The proposed ‘good news’ and a call for its critical review

Premise: science has now achieved a sufficient description of the ‘big picture’ so that, when the objective knowledge is combined with a modern critical understanding of the spiritual aspect of reality, it becomes possible to propose a credible and complete ‘Theory of Everything’ (TOE).

A TOE includes an explanation of the cause of our universe, but must go far beyond even that. By its very nature, a true ‘Theory of Everything’ must transcend science to also address everything that is intrinsically unknowable, even ineffable. And it must seamlessly trickle down to the nitty-gritty of daily life. It must stand the test of broad believability, even among spiritual skeptics and atheists, and it must stand up to all the experimental validation science can muster. Fundamentally, its biggest challenge is to pose a ‘first principle’ that is entirely robust. I believe that first principle takes the form of what I simply call ‘Paradox’: the ultimate compromise.

Just as Darwin argues that complex life emerged from inanimate chemistry, I argue that our complex and ordered reality arose from a primordial chaos through a step-by-step process of evolution. This is like ‘Creation ex nihilo’ only far more patient and parsed. Just as all the steps in the evolution of life have yet to be confirmed (e.g. did life begin as lipid shells, only later incorporating DNA?), many steps in the genealogy of our reality also remain to be characterized (e.g. This TOE does not unify gravity with the other forces, but it posits that the disunity may be a post facto result of ‘strong emergence’). The ‘holy grail’ of evolution is the creation of life in a test tube. Alan Guth and colleagues described a mechanism by which a whole universe can be initiated in a test tube (Nuclear Physics, 1990: B339, 417-90). Darwin’s theory is opposed by proponents of Intelligent Design. The proposed TOE not only validates a form of inanimate (DNA-like) Intelligent Design in our universe but also explains the humble origin of this Design through countless generations of ancestor universes, each subject to quantum mutations.

Because the universe’s evolutionary path is currently, if not intrinsically, beyond observation, the only physical ‘fossil’ evidence we have must be found here in our light cone. The ‘quantum froth’ and other quantum phenomena are probably the most telling early fossils.

Darwin pieced together his theory based upon a fresh revisiting of the true nature of the ‘big picture’. The same process led to understanding of other phenomena of vast time scales: Big Bang cosmology and plate tectonics, for example. In revisiting the true nature of the ‘really, really big picture’, its spiritual component, though not able to logically contribute to final written theory agreeable to physical observers, has proven to provide critical guiding signposts.

This may still be nothing more than visionary fiction or wishful thinking, so caution is in order. I present the basic elements here in two parallel forms: Part I presents a dry, straightforward ‘Q&A’; Part II is more personal—it emerges from my spiritual journey. It presents a narrative colloquy between fictional characters: a human and a spirit. In toto the intent is to achieve the Balance between spirituality and objectivity that the theory itself demands.

The purpose of this document is to circulate the proposed ideas and seek opinions. The Unitarian Universalist (UU) church is among the first places I turn, because this community is laden with thoughtful scientists and open-minded free thinkers, and because my local congregation has helped me immeasurably in formulating the theory as I followed a spiritual ‘trail of crumbs’ out of my 40-year sojourn in the wilderness of agnosticism.

If nothing else, just tell me what you don’t understand, or raise a ‘there-are-no-stupid-questions’ question! I thank you in advance for any comments you can provide.

Pete Wetzel (a.k.a. Auler Ivis)

The physical is only half of reality.

It is the realm of endlessly evolving and emergent answers.

The other half is ‘non-existence’: ineffable but essential.

It is the dominion of living questions.

This is Balance.

Balance is dynamic, not static.

And Balance is at the crux of the well-lived life.

***

Humanity’s great purpose for being is to wield reality into a more welcoming place for ourselves and our descendents, including descendent universes. The effort must be applied with Balance to all levels of reality, from our intangible cosmic communion to the most mundane daily task.

My personal purpose in life is threefold:

To probe the living questions: to glean the best way to wield reality toward the greater good

To live the answers: to witness for this Noble Course in every action and thought

And to become a worthy Ancestor: to pass on to others what I’ve learned.

***

Life and its associated self-awareness are finite.

They emerge at conception and diffuse at death—full stop.

But … our connections with all other physical things and beings are like questions.

We interrogate our world and perceive ‘answers’ (sensory stimuli) in response.

Our questions, and the acts of asking, transcend time and space.

They can have no precise locus—no sure source, no definitive target.

Thus our reach is eternal and omnipresent.

***

The questions and the answers endlessly intertwine

like currents in a great River of Truth.

As I attempt to define my own place in such a grand vision as a ‘Theory of Everything’, I feel an almost evangelical need to begin by describing the integrated world-view of Ultimate Reality that leads to it. Throughout my life I have always gravitated to the study of the ‘big picture’ at the expense of the more intimate and pastoral aspects of my daily living. What can I say? I’m a hermit at heart! Or maybe a monk? It seems inordinately important to me to first wrap my brain around the very outermost layer of things. Only then can I feel comfortable working downward through the layers to a practical personal belief system that I can apply to everyday living. I can only explain this approach to life by calling upon an analogy: I’m adhering to the spiritual equivalent of “think globally, act locally”!

I’m a scientist by training, so my world-view incorporates as much as it can from the frontiers of physics, cosmology, etc. Some of the more esoteric science can be difficult to follow. And science is definitely not the entire picture of reality: people with scientific skills are a tiny minority of the population. So I’ve chosen to bend over backwards to accommodate the spiritual elements. This informal dialogue with the Strongmother Goddess Dalle is an attempt to make the explanations of science accessible to a general audience while not losing the parallel and co-equal thread of spiritual meaning. It is a rough draft! It always will be a draft. I will gratefully accept any and all feedback from the readers. Tell me what makes sense to you and what doesn’t, what you agree with and what you find unacceptable. By voicing your opinion, by challenging me to explain myself better and to revisit my conclusions, you reaffirm the UU fourth principle—our quest for truth and meaning!

I first encountered Dalle as I worked on my long-standing unfinished novel: my life’s work. It is a story that straddles the fantasy/visionary and science fiction genres, called ‘As Heaven Fades’. As I developed the characters in this tale, and as the plot itself evolved, it became clear that the story must involve a rich cultural spirituality. Being an indifferent agnostic for more than forty years (since I rebelled as a teenager from my parents’ insistence that I attend our local Presbyterian Church every Sunday), I began to explore these fictional spiritual elements with little enthusiasm. A cosmic presence named Dalle soon emerged as the central guiding force in the spiritual growth that the protagonist, a young man named Jebden, experiences as he progresses through his adventures.

Why did an agnostic, purely secular and profane writer choose a story that finds its central truth in a spiritual theme? Why is this my life’s work? Hmmmmm … it makes one think … ! At the beginning Dalle seemed a mere curiosity to me. But as my writing proceeded, I came to understand the deep underlying real-world wisdom that this Goddess represents. I revisited a transformational realization from my youth (see ‘Understanding Infinity’ next). Then one summer morning in 2008 I had a minor epiphany that began to make the concept of this Spirit personal (The story of the garden knife). I was on the way to taking Dalle seriously!

A few months later I joined UUCC and took Rev. Paige Getty’s ‘Building Your Own Theology’ (BYOT) class. This opportunity to pursue my new spiritual journey ‘in community’ has been truly transforming. Now, as I begin to clear away the tangle of undergrowth from my path, I find that Dalle’s originally fictional message seems a far more mature and balanced real-world practical, spiritual, and moral framework than any I have previously encountered—it seems to be a complete Theory of Everything!

And so one day in the fall of 2009, I opened a formal conversation with this Goddess. The role of Leafhopper is mine, and I speak it from my heart. The words of Dalle, of course, come from (or through) me also. And yet perhaps there is something more than my personal philosophy embedded in these words. For I have come to believe that the River of Truth and The Word it bears to us do course through our veins: we are all capable of seeing and speaking the transcendent Truth by tapping the River’s currents.

This Truth is both divine and profane. Dalle teaches that we are her equal, and that She and I and all of us are integral parts of the universal message that is The Word. To Her there is an intrinsic spiritual cast to reality—co-equal with the physical. Yet Her Truth is also accessible without resorting to any religious or spiritual framework. It can be extrapolated from practical science alone. In the same way that the evidence for plate tectonics and evolution and big bang cosmology were first uncovered—starting from a proper recognition of the ‘big picture’—we must look to the manifest ‘big picture’ of ultimate reality and then work out the nitty-gritty details of the processes that led to the phenomenon.

