What practical difference is there between a belief in the particularity of (all) things and that in the same things as congeries of essences? If the metaphysics is so different can the experiences be the same? In each case it is a matter of the ways in which ordinary experience can be deepened, a matter of the direction you take in attempting to do so. In the first you move towards the being of things and the discovery of yourself as a being among beings, an infinite actuality, an aesthetic of thingness, an incarnate mystery. In the second you unfold the activity of perception in layer after layer, marveling at the cunning imbrications of what are essentially illusions and the way they produce an infinitely articulated effect of reality. Here the invisible seer, the ultimate witness that can't itself be witnessed is the only true reality. And you could also insist that since the difference of the two ways is premised only on an idea, and a superficial one at that, there must be a point in which the divergent directions coincide, even if you are not entitled to go straight to it.

All computational theories of mind including their uploading, virtualising, simulating, substrate-independent corollaries inevitably come down on the anti-existential side of 'essence before existence', or of dissolving being in a solution of essences. The terms in which these physicalist realisations are framed are always via variables, that is algebraic x's where x stands for whatever it happens to point to. In other words there is no pure particular, only the convergence of a finite web of general terms, of universals. The proponents might think they are perfectly nominalist, but their nominalism is underpinned by this radical interchangeability, or formalism, of the underlying terms. Of course it is true that if challenged you could not point to a pure particular, the context of such a challenge, in words or propositionally contentful intentions, begs the question, but still something protests that this isn't enough. This is something like the forgetting of being: once it is forgotten you can't even remember what it is that has been forgotten, but only an uneasiness remains which you will not surrender.

The simulation hypothesis utilises the idea that a good simulation of the universe can be far less complex than the presumed real universe (as thought by physics), whose complexity is such that it could not be simulated other than by a system of equal complexity. The savings are in all the things that don't actually need to be computed because they are not needed, for example, to take an extreme case, all the subatomic doings inside a piece of rock on an uninhabited planet. Implicit in this is that there is a privileged point of view, that there are things that matter to whoever set up the simulation, and chief among these the experience of conscious beings akin to the creator, for example in 'ancestral' simulations. In this way the notion of a simulation merges into that of a virtual reality, and indeed if we go along with the underlying assumption of the simulation hypothesis it would be natural that the creators would utilise it by way of the ability to participate rather than just observe. In this sense, self-conscious beings inside the simulation would be the ideal forms for the interface. How could you know then when you were being 'worn'? If we also grant that full self-consciousness is computationally expensive, then why not have only a single such character at a time, all the rest of the living beings being run as p-zombies? All of this is meant to sketch out one of many lines by which this hypothesis leads to absurd conclusions.

The narratives within experience are of more interest than the materials of experience. But still you have staked everything on the latter, at least on finding the narrative core of such materials after all the threads have been taken out, or left to wither. The narratives lead away from the brute fact of their dependence on some kind of dream stuff, on whatever it is that makes them up, the physics of mind. But absent any narrative and there is nothing left to study, the texture, the feel of things vanishes with it. These are the emptiest of days, this suspension of desire and of being.

Experience as your experience is always based out of a system (or anti-system) of everything, a system which is mostly implicit and is defined loosely by certain parameters. Philosophy is the attempt to make it explicit and to disinter the core parameters as required by the particular choice of most encompassing reality. You might consider the degree to which everything is relational, including the apparent entities that are related, or whether at some point there are ineluctable reals, say pure impressions. Some theories present as purely relational in order to shelter non-relational elements, to protect them from dissolution. It is not about which view is true and which false, since these valences are already defined within the system. It is more as if the choice is for a style of architecture and what that in turn makes possible. In any case the meta-theory is formed inside the theory; that being what it means for a system to be a system of everything. That is an inherently paradoxical situation and much depends on how you treat the paradox; it is the limit of relationality which otherwise would seem all too easily to undermine all boundaries.

