Section 26 (first updated 1.16.2021)
Our modern accounts of what constitutes development in the evolutionary context are heavily dependent on the observation of physical differences between life forms that have accumulated throughout different periods of time. Modern evolution is very physically oriented and focuses on the “use and disuse” of physical attributes of an animal—its claws, horns, beaks, eyes, nose, etc.—and how an animal’s physical composition changes depending on how it adapts to its environment.
But if we look at the most important feature—the only thing that can measure developmental differences between life forms, namely mental capacity—a deeper issue emerges. We know the mind is central in its significance because, like the nucleus of a cell, the mind is the part where activity originates and branches into physical action and behavior. In other words, the mind is the command-control motherboard of a life form.
However, the mental feature—which uniquely orders randomness into coherence—is treated as merely one of many physical traits that supposedly arise randomly through evolution. Yet it is the very feature we use to distinguish human beings from all other animals, and the feature that differentiates animals from each other.
Physical fitness is highly related to mental fitness, and among higher-developed animals (e.g., mammals), their development is directly related to their mental capacity to contend against nature. We take it for granted that a bear has fur and therefore survives winter, but we fail to realize that the bear still battles extreme cold with a limited time frame, expending only as much energy as it can afford for hunting. If it fails, it may die. What we treat as a purely physical condition is also a task of mental fitness.
Yet the mind is an entirely different kind of feature than all other physical attributes of evolution. It is the only feature that does not have randomness but purposiveness as its quality.[1] When we observe evolutionary traits such as fur or claws, we can say they may be randomly acquired in the sense that they are given to the animal by heredity or environment without the animal’s prior conception. Bears are simply born with fur.
However, the mind—what the animal does with its claw, jaw, or body—depends on its mental capacity, which is not merely given, but must develop through semi-unique experience.
The mind is not entirely physical; it is something fundamentally different—whether we call it “mental,” “abstract,” or “non-material.” Therefore it is not wholly determined by physical circumstances but possesses freedom and self-determination.[2] When we say something has free will, we ordinarily assume that its agency arises from choosing between different objects in its environment. But this standpoint cannot offer a comprehensive account of freedom because consciousness begins in a definite environment predetermined by natural order. Consciousness also always finds itself in a body not of its choosing. The organism’s body is itself a particular determinism of nature—its lifespan, features, instincts, and functions.
How did the consciousness of the organism come to know the need for these features prior to inhabiting its body? Darwinian evolution answers with heredity: the experiences of ancestors influence the formation of the body of the species.[3] But the species is, in the first place, composed out of a set of unique individuals. Thus arises the classic question: which comes first, the chicken or the egg; the species or the individual; the form or the object?
A comprehensive description of freedom must explain how the entire particular circumstances of a life form have been determined prior to any single choice throughout its lifetime.
Development, in the universal sense, is a mental activity—an abstraction of how consciousness approaches the particular circumstances it inhabits. This does not simply mean that development increases as animals gain physical features or become more aware of themselves. It also concerns how this development is even possible. Consciousness develops by its ability to remain virtuous—that is, to make the right decisions at the right times. But more fundamental still, consciousness must develop the capacity for concentration. Here “concentration” does not merely mean mental focus, but the process of energy concentrating at a point so as to become identical with the conception of that point.[4]
We may ask: how do the skills acquired by an animal help once it is dead? One answer is: they are passed on through genes. Genes tell us that physical traits like horns and body structure remain from parent to offspring, but these traits arise from a mental source. The horn remains because it served a purpose conceived by the organism. All the physical features passed on through genes belong to a more fundamental continuing agent that endures across generations. This substance must be the quality of consciousness, because there must be something that recognizes that horns, claws, or spatial instincts will be necessary for offspring as they were for ancestors. When we say something is “passed on” through generations, this should not suggest an object being thrown from one being to another.
Once the individual life form’s body dies, its consciousness endures and continues into the dimension of eternity. In this dimension, an infinite variety of possible life forms is available. Universal consciousness is influenced by the particular position it departs from at death. The influence of the particular lifetime upon universal consciousness operates as follows: universal consciousness enters a particular stage—call it a single lifetime—whose events generate the energy flow that consciousness uses to propel itself into an infinite state of eternity.
