In this system, I hold as axiomatic that, as in the symbolism above, all three are logical equivalents.
The reality we refer to as God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity contains every possibility, but is fully contained by none. It is that which, while making all images possible, cannot itself be imaged.
God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity can be abbreviated ΘQT∞ for brevity. Though this work uses the full formulation above, I present
parenthetically as shorthand for the chain of logical equivalences God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity, and for future reference. The three terms are treated as logically equivalent.
, I, Proposition XVI: "From the necessity of the divine nature must follow an infinite number of things in infinite ways — that is, all things which can fall within the sphere of infinite intellect."
The reality of God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity cannot be observed directly, yet is that by which all else is observed. It is defined by nothing and no one beyond itself.
contains all possibilities, while transcending them infinitely. The reality at reference is undeniable, yet beyond defining.
the unquantifiable number, by which all numbers may be quantified;
the immeasurable dimension, by which every dimension is measured;
The infinite alone is free, determined only by itself. All finite entities are limited. The infinite is the context in which all finite objects are limited. Finite objects have a beginning and, so far at least, an end. Infinity is without beginning or end.
Ludwig Wittgenstein summed up the paradox of unprovable proof, telling us, “This throws light on the question why logical propositions can be no more empirically confirmed than they can be empirically refuted.” (
We can’t prove either God or infinity, but in its unprovability, it proves all else.
The infinite is that, in light of which all propositions, all words and actions, have meaning. It is, in Wittgenstein’s vivid word, the “scaffolding” of reality.
I. God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity ⊃ Existence.
God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity (ΘQT∞) contains Existence. If Existence is separate from God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity, then God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity is not infinite. The reality we call God contains Existence.
Spinoza called such implications of God attributes. “By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.” (
Ethics, I, Definition IV)
“By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite — that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.” (
Ethics I, Definition VII)
We perceive attributes of God, not God Himself. In this system, we will make use of three of the infinite attributes contained by God: Existence, Self, and Wisdom.
The logical statement above means God, the absolutely infinite, contains existence.
Existence = Substance.
Existence and Substance are equal, synonymous.
Consider an inductive description of substance: You and I both may leave a room, yet both you, I, and the room continue to exist, at least for the moment.
Imagine that which, if removed, neither you, nor I, nor the room itself could continue to exist. That is substance.
For the purposes of this project, Existence and Substance mean the same thing, and may be used interchangeably.
The scientific term "matter" points toward a similar idea. We know matter exists and can describe it mathematically, yet we encounter it only through particular forms and interactions. We perceive gases, liquids, solids, light, motion, and force. We do not perceive "substance" apart from its manifestations. In the same way, we know Existence through the forms that exist, rather than as an object among other objects.
Self ≡ I Am.
Self and I Am are logical equivalents.
I Am is the root of all individual experience.
Without one perceiving, there is no perception.
I Am is the awareness of the unseen seer, the witness consciousness, the eye that cannot see itself.
As a thought experiment, ask yourself whether you have ever seen your own face in full?
Without Self, the question of Existence is senseless.
II. God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity ⊃ Self.
God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity (ΘQT∞)contains Self. Self is the second attribute cited, in the Spinozan sense. It will be axiomatic for this work that God underlies Self. Self derives from God. Self shares, by implication, the absolute infinity of God.
A. Self ∧ Existence → Body-Mind
Self and Existence yield Body-Mind. Where Self and Existence coincide, there emerges what we call Body-Mind. The term "Body-Mind" recognizes that Body and Mind function not as two separate entities, but as one.
In this system, Body-Mind includes both the physical and psychological manifestation of Existence and Self, which eventually expresses itself as awareness and thought. Neither can be effectively understood without the other.
Every finite Body-Mind is the present expression of an unimaginably vast network of causes contained within Quantum Truth. As an example, the average human female is born with between one and two million oocytes, potential eggs. Of those, three to five hundred will eventually be ovulated. The average human male releases between 100 to 300 million live, um, cells per, um, episode.
And yet, out of all those trillions of possibilities, here you are.
Body-Mind ↔ Life
Body-Mind exists if and only if Life is present.
Though Body-Minds vary enormously in complexity, from amoebae to human beings, differences among living beings are differences of degree, not of kind. Body-Minds endure only so long as Life remains within them.
To the extent an individual or collective Body-Mind has affected the larger world it inhabits, its effects may continue after Life has departed. Apart from such continuing effects, however, there does not seem to be any abiding existence for individual Body-Minds absent Life.
B. Body-Mind ∧ Change → Sensation.
Body-Mind and Change imply Sensation. The state of Body-Mind in the absence of change is unknowable to the human mind. It may be the pure being of God, as theists assume, or it may be nothingness, as in Buddhism. Only with Change does Body-Mind become aware. The sensation of change, experienced in Body-Mind, gives rise to the process that eventually leads to the world as we know it.
We can say that:
Sensation ≡ Awareness.
For our purposes, Sensation and Awareness are logical equivalents. Body-Mind senses effects originating both outside and inside itself, including, as the process advances in human Body-Minds at least, awareness of mental activity and thought.
The question that follows concerns Change itself. Why is there any Change at all? Let’s examine that logically.
Change → Cause
For the purposes of this discussion, every Change implies a cause.
Further, every state is changed by a cause either within or outside itself.
God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity (ΘQT∞)
Since God is absolutely infinite, there can be no cause outside God. Therefore, the change that gives rise to awareness originates within God, for the notion of a cause existing outside the infinite is self-contradictory.
Why God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity should initiate Change is beyond the capacity of our minds to perceive directly. Our response to this uncertainty will be a leap of faith, whichever direction we leap. One of my aims in working through this philosophy is to provide practical tools for living a balanced life, regardless of where we leap.
What can we say about the nature of a cause from studying its effects? Does the cause appear accidental or intentional? To the extent that our own experience may be extrapolated onto this ultimate scale, let's hazard an observation. In our experience, accidental causes often yield random effects—sometimes useful, but at least as often destructive. Intentional causes more frequently give rise to ordered effects.
Given the order we intuitively grasp in the world, the probabilities seem to lean more toward an intentional than an accidental cause. See
Proof.
Some might say that if God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity is infinite, there can be no change in God’s perspective. God is the Quantum Truth, containing all possibilities.
I reply respectfully that it might be so. Yet it also might be that I've abstracted from my own experience what I call a perspective, and placed it on a vastly more complex, trans-cultural and trans-temporal construct called “God.” Do I imagine I can speak meaningfully from such a perspective?
I don’t know God’s perspective. I don’t know whether the world changes from God’s point of view. I know it does from our point of view as human beings. I know it does from mine as an individual. That’s where I should probably focus my effort.
By
Philosophy, I consider it probable that these effects have an intentional cause.
By
Faith, I trust that these effects have an intentional cause.
By
Religion, I live as if these effects have an intentional cause.
Analogically, the Body-Mind is like a statue: a pure form, initially unaware of anything else. The pinprick of pain or the tickle of pleasure awakens in it a dawning sense of its own existence.
C. Awareness ∧ Change → Self-Awareness.
Awareness in Body-Mind arises through the experience of Change. As Change repeats, those repetitions yield a sense of pattern within Body-Mind. From those patterns, a rudimentary sense of self is abstracted from experience, and the first construct of Self-Awareness emerges.
The statue in the previous illustration becomes aware through multiple pinpricks that it is an individual entity, and that the events taking place are, in some sense, happening to it.
D. ∀x(Self-Awareness(x) → Longing(x)).
For every x, where x is Self-Awareness, x experiences Longing. When Self-Awareness emerges, Longing emerges as well. Every self-aware being experiences Longing as a fundamental part of its being. Synonyms for longing are hunger, desire, thirst, and the like.
To exist as a self-aware Body-Mind is to long. The object for which we long is not necessarily clear in finite existence. We find, as we’ll explore in greater depth later, that while some things ease our longing, and some things intensify it, nothing we experience in finite existence permanently removes it, apart from the cessation of finite life itself.
This is the central piece of the psychology presented within this philosophy. Longing is parallel with
dukkha in Pali, the first of Buddha’s
Four Noble Truths, often translated as suffering.
The word longing does not necessarily convey the intensity of the experience. When a newborn cries out in hunger, that cry seems like much more than longing, but at its root it is not.
As finite Body-Minds, we experience within ourselves an innate lack, arising from our finitude itself. That lack is the longing we feel, and the fact that it arises from our finitude hints at its insatiability under the conditions of finitude.
E. Self-Awareness ∧ Change → Preference.
Self-Awareness and Change together yield Preference. A self-aware being, aware of its longing, experiences change. That change either eases longing, making it more tolerable, or intensifies it, making it less so. We naturally prefer that which eases our longing to that which increases it. We are fundamentally shaped by our tendency to prefer pleasure to pain.
Though there are instances in which short-term pleasure leads to long-term pain, and short-term pain to long-term pleasure, such considerations are downstream of Preference itself. Before we learn which pleasures and pains serve us best, we first learn to distinguish between what we prefer and what we do not.
Continuing the analogy, the statue, now aware of sensations, begins to distinguish between such sensations and develop preferences between them.
F. Preference ∧ Change → Conditioning.
Preferences and Change together yield Conditioning. Rudimentary self-awareness finds itself preferring pleasure to pain. As change continues, self-awareness learns to associate certain patterns of action with pleasure, and others with pain. It begins consciously to pursue what decreases longing and avoid what intensifies it.
The process conditions it to act in certain ways, and to avoid acting in others. Though such conditioning often falls short of easing the longing, it succeeds often enough to ingrain such impulses in the Body-Mind.
