Effect of the Discriminating Mind on the One

Dehning argues that because of discrimination, reality is split into oppo-
sites. Matte-Blanco views the mind as a dynamic discriminator and classi-
fier. Every second the human mind is classifying things into categories. The
ordinary ‘logical’ thinking activity is constantly dealing with combinations
of triads: it recognises and makes propositions to itself about one thing, an-
other thing, and the relation between those two things. Most of these rela-
tions are asymmetrical, for instance: ‘Simon is the father of David,’ or ‘A is
part of B’; the converse order of such relations is not identical to it i.e. it is
‘non-commutative.’

This discriminating consciousness is a typical human phenomenon. ‘I do
not know how and why it came into being,’ says Dehning. ‘But I am con-
vinced that it deeply influences our being-in-the-world. Our discriminating
consciousness automatically compels us to discriminate and classify these
perceptions. “Friend or foe?” — This is the question to which our discrimi-
nating consciousness unremittingly tries to find an answer. Whenever we
try to listen to a piece of music, to contemplate a landscape or a work of art,
some “discriminating” question pops up and disturbs our general impres-
sion. There is a human need to try to retrieve some form of direct contact
with indivisible reality, beyond the dividing categories of discriminating
consciousness.’
Thus our asymmetric discriminating consciousness divides indivis-
ible reality. By its splitting action, discriminating consciousness fragments
reality. This crumbling cascades in a never-ending process (of symmetry
breaking). Consequently the subject is left with an ever-growing number of
things. What was originally one and indivisible falls apart into a plethora
of elements that extrapolates infinitely. By establishing relations between
different elements in our minds, we try to cement the countless cracks in
indivisible reality that our discriminating consciousness caused.
According to Blanco, relations do exist in the indivisible reality, but
these ‘relations’ are different from the asymmetric relations we are familiar
with. We cannot represent them: in order to do so we would have to asym-
metrise them, to make them fit into our well-known discriminating — and
reductive — schemes. To some extent then, indivisible reality is like a living
body — remove a part of it and the part dies.

 

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