In this final wrap-up section, I shall do my best to estimate well this ‘systems philosophy: -The New Monadology measures up as a candidate for the New Paradigm; it has been written as much for my benefit as for yours. Just what was I trying to do, how did I go about it and how well did it work out? First must come an appraisal of the system itself, as a fully elaborated framework of ideas –i.e. as a cognitive edifice. In proportion as this passes muster, we are but brought to a half-way inn –somewhere to catch our breath before completing the journey towards a personal regeneration.

          I shall `conclude with some very personal reflections and observations

          As a Systems Philosophy; as an Edifice of Ideas

          I opened my quest with a series of ‘non-negotiable’ demands that, whatever else, these must be scrupulously adhered to. Here is a list of the more important items 

                1) The larger Reality must rest securely upon the Ungrund 

                2) The Ungrund Contains Nonbeing which is only Marginally Weaker than Its Positive Self

                3) We Enjoy a Strong Ontology;  We are Begotten, not Created 

                4) Eternal Life lies Ahead for All;  this Demands a Workable Eschatology

                5) Our Presence must have a Profound Significance;  We’re More than After thoughts

                6) Our Real-World Epistemology Isn’t one of ‘Naïve Realism’ but rather of Representationalism.

                7) The Raison D-etre of the Processing of Reality is the Confrontation and Defeat of Nonbeing

                 8) A Demand for an Exotic Extension to the Lex Naturalis

           The first in the above list was demanded to make reality self-necessary and self-sustaining. Without this assurance, it might have been that there was nothing rather than something. However, this Ungrund is not quite in the way that Böhme (and Tillich) envisaged, The major formal consequence of the second is than the evolution and processing needed to bring an eternal living Being (of which we shall all be aspects) into existence must start at the grounding singularity of the simple unit. It is fascinating that this is precisely what the ‘Big Bang’ gave us; bearing in mind that item 2) in the above listing was not postulated in order to account for the event itself.

          The razor-thin marginality of positive over negative being propagates down into asymmetries exhibiting the same paper-thin offset 

O  Eros over Logos

O  Form over Substance

O  Consciousness over Unconsciousness

O  Being over Becoming

O  The End over the Beginning

O  Infinity over Finitude

O  Eternity over Time

O  Unity over Plurality

O  Outside over Inside

 

          (1) Infinite Multitude over Single Unit

(2) Infinite Extent over a Point

(3) Inifnite Time over an Instant.

 

 

 

 

O  Top-down over Bottom-up "......This hidden, wordless Godhead both goes out and remains in.  He gives Himself, yet does not lose anything of himself."  Rufus Jones

 

          Were it not for (3), we would be lost among billions of other beings and would be in danger of sinking from an authentic ens spiritualis to a res naturalis. Eternal life is a non-negotiable demand because without it, Reality cannot be justified –in particular, the theodicy dilemma cannot be roundly dismissed. That we are more than after thoughts again is needed to parry the theodicy dilemma, but also to give life a deeper meaning and zest to life. I think that we must add –as a ‘non-negotiable’- that our presence is absolutely essential to the working out of the larger Reality. That naïve realism be dispatched follows inescapably from introspective psychology and the sciences of neurophysiology and neuroanatomy. Its necessary replacement by a representational epistemology confronts us with the richness of mind and inverts the brain > mind advantage that currently holds sway. Item 7) follows primarily from the sequestered constitution of the Ungrund; it necessarily contains non-being, so that life in general and eternal life in particular can only be achieved in proportion as this be neutralized. I have taken over the teachings of Nicholas Berdyaev in his insistence that Nonbeing is to be creatively captured and transformed rather than ejected.

          Items 1-7 call for the creation of a robust formal domain of metamathematics. Evolving this logic turned out to be by far the hardest part of the whole enterprise. I claim that what I ended up with fulfills most of what was asked of it . Here is a summary of some of its features:

● It is the ultimate invariant that stands above all modalities and categories –and even of the dichotomy between Positive Being and its Nonbeing counterpart

 

● It sustains an epigenetic process that carries us from the Ungrund to the quasi-singularity of the ‘Big Bang’. 