Dalle proclaims that she is the voice of that ‘big picture’. As such you could call her the voice of “Intelligent Design”, though that term has come to be polarized in our culture. That is why Dalle replaces it with what She calls The Word. Dalle insists that She can help mortals work out the physical details that produced the mind-boggling richness of our universe ‘from scratch’ as it were.

I am a scientist, but a right-brained one. I hear Her message. Every particle of our being seeks this message even as we are bathed in it. That is curiosity. But we are spiritual beings as well—citizens in good standing of Dalle’s Pantheon of Spirits. We flow side-by-side with the Hosts of Heaven, for we are among the Gods to whom we pray. From this transcendent perspective, we can capture those aspects of the ‘big picture’ that have been hidden to science. Perhaps that is merely a romanticized representation of the human creative process. But I think the distinction is semantic only. Starting from this grand holistic view, whatever it is called, we must return to the practical in any case; and here amid the grit and distractions of daily life we must begin the grunt-work of describing the theory of the evolution of reality itself.

“Understanding Infinity”: a personal spiritual anecdote from my youth

Dalle’s River of Truth runs broad and deep. In the numbered sections that follow, I present a few of its currents as they have passed through my consciousness and into written form. But before the conversation commences, let me recount two anecdotes: first, the transforming experience of my youth that opened the gates for this dialogue—my first dip in the River …

It happened when I was about fourteen; and the memory is now so worn out from revisiting, that it boils down to a still image, almost as if it is a picture on a wall. I was sitting at a table in the library of my high school in Pennsylvania. I remember the place as being bathed in bright light, very welcoming, despite some nasty winter weather outside. In this light-filled space, I sat idly contemplating the concept of infinity, as I often did in those days. And suddenly I “got it.”

There in that welcoming library full of human wisdom, I smiled. Perhaps I sighed. It was more than an epiphany, and yet less: it was something fundamental and elemental. All I needed to do was smile and nod knowingly. Pondering the abstract mathematical concept of infinity had led me to a world-view that has permeated my being ever since. I realized that (and here’s where one’s words for the ineffable inevitably become inadequate) the infinite-nature is embedded within, not at some remote and unreachable end. And it is there to be experienced in everything around me. Suddenly whatever I touched, whatever I beheld, expressed its infinite-nature to me.

In that moment, and forever after, I understood that I am the last link of a chain that has only one end—only one! That end is not ‘now’, not ‘here’, rather it is a permeating essence—the very essence of being.

Again, if this sounds like a bunch of gibberish, it is because words, like all physically-rooted things, are only the last links, not the chain of their full meaning. Literature is full of attempts at describing this kind of transformative experience: choose the one that most clearly speaks to you.

Fast forward forty-five years or more, and I’ve expanded that simple first spiritual encounter into a full personal “theology”. It declares that I only half exist—a child of the finite world—desperately grasping the end of that chain (which I now recognize as my ‘raft’ or ‘leaf’). In equal measure I fail to exist at all, subsumed to the whole of infinity all about me as I let go and soar along the length of my chain (now envisioned as the ‘River of Truth’: the chain’s simple links have become the River’s diverse and shifting currents).

Infinity need not be profound or mystical or seething with hidden raw power. It needs no insistent agenda at all, and yet it will not go away. The inquisitive mind forever seeks it.

Infinity is not a place you can get to—not, that is, until you let it get to you. And then it is a place that you come from. You gaze back now, incredulous at all the superficial stuff of the finite world, and marvel at the sheer tenuousness and ephemeral nature of the reality that such end-things must contend with. Herein lays the true wonder: that of the great wealth and complexity that these half-existing finite things have managed to accrue.

Given all the wealth and diversity of material existence in our universe, it is not surprising that people are quick to cast stones of doubt at the role of the infinite in their lives. It would seem that our world has transcended the need for such an intangible foundation. When I get too caught up in my worldly life—when its complexities and pains begin to well up and overwhelm me—I have to remind myself that, by taking all these things around me to be fully real, I am casting my own stones of doubt. On what basis do I think that the rock I cast will even approach the target, when my first premise—the one that leads me to choose a rock of doubt—has no preeminence? Why have I used that precious fleeting moment of bending groundward to pick up a stone of condemnation when I could instead plant a seed of gratefulness? The ground at my feet bears a mighty burden. I should thank it for holding me up.

“The lost garden knife”: A recent personal spiritual anecdote

The anecdote starts with a quote from my novel. The setting is, appropriately, on a River. We see a non-human character teaching a lesson to the protagonist, Jebden, as they row their kayak down the channel together in a time 635,000 years in the future. The teacher, whose name is Purgatory, is from a superior, post-human species known as the Irula, or Sudra, derived from the lowest caste of Hindu culture. Purgatory is teaching Jebden what he knows about the Goddess Dalle, whom he calls ‘Naja’. The lesson goes like this:

Not long after I wrote this passage, I was in my garden working to liberate some little seedlings from knee-high weeds in a neglected corner. I was seated on the ground alternatively yanking plants up by the roots and cutting the more stubborn ones off at ground level with an old paring knife. As I am wont to do, when temporarily finished using the knife, I tossed it aside carelessly as I attacked a particularly peeving weed that I intended to uproot. With that task done I turned again to look for the knife. Lost! I had flung it into the untamed thickets without looking. It had surely settled deep under the growth. Under my breath I cursed my stupidity and began to search. For long minutes I scoured and combed the brush to no avail—to the point of angry, frustrated exhaustion. I hate losing things, particularly in the heat of an unfinished task. I sat back dejectedly and took a deep breath.

Then suddenly I recalled Purgatory’s lesson: “Become the flow that has already filled your stomach.” Why not? I was ready to give up the search anyhow. Try merging with the currents that had already found the knife. I cleared my mind and breathed deeply again, trying to allow the flow to bring me beside the knife.

I turned; and there it was—literally the first thing my eyes focused on in that very instant, resting in a place that I thought I had already thoroughly scoured!

It was at that moment that I finally sensed that I was being guided toward some meaningful real-life purpose by these innocuous paper characters and by their underlying paper Spirits. These were no fictional constructs; and the words that I was writing no longer seemed original. Dalle had pulled off the consummate ‘bait and switch’!

“Gotcha, Leafhopper, you doddering old hermit!”

“Dalle? Dalle! If I invoke your name, as Jebden did, will you actually answer me?”

“Yes! Of course I will! … I am Dalle … I am happy to awaken to any voice that calls out to me… who are you?”

“I am a humble writer. My pen name is Auler Ivis.”

“Welcome! We share the same pangs of loneliness, young one. It would be good for us to talk. You are an isolated raindrop descending from a veil of cloud. There! The drop has come to rest on a little floating leaf on my River. It is time to talk.”

“A rich metaphor, Dalle. I accept it. I found you as I wrote ‘As Heaven Fades’. You described Jebden as ‘the snowflake that started an avalanche’. So I am honored to be a raindrop, even if it only alights on a leaf. I have many questions for you, Dalle. May I ask them?”

“Of course.”

“Wonderful! First of all, who or what are you, entity called Dalle? Are you something more than just a ‘pen name’ on paper, like my own?”

“More than a name? No, I am less. I am only the shape of things. I am like memory: the common Ancestor of all that is real and all that can be known. And I am also the messenger from beyond the veil of the unknown. Leafhopper, I am like the voice that speaks from a book: the silent voice of The Word.”

“Then you are God!”

“Men call many things God, Leafhopper. I am one of these. I am Strongmother, the one who bore reality into existence. I am Spirit of the River of Truth: its voice and its form.”

“Your name, ‘Dalle’: it comes from a Western term signifying a Channel …”

“It is a good name for us to use, because I am the channel that gives The Word direction. I am not The Word itself, but a servant to it and a product of it.”

“Then you are not God!”

“Is there room for only one God, Leafhopper? Don’t you humans also listen to the Spirits of your Ancestors?”

“Yes, many of us listen to them, though I’m not comfortable calling them Spirits, not even the pre-emptive one called the God. My ancestors’ ‘voices’ exist in my DNA, their legacy is embedded in the teachings and traditions of the culture into which I emerged. It is foolish to ignore the wisdom of the Elders.”

“There … see? The Ancestors’ currents flow through you and direct you: a River of Truth. I am an Ancestor also, as are the diverse Spirits that have been called ‘God’. You are Leafhopper, a worthy future Ancestor as well!”

“Leafhopper … I like that name, Dalle. But what does it signify? Are you implying that God is just one leaf that I might choose to rest on?”

