God

It's been 294 days since I decided that I was going to try to read Fr. Frederick Copletston's A History of Philosophy for 15 minutes per day. Somewhere along the line I decided to take that a little bit farther, going for 10 pages per day instead (15 minutes tended to get me through 7 pages, so it was a substantial increase--about 40%--in time commitment), and I think that I've met or exceeded that goal every day. And, in fact, I have yet to miss a day of reading...though it's been a little dicey a time or two...and a little Reading Under the Influence a time or three. But here I am, and today I opened up the third omnibus edition to its first page, which means that to date I've read 2,961 pages of this monumental work to date. 

It's funny. If I'd sat down and tried to plow through, I don't think I'd have ever even finished the first volume...and by that, I mean the first 1/3rd of the first omnibus. I tried to do it that way before, as a matter of fact, and I pooped out very quickly. It's the fact that I approached it as a small amount of time daily that I've been able to get so far. And barring accidental death or dismemberment (and maybe  not even then in case of the latter), I am sure that I will finish this entire work...which includes two additional volumes after this third omnibus. It's been quite a life lesson in and of itself, aside from the content. (Which, by the way, has regularly been revelatory and fascinating.)

All of which is just preamble. But as I did my reading today, I ran across a line which I thought deserved to be pondered, and I do my best pondering in front of a keyboard, so here I am. Hi. How are you? Wife and kids? Ah, yeah, right. Been there, done that, bought souvenirs. But as for this line I was talking about? Yeah. It went like this: "...reality is the process of the self-expression or self-manifestation of infinite thought or reason." Which seems pretty straightforward to me, but just in case I'm missing some ambiguity, here's my layman's translation: "Reality is God in the process of being created." 

Bam.

I like that thought for many reasons, but one of the foremost amongst them is that this fits in so well with one of the ideas I've been playing with in a novel which is currently under construction, to be entitled (I think) ...then there is no mountain... which is a line from one of my favorite Donovan songs, the whole of which goes like this (after excising the repetitions):

Look upon my garden gate, a snail, that's what it is

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is

The caterpillar sheds his skin to find a butterfly within

Oh Juanita, I call your name

Oh

The snow will be a blinding sight to see, as it lies on yonder hillside

In fact checking those lyrics (I do it for you, my love) I found that several sites had the first line wrong, putting it as "The lock upon my garden gate's a snail"...which amuses me because (1) Donovan's diction is not ambiguous and (2) the line these sites put up makes no sense whatsoever. (Snails make notoriously poor locks, after all.) But hey, that's life in the 21st century. 

Anyway. The song pretty obviously alludes to the Buddhist concept that before you are enlightened, you see the physical mountain, while you struggle to become enlightened you no longer see the mountain / the material world, and once you become enlightened you see the mountain for what it is: a manifestation of the spiritual reality. (At least I think that's how it goes. If you want more of that, you can find it in lots of places, one of which is "First There Is a Mountain (Then There Is No Mountain): How science brought down the Buddha’s Mount Meru" by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., which appears in the FALL 2008 issue of Tricycle, and which you can find online. Sorry, I don't do links anymore. Not sure of the legal ramifications, and want to stay safe.) 

And I'm supposing that you can easily see the connection between the is / no / is and the quote from A History of Philosophy. The world as a manifestation of the infinite spirit, right? Right. This also is starting to fit together with another idea that I've been kicking around for awhile now...and which is also a major bit of my gestating novel: the idea that it is our experiences, our perceptions, which create God...which also explains why some people suffer so terribly while others slide down the surface of things: in order for God to become, EVERY perspective must be considered. Which is, I suppose, either an argument against the infinite or an argument against the existence (at least in a final sense) of God. At least from this point of view.

And even though it smacks of Scientology (I think I'll make up my own religion!), the more I think about this thing, the more sense it makes to me. So I am delighted when I read something in, say, A History of Philosophy which corroborates my point of view...even though the person writing that thing was not writing from anywhere close to my perspective.