Relativity and Physical Reality

Steven E. Kaufman

In this article both the inner orientation of emotional and mental experience, as well as the outer orientation of physical experience, are described as a function of our particular position and perspective within the fractal Structure of Reality relative to the particular level of Reality at which each of those different types of experience are created. Additionally, the Relational Structure of Reality is described as the framework that underlies our overall apprehension of mental and physical reality by relating the different levels of Reality to different fundamental aspects of what we apprehend as mental and physical reality. Also described is the relation between what is expressed in quantum physics as the wave function and the underlying Structure of Reality from which that expression is derived, including a description of what occurs within that Relational Structure to produce the event referred to as the collapse of the wave function.

John Lighton Synge

Steven E. Kaufman

In this article, physical reality as a whole is defined, thereby revealing the actual nature of physical reality to be that of a boundary created by a relation, as that boundary is apprehended from one side of the relation that brings it into existence. The reason we can’t pin down a specific physical reality, i.e., completely define any physical reality, is because in doing so we are trying to pin down what is effectively a miniature rainbow, trying to pin down that which is actually only the product of a relation, trying to pin down something that, in the final analysis, is not at all or in any way what is actually there, but only seems to be what is actually there. However, while we cannot ever pin down any specific physical reality for the reasons mentioned above, we can pin down the nature of physical reality as a whole. We cannot get to the end of a rainbow, because rainbows only appear to have an end. However, we can understand the true nature of the rainbow and understand how it is created and why it appears as it does. In the same way, although we cannot pin down any specific physical reality, we can understand the nature of physical reality as a whole, how physical reality is created and why physical reality appears as it does, if we are able to understand what it is that the phenomena of wave-particle duality and uncertainty are actually telling us about the nature of physical reality.

Diederik Aerts

Steven E. Kaufman

What quantum theory has revealed about the nature of reality has remained hidden in plain sight for almost one-hundred years because what quantum theory has revealed about the nature of reality cannot be comprehended in the context of the materialist model and conception of reality in which science presently operates, which materialist model places physical reality at the center of reality and Consciousness at the periphery, as a secondary or derivative reality. What this work will demonstrate, by explaining the heretofore inexplicable basis of the phenomena that lie at the heart of quantum theory, is that it is Consciousness rather than physical reality that lies at the center of reality, and that it is physical reality rather than Consciousness that is a secondary or derivative reality. Specifically, wave-particle duality, quantum uncertainty, quantum non-locality, the probabilistic nature of the wavefunction, and the collapse of the wavefunction, will all be shown to be phenomena that have as their basis the way in which the fundamental Reality of Consciousness, through relation to Itself, creates what it apprehends as physical reality.One of the most important things the phenomena that lie at the heart of quantum theory will be shown to reveal about the nature of reality is that the nature of physical reality is like that of a reflection, and like a reflection, physical reality is able to obscure from view what is actually there, as long as it is mistaken for what is actually there. Thus, in revealing the reflection-like nature of physical reality, the phenomena that lie at the heart of quantum theory indirectly reveal that what is actually there, underlying the reflection that is physical reality, is the non-physical, non-experiential Reality of Consciousness that is, through relation to Itself, both creating and apprehending experiential reality in general and physical reality in particular. Ultimately, understanding the reflection-like nature of physical reality should make it possible for Individuals to understand that what actually Exists directly where they are, where their physical bodies appear to be, is not different in Nature than what actually Exists everywhere else as well, where the rest of physical reality appears to be, thereby disabusing them of the notion that what they are is a physical reality, while at the same time revealing to them their true Nature as Consciousness, which, through relation to that which is also Consciousness, creates what they, as Individual points of Consciousness, apprehend as experiential reality in general and physical reality in particular.Part II of this series of three articles includes: 2. The nature of quantum reality.

Jagdish Mehra