When the man of God Benedict was standing at the window in prayer to Almighty God … he suddenly gazed and saw light poured down from on high that cast away all the nights gloom … A very marvelous thing followed that sight, because, as he himself later said, the whole world was brought before his eyes, gathered together in one ray of light
St. Gregory the Great, Dialogues
Omnia in omnibus, proprie autem in unoquoque
(All things are in all things, but each according to its proper nature)
Proclus
In recent time the idea of the ‘holographic universe’ has gained in popularity, even among some of the higher echelons of the scientific community, and it feels like everyday we are bombarded with a new article about how the universe is really a 'hologram', a 'computer simulation' or whatever. Now, we ourselves, profess to not have any expertise on the ‘physics’ concerning this question whatsoever, this being however quite irrelevant, for all genuine cosmology has ultimately to flow from the ‘meta-physical’ properly speaking, and as such knowledge of the ‘holographic’ or ‘fractal’ nature of manifestation (‘the whole in its parts, as above so below’) can be found in all the ancient Traditions, so often denounced as ‘pre-scientific’ or even ‘primitive’.[1] We thus want to briefly elaborate on the topic, not from the viewpoint of profane ‘science’, but that of the sacra scientia of Perennial Wisdom (‘Intellect is truer than science’, says already Aristotle).
Now, string theory seems to hold that the universe is built up from the most elemental building blocks (the ‘strings’ in question) to ever more complex units (quarks, atoms, molecules etc.), which also corresponds to the formation of ever higher (spatial) ‘dimensions’; form the ‘zero-dimension’ to the first, second and eventually the third, which we inhabit, spanning further onto 10 or even more. According to some proponents of the ‘holographic universe’, our three-dimension universe would thus appear as a ‘hologram’ projected from a two-dimensional ‘space’ or ‘field’ (the ‘holographic plate’).
This view seems to be quite the inversion of traditional metaphysics, which holds that the fundamental origin of the universe is not be sought ‘there below’ but up on high, such that manifestation is not be conceived of as being built from ‘bottom-up’ (a typical evolutionary fallacy) [2] but emanating, as it were, ‘top-down’, ‘from the Hayoth and Serafim to the lowliest worm on earth’, as the Zohar famously says; its ultimate Source being, in the last consequence, the Supernal Principle itself (‘In the beginning was the Word’, and not some ‘quarks’ or most primitive ‘atoms’).[3]
[Notabene: A similar ‘inversion’ (cette tendance ‘démocratique’ à tout faire sortir ‘d’en bas’) is found unsurprisingly in the Darwinistic ‘evolutionary tree’, starting from some ‘primordial cell’ and building up to ever more complex life-forms, which constitutes a plain inversion of a ‘Porphyrian tree’ or the traditional ’chain of being’ more generally. We might also note that the desperate search for some ‘most fundamental’ building block, which we have been engaged in throughout the past decades cannot but seem ridiculous to anyone familiar with basic metaphysics, for the very ‘fractality’ of the universe, which by now should be well established even among scientists, i.e. its indefiniteness, means that one could indeed spend an indefinite amount of time to probe ever deeper and deeper into the substrates of matter before ever reaching a final ‘end’, a last atomos, or indivisible ‘unit’ beyond which there lies nothing more ‘fundamental’. Already Plotinus knew that ‘there are no atoms’ and that ‘all bodies are divisible endlessly’ (cf. Enn. II.4.7; III.7). But such is the nature of profane science, which, having cut itself of from the Supernal Centre, is doomed to circle the periphery indefinitely].
A quite similar ‘pattern’ like that proposed by string theory, was taught by the Pythagoreans, albeit exactly inverted. According to the geometric symbolism for which the school is so famous, manifestation proceeds in fourfold movement of: Point (or ‘number’) → Line → Surface (Triangle) → and Solid (Tetrahedron), the ‘manifested’ or ‘perceptible body’ (aistheton soma). This is of course the Tetraktys, which, according to Pythagoras, is the ‘fount and root of eternal nature’, the Tetrad being the seal of all perfection (1+2+3+4=10).
Here, too, we find a kind of ‘dimensional succession’, which proceeds from the simple to the complex, with the only difference that the ‘lowest’ dimension is in fact, ontologically speaking, the ‘highest’, for the ‘numbers’ of course represent the ‘forms’ or what Plato called the ‘ideas’ (eide), i.e. the monas (‘point’) of the Nous (and not the subcorporeal realm of quarks and atoms).
