Section 70 (first updated 4.21.2021)

Infinity and the Future

The direction the universe is into infinity, but this has a very precise meaning.[1] Infinity should not be understood simply as many uncountable things placed one after another, as though infinity were merely an enormous quantity that continues increasing.[2] Infinity is not simply a number that happens to be larger than every other number. It is a concept concerning what has no finite limit, and different mathematical structures can possess different kinds of infinity.[3]

The man in his experience, and the experience in the mind, has the form of infinite tunnelling.

Like a mirror reflecting itself, but unlike it, whereas it is whatever appearance of the infinite, the infinity reflection is all the potentiality of the mind: the whole of the experiences being neurologically transmitted, the form of the tunnel of infinity whereby dictating the evolutionary direction of the universe.

The infinite tunnel is therefore not merely an infinitely long physical corridor. It is the continuous opening of potentiality within experience.

Every present moment contains a relation to what may become.

The present is therefore not simply a point between a past and a future. It is the opening through which potentiality becomes actuality. The future is infinite because the possibilities contained within the present are not exhausted by the present form of reality.

The mind exhibits this particularly clearly.

A human being can remember what has happened, perceive what is happening, and imagine what could happen. The neurological system therefore does not merely transmit the established reality of the present; it participates in the construction of possible futures through memory, prediction, imagination, decision, and action.[4]

The experience in the mind is therefore an infinite tunnelling.

One experience opens into another.

One thought opens into another thought.

One possibility opens into another possibility.

The mind does not merely move through a fixed sequence of events. It continually generates a space of potential relations from the events already experienced.

The tunnel therefore becomes infinite not because there are literally an infinite number of objects contained inside the mind, but because every determinate experience can become the condition for further determinations.

The idea contains another idea.

The event contains another possible event.

The experience contains the possibility of another experience.

And so the direction toward infinity is the direction toward the continual differentiation of potentiality.

Infinite Tunnel

This describes the scientific idea of a wormhole, or is more imaginatively speculated by the depiction of the “rabbit hole.”[5]

The wormhole provides a useful image because it represents a passage between regions of spacetime that might otherwise appear separated. In the mathematical structure of general relativity, wormhole-like geometries can be constructed as solutions of the field equations under particular conditions.[6] Whether traversable wormholes actually exist in nature is another question, and no observational evidence has established that they do.[7]

Our use of the wormhole is therefore more philosophical than literal.

The infinite tunnel represents the movement from one state of actuality into another state of potentiality.

The rabbit hole represents the same idea imaginatively: the deeper one goes, the more the apparently stable surface of reality opens into increasingly strange and differentiated possibilities.

The tunnel is therefore not simply a distance.

It is a transformation.

It is the passage from what is to what may be.

It is the continuity between actuality and potentiality.

The universe itself can consequently be understood as an infinite tunnelling through its own possibilities.

Towards the Singularity

The path towards the singularity is the path toward the limit of differentiation.

The “Eye of God” is a depiction that is more fictitious because it shows the quantitative way the universe is leading to the singularity, the black hole, but it does not show the qualitative actuality of this form.[8]

The singularity, having no particular location, is not determined by some large-scale aggregate position in the universe.

This is important because the singularity should not simply be imagined as a giant physical object sitting somewhere at the end of the universe.

In general relativity, a singularity represents a breakdown or boundary of the classical spacetime description rather than necessarily being a physical point sitting at a particular location.[9] A black-hole singularity, moreover, is not equivalent to a universal singularity toward which the entire universe is necessarily travelling.

Our philosophical singularity is therefore different.

It is not simply the black hole.

It is the limit toward which the differentiation of possibility tends.

It is the point at which the distinction between beginning and end, actuality and potentiality, particular and universal, becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.

The present of the evolution in the universe—the point of the singularity where the whole universe results in and onto the continuum to the future—is the mind of the human being.

Here, there, the potentialities of thought provide qualitative probabilities exponentially more than the established reality of the universe.

The human mind is therefore the point at which the future becomes internally represented before it becomes externally actualized.

The organism does not merely wait for the future.

It anticipates it.

It imagines it.

It compares possibilities.

It selects among them.

It acts.

And through acting, it changes the conditions from which further possibilities emerge.

The mind therefore becomes a qualitative singularity of potentiality.

The established universe contains what has already become actual.

The mind contains representations of what could become actual.

The difference is not that thought exists outside physical reality. Thought itself is an event in physical reality. Rather, thought is a physical event that contains representations of possible future events.

The future therefore exists within the present as potentiality.

Probability of Potentiality

Probability is a function of potentiality, the latter being the form, the former being the content.

Potentiality describes the nature of the specific idea ordained by thought, which exhibits itself as an extended set of differentiated possibilities.

Probability describes how possible outcomes are quantitatively distributed within some specified model.[10] Potentiality, as we are using the word here, is broader. It refers to the capacity of a form to become differently actualized.

The distinction is therefore:

Potentiality is the form of what can become.

Probability is the quantitative distribution of how possible outcomes are represented within a given framework.

A probability requires a space of possibilities.

Potentiality is the form of that space.

Probability therefore does not create potentiality. It describes relations among possibilities that have already been defined within some model.

If I say that an event has a fifty-percent probability of occurring, I have already established a set of possible outcomes within which that probability has meaning. The probability is therefore not itself the entire structure of possibility.

The philosophical question is deeper:

What gives the possibilities their form in the first place?

The mind provides one observable example.

Before I choose between two actions, both actions can exist as possibilities within thought.

The actuality of one action does not erase the fact that the other action was previously possible.

The mind therefore contains a distinction between actuality and potentiality.

This is why thought becomes significant for our conception of the universe.

The universe does not merely contain what has happened.

It contains conditions from which what has not yet happened can emerge.

Every present configuration therefore contains a horizon of possible future configurations.

The future is infinity.

Not infinity as an enormous collection of already-existing objects.

Not infinity as an uncountable heap.

But infinity as the absence of a final exhaustion of potentiality.

The infinite tunnel is therefore the continuous movement from actuality into possibility and from possibility into actuality.

The future is the opening of the universe into itself.

Infinity is the Direction of Becoming

If the universe is understood as an organism, then its evolution is not merely a sequence of objects changing positions. It is the progressive differentiation of forms.

Matter forms structures.

Structures form organisms.

Organisms form experiences.

Experiences form ideas.

Ideas form possibilities.

Possibilities become actions.

Actions alter the conditions of the universe.

The altered universe produces new possibilities.

And the cycle continues.

The universe therefore tunnels through itself.

Each present moment is both an endpoint of what has already happened and an opening toward what has not yet happened.

The past is actuality.

The present is actuality becoming potentiality.

The future is potentiality becoming actuality.

Infinity is the horizon at which this process cannot be finally exhausted.

This is why the singularity, in our philosophical conception, is not simply a point in space.

It is the limit toward which the whole process points.

It is the universal within which every particular possibility is contained.

The human mind becomes significant because it is the place where this infinite structure becomes qualitatively explicit.

The mind can hold the possible before the possible becomes actual.

It can contain an event that has not happened.

It can construct a world that does not yet exist.

It can take the present and transform it into a representation of the future.

The mind is therefore an infinite tunnel within the universe because it allows the universe to pass through itself as possibility.

We are not outside the universe imagining its future.

We are the universe imagining through us.

The future is therefore not simply what comes after the present.

It is the potentiality already contained within the present, continually opening into further potentiality.

Infinity is the future.

And the future is the universe continuing to become an idea of itself.

Footnotes

[1] “The universe is into infinity” is being used here as a philosophical claim about unending becoming rather than as the claim that cosmology has established that the universe is spatially infinite. Current cosmology allows different possibilities concerning the global geometry and spatial extent of the universe, and observations constrain but do not straightforwardly settle every question about its total extent.

[2] Infinity is not simply an extraordinarily large number. In mathematics, infinity is used in several distinct ways, including as a property of unbounded sequences, cardinalities of sets, and points or limits in extended mathematical structures.

[3] Georg Cantor demonstrated that there are different cardinalities of infinity. For example, the natural numbers form a countably infinite set, whereas the real numbers are uncountably infinite. Thus, saying “infinity” does not by itself identify a single magnitude or collection. The philosophical argument here is concerned primarily with infinity as unbounded potentiality rather than with cardinal arithmetic.

[4] Contemporary neuroscience and cognitive science study memory, prediction, planning, imagination, and prospective cognition as interconnected capacities. The brain does not merely encode present sensory information; it also constructs representations relevant to possible future states. This empirical fact provides a useful basis for the philosophical distinction between actuality and potentiality, although it does not establish that the universe itself possesses a mind.

[5] A wormhole is a hypothetical spacetime geometry that can, in certain mathematical solutions of general relativity, connect otherwise distant regions of spacetime. The popular “rabbit hole” image is a literary and imaginative analogy rather than a scientific description of an actual wormhole.

[6] Wormhole solutions appear in general relativity under particular geometrical and physical assumptions. The classic Einstein–Rosen bridge is associated with the geometry of certain black-hole solutions, while traversable wormholes require additional conditions that raise substantial theoretical difficulties.

[7] No observational evidence has established the existence of traversable wormholes. Their possibility remains primarily a theoretical subject in gravitational physics.

[8] “The Eye of God” is being treated here as a symbolic image rather than as a scientific model. Astronomical imagery sometimes gives galaxies, nebulae, or other structures an eye-like appearance, but such visual resemblance has no established cosmological implication.

[9] In general relativity, a singularity should not simply be imagined as a physical object occupying a location. Singular behavior indicates that the classical theory reaches a regime where its description becomes incomplete or breaks down. Quantum gravity may ultimately provide a different description of such regimes.

[10] Probability is mathematically defined relative to a specified space of possible outcomes and a probability measure. Consequently, probability does not simply mean “anything could happen.” A probability model specifies which outcomes are under consideration and how probability is assigned to them.

[11] The distinction between potentiality and probability has a long philosophical history. Aristotle’s distinction between potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (energeia) is particularly relevant to the present argument. Here, however, “potentiality” is being used in a broader metaphysical sense to describe the capacity of an existing form to become differently actualized.

[12] The statement that the human mind provides “qualitative probabilities exponentially more than the established reality of the universe” is not a standard mathematical or neuroscientific proposition. In this essay it means that conscious thought can represent qualitatively differentiated possibilities that are not yet physically actual. It should therefore be understood as a metaphysical description rather than a numerical claim.

[13] The proposition that “the future is infinity” should not be interpreted as saying that the future is a pre-existing infinite collection of events. The intended meaning is that the future represents an open-ended horizon of potentiality. Whether physical time itself is infinite into the future remains a question for cosmology and depends upon the physical model of cosmic evolution.

[14] The statement that “we are the universe imagining through us” is the culmination of the essay’s philosophical argument. It reverses the ordinary relation in which a human subject is imagined as a separate observer looking at an external universe. Here, consciousness is understood as a process occurring within the universe through which the universe becomes capable of representing possible forms of its own future.

[15] The central proposition can therefore be stated more precisely: infinity is not conceived as an infinitely large collection of objects but as the open-ended potentiality of a universe whose present configurations continually generate further possible configurations. The human mind is one particularly explicit form of this process because it can represent possibilities before they become actual events.

Star as meeting point between two parallel dimensions

So far, we have been discussing the nature of these hidden realities that underlay our observable macroscopic [world], that their necessary existence is inferred only indirectly through their necessary reality and their relation with the observable. But this is not a matter of faithful truth, but rather it is a physical property of energy dispersion, that concentrated forms of energy interact and combine within a lack of energy, so-called, or void.

