Section 8 – 26th October 1992

Resumed after OU interlude, following June and July pieces

23rd June 1992 – Reformulating phase of Pattern!

Objectives:

1. to justify the book and the ideas it contains in order to lead the reader into wanting to understand it;

2. to make a short summary of what I wrote during phase 1 in order to:

get a picture of what’s there;

see if there’s an inevitable sequence due to the ideas developing, or if the material can and should be sequenced differently;

to spot repetitions and gaps;

and to see how it could be ‘lightened up’ with examples, pictorial illustrations, poetic-style, sections etc.

3. to add the ‘so what?’ section: what difference might these ideas make to how we live in the world?

1. Justification

The subject of this book is a ‘new’ metaphysics: a philosophical study of ‘first principles, especially of being and knowing’ (Collins Concise English Dictionary). I have put ‘new’ in inverted commas for a number of reasons. Firstly, I am not an academic philosopher, or even a particularly well-read amateur student of philosophy, so I may be repeating ideas which are already, or were at one time, current in philosophical circles; and which may have been firmly discarded by professionals and great thinkers decades or centuries ago. (It would not bother me to learn that this is so because ideas do perform cycles of reincarnation, gathering different interpretations and associations as they go.) Secondly, I am very dubious about newness, in ideas as much as in the gadgetry and consumables which plague the modern world, so I do not feel comfortable about engaging in the march of progress implied by the production of anything new. Lastly, if I have discovered something which is valid or ‘true’ at the deepest level it must be as old as existence, and therefore not really ‘new’ at all.

The theory I am going to describe is not just of interest to those who like to ponder the meaning and essence of things, it is useful; so useful that it could save the world from human folly. Its saving potential comes, not from its being yet another solution to the world’s problems, but from the way it reconciles all the ways of being and knowing which humanity has devised or may devise, so there need be no disagreement or conflict. This is a colossal claim, which I cannot justify ahead of describing the theory, and, of course, the saving potential will only be realised if the theory is widely adopted. However, its adoption does not require the abandonment of any other truth or belief, but only the lesser step of giving up claims of exclusivity; which is currently receiving a lot of attention from the members of organised religions who are involved in ecumenical and inter-faith initiatives.

There is another group of people, besides philosophers and religious people, who have strong opinions on truth: the serious scientists. Non-exclusivity need not pose any difficulty for them either, as long as they abide by the principle that the theories of science are only ever models for representing what we experience in useful and consistent ways, and are not ‘Truth’ in any absolute sense.

Possibly the abandonment of exclusivity is most difficult for those deeply committed to the dominant belief system of our day, which is economics. The actual beliefs of economics underlie all its various theories, forming a hidden ideology disguised as common sense and pragmatism, which sanctions heedless exploitation, alienation, and grave inequalities of living conditions and power. By describing economics in these terms, I am revealing that I am no devotee of this belief system – it is not my truth. Even so, there is no necessary clash with the theory I am going to put forward, because the theory does not deny the validity of the truths of economics, for those who do believe in them, any more than it questions the truths of other believers.

If a belief system claims exclusivity, and denies the truths that others hold, by the theory, as I shall explain later, that denial is impotent anyway. There is no ‘either/or’ or ‘zero sum game’ in this theory. It is inclusive rather than exclusive, allowing ‘both/and’ and everything on the spectrum in between, so that everyone wins.

It may be argued that a theory which reduces conflict by reconciling the beliefs of different groups of people will still not save the world, because it is what we do to each other, and to the rest of life on earth, which is so terrible. But I shall show not only that beliefs are the driving force in the modern world, but also how ‘beliefs’ in a wider, metaphysical sense are the creative agents of the universe.

The theory I have put together is called ‘pattern!’. It began as a development of the ideas of ‘formative causation’ and ‘morphic resonance’ put forward by the biologist Rupert Sheldrake. Although pattern!, like any child, has developed its own unique identity, which is different in many ways to its parent, the theory would be recognisable by anyone familiar with Sheldrake’s ideas as coming from the same family. The ideas are based on the conception that the universe is organic, rather than inert and material, and habitual, rather than mechanical and obedient to immutable laws of physics. By this conception, all entities, from atomic particles to galaxies, through organisms, ecosystems and human societies on earth, are subject to habits which build up over time.

