We have now established that CONSCIOUSNESS has the abilities AWARENESS, FOCUS and KNOWING. But at the beginning, KNOWING is not present as a finished universe of established MEANINGS.
There is as yet no SEPARATION, no established IDENTITY, no time, no space and no established understanding of what anything IS. But KNOWING is not absolutely empty. It contains the first
proto-idea: Non-IS-NESS may be real.
This is not an established truth. IS-NESS still IS, and non-IS-NESS is ruled out by the theory's fundamental axiom of unconditional, eternal IS-NESS. But the
mental representation of the possibility of annihilation is present as an unfounded idea.
What is missing is established KNOWING about IS-NESS itself. I call this non-KNOWING.
Non-KNOWING is not an object. It is not an empty space. It is not a hidden relation or some other kind of «something». Here it denotes the absence of established and confirmed KNOWING that IS-NESS IS.
The proto-idea that non-IS-NESS
may be real is present without such confirmed KNOWING. According to The Mechanism's necessity principle, this cannot be present as a state of indifference; the principle says that IS-NESS
must KNOW its own IS-NESS.
The immediate recoil of IS-NESS against the unfounded mental representation of possible annihilation is therefore felt as a raw SENSATION of
fear. As this impulse is felt, the first manifest CHANGE is present.
When I subsequently refer to fear as the proto-idea's manifest appearance, it is this recoil that I mean. The proto-idea is present as abstract content in KNOWING; AWARENESS feels the impulse of fear to which it gives rise.
This is not fear as a human fears the dark, illness or death. At this point there are no objects, no body, no past and no mental representation of death. But this fear is at the same time something we can all understand: The fear that arises
when we do not know. In that sense, this fundamental fear is the same as that which appears much later in humans and all living things.
This very first impulse of fear is what we can call
existential fear, because it concerns the
absolute absence of established KNOWING – including about one's own existence. IS-NESS IS, but has not yet established KNOWING
that IS-NESS IS. The proto-idea is present, but there is no confirmed understanding of its own existence.
As Shakespeare says in Hamlet:
To be or not to be, that is the question.
The problem is not whether IS-NESS actually IS. The problem is that CONSCIOUSNESS has not yet established KNOWING
that it IS. It must know its own
existence, which is a word with a certain explanatory power. It comes from the Latin
exsistere, composed of
ex- (out, forth) and
sistere (set, place, step forth).
CONSCIOUSNESS cannot truly leave itself, and IS-NESS cannot cease. But The Mechanism will later create a local identity and a perspective that can be experienced as an outside view of its own existence. This is not yet established. The first consequence of the proto-idea is simply the impulse of fear that triggers the entire development.
The primary trigger is therefore not the impulse of fear itself, but the proto-idea that manifests as fear:
Non-IS-NESS may be real.
The impulse is not a thought. It is the manifest, raw experience of this idea. This does not mean that AWARENESS already understands the idea's abstract content. AWARENESS feels the fear.
In "A Course in Miracles" (ACIM) – a distinctive "technical-philosophical-idealist" work completed in 1975 and first published in book form in 1976 – it says of the beginning of the universe:
Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh.
I mention this purely anecdotally, but at the same time I find the quotation relevant and precise for what I am trying to explain. "The tiny mad idea" is, in my eyes, precisely this proto-idea:
Non-IS-NESS may be real. The human formulation «Do I not exist?» comes much later, when an IDENTITY has already been established. But a human too is CONSCIOUSNESS in their nature and is an IDENTITY
in CONSCIOUSNESS. We can recognise it.
ACIM was received over several years by Helen Schucman, who was a clinical and research psychologist with a permanent position as an associate professor of medical psychology at Columbia University in New York. The inner voice she conveyed identified itself as Jesus, while Schucman herself described her previous stance as agnostic and atheistic – often referred to in biographical literature as "militant atheism".
ACIM nevertheless uses Christian language, but gives the Christian concepts new meanings. Large parts of the work are also shaped as Shakespearean blank verse, connected to Schucman's own literary interests and background. The Christian language can therefore be understood as an accessible language of interpretation for readers shaped by Christian culture, not as an endorsement of traditional Christian doctrine.
The Shakespearean language has also been understood as a strategic choice: The classical form was intended to make the text readable in future times too, while giving the work literary weight and distance from the fleeting language of its own time.
I mention all this because it resembles my own position and attitude towards the material addressed by the book The Mechanism. I too have received the core of the insights presented through inner knowing and not through logical reflection alone. I too have been a "militant atheist", but now call myself instead an "idealist analyst with direct insight".
Absolute non-IS-NESS is ruled out by the fundamental axiom. But the proto-idea of annihilation is nevertheless present in KNOWING, without being confirmed as true. Because no established KNOWING yet resolves it, and IS-NESS
must KNOW, it manifests as existential fear.
The first impulse is registered by AWARENESS. But this is not enough, because it would be unbearable to BE in an eternal state of existential fear. The fear must be read and understood; it cannot remain as a final, unresolved state.
AWARENESS therefore feels this impulse. But it is not yet understood. Only at the next stage can FOCUS read it. Only later can the reading result be present as the first SEPARATION and the first established KNOWING.
The universe therefore does not begin with a thing, a space or an act of will. It begins with the proto-idea of possible non-IS-NESS, without established KNOWING that resolves it — and with the fear that is its manifest appearance.
FORMAL PRESENTATION (for specialists) »DEFNon-KNOWING here denotes the absence of established and confirmed KNOWING of one's own IS-NESS.
This absence is not itself a thing or a relation. At startup, nor is there an INTERSPACE between established MEANINGS, since no such MEANINGS have yet been established.
