Saturday, June 24, 2006

Darwhiggian Evolution and Supernatural Election

Although it really makes no sense to our natural reason, Big Bang cosmology describes an event some 13.7 billion years ago that brought everything into being by expanding outward from a central point of imarginable nothingness. Among other things, scientists deduce that primordial event from the fact that it is still happening now. The cosmos is still banging away, expanding into....

Actually, no one knows what it’s expanding into. It’s a nonsense question, since cosmology only describes the cosmos, not the metacosmos in which it is embedded. That goes without saying, which is to say that it is an unsaid assumption of science.

For the same reason, cosmology cannot answer the question of “what was before the big bang?,” since the big bang brought the modality we call time into existence. “Before” that, there was only eternity and perhaps duration, but not physical time. To ask what was before the big bang, you might just as well ask what your phase looked like before you were bearthed and begaialed, for the answer is roughly the same.

Science adequately describes the horizontal cosmos, which is to say, inadequately. In order to acquire an integral understanding of reality, the linear/temporal/horizontal view must be supplemented by the vertical, which is where revelation, myth, and metaphysics take over. Only these modes can take us beyond the horizon of knowability that afflicts your and myopic little ego. Myth and revelation bypass the ego by making an appeal to our lower and higher intuition, respectively, while metaphysics speaks directly to the timeless intellect which may know absolute truth absolutely, since it is in the image of the divine. These are built-in ways for us to see beyond the temporal illusions of our womentary maninfestation.

We might visualize reality as a circle containing a cross. Science describes the horizontal vector, but there is a second “ray of creation” that extends from the top down and then back up again. The downward descending energy is called the “ray of involution,” while the upward ascending one is called the “ray of evolution.” Of course, this is not the same as Darwinian evolution, which only describes change--but not progress--in the horizontal.

On the strict Darwinian view there is, of course, no such thing as progress, which is as it should be. While technically a “true” theory if we limit ourselves to the horizontal, it is obviously a false and limited understanding if we don’t supplement it with the vertical view of spiritual evolution. Strictly speaking, I can assure you there are no strict “Darwinians,” for even the belief in strict Darwinism takes one out of the strictly horizontal stream of Darwinism, into the realm of transcendent ideas. In short, the theory of pure Darwinism finds itself in the embarassing position of having to express itself in a medium it cannot account for, and make its appeals to a judge that cannot exist. D'oh!

Paradoxically, in order for us to exist and possess our own free will, God cannot exist. But it is not really a paradox, for a moment’s reflection will inform your intellect that if God doesn’t get out of the way, there can be no creation separate from him, no free beings. In other words, at the top of the vertical ray is God. Even that is a bit misleading, for the top of the ray has a “face” we can see from our relative position, as well as an "interior" or "dark side" we cannot see (dark because the light would be too blinding).

Imagine a solar system, if you will, with God at the center. We all have a certain view of God, but “within” God there is the God-beyond-God that trails off into eternity. That is the temporal horizon of God’s intellectual knowability (and here I am again speaking of the higher, faith-infused heart-intellect, not the lower egoic mind).

The vertical “ray of creation” therefore extends on one end from the God-beyond-being to our world “below.” But it doesn’t stop here. Rather, just like the sun’s rays, they go one “forever,” becoming increasingly faint to the point of apparent “nothingness.” But the nothingness is only apparent, since God can only be “relatively absent” from his creation. (Keep that point in mind for later, when we discuss evil and the hostile forces.)

The Kabbala is especially precise on this point, and does an excellent job of objectively describing God's "withdrawal" and the various degrees of being in the vertical ray of creation that "reveil" him. To a certain extent, these degrees are inevitably arbitrary, as are the divisions between the colors of the rainbow. All are an aspect of “pure” white light taking on different properties as one color shades into the next.

God is like the white light who “withdraws” so that color may exist. As different as they may appear, the colors are all internally related to one another, just as the degrees of being interpenetrate and shade into one another. The real world is the entire rainbow and ultimately the white light, although each of us tends to live in just one of the colors, confusing it with the primary reality.

