The Tenets of Intimacy: First Notes
CosmoErotic Humanism in a Time Between Worlds by Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zachary Stein
This is an early version of what we call in CosmoErotic Humanism the Tenets of Intimacy. It is not written as a formal essay but as a series of bullet-points, summarizing our early thoughts on the topic. For proper citation, please cite “The Tenets of Intimacy” by Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zachary Stein.
Introduction: Metatheory as Humanity’s Vocabulary of Self-Transformation
[With] self-consciousness comes the possibility of transforming ourselves by adopting new vocabularies, redescribing, and so reconstructing ourselves and discursive institutions. While all of us are in some sense consumers of such new vocabularies, it is the special calling of some to produce them. And among those producers, some take the construction of unique, potentially transformative vocabularies as the project by a commitment to which they understand and define themselves. Among that group, some seek to produce those new vocabularies precisely by trying to understate the phenomena of sapience, normativity, conceptuality, reason, freedom, expression, self-consciousness, self-constitution, and historical transformation by subversive, empowering vocabularies. Those are the philosophers. They are charged neither with simply understanding human nature (human history), nor with simply changing it, but with changing it by understanding it.[1]
—Robert B. Brandom
The Tenets of Intimacy
Tenet One: Infinity Desires Finitude
1) The Infinite is intimate. This is true in the same way that Rocks contain Mozart.
2) The Infinite desires.
3) Desire wants something that is, in some sense, not yet.
4) Infinity desires finitude.
5) “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.” [Blake]
6) [Interiors Sciences:] The infinite universe is sourced in the ‘stirring of desire’ in the infinite. [Interiors Sciences: Abhinavagupta, Luria, Exterior Sciences, Donald Hoffman, Chapter Four, Physics and the Space-Time Continuum.]
7) "True Self" is the beingness of No-Thing: The consciousness that inheres at the Heart of the Infinite.
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Tenet Two: Infinity Desires Intimacy; Infinity Desires Relationship
8) Desire drives reality to seek ever-greater intimacy. [For a Definition of Intimacy, see Tenet Seven.]
9) Infinity desires intimacy: The paradox of Perfection/ Infinity/ Spirit/ Consciousness is that Infinity desires intimacy.
10) Infinity desires relationship.
11) How do you know? Because we are here.
12) We will define intimacy below, offering a definition that operates at a source code level across what Integral theory calls all quadrants and lines.
Tenet Three: Reality Is Evolution = Reality Is not a Fact but a Story
13) Reality is evolution.
14) Reality is evolution means: Reality is not merely a fact, [not only an eternal fact].
15) Reality is a story.
16) Reality is not an ordinary story, it's a love story.
17) It's not an ordinary love story, it's an Outrageous Love Story.
18) It's an Evolutionary Love Story.
19) The language of Reality is Story.
[CONTEXTUAL FRAME FOR TENETS BELOW:]
20) Three core approaches to Reality:
Fact [Scientism]
Symbol [Religion and Jungian Psychology]
Story [CosmoErotic Humanism and other leading-edge approaches].
21) Four Big Bangs. Seeing the thread between cosmological, biological, and cultural evolution; physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere; matter, life, and mind.
22) This story itself we will describe in the tenets of the evolution of relationships/ the evolution of intimacy/ the evolution of love.
23) Each level fulfills itself in the next level.
24) Matter in Life and Life in Mind.
25) In what way does mind fulfill itself? In Homo amor, the new human and the new humanity, apotheosis.
26) The story is always a story of relationship, a relationship story.
[END CONTEXTUAL FRAME]
27) CONTEXTUAL FRAME: Homo sapiens 150k years ago. Language 70k. Theories of language from functional to narrative. Narrative key. [Most historians adopt a language narrative view and not a functional view.]
28) REFRAME: Three simple steps:
Reality is Evolution.
Reality is Relationship.
Reality is the evolution of relationships.
29) The evolution of Story is the evolution of Reality.
30) NOTE: In later tenets, the same sequence will be unfolded, replacing relationship for intimacy.
31) NOTE: The two words relationship and intimacy are related but not isomorphic. Each expressed a different quality of consciousness
Tenet Four: Reality Is a Story—All Stories Have Plotlines—Reality Has Telos
32) Reality’s Story has inherent telos—a goal—it is going somewhere. Reality has intention and direction: Bacteria to Bach, Mud to Mozart, Quarks to Culture, Dirt to Shakespeare.
