The three images of Figure 9 offer broad hints of the way in which the dismissal of the epistemology of naïve realism retilts the Mind/Brain playing field, causing Mind to acquire a substantial advantage over its cortical substratum –to the point where it may seem that there’s more inside –in terms of the richness of content- than given in aggregate by the whole of the physical Cosmos

          What is so apt to prevent one from coming into full possession of the consequences of its dismissal is the stark counter-intuitiveness of the notion. It is only when this is resolute overcome –at the ‘gut’ level- that one is primed to tackle a most intriguing domain of enquiry, namely that of a neo-Husserlian phenomenology. This virtually untapped field promises rich rewards whose implications can only be vaguely guessed at. What I am talking about is a completely novel mode of introspection in which the enquiry investigates how he himself as agent grasps a hold of the surrogate image of reality that the faculty of perception presents him with. As a very simple example, when I decide to move my hand to reach for the cup of coffee standing near the laptop I am working with at this moment, I don’t at all enter upon the sequence of events actually taking place in external reality. If I did, then I would sense myself reaching within my head for that reaching of the motor cortex that couples to my right arm. But I do nothing of the kind. What I experience, in entertaining this introspection is of my psyche –as a kind of adaptable field –reaching out and suffusing my hand, articulating it in a the needed train of configurations that achieves the objective. In so doing, I by-pass not only the cortex, but also the efferent peripheral innervation, and finally the discrete set muscles in arm and hand.. Indeed, unless one is versed in Gray’s anatomy, one may have only a vague knowledge of what these may be.

            Figure 12 has been put together to drive home the very different ways in which the two epistemologies view matters of the isolation of mind. What both parties are viewing is a well known painting of Botticelli’s.

           The Naive Realist believes mind to be open on the outside but closed on the inside. The internal closure follows automatically from the mainstream intellectual’s secular weltbild; there is simply no realm of Transcendence ‘out there’ to be coupled to. The mind, along with everything else is taken –at most- to be ontologically self-sufficient. However, to minimize its threat to the autonomy of physics, the positivist would prefer to make its ontology physically dependent –a perverse bottom-up epiphenomenon exhibited when matter is appropriate organized. Even a psychic presence –as efficacious agency- is called into question –being dismissed as no more than the mind viewed top-down. In contrast, the representational epistemology discounts any questions of a psychic outreach onto the Botticelli masterpiece; the connection is physical and neural only, through the mediation of hints provide by low frequency trains of impulses. But the conscious moment of the agency of the self and the microcosmic image that it entertains is very much informed by the immanent presence of the Gottheit from which it continuingly receives its being. This is an openness of an altogether deeper and higher kind than that granted to the naïve realist; it is ontological, not physical. It furnished a security which mitigates against the alienation to which followers of Mainstream doctrine are so prone. This, surely, provides one final reason why the doctrine –though virtually certain to be false- cannot be given up. For if it were, the he would find himself walled up in a claustrophobic world in danger of imploding into solipsism.

          I have constructed the figure in an attempt to portray the opposite ways in which the two epistemologies view the Mind/Brain relationship. As the figure makes clear, for the naïve realist, most of what is experienced is outside; what the mind harbours are mostly the secondary qualities of colour, flavour, timbre, touch, etc –the so-called ‘secondary’ qualities. As the4 figure suggests it is the brain which is dominant. At least this is the way it used to be, back in the days of John Locke et al. However, it has now become clear to the advocates of this epistemology that ‘primary’ as well as ‘secondary’ qualities must be projected. Given the way in which modern physics now knows the material world to be put together, Botticelli’s beautiful canvas is, in itself, a conglomeration of a huge number of particles many orders of magnitude beyond access, and hardly of a form offering a suitable interface of access. For visual perception to have become possible, it has therefore become necessary for mind to put together a matching image that preserves the configuration of the object under review at mesoscopic and macroscopic levels. In summary, it has had to be conceded that not only secondary, but also primary qualities must be preserved within mind and projected in acts of perception. The left hand image of Figure 10 portrays the outreach of consciousness as a stack of images in which the primary and secondary qualities take hold. At the top of the stack are the secondary qualities of the image. The three circular icons which follow attempt to portray the way in which the primary qualities interface with the actual physical canvas ‘out there'.

          Glancing now at the representationist schema on the right; there is no trace of ambiguity concerning what’s in side and what’s out. All primary and secondary qualities reside in mind to which they are forever confined, and furthermore with a richness of presence that outweighs –and in a sense envelopes the cortex upon which they depend.

"…..The soul must put off equality with God in order to realize identity with God."

          However, we need be cautious not to overstate the implications of this ontological closeness. As will be shown when we come to take a final look at the ‘God Question’ further below, it does nothing to undermine the prerogatives of the divinity

          When this final insight is projected into Figure 10, it becomes overwhelmingly obvious that we are about as far away from isolation as it is possible to get; to the extent that this thesis is truly embraced, no trace or suspicion of alienation can remain.

          Figure 13 presents the same message from a different viewpoint; it portrays a pluralist Reality that has been limited to five persons for pedagogical reasons. Figure 14 has been added to display the way I which Figure 13 has been arrived at as the final step in the deepening of an ontology that starts from classical theism.

