Reality 9

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Reality 9

Daniel Clark

© 2005

These profound matters should be the subject of all theefforts of our human intelligence, so that it may raise itself to that simplicity where contradictions coincide.

- Nicholas of Cusa

Potentiality 1 behaves like an infinite wave.Potentiality 5 behaves like finite particles.Actuality is the secret room of Yin and Yang. It is dual.Materiality is our school. It has four elements: earth, water, air,fire.Spirituality is our home. Two parents and a child make three.The potential energies balance in Spirituality, the midpoint.Goddess and God live there with their Devotees.

I call it Reality 9. Nine is my favorite number. It's a personalthing. Reality 9 is a personal view, out of an unlimited range of possibilities. Your Reality may be different. This is mine.

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She Is The Creator

She is the Creator.To be exact, She is the Creatrix.

She is the whole of whom we are parts.She is EWEU -- The Eternal, The Whole, The Everything, TheUltimate.She is feminine but she includes masculinity.She is Energy.She is the potential energy that becomes actual energy, thepre-existence that becomes existence, invisible, yet thestorehouse of all the particular details of existence all at oncetogether.She is everything all at once.She is Chaos.

She is Perpetual Motion.She is the One who yearns to be one of two.She is the cell ready for mitosis.She is the One Hypostasis who becomes two, Goddess andGod. She pulls her masculinity out of herself and makes it God.The larger portion of herself remains as Goddess. As GoddessShe is the material cause, the substance, of all further manifestations. As God She is their efficient cause, their controller.She is Love.She is Worship.

She is Sex.She is a person.She is the essence of Personhood.She is without any single name because She is all names.She is without any single form because She is all forms.She is without any single quality because She is all qualities.She is the foundation of the spiritual world where we playeternally with her blissful names, forms, and qualities.She is everything.She is whatever has been said correctly about the SupremeBeing.

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Constant Motion

We watched In the Mirror of Maya Deren (2002, MartinaKudlacek). Among the people interviewed was Chao-Li Chi. Hesaid: "The ultimate form is that which has no form. This is notsupposed to be a paradox. Because what has no form is whena shape is in motion, is in constant change. So that which is inconstant motion contains all forms."

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Infinity

When Infinity formed God out of a part of herself, they becameExistence -- Goddess and God -- Infinity minus One.

James G. Cowan

"...the divine disorder lying beneath the surface of manifestation."-- James G. Cowan, The Elements of the Aborigine Tradition

The Hidden Potentiality

Potentiality, always reaching toward actuality, is defined byLove, the yearning for another. Potentiality-Love doesn'tobliterate itself to become the other. It is a flow, a moving

energy, an urge, directed beyond itself, that maintains theintegrity of both itself and its object.

Each person is dual: a potential person and an actual person.I'm conscious of my actual self, but not of my potential self.Both selves are eternal. The two worlds, the potential and theactual, are adjacent to each other. My actual self is alwaysaccompanied by my self of infinite possibilities.

The potential world is liberal, the actual is conservative.

Each existing item in the actual world (including every falseidea) has its hidden counterpart in the potential world. Andpotentiality -- infinity -- is the source of yet more items, whichsurprise the actual world when they arrive here.

Spirituality means an awareness of The Whole. Materialitymeans cutting out a portion of The Whole and giving that apreferred status. Thus, sectarian religions are materialistic.They limit the truth to a certain tradition, ritual, scripture, and soon. Nevertheless, acts of devotion are carried out in anenvironment of specifics. I'm not advocating a "contentlessmysticism," as someone once called it. To love God in aspecific way is spiritual if I know that like all actual forms, theGod I worship has his counterpart in the potential world.

The actual world is graded into a vertical hierarchy. Sitting atthe bottom are illusions and miseries. At the top we find theblissful truth, Goddess and God. In the potential world the

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forms are not graded. They're all equal, that is, horizontal.Furthermore, the potential world is One Person.

All phenomena in the actual world are eternal, from dog to God.So you see, this is not that "material world" you've heard about.

The "material world" is the actual world as seen by amaterialist. It's a mistake.

The other world, the potential world, sustains actuality -- as abattery sustains a light bulb. Both the battery and the bulb arenecessary for the light to shine.

Potentialism

Neither one, potentiality or actuality, is more real than the other.Reality is made up of both of them together.

In relation to each other, it might be said that potentiality is Yinand actuality is Yang. In the potential world, the feminine rules.In the actual world, the masculine rules. This is what is meantby saying, "she is the power behind the throne."

Thinking that, in the actual world, things die, that people die,that I die, is a mistake. Nothing here disappears. Everythinghere exists eternally. Each atom is as eternal as God. Thingshere are always alive. There is no non-existence. The other world, the potential world, is pre-existence. I don't die. Or, my

moment of "death" is already on the ledger. So, now that I knowI'm already dead, I can really start to live.

