Existential Mechanics, Holographic Approaches & Self-Transcendence from Huping Hu's blog

In the first article "Introduction to Existential Mechanics: How the Relations of Existence to Itself Create the Structure of Reality and What We Experience as Reality", Steven E. Kaufman "presents a general description of how the iterative relations of Existence to Itself create two different realities; 1) Realties that are composed of Existence as it is being in relation to Itself, which Realties or Relational Structures, taken together, make up the Structure of Reality, and; 2) realities that are not composed of Existence, but are created where Existence becomes defined in relation to Itself as a result of being in relation to Itself, and which realities or relative existences are the most proximal basis of what Existence apprehends as experience. Thus, Existence is described as that which, through relation to Itself, creates out of Itself the Structure of Reality and is also described as that which apprehends as experiential reality the products of its relations to Itself that are not composed of Itself. Ultimately, what we call Consciousness, i.e., that which apprehends experience, is shown to be not other than Existence that is involved in some relation with Itself and creating a relative existence as a result, which relative existence the Existence involved in that relation must then apprehend as experience."

In the second article "Existential Mechanics Part I: The Three Progressive Levels of Reality and Experience", Kaufman presents "the three different types of experience that we apprehend, i.e., emotional, mental, and physical, are each related to one of the three different and progressive levels of Realty or Relational Structure that emerge as a result of the iterative process of Existential self-relation." He states "what is presented is a description of how Existence evolves into different levels of Reality composed of different Relational Structures, while at the same time creating at each level of Reality a distinct type of relative existence apprehended by the Existence involved in those relations as a distinct and particular type of experience."

In the third article "Existential Mechanics Part II: The Big Picture; The Relation Between the Structure of Reality and What We Experience as Reality", Kaufman presents "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, He describes the Relational Structure of Reality "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."

In his fourth article "Existential Mechanics Part III: The Creation of Experience by the Individual", Kaufman describes "the limitations that are inherent in the Individual’s creation of experience, both within a given level of Reality and between levels of Reality, owing to the nature of experience as being the product of a relation in which the Individual that is apprehending the experience must always be involved." Also described by Kaufman "is the reason that positive emotion is associated with a feeling of connection, while negative emotion is associated with a feeling of disconnection. And finally an experiment is presented that any Individual can perform in order to demonstrate and prove to themsel[ves] their ability to control the quality of what they create as emotional experience.

In her article "Holographic Trans-disciplinary Framework of Consciousness: An Integrative Perspective", Tamar Levin proposes "an integrative framework for conceptualizing human consciousness and compliments it with existing research data." Her framework "is based on the holographic and trans-disciplinary worldviews and their implied implicate-explicate order and the holographic knowing-becoming-experiencing-valuing human being who interacts interdependently with/within different levels of reality." The framework "conceptualizes universal consciousness as a fundamental part of reality/universe that complements physical potentialities and brings them to actual physical states. It regards human consciousness as both structure and system, state and process, means and end, experience, information and energy, having a metaphysical /spiritual /implicit /implicate layer and a physical/ material /explicit and / explicate layer expressed via biological, chemical, and physical processes." Levin also considers "human consciousness as incorporating inward-outward 'space' processes and a backward-forward 'time' system's view expressin/influencing different modes of thinking, feeling, and behaving, and personal and transpersonal elements." Her framework "focuses on the unique functions, and interactions in heart-soul and brain-mind relations and their effects on states of consciousness. The subjective nature of consciousness is conceptualized in terms of the essence of individuality manifested by the root of the soul, the genetic spiritual-DNA code, and the individual's historic evolution through different life-cycles."

In his article "Cells, Neurons, and Qualia: The Holographic Strange Attractor Model", Claudio Messori presents a "biophysical model to interpret biological, neurological and psychic phenomena is presented, in a quantum-relativistic key." He attributes a central role "to the concept of Spin in explaining space-time geometry as well as the genesis of energetic and sub-energetic phenomena." Messori also consider energy "in relation to both its vectorial and scalar components." He states that the "dynamic of cells, neurons and qualia is ascribed to the field of nonlinear transient systems of a chaotic kind, and explained in the light of the syntropic action of a quasi-virtual object known as a HoSA (Holographic Strange Attractor)." In conclusion, Messori assigns "an epigenetic and relativistic location...to the mental fact, thought, and consciousness."

In his article "Transcending the Shamed Self", Gary Schouborg contributes to the "understanding self-transcendence" He "provides an account of my personal experience of transcending my shamed self. This requires explaining the kind of self and shame involved. In mystical literature, the consciousness that remains after self-transcendence is sometimes called the Self or non-ego, in contrast to the self or ego, which is the empirical, executive self of ordinary consciousness and functioning. The self includes specific selves that play distinctive roles in various contexts. The specific self transcended in my personal experience was the shamed self, one that was experiencing the self-rejecting emotion of shame. Ordinary discourse as well as philosophical and empirical research often employ the term shame[GMN1] generically while failing to distinguish among at least eight closely related emotions: shyness; embarrassment; fear of rejection; feeling exposed, vulnerable, inferior, or unfulfilled; and self-rejection—shame in the strict sense, the emotion caused by my self-evaluation that I do not deserve love, even my own. The article proceeds in six parts: a summary introduction; a phenomenological account of shame; a phenomenological account of my personal experience of shame; a phenomenological account of my personal experience of transcending my shamed self; a phenomenological account of the aftermath; and an outline of a naturalistic explanation of my self-transcendence. Throughout the article, the term Self refers to an embodied, observing Self that avoids overly identifying with any aspect or function of the self, rather than an ontologically disembodied entity that transcends nature."

Huping Hu & Maoxin Wu

Dated: November 22, 2011