The aim of the realizations is discovery in interaction of knowledge and realization, so far as it is good, of the highest in immediate to ultimate realms.

The good, possibility, feasibility; pinnacle and process; engaging vs. just be-ing

It is implicit that ‘so far as it is good’ also entails ‘so far as it is possible’ and that it is at least suggestive of ‘so far as it is feasible’.

It is also implicit that the ‘highest’ does not emphasize only the pinnacle but also the process and that, therefore, there are judgments to be made or defaulted regarding when to engage, when to engage only to the degree of ‘good’ or ‘good enough’, and as to when to just be.

Immediate and ultimate

The text emphasizes the immediate and the ultimate and, especially, their relations.

Knowledge and action

Knowledge and action are the elements of realization.

Natural divisions are ideas and action

This defines a natural division of the narrative. The first main part is development of a system of ideas or knowledge framed by a metaphysics or worldview. The second part is development of an approach to and program action and realization.

Plans include suggestions for exploration

Where I suggest possibilities for exploration, these are part of plans for future development.

Audience

Classes of interest

The foregoing defines three classes of interest or audience as (1) General interest in the view and its main implications for ideas and destiny (2) An academic interest in the development focusing on the ideas and (3) An ‘ultimate’ interesting in the ultimate process revealed.

Counterintuitive character of the worldview

The worldview developed in the narrative is that the universe is the universe of maximum possibility. This view and its consequences have appeared strongly counterintuitive to readers of my website.

This characteristic derives from intuition of a limited world

So, it may be useful to point out that the entire universe and its realms may be quite unlike the realm of our empirical and experiential ‘universe’ (the one that is ‘our cosmos’ and that we sometimes call ‘the universe’); this is not in violation of experience or science of philosophy or intuition based in experience-science-philosophy. But this is just preliminary. Discussion continues below in conditions that any new view must satisfy.

How limited is limited?

In the narrative it is shown (from maximum possibility) that our cosmos and therefore our intuition is of an infinitesimal part of the universe and therefore that, while intuition will remain informative, it will also be significantly misleading to insist on our entire system of intuition.

Here, however, it will be useful to estimate the ‘size’ of the universe and so the bounds of our cosmos and our intuition of it.

It is important to repeat that experience and science is of an empirical nature. Experience of what there is, is not experience of what there is not. Therefore it is consistent with experience and science that there is an infinitely greater world, in terms of duration and extension and variety, ‘beyond’ our cosmos (beyond is in quotes because it includes but is not limited to a spatiotemporal ‘outside’).

How can this size be estimated? Our cosmos is finite in many respects but perhaps infinite in others. However, in relation to the possible ‘beyond’ it is infinitesimal (I ask the indulgence of readers who are not familiar with Georg Cantor’s concept of the infinite as an unending series of infinites). If our cosmos is thus at most a limited infinity, the space of the possible beyond is limitless (infinity). Where in that vast range does the actual universe lie? From present considerations it is impossible to be sure but some estimate is possible. We must count possibilities and regard them as probabilities; this is of course suggestive and not rigorous. The possibilities are without limit and if we average them we still get finite fraction of the limitless which though limited is, again, limitless-as-infinity (this by the way shows just how ‘large’ limitless is).

This limitless-as-infinity is but an estimate but the estimate will be confirmed the narrative.

Conditions that any new view must satisfy

Any significant new view, regardless of its intuitive status, must satisfy the following conditions: it must be proved, it must be internally consistent, it consistent with older views where they are valid, and it must be consistent with facts.

Conditions met

These are given and this should address issues of both validity and intuition. It may be worthwhile to point out that whereas the new view shows the large scale universe to be far greater and different from our cosmos, it is consistent with and even requires the existence of cosmoses such as ours.

Still, reeducation of intuition may take time

Still, reeducation of the intuition, even when the ‘formal’ issues have been addressed and absorbed, may take time and what I recommend is that readers take this time. But why should readers want to take this time?

Reasons to take the time

The answer for any new view is that it should be important or significant in some sense. What kinds of sense? One sense is ‘practical’: the implications should be significant—materially and for the world of ideas. Another sense is intrinsic: the view should have inherent appeal such as symmetry or beauty; or it may reveal the world in a greater light.

How the conditions for any new view are met

I believe that the new view meets all the conditions in the previous paragraphs. In summary I shall say that the narrative presents foundation, proof and demonstrations of consistency, addresses questions of doubt and intuition, regarding the view that it presents. Finally, the narrative presents the outcome of my intent and endeavor to ‘apply’ the view to a fairly universal range of academic and worldly issues.

What are some problems of intuition?

Returning to the issue of intuition, what are the points at which the concern may arise? Two have been noted above—universe as maximum possibility and universe as far greater than our cosmos. The latter is not ‘may be greater’ but ‘is greater’ for this is precisely one of the fundamental and proven conclusions of the narrative. Others are existence of the void, that something must and does come from the void (nothing or nothingness), that the universe can have no external creator, that experience—initially awareness and appropriately extended—is a fundamental if not universal characteristic of being, that it can be proved that there is being… there is experience… that there is a real world that is experienced and that contains experience, that laws of nature have being, that an alternate statement of maximum possibility is that the universe is the object of realism and Logic, that there are abstract objects and that these are in the one universe, that it can be shown that ‘matter’ and ‘mind’ (as defined) exhaust the number of such (as if) substances, that it can be shown that space and time exhaust the ‘dimensions’ of extensional difference, that the significant content of the universe is (generally, probably) determined by adaptive incremental process via indeterminism but through relatively stable states, that the universe has identity and that its manifestation and identity are eternal process without limit to extension (spatial), that in this process the universe experiences identity and manifestation without limit to variety, that the individual is (equivalent to) the universe but that while in limited form the approach to the universal is in eternal process with out limit to variety or extension and duration or peak and magnitude and dissolution, that there are ways to approach this ‘journey’ and that these ways connect the immediate and the ultimate, that death is real but not absolute, and—finally—that there is another perspective to the process one described in which the universe is the Aeternitas of Thomas Aquinas and the Brahman of Advaita Vedanta, which is all being over all extensionality as if a single point (and in which state all is and all is known and so thinking is possible but unnecessary).

Summary of how to approach the problems of intuition

How may the reader approach the issues of intuition? Time, i.e. patience, is essential and in this time the reader may or will have doubts and issues and questions: I suggest registering the doubts, perhaps writing them down, and then setting them aside so that the whole picture of the new view can be absorbed. Then the reader will be ready to address the issues. The following features of the narrative may aid in this process:

Features of the narrative that address the problems of understanding and intuition

1. Doubt and its importance

I have raised and addressed numerous doubts. This may facilitate address of readers’ doubts. Doubt is crucial and it is via imagination and doubt that the present view developed. Thus I have no desire to suppress reader doubt or my own doubt (I suspect that some readers however would prefer to not encounter doubt and of course I am subject to the same preference at times but I always come back to a point where doubt is part of the only way forward). My address of doubt, and so whatever security-certainty may be possible, has a further function—it is an empathy with others’ doubts and so perhaps an aid in appropriate resolution of such doubts. In this manner I hope I may be contrasted to Sigmund Freud who sought to suppress publication of uncertainty. I hope I may perhaps be compared to Gottlob Frege who acknowledged the insecurity of the foundation of his famous Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, Vol. I (1893); Vol. II (1903), which, in addition to the positive contribution of the work, helped the twentieth century advance of the foundations of mathematics.

2. Parallel summary version of the narrative.

There is a summary version of the narrative that is intended to show the structure of the picture as a whole.

3. Addressing tension between idea and action or use

One criticism of earlier philosophy that arose in the twentieth century, roughly between the two wars, ‘critical theory’, has as one of its tenets that knowledge—philosophy—is critical, as opposed to traditional, to the extent that it seeks human emancipation, “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them” (Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory, 1982, 244). Of course, any implication that the traditional did not have emancipation as one at least implicit objective is not true. Further, any implication that all theory should be critical andor only critical in the given sense is also far from true. This is in part because emancipation requires at least some understanding, so far is it is possible, of the place of human being in the world and the universe as a whole. The narrative addresses these apparently and only apparently contrary objectives by providing universal and local accounts, by keeping them separate (at least to some extent and for purposes of getting both perspectives right) and connected—embedding-embedded. Being is one of the notions that enhances the neutrality of the connection while experience, understood in its general sense, is (the way of or into) connection-interaction-relationship.

4. Definitions and systematic development

While many of the terms used here are established terms, they have numerous meanings in the literature, and so are given precise and perhaps novel definitions here. The definitions here were arrived at via a fairly long process in which I tinkered with individual meanings while simultaneously attempting to security the integrity of the system as a whole. Thus it is important that the reader pay attention to the individual as well as the system meanings.

5. But the narrative allows ‘non systematic’ elements

It is important that the development is not systematic of necessity. I make this point not because it will necessarily be an issue of intuition but because the notion of system may cause unease to some readers (falling under the broad classes that may be labeled ‘analytic philosophy’, ‘continental philosophy’, ‘pragmatic’, and ‘practical’). What system there is arose naturally, was not forced (in fact it was a slow process of seeing that led to seeing system). Where it is useful to import learning from tradition this is done (and is crucial). ‘Ad hoc’ elements such as risk are admitted. This addresses the issue of the ‘grand narrative’ whose point concerns earlier overweening metaphysical and other theoretical developments—developments that sought to impose system on the universe. The present development of system is a natural and, in a manner to be seen, empirical framework. The particular and the local find a place within this framework.

6. Concepts that are universal and local

The concepts of being, experience, universe, domain, pattern or natural law, and void, have been chosen to express and facilitate universality. Allowing other ‘connotations’ to enter while developing the system would strain development and understanding. It is especially important that these concepts derive their universality from their neutral character; therefore they implicitly include the local.

7. And concepts that focus on the local and some of its degrees

Later, when developing the cosmological picture, the local-immediate element enters naturally from the way in which being and experience are conceived. Concepts relating to the local-immediate are identity and experience which straddle the universal and the immediate and ‘individual’, range of experience, local cosmology, politics, economics, and immersive knowledge, politics, economics, and action.

8. Attention to clarity in meaning as an aid to understanding and intuition

Attention to the concept of referential meaning is crucial. This kind of meaning is invariably a concept and the object(s) to which it refers (reference may be empty). Conflation of word, concept, and object in linguistic referential meaning is a source of immense confusion and much paradox and much sophisticated and intelligent—and useful—thought writing has been devoted to working around such problems where a simple clarification in terms of concept-object meaning would suffice. Here, recognition of the distinction of concept and object clears paves the way for clear understanding and development. I am not saying, of course, that mere clarification of meaning is a source of new knowledge (but it is often a way to make explicit what is already implicit). The present conception of referential meaning should be an important part of the reader’s conceptual toolbox. See meaning for more on meaning.

Being

Being is that which is.

Why Being? Relation to ‘is’. Metaphorical uses.

Reasons for using ‘being’ become manifest below.

The word ‘is’ is used in a sense that means ‘in or at one or more extended regions in andor beyond space and time’ (the terms space and time are explained below).

The phrases ‘non being’ and ‘beyond or neither being nor being’ are sometimes used metaphorically to refer to some special kind or aspect of being. However, where they refer to anything at all their reference has being.

Addressing paradoxes and ambiguities of ‘being’

The concept of being has a number of ambiguities in its traditional use. These can be avoided by attending to the use introduced here. There are also paradoxes in its use and in the use of the related ‘existence’. These are quite simply resolved as in template. What is critical to the resolution is careful attention to linguistic referential meaning as word, concept and object (see meaning, below).

That there is being follows perfectly from the situation that being is a name for what there is rather than by a (doubtable) demonstration.

