Back to the real world, I again am faced with news both local and international and reminded that this mess, this mix of beauty and pain and abomination and nobility, is what we are. That is, we live in a dimension that is defined and bounded by natural laws (including genetic ones) that lead to pain, misery and death no matter how perfectly we run our own lives. These are laws as ironclad as gravity and entropy and space and energy limitations, laws that make our messy lives all but inevitable: with gravity, we are forced to struggle against weight; with entropy, we have death; and with space and energy limits, we have competition, an opposite of love. Thus when I read Teilhard de Chardin's words, "we must create a metaphysics of the fifth dimension," I gain a greater understanding of what he means: that is, we must fundamentally change the laws of physics for a better world.
This, however, is a bootstrap initiative. "To pull oneself up by one's bootstraps" means to better ourselves by ourselves, but in physical terms, it is impossible: for while we pull on the bootstraps, we exert an equal force downward. In effect, we are going nowhere by doing this, except to break the bootstraps. To change the laws of physics presents the exact same problem: by our own laws, we cannot do this. We must first become aware of alternative laws before we can change the laws we have, for with the laws we have, any effort would only be met with an equal and opposite force, and we would go nowhere.
The practical minded might say this is all abstract fluff anyway - the law, after all, is the law, and is not set by man but by some unknown but all-present principle. And yet: to the Believer, of course, the laws are set by God; and to the materialist, they simply are what they are. But in neither case are they necessarily so , for God can do anything IT wishes, while the dead universe that simply has laws can also form other "dead" universes with other laws. Because these have other laws, they would seldom detect each other, like ships in the night, and that is exactly what theoretical physicists with far better brains than I predict: that, according to their calculations, there should be anywhere from seven or so dimensions to an infinite amount. In either case, the probability is that other systems of reality exist; while we exist, as far as we can know in our dimension, in only one.
That is, as far as we can know, for if there are other dimensions, or possible realities, we could exist in them as well, but not as we are now; we would be something like the heavenly body of the spirit compared to the corporeal one. And because this other world would be so different, we wouldn't even know that we existed in that other world as well - it would be incommunicable. Practically speaking, the problem is: if another reality is incommunicable and follows different laws, how can we have knowledgeable access to it? How can we begin to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps?
I think to do this, to bring ourselves to another dimension that does not include laws that automatically will make us miserable, is what the core of the true religions has always been about. We have separated the two,"reality" and the spiritual, just as we separate the Sabbath and the religious house from other days and other houses. For the materialist, the separation is even more so: those so inclined separate fantasy from reality in this way. But the point of the great spiritual leaders might have always been (and I believe it has been) to provide the primary change in our physics to allow ourselves to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. To understand the kernel in the words and deeds of the great masters is to grasp the key that leads to the other world.
Easier said than done; as we know, the words of great prophets such as Jesus and Buddha confound the practical mind - what the heck are they talking about? How, really, shall the meek inherit the earth? How really is this, our reality, only a dream spun from desire? And yet to understand the words is the first step towards freedom from the iron laws of inevitable suffering of this world.
That last sentence could involve us in a great volume of words, but we don't have space for that; and, anyway, those words have been printed elsewhere. They hold the key to traditional enlightenment, which is freedom, freedom from the animal laws of struggle that are propelled by selfish desire. But while we are still working here from our known laws - from actualities in the form of the prophets from the past - Teilhard is speaking of something in addition to what we thought we knew. For many, evolution is just another law of nature, discovered rather late in our civilization's development, but to the spiritual evolutionists, it is God's pull to ultimate unity, as seen in the undeniable march of life to more and more complex systems. For Teilhard, then, God is changing the realty of physics for us; for as the prophets have been our guides along the way, so God is making the way new. We are on the cusp of the Omega, says Teilhard, an actual change of physics where God changes the laws, as IT can, so that a bootstrap can indeed provide a lift.
