At present this ‘essay’ is in summary form. Only those parts that are new ideas or new expressions of ideas are developed in detail. Much of the rest is telegraphic or, as a recent generation might say, ‘texted’.

Aim

The aim

The aim of the way of being is to know the range of being and to realize its highest immediate and ultimate forms.

Way of being

In the beginning we do not anticipate what the aim entails. We will find that it implies a way of being as:

The use of all dimensions of being in realization of the ultimate in the immediate and the ultimate as such.

Outcome

While limited, individual realization is process—eternal and ever fresh approach to peaks of being and dissolution.
The narrative develops a way and a path template in which immediate and ultimate mesh and that can be adapted to different individuals and cultures.
Demonstration of a picture of universal and individual being and identity as limitless in variety and power.

Origins and motives

Civilization

In parallel with the day to day of life, love, adventure, and civilization we sometimes wonder ‘What is it all about?’ Even in the background the thought is a driving force. It is of course the stuff of much thought but I guess that there is no reflection that everyone finds satisfactory. But some people find the possibility of questioning, reflecting on, and living ‘what is it about’ to be wonder-full.

It is hard even to find a foothold on the question. Why? Perhaps because we do not quite have the measure of the world or ourselves. A good place to start is in the here and now—even if we do not have it under control, at least we have it. But that is a beginning and so we wonder what else there is there and what is the significance of it all. If we had a view of the entire universe and our place in it—a worldview—that might be an appropriate measure.

There are two common kinds of worldview. The secular view holds that the real world is the world of experience and science and that what we are and what is good is centered in that world. The view is good as far as it goes and some people find it fully satisfactory but, as we will see, it is far from complete. When we think it essentially complete we do so because we think that the boundless realm of possibility is like what we already know in common experience. Some people are rationally and others existentially dissatisfied with the secular view. Many of these people, however, accept that they simply do not know the measure of the world.

The second kind of view, the trans-secular, holds that there is a realm beyond common experience. These imaginative and fantastic views address our sense of incompleteness but, as worldviews, they tend to contradict one another. And the secular and the trans-secular offer little mutual support (except that secular science offers psychosocial explanations of ‘religious belief’). Still many who hold to trans-secular do so as fact and as measure of the world. Some are prepared to die, others to kill for religion.

Is there another ‘third’ way—a way that is significant; a way does not appeal to a world beyond what an ordinary person experiences but that does not suffer the limits of ‘secular empiricism’, a way that is rational in its reasoning and so also in its self-assessment?

That question can be seen as a ground to The Way of Being. And the beginning ground is supreme simplicity. As used here being marks all existing things. It is so simple that it seems trivial and useless. But it shall be teased into usefulness. The next idea is the universe conceived as all being. Where are ideas, where are values, where is mind, where are stones, where is death and beyond, where is god, where is creation, where are space and time and beyond, and where is our ultimate destiny in this form or another? Whatever among these are real, are in the universe. Thus the universe was not created and creation and space and time are not its measure: they are of it. If there is creation it is in the universe, not of it. Now we come to the ideas of pattern and natural law! Are they made of ideas, are they of matter, are they mere descriptions, mere generalizations from data that have no more purchase than what the date already has? I do not know: but they are of being—they exist—and so they are in and of the universe—of its whole or its parts; or they are not and therefore nothing. Then the void: the void is the absence of being. Whether it exists or not, the laws do not pertain to it and so it must, rather like the quantum vacuum, have power but unlike that vacuum must have power without end. Therefore the universe and the individual inherit this power for otherwise would be a limit on the limitless, a bound on unbounded.

The evolution of these thoughts did not occur from first to last in temporal order; the system itself was the result of thought, error, correction, and thought again. Still they are a ground.

The purpose of the narrative is to express them precisely and develop consequences for ideas and in action. It is to define and realize the aim.

Inspiration.

Sharing and contribution.

The aim was suggested by experience, imaginative thought, and critical reflection in interaction with primal through current traditions of ideas and practice.

A motive has been wonder and love of beauty in the world—nature, ideas, persons, civilization, the universe. The narrative is one outcome of seeking to cultivate the wonder.

Heart, mind and action

Without emotion, our lives are flat; without cognition they have no direction.

Application of ideas is not merely ‘good’: without action ideas would be ever incomplete; and without ideas, there would be no action.

See the realizations-resource version (resource > history of the metaphysics > a conflict).

The narrative

The compact edition

The compact edition is an overview of the essential ideas. A generic path of realization is derived from the ideas and tradition and adapted to a particular situation. Together with the ideas the path provides a manual that can be used as it is and / or as a template to be adapted to a range of individual situations and cultural contexts.

Conventions

Definition

The form of definition and assertion.

This document

An informal section. In final versions its content will be (a) eliminated or (b) absorbed to ‘the narrative’.

Resources

Main resource for current detail: the realizations-resource version. Generally, in the outline, I specifically mention only other sources.

A general source is plan for study and action.

Aim

It is to be in process and therefore does not need to be finalized.
I will return to it from time to time during and after ‘experiments in becoming’.
I will use special styles or other marks for the essentials of the outline.

Means

Ideas and action

The means of realization are ideas (knowing) and action (realizing); these are not distinct: knowing is a form of acting and there is no action in the world without knowing (which is both instrumental and affective).

Tradition and modes of expression

The term tradition will here refer to what is valid in the collection of ideas and practices of known cultures of living beings from origins to the immediate present. It includes ways of being and knowing and their (encoded) principles and processes.

Two non-exclusive and major modes of expression are the mythic-holist and the literal-atomic.

Human knowledge and worldviews

System of human knowledge

Logic and science

Worldviews and their significance

What is a worldview?

What forms do worldviews take?

Significance of explicit world views

Makes tacit presumptions explicit.

Can be improved and integrated with intuition.

Inclusive approaches to world views

Metaphysics as knowledge of things in themselves (question of possibility addressed later).

Cosmology as the variety of things and kinds, the nature of space-time-beyond, and their immanence in things as relative location and process.

See system of human knowledge for some elements of a complete system.

Standard worldviews and their deficiencies

Standard worldviews and their limits

The primal

The secular and the trans-secular

The trans-secular does not deny the secular realm and is therefore more inclusive.

Meaning of ‘nature’ and ‘spirit’

Fundamentalism as a deficiency of process

The worldview of the narrative

Demonstrated.

Ultimate.

Anticipating the importance of ‘being’

Imagination, doubt and criticism

Imagination and doubt

Imagination (concept freedom) essential to ‘seeing’ beyond the known.

Doubt essential to eliminating errors of free conception.

Each improves quality and content of the other.

Still action and risk remain essential; but reason makes action efficient and enjoyable.

Two roles for doubt

Critical and essential

Criticism

Criticism is constructive doubt.

Sources

Wide ranging cumulative experience and cultural immersion; openness, reflexivity (‘meta-thought’) and judgment; interaction with others; retreat.

Perceptual and symbolic imagination.

Arrangement of the narrative

Main divisions

The main divisions are defined by the means—a division on ideas and a division, realization (action), that emphasizes action.

A supplementary resource division suggests tools for ideas and realization.

The narrative as a manual

When the outline is filled in, the narrative may function as a manual to understanding and realization.

As a manual the document has the form of example and template: it defines a particular path but the layout of the path is general in two ways (1) the foundation in ideas (2) comprehensiveness of the headings. Therefore the path / template may be adapted to other ways. Background for general adaptation and appreciation of pathways is established in the ideas.

Audience

Audience interest

The audience will have one or more of the following interests.

The general picture

The ideas

Universal realization

Understanding the narrative

Scope and originality

It is important that the scope of the document is broad and systematic where possible and appropriate; that it is original and ultimate with regard to depth of foundation, ultimate with regard to breadth or variety and implicit capture of the breadth of the universe, and revealed nature of the universe.

Meaning

Emphasizes meaning; and formal and intuitive understanding—especially variant and system meaning, and re-education of the intuition

Features that address problems of understanding and intuition

See the realizations-resource version.

Ideas

It would be formally satisfying to being with being but instead the development begins with experience. Why?

There is a range of related reasons. The primary ones are (a) that experience as defined here is the first example of being of which we have definite knowledge (we may be unsure of the nature of cognition and emotion and cognition versus emotion but experience as experience will be seen to be beyond doubt) (b) It is in and via experience as defined here that we know of being and its varieties (c) experience is the essential place (in an essential sense to emerge) of our being, our sense of significance, and of our relationship (active and receptive) to the universe and which includes our future on both sides of death and birth (which requires and will be given demonstration). Finally, when we come to being we will be able to approach it with grounding. ‘Being’ should and will be introduced as abstract (for it to have the power that it shall have) but what we encounter will be abstract but not merely abstract.

