Infinite possibilities

The idea is not infinite. If it were infinite it would not be possible. There are no infinite possibilities. The possibilities imaged in the idea are finite and cannot grasp what is real or distinguish between the real and the actual. Existence, the actualized possibility, is only an image of reality, which cannot be known by those reflective processes of rational thought that discover the idea, the ground of possibility. The actualities in which we each exist, the actualized possibilities, are only related coincidentally and impartially to the reality of being.

Preface

I hope that my work will demonstrate effectively that the recorded history of humankind upon the earth is the direct result of the fallen condition of the human intellect. The work is, therefore, essentially, a poetic thesis in which I attempt to demonstrate that this fallen condition is elemental and has existed throughout recorded history. In my demonstration the present human condition is seen as the fruit of what has been termed by Cardinal Newman “an aboriginal catastrophe”, depicted within conceptualized time as the fall of man. Without this catastrophe there would be no history, a history of conquest and death, the fruit of an act of murder, the killing of Abel by his blood brother, Cain. The archetypal stories in the Jewish scriptural canon will be seen to record this fall with astonishing psychological insight and I will use them in my poetic attempt to guide the unhindered soul into the consciousness of absolute being and the promise of eternal life.

As a Catholic philosopher I am constantly seeking the answer to the puzzle of my existence, an answer I can find only within my own consciousness. Through reflection on my own experiences of the universe in which I exist and the study of others’ reflections and experiences I draw a map of my actuality while seeking its relationship to an ultimate reality. The puzzle of why I exist supposes a knowledge of where I exist. The accumulation of knowledge of my environment is, therefore, a necessary step, but my goal is to understand. Discovering that, within the universe, all things are relative but that my own being is not relative, since thought follows being and I am before I think, I become a passionate searcher after the absolute and a seeker after wisdom, which cannot, I believe, be defined except by those who have gained it. Wisdom lies in immediate being and reflective thought is, therefore, a distraction. Herein lies a paradox, that an ultimate reality must be accepted, must be believed in, before it can be known. Faith in the absolute is an act of being. I therefore pursue in darkness a far light.

That far light is an image of both the beginning and the center of the physical universe in which I apparently exist, a light which has traveled from a seminal point in space and moment in time outward in every direction at an immense, yet relative, speed for millions upon millions of solar years to reach my observation, a solar year being an arbitrary measurement by an earthbound observer’s intellect of the time in which the earth completes one orbit around the sun, a relative moment of time. This light has then traveled past my outpost in the universe for millions upon millions more solar years, apparently gathering speed, until it has reached the outer limits of its expanding material domain and has either regained the material formlessness of energy with which it began its journey among the stars or has spiraled back into the formless, absolute void into which the physical universe is expanding.

Time and space are products of the rational human mind, conceptual artifacts inextricably intertwined within a reflective intellectual consciousness that embraces duality. These concepts are then projected as a repetition, a reflective actuality, upon a universe that can no longer be apprehended immediately but only reflectively. This loss of immediacy is precisely the fall from innocence. My existence is as a moment of consciousness within this projected actuality of space and time, this physical universe. I was conditioned, while young, to accept this reflective actuality as reality and then indoctrinated into a false value system which accepts only a rationalistic interpretation of events and sets me on a course of acquisition of material possessions. I am surrounded by form, which I perceive to be energy of decreasing velocity. This informs me that the material of the physical universe is in decay. Decadence, entropy, rules the physical universe! The possessions that I devote my life to gain today are worthless tomorrow. There are no absolutes within this universe, everything is relative, making it accessible to my reflective and rational mind, which is searching for, but cannot comprehend, the absolute.

The physical matter of the universe appears to be moving in two contradictory directions in time, both decreasing in speed as it's energy decays, and increasing in velocity as it expands in space, which presents another paradox for me to attempt to understand. My bodily movement, too, slows as I age, yet my consciousness, building upon an ever increasing pool of experiential knowledge, increases in acuity. To confront this paradox requires wisdom, which I have yet to attain but which may now be partially defined as a qualitative increase in consciousness. An increase in knowledge without understanding does not give wisdom. Only a correct understanding of the knowledge that I have gained will make me wise and the acquisition of this understanding requires diligence over time, and patience.

The schools of learning in civilization, the academy and the university, do not teach wisdom or own wisdom, despite their claims, and, insofar as they are a part of the worldly establishment that founded them, they cannot ever possess wisdom. Since understanding is a prerequisite for obtaining wisdom, they reveal by their claim to authority and their service to those who hold power and who claim a larger authority, that they do not even possess understanding. There can be no legitimate authority, intellectual or otherwise, on the earth. Authority represents power and all power exhibited on the earth is merely the power of the negative in existence which is discovered by an intellectual reflection the use of which involves the loss of immediacy and innocence, thereby rendering the authority holders guilty. All power and authority have, as their base, the fear of the ultimate power of the negative in existence, which is death. Therefore, the knowledge that the academy and the university have gained and holds in trust of necessity becomes perverted in its application, destroying the natural world and filling the intellectual void with the works of progress, a euphemism for entropy. Always marching forward, to a dubious destination, these powers can never stand still. Always becoming objectively, they can never simply be subjectively. All such authority, power and progress may be seen as artificial constructions of the fallen human intellect.

The environment formed by civilization, an artificial actuality which a misnamed homo sapiens is constructing across the Earth over time, obfuscates human perceptions of reality and truth. Youthful minds are conditioned to accept this unnatural actuality as reality and are then indoctrinated into a set of false values which contain a misrepresentation of the world of phenomena. A materialistic and mechanistic worldview is foisted upon each budding consciousness as the only reality. Conformity to this worldview is rewarded while nonconformity is deemed eccentric and erratic. The laws that govern

societies are always framed to protect the interests of those who claim authority and exercise power over others, while the weak and the poor are fed from the scraps that fall from the tables of the greedy and the powerful. Men are encouraged, like Esau, to sell their birthrights for a bowl of soup.