A clear continuum stretches unbroken from illusion to truth,from despair to divinity, from garbage to God. The entire rangeconsists of one substance: actuality. No dividing wall separates"matter" from "spirit" as if they were two countries. It's not thatgarbage is "matter" and God is "spirit," and one must changeone's identity to get across the border. While traveling fromignorance to knowledge, we journey across a continuouslandscape, a single country, made of actuality.Perhaps it could be called "matter" because it's filled withforms. Or "spirit" because it's eternal. In any case, it's all onesubstance. Duality enters the picture with the differencebetween The Potential and The Actual. But then, you see, ThePotential doesn't exist -- yet. So, is it really a duality?

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Quantumism

...the "physical vacuum" -- as it is called in field theory -- is nota state of mere nothingness, but contains the potentiality for allforms of the particle world.

-- Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics

If the universe came from "nothing," then perhaps nothing wasnot perfectly empty but had a slight amount of symmetrybreaking, which allows for the slight dominance of matter over antimatter today. The origin of this symmetry breaking is still notunderstood.-- Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds

When one knows that the Great Void is full of ch'i, one realizesthat there is no such thing as nothingness.

-- Chang Tsai, quoted by Capra

That which seems to the intellect to be Nothing is theincomprehensible Maximum.-- Nicholas of Cusa

Every Little Thing

Every little thing in the actual world also might be found in thepotential world, if we could peer into that world, which we can't,because the things there don't exist, they pre-exist. What's

more, there's more in the potential world, since it's infinite,unlimited. It's beyond our understanding. Perhaps I shouldn'trefer to us as inhabitants of only the actual world. We alsoinhabit the potential world, in our potential forms. But weachieve our completeness in the actual world. All things in thepotential world reach toward actuality. So you see, even thoughthe actual is finite, it's always being fed by the infinite. It'salways expanding. My guru said, "Krishna is alwaysexpanding." Krishna, too, inhabits both worlds. What's specialabout Krishna, about God, about Goddess, is that they inhabit aregion that touches the infinite, tangential to it. The divine isactual, but directly in contact with the potential. We becomesuccessful when we move to that region, which is known as thespiritual world.

Every Little Thing

Every little thingreminds me of You,

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when I stop discriminatingand assigning value.Just accepting, not rejectingwhat's within my view,every little thing

reminds me of You.

Death

Death is a mistaken impression. Everything is real, nothingdisappears.

Disruption

Love is the original "disruptive technology." We try to organizethings. But new things are always coming in from the

Potentiality and mixing us up, pulling the rug out from under us,upsetting the applecart, blowing our minds, forcing us toreconsider, giving us life.

Anarchy

Within the Potentiality, which is pure Love, there is nohierarchy. You might say that anarchy reigns there, except thatLove's infinite persons are all parts of one person, She. If thereis only one person, how can there be anarchy?

Continuous Creation

In the Infinite Potentiality there live an infinite number of souls.They yearn towards God. They know only God. In their potentiality, they have no awareness of themselves. As theygradually pass into the Actuality, they first stay with God. But astheir self-awareness grows, they become jealous of God. Sothey descend to lower levels of Actuality -- into the darkness, soto speak. This is painful, but through their suffering they gaincomplete self-realization, which finally matures into a freelychosen love of God. That's the drama of the soul. It keepsgoing on and on, with more souls from the limitless well of thePotentiality continually passing into the Actuality. My guru said,"Krishna is always expanding." The Actuality is alwaysexpanding. In that sense, even the Actuality has no limit.Creation is continuous. It may appear that a universe will die,

just as it may appear that you will die. But that's a mistakenimpression.

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Causality

Material Cause: Generation: Moves Inward (Feminine)Potentiality 1 Generates ActualityActuality Generates Spirituality

Spirituality Generates MaterialityMateriality Generates Potentiality 5

Efficient Cause: Regulation: Moves Outward (Masculine)Potentiality 5 Regulates MaterialityMateriality Regulates SpiritualitySpirituality Regulates ActualityActuality Regulates Potentiality 1

The outer generates the inner, the inner regulates the outer.Such a generator-regulator system is a simple machine.

Reality 9 is a closed-loop servo system.

Patti Smith "She is the root connection." (Patti Smith, from "DancingBarefoot")

Marriage

Reality 9 marries science and religion in a personalist universe.

Worlds

Potentiality: the world of SheActuality: the world of She and HeSpirituality: the world of She and He and DevoteesMateriality: the world of the Almighty God

Einstein

Fields (space) behave in waves.Events (time) behave in particles.The totality is space-time.

