No Amount of Walking Adds Up to a Leap

Have we hit the bottom (line) of the cosmos, or is there further to go? Yes and no. Although the truth of reality isn't subject to change, human beings we are always either approaching or fleeing from this Truth.

In other words, vertically speaking, the cosmos is asymptotic at both ends; recall the image from a few posts back with the horizontal time axis bisected by the ovoid vertical sensorium of human understanding. The larger and more luminous that space, the more of reality you understand (and not just know, which is a poor substitute for integral comprehension). And we do mean this literally, more on which as we proceed.

Actually, it's right there in the comment box, and has been for a number of years. In no sense is it meant metaphorically, poetically, mystagogically, or "in a manner of speaking." Rather, it's the way it is, and always will be in this life:

The quest, thus, has no external "object," but is reality itself becoming luminous for its movement from the ineffable, through the Cosmos, to the ineffable.

I want to say that Truth is eternal while Ignorance, Stupidity, and the Lie are sempiternal, the latter meaning they might as well be endless but are still located in time. Expressed another way, there can be only one Eternal, and it doesn't include fake news, secular idolatry, or tenured babble.

Also, far be it from us to try to convince anyone of our deuscoveries. We leave that drudgery entirely to the Marketing Department. This blog is all about pure R & D, while implications and practical applications are mostly left to others.

Put another way, we write only for... well, first of all for ourselves, and second for readers capable of understanding what we're going on about. But nearly all Bobjections come from people who haven't understood Bob at all, but merely imagine they have because they squeeze Bob into their own procrustean reality tunnel.

Having said that, we are always delighted to hear objections from fellow vertical travelers who do understand our perspective and our process, being that it is improvised on the spot and naturally can't have the finished elegance of a composition or score. Always check with your holy man to see if One Cosmos is right for you. Side effects may include second birth pangs, third eye strain, untimely chakra activation, ontological weight gain, existential bemusement, vicarious embarrassment, guffaw-ha experiences, and more.

Suffice it to say that we do not prescribe our medicine to horizontaloid beings for the same reason the Bible tells us that we shouldn't cast our spheres before circles, or Plato warns the free-range thinker of the consequences of assuming cave dwellers will welcome your insights about the Light from outside their cave narrative.

This no doubt sounds a bit abstract, so I will momentarily remove the coonskin cap and put on my psychologist's hat, and remind you that the human need for extra-biological transhistorical meaning is as intense and pervasive as any physiological drive or instinct.

We might say that while instincts are animal drives, the drive for meaning is the quintessential human instinct. It explains why all humans in every culture have come up with so many idiotic meanings, from human sacrifice to Marxism to BLM (but I repeat myself).

(Brief timeout and apology: I had had a proper subject for a post in mind, but I'm just going to continue with the free & loose associating and see where it goes. Who knows, it may eventually lead back to the subject I'd had in mind.)

Let's pull back and try to see what's going on here. And when I say "pull back," I mean 50,000 years or so. Or better, let's "pull above" and try to discern the patterns that continuously repeat themselves like currents in the oceans. Looked at this way, there is very little true "progress," mostly just a tail-chasing rat race on Sisyphus's own hamster wheel; nevertheless, there are, in Voegelin's terms, occasional "leaps of being" that are truly radical and revolutionary, for they change everything.

Looked at this way, a radical revolutionary such as, say, Marx, or Hitler, or Mao, isn't revolutionary at all, but rather, just the latest iteration of the regressive force that always pulls man and culture back to a more primitive and undifferentiated state.

Conversely, a conservative -- specifically, the American variety who wishes to conserve the radical leap in being expressed by the Declaration and given flesh by the Constitution -- is the counter-cultural radical. What we nowadays call the "radical" is but a reanimated fossil of the past, for he is an emissary of tribalism, relativism, animism and/or materialism (which are but two sides of the same dysfunctional ontology), etc.

From our vertical meta-cosmic perspective we see a number of outstanding leaps in being. In other words, these are "discontinuous," being that there is nothing in their antecedents that can account for or predict their consequences. I know, because I'm one of them. My life makes no sense in linear terms.

At risk of boring the Old-timers, let's briefly run down some of the big leaps. There is, for example, existence itself, which is either created or it isn't. This is the Greatest Leap of All, even the greatest leap conceivable, and we mean this literally, because this is what creatio ex nihilo means.

Ask yourself: is there a greater conceivable leap than that between nothing and something? No, of course not. Compared to nothing, even something as vacuous as the quantum vacuum is of infinite significance.

The alternative metaphysic pretends the cosmos is self-sufficient and that there are no leaps. This view tends to be held in a consistent way by its flatland devotees, such that no subsequent leaps are seen or permitted either.

Nevertheless, to paraphrase Galileo, and yet it leaps. For example, the transition from inanimate matter to life isn't a line but a leap; likewise the leap from biology to intellect. And there's another vitally important leap from mere animal lineage to human history. Animals have a past but they have no history.

So history is indeed a leap, but what kind of leap, and into what? You might say that Voegelin spent his entire life exploring and answering this question. And the answer is quite multifaceted, requiring familiarity with...

Let's just say with everything; and not just what has occurred outside, but even more critically, what happens inside, which, after all, is the only thing of which we have direct and unmediated awareness.

Thus, for example, the transition from cyclical to linear time represents a tremendous leap forward; likewise the leap from polytheism to monotheism, or from collective identity to the individual, or from rule of man to rule of law. And if you personally haven't leapt into the space between immanence and transcendence, you are nowhere, literally. And yet, you are still a nuisance.

Does any of this touch on the news of the day? Yes, of course. But the clock has run out for today...