Four Notions

The horse with no name jumped out of the Eagle Nebula.  “Who am I?” it asked as it pulled forward an invisible carriage whose 30-spoke wheels turn on themselves at the Universe’s cardinal points. The Eagle with dark wings glanced at the horse and wrote a riddle in its trail: “What is, has passed, will be, and is always in the state of becoming?” The horse slid through the  Earth’s clouds hung from the sky dome and came to a halt with no answer. With its keen eyes overlooking from afar the four-dimensional spacetime filled with elements of fire, water, earth, and wind, the Eagle sounded a peal and whispered: “Time.” Through seasons, the horse's hoofs went on printing rings of stars into the wood of trees.

Shapeless Universe means the four-sided reality is embedded in one. Since there is no shape, to begin with, there is no divided entity from the start. Sensitive souls have pondered over their relationship with the Universe since the beginning of time. Ideas are seeds from an antecedent philosophical thought planted into the ground of new lands adapted to their growth. We are seed sowers in the quest for answers, picking up where others left off in a participatory approach to fundamentals and principles through time and space.

There is a double screen of perceptions and conceptions. We may split them apart and observe the projection of their shadows, the interplay between them. In my mind, there is a correspondence between the four time perspectives and the four attributes* of a self, a soul, a being, and an entity — whether actual or enduring. Whitehead writes that the common element of form is simply a complex enduring object. In his mind, ‘enduring’ does not preclude that they enjoy adventures of change through time and space. Enduring entities point to longer cycles and interlocked processes. How every entity processes reality depends on balancing the four time components.

What is a soul anyway? The breath of consciousness. A floating memory expanding freely like gas.  A quantum spark in a magnetic field. Even words have a soul. What I know is that how can a poet not raise the question of the soul? By soul, I mean an ethereal essence that grows and transcends. It is indivisible from cosmic consciousness. We may question the soul’s spiritual journey, whether it precedes the search for a host, and whether the four attributes form a hierarchical chain. Should the soul be prior to being, it may come from an antecedent whereabouts to take part in the foundation of an actual entity. Does the soul find its home where the light touches? And once it finds its niche in the human body, does it lodge in the heart or the mind? Whatever passes in the mind is born out of a feeling. 

The difference lies in the layers of time. Each provides a different perspective. Timelessness is what is always in the state of becoming.  It is the place of the soul. What has passed remains with the self, rigid like a rock, which clings onto past events, stages, and states. What is defines the innocence of action and the freedom of the being. What will be carries in the shadows the quintessential aspect of what it is yet to become. It is what an actual entity — a person or an organism — chases after, planning the next steps behind the scenes to serve the purpose of actualization. Whitehead asserts that even the Universe in any stage of its expansion is the first meaning of ‘organism’. I ask then: In the end, can the universal organism reveal itself by expressing itself and know itself through every bit of experience and still be planning its next steps below the surface?

The four attributes break apart and merge like dark spots on the Sun’s surface. They come together, mix and split. They take on characteristics of awareness, subjectivity, intentionality, and agency. Awareness is the process undertaken by the soul. Subjectivity is what the self cannot escape. Intentionality is what defines the existence of the being. System-wide, Whitehead’s ontological principle refers to the concept of ‘existence.’ It means that any ‘puff of existence’ or ‘drop of experience’ is, by itself, the only reason; to search for a reason, he wrote, is to search for anything that is ‘positively somewhere in actuality, and in potency everywhere.’ Nothingness becomes a nonentity beyond the realms of form and formlessness.

Agency is how an actual entity relates to a group or a society. ‘Society’ is a geometry of social order. It may apply to a group of stars, a category of galaxies, or even a clump of passing clouds. Any togetherness among actual entities underscores ties among living souls and relationships among objects, entities, and individuals. Although there may be a ‘genetic’ relatedness between members, distinct elements become over time impossible to determine. We see the wholeness of a body but are oblivious of its parts, not fully aware of the holobiont-like system within ourselves.

The universal organism is an intricate lacework of geometry and matter. In its ultimate and simplest form, it is shaped by a geometry of ontologically prior entities. Our Sun is a circle; our bodies are vertical lines with feet on the ground and heads in the clouds. We are strings, short and tall, capable of emitting sounds. And within such a geometry is a shapeless Universe laying bare its simplicity.

Reality displays a landscape of boxes in boxes. Within the boundary of each box is a mindscape that only catches a partial view through pierced holes that let sun rays shine in. From a higher vantage point, drops of feeling are everywhere at different degrees of agency, sentience, and consciousness, thus denying insentience.  A modern take on Buddhism would argue that if entities had been insensitive and devoid of seeds, the structured reality at every level, whether physical or spiritual, would not have produced anything. And so if the soul of the Universe — the source of consciousness — is indivisible from every entity, it is all at the same time individualized into every entity, scattered into echoes and mirror souls.

In contact with their environment, entities are malleable. Metaphorically speaking, they curve, flow, or freeze like water. They may be endowed with corporeality, sensations, perceptions, and the volitional act within their consciousness, as do systems and ‘societies’ that are organically constructed from actual entities. Their raison d’être is the outcome they pursue. Sentience is determined by how they relate to their surroundings through prehensions or inner feelings of perceptions by the self. 

The question of sentience brings back to the forefront the fragile figure of the juggler. It, too, evolves into a more random state. It stretches and shrinks, moves away and closer from the collapsing of its parts. It, too, is a geometrical figure that spins on its axis. The more it spins, the more the collapsing circles of concepts become unsteady, distancing from each other at times and deepening the spatiotemporal divide from the one integrated structure. Positively speaking, the primordial integrated structure is the togetherness of Nothingness and the Quantum Universe.

 Like the juggler, the Universe loses its grip on its parts to the benefit of their independence. Something within takes over. Divides and intervals make it harder.  Every bit of experience becomes wrapped up in themselves. But if they are part-to-whole, shouldn’t they intuitively know deep down how the Universe and all its parts feel? It is neither about an outside view nor an inside experience. It is that everything — through the self, the being, the soul, and the entity — is a manifestation of time.

* The term ‘living soul’ on the top of the page to the right comes from a translation by Edward Conze. It was meant to describe the living beings, the mistaken belief in the permanence of life. The emphasis was originally on ‘life,’ not on ‘soul.’ I have revised it to focus on the ‘soul’ and extend its reach to every manifestation of time. Like Conze, I use the word ‘being’ instead of ‘creature’ to emphasize the idea of existence. I also use the general term ‘entity’ instead of ‘person’ or ‘human being’ to widen the philosophical view. 

Randolph Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology

Whitehead, Process and Reality