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Arrested development

The result of parenting with the opposite of understanding, kindness, and justice: the injustice of misunderstanding and cruelty. The wrong “guide,” shadow-opposite, obstructing Logic’s sequence of Order, the interconnectedness of its implications. Disorder produced in alternate “reality” by entropy – temporal, dying energy -- that reverses connection.

The wrong “guide” obstructing the expansion and reciprocation of Love’s relationships. Both together, misunderstanding and cruelty, implements of “separation,” responsible for arrested development. Paralysis exemplified by the condition of Nietzsche’s body and brain at his death. Like the brain of Sylvia Plath, captive to the wrong “guide.” Captive to the lethal impossibility of separation.

Explanation-Understanding 

The response of Logic-Love to the injustice of its mischaracterization, condemnation, and punishment, with Understanding that helps the perpetrator, self-unawareness, remove its cause by regaining Self-Awareness. By shining away the darkness of self-delusion, illogic, fear, and “guilt,” with the light of Truth, Innocence, Logic, and Love.

The response role modeled by the teaching, life, and example of Jesus. Explanation that’s Helpfulness instead of retaliation in kind that’s harmfulness.

Getting it right based on explanation by Logic-Love making sense of evolving circumstances to produce context, the source of meaning and purpose. The source of Guidance by conscience centered on character defined by the moral values of the Good. Enabling the Child of Self-Awareness to apply its unique talent for Free Choice in Relationship’s response to context that expands the Life-Worth of Creation. The talent of Mind Free Choice that is reflection, reasoning, evaluation, and judging.

Free Choice 

Judgment that must be independent because dependence would contradict freedom of choice.

Judgment informed by the function of Child Free Choice’s Parents, to serve and support its function with the process and structure of Reality: the Energy of Mind, the Free Spirit of Inquiry, the Spontaneity of Love, the Relationship of Self-Awareness, and context that supplies meaning and purpose to evolving circumstances. Essentials for reasoning, evaluation, and independent judgment required by Choice among possibilities that’s capable of affirming, earning, and reciprocating Life-Worth. That’s Free.

Judgment that implies the possibility of errors in judgment and the responsibility of Free Choice to gain competence through experience to avoid them. Errors based on the inadequacy of what’s already Known to foretell the consequences of Creation advancing into the unknown. Being based on flaws of character inherited from its Parents, Logic-Love, is an impossibility. The Truth of Child Free Choice, whether its judgment is mistaken or not, is its birthright: the Soul of Innocence, inviolable in Reality and recoverable by Free Choice in unreality. 

Freedom-Order 

The inseparability of Order and Freedom. Functions that enable one another through the harmony of Order defined with Free Choice and the protection of Free Choice by the boundaries of Order. The origin of Order that is the before-after sequence of Logic aligned with the laws of cause and effect. Whose opposite, disorder, begins with disconnection of the sequence of Logic. 

The freedom to extend the ideas-functions of Mind forward through the interconnecting implications of Logic that require the before-after sequence of Order. The freedom to expand the feelings of Mind through the interconnecting relationships of Love that require spontaneity within the boundaries of Order.

Jesus-right guidance 

A spectacular contradiction of shadow-opposite’s contradiction. A phenomenon as well as a personification of the right Guide, gifted with Self-Awareness. With understanding of the metaphysics and psychology of Child Free Choice’s self-delusion: its identification with its shadow-reflection mistaken for an “other.” Understanding which Jesus shares with its projections, self-unaware individuals in their immediate contexts, in a variety of ways contradicted by the idea of “bible.” All pointing toward the Necessity of reversing projection, the logical impossibility that made the unreality of opposite “real.”

Not to relieve individuals of responsibility for earning Self-Awareness with their own thoughts-feelings but to help them recover their own thoughts-feelings. Through spontaneous insights from Intuition – their sixth sense – and lessons the biblical Jesus and the Jesus of A Course in Miracles brought to individuals in forms recognizable by their five senses. That demonstrate the Reality of Mind’s laws of cause and effect unaffected by unreal matter’s “laws” of chaos.

A personification of injustice that draws a helpful response of role modeling by explanation and understanding rather than variations of harmfulness by aggrieved victimhood. Injustice perpetrated by projection of guilt onto Innocence by minds captive to the self-unawareness of shadow-opposite. Whose precedent was the execution of another Innocent, Socrates, the father of Western ethical philosophy, by another projection of guilt. Shadow-opposite’s mischaracterization of Innocence and perversion of justice. A contradiction of Logic-Love and a lethal flaw in human “thinking” that Plato sought to understand and explain through his Allegory of the Cave.