     

● More generally, it keeps us ‘connected’ during the entire sweep of our odyssey –from Eternity to Eternity

 

● Provides the substratum for an eternal life that is truly to be desired

 

● It is replete with the “ < = “ and  “ > = “ asymmetries that in combination with a number of topological singularities and devices to bind the whole thing together into a seamless yet productive configuration; 

 

● It incorporates extensions of Cantor’s Infinite set

 

● It properly poses –and answers- the ‘God Question’ by sustaining a thorough going reconstitution of the Trinity that does justice, both to ourselves and to the prerogatives of Divinity’s Holistic upper face.

          Extending the Lex Naturalis also calls for an exercise in Logic/Maths but this is far more straightforward since it calls for no modal or categorical additions to those currently in force. This problem reduced itself for a search of a molecular substratum that could sustain some analogue of a phase change to exoticize a part of itself. The two aspects remain conjoined into a continuum in which the classical residuum remains as a piecrust beneath the filling. It has seemed to be that the most likely candidates are the extended double bond systems of conjugation and aromaticity. Nucleic acids and proteins provide precisely what is required. The exotic manifold that may arise from them lifts itself above the classical matter from which it arises (and remains attached), to enjoy a cortex wide delocalization.

          When all the smoke has cleared and all of the dust has settled, it seems to me that of the "Great Questions’ with which we started have given meaningful answers that are at least minimally satisfying. It is for the reader to exercise his own –perhaps less forgiving and more objective- judgment over the matter. As a reminder, these are listed again below

1.Who am I?

2.Why am I Here?

3.What is the Meaning of Life?

4.What is the Meaning of Death?

5.What is the Cosmos for ?

6.What is the Aim  of Evolution? 

7.What is the Nature of the Larger Reality?

8.How Are We to Understand Infinity and Eternity?

9.What is Being?

10.Why Should there be Something  Rather than Nothing ?

11.How are Horrendous pain and Evil to be Justified??

            I believe that those readers with monistic leanings who find themselves comfortable with the approach taken will end up making an equivalent evaluation –though each will have creatively imposed some reshaping to ‘impedance match’ his particular philosophical temperament. More objective and less subject to personal quirks are matters of formal elegance and the tidy compactness of its foundations, feel that the system measures up quite well for the way in which a lot is to be accounted for by a little. The grounding principles up which the entire system was put together can be written on the back of a (large) envelope. More to the point, however, has been the way in which the project progressed. In the long course of my speculations I have been much heartened by the way in which things got progressively simpler and more streamlined, and for the way in which, time and again, solutions to one aspect of the puzzle turned out to solve problems elsewhere –which had not at first been taken into account. Towards the end I was much gratified to have the same experience of many novel writers and story tellers when they report that the enterprise took on a life of its own, in which the erstwhile creator and shaper stood back as an observer.

          No system philosophy overview, in itself, can bring about an individual, personal regeneration, nor enable the culture to step up from its present nadir of Homo sapiens caducus to the verus subspecies that awaits us and is our destiny. However, for a number of reasons, it’s the best place to start. First, as a graspable cognitive, intellectual framework of ideas, it can help us to gain and maintain our bearings as we seek to gain regeneration in other ways; it should provide us with a half way house or inn where we can catch our breath while considering how to negotiate the next leg of our journey firm place upon which to stand while considering how to step forwards or upwards

         The path from systems philosophy to personal or cultural regeneration is a tortuous one, which I have found it convenient to break into this sequence of stages:

                        (1).A Cognitive restructuring of the original System from the Existential Standpoint

                        (2) Dealing with the tricky interface of Alienation

                        (3) What One may expect in working through the spiritual discipline Regeneration.

                        (4).How we may expect the Regenerate state to ‘feel’ from the interior

          Before embarking upon this expedition, we need to be clear about what kind of regeneration we’re talking about. At a minimum, the exercise has often been viewed in exclusively remedial terms –a palliation of the pain of alienation. More ambitious goals have mostly involved retreats into a contemplative state of rapture –of which the Buddhist Nirvana is a prime example; however, the Processing of Reality as envisaged with my systems overview calls for something much more active –directed outwards away from the inertial of the beatific state. It is the job of all beings -from us on out- to both devise and execute plans of action that shall converge the cosmos to the unitary Omega Being. It is the wondrous, unlimited open-endedness of this mission that makes of an outward-directed stance or posture the default choice. However, it does need to be added that this is the ultimate benchmark; to demand that we reach it is to ask for a lot. Better, that one never loses sight of the goal.