But then we state that the void plays a deeper role than just being simply the facilitated realm whereby objects move within, but that somehow the void exists as the energy of determining these components into interaction and rational relation, that there is a rational element of the invisible realm of reality that is where mind resides, ultimately speaking. The form of the observer is this nullity, this lack of placement where possibility springs up into actuality.

We stated that spacetime is this realm whereby all possible events are discussed in their every possible spatial ordination. It is difficult to imagine such complex dimensions; it escapes mentally revealed capabilities and appears like a singularity in spacetime, of infinitesimally extended inward duration, disclosed within a particular conception of all the possibilities of the conception. The one is many and the many is one. This ancient paradox is important, for this is what appears to be a quantum paradox.

That spacetime exhibits itself as these peaks or valleys, let us say as analogies, at the end tip of the peak, that is what we disclose and see as energy, stars, in spacetime. But beneath the system is a mammoth of infinite possibilities, a singularity at the heart of every particular relation.

Yet this is not so novel as it seems, for it explains basically everything in the universe, that stars, as we see them, as this ball of fire or energy, are merely just an abstraction. In fact, when we look up into any object in space, we ultimately see it as spherical. But why is this the case? Why does every object observed in space ultimately appear spherical? Is it because it is fundamentally spherical, or is it because our minds can only observe complex phenomena in a rudimentary manner, therefore shaping the complexity of a singularity into a spherical form that the observer can understand and conceive of?

Yet these two points ultimately and basically come to mean the same thing: as to whether it is for him this way or he makes it for himself that way, the result still in the same ambiguity. What are the chances of us, our mind, reducing objects to a spherical manner, or are they actually spherical? As if nature lacks all possible shapes? And the reality is that in space there is every shape, all at once displayed.

Ancient tablets from past Assyria describe the skies being different, and their coordination of the sky is different than today, that things are shaped mismatched and change, our sky ultimately changes, and therefore the motion of the Earth is not as uniform as we assume, that it is always moving spherically around a star. The reality is that that star itself is also racing across space, with the objects following it.

Yet the ancient models say that the entire heavens actually revolve around our flat plane, and that the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This is a particular conception of the star, yet what we are even seeing is only an abstraction of a star, for the star itself is a very interesting element in spacetime that we overlook the complexity of.

In fact, the star is a certain distance away from Earth, but for us, from our point of view, it might as well be right above our head, and we feel it. That is because the intensity or magnitude of the energy of the star extends to the region of Earth at the distance which appears close to the observer. It might actually as well be that close. Its distance is not a matter of where it is initially, but till where it extends into and continues into.

In fact, every object in apparent relation to the Sun exhibits a physical formation based on the level of energy interaction with the Sun. The Sun, its first original point, let us say, where it stands originally, not an object but rather an interaction between two parallel dimensions in spacetime that ever came so close, approximate to each other, that never touch, release a generation of energy equal to that of a star.

Or that is what a star is: a point of almost contact between two dimensions, disclosing an infinite amount of unique reactions. And therefore this is why all ancient roots, analogies, and images, and now we are seeing physically that energy released from a dying person shoots out presumably into the Sun. The Sun was associated with God and all bearing life, even in Christ, heaven is going into the light.

These analogies are not random or arbitrary; they physically describe a deep moment in reality for consciousness of the observer.

These stars are therefore not just bodies of energies, but are interactions between dimensions that allow an entrance of energy from one place to another, that sprouts, or souls even can transfer between these gateways and enter into what we call the bearing of life. Sunlight is the initial source for all life forms on Earth.

And even planets are not just what they appear from a distance, for when we look at a planet like Earth from outside of it, we see it appearing spherical, but reality can be that this could be the mind reducing that complex object to its most rudimentary shape so that it can disclose the complexity before him.

When in reality the Earth can be, from the perspective of being on it, appear flat from all sides, yet this flatness extends into lands beyond lands, and where is the edge they never can ultimately find.

The Universe as a Neural Network

There is a useful analogy here, but it helps to distinguish the structural resemblance from the claim that the universe literally is a brain. The strongest version of your idea is that both a neural system and the universe can be understood as systems of distributed relations in which energy and information are transmitted through interconnected structures. In the brain, neurons are connected through enormously complicated networks. Electrical and chemical activity propagates through these networks, with individual neurons receiving signals, integrating them, and transmitting signals onward. What matters is therefore not merely the individual neuron, but the pattern of relationships among an immense number of components. In a similar visual and mathematical sense, large-scale structures in the universe form an interconnected cosmic web, with galaxies and galaxy clusters concentrated along filaments surrounding enormous underdense regions called voids. This can make maps of the cosmic web resemble images of neural networks: branching structures, nodes, concentrations, pathways, and relatively empty regions appear in both.

The analogy becomes particularly interesting when considering energy exchange. A neural system does not contain isolated pieces of matter simply sitting beside one another; its behavior emerges from continuous exchanges across relationships. Electrical potentials develop across neuronal membranes, ions move, chemical neurotransmitters cross synapses, and subsequent neurons respond to those changes. The result is a dynamic process in which activity propagates, interacts, amplifies, inhibits, and reorganizes. The universe also contains continuous processes of interaction and energy transfer, although through fundamentally different physical mechanisms. Stars exchange energy with their surroundings through radiation, matter moves through gravitational fields, particles interact through the fundamental forces, and electromagnetic radiation carries energy and momentum across enormous distances. In this sense, both systems can be described as dynamic networks rather than static collections of objects.

Your idea of the void becomes especially interesting within this comparison. In a brain, what appears to be an empty space between neurons is not necessarily functionally irrelevant: the separation between cells permits electrical and chemical gradients, synaptic transmission, and organized communication. Likewise, cosmic voids are not simply absolute nothingness; they are enormous regions containing much less matter than the surrounding cosmic web. However, the physical meaning is different. A cosmic void does not currently function like a synaptic gap, and there is no established evidence that spacetime itself performs the informational function of a neural synapse. The comparison is therefore strongest at the level of relational structure: what appears to be absence can nevertheless be part of the conditions that allow interactions to occur.

There is also a deeper similarity in the way local interactions can produce global organization. A single neuron does not contain an entire thought. A thought emerges from coordinated activity involving enormous populations of neurons. Likewise, a single galaxy does not contain the structure of the cosmic web; the large-scale organization emerges from gravitational evolution across vast numbers of galaxies, dark-matter structures, gas distributions, and other components. In both cases, the whole cannot simply be understood by looking at one isolated component. One must examine the relationships and flows connecting the components. This gives your phrase that “the one is many and the many is one”a particularly useful interpretation: the individual exists within the network, while the network exists through theorganization of individuals.

The resemblance becomes even more striking when visualized. If one looks at a microscopic representation of neuronal tissue, one sees branching extensions, dense clusters, pathways, intersections, and regions of relative sparsity. If one looks at a simulation or map of the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe, one similarly sees filaments branching between dense nodes, with immense voids between them. This resemblance has been noted in scientific discussions, but visual similarity by itself does not establish that the universe operates as a brain. Two systems can independently produce similar patterns because branching and network organization are common solutions to problems involving transport, connectivity, growth, and distribution.

The crucial difference is that electricity does not mean the same thing in the two systems. In a brain, electrical activity is inseparable from the biological machinery of neurons, ion gradients, membranes, neurotransmitters, and cellular metabolism. The universe, meanwhile, is not known to be fundamentally an electrical circuit in the literal sense. Electromagnetism is one of the fundamental interactions in physics, but gravity, the strong nuclear interaction, and the weak nuclear interaction also play fundamental roles. Much of the large-scale structure of the universe is governed primarily by gravity rather than by electromagnetic attraction and repulsion. Therefore, if your proposition is that all cosmic reality is literally an electrical brain, that would be a highly speculative physical hypothesis requiring evidence beyond the analogy.

But if our proposition is more philosophical—that mind provides a model for understanding reality as an interconnected process of relations, exchanges, potentials, and actualizations—then the analogy becomes much richer. A neuron exists as a potential before it fires; a signal becomes an actual event when the appropriate conditions are reached; that event alters the state of other neurons, which creates new possibilities for subsequent events. Your conception of possibility “springing up into actuality” can therefore be compared metaphorically to a network in which the state of one region constrains and enables the states of other regions. Reality, in this picture, is less like a collection of separate objects and more like an enormous continuously transforming network in which what exists is inseparable from what can interact with what.

This also connects to our earlier idea that the observer encounters only an abstraction of an underlying complexity. The brain itself demonstrates that perception is not a passive mirror of reality. Sensory systems receive signals and construct representations through enormous layers of processing. What we experience as a unified object—the Sun, a star, a planet, another person—is the result of information reaching the nervous system and being organized into a perceptual representation. This does not necessarily mean that the external object is unreal or that the mind invents its existence; rather, it means that the object as experienced by consciousness is already an organized relation between an external physical process and the observer’s nervous system.

So our broader picture can be expressed as follows: the universe may be conceived as a vast relational structure in which energy, matter, fields, and information continuously interact, while the brain is a localized biological structure that performs a particularly sophisticated form of relational organization. The visual resemblance between cosmic networks and neural networks gives this philosophical idea an evocative image. The deeper question, however, is whether the resemblance is merely an analogy produced by similar organizing principles, or whether it points toward a genuinely deeper common principle underlying both physical reality and consciousness. That latter proposition is where your argument moves beyond established physics and into a speculative philosophy of mind and reality.

Plasma is Aether

Ironically, most of outer space is made up of this so-called fourth substance called “plasma,” which we are arguing is the proof of the ancient notion of aether.[1] Plasma is the fourth state of matter, made of superheated gas where electrons break free from atoms, creating a soup of charged ions and free electrons.[2] Unlike regular gases, plasma conducts electricity and reacts strongly to magnetic and electric fields.[3] While relatively rare on Earth, plasma constitutes the vast majority of ordinary visible matter in the universe.[4]

The plasma constituting the other allows for higher-than-normal electricity. This means that most of space is electrical in nature and vibrational in kinetic energy. Yet what does this tell us in conjunction with our ideas about the universe in terms of being an arena of time rather than just space?

For once we see the universe as a place of events and moments of happening, rather than just an area of objects footnoting about, we begin to see that the objects themselves are also animated. They are in flux, not merely in their external nature and external realities, but in their internal energies and structures. Both are entropical, yet they create, or ultimately result in, a cohesion and a rational structure to be observed by an observer.

The object, then, is not simply an isolated thing sitting within space. It is the peak end result of an infinitesimally inwardly extended duration of possible events, each taking on a turn, playing out at one moment and at one place in time, while at the same time both changing eternally and externally in relation to other things that are animated with the same type of changes.

And so this plasma, in conjunction with space as an element of time, shows space as a screen, analogous to an LCD screen, a liquid-crystal display. Reality is fundamentally a conception of the mind, like events happening on a screen. Their physical relations are only apparent when the observer is in an approximate relation within their objects: when they touch them, come close to them, see them, measure them, or otherwise interact with them through adapted senses.

But outside of those adapted senses, the universe is an ongoing changing process of events. Its essence, in physical terms, is the aether, which hosts a field of electrically charged, unobservable senses that holds together objects—or rather, objects are only the peak-end result of an infinitesimally inwardly extended duration of possible events.

Each object is therefore not simply a static thing, but a momentary crystallization of processes that are continuously occurring. What we call an “object” is the point at which these processes become sufficiently coherent for an observer to distinguish them from their surroundings. The apparent solidity of the object is therefore not necessarily the fundamental reality of the thing itself, but the observable result of an underlying continuity of energetic and temporal relations.