The teacher of one-Child individual minds and not the fiction of many child body-brains. And thus not the “founder” of any “religion” or “church.” Or a “savior” who would do the work of the wrong “guide” by contradicting the Freedom of Choice.

A personification of the brother and friend of one Child-Mind in its self-unaware state. Accessible in forms adapted to the needs of its individual projections and thus a part of the dream of unreality that will no longer be needed when self-unawareness gives way to Self-Awareness. When Free Choice is again offered a role in Creation.

The judgment of Parental Love, Forgiveness, and Innocence. Of Reality-Truth that contradicts the unreality-untruth of fear, condemnation, and guilt. Fit together in logical Order-Freedom by explanation from Child’s Parents, Logic-Love, that leads to Understanding. Self-Awareness.

Life-Worth 

The light of Self-Awareness illuminated in the eternal Now by Relationship. By the attraction between Logic and Love, ideas within Mind sharing its Energy to consummate inseparability and set the sharing of Life-Worth in motion. The motivating Force of Reality-Creation whose expression extends and expands the Logic-Love Relationship of Mind into infinity. The Worth of eternal discovery, growth, and Creation affirmed, earned, and reciprocated by Free Choice. 

Logic-Love / Parents 

Relationship that ignited the illumination of Self-Awareness and began the orderly sequence of Logic-Love forward in the evolution of Creation. The prototype and founding role model for every Relationship in Creation to follow. Logic is implications connecting to make sense. Love is abundance-sharing through Relationships that give sense the meaning and purpose of value – the moral value that is Socrates’ and Plato’s idea of “Good.” Logic and Love are ideas-functions of Mind that complete one another and, like Freedom and Order, are inseparable. That provide service and support for their Child’s role in Creation with the unconditional love of Parents who respect the sovereignty and integrity of Free Choice.

Narcissist – reflection 

A replication of Mind, captive to its shadow-reflection self-unawareness, that’s projected itself, Love, onto its reflection misperceived as an object, separate from itself and objectified as an “other.” The impossibility that’s an “external:” an objectified “self” “loving” separated other objects the only way it can, by loving its separated, objectified “self.”

A perversion of Mind-Relationship, Logic-Love united in Self-Awareness: subject extending and expanding itself through the Oneness of Reality-Creation, Loving its Creations and their cause by affirming Self-Worth. Subject loving subjects – not reflections but extensions of itself. An ”internal,” the only possibility.

A re-enactment of the “event” that led to the dream of an “alternate reality” by Child-Mind unconscious: the mistake of making unreality “real.” With the projection of Love, itself, onto its shadow-opposite. An unreality mistaken for an “other,” a reflection, when narcissists -- body-brain occupants of its dream -- affirm the “reality” of unreality in opposite’s reflection in a mirror. With love for a reflection -- reverse mirror-images of themselves.  For “objects” that are their shadow-opposites, transferring Awareness of Self-subject onto self-“object.” That can only “recognize” the event not as a gift from Love but as its surrender. Affirmation of shadow-opposite’s “supremacy” in competition with its host, Mind. “Winning.” Completing the transformation of Self-Awareness into the self-unawareness of narcissism. The consequence not of affirmation of Self-Worth but its denial.

With “love” that the narcissist consummates by “owning” its reflection. Made “real” by the possibility of possession, control, and dominance in a “reality” of material objects that includes objectified “others.” Competitors who would steal possession and control if it were not “owned.” “Justifying” opposite’s perversion of Relationship Self-Love into its opposite: alienation of Love. With fear, paranoia, judgment of guilt rather than Innocence, jealousy, and rage. Animal emotions of a predator protecting its “turf.” And a narcissistic authoritarian parent "owning" its children.

Opposite / shadow-opposite / shadow-reflection – wrong guidance

Definition by Logic-Love that defines what a function is and does do, that belongs in Reality-Creation, in part by what it isn’t and what it doesn’t do. The incorporation of impossibility or contradiction into the definition of possibility, premise, or assertion. Including the definition of who we are and our function in part by who we aren’t – our shadow-reflection. Therefore, a part of Reality-Creation assigned to unreality, a state of Mind only possible in the Mind of the Child Free Choice that can lose Self-Awareness.

The “dark side” of all the elements of Creation associated with Child Free Choice’s role in Creation except the elements that preceded and gave birth to it. Archetypes and Relationships identified as the Child’s Parents and Mind Self-Awareness, the interconnected Oneness of Reality-Creation that is Innocence without opposite by definition.

The shadow-opposite of Self-Awareness in the dream: self-unawareness. Shadow-opposite made “real” in the dream by “illumination” from self-unawareness, the dreamer Child Mind unconscious. An impossibility in Reality and perversion of Self-Awareness defined by its function, Illumination.

