Adam Blatner

I strongly suspect that it may be better to think of reality as we know it as co-created. That is to say, our minds co-create what we call reality. (By mind, I think this dynamic operates in dimensions or realms far from our material realm, yet co-exists; and even so, much of mind is to our human minds beyond our conscious mind to access!)

I am not one who believes that “it’s all in your mind”—not at all. I believe there is much “out there” that is truly new, not known by most, and of those who sense it, many cannot articulate it, and of those who can, few can make it understandable to others. There’s also the funny way that people “nibble on the ineffable,” grasp a few properties in their lifetimes. Electricity was “discovered” and “re-discovered” many times in the last few hundred years, and I question that we have finished discovering. Indeed, I doubt that we know all there is to know about much.

There may be a variety of “gates” to the unknown, when when you try to specify the nature or design of those “gates,” the process breaks down. Some understand and become loyal followers, some partly understand and think they’ve wholly understood, and so forth. Part of the problem lies in the compelling illusion that what is to be understood lies entirely beyond subjectivity, co-creation. But what if we’re always co-creating? We can’t help it, because mind does that as a fundamental metaphysical dynamic.

Interestingly, much religious and political and even seemingly “scientific” doctrine all hinge on the idea that reality operates entirely independent of subjectivity—it is not co-created—and therefore a true consensus is possible, ultimately. But what if that objective and materialistic view is only true half and half; perhaps even it’s only three-fourths “out there.” I think that co-created reality cannot come into use in human life unless we bring at least one-fourth of our creative mind to the process of perception and interpretation.

Not recognizing the intrinsic necessity of subjectivity leads to sectarian conflict, because the illusion is compelling that the world is what we imagine it to be. Even psychoanalysts—who theoretically should know better—tend to be caught up in thinking that what they think is there is in fact the way they think it is. After all, they have been “analyzed.” (That is to say, analysis is far from effective in illuminating biases that run deeper than ordinary psychodynamics. What if our memories are to some great extend re-constructed, as contemporary psychological research has suggested?

To me, ideally, the product of being analyzed is that one becomes almost painfully aware that whatever is thought is recognized as being significantly interpreted through a lens that is affected by desire, habit, conditioning, familiarity, comfort, laziness (leading to over-simplicity), childish residues, and so forth. There’s no escaping this. You could be in any kind of analysis, or all kinds, and still have a heavy residue of manufactured meanings but no real seeing it as it is.

I even dare doubt Zen Buddhism, which I believe glimpses at the truth of the falseness of all interpretation—but that, too, is a relative and misleading idea. It implies that whatever truths are glimpsed alongside this healthy skepticism are rendered more valid. It deeply underestimates the holy power of the goddess Maya, the goddess of illusion.

These are deeply paradigm-challenging ideas, but I suspect they may be found to be valid in the coming decades or centuries.