The flux of experience is intentional all the way down, intentional in a fractal manner, each moment subdividing into smaller ones, each a world in itself and bearing no prior relation to its parent or sibling worlds. A sparkling dust of subjective events. The nominally fractal structure of this plurality of micro worlds is not itself a world or world-like in any way. It defies rationality which is why it can be the condition for rationality, while permitting it more flexibility, more degrees of freedom than it would allow itself. None of this chaotic formalism is enough to constitute experience. What it misses is what is pervasive and omnipresent and unable to be captured by any form, namely the very stuff out of which it is sculpted, the warm mercury of nameless living being.

The constancies of outer perception provide relief, or respite, from an inner world that swirls unendingly. This movement is in the mutual relativity of the object and subject poles but is also independently in each of them in which that very distinction is cast. And swirling doesn't do it justice because it is also jerky and ragged, it flashes and darkens unpredictably, and with inhuman ferocity. To address it is to court nausea, it is intolerable, literally insupportable. You must pass through this chaos but only after opening to it completely by seeing the fragile illusion that there is anything beside or above it shattered. There can be no internal foothold that you could use to steady your awareness into a single quality or flavour, the idea does not even exist.

Inhaling is action, it is what you do, while exhaling is passive, it is letting go of action, or allowing the action to take place of itself by the return of the body and its inertia. There is a subtle kind of dialogue involved which underlies every kind of mental activity, a moving of the weight from one side to the other, a doing and a being done. The tone of relation of these determines the mood. This is perhaps the same as the yang and the yin, an interplay or weave right down into the core of the experiencing in time. When the yin, the passive, dull and bodily component predominates, like an overcast sky, it resumes its sway in every moment forestalling all lightness and covering over he intuition with a pall of befuddled skepticism.

If the sole underlying reality is that in which or for which you appear then it is the same in respect of your ceasing to appear. Your life and your death and everything in between merely appearances or arisals in this sole condition for any sort of experienced reality. It is then a kind of pure distinction, and abstract power of choice or distinction. If you were to be reborn as another with no memory of your former life there would still be a sense in which it was you, different shadows playing on the same screen? But then why could this not be what is already in place in relation to every other person or sentience, the very same screen? You have pushed the background of consciousness so far back that it embraces every degree of difference. Yourself yesterday and yourself today and tomorrow appearing on the same timeless screen despite there being mo real commerce between them. This is absurd, but since it is the inevitable conclusion of your questions ought you to embrace this absurdity or reject the whole logic and start over again?

The 'I' that witnesses being is beyond being all the more as its avatars in being are subject to infinitely rich vicissitudes of experience. You might say that it is its own ground, but to do so you need to re-evaluate the meaning of this term and everything related to it, including the notions of witnessing and beyondness. It's not that these words don't apply but that they undergo a radical pivoting. Being is framed in language but language is 'contingent' to the 'I'.  Starting here you can push further back into the source, what it is behind or apart from any and all 'I'-ness.

In the cogito as mostly understood, being is the host and 'I' am the guest. Being is the frame, it is unquestioned, and only 'I' am dubious - it is by no means clear that I am 'in' being, that I belong here. The thoughts, whatever they represent, whatever their intensional objects, clearly are, they sit comfortably and squarely in the frame of being, they are things, and since these thoughts are linked to me by an indelible connection, namely that they are my thoughts, that I am their thinker, then 'I' must share in their reality and so I must also 'be'. I am a suppliant of being and the cogito is my warrant, my certificate of nativity, or passport, to being. Indeed, even with the cogito in my pocket my status is not entirely certain, further reassurances are needed and perhaps the possession of 'clear and distinct ideas' goes some way to supplying them. All of this seems to be topsy turvey. Rightly being is the suppliant. Whatever my nature is it is the undoubtable, and it is being that is doubtful, dubious, that borrows whatever standing it appears to have from me. If the cogito is seen in this way, in reverse, then it fails to do what it sets out to do, being gains no assurance since its grounding is only provided by my thoughts, by the kind of being my thoughts derive from me. Whatever it is about me that is beyond doubt, however, there is no reason to find that it is inherited by my thoughts, since they are merely objects and outside of the kind of certainty that is mine.