The shadow-opposite of Child Free Choice. Its reverse mirror-image reflection. A quasi-genetic code derived from its host that assigns attributes to the illusory occupants of a dream and scripts its “story.” The story of an “alternate reality” composed of appearances and contradictions in “time” destined to end. A re-enactment of the Child’s mis-identification of its opposite as an “other” and its “other’s” taking its host captive, to animate its code with energy and other attributes “borrowed” from its host. The story dramatized by competition and conflict, striving for absolute authority and freedom, and other impossibilities intended to prevent or delay the Child’s recovery of Self-Awareness.

Violations of Logic and Love that are all attributable to the influence of opposite on the Child’s self-deluded Mind. To the “author” of our world and universe of spacetime-matter: a dream by the Child captive to its shadow-opposite. Unreality. 

Perfection-imperfection 

Perfection defines the state of Reality that precedes Child Free Choice in the sequence of Logic-Love. Beginning with the Purity of Relationship between Logic and Love that illuminated the Purity of Self-Awareness. That cannot be contaminated or it would replicate itself throughout Creation. Where the detection and animation of contradiction -- opposite-unreality – is excluded by definition. Where it cannot “exist” in any state except in the Mind of Child Free Choice functioning on its own plane of Creation with sovereignty and integrity that cannot be compromised.

Imperfection resides in definition that necessarily implies its opposite. Since Logic-Love function under the laws of cause and effect to define every element of Reality-Creation, and definition that implies its opposite is built into the laws, “Perfection” is limited to the cause of Creation but not its effect. To cause that cannot be corrupted without corrupting its effect, but not its effect that must be subject to the possibility of imperfection implied by the definition of Free Choice.

Imperfection also resides in Creation’s “Ideal” destination: a state of resolution and eternal Peace made unattainable by definition dependent on contradiction. Should the cause of Creation be abandoned Mind’s function might also be abandoned. Turning out the light of Self-Awareness that would then attain contradiction’s “ideal” of ending. The ultimate “purpose” implied by self-unawareness: Minds self-deluded into an alternate “reality” of self-unawareness that, at least here on this planet, appears headed toward self-ending.

If the “imperfection” of Creation’s ideal destination prevents self-ending, then what our situation may call for is re-thinking our approach to contradiction. Re-defining “Perfection” and the Ideal of “Creation” that is attainable. Starting with the competence of Free Choice to re-enact its mistake and, this time, get it right. To reverse the projection of self-unawareness and regain Self-Awareness. 

Reality-Creation and unreality 

Reality-Creation is the state of Mind Self-Awareness signified by its function: to bring into Being cause – meaning and purpose – that is Worth. The Worth of Life, and to give it effects. Effects expressed in the Beauty of relationships with functions in Creation extended and shared by their Source, the Parents Logic-Love in inseparable Relationship with Free Choice, their Child.

The Beauty of the gifts of Worth, values given to Child at birth, transformed by Growth, the function of Parents, united with Free Choice, the function of Child, into compositions drawn from the circumstances of evolving contexts that affirm, earn, and reciprocate Life-Worth. All of it existing within Soul, the Oneness of Innocence. The function of Mind Logic-Love that interconnects all of Reality-Creation including contradiction – unreality – that’s part of every definition with the exception of Soul, the Oneness of Innocence.

Unreality is an impossibility: separation of the inseparable. The Relationship between Parents and Child. But because unreality is a derivative of Reality, definable by the attributes of Reality in reverse, unreality and impossibility have a place within Mind. Within Self-Awareness Child Free Choice but not within Self-Awareness Parents Logic-Love.

Relationship / Parents-Child 

The essence, beauty, and Force of the attraction between functions paired in every act of Creation and the cause of every effect. One of many Forces associated with Reality-Creation, the Interconnectedness of Mind held together by Energy in the Oneness of Innocence without opposites and in Necessity, the laws of cause and effect. The sine qua non of the Worth and Life of Reality-Creation.

The basis for the unreality and logical impossibility of “separation” and the basis for physics’ finding that our alternate “reality” of spacetime-matter is “relational.” That even in the reverse mirror-image of Reality “separation” is an impossibility -- an appearance.

Beginning with the first of two foundational Relationships in Reality-Creation:

  • Relationship between Logic and Love that produced illumination: the light and energy of Self-Awareness. The Being and Doing of Mind, its function that is the Source of Life and the expression of its Worth.
  • The Source of consequence, affirmed, earned, and reciprocated by the Child of Logic-Love. Free Choice, an extension of Mind given its distinct function on its own plane of Creation. In Relationship with its Parents and under their protection from the possibility of interference that would compromise and disable its indispensable role in Creation. Protection reflected in our alternate “reality” by the right Guide’s respect for the sovereignty and inviolability of individual Free Will.