Thus informally we do begin with being. Why should we begin with being? Being is central to the development in a number of ways. In itself the concept and fact are able to and do receive ‘perfect’ foundation. If we were to begin with some lesser category we would not even begin to get off ground (What is matter? Is matter?). Yet if matter is real, the approach from being may (and will) found it; from being we will not need to presume matter (and the same is true of all lesser categories including mind). Together with other carefully chosen concepts (universe, natural law, void, and realism) it provides a perfect framework of knowledge. Then, the framework provides for establishment that it and the rest of (human) knowledge are perfect in relation to the essential aim established by the framework (the aim is not exclusive and therefore excludes no valid lesser aim). Finally the idea of being is an appropriate conceptual vehicle to frame our being in the world as such and in relation to the aim.

Experience

Definition

Experience names awareness in all its manners, kinds and forms.

There is experience

The form and function of definition

The range of experience: a psychology

Necessarily a tentative framework for revision and in process filling out (the problem of premature definition and depth).

On a psychology for the aim.

If we take psychology to be a map of experience there can be no ultimate distinction between metaphysics and psychology.

Experience as such

Doubts

Is there such a thing ‘experience’. Is there anything but experience?

The response to the first doubt is that one cannot validly say something does not exist but not define it. Illusion and mere appearance satisfy the meaning of experience.

Experience and the real world

Regarding the second doubt, he following are the same true picture: experience is of a real world that contains experience and there is nothing but experience—i.e. all is experience (though they are the same picture the labeling is different: the things I call objects in first picture are something like coherent systems of experience in the second).

Significance

The form of experience is that of relationship.

Experience is the place of expression and core of living being. Significance and knowledge are of the world but occur in experience.

Meaning

Concept meaning

Two meanings of ‘concept’

Concept and linguistic meaning

Completeness of this conception of meaning

Focus on the object is obviously essential. Without a concept there is no object.

Crucial significance of this concept of meaning

Without it there can be no meaning at all (it is implicit in ‘day to day’ thought).

Clears confusions due to (a) multiple associations of terms (b) acknowledging that even a single association comes in shades of ‘color’—i.e. a multidimensional continuum. There is a tendency to assume that when we come from the ‘same’ culture we have the same system of meaning—but this is an approximation to the truth. Although the ‘meaning gap’ between cultures, there are various gaps within a culture and these gaps have many dimensions—class, gender, locality, political orientation, education, personality, race and more. In ‘serious’ discussion attention to meaning is critical to the ‘seriousness’. If a person who makes a claim that is open for discussion makes clear his or her meaning, there will often be a net saving in time and a more productive outcome.

Resolves paradoxes that assume an object without a clear concept, e.g. direct association of word or sentence with an object.

Essential to clear development of conceptual systems.

Enables discovery of implicit meaning (which shows why analysis of meaning has been mistaken as a source of knowledge).

But generation (the process) of meaning is generation of knowledge.

Significant meaning

This is a different meaning of ‘meaning’. It is ‘the meaning of life’. Concept and significant meaning both occur in experience while they are of the world.

As noted earlier

Identity, space and time

Sameness and difference

Difference is the most elementary pattern.

Utter sameness is absence of difference.

Identity

Identity and time

Sameness with difference refers to identity of person or object and marks time.

Object

Person

Identity and existence of objects and persons

Space

Difference without identity marks space.

What changes in space is the object or part.

Extensionality

Space refers to ‘extension’ as time refers to ‘duration’. ‘Extensionality’ is a general term spatiotemporality.

The nature of time and space

Immanence

The only dimensions of extensionality

Relative to identity, the modes of difference or extensionality are space and time.

Where precise and where vague

Where identity is not well defined, space and time cannot be well defined.

Why or how they are interwoven

To the extent that the modes of difference are not well distinguished.

Universality

To the extent that identity is not universal, space and time are not universal.

Two ways of being beyond time and space

Absence of identity

Abstraction

Space and time are not absolute—they are immanent in being

Space are immanent in and have and time have being.

Being

Definition

Being names that which is (in any set of regions—e.g., in space-time or not).

The meaning of being

Not some special or higher being; not an essence; not particular to having sentience (these connotations are not used in the main development here).

Distinguishes only existence from non-existence.

Does not denote ‘beings’. This distinction will be seen to be unimportant in discussing objects.

Except if the void is regarded as existing, the meaning of non-being is either that of potential being or metaphorical.

There is being

We have seen that there is experience of a real world that contains experience. That there is being, therefore, is beyond doubt.

From experience, the proof is trivial. It does not tell us much about the variety of being but that is a problem that will occupy much of the narrative.

On proof

The proof of being is profoundly simple when understood. Yet it has been a difficult question in the history of philosophy. The essence was to find what is beyond doubt and this is due to Descartes. The existence of being is a ‘fact’, i.e. it can be used as a premise in deductive arguments.

In this case what was proved amounted to a fact. Later we extend this to deduction. (of a general framework). The establishment of the fact of being is important to the nature of deduction as well as to the deduction of the metaphysics. The argument will be sound, i.e. premises will be true, deduction valid.

Then we find the place of induction in the general framework. The latter will not be marked by certainty but the framework will show certainty of detail to be impossible and not desirable.

‘Is’ and existence

Use of ‘is’.

The generic ‘is’

A deficiency of the English language is that it does not have a term for the most general ‘is’ in the sense of ‘is in some regions of space-time and / or not’.

Existence and being

Have been distinguished but will be seen to be the same.

The problem of negative existentials resolved by appeal to meaning

If Sherlock Homes or unicorns do not exist then to what do ‘Sherlock Homes’ or the term ‘unicorn’ refer? This exemplifies the so called problem of negative existentials (and shows that it as acute for general terms as it is for singular names). The resolution is trivial. The terms are explicit or implicit descriptions and the generic solution is that ‘does not exist’ means that the description has no object.

Why being?

Importance to metaphysics

Being is all inclusive and well established. Some metaphysical systems begin with categories that are not known to be inclusive and / or not perfectly established. Such systems are therefore not known to be complete or well established; further they are speculative at outset and generally require speculation to be inclusive.

A metaphysics that begins with being is not necessarily subject to (such) error. As such, beginning with being introduces no error. There is being: this is a perfect metaphysical assertion. Beginning with being permits development of perfect metaphysics. The perfection will of course have to be demonstrated (as is the case for the metaphysics of this narrative).

Importance to human being and realization

The inclusive character of being allows for careful understanding of our being and, in combination with metaphysics, for understanding of what may or will be realized and the means of realization (supplement from the approximate knowledge of tradition will help in incremental experiments).

Some problems of being

Being is trivial

It is so general that it refers to everything—or to nothing. Response: that it is trivial does not imply that it is not empowering (see Why being? above).

Being cannot be known

This is the Kantian objection and though Kant’s answer is incorrect (Euclid and Newton did not enunciate a priori forms) the form of Kant’s answer is correct (Experience, Being, Universe etc. are synthetic and precisely known as such).

Knowledge of being as being is a very special case

Response 1. We already have perfect knowledge of experience, real world, and being. Perfect knowledge of being as being will be seen to be inherited by all being as a unitary object (universe), domain, pattern and natural law as such, the void which will be instrumental in developing a powerful metaphysical framework and its principle of reason called ‘realism’ that includes ideal forms of logic and science. The framework shows that the universe is the realization of all possibility and that individuals inherit this power but only in process while they are in limited form.

Response 2. The framework will be filled in by tradition, experience, reflection, and action. These are of course not perfect as in perfectly faithful to objects. However, the metaphysics shows that such perfection is neither possible nor desirable in the path of ultimate realization. Thus perfect faithfulness is not universally desirable and further an alternate notion of perfection as ‘good enough’ or ‘being-in-the-world’ is appropriate to ultimate realization and its approximation this side of death. In this sense we are perfect but such perfection does not avoid error or pain (or joy); rather, error and pain acquire significant meaning.

What has being?

What among our ideas are truly real? We have begun to answer this and the issue of how to answer it. The narrative is a meditation on this question and its answering.

Being and human being

As human we are interested in human being.

The interest in being empowers this while not excluding the non human. We are enhanced by similarity and difference.

In this narrative we will be interested in the special concerns of human being but we will emphasize ‘similarity’ and ‘universality’ over difference and details of human psyche.

What is the essential problem of metaphysics?

I.e. what is the essential problem of knowledge and study of being? Heidegger has called the question of why there is being at all the fundamental problem of metaphysics. However, here we demonstrate a surprising and trivial solution (one that has been ‘staring us in the face all along’). We also show that the question ‘What has being?’ deserves the title ‘fundamental problem of metaphysics’.

But is not the foundation of metaphysics to be found in substance?

Purposes of foundation include (a) power to explain the complex from the simple (b) soundness: for any predictions to be correct (c) to be complete: to cover the varieties of experience (d) on the affective side: to expose the world in its wonder. The last two points are somewhat in conflict but for the fact that explaining is not explaining away and, further, we find final depth but every open breadth to being.

Here we will find that ‘being’ is adequate to the task but substance falls short on (a) through (c) above.

Must there be being?

From the premise of experience, we conclude that there is being. But to conclude that there must be being along these lines we would have to know that there must be at least one case of being (e.g. experience).

Later we will show that there must be phases of manifest being as well as phases without manifest being.

