A Lay Cistercian Looks at Spiritual Reality
“Why does human life find itself on a planet just far away from the Sun not to burn up, with just the correct mixtures of gases to exist, with just the correct protection from radiation not to be torched?” Added to that seeming statistical anomaly, humans developed on this planet with the awareness that they know and the ability to choose what they think is good for them. You have an astonishing coincidence if it is that. But, wonder if we are the only self-aware beings in the universe or universes?
One day, Enrico Fermi, a nuclear physicist, raised this question to his colleagues over coffee. He asked, “Where is everybody?” I am not so naive as to think that, with billions of Suns not counting planets, there might not be life, specifically sentient life. But, it is tantalizing to think that due to the radiation and sterility of what we know is “out there,” we human species (of all life species) ran the gauntlet of the corruptibility of matter and life to show up now. Why is that? I showed up eighty-one years ago as a product of my mom and day, which, in turn, were produced by other humans, and so on. Why is that? Rationality does not come from animality. A species by itself would seem to lack the energy to propel itself into the next dimension of its evolution, but that is precisely what happened. It is like humanity pushed itself up by its bootstraps from being an animal to being rational. Why is that? How is that? The Jesuit paleontologist/scientist Henri Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., puts forth what I consider the most compelling explanation of what and how our race became self-aware. I encourage you to watch two YouTube videos. My own notions of The Divine Equation have their fingerprints from authors such as Teilhard de Chardin, Erich Fromm, Martin Buber, Carl Sagan, and Steven Hawking. onhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCJgB7-jXmg All of these ideas, concepts, insights, and Lectio Divina meditations, I always measure against The Christ Principle, the center of all that I am.
THE RULE OF THREES AND VISIBILITY AND INVISIBILITY
When I apply the Rule of Threes to the question of visibility and invisibility and how it affects intelligent human progression (my term for natural evolution), like pulling apart the leaves of fresh cabbage, some exciting reflections come from it.
THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE –– This is the realm or universe of matter, energy, time, space, and the base for life itself. As you read this, this dimension exists from the beginning of what is to, at least right now. It is the WHAT of matter. To think that there are no rules to this universe is a mistake, even in the world of matter. The forces of visibility and invisibility are at work, even if no humans are around to see them. What influences this matter is time and energy, and all physical reality is invisible yet no less objective. Like magnetism’s pull on the face of a compass, it is present but not seen. Humans are not present to see the effects of what is invisible throughout the universe. However, we know it exists in forms such as dark matter, dark energy, and the effects of the four forces of quantum mechanics (strong force, weak force, gravity, and electromagnetism). https://www.newscientist.com/definition/quantum-physics/ My purpose is to use what I know about reality to look at “the big picture” of how all reality fits together. I seek to have a “theory of everything” combining all that we know about what we know, but I reject that the scientific approach is everything. It does not take into account all that is. When Enrico Fermi asked the famous question that I don’t think anyone has answered, “Where is everyone?” he should have asked another question. “In looking at the physical and mental universes alone, is that all there is?” This is the question I seek to pursue with my reflections.
It won’t come as a big surprise that all seven (or more) of these strings depend upon each other, although they are separate. An example is how visibility depends on the light in the physical universe. Light, in this sense, is the energy that a force emits, such as a hypernova or our own sun. Animals can see, taste, hear, feel pain, and have instincts as we do. We morphed from animality to rationality, so we carry the genetic baggage from our progenitors. Light is needed for survival. Living things have developed ways to capture the light and feed it to the brain to turn it into survival behaviors. Humans have something that turns light into enlightenment– human reasoning and free choice. When humans use light to see with their eyes, they can make observations, leading to conclusions and behavioral activity.
Visibility is essential to all living things, but only humans can use what is visible to look at a deeper level of reality, one that is invisible. Why is that? Visible light is composed of energy properties, but what about invisibility that has no mass, matter, gravity, or form? This is the problem that humans had to solve to move forward with the next level of their intelligent design. With God’s DNA, the answers are always present. The mental universe came into being not from the power of humanity but rather from a force outside itself, The Divine Equation.
THE MENTAL UNIVERSE– Humans alone inhabit this realm, one that uses intelligent progression to observe the physical universe and seeks to find the WHY and HOW, WHEN, HOW FAR, and ARE WE ALONE?
