10.04.2005

1._ Process



When we stop to reflect a little on the world that surrounds us, the first thing that we notice is the immense variety of things that we can discern. All that great multiplicity is presented us, besides, in continuous variation, in movement, in incessant change.

We feel the natural, necessary and uncontrollable impulse, to order of some way those representations to manage to understand, and thus to be able to act, on the reality. We intend to discover relations among its different elements, and permanent aspects inside the change. We try to support the opinion that there is a fundamental unit over, or by underneath, of that multiplicity, and of that there is certain stability, or equilibrium, behind those changes. All in all, we try to discover the "cosmos" from the apparent "chaos".

It would be able to be thought that the world is in "dynamic equilibrium", that all the change that we see is necessary so that, in the fund, all equal remain. They change the people, the alive beings are agitated, they move and they combine the objects, so that persist the Humanity and the Nature, in the fund always equal to itself. Do not there would be creation, not even true modification, but only maintenance. Thus eternally, in the past as in the future.

But the present thought recognizes some much deeper changes in the history of the humanity and of the universe. Both they have evolved in the time until coming to be what now we see, so modest from beginnings that can be affirmed that there were times in which the humanity did not exist, and even that the universe was reduced to practically nothing.

There is therefore no such "dynamic equilibrium" of the universe, but a process of so deep changes that they have been able to be constructing all the reality that now we see, gradually through the past centuries, and that probably it will continue during the future centuries. From when? Existed a fundamental equilibrium that was broken by some cause? Until when? Will exist a final equilibrium --static or dynamic-- to which will be arrived in the future?

Everything what now exists is part of that process. There is no absolutely nothing permanent. All the things have been "constructed"; even the space and the time that formerly had been considered like "absolute frames". Everything is also material for future "constructions". Nothing is definitive neither finished. Even the people, are fleeting and unfinished. We are least and ephemeral. And we are part of the process; not realities finished but elements for the construction of the future realities.

2._ Newness

At previous times, significant changes only in the lives of the concrete individuals were perceived. The evident changes in human history could be considered as mere superficial episodes on a permanent plot. History seemed cyclical, --as cyclical are the day and the night, and cyclical they are the stations--, since after each civilization happened another one of similar characteristics. And the Nature essentially seemed always the same, in spite of the local changes, "superficial and fleeting "caused by catastrophes, or the erosion, or the action of the alive beings. But, fundamentally, it could be thought that the Earth always was there, with seas, mountains, rivers, valleys, etc., always similar, inhabited by alive beings, animals and humans, always similar, behaving always similarly. "Nothing there is new under the sun". And the changes that were noticed did not seem to really produce new features, but to correspond to repetitive behaviors. Over everything, the stars unquestionablily seemed immutable and eternal, remote and impassible in their divine perfection; until their same movements, supposedly of perfect geometry, were rather manifestations of stability and rest.

But we know very well that a movement can have the appearances of the rest, if is observed to a "temporary scale" very different to his intrinsic. Thus, the vegetables seem us at first sight motionless, since they have an intrinsic temporary scale --a vital rhythm-- very different from ours. During the interval of time in which we dedicate our attention to a flower, this seems us static, as if out of paper or plastic; we know that if subsequently, at tip of hours or days, we observe it again, she there will be various, as alive being that is, but this movement do not we note it with facility inside our temporary scale. If we film it and we see the movie to rapid rhythm, to another temporary scale, we will see the flower sprouting, opening, unfolding, agitating, with a surprising vitality not at all static.

Then something thus is what it happens --now we know it-- with the nature. When the scientific research has advanced the sufficient thing, and has been able to explore the past in enormous time intervals for the human scale, it has drawn up a "film" of the past that exhibits the huge biological and cosmic precedent evolution, in that we are inserted like its very small last photogram.

