42 An Eye for an I (1)

 

Written by Normand Bourque on Aug 30, 2013

 

“You and I are mirages who perceive themselves, and the sole magical machinery behind the scenes is perception — the triggering, by huge flows of raw data, of a tiny set of symbols that stand for abstract regularities in the world. When perception at arbitrarily high levels of abstraction enters the world of physics and when feedback loops galore come into play, then “which” eventually turns into “who”. Douglas Hofstader, I am a Strange Loop”, Basic Books, p. 360

“God said: Why would I tell you the Truth of your Self unless it were true? I don’t fool around. I get to the point. You are a spectacular representation of Me. That is the Truth. How you interpret yourself is not true. You could use some new glasses, and then you would see better what is right before you.” HL 4818

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Enough speaking about the ego. Not necessarily because we are through with it but because ego uses its own name — which is our own attempted identification of it as ego — to deceive us. Even by making us believe that we are not our ego, but that we have an ego, ego, in a very sneaky way, relentlessly applies the decoy of self-reference to maintain its grasp on us. If we have so much difficulty with the ego, could it be because we are identifying the wrong guy?

The idea of ego stresses our sense of duality and torture, making us believe that we can more easily grasp the ego by giving it a name that is not “I”. Identify the enemy, the virus. But isn’t the “I” ego’s supreme disguise? Let’s have an eye on this tricky “I”.

The power of selection

The most confusing concept or symbol for the human mind is I am because, seemingly, we have and we are two I am simultaneously. One of the two I am is what identifies us as an embodied entity, thus separate from the other embodied entities. The other I am which could be written I AM, is the I AM of our Oneness with everything because, conceptually at least, we know that only One is so that there is no you, I, we, or they but only I in Truth. How do we live with that?

What does it really mean to separate from I AM to experience a self-created I am? If we acknowledge that separation is the experience of exploring what it would look and feel like to believe that we created ourself, then it appears that the only way to experience or experiment with such a belief is by selecting and containing ourself, thus excluding other selves. We surely don’t pretend having created other selves hence keeping separating and selecting ourself from other selves seems the only way to attain self-consistency and a certain sense of being complete by ourself. That is how a virtual I am is projected out of I AM. We could reverse the statement by saying that the virtual I am takes a seeming existence by projecting I AM outside of itself. This is the ego real disguise.

How could the Universe respond to our will of self-creation, hence self-selection? We have talked several times, when referring to quantum physics, about the quantum atomic and sub-atomic world where particles (photons, electrons, etc.) are undefined, immaterial and non-localized in space and time until they receive a space-time determination and activity by the mind of an observer which is also an actor (just by the fact that the observer has the desire to observe something).

But, as human beings, we don’t utilize the outside world simply to “use” it as a field of survival and as a source of discovery and knowledge but as the materia prima to build a meaningful I am through perception.  As Hofstadter says of perception, it is “the triggering, by huge flows of raw data, of a tiny set of symbols that stand for abstract regularities in the world”. These raw data, which come from the physical world (movement, interaction, and composition at the atomic and molecular levels) are carried through the neural circuitry of our brain to be interpreted and made symbolically significant by the I am (what Hofstadter calls ‘abstract regularities’) and integrated into its own structure and contributing to its self-definition. At a high level of abstraction or symbolism, and through feedback loops, “then ‘which’ [abstract regularities or symbols] eventually turns into ‘who’” as Hofstadter brilliantly states it. (By the way, I suggest the reader have a look at Hofstadter’s new book “I am a Strange Loop”, Basic Books. My blog was inspired by that book. Hofstadter is the author of the successful and winner of a Pulitzer Price “Gödel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid.” A really fascinating and brilliant book by a brilliant author. Google first for Douglas Hofstadter.)

What we don’t realize enough is that building a symbolic I am is paradoxically building a “What I am not”. By concealing our I AM to experience the I am, what we are doing is transforming symbolically our I AM (which still exists even when we pretend to ignore it) into an observing EYE which is the driving force of awareness rising from our embodied self-conscious I am. It is an eye for an I, for the I AM ONE.

