Hello, Cy, OMF II - Part 2

First topic message reminder :

dan wrote:Cy,

I'm not in favor of guns, but I understand that some folks need that extra sense of security.  

Yesterday we were at the national Cathedral doing the flower market for Kashmir-Rose.  Today we are headed to a WCUAVC flight day at a school down here.  


Was looking at the connection between India and Greece back in the day.  In fact there was a Greco-Indian empire, created by Alexander the Great.  The mutual influence



(cont.)

Well guns have their place, but that wasn't the point...the point was that Hillary equates gun possession with violent individuals or groups and I think I quite clearly illustrated the problem with that kind of thinking by saying I've never been responsible for hurting someone.

I'm not a violent person and my record attests to that. Hillary however is responsible for the deaths of two exemplary military members and one Ambassador, all by design. She also responsible for the arrests and loss of career of one General and one Admiral who attempted to send in a rescue party. They would have been successful in the rescue and then the creation of ISIS and the gun running that contributed to it would have been exposed. Nothing like wiping the proof of criminal wrong doing off the map to protect your own arse Hildebeast? Like any of us would forget and forgive her? Hillary apparently doesn't own guns and yet she's been responsible for the ending of at least three lives and two careers. She's five ahead of this gun owner. And that's just what we happen to know about. There's rumors her and her prior hubby were involved in the drug trade of Arkansas and S. America...then there's China and Walmart. I could go on but what's the point. Truth is too old fashioned and justice is also out-dated.

I'm a celt so truth and justice is not a cultural trait in the eyes of the modern umbrella society which refuses to acknowledge those traits as part of the nation's psyche, but rather as a personal neurosis that they'd probably insist a straightjacket and heavy medication be applied to if I were within reach in DC. Truth and justice equals neurosis? What kind of thinking is that?!! But that's the spew emerging from orgs like DHS since its inception. So when it comes to commentary, turn-about-is-fair-play. They and their flunkies make snide comments about us and we return the favor.

>>>on India and Greece...look at the Sanskrit language and old greek. Then compare it to Old Irish. Fascinating? Now look at some of the ideas each culture valued...same again. All three have same root system. Ah but why would anyone care about the legacy of the elder gods? 'er ET and the seeding of civilizations? Virmana are inconveniences...ah! and there once was one in the vicinity of Fermoy Eire of all places! That is if you can take the Christian overlay off the history.

>>> on the subject of the Glyphs:

432 Mystery

432 Mystery: the first lesson - the Abducted Preceptor

Cy and Gary,

Thank you for your contributions.  

Gary,

Yes, maybe we will send people to Mars.  It seems that the main incentive to do so would to form a memorial/remnant there, of the once great civilization on Earth.  I doubt that this will occur, prior to the MoAPS.  


Cy,

It seems that Schorn has based the thesis of his 'Legacy....' on the Book of Dyzan.  No copy of such a book exists.  The few alleged verses were written by Mme Blavatsky, and channelled by Alice Bailey.  This constitututes a rather tenuous foundation for one's belief system.  

Is the foundation of the BPWH any more secure?  That depends.......


One might say that I am channelling the BPWH.  I don't even have a possibly fictional 'Book of Dyzan' for a source.  Much of the BPWH, I have had to make up out of whole cloth.  I can point to no one who explicitly supports the basic premises of the thesis.  Not even after 40 years of work on my part.  Not even my BBQ buddy, Ron, will support it.  

What keeps me motivated?  Very few people find scientific materialism to be plausible.  There exist no treatises supporting mind-brain dualism on a cosmological scale.  That leaves us with immaterialism.  Leibniz' immaterial/monadic thesis was the first attempt at such a thesis.  Mine is the only attempt at a coherent/cosmological immaterialism since Darwin.  

When I think about, I can hardly fail to be surprised by this solitude.  


Here you see me struggling to come up with an immaterialist rationale for the Sun.......

It's easy enough to point out that, if the Sun didn't exist, we'd have to invent it.  The question is, how did we invent it?  How do we invent our dreams?  I suggest that where there's a will, there's a way.  

Is it any easier to explain the existence of Mt Everest?  Is it any easier to explain rain?  In some ways it is easier.  It's quite a bit easier, once you get past the basic barrier of the sharing of the vision.  Once you realize that we probably share the same soul, and the same collective uCs.  

We don't need a Creator, we're the creators of this shared vision we call the world.  No.  What we need is a Coordinator...... no mean feat.  

Well, no, we don't really need a coordinator.  The coordination is implied in the Monadology, the Monism, of it all.  What exactly do we need?  I hesitate to suggest a committee, but I have suggested an olympiad.  I have also suggested pioneers.  


But before we leave the Sun behind in the metaphysical dust, I would like to comment on photons........


1pm-----------

I am skeptical of photons, in the same way I am of atoms.  Atoms are very useful as calculational tokens, I've  likened them to currency, and in the design of many technological devices.  And, of course, we could hardly do biology without reference to atoms.

What I wish to point to, however, is that the status of gravitons remains ambiguous.  Scientists are so used to everything being quantized that they would barely know how to think about gavity, if it's not quantized.  But, in the end, though, we might be forced to use our ontological imaginations, to do a workaround wrt to gravitons.  

Immaterialism would be the mother of all such workarounds (MoAW).  


And, then, what lights our dreams, our consciousness, even?  Is it photons?  Is it the electro-chemical signals at our synapses?  The phenomenolgical aspects of light seem to differ radically from those of scent and sound, until we consider the phenomena of synaesthesia.  Then the ambiguities of the senses stare us in the face.  

Ultimately, all phenomena end in felt meaning.  All felt meanings have love as their synaesthesia.  There is a will to meaning, and that is it.  Everything is intentional, especially the Sun.  Holism rules all.  This is how I explain the Sun and the ocean, after all.  

Love is the coherence that we feel with each other and with Creation.  It defines our path back to the Monad, where the Monad takes on all the aspects of our personal Savior.  Being a personalist, maybe I can get away with this.  

Perhaps, foremost, I should say say that love is the coherence that we can feel within ourselves.  Everyone feels coherence within their current system of understanding..... with their present worldview and view of themselves.  It would take a considerable leap of faith, an existential crisis, to consider any other.  It would, at first, seem like an alien PoV.  


I should not feel compelled to give an idealist account that will compete with solar physics or photosynthesis.  Science has developed a coherent set of prescriptions for dealing with the subsidiary phenomena that emerge within the technological/instrumental matrix that it has created for itself.  Should we be surprised that these subsidiary explanations are able to retrodict the original phenomena?  But then we do seem mystified that these same phenomena do seem so 'finely tuned' to our own existence.  What a coincidence.  

