I mentioned in a comment that I've been leisurely alternating between two books, one called Reality, the other called Keys to the Beyond. It's a little like going back and forth between alternate universes -- I was about to say "parallel" universes, but that can't be right, since there can only be one.
Nor is it like choosing a neighborhood to live in -- for example, this one is more expensive but has better schools, while that one is more... vibrant but has more crime.
If one of these cosmic neighborhoods is Reality, the other is Beyond Reality, so they're not really parallel, but rather, perpendicular. Assuming there's something beyond reality.
But wait: how can there be something more real than reality? We'll get to that, but let's start with this:
the deepest joy arises from the activity of man's highest power, namely, his mind, when that power is occupied in contemplating its highest object, which is God, the Supreme Truth, the Supreme Intelligible.
Are we not men? Check. Is not the mind our highest power? Check. Is not God the highest intelligible object? Check. Thomas:
man must immortalize himself, by striving with all his might to live according to what is most excellent in himself. This principle is higher than all the rest. It is the spirit which makes man essentially man.
Immortalizing ourselves by living in accord with what is most excellent in ourselves, whatever the cost... Isn't that what makes a man? Ummm, sure. That and a pair of testicles.
You're joking. But perhaps man is only man when surpassing himself, which would imply that reality too is a descent from something more real. This probably wasn't clear, but soon it will be, perhaps even to me.
The point is that reality is always pregnant with possibilities, and the possibilities are infinite. This being the case, to say reality is to advert to a deeper or higher source, i.e., something paradoxically beyond what we call reality.
Let's remind ourselves that the metacosmos is circular, or a kind of nonlocal spiraling movement that ceaselessly goes out of, and returns to, its source. At the summit of metaphysics is the convergence of essence and existence, AKA God:
This supreme truth is the terminus, the goal, of the ascending road [↑] which rises from the sense world to God, and the point of departure on the descending road [↓], which deduces the attributes of God and determines the relation between God and world.
In reality, it is ↺, since God is the ultimate cause of both movements. The first movement is from effects to cause, while the second is from cause to effects or entailments. Or, we could say many-to-One and One-to-many, or just unity and diversity, bearing in mind that the former is inconceivable in a universe of pure multiplicity. While the two are complementary, Unity is necessarily prior.
Here's where things get a little ambiguous in this cosmic neighborhood. Fr. Reginald points out that
The first cause, being uncaused, must have in itself the reason for its existence. But the reason why it cannot cause itself is that it must be before it can cause. Hence, not having received existence, it must be existence (emphases mine).
True enough. But what if it receives Being from Beyond-Being? "In God alone are essence and existence identified." In other words, God is the the being whose essence is to exist. But who's to say this is the end of the line?
In the next post we'll tour the other cosmic neighborhood.
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