Spiritual Forum

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  tertiusgaudens May 6, 2013 at 7:00am

  I would rather say, those questions not only lead us to God, but - in deeper ontological view of a Ground of Being managing any emanation of Being, which is not viewed by pure deduction, nor any derivation of a wave function - are originally induced by God. The old ones - I mentioned it - called that "Grace": Paul mentions the classical paradox in Phil 2: "...work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, ¹³ for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure". In existantial terms: the phenomenon "existence" appears under limited conditions of "Being" (as unfolding of Being among Being), while it is on a deeper level an unfolding of God (someone called that "finitum capax infiniti"). In QM terms it appears almost strange, that any wave function has not lead to proper solutions, and they invented the thought of an ether again by introducing a Higgs field...a Higgs field is actually nothing else than an ether from which the old ones said it is more "subtle" than any interaction between billiard balls...but if you would ask the guys at CERN, they would deny it...
  

  So you ask for a QM expression of existence - which is an ontological case -  and do in fact miss to integrate an "un-ontological" term called God (which cannot be described ontologically): this was the main intervention of Kant. And btw, Leibniz did miss to integrate human suffering in his God concept: in 1755 there was the big earth quake in Lissabon with thousands having died: thus he developed his concept of "theodicy", another difficulty. Later he spoke of "monads and prestabilized harmony" which point to a "best of all worlds", as he called it.

  As I understand math, it is a pure unfolding within the field of ontological appearances of act and potentiality, coming and going, being and becoming, life and death, limits and transcendentals once in a while. Otherwise there is always an incursion of the un-ontological taking place: God extends the usual and "normal" not simply by breaking natural laws, but transcending the ontological: from "either - or" becomes "as - well - as"; from separation becomes entanglement, from not yet becomes now...

  I´ll leave it for now that way, I got to have breakfast, and if you were close to me, I would invite you to come over...
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  tertiusgaudens May 5, 2013 at 10:55pm

  My dear RH,

  I took a whole night and almost a whole day thinking on what you have written. Actually it was almost 40 years that I have gone "pregnant" with those questions. It was part of all my professional career. You have pointed to something I found always most important for my style of thinking as philosopher in college and in public lectures - the emenation of something apart from nothing we call "coming into existence", the basic essences I find worth acknowledging as such and why.

  In 40 years my library has grown to a couple of thousand books - a big single room in my house. While others of my former school mates drive Mercedes Benz or Jaguar and ask me why I always had only rusty and unattractive, cheap cars, I showed them my big library. I was always a junkie of knowledge. Only to come to an insight of deep disappointment.

  I´m not saying that being a philosopher and having studied countless and manifold books had been senseless at all. But getting deep into "existential approaches", something must happen with you - you must somehow "wake up" in order to come from "straight intelligence" (which enables you to catch all the good stuff from around the world) to "living awareness". Neuro science has done a good deal of discoveries in recent years. Our brain is a big devive creating illusions. There is a difference between - even Kant came to such conclusions - thoughts and reality, between thinking and being. And awareness comes to help clearing such process.

  Over the years I got aware that there is also a big difference between having and being something. And as many look for having certain things (like money and influence), having knowledge is on the same line - it appears only more "honorable". If existence (from latin "to come or step forward"), which is itself an emanation of "being", becomes self-referential and thus conscious, having something appears only one option embellishing existence like an attribute - the other and eeper option is "being": I am this and that, but foremost am I an emanation of the Ground of Being. Thus the Ground - I call God - which "itself" cannot be described in words of "being", which is always linked to categories of space and time - is revealing "itself" into "being", and we know it not by any deduction, but by intuition - we simply know it. The old ones called that "Grace" - it is a divine gift. A deep struggle for proper understanding we see in Romans, chapter 7 and 8.

  And awareness has access to such intuition - and suddenly all becomes more easy to understand. All that is (being), which has emanated from the Groubd of Being, is an expression of the Ground. And the kind of unfolding Being into being is an expression of the joy of the Ground to reveal "itself" in "act and potentiality", in being and becoming, in now and not yet, in masks of happenings.

  In deeper reality there is non other than God appearing in categories of space, time and change. The other layer of reality playing with emenations, unfoldings, life, death and changes is trapped in categories of "being" showing changing and even fading faces. This is maybe the "Divine Comedia" appearing deeply serious and accomplished, as if there is no "deeper reality", which I call "the reality of the Ground of Being or God". Thus the comedy has become really challenging - humans can get lost in it (without really getting lost at all).

  All this I mentioned has left me nearly naked as I have come into existence: my awareness has brought me to see, that I have more to loose than to gain - like an onion with different layers I´m not willing anymore to collect more layers, but to loose one layer after another: I let it happen to acknowledge being rather than having. I do not clear existence by more studying thoughts and other opinions, but by seeing the illusionary character of the upper layer and my brain complex, which brings me to the impression, that there maybe is no external universe and no external cosmology at all, but only an apparent penomenon mirroring myself, for I seem to bear that seemingly external universe in myself, and I see myself part of a divine game...

  Let me end here and leave it to you as an gesture of my deep respect for you and your questions. I have never found someone exposing deeper questions in here (AC), I sometimes think that this is a forum of prescoolers whith pretty superficial utterances. But I will never criticise - I rather will keep myself aware that I am not the center of all that is and that other utterances are allowed in God´s name...

  Take my greetings from Germany!
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  tertiusgaudens May 4, 2013 at 9:25pm

  Dearest RH,

  the problem you are describing is genuinely not between Leibniz and Kant.

  The problem of existence Kant explained in answering not Leibnitz, but Anselm of Canterbury. Leibniz reacted on Descartes´ version of the ontological proof of God.

  For the sake of understanding we must read Kant, and many do not. It would reveal Kant saying, that Anselm has mixed notions. Existence of someting "highest possibly imaginable" (according Anselm) must not have necessarily existence, and Kant used a simple example: 100 imagined bucks in my pocket are not 100 existent bucks being real!

  So Kant´s criticism is exactly on Ansem´s theorem of God´s existence of being that, what is the highest possibly imaginable, while the most perfect - and God is thought most perfect - would be existence. Kant said: No! There is a difference between thought and reality, there is no necessity of deducing existence from thinking...

  So, before criticising Kant it would be better to read and understand him...

  Here is a fine link: http://www.kantstudiesonline.net/KSO_Recent_files/RobsonGregory0061...