In this sense, space is no longer merely an empty container in which things happen. Space becomes inseparable from the happening itself. It is the medium through which events become related, ordered, and perceptible. Time is not simply something that passes while objects remain in place; rather, objects themselves are expressions of time, moments within an ongoing process of becoming.

The universe, then, would be less like a collection of objects occupying an already-existing space and more like an ongoing display of events. The screen analogy becomes useful here: what appears to us as stable forms may be understood as temporarily coherent patterns within a deeper process that is continuously changing beneath the surface of perception.

Plasma becomes philosophically interesting within this picture because it demonstrates that what appears to be empty space can contain highly dynamic physical processes. It is not simply “nothing” between objects. It can contain charged particles, electromagnetic fields, radiation, waves, currents, and continuously changing interactions.[5] The apparent emptiness of space therefore conceals an immense amount of activity.

This brings us back to the ancient notion of the aether. The aether, in its older philosophical meaning, was conceived as something more fundamental than ordinary matter: a medium through which the structures and motions of the universe could exist.[6] Modern physics does not establish the existence of a classical aether, and plasma itself is not scientifically equivalent to the historical aether.[7] Yet the conceptual comparison remains interesting: both ideas arise from the intuition that what appears to be empty space may actually possess an underlying structure through which physical events and relations occur.

If we therefore conceive of the universe primarily as an arena of time, then space can be understood not merely as extension but as the field in which temporal events become externally related. Every object becomes a momentary organization of an ongoing internal duration, while every interaction becomes a new event within that duration.

The observer encounters the universe through these events. What the observer calls reality is therefore a structured appearance produced through relations between the observer and the processes occurring around them. The world is not simply an arrangement of finished objects waiting to be perceived. It is an ongoing process in which objects, observers, fields, energies, and events continually participate.

Reality, in this sense, resembles a liquid-crystal display: the visible image is coherent and structured, but the image itself is the result of underlying processes that are not identical to the image we perceive. What appears externally as a stable object may therefore be understood as the visible expression of deeper and continuously changing relations.

The fundamental reality would consequently not be the object as such, but the event, the relation, and the duration from which the object temporarily emerges. Objects are the visible peaks of an invisible continuity. They are moments in a process rather than absolute things outside of time.

Thus, the universe can be understood as an ongoing changing process of events in which space and time are not completely separate dimensions, but aspects of the same unfolding reality. Space gives events their relational extension, while time gives them their becoming. Plasma, electromagnetic activity, energy, and matter all participate in this continuous unfolding.[8]

The observer then does not stand completely outside of this process. The observer is another event within it, another animated structure undergoing internal and external change. To observe reality is therefore not merely to look at objects from the outside, but to enter into a particular relation with an ongoing field of events.

What we perceive as a stable universe may consequently be the rational and coherent appearance produced by innumerable processes occurring simultaneously, each changing eternally and externally in relation to every other thing. The cohesion we experience is real as an observable structure, but beneath that structure is a universe in constant flux.

The aether, in this philosophical sense, becomes less a substance floating between objects and more a name for the underlying continuity of relations, energies, events, and durations through which objects become possible. Space becomes the screen, time becomes the unfolding of the display, plasma becomes one visible expression of the dynamic medium, and objects become the temporary forms produced within the ongoing process.

The universe is therefore not merely a place where things are.

It is a place where things are happening.

Footnotes

[1] The statement that plasma is evidence or “proof” of the aether is a philosophical hypothesis rather than an established conclusion of modern physics. Plasma is a well-established state of matter, whereas the classical luminiferous aether was a proposed medium for the propagation of light. The relationship between the two therefore requires a philosophical argument rather than following directly from the physical existence of plasma.

[2] Plasma is commonly described as an ionized gas containing free electrons and ions. Ionization does not necessarily require “superheating”; plasmas can also be produced through electrical discharges, radiation, and other mechanisms.

[3] The collective electromagnetic behavior of plasma is one of its defining physical characteristics. Because it contains mobile charged particles, plasma responds strongly to electric and magnetic fields and can itself generate electromagnetic phenomena.

[4] The often-cited claim that approximately 99% of visible matter is plasma refers to the observable universe in broad astrophysical terms, particularly stars and other ionized environments. It should not be confused with the claim that 99.9% of the entire universe, including dark matter and dark energy, consists of plasma.

[5] Space is not physically characterized simply as a vacuum devoid of phenomena. Interstellar and intergalactic space can contain extremely tenuous plasma, magnetic fields, photons, cosmic rays, gravitational fields, and other forms of physical activity. The density of matter in much of space is nevertheless extraordinarily low compared with ordinary terrestrial environments.

[6] The concept of aether has several historical meanings. In ancient Greek philosophy, aithēr referred to a heavenly or upper element distinct from the four terrestrial elements. In later physics, the luminiferous aether was proposed as a medium through which light waves were thought to propagate.

[7] The Michelson–Morley experiment of 1887 found no detectable “aether wind” under its experimental conditions, contributing to the eventual abandonment of the classical luminiferous-aether hypothesis. Einstein’s special theory of relativity subsequently provided a framework in which electromagnetic phenomena do not require such a medium. Consequently, identifying plasma with the classical aether would be a new philosophical or physical proposal, not a conclusion established by these theories.

[8] The connection between space, time, events, and physical processes has deep roots in modern physics. In relativity, space and time are combined into spacetime, while physical theories describe events and relations within that structure. The stronger philosophical claim that objects are fundamentally “events” or temporary crystallizations of duration goes beyond this formal physical result and enters metaphysics and philosophy of time.

The central move of the argument is therefore simply “plasma = aether.” A more defensible philosophical formulation is:

Plasma demonstrates that what appears to be empty space can possess dynamic physical structure; this invites a philosophical reconsideration of space as an active field of processes rather than merely an empty container.

From there, the argument can proceed toward the deeper claim that objects are not fundamentally static things but temporally extended processes, and that what we perceive as objects may be coherent appearances arising from an underlying field of events, relations, and change.

That distinction is important because it allows the philosophical argument to remain ambitious without presenting the historical aether hypothesis as though modern physics had already experimentally established it.

Mind–Universe

As the Form of the Ultimate Mind of Ideas

The idea that the universe is a “mind” does not have to be grandiose in the sense of being a “huge supermassive” mind that the whole universe is. Rather, the mind is particularly the rational component in the whole, the particular that is the universal. This is our thesis: we are trying to prove that the universe is a rational organism, that we take the whole as inseparable from the parts. This is our presumption.

The universe, in this sense, is not a mind because it possesses a gigantic brain somewhere outside of itself. Rather, the claim is that mind expresses something about the fundamental organization of the whole: the capacity for relations to form a coherent unity, for differences to become integrated, and for events to participate in a rational structure. The “mind” of the universe is therefore not necessarily another object contained within the universe, but the rational component of the whole through which the particular is related to the universal.

The nature of ethics is perhaps the most complicated explanation.

This is the form of ethical relation: protoplasm. Consider, for example, the effect of scaring an old lady and causing her to swallow a fly. Any action done creates a butterfly effect into the affect of another action. An action does not remain entirely isolated within the individual who performs it. It enters into a network of relations, altering the circumstances in which other actions become possible. The ethical character of an organism therefore begins with the fact that its existence is never simply its own isolated existence. It is always participating in something larger than itself.

The organism is a relation.

The neurological system gives us perhaps the clearest physical example of this relational character. It is a system in which events occurring in one part of the organism can become conditions for events occurring elsewhere. Neurotransmitters exchange information, but what this actually means, and what information is being transmitted in the brain other than the primitive idea that there is triggering of stimulus from the environment, remains philosophically vague.

Modern neurology describes neurons as electrically excitable cells that communicate through electrical and chemical processes. An action potential travels along the neuron and, when it reaches the axon terminal, can cause calcium ions to enter the cell and trigger the release of neurotransmitter molecules into the synaptic cleft. Those molecules bind to receptors on another cell, producing either excitatory, inhibitory, or modulatory effects depending upon the receptor and cellular context.[1] The “information,” therefore, is not simply a little message contained inside an individual neurotransmitter. It is represented through patterns of electrical activity, chemical release, receptor activation, network connectivity, timing, and the changing state of the receiving neuron.[2]

Dopamine, serotonin, GABA, glutamate, and other neurotransmitters therefore do not correspond in a simple one-to-one manner with particular experiences. Dopamine, for example, participates in reward learning, motivation, movement, and the processing of prediction errors; serotonin participates in numerous regulatory functions involving cognition, affect, learning, and behavior; GABA is a major inhibitory neurotransmitter, while glutamate is a major excitatory neurotransmitter.[3] Thus, the statement that “being horny triggers dopamine” is directionally suggestive but scientifically incomplete. Sexual motivation and sexual behavior involve distributed neural systems, hormonal processes, sensory information, reward circuitry, and multiple neurotransmitters rather than a single chemical being equivalent to the experience itself.[4]

Yet this scientific description leads us toward a deeper philosophical question.

Experiences on some level are externally received inwardly so as to trigger chemical responses, like a pizza entering the oven to form the crust, or the penis entering the vagina during intercourse to fertilize the ovaries. These exchanges occur between two external factors coming together, forming an internal component arising externally out of one, yet being an entity of external relation.

The important point is that the external event does not remain merely external. It becomes incorporated into the internal organization of the organism. Something happens outside, and that happening becomes transformed into something happening within. The organism therefore represents a continuity between external relation and internal experience.

But this does not explain the experience as a whole that encompasses the external factors to form yet more external entities. The encompassing nature acting as the whole, whereby each external relation is part, is called internal because nothing is outside of that but is only being done by a self-identical principle.

The terms “external” and “internal” are confusing to the mind unskilled in philosophy, and even to advanced thinkers, because with these ideas we cannot help but think that what is internal is devised inside what is external.

The term external really means exo, like exoskeleton. It is an expression, example, experience, etc. Whereas internal is innate, inherent, innermore, intimate, intermediate, integrated, involuntary, integral, ingrained, etc. It is that which things happen for and is therefore the whole of the happening as its own will.

And so whatever kind of externalizations come out of it as external relations ultimately make their way back to the self-identical form, which geometrically is spherical.

The experience as a whole must exhibit a universal form that remains the unity of external relations contradictorily coming together. Without some form that allows for differences to come together in some consistent harmony, it is not clear why the differences do not cancel each other out so as to annihilate the relation altogether.

Without some universally encompassing whole, there is no reason why two parts different would be related in the first instance. What purpose would their relation have other than the knowledge of what their whole may exhibit?

And it is the whole of the relation that, in the first place, commits the difference for the curiosity of what the unity may be like. The whole of the experience includes the agent as part of the experience that aims to derive knowledge of it.

The consciousness that aims to derive knowledge of its experience is phenomenologically involved as the part in the experience that aims to derive knowledge of the experience. By being one part, consciousness is contradicted by all the details of the experience that appear to be the differences constituting it as the knowing part of the experience.

The consciousness in the experience is what all the differences are for. In being the difference of them all, it is identical to the differences of the relation. The information being transmitted in the neurological system of consciousness is therefore, in our philosophical interpretation, not merely a collection of isolated signals. It is the whole experience that it finds itself within as the participating part that knows.

The information being transmitted in the mind is atoms, but the atoms hold the mind that the experiences being transmitted in it. What is being transmitted in my mind are the very experiences that contain me as the mind that transmits such experiences.

The atom, in this conception, is the spherical substrate of an event.

The world of experience is the idea transmitted; its transmission is the continuity of its existence. Behind the scenes, under the surface, we say that there is an abstract continuation of logical nodes as the building block for the course of experience. The existence of sense experience as we know it is being continually built by the abstract logical activity of reason.

