Holistic Quantum Relativity
From ANHwiki
On the IntentBlog [1], a number of people have, under the inspiring guidance of DK Matai [2] , developed a Socratic Dialogue about the above subject that already comprises 9 articles that give us a descriptive journey on how we travelled from:
Rumi -- The Great Spiritual Master -- to the Four Forces -- Gravity, Electromagnetism, Strong & Weak Forces -- to Embracing Science, Art and Spirituality to Complex Holistics: Hegel's Logic, Spirit and Mind to Simple Holistics: Hegel Triangles & Unified Pyramid to Holistic Pyramid, Sahasrara, Sri Yantra, Creation to Holistic Relativity: Spiritual Planes & Consciousness to Holistic Quantum Relativity: Spirituality and Science to A Glossary of the Holistic Quantum Relativity Project
A testimony to the poetry of Rumi nearly 800 years ago, who spoke of a Unified Force of Love.
Come and journey with us into this rich conversation.
Contents |
Maulana Rumi: 2007 is his 800th Anniversary!
DK Matai - January 16, 2007
Our friend Sussan Deyhim has reminded us that 2007 is the mystic poet Maulana Rumi's 800th Anniversary. So the post has been revised... The Great Spiritual Masters have often made references to the love of the Perfect Master Maulana Rumi -- Maulana of the Roman Empire -- who was born in Balakh, Afghanistan, in 1207 AD.
After Genghis Khan's invasion of Balakh in 1219, He lived mostly in Anatolia, Turkey -- base of the Eastern Roman Empire -- until 1273. His love for his Spiritual Master Shamaz "Tabrez" who lived in Persia, ie, modern day Iran, is legendary. Maulana Rumi's poem, "I died as a mineral", is very heart rending and also, His "Divan-e-Shams" in glory of His Master is pure melancholia.
"I Died as a Mineral" by Maulana Rumi" :
I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish. When I have sacrificed my angel-soul, I shall become what no mind ever conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence Proclaims in organ tones, 'To Him we shall return.'
"Divan-e-Shams by Maulana Rumi, Spiritual Couplet 26" :
I need a lover and a friend, All friendships you transcend, And impotent I remain
You are Noah and the Ark, You are the light and the dark, Behind the veil I remain
You are passion and are rage, You are the bird and the cage, Lost in flight I remain
You are the wine and the cup, You are the ocean and the drop, While afloat I remain
I said, "O Soul of the world, My desperation has taken hold!", "I am thy essence," without scold, "Value me much more than gold."
You are the bait and the trap, You are the path and the map, While in search I remain
You are poison and the sweet, You are defeated and defeat, Sword in hand I remain
You are the wood and the saw, You are cooked, and are raw, While in a pot I remain
You are sunshine and the fog, You are water and the jug, While thirsty I remain
Sweet fragrance of Shams is, The joy and pride of Tabriz, Perfume trader I remain.
"Other Select Verses by Maulana Rumi"
I swallowed some of the Beloved's sweet intoxicant, and now I am ill.
My body aches, my fever is high. They called in the Doctor and he said, drink this tea!
OK, time to drink this tea. Take these pills! OK, time to take these pills.
The Doctor said, get rid of the sweet intoxicant of his lips! OK, time to get rid of the doctor.
It is your turn now, you waited, you were patient. The time has come, for us to polish you.
We will transform your inner pearl into a house of fire. You're a gold mine. Did you know that,
hidden in the dirt of the earth? It is your turn now, to be placed in fire.
Let us cremate your impurities
When we talk about the witness in our verse, we talk about you.
A pure heart and a noble demeanor cannot compete with your radiant face. They will ask you
what you have produced. Say to them, except for Love, what else can a Lover produce?
By day I praised you and never knew it. By night I stayed with you and never knew it.
I always thought that I was me--but no, I was you and never knew it.
This is a gathering of Lovers. In this gathering there is no high, no low, no smart, no ignorant,
no special assembly, no grand discourse, no proper schooling required.
