Broaching a new paradigm, my book ‘A Musical Reality’ introduces a new way of thinking. Following the Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, the world can be envisaged as flowing energy fields of the type Richard Feynman and John Archibald Wheeler proposed. My book approaches the concept of what we conventionally and colloquially call physical reality from the perspective of a Jazz musician who plays with the intervals that form melody. It does so from the perspective of Einstein’s energy/mass equivalence thesis. A jazz musician works with resonant sonic frequency-intervals, while exploring the flowing structural chord-grammar that creates the sonic patterns we know as melody.
This view was is, formed not by calculus, but directly by experiencing and being immersed in the field of flowing resonant patterned sonic energy that we call music. It is also influenced by the fact that now is not then. This observation points to reality as being a dynamic stream. With this in mind, my book is about the grammatical systems that modulate and organise the patterns of neural energy that we call thought with which we think about reality. It also investigates how inherited European linguistic grammar causes us to misperceive time, space and causality itself. This mis interpretation in turn, being due to the core medieval belief-based grammatical systems that currently continue to form and organise the Western human thought that we currently refer to as beliefs.
I define continuing reality as being simply the fundamental conditions necessary for the existence of any physical thing, or phenomenon, irrespective of wither or not that same existence is identified or recognised by humans. The class of phenomena of interest here is energy. Historically such classes and types of unrecognised phenomena, remained un-identified. It wasn’t until the 19th century when the physicist Thomas Young defined energy as the capacity to do work. In doing so, he gave us our modern interpretation of energy. Faraday, then demonstrated that electromagnetic energy has the ability to cause change by induction. It was then that a new scientific interest in the nature of energy was initiated. Before then, such hidden physical energy was for millennia thought to be due to the actions of invisible supernatural forces, famously cited as “Acts of God or of gods, or of the Devil”.
In the religious atmosphere of pre-Enlightenment Europe, if we dared think about it at all, how we perceived the manifestation of energy together with questions as to its nature, such questions were left to Biblical interpretations. These were pondered on, and disseminated by theologians. It was through such doctrine founded in Isiah 55-8.9 that Augustin of Hippo declared the power (energy) of god as being beyond human understanding.
Today, thanks the physics of Thomas Young and other 19th century thinkers such a Faraday, Maxwell et al. we not only recognise energy as being a physical phenomenon, but we can also recognise different types and classes of energy.
We can now discuss the nature of different types and classes of energy. Chemical energy, Nuclear, Electrical, Radiant, Light, Heat, Motion, Sound, and more., are all defined by their humanly perceived context. However, that ego-centric perception itself is in turn formed by the organisation of the patterns of electrochemical neural energy-field which flows, somewhat slower than the pace of continuing reality, through the synapse interface junctions of the brain. It these grammatically-formed neural-energy patterns which we also know as human thoughts.
In considering the physical nature of energy itself, a significant challenge we face, is that even today, many have difficulty in objectively describing its physical nature. This is because the perspective we typically use from which to describe it, is usually from a subjective standpoint where human ego-centric belief is central. Beliefs are formed by a linguistic grammatical system that expresses inherited pre-enlightenment Biblical view of Euclidean space, existing in believed to exist time. However, if we allow the grammar which structures our thoughts to reflect the logical related ratios of interval that continually form physical reality as a patterned energy field, then we see reality as a musician who explores the grammatical structure of sonic energy. In this view, the Reality-Energy-Field is itself, like a symphony. It is the continuing existential synthesis of its ratio-organised formative resonant-interval relationships.
During the practice of engaging with the grammar of music, or of scientific equations which describe the formative relationships of reality, we encounter and explore grammatical systems that are quite different to the grammar of conventional belief-communication. Science uses such mathematical equations to describe the formative ratios of relationship that allow various classes of energy-patterns to exist. From the energy of a believed-to-exist atom particle, as modelled in Max Planck’s planetary system, to the energy of a human thought which is manifested as the patterned sonic energy that we call speech. From this perspective we can begin to regard all that exists as the manifestation of harmonic stable energy-patterns. Even reality itself, as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus noted, can be considered to be an ever-continuing energetic stream.
The modern view of such a continuing stream as an energy ‘field’, was developed by the Nobel Laureate physicist Sir Roger Penrose. I develop this to suggest that patterned energy, during the life-cycle of its patterns, modulates the flowing energy-‘field of continuing reality into ratio-structured patterns. Reality, being an energy field, must be indestructible, but the stable patterns it carries in its stream have, like melodies in a symphony, their own life-cycles. The frequency-interval patterns which modulate energy, are structured by their own unique grammar. If we abandon the notion of time, and think of energy as would a jazz musician who recognises and plays with the grammar of sonic-energy patterns, then those same patterns arise from the energetic reality-flow of the continuing overall symphony of music. Outside of a physical concert performance, in a humanly believed world existing in believed to exist time, those same continuing harmonic resonant relational patterns are continuously forming what our communication-grammar forces us to define as ‘Things’. Such ‘things’ in turn, are often inaccurate linguistic metaphors shaped by belief-communication grammar.
Currently, our communications are formed by the ego-centric and often irrational beliefs inherited during early language acquisition. However, following Einstein’s famous equivalence thesis E=MC2, which suggests that all that exists is energy in different classes and forms. I suggest that to understand the actual nature of that energy, we need use a linguistic/thought grammatical system other than the belief-based one that the one that is currently dominant in Western society.