Since it is a philosophical theory, pattern! is a way of seeing and understanding the world. At the risk of getting into tautological cirles, I am going to take the subject of human understanding and beliefs as an example of how my ‘new’ theory helps us to understand. Understanding is a phenomenon which, like everything else, is habitual and is a ‘pattern’ – in the special sense I have adopted for the theory.

The ways people seek to understand the world involve habits of thought, which can be very compelling, but which change and evolve roughly as society changes and evolves, but with a dynamic involving lags and leads as thought and practice influence each other and move society onwards. But a habitual way of understanding is not a straightforward habit, like tying bows or nail biting – nor is it necessarily, like these examples, either good and useful or bad and annoying. A person’s way of understanding is a complex pattern formed from deep and unconscious attitudes, overlayed by the ideological assumptions of various groups the person belongs to and of society at large, and embellished by his or her own ideas and opinions. A way of understanding has a history, a geographical location and social context, a structure or model to hold it together, a language to express and communicate it, and so on.

The word ‘habit’ does not seem an appropriate term for something as complex as a way of understanding. In my theory I have decided to use the term ‘pattern!’, because the meaning and usage of the word ‘pattern’ is very flexible. A pattern can occur in various contexts in space as well as in time, and a pattern can be simple or complicated, regular or diffuse. The exclamation mark serves to distinguish the theoretical concept from the general idea of pattern as repetition and form.

The way to understanding usually includes seeking or devising explanations. An important part of any pattern! of understanding is the platform on which it is built, which is where an explanation has to get to – or at least approach – if it is to be judged satisfactory. A favourite platform of understanding in the modern world is the mechanistic model of orthodox science. The mechanistic model includes all sorts of conceptions involving moving parts, the forces between them, and sets of rules the parts and forces abide by. It is by no means limited to the thinking and activities of scientists, technologists and engineers, but permeates society, and is part of common speech as in ‘how it works’, ‘market forces’, ‘parts of the body’ etc.

The kinds of mechanisms which seem to satisfy scientists and, though their authority, the general public, are often quite mysterious. There are invisibly tiny particles spinning, cycling in orbits, and attracting or repelling each other. There are waves and forces travelling or acting through vast empty spaces. Gravity, electricity, chemical bonding, genetic coding, entropy, radiation, photosynthesis and respiration; the list of respectable phenomena goes on and on. One could make another list of phenomena which are ‘nonsense’, according to science: precognition, reincarnation, hauntings, UFOs, dousing, ley lines, spiritual healing, levitation, out-of-the-body experiences, channelling and so on. If one takes a step away from being a committed believer in, or respecter of, orthodox science, the phenomena in the first list can be seen to be just as strange and amazing as those in the second.

As I stated earlier, I am not intending to deny the validity or truth of the beliefs held by scientists, nor for that matter the beliefs of people interested in the paranormal. However, I am not satisfied with science’s ‘platform of explanation’. I do not feel ‘Oh, yes, fine, I see’ when a mechanism is offered to me as an explanation of why something happens the way it does. This is because the mechanism does not seem any more likely than the event, process or phenomenon it is supposed to ‘explain’.

One thing about mechanistic explanations which I dislike is the idea of ‘space in a box travelling along the rail of time’. When the idea of three dimensions was conceived, it was not because Descartes or someone looked through a telescope and saw the three axes of the universe. Similarly, there is not an observable time line, except in diagrams. Of course, coordinates of space and time are useful when modelling collections of events mathematically, but I do not see the universe as being ‘really’ four dimensional.

Another thing I dislike is that the parts and forces involved in a mechanistic explanation are so often invisible and intangible. So why should an explanation involving things like that be more satisfactory than the things that we can see and experience which are supposed by scientists to need explaining? For example, why should consciousness, which I know about, have to be explained in terms of the way the brain ‘works’, which is something I do not know about? It seems more sensible to me to explain the brain in terms of consciousness – which is what pattern! theory can do.