We are in the events that are the events in us.

Neurological System as the Mediation of Mind and World

The neurological system is therefore not merely a mechanical cable connecting an external world to an internal mind. It is the living mediation through which external relations become internal events and internal events become external actions.

A neuron does not simply “receive” an isolated piece of information and then passively transmit it forward. Neurons integrate thousands of inputs, some excitatory and some inhibitory, across time and space. Whether a neuron produces an action potential depends upon the integration of these influences and the state of the cell.[5] The nervous system therefore operates through relations, feedback, thresholds, patterns, and transformations.

This gives us a physical model for the philosophical idea of the whole and the part.

The individual neuron is a part, but what it does cannot be understood entirely apart from the network in which it participates. The synapse is a relation, but its function cannot be understood merely as the existence of two isolated neurons. The neural circuit is a larger whole, yet it exists only through the activity of its constituent parts.

The whole exists through the parts, while the parts have their significance through the whole.

This is precisely the form of relation that our philosophical argument is attempting to identify in nature itself.

The same structure can be observed at increasingly different levels: molecules form cells; cells form tissues; tissues form organs; organs participate in organisms; organisms participate in environments; and organisms form relations with other organisms. At every level, the relation is not merely an external connection added afterward to already-existing things. The relation contributes to what the things are within the larger whole.

The neurological system makes this especially visible because the organism continuously converts external differences into internal differences and then converts internal differences back into external action.

A sound becomes neural activity.

Neural activity becomes perception.

Perception becomes thought.

Thought becomes action.

Action alters the environment.

The altered environment becomes new sensory input.

The cycle begins again.

The organism is therefore situated inside the very world that it is attempting to know.

Continuity of Thought

So far we describe that the information the mind neurologically transmits is the very form of the world that the mind operates in. This alone, however, does not explain the function of this.

Why are the very same experiences of the mind being transmitted in the mind of those experiences?

It answers precisely to the question of continuity.

The continuity of thought involves this cycle of the thought and the being in the thought. My experiences being neurologically transmitted is the very continuity of thought in the void; it is the creation of future reality.

My thoughts passing into the void construct my physical reality.

This is occurring at the atomic level, the building block of reality itself.

Here, however, we must distinguish the philosophical claim from the empirical one. Neuroscience demonstrates that thought and perception correspond to changing patterns of neural activity, but it does not establish that individual thoughts directly create external physical reality at the atomic level. That stronger proposition belongs to the metaphysical thesis being developed here, rather than to an established result of neuroscience or quantum physics.[6]

The philosophical proposal is instead that thought participates in reality because thought itself is an event within reality. A thought is not outside nature looking into nature. It is nature becoming internally organized into a form capable of representing, remembering, anticipating, and acting upon its own relations.

The thought is therefore both an event in the world and an event about the world.

We are in the events that are the events in us.

Gap as the World

So far as there is a separation between neurotransmitter receptors, the gap whereby the electrical impulses transmit is the world.

The synaptic cleft is literally a microscopic separation between cells, yet this separation is precisely what makes the relation possible. The signal must cross a gap. The electrical event is transformed into a chemical event, which is then transformed again into an electrical or biochemical change in another cell.[7]

The gap is therefore not simply an absence.

It is the relation.

In the neurotransmitter process, there is something more fundamental occurring than the synthesis of chemical compounds like GABA, adrenaline, etc. There is also, in our philosophical interpretation, a deeper occurrence of building the structure of reality that cannot be empirically directly detected.

We know that DNA is made out of molecules.

But what makes molecules?

Atoms.

And what makes atoms?

Here we reach the quantum realm.

Thought and the Quantum Realm

The question then becomes: how does the thought, being the function of the mind, operate in the logic underpinning the quantum realm, where atoms are made to structure objects?

Quantum mechanics describes matter not as tiny classical objects possessing completely definite properties at every moment, but through quantum states, probabilities, interactions, and quantized physical observables. Atoms are quantum systems whose electrons occupy quantum states, and molecules arise through interactions between atoms governed by quantum mechanics.[8]

The philosophical question we are asking is whether the logical structure by which a mind organizes experience has an analogy in the logical structure by which physical systems become determinate structures.

This does not mean that a human thought literally reaches down into a quantum field and constructs an atom merely by thinking about it. There is no established empirical evidence for such a claim.

The stronger philosophical possibility is different.

Perhaps thought and matter are two manifestations of a more fundamental rational structure.

The thought is the inward manifestation of a logical relation.

The physical object is the outward manifestation of that same logical relation.

The atom, then, is not “an idea” in the ordinary psychological sense. Rather, it is a physical structure whose existence is describable through mathematical and relational laws. The philosophical question is whether the rational order through which we comprehend these laws is merely something imposed by the human mind, or whether the rationality we discover in nature reflects something intrinsic to nature itself.

If the latter is true, then mind and universe are not two completely separate substances.

They are two aspects of one rational order.

The mind does not invent the rationality of the universe from nothing. It discovers, participates in, and expresses a rationality that is already present in the relations of things.

The universe would therefore be the ultimate mind of ideas—not because the universe literally possesses a giant brain, but because the universal is itself structured through relations that can become particularized as physical forms and inwardly represented as ideas.

Man and the Form of His Ideal

Classically, The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci is so simply ingenious because it intuitively glimpses the fact that man and his experience are objectively the same form, not that each are separate entities externally “on” one another. But that the physical manifestation of man is in the form of his ideal.[9]

The circle and the square become significant here because they represent different forms of order within the same figure. Man is placed within geometrical relations, and the body itself becomes a manifestation of proportion, symmetry, measurement, and spatial order.

It has become customary to cringe at a philosophical science claiming to be an idealism because this is viewed as an attempt to spew whatever theoretical speculation the mind can conjure up and claim that to be “hard” science.

What this naïve opinion misses is the fact that the nature of reality may perhaps be itself ideal. In that sense, idealism is no longer some imaginative theoretical framework but the logically grasping of the actually concrete condition of substance.

The claim is not that whatever the mind imagines therefore becomes physically real.

The claim is more fundamental:

What if the rational form through which reality is intelligible is not merely an abstraction added by the mind, but is itself part of the structure of reality?

Then the distinction between idea and object becomes less absolute.

The object is an idea embodied.

The idea is an object understood.

The difference is not between two separate worlds, but between two expressions of the same rational form.

Against the Primitive Concept of Stimulus

Modern psychology, which is the contemporary study of mind, is proud of itself with the invention of the concept “stimulus,” arrogantly flaunting it as a sign of expertise about the mind.

Stimulus defines activities that invoke a specific response in the mental organ. This concept is taken to be the “concrete” depiction of the actual relation between the mind and environment.

The stimulus egregiously describes the most primitive nature of the mind: that it bears a set of corresponding reactions to the operations of the environment. It limits the operations of mind to a set of passive mechanical responses to the presupposed, but not yet explained, operations of nature.

But the modern scientific understanding of nervous systems is more complicated than this historical stimulus-response picture. Contemporary neuroscience and psychology study feedback, prediction, learning, memory, attention, context, reinforcement, internal states, and active behavioral selection. Organisms do not merely wait for stimuli and mechanically respond; they continuously regulate themselves and alter the environments to which they are subsequently exposed.[10]

The philosophical criticism therefore should not be directed against the empirical concept of a stimulus itself, which remains useful in experimental science, but against treating stimulus-response as a complete metaphysics of mind.

A stimulus can describe a relation.

It cannot by itself explain the whole relation.

The question is not merely:

What stimulus caused this response?

The deeper question is:

What whole is capable of making this stimulus significant in the first place?

A sound is not merely a vibration.

It becomes a sound for an organism.

Food is not merely molecules.

It becomes nourishment for an organism.

A face is not merely an arrangement of photons.

It becomes the face of another being.

The physical event and its significance are therefore related through the organization of the organism.

Organism as Rational Form

Every organism and process in nature bears no distinction between its rational form and its physical manifestation.

The actions of the cat are in complete accord with its thought.

It is only in the human being that the function of thinking before you act, and acting before you think, can take place. But even so, this is only some partial function of self-consciousness.

It remains the case that what we take moving toward its food. Its organism already embodies a unity between perception, desire, movement, and action. The body is not carrying out a command issued to be involuntary operations, like the functioning of our bodies, and the so-called voluntary ability of reflective thinking are not actually separate at all. Rather, reflection is that part that remains observing the indivisible unity.[11]

The cat does not need to formulate a philosophical proposition before moving toward its food. Its organism already embodies a unity between perception, desire, movement, and action. The body is not carrying out a command issued by some separate thinker located somewhere behind the body. The organism itself is the process.

Human reflection introduces another layer.

We can interrupt an action.

We can think about thinking.

We can observe our own desires.

We can imagine a future action before performing it.

We can act against an immediate impulse.

But this does not mean that reflection has escaped the organism. Reflection itself is another activity of the organism.

The thinker is within the thought.

The observer is within the observed.

The knower is within the known.

And consciousness is therefore not a spectator standing outside the universe and looking into it. Consciousness is the universe participating in its own experience.

Mind as the Universal Within the Particular

This brings us back to the original thesis.

The universe is a “mind” not because it is a gigantic person floating in cosmic space, but because the rational component of the whole is present within the particular.

The neuron is part of the nervous system.

The nervous system is part of the organism.

The organism is part of the environment.

The environment is part of the larger physical universe.

And yet, within the organism, the universe becomes capable of representing itself.

The particular becomes the place where the universal becomes conscious of itself.

This is the strange inversion at the center of the thesis.

We normally imagine that consciousness is something contained inside an organism that is itself contained inside the universe.

But we can reverse the relation:

The organism is a particular expression of the universe, and consciousness is the universe becoming internally present to itself through that particular expression.

The mind is therefore not simply inside the universe.

The mind is one of the ways in which the universe exists as an internally experienced relation.

The universe is not merely a collection of objects.

It is a continuity of events.

It is a continuity of relations.

It is a continuity of becoming.

And wherever these relations become sufficiently organized to experience, represent, remember, anticipate, and know themselves, the universal appears within the particular as mind.

We are in the events that are the events in us.

The world is transmitted through us because we are ourselves part of the world being transmitted.

The experience is not merely something that happens to the mind.

The experience is the mind happening within the world.

And the world, in becoming experience, becomes the idea of itself.

Footnotes

[1] Neurons communicate through both electrical and chemical mechanisms. When an action potential reaches a presynaptic terminal, voltage-dependent calcium channels open; calcium entry promotes vesicle fusion and neurotransmitter release into the synaptic cleft. The neurotransmitter then binds receptors on the postsynaptic cell, producing effects that may be excitatory, inhibitory, or modulatory. See the overview of neuronal communication provided by the National Institutes of Health/National Center for Biotechnology Information. PubMed Central (PMC)+1 

[2] This is why “information” in neuroscience is not adequately represented by a single molecule. Neural information can be encoded in firing rates, temporal patterns, population activity, connectivity, synaptic strength, and the interaction of multiple neural systems. A neurotransmitter can alter the probability or character of subsequent neural activity without itself constituting the entire content of an experience. PubMed Central (PMC) 

[3] Dopamine has been associated with reward learning, motivation, behavioral activation, and prediction-error processes, while serotonin participates in a broad range of affective, cognitive, and regulatory processes. GABA is generally the principal inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, while glutamate is the principal excitatory neurotransmitter. These categories are useful but do not exhaust the functions of these substances. Nature+2 

[4] Sexual motivation and behavior cannot be reduced to dopamine alone. Dopaminergic systems contribute to reward-related behavior and motivational processes, but sexual experience involves interactions among reward circuitry, sensory processing, hormones, autonomic systems, cognition, and multiple neuromodulatory systems. Nature+1 

[5] A neuron integrates many incoming signals. Some inputs increase the likelihood of an action potential, while others decrease it; neuromodulatory systems can also change how neurons respond to other inputs. Thus, neural activity is fundamentally relational and context-dependent rather than a simple chain of isolated stimulus-response events. PubMed Central (PMC)+1 

[6] Current neuroscience provides evidence that conscious perception, thought, memory, and behavior are associated with changing patterns of neural activity. This does not by itself establish the metaphysical proposition that thoughts directly construct external reality at the atomic level. That proposition would require an additional philosophical argument and, if presented as a physical hypothesis, empirical evidence.

