The Gravity of Consciousness

A whimsical supposition…

I remember reading once somewhere, where I believe it was Ken Wilber who suggested that Love should be considered the fifth fundamental force of physics. I understood, in essence, he was arguing that something fundamentally causes things to come together in increasingly higher orders of relational connectedness.

Then there was this article last year suggesting something similar — “that the functional information of a system will increase over time when subjected to selection for function(s).”

This musing is, for me, related to these things…

Let us begin by postulating the substrate of observable phenomenal existence as that which we refer to as awareness itself. [I have ranted on this subject before and will not further belabor the point here.] In short, observation of any phenomenal postulation is at once and at first (as far as we are capable to tell) arising in awareness, whether we are conscious of it or not.

In the sense that objects of consciousness might be an expression of the invisible made visible, I’m further a little curious about the apparently vast amounts of energy somehow dormant in the quantum void fluctuations or instances of dark matter… But let me attend the point, if I am able…

A, perhaps theoretical, boundless and timeless present emptiness, completely free of any constraint or definition, nonetheless gives rise to phenomenal expression in the form of liveliness, movement, emanation, and apparent tension between a relative existential condition and absolute transcendent freedom.

I imagine I perceive something of the nature of this incredible dance, or at least I imagine that I perceive some words that might act like prism or ground on which to make these thoughts visible…

As if inherent in the nature of this transcendent pre-existential field I’ll refer to simply as “awareness,” lies a propensity to condense, like vapor into droplets. A fundamental force, this love, emanates connection of the unseen, perhaps the un-manifest, to itself in a way of revelation or real-ization, or or re-“if”ication if I may wax a bit absurd.

Emanating from infinite waves of possibility, this awareness begins to form a particle of consciousness, complete freedom binding to itself, a compassionate surrender to become bound to itself in love.

A first moment of existence, bound to nothing else, itself fleeting, in the very same moment gone. Or perhaps not…

In Buddhist thought, this has been called a “mind moment,” arising and, unelaborated, vanished in an instant. Or not…

The moment might spin up. From the human perspective, this moment might become a fleeting thought, apparently existential but it’s seed content invisible, momentary and gone.

This awareness-emptiness become consciousness, and turns into itself, begins to identify as existential, elaborates further, becomes object, a viable existential conception arises.

In phenomenal terms, the formless absolute becomes broken in two, existence/nonexistence, self, other, foreground, background, subject, object arise, relationality, distance from center or origin, and tension arise. Substance now exists, this love now exists, in tension. From one becomes many, and in many relating and the gravity of these dynamics becomes a force in this arising cosmic constellation.

Existential nature. “Thought, therefore existence.” Like the mirror of a galaxy at the most fundamental scale visible within the human mind, these moments whirl together into the familiar patterns of habitual persistence. Commonalities of form giving rise to themselves again and again, the persistent dimensions of the evolutionary impulse, enduring in the face of its own tendencies towards entropic dissolution.

At the hardest edges of this reified persistence, belief in existence, belief in self and righteousness becomes a fixed dogma, brittle and incapable of incorporating higher order relationalities, the pendulum swings to entropy and emptiness begins to reassert its own pole of the gravitational dance.

Collapse can ensue. Perhaps particle meets antiparticle… Annihilation.

In my minds eye, there is another movement… Not an excess into dogma, but rather a feeling of fullness, an overwhelming gratitude becomes generosity and what was once “self” begins to pour out, realizing a boundless energy of that transcendent still point moment of origin, and love becomes again to empty itself of any constraint, giving totally in wholeness.

This movement breaks the plane of a habitual cyclical whirling about the center, and rolls tumbling, in joyful abandon, drawing in new orders of gravitational possibility, expounding exponentially the ever presence of creative opportunity.

Distinction becomes humility. Self transcendence becomes fullness of the one. The illusion of permanence is pierced and boundless freedom realized once again as essence of nature.

The profound moment has awoken once again, fully realized in emptiness and form, one within the other and neither bound by momentary conceptions of stasis or reality.

You, and I, all of this, dynamic ontological superfluid escape the gravity of the outer bounds of this imaginary black hole of being… A timeless dance ends, begins, and endures now.