Our statue, now sensate of itself, now preferring pleasure to pain, realizes that if it acts in certain ways and not others, it is more likely to experience pleasure than pain. Thus, behavior is shaped in a self-aware Body-Mind.
G. Conditioning ∧ Change → Identity.
Conditioning and Change together yield Identity. Self-awareness, now fully awake to its preferences and conditioned into patterns of attaining them, begins to connect the physical Body-Mind and the conditioning that shapes its behavior into an enduring sense of identity.
Consider how this process plays out in infants. They are born knowing neither names, genders, families or expectation. They flash to awareness with change and the sensation of pain. Their minds begin developing a sense of themselves, gradually sharpened through their preferences and their conditioning.
They begin to associate a particular sound made by those nearby with themselves as a name. They are conditioned to expect a caregiver to respond (or not respond) to their needs by acting in certain ways. All of these are abstracted from experience into the construct they’ll come to consider their own identity. I am John, because that’s what everybody calls me. I am male, because I have body parts corresponding with that, and because that’s what others condition me to be. And at a certain point, they come alive to their own identity as an individual Body-Mind among others, with an agency in the objective identity that was unknown to the pure I Am of the origin.
Identity ≈ Me.
I am always I, at least in proper English grammar. Through lived experience I have built up a mental construct of “me”, and associate that construct with who I am.
Identity ≈ Me
Identity ≢ Self.
I Am ≢ Me
Though Identity is mostly equivalent to Me, Identity is not equivalent to Self, nor am I equivalent to Me.
I am I, yet I am not me.
This is a point with which many struggle. We lose sight of how we can be something other than the construct of ourselves we have built over a lifetime into our identity.
We fear losing that identity, as it is the only one we are aware of and can imagine nothing without it. And yet, it remains true. I am I, yet I am not quite me.
In a sense, we fear losing what we have long taken to be ourselves. Yet I am not the content of my memory or my conditioned, acquired identity, however closely associated with those objects I may be. Neither are you.
I am I, the observer, the metaphysical subject. The realization of this can be profoundly unsettling at first. Over time, however, it is frequently attested as a source of inner peace.
III. God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity ⊃ Wisdom
God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity (ΘQT∞) contains Wisdom.
Wisdom is known by various names across time and culture, yet the concept appears universal.
The Bible contains its Wisdom literature:
Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. The Vedas offer us
Bhagavan’s Song, among others.
Wisdom ⊂ God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity
Wisdom is contained by God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity, and manifests as order within the cosmos, however terrible that order may at times appear to us.
The English word ‘logic’ derives from the Greek word
Logos.
Logos is the fifth word of
The Gospel of John in Greek. It is often translated as "Word," though its meaning encompasses reason, order, and intelligibility.
Logos ≡ Wisdom
For the purposes of this system,
Logos and Wisdom are treated as logical equivalents.
Logos refers to the intelligible order perceived within existence; Wisdom refers to the practical and contemplative apprehension of that order. They are distinguished conceptually, yet point toward the same underlying reality.
Wittgenstein says, “The logical propositions describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather present it.” (
TLP, 6.124)
If Wittgenstein is correct that logic presents the scaffolding of the world, then
Logos may be understood as the intelligible order by which finite Body-Minds perceive reality. Wisdom, an attribute of God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity, makes possible the disciplined alignment of life with that order.
Wisdom ⊃ Goodness, etc.
Wisdom contains goodness, and such qualities as are similar to goodness.
A. Wisdom ⊃ Love ∧ Joy ∧ Peace ∧ Patience ∧ Kindness ∧ Goodness ∧ Faithfulness ∧ Gentleness∧ Self-Control
Wisdom contains love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This links Wisdom to the Apostle Paul's famous elucidation of "the fruit of the Spirit" in
Galatians 5:22-23. Note that the word fruit is a singular noun, as if the listed virtues were the segments of it in the manner of an orange. Could we cultivate this one fruit, as it were, aligning in a ongoing manner with a transcendent order?
By intentionally practicing any one of the manifestations of this fruit, and by returning to it after falling short, we draw nearer to the transformative Wisdom from which they arise. Such Wisdom may elevate life beyond mere stoic detachment toward a deeper participation in reality itself.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control may be understood as manifestations of Wisdom within finite Body-Minds.
B. Conditioning ∧ Abstraction → Knowledge
Conditioning and Abstraction imply knowledge. Knowledge consists of constructs formed within Body-Minds, rising from ongoing reflection on the changes Body-Minds experience.
If preserved in an external form and passed on, knowledge is cumulative. To some extent, knowledge is self-correcting by careful consideration.
Yet knowledge may or may not ease longing. The knowledge of nuclear fission, for example, has the capacity to ease longing by the production of electricity. Byproducts of such knowledge make available deeper understandings of subatomic and atomic processes that, for instance, empower medical advances and allow humanity to peer deeper into the Quantum Truth of existence. Of course, the same knowledge of nuclear fission also produces nuclear weaponry.
C. Knowledge ≠ Wisdom
Knowledge does not equal Wisdom. Though the two are often conflated, they are not the same. Knowledge may increase human scientific and technical capacity. At the same time, it may equally be used to decrease such capacity. Any knowledge that can be used to ease longing can also be used to intensify it.
Wisdom, on the other hand, is the capacity of finite existence to orient itself toward the highest good, God. One may be knowledgeable without being wise, and wise without being knowledgable.
D. Knowledge ∧ Wisdom → Ethics
Knowledge and Wisdom together imply Ethics. Knowledge tells us what can be done. Wisdom guides what ought to be done.
An ethic is a coherent combination of knowledge and wisdom, serving as a guide for practical living. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount,
Matthew 5–7, offers one example of a coherent ethic, as does the Buddha’s formulation of
The Eight-Fold Path.
Perhaps the clearest scriptural ethic comes from The Old Testament book of Micah:
I will show you, O man, what may be good, and what the Lord may seek from you: by all means to work judgment, and to love mercy, and to walk concerned with your God. Micah 6:8 (LTPB)
E. Self-Awareness ∧ Ethics → Balance
Self-Awareness and Ethics imply Balance. By Balance, I mean the quality described as “…a balanced SELF-REGARD.” (See
The Saints Among Us. Morehouse Publishing, 1992).
The application of a consistent ethic to life tends to make for a sense of balance. As we do so, we tend to find a middle ground between extremes: neither too giddy when things go as hoped; nor too despondent when they don’t.
It is perhaps a modest ambition. Still, if we discipline ourselves to live ethically, we have a chance to discern for ourselves whether Wisdom as an attribute of God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity
(ΘQT∞) will in fact justify itself in our practice. Without a degree of ethical self-discipline, though, we are more likely to be tossed and turned by the passing waves of longing.
Ethics is a method of living in a climate without being overwhelmed by every storm. Balance, a life lived at relative peace regardless of circumstance, is the outcome.
Progress toward Balance depends on Focus, Responsibility, and Influence. We do well to be mindful of where we are focusing between the pure subject, I Am, and the abstract identity we have labeled Me. We do well also to keep in mind the degree of responsibility we bear for particular causes that impact us, and the actual influence we have over them. Some events we need to let go of, given the futility of trying to control the uncontrollable. Other situations closer to us perhaps need us to exert a greater responsibility than we presently do.
Ethics serves the Self-Aware Body-Mind by helping us make and keep such distinctions.
Here, let us introduce the
Continuum Principle: Many aspects of a finite Body-Mind's experience are better understood as positions on a continuum, rather than discrete states. Human experience usually occupies a position between extremes. Several examples follow.
1. This formula helps us perceive where we are focusing our attention in any given moment.
∀x (HumanBodyMind(x) → ∃y Focus(y, x, IAm, Me))
For every x, if x is a Human Body-Mind, then there exists a y such that y is the position of x's focus on a continuum whose limiting cases are I Am and Me.
Each of us focuses our attention somewhere on a continuum between I Am, the observing subject, and Me, the constructed object of reflection. Normally, we allow events to passively move our focus. Yet with sufficient discipline, we can begin to choose where we place that focus. It does not have to be purely driven by forces beyond our control.
2. This formula helps us consider whether and to what degree something that happened was our responsibility.
∀x (Cause(x) → ∃y Responsibility(y, x, Total, NoneAtAll))
For every x, if x is a cause, then there exists a y such that y is the degree of responsibility associated with x on a continuum whose limiting cases are total and none at all.
Our responsibility for any given cause lies somewhere between Total, something we alone actively chose, and None at All, something which happened entirely without our input.
As an example, my reponsibility for taking my family for ice cream is obviously not total. The children often insist, though I am the one who drives and pays. On the continuum described above, though, I have a fair amount of responsibility for the decision.
My responsibility for the state of the roads as we drive there or for the price of the ice cream is obviously smaller. As I taxpayer and voter, I have some responsibility for the state of the roads. As a consumer, my responsibility for the price of the ice cream is negligible.
Degrees of our responsibility vary. At times, we assume more responsibility for effects we had little control over than is warranted. Other times, of course, the opposite holds true. Neither extreme helps maintain Balance for long.
3. This formula offers perspective on the burning Issues that concern us so much today.
∀x (Issue(x) → ∃y PersonalInfluence(y, x, None, Total))
For every x, if x is an Issue, then there exists a y, Personal Influence, such that y describes our degree of Influence concerning x on a continuum whose limiting cases are None and Total.
Some issues lie largely beyond our influence, however much they concern us. Others we may indeed influence, should we so choose.
This formula invites us to reflect on what our actual influence may be in any given circumstance. Having done so, we may then consider how best to use whatever influence we have.
It seems we often devote much attention to issues over which we have little influence, while neglecting issues which are genuinely within our reach. Discernment consists partly in recognizing the difference.
