Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Meta-Cosmic Reflections on Life Itself

So, yesterday I created the cosmos. That's a difficult act to follow. Now what? In cerebration of March Forth!, i.e., Innernational Transdimensional Raccoon Day, I suppose I'd like to reflect on the cosmic meaning of Life.

This cosmos is a four-banger. After the big bang, we get the equally big bangs of Life, Mind, and Spirit, although I'm sure the least of you kits realizes that what is chronologically later is ontologically earlier.

Again, Spirit is both alpha and omega, not something that only suddenly appears 13.7 billion years into the big bang. Rather, what is new is the sudden realization by conscious beings that Spirit had been doing its thing all along. However, timelessness takes time, as Genesis makes plain; no one is there to realize Spirit until the sixth day -- and really, the seventh day -- even though it was there all along. One might say that the purpose of the Sabbath is to contemplate this orthoparadoxical truth.

It is only a conceit of physics that the first big bang is the origin of the cosmos, for we can argue with equal boombast that there was truly "nothing" until there was a living being there to experience it. Otherwise, you're caught in the literally unimaginable space -- which is no space at all -- of a reality without a point of view.

For example, just try to imagine the room where you are now sitting from every possible angle. This would take the rest of your life. For in reality, the sum total of all points-of-view would still not equal the transcendent no-point-of-view.

So when cosmologists talk about the big bang being the origin of the cosmos, they're obviously "retrojecting" their current consciousness back in time. Which is fine. This is what I did yesterday in order to prove that consciousness and interiority were indeed there at the origin, and at every step of the way between then and now, a now which obviously "always is."

In order to better understand what Life is, we need to get away from the reductionistic schemes of biologists -- who don't really study Life Itself, only abstractions from it. (When I capitalize Life or Mind, I am not just being pompous, but speaking of them "as such," i.e., ontologically and concretely rather than scientistically and abstractly.)

DeKoninck -- who at times again reminds me very much of Teilhard -- wrote that "in the theory of mutations, biology too sees life advance by successive explosions," becoming richer and more concentrated along the way. Viewed vertically, the physical world is only an epidermis, or perhaps "like the shell of an egg" through which Life pushes up from within.

Before the emergence of Life, there was no "center" to existence. Rather, it was as if it were "all periphery," if such a thing can be imagined (which it can't). But among other things, that first living being was the emergence of a center of existence. Afterwards, the flow of evolution will involve increased centration, which ultimately coheres around something called I AM, more on which later. Suffice it to say that Life is a kind of penumbra around the radiant I AM.

Now, just as the first big bang -- creative though it may have been -- "destroyed" whatever previous order existed, so too does Life put an end to the reign of the physical. Again, I caution you to look at the situation vertically, for from that surpassing standpoint, an entirely new cosmic order was revealed 3.85 years ago, when the first itty-bitty defied matter, declared its independence from entropy, and became a transcendent teensy-weensy standing over and above the material plane, even while remaining dependent upon it.

When this happened, what actually happened? -- again, not scientifically but ontologically. After all, this was the primordial revolution, a revolution of which we are all still beneficiaries. How can we ever repay the debt owed to our founding dissipative structures, who defied all the odds in rebelling against the mightiest army every assembled, i.e., pure matter?

DeKoninck writes that "it is the thrust of life which dismantles the universe under its physical aspect, which uses this universe and makes space grow" (emphasis mine). This is a tricky point, but "When life travels toward an organization always more intense, the disorganization of the physical world is only a loss of a cosmos which is absorbed in life."

As I attempted to explain in my book, the emergence of Life did indeed spell the end of Matter's reign, although materialists still haven't gotten the memo. Here it is, p. 70:

"Thus, regardless of how close scientists come to a complete understanding of the cosmos, if they are employing the standard ways of materialistic science, it will be an understanding from before the instant life became manifest. In order to place a bright line between observer and observed, subject and object, science must retreat to a time when no subjects apparently existed. In short, science tries 'to pull the subjective into the objective by pulling the present into the sufficiently remote past'" (emphasis mine... and not mine too, I guess).

Verily, as described by the brilliant theoretical biologist Robert Rosen, biologists -- and scientists in general -- proceed as if living things are "clues only to what the universe is not like," but the more they prove this point, the more they disprove it, for they are like branches of a great tree trying to show that the trunk is dead by growing more leaves.

