events but only indirectly receives these by virtue of the mind. As for the mind, the body serves as the approximate space where a distinction between possible events can unfold in one way or another. In other words, the body is the space from which reality can be one event or another. What we do not directly perceive are the implicate possibilities of other events in any given event occupying the present moment. In one moment, there is the gap between one event happening in one way or in another.

As the mind is distinct in time from these possible events, or occupies a past moment further out from the future, possible events appear muddled together so as to happen simultaneously. We see this phenomenon most directly in psychoanalysis of dreams. In a dream state, a set of possible events, different from each other, appear to occupy the same moment so that the dream either appears as a discombobulated moment of events that do not follow from each other, or a definite outcome is picked out that does not occur in the actual presence of that moment later in future time. It does, however, happen that a dream can capture a possible moment occupying a present moment and actually have that same possible event occur in a present moment in a future time. This phenomenon is a small glimpse of how events generally unfold in time. When the mind makes a decision, or a conception, it is at that moment that one of these possible events, active at a quantum state, actually unfolds into a real event.

The mind-body relation, explained as a law of mind, properly demonstrates quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement is a relation irrespective of space, and even time, for it is the universal condition where the form and object, mind and body, exist instantaneously and simultaneously, operating inverse to each other.

The relation of mind and body is fully explained by the notion of consciousness, but in modern times, the term “consciousness” developed the same elusiveness as the notion of God has throughout history. Except consciousness provides a more specific and particular understanding than the idea of God, because consciousness is the notion of the particular as an absolute. God, on the other hand, is an absolute in the pure sense, being exempt from anything, because in every definition of God is that which always transcends a finite or a limit. Consciousness is an absolute in the inverse sense, by precisely defining a particular; it is the conception by which a particular bears relations. But it is exactly this function of particularity that makes the concept of consciousness remain limited for the understanding. When the understanding takes consciousness as that which conceives a set of relations derived from a particular point, as is the case in human consciousness, for example, the understanding is only portraying a very particular form of consciousness, known as self-consciousness, and takes this capacity as characteristic of consciousness generally.

Hegel distinguishes between two forms of consciousness: he says, “The immediate existence of Spirit, consciousness, contains the two moments of knowing and the objectivity negative to knowing” (36). The difference between knowledge and objectivity constitutes two forms of consciousness, known as self-conscious and non-conscious.

Self-consciousness is the quality that takes itself out as a variable from which a set of relations are disclosed within its conception. Consciousness itself is a concordance of infinite possibilities, but it cannot differentiate itself in that infinite way. And so it appears to itself as a muddling of pure possibility. Consciousness, in order to differentiate itself, takes on the inverse condition of what it is ultimately; it abstracts itself into a particular point from what it is as an infinite state, but because it cannot do away with itself as infinite possibility, it makes this particular abstraction an infinity of times.

Non-consciousness is the content being conceived and therefore is the limit of the conception manifested, as is only an object for the observer, or is identical with what the observer is as an object. Consciousness is the general determination, the pure energy of action itself, that constitutes the interplay between self-consciousness and non-consciousness. In a purely materialistic standpoint, we have a matter mediated by an internal consciousness and an external non-consciousness to be considered.

When my mind is in here and it is looking out at an object out there, the conditions of this reality—the mediation—are the distinction between mind and body, where one is in the other: the mind is in the body, but also the mind is somewhere conceiving all the objects in the surrounding.

Perception is the process by which raw sensory information becomes meaningful experience. In vision, perception begins long before the mind is aware of “seeing.” Light reflects off objects in the environment and enters the eye, where refraction by the cornea and lens organizes that light into a focused pattern on the retina. At this stage, there is no image as we experience it—only physical light energy arranged in a specific way. The retina converts this light into electrical signals, which are sent to the brain. What reaches the brain is not a picture but coded information about brightness, color, contrast, and movement.

The brain then transforms this sensory data into perception. Different areas of the visual cortex analyze different features: edges, motion, depth, color, and spatial relationships. The brain compares this incoming information with memory, expectation, and context. Because the retinal image is inverted, the brain does not “turn it right-side up” like rotating a photograph; instead, it learns how the world is structured and interprets the signals accordingly. Perception is therefore an active construction, not a passive recording of reality.

Reflection, refraction, sensation, and perception form a continuous chain. Reflection allows objects to send information through light, refraction shapes that information inside the eye, sensation converts it into neural signals, and perception gives it meaning. What we experience as “seeing” is not located in the eye or even in the retina, but in the brain’s interpretation of light patterns. Thus, perception is the mind’s understanding of reality built from physical processes, biological signals, and learned interpretation working together.