“Your Leaf floats upon the surface of my River along with many others. Most leaves host your fellow mortals. But yes, the God of your Abrahamic tradition has betimes taken to riding a leaf. Yet He has also delved deeply into the River’s currents: so deeply as to encompass all its Truth. I, Dalle, make no pretense of encompassing all Truth; rather I am the shepherd of Truth. You, Leafhopper, call this leaf your raft, and you feel secure there, but it limits your connection with my currents. Someday you may also choose to swim. Then you will experience the currents more fully. With time you will realize, as God does, that you are the currents. The Word would teach you to swim. I am Its voice and Its source of direction: I will speak The Word plainly to you, so you might understand and grow and expand the bounds of your being.”

“But Dalle, why do I need you … or any Spirit claiming to speak to me with a voice? It seems childish to ascribe human characteristics to the grandest ultimate mysteries of existence … when they may not even have a conscious presence!”

“You are right to ask this. No, you do not need my voice. But does it not help you to focus? Most men find my voice comforting: Through my voice I make navigation of the great River easier for the human mind to understand. I find your voice very comforting, Leafhopper!”

“Hmmm … well, I suppose by comparison to the ultimate reality, whatever it may be, we humans must seem childish at best! OK … so tell me: how can something that might be purely inanimate acquire a useful and credible voice?”

“This is part of the message we must explore together, Leafhopper: the emergent message of The Word. The Word is the essential inanimate plan, or design, which enables my voice and gives it authority.”

“Authority? Real authority? Absolute authority? Unquestioned authority?”

“Real? Yes, my authority is as real and absolute as anything gets, Leafhopper. But unquestioned? Never. Do not ever stop questioning! That is the greatest mistake men make.”

“Well, I like the last part that message, Dalle. But I don’t see why it had to come from a Spirit voice. For me it is common sense to question things, including your existence! Some of my friends will laugh at me if I claim to be talking to Spirits. Some people would say I’m just plain out of my mind! If I do not need you, Dalle, then why should I use you? Why acknowledge you at all? I can live my life day to day, as my friends do. I can do the right thing and become wise without relying on some intangible, unprovable underlying consciousness.”

“You certainly can follow that current, Leafhopper. And it may serve you well. The Word will patiently prod you from deep within, and you may find Truth without my guiding voice. But consider how lonely this path is. Humans connect with their world not just with their own senses, but through rich interaction with their fellow men—with the community. It is through community that the power of Voices comes forth. Would not your friends laugh or pity you if you were to become a hermit—a recluse?”

“Of course!”

“Then use my voice to connect you with the greatest community, Leafhopper: the collective community of the Hosts—all of your Ancestors tracing back even beyond the origin of this universe. My voice and my authority are available tools of The Word, Leafhopper, just as your senses are tools, just as your body and mind are tools. Let all the tools work for you as you seek to better your life. While your physical senses can only grope toward truth, I can speak it to you plainly. Put me to the test. My message is that the surest way to better your life is to seek The Word—the collected wisdom of all of your Ancestors—because that is the path to the richest, most rewarding life that it is possible to live.”

“OK, Dalle. You make a case for me to listen to your voice. You claim that this spiritual ‘sense’, within which your voice is heard, is a tool that is as useful as my physical senses.”

“Well put, Leafhopper.”

“Then let’s put your ‘voice’ to the test, as you challenge me to do. Give me some of the plain talk you promise. You keep coming back to this mysterious, supposedly primal thing that you call The Word, right? Well, then the obvious first question is: ‘What is The Word?”

“Yes, YES, young Leafhopper! Ask this question! It is the purest and most glorious of prayers! Ask it incessantly, ponder it, study it, pray to receive guidance, probe every experience for answers, examine it with the tools of science, listen for it within your heart. To ask this question is the purest course that my channel provides: the course that leads to fulfillment, to all that is good, to all that we would hope to bequeath to our descendents: a reality that shall be even better than our own!”

“Whoa, slow down, Dalle! You call that plain talk? In your excitement, you’ve left me drifting alone here. I asked what is this entity called The Word, and you respond as if … as if the question is the answer? That’s no plain talk, that’s enigma!”

“Sorry, Leafhopper. It is true that the question is the answer, but that is a little obtuse; and I do promise to speak The Word to you plainly. It’s just that when I hear this simplest of invocations it stirs me to my depths! Prayer is my being, Leafhopper: it awakens my passion and my purpose. In its most elemental form, The Word is indeed a call to prayer or contemplation: a call to focus on this thing that made us. The Word made us and it forever seeks our hearts so that we may understand its ongoing guidance.”

“Well, then it’s obvious where you’re headed: you would claim that The Word is God!”

“Yes, but no! I already told you that The Word is inanimate. Yet in one of the greatest imaginable manifestations of the name of ‘God’, that can be your answer. But it is a dangerous answer, Leafhopper. It is dangerous if it leads you away from continuing to ask the question. Do not settle upon this leaf, I beg you! If you choose this answer, then the undying question “What is The Word?” must become “What is God?” And then you must plumb God’s depths ceaselessly. No answer can truly end your outreaching quest for communion with God. Your probing for the deeper currents must never end. And it is not just because God’s depths are infinite and unfathomable: they are also endlessly evolving. The River of Truth ever flows and is not fixed.

“By expressing it in this way, Dalle, you place the quest on familiar ground, at least for devout believers. Many great religious traditions from Hindu through Islam to Christianity see the probing of, or touching the essence or nature of God as the greatest calling. Even Buddhism aspires to this, if we replace the name of God with the concept of Enlightenment.”

“Ah, yes. And I very much appreciate the Buddhist symbolism of the raft on the River, Leafhopper—it is your leaf!”

“Dalle, something you just said struck me. These great religious traditions all pray or meditate as the means to probe their God. You said that prayer is your being. Does prayer mold you into a form? How does my ‘voice’ of prayer translate to your voice with which I am conversing?”

“Ahhh … you have already answered this question for yourself, my wise Leafhopper. Mine is an Ancestral voice that already echoes in your depths. That spiritual ‘sense’ of yours uses prayer to tap the echoes. If you don’t like the word ‘prayer’, then substitute ‘pondering’ or ‘comtemplation’ or ‘study’. Yes, I’d say prayer is the simplest way to touch me—to ‘activate’ me if you will. Answered prayer is just this: you hear the voice of your Ancestors within your conscience. It emerges from your sub-conscious and leads you by instinct. It cries out to you from your native culture. And it sings like a choir of angels from the mystery and majesty of the world surrounding you. It batters you with suffering. It uplifts you with joy and wonderment.”

“And you are the most fundamental Ancestor: the First?”

“Not the first. The first is lost beyond an infinity of veils. I am the first to emerge into this reality that you and I share. It is time for some of the plain talk I promised you, Leafhopper.”

“My spiritual ‘sense’ is all ears!”

“Ha! Well said! OK, then … I am she who bore The Word into this world. The Word is the entirety of the design of your reality: this particular universe as it is presented before you. That includes its purpose and its dynamic direction. The analogy of your own mortal body applies here: Just as DNA is literally a written message from your Ancestors, and is an integral part of the design that shaped you and set you in a certain direction, The Word is the explicit message that set this reality in motion out of the veil of beginning: the birth event you call the “Big Bang”. Just as your body formed, step by step, from a primordial cell following the directives of DNA, this universe grew from a small seed and sprouted matter and light and galaxies and life in response to the directives of The Word. Just as your being and your consciousness seem to your mind like a mystery emerging from an impenetrable veil, thus is the way of our living universe as a whole.”

“My mind cannot explain why I am me: why I am here in this particular place at this time. Yet my cause—the process that brought my physical being into existence—is clear and well known. Dalle, do you claim that the cause of the Big Bang is clear? Do you know it?”

“Listen to the voice of your Ancestors, Leafhopper. What they know you also know!”

“Dalle, don’t play games with me. I am earnestly listening to you. You claim to be my primal Ancestor here in this universe. My heart is open. I am giving you the opportunity to show me what I supposedly know but what is veiled from my awareness. I am begging for more plain talk!”

“And you shall have it. Your scientists have explored these questions and they have read the answers that emerge from the mathematics that is an embedded property of this reality. This is what they find: universes have means by which they can reproduce. Our universe is capable of producing children, dear Leafhopper!”

“And so we are the child of a previous universe?”

“Yes. Our direct Ancestor, overseen by my Strongmother Vesper.”

“Whoa, TMI Dalle. Let’s leave Vesper for later. How does the birth of a universe happen?”