         The first task, then, is to take the systems philosophy and re-enter ti from its Existential portal. What this initially calls for is a reworking of the same ground from a different point of view; that is to say, at first it is largely a cognitive exercise. It takes its origin from the interior of the given conscious moment, relating this to the larger system to which it is connected. However, Existentialism comes in many varieties, from Sartre’s ontological; dangler -that replaces rather than reinterprets systems philosophy- to those with strong spiritual overtones. I have Berdyaev and Tillich particularly in mind here; I have been glad to follow up upon the lead that they have offered.

          The following schema summarizes the way I have organized the shift from the Systems to the Existential viewpoint

          The internal image of the painting is shown larger for the representationalist –to reflect his apprehension that what seems to be the outside world directly known is totally ‘in his head’. What is immediately and phenomenally given within the Cartesian theatre is nominally the same, for both of the viewpoints; it is only during phenomenological introspections that changes emerge. For he who adopts such an introspective stance while in possession of the conviction that what is immediately given is entirely and 100% a mental presence, A sense of buoyant and vertiginous expansion follows inevitably. This is precisely the Koan shock that everyone who dismisses the doctrine of naïve realism must experience. I have symbolised this in the figure by an increase in the size of the image. Again, the psychic presence is shown of reduced size, for the mainstream believer –given his doubt as to whether an agent is truly there at all. A serrated outline has been employed I the diagram to suggest that this is some kind of phenomenal expression from what is being objectively viewed within the theatre; how very, very different from how the neutral monist assumes –as shown on the right.

          For completion, I have also incorporated differences that are taken to be the case in the nature of the outside world being directly accessed. Both parties are in agreement that the act of introspection grants no ding-an-sich of whatever be the object under review. Regardless, both individuals do entertain presuppositions upon the matter which I have attempted to convey within the figure. The mainstream physicist –leaving quantum wave possibilities on one side for the moment- lives in a Bourbakian world where there is a place for everything and everything belongs in its place and nowhere else. Physical reality is remorselessly pluralistic; fields such as those of gravity and electromagnetism, with their disturbing implications of action-at-a-distance, are to be explained away –or more accurately transduced into proposed Bourbakian counterparts. The prime example is that of the virtual photon invented to leap, instantaneously between separated charged particles to account for how the presence of the one changes to motion of the other. This is symbolized, for the man on the left, by the density of its configured texture. Two other projection stages have been inserted between Berkeley’s ‘secondary characteristics and the final target of physical reality its. First is the loss of those secondary qualities leaving behind lingering field attributes that are taken to be mentally imposed characteristics; after inverting to the negative –to suggest yet another distancing step, the projection comes to rest upon physical Reality which remains a hidden substratum for mental projections.

         All in all, then the switch from the left image to the right can hardly be anything else than a dismissal of alienation –insofar as this stems from the matters which they address. As an aside, the figure suggests one more reason why the quintessential scientific intellectual I reluctant to dismiss naïve realism. For were he to do so, the mind would be immured as an isolated entity trapped within –or more accurately, offset from- the cerebral cortex.

          The begottenness which we enjoy guarantees forever that we can never be lost, and that quite to the contrary, each of us is the centre of Holistic reality –from a very special and unique viewpoint. As if this were not enough, the holistic upper face of neutral monism puts us all in the same boat –with the net result that each of us is not lost, community wise, within the countless monad of the universe –starting with the billions of fellow humans that inhabit our planet. This means that those people –and others- out there are ultimate doppelgangers of ourselves; despite manifest differences all of them ‘out there’ but different versions of myself. Standing as I now am within a vast hall of mirrors, there are only ‘ I ‘s to be seen out there; the ‘yous’ have all vanished.