          It is neither to be anticipated nor necessarily to be desired, that the regeneration of which we are in need should endow us with powers of mystical encounter. That such should be the apex of personal existence –as supposed by monks and monasteries- follows naturally from a failure to recognize that it is only in the future that eternal personhood is to be found, and that it is the mission of all intelligent beings to make this happen. It is mysticism enough for us to come into possession of a subliminal awareness of our begottenness –that I am immersed with a holistic presence that is, indeed, ‘closer to me than am to myself. Mysticism remains appropriate for those able to acquire the necessary competence, but again, it should be regarded as a temporary break –aimed at a kind of spiritual refreshment rather than as an end in itself. We are here to act, not to lose ourselves in the comfort of the kind of enduring remedial escape that some of the eastern and Western sages have urged.

         But we’re still not quite done –so please read on to the final section. 

          These important matters will be given a final review in the final chapter to follow that takes a final look at the vexed ‘God question’.

          The addition of this attribute of plurality rounds out the Positive node configuration. Its –deeply sequestered- components are those of Spirit, Form and Substance. Both its Substance and the Plurality aspect of Eros are acquired from the Nonbeing node when ‘Becoming’ is launched by the epigenetic fracture of the Ungrund.

          The view of the essence of personhood, offered up to this point, has been presented by a series of snapshot photos. The complementary description that follows presents an orthogonal overview of my odyssey from start to finish –from eternity to eternity- as taken by an elapsed-time camera

        There was never a time when we were not our origins were already present within the Ungrund:

          However, we did not (and still do not) exist there as protomonads, nor are we in any way distinguished from individuals who might have existed but never, in fact, came to be Our form, there, is not of a dispositional, but rather of an instantional nature. Ignoring germinal endowments for the moment, my dispositional mind –my persona- came to be put together by a stream of instantiations that progressively integrated and consolidated into the ‘synthetic invariant’ of my mind and its agent; you might say that I am of Gödelian origin. All of the instantiations from which I have put myself (implicitly) together always existed as potentials within the Ungrund. What it is important to emphasize is that they were not –and are not- ‘strung together’. If they were, this would signal a dispositional proto-presence which is precisely what must be denied. Such objects would be contingent rather than necessary, hence if present would compromise the self-necessity of the Ungrund. Exactly the same applies to Omega; His source is not uniquely determined but is present as a set of possibilities from which an appropriate selection shall be made when the time comes. Finally, this total gamut of possibilities is not present as an exhaustive enumeration –as the above way of putting things might suggest- but rather as a very powerful protopersonal invariant.

          This way of stating things omits the initial two steps in the opening becomingness of the Ungrund. –take a look at Figure 16. The metaprocess is initiated by the pristine spirit (my analogue of the First Person of the Trinity –corresponding roughly to Eckhart’s ‘Gottheit’. His pulling of Himself out of the darkness of the Ungrund might be thought of as the first step of what Böhme had in mind. But contrary to Böhme, this as far as Godship can emerge at the level of holism. From hereon out, we are need to do for the Gottheit what he cannot do for Himself. But our first entrance upon the stage –as the spectrum of possibilities referred to above- is purely passive –we are simply carried along as the Gottheit completes the unwrapping process. Our deepest origins within the Ungrund is within the Nonbeing node wherein we constitute the pluralistic aspect of spirituality and monadship. In our private origins we are axiological inverses of the Gottheit in that we preserve the essence of the possibilities of negative Being, including -quintessentially the roots of horrendous evil and suffering. At this stage, we were yet to come into the ontological inheritance of a " < = " attachment to Divinity. There is a connection, but it is the uncompromising one or Monism > Pluralism. And finally, its topological orientation is the reverse of that needed to permit us to be begotten into actual existence from the darkness of our potential existence.

         It is only when the unfurlment and unwrapping is complete, and the floor of finite unity is exposed, that the Gottheit can come into the potency of the Third member of the trinity. This makes begottenness possible in which we come into our " < = " legacy, The first being to emerge was presumably the most primitive of all –he who instituted the ‘big bang’.

          Figure 16 also displays the progressive changes in the topology of the temporal thrust. At the first level of the unfurlment the forwards intention is the opposite of what is needed in the coming relam of existence, at this level, it is also opposed by the opposite thrust within Positive Being. In the relaxation which follows its orientation is neutral, as suggested by its vertical orientation –a kind of ‘running in place’. It is only when the Realm of Existence finally manifests that the temporal orientation becomes productive.;

          This very powerful ontology carries with it an active cutting edge; at each moment we take a substantional –if sotto voce- hand in deciding what king of being we wish to bring into progressively bring into existence.

          That of 'limbic' character has been a part of vertebrate evolution almost from the start, though my cortical, 'philosophical' temperament only started to emerge at that point at which the cortex ceased to be a mere cognitive instrument of the 'limbic' brain, and acquired its own autonomy only with the arrival of man himself -more particularly with Homo Sapiens- hence goes back only of the order of 100,000 years. It is at this point that we emerged from the tunnel of instinct and arrived at the point at which we could start to charter our own course. But instinctual forces remain very much within the picture -and necessarily so, for every reason. What the cortex has come to possess are special efferent nerves which can be brought to bear upon the expression of limbic urges of all kinds -though in the face of what may be affective pressures of the most extreme kind. Both aspects of mind are essential and intrinsically valuable; but the cortex needs to be in charge; though it may and should liberate limbic forces as appropriate.