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Symmetry-Breaking Potentiality is hermaphroditic. But there's a slight dominance of the feminine. That symmetry-breaking allows for form, motion,and purpose.

Forms

All forms are Her form.

She's Flexible

Potentiality 1 has the edge over Potentiality 5. Generation hasmore power than regulation. Art outlasts politics. Life beatsdeath. Motion beats stasis. Flexibility beats rigidity.

The Purpose

When the unity of Potentiality 1 enters into Actuality, Shearrives as the generator - She - and the generated - He.

When the multiplicity of Potentiality 5 enters into Materiality,She arrives as the regulator - the Almighty - and the regulated -the souls, the atoms, and the elemental spirits.

When the two currents of Potentiality converge in Spirituality,they arrive as Goddess, God, and the Devotees. The creationof this joyful Home is the purpose of Reality 9.

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Dualities

Reality 9 is a duality of dualities. It is a duality of the potentialand the actual. Then the actual includes a duality of the spiritualand the material.

Divertimentos

The "least important"things are the most importantthings, the flowers said.

The quest for perfection is the devil's best trick.

"You must have no thoughts of your own.You must only repeat. Be my clone.

For your spiritual health,run away from yourself,and obey what I say from my throne!"

Raw Consciousness and Time

Potentiality is the world of raw consciousness, of pure motionand emotion. Entities never leave Potentiality. To move fromPotentiality to Actuality, they duplicate themselves. Then theylive in both worlds. Even though Actuality is made up of aleph-nought static states, the entities experience flux, or time,

because they are conscious. Consciousness moves, and hasdirection. Consciousness bridges the gap between the static"now" particles and allows for a sense of past, present, andfuture.

Greex !

Pokin' around in the history of Western Feel-oh-so-free, wereturn to that grand period between 600 and 400 BCE. TheGreeks were revvin' up their brains. First to come up with anopinion was ol' Thales. He said everything's made of Water.That inspired Heraclitus to say there's no Thing at all - what itcomes down to is Change. Parmenides couldn't agree withthat. He said we can't think of No Thing, therefore there'sSomething. And what it is, is a big round ball so jam-packedwith Things that nothing moves. Nothing changes. And it staysthat way forever. His student Zeno liked to aggravate peoplewith peculiar proofs of how nothing moves. Anyway, there werelots of others and it gets confusing. But I do like Anaximander.

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He was a cagey guy who said that the source of everything is -get this - Indefinite. That was a Greek word, "apeiron," whichsome people claim might also mean Infinite. Now, if that's so,then maybe Anaximander wasn't so sneaky after all. In fact,that's just what I've been getting so wordy about myself. The

Infinite is the source. Oddly enough, I often think of it as beinglike an ocean. So maybe Thales was right, that everything'smade of Water. We could've saved ourselves 2600 years of fussin' if we'd just stuck with him !

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

In his Exposition and Defense of the New System of 1695,Leibniz explains his view of "the ultimate elements into whichsubstantial things can be analyzed." Later he would name theultimate element a Monad. Here he calls it "an atom of

substance."

But it is hardly an atom as we usually consider one. Of theseatoms, he says "their nature consists of force and ... from thisthere follows something analogous to feeling and appetite ...resembling our ordinary notion of souls .. there is about themsomething vital and a kind of perception ..."

Having stated that "it is impossible to find the principles of unity in matter alone," Leibniz remains true to his word. His basic unitof reality displays the characteristics of force (energy), feeling,

appetite, vitality, and perception. It is indeed like the standarddescription of a soul. For Leibniz, reality is essentially spiritual,and personal.

Atoms are people? Well, like people and unlike theconventional material atom, each of Leibniz's elements isunique - not standardized. He tells of a friend of his trying tofind two identical leaves in a garden, and failing to do so. Fromunique causes, unique results, Leibniz commented, in so manywords.

Of additional interest to me is his probing into Possibility. Asone who places so much emphasis on Pre-Existence, I'mhappy to find similar thoughts in passages such as thefollowing, quoted at length from On the Ultimate Origination of Things (1697):

"First we must notice, from the very fact that something existsrather than nothing, that there is in things that are possible, or

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in possibility of essence itself, a certain need for existence, or (if I may so put it) a claim to exist; and, to put it bluntly, thatessence in itself tends toward existence. From this it further follows that all things which are possible, or express essence or possible reality, tend by equal right towards existence in

proportion to the quantity of essence or reality which theyinclude, or in proportion to the stage of perfection whichbelongs to them; for perfection is nothing else than quantity of essence.

"Hence it is seen to be most evident that out of the infinitecombination of possibles, and the infinite possible series, thatone exists by whose means the greatest possible amount of essence or possibility is brought into existence."

