Aphorisms

What is time, asked Saint Augustine in an honest fear of the fear of the answer. Time indeed would ravish the mind of a Platonist- for time itself is impermanent. Plato seeks first to stand in the river, then to declare its waters still by denying the fact that they roll by- by denying change he is denying time, inventing eternity, which does not exist, except in that which does not exist. Time is a simple rate of decay- even as a term it is limited. Time may not even apply, when properly understood, to the non-existent(s) in the cosmos.

First we must view the entire field of cosmology with innate but unprejudiced suspicion. It was born in the provincial mind of an Immanuel Kant, less a villain than a bland man. It posits many things. It depends wholly upon the western, now global language of mathematics. The root issue with it is the nature of the physical universe. Thus, with pen an equation it has thrust out the beauty of an Aristotle,

'Men by all nature desire to know' and instead postulated,

E=Mc^2.

Cosmology deduces more that it induces. Better it induces, then we could be surer. But deduction has its place, has its uses, and has its conflict and ultimate unity with induction. Reality is all that is. Simply speaking mathematics is a function of the outreach of the human mind. The Sanskrit numbers, the Euclidean geometry, the Al-Jabr are all forms with which we seek to parse and make a sensible reality. It postulates and searches with the art of its numbers. Thus, it gives us a series of theories with which we can parse out the whole of physical reality. But little has been done since the major insights of the 20th century to view this cosmological thinking beyond a scant humanistic interpretation or a creeping nihilism. We cannot prove anything. Nothing proven for sure- this is the first truth of our metaphysics.

Time is a fourth dimension, intricately tied to the other two. Anything with two dimensions ultimately has three. Only in our perceptions do we reduce three dimension objects to two by eliminating stimuli. Only by repeating this process do we think of time as an overarching entity, a Father Time, rather than a fourth dimension without existence independent of the other three. Time then is a trick of the consciousness of a given subject.

Among the writings, of the Upanishads the concept of Brahma becomes fully developed. All is one. Physical reality is mere illusion. Among all the devas, the veil of Maya is indeed powerful.

If we conceive of space as infinite, and consisting of one universe, as we must, then we must come to the belief that non-existence makes up the majority of the universe.

This non-existent space, this void as proposed by Democritus and Narajuna will eventually comprise all of the known universe. Or on the other hand, if 99% of matter manages to have mass-properties that are unknown to current science, it will collapse all in on itself. The Big Crunch will begin followed by another big bang. Will all time then reoccur? Blow for blow? Fodder for metaphysician

The fleeting images of what man believes as the past and future is a function of his mind rather than physical reality. The past exists only in his thoughts. In truth, all that was the past has passed into its current configuration and is destined to move forward, in constant flux.

The future exists first as an idea in the mind; it is to be made in the now. The past is only a fleeting visage of what we once sensed; often only vapors in the mind. Emotions exist only in the mind. Emotional states, once understood as transitory reactions of the psyche to objective events, are like the rattling rails of a passing train of thought- jarring, but temporary though many make the mistake of elevating these states to objective reality regarding one's life, instead of allowing them to process as natural reactions. To not have these reactions is to be a sociopath, that is, something that appears to be human but is not. To have these reactions and to give them as permanent states is immature, that is if one makes them primary, then there can be no evolution of the self beyond an adolescent state. Just as extinction is necessary for the evolution of life past its failed forms, so pain is necessary for the evolution of what humans call the soul past its common variety into the rarefied form capable of great things.

What is justice to the universe? A human concept that must go the way of the moral world order. Morality, as perceived by religions, does not exist. All that is moral in religion depends in every way upon an afterlife. No afterlife, no morals. And morals, as traditionally understood, are understood in contradictory fashion.

Original sin dies with god. With this dies his son: Eli Eli lama sabachthani!

Good and evil can only be understood in the anthropological sense, and perhaps then, once again respected. There exists no overarching categorical imperative, nothing hanging about the longest horizon of the cosmos.

Cosmology itself has wielded a powerful hammer against the misconceptions of a race long to infatuated with myth. Man was grandiose- narcissistic- before Copernicus and eventually even Hawking reduced him to the life of a particle. The earth is but a simple dust in the cosmic wind.

Life not only seems to lose meaning, but it seems to have no meaning, leaving only nihilism in its wake.

Are there not a thousand ways in which the earth could perish? So wherefore dogmatism and demands of peace and utopia, of foolish self-preservation at the expense of the superior man and his ideals?

What is love to the Universe? Another chemical imbalance among its higher amino acids.

What is Alexander to the Biochemist? A collection of advanced amino acids- his passion for a Hellenistic world a simply rapid firing sequence of synapses.

Thus, the individual stands abandoned in the face of the abyss. He can turn away, chose to cross into it, or die of fear.

