It's a Wonderful Reality Tunnel

The miracles of Jesus Christ reveal the secret of the influence exercised by individuals for the universal, and by the universal for the individual. --Valentin Tomberg

Let's talk about miracles. According to Schuon, the phenomenon of miracles "has in itself nothing mysterious or problematical about it: the so-called natural laws of a lower degree of Existence can always be suspended through the intervention of a higher degree, whence the perfectly logical term 'supernatural.'”

In other words, there is in any phenomenon a combination of both horizontal and vertical causes. Some things are almost all horizontal, while others -- we call them miracles -- are predominantly vertical. Thus, what appears supernatural on the horizontal or terrestrial plane is actually “'natural'” on the universal scale."

Scientists, of course, "confuse the miraculous with the irrational and the arbitrary," but Aristotle was correct in his outline of the four types of causation: material and efficient, which are horizontal; and formal and final, which are vertical. This is why scientists are baffled by anything that clearly manifests final causation, such as free will. Acknowledging final causation would destroy their faith in matter, so they attempt to explain it through material and efficient causes only, which ends in self-refuting absurcularity.

According to Tomberg, the seven miracles recorded in the Gospel of John "represent the healing of the seven principal infirmities of human nature in both individuals and groups." As such, they are "not just miracles," but "signs of the future spiritual and bodily healing processes within the human organism, which is sick as a consequence of the fall of humanity" (emphasis mine).

Please note that healing of any kind has a teleonomic aspect, in the sense that it is an attempt on the part of the organism to "return" to its archetypal form (which is always "above" in space or "ahead" in time).

Three orthoparadoxical statements come immediately to mind: 1) The kingdom of God is within [or among] you, 2) Seek ye first this kingdom, and 3) from the Gospel of Thomas, The Father's kingdom is spread all over the world, but the folks cannot see it. Hold these thoughts for later.

Just as the scientist can deny the miraculous, it is possible for the religionist to deny the mundane, so to speak. And he would be ontologically correct in doing so, although it would make functioning in the world difficult. I mean, someone has to grow the food, make the clothes, and take out the trash.

The point is, since verticality takes priority over horizontality, we could say that there is an "upper vertical" magic and a "lower vertical" magic (one is reminded of the observation that Isaac Newton was not the first scientist but the last magician).

Which is why signs and wonders are happening all the time -- i.e., the Father's kingdom is spread all over the world -- but the interventions are so subtle that we may underlook them, so to speak.

We may also fail to notice them because we can only scamper through one reality tunnel, and cannot see the other timetube that "might have been" in the absence of the vertical influence. It is not possible to conduct a double blind study on reality, which is why faith is unavoidable, whether secular or religious (e.g., Paul Krugman and other leftist economists have the faith that if only Obama had spent a few trillion more, the economy would be in great shape).

Of course, this is the great spiritual lesson of It's a Wonderful Life, which is about a man who spends his life selflessly aligning himself with the good, at great personal cost. However, in his case, he is shown the alternate reality that might have been had he spent his life pursuing only his egoic desires. Thus, he is able to understand that by acting so selflessly, he was actually socking away capital in a moral bank account that is "not of this world."

Another way of saying it is that George is granted the spiritual boon of a clear vision of all the miracles and magic that had occurred in his life as a result of unselfishly aligning himself with the Good.

And realizing this is the greatest miracle of all, for with this realization, the magic that had always been operating in his life bursts upon him like a sudden downpour of grace. What a tragic waste of life to miss the magic that is happening all the time, for this magic is precisely what nourishes the soul and feeds the "second birth." Living for others is a great liberation.

The same lesson is present in Dickens' Christmas Carol, in which Scrooge is first given a vision of the forces that went into exiling him from the greater reality and enclosing him in the cold world of his bitter and envious ego.

Envy and entitlement are literally forms of "reverse magic," in that they will spoil whatever they acquire. Envy may or may not help you get what you think you want, but it will also prevent you from enjoying it once you have it. Conversely, gratitude is both the cause and effect of spiritual awareness and contentment.

This lower vertical magic forms the basis of the leftist agenda, which is why they only become more bitter upon getting what they want. The bitterness of the left has not remitted one iota since prevailing in the 2008 election, because envy is an addictive way of life.

Leftism begins with the childish observation that the world is not perfect -- that it does not conform to their fantasies -- so that even things that work miraculously well must be attacked. Which only results in more problems that the leftist will decry and demand that the state remedy. If this downworld spiral is not arrested soon, it will eventually reach bottom.

In hermetic terms, the subtle rules the dense, and the deeper the effect, the higher the cause. The highest cause being God, aligning ourselves with this cause should, so to speak, lift us out of the closed circle of horizontality and manifest in our own lives in terms of the "subtle ruling the dense."

Now, this is not to say that the dense -- the horizontal -- can ever be wholly eliminated. We are not angels, which is to say, purely vertical beings. But it does mean that we can do our part to reverse the fall and restore the priority of the vertical over the horizontal. Obviously, if everyone did this -- individuals working on behalf of the universal -- we would have "heaven on earth," or a kind of earthly analogue of paradise.

On the other hand, "hell on earth" is the leftist agenda of the individual being forced to work on behalf of the (false) universal which is the state. For the true liberal, the individual is the true universal, not the collective.

Now, the first miracle recorded in Genesis is the archetype of all others, for as our Unknown Friend says, creation ex nihilo -- or out of nothing -- "is the highest possible expression of magic, namely divine and cosmic magic." This is why the primordial act of creation was not so much a bang as a blossoming seed. As he says, this is "not too difficult to imagine, because each little acorn is such a 'constructive bomb' and the oak is only the visible result of the slow 'explosion' -- or blossoming out -- of this 'bomb.'" What is a butterfly but an exploded worm -- or in our case, a buddhafly caterpultered from a christallus cocoon?

The seed has both a husk and kernel. The husk is there to protect the kernel, but it is possible that we can come to identify with the husk, thus defeating its purpose -- and the purpose of our lives -- by arresting the "blossoming explosion" of our true self. This blossoming -- once you begin to experience it -- is the "personal magic" that mirrors the magic of creation itsoph -- of God's unfolding, creative self-revelation. You too are a Big Bang.

The kernel, since it is internally related to the whole, seems miraculously able to draw the people and materials it requires in order to fulfill its mission. Or as a rabbinical expression puts it, "God spends most of his time arranging meetings and marriages."

Better stop now. Late for work....