33) Self-Actualizing Cosmos: Self-Organizing Universe
34) SPOILER ALERT: Unlike the early Santa Fe Institute folks, we are not suggesting Eros as a fifth force but rather as the animating in-formational [Bohm] energy that animates and suffuses all of the forces. [Sidenote: See Howard Bloom on the problematic absurdities of Heat Death. See Mlodinow’s strange dogma on Heat Death in War of the Worldviews.]
35) Story has a plotline = Reality has a plotline = Reality has telos.
36) Reality has different doors: We can access the plotlines through different doors.
37) Exterior door: simplicity to complexity.
38) Plotlines of Reality:
39) More and More Complexity
40) More and more Creativity
41) More and more Uniqueness
42) More and more Consciousness
43) More and more Depth
44) Wholeness
45) More and more Interconnectivity/ Intimacy
46) More and more Love
47) Evolution = the Evolution of Love
48) Complexity is an exterior describing interconnectivity between parts.
Tenet Five: Evolution Is the Evolution of Intimacy—Evolution Is the Progressive Deepening of Intimacies
49) CONTEXT FOR TENET FIVE: Reality is interiors and exteriors, all the way up and all the way down.
50) This is the core tenet of Anthro-Ontology.
51) The mysteries are within us.
52) The Common-Sense Sacred Axioms
53) There are three primordial perspectives in language.
54) I, We, and It [We, all the way up and all the way down. Evolution of We-Space.]
55) Sheldrake: The hard problem is not hard.
56) Pandepthism.
57) Interior science.
58) Reality is interiors and exteriors, all the way up and all the way down.
59) Not panpsychism but pandepthism.
60) Rejection of Dogmatic Materialism.
61) NEW TENET FIVE: The interior of interconnectivity is intimacy.
62) Complexity is a structure or pattern of intimacy.
63) Reality is interiors and exteriors, all the way up and all the way down.
64) The plotline of the story is the evolution of intimacy.
65) Evolution is a trajectory of ever-deepening intimacy.
66) Evolution is the evolution of intimacy.
67) The strange attractor of evolution is ever-increasing intimacy.
Tenet Six: The Drive for Intimacy Is an Interior Appetite of Cosmos called Desire
68) Reality’s drive for intimacy has an interior quality. That quality is called desire!
69) Desire is the desire for contact.
70) Another way to say it: contact is touch. Whitehead called this prehension, meaning proto-touch. It’s a desire to touch and be touched.
71) Said differently, the fundamental desire of Reality is for intimacy.
72) It is not a static desire that can be fulfilled in an object. It is a desire for an ever-deepening subject.
73) Said differently: Reality desires ever-more intimacy.
74) Said differently: Reality, or evolution, is the incessant desire for the progressive deepening of intimacy.
75) Reality is the inherent, incessant desire that drives the progressive deepening of intimacies.
76) Quarks to subatomic particles to atoms to molecules to complex molecules to cells—prokaryotes to eukaryotes—to early plants—like green algae, amphibians, land plants—to animals, early mammals, hominids, early humans, advanced humans, Homo amor.
Tenet Seven: Intimacy Is Shared Identity in the Context of Otherness Plus Mutuality of Recognition, Mutuality of Pathos, Mutuality of Value, and Mutuality of Purpose
77) The formal equation of intimacy is “Intimacy = Shared Identity x [Relative] Otherness x Mutuality (Recognition + Feeling + Value + Purpose).” Or a little less formal: “Intimacy is shared identity in the context of [relative] otherness, characterized by mutuality of recognition, mutuality of feeling, mutuality of value, and mutuality of purpose.”
78) Mutuality of Recognition: There is a deep mutuality of recognition or knowing between the parts. The parts in a human body, for example, are constantly knowing each other in a kind of instant quasi-non-local recognition in every second. Every atom and every cell of the body are in constant “touch,” ever and always exchanging information and recognition. Mutuality of recognition may emerge from shared identity or may evoke shared identity.
