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Frequently consider the connection of all things in the Universe. ... Reflect upon the multitude of bodily and mental events taking place in the same brief time, simultaneously in every one of us and so you will not be surprised that many more events, or rather all things that come to pass, exist simultaneously in the one and entire unity, which we call the Universe. ... We should not say ‘I am an Athenian’ or ‘I am a Roman’ but ‘I am a Citizen of the Universe.'"—Marcus Aurelius
Excerpt from Chapter 4
From The Book:
Everything
Forever:
Learning to See Timelessness
"Every human has a different life and set of questions to explore. Some of our questions are universal, but each of us is exploring this thing we call life in our own unique way. So is every other form of life, from mountains to every leaf on every tree."
—Mellen-Thomas Benedict
"In this 21st Century, the Age of Technology, we are still plagued by
religious beliefs that are a contributing cause toward terrorism, killings and wars between nations. Belief in a deity,
who keeps causing catastrophes, punishes people, and created the universe out of nothingness as if by magic was brought
about by hysteria and superstitions. This thought process needs to be reassessed and brought up to date. Open-minded
people must use common sense to determine whether this so-called deity was incorrectly perceived, mis- interpreted and
misunderstood by the masses of a bygone era."
—Kurt Kawohl
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Part
Four - Page One Beautiful Diversity For every north there is a south, for every up a down, for every forward a backward. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Every school kid learns how to pair together opposites such as hot and cold, smooth and rough, short and tall. On the playground we learn what goes up must come down. And as we grow older there are lessons to be learned about pleasure and pain, strength and weakness, love and hate. In stranded moments throughout life we contemplate opposites of good and bad, wrong and right, darkness and light. The philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.” But does absolutely everything have an opposite? And if so, and it is also true what they say, that opposites attract, then what happens when all the opposites meet in the middle? In between opposites there is always a middle ground, and yet the middle can be awfully difficult to describe. Between thin and tall there is the average height. Between heavy and light there is the average weight. We usually have to use neutral words and phrases such as medium, average, the most common, the norm, to define the middle ground between opposite attributes, because oddly enough there aren’t special words that identify the middle ground. What word defines the middle between strong and weak, hot and cold, sharp and dull, hard and soft, or easy and difficult? The middle ground is almost always nameless and yet we can easily recognize it exists between each opposite. There are opposing directions in politics, the left wing and the right wing, but of course the balance between liberal and conservative is simply called the middle of the road? Why aren’t those ‘middle of the roaders’ allowed a special name of their own, or a political party of their own, like everyone else? And why aren’t there more of these people. Where do they hang out? I can’t remember ever meeting any of them. Could it be that when people reach the middle of the road they just disappear without a trace? Or is it that they just don’t speak up, or don’t have an opinion? Why are the rest of us so clearly on one side or the other? Why is everyone so polarized into camps, or sides, or groups? There are left wingers and right wingers in politics, religion, justice, education, and even art. In the study of human personality, Carl Jung, and later Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs identified the four temperaments that define the essence of each person’s personality. A multiple choice test identifies a person as more thinking or more feeling, more sensory oriented or more intuitive, more introverted or more extroverted, and finally in the last divide it tells if a person is more spontaneous, flexible, and free to flow with the ups and downs of life, or it tells if they are more inclined to be planned, rigid, structured, and organized. The four divides effectively define sixteen basic personality types. It can be quite surprising to find how accurate one’s own personality and behavior is described in respect to being one or the other of each of these temperaments. Yet I have wondered, with billions of people on this planet, isn’t there one person out there who is right in the middle, who isn’t any one type more than the other. Really there must at least be many thousands, but why hasn’t their personality been identified as the seventeenth type? What is their personality like? Do they have one? And how come I hear somebody telling these individuals (if I can call them that) to “take a stand”, “be somebody”, “make your mark!” Why are we expected to be off center? What is so terrible about being in the middle? All opinions, all traits, all characteristics, all forms, have a middle ground, but we don’t name the middle ground apparently because we think it’s too plain and boring to be given a name. We usually act as if there is nothing in the middle, as if when two sides blend together they cancel out or disappear. But just because the middle ground is always less distinct and pronounced than the definitive extremes on either side, why do we go and think the middle ground is a formless