Commonsense Realism and the Ego

Commonsense realism is a profoundly important concept that impacts on all subjects. It is central to The Scientific Case Against Materialism and The Mystic Meaning of Original Sin is essentially that "Commonsense realism IS the original sin". It is the root cause of all delusion (which is the real meaning of 'sin'), the first of which is the ego, which then forms the centre of a whole world of delusion (maya or samsara). Without understanding commonsense realism we cannot truly understand the ego (see these articles for a systemic perspective on the ego).

In each moment of awareness commonsense realism blinds us to reality and causes us to dwell in a fantasy land that is constructed from false beliefs within our own minds that we unquestioning mistake for the external objective world. With our thoughts we construct a subjective experiential world with the ego as the main fictional character at its centre and commonsense realism causes us to confuse this as being the objective reality. I have discussed commonsense realism in the above articles but I'll go into more detail about it and its relation to the ego here.

Firstly, the word 'truth' as I use it is "that which is" and any truth that is known/spoken is just a cognitive/cultural reflection of the underlying truth. In a recent post to the Discussions of Truth forum of the Raising the World Mind workgroup, Jim Whitescarver says:

>>Humanity lacks the authority to postulate the nature of truth.
>>"May I find those seeking truth, but deliver me from those who have found it."
>>Indeed, being and discovering higher truth are one.
>>Yet, we are alone in our knowledge of truth as truth is relative.

I would also add:

From Taoism: "The Way that can be spoken is not the eternal Way."
From Christianity: When asked "What is truth?" Christ replied "I am the truth."

But what is it that separates the actual truth (that which is) from the relative truth (that which we know)?

It is commonsense realism, also called naive realism!

In a reply to Jim's post Gabriel Guevara says:

> I theorize that on the most fundamental level our "reality" as we like to
> call it may be based upon the power of thought! In order for consciousness
> to inhabit a flesh-and-blood body it must be able to interact with the body.
> The law of physics states that "energy" must be involved in order to affect this
> reality, so our "thoughts" as we think of them must exhibit a form of energy.
> You follow this to its final conclusion and you find that consciousness forms reality.

All the greatest mystics for thousands of years have been saying much the same thing:
But let me pose a few questions:

Does consciousness inhabit a flesh-and-blood body?
Does the body actually exist separate from our perception of it through the medium of consciousness?
Or is it just an object of perception that we unthinkingly assume to exist "out there"?
Does the concept of "out there" even make sense?

The answer to these questions depends on understanding commonsense realism!

Also Matthew Webb says:

"Rather than actually being material, consumer society is really EGOTISTICAL. People waste their lives on such Enquirer nonsense as high-heeled shoes, neckties and reputations, not because they truly value objects or even life itself, but because they have egotistical images to uphold. Mind you, the image has little to nothing to do with the real person underneath. The ultimate mistake in the social setting is honesty…if you want to speak to the modern person, talk to their projected image, not their true selves! For this reason people spend most of their waking moments fixated obsessively upon how other people perceive them, and THIS REASON ALONE is why they commit slow suicide hoping to impress that imaginary crowd inside their heads. Meanwhile, everyone else is doing the same and not really paying attention. It’s all just an absurd game played for the sake of false ideas of the self, and every living thing on the planet suffers for it... The future is of no real concern to those who secretly hate their lives, and who commit suicide in ever more creative ways, to pass the time with as little pain as possible... Consumerism is like a religion. It asks you to, “have faith” and never mind the details…our priests in suit and tie have everything under control for everyone’s benefit, or so the official story goes. But actually, society is out of control in every way, and everybody secretly knows it. It’s based upon the wrong values of greed and egotism where no one can really trust anyone, (and for good reason as almost no one stands for anything). It is essentially EVIL and mindless, for there is one simple question it can never afford to ask, one that will remain unanswered for all time. That question is the simple, “WHY”? There is no reasonable answer to the questions, “WHY must the natural world be increasingly destroyed for the sake of profit”? “WHY must people buy and go on buying things they don’t need, and only for the sake of “impressing others”, while the world dies and billions live in misery”? “WHY must wars rage for the sake of international piracy and in the name of hypocritical ideology”? Believe me, you wont find even one person out of ten thousand who has the guts to tackle these questions…"

The answer to this question of WHY? is commonsense realism!

