You Are Not Book.indb - Stephen H. Wolinsky Ph. D.

26 / You Are Not
GO BACk THE WAY YOU CAME
Pick an object in the room. Withdraw your attention backward
prior to any knowledge or information or impressions
“you” have about the object. So “you” are looking from back
“there.” Look at a person; withdraw your attention backward
prior to any thoughts, impressions, knowledge, or information
that “you” have about the person. Look at any person
in the room and withdraw your attention backward prior
to any thoughts, any ideas, any knowledge, any information
or impressions “you” have of that person. “Look” eyes open,
“look.” Oftentimes, people found that when they looked at
someone from “back there,” the person began to look less
formed, lost their boundaries. It is because your ideas about
them are not them. When “you” “look” through ideas, “you”
are not seeing them; “you” are seeing your ideas about them;
your information, your impressions about them. When “I”
am not seeing “you,” “I” am seeing “my” ideas about “you,”
and “I” don’t even know that “I” am seeing “my” ideas about
“you,” and not “you.” Moreover, “I” see only my ideas and
representations of this “I” or “me,” which means “I” don’t see
“you” and “I” don’t see “me.” It relates to abstracting, which is
automatic. Going back the way you came is going the other
way, so everything just “becomes” the way it is.
If anything were to typify, even on a physiological level,
the understanding of this statement, it is Korzybski’s Structural
Differential. For as we will see, to go back the way you came,
on a physiological level means moving from the inference
level back “down” to the descriptive level, to the label level,
to the object level (I AM), to the microscopic level, to the
quantum physics level, to the process-movement level, to the
consciousness level, and ultimately to THE SUBSTANCE.
The Yoga Sutras say it this way:
“As the progressive involution of consciousness in
matter . . . imposes increasing limitation is the reverse