Intimate Reality

It is all around us, and we are in it every moment:
what we call “reality”.
It is certainly intimate:
it pervades our thoughts as well as our outer experiences.

The Nature Of “reality” is such a large question that most scientists and theologians stay away from it as much as possible,
while fiddling around the edges of their respective fields.

What Science is based upon
is objective observation.
Using this supreme method has gotten the human race to where it is.

Yet the other half of what we call reality is what goes on inside ourselves.
Why not subject that half of reality to scientific observation?

This idea came up over a century ago.
Jamesian psychology is based on the idea of using introspection
as part of scientific method.
It became an unfashionable idea in the age of behavioral psychology.

Behavioral psychology has paid out as a theme and Psychology could use a new one.

In the East the idea of using introspection with scientific objectivity came up thousands of years ago.

All his life, the writer attempted moment by moment to introspect with scientific objectivity. The idea came to me when I was very young and very impressed by Science.

That experiment led to the following findings.

There are two types of conscious experiences during the awake state. In one type, what I call The Watcher is in control, and in the other type, what I call The Defender is in control.

When identified with The Watcher there is an experience of intuition, love, joy, and the spiritual dimension, and actions taken at this time tend to be more successful. When identified with The Defender there is an experience of negative emotion, continuous words in the mind, deliberate mental efforts to conquer a challenge, and actions taken at this time tend to be less successful.

We hypothesize that The Defender is a piece of software made out of consciousness by The Watcher (aka The Original Self or Consciousness, that which experiences).

We built it to protect our Self.

It undoubtedly has neuronal physical structure supporting its function.

There was a scientific introspecter before us who came to the same conclusion. Freud postulated that the Ego (as he called The Defender) came into existence when the Id (the original Self) first sensed that the environment was not cooperating with its every whim and therefore (a baby’s first terrifying thought) some part of reality/experience had to be “Other” and therefore potentially Nonbenevolent.

What Freud came up with as an intervention approach was aimed at disabling The Defender so that The Watcher could have a good time.

Our aim is the same. This book aims to have the same effect as Freud wanted to be able to achieve. We do not aim to replace psychotherapy or anything else. Our aim is to add more on top of what is there already.

We are not propounding anything in conflict with any religion we know of. Quite the opposite.

There is a whole lot of fascinating theory about Consciousness, its parts, etc. and if you want to read theory please see the Highly Recommended Reading list at the back of this book.

This book however has a different purpose. The whole purpose of this book is to help the reader spend more time, automatically, in The Watcher state (aka The Self). This does not require full explication of theory so we do that elsewhere. What will you therefore find in this book?

There are uptrigger and downtrigger stimuli which help move people between these two states, The Watcher state and The Defender state.

This book is essentially a collection of uptriggers which still work for me.

I am compiling other uptriggers to share, if the ones in this book work for you.

You will know the book is working if any of the following happens:

1. You are able to follow your own mental moves more closely.
2. You are more effective in your work.
3. You are able to more quickly stop yourself from acting on compulsions to act which come from low motives in The Defender in you.
4. You are more aware of being joyful most of the time.
5. You feel a sense of love and connectedness to all things.

You will be becoming more intimate with Reality.

Here's how to BENEFIT YOUR SELF.