But for me the most unsatisfactory idea in the portfolio of scientific explanations is the ‘universal machine’ which is supposed to have been cranking along for billions of years before anything or anyone was aware of or interested in it. Scientists themselves are troubled about this, and have postulated various ‘anthropic principles’ to give a purpose to the insensible machine: it was there for all those aeons of time to prepare the way for us!

Science’s explanations do not take me to a place where I feel ‘Yes, I understand’; they take me to a realm which is bizarre, counter-intuitive, contradictory, artificial and anthropocentric.

It is important to distinguish potentially useful models, which science can provide, from explanations as such. When it comes to the platform of understanding where explanations stop, I prefer my own conception – not that I claim to be its first discoverer; many people have surely thought of the exact same thing, or varients of it, before I did.

My explanation platform is the recognition that the universe is patterned!. All sorts of patterns! exist, with patterns! including other patterns!, patterns! within patterns!, collosal numbers of apparently identical patterns!, seemingly unique patterns!, and ranges of similarity between patterns! Similarity and difference are what makes patterns! patterns!.

There are two characteristics which all patterns! share, and these form the basis of the answers to all the ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ questions we might ask. The two characteristics are form and resonance: each pattern! has a shape in space and in time; and each is capable of recognising how similar other patterns! are to itself. The two characteristics are inseparable: nothing can have a shape unless it knows what is itself and what is other than itself: which means that it is aware. The shape of a pattern! in space and in time is influenced by its awareness: it continues, grows and changes in response to its awareness; its conscious resonance with its own shape and the shapes of other patterns! is the nearest thing to a ‘force’ in the pattern! conception, but it is more like a yielding than a force.

The joy of pattern! understanding is that it is based on what we know and experience. We are ourselves patterns!, so we have form and awareness. We know ourselves and others, and sense the interplay of continuity and change which resonance brings about. We participate in various patterns!: as individuals, as members of groups and cultures, as a species, as parts of the living planet, as a pattern! made up of other patterns! such as our organs, tissues and cells, and down to the molecules and atoms performing their own living dances in and out of ours.

In other words, pattern! is based on ‘common sense and sensibility’, and I have found that many people are satisfied with, and happy to accept, the theory on that basis. When I have shared these ideas I have often received responses of a kind which I refer to as ‘Of course it’s like that!’ responses. These are wonderfully confirming. But I am continually surprised to get such responses; I expect my ideas to be questioned and doubted – primarily because they are, in some key respects, unlike those of orthodox science. I was myself educated in science, and have had a tendency to think scientifically, that is analytically and rationally. So perhaps I think of scientific thinking and respect for scientific expertise to be more influential in our culture than it is, and I expect people to be dissatisfied with understanding which is simply based on ordinary experience and thinking, which is often confused and intuitive. Of course, the ‘both/and’ principle of pattern! thinking means we can combine analysis and rationality with confusion (literally ‘pouring together’) and intuition.

There are, of course, many people who are ‘science devotees’. I refer to those who regard the basis and approach of science as obvious and inevitable. They feel comfortable with explanations which end up with mechanistic models, and think of such models as ‘truth’. They see no mystery in invisible particles and forces, and are content to have the buck of explanation stop with such things. They are interested in phenomena which can be replicated in laboratory conditions, and can even filter out those phenomena which do not lend themselves to empirical study as irrelevant or even non-existent.

I am inclined to mock such beliefs as absurd only because people who adhere to them are so arrogant, sometimes with a naive – even charmingly child-like – pomposity. I must say again that I am not denying that science has value, although I do feel that the implementation of scientific discoveries in new technology and new products needs to be subject to more ethical evaluation by society at large. But whatever criticism I might make of the attitudes of science devotees towards alternative ideas, I defend their right to believe what they believe; they have an absolute right to their truth. But, by pattern! theory, their truth is not the only truth; their truth is a pattern! which can coexist with other patterns! of truth, even if science’s truth and some other truth seem to contradict each other.