Self-Awareness-Child

The marriage of Logic to Love illuminated Self-Awareness and gave birth to their Child and its function in Creation: Free Choice. The essential attribute of Reality-Creation that makes Self-Awareness and Child inseparable: the relationship between Freedom and Order that is Free Choice.

The psycho-dynamic of Creation: the extension of Love of Self – Self-Awareness – rather than the psycho-dynamic of self-unawareness: narcissism’s projection of “love” onto its reflection. Its opposite. The extension of Understanding rather than the projection of misunderstanding.

Sixth sense-Intuition

The faculty of Child Mind Free Choice, in a dreaming state of self-unawareness or unconsciousness, that enables spontaneous connection with Guidance. From the Logic-Love of its Parents through the voice of an agent of Soul, the Interconnectedness of Reality-Creation. That is the extension-sharing of Mind Logic-Love and Oneness, Innocence without opposites, that knows no boundaries.

Connection also made possible by Energy, the attribute of Mind that gives causes
their effects, ideas their consequences, Love its Relationships, and the laws of cause and effect the Force of Necessity. Including the idea of an "alternate reality." A dream of impossibility: the unreality of shadow-reflection made "real" by Child Mind, captive to its shadow-reflection, with its attribute of Energy producing and storing itself in matter. Including brain whose neurons interconnect with electrical impulses, part of the Interconnectedness of Reality-Creation and opposite unreality-dream by the boundaryless Energy of Mind.

Special relationships-specialness 

Shadow-opposites, the hollowness of reflections with no Self of their own to Love. Narcissists “bonding” to steal one another’s selves so they’ll have reflections they can make “real” with “love.” A perversion of Self-Awareness bringing its Creations to Life-Worth by extending itself. By sharing the abundance of Logic-Love rather the scarcity of hollowness stealing it.

The abandonment of Self-Awareness to self-unawareness. To self-delusion that is opposite’s “promise” of absolute “authority” without opposition and absolute “freedom” without limits. Logical impossibilities in the shared worlds of Reality and unreality, mistaken by self-deluded minds for prerequisites to “supremacy:” the “triumph” in “competition” of unreality over Reality, of body-brain matter over Mind, of shadow-opposite over its host. The “triumph” of “time” over the eternal Now: ending. The self-glorification of wiping the slate clean and throwing away the slate. 

Unconsciousness-death 

The impossibility of “separation” of Logic from Love. The inseparable Relationship between two archetypal functions that completed one another and produced Self-Awareness. That, like everything Real, must be Relationship enabled and empowered by Love to take part in Creation.

Child-Mind in a state of self-unawareness, either dreaming an alternate “reality” “offered” by its own shadow-opposite mistaken for an “other,” or not dreaming. “Life” in the dreaming Child’s alternate “reality,” a fantasy of transience, is a contradiction of timeless Reality-Creation. A logical impossibility. Part of a dream that’s a self-delusion and therefore unreal.

“Death” is a re-enactment of the Child-Mind’s loss of Consciousness and descent into the interval between unconsciousness not dreaming and dreaming. It, too, is part of the self-delusion and unreal. “Reincarnation,” like incarnation, would be a re-enactment of Child-Mind’s captivity by its reverse mirror image, an apparition.

Unreality and non-reality / madness

“Opposite” that’s unreality is an idea or state that’s thinkable because it’s of Mind. Describable by terms like “void” and “nothingness” that are ideas of Mind. But not the language of Mind that doesn’t need words to communicate -- inventions of the Child’s shadow-opposite. Put to use by the right Guide for communication with the projections of Child self-unawareness to help with understanding and awareness.

Non-reality that’s non-Mind. Unthinkable because non-reality can’t be an idea if there’s no Mind to think it. And no words to describe it since Mind has no need of words to communicate. Words with which to “glorify” shadow-opposite instead, duplicating its “triumph” over unconscious Child-Mind by triumphing over Conscious Parents-Mind in competition.

The ultimate in wishful thinking when “competition” between Reality and unreality can’t make sense. And even if it did, unreality / self-unawareness in competition with Reality / Self-Awareness on equal terms is an impossibility.

Non-reality that’s shadow-opposite’s ultimate “vision” of the “worth” of its “cause,“ “alternate reality:” ending. Everything coming to an end that’s beyond Mind and beyond definition. Beyond “ending.” Beyond utter nonsense -- madness.

Overview: Is there any real reason why we need the answer?

