Is God a Noun or a Verb? I don't give a damn what the Bible says. I don’t give a damn what the dictionaries say. God is the word without definition. Regardless of how expansive we may believe our definition of God is, it falls infinitely short. Definitions require finiteness, and from any point in any direction it must be understood that God is anything but finite. One must also assume that the infinite exists if one presumes to argue rationally about it. The Null Hypothesis becomes worse than worthless upon transcending the shimmering borders of a finite physical reality.
Boundaries exist within the infinite. We witness boundaries. We, through life, are committed and contracted to them. But even boundaries have boundaries. We here reading and writing agree upon a boundary called “matter”. For many thousands of years Homo Sapiens and The Progenitors have attempted to approach and transcend this boundary in order to discover or deny why things are as they become. Fire was the first miracle, the first witnessed transmutation of matter. If Aristotle could be brought forth and shown the wonders revealed by science since his time, what would he think? Would he agree that reality is rooted in the infinite and immaterial? To approach these transient boundaries, To follow “matter” as it leads us beyond what we in this moment call real is the evolution of evolutions. We follow God, infinitely at the heels of God, through to the essence of mind.
What is permanent? If anything is permanent it must exist in all time by definition. According to Aristotle, that which is permanent is fixed and changeless and has no becoming. Therefore, to claim that anything is permanent is to say that it must “now” exist in both the past and future. So, what is permanent? We may piously reply that only the Living God is permanent and leave it at that, leaving this statement hanging on its uncomprehended cross as it were.
We may call reality the definition between beings. This is a fatal but necessary assumption which gives actuality to life as we know it. But what happens when all known definitions between beings dissolves? Perhaps this state approximates the moment of death, as if we are walking through curtains of hippie beads which are hung endlessly. The spaces between these curtains we call life. We are born and die through these curtains, forgetting their relative transparency. We linger between, in a corner of the infinite, and chat, and dine and make war upon our mutual subjection, until, again in death, perhaps we remember that we have been forever passing through.
We learn from science that matter transcends itself. Does mind share this attribute of transcendence with matter? If it does, deeper and deeper we go, into waters of which we know nothing. We dive for the top and rise to the bottom, never encountering either. Our minds forage through the infinite and eternal variety of subjection, forming into our finite but transient selves groups of ideas similar to their collection, becoming living batteries of mind in a voluntary imprisonment of a portion of the ultimate mind; a renegade from the One.
It here becomes apparent that this line of argument assumes a continuum of mind and consciousness. As at one time matter was believed to have irreducible foundations, deductively we may follow the crumbling of material finiteness with the redefinition of ourselves.
An ancient document which may shed some light upon these questions has recently been discovered by archaeologists in Greece. The document is purported to be a rendering of a conversation recorded by an anonymous scribe who overhead the conversation from a stall in a public lavatory in Athens. The document is written on a scroll of very soft two-ply papyrus, leading many to believe that the origin of the document is as claimed. The conversation is between a man named Socrates, who is being escorted to his trial, and Wipus, the officer escorting him to the place of trial.
Wipus: Hurry up now!
Socrates: ah, as one’s probability of death increases, everything becomes hurry. And have not you also the need to leave behind a bit of waste for the historians to quarrel over? For I see by your walk that you perceive words are but words, containing in themselves but themselves until a hearer projects upon them the words in his own mind. And if the words a man reflects upon cause a quarrel within his soul, in order to preserve the comfort of his soul he will readily assume that the speaker is evil in his setting up of the mirror of the hearer’s mind.
Wipus:
Socrates: A man is prisoner to his happiness.
Wipus: You are a prisoner, Socrates.
Socrates: True, but I am not a prisoner to my own happiness, so I may find ever greater happiness as I leap from stone to stone in the river of the mind of God.
Wipus: But surely, Socrates, some of these stones are slippery, and some lie beneath the surface. And some are themselves being swept along by the current, so you must fall into the river and be devoured by the serpents which lie in wait.