4. This formula helps us keep contests (including games!) and outcomes in perspective.
∀x (Contest(x) → ∃y Outcome(y, x, Me, Fatally, NotAtAll))
For every x, if x is a Contest, then there exists a y, an Outcome of x, such that y affects Me on a continuum whose limiting cases are Fatally and Not At All.
Every contest has an outcome, which affects me on a continuum between fatally and not at all. Typically, our passions concerning an outcome follow the larger passions aroused in our communities. Such passions carry us along. We may feel as though we live and die with each win or loss.
Yet an outcome can have a disproportionate effect on our well-being relative to its actual importance in life. Wisdom includes the ability to keep our reactions within reason, and avoid being unduly driven by passions beyond ourselves.
5. Here’s a formula for weighing how badly we need something we want.
∀x (Want(x) → ∃y Need(y, x, DieWithoutIt!, Meh)).
For every x where x is a Want, there exists a y, Need, which can be plotted on a continuum whose limiting cases are ‘DieWithoutIt!’ and ‘Meh’.
Our wants are unlimited. Our Need for what we Want can be imagined on a scale between something we'll surely die if we don't get, and something Meh, unimportant. The ability to imagine our wants in terms of actual needs is a life-skill, often learned through painful experience.
6. Is the old slogan, No Pain, No Gain, reliable?
¬ Pain → ¬ Gain?
Not necessarily. Sometimes we gain things without pain. Sometimes we suffer pain without gain. Other times, we gain by someone else’s pain, or someone else gains through our pain. Perhaps we should note the difference between a Want and a Gain.
Want ≠ Gain
A Want is simply a desire for a particular state or object. A Gain is the beneficial outcome of obtaining what is wanted. Not every want results in a gain. Some wants, when fulfilled, leave us no better off than before.
Perhaps the following clarifies better.
∀x (Want (x) → ∃ y Pain (y, x, None, Excruciating)).
For every x, if x is a Want, then there exists a y, Pain, such that y describes the degree of pain associated with pursuing x on a continuum whose limiting cases are None and Excruciating.
Every want implies a degree of pain, whether that pain falls upon the one wanting, another person, or the wider world. Wisdom includes recognizing that pain, discerning who or what will bear it, and deciding whether the anticipated gain justifies it.
As Jesus said in
Luke 14:28:
"Who among you, wanting to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the costs that are needed, if he has enough to finish?”
7. Are we really free?
First of all, what is freedom? Consider the following:
∀x (FiniteBodyMind(x) → ∃y Freedom(y, x, Absolute, NotAtAll))
For every x where x is a finite Body-Mind, there exists a degree of Freedom, y, regarding x, which can be imagined on a continuum between Absolute and Not At All.
Spinoza said, “That thing is called free, which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. On the other hand, that thing is necessary, or rather constrained, which is determined by something external to itself to a fixed and definite method of existence or action.” (
Ethics, I. Definition VII.)
My definition is this:
freedom is the ability to initiate change without external restraint. At a human scale, freedom is the ability to make our own life choices, without external compulsion. Human freedom is limited by nature.
To begin with, no one chooses to be born. No one chooses genes, parents, culture, or environment. We didn’t come to this party voluntarily. Our choices themselves are usually conditioned for us before we are conscious of making them.
We have a grisly liberty to choose how we are going to die, should we choose so, but no one has a choice of whether we are going to die. Human freedom, such as it is, exists within those limits.
We are potentially free to choose how we respond to life, yet learning to do so and actually doing it are challenging. We are potentially free to make some choices, within the limits imposed on us as finite Body-Minds.
Are we free in the sense the word is often used around us? I would say not as much as some imagine, nor as little as others fear. Again, Wisdom helps us understand and live with the limits of human freedom.
8. Do Things Get Better When We die?
A. IEndAtDeath → TimeIsFinite
B. ¬IEndAtDeath → TimeIsNotFinite
A ∨ B
If I end at death, then time is finite.
If I do not at death, then time is not finite.
Either A is true, or B is true.
∴ ∃y UseOfTime(y, Me, Conscious, Unconscious)
A → ∃y RiskOfWastingTime(y, Me)
B → ∃y RiskOfEndlessMonotony(y, Me)
Therefore, there exists a y, use of time, such that y can be evaluated for me on a continuum between conscious and unconscious.
If A is true, then there is a risk to me of wasting time.
If B is true, then there is a risk to me of inescapable monotony.
A → BadOutcome
¬A → BadOutcome
∴ BadOutcome.
If A is true, then there is a bad outcome.
If A is not true, then there is a bad outcome.
Therefore, there is a bad outcome.
“If you lose your sense of humor, you might as well kill yourself.”
Kathryn Hepburn
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Jesus of Nazareth
John 3:3 (RSV)
9. Missing the Target?
I never missed a target I didn’t have. Then again, I never hit one either. We can only hit or miss something we're aiming for, after all. Without targets, we live in a space with neither failure nor success.
∄y Target(y,x) → ¬◇∃y Misses(x,y)
If there is no target y for x, then it is not possible for x to miss y.
∄y Target(y,x) → ¬◇∃y Hits(x,y)
If there is no target y for x, then it is not possible for x to hit y.
∃y Target(y,x) ↔ (◇Hits(x,y) ∨ ◇Misses(x,y))
If and only if there is a target y for x, is it possible for x to either hit y or to miss y.
Sometimes, having no target eases our longing. It's good for us to spend at least some time in that place beyond failure and success. Sitting back and watching the world go by can be sweet. Yet having no target risks aimlessness.
Sometimes, having a target intensifies longing. It's often uncomfortable stepping into a space where we either hit or miss a target, whether someone else selected it for us or we selected it ourselves. Yet is there not within us a longing to accomplish goals and make something of the life we've been given? How can we do that without something to aim for, even at the risk of failure?
Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us,
"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven."
There is a time for letting go of targets, and a time for setting them up. We come closer to a balanced life by understanding both. At times, we accept the gift of moments without targets, just as at others we grasp moments that make aiming for our targets worthwhile.
Ask yourself these questions:
Do I have a target?
If so, what is my target?
Is that target worth risking failure for?
If so, how best can I learn to hit it?
10. How many of you are there?
You are not something different from your life experiences. At the same time, you are not identical to your life experiences. You can be distinguished from your life experiences, but you cannot be separated from them. This state is called
non-dual.
Non-dual(x,y) ≡ (x ≠ y) ∧ (x ↔ y).
Non-dual x and y are logically equivalent both to x and y not being identical, and to x and y existing if and only if the other exists as well.
I know, I know, the formula's a little deep. Let's look for some examples to clarify. For instance:
I ≠ MyBody-Mind.
I am not identical to my body-mind.
That's pretty straightforward.
I ↔ MyBody-Mind.
Yet I seem to be aware of existing as an individual indentity only as long as this body-mind exists.
∴ Non-dual (I, MyBody-Mind)
Therefore, I and my body-mind are non-dual.
Though they can be distinguished from each other, neither exists without the other.
That holds true for subjects and objects in general, does it not?
Subject ≠ Object
A subject is not identical to an object.
Subject ↔ Object.
Yet
a subject exists if and only if an object exists, and vice versa.
To clarify further, let's put it this way: an object exists
as an object only in relation to a subject, and a subject
as a subject likewise.
∴ Non-dual (Subject, Object)
Therefore, a subject and an object are non-dual.
Though they can be distinguished from each other, neither exists without the other.
Self and Existence are non-dual attributes of God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity.
(ΘQT∞)
As we reflect on this, we may find a greater balance in our living as we go along.
Let’s Look at Longing
Is It Real?
Is the world I perceive through these senses, and process by abstraction into thought, real? The obvious answer is, Duh! Of course it is. A priori it is. Is it not?
Consider the exceptions.
Most of us experience dream states in sleep, often vivid enough to create a sensation that our external senses (sight, sound, etc.) are engaged. From the dreamer’s perspective, the dream is real. Is it?
Our bodies lie largely still. Our eyes are largely closed. It seems the ordinary sensory pathways are closed as well. Yet they are open in the dream of the dreamer.
The patterns in the brain overlap significantly, to an extent that blurs the distinction between existent and non-existent. Yet other patterns remain stilled in sleep.
Consider hallucinations, induced be illness, medication, or a combination thereof. I experienced an elderly patient as he suffered what the doctors called “terminal delirium,” in the days leading up to his death. His hallucinations were excruciatingly real to him. There was simply no telling him, “This isn’t real.” For him, it was, and for the rest of us the consequences were equally real.
How do we know reliably which shade of our experiences of a world beyond us, if any, is actual, material? Which is the “real” one? Is it the vision of the dreamer in sleep? Is it the fearful hallucinations of one suffering delirium? Is it what we consider waking consciousness?
Our answer is a leap of faith. All three types of experience described above are real in a certain way. All stimulate pathways in the brain. All result from Body-Mind processing experience through neural and sensory pathways. It’s within the realm of possibility that all such experiences are equally real, that each world experienced while awake, dreaming, or hallucinating are equally substantial. It is also within the realm of possibility that each world experienced in such a way is merely a projection, that only exists within the Body-Mind and not beyond it.
Most times, most of us leap to the faith that our waking experiences are real, and that the other two are less so. Under some circumstances, we leap to different assumptions about their reality, or refuse to leap at all, held fast in our own inability to trust either our own sensations or the inputs of a world beyond us.
Yet the leap that leads us to act as if waking life was indeed the truest proposition, and the others subordinate to it, yields greater pleasure and eases longing better than the other possibilities. A sensible faith in the reality of the world too often correlates with the ability to live fruitfully within it to discredit such faith prematurely.
Similarly, the leap that leads us to act as if the dream or the hallucination were the touchstone, correlate in common observation more often with painful experience, delusion, even an inability to function effectively as a Body-Mind.
