May
23
Yes: my two observers trying to measure a moving rod while they are themselves moving at differing velocities. That is the relativism of the instrument. But take, let us say, a man who is a Russian vegetarian pacifist and a woman who is an Italian Catholic conservative, each trying to understand Sir John’s story. None of it will mean the same to both of them. That is the relativism of consciousness, of the nervous system itself.
But the nervous system, mein Gott, is the instrument which reads all other instruments.
So, then: precisely as my physicists in the elevator can never tell, from within the elevator, whether the downward force is gravity or inertia, so, too, no two persons can tell, from within their nervous systems, what presumed external source provides the signals they receive. Which is why, of course, the atheist and the occultist can argue forever, without either ever convincing the other. We are trapped, trapped, trapped by our ideas, forever in the position of the five blind men and the elephant. The rules of our neurological chess game determine the form or context with which we frame each new signal. The player on the other side, as Huxley said, is hidden from us. Robert Anton Wilson, “Masks of the Illuminati”
But the nervous system, mein Gott, is the instrument which reads all other instruments.
So, then: precisely as my physicists in the elevator can never tell, from within the elevator, whether the downward force is gravity or inertia, so, too, no two persons can tell, from within their nervous systems, what presumed external source provides the signals they receive. Which is why, of course, the atheist and the occultist can argue forever, without either ever convincing the other. We are trapped, trapped, trapped by our ideas, forever in the position of the five blind men and the elephant. The rules of our neurological chess game determine the form or context with which we frame each new signal. The player on the other side, as Huxley said, is hidden from us. Robert Anton Wilson, “Masks of the Illuminati”
