Absolute Convergence

So: Absolute reality, Infinite possibility, Perfect quality; these are at the top of the cosmic flow chart, and are of the same substance, each contained virtually in the others. 

Now, in Trinitarian thought, there is the idea of the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity, the former dealing with God's relations vis-a-vis Godself -- thus technically none of our isness -- the latter touching on God's activity herebelow in creation and history, so, very much at the heart of all this bipedal monkey isness.

Is there some way to reconcile Schuon's description in paragraph one with orthodox Christianity? Indeed, could they be two ways of talking about the same divine reality? 

I'm always inclined to say Yes to the latter, even though there are real theologians who would say that this is a no-go zone, the reason being that God provides us with a revelation precisely because it is beyond anything we could ever wrap our minds around. 

But I'm not trying to wrap my mind around it per se; rather, I fully respect the apophaticity of the Godhead, and in either case the words are just pointers to what cannot be grasped. Dogmatic formulations are important, but they're not walls, they're windows. Maybe not totally transparent windows but neither are they opaque.

I even wonder if Pure Intellection converges upon what it is these formulations point to. Analogously, think of how biological evolution is said to be convergent in important ways. 

For example, I read somewhere that it has evolved the eye as many as 40 separate times, suggesting to me that natural selection really likes eyeballs (and vision), and that outward eyes must be a consequence of an inward, nonlocal form, morphogenetic field, or attractor in evolutionary phase space.

Irrespective of whether such archetypes guide the biosphere, there is no doubt that they exist in the vertical space of the pneumosphere; it's just another way of saying that human nature exists (it is an essence) and is one. In our day, affirming an essential human nature has become controversial, if not fascist, but that's human nature for you.

If there is a vertical convergence toward various nonlocal archetypes, then we should see evidence of it in anthropology, and indeed we do. I hold in my hands The Book Of Absolutes, by William Gairdner, which describes the multitude of ways we are alike because we share the same human essence (https://www.amazon.com/Book-Absolutes-Critique-Relativism-Universals/dp/077353413X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1BMRSNLJM40IE&keywords=William+Gairdner&qid=1687022162&s=books&sprefix=william+gairdner%2Cstripbooks%2C163&sr=1-2 ).     

I lied. I don't hold it in my hands. It's over there in the bookcase, and I'm too lazy to pull it out. Rather, I'm going to let an amazon reviewer handle it while I lean back and sip coffee. Surely they can't all be idiots.

Relativism is a particularly modern disease that has come to infect many aspects of life and thought in the modern world, especially and increasingly over the past hundred years. Gairdner makes a strong and persuasive case for the existence of absolutes or universal truths and constants by examination of ancient and modern evidence in many areas of human life and cultures, nature, physics, mathematics, cosmology, biology, sexuality, morals, natural law, and language. 

His central thesis is that "all of nature, all human experience, cultures, moral systems, and all sciences, from the softest to the hardest -- while they are repositories of sometimes countless differences... are characterized by the existence of a very large number of absolutes without which the subjects themselves could not be meaningfully discussed in the first place" 

Some fine insultainment here, meaning that Cousin Dupree can also take the morning off:

Gairdner trains his sights on the philosophy of relativism, the intellectual (more accurately, anti-intellectual) matrix out of which many of the most malodorous orthodoxies of the day have arisen. The palaver of relativism (epistemological, moral, cultural) can now be heard practically everywhere, from the public square to the private cocktail party. Everyone knows that truth and right, like beauty, exist "only in the eye of the beholder." (That there is no absolute truth is the only truth we dare to affirm with absolute certitude.)

Moreover, any acknowledgment of absolutes of right and wrong, or of innate and immutable factors within our universal human nature, all too inconveniently limits our choices and desires. It is not surprising, then, that relativism has been given such a free ride.

Along the way, Gairdner exposes the grossly political motivation behind the research of such pioneers of the new "science" of anthropology as Franz Boas, and the risible myths of primitive innocence confabulated by the likes of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. And we learn that Einstein, though popularly supposed to have proven that "everything in the universe is relative," was persuaded that he had only demonstrated the universal and objectively knowable constants of nature. It is a little known irony that Einstein came to bitterly resent the misappropriation of his work by the demagogues of moral and cultural relativism.

The main burden of Gairdner's book is, more happily, to show that there exist, in fact, any number of demonstrable universal and abiding patterns, ideas, and truths that transcend and unify all historical epochs and cultures across the world: in mathematics, theology, myth, morality, and law; and that current studies in biology, psychology, and theoretical physics are uncovering new constants of human and physical nature every day.

So there. I guess what I'm saying is that if ultimate reality is in fact trinitarian, we should actually see hints of it everywhere, even if it is something we could never know with certitude in the absence of revelation. 

And now for a sudden left turn, or knight (night) move: we've suggested before that Absolute is to Male as Infinitude is to Female, such that our biological dimorphism is ultimately anchored in the nature of things. With this in mind, check out Joyce's ode to cosmic femininity:

In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!

Infinitude is the "bringer of pluralities," i.e., of mayaplicity and diversity. 

Her untitled mamafesta memorializing the Mosthighest has gone by many names at disjointed times.

Thus, a multitude of books, a "polyhedron of scripture" describing one Absolute reality. For Campbell & Robinson, her memorial to the mosthighest is the cosmos itself, while her memorial letter, her mamafesta to the Absolute, is the world's various scriptures: "Though it seems a more scribble to the ignorant reader, to the hardy student" it reveals

a multiplicity of coalescing personalities who merge, their contrarieties eliminated, into one stable somebody.

That's about it this morning. Goodnight and pleasant dreams!