Universe

Definition

The universe is all being.

Properties

The universe has being.

There is precisely one universe.

The universe has no creator; it is not created.

The universe and possibility

The universe is all possibility. I.e. the possible is the actual.

Relative to a set of configurations some thing that does not occur in one configuration is called possible if it occurs in another. There are no configurations outside the universe. Therefore:

For the universe the possible is the actual—i.e., the universe is all possibility.

This does not specify the kind of possibility—e.g. logical or physical.

In the universal metaphysics we find the kind of possibility that defines the universe to be logical.

Domain

A domain is a part of the universe.

The non null domains have being (a null domain is a part that contains no being).

Pattern

A pattern is a particular (set of) arrangement(s).

Patterns have being.

Cosmos

In its first meaning ‘cosmos’ refers to our empirical cosmos (interpreted by physical laws). This is often taken to be the universe but there is nothing in science or reason that requires this. Since the space of possibility outside the empirical cosmos is limited only by ‘logic’ there is no estimating probabilities that the cosmos is or is not the universe. This is true regardless whether we think of the cosmos as the cosmos of the big-bang or any other physical system such as an array of bubble cosmoses.

Karl Popper’s searchlight metaphor ‘we see only where we look’ (or can look) is one explanation of the mistaken view that our latest knowledge defines the universe.

Pattern and natural law

A pattern is a particular (set of) arrangement(s).

Patterns have being.

The natural laws of our sciences are readings of patterns.

Provided we recognize that it is local, the (object of) the law may be conflated with the pattern.

Natural laws have being.

The fundamental principle

Name

The fundamental principle of metaphysics or, simply, the fundamental principle.

Demonstration

Derivation from the non manifest

Statement in terms of possibility

All possibility emerges from the non manifest.

Why this is logical possibility.

Statement in terms of realism

That realism has perfect being.

Why not from the void as in earlier derivations.

Significance

A vast framework (‘metaphysics’) for understanding.

Objections

From science and experience. We’ve already seen that this is not an objection. The framework is consistent with science and experience.

The void

Definition

Fundamental properties

Existence or being of the void

From realism, the universe must go through non-manifest or void phases. Thus the void (the non-manifest) has being; knowledge of it is perfect; and this (to repeat) implies perfection to realism.

The void contains no law.

The concept of the void is ultimately simple.

Derived properties

Not a substance

In so far as substance is deterministic or has a kind (determinism is severely limited, kinds are limited).

More powerful than substance

Generates and explains far more than ‘this’ world.

Not characterized by simplicity or complexity

Conceptual simplicity does not imply actual simplicity.

The universal metaphysics

It will be seen that significant metaphysics has already been developed. It will be the basis of the metaphysics to be developed here (and to be called the universal metaphysics). But let us first introduce metaphysics.

Introduction to metaphysics

The concept of metaphysics in this narrative

Metaphysics as perfectly faithful knowledge of being.

Why perfect faithfulness? Metaphysics versus practical knowledge. Later integration.

The study of metaphysics has already begun

Focus only on definition, not on detail that may or may not be there. For example in ‘experience is awareness in all its forms’ focus only on the fact of awareness and the fact that there may be forms but not on the specific forms.

Then, from experience through the void we already have a vast metaphysical framework (it is only a beginning and remains to be completed and filled out). The development continues in the universal metaphysics.

Two classical branches of metaphysics

Two classical branches or connotations of metaphysics as understood here (1) general metaphysics—knowledge of being as being (and related concepts known perfectly as such though not in detail) (2) special metaphysics (e.g. the religious cosmologies and a range of speculative metaphysical systems from the history, western and eastern, of philosophy and metaphysics.

Objections to metaphysics and responses

Impossibility of perfect knowledge—i.e., of general metaphysics

But we already have demonstrated a vast framework. We expand this below.

Speculative character of special metaphysics

The objection is obvious. Here, however, we will demonstrate all assertions.

Note—many of the systems have good arguments, may be shown to avoid inconsistency, and have been and may well be useful. However, systematic character, elegance and other beauty, good argument, and lack of inconsistency fall short of proof. Therefore the metaphysics of this narrative has an emphasis on deductive proof.

There are other classical conceptions of metaphysics

There are other things named ‘metaphysics’ from Greek to modern thought. They are different concepts (though perhaps similar in content or intent). However, this matters not. What matters is that (1) I use the one definition consistently (2) that it be significant (i.e. sound and consequential). Others may use the term for other definitions but to have a range of different and non equivalent (or not clearly equivalent) notions and think ‘this is metaphysics’ is illogical (or vague) and precisely unnecessary.

Today metaphysics has different conceptions

Examples

New concepts of metaphysics

The study of the nature and range of experience as experience (roughly metaphysics is phenomenology).

The study of abstract objects.

New activities under metaphysics

Identity; space and time; causation, freedom, and determinism; and mind and matter

Reasons and responses

The classical concept is thought to have failed or be inadequate. However, I have shown it to be sound and immensely powerful.

Other activities have arisen and are now thought to be metaphysics. Response. Some of these are new but fall under metaphysics as defined here. Others are different conceptions for which the response is the same as alternate classical conceptions of metaphysics.

The significance of metaphysics

Our secular and trans-secular thought is severely limited. There is no standard system, modern or earlier, to fill the ‘void. We already see how metaphysics fills this void. The development continues.

Most importantly, the developments of metaphysics here are crucial to the aim of the narrative.

A brief history of metaphysics from its origins to the universal metaphysics

See the realizations-resource version for details.

Primal thought

Origin of the secular—trans-secular divide

Greece

Other

The modern era

The rise of system

A variety of conceptions of ‘metaphysics’

‘The conception’

The restitution of metaphysics

An open slate

It held putatively among those who accept metaphysics that its nature is an open slate.

Back to fundamentals

The lineaments of a metaphysics

Hypothesis, speculation, and reason

The universal metaphysics

The metaphysics

From the study of metaphysics has already begun: being, experience, universe, pattern (including natural law), void, and realism define a sound metaphysical framework that, as framework, is ultimate (a) in capturing the universe perfectly and (b) in showing the universe to be ultimate.

Name

This framework is named the universal metaphysics or simply the metaphysics.

Extension to all valid knowledge

The framework will be filled out below to extend to all tradition and all possible valid knowledge (but the ‘fill in’ will be regarded as perfect only for criteria to be justified but not according to perfect faithfulness). When the framework is filled out below the names ‘universal metaphysics’ and ‘the metaphysics’ will be retained.

On proof and intuition

Trivial cases

Complex cases

On principles

Our knowledge is the only place to begin

Need for systematic account of knowledge

Depth, power, breadth, and limits

Thus the depth of the metaphysics as foundation is ultimate. Explanation terminates at the void (or equivalently at any element of being). Surprisingly it is an absolute and non relative foundation (it is non relative in that it refers to no further or deeper foundation and absolute in that it does not need to so refer for its own foundation).

The following brief excursion into ‘cosmology’ further shows the power of the metaphysics. Thus the power of the universe is without limit to ‘breadth’: the identity and being of the universe occur in acute, diffuse, and void or non-manifest phases; there is no limit to their variety, extension, duration, peak and magnitude and quality, and dissolution. The Aeternitas (all knowing and being manifest as one) of Thomas Aquinas and Brahman of Vedanta are the peak of peaks. The individual inherits this power for the contrary would be a limit on the power.

Does this mean that the individual has no limits? The answer is that as long as the individual remains in limited form, the approach to the ultimate are eternal process. Would this not be experienced as essentially stale? No, for the variety is without end, ever fresh (the issue of memory is dealt with in cosmology).

Death, pain, and joy

Though not part of the development of the metaphysics, some conclusions from the fundamental principle regarding these human issues are placed here to show the power of the metaphysics. They are explained further, particularly in cosmology.

Death is real but not absolute. In life, death is a reminder of its preciousness.

From the fundamental principle, our lives are necessarily mosaics of pain and joy. This (significant) meaning to pain is extended later.

On explanation

On the universal metaphysics as explanation. Violation of intuition.

Existence of the void: a principle of Realism or Logic-Science

The existence of the void is a principle of Realism or Logic-Science (capitals signify reconceptualization but will be used no further in this regard).

Extension of the metaphysics to all being

Requires extension of the meaning of perfection. The extension is suggested and required by the metaphysics.

Unity of experience: metaphysics, logic, mathematics, science; and an afterthought on affect and metaphor

In this section on the unity of experience we attempt to bring all experience under the umbrella of realism. The developments suggest the importance of openness regarding realization beyond our present stage of evolution.

Preliminary

Metaphysics, logic and science

Mathematics

Affect, metaphor, and indirect and potential reference

Doubt and existential attitude

Also see imagination, doubt and criticism.

Recursive doubt

Detail: learning and doubt

The fundamental problem of metaphysics

Something from nothing

The significance of enquiring about something from nothing

A new fundamental problem of metaphysics

The power of being

The power of the concept of being, now emphatically clear, will continue to emerge in what follows.

