1.25 space time

Section 22 (first articulated 1.10.2021)  

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Time and space are propositions of being and nothing—the latter being the presupposition of the former.[^1]

Productivity

The general principle of productivity is the simple fact that it takes time to do something. Time is universal for productivity because it arises instantaneously at the onset of conception—as the opportunity for the determination of action.

Time functions as a setback loop—not as a mere restriction upon an already determined act, but as the very opportunity for determination to move forward from its origin as conception.[^2] The moment for thought is the opportunity to think.

Time is not reactionary to preexisting events, as our conventional measurement of it implies. The clock takes a circular form precisely because it symbolizes this self-referential process—the returning of the origin into its own movement.[^3]

Etymologically, the term opportunity breaks down into opp-or-t-unity: “opposition or unity,” and “tune,” meaning to adjust or correct.[^4] Time, as opportunity, is therefore both the opposition and the reconciliation of determinations—it is the tuning of becoming. The law of irreversibility in thermodynamics expresses this very function of time as opportunity: every action proceeds in a definite direction toward realization, and cannot revert to its exact initial state.[^5] Thus, time is the first dimension—the condition of determination itself.

The dimension of simultaneity is the interaction between opposing determinations happening at once. In other words, simultaneity is the coexistence of processes that, while appearing opposite, belong to a unified duration.[^6]

There is, at the very least, this necessary order: something cannot simply be done—it takes time for it to happen. “Predetermined” does not merely mean that some event is destined to occur, but rather that it is supported by the set of determinations that enable its possibility. An event requires its necessary preconditions before it can arise.

To ask why it takes time to perform an activity is like asking why energy is required for work. Both questions point to self-evident truths. Asking why something takes long is the same as asking why something lives: the answer is contained within the very nature of the question.

In this sense, time and energy are identical as conditions of productivity—they both represent the capacity of being to manifest itself through process.

(Compare Whitehead’s notion of simultaneity as the co-presence of actual occasions with Einstein’s relativity of simultaneity, which defines it as frame-dependent within spacetime.[^7])

Footnotes

[^1]: See Parmenides, On Nature, fragments 3–8; Hegel, Science of Logic, Book I, “Quality,” on the dialectic of Being and Nothing.

[^2]: Whitehead, A.N., Process and Reality (1929), Part I, Chapter II: The Categoreal Scheme.

[^3]: Bergson, Henri, Creative Evolution (1907), on durée as continuous creation.

[^4]: Oxford English Dictionary, “opportunity”: from Latin opportunitas, meaning “fit, convenient, favorable,” from ob- (“toward”) + portus (“harbor”).

[^5]: Prigogine, Ilya, From Being to Becoming (1980), on irreversibility and the arrow of time.

[^6]: Compare Whitehead’s notion of “contemporaneity” with Einstein’s relativity of simultaneity (see Whitehead, The Principle of Relativity, 1922).

[^7]: Einstein, A., Relativity: The Special and General Theory (1916), on the relativity of simultaneity; Whitehead, A.N., Process and Reality, on the co-existence of actual entities in concrescence.

Studies of Simultaneity

Time is motion, motion is light, and light is energy.

This sequence expresses both complexity and simplification: complexity, because each term implies the other in a dynamic relation; simplification, because the whole sequence reveals the unity of being in motion.

Spacetime and the Syntax of Reality

Spacetime is a syntactic concept, meaning that the presupposition of space by time—and time by space—allows the two to exist as individual propositions within a single structure. Spacetime is the observer-independent totality of all events—an undoubtable fact. Yet how spacetime is split into “space” and “time” can differ from observer to observer.[^1]

In special relativity, observers in motion relative to each other do not agree on whether two events occur simultaneously or on the distance between two objects. However, they do agree as to what events exist, even if they disagree on when and where those events occur.

This aspect of relativity connects to the uncertainty principle in quantum physics. Time expresses order.[^2] Physicists define a time coordinate by associating each event with a number that reflects its order: if event B follows event A, then the number associated with B is larger than that of A.

Mass, Quality, and Number as Relation

There seems to be an addition of mass with the motion of time, but this addition is not one of mere quantity. The earliest moment of the universe exhibited the greatest total mass-energy, yet the universe appears to evolve toward increasingly complex and condensed forms—culminating in biological life. Here, quality becomes the true quantitative element.[^3]

Numbers, likewise, are relations, not bodies. For instance, in 2 + 2 = 4, the number 4 is not a distinct object apart from the relation of 2 with 2. The operation presupposes the grouping of four singular unities (1 + 1 + 1 + 1), whose relation constitutes the number “4.” If we observe four men walking together, “four” is not an attribute of any one man, as a jersey number might be, but the shared relational order that defines their unity as a set.

Time, Event, and Relational Order

Physicists assign a time coordinate (“a time”) to any possible event, describing how fast or slow processes occur relative to that coordinate. Time thus reflects the duration of an event—its beginning when first conceived, and its end when last conceived. This is inherent in the nature of number, which abstracts relation from nullity. Every number is, in a sense, a negation of zero.[^4]

According to special relativity, the aspect of time concerning the order of events is motion. This order is neither merely temporal (one thing coming after another) nor simply causal (A causing B), but relational—the dynamic interconnection that produces form. The relation of one thing to another, through differentiation, constitutes a unity in motion. Thus, in motion, the synthesis of time and space arises: the order of events (before or after) is determined by extension in space—the past in relation to the future.

Space as the Source of Motion

Where an object is—the space it occupies—within the totality of spacetime determines its temporal period. Motion is the space covered by time; it determines the order of when in time something occurs. To say when something happens is to measure where it is, and where something is means to abstract it from the order of all other relations.

Space is defined geometrically as a set of points with a specific structure. A line, for instance, is one-dimensional only in relation to a surface of higher dimension. This understanding of motion alone, however, does not reveal how time as the principle of order discloses space as extension for motion.

Mathematically, all sets of points constitute “spaces”—from a line (1D) to a surface (2D), and further to higher-dimensional spaces.

Simultaneity and Relational Motion

Space constitutes, for time, a source of motion. We normally interpret this as the place something moves toward or the position where something is identifiable. Both are derivatives of space as simultaneity with time. Just as an observer functions as a frame of reference revealing the relative motion of two objects, so space represents the simultaneity of temporal determinations in relation.

This does not mean that space merely provides the place for such relations; rather, space grounds their very possibility. A circle being a line connected to a point depends on the plane’s property of extension.

Space, as quantity outside itself, is a function of simultaneity because temporal patterns require connection through externality. Space is thus the source that motion seeks to determine.

Light, Energy, and Self-Identical Motion

If two objects share the same space, are they perfectly synchronized—occupying the same time? That depends on whether they are moving toward the same destination. To occupy the same space does not mean to be determined toward the same space. The distinction lies in whether the space is an equal distance from both objects. Equal distance implies equal velocity; unequal distance implies different speeds. To move at the same speed is to be determined toward a common space equally distant from each.

Simultaneity, therefore, is always presupposed when it must be explained. Space is the relentless feature of motion—motion is never at rest because it constantly falls outside itself. In light, we see identification with this externality: light identifies with external space as its own self, remaining identical with itself while distinguishing itself as other.

