If you refer to the sum of all things, you’re correct. The only thing that can emulate the sum of all things is the universe itself.
Here, we disagree. Logic is only the beginning, but there is nothing without it. Genuinely illogical things do not exist in our reality; they’re essential parts of the totality, but they’re where we aren’t.
Polycarp: You’re clearly a very intelligent and thoughtful person, but in this particular circumstance, you’re being quite dense. You have defined happiness: it’s what, when you see it, causes you to assign the label of ‘happiness’ to it. Without knowing the particulars of the workings of your mind, though, this definition is unusable to everyone else.
If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t bother correcting your error. If I loved you, I wouldn’t insult you by calling you stupid. Quickly, now: do I love you or not? 
Vorlon wrote:
First order logic is a house of cards standing upon one of its own fallacies, the petitio principii. Trusting logic to model the universe ontologically is like trusting your eyes to model it metaphysically. Eyes are themselves part of the universe, and observing it is as circulus in demonstrando as a proof of necessary existence.
If I were inclined to speak mystically, I’d say that the universe is what the eyes see.
In an attempt to be more precise: a universe inhabited by a ‘mind’, which has certain properties, must itself have certain properties for the mind to be able to exist within it. Understand the mind, and you understand the universe (in part).
Formal logic is to logic what formal wear is to clothes. It’s just a subset of a much larger world… much as the universe itself, in fact.
Yes! That’s an excellent (and time honored) approach to understanding. There are various ways of trying to understand the mind. I recommend including a subjective examination of your own mind in your explorations of the universe.
May I relate what I found when the urgings of my wife and of a few of the people participating in this thread led me to take that approach myself?
Could I stop you if I tried? 
Yep.
I offer because I think my experience is illustrative of a non-intellectual way of discovering something that can promote a greater intellectual understanding. However, as I said before, the account is fairly lengthy, so I hesitate to give it where it’s not of any interest.
Go ahead.
OK. I’ve been writing this up over the past week in the form of an epistle to my wife, so a few edits and vB codes and I’m ready to post.
There’s a technique Buddhists practice (or which in any case I learned from a text on Buddhism) which is used to get “in touch” with the here and now of existence. You find a quiet place, assume a comfortable upright sitting position, close your eyes, relax, and begin to notice your physicality; the contact of your body with the chair or floor, the small tensions or muscle aches, the pull of gravity on your limbs and its effect on your balance, the sounds around you, your mood, etc. You do all this noticing without trying to change any of them; you are merely observing them as they are. You notice your own breathing, paying attention to the physical sensations involved, letting your breath take place naturally without controlling it.
The goal of this exercise is to stay in the moment, to just exist in an aware and engaged state. This may sound pretty easy, but it is not. With practice, one can maintain such awareness for longer moments before drifting into contemplation, or the various fantasies and distracting thoughts of the more or less continuous internal dialogue in which we engage when we’re not “in the moment”. This is the opposite of “letting go” of worldly things, it’s more an embracing of consciousness and calm acceptance of what it reveals. (The Buddhist point of the exercise btw is to facilitate understanding of anguish, so that one can begin to let go of its causes.)
It’s proper during this sort of engagement with consciousness to examine relationships and to test one’s premises against what one observes in the moment. Just as you can notice your physicality in a detail that cannot be accomplished when distracted by the internal dialogue, you can also notice your own assumptions and beliefs when not engaged in rationalizing them. One must first look for those sets of basic data about one’s universe from which assumptive propositons are pulled. This, I decided, would be the first step I took toward inviting a subjective revelatory experience.
So the particular rubric I looked for was “things I know about existence through direct experience.” I looked at all the subjective phenomena which I experience associated with biological and physical functions. I examined my preconceptions about those direct experiences, and attempted to accept the associated phenomena without assuming a purpose beyond biology or physics.
It was no surprise to me that, without the presumption of Purpose, I could find no such thing catologued among my ”direct experience” base of knowledge. What I found but had not expected was that I have a profound confidence of my direct experience of Meaning. –Remember, I’m not speaking of some derived or supposed meaning to existence; this was a direct piece of knowledge I found that I possess. There was no underlying chain of logic supporting this knowledge at all; I just know that my existence has Meaning, even though there is no purpose to it. In other words, I know that I am part of everything in a way that has sense to it, even though my existence is not meant to accomplish anything. In other other words, I’m essential without being necessary.
Finding this intriguing, as you might expect, I investigated further. (Keep in mind this was all over more than a few sessions of “in the moment” meditation. I am not yet so practiced in this technique that I find it very easy to maintain. Also, the analysis of these realizations has naturally been done during contemplative, rather than meditative moments.) I wondered how I had come by such direct confidence, since I could remember no specific experience which imparted such essential knowledge. I asked (in effect), paying attention only to my own “here and now”, from where did this assurance come?
I’ll have to paraphrase the instant response, because it wasn’t in the form of speech or even of communication; it was a direct and utter knowledge which I cannot transcribe. An approximation of the message is all I can give, and I must caution you that what I can put on paper (or pixels) does not adequately describe things as I experienced them. I asked, without asking, and received an answer:
The knowledge has come to me from the same source from which I am given life, and to Whom I shall return, and Who is always with me.