Objects

Introduction

In recent thought concrete and abstract objects have been regarded as real but different: the abstract are partially or totally outside the physical world. The problem: What and where are the abstract objects?

We will find that the distinction is artificial—both are in the one universe. Unlike the naïve empiricism of JS Mill, however, this will not be in contradiction with the idea of the abstract as formal or platonic.

Significance and present purpose

The nature of the world and objects

Clarification of the nature of the world and of objects generally. No concept, no object. Not an idealism; reveals the fundamental character of experience. All objects are in the one universe. There are no separate platonic, conceptual, or other universes

Some examples

Resolution of the problems of abstract objects; significance for cosmology and the nature of the real; unity of experience: metaphysics, logic, mathematics, and science…

Significance for realization

Examples: the variety of modes of being—what we may be, memory or survival of identity across death and transition through the void.

Other ‘applications’ in the narrative

The concept of abstract object and the metaphysics enable a clearer and comprehensive conception of ‘object’. This metaphysical clarification has significant and multidimensional consequence.

The remaining topics in this chapter on metaphysics.

The concept of the abstract object

No fundamental distinction between the abstract and the concrete

Just one kind of abstract object

Objects in general

Just one kind of object

All objects are in the one universe

Any Platonic ‘universe’ is part of the one universe

The concept of the void

Objections to the void as absolute nothingness

Alternate characterizations of the void

Problems with the alternate characterization

Concluding discussion

The proto-void

‘Mind and matter’

Purpose of the discussion

Mind

And matter

Understanding mind and matter in terms of substance: a thought experiment

The universal case: relaxing the assumption of substance

No ultimate distinction between nature and spirit

The Real

Aeternitas and Brahman

Aeternitas and Brahman are more than names

Death

Meaning of the metaphysics

Cosmology

Introduction

Definition

Cosmology is the study of the variety, extension and duration of being.

That is, cosmology is a continuation of metaphysics.

Some purposes to development of cosmology

Knowledge of the world. Knowledge of ‘our’ power in the world.

Our being in the world—past to present to future and, perhaps without question, to past ‘again’.

Aim

Work out the implications of the cosmology and power for the ideas, thought, and lives of sentience.

Approach

Work out principles in parallel with the content of and action under cosmology:

For principle, content, and practice require one another—develop together with reflective (imaginative and critical) action and correction (also see on proof and intuition).
System is just the ordering of the received-in-the-present so as to build; and to rework the foundation when structure is found unstable
There is a natural order of development from general cosmology (concrete and abstract) to stable cosmologies like ours (familiar and alternative and extreme), to cosmology of life and identity.

General cosmology

Introduction

Definition

General cosmology is cosmology without restriction or special attention to special kinds (e.g. stable, empirical, or natural-in-the-limited-sense).

First principle

The first principle of general cosmology is the fundamental principle (supplemented by tradition, reflection, and action).

Significance

Wide angle view of the universe and our prospect.

Sets stage for stable cosmologies—i.e. those whose realization is likely and durable; and conducive of experience and engagement and so meaningful.

Large scale picture of the universe

Manifestation and identity and its scope

Inheritance of power

The individual inherits the power of the universe.

Why it is not a contradiction for two individuals to simultaneously inherit this power

Eternal process

While in limited form realization is eternal process (of approach to the large scale picture of the universe).

Ever fresh.

Death, identity and memory

Fundamental issue

The form rather than the fact of recollection (past human life doubtful in fact and significance)

Issues of the form

At a given level

What is constant (rather than detail of what is different); of seeking what contributes to general realization (increment and large scale)

In transition

To seek merging in transcendent form (form that transcends individual experience); merging and meaning of Brahman.

How is memory preserved?

The preservation of memory would occur, abstractly, from the fundamental principle; and more concretely via communication among the void, the proto-void, and the cosmological.

The proto-void and the ephemera

Some details of general cosmology

Identity, space and time

Complexity

Local creation, gods and significance

Fiction and its significance

Principles of general cosmology

First principle

Above.

Mode

Search for concepts includes realization and error.

Criteria

Possibility and significance

Heuristic

Experience (including the outcome of action), presence, intuition, and the metaphysics are among the heuristics.

Also see the universal metaphysics > the universal metaphysics > on proof and intuition.

Formal

Developing and using existing and new abstract theories.

Examples—set theory, mereology, logics, theories of abstract objects, and various mathematical systems suitable to the study of complexity.

Supplement—a system of human knowledge.

Prospect

General cosmology stages the stable cosmologies and cosmology of life and identity which further bring out the significance of the general.

Stable cosmologies

Our cosmos has a degree of formed-ness and stability. The universe is a collection of formed stable cosmoses against a transient-void background. What principles are available to explain form and stability?

General principles

Since every origin complies with the metaphysics, this is the most general explanatory principle. As explanation it is trivial; it does not satisfy our usual associations of explanation of macro phenomena being locally causal at root; but it is still profound; and at this most general level no more than generic explanation is to be expected.

But we are also interested in more specific processes that explain form and the population of form in the universe. These include the standard processes of experience, science, scientific and metaphysical cosmologies as well as metaphysical systems tinged by cosmology and other particularization—and their forms and principles.

It is sufficient to consider origins from the void.

Because there is no form in the void, the origin of form is indeterministic. But form has at least some degree of determinism. A goal of explanation is to illuminate the ‘balance’ between indeterminism and determinism—between absence and occurrence of form. A classic mechanism is stepwise via indeterministic increment between stable states where population is maximized where the product of frequency and longevity is a maximum. Fecund transients are very short lived. Perfect symmetry is frozen. The optimum lies somewhere in between.

It is in the stable structures that local mechanism and causation, partial as if determinism, structured space and time are to be found. That these structures originate from the void constitutes an ultimate explanation.

There is no compelling reason to think that origins obey our laws of science, particularly its conservation laws such as conservation of energy.

Origins from a non conservative background provide an explanatory template for conservation laws: conservation of energy, for example, lies at the stable interface between deflation of energy dissipating and inflation of energy generating proto-cosmoses.

Estimating simple adapted and significant probability and population

General

Special: the forms of our world

Special: going beyond

Special: alternative and extreme natural law

Population significance

In an advanced stable cosmology there is the prospect for intelligent commitment to populate and discover or uncover the apparently less stable.

Stable cosmologies like ours

Principles

Our cosmos as a model example

The patterns (laws) and entities (physical—particle and interaction; and living and sentient) and their general form.

The ‘accidents’ (the values of the constants, the abundance of hydrogen and oxygen…)

Origins

See alternative and extreme cosmologies next.

Alternative and extreme cosmologies and physics

These overlap the stable cosmologies

Motive

Exploration of the world and metaphysical possibility.

Examples

Are conservation and symmetry essential?

Is there any element of our laws that is universal? E.g. conservation, the ‘universal’ constants including speed of propagation of fundamental forces.

There can be no radical departure from our laws; mind requires form and so a body—are these physically, reasonably, or metaphysically necessary?

Sources

Generalization and variation of known laws, principles, and conservation (Noether’s theorem).

Generalized pictures of origins from laws that span a range of conservation and non conservation; conservation and symmetry.

Fiction and realism.

Conclusions

There will be pockets of improbability but generally the foregoing population picture will obtain. There is a vast theory of possibilist and probabilist form awaiting development.

The stable cosmologies are our first prospect in terms of probability, duration, and meaning. It is generally the self-adapted systems that will have anything more than the barest sentience.

They would be the foundation for the peak of being and perhaps rendering of new heights of stability in what otherwise may have seemed unstable.

Cosmology of life and identity

Approach to the ultimate

Though realization is given to limited form (the individual), intelligent and passionate (committed) engagement enhance effectiveness and enjoyment of the process.

Implications for relations to the ultimate

Local forms are necessary to the way (a first source of meaning); a second source: identity across death and dissolution.

God—particular versus diffuse, concrete—e.g. person—versus abstract, remote versus immanent

‘God’ as the process of ‘our’ realization (‘error’ as essential)

Intelligence, evolution, and significance

We have via intelligence some, if very partial, control over our fate and evolution (such control is one common meaning of the word ‘destiny’). It is possible and therefore will occur that we (at least in identity beyond death and together with organism from the corners of the universe) rise to the level of constructing peaks of the universe (there will be depths too). That is some peaks will be the result of intelligence. But is this not also reasonable? I.e. as structure and process become capable of degrees self-world knowledge and ‘control’ is this not (a) likely to be most effective in populating the universe with higher / self-aware structures (b) the very conception of intelligence? It is in the nature of significance and of the void background (no external god) that such peaks, whatever the mechanism, are the highest significance.

Pain and enjoyment

Significant meaning

Given stable organisms in a stable cosmos under the paradigm of adaptation, pain and enjoyment are in adaptive balance. This gives further meaning to pain.

Adaptivity

In stable cosmologies pain is adaptive. However, pain will normally have limits; this and joy, too, are adaptive.