We continue the notation from Point 5.1:
$I_0:=\text{«Non-IS-NESS may be real».}$
At startup:
$\mathcal V_{\mathrm{proto}}=\{I_0\},\qquad\mathcal V_{\mathrm{established}}=\varnothing.$
Here $\mathcal V_{\mathrm{proto}}$ denotes the proto-idea's content at startup, while $\mathcal V_{\mathrm{established}}$ denotes content that has already been established as MEANING through reading. KNOWING as an ability is present inseparably from AWARENESS and FOCUS.
The emptiness therefore concerns established content. It does not concern all content in KNOWING.
Let $\mathcal F_0$ denote THE FIRST SENSATION: the immediate recoil of IS-NESS against the proto-idea, felt through AWARENESS as existential fear.
RELThe necessity principle: IS-NESS must KNOW its own IS-NESS.
This principle expresses an ontological necessity in The Mechanism. It is not an act of will and does not follow from the ability for KNOWING alone.
The startup involves three conditions:
- The proto-idea $I_0$ is present.
- Established and confirmed KNOWING of its own IS-NESS is absent.
- IS-NESS must KNOW.
In the theory's startup description, these conditions give the first manifest SENSATION:
$\left.\begin{array}{l}I_0\text{ is present}\\\text{confirmed KNOWING of its own IS-NESS is absent}\\\text{IS-NESS must KNOW}\end{array}\right\}\Longrightarrow\mathcal F_0.$
The arrow indicates the direction of ontological justification. It does not introduce a temporal process in KNOWING.
The absence of established KNOWING is not treated as an independent cause or object. Under these conditions, the recoil of IS-NESS against the proto-idea produces the first manifest impulse of fear.
MECHTHE FIRST SENSATION is:
- manifest;
- experienced in its raw form through AWARENESS;
- the recoil of IS-NESS against the proto-idea, felt as fear;
- not yet read as a complete form;
- not yet understood as established MEANING;
- without a present SEPARATION or established IDENTITY;
- not dependent on a pre-given space, a pre-given time or an external object.
The first manifest CHANGE is that $\mathcal F_0$ begins to be felt through AWARENESS. This registration is not the same as the whole SENSATION already having been read.
FEAR here denotes the impulse's raw qualitative character ("the quality"). It is connected to the proto-idea of possible annihilation and the absence of confirmed KNOWING of its own IS-NESS.
AWARENESS feels this quality without thereby understanding the proto-idea as an abstract statement.
THE SENSATION is therefore not shaped by previously established MEANING. It nevertheless has an abstract origin: the proto-idea $I_0$. The absence of established KNOWING does not mean the absence of this origin.
Further reading is necessary because the raw registration does not in itself establish the KNOWING that is missing. How the reading takes place is addressed in Point 5.3.
PLACEMENTThe ontological dependency is:
$\begin{aligned}&\text{NN as CONSCIOUSNESS, with }I_0\text{ in KNOWING}\\&\quad+\ \text{absence of confirmed KNOWING of its own IS-NESS}\\&\quad+\ \text{the necessity principle: IS-NESS must KNOW}\\&\longrightarrow \mathcal F_0\text{ felt through AWARENESS}\\&\longrightarrow \text{FOCUS READING}\\&\longrightarrow \text{first established MEANING: SEPARATION}.\end{aligned}$
The plus signs mean «together with», not mathematical addition.
Point 5.2 addresses the transition to THE SENSATION. Point 5.3 addresses the sinusoidal form and the reading process. Point 5.4 explains how the same reading process produces space and time. The establishment of SEPARATION as the first MEANING is addressed in point 5.5.
This division into chapters is an order of explanation. It does not make space and time a separate event after the reading.
XTHE SENSATION is the manifest impulse of fear to which the recoil of IS-NESS against the proto-idea gives rise.
The fear is genuinely present as experience, even though the annihilation it concerns is ruled out by the fundamental axiom.
That the fear IS therefore does not imply that non-IS-NESS IS or can occur.
NOT-X- Non-KNOWING is not VOID.
- Non-KNOWING is not THE INTERSPACE.
- Non-KNOWING is not a hidden object that affects NN.
- THE SENSATION is not an abstract relation.
- THE SENSATION is not a SEPARATION.
- THE SENSATION is not KNOWING of its own meaning.
- The initial FEAR does not presuppose human interpretation, ego or will.
- The first manifest CHANGE is not produced by an external cause.
- The proto-idea does not disappear from the justification because its appearance is manifest.
BOUNDARY-XThis point distinguishes between:
- the proto-idea's abstract content;
- the absence of established and confirmed KNOWING;
- the manifest fear quality of THE SENSATION;
- the first registration and the later completed reading;
- raw experience and established MEANING.
The startup description establishes that the recoil of IS-NESS against the proto-idea produces fear under the necessity principle.
Nor does this point explain the necessity of the sinusoidal form, the reading process itself or the establishment of SEPARATION. These are addressed in the following points.
FAIL_CONDThe following claims would conflict with this point's definitions and fundamental premises:
- that non-KNOWING is an ontological object or a relation;
- that KNOWING is absolutely empty at startup;
- that THE FIRST SENSATION arises without the proto-idea as its abstract origin;
- that the startup presupposes a previously established SEPARATION, local IDENTITY or an external object;
- that the necessity to KNOW is derived from the ability for KNOWING alone;
- that the initial FEAR requires an already established human interpretation;
- that the first registration of THE SENSATION is already a completed reading or an established SEPARATION;
- that the actual occurrence of fear proves that non-IS-NESS is possible.
These are criteria for internal consistency in the presentation, not independent empirical tests of the fundamental premises.
The mathematical content is, for now, only clarifying content and relational notation. The proto-idea is present, established KNOWING is absent, and THE FIRST SENSATION follows under the necessity principle. The sinusoidal form is introduced in Point 5.3; space and time are explained in Point 5.4.
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