Thoughts on Relativity and Paradox

Relativity is key to right understanding. Things are not true and false: things are–to some degree–true and false.

Every verbal formula is limited, being some distance from the light.

Recognition of paradox is key to right understanding. Everything expressed in words challenges the mind to understand a paradox.

Understanding does not make its home on the astral plane where relativity and paradox are virtually unknown.

We could say that people who do not comprehend relativity and paradox are fanatics. But that formula does not correspond well with the above affirmations.

Therefore, it is better to say that, to the degree that people do not understand relativity and paradox–to that degree–they tend to be fanatics, or at least relatively mistaken.

Renunciation

One teaching says that non-attachment is, “freedom from longing for all objects of desire, either earthly or traditional, either here or hereafter.” Yet it may be early for us to idealize the renunciation of all desire, when we’ve not made much progress in supplanting our numerous bad desires with better ones, and it may be we’ve not yet even learned to enjoy taking out the trash.

And if the water is still and clear, we will notice reflected there the awesome beauty of the sky? And if the sky shines in the eye of a friend, likely we will desire to remain with this friend. And shall we also renounce future desires we do not possess? Naturally not, since desire is continuum and evolution of many refinements, and abstract philosophy will not serve as eraser. We must think realistically about desire. Renunciation is a supplanting process, and more of a direction and orientation than a decision.

“The essence is not in renunciation, but in realization of the especially Beautiful.”

— Aum, Helena Roerich

Desire in Absolute and Relative Perspectives

Someone says truth is subjective and there is no objective truth, no truth at all really, just some brain phenomena relative to this or that pair of eyes. Another soul is on a mission to affirm absolute truth by recommending total and immediate ending of all desire. In this are the absolute and relative extremes.

The first, the extreme relativists, inclined to a lonely space and wrote stories about unredeemable human craziness. There was a glaze of pain over the eyes and a sharp edge to the voice. This extreme relativist finds little significance in the word “truth,” and prefers words and matters more earthly. For them, all lofty affirmations are personal, only a grade or two above dust, and ultimately of a similar reduction.

The second, the absolutists, when questioned will presumably allow some qualification for the natural desire for food, otherwise the remainder of their stay on Earth will be brief and we will hear little more from them. Perhaps their absolute perspective will also yield qualification for sex, otherwise by this prescription humanity’s stay on Earth will also be strikingly brief. Or it could be the absolutists concludes there is no need for embodied humanity-as-is, and it is best that we all jump to hyperspace nirvana without delay.

The absolutists devour gigantic concepts a hundred quadrillion times the size of planet Earth. They have found all the unhappy meanings for human yearnings and for them it is without qualification, the cause of suffering. Desire is, of course, inherent in nature, and it appears as an essential part of the evolutionary scheme of things. There are healthy and unhealthy desires, or rather a continuum of these. So modern man goes to extremes and is often drive by the latter kind. Sill, some of our finest aspirations are desires in subtle form. Among them is the aspiration towards balance. Perhaps even now the relativist is not entirely satisfied, and the absolutists may be evolving a more realistic adaptation. In this might be a gravitation toward the golden mean.

Geometry of Consciousness

Let’s think and play a bit with geometry, proceeding from the most simple.

Geometry begins with a point. It is a focus and in way the most illusive, being abstract and without dimension. We might think of the point as unmanifested potentially. And we might say that, being without visible aspects, it is unity, or the source of unity, and that it is the beginning point or cause from which everything flows. Since it is origin, it is an apt symbol of spirit.

A ray, extended from the point yields a line. This first radiation has a terminus. Let us call this terminus dense matter or effect, or that which is most remote from the origin. So, from potentiality (spirit) comes radiance, relationship, and relativity.

The simple line itself yields three entities: the origin (spirit), the terminus (dense matter), and all relativity in between. The line is also a unity in polarity, and is essentially one, a single line.

If we extend an infinite number of co-equal rays from our central point, the collective end points of these rays describe a circle, or if we add another dimension, a sphere. Perhaps we may take this as symbol of all possibilities, of all that radiates from the Alpha point or cause.

But, returning to the simple, we have three: point, endpoint, and the relation between. Relations are part of knowing. Consciousness means “to know,” and the simplest form of knowing is that of the relation between two entities. So let’s call this relational middle ground “consciousness.” So in our play with the line symbol, we have:

• Point, line, endpoint
• Cause, relativity, effect
• Spirit, consciousness, matter

Apart from the line, the simplest regular geometric representation of trinity is the triangle, and the next simplest such form is the square. The triangle gives us three points and the square gives us four points, and we might picture these two figures as a basic duality, analogous to the start and endpoint of our line. These two simple figures, the triangle and square, give us an added dimension in that their combination (3 + 4) yields seven entities.

It’s an entertaining thought that “a square” is a person regarded as dull, rigidly conventional, and in another sense a square suggest something block-like, solid, or sturdy. We might take the square, externally considered, as a symbol of spiritless personality. We can then, easily see the square as correspondent with matter. The triangle or trinity principle stands behind the square as spirit, and one often finds the triangle as the symbol of deity or of the higher self.

There are many alternative symbol systems that have some value. In thinking with and about symbols, it is not so important to derive a fixed or rigid system (which would be a uninspired personality thing to do), but it’s important that we think and strive to get at the meaning of things in the most simple and clear terms.

Flowers, Fanatics, and other Distances from Divinity

Some measure of evil, or not Life, is born with incarnation, with the taking of form, with leaving the “father’s home,” with separation from divinity. Illusion, the virtual synonym, comes into being with this separation. And so it is said that everything external is maya, being other than the pure light of source. This formulation has a certain value, but by it alone we cannot find our place between the candle and the star because all manifestations are relative.

A flower is not as remote from divinity as the cruelty of fanatics. Yet both are manifestations other than or apart from absolute Life or divinity. We may say the flower and the cruel man are illusions, and so they are, but they are not equal. So we find that the most abstract concept of good and evil, yielding as it does a simple binary, corresponds poorly to daily life and required decisions. We must, standing somewhere between the candle and the star, bring righteous to decisions.

In love and wisdom there is movement toward life and light. This orientation is the antithesis of evil and the basis of right choice.

Teachings as Catalyst

Teachings are not the truth, but a catalyst to aid in approach to the truth. There are limitations to be found in every verbal formulation and in those who give them. Good teachings have merit as general guidelines and as stimulus to thinking and reflection. Also, even in a great teaching, the specifics and their application to any time and space involve much ambiguity and vagueness. So, in this sense, we are always on our own, in other words a good teaching or teacher stimulates independent thought.

Flowers and other Hyper-space Doorways

“It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world.”   R. W. Emerson

This being so, every encounter is an act of interpretation, an attempt to divine essential meaning. Every thing suggests its higher correspondence. The archetypal shines through everything in all its oceanic majesty. So, to the evolving eye, the entire universe, every person, flower, and event becomes a hyper-space doorway.

And God said: "Relativity, degrees, strata, spectrum, etc."

The words you see here—and the thoughts I hope you see—are an illusion, but also relatively real. Words are real to the extent that some true spirit or knowledge imbues them, and they are also more or less real or unreal according to the consciousness of the reader.

Think of the words “real” and “illusion.” I propose that the world is not illusion on the one-hand and reality on the other. Is this obvious? Yet we often use the word “real” as white and absolute and “illusion” as black and unqualified. Sure, some accommodate some grays in their vocabulary, but usually human emotions are friendlier with the enthusiasm of an absolute and unqualified ego affirming judgment.

Are you with me or against me on this?

Or is the question: “To what degree?”