Before the physical universe began to exist I surmise that there was only an infinite void, formless and empty, absolute and eternal, a great immaterial Zero. It is within this vast emptiness that the physical universe came to exist and and into which is expanding. The One, the universe, is an attempt to negate the Zero, the void, with something instead of nothing. But when the One appears and confronts the Zero the Universe of relativity is formed, a bubble within the Void. This universal bubble expands within the void but can never become absolute since everything within it is relative. It had a beginning in time so can never become eternal since it must also have an end, and it is finite so can never become infinite.

Whatever caused the material universe to exist must be extraneous to the universe, and the totality which is outside the universe is precisely the immaterial void into which the universe of form that confronts the conscious mind is expanding and which, I believe, is a spiritual and conscious being, infinite, absolute and eternal, present within the material universe as the soul of every individual being. It is the effort of human beings to fill this void without acknowledging its spiritual and conscious reality which leads to the development of the material civilization that is now spread, like an infectious scab, across the earth.

The soul of each man and woman may be defined as a single moment of the eternal consciousness of the void, the spiritual void of absolute being, a moment that can freely choose to be determined spiritually or materially, as being or as existing, as a moment of eternity or as a moment of time. When the soul moves to express its self as a moment of time it falls from being into existing, from unity into duality, from absolute into relative, from the infinitude of the spiritual void into the finitude of the material universe.

The highest work of the individual soul within the universe is to express in consciousness its own absolute being, a transcendent being of the absolute, subjecting its own existence to the reality of being. The physical universe now appears to human consciousness as an expression in lower dimensions of the higher dimensions of being and a consciousness of the absolute is the highest form of consciousness, revealed as transcendent to the physical universe and thereby infinite and eternal. The seed of consciousness implanted in the universe transcends the physical limitations of form that delineate existence and which is passed on through generation. The expansion of consciousness becomes the direction of the evolution of life within the universe.

Increased consciousness is not therefore a means to an end but an end in and of itself. It is not to be achieved in order to manipulate the physical universe, but in order to transcend the physical universe. That universe has a beginning and therefore will have an ending; everything within it is relative. It is finite and temporal and designed to decay. All movement in time and space is the movement of decay, time being most precisely defined as the measure of entropy. Absolute consciousness, on the other hand, the consciousness of absolute being is infinite and eternal and so is not subject to the great law of physical entropy. It is transcendent to the limitations of relativity and to their rational interpretation. The innumerable forms of philosophy and the rationality of logic, however, capture the fallen intellect in their nets and hinder it from acquiring knowledge of the absolute categories, bringing the mind into the bondage of rationality subject to the ills of the flesh. In this light, the limitation of dialectic is obvious, although the dialectical method can bring us to the borders of the absolute, which can be comprehended only by a transcendent, spiritual consciousness of faith in an absolute being.

Everything and Nothing

Whatever caused the material universe to exist must be extraneous to the universe, and the totality which is outside the universe is precisely the immaterial void into which the universe of form that confronts the conscious mind is expanding and which, I believe, is a spiritual and conscious being, infinite, absolute and eternal, present within the material universe as the soul of every individual being. It is the effort of human beings to fill this void without acknowledging its spiritual and conscious reality which leads to the development of the material civilization that is now spread, like an infectious scab, across the earth. 

existence or being - choose one

The soul of each man and woman may be defined as a single moment of the eternal consciousness of the void, the spiritual void of absolute being, a moment that can freely choose to be determined spiritually or materially, as being or as existing, as a moment of eternity or as a moment of time. When the soul moves to express its self as a moment of time it falls from being into existing, from unity into duality, from absolute into relative, from the infinitude of the spiritual void into the finitude of the material universe.

Avoidance of Spirit!

The spiritual void which is the ground of each human soul is the same void within which the physical universe is expanding, an infinite emptiness. The soul which is consciously grounded in this emptiness is at one with its own transcendent being, absolute being. On the other hand, the soul which spurns the spiritual void and seeks fulfillment within the universe loses its connection to the eternal and wastes its lifetime filling the void at the center of its being with things of only relative value.

A little about faith

The reality of being is absolute and transcendent to every actuality in existence. This absolute being 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 the reality of being transcends the actualities of intellectual existence. This reality is transcendent and absolute while existence is intellectual and confined to a rational universe where everything is relative. 

Indirectly Speaking !

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 universe as unity into a reflective cognizance of the universe as a duality. 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 innocence and guilt. Existence is the objective invention of a human, rational, intellect that has fallen from a subjective contemplation of a reality that is spiritual and infinite into an objective actuality that is material and finite. The rational 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, which 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 a particular religion which provides a dogma of faith in a transcendent and absolute being that has appeared within the actualities of relative existence, an unthinkable paradox that can only be believed, can only be related to by faith. 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 faith in an absolute being and a moral discipline founded on the absolute principles which can be provided only by true religion. Christ provides that religion.

You can't get there from here!

I stopped a fellow once on a Jerusalem street and asked for directions to a certain place. He thought for a few minutes, turning in different directions contemplating the possibilities and finally threw his arms up in the air saying “you can't get there from here!”

Such is my thought and its conclusions for those unfamiliar with it. “You can't get there from where you are at!'  

The task of cosmology, I would think, is to reconcile the relative with the absolute, that is to say, the relative universe with the absolute void. This, of course can only be done on a level of transcendence, which postulates the void as spiritual. So cosmology, as every other science, is nullified and we must move into the realm of dogmatics. The task is to hold on to faith. What do you believe?

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.