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

The structural differential diagram / 39
illusion or veil of consciousness at the object level after the
formation of I AM, which gives the illusion that “you” actually
ARE when, that idea is an abstraction-condensation of THE
SUBSTANCE, and the “you” or “I” is only an appearance of
THE SUBSTANCE.
“All that we have dealt with so far, concerning the
process level parabola and the object level disk, is on the
non-verbal level. I have described the subatomic process
level of reality and the object level of reality, but not
yet the level of words, ideas and statements. Korzybski
warned us against confusing these two levels when he
wrote: ‘Whatever we may say or feel, the objects and
events remain on the unspeakable levels and cannot be
reached by words 8 . . . we can only reach the objective
[sense] level by seeing, handling, actually feeling, etc., . .
. all of which cannot be conveyed by words alone.’ (Korzybski,
Science and Sanity, p. 420) By using language, a
person can assign symbols, in the form of words, to his
sensations and describe to himself and others what he
experienced. I like Hayakawa’s description of this process:
‘Human beings use extremely complicated systems of .
. . noises called language, with which they express and
report what goes on in the nervous systems.’ (Hayakawa,
Language in Thought and Action, p. 9)” (Sawin)
“nOBODY HAS EvER SEEn MATTER.”
Bishop George Berkeley
8 Moreover, as noted philosopher David Hume said, “You cannot have
direct experiences.” All that you call experiences are mediated by the
brain and nervous system. Furthermore, we would say prior to the “I”
experience, YOU ARE NOT; so who but an “I” fabricated by the nervous
system through a chemical reaction is having an experience?