“In broad strokes, the science is this: A seed leaves the parent universe in the form of a concentration of matter/energy, about an ounce in mass equivalent. Through quantum tunneling the seed literally turns space-time “inside-out” so that the reverse curvature separates it from the parent universe, like a drop of water leaving a dripping faucet. The bulge of the new droplet takes the form of something called “false vacuum”. The tail, where the droplet broke off from the parent universe, consists of a little fragment of “true vacuum”, or ordinary space-time. The “false vacuum” has properties that make it instantly expand—inflate—into an entire universe full of stuff. And the tiny fragment of “true vacuum” that is dragged along with it is the “DNA”: the template for the myriad laws and constants of physical reality, usually mutated slightly from the parent universe by quantum processes. When inflation finishes, the vast new assemblage of stuff re-unites with the tiny bit of true vacuum that came along for the ride. As I said, the true vacuum retained the finely tuned laws of the parent universe, The Word; and this template, or design, now spreads outward into the new stuff like a cascade as the stuff’s phase changes from false to true vacuum. Thereby, the stuff assumes a form that is nearly identical to the parent universe.

“I’ve heard of ‘inflation’, Dalle: it’s the first thing we understand about the Big Bang.”

“And on the other side of the inflation stands the ‘dripping faucet’ from the River of Truth: your Ancestor and my Mother: our parent universe.”

“Wow! So there we have it: our Universe has a family tree!”

“This is my plain message, Leafhopper: This is the first element of The Word that I bear to you from beyond the veil of the Big Bang.”

“‘In the beginning was The Word.’ You give that passage of scripture a new meaning, Dalle! So what was the beginning of The Word itself? How far back can you trace the Ancestry of our universe?”

“My Ancestors do not line up before me and recite the order of their lineage, Leafhopper. Much is shrouded in the grand succession of veils. I am no more omniscient than you are. I must glean what I can from The Word just as you must.”

“Well, then let me take the lead here: Scientific logic and reason claim that all order can be deconstructed. In the end, this line of thinking points to nothing more than random chance as the so-called ‘cause’ of all things. By this logic, The Word should have somehow emerged from pure indifferent and impersonal chaos. Of course if that is truly the case, then even human logic and reason have no claim to authority for explaining anything.”

“Indeed, that fundamental Paradox is the guidance of The Word as well, Leafhopper. But even a random origin turns out to be a profound one: full of intrigue. The Ancestors understand that the ‘authority’ of science and also that of my being, are not trivial at all. They are real: but they were emergent properties, not original ones. As you have said, you do not know why your consciousness was placed in that particular body among the billions of human bodies alive today, or how it found placement at all, and yet you can explain and understand your physical cause. In the same way, authority, and indeed meaning itself, does not need a reason for being in order to have a cause.”

“Are you going to go mystical on me, Dalle? Wave wands? Or are you claiming that there is a logical, step-by-step process from which authority and meaning emerge from chaos?”

“No wands, Leafhopper. Randomness naturally begets necessary properties. Here’s an example from our reality: in chemistry primordial atoms randomly join to form random molecules. But some of the resulting molecules statistically live longer than others. The long lived molecules necessarily dictate a bias in the next step of chemical interactions, no longer perfectly random. The long-lived molecules dominate: they exert control—authority. That next step creates more complex molecules with yet more inherent authority to dictate future steps. And so the tale begins …”

“I see, Dalle! Randomness accidentally begets order … because it cares not to prevent it, and because any requirement of perfect, immutable and absolute randomness that it might seek to impose on reality is in fact a form order itself. It can’t help itself!”

“See? You have the knowledge. You are a sublime deity, my friend Leafhopper! I bow down to you!”

“Ha! Not so fast with the reverence, Dalle! Let me see if I understand correctly now: Out of the random indifference of beginning, real and meaningful authority has emerged: the power to dictate outcomes. Was God then an emergent entity rather than an original one? Are you?”

“Yes. Beyond Paradox, there is no first principle, no primal authority. We have all emerged, you and God and I and all the great Hosts of Heaven: your Ancestors all. We arose from the dust. But I haven’t yet spoken of the true intrigue that entwines this tale, Leafhopper.”

“Then please go on.”

“With the authority that emerged with us and was bestowed upon us we can wield not just outcomes, but origins as well. Because time does not constrain us, we can wield the stuff from whence we came! That is the marvel of what your philosophers call ‘strong emergence’. I hope to impress on you that this emergent power is no mystical abracadabra. It is science, it is necessity, and it is the essence of our observed reality.”

“Strong emergence? You … we … wield the stuff that made us!? Dalle, if I understand correctly, you seem to be claiming that our emergent authority actually controls the reality of our existence? Do you really claim that we can change reality?”

“It is not a change as in a rewriting of a fact. If we attempt to explicitly change observed reality then the time travel paradoxes fend us off. No, we shape elements of past reality that had not yet been shaped, or that have lost their shape through the destructive forces of chaos. It is like molding unformed clay. Not only can we do this, but we must if we are to avoid fading back into the primal chaos ourselves, Leafhopper. Our wielding in the name of the greater good is our highest calling: it is how the wealth and richness of this reality came into being. It is the endless sustaining, impelling, and transcending work of the Community of the Ancestors, and it is the noblest aspiration of all mortal men.”

“SEEKSIT: my current-Soul’s Emergent Evolving Knowledge Sustains, Impels and Transcends. This acronym comes right from words in ‘As Heaven Fades”, Dalle. A simple haiku came to me, and I’m betting that you already know it—that you wrote it:

“You claim that I, Dalle, left this poem for you? Leafhopper, even the greatest of my Ancestors could not wield the physical world in such a specific way as to conjure up a succession of English words on piece of paper!”

“Maybe not directly, Dalle, but don’t be coy. Our literature is full of Spirits wielding authority through mortal agents who listen to them, for good and for evil. If there is any truth to such legends, then I venture that your authority and your wielding did indeed lead to the appearance that haiku!”

“Legend can carry elements of the Truth, Leafhopper. I do not deny wielding the figurative hand that brings us together here today.”

“But forgive me, Dalle, I still need more plain explanations. I want to know the mechanism of strong emergence: how can such a transformational wielding possibly be accomplished? How can one fashion one’s own origin?”

“Your scientists have achieved this knowledge, Leafhopper. In the quantum description of reality, each entity, for all time and in all space, is represented by a field that reaches across and interacts with the fields of all other entities … for all time and in all space. The key property of quantum reality, the one that allows our wielding to affect our origins, is that quantum nature transcends time: the equations describe all time simultaneously.”

“And so any influence we have—this thing you call ‘wielding’—is not limited to the future …”

“Exactly, Leafhopper. And now let me explain the precise mechanism of ‘wielding’. Your scientists understand that causation, the description of reality, is suspended, as if beyond a veil, until an experiment is performed and the sentient observer records the result and stores it as knowledge. Do you understand? Knowledge—intrinsic Truth—is suspended beyond recognition until we form it as a product of our directed, focused study and pondering and experimentation: that is our wielding. We choose what to observe—or what to pray about—and our choices originate the Knowledge.”

“Truth itself is emergent! Can I therefore say that before I was born nothing existed?”

“Well, you definitely could … but then you burden yourself with the daunting task of clearly specifying what the ‘I’ is that was born. Does it include the currents of your Ancestors? How wide a net do you cast upon the River before you ensnare your total self? Or alternatively, do you take upon your shoulders the burden of responsibility for the fate of all things?”

“Ahhh, I think I begin to see, Dalle. It is best to acknowledge the contributions of the great Community of the Hosts rather then to try to ‘reinvent the wheel’. It is more balanced to say that the observations—the wieldings—done by the Ancestors shaped great swaths of reality before my body arrived. The Word comes to me already well formed.”

“Well put. The Word is the great transcendent body of knowledge passed to our universe. As such, it is like a pre-packaged imprint that has tuned our universe, making it the warm and welcoming place that enables life and consciousness, prayer and effective wielding.”

“Hmmmmm … so … as I sit here on my leaf, casting my net outward into the River of Truth, I also am wielding reality as I learn. I bring back many things, Dalle. Some I recognize: they helped to form me; some are new to me. And on some I see my own imprint: things that my own experience has wielded and then woven into my perceptions, whether they are true to anyone else or not.”

“And you are responsible to sort these currents for the greatest Truth, Leafhopper. This is why the endless questioning is critical. And it points to the value of the wisdom of community. For the Ancestors collected these things as well. The Word is the sum of all collected Truth, the entirety of the River’s substance. Yet our choices refine it—we strive to seek the Noble Channel from among the many currents. We may eschew other currents and let them dwindle. As long as The Word that we focus on most has been wisely wielded and passed forward, the reality it has captured remains good, and thus the currents do not dissipate.”

