Dialogue ~ 14

I wrote in my previous blog, “… Illumination is present … where Being and Becoming are one … for where else would it be possible to know for certain 'one's truth'? It is not the ground or distance covered, so much as an inclination which opens a doorway to revealing … it is an invitation to enter into the unknown and to be willing to ‘surrender all one’s worldly goods’, to give up one’s life in effect … Revelation is a threshold which is perceived as the greatest terror for a human and is also life’s greatest joy.”

I will continue to explore this. Firstly, consider Plato’s concept of the ‘form of the good’ as that which is not clearly seen or explained, until it is recognised as the form which allows one to realise all other forms. I have written, “… what we are looking for is ‘an illumination or aspect of consciousness which reveals knowledge and truth to us’…”

I have also written about revelation as being a glimpse of reality which we are looking for when we search for meaning in life and when we commune with authentic experience of our being. Are we hard-wired then, to search for an esoteric or inner aspect of Nature, as that which will yield to us ‘the purpose of, or meaning of our Being’? Why would that have any bearing upon us, given as there is such diversity and complexity of life-forms and other distractions of Nature which can occupy our attention?

An answer to both of these questions might have something to do with the concept of the ‘One and the Many’. This is an enigma which has to do with identifying the one thing – or unity – which lies behind all things in the universe. Through observation of the world, many cultures have come to believe that even with the great diversity of life and change, all of it is related through a single concept, material or object which offers stability – but simply put, what is that? Does the world and any semblance of an order emerge from the ‘nous’ or cosmic mind, an invisible aether or ‘apeiron’ (unbounded and infinite) or an element already in the world, whether that is water or fire or atoms?

Why has the human mind been preoccupied with identifying what a unifying principle of the cosmos could be? We might be given to observing what gives rise to order in the midst of chaos, to harness that and ‘organise the world in our image’, if that is our inclination. Perhaps we desire to manoeuvre ourselves into being in right relationship with said ordering principle, so as to establish concord or communion with it; there might be fear that if we do not, we will miss out on our special purpose in life and face some form of purgatory or wrath in an ‘afterlife’? Or are we moved by something else, that which we might hesitate to call love, because who or what would be an object of our love? 

A tricky part of exploring human nature is that we have to reconcile that we are creatures of a visible and material world, whilst at the same time we are sentient beings – but being what? Consider how challenging it is to define that exact moment when ‘I love you (directed towards other)’ becomes simply instead ‘I love...’ (universal)? It is a transition of identity. How are we able to ‘scientifically observe and identify’ all that we are perceiving in the cosmos, when what we are looking at and how we are looking, are one and the same? Quantum mechanics in physics is only touching upon the surface of this quandary.

What is it that the monotheistic religions hold? That there is only one God (interpretations are that this deity is abstract, universal, eternal, unchanging)? Then again, there are those who would put forward that the concept of a collective human unconsciousness is equally universal. For the most part, we don’t regard the unconscious as that which is supernatural, even whilst it might not be visible to us at all times. What is perplexing is that we appear to be comfortable with making space for the presence of an unconscious in our lives; we struggle instead with how to identify what a supra-consciousness would entail and how to relate to that? Essentially, isn’t all of it a shift of perspective? Are there hindrances to our vision, such that we are unwilling to perceive reality as it is?

The philosopher Parmenides had objected to what Heraclitus, as well as naturalistic philosophy, had emphasised about the world being full of change. Parmenides had put forward that those who believe in the possibility of change are venturing along trails which are forbidden by reason; that the notion of change is incoherent.

If the ‘one thing or entity’ that is at the same time as itself, expressing itself through ‘the many’, how are we to perceive changes that we observe in the world? Are we at cause – or caused by? Is the world essentially a playground of matter, in which there is no determinism or end-game, other than of probabilities of collisions and of experience of conflict or co-operation? Is any notion of ‘becoming’ incoherent?

The philosopher Empedocles (490-430 BC) suggested that the world consists of the elements of earth, air, water and fire (these being unchangeable elements); making up the world as it appears to us through the agency of two motive forces: love as cause of union and strife as cause of separation. Empedocles’ philosophy creates an impression of a generative, ordering and coherent principle in the universe (love), which is at odds with a degenerative, chaotic and incoherent aspect (strife) of itself; heaven and hell?

Given as there cannot be the concept of unity without disunity, it implies that ‘becoming’ is built into this cosmology – the symbolism I have is of an ‘ouroboros’ (cosmic snake eating its own tail); also of the Tao. If the framework of the universe is as Empedocles had suggested, it would appear that the cosmos is pulsating; fluctuations of awareness of being (gradients potentially?) which give rise to coherence before disintegration; similar to an empire or a kingdom in the making before collapse.

What sort of relationship (if any) is there between being and becoming? Is it a symbiotic relationship? Remember that Parmenides had said that any notion of becoming is incoherent. If that is true, what does it mean? Without becoming, there is no cosmology; there is no sense of progression. Being is timeless, eternal; it has no experience of itself, as what would exist besides itself? The only space for anything else to inform being, would be that which is imagined of ‘what is’ and exists within a ‘bubble of Time’… a curvature or refraction of light; Being then is primordial, whilst becoming is light (coherence) and its absence (incoherence). Being is transcendent of becoming; such is its esoteric nature.