Thus, light is the first solid quantity—its “solidity,” though massless, lies in its self-consistency. Yet this consistency is not ultimate rest, for light is perpetually self-transcending. When light’s identity falls outside itself while retaining its own extension, it constitutes the first moment of determinate motion—motion with definite direction rather than mere fall. This is electricity—energy itself.

Footnotes

[^1]: This observer-dependence of the division between space and time is central to Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity.

[^2]: Time as “order” resonates with Aristotle’s definition of time as “the number of motion according to before and after.”

[^3]: This reflects a qualitative cosmology: evolution from mass-energy uniformity to informational and biological complexity.

[^4]: Mathematically, zero functions as the origin of all relational determination; each positive number is its negation or differentiation.

Electromagnetism

Light, Simultaneity, and the Logic of Being and Non-Being

If both objects are heading toward the same place with the same speed, this introduces the problem of simultaneity, expressed in the question:

If the speed of light is constant and moves in all directions, how are objects distinguished as having lower speeds of motion?

Space is the material used for relation. It is not the place where preexisting material operates, but rather, insofar as it is distinguished from nothing, space itself is the material of form.[^1]

The answer lies in the concept of light. According to special relativity, light represents the motion where space determines the order of time—the occurrence of one thing relative to another (manifesting as time dilation)—and time discloses the general scope of space as a kind of order (spacetime curvature).[^2]

Light is the principle outside itself while remaining itself; it is both eternal (unchanging in velocity) and infinite (extending without bound).[^3]

Thus, light is not motion in the sense of moving from one place to another, nor is it motion that occurs during past time as opposed to future time. Light is the complete totality of motion. Its activity is not a transition beyond itself—were it so, it would be defined by its own surpassing. Nor does it arise out of nonexistence into being, for then its distinction from darkness would be arbitrary.

The motion of light is the transmission of information within itself. Light is information in self-propagation. Its speed is constant, because it is the measure by which all other motion is determined.

The Misunderstanding of What Is Fundamental

We often misunderstand what constitutes something fundamental. We assume that what is prior in sequence is more primary in principle. Yet the progress of mind reveals that what appears last is in truth most fundamental—the culmination discloses the origin.[^4]

Light is therefore more fundamental than space and time, for it is their relation. Yet as a single abstraction, light is less a being than a unity of beings; it is not an entity among others but the principle of their distinction and synthesis.

Time as Being and Non-Being

Objects form discrete bodies separated by space and come into contact with one another—but how are such bodies formed? Their element is time, for they come into being and pass out of being. These moments form a series, where each event is separated from the next by its negation—its not-being or nothingness—divided again by the possibility of another moment.[^5]

This is the logic of an instantaneous flash—a point of appearance between two absences. Imagine instead that each flash contains a different sequence of events: the flow of existence through negation.

Space as the Fixed, Time as the Flux

In nature, one substance had to be made fixed and stable, and the other dynamic and in flux. Space was chosen as the stable state, while time became the state of flux. The universe, therefore, flickers between being and not-being.

The discrete measure in space is that bodies are separate from each other. The discrete measure in time is that they exist and do not exist in relation to one another. Being and non-being are temporal differentiations, not spatial separations.

Human understanding, however, tends to take these temporal moments as absolutes: when a thing exists, it does not not-exist; and when it does not exist, it cannot exist. This logic makes sense from the standpoint of perception—when we look at something, it is there or not there, it exists or does not.

Relativity of Existence Across Time

From Einstein’s perspective in time, Plato does not exist; and from Plato’s perspective, Einstein does not exist. Each, from his own temporal frame, finds the other absent. Yet both exist in relation to time—Einstein as Plato’s potential future, Plato as Einstein’s past.

We take the properties of being and not-being too absolutely, driven by the instinct to preserve existence and avoid its negation. Living beings do not have the same drive to be in one place over another; whether we are here or there is merely a matter of motion. Being and not-being occur as abundantly and abruptly in time as position does in space.

The Instantaneity of Occurrence

Just as all locations in space are present simultaneously, the general idea of time guarantees that every instance must be occupied by a moment. Yet the rate at which one moment replaces another is indefinite.

In space, the number of objects occupying different positions is always definite at some scale; there are always many objects in different places at once. This implies that something is always occurring—but the manner of occurrence in space differs from that in time.

There is, therefore, an instantaneity in every occurrence, allowing two opposite factors to coexist: when one thing is in being, the other is not, but both are aspects of the same dynamic relation. Standing “here” implies not standing “there,” yet both “here” and “there” coexist within the same totality of presence. Likewise, there is always a moment occupying the present, regardless of how many moments have replaced it.

The Principle of Uncertainty and the Logic of Potentiality

We take this as a resolution of contradiction—a demonstration of non-contradiction—but it is in fact the principle of unpredictability in the world. To have a set of potential events, any of which could occur, introduces uncertainty about which one will manifest.

When one event occurs, we can be certain of it; yet the potential events that did not occur remain uncertain possibilities. We cannot fully predict which event will happen, or when.

The question, therefore, is not whether an event exists or not—for any conceivable event exists as potentiality—but which event occupies the present. The present is the selection of a particular from the infinity of possible events. This act of determination reveals the intentional structure of reality—the choice of one actuality over all others.

Since there is an infinity of potential events, the one that becomes actual is simultaneously arbitrary and necessary—good or bad by fortune, yet inevitable in being realized.

If everything possible can occur, then both good and bad events exist equally; all things that exist are distinguished from nothing. Yet if we conceive of a world where nothing can be conceived at all, that leaves only everything to be conceived—since “nothing” itself cannot stand outside existence.

Conversely, if nothing truly exists—as the insistence of no thing existing—then it becomes an active negation of every possible thing. It must conceive all existence in order to deny it.

The reader should now recognize that both logical situations describe the present condition of nature—an eternal oscillation between being and nothing. Time is as bent and bumpy as space; there is no perfect line in space, just as there is no single direction in time.[^6]

Footnotes

[^1]: This recalls Aristotle’s distinction between matter as potentiality and form as actuality, except here space itself is the “matter” of relation rather than a passive container.

[^2]: Relativity unites time and space such that changes in velocity alter temporal order, and curvature of spacetime replaces Newtonian force.

[^3]: Light as eternal and infinite echoes both Spinoza’s substance (as self-caused) and Hegel’s absolute identity of self and other.

[^4]: *In dialectical logic, the “last” is the most complete; the end contains the truth of the beginning. See Hegel, *Science of Logic, “The Absolute Idea.”

[^5]: This structure parallels Heidegger’s notion of temporality as the ecstatic unity of presence, absence, and possibility.

[^6]: In general relativity, spacetime curvature prevents any perfectly straight geodesic across all scales, just as quantum uncertainty prevents a single continuous “now.”

Impetus

The Impetus of Time and Space

The impetus of time, irrespective of space—and conversely, space, irrespective of time—reveals a reciprocal but asymmetrical relationship between the two.

In the spatial domain, physical mass dictates the plane, and motion appears secondary, determined by the distribution of mass.[^1] In time, however, behavior dictates the sequence of events—it causes the scenarios and circumstances in which mass finds itself. Behavior is thus identical with the composition of mass that forms a specific kind of being.

In time, behaviors accumulate and form a continuous sequence—a duration. This continuity constitutes habit: present behaviors build upon past ones. In space, by contrast, behavior is not directly visible in the same way that mass is directly present in time. It takes a certain duration for the effects of behavior to become evident. In space, mass is instantaneously evident; in time, its manifestation unfolds gradually.