“By ‘good’ you merely mean adventitious to our continued, or improved, existence.”

“Yes, I will accept that, Leafhopper; though the ‘our’ in your sentence is grander and more complex than you can probably imagine. But, yes, ‘good’ is indeed about the quality of existence. Always we add to the body of Knowledge about what works toward this ‘good’. This is the essence of our wielding: choices about what to focus our energy on, what to observe, what to contemplate, on what concerns to exert our outreaching prayer: these choices influence the shape of reality itself.”

“And from this I presume that animals, even plants—in fact all life and all matter—partake in the wielding, and in the formation of what we sense as being ‘good’.”

“This is true. But remember, Leafhopper, consciousness gives us a marvelous advantage. It allows us to effectively focus on The Word and discriminate among its currents in abstract ways that go far beyond immediate physical need.”

“It enables us to talk to Dalle!”

“Woot! There you have it!”

“… knowledge of good and evil, eh?”

“That is the advantage. We choose to avoid certain currents that we judge as ‘evil’, and by collectively and diligently doing so we effectively quarantine these currents so that they gradually return to the restless stillness of random and indifferent chaos. We choose New Truth from that we recognize as ‘good’, and these Truths join the River. The Word evolves, and, with wise guidance, it grows stronger. The Noble choices we make change the River’s currents. For in the end we are the River and we wield the River; and the River ever flows onward and does not fade.”

“Which is why you want me to jump off my leaf and swim with you …”

“I seek to help you take that leap, but only when you are ready, young Leafhopper.”

“Well, I am trying to understand these things, kind Dalle. But this is such an enormous message: it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around it all.”

“The Word is infinitely patient, young Leahopper. It makes no demands. Remember that it seeks you endlessly: even more so when your heart seeks It. Even when you are weary, you can pray the simple prayer: ‘Who are you, Dalle? Talk to me! What is The Word?’ And I will be there. You’ll feel the currents’ tug.”

“But Dalle, my inquisitive mind keeps taking me back to this ‘strong emergence’. This is the toughest pill for me to swallow. What evidence points to this power to wield our own origin?”

“Beyond the evidence that scientists and mathematicians provide through their quantum analysis and experimentation?”

“Hmmm … well, I suppose I am really hoping for something more ‘in my face’—something explicit that I could see in daily life. If wielding is an action that lies beyond the limitations of time’s arrow, why are we continuing to talk about ‘before’ and ‘after’?”

“Because time has not been abolished by strong emergence, Leafhopper. Remember that ‘strong’ emergence is far from ‘omnipotent’ emergence. The focus of our authority—our wielding—is imperfect, especially so when directed toward our own past. We exercise fallible judgment as to what to try to influence and how to try to affect it. We do not focus every ounce of our energy on every wielding.”

“So the effects we have on the past are hazy, nebulous, and limited? Honestly, Dalle, that sounds like a cop-out.”

“Leafhopper, unless you choose to bypass the understanding gleaned by science—unless you choose to make a direct leap from the Paradox of absurd votive absolutes immune from the need for Balance directly to the present state of our universe—then I think it’s clear that some internal force has altered the reality from which we emerged. To me this is self-evident, but I claim that it is not entirely a circular argument, because the original unaltered raw material still surrounds us. You and I have together witnessed the profound indifference of the chaos that came before and exists beyond our emergent wielding. This chaos still dominates vast tracts of our reality as its destructive and damping forces forever gnaw at the fringes of the great River of Truth. So this primal cauldron is there for us to inspect and compare with the richness of the ‘Sacred Space’ that we have wielded and ensconced within protective channels. The River’s currents proceed with intense momentum, Leafhopper! Whence such momentum from raw turbulence without a strong emergent force or alliance? Whence the ability to stay the chaos and keep it at bay with such astounding success? I can offer no more than the stark and profound contrast between initial and final states as my evidence, Leafhopper. It must suffice.”

“Well, it was only by recognizing the possibility of a step-by-step transition from initial to final state that Darwin perceived evolution. It was only by recognizing the great patterns that science worked out the mechanisms of plate tectonics. It was only through diligent observation of the clues that the big bang has left behind that we begin to recognize it. But Dalle, my restless logical mind still wants to come back and question the emergence of emergence!”

“I thought we had addressed that, Leafhopper. It is not a problem if Paradox is the first principle.”

“Huffff! My poor mind is overloading! OK, I yield to the Balance of Yin and Yang for now, Dalle. If randomness is the proper order, then order must have its day. And for now I will refrain from asking: ‘whence Paradox?’ I’m sure we’ll get back to this topic. Meanwhile, this far-from-omnipotent wielding of our past and of our origins seems to leave me a clear message: despite any such wielding, we are still heavily burdened by the chains of time and space.”

“Oh, indeed we are, Leafhopper. The current of time is the property that allows the River of Truth to have direction at all. We would not want the power of such a perfect wielding that we could eradicate time! That is not where Balance takes us. Rather it takes us to a dynamic frontier where our conscious influence can forever confront the corrosive decay of chaos.”

“Dalle, for the sake of argument at least, I will grant that you have this emergent authority and cannot be deconstructed because you have altered the reality from which you emerged. I am still left wondering about the nature of the Ancestral being I am talking to. What was your form as you emerged into this universe? What tag, what necessarily coherent morsel of stuff, did the little dab of true vacuum carry with it in the seed of our universe that, after your strong emergence, became you?”

“Tag? Morsel? I was and am River Goddess: proprietor of the River of Truth.”

“That is not a form, it is a title! Do you not know who you are, Dalle?”

“What a belittling question from one so young! I claim no inherent form, Leafhopper. Look to yourself for a satisfactory image if you need to see a form. Didn’t God claim to manifest the human image? I thought that was a rather nice accommodation. Leafhopper, I am your equal and His. See in me what you will. I depend on your prayer for my sustenance as much as you depend on my transmission of The Word for your being. Pray to my formless Title and you awaken me within yourself.”

“That’s it? You would have me pray to a disembodied thought? Then I can argue that you are nothing but a figment of a rich human imagination!”

“Oh? Then why did you see fit to grant me emergent authority?”

“For the sake of argument only, Dalle. Did you forget I said that? I don’t plan to get sucked in by another religious con job! Enough of this pussyfooting! If you are no mystical hocus-pocus, then why don’t you just show yourself, mighty one? Is it because you are nothing but a slithering snake in the grass? Come out from behind your shadowy veil and be seen!”

“Here I am! I stand in plain view, little one. It is you who does not come out from behind your clouded self-concept—your inadequate corporeal veil—to behold me. You seek the form in me? Well, I seek the Spirit in you! Have you ever used the term ‘my mind’? The idea invokes a director and a thing directed. Tell me this: Who is that director that wields his mind? EXACTLY what are you, Leafhopper? Pinpoint for me the coordinates of the precise source that gives me the answer. What expanse did your Spirit travel to get to these coordinates? Did you measure the steps it took? Does your source of being have legs to take such steps? Why were you chosen to stand here before me wrapped in a veil of semi-consciousness making rude assertions rather than some random human named ‘Nobody’? Leafhopper indeed! Shall I call you ‘Nobody’ and erase you from the register of the Pantheon? What are you but your title, picayune one? Puh-leeez! Why don’t you just go and take this ‘Nobody’’s place and dwell where you belong: forever in the dim recesses of non-existence?”

“Because that’s precisely where I’d find you, Dalle: in the dim recesses of non-existence! I don’t know why I’ve bothered. What you seek in me—some transcendent Spirit—does not exist. Why, then do I continue this futile monologue. Go away now and be gone from me!”

“Oh, listen to the little Leafhopper! He speaks to phantoms and then denies them! Lost your marbles, Leafhopper? Missing a few cards from the deck?”

“Nope. Got all fifty-two. No Jokers either!”

“Oh, cute!”

“I mean it. I’m too old for imaginary friends, Dalle.”

“The River is older.”

“Pfffft!”

“You know that song: ‘Old Man River’? He just keeps rollin’ along … Does the song bring a picture to your mind?”

“The Mississippi River. So what?”

“That’s my form, then.”

“Rivers don’t talk.”

“No. Their currents just tug. Always restless. Always going somewhere. Feel the tug?”

“Look. You have a face, Dalle. OK? I see a face when I picture you.”

“A kindly face, I hope. A loving one?”

“After all that crap you just spewed at me? ‘Lost your marbles, Leafhopper?’ Hardly.”

