Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?
This work begins with a simple but far-reaching proposal: our understanding of the universe arises from a fundamental postulate. In Postulate Mechanics, a postulate is not merely an assumption made for the sake of argument. It is a starting point for observation—a principle through which experience can be organized, examined, and understood.
The postulate explored here is substance-awareness-oneness.
It proposes that reality may be approached as an inseparable relationship between what can be sensed, that which senses it, and the intrinsic unity toward which all understanding tends. The universe is therefore not treated as a collection of isolated objects, events, minds, and forces. It is approached as one continuous field in which substance and awareness interact, and in which harmonious consciousness develops through that interaction.
Substance and awareness
In this framework, substance includes matter, energy, and thought. Matter is the tangible aspect of experience: a stone, a body, a tree, a glass of water, or the Earth beneath our feet. Energy is the changing, active aspect of experience: light, heat, motion, electrical activity, gravity, and transformation. Thought is also substance in the broad sense used here, because it can be noticed, differentiated, examined, and related to other contents of experience.
Awareness is that which senses substance. It is not the chair, the light, or the memory. It is the capacity through which each of these becomes present. When one notices a sound outside the window, awareness is present as hearing. When one recognizes anger arising in oneself, awareness is present as feeling. When one understands a relationship or reflects on the meaning of a life event, awareness is present as observation.
Without substance, awareness would have nothing to sense. Without awareness, substance would not be experienced. Their meeting gives rise to consciousness.
Consciousness as an active process
Consciousness is not presented here as a fixed object or a mysterious entity hidden somewhere inside the body. It is the living condition that arises when awareness senses substance. It includes sensation, attention, perception, thought, understanding, and the capacity to respond.
Consider seeing smoke in the distance. At first there may be only a sensation: a gray shape against the sky. Then perception organizes that sensation: “That is smoke.” A concept may follow: “Smoke often indicates combustion.” Knowledge may add practical context: “There may be a fire nearby.” Wisdom may guide response: “I should determine whether anyone is in danger, remain calm, and act appropriately.”
This movement from raw sensation to wise action illustrates the development of consciousness. The mind does not merely receive impressions. It assimilates them. It brings what is newly experienced into relation with what is already understood.
In Postulate Mechanics, consciousness is shaped by the impulse of awareness. Awareness does not simply drift passively among disconnected impressions. Its primary impulse is to bring harmony—the condition of oneness—to all substance.
The impulse toward oneness
The word oneness does not mean sameness. A forest is one ecosystem without requiring every tree, bird, stream, and stone to be identical. Likewise, harmony does not erase distinctions. It brings differences into intelligible relationship.
A musical chord provides a useful example. Individual notes may be distinct, yet when related in a fitting way they form harmony. If a note clashes sharply with the others, the listener experiences tension. That tension is not necessarily wrong; it may point to movement, change, or a need for resolution. In a similar manner, the mind encounters contradictions, confusion, pain, unanswered questions, and conflicting desires. The impulse of awareness is to examine these conditions until a more coherent relationship becomes possible.
Harmony, in this sense, is not the suppression of disagreement or discomfort. It is the resolution of incoherence through clearer observation and more inclusive understanding.
Assimilation and the function of mind
The mind performs its essential function through assimilation. It takes in experience and progressively integrates it through several levels:
- Sensations are immediate impressions, such as warmth, color, pressure, sound, hunger, or bodily tension.
- Perceptions organize sensations into recognizable patterns, such as seeing a face, hearing a melody, or identifying a moving vehicle.
- Concepts give those patterns general meaning, such as “person,” “danger,” “cause,” “freedom,” or “change.”
- Knowledge connects concepts through tested relationships, evidence, memory, study, and practical application.
- Wisdom applies knowledge in ways that are broad, balanced, humane, and responsive to the whole situation.
Assimilation occurs when each new experience finds its place within a more comprehensive order. Confusion results when experience remains disconnected, contradictory, or unexamined. Understanding grows when the mind can relate the parts without distorting them.
The purpose is not to force experience into a predetermined conclusion. Rather, it is to observe honestly, identify inconsistencies, and allow a more harmonious understanding to emerge.
Laws of looking and thinking
Awareness operates according to the laws of looking as covered later in this book. These laws guide awareness toward greater accuracy, completeness, and consistency.
Assimilation applies the laws of thinking (also covered later in this book) that ultimately arise from the coherence, or oneness, of reality. If reality is one, then it must be continuous, consistent and harmonious.
Scope of this work
This preface offers an overview of the function of the mind as understood through Postulate Mechanics. The mind is the process through which awareness looks and assimilates substance. It moves from sensation to perception, from perception to concept, from concept to knowledge, and from knowledge toward wisdom. Throughout this movement, awareness is guided by an impulse toward harmony: the realization of oneness amid the diversity of matter, energy, and thought.
The inquiry that follows is therefore both philosophical and practical. It concerns the structure of reality, but also the immediate activity of seeing clearly. It concerns consciousness, but also how one responds to a difficult conversation, a scientific question, a moral conflict, a painful memory, or an unexpected discovery.
To understand the universe through the postulate of substance-awareness-oneness is not to claim that every question has already been answered. It is to adopt a method of inquiry: look carefully, assimilate honestly, resolve contradiction where possible, and seek the wider harmony in which every element can be understood in relation to the whole.
The Main Ideas
- According to Postulate Mechanics, our understanding of the universe arises from a postulate.
- This postulate may be defined as “substance-awareness-oneness.”
- The substance is “matter-energy-thought” that can be sensed.
- The awareness is what senses the substance.
- When awareness senses substance, we have consciousness.
- Consciousness is shaped by the impulse from awareness.
- The primary impulse is to bring harmony of oneness to all substance.
- This is done through assimilation of sensations, perceptions, concepts, knowledge and wisdom.
- The awareness operates according to the laws of looking.
- The assimilation follows the laws of thinking derived from the postulate of oneness.
- This is an overview of the function of the mind.
⁂