          Let us now compare how the two antagonists view our relationship to our germinal origins. For the NeoDarwinian, it’s simple. Though in itself a purely molecular configuration and nothing but, it has contrived to put together Beings such as you and I with explicit self-consciousness entirely as a survival stratagem. This is an astonishing performance in which a molecular limited to the parameters of physics and biochemistry can some how conjure up other categories s –in particular that of consciousness and all of subjectivity of ‘meaning’ to which it points. My position was to be driven by the demonstrable insufficiency of Neo-Darwinism as a sufficient explanation of the astonishing phylogenetic outflow –of which we offer a stellar instance. It takes only an elementary knowledge of probability theory, biochemistry and thermodynamics to drive this point home. This greatest of natural mysteries has been turned a blind eye to by Mainstream science. It has surfaced at the moment of writing as the question of ‘intelligent design’. Willy nilly intelligence and a forwards teleological reach of some kind seems to be afoot, but where on earth does it come? Most of those supportive of this movement take it to be a matter of divine orthogenesis. An immediate problem here is the dark underside of phylogeny –as may be found in parasitism, for example; the ethics of phylogeny –as are ours- are decidedly mixed. Consider for example one of the parasitic worms who larvae hatch out within the substance of the cerebral cortex. A theistic God –in full residence through evolution- is also taken for granted. As explored at great length within the body of the text, this thesis is beset by difficulties of every kind. My solution has been to propose the presence of germinal mind; this will be explored in greater detail in an upcoming website, and will be returned to briefly, further below. What this amounts to is that our minds have two aspects, a germinal and a somatic one. It is very important to note that germinal mind endows us with a great deal more than a cortex that has broken the sound barrier into explicit self consciousness –plus inhibitory fibres to the limbic system to -hold blind, instinctual motivation at bay. It also endows us with a philosophical temperament that inclines in one way rather than in another to make sense of the new and alien world in which we have found ourselves to be. Finally it is a mistake to think of two minds here –a somatic and a germinal one. The image of the somatic mind already within him is what he intends to project into manifest existence in the embryogenesis hopefully to come about. What I therefore find within myself is germinal mind which has broken free of the inner blindness to which he is perpetually condemned. These two minds are but one, there being no communication or traffic between them. (I cannot refrain from adding a note here that a most important evolutionary step which lies ahead of us is the transcendence of the Gnostic disjunction between this pair of psychic entities); here, once more is a spectacular reversal of the alienation to which we are being invited to condemn ourselves.

          When we turn from the significance of our existence at any given moment to our changing presence and standing in the grand odyssey of reality –as it moves from eternity to eternity- we get the same supportive story. Our roots have always been ‘up there’ within the Ungrund; more than this the Ungrund could not be what it is and would vanish if our proto-presence concealed within this source were to be extirpated. At all times and places we were, are and shall be aspects of whatever form of Holism it is from which immediately stem. To quote Eckhart once more on the subject:

          Eckhart’s uncompromising affirmation ports freely into the novel ontology of neutral monism that I am proposing –provided only that we are willing to install the Holistic aspect of Being at the leading edge of our begetting. We might say that Holism resides at the leading edge of our begottenness –to which we immediately add our own contribution –in which we select one of an envelope of options that are offered to us. This follow-up quotation of his can be taken at face value...

          Our pristine presence within the mighty invariant of the Ungrund is not in the dispositional or corporate mode, but as an envelope of all of the instantiations that will be needed to put together the corporate essence upon which the flow of conscious experience emerges. It is from these that we have contrived to put ourselves together. Further, there is no distinction between those instances that actually end up contributing to the formation of all of those monads who come to emerge during the course of cosmic and organic evolution. Were this actually the case, some kind of preselection and organization would be implied –such as that emphasised in classical theism in which souls are created in advance.

          Figure 18 presents a summary overview of our entire odyssey –from eternity to eternity. It complements Figure 30 already given for the way in which it factors in the germinal component of our persona. It must be viewed as having been taken by an elapsed time camera. However, an attempt has been made to differentiate between stretches which are epigenetic from those that are transient by rendering the latter in ghosted, whited-out form.

          We come finally to the purpose and raison d’etre of the individual –and if this doesn’t open doors upon the claustrophobia of alienation, nothing will. For it is the job of all creatures to execute an organic evolution, converging the cosmos to its climax, and finally engineering its apocalyptic termination. Accomplishing this is the exclusive prerogative of the individual monad. We are the first known examples; contributions to be made by all creatures who shall follow us shall be increasingly impressive and awe-inspiring. Without the services that we and all subsequent beings are to render, the Holism of the Gottheit could never be brought to the eternal life of his ‘Second Person’ aspect. What opens up before us is the ultimate open-ended adventure where we must both devise and execute the needed plans to bring us to our goal. This is but the final example of the extraordinary pre-eminence which neutral monism endows the individualistic aspect of personhood. It is stronger than that of the panentheisms, on the one hand, while dodging the dissolution imposed by classical monism in which Atman = = Brahman, and in which manifest existence is dismissed as no more than quasi-real. Buddhism’s elevation of individual personhood is even more thoroughgoing in its total exclusivity. Its epochalism affirms a haecceitas of the passing instant while denying a corporate quiddity as an invariant of some kind from which covariant instants may be expressed. Such is the seeming individuation that one wonders that communication between neighbouring beings is possible at all.

