5. THE ES/HE THEORY IN 132 POINTS
ONTOLOGICAL PRIMITIVES, MECHANISMS, PHYSICAL CONSEQUENCES AND PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS RELATING TO THE HORIZON EQUATION
First of all – before we begin with anything at all – there is one thing you must understand, or you will immediately become confused. What follows are 132 precisely formulated points about how the world works. You will hear about emergence and Attractor Dynamics and much else. So you might think this is some kind of “physical” theory. That it is about how particles, atoms and objects of every kind first come into being and then begin to interact in a complex interplay.
This is something else.
The physical world is as described. There, “objects” exist. Things. This theory, however, says something different. It claims that objects, things, atoms, air, water, stars and coffee cups do not exist.
Everything is experiences in your mind.
This is therefore an idealist theory. It holds that there exists an abstract universe which is the origin of physical experiences. Plato said the same thing. There is an idea of a horse before the experience of that same horse can arise. We sit inside a cave and see only the shadows on the wall of what comes streaming in from the Sun outside.
Here we shall speak of what lies outside Plato’s cave.
The world of ideas.
How do ideas work? Thoughts? How do they become the experience of something material – an entire world, exactly as we experience it? This is a colossal question.
No one has ever described such mechanisms before. But here they are. The Mechanism itself. The workings of that which comes before the world that we, and physics, take to be “real”.
This is strange, so let me try a little further to talk you into it.
Your feelings, the experience of holding a coffee cup in your hand, the smell of the coffee, the taste, the sunlight through the window – everything, absolutely everything you experience as physical, material, real – is precisely that: EXPERIENCES in your mind. Nothing exists beyond this.
This is an exceptionally strange thought for most people. It takes a long time to get used to it, even once one has understood, on a purely logical and technical level, that this is in fact how things must be.
Traditional science has not yet discovered this. It operates with physical things and phenomena. This is why it cannot get all the way to the bottom of how the universe works. Or rather: it has got as far down as is possible at all when studying “things” – experiences – going further and further down towards the smallest scale. There, everything dissolves. One encounters a “quantum field”, which is in itself nothing physical – as far as science has been able to determine. It is right.
Right at the very bottom, “particles” simply pop up from… a purely abstract, mathematical “construction” – a “field”, which is really just a collection of information. And information has no tempting aroma of coffee.
At the very, very bottom there is a number. The fine-structure constant. Physics has found this number – both theoretically and through measurement. But then it stops. One cannot go further. Because this is the point where the world of experience – the physical – meets the world of ideas. And that world is made of KNOWING.
Such a transition between two different “domains”, or paradigms if you like, is called a *horizon*.
So you are probably wondering what an “abstract domain” actually is. Well, words are abstract. Music, colours, poems, mathematics, ethics, humour, debate programmes on television, thoughts. Abstract. If you think about it, EVERYTHING is actually abstract BEFORE it is experienced. Language exists in abstract form before you read the words on paper or hear them as sound waves. The house you live in, for example, was ideas in the architect’s head. Those who carried out the construction had plans and knowledge.
Ideas and knowledge lie behind everything.
Next question: how can we all experience the same world, if it is merely ideas in your own mind?
We each have our own private experience. The world looks slightly different to each of us – partly because we are located in different places and have our own unique perspective within this “world of representation”, but also because we each have our own mind. You have your thoughts, I have mine. You experience blue cheese as stinking, I love it.
We experience differently – but also alike. About each other. You see the dog over there. I see it too. We interpret it slightly differently (dangerous/cute), but the dog demonstrably stands before us both. This means one thing: we have both collective and private experiences – simultaneously.
How can this add up? How can something be solely in my mind, and yet shared with you?
And it does not stop there. You do not merely see the dog – you can also act. You pat it, it reacts, I see that it reacts. Your action arises in your mind. But the effect of it is evidently also part of my experience. How can something that has its origin in one mind become part of the reality of another?
Now most people fall off, because how can such a thing be possible at all?
Well, you shall have it explained. The key word is dissociation. But I am getting ahead of myself here – you must read the points in order, or understanding will fail.
So hold on to this as you now go through the 132 points that describe it all. Do not picture “things” – picture thoughts, and that on which thoughts are founded: what you know – KNOWING. The universe is, in essence, KNOWING – and this is the story of how KNOWING works, and is experienced.
A chain
Chapter 5 is structured as a chain. Each point presupposes the preceding ones — not because they are difficult, but because the theory is cumulative. Each step lays the foundation for the next.
The first nineteen points constitute the Startup Sequence — the ontological foundation of the theory. These should be read in order and without haste. They are brief, but dense.
The remainder of the chapter may be read more thematically. The table of contents is your guide. Each section is self-explanatory in its title, and each point has its own heading. You may follow the chain from beginning to end, or jump to whichever topic burns most urgently.
Some points are fundamental to everything that follows — particularly point 1 (BEING (VÆREN)), point 8 (FOCUS), point 19 (THE FIRST COMPLETE WORLD OF REPRESENTATION), point 22 (Reversed causality) and point 34 (The Experience Circle as a mirroring mechanism). If something becomes unclear further into the text, these are the natural places to return to.
Terms you may not be familiar with — VITEN, attractor, qualia, dissociation — are explained the first time they appear, and gathered in a glossary placed after the 132 points: 6. GLOSSARY.