 

I am and mathematics

Through the reading of Hofstadter books, I saw a powerful connection between the structuration of I am and the goal pursued by mathematics and mathematicians.

The mathematician Gödel demonstrated that in their obsession to ensure absolute consistency and completeness in their theorems, mathematicians had to accept that some mathematical statements inevitably ended up in referring to themselves, which is absolutely unacceptable yet mathematically inevitable and uncontrollable. A literary example of a self-referential statement or sentence is the classical: “This sentence is not true”.  A statement (linguistic or mathematical) is considered self-referential if it contains a copy of itself. In the field of language, we understand that a self-referential sentence is only apparently self-referential because one reading of the sentence concerns the content of the sentence while the second (and simultaneous) reading concerns the sentence itself as a container. But in the formal logic of numbers (Number Theory), one cannot play on two levels at the same time, that is the content and the container since with numbers content and container are the same.

In mathematics, consistency means that what is true must yield a proof and a proof must be equivalent to say that something is true. Since a self-referential statement constitutes a threat to consistency, it presents a threat to the proof as well as to the statement. Completeness (a more abstract concept) refers to coordinated sets of theorems and true statements (in number theory) that present no flaws like self-references. But since that, as demonstrated by the mathematician Gödel, there are some self-referential statements in the mathematical theory of numbers, certain rules have been established to censor those self-referential statements. And how about axioms? They cannot be demonstrated or proven, yet they have to be taken “as is” like 1+1=2. Once the axioms are positioned, then a series of numbers (primes, squares, etc.) can be created and reveal significant patterns. Yet, self-referential statements are a constant threat to the mathematical building because they have been concealed, not eliminated.

We find an analogy between mathematics and the structuration of I am. Is not I am aiming at the trilogy of proof, consistency and completeness? I am always has to prove itself to be true to confirm its own statement that it is basically true. That is how it strives at ensuring its consistency. It also can’t stand incompleteness. But, at the opposite of mathematics, I am needs to be self-referential in the statement of itself to be seemingly consistent. Yet it is looking for the proof outside of itself,  since it threw I AM outside. The result is the same as in mathematics. They both carry in themselves a time bomb of self-destruction through recursive self-reference.

The real loophole, the real feedback in the I am is comparable to the situation where we position ourself between two mirrors facing each other obtaining an infinite yet meaningless replication of our own image. We could say that I am is recursive because it repeats itself in a self-similar way, but never creatively. The feedback effect in the I am is generated by the very process of selection. The power of selection comes with free will. Free will is the power to choose but by choosing, we virtually separate from Oneness. Free will gives us the possibility to experience what we are not. And the quantum particles will obey our desire by acquiring corresponding space and time properties.

 The liberating self-referential statement

In Escher’s drawing (autoportrait), we have a very interesting graphical representation of what I am is as a self-referential statement. The artist is examining something on a piece of paper (apparently some undefined thing) while at the same time, he is part of the piece of paper he is examining with a

magnifier. He sees himself as a portrait of himself and this can go into an infinite loop. This is a good example of a picture that is self-referential since it contains a copy of itself. Of course, this graphic work puzzles us at the same time as it is amusing us.  The trick is that they belong to the same dimension: the artist is in 2D and so is the piece of paper. The subject and the object are on the same level: the container and the content are the same.

Is it not what I am is without I AM, that is an infinite yet meaningless replication of itself in the very same dimension as the material it is made of, that is perception and its objects and signals? If self-reference is possible in 2-D, it is also possible in 3-D. Is it not how the ego really work? The perfect and complete self-referential statement of the ego is “I am an illusion“. I am and ego are on the same level as subject and object. They are purely self-referential and cannot constitute a proof of each other. The content and container are the same. It has no container and no content. When all is said and done with I am, only I AM remains and it is consistent, complete, and constitutes its own proof.

God gave us free will. But by choosing I am over I AM, we accepted to live with a Trojan Horse inside. “ How you interpret yourself is not true. You could use some new glasses, and then you would see better what is right before you.”