          This concludes my cognitive restructuring of my Systems philosophy in cantering it upon the existential moment. The time has now come to move upwards towards our goal of personal and cultural regeneration. And perhaps there is no better place to start than with a very thorough examination of alienation. This is currently widespread; its fundamental cause is our current anthropological nadir as Homo sapiens caducus which has suffered reinforcement from the nihilism sequestered within the present world view. It is unknown within the shelter of the animal world. Animals know who they are; they know because the germinal mind from which they are embryological extrusions has told them so. However, we may anticipate that when the sought after regeneration has been achieved, alienation will not merely be dispelled; it will be replaced by its opposite -a most resonant sense of a belongingness.

          Let's take a look at the various aspects of alienation, and how they may be countered. All of them involve what is claimed the immense offset –in terms of the magnitude of time, space, or plurality, or of numbers, or of our ontological destitution. This latter is the most serious; according to whether one hearkens to the scientific intelligentsia, or to an established church, we’re at most created beings and as such are ontological danglers, or we are simply physical configurations that have somehow come into the awkward possession of the ‘second category’ of consciousness. But for the others; each of us is but one of a vast multitude of fellow beings –numbered in the billions. We’re but specks of dust in a cosmos billions of light years across while we live out our lives in a cosmos that is billions of years old.

          But now let’s reconsider; first, we’re begotten rather than created –which in its strong version under neutral monism means that we are the whole –not of the physical cosmos but of the far greater realm of Logos and Eros. While it is true there are billions of flow beings ‘out there’, the sense of the alienation of plurality is diminished if we look upon these others of different versions of myself –to conjure up the ‘hall of mirrors’ analogy once more. Again though our somatic beings have lifelines of the order of magnitude of 10² years, our germinal doppelganger starts to come into being a billion or more years ago –see Figure [-12-] once more. However a substantial offset remains between our size and duration and that of the cosmos and its evolution taken as a whole. There is a very solid and satisfying reason for this. We have to consider just at what point it is at which we are standing within the great sweep of organic evolution as this is envisaged within the New Paradigm that I am proposing. Evolution does have a goal –that of a unity person Omega who shall be –as much as be in- the cosmos. Omega shall be reached through a convergent evolutionary process in which organism become progressively larger, more complex and with extended lifelines. In the process there will no doubt be a number of changes in the substratum, starting with one which enables the exiting dichotomy of minds –their germinal and the somatic- to be brought into the continuum of a single unity. Increasingly, then, as organic evolution proceeds, there will be a diminishing disparity between the temporal and spatial dimensions of individuals and those of the cosmos within which they shall have come to reside. (I have speculated elsewhere that eventually, the size of organisms, the nature of the offset lattice space in which their configuration resides shall some to alter the geometry of the cosmos itself; a contributing factor here will undoubtedly be the increasing prominence of whatever phase change occurs whenever objects grow massive enough to retreat within their Schwartzchild radii. I am speaking here, of course, of what are currently claimed to be ‘black hole’ singularities). .

          This brings us to a parting of the ways –in which we are no longer talking about intellectual schema, but about the daunting, internally-directed discipline of self-examination and self-transformation that must be undertaken.

          Here are Tillich’s somber pronouncements on the matter:

           Quite apart from any explicit commitment to a regenerative initiative, the confrontation and creative, possessive transcendence of Nonbeing –in all of the ways that it shows up in everyday living- is the main way in which the persona achieves maturity. ‘….With age comes wisdom…’ -so it does, as a rule, but there’s no guarantee that things will go this way.