If a particular lifetime is complex, rich in experience, and sustained over time, then consciousness is propelled with greater velocity into the infinite, enabling it to remain longer in eternity. This extended endurance increases its likelihood of entering a higher and more developed state in its next incarnation. For example, if a bird grows to adulthood, hunts, sustains itself, reproduces, builds nests, and protects its offspring, that state of consciousness has accumulated enough energy to remain longer in infinity, increasing its chance of entering a higher life form—e.g., a mammal—since higher-developed animals arise later in cosmic time.
Conversely, if a bird dies prematurely—say, a bird still in an egg eaten by a lizard—it has not acquired the necessary experiences or energy to propel itself forward. Its consciousness is too weak and defaults to a more primal state—perhaps a worm or maggot—whose experience is minimal and comparable to a bird in fetal development rather than adulthood.
A consciousness that has not developed the skill of concentration during its lifetime becomes a weak form of universal consciousness. It is unable to concentrate long enough to remain extended within infinity, and therefore defaults to a finite and primitive life-path, as reincarnation traditions often teach.[5] It is impossible for consciousness to endure infinity fully because its quality is to identify with a specific form. Yet its task is to endure as many passing life-paths as possible without becoming fixed in any single one. The more time passes in this temperance, the higher the life-path it may eventually enter.
More and more conceptions appear the deeper into the infinite wormhole the mind enters. As universal consciousness moves within infinity, it is attracted by the particular events it encounters. Eventually, a particular event captures its attention so intensely that consciousness concentrates upon it and becomes identical with it—thus becoming that life form living that life-path. That particular life form then, in turn, looks back toward its universal source—the same universal look that first attracted it.
Universal consciousness becomes attracted to a particular consciousness in order to become it; yet that becoming is also what enables the universal to be propelled again into eternity, allowing it to select another particular in the first place. This dynamic between particular and universal is a fundamental simultaneity in nature.[6]
Footnotes
[1] Kant, Critique of Judgment (§10–§17): purposiveness without purpose as a principle of reflective judgment.
[2] Aristotle, De Anima II.3; Kant, Critique of Practical Reason on autonomy.
[3] Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Chapters 1–4 on variation and inheritance.
[4] Hegel, Science of Logic, Doctrine of Being; notion of concentration as self-relation of the concept.
[5] Parallel to classical Vedānta, Buddhist, and Neoplatonic theories of transmigration.
[6] Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, “Force and the Understanding”; Whitehead, Process and Reality on the concrescence of the particular within the eternal object.
“things just happen”
These are objects that coexist with each other in an environment. But what we see as a set of objects coexisting in an environment also exists within an event, and each event coexists with another event. How can the present event transition into a future event if the future event has no prior existence? Where, then, does the future event come from?
It is often said that “things just happen.” In the ordinary conception of time, observed by the sensible faculties, we only perceive the coexistence of objects within a single moment. But the moment of sensation does not simultaneously coexist with any other moment; it only follows after or before another moment.
But if time is truly within space and indivisible from it, then we must grant that time abides by the principles of space, just as space abides by the principles of time.[1] Every moment exists in space, and every space discloses a moment. Space is separated from itself—outside itself—by being the disclosure of a moment, and space is continuous because time continuously flows through and fills it. Rather, time itself is continuous within space.
The idea that “time is getting faster” can be explained by the notion that the deeper consciousness descends into the continuum of the wormhole, the more unique sets of events appear. More is conceived and therefore time appears faster. By comparison, someone sitting in a waiting room, or waiting for the last minute of class to end, finds time moving slowly precisely because very little is happening.
This dimension appears as a wormhole with infinite possibilities—each possible event protruding from the others. Events emerge from each other because they all inhabit the same space. A fundamental feature of objects being in the same space is that they “come out” of one another; in other words, man begets man.[2]
This is where the idea of reincarnation begins to make sense. Consciousness enters an infinite stream of possible life paths. The weaker versions of consciousness default to lower life forms with lower levels of awareness (insects, lizards, mice, etc.), while the stronger—those with greater concentration and focus, measured by how long they can withstand eternity—default to higher beings such as humans, and perhaps beings beyond the human. Each of these beings, from highest to lowest, forms a feedback loop in which they reproduce themselves continuously.