KIM, that I have always believed and stated that science and technology were an essential part of Creation, and, indeed, an essential part of our plan of salvation. I have not explained, though, how such a denoument was made possible or even envisioned, in the first place. I admit that this is not a small oversight on my part.

Hindsight is much clearer than foresight. I do speak somewhat glibly of teleology, but, still, the idea of techne had to have a logical origin.

I have spoken particularly of our modern communications as the logical precursor to the noosphere of the cosmic mind.


(cont.)

No...... I'm thinking that our inustrial and technological revolutions are not such a stretch that they could not be conceived as having emerged from the monadic potentia......

You have artifical fire, cooking, carbonacious deposits, vehicles,  electrical conduction (as in biology) and a wired planet (as precusor to the noosphere).  Teilhard understood the latter development, back in the Fifties.  

As to the details of U^235, semiconductors and neutrino shockwaves, well, we have the basic premise of the anthropic principle.  And what is that basic premise......?

The basic premise is that love, with its many splendors, is the only robust antidote to the possibility of nothingness.  Or, where there's a will, there's a way.  

But how can this small world be maximizing love?  That is where personalism comes in.  Love and persons are like water and fish.  They are complementary.  The person abhors the apeiron and the abyss.  

But, then, why a world, at all?  Why Creation?  Why......?  Here's why.......

It, again goes back to the person.  Persons are essentially social.  Biological reproduction of persons is one way to ensure a proper social context.  Anyone have a better way?  And then we have the breakdown of the nuclear family.  What will the family be in the Endtimes?  

But let us not pass over the essential microcosm of Creation with the family as the essence of that personal microcosm, however that family might be defined.  How we handle our families and fertility in the Endtimes will be a crucial test, of course.  I think we can already see the outlines of the many ways of expanding the notion of family.  The strictly nuclear family seems peculiar to a certain period of developmentally induced demographic transition.  Of course, there never was that strictness.  


10:40-----------

I think, in the last few days, that we have achieved a rather concise summary of the basic philosophy behind the BPWH.  Can I now summarize the summary?  First I'll have to do a review......

I've spoken of energy, love, persons and anthropics.  I've spoken of the monad and polyads.  I've spoken of the logos-spermatikos and the christ.  I've spoken of atoms, gravitons and photons (in the 'light' of dreams).  I've spoken of the Sun, in the context of cosmic energy

I've spoken of the cosmic eucharist/communion on various levels.  I've spoken of the need to transcend materialism, personally and historically.  Of the aesthetics of wilderness and the person.  

Of symmetry breaking and Creation.  Why am I not just a neoplatonist?  Let's see............

Was Liebniz a neoplatonist?  I'm watching this summary of neoplatonism........

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QvWGXXTk5UE

Now the question is to what degree Plato, Plotinus and Liebniz were personalists.  What I'm seeing is an historical progession toward personalism, under the influence of xtianity.  What Islam mainly lacks is its failure to conform to that progression toward a non-secular humanism.  OTOH, humanism failed to grasp the ontology of the person.  Between these two failures, we may get to see some light.  


1pm----------

We have this from the SEP......

....personalist thought had developed throughout the nineteenth century as a reaction to perceived depersonalizing elements in Enlightenment rationalism, pantheism, Hegelian absolute idealism, individualism as well as collectivism in politics, and materialist, psychological, and evolutionary determinism.

This is a good summary of what personalism is not.  Plotinus, I think, evinced too much of Hegel's absolutism.  Neoplatonism is in desperate need of a humanizing relationalism.  

My relational, personal theism is a strong reaction against the impersonal absolutism of deism.  No, I am at pains to not project superhumanism upon God.  Mankind is created in the image of God. Mankind has all the potentiality of God.  There need be no intercessors.  The Son is the Father, in that sense.

That Jesus could 100% human and divine, is the scandal that Islam just couldn't get over, not with their absolutism.  

Yes, I'm still struggling with my ontogenetic polyadism.  Trinitarianism suffers on the side of absolute deism.  It is important to expand on that concept, so that we have a continuity between Creator and co-Creators.  I'm not yet convinced that Jesus will suffice, unto the day.  But I'll be darned if I can perceive a logical intermediate community.  In the meantime, I'm stuck with my Olympiad and their Pokotok Parc.  

We don't need superhumans, we only need the logical precursors to our divine fleshiness.  Were there ever shape-shifting pioneers, in our stead?  Or does the J-man suffice?  I find no compelling mythos to the contrary.  There may have been precursors, but I don't see the need for a special class of them.  


3pm---------

Obviously, though, I owe a great debt to Plotinus and his Enneads.  

I'm presently reviewing RB Harris' Significance of Neoplatonism' (1976).  


5:30---------

I follow the SEP exposition of Plotinus......

Plotinus' monad is the One. It is also the Good, of Plato. Xtians would refer to it as love. That is the same for all. The first emanation of the One is Intellect. I say that love implies sapience. The emanation of the Intellect, we xtians see as the three persons of Trinity. Intellect does not exist in grand isolation. It emerges from a community of persons.

For Plotinus the person is closely identified with it's soul. Every animate thing consists of soul and body. The Platonic Forms are contained in the cosmic intellect.

There is an apoctastasis for Plotinus. Not true for the Western versions of xtianity. But this is only for the individual. Not for the community.

What appears, though, finally, is basically just gnosticism, with which neoplatonism is closely allied. It is non-communal, and thereby impersonal. Personalism is to be strongly distinguished, as noted above, from individualism, tribalism and collectivism. Only xtianity seems to get this.



(cont.)

Merry Christmas to everyone...........

I say that with advisement.  Skai may be the only mainstream Christian on board, here.  There being only two other menbers who frequent the 'hello, Cy' section.  

I know I'm not mainstream.  The question is whether any orthodox xtians would not anathematise me.  Yet, I believe that we will all come to understand that Jesus played the crucial role in history.  If there had to be a singular incarnation, his would be an order of magnitude more important, historically, than any other possible contenders.  

Actually, the Buddha is the nearest possible contender, but, as most Buddhists would readily admit, he is self-described as being ahistorical.  

Next on the list would be Mohammed.  But Islamists would consider it the height of blasphemy to suppose that he was event 1% divine.  