To explain I'll quote some passages from my latest e-book The Gaian-Ego Hypothesis, soon to be released:

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An example of commonsense realism manifesting in humans is when we look at something and we believe we are objectively seeing "out there" and that the mind is grasping the "things as they are" but what is actually happening is that information flows through the senses, it is subconsciously filtered and interpreted to form a cognitive impression based upon our prior beliefs, agendas and values, which is presented to the conscious mind. The conscious mind succumbs to commonsense realism and believes that the cognitive impression is actually "the world" that objectively exists "out there". So when we see a chair we unquestioningly believe that the chair exists exactly as we see it; we don't think to question this beyond taking a second look, which gives exactly the same subjective impression. Thus "with our thoughts we make the world" (Buddha), which is a subjective experiential construct that we respond to as if it is an objective external reality. The ego is the perceived centre of that world around which we structure all of our values, agendas and fears. The ego, its delusions and "the world" have no absolute existence beyond our cognitive impressions. There is definitely something that is real underlying those impressions but it is not what we think it is; that is the illusion.

It is more accurate to describe reality as a unified quantum field or a transcendent information process or as spirit-in-motion. There is a unified non-material reality generative process that is like a cosmic field of consciousness. The world we experience is composed of the objects of sense perception that are formed by the mind into an experiential space - but underlying this - consciousness flowing within us is the substance of the mind and consciousness flowing outside us is the substance of what we call the universe.

Perception and cognition in all systems is a highly flexible, adaptable and non-linear process where the mind is both the seer and the lens. The mind looks through the lens of its own ideas, which change based on what is seen, thus changing the lens, thus changing what is seen and so on. So the contents of awareness, what we call "the world", is only stimulated by reality but is in fact composed of the contents of one's mind. The mind is metaphorically like a puppet made up of beliefs, thoughts and expectations and all we ever experience is our own mind dancing about as reality pulls its strings. If the puppet is very agitated by desires, aversions, fears and agendas, only a small tug from reality may cause it to dance wildly or perhaps a huge tug will elicit a barely perceptible response. By mistaking this mind-puppet for reality we make constant and grievous errors of judgement. By stilling and clarifying the mind we can better discern and respond to the stimuli of reality, thereby participating more harmoniously within reality.

Because of the uncertainty of the relationship between our objects of perception and the underlying reality human ideas such as the world, objects, people, places, events and so on, and collective ideas such as terrorism, strategic threats, economy, industry, society and so on, are only useful metaphors for referring to aspects of cognitive impressions. One must be careful that one doesn't naïvely believe that they exist "out there" objectively exactly how they appear to be because they are purely subjective responses to the underlying reality and not the reality itself.

In truth, beyond the mind made world there is no such thing as "out there", there are no objects or industries. The idea of objects in space operating via mechanistic forces has been clearly shown, by quantum physics, to be a commonsense realist belief system without any basis in objective reality. Beyond these subjective impressions there is the ongoing process of the real, which we don't really understand but which we can attune to and align with if we open and clarify our minds and let go of our delusions. We cannot totally understand it with our minds but we can align with it because we are it, beyond our impressions of ourselves we too are that deeper reality.

The only reality our minds can be sure of is consciousness or awareness itself because that is the medium within which all the objects of awareness are made manifest. We know awareness exists but the objects of awareness are just subjective reflections within awareness that have an unreliable relation to reality that depends on the nature of perception and the contents and stability of our minds. This awareness can only be found 'within' via deep introspection, by not solely focusing on the objects of awareness and chasing after egoic agendas but by focusing on awareness itself. All that we think is "out there" can be said to really exist 'within' but in truth there is no inner and outer, there is only the 'dance' of existence.

The ego creates a centre and the senses create a circumference and these divide reality into inner and outer, but without the ego there is only the vast field of existence. This can be explained metaphorically by the idea of a VR universe that is occupied by AI beings. Here everything is formed from the flux of information and computation is the cosmic consciousness, which flows to create a virtual world that contains virtual systems that experience that virtual world. When the information flows within it manifest consciousness and when it flows from 'outside' through the senses it creates the experience of an external 'physical universe'. But in reality there is only a transcendent information process and all concepts on inner and outer only arise in the minds of the virtual beings. The VR world seems tangible and material to the virtual beings because it is as real as they are - but everything is ultimately the flow of cosmic consciousness or spirit-in-motion.