What we call heredity is merely this feedback loop maintaining a certain level of conscious experience. It maintains the same degree of consciousness that re-enters the same level. Heredity is simply the maintenance of a fish as a fish, a dog as a dog, a monkey as a monkey, a human as a human, etc., irrespective of the general upward trend of development. The fact that humans evolved further than monkeys is a different aspect of evolution than the persistence of monkeys continuing to maintain themselves as monkeys. We assume that across generations there is constant progressive development—that each new generation is more developed than the previous. But this is an abstraction from our present point of view, because from any particular viewpoint there is always development beyond it, and that is relative to the observer.
In the present, the observer can always look back at how things developed in the past and can look forward to what things might become. Thus there arises a subtle idealism in our natural conception of time: the belief that “things are going better than before,” because embedded in this view is the thought that things ought to be better. The past is undeniable in what occurred—for example, if I broke my hand in the past, that is a fact—and if in the future my hand heals, that healing necessarily presupposes the past injury. The future thus appears to follow necessarily from the past. In this conception, change always arises from something other than itself. That is, change occurs only when something comes from something other than itself.
Consider reproduction in sexual and asexual forms. Sexual reproduction involves the unity of two separate organisms producing one. Asexual reproduction involves one organism replicating itself into two or more. In either case, the cause of coming-to-be originates from something else that is independent of the thing undergoing the transition—change comes from elsewhere. In sexual reproduction, the offspring arises from parents who are related to but distinct from the offspring; in asexual reproduction, the original organism transforms into a new form and leaves its prior form behind.
But in order for something other to arise out of something self-identical, we must ask: what about something that is not identical with anything? The answer is simply: the totality that includes the identity, then the other, then yet another identity that is itself an other relative to the first identity, which is also other to itself.[3] In this conceptual movement lies the beginning of an explanation of the very nature of temporal development itself. Unlike the fleeting moments of our particular experience, there are fundamental moments that constitute the most permanent conditions of nature.
Consciousness develops in the infinite state of all possibilities by unfolding into three fundamental perspectives corresponding to the three dimensions of spacetime.
The first dimension is a line connecting any two points. It has no width or depth—only length. It is a wavelength. The essence of the first dimensional wavelength is not merely the distance between the two endpoints, nor its singularity, but the space parallel to it between itself and other wavelengths that do not share the same endpoints.
The presupposition of the first dimension is not that there cannot be multiple wavelengths, but that the wavelengths do not intersect. The first dimension is defined by things being parallel. As long as the lines do not intersect and remain parallel, they remain within the first dimension. The first dimension is also the first instance of mathematics: the principle of arithmetic, where the function of addition requires each number to remain parallel to the next, even though the purpose is to combine them. Their combination is conceived as a single entity that remains independent and parallel to other combinations. The definition of the first dimension does not say there must be only one object; only that the objects do not combine through contact. The moment two lines intersect, they become the second dimension.
A two-dimensional plane, when viewed on its back—imagine placing a computer screen flat on the ground with its surface facing upwards—is a 2D surface within a 3D world.
The second dimension occurs when two lengths intersect, and the point of intersection produces a shape. The second dimension is defined by the branching of a second line off the first.
A junction is the point where the two lines intersect and become inseparable. In a “no junction,” one can still distinguish which line is which at their crossing.
We must ask: what is presupposed whenever two lines intersect?
In the junction, the no-junction is not revealed, but it is still present. The interaction between two lines is compatible with their being parallel; indeed, the point of intersection highlights their parallelism.
The presupposition is that there is a third point, the point of intersection itself—whether a right angle, an acute angle, a triangular vertex, or a simple cross. The resulting shape is a third entity independent of the lines that formed it. It is important to explain how the first dimension gives rise to the second.
The first dimension does not contain merely one wavelength. It may contain two or infinitely many wavelengths; the only condition is that they remain parallel. The second dimension arises from the intersection of two such lengths. Therefore the question becomes: how can two parallel lines intersect?
In computer technology, for example, when constructing a website, one uses “hyperlinks”—one window governing another. This is analogous to how one dimension may “intercept” or govern another.