Thus, in space, it is always the present, whereas in time, the past is always moving toward the future.

Pure Conceptions: Time as Behaviour, Space as Mass

In the pure conception of time, there is only behavior; in the pure conception of space, there is only mass. Of course, these are abstractions, since one cannot have mass without motion generating it, nor motion without mass exhibiting it.[^2]

This exposes the paradoxical nature of abstraction. On the one hand, abstractions are limited representations of nature; on the other, if we assume that the observer is limited while nature is unlimited, then the very distinction between observer and nature becomes itself an abstraction.

For the observer is part of nature; and if nature has parts, it is in some sense limited—for a part limits the whole, and the whole contains limits within its parts. The continuum between observer and nature is characterized by the limitation of one within the other: nature exhibits its limitlessness only as limited to the observer, and the observer conceives nature in a finite form.

Hence, the unlimited expresses itself through limitation, and limitation reveals the infinite within the finite.[^3]

Whole and Part: Complexity and Simplicity

This dynamic also clarifies the relation between complexity and simplicity, or whole and part. The dimension containing a particular is often more fundamental than the totality that contains it. For instance, the cellular realm is more fundamental than the organism it composes. Cells are the pixels of the perceptible body.

The body is not the whole of the cells, even though it is the combination and product of them; and cells are not merely its parts, even though they constitute it. The organism is a synthesis emerging from relations among cells, not a simple sum of them.

Thus, the fundamental lies in the dimension that contains the potential for relation, not merely the visible unity that results.

Binding Energy and the Logic of Stability

The physical phenomenon of binding energy expresses this same principle. The stability of an object—the fact that its composition does not spontaneously decay into its components—reveals that being is preservation through relation.[^4]

For example, the nucleus of a helium atom does not spontaneously split into its constituent protons and neutrons. Its binding energy holds it together, making its composition stable.

This has deep metaphysical implications: the movement from false to true in understanding—where division is seen as analysis—is, in nature, already resolved. In knowledge, we move forward by dividing (analysis), but in nature, division is decay—the opposite of understanding.

Nature’s truth is unity through energy, not dissection through concept.

The Paradox of Energy

There is a logical contradiction in the nature of energy. Energy neither spontaneously comes into existence nor vanishes. It is fundamentally conserved: it cannot be created or destroyed.[^5]

Yet it takes energy to separate the constituents of an object against the forces that bind them. The total energy required to split a composite object equals the total energy it already possesses before division.

This implies that it does not take more energy to split an object than to maintain it; to maintain and to transform require the same total energy. The law of conservation of energy concerns not static persistence, but the universality of transformation.

The term transformation can be misleading, for it suggests that the prior form is left behind when a new one appears. Yet when we examine actual energy processes, we find not destruction but oscillation—fluctuations characteristic of the wave spectrum.

A wave is defined as a periodic disturbance propagated through a medium, without net movement of its particles—an undulating motion transmitting energy without the displacement of substance.[^6]

Energy, then, is not something that “changes” form by annihilating the old, but something that fluctuates within continuity—difference within sameness.

Footnotes

[^1]: According to general relativity, spacetime curvature—and hence motion—is determined by the distribution of mass-energy. In Newtonian terms, mass “dictates” the spatial configuration of forces.

[^2]: This recalls Aristotle’s inseparability of potentiality (matter) and actuality (form): mass and motion are mutually defining.

[^3]: *In dialectical philosophy, infinity is not the negation of limitation, but its perpetual transcendence through finite expression (see Hegel, *Science of Logic).

[^4]: Binding energy represents the difference between the sum of individual particle masses and the actual mass of the nucleus—energy equivalent to the cohesion of the whole.

[^5]: The First Law of Thermodynamics: the total energy of a closed system remains constant, though its form may change.

[^6]: Physics defines a mechanical wave as “a periodic disturbance of particles within a medium propagated without net transport of matter,” as in sound or light waves.

E=mc2

E = mc² means that matter is energy and energy is matter. Specifically, E represents units of energy, m represents units of mass (matter), and c² is the speed of light squared—the constant of proportionality linking the two.[^1]

This equation also expresses the quantum principle: that matter is activity. The term quantum (from the Latin quantus, “how much”) signifies a unit of process or energy, not a static particle. Each “quantum” is a discrete moment of determination, a pulse of being.

Energy as Determination

Energy is, in essence, determination—what Aristotle defines as “the transition into an opposite.”[^2] Determination is the act of becoming other while remaining itself, the movement of potential into actuality.

This explains why energy is irreversible: if it were reversible, it would not be determinate—it would not be a defined transition but an indefinite oscillation. Determination implies directionality, and hence temporal asymmetry—what we experience as the arrow of time.

The quantum leap is precisely this movement of determination: the abrupt transition of a system from one discrete energy state to another. It is not a continuous motion through intermediate states but an instantaneous reconfiguration—the moment of becoming itself.[^3]

Matter as Activity

Einstein’s equation is regarded as the greatest of all physical principles because it captures the essence of matter: that matter is energy—that is, matter is activity. What appears as static substance is actually dynamic process condensed into form.

Light is the form that matter-as-energy takes. As Hegel describes it, light is self-identical externality—it is outside itself while remaining identical with itself.[^4]

Light thus defines the quality of mass, or the quantity of matter a body contains. “Quantity” here refers not merely to amount, but to the capacity of being self-identical across difference. Light determines quantity because it is a unity (a “1”) that remains itself while being external to itself—another “1.” In this way, light exemplifies identity through differentiation: the archetype of measurable being.

Space, Time, and the Inverse Speeds of Light

The most fundamental principle of Einstein’s special relativity is that the speed of light in space is inversely related to the speed of time. The faster a body moves through space, the slower it progresses through time. Conversely, the slower it moves in space, the faster it advances in time.[^5]

This reciprocity demonstrates that space and time are one and the same reality—the fabric of spacetime. Each is a mode of the other: motion in space is the extension of being, motion in time the order of becoming.

Light, which moves at the constant velocity c in all frames of reference, thereby defines the boundary condition of all motion—the limit where spatial and temporal motion coincide.

The Indivisible as Activity

The word “atom” comes from the Greek atomos, meaning “uncut” or “indivisible.” The ancients understood that which is indivisible not as an inert fragment but as a self-contained activity—a unity that cannot be divided because its being is motion itself.[^6]

Thus, the atom—both in its ancient and modern sense—is not a rigid object but a mode of energetic relation: a dynamic field of determination. What is indivisible cannot be broken because it is process, not thing.

Footnotes

[^1]: Einstein, “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon Its Energy Content?” (1905). The constant c² expresses the conversion factor between mass and energy based on the invariant speed of light (~3×10⁸ m/s).

[^2]: *Aristotle, *Metaphysics, Book IX (Θ): “Energy is the actuality of that which exists potentially, in so far as it is actual.” Determination is the realization of the possible through opposition.

[^3]: The quantum leap describes non-continuous change in discrete energy states—first formalized in Niels Bohr’s 1913 model of the atom.

[^4]: *Hegel, *Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §275: “Light is simple self-externality, absolute negativity of difference that yet remains identical with itself.”

[^5]: This is expressed mathematically in the Lorentz transformations: as velocity through space approaches c, proper time (τ) slows, approaching zero at light speed.

