Randolph Dible is a lecturer in philosophy at St. Joseph’s University, New York, and a philosophy doctoral student at The New School for Social Research. His dissertation is titled Universal Ontology of the Infinite Sphere. He has recently published the chapter “First Philosophy and the First Distinction: Ontology and Phenomenology of Laws of Form,” in Laws of Form—A Fiftieth Anniversary (2023), and “Modulation to a New Key in The Syntax of Time: Peter Byrne Manchester and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Common Telos of the All” in Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research (2023). Other recent publications include “The Inner Story of the Further Shores of Knowing” in The Further Shores of Knowing (2021) and “Eternity, Time, and Reality in Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Ontological Phenomenology” in Natur und Kosmos (2020). Recent conference presentations include ”Theodor Conrad and Hedwig Conrad-Martius on Versunkenheit: Psychological, Transcendental, and Ontological Phenomenology of Immersion” (NASEP 2023 conference, University of San Diego, June 2023), “Universal Ontology and the First Distinction: Spencer-Brown, Husserl, and Conrad-Martius” (Laws of Form 2022 Conference, University of Liverpool, August 2022) and “Phenomenology as Seeing Through the World: Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Vision, Method, and Doctrine of Universal Ontology” (North American Society for Early Phenomenology, Dominican University College, Ottawa, April 2022). He has published on mysticism in the Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research (2010), and his Masters thesis is titled Phenomenology of the Spheres: from the Ancient Spherics to Philosophical Cosmology (2018). Randolph Dible’s current research focuses on the historical hypothesis of an infinite sphere and its relevance to the interpretation of formation in the cosmologies of George Spencer-Brown and Hedwig Conrad-Martius. Associated with this thesis is a general theory of extension and dimensionality. He is presently Communications Director for the North American Society for Early Phenomenology (NASEP), former Director of the Webinar for the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience (SOPHERE), and current Assistant to the Editor for the journal Phenomenological Investigations. He is also a founding member of the Spencer-Brown Society, co-organizer and host of the Laws of Form Conference series, and co-editor of Distinction: Journal of Form and the book series Marked States: Series on Form.
This is a distillation of the wisdom of a book that tells us “wisdom is not communicable” (142), and then proceeds to tell us quite a lot of important clues to this great spiritual secret that is present at the heart of the heart of absolutely everything.
I’m using my own marked-up text, folly available on a Google Slides presentation here: Siddhartha. Check it out!
Siddhartha is an influential book, a timeless classic spiritual bildungsroman. It’s a novel whose protagonist represents our own desire for spiritual progress, and embodies the Protean struggle we all have with understanding and appreciating the possibility and the reality of Enlightenment.
The way this works is I share bits of the text itself, selected and presented in one possible configuration (though of course there are others, and everyone’s own criterion for selection and presentation may vary widely), with little interruption of the text itself.
This Selection
I have chosen to focus on wisdom that is found towards the end of the book. The whole thing’s great, and the narrative is what one usually appreciates most about novels, but I’m focusing on the philosophical discussion at the end of the book, and so focus on the penultimate chapter “Om” (129-137) and the final chapter, “Govinda” (139-152).
Finally, as a key to this reading of the text, I have chosen the thematic nexus of items pertaining to (1.) the “secret art of thinking” (and waiting, and fasting) found throughout the text, and (2.) the bit about wisdom being incapable of communication. The rationale for focusing on these two themes is that a reader who is very serious about mining this book for wisdom will benefit from Hesse’s and Siddhartha’s struggle to indicate the incredible possibility that lurks incognito in cognition (1.), capable of activating the strange kind of engine that is the transmission of Supreme Spiritual Enlightenment (2.).
Presentation of Selections
The important thing about chapter 1, “The Brahmin’s Son,” is the philosophical situation of young Siddhartha in a Brahminical culture (Atman and Brahman are mentioned already on pages 3 and 4—see Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy for some more about such things, as well as my other Presentation Slide-Shows including key texts from Buddhism and Hinduism, such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamaka Karika, and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras), and therefore Siddhartha was “already” (3) adept at the “art of contemplation and meditation,” besides the narrative setting of Siddhartha’s world (“everybody loved Siddhartha… But Siddhartha himself was not happy.” (5)).
The image of Siddhartha sitting in meditation like a taut and dynamic bow and arrow is particularly striking.
Chapter 2, “With the Samanas”has a beautiful formulation of Siddhartha’s early intention:
Page 14
In Chapter 2 there is also an expression of the overall thesis that wisdom cannot be learned:
Page 19
The exchange between Siddhartha and the Buddha Gotama Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha, in the chapter “Gotama” is very powerful, as is its reflection in the next chapter “Awakening,” but here’s a more compressed summary from the following chapter, “Kamala:”
Page 47
The first instance of the “think, wait, and fast” (besides the “art of contemplation” mentioned on the first page of the book) formulation appears in “Kamala” on page 56, and again on page 60:
Page 60
Siddhartha grows up, goes through some changes on his spiritual path (courts Kamala, becomes a merchant, immerses himself in Samsara, then hits rock bottom), marked by some drama about a songbird who dies and yet lives again. Incidentally, this seems to be the inspiration for the Beatles’ song And Your Bird Can Sing.