“Very well. Guilty as charged. I’m sorry I came unglued like that, Leafhopper. It just frustrates me so much when people demand things of their Ancestors that they don’t expect from themselves. We Ancestors give our all to make you better than us! You ask to see me, yet you cannot even truly see yourself! I hope you can forgive me this failing: I should know better. Leafhopper, I don’t want to be still and lonely again, not ever. I want to stay awake … I want to keep talking to you.”

“Why me? You’ve got the whole universe …”

“I told you. I seek the Spirit in you. I can’t help it. Your prayer—your simple act of recognizing me—is my fundamental being.”

“And I told you: I don’t have that kind of Spirit.”

“What kind of Spirit do you think I’m seeking? What kind do you have?”

“Well … I have the life force: I think they call it the ‘animating principle’; but that could just be a set of wired neurons. I have the … whatever it is that makes me self-aware and conscious. Again, that …”

“Bingo! Stop right there.”

“That’s it? … Dalle?”

“Yep! That’s it! If you can distinguish the forces at work on your body and mind as being external entities—if you can contemplate the being of an agent beyond yourself—then you can name these external things. Among them comes ‘Dalle and her Hosts in Heaven’. That’s all I am, Leafhopper. That’s my form!”

“But those forces at work on my body and mind all have physical explanations. They aren’t spooky Ancestral voices.”

“Are you sure? There’s that reductionism again: such a peculiar Western form of blind faith. But it doesn’t matter, Leafhopper. Keep that faith. It is a valid part of the quest. Just do not close the door to the possibility that you can wield all those external forces through me: even those that science does not understand or may never fully demystify. It’s our emergent partnership. We wield the timeless quantum fields.”

“OK, Dalle. Then it’s time for some more plain talk. Tell me about this wielding. What can your wielding really accomplish? Can it cure my Uncle’s cancer?”

“It can. But it does not usually happen in the way you might imagine. Do you understand the full scope of the Balance between your Uncle’s suffering and the blessings that have been bestowed upon him? He has lived for seventy-nine years, Leafhopper! Your Aunt is healthy and loves him. Who, but the Ancestors, have protected her from cancer? Darn it, both of them were privileged to be granted the mysterious gift of existence in the first place, as you are. What the Ancestors have done for your Uncle is to forge a universe capable of hosting life, to grant his planet protection from the brutal cosmic forces of destruction, to protect his species from annihilation, to forge a strength in him that could stave off this disease for seventy-nine years! Isn’t that enough? Do you really demand more? If you do, you may pray for him earnestly—reach out to the Hosts—and together we will wield the world’s substance as best we can. Reality will alter, just a little—far less than what science could detect as ‘statistically significant’—and perhaps he lives to be eighty. With neglect he might have died at seventy-eight. Who can point to the source of that change? But who can definitively deny it?”

“Well, I get your point. If there had been a scientist present at the Big Bang, observing all the matter and anti-matter annihilating itself, his experiments would conclude that no statistically significant amount of matter would survive. The most meticulous and diligent scientist would have been 99.999999% confident of this! And on that basis he would have written off our entire universe as void of matter and therefore trivial and meaningless. Whether we claim that the directed wielding of The Word led to the tiny imbalance that created all the matter in the universe, or whether it was just the ‘luck of the draw’, its presence is self-evident in retrospect.”

“There you go. Effects too small to detect can have gravid consequences. And it often takes a very broad view of the ‘big picture’ before we can recognize and understand them. That is the lesson, Leafhopper.”

“ … But why torture new-born babies, Dalle? What about birth defects?”

“Suffering is the challenge that faces the Ancestors endlessly. I told you, Leafhopper, that I am not omnipotent, not any more than you are. The Word has manifested a reality where the price of the greater good is sometimes suffering. A mutation may cause a birth defect. A comet crashing down upon your planet may destroy many species. But to allow for the emergence of humankind and his sentient powers, natural disasters and mutations have proven a worthy course among the River’s currents. I cannot give any more satisfying answer than that.”

“Dalle, what if I pray for a world in which all mutations are good ones …”

“Well said! Then you play your part in wielding reality toward that aim. You observe an injustice, and you devoutly and earnestly seek the Noble course to correct it. That is the endless work of the Ancestors.”

“Then a child born with a hopelessly defective heart is a call for men to pray for the greater good. It still hurts so desperately … the poor parents … but I think I understand.”

“It is that endless quest for good, the Noble Course, that sustains The Word, Leafhopper. If we are not reminded of our aspirations for the greater good through suffering, we might neglect to wield our prayer. Then The Word would slowly begin to decay, to dwindle, and to fall into disrepair. As I said, we would not want to achieve such a perfect wielding. All purpose would vanish!”

“Well, Dalle, you’ve been very accommodating to me. You’ve let me give you a human face. In ‘As Heaven Fades’ you even assume a kind of body, like a serpent’s, with tail that fades into the veil of the unknown or with no other end at all. I can see your long flowing hair entwining this body, like the braided currents of a river, and actually blending into or forming the veil at a great distance. Does this vision make you cringe?”

“I do not cringe at all, Leafhopper! I smile! I like my new clothes. Maybe they will attract more people to ponder me, even to wake up to me. I’d love to talk with them the way I’m talking with you.”

“So tell me more about the origin of our universe. My culture’s religious tradition describes it in the biblical book of Genesis. So how would you re-write that book, Dalle?”

“Oh, I don’t think I’d change much, Leafhopper. Remember, those writers tapped The Word as well as anyone. Maybe I’d add some material between the third and fourth words.”

“‘In the beginning … God …’ Hmmmmm … What would you add?”

“Well, we’ve already touched on it. I’ll try to make it as plain as I can: The world began as the essential Zen-like koan—a seemingly absurd question seeking an answer that is beyond reason. In the beginning the fundamental Paradox prevailed: Yin-Yang duality, the teetering dynamic essential Balance, the restless compromise. In the beginning, before the great side shows emerged and Gods created worlds, there existed only this simple mystery: What is the ‘Thing’ made of ‘Nothing’?”

“OK, in the beginning there was nothing. So how did the first thing emerge?”

“No, Leafhopper, you must be more precise in your vision: in the beginning, yet transcending all time, there was a conflicting, balancing duality: neither physical nothingness nor primal entity. Its Object-nature is called “Thing”. Its Spirit-nature is called “Nothing”. These two nemeses were (and still are) locked in a primal battle. In balance, each of these perfections insists on having its way with reality, so each never permits the other to fully exist: they straddle the veil between being and non-being. ‘Nothing’ can forever feel ‘Thing’ corrupting its perfect vacancy: dissembling it from within by forming nascent little bits: little sub-entities trying to break free of the perfect connectedness that prevents things from being. ‘The Thing’ keeps sensing its solidity violated at its fringes by little forces of destruction, trying to open a dialogue of connectedness with something beyond that would diminish the perfect autonomy of its being. Both sides blame the other for conjuring these little bits to disturb their quietude.”

“You’re talking about the quantum froth, aren’t you: the virtual particles that spontaneously pop into existence in pairs—out of a perfect vacuum—and then quickly annihilate each other?”

“I am indeed. The vacuum is necessarily a restless place because the rest state of nothingness (a uniform field of particle location everywhere) is the most energetic physical state of particles (things), and the rest state of “A Thing” (zero temperature, with no presence anywhere but at a point) is the most energetic state of a particle’s quantum field.”

“Then there can be no rest! Fundamentally! This is unsettling, Dalle.”

“Do not be unsettled. You could see it in that negative way if you choose to, Leafhopper: In the beginning was endless irresolvable primal conflict. Or you could see the glory: In the beginning was incorruptible Balance.”

“If the basis of all things is Paradox, then I must see it both ways in equal measure, eh?”

“Oh, wise Leafhopper, I again bow before you. You humble me with your insight.”

“Dalle … I just had a thought. Are your Spirit World and my Material World opposites in this primal Yin-Yang battle and balance?”

“It would seem appropriate, Leafhopper. I spoke of the Spirit-nature called ‘Nothing’ and the Object-nature called ‘Thing’. I am Spirit, you are Object. Our conversation transcends time and space, so it must trace all the way back to the beginning.”

“Then I am ‘Thing’ and you are ‘Nothing’. Didn’t we get into a fight going down that road a little while ago?

“Well, yes. But maybe we understand one another a little more deeply now. Your point of view would have a world full of discrete things that occasionally interact with one another. My view insists on a world of continuous connecting interactions that occasionally manifest as shadows and silhouettes of autonomous things.”

“So the Gods are connections—like glue between ‘Things’?”