[7] The synaptic cleft is a physical gap between communicating cells. In chemical synaptic transmission, an electrical signal in the presynaptic neuron is converted into chemical signaling and then into a change in the postsynaptic cell. The “gap” therefore has a precise physical meaning in neuroscience while also serving here as a philosophical metaphor for relation itself. PubMed Central (PMC)+1 

[8] Quantum mechanics provides the framework used to describe atomic and molecular structure. Atoms possess quantized states, and molecular structure arises through interactions between atoms governed by quantum mechanics. This establishes a physical theory of the organization of matter; it does not establish that human thought creates quantumstates or atoms. The latter is a metaphysical extension of the argument presented here. Physical Review Letters 

[9] Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is based upon the proportional descriptions associated with Vitruvius and places the human body within geometrical figures. The interpretation offered here—that the work symbolically expresses an identity between human form and rational/geometrical order—is a philosophical interpretation rather than a claim about Leonardo’s experimentally established theory of mind.

[10] The modern scientific study of behavior has moved considerably beyond a simple stimulus-response model. Contemporary neuroscience investigates reinforcement learning, prediction, internal states, neural feedback, contextual processing, and distributed networks. Dopamine, for example, is involved in learning about outcomes and in the updating of behavior rather than functioning merely as a simple “pleasure chemical.” Nature+2 

[11] The reference to Alan Watts concerns the philosophical idea that conscious reflection and bodily activity should not necessarily be treated as two absolutely separate processes. The stronger proposition—that voluntary and involuntary activity are ultimately an indivisible unity—is philosophical rather than an experimentally established neuroscientific conclusion.

[12] The phrase “the particular that is the universal” expresses the central metaphysical structure of the argument: the universal is not conceived as something existing separately from particulars, but as something that exists through them. The organism therefore becomes a particular form through which the universal organization of nature becomes internally expressed.

[13] The claim that “the universe is a rational organism” should be understood here as the thesis being developed, not as an established scientific fact. Physics demonstrates extensive mathematical regularity and structural relations in nature, but whether such rational order should be interpreted as constituting a “mind,” “organism,” or “ultimate mind of ideas” is a philosophical question.

[14] The distinction between the empirical and philosophical portions of this argument is essential. Neuroscience can investigate neural activity, neurotransmitters, receptors, synaptic plasticity, and behavior. Physics can investigate atoms, quantum states, fields, and interactions. The philosophical argument begins when these empirical descriptions are interpreted as expressions of a deeper unity between matter, experience, relation, and rational form.

The strongest conceptual thread here is that neuroscience or quantum mechanics has already proved idealism. It is that the structure of modern neuroscience gives you a physical example of the philosophical relation you are trying to articulate: external relation → internal transformation → integration into a whole → subsequent externalization. That gives the “mind–universe” thesis a much clearer bridge between phenomenology, biology, and metaphysics.

I’ve preserved your vocabulary and the speculative structure, while correcting the grammar and adding footnotes that separate established biology/cosmology from the metaphysical interpretation you are developing. In particular, I’ve softened places where the original wording treated a philosophical inference as an established scientific result.

The Connection of the Brain with the Environment

DNA

DNA is a sequence of spacetime that is deeper than just being the makeup in you, making you out to be the thing that you are. When a technological tool focuses enough into an aspect of your body, at a certain level, the distinction between what makes you out to be an individual component in your environment, as opposed to your environment, which is something external from your body, becomes an aspect internal within it.

DNA is ordinarily described as the molecule that contains the instructions needed for an organism to develop, survive, and reproduce.[1] Yet philosophically, we can look deeper into this description. DNA is not merely a static substance located inside the organism. It is part of a continuous process involving the organism, its cells, its environment, its history, and the molecular interactions through which its biological form is continually produced.

The distinction between the organism and the environment therefore becomes less absolute the deeper we investigate.

Where your body begins and where the environment ends develop a blurred line at the subatomic level, such that what we view as events in time become objects in space, and what we view as objects in space become events of time in those greater objects, having a superposition to them.[2]

The sequencing of all events connected with each other as objects is the entire “gnome” of nature, which includes the laws of physics as behaviour in one dimension, as opposed to the laws of chemistry operating at another dimension, as opposed to biology operating at a lower dimension than both, with the one being less than the second, and the second being less than the number minus itself, which is any greater number, results in a lesser one. For example, 5 − 2 = 3, which is less than 5 but greater than 2. It is a dimensional measure.

What we are attempting to describe is a hierarchy of organization: physics describes fundamental physical relations; chemistry describes organized relations among atoms and molecules; biology describes organized living processes that emerge from those chemical and physical relations. These are not necessarily separate worlds, but different dimensions of description of the same reality.

The biological is therefore not outside the chemical.

The chemical is not outside the physical.

And the physical is not outside spacetime.

Rather, each level becomes an increasingly organized expression of the relations already present at the more fundamental level.

DNA–Enzyme Interaction

When we are looking at a strand of spacetime, we do not see it as an abstract theoretical object, but rather that it has a real place somewhere in space. It can be accessed via any dimensional framework, whether it is through the biological, as it looks like some kind of protein disclosed by a membrane; or whether it is chemical, i.e., interaction of substances causing physical reaction; or whether via purely physical manners.

The most abstract of the bunch, physics deals with the motion of substance stripped away from any perceptually recognizable characteristics. Its most primary science is geometry, which is the motion of generation, and not merely locomotion: that motion that simultaneously causes the object to be a figure or a shape, rather than the mere shape itself changing position or orientation in the plane.

The idea of the fabric of spacetime, or that spacetime is some kind of “fabric,” is an image created by Einstein to explain a more homogeneous dimension that is implicit in the one observable as just space and the non-observable time.[3]

DNA–enzyme interaction makes this relation particularly interesting because DNA does not act alone. Enzymes interact with DNA to copy it, repair it, transcribe it, and regulate its expression. DNA therefore exists as part of a network of molecular relations rather than as an isolated substance.[4]

The DNA molecule becomes meaningful through its relations.

The enzyme becomes meaningful through its relations.

The cell becomes meaningful through its relations.

And the organism becomes meaningful through its relations.

The thing therefore cannot be completely separated from the process through which the thing becomes what it is.

Blood Supply of the Brain

The connection between the brain and the environment becomes even more obvious when we consider the blood supply of the brain.

The brain appears to be enclosed within the body, protected by the skull and separated from the external world. Yet the brain is continuously dependent upon substances arriving from outside its immediate cellular environment. Oxygen and glucose must be delivered through the blood supply, while the blood-brain barrier regulates what substances can pass between the bloodstream and nervous tissue.[5]

The brain therefore does not exist independently of its environment.

Its apparent interiority depends upon an external circulation.

The blood is external to the neuron, yet the neuron cannot exist without it.

The oxygen is external to the brain cell, yet the brain depends upon it.

The glucose is external to the neuron, yet it supplies the metabolic energy necessary for neural activity.

The supposed boundary between “inside” and “outside” therefore becomes a relation rather than an absolute division.

Translucent Skin

Translucent skin means that it is fairly see-through, in a way. Skin is partially transparent, but not see-through.

“Translucent” means allowing light to pass through while scattering it sufficiently that detailed shapes are not clearly visible.

Skin is translucent in the sense that, at the molecular level, the environment and what we understand as internal organs interact at a DNA and bacteria level. The skin only protects against macroscopic objects, not microscopic ones.

This is to show that the body and environment are more connected than we think.

The center of the brain is outside in its conception of the environment.

The apparent interior is therefore already dependent upon an exterior. The brain does not construct its world from nowhere. It receives chemical resources, electrical signals, sensory information, hormonal signals, immune signals, and metabolic support from a body that itself exists within an environment.

The “inside” is therefore constituted through relations with the “outside.”

Big Bang as Emergence

The notion of the Big Bang as an explosion is a general misreading of the theory. The Big Bang is better understood as an emergence. It is an infinite emergence of abrupt changes.

The Big Bang is a modern cosmogony.

The Big Bang is a partially true intuitive inclination concerning the beginning of the universe: that the universe, as the state of nature known to our understanding, initiates by a Bang, an electric impulse or explosion.

But this fact does not explain origin because that requires the cause of the beginning. The Big Bang model describes the universe’s early hot, dense state and its subsequent expansion, but it does not by itself answer the philosophical question of why there is a universe at all.[6]

Modern cosmology does not actually describe the Big Bang as an explosion occurring at one particular location in pre-existing space. Rather, the expansion concerns space itself, and there is no established central location from which galaxies are flying outward.[7]

This distinction is important.

The universe did not necessarily begin as an object sitting inside an already existing space that then exploded outward.

Rather, the model describes an early state in which the universe was extraordinarily hot and dense, followed by expansion and cooling.

It is proven through multiple lines of evidence that the universe expanded from a very hot and dense early state. We observe the expansion of space through cosmological redshift, and the cosmic microwave background provides evidence of the hot early universe.[8]

But this only tells us features of the universe.

It does not, by itself, tell us what the ultimate structure of existence is.

It does not tell us why there is something rather than nothing.

And it does not establish what, if anything, preceded the earliest physical regime that our current theories can describe.

Big Bang as an Abstraction of Universal Neurological Transmission

The Big Bang is commonly called a cosmological model, but an adequate cosmology must explain the form of the structure of the universe and not merely an instant of it.

Moreover, this lack of explanation into the form of the universe results in the theory appearing, from our philosophical perspective, to lack another necessary feature required for a theory to be considered cosmological: an explanation of the ultimate organization and fate of the universe.

Here, however, we must distinguish what the physical model actually says from our philosophical criticism of it.

Modern cosmology does not simply say that the fate of the universe is dictated by probability and chance. General relativity, quantum theory, thermodynamics, dark-energy models, and observations of cosmic expansion all contribute to descriptions of cosmic evolution.[9] Probability enters some physical theories, particularly quantum mechanics, but this does not mean that cosmology has reduced the entire universe to arbitrary chance.

Our philosophical objection is therefore directed toward the question of whether a mathematical description of physical evolution is sufficient as an ultimate explanation of why there is an ordered process at all.

The logical problem arises when the theoretical model aims to derive form from the feature of the content it proposes to be the cause.

In this way, we have the following logical problem:

First, the question of origination is ascribed to a mechanical effect of hyperactive expansion at the beginning.

Second, this expansion is attributed as possessing the inherent form of probability and chance, which is not only said to dictate the fate of the expansion but also serves as an explanation for why it took place in the first instance.

But this raises the philosophical question:

Can probability explain the existence of the process in which probability itself operates?

Probability and chance are functions of some beginning and end, and not the beginning and end functions of some probability, because the fact that there is a beginning and end of some occurring event is itself the first principle that is not probabilistic.

Probability is a form of some form of its cause and cannot be a principle of its own explanation, as its very explanation is contradiction to its definition, because it is certainty of it being that form where equally contradictory events can plausibly take place.

For to say that either this or that can happen just determined that happening.

