THE HUMAN RAMIFICATIONS OF VISIBILITY AND INVISIBILITY

“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

• There are at least seven forces that tie all reality together.
• There is but one reality with three distinct yet interdependent levels of existence, each with its own measurements and characteristics.
• The physical universe is the base for matter, time, and energy and includes all life on earth, including humans.
• The mental universe is the universe of transition, where we reflect on the physical universe and can ask and answer questions about WHO, WHAT. WHERE, WHEN, WHY, and the purpose of life. This universe is where humans learn to discover invisible dimensions of what is real. This universe cannot answer the questions of life using mere logic, scientific methodology, or values that come from living in only the physical and mental universes (the world).
• The spiritual universe is the intelligent progression of the first two universes but exists entirely in the invisible dimension now and in the future. This universe has questions and answers to what it means to be human, but they come from divine nature, hence the Divine Equation.
• Humans don’t do well with what they cannot experience with their senses. It doesn’t make sense.
• Humans can sense but not define the feeling that there is a reason beyond death responsible for all that is.
• Humans have developed systems of thinking from the beginning to relate to what is invisible but somehow lacking in their hearts. All religions are such an attempt at attempting to touch what is invisible. These ways of thinking have developed their own rationale and mythic stories of living, being happy, and being fulfilled. They all describe their relationship with the sacred.

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.

1. A SYSTEM OF VISIBLE GODS AND GODDESSES– Both Roman and Greek societies developed a pantheon of gods and goddesses that they could see. Naturally, they molded them after the society where they experienced values and meaning. Each system had a monarchical caste system, a “them and us” distinction where humans were not gods. All the gods were visible, living on Mt. Olympus quite apart from the human condition. The gods did favors for people when invoked. This was a relationship but one with master and slave overtones. Ask the gods and goddesses for favors and give them offerings, and you might just get what you wished for.
2. A SYSTEM OF COVENANTS —
3. a. The Old Covenant: It all began with Abram, a wandering Armenian nomad. A god outside of him chose him to change the paradigm of god-human to that of God, choosing Abrahams’s descendants to multiply and form a new covenant relationship (Deuteronomy 6:5). The Old Testament books record the fidelity of God and the struggle Israel had with fidelity over the centuries. Those tribes who were faithful to keeping the law and listening to the prophets survived, and those who did not just fade away (ten lost tribes of Israel). The history of these chosen people morphed from just a bunch of twelve brothers trying to survive drought and oppression through electing judges, then kings to organize and rule them. They survived through the hegemony of Greek and Roman and Persian and Egyptian domination. Their country was no more than a gateway for the superpower to face each other. Israel was a watering hole. Yet, the covenant endured captivity and the return to Jerusalem as the holy city of God. The temple was built for sacrifices. With all the chaos, Israel hoped someone would lead them out of bondage once more, someone to save them from extinction, just as they do in 2022.
4. b. The New Covenant: For those seeking a military leader, one to free Israel from the tyranny of Rome, Greece, and Syria, Jesus is not the way, and because Jesus taught a consolidation of the Law based on love, he was not the truth. So, the life of the Old Testament remains much as it is today, seeking to maintain tradition and territory for a remnant of the twelve tribes. It makes perfect sense that Jewish rabbis and believers don’t believe in Jesus. I don’t believe in that type of Jesus. What makes all of this so confusing is the sign of the cross, the signal that, with the coming of an invisible God in the human form, made visible (flesh).

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.

• In the physical universe of matter, there is visibility and invisibility. It is just that it does not know what it means outside of humans. Humans are part of this physical universe because it is a base where we exist along with all the other star stuff. Then, there is a paradigm shift. Of all the being that is alive, humans progressed to the point of having reason and the ability to choose something beyond the confines of their nature. St. Paul states that “Sin came into the world through one man, Adam.” Put another way, humans now choose good and what is evil for their nature. With the progression of free will, the urges we inherited from our animal DNA clashed with our freedom, and all of that against the freedom of other humans to seek their needs.
• These needs are supported by a visible world, although now a mental one also, which now contains values and consequences of choosing behaviors. Humans began to use their choices based on what they could see and what they could not see. In the progression of time, the mental universe is where humanity learned to discover a visible reality but now one that is invisible. Why is that important? In my encounter with what I can see and not see around me, to move to the third universe, the spiritual one, demands that I suspend my assumptions learned over a lifetime of using my senses to discover purpose and how I fit into these few years I exist on this planet.
• Dealing with invisibility is the most challenging aspect of being human. Love, for example, is invisible, but we know it is there because of its impact on me in particular and those around me in general. This is where the spiritual universe is the condition where I make sense out of all the chaos and seeming dissonance I find resulting from original sin. The Christ Principle, used as the mechanism to unlock the puzzle of life, can only be accessed by actually dying to the assumptions of the world (dying to self to access true life). The spiritual universe allows me to penetrate deeper into reality and discover the authentic meaning of what being human is. This is a sign of contradiction because the answers to the Divine Equation are all found in the invisible but natural realm of the spirit. That makes absolutely no sense to those who only accept what is real is what you can see or experience with human senses.
• In the Old Testament, the tribes wanted a visible god, just like the idols they saw their neighbors have. Yet, God remained invisible. The people encountered God through physical representations, ones that they could see. God visits the people through activities (when God is with them, they prosper, when God is not with them, there is a disaster, such as the 10 lost tribes). The invisible God is visible through nature. The invisible God communicated to them through the ten commandments and manna (what is it?) and carried them on their journeys as the Ark of the Covenant. The Temple is the visible place where God dwells and where the people must gather to
• The paradigm shift in the visible and invisible dynamic was God becoming human (Philippians 2:5). “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us.”
• During the time of Christ on earth, God is visible through the person of Jesus Christ.
• After Christ died, his followers carried on the message first through the Jews and then to the whole world. Christ is visible through those who gather in his name (ecclesia).
• But, Christ is also visible in a unique way even as each age approaches the invisibility of God. In the Real Presence, Christ is present under the appearance of bread in the breaking of the bread. Believers can receive the actual Christ in the recapturing of the Last Supper. They can stand vigil before the real Christ in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. They can be present to the Holy Spirit by doing the tools for good works in Chapter 4 of the Rule of Benedict, making what is invisible visible to those around them. They can contemplate the mystery of Faith in their hearts through Lectio Divina. All of these Cistercian practices and charisms are there to allow us to sanctify the moment in the presence of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
• With the spiritual universe, those who are signed by the cross, the contradiction, make what is invisible visible in their hearts. Can is only possible with the invisible power of the Holy Spirit through Christ.
• Invisibility is our destiny. We learn in the time we have on earth how what is invisible is essential to move forward in our intelligent progression (evolution) to be fully human and thus fulfill our destiny to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father…forever.

God’s cosmic string shapes us to move from visibility to consider what is invisible as part of one reality.