My greatest blasphemy is to say that we are all 100% divine.  How does Jesus manage to stand out, then.  It's all in the history books.  Jesus stands out as a person.  Could there be any agreement on who might be a contender?  I don't think so.  

So much for Merry Christmas.......


But, speaking of Skai, he did manage to keep my cabin occupied on this latest cruise.  I'm pretty sure that they'll be back this week.  I can almost breathe a sigh of relief.  At one point, in the build up to the cruise, I was nearly convinced that there would be an untoward incident, back on land, while they were at sea, such that it would have been nearly preemptive of next September's alleged surprise.  If there is nothing, it would go a long way toward undermining any prognostications, at all.  


Back to the BPWH..........

I've been doing some more homework.........

Is it possible that we could have a MoAPS w/o a MoAPS?  

Let's consider........

Materialism is, 'officially', deader than a doornail.  All academic references to 'materialism' have been replaced with 'physicalism'.  Hey, this has been true for several decades.

Belatedly, though, what do I do?  Early this morning I get around to googling 'physicalism'.  'Twas an eye openner.......

Wait, let's take this a step at a time........

Logically prior, I should have checked materialism.  I did, later.....

What's interesting to see are the many ways that the word 'materailism' has been coopted by the social sciences.........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism#See_also

Anyway, back to 'physicalism'......  The wiki entry is brief, and ony has one external link..... to the SEP entry, which is lengthy.  I think it fair to say that, in general, physicalism, as a philosophy, is being damned with faint praise.  It turns out that there can be many kinds of physicalism, and not one of them escapes a very serious critique.  

The first thing to not is that the author of this article's acknowledgements go mainly to David Chalmers, who is notoriously anti-physicalist.  The implicit politics of Wiki > SEP > Chalmers is profound, if you stop to think about it.  

But, then, get this......

.... if pains don't cause pain behavior how can it be that your telling me that you are in pain gives me any reason for supposing you are? It might seem that epiphenomenalists are in trouble here, but as a number of recent philosophers have argued, the issues here are very far from being settled (Chalmers 1996, Hyslop 1999).

This comes as a summing of the entire article on physicalism.  Is physicalism dead in the water, or am I seeing things?  Is this finally the MoAPS, summed up in one sentence?  '.... if pains don't cause.....'  That's all she wrote!  

It's over folks, but for the shouting......  Where is the shouting?  When will it be?  


4:40----------

Physicalism may be dead philosophically, but the philosophers are confronting the the physicists about this.  They can provide no cogent alternative.  

Meanwhile, Jack Sarfatti continues to defend Bohmian version of physicalism.  Bohm's version of QM has the added feature that it appears to be dualistic.  The wave function is divided a particle into a potential.  Jack, rather arbitraily, refers to the quantum potential as the mental aspect of the wave function.  

He then goes on to mix the languages of physicalism and dualism, and that way he can present a moving target to his critics.  

He next claims that consciousness can only emerge in self-organizing systems, but it turns out that he will allow quantum computers to be classified as self-organzing. Yes, he is advocating the strong version of artificial intelligence.


(cont.)

I'm debating whether or not to take on Jack Sarfatti.  I'm leaning against the idea.  This opinion comes from past experience, and from considering the prospects.  

Jack will not conform to any rules of logic, especially nothing that smacks of philosophical logic/reason.  His conformity, where it exists, is to mathematics.  Once the discussion goes beyond formal mathematics, he recognizes no further rules of reason.  Rules of grammar and syntax?  Not often.  He will take a cheap shot where he can.  Also, importantly, he will vacilate between extreme optimism and pessimism regarding the human physical future.  Spiritual matters are not on his radar screen.  

Jack is unique, though, in his ability to bridge the political gap between the scientific and paranormal fields. If I were to approach him, that would be the angle that I would use. That might suffice to get a conversation started.



(cont.)

Jack's view is Bohm's quantum potential is the "ghost in the machine" but he refuses to throw away the machine itself, as then he'd be out of his job as a quantum "mechanic." ;-) (Many Worlds Interpretation mechanics throw away the material machine in favor of one multiverse containing "many worlds.") Jack does suggest that the spirit (quantum potential) and the material body (beable) conspire together to form self-awareness when they "talk" to each other (self-organize).

These days, I prefer looking at our human world from the multiverse point of view, since it has maximum explanatory power (it explains why everything is as it is, including answering why God allows evil in the world -- since evil must exist in MWI, it has to be somewhere). Dan seeks to hide under the cover of a single world with his SWH (single world hypothesis), whereas I prefer a single Best Possible World anthropic selection effect taken from a set of many possible worlds.

Yes, Gary, you do seem rather stuck upon the MWI.  I really don't get the attraction of the MWI.  It is very speculative, so why speculate on a seeming negative.  

It is negative, is it not?  

It might make more sense for me to debate with you, as a probably more reasonable debate partner.  In any case, if I can't get you to see reason, it is very unlikely that I would get Jack to see.  Jack has cultivated a particular posture vis-a-vis science and the paranormal.  It is not based on reason, it is based on politics.  

What is not clear is the time question.  Perhaps over the holiday, you might have extra time, Gary.  It would facilitate the discussion if you would make yourself available on the phone.  What's with you and phones?  

Hope springs eternal.  

Yes, you may be right, in that the MWI has maximum explaining power, but, as they say, that which can explain everything, explains nothing.  

Most people use God to explain everything.  The MWI is the atheists' version of God, I believe.  But would God be impossible in the MWI?  

BTW, SWH is the _small_ world hypothesis.  But, technically, you're right.  It should be the SSWH, single small world hypothesis.  


I guess that Gary will not come out to play/reason with me.  Again, hope springs eternal.  

BTW, for all you Ron fans out there, Sam called and wondered where Ron was.  I have no idea.  He could still be at sea, or back in town.  IOW, Ron is MIA.  Also missing is the December surprise.  Well, is was intimated that it would happen while the party was still at sea.  

One possibly unusual item was that the cruise line called me, a couple of days after the departure, and invited me to join late.  I guess they figured, though, that I was a potential customer for spending more on the many extras that one is faced with on cruises.  On an earlier cruise that I stayed away from, I tried to see about joining late, and there were all kinds of alleged barriers against doing so.

Sam had been setting up to do a ship-to-shore skype conference.  But the day they left, the Princess said that they would, at least in my absence, be maintaining a strict radio silence.  

As it stands, I wonder if this alleged December surprise might turn out to be the end of the R&D show.  It is possible.  With this year-long run up, involving vectors, surprises, central commands, and conferences at sea, 'someone not returning'......... I have to wonder......