           How is this to be done? Though it is possible that personal tutelage offered by a sage may be helpful, it is really a personal, individual matter, there being as many approaches as there are people. This being said however, it has always seemed to me –something to be found within the pronouncements of the Bhagavad Gita- that there are two basic ways of going about it. On the one hand is the path of ‘knowledge’, and on the other, that involving a more direct face-to-face encounter. I find it easier to speak in terms of the first, because it is that which I have followed, and hence something upon which I can report in terms of direct experience. I have come to think of the odyssey in terms of a long drawn-out process of creating a bridge across this bottomless precipice of Non-being. It would be nice if one could build from both sides, to meet finally, in the middle. Unfortunately, it is just any such ‘short circuit’, which is ruled out. The bridge must be put together –cantilever style- from where we are standing at present, ultimately to reach the ‘far side’. It is a process in which, Willy nilly, ‘higher knowledge’ –as the Bhagavad Gita would put it- must somehow be brought into existence from the ‘lower’ of our quotidian existence. The contents of this book that you are reading is my best insight into the nature of the ‘higher knowledge’ –and its relation to the lower. In the process of writing it –extending over half a lifetime- I had suffered my own confrontation withy Non-being, which I would describe in the following terms. There were recurring moments of doubt -‘black days’- when I despaired of ever reaching the ‘far side’. It was as though I had tumbled into a deep hole from which absolutely no means of extrication seemed to be at hand. The pit has sides that are vertical –if not re-entrant- and they have slippery surfaces offering no possibility of affording footholds. I find that I can no longer think clearly, so that all that I have written appears as a vast wasteland of meaningless symbols. A deep depression freezes me into immobility so that I am robbed of any power to think ahead about how I can somehow pull myself together. Oddly, the knowledge that I have somehow manoeuvred an escape many times in the past offers no comfort or conviction at all. The Theologia Germanica knows all about this:

          The gentle Tillich offers these words of consolation:

          It hardly needs to be said that within the Christian context, something far deeper is demanded than an on-the-spot ‘conversion’ of the revivalist tent, although it is always possible that enlightenment may come within the twinkling of the eye at the end of the quest.

          A final service that our systems philosophy overview can render to gather up and pass on to us is the reportage of those who have arrived at the destination, together with an analysis of just how their findings can be accounted for in terms of how the psychic agent and the mind and world that he knows and operates upon, are put together and related to the Gottheit from which they take origin and are continuingly renewed. Again, this will do nothing to enable us to dodge the Sturm & Drang of the healing process, but the added context that it provides may encourage us to stay with and agonize with things until the end is reached. We’re talking here of the ‘Abgescheidenheit’ state or posture that personal regeneration can bring us to. But once again, to tell us about is not in itself at all to bring us to, but it might help;

          Most fundament here is a shift in our basic posture –to the forefront of our begottenness, to the place where we are closer to the Gottheit than we are to ourselves. This shift does not, in itself, bring us face to face with the Immanent Presence –unless, in addition, we have acquired the skill of mystical encounter. In fact, it is important to remember that the two postures are mutually exclusive. This being the case mystical states should never be the ultimate goal; their value pies in what they are able to teach us rather than as a retreat from the Sturm uind Drang of life.

          What I have designated the Abgescheidenheit posture is necessarily outward-directed –both towards the contents and goings-on of our own minds and to the captive environment beyond. We shall find ourselves standing sub specie aeternitates from which many consequences follow. Perhaps most striking is the ‘feel’ of the motivational thrust and the chronological environment in which it is embedded. When one adopts the Abgescheidenheit posture one stands within the stillness of the forefront of one’s being, so that one's ontological centre of gravity remains undisturbed, not being dragged off base in the pursuit of the goals in question. "Live within the present moment, perform every act sacramentally and be free from the results of action".

          This latter exhortation has been widely misunderstood as an aloofness and lack if real concern, but exactly the reverse is the case. It is an appeal to adopt an ethic of deontology in which the motive emanates from the intrinsic worth of the act, this detracting nothing from ones commitment to the teleology typically involved –e.g. the exercise of compassion in some very urgent and pressing situation. Paradoxically, teleology is more effective when reached through the indirection of deontology. In allowing oneself to be teleology-cantered, one gets dragged away from one's own centre of gravity with the net outcome of undermining one's effectiveness with respect to the matter at hand. The back away into deontology does not signal a weakening of concern, as is widely believed.