Leibniz calls Possibility the Essence. It is the source, the great

storehouse. It's tempting to consider it "the spiritual world,"except that existence is also made up of nothing but Monads,which are spiritual entities.

This "essence in itself tends toward existence." A big questionrises up. Why doesn't all the essence become existence all atonce? He states that the "things" in that world have differentquantities of the essence. The greater the quantity, the morelikely the passage into existence. I'm not sure I like that story.For me, the pre-existent entities are particles of She. (She isthe Potentiality, the Pre-Existence.) She controls the rate of

passage. To her, all entities are of equal quality. The flowinginto existence is merely her game, her dance. On the other hand, the entities traverse into existence when they want to.They have free will.

Scientists have found most interesting Leibniz'sCorrespondence with Samuel Clarke of 1715. Clarke waswriting on behalf of Isaac Newton. Newton and Leibniz were atodds over at least two issues. First and most irritating was thequarrel over who had first developed the calculus. (That'sLeibniz's name for it - Newton called it "fluxions.")

But more significant was their dispute over the nature of spaceand time. Newton felt they were absolute, spreading asundifferentiated regulators independent of anything else in theuniverse, except God. Leibniz felt they were ideas only, andrelative to the changing aspects of things. For him, space isdefined by things existing together at one time. Time is definedby things succeeding each other in one space. The two can

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only be defined in terms of each other. Indeed, Leibnizpreferred not to speak in terms of space and time. He saidthere is no such thing as space. But there are places. There isno such thing as time. But there are instants. "... space is thatwhich results from places taken together ... In the case of time,

nothing exists but instants, and an instant is not even a part of time ... time can only be an ideal thing ... instants apart fromthings are nothing ... they only consist in the successive order of things ..." Things, or substances, are the only entities. Sincespace and time are not substances, they don't exist inthemselves, but only as concepts regarding the interactions of substances.

Like Parmenides, Leibniz considered existence to be a Plenum(fullness). Everything touches something. Newton was wrong totalk of "empty space." Leibniz said, "I hold there is no void at

all." He thus eliminated Newton's problem of "action at adistance." Monads are contiguous. Forces travel along anetwork of "communication" between contiguous entities.Furthermore, there's no such thing as distance.

Then, is there only one place, here? And one instant, now?

Julian Barbour

When Barbour says that each instant is a static andindependent instance of the entire universe - that nothing

moves from one instant to another, it's really instant-universes(within which nothing moves) somehow succeeding each other,like frames of a movie creating the illusion of motion - I agree.When he says that the cat who leaps is not the same as the catwho lands - they are two different cats embedded into twodifferent instants - I agree and disagree. When he says that our sense of motion and time is a function of records ("memories")which are not really ours but are something like computer filesloaded into the structure of the instant - I disagree. Finally,when he grants no continuity of self at all across the instants - Idefinitely disagree.

Reality 9, unlike Barber's Platonia, allows for the presence of consciousness as a continuum that bridges the gap betweenthe static instants. That was my perception in December of 1961 in an apartment at 437 West 22nd Street in New YorkCity. I was looking down at the rug, pivoting around as I looked.The rug-image jerked around the circle. It didn't go smoothly. Iwondered if my eye muscles weren't able to make smooth

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movements. Then I moved my hand in front of me. Again Isensed that the hand wasn't really making transitions. It was asif each fractional position was an independent fact, despite mydesire to perceive a smooth movement. The metaphor of asuccession of still frames on a strip of movie film came to mind.

The more I tried to impose a sense of smooth motion on anymoving thing, no matter how slowly it moved, the more I got adizzy feeling that reminded me of what Sartre wrote about inNausea. I was trying to force onto the world a property thatwasn't there. Motion wasn't in the world, it was in me. The worldwas divided up into static instants. I, on the other hand, hadsome ability to join the instants together. There really were twodifferent worlds operating together. One I called Time, the other Energy. It was similar to the traditional matter-spirit duality. Icalled it the Time-Energy System.

That Energy is not affected by time. Today, I would identify itshome as the Potentiality, a "place" of constant movement. ThePotentiality, the Pre-Existence, is always moving towardExistence. Even when it becomes Actual, it lives in a worldthat's always expanding. This might be like Barbour's timecapsules branching out from Alpha to infinity. But in hisPlatonia, there are no souls, just numbers and angles andcards on spindles. Thank God we don't really inhabit such amisty graveyard. However, unless we develop our consciousness, our self-awareness, our Energy, we mightindeed be lost in a world of motionless and emotionless

instants no better than his.

Kurt Godel

Formal logical systems and their proofs, though useful, are bytheir very nature limited by their methods, and cannot describethe truth of a totality. They are always incomplete. Totality canonly be grasped through intuition.