There is no master, no disciple. This gathering is more like an intoxicated party,
full of tricksters, fools, mad men and mad women. This is a gathering of Lovers.
I wish I could give you a taste of the burning fire of Love.
There is a fire blazing inside of me. If I cry about it, or if I don't,
the fire is at work, night and day. People make clothing to cover their intellect,
but the heart of Lovers is a shroud, inflamed in golden hues of His Love.
Background
Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi is from Turkey and he is known as one of the greatest mystic poets of his time. In Turkey, he is known simply as 'Mevlana,' and his followers go by the title of 'Mevlevi.' But his poems and mystical teachings are known throughout the world.
Jalaluddin Rumi was born in Balakh, Mazar-e-Sharif -- present-day Afghanistan -- on September 30, 1207, to a family of well-known mystics and scholars. His full name was Jalaluddin Mohammed but he became known as 'Rumi' - meaning from Rome - because his father Bahauddin Balad later moved to Anatolia, once the base of the eastern Roman empire, in the wake of the Mongol invasion in 1219. The Mongols, led by Genghis Khan, destroyed Balakh in 1220 and went on to sack Baghdad in 1258, ending the Abbasid khilafah. Bahauddin claimed direct descent from Hadhrat Abu Bakr, the first Khalifah of Islam.
Maulana Rumi's first teacher was his father, but he was also greatly influenced by His Great Spiritual Master Shams Tabrizi, whose shrine is close to the Maulana's in Konya, where the family finally settled after pilgrimage to Mecca and stays in Arzanjan, a small town in Armenia, and Syria. The family's relocation to Konya was made through the request of the Seljuq king, who had made the city his capital.
When Bahauddin moved to Laranda, a small town 35 miles south-east of Konya, he arranged for Jalaluddin, now 18, to marry Gauhar Khatun, daughter of one Lala of Samarkhand, most probably a member of the travelling party. Of this union was born a son named Sultan Walid, who later composed his father's poetic biography, compiled his scattered discourses, and established a school to spread his father's teachings.
In order to read the comments on this part of the Socratic Dialogue go to: http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2007/01/maulana_rumi_ti.html
Unified Force, Sub-nuclear Physics & Love of Rumi
DK Matai - January 17, 2007
Harbhajan "Harb" Singh (http://www.SelfDesignedUniverse.com) and other IntentBloggers have started an interesting dialogue on the Unified Force, Sub-nuclear Physics and Spirituality developing under Maulana Rumi. Synthesising the views of The Great Spiritual Masters and Philosophers including Socrates, Plato, Lao Tsu, Rumi, Kabir, Kirpal and Indian Vedanta, alongside nuclear physicists like Prof Hans-Peter Duerr and Prof Richard Feynman begins to unify all.
One can conclude from:
1. What is being developed by way of Socratic Dialogue on IntentBlog under the Maulana Rumi string;
2. What eminent nuclear physicists like the Nobel Laureate Prof Richard P Feynman and the Alternative Nobel Prize Winner Prof Hans-Peter Duerr have also argued;
3. What the Great Spiritual Masters over the centuries have reiterated in regard to Advaita or Non-Duality and the Physical, Astral and Causal Planes of the Illusory (Maya) Universe (Brahmand); ParBrahmand or Beyond Universe; and Sachkhand or True Home; and
4. What the Greeks referred to as the five elements symbolic of all the worlds = Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Sky. Socrates referred to the human beings body, mind and spirit in the context of having all five elements, with Sky being the liberating element which only a human being possesses;
is as follows (this is work-in-progress and subject to revision as feedback is received):
1. Force of Gravity
= Metaphorically similar to Physicality & Senses, dominant in our childhood interactions
= Characteristics of the Greek element of earth
= Sourced at Physical Plane in the Illusory (Maya) Universe (Brahmand).
2. Electromagnetic Force
= Metaphorically similar to Emotions & Feelings, dominant in our youth interactions
= Characteristics of the Greek element of water
= Sourced at Astral Plane in the Illusory (Maya) Universe (Brahmand).