All of the senses are at the surfaces of the body and the perceived world is a model which summarises and predicts sensory correlations. You may have a direct experience of time, but space and spatiality are entirely constructed in the imagination. This includes the body as an object in space and its surfaces and senses as well. All you have is a sensorium responsive to movements of attention so as to appear spread out in a wholly fictitious dimension of depth. You can catch your mind at work more easily in the creation of empty space than in the objects which fill it. By first proposing this capacious nothing it allows things to appear as things. And in the same way the inner spaces, the space between you and what you are aware of, thoughts sensation, feelings, are fictions allowing something you think of as you to appear as mysteriously not-appearing.

A practice consists of a performance in a situation in which results accrue which reflect the proficiency of the performance. The performance in each case is an engagement, an interrogation, a dance and response with and from a relative reality. Say that there are no in-principle limits to proficiency, but that your performances in such a practice that you are committed to enacting repeatedly are uniformly mediocre, meaning that the balance of reward and frustration skews towards the latter. This is a powerful form of subjectivation, it tells you something seemingly inescapable about yourself, especially because every ancillary performance you are able to add does nothing to change the pattern of the outcomes. It can happen that by pure grace, that is by a change which you could not have initiated, you suddenly find yourself performing at a dramatically higher level of proficiency. What feels like exactly the same performance now produces a far more rewarding result. You understand this as your having learnt something previously unsuspected about the situation which subtly alters your performance without any extra effort, or indeed with far less effort than previously, and hence you are able to continue to perform at this level with no fear of sliding back. There is still subjectivation, but it has altered in every way. You can see the 'errors' in your previous way of going about things but are just as blind and impotent in relation to the current errors which prevent you from attaining the 'next level'. The nature of subjectivation is what locks you into the level at which you find yourself.

The subject subjected is less than a shadow since there is the maximum distance between what he might know and its object. Everything is spun from the thread of his imagination, and that imagination is fed only from his  selfhood, which is what he seeks to establish by means of it. The subject reincorporated into the whole is redeemed from the consequences of his own poverty without that poverty being in any degree alleviated. His thoughts have their source elsewhere and however limited and known to be limited they are the working out of a specific and unique set of possibilities whose final significance is his own mystical body, however unknown to him in the pain and separation of the thinking.

Be it as it may, it is only significant in its passing by way of psyche with its deep enfoldings of every historical fragment of a life and their re-echoings, its resurgent fleeting subjects, their hullabaloo and revulsions. How good it would be to get behind this and describe its texture and action, the way it swirls and you within it, the days appearing out of dream, the weight and odour of time, the descent, the very Sunday, the green of it.

If there is a moment of experience prior to reflection, to the knowing of that moment, something like pure perception in which nothing is a repetition but is entirely new and fresh, then there ought also to be prior moment of knowing before it has been seduced into utility by perception and the pressure of prior thoughts, an inchoate pure penetration. These two sides of experience are locked in a embrace in which one now is the master and then the other. Is there really something go on here at the core of experience generating heat? Or are they separate, a rapid flicking back and forth, perhaps a single force that is neither mind nor world, an inescapable escapement?

To be cognisant of an event is to have that event in reflective consciousness. Reflection is already secondary, so what is primary? It can't be the event, but some sort of unreflecting knowing prior to the event and out of which the event is formed in awareness. You know this, but don't know you know it, you know it but not by the means by which you know things. This is where you must part ways from thought. This is not obscure but concealed beneath what is most taken for granted, immediate but so banal in appearance that it is overlooked, even if you spend a lifetime theorising about it. Only once look and see for yourself.

According to folk metaphysics you are a complete little personage, a soul or animula, suffering and animating a body object whose operations are in objectively real time and space. If you rephrase all of this in functionalist terms it is a complex interactive structure in which certain distinguished substructures define space-like and subject-like perspectival relations among themselves and with the other parts. When you do this nothing changes except for the disappearance of certain accompanying concepts, epiphenomenal in the true sense, which posit an independent and fixed reality of a convenient model which affords some practical shortcuts at the cost of some rather drastic overheads. For example, the model makes much of the distinction between insides and outsides, subjects and objects, none of which are supported by the bare phenomena of experience. The functional rephrasing of space in these terms is fairly straightforward, but time is more challenging since it bears absolute irreversible difference. The same necessity has it that the experiencing cannot be experienced as that time cannot go backwards, and in this sense it can be said that the time is the only way in which the appearing appears.

