45. Manifest experience and the timeless whole of KNOWING
In the EC/HE theory time, space, movement, sequence and qualia belong to manifest experience. KNOWING itself is not temporal or sequential, but a constant, always momentarily updated whole of relations and understandings.
When new relations arise in KNOWING, they appear immediately as sensation. This sensation is not in itself a concept or an understanding. It represents only that a relational difference has arisen. It is known as qualia.
The Experience Circle does not create these sensations. The EC is the mechanism that reads and understands them. Through this reading THE SENSATION appears as understanding, meaning and experience.
What before the reading appears only as an accumulation (strength/degree of difference) and form (configuration) of sensation can after the reading be understood as anything from fear and pain to love, music or the taste of chocolate. The Experience Circle therefore does not generate the experience directly. It makes the experience intelligible.
This can be observed in many contexts. Intense cold and intense heat can be experienced as surprisingly similar if the context is removed. The same sensation can be interpreted as pain, relief or pleasure depending on how it is understood. Some people even experience pain as something positive. The difference does not necessarily lie in THE SENSATION itself, but in how it is read and understood through the Experience Circle.
The same principle underlies taste, preferences and attraction. Some people love blue cheese, while others find the same smell repellent. Some are drawn towards particular people, pieces of music or ideas, while others respond with indifference or resistance. The difference does not lie in what is experienced, but in the attractor landscape that understands the experience. What we call taste, preferences and meaning are thus expressions of how different attractor landscapes understand the same sensations.
Manifest experience therefore arises indirectly through the Experience Circle. Relational differences first appear as sensation. They are then read and understood through the EC. Only then does the complete experience arise.
KNOWING remains simultaneous and timeless. It is this continuous process of sensation, reading and understanding that appears as the sequential world of time, space, movement and experience.
The Experience Circle thus constitutes the horizon between the timeless whole of KNOWING and the manifest experience of reality.
