Ancient Faith and Modern Woo

Just the usual Coon pr0n freshly half-baked for your vertical innertainment...  

The relationship between self and consciousness has always reminded me of the particle / wave complementarity in physics. We are always conscious, but at any given moment only conscious of a tiny fraction of what is potentially present to the conscious mind. 

It reminds me of the Trinity, which is substance-in-relation, i.e., one substance in three persons. Thus, the substance is analogous to wave, the person-relations to particles. 

But just as in physics, the parts are by no means separate from the substantial field, any more than the water of the ocean is radically distinct from its waves; there is always a relation of parts within a unity of substance.

Reminds me of Whitehead:

Things are separated by space, and they are separated by time: but they are also together in space, and together in time, even if they be not contemporaneous (Science and the Modern World).

This is because in this here cosmos -- the one disclosed by modern physics -- "there is no element whatever which possesses this character of simple location." Ultimately, nothing is here without being everywhere because of the field aspect.

For a book that was published almost a hundred years ago, he gets pretty woo-woo: "every volume mirrors in itself every other volume in space"; and

Exactly analogous considerations hold with respect to durations in time. An instant of time, without duration, is an imaginative logical construction. Also each duration of time mirrors in itself all temporal durations.

You might be tempted to think such metaphysical spookulations have no practical utility, but such a paradigm might help us understand how, for example, everyday vertical causation works. Dávila:

Christ was in history like a point on a line. But his redemptive act is to history as the center is to the circumference.

Always above and in time. Likewise, short of an appeal to ad hoc magic, it would be difficult to explain, say, transubstantiation, in a machine or clock universe. But in a nonlocal organismic cosmos it is eminently reasonable. (This is not to stake religion on science, because truth is true regardless of the current state of any particular  science.)

Again, a geometrical point might be here locally, but it is also "everywhere" in its wave or field-like aspect. Such a consideration helps us make sense of the following aphorism:

God is infinitely close and infinitely distant; one should not speak of Him as if He were at some intermediate distance.

To say the cosmos is like a machine or clock may well be useful, but these are mere abstractions from a concrete reality that cannot be contained by any image, model, or mathematical equation. The model is not the reality, nor can you eat the menu. But climate hysterics never stop trying.

About the cosmic complementarity, Dávila suggests that

Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how.

We can't understand how something can simultaneously be particle and wave, but fortunately, someOne knows. Nor do we understand how our freedom gets in here, but that hardly makes it any less real:

Determinism is a verbal generalization; it is concretely unthinkable.

No, we haven't forgotten about our search for the source of the soul, and the following aphorism might furnish a clue: 

The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act.

In Christian metaphysics, only two things are special and immediate creations: the world itself (or better yet, Being as such); and the individual soul. Both are said to be created from no pre-existing materials.

Being is very wavelike, isn't it? For it consists of every conceivable event, thing, and thought, now and forever, and yet, all of these put together don't add up to Being, nor do they add to Being, since it's already always everything everywhere every time. 

And again, the soul situated within Being has a kind of particle character, even though it could never be a closed monad, but rather, is connected to the whole of Being.

For which reason Thomas could say that the intellect is "naturally capable of knowing everything that exists," and "in understanding is extended to infinity." How is this possible if we aren't somehow connected to all of Being in a wavelike manner? 

For ultimately, "Every rational being knows God implicitly in every act of knowledge" (ibid.). Again, we are parts but the part is always connected to the whole. Which helps us make sense of this last aphorism:

Only God and the central point of my consciousness are not adventitious to me.

Point and sphere... ʘ....

Since God is the universal cause of all being, it is thus necessary that wherever being is found, God is also there present (Thomas).

 We are always a substance-in-relation, like God himselves.