The second dimension possesses both length and width. The width arises from the intersecting line. But in the first dimension, where does width come from? It is not found in the line itself but exists outside the line in the plane. Width is a feature of the plane, not the line. Even though width has length, it does not follow that length has width—at least not at this fundamental stage.
A world with only two dimensions appears “flat” when perceived through width. But to perceive something through width presupposes depth. Yet the first and second dimensions lack depth.
Depth, therefore, belongs to the third dimension. How, then, do we move from the second to the third dimension? Where is depth implicit in the first and second dimensions? In the first, depth is implicit in the parallelism of the lengths. In the second, it is implicit in the width and height that constitute a shape—in other words, the shape in relation to the plane.[4]
Footnotes
[1] Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A23/B38–A25/B39, on the interdependence of space and time as pure forms of intuition.
[2] Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Z; Hegel, Science of Logic (“Doctrine of Essence”), on generation and self-externalization.
[3] Hegel, Science of Logic, section on “Identity, Difference, and Contradiction.”
[4] Euclid, Elements; Kant, Prolegomena §14; Hermann Weyl, Space, Time, Matter on dimensional implication.
Look into the In-Between Space
The order may be backwards, rather than forwards, from what we typically assume in our mathematical accounts. In mathematics, the measure of quantity is usually derived to move in one direction only, but this is simply a rule for performing a single action at a single time. The concept “to subtract,” or the act of subtraction itself, is a sub-form of abstraction: it means that one can only move in one direction during one duration.
One implication is that the time in which something happens, and the place in which it happens, do not necessarily coincide. For example, counting can only proceed in one direction at one variable at a time. If I am counting in the positive direction, my next step can only move positively: 1 must go to 2; it cannot go to –1. But once that step is taken, the next step may reverse direction; from 2 I may move to –1.
From a three-dimensional perspective, the observer sees two-dimensional cross-sections of objects. A ball, for instance, appears as a circle.
The expression “read between the lines” is in fact a principle of consciousness.
Between the space separating two wavelengths—each connected by endpoints that are not themselves connected—there is a depth. This depth is distinct from both wavelengths, yet similar insofar as it shares their essential feature: extension.[1] The plane has no discernible width, length, or thickness when considered abstractly, yet it has an extension that continues indefinitely. This does not mean it continues infinitely without qualification; it proceeds indefinitely starting from a definite beginning—the parallelism of the two lengths, which is the presupposition for its indefinite depth.
Zoom into Space
Their essential nature is extension itself—the action or movement of extension—not merely the result that appears when it reaches a definite point. The function of a plane is, after all, to be “plain,” that is, free of any specific quality. Therefore it possesses only the quality of potentiality—the possibility of acquiring a quality.[2]
The third dimension is the essence of the two distinct dimensions, something distinct from both yet encompassing them.
And when one zooms into space, one finds nothing different than what one was first observing, because one was already observing a differentiated spectrum within another spectrum. The act of zooming is simply the intensification of the same structure at another level.
The third dimension appears the moment we conceive a third object in relation to the unity of two or more objects that make up the second dimension.
The distinction between a 2-dimensional plane and a 3-dimensional space lies in the relation of each individual object to each other individual object—not in one individual object relating to the group as a whole. When one object stands in relation to the unity that constitutes a group, we have a change in dimension.
The Third Dimension and the In-Between
The third dimension closes the first two dimensions onto one another by doing what they both do simultaneously. It zooms into the in-between space—the space indifferent to the first dimensions yet distinct from them—infinitely. It keeps a gap between every particular instance of a unity, then takes that gap itself and fills it with each particular instance. This gap becomes the passageway into the infinity of all possible instances.
And when one zooms into a particular place in this continuum, that “one place” brings along many other points that become immediately clear once the appropriate distance is traversed.
A dimension is the group of objects composing one order relative to another group of objects composing another order.
How Do Many Varieties Arise from the Same Thing?
How can one obtain many varieties from the same material? By changing the conception.
