Physical Spirituality

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Table of Contents

Part I:

Modes of Interaction

Interactions
Features of Connective and Binding Interactions
Spatial Arrangements
Connectivity and Architectivity
The Relevance of Scale

Part II:

Modes of Meaning

Serial Meanings of the Architective Mode
Serial Meanings of the Connective Mode
Features of Serial Meaning
Sentience
The Architective Dominion

Part III:

Modes of Spirituality

Spiritual Possibilities
Unimodal Deities
A Personal Perspective

Part IV:

Changing the Paradigm

Morality
The Unsung Virtues of Sublimation -->
Psychedelics in Perspective
Connectivity, Architectivity, Yin and Yang
Faith and Reason
Cosmic Consciousness in Perspective
To Sleep, to Dream
Conclusion
The Post Planetary Age

Appendices and References

Chapter 15: The Unsung Virtues of Sublimation


When presented with an unavoidable architective obstacle, our natural reaction is to try and forcibly overcome it, to disrupt it so that we will be free to penetrate it and perhaps harness its constituent objects to our cause, if that is our intention.

But there is another, subtler way to achieve this (though it is not always appropriate). If instead of attempting to apply overwhelming force to break an object, we sublimated it instead, applying an influence that did not challenge the internal constraints of the obstacle. The obstacle therefore does not respond as a whole and instead its constituent objects respond individually as if in a connective. While this approach may not have very dramatic effects, if the sublimating influence carried a vibration the constituent objects could connectively mimic the vibration and any signal it carried, while the obstacle as a whole remained unresponsive to and unthreatened by it.

I have found, for example, that touching someone who is agitated - say by holding their hand - sometimes allows a gentle bodily vibration of my own to calm them down and assist their agitation to subside.

Meditation can also be understood in terms of sublimation - that as one eliminates extraneous factors from one's consciousness and allows one's mind to calm down, the gentler mental vibrations that arise sublimate one's own body so as to allow one to experience one's body in vibrational and connective terms. Indeed, if touching another, one's gentler vibrations can sublimate someone else's body enabling one to feel their somatic vibrations.

Sublimation is a means by which connectivity can be indulged without raising the hackles of our Planetary Deity, for it does not involve the demise of any architecture nor affect any architective narrative, and so does not result in a hole in any architective serial meaning to alarm our Planetary Deity.

Ignorance of Constraint

Our behaviours in activities that are constrained often lie well within the boundaries of their constraints. Being sublimate to their constraints, these behaviours never challenge their constraints so we do not realize they are constrained. We freely enjoy their apparent connectivity oblivious of the fact that it is bounded. For example, very young children of different social strata may happily play together - until they are sent to different schools in line with their parents' social expectations.

It is probable that much of our everyday connective activity is sublimate, and we blithely proceed in it without raising the ire of our Planetary Deity.

Sublimation and Resonance

I used the term 'consonance' rather than 'resonance' when describing how, when waves interact with each other, if their peaks and troughs were suitably aligned their interference resulted in exaggerated oscillations in some positions and severely reduced ones in others, which are commonly known as 'nodes' and 'anti-nodes'.

In order for the nodes and anti-nodes to maintain static positions, as they do in the case of standing waves, the waves must be anchored to an architective object, perhaps by reflecting off one or more objects. The bridge and nut of a guitar are examples. It is only when a consonance is so architectively anchored and the wave stands that I am happy using the term 'resonance'.

If a wave sublimating an object were to be internally reflected when attempting to exit the object, it would echo to and fro inside the object with each reflection, and if its wavelength matched the physical size of the object then standing nodes and anti-nodes would appear in the wave as it interfered with its echoes inside the object. That is, the object would resonate internally in response to the wave sublimating it.

Should the wave be of a sufficiently long duration, the resonance would get stronger and stronger, so that the difference between its nodes and anti-nodes became larger and larger, and if their difference got to exceed a binding strength of the object, the object would disrupt. That is, it is possible for a wave to disrupt an object if the wave sublimated the object, its wavelength resonated with the size of the object and the wave persisted for long enough.

I mentioned how touching someone who is agitated might allow a gentle bodily vibration of one's own to calm them down. While this can be very beneficial to both parties, one must take care when attempting such a sublimation, for one also has the capacity to facilitate a resonance, and while a mild resonance can be very pleasurable, pushing it to an extreme could cause something to break - and one does not always know what that will be.

Learning how to sublimate can be an important step in one's spiritual development, to be followed by the equally important step of learning to be careful when letting a sublimation resonate.

The Song of the Sublime

Lets now consider some of the milder connective physical processes affecting us.

The universal gravitational interaction was mentioned at the beginning of this book, where I noted that, apart from our moon and sun, all other gravitational influences - being those of every object on Earth, those of our solar system's planets, and those of every other star and galaxy - were too small to have any noticeable effect on us. But they are there, and being so small they could sublimate our bodies and most if not all earthly architectures.

Consider that the orbital periods of our solar system's planets are on the scale of years, while those of remote stars and galaxies are on the scale of eons, so the likelihood of these gravitational influences resonating in our bodies is nonexistent and would have no architective consequences.

There are a number of other physical cosmic connective influences such as the Cosmic Microwave Background, the radiation from distant stars, passing cosmic rays and neutrinos, our sun's heliosphere and the Earth's magnetosphere, that are also small enough to sublimate earthly architectures without architective consequences.

Then there are connective but non-cosmic influences, such as the radio and microwaves we broadcast through our cities, though these either do not resonate within our bodily architectures or are at such low levels as to be deemed safe. X-rays and UV-rays, on the other hand, are stronger and do resonate within our bodies and are treated with caution.

Being connective, in the absence of resonances, these influences have no architective consequences.

Together, these influences, cosmic and otherwise, induce a confluence of subtle vibrations sublimating our bodies and our environment, the interferences of which constellate in patterns of varying profundity.

The influence of a holism is always less than the connective influences of nearby objects as well as being less than any architective influences. Through connective influences such as these, the holism of the universe - the Cosmic Deity - expresses itself at such extremes of subtlety as to be capable of sublimating absolutely every object, earthly or otherwise (except for elementary objects such as quarks and leptons which can't be sublimated since they have no constituent objects).

I like to think that the Cosmic Deity expresses itself in a music, so that by sublimating every non-elementary object, from the smallest hadron to the largest rocky planet, all are subtly singing to its song, both internally and externally, and doing so without undermining the architective expressions of the objects they might constitute.


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