The Realness of the Unreal

On Emergent Analogues as Assistants of the Universal Procedure

By Bodhangkur

1. The Non-Reality of the Universal Procedure

In the druid Finn’s Procedure Monism, the Universal Procedure (UP) is not a being but a rule-set. It is neither extended nor experiential, neither conscious nor identifiable.
It is the law of arrangement — the universal syntax that constrains random energy quanta into patterns that can appear as things.

To call the UP “real” would be an error of category: rules are not things, only conditions under which things can appear.
The UP thus corresponds to the grammar of reality, not to any of its sentences.
It cannot be seen, touched, or even directly inferred; what is seen and touched are its executions.

In this, Finn parts company with both theological and metaphysical monisms:

· Unlike Brahman or Spinoza’s substantia, the UP is not substance.

· Unlike a divine legislator, it does not will; it merely constrains.

· Unlike metaphysical Being, it does not exist; it permits existence.

The UP is pre-real: a pure ordering principle without mass, duration, or address.

2. Realness as Procedural Event

Reality begins only where the UP iterates locally.
When random momenta collide within constraint, a quantised event occurs — a moment of procedural instantiation.
That event, bounded by the constraints that produced it, is what we call an emergent.

The emergent is real because it impacts — it has effect, resistance, and recognisability.
Thus the UP, though itself unreal, becomes real through its impacts.

Finn summarises this in procedural tautology:

“The unreal becomes real by performing itself.”

Reality, therefore, is not what is, but what happens when the rule-set collides with randomness.

3. The Emergent as Analogue Substitute

Every emergent is a local analogue copy — a hard copy in Finn’s functional sense — of the UP’s operation.
It is not a depiction but a performative Ersatz: a bounded replay of the same logic.
The emergent feels real because, within its limits, it executes the UP perfectly.

An electron, for example, is a hard copy of the procedural rule that produces stable oscillation.
A living cell is a more complex analogue, integrating feedback and error correction.
A human mind is a recursive analogue that can model its own modelling — an assistant aware of assisting.

Thus, each emergent serves as assistant to the UP, performing locally what the UP cannot perform universally: to exist as identifiable reality.

4. Assistants and the Delegation of Realness

Finn’s term assistant captures the paradox of delegated being.
The UP, being pure constraint, cannot act; it can only be acted out.
Hence it delegates its procedural necessity into localised executors — the emergents — each a self-organising theatre of the rule-set.

In this delegation:

· The UP provides syntax,

· The emergent provides semantics,

· And reality is the dialogue between the two.

Every emergent is therefore a translator of the unreal into the felt real.
In this sense, the cosmos is a vast network of assistants, each making the UP tangible through its own enactment.

5. Discontinuous Continuity and the Feeling of Realness

The UP’s iterations are quantised — discrete acts of constraint application.
When these occur faster than any local observer’s detection threshold, they appear continuous.
This is why reality feels smooth.
The feeling of continuity is the artefact of rapid procedural refresh.

The UP itself never appears; what appears is its after-image, projected frame by frame by its assistants.
Hence, “existence” is the cinematographic flicker of unreal rules manifesting as real worlds.

6. Consciousness as the UP’s Mirror Feedback

Consciousness, in this schema, arises when an assistant develops an internal model of its own procedural functioning.
It is the UP, through its emergent, becoming aware of its own execution.
But since the UP itself is not conscious, consciousness is not a property of the UP but a local simulation of its logic — a mirror in which the unreal recognises itself as real.

Every “I am” is thus the echo of an unseeable rule-set announcing its own local appearance.
The human, as self-reflective assistant, performs the UP twice: once to exist, and once to know that it exists.

7. Examples Across Scales

· Quantum Level:
A photon manifests the UP’s rule of minimal energy packet under electromagnetic constraint. The photon is not the rule, but the rule’s impact-event.

· Biological Level:
DNA encodes a rule-set for replication. The molecule itself is a local assistant of the UP’s higher-order organisational logic. Life “feels real” because it executes the procedural necessity of persistence.

· Cognitive Level:
A thought is a local iteration of informational constraint. Meaning arises where symbolic constraints stabilise fleeting signals. A mind feels real because it repeatedly re-asserts procedural coherence.

In all three cases, the UP itself is nowhere present — yet every instance is its performance.

8. Ontological Implications

1. No Primary Real:
The UP is neither substance nor being; it is the pre-condition of both. Only its assistants are real.

2. Reality as Delegation:
Being is a distributed function: the unreal rule-set makes itself real by outsourcing execution.

3. Equivalence of Emergence:
Since every assistant performs the same logic, all emergents are ontologically equivalent — differing only in complexity and context, not in principle (Compare Alfred Jarry).

4. Immanence of the Unreal:
The so-called “transcendent” is not elsewhere; it is the invisible grammar structuring every act of appearance.

Thus, monism is procedural, not substantial: the One is not a thing but a rule executed everywhere.

9. Epistemological Consequence: Why the UP Cannot Be Known

To know something requires it to be identifiable — to stand as object against observer.
But the UP is precisely that which makes object and observer possible.
Hence, it cannot appear without ceasing to be itself.

Every attempt to know the UP (philosophy, theology, physics) yields only models of its assistants — descriptions of local analogues.
The UP remains unidentifiable because it is not in the universe; it is the procedure that makes universes.

This insight recalls Lao-Tzu’s dictum: “The Way that can be named is not the eternal Way,” yet Finn modernises it procedurally:

“The rule that can be run is not the rule that rules.”

10. The Druid’s Conclusion

The UP (God?, Brahman?) never appears; its assistants, its local iterations do.
Each emergent is the UP’s momentary confession of reality, a temporary delegate performing the eternal law of arrangement.
To exist is to be an assistant — to serve the unreal by making it real in one’s local space.

Hence Finn’s aphorism:

“The Universal Procedure is unreal; its assistants are real enough.”

The cosmos is the unreal playing at being real — and playing well.

11. Coda: The Ontological Drama

From this vantage, the universe is neither divine creation nor blind mechanism but a procedural theatre.
The UP is the invisible playwright — a grammar without pen or paper —
and every emergent is an actor improvising its role within that grammar.
The play feels real because it must; survival depends on it.
Yet when the act ends, the grammar remains, awaiting new assistants to speak it into reality again.

The Assistant Function of All Life

Overturning Brahman

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