According to Plotinus, the Nous is the first emanation (hypostasis) of the One (or ‘the Good’: t’Agathon), which, in its principal ‘reversion’ (epistrophé), contemplates itself, and, unable to grasp the ‘dazzling obscurity’ of its utter simplicity (which is beyond all forms, even ‘beyond oneness’), breaks it up into the pleroma of ideas (ta noeta).
However this ‘multiplicity’ of ideas, which results from its ‘fragmental vision’, is still ‘fused’ into the integral unity of the kosmos noetos (a unity which is however ‘composite’, or perfectly ‘fused without confusion’, as opposed to the absolute super-simplicity of the ineffable One). This multiplicity of primordial ideas is traditionally counted as numbering 9+1 in toto (the number nine symbolically expressing the paradigmatic, all-encompassing totality of intelligibles) [4], as for example in the Egyptian Ennead, or the 10 ‘noetic’ or ‘eidetic numbers’ (arithmoi eidetikoi) of the Pythagoreans (the first, or ’+1’, being the ‘Idea of the Good’ itself, tou agathou idea) and likewise the kabbalistic ‘Tree of Life’ with its 10 sefirot (of which the first, Keter, the ‘crown’, could also be placed ‘above’ the enneadic ‘body’ of Adam Kadmon itself and could thus likewise be equated with the ‘One’, Ain Sof).
Now, each sefira is said to contain all others (likewise, each of the four ‘worlds’ is thought to contain in itself the whole ‘Tree’), just as each ‘idea’ or ‘form’ (eidos) mirrors the whole of Intellect (Nous), but from its own perspective.[5]
[Just like according to Leibniz, each monads mirrors the whole universe form its unique perspective in their indivisible and interrelated plenum – omnia in omnibus: “Each portion of matter may be conceived as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fish. But each branch of a plant, each limb of an animal, each drop of its humours, is also such a garden or such a pond. And although [they] are not themselves plant or fish, yet they still contain them”, Monadology §67-8].
The ‘intelligible realm’ or ‘world of ideas’ appears thus like the ‘net of Indra’ (an infinite number of jewels, each reflecting all others), making up one coherent totality (‘They were identical wheels, sparkling like diamonds in the sun … wheels within wheels, like a gyroscope’ – Ez. 1:16)[6].
To use a modern image, we could say that the forms are like pieces of ‘film’ (or cells in a holographic plate, this plate being the 'mirror of Wisdom' as the indivisible plenum of ideas) through which the pure light of the One is projected into receptive nothingness (or apeiron); this projected ‘image’ being in fact nothing else than our perceptible world (kosmos aisthetos), or ‘manifestation’ more generally. It is precisely this image which is expounded by Plato in his famous ‘allegory of the cave’[7] and it is also in this way that Ibn ‘Arabi says that the world is ‘God’s shadow’ [8] (‘A sun shining through a thousand bits of glass, beaming to plain sight through each a ray of color’, according to Fakhr al-din ‘Iraqi).[9]
Another analogy would be the perennial image of the ‘central point’ (the noetic monas), which is then projected via its radii (the individual eide) as ‘circumference’ (in a kaleidoscopic mandala), or ‘sphere’[10] (‘A sphere, equally poised from the centre in every direction’, as Parmenides says, meaning that the Supernal Centre is equally present at the ‘centre’, or ‘heart’, of all peripheral points, so that from the highest view it truly can be said that centrum est ubique, circumferentia nusquam), an image particularly popular among the Greeks, but also to be found in Kabbala, where the three supernal sefirot of the (unmanifest) ‘Triple Face’ (Keter-Chockmah-Binah) can be conceived of in terms of a ‘circle’ and the lower seven sefirot as a ‘sphere’ (the ‘triple point’ of the supernal yod[11] being the centre, which then unfolds along the six cardinal directions, Malkut being their mutual circumference).[12]
The supernal circle, is the circle God ‘traced on the deep’ (Prov. 8:27) in principio, the archetypical circle which is the blueprint for the whole cosmic sphere (the ‘house of Wisdom’ built on the ‘seven pillars’ of universal extension). The fathomless ‘deep’ represents the ‘groundless ground’ of the Superessential Godhead (Non-being/Ain), in which God ‘contracts’ (tzimtzum) His uncreated Light into one luminous point (Being/Ehyeh). This primordial point is then ‘stretched out’ by ‘the Spirit (ruach Elohim) hovering over the deep’ (Gen. 1:2), who is the ‘Wind (ruach) like a tempest coming out of the North’ [13] (Ez. 1:4), the tempest (or 'vibration', Vox Domini super aquas - Ps. 28) turning like a ‘wheel within a wheel’[14] – ‘they were called: whirling wheels’ (Ez. 10:13) – i.e. like a whirlwind or vortex, which spirals out into manifestation.
