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Consciousness divides, but only to reunite. The danger is that we get stuck in the differentiated consciousness, which is where we are now.
But all differentiation leads back to a unity which transcends differences. This is the final state of nirvana, sunyata, or nirguna Brahma,
Brahma without qualities. In the Trinity everything comes from its original source in the Father beyond differentiation, and comes forth in the
Son in all the multiplicity of the universe, and returns in the Spirit to the original transcendent unity but now in full consciousness.
This is how I see it, but you bring an abundance of new insights from science which are new to me. In regard to education I think that it's
important to be based on traditional religion, whether Hindu, Christian, or American Indian. A tradition links you vitally with the past and
enables you to grow. Of course, it can also prevent growth, but our call is precisely to allow the tradition to grow, and to be open to all the
new insights which are offered us. But to start without roots in tradition I feel would be frustrating.
Rupert: One point Father Bede is making is that, in our first book we didn't speak much about the transcendent source, although in the course
of our discussions over the years we refer to it repeatedly, particularly in what Terence says about the cosmic attractor. This unity which
Father Bede refers to contains all multiplicity, because it contains all the variety of forms in creation. When he talks about the unity which
transcends all dualities, this transcendent unity which embraces all multiplicity, it sounds to me very like what Terence is talking about.
Terence: I agree. It's absolutely the same thing. I think, since
the publication of Trialogues at the Edge of the West, we've more and more tended to address this precise issue. I don't have any problem
with any of it. It certainly is part of the picture.
Ralph: I'm not sure we'll ever get finished discussing this point. My own views of the mystical and the unity of phenomena in the world is
still evolving. Actually, our interaction in the context of our discussions continues to present different views about the details of this picture
of the connectedness of all and everything. More specifically, I think our recent discussions have had the function of decreasing dualism
somehow, especially in our discussions about the heavens. When we talked about the location of heaven from a real estate perspective, we
arrived at a kind of integration into a unity of all and everything. As I listened to our discussion, I imagined a unity of the dualism of form and
matter and energy, not only unified in a primal cause, or primal Eschaton, but through all time. In the present moment as well, there is the
interaction of matter and spirit within the integrity of a single phenomenon or trans-temporal object. Even now, the entelechy, or causal
phenomenon, has a concept of time in it which I think is more specific and special than, for example Brahma, the unity of all and everything
which is the spirit and the world in one.
We tried to integrate heaven and Earth in our discussion by locating a door to the paranormal dimensions at each and every point in ordinary
space and time. This is a kind of timeless integration in which the whole of time becomes a kind of slice in this trans-temporal causal object.
This is a little bit different, as I see it, from the idea of the Eschaton, the attractor at the end of time.
Rupert: This is the holographic matrix, all-in-everything model.
Terence: It assumes that the higher, trans-temporal dimension can be accessed from anywhere in space and time. I suppose this is like the
difference between individual and collec-
tive salvation, as one must believe that the individual at any point can truncate the process and cut to the chase, although clearly the species is
locked in a larger drama that has to unfold according to its own dynamics before it's completed.
Ralph: I agree that ordinary reality lives in space and time, and the individual subjective experience of time is exactly what it seems to be.
From the individual perspective, the model, the master form, chaos, can be visualized within ordinary reality either at the beginning of time or
the end of time. A truly transcendental vision sees time as a kind of lower-dimensional phenomenon in the all-embracing picture of the
overall unity of reality.
Rupert: Time is the moving image of eternity,' in Plato's well-known words.
Ralph: And eternity is not at the end of time.
Rupert: I think we've run into a problem, because all the Platonic formulations are based on a cyclical view of the universe. Whereas, the
evolutionary view, which is Whitehead's3 view and Terence's view and my own view, are based on a different model of time, namely time as
a development or movement towards an end or a goal. Because of evolutionary theory, the attempts in this century of theologians and
metaphysicians and philosophers to grapple with the problem of the eternity and unity of time have been different from the problems faced by
their predecessors. Teilhard de Chardin4 tried to adapt traditional theology to the evolutionary view, and in India Sri Aurobindo5 put forth a
similar evolutionary idea.
It's one thing to have the image of a transcendent reality which generates endless cycles of recurrence: the great breath of Brahma, the Great
Year, and that kind of thing. It's another thing to have a model where the whole thing is developing toward a Telos, an end goal or cosmic
attractor. This evolutionary view, which is fundamental to my own work and to the idea of
morphic resonance, depends on the asymmetry in time. Evolution depends on an asymmetry in time, an increasing diversity of forms, and the
appearance of novelty as well. All these things are slightly difficult to square with traditional theologies.
If you have the idea of cycles, then the transcendent and the temporal exist in some kind of ongoing, more or less eternal relationship. Time,
as the moving image of eternity, goes round and round in circles, which is the closest approximation of eternal movement that the Greeks or
anyone else could come up with. This is not the evolutionary version, where time moves ever increasingly faster and faster, as Terence tells
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