79) Mutuality of Pathos: The parts feel each other. That is true whether the parts are human beings, subatomic particles, or even ideas. It is the experience of shared pathos—shared feeling—that generates shared identity, even as shared identity generates shared pathos. In a family, tribe, or nation, people are held together by shared feelings like love, loyalty, or patriotism; these feelings are part of their sense of shared identity. This is no less true in the realm of ideas, as we feel our way into the new Universe Story. The ideas that come together to form the new Universe Story create a new shared identity. And the ideas also feel each other.
80) Mutuality of Pathos: A Second Take
81) One way to think about mutuality of pathos is through feedback loops of feeling.
82) In loop one, mutuality of pathos equals feeling you or feeling me.
83) In loop two, mutuality of pathos equals: feeling you feeling me, or feeling me feeling you.
84) In loop three, mutuality of pathos equals: feeling you feeling me feeling you.
85) Spoiler Alert: One of the core distinctions around relationship is
role mate = mutuality of purpose;
soul mate = mutuality of pathos;
whole mate = mutuality of purpose and pathos.
86) Mutuality of Purpose:
87) What emerges from Shared Identity + Mutuality of Recognition + Mutuality of Pathos is the possibility of mutuality of purpose.
88) Mutuality of purpose means simply shared purpose and function.
89) This definition of intimacy applies across life platforms and across lifeworlds.
90) For example, cells are a new configuration of intimacy—shared identity (as a cell), in the context of otherness (the continued existence of all parts of a cell from quarks to protons to atoms to molecules to complex molecules) + mutuality of recognition (all parts of the cell recognize or know each other) + mutuality of pathos (the allurement between all parts of the cell) + mutuality of purpose (the natural functions of the cell).
91) The same tenets of intimacy—the same definitions of intimacy—that apply to a cellular organism apply to a superorganism.
92) The crucial need at this moment in time—which we are failing in realizing and upon which virtually everything depends—is the fostering of mutuality of purpose. This is impossible without these shared memetic structures and them being downloaded into the source code of culture.
93) We now understand that shared fate is insufficient to manifest the kind of mutuality of purpose with the quality of depth necessary to address either catastrophic or existential risk. We need to move from the covenant of shared fate to the covenant of shared destiny, which is rooted in the covenant of shared identity.
Tenet Eight: Intimacy Itself Is Creative
94) Intimacy births new possibility.
95) New intimacy means deeper contact between the parts and new patterns of relations or new configurations of intimacy between the parts.
96) Thus, when subatomic particles come together and form an atom, they create a new configuration of intimacy, which is greater than the sum of the parts.
Tenet Nine: Intimacy Has Two Faces—Being and Becoming
97) The nature of intimacy has two faces:
98) Being: Intimate with Eternity—Before the Big Bang. To rest in that quality—spacious eternal. The quality the great traditions seek to access beneath the spacetime continuum—in meditation and other practices.
99) Becoming: It's dynamic. It's pulsing. It's ecstatic. It's urgent. It's ecstatic urgency. It is the quality of what we term, in the Tenets of Intimacy, Evolutionary Love or Outrageous Love.
Tenet Ten: Introducing the Term Eros—Eros Animates the Forces of Reality
100) Eros is the experience of radical aliveness, desiring ever-deeper contact and ever-greater wholes.
101) The drive of the entire system is Eros. This is Eros. Eros = the experience of radical aliveness seeking/ desiring ever-deeper contact and ever-greater wholes.
102) Eros = the desire for ever-deeper contact/intimacy and ever-greater wholes: A greater whole—new configurations of intimacy or new patterns of relationship between the parts that generate a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.
103) Evolution is driven, or to use a better word, allured by its desire for ever-deeper intimacies, yielding ever-greater wholes. The strange attractor of evolution is the deepening of intimacy.
Tenet Eleven: Intimacy Drives Emergence
104) A new whole is a new emergent.
105) A new emergent means a new quality of Reality that is caused/ catalyzed/ generated by a new configuration of intimacy, which then yields a whole greater than the sum of the parts.
106) Intimacy turns heaps into wholes.
107) Intimacy drives emergence.
108) Intimacy generates the possibility of possibility.
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Tenet Twelve: Intimacy Turns Complicated Systems into Complex Systems
109) Intimacy turns complicated systems into complex systems.
110) A complex system is one in which there is allurement between the parts.
111) A complicated system is one in which there is no allurement between the parts.
112) There are two arrows of evolution:
113) In one, we notice that the Universe is getting more and more good, true, and beautiful.
