frequently asked questions catetories: general, academic, religious-spiritual
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What is the way of being? ▪ For whom is the way intended? ▪ What are its sources? ▪ What is its purpose? ▪ What is it possible to realize? ▪ Are the claims proven? ▪ Does the way neglect this life? ▪ How easy is the way to understand and undertake? ▪ How may we approach realization? ▪ What are some details of interest to all readers?
What are some points of interest of the new picture for academic readers?
What are some anticipated difficulties for academic readers?
Are there any implications for religion and the spiritual?
What are some main conclusions for religon from the metaphysical picture?
What
is the way of being?
It is a way of realization of the
ultimate, here and beyond. See
previous home
page, about, and
essays.
For whom is the way intended?
The intended audiences are general, active, and academic.
General readers are interested in a new and ultimate vision of the
universe,
Active readers are interested in realization under this vision, and
Academic readers are interested in philosophy, metaphysics, abstract and
concrete sciences and religion.
What are
its sources?
The Way of Being is original work.
Primary sources are my experience and thought.
Secondary sources are in the literature, especially science and philosophy.
What is
its purpose?
For individuals and civilizations to know the possible and realize the ultimate.
What is it possible to realize?
First, the universe and its identity are the greatest possible.
Second, that individual and civilization are intrinsically that ultimate.
Third that it is not just possible but given that the ultimate will be realized.
Are these claims proven?
The essay,
The Way of Being, proves and develops a perfect metaphysics.
The assertions above follow from the metaphysics. The metaphysics is also
easily seen to follow from the point that the universe is the greatest possible.
Does the way neglect to
consider this life?
Every life, lifetime, and era is essential in realization.
How easy is the way to
understand and undertake?
The picture of the universe would be unanticipated by most people.
However, once the novelty is accepted, the picture is simple.
The analytic groundwork (The
Way of Being) is useful but not necessary
The only 'difficulty' to realization is that it takes time, application, and
patience.
How may we approach realization?
Read, understand, and practice
The Way of Being.
The way which provides templates for everyday and universal practice.
What are some details of interest to all readers?
The universe is the greatest possible universe or being.
As greatest possible it must have identity in which we participate as
sub-identities—
from which we emerge and to which we return;
and with which we are identical even when this is obscured.
There is no limit to variety of kind or peak of identity, being, extension, or
duration.
A material example is that there are cosmoses limitlessly arrayed in space and
time.
The ultimate possibility of any being—individual or civilization—is that of the
universe itself.
Within that range, be-ing and relating and becoming, immediate and ultimate, and
home and abroad are ever interwoven.
Given security, choice between these polarities is neither necessary nor
fulfilling.
Consider a given being. Then, there is always (1) A greater being, (2) A greater sentience or sentient being,
(3) Realization of the being and 1-2 from the void (absence of Being), and
(4) A sentient being capable of engineering realizations the being and
1-3.
Definite description avoids paradoxes of the idea of 'the greatest possibility
or being'.
What are some points of interest of the new picture for academic readers?
The ideas provide a conception of metaphysics, the possibility of metaphysics,
and proof and development of the system of metaphysics described above.
This is based in carefully defined and selected concepts of experience, meaning,
sameness, difference, universe, beings, Being, possibility, natural law, the
void,
reason (which includes action), and agency.
The proof requires a notion of possibility to be carefully developed with regard
to its meaning and so as to avoid paradox.
The term 'greatest' in 'greatest posssible universe' requires careful treatment.
The concept of 'greatest possible universe' and 'all possibilities' are
potentially paradoxical and indeterminate. We can remove trivial semantic
paradoxes by requiring that every allowed possibility be conceptually
determinate and acknowledging that for every one, there is a greater. What then
is greatest? That there is always a greater is the first notion of greatest. Is
there a real absolute greatest universe or must that be potential? A significant
issue but regardless, there are clear implications for realization—below.
The perfect metaphysics is the ultimate system as a framework for what is valid
in traditional knowledge and reason. This is the ultimate picture above in which
metaphysics and reason, appropriately conceived, are found identical.
This, in turn, catalyzes enhancements, ultimate in some sense, of metaphysics
itself, logic and reason, general philosophy, concept and linguistic meaning in
the referential case, meaning as significance, criteria of knowledge and
perfection in knowledge, the notions of experience etc listed above, the
abstract and concrete sciences, the abstract and the concrete, the nature of
ultimate being, philosophical cosmology...
And a careful conception of categories, a system of categories of being
including being itself: mind, matter, and identity; relation, process, and
matter; the origins and form of a cosmos—
an evolutionary paradigm for efficient origins in the universe; that given any
being or cosmos there is a greater sentient being; and the dynamic relation
between particulate or individual being and the Being of the universe.
What are
some anticipated difficulties for academic readers?
The system of understanding is not technically difficult.
The main difficulty will be the radical departure from our traditional world
views. The traditional picture is not 'wrong' but vastly incomplete. Those who
see the picture from science near complete will find a radical departure; but
the new view is not inconsistent with that picture and contains it.
If logic or reason are metaphysics we must expect that traditional notions of
cause, mind, matter, the empirical realm of the physical, must have extremely
limited purchase in the universe even though they loom large in our thought.
Those who are habituated to the intuition from quantum theory, from relatvity,
and of a physical cosmos originating in a 'big-bang' will need to reeducate
their intuition: so as to intuit the perfect metaphysics and to locate what is
valid in the old intuition within the new.
A second diffiulty will be for those who think metaphysics as knowledge is
impossible. However, the development is not that of a metaphysics in any so far
established sense. Rather the notion of metaphysics is and the actual
metaphysics developed together so as to dovetail.
A conceptual difficulty will occur for those wedded to given notions of the
basic concepts. The modified conceptions enable the new metaphysics—and the
metaphysics empowers the modified conceptions.
It is not required to abanson old conceptions; but to realize that the concepts
in question do not have definite meaning—except in relation to a metaphysical
system; and that the power of the present system gives justification to the
conceptions.
Still the philosopher's old conceptions may be useful in giving added meaning
and in further developing the system. Finally, it should be realized that the
varioius notions are not floating in ad hoc but are tightly bound. There is an
axiomatic to the system, only I have not written it as such even though it is
there.
Summary for academic readers.
The system is new; attend to its newness; regard the previous point as
suggestions on how to effectively understand the new metaphysics. Read
The Way of Being.
For readers interested in religion | spirituality
Are there any implications for
religion and the spiritual?
Introduction, spirituality is part of religion. While religion becomes
debased, ideal relgion and spirituality are identical except that religion
recognizes that some individuals have greater power of vision into the real.
First, there is no intrinsic need for dogmatic religion or speculative
religion—but the speculative and mythic side of religions can be seen
symbolically and spiritually.
Second, the extrinsic functions—community, social bonding and leadership,
economic and so on—remain.
What
are some main conclusions for religion from the metaphysical picture?
The present system goes far beyond most religions and theology
in its vision of the ultimate and human relations to it.
What will be attained as seen from the present metaphysical picture
is far greater than generally thought or imagined in religion.
Every religious cosmology is realized when contradiction is removed—
even the contradictory have a symbolic meaning capable of realization—
but the more arbitrary and ad hoc the cosmology the more remote is its stability
degree of permanence, likelihood, and significance.
The picture here is one of universal realization, desired or not—
but likelihood and stability are enhanced by intelligent, passionate,
and yet appropriately detached committment.
Practically there is no ultimate realization for there is no permanent
permanence.
But there are degrees of perfection within local constraints of place and
person.
Finally, there is no escape from but there are optimal attitudes toward pleasure
and pain—and both are limited even when they loom large in psyche.