I think that most folks have forgotten or never even knew the basic premise behind the 'R&D show'. I even have to remind myself......

The idea was that in a nuclear world, post trinity-flats (TF), we had entered into a new phase of history, and a new phase of our cosmic relations. To put it another way, we were, perhaps, entering into an Endtimes scenario. This, at least, was the context to which I believed I should be open wrt the R&D show. After all, Ron was the most visible legacy to all the conspiracy theories that surrounded our alleged 'visitations', post TF. How easily we forget history.

Yes, I am also Kashmir's gogo, and Ron's bbq-buddy. Well, we were foxhole-buddies wrt the alleged, by me, Endtimes. I'm aware that this allegation could use some explication......


Well, Ron may be mia/awol, but I'm OTL w/ Sam.........



(cont.)

Endtimes.........

In my second phone conversation with Ron, in Sept '91, he told me that he was going to Los Alamos to talk to the 'visitors'.  I was on the Compuserve UFO bulletin board at the time.  I had been led to that forum by a series of experiences I had that Spring.  I responded on the forum saying that when Ron, at the CIA, talked to the visitors, they would tell him to talk to the spirit of truth, and I would tell him about the Eschaton.  

It was this January that he first mentioned the '32 vectors' that were 'aligning' on Sept 2016, as the date when the prognostications were breaking down.  And then, in connection with the cruise, they would be fortunate to be at sea, to avoid a December surprise, but one would not return, stated the caption under my picture.  It is possible that my sea based adventure in SF, over Halloween, may have preempted or precluded what was to happen in December.  We shall see.  

The only thing I'm predicting, in the near-term, is the MoAPS, the mother of all paradigm shifts, as we transition from scientific materialism to immaterialism, entailing the small world hypothesis (SWH/BPWH). This revelation/apocalypse is what would usher in the anticipacted Millennial kingdom on Earth.  


Most believers in the prophetic tradition expect that the 'Apocalypse' will be a physical catastrophe in the form of an Armageddon/Tribulation/Rapture.  That scenario would, IMO, easily invalidate the BPWH.  But didn't God promise the A/T/R?  

That 'promise' was made mainly from of a vision recorded in the Book of Revelation, some two thousand years ago.  This promise of a final resolution to our many wars and tribulations since then has been a great comfort to the faithful, helping them through the hard times.  History was not going to be just one darn thing after another.  A greater purpose would be revealed, all in due course.  

If we truly understood that we are all returning the the same Source, as soon as we straighten things out, down here, it is very likely that we'd be a lot less contentious.  We would all be guranteed our place in the sun.  

But was it worth the wait? Most of the world's history has been crammed into the last few centuries. For most of the world, 'modernization' has been crammed into the last few decades. Who'd a thunk, back when, that we'd be capable, of all that, seemingly on our own. It will be a hard act to follow.


(cont.)

Steven Weinberg - How Many Universes Exist?

https://youtu.be/RPeXddjctaU

Max Tegmark - How Many Universes Exist?

https://youtu.be/cixKru4RnFc

Martin Rees - How Many Universes Exist?

https://youtu.be/47YBtGC1Omg

Leonard Susskind - How Many Universes Exist?

https://youtu.be/AuWDzQ-tiZ8

Andrei Linde - How Many Universes Exist?

https://youtu.be/1Oq5eA0n0L0

Closer To Truth

https://www.youtube.com/user/CloserToTruth1/videos

Don't fear the infinite ...

https://youtu.be/Zem99tYi1l0

Why is the Quantum so Strange?

https://youtu.be/MckuBQC6gKU

Gary,

I abhor the quantitative infinite as being something absolutely impersonal.  I embrace the qualitive infinite as being within the perview of the cosmic attractor, which is love.  Hate is parasitic upon love.  Hate does not confer life.  

The quantitative infinite, the absolute object, the impersonal, the abyss....... these are things we cannot wrap our heads around, we cannot embrace.  

But you, Gary, and others, do keep trying.  You attempt to embrace your fears.  I guess that is an admirable desire, senselss though it may be.  It is a bogey-man that you conjure out of your imaginations.  

Well, our telescopes, and other instruments, show us a large universe that appears to absolutely dwarf our existence.  But I don't quite buy it.  Fossils seem show us a depth of time that is comparable.  


Would it not be a perverse intelligence that would deceive us so, were it not true?  

Well, truth does not come easy.  It comes at a price.  Yes, this world could have been made much easier to fathom.  We could have whiled away our days at the shallow end of the pool.  In that sense, Gary is right to embrace the abyss.  How better would we have learned to swim?  Swim.....?  

Truth had to be the pearl of great price.  We had to have looked for love in all the wrong places.  

The truth and love are both within.  We had to look everywhere else, first.  Along the way, we discovered great beauty and riches.  And great suffering.  That is our true abyss.  


1pm---------

This world would not have been the best possible, if God had left his fingerprints upon it.  They would have just been ours, in the end.  

What we see outside of us is a projection of the depth within.  It is in that external, quantitative depth that we find the reflection of the cosmic attractor that is hidden within. Thus are we able to see ourselves, as if for the first time.   
----------------


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/25/opinion/the-christmas-revolution.html

This op-ed piece points out that our notions of human rights do have a Source.  Is it possible that these notions could have developed spontaneously?  We suppose that these rights can now be sustained on their own.  Are these rights just a matter of individual opinion?  They have no guarantee?  Too bad.  I'm willing to suppose otherwise.  Is it time to find out?  




(cont.)

Greetings, Dan

I have been away for sometime. The forum looks as barren as I left it. It seems like we have a lot of catching up to do.  Where does one place the cornerstone before the bridge to nowhere?  

It really happened, and it was recorded.  

I have been struggling with infrequent headaches for 2 years now. They range in severity depending on the mood or what I am viewing. There seems to be some undiscovered country you and your friends in government need to start investigating.  I may have been the first to discover it, actually.

Lately, I have been attempting to reduce my online activities, moods depending.  I do not know how much time I can spend here because Up will not leave my house.  I have accumulated some material no one has ever seen, but I am looking for rational guidance on how to present it.

Look up, Ultra-terrestrial.

Most of it should be probably be classified.

Hi, Bard,

Things remain quiet around here.  Not a creature is stirring, it seems.

But visitations do happen, evidently.  There must be a reason for them.  I don't suppose that it is a more 'advanced' civilization, rather it is contingent of beings who are less incarnate than are we.  They would be intermediaries between us and the cosmic intelligence.  