114) In the second we notice that each layer of developmental capacity creates new pathologies and therefore new pain, while moving toward more complexity = non-inspiring and even frightening. Complexity is simply a word, which instead of disclosing the nature of Reality, hides the nature of Reality.
Tenet Thirteen: Crisis Is an Evolutionary Driver—Every Crisis Is a Crisis of Intimacy
115) The inherent driver of evolution is the evolution of intimacy.
116) One mechanism of that inherent driver is crisis.
117) Crisis is an evolutionary driver.
118) The inherent drive for intimacy in Reality is heightened, or kicks into a higher gear, when it encounters a block or a crisis.
Tenet Fourteen: All Crisis Is a Crisis of Intimacy
119) Crisis means that the intimate relationship between parts is no longer life-giving/ affirming.
120) Reality responds to this crisis—a crisis in intimacy—by generating a new configuration of intimacy.
121) For example, at the level of the biosphere, from single-cell to multi-cell.
122) At the level of human relationship, the same principles apply.
123) A crisis of relationship moved us from role mate to soul mate.
124) A crisis of relationship is now moving the leading edge from soul mate to whole mate.
125) A crisis of intimacy, therefore, requires one of three moves:
a) a new configuration of intimacy, that is to say, a new order/ a new pattern of relationship between the parts.
b) not a new pattern but a new quality of relationship between the parts. Deepening intimacy between complex molecules generates cells. We might call this not a new pattern of intimacy but an intensification of intimacy.
c) in order to resolve a crisis of intimacy, sometimes a missing or hidden part, or a part that has not yet emerged, needs to be added into the calculus of intimacy.
126) For example on the human level, a crisis of intimacy between a couple, be it two friends, siblings, or any other form of relationship, might require that one or both of the parties either reveal a new part of themselves or develop a new part, which will then create a new configuration of intimacy.
127) The meta-principle: All crisis either destroys the system or generates new emergence.
Tenet Fifteen: Every New Emergence Is a New Configuration of Intimacy
128) The new emergence must be a new configuration of intimacy.
129) It is always a new configuration of intimacy that generates the next stage of evolution.
130) The Universe self-actualizes or self-organizes to higher and higher levels of intimacy.
Tenet Sixteen: Our Global Action Paralysis Is Based on a Global Intimacy Disorder
131) We are in the grips of a global action paralysis and a global action confusion. Our global action paralysis [and confusion] is based on a global intimacy disorder.
132) The nature of the global intimacy disorder is the collapse of Reality’s plotline. When one loses the thread of one's own story, one loses the intimate quality of one's existence; existence becomes bizarre, strange, and alienated.
133) This alienation in the plotline of the story, which collapses intimacy and collapses Eros, takes place both personally—in terms of the personal thread or plotline of one's own biography/story—but it also takes place collectively. Culture loses its direction. This happens when culture loses the inherent plotline of its own story. That is what we mean when we say global action paralysis is rooted in global intimacy disorder—we cannot find our way out of the labyrinth because we have lost Ariadne's thread.
134) The only way to heal the global action paralysis and the global action confusion is to restore intimacy.
Tenet Sixteen: Enlightenment Means Intimacy with All Things
135) Enlightenment is an empirical state structure of consciousness, cross-culturally validated, which stands at the center of what has been termed the perennial philosophy.
136) Enlightenment means intimacy with all things.
137) Enlightenment means, there are no externalities.
138) No one is outside the circle.
Tenet Seventeen: Intimacy Distinguishes Between Eros and Pseudo-Eros
139) Intimacy is a function of Eros.
140) Non-intimacy is a function of pseudo-eros.
141) Eros is the experience of being on the inside.
142) Pseudo-eros is generating the illusion of being on the inside.
143) This happens in two possible ways.
144) By creating a pseudo-sense of aliveness [addiction, for example].
145) By placing someone else—a person, idea, or collective—outside the circle, to give oneself the illusion that they are inside the circle. Oneself might refer to either a person or a superorganism.
Tenet Eighteen: False Identity Is a Failure of Intimacy with Self
146) Rivalrous conflict and win/lose metrics—the pseudo-eros of externality—are forms of pseudo-eros.
147) True Eros creates genuine identity.
148) Pseudo-eros generates false forms of identity.
