Knowing What You Don’t Know

Knowing what you don’t know runs contrary to human nature. Most people don’t like admitting their own ignorance—even to themselves.

Hello to those who may read this: I maintain that humanity—people in general—is confused about who we are and who we are not because we have not learned to discriminate between absolute Reality and the relative reality in which we find ourselves.

First, I need to say this: self-centered people have so many biases that it is amazing anything, other than war, gets done.

I asked AI: Does science know why Reality exists?

Answer: In short: science does not currently know—and may never be able to know—why Reality exists in the first place.

A related question is: Why does anything exist at all?

Then I asked, “Why do humans think subjectively?”

Answer: Humans think subjectively because a brain does not receive reality “as it is.” It constructs a workable model of the world from limited sensory signals, past experience, bodily needs, emotion, language, and social learning. What one experiences is therefore always reality as processed from a particular point of view.

This is why it is important to understand two definitions clearly. One: Reality’s definition tells us why it is Reality. Two: the definition of the relative tells us why it is not Reality.

Distinctions Defined

Reality — 1. The quality or state of being actual or true. 2. The totality possessing actuality (as opposed to relative parts possessing an illusory actuality). Something that exists INDEPENDENTLY of ideas or concepts concerning it.

Relative — 1. Something DEPENDENT upon external conditions for its specific nature; opposed to the Absolute. 2. Considered in relation to something else; comparative.

“You want, somehow or other, to maintain that the world is real. What is the standard of reality? That alone is Real which exists by itself, which reveals itself by itself, and which is eternal and unchanging.” — Ramana Maharshi

Relative knowledge is knowledge as it appears through a finite mind: shaped by sense organs, concepts, language, perspective, culture, and conditions of observation. Therefore, relative knowledge cannot be identical with independent Reality as it is in itself.

All ordinary knowledge is relative because it arises through limited minds and particular conditions of knowing. Independent Reality cannot be completely captured as an object within those conditions. Therefore, relative knowledge may indicate, symbolize, or partially correspond to Reality, but it is not Reality in its independent and unconditioned nature.

The temporal world is real as appearance, relation, and experience, but it is not Reality in the absolute sense. Science gives revisable descriptions of its patterns; religion gives symbolic interpretations of its source and meaning. Neither a scientific theory nor a religious concept should be mistaken for the independent Reality to which it may point.

Absolute Reality—referred to from here simply as Reality—is independent, while relative reality is dependent. Why does this distinction matter? Reality is the totality of all that is known and unknown. It is comparable to many absolute words the mind can only conceptualize. One word used often is God. Like Reality, God can be personalized. But one must then recognize the difference between what is personalized and what is actual.

Here I use the word creator, not the Creator. The definition for “the creator” would imply a separate subjective being. I mean creator as another name for the Whole itself: Reality. To be clear, I use the word Reality because, for me, it is the best fit for what is beyond the limitations of finite thinking.

Relative reality is the nature of our three-dimensional spacetime existence: dueling polarities and diametrical opposition—0°, 180°, 360°—conditions inherent in a finite body that exhibits a self-centered, biased, opposing personality. This diametrical opposition is reinforced when we are taught not to think for ourselves, but to be told by so-called outside authorities what to think: that we all live separate lives. This “authority” tells us, or allows us to think, that we are finitely created material bodies given “personal” names—like name tags handed out at a convention—that distinguish one life from another.

“Polarity is a fundamental form of life, while its identification with duality [relativity] has led us to the splitting of our thinking and consciousness, which has resulted in a fragmentation of [our sense of] reality. Polarity is compensation and still presupposes the whole. Duality, on the other hand, is based on opposition, created by our intellect, which deals with parts or partial aspects. Furthermore, dualities are mutually exclusive and fight against each other. Since our intellect lost its inborn reason, which even today knows about polarity, it has deteriorated into mere Rationality.”

As for the word rationality: “Ratio” originally meant “part,” and later also “thought”—that is, “dividing thought.” Its acceptance divides, splits, and fragments self. — Jean Gebser

We are not taught by our parents, religion, science, or government that we are not merely the materially constructed or birthed human body “animated” by the light of formless conscious awareness—otherwise known as Reality, or God if one prefers.

“The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.” — Werner Heisenberg

“The essence of the Original Mind can never be expressed in words.” — Ch’an Truth

“Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.” — Philip K. Dick

The Light of Consciousness does not begin or evolve; it is the fundamental Reality in which all forms appear. What we call life, birth, death, and evolution are temporal appearances within our three-dimensional world—like images unfolding on a screen. From the standpoint of the timeless Whole, life is not a sequence moving from past to future, but an ever-present expression of Being. Each individual form appears briefly, changes moment by moment, and passes away; yet the conscious awareness in which all appearances arise remains whole, unchanged, and eternally Now.