Pattern! theory achieves the reconciliation of contradictory truths by being non-materialistic, in the philosophical sense. The pattern! universe is not made from matter, or some substantial ‘stuff’ out of which its structures are formed. Hence there is no absolute, objective ‘how things are’ in the pattern! universe. On the contrary, different truths bring about different realities. But since truths are patterns!, they influence each other, so, although we each live in our own created world, our worlds are also shared, and create each other and ourselves.

I began by introducing my theory as a (‘new’) metaphysics. As such it cannot be verified by experiment, but it does have to be believable. I have now stated that, by this theory, the universe is not made of matter; a statement which is hardly credible, since we experience the world as containing some pretty solid stuff, such as rocks, chairs and bones.

But pattern! is no different here from other metaphysical conceptions. Science tells us that rocks, chairs and bones are made from miniscule particles chasing about in empty space – each atom of matter being like specks of dust in the dome of St Pauls, as we were told in science lessons at school. And, by the physics of recent decades, those miniscule particles are waves of potentiality, rather than hard little spheres, and manifest only when they are observed. This is very similar to what pattern! says occurs.

The metaphysics, or mythology, of Judaeo-Christianity also has parallels with pattern! The creation myth tells how God created the living earth out of the dark void. Those who, like myself, were not brought up with such beliefs, find them unsatisfactory and incredible. As with orthodox science, the ‘platform’ where the explaining stops is not one where we feel we have arrived. I am inclined to pursue the enquiry further, and ask ‘Where did God come from then?’, to which there is no answer. Again, as with the truths of science, pattern! asserts that religious truths are valid for those who hold them, and bring into being a corresponding reality. But, to return to the metaphysical parallels with pattern!, by pattern! theory, the universe is creative rather than created; the process of creation continues in a mutual creativity which we all participate in. However, the process of creation is very like the ‘something out of nothing’ which Judaeo-Christianity postulates.

Having touched upon science and religion, it is appropriate to state at this point where pattern! stands on a fundamental philosophical argument which scientists and theologians have been engaged in for centuries: dualism versus monism.

Pattern! is a monistic philosophy in that it rejects dualism – the idea of two basic principles: mind and matter, or spirit and matter. To the extent that it does postulate any universal medium, it is mental or spiritual rather than material. But the ideas of ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’ come with a lot of associated baggage, some of which is not appropriate to this theory.

spirit – lose mystery – all is spiritual – not about saints and mystics – lose ghostly form, spirit is tangible – not separate realm – no duality – ordinary

Science is not really monistic – but pluralistic – matter, space, waves, forces, laws. Even if a ‘single unified force’ were to be discovered or worked out, there would still be the entities or substances on which it operates.

matter, monism/dualism/pluralism/pattern!

23rd July 1992

Preface

Everyone needs security. Well, I need security and, since I assume other people are rather like me, I assume they need security too. However, there appear to be exceptions. Some people like to do highly insecure things; like free-falling from aeroplanes, potholing, mountain climbing and motor racing. But perhaps these are just another way of seeking security: defying death and so proving it’s not going to happen to you. And, of course, it doesn’t happen to you, because when it does, there is no you to know about it.

My father told me when I was very young that everyone dies, that death means oblivion, and that, because people don’t want to cease to be, they invent ways out, like religions which promise a heavenly destiny for your immortal soul, but that is all nonsense. I would rather he had told me about heaven, because I have suffered for years from a terrible fear of death, which has marred my life quite seriously. I could not look at the stars because they reminded me of the smallness and brevity of my existence. Going to the lavatory reminded me of my animalness, and brought on the fear. Seeing a hearse with a coffin in, rather obviously, brought it on too. ‘It’ was the intimate, internal realisation that there would soon be nothing, that ‘I’ would be blind, deaf, unfeeling, unknowing, all-over-forever and no coming back. I felt I was walking towards a cliff edge over which I would fall to nothingness, and I could not change direction. Although death had not happened yet, it would come, like holidays or other coming events that you look forward to, think they will never come, but they do, only when this one comes, everything would be over. The nearer I came to engaging with that realisation, and it became masochistically fascinating to me, the worse the shock of its inescapable truth, and I became afraid that I would actually ‘touch’ the realisation, and the shock would kill me; it did cause me go faint. It would be worst at night, when I would tempt myself towards the dreadful truth until I ‘got it’, the wave of shock and faintness would come, and I would shout out ‘No!’ ‘No!’ ‘No!’ and, if there was someone in my bed, I would cling and sob out, ‘Oh my God! oh my God! help me!’ and be comforted, not by God, because I did not believe in any of that.