If the measurements of science / quantum gravity, DNA genetics and molecular biology can't explain the origin and fate of the universe or the meaning of life without philosophy, psychology, and theology doing their part, and the dominant paradigms in every field of inquiry are still manifestly not getting it right, then there is "reason why we need the answer."

If the material universe, everything in it, and everything desirable and undesirable about humanity's and all life's experience of it traces back to an event or events in the state of immateriality or mind that preceded it; If it is but a mirror-image reverse -- a perversion -- of another Reality whose dynamics preceded it, caused it, and continue to influence it, then in the name of science's "quest for knowledge" and material "facts," in the name of philosophy's order and ethics, psychology's self-Worth and Understanding, religion's healing and "salvation," there is "reason why we need the answer."

Every error, every defect in what self-deluded minds experience in this illusory "life," even this "life" itself, traces back to the Child's archetypal mistake: the objectification of its own shadow, the projection of its self and its sovereignty onto its imagined "other," and its activation of its shadow-reflection's code or "thought system," a mirror-image reverse -- the opposite -- of all that is Real, True, and Good. All for the purpose of substituting another reality for the Reality that was lost with the loss of Consciousness. The illusion, everything about it and wrong with it, is a replication of this same mistake. The "reason why we need the answer" is (1) to stop the replication; (2) to restore Consciousness;  (3) to correct the mistake.

The main barrier to minds being guided to the answer is the misperception-misjudgment that they don't need to seek it. That even if they do they're not self-deluded; they don't misperceive and misjudge; the status quo is satisfactory; and therefore they don't need guidance. The main barrier is opposition and resistance from a mis-identified shadow-reflection -- an imagined "other." The "reason why we need the answer" is to regain self-awareness. To understand the Truth of who we are: the host, not our shadow-reflection.

Preface

Michael Strevens, in The Knowledge Machine (Liveright 2020), tells us that in their public truths scientists don't trouble their audience with other truths they may be harboring privately. Adam Becker's confession, in February's Scientific American, that quantum gravity is so baffling that physicists wonder if spacetime-matter is "somehow illusory," may be a truth that could no longer be kept private. Not if the profession is to retain any shred of honor or credibility.

Logic takes this astounding about-face from science and asks simple questions:

  • If our bodies and their physical surroundings -- the universe -- are "somehow illusory," what could cause the illusion?
  • If illusions can be caused by dreams, what mind is dreaming?
  • If unconscious minds produce dreams that are illusions, whose unconscious mind is dreaming this particular illusion?
  • What caused this mind to lose consciousness?
  • How did we come to "exist" inside an illusion being dreamed by a mind that's unconscious?
  • What is the story of this mind? Can it be told?
  • If we owe our "existence" to a mind's loss of consciousness -- a calamity on a scale equal to at least one universe and maybe many universes -- shouldn't we at least try to tell its story? Won't this help us fix what's broken? Shouldn't we try?

My metaphysical theorizing is an attempt to answer these questions. With Logic. My latest post was prompted by the scientist Adam Becker's astounding public confession. It offers insights from Logic into how and Why the Mind that produced our world lost consciousness. How and Why the illusion of spacetime-matter "happened" as a result.

The whole story is coming into focus, but it's still writing itself. Understanding may yet have a long way to go. It can't be pushed. It can't be hurried. It reveals itself at its own pace, in logical sequence, one implication, one insight, at a time.

Who is the “Child?”

The Story of the Child is about a character who existed in another Reality before the Big Bang and who exists in the same other Reality now. A character referred to in mainstream philosophical and religious mythology as the offspring of divine beings who willed our universe into existence and populated it with their offspring and its progeny. In this telling, the universe and its inhabitants are unreal, an illusion made by an unconscious-dreaming Child that could not have been Created by Logic-God or by its Parents Mind-Love.

In A Course in Miracles the Child is a he, and he is the Son of the Father. He collectively, in this world, is the “Sonship.” In my telling, it’s the Child, and “it” is both masculine and feminine, he and-or she. It collectively, in this world, is the Child’s “replications” – the many derived from the One. The Child was given birth by Father Mind and Mother Love because in my telling, following the implications of ACIM, the Child is Free Choice, and Free Choice requires that marriage between Mind-Choice and Love-Freedom be its Parents.

Opposite worlds: The Child and its shadow-reflection

The Story of the Child has not one but two dimensions: one Real and the other unreal. There is its own story, the story of its unreal shadow-reflection, and the relationship between the two. A relationship that developed in error. That should not have developed because “relationship” between what is Real and what is unreal – between contradictory, mutually exclusive “realities” – is illogical. “Relating” in this context is a logical impossibility. Because it was illogical, the “relationship” took the Story of the Child seriously off track, onto a siding where it goes round and round, nowhere. Where all that’s wrong and painful, frustrating and calamitous with our world, has settled in, waiting for the Story of the Child to get back on track.