Wittgenstein, building his theory of probability in
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, wrote: “Certain, possible, impossible: here we have an indication of that gradation which we need in the theory of probability.” (
TLP, 4.464)
In the waking state, we experience the world and ourselves as real, and as governed by discernible patterns. The waking state retains within it some awareness of the other states as well. Though this “real” world disappears every time we sleep, it reappears in largely the same form when we wake up. On the other hand, the dream-world vanishes entirely and only accidentally recurs in future dreams, and the hallucinated world disappears entirely when the underlying condition eases, or when death ends sensory perception of all kinds.
The world we encounter while awake is more probably real in an external sense than the ones we encounter in altered states. Practically speaking, this is the view of the vast majority of humanity. If we understand both ourselves, and that which we experience beyond ourselves, as sharing existence, as an attribute of God, then we may leap to a faith that reinforces what is the most probable explanation, even as it infinitely transcends.
Imagine one
Imagine one
Absolutely infinite;
Without beginning, middle, or end;
Of infinite attributes;
Life among the living;
Love’s perfection.
Why Consider Scripture in a Philosophy of Life?
1. Every philosopher begins with a leap of faith. That is, every philosopher outside a mental hospital begins with faith that, at some level, he or she understands the world well enough to express it to self and others.
Such a leap of faith is unavoidable if we are going to have any meaningful contact with the world around us. The necessity of such a leap suggests an abiding orientation toward truth within us. Many across cultures and millennia have called this abiding ground of truth ‘God.’
Philosophically, God and truth are inseparable. Let’s do our best not to speak untruths in the name of God.
2. Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-Century Dutch philosopher, stated a qualified belief in Scripture, as his age knew it. He argued that Scripture’s truth has little to do with the worldviews of its writers, but much to do with the moral actions those writers enjoined.
God spoke truth through prophets who expressed it in worldviews they and their hearers knew. To understand the prophets properly, we must understand to some extent their historical circumstances and worldviews. Not every teaching given under particular historical circumstances binds every generation forever.
Common sense alone makes such a case. The role of philosophical theology, believe it or not, is to express common sense: to find the balance between moral imperatives bound on every generation, and worldviews which change over time.
Spinoza believed the moral imperative of scripture could be summarized in Jesus’ words from
John 13:34:
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. As I have loved you, so you also love one another.
Those imperatives remained true, Spinoza said, whether or not there was a seven day creation; or the sun stood still for the prophet Joshua; or the universe had three-stories: earth, heaven, and hell; or the rhetorical tool of apocalyptic described literal reality.
What Scripture requires of each one who would be human is obedience to this binding truth. While this approach offended many people both in his day and ours, does it not make a valid point in spite of that? We don't have to go all the way with others to love them humanely while we share this common life.
3. I also affirm that Scripture shows us truths about God through its literary genres, apart from consideration of such content’s alleged literal truth. Scripture records in such fashion the precedents of the infinite God’s self-revelation to finite awareness. Such precedents, where found consistently across the spectrum of human scripture, can form a basis for philosophy and a measure of an individual philosophy’s value.
Such precedents about God from Scripture include God’s role as the cause of existence, God’s eternal goodness as the object of finite longing, and God’s involvement in and interaction with finite awareness. Unlike the impersonal ultimate of Spinoza and the Deists, God interacts with finite existence in infinite goodness, even as He infinitely transcends it.
I use Scripture, primarily the Christian Bible but also from other religious traditions, as a starting point for my leap of faith into philosophy. As such, Scripture empowers philosophy, rather than imprisoning or stifling it.
Part I. Elohim.
This section of my philosophy of life begins with the third word of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible:
Elohim. The word
Elohim literally means “Gods,” but is translated as a singular:
“In the beginning, God created…” (Genesis 1:1)
Elohim is the Hebrew plural of the proper noun
El, meaning “God.”
Elohim is a “Plural Intensive,” a verbal form in which the plurality emphasizes the excellency of the one named. In this case, it indicates the highest or most important God.
Mahadeva, “great God,” states a similar idea in Sanskrit.
Svetasvetara Upanishad describes this ultimate as
“the origin and dissolution of the universe,” in
Mandalas: A Graphic Prayer Book, Plate 39.
Arjuna describes this reality as
“…without beginning, without middle, and without end,” in
Bhagavan’s Song: The Dialogues of Krishna and Arjuna, pg. 82.
The Apostle Paul refers to the one
“…in whom we live and move and have our being,” in
Acts 17:28.
Ilias Latina refers to this reality as “divinities,” embodied in and underlying the particular gods of the story, beginning with Book 1, Line 32.
Thomas Aquinas, elaborating on Aristotle, calls God the “uncaused cause” in his
Summa Theologica.
In
Ethics, Baruch Spinoza wrote, “By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite,” described as possessing “infinite attributes.” (Book I, Definition VI). Echoing St. Paul, Spinoza identifies God with the necessary substance underlying all that exists, beginning with Book I, Definition III.
God is a being in relationship with godself:
“Let us make man in our image.” (
Genesis 1:26)
God is good, and God’s goodness is an attribute of His being:
“Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? the goodness of God endureth continually.” (
Psalm 52:1)
God distinguishes the good in what exists:
“And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.” (
Genesis 1:4 KJV).
The Hiddenness of God:
Look, these are said
about a portion of His ways!
When we have heard
hardly a tiny drop of His word,
who can consider the thunders
of His immensity?
Job 26:14.
Full Knowledge of God Is Not Possible in Human Form
From of old they have not heard by ears nor perceived. Eye has not seen, O God, apart from You, what You prepared for those expecting You.
Isaiah 64:4
Eye Has Not Seen
And again He said, “You cannot see My face, for man will not see Me and live.”
Exodus 33:20
Nor Ear Heard
He answered him, “Why do you seek My name, which is wonderful?”
Judges 33:18
Nor Has It Risen in the Mind of Man
For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are My ways your ways, the Lord says.
Isaiah 55:8
Nevertheless, We Know Something of God…
"For His invisible
attributes are seen, understood from the world’s creation through those things that are made: His might and divinity, likewise, so they may be without excuse.
Romans 1:20
This verse is left as a quotation, with the italic indicating in this case a word added to the sentence to make sense of it in English, which is not specifically stated in Greek. It has long interested me what specific word is pressed into service in Romans 1:20, to cover the quirk in the Greek.
Attributes of God:
(From Christian Scripture)
What is an attribute?
“By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.” (
Ethics, I, Definition IV)
“By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite — that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.” (
Ethics I, Definition VII)
We perceive attributes of God, not God Himself.
A. Self.
Our selfhood is part of God’s image.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Genesis 1:26-27
1. Self is an attribute of God. God’s Selfhood is established by the precedent of
Genesis 3:9:
And when they heard the Lord God’s voice walking in paradise to the afternoon breeze, Adam hid himself and his wife among paradise’s trees from the Lord God’s face.
By the same precedent, God’s Selfhood is associated with His
Logos, or Word.
God identifies Himself to Moses in
Exodus 3:14:
I am who I am. He said, So you will say to Israel’s children, ‘Who is’ sent me to you.
God affirms His Selfhood and relationships in
Isaiah 43:10-13:
You are My witnesses, the Lord says, and My slave, whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I alone am. No god was formed before Me, and none will be after Me. I am. I am the Lord, and there is no securer apart from Me. I have told, and have made safe. I have made heard, and no stranger was among you. You are My witnesses, the Lord says, and I am God.
Jesus echoes this language beginning in
John 8:58:
Jesus said to them, Amen, amen I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am.
This Selfhood of God is directly connected to the meaningful life of humanity in
John 14:19-21:
Yet a little while and the world already will not see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live too. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Who has my commandments and keeps them, he is who loves me. But who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself known to him.
Jesus says that failing to grasp him as Self, as “I am,” is sin, in
John 8:24:
Therefore I’ve said to you that you will die in your sins – for if you don’t believe that I am, you will die in your sin.
2. Humans are images of God in Body-Mind. God’s image remains the essence of human self-awareness in Body-Mind.
B. Existence.
Our existence is part of God’s existence,
"in whom we live and move and have our being."
Acts 17:28 (RSV)
C. Wisdom.
God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity contains Wisdom.
God distinguishes between what is good and what isn’t. (
Psalm 52:1)
The longing that drives finite awareness is ultimately a longing for God’s goodness. Such longing can be eased apart from God’s goodness, but can never thus be satisfied.
Most beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. Who does not love hasn’t known God, for God is love.
1 John 4:7-8
Yet Our Knowledge Is Limited…
Now we see through a mirror, in an enigma.
1 Corinthians 13:12
And Even Direct Revelation Is Overwhelming…
And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people."
Exodus 32:9
Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
Isaiah 6:5
I have heard you with the
hearing of the ear,
yet now my eye sees you.
Therefore I reproach myself
and do penance in embers and ashes.
Job 42:5-6
Tell me who you are, you of terrifying form!
Reverence to you, O Best of Gods!
Have mercy! I wish to understand you.
Truly, I don’t comprehend your purpose.
Bhagavan's Song Pg. 84.
We won’t know God in a satisfactory way, until he shows up.
Beware Arrogance.
Arrogance is claiming to know more than we do, speaking beyond our understanding, and expecting others to bear with us. I am willing to affirm what I believe, but I am unwilling to pretend I know more than I know.
Belief ↔ Satisfaction?
Does belief in God follow if and only if life satisfies us, or does satisfaction follow if and only if we believe? Some experience the cruelty of the world so profoundly that they can’t bring themselves to believe. If God were good, the heart says, these painful things wouldn’t happen. No satisfaction? No belief.