In these evolutions, the changes are radical and successive; the general plot is not static nor cyclical of any way. There were times in which there was no human civilization. There were times in which there were no human beings. There were times in which there was no animal of now known. There were times in which all the alive beings were microscopic. There were times in which there were no alive beings. There were times in which there was no Earth nor Sun. There were times in which there were no stars. There were times in which there were not composed nor chemical elements like the present ones. And all this in inverse temporary succession... until arriving at an initial moment in that there was "practically nothing", neither space nor time at least, but... a pure potentiality?
If this great one "film" we see it imaginarily since its start, to cosmic temporary scale, that is, to a sufficiently rapid velocity, we will see to sprout and to be unfolded the Universe, as an enormous flower. A second of movie would be able to equal to a century of our temporary scale; to this velocity, we would delay some five years in seeing the entire "movie", without taking a moment of rest; and all the human history would appear only in the last minute of projection. Surely, there would be shaken sections of film more than others. After a long lapse --perhaps of several "days or weeks of projection"-- in which practically does not happen anything, a great activity begins suddenly: they appear new beings, new phenomena, new surprising behaviors that we could not have suspected previously.
Thus, probably, it would be the moment of the appearance of the first alive beings, and also the moment of the appearance of the first human cultures. We would have the sensation that somewhat new, radically new, has sprouted suddenly in each case; and since this new does not be able but to be referred to its origins, by different that have been, we would have that to conclude that has "emerged" of some way of them. What there was before was evolving, changing slowly, insensibly --o perhaps quickly, sometimes-- until it has arrived a critical moment, it has reached a critical state, it has transposed a threshold, and --as an explosion-- another thing has emerged.

3._ Last Newness

The capacity to produce newness, whose effects are noticed throughout in the nature, but that is not property of any of its parts but of the totality, is the one that confers the quality of finality or sense to him.

Seen "a posteriori", each new level of emergence --or level of reality, or complexity, or conscience, as also usually it is said-- appears like end, as goal --not as purpose-- of the previous level. Thus, when we consider the series of successive levels, each one equipped with sufficient stability to be practically irreversible, and each one appearing like end of the previous one, we discover a chain or ascending scale --the "Great Chain of Being"?-- that carries us of link in link, of step in step, of newness in newness, in a progress without own purpose, but that "a posteriori" defines an evident intrinsic finality.

If we think, or we postulate, a maximum level or upper limit of this series, that would be therefore the level of final and last newness, the "Novum Ultimum", we deduce that to be able to be really the last one should have necessarily the characteristic to transcend, of go "beyond" of all the previous reality.

Although each level of emergence, by its radical newness, can be considered trascendent respect to the previous levels, this one, being the last and definitive one, must reach a state of equilibrium and total irreversibility, that gives complete fulfillment to all capacity of newness of the reality, that satisfies definitively all its tendencies. This defines the special and unique trascendence of the Novum Ultimum respect to the assembly of the universe. Particularly, we can emphasize that the space and the time are in him trascended, surpassed.

Since the Last Newness is the supreme aim, the aim of the aims, of the process of emergence of new features, we can affirm that all intermediate purpose is remitted to it in last term, and that all capacity of partial newness is only an aspect of the capacity to produce the last newness.

We identify the "Last Newness" with trascendent God; and the capacity to produce it, present in all the parts or aspects of the reality, but that is not property but of the totality, we identified it with the immanence of God, the power of God, the spirit of God.
The "capacity of God" is then immanent to the Nature, intrinsic to her, inseparable of its essence, although nonidentifiable with her. It is in her, but it is not she. This we mean when we called it "immanent". And it supposes, obviously, to trascendent God.

If we recognize an intrinsic capacity of the Nature to produce partial new features, a "creative power" present in the evolutionary process like intrinsic quality and not like external agent, or a free and creative capacity of the human activity, for example, we are in the fund recognizing the presence and action of the spirit of God, of immanent God. The cosmic evolutionary process is identified thus with the divine creation.

4._ Spirit

But the action of the Spirit, with being fully efficient, is not absolutely determinant of each plot, or particular phenomenon, of the reality. If thus was, do not there would be space neither time, neither would be able there to be process neither any capacity, since all would be "instant act", immediate execution of the Last Newness.

It admits, however, certain inertia, certain spontaneity, a resistance, a tendency opposed "towards the nothing", in each event, that nevertheless is beaten in the assembly of the process. The action of the Spirit seems more to a "heuristic tendency" that to an imposed and irresistible force. It controls the process, but it does not drown it. It directs the events, pilots them, like with "drops of providence in a sea of chance and necessity". For that reason it is only discovered "like hidden" in his more intimate intimacy.
(The spirit of God, yes, he plays dice, but is somewhat "cheating": he loads them a little.)

We were mistaken seriously if we yield to the temptation to consider to the Spirit like a force of external origin to the Nature; as if trascendent God was not the culmination and completeness of the cosmic process but "a being" who exists "parallelly" to this one, and that acts from outside on it, continuously or intermittently. No; the spirit of God is truly immanent to the Nature, is entirely inseparable of her, so that, even recognizing the action of God, we can say that the Nature experiences the creative process "by itself".
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