A vortex is in fact like a ‘wheel in another wheel’, a circle that contains the other circles revolving around the same center and constituting, in reality, the one unclosed curve of a spiral; it wraps itself around its starting point or pole, from which it regularly moves away more and more, so that, while being one, its connected circular turns or arcs appear as several circles ... This spiraling movement of the Divine Irradiation is effected by the fiat lux [the primordial sound], the universal deployment of the luminous Continuity of the One through all the obscure discontinuities of the cosmic multitude that it generates by and in its own tenebrous Receptivity (Schaya, Creation en Dieu, VIII).
Thus the essential point radiates outwards into manifestation in a spiraling movement, separation and distance to the Principle becoming more and more accentuated with each circle. The cosmic spiral seeks its infinite expansion but it can only ever be indefinite and is wholly encompassed by the Only Infinite, who is both the infinitismal small point at the ‘centre’ (the ‘eye of the storm’) and the unbounded ‘Exteriority’: Deus est locum omnium (‘smaller than a grain of sand and greater than all these worlds’ – Chând. Upan. III); He is interior intimo et superior summo, as St. Augustine says (Conf. III), Alpha and Omega, and as such the centrifugal radiation of the spiral returns in a centripetal counter-movement flowing back into its source (the twofold movement of the Divine Spiration, exhalting-inhaling, prôodos-epistrophé; cf. also here)[15].
These two movements, at the same time opposed and complementary, together constitute all life, the twofold vital act of the dilation and concentration of the ‘heart’ and ‘arteries’ of the universe, the diastole and systole of every created point, possessing its own spiral of existence within the macrocosmic spiral of which it is a reflection (ibid.).
Of course the ‘central point’ we've been talking about (dove s'appunta ogni ubi ed ogni quando – Dante), which ‘projects’ itself holographically into the circumference of manifestation, does not correspond to some ‘2nd dimension’, nor to any ‘spatial dimension’ at all for that matter (its geometrical extension being absolutely nil), but rather to the ‘unmanifest’ properly speaking (the ‘nothing, which is everything’)[16].
The whole circle of creation [Skr. bhava-cakra, St. James’ ho trochos tês geneseôs] really begins and ends in a single point, i.e. the Essence of God, which is perceived by us under the form of extension ... a flash of Divine illumination (tajalli) revealing the One as the Many and the Many as the One (cf. A.K. Coomaraswamy, Time and Eternity, IV).
Omnis illuminatio ab uno lumine; et multi sunt radii, et unum lumen (Hugh of St-Victor); or, as Cusanus puts it: ‘There is but one Divine Word that gleams in all things’, all creatures being but different expressions of it.[17] We could thus say that Creation is the fractal ‘unfolding’ (explicatio) of the Word, which ‘creates all things and is created in all things’, as Erigena says, like a ‘fountain flowing into itself’ (St. Dionysius). Or, platonically speaking: manifestation is the ‘projection’ of the One, its self-revelation; the ‘rays of the Good’, refracted, as through a prism (cf. also the symbol of the Pythagorean Pentagram, which they called 'the all' - to pan - and which, geometrically, is a perfect fractal).
It is the Good (Agathon) made diverse. It might be likened to a living sphere teeming with variety, to a globe of faces radiant with faces all living, to a unity of souls … with Intellect enthroned over all, so that the place entire glows with noetic splendor (Plotinus, Enneads VI.7.15).
It is thus not inherently wrong to speak of an ‘increasing complexity’, although not in the sense of a gradual ‘building up’, but as ‘dispersion’, resulting from the increasing distance to the utterly simple Principle.[18]
[We are presented here with an analogy which is indeed quite interesting, for the ‘world’ (as manifestation of the Logos) could indeed be called ‘the body of Christ’. Now, as it known the sacramental Corpus Eucharisticum likewise exhibits a ‘fractal nature’, for each consecrated Host becomes the full Body of the Lord, and at the same time, so does every single particle of each Host, without He Himself being ever diminished in any way whatsoever (we might also note that there have been scientific investigations of Eucharistic miracles in which every single drop of blood weighed as much as the rest together)].
But the Word is not only the Supreme Principle (Principium ego – Joh. 8:25), but also ‘Universal Man’, a fact which is certainly not without interest concerning the matter at hand.