Well, that's not quite accurate.  There are no intermediaries, strictly speaking.  They would simply be other manifestations of that Presence.  There is not even a need to monitor us.  We are already one with God.  It is our interactions with, and reactions to, other types of being that are being monitored.  

But they are only 'authorised' to interact with (small groups of)  individuals, such as with you and you family.  This could fall within purview of what used to be called the 'prime directive'.  I would simply point out the the God of revelation is also, necessarily, the God of concealment.  You have been chosen to be on the other side of the veil of concealment, for some reason.  Some people have to be there to maintain a minimal contact for the rest of us.  It keeps that channel of communication open for future reference.  It is a sort of a placemark, if you will.  It is a calling card.  

Understand that, with the BPWH/SWH/CTC, the conception of God is not the orthodox one.  In the first instance, Creator and creatures are one.  Our separateness is a useful illusion.  Creation is an essential aspect of the cosmic Monad.  

Importantly, I do not subscribe to any sort of hierarchy beyond the absolute minimal one.....  non-sentient, sentient, sapient and the Monad or cosmic Self.  

The visitors are UT's or discarnate or shape-shifting sapients.  IOW, they are angels and 'demons'.  These creatures have less freewill than do we.  They are special purpose agents of the cosmic mind.

Do you agree with any of this, Bard?  

This visitation does put you contactees in a awkward place, relative to the rest of us.  You are likely to be damned if you do and damned if you don't communicate your experiences.  I guess that the internet has gone some way toward alleviating that general sense of alienation, at least for some of you.  

I should say also that there can be no general acknowledgement of the visitation phenomenon, short of Revelation.  IOW, the visitation phenomenon, and the general disclosure thereof, is integral to the entire Salvation 'economy'.  Please keep that in mind.  
----------


11:40-----------

What occurred to me, last night, was that the anthropic principle (AP) was getting short shrift within the BPWH.  The AP and the mind-body problem (MBP) were the two main instigators in forcing me to accept immaterialism.  After that initial impetus, I have mostly dropped them from the discussion.  

Perhaps that is a misake.  The AP, if used more robustly, could significantly reduce the residual problems I have with the more general phenomenological problem of deal with atoms, stars, fossils, etc.  


Later...... I'm OTL........


2pm-----------

Back to a hopefully more robust AP.  Call it the RAP, and distinguish it from the strong AP (SAP).  

The AP deals only with the constants of physics and the initial conditions of cosmology.  I would like to invoke the RAP for atoms, stars and fossils.  Is that fair or legitimate?  

It might seem that immaterialism ought to do away with the AP, altogether.  Yes, that is true, to a point.  The AP only refers to the laws of physics.  

But......... when it comes to Creation, we still have need for an arena.  


We have referred to an aboriginal pokatok-style arena.  What was the Monad before the arena....?

There was the trinity and the olympiad, at least.  The Monad is an arena of sorts.  It's hard to fathom what the aborginal rules would have been.  I'm not sure that the question even makes sense.  Creation is eternal.  The monad was logically prior to the triad, but that priority has nothing to do with time or history.  


I have not even addressed the possibility that there could have been two monads.  Well, the monad entails potentiality.  Potentiality must reside somwhere.  What is potentiality if it is not exhaustive?  Can there be separate potentialities?  

The multiverse is a common concept among cosmologists.  How would that concept differ from multiple monads?  Does the concept of a monad make any more or less sense than that of the multiverse?  Each makes sense in its proper context of materialism or immaterialism, respectively.  

One must confront the question of whether existence can preceed essence.  Which is logically prior?  To be is to be perceived, but how can something be perceived without an idea of it.  What is an idea without some sort of essence?  Without a felt meaning?  Can we perceive that which is meaningless?  

Does an unobservable universe make any sense?  It all depends on your PoV.  Our universe might have been unobservable, on the materialist view.  None of these basic questions can be answered objectively.  They require a prior commitment.  

How would multiple monads be perceived w/o omniscience?

We can conceive of a collective uCs. What is to separate multiple CuCs's? We do seem to have quite separate minds.



(cont.)

We have the problem of separate minds and separate monads........

Is monism impossible?  Is monotheism impossible?  Is the multiverse the only logical possibility?  This is definitely putting the shoe on the other foot.  

Is monism impossible to conceive?  Well, it can never be disproven.  The PII would also come into play.  How could monism be proven?  

When speaking of the multiverse, there is the presumption of a common manifold.  It is far from clear of what that manifold might consist.  

The multiverse usually invokes the concept of eternal inflation......
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/29559/the-multiverse-of-eternal-inflation

The concept of eternal inflation provides only one of many ways of conceiving of multiverses.  The ultimate 'space' of these 'universes' is likely to be conceptual, mathematical or logical.  

How does monism fare in this cosmological (Meinongian) jungle?  Philosophers compete with cosmologists in this field of 'multiversity' or possible worlds.  W/o a postulated cosmic intelligence, there is no way to clear the jungle.  Should we not expect there will be those who wish to preserve the 'jungle' against any limiting schemes, such as monism and the BPWH?  

Postmodernism definitely favors pluralism.  It's all the rage.

But how can there be pluralism w/o a common conceptual space?  

IOW, we want our pluralism to be observable.  What good is unobservable pluralism?  

Physicalism, and materialism before it, used to be considered a monism.  No longer.  It has now opened the floodgates to the most extreme pluralism.  Might this extremism serve as a 'reductio ad absurdum' of objectivism?  

As opposed to the plethora of physical and mathematical spaces, how many mind spaces do we have?  As many spaces as there are minds?

How many minds are there?  Monism makes sense only in an idealist context.  How many ideas are there?  How many qualities are there?  Does everyone have their private qualities?  Is your red incommensurable with my red?  Or what about pain?  

The general ease and ubiquity of communication suggests a common database, and given that one truly desires to communicate.  

Are there any ideas in a foreign culture that truly cannot be communicated?  Even if there is not a word match, we can just go ahead and adopt the foreign word, as we often do.  


2pm--------

Empathy is likely to transcend cultures, as well.    

The self is what unifies individual minds, internally.  Until materialism gained a foothold, survival of the self was a nearly universal notion.  

Until the rise of monotheism, pantheism was the natural complement to polytheism.  Spirit was ubiquitous.  Everything participated in spirit.  It seems that spirit served the function of space, before we even had a notion of (empty) space.  And then there was substance, before we had a concept of inert matter.  