Others experience hardship and immediately blame a lack of belief. If we had enough faith, so the story goes, only good would come our way. No belief? No satisfaction. Yet mature believers learn in the school of hard knocks that belief no more guarantees satisfaction than satisfaction guarantees belief.
In American law, someone accused of an offense has a right to trial by a jury of his or her peers. Your guilt or innocence is judged at law by those who are like you, who share your nature and limitations. Am I God’s peer? Would I sit on a jury judging God on the basis of whether life makes me happy?
What if the struggles we so resent in this world are the reasons we were put here to start with? What if there’s a larger purpose at work than our finite minds can understand? Given the vastness of the universe we know, does a larger purpose seem unlikely? We can safely assume there’s more going on in any given situation than we comprehend. Maybe it’s better to take a deep breath, to pause a minute, before sitting down in the jury-box as God’s judge.
FiniteBodyMind(x)→LimitedPerspective(x)
If x is a finite Body-Mind, then x has a limited perspective.
LimitedPerspective(x)→¬AdequateJudgeOfTotalReality(x)
If x has a limited perspective, then x is not an adequate judge of total reality.
Seeking God remains the highest good.
But seek first His kingdom and righteousness, and all these will be added to you.
Matthew 6:33
“The mind’s highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind’s highest virtue is to know God.”
Ethics, IV, PROP. XXVIII.
Names, Names, Names
I refer to the ultimate reality as God in this work. That same reality is called different names by different humans across different cultures, yet remains the same. By the following definition, God infinitely transcends any name applied to the divine nature.
God is absolutely infinite. Finite forms are limited by finite forms, yet God is without limit. God’s infinity contains all that exists, but is contained by nothing finite. God infinitely transcends all that exists within God’s infinity.
As both the creation story in
Genesis 1:1 and the quote from
Svetasvetara Upanishad in Section I of this work affirm, God is the cause of all that exists.
Part II. Logos.
The second part of this Scripturally-grounded philosophy begins with the fifth word of the Gospel of John in Greek:
Logos, meaning Word, Reason, Understanding.
Logos takes what is hidden in the abyss of
Elohim and makes it known.
Logos is the principle of divine self-revelation, per the Cappadocian Fathers of early Christian theology: They “…taught that the Son (the
Logos, the Word) is the one through whom the invisible God becomes known.” (Aisha Ianepo)
Logos reveals a meaningful dance of electrons from the flux of substance.
Logos draws meaning and value from the infinite.
Logos is the sense the universe makes of itself. It makes the universe sensible.
Logos is that aspect of God which enables us to observe recurrent patterns, abstract from them natural principles, and construct from those principles self-correcting philosophies through scientific method.
Logos is well attested cross-culturally and cross-temporally, as in the Old Testament's Wisdom Tradition and the South Asian Vedas.
The English word ‘logic’ derives from the Greek
Logos. The tool of logic is always available in its fullness.
Wisdom ≡ Logos
Wisdom and Logos are logically equivalent. To know one is to know the other. Wisdom is self-caused, eternal as an attribute of God, and woven into the fabric of reality, as it were.
Examples of Wisdom in The Christian Bible.
God says this of Beselel, a fine craftsman.
Exodus 31:1-3: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Look! I have called by name Beselel, Uri’s son, Hur’s son, from Judah’s tribe. I have filled him by God’s spirit with wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge in every work to thinking out skillfully whatever can be made…
Moses tells Israel that God’s commandments are wisdom in Deuteronomy 4:6:
You will observe and fulfill them in practice, for this is your wisdom and understanding before peoples, that, hearing all these precepts, they may say among the peoples, “Look! A wise and understanding people, a great nation!
Joshua, Moses’ successor, is described as wise in Deuteronomy 34:9:
Joshua, Nun’s son, was filled with spirit and wisdom, because Moses placed his hands on him. Israel’s children obeyed him, and they did as the Lord commanded Moses.
Isaiah says that God understood by wisdom in Isaiah 10:13:
He said, “I have worked in my hand’s strength, and understood in my wisdom.
Wisdom will be an attribute of a future deliverer, in Isaiah 11:1:
A rod will come out from Jesse’s root, and a flower will climb up from his root. The Lord’s breath will rest over him: a breath of wisdom and intellect, a breath of counsel and might, a breath of knowledge and piety.
Solomon prayed to God for wisdom in 2 Chronicles 1:10:
Give me wisdom and understanding so I can go out and come in before Your people! Who can judge worthily this Your people, who is so great?”
Daniel affirmed that wisdom belongs to God, in Daniel 2:20:
He spoke, saying, “May the Lord’s name be blessed from the age and even in the age, because wisdom and strength are His!
Solomon tells us that some despise wisdom in Proverbs 1:7:
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding. Fools despise wisdom and even teaching.
Solomon affirms that God created by wisdom in Proverbs 3:19:
The Lord founded earth by wisdom. He established skies by prudence.
Solomon commands his son in Proverbs 4:7 The beginning of wisdom: possess wisdom, and in all your possessing, buy prudence.
Solomon hears wisdom crying out to foolish humanity in Proverbs 8:1:
Does wisdom not cry out, and prudence give her voice?
Wisdom personified through the King’s imagination testifies to her role in creation, in Proverbs 8:22:
‘The Lord possessed me at the start of all His ways, in the beginning, before He made anything. I was set up from eternity, and from antiquity, before earth was made.
Wisdom ≡ Logos has been associated historically with Jesus of Nazareth, beginning with
John 1:1-18.
Jesus of Nazareth and
Christianity allow us to visit our definition of
History. Both Jesus and Christianity are part of
History, which is a collective construct in the human Body-Mind of our common story. The emergence of the Resurrection Faith is
Historic, in the sense of being a cause that had a wide and lasting effect on human culture and development. The Resurrection itself is
Historical as a cause, in a strict sense. We can narrow down with a good degree of accuracy when, where, and to whom it originally occurred. We can document with increasing clarity through the following decades the widening impact of the cause.
As to the exact nature of the cause, it is a matter of disagreement. To some, it’s a fabrication, a “story,” a tall tale. To others, it’s a mass hysteria, which since then has become endemic in the human population, though of varying severity and frequency. To others, it’s a literary plot, or a case of mistaken identity, or an unlikely survival story. Some consider it a revelation of God’s reality in human form.
The same holds true of
Muhammad and
Islam. Both Muhammad and Islam are part of
History. Islam’s emergence is
Historic, in that it had a wide and lasting effect on human culture and development. The emergence of Islam itself is
Historical as a cause, in a strict sense. As with the Resurrection faith, we can narrow down with accuracy when, where, and to whom it originally occurred, and document its widening impact through the centuries.
The exact nature of this cause, too, remains a matter of disagreement. To some, it is a tribal delusion, embellished with ideas from earlier sources. One Texas pastor called it “a lie from the pit of hell.” To others, it is a powerful and frightening presence, which became endemic then and continues to this day. To others still, it is a revelation of God’s reality to humanity. For a huge number of people living today, Islam is like an ocean in which all fish swim: the organizing principle of life itself.
In terms of probability, the causes are somewhere among the possibilities. Consider them carefully, in light of the effects having proceeded from them.
Wisdom is self-justifying. Jesus said, “Yet wisdom is justified by her children.”
Matthew 11:19 (LTPB)
His astonished onlookers said of him in
Mark 6:22 at his homecoming in Nazareth:
Where did he get all this, and what is the wisdom that was given to him, and such powers that are brought about through his hands?
The boy Jesus is described thus in
Luke 2:40:
But the boy grew and was strengthened, full of wisdom, and God’s grace was in him.
Luke 2:52 says,
“And Jesus grew in wisdom, age, and grace, with God and men.”
Jesus claims that the voice of God is Wisdom’s in
Luke 11:49,
“For this reason God’s wisdom also said, ‘I will send prophets and apostles to them, and some of them they will kill and persecute’–“
Wisdom grows in Jesus, and is expressed through him.
Part III. Berith.
The third point, defining my relationships with others, begins with the third word of Genesis 6:18 in Hebrew:
Berith, meaning “covenant.”
And I will establish My covenant with you, and you will go into the ark: you and your sons, your wife and your sons’ wives with you.
Genesis 6:18
God repeats it with Noah and those with him:
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you…
Genesis 9:9-10
The word “covenant” appears 292 times in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. It is used 272 times in the Old Testament and 20 times in the New Testament.
Synonyms for Covenant include: Agreement, Pact, and Treaty.
Characteristics of Covenants
A covenant is an agreement, whether spoken or not, to live in relationship with another, pooling both risks and rewards for a common interest.
Our earliest covenants are unspoken: family, kinship, cause.
A covenant has at least two parties, and implies obligations governing the relationships inside it. Each party in a covenant has both rights and responsibilities under it.
The concept of sin only arises with a specific idea of a covenant. Only when a sense of responsibility to a covenant relationship exists, can sin exist.
Over time, those best at adapting to their environment tend to survive. The evolution of covenant relationships in nature witnesses to the advantage covenants confer.
Let’s examine logically Jesus’ “New Commandment” in
John 13:34:
“I give you a new commandment: that you love one another. As I have loved you, so you also love one another.”
He bases the commandment not in an abstraction but in an example, one those gathered in the Upper Room the night before his crucifixion knew first-hand.
x = “As I have loved you…”
y = “Love one another.”
x ∴ y.
As I have loved you, therefore love one another.
This is the Christian covenant at its most elemental. He doesn’t command them to believe in God, to practice a particular sacrament, or to form a particular church. He commands them to love one another.
Example → Obligation
Under this understanding of covenant, the only sin, the only missing of the mark or falling short, is that of failing to love.