Vision happens because light leaves objects and travels to the eye. Most objects do not produce their own light; instead, they are seen because light from a source reflects off their surfaces. This reflected light carries information about the object’s shape, color, and position. Once this reflected light reaches the eye, it does not simply bounce off the inside of the eye like it would from a mirror. Instead, the eye guides and bends the light inward so it can be focused. In this sense, reflection and refraction are closely related: reflection sends light away from a surface, while refraction redirects light as it passes through a transparent medium. Both involve light changing direction, and both follow predictable physical laws.

The front of the eye, especially the cornea, is transparent and curved, so when reflected light from the world enters it, the light slows down and bends. This bending is refraction, and it is similar in purpose to reflection because both control where light goes. A mirror uses reflection to redirect light, while the eye uses refraction to gather light and bring it to a focus. The lens inside the eye continues this process, fine-tuning the bending so that light rays coming from different points on an object are brought together at specific points on the retina. In this way, the eye behaves like a clear crystal or glass lens, shaping the path of light rather than bouncing it away.

Because refraction follows geometric rules, light rays crossing through the curved cornea and lens cross over each other. Rays from the top of an object are bent downward, and rays from the bottom are bent upward. This causes the image formed on the retina to be upside down and reversed from left to right. This is not a flaw of the eye but a natural consequence of how both lenses and mirrors organize light. A concave mirror can also form an inverted image, showing again that reflection and refraction are different methods that can produce similar results.

The retina itself does not understand images. It simply receives the focused pattern of light and converts it into electrical signals. These signals travel along the optic nerve to the brain. The brain interprets this information based on past experience, body movement, and signals from both eyes. Over time, the brain learns how to map this inverted retinal image to the upright world we interact with. The mind does not “flip” the image in a mechanical way; instead, it understands spatial relationships and constructs a stable view of reality.

In summary, reflection and refraction are both ways light changes direction to carry information. Reflection allows objects to send light toward the eye, while refraction allows the eye to organize that light into a meaningful pattern. The eye functions like a transparent, crystalline system that shapes light, and the mind completes the process by turning that light into perception.

Plato’s idea that knowledge is a process of recollection is difficult to grasp because we have it disconnected from experience. We confuse recollection to mean memory, but memory is a recollection of a past event. The difficulty in the idea that knowledge is recollection is due to its presumed incompatibility with the idea that knowledge is experience. On their own, the ideas that knowledge is recollection and that knowledge is experience contradict each other, and when taken separately, they are incomplete.

Recollection is said to propose a crude determinism where all the knowledge of events has already occurred, and the process of going through them verifies their presupposition. This general notion is somewhat correct because time nears itself in every dimension of space. For example, the single dimension of time is present in each of the three dimensions of space, forming a single four-dimensional continuum. The fourth dimension is the presence of the one dimension of time at each single dimension of the three dimensions of space. This appears to operate in this manner: the past relative to the present, or towards it, constitutes the future relative to the present; from the past, the present and the future are the same point. Vice versa, from the future, the present and past are the same point. (Add 4th dimension diagram)

The empiricist idea that knowledge is only what is directly experienced is only true on a very narrow scale because it does not include, as part of the definition of experience, all the indirect phenomena, like unconscious processes or more abstract infinitesimal operations that occur at periods of time not during the present. Although they are not directly occurring here and now, they exist in a different dimension of potential happening.

When we ask, “Are there aliens on other planets?” the question seems nebulous because we are assuming they are present right now but at a far distance. It is this very distance in space that constitutes a difference in time. If we ask the similar question, “Was there life thousands of years ago?” the answer is not so alien because we do not think of them as somewhere else. However, the motion of the heavenly bodies makes an interesting point: the position of where the Earth stands right now, if we reverse time back millions of years, would be a position where a completely different planet stands. This is due to the simple fact that the star the Earth is revolving around is also revolving around a bigger star, such that the position of the star changes the position of the Earth it is dragging around over millions of years.

Darwin’s thesis introduces a divide between the universe and Earth: one conceived as lifeless and inanimate, the other as alive. His view is largely limited to the adaptive capacities of organisms on Earth and their relationship to specific environments, emphasizing how unique traits develop for survival and, in the human case, for thriving. However, even within this survival framework, animals are not only products of their environments but also of broader universal conditions, such as time, matter, and physical law.

If we accept a crude Darwinian ontology, we are left with a disconnected universe—one in which it is unclear how living objects relate to the vast regions of the cosmos deemed “lifeless.” From this perspective, which closely aligns with materialism, the universe as a whole appears inert and inanimate, while life exists only in a small crevice within it. Viewed quantitatively, life becomes an accident, an anomaly with no deeper ontological significance. Yet this conclusion is not only unsatisfying but logically inconsistent, as it offers no further explanatory expansion beyond the mere observation that life exists here and not elsewhere.