The senses perceive boundaries and the mind makes divisions between spaces and through commonsense realism we come to believe in the reality of those divisions. There is a vast network of systems engaged in intricate interactions that make up the body of the cosmos, and the senses identify a boundary between 'I' and 'other', but different senses would perceive a different boundary, and a mind that knows the network of systems can only identify the cosmos as a whole because there is no arbitrary boundary. Similarly, there may be just an open landscape but a nationalist ego arises and arbitrarily creates an inner and outer by defining borders. The egoic mind creates these arbitrary divisions and this tendency of the mind is the source of all dualities, especially the dualities of mind and matter or self and other. These are just ideas with which we unthinkingly fill gaps in our understanding and matter is just the objects of sense perception which we project into the idea of external material objects. In this manner commonsense realism is the root of all duality, of all ignorance, of all delusion, which is what we call 'evil' and of all suffering.

This is very simple psychology and information systems theory, stripped of all pre-conceived beliefs and taken seriously. Whilst it is really very simple the implications are profound. Overcoming commonsense realism destroys all delusion and gives clear perception and understanding of reality but commonsense realism is not trivial to overcome. It is a fundamental aspect of being a system and our succumbing to it is a deeply engrained habit that has been reinforced by billions of years of evolution. But with sincere effort, self-honesty and introspective self-awareness it can be unravelled very quickly or worn down very methodically, depending on one's nature and state of readiness and commitment.
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The standard method of overcoming commonsense realism is to practice the process of letting the impressions arise whilst not believing in their separate reality, this is meditation. Or like with jnana yoga one can subtly enquire into it until one 'sees' through it. Jnana yoga (yoga of supreme knowledge) can be rapid for those that are ready for it - leading to sudden penetrative insight, whilst meditation is a slower way but easier to approach. There are many ways of tackling it but it's a deeply ingrained habit so just knowing about it intellectually isn't enough to stop oneself from doing it. One needs to get down to its subconscious roots and uproot it from one's mind.

Coming back to the question: Does consciousness inhabit a flesh-and-blood body? Does the body actually exist separate from our perception of it through the medium of consciousness? And also the issue of: Where does spirit fit into all this? The answers should be clear from the above discussion but to make things explicit I'll quote some of a recent comment I made here on NCN regarding Body, Mind and Spirit:

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All the deepest mystic wisdom and much of cutting-edge science suggests that the underlying reality is the intricate flux of a non-material essence that is a unified cosmic resonance. Some call it spirit or transcendent information or a unified quantum field but the implication is that it is the deeper reality and what many people call reality is the cognitive reflections of the deeper reality.

The flux of spirit manifests forms such as that which underlies what we perceive as "the body", the flow of spirit within that system is experienced as consciousness. The deepest level of pure consciousness is the universal flow of spirit that transpersonally permeates the cosmos. But within the body there are more localised patterns in the flow and these are experienced as the mind. The mind experiences itself and perceives the body and thinks 'I' and thus the ego arises. This ego looks out on a world that is perceptually 'wrapped' around the 'I-thought' and it interprets everything from that perspective.

From this egoic perspective people develop their understanding of the body as an object in space within a world of 'others' and thus the whole 'normal' world comes into being. Although the deeper reality is an intricate flux of spirit, it gives rise to cognitive reflections that are interpreted as a physical universe and a human social world of objects, people, places and events.

It is within this interpretive scheme that most people believe themselves to be born, to live and to die. That is a real and useful interpretation but in the underlying reality there is only the timeless flux of spirit. Those who understand themselves thus know that they are the timeless and all-pervading cosmic spirit and there is no birth or death.

As Ramana Maharshi puts it:

"What is it that had birth? Whom do you call a human being? If, instead of seeking explanations for birth, death and after-death, the question is raised as to who and how you are now, these questions will not arise...

The body is born again and again. We wrongly identify ourselves with the body, and hence imagine we are reincarnated constantly. No. We must identify ourselves with the true Self. The realised one enjoys unbroken consciousness, never broken by birth or death - how can he die? Only those who think 'I am the body' talk of reincarnation. To those who know 'I am the Self' there is no rebirth.

