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

44 / You Are Not
THERE iS nO CHOiCE:
WE SEE OnlY THE pAST
Once we understand the nature of the abstracting process,
ultimately what is grasped is that since the perceiver of “reality”
appears at the object level, all the perceiver’s descriptions
and interpretations appear further along in time. In this way,
all the perceiver can perceive is the past—something that has
already occurred. Therefore, to believe in choice would require
a NOW. But since all the perceiver can perceive is what has
already occurred, by the time it occurs to the perceiver to do
or choose this or that, and the “I” imagines it chooses and
does something, the something has already occurred. Even
at a physiological level there is no doer, you are not the doer,
or better said, “there is no “I” which does”.
To understand that the perceiver, and hence, its perception,
appear only after the experience has already occurred, not only
boggles the mind, but also changes our entire understanding
of choice and free will. Let us explain it this way: First
we have NOTHING-EVERYTHING (THE SUBSTANCE),
which contracts or condenses to form consciousness. Then
the process-event (movement) level forms the physics level of
energy, space, mass, time, gravity, light, sound—in short, the
physics dimensions and forces. Further condensation forms
the microscopic level of atoms, electrons, etc. Through this
condensation we get the body and chemicals (which have no
I), but produces the fluids, the concept of I AM (first at a
non-verbal level, then later at verbal levels). From there, the
label level, for example, there is a “book”; the descriptive level,
“I am reading the book”; then Inference-1: “I am choosing
to read the book”; then Inference-2: “I am choosing to read
the book to get understanding.” With each abstraction the
illusion of choice appears. However, the “I” that views the
world is produced by the nervous system after the experience
and action have already occurred, then the “I” declares doer-