But you can't eliminate Life that easily, you facile academic boneheads. For what prevents us from turning the cosmos right side up and seeing that Life is a vital clue as to what the universe is actually like? Or, to take it a bit further, what if Mind is an even more vital clue?

Prior to the emergence of Life, there is actually no time or space in the cosmos, for again, space only exists relative to an observer, and time can only "flow" relative to a "now," and there is no now in the absence of Life.

To plagiaphrase DeKoninck, the biosphere lifts itself out of the fragmentation of space and the dispersion of time, which are really the "ashes and smoke of a world which glows with life." Life becomes "a center of pure density," and "cuts through space-time as the prow of a ship cuts through the water." Time does not mete out Life; rather, Life metes out time. Life, in binding space, necessarily binds time. The rhythm of life is the rhythm of being -- although the rhythm of James Brown expresses the point equally well.

Life specifically "travels against the grain of the diffusion of time," and is a "triumph" over its "scattering." We especially see this with the emergence of Mind, which is obviously inconceivable in the absence of memory. For what is memory? First of all, let us bear in mind that DNA is nothing but a memory of life's journey. But so too is a conscious man a man who "remembers" -- not just horizontally, but vertically. Or, to put it another way, the most conscious man is the man with the most vertical recollection, whose memory "wraps around" existence in the same way that Life transcended matter by wrapping around it.

To wrap one's being around existence in this manner is to be fully present to oneSelf. This is what it means to be a big gnosis-all, for the adventure of Life culminates in the Man who "succeeds in uniting all the degrees of cosmic being.... The world tends to join in man its extremities separated by space-time" (DeKoninck).

Thus, we enter time in order to be fulfilled in it. As we rumble and bumble and tumble through its rocky corridors, it is very much as if we are polished and perfected, once again becoming atemporal in process, a finite mode of the infinite. In so doing, we return to the origin of our ring-tale, but now know it for the first time.

Now, March Forth, inward and upward, you ring-taled bastards!

25 comments:

julie said...

an entirely new cosmic order was revealed 3.85 years ago

I forget; how old is FL now? ;)

julie said...

biologists -- and scientists in general -- proceed as if living things are "clues only to what the universe is not like," but the more they prove this point, the more they disprove it, for they are like branches of a great tree trying to show that the trunk is dead by growing more leaves.

It's actually quite funny. When we consider many of the happenings of the universe, they are frequently described in terms of living processes: the life and death of a star, for instance. But how can matter imitate life and death, unless of course there's more to mere material than meets the scientistic eye.

walt said...

"...the most conscious man is the man with the most vertical recollection, whose memory "wraps around" existence in the same way that Life transcended matter by wrapping around it.

To wrap one's being around existence in this manner is to be fully present to oneSelf."


Superior jazz!

Anonymous said...

Julie--- Yes! Not only do inorganic scientists often speak of matter as if it were a living thing, but organic scientists---especially evolutionists---speak of plants, microbes, genes, etc. as if they were endowed with Mind.

Perhaps it is not possible to speak of the lower without reference to the higher.

Anonymous said...

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mushroom said...

So when cosmologists talk about the big bang being the origin of the cosmos, they're obviously "retrojecting" their current consciousness back in time. Which is fine.

Of course it's really no different than those monkeys poking sticks in the ant holes, but a clever primate trick nonetheless.

Leslie Godwin said...

OT
I'm glad I'm not the first to veer off topic today.

I've just started reading Vince Flynn and I was wondering if anyone else here is a Mitch Rapp fan.

Leslie

Anonymous said...

"When life travels toward an organization always more intense, the disorganization of the physical world is only a loss of a cosmos which is absorbed in life."

Sounds like Life repeals the second law of thermodynamics. (And Grace repeals the first).

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Are you sure you don't channel Lewis, Bob? I don't mean in the 'spirit channeling sense' but in the 'John B/Elijah' sense. Perelandra - my beloved and I are reading it. It's the metacosmic suite - told in Lewisian style.

julie said...

Les, I've never read anything by Vince Flynn, but in between other things I've been reading John Ringo's The Last Centurion, which has been a great read so far but perhaps underestimated how quickly the feces will fly. Quite good, but also disquieting. In between blowing things up, there's some interesting commentary on what makes societies tick, and why one culture is likely to survive over another.