There are instances of pain that, as just instances, have no meaning. Their meaning derives from the adaptive need for pain to be a general rather than too specific mechanism. In a universe with a traditional god it is hard to given meaning to meaningless pain.

‘Meaning of life’

Since there is nothing outside the universe, any meaning is being in it—its being and process.

Meaning of life—significant meaning, lies in being in process, i.e. in negotiating the immediate-ultimate.

The way of being

The way of being is all being—the use of all dimensions of being (individual, culture, civilization) in realization of all (essential, highest) being. The way is eternal process of approach to peak and dissolution. This would be monotonous but for limitless variety and limitless quality of the peaks.

This is given by the metaphysics.

A universe of meaning

Significant meaning

Here the sense of meaning is that of significant or existential but not concept or linguistic meaning.

Love and light as meaning?

Some religions and philosophies hold that that the universe is essentially one in which ‘love and / or light is the transcendent principle’—the universe is love.

It seems to me that a universe of only pain or ennui would not have existential meaning (some might disagree but I think that the disagreement is based on the possibility of something beyond just pain).

However, it does not seem that the universe is one of pure love or that love is the direction of meaning. Still, as a mosaic, love and joy must occur in the universe. They are meaningful but not meaning itself.

The universe as it is

We have seen that the universe is: universe is essentially meaningful to its significant intelligent populations.

Meaning comes from being in process—the mosaic of pain and joy, commitment, intelligence on the way in the immediate to the ultimate

The eleventh hour

Arriving at meaning and truth is a process. We might have success before death (relative not absolute); we might have failure and shame; this is temporal. In ‘another existence’—another expression of universal disposition the opportunity arises again and its different occasions constitute a sequence from the limited to the limitless. There is always resolution; shame and success dissolve and arise again. This is not reason for fatalism for we (all being not just being on earth) are the universe in its creative process between blind nothingness to Aeternitas or Brahman and back but always with freshness. As seen earlier, intelligent commitment (thought and perception in step with feeling, passion, intention, and action) is essential to effectiveness and enjoyment. The traditional ways provide realization in ‘this’ life but that is a projection of the ultimate onto our cosmos.

Religion

The notion of religion could be discussed here. However, religion is more than a system of thought so I defer discussion of religion to the later section on religion.

Realization

The process

The individual realizes the ultimate. While in limited form this realization is eternal process—a journey in being. This follows from the metaphysics.

It is in overcoming limited form that the ultimate, i.e. the Aeternitas or Brahman, are achieved.

Preview

The process starts from the idea of realization as eternal process and then derives and discusses some dimensions and elements of process; redundancy is allowed.

Path derives an approach ‘universal realism’ and a generic template. The way sets out a plan; the plans are mine but may but are sufficiently broad in form that they may be modified to suit other path designs.

Nature of realization

Enjoyment and effectiveness are enhanced by intelligent, committed and passionate engagement. The process always begins here-now and connects to the ultimate.

Magnitude and enjoyment of the process of realization

The extension, duration, variety, peaks and their magnitudes, and dissolutions are without limit; the ultimate is approached but not achieved; it is only in overcoming limited form that the ultimate is achieved.

Further, enjoyment and effectiveness are enhanced by intelligent, committed and passionate engagement (which of course is not to exclude detachment from too much investment in outcomes and so on).

The ‘journey’ connects the immediate and the ultimate. It begins here, in this world. It is incremental but saying so is not to exclude significant steps.

Immersion and the disciplines

The intrinsic and instrumental disciplines—the traditions of the east are, though limited just as the west too is limited, developed beyond western psychologies of being. I call these eastern style disciplines intrinsic because they apply to our being in contrast to the extrinsic or instrumental disciplines that apply primarily to the environment or instrumentally to the individual.

While the western ‘way’ (a stereotype) may be essential to the way, they require to be complemented by the intrinsic. That is the use of ideas must be also immersive.

Natural science and technology in the modern world

Society, immersion, and the need for greater immersion

Need for immersive natural science and technology

The intrinsic disciplines

Dimensions

Aim

The aim is to attempt formulation of a comprehensive set of areas of action toward realization. There is no suggestion that the definitions are absolute or altogether trans-cultural. Completeness, if the project would be feasible, is left for another time.

Overview

The dimensions of process are nature or ground, civilization (individual and community in interaction), psyche (the place of being and significance and source of instrument), and the universal.

Nature

The concept

Nature can be seen as the ground of being…

Perhaps the main artificiality to concepts of nature is the cutoff from other ‘dimensions’… especially society and spirit.

Explanation

Nature is the most ‘elementary’ of the dimensions…

Psychology or theory of realization

The focus and purpose

The purpose is to serve the aim.

The focus is practical—we are here interested in transformation.

The primary psychology of transformation must include a proximate psychology.

Apprehension of the real

Ways to apprehension of the real

What is psychology?

General

Understanding of experience and its categories in general, conceptual, and empirical terms.

Academic and existential psychology

Though slanted and programmatically incomplete these may be useful.

A principle

In the aim of perfection we do not wait for perfection.

The essential psychology

The essential psychology is the theory of realization.

Individuals are strands of the universal, we are its dispositions become concrete.

In universal process individual memory is recollected as part of a higher individual. There is an endless continuum of levels—above self, from SELF to BRAHMAN and below self, from the void and its transients to self.

Detail

The essential psychology is not a theory of how human psychology ‘works’ rather it is the theory of realization…

I emphasize the maxim that in the aim of perfection we cannot wait for perfection. That is, practically, perfection in ultimate terms includes sacrifice of aspects of self—i.e. focus on ego and self is in service of the ‘higher’ aim.

Elements of psychology

A goal for the future is to work a full but relevant psychology into the theory of realization.

Elements of psychology may be divided according to binding to the world versus freedom…

The immediate and the ultimate in psychology

Goal: balance the immediate and ultimate

Modern and classical sources

Freedom and necessity

Further ‘elements’

Elements of cognition, cognition and emotion, mind and body, individual and civilization, nature and universe.

Civilization

Human civilization is the web of human community across time and continents. Universal civilization is the matrix of civilizations across the universe. The universal metaphysics implies the being of universal civilization and that it is one vehicle for realization of the ultimate.

Introduction

Civilization is the large scale aspect of community—global and universal.

Civilization: the concept

Source: published version of the realizations.

Detail

From ‘Our civilization is the web of human culture over time and continents’ to ‘Especially on this knowledge, realization for limited forms begins in the present, touched and illuminated by the ultimate.’

Civilization: dimensions

The immediate and the ultimate

I seek to formulate ways to connect the immediate and the ultimate.

Introduction: the secular, the trans-secular, overcoming their joint limits

The block

Ways to connect

Universal

The universal is ‘everything’ but, particularly, emphasizes the unknown; it includes the previous dimensions.

All dimensions, especially the universal, straddle the known and unknown.

Processes

Aim

The aim is to attempt formulation of a comprehensive set of ways of action toward realization. Again, I do not suggest that the definitions are absolute or trans-cultural; completeness and its feasibility are left for another time.

Overview

Elements of process are means (ideas and action), disciplines and mechanics of transformation (ways, psycho-physiological catalysts (non drug) such as extended hiking, fasting, vision quest, risk, reflection, and consolidation), modes (intrinsic—of being, extrinsic—of environment and technology), and places (nature, civilization, psyche, and universe), and vehicles (individual, civilization, intelligent artifact), and phases (becoming: nature, spirit, civilization-artifact and pure be-ing).

Means

The means are ideas and action.

Derivation

Disciplines

The tradition offers disciplines or received knowledge and practice.

Derivation

Mechanics of transformation

A mechanics of transformation is, simply, analysis and synthesis of being. It may use the disciplines—e.g., the ways of the religions. Its essential mechanics is choice-risk-consolidation.

Detail

Ways and catalysts

A mechanics has two elements—ways of living, and particular catalytic activities such as meditation, fasting, and exposure.

Modes (of change)

Change is either intrinsic or in external circumstances.

Derivation

Places of change

The dimensions—nature, civilization, psyche, universe.

Vehicles

Individual and civilization (artifact would be included at the point that artifact acquires knowledge of significance)

Phases

Phases of a ‘journey’ correspond to the dimensions and the aspects of process. Be-coming versus be-ing defines a broad division.

Derivation

General overview

General

Some significant options

Path

The principle is to use the metaphysics, cosmology, traditional ways, reflection, action, and experience as foundation to synthesize a way to be named universal realism. That is, the path or way and their development are part of the same process.

The traditional systems may also be used as sources with regard to detail of living in the world—only brief detail is presented here as foundation from which to build by example or by criticism.

Some sources

This overview is intended as suggestive rather than definitive or comprehensive.

Secular sources

The positive side of secularism (here the view that the secular world is all) and secular humanism is the cultivation of truth and the good. As such it is a good foundation for trans-secular activity.

However ‘naïvely positivist secularism’ which sees the secular world as all being abandons human inheritance of the unbounded being of the universe.