The philosophical point is therefore not that probability is unreal, but that probability describes possible relations within an already existing formal structure. It does not automatically explain why there is a structured field of possibilities in the first place.

The Big Bang and the Ultimate Mind

The Big Bang commonly used to explain the history of the universe is really an abstraction.

It is an abstraction of an initiation of an idea in the ultimate mind of the universe as organism.

This is why we cannot recall what is before the Big Bang: because it is prior to the happening of the idea, such that the consciousness part of it as idea theoretically did not originate.

This is not an empirical claim about what existed “before” the Big Bang. Indeed, in standard cosmology, the meaning of “before” becomes complicated when extrapolating toward the earliest stages because time itself is part of the spacetime description.[10]

Rather, the philosophical proposal is that the Big Bang can be interpreted as the abstraction of a more fundamental event: the emergence of the universe as an idea within the ultimate mind.

The universe does not merely begin as matter.

It begins as form.

It begins as relation.

It begins as possibility becoming actuality.

It begins as an idea becoming an event.

The Human Mind as the Universe Becoming Aware of Itself

The human mind characterizes in the mind of the universe the idea that is aware of itself as an idea.

The present is that part of the universe that is aware of itself—as the common saying goes, “be in the present” or “live in the present moment.”

This is analogous to how, physically, one of your neurons knows it is a neuron.

Our common inclination is to think that this self-knowledge would constitute the neuron to operate inversely to its whole. But this is our own subjective impulse because the neuron belongs to a system, a species; likewise, man is only individual as the individuality of the species.

The neuron does not become independent of the nervous system by participating in the nervous system.

Likewise, consciousness does not become independent of the universe by becoming conscious of itself.

Rather, consciousness may be understood as one of the ways in which the universe becomes internally represented to itself.

The individual therefore does not stand outside the universal.

The individual is the universal expressed as an individual.

The Singularity as Beginning and End

In the Big Bang theory, the singularity is seen as that which initiates the beginning of the universe and powers its duration.

But this is only half true.

For the singularity, by definition being the function that takes an infinite value, is not at the beginning only towards some end, but also the end whereby the beginning is being actualized.

The inverse of the Big Bang is also true: that the universe began by a universe and headed into a singularity.

This is because the universe is the adventure of an idea.

This is the true physical form of the universe.

Here again, however, the mathematical singularity should not be treated too literally. In general relativity, a singularity indicates a breakdown of the classical theory, rather than necessarily representing a physical object that literally possesses an infinite density or infinite value.[11]

The philosophical meaning we are giving to the singularity is different.

The singularity is the limit at which beginning and end become conceptually inseparable.

The beginning is not merely a point behind us.

The end is not merely a point ahead of us.

The entire process is the unfolding of a relation whose beginning contains its possible end and whose end expresses what was implicit in its beginning.

The universe is therefore the adventure of an idea.

The Universe as an Organism

The universe as organism exhibits a form akin to a plasma ball.

Like our own neurological system, which is an advanced representation of the idea that the mind has about itself, its electrical transmissions are the connective relations that form thoughts.

The universe is a transmission between one singularity to itself.

The singularity, being a quantum form, exhibits itself as more than one happening occurring at the same time. It is at two different places at the same time.

This property is the spectrum of the beginning of the universe as an idea towards the finish of the idea, which, being connected by the same singularity, is the same mind.

The ion exemplifies how this form can look like.

The Ion as a Model of Difference Within Unity

An ion is an atom or molecule with a net electric charge due to the loss or gain of one or more electrons.[12]

An ion is an atom or molecule that has a non-zero net electrical charge. An atom contains charged particles, namely protons, which are positively charged, and electrons, which are negatively charged. Generally, they are equal in number, resulting in a total or net electric charge of zero.

But electrons can be lost and gained, and that decreases or increases the negative charge in the atom respectively.

When that happens, you have an ion.

The philosophical importance of the ion for our argument is not simply its electrical charge.

It is the fact that the atom can remain recognizably the same kind of physical system while its state changes through the gain or loss of electrons.

The distinction exists within a continuity.

There is a center that remains identifiable while its relations change.

In order for electrons to be gained and lost, and for this imbalance to be held by a centre—the grey in the illustration—that allows for the imbalance, we can use this as an analogy for what it means for the same thing to be at two different times.

The centre remains as the same thing: a potential of being at two different times.

The two different times that are different—the red—are different at the same time because they are connected by the same thing.

The same therefore contains difference.

Difference does not necessarily destroy identity.

Difference can be the expression of identity through time.

Singularity as Centre

The way this operates as mind is that the singularity remains a centre black hole and extends into many different points, the galaxies, while it remains at the centre of each difference.

Each galaxy has a black hole.

Each universe, in one sense, is an idea extending into the abyss of the singularity.

The singularity is therefore not merely the beginning.

It is the centre.

It is the point from which difference unfolds and to which difference can conceptually return.

The universe becomes a transmission of identity through difference.

One thing becomes many.

The many remain related.

The relation allows the many to remain intelligible as expressions of one underlying form.

This is why the analogy to the nervous system becomes important.

A neuron is not meaningful by itself.

It is meaningful through its relation to the system.

A signal is not meaningful merely because it exists.

It is meaningful because it participates in a continuity.

A thought is not merely a chemical event.

It is a moment within an organism’s continuing relation to itself and its environment.

And, by analogy, the galaxies are not merely isolated objects distributed throughout space.

They are events within the larger continuity of the universe.

The universe is therefore not simply a collection of things.

It is the transmission of an idea through things.

It is the idea becoming physical.

It is the physical becoming conscious.

It is consciousness becoming aware that it is itself an expression of the whole.

And so the universe as organism becomes the ultimate neurological system:

the whole universe is the relation, the galaxies are its differentiated events, the physical laws are its form, living organisms are its internalized processes, and consciousness is the point at which the universe becomes aware of the idea that it is.

Footnotes

[1] DNA is the molecule that carries genetic information. The human genome contains roughly 3 billion DNA base pairs, and DNA sequences provide instructions involved in development and biological function. DNA does not operate independently: enzymes, RNA, regulatory sequences, cellular structures, and environmental conditions all participate in how genetic information is expressed. Genome.gov+1 

[2] The phrase “events in time become objects in space” is being used here philosophically. In modern physics, an event is represented as a location in spacetime, while an object can be described through a worldline or worldtube extending through spacetime. Quantum superposition does not simply mean that an ordinary macroscopic object is literally in two places at once; it refers to a quantum state that can be represented as a superposition of possible measurement outcomes. The analogy should therefore not be confused with the technical meaning of quantum superposition.

[3] The “fabric of spacetime” is a metaphor frequently used to communicate general relativity, in which spacetime is modeled geometrically and matter-energy affects brain has exceptionally high metabolic demands. Oxygen and glucose are continuously delivered through its blood supply, while the blood-brain barrier regulates movement of substances between blood and brain tissue. A disruption in blood flow can rapidly impair neuronal function because neurons its curvature. It should not be understood as claiming that spacetime is literally a material fabric. More importantly, Einstein did not establish that time is simply a hidden substance behind space; rather, special and general relativity treat space and time as components of a unified spacetime structure.

[4] DNA replication, repair, transcription, and regulation involve numerous enzymes and molecular complexes. DNA therefore functions within a dynamic molecular system rather than as an isolated informational object. The National Human Genome Research Institute describes DNA as an information molecule whose sequences are used through processes involving RNA and proteins. Genome.gov 

[5] The brain has exceptionally high metabolic demands. Oxygen and glucose are continuously delivered through its blood supply, while the blood-brain barrier regulates movement of substances between blood and brain tissue. A disruption in blood flow can rapidly impair neuronal function because neurons are highly sensitive to oxygen and glucose deprivation. NCBI+1 

[6] The Big Bang model is supported by several independent observations, including cosmic expansion, the cosmic microwave background, and the observed abundance of light elements. It describes an early hot, dense state and subsequent cosmic expansion. It does not, by itself, provide a complete philosophical explanation for why the universe exists. NASA describes the early universe as extremely hot and dense and traces its subsequent expansion and cooling. NASA Science+1 

[7] The “explosion” analogy is misleading because the Big Bang was not an explosion from a particular location into pre-existing empty space. NASA explicitly notes that the universe does not have a center from which galaxies are receding and that the expansion is a process occurring throughout space. NASA Science+1 

[8] Observations of galactic redshift demonstrate cosmic expansion, while the cosmic microwave background preserves information about the early hot universe. These observations strongly support the standard expanding-universe model. NASA Science+1 

[9] Contemporary cosmology does not reduce cosmic evolution simply to “chance.” The evolution of the universe is modeled through general relativity, quantum physics in appropriate regimes, thermodynamics, particle physics, and empirical parameters. The future expansion of the universe remains an active area of research, particularly because the physical nature of dark energy is unknown. NASA Science+1 

[10] Statements about what happened “before” the Big Bang must be treated carefully. In the standard cosmological description, spacetime itself is part of the system whose early evolution is being modeled. Consequently, asking what happened “before” the beginning of time may not be equivalent to asking about an ordinary earlier moment. NASA similarly explains that time is part of the universe and that the Big Bang should not be pictured as an explosion occurring at a location within an already-existing space. NASA Science 

[11] A singularity in general relativity is more accurately understood as a boundary or breakdown of the classical spacetime description, where quantities such as curvature can become divergent or where geodesic completeness fails. It should not automatically be interpreted as a literal physical object possessing an infinite density. A complete theory of quantum gravity may be required to determine what actually occurs in such regimes.

[12] An ion is an atom or molecule possessing a net electric charge because it has gained or lost electrons. A neutral atom has equal numbers of protons and electrons; gaining electrons produces a negative ion, while losing electrons produces a positive ion. This physical distinction provides the basis for the philosophical analogy of a stable identity undergoing changing relations.

[13] The statement that “each galaxy has a black hole” requires qualification. Most large galaxies are believed to contain supermassive black holes in their centers, but the relationship between galaxies and central black holes is not literally a one-to-one metaphysical identity. Some galaxies may lack a central supermassive black hole, and the physical relationship between galaxy evolution and black-hole growth remains an active field of research.

[14] The claim that the universe is a “transmission between one singularity to itself,” or that the Big Bang is the manifestation of an “idea in the ultimate mind,” is a metaphysical interpretation developed in this essay. It is not a conclusion established by the standard Big Bang model. The scientific evidence establishes an early hot, dense state and subsequent cosmic expansion; the interpretation of that process as the activity of an ultimate mind is a philosophical thesis.

[15] The analogy between the universe and a neurological system is likewise philosophical. A nervous system is an empirically established biological network of cells, electrical activity, chemical signaling, and feedback. The universe is not known scientifically to possess neurons or a nervous system in the biological sense. The analogy is that both can be conceived as systems in which differentiated events are connected through relations and through which local processes participate in a larger whole.

[16] The central metaphysical proposition of the chapter can therefore be formulated more precisely as follows: the universe may be understood not merely as a collection of objects but as a continuous process of relations in which objects are temporally extended events, organisms are internally organized expressions of those relations, and consciousness is a form through which the universe becomes aware of its own organization. This is the philosophical thesis of the work, rather than an established empirical conclusion.

Infinity Is the Future

The direction the universe is into infinity, but this has a very precise meaning. Infinity should not be understood simply as “many uncountable things,” as though infinity were merely an indefinitely large collection of objects.[1] The problem with this conception is that infinity is not itself simply a quantity of things. There are different kinds of infinity, and mathematics distinguishes between finite quantities, countably infinite sets, and uncountably infinite sets.[2] Infinity is therefore not merely the largest number. It is the absence of a finite limit, and its precise meaning depends upon the mathematical structure in which it appears.