IIn this respect, during a long discussion in the autumn of 1980, in Birkbeck College on the Sapir Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity with David Bohm agreed that a grammatical system devoid of the European (Biblical) notions of time would alter how we think about anything.
The Sapir Whorf hypothesis draws its conjectures from a study of indigenous American native cultures. There, languages such as that of the Uto-Aztecan speakers that are the Shoshone, Hopi, and Comanche. The grammatical systems forming these languages did not express concepts such as time, first-person singular, or belief, as in the Western sense. This we agreed, could facilitate a quicker and deeper understanding of quantum physics, due to the way that these other linguistic grammatical systems are not built around Western notions of time and belief to form human thought.
It is worth noting at this point, that while allowing the grammar of jazz to modulate human neural energy while playing, the improvising musician has no sense of self, nor of time.
During the intervals spent not playing, it is in those quiet intervals that the musician allows conventional tense-belief grammar to re-organise thought. Yet while engaged in continuing melody, in a musical system, in the mind of the musician, thought becomes the expression ratios of intervals. It is these flowing intervals which in turn are themselves dynamically and formative of the continuing stream of patterns whose flowing synthesis is reality. The existence of any pattern, is contingent on its organisation. In a stream, any pattern becomes existentially formative of the whole patterned structure of the stream. It is simultaneously manifested frequency interval ratios which create harmonic chord pattern that are the resonant syntax organising sonic energy which allows melody to be manifest. It goes without saying that this simultaneous harmonic-cause occurs in the continuing physical experientable stream of reality. This is a point which both academic and colloquial Western thinkers mostly omit, yet in other non-Western indigenous cultures, reality-flow is implicit. By contrast, Western thought allows reality to be envisaged as being a passive, inert, or abstract human convention.
A grammatical system is only as good as the type and class of relationships it can organise and which it can represent.
In the stream of reality, the grammar of music-as-sonic-energy, provides an alternative descriptive grammatical model for a patterned energy-field, as its coherent yet existential structural patterns are directly related to harmonic frequency interval-ratios. With a focus on formative interval-ratio, this is a concept expandable to allow the interpretation of any coherent stable physical structure existing in the stream of reality.
Improvising musicians play with the grammar of frequency interval-ratio which structures music into sonic patterns. This is done in a similar manner to that of the resonant neural energy appearing in the brains of authors, who like jazz musicians, improvise with the formative grammar creating thought. However, if we regard energy-field flow as itself occurring in a moving seamless reality-field, then that same neural mental energy, could be harmonically induced from the general field of energy patterns. In this sense, the patterned energy field of both music and moving reality encompass the human. The musician-author instinctively and intuitively interprets the grammar patterns which are already forming the patterns of reality and impinging on human sense receptors.
As patterned electrochemical energy, both thought and music appear to flow in the neural pathways of the human brain. I have said ‘appear’ to flow in neural pathways, which conjures a view similar to that we currently have, of electricity flowing like water as electron particles, within the paths of electrical conductors. However, as noted from the insights of Rodger Penrose, and if we forget about time and tense saturated belief grammar, and instead, focus on stable ratio-formed existential structures, as would a musician contemplating the physics of melody as existing in a flowing reality, then a new view of reality as a resonant seamless energy field begins to emerge.
We experience such an actual energy-field whenever we attend a musical concert, a conversation, or merely go outside and listen to the wind rustling leaves. As we listen, apart from the gravitational energy that hold us to the planet, electromagnetic energy as light impinges on our sensory systems. In short, it is safe to say that we are continually immersed in fields or seas of moving patterned energy.
It is the anachronistic belief-grammar of our thoughts which allows us to define and classify the manifestation of patterned energy-fields as discrete things. It is grammar, i.e. the physical organisation of interval-ratios that organises the frequency intervals of sonic, then neural energy into melodies which are existentially manifested as the mind of musical composer, or as the grammatical syntax of mathematical equations existing in the same flowing medium of the reality stream.
In continuing reality, any stable pattern, is the continuing organised synthesis of its component relationships. Ordinarily, with an egocentric grammatical system, we think from a human perspective, of patterns as taking geometric shapes. However, the unique feature of the human animal, is that it can allow a variety of grammatical systems to pattern, or modulate, the electrochemical energy flowing in the human brain. The rate at which such stable patterns flow, cannot exceed the flow of the symphony of patterns forming time-less reality, yet can flow as harmonic counter frequencies as does a counter-descant in Jazz, or Gregorian Chant.
In other words, time is the human period measure of the pace of the cycle of an energy-field pattern-flow occurring in the continuing stream of reality. Time, in this sense, can itself only exist as a human arbitrary incremental period measure, which by ignoring the natural flow of reality, we have, through the grammar of belief in Biblical doctrine, come to believe that time actually exists. That belief itself, is in turn formed on the belief-assumption that the grammar of human beliefs is the only authoritative and valid organiser of communication. This is an assumption that any jazz musician who allows the grammar of intervals to existentially form his/her thoughts could refute, as would a scientist who deals with the ratio relationship that form mathematical equations.
A Different Way Of Thinking 