Reincarnations only exist so long as there is ignorance. There is no incarnation, either now, before or hereafter. This is the truth." (Sri Ramana Maharshi)

And Nisargadatta Maharaj puts it:

“The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment. The real you is timeless and beyond birth and death. The body will survive as long as it is needed. It is not important that it should live long.” (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

I come to this understanding too from the angle of information system theory but the parallels with mystic wisdom are no accident. Thinking of reality as an information process is equivalent to thinking of it as a spiritual process. Both are non-material and universal, they both give rise to an inner flow that perceives outer forms and both have a transcendent reality generative process that creates a context in which objects in space and time seem to arise.

Coming back to your comment "Mind is part in body and part in spirit" I agree and I think it is because all is spirit, where the mind is a high level experience of consciousness which is how we experience spirit and the body is how the mind perceives the spirit through the senses, i.e. as matter. The entire cosmos is spirit in motion, both within us and outside us. When it flows within it is experienced as consciousness and when it flows outside it is experienced as matter. But the concepts of inner and outer are constructs of the mind and in reality it is all an intricate flux of spirit. The ego creates a centre and the senses create a circumference and these divide reality into inner and outer, but without the ego there is only the vast field of existence.
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I discuss these matters in great detail (over 150 pages) in the e-book An Information Systems Analysis of Mind, Knowledge, 'the World' and Holistic Science, it's shorter informal title is "The Red Pill".

But what is the detailed connection between commonsense realism and the individual and collective ego? Here is another passage from the e-book...

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The ego is the I-thought, the sense of individual 'self'. It is inherently both an individual and collective phenomenon; it is the bridge between a collective of individuals and an individual collective. So the concept of “Individual and Collective Egos” contains a bit of a word conflict. This arises from the inherent systemic parochialism of our language. We experience ourselves as individuals and we experience organisations as collectives of individuals so that is what those terms refer to, however we ourselves are cellular collectives and organisations form individual identities. So in truth both are individual and collective at the same time.

The nature of an ego is to not know itself "as it is" it can only know things based on the information that is available to it through the senses and mind and interpret this based upon its knowledge and beliefs. Hence it is in the nature of the ego to be totally ignorant of the depth and breadth of its ignorance although it assumes that it knows things with certainty.

Although the ego thinks 'I' it is not the real being. The mind is a kind of cognitive software; a control system by which the whole organism integrates and engages in collective behaviour and when the mind perceives the organism through the senses and thinks 'I', and this I-thought confuses the life of the whole organism as "its life" then the ego is born. Similarly, government/economy is cultural software; a control system by which the whole society integrates and engages in collective behaviour and when the government/economy perceives the society through its 'senses' and thinks 'I', and this I-thought confuses the life of the whole nation as "its life" then the collective ego is born.

Both are based upon fundamental perceptual illusions and taking the human ego as the principal reality and ignoring the reality of the organism is like taking a fascist regime as the principal reality and ignoring the reality of the nation. Both of these confusions lead to internal suffering and dysfunction. There is a degree of reality in each but it is a reflected and distorted reality.

Each egoic structure is a memeplex [FR], one within the mind and the other within a culture. "These vast memeplexes, with their varied means of propagation, form the very stuff of our lives. Yet there is one memeplex, perhaps the most powerful of all, that we readily overlook. That is our own familiar self. Like other animals, we have a body image--a plan of our body used for organising sensations and planning skilled actions. We also have, as some other animals do, the ability to recognise other individuals and understand that they, too, have desires and plans. So far so good--but now we add the capacity to imitate, the use of language and the word "I"." [FR]

The mind is primarily focused outward, that is the way it evolved because that is where the food, mates and threats are. In ourselves the ego is a thought construct that looks primarily outward into "the world" through the senses and mind. When it discerns the body it knows it primarily as an object in the world and only secondarily through inner awareness. Because of this outward focus the ego comes to know the 'other' first and it only comes to know itself as it is reflected in the world.

If a baby has a loving and caring mother the ego comes to feel good about itself, but if the mother neglects it or is abusive the ego feels bad about itself. This underlying feeling about itself forms the basis of its self image, the foundation upon which all other self-knowledge is built; in this way the ego grows. If the foundation is disturbed the entire structure of the ego will be disturbed. Indeed if any one level of growth is disturbed all subsequent levels are disturbed.

A baby looks out upon the mother and the world and forms its first self-image from that and only later discerns its body as separate from the mother and the world and only later comes to discern its inner sensations if at all; most people are very unaware of these inner sensations throughout their entire lives. The collective ego looks out on the political and economic scene, which is harsh and hostile and forms its first self-image from that and later, through its various information gathering agencies, it discerns the society that underlies it and constitutes its 'body' and only later, if at all, it senses within and discerns the actual state of its body; i.e. the collective mood or conscience of the society that doesn't necessarily show up in the social or economic statistics.