149) False or limited structures of identity do not fill the hole in the heart of existence.
150) The attempt to fill the hole, generated by pseudo-eros, which lies in the heart of existence, is the source of most evil and human suffering.
151) It does not define identity.
Tenet Nineteen: Intimacy Is Right Relationship Between Lines and Circles
152) Intimacy is the right relationship and calibration between lines and circles.
153) Lines geometrically incarnate the directional, thrusting, analytical, abstracting move of Cosmos. The line quality used to be culturally and biologically associated with the masculine.
154) Circles geometrically incarnate the holding, inclusive, gestating, and nurturing quality of Cosmos. This circle quality used to be culturally and biologically associated with the feminine.
155) Every moment in Reality, every person, every subject, and every object in Reality, involves a unique interplay between lines and circles.
156) Thus, intimacy is the right calibration of relationship and synergistic inter-inclusion of lines and circles.
Tenet Twenty: Evil Is a Failure of Intimacy
157) Evil is a failure of intimacy.
158) Suffering is a failure of intimacy.
159) If we do not live in an Intimate Universe, then there is no question of—why do people suffer, or why is there evil, or why do bad things happen to good people?
160) The question disappears, because there is no expectation that it could or should be any different.
161) But in an Intimate Universe, the problem of pain screams out. [See, for example, Ivan’s speech in Brothers Karamazov to Alyosha.]
162) There is therefore no answer to the problem of pain.
163) Other than the question itself is the answer. Or more accurately it is the response [not the answer].
164) The problem of pain, contrary to two thousand years of speculation, does not challenge the Intimate Universe but rather serves as the ultimate validation of the Intimate Universe.
Tenet Twenty-One: Theodicy Should Aim not Toward Theo-logic but Toward the Restoration of Intimacy
165) The purpose of theodicy should not be theo-logic but a restoration of intimacy.
166) The purpose of memes, dharma, distinctions, and narrative is not theo-logic but a restoration of intimacy.
167) Memes, Dharma, and Distinctions are a uniquely Da-Vinci forms of activism—in this time between worlds—which themselves are a restoration of intimacy.
Tenet Twenty-Two: Information—a Core Structure of Reality—Is a Configuration of Intimacy
168) Information is a—the—core structure of Reality, all the way up and all the way down the evolutionary chain.
169) The implicate order of Reality can be expressed as information that defines Reality on all of its levels.
170) Indeed, Hebrew mysticism held language to be the source code of Reality.[2] But by language, the evolutionary mystics of Kabbalah were referring to something akin to what the leading edges of contemporary science might call “information.”[3]
171) David Bohm understood what he called in-formation to be essential configurations of what we might call coherent intimate patterns.[4]
172) All information is an intimate configuring of parts, from sounds to letters to words and the likes. Each part is a symbol or sign for a particular dimension of Reality, which has been perceived. Every unit of information is a complex cluster of resonant signs.
173) But when felt from its own interior perspective, a unit of information may be more deeply understood as not merely complex but as a coherent intimate.
175) But complexity is really but an external description of intimate patterns of relationships that are generated through their co-joining of new emergent information.
176) This meaning-generating process of Reality is the essential structure of what we might alternately term the CosmoErotic or the Intimate Universe.
177) But in fact, the innately present and ever-evolving patterns of coherence that constitute Cosmos are themselves deafening whispers of meaning.
178) Said simply, coherent intimate patterns are self-evidently meaningful. In that precise sense, they disclose an Intimate Cosmos.
179) In the emergent language field of CosmoErotic Humanism, we speak of evolving configurations of intimacy, which are the very source code of Reality itself.[5]
Tenet Twenty-Three: New Story = New Structure of Emergent Information = New Configuration of Intimacy
181) A new story is a configuration of in-formation, which is a new configuration of intimacy: a new whole greater than the sum of its parts.
182) The parts of the story—as they live in us —desire each other. The parts—the different disciplines—desire to fit together in a larger whole.
183) Intimacy creates a new coherence.
184) A new narrative—a new story—a new configuration of intimacy—is a new coherence.
Tenet Twenty-Four: Evolution = Evolution of Information = New Story [Dharma] = New Information = New Configuration of Intimacy
185) Therefore, the only way to restore intimacy is the re-weave the global story. To re-weave the core narratives.
