Lookin' Under God's Hood

Way up at the toppermyst of the vertical flowchart there is Absolute reality, Infinite possibility, and Perfect quality. If that's the case, then what are we doing here? How did we get here?

Easy: Infinitude "projects the Principle into Relativity, and thus produces the metacosmic 'space,'" or what we've been calling the vertical flowchart. 

Being that there is no relativity "prior" to the projection (since it must be coeternal), I suppose we could say that relativity is this projection (and vice versa). To paraphrase el Grande Aphoristo, this creative projection is the nexus between time and eternity.

But there are two ways of looking at it, from our perspective and from God's perspective -- the latter only being a "perspective" by way of analogy, since it excludes nothing, in the same way a sphere contains every possible circle.  

Beginning with God's POV, Schuon describes it thus:

The Absolute is infinite; therefore it radiates, and in radiating it projects itself; the content of this projection being the Good.... This is the very foundation of what Christian doctrine terms the Hypostases.

Oh? Say more. 

In projecting the Absolute, Infinitude "thus produces the image," this being the Logos; it is like a "refraction of the Light which is in itself undivided." 

The Absolute is necessary being, AKA that which must be and cannot not be. 

However, its first and intrinsic entailment is Infinitude, and this is where we come in: we always partake of both, since we exist (which is to say, participate in Absolute Being), but always "more or less," since there is the potential that is the shadow of our participation in Infinitude; and "progress" is movement toward the Good, or a round trip back to Perfection. At any rate, it's a trip. 

In this way we are analogous to God, in that we too are made of Absoluteness and Infinitude. I suppose we could reason up from this existential fact to the Principle, or from the Principle down to us. Either way, at least it gives us a way to think about our situation. Or something to argue about.

But our predicament is a bit more complex than this bipolarity suggests, since there are degrees of being, like concentric circles around an infinite point. 

Again, there is the material world that answers to our senses, and the formal to which the mind is an adequation. 

The latter is immaterial -- for example, the concept of a circle, a tree, or a dog. Every material tree we will ever encounter is unique, and yet, we spontaneously discern the subtle concept beneath the gross matter perceived by the senses.

Which means that the world is "transparent" or "translucent," or something, for every form is like a window into the essence. 

Imagine what the world would be like in the absence of this interiority. You can't, because you would have to eliminate the interiority at both ends, i.e., intelligibility and intelligence, the two being mirror reflections of one another. Such a cosmos is literally inconceivable. Especially for God, who is the very principle of Intelligence.

Here you can appreciate all the trouble Kant -- and prior to him, nominalism -- landed us in, because he collapses the world of intelligibility and form into the ego, as if the world is just a projection of our own concepts, instead of a discernment of these immaterial forms in extra-mental reality.

And now it occurs to me that Kant's conceptualization only confuses man with God, for it is God -- as outlined above -- who projects and radiates ideas, forms, and archetypes into the world, not us (pathological projection notwithstanding, but that's a different post). 

Rather, the forms were all here before we arrived on the scene, and will still exist after we're gone. 2 + 2 will always = 4, and more generally, truth will always be true irrespective of whether anyone believes it. More generally, Being is intelligible, and that's my final answer.

Are there people who think there were no laws of physics before the emergence of man? Probably, since there is no idea so stupid that it hasn't been promulgated by some tenured primate. 

A more interesting question is whether the cosmos was beautiful before we got here. I say yes, because I'm just not that creative, except maybe in my dreams. I also say it was good, but of course, God said that before I did.

Oh, I guess there will be no post tomorrow, since they tell me there will be no electricity from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

Speaking of which, I don't know if you heard it here first, but Brandon won't make it to 2024 for one reason or another (i.e., health or scandal), so get ready for President Newsom. He'll save the world, one blackout at a time.