The ability to distinguish between universals and the absolute, between a relative actuality and an absolute reality, is surely a leap in the development of human consciousness, a consciousness which is confined within an intellectual existence where everything is relative. There are multiple relative actualities but only one absolute reality, which absolute can exist only once within the universe, if it exists at all, and where it can only be an object of faith.
In reality the essential task of every human being is to remain conscious of the absolute categories and practice a selfless compassion, thereby to annul the negative brought about by the expression of the self in existence. Instead of pursuing this task however, the worldly are engaged in a rampage of self-actualization, seeking to outdo each other in a frenzy of greed and pride. In the place of denial of the self, which is merely an image of their true being reflected against the artificial world of the city, they have cast themselves loose in the universe of dust and ashes, fabricating the idea and actualizing the self’s fulfillment of success in the intellectual construct of existence, although real success in life is, not the actualization of the idea of an individual self, but the realization of one’s true being in an eternal and infinite harmony with the absolute.
Suffering, like sin and death, is an expression of the negative in existence and belongs exclusively to the intellectual consciousness of the self, the reflective idea of the soul in existence. In the spiritual reality of absolute being, as in the immediate relationships with absolute being that characterize the actuality of nature, there can be no intellectual suffering, since there is no idea of the self.
The soul of each man and woman may be defined as a single moment of the eternal consciousness of the void, the spiritual void of absolute being which appeared in the first atom of physical matter, a conscious moment, furthermore, that can freely choose to be determined spiritually or materially, as being or as existing, as soul or as self, as a moment of eternity or as a moment of time. When the soul moves to express its self as a moment of time it falls from being into existing, from unity into duality, from absolute into relative, from the infinitude of the spiritual void into the finitude of the material universe. When will it end?
The absolute is nothing, the infinite void, and the void is the only absolute. The void is spirit, immaterial, the source and being of every living entity within the material universe. The only infinite possibility within the universe is the possibility for human consciousness to grasp the infinite void. To be conscious of being nothing is the highest realization of consciousness, the highest achievement of human life.
Existence, the sensually apprehended and intellectually conceived four dimensional space/time continuum, can be defined as a physical universe of relativity while the true vacuum of the absolute void into which this universe is expanding is a spiritually transcendent presence that cannot be sensually apprehended or intellectually known. The human conception of the relative universe of existence is striving to expand into the absolute presence of being, in order to comprehend an ultimate reality in an intellectual, unified theory and become absolute, the finite desiring to become infinite, the temporal to become eternal. This, of course, can never be achieved.
Reality is transcendent to every actuality, as the absolute is transcendent to existence. Reality is spiritual, encompassing the void and the physical universe within the void. The universe is a universe of relativity in which the only presence of the absolute is the presence of the void at the center of each living being. Within the relative actualities there can be no absolutes. These relative actualities are limited by the boundaries of rational thought, and it is precisely faith that introduces the absolute into the actual universe, not as idea but as transcendent reality. Faith instructs us that there is a reality beyond the actuality of intellectual existence. This reality is transcendent and absolute while existence is intellectual and relative.
Existence is not being. Existence, the field of relativity, only exists within the human intellect, discovered when the conscious mind moves from an immediate perception of the world as unity into a reflective cognizance of the world as a duality. Everything within existence is given a name and it is precisely the naming of things that calls them into intellectual existence. Existence is an invention of the objective human intellect that has fallen from a subjective contemplation of a reality that is spiritual and absolute. The soul falls from an immediate subjectivity to the absolute categories of being into a reflective perception of the relative categories of existence, from positive into positive and negative, from good into good and evil and from innocence into innocence and guilt. The reflective intellect fails to distinguish between reality and existence and, rejecting the void which cannot be experienced or thought, denies the reality of the absolute and of spiritual being. G-d does not exist, which is to say that G-d does not inhabit human intellectual existence. Absolute being simply is, eternal, infinite and absolute and to actualize that being we need faith in a transcendent reality. Whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not, we are held captive in a world of duality, of both good and evil, of both positive and negative, of both attraction and repulsion and a world, moreover, where the negative appears to be increasing in power and the good diminishing. To be redeemed from that world each human being needs a moral discipline founded on absolute principles. Science cannot give that discipline, but only faith.
All anxiety is anxiety about nothing, the absolute nothingness of the void, the spiritual presence at the core of every living being. Filling this void with sensual baggage distracts us from its reality and places us within the illusion of relativity, the physical universe of time and space. Anxiety leads to despair, the condition of the soul that has lost its connection with its true being, and despair leads to death, the ultimate expression of the negative in existence.
The void, which is the ground of each human soul, is the same void within which the physical universe is expanding, an infinite, spiritual, emptiness. The soul which is consciously grounded in this emptiness is at one with its own transcendent being, absolute being. On the other hand, the soul which spurns the spiritual void and seeks fulfillment within the universe loses its connection to the eternal and wastes its lifetime filling the void at the center of its being with things of only relative value.
There is no evolutionary benchmark for the development of agriculture. It arrived in human consciousness some other way than through the evolutionary process. According to my thesis, the spread of farming began at the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, conceptually coincidental with an aboriginal catastrophe, the fall of human beings from an immediate apprehension of the absolute reality of being into a reflective conception of the relative actuality of existence. To conceive is to grasp objectively, and the history of modern man is the history of fallen humanity’s projection of an objective conceptual actuality into the reality of nature, which must be apprehended subjectively if humankind is to re-enter reality.
Languages also developed from a common root and a common center. The spread of farming into Europe appears to be coincidental with the spread of the Indo-European language group from Anatolia and Mesopotamia after a great flood, and it is precisely farming with the ability to provide food for large groupings of people that makes possible the growth of the urban centers of civilization which make up the modern world. These huge population centers, which the earth suffers to sustain, may be seen as the fulfillment of the biblical curse placed upon the earth through Adam and the second biblical curse placed upon Cain’s descendants following his killing of his brother Abel which represent a double fall of consciousness from the contemplation of absolute being into a reflective and conceptual actuality of existence. This fall can only be remedied by a opposing double movement of consciousness, acknowledgment of and turning away from the negative self in material existence and a leap of faith back into the reality of the human soul’s spiritual being.
Reality is transcendent to every actuality, as the absolute is transcendent to the relative. Reality is spiritual, encompassing the void and the physical universe within the void. The universe is a universe of relativity in which the only presence of the absolute is the presence of the void at the center of each living being. Within the relative actualities there can be no absolutes. These relative actualities are limited by the boundaries of rational thought, and it is precisely faith that introduces the absolute into the actual universe, not as idea but as transcendent reality. Faith instructs us that there is a reality beyond the actuality of intellectual existence. This reality is transcendent and absolute while existence is intellectual and relative.
" Serious mind, serious life" 