Even the concept of an individual mind or soul was not aboriginal. Julian Jaynes speaks of the origin of ego consciouness, in the second millennium BC, in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Before that time, we had tribal and clan mind. There likely was a sense of communality that we can barely imagine today. The individual soul was only place holder at the time of death. It was your 'seat' at the tribal feast, so to speak.




(cont.)

Is this the end time?

http://closertotruth.com/series/the-end-time

A new heaven and a new earth, new body in new form of matter

http://closertotruth.com/series/new-heaven-new-earth

Thanks, Gary.  

I have watched a number of these, Closer to Truth, episodes, and I also recommend them to our readers.

I am waiting 'til Friday to celebrate the lack of a December surprise.  I've not heard from the royal family since they left on the cruise to nowhere.  Maybe they were raptured.  

In the meantime, I don't think it's too early to say happy New Year to you and everyone else.  
-------------


Now, let's get back to work..........

We were discussing the possible plurality of the Monad.  

The various monads might be embedded in a space that is impenetrable.  This space would constitute an ultimately impenetrable substance.  I'm not sure that such a substance has even been conceived.  

But still there would be commonalities between these Monads that would tend to relate them.  They would all have to share the same notions of nothingness and simplicity.  Last night I reviewed Craig's book by that title.  I regret to say that Craig Dilworth is, very likely, no longer with us.  He was very sick with cancer, the last I heard from Sam, several months ago.  I see no notice of his passing, however.  

Plotinus described his primordial One as being ultimately Simple.  One could employ the PII to identify that essential aspect of every Monad.  Craig did object to the PII on other grounds.  But the PII would still constitute a strong argument for the singular uniqueness of the cosmic Monad.  That's the best argument I have for now.  Nothing can divide pure simplicity.  We can suppose it to be the ground of all being.  

Otherwise, the ground of being would likely be the abyss of sentential chaos.  I wonder how these two concepts might relate.  Is one the opposite of the other?  There would have to be a background to this primordial chaos.  The synthesis of it would be a simple white noise.... an experiential rainbow of simplicity as refracted through the prism of cosmic consciousness or maybe the unconscious.  

Craig does point out that simples may be viewed as complex, depending on the perspective.  

This cosmic simple might be compared with the notion of a cosmic self or person.  Craig does point to the self as an example of a simple.  Each of our selves might then be viewed as a chip of cosmic simplicity.  But Craig was mainly a Buddhist.  He did not address cosmology.  Buddhists don't.  I guess it is seen as too disputatious.  It cuts to the core of religion and the prophetic tradition.  One is also reluctant to confront scientific cosmology.  


11:45----------

Is the simple, then, logically prior to all else?  Perhaps.  It's not clear what the alternative would be.  

There does have to be a subject to acknowledge the simple.  It takes a subject to objectify the object.  Can the simple exist to a mere sentient?  I'm doubtful.  It requires sapience to appreciate simplicity.  Perhaps, though, we might critique simplicity as a mere abstraction.  It cannot be directly observed.  

OTOH, I would include love and logos among the simples.  Also truth, beauty and the Good.  The trinity is three persons in one substance.  What could that substance be, other than the simple?  


Got to run........
-------------

The self, mind, consciouness and the uCs may be viewed as simples.

The self is also a prism through which the mind is dispersed into the many.





(cont.)

Dan, perhaps it is time to revisit Carlos Castaneda's non-standard explanation of tonal and nagual?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagual

As I recall, in this non-standard explanation, knowledge, order and discipline (including the scientific method) reside in the tonal whereas the formless, timeless eternity "out there" resides in the nagual. Items possible to map to each other may only reside in the tonal, whereas the power of the unknown unknowns beyond this mapping reside in the nagual. The power of the unknowable may be experienced but never translated into a form mappable within the tonal; rather, to survive the encounter with the nagual, the tonal needs to be ordered correctly.

It is possible your BPW attempt to rearrange the explanation of the tonal is being confused with the power of the nagual, which in principle cannot be mapped, by definition. The power of the unknown unknowns is experienced by personal will, not by reason, in this non-standard explanation.

[Added note: Encounter with the unknown unknowns has a dramatic effect on the ordering of the tonal, thus the need for proper ordering of the tonal prior to the encounter. Alien abduction 'dreams' are possibly a reordering of the tonal in response to brief encounters of the nagual, in this modified explanation.]

But I digress ...


I am waiting 'til Friday to celebrate the lack of a December surprise.  I've not heard from the royal family since they left on the cruise to nowhere.  Maybe they were raptured.  

In the meantime, I don't think it's too early to say happy New Year to you and everyone else.

The clock is ticking ...

Happy New Year!

The notion of an aether is being revived in physics.  The physical vacuum is the holder of the mathematical laws that govern the individual particles, as well as the background of virtual particles and quantum entanglements.  There are also the background symmetries, waiting to be broken.  

The anthropic principle is often viewed as a matter of the 'fine tuning' of the all pervasive aether.  Our physical infrastructure is the instrument to be so tuned.  But what of the instrument itself?  Who ordered that?  That infrastructure is simply assigned back to the big-bang.  The big-bang hardly fits the mold of immaterialism.  The fine-tuning, on the immaterialist model, includes all the traces of the big-bang, our physical boundary conditions, as a necessary background.  The Earth and Moon may then be viewed as an extension of the (strong/immaterial) anthropic principle.  
--------------


Gary,

Yes, I'm thinking that the December surprise is a no-show.  So, yes, happy New Year.  


I like your (and Castenada's) description of tonal and nagual.  These descriptions also conform to Kant's understanding of the phenomenal and noumenal aspects of the world.  In the mesoamerican understanding, though, both designations deal with spirits, referring to their daytime and nighttime aspects, respectively.  


My understanding of this fundamental divide lies somewhere between the Castenadian/Kantian version and the indigenous version.  My, BPWH, version has been strongly informed by the personalism that arises from Christianity.  

IOW, in your, Castenadian/Kantian, version, the nagual/noumenon is the epitmome of the impersonal. I disagree. I suppose that the world is predominantly personal in its construct. Thank you, though, for this additional insight into your thinking.


Got to run........



(cont.)

I have placed the BPWH somewhere between theism and pantheism.  I have often borrowed the descriptor of panentheism.  But panentheism does not adequately capture the personalism that I have been touting for several years.  