Sin ≈ Failure to Love
In other words, what matters most is not your belief, not your name, not your doctrine, but your action. If someone objects that this is “works righteousness,” I have to agree. But that is an objection one must raise with a higher authority. This is what Jesus commanded, not me.
An Attempt to Outline the System.
I. All finite life arises with longing.
We experience what eases longing as pleasure, and what intensifies it as pain.
Longing innately values that for which it longs, though it never finds lasting satisfaction in the objects that ease immediate longing.
The reality for which we long is self-evidently excellent, however blindly life may at times seek it.
Longing must have an object, however mysterious that object may be to us, and however ineptly we may seek it.
Pleasure cannot permanently ease longing unless its source is the ultimate object of longing.
Longing cannot be removed otherwise, without removing life as well.
The longings of indeterminate masses shape the events that finite awareness experiences in Body-Minds.
Individual finite awareness is swept along in the current of mass longing, whether the individuals choose to be or not.
Emotions arise from longing and its limitations, within our finite awareness.
For the most part, we passively follow along, moved from outside, but ourselves moving only in reaction.
The force of our emotions arising from events beyond our control often overmasters us in daily life.
Being overmastered by emotions arising from events beyond our control is a type of bondage to those emotions.
We find it difficult, if not impossible to resist the pull of the emotional tide of mass longing, often not even knowing that such a choice is possible.
Sometimes circumstances beyond our control mitigate the choices we make while being moved by longings beyond ourselves. Those choices are themselves part of that larger longing, and one can struggle to see free choice in it.
II. God is absolutely infinite.
God contains all but is contained by none.
God is the source and cause of existence.
God manifests through attributes in finite living beings: among the attributes being Existence, Self, and Wisdom.
God is good, the perfection of all virtues.
III. Logos, Wisdom, expresses the truth of God in the midst of existence.
The order we perceive in nature is
Logos.
Though our minds form mental images of
Logos, our expressions of it invariably fall short.
Yet
Logos does not disappear for lack of our awareness of it at any given moment.
Logos represents the infinite God reaching through finite existence, manifesting itself through laws, and drawing us to harmony with god(’s own) self.
Logos reveals itself “in many and various ways,” as in the marvelous, run-on sentence in Greek that begins in
Hebrews 1:1:
God, speaking of old to our fathers in the prophets in many and various ways...
Logos disproves the proposition that God is uninvolved with and uncaring toward finite existence.
If God is absolutely infinite, as defined, how can any finite awareness place limits on God such as, “God is indifferent to sentient pain”?
Logos manifests itself historically as well.
IV. Covenant represents that which binds the living to each other.
Under covenants, at least two parties bind themselves in relationship to the others, to act in particular ways.
Sharing finite existence with other objects is itself a covenant, so to speak, governed by the natural laws through which
Logos brings them into existence..
The covenant of living nature is survival of the fittest.
Sin, falling short of or failing in an obligation, only exists within a covenant.
Under the covenant of nature, sin is losing the struggle for survival, dying.
Logos, which binds humanity to God in the covenant of nature, offers humanity another covenant beyond that of nature, as many religious traditions attest.
In Christian tradition, God covenants with humanity through Jesus Christ.
As His obligation under the covenant, God saves those within it from sin, despair, and death.
The Christian’s obligation under the covenant is as Jesus stated in
Mark 12:30-31:
You will love the Lord your God from all your heart, and from all your soul, and from all your mind, and from all your strength. This is the first commandment. The second is like it: You will love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus restated the covenant commandment in
John 13:34:
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. As I have loved you, so you also love one another.
To fall short of love in either sense is sin under the Christian covenant.
We are tempted to obsess over sin, out of fear and superstition.
Our fear and superstition are often manipulated by forces beyond us.
Yet our covenant obligation remains unchanging: to love.
A task of coherent philosophy is the discipline to remain focused on the positive obligation, not merely on the times we fall short of it.
Wisdom both is, and makes available, the way to a balanced life.
A balanced life is one not driven exclusively by events beyond its control, but able to maintain a peace among them in the knowledge of God.
The human mind, as a species of finite awareness, is itself a part of God, who also infinitely transcends it.
Apart from direct knowledge of God, the longing that drives us can never be satisfied, and we experience the changes of material form as death.
Definitions
All these are constructs in the intellect, by which Body-Mind makes sense of its world.
Abstraction is the process by which Body-Mind associates patterns of changes with each other, so as to compare them, and provides the raw material of thought and reflection. See
Construct,
History,
Intellect,
Liberty,
Longing,
Mind,
Thought,
Pleasure,
Self,
Senses,
Time,
Thought.
Back to Top
Attribute, according to Baruch Spinoza, is “that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of God.” (
Ethics, I; Definition IV.) Such attributes may be modified, may take many forms, yet remain infinitely in God. Attributes are distinguishable in thought but not separable in reality. See
Body-Mind,
Change,
Existence,
God,
Good,
Infinite,
Macrocosm,
Quantum Truth,
Self,
Truth,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Awareness is the activity of observing. Self is the underlying observer. Self-awareness is awareness turned back upon the observer. Identity is the accumulated abstraction built from repeated acts of self-awareness. Such self-awareness becomes a mind when associated with a living human body. Awareness presupposes a Self capable of being aware. As such, Self is prior to awareness. See
Change,
Emotion,
God,
Intellect,
Longing,
Macrocosm,
Self,
Senses,
Thought.
Back to Top
A Balance is the goal of a coherent philosophy of life, lived as a “disciplined love of wisdom.” One lives aware of the longing that drives finite self-awareness, and is able to moderate that longing so as to avoid extremes of emotions, thus preserving what liberty of action remains for an individual. This goal can be pursued through self-discipline, even apart from explicit consideration of God. From a God-centered or God-transformed perspective, a balanced life is one where an individual recognizes all longing as longing for God, and finds in that the discipline necessary to live a life not driven by emotional or existential extremes. A balanced life is one in which finite self-awareness recognizes its longing, disciplines its response to that longing, and thereby preserves the freedom to seek wisdom, goodness, and ultimately God. See
Coherent,
Construct,
Ethics,
Freedom,
God,
Good,
History,
Infinite,
Intellect,
Logos,
Longing,
Macrocosm,
Philosophy,
Pleasure,
Quantum Truth,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Berith is a Hebrew word meaning “covenant.” See
Covenant,
Elohim,
Logos,
God.
Back to Top
Body-Mind recognizes that Body and Mind function not as two separate entities, but as one. Body-Mind derives from the intersection of the divine attributes of Self and Existence. Self-awareness within a finite form is imperfect of itself. Its imperfection drives Body-Mind to ease its longing. Body-Mind becomes aware of other Body-Minds only through changes in itself, such as sense impressions and abstractions from them. See
Attribute,
Awareness,
Change,
Existence,
Finite,
God,
Intellect,
Macrocosm,
Self,
Senses,
Thought.
Back to Top
A Cause initiates Change in a preexisting state. Every Cause has an Effect, and much about the nature of a Cause may be discerned from the Effect that follows. All events are either self-caused, originating within the one doing the causing, or externally caused, originating outside that which is affected. See
Attribute,
Awareness,
Change,
Existence,
Finite,
God,
Intellect,
Macrocosm,
Self,
Senses,
Thought.
Back to Top
Certainty is complete knowledge of all possible outcomes in the present in the Quantum Truth of God. By intuition, immediate trans-rational awareness, we know certainty exists. Simultaneously, we know that we do not possess it adequately. Thus uncertainty, and its concomitant, longing, are fundamental to the nature of finite awareness through Body-Mind. This echoes the ancient Buddhist understanding expressed in “The Wheel of Existence”:
From uncertainty, change arises;
From change, consciousness arises;
From consciousness, the world outside arises…
A Path Beyond Suffering: Working the Buddhist Method,
Searchlight Press, pg. 41.
See
Abstraction Awareness,
Change,
Construct,
God,
Infinite,
Intellect,
Longing,
Philosophy,
Quantum Truth,
Time.
Back to Top
Change, flux, is the underlying state of material existence. Why change should take place or where it arose to start with are beyond the ability of Intellect to directly perceive, since Intellect derives from change itself. See
Abstraction,
Awareness,
Certainty,
Effect,
Existence,
Intellect,
Philosophy.
Back to Top
Something
Coherent makes evident sense to the intellect of many. See
Ethics,
History,
Intellect,
Liberty,
Philosophy,
Religion,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
A
Construct is a conditioned perspective Body-Mind develops to make sense of its experience. See
Abstraction,
Certainty,
Change,
Coherent,
Finite,
History,
Intellect,
Liberty,
Mind,
Philosophy,
Thought,
Senses,
Time,
Thought.
Back to Top
A
Covenant is an agreement, whether spoken or not, to live in relationship with another, pooling both risks and rewards for a common interest. See
Balance,
Berith,
Elohim,
Faith,
God,
Sin.
Back to Top
Effect. See
Cause. See
Abstraction,
Awareness,
Certainty,
Change,
Effect,
Existence,
Intellect,
Philosophy.
Back to Top
Elohim is the Hebrew plural of the proper noun El, meaning “God.”
Elohim is a “Plural Intensive,” a verbal form in which the plurality emphasizes the excellency of the one named. It is translated in this sense as a singular noun in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created…”. In this case, the word indicates the highest or supreme God. See
Attribute,
Berith,
Covenant,
Certainty,
Freedom,
Good,
Infinite,
Logos,
Macrocosm,
Philosophy,
Quantum Truth,
Substance,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Emotion is a Body-Mind’s internal response to stimuli. Emotional reactions usually follow in sequence from physical sensations, and are generally followed in sequence by conscious thought. As such, emotions can often remain hidden from thought in one’s finite awareness. Recognizing emotions and reckoning with them consciously is also part of a coherent philosophy of life. See
Abstraction,
Change,
Liberty,
Longing,
Passions,
Pleasure,
Senses,
Time,
Thought.