When people tell me they don’t believe in an after-life, and they are not afraid of death, I do not believe them. Some people have said to me that you cannot be afraid of nothing, that they won’t know anything about it, so what is there to be afraid of. I think that they have just not found the path to the realisation of death which I have found; they just have not really ‘got it’. But, of course, that is a pretty good way of avoiding the fear, so I should not doubt what they say. It does not take away my fear, of course.

I am a little sceptical when people say they are not afraid of death because they are sure it is not the end; either there is heaven, or they will be reborn, or they will continue in some other way they cannot predict, but which they ‘know’ at some deep level is there. Are they kidding themselves? I remember someone telling me about her aunt, a very devout Christian lady, who told others not to be afraid or to grieve for others, because every believer goes to heaven. But when this aunt was on her death bed, she was hysterical with fear, and died, her niece told me, ‘very badly’. I have a friend who ‘believes’ in reincarnation, but I have a sense that, when she is telling others what she believes, she is really trying to convince and reasure herself.

If there is a deep, and usually unacknowledged, fear of death in all of us, it does help to explain certain human attitudes and behaviour which have a profound effect on how we treat the world. We have a bizarre ambivalence towards the future. On the one hand we think that the future matters; we worry about environmental threats which could make life very difficult in ten, twenty or fifty years. On the other hand, we do not live as if the future mattered: we squander scarce resources; we fail to plant, or allow to regenerate, slow-growing hardwood trees; we have numbers of children which will increase population levels; and so on. This ambivalence can be accounted for by a conscious assumption that life goes on and on, so we think we care, but a deeper unconscious knowledge that it does not go on, so we know that really there is no point in doing anything for the future.

This makes us all sound completely selfish. What about our children, you may say, surely we care about them and their future? But this can be viewed as just another kind of selfishness: it is a matter of identification. To the extent that we extend the notion of self beyond ourselves, we extend the net of our concern and protectiveness to include that wider self. I suppose each of us has such a ‘self-net’. I had better concentrate on myself here, rather than assume how it is for others. I would certainly include my husband and my children in my self-net. Unlike the Mother Theresas of this world, I would not include the poor and needy, or the whole of humanity. I am more inclined to project myself onto other creatures, trees and, by extension, onto wilderness and nature. My self-net also includes many of my possessions, particularly photographs and souvenirs, but generally the things around me, which I prefer not to change much.

What this adds up to is far from being a coherent and useful extended self. If I could assemble my self-net into a private geosphere, perhaps on the basis that I was allowed to determine what would survive a nuclear holocaust, we would have a tough time trying to make it on our own. I expect this would be true of other people’s self-nets too. Many people would be worse off than me in their private geospheres full of people, pets and possessions, but nothing to provide food or water. Few people would include a nice little mixed farm in their self-net. So if we need more than the portion of the world we identify with and care for, what is our relationship with the rest? Basically, the rest is exploitable, condemned or disregarded.

If what is ‘really’ going on is that each of us is going to die and cease to exist, is afraid of death but cannot face it, only loves self and some limited extension of self, and uses, hates or ignores the rest, it is no wonder that we live life in a semi-conscious, superficial way, and seek ways to escape, to be amused, or to find pretended meaning.

One night when my partner and I had not long been together, I woke him up after a death fear encounter, and explained what had happened, and what the fear was. He listened carefully, and then he said something which has changed my life. He said, ‘Perhaps it isn’t like that.’ This has allowed me to explore what it might me like instead, and this book is what I have found.

26th October 1992

Intentions, state of mind and recent thoughts on resuming after a considerable break

1. I want to ‘finish’ this book by the end of the year.

2. Not feeling very confident or positive at present – afraid of having moved beyond material I’ve written. Is it going to look ‘naive’ or silly? Aware of other people’s chunks of writing they sometimes give me to read – important to them, but of little interest to anyone else.