As we have said, the universe as we see it, our ‘plane of manifestation’ (or the human state more speicifically), could be located, in a sense, at the ‘midpoint’ between the two poles of creation (the ‘upper waters’ of the kosmos noetos and the ‘lower waters’ of apeiron, or between the 'heavens', swarga-loka, and the 'hells', pâtâla-loka, according to the eastern cosmology), between ‘being’ and ‘not-being’ (the suspension between these two poles being what is commonly referred to as ‘becoming’), the fallen world being likewise placed (on this particular 'circular' plane) between between the centre (terrestrial paradise) and periphery (the 'outer darkness').[19] This ‘middle position’ (geocentrism, 'anthropic principle') also corresponds to the role of man, as the mediator between ‘above’ and ‘below’, or God and creation.[20]
Man truly is the ‘measure of all things’, because he is in a sense the ‘form of all things’, the human form being the ‘primordial form’ which contains all forms; an idea also expressed in the doctrines of the ‘Universal Man’ (Adam Kadmon, Purusha, Insân-i-kâmil) as a kind of Philonic logos or Platonic Nous.
We could say that the Nous beholds the One in the form of a man (‘I looked and saw a figure like that of a man’ – Ez. 8:2), or, in terms of Kabbala, that the totally of the self-revelation of Ain Sof (the sefirotic tree) makes up the ‘body’ of Adam Kadmon.
Thus Böhme says that “the eternal Being (das ewige Wesen) is like unto a Man and this whole world, too, is like a Man” (De Incarn. III.6) and that everything is contained in the human form:
All is in Man: heaven and earth, the stars and the elements, even the triplicity of the Deity, and there is nothing, that is not in man. All creatures are in man, of this world and the angelic one; we are all, with the whole being of all beings, but one body with many members, and every member is its own whole [holon]” (De Triplici Vita).
And finally in Sophiology, Heavenly Wisdom, God’s ‘Glory’: Sophia (as mundus archetypus), is likewise equated with ‘Celestial Humanity’. We may thus conclude that the 'prism' through which the pure white light is filtered is indeed nothing other than Man himself (the pan-creature), all beings being but 'refractions' of the human form.
And then, as they stood with folded wings, there was a voice from above the dome over their heads. Above the dome there was something that looked like a throne, sky-blue like a sapphire, with a figure like that of a human towering above the throne. From what I could see, from the waist up he looked like burnished bronze and from the waist down like a blazing fire. Brightness everywhere! The way a rainbow springs out of the sky on a rainy day—that’s what it was like. It turned out to be the Glory of God! (Ez. 1:25-28).
That we may thus attain to the Glory of the Most High, so help us God. Amen.
[1] Let it be clear from the start, that if we argue here for the ‘holographic nature’ of the universe, this is in no way to say that the cosmos is a literal hologram (i.e. a computer projection constructed by some higher beings or advanced humans, which is a position some ‘scientist’ actually seem to hold), but merely that it could be said to follow the ‘holographic principle’, mean that the ‘whole’ (holon) is contained in the parts and so on, just like in a ‘holographic plate’ each singe cell contains the whole image.
[2] A similar ‘inversion’ (cette tendance ‘démocratique’ à tout faire sortir ‘d’en bas’, as the Abbé Stéphane rightly points out) is found unsurprisingly in the Darwinistic ‘evolutionary tree’, starting from some ‘primordial cell’ and building up to ever more complex life-forms, which constitutes a plain inversion of a ‘Porphyrian tree’ or the traditional ’chain of being’ more generally.
[3] In fact the desperate search for some ‘most fundamental’ building block, which we have been engaged in throughout the past decades cannot but seem ridiculous to anyone familiar with basic metaphysics, for the very ‘fractality’ of the universe, which by now should be well established even among scientists, i.e. its indefiniteness, means that one could indeed spend an indefinite amount of time to probe ever deeper and deeper into the substrates of matter before ever reaching a final ‘end’, a last atomos, or indivisible ‘unit’ beyond which there lies nothing more ‘fundamental’. Already Plotinus knew that ‘there are no atoms’ and that ‘all bodies are divisible endlessly’ (cf. Enn. II.4.7; III.7). But such is the nature of profane science, which, having cut itself of from the Supernal Centre, is doomed to circle the periphery indefinitely.