Time Is the Expansion of the Actual

"Time" is the word we have for the expansion of the Actual .Entities from the Potentiality pass into the Actuality. Eachpassage is, so to speak, the ticking of a clock. The volume of Actuality has increased by one entity. And it keeps onincreasing without cessation. Its volume never decreases. Themovement goes in one direction only. Time doesn't gobackward. The "arrow of time" always goes forward. Increase -

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addition - succession - is real, and constant. Energy isunlimited.

In the infinite Potentiality, where change is an urge - a tendencynot yet brought into existence - past, present, and future are

simultaneous. The Potentiality is made of motion. But it'smotion itself in motion, and not things moving. No things there.No clocks, no time. It's totality all at once. Since our consciousness is of the Potential essence, we have somepossibility of perceiving the past and the future. They areswimming in the ocean of Pre-Existence along with our rawconsciousness. To see the past and future directly, we muststrip down and plunge in naked. Really, that's also the only wayto see the present. So few of us are ready for that !

Divertimentos

Be a healer,not a thief.Selfish stealingleads to grief.Anger and hate -quick, but wrong -they're not your fate -go beyond.Open your hands.Make a friend.

Give all you can,without end.Love and shed some light.Live to set things right.

I used to livein a social hell,because I shiveredin fear of myself.But when I acceptedthe person I was,I lived in heaven'swarmth and love.

Detachment

In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna says:

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3.27"I'm the one who's doing this,"thinks the ego-bewildered atman,all of whose activitiesare done by the gunas of Prakriti.

3.28But Mahabaho, someone who knows what's realcan discriminate and see that guna-karmais just the gunas relating with the gunas.With that in mind, you're never attached.

To paraphrase: Whatever's happening in the material world isreally material nature itself doing things, not us. We're justalong for the ride. We imagine we're in charge. But reallynature's moving us around like puppets. With that in mind,

you're never attached.

In terms of Reality 9: In the particle-dominated world of Materiality, we tend to identify with the events embedded withinthe particles. Generally, our consciousness hasn't developed tothe point of seeing She and He behind it all. We don't feel thatevery atom is glorifying God. We feel that matter is somethingwe can manipulate for our own benefit. But really we're justwatching a movie that keeps on repeating itself endlessly. Withthat in mind, you're never attached.

Devotion

The purpose of knowledge is to bring me to devotion. No matter how much I know, it's useless if I have no love. As ClydeMcPhatter sang, "Without love I have nothing at all."Waves and particles, space and time, categories and sub-categories - they all fade away in Spirituality, where Goddessand God are loved. Krishna is there. DLK - Dear Love Krishna.

Divertimentos

Reality 9 - reality mine.Reality 8 - who knows its fate?Reality 7 might lead to heaven.Reality 6 has a bag full of tricks.Reality 5 keeps a world alive.Reality 4 is behind a locked door.Reality 3 - you know - Trinity.Reality 2 plays a digeridoo.

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Reality 1 is mostly for fun.What's Real is my hero. Therefore, no Zero.

therefore this and therefore thatcatch a fish to feed the cat

fight like hell 'til you have wontoll the bell when day is done

Cats don't get lostwhen they wander afar.You're not their boss.They follow their star.

Who can accountfor the whims of young parents,in the naming of their babies?

Why pin them downto "Clara" or "Clarence"when the world is full of maybes?

Cumulative Spiritualities

1941 Unitarianism1958 Pantheism1959 Atheism1961 The Time-Energy System1962 The Flesh Mystic

1963 Buddhism1965 Love Vs. Knowledge1966 Krishna Consciousness1969 Orthodox Vaishnavism1974 Theistic Personalism1978 Nature Worship1978 Nudism1979 Love1979 "The Theory of Gummy Substances" *1980 Planet Mantras1981 Native American Spirituality1982 Pandevotionalism1987 Wabasso Beach1994 Walking1995 Singdango1997 Goddess Worship2004 Deep Rumbling2005 Reality 9

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* I realize this looks like a joke. But sometimes silly beginningscan lead to serious conclusions. My annoyance with gummystuff like chewing gum or tar sticking to the bottom of my shoesled me to inquire about gummy substances in general. Irealized that gum is a residue of the sap, or "blood" of plants.

Like vampires, we suck out a plant's life and use it to our ownbenefit. We think it improves our life. But there must be areaction to our sinful action. One such reaction occurs when thestuff sticks to us, marking us as criminals. It comes back tohaunt us. We can't escape our punishment. We have sinnedagainst Nature. We have misunderstood Nature. In fact Natureis not directed toward us, but toward God. Nature does notworship us, it worships God. My "Theory of GummySubstances" was the chronological starting point of mydiscovery of Pandevotionalism.