Back to Top
Essence constitutes the particular configuration through which nature is uniquely expressed. Essence is differentiated from bodily form and unfolds, becoming knowable in part through time. See
Awareness,
Body-Mind,
Identity,
God.
Back to Top
Ethics represent a a coherent combination of knowledge and wisdom as a guide for practical living. See
Balance,
Coherent,
Construct,
Freedom,
God,
Good,
History,
Infinite,
Intellect,
Logos,
Longing,
Macrocosm,
Philosophy,
Pleasure,
Quantum Truth,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Existence is an attribute of God. God is what must exist for all else to exist. Existence reflects Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Proposition 2 from
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts,” though Radoslav Tsanoff highlighted the danger of understanding it too narrowly: "The acoustical description of a discourse need not rule out its likely significance." Existence and awareness are attributes of the same God. Finite Body-Minds, knowing existence imperfectly, attempt to understand “atomic facts” through abstraction. In light of theoretical advancements since Wittgenstein wrote, I prefer the phrase “quantum truth” as a description of existence. See
Attribute,
God,
Quantum Truth,
Substance.
Back to Top
Faith is the unavoidable confidence we must have in existence in order to function as finite Body-Minds. When we turn on the shower, we have faith the water will fall downward. Simple faith undergirds every response to stimuli, that what we experience will be one particular way, and not another.
As Bhagavan puts it:
A human is made of faith.
As someone’s faith is, so are they.
(BhS, pg. 115.)
Yet finite awareness in this Body-Mind arrives at events in experience that disorient that elementary faith in us. Our conscious minds may reach a point where we do or do not trust the reality we experience. A person makes a leap of faith at points where they decide to trust, or distrust, an infinite God. See
Awareness,
Balance,
Body-Mind,
Certainty,
Freedom,
God,
Infinite,
Philosophy,
Quantum Truth,
Religion,
Scripture,
Truth,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Finite: Something finite is limited and has barriers between itself and that which is beyond itself. See
Abstraction,
Infinite,
Intellect,
Liberty,
Longing,
Senses,
Time.
Back to Top
Freedom is the ability to initiate change without external restraint. At a human scale, freedom is the ability to make our own life choices, without external compulsion. Human freedom is limited by nature. See
Covenant,
Ethics,
God,
Good,
Infinite,
Liberty,
Longing,
Passions,
Philosophy.
Back to Top
God is absolutely infinite; without beginning, middle, or end; of infinite attributes. God is the uncaused cause; the life of all that lives; the perfection of virtue; and the infinite value. Finite forms are limited by finite forms, yet God is without limit. God's infinity contains all that exists, yet infinitely exceeds all that exists within it. While God's infinity is absolute, God's self-manifestation, which occurs through change, is part of that infinity. God's infinity includes both stillness and change, both pure potentiality and manifestation. See
Attribute,
Balance Certainty,
Freedom,
Good,
Elohim,
Infinite,
Longing,
Macrocosm,
Philosophy,
Quantum Truth,
Substance,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
god [sic] is whatever matters most to an individual or group. See
Construct,
Finite,
History,
God,
Liberty,
Longing,
Passions,
Religion.
Back to Top
Good, according to Scripture, God recognizes and names on the third day of creation. (Genesis 1:10). Scripture also recognizes goodness as an attribute of God, beginning with Vulgate Psalm 105:1. God’s goodness, by this view, accounts for our finite longing. Longing remains unsatisfied with anything less than the goodness of God. See
Attribute,
Balance,
Ethics,
God,
Longing,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
History is a construct abstracted from the finite awareness of Body-Mind, individually and collectively. The construct is imperfect, and changes with experience. Something historic is the construct of an important collective memory, existing in a variety of Body-minds at a given moment. For example, the Beatles are historic. Something historical is the construct of an event whose occurrence can be verified from multiple credible sources, establishing the reality of a particular effect and offering conclusions as to its cause. For example, the release of the Beatles recording of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in the United States on November 22, 1963 is historical. See
Abstraction,
Change,
Coherent,
Construct,
Covenant,
Intellect,
Liberty,
Longing Passions,
Philosophy,
Religion,
Time,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Hope, according to Baruch Spinoza, “…is an inconstant pleasure, arising from the idea of something past or future, whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue.” (
Ethics, III. Definition XII.). See
Balance,
Change,
Covenant,
Longing,
Philosophy,
Religion,
Time,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
I Am is the “metaphysical subject,” the “philosophical I,” the Vedantic “witness consciousness” which observes all, but cannot itself be observed. I am always I, but I am never me. We organize the elements of individual Identity around this persistent I Am, but that identity is never identical with it. See
Awareness,
Body-Mind,
Elohim,
Freedom,
God,
Macrocosm,
Quantum Truth,
Self,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Identity, following the Buddhist model, accretes over time, derived from sensation, preference, and conditioning. This accreted identity forms around finite awareness experiencing a world as a Body-Mind. Identity derives from Self, but is not identical with it. As Wittgenstein put it, “The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit — not part of the world.” (TLP, 5.641) The relationship between I Am and Identity can be stated as follows: Subject ⊨ Object. The Subject, I Am, entails the Object. The two are not the same, yet they are not different either. I Am and Identity are in a non-dual relationship. See
Abstraction,
Awareness,
Body-Mind,
Change,
Construct,
Emotion,
Ethics,
Longing,
Passions,
Pleasure,
Self,
Senses,
Time,
Thought.
Back to Top
Infinite: Something infinite is unlimited and without boundaries. The “absolutely infinite” includes all. If it did not, it would not be absolutely infinite. There can be nothing beyond the absolutely infinite. See
Abstraction,
Finite,
Freedom,
God,
Macrocosm,
Quantum Truth,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Intellect is that by which the Body-Mind makes sense of its world. It is an essential part of human nature, possessed individually and collectively in varying measure. See
Awareness,
Change,
Emotion,
Liberty,
Longing Passions Philosophy,
Pleasure,
Senses,
Time,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Knowledge consists of active constructs in finite minds, abstracted from the senses. See
Abstraction,
Awareness,
Body-Mind,
Change,
Construct,
Emotion,
Ethics,
Longing,
Passions,
Pleasure,
Self,
Senses,
Time,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Liberty is being able to make one’s own life choices, as one best sees fit. Liberty is often an afterthought to those enjoying it. As is so often the case in life, the truth is often most tangible in the lack. Liberty is precious to those deprived of it. See
Abstraction,
Balance,
Covenant,
Ethics,
Finite,
Freedom,
History,
Intellect,
Longing,
Passions,
Philosophy,
Pleasure,
Thought.
Back to Top
Logos, derived from Greek, λογος, takes what is hidden in the abyss of God’s infinity and makes it known. It is the sense the universe makes of itself. See
Attribute,
Berith,
Covenant,
God,
Philosophy,
Quantum Truth,
Religion,
Scripture,
Self,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Longing or hunger is the nature of all life, and part of the essence of each individual living entity, an innate incompleteness intrinsic to finite existence. Longing is the signature of finite awareness. According to Rig Veda:
For whom or for what all nature longs, the sensory experience alone cannot determine of itself. In individuals, changes to Body-Mind either ease longing, increase it, or leave it unchanged. While longing may be eased or intensified, it remains at the core of Body-Mind’s nature. Pursuing changes that ease longing, and avoiding others that intensify it, conditions the finite awareness of Body-Mind into patterns of behavior, but no change can remove longing without at the same time removing life itself. See
Awareness,
Balance,
Certainty,
Change,
Emotion,
Good,
History,
Intellect,
Passions,
Philosophy,
Pleasure,
Quantum Truth,
Time,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Love, according to Baruch Spinoza, “…is pleasure, accompanied by the idea of an external cause.” (
Ethics, III. Definition VI). See
Freedom,
God,
Good,
Infinite,
Macrocosm,
Self,
Truth,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
The
Macrocosm is the Body-Mind of God, encompassing all existence. The
Microcosm is finite awareness, experiencing a particular manifestation of Body-Mind. Despite their obvious differences, the microcosm and the macrocosm display a curious unity. The microcosm contains the macrocosm, at least in inchoate form, as surely as the macrocosm contains the microcosm. The little “I” bears a remarkable resemblance to the big “I”. As Krishna tells Arjuna, “How this can be is beyond subtle.” (BhS, Pg 97.) See
Awareness,
Body-Mind,
Certainty,
Change,
Emotion,
God,
Good,
History,
Intellect,
Passions,
Philosophy,
Pleasure,
Quantum Truth,
Time,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Mind refers to the awareness beginning with material existence as experienced through a body. See
Awareness,
Body-Mind,
Abstraction,
Construct,
Intellect,
Thought.
Back to Top
Myth is a meaningful religious story that is neither true nor false from a philosophical perspective. See
Awareness,
Body-Mind,
Abstraction,
Construct,
Intellect,
Proposition,
Thought.
Back to Top
Nature constitutes those attributes which distinguish one class of phenomena from another. Nature is that without which such phenomena “…could neither be nor be conceived,” in Spinoza’s phrase. (
Ethics, II; Definition II.) See
Attribute,
God,
Essence,
Existence,
Quantum Truth,
Substance.