Desirability of proof. Recognizing the given as proof

A proof that there is being is desirable not primarily because we doubt it but because it clarifies being and introduces ‘philosophical’ approaches to proof. For proof refer to the document linked from the previous paragraph. The essence of the ‘proof’ is that being is so fundamental that it requires no proof in terms of something more basic but the ‘definition’ is (just as in the case of the verb to be and its forms such as ‘is’) a naming of the fundamental given.

Must there be being?

Note that a demonstration that there is being does not establish that there must be being. The latter will be established later.

Meaning

Meaning is crucial

The concept of meaning is crucial but I will nonetheless write it as secondary. I begin with an example. It is important to note that concern here is with referential meaning and not with more general concept or word meaning (a different use of meaning in this narrative will be that of ‘existential or significant meaning’).

Statement of the problem of negative existentials

A reason to begin with this problem is that it occasions careful understanding of meaning (the choice of problem is dictated by this fact and that the problem is significant in itself).

A common problem of being occurs in use of the closely (in fact equivalently) related ‘existence’. Consider ‘Sherlock Holmes’ does not exist. Well, then, to what does the name in quotes refer? This appears paradoxical and is generically known as the problem of negative existentials. Let us provide a resolution of the problem—one that I regard as the essential resolution.

Meaning as word and object is inadequate

A common concept of meaning is that a word is associated with an object (an object is not necessarily a ‘thing’). If I say ‘tiger’ you are likely to think of a striped animal with which you are familiar from pictures or zoos or encounters in India, Indonesia or Siberia. Without the association to a picture—mental andor in books—the word ‘tiger’ conveys nothing.

Referential meaning lies in concept and object (or sense and reference)

Thus, really, meaning lies in the relation between a concept and an object. For efficiency in thought and communication the full concept may be replaced by a partial one (an outline) or associated with a symbol that has no intrinsic similarity to the object—this is what happens in linguistic meaning. This account of meaning has been criticized as not taking into account non-referential meaning such as the expression of pain when I say ‘ouch’. Perhaps however all utterances have some oblique or implicit reference but this is not an issue for the present discussion which I limit to referential meaning since that is what is needed here.

Resolution of problem of negative existentials from the concept-object meaning of meaning

So, now, ‘Sherlock Holmes’ is not merely an empty sign or a mere association but the concept is defined as a man who lives 221 Baker Street and so on as described in the writing of Arthur Conan Doyle. Now, ‘Sherlock Holmes does not exist’ means that there is no actual object corresponding to ‘Sherlock Holmes’. Bertrand Russell said something similar—i.e. that a singular term such as Sherlock Holmes is a disguised or implicit description. Now we know that names are not disguised at all; their meaning comes from association with a picture.

Resolution of the liar paradox from the concept-object meaning of meaning

This is crucial. Consider ‘This sentence is false.’ It is one form of the famous liar paradox. It is true if false, false if true. Consider, instead, ‘This sentence is true’. It is not even seemingly paradoxical: it is true if true, false if false. But which is it? The problem is that it has an implicit reference, its own truth value, which (before the era of Russell) was commonly thought to obtain for all grammatical sentences. But now, this theory of meaning, identifies the problem. Not all sentences, even if grammatical, possess truth values. (E.g. ‘It is raining on the non-existent planet Zebron.’ This, incidentally, suggests a well known necessary condition for there to be meaning and to avoid paradox: the universe of discourse must be non-empty for such classic laws as that of the principle of bivalence to be able to hold.) So there is potential paradox even in ‘This sentence is true.’ for it is suggesting the false assertion that it has a truth value. The resolution for the truth teller paradox as well as for the liar paradox is to recognize all reference and to note that there is none. It also follow that it is not self-reference that is the source of paradox but, rather, empty reference.

Referential linguistic meaning

Referential meaning then consists in a concept and its object (many objects can be interpreted as one). In linguistic referential meaning the concept occurs by association with a word. But the association is not fixed and linguistic meaning derives some confusion and much power from this. In using old terms with new meaning, as in this narrative, we avoid confusion by re-definition; and the power comes from the new definition and system of concepts but also, provided we are careful, from old associations.

Sources

Frege

Gottlob Frege in his 1892 paper Über Sinn und Bedeutung (On sense and reference) argued, as I did above, that a meaning cannot be the object a word (name) refers to. If my memory is correct, I derived the concept-object / sense-reference notion of meaning from Frege. Of course reflection shows the necessity of this: without ‘sense’ or some kind of referring image, at least an implicit and partial one, there can be no referred to object.

Myself, Ogden and Richards

I later derived the word-concept—object conception of linguistic meaning (in the simple case of linguistic word meaning) as necessary because words alone, i.e. pure symbols without at least implicit iconic content, cannot refer. I later learned that this idea was already present in The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (1923) by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards.

The application of concept-object to clarity and removal of ambiguity generally and particularly to resolution of negative existentials and the liar paradox is mine but I do not know whether it is the fist application.

Wittgenstein

Incidentally, as Ludwig Wittgenstein noted in Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus (English ed., 1921), even where words are pure symbols, sentences are or can be depictive in virtue of their structure.

Subject-predicate form as pictorial

For example the subject-predicate form means that the predicate is predicated of the subject. In a particular case the subject-verb-object form of English (e.g., ‘The cat played with a rat.’; note that here ‘played with a rat’ is the predicate) and many other languages is a form in which the subject acts, the object is acted upon and the verb specifies the action (this form is the most common one but there are others and some, even, in which there is an ‘agent’ instead of an explicit subject).

This does not come close to being comprehensive with regard to what has been written on meaning. There is a notion that we understand the meaning of an assertion when we know the conditions for its truth. In the case of the ‘correspondence theory of truth’ is clearly related to the concept-object meaning of meaning regarding. But there are other ‘theories’ of truth. I shall do an analysis some day but meanwhile I must complain that we will never do better than languish around with multiple theories, mere ones at that, until we abandon the systematic piece meal approach (without of course abandoning its occasional use where nothing else is available and as preliminary to further analysis). Further there is much analysis of meaning concerning non referential meaning and to referential meaning with differing illocutionary or para-locutionary force such as the assertive, directive, commissive, expressive, and declarative. These are interesting, even to the present analysis, especially as we are concerned with action but I shall not take them up here as I think we already know enough for our need (but remain open to further written and unwritten thought).

Experience

Experience—awareness, the sign of relationship—is the core of living being.

Experience has being.

Mind; significance

The term mind refers to the occasion of experience in all its manners and forms.

To be significant is to have at least some small, vague, or indirect effect in experience.

This is not to say that experience is all that is significant.

Real world

The experienced has being—it is the (real or ‘external’) world; the world includes experience; and experience is ‘reflexive’ in that there is experience of experience.

Where are the arguments?

The document template has the arguments that there is experience (also a naming of a fundamental kind), and that there is a real world that contains experience.

Universe

The universe is all being.

Properties of the universe. Domains

There is precisely one universe.

The universe has no external creator.

A domain is a part of the universe.

The universe has no outside.

The concept that defines an object that is outside the universe defines a non-existent object (meaning that the concept does not truly define an object at all); and the concept itself must be illogical (on the other hand if the universe were but our empirical ‘universe’, the illogical would not define the only non-existing objects—the non-physical would also define non-existing objects.

Pattern

Patterns have being.

Why patterns?

The discussion will now be of some elementary patterns—those described in terms of space and time. This could be done with the aid of the metaphysics. It is done here (1) to clarify primitive intuition and understanding of such patterns and (2) so that later application of the metaphysics may show some enhancements (and methods for the same) of the primitive and bring out some of the power oft the metaphysics.

Difference and sameness

Difference is the most elementary pattern.

Sameness is absence of difference. In utter sameness, there is neither thing, nor pattern, nor knower or known.

Duration and extension. Extensionality

Sameness with difference is identity and marks duration.

In this sense, identity is not sameness with regard to every property. There is sufficient similarity to mark identity of object or person.

Difference without identity marks extension.

Duration and extension are experienced in terms of some ‘origin’. The ideas of duration and extension without regard to an origin become time and space. However, time and space measures are marked from some origin (which need not always be the same).

We use the term ‘extensionality’ as a generalized notion of ways of difference. Then, duration and extension are examples or parameters (I do not use the term ‘dimensions’ because it will be convenient to reserve that term for another use) of extensionality. Are there other parameters?

Duration and extension the only parameters of extensionality

The definition in terms of identity shows duration and extension to be the only parameters of extensionality.

But they do not universally obtain

This however, does not imply that the measures invariably obtain. Where identity is vague the measures may be vague; where the distinction between the modes of difference is indefinite, the measure of space and time may be perspective dependent; and where identity approaches lack of identifiablility, space and time may approach not being. The so called ‘abstract objects’ (contrast to the concrete) may lack, say, spatiality (and causality) andor temporality in another way; for discussion see abstract objects.

Space and time have being.

Space and time are not absolute but relative

The question arises whether space and time are absolute or relative. What this means is as follows. They will be called absolute if, where they obtain, they stand independently of the world itself. On the other hand, if the world itself is definitive of space and time measures, they will be called relative. That they seem to arise in being and that they have being suggests that they are relative.

But since there is nowhere else that they can arise—the universe has no outside—and, further, from their conception they must be relative (but since domains have outsides, there may be domains with as if absolute spacetime).

And their measures may depend on perspective or observer

What Einstein showed has the interpretation that sameness with difference depends on perspective—on the observer. However, this is eminently clear from the notions of sameness and difference. That is, the measure of time or space from one perspective may depend on the measure of both time and space from another perspective. And as in Einstein’s general theory, the measures are affected by accumulation of being (read density of matter).

Now consider some specific elementary patterns

The diverse phenomena encapsulated in laws of natural science and in oral / mythic traditions are examples of patterns.

An example of pattern: the Newtonian system

As an example, the laws of physical science are usually stated in terms of ‘elements of being’ that change in relation to space and time. More specifically Newton’s elementary particles had intrinsic properties (mass) that were fixed, their size was zero and they had no other properties relevant to the Newtonian system; their spatial condition (position) changed over time (position was regarded as ‘extrinsic’). The way in which they changed was determined by forces that were in turn determined by the particles, their positions (and in some cases by their motions). Thus the idea of force could be eliminated so that a system of particles formed a system whose dynamical evolution was self-determining.

The laws and mythic forms (regarded as objects of stated law and myth) have being.

On tradition

Tradition—here the word is used in the following non-traditional manner: it is the collection valid patterns of natural science, oral traditions, and other ancient through current cultural systems—applies within an empirical domain: our cosmos. In this sense (let us allow for completeness that humans are not the only possessors of culture even though of course humans are most familiar with human culture) nothing is outside tradition. The non standard metaphysics to be developed lies within tradition. However, in order to give relief to the development here, it will be convenient to use the word tradition to not refer to the metaphysics of the narrative and to use it primarily to refer to what is recognized as standard in the cultures.

Logic, mathematics, and science

Note here that there are standard views on the nature of science and its process as well as alternatives. A current standard view is that every transition to a newer theory is an approach to the universal. However, if the universal were not approachable (and we will find this to be the case) then the thought that we are asymptotically approaching the universal would be false and self-defeating). An alternate view is that the scientific theories are facts but only within limited regions. This alternative has concordance with (a) the metaphysics that we find (we will see this later) and (b) the picture of logic and science that it suggests (and perhaps first due to WVO Quine) that they are of the same kind but that the distinction is that logical truths are universal while scientific truths are particular (and as we now see, local). This view also conduces to the thoughts that (a) logic is revisable and (b) that the proper comparison between science and logic is that the development of logics and sciences is inductive while their application is deductive (naturally only in their domains of validity for it is precisely this that makes them deductive, i.e. that the conclusions are given but only need to be worked out). Later we will see how and where mathematics fits in this framework.

