I AM the Change: Change Our Mind

It seems to me that the right cerebral hemisphere (RH) must be the home for our more receptive orientation to the world, the LH being a limitation on, and conceptualization of, that infinitely open potential. 

If McGilchrist didn't exactly put it that way, it doesn't matter, because this dialectic exists irrespective of brain anatomy. Frankly, it's similar to the dynamic relation between act and potency first identified by Aristotle and perfected by Thomas. 

Every other animal is restricted to life in a more or less narrow "environment," whereas for human beings the environment is literally everything: AKA the cosmos. The higher the form of existence, 

the more developed becomes the relatedness with reality, also the more profound and comprehensive becomes the sphere of this relatedness: namely, the world (Pieper).

Man has nowhere in particular to lay his head, and everywhere in general. This general homelessness has often led to feelings of alienation -- the common intuition that this is not our home, that we're just passing through, or that we're on a pilgrimage or bewilderness adventure of some kind. Homo viator, and all that.

We rate that statement True, for reasons articulated by Schuon, that

The intelligence of animals is partial, that of man is total; and this totality is explained only by a transcendent reality to which intelligence is proportioned.

For which reason

material things and the common experiences of life are immensely beneath the scope of intelligence.

And 

the things of this world are never proportionate to the actual range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or else it is nothing. 

This Absolute is at once the guarantor of truth -- any truth -- and a kind of teleological attractor that dissolves or shatters every form short of its (supraformal) Self:

Whether we like it or not, we live surrounded by mysteries, which logically and existentially draws us towards transcendence. 

I like it.  

Now that I'm thinking of this, it would appear that Absolute is to LH as is Infinitude to RH; but again, the neurology scarcely matters so long as the deeper principle is grasped. Absolute is "that which is at once solely itself and totally itself," whereas Infinitude "is not determined by any limiting factor and therefore does not end at any boundary":

it is in the first place Potentiality or Possibility as such, and ipso facto the Possibility of things, hence Virtuality. Without All-Possibility, there would be neither Creator nor creation (Schuon).

Bold claim! I prefer to put it the other way around, and say that since the Creator by definition creates, it implies potential, even though this is an unavoidably naughty belief (among the temperamentally un-Dude) because it implies change in God. But there's a way of thinking about divine mutability that preserves and balances the strict immutability and the loose Dudeness.

Really? You want to know how to square that circle? Okay, in order to do that we need to pull out another book by Norris Clarke.... actually we may have to pull all of them out, but this one will do: Explorations in Metaphysics, chapter 9, A New Look at the Immutability of God. 

First -- and I'm not accusing Thomas of being un-Dude! -- but 

mutability, as he understands it in the Aristotelian metaphysics of change, necessarily involves imperfection.

But what if change a perfection? Or rather, what if it can be construed in such a way that there is something analogous to change in God? 

Recall that the analogy of being means that the similarities are always dwarfed by the dissimilarities, since God is infinite and we're not. So we can say that everything and anything is a more or less distant image of the Creator, but we cannot turn this around and say that God is limited by these, for this would be idolatry or ideology, and that's a no-go for the Logos.

You get it. The point is that since God is a person, and a relationship of persons, and therefore interpersonal, this cannot imply "the unqualified immutability in all domains which seems to have been the ideal of the classical Greek mind" -- as if God is a static object. Rather,

the immutability which must be affirmed of God is the unchanging, indefectible steadfastness of an infinite plenitude of goodness and loving benevolence, but a benevolence which also expresses itself in a process, a progressive unfolding of mutual interpersonal relationships, spread out in real temporal succession at our receiving end... in terms of which he is truly related to us....

I think of it this way: the very Principle of "time," of "change," and of perfection is located in the non-distant "distance" or "gap" -- analogously, and in a manner of speaking, yada yada -- between the First and Second persons. How to put it....

This is from another book, The Philosophical Approach to God: "God is the supremely perfect Being, surpassed by no other, yet constantly surpassing Himself, as He both gives and receives," both to and from the world, as the Father gives to, and receives from, the Son. This latter is the Principle of -- in my opinion -- time, change, and relation: "To receive love as a person"

is not at all an imperfection, but precisely a dimension of the perfection of personal being as lovingly responsive. What remains fixed as the constant point of reference in our concept of God is Infinite Perfection. 

"Perfect change," not from the imperfect to perfect, rather, but "from perfection to perfection," so to speak. Which shouldn't be any more difficult to reconcile than a strict monotheism in three persons, and indeed, this is the whole durn point of the Trinity:

God's "receiving" from us, being delighted at our response to His love, is really His original delight at sharing with us in His eternal Now His own original power of loving and infinite goodness which has come back to him in return.  

Again, it is only an analogy, but "God is not only the universe's great Giver, but also thereby its great Appreciator, its great Receiver" -- in a qualified way and a manner of speaking, and with all due yada yada.

To be continued...