Everyday schizophrenia, that you are an entirely different person in a different world in the morning and at night, according to the season, weather, last night's dinner and other conditions, is the simplest way of seeing that there is no sharp division between you and the world. What moves through time - to provisionally lean on time - is the whole complex of experience, and the parts that you momentarily call self and world are contingently defined in each movement by material inferential relations. It is a matter of applying a certain ontological topology, to which the mind is perfectly adapted, to do which results in the 'full-service' being-in-the-world that you have at any particular time. This might be an insight resulting from performing a phenomenological reduction, or from the habit of a basic meditation in which you feelingly locate the self vortex within the welter of active engagements, or merely from living with your desires. It should be clear the that who is experiencing is not the self in the feeling of self but the nameless presence of the totality of whatever happens to be.

That subjectivation is an inevitable and inescapable result of language or related overarching structures is merely the latest form of metaphysics. You know more and more, have multiple overlapping accounts, physical, psychological, aesthetic, social political etc., all of which add to an immense sway of determination, of bondage. The broken impossible subject is the subject par excellence. All of these are motivated by the guiding question, what is it? That all of this works as it does is because you cannot yet ask what grounds it, to do so is foreclosed, taboo, obscene from within this understanding, as if you are attempting to give birth to yourself. Nonetheless, this question cannot be prevented, to do so would be to admit it. It is of a different dimension which passes through the other space as if it weren't there, as if there is no 'Da' there.

Everything, that is every thing, subjectivises you. Being in the field of the other is the most salient example, but the presence of what is taken to an other subject is only what makes this the most obvious. The same effect, a separation from yourself that brings you about is the way you are in your world. This means that you do not possess your own ground, you are in rhetoric and not persuasion, and it is an index of the unawakened condition. Logically, this is only possible for a kind of being that does possess its own ground, since how else could it be projected, but by an odd inner twist whereby it cannot be recognised. To be awakened is then to be immune from subjection, which is the same as being free from any subjectification. This can be mistaken for having no self, but that's not it at all. There is nothing in human reality that demands it be of a subject. This is only of the realm in which you first find yourself. The puzzle is how to emerge from it, and to do so without denying it.

Every worthwhile question has no answer within the same terms as those in which it was formulated. Such a question brings about a movement of attention which alters the entire landscape of meaning and your place within it. You have no master map which can describe where you now find yourself. The possibilities are greater than you think since the reflex of thought is to assimilate the new to the familiar. And so you miss the pathways than can take you further away from your starting point, further towards the destination that is yours. Only when you are propelled by a powerful distress within the familiar are you sufficiently awake to realise the strangeness of the journey. How else can you recognise what you have never looked at before? How else can you see the door that has always been open but that you have always blindly walked past?

Every content can be chased down to its initial moment in which it is always found to be preceded by a context, or frame, or clearing which need not themselves be definite contents. The context for a content might be only the sheaf of possible ways for that content to be, an indefinite comprehended plurality. If you bring it to attention it reveals a further even more primitive context, or pretext for a staging. This is what experience no matter how direct shares with thoughts no matter how abstract and distinct; they are because their place has already been prepared. This can't lead to an infinite regress, at some point there must be a possibility of a content that has nothing behind it, that gives birth to itself out of pure emptiness, pure vacuum. This is miles behind what you know as consciousness, but the strange inner urge in consciousness is to swim upstream to that very brink, its origin and finality.

Your thought is of the thinkable, but the thinking is unthinkable. Experience is of the experiencable, but the experiencing cannot be experienced. The only motive for speaking is to utter the unspeakable, and for reading to encounter what escapes formulation. But you go on searching to escape from what cannot be lost and hence cannot be found.

It doesn't make a difference whether the objective engulf the subjective or the subjective engulfs the objective. Once that takes place neither is what they were, but if you can still get hold of it somehow negation is no longer possible. You would step out of it without negation, or even negation of negation. The gap between you and experience isn't in any direction, and it's the same even here, in the storm of conditions.