On tradition, literalism, and mythic or metaphorical holism

Tradition has a variety of forms of expression. The literal is thought to simultaneously define and refer to the real. Metaphor is suggestive and as such may include an element of the literal. Allegory is a story told as fact but that refers to truth in another realm, e.g. the psychological. Myth as deployed in ‘primal’ lifestyles is a holist but differentiated approach to truth ‘here’ (in the apparent or ‘material’, the need of which is obvious) and beyond (in the inexplicables in the apparent). The latter arises in needs for explanation in the material realm (adaptation) and, at least correspondingly, adaptation of psychology to the material realm and beyond (thus while spirituality must include elements of speculation, it is not without realism; and, this is there even in modernity and its investment in science and so on; and without which what is adaptive would also be eliminated; and therefore the inclusion of which is optimally adaptive).

Faithfulness in the depictive aspect of tradition

Tradition is almost invariably without perfect and pure literal content. However, mixed modes of expression may have faithfulness in depicting the world. An explicit interest in this narrative is this depictive character.

Empirical limits of the greater part of tradition

In the following use of tradition will include the ideas of experiential discovery and reason.

Tradition is not empirically known to extend beyond the cosmos.

Nature of the beyond: assessment of the cultural systems

What, then, is the beyond like? The human perceptual system is attuned to the local environment. The term ‘local’ not just a spatiotemporal region but depends on the conditions of adaptation which include that the main human senses are sensitive only to certain ranges and thresholds of stimuli. However, humans do extend the senses with instruments and, more importantly, do immensely expand via concepts the range of the local. It remains true, however, that there is a tendency in every culture to view the limits of the cultural system as the edge of the universe even though it is not that edge. Why? One reason is that the cultural system has some adaptive functions that the history of the culture has not encouraged it to overcome even if the overcoming were within human limits. A second and related reason is that education into the cultural system is a task of becoming in itself and that therefore even the accomplished individual tends to see the world as defined by the culture. However, what this shows is that the cultural view of the edge is in fact only the edge of the perceptual-cultural system. What is outside is unknown but is often culturally relegated to zero and this is true in both ‘primal’ and ‘advanced’ cultures.

Nature of the beyond: assessment in terms of possibility

What is the nature of that outside? I will discuss it in terms of a concept of possibility.

On realization of possibility and its consequences

Possibility is that which is not inconsistent with the patterns and reasons of tradition. The greatest conceivable universe is the realization of all possibility. It would have limitless arrays of cosmoses of limitless variety. Of these, some would be replicas of ours. Among ours and the replicas, some would have ghost cosmoses—ones not in current interaction with the host—passing through them. These would occur against a background universe. The universe itself would have identity and manifestation in acute, diffuse, and ‘absent’ phases. This power would be conferred on individuals (who, when assuming ultimate identity would coalesce with the universe).

Possibilism in history of thought. How the present view is an immense advance

The idea of a possibilist universe is not new and has been seen in a range of contexts. Plato envisaged a hierarchy of being from matter to god. The idea of a chain of being persisted in Greek and Scholastic philosophy and in modern times, especially in theology. The Advaita Vedanta philosophy that the individual 'I’ is a particular manifestation of a universal and potential ‘I’ hints at philosophical possibilism (which is quite different from anthropological possibilism that asserts that, within environmental constraints, culture is determined by social conditions). The principle of plenitude asserts that in an infinity of time all possibilities are realized; Kant held this to be true but not proved (it is not true for a possibility may have zero probability).The philosopher David Lewis assigned reality to the ‘possible worlds’. One realist (rather than instrumentalist) interpretation of quantum mechanics involves the idea of many worlds (however the significance is not that of possibilism even though an argument of possibilism has be made from quantum theory). What are the differences of these versions of possibilism from the one to be developed? The main difference is that the present version is proved. Consequently it enables a vast elaboration and application of a possibilist and ultimate metaphysics (as follows). Particularly, for example, it does not actually prove that all possibilities will occur given infinite time but shows that time is eternal and that all possibilities are already occurrent in the space-time and the connected non space-time regions of being.

Remarks on cultural relativism

It may be useful here to express some thoughts on cultural relativism. First, every surviving culture must have sufficient knowledge—literal or mythic—to permit survival. From what we have seen so far, no culture is thus guaranteed to approach absolute knowledge of all things. Second, it appears that any culture may have immense and impressive knowledge of some things pertaining to the natural and social world. Third, when cultures interact there is often a gap that makes seeing the ‘meaning’ of the other system. What I take from this is that even though in some ways any culture may approach ultimates, the world is varied enough that every culture pertains to some niche and that although some inter-translatability of systems is possible, entire translatability is not—precisely because the niches are not identical (and perhaps for other reasons as well). Therefore while I do not see different cultures as inherently lying on a superior-inferior continuum, I do not regard the cultural systems as devoid of true realism. The previous comments have been rather on the epistemic side. There are political reasons for disparaging other cultures but this has not to do with ‘correctness’. However, I do think that I the interests of ‘correctness’ which includes the future realizations of the human race that cultural cooperation—not only political and economic but also intrinsically cultural—is good.

Perfection so far

Knowledge of the main concepts so far, especially being, experience, universe, and pattern is perfect.

Clarification of the perfection

To be precise the assertion should be regarding being-as-being, experience-as-experience and so on which means that reference is only to the concept-object at its most general and given level—and not to the details thereof or within. While complete and precise empirical knowledge at the level of detail is impossible, knowledge at this most general or abstract level is, as we have seen, precise knowledge of named givens.

The void

The void is the null domain—it contains no being.

As the complement of every domain with respect to itself the void exists.

Doubt

Except that this existence can be doubted, knowledge of the main concepts so far is perfect.

Perfection so far

The perfection continues regarding the void. However, as it contains no pattern or detail the restriction regarding detail is ‘immaterial’.

The void contains no pattern or law.

The void has being; there is essentially one void

The void has being (even though it contains no being).

Except that there is at least one, the number of voids is thus far indeterminate.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is analysis of being.

The analysis so far is perfect and will be further and perfectly extended to an ultimate metaphysical framework and then, in a different sense of perfection to understanding of and being in the entire universe.

Metaphysics is possible

It follows that, contrary to much received opinion, metaphysics in the traditional sense of knowledge of being-as-being is possible and for a far greater part of being than was generally imagined in the pre and post critical eras.

And, here, actual and ultimate

The metaphysical framework will be ultimate (a) in framing the entire universe and (b) in showing the universe to be the realization of all possibility.

Perfection so far will be extended in another but appropriate sense of perfection to the tradition

The analysis so far of being, experience, real world, universe, pattern (law), universe, part or domain, and the void is perfect in the sense of faithful depiction (the knower generally contributes to the known but the concepts noted refer perfectly). This perfection will be extended to ‘realism’ and thus bring fundamental and general principles of knowing and being under the same umbrella of being. Then there will be an extension to all knowledge and being; here there will be on perfection of depiction but there will be perfection in a sense that is practical / centered on limited being. The perfection in the latter sense would not obtain on the standard cosmologies but flow from the new metaphysics about to be established.

The developments described meet the Kantian critique

The contribution of the knower to the known is well acknowledged in a number of cultures, especially modern western philosophy. Immanuel Kant developed an analysis of the contribution—perceptually-conceptually—and developed this into a critical and constructive epistemology-metaphysics. It seems to me that Kant presumed the contribution of the knower to be universally present (I regard this as obvious, at least naïvely and without further reflection) and as universally affecting the knowledge. But we have just shown that the effect is not universal and shall be continuing to develop a metaphysics on this basis. It remains true of course that there is a vast empirical realm for which the contribution of the knower does affect the knowledge. However the development of the metaphysics where the knower does apprehend the known (thus the metaphysics is empirical) but does not affect the knowledge or its validity will diminish the importance of the realm in which the knowledge may be distorted. This is because the metaphysics reveals a far larger realm than recognized traditionally and shows the latter to be transitional in the service of the former.

Notes on the Kantian critique and construction

Kant noted the fundamental contribution of the knower to the known, i.e. to the phenomena; he concluded that the real, the ‘noumena’ cannot be known by the senses but that we can know of it conceptually. He then observed some fundamental categorial aspects of the phenomena—the world as known. These are among the Kantian categories of being which include, and which Schopenhauer later identified as the essential categories, space, time, and (Newtonian) causation.

Because the Euclidean Geometry and Newtonian Mechanics of the time seemed to perfectly describe reality, he concluded that the categories of understanding are the categories of being. Further, because the knower contributes, in general, experience of the world as it is can occur only if the categories of understanding are the categories of being. He is therefore simultaneously answering the critique of knowing and deducing the structure of the world and of knowing.

We now know that the geometry and mechanics of the world are not Euclidean and Newtonian.

However, the principle of the critique remains methodically valid, negatively, in relation of the general contribution of the knower but positively, in that for some categories the contribution may be null.

The present response to the Kantian critique is to appropriate it appropriately

Whereas the contribution was null for Kant because of the attunement of the knower, it is null in the present development for different reasons. In the case of the metaphysical framework it is because of the abstraction of the categories is ‘binary’—something does or does not have being (two-ness is not as important as that the categories should be ‘digital’); we have already seen this. It will be perfect for the tradition where it is sufficient for the purpose at hand, and we will show that such purposes arise the moment we begin to move beyond the immediate or where we find being-in-the-world essential over ‘manipulating’ the world, that the knowing be good enough for those purposes (which will be clarified later).

We will find categories that, though not the categories of Kant, are categories fully in the sense of Kant. That is the categories that we find will be simultaneously resolutions of the problem of knowledge and categories of both being and knowing. (Some of these categories have already been found though not identified as categories.)

The process of discovery in this narrative did not start from a search for ‘categories’. Rather it was a search for the real. It was later that I realized that the Kantian framework was applicable to the discoveries.

This analysis now continues and includes extension of the meaning of perfection

When approximation is admitted it will be noted. We will then search for alternative interpretations of ‘perfection’.

Fundamental principle

Every possible state emerges from the void.

The proof is that the contrary would be a law in the void.

Consequently, every state of being is equivalent to every other state. “All beings are equal.”

The universe is the realization of all possibility.

This is called the fundamental principle of metaphysics.

On the fundamental principle

It says, from earlier remarks, that the universe is the greatest conceivable.

The number of voids

The number of voids is effectively one.

Avoiding inconsistency in the concept of possibility

The notion of possibility used thus harbors potential paradox. A trivial example is that ‘it is possible that the possible will not occur’. Such paradox can be avoided by a careful specification of the set of possible states so as to exclude paradox. I think this would be parallel to the introduction of axioms such (e.g. Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice, commonly abbreviated ZFC) in set theory that avert paradox there.

Necessity of being

The universe must go through manifest and non-manifest phases.

‘There must be being’.

This is a resolution of the famous problem ‘why there is something rather than nothing’ that has been called the fundamental problem of metaphysics.

The fundamental problem

What has being?

In noting the being of being itself, experience (and so realism, below), world, universe, domain, pattern and law, and void, the answer to the question above has begun.

The answering continues.

Realism and Logic

Realism

Regard realism as the principle of possibility.

This may appear to be in conflict with our experience and views of ‘reality’. Discussion of the issue of intuition and counter-intuitiveness is taken up later.

Then realism is the union of consistency with science (and experience and fact) and logic, which we may call ‘Logic’.

There is no conflict or inconsistency between realism and Logic

Within realism every concept is realized.

This eliminates the apparent conflict above.