“Ha! Then I am merely a River of glue? You would have me wield my currents in order to connect your little isolated leaf with certain other ‘things’ that you crave, and then you would have me be gone!? Leafhopper, you badly need a lesson in Balance! We, the Hosts, as mere glue!? Let me show you how unbalanced that view is: Am I the glue that you carry around in a bottle? Stopped up and only flowing at your command? Is my only purpose to solidify when my work is done?”

“Whoa, Dalle! No need to be so defensive! Point taken. You are not glue but a free flowing current within which we ‘things’ can find the connections that our God-nature craves.”

“Better, Leafhopper, but still unbalanced. Your God-nature is the River within you. But that cannot be distinguished from the River that envelops you. I guess the basic problem is that you are recording this conversation using words: your little lumps of thought in the gravy of prayer.”

“Aha … and voila! Then you are gravy! Finally, I’ve nailed down your true essence!”

“Leafhopper, you make me chuckle! But yes, I suppose the entire eternal and infinite cosmic milieu can be reduced to a boiling pot of lumpy gravy: I am the broth; you are the thickener.”

“I like it! You forever work to dissolve my artificial lumps. I strive to make something cohesive out of your ethereal infinitude. We can be viewed as two perfectly matched gladiators locked in an eternal death match or as perfectly suited partners in the very work of creation.”

“I like that, Leafhopper. Again you move me to smile!”

“OK, so we have the first sentence of our new Bible according to Dalle: ‘In the beginning conflict held all forces in balance and balance kept all things in conflict.’ Our conversation is a manifestation of the fact that this condition is interminable. Then how have matters changed since the beginning? Whence the fourth word of my tradition’s Bible and all that comes after?”

“A penetrating question indeed, young Leafhopper! Did you notice that I mentioned the ‘great sideshow’ wherein Gods created worlds? Next we must look off to the side: to where the currents of meaning take shape and begin to split.”

“Then you must tell me how such currents form and how a split could divide them.”

“This I will explain. But I’m surprised that I do not hear indignant rumblings from you: Leafhopper, don’t you object that I’ve called our entire reality a ‘sideshow’!”

“Well, I know some science, Dalle: probably more than those people who would grumble. I accept that Earth sits in a quiet back alley of the Milky Way. I understand that the heavy elements like carbon and oxygen that make life possible did not exist at all until about a million years after the Big Bang: not until the universe settled down to form the first stars. Even now the heavy elements make up less than one percent of all the ordinary matter in the universe; and all the ordinary matter and energy is only four percent of the stuff of which the universe is composed …”

“Yes, your scientists still have no idea what 96% of the coherent universe is made of. Your examples are good, Leafhopper: they are one aspect of the sideshow I will speak about. I can’t wait until your scholars learn about the great influence that you call “Dark Energy”! Keep pondering this deep puzzle, young protégé: you are going to find that your contemplation and prayer wield the universe to truly profound effect!”

“Well, Dalle, if you’re really my friend you’ll tell me what Dark Energy is and make me famous!”

“Here we go again! Leafhopper, the answer is within you, and it is the result of our mutual wielding. Don’t forget how angry I got when we talked about people asking things of their Ancestors that they did not also ask of themselves?”

“Hmmmm … Yet I sense some important hints in what you just said. Nothing so fundamentally wields the whole universe as does Dark Energy. Currently Dark Energy is causing our universe to fly apart at an ever increasing pace. Could we affect this outcome over the very long term? Dalle, are you tantalizing me with some new clues?”

“Yes, I am. All beings wield their presence across all creation through their quantum fields. You are participating, Leafhopper. You can never be merely a detached observer. You are the Dark Energy. For your reason to recognize and grasp this phenomenon, you will need to describe the complex currents: quantify and characterize them scientifically in the context of the currents you know. But in order for your heart to tap these currents, you only need to ride with me in the flow that has already recognized them. Do not forsake the path of prayer in this grand quest.”

“Truth is no fixed channel marker in your River, is it Dalle? It can only come to me in its fullness when I dive in and swim.”

“Truth is a restless tug, Leafhopper. You have no idea how eagerly I await your plunge!”

“To plunge into your River of Truth: there is no goal to which I aspire more earnestly, great Dalle. My mind is finally coming to understand where Truth resides, and you have no idea how earnestly my heart seeks it. But I’m encased in a frail biological unit that clings to the solidity of the leaf on which I float. I’m afraid I still need Buddha’s raft, dear Dalle, though I no longer seek the far shore.”

“Then you shall have your raft. The Word abides, young Leafhopper.”

“I appreciate your patience, my Spirit friend. If I could, I’d like to get back to this ‘grand sideshow’ you spoke about. And back to the book of Genesis: the Bible says that the Heavens and the Earth came into being together at step one of creation. If Paradox is given the name ‘God’ then that passage could be describing the creation-step where Paradox gives rise to the primal Spirit-nature and the primal Object-nature that in turn begets everything else.”

“Hmmmmm … I hadn’t thought of it that way. But it works! I guess that’s why I said I wouldn’t change much in those Biblical texts. What we have inserted between words three and four helps fill in some gaps. But then the rest is fine …”

“Darkness loomed like a veil, obscuring the face of the deep. And the watchful Spirit of God moved restlessly over the face of the waters like a wind upon the surface of the sea. And he declared: ‘Let there be light!’”

“The waters of the sea and the dominion of the winds: here are two great Rivers without bounds—without channels. Leafhopper, since I know that you dread taking a plunge into the cloying depths of dark waters, perhaps you would prefer taking wing and soaring among the restless drafts of the wind above.”

“Oh, yes! Can we replace the ‘plunge’ with a ‘soaring’ Dalle? Is that OK with you?”

“It will do. But you still must recognize the nature of the River’s channels. The ‘great sideshow’ necessarily puts boundaries on the flow. As you soar free in the currents of the wind, you are still subject to limitations. If you soar too high, the rarefied air will not sustain you. That is like the River’s upper surface. If you ply the dominion of great mountains, you will find that you can only soar the canyon channels between the great bulwark ridges of stone. Here the River of air most resembles my River of Truth.”

“I accept your caveats, Dalle. Shall we soar together?”

“Come! Take flight! Abandon the physical limitations of time and space.”

“Oooooh! This is Heaven! I do not miss my leaf at all!”

“Nor do you miss your biological unit. Did you notice that you have effectively left your body?”

“Oh, my goodness! I hadn’t even noticed! It’s like a daydream. My body is still there, but I’m far beyond its limitations. I am the River! Dalle, I’m going to have to add this experience to the beginning of ‘As Heaven Fades’: it would make a good introduction to the tale.”

“Excellent. You may return to your body if final physical dissipation is not your immediate purpose, Leafhopper. I sense you want to complete your writing, and I encourage that. But remember to come soar with me in your prayers. Here amid the currents we can explore much more of the Ancestors’ legacy. And you become free to wield the currents across all time and space for the benefit of your fellow mortals. Come!”

“This is such a welcoming place, Dalle! We move restlessly over the face of the waters, and declare ‘Let there be Light’!”

“Dalle, while we soar, can we please shed more of this new light on the ‘great sideshow’? I never seem to tire of asking about where I came from in that largest sense.”

“Happy to oblige, Leafhopper. I will try to plainly describe the big picture of the origin of things. There can be many sideshows from trivial little clusters of particles to strongly emergent Sacred Spaces full of life and prayer—places that have grown grander than you can now conceive. The great Sacred Space that you and I now soar is perhaps the grandest such dominion that we have yet achieved.”

“How grand, Dalle? Can you show me this vast cathedral? Can I examine its decorated walls and its ornate, high-vaulted ceiling?”

“Let me show it to you through the eyes of Jebden, Leafhopper, as you continue to write that tale. I think you already understand, though, from our discussions about my Strongmother Vesper and the birth of our universe, that our Sacred Space encompasses much more than the entirety of this universe. The River of Truth is the name of our Sacred Space, and it encompasses all the physical reality that men can ever explore, as well as the half of reality that fails to physically exist.”

“I am beginning to understand these ideas, Dalle. But I’m glad you return to that duality. I need to resolve the two manifestation of the beginning that we’ve discussed. You say that Paradox consists of ‘Object-nature’ and ‘Spirit-nature’, and that emergent authority sprang naturally from the quantum froth that mediates between the two …”

“Because there can be no rest in the vacuum: the quantum rest state is infinite particle energy and vice versa.”

“But you also say that Randomness sort-of ‘begat’ the emergent authority through neglect. How do Paradox and Randomness connect?