Existence is still existence; the fundamental questions of ethics still resound. A human being must still live. Living is enough- it is a condition- it seems even an ailment requiring various cures. The ultimate cure is still more terrible than the disease as long as one retains the will to live.

Among the creatures of nature one can see an interplay of the will to live and the will to power- predatory creatures retain a will to power; prey retains only a will to live.

In the original Sanskrit, karma is action, movement or deed.

All unwholesome action sets in motion a course of events that will reciprocate. All wholesome action does the same. All actions resound outward without regard to good or evil; god or devil. Action produces a reaction. Thus, the East was the first to see man as one with his cosmos in a unique sense. Action, not punished by some deity, would instead carry intrinsic weight. The Brahmanic mind with its negations of objective reality would seek to quantify the void with a Zero. With this zero the void entered the so far reasonable world of mathematics. Agni it seems borne not a heavenly ray but a torch.

It is no coincidence that the artist is the first to dare his body towards death with copious intoxicants. For he has transcended himself, and he feels the world as it is. He is harmony with energy. Long-term destruction of the body must be sacrificed for the fleeting heights of the moment. Better a death by bits of exalted Hemlock than dying of hypothermia after a thousand dreary days. Thus is the common death.

Man seeks after chaos; for in chaos he finds nature. The stars are born of flame. The woman wrenches forth a child in terrible pain. Many people prefer aggressive sex. Violence then, a component and an aesthetic quality of all things, and not an end. All that is matter is subjected to reconfiguration, unseen courses, uncertainty at the highest level. To be is to be uncertain. What am I then? A thing that is uncertain. To be certain is to cease to be, to never bring forth, and to be void. In opposition to the explosions of death and the flaming forth of new stars is the void. One is always becoming.

When a star perishes, it does so with an explosion. The increasingly metallic core of the most giant of the stars lets off its gas. Out of control, the star is eradicated in a blast. Planets near are burned to cinders. Planets far are pelted with Gamma Rays. All life follows this basic nature: it begins amid great suffering, passes its days in perpetual struggle and then dies to bring forth something greater. As winter passes, there will always come a spring.

Superstring theory postulates that all matter is a mere vibration of energy. That we are all music to contrast the cosmic background noise that only seems to hiss.

Do ends matter so much? All is limited, all is short, all that is will cease to be.

Society as we know it, with laws, institutions, and the like, stands in direct opposition to the nature of things. Society is artificial. It seeks to place us in our proper orbits without reference to our gravity. Indeed to have gravity at all it an old habit that died too easily among the great. Proto-people is always those who burn the brightest: first among these have to be considered the Arya, who took the walled cities of Mojeno-daro. These came, merciless and full of energy to consume the people there. From high on horseback; terrifyingly clad Ksatriyas, full of the power of Soma, unleashed arrows upon their foes. But they too settled, only in turn to be flooded by further invasions. Like the British, who may have invented the Aryan invasion hypothesis in the first place. Proto-people have no governing authority. Mongols, Huns, Goths, Sioux. They are the illegitimate parents of authority. Their task is to bring forth. But for those of us in this last stage of all societies, in this twilight of all things- the task may be to learn to live according to our innate energies.

But in all things there is opposition and collision that makes up the whole. In all interactions, there is a period of both decay and union. In all struggles, there is a period of peace. But peace is to be seen not as a cessation of struggle, but as a period of recharging for the final overcoming.

In cosmology, there is much bantered about the theory of everything, a quest that is platonic silliness. Pythagoras and Plato have returned, without god and form and have taken up again the equation.

What is time? A dimension. And what are dimensions? Aspects of human understanding. What is the particular understanding of man to universal infinity? If infinity had a sense of humor, perhaps it would invent man's metaphysical yearning and inborn tendency to unfounded certainty. Time began with matter. There exists no time before time, nothing that exists is above its non-existence. Thus in all ontology nothing escapes entropy, or a state preceding it in which it did not exist. None that claims to eternity shall be allowed into one's pantheon. The soul; a figment, the spirit, it dies with one's body. The spirit demands nothing more than the body, tan what the body sees than what the body may desire. The soul desires the higher realms. It desires forms and strings. It desires nonsense. The soul; not a stupidity, but a psychological error? How simple then the cure for god.

All in life is uncertain. The position of a subatomic electron is unknown and shall be forever. What of the man, made of untold electrons?

Everything better in Latin: Dues est mortatum! God is dead! Make him in the image of the pale Latins, reeling before barbarians, and kill him so.

All faiths see man as part god. But yet the truth, the lower dirtier truth, is that god is but a part man. Man exists with many impulses, but few become gods. The impulses of god are denied the many so that the few may keep their secret: the volition of self-creation that is god.