A gap in knowledge so far

However, it leaves a gap in knowledge—the range between the immediate experiential-reasoned world and the ultimate. One of the goals of cosmology, below, is to bring it to greater completion by attempting to fill in understanding and knowledge in this range.

The status of logic, science, and mathematics under realism

Logic and science

Our valid experience, science, and logic—tradition—are elements in this future ideal Logic or realism. It was seen in pattern that logic and science are of the same kind. There we saw logic to be universal and science as local. Now this distinction can be amended. Science is particular, concerning particular aspects of reality while logic pertains to all aspects.

There we saw logic and science to be on the same footing, except the universal-local distinction. However, both are revisable; logic being more general in application is likely to be revised far less frequently.

Note that Logic as conceived here is perfect but ever under development, ever incomplete. Science and logic are approximations.

We now bring mathematics into the same fold.

Mathematics

Where does mathematics fit into this scheme? In its beginning, mathematics was empirical: number and geometry, for example, concerned aspects of the world. In time a distinction was recognized: whereas science was about particulars, mathematics was about form. This enabled an abstract turn in mathematics that began at least as early as Greek thought but which accelerated in the modern era. The axiomatic approach heightened this turn for in axiomatization, the terms of the axiom system need not refer to the actual world. However, we now see that if an axiom system is consistent then it must refer to the actual world. The ideal form of mathematics had led to the idea that mathematical objects (e.g. number) must be real but since number is not physical (e.g., a number is not located in space) numbers do not reside in this world but in a world of ideas or forms (Plato) or, in modern terms an abstract world that we also refer to as Platonic. However, we have now learned (i) that there is but one world and (ii) a consistent system of mathematics must have reference in this world. Can we then think of mathematics as a science? Yes, in that it refers to the world: in its beginning, mathematics was most probably empirical and we can still view Euclidean Geometry and number as empirical. However, the way we study mathematics has become different—it is largely symbolic and formal and this is important for this permits any given mathematical structure to be applicable to more than one domain and it simultaneously enables a precision that makes mathematics more rigorous than the natural sciences. Thus mathematics is no longer pursued in the primitive empirical sense and, correspondingly and especially on account of its power, mathematics has largely come to be viewed as symbolic-conceptual-axiomatic-formal. However, the rigor and symbolic approach come at a price. Since we are not talking of an actual structure, we do not know whether we have fully captured any structure or whether ‘full capture’ makes sense. The ideas of Gödel suggest that it makes at least partial sense for we can demonstrate that, for a formal system, there are truths not captured by the system. What that means is that the formal system has not completely captured the world. This, after all is not really a price for logic and science are likewise; it is a price only relative to certain hopes that the greater and greater rigor and power of mathematical thought had led us to expect. A further comment is in order. It is that while we have seen unifying similarities among logic, science, and mathematics we also see that they remain different. Science is relatively concrete. Logic, so far, can be abstract because it is general. On the other hand mathematics is abstract because it refers to form rather than particulars (another way of saying this is that the object to which it refers is what is common to multiple objects of a given kind). But, now, from realism the contact with the real is re-introduced into mathematics and even though the particular systems are not empirically founded, realism shows that as long as they are consistent they must have objects in the one universe. As we will see these objects are, for axiomatic-symbolic systems, abstract objects. We will also see that we may regard mathematical objects as residing in a Platonic ‘universe’ which is not a separate ‘universe’ but a net within the one universe.

Realization of the ultimate is given

Realization of the ultimate is given.

While in limited form we are always in the process of realization; always at the beginning of realism (Logic).

Proof

From realism, many proofs are so trivial that explicit proof is unnecessary.

Perfect metaphysical framework

The framework

The metaphysics—knowledge of being—so far is perfect.

Within realism, every concept is realized.

Therefore a concept such as number is realized. That is, the concept has a real object that is or resides in the (one) universe. However, numbers are regarded as abstract—they are not temporal (they can measure temporality), not spatial and not causal. The notion of an abstract object is (apparently: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/) recent though the root idea is of course present at least as far back as Plato. What is important in recent thought is that they identified as objects—i.e. are thought to have reality in themselves over and above being just concepts or symbols but this status as real but not concrete (e.g. lacking such concreteness as spatiality, causal efficacy, and temporality) is not generally well understood and therefore controversial. Thus the metaphysics resolves this status showing the abstracts to be as real as the concrete: the non spatiality is contingent (not necessary), where it obtains it is the result of temporality not surviving the abstraction. See abstract objects for further discussion.

Categories

Though not the categories of Kant, we have found categories in the sense of Kant (categories of being and knowledge and, simultaneously, solutions to the problem of knowledge). In outline, the categories are being and experience; they can be expanded as being-experience-real world-universe-domain-pattern (Law, form)-void-realism.

These are perfect in the abstract, i.e. as long as we are not looking at details within them (the abstraction suggests triviality which, however, is not the case). In a perfect metaphysics these will be supplemented by practical categories that include detail.

The framework and tradition

Tradition and the metaphysics complete one another

Tradition and the metaphysics supplement one another. The metaphysics is a framework and guide. The tradition provides an instrument of action and realization toward the ultimate shown in the metaphysics.

The perfect framework and tradition complement one another.

Given the eternity of realization, every tradition will be outworn like the shedding of a skin. This does not eliminate the traditional idea of justification in epistemology but diminishes its significance.

The interaction between the metaphysics and tradition is more than that of complement. Tradition fills out the metaphysics (more precisely, since beings with limited form are ever in a process of realization, tradition is ever in a process of filling out the metaphysics and the title of this section should replace the verb ‘complete’ by ‘are ever completing’; and completing is the correct word because they approach the ultimate per the metaphysics itself). On the other hand, the metaphysics is more than container for it often enables correction andor clarification of the tradition and examples are given below.

Examples

The main example is, of course, the metaphysics itself for its concepts are selected from the tradition (though modified and adapted to present use).

Further examples

A second example has already been given—the universe has no external creator.

Another simple example has also been given: the universe has no ‘outside’; space and time have being; therefore there is no universal absolute space-time but there may be local ‘as if’ absolute space-times.

The metaphysics illuminates those aspects of the tradition that we have regarded as ‘higher search’.

The list may be continued. Other examples are shown below.

A perfect metaphysics

The metaphysics

The join of the perfect metaphysics and the tradition is potent.

Since perfection of the tradition in the sense of depiction is impossible and undesirable other criteria such as ‘good enough’ relative are appropriate. In terms of such criteria the join of the metaphysical framework and tradition has perfection.

The use of ‘perfect’ here is in the sense of perfect faithfulness.

However, since perfection of tradition in this sense is neither to be had nor desired and since tradition is the essential complement to the perfect framework, there is a practical sense in which the join constitutes a perfect or optimal framework.

(The older epistemic criteria, e.g. critical realism and the more recent emphasis on local narratives, remain important but their ultimate importance is diminished).

Thus the join may be also titled metaphysics even though it is not the traditional conception of metaphysics – as – perfectly – faithful – knowledge – of - being.

The term universal metaphysics will refer to the framework and in an extended sense to the join of the framework and tradition. For brevity a short version, the metaphysics, will also be used.

Worldview

The metaphysics implies a worldview.

I have specified the meaning of worldview relatively implicitly so far and while definitions are at most suggestive here is one: a worldview is the cognitive-emotive orientation of an individual or society encompassing its entire knowledge of the universe, the place of sentient being in it, and a defining ‘point of view’ and the place of entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point of view and a characterization of this whole; commonly, but not necessarily, a worldview is implicit, experiential, and intuitive.

What is a good name for this worldview? The view is trans-categorial but admits talk of categories; it is based in being but admits states of non-manifestation (that should not be called ‘non-being’); it is beyond process and extension but admits space and time; it is about commitment but especially about neutrality… it seems that any naming admits the opposite and is otherwise limiting. However, it is not un-nameable for that too would be a limited perspective. Still, perhaps a good name trans-nominalism which, however, invokes the nominalist vs. realist issue regarding universals and other abstracta. Therefore, I might call it trans-nomial-ism which is wordy; so I tentatively call it the or a trans-nomial world view—i.e., a worldview beyond naming even though that, too, is limiting.

Categories

The abstract categories of perfect metaphysical framework are supplemented or filled in by the detailed and ‘practical’ categories. These are the ‘good enough’ and the ‘being-in-the-world’ which are perfect, not only in the practical sense but in that we can and need have no better (they can be improved of course but there is a limit to the improvement which we cannot and need not exceed; and though we can reach the limit there is always a judgment as to whether we ‘need’ to—i.e. a balance between the imperative to precision and the imperatives of being-in-the-world and becoming or realization… and a balance between a technological imperative to precision and an economic imperative regarding the cost versus benefit of precision).

The good enough and the being-in-the-world include a host of detail, including the categories of Kant-Schopenhauer (and, within realism, many other systems, rational and feeling and, of course, cognitive-emotive.

Abstract objects

Two kinds of abstract object—concretion does not survive the abstraction; pertains to part of the universe lacking concretion.—is there a difference?

As noted earlier, the explicit concept is new (twentieth century) even though the implicit root idea is not.

The purposes to introducing abstract objects are as (1) a significant clarification and extension of the metaphysical notion of object; (2) as application of the metaphysics and illustration of its power; (3) clarification of the notion of abstract object and issues relating to the nature of abstract objects as the notion and the issues appear in current thought; (4) clarifying a number of issues such as the place of concrete, e.g. spatiotemporal and causal, in a universe that is not altogether concrete or non-concrete and remembering among concrete domains that are not concretely connected; and (5) showing an immense extension of the variety of being in the universe—i.e., as immensely extending the cosmology.

In the first section below, the idea of the abstract object extends and unifies understanding of objects in general; helps provide understanding of the full nature of objects under the universal metaphysics; and resolves current issues regarding abstract objects.

Then, in the second section below, some significant general and specific applications of the idea of the abstract object are taken up.

The concept

This continues previous mention of abstract objects in pattern and perfect metaphysical framework. There discussion was via example. Here we define. The discussion resolves the modern issue of the abstract versus the concrete. It dissolves any essential distinction and shows the functional difference.

An object is defined by a realistic concept (i.e. the idea of object without concept is meaningless: see meaning).

The idea of object without concept is meaningless: see meaning.

A concrete object is defined by an empirical or perceptual concept (of course realistic).

An abstract object is defined by a concept without explicit empirical reference but that is realistic and is defined in symbolic or conceptual (rather than empirical) terms.

From the metaphysics, concrete and abstract objects are in the one universe. Abstract objects are not essentially a-causal, non-spatial, or atemporal; rather causal, spatial, and temporal features are absent in the (symbolic) definition.

Objects in general

What we have shown is that there is no essential difference between the abstract and the concrete objects. The abstract lack some of the detail of the concrete, e.g. space-time-cause, but not essentially—they are there but the abstraction renders them null (alternatively, they do not survive the abstraction). They are known by different means (the abstract conceptually, the concrete perceptually) but, first, the conceptual and the perceptual are not essentially distinct, second, the difference in mode of knowing is not essential (even though it is immensely useful and powerful to have different approaches) and, third and finally:

All objects are in the one universe.

Because there is precisely one universe the abstract objects are in the universe and not in another, e.g. Platonic, universe. As described above they are not truly atemporal but, rather, time is not part of their character (definition). Where they are non-spatial, as in the case of number, the non-spatiality occurs in manner similar to the non-temporality. The abstract objects are, to repeat, in this one universe. They may seen as Platonic but not as residing in a separate Platonic universe; alternatively we can see Platonic ‘universes’ as abstracta within the one universe. What this means is that their definition is primarily of the higher conceptual type (whereas the concrete objects are defined in terms of ‘lower’ concepts, i.e. percepts).