However we look at it, the laws of our existence are what we seek to change, for to not do so is to endure inevitable tragedy and pain. We may transcend some of them by a transformation of the will, where we refuse to be victims of our animal nature; we may go further still, and reach the void, "nirvana," where the laws of nature become only a temporary and thin veneer over a vastness in which we are free; or we may fall into freedom, as God Itself changes Its own laws for us as we evolve. However we may experience it, changing the very nature of our world is what we ultimately seek in our science and in our religion and in our dreams. This is so not only because we can dream of a better world, but because we were made to dream of a better world because there is one. FK
This, however, is a bootstrap initiative. "To pull oneself up by one's bootstraps" means to better ourselves by ourselves, but in physical terms, it is impossible: for while we pull on the bootstraps, we exert an equal force downward. In effect, we are going nowhere by doing this, except to break the bootstraps. To change the laws of physics presents the exact same problem: by our own laws, we cannot do this. We must first become aware of alternative laws before we can change the laws we have, for with the laws we have, any effort would only be met with an equal and opposite force, and we would go nowhere.
The practical minded might say this is all abstract fluff anyway - the law, after all, is the law, and is not set by man but by some unknown but all-present principle. And yet: to the Believer, of course, the laws are set by God; and to the materialist, they simply are what they are. But in neither case are they necessarily so , for God can do anything IT wishes, while the dead universe that simply has laws can also form other "dead" universes with other laws. Because these have other laws, they would seldom detect each other, like ships in the night, and that is exactly what theoretical physicists with far better brains than I predict: that, according to their calculations, there should be anywhere from seven or so dimensions to an infinite amount. In either case, the probability is that other systems of reality exist; while we exist, as far as we can know in our dimension, in only one.
That is, as far as we can know, for if there are other dimensions, or possible realities, we could exist in them as well, but not as we are now; we would be something like the heavenly body of the spirit compared to the corporeal one. And because this other world would be so different, we wouldn't even know that we existed in that other world as well - it would be incommunicable. Practically speaking, the problem is: if another reality is incommunicable and follows different laws, how can we have knowledgeable access to it? How can we begin to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps?
I think to do this, to bring ourselves to another dimension that does not include laws that automatically will make us miserable, is what the core of the true religions has always been about. We have separated the two,"reality" and the spiritual, just as we separate the Sabbath and the religious house from other days and other houses. For the materialist, the separation is even more so: those so inclined separate fantasy from reality in this way. But the point of the great spiritual leaders might have always been (and I believe it has been) to provide the primary change in our physics to allow ourselves to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. To understand the kernel in the words and deeds of the great masters is to grasp the key that leads to the other world.
Easier said than done; as we know, the words of great prophets such as Jesus and Buddha confound the practical mind - what the heck are they talking about? How, really, shall the meek inherit the earth? How really is this, our reality, only a dream spun from desire? And yet to understand the words is the first step towards freedom from the iron laws of inevitable suffering of this world.
That last sentence could involve us in a great volume of words, but we don't have space for that; and, anyway, those words have been printed elsewhere. They hold the key to traditional enlightenment, which is freedom, freedom from the animal laws of struggle that are propelled by selfish desire. But while we are still working here from our known laws - from actualities in the form of the prophets from the past - Teilhard is speaking of something in addition to what we thought we knew. For many, evolution is just another law of nature, discovered rather late in our civilization's development, but to the spiritual evolutionists, it is God's pull to ultimate unity, as seen in the undeniable march of life to more and more complex systems. For Teilhard, then, God is changing the realty of physics for us; for as the prophets have been our guides along the way, so God is making the way new. We are on the cusp of the Omega, says Teilhard, an actual change of physics where God changes the laws, as IT can, so that a bootstrap can indeed provide a lift.
However we look at it, the laws of our existence are what we seek to change, for to not do so is to endure inevitable tragedy and pain. We may transcend some of them by a transformation of the will, where we refuse to be victims of our animal nature; we may go further still, and reach the void, "nirvana," where the laws of nature become only a temporary and thin veneer over a vastness in which we are free; or we may fall into freedom, as God Itself changes Its own laws for us as we evolve. However we may experience it, changing the very nature of our world is what we ultimately seek in our science and in our religion and in our dreams. This is so not only because we can dream of a better world, but because we were made to dream of a better world because there is one. FK
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