As this year's Lent comes towards its end, time to wrap up. The biggest question/unquestion* of them all – why do we exist, and why indeed does anything exist rather than nothing at all??
Caught up in daily routine, there's little time to consider ontology – what is existence. Many would even argue that it's a waste of time to even consider such abstractions. Better get on with earning money, spending money and projecting one's ego to a higher rung of the status hierarchy.
Curiosity ought to get the better of us. It should make us stop and reflect. It should do, but doesn't necessarily do so. Getting off the treadmill, even temporarily, to step back, step beyond, to take the meta-view, is essential.
{{ I feel guided. }}
Why is there something rather than nothing? Physicalists, atheists, would merely posit randomness; the Universe just emerged the way it did, get over it and go shopping. We are nothing more than random collections of atoms moving through spacetime in a predetermined way.
But it doesn't feel that way to me. I strongly sense a purpose, a direction, an aim, a goal. I also sense the ant-like insignificance of my individual life, yet subjectively, it is my individual life, as is yours, as is everyone's, which sits at the centre of the Universe. Without you to observe the Universe, would it exist? Well, to you, no it wouldn't. But without any conscious observer, would it exist? Personally, I feel it wouldn't. Unlike Giulio Tononi or Donald Hoffman, I cannot express that thought as a mathematical formula, but I most certainly intuit it.
Big-C consciousness has created small-c consciousness, dispersed across the Cosmos, with a purpose; to observe wave-functions as they collapse in quantum mechanics. Treat that statement metaphorically: everything you observe is driven by purpose.
Catholic theology would have us believe that God created the heavens and earth so that all Creation could praise Him. [ "The world was made for the glory of God."] I feel that this is an attempt to anthropomorphise the mystery to a level that all believers could accept simply without having to question.
Does God need glorification? Egos do, Consciousness doesn't. Quietly, consciousness experiences and observes; our brain cogitates over that which consciousness brings to us. And a Big-C consciousness does so to, looking down at the Cosmos as we peer up at the night sky.
Big-C consciousness needs small-c consciousnesses to observe it and make it thus.
Is God perfect? It is my intuition that the entire Cosmos is a work in progress, on an eternal journey from Zero to One, improving all the while. So currently, to us, no – God is not perfect, but was and will be. Where my thinking, however (thinking as distinct from intuition), is leading me, is to separate the notion of time as we see it, and time as it functions on the Cosmic scale. In a block universe, there is no past or future, just an eternal Now. This, of course, is not how we experience it. However, a photon, travelling at the speed of light, doesn't experience time at all. This suggests that the entire history of the Universe is happens simultaneously to photons. "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." (Genesis, 1:3)
I am struck by the way the authors of Genesis and evangelist St John intuited the Big Bang, a something-out-of-nothing that has purpose and intent, a beginning and an end.
* An unquestion – ask it of the Zen master, and the Zen master will answer it with a swipe of the bamboo rod across your shoulders. Ideally, this is not a question that should be answered, nor should it even be asked; question and the answer are to be intuited. However, this is not an ideal world, nor have I reached any kind of mastery. And so, dear readers, here's the question and my putative answer to it.
Lent 2023, Day 46
The summary, finale
Lent 2022: Day 46
Easter Everywhere, but not Ukraine
Lent 2021: Day 46
The summing up
Lent 2020: Day 46
Nor followers, nor leaders; one's own way to God
No comments:
Post a Comment