The concept of “ICHI NO KOUKAN (the Exchange of positions)”

Usually, when you are looking at an object, you sense that your subjectivity (the subject) exists within your physical body in front of the object. However, when “ICHI NO KOUKAN (the Exchange of positions)” occurs in your consciousness, the position of your subjectivity (the subject) shifts from your body to the object’s background plane. Furthermore, your consciousness transfers the object’s background plane you see into the center of the object. (2013: The Day God Sees God, Advanced Edition)

OCOT informed me that the inversion of concepts between the subject and the object naturally occurs in human consciousness when “the Last Constitution of the solar system in a human being” starts. We call such an inversion between the subject and the object “ICHI NO KOUKAN (the Exchange of positions) in Noosology. This notion resonates with what Bergson claimed: In the object as the observed image (i.e., the object containing the trail of memories that make it an object), we see the existence of the seeing subject itself. In other words, “I, the subsect, am, in fact, the object of what is being seen.”

As I mentioned in the previous article on Bergson, the significance of “ICHHI NO KOUKAN (the Exchange of positions)” is that the way one’s consciousness arises is not taken as a chain of abstract conceptual actions taking place inside one’s body or brain, as is the conventional way of thinking, but is instead transferred into the open nature itself, right in front of one’s eyes. That is to say; I am “being” on the side of the visible world. To understand this, however, we must be careful not to view nature* as an “external” entity surrounding us in the conventional temporal-spatial sense of the term. Where this nature is present is the world permeated by the “I,” the subject, who possesses duration=memory. Therefore, in such a sense, nature is transformed into a place where the “I’s,” the subject’s, immanence is alive. From Noosolgy’s perspective, the space of “GAIMEN (the Outside of a human being),” the place where perception occurs, can be described as “the world inside the body.” Why, then, nature appears to be external to our body? – It is only because our consciousness habitually focuses on the space of “NAIMEN (the Inside of a human being),” which urges us to see our body as a material body surrounded by material nature.

*In this sense, the author, KOSEN, often uses the Greek philosophical term physis to describe the word “nature” in his lectures.

Let’s go back to see the two spherical spaces of “JIGEN-KANSATSUSHI (Dimension-Paratirons)” ψ3 and ψ4: the spherical space ψ3’s radius extends from the object to its backward direction, while ψ4’s radius directs from the object toward the observer’s front. These spaces are inverted from each other. Moreover, ψ3 corresponds to GAIMEN (the Outside of a human being; the visible side), and ψ4 corresponds to NAIMEN (the Inside of a human being; the invisible side).

Now, suppose this space division becomes the dividing line between spirit and matter. Then, GAIMEN (the Outside of a human being: ψ3) will be reflected in NAIMEN (the Inside of a human being: ψ4) in a minimal spatial area.

In other words, the space behind the object is reduced to an infinitesimally small sphere in the space in front of the object – this is the concept that philosophy has called “intension.”

To use a figurative expression, as if our perceptual space as the undivided space of intension were scattered like glittering stars in the space of extension called space-time. If we superimpose Bergson’s concept of duration into this idea, it becomes resembling Leibniz’s concept of “monad.”

Leibniz defines a monad as the smallest unit of existence that makes matter. However, this is not an atom, as Democritus advocated. While an atom is considered to be the smallest unit of matter, a monad that Leibniz speaks of is spirit. Thus, each monad has a cognitive capability and is the center of its world, capable of representing the universe as a whole and yet is a tiny part of it. In Buddhist terms, it is the knot of Taishaku-Ten (one of the guardian deities in Buddhism)’s net*, meaning that “a part projects the whole, and the whole is settled in each part.” In modern parlance, it is a holographic existence in which the part contains the whole.

*Taishaku-Ten’s net – refer to the note on Juju-Tai Mou in 50 Ways to Leave Your Time (16)

Standing under the starry sky,

let yourself be a magician of time and space.

There is a pinball in your hand.

Reflecting all the stars on its surface,

It is longing for the moment of inversion.

The image of the spherical space of JIGEN-KANSATSUSHI (the Dimension Paratiron) ψ3 is just like the surface of the pinball turned inside out. The expanse of space-time behind an object/matter is reduced to its limit by the speed of light. And then, it secretly enters into the center of the object/matter in NAIMEN (the Inside of a human being). (See Figure 1 below)

However, this place is no longer the center point of the object/matter, but as we have seen, it is where the perception of the object occurs. Thus, it can be paraphrased as ‘the place where I, the subject, am. OCOT calls this “monadized I” the “minimal spirit.” In Noosological terms, it is the baby of the tiniest essential self that has disclosed its existence.

The minimal spirit is the first position (of the transformer’s consciousness) in “Actualization” — Sirius File

Look around and see objects surrounding you one by one with this series of images in mind. You will have a sensation that your “I,” who is gazing at the object, is living in the center of it.

“We perceive the object not in ourselves but in the object.” — Bergson, La pensée et le mouvant