3. Strong Force
= Metaphorically similar to Reason, Logic, Intellect and Judgement, dominant in our middle-age interactions
= Characteristics of the Greek element of fire
= Sourced at Causal Plane in the Illusory (Maya) Universe (Brahmand)
= Home of Illusory Universal Consciousness (often confused with The (True) Universal Consciousness) which created the Astral and Physical Planes.
4. Weak Force
= Metaphorically similar to Spiritual Awakening, ie, Intuition and Intelligence, dominant in our wise age or Wisdom interactions
= Characteristics of the Greek element of air
= Sourced at ParBrahmand or Beyond Illusory Universe or Beyond the Event Horizon
= The narrow tunnel of freedom to the Supra- or True-Universe (Sachkhand).
5. Unifying Force of Love or Liberating Force
= Spirit triumphing over the entrapment of the Physical, Emotional, Reason/Logic and Intelligence Envelopes
= Characteristics of the Greek element of sky
= Sourced at Sachkhand, True Home, Supra- or True-Universe
= Emanating from Supra- or True-Universal Consciousness
= Underlying Advaita (Non-Duality)
= Underlying series of Haps or Events stringing together the entire energy in "The Illusory Universe", "Beyond Universe" and "Supra- or True-Universe" with no concept of Separation, Duality or Plurality
= Universal Consciousness and Universal Connectivity
= Infinite Love.
Unifying Force Realisation or Liberation
= Our Ultimate Goal
= Total Freedom
= Attaining the Omega Point
= Infinite love.
As a follow on to the above representation, Dr. Avtar Singh and the IntentBlog team proposed the following unified model based on general relativity theory to address spirituality:
Five Point Definition of Holistic Quantum Relativity:
1. Holistic Quantum Relativity seeks to integrate Spirituality and Science and also the four forces -- gravity, electro-magnetism, strong and weak forces -- with the unifying fifth force.
2. Holistic Quantum Relativity consists of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity in its original unaltered form but enhanced by the mathematical formulation of the well-established phenomenon of spontaneity or consciousness in nature as evidenced in the observed spontaneous expansion of the universe, spontaneous conversion of mass-energy in the wave-particle duality, and spontaneity or consciousness of the human mind.
3. Since the original formulation of general relativity remains unaltered, the Holistic Quantum Relativity retains all the validity and predictability of a vast array of scientific experiments and universe observations. However, the enhancement or augmentation of general relativity by addition of an additional equation representing spontaneity or consciousness in nature not only resolves its known deficiencies and singularities, but also resolves all inconsistencies with quantum mechanics.
4. Holistic Quantum Relativity provides a mathematical framework that explains the inner workings of quantum mechanics and resolves its own unexplained paradoxes such as the Quantum Measurement or the Observer’s Paradox, parallel universe, Heisenberg’s uncertainty, non-locality (infinite speed of light) etc. Further, Holistic Relativity resolves the well known paradoxes of cosmology such as the Big Bang singularity, superluminous inflation, dark energy, dark matter, the paradox of time and evolution, and future of the universe etc.
5. Holistic Quantum Relativity builds a seamless bridge between science, spirituality, and religion resolving their log-standing conflicts related to creator, creation, purpose, meaning, and genuine happiness.
In order to read the comments on this part of the Socratic Dialogue go to: http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2007/01/unified_force_s.html
Holistics: Embracing Science, Art and Spirituality
DK Matai - January 23, 2007
Dear friends, we recently initiated a Socratic Dialogue in which a number of IntentBloggers have taken part in. We are now being told in no uncertain terms "what is being discussed here in the name of science is not only bad-science, it is pseudo-science, bad-science, non-science or rather non-sense. Are we in the realms of going beyond science, art and spiritual philosophy towards Holistics?
