Thursday 23 March 2017

What Kind-of-Thing is the universal realm of truth?

If we are to account for true knowledge, we cannot be reliant upon some multi-stage and approximate process like 'communication'.

There must be direct access of our minds to truths; and this has usually been conceptualised as some single realm of universal truth, to which all people potentially have direct access - a realm that contains... well what, exactly?

This is a kind of 'model' of reality - not reality itself - but assuming we do want a model, then there are two questions that spring to my mind.

The first is to ask where is this realm; such that it is at the same time a single realm and yet every mind can have access to it?

Various answers have been given - but of course, none of the answers maps-onto a materialist world picture of modernity. For example, the universal realm is inside everybody, yet each inside is the same place.

This (or something similar) was an answer found acceptable by many people for many centuries - or indeed millennia - but is now supposedly incoherent. Yet its 'incoherence' is merely a matter of working from abitrary and materialist metaphysical assumptions.

The second question is relatively neglected - which is what kind of ultimate truths are in the universal realm?

Typically, (e.g Plato at the beginning, or Rudolf Steiner and Own Barfield in recent years) the realm is conceptualised as a place of Ideas or Concepts - in other words, by such accounts, universal truth is Abstract.

But this won't do for me; because my understanding is that the universal truth of God's creation is Love - and love is not abstract but Love is the cohesion of reality

Love is therefore not an emotion, nor is it a physical 'force' - love is the ultimate cohesion between the beings of creation (and creation consists of beings, and their products).

So ultimate reality is God and God's children (Men, and the various levels and types of angels and other beings - animal, vegetable and mineral as we modern people usually term them) and the Love between them - these beings 'cohere' by love; and love is between living, conscious beings.

So; if we want to be philosophers or scientists, and to know more specifically about creation - our ultimate answer will be in terms of Love - and we can only get access to this knowledge by ourselves being a part of this vast and intricate, family-like network of Love.

But what about evil? Well, evil rejects Love and can never truly know - because for evil all knowledge is ultimately a personal delusion. Evil has rejected God's creation and the network of relationships - the Pride of evil is to rely upon its own, specific, cut-off understanding and motivations.

Furthermore, evil is un-understandable - since it is outside the realm of truth , reality, knowledge - evil is sealed-off in its own world. We know what evil is not - but can never know what it is - because there is no truth in evil... what this means is that truth is a universal, evil is not universal. Therefore, we should never 'believe' evil for the simple reason that evil cannot know; and the assertions of evil are merely delusional manipulations. That is, the devil is a liar, and father of lies, and so are all who have set themselves up as the ultimate source of 'reality'.

So... my notion of the universal realm - or, at least the one I strive to live-by - should ultimately be one of loving human relationships. These might be approximated by 'concepts', 'ideas', 'facts'... but such abstractions are not the bottom line reality.

Creation is Not held-together by concepts or any other abstractions - creation is held-together and structured by divine Love between living conscious beings.