Socrates: Can one who has never fled the comfortable stone on which he was born know that these serpents exist?
Wipus: Undoubtedly, I say.
Socrates: And how does one know that these serpents exist? By looking into the river?
Wipus: Not only in this manner, but also by observing the fate of one who ventures into the water, as have you apparently.
Socrates: What do those remaining behind say? That the man who ventures among the serpents is a fool? Say they that all must stay upon the rock or meet a similar fate? And if one contests this rule may they shove him unprepared into the water to prove this as fact?
Wipus: In doing so they may save countless innocents by discouraging further ignorant acts.
Socrates: and thereby precluding any reasonable attempt of the journey with a greater act of ignorance. What becomes of he who is devoured?
Wipus: He becomes serpent feces upon the bottom of the river.
Socrates: In doing so has he not reached a new stone? Is not the stone which protrudes through the surface of the water but a portion of the bottom of the river? Will he not become, eventually, a seaweed which may be eaten by the fish, and becoming a fish may he become those on another dry stone as the fish is eaten?
Wipus: Perhaps, by chance. But in what form?
Socrates: In many, in patience! But all of this may be avoided by swimming intelligently.
Wipus: How, Socrates, is this achieved if safe refuge can not be seen from the point of departure?
Socrates: You recall that this river is called the mind of God?
Wipus: Reluctantly, yes.
Socrates: Does not the river know all that is within it?
Wipus: It quite probably does.
Socrates: Then one could know in which direction to swim by knowing a portion of what the river knows.
Wipus: Do I understand you to be saying that, in fact, one can know the mind of God?
Socrates: You have grasped my allusion in its intended context, my dear Wipus.
Wipus: Even so, in no manner am I able to concur with such a blasphemous assumption.
Socrates: So now, Wipus, I shall set up the mirror with my words which may show to your soul its error in its self-complacency.
Wipus: Pray, Socrates, continue. (nervous laughter)
Socrates: Do you agree, dear Sir, that God has a mind?
Wipus: Of which God do you speak?
Socrates: Of the God of the gods, of course!
Wipus: Is there such?
Socrates: Do you admit a plurality of gods?
Wipus: Yes, by the state , I do.
Socrates: And do not these several gods in their plurality require an arena of existence in which to intercourse and manipulate the affairs of man?
Wipus: Yes, I suppose they must.
Socrates: Are these gods not in turn subject to the arena to which they owe their separate identities?
Wipus: I believe, Socrates, that I perceive your meaning.
Socrates: This arena then must be the God of the gods, as the gods are under the final power of the arena to which they owe their separate existences.
Wipus: But, Socrates, regarding your earlier hypothesis, how can one know the mind of this God of the gods?
Socrates: Will you agree, my friend, that this God must be great?
Wipus: The greatest, without doubt.
Socrates: And if one is to say that this god is the greatest, must not it seem that this god is infinite? For nothing which depends upon an external arena for its existence can be the God of gods, nor the greatest. In order to have no external arena in which to exist there must be no boundaries between itself and that in which it exists. Is not that which may have no boundaries the greatest, and is it not infinite? Would not this be the God of the gods?
Wipus: It must be so. Definitely!
Socrates: Yes! The only definite infinite!
Wipus and Socrates: (Much gleeful laughter, even in such putrid atmosphere!)
Socrates: And again, must not this God, if this God be the greatest, have the greatest mind?
Wipus: Yes! Yes!
Socrates: If this mind is the greatest, must it be infinite?
Wipus: Definitely!
Socrates: And if something is infinite it must have no boundary, correct?
Wipus: Of course.
Socrates: Therefore, the mind of God must contain your mind. And if the mind of God has no boundary, you cannot keep the mind of God out of yours. So where, my gifted Wipus, do you draw the line between your mind and the mind of God?
Wipus:
Socrates: Shall we go?
Wipus: (urinating)
Socrates: Hurry up now!
KDO ~1987