[^6]: *In Democritus and Leucippus, *atomos* signifies an ultimate unit of being that moves in the void—indivisible because its nature is activity, not extension.*

Time Dilation

Time dilation in forward time (linear time) is a phenomenon in which time appears to move more slowly, caused by motion, gravity, or other relativistic factors. In reverse time (non-linear or parallel time), the same phenomenon implies an acceleration of time.

Unlike our ordinary perception of light in close proximity, where it appears to fade or diminish, the light at the furthest observable edge of the universe does not weaken. Instead, it intensifies in energy. Modern science identifies this limit as the moment of the Big Bang—the earliest stage of the universe, when it was most dense and hottest in energy.

This means that the furthest point of light in space is also the greatest concentration of light in the universe. Consequently, we occupy the position furthest away from that moment of maximal light. This translation makes sense if we understand light not merely in terms of space, but in terms of time.

In linear time, time dilation appears as a warp in the light that constitutes the material universe we observe. It is as if the appearances of galaxies and cosmic structures are being stretched or smeared, like paint across a canvas. The light that transmits information about these massive celestial bodies eventually reaches a limit of perception, where it bends and folds into itself. At that point, the individuality of objects in space is no longer distinguishable. Everything merges into a single continuous mesh—a boundless unity of energy, what physicists describe as a singularity.

From another perspective—reverse time or nonlinear time—light exhibits a profound correlation between speed and time. The faster an object moves, the closer it approaches the speed of light, and the slower its time progresses. To such an object, time itself appears to slow down, while for everything else it seems to accelerate.

At the ultimate limit, as the object approaches the speed of light, its internal time comes to a stop. From its own frame, it remains motionless, yet relative to everything else, it moves the entire universe infinitely fast. In other words, if time stops for the object, it is because it must move away from everything else at the speed of light—the very limit where motion, space, and time converge into a single state of being.

This concept helps clarify Peirce’s Law of Mind, which states that “Mind is the future and matter is the past.”[^1] Mind projects the idea that matter will take form; matter is the substance that molds the form of time into a record—an object persisting from past to present.

Time, as both Hegel and Aristotle understood, is not an empty container but a principle of activity.[^2] It is the self-movement of being. The content of space is the activity of time.

Active and Passive Determinations

For Aristotle, activity (energeia) divides into two determinations: active and passive.[^3]

• The active is mental activity—form, idea, or the principle of determination itself.
• The passive is material activity—capacity or matter, the realization of the form.

In relation to time dilation, an active determination—such as the proposing of an idea—is slower than its passive realization, the materialization of that idea.

For example, imagine encountering the game of chess without prior knowledge. How long would it take to discern the rules and possible moves? Presumably longer than for someone already familiar with it. One who already knows the rules can simply apply them; the one who learns must first reason them out.

This illustrates the difference between the active and passive determinations of time. The active determination (mind) is slow because it is engaged in reasoning—it is working itself out. The passive determination (matter) is faster because it simply takes on form; its response to the idea is immediate and abrupt.

Hence, when time is imagined as reversed, the process accelerates—because the reasoning has already occurred. What we conceive as “going back in time,” reliving a prior event, is in fact the process of the future for mind: the materialization of what has already been thought.

The thought for mind is past—it already was. But the material realization of that thought is the future of the mind: the becoming of the idea as object, confirming its identity. Materially, we are living the past of mind.

Determination and Determinism

This also explains the distinction between determination and determinism.

• Determination belongs to mind: it sets the idea, the purpose, the form of the future.
• Determinism belongs to matter: it is the fixity of that idea as an object among other objects.

For instance, if you conceive the idea of becoming a doctor, that idea is a determination—a setting of the future. The events that follow—attending medical school, training, and practice—constitute the determinism towards that determination.

However, the relation between determination and determinism is fluid. The goal of becoming a doctor is itself a determinism once set, generating further determinations (such as studying, applying, or choosing a specialty).

Thus, determination and determinism are not separate concepts but two modes of the same activity—one active, the other passive. Their negation of each other constitutes the whole.

In relativity, the analogy appears in that the faster one moves through space, the slower one moves through time: the two dimensions balance into a unified determination—the spacetime continuum.

Light as the First Determination

All motion is relative to the speed of light, which serves as the limit and identity of all physical determination. Light is the first and fundamental determination, where mind and matter coincide as the same substance.[^4]

In this view, your life is already determined by your mind—you chose your genetic form before birth. The ancient Greeks expressed this as the soul finding the body, but more precisely: the soul is the idea of the body. Your body is the realization—the passive determination—of your mind’s active idea.

Heredity and birth are thus expressions of potential and actuality. You are the actualization of your father’s potential; the species diversifies as the future species becomes the sum of the potentials of the past.

In this sense, your father’s mind is your future, and you are your father’s past.

Spacetime and the Quantum Relation

The concept of spacetime presupposes the quantum principle that the observer and the observed are inseparable.[^5]

• Space corresponds to the object, always external.
• Time corresponds to activity, always internal and identical.

The equivalence of a faster speed in space with a slower speed in time means that both principles—space and time—constitute a single relation. From their unity arises a new concept that bears within it both activity (faster, active determination) and passivity (slower, passive determination).

The relation between space and time thus constitutes matter, which is defined by the nature of light squared (c²)—light as a substance outside itself (space) while remaining itself (time).

Light, Geometry, and Self-Identity

Light is both wave and particle because it embodies the geometric form of the circle—the archetype of self-identity.

To be something, a thing must first identify itself. But in order to identify itself, it must first not be itself—it must distinguish itself from what it is not. From this negation it recognizes itself and becomes itself. Thus, self-identity arises through self-difference.

Light, then, is the first act of self-recognition—it is itself within itself while remaining outside itself. This dialectical process is the very structure of consciousness.

Consciousness and the Form of Thought

If we ask what consciousness or thought is, we can answer:
Thought takes itself as its own object.

This self-relation defines consciousness—the striving to know itself. To do so, consciousness must make its own nature conceivable to itself.

The process by which thought comes to know itself mirrors the structure of spacetime as the relation of light. Matter and light are nothing but the defining form of consciousness—the abstractions of thought’s activity.

The spacetime continuum thus constitutes the outline of mind itself. As Einstein once said, “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”[^6]

Einstein’s belief aligns with Spinoza’s understanding of God as the sum of all thought:

“If a triangle could speak, it would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular.”[^7]

This means that God is the totality of His own thoughts. Similarly, in Plato’s Euthyphro, Socrates asks:

“Is the good loved by the gods because it is good, or is it good because it is loved by the gods?”[^8]

Aristotle resolves this by defining the divine as pure thought thinking itself (noesis noeseos).[^9]

Even Newton, who defined motion, observed that any object moving in a circle is in constant acceleration—a fitting image for the self-moving totality of mind and light.

Footnotes

[^1]: Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Law of Mind,” The Monist, Vol. 2 (1892). Peirce describes the tendency of mind to evolve toward greater continuity and the tendency of matter toward fixation—thus, mind as future, matter as past.

[^2]: *Aristotle, *Physics*, Book IV; Hegel, *Science of Logic, Book II (“Being and Essence”). Both define time as the actuality of change—the moving image of eternity.

[^3]: *Aristotle, *Metaphysics* IX (Θ): “For action and passion are both kinds of movement.”*

[^4]: Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” (1905); light as invariant across all frames establishes the unity of mind and matter in motion.

