Monday, March 24, 2008

Frank L: I Only "Know" One Thing

Preface

When I hear someone use the word 'God', I assume that this person is talking about whatever he thinks is 'ultimate' about his experience. Many think that what they see as unknown or mysterious is the ultimate concern and that they need to apply a label. The nature of 'God' becomes 'the father', 'the mother', 'the creator', 'the destroyer', 'the judge', 'love', 'spirit', 'everything', 'friend', 'enlightenment', 'death', or whatever else is both puzzling and ultimately important. Then one chooses to believe or to disbelieve in that God that they have created.

Finding other people whose self-created deity resembles our own is a temptation, most dangerous but difficult to resist, to begin to believe that the form of being that we have imagined has some reality outside our imaginations. Imagine two people who have both written a story about the starship Enterprise. They might read each other's story and wonder "Does it really exist?". Imagine 100 people each with a story just close enough to be thought the same. Imagine how convincing they would be as they repeat the story to others. Sometimes you want to believe the story even if only for a moment.

Foundation

I only 'know' one thing. I am experiencing this, my world. It is a world that I desire. I choose actions that might make my experience last longer, understand more, be more varied. I imagine many ways to increase my experience and I choose the way that I want. This process that I describe is indivisible. It is one thing. It is the only thing that I know for sure.

Any explanations that my intellect can find to explain the great variety and depth of my continuing experience will have to be based on this one thing that I know. This one thing is my 'God'. It is my ultimate concern. It is my divinity. If I could find one other person that knows the same story, we could start a religion. Not that I would yield to that temptation.

Expansion

Teleology, as I understand it, generally recognizes this kind of goal directed activity as a fundamental part of our reality. Some think this part is outside the physical world, only interacting occasionally to guide evolution and work other miracles. Some think that the dead universe was finally able to produce it in life or perhaps only truly in human consciousness. Some think it is everywhere, the creator of existence. I tend to go further than even this universal teleology. I think that everything is experiencing its own world and choosing to experience it. I am conviced that the process I describe above as my own experience, is the basis of all reality. Just as we choose to act in the world, which creates part of the experience of those around us, all things in reality are also choosing to act, creating part of the reality we see. This choosing goes on continually. It creates time. It happens everywhere. It creates space. All so that the experiencers may have more to experience. More duration. More variety. More order. And more experiencers. More life. More people. More forms. It is the story of Reality.

Some may find it difficult to imagine the 'experiencing' of an electron, which is understandable since its world is so different from ours. Its time is different, its space is different, its choices are more limited. But, the process of perceiving the environment, imagining possibitlities, choosing an action to extend or expand experience is the same.

All higher levels of form with their resulting increase in experience are the result of this process gathering lesser forms together to create new expansions of experience. Imagining the future forms beyond humanity that may be created leads to both danger and great promise as the universe finds new ways to experience itself.

2 comments:

John Kotre said...

Much to think about here .... What struck me the most was the author's sense that cosmology is personal, and how his started with "the one thing I know."

What is the one thing you know? The one thing that you are certain of? It's a great way to get into a Story of Everything. My answer would be, "Moments ago, in cosmic time, compassion began to circle a star." The rest of the Story would flow from that.

I recently posted a blog in which I called the one thing the "pearl of great price." Here is the link, which you'll have to copy and paste: http://thestoryofeverything.blogspot.com/2008/03/pearl-of-great-price.html

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