“Before The Big Bang Was, I Am.”

 

When speaking of what we call dimensions, it is self-evident (to my self, even without proven mathematical theorem), that in the undifferentiated void before the so-called “big bang” which represents the beginning of space and time, zero and infinity mean the same thing.  Zero equals Infinity, with respect to space and time. If you can get a grip on what that means in the reality, not just an abstract idea for mathematicians, it can blow your mind like a koan on the limitations of concept. For me, it also offers simple and self-evident proof of the existence of the conscious will whom religions struggle to identify as God.

 

Though all of the material universe seems to operate on the cyclic principle which perpetuates duality through time (as elucidated by the I Ching), and thus each differentiated element therein might be expected to someday have an end, it is self-evident that the field in which the universe of time and space exists is itself eternal and infinite, the same as absolute zero.

 

 If a singularity is taken, a single unique point of existence in the void, then by itself it has neither dimension nor location.  The zero-dimension point does not intrude into the void, and the concept of infinity does not limit it.  As a singularity has no other thing with which to have relationship, there is no change, and thus, no time. A condition in which no time passes is the same as lasting forever unchanged, and is thus eternal.  Zero equals Eternity. That is to say, there is only the everlasting Now. 

 

If a second point is recognized that is not the first point, then a line drawn between them identifies a relationship, which we call a dimension. The distinction that one point is A and the other is not-A is an act of consciousness that establishes what we call a “word,” that is, the conceptual image of some thing as separate from the rest of the universe.  This conceptual image of distinction is what is meant by the Greek word “logos” which is used in the Bible. When the physical universe responds in conformance to such an image, it would be accurate to say, “the word is made flesh,” where flesh means not one man’s meat, but all the interacting substance of the physical world.  This is exactly the same process as any artistic or mechanical creativity. In the non-physical field of crafting images in the mind, a concept is conceived which does not yet exist in the material plane. By manipulating the physical in conformance to that image, it is brought into real existence. 

 

It takes the recognition of three points, and the concept of a relationship existing among them to establish a plane, that is, a two-dimensional condition.  It takes a fourth point not on the plane to establish a third dimension, and to give us the physical condition called volume. 

 

Time is said to have passed only when a change in the relationship of things is observed.   Until some primordial conscious will considered the existence of a point, and then a second point which was not the other point, and considered there to be a relationship, a “distance” between them, and then observed a third point in relationship to those could a change in relationship be observed to have taken place.  The existence of a physical universe of dimensions is wholly dependent upon the concepts of distinction and relationship, and upon the concept of comparison of relationships. Comparison of elements of change requires the ability to simultaneously hold  two images, only one of which can be what is real at the time of that comparison. The other must be a concept that no longer is the same as the existing reality, or which is not yet reflected in the existing reality.  The existence of any such image that is not the same as the reality clearly demands the existence of a conscious image creator, and someone to perceive the image.  Concepts are not merely the coincidental characteristics of physical things, either of those things imagined, nor of the cells of a body or the chips of a computer, but are functions of willfully creative consciousness.  Consciousness is not the same as a mechanical reaction, nor a chemical reaction. Those are things of which one might be conscious, but clearly things themselves, even mimetic robots, are not conscious. The question is not so much what we are that we should be conscious, but who we are.

 

Before any What or any When happened, there had to be a Who in the loop.  That is the most important spiritual lesson and experience you can draw from all this, when you really see a clear distinction between what is meant by “what” and “who.”

 

There has to be a Who before there can be a What.  The distinction A vs. not-A is a concept, that is, an act of conscious will.  The recognition of relationship is not a function of the things so related, but of the consciousness of the observer.  The entire existence of all the what-ness of the Matter-Energy-Space-Time universe is contingent thus upon the pre-existence of a willful consciousness, a primal Who.   

 

Until a change of relationship of things is observed, no time measurable has passed.  The Who therefore must precede time, which is an observation of a change of conditions in the What.  Clearly then, the pre-temporal pre-universe conscious will is eternal.  That conscious will who exists external and apriori to the universe of matter, energy, space, and time is that reality, more real even than the universe itself, the One we struggle to know as God.