Application

It is clear that the conception of the abstract object shows a far greater population to the universe than the concrete alone.

In general cosmology the concept of abstract object is used to resolve doubt regarding the universal metaphysics and the survival of identity across death.

It is also used to show a way for Brahman and Aeternitas to transcend but not be beyond space and time.

And to show spatiotemporal domains merging non spatiotemporal domains, especially as background; it shows a place for the concrete against a timeless and even space-less background. And, it may be used to show the place of Civilization in this merging.

The Real

‘Mind and matter’

The purpose of the discussion is (1) to uncover the nature of mind and matter, (2) and so to illuminate the nature of nature and spirit, and (3) consequently to talk of and illuminate The Real.

Mind and matter are not different kinds but it is only incomplete knowledge—ignorance—that sees them as such.

Mind is the name of the place of experience and its manners and forms.

If to ‘being-as-being’ we give the name ‘matter’ then, since experience is relationship, mind is the name of ‘being-in-relationship’ (or interaction).

Since it is often thought of as a substance, understanding may be approached via a substance approach to give insight and show the contradictions of the approach. The insight gained then enables formulation in the universal case (the metaphysics). Discussion will not go into details of ‘substance theory’ except to note that substances are uniform and unchanging and therefore do not interact.

If matter is the sole substance of the universe, then, mind is either an aspect of matter or there is no such thing as mind (there may be as if mind). Therefore mind and matter are essentially interwoven at the core but this is an understatement: they can be no more than different aspects of the same thing.

The difference in the universal case is that while ‘being-as-being’ and ‘being-as-interaction’ need not go to the same depth they will invariably meet at whatever depth there is.

That is, mind and matter are not different kinds but it is only incomplete knowledge—ignorance—that sees them as such.

Nature and spirit

There is a realm of spirit.

The metaphysics shows realms that may appear to us to be beyond the individual in this world. We have called the ‘acme’ of this the Apex, Aeternitas, and Brahman. We may think of the ‘beyond’ realms at all levels as ‘spirit’.

Nature and spirit are not different kinds or realms but it is only incomplete knowledge—ignorance—that sees them as such.

However, there is no non interaction and no ultimate distinction. We may conceptualize the apparent distinction within the lack of distinction as we did for mind and matter (indeed mind vs. matter and spirit vs. nature are similar and overlap).

The Real

‘The Real’ is another name for the same—for Aeternitas and Brahman. But as characterizing ultimates it is more than a name. How so? It is the real to which the positive endeavor of life seeks. Therefore The Real is the ultimate form of the real.

Relationship between the real and The Real succinctly describes our place in the ultimate.

Clearly death is real but not absolute—i.e., death is not Real. This theme is visited again below in death and identity.

Doubt and existential attitude

The essential doubt about the metaphysics concerns existence of the void.

The situation is the same as for any realist (no factual or logical inconsistency and eminently reasonable) proposition.

Examples abound in science but especially in mathematics.

The existence—though counterintuitive relative to standard worldviews—is not absurd, not paradoxical, and not inconsistent with what is valid in the worldviews (which includes their principles of reason). Further the given proof makes the existence highly reasonable.

There are various plausibility arguments. One rephrases the proof—the laws apply and the patterns are of manifest being but not of nothingness. Another is that there is no significant conceptual difference between existence and non-existence of the void.

On account of the great return, we therefore adopt the metaphysics as an existential attitude or principle of reason.

This is more than ‘attitude’. It is optimization of expected return. However, attitude is significant for it empowers action.

Since certainty would be a guarantee there is an existential sense in which uncertainty (where not absurd) is prized over certainty.

We now turn to cosmology which is part of metaphysics.

The power of being

Being stands above particular kinds. Therefore it is no subject to the limitation and error of such kinds. This is the essential power and all power is derivative from this.

We can summarize the power of the concept of being.

In its generic nature it stands above category and so the development is not subject to errors that might result from foundation in categories such as mind and matter. It stands above doubt and existential attitude in suggesting the neutrality of sufficient detachment as counterpoint to sufficient engagement. This might seem to trivialize being but as we have seen so far it does not.

The universe is all being. There are a host of consequences but particularly that all categories are equivalent at a fundamental level. This leads to elimination of the a priori—we can derive or see how to derive principles of reason and thought about the rest of the world from the same source.

Since laws have being there are no laws in the void and the fundamental principle follows.

These are some of the main points so far.

More will emerge, particularly in development of cosmology and in understanding the scope of realization and our place as ranging over that scope.

Systematic cosmology and its principles

Introduction and motivation

As the realization of all possibility, the universe confers this power (possibility) on individual beings.

The power is conferred on all communities from small groups to ‘universal civilization’ (the nature, being, and significance of the latter is established below).

Intuition, innate and constructed from experience, is attuned to this world. Therefore the fact of the possibilist universe is strongly intuitive. However, intuition and concept formation have some power of adaptation to new circumstances (also of course an attunement to unpredictability in our world). Consequently intuition, innate-acquired, is not absolute in its rule. It may change—have experiential and volitional re-education—at perceptual and conceptual levels. The individual can go beyond this world-as-experienced-so-far and this too is part of adaptation to this world.

An aim now becomes to explicitly work out implications of this power for the ideas, thought, and lives of sentient being(s). Let us attempt to formulate some principles to formulate a cosmology.

As far as reasonable, the principles and cosmology will be systematic (details being derivable from explicitly stated and founded elements). The non-systematic, however, will not be eschewed, especially as system does not capture all and as a source of enhancement to system; generally, of course, the non-systematic will not be uncritical.

One approach is to use the metaphysics in developing knowledge and paths of action for realization. It is desirable to have a systematic approach. The following emphasizes not only a systematic approach but how to get to such approaches (we could call this meta-system but it may already have been observed above that, in the end, the distinction is empty for it emphasizes a false distinction, i.e. that our ideas are not part of the world).

In the end, of course, system may face a blind end or impenetrable wall. Perhaps this is one reason that some thinkers have been opposed to system (in addition to its abuses which include negation of human freedom). However, there is value to system where it arises organically (organism has system) and where we do not insist upon it for all purposes.

Where the blind end arises, then, we are not without recourse. Risk is always available. We would like risk to be ‘intelligent’ but where no particular course of action or thought is intelligent, blind risk is intelligent.

An informal first principle, therefore, is that system is desirable where it has application but that it is essential to recognize that system may not always be application. In the latter case risk is always available and the goals of systematic cosmology are complemented by local interest.

Principles of systematic and general cosmology

Knowledge of our world

Begin with the world and our being in the world…

I.e., with knowledge and experience so far and then with further experience, imagination, criticism, experiment and becoming.

Except for pure risk, there is no place to begin other than with knowledge, experience, and the world as we find it. But since we want to go beyond this, we seek further experience, imagination, criticism, experiment, and becoming. This is of course the process of knowing and being but it is explicitly spelled out to our purpose.

Particularly, begin with our cosmos—its cosmology, space-time, mind-matter as we know it, individual-civilization, and knowledge of symbol.

A systematic account of the tradition—here understood to include the ancient and the modern, the literal and the mythic—is invaluable to realization of the aim revealed by the metaphysics.

Note greater system and detail in a system of human knowledge.

Now turn to how to deploy this beginning…

I.e., to fill in details for the metaphysics. Note in the following that there is overlap among and within the details of the principles.

It will be seen in Abstract objects that Realism leads to a far greater population / variety of being in the universe. More than that it provides an approach to understanding the place of the concrete against the timeless and perhaps space-less background.

Realism: the main principle of general cosmology

Evaluating possibility

From the metaphysics, possibility is a first principle for constructing the most inclusive and realist cosmology.

The approach is to build upon knowledge of the world via imagination and reason, including logic. This advances both cosmology and Logic.

Many proofs based on this principle are so trivial as to not need explicit statement. Future development, however, will take analysis into difficult realms of proof.

Note on proof and interpretation. Working out some possibilities is easy. For example, a limitless collection of cosmoses with limitless variety of physical law is logically possible and, from the fundamental principle, must obtain. What is of near equal importance to the general principle of possibility and finding possibilities is interpretation of their significance; some significance is built in to the possibilities we find and further significance is found via item #3 below (simple and significant probability and population).

Examples have been given above. Systematic elaboration is taken up in what follows.

The simple cases do not exhaust the possibilities. Consider for example ‘every cosmos is an atom, every atom a cosmos. Is there a source for figuring such complex possibilities and more in detail? Here, we might begin to encounter issues with the logics so far and the evolution of logic (at the border between logic and science).

Even in simple cases of imagination care is needed to ensure that no implicit impossibility has been admitted. Here the modern logical systems, axiomatic set theory (to avoid paradox) and mereology (analysis and theory of part-whole and part-part relations; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/) may be useful.

A complete critical - rational development of this process is impossible but in process developments of our science, logic, metaphor-myth-allegory would seem to be open ended and the territory vast.

These approaches give us leverage in the findings below regarding the general cosmological picture, identity and death, The Real, and the issue of nature and spirit.

Regarding issues such as the nature of space and time and mind and matter the metaphysics will enable specification of what they would be in general, whether they exhaust their series, and whether they are universal. The principles here are (a) being and universe are what is and all that is (therefore, e.g. space and time and mind as experience have being in the universe) (b) simple analysis of the nature of mind and matter and space and time will show that they exhaust their series and (c) application of the fundamental principle to see some details of how the universal case may be different from the situation in our cosmos (more particularly we use an idealized picture of the realities of cosmos to guide us to differences between the locally apparent and universal truth).

The approach so far will get us features the possibilist universe (which from the metaphysics is necessary) but not an accounting of what features are most probable or populous. How may we reason about the probable?

The approach from possibility shows some ways to reason about the possible but how do we reason about the probable?

We can begin with ‘the world and our being in the world’ but we are particularly interested in general principles.

The study of possibility is enhanced by the study of abstract objects.

Abstract cosmology

As far as development pure metaphysics (i.e., perfect metaphysical framework) is concerned, the concepts of being, universe, law, and void function as defining abstract objects.

We saw the power of this approach.

This power of abstraction in cosmology is extended in abstract objects in general cosmology.

Significant population of the universe

Estimating simple adapted and significant probability and population

Before discussion of general principles note that an analysis of matter and experience, i.e. of matter and mind, will enable a more careful understanding of experience. Consequently the general analysis of cosmology will not be simply linear but different departments and levels will be mutually informative.

Examples of general principles whose use is illustrated below are (a) symmetry and stability (b) incremental adaptation at a range of levels of hierarchy and extension and (c) estimation of significance—i.e. what are the features of a ‘cosmos’ that contain world aware beings. A complement to the principles is that the improbable is also necessary but, generally, less significant.

Thus there is a balance here between sufficient stability (the operative terms are relative stability resulting from near symmetry) and so longevity versus sufficient remove from stability for fecund generation. While modern theoretical physics (quantum theory, vacuum fluctuation, bubble cosmoses) may be suggestive, biology—adaptation and its process—shows us a principle. Here there is a paradigm of this balance between stability and fecundity. The significance of such models is that they explain the population of the universe by form over transient; they explain the forms also ever in process—origination—stable evolution—decay; and they help explain the nature of significant form.

Special principles would begin with the particular forms, laws, and narratives of the world—and these enable (with imagination, criticism and so on) more detailed scenarios. Always remember that what is possible is necessary. How, then, is probability estimated. Begin with well known features such as the estimated narrow range of cosmological constants that allow a cosmos suitable to emergence of life, mind, and intelligence.