186) The new narrative must include a Universe Story, a narrative of identity, a narrative of power, a narrative of relationship, and a narrative of community.
187) “When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.”—Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry.
188) A new story is just such a fluctuation point.
Tenet Twenty-Five: Evolution = Evolution of Intimacy = Evolution of Information = Evolution of Story
189) Homo sapiens appeared 150,000 years ago on the Savannah
190) It was only 70,000 years that what we term the third big bang, or the third flaring forth, generated the self-reflective, self-representing human.
191) The key new quality that generated or co-emerged as humanity was language—art.
192) Language does not just generate a functional information transfer, which allows for better hunting.
193) Rather, languages cohere intimacy beyond the Dunbar number through the cultivation of a new structure of intimacy.
194) The new structure of intimacy is generated by a new story.
Tenet Twenty-Six: Intimacy Is Always Unique
195) Intimacy is always unique at all levels of Reality—from matter to life to mind.
196) This means that each configuration of intimacy—from the original standing and propagating waves and their interference patterns all the way to the human level—is absolutely unique.
Tenet Twenty-Seven: Intimacy Is the Dialectic between Sameness and Distinction
197) Intimacy is not only unique, however. Intimacy is also based on sameness or commonality.
198) But what we all share in common is not only our sameness.
199) What we all share in common is also our uniqueness
200) Uniqueness is always in dialectical relationship to sameness.
Tenet Twenty-Eight: One Movement of the Evolution of Intimacy at the Level of Individual Human Identity—From Pre-Personal to Separate Self, to False Self, to True Self, to Evolutionary Unique Self
201) The movement through the five selves—as is extensively described in Unique Self theory—is not merely phenomenology but rather describes the ontological direction of Cosmos.
202) Said simply, the movement through the five selves is one of several primary expressions of the evolution of intimacy.
Read also:
Integrating the Two Models of Self: The Five Selves & The Three Selves
»Read Part 1 of this Essay HERE«
Tenet Twenty-Nine: The Move from Egocentric to Cosmocentric Intimacy Is an Expression of the Evolution of Intimacy
203) The movement
from egocentric—felt care and concern and willingness to sacrifice for self and survival group—
to ethnocentric—felt care and concern and willingness to sacrifice for tribe—
to worldcentric—felt care and concern and willingness to sacrifice for every human being—
to cosmocentric—felt care and concern for all of Reality—
is itself the evolution of intimacy.
Tenet Thirty: The Awakening to the Intimacy of Human-Level Identity: As Unique Self and then Evolutionary Unique Self
204) At the human level, human beings take the first step toward realizing their authentic identity by awakening as True Self. True Self is the singular that has no plural. True Self is the One Field of Consciousness and Eros.
205) But True Self is not yet full intimacy. It creates shared identity—sameness—but there is no otherness—uniqueness. Remember that the first part of the definition of intimacy is “shared identity in the context of relative otherness.”
206) It is at the level of Unique Self that intimacy is aroused. Unique Self shares identity with the seamless coat of the Universe but also realizes that the coat is seamless but not featureless. Its features are unique. That uniqueness at the human level shows up as your Unique Self—the unique face of True Self.
207) Unique Self is the puzzle piece that completes the puzzle, in the language of Unique Self theory.
208) In the realization of Unique Self on the human level, evolution moves from unconscious uniqueness to conscious uniqueness.
209) Unique Self = Unique quality of Intimacy.
210) More precisely: True Self + Unique Perspective + Unique Quality of Intimacy = Unique Self.
211) The context of intimacy evolves once again at the level of Evolutionary Unique Self.
212) Evolutionary Unique Self is an expression of cosmocentric consciousness.
213) More precisely: True Self + Unique Perspective + Unique Quality of Intimacy + Evolutionary Context = Evolutionary Unique Self.
Tenet Thirty-One: Personal Intimate Identity and Cosmic Intimate Intimacy Are Ontologically Identical
214) To be intimate with your own deepest identity and to be intimate with the largest Cosmic Reality is the same ontology and the same experience.
215) Your deepest personal identity is Evolutionary Unique Self. It is also your most expanded identity in which you align as the unique expression of the evolutionary impulse.
Tenet Thirty-Two: God Is [Also] the Infinity of Intimacy
216) The God you don’t believe in does not exist.