3. Notes on possible next bit (worried about tendency to keep writing introductions, prefaces, justifications, this could be yet another so I won’t flesh it out).

‘Blindingly obvious’ – simple truth that out-shines all else. More often ‘blinded to the obvious’ – by habits of thought, asking unnecessary questions, esp. ‘why?’, and being receptive to only certain sorts of answers. TV programme on ‘Anti-chaos’ – getting close to realising that most things are complex, and that form tends to emerge from muddle. Ended by hope of ‘discovering the laws of nature’ – felt like shouting ‘there are no laws of nature!’ Science vascillates between absolute determinism and blind chance – perhaps with ‘laws’ governing probabilities of outcomes. Pattern! says no answers to ‘why’ apart from ‘because it’s happened before’.

No more fantastic than orthodox science: gravitation is action at a distance, diminishing with distance, pattern! is influence at a distance and over time, diminishing with distance in space or time, and with dis-similarity.

Herman Daly model of economics: cube inside biosphere. Similar model of mind within ‘real’ or ‘natural’ world. Mind results in dispacement of natural world by translations of mental constructs. We can only (?) experience the ‘real’ world from within the mental one. We enlarge the mental world within itself – invent realities bearing little resemblance to external world. We select parts of the ‘real’ world as important and ‘more real’, esp. what can be measured, modelled and mimicked, disregarding secondary qualities such as sensation and emotion, hence we disregard influence, empathy, recognition etc., which are manifestations of pattern!’s effects on ourselves. We look for mechanistic causes because we have dismissed the causes we could feel.

New title for book: ‘Mind Free’. Need to work on openmindedness. Tibbetan Lamas’ giggling, knowing that it doesn’t matter, that all is and shall be well. Significance of meditation, clearing the mind, leading to peace of being. Nothing dies or is destroyed. The oldest and strongest of forms will return if allowed – stop ploughing and mining and the forest will return.

Loving one’s neighbour is social responsibility, cultivating consciousness and conscience about the effects we conspire in. Primal peoples did not conceptualize – love someone or something but not love in the abstract. We imagine ourselves better than others on the basis of our concerns, almost irrespective of our actions, or backed up with minor actions such as using recycled paper. ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’. Effect of over-emphasis on the mind. Indirect responsibility, eg cheese sandwich sermon. We live by Plato’s Republic purity – citizens don’t slaughter animals because that would degrade them, but do eat the meat.

Sheldrake – important realisation under expoited. Too much energy into trying to convince those who have most to lose in changing their perspective, most inclined to ask unnecessary questions and expect steriotyped answers. If you want something done do it yourself. Eg env. ed. on land degradation. Now more interest, eg E and J Goldsmith. Not directly due to my efforts, but trust the process.

Food production very habit bound. Deeply rooted in Judaeo-Christian and Moslem culture – Genesis: Cain was a tiller and Abel a shepherd.

Land degradation still invisible for many – eg no gardens in shanty towns and no comments on this.

4. Plan to complete this book, even if little hope of publication, and then begin writing science fiction novels based on a (near) future world which is in the process of adopting the pattern! paradigm.

Thoughts on first story. Lowered fertility means that teenagers are only ones capable of having children. Youngsters are ‘back-tripping’, ‘earth-tripping’ and ‘star-tripping’ – consciousness journeys back in time and to other parts of this planet and other star systems. Permaculture way of life adopted. Non-interference regeneration of most of land. Only travel is on foot or tripping. Girl called Lily has bad back-trip while pregnant – was murdered, concern re child being ‘infected’ by past life. Young people are discouraged from reasoning, have to fill minds with useful local knowledge, emphasis on particular rather than categories, species names based on characteristics and associations rather than Latin names. Pattern! healing process – contact to keep patterns! alive. Younger people happy to leave their bodies, older ones cling on because of fear of letting go.

Need to make a study of science fiction and fantasy novels to discover what works – help from Fizz and others? Multi-threading seems important – plenty of complex plot and events, background within this, not in separate chunks, not too much explaining, let reader figure it out.

5. Will do precis D suggested.