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

52 / You Are Not
is a representation of a representation!!! In this way, we can
say only what is NOT (Neti-Neti).
This is critical to understanding the nature of the nervous
system. The nervous system perceives and determines (after
the fact) an object or event and then justifies what has already
occurred—NOT it is there and then “I” see it. Everything is
there because the nervous system produces a perceiver that
sees its own abstractions and then believes they are real.
The Buddha said:
“All these molecules are not really such; they are
called ‘molecules.’ futhermore . . . a world is not really
a world; it is called ‘a world.’” (Buddha, The Diamond
Sutra, p. 41)
Because we see and experience only the past, our perceptions
and justifications are more in the past and more
abstracted than the object level of sensation, since it is farther
away from “what is.”
We used the Structural Differential as the basis for creating
The Substance Diagram, which shows that even at the
physiological level, YOU ARE NOT.
Both diagrams also help us avoid confusing one level of
condensation abstraction with another. This informs us that
the inference level is not the descriptive level, the descriptive
level is not the label level, the label level is not the object (I
AM) level, the object (I AM) level is not the microscopic level,
the microscopic level is not, the physics level, the physics level
is not the process level, the process level is not the consciousness
level, and when all is THE SUBSTANCE—then there
are no levels and YOU ARE NOT.
In this way, the following suggestion of Ramana Maharishi
holds true even on a physiological level:
GO BACk THE WAY YOU CAME.