As an aside, I should also say that there is a pure “black” reality at the other end of the ray of creation. It is the absence of light and the blending of all of the colors into an indistinct blur. This is the leftist/totalitarian dream of E Unum Pluribus, in which a false, descending, material "one" is imposed upon reality. It is the basis of multiculturalism, moral relativism, and secular fundamentalism, for it represents a flight form the real One that unifies and transcends, toward division and rule by a secular elite.

Nazism, communism and Islamo-fascism represent “pure black” in the ray of creation, while leftism represents a degree or two or three above that. But leftism tends toward the all-black, for it is a descending theology that has no means to elevate itself, having rejected the cosmic eschatolator at the outset. Therefore it “falls” and descends at the natural rate encoded into our existence, which is 32 feet per second per second.

By the way, this is why spiritual practice requires effort. True, all things are possible with grace, but grace only operates in the cosmos as given to us by God. There are readers who don't want to believe me on this point, and I have no desire to get into an argument with them yet again. But for most of us, our “fall” must be actively countered on a day-to-day, even moment by moment basis. It is not as if you are “saved” and born again, and that's the end of it. Rather, that is only the beginning of it. It represents the formal acknowledgment of the ascending cosmic winds that one will heretofore spend one’s life trying to navigate back up toward the One at the father shore. In the formula of Sri Aurobindo, it is Aspiration-Rejection (of the lower)-Surrender (to the higher) 24/7/365/13.7 billion.

I’m still trying to get to a discussion of the hostile forces. We’re getting there, but I needed to present a bit of background in order to have an implausible framework to discuss them. Plus, I realize that most people tend to just skim blogs and have little patience for anything longer than a bite-sized paragraph or two. So I'm also trying to break it down and make it real for these omies.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Aspiration - Rejection (of the lower) - Surrender"

The magnificent Sanjarakshita, a delightful English Western Buddhist, writes that we are positioned on a spiral & that every move or gesture moves each infinitesimally yet significantly up, or down the spiral.

I've coined a phrase The Value-Added Life, a kind of Pareto-optimality based economic metaphor that 60/24/7-etc. the opportunity is always there to lean into one or the other of the Two Ways, and thus add or subtract value.

Helps motivate me to make the bed in the morning. Though not yet this morning....

Anonymous said...

On making the effort, why we must wrestle with the angel 24/7/end of days: well, it's just not to entertain God, though I'd bet He really is pleased when we do. Here, in my view, is why - by making the effort, we individualize ourselves spiritually (the only true individualization). The more we individualize, the more we are capable of mirroring God, ie., being partners with God. Thus the more God becomes God, the more He realizes His own identity as God.

So when we're making the effort, we should ask not what we can do for ourselves spiritually, but ask what we can do for God. (even in making the spiritual effort we can be seduced by fairly subtle vanities)

And for what it's worth - it's a bit ironic how similar are some Christian fundies with their "I'm saved, the battle is over" approach to the 50's beatniks with their Zen "no effort is required, you're already enlightened, so let's slap the bongos all day" philosophy.

Tusar Nath Mohapatra said...

Can I expect the discussions to include sympathetic references to Indian mythology and the metaphysics the legends symbolise, instead of mere name-dropping? That would be a more wholistic way of looking at our ancient wisdom, overarching geo-cultural divides.

Gagdad Bob said...

No, just more of Petey's gnome-droppings. No Vedic mythunderstandings or Hindu legends in their own launchtimes, I'm afraid.

Anonymous said...

sorry, but thyis post is gibberish.

FACT: there are things OBSERVED/MEASURED in the universe which are older thn the universe - according to the scientists measuring this stuff.

which LOGICALLY means ALL their assumptions are crap.

like the assumptions that time and light are uniform constants.

actually they are NOT constant and have NEVER been measured as such.

time is a LOCAL/relative phenomenon.
light's speeds varies.

and it has properties of both particles and waves.