217) God is not only the Infinity of Power but the Infinity of Intimacy.
218) God is the Infinity of Intimacy, and Intimacy generates emergence = God is the Possibility of Possibility.
Tenet Thirty-Three: You Are God’s Unique Intimacy—You are Reality’s Unique Intimacy
219) YOU are God’s Unique Intimacy.
220) Through your unique quality of intimacy, you participate in the Divine [image of cord and plug: plug = unique quality of intimacy = Unique Self—that plugs into the wall (= True Self)].
221) Identity is the realization of one's unique quality of intimacy.
222) In evolutionary language, you are Reality's unique intimacy.
223) In God-language: You are God's Unique Intimacy. Therefore, there are no extras on the set.
Tenet Thirty-Four: Unique Intimacy Is Your Core Identity
224) I am a unique configuration of intimacy desired by all of Reality.
225) Your unique configuration of intimacy has a unique quality of intimacy.
226) You are a unique configuration of intimacy intended by Reality, generated by Reality, unlike any that ever was, is, or will be.
Tenet Thirty-Five: Unique Self = New Quality of Intimacy = New God
227) Unique Self = new quality of intimacy = New God.
Tenet Thirty-Six: Every Unique We Births a New God
228) When two Unique Selves meet in a genuine encounter, a new Unique We is formed.
229) A Unique We is a new quality of intimacy.
230) Remember that God is the Infinity of Intimacy.
231) Thus, the formation of a Unique We through conscious human relationship—which is a new quality of intimacy—is a New God.
232) Every Unique We births a New God—a new quality of intimacy that never was, is, or will be ever again.
Tenet Thirty-Seven: The Infinity of Intimacy Desires Ever-More—Wider and Deeper—Intimacies = More God to Come
233) The Infinity of Intimacy desires more intimacy.
234) A new quality of intimacy is a New God.
235) A New God is a new whole greater than the sum of its parts.
236) The New Intimacy = the New Whole = the New God.
237) Reality moving toward a progressive deepening of intimacies means there is always more God to come.
238) Reality moving toward the progressive deepening of intimacies is the evolution of intimacy, which is the evolution of God.
Tenet Thirty-Eight: New Intimacy Demands Our Devotion and Creates New Obligation
239) The New God requires our devotion.
240) The New God creates obligation.
241) New Intimacy creates new obligation.
242) Obligation and devotion are natural expressions of intimacy. [Obligation, Honor, Duty, Noble Action.]
243) The devotion demanded by intimacy is to intimacy itself.
244) The obligation created by intimacy is to intimacy itself.
Tenet Thirty-Nine: Intimacy Is the Source of All Ethics
245) Intimacy is the source of all ethics.
246) Every moment brings a new quality of intimacy.
247) Every moment is either open or closed. The obligation of intimacy is to love the moment open and to let the moment love you open.
248) The ethos of the moment demands Eros—to love the moment open.
249) To refuse the new gift of possibility in the new moment is to deny intimacy, to deny God, to deny Reality.
Tenet Forty: The Three Faces of Intimacy
250) The three primordial perspectives—I—We—and It—incarnate the three faces of intimacy.
251) “I” is intimacy incarnate in first person.
252) “We” is intersubjective intimacy in second person.
253) “It” is the movement of intimacy in third person.
Tenet Forty-One: Unique Risk and Unique Intimacy—Intimacy Invites and Even Demands Unique Risk
254) We always take great risk when we feel intimate.
255) The more intimate we feel, the greater the risk we are willing to consider.
256) Your Unique Risk is a function of an expression of your Unique Self,
257) The only genuine risk in your unique risk is not taking the risk.
258) Because not taking your unique risk alienates you from the Infinite field of Intimacy.
Tenet Forty-Two: Our Deepest Heart's Desire Is the Stirring of Desire in the Infinite
259) Our deepest heart's desire is the stirring of Desire in the Infinite.
260) Your unique heart's desire is an incarnation of the quality of desire that drives the Intimate Universe.
Tenet Forty-Three: Shame Blocks Intimacy
261) Shame blocks intimacy.
262) The healing of shame is a direct result of evolving intimacies.
Tenet Forty-Four: Eros Is the Paradoxical Wholeness of Allurement and Autonomy—Attraction and Repulsion
263) Reality is not just allurement but allurement and autonomy. Reality is not just attraction but attraction and repulsion.
