Antonio,

Thank you for a well developed analysis of how we, as sentient beings, fit into the world and reality.

I would offer up some ideas to consider, as to how the elements function;

For one thing, as mobile, intentional organisms, we experience life as sequences of perception, which we then sort and judge, in order to navigate. Then we narrate our journeys and build civilizations out of the collected knowledge.

The makes the sequence of time fundamental to our conscious reality and culture. Physics codifies it as measures of duration.

Yet the evident fact is that it is not so much the point of the present, moving past to future, as it is change turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is this physical presence, as events form and dissolve.

There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it, aka, causality and conservation of energy.

Energy is “conserved,” because there is no physical past for it to recede into, nor physical future for it to arrive from. It is the changing configuration of this dynamic which creates the effect of time.

So time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, etc. We could use ideal gas laws to correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but no one calls them the 5th and 6th dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought.

The left, linear, cause and effect logical hemisphere of the brain is analogous to a clock/ruler, while the right emotional, intuitive side is to a thermostat/barometer. Nature and the subconscious are more thermodynamic feedback loops, than the linear projection of time.

Different clocks can run at different rates, simply because they are separate actions. Think frequencies, or metabolism. Though as much of history is about getting everyone dancing to the same tune, we are indoctrinated to the notion of a universal time.

As the energy is always and only present, basically creating this state of the present, it goes from one configuration to the next, past to future while the patterns generated go future to past.

As in consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts go future to past.

Lives go birth to death, while life shuffles onto the next generation, shedding the old.

Even in factories, the product goes start to finish, while the production line points the other way, consuming material and expelling product.

The feedback is that the patterns steer and define the process.

Yet these patterns are like waves. They are only fully formed, as they are cresting, so they fade as we study them, magnifying this sense of impermanence.

This dichotomy of energy and form is essential. Galaxies are energy radiating out, as form coalesces in. As biological organisms, we have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, along with the central nervous system to sort through the forms precipitating out and referee the emotions and impulses bubbling up.

Societies are the elemental desires and emotions bubbling up, while the civil and cultural forms coalesce in. Youth and age, liberal and conservative.

Though as we have this linear, goal oriented culture, each side of the dynamic sees themselves on the road to nirvana, while the other side are fools.

As good and bad are not a cosmic dual between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental, so ethical and moral structures can never be set in stone, but are the constant tension and fluctuation between desire and judgement.

Necessarily a spiritual absolute would not be an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell, but the essence of sentience, from which we rise. The light shining through the film, rather than the images on it.

Though like the new born, we need structure and form. So we have to wrestle with the multitudes of desires, which are the appetite that gives this banquet of life meaning, in order not to be lost in it. Fluctuating on the spectrum between anarchy and totalitarianism.

Yet just because it is all connected, doesn’t make it one. Only networked.

The notion of universal oneness is very powerful, but it’s only one side of the equation. The opposite of the absolute is the infinite and we fluctuate between them.

For example, if we take all physical properties from space, it has the non-physical properties of equilibrium and infinity. Infinity because there is nothing to bound it and equilibrium is implicit in General Relativity, as the frame with the fastest clock and longest ruler is closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum, the absolute zero of the void.

So space is the absolute and the infinite.

What fills space, energy and form, cycles between these, as energy radiates toward infinity, while form coalesces to the neutrality of the absolute. Until all energy is radiated back out. Resulting in galaxies as cosmic convection cycles.

So when we assume the one, we are focused on the absolute. The black hole/eye of the storm, at the center.

This is a very powerful attraction, yet this physical and mental reductionism has to be balanced by contextualization. The network stretching to infinity.

Cosmology even tries to define the entire universe as a singular entity, but even this is breaking down and now they add multiverse to fill some of the many gaps.

It is more the yin and yang, than God Almighty.

It’s the tension and friction between these opposites which is reality.

Best,

John