nothing. This elusive middle ground between opposites is itself a physical part of reality, although it depends upon how we look at it as to whether we define it as a combination or a cancellation. It can be seen as inclusive, as the combined sum of opposite properties, or it can be seen as exclusive; the negation or cancellation of opposite properties. It can be seen as the potential to be either or it can be seen as a nonexistent neither. It can be seen as everything or it can be seen as nothing. And since we are each defined by our own particular imbalances, it often depends on our own temperament as to whether we see the middle ground as the whole, or as a void. The great egos, the loud and obnoxious, the pronounced types, of course see the middle ground as boring, empty, and repulsive. The practical, the conservative, the sensory oriented skeptic, tends to see the middle ground as irrelevant because it doesn’t, or it doesn’t seem to, have identifiable qualities. What isn’t physically definitive doesn’t exist. The classical physicists of the past century, in concert with mathematical logic, have strictly seen the merging of opposites as a cancellation. Someone with a practical and physical personality prefers to define reality as limited to physical things and measurable properties. On the other hand, the more intuitive, the progressive, the insightful, the more spiritual types, tend to sense the middle ground as a whole containing all opposing sides. They tend to depreciate the physical and see the balance between opposites as a unity, as two sides of the same coin. The middle ground is seen as a foundation or axis, from which form springs outward. For some, the combination of all opposites forms a single unified whole, a common oneness. This is the central core of many philosophies and religions in the east. A common belief in Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism asserts the unity and interrelatedness of all things. In Buddhism the Dharmakaya is the experience of a timeless unity devoid of all physical characteristics, which is said to be true reality. The Heart Sutra of Buddhism states “...Form Does not Differ From the Void, And the Void Does Not Differ From Form. Form is Void and Void is Form...” More toward fullness, Brahman, in Hinduism and for the Yogi is the unchanging and infinite background of all physical being. It is the sum totality of all. Likewise, in Chinese Taoism the word Tien or Tao refers to the ultimate sum of all. Everything exists in relation to the Tao and everything is a part of the Tao, even though the Tao is one thing. Therefore nothing can exist or have meaning apart from the Tao. Out of the Tao comes the Yin and Yang, the two opposing forces or natures. Oneness was also a common message of many great philosophers, including Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Plotinus, and Giordano Bruno. Xenophanes appears to have influenced a long line of other philosophers with his belief in an infinite and eternal Universe that is unable to change. He undoubtedly influenced the development of modern religion as he described the infinite whole as an omniscient God that sees all, thinks all, and hears all, “one god greatest among gods and men”. A few years later Heraclitus called the unity of opposites “Logos”. And following Xenophanes, the logically minded Parmenides described being as innate and without any opposite of non-being, since non-being cannot exist, and he also argued that being is ultimately timeless and unchanging. In that belief Parmenides treated time, form, distinction, and all duality, as illusion. Plato also considered the visible world to be an illusion, one that produces weakly assumed beliefs in the illusion. In the allegory of the cave he suggests the world we experience is like the shadows of another much deeper reality. Plotinus, like the Buddhists saw the great Oneness as beyond all attributes, including even being and non-being. More recently, the Italian Philosopher Giordano Bruno wrote: “Everywhere is one soul, one spirit of the world, wholly in the whole and in every part of it, as we find in our lesser world also. This soul...produces all things everywhere; so that for the generations of some even time is not required...” In modern times, Ralph Waldo Emerson in believing that opposite halves inevitably produce a whole writes: POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the undulations of fluid and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Super-induce magnetism at one end of a needle, the opposite magnetism takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as spirit, matter; man, woman; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under, motion, rest; yea, nay. It is extremely difficult to contemplatively turn a switch within oneself and suddenly see the world in an entirely different way. But if we really take a careful look at the way all opposites are bound by a neutral center, and simultaneously consider the likelihood that beyond our personal experience of time literally everything exists timelessly, meaning that all the opposites exist simultaneously…and then we try to imagine what the universe would be like if we could glimpse that whole if only for a brief moment, the vision we would see could be interpreted to be....continued in book :) Next Page: God's Math
This essay is about 1/4th of Chapter Eight from the book Everything Forever.
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"The taking
of any stance, including one of atheism, manifests blatant violation of the very core of
scientific objectivity."
—
Gilbert Lawton
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