Another way to approach personalism might be through the aboriginal system of animism...... ".... is the belief that every non-human entity possesses a spritual essence, including plants and inanimate objects."  Totemism might be another path.  Plato's notion of forms comes to mind.  

In animism, totemism and the theory of forms, spiritual essences abound, generally in association with species of plants and animals.  Types of natural phenomena and particular natural objects are seen as embued with spirit.  In these systems, our souls may be seen as somehow derivative of those various spirits.  With personalism, however, I'm inclined to turn the emanation around.  

The Sun could be viewed as a spiritual entity, in its own right, but, ultimately, it is persons who confer the essential identity/being onto the other entities.  The forms reside not in heaven, but in us.  Yes, one could also say that there is that of the Creator in all of us.  

In this emanation process, it would be crucial that there be personal intermediaries.  The Sun god, or the species essence, would, at one point, have been conveyed by a proto-persona, as in pantomime.  

I'm suggesting that the primordial olympians did not form design committees.  The creation process was rather more personal.  Shape-shifting olympian persons would take on the various roles.  Ultimately nature would be disenchanted, depersonalized.  I should emphasize that this process would, in no way, be historical.  Traces of this logical process, however, are seen in the historical dimension of the mythologies.  

Well, this is my just-so story of today.  Tomorrow..... we'll see..... This is how I'm choosing to pesonalize pantheism.  I turn pantheism into polytheism.  I can then turn polytheism into trinitarianism.  


Alchemy and astrology speak to the animistic connections we have to these natural phenomena.

Humans are mircrocosms in a way that no merely sentient creature can even approach. The depth without merely reflects the depth within.

Ok, we have an immaterial personalism supported by some sort of reverse animism/totemism..... shape-shifting persons give substance to other kinds of beings.  Persons give rise to the Platonic forms.  

We have a kind of neoplatonism wherein the Parmedian One is composed some sort of minimal olympiad, which may also pose as a zodiad.  This olympiad may shift to a cosmic self or trinity on occasion.

Logically arising from this primordial olympiad is the maximal Creation or BPW, best possible world.  That's us.  

It is understood that there can be, should be, only one olympiad and best possible Creation.  The idea of a multiverse makes sense only with materialism, which thereby reduces materialism to an absurd tedmark/meinong jungle.

One way to understand the singularity of existence is to understand the sapient self (person) as necessarily microcosmic.  This implies minimal plethora of understandings that all such beings are basically human, whether they be mortal or immortal.  We are all immortal, but are capable of taking on a mortal form.  

Love is singular.  It is the cosmic attractor.  Escaping its orbit is a singular feat.  

Matter, per-se, is generated in the 'centrifuge' of the CTC.  

Besides persons, there is an aether.  This might also be the cosmic logos/mind/self.  Is it a person?  Perhaps there are only three layers of persons..... the One, the primordial olympiad and us creatures, setting aside the discarnates and angels.  But I wish to have another category of existence like the logos, from which we might derive ordinary matter.


Then there is space and time.  How are they coordinated?  Ordinary matter makes little sense outside of some manifold.  Of course, there is the mathematical manifold of physics.  Perhaps the logos should be split between the personal and impersonal.  Can there be an impersonal sense of time?  Space might be the only part of the logos that would be impersonal, but I wouldn't be too sure about even that.  

It is claimed of Hegel that he was an impersonalist.  Impersonal idealism seem tantamount to oxymoronicity.  

Ok.... His impersonalism is equated with his pantheism.  

Well, impersonal pantheism is roundly criticised as atheism for nature lovers.  Other pantheists see it as an attempt give atheism a more acceptable guise.  

No, I don't think that even Hegel's absolute/monistic idealism succeeds in being impersonal.  It is questionable that even Marx succeeded in making his dialectical materialism impersonal.  I doubt that Marx would have supposed that humankind was not an inevitable part of his ontology.  


Even atheists generally support free will.  That may be the single most important aspect of personalism.  It is difficult ascertain to any center of support for impersonalism.  We may be lost in space and time, but still we are persons.  It is hard to argue, point blank, that there could be no teleological component.  

The major prophetic traditions simply do not engage in philosophy.

I'm looking for some way to introduce impersonalism into a personalist cosmology.  I'm not seeing it.  What might the most likely venue be?  Mathematics seems a candidate.  Yet, mathematics remains an intensely personal pursuit.  Computers barely scratch the surface.  

Matter, itself, we know by its qualities, not by its abstractions.  And what abstractions do not subsist entirely within the cognitive realm?  

Recall that the foundation of physics is measurement, and measurement is entirely normative.  Is it also objective?  Well, since when is objectification not a cognitive process?  

The objectification/disenchanment of natrure is entirely the result of technology.  Technology is an entirely normative/functional construct.  

Trying to find something absolutely impersonal is like trying to punch our way out of a paper bag.  We hear the rumors, but have not been able to spot the beast.  


It seems easy enough to point to the impersonalism of the starry sky. There is the idea that the Sun will go out and take everyone of us with it. Is not the motivation behind space exploration the imperative to personalize the impersonal?

We use our technology to objectify the abstraction of space. We moderns are mesmerized by that abstraction. We will probably outgrow it. The notion that our visitors are UT's, would banish the abstraction in an eyeblink. Otherwise, it will take time. Maybe that's the plan. We have all the time in the world. We survived December. We can hope to survive September.



(cont.)

There is nothing like geology and paleontology to make the world feel impersonal.  

Would we want the world to feel unnatural?  As it feels natural, it also feels integrated, spontaneous and serendipitous.  Nothing wrong with that.  

With ecology, the world feels self-generated, self-organized.  We feel that way, too.  Would we have it otherwise?  


A few paragraphs just got run over..... Let me try to work my way back.......

An optimal balance is struck between the personal and impersonal.  The world turns out to be subtle.  Would we have it otherwise?  

Geology and ecology logically stretch back to the zero point of the big-bang.  A little teleology, however, can go a long way.  Some have no problem denying the Telos or additional Source.  Others of us turn to religion, the mystical or the metaphysical.  

Individual persons flourish in the impersonal background of nature.  It would be very easy for us to be overwhelmed by the cosmic Self.  Subtle are the ways of the Lord.  The God of revelation is also, necessarily, the God of concealment.  

The impersonal must be abstracted from the personal.  If the big-bang weren't already there, we would have had to invent it.  Could we have invented all that natural coherence?  Perhaps, in the end.  It must be kept in mind that the BPW/SW is forever.  It is out of time.  Space and time are integral to it.  

