Say: It is in Our power,
should We wish it, to cause all created things to expire in an instant, and,
with the next, to endue them again with life. The knowledge thereof, however,
is with God alone, the All-Knowing, the All-Informed.
(Baha'u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts: 39)
From last post we understood that there are two main ways
to understand resonance as the balance, equilibrium, symmetry, and harmony of
things: either through acoustic or
auditory metaphors, or through visual images, such as the Lewis structure in
chemistry. We can call these balances,
equilibriums, and harmonies vibrating resonant structures.
We
learned, too, that resonance, as what goes on in the excited state of
anti-symmetry, i.e. disequilibrium, is connected with freedom and creativity. A physical system can have as many resonant
frequencies as it has degrees
of freedom, each degree of freedom can vibrate as a harmonic oscillator. But too much reinforcing positive feedback on
a frequency can break down the system—as when a glass breaks at a certain
frequency that is held too long—because the system stores vibrational energy until it reaches
its limit. Too much negative feedback
brings about a rigid, sclerotic equilibrium that is death.
All
this implies, in my mind, several principles.
First, not only the periodic breakdown of a resonant structure, but also
the building of new ones upon different frequencies and new vibrations can occur. This, in turn, suggests profound implications
for the power of the human will to bring forth new reality—implications which I
cannot go into in detail in this post. Briefly,
I mean that an intentional, volitional attitude (which is a thought at certain
frequency or vibration) when held long enough and intensely enough may have the
power to shape or reshape reality.
Certainly the Manifestations of God had this power to a supreme
degree. Does not Baha’u’llah unequivocally
state of the effect of His Revelation upon a moribund human society that: “The world's
equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great,
this new World Order.” (Gleanings from the
Writings of Baha'u'llah: 136)
But further than
human society, yet intertwined with its changes and transformations, is the
effect of Revelation upon even the physical foundations of the entire
universe. Consider this statement: “I testify that no sooner had the First Word proceeded, through
the potency of Thy will and purpose, out of His mouth, and the First Call gone
forth from His lips than the whole creation was revolutionized, and all that
are in the heavens and all that are on earth were stirred to the depths.
Through that Word the realities of all created things were shaken, were
divided, separated, scattered, combined and reunited, disclosing, in both the
contingent world and the heavenly kingdom, entities of a new creation, and
revealing, in the unseen realms, the signs and tokens of Thy unity and oneness.
"No sooner had
that Revelation been unveiled to men's eyes than the signs of universal discord
appeared among the peoples of the world, and commotion seized the dwellers of
earth and heaven, and the foundations of all things were shaken. The forces of
dissension were released, the meaning of the Word was unfolded, and every
several atom in all created things acquired its own distinct and separate
character.” (Prayers
and Meditations by Baha'u'llah: 295-296)
So where does
this change and upheaval take place? I
say it takes place in what I am calling the resonant interval. By resonant interval I mean the spaces
between all living and created things, spaces that define the boundaries of
resonant structures. It is a kind of
boiling cauldron of potentials that flow into existence when intention is
focused upon it, something like lava erupting onto the surface of the earth that
cools into rich soil. Let us recall here
Baha’u’llah’s statement that: “The
world of existence came into being through the heat generated from the
interaction between the active force and that which is its recipient.” (Tablets of
Baha'u'llah: 140)
I also call it a
resonant interval to denote, on the auditory side, the vastly intricate activity of creating new
harmonies and balances that is the result of the Word of God calling into being a new creation. For there are no absolutely empty
spaces. The universe is a plenum not a
vacuum, but a plenum of various and discrete orders and kingdoms. The gaps or spaces or intervals are laboratories
of creation, the place to glimpse the substratum of life, the dark matter
behind visible matter, the realm of becoming or coming into being.
In the resonant interval is turbulence and
disequilibrium, death and birth, where chaos rules, complexity is built, and
new harmonies are established because a new master vibration, a new Name or
Title of God, has upset equilibrium, where either positive feedback or negative
feedback, or both, has pushed the system to its break boundary.
The resonating interval is the
interface of vibrational orders whose myriad recombinations in creative
interplay renews creation in new form.
It is where final states return to their opposite, where energy can
reverse and flow backwards, where end states become new beginnings and new
beginnings incorporate what ended. It brings the extremes into conjunction. These reversals are not only in structure but also in
polarity and the flow of energy.
Enantiodromia means “to flow backward” the name of the counterpart of
movement.
In the resonant interval the primary focus is
not on things, not upon objects created or creations transformed, but on emerging relations of creation and transformation from the active force of Will, Defining these new relations, bringing them
out from their invisibility, clothing them in language or numbers so they may
be perceived, is to peer inside the exploding nova of creative activity. Changing the focus of the mind from things to
their hidden relations does tend to blur the outline of the things themselves,
much as physicists cannot know simultaneously the position and momentum of a
photon. That is, relations are hidden
when the mind is focused on the things. Things become hidden if the focus is on
relations and interaction and interplay as things. But if the things are concretions of relations
then “these two are the same, yet they are different”. This is the glorious structure of the
interactions of the active force and that which is its recipient. Cosmologically and archetypically that is
Divine Will acting upon primal matter through the universal Intellect.
Between divine unity
(things created spiritually perfect and complete from the first) and earthly union
(the last and perfectly manifest form of the thing, its essence) is the vast
realm of indeterminacy. At every stage
of this journey from unity to union there is the resonant gap where all possibility exists until a
determinate choice is made. This is where
Destiny takes shape.
Resonant intervals appear at the
boundary/union of both extreme and end states of an organic system or living thing. From one view, end states are the exhaustion
of creative possibility, the state of total equilibrium which is approaching
death. They are, nonetheless, states
ready for transformation and sacrifice. The
system is in crisis. Extreme states are
the transformative energies at work. These have a different dynamic from those
incremental growth stages occurring within an order. End states are the prerequisite
conditions for extreme states to be manifest. Extreme states generate energy for humanity to
make leaps, the final leap being to transcend the entire order. But from the view of unity, these two states
are actually stages of one process leading to union.
In previous posts I have named these two stages as The End of Time and the Eclipse of Distance. The end of time is an end state, but the
eclipse of distance is an extreme state. It is the state where, as Baha’u’llah
says, “Paradise hath been brought nigh, and Hell made to blaze!” (Gems of Divine Mysteries: 16), where the B and the E are joined and knit
together.
Last post we read that resonance only occurs when the first
object is vibrating at the natural frequency of the second object. Creation must periodically be
recreated so that it resonates with the new spiritual message. In fact, it is the new Revelation that causes
the excited state that breaks balanced resonance, revelation being the new master
vibration. What
happens in that universal interval is the recreation of the universe. Thus for acoustic resonance that is the “calling into being” of all
things. For the visual image it is the
reconfiguration of creation.
More in next
post.
No comments:
Post a Comment