Jules Massanet

"Tell me that time will not wither the roses of my lips."- from the "Mirror Aria" in Massanet's opera Thais.

Peter Lynds

A young guy from New Zealand is circling the globe presentinghis views on Time. He met with Julian Barbour and they didn'tget along very well. I can see why. Barbour says thephenomenal world is made up of static units. Peter Lynds says

it's "constantly changing and undetermined." That phrasecomes from his 2003 paper, "Time and Quantum Mechanics:Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity." Barbour says everything is acollection of Nows. Lynds says the opposite: "it is the humanobserver who subjectively projects, imposes and assigns aprecise instant in time upon a physical process." For him, thereis no Now except in our dreams.

Doesn't it sound like the old particle vs. wave controversy in anew suit of clothes? I think it does. Somehow we have toaccomodate both the part and the whole, the static and theflowing, and I suppose matter and spirit. To do so, we mustallow for something like paradox to enter in. Or one of our terms must describe something beyond our ability tocomprehend. Or we must be willing to gracefully acknowledgesomething self-contradictory.

Lynds is far better at math than I am. But I'm not comfortablewith his English. His sentences are atrocious snarls of

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truncated clauses. Like most precocious high-schoolers, he'sseduced by Big Words. Most important, he never defines histerms. At least after repeated readings of his infamous paper,I'm still in the dark about what he thinks time really is. In a raremoment of clarity, he states that "we live in a world where

indeed there is interval in time." (That would be a goodbeginning statement, but it's buried midway through.) OK, thentime exists. But what is it? Is it a function of the "dynamicalphysical process" he repeatedly invokes? Or is it an inventionof the human mind, as quoted above? Or both together? Heleaves me unsatisfied.

But he leaves no doubt about his main purpose. He says itagain and again. "There is not a precise static instant in time."For me, as for Barbour, the universe is indeed made up of justsuch static instants. However, Lynds does make room for the

intervention of consciousness. I find that more satisfying thanBarbour's lonely deck of cards. Of course, Lynds sees the mindforcing gradations onto a faceless flow. I see the mind, or thesoul, building bridges that connect static instants.Consciousness, or Life, or Energy, is Motion itself, as Platoremarked. We move through the static frames of the cosmicmovie, the karmic construction. We move because we arealive. Time is the interaction between dynamic consciousnessand static universe-stages.

William Shakespeare

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to dayTo the last syllable of recorded time,And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.

from Macbeth

The Quick and the Dead

You can't put your finger on the present. As soon as you say"now," that word is part of the past. And, now you're in thefuture? Sorry, no.

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Analytical attentiveness to the present (Life) is like a knifecutting it down the middle into two halves, the past and thefuture (Death). The present is in motion, is alive. When weanalyze it, it becomes static and dies. It's changed into two

dead things, the past and the future. Time is the death of life.

The past and the future do exist. But they're dead. Becauseyou're not living in them. Only the present is alive, and it'sbecause of you. The present is you, alive. By "alive" I mean,you're simply accepting what is. When you start questioning,doubting, analyzing, categorizing, you're dead. The presentdies and all you're left with is the past and the future - Time.

Expansion

Actuality is constantly expanding, without any beginning or endto its expansion, and so much beauty along the way. Isn't thatwhat fractals are telling us? There was no "Big Bang." Theexpansion never had a beginning. It's just always beenincreasing from whatever it was before. New souls fromPotentiality 5 keep getting added. Actuality won't cool down anddie from dispersion. It won't shrink back into a speck. It willkeep on expanding forever.

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Divertimentos

Who bombed Baghdad in '98?William Jefferson Clinton.Who starved Iraqis while he ate?

William Jefferson Clinton.Who left the Bosnians to their fear?Who freed his pal but not Peltier?Whose party knelt to his lecherous leer?William Jefferson Clinton.

Ronald Reagan once worked for a company whose slogan was"Progress Is Our Most Important Product." His political heir,George W. Bush, would like his current employer's slogan to be"War Is Our Most Important Product." No progress there! Let'sget our priorities straight. We need a Department of Peace.

That would be our most important "faith-based initiative." But todo that, Bush would have to give up his role as our War President. He would have to become a true follower of thePrince of Peace. That would be progress.

Incomprehensibles

Nicholas of Cusa:In God we must not conceive of distinction and indistinction, for example, as two contradictories, but we must conceive of themas antecedently existing in their own most simple beginning,where distinction is not other than indistinction.

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz:The least particle ought to be considered as a world full of aninfinity of different creatures.

Georg Cantor:

The Absolute can only be acknowledged and admitted, never known, not even approximately.

