An Ontological Aside on the Dynamics of Emergent Potential
“The world is not composed of things, but of processes.” — Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality, 1929)
“We can never know the world as it is, only as we construct it.” — Heinz von Foerster (Understanding Understanding, 2003)
Shifting the Lens—Perception, Reality, and the Disappearance of Magic
Magic is not a relic of ancient myth nor a whimsical fancy. It is an ontological reality—hidden, filtered out by the structures of the world we inhabit. This essay is an exploration of this paradox: how magic exists within reality’s deeper layers yet remains absent in the compressed, symbolic construct we call “the world.”
The distinction between reality and the world is subtle but crucial. Reality, in its unmediated form, is an open field of dynamic potentialities—a continuous flux of becoming. The world, by contrast, is a stabilized construct: a map, not the territory. It is a symbolic compression, designed not for truth but for survival. It organizes, simplifies, and mediates reality into manageable forms, but in doing so, it occludes the deeper dynamism that underlies all existence.
This essay explores the philosophical, epistemological, and metaphysical foundations of this split, drawing from constructivist epistemology, second-order cybernetics, process philosophy, complexity theory, and mystical traditions. In doing so, it reframes magic—not as superstition or fantasy—but as the latent potential within reality itself, filtered out by the very mechanisms that create the stability of the world.
Magic and mysticism, though often conflated, operate on distinct yet complementary levels. While magic engages the hidden dynamics of reality—allowing interaction with its latent potential—mysticism concerns itself with the inward journey towards meaning and coherence. The mystical experience is not about altering external reality but deepening the subject’s orientation within it. Thinkers like Aurobindo in Vedic philosophy and Gershom Scholem in his studies of Kabbalah have emphasized this inner transformative journey. While magic navigates the flux of reality, mysticism seeks its underlying coherence.
In my framework of Sapiognosis—the evolution of cosmic intelligence—both magic and mysticism are seen not as esoteric outliers but as integral aspects of reality’s self-unfolding. Where magic bends the currents of potential, mysticism tunes the subject to its deepest structures.
However, this essay maintains a constructivist stance: it does not aim to compare mystical traditions but rather to integrate their epistemological relevance within a broader understanding of cognitive evolution.
I. The World as Symbolic Compression: How Perception Limits Reality
1.1 The Constructed World
The world we navigate daily is a cognitive artifact—a tool for survival, not a mirror of reality. Human consciousness, shaped by evolutionary pressures, filters out complexity in favor of clarity and coherence. This process—explained by constructivist epistemology (Maturana, Varela, Luhmann)—creates a self-referential loop: we perceive not reality itself but a version filtered through biological, cultural, and cognitive constraints.
Language is central to this filtering process. As Ludwig Wittgenstein observed, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Language condenses complexity into symbols, creating a map of the world that is legible but reductive.
This mapping process is not passive. It stabilizes perceptions, locking dynamic processes into fixed identities—turning flux into form, becoming into being. The result is a world that feels solid, predictable, and deterministic—but only because the unstable elements have been systematically filtered out.
1.2 Redundancy and the Loss of Magic
The stability of the world comes at a cost: redundancy.
Symbols, habits, and social norms create feedback loops that reinforce existing structures, leading to a form of cognitive and social inertia. Over time, these redundancies harden, and the dynamic potentials of reality fade from view.
Magic, in this context, is the capacity to engage with reality’s fluid dynamics—to operate within its deeper layers of potentiality. But the world, as a system of compressed symbols, filters this out. What remains is a deterministic surface where cause and effect appear rigid and linear.
Children, mystics, and certain artists bypass these filters, tapping into the deeper potentials of reality. They glimpse what the world hides—a space where thought, emotion, and matter coalesce in unpredictable ways.
II. Reality as Dynamic Potential: The Field Where Magic Resides
2.1 Reality Beyond the World
While the world is a symbolic construct, reality is an emergent field—a space where potentialities unfold, intersect, and transform. Process philosophy (Whitehead), complexity theory, and quantum mechanics all point to a similar conclusion: reality is not a static architecture but a living process.
In quantum terms, reality exists in a state of superposition—multiple potential states—until observation collapses it into a single actuality. The world is the product of countless such collapses, stabilized into a coherent narrative. But the underlying field remains open, dynamic, and deeply interconnected.
2.2 Consciousness as an Interface
Consciousness occupies a unique position—it is both within the world and connected to the deeper layers of reality. In its ordinary state, consciousness operates within the confines of symbolic mediation. But in altered states—through meditation, artistic creation, or profound insight—the filters thin, allowing access to reality’s latent potentials.
This is where magic emerges—not as a violation of natural law, but as a deeper engagement with its fluid foundations. In these moments, consciousness becomes a modulator of reality, influencing the dynamics that underlie fixed forms.
2.3 Time as a Construct
We experience time as a sequence—past, present, future—because it allows for coherent narrative construction. But this sequence is a cognitive artifact.