[^5]: *Heisenberg, *Physics and Philosophy* (1958); Bohr’s principle of complementarity describes this inseparability of observer and observed.*

[^6]: *Einstein, quoted in Philipp Frank, *Einstein: His Life and Times* (1947).*

[^7]: *Spinoza, *Ethics, Part I, Appendix; the divine is identical with Nature (Deus sive Natura).

[^8]: *Plato, *Euthyphro* 10a.*

[^9]: *Aristotle, *Metaphysics* XII (Λ): “Thought thinks itself because it is the best thing, and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.”*

Energy = Mass

Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc², states that energy corresponds to mass and mass corresponds to energy. In philosophical terms, this means that every activity is a body, and every body is activity. The process is the result, and the result is the process — Aristotle’s form and matter united.[^1]

However, the body, insofar as it is a body, is defined by stability — by the fact that an object does not spontaneously transform into its component parts. The component parts, paradoxically, contain more total energy than the body that is said to be their whole. This is because of the phenomenon known as binding energy: the energy required to separate a bound system (a composite object) into its constituent elements.[^2]

Thus, the whole is not the sum of its parts; indeed, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The energy needed to split an object apart is greater than the energy manifest in its stable, unified state.

Relativistic Mass and the Stability of Consciousness

According to relativity, every quantity of energy corresponds to a particular mass, no matter how small. This leads to the concept of relativistic mass, which implies that even pure energy possesses a measurable equivalence to mass.[^3]

There exists a minimum mass—the rest mass—defined relative to an observer at rest. This reveals that the observer’s frame of reference itself constitutes a kind of stability, a conceptual ground, in which energy appears in its most condensed, particular form. This stability is the particle, the focal point of energy held in equilibrium by the infinite extension of its surrounding field.

In this way, the observer’s consciousness serves as the whole within which energy discloses itself as mass. When consciousness conceives energy, it manifests it as a body; the body that appears as a whole of parts is in truth merely another part within a greater whole. The distinction between one body and many bodies is only a matter of scale: the one is smaller than the many, and the many are reflections of the one.

The Logic of the Whole and the Part

Relativistic mass thus entails a profound logical consequence: the whole of parts is itself a part within the greater whole. Any whole, insofar as it consists of parts, also plays the part of being the whole. In this sense, the whole is partial — it is the totality only from a certain perspective within the larger totality of all relations.

A body that serves as the whole of other bodies is therefore a partial abstraction. A single body composed of many, when considered among others, objectively possesses less total energy than the combination of its constituents, each of which singly holds an equal energetic potential.

Oscillation and the Motion of Contradiction

Oscillation is the most fundamental motion — the movement of contradiction, where each pole exists only through its opposite. This activity assumes the form of a wave.

The particle is the identity of this wave, the wave gathered into a unity — a sphere. The particle moves when one position within the wave is missing; it fills that absence, moving into the vacant center. The missing place is the center, and the universe itself is drawn perpetually toward this center.

According to the cosmological principle, every point in the universe may be taken as the center, for conception itself is the center — not in a geometric sense, but as the act of creation through observation. Creation here is not merely visual perception, but rational conception: any point conceived on the surface of a sphere is, from the standpoint of thought, its center.

The wave spectrum of being implies that the center is defined by what is missing — the point toward which all motion falls. This is the singularity, the point of infinite density and value.[^4]

A black hole, unlike a wormhole, is infinitely dense: no light enters or escapes. It is total inwardness. A wormhole, by contrast, allows passage — it is the communication of the universe with itself. The universe, as a living organism, communicates through such wormholes: they are the arteries of consciousness, the channels through which the universal being shrines and folds upon itself.

All of these, however, fall toward the same unknown principle — the black hole, the center of unknowing. This is not merely what is not yet known, but the Unknown as an object itself. The universal process of nature is identical with the process of thought: both are the movement of knowledge toward the unknown.

The Logic of the Whole and the Ground of Knowing

The deconstruction of the whole into its parts does not simply confirm a transition from complexity to simplicity. In abstract knowing, such transition involves dissection, but not disassembly — not like the biologist who separates the frog into limbs and organs.

Thought moves through assimilation: a continual oscillation between progress and regress, like the pendulum’s motion. It assimilates itself into particular events, whose continuous return to the universal source induces the experience of consciousness. This motion is not mere repetition; it is the living energy that sustains the stability of form.

Matter, therefore, is not produced in some external factory of “stuff.” If such a place existed, it too would require explanation as a product of another process. The form is responsible for the material, just as the act of thinking is responsible for the object of thought.

To “go through a thought” — to take the time to think — is to set forth the ground for the manifestation of objects. This process is not preliminary to reality; rather, the movement of thought itself is identical with what is presented to thought.

As Hegel writes:

“The fact emerges from the ground. It is not grounded or posited by it in such a manner that the ground remains as a substrate; rather, the positing is the movement of the ground outward into itself and its simple vanishing. … The fact is not only the unconditioned but also the groundless; it emerges from the ground only insofar as the ground has fallen to the ground and ceased to be ground.”[^5]

Ground and fact are not separate; the emergence of fact is the self-negation of the ground, its transformation into immediacy — the vanishing of the distinction between what grounds and what is grounded.

Potentiality, Process, and the Objective Nature of Motion

If potentiality is taken as the ground of actuality, one might ask: Why must potential become actual if it already is?

This kind of logic — that if something already is, then why does it need to be? — divorces the meaning of motion as an objective phenomenon. In other words, it confuses what it means for something to become, because process is assumed to be merely the pretence of a result.

This confusion stems from assuming that process is a mere pretence of result — that motion is an illusion attempting to make the untrue appear true. But motion is not a deceptive means to an end; it is generative.

The production of a result does not negate motion; rather, it is through motion that the result is. Once the process concludes, motion itself is no longer in process, because it has become its own outcome — the truth of becoming.

Footnotes

[^1]: *Aristotle, *Metaphysics* VIII.6 (1045b17–23); “Form and matter are one and the same thing, one potentially and the other actually.”*

[^2]: The concept of binding energy arises from nuclear physics: the energy required to disassemble a nucleus into its protons and neutrons. See Bethe, H. A., “Nuclear Physics B: Nuclear Dynamics” (1936).

[^3]: Einstein, “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon Its Energy Content?” Annalen der Physik (1905). The idea of “relativistic mass” follows from the equivalence of energy and mass in all inertial frames.

[^4]: Penrose, R. & Hawking, S. W., “The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology” (1970), Proc. R. Soc. A 314: 529–548.

[^5]: *Hegel, *Science of Logic, Book II, “Ground,” §1035 (Miller translation, 1969).

Motion is becoming

Potentiality is at least actual in thought as the most complex principle, given its infinitude. And if the answer, as the nature of growth indicates, is that the creator is self-caused, then why does the nature of the self involve a multiplicity of details, each working against the other toward some definite end? Why does the chicken come out of the egg only so that the egg comes out of the chicken? Both creation and growth involve an aim, yet in an inverse manner: the goal of growth is to result in creation, whereas the aim of creation is growth.¹

The physical law of irreversibility describes the relationship between growth and creation—the growth of creation. Irreversibility proves that the occurrence of events cannot be undone; once an event occurs, it cannot unhappen.² A different outcome requires a new form. The experience of an event cannot be taken back; to produce a different outcome of that experience, the event must take on an entirely new form in which the different outcome is not affected by the previous result. Yet the previous result is precisely what requires that there be a need for a new form so that it may result in something different.