Whilst pseudo-science, bad-science, non-science or rather non-sense may be an entirely justifiable and justified point of view for some, it may reflect a narrow mindedness in terms of appreciating the holistic nature of the world and the universe to others. Socratic Dialogue is all about thesis and anti-thesis to arrive eventually at the truth with humility, so all protagonists and antagonists have their part to play!
We would like to hear from IntentBloggers in regard to their views about the present understanding, knowledge and "wisdom" that modern science has hitherto delivered for the present and future well being of humanity and how that may metamorphose in the collective quest for the greater truth towards the nascent discipline of Holistics.
Does modern science offer very good quality answers to fundamental questions and holistic issues of well being, longevity and sustainability posed by humanity for its sake and generations yet to come? Does today's scientific understanding reconcile easily with humanity's spiritual longing, access to the universal consciousness and divine connectivity in a holistic way? Is it wrong to try to find ways to bring forward a holistic point of view that seeks to unify all our levels and dimensions of understanding from spirituality and religion through to evolution, economics, politics, pschology, philosophy and holistic science?
Is the quest for such a holy grail of Holistics fool's gold? Is it really justified to label any such dialogue or development of a new discipline such as Holistics, which seeks to unblock the self-imposed roadblocks of modern science as bad-science, pseudo-science, non-science or non-sense? If so, Why? What and where is the alternative to the roadblocks presently being experienced by science and is it not inevitable that humanity will go beyond the artificially imposed boundaries of science, art and spiritual philosophy in its quest for the greater truth?
In order to read the comments on this part of the Socratic Dialogue go to: http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2007/01/pseudo_bad_nons.html
Complex Holistics: Hegel's Logic, Spirit and Mind
DK Matai - January 19, 2007
Hegel is short form for the great German philosopher by the name of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831) who sought to reconcile the System of Science, Logic, Nature, Spirit and Mind. A slightly edited excerpt of the 1911's Encyclopaedia Britannica "Hegel" article follows which carries the seeds of 21st Century Holistics within it as viewed from an early 20th Century perspective.
0 - Phenomenology of Spirit/Mind
Hegelianism is confessedly one of the most difficult of all philosophies. Every one has heard the legend which makes Hegel say, "One man has understood me, and even he has not." He abruptly hurls us into a world where old habits of thought fail us. In three places, indeed, he has attempted to exhibit the transition to his own system from other levels of thought; but in none with much success. In the introductory lectures on the philosophy of religion he gives a rationale of the difference between the modes of consciousness in religion and philosophy (between Vorstellung and Begriff). In the beginning of the Enzyklopädie he discusses the defects of dogmatism, empiricism, the philosophies of Kant and Jacobi. In the first case he treats the formal or psychological aspect of the difference; in the latter he presents his doctrine less in its essential character than in special relations to the prominent systems of his time. The Phenomenology of Spirit/Mind ("Geist"), regarded as an introduction, suffers from a different fault. It is not an introduction —for the philosophy which it was to introduce was not then fully elaborated. Even the last Hegel had not so externalized his system as to treat it as something to be led up to by gradual steps. His philosophy was not one aspect of his intellectual life, to be contemplated from others; it was the ripe fruit of concentrated reflection, and had become the one all-embracing form and principle of his thinking. More than most thinkers he had quietly laid himself open to the influences of his time and the lessons of history.