The man in his experience, and the experience in the mind, has the form of infinite tunnelling.

Like a mirror reflecting itself, but unlike it, whereas it is whatever appearance of the infinite, the infinity reflection is all the potentiality of the mind: the whole of the experiences being neurologically transmitted, the form of the tunnel of infinity whereby dictating the evolutionary direction of the universe.

The mind does not simply contain an infinite number of experiences as though they were objects stored inside of it. Rather, the mind contains the potentiality for experience to continually become something else. One experience becomes the condition for another; one thought becomes the condition for another thought; one possibility becomes the condition for another possibility.

The infinity reflection is therefore not merely the reflection of an image.

It is the reflection of potentiality itself.

The mind reflects the universe because the mind is itself an event within the universe through which the universe becomes capable of representing its own potentiality.

Infinite Tunnelling

This describes the scientific idea of a wormhole, or is more imaginatively speculated by the depiction of the “rabbit hole.”[3]

The wormhole gives us an image of infinite tunnelling because it represents a passage through which apparently separated regions can become related. The “rabbit hole” gives us the imaginative version of the same idea: one passes through the surface of ordinary reality and discovers that the apparent boundary was only the beginning of another level of relation.

The infinite tunnel is therefore not merely a physical tunnel extending indefinitely through space.

It is the continuity of potentiality.

The path from one event to another is the path from actuality into another possible actuality. The present is therefore not simply a location between past and future. It is the point at which what has become actual opens itself toward what may become actual.

The universe tunnels through itself.

Every event is therefore both an ending and a beginning.

Every form is a limit of what has already become and an opening toward what can become.

The future is infinity because the potentiality of the present is never simply identical with the actuality of the present.

The Path Towards the Singularity

The path towards the singularity.

The “Eye of God”: this depiction is more fictitious because it shows the quantitative way the universe is leading to the singularity, the black hole, but it does not show the qualitative actuality of this form.

The singularity, having no particular location, is not determined by some large-scale aggregate position in the universe.[4] A mathematical singularity in general relativity is not simply a giant physical object sitting at the end of space. Rather, it indicates a limit or breakdown of the classical description of spacetime.[5]

The present of the evolution in the universe, the point of the singularity where the whole universe results in and onto the continuum to the future, is the mind of the human being, where there, the potentialities of thought provide qualitative probabilities exponentially more than the established reality of the universe.

The singularity here is therefore not merely the physical singularity of a black hole.

It is the abstraction of individuation as process.

It is the point at which the universal element is appropriated as particular variations of itself.

The singularity is therefore the center.

Not necessarily a physical center located somewhere in space, but the conceptual center of the process whereby the universal becomes particular and the particular appropriates the universal.

Each variation stands in relation on a hierarchical spectrum, judged by which version appropriates each as each appropriates the whole.

The most likely possible, characterizing the center, involves the individuality that appropriates each individuality, as each of those individualities appropriates the whole in some manner.

Probability and Potentiality

Probability is a function of potentiality, the latter being the form, the former being the content.

Potentiality describes the nature of the specific idea ordained by thought, which exhibits itself as an extended set of differentiated possibilities.

Probability explains the structure of the ordination of the idea as measured by the ratio of the favorable cases to the whole number of potential cases.[6]

Probability on its own only says that, given the nature of a quality, there is a quantitative relation between two amounts, showing the number of times one value contains and is contained within the other.

This is the definition of ratio.

Probability is the quantity measure of potentiality, the latter being the quality of the former.

Possibility is the ratio of form.

The ratio of form concerns in what sense certain variables said to be “most likely possible” adopt motion towards the center, whereas “less likely possible” constitute motion away from the center.

The “center” here is the standard of singularity, which is the abstraction of individuation as process whereby the universal element is appropriated as particular variations of itself.

Each variation stands in relation on a hierarchical spectrum, judged by which version appropriates each as each appropriates the whole.

The most likely possible, characterizing the center, involves the individuality that appropriates each individuality, as each of those individualities appropriates the whole in some manner.

In this sense, probability does not create potentiality.

Potentiality is what makes probability possible.

Before we can say that something has a probability, we must already have a set of possibilities within which that probability can be measured.

Probability therefore concerns the quantitative relation among possibilities.

Potentiality concerns the qualitative form of the possibilities themselves.

The question therefore becomes:

What determines the form of possibility before possibility can be quantitatively measured?

This is where the singularity becomes important.

The singularity is the limit of the process in which the universal is differentiated into particulars and the particulars remain expressions of the universal.

Ordinal

The ordinal concerns order.

The cardinal concerns quantity.

Cardinal numbers are used to count or indicate how many, while ordinal numbers represent rank and order in a set.[7]

The distinction is that they are different forms of the same content.

Think of the ordinal as the analogue and the cardinal as the digital.

The ordinal gives the position.

The cardinal gives the count.

The ordinal tells us where something stands in a series.

The cardinal tells us how many there are.

The two therefore describe different aspects of the same numerical content.

The Fibonacci numbers constitute the bare nature of what we mean by hierarchy, which is explained by how quality governs quantity.

The Fibonacci sequence is characterized by the fact that every number after the first two is the sum of the two preceding ones:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, …[8]

The importance of the Fibonacci sequence here is not simply that it produces a particular numerical pattern. It is that each new value is generated through the relation between preceding values.

The number is therefore not merely an isolated quantity.

It is the result of a relation.

Quantity becomes an expression of an underlying order.

The Fibonacci sequence therefore gives us an image of hierarchy as the continual production of a new value from previously established relations.

The quality of the relation governs the quantity of the result.

Nominal, Ordinal, and Cardinal

The fundamental function of the numbers 0 and 1 as nominal numbers describes the ordinal and cardinal numbers.

Nominal, also known as categorical function, identifies what is merely supposed but not yet explained: the given nature of numbers as ordinal and cardinal.[9]

0 and 1 are the form of numbers.

Every number after 1 exhibits the form of 1 value, no matter the quantitative variations disclosed by that totality.

Whether we say 1, 100, 1,000, 10,000, etc., all these have at least the value of 1.

They are, as numbers, identified as 1 and only 1 number.

And 0 describes the form of non-value.

No matter what number it is attached to, 0 is the negative of that number.

Here, however, we are using “nominal” in a philosophical sense that differs from the standard mathematical terminology. In ordinary mathematics, nominal numbers are not generally defined as the foundational forms of 0 and 1, and 0 is not ordinarily described as “the negative of that number.”[10] The purpose of this terminology in our argument is to describe the qualitative function of numerical identity before its quantitative relations are developed.

The nominal function provides the qualitative merit of ordinal numbers by describing the rank of the numbers disclosed by 10, where 1 is furthest away and 10 is closest.

The value of order is the function to determine which is closest and furthest away from the limit set as the disclosure of the series.

For example, the number 10 is 1 value of 10 variables, each of which is 1 value of certain other variables.

10 is 1 entity of 10 entities, each of which bears other entities.

10 as ordinal is 1 value of 10 × 1 other values:

10 × 1 = 10.

The ordinal function of number is not cardinal because it does not yet concern the count of the quantitative variation disclosed by the same value.

For example, 10 as ordinal is not the same as cardinal because the quantities disclosed by 10 as value, when countable, would add up to exceed 10:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 = 55.

10 is ordinal when it discloses only the order of the series as:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

This is identifiable because of the nominal fact that 10 is 1 value that discloses the order of the series by limiting the duration of the series as 1 through 10.

The nominal function provides the qualitative merit of ordinal numbers by describing the rank of the numbers disclosed by 10, where 1 is furthest away and 10 is closest.

The value of order is therefore the function that determines which is closest and furthest away from the limit set as the disclosure of the series.

Cardinal as the Count of Ordinal Relations

Second, the nominal function of 0 explains the cardinal numbers.

In ascertaining the nominal nature of the cardinal function of “how many?” we are now not only asking for the numerable, because how something is numerable is explained by the order of the series, and why, because the order of the series is determinable by the nominal factor of 1 value to each group of quantitative measures.

The cardinal question concerns how numbers, so far as having the ordinal function of being 1 value, are capable of being related with other numbers of the same ordinal value.

The difference between ordinal and cardinal is that they are different forms of the same content.

Think of the ordinal as the analogue and the cardinal as the digital.

The ordinal gives the structure of position.

The cardinal gives the structure of count.

The ordinal tells us that something occupies a determinate place within an ordered sequence.

The cardinal tells us how many entities belong to the collection.

The two therefore cannot be completely separated.

They are two determinations of numerical form.

Zero as the Function of Space

0 is nominal because what it is as 1 value is the negation of 1 value.

This is why we can have a negative series of numbers on the x- and y-axes.

It is precisely due to the fact that what 0 is as 1 value is the negation of 1 value.

This is why we can have −1, whose sole function is the deduction of 1.

The value of −1 is still 1, even if the content of that 1 value is the negation of value, 0.

Here we can see the peculiar function of zero.

Zero is not simply “nothing.”

Zero is the position from which positive and negative numerical directions can be established.

On the number line, zero provides the origin from which numbers can be added and subtracted.[11]

This is why 0 is the origin of the x- and y-axes.

It is the center, which is the potential whereby any value is countable and able to be related with other values.

The center is therefore not merely another number among the numbers.

It is the point of relation through which positive and negative directions become possible.

From zero, one can move toward positive values.

From zero, one can move toward negative values.

The same center therefore contains the potential for opposed directions.

This provides the mathematical image for our philosophical conception of the singularity.

The singularity is the center.

The center is the potential.

The potential is the form from which differentiated values can emerge.

And the differentiated values remain related through the center from which their relation is possible.

Infinity as the Future

Infinity therefore cannot simply mean that there are endlessly many objects.

It means that the relation between center and differentiation does not reach a final exhaustion.

The future is infinite because every actuality contains potentiality.

Potentiality produces possibility.

Possibility becomes subject to probability.

Probability organizes the possible into quantitative relations.

Quantitative relations produce determinate forms.

Determinate forms become new conditions for further potentiality.

The process therefore continually returns to itself while simultaneously moving forward.

This is the infinite tunnel.

The mirror reflecting itself is an image of this continuity, but the mind is more than the mirror because it does not merely reproduce what is already present.

It produces possibilities.

The mind takes the established reality of the universe and turns it into potentiality.

The whole of the experiences being neurologically transmitted therefore becomes the form of the tunnel of infinity, whereby the potentialities of thought participate in dictating the evolutionary direction of the universe.

The future is not simply an unknown location.

It is the possibility of further determination.

The singularity is not merely where the universe ends.

It is the center from which the universe continually differentiates itself.

The universe therefore moves into infinity because the universal cannot be exhausted by any one of its particular forms.

Every particular is a determination of the universal.

Every determination opens another possibility.

Every possibility can become another determination.

And the process continues.

Infinity is the future.

Potentiality is the form of the future.

Probability is the quantitative relation among its possibilities.

The singularity is the center through which the universal becomes particular and the particular remains related to the universal.

And the mind is the place where this process becomes conscious of itself.

Footnotes

[1] Infinity is not equivalent to “an extremely large number.” In mathematics, infinity can describe unboundedness, limiting behavior, infinite cardinality, or other structures depending upon context. The philosophical argument here uses infinity primarily to mean an open-ended or non-exhaustible potentiality.

[2] Cantor’s work on set theory established that there are different sizes of infinite sets. The natural numbers are countably infinite, while the real numbers are uncountably infinite. Thus, “infinite” does not specify a single quantity.