But we may also go beyond our laws, not just to different values of the constants, but also different forms of law. What principles can we find here? Approaches include (1) Learning from our laws and their forms, including near symmetry, relative stability and how it comes about that there is simultaneous symmetry and symmetry breaking (there must be a balance between stability on the one hand and on the other hand effective origins and change, the related (2) Conservation laws, e.g. momentum and energy and reasons that a conservative universe is stable (non conservation means extreme dissipation or extreme inflation and of course extreme inflation may be a path to relative stability) and dissipation laws (e.g. entropy and, remembering that these laws seem to be statistical in nature, how they may contribute to structure and form—from the simple ‘usefulness’ of friction to the complex relations between entropy and life), (3) Learning from the ‘forces’ of our cosmos—the strong and weak are implicated in binding of particles, the electromagnetic in radiation and chemistry, and the weaker gravitation, since it is or seems strictly attractive, in the larger scale structures, (4) The scales of our cosmos—microscopic to macroscopic and how, e.g., the microscopic gives rise to possibility of form and variety at the level of organisms, and (5) ‘Accidents’ such as the abundant occurrence of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon; the abundance on earth of water and the special physical and chemical properties of water including its anomalous expansion and that it is a medium of chemistry and solution.

What is the value of finding alternative laws, e.g. alternative physics? First there is a filling in of the picture of what the universe is like. This may be enhanced by computational intelligence and perhaps even realized by technology (computation itself or other such as micro-technology down to particle levels). Second, consider an alternative physics such as one in which time is sufficiently accelerated so that we can perform ‘super-tasks’. What is a super task? I use a definition somewhat broader than seems to be current. A super task is one that is logically possible but immensely difficult to unrealizable within the physics of our cosmos or a limited collection of cosmoses. However, if ‘super-physics’ permits super tasks then distinction emphasized above between the merely possible and the significant may have some to absolute break down.

Becoming: cosmology of realization

Becoming is essential, i.e. over and above knowledge alone.

The importance of application and knowledge in service is obvious. The point here however is that there is no knowledge without action and that action is the completion of knowledge.

This follows of course form the metaphysics and requires the process features noted in discussing ‘the world and our being in the world’ including pure risk—i.e. risk that does not avoid intelligence but that recognizes that risk is sometimes the only option for possible survival and advance of being.

This is taken up later in discussing Realization.

The cosmological picture

We have already observed and shown various features of space-time, especially that are the two essential and only ‘coordinates’ of extensionality; that they are relative but may be locally as if absolute; and that extensionality is not universal. Therefore I will not repeat details of the features or the proofs.

General possibilist cosmology: identity, manifestation, space, time

The universe and its identity are limitless in extension, duration, and variety.

That limited form approaches this apex is given

The universe is a manifold of acute to diffuse and absent extension and duration. As such it is self contained. Within this there are phases of acute, diffuse, and absent manifestation and identity. The phases of identity are not entirely connected but maintain continuity. The continuity is maintained of necessity but, for example, factually in connection of the extensional (space-time) regions via the non-extensional. Thus there is an apex of identity, the Aeternitas of Thomas Aquinas and the Brahman of Advaita Vedanta, that is and knows all as if in a moment; as knowing all this being does not require thought but its processes include what may be seen as thought. It is perhaps also via the extension-non-extension connection that the limited individual is part of the Apex. In not fully knowing the Apex, the individual does not get out of time (the Apex can be seen as in time but not essentially so) and experiences ‘self’ with degrees of separation (and sometimes assigns absolute separation to partial separation for, though I do not ‘read’ the mind of another I do in fact do so when my empathy is as if a feeling of their feeling). Thus my realizations which I experience at least partially as bubbles in the stream are part of the larger being and may perhaps be seen as its dispositions. My ‘bubble’ is also a strand and the identities are interwoven and interweaving and inter-joining and separating strands. The whole, the Apex, has pan-connected experience; the individual experiences cycles. Thus there is simultaneously the individual and the Apex; the former experiences separateness but is part of the latter. The individual at least, while in limited form, approaches the ultimate, but separates from the form. Individual experience is eternal but not obviously experienced as such. Death is real but not absolute.

It is reasonable in the general case (and to be expected in the probabilist case) that memory across death will not typically occur at the level of the particular organism. Rather, memory will be stored in trans-organism level, a level whose identity includes that of the organism. What is perhaps recalled by the organism is its disposition. What levels are there? There are levels below the organism / self that the organism typically experiences as ‘material’ but those too are experiential at a lower level (‘mind and matter’) and whose ‘memory’ is in their having the same or similar structure in relation to one another (the constancy of the properties and interrelations, e.g., of the fundamental particles of modern physics). And above the individual there are levels ranging from self to Brahman / Aeternitas.

Introduce the following. Primary memory over death = what is constant! There are levels below SELF and between self and BRAHMAN.

For the individual death is a reminder that time is precious. This earth and its beauty are to be experienced; and there is once again an opportunity to ‘contribute’ to and be a larger part of the ultimate. There is a reality to good and evil; good is what approaches or helps approach to the ultimate (whether seen in greater or lesser—local or ultimate—terms); thus perhaps good is always greater than evil; and in this sense, evil is not ultimately the hateful thing we think it even though, here on Earth we may temporally think it so. At least from the limited point of view there is no overcoming pain; but there is meaning to pain for it is part of the process just described (note that in the possibilist description there is no essential reference to pain as adaptive); and pain and joy and death are among the gateways to the ultimate.

There is of course a vagueness to the descriptions above. Should we concretize them or leave them vague? This will be addressed in abstract objects below.

In greater detail, manifestation and identity cycle through acute, diffuse, and absent phases; and there is no limit to the extension, duration, and variety of these cycles and their peaks (i.e. the variety is so great that there is no mere repetitiousness and, of course, there are peaks within peaks…). The variety of local or cosmological systems and their laws is without limit. The cosmoses may be seen as lying on a grid connected, sometimes by explicit space-time, but generally via the non-extensional whole (universe). Our cosmos is repeated in its precise and variant forms without limit as an infinitesimal part of this grid. It is possible that a cosmos will have ghost cosmoses that are at most temporarily isolated from them (there is no ultimate disconnection or non-interaction). Therefore a limitless sub-collection will have such ghost cosmoses, each passing through the other(s) with barely a whisper. Temporally, even though this is probably at least partially metaphorical, the cosmoses which have a limitless range of small to large scale manifestation, may be seen against a transient to void background. The universe, as we have seen, has no external creator. However, there may be local creation of one cosmos by another. That is, there may be local ‘gods’.

Note that in viewing the universe as an abstract object for some purposes we can see how it is a non-spatiotemporal reservoir for memory. This is a rather abstract argument that is drawn out below

Abstract objects in general cosmology

Doubt has been expressed regarding the proof of the metaphysics (especially in providing alternate proof and heuristic and in showing its consistency with what is valid in tradition). Later a question arose regarding the nature of identity—if I am or approach Brahman but do not experience this why do I not: where is the memory ‘stored’.

I will use abstract objects to simultaneously address these two issues (it is effective to wait till this point to resolve doubt about the metaphysics.).

Consider a domain. Now consider one that is ‘smaller’. Its smallness does not have to do with extension but, instead, an abstractive process that omits a small feature or collection of features. For any domain including the universe itself we can consider an unending sequence of domains that become closer and closer to the void but that do not attain the void.

This sequence approaches the void and so the absence of any law. Thus, the existence of the void does not have to be assumed to prove the fundamental principle; the fundamental principle has thus been placed on a firmer foundation. Having proved the fundamental principle, the existence of the void (and other sequelae) follow.

If they follow, there is no limit to the preservation in such states or domains infinitesimally close to the void and so memory of identity is preserved as dispositions ‘in’ the void—even in transitions across the void.

Stable cosmology: adaptive and probabilist

The goal is to arrive at general considerations rather than, for example, specific physics such as the physics of our cosmos. The concern is how such a cosmos forms and what maintains that form. This consideration, of course, impacts specific physics which taken up in special cosmology.

To arrive at some further significance and selectivity to the above we may transition from possibilist thought to probability and significance. We noted above that the greater population of form in the universe will be the result of incremental process. The increments will not and generally cannot be determinist, and from among these those that have features of near symmetry and relative stability will survive preferentially. There is a balance between fecundity and longevity: more stable is longer lived but less likely to occur; where the product of fecundity and longevity is a maximum will be where the greatest population occurs. The net process, starting from the void, will be generally incremental with transitions from self-adaptation to self-adaptation; it is perhaps self-selective in that once there is a large population of self-adaptation, it is the basis of further adaptive form (large adaptive increments will occur but not frequently). There will be pockets of improbability but generally the foregoing population picture will obtain. There is a vast theory of possibilist and probabilist form awaiting development. It is generally the self-adapted systems that will have anything more than the barest sentience (see further discussion in The Real, below) and these higher forms of sentience, being locally adapted, will be less to see other self-adapted systems and very unlikely to see transient systems. Thus while the formed cosmoses will be high in population, their sentient forms will predominantly see only their own cosmos (at least until such sentience adapts at a still higher level—organically or culturally). Since we can at least think of higher cosmoses and the ultimate we are perhaps higher in this sense though fairly obviously far from ultimate.

Pain and joy

In such systems pain is adaptive. However, pain will normally have limits. Joy, too, is adaptive. Though pain is a ‘problem’ it will not be adaptive for it to too outweigh joy. Pain and joy are a mosaic (this is true also in the more inclusive possibilist scenarios although it is impossible to rule out the possibility and rare actuality of infinite pain; perhaps it could be argued that it would be unstable therefore transient and local). The adaptive situation therefore gives further meaning to pain.

On the words ‘pain’ and ‘joy’

Here, the word ‘pain’ is preferred to ‘suffering’. In Buddhist and other thought, suffering is the result of deep, i.e. not merely cognitive, ignorance. However the concern here is pain; and understanding pain is essential to removing suffering because the sources of suffering include pain and, further, suffering is pain. I.e., understanding pain addresses the source and the nature of suffering. It is true, of course, that ‘ego’ as invested only in itself rather than indirectly via ‘truth’ is a source of suffering and the approach of course is deep knowledge. But not all pain can be removed and it is essential to understand this (‘grant me the wisdom to know the difference’); and to recognize that self-in-process shall not wait eternally for perfection of self.

For similar reasons I prefer ‘enjoyment’ to ‘joy’. Joy of course is not irrelevant. But I prefer enjoyment because it is joy in the process and therefore a nuanced and adaptive cousin of joy. Since ‘joy’ is shorter, I use it to refer to ‘enjoyment’ as well as occasionally to being open to pure joy and to cultivating it.

Approach to the ultimate

Though realization is given to limited form (the individual), intelligent and passionate (committed) engagement enhance effectiveness and enjoyment of the process.

Pain and joy are a mosaic coloring of the process. The essential character of the mosaic from universal and local points of view gives meaning to pain.

What circumstances over and above the universal-possibilist case does the probabilist case hold for relations of limited forms to the ultimate? Importantly, local adaptation (perception and free concept formation) enable understanding that goes beyond organic adaptation. This may and as we are now reading does enable universal understanding—some knowledge of the ultimate. Thus knowledge of approaches to the ultimate are also enabled (perhaps the knowledge is not too great but the metaphysics shows that realization for limited form is always at a beginning). These approaches may be ideational (e.g. meditative practice), behavioral (nature immersion, service, mutual spiritual practice—see The Real for discussion the meaning of ‘spiritual’), and technological (moving beyond earth to universal civilization via material and information technology). Abrahamic type conceptions of god, divested of inconsistency, are realized. However, these realizations are seemingly not probabilist and therefore the significance of the ‘gods’ is primarily symbolic. Remote personal gods are thus apparently of less real significance. What of local personal gods? These, too, seem improbable except as far as life is part of the ‘god-process’ and this appears to have some significance. However, here it is the abstract god (of which the concrete is a special case) that appears to have the greatest significance for it includes the ultimate. We are as noted earlier strands and dispositions-realizations within this process and therefore it is here that we find the ultimate into which we may enter.