The Phenomenology is the picture of the Hegelian philosophy in the making - at the stage before the scaffolding has been removed from the building. For this reason the book is at once the most brilliant and the most difficult of Hegel’s works - the Phenomänologie - most brilliant because it is to some degree an autobiography of Hegel’s mind - not tile abstract record of a logical evolution, but the real history of an intellectual growth; the most difficult because, instead of treating the rise of intelligence (from its first appearance in contrast with the real world to its final recognition of its presence in, and rule over, all things) as a purely subjective process, it exhibits this rise as wrought out in historical epochs, national characteristics, forms of culture and faith, and philosophical systems. The theme is identical with the introduction to the Enzyklopädie; but it is treated in a very different style. From all periods of the world - from medieval piety and stoical pride, Kant and Sophocles, science and art, religion and philosophy - with disdain of mere chronology, Hegel gathers in the vineyards of the human spirit the grapes from which he crushes the wine of thought. The mind coming through a thousand phases of mistake and disappointment to a sense and realization of its true position in the universe - such is the drama which is consciously Hegel’s own history, but is represented objectively as the process of spiritual history which the philosopher reproduces in himself. The Phenomenology stands to the Enzyklopädie somewhat as the dialogues of Plato stand to the Aristotelian treatises. It contains almost all his philosophy - but irregularly and without due proportion. The personal element gives an undue prominence to recent phenomena of the philosophic atmosphere. It is the account given by an inventor of his own discovery, not the explanation of an outsider. It therefore to some extent assumes from the first the position which it proposes ultimately to reach, and gives not a proof of that position, but an account of the experience (Erfahrung) by which consciousness is forced from one position to another till it finds rest in Absolutes Wissen.
The Phenomenology is neither mere psychology, nor logic, not moral philosophy, nor history, but is all of these and a great deal more. It needs not distillation, but expansion and illustration from contemporary and antecedent thought and literature. It treats of the attitudes of consciousness towards reality under the six heads of consciousness, self-consciousness, reason (Vernunft), spirit/mind (Geist), religion and absolute knowledge. The native attitude of consciousness towards existence is reliance on the evidence of the senses; but a little reflection is sufficient to show that the reality attributed to the external world is as much due to intellectual conceptions as to the senses, and that these conceptions elude, when we try to fix them. If consciousness can not detect a permanent object outside it, so self-consciousness cannot find a permanent subject in itself. It may, like the Stoic, assert freedom by hold in aloof from the entanglements of real life, or like the skeptic regard the world as a delusion, or finally, as the "unhappy consciousness" (Unglückliches Bewusstsein), may be a recurrent falling short of a perfection which it has placed above it in the heavens. But in this isolation from the world, self-consciousness has closed its gates against the stream of life. The perception of this is reason. Reason convinced that the world and the soul are alike rational observes the external world, mental phenomena, and specially the nervous organism, as the meeting ground of body and mind. But reason finds much in the world recognizing no kindred with her, and so turning to practical activity seeks in the world the realization of her own aims. Either in a crude way she pursues her own pleasure, and finds that necessity counteracts her cravings; or she endeavours to find the world in harmony with the heart, and yet is unwilling to see fine aspirations crystallized by the act of realizing them. Finally, unable to iqipose upon the world either selfish or humanitarian ends, she folds her arms in pharisaic virtue, with the hope that some hidden power will give the victory to righteousness. But the world goes on in its life, heedless of the demands of virtue. The principle of nature is to live and let live. Reason abandons her efforts to mould the world, and is content to let the aims of individuals work out their results independently, only stepping in to lay down precepts for the cases where individual actions conflict, and to test these precepts by the rules of formal logic.
So far we have seen consciousness on one hand and the real world on the other. The stage of Geist reveals the consciousness no longer as critical and antagonistic but as the indwelling spirit of a community, as no longer isolated from its surroundings but the union of the single and real consciousness with the vital feeling that animates the community. This is the lowest stage of concrete consciousness—life, and not knowledge; the spirit inspires, but does not reflect. It is the age of unconscious morality, when the individual’s life is lost in the society of which he is an organic member. But increasing culture presents new ideals, and the mind, absorbing the ethical spirit of its environment, gradually emancipates itself from conventions and superstitions. This enlightment ("Aufklärung") prepares the way for the rule of conscience, for the moral view of the world as subject of a moral law. From the moral world the next step is religion; the moral law gives place to God; but the idea of Godhead, too, as it first appears, is imperfect, and has to pass through the forms of nature-worship and of art before it reaches a full utterance in Christianity. Religion in this shape is the nearest step to the stage of absolute knowledge; and this absolute knowledge— ‘ the spirit knowing itself as spirit “—is not something which leaves these other forms behind but the full comprehension of them as the organic constituents of its empire; “they are the memory and the sepulchre of its history, and at the same time the actuality, truth and certainty of its throne.” Here, according to Hegel, is the field of philosophy.