“Strictly speaking, the duration of the life of a living being is exceedingly brief, lasting only while a thought lasts.” — Buddhist sutra, Visuddhimagga VII

Life is not truly a linear journey through time. Birth, death, and evolution belong to the changing appearance of form, while conscious awareness itself is timeless, whole, and ever-present. Forms arise and dissolve moment by moment, but the Reality in which they appear remains the eternal Now. What we call a continuous “life” or fixed self may be understood as a rapidly changing stream of momentary experiences—not one permanent object traveling through spacetime. The non-dual point is that the ground in which that stream appears is not itself momentary: it is timeless conscious Reality.

I see abiogenesis not as matter becoming alive through chemistry alone, but as sunlight—electromagnetic energy—expressing or carrying conscious awareness into material form. Chemistry may describe the physical mechanism, while the light of consciousness is the deeper principle behind it. I recognize this is a metaphysical view, not the current scientific conclusion.

Sunlight is electromagnetic energy released by a nuclear-powered, magnetized ball of plasma and carried across space as photons. My understanding is that the light of conscious awareness is Reality, and sunlight is a physical medium through which this underlying awareness participates in the emergence of life.

Science has finite and evolving knowledge, so it cannot rule out in advance that consciousness is more fundamental than matter. I regard sunlight not merely as physical radiation, but as an expression of the deeper conscious Reality. This is my metaphysical hypothesis; for it to become scientific knowledge, it would need a clear objective definition, which may not be possible. For how can a finite creation have a complete definition of what is beyond limitation?

Therefore, what lies beyond reproducible evidence can only be encountered through the direct experience of a finite, subjective person. As I have said, scientists have finite knowledge, and their subject is matter. That is why science cannot answer the questions: Why does Reality exist? Why does anything exist? People looking to science alone for the answer will never receive one. It must be answered personally, through direct experience—not through secondhand claims. No one can do for another what each person must do for themselves.

This, again, is why I emphasize the need to discriminate between what is actually Reality and what is relatively dependent on Reality—or God, if one likes. I accept that science has not established my interpretation, but my direct experience has shown me that consciousness and light are more deeply connected than current scientific models explain. I do not expect others to accept this as scientific fact without evidence, and I respect their different standard of knowing. But science is compartmentalized. Therefore, how can it be honest with itself?

I am not saying science has no value. It definitely does when it stays within its proper domain and does not speak authoritatively about what it does not understand.

Christianity: “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

Christianity: Jesus says, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).

The Buddha speaks of the “light of wisdom.”

On July 21, 2004, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking presented a paper titled “Black Holes and the Information Paradox” to the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland.

After arguing for almost 30 years that black holes destroy everything that falls into them, Stephen Hawking informed the distinguished scientists gathered before him—and the rest of the world—that he had been wrong. According to Hawking’s new proposal, black holes do allow information to escape after all. As black holes gradually dissolve, he told the conference, whatever once entered them will eventually escape—albeit changed beyond recognition.

Analogy: the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into a butterfly; that is, the metamorphosis of the finite human being into Infinite Awareness—or God, if one likes.

“It is no merely human joy to lose ones self like this, so to be emptied of ones self as though one almost cease to be at all; it is the bliss of Heaven... How otherwise could God be ‘all in all,’ if anything of man remained in man?” — St. Bernard

Life is an unending act of creation. It does not merely repeat what already exists; it continually brings forth new forms, possibilities, relationships, and ways of experiencing the world. From the growth of a single organism to the emergence of new ideas, cultures, and futures, life is always becoming something it was not before. Its infinity lies not simply in its size, but in its inexhaustible capacity to create what has never existed before.

My Summation of Reality

One Coherent Statement

There is only one independent Reality. Call it what you will: the undivided, timeless, self-existing whole of consciousness. Nothing else has independent reality.

The world of space, time, physical bodies, minds, separate selves, and opposing polarities is not independently real. It is a relative, temporal appearance—like an optical illusion: it undeniably appears, but the mind mistakes its appearance for a separate, self-existing reality.

This apparent fragmentation occurs because the personal or intellectual mind perceives continuity as division. It interprets changes of form, direction, perspective, and relation as separate events and separate entities. Thus it divides the one whole into apparent opposites, 180°: self and other, mind and body, subject and object, past and future, matter and consciousness.