In contrast to purely cosmological or linear views, Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of vertical time shifts our perspective from sequential order to layered depth. Rather than unfolding in a rigid before-and-after progression, moments interact much like overlapping strata in which meanings resonate, amplify, and intersect. This perspective aligns with a broader philosophical current that treats time not merely as a chronological or physical continuum but as a poetically charged dimension with profound ontological implications.
Henri Bergson, for instance, introduced the concept of la durée, emphasizing that genuine temporal experience is indivisible. Rather than existing as discrete slices of past, present, and future, consciousness endures in a continuous flow, where past moments remain actively present as a qualitative thickness. Time here is not segmented but accumulative—each new instance resonating with earlier lived layers.
Gaston Bachelard further underscored this dynamic in his explorations of poetic imagination, depicting the moment as a heightened zone in which memory, dream, and the immediate present intersect. Instead of being a mere point on a horizontal timeline, the instant becomes a dense node of possibility, revealing multiple layers of meaning that unfold simultaneously.
Likewise, Martin Heidegger questioned the standard partitioning of past, present, and future. In Being and Time, his analysis of ecstasis shows how human existence inherently projects forward into possibilities while continuously drawing upon what has been. Time thus appears less as a linear sequence and more as an existential interplay of “already,” “now,” and “not-yet,” all co-present in the structure of Dasein.
Such vertical or layered conceptions of time resonate powerfully with the essay’s overarching argument: reality is a living field of emergent potentials, while the world is a stabilized construct that filters out this underlying fluidity. By acknowledging a more poetic, multidimensional sense of time, we glimpse how reality’s deeper strata—beyond rigid cause and effect—remain open to new coherences and latent possibilities. Herein lies the connection to magic: when consciousness engages these overlapping time-layers directly, it can modulate the field of emerging potentials rather than passively moving along a fixed timeline.
Beyond mere chronology, time thus becomes a vessel of ontology—a dynamic backdrop for the continuous interplay of events, meanings, and transformations. Thinkers from Bergson to Heidegger highlight this vertical depth as a key to perceiving reality’s inherent fluidity, reinforcing the essay’s claim that linear chronology is only one mode (and a restrictive one) of navigating the vast expanse of the real. Through vertical time, we recover the richness of overlapping moments and reclaim a horizon of emergent coherence—the very dimension in which magic, as discussed throughout the essay, unveils its power.
III. The Mechanics of Magic: Thought as a Field Modulator
3.1 Consciousness and Field Theory
If reality is a field of emergent potentials, then thought is not confined to the brain but is a field phenomenon. In quantum cognition and noetic sciences, consciousness is increasingly viewed as a participant in the unfolding of reality, not merely a passive observer.
When thought aligns with the deeper dynamics of reality, it acts as a field modulator, influencing probability patterns. This is not mere metaphor—research in psychoneuroimmunology and epigenetics shows how intention can influence biological systems. At a subtler level, consciousness may also interact with broader energetic fields.
3.2 The Role of Redundancy Filters
Why, then, is magic rare? Because the world’s redundancy filters block most access to the deeper field. These filters—cultural norms, cognitive habits, and biological imperatives—stabilize the world but at the cost of closing off its dynamic potentials.
Altered states of consciousness—whether induced by meditation, art, or psychedelics—temporarily disrupt these filters, allowing access to the deeper dynamics of reality. In these moments, consciousness can interact with the field directly, producing effects that appear “magical” from the perspective of ordinary perception.
IV. Ethical and Existential Implications
4.1 Freedom as Emergent Potential
If magic exists in reality but not in the world, then freedom is not the ability to choose between pre-defined options but the capacity to engage reality at the level of its latent potentials. This is a deeper form of agency—one that transcends the constraints of symbolic mediation.
4.2 Ethics Beyond Symbolic Codes
This also reframes ethics. In the world, ethics is often a system of rules—a symbolic code for behavior. But at the level of reality, ethics becomes a question of systemic coherence. The ethical act is not the one that follows the rules but the one that aligns with the emergent dynamics of the whole.
Artists, mystics, and visionaries often intuit this: their acts are not ethical because they follow codes but because they resonate with deeper patterns of coherence.
Epilogue: On the Veiled Potentials of Being
The statement “There is magic in reality, but not in this world” is not a claim but a provocation—a way of opening perception beyond the habitual. It gestures toward the hidden depths beneath the world’s symbolic crust and invites us to consider that what we take as fixed may be fluid, and what we dismiss as illusion may be the deeper truth.
In an era of systemic collapse and symbolic overload, this orientation is not merely philosophical—it is existential. To re-engage with the deeper potentials of reality is to reclaim a form of agency that the modern world has all but forgotten.
Magic, in this sense, is not a force to wield but a field to align with—a space where consciousness, freed from the redundancy of the world, can participate in the continuous unfolding of reality itself.
References
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“To transcend the limits of the world is not to escape it but to engage reality at the level where its deepest potentials emerge.”