          I have found it helpful to think about the problem of regeneration in the following terms. Homo Caducus has a void or gap within its being that entices the ‘will’ from its proper station ‘up there’. As an inevitable consequence, it is drawn down into, to be made captive by the psyche’s agents resident within the phenomenal, articulate self. This stratum of existence is of lower ontological order, being created by and subsistent to our true source of begottenness. It is exactly this, which accounts for the malaise of ‘striving’ of which Buddhism speaks of with such eloquence. We find ourselves forever dragged away from the moving immediacy of the moment, in pursuit of the events that have been set in motion. This is the fatal ‘attachment’ so deplored by Buddhism.

          To step up to the fullness of one’s authenticity is automatically to imply an acceptance of ethics. This brings the axiological discipline to completion. At the present time the Default posture takes it absolutely for granted that ethics is exclusively teleological in character; that is to say, rightness is to be judged entirely by the value of the consequences to which a proposed alternative leads The mindless ‘one liner’ is to be heard on all sides: "……everything is all right provided it harms on one" Of course, one could do a great deal worse, but also, I am urging, a great deal better. It reduces ethics to a matter of cost accounting. Any means is to be justified if the end to which it leads is the most beneficial of the available alternatives. Under the regime of deontological ethics, however, we may find ourselves in situations in which a means to the most valuable of alternative ends is simply not to be justified. As Berdyaev has insisted, this makes of ethical decision making a creative process in which one may find ourselves agonizing over a choice between intrinsic rectitude and the favourable consequences that would follow if the action were taken. Much of the time, ethical decision making –deciding which of two alternatives right and which wrong- is more or less straightforward. But agonizing situations can arise when it is anything but. We may find ourselves forced to jhave to decide between alternatives both of which are evil. Or consider the tug of war between holding people (including ourselves!) responsible for what they do, or granting exoneration on the grounds of extenuating circumstances.

          In times of war, the lives of tens of thousands may hang upon whether the enemy believes what one of our ‘planted’ captured agents is believed. In order to protect him from the possibilities of horrendous torture we have armed him with a concealed cyanide capsule. However, what he was not told was that this tablet was actually a worthless placebo –on the grounds that the enemy would be more likely to believe what they had been told if no such escape were executed. I believe something of the sort occurred in world war II. What disturbed me was the way in which those responsible were able to sleep easily in their beds on the grounds of cost accounting; what did the sufferings of one matter if that of many thousands were avoided?

          Berdyaev –perhaps following Plotinus- has insisted that the goal –in enco9unters with evil and Nonbeing is not the separation and discarding of the negative, but exactly the reverse. It is to be transcended and creatively reincorporated into the schema of values:

          We’re actually all very familiar with this. In all family unions, there are apt to be reminiscences in which events –painful or humiliating at the time are recounted with humour and lafter. The reason is that the experience of the encounter and our subsequent coming to term and to an understanding of what was afoot has added depth and wisdom. We can laugh now –and with good reason- but there was nothing funnay at the time

           Even on its own teleological turf, the current ethics is found wanting because of its truncation. We have the notion of progress –of a moving forwards to a better future, but there is no ultimate goal –in the present-day scheme of things- to be envisaged. Quite the reverse; in almost all of the scenarios contemplated by physicists and cosmologists, the future shall be grim; it’s only a matter of time before the last vestiges of life, mind and consciousness shall be wiped out. This truncates the most exciting half of teleological ethics –a ‘thou shalt’ that is directed towards our reason for being –that of taking charge of organic evolution and converging it to the terminal single being of Omega. The half that is left is concerned less with positives than the cancellation of negatives –of alleviating needless suffering wherever it may be found.

          It must be clear that an acceptance of a deontological ethics is automatically an acknowledgment of an axiological absolutism, though this is very far from implying that the discipline is a normative one which is reducible to a clean-cut and clear catalogue of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. To accept deontological ethics is to affirm an underlying absolutism; however, this does nothing to make of ethics a normative science. That is to say that the absolutism in question is of a simplistic kind expressible in definitive lists such as the Decalogue.