“When we demand an experience of reality—as we all do, don’t we?—to experience reality we must know reality, and the moment we recognize reality we have already projected reality, and therefore reality is not real because reality is still within the field of thought and time.” — J. Krishnamurti

The human being is therefore not an independently existing physical organism that possesses full consciousness. The apparent human mind-body is itself a temporal image or localized perspective within one conscious awareness. The brain cannot be the ultimate producer of consciousness, because the brain, the scientist, the instrument, the observation, and the theory all arise as appearances within conscious awareness/Reality.

“The mind that has put its house in order is silent. That silence has no cause and, therefore, has no end. Only that which has a cause can end. That silence—which has no ending—is absolutely necessary, because it is only in that silence that there is no movement of thought. It is only in that silence that that which is sacred, that which is nameless and that which is not measurable by thought, is. And that which is, is the most sacred. That is Meditation.” — J. Krishnamurti

Neuroscience can describe regular patterns within this relative appearance, but it cannot establish that the apparent physical brain creates the consciousness in which the brain itself appears. It remains part of the same human, temporal, dualistic framework it seeks to explain.

Time is likewise an apparent division. Memory creates the experienced past and anticipation creates the experienced future, while the mind takes their sequence to be an independently existing flow. Yet the present Now is not a moving point between two independently real regions; it is the immediate appearance of the timeless whole.

''... at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance'' - T. S. Eliot.

St. Augustine — The image of the circle is regarded as the most perfect form since Plato’s Timaeus. And because the macrocosm, the Great World, was made “in a form round and globose,” the smallest part of the whole—the point—also possesses this perfect nature. As St. Augustine says, “Of all the shapes the simplest and most perfect is the sphere, which rests in a point.”

The circle illustrates this: 0° and 360° are the same point. At 180°, movement appears to invert—from downward construction or creation to upward deconstruction or ending—but the circumference has never broken into two separate circles, nor into two opposing time frames. Similarly, consciousness does not literally divide into many separate selves. The apparent many are relative perspectives within one continuous whole.

From Cosmic Descent to Conscious Return

A Gurdjieff–Ouspensky-inspired interpretation of creation, human purpose, and redemption

Author’s note: This section is an interpretive reflection inspired by the cosmology recorded by P. D. Ouspensky in In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, presenting ideas associated with G. I. Gurdjieff. The Law of Three and the Ray of Creation belong to that source tradition. The connections made here—to the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Dark Ages; to the symbolism of Sun and Moon; and to a non-punitive account of spiritual development—are the author’s interpretation. AI assistance was used for organization, drafting, and editorial clarification.

This is my attempt to show that our relative existence is a creation within Reality—or God, if one likes. This is not offered as religious certainty or historical fact, but as a working metaphysical model for considering consciousness, creation, suffering, and human purpose.

From this perspective, cosmic descent and conscious return describe a single movement of relative Creation within the one Whole of Reality. The descent extends symbolically from 0° to 180°, while the conscious return extends from 180° to 360°. At 180° there is an inversion: finite, subjective human consciousness must choose between relationship and opposition. Opposition produces conflict within the human mind and, carried outward, war. Yet opposition cannot restore wholeness because it begins by mistaking a divided perspective for Reality itself.

Cosmic descent and conscious return are therefore the experience through which a creation may merge into the Trinity of the Godhead—that is, Reality. The short way is to become aware of who “I” am and who “I” am not. The long way is to let nature take its course. In either case, creation eventually returns because time is an illusion of finite nature. Mind depends upon memory, and memory constructs the apparent past and future while the Present is overlooked as merely the same old time.

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” — T. S. Eliot

“In this world opposites apply,
appearances lie, and
Truth is shy.”

Many people live within what might be called a relative reality: a world defined by changing thoughts, social roles, bodily survival, fear, pleasure, loss, and the apparent finality of death. These things are real at their own relative level, but they are a relatively dependent creation within ultimate Reality.

The Gurdjieff–Ouspensky cosmology offers a way of thinking about this problem. It proposes that creation proceeds from an original unity into increasingly complex and mechanical levels of existence. Human beings live near the lower end of this creative ray—not as worthless creatures, but as beings with the unusual possibility of becoming conscious participants in their own evolution.

The Absolute and Creation

At the highest level is the Absolute Reality: undivided being, consciousness, will, and creative potential. In the Gurdjieff–Ouspensky system, the Absolute is represented by the number 1, not because it is merely one object among many, but because it signifies unity.

Unity = the state of being One; the Whole or Totality combining all its parts into One—that is, the Complete.