[4] “The ennead is the greatest of the numbers within the decad and is an unsurpassable limit. At any rate, it marks the end of the formation of specific identities … That number admits nothing beyond the ennead, but rather everything circles around within it” (Iamblichus, Arithmetical Theology). We might also note that these 10 original numbers correspond exactly to the 10 dots of the Tetraktys, the uppermost one representing the One (or Agathon), the two below the primordial duality of peras and apeiron, or the monad and the ‘indefinite dyas’ (aoristos dyas), the triad could, under one aspect, be interpreted as the kosmos noetos, as the primary manifestation of the two primordial principles (analogous to Chockmah, the active, outflowing principle as the ‘Great Father’, and Binah, the passive, receptive principle, Magna Mater, which beget the heptad of the ‘lesser face’), whereas the quaternary is (in perfect accordance with the numerical symbolism of the 4) the kosmos aisthetos, or ‘manifestation’ more generally.
[5] Just like according to Leibniz, each monads mirrors the whole universe form its unique perspective in their indivisible and interrelated plenum – omnia in omnibus: “Each portion of matter may be conceived as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fish. But each branch of a plant, each limb of an animal, each drop of its humours, is also such a garden or such a pond. And although [they] are not themselves plant or fish, yet they still contain them” (Monadology §67-8).
[6] An image eerily reminiscent of the Böhmean vision of the inner process of the Divine Life: “Suppose a WHEEL standing before thee, with seven wheels one so made in the other that it could go on all sides, forward, backward and cross ways, without need of any turning back or stopping. In its going, that always one wheel, in its turning about, generateth the others, and yet none of them vanish out of sight, but that all seven be visible or in sight. The seven wheels always generating the naves in the midst or centre according to their turning about, so that the nave stand always free without alteration or removing, whether the wheels go forward or backward or cross ways or upward or downward. The nave always generating the spokes, so that in their turning about they stand right and direct from the nave to the fellies of the wheel: and yet none of the spokes to be out of sight, but still turning about thus one with another, going whithersoever the wind driveth it, and that without need of any turning back or stopping. Now observe what I shall inform you in the application of this. The seven wheels are the seven spirits of God, the one always generating the others, and are like the turning about of a wheel, which hath seven wheels one in another, and the one always wheeleth itself otherwise than the others in its station or position, and the seven wheels are hooped round with fellies, like a round globe …” (cf. Aurora XIII).
[7] The ‘Sun’ outside the cave represents the One or Agathon, the ‘fire’ is the Nous, the ‘puppeteers’ are the world soul or psyche tou panton, which ‘explicates’ or ‘unrolls’ the simple ideas (the ‘line’ and ‘surface’ of the Pythagorean symbolism), thus for example generating time as a ‘moving image of eternity’ (Tim. 37D). The ‘prisoners’, lastly, are the individual souls which are ensnared by the play of the ‘shadows’ (the ‘solids’ or aistheta somata) on the ‘wall’ (i.e. apeiron).
[8] „We say: Know that what one calls ‘other than the Real‘ and which is referred to as ‘the world’ is, in relation to the Real, as a shadow is to an object. It is the shadow of God. It is in just this way that existence is attributed to the world, for without doubt the shadow is existent in the sensory domain, albeit only when there is something wherein the shadow is manifest” (Fusus al-Hikam).
[9] In Plotinus we find there very interesting image of anima mundi as a ‘Dionysian mirror’ (Dionusou katoptroi), the ‘psychic waters’, on which the noetic unity is reflected and which prismatically breaks up the white light of Nous into the colorful multiplicity of manifestation. It might also be noted that, according to the Orphic myth, the ‘Universal Man’, Dionysius, was torn into 7 pieces by the ‘titanic dynameis’ of separation and dispersion, which also bears similarities with the Kabbala, according to which that Keter , the Supreme Principle (analogous to the One), sees itself through Chockmah (or Nous) in the ‘mirror of Binah’ (psyche tou pantos; these being only roughly analogous), in which it beholds its ‘7 lordly aspects’ (keeping with our prior analogy we might likewise say that Binah is the ‘prism’ through which the light of Chockmah is refracted into the 6 colors of the sefiroth of construction projected on the wall of Malkut) In fact the ‘emanation pattern’ of 1-3-7 could certainly be called ‘archetypical’ and is to be found all over (we might also recall the image of the ‘seven rayed Sun’, Helios heptaktis, an image likewise found in the Veda): Out of the original unity (1) emerges primordial duality (1+2=3), which is then ‘manifested’ in the heptad (7). Thus the noetic unity is refracted into 7 ‘pieces’ through the psyche for, as Proclus tells us, ‘the division into seven is proper primarily to Soul’, it being that ‘which first divides and defines’ (in Parm. III). However, this ‘tearing up’ does not in any way diminish the noetic totality in itself: ‘And this is why the theologians say that at the dismemberment of Dionysus his intellect (nous) was preserved undivided through the foresight of Athena [the goddess of Wisdom, i.e. Sophia]” (Proclus, ibid.). The kosmos noetos stay ever immaculate, whence also the Plotinian doctrine of the ‘undescended soul’ according to which the anthos nou or apex mentis never fully descends into the ‘shadow realm’ of manifestation.
