Wisdom Notes on Spirituality

The Meaning of Relativity

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Consider the ego. The ego splits life up into a subject and one or more objects. The ego is the subject and everything else is object to it. How does this split or dichotomy arise? The subject-object dichotomy is related to relativity. In a static, unchanging world then subject and object can blend together into a unity – this is the psychological process of absorption (or identification). But the process of change destabilises unity.

Even during meditation the meditator cannot remain indefinitely in his state of trance, of absorption, of unity with the object of his meditation; nor can the mystic who is absorbed in his divine ecstasy. Neither the meditator nor the mystic can halt the process of change. Therefore, in my view, it is the process of change that creates the subject-object dichotomy. The subject-object dichotomy is created during the early life of each new-born child. How does this happen?

The Child and Relativity

If we look at a clear blue sky, with no clouds in it, initially it all looks one colour. On closer inspection we can see that the blue of the horizon is a deeper shade than that of the zenith; that is, on closer inspection we can relativise the colour of the sky into shades. Relativising sensory stimuli into different shades and colours is the first act in trying to make sense of perception: from shades and colours we can identify shapes.

Consider the infant of a few days or weeks of age. It has no consciousness, no ego; it functions on levels of mind below normal consciousness. It exists only as a mixture of a subconscious mind and an unconscious mind. If it were born with a conscious mind then it would have memories of its previous existence and soon after birth it would be able to speak and talk with other people.

At first the infant sees merely a constant interplay of colours. Gradually it learns to relativise these colours into certain recurrent shapes, shapes that one day it will recognise as being the teddy bear, the rattle, the face of the mother, etc. It learns to discriminate by relativising its sensory stimuli into patterns. This process of discrimination leads to the construction of the ego, the ego being the subject of the subject-object dichotomy. Therefore the ego is constructed by this relativising process.

The infant stabilises recurrent stimuli into shapes because they are associated with feelings and emotions in him. He learns to value patterns that are associated with happiness and to avoid any patterns associated with pain. The introjected emotions from the mother help to produce value judgements in the infant, enabling him to consolidate the sensory stimuli into the patterns of her face and body. His interpretations of his relationship to the mother create fixed beliefs and underpin the emerging ego. These beliefs and value judgements are relative ones. Hence the world of the infant is a relative world.

A relative world is normally a changing, unstable world. The infant has to find a way of creating stability within an unstable world. It uses beliefs and value judgements to attain the stability it needs. Its ego stabilises its world into subject and object by the production of fixed beliefs and values; this creates Being. Relativity is the ground of all Being. Therefore the ego is a relative construction.

I summarise these ideas.
It is the process of change that creates the subject-object dichotomy, and this change is always relative. The relativity of the ego is the ground of the relativity of all values and all beliefs.

Perception

Now I turn to the nature of a relative concept. I consider the process of perception. Perception is the central feature of consciousness, since the individual engages in it in all states of consciousness (that is, waking consciousness, dream sleep, and trance) except dreamless sleep. Whatever relativity means within the process of perception will, in my view, apply to everything else within consciousness. To understand relativity we have to consider the influence on it of both subjectivity and objectivity.

I look at a tree in the distance. It will appear small to me. The size is in the mind of the observer and so is subjective. Subjectivity means that something is only in the mind of the thinker or observer. The size is also relative: size is a relationship between the object and the observer - as I walk towards the tree, its size gets bigger. The tree does not get bigger ; only its size gets bigger. Hence relativity determines the format within which subjectivity operates (by this statement I mean that the way the subjective image appears in the person's mind depends on the relative relationship between the person and the object).

The relativity of the size of the tree depends on the size of the eye of the observer (a tree will appear larger to an insect than to a human). Hence the physical eye is an objective factor of perception, and so is also a factor of relativity. Here, relativity, subjectivity and objectivity are associated together.

As I walk towards the tree the size will get larger. This size is due to the size of the angle that the rays of light make to the eye of the observer. If two people walk together towards the tree, the apparent change in its size will be the same for both of them. As they walk together the rate of change of the size will be equal for both of them, since the change in the angle of the light rays will be the same for both. Hence the rate of change is an objective factor to perception.

This simple illustration shows that in the process of perception, the three issues of subjectivity, objectivity and relativity are all linked together.

I simplify this illustration. Consider again the person who is looking at the tree. The image on the retina of the eye produces the subjective image in the mind. However, the size of the retinal image depends upon the optical angle subtended at the eye by the tree. This angle will be the same for all observers at the same position of observation. Hence the optical angle of the object is an objective component of perception, while the mental image is a subjective component. Both the subjectivity and the objectivity function within the overall framework of relativity.

What this illustration means is that in perception, which is a relative process, a subjective effect always goes hand in hand with an objective effect. This result is the general meaning of relativity.

The importance of this conception of relativity is immense. Perception is a relative process. All life depends upon perception; there is no way that anyone can escape it. Perception usually entails interpretations of what we see. So perception is usually tied to our beliefs and values. We do not usually perceive the world in a neutral frame of mind, apart from the background (unless we are practising the Buddhist technique of mindfulness). We only notice what interests us. We only notice what has value for us. Perception is a value-laden process and begins from birth. All values are based on perception, and all values are thereby relative. This means that all values have both a subjective component and an objective one too.

The new-born baby engages in relativity the moment that it opens its eyes, and never ceases from this process during life.

Einstein’s View

The world of the atom is a relative world. The material particle is objective, and the electron waves are subjective.  In short, the particle is the objective part of relativity, and the electron is the subjective part of relativity. Or we can say that matter is relative objectivity and energy is relative subjectivity.

In his Special Theory, Einstein derived the energy equation E=mc², which was brilliant. However, his theory gave rise to paradoxes. In reality there are no paradoxes. There are only paradoxes in theories that attempt to describe reality. Hence Einstein's model was flawed. Since he derived the energy aspect of reality, this represents the subjective side of relativity. He did not realise that there was an objective side to relativity. I have not attempted to understand his General Theory. 

In popular science, there is the belief that when the world was created, it only consisted of energy. Then over long periods of time, energy condensed into material particles. In my view, this belief is wrong. Although energy can be condensed into matter, and matter can be changed into energy, you cannot have just energy and no matter. When reality was created, energy and matter were created together. In a relative world, you cannot have just energy, and you cannot have just particles. Overall, you have to have energy and particles co-existing together in reality.

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