The Part Abides in the Whole

As we know, there is nothing in science per se -- nor will there ever be -- proving the existence of a closed cosmos. At best, this is but a methodological assumption, but if it's an ontological truth, it can't be, because it could only be known from a transcendent standpoint. 

In short, to place an ultimate limit is to have transcended it,

for how could the intelligence limit itself, seeing that by its very nature it is in principle unlimited or else it is nothing (Schuon)?

In other words, 

science must transcend itself to remain science. It stands as evidence that something beyond its own limits is inherent in the very consciousness that makes it possible (Harris). 

Atheism is always based upon appearances -- appearances that are of a reality we could never know in the absence of God. Ultimately, "finite nature transcends itself in man," just as "science transcends itself in philosophy." Thus, "Man's self-transcendent awareness is the image of God immanent in this thinking" (ibid.). 

I guess we could say that the Unlimited has sprouted here within the Limited, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it except enjoy the show.

Any true statement we make is sponsored by the Absolute, otherwise there would be no such things as objectivity and certitude. A principle of wholeness is built into the very nature of things, such that knowledge of parts not only gives knowledge of the whole, but is predicated on it. 

Not to go all Deepak on you, but this is a holographic or fractal universe, otherwise we would have no basis for knowing it is a universe, i.e., an ordered totality.  

Which reminds me of Finnegans Wake, of all things, for When a part so ptee does duty for the holos, we soon grow to use of an allforabit -- man himself being this petit part, and science and philosophy being the allforabit with which we speak of the whole. 

This is even a key passage to approaching the text, and Joyce says so right afterwords: Here (please to stoop) and pay attention to that last gag. 

Besides, Somedivide and sumthelot but the tally turns round the same balifusion. This may sound bally, but our analytical division implies the prior fusion of the whole, and that's all there is to it. 

With this in mind, let us switch seers back to Augustine. I think we can stipulate that he was a part of the universe, but a "guiding principle" of his philosophy was a gnostalgia for the Whole,

a longing that is a longing to return, to return to the One who made it, a longing that is experienced as restlessness, inability to settle and rest anywhere, a pressing sense that in all created things there lies something beyond, something that calls us to God (Louth).  

This longing is already "the movement of the Holy Spirit Himself in our hearts," which is to say, (↑) is already (↓), these two constituting a kind of eternal spiral. 

Suffice it to say, they are not two -- any more than transcendence and immanence can ever be radically divided from one another, for they are distinct but not separate.

In a famous passage Augustine describes rising all the way up to the toppamost of the poppamost and thensome: "And higher still we soared," until "we came to our own souls, and went beyond them to come at last to that region of richness unending," to "the Wisdom by which all things are made" and beyond, to "Wisdom itself not made," for "it is as it has ever been, and so it shall be forever."

Waaaay up there, where "it simply is, for it is eternal." Where God abides -- "abides in Himself forever, yet grows not old and makes all things new!"

Whew! Or is that too woowoo? For this appears to be nothing less than "a foretaste of the joys of heaven" (Louth), or at least Augustine thought so:

Sometimes You admit me to a state of mind that I am not ordinarily in, a kind of delight which could it ever be made permanent in me would be hard to distinguish from the life to come.

This state can't be continuous herebelow, because someone has to grow the food and take out the trash. 

Nevertheless, shoosh. I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' that Augustine's up there abidin' and takin' her easy for the restavus.