On religion

But for the limitations of our common conceptions of the activity of being human and the limited associations of the word ‘religion’ we might use the following conception that is validated by the universal metaphysics and its implications:

Religion is the use of all dimensions of being in realization of (1) the ultimate in the immediate and (2) the ultimate as such.

Primal religion

Especially as primal to and more inclusive than the post secular divide; as the root of the modern; and as a ground of being a human animal that can know being.

Buddhism

The focus is the multi-faceted psychology and salvation from suffering. The response is therefore a multi-faceted, e.g. eight-fold, way.

Advaita Vedanta

Metaphysics is important to Advaita Vedanta: every ‘I’ is Brahman. The psychology is the alienation of the ego from the true self (Atman: Brahman) due to the natural ignorance of ego. The way emphasizes seeing and overcoming the mistakes of ego. It may be simple: an inspired vision of truth. Other ways, adapted to various personal situations and degrees of potential (in this life), are programs to overcome ignorance.

The essence of the Gita, for example, is that doing the right thing in mindfulness and action will result in realization of the boundless ultimate in this life.

Abrahamic Religions

The cosmology has emphases on a god that is simultaneously personal and remote. However the monotheism, remoteness or sometimes aloofness, and personalism are not univalent: God is not invariably remote. Christianity’s ‘Gnostic’ stream suggests that the individual is part of the process of an immanent god. That is, there is a metaphysical interpretation of Gnosticism in which we are part of the stream of god. It is not a static interpretation: it is processes like ours that constitute god (even if our present state is primitive). The standard psychology of salvation is that of overcoming sin (rather than ignorance); but there are alternate strains in which we are (in) the process of a personal god.

The ‘standard’ Abrahamic Religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Bahá'í Faith (Wikipedia) is an interesting / suggestive more modern incarnation: its principles are unity of god, unity of religion, and unity humanity, and that religious history unfolds through messengers who establish religions appropriate to the time. The messengers have been Abrahamic (Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad) and Dharmic (Krisha, Buddha and others).

Modern trans-secular systems

Three axes of interest are (1) Re-interpretation of secular reality. (2) Modern trans-secular thought. (3) Analyses of the ‘condition of man’ in theological terms.

Summary

As for the world religions modern thought is suggestive in undertaking a program of ‘universal realism’ below. However, the metaphysics of all other thought that I can see often scores high on creativity and poetry but low on range and foundation. The sources are of course immensely suggestive regarding details of human ‘overcoming’. Vedanta comes closest in range and, together with other Indian systems, affective-existential foundation.

Universal Realism

Metaphysics: individual and universal identity are the same (as for Advaita); the universe and individual (Brahman and Atman) are both processes—individual identity ever approaching the latter (this is one perspective; there is another in which they are one timeless ultimate).

Psychology: the sources of alienation include those of Buddhism and the Advaita. However, there are further considerations. The metaphysics of eternal process is proved. While we are in that loop, perfection in the ultimate cannot wait for ultimate perfection in this life which is a mosaic of pain and joy (adequate attention to the issues life are essential to and a result of approach to the ultimate). The psychology is that of seeking a path within this mosaic that is ‘optimally’ effective and enjoyable in and on the way in the immediate-ultimate. Perfection in this life is a balance or equilibrium between the perspectives of local perfection and process. The elements of process are described in earlier sections of realization.

Sociology: for vibrant realism, every individual and culture is an occasion for renewal in the way of realization. This is not to abandon the past as inspiration. There is a default secularism that sees society as its own end, its science as essentially complete and therefore closed (as in some naïve kinds of positivism). When we do not think of science as closed it may be an instrument in universal civilization via, e.g., technologies of organism, information, and space-time-matter; seeing it as open, it may be more than instrument.

Originality: many faiths have an account of a founder who finds inspiration in the forest or the wilderness. An interpretation of this is that while we derive support from communal knowledge, our ultimate resources in the process from dark to light is within rather than beyond ourselves (in which nature is ground and inspiration). That is, the divisions of charismatic versus patriarchal authority, of authority versus process, of leader versus follower, and of guru versus pupil are temporally but not ultimately real.

The way: the mechanics is choice-risk-consolidation (see discussion of mechanics of transformation, earlier). From the universal metaphysics and other previous considerations this is worked out below.

The way

Introduction and overview

The intent is to provide a template for origin, understanding, and action on the way.

See the resource edition for details of the program phases below.

That resource edition and the present text suggest a small but comprehensive set of resources.

Detail

Sources for plans are linked from the already mentioned plan for study and action. Also see charting the journey (dated but useful for its format) and matrix.

Charting the way

Path concept and design

Time: as needed, at major review, and parallel to path

A principled way has been established above. The sections on the way, below, detail a way of acting and being in the immediate-ultimate.

The following sections delineate a program. It is important that this program is revisable—as is this document—for comprehensiveness-incisiveness and essentiality. Except where stated revision will be as the occasion arises, especially at major reviews.

Introduction and overview.
Program: template.
Program: ways and design. Search for tradition, community, and teachers may be immensely useful in the necessarily original—always beginning—path to the universal. See Resources.

Daily practice

Time: all times

Follow Daily practice and Program: right thought and action. Date: ongoing.

Ideas

Time: as occasion arises; parallel and guide to action

Review Ideas as occasion arises. Follow Ideas: program (write as indicated). Date: parallel to action (realization).

Action (realization)

Programs for developing the conceptual background are given in the way: becoming or action (and some development is already present in this narrative and at http://www.horizons-2000.org).

Time: immediate… sequenced as follows

Nature as ground and inspiration

Review Nature as ground and inspiration: Beyul and quest for vision in interaction with immersion and the quest. Follow Nature as ground and inspiration: program. Date: 2015 (immediate).

Practice and action for realization and transformation

Review Transformation of being: yoga, meditation and related practice-in-action. Follow Yoga, meditation and related practice-in-action: program. Date: ongoing.

Civilization: this world and the universe

Review Civilization: engagement in the world—ultimate and secular in interaction with engagement. Follow Civilization: program and Civilization: detailed program. Date: 2015 (in parallel to nature as ground and inspiration which has priority).

Artifact as being and synergic to being and civilization

Review Artifactual being when occasion arises. Follow Artifactual being: program. Emphasize formation of a focused group (TranscommunityDesign, and a first plan—TransCommunity.xls or TransCommunity). Date: 2015 (civilization: engagement in the world has priority).

Pure being

Time: all times and as closure to this life

Review Pure being frequently. Combine the basic and detailed subsections now. Follow and review Pure being: program. Date: all times; emphasis: when the projects are substantially complete; and, essentially, as closure in view of death.

Writing (for understanding and sharing)

Time: (a) field notes parallel realization (b) The Way of Being to follow significant action

Writing (for understanding and sharing): date parallel to and in interaction with transformation: Field notes will be typed or scanned and uploaded frequently; new and publishable versions of this document, and, especially the realizations-brief version will be written following significant achievements and insights.

Template

The definition of the template derives from earlier sections, especially of realization—i.e., The process and path.

The essentials of a template from reflection so far are: aim, phase, place (dimension), time, sequence, vehicle, means, mechanics, mode, place, and action.

Definition

Introduction—general or specific action; nature of the particular action, plans; remark if the action has redundancy…

Aims—state, process, knowledge of being | understanding, knowledge of practice.

Phase (dimension)—area(s) of focal activity grouped efficiently: ideas (pure and applied), action (identity-civilization, artifact-technology) | universal-all: the phases seen as a single process.

Time—now, year, life, beyond | all.

Sequence—i.e. co-requisite andor prerequisite—parallel or prior to phase vs. all.

Elements

Vehicle—individual (practitioner / direct learning-teaching) andor shared (civilization) | being.

Means—ideas (study discipline) andor action (below) | being—direct and study of mechanics of transformation by increment—risk-learning, ways, catalysts.

Mechanics, discipline, or practice—risk, ways and catalysts—direct experiment with being: way-catalyst | reflexive: development of discipline.

Mode—intrinsic vs. instrumental-artifactual.

Place—nature, psyche, society | universe-all-home.

Action

Practice in action including ritual action | action as practice.

Discussion

For details and items not covered in this template / no discussion so far.

Program: template

Review as occasion arises, especially when reflecting on the realizations.

Template instances

In the instances below, details are omitted (see the realizations-resource version).

Ways and design

Ways and catalysts, mechanics, elements, and phases

Ways psycho-physiological catalysts (non drug), mechanics, elements, and phases are part of the way.

Primary source: dynamics, catalysts and catalytic states.

Path and phase design and selection

Path and phase selection and design. The criteria are comprehensiveness and incisiveness in supportive balance.

Source: the long section journey: process (in the realizations-resource version) and plan for study and action.

Program: ways and design

Review as occasion arises, especially when reflecting on the realizations.

Everyday practice of right thought and action

Right thought and action

Action: right thought and action everyday.

Every culture (and religion) has a concept of an ‘ethical’ way of life. But while the ethical has to do with right behavior, its range of connotation varies among cultures. In its narrow senses it may be a set of morals. In a broader sense it is an entire way of life (with or related to an at least implicit metaphysics). Among religions, perhaps the most systematic systems are found in Buddhism and Hinduism.