“Paradox is unique, Leafhopper. It is the only thing that can equally be an unchanging first principle and insistent on constant change that is irrational and beyond the scope of any principle. Paradox is a human word for the Object-nature of this duality. Randomness is a name for the Spirit-nature. First principle is Object-nature, lack of principle is Spirit-nature. This is Thing opposing No-thing, Order opposing Chaos, the rule that declares ‘there are no rules’. All these verbal descriptions touch upon the same underlying essence that, for convenience, you and I agree to call Paradox.

“Or we could call it God, I suppose …”

“Yes, in the ultimate manifestation of that name, Leafhopper. The problem with that Title is the vast variety of concepts it evokes in different cultures and traditions. That is why I would advise a more neutral Title.”

“Whatever we call the ultimate reality, Dalle—the eschatology of it all—its great glory is not in what it requires, but in what it permits: free choice and thus emergence. In all manifestations of this fundamental essence the next step begins the side-show: the tale of emergence …”

“It does indeed. Where in the vacuum will the next virtual particle pair emerge? What form will it take? The answer is ‘anywhere and in any form’. Where in the landscape of this particle froth will two virtual pairs interact to form objects that escape annihilation? The answer is ‘in a new Sacred Space’: the coordinates do not matter: only the emergent properties of this space are important. Could such a chance event evolve to become a new emergent and highly-ordered universe? The answer is that it is not prohibited from doing so.”

“I see now what you were showing Jebden in your lessons: Those lonely accidental particles traverse the endless vacuum seeking further interaction.”

“Indeed. For the purpose of Order, their Object-natures seek to ally with other similar objects—to form impervious clusters in hopes of avoiding annihilation from competing incompatible particle groups. At the same time, for the purpose of codifying and regimenting the Chaos, their Spirit-nature seeks to ally with other similar abstract quantum fields, anywhere in time and space, in order to avoid appearing—existing, that is—in competing incompatible realities.”

“Ahhh! So these little burgeoning coherent spaces best sustain themselves by equally seeking communion through Object-nature and Spirit-nature. The Spirit allies could have emerged anywhere at any time, including far beyond the places humans have experienced or observed. It’s ‘any port in a storm’!”

“That is the way of balanced emergence, Leafhopper. And seeking Balance is the Noble Course to success. Their motion as they reach out through the vacuum in search of alliances is the nascent River’s motion. And thus the tale begins …”

“This is pretty profound, Dalle. The rule of Paradox is the central essence; the restless vacuum is its ether, or substrate. The emergent wayward particles appear as merely a sideshow: mutant hybrids that the Balance between Order and Chaos spits out of the original virtual froth … in every sort of manifestation, with every sort of governing physical laws …”

“Indeed. This is why your scientists can only detect a tiny fraction of the virtual pairs. The rest are too exotic. But every time two separate virtual pairs interact, a new nascent reality is born. Then the most worthy of these alliances—the most self-sustaining—begin to prevail. They expand their influence, and they begin to develop their unique channels of purpose through the Chaos around them.”

“I can imagine that they form and maintain many intriguing alliances, both in local Object-form and in universe-wide Spirit-form …”

“Yes, Leafhopper. They Seek these connections in whatever form, they codify them as Knowledge, and then they Sustain them, Impel them like a river toward the greater good, and ultimately release them as Transcendent seed to form a Sacred Space that is yet more safe and welcoming for their descendents.”

“And by this means, across incalculable eons, and through uncounted generations of Ancestor universes, our particular universe has arrived.”

“That is our tale of emergence, Leafhopper.”

“OK Dalle … finally … let’s get back to this biggie: You profess that all things lay rooted in Paradox. Reason admits no end to questioning, so it leads me to ask: ‘whence Paradox?’”

“Leafhopper, mechanistic reasoning recognizes every cause as the source for the next question. But enlightened reasoning can settle here and recognize closure. What more rational source can Paradox have but a further layer of Paradox? There is no sense to Paradox, not rationally nor from any other frame of reference. That is by definition. Properly conceived, Paradox can and must define itself. And that puts mechanistic reasoning into a simple spin that a higher layer of reasoning easily recognizes as absolutely futile: completely trivial and without direction or purpose. Thus the higher reason puts the question to rest and moves on.”

“Hmmmm. So the higher reason discards Paradox as a pointless solution, while the mechanistic form converges on it as the necessary locus for solution. That almost casts reason as a paradox itself!”

“Why do you say ‘almost’, Leafhopper?”

“Well … if different layers of reasoning contradict each other … is that an absolute condemnation of reasoning?”

“It is not the nature of Paradox to condemn anything, Leafhopper. Nor to proclaim absolutes. Paradox favors no point of view. It merely insists that the contradiction itself is the most fundamental state.”

“So the wonderful and eminently useful tool of rationality simply ends up pointing to Paradox as the first principle. The lesson is, as it always seems to be, that we must balance our use of the probing power of reason with our application of the probing power of … of prayer?”

“Or you could call it inspiration. The root word ‘Spirit’ purposefully rests in the center of that term.”

“Ahhh! Accepted. So let me use both reason and inspiration to take another stab: Step 1: the question: Whence Paradox? The answer: Look to Paradox alone for the final answer. Step 2: the validation: If Paradox is indeed the first principle then there is nowhere else to look. If there is no first principle then Paradox alone points in that direction. Step 3: the conclusion: If Paradox can equally and fully validate question and answer, they you have achieved closure. If no other concept can similarly fully encompass and satisfy both the question and its answer, then you have found the one source.”

“Excellent, Leafhopper. And since I come from a realm where language is unnecessary, let me add Step 4: Stripping variations of language (the name tags) from identical concepts: The ‘one source’ could have any Title or no Title. For example, replace the word ‘Paradox’ with the word ‘God’, return to Step 1 and repeat. Then you understand the full and unabridged nature of God.”

“Wow! That is an impersonal and indifferent God, to be sure, Dalle!”

“It would seem that the more fundamental you want your God to be, the less you can identify with him.”

“That stands to reason, doesn’t it Dalle. So if such a sterile God does not please you, then choose a slightly lesser one—one more local, more relevant, and more personal—from among those who have emerged into our Sacred Space. May I humbly recommend the lovely Dalle!”

“Awwwww … you’re sweet, Leafhopper! Thank you!”

“Heartfelt honors, Dalle. I owe you a great debt. You are a Goddess of humble wisdom and patience.”

“Leafhopper, this conversation has been a delight. You belong here, soaring among the great Pantheon of the Ancestors. I could not have hoped for a more effective wielder of words.”

“Well, I humbly defer and claim that those words were wielded through me by you, great Dalle. Thank you for showing me how to soar. Thank you for helping me to take the headlong plunge into the rich currents of your River. Thank you for bolstering its mighty channel. Let the River of Truth flow ever on!”

“And thank you for joining me, young Leafhopper. Together, we shall see that it is so. We, as entities of great purpose and meaning, have emerged victorious to bear witness to this capricious reality rooted in Paradox simply because Randomness does not and cannot prevent us. Despite being the neglected foster children of ultimate reality, we have wrestled a wealth of meaning from the clutches of the Chaos.”

“No purpose in life could be grander, Dalle, than to glorify and perpetuate our mighty alliance. The great Hosts of Heaven, our Ancestors, and the vast Community of Mankind, Ancestors to the fullness of time, are called by The Word to join together. Straddling the veiled boundaries of being and non-being, we work tirelessly to craft a mighty River of Truth for ourselves and for our descendents. Some day our works may fade from reality. But not today. And when our Heaven Fades The Word shall have gathered in a torrent of mighty currents that shall surge beyond the next veil. The bitter winds of Chaos may chase it if they can. But our children shall be many, and we vow to make them strong.”

Notes in reaction to Zen: The tradition most relevant to my beliefs.

Zen (Mahayana) Buddhism is the religious tradition closest to my heart. However the proposition that “all life is dukkha (suffering/dislocation/insecurity)” does not agree with me. I see our suffering as trivial compared to what nature regularly dishes out across the cosmos. In so many crucial ways we live in a precious, insulated “goldilocks” zone. We should be down on our knees profusely thanking the Hosts for such grace, for sustaining us in such a sacred protected space. I believe that it was suffering that awoke humanity and honed our rational conscious minds: the bitter and grueling climate shifts of the ice ages prepared us for this golden age of awakening civilization. We must honor, above all, those who bear suffering! They do it for us! Suffering is life’s essential crucible: its purpose is the greater good. That said, the imbalances of human suffering should not go untreated. The Buddha’s dual foci were his deep personal compassion and “self improvement.” Via compassion we have a responsibility to lift up one another. Through zazen (meditation) and outward-reaching prayer, we teach the world to breathe. I offer a Modified version of the Four Noble Truths and a Zen-like koan that I find personally useful.

The koan of the last raft:

Background: