Overview of the Process of Reality

          The entire odyssey of the Processing of Reality carries us from Eternity to Eternity -that is, from the diaphanous abstraction of the Ungrund to Eternal Life. Here are its seven stages:

          The present file takes us through stages (1) to (4).  The first three are metastages being confined to the realm of Transcendence  They set things up for the launching of actual cosmic (and later organic) existence.  Stage (4) carries us from the Big Bang intialization to the convergence to the unitary being of Omega.  The Chiliastic wind-up, the eschatological termination and Eternal Life are dealt with in the succeeding filelaunchoing. 

           The Beginning of the Beginning

          It is, perhaps over the matter of how the dynamism of ‘becoming can take origin from an Ungrund that is absolutely and necessarily at an eternal rest, that we face our greatest challenge. Right away, before making any attempt, one must grant that here as elsewhere, the grounding Reality of the Ungrund is not about to be outdone. The best that we can hope for are to speculate upon concepts that offer hints of what is afoot; never mind that nothing approaching an articulate focus is to be hoped for.

The first thing to be born in mind is that whatever metatransformations that are operative are of time as well as in it; We have to speak of a metaprocess whose major objective is that of the laying of the bearings of time itself. The mystics offer us a valuable hint here, in pointing out to us that a universal ‘Now’ stands above both eternal and temporal time –of which it is their origin. The monistic and holistic overtones of this prototime harmonize well with the higher monism of the Ungrund from which it evidently exists or emerges. And I follow Stace when he says that within the realm of Potentiality, The ‘end’ outranks the ‘beginning’ –of which I would add, it is its source. If the ‘Now comes first, then the End and the beginning follow as second and third.

          Again, in one’s persistent concern, not to rob the ungrund of its self-necessity through the imputation of features or properties, I would propose that the instability of Being making emergence possible is so slender as to amount to nothing more than a singularity. What I have in mind here –by way of analogy- is the way in which the finite closure of the sphere may be exploded into an infinite plain buy roving the single point of its North pole.

          Figure 6 employs the language of fields in coaxing a Becoming out of the stasis of the Ungrund.

         First comes a scalar Now, to be followed, successively by an axial and a linear vector. The axial vector, or ‘Curl’ is essentially a rotation –here to be interpreted as a ‘running in place’ –a motion devoid of translation. (It may be noticed in passing that we have all had phenomenal experience of such a vector. If one has been looking out of the window during a long train ride, things continue to move when the train halts at the next station; what we now observe out of the window ‘moves without moving... What this figure does not show is that the right-hand end of the vector emerges –instantaneously- ahead of its left-hand beginning.

          In the fourth image –in moving down through Figure 6- he see the completion of the ‘beginning’ sequence, we see the emergence of time’s ‘manifold’ attribute. Despite the linear stretch-out of the icon, no metrical Groundform has been manifest. It has not yet become a coordinate; this must await the coming of the cosmos. All that we have at the moment is the potential of the coordinate –the means by which it can be brought into existence when the appropriate time arrives. In itself, it is no more than a topological ordering. They provide the ultimate benchmarks within which any actual emerging coordinate is necessarily constrained. And notice, finally, that the ‘beginning’ benchmark emerges from the ‘end’, and not the other way about –as we have already noted in a quotation of W.T Stace’s

          Bringing Forth the Realm of Configured Potentiality

          Leaving matters of how things ‘start’ on one side, what hints may be offered about the ongoing ‘becoming’ –to finally terminate in the ‘Big Bang’? I have suggested these:  

O  We have to think in terms of a series of symmetry breakings that are trans-modal, that is involve categories other than those to which ortho-transformations are limited.  What I found was needed what a reformulation of the Hegelian ‘Logic’ of dialectics...

 

O  To preserve the Unity and monistic integrity of the Ungrund, it seemed to me necessary to insist that the metatransformations involved are of epigenetic rather than transient character.  What I mean here is that earlier states are not replaced by those to which they give rise, but persist unchanged.  Brahman acts without acting, as the Hindu theologian would put it. 

 

O Although I have found myself obliged to think of a stepwise seriality of events, once more, in order to ensure that things hang together in a larger unity, it is necessary to add that in the larger the process runs in parallel over whatever hints of seriality may be sequestered within

 

O The metaprocess is ‘relaxational’, in which its products emerge not as covenants from an invariant (or instantiations from a dispositional source) but as a ‘letting go’ –in which the origin of the apex releases a divergent cascade of differentiations.  As such, one might say –in the parlance of linguistics- that the elements of time are being mentioned as opposed to being actualized or raised to operational status

          When all is said and done, what this ‘Unfurlment' process ends up giving us is an articulate domain of the potentiality of time (as of the potentiality of everything else). It provides the Transcendental realm with all of the concepts and elements need to bring forth actual time –in all its manifestations to come. Included here are the subtleties needed to handle the chiliastic transformation, the eschatological termination of the finite cosmos that will be embodied in Omega, and finally, the nature the flow of time in eternal life.

          Time is a Process –not a manifold

          From start to finish, time is Process in nature; it is a mistake to believe that it is essentially a Manifold. However, in order to investigate the implications of schema embodying different alternative forms of Process time, it is convenient to study the manifold that an elapsed time camera would reveal. That is what I have done in the paragraphs that follow. A major characteristic is that they are essentially open; while they are being forever extended and swept out by the passing moment, at no point do they ever extend ahead of it. In addition, most forms take it to be the case that the future isn’t rigidly determined by the present but is subject to some degree of contingency; what actually emerges from the present is one of an envelope of possibilities. But since the publication of his celebrated paper on Special Relativity in 1905, it has come to be near-universally believed that the Michelson/Morley findings, about the constancy of the velocity of light, compel the belief that the future is predetermined –being ‘out there’ waiting to be moved into.

          The choice between them that needs to be made, however, is no trivial matter because of the contrasting implications of each concerning the nature of Reality -as this affects both physics itself and our standing as conscious beings.

          Reference is made to Figure 7. The top row of images depicts three alternative versions of space-time. The first is that enjoyed by classical, nineteenth century physics (and for that matter, by commonsense today). It gives us classical Newtonian space/time in terms of a rigid and invariant orthogonal grid which assigns each of the two parameters its unique presence, uncontaminated by the other. There is a clear-cut modal disjunction between the two parameters.

          Thanks to the discovery by Michelson & Morley, however, whatever else, Newtonian space/time is gone forever. But it is important to be clear about how much has to be given up in accommodating their embarrassing disclosures. What we are obliged to concede is that the metrics of both time and space are no longer invariant, but are dependent upon the local state of motion; in formal terms, we must replace the Galilean transformation by its Lorenzian counterpart. It also follows that we are barred from access to a universal time, and can longer get our hands upon the inertial coordinates in order to establish absolute position. Nor can we, in the general case, determine the order of two events displaced from each other in time and space. We cannot cleanly distinguish between them. The limit of what we can directly know is portrayed graphically by the Minkowski manifold –depicted in the second of the three images in the figure. This odd metrical Groundform is due to the fact that while space is ‘normal’, the coordinate of time is negative –or, more properly ‘imaginary’. In our attempts follow up on the implications and significance of this counter-intuitive manifold, two alternatives are open to us. Neither can be proved superior to the other -either by process of formal inference or by empirical interrogation. In selecting one over the other, therefore, we are but taking a position or adopting a posture.

          The most straightforward choice is to assume that despite their being beyond reach, both absolute time and the inertial coordinates remain firmly in place, and that events are, in fact, uniquely ordered in time. The immediate implication is that the inertial manifold directly impacts objects that are moving through it, the effect scaling up with velocity. We are therefore in need of an extension to the laws of physics to underwrite these changes. One thinks, instinctively, in terms of some analogue of inertial drag, the necessary equations needed to carry us into this Neoreality have already been given us by physicist Simon Prokhovnik, for one. Commonsense has no difficulty in accommodating itself to this new world; it may be looked upon as simply a more complicated version of classical Reality. This is particularly the case, given the high velocities needed to make their effect apparent.

          But if one recoils from the counter-intuitive image of reality that this depicts, then the Minkowski manifold is put in its place by downgrading from the Olympian heights of the ontic to the work-a-day status of the epistemic. It is no longer reality, but all that we are able or are allowed to see of it. Take a look at the lower right construction in Figure 7. The Neorealist world that’s assumed to be actually "out there" is depicted by a grid in which Newtonian orthogonality has suffered local distortions due to different states of motion distributed throughout the domain. To clarify exposition, the velocities in question have been made very large. It is as though the plain glass pane of the classical window of observation had been replaced by a Fresnel lens. This remarkable pane –if it existed in Reality- would be constructed of material unknown to the artisans of Venice or elsewhere, because of the negative (or ‘imaginary’) status of the vertical axis. This lens stands between the observer and the neophysical world beneath. The lens both filters and distorts the image of the world below. As the figure shows, these effects, corrupting the image that passes through are plainly visible to the observer.

          One is very much left wondering why the option that bristles with contradictions should be universally accepted as the default choice between the two alternatives. Occam’s razor is what is customarily offered but it is hard to see why this should be sufficient; after all what Occam had in mind was a razor, not an axe –and his principle is an heuristic rather than a categorical imperative The simpler of two alternatives (here, the assumption that what cannot be accessed does not exist) is only to be accepted other things being equal. This is very much not the case here. Let’s consider some of the deleterious consequences of making this choice

O The dismissal of a material, physical world cannot but contribute to the sense of alienation to which  we are currently all too prone.

                   

O The counter-intuitiveness of the Minkowski manifold with its imaginary axis

 

O The Future is totally determined;  it’s just as though it were already ‘out there’ waiting to be moved into.  This puts paid to Process time and to the openness of the human initiative.

 

O Extended into General relativity, it has been pushed into the service of time travel, among other things.  Science is degenerating evermore into science fiction.

          When this is pointed out to the proponents of relativity, they are apt to insist that counter arguments stemming from subjective judgments that are no part of the physical domain simply do not ‘count’. One can win any argument by such high-handed maneuvers.

          It has always seemed to me that that the substitution of science with science fiction can be viewed as a piece of poetic justice. Having discarded the wine with the lees (in his retreat from doctrinal theism) the secular-minded intellectual has created a drab world destitute of the kind of magic that his soul hungers after He is fascinated by the baffling singularities of ‘black holes’ in which local existence can be crunched into annihilation. Here again, science fiction has the edge over science –and this despite the fact that the General theory’s exclusive author, to the end of his life never accepted them. This situation cries out for a return to the science of physics that addresses the nature of the formalism embedded within a physical substratum What we need is an extension to the equations of General Relativity that underwrite some analogue of a phase change. No one doubts that when a body moves inside its Schwartzchild radius, a drastic contraction ensues. I think it is fair to say that we have firm astronomical confirmation of this inference. One thing needed to be sought after is this; where does the contraction end? For general relativity as it stands today, it terminates in an annihilating singularity of nonbeing. What we need is an extension of the equations of General theory that define a phase change to produce a highly compact form of matter. When water vapour moves inside its dew point, it implodes –not ‘all the way’ to a point, but halts after two or three orders of magnitude to become a drop water. .

          However, the plot thickens. The unequivocal disconfirmation of Bell’s theorem (and corresponding affirmation of the ‘EPR’ conjecture) by establishing that certain arbitrarily widely separated events were in instantaneous communication with each other, by Alain Aspect and others seemed to compel acceptance of a universal time –which of course runs counter to one of relativity’s tenets) (in the EPR Gedanken experiment, Einstein and his colleagues had pointed out that if quantum theory were true then it would seem to follow that instantaneous communications should be possible under certain conditions. He Called these ‘'Spukhaftefernwirkungen" -spookie actions at a distance)

          The fate of the fully objective aspect of mind’s odyssey is the exact reverse. Each passing instant will be totally lost; nothing of it will be preserved. Much of the same applies –at a different level- to dispositional mind. Although its content at each passing moment largely preserved, objective mind is ultimately lossy, in that it undergoes total dissolution at death; the material substance thus released is thereby made available for incorporation in life forms to follow.

          Cosmic & Organic Evolution

         How are we to get from here to there? The problem is unique acute at the era in which I am writing. Life only started a few billion years ago, and intelligent mind –capable of thinking things through, only for two or three thousand. One has only to glance at the vastness of the cosmos to appreciate how far we have to go in achieving an organic takeover –with final convergence to Omega. This means that extrapolation from what has happened to date –even when including the kinds of extensions to the lex naturalis that we have been contemplating won’t take us more than a few steps along the way. No matter; there’s no harm in simply releasing the imagination and seeing what it comes up with. There is nothing pseudoscientific about this –so long as we bear in mind what it is that we are doing. –so long as we are not precipitous in imputing them to Reality itself. What I have in mind would be more appropriately called futurist fiction –to free it of the Cyborg stigma. There is a chance that such fantasies may turn up some heuristics.

          Let’s go back and start at the beginning –at the kind of universe that the ‘Big Bang’ gave us, and which is essentially still with us today. Why is it the way it is? It is massively pluralistic because nothing less will give us the limiting finite set from which omega shall be crafted. It is physically huge, because given its primitive 3-d manifold, only thus can each primitive particle be accorded a private space within which to operate. It only has three dimensions because that’s all its destitute ontology can come up with. It is inhospitable to life as it stands. Life cannot make a start until there have been extensive inorganic developments –in the form of populations of stars which produced and extruded those elements of the periodic table inseparable from living protoplasm.

          First, it has taken germinal mind 3 ½ billion years to arrive at Homo sapiens. For most of this period, life was unicellular; not much more was to happen until the atmospheric concentration of oxygen had reached levels comparable with what we know today. The completion of this stage was followed by the multicellular Cambrian explosion, starting half a billion years ago –to terminate with Homo sapiens that is with the likes of you and I.

          The final item in the above listing will I believe, be met in two completely different ways, the first being an as yet unapparent consequence of the exotic extensions to physics already in free and essential use within all life forms, minds, and the phylogeny of evolution. It was suggested in an earlier discussion devoted to the need for an exotic physics that the phase change needed to be undergone by qualifying electrons is partial only, and in fact marginal and far too small to have made any apparent changes in the behavior of these electrons. But changes there must surely be, and as organism, grounded upon a post-protoplasmic substratum become sufficiently large, the fraction of each qualifying electron undergoing a phase change, the mental configuration –existing within a lattice space of unknown (yet clearly high) dimensionality- will acquire a mass and electric charge will sufficiently high to effect the geometry of the normal matter from which it is derived. It is mooted that these electrons –and the atoms and molecules with which they are associated will be partially drawn up into this exotic space. The distinction between the classical and conventional phases of the organism will come to share a substantial geometrical and topological interface. I have suggested that pushed to its limits, this would open the door to an arbitrarily large scale-up is the size of organisms.

          But this will only take us son far. In proportion as the organic realm captures the cosmos as a whole, we shall find ourselves in need of monads of stellar proportions; I suspect that these could only exist if grounded upon a substratum of the ultra dense matter produced by Schwartzchild collapses.

          What might be called the Schwartzchild take-over of the cosmos will lead to a huge contraction in is size and physical dimensions. If nothing else this should speed up communications. This might fall into useful step with what must surely be a huge lengthening of the chronon of all organisms, so that they would be able to take large chinks of the universe in active stride.

          What of encounters between competing life forms of independent origin? I take it that this will not be until advanced trans-germinal life forms have emerged; these will bear no resemblance to current science fiction odysseys involving cyborgs and the like. How long this will take to happen depends upon both rates of evolution and the plurality of living centres. It might well be that the final convergence will be an orderly planned integration engineered by a small group of large organism to which the cosmos will have become limited. It seems to me to be most unlikely that there will be Armageddon-like encounters; such assumptions would credit advanced life forms with our critical limitations as Homo caducus.