Karl Geis, the great Judo and Aikido master, once pointed out to me the importance of "threads" in the development of human thought.
What he said was this: "Suppose that you didn't understand the idea that a kitchen was a place where you cook and prepare food; think about how confusing a room a kitchen would be." Consider: in one room you have fire and ice, animal remains, running water, knives, herbs and spices, soaps, wire brushes, gigahertz band microwave transmitters, churning blades. "It would be easy for some outer space creature to decide that this room had some sort of religious significance. A kitchen is like no other room in the house". Yet all of the seemingly unrelated objects in a kitchen suddenly make sense if you understand the idea that a kitchen is a place to cook and prepare foods. This idea serves as a thread, tying all of the seemingly unconnected items in a kitchen together and making sense out of them; what appeared to be unrelated chaos suddenly ties together and comes into focus.
What I can tell you about what I have learned is that there is a common thread, which runs throughout almost everything in the universe, and which ties all of existence together; making sense out of it. Unfortunately in trying to explain that thread I find myself in the position of someone who has worked a giant jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces to it - without benefit of having a picture of what the puzzle is supposed to look like when it is finished - who now attempts to tell people how to solve the puzzle over the telephone. If you could see what I see - my conclusions would be obvious.
Sticking with the jigsaw puzzle for a moment I would like to point out that everyone has been working on the same puzzle; some people solve a little piece of it and keep it to themselves. Other people - out of frustration at not being able to solve the puzzle intentionally distract and confuse other people to keep them from solving it. Other people have an idea how the puzzle fits together, but do everything in their power to keep anyone else from understanding what the puzzle looks like. Why would someone do that? Because it gives them an illusion of power to see everyone else struggling with the problem.
One of the things that makes the puzzle difficult is this: the one thing
that is known about jigsaw puzzles is that you find the four pieces with
the square corners, and use them - along with the other pieces with straight
edges to form the outer frame of the picture. From this point on you build
the picture from the outside in. See illustration 1. This is an obvious
and successful way of solving jigsaw puzzles. In a sense human education
is designed to help you look for the pieces that fit into this pre-existing
frame.
What I have realized as a result of my studies is that there was an error made by the first people to work on the puzzle which has gone uncorrected for thousands of years. Instead of forming the outer frame of the picture - the pieces with the straight edges actually form the core of the picture. See illustration 2.
I realize that I have been speaking allegorically - but I want you to have a feel for what is wrong with the current state of human knowledge, and how fundamental the problem in understanding is.
An example may clarify what I am trying to say. Scientists have a view of the world that starts with the framework of the scientific method, and which ignores and rejects anything which does not fit into that framework. For instance basket weaving is not considered as something that most scientists would study; it is too mundane.
Everybody from business men to farmers has solved a piece of the great puzzle. Yet most scientists consider anything which does not fit into their framework as somehow irrelevant. I believe that this is a grave error - and that all of reality is a proper thing for the study of an inquiring mind. The problem with the framework view of things is that the picture doesn't make any sense; individual pieces of the puzzle fit together correctly, but the coherent all doesn't fit together. In my essay entitled "The Interference Anomaly" I discuss a piece of the puzzle that just won't fit into the existing scientific framework no matter how it is turned.
It is because I began to realize that the picture didn't make any sense the way the puzzle was being solved that I set out down the bizarre path of my life. Whether or not my conclusions are correct is almost irrelevant: the journey I have taken has let me see things that most people don't even dream exist.