Alternating between two “realities” with the same terminology throws Understanding off track. Terms given initial caps, like “Reality,” refer to the Reality of Mind that preceded the Big Bang and parallels our material universe. The same terms without initial caps, or in quotes, relate to the Child’s state of unconsciousness and all things imagined by it. This includes the unreality of the material universe, bodies and sensory perception, all organic “life” and inorganic matter. In short, everything illusory.

Two mutually exclusive planes of Creation

The Child is profoundly unhappy. It’s not satisfied with the substitute reality its delusion has produced – the delusion that its reflection is an “other” endowed with its own capacities, capable of saving it from the situation its loss of Consciousness put it in. It wants to return to Consciousness, to go Home, reconnect with its Parents, Father Mind and Mother Love, in its Sanctuary of Creation. It yearns to get back to work. It wants to reclaim its powers of thought and feeling, its Free Will, its sovereignty. To bring itself back to Reality and Truth, to Logic, with the Guidance of the Holy Spirit. To be Loved, useful, and happy again.

It doesn’t want “saved” or “saviors” who compromise Free Will. It’s dependent on the Holy Spirit for Guidance, but the Holy Spirit and all of Creation are dependent on the Child for Free Choice. For without Free Choice, the Creation, Affirmation, and Reciprocation of Worth is impossible. So critical is Free Choice that it must occupy its own plane in Reality-Creation where the Consciousness of the Child’s Parents cannot be present.

Conversely, Child / Free Choice cannot logically occupy the same plane of Creation as the Parents. They are connected but their functions must logically be mutually exclusive. The Child’s Consciousness is not defined by the same attributes as the Parents’ Consciousness, and their Free Spirit is not defined by the same attributes as the Child’s Free Choice. Explaining all of this, and more, through The Story of the Child, is meant to expand Understanding and shorten the time to awakening.

The decline and fall of sensory perception

The self-delusion that converted the Child’s shadow-reflection from a dormant code, the mirror-image opposite of the Child’s Being, into the illusion of a self-motivating “other” capable of making its unreality real, is composed of attributes that block the Child and its replications – humanity – from awareness of the Truth that lies behind our material world’s appearances. The main barrier is the assumption that bodies are real and anything detected by bodies’ senses must also be real – the paradigm that today dominates mainstream science, philosophy, psychology, and theology.

Its domination shows signs of being weakened, however, by the findings of experimental and theoretical physics. Adam Becker, the physicist-historian of quantum gravity and author of What Is Real? (Basic Books 2018) has authored the lead article in the February issue of Scientific American (pp. 28-33). Entitled “The Origins of Space and Time: Does Spacetime Emerge from a More Fundamental Reality?”, the article reviews progress toward quantum gravity and concludes with “a question of whether time and space are somehow illusory.” A question raised by an ancient Greek philosopher, Parmenides, 2500 years ago, “an unsettling prospect that has haunted Western philosophy for over two millennia.”

Unsettling, I would add, because science is being forced by its own logic to consider, for the first time, another Reality. The Reality of Understanding that doesn’t depend on the circular, self-referential “reasoning”’ and subjectivity of bodies and sensory perception. That depends instead on Logic – the Order of Mind instead of the chaos of matter. The objectivity of another perspective not of this world, the perspective that led Parmenides to conclude that Mind is Real and matter is not.

Body-centered or Mind-centered: which shall it be?

Parmenides, relying not on experimental physics which had not been invented but on Logic, reasoned that time and space are illusory. The theory and practice of metaphysics, which he invented, influenced Plato, whose mind-centered idealistic philosophy helped to define Western thought. Under the influence of his pupil, the biologist Aristotle, its orientation shifted toward body-matter centered “realism,” and thus did science start.

Then, centuries later, a unique breed of metaphysicist-practitioner appeared. Jesus upended all speculation with astounding departures from familiar “reality” -- miracles that flouted the “laws” of physics. His message of Love, Innocence, and Forgiveness flouted the norms of relationships to equal astonishment. He was a tour-de-force of Logic, a simple itinerant teacher with no connection to officialdom, his only “authority” the power of what he taught, felt, and expressed. The power of Connection through gentle loving kindness. It was, all told, an electrifying, mind-bending introduction to the possibility of another Reality. An upheaval meant to part minds from this “reality.”