          What has to be born in mind with respect to the above, is that there exists within germinal mind an actual psychic awareness of the nature of mind which is intended. It takes the form appropriate to germinal mind which is very different in character to the somatic, brain-based mind to which it gives rise during the process of ontogenesis. Its consciousness is distributed, and of an analogue character, totally lacking in all discursive attributes -simply because the germinal monad doesn't have the kind of ontophoric substratum which could supply appropriate underpinnings. But the point I’m trying to make here is the way in which the core of the germinal persona entertains this somatic image. It is the leading edge of its persona, so that germinal mind, as it were, identifies with it when the moment comes to launch the embryogenesis of the intended organism. It is as though germinal mind had said "this might be worth trying; let’s bring it forth and find out’"

          This early entrance of germinal mind upon the scene makes it evident that all of us are much older than we think!

          We now come to my actual emergence, starting with my conception and birth. The ontogenesis which brought me forth had two components, one obvious and the other more subtle. First of course is the magical embryological unfolding of body and brain occurring in the uterus and persisting post-natally. But there is also a hidden transfer of the genetic endowments of mind listed above. In the process of so doing, the faint glimmer which they enjoyed within the germplasm undergoes a huge Gnostic and affective amplification; the germplasm's vision of the mind has finally come into its own. Unlike its germinal anticipation, it’s no longer walled-in but is open to the outside world. Most immediately here, it has an outside-in grasp upon the rest of the germinal endowment –its and our own body.

          Obviously, my evolving psyche and mind are very heavily dependent upon the immediate cultural environment, starting with the nurture provided by my parents. And the kind of beings which we have all become would be quite impossible in the absence of the cultural heritage which has been evolving at an accelerated rate during recent millennia.

          During the whole of my lifetime, it is my fate to have to juggle with two competing reasons for being. First of all, it is of the nature of things that the living eternal person of Nous can only be brought into beings through the joint efforts of all of the finite beings who shall appear as evolution proceeds. To say this is to assign an instrumental purpose that may not at all correspond to what we have in mind for ourselves. Yet at the same time, each of us is the closest that the Gottheit who continually ‘exists’ us can get to the Nous whose creations is his raison d’etre. As such we have an entitlement to put ourselves at the center of the universe and take charge as though it were out there ready to be captured in an unending growth process. These two reasons for being create for each of us something of a conflict of interest which must be resolved by giving our instrumental significance the upper hand. The pursuit of happiness has full legitimacy only in proportion as it is entertained when there is nothing more important at hand. In support of this, I think it is fair to say that as a matter of simple observation, an exclusive dedication to personal satisfaction –even when conducted at the higher level of an egoism-a-deux, or at a higher cultural level, is ultimately self-defeating

          Once more it is important to insist that the transcendental Nous within which all of us shall find our eschatological completion, shall be an incarnate being –if only because monads cannot exist in the absence of a material substratum of some sort within which to embed themselves. The difference between finite and eternal life is not between the spiritual and the material, but rather the way in which time is handled. ‘Down here’ the ‘now’ of the chronon can only stand its ground for so long (though –for all we know- towards the end of evolution, its duration may come to be measured in millennia). It is vanquished time to which it is always captive: The ‘nows’ of the chronon are sequenced within time. But ‘on the far side’ the sequence of temporality shall run within an eternal Now.

          Here, by way of recapitulation, is a listing of the ‘seven stages of man’ as they come to take their place within the philosophical overview of my Weltanschauung:

(1).A hidden presence as the spectrum of the instantiations of which it will turn out to need

(2).During the unfurlment, these will become increasingly manifested –while remaining inactive

(3).There will be a hiatus –from the Big Bang till the early grounding of my Germinal Mind

(4).A further period of a billion years must elapse to bring me to the birth of my somatic persona

(5).My somatic lifetime of a few decades

(6).A second hiatus till the eschatological terminus (broken, however, by the epigenetic Tau lifeline

(7).The apocalyptic event when I am recovered to enter eternal life

          Figure 18 offers a second summary that underscores these features. First –as perhaps the figure suggests- the early unfurlment phase stretching from the Ungrund to the launching of the cosmos is 100% epigenetic and continues to preside over everything which follows –including, finally eternal life itself. Second, the way in which my germinal mind stretches backwards over a long reach of time. Shown whited out is how my brain evolved during this period. Next, the only aspect of my lifetime which I shall bring into eternity are my two Tau life lines –epigentically preserved in frozen time. This both my eveolving agency from the cradle to the grave together with the flavour of each moment of passing time. But this cannot come alive in eternity limited to these resources. A new mental vehicle and world beyond is needed, and we shall find this waiting for us at the apocalyptic moment. As the figure clearly shows, these facilities shall be provided for us by Beta Omega within which we shall be able to take root to find our completion. .