Free Your Mind: Conceiving in Noumenal Reality

“They say a good thing never lasts and that it has to fall. Those are the people that did not amount to much at all.”

--Madonna

One problem, sometimes what I think to be the most fundamental difficulty people have with how they deal with life and most crucial of all intellectual errors, is that of failing to ever conceive and apply what I will call (to borrow from Immanuel Kant) ‘noumenal’ or ‘metaphysical intelligence': as Kant would define it: 'the ability to see a thing in and of itself,' or the ability to see a thing in terms of absolute reality; the absolute reality of a thing, that being--its metaphysics.

Plato would ask something to the effect of:

‘Is the reality you see before you, the real version of reality that exists?’

I would phrase this question a bit more like:

‘Is the reality we see as it exists right now, the version of reality it is designed to be?’

And:

‘Is the reality we see, as it exists right now, the version that it could be?’

If we conclude that many different outcomes to every situation is possible, we must also conclude (that since reality is nothing more than an amalgam of a large number of, if not, infinite number of situations) -- that reality as it exists presently is only one version of many possible realities.

And if this is only one version of reality, then we must ask the question in every given situation: Is this the version of this situation everything that it could be? Is this situation everything that it should be?

In my life I have asked the question: what do I want most, period? Or: what are my highest values?

Upon concluding that a rap sheet of a top 10 existed to me that put me in utter bliss, I also determined that since these values didn’t hurt anybody that I was justified in wanting them.

This conclusion alone allowed me to evade unsuccessful relationships, the slavery of the 9 to 5 work life, among many, many other important actions I would have otherwise been trapped in. I am now an artist and entrepreneur, that which I have always wished to be.

So now what?

Something else from my experience, another concept that helped me get to where I am spiritually, is the notion of noumenal reality.

For example, from the perspective of politics, if we to conclude that the version of political democracy that exists in our society today, is the only version possible, we are no doubt doomed to extinction --and I mean not merely even one nation or another, but the human race--, since the nature of our politics is so intensely self –defeating.

For the same reason you must ask yourself: Is the version of me the real version that exists (could exist) or does exist in essence in your ‘core’-the version of you that you want to be?

By noumenal then, I mean something different but along the same lines as Kant: The integrated culmination of ‘could’ ‘would’ and ‘should’ into one word and concept.

When we see a pretty or handsome face we are facing noumenal reality because physical beauty is the culmination of all the good features of the hundreds of millions if not billions of possible combinational outcomes of a single face.

If you can imagine someone turning to you while looking at a really ugly face and saying "Wow, she's beautiful!" What would your reaction be? Not the politically correct reaction that clamps down onto your mind within a mili-second of your initial thought, but that initial thought, that initial feeling--what would it be?

Disgust?

Probably. And if you can conclude this, you can see noumenal reality at work. Not ideal reality per se, but that which could be, should be, all in one.

The way in which this has helped me has been in evaluating life from a multifaceted perspective. Rather than seeing a thing for what it appears to be, I continually ask the question: how many versions of this thing can there be? After literally listing every single major version I can think of, I usually come to a better perspective about that thing to say the very least.

For example, my life has been comprised of a conflict between ideals and reality in such a particular way as to emphasize loss, great loss, the loss of my mother at an early age among many others close to me. But what would I be without those experiences, without the dynamic of the clash between loss and triumph? Answer: if there are no ashes to rise out of, then what is the good of rising?

To get a bit more complex and apply the idea properly so you get the essence of what I'm identifying, try to apply the face analogy to life. That is, see your experiences as an organic amalgam of thousands of variables coming together, like a pretty face that has maybe 20 or 30 major aspects and thousands of sub-aspects that comprise it.

Life situations and who are, are the same way.

To see life in absolute form, we must take all the possibilities we can think of and manage within our minds, and integrate them, leaving only those things that would be the same under all conditions we imagine.

To get a better view of this, imagine you're at a party, there are many people there. It's your birthday, all your friends are there and everyone's getting tipsy. You feel the excitement of people being there. Everyone you know is the result of the years you've spent on Earth, the values and virtues, along with the effort you've put into life and here is a tangible form of a good representation of the essence of this particular outcome. What brought you to this point? Was it your looks? The fact that you're nice to people, your intelligence etc.? Are there overriding factors to it, or is it merely an arithmetic total sum?

I remember having a party, a birthday party when I had reached 16. It was great, so many more people came than I thought would want to come. One of my friends turned to me and said: "Wow, this is a great party!" It meant so much to me that at the time, the love of my life and the girl I'd been dating for a year, was there and I could be proud to see her interact with people.

What is the 'absolute reality' of that 16th birthday party?

I've always seen my friends as a reaction to who I was, and in effect, pieces of me, reflecting on me, looking back at me...I tried to imagine life if I hadn't met that first love, that one party, just without that one experience. And suddenly it came to me with the fullest of luminous, concrete clarity: I saw ten or twelve people huddled around my dinner table...having fun, yes, but not with half the zeal and glory of the actual party.

There were many of the same factors there: smart people talking about smart things, sharing ideas, thoughts on movies, etc... But the room was darker, there were candles instead of full lights on, and things felt more subdued, like something was missing.

I then assessed the party on many other conditions. One of them was having different 'loves' there. Each time, the party changed significantly, but mostly in terms of sense and character. In one thought-experiment I did, the party was without my friends, or with different friends... After doing many thought-experiments I came to a set of prevailing factors. The love of my life at that time, this girl was the main factor that changed the scenario the most, that and my friends, family much more than any circumstantial possibility such as not having Mr. Jackson as my 9th grade English teacher, who taught me so much about the value of linguistics, for example, are what made the party what it was.

Life is this party. We are all participants in it. It will not last, as Prince says "Life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last.."

Imagination is the mental process of generating progressively differing outcomes to static occurrences and phenomena. Without this ability, life too is as static as one happening without your intervention.

Our values the things that matter, are possible to us. If we see reality for what it could be or what it wasn't, both are of merit in seeing reality from different angles in order to really know what we want out of life.

That which is the same under all possible conditions, 'in all possible worlds,' --is the 'core' of you or anything you encounter. It is the core, I believe, that one must strive for in their lives, and see in reality.

At that point, your life decisions I think you will find, will suddenly exist on a totally new and different level.

In other words when we look at reality as it is right now we are only looking at fragments of that which really in this sense—is.

What fragment of yourself are you currently unlocking? What fragments of other people do you accept without question?

Are you even one iota of what you are capable?

To state a very true cliché—Free Your Mind.