[10] Cf. also the image of the ‘dancing spheres’ employed by Plotinus in Enn. I.8. We might also note that the ‘angrogynes’ of the Platonic myth are described as ‘spherical’ (cf. Symposium 190A).
[11] The upper tip of the yod (י) representing Keter, the middle bar Chockmah and the lower tip Binah, according to kabbalistic exegesis.
[12] The ‘holographic’ nature of the kosmos is also illustrated by the ‘Pythagorean Pentagram’ (a perfect fractal, each side harmonically mirroring all others, indefinitely expandable; a true ‘wheel within a wheel’), which, according to Lucian (cf. Pythagorean Sources), they called ‘totality’ (to pan), i.e. the totality of manifestation, which was also represented by the Dodecahedron (‘The sphere from twelve pentagrams’), thorough which, according to Plato, ‘the great God created the world’ (Timaeus 55C). These figures also open the door to a number of esoteric mathematical symbolisms involving the ‘golden number’ phi φ (the fractal pattern par excellence), which further emphasize the ‘holographic’ nature of the ‘universe’ (pantos), but which we cannot hope to elaborate on here. We might note in passing that according to some esoteric Platonists the logos of the ‘existential spiral’ is infact phi, which would mean that the irridation of the Divine Essence follows the pattern of a ‘golden spiral’ (also known as ‘fibonacci spiral’), which would certainly explain the ubiquity of golden ratios/numbers in the universe.
[13] This also the ‘polar axis’, marked by the pole star who also symbolically designates the ‘keystone’ of the cosmic edifice.
[14] The prophet speaks of a ‘single wheel’ which then multiplies and takes the appearance of ‘four wheels’ (cf. Ez. 1), these being the ‘four worlds’, or the three world of manifestation (corporal, subtle, spiritual) and the ‘fourth’ (skr. turiya) being the realm of the unmanifested (hebr. olam ha-atziluth).
[15] As we’ve said before this double spiral is symbolized by letter S (as found in Spiritus), the upper part (centrifugal, upwards) could be said to signify the ‘upper worlds’ and the lower one (centripetal, downwards) the inferior ones.
[16] “Let be this everywhere and this aught, in comparison of this nowhere and this naught ... What is he that calleth it ‘naught’? Surely it is our outer man, and not our inner. Our inner man calleth it ‘All’ ... And therefore travail fast (earnestly) in this naught and this nowhere” (The Cloud of Unknowing); or, as Böhme puts it: “Nothing and All, or that nothing-visible out of which all things proceed ... Whosoever finds it, finds nothing and all things” (De vita mentali).
[17] We are presented here with an analogy which is indeed quite interesting, for the ‘world’ (as manifestation of the Logos) could indeed be called ‘the body of Christ’. Now, as it known the sacramental Corpus Eucharisticum likewise exhibits a ‘fractal nature’, for each consecrated Host becomes the full Body of the Lord, and at the same time, so does every single particle of each Host, without He Himself being ever diminished in any way whatsoever (we might also note that there have been scientific investigations of Eucharistic miracles in which every single drop of blood weighed as much as the rest together).
[18] This ‘distancing’ or apostasis from the noetic realm of eide to the phenomenological eikons, which manifests itself as duality of ‘good and evil’, being in the Abrahamic Traditions denoted by the ‘Fall’, resulting in avidyâ, the ‘ignorance’ of one’s eternal archetype contained in the Word (or Nous).
[19] We could say that the universe is in a sense truly ‘human-sized’, the human state representing the ‘mid-point’ from which an indefinite expansion to either extreme is possible (it has long been noted that the ‘macro-realities’ like galaxies and black holes correspond not seldom, in a ‘fractal manner’, to the ‘micro-realities’ like atoms and molecules).
[20] Contrary to scientific relativity (and its ideological ‘relativism’) the world which we perceive, with all its qualia and so on, could indeed be called ‘truer’ than the sub-corporeal realm of ‘physical reality’ (which is but an ‘abstraction’, the mere quantity of materia secunda, or materia signata quantitate).
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