A line is vertical; change the conception and the same line becomes horizontal. Change the conception again—while maintaining both perspectives simultaneously—and you have an intersection: the first discernible moment of shape. These differing conceptions of consciousness become imprinted as permanent structures in nature. They are so fundamental that they possess the longest durations in the universe.[3]
There is a parallel first dimension to every first dimension.[4] Hegel calls consciousness “reflection within being”—a doubling of form.[5] This is what density is: when the parallel distance between dimensions is reduced, they form a compactness, a limit where one moment cannot become the other because both are fundamentally first dimensions.
If one became the other, differentiation would collapse—both would be identical. Yet there are slight differences from moment to moment, mediated by an infinitesimally small space: a minute space. The English “minute” (very small) derives from Latin minutus, meaning “made small,” while the noun refers to the sixtieth part of an hour—the distance covered in sixty seconds.[6]
A minute is the space in time where a series of moments intersect as closely as possible, forming a measurable duration. I say “measurable” because when we descend into seconds and milliseconds, measurability increasingly diminishes into an unmeasurable point, where moments can no longer be distinguished from one another by the space that constitutes them. A minute—this minute space between moments—is the level at which consciousness “peaks” to locate the next moment.
You find the same line you were looking at because you could only have been looking at it through the conception that reveals it. The concept proves itself in the consciousness of itself.
Concentration and Dimensional Synthesis
When the focus of consciousness is strong enough, it pulls similar moments together. It binds them from an infinite bundle of possibilities, producing a clear continuum of events once a specific possibility is selected.
The third dimension is dense within itself. Therefore, it is the only dimension in which the first two dimensions appear to be the same—because it synthesizes both opposite determinations into a unity.[7]
Footnotes
[1] Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A24/B39–A25/B40, on extension as the form of outer intuition.
[2] Aristotle, Physics, Book III; Hegel, Logic, “Quality → Being-for-Itself,” on potentiality and determination.
[3] Hegel, Science of Logic, “The Doctrine of Being,” on the permanence of qualitative nodes in the continuum.
[4] Weyl, Space, Time, Matter, ch. 1, on parallel manifolds in geometric intuition.
[5] Hegel, Science of Logic, “Reflection,” on consciousness as duplication of immediacy.
[6] Etymological reference: Latin minutus (“made small”).
[7] Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface: the “unity of opposites” as conceptual synthesis.
Dense with Itself
All the dimensions come so close to one another that they effectively form the same dimension—a particular wavelength extending into the depth of itself. Because each moment is so similar and so close to the present moment, a similar situation repeats. The infinite possibility of itself begins as a scattering of random events crisscrossing each other—an “entanglement” of spacetime. But the un-entanglement of these dimensions takes hold when consciousness concentrates so intensely upon a single point on the spectrum that consciousness becomes identical with the duration of the continuum.[1]
This is what may be called a slab of nature in the continuum of spacetime: a piece of spacetime itself abstracted and held in focus by consciousness. The more consciousness focuses upon it, the more identical it becomes with it. The dimension that separates the continuous series of spatial events filters out during this process; consciousness effectively pulls out one event from the infinite mass of possible events.
This is the bare structure. Now add infinite quality. A quality presupposes diversity—that there are things different from one another. It also presupposes identity—that each thing is a unique and separate unit. And it presupposes commonality—that each unique and different thing is alike in its having uniqueness. This infinite field of quality is the “matter” or content from which any single one of the infinite can be formed.
Moment Within a Moment
(Insert: picture of the ocean sunset)
This is what motion is: the process of turning one’s head involves every moment being imprinted onto space.
If we assume that space is everywhere—or that space is invariably present in any phenomenon—then space is also an aspect of time. Between moments there is space; we call these “minutes,” meaning both externally small and a spatial-temporal interval.
The reason ordinary experience does not appear as a disconnected series of fragmented conceptions or isolated moments, but instead as a continuous spatial field filled with integrated points, is that consciousness concentrates so intensely on each possible point that the universal conception divides itself into the many objects conceived within it.[2]
Imagine that each object within a general conception has a correlated conception sustaining it. There is a corresponding conception linked to each distinct phenomenon within the infinite spectrum of possibilities. Each variable phenomenon develops this conception within itself and integrates it as a self-contained system—the same system used to pick out a particular thing from everything as a universal.