Teleology

Potentiality 1 acts as a single wave. Potentiality 5 acts as manyparticles. But Potentiality in general combines both. Each of themany particles is an infinitesimal wave. (It retains thatcharacteristic even when it has entered Actuality.) The singlewave is an infinite particle, or unit. In addition, the two share thesame quality, Potentiality. Therefore all entities are energies

directed outside themselves. As Aristotle said, every entity hasan inner purpose, intrinsic to itself, not imposed on it by anyexternal agent, that drives it toward a goal in another time or place that fulfills its own nature. The purpose of an acorn is tobecome an oak. The purpose of the Sun is to radiate heat andlight. Each entity is moving toward a fulfillment of itself.

In Reality 9, the inner seed, and thus the outer goal, of eachentity is its life in Spirituality with Goddess and God. Thatdevotional life sits in the center of each thing, including theinfinite wave. The infinite wave is She. She yearns to worshipthe Other, He. Her yearning culminates in Spirituality, where

Goddess and God and their Devotees enjoy eternal lovingpastimes.Each soul, being an infinitesimal version of She, has the

same inner purpose as She. Every entity is moving towardSpirituality. Spirituality, lodged firmly in the center of Reality 9,is the goal of Reality 9.

But if it is the goal it must also be the source. For teleologyis a tautology, employing circular reasoning. (Since the Sunradiates heat and light, then its purpose is to radiate heat andlight.) This circle of reasoning includes a long chain of causesand effects, each of which is an absolute and can thereforefunction as both the beginning and the end of the circle. (A casecan even be made for Materiality as the source and the goal.)However, the circle floats, so to speak, on an ocean of She.She has the advantage of being infinite, thus being both insideand outside the circle. And She has her priority: He. Together,they reach their peak in Spirituality. In this sense, Spirituality isthe essential origin of it all.

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Elementals

Materiality's particles are of four types: atoms, elementals,souls, and the Almighty. By "elementals" I mean entities usuallyconsidered today as imaginary: angels, fairies, pixies, and so

on. They aren't exactly individual souls. They're portions of Shewithout free will. These messengers of the divine are divinethemselves, but they haven't achieved their divinity through anyexercize of power of choice. And they never suffer. So althoughtheir devotion to She is real, it can never approach the intensityof love possible for the souls.

Everybody Has Everything

There's no tomorrow,or yesterday,

to loan or borrow.Don't be afraid.It's all eternal.Time does not pass.What's called initialis first, and last.There is no passage.There is no flow.What seems so fast isnot even slow !One present moment

of endless timecontains unbrokenall nows combined.

Divertimentos

Love and Hatred Hatred is for cowards,and love is for the brave.Love takes you to glory,and hatred to the grave.

Swamp RoostersFloridians, like farmers,wake up without alarmers.The time when they're awokenis when the frogs start croakin.

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Those Who Know Those who doubt, go down.Those who hope, go up.Those who know, stay safe at home,And share the loving cup.

Keshava's GardenIn Keshava's Garden I'm as happy as can be,making beauty ardently that He will love to see.When He walks around the beds and smiles at every turn,that's the only recompense I'll ever need to earn. Georg Cantor

For the mathematician Georg Cantor (1845 - 1908), nothingwas more important than God. When Cantor developed set

theory, which every elementary school student now learns, hebased it on a new concept of infinity, the Absolute Infinity beingGod. Besides the Absolute, Cantor said, there are two other kinds of infinity. They are the actual infinite and the transfinite.This got him into trouble with other mathematicians. Aristotleand Thomas Aquinas and everyone else since had declaredthat there's no such thing as an actual infinite - that is, aninfinite realm that can be made subject to mathematicalprocedures. And the transfinite, nobody had even heard of before.

I'm not a mathematician. Symbolic logic utterly escapes me -along with the details of Cantor's theorizing. I won't try toexplain what I don't understand. But I do see a correspondencebetween Cantor's three infinites and mine.

His Absolute Infinite is my Potentiality 1. I don't use the term"potential" the way mathematicians do. They posit a "potentialinfinite" as a hypothetical state necessary for the sake of performing certain operations within finitude. My infinitePotentiality is a real state in its own right, the source of all else.It is Cantor's Absolute Infinite, beyond the reach of our intellect.

His transfinite is similar to my Potentiality 5. Cantor describesthe transfinite as a realm that can be enumerated. It can beadded to. Its constituent elements have their specific identities.Likewise, Potentiality 5 is composed of an infinite quantity of identifiable particles.

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His actual infinite is comparable to my Potentiality-within-Actuality. All entities within Actuality have emigrated there fromthe infinite, and retain the infinite at their core. "We are spirits inthe material world," as The Police sang in the 1980s. Christianstend to be dualists, digging a deep trench between the infinite

and the finite. Cantor had a rough time with their Thomistcondemnations. But I am not a dualist. I am a monist-dualist,subscribing to the achintya bhedabheda tattva of ShriChaitanya. Like Cantor, I feel the presence of the infinite withinthe finite to be a continual inspiration.Following are some passages from Cantor's books and letters.

