Consciousness, Time and Divine Reality in Metaphysical Studies

unconsciousness leads to a virtual annulment of time. In the same way we notice that even in the inner world causality is linked to time. And every cause, however instantaneous on an informal plane, requires a phase transition time to be able to develop correctly and manifest completely. In this case, the deeper the causes are and the farther they are from the conscious activity of the individual, the more time they take to manifest themselves in a complete and stable way. The study of the constraints between these magnitudes of psychic life is very fascinating and will certainly one day be the object of study of psychology, but regardless of the formulas that can be hypothesized or derived, it is however important to emphasize that these same categories that allow us to relate to the world of exterior phenomena are the same ones that bind us to interior phenomena. Even from an interior point of view everything occupies a certain interior space, everything invests a certain subjective time and everything requires an originating cause. These categories constitute our constraint to the entire phenomenal world. Our created mind is not free to conceive itself without time, nor to conceive itself adimensional and without occupying any space just as it is not capable of conceiving itself as the originating cause of itself. These categories of thought are the limits that stand between the Absolute and the Universe. These are the categories of thought that close and imprison the consciousness of Man. These are the constraints that are found both in the immensely small, "at the base," and in the immensely large, "beyond the Universe." Absolute concentration leads to the limits of the Universe as does absolute comprehension. These are the constraints beyond which lies "substantial Reality, fundamental Truth." Does a fundamental Truth therefore exist? Is it knowable by Man? Are these boundaries surmountable? And what is consciousness beyond such limits? To the corresponding state beyond the boundaries of created consciousness, a very rare and very particular state, tradition has given a name: epoptate. A description of such a state is expressed by Clement of Alexandria in the Stromata: "We can take purification through confession, contemplation through analysis, advancing toward the first contemplation by means of analysis, beginning from the objects that are below being itself, eliminating from the body the physical qualities, removing the dimension in depth, then the dimension in width, after this, the dimension in length. The path that remains is the monad that has, so to speak, a place. If we remove this place, the monad is an object of thought. If therefore, having removed what is found in the body and in what is called incorporeal, we throw ourselves into the greatness of Christ and from There we advance into the wide open immensity, in full holiness, we will arrive at the intuitive perception of the universal Master, having recognized not what is, but what is not. The figure, the movement, the throne, the place, the right, the left of the Father in all things, must not be perceived, although this is described, but what each of these things means, this will be shown in its place. The first cause is therefore not in space, but above place, time, name and thought. This is why Moses says: — Show yourself to me — indicating in the clearest way that God is not taught, is not named, but must be known only through the force that is in Him. Because the obscure and invisible research and the grace of knowledge come from Him through the Son." PRINCIPLE OF PANPSYCHISM Law of mentalism: the Universe is mental. The materialistic thesis is false. Everything is mind and is held in the mind of the All. The All creates in its infinite mind innumerable universes, which exist for eons of time. However for the All the creation, development, decay and death of a million universes have no greater duration than that of the opening and closing of an eye. The infinite mind of the All is the matrix of universes. Within the mind of God Mother-Father mortals are at home. No one is without Father and without Mother in the Universe. Everything is mind and is held in the mind of the All. According to Saint John Damascene, with creation from Nothing, God has placed beside himself a being absolutely other, different from himself not by place, but by nature. The Corpus Hermeticum confirms this intuition by specifying: "All beings are in God, but not as placed in a place, but in incorporeal imagination." Man is not God but is in God. This concept is explicitly affirmed in the Acts of the Apostles: "For them he has established the order of times and the boundaries of their space, so that they might seek God, if ever they might arrive at finding him going as if groping, although he is not far from each of us. In Him indeed we live, in Him we move and in Him we exist [...]" Acts 17:27 The Universe therefore exists in God because it is thought in the Divine Mind, continuously willed by His Will and begun in time with the creative fiat. In the creative act the All concentrates itself leaving in its mind a limited zone deprived of its Power and into which to return with the creative act. The creative process in question is well described by the teachings of the Kabbalist Isaac Luria reported by the disciple Vital in his 'etz hayyim with these words: "When the pure will conceived of creating the worlds and producing the emanations [...] then the En Sof concentrated itself in the middle point, placed at the exact center of its light. The light concentrated and withdrew all around that central point; precisely from the middle point there remained then a free space, empty, vacuous and hollow in this way: [...] After this concentration there was a space where the emanations, creatures, forms and realizations could exist; from the light of the En Sof there then derived a straight line, which descended from the light of its circle and came down from above to below." The created Universe therefore is not God, but is in God, sustained