264) Eros is the paradoxical wholeness of allurement and autonomy—attraction and repulsion—which moves evolution toward ever-deeper contact and ever-greater wholes.
Tenet Forty-Five: New Technologies Are New Configurations of Intimacy
265) Technology is a configuration of intimacy continuous with Reality itself.
266) New technologies are new configurations of intimacy.
Tenet Forty-Six: We Live in an Intimate Universe. The Intimate Universe Lives in Us
267) This entire sequence can be summarized in five sentences:
1) We live in an Intimate Universe.
2) The Intimate Universe lives in us.
3) I am evolution = The Intimate Universe lives in me.
4) Intimacy is always unique.
5) Reality always seeks/desires more intimacy.
6) New configurations of intimacy, in response to a crisis of intimacy, are the engine of evolution.
Tenet Forty-Seven: Evolution Moves Toward a Planetary Awakening in Love through Unique Self Symphonies
268) Unique Selves can form evolutionary We-Spaces between them or, in a momentous leap of evolution, they can create a new quality of collective intimacy, namely a Unique Self Symphony.
269) Unique Self Symphony is a new emergent of intimacy.
270) The omega point of evolution is Evolutionary Intimacy.
271) Evolutionary Intimacy = A Planetary Awakening in Love Through Unique Self Symphonies.
Tenet Forty-Eight: Holiness = Intimacy
272) Holiness = Intimacy.
273) The Holy of the Holies is the Inside of the Inside, which is the Deepest of the Deep.
Tenet Forty-Nine: Intimacy and Desire Are in Exile and Yearn to be Liberated—The Four Exiles
274) Exile No. 1: We have exiled desire from being a core quality of the Universe to the human realm.
275) Exile No. 2: We have exiled desire to sexuality.
276) Exile No. 3: We have exiled desire into a particular form of sexuality.
277) Exile No. 4: We have exiled desire into a particular cultural form of relationship.
Tenet Fifty: Sexual Intimacy Models Intimacy in every Realm of Eros
278) The sexual models the erotic = Intimacy in the sexual models possibilities for intimacy in the erotic.
Footnotes
[1] Brandom, R. (2009). Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 150. Cited in Zak Stein, “Beyond Nature and Humanity: Reflections on the Emergence and Purpose of Metatheories.”
[2] See, for example, Joseph Dan, The Name of God, the Name of the Rose, and the Concept of Language in Jewish Mysticism,Medieval Encounters, Volume 2 (1996): Issue 3 (Jan 1996). See also critically, Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections, Yale University Press
[3] The understanding of information as the core structure of Cosmos appears in multiple sources, which we will address more fully in the forthcoming work. For but one early example of information as the implicate order of an intelligent Cosmos, see David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, originally published in 1980 by Routledge, Great Britain. See also David Bohm and B.J. Hiley, The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory. 1993—Routledge. See also David Bohm, “Quantum Theory as an Indication of a New Order in Physics—Implicate and Explicate Order in Physical Law,” PHYSICS (GB), 3.2 (June 1973), pp. 139-168. See also David Bohm, B.J, Hiley, and P.N. Kaloyerou, “Ontological Basis for the Quantum Theory,” Physics Reports (Netherlands) 144.6 (January 1987), pp. 323-348. We are not in this footnote endorsing Bohm’s view in all of its detail and structure. We cite it as but one of the myriad examples of the leading edges of science and consciousness that point toward what Bohm referred to as the in-formational structure of Cosmos.
[4] Ibid. See also Charles Sanders Peirce, who was one of the first to understand the informational core of Reality and to link that informational core to Evolutionary Love. This has been termed the pan-semiotic nature of Reality. All of Reality is information and its interpretation. But the writers often miss the intimate nature of information—that is to say in-formation itself—is but a unique configuration of intimate relationships between diverse parts. See Peirce, C. S. (1934). Book One: Ontology and Cosmology. In C. Hartshorne & P.Weiss (Eds.),The collected papers of Charles S. Peirce (Vol. 6) (pp. 11–283). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[5] This is the core of our shared work together with Zachary Stein, forthcoming.
Wow what a journey! I'm curious about the distinction between "panpsychism" and "pandepthism"... I lost track of which tenet it was...