The Journey Home

Picking up where we left off, if our Cosmos

were totally unconscious there would be no way for it to complete its return to God in the Great Circle of Being as we shall see in a moment when dealing with the universe as Journey (Clarke). 

That moment has arrived. All aboard! 

Not to go woo woo on you right away, but as I said in the Book -- and I meant it -- if the Cosmos is conscious anywhere it is conscious everywhere, due its part-whole, or holo-fractal organization. That's not the Norco talking, because I ran out. I mean it in a very literal way, but let me first defer to another authority:

The order of the parts of the universe to each other exists in virtue of the order of the whole universe to God (Thomas).

Argument from authority is a logical fallacy.

That's true, unless what the authority says can be independently verified. Nobody's perfect, but

The source of every imperfect thing lies necessarily in one perfect being (ibid).

And

The complete perfection of the universe demands that there should be created natures which return to God (ibid).

Assumes facts not in evidence, i.e., God. 

Okay, let's leave God out of it for now, and put it this way: 

Intellect is the first author and mover of the universe.... Hence the last end of the universe must necessarily be the good of the intellect. This, however, is truth. Hence truth must be the last end of the whole universe (ibid.).  

Still sounds circular to me.

Precisely, bearing in mind that this is the only alternative to a radical absurcularity, or cosmic nul de slack. It's either one or the other:

The creature is vanity in so far as it comes from nothingness, but not in so far as it comes from God (ibid).

And if we came from nothingness we could never know it. Turns out that -- because of the holofractality referenced above -- the intellect is "naturally capable of knowing everything that exists," and 

every intellectual being is in a certain manner all things, in so far as it is able to comprehend all being by the power of its understanding (ibid.). 

Conversely,

This ordering of the intellect to infinity would be vain and senseless if there were no infinite object of knowledge (ibid.).

But there is an infinite object of knowledge: O. Which is why we aren't plunged into the darkness of vanity and senselessness:

The intellectual light dwelling in us is nothing else than a kind of participated image of the uncreated light in which the eternal ideas are contained (ibid.). 

Which is why I find the cosmos s'durned innarestin' -- the way the whole human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself down through the generations.... Aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again. Let's get back to Clarke. He says that

our -- and any -- universe turns out to be a radically personalized one, in its source, its meaning, and its destiny.

Any universe? 

The person is ultimately the key to why there is anything at all and not rather nothing.

And again, an isolated person is not, and could not be, a person: "the notion of person itself necessarily turns out to be interpersonal. There is no 'I' without a 'Thou,' and hence a 'We.'" 

So the real mystery is intersubjectivity. How did it get here, and by virtue of what principle? One possibility is that Christianity is true, for the existence of God "as a Triune Personal Being, or "a Three in One" 

sheds immense light on the very nature of being and person. For it reveals that the Supreme Being... must be interpersonal, a Personal 'We,' rather than a solitary, utterly simple, and nonrelational One. No wonder, then, that human personality also is intrinsically interpersonal, since it us such a lofty image of the divine perfection.

Unless you have a better idea. Or a more comprehensive vision, one that leaves nothing out, in particular, the interpersonal personality which is the very lens through which we see this and any other vision. In this vision there is first an exodus,

or journey outward of all created being from its Infinite Source, the emanation of the Many from the One.... But no sooner has the outgoing journey begun than it pivots upon itself and starts back on a journey home again to its Source, drawn by the pull of the Good in each being.

Bearing in mind that the Good of the intellect is Truth. To repeat what Thomas says above, 

the last end of the universe must necessarily be the good of the intellect. This, however, is truth. Hence truth must be the last end of the whole universe.

Or as Clarke puts it,

the exodus and the return, the leaving home and the returning thereto, the way out and the way back, are a journey motif woven into the very ontological structure of every being and thus of the universe itself as a whole.

Man is the mediator, the "bridge builder"

standing in the midst of the material universe, arising out of it as a synthesis of matter and spirit, a microcosm imaging the whole in himself, and with the capacity through his intellect and will to understand the whole process, the entire journey and its meaning...

That's pretty much the vision of my divine cosmody, and I'm sticking to it: badda-bing, badda-BANG!

the Big Bang Theory of the origin of the material universe now reveals that the entire cosmos from the first fiery moment of its origin to the present is enveloped in a single great unified journey. Physics and metaphysics here reinforce each other. And the spiritual journey of each one of us becomes a microcosm of the larger journey.

Someone ought to write a book.