Now, I should interject that, in the course of forty years I’ve experienced epiphanies large and small, and each was accompanied by a sort of zing! pow! type of realization. This was nothing like that. In fact, the response was so utterly mundane and unsurprising, so completely devoid of mystic drama, that I actually experienced something like “Well yes, I knew that…” It was like considering someone who had always been in the room with me, except that it was more like totally understanding that person without interaction, like experiencing the message through the same apparatus that was used to convey it.
Over the course of the months since then, I’ve repeated the exercise and have never failed to come “face to face” with the knowledge of this Person, who I am absolutely assured accepts me in an utterly complete way, and advises[sup]1[/sup] that I accept all other creatures in the same way. I am given by this Person to understand that it is from him[sup]2[/sup] that all others are given life and to him that they shall all return. All are connected in the same way that I am, and each is accepted by him in the same way as well.
I am quite aware that the Person I apprehend might very well be Me staring back at me, and that I may be fooled by some sort of biological defense mechanism of self awareness into thinking that this perception is a separate being, colored and endowed by my imagination into a loving Source for everything. I choose, as a matter of faith, to trust and accept my experience, and to call this Person God. This is what I think Fatwater Fewl means when he says faith is a decision; one must decide intellectually how to deal with what one discovers experientially. That is always a matter of faith, no matter what the decision.
This decision I’ve made has required some adjustment. Since I have several decades behind me in which I deliberately shed attachment to the various myth-structures (see Polycarp’s excellent thread), I’m attempting to work what I know into a structure from which I can test my moral understanding. I don’t think the structure itself is as important as maintaining the moral understanding. I’m also not called upon to hold anything more important than the guidance to practice that utter acceptance I discussed earlier, and I am called on to “witness” nothing more than that. And I am certainly not called upon to proclaim about religion. Rather, I’m to examine the beliefs I cannot determine directly, testing them against the things I do know directly. (When I read the words of Christ, they resonate with what I understand subjectively. The words and works of various others resonate the same way.)
I believe that I am given spirit from the same source that animates all of creation; that I am an intentional fragment of God, meant to make my own way. I am essentially the same as all other fragments of God. On the scale of infinity, there is no relativity. That is a humbling thought. I am the same to God as Pol Pot. I am the same as Einstein and Mother Teresa, and they the same as Stalin and Jack the Ripper. The differences between myself and others in the here and now must still be dealt with, of course, but I must recognize that those differences have no ultimate effect.
I mentioned earlier that my experience of the connection I have always had to God was lacking in drama. That’s the honest truth of it. But the implications of that connection are both profound and dramatic, and I think it’s a lifetime’s occupation to work them out.
[sup]1[/sup] I say “advises” instead of “commands” because it feels like something that is just structured that way. Sort of Operating Instructions for Bioexistence, Rev 0.
[sup]2[/sup] Personal pronoun for convenience only. I don’t think any biology-based terminology represents God adequately.
xenophon41
That was absolutely beautiful! Thank you for sharing your experience with us. It’s an exciting, humbling, and joyful journey, isn’t it?
lekatt
I really liked the clearness of this message. Sometimes just phrasing something differently brings it more in focus.
Interesting.
My only problem with this is that this Person doesn’t seem to draw any distinctions (you state, between people, although I’m assuming between things/states as well).
Not drawing distinctions isn’t really a property of a Creator… granted, you didn’t claim that this Person was a Creator in the first place.
Xeno, that was wonderful. It relates closely to my experience, save that mine included a suffusement of love pouring from Him (again a pronoun of convenience) to me – which you did not relate as a part of your initial experience. In my dichotomous mental structure, I feel very uncomfortable with seeing myself as “an intentional fragment of God, meant to make my own way” – but I grok what you mean by that wording, and cannot disagree.
xenophon41
What a wonderful post. It is very clear and precise. I saw my near death experience in it. I remember the first time after the NDE when I read the teachings of Jesus, they spoke to me with love and acceptance I never understood before.
God Bless You
Edlyn
Thank you for your kind words, I feel I still have a way to go yet in expressing my thoughts so others can feel them.
Love
Leroy
Xeno
A fabulous moral journey! How blessed you are to be walking it. God go with you always.
Vorlon wrote:
Agreed. Especially the “in part”. If the universe is complete, then it is inconsistent.
Creator of things… I really couldn’t say, as I don’t have access to that information. I think definitely Source and Suffuser of spirit, but that’s an imprecise term. As far as drawing distinctions, I don’t think that’s a “property” he values very highly. This may be completely contrary to other experiences, but I got absolutely no sense of judgement. (Maybe we only return when we can accept him as completely as he accepts us.)
The universe is consistent, but not complete.
Could you explain how the emission of a photon is “consistent”? And could you describe what the universe is missing? Thanks.
Oy. Now we have two “God and Physics” threads…
Gah. You’re right. Bring us back on track, Xeno.
In the experiences you described, did you perceive a love that aligned with my own perception of love as the sharing of goodness? In other words, was goodness imparted to you?