Within this unity operate three fundamental forces: the active force, the passive force, and the neutralizing force. At the level of the Absolute these are not three separate gods, personalities, or wills. They are one whole action—the basis, perhaps, of why so many religious traditions speak in some form of a trinity.

Wholeness. Robert Lawlor explains it through phi: the Golden Proportion is the unique division that fulfills this characteristic: 1/phi + 1/phi squared = 1. This completes the mathematical metaphor for the Trinity: “Three that are Two that are One.” It is the ultimate reduction of proportional thought to the causal singularity. — From Robert Lawlor’s book Sacred Geometry

One = the Absolute—Creator. Two = the Relative—Creation. Three = the union of the Absolute and the Relative; that is, Creation within Creator: One that appears as No-thing, 0, but is Everything—One.

Creation is inherent in the Absolute. It is not necessarily a one-time event in which a distant deity makes a separate universe and then judges it from outside. Rather, creation may be understood as the Absolute expressing its own inner possibilities through differentiated worlds.

The Ray of Creation

As the original unity expresses itself, the three forces become progressively more divided. New worlds arise, and each new level is governed by a greater number of laws.

The traditional sequence is expressed as:

Absolute (1) → All Worlds (3) → All Suns (6) → Sun (12) → All Planets (24) → Earth (48) → Moon (96)

The numbers are not best understood as astronomical measurements. They indicate degrees of lawfulness, limitation, and mechanicalness. A world closer to the Absolute is governed by fewer laws and is more directly expressive of unity and conscious will. A world further from the Absolute is subject to more laws, more division, and more automatic processes.

This does not mean that Earth is evil. It means that Earth is difficult. We are situated in a realm where physical necessity, biological inheritance, emotion, habit, society, desire, fear, and mortality all exert pressure upon an inherently ignorant yet innocent conscious self. Its purpose is not self-indulgence, but the need to discriminate between Truth and one’s ignorance—an ignorance that can become either an ally or a demon, depending upon the choices one makes.

The Ages of Descent

One way to interpret this cosmology is through the ancient symbolism of successive ages: Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron/Dark. These need not be treated as literal historical dates. They can be understood as degrees of consciousness within creation and within the human being.

In this interpretation, the movement from the Absolute toward the Moon is a descent into multiplicity. The further consciousness enters material and psychological density, the easier it is to forget its origin—that is, to enter the sleep of ignorance.

The “Iron/Dark Age” is therefore not simply an era in the past or future. It is a condition of mind. It exists whenever a person lives entirely through impulse, fear, tribal identity, greed, resentment, imitation, and the unquestioned belief that the temporary personality is the whole self.

When the Moon Eclipses the Sun

The Sun may be taken as a symbol of direct, unifying, creative conscious awareness. The Moon may be taken as a symbol of reflected, repetitive, and conditioned consciousness—reflected sunlight.

When the Moon eclipses the Sun in the human being, the acquired mind becomes the apparent ruler and displaces the Heart of Compassionate Love, the primary source of being. Thoughts, memories, fears, desires, social conditioning, and bodily survival become mistaken for the entire person. A person says “I,” yet this “I” may shift continually: one moment afraid, the next ambitious, then angry, sentimental, ashamed, hopeful, or distracted.

This is why fear of death is so powerful. The personal self—the mind, the “I”—fears its own ending because it takes itself to be the totality of consciousness. But personality is only one aspect of a greater Reality. Therefore, its transformation—or even its dissolution—is not the destruction of all that one is.

The necessary death—an inner death of the mind’s false identification with the first-person pronoun “I”—is the recognition that the stream of reactive thought is not the ultimate knower, and that the ego’s demand to remain unchanged is not the voice of the whole being.

Ego = the first-person pronoun “I,” or the self of any person (ego is Latin for “I”).

“The Saint is a man who disciplines his ego. The Sage is a man who rids himself of his ego, ‘I.’ The Saint retains the illusion of a ‘me’ and lives inside his mirage. The Sage walks through this mirage and finds that there was no ‘me’ in reality.” — Wei Wu Wei, Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon

Original Ignorance, Not Original Sin

The Catholic doctrine of original sin is sometimes presented in a way that burdens human beings with inherited guilt: one is born fallen, guilty, and deserving of punishment before one has freely acted.

A more life-affirming interpretation would be original innocence or original ignorance. Human beings enter embodied life without full knowledge of what they are. They are born vulnerable, unfinished, suggestible, and subject to the laws of a dense material world that requires the personal self to learn about itself—to develop inner self-awareness alongside outer knowledge, becoming a balanced human being.

