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A few notes: All images on this page are public domain and may be used, altered, published, posted, or distributed in any way with or without attribution, for any purpose. These images partially illustrate a new account for the primary-secondary quality distinction. The idea relies upon a primary-secondary subject distinction (rather than a material object or substratrum as proposed by John Locke) to account for the primary-secondary quality distinction. It posits an evolution of perception from an original primordial state to a complex self-aware state. The idea is simpler and has more explanatory power than the representational posit of a causal and inert substratum. Here evolving consciousness creates matter, form, and name, rather than the other way around. The idea also addresses the evolutionary emergence of time, space, and natural laws, a problem which is not addressed in previous sciences. I created these images between 2004 and 2006 after writing “The Evolution of Perception & the Cosmology of Substance.” They are designed to illustrate the same general mechanics of lenses (perceptual schemata) giving rise to an increasingly complex percept (image world), and at the same time giving rise to self-awareness (full human consciousness). The rise of the image world correlates with and reflects the rise of human self-awareness. This journey parallels the one described in God Speaks by Meher Baba, but deals with a different aspect of the same mechanics—that of natural law and perceptual supervenience (seeing through & seeing as). Also, while God Speaks encompasses the entire spiritual panorama from God’s Point of View, this model is limited to the journey from Paramatma to Jiv-atma.

Analogy of a projector projecting its own light (representing evolving consciousness). Lenses (depicted in pink) represent evolving perceptual schemata (ways of seeing). Each lens supervenes upon the previous, e.g. natural laws supervening upon time and space, with the body eventually supervening upon natural laws.

Ojbective and subjective worlds arise in turn during the process of evolving consciousness.

Individual mind supervenes upon evolving Universal mind. Thus the individual sees through both without realizing it.

Keep in mind that the exact same spiritual light is passing through all atmas (souls). The impression of separateness, e.g. separateness from others, separateness from Brahman, and seperateness from the impression, is a complete and unqualified chimera (a fanciful mental illusion or fabrication).

Plato's "forms" cease to be metaphysical objects, and are reasigned as evolving perceptual schemata (ways of seeing). The idea of metaphysical entities is replaced with a new idea of a process model, much like the process theology proposed by Alfred Whitehead.

Here the split between reality (Indivisible Unity) and illusion (plurality) as posited by Parmenides and Shankaracharya is illustrated by the white and grey areas of the chart. Plurality is appearance. Unity is reality (the true unmoved Witness).

In the diagram above we see how appearance manifests out of the residue of past impressions. The mind works through a process of apperception, whereby the present and future are imagined through the gathered impressions of the past. In fact these impressions mold and form the percept, i.e. the object of our experience. In Vedanta these impressions are called sanskaras. The process itself (the described principle by which illusion is formed) is called Maya. Maya is not the illusory percept itself, but rather the principle by which this illusion is formed by the Universal and individual mind.

Here we recapitulate the rise of the inorganic world (rocks and minerals, water, air, chemical reactions like combustion, planets and suns, etc.) by the process of evolving perceptual schemata.

Here we show the precise point of juncture of the demarcated individual (beginning of a sense of separateness) correlating with the point of the rise of the biological form.

Now we take the evolution from the point of juncture of the fully evolved individual human being with full consciousness. New schemata are fully conscious and man takes an active part in creating his cultural universe (though he may not realize that he is doing so). His cultural schemata (ways of seeing) are the cause of the cultural attributes he finds all around him. This is accomplished through language, culture, and complex myths.

Here we recapitulate the entire journey from Unified but not self-aware consciousness (represented in the analogy of light) to full self-aware human experience, recapitulating both the physical and cultural schemata in turn and showing what they give rise to and at what point in the process.

And there you have it. That's how human beings are made. We are unity in diversity.

Quote by Meher Baba:

Suppose twenty-five thousand people are sitting here and all have the same sight and the same object to look at - a ball. Now take the sight to be God's, which means that the Seer through twenty-five thousand pairs of eyes is one. Put before every pair of eyes different colored glasses, and in front of all these glasses put a ball.

The sight is one and the ball is one, but to twenty-five thousand people the ball has a variety of colors. This varying experience is because of the different glasses. All these different colors are different minds and the different glasses are different bodies. Through the medium of various colors and glasses, the Seer sees the ball. Thus there is the Seer (God), the color (mind) and the glasses (bodies). God is only one. The ball (illusion) is also only one, but God experiences this illusion through all the various minds and in a variety of ways.

You know that all thoughts are different, feelings are different, and experiences of misery and happiness are different. The reason for it is that all have different minds. Although the thoughts, experiences, minds and bodies of all are different, the One having this experience is one as is the ball (illusion) through which the One God experiences Himself in various ways through innumerable bodies and minds. That which He sees is not the color nor the glasses; it is through the colors and glasses that the Seer sees the ball. God, who is experiencing all this, is not the mind, but He sees illusion through the medium of minds and bodies.

(Meher Baba, July, 22, 1925, Meherabad, quoted on pg. 743, Lord Meher, Vol. 3)

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"Love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew 22:39).

"Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21).

"I and my father are one" (John 10:30).

"In my Father's house are many mansions" (John 14:2).

"God is the light of the heavens and earth" (Quran 24.35)

"The first thing that God created was my light" (Bihar al-Anwar xv, 3)

"Had we not existed, God would not have been known." (Bihar al-Anwar, xxvi, 247)

God is Love. And Love must love. And to love there must be a Beloved. But since God is Existence infinite and eternal there is no one for Him to love but Himself. And in order to love Himself He must imagine Himself as the Beloved whom He as the Lover imagines He loves. Beloved and Lover implies separation. And separation creates longing; and longing causes search. And the wider and the more intense the search the greater the separation and the more terrible the longing. When longing is most intense separation is complete, and the purpose of separation, which was that Love might experience itself as Lover and Beloved, is fulfilled; and union follows. And when union is attained, the Lover knows that he himself was all along the Beloved whom he loved and desired union with; and that all the impossible situations that he overcame were obstacles which he himself had placed in the path to himself. To attain union is so impossibly difficult because it is impossible to become what you already are! Union is nothing other than knowledge of oneself as the Only One. —Meher Baba, from The Everything and the Nothing