The way of growth is thus the creation of differing forms manifesting as opposing parts of the same relation. Events are patterns, or habits, so that the interaction between events is the interference of one form of pattern by another.³

The determinate motion of light is electricity—hydrogen—the pure process of energetic differentiation. Time is the general rule of simultaneity, indicating conceivable differences of activities disclosed within the same spatial extension whose subject is itself activity. For example, the planet Earth is a spatial extension in motion that serves as the relation between any two individuals within it, moving relative to each other.

The question of special relativity concerns what effect particular movements have on the general motion disclosing them. Special relativity shows that the relative motion between particulars sharing the same space minutely influences the shared spatial extension—movement adds mass to space.⁴

In string theory, vibration means that every sequence of change in something’s motion leaves its mark—adds to the mass of the spatial extension.⁵ Light is therefore the only universal resource, the medium through which all relations are transmitted. This also explains time dilation.

History is the spatial extension of time. The subjective experience of history exhibits a moment in time as the present. History, as simultaneity, is the totality of all events; the frame of reference of experience determines where one stands in history. All historical time periods are occurring simultaneously—history is like a script contained within the mind of the present being.⁶

Time is motion, and motion is light; light is simultaneity because, as Hegel says, it is “the principle outside itself while remaining identical with itself.”⁷ This principle constitutes the motion for the becoming of the platform onto which reality and its particularities are attributed as stable, consistent forms of conception.

All possible events of time, exhibited as spatial extension, define the idea that the only moment that exists is now. The term “now” is taken as the ultimate moment because it discloses all possible events—the relative relations between events constitute past and future. However, the fact that “now” is the moment disclosing all events does not determine their order. This order is the continuity of development.

What is meant by “the only stability is progress” concerns how each moment maintains the whole, and the whole maintains each. Each maintains the whole because the whole is activity, a wave spectrum; each part constitutes the continuity of that spectrum. The part, as abstracted from the whole, concerns the particle state of the wave—the particular—which, as continuity, sustains the whole. The whole, however, is not a portion of some greater whole, for then it would itself be a particular.

For the particular to be the continuity of activity connects with what Whitehead identifies as the way phenomena are disclosed by their conception: the measurement of phenomena serves as their disclosure.⁸

This element of simultaneity, for Whitehead, is the non-relative principle, because there is nothing outside the conception disclosing the phenomena. “Outside” itself becomes a relative concept only between objects internally disclosed by conception.

The particular is part of the continuation of the whole as activity because it is the conception disclosing its own movement. Development is not merely a forward motion directed toward an external aim, but the whole motion of the activity reflected back into itself by the conception that discloses its continuity. The conception is turned toward its object, while the object is the content of the conception disclosing it.

Symmetry and Asymmetry

Here, the symmetry–asymmetry relation can be imagined as a tree: symmetry represents the structure, the static form of branching balance, while asymmetry represents the growth—the living motion—within it.⁹ Asymmetry is what gives rise to movement; it is the principle of differentiation that produces time, change, and becoming. Symmetry alone is timeless, frozen; asymmetry is the life of motion. Thus, motion itself is asymmetry in action—the imbalance that drives creation and growth alike.

Relativity and Consciousness

The problem of relativity is that two observers moving relative to each other cannot agree on the extent or magnitude of an event, but only that the event is. Their conception discloses the event itself. Behind this conception lies the uncertainty principle, which emerges from asymmetry as the indicator of motion. When the observer is in motion, this very motion becomes the object disclosed by the conception—but the nature of motion is to reach beyond the scope of conception, generating the very object for it.

The conception of motion shows that continuity extends toward a point not yet conceived—what is potentially conceivable. It is not immediately obvious how the relative relations between two particulars affect their common space, especially when their generality seems to have brought that relative relation about.

In this case, the space occupied—its size—determines position, and size is determined by speed. The principle of relativity states that the laws of physics are the same for any two observers moving relative to each other at constant velocity, such that neither can be said to be “at rest” in an absolute sense.¹⁰

When the observer moves, everything in their conception moves. There is no difference between the object in motion and the motion disclosed by conception. The ultimate relativity is being in motion relative to nothing.

The logic of relativity reveals that being in relative motion to nothing is absolute motion—because motion, when left by itself, is pure being, and nothing, when relative to being, is motion. Motion is the function of time that enables the conception of relations. The term relative is ontologically shallow, not only because it is proposed as the exclusion of the absolute, but because it fails to describe the nature of relation. The term inverse is preferable, since it expresses that differentiation within relation is an opposition—a living tension that gives rise to form and meaning.

Footnotes

1. Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, on actuality and potentiality.
2. Ilya Prigogine, From Being to Becoming (1980), on irreversibility.
3. Charles Sanders Peirce, “Habit and Law of Mind,” The Monist (1892).
4. Albert Einstein, Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper (1905).
5. Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe (1999), on string vibration as energetic imprint.
6. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (1896), on duration and simultaneity.
7. G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, Doctrine of Being, on light as self-identical externality.
8. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929).
9. Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality (2004), on symmetry and asymmetry in cosmology.
10. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory (1916).

Heraclitus “all things pass and nothing stays”

The simple ontological fact first proposed by Heraclitus: that “everything is always flowing in some respect,” or, in his more general principle, “every pair of contraries is somewhere co-instantiated; and every object co-instantiates at least one pair of contraries.”¹

His most famous line—“You cannot step twice into the same river”—as recorded by Plato (Cratylus, 402a),² is often quoted to emphasize flux. Yet the more important line is the one preceding it: “All things pass and nothing stays.”³ This does not necessarily mean that no thing remains the same, but rather that only the concept of nothing itself is the one thing that does not change. The ancient notion that “being is always changing” may not refer to begetting, for to beget something into being is simultaneously to experience it. Yet in order to experience an event, it must first exist for experience.

For Einstein, simultaneity refers to how the relative motion between two things affects the shared general motion—their common spacetime frame.⁴ For Whitehead, by contrast, all of this is disclosed as an absolute relation—a non-relative entity—which is more a rule of process than a statement about the world as an object. Any entity, he suggests, is perceived as a whole, and its component parts become visible only when abstracted as wholes themselves.⁵ The whole is therefore not the sum of its parts, because the whole is the conception—the consciousness concentrated within the thing.

Timelessness

The idea of immortality has been stamped into our minds by religious thought in such a way that we grasp only a narrow understanding of it. The general idea of immortality is defined as the capacity to possess life for eternity. The ancient Greeks, however, understood life as a universal principle of the cosmos; when asked whether life has always existed, they replied that it has, for life is a principle, and hence also a beginning.

But here we are concerned with human life as bearing an eternal existence. Two concepts must be elaborated in defining immortality: life and eternity. The latter is, paradoxically, easier to conceive than the former, since life is the very condition for individual contemplation.

Eternity is understood either as infinite time—unending duration—or as the state in which time has no application, that is, timelessness. Infinite time is eternal in a peculiar way because it is not like space—space being the indifferent difference, a double negation that is purely positive existence. Infinite time is the negative of this positive and is thus purely negative existence. This negativity, in relation to the positive, is its division. Time is the division of space, and it is in this sense that time is infinite—time is the infinite division of space.⁶

Timelessness is the negative notion relative to infinite time, but it presupposes time insofar as it is its limitless. Timelessness is thus the manifestation of eternity within time. It is the negative principle relative to time, just as time is the negative principle relative to space. Hence, timelessness is the positive state in which time persists as the division of space.

