When teaching introductory philosophy, I loved to make this point manifest by asking, as I was writing the formula “F=MA” (Force equals Mass times Acceleration) on the blackboard, “What is the difference between that formula…” (and then I would pause as I turned toward the class and threw my chalk over their heads and against the rear wall of the classroom, shattering it into small pieces) “…and this?” spoken as I threw the chalk.

I never needed to say another word about this distinction because the act was so unexpected, and therefore phenomenal to my students. They got it.

But it takes that kind of phenomenal intrusion to wake us up to the distinction between words, concepts, and thoughts about them, and reality. Without that intrusion, this idea will just be received as another concept to be stored amidst the ever-growing collection of dusty concepts, and the visceral truth of it will be lost to the hearer.

Similarly, a different kind of phenomenal intrusion occurs when we also — suddenly — see that the distinguished “things” all around us are of the same nature — still not yet reality itself. That is, we normally live at a double remove from reality. Noting that the map is not the territory takes us back only one remove. This is the point of traditional meditation, and its ultimate goal, and it is what is meant by “seeing the true nature of mind.”

This is not always a well received idea for those comfortable at that primary remove, which they see as the ultimate reality, just as in the past, words were taken as being the real thing itself, which I believe is what the idea of magical incantations is based upon, and thus the map was the territory for those that held this understanding.

The goal of seeing past the distinctions we make, cutting up reality into “things” is what meditative traditions mean by the expression, “waking up.”

Thank you, Rob Marchant, for this excellent “pointing out.”