In Search of the Cosmic Ground

Yesterday we looked around for the World, today we'll try to discover its Ground. For Voegelin, "in all civilizations there exists a quest for the ground of everything with regard to existence and essence," although "these searches are expressed symbolically in widely varying forms."

The first voice that barges into my head is Schuon's, who says of both "traditional peoples and peoples in general," that they are "dominated by two key-ideas, the idea of Center and the idea of Origin." 

You could say that the Center is more vertical, the Origin more horizontal, and we can be more or less distant from each, albeit in different ways (the first in ontological "space," the second in time). 

For example, we are roughly 2032 years from the Origin, while mileage obviously varies with respect to distance from the (vertical) Center.

I don't know if we need to get into subtleties regarding the proximity of the eshchatological Origin at this very moment, because we're thinking about this more in purely scientific and rational than religious terms per se. We'll come back to the ultra-rationality of our perspective as we proceed, but not only is it rational, it is the very basis of a life deserving of the name.  

A rational life. Note that one may try to live an "intra-rational" life, but doing so would constitute the last word in irrationality; it is to confine oneself to a or even the Matrix for reasons we will also get into, but for now let's just say you can fool yourself but you cannot, under any absurcumstances, fool Gödel.

Orthoparadoxically, a truly rational life will be meta- or transrational, which is not to say irrational, rather, in conformity with the very ground of rationality, otherwise you are simply enclosed in your own "ultimately" arbitrary premises. 

We put arbitrary in scare quotalics, because this source of ultimacy will be none other than you in all your assoulery, even if you've only assimilated these premises via cultural osmosis. In other words, tenure is no excuse for locking yourself into the Matrix and literally throwing away the key. 

As we shall see, the doors of the Matrix are always locked from the inside. And if you can't see through the windows to the transcendent ground, it is only because you have closed the blinds; to be sure, you are in a world, but it is a more or less cramped and poorly lit room of the World. 

Frankly you are living in a cave, but no one is actually compelling you to avoid turning around and looking at the entrance. Rather, you are free, and it so happens that this very freedom flows in through the same entrance.

Scientifically speaking.

Pardon me. We interrupted Schuon. Let him finish his thought before we return to Voegelin:

In the spatial world in which we live, every value is related in some way to a sacred Center, which is the place where Heaven has touched the earth; in every human world there is a place where God has manifested Himself in order to pour forth his grace.

Scientifically speaking. And "it is the same for the Origin, which is the quasi-timeless moment when Heaven was near." But since it is quasi-timeless, it is more accurate to say it is near, as per what was said above about the eshchatological Origin (which is Alpha and Omega) being available to us everynow. 

Indeed, it is ultimately what the now is, and why we have access to it. I won't remind you again that reason itself demands such a wonderstanding. Put it it this way: every now is, in a sense, the timeless Origin deployed in time.

Let's bring all this science down a few notches and express the same ideas in more colloquial terms. In fact, the chapter we're reviewing is called In Search of the Ground, from a lecture Voegelin delivered in 1965. It's a little less German than his dense and esoteric written texts, almost downright volksy. 

Again, this search for the Ground is "a constant in all civilizations," sub-civilizations, and even anti-civilizations such as ours (i.e., civilizations that either flee from the Ground or try to ban inquiry into it).

This quest is informed by two big -- some say the biggest -- questions that pretty much define man as man. Certainly no animal asks them, whereas we can't help asking them, whether implicitly or explicitly, and in rational or irrational ways. After all, supposing you have any answers at all, it's because you asked a question. Or should have, anyway.

Question the first: why is there something instead of nothing? 

Question the second: why is this something what it is instead of something different?

These questions sound innocent enough, nor is it irrational (to put it mildly) to ask them. "Guilt" only comes into play with cosmically pathological answers, or in mythological terms, Genesis 3 All Over Again. 

Of note, in the paragraph above we are using the term "mythological" in a strictly scientific sense. 

To jump ahead a bit, Voegelin defines it as any explanation (i.e., answer to our two questions) that takes a purely intra-world (i.e., immanent) form. Therefore, an immanent scientism is every bit as mythological as saying, for example, that the cosmos is formed out of the god Witoto having to take a leak. Ultimately, each is as absurd as the other.

Let us tackle question the first. It's somewhat of a trick question, because there is of course no cutandry answer, or rather, it is an answer God keeps to himself, even if he drops so many hints that in order to miss them, you must be living in a cave, for 

the ground from which things are what they are, and are at all, is a transcendent divine Ground; there is no answer except in the symbolisms of theology or of a myth or of a metaphysics of transcendent divine Being or something like that -- which does not render any simple propositions for knowing the matter.

Nevertheless -- and everthemore -- "The question itself"

implies its answer; because in raising this question the very nature of man who is in search of his ground expresses itself in questioning to the last point, or to the last resort, what is the ground of everything with regard to existence and essence. 

Expressed schematically, it would like something like this: (?????????????????????????...) --> (!):

In this questioning one keeps open one's human condition and is not tempted [heh] to find cheap answers.

Turns out these cheap answers are rather expensive, i.e., Genesis 3 All Over Again.

Above, Voegelin alludes to existence and essence, which go to questions one and two, respectively: first, that! something is, second, what? it is. Everything both is and is something. Obvious, but not self-explanatory. In other words, any intra-cosmic explanation for THAT and WHAT is a FAIL.

How do we know it is a FAIL?

We shall now undertake a Gagdankanexperiment to prove the point. 

You -- you there -- you're a rational being, are you not? You do things for a reason, and you also have reasons for what you believe. This is precisely what defines you as human, and distinguishes you from the tenured. Why did you this instead of that? Then just repeat the question, like so: (???????????????????????????????...).

Thus we are led into an indefinite regression in which the supposed end from which we started always becomes a means in another means-end relation, and that end a means for the next means-end relation.

Does it -- can it -- really just go on forever, with no (!) to the sequence?

Let's pause for now, and pick up the thread tomorrow.