edgar-mitchell

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Not long into my research I began to ponder what it was about a living
being that changes the wave equation we would use to represent it in an
experiment. Would a simple rock’s wave equation remain unchanged, while
a cat’s would not Representing the effects of consciousness and sentience
with a wave equation first requires one to be able to specify and measure
consciousness and sentience.
Asking how and when the experimenter’s state of knowing collapses
the wave function, without first discovering how a rock, a cat, or a philosopher
knows anything at all, would not likely yield any useful answers.
The major problem lies in the confusion of maps and territories. The maps
are the knowing, the images, the thinking, the beliefs, the measurements
that we carry around in our heads. They are indeed the only information
about reality of which we are aware. The territory is the world itself. At
any moment our conscious awareness is not accessing all the information
available to the brain/mind, and the brain/mind is not accessing all information
available in the world around us. If it were, then our map could
precisely depict the territory; then we could really “know” reality. Yet in
an evolving universe it must be an ongoing process of learning. We humans
have a tendency to believe that whatever we have in our heads is Reality
and Truth, at least for the most part, because it is the only map in our
possession, and we don’t intentionally riddle it with errors.
But I don’t know anyone who has found life and reality to be always as
he or she has interpreted it. Daily life is always correcting us, challenging
our beliefs from moment to moment. What is in our minds is not a perfect
reality, but rather a shadow world based on incomplete information and assumptions
about whatever reality is. Although our only map is incomplete, it
still governs our behavior and thinking as we “create” our personal reality. It
seems accurate until life’s experiences, usually unpleasant ones, convince us
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