Isdom -- the locus of wisdom?

The Isdom of the Wisdom Society: Embodying time as the heartland of humanity (Part #4)

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The suggestion above -- that wisdom is uniquely related to the properties of space-time -- frames a question as to the locus of wisdom and of the quality of knowing with which it is associated.

In what follows the suggestion is that this may be fruitfully explored in relation to the quality of understanding in the present moment -- the Spirit of Now, as articulated by Peter Russell (The Global Brain, 1983; The White Hole in Time: Our Future Evolution and the Meaning of Now, 1992). This theme has been explored in earlier papers (see Presenting the Future, 2001; Present Moment Research: exploration of nowness, 2001; Composing and Engendering the Future, 2001)

Paradoxically, as one might expect with respect to a "timeless" quality, its uniqueness derives from a way of "being in the present". This focus on the present is echoed in many sources of wisdom -- as the key to appropriate action in the more extended framework of space and time. Its proximity is for example stressed in various religions. Judaism and Islam recognize that the separation between Heaven and Hell is but a "hair's breadth" -- echoed by Zen in the acknowledgement that the separation between enlightenment and ignorance is again just one "hair's breadth".

It is for this reason that -- playfully -- it is suggested here that the domain of wisdom might usefully be recognized as "Isdom". This might be seen as corresponding to terms such as "Kingdom", "Dukedom" or "Fiefdom" -- except that the focus is on the domain of "is-ness" in the present. The suffix "dom", deriving from domain and dominion, has connotations that include:

• the highest taxonomic category in biological classification ranking above that of "kingdom"
• a sphere of knowledge, influence, or activity
• the set of elements to which a mathematical or logical variable is limited; specifically: the set on which a function is defined (Note that an "integral domain" is a mathematical ring in which multiplication is commutative, which has a multiplicative identity element, and which contains no pair of nonzero elements whose product is zero)
• a realm or region in which something is dominant or holds a pre-eminent position

The domain, rather than emphasizing the spatial as is conventionally the case, here emphasizes the temporal -- as one in which the time dimension is pre-eminent -- a complex standing wave in time, for example. Additionally, however, given the intensity of the subjective focus, it might be considered to have echoes of the 6 "curled-up" dimensions of the 10-dimensional framework of string theory (see Higher dimensionality as the prime characteristic of human consciousness? 2003). In the spirit of David Bohm (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980), it would then be associated in some special way with implicate order [more | more]. Arthur Young (The Geometry of Meaning, 1978) has explored a related view in terms of inverse time (1/T) rather than negative time (-T). Inverse time would then be very short -- eternity in an instant -- implying that:

"in the 'anti' world there might be an unlimited amount of energy in an instant àf time...This compaction of time would give it the character of omnipresence -- not going 'backward' in time, away from the present, but instead going more deeply into the present. This interpretation has the merit of conforming to references in countless religions and mythologies to the super-sensible, nonphysical celestial world..." (p. 81).

As argued elsewhere (Hyperspace Clues to the Psychology of the Pattern that Connects, 2003), the focus by cosmologists on Big-Bang type origins of the universe, to be eventually followed by a Big-Crunch collapse, suggests that:

From a psychological perspective this concept might be interpreted as an effort to project as far as possible from the present -- into the most inaccessibly distant past -- a "golden era" of integration. And as an effort to project into the inaccessibly distant future -- the possibility of re-integration. This may be consistent with the continuing depersonalized globalization of the world of material value according to a constrained logic -- as matched by the continuing collapse of individual spiritual life, forced to "curl up" into insignificance. It is perhaps no wonder that the importance of drugs and substance abuse is increasing explosively to offer individuals access to "knight's move thinking" ... with its more creative freedom of association.

But from a "psycho-spiritual" perspective, it is also interesting to speculate on the possibility that the "communication space" experienced by an individual is subject to an analogous explosive expansion at birth -- and to violent collapse at death. Or, even more intriguing, that such an analogous explosive expansion takes place in any significant moment of creativity in the life of an individual -- to be lost (or quashed) with any subsequent reversion to banality or loss of focus (or meditative concentration). This might accord with some existential and meditative experiences which -- as with many high-energy physical experiments -- would be difficult to demonstrate or replicate.

Any such significance in the moment derived from a Big-Crunch collapse could also be derived from the various doomsday scenarios currently foreseen for the current century for humanity and the planet -- including the temporal collapse explored by Peter Russell (The White Hole in Time: Our Future Evolution and the Meaning of Now, 1992). Attention can be significantly focused if humanity is considered to be on Death Row (see also Globalization of Death: a checklist, 2003). The imagination of death is a a feature of religious studies, mythology and spiritual discipline.

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