Dead Men Walking and the Two Arrows of Time

Somewhere in One Cosmos I suggested that time actually runs in two directions, not one... yes, here it is:

"The most recent theories of physics agree that the properties of elementary particles 'are in the end influenced by the history and state of the whole universe' (Whitehead). If an event endures and has a future, then it follows that the past participates in the present, that the present anticipates the future, and that the future may affect that part of the present which is 'open' and not fully determined; there is both upward, deterministic causation (part-to-whole, past-to-future) and downward, teleonomic causation (whole-to-part, future to past) in the form of mathematical attractors, hierarchical control of lower levels, and boundary conditions exerting their influence on levels below them."

Petey was in a hurry that day, but one could add to the list Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields, the archetypes, the Platonic realm of pure mathematics, the three transcendentals (the Good, True, and Beautiful), and, of course, the teloscape at the end of the cosmic eschalator, O, which draws all of history in its wake, and all of the awakened through history.

Ipso facto yada yada blah blah blah, "the ultimate implication of this view would be that, just as the universe had an origin, it has a destiny; but in the end, the origin and destiny must be One, since the universe is only separable in our imagination."

Supposedly. The only way to "prove" this is to read and assimilate Chapter 4 and become the alphomega you were always meant to be and already are anywu wei. Another way of saying it is that Truth cannot be proven, only undergone -- suffered and sophered. It's not illogical or even alogical, but translogical, like knowing you're alive and conscious, which many of you are, trolls excepted. (Yes, it's leuny tune beyond all reason except Reason.)

This is why my book does not make the absurd promise of "instant enlightenment." Rather, it makes the absurd promise of eternal life while you wait. For eternity can only occur while you wait, since time and eternity arise simultaneously outside time, if that's not too paradoxical. To put it anortho way, God became man so that man might become God (St. Athanasius). And why did he do this? First of all, why ask why?

Secondly, it is written (on the "eighth page") that It was not good that this Godhead, the Most High, should be allone, so he exwholed with a big bong and said 'Let there be higher physics,' and it was zo. 'Zohar, zo good,' zedamon to himzeus.

Was that some kind of drug reference, Bob -- e.g., "high," "bong," "exhale"? Yes, and so what? You should try reading One Cosmos backwards, and see what comes out! Everything is a drug, especially serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which prevent the brain from going round. You think God doesn't know about those things? That he is a mathematician, but not a biochemist? C'mon. Get real.

Anyway, I was intrigued that Bolton also discusses the idea of two arrows of time, but from a different angle or perhaps pharmaceutical. He writes that,

"the immediate past issues in the present, through which the future is brought into being. From this point of view, one can see the future being formed from what is past."

Bueno, says the old-fashioned, straight-arrow materialist. I've got no problemo with that.

"However, it remains equally true that everything in the past was once in the future, and this means that the contents of the past which we see to be the generator of the future have all come to it out of that very future, by virtue of an equal and opposite flow toward the past."

Therefore -- don't put down the bong just yet --

"On this basis, the present time is the scene of two equal and opposite flows which build up the future out of the past and build up the past out of the future. The present could thus be compared to a window through which one observes two columns of troops marching past each other in opposite directions."

Wo, dude, I am so wasted! Do you see the little soldiers?

No?

Then you are insufficiently wasted, which is to say, wasting your eternity down in the wasteland of 3D. Speaking of which, that corpse you planted last year in your garden / Has it begun to sprout? And will it finally bloom this year?

And while we're on the subject, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, / You cannot say, or guess, for you know only / A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, / And the dry stone no sound of water.

Ah, but

I will show you something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.

And what might that be? Well,

Who is the third who walks always beside you? / When I count, there are only you and I together / But when I look ahead up the white road / There is always another one walking beside you.

Who or what is this third thing? In order to find out, we must, in the words of Mouravieff, "begin an interior revolution as soon as possible." Man requires "a transformation of his being which will permit him to restore the equilibrium between the technical and moral levels, now so dangerously compromised," another way of coonceptualizing the two arrows.

As Mouravieff explains, "The life of man is a film," a concept which is "difficult for our Cartesian minds to grasp":

"Incomprehensible as it may seem, our life is truly a film produced in accordance with a script.... Each human being, then, is born with his own particular film.... [E]xterior man, who lives in the system of Future-Past, cannot embrace in a single moment the ensemble of his film.... To do so, he would need to enlarge the slot of his Present.... As long as man lives in the wilderness, self-satisfied and immersed in lies and illusions, the film will unfold with mechanical inflexibility, and the Personality will remain entirely unchanged" (italics in original).

In keeping with the two arrows of time, we might say that, on the one hand, "exterior man" is the "crowning achievement of millions of years of evolution"; but from the spiritual standpoint (i.e., the future) he is just the raw material for something transcending himself, "a possibility which has not yet been realized." The former, or "anthropoids," are those who, in the words of Jesus, "believe themselves to be alive," but who are trapped in the circularity of their own bad movie. Let De Palma bury de' Redford.

Now, what was that about "enlarging the slot of the present?"

Yes, that's the key to the "third party" or person alluded to above. But my slot of timelessness just closed. To be continued.....

I sat upon the shore / Fishing, with the arid plain behind me --T.S. Eliot