Each object disclosed within a variable conception has an invariant relation to a broader conception beyond it, such that it may be conceived in and of itself, and not merely as a relative “other.” This “other,” however, may also be a self-contained thing from yet another perspective.
These derivations—motions of thought prior to any precondition—use only the material readily available, namely the subject matter itself. This allows the mind to generate what is not itself: the opposite direction where itself exists only potentially. For example, take the same vertical line and rotate it horizontally.
To say that the particular is an expression of the universal means that the universal is the activity producing diverse reactions or differences—static, objectified abstractions which we call the ordinary objects of daily life. Yet even this field of abstractions is only one among infinitely many unperceived abstractions. The universal experiences itself through the particular differentiations of itself, and each differentiation constitutes an ethical characteristic of the individual.[3]
Fundamental Principles: Time, Space, Light
The basic principles of nature—time, space, and light—are universal determinations of reason. They are universal because they apply in any dimension of reason. They are true in the mind just as they are true in the external world.
Each principle is more fundamental than the other, yet its fundamentality lies in being carried out as a derivative in every other principle. Modern empirical science often asserts that one principle may contain another, but the contained principle does not contain the containing one. Logically, this is contradictory.[4]
It may sound sensible to say “space contains light but light does not contain space,” because we observe light in the vacuum of space. But this assumes—without demonstration—that space is not also implicitly contained within light.
Quantum mechanics assigns this dual role to the atom, which appears both as a wavelength and as discrete particles. Light appears to exist within space; but change the observational scale and light appears as a wavelength, an extended continuum that itself contains discrete points of energy.
(Insert: picture of a circle or field of light containing points of light)
Scaling Up and Down
Working backward from any object before your vision, you may either zoom into its microscopic structure with a microscope or zoom outward into the cosmic structure with a telescope. Either way you encounter increasingly diverse entities, both qualitatively and spatially separated.
If we alter the ordinary duration of time normally experienced by the mind—for instance by taking psychoactive substances that amplify cognitive sensitivity—we observe that each moment of time is spaced out by a void, normally imperceptible. When one focuses on this gap, it reveals an entire world of infinite content.
When we look into the universe and see countless galaxies, we are in fact looking between different moments of time—different historical events separated by immense spacetime intervals.[5]
Consciousness and Death
When consciousness leaves a particular manifestation (e.g., a body), it means that this sequence of time has run its course. The final moment of life is the moment consciousness reverts to a more fundamental, universal mode. Death is a matter of time; the transition is inevitable.
The process by which life appears as a particular and then returns to a universal is a fundamental cycle observed in the behavior of energy throughout the universe.
Stars emerge from star-forming nebulae—nebulae that result from prior stars reaching the end of their life and exploding outward. The outward expression of a collapsed star is a nebula, but within the nebula are the seeds of supernovas, neutron stars, and even black holes.
When a star explodes and disperses, that is the very moment it is reborn—or rather, the moment its energy returns to a more fundamental state, a singularity. A singularity is a dense form of concentrated energy that theoretically underlies all energy states, including stars.
In Big Bang cosmology, the universe begins as such a concentrated point and explodes outward, dispersing into every possible object. Some theories predict the universe will slow down and die as a cold, empty space. Others predict it will accelerate indefinitely. Still others propose collapse outward and then collapse inward—an oscillating universe.[6]
The bell curve of something rising to a peak and then descending is an abstraction of a natural cycle recurring in anything subject to time. When a star lives its life and ends in an explosion, that explosion is simultaneously the beginning of another star’s life cycle. We say it is “another” star, but this “other” may simply be the recurring universal form of starhood.
This energy state—beginning as a concentrated point, then expanding into a dispersed plane, then collapsing again—is a fundamental behavior throughout the universe. It is the physical manifestation of consciousness entering a particular state and then reverting to a universal one.
The continuity of development is this oscillation. What we call “progress”—movement toward greater complexity—is merely the abstraction of one arc of a circular duration. The curve is just one segment of the circle.[7]
Footnotes
[1] Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, on the collapse of multiplicity into focused coherence.
[2] Husserl, Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, on temporal synthesis and retention/protention.
[3] Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Ch. VI, on universality expressing itself in individuality.