Daily practice

Right thought and action is being in the present and the ultimate as one.

Routine—some become set in routine, others are chaotic, and some have routine set by circumstance. I find that I can adapt and change according to circumstance and that this is energizing. Routine can be adapted to circumstance. Living at the fortieth parallel, I find that rising a few hours before the sun is an adaptation to being in the rhythm of the day—after a few hours of ‘work’ there is an entire day of light, even in winter.

Dedication

Rise before the sun—begin with dedication of my life and the day to the way of being, to focus on essence.

I dedicate my life to The Way of Being: / To its discovery and realization— / To live and grow in all worlds as one; / To shed the bondage of limited self— / So that I may see The Way so clearly / That living it, even through difficulty / Is flow over force… / And so to show and share its truth, power, and care.

I dedicate my meditation, prayer, commitment, and action to the good of the world; to being in the present as ultimate—and to being-on-the-way-to-the-ultimate; to all persons and their care—especially those who I resent or for whom I find care hard; to a positive and higher attitude; and while limited, to seeing but not taking imagined or real fears and resentments as affronts to security and sense of self; to take responsibility for my pain and joy, and action and assertion illumined by the way; and dedication to release from the bondage of limited self…

Review, realization, meditation in action

Review and meditate on realization and other priorities and means (priorities).
Realization—action and experiment; ideas and writing.
Meditate: quieting—spaciousness of being; focus and focal issues; pain and resentment; death as spur and transition; meditation-in-action. Incorporate the yogic elements of the Gita.

A practical meditation. I will meditate on my truth and not let apprehension prevent me from speaking it when good; or ego force me to speak it when not good; I will meditate on other weaknesses. I will avoid all fundamentalism—i.e., belief in conception (words) over perception (ex-perience) or percept over concept.

Some tools. Act on my ambitions and goals. ‘Own’ my pain and joy which means (a) as I am the active and core source, so I am responsible for, will acknowledge pain (and joy) and not avoid it; and will—meditate on it (to overcome the fear of pain, and its perpetuation by avoidance; to become aware of its true source as a first step in overcoming self-caused pain) (b) be appropriately assertive to stem other sources and / or remove myself from them… and enhance joy. Wait, but not too long, before acting and assertion on problems and resentments. Commit to this daily practice.

Exercise—posture, general (aerobic, flexibility, hiking fitness and strength), and yogic.
Evening—review the next day, plans; meditate; sleep early.

Program: right thought and action

Review right thought and practice (a) when rethinking the realizations and (b) in interaction with practice.

Ideas

Ideas—the metaphysics; ‘research’, i.e. study, concepts, and criticism for the phases of action and of pure being; and designing and planning the entire path.

Links: the present document and plan for study and action.

Time: ongoing

The metaphysics

Study, concepts, and criticism: the whole system and general reading, specific problems (e.g. memory across death and the void), special topics (e.g. oral tradition, the logics, extreme physics).

For the phases of action and pure being

Designing and planning the entire path

Ideas: details

Discussion

Some details regarding the aims—see the resource and other documents in the archive for details of a program—some specific topics are: foundations, logic studies, science of possibility, mereology, development and application of the pure and practical metaphysics.

Ideas: program

Parallel to action—i.e., individual, civilization, and artifact. The main topics are the metaphysics and its development, sciences—empirical and symbolic (including mathematics), human knowledge—principles and system (toward a knowledge database), physical cosmology and its foundations, ethics and value and foundations, religious and spiritual thought—nature-principles-systems, design and planning, and narrative mode. It is critical to not think of these as watertight divisions.

The following arrangement is effective: this section focuses on metaphysics in the broad sense that includes practical knowledge. Each remaining ‘action’ section has at least one subsection on ideas pertinent to it.

The metaphysics, its foundation and development

Some topics:

Foundation

Logic

A science of possibility or possibility theory

Not essentially different from logic.

Mereology

Adequacy of the dimensions and processes of being and realization

Development of the metaphysics and application

Science and symbolic systems

The abstract and concrete sciences

Knowledge database—principles and development

The database and sources—knowledge database and system of human knowledge.

Programming for the database and multiple and dynamic organization.

Foundations of physical cosmology

Physical sciences, especially quantum theory for its relations to the metaphysics.

Foundations of ethics and value

Systems of religious and spiritual thought

Source: field notes (2014)

Modern West, Christian Mystic, Russian Orthodox. / India, Tibet, Japan, China, Middle East (Sufi). / Amazonia., North America., Siberia., Australia (Dream Time), New Zealand. / Personal.

Design and planning

Narrative mode

Becoming or action

There are currently five action concepts; actual action will select from these and others. The phases are (i) nature as ground, (ii) transformation of being, (iii) civilization: engagement in the world, (iv) right living and thought (in a previous section), and (v) artifactual being.

Nature as ground and inspiration: Beyul and quest for vision

Action: nature as ground and inspiration: Beyul and quest for vision. Extended immersion; importance of selection, access, and extended immersion in one ‘natural’ place; and example (‘primal’ cultures).

Links: journey in being-detail, template, and plan for study and action.

The term ‘Beyul’ from Tibetan Buddhism refers to a nature pilgrimage whose aim is to ‘awaken within oneself the qualities and energies of the sacred site, which ultimately lie within our own minds’—from the Introduction by the xiv Dalai Lama of Tibet to The Heart of the World, Ian Baker, 2004).

Nature as ground and inspiration: program

Ideas—see elements: means above: study of the ways of immersion, Beyul, pilgrimage and vision.

Places—select places for criteria, e.g., extended, repeated, and varied immersion (time, one place, variety); spirit; and access.

Examples—Trinity Alps: six months; Copper Canyon: living; Southern California desert: winter.

Activities—meditation and other psycho-physiological catalysts (non drug): extended hiking, fasting, vision quest.

Beyul—immersion—being—mind and place.

Transformation of being: yoga, meditation and related practice-in-action

Action: Transformation of being: yoga, meditation and related practice-in-action—tradition and experiment, psyche and physical organism (especially catalytic transformation by psychic and physical action).

Minimize priorities (inessentials), space (property)-time (‘entertainment’), dissipation (food, alcohol).

Link: journey in being-detail.

Discussion

On the disciplines—two kinds of meditation (one pointed versus open); their union; the principle…

Yoga, meditation and related practice-in-action: program

See everyday practice of right thought and action.

Detailed program and study plan for study of practice in action

Ideas—ways

General aspects

Givenness, beginning in the present. Learning, experiment, iteration are essential; tradition is a beginning.

Ways and catalysts

Catalysts

Ways

Blurring of the distinction

Elements of the ways

Means (ideas, action)-vehicles (individual, civilization)-places (nature, culture)-modes (intrinsic—especially immersive: ways, catalysts, art and religion; instrumental—science, philosophy, technology)-disciplines (established interacting with experiment and selection / criticism).

Core mechanics of risk (experiment, splitting) and consolidation (rebuilding, increment in reason, recollection, and artifact)—i.e., analysis and synthesis of being and meaning.

Sustaining

Tradition and experiment.

Synthesis

To organism by iteration upon small change… To person and culture by synthesis-reason, record, transformation, iteration… To process (including evolution) by entry into to transience-permanence.

A study of psychology, cosmology, meaning, and deity

Examples for study and experiment

Introduction: it is important that the meanings of the systems, while presented as systems, are not at all fixed and should not be; there is experience but not expertise.

Religions of native peoples.
Mysticism—Greek, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic.
‘Indian’ (Veda, Upanishad, Vedanta and other ‘non orthodox’; yoga, meditation, Tantra).
Buddhism: Mahayana (four truths, eight-fold way) and Tibetan (Tantra: Chöd and death—its understanding as horizon and spur to closure to this life and gateway to universal life, Beyul).
Modern—hypnosis, EMDR, psychoanalysis (Freud, Jung, object relations, self psychology…), psycho-behavioral re-education (REBT), 12-step logic.
Integration

Ideas—catalysts

Approaches to transformation are evolutionary, systematic (ways, ideas) and catalytic.

Types of altered and enhanced state

Dream, hypnosis, meditative—focal and open space, unconscious access, object free but vivid perception and thought (‘hallucination, delusion’), enhanced vision, receptivity, feeling-emotion, ideation, kinetics and kinesthetics.

Dreams and vision

What are dreams?

What is the biology of dreaming? What are the biological ‘functions’?

That there need be no particular origin or original function.

To what uses can dreams be put?

How to cultivate dreams.

Biochemical.

Voluntary.

The culture of the vision quest.

Other.

