What Is Random?

Preston Harold sets us up for his next section of chapter 6 by asking a major question, which needs to be qualified before it can be answered:

A question may now be posed: is man somehow psychically involved in a parallel operation to nature’s supreme law? Before this question can be answered, it is pertinent to note that…absolute vacuum has not yet been achieved. Nor has absolute zero temperature been achieved – note that Jesus’ words pointing to the increasing disorder as love grows “cold” (Matt. 24:12) are congruent with scientists’ finding that the lower the temperature the greater the disorder. Nor has absolute power ever been exerted: operation of the second law of thermodynamics opposes. Not even the word, random, is absolute in it’s meaning, it takes a strange turn – by definition, random means haphazard course of progress, without definite aim, direction, rule, or method, but biologically speaking, “as if” enters the picture: “Made as if at random but controlled so as to bring together certain individuals or classes, or to make representative.” (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary)

So randomness is hidden within a greater purpose that we cannot immediately perceive; something that seems not to make sense to us with limited vision may be working toward a greater whole if we choose to take in the long view.

A funny story about randomness…

Back in the early ‘90s a friend of mine was telling me about his latest shopping expedition to find a new CD player. He was specifically looking for a 5 or 6 disc changer that would either play the CDs in order one after the other or would “shuffle” the discs, playing discs and the songs on them randomly until all the songs on all the discs had been played. He told me, “Yeah, the sales guy said that over time when you choose the shuffle option that the disc player becomes less random.” I asked him how that was possible. He said it must have had something to do with the way the changer was programmed. I told my friend that it didn’t matter in what order the disc player played the songs, that once that “random” option was chosen the order in which the songs were played WAS totally random, even if the player began at the first song on the first disc and played every song on it in the original sequence and then through each subsequent disc’s original sequence through to the last song of the final disc. My friend thought about it for a second, chuckled, and said, “You’re totally right!” He shook his head and couldn’t believe the sales guy unknowingly played him so well. The lesson is that once we invoke the word “random,” even perfect order is a consequence of the randomness we invoke. Ahhh, the power of words!

Preston Harold claims if we take a step back, we will see that there is a hidden order behind the randomness we perceive. Until next time, peace.

Time Maps: Part III

Finishing up our “Time Maps” installments, we continue with how the words of Jesus interpret the time maps Preston Harold has drawn for us.

Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, [Jesus] answered them and said the kingdom of God comes not with observation, nor will people say “Here it is!” or “There it is!” because the kingdom of God is in your midst. –Luke 17:20-21

Consciousness in man is attached to a material body and thus consciousness can take him only into a concept of absolute future. But man’s kingdom, the unconscious domain, is located “absolutely elsewhere” in relation to consciousness’ space-time frame; thus he does not have to “go” anywhere to enter this kingdom here-now within him, and thus he is with God and all things are possible to him: he is constantly passing through the “eye of a needle,” through the now, which is absolute unto himself only, for there “is no absolute Now, but only the various relative Nows differing according to the reckoning of different observers…”

No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father has declared Him.

–John 1:18

Eddington calls “Absolute Elsewhere” the neutral zone. God being the only “Absolute Esewhere” man can conceive of makes of Him a neutral event man cannot observe because he is taking place through and within God being – just as a child is taking place through a woman “with child” and the embryo cannot observe her as an event or form, and she cannot intervene in the natural process that causes him to be brought forth through her body and being. In this process, man becomes an event in himself, a biological event, his flesh antientropic although the random element is increased with every move he makes, pointing time’s arrow for consciousness as the unconscious calculates the hour.

 

Here we encounter a concept that can revolutionize the way we see the world: that humankind, each person, is an event, a verb. Not a noun, a dead product of thought, a mere “thing,” but a process, an activity, a living movement. And if humans are created in the image of God, then God must be a verb as well.

In our next post we will look a bit closer at what the word “random” might really mean. Until then, peace.

Time Maps: Part II

Preston Harold now describes his time diagrams from the standpoint of Jesus’ words. He gives us a brief introduction:

The diagrams are not to be taken as more than a token – a token idea is all that can be given. Therefore, if an ancient’s pure thought grasped the truth of time in all it’s complexity, his revelation of it must bespeak such as is beyond man’s comprehension in its entirety; and since time is so involved with space and with a body traveling through space, the ancient’s statement could not at first glance appear to be related directly to the mystery of time.

Once again, Harold reminds us that the ancients didn’t have modern scientific concepts on to which to build their revelations. Poetry was their means of transmission. Now, onto the main event…

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God…With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.” –Mark 10:25

 

Look now at Figure 2. It shows, poetically speaking, that “I, myself” am being drawn through the “eye of a needle” – and when the drawings are understood, it would appear that it is more difficult for “me” to enter “Absolute Elsewhere” which the “eye of the needle” involves (see Figure 4) than it is for a camel to go through a tiny hole.

 

Consider that if a man possesses the kingdom of God within him, he is rich – and as Jesus depicts true wealth, He, Himself, is rich indeed. Thus, His words must pertain to “how I locate events in my frame” as He presents in words a form that looks like a “circle,” the eye of a needle, which it is possible for “a rich man” to be drawn through, if God draws him, and by a force which is “heaven knows what” – time.

Please also note in Harold’s diagrams that the symbol in the middle of the circle for the “Here-Now” experience is a cross.

Harold continues…

“Absolute Elsewhere” provides “room” for the concept of the unconscious, for an eternal abode of the Father who alone knows the secret of time, and who in relation to the possibility of man’s seeing Him must be absolutely elsewhere – thus, all one can see of Him is to be seen in God-consciousness in man’s here-now being.