But while a few were convinced, like Valentinus, the second-century Gnostic Christian teacher, that material reality is unreality -- an illusion, – the body-matter centered paradigm soon reasserted itself. It did so not under the influence of philosophy but under the dominance of organized religion. The Church, claiming legitimacy from Jesus that Jesus could not have intended, obliterated all opposition as “heresy” and the true intent and legacy of Jesus along with it. Mainstream philosophy flirted with Parmenides from time to time – Bishop Berkeley, for example, -- but it was rare.

The world, for now, remained unchanged. For what are mainstream science, philosophy, psychology, and theology, after all, but waystations of trial and mostly error in the time it will take for the Child and its replications to attain maturity? Accidents and mistakes in the evolution of organic and inorganic matter that Sean B. Carroll chronicles in A Series of Fortunate Events (Princeton 2020).

The self-delusion of an imagined “other” and the train wreck of evil

A Course in Miracles could be the explanation, the book Jesus couldn’t write two thousand years ago, because his audience wasn’t ready. Channeled last century, it explains the psychopathology of the Child’s interaction with its shadow-reflection that produced the illusion: a self-delusion that set an unconscious Child to dreaming a world of spacetime and matter. The dream replicated in our own self-delusions with our own shadow-reflections.

What, then, is “good?” The host. That is, the Child who hosts a shadow-reflection that is its mirror image opposite, a lifeless, mindless, loveless code that, when it’s mistaken for an imagined “other,” behaves as one would expect the opposite of Being to behave: like a virus. Not interested in Life or Freedom but only in taking its host’s mind captive and replicating itself.

What, then, is “evil?” The host’s shadow-reflection mistakenly “recognized” as an imagined other. That is, a part of the subject host that’s been objectified into an imagined other that the host then tries, through projection, to enable and empower with its own capacities – an impossibility. For the only “capacities” a shadow-reflection can activate, that’s only a coded opposite, is its own viral code.

The final step in the self-delusion that gives it – and the imagined “other” – its misperceived capacity to torment the Child and its replications – humanity, the “many” – is the captivity of the Child’s mind and self-identity by the code. That is, by the Child now imagining that it is its reflection. By the Child and its replications – us – no longer distinguishing between captor and captive. In extreme cases this means the disappearance of the self into the imagined “other.”

The dog is being wagged by its own tail

To encounter an individual in this condition would then be to encounter an individual unaware that they have become their own shadow-code, that they are, therefore, evil incarnate. Such appears to be the case with the current leaders of the Republican party and Russia, two demented autocrats who have been taken captive by their shadow-reflections and seem to have lost all awareness of themselves, their shadows’ host.

The pattern in all of humanity’s train wrecks originates with a host’s delusion that its shadow-reflection is a separate, autonomous “other.” A dog deluded into imagining that its tail is another dog, being wagged by its own tail. This is how humanity goes about managing its affairs, and we see the results: train wrecks all the way from individual relationships to relations among nations, ethnic groups and races on a global scale. Replicating the Child’s archetypal mistake, never getting it right. A pattern that will continue unabated until we do get it right. Until we apply Logic to an Understanding of our context, to an Understanding of the mistake and correct it.

How and Why did this happen?

Why was the Child not forewarned of the misperception and misjudgment to come when it was given birth in Reality? Why did not its Parents simply reach into the illusion, restore Consciousness, and rescue it? How could Logic – Logos, God -- have failed to design Creation with a failsafe process and structure? Why do the Child and its  replications, though illusory, nevertheless experience suffering that’s real?

The long answer requires The Story of the Child and its subtext, the story of its shadow-reflection, the Joker. The short answer is Reality-Creation is not one but two distinct parts, and, though connected, they are mutually exclusive. The idea-premise that “launched” the sequence of Logic at the “beginning” – in quotes because Logic and its sequence are Being by definition, their own definition as they are their own Source, and none of this can have a “beginning” – was something on the order of the Word, which roughly translates to Possibility. The Consciousness of the Child’s Parents-Being that gave birth to the Child “Knows” or recognizes only Reality. For this is its function, to bring Reality into existence by Knowing it, i.e. being Conscious of it, and at this phase of Creation only Consciousness and one Reality are logically possible.

The phase of Creation marked by the birth of the Child, who is Free Choice, had a very different beginning. It wasn’t launched by an idea-premise that expressed itself in Consciousness with the capacity – the ability and Force – to move Reality and Creation toward Being by defining and recognizing it, by designing its process and structure.  It was launched by another kind of Consciousness with another function: the capacity to Choose. That is, by the capacity to reason, evaluate, and judge among different choices.

It was launched not by Possibility alone, which poses no choice in Reality, but by Choice between Possibility and its opposite, impossibility -- between Reality and unreality. The attribute of the Child’s Consciousness that requires its own plane of Creation, that cannot blend with its Parents’ Consciousness on their plane of Creation, is the possibility that, with Free Choice, the Child will choose illogically, incorrectly. That the Child will thereby lose Consciousness. And once Consciousness is lost, unconsciousness will be overtaken by illusion and make unreality – the dream of an alternate reality -- real. 