Enhancing and inducing factors

Isolation-deprivation, inaction, exposure—extreme environments, shock, trauma, pain, exhaustion… Fear—presence, crisis and opportunistic sense, dissociation and reintegration via exposure to anxiety (Chöd)—volitional or not—and purpose… Repetition, rhythm, dance, point focus (e.g. breath), and engagement as sources of experiential space and concentration; ritual… Immersion in new perspectives—handedness, new languages, travel—cultures and remote environments (receptivity in Churches, Beyul), sacred texts and poetic expression, acting as stepping outside the bonds of self… Fast, diet, psychoactive substances… Charismatic transformation via purpose, preparation, risk-exposure to people and places, and insight into motives… Brain state technologies…

Goals

Experiment

Civilizing: immersion

Building toward the aim

Reflection on the means

Experiments

Preliminary

Planning (and just do it).

Transition: search and openness.

Preliminary trips and experiments.

Nature

Travel-share-vision-experiment.

Culture and civilization

Being. Immersion.

Being

What is it to be another being?

From the inside

(1) I am the answer (2) The other is the answer.

From the outside

(1) Concepts (2) Assuming the life-way.

Risk

Get out of comfort zone. Do good work—civilization.

Transformation of being or identity is continuous with civilizing the universe.

Civilization: engagement in the world—ultimate and secular

Action: civilization: engagement in the world—ultimate (universal-holist) and secular (culture, political-economic…).

Link: journey in being-detail.

Civilization: program

Develop theory of joint realization.

Shared endeavor: all phases, especially daily practice (and meditation and yoga), ideas, Beyul, and artifactual being.

Focused groups: an institute: see TranscommunityDesign and a first plan—TransCommunity.xls or TransCommunity.

The links are:

TranscommunityDesign—http://www.horizons-2000.org/1. World and Being/realization/being-elements/2010/2011-2012 jib in-process/TranscommunityDesign.html,

Transcommunity.xls—http://www.horizons-2000.org/1. World and Being/realization/being-elements/2010/2011-2012 jib in-process/Transcommunity.xls, and

TransCommunity—http://www.horizons-2000.org/1.%20World%20and%20Being/realization/being-elements/2010/2011-2012%20jib%20in-process/Transcommunity.html.

Civilization: detailed program

Experiments and ideas toward knowing and realizing the ultimate emphasizing Civilization.

The primary mode of transformation is intrinsic: individual—identity, participation, and immersion—and civilization as such: individual-group synthesis.

Ideas—world studies

Topics for the section ‘world’ in journey in being-detail—values, laws (e.g. constitution), ecology, politics (immersion / grass roots), exchange values (international and local), and economics.

Ideas—civilization and realization

Analysis and role of civilization in realization—the idea—civilization is the web of human culture across time and continents. Greater civilization is the matrix ‘civilizations’ across the universe. Individuals foster civilization; civilization nurtures the individual. (2) Concepts—the universal metaphysics reveals a limitless universe open to individuals and civilizations.

Disciplines

Approach

Shared endeavor

This world

Civilization of the universe

Civilizing the universe merges with the issue of artifactual being.

Artifactual being

Action: artifactual being—construction of independent and adjunct technologies via cognitive approaches (science, cognitive science, art…), experiment, evolution for organism-artifact.

Link: journey in being-detail.

Time: when ‘civilization’ is under way.

Artifactual being: program

Ideas—symbolic and experimental being in realization as outlined next.

Artifactual being—stand alone, symbiotic, and adjunct—including life and experiential being (including study of life and mind); concepts; computation and networking (and text and media: shared, interactive, and dynamic); modeling; design; experiment; evolution. Technology for Civilization. Theoretical (and experimental) study of transformations with organisms, individuals, selves, and dissolution of self—psycho-biology.

General—the primary mode of transformation is extrinsic or instrumental: science, technology, and artifact—artifactual aids and symbiosis and constructed being—including life, mind, and intelligence.

The approach is defined above in plans for symbolic and experimental being in realization.

See immediately above for shared endeavor: TransCommunity and related links.

Adjunct to civilizing the universe—technology (material—macroscopic and microscopic, biological, psychosocial, and information) as adjunct to civilization. The metaphysics, trans-secular systems, and modern science—quantum and relativistic, microscopic or at least sub elementary particle to macroscopic e.g. cosmological—are significant. The questions of how to populate and the limits to population of the universe are significant; this of course depends on further issues (a) the ways in which identity can manifest, (b) whether and how the essential nature of higher manifestation are quality or quantity or both, (c) pathways to such manifestation, and (d) the higher or highest manifestations supported by the universe (the answers to these questions are very different on our standard secular and trans-secular views versus the universal metaphysics). A very preliminary source is:

Journey in Being: http://www.horizons-2000.org/1. World and Being/realization/being-elements/2010/Journey in being-detail.html.

Pure being

Pure being: overview

Pure being—living in the immediate and ultimate as identical.

Link: journey in being-detail.

Pure being: detail

Return

Pure being

Death and its meaning

Pure being: program

Time: all times; emphasis: substantial progress in ideas and action; and, essentially, as closure in view of death.

Daily practice, meditation, yoga. Sharing.

Just being. Simplicity. No goals but presence. Emptiness.

The realizations: assessment, process, prospect

Place

The place of the realizations is immediate and the ultimate.

Process

The process—all endeavor lies in process—in ideas-action-shared endeavor. Ideas reveal the universe; and ways and paths of action. Paths of becoming, join nature immersion as ground and inspiration; ways of becoming, especially risk and consolidation, life ways and practices, psycho-physiological catalysts (non drug), shared endeavor in realism, learning from tradition, and publication of works.

Personal

My endeavor so far, which is and which I regard as in process, lies in the combination of nature immersion as ground and as inspiration, experience with psychic catalysts (non drug), spiritual endeavor, learning from the tradition, and the ideas and publication of this work.

Evaluating the accomplishment

The aim

What do I feel is most significant, over and above the general endeavor? It is nature immersion, the ideas, and their interrelation; and the shared endeavor. It is the sense that I am incrementally on the way to the aim of the ultimate in fact and in the immediate.

General

See evaluation of the work: the contribution.

Transience and arrival

Transience and arrival—realization begins in the present, with perhaps with traditional discipline and practice. It requires risk—reflection and experiment—and consolidation of individual form (heart, mind, and body), and in culture and artifact. Living in transience—in joy and anxiety—is on the way… is essential in realization, ever a flux of transience and arrival. While in limited form, realization is endless process—ever fresh in variety and depth in a journey of realizations of being.

The future

The future—the path is always at a beginning, in be-ing and becoming. Becoming is always on the way, somewhere in process (above); exploration, sharing, publishing in world and ultimate, entraining and being entrained by society and civilization. Be-ing is immanent—it is being in the present… which is encouraged by practices such as meditation—and at times when death speaks: enter into a time of be-ing.

For a map, see the way above.

Personal

My plan and hope is to extend the work so far—to continue exploration of this world and the ultimate; to extend it in a variety of ways to the social world and civilization—publication of course, but also to attempt to entrain civilization in the process, and perhaps as a specific way of sharing and mutual endeavor, to establish a research and action group or institute dedicated to ‘journey in being’.

Field notes

This space is for notes andor links to notes from the field.

The emphasis will be experience in the present; and realization or becoming—the way and, especially, actual realization.

I will write in the field and on return.

Integration and narrative will be left for later.

Resource

Since the structure of this division is tentative, refer to the realizations-resource version for detail.

History of the metaphysics

In history; Sources of inspiration; My motives; A conflict; Early process; Insight in nature and working out at home; Fundamental insights; First proof; Empowerment; Development; Achievement; Action; Ideas parallel action

Evaluation of the work: the contribution

Criteria for significance; Major contributions; Significance for the history of ideas

Resources for realization

General (include tools for the means—e.g. imagination, doubt, and criticism; and realization); Human; Process; Archived

Other resources

A general source for the following is the realizations-resource version.

Glossary

Comments

This is taken from journey in being-detail and requires revision—the concordance is a potential source of terms. Here, many terms have improved definitions; some have been renamed. Sameness, difference, identity have improved definitions in the present document; ‘extensivity’ has been replaced by ‘extensionality’.

The terms

Definition, Significant meaning, Destiny, Rationality, Knowledge, Being, Manifest, Experience, Unconscious, Action, Psychology, Real world, Concept, Object, Meaning, Perfectly known objects, Existence, Metaphysics, Universe, Creation, Possibility, Law, Void, Fundamental principle, Limit, Limitless universe, Possibilistic universe, Emergence, Determinism, Deterministic basis, Universal metaphysics, Abstract object, Logic, Realism, Logical realism, Empirical, Normal world, Science and logic, Science of possibility, Death, Pain, Suffering, Identity, Personality, Cosmology, Civilization, Sameness, Difference, Extensivity, Extension, Duration, Space and time, Time, Mind, Psychology, Substance, Attribute, Physical cosmology, Power, Individual, Journey in being, Realization, Elements, Discipline, Psyche, Mechanics, Religion, Psychology, practical, Way, Catalyst, Path, Design, Sustaining, Transformation, Civilizing, World, this, Artifact, Return, Pure being, Reckoning with death

Index

See the folder index making for concordance; see the folder first production for examples of and formatting for an index.

Author

The significance is (1) to be open about my background and (2) to share my process.