[4] Hegel, Science of Logic, “Measure,” on reciprocal containment of qualitative determinations.
[5] Einstein, Relativity, on cosmological lookback time and observable past light-cones.
[6] Penrose, Cycles of Time; Steinhardt & Turok, Endless Universe, for cyclic cosmologies.
[7] Heraclitus, Fragment 12; Hegel, Logic, on becoming as oscillation between being and nothing.
Particle Collider
Particle colliders reveal a potential moment in time.
What particle physicists attempt to do with colliders is to accelerate and smash two particles together so that their combined energy produces a flash—typically in the form of high-energy photons (gamma rays). For a brief instant, this flash reveals a third particle, but this is not merely the appearance of an additional object. Rather, it is the disclosure of one possibility, or a potential event of the proton that exists just outside the present moment—a proton belonging to a future moment of the same particle’s existence.[1]
In classical mechanics, two objects colliding simply repel each other. But at subatomic scales, collisions frequently result in two particles combining into one, or splitting into many others. How can the contact of two particles produce a number of particles either less than or greater than the number originally present? If two particles merge into one, where did the “other” go? And if two particles collide and numerous particles appear, where did these additional particles come from?
This contradicts classical mechanics, in which collisions alter only the relative motion of the bodies involved.
What is actually occurring when subatomic particles collide is the same phenomenon operating at different degrees of intensity. When two particles collide and multiple particles appear, the energy generated—often in the form of gamma rays—momentarily illuminates the fabric of spacetime, which contains all the possible temporal states of the particles. The collision does not literally create more particles out of fewer. Rather, the flash reveals particles existing at different moments in time—moments normally inaccessible from the present.[2]
Particles that were not present in one moment suddenly appear in the next because the flash exposes the layers of spacetime where those potential states reside.
When two particles collide and only one particle is detected afterward, the gamma-ray flash is weaker. It reveals only the nearest next possible moment of those particles. The merged particle may correspond to a probability that, in a future moment, one of the original particles collapsed or transformed. Subatomic particles continually fluctuate—appearing, disappearing, collapsing, and re-emerging.
The gamma-ray flash reveals these particles in their other dimensions, their other possible spacetime configurations. The flash does not create the future; it exposes more of spacetime itself, a spacetime that is already filled with potential future moments.
Footnotes
[1] Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, on virtual particle emergence in high-energy interactions.
[2] Rovelli, Quantum Gravity; and Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, on particles as temporally extended quantum states rather than static objects.
Double Slit – Infinite Density of the Line
When the electron exists in its wave form, it is in a state of potentiality. Geometrically speaking, a wave can be treated as a kind of line, and a line contains an infinite number of points. This is why, when the electron passes through the slit, it appears to “become many”: before entering the slit it is not in particle form but in wave form, which means it carries the potential to manifest as many possible particle positions.[1]
A line contains an infinite number of points not merely because of its extension, for a line may be finite in length and still contain infinitely many points. Rather, a line is infinitely populated with points because of its density. Between any two points—no matter how close—there is always another point, and between those points still more, without end. This infinite divisibility is intrinsic to the very concept of a line.
To say that a line is “dense” with points means that its continuity is constituted by an unbroken field of infinitesimal distinctions, each of which is a potential position. The line is therefore not simply an extended segment of space, but a continuum of infinitely many possible determinations. At the conceptual level, each point is a moment where the line could be “cut,” differentiated, or transformed into something else—such as an angle, a plane, or a shape.
Because the points are infinitely dense, the line contains within itself the potential for any geometric construction. The square, the triangle, or any other shape emerges not by adding something external to the line, but by selecting, relating, and fixing certain points within this already infinite continuum. In this sense, the line is the primordial field of geometric possibility.
The Double-Slit Experiment in Relation to the Infinite Density of the Line
When we say that a line contains infinitely many points, we do not mean that it extends infinitely, but that it is infinitely divisible, that every segment—however small—contains more determinate positions than can ever be counted. The line is therefore a continuum of potential determinations. Each point is a location where something could occur, even if only one position is realized at any given moment.
This same logic applies to the double-slit experiment.