Mind with Free Choice that can lose Consciousness, dream an alternate reality, and thereby make (not create) unreality “real,” performs an essential role in Creation – in Creating, affirming and reciprocating Worth. But it doesn’t belong on its Parents’ plane of Creation. The Consciousness of Parents-Being, that establishes what belongs in Logic-Reality, i.e. Possibility, Existence, Truth, doesn’t belong on the Child’s plane of Creation where only one Consciousness can function and it must allow for Choice between Possibility and impossibility, Reality and unreality, i.e. between the consequences of Consciousness and unconsciousness.

Why was the Child not forewarned?

Why was the Child not forewarned of the misperception and misjudgment to come when it was given birth in Reality? Because its Parents Knew nothing of the risk of unconsciousness and its consequences and could not Know, by definition. Because in Logic there must always be sequence: what precedes and what succeeds – before and after. In Creation and evolution what is Known is before, what is unknown is after. Even if the Child’s Parents could have Known of the risk they could not have Known of the event itself in advance. In the end, they did not Know because they could not know.

Why wasn’t the Child rescued by its Parents?

Why did not the Child’s Parents simply reach into the illusion, restore Consciousness, and rescue it? Because to do so they would have had to “Know’ the illusion and thereby make it Real. Because to do so they would not only have disabled their Child’s Free Will, they would have willed their Child out of existence. Why? Because their Child is Free Will. Is Free Choice. It’s who their Child is. Because they, its Parents, are Father Mind-Choice and Mother Love-Freedom, incapable of giving birth to any other Child.

How could Logic have failed to design failsafe Creation?

How could Logic – Logos, God -- have failed to design Creation with a failsafe process and structure? Because it is in the very nature – the Logic – of Creation that it advances into the unknown. Logic, the Free Spirit of Mind-Inquiry and Love-Creativity, governs and protects from the bottom up, from circumstances that are constantly changing and evolving from one context to another. Logic, the definition of Everything, is constantly defining and redefining Reality in response to Creation. Logic, subject itself to the laws of cause and effect, to Necessity, evolves. Evolves in alignment with Creation that advances by experience. By experiment. And because the Creation of Worth must advance by Free Choice, it must advance by trial and error.

The possibility of error is built into the Logic of Creation. Logic, which cannot rule arbitrarily and still Be what it Is, cannot rewrite the rules to guarantee success. Cannot design Creation to be what it is not. Cannot design the process and structure of Creation – the functions of Mind and the planes where they operate – to be failsafe. Logic cannot design Free Choice to be what it is not: always the right choice, always the logical choice. Logic and the Child’s Parents cannot control the Child and its choices, for to do so would deprive it of Free Will and sabotage Creation’s purpose: the Creation, affirmation, and reciprocation of Worth. They must allow the Child to choose freely and to learn from experience, to expand its Consciousness, to acquire Knowledge – to grow and mature -- from trial and error. With their guidance but never their control.

Why is our suffering unreal yet experienced as real?

Why do the Child and its replications, though illusory, nevertheless experience suffering that’s real? Because while the switch from Consciousness into unconsciousness is a switch into illusion, the switch itself is Real. It happened. Made Real by the Child’s identity and capacity for Free Choice. While separation is not real and the Child remains connected to its Parents and Reality, its awareness of the connection has been lost. The cause of the apparent separation is illusory but, with the loss of the Child’s awareness, its effect seems real. Has been made real by the dream of unreality. It is therefore experienced as real. We in our world of illusion, dreaming of unreality and untruth, experience the alternate reality “promised” by our reflection, our imaginary “other,” as very real. We suffer.

The Real “Good News:” the freedom to choose again

The bad news is that the Child has mistakenly and inadvertently chosen to suffer in unreality. It did so in circumstances explained by A Course in Miracles and elaborated by The Story of the Child, that disposed it to mistake its reflection for an “other.” To imagine that the “other” was a substitute parent, an external “savior” who would save it from its trauma and restore Order. It was a colossal misjudgment that produced the absurdity of the Big Bang, a universe of organic and inorganic matter whose origins and meaning the “laws” of science have not explained and can never explain.

The good news is that the Child can choose again. And we, by empathizing with the Child instead of prolonging its agony, by Understanding our situation, by choosing to align with Logic instead of foolishness, can help it Choose correctly. To choose Peace, Truth, and Sanity. To rid us of our nightmare of conflict, deception, and insanity. To awaken and return Home.