How to read the way

The way is concerned with immediate things and the ultimate. It is essential that in approach to the ultimate, the meanings and system of ideas should attempt to go beyond the received; therefore, readers should attend to concept meanings as introduced, and system meaning as it emerges. Readers ought not to expect confirmation of their preferred paradigms of the ‘real’. It may be useful to read the material two times, noting but withholding criticism on the first reading. Thus, an intuition of the metaphysics of the way may be built up—or rejected if the reader is not satisfied by the arguments.

The way touches on a number of problems of philosophy, to which there is no current consensus resolution. In the development some of these problems are given some resolution; others are found to be capable of being bypassed without detriment to achieving the aim of the way. Viewed individually, the problems are often seen as puzzles. The purpose to the address of these problems is that they are part of a circle of issues that empowers the development; it is the circle that has depth. However, since the aim here is not primarily philosophical, there will be no remark at the relevant places that “this is or was a fundamental and incompletely resolved problem”.

Contents

The aim of the way … 2

Experience and being … 2

The universe, natural laws, and the void … 5

The fundamental principle of metaphysics, identity, cosmology … 6

Realization, pathways, enjoyment, the aim of being … 8

Doubt; alternative attitudes to the fundamental principle … 8

Tradition and the real metaphysics … 9

Realization … 10

Dimensions of being … 11

Means of realization … 13

Templates for realization … 13

Everyday template … 14

Universal template … 15

Resources … 16

The Way of Being

The aim of the way

The aim of the way of being is shared discovery and realization of the ultimate in and from the immediate.

Experience and being

Experience is awareness in all its forms. There is a sense in which we never transcend experience—the measure of experience is further experience. Experience is the place of all significance, language and concept meaning, knowledge, and identity.

A being is an existent—that which is (in some sense of the verb to be); being is the characteristic of beings as beings.

Used in this sense, being does not carry specialized meanings from classical or modern thought. On the present meaning, those other meanings, so far as they are real, could be seen as defining kinds of being.

Thus ‘being’, should it prove to be the ground of all things and foundational to knowledge, would be absolutely so, at least in some ways, for it does not refer beyond itself (particularly it does not need the posit of substance, resort to endless regress, or the somewhat arbitrariness of coherence among ideas, which are the downfalls of traditional foundations). It will be found that, though simple, the idea of being is not trivial—rather, it will be found to have ultimate power in the directions of depth of understanding, and breath of inclusivity, at least implicitly and to some extent explicitly, of all existents and their kinds.

The being that has no power (interaction, cause-effect) with self or other does not exist.

That there is being, is known by abstraction which is the removal from a concept of details that are subject to distortion.

A pattern obtains when the data to specify a being (e.g., an individual or cosmos) is less than the raw data. Patterns have being—i.e., are beings.

So far as they are real the following have being—i.e., are beings (i) ideas (ii) concepts, including linguistic concepts (iii) signs, letters of alphabets, parts of speech, clauses, sentences, and other linguistic constructs (iv) universals (e.g., redness—which is distinct from a ball that is red, but is universal to all red things) and particulars (e.g., a red ball) (v) tropes (e.g., the redness of a red ball) (vi) concreta and abstracta.

When the concept of experience is extended, actually or potentially, it is found to be the essence of power or interaction. Therefore, being is essentially experiential. That we do not transcend experience is not a limitation on what we are or may achieve.

An interpretation is a picture of (a phase of) the world that is consistent with experience. An interpretation of the world as a society of experiential beings (‘selves’ and ‘others’) in a material environment, with a range of forms of life, is untenable when ‘matter’ is regarded as being essentially non-experiential. The following are valid (i) the previous ‘material’ interpretation modified so that the environment also has experientiality, at a level so low as to count as at or near zero (ii) the world or universe as a field of experiential being with experientiality ranging down to zero in magnitude but not in quality, which manifests as a structured physical (but not non-experiential) environment, with complex centers (life) and bright and layered centers (markedly experiential beings), and (iii) interpretation ii, in which the greatest possibility is realized (i.e., given a consistent concept it is realized somewhere in the universe). Interpretations i and ii are equivalent; interpretation iii includes cases of i and ii and many others including the ‘invalid’ case above (it is invalid as a description of our world but there may be worlds that are effectively strictly material).

The universe, natural laws, and the void

The universe is all being (or all beings), manifest and non-manifest.

The void is the absence of being and may be seen as non-manifest. The existence and non-existence of the void are equivalent and therefore the void may be taken to exist.

A (natural) law of the world is a pattern. Laws have being—i.e., laws are beings. There are no laws in the void because the void, though it has being, contains no beings.

A concept that has the form of reference to an object, is essentially consistent if it can have a manifest (non-null) object in some world. A being is possible if its concept is essentially consistent.