***
wv suggests we're juicing in our ownsteu.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Speaking of. Have you seen This MADNESS?

It's what happens.. well, you can read and figure it out. Education is no defense against raw greed. Even centuries of 'collectivist' life? No effect on human nature.

ooooops.

julie said...

Holy cow - River, did you see this part?

Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called “hidden people”—or, to put it more plainly, elves—in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, “we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.”

Just, wow.

Anonymous said...

Your point being?

julie said...

Well, everybody knows elves prefer the woods to the rocks. They should have been looking for orcs.

julie said...

In point of fact, it's already been established, earlier in the article, that Iceland has orcs:

At length, I return to the hotel to find, for the first time in four nights, no empty champagne bottles outside my neighbors’ door. The Icelandic couple whom I had envisioned as being on one last blowout have packed and gone home. For four nights I have endured their Orc shrieks from the other side of the hotel wall; now all is silent.

Tonga also gets a mention (as an example of an island nation which managed to not get hit by the global financial tsunami).

Rick said...

Speaking of...one of my prized prizes is a 2nd copy of OCUG autographed by Bob on March Forth 2007. I can’t beleaf *sniff* the little fella's two already.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps of interest to Raccoons:

Mark R. Levin's new book Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto is due out March 24. Pre-order currently gets you 40% off the list price.

Van Harvey said...

Not time for much else, but wanted to at least get in a happy Transdimensional Raccoon Day!

(keep the grog away from the elves)

Anonymous said...

>>the disorganization of the physical world is only a loss of a cosmos which is absorbed in life." <<

A bit of speculation - matter must contain a frozen God-consciousness, so to speak, so perhaps at such time human consciousness becomes divinized (or the necessary numbers are reached to tip the balance), then we will absorb or integrate the frozen consciousness of matter and matter will no longer be necessary. Matter might go poof. (!)

Anonymous said...

Along the lines of what Will suggests:

The states of matter, life, mind, and spirit could be analogous to the states of ice, liquid water, water vapor, and finally superheated plasma of hydrogen and oxygen.

All the same stuff at varying densities.

So God-stuff at its most "frozen" is matter, slightly more energetic would be life, slightly more energetic, mind, and fully back to original state, spirit.

So it could be all the same stuff at a deep level.

Sitting on my chair breathing and thinking of God, and He there too, all states represented at once.

Anonymous said...

Not a chance, Van.
The elves can have my grog when they pry it from my cold, dead liver.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Excellent post, Bob! Goes well with yesyerday's too.

"To wrap one's being around existence in this manner is to be fully present to oneSelf. This is what it means to be a big gnosis-all, for the adventure of Life culminates in the Man who "succeeds in uniting all the degrees of cosmic being.... The world tends to join in man its extremities separated by space-time" (DeKoninck).

And gnosis-alls are also wise guys, and make superb hitmen. Just look at all of Bob's posts. So many hits. Don Gnosis-all Bob...or Don Bob for short. :^)

I gno this applies to Petey but Don Petey doesn't sound as cool as Don Bob, the Cosmofather.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Zounds. A long day (I think this is my 88th longest day, so it broke the top 100 chart) plus muscle relaxers are making it difficult to keep my ayes open, and I keep dropping my keyboard.

But I will return soon after I catch some zee's (barring another honeydoo list).

jp said...

River says:

"Education is no defense against raw greed. Even centuries of 'collectivist' life? No effect on human nature."

I think I found one of the problems with their "education" from the Vanity Fair article:

“The schools of engineering and math were offering courses on financial engineering. We had hundreds and hundreds of people studying finance.”

Financial engineering is useful if you base your equations off of something resembling reality.

And if you know that there will be a certain (significant) percentage of the time that the equation will not work.

Assuming that housing prices always go up is not a good assumption.

There's an article in Wired about the Chinese guy who developed an equation that was used to sell the mortgage based toxic financial derivative trash.

The Forumual that Killed Wall Street

It was not so much of an equation as a sales pitch.

I need an equation for financial engineering.

How about ($!!!) → (???) → Ø

Rick said...

Bob,
Four or five Eckharts might agree that The Declaration, that baby, was a pretty big bong hit. You could say theirs was the recognition of the first four. Or you could say, them farmers were just waked-out on the stuff. Don’t you think?

wv: cosimot

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