We are the microcosms of the seeming big world.  We concoct the coherence.  It is woven from our collective emerging sapience.  It is much like a cocoon.  It is our cosmic eggshell.  Cracks do appear.  The telos is our hatching out.  We emerge from pupa to butterfly.  It is a scary process, frought with seeming danger.  That Telos seems so ellusive.  

The fundamentalists of all stripes see this 'abyss' opening up before them.  They have a death grip on whatever seems solid or familiar.  They lash out at the unfamiliar.  It's no country for us old men.  We, too, shall pass.  

The impersonal is the logically necessary background of the personal.  It's all part of the logical coherence.  There is a logical counterpoint to the interpersonal.  


Atoms appear quintessentially impersonal.  Yet, like persons, they are microcosms.  They manage to reflect, in their intricacy, much of the universe around them, particularly its biological and astronomical aspects.  They are even more deprived of individuality than animals and plants.  

Does this micrcosmicality lend them substance?  I suggest that atomness fills the role of platonic forms, wherein they are immaterial, logical constructs.  Their substance derives from us, through animals and plants.  Their substance is very indirect.  Sunshine lends its substance to the atoms of the Sun.  

More distant stars......

We see the traces of black-holes and supernovae.  Powerful stuff.  Atoms are their logical foundation, as with plants and animals.  Yes, there may be codependent arising..... Pratītyasamutpāda.  There's a mouthful.  This same codependence as we see between Creator and creature.  Here the atom may be likened more unto the Creator, in its platonic, discarnate glory.  The form of the Atom is the is the opposite pole to the Creator.  Creation stretches out between them, almost as the Alpha and the Omega.  The atom contains its own mathematical strand of 'DNA'.  They are abstractions, as with the first and third members of the trinity.  

Mathematicians maintain the organic coherence, the anthropicity, of  mathematics, as witnessed in the Mandelbrot and Euler's identity, for instance.  This mathematical coherence is just a cross-section or logical skeleton of the cosmic love.  Mathematical logic maintains the threads of our cosmic cocoon.  Somehow, those skiens are spun out of love and logic.  The tensegrity is enormous.  


I see that Raimon Panikkar, with his Cosmotheandry, has expressed similar views, but, as with other versions of panentheism/process-philosophy, he takes off from the scientific cosmology.  That is a real stretch for personalism.  


What then is the personalism of space?  One might take a look at Thomas Torrance's Space, Time and Incarnation.  It is the sacralizing of space and time, when God pours himself into all of human history.  Eschatology is inherent in the act.  This is cosmotheandry of the first magnitude.  It's singularity contravenes the Coperican principle.  The Incarnation is a radical critique of the modern, aseptic/absolutist view of space-time.  Space is now freed-up to take on the aspect of an interpersonal medium.  



(cont.)

I'm skeptical of photons in the bulk.  I'm even more skeptical of gravitons.  I'm hardly alone in that skepticism.  

Consider the Earth's magnetic field.  It is comprised of virtual photons.  What comprises the Earth's gravitational field?  Is it virtual gravitons or curved space?  I'll bet you could ask any number of physicists, and you would not get a clear answer, let alone a consensus.  Maybe I should ask Jack.  Ask google?  

There is a discussion of this problem at......

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/427/nature-of-gravity-gravitons-curvature-of-space-time-or-both

Also see.....

https://www.quora.com/If-gravity-is-caused-by-curved-spacetime-how-do-gravitons-fit-in

There is phenomenological evidence for gravitational waves coming from binary pulsars.  What would carry the gavitional radiation, if not gravitons?  

Yet, there is no mathematical theory of gravitons.  With the quantization of other fields, there are reasonable methods to avoid the UV catastrophe, but not with gravity.  String theory was developed as a quantum theory of gravity.  


3pm----------

I have reviewed several articles on AdS/CFT, but have gained little insight. One can model a blackhole in such a theory, but there is not any clear, intuitive emergence of the gravitational field in this holographic theory.

It occurred to me, however, that an AdS tube could also be a CTC, and be reminiscent of the concave Earth conjecture.



(cont.)

Dan, reflecting more on the concept of the tonal and nagual and the reasonable fear of the infinite:

It is natural for the reason to fear the infinite as the abstract representation of an unlimited resource capable of unlimited rearrangement of the order of the tonal (our experience of this world). From this point of view it is impossible to map any infinite resource to the order of reason in the tonal. Mad Max has given it his best shot and arrived only half mad compared to Cantor.

http://nautil.us/issue/2/uncertainty/the-deepest-uncertainty

My understanding of this point of view is that contact with this infinite resource will rearrange elements in the order of the world (tonal) but never provide any sense of what is really "out there" beyond the profound impact we observe in our everyday world. I suspect this is your MoAPS, however, it would seem from this point of view there is no way to map the source beyond the rearrangement we observe. Castaneda's don Juan explained that we are left with an explanation but this in and of itself is useless in the realm where contact occurs with that infinite resource.

I suspect your struggle is due to not recognizing the futility of the task.

I should add that there is a personal aspect to our relationship with the unknowable when we encounter the infinite, by definition.

Gary,

How many times have I mentioned the distinction between quantitative and qualitative infinity.  Apparently you recognize no such distinction.  Each person is an infinite microcosm.  But an infinite number of persons would be impersonal.  To suppose an infinity of persons is tantamount to an oxymoron.  

I don't think you've ever grapsed this problem.  What gives?  

Personal encounter with the infinite......?  Here I think you are confusing the infinite with the numinous.  The uncertainty surrounding the CH may strike us as numinous, for instance, so might God, but that need not have anything to do with their quantitative infinity, or lack thereof.  

Please, clarify your thoughts on this matter.  
-----------------


I must say that the CH, see eg.......

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/large-cardinals-determinacy/ ,

is key to the philosophy of mathematics.  I would have to come down on the side of intersubjectivism and aesthetics.  It's not clear whether these conditions point toward realism or pluralism.  


Back to gravity........

I'm wondering what might be the ontological distinction between a gavitational lens and an ordinary magnifying glass, if any.  

Then there was this........

http://www.pulseheadlines.com/the-hubble-captures-reappearance-of-refsdal-supernova/13108/

Supernova + gravitational lens = Refsdal. Impressive display. It was bound to happen, and it did. Is there an actual magnifying glass out there, in space? Is the devil in these details? The katechon seems alive and well. The sky, then, is a sophisticated, teleological, dynamic, fractal. What is an ordinary magnifying glass? What about a mirror? What if there were no refraction?





(cont.)