1 - Science of Logic
The preface to the Phenomenology signalled the separation from Schelling - the adieu to romantic. It declared that a genuine philosophy has no kindred with the mere aspirations of artistic minds, but must earn its bread by the sweat of its brow. It sets its face against the idealism which either thundered against the world for its deficiencies, or sought something finer than reality. Philosophy is to be the science of the actual world - it is the spirit comprehending itself in its own externalizations and manifestations. The philosophy of Hegel is idealism, but it is an idealism in which every idealistic unification has its other face in the multiplicity of existence. It is realism as well as idealism, and never quits its hold on facts. Compared with Fichte and Schelling, Hegel has a sober, hard, realistic character. At a later date, with the call of Schelling to Berlin in 1841, it became fashionable to speak of Hegelianism as a negative philosophy requiring to be complemented by a "positive" philosophy which would give reality and not mere ideas. The cry was the same as that of Krug, asking the philosophers who expounded the absolute to construe his pen. It was the cry of the Evangelical school for a personal Christ and not a dialectical Logos. The claims of the individual, the real, material and historical fact, it was said, had been sacrificed by Hegel to the universal, the ideal, the spiritual and the logical.
There was a truth in these criticisms. It was the very aim of Hegelianism to render fluid the fixed phases of reality - to show existence not to be an immovable rock limiting the efforts of thought, but to have thought implicit in it, waiting for release from itt petrifaction. Nature was no longer, as with Fichte, to be a mere spring-board to evoke the latent powers of the spirit. Nor was it, as in Schelling’s earlier system, to be a collateral progeny with mind from the same womb of indifference and identity. Nature and mind in the Hegelian system - the external and the spiritual world - have the same origin, but are not co-equal branches. The natural world proceeds from the "idea", the spiritual from the idea and nature. It is impossible, beginning with the natural world, to explain the mind by any process of distillation or development unless consciousness or its potentiality has been there from the first. Reality, independent of the individual consciousness, then must be; reality, independent of all mind, is an impossibility. At the basis of all reality, whether material or mental, there is thought. But the thought thus regarded as the basis of all existence is the consciousness with its distinction of ego and non-ego. It is rather the stuff of which both mind and nature are made, neither extended as in the natural world, nor self-centred as in mind. Thought in its primary form is, as it were, thoroughly transparent and absolutely fluid, free and mutually interpenetrable in every part - the spirit in its seraphic scientific life, before creation had produced a natural world, and thought had risen to independent existence in the social organism. Thought in this primary, form, when in all its parts completed, is what Hegel calls the “idea.” But the idea, though fundamental, is in another sense final, in the process of the world. It only appears in consciousness as the crowning development of the mind. Only with philosophy does thought become fully conscious of itself in its origin and development. Accordingly the history of philosophy is the presupposition of logic, or the three branches of philosophy form a circle.
The exposition or constitution of the "idea" is the work of the Logic. As the total system falls into three parts, so every part of the system follows the triadic law. Every truth, every reality, has three aspects or stages; it is the unification of two contradictory elements, of two partial aspects of truth which are not merely contrary, like black and white, but contradictory, like same and different. The first step is a preliminary affirmation and unification, the second a negation and differentiation, the third a final synthesis. For example, the seed of the plant is an initial unity of life, which when placed in its proper soil suffers disintegration into its constitutents, and yet in virtue of its vital unity keeps these divergent elements together, and reappears as the plant with its members in organic union. Or again, the process of scientific induction is a threefold chain; the original hypothesis (the first unification of the fact) seems to melt away when confronted with opposite facts, and yet no scientific progress is possible unless the stimulus of the original unification is strong enough to clasp the discordant facts and establish a reunification. Thesis, antithesis and synthesis, a Fichtean formula, is generalized by Hegel into the perpetual law of thought (for a discussion of these three steps by Hegel, see the paragraphs 79-82 of his Encyclopedia).