MY POINT: don't go too far in making metaphysical points from VERY provisonal comsology.

good and evil exist and the proof is right here in our domain/dimension/world/lives.

like love, hate is itself dimensionless, but nevertheless has a powerful effect on real events.

as living beings we can act out of motivations.

like God.

who was MOTIVATED to create the universe.

according to rules and laws.

and gave us the freedom to choose, and to motivate others to choose.

light cannot choose.

nor planets or stars.

they operate by rules and laws.

we can choose.

that's is one way that we are made in the image of God.

and this aspect enables us to remake thew world in which we live.

our world is the way it is becasue of our motives.

and when these motives collide with others with opposing motives, then we have things like war.

who is good and who is evil?

what are good motives and what are bad?

god's let's us choose.

the humans who do not let us choose are evil.

those who would do to others what they would find abominable if doen to themselves are evil.

good people do not impose their morals on others.

they might argue for them - rationally.

but do not force them - like tyrants do.

and then there's this:

when confronted by an opportunity to enhance LIFE, grow life, nurture life, we mist do so.

to squash life is evil.

it can only be done to save other LIVES. and onloy after a fair warning.

this we do for life's sake, not for god's.

God wants us to choose goodness and life.

but we are free to ignore god.

at our peril.

which makes us unique in the universe, in all the dimensions of the universe.

Gagdad Bob said...

Anonymous--

Two points, of which you are living proof:

"It is impossible for me to write in such a way that it cannot be misunderstood,"

and,

"It is impossible for you to write in such a way that it can be understood."

Anonymous said...

Ever NOTICE how LUNARBATS tend to CAPITALIZE certain WORDS as they GO along in THEIR rambling STREAM of CONSCIOUSNESS, all the BETTER to emphasize the EXTREME profundity of WHAT they are SAYING?

Lunar bats come flying
as the sun sinks a'sighing,
Their brains are all attuned
to le modality d'le moon -

Which is to say, their brain's motion,
is tossed like water of the ocean,
hither and thither and yon
like, say, the brain of a Harvard don -

that's pickled in PC, or the brain
of a runaway train, quite the same -
Oy, behold what the moon begat:
the winged, squeaking lunar bat

Anonymous said...

Anon.

So why can't you just let it go and allow us to, in your opinion, freely choose to ignore God? After all it is at our own peril, isn't it?
Surely a man of your nominal talents isn't up to the job of saving such unredeemable heathens, are you?

Anonymous said...

OT, but this circle might want to know: don't miss "The Lost City," the new movie from Andy Garcia about the Cuban revolution. Not just massive food for thought (the movie is a semi-biography of his father); but beautiful, grown-up, romantic, and wise.

And it won't stay long in Blue parts of the country, so grab it on the big screen if you're a movie-goer. I think you'll be glad you did.

It's a film full of 'inconvenient truth,' and rumor is, Hollywood has royally dis-sed it.

Anonymous said...

that you are free to ignore god is my point.

also: that there are observations made by instruments of physics which are contradictory, so beware of using them for metaphysics.

read FASIONABLE NONSENSE by SOKAL and BRICHMONT - Picador, USA 1997.

They expose jerks like you all who misapply provisonal hypotheses narrowly applicable in physics to the humanities.

like the infamous and incorrect use of heisenberg's uncertianty principle - which ONLY works on small particle observation: assho9les like you all apply it to religion and cosmology and religion and politics, etc.

fools.

IN FACT: You guys read like those assholes Derrida and and Irigary (whose incoreect applications of phyics and appropration of terms from physics) is NONSENSE.

BTW: i like CAPS. And I like that asshole idiot armchair metaphysicians like you all don't!

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

BTW: I expect the host of this blog to delete this.

SURPRISE ME: LEAVE IT UP!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Anonymous said...

BTW (ALL CAPS!!!): i don't think I'm a dope: I earned an MA (in a humanity) from one of the top 40 grad schools in the USA - in a year.

so fuck off. er um... I mean FUCK OFF you pseudo-intellectual wankers!

Gagdad Bob said...

Anonymous--

Your all too evident brilliance nothwithstanding, the entire point of my post eluded you, which is precisely to emphasize that the vertical lies entirely outside the purview of scientific explanation.

But I would not dream of deleting your posts except in a sudden pang of modesty, for, as ever, the fool's reproach is a kingly title. Thank you.

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