[3] Wormholes are theoretical geometries in general relativity that can connect different regions of spacetime. The “rabbit hole” is a literary and imaginative analogy rather than a physical theory of infinity. No traversable wormhole has been empirically established.

[4] The claim that the singularity has “no particular location” requires qualification. Singularities can occur in particular spacetime solutions, such as black-hole solutions. The philosophical singularity being developed here is broader: it is being used as an abstraction of the center of individuation rather than as a literal astrophysical location.

[5] In general relativity, singularities are better understood as indications of geodesic incompleteness or a breakdown of the classical spacetime description than as ordinary physical points possessing infinite density. A quantum theory of gravity may ultimately be required to describe the relevant regime.

[6] In elementary probability theory, when all outcomes are equally likely, probability can be calculated as the ratio of favorable outcomes to the total number of possible outcomes. More generally, probability is defined through a probability measure and does not always take the simple favorable-cases/total-cases form. The latter is therefore a special case of probability rather than its universal mathematical definition.

[7] In standard mathematics, a cardinal number answers “how many?” while an ordinal number describes position in an ordered sequence, such as first, second, third, and so on. The distinction is between cardinality and order type rather than between “digital” and “analogue”; that latter distinction is being used here as a philosophical analogy.

[8] The Fibonacci sequence is normally given as 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, … or, under another common convention, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, … . Each term after the first two is the sum of the preceding two. Fibonacci-type patterns appear in numerous mathematical and natural contexts, although claims that the Fibonacci sequence universally governs biological or cosmichierarchy should be treated cautiously.

[9] “Nominal” has a standard meaning in mathematics and statistics that differs from the philosophical use developed here. Nominal data are categorical labels without intrinsic numerical ordering. The present argument instead uses “nominal” to mean the basic identity or qualitative determination from which ordinal and cardinal relations are subsequently developed.

[10] The statement that “0 is the negative of that number” is not standard arithmetic. Multiplying any number by zero gives zero, while the additive inverse of a number $n$ is $-n$. Thus, $0$ is better described mathematically as the additive identity and as the point separating positive and negative values on the real number line. The philosophical argument uses zero as a conceptual “negation of value,” which should be distinguished from its formal mathematical definition.

[11] Zero serves as the origin of the standard Cartesian coordinate system. The x-axis and y-axis intersect at $(0,0)$, allowing positive and negative coordinates to be represented relative to the origin. This makes zero particularly useful for the philosophical analogy of the “center” as a condition for opposed directions.

[12] The equation $1+2+\cdots +10=55$ does not demonstrate that ordinal 10 is “not cardinal” in the standard mathematical sense. The cardinal number 10 still denotes a collection of ten elements. The calculation instead illustrates a distinction between the final rank in a sequence and the sum of all numerical ranks within that sequence. The distinction should therefore be understood as part of the philosophical framework rather than as a conventional definition of cardinality.

[13] The proposition that “probability is the quantity measure of potentiality” is a philosophical reformulation, not a standard definition of probability. Mathematically, probability measures events within a specified sample space. The philosophical argument adds the prior concept of potentiality as the qualitative structure from which a space of possibilities is constituted.

[14] The claim that “the most likely possible” represents movement toward the singularity is also philosophical rather than a theorem of probability theory or physics. Probability alone does not establish a spatial or metaphysical direction toward a center. The center, in this essay, is the conceptual point at which particularity and universality are related.

[15] The statement that the mind contains “qualitative probabilities exponentially more than the established reality of the universe” should not be interpreted as a literal mathematical measurement. It means that thought can represent a potentially enormous number of qualitatively distinct possibilities relative to the comparatively determinate state of an already actualized event.

[16] The final distinction between potentiality and probability can therefore be stated precisely within this philosophical system: potentiality is the qualitative space of what can become; possibility is a differentiated form within that space; probability is the quantitative measure assigned to possibilities under specified conditions; actuality is the particular outcome that becomes determinate.

[17] The broader thesis of the chapter is that infinity is not fundamentally a collection of infinitely many already-existing things. It is the non-exhaustion of potentiality. The “infinite tunnel” therefore represents an ontological process: actuality gives rise to potentiality, potentiality differentiates into possibilities, possibilities become determinate events, and those events become the conditions for further potentiality.

Void, Spacetime, and the Abstraction of Form

The nature of these hidden realities that underlay our observable macroscopic [world], whose necessary existence is inferred only indirectly through their necessary relation with the observable. But this is not a matter of faithful truth; rather, it is a physical property of energy dispersion, whereby concentrated forms of energy interact and combine within a lack of energy, so-called void. But then we state that the void plays a deeper role than simply being the facilitated realm whereby objects move within. Somehow, the void exists as the energy of determining these components into interaction and rational relation: that there is a rational element of the invisible realm of reality, and that this is where mind resides, ultimately speaking.

The form of the observer is this nullity, this lack of placement where possibility springs up into actuality. We stated that spacetime is this realm whereby all possible events are discussed in their every possible spatial ordination. It is difficult to imagine such complex dimensions; it escapes mentally revealed capabilities and appears like a singularity in spacetime, of infinitesimally extended inward duration, disclosed within a particular conception of all the possibilities of the conception. The one is many and the many is one. This ancient paradox is important, for this is what appears to be a quantum paradox.[^1]

That spacetime exhibits itself as these peaks or valleys, let us say as analogies, at the end tip of the peak, is what we disclose and see as energy, stars, in spacetime. But beneath the system is a mammoth of infinite possibilities, a singularity at the heart of every particular relation.[^2]

Yet this is not so novel as it seems, for it explains basically everything in the universe. Stars, as we see them, as this ball of fire or energy, are merely just an abstraction. In fact, when we look up into any object in space, we ultimately see it as spherical. But why is this the case? Why does every object observed in space ultimately appear spherical? Is it because it is fundamentally spherical, or is it because our minds can only observe complex phenomena in a rudimentary manner, therefore shaping the complexity of a singularity into a spherical form that the observer can understand and conceive of?

Yet these two points ultimately and basically come to mean the same thing: as to whether it is for him this way or he makes it for himself, the result still arrives at the same ambiguity. What are the chances of us, our mind, reducing objects to a spherical manner, or are they actually spherical? As if nature lacks all possible shapes. And the reality is that in space there is every shape, all at once displayed.[^3]

Ancient tablets from past Assyria describe the skies being different, and their coordination of the sky is different than today: that things are shaped mismatched and change, our sky ultimately changes, and therefore the motion of the Earth is not as uniform as we assume. It is always moving spherically around a star, while the reality is that that star itself is also racing across space, with the objects following it.[^4]

Yet the ancient models say that the entire heavens actually revolve around our flat plane, and that the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This is a particular conception of the star. Yet what we are even seeing is only an abstraction of a star, for the star itself is a very interesting element in spacetime that we overlook the complexity of.

In fact, the star is a certain distance away from Earth,[^5] but for us, from our point of view, it might as well be right above our head. And we feel it; that is because the intensity or magnitude of the energy of the star extends to the region of Earth at the distance which happens close to the observer. It might actually as well be that close. Its distance is not a matter of where it is initially, but until where it extends into and continues into.[^6]

In fact, every object in apparent relation to the Sun exhibits a physical formation based on the level of energy interaction with the Sun. The Sun is its first original point, let us say, where it stands originally—not an object, but rather an interaction between two parallel dimensions in spacetime that ever came so close, approximate to each other, that, without ever touching, they release a generation of energy equal to that of a star.[^7]

Or that is what a star is: a point of almost contact between two dimensions, disclosing an infinite amount of unique reactions. And therefore, this is why all ancient roots, analogies, and images—and now we are seeing physically that energy released from a dying person shoots out, presumably into the Sun—the Sun was associated with God and all bearing life. Even in Christ, heaven is going into the light.[^8]

These analogies are not random or arbitrary; they physically describe a deep moment in reality for the consciousness of the observer.

These stars are therefore not just bodies of energies, but are interactions between dimensions that allow an entrance of energy from one place to another, that sprouts—or souls even can transfer between these gateways—and enter into what we call the bearing of life. Sunlight is the initial source for all life forms on Earth.[^9]

And even planets are not just what they appear from a distance. For when we look at a planet like Earth from outside of it, we see it appearing spherical, but in reality it can be that the mind is reducing that complex object to its most rudimentary shape so that it can disclose the complexity before him.

When, in reality, the Earth can be, from the perspective of being on it, appearing flat from all sides, yet this flatness extends into lands beyond lands. And where is the edge? They never can ultimately find.

That is the deeper question: whether the form we perceive is the form that reality fundamentally possesses, or whether form itself emerges through the relation between reality and the observer. What appears to us as a sphere may therefore be the disclosed surface of a much greater complexity, while what appears as a plane may be only the local experience of an observer situated within that complexity. The edge cannot ultimately be found because every edge becomes another relation, and every relation opens into another possibility.

The one is many, and the many is one.

Footnotes

[^1]: The phrase “the one is many and the many is one” has parallels in ancient philosophical traditions, while the connection to quantum mechanics is interpretive rather than a statement of established quantum theory. Quantum mechanics does describe systems in terms of superposition and possible measurement outcomes, but this does not by itself establish that spacetime contains every possible event simultaneously.

[^2]: “Infinite possibilities” and a “singularity at the heart of every particular relation” are being used here as philosophical concepts. In physics, a singularity has a more specific mathematical meaning and does not simply mean an infinite collection of possibilities.

[^3]: Objects in space do not all fundamentally have spherical shapes. Stars and many planets become approximately spherical because gravity pulls matter toward a common center, while smaller bodies can have highly irregular shapes. The question of whether perceived form is partly constructed by the observer belongs more directly to philosophy of perception and epistemology.

[^4]: The ancient Assyrian and Babylonian astronomical traditions did contain sophisticated observations and models of celestial motion. However, the claim that ancient descriptions demonstrate that Earth’s motion was non-uniform in the modern physical sense would require specific tablets and translations to establish. Modern astronomy describes Earth as rotating on its axis and orbiting the Sun, while the Sun itself moves through the Milky Way.

[^5]: A specific distance cannot be supplied without identifying which star is being discussed. For scale, the nearest star beyond the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.24 light-years from Earth; other visible stars can be tens, hundreds, or thousands of light-years away. This distance represents the travel time of light between the star and Earth, not a statement that the star physically occupies the space immediately above the observer.

[^6]: Here the argument moves from physical distance to the idea of energetic extension. Physically, a star’s radiation does extend outward through space and can reach Earth despite the star being very distant. However, the intensity of that radiation decreases with distance according to the inverse-square relationship for an approximately isotropic source. Thus, the fact that starlight reaches an observer does not make the star physically as close as it appears.

[^7]: The proposition that a star is produced by “almost contact between two dimensions” is a metaphysical or speculative physical model rather than the accepted astrophysical explanation. In established astrophysics, stars are self-gravitating objects in which energy is generated primarily through nuclear fusion in their interiors. The phrase “two parallel dimensions” would therefore require a new physical theory and mathematical formulation if it is intended literally.

[^8]: The association between light, the Sun, divinity, death, and transcendence occurs across many religious and cultural traditions. Such symbolic similarities can be studied anthropologically and psychologically, but they do not by themselves demonstrate a physical connection between religious symbolism and stellar processes. The statement about energy being released from a dying person and traveling toward the Sun would likewise require a specific physical mechanism and evidence.

[^9]: Sunlight is indeed the primary energy source for most life on Earth. Photosynthetic organisms capture solar energy and convert it into chemical energy, which supports most terrestrial and many aquatic food webs. There are exceptions: some ecosystems, such as certain deep-sea hydrothermal-vent communities, derive primary energy from chemical processes rather than sunlight.