 

While hedging a bit on the word God to avoid getting into people’s pre-conceived ideas and definitions, I do acknowledge that Who upon whose concepts the physical universe is in its most empirical sense founded is the same reality which every culture of human beings has recognized implicitly, and which every religion struggles to grasp intellectually, is exactly the One we call by such names as God, Allah, or Theta.  It is a reality we all can sense, but cannot get a grip on, like fish trying to figure out water.  Whatever book of graven images or golden calf you happen to subscribe to in attempting to put that genie into a bottle to serve you, or whatever blood you sacrifice in fear of it, there is only one real reality, no matter how well or how poorly any of your religious idols attempt to describe it.

 

As no map is the trip it describes, no matter how good a map it may be, no idol is the God it would describe, whether that idol is carved of stone, cast in gold, or like all versions of the Bible, an image graven in occult symbols on papyrus and bound up like a mummy.  That is exactly what all of the versions of the so-called holy books are, mummified idols, descriptions of God in symbols and stories.   For all the fine things that are written in all those wonderful and terrible books, from uplifting inspiration to the horror of dark self-fulfilling prophecy, they are not fairly called the living word of God.  You will find the living word of God in the mouths of God’s living prophets.  There are a lot of us.  Here’s a quotation for you, “My Father’s children all do prophecy, each in his own strange tongue.”  If you would hear the word of God, you only have to open your heart and mind and listen.  If you keep your heart and your ears and your mind shut because you have been told you already have all that word there is in the books they would sell you, then you are unlikely to hear a word of it.

 

            My rudimentary knowledge of sub-atomic physics informs me that as the researchers delve deeper and deeper into the atom, a point is reached where the definitions of particles are no-thing, not chunks of mass, but concepts like twisters and strings, un-locatable places where no thing exists but the concept of the relationship of positive-and-negativeness.

 

Einstein’s mathematics are beyond my skill, but the conclusions he drew from them I understand.  One of these is the observation that the ability of change to propagate through the physical universe (that is, the speed of light) is limited, and constant.  What is not constant from local condition to the next is the rate of change we measure as time.  The rate of time is not a constant, but is a local function of your speed in relation to something. 

 

The mathematics say that as you approach the speed of light, both dimensions and time are diminished.  Lengths become shorter, and time becomes slower.*  If a spaceship took off from earth, accelerated to near light speed, used the gravity of the nearest star to turn back around and returned to earth, thirty years would pass on the spaceship, and about two thousand years would have passed here.  At the speed of light, lengths in the direction you are moving become zero, the rate of time becomes zero, and the energy needed to accelerate any mass to that speed becomes infinite.  

 

This condition exists in black holes.  As a particle falling into it accelerates under its enormous gravity, it approaches the speed of light.  As it does, its “spaceship time” is slowed down until it approaches zero. Though moving at almost the speed of light, it is moving almost no distance at all in any measurable length of time.  Like a sphere flattened to a disc, its length approaches zero, so its volume approaches zero.  In the black hole, from the point of view of the external world, no time passes at all, forever. Every particle is moving at almost the speed of light, but at a rate of time almost zero, and filling up a volume of almost zero.  Presumably, at the center of a black hole, the speed of all the mass would reach c at the same instant, time and length would go to zero, mass would be zero, all converted by E=Mc2, and energy (the potential for change) would therefore be infinite. This would be exactly the same condition as the pre-big-bang undifferentiated void, an eternal unchanging now with no thing in it, and infinite potential.

 

This condition is, always was, and ever shall be the state of existence of that pre-primal Who, Eternal, and Infinite.   Only within the structure of a dimensional and temporal universe can there be individuals and change, things and time, avatars and experiences.  The universe, the whole universe, is a great big WHAT.  It exists because of the concepts of the eternal WHO.  It exists, all of it, simply to interest and amuse God, you could say, which is as good a reason as I can think of.  The fact that I am able to recognize that I am what is meant by the word “who” means that in some very real way I exist now and forever apart from all of the wonder and delight and suffering of the entire created universe.    

 

There is a point at which I recognize for all of what I have -- which I can say includes the entire physical world, as the sun is as much mine as my head or my hat -- none of all that is who I am.  All I can say about who I am is that it cannot be an accident of chemistry that I know that I am, and for all the worldly illusions of what I am, that I am is all the proof of the existence of God I need.  That does not, however, enable me to prove a thing to you.

 

  James Post   www.postpubco.com/blasphemy.htm 

 

*    A mathematician named Fisk

Had excretion exceedingly brisk.

So fast was his action

Lorentz contraction

Pressed each of his balls to a disk.