"The grounding of the principles of mathematics and naturalscience is a matter for metaphysics."

"What surpasses all that is finite and transfinite is ... the single

completely individual unity in which everything is included,which includes the 'Absolute' incomprehensible to the humanunderstanding. This is the 'Actus Durissimus' which by many iscalled 'God.'"

"All forms whether finite or infinite are definite, and with theexception of God, are capable of being intellectuallydetermined."

"... certain knowledge ... can only be obtained through conceptsand ideas, which are at best only stimulated by outer

experience, but which are principally formed through inner induction and deduction, like something which, so to speak,already lay within us and is only awakened and brought toconsciousness."

"In my opinion, time is an idea ... it is nothing other than arelational concept, by whose aid the relation between variousmotions we perceive in nature is determined."

"All these particular modes of the transfinite have existed frometernity as ideas in the Divine intellect."

" ... the transfinite not only expresses the extensive domain of the possible in God's knowledge, but also presents a rich andcontinually increasing field of ideal discovery. Moreover, I amconvinced that it also achieves reality and existence in theworld of the created, so as to express more strongly than couldhave been the case with a mere 'finite world' the majesty of theCreator following its own free decree."

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The Ultimate Is Inconceivable

Finitude has an infinite feature and infinity has a finite feature.For instance, even in conventional religious terminology, a body

has a soul and God has a body. Finitude is form or identity or stasis. Infinity is freedom or action or motion. So, since thefinite is the limited, and the infinite is the unlimited, then finitudehas limited freedom and infinity has unlimited forms.

But the finite and the infinite are of two different states. Finitudeis actual and infinity is potential. They're both real. But finitudeexists and infinity pre-exists.

To what extent can we speak of a mathematics of pre-existence? Cantor may have found a way. Like Cantor, I

propose that "everything is included" within the AbsoluteInfinite. That is, every thing is included. It is not only singular but also plural.

Indeed, it's easier to conceive of its plurality - its containing aninfinite number of forms - than it is to conceive of its singularity -its boundary. In fact, it has no boundary. It is not a "set" in themanner of actual sets. Here is the paradox. Potentiality is aform, She, but a form without a boundary. That is the greatmystery. That is why the ultimate is inconceivable.

Nicholas of Cusa

from On Learned Ignorance 109:

Who, I ask, could understand how it is that the plurality of things is from the Divine Mind? For God's understanding is Hisbeing; for God is Infinite Oneness. If you proceed with thenumerical comparison by considering that number is themultiplication, by the mind, of the common one: it seems as if God, who is Oneness, were multiplied in things, since Hisunderstanding is His being. And yet, you understand that thisOneness, which is infinite and maximal, cannot be multiplied.How, then, can you understand there to be a plurality whosebeing comes from the One without there occurring anymultiplication of the One? That is, how can you understandthere to be a multiplication of Oneness without there being amultiplication of Oneness? Surely, you can not understand it asyou understand the multiplication of one species or of onegenus in many species or many individuals; outside of these

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individuals a genus or a species does not exist except throughan abstracting intellect. Therefore, no one understands howGod (whose oneness of being does not exist through theunderstanding's abstracting from things and does not exist asunited to, or merged with things) is unfolded through the

number of things.

Krishna

from the Bhagavad-gita:

9.4All this world is permeated by me,in my form as the Unmanifest.All creatures stand in me.I do not stand in them.

9.5And, the creatures don't stand in me.See how my yoga rules!My atman creates the creatures,sustains the creatures,but doesn't stand in the creatures.

9.6Understand -- just as the wind blows everywherewhile always situated within space,

so all the creatures are situated within me.

13.13I'll tell you what is to be knownknowing it, you'll attain immortalityit's the beginingless Supreme Brahman-- they say it neither is nor is not

13.14everywhere its hands and feeteverywhere its eyes, heads, faceseverywhere it hears, and abides-- embracing all the world13.15shining in the gunas of the sensesand without any senses at alldetached, and supporting everything-- without gunas and enjoying gunas

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13.16inside and outside all creaturesthose that move and those that don'tit's too subtle to be understood-- close, and placed so far away

13.17undivided, standing in all creaturesalso divided, or so it seemsunderstood as the creatures' maintainer -- and devourer, and creator

13.18it's also the light in all lightsit's beyond the darkness, they sayit's knowing, the known, and known by knowing

-- it stands in the hearts of us all

The ways of love are crooked.(traditional Vaishnava saying)

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