EPILOGUE
If the ideas expressed in this paper are to be more than an incongruous collection of chimerical concepts then the relationship that exists between the cosmos and our central nervous systems must be far different than we had previously recognized. These ideas and the system of thought that embodies them can help clarify our insight into the significant connection that might exist between our consciousness and our being.
It is the position of this paper that all three men: Nietzsche, Hitler, and Jesus had likely experienced an eternal recurrence in their lives. Nietzsche was significantly aware of it—at least to the extent that he incorporated it into his philosophy as “the highest formula of affirmation that can possibly be attained.”1 Of the other two men, Jesus appears to have recognized the experience most completely—at least to the maximum extent possible for a human being. Jesus understood the eternal recurrence as a completely subjective experience—a subjective experience he shared with his three disciples. Hitler, on the other hand, failed to comprehend its true significance as a purely subjective experience. It remained for him an objective but spiritual experience, a mystifying premonition, a divine revelation from another realm about his life’s mission on earth. This difference in perspectives helps to explain the divergence of historical realities that resulted from the eternal recurrence of Jesus the Nazarene and Adolf Hitler the Nazi. It also helps explain the subconscious and psychological satisfaction that motivates a suicide bomber. Coincidently with the exact moment that an individual commits subjectively to becoming a suicide bomber and then actually does commit suicide in the future, they likely experience a similar recurrence subjectively at that moment. Unrecognized by the individual, it is for him as it was for Hitler, a singular spiritual event, a mystifying premonition, a divine revelation about this life’s mission on earth. Failing to comprehend its true nature and significance, the individual subconsciously experiences this eternal recurrence as affirmation of his own life. By misconstruing his recurrence in space-time, he exchanges an irrational hope of eternal rewards for the real and divine gift of his own contemporary life in God’s eternal kingdom. See: Looking for Eternal Life
If the central theme of this paper is correct and its supposition about Jesus accurate then the question remains: what else must be true to render these assumptions also true? Most significantly, it must be true that our present model of the universe is largely incomplete. As a model, this concept of a singular universe is inadequate. It does not facilitate any meaningful interpretation of human consciousness with respect to an eternal recurrence. If the final supposition of this paper is to be valid, that is, if the incorporation of the eternal recurrence with a gradient of consciousness elucidates the nature of being, then the actual cosmos must be significantly different than we presently understand it to be. It must be a plurality of alternate or parallel universes. As Max Tegmark wrote in Scientific American, "Each universe is merely a small part of a larger 'multiverse'."2
If this model is accurate, then a multiverse effectively implies an end to reductionism in cosmology. Throughout the modern era, western society has pursued a reductionism approach to studying nature. This approach connotes a western belief that in separating or distinguishing the component parts of a thing, by revealing its inner relationships, we ultimately discover its true nature and thereby its true being. In dogmatically following this course of study, in analyzing nature to its infinitesimal limit we are beginning to discover a plethora of possible being in the realm of the infinitely small. The single, one- way temporal dimensional universe in which we attempt to understand the nature of being by reductionism might be the only universe in which that inquiry isolates the nature of being and thereby falsifies it. Any attempt to define the infinitesimal properties of our existence yields quantum shadows of that existence, cosmic twins. "The idea of such an alter ego seems strange and implausible," writes Tegmark, "but it looks as if we will just have to live with it, because it is supported by astronomical observations."3
Notes
EPILOGUE
1. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 69.
2. Max Tegmark, "Parallel Universes," Scientific American, May 2003, 41.
3. Ibid.