Eternity is the universal principle of motion, and to this extent, time is the particular collapsed state of eternity. Motion for Aristotle is not reducible to locomotion but signifies the activity of becoming—the bringing into being.⁷ To understand how time is the particular collapsed state of eternity, we must contrast it with space: space is indifferent motion existing outward in duration, whereas time is differentiated motion existing inwardly. The outward movement associated with space contradicts the inward movement of time, and their tension constitutes what we understand as the object.

The object is thus not a static body but a state—the synthesis of space and time as an intersection. This intersection is in flux (as the constant flow between the two) and static (as their dualistic meeting-point). It is an error to assume that flow occurs in only one direction.

The intersection between time and space is the object. The object, as the synthesis of space and time, is the state of timelessness.

The term timelessness, taken semantically, suggests a lack of time or a state in which motion is suspended. Yet such suspension is empirically impossible. Timelessness is not the absence of motion but its concentration. It is the resolution within negation—a “resultless” result, itself the first determination.

For example, even the regressive cycle of planetary orbits is a determination—a static one, but determination nonetheless. Individual planets come and go, but the orbital system persists. The negative result of timelessness is the opposite: whereas orbits are limited determinations, timelessness is unlimited determination.

Timelessness is the inverse of time. If ordinary time is the continuous succession of events, then timelessness is the state in which events are maintained as qualities that happen. Though events pass, they also leave traces in memory; and during their happening, an event is the most real of all things. Even potential events occupy a kind of present reality, just as past events remain real insofar as they occurred.

All these instances of time—past, present, potential—bear elements of reality equal to the “now.” This is the spatial-temporal aspect of time: not “time in space,” as when we say something happens there, but rather what time is as the event’s spatial extension.

Ordinarily, we conceive of time only temporally, just as we see motion only as locomotion. Time is treated as a linear equation measuring the duration of a variable’s motion in units of time, without regard to qualitative change. Yet every unit of time presupposes such change: for instance, a second is defined as 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation of the caesium-133 atom—each “period” marking a condition in which one state ends and another begins.

The distinction between inward and outward mirrors that of internal and external. Timelessness is the state of time wherein its determination occurs not within its ordinary duration but is inverted outward: timelessness is the externality of time as space, yet still maintains the quality of time. It is the obscurity of time after time has affected space.

For example, special relativity describes time dilation—the difference of elapsed time between two events as measured by observers in relative motion or in different gravitational potentials.⁸ This effect arises not from clocks or signal delays but from the nature of spacetime itself. The relativity of the spacetime continuum expresses the very notion of timelessness at play—the internal relation of time implicit in the object.

The future of one object in motion may be the past of another. Every object possesses an element of timelessness; indeed, the object is this state—the condition of self-determination. Just as the plane is the space in which the object moves, timelessness is the object’s demand against time to possess liberty within duration.

This relation between time and timelessness constitutes the internal dialectic that manifests the object. It is the dialogue of birth and death, generation and corruption. Time dilation, therefore, possesses qualitative determination: it indicates not merely the relative difference of time between objects but the relative difference in how time applies to objects.

This corresponds to thermodynamics, the science of the relation of heat to forces acting among bodies. The first law states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed.⁹ This conservation of energy is the state of timelessness within the object that maintains energy while temporal duration affects it. The way to conserve energy is not to preserve it statically, but to apply it dynamically.

In the organic form, this process is called life. Life is ordinarily understood as the biological condition of organic matter, yet philosophy must also treat life as a universal state of being. Either the smallest unit of the universe possesses life, or the universe itself is a living whole of which local organisms are expressions.

For philosophy, the defining aspect of life is consciousness, understood not as a metaphysical abstraction but as activity—the life of form itself. Consciousness manifests materially in the same way that dark matter is inferred from its gravitational effects: through its influence on what is visible.¹⁰ Consciousness is inferred from the formal effect it exerts upon objects—the evidence being yourself and all phenomena around you.

The second law of thermodynamics (entropy) represents the increase of timelessness through differentiation. When an object conserves energy by transferring it, it simultaneously increases the total energy distribution of the system.¹¹ Hence, Whitehead’s assertion that “the only form of stability is progress” finds empirical expression in evolution.¹²

Life, Immortality, and Consciousness

This process, when embodied organically, is what we call life. Life maintains itself through reproduction and homeostasis, which together imply immortality on the level of species. Thus, the constant flux of matter is itself the form of immortality. Matter’s essential property is extension, and life extends itself through corporeality.

Similarly, mind is immortal. As matter’s essential property is extension, the essential property of mind is consciousness. The synthesis of the two—extension with consciousness—is the principle of unity between body and mind.

The extension of consciousness is the universal principle by which mind and body interrelate. Matter is the necessity through which this developmental process unfolds. Through the cunning of consciousness, what is achieved endures the flux of birth and death among physical bodies.

Just as extension is essential to matter, consciousness is essential to extension. Diversity in evolution exemplifies this: life’s multiplicity reflects the self-differentiation of consciousness within extension. Continuity, as Peirce observed, is the very definition of extension; yet what he left implicit is that continuity is a collection of particulars.¹³ The river is continuous, yet the fish within it act distinctly within its flow.

The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics defines equilibrium as a transitive relation among systems—a formal balance of relations.¹⁴ The First Law applies analogously to consciousness: the conservation of energy corresponds to the transmission of knowledge. Consciousness maintains itself by transferring its energy, both to preserve its activity and to advance its development.

The history of philosophy itself demonstrates this: Plato and Aristotle are not dead; their thought reproduces itself through generations. Each epoch transforms their ideas into new forms—the Sophists become lawyers, the Skeptics become postmodernists, the Atomists become scientists.

World history is, therefore, self-consciousness. The soul, according to Aristotle, is the essence of the body—thus, the soul is life.¹⁵ What is the life of consciousness? Truth is the life of consciousness—the truth of reason. Reason is everything that potentially exists; consciousness is thus the truth of itself.

Footnotes

1. Heraclitus, Fragment DK B12; cf. Kirk & Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers.
2. Plato, Cratylus 402a.
3. Ibid.
4. Albert Einstein, Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper (1905).
5. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929).
6. Hegel, Science of Logic, Book I, Doctrine of Being.
7. Aristotle, Physics III, 1–3.
8. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory (1916).
9. First Law of Thermodynamics; cf. Clausius, Über die bewegende Kraft der Wärme (1850).
10. Analogy from cosmology; cf. Vera Rubin, Dark Matter and the Universe (1983).
11. Rudolf Clausius, The Mechanical Theory of Heat (1865).
12. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (1933).
13. Charles S. Peirce, “The Law of Mind” (1892).
14. Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics, Fowler (1931).
15. Aristotle, De Anima II.