In what we may call their psychological aspect, these three stages are known as the abstract stage, or that of understanding (Verstand), the dialectical stage, or that of negative reason, and the speculative stage, or that of positive reason (Vernunft). The first of these attitudes taken alone is dogmatism; the second, when similarly isolated, is skepticism; the third, when unexplained by its elements, is mysticism. Thus Hegelianism reduces dogmatism, skepticism and mysticism to factors in philosophy. The abstract or dogmatic thinker believes his object to be one, simple and stationary, and intelligible apart from its surrounding. He speaks, e.g., as if species and genera were fixed and unchangeable; and fixing his eye on the ideal forms in their purity and self-sameness, he scorns the phenomenal world, whence this identity and persistence are absent. The dialectic of negative reason rudely dispels these theories. Appealing to reality it shows that the identity and permanence of forms are contradicted by history; instead of unity it exhibits multiplicity, instead of identity difference, instead of a whole, only parts. Dialectic is, therefore, a dislocating power; it shakes the solid structures of material thought, and exhibits the instability latent in such conceptions of the world. It is the spirit of progress and change, the enemy of convention and conservatism; it is absolute and universal unrest. In the realm of abstract thought these transitions take place lightly. In the worlds of nature and mind they are more palpable and violent. So far as this Hegel seems on the side of revolution. But reason is not negative only; while it disintegrates the mass or unconscious unity, it builds up a new unity with higher organization. But this third stage is the place of effort, requiring neither the surrender of the original unity nor the ignoring of the diversity afterwards suggested. The stimulus of contradiction is no doubt a strong one; but the easiest way of escaping it is to shut our eyes to one side of the antithesis. What is required, therefore, is to readjust our original thesis in such a way as to include and give expression to both the elements in the process.
The universe, then, is a process or development, to the eye of philosophy. It is the process of the absolute - in religious language, the manifestation of God. In the background of all the absolute is eternally present; the rhythmic movement of thought is the self-unfolding of the absolute. God reveals Himself in the logical idea, in nature and in mind; but mind is not alike conscious of its absoluteness in every stage of development. Philosophy alone sees God revealing Himself in the ideal organism of thought as it were a possible deity prior to the world and to any relation between God and actuality; in the natural world, as a series of materialized forces and forms of life; and in the spiritual world as the human soul, the legal and moral order of society, and the creations of art, religion and philosophy.
This introduction of the absolute became a stumbling-block to Feuerbach and other members of the "Left". They rejected as an illegitimate interpolation the eternal subject of development, and, instead of one continuing God as the subject of all the predicates by which in the logic the absolute is defined, assumed only a series of ideas, products of philosophic activity. They denied the theological value of the logical forms - the development of these forms being in their opinion due to the human thinker, not to a selfrevealing absolute. Thus they made man the creator of the absolute.
But with this modification on the system another necessarily followed; a mere logical series could not create nature. And thus the material universe became the real starting-point. Thought became only the result of organic conditions - subjective and human; and the system of Hegel was no longer an idealization of religion, but a naturalistic theory with a prominent and peculiar logic.
The logic of Hegel is the only rival to the logic of Aristotle. What Aristotle did for the theory of demonstrative reasoning, Hegel attempted to do for the whole of human knowledge. His logic is an enumeration of the forms or categories by which our experience exists. It carried out Kant’s doctrine of the categories as a priori synthetic principles, but removed the limitation by which Kant denied them any constitutive value except in alliance with experience. According to Hegel the terms in which thought exhibits itself are a system of their own, with laws and relations which reappear in a less obvious shape in the theories of nature and mind. Nor are they restricted to the small number which Kant obtained by manipulating the current subdivision of judgments. But all forms by which thought holds sensations in unity (the formative or synthetic elements of language) had their place assigned in a system where one leads up to and passes over into another.