The ego cannot truly understand itself without great focus and introspection, which is meditation. In its natural state the ego knows nothing about the body, mind and ego, but it instinctively knows how to control the body and mind to some degree and uses that knowledge to pursue its agendas. The ego is primarily focused outward and becomes an expert on its subjective experience of the world, which it confuses for actually being the world. This confusion of subjective with objective is the essence of "commonsense realism" (also called naïve realism), which is the assumption that one actually perceives and experiences things "as they are" rather than just experiencing a subjective cognitive impression formed from information entering one's senses and mind and interpreted according to one's knowledge and beliefs. Within the scope of its perceptions and thoughts about its 'world' it forms desires, aversions, agendas and values. But without understanding its body, senses and mind it has no true knowledge; it only assumes it does, which is also a hallmark of commonsense realism.

The collective ego forming in our midst only knows what its crudely evolved senses and mind tell it; its various agencies and bureaucracies gather information and process it, forming organisational impressions, attitudes, strategies and policies. These are all that the collective ego has to operate on. When it looks upon its body it cannot discern we humans and the physical landscape; its 'sight' consists of census data, economic data and so on. This is all that it knows about us. Just as most humans know nothing about the cells that comprise them the collective ego knows nothing about us. Millions of people can suffer and die but this is only data that the ego can ignore if its not in its interests to take notice. If significant portions of society such as industries or government agencies are destroyed then the ego experiences pain and loses functionality so it carefully guards these but the masses are largely superfluous to the ego. Our suffering is just a scratch that it can block out if it wishes.

In many people's lives the body can be wracked with tension and discomfort, but it seems okay to their narrow awareness and the ego is so focused on using the body to pursue its agendas that it is oblivious to the growing suffering in the body. So too a government can be so focused on using the nation to pursue its agendas and all the social and economic data seem okay or can be adjusted so that they seem okay, but there is growing suffering throughout the society that it is totally oblivious to. Only when there is serious breakdown in some vital sector does it stop and pay brief attention, but only enough so that things 'seem' okay again within its limited understanding. This leads to growing and spreading dysfunction that can eventually lead to systemic breakdown. If the person or government had greater introspective awareness and sensitivity they would not engage in such self-destructive behaviour and would have a much healthier, more vital and longer life.

Furthermore, collective egos don't have a loving mother to raise them, they often arise alone in a hostile political environment, perhaps with allies but still not loving parents. They often develop a traumatised and negative self-image that leads to many psychoses and brutal behavioural traits. They are also intrinsically crude and newly evolved having only tens of thousands of years to refine themselves whereas we organisms have had over 550 million years since the Cambrian Explosion in which we arose from out of the single-cellular ecosystem. Prior to that there were only single cells for billions of years but there was a sudden explosion of creativity that was sparked of by a new kind of single cell that was capable of more intricate communication, hence interaction, hence integration and hence organisation, thereby eventually leading to cellular civilisations such as ourselves.

In our own case the gradual development of economics is the growth of the system of feedback and control that links the ego with its body. The technologies of communication and computation have accelerated the growth of the collective ego leading to the pervasive reach of economics into every aspect of our lives. The collective ego now has the potential to have full control over its body by monitoring and controlling every aspect of our lives and harnessing our activity into coordinated metabolic processes that respond solely to its will. That is why in recent decades we have seen a massive growth in collective coordination and the collective ego has extended its reach into our lives and minds, conditioning all of us and integrating us into its body. This is what I call The Second Cambrian Explosion.
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Commonsense realism doesn't just plague individual humans - it plagues all complex systems that engage in perception, interpretation and response. This means that organisations also succumb to it and just as it leads to the ego in humans so too can organisations form egos (as I discuss in The Gaian-Ego Hypothesis). Just as the ego is the ultimate source of all delusion and dysfunction in humans the collective ego is the ultimate source of all delusion and dysfunction in society and the world at large. Just as meditation and jnana can overcome commonsense realism and the ego in humans it can also be adapted into collective strategies to combat collective commonsense realism and the collective ego. These strategies are discussed in Collective Meditation to Counter the Collective Ego.

Best Wishes :)
John Ringland