Birth

The coming into consciousness characterizes the birth of individuality. A lifespan is itself an objective event. Alan Watts makes an interesting proposition to elaborate on the fallacy in the common-sense idea of causality: “that events are caused by previous events from which they result necessarily.”¹

What is meant by an event? For example, take the event of a human being coming into the world. When does that event begin? Does it occur at the moment of parturition, when the baby actually emerges from the mother, or does the baby begin at the moment of conception? Or does the baby begin when it was “an evil gleam in its father’s eye,” or when the spermatozoa are generated in the father or the ovum in the mother?²

All of these can be thought of as beginnings, but for pragmatic reasons, we decide that a baby is born at the moment of parturition.³ This moment remains a significant and contested issue in contemporary abortion debates. Watts shows the same phenomenon in the spatial dimension instead of time: “How big is the sun? Is the sun defined as limited by the extent of its fire? Can the sphere of the sun be defined by the extent of its heat? The sun can also be defined by the extent of its light. Each of these would be reasonable choices, except it would be difficult to keep track of the extent of its light because we are inside it. We arbitrarily define the sun by the limit of its visible fire.”⁴

By these analogies, how large an object is or how long the duration of an event lasts can be determined by conception—by imposing a limitation on a process.

Every event and object exists eternally. In an abstract state, the side of an event that has not yet happened equally constitutes the total existence of a thing, as much as the aspect of it that has happened. We normally think that, in order to be eternal, something must exist eternally, but an event that does not exist is still eternal in the sense of not existing. The existence of an event at one point exists eternally as having existed at that point.

The implications of spacetime grant ideas it did not customarily consider. For instance, if we take the application of space to time seriously—in the sense that space has an immutable effect on any event, and space is the relation where the duration of one event changes relative to another—then it may not be far-fetched to say that, insofar as that change is disclosed by space, the change itself is an immutable part of space.⁵ Since space is a feature of an event that is immutable and belongs throughout every step of its duration, in what sense does an event cease to exist once it has passed?

For Socrates, we can say he lived for seventy years, but he still exists to this day, even if he is no longer living. Perhaps it is not erroneous to say that, evolutionarily, he existed even before he was born as the potential of some archaic animal. The universal and individual relation is the substance of the world: it exists simultaneously and eternally as every possibility, while the individual partakes in each possibility one at a time, the universal doing all at once. For the individual, it is difficult to accept that life is and was always eternal, because external existence constantly contradicts this fact due to the passing of moments.

The law of irreversibility seems to challenge the possibility of doing something twice. Yet as a law, it does not negate that whatever happens already exists; once it is done, it cannot be done again. This presents a paradox: when something is done, it cannot be repeated, yet it always exists as having occurred once. This is what it means for something to be objective: an electron, for instance, exists as a universal memory of a fundamental action. Does every action reaffirm the electron? Yes, but not by constantly recreating it—otherwise, we would eliminate its existence as having once occurred. To say that a certain action presupposes the electron as a fundamental action is to sustain the truth of its objectivity.⁶

A particular lifespan is a necessary sequence in the manifold of possibility, just as basic dimorphism is a primary object in nature. The idea that everything is eternal in a potential state can be defined by the logical axiom where the beginning point is at the same time the endpoint. Actuality is the process of advancement, confirming that the distinction between beginning and end demonstrates that one is the other.

Take, for example, one of the most perplexing questions across all human cultures: what happens after death? Traditionally, the answer has been that there is something after death—an afterlife—whereas modern atheistic accounts proclaim that there is “nothing” after death. Whether an afterlife is the same continuity of subjective individuality or a form of reincarnation, where life continues impersonally in different forms, is a further question. But by focusing on the distinction between something and nothing after death, we can make two propositions:

1. Something after life is ambiguous because it is potentially anything, and if anything includes nothing,
2. If nothing is a potentiality of afterlife, then that itself is identical with the potentiality of being any given thing.⁷

The claim that there is an afterlife is correct in the sense that life generally continues after the individuality of the deceased—everything happens after death except the individual. However, it is erroneous to assume that the subjective personality of the deceased continues as it was. Removing the individual factor, the notion of an afterlife lacks explanation of the transition into it; death lacks a medium that facilitates the change it is supposed to cause. Ironically, recent atheistic accounts indirectly answer this by proposing that nothing happens after death, identifying death with an absolute end. While this accounts for death as the object of nothing, it leads to a dead end in reasoning—negative reason—where the cessation of a thing is confused with the absolute negation of what it ever was.⁸

If death is a feature of nature and everything tends toward it, the process leading to death must still be continuous. If death is the end of a process, it is still a feature of the process. Either there is something outside death that determines it, making death not an absolute endpoint, or the nihilist conception confuses the end of a particular subjectivity with an absolute end. From a dying individual’s point of view, all things end with them, but everything continues after death except the deceased. Being, therefore, is eternal, whereas death is not. In this sense, death is a mechanism of change, not an absolute endpoint.

Death as an endpoint is simultaneously identical with birth as a beginning: the moment of death, when nothing happens, coincides with the moment of birth, when something happens. When an old person dies, it is the exact moment a baby is born.⁹

Universe as a String

In every religion, birth is associated with light and death with darkness. These points are physical accounts of being and nothing. When consciousness dies and darkness occurs, consciousness is met instantly with the light of being born. The entire life process of growth is the realization that these two points are the same: the end of life is found in the beginning.

In string theory, the universe is reduced to a string that vibrates. Strings are theorized to be more fundamental than quarks.¹⁰ Instead of the universe being made of atoms, it is primarily made of strings. At this level, the distinction between the universe being made of strings and being itself a string is undefined.

Scientists claim the universe is made of atoms because we can observe them empirically. To claim the universe itself has the form of an atom is ungrounded because we cannot observe the full extent of the universe. This highlights a limitation of empiricism: it seeks the total outline of an object to determine its structure.¹¹

At death, consciousness may revert to a general, least-individual form. It is not individuated and thus perceives the universe as an indeterminate strand of nature. The universe, in this ontological context, exists in every possible way simultaneously. A particular consciousness detaches from this flux to construct a specific reality—a lifetime—within infinity. Multiple perspectives construct specific realities simultaneously, collectively forming the state of everything. Everything is each and every possible thing in every possible way.

Consciousness does not enter infinity like an object entering a room. Classical mechanics, which assumes objects preexist with mass, density, weight, and texture, describes motion in inverted terms. Fundamentally, motion is not the product of preexisting objects but the manifestation of all possible objects entering consciousness.

Consciousness, as a “stillness,”¹² does not move, nor is it moved. Infinity enters the reference frame of consciousness, and the principles of nature emerge as they are recognized and conceived by consciousness. These principles become absolute—they become moments in time. The light at the end of the tunnel symbolizes the emergence of ideas molded into existence.

Footnotes

1. Watts, A. (1975). The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. Vintage.
2. Ibid. Discussion on the philosophical question of the “beginning” of life.
3. Contemporary debates on abortion and legal definitions of birth.
4. Watts’ analogy regarding the arbitrary determination of spatial boundaries.
5. Concept drawn from Minkowski spacetime and the intersection of temporal and spatial dimensions.
6. Analogy to electron objectivity and fundamental actions, connecting physics with metaphysics.
7. Philosophical distinction between “something” and “nothing” in the afterlife.
8. Nietzsche, F. The Will to Power, on negative reason and nihilism.
9. The symbolic simultaneity of birth and death echoes cyclical concepts in Eastern philosophy.
10. Greene, B. (1999). The Elegant Universe.
11. Critique of empiricism in understanding the universe’s totality.
12. Conceptual parallel to God as the ultimate stillness in Islamic philosophy (Al-Ghazali, Ibn Arabi).