Waste and Void

Yesterday we spoke of the Theos breaking the fourth wall of spacetime, which implies a kind of top-down movement from Creator to creation, or from O to both Cosmos and Anthropos. We can also consider the matter from our end, in that Gödel’s theorems prove that any frame we use to describe the universe is always already broken, which is to say, incomplete: wherever we are, we must appeal to a higher order in order to know where we are, and this appeal is in the mode of faith, not knowledge per se. Rather, faith is the link between two orders, however we conceptualize them.

For example, the working scientist has faith in the intelligibility of the world without being able to account for this intelligibility. To paraphrase Polanyi, this wholly reasonable faith takes form in the implicit knowledge of an impending discovery — or in other words, we believe in order to understand, but we never stop at any mere understanding.

Here the recovering alcoholic knows something that eludes the sober materialist, insofar as the former comes to believe in a Power greater than himself that may restore him to sanity: the sanity is posterior to the belief. This belief or faith merely establishes diplomatic relations with this Power before being able to say what it is or does. Likewise the scientist who must believe in a power greater than science in order to arrive at any sane ideas about the nature of reality. In other words, he must retain a stance of openness toward whatever realm being explored. Supposing we enclose the world in an ideological frame, then we have broken off relations with reality.

Cosmotheandrism is not explicitly about politics, but it certainly has political implications. For example, think back on what happened the night of November 3, 2026, when an electoral tsunami washed over the nation. Whatever one’s perspective, the tsunami obliterated the existing political frame, and now what?

Too soon to tell.

In an open Cosmos it is always too soon to tell, because no one can tell ahead of time what the Cosmos will tell us. All knowledge is preliminary to new discoveries that no one can foresee. We cannot deduce the future from the present — much less ordain the future — for as we have said, reality itself is the Mother of All Unintended Consequences. Again, for Polanyi, reality is characterized by its capacity to surprise us with new discoveries. Thus, a good theory is fruitful whereas a bad one is a dead end.

Nevertheless, it is still unsettling to wake up and find our frame lying in pieces on the ground, whether it is the geocentric frame destroyed by heliocentrism, or creationism by Darwinism, Newton by Einstein, or the Gutenberg Galaxy by the internet. This latter is happening in real time as we make the turbulent transition from literacy to post-literacy. I don’t believe it will be possible for any of us who still reside in the Old World of literacy to ever grow accustomed to this new post-truth world of relativism, subjectivism, and emotionalism, wherein every man is his own priest, philosopher, scientist, and journalist.

This latter world is inherently unstable and turbulent, since it has essentially declared independence from the Absolute, so there is no longer any controlling mythos-frame shared by everyone. A new frame could only be imposed from the top-down via authoritarianism. Which only enables more turbulence. To pretend to know where the post-literate turbulence is headed is like pretending to know what will happen once the lunatics are in charge of the asylum, each lunatic dwelling in his own private delusion. It is not a matter of which one is the real Christ or Napoleon, rather, the recognition that no one is. But try telling that to the new saviors!

∞

Speaking of frames, Schuon writes that “The whole existence of the peoples of antiquity, and of traditional peoples in general, is dominated by two key-ideas, the idea of Center and the idea of Origin.” Thus reality is framed by Center and Origin, even if the Origin is the Big Bang and we are in the middle of it.

In reality, our two poles orient us to something in space and time pointing to what is beyond them. For example, the “sacred Center” is “the place where Heaven has touched the earth,” where “God has manifested Himself in order to pour forth His grace.” In short, it is any place where the breakthrough of grace — of vertical energies — is particularly noticeable: In certain moments of abundance, God overflows into the world like a spring gushing into the peace of midday.

Likewise, the Origin “is the quasi-timeless moment when Heaven was near and terrestrial things were still half-celestial.” Or, “in the case of civilizations having a historical founder,” it is “the period when God spoke,” which is to say, broke the fourth wall — as occurred in the Axial Age vis-à-vis the Hebrew prophets, Greek philosophers, Upanishadic seers, Taoist dudes, Buddhist pneumanauts, et al.

Incoming from T.S. Eliot, who speaks of

A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time.

A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.

Otherwise — absent this vertical ingression —

Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.

Again! I hate it when that happens. Who can breathe in such a place?

No one can, hence

The soul is fed from what is mysterious in things.

The transcendence of things is the salt that seasons their blandness.

We are saved from daily tedium only by the impalpable, the invisible, and the ineffable.

The waters of the West are stagnant, but the spring is unpolluted.

Hell is any place from which God is absent.

Each of these aphorisms goes to both God and man breaking the fourth wall. And we needn’t dwell on the meaning of Christmas, but there it is: the story of Jesus’ birth is the quintessence of God breaking the fourth wall of spacetime.

Granted, breaking the fourth wall is usually inappropriate. Most of the time, in order for art to function as it is supposed to, the frame must be respected. Typically we want to abandon ourselves to the illusion of art, not be reminded that it is an illusion. One of the reasons why breaking the frame can be effective is because of its unexpectedness. If it happened all the time, the novelty would quickly wear off: if everyone is the savior, then no one is.

It’s not just a film or play that has a frame, but all works of art. Art always involves some kind of boundary separating it from the world, such as a literal frame around a painting. Without the frame, we wouldn’t know what to look at.

In the case of the Incarnation, what is the frame? It depends, for there are multiple frames or hermeneutical perspectives, from the literal to the psychological to the cosmic and more. At the very least, there are the traditional four senses of scripture, the literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical.

In the most obvious and literal sense, the frame is a particular man named Jesus. However, this man is embedded in a particular tribe, but also within a narrative that goes back to the creation of man and even to creation itself. At the far end of the narrative frame is his return, but meanwhile life goes on. I can’t worry about that, man.

Now, no one has to reinvent the telephone or computer every time we use them, but that’s not the way it is with regard to art or scripture, which necessitate a personal engagement on our part. There is a passive element, as in suspending disbelief, but also an active one, as per the various hermeneutical frameworks referenced above, not to mention the wild card of the Holy Spirit that blows where it wants, gosh!

In the case of both art and scripture, the purpose of the frame is to convey something that is beyond the frame, just as, on a more mundane level, we use words to convey a meaning not reducible to the words themselves. Which is why a literal interpretation of scripture defeats its purpose, for it reverses the vector flow of meaning — like focusing on the finger instead of that to which the finger is pointing.

Now, if man is created, this implies that he is analogous to a work of art with multiple levels of meaning. But he will ultimately point to his creator, just as Macbeth points to Shakespeare or the Mona Lisa to Rembrandt.

Man as such breaks the frame of the Cosmos and cannot be contained by it. Or, we have one foot in the Cosmos and one foot out. We are existentially amphibious, which is to say, material and spiritual. Matter cannot literally contain the soul, rather, vice versa: the soul — again, literally — contains the body, which means that it transcends the material. It is only in this transcendent space where intelligence meets intelligibility, where mind encounters truth, where the soul perceives beauty, and where we encounter a power that can restore us to metaphysical sanity.

This is another way of saying that this is an open Cosmos, open to its transcendent source. And that we in turn are uniquely open at our end, in that the very principle of being is reflected in us. Conversely, if the Cosmos were indeed enclosed within itself, then man cannot be “about” anything transcending himself. He can be about “selfish genes,” or neural activity, or class warfare, or a blind will to power, but these reduce to empty frames that are about nothing.

Let’s just say that the only way to repair our broken frame is for it to be inbroken by something from outside the frame. Otherwise, waste and void.

Truth is in history, but history is not the truth.

History commits suicide by denying all transcendence. For history to be of concern to us, there must be something that transcends it: there must be something in history more than history.