Back to Top
Passions are emotions arising from events outside our control. Our experience of emotions is largely passive. Emotions happen to us, for the most part, and often overwhelm us. Disciplining oneself to control emotions, rather than be controlled by them, is the first conscious act in a philosophy of life. See
Abstraction,
Awareness,
Balance,
Change,
Emotion,
Freedom,
Intellect,
Liberty,
Longing,
Philosophy,
Pleasure,
Senses,
Time,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Something
Perfect is complete, lacking nothing. Perfect love is complete love. See also
Good,
God,
Infinite,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Philosophy combines the Greek words Philos, “love”, and Sophia, “wisdom” into One. Philosophy is a disciplined love of wisdom. By philosophy, we discipline ourselves to live by reason. See
Balance,
Ethics,
Freedom,
Good,
History,
Intellect,
Liberty,
Longing,
Quantum Truth,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Pleasure, and
pain are as follows: pleasure is change that eases longing; and pain is change that intensifies longing. We are conditioned to seek pleasure and avoid pain, in response to the longing inside us. We perceive pleasure as good, and pain as bad. See
Abstraction,
Awareness,
Change,
Emotion,
Intellect,
Liberty,
Longing,
Passions,
Philosophy,
Senses,
Time,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Proof is substantiation that a given circumstance conforms in all aspects to the quantum truth of the moment. As this is beyond the capacity of finite Body-Mind to ascertain, we must speak more often in terms of probability. How probable is it that x adequately describes y? Wittgenstein describes the logical limits of probability: a tautology, true in every possible circumstance; and a contradiction, false in every possible circumstance. Between those poles of impossibility, varying degrees of probability can be approximated, depending on the accuracy of the measurements and the credibility of those making them. Can we prove or disprove the existence of God, for instance, beyond all possible doubt? No, we can’t, in either direction. We can, however, weigh the probability, and act therefrom. Proof, in the absolute sense, belongs to Quantum Truth itself; finite beings navigate reality through varying degrees of probability. See
Abstraction,
Awareness,
Change,
God,
Intellect,
Philosophy,
Quantum Truth,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
A
Proposition sets forth an idea. The word derives from a Latin verb at the root of “proposition”:
proponere: “to set before”;
pro: (in this instance) “before; in front of”;
ponere: “to set; to place”. A
philosophical proposition is one that sets forth an idea which can be verified experimentally as either true or false. Other propositions express probabilities, not certainties, and thus are not philosophical propositions. The distinction seems trivial, but proves not to be in experience.
“The moon is made of green cheese,” as a philosophical proposition, is verifiably false. Along with millions of others, I saw the moon landing on TV in 1969 No green cheese was either encountered or verified experimentally. Claiming otherwise in the face of experience and evidence defies common sense.
“2 + 2 = 4” is a philosophical proposition which is demonstrably true, just as
“2 + 17 = 4” is also a philosophical proposition demonstrably false.
“The world as we know it will end in 10 minutes” is a philosophical proposition whose veracity, though certain, is as yet unknown.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” is a proposition that can be experimentally verified neither as true nor false. The proposition conveys its meanings apart from its formal, philosophical sense. All propositions assume a modicum of common sense to understand. See
Balance,
Ethics,
Freedom,
Good,
History,
Intellect,
Liberty,
Longing,
Myth,
Quantum Truth,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Quantum Truth extends Wittgenstein's notion of atomic facts into a contemporary understanding of reality informed by quantum physics. Quantum Truth contains every possibility. Quantum Truth does not contain what is not possible, though it does contain the idea of what is not possible. It contains the actual state of reality, inclusive of the subatomic, in the present, and every possibility within it. Though quantum truth is reality itself, it transcends finite Body-Mind’s attempts to abstract it as an object of thought. Much of it remains hidden from a finite observer, graspable only by a leap of faith, if at all. Quantum Truth is reality in the present moment. See
Awareness,
Certainty,
Freedom,
God,
Infinite,
Intellect,
Philosophy,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Religion is how individuals and groups connect to their “god”. See
Coherent,
Construct,
Covenant,
God,
god,
History,
Intellect,
Longing,
Passions,
Philosophy,
Thought.
Back to Top
Righteousness is purity of heart and rectitude of conduct, without which no one sees God. See
Coherent,
Construct,
Covenant,
God,
god,
History,
Intellect,
Longing,
Passions,
Philosophy,
Thought.
Back to Top
A
Scripture is a religious book regarded as authoritative in some sense for large groups of people through time. For instance, among Jews, Torah is Scripture, as are Nevi’im and Kethuvim. For Christians, The Bible is Scripture, made up of at least the Old and New Testaments. For Muslims, The Quran is Scripture, and The Bible is highly-regarded. For Hindus, The Vedas are Scripture, consisting of three layers: the Rig, Sama, and Yajur Vedas; the Upanishads; and the Bhagavad Gita. To call these different texts Scripture is not necessarily to collapse their messages into a single meaning, or to flatten their differences into sameness. It is to give them a category in our thought to recognize their importance to humanity through the ages, a value which stands apart from the expressed worldviews of their authors. See
Construct,
Covenant,
God,
god,
History,
Religion,
Thought,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Self is an attribute of God. Self shares itself infinitely, with infinite aspects, and yet remains self in all. Self is the underlying observer. Self becomes manifest by the awareness of change, and is the foundation on which finite identity is built. Self is the I that experiences. Identity is the me that experience constructs. See
Awareness,
Attribute,
Change,
God,
Infinite,
Intellect,
Liberty,
Macrocosm,
Thought.
Back to Top
The
Senses are the means by which Body-Minds experience a larger world, and form the basis from which the process of abstraction begins. See
Awareness,
Change,
Finite,
Intellect,
Longing,
Passions,
Pleasure,
Time,
Thought.
Back to Top
Shiva is a name derived from Sanskrit for the infinite Self that manifests the universe and experiences itself through that manifestation.
Existence,
Freedom,
God,
Good,
Infinite,
Macrocosm,
Quantum Truth,
Religion,
Scripture,
Self,
Truth,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Sin is missing a target, falling short of a perceived expectation. See
Berith,
Covenant,
Elohim,
Faith,
God.
Back to Top
Solomon King of Israel, son of King David, reigned in Jerusalem over the twelve Israelite tribes, between 970-931 BCE. Though Solomon's authorship is a matter of debate, the Bible's
Wisdom Tradition is written in his name. See
Berith,
Covenant,
Elohim,
Faith,
God,
History.
Back to Top
Substance is that which necessarily exists, the underlying reality of all that is. Substance is equivalent to quantum facts. See
Attribute,
Existence God,
Infinite.
Back to Top
Time is a Body-Mind’s measure of relative rates of change. Without a Body-Mind to perceive it, time has no substance. See
Abstraction,
Awareness,
Change,
Construct,
Finite,
History,
Intellect,
Longing,
Senses,
Thought.
Back to Top
Thought is Self considering itself, in the attribute of Body-Mind. See
Abstraction,
Awareness,
Body-Mind,
Coherent,
Construct,
Intellect,
Emotion,
Finite,
History,
Longing,
Passions,
Philosophy,
Pleasure,
Self,
Senses,
Time,
Wisdom.
Back to Top
Truth (see Quantum Truth).
Back to Top
Value is the innate worth we discover in existence. We value different objects in different, but the underlying essence of quality is the same through all. We are aware of gradations of value, from that which we despise and value not at all, to that which is precious beyond price. God is the ultimate value, the ultimate good, and finite beings share both a sense of and a predisposition toward what is more valuable and what less. See
Ethics,
Freedom,
Good,
Elohim,
Infinite,
Longing.
Back to Top
Wisdom is intuition into the nature of God, and an attribute as well. Wisdom is distinct from knowledge, and exists in collective and individual Body-Minds. See
Attribute,
Balance,
Coherent,
Construct,
Ethics,
Freedom,
God,
Good,
History,
Infinite,
Intellect,
Logos,
Longing,
Macrocosm,
Philosophy,
Pleasure,
Quantum Truth,
Thought.
Back to Top
The
World is the totality of a finite Body-Mind’s experience and abstraction in the present. See
Abstraction,
Awareness,
Body-Mind,
Coherent,
Construct,
Intellect,
Emotion,
Finite,
History,
Longing,
Passions,
Philosophy,
Pleasure,
Self,
Senses,
Time,
Wisdom
Back to Top
Reference List of Logical Symbols
Θ = God (θεός)
QT = Quantum Truth (contains every possibility)
∞ = Infinity
≡ = Logical equivalence ("x is logically equivalent to y.")
→ = Implication ("x implies y; If x, then y.")
← = Reverse implication ("x is implied by y.")
↔ = Biconditional ("x exists if an only if y exists.")
⊂, ⊃ = Subset, Superset
∀ = Universal quantifier ("for every")
∃ = Existential quantifier ("there exists")
∄ = Negated existential quantifier ("there does not exist")
∴ = Therefore
Bibliography
The Latin Testament Project Bible.
Searchlight Press (2016)
A Path Beyond Suffering: Working the Buddhist Method.
Searchlight Press (2008).
Flames of Faith: A Thumbnail Guide to World Religions.
iUniverse (2006).
Bhagavan’s Song: The Dialogues of Krishna and Arjuna.
Searchlight Press (2026).
Mandalas: A Graphic Prayer Book.
Searchlight Press (2025).
Spinoza, Baruch;
Complete Works of Baruch Spinoza (Grapevine Edition) Kindle Edition, 2025.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig;
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
Translated by C. K. Ogden, Dover, New York, 1922, 1955.
****Blurbs****
I.
I perceive one absolutely
infinite God
through three attributes:
as
Existence;
as
Self;
and as
Wisdom.
II.
By
Philosophy, I consider it probable
that these effects have an intentional cause.
By
Faith, I trust
that these effects have an intentional cause.
By
Religion, I live
as if these effects have an intentional cause.
III. God is absolutely infinite.
God contains all but is contained by none.
God is the source and cause of existence.
God manifests through attributes as finite living beings.
God is good, the perfection of all virtues.
God ≡ Quantum Truth ≡ Infinity
(ΘQT∞)
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