One here is reminded of last verse of the Prologue to the Gospel of John – “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart who has made Him known.” John 1:18

Jesus’ strange word-picture suggests a large mass being drawn through a tiny opening – by means of this contradiction, He indicates poetically that the actual mass of matter is no more than a speck in comparison to what it appears to be. Scientists now confirm this.

And who knew that Jesus taught at light speed?!

Eddington says, “As the speed of matter approaches the speed of light its mass increases to infinity, and therefore it is impossible to make matter travel faster than light.” Jesus made Himself a symbol of light, He poetically “sets the pace” at which a material body may travel: He was called “teacher” and “Lord” – thus, when He says that the scholar is not above his teacher nor the servant above his lord, enough that they fare alike, He restricts the pace to His own, light’s speed.

Move over Millenium Falcon, Jesus is in the passing lane! We’ll finish up our “time maps” installments in the next post. Until then, peace.

Time Maps: Part 1

In spite of many predicting when the 2^nd coming of Christ will be, Jesus himself said no one would or could know:

Jesus said that the answer as to when “becoming” will be achieved is not accessible to Homo sapiens’ consciousness:

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. –Mark 13:32

Thus, only the Father knoweth the hour – even as something in the unconscious can calculate time without consciousness’ awareness that it is calculating it.

Preston Harold goes on to compare a physicists understanding of time with Jesus’. He says…

But Eddington does try to picture what the physicist knows of time in a way that the layman may grasp it. Jesus also drew a word-picture so similar to Eddington’s in many respects He must have been alluding to all that men can know of the mystery of time: primarily, that consciousness cannot penetrate its secret “now” although in the unconscious time’s function or working is grasped.

Eddington explains that “Physical time is, like space, a kind of frame in which we locate the events in the external world…We have seen that there is an infinite choice of alternative frames; so, to be quite explicit, I will tell you how I locate events in my frame.” First, he depicts a number of events, represented by circles, located at random around the cross encircled, representing “I,” here-now, enveloped in an event.

Figure 2 extends the line of the cross, vesting “I” with a past: “myself” drawn through “I, here-now,” into the future.

Figure 3 depicts time as “I” am related to the world or activity of others and it may be observed that “my now” and the “now” of another are not one and the same; nor is the past and future line of time-seeing precisely the same.

Figure 4 shows a drawing of “Father Time,” as a space-time frame involving “Absolute Past” and “Absolute Future” and “Absolute Elsewhere.”

Eddington says, “No observer can reach an event in the neutral zone [Absolute Elsewhere], since the required speed is too great. The event is not Here for any observer (from Here-Now); therefore it is absolutely Elsewhere.”

Yet, “I” am enveloped in the “disappearing act” of time and although “I” cannot see “Absolute Everywhere,” somehow “I” must touch upon this realm, for it converges upon the “event” and “myself” passing, or being passed, through it as may be seen in Figure 4.

Whew! That’s quite enough for today. In the next installment we’ll look at how these diagrams pertain to the words of Jesus. Until then, peace.

Time the Conundrum

Jesus often preached and taught on the “coming of the kingdom,” an idea which has held captive the imagination of his followers for millennia. Many have predicted the return of Jesus, also known as the “second coming” (and along with it the kingdom of God) for generation after generation, only to be let down and confounded by the failure of their prognostication. But this understanding concerning the coming of the kingdom just will not do. Preston Harold helps us to get a hold on reality:

All that Jesus said of the coming of the kingdom does not refute its existence and present operation, but serves to identify that of which He speaks as being completely involved both in being and in becoming, just as entropy is involved in that which is and is coming to be – with becoming in the universe – which is to say, time.

It is time – real time and the meaning of time – that unites the unconscious and nature’s supreme law which, in Jesus’ teaching, therefore, share the words: kingdom, heaven, realm, and reign of God. In the physicists’ view, entropy “points time’s arrow,” and the unconscious in man is capable of calculation of time, as is demonstrated in posthypnotic response to suggestion made to the second after a span of minutes, days, months, or even years.

If one will not concede that Jesus’ references to the kingdom of heaven pertain to the unconscious and to the working of supreme natural law in man’s being and throughout the universe, he must ask himself anew what these passages refer to and concede that they cannot deal with any sort of eternal abode for the “redeemed” because Jesus says that “Heaven and earth shall pass away…” but not “my words,” not consciousness’ manifestation.

How many Christians are willing to “ask themselves anew what these passages refer to?” How many teachers are willing to leave behind the comfortable and traditional teachings and lead the Church into a new understanding of the teachings of Jesus? The modern knowledge of the quantum realm and the second law of thermodynamics have thrown the door wide open to understanding “open secrets” of scripture in a way that our current times demand. It is TIME for us to grasp the purpose of TIME!…

The passing away of “heaven” indicates that the unconscious domain will at some point no longer exist as such because its content and power will be realized – herein is the becoming, or the coming of the inner kingdom unto each man. The passing away of “earth” indicates change born of the operation of the second law of thermodynamics, and it indicates also that flesh expressed by partial consciousness will pass away as a material embodiment born of complete comes into expression. But Jesus said of the kingdom’s coming – of time’s working in the unconscious and in the universe through entropy’s increase – “The kingdom of God cometh not through observation (Or, with outward show)…” as man expected it to come in His day. Perhaps it is as unlikely that the “end of the world” will come as the physicists expect it today as that it will come as the early Christians expected it, for the meaning of the supreme natural law and its working in universal terms is not yet known – cannot be known entirely until the innermost workings of the universe are known, and until time’s meaning is grasped.

Jesus said that the answer as to when “becoming” will be achieved is not accessible to Homo sapiens’ consciousness: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but only the Father.”

We will continue exploring time in our next post. Until then, peace…