Ignorance can cause real harm. People who do not know themselves may act cruelly, selfishly, or destructively. Yet ignorance is not the same as eternal wickedness. Ignorance can be, as I have said, an ally or a demon, depending upon our human choices. It is a condition to be illuminated, educated, transformed, and eventually outgrown.

When the source of creation is truly unconditional Love, then eternal torment cannot be its final purpose. Correction may exist; consequences may exist; painful states may arise from ignorant/destructive action. But a Love that is truly absolute must ultimately aim at restoration, awakening, redemption, and the recovery of wholeness—not endless punishment.

Hell as a State

“Hell worlds” can be understood without imagining a deity who eternally tortures created beings.

Hell is the indulgence of ignorant conditions of increasing separation: separation from truth, from love, from conscience, from other beings, and from one’s own deeper possibility. It is a state in which unconscious habits become more dominant, fear becomes more compelling, and the person loses the capacity to see beyond appetite, anger, and self-protection.

In this sense, hell is an inner, self-imposed punishment created by one’s ignorance, not necessarily imposed from outside. A person may move toward it through persistent identification with hatred, cruelty, greed, dishonesty, or deliberate unconsciousness. The punishment is not arbitrary; it is the inner consequence of becoming fragmented.

Yet even such a state is not eternal. If Creation arises from an unconditional, loving God or Reality, then no being is beyond the possibility of return. The path back may be long, difficult, and require a complete transformation of one’s character—but it cannot be closed forever.

Human Purpose

Human beings occupy a peculiar place in creation. We are highly conditioned, yet capable of recognizing our conditioning. We are mortal, yet able to contemplate eternity. We are mechanically asleep in many ways, yet able—at least at moments—to choose attention, truthfulness, compassion, and conscious effort.

Our purpose may not be passive belief in a doctrine. It may be the gradual formation of a more real and unified being.

This work begins with simple but demanding acts:

• Observing oneself without immediately defending or condemning oneself.
• Recognizing mechanical reactions before acting from them.
• Questioning the assumption that every thought or emotion is “I.”
• Developing attention rather than living entirely in distraction.
• Accepting the reality of change rather than treating it as an enemy.
• Acting with conscience toward other beings.
• Seeking truth even when truth unsettles one’s self-image.

The goal is not to reject the body, emotions, mind, or ordinary life. These are instruments of embodied existence. The task is to stop treating any one of them as the whole of reality.

Three Directions

From this perspective, human existence presents three broad directions.

Conscious evolution is the path of awakening. A person develops greater attention, responsibility, integration, and compassion. They become less ruled by automatic reactions and more capable of participating consciously in creation.

Repetition is the path of sleep. A person may continue cycling through the same fears, desires, conflicts, and mistaken identities. Whether one understands this as repetition within a single lifetime, recurring psychological patterns, or reincarnational return, its meaning is similar: the lesson has not yet been learned.

Regression is the movement toward greater fragmentation. When a person repeatedly chooses cruelty, falsehood, hatred, or self-destruction, they may fall into states of being that resemble hell—not because they have been abandoned by God, but because they have increasingly abandoned truth and embraced self-deluding ignorance within themselves.

These paths are not merely future destinations. They are present movements. At any moment, a person can move slightly toward wakefulness, remain in repetition, or deepen identification with unconsciousness.

The Return to Unity

The deepest spiritual task may be to remember that the isolated personality is not the final reality. We arise within creation, take on form, become divided, forget our source, and are given the possibility of conscious return.

This return is not a flight away from the world. It is a transformation of how one exists in the world. The person who begins to awaken does not become less human; they become more fully human. They learn to use thought without being imprisoned by thought, to feel without being ruled by feeling, and to face mortality without confusing it with ultimate annihilation—the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into a butterfly.

The Ray of Creation can therefore be read as both a map of cosmic descent and a map of inner work. The same movement that carries consciousness outward into multiplicity also makes possible a return toward unity—not by denying the world, but by becoming conscious within it.

Sources

Ouspensky, P. D. In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1949. See especially the discussions of the Law of Three, the Ray of Creation, the Absolute, and the sequence of worlds represented by 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, and 96.

P. D. Ouspensky — In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching — Read the PDF

A book about the relationship between the student P. D. Ouspensky and his teacher, G. I. Gurdjieff. It is best read in book form and over a long period so that its ideas can be digested. I suggest first choosing the chapter that interests you most, then continuing until you either want to read the entire book or decide it is not for you. It is best read once, then again a year or so later; each time, more may be understood.

Aloha — Supertramp, “The Logical Song” — Listen on YouTube

“When you grow up, your heart dies.” — Ally Sheedy, The Breakfast Club