          Perhaps this one final insight may help in driving home the necessity for a deontological ethics. It has to do with the drama that is forever being played out in the encounter of Nonbeing –as manifest in evil intent. The point is that our contract is with the ongoing begetter of our being, rather than a code put together within the ongoing social fabric. To wish someone dead –though there in no intent of going beyond the wish- is a culpable offence for the way in which it runs counter to the divine mandate. In itself it is evil, hence imposes upon the immanent presence at our source the burden and unpleasantness of ‘paying the redemptive price’ that alone shall allow us to enter eternity when the time comes

          Ideally, one should live through each moment –no matter what form it may take- in a spirit of acceptance. This follows because a commitment to 'living in the present' is necessarily matched by one of 'living here and now'. This is because it is the duty of the creature to do the best he can where he is and not to wish he were somewhere else. To wish to be somewhere else is to deny that being is always here and now. The position in which we come to find yourself is not of our choice or making, but being there, we should rest content to play the hand that, Willy nilly, we have been dealt. But again, an unqualified acceptance by no means implies any corresponding indifference or acquiescence There may be urgent matters at hand calling form immediate attention and rectification

          Let’s first just savour the magic of the moment –as it seems to me as the author of this weltanschauung. I find myself standing within the innermost member of a concentric set of singularities which have carried Homo sapiens from its origins only 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. That’s no more than the final eye blink at the end of the e volution of the cosmos that started some 1 ,billion years ago (and the emergence of life about a billion of years later. Language and the ability to speculate and reason abstractly and explicitly only arose about 5,000 years ago. We only came into possession of all of the pieces of the puzzle awaiting assembly about a century ago –perhaps only 50 years. We finally know enough –thanks to science- about the nature of the empirical realm –in both its cosmological and organic aspects, and have at our disposal a sufficient grasp of the formal domain of logic and mathematics to bring everything into focus. Not to be overlooked here is the rich lexicon of ideas and concepts that are the legacy of generations of philosophical speculation. And –speaking from my own very personal viewpoint- it is only a few years ago that I was able to bring everything into some kind of coherent focus –sufficiently well defined to jive me answers to all of the ‘Great Questions’ that were at least minimally satisfying. As measured in terms of the billions of years that heave brought us from the ‘Big Bang’ to the present, the nest of singularities listed above has undergone something of an implosion. Suddenly, I know who we are and what we ought to be doing with our lives. Ahead lies a breathtaking, absolutely open-ended adventure that shall not come to an end until life has captured the entire cosmos, and the population of beings reduced to a single member –whom I have dubbed Omega. But the best is yet to come. When eschatology –thanks to the efforts of Omega- has done its work and finite existence is brought to an end, eternal life awaits us all. The task is ours and ours alone of both devising and executing the plans needed to bring all of this about. This is something of a precious bane –an oxymoron whose positive face is decidedly uppermost. It is a trumpet call to arms to undertake the ultimate adventure. Once more, the ‘we’ in question is all intelligent beings who shall ever come to be as the nature and grounding of organism proceeds stage by stage. Every being is precious, having an ontology resonant with fractal overtones. Each of us is –at the same time- first, a part of the embryogenesis of Nous –the eternal Being that it is the raison d’etre of the real of Existence. At the same time, each of us shall be Nous from our own point of view. Who we are shall not be obliterated by any need to conform to the dictates of a pre-arranged ‘heaven’. We have always been, and shall always be- around, in some sense or another from eternity to eternity .

           I must end here with a very personal aside. The reader may wonder if all of this life long speculation has brought its author to the regenerate ‘abgescheidenheit’ posture. The answer is ‘no’ –at least not yet. But then, this was not my primary goal. My task –that which I chose to undertake- was to bring the needed ‘Systems’ philosophy overview into being. In proportion as I have succeeded, then we now have at our disposal the framework or scaffolding of ideas that the culture needs to bring Homo sapiens caducus up to its anthropological destiny of Homo sapiens verus. I am an architect –an architect of ideas. This is what I found myself to be good at –and I claim that I have fulfilled the requirements of the trade. If it has not brought me to the regenerate posture of Abgescheidenheit, it has brought the needed goal clearly in sight. I have a deepened sense of personal identity –I am in process of discovering who I am. Alienation is gone. I’m no speck lost within the vastness of time space and the billions of fellow beings. In a sense I (along with you) is the whole of Reality from my particular point of view. It is the holism of the Gottheit alone that stands clearly above all of us. It is He who shall have the last word.