Human history is only a succession of individuals who live seventy to eight years (if they are strong) and hopefully pass on to future generations what they have learned about the meaning of life (How does everything fit together and how do I fit within all that is?). Put another way, only humans can ask and search for the answers to The Divine Equation, what it means to be fully human as the end product of intelligent progression (evolution).
Humans, most definitely, came up with the idea about all this God stuff. There was, and is, something in the human heart that yearns for immortality and closure. In the mental universe, we can reason (collectively and individually) plus the capability to use what we have learned to control our destiny through choice.
Humans have always had a problem with invisibility. Maybe that is because you can’t see it. Collectively what we see is the basis for humanity to move forward with social progression, which lasts as long as there are humans. Individually, I am the only one to see my particular world, and it lasts as long as I do. Visibility is essential to all humans, especially me, since I use my senses to inform my brain about my environments and react to them according to the accumulated choices and human emotions unique to me. I am not you, I am fond of saying; you are not me; God is not me, and you and I are certainly not God.
For humans, looking around at what gives purpose and meaning, we use our senses and reason to make choices each day. Our human world is a visible one, not an invisible one. Humans have developed reason for a reason and the ability to choose something. What is it? One of the reasons I think we have the power to reason and then choose what we reason as factual is to explore the realm of the invisible, the realms we cannot see but, like gravity, dark matter, and dark energy, exert an inexorable pull on the matter, time, energy and space (the physical universe).
THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE — If the physical universe is one where visibility exists, then the mental universe of humanity exists to allow us to discover the invisible universe if containing both visibility and invisible reality. We do this through our collective reasoning, which allows us to discover what is meaningful and has value for us. The spiritual universe provides the penetrating questions and answers to the question, “What does it mean to be a human being? and How to love fiercely?” The spiritual universe allows humans to discern what is visible and invisible and how it propels humanity (both collectively and individually). Only the spiritual universe provides both the answers and the questions that the physical and mental universes cannot address. It is The Divine Equation. There is one reality that contains six different questions and their correct answers to allow the resonance of all reality, the way to transverse the minefield of life without getting blown up, the truth that is incorruptible, not subject to deterioration, and most of all, how humans can accept their adoption as sons and daughters of the Father and fulfill intelligent progression as intended from the beginning of time.
Baptized and Eucharistic believers are a people of opposites and contradiction compared to the world. Several examples of this universe are right in front of us all the time, but some can see them, and many do not. It is available to all humans but, like a pair of glasses, you must know about its possibilities and try them on to see if they are helpful. As an article of our Faith in the Nicene Creed, we explicitly say that we believe in “the visible and invisible,” a reality that has matter but also one that has no matter whatsoever. We are saying that when we look at one reality, we see three universes, a physical one that is our base, a mental one that allows us to seek wisdom and truth, and a spiritual one that completes our intelligent progression in a state of invisible light. None of this makes sense without applying The Christ Principle as the key, the cornerstone of one reality with three distinct universes.
REVIEW
Two authors have been instrumental in my thinking, and I want to introduce them to you.
James Campbell — probably best known for his work on mythology and its importance in advancing the notion of a universal hero throughout all mythic literature. He influenced my view of Christ as an archetypal hero and not just an isolated fantasy of one lone Jewish carpenter fantasizing about being God. https://www.tckpublishing.com/joseph-campbell-monomyth-heros-journey/
Mircea Eliade — best known for linking together patterns in the thinking of all religions. As I do with any writer, I read them in terms of the compendium of my collective knowledge and experiences of what I know to be true. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mircea-Eliade/Legacy
ANTHROPORMORPHIC REPRSENTATION
We like our gods to look and act like us (image and likeness) so that we can relate to them. The type of relationship throughout human history has morphed into a deeper and more profound meaning so that we relate to an invisible god using what we know from visible relationships. Humans created the gods. Where else would they come from? We like our gods to look and act like us, a virtual avatar of what we would like to be.
VISIBILITY AND INVISIBILITY AS COSMIC THREADS — Cosmic threads shepherd reality much like the banks of a river shapes the course of how and where it flows but does not affect its progress. I would like to take you on a journey through time (from the beginning of what has matter and defined time (Alpha) to whenever in the future there is no matter (Omega). I choose to use the Rule of Threes (see above) as my thoughts.
God’s cosmic string shapes us to move from visibility to consider what is invisible as part of one reality.