The concept of essential consistency is that of logical consistency. The idea of logic is crucial to a full development of the metaphysics of the way, but the idea itself is developed in other versions of the way (see a précis of the way of being for an introductory treatment). It ought to be said, here, that while what follows from logic alone is ultimately sterile, what is allowed by logic and what is the function of logic in the metaphysics, is ultimately rich in both quantity and quality. In other treatments, the concept of logic is further developed to include, not only logic in its formal and informal senses of deductive and inductive inference, but also to include the abstract and concrete sciences—see bare content for a sketch.

If from the void a possible being never emerged, that would be a law of the void, but the void has no laws.

The fundamental principle of metaphysics, identity, cosmology

Therefore, all possible beings emerge from the void. All possible beings exist somewhere in the extent (spatiotemporal) of the universe. In just that sense, the universe is the greatest possible. The three foregoing sentences are formulations of what will be called the fundamental principle of metaphysics.

It follows that interpretation iii above holds, provided it is allowed that in any world, experientiality potentially reaches down to the most elementary beings, and that in some worlds, it indeed reaches all the way down. A takeaway is that ‘matter’ and ‘mind’ are two sides of being and that even though we experience them as distinct, they are not.

The assertions to that follow are implications of the fundamental principle. It is possible, therefore true that individuals inherit the power of the universe; this is not contradictory in that (i) they may inherit ultimate power at different times (ii) they inherit ultimate power in merging as one. The universe has identity (i.e., a sense of sameness of self or an object). The universe and its identity are limitless in extension, duration, variety, peak, and dissolution of being. There are endless arrays of cosmoses of endless variety in physical law. The universe and its beings are eternal transaction with one another, which includes transaction with the void. The universe is repository of individual identity, which in its individuated form may lack recollection of its higher forms but has that recollection in its pre-individuated form. The universe may be described as a block that covers its being in extension and duration as if it were a static block. Beings and their realizations and dissolutions, and their mergings can be seen as the evolutions and interactions of bundles of rays in the block and it is here that there is sharing, merging, and splitting of identities. The universe is absolutely deterministic in that all beings are realized; but absolutely indeterministic in that any state of being may emerge from any other. Determinism is relative to coherent phases such as cosmoses; an individual in a cosmos would find the cosmos to exhibit both determinism and indeterminism but the universe as a whole as undetermined relative to their cosmos; a (the) peak being would find the universe determined.

Realization, pathways, enjoyment, the aim of being

Realization of the ultimate is given; however there are intelligent and effective paths to the ultimate; to be on a path is not just to follow but also to develop and negotiate paths and pathways; pleasure and pain are inevitable; enjoyment is the proper appreciation of pleasure and pain and must be an ultimate value if there are values at all; if enjoyment is a value, it is imperative to be on a (shared) path; the problems of pain and pleasure are best resolved by dual address—direct address and being on a path. The aim of being is the aim of the way of being.

Doubt; alternative attitudes to the fundamental principle

We ought to doubt these developments. The crucial point at which doubt should have occurred was in asserting proof of existence of the void—was that proof real or merely formal? How may we address this doubt? It is critical to first see that since essential consistency (logic) has not been violated, the developments are consistent with experience. They may be in contradiction with some of our traditional paradigms of thought and with science where science is seen as asserting the nature of the universe, but true science does not do that—it says what there is, at least pragmatically, but not what there is not (for the latter is projection). Therefore, the following alternates to the attitude of truth arise (i) to regard the fundamental principle as a metaphysical postulate, where metaphysics is understood as knowledge of the real (and the critical and imaginative principles of such knowledge) (ii) an existential principle of action, transformation, and living.

Tradition and the real metaphysics

The developments so far show an ideal and that the ideal may and will be achieved but not how to achieve it. The gap is supplied by tradition—which is here seen as what is valid in cumulative human culture, knowledge, understanding and reason (which will be understood to include not just activities of mind but also of experiment, exploration, and reflection on the same; in contrast to tradition, reason will also be understood to include understanding—direct knowledge and its means and which contrasts to inferred knowledge, the traditional meaning of ‘reason’). On some of its own criteria (truth, perfect correspondence in knowledge), tradition is found wanting. But the fundamental principle is true, which is made possible by abstraction, and found true via strict reason. It reveals an ideal, for which the means, tradition, need not have correspondence perfection. Tradition has pragmatic worth, and, especially if no more is possible, no more is needed as a complement to the ideal. In terms of this new insight, the pragmatic is perfect. What results is a dual system, each perfect according to dual but appropriate criteria; the ideal illuminates and guides the pragmatic, while the pragmatic illustrates and provides direction toward the ideal; this dual but seamless system is named the real metaphysics (this allows that the traditional criteria still have significance, but that those criteria are to be seen in perspective—they are not ultimate in significance).

Realization

How is the ultimate achieved? It is given that it is. It need not be a compulsion or obsession. We may lay down paths without claiming them to be the only paths or to insist that a path must be followed; however, if the paths are not laid down in too much detail and if they have derivation from the real metaphysics, they may, from sufficient but not too much abstraction, be found universal.

