Absolute / Relative

Absolute Being and the Relative Universe

The expansion of human intellectual consciousness is from philosophy through poetry to prophecy. The philosopher, with an inquiring mind, attempts to understand the universe in which he or she awakens and formulate an approach to that developing understanding, while the poet attempts to give form to a discovered understanding. The prophet is silent, subjectively allowing the absolute to manifest its being through him, or through her. The prophetic consciousness is the highest development of an authentic human life and the prophetic utterance is the highest possible truth. My work is a work of philosophy that, in poetic semblance, aspires to but may not become a prophetic utterance. Based in physical theory, it expands into spiritual theory, revealing a sacred science which subjects the universe of relativity to a profound reflection, culminating in a leap of faith that seeks traces of the ultimate and absolute reality.

Growth in understanding is not a means to an end but an end in and of itself and should not be sought in order to facilitate manipulation of a physical universe which is finite and designed to decay. All movement in time and space is a movement of decay and time may be correctly defined as the measure of this decay, the measure of entropy. The universe began with time and will come to an end with time. All progress within the physical universe is the progress of decay. Consciousness, however, filled with knowledge and understanding that culminates in consciousness of the absolute and its categories is, necessarily, infinite and eternal and is not subject to the law of physical entropy. It is also transcendent to the limitations of a rational, cosmological interpretation of physical phenomena. The task of cosmology becomes the reconciliation of the relative universe with the absolute void, which can only be achieved utilizing a transcendent consciousness that postulates the void as spiritual. Absolute consciousness, the goal of human life, is independent of the physical universe. It is the spiritual consciousness of the infinite void.

We apparently live in an expanding material universe, conceived as relative, that began with the first moment of time. Before the beginning of this material universe there was nothing, and after the end of the material universe there will also be nothing and it is within this nothing, this void, that the physical universe is expanding in time and in space, which is to say that the expansion of material creates a universe of time and space inside the infinite void within which it emerged and is expanding. This void is absolute, infinite and eternal, while the physical universe is relative, finite and temporal. Viewed from within the universe of relativity the absolute is nothing, it does not exist. Only the relative universe exists in space and time and it came into existence at its beginning out of nothing, within the absolute void, within a true vacuum in which there is not even a presentiment of materialism.

Existence, the four dimensional space/time continuum, is apprehended sensually and can be defined intellectually as the universe of relativity. Since the physical universe of relativity is expanding into it, the true vacuum of the void must be present and it must have a spiritually transcendent presence since it cannot be sensually or intellectually known. The relative universe of existence can be thought of as expanding into the absolute presence of being, the infinite void, striving to become absolute, the finite striving to become infinite, the temporal striving to become eternal, as human consciousness strives to grasp an ultimate reality in an intellectual, unified theory.

Reality is transcendent to every actuality, as the absolute is transcendent to existence. Reality is spiritual, encompassing the void and the physical universe within the void. The universe is a universe of relativity in which the only presence of the absolute is the presence of the void at the center of each living being. Within the relative actualities there can be no absolutes. These relative actualities are limited by the boundaries of rational thought, and it is precisely faith that introduces the absolute into the actual universe, not as idea but as transcendent reality. Faith instructs us that there is a reality beyond the actuality of intellectual existence. This reality is transcendent and absolute while existence is intellectual and relative.

Existence is not being. Existence, the field of relativity, only exists within the human intellect, discovered when the conscious mind moves from an immediate perception of the world as unity into a reflective cognizance of the world as a duality. Everything within existence is given a name and it is precisely the naming of things that calls them into existence. Existence is an objective invention of the human intellect that has fallen from a subjective contemplation of a reality that is spiritual and absolute. The soul falls from an immediate subjectivity to the absolute categories of being into a reflective and objective perception of the relative categories of existence, from positive into positive and negative, from good into good and evil, from innocence into guilt. The reflective intellect fails to distinguish between reality and existence and, rejecting the void, which cannot be experienced or thought, denies the reality of the absolute, the reality of spirit and the reality of being. God does not exist, that is to say that God does not inhabit human intellectual existence. Absolute being simply is, eternal, infinite and absolute and to actualize that being we need faith in a transcendent reality. Whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not, we are held captive in a world of both good and evil, of both positive and negative, of both attraction and repulsion and a world, moreover, where the negative appears to be increasing in power and the good diminishing. To be redeemed from that world we need a moral discipline founded on the absolute principles which science cannot provide, but only faith.

Since the fallen soul can no longer live in the reality of absolute being it enters into a relative actuality, an invented, intellectual existence in which it is constantly becoming and striving to be who it truly is in the reality of being. It projects a negative image of its being, the idea of an individual self, into the artificially invented actuality of civilization, where it is held captive, conditioned and deformed by that artificial and false environment, the city, from which there can be no escape without a faith which reintroduces the absolute, spiritual categories into the world of intellectual relativity.

The negative image of its absolute and eternal being which it projects into intellectual existence, the artificial world of the city, is precisely the idea of the individual self. Leaving behind the reality of absolute being the soul enters the delusion of intellectual existence. Abjuring the absolute categories of the infinite and the eternal, leaving behind the absolute values of morality, justice, peace and mercy the fallen soul becomes self-conscious within the relative actualities of existence, affirming its own existence as an individual self, a negative image of being. Whereas being is guided by moral values founded on absolute principles the self, an image of non-being projected into intellectual existence, rejects morality, the values of absolute principles, and constructs systems of ethics founded on relative principles.

We live in a world of relativity, a universe of relativity, and yearn for the absolute. Each individual human is faced with this dilemma, and a choice must be made, to be determined intellectually by relativity or transcendentally by the absolute. The relative is everything, the physical universe, the absolute is nothing, an infinite void. The choice is between existence and being, between the material and the spiritual, between guilt and innocence. The end of all philosophy, consciousness sifting through the stuff of existence in search of meaning, is the discovery of the nothingness of being. It is the nothingness within which the universe came into existence and into which it is expanding, the nothingness of life, of the void of spiritual being, the void within each and every human life from which the natural man runs and hides. The choice is clear.