Death and identity

I noted in The Real that death is real but not absolute—i.e., death is not Real.

Death is real but not absolute. It is only non absolute when all limited selves and forms transcend it and join across it.

We saw in the cosmological picture that death is real but not absolute; that if we regard individuals as strands and as dispositions of the ultimate then these are only as a result of not knowing, experienced as distinct from the ultimate (therefore the not knowing is powerful over the individual); but that they join in the ultimate; that from the perspective of the ultimate they are already joined; but that the individual does not experience the join (always); and, finally, in contrast to some religious pictures the joining is also eternal process requiring eternal engaging and giving back an eternal mosaic of joy and pain which is good and where good is found.

‘The ultimate’ was given other names: ‘Apex’, ‘Aeternitas’, ‘Brahman’.

Alternate and extreme cosmologies and physics

Motive

Exploration of the world—our cosmos and its laws are one scenario out of limitlessly many implied by the metaphysics.

Exploration of metaphysical possibility—what is the universe like, what variety and identity are there, what is the origin of our cosmos and its laws and what is its relation to the rest of the universe. Thus far there are two pictures (a) our cosmos and variations (b) the metaphysics of this narrative. Not only do we want to explore the latter in its full range but we are also interested in special cases—laterally and from the level of our cosmos on up.

Constraints

Note that some thinkers interpret ‘metaphysically possible’ in restrictive terms such as (a) should not radically violate our laws and (b) mind requires a body. It is interesting that while these two requirements should be interesting, they are not necessary. Particularly, if we are interested in the most general case, Logic is the only restriction and (b) if we are interested in the origin of our laws (and mind) it is essential to start from more general scenarios.

Sources

Generalization and variation of known laws, conceptual or thought experiment, adaptation, conservation (energy, momentum, angular momentum, Noether’s theorem), entropy (and dissipation and availability) issues, experiment and empirical evidence and suggestion.

Realization

Journey

We have seen that the individual realizes the ultimate. This is given. However, enjoyment and effectiveness are enhanced by intelligent, committed and passionate engagement (which of course is not to exclude detachment from too much investment in outcomes and so on).

The ‘journey’ connects the immediate and the ultimate. It begins here, in this world. It is incremental but saying so is not to exclude significant steps.

Dimensions

Let us identify some ‘dimensions’ of the world. The purpose is to attempt comprehensiveness with regard to areas of action toward realization.

The dimensions

The chosen dimensions will be nature, civilization, psyche, and the universal.

There is both a logic and an arbitrariness to this. The logic is that nature is primal. However, the separation of nature and psyche or spirit is arbitrary. And some traditions do not recognize psyche.

Civilization includes community. So far as there is a communal identity or even soul, it is an aspect of civilization. But civilization also emphasize an external aspect—technology and artifact and their role in realization.

The word psyche refers to mind, spirit and soul (to the extent that they obtain). I said earlier that the nature-spirit distinction is the result of ignorance of full knowledge of nature and sprit. However, the distinction is convenient. The universe contains elements of good and evil; we do not seem to see this with out corporeal senses; our sense of this ‘spirit’ in the universe is at minimum a sense of incompleteness in ‘material’ being; and the sense is part of the spiritual sense. We may think that the spiritual sense is come combination of perception, conception, and emotion; what this exemplifies is not that there is no spiritual sense but that it is continuous with the natural. Psyche also refers to the elements of mind which we can see from the discussion to be continuous with the spiritual. Soul is the continuous part of identity—the part that does not die and which must have awareness—i.e. mind. Thus there is a place for a term that properly refers to identity, person, mind, spirit, and soul; the word chosen here is psyche.

All dimensions, especially the universal, straddle the known and unknown.

Process

Elements (non exclusive) of the process may include means, disciplines (mechanics, ways and catalysts), modes, places, vehicles, and phases.

Means

The means are ideas and action.

What would a mechanics of the process be? We seek activities that are transformative. That includes not only action but also ideas. Ideas and action are in interaction. An action has a transformative effect. We see this in ideas and seek to multiply it. We take a risk; in ideas we see the outcome and reject what does not work, admit what does.

Disciplines

This does not take place in a vacuum. Others came before us; tradition includes a cumulation of ideas from bits of understanding to a broad understanding of being; tradition also includes ways of transformation and ways of analysis; these become consolidated in disciplines which are also in process (sometimes the activity of exceptional individuals). There is a discipline of disciplines; it may be encoded in culture; it may be explicitly recognized; it is especially active—recognized or not—at times of transition.

Mechanics

We can identify a mechanics of transformation—it involves risk which is intelligent where possible but sometimes true risk. The ‘cyclic’ process, then, is risk, outcome, learning at various levels, consolidation andor letting go (rejection) conceiving and making choice… or, briefly, choice-risk-consolidation (consolidation refers to both ideas and transformation of being itself).

A mechanics of transformation is, simply, analysis and synthesis of being. It may use the disciplines—e.g., the ways of the religions. Its essential mechanics is choice-risk-consolidation.

Ways and catalysts

A mechanics has two elements—ways of living, and particular catalytic activities such as meditation, fasting, and exposure.

Modes (of change)

Change is either intrinsic or in external circumstances.

The external includes social organization or civilization, technology with perhaps material changes in the individual (prosthetics and medicine, machine assistance including intelligent machines. We tend to think of the organism’s being as relatively fixed and so, on the intrinsic side, to emphasize ideas. For the most part even the major religions, even where they see salvation, it is salvation of the individual. They do not seen the individual becoming something else, something greater. But some religions see and we have already seen here that we are already part of the absolute; all that is required is transformation of degree. And it is important to emphasize transformation of being because that is what we aim at. Perhaps what we achieve in this life will be small but perhaps not. We do not know the future with precision.

Places of change

The dimensions—nature, civilization, psyche, universe.

Phases

A particular journey may recognize phases that correspond to dimensions and aspects of process. The phases below recognize becoming and being as well as sub-phases.

Foregoing considerations suggest (a) BECOMING: transformations in ideas and transformations in being (individual-civilization and artifact-technology) and (b) PURE BEING.

Nature

Nature can be seen as the ground of being. It can be seen in various ways, e.g. scientifically. Here, however, we are especially interested in other aspects—the experiential and via experience as gateway to the universal.

Nature is the most ‘elementary’ of the dimensions. We tend to think that its province does not overlap spirit. Where we see spirit in nature we tend to think of it as separate. However, it was argued that this is simply because what we see in nature as incomplete—i.e., it is our seeing (or thinking) that is incomplete and not nature itself. As our knowledge of nature grows (ancient intuition such as the mystic and the philosophical, mind as part of nature, society as expression of nature even though perhaps remotely so in our understanding, modern physics being more suggestive of mind than classical physics) we begin to see the unity of nature and spirit.

Psychology or theory of realization

In the aim of perfection we do not wait for perfection.

The focus is practical—we are interested in transformation. We are of course interested in theory, particularly because that too is practical.

The primary psychology of concern is psychology of transformation. It is not that psychology of the proximate is not of concern; however it is part of a psychology of transformation since the proximate is part of the ultimate.

The essential psychology is the theory of realization.

Individuals are strands of the universal, we are its dispositions become concrete.

In universal process individual memory is recollected as part of a higher individual. There is an endless continuum of levels—above self, from SELF to BRAHMAN and below self, from the void and its transients to self.

The essential psychology is not a theory of how human psychology ‘works’ rather it is the theory of realization—that it is the metaphysics and the cosmology with emphasis on the relations between the individual and the ultimate (which includes groups). How it works is valuable in itself and as support for human aims. At this time this text makes reference to the enormous output of writing in the tradition. But I emphasize the maxim that in the aim of perfection we cannot wait for perfection. That is, practically, perfection in ultimate terms includes sacrifice of aspects of self.

A goal for the future is to work a full but relevant psychology into the theory of realization.

Elements of psychology may be divided according to binding to the world versus freedom. Perception and primal feeling are binding; we are not normally free to perceive the form of mountain as something else and we are not normally free to ignore pain. That is tied in with survival. Yet we are free in some ways; we have freedom of concept formation which is adaptive in surviving in new environments—that is, freedom of concept formation is part of the adaptation of adaptability. We have a degree of freedom of affect—the ability to invest emotion in new objects and pursuits and this too may be seen as ability to adapt to new contexts, even the universal (even if this arose in small ways, the difference between the small and the universal in this context is one of degree rather than kind).

An important element of this psychology is to keep a balance between the immediate and the ultimate.

The aim of the practical parts (practice and ritual) psychology would include developing and sustaining this freedom while maintaining adequate respect for the immediate or normal. It would further include sustaining this balance between freedom and ‘necessity’ with regard to all elements noted above: the elements of cognition, cognition and emotion (heart-mind), mind and body, individual and civilization, and nature and universe.

Civilization

Concept and dimensions

Individuals are in process together. The process is communal. Together, we compare learning—develop traditions shared among peers and from generation to generation. There are venerated and charismatic teachers but to think in terms of mastery over transience is stasis.

At a more inclusive level the process involves civilization. Human civilization is the web of human community across time and continents. Universal civilization is the matrix of civilizations across the universe. Civilization nurtures the individual, individuals foster civilization. The metaphysics requires and suggests that Civilization forges its way to becoming an individual. The process of civilization is also intrinsic—the being of civilization: civilizations in interaction, individual strands interweaving—and external—the employment of physical and life sciences, travel in the world (which merges with the inner as in the Beyul below), and technology in the service of exploration and, via information processing and networking, of identity.

It is important that the dimensions of civilization include the practical cultural domains of knowledge, politics, and economics. In the process of realization these may come to emphasize immersion as much as instrument.

The immediate and the ultimate

I seek to formulate ways to connect the immediate and the ultimate.

Introduction

The tradition provides ways. In the secular the ultimate tends to be this world and cosmos and so the primary connections are material and human. The material emphasizes improving the material aspect of life and exploration (and utilization) of the cosmos.

The trans-secular sees a greater universe than does the secular and so sees further connections. There are conflicts and commonalities among the different trans-secular systems and between the secular and the trans-secular. The conflicts are largely the result of fundamentalist interpretation and the politics of religion (religion is also political). The commonalities include moral principles-behavior and symbols of the real (which is or includes the spiritual). Issues of the trans-secular include the negative aspects of its politics, the limited reality of its symbols (which we might see intuitively but are starkly brought out by the metaphysics), and that while religion flourishes in some places it has lost its hold in others. Reasons for this loss are the ascent of science and political-economic freedoms that diminish the need for religious light: the idea of spirit remains positive for many secularists but the compulsion that results from misery and coercion has been removed.

However, the metaphysics shows the standard secular and trans-secular to be severely limited. What it shows is the greatest opportunity that transcends the secular divide; it does not do so compulsively; it cannot do so compulsively for realization must begin with volition. This requires freedom from coercive religious and other politics. On the other hand it also implies that there are limitations to the separation of secular and trans-secular affairs (the separation is important in helping guarantee freedoms of thought, freedom from persecution). This sets up a paradox. The secular divide retards realization while it provides freedom to pursue realization. Its source is a defect of human nature—ignorance and coercion—but its purpose is to protect human value. But the metaphysics and its implications show the crucial significance of going beyond this many faceted stand-off.