In one vision, we may see our progress toward the universal as migration from one level of being to another, via a progression of cosmoses, via civilization expanding into the universe. In another, we may see our real selves, the ones that are eternal elements of the universe, may be found in a given lifetime for a being that has, as we do, some of the primitive elements to be on a pathway (and hence the term in some ways of being, of ‘this precious life’, which is not to be wasted).

From the fundamental principle, realization in ‘this life’ is possible; however, from realism, it seems unlikely. Patience with diligence and commitment help sustain a sense of realism in aiming at the ultimate.

Dimensions of being

As preliminary to pathways, let us develop pure and pragmatic ‘dimensions of being’—i.e., aspects of beings that allow them to be known, and therefore instrumental toward achieving goals, particularly the aim. What makes a being identifiable is form, which requires extension (‘space’). The void has no form; we may say it has a ‘null’ form. A being may be atemporal (at times); however, experience requires change, which requires duration (‘time’). The pure dimensions are experiential being in form and formation (Form) as the world.

The pragmatic dimensions need not be perfect, e.g., in a correspondence sense, and may be taken from the paradigms of one’s culture—I will select the following. The main dimensions are the world as we find it or nature, the world as we collectively build it—society (with culture), and the world as we become it on the way to ultimate and universal being.

Nature is (a) elementary or physical, (b) complex or living, and (c) experiential (experience for individuals is relatively bound as in perception and primitive feeling, relatively free as in thought and emotion, which require memory to represent self and world, and join together in anticipation and will).

Culture is a repository of means and content for knowledge and transformation of the world—natural and social sciences which include politics and economics, abstract sciences which include mathematics and metaphysics, technology, art, drama, literature, music, and history. What is valid in religion, especially search for possibilities of being, and transcendence of secular reality, may be incorporated under metaphysics, technology, art, drama, literature, and music. Culture is a society’s map of being.

Means of realization

Western culture as depicted above and enhanced by the real metaphysics (with reason), has, already, a map and key to the universal. The means are metaphysics, reason, meditation, and technology. Meditation is not to be understood as defined by any culture or system. It is a conceptual-experimental approach to (the beginning of) expanding individual experience out to become the universe. The different systems are experiments in meditation. To become the universe is one goal individual meditation may have. Since meditation is transformation of experiential self, it can be seen as ‘intrinsic’. In transformation, it is matched by instrumental transformation, by external means, such as physical action, diet, and technology. But in the ultimate, as the universe is experiential, there is no distinction between the intrinsic and the instrumental.

The narrative draws from western (America and Western Europe) and eastern (primarily Indian) cultures—the cultures with which I have some familiarity.

Templates for realization

The manual ends with two templates for realization and resources. They are inclusive, so as to be adaptable to a range of individual and social situations… and skeletal, so that they are not constraining and can be filled in per the need and inclination of the individual or group.

The principles of development of the templates include use of reason, the real metaphysics, and the dimensions of being.

Readers may render the templates in tabular form, with columns for time (hours of the day for the everyday, and phases of life and years for the universal template), activities to emphasize, progress, new ideas and remarks, and further details.

Everyday template

(1) Rise before the sun, dedicate to the way and its aim, affirm the universal nature of being, morning reflection in nature, breakfast. (2) Meditative-contemplative review priorities and plans—the way, life, the day. Reflect on realization, priorities, and means. (3) Realization—work, relationships, networking; ideas and action (e.g., this manual); experimental yoga and meditation—practice, action, sharing; other activities—engagement in the world, e.g., languages, art. (4) Tasks—day, week, … , year, and as needed; lunch; attitude—meditation in action, commitment with detachment; merges with realization. (5) Physical activity—exercise and exploration of the worlds of nature and culture for experience and inspiration. (6) Evening rest, renewal, review, meditation and realization, network, community, tasks, supper, preparation-dedication for the next day and future. Sleep early.

Universal template

(1) Being in the world—pure being, community; means—yoga (meditation), retreat for experience of the real. (2) Ideas—knowing as relation to the world, reason, art; acting effectively, creating the real; means—yoga (meditation), the real metaphysics, sharing—way of being website and its design, talks. (3) Becoming—nature as catalyst to the real. Animal being and devolution—observation, situational empathy, defocus, reason. (4) Becoming—society. Civilization as vehicle and path to the real. Transformation via psyche—by immersion in social groups as place of being and catalyst to the real. (5) Becoming—artifact. Civilizing the universe, especially technology as enhancing being in the universe—universe as peak consciousness via spread of sapient being. (6) Becoming—universal, incompletely known. The common way from self to Being (Atman to Brahman), via the block universe and extended secular worlds consistent with experience of and in the world. (7) Being in the universe—universal. Realizing peak being in the present; if rarely achieved, this life is a beginning that is continued beyond death. The means is in the previous items 1 – 6, the everyday template, and open.

Resources

Way of being site; planning. Detailed templates everyday template.pdf, universal template.pdf. Detailed conceptual system bare content.html. Brief essay precis.html. Dedication dedication-affirmation.pdf. More resources.html. A system of human knowledge (html). Some world problems and opportunities (html). Suggested reading.html. A reference on yoga (html). Some lessons as basis for talks.