The fact which ordinary thought ignores, and of which ordinary logic therefore provides no account, is the presence of gradation and continuity in the world. The general terms of language simplify the universe by reducing its variety of individuals to a few forms, none of which exists simply and perfectly. The method of the understanding is to divide and then to give a separate reality to what it has thus distinguished. It is part of Hegel’s plan to remedy this one-sided character of thought, by laying bare the gradations of ideas. He lays special stress on the point that abstract ideas when held in their abstraction are almost interchangeable with their opposites—that extremes meet, and that in every true and concrete idea there is a coincidence of opposites.
The beginning of the logic is an illustration of this. The logical idea is treated under the three heads of being (Sein), essence (Wesen) and concept/notion/comprehension (Begriff). The simplest term of thought is being; we cannot think less about anything than when we merely say that it is. Being the abstract "is" - is nothing definite, and nothing at least is. Being and not being are thus declared identical a proposition which in this unqualified shape was to most people a stumbling-block at the very door of the system. Instead of the mere "is" which is as yet nothing, we should rather say "becomes", and as "becomes" always implies "something", we have determinate being - "a being" which in the next stage of definiteness becomes "one". And in this way we pass on to the quantitative aspects of being.
The terms treated under the first head, in addition to those already mentioned, are the abstract principles of quantity and number, and their application in measure to determine the limits of being. Under the title of essence are discussed those pairs of correlative terms which are habitually employed in the explanation of the world—such as law and phenomenon, cause and effect, reason and consequence, substance and attribute. Under the head of notion are considered, firstly, the subjective forms of conception, judgment and syllogism; secondly, their realization in objects as mechanically, chemically or teleologically constituted; and thirdly, the idea first of life, and next of science, as the complete interpenetration of thought and objectivity. The third part of logic evidently is what contains the topics usually treated in logic-books, though even here the province of logic in the ordinary sense is exceeded. The first two divisions - the "objective logic" - are what is usually called metaphysics.
The characteristic of the system is the gradual way in which idea is linked to idea so as to make the division into chapters only an arrangement of convenience. The judgment is completed in the syllogism; the syllogistic form as the perfection of subjective thought passes into objectivity, where it first appears embodied in a mechanical system; and the teleological object, in which the members are as means and end, leads up to the idea of life, where the end is means and means end indissolubly till death. In some cases these transitions may be unsatisfactory and forced; it is apparent that the linear development from "being" to the "idea" is got by transforming into a logical order the sequence that has roughly prevailed in philosophy from the Eleatics; cases- might be quoted where the reasoning seems a play upon words; and it may often be doubted whether certain ideas do not involve extra-logical considerations. The order of the categories is in the main outlines fixed; but in the minor details much depends upon the philosopher, who has to fill in the gaps between ideas, with little guidance from the data of experience,,and to assign to the stages of development names which occasionally deal hardly with language. The merit of Hegel is to have indicated and to a large extent displayed the filiation and mutual limitation of our forms of thought; to have arranged them in the order of their comparative capacity to give a satisfactory expression to truth in the totality of its relations; and to have broken down the partition which in Kant separated the formal logic from the transcendental analytic, as well as the general disruption between logic and metaphysic. It must at the same time be admitted that much of the work of weaving the terms of thought, the categories, into a system has a hypothetical and tentative character, and that Hegel has rather pointed out the path which logic must follow, viz, a criticism of the terms of scientific and ordinary thought in their filiation and interdependence, than himself in every case kept to the right way- The day for a fuller investigation of this problem will partly depend upon the progress of the study of language in the direction marked out by W. von Humboldt.
Part II of this story follows in: http://wiki.anhglobal.org/wiki/Holistic_Quantum_Relativity_Part_II
The HQR Project's Latest Glossary (v0.5) is available from here: http://wiki.anhglobal.org/wiki/GLOSSARY_to_the_Holistic_Quantum_Relativity