When the electron is not observed, it behaves as a wave. A wave is the physical analogue of the continuum of the line:
it is not committed to one definite location but is instead spread over an infinite field of possible positions.
In this wave-state, the electron exists in superposition—not many particles, but one entity whose nature is to carry infinitely many possible points of arrival.
Just as a finite line contains infinitely many points in its density, a finite wave contains infinitely many possible positions where the particle could actualize.
When the electron passes through the two slits, it does not “split” into many electrons; rather, its field of possibilities spreads across both openings, and each point on the detection screen corresponds to a possible moment of actualization. The interference pattern is a record of this underlying infinite continuity—the same continuity that defines the density of the line.
Observation collapses the wave and forces the electron into one of its infinite potential points, just as selecting a point on a line collapses the entire continuum into a single determination.
Thus:
- Wave-state = the infinite density of points (pure potential).
- Particle-state = the actual selection of one point from that continuum.
This is why, when unobserved, the electron behaves like a line of infinite density—a continuum of possibilities—yet when observed, it becomes a point, a single realized location in that continuum.
In this way, the double-slit experiment is a physical instance of the metaphysical structure you described:
The infinite density of the continuum manifests first as pure possibility, and only afterward as a determinate, singular event.
Strings — First Dimensional
If we zoom into particles deeply enough, and then from that zoomed-in perspective look outward, we encounter what “string theory” calls strings—one-dimensional boundary states of an event. A string is like a plane turned on its side: when viewed edge-on, the plane becomes a single line.
For example, if you rotate a square to a perfect angle, it appears as a line. Yet within that same line, in reverse, all the angles that constitute the square are still implicitly present. A line contains the potential for all its geometric determinations—length, width, depth, and so on. Thus, how do we derive a square from a line?
A string is the concept seen from its angle, and the angle is the position in which all possible quantities converge. An angle is defined as two rays sharing a common endpoint. But the deeper presupposition is not that two distinct lines meet at a point; rather, the endpoint itself is what differentiates a single possibility into two rays. Two rays are discernible only because they stand parallel at some infinitesimal separation; otherwise they would be indistinguishable as one and the same line. The angle thus divides a line into two rays.
Gravity as Possibility-in-Influence
Gravity is the influence of possible events on a present event. An event is “possible” not because it lacks reality, but because it does not occur at the same moment of time as the observer. Possibility refers to events that do not share the observer’s present location—yet they still occupy spacetime. A possible moment exerts an attraction on matter toward itself.
This is what we describe as a warp in spacetime: matter is drawn toward a point where multiple possible future moments converge. Physically this appears convoluted, but temporally it is clear: gravity is the pull of a future configuration of spacetime. Because outer space is mostly empty while the masses being warped are extremely large, this temporal distortion appears as a dramatic curvature of matter.
Thus, gravity corresponds to the nearest possible future moments of particles embedded in the fabric of spacetime.[2]
When gravity is “condensed,” what is happening is that unobserved first- and second-dimensional temporal structures exert indirect influence on observable matter. When two objects are gravitationally bound, they are held together by a sequence of necessary moments in time. These moments cannot collapse into one, but they also cannot break apart.
Manipulating Necessary Moments
Imagine that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization could manipulate these necessary moments. For example, to go downtown I must undergo the 20 minutes required to walk there, during which countless micro-events occur: I see a person fall, pass trees, notice people, and so on. These events fill the intermediate moments of time.
If instead I take a taxi and arrive in 5 minutes, the speed compresses these possibilities; the potential events of the longer duration never have a chance to occur.
A hypothetical extraterrestrial technology could suspend or bypass the necessary intermediate moments altogether. This explains why UFOs are often observed to remain stationary and then suddenly appear in a distant location: they have skipped the intermediate temporal frames.
You “surf the internet with knowledge” in the same way—by skipping the vast number of intermediate steps that would otherwise be required to access the information.
Footnotes
[1] See Wheeler & Feynman, “Delayed-Choice Experiments,” and standard interpretations of the double-slit experiment regarding wavefunction superposition and position probability distributions.
[2] For gravitational curvature as a temporal phenomenon, see Misner, Thorne & Wheeler, Gravitation; Barbour, The End of Time, on time-structure influencing gravitational behaviour.