Time, History, Apocalypse, and Buggery

I think we have time for a Saturday bonus post on the topic of those additional cosmic dimensions. At this juncture I am prepared to affirm without hesitation that there are seven cosmic dimensions in all, based upon sneaking suspicions, revealed hunches, hand-selected evidence, and some scattered notes scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin by a certain disembodied household gnome.

Now, we all know about the first three dimensions. Throw in time, and that makes four. But time itself -- i.e., the time of physics -- is mere quantitative duration, with no qualities or substance at all. Therefore, I think that profane history begins to touch on the fifth dimension, since it attempts to reveal a kind of unity -- or at least interconnectedness -- beneath the flux of seemingly disconnected events.

For example: 313, 476, 1066, 1492, 1620, 1776, 1865, 1914, 1917, 1929, 1939, 1945. This is not just a random list of numbers, but a random list of dates that everyone would agree are of world-historical importance. These are dates that every schoolboy once knew (but which college students probably no longer know) -- even a cloud-hidden lad as distracted as I was. In my case, I was much more concerned with baseballically sacred numbers such as 714, 56, 382, 61, 1.12, etc.

In any event, not all dates are created equal. If they were, then the practice of history would be impossible, for there would be no way to determine what in time is "important." History doesn't end, but begins, with the selection of what properly belongs to this higher -- which is to say, transcendent -- dimension we call History (which I will capitalize in order to distinguish it from the mere existence of a past).

But why is anything in time important, being that in the long run we're all dead? Again, this goes to intuitions about the very purpose of human existence, a purpose which must by definition be transcendent if it is to be a purpose at all. In other words, to say "purpose" is to have lifted oneself from the raw facts of time, even if one's purpose is totally whack, as in the case of the left.

Now, since we in the Judeo-Christian West are so embedded in a certain view of history, most people don't notice how odd it is to be situated in this kind of time. But no primitive culture knew of history. They still had time, of course, but their lives were primarily spatial, not temporal. That is to say, they were rooted in a timeless archetype which provided the culture with its sufficient reason. Time was regarded in wholly degenerative terms, as a kind of entropic flow away from the source -- very much like the physical aging that inevitably ends in death. Although I'm working on that.

Therefore, the sacred rituals of primitive cultures all had to do with arresting time and undoing its corrosive effects, in order to bring the culture back to its pure spatial archetype -- like a collective case of OCD. Usually this required a volunteer from the audience in order to engage in a little human sacrifice. True, the volunteer had to be led kicking and screaming to receive their honor, but this at least added a little drama to their otherwise monotonous lives. It also conferred a temporary unity on the culture; or, to be precise, unanimity minus one. See Bailie for details.

By the way, this obviously touches on one of my core disagreements with Schuon, who venerated these primordial cultures. In my case, I do not condemn them, for it would be absurd to apply Christian ethics to a pre-Christian world that was simply doing the best it could with the available materials. The fact that all primitive groups engaged in animal or human sacrifice (cf. Burkert's Homo Necans) must mean that it was effective in accomplishing what it was supposed to accomplish, and that failing to engage in it was actually the more destructive option, since it would have meant dissolution of the culture. And man needs culture in order to be man, otherwise he is just another animal.

Now, where was it.... One of our Raccoon Fathers speaks of the different temporal dimensions.... Here it is, letter XX of Meditations on the Tarot, if that's the one I'm looking for. Let's see. He discusses...

Hey, wait a minute. I don't have to reinvent this wheel of karma. I can just review my previous commentary on MOTT, which we did back in 2008. Here it is.

Well, that was a waste of five precious minutes. What a copout!

Besides, that's not the schematic I was looking for.

Wait -- this might be it -- chapter XII of Mouravieff's Gnosis. He's a man that wasn't afraid to speculate. Nevertheless, much of his speculation has the intuitive ring of truth, such as "All that exists in Time, until the day when the Seventh Trumpet will sound to announce that the work undertaken by the Absolute has been achieved (sic). Then the Kingdom of the World will become that of God and his Christ, the Alpha and Omega of manifestation."

This accords with my own intuition about what we might call the "seventh dimension" of existence, in which the "heavenly kingdom" is currently under construction, so to speak (but don't quote me on that).

Later in the chapter (p. 125), Mouravieff discusses the three dimensions of time. It first appears as a simple line between future and past. Again, this would correspond to the pre-historical time alluded to above.

I'll just quote what he says next: "The fifth dimension represents the geometrical locus of all the possibilities of a given moment, of which only one is realized in Time -- while all the others remain unrealized." Now, the first thing that occurs to me is again the work of the historian, which would not be possible if time were not pregnant with different possibilities.

For if time were linear or mechanistic, then it would be absurd to say that any time was more important than another, or that any choice was more significant than another.

Also, this would be much closer to the Muslim view of each moment of time being directly caused by Allah, with no intermediate realities or human contribution. Rather, the "book of history" is already written, which goes to the dialectic between Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia, if you were paying attention.

For Prince Ali, history is already written, whereas for Lawrence, the book of history is largely dependent upon man's free choices. There is one point in the film when Lawrence succumbs to the temptation of imagining that he is not subject to the vagaries of time, which ultimately results in his getting buggered by a Turkish general. So let that be a lesson to you.

Mouravieff compares the fifth dimension to a kind of temporal plane of possibilities that is "pierced" by a single line of time, which transforms it from potential to actual. Kind of reminds us of the collapse of the wave function in quantum physics; or, of the flow of O which can result in only one explicate manifestation at a time. Or of art, which is the attempt to convey the boundless within boundaries.

And with that, we'd better stop. Need to catch up with my work down in 4D. I don't get paid for the higher dimensional stuff.