An alternative interpretation is that the universe itself may be alive, but appears lifeless due to the limits of our perception and our inability to grasp its full complexity. What seems inanimate may only appear so because we are embedded within it and incapable of perceiving its larger-scale vitality. An analogy can be drawn to a bacterium residing on human skin or beneath a toenail. From the bacterium’s perspective, the being it inhabits appears inanimate—an aggregate of matter rather than a living whole. The bacterium does not recognize that it is part of a larger living organism. Similarly, humanity may fail to recognize that life on Earth is not an isolated exception, but a localized expression of a larger, living universal system.

We operate on the misconception that life is scarce in the universe, but the opposite is true: being is the most abundant form of individual existence.

Darwinian evolution makes it difficult to view how life on Earth is part of the universe. The idea that life is merely an adaptive strategy that arose out of its particular environment requires that life be only relevant to the close proximity of its environment, and therefore the outer extremities of these conditions for life are rendered lifeless. Under Darwinian evolution, life must be limited to the earthly conditions it is empirically observed on, while on the other hand, it is also an empirical fact that the Earth itself is a living entity, part of a solar system within a greater system of terrestrial bodies.

The quality of being is the event quality of an object. Monotheistic versus many gods: every determination takes on its own being and is its own observer. There are as many living entities as there are determinations, except that what it means for “living” in this context is so general as to include all degrees of what it means to be animate, to activate. The old metaphysics teach us that being is the universal principle, shared by all things. The limit of the old metaphysics is that they took the principle of being as the general principle disclosing everything without applying it to each particular being.

When we apply what it means to be a being to a particular object, we have being in terms of what Aristotle calls substance—activity. Being is animate and active and therefore exhibits a behavior, and is not merely a general principle including the scope of existence. Nevertheless, the pre-Socratic ascertainment of being as the state of existence was the scientific step of man because it opened up the view of nature as an active and animate subject whose behavior can be studied and apprehended.

Every particular thing is a being, which does not mean they are equally the same being. All men are equal in that they are men, but not all men are equally the same man. A being is universal because it is the feature shared by every determination, but every determination is its own particular being. We still maintain, with the latter claim, that every particular being shares in the complex of exhibiting the behavior of the universal quality of being.

When we say that the idea of a building is present in the mind but there is no actual structure of a building present, in what sense does the idea of a building determine the physical construction of it? This question brings up the fundamental relation of how the particular is determined by the universal. The universal is never found as a single object because it is the abstract idea in the form of indivisible logical relations presupposing each other, and so a single object is an abstraction of a particular relation of the logical presupposition of an indeterminable multitude of determinations. The particular, by contrast, is always found as a single entity individuated from a class of versions like it, maintaining the abstract idea of their shared activity and their specific role in it. There seems to be a time lapse between how the universal abstract idea operates in each single object.

In other terms, the expression of the universal at the level of the species is distinguishable from how each individual member expresses its role in the species. Does an object cease to exist if it is not partaking in the activity of its function? In what sense is a single knife not used to cut continued to exist as a knife? The answer can be something like: even if a single knife is not cutting, there is always another knife in a different place that is cutting. That is, the activity is always being done somewhere. If the activity stops, like in the case where nobody uses certain technologies like the flip phone, the composition of each individual flip phone slowly either is reused for other things or decays as any other inanimate object does by the conditions of its non-use in the environment.

This means that even if a single entity does not fulfill its function, the species is fulfilling it. If the species stops fulfilling it, that function changes, and this is seen when the physical composition of the components changes over time given their disuse. In spacetime, a single entity not doing its function is being sustained by its species doing the function, and the species continues the function as a fractal of individuals taking different points in space, acting on the function in different ways. For example, in the market, some people are buying certain things, and the things that are not being bought still remain on display based on the fact that they will potentially be bought. What determines the presence of the object is whether it is potentially able to act—be bought or whatever—not whether it is currently being used. However, for it to be potentially there, it must be based on the presupposition that it will be; that is why it is potentially there. The question of potentiality is therefore a matter of time: when will it be bought, when will it happen—not whether it will happen at all.

The present state of nature, or nature as it stands, means that we stumble upon a condition called nature operating in a natural way—a way uninterfered with by any single observer, but rather a condition accumulating from all possible conceptions forming one. This condition of nature, as it stands, always involves identity, which is a thing contained within itself and arising from a second point of difference: that in maintaining my existence, I am distinct and different from everything outside me.

But it is not only difference of identity; it is also difference in contradiction, or in clearer terms, opposition. Everything in nature is combative against everything else. A clear example is the condition of war. The idea of war has always been present in every age in extent; only the nature of the combat has changed. The inherent quality of world conflict and opposition is natural in this sense of war, in that humans either form soldiers who fight within it, or soldiers are naturally formed who fight against it.

From whatever side you are on, the opposition is either directed toward something oppositional or reflected back past the original source as its recipient. You are either the killer or the killed, the giver or the receiver.

last updated 12.30.2025