While one source of the stand-off is that of the different fundamentalist systems, it is not so commonly recognized that the secular worldview has its own limits and fundamentalisms. The limits are by now obvious: the standard secular worldview is severely limited. The fundamentalism is in taking this limited (e.g. naturalistic) worldview as complete. ‘Soft secularism’ takes it as complete by default; hard, i.e. positivist secularism, believes that it must be complete (but of course does not regard its position as belief).

Thus the argument here is not that of secularism and trans-secularism, one is right and one wrong (in any case there are so many strands within each that the meaning of right and wrong in simple terms is compromised). It is that, while the valid elements of both—tradition—have positive contributions, both are severely limited. What is the way out?

Intellectually, there is a simple answer. The metaphysics has made belief irrelevant; it has shown an ultimate that, as such, requires no belief. Realization, then, is a positive process (which is not to say that there is and shall be no mystery; for there is, especially with regard to the realms of being and as knowledge does not displace true mystery) and all that is required is engagement (which of course is an immense endeavor and may be experienced as difficult and in which the symbolism of the traditions may be invaluable).

Problems of the intellectual answer include the following. While the metaphysics has made the psychologically imperative character of belief rationally unnecessary with regard to realization, it has not removed the strength and various sources—intrinsic and social—of the psychological imperative (for belief could already be seen to be irrelevant with regard to realization from the conflicts of fundamentalism and the symbolic meaning of religion). So the psychological issue is the conflict from the various needs and reasons for fundamentalist belief on one hand, and the inertia of secular comfort on the other. Simultaneously, there are the social issues of communication and organization in relation to the trans-fundamentalist (secular and trans-secular) inertia and reaction which is both psychological and political-economic.

The block

I begin to see that a fundamental issue is not the secular versus the trans-secular but fundamentalism (secular and trans-secular, explicit and implicit) versus openness.

Ways to connect

This emphasizes the psycho-social side. Intrinsic connecting has been set up in the foregoing and continues in path.

Tentative ways

It is important to see not just the material and quantitative but also the spiritual and qualitative implications of the metaphysics (system).

The nature of the universe includes experience of The Real as spiritual.

Belief is not necessary.

Belief may now be replaced by a mix of positive knowing (the givenness of the ultimate) and ‘existential faith’ in the face of doubt and variety. A practical concern—communication and allocation of resources (all institutions, secular and trans-secular, require and take resources).

The way through the secular and the trans-secular.

Modern science (quantum and relativistic) has points of contact with the metaphysics, especially in the notions of the void (quantum vacuum), mesh of space-time-being (the space-time-matter of general relativity), and suggestions of mystery from quantum theory (stability from indeterminacy, analogy at least to mind-life-spirit in various phenomena including entanglement and the self-origins of replication and complexity). But these are only suggestions. Clearly, science is far from ultimate and the potential is immense. Regarding the trans-secular, one way is to focus on symbolic meaning, to fuse that meaning with the metaphysics, and perhaps to render the fusion in symbolic (parable or story, myth, legend, allegory) terms. Would institutionalization be significant?

To infuse social institutions with the implications of the metaphysics.

I do not mean ‘symbolic infusion and invocation’ such as prayer and artistic rendering (nor should I exclude symbol). However, what I mean is that there are implications for our cultural, political, and perhaps economic processes and institutions. We have seen that the new trans-nomial worldview implies that science will never be at an end and that limited form—individual and civilization—shall never exhaust science; therefore the realization of any ultimate science or even greatest possible science, shall be by enhancing its approach or method to include explicit and intrinsic immersion (application of science is extrinsic and perhaps only implicit). But the same should be true of other institutions—political-economic, other aspects of culture, education and other. And what of symbolic infusion? Would this be anti-‘democratic’? Offensive? And regarding symbolic infusion—what and how?

Institutional and charismatic initiatives are important.

And compulsive and exclusive rationality as well as emotionality are to be avoided. Both are adaptive and there separations come in degrees, not absolutes; each ‘informs’ the other; generally, they work together

My path has to be multiple.

Intrinsic—my thought and being; individual—my process; and sharing.

Path

Path specification will be via a template which will reflect the design principle that actions should be specific yet reflect the logic and multidimensional needs of the aim; and it should be open to change.

Template

It is not necessary that every instance shall need every aspect.

Introduction—general or specific action; nature of the particular action, plans; remark if the action has redundancy…

Discipline or practice—ways and catalysts, mechanics, elements, and phases—direct experiment with being: way-catalyst | reflexive: development of discipline.

Aims—state, process, knowledge of being | understanding, knowledge of practice.

Mode—intrinsic vs. instrumental-artifactual.

Vehicle—individual (practitioner / direct learning-teaching) andor shared (civilization) | being.

Means—ideas (study discipline) andor action (below) | being—direct and study of mechanics of transformation by increment—risk-learning, ways, catalysts.

Phase—area(s) of focal activity grouped efficiently: ideas (pure and applied), action (identity-civilization, artifact-technology) | universal-all: the phases seen as a single process.

Place—nature, psyche, society | universe-all-home.

Time—now, year, life, beyond | all.

Sequence—i.e. co-requisite and / or prerequisite—parallel or prior to phase vs. all.

Action—practice in action including ritual action | action as practice.

Discussion—for details and items not covered in this template / no discussion so far.

Instances

Select for comprehensiveness and incisiveness. Refer, especially to the phases. Here is a minimal set (see the template for more).

1. Path and phase design and selection

Introduction—general action.

Discipline or practice—ways and catalysts, mechanics, elements, and phases—meditate, reflect on goals and means | and on what is fundamental.

Aims—conceive, reconceive, and select phases; select phase for primary current emphasis; define criteria for relative completeness and review accordingly for transition to another phase; review for parallel work on more than one phase (e.g. ideas under continual review and use); consider one main endeavor—perhaps a synthesis—for (my) life amid the ‘many worlds’ as one; review path.

Mode—primarily intrinsic but perhaps also instrumental.

Vehicle—self then civilization.

Means—ideas and experiment.

Phase— universal-all; elaborate.

Place—all-home.

Time—now | all.

Sequence—

Action—practical aspects of implementation—place, travel…

Discussion—many worlds as one: my intent for this phrase is to live, as far as it is correct, in the immediate and the ultimate, self and other, inner outer…

2. Ideas

Introduction—general action.

Discipline or practice—ways and catalysts, mechanics, elements, and phases—ideas and knowledge as practice (emphasis: the tradition of philosophy) | reflexive: the nature of ideas and their validity.

Aims—knowledge of being (including Jnâna yoga) | understanding, knowledge of knowledge.

Mode—intrinsic.

Vehicle—individual and shared | being—deploying the full nature and source of ideas.

Means—ideas: study| being—aspects of being supportive of truth and fullness in ideas.

Note—the study will emphasize the metaphysics, psychology of realization including the yogas.

Phase—ideas | universal-all.

Place—nature, psyche, society; university and other institutions | universe-all-home.

Time—all (emphasis: a time in the future of return to ideas).

Sequence—co-requisite to all phases of being; each phase will have its own study program (see this resource document).

Action—knowledge is inseparable from and completed in action (‘action without action’ is not action).

Discussion—some details regarding the aims—see the resource and other documents in the archive for details of a program—some specific topics are: foundations, logic studies, science of possibility, mereology, development and application of the pure and practical metaphysics.

Discussion—also note—Jnâna yoga, typical of a number of eastern traditions, is about knowledge and understanding but there are distinctions from the way these terms are understood and practiced in the modern west where what is emphasized is intellect (of course not divorced from experience). The main distinctions are (1) the aim and object of focus is not that of detached intellect and subject but of embodied knowledge of the ultimate and ways to the ultimate and (2) practices for the individual (not just ‘mind’) aimed at seeing truth and being-in-truth (e.g. samanyasa, sravana, manana, dhyana whose inclusion and elaboration is deferred till I have greater exposure and an opportunity to integrate the practices into my knowing). The ideas may be seen as contemplation which interacts with meditation—meditation provides the space to see—that relaxation that heightens awareness of internal and external worlds, in contemplation we come to see and this coming to see is not just intellectual but permeates our being.

Discussion—some important special topics include (i) study of logic, abstract systems, mathematics, and border and alternative physics… for the universal metaphysics and realization, (ii) alternative cognitive, emotive, mythic paradigms for understanding and immersion.

3. Beyul and quest for vision

Introduction—specific action.

Discipline or practice—ways and catalysts, mechanics, elements, and phases—pilgrimage: Beyul to open self to qualities of sacred places; and vision quest: to awaken vision.

Aims—seeing and being the real, being on the incremental way | understanding the way of pilgrimage and vision.

Mode—intrinsic and. instrumental for being.

Vehicle—shared and individual | being.

Means—study of the ways of pilgrimage and vision.

Phase—ideas, identity-civilization.

Place—nature and psyche, society; consider the Trinity Alps, Barranca del Cobre, and other places.

Time—immediate.

Sequence—before action in the world and artifact-technology.

Action—these are ways of action; undertaking with understanding of the way is essential.

Discussion—

4. Engagement in the world—ultimate and secular

Introduction—specific actions.

Discipline or practice—ways and catalysts, mechanics, elements, and phases—sharing the aim of realization: political, economic, and universal (spiritual) dimensions | reflection on the needs and on effective communication.

Aims—shared being | understanding nature and path of shared realization (this aim has two parts, the one stated and an implicit one—i.e. secular engagement informed by and supportive of the shared being and realization).

Mode—intrinsic and. instrumental.

Vehicle—civilization | being.

Means—shared ideas and action | shared development of mechanics.

Phase—identity-civilization | universal-all.

Place—psyche and society; consider a tour of spiritual groups, universities and other institutions; establishing / living in a dedicated—spiritual—community | universe.

Time—2015⁺.

Sequence—after or parallel to Beyul and quest for vision.

Action—action as practice.

Discussion—

5. Artifactual being

Introduction—specific actions.

Discipline or practice—ways and catalysts, mechanics, elements, and phases—direct experiment with organic, mechanical, and symbolic being: | related conceptual development (e.g. theory of artificial being).

Aims—independent and adjunct being.

Mode—instrumental-artifactual.

Vehicle—organic level of being.

Means—emphasizes concepts to be modeled and on the nature of practical, experimental, and evolutionary implementation.

Phase—artifact-technology.

Place—society; universities and other research (and development) institutions.

Time—2015⁺.

Sequence—after engagement in the world.

Action—concepts and experiment in a shared and designed institutional context.

Discussion—

6. Pure being

Introduction—general action.

Discipline or practice—ways and catalysts, mechanics, elements, and phases—meditative expansion of and freedom in conscious space | reflexive development.

Aims—my being as part of Being; consciousness as part of Consciousness | understanding.

Mode—intrinsic.

Vehicle—self and sharing experience-learning (civilization) | being.

Means—ideas co-illuminating practice-action | being—open search for direct transformation.

Phase—universal-all.

Place—‘here’ | all.

Time—‘now’ | all.

Sequence—when satisfied with the ‘action’ phases | in view of approaching death.

Action—practice (and ritual) as action | action as practice.

Discussion—

Realization

Thus far

My process so far, which I regard as in process, lies in the combination of nature immersion as ground and as inspiration, experience with psychic catalysts (non drug), spiritual endeavor, learning from the tradition, and the ideas and publication of this work.

What do I feel is most significant, over and above the general endeavor? It is nature immersion, the ideas, and their interrelation.

Future

My plan and hope is to extend the work so far—to continue exploration of this world and the ultimate; to extend it in a variety of ways to the social world and civilization—publication of course, but also to attempt to entrain civilization in the process, and perhaps as a specific way of sharing and mutual endeavor, to establish a research and action group or institute dedicated to ‘journey in being’.