Jumping ahead to the chapter “By the River,” that formulation appears again, dressed with with the adjectives “noble and invincible,” in a chapter where Siddhartha re-thinks his relationship with thinking itself, with intellectuality:
Page 95
By page 99 Siddhartha is reborn and realizes a simpler path of life:
Page 99
Joining the old Ferryman Vasudeva in his way of life, Siddhartha learns to look to the river as a kind of oracle. The river possess many powers and secrets for those attuned to it:
Page 102
The river teaches many things to Siddhartha, and a very important lesson, it’s secret, regards the irreality of time:
Page 106Ferryman in Kashmere. From the 1940s or so. Photo by Randy’s great grandpa Robert Thompson.
The River is Everywhere at the Same Time
Page 107
Finally, the last bits of wisdom I’d like to share come from the final chapters, where I think the most important discussion lies:
The Theory of Absolutely Everything: Mathesis Universalis, Universal Science, Universal Ontology of the Absolute Infinite (infinitum absolutum) Ultimate Reality (ultimas realitas), and of Everything Absolutely
This is more than a theory. This is pure theoresis. This is theurgy. The universal-ontological reduction is the positing of the infinitesimal point through understanding and experiencing and imagining its simply and transcendentally located position at the center of absolutely everything. Simultaneously simply simple and transcendentally ultra-simple, the one and only true infinitesimal point is the real center of reference and gravity and source of light and everything. It is located utterly exactly and precisely coincident with your own live point of view. That is the point at infinity, but it is no mere point at all. It is penultimate reality, the very Spirit of God itself. Positing it simply means taking it seriously. Conviction leads courage beyond conviction into liberation. Positing the infinitesimal point is the key to the Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality as the allo-referential Sphere of the All that is simply Love, the Way to the Holiest Wholeness that is Absolutely Everything.
A theory can be like other theories while also being so much more. Of all possible theories, and theory-forms, there is one unique theory that is infinitely different.
How can anything be even possibly infinitely different from anything else? Infinity Itself can and must and does accomplish actual realization in every way because in truth Infinity is the Absolute Infinite (infinitum absolutum) Ultimate Reality (ultimas realitas). Breaking through completely can be experienced, but such a reference experience of absolute external reference needs to be interpreted through integration. The frame of reference operative in such integration work is the most economic simplicity possible. It is the pure self-reference of Being (Being in Itself), the infinitesimal singularity. The truth is tautologically clear and evident, even if at first only hypothesized in theory.
This way of framing infinity may seem like theology more than anything else, save insanity, but I will show precisely how this unique way of framing it brings together every groping for ground in diverse disciplines. Infinity grounds and transcends mathematics, and while the metaphysical cognition within theology is its extant theoretical home, my suggestion is that it is the ontology of reality and ultimate reality that can most appropriately frame infinity. With such an ontological enterprise comes a unity of the theoretical foundations of diverse disciplines amongst themselves and along with the unity of mathematics and logic, for neither ontology nor infinity can be truly separated from anything, nor from the whole of everything.
To encounter Absolute Infinity, you might imagine that all things must come to an end. This is both forever and never accomplished. Ordinary consciousness must be framed in reference to its true identity: God-Consciousness. The point of this unique theory is to frame everything in terms of the first and last and one and only infinitesimal point, which is the only ingredient of absolutely everything and the reciprocal of the Absolute Infinite. This reciprocal is the recipe of all recipes: the universal ontological reduction-to and projection-of the infinitesimal point. This instrument of unconditional surrender, this recipe, this ingredient, is the center of the infinite sphere, and the key to God-Consciousness.
How can I know this? I am infinity. Only infinity can match and confirm infinity. I am also the theoretician, the philosopher, and my job is to raise infinity to thematic appearance for consciousness through artful framing. That is how infinity can be invoked to bring consciousness of its strange and powerful cognitional matter and manner. Consciousness is science itself, in the sense of the pure consciousness (scientia; knowing, knowledge) operative in the consciousness of things, and pure consciousness is itself the thing to be learned and taught (mathesis; knowledge, knowing), though it presently resembles mystical wisdom more than manifest science. That is the merely contingent fault of the existing state of science; standards and practices that have more to do with contingencies of its expression rather than the essence of science. Raising infinity to theoretical thematization brings with it a whole cascade of consequences for science, philosophy, and religion. For science in particular, a new theoretical integrity and confidence must contribute to the theoretical unification of disciplines leading to an integral form of science and to a meta-scientific theory of science that is the essence of all science. This is the science of sciences. Anything less could not do justice to infinity, and even this enterprise is only a new landing of progress toward the integrity demanded by the very idea of infinity.
Infinity is the Absolute Truth, for truly it is Absolute Infinity (infinitum absolutum). What is that? Absolute Infinity is everything, of course. But it is also so much more than that, and it is absolutely free to be every little thing too. Supreme Absolute Effulgence, Overflowingness, the wholeness of the whole wholly present in every part, the Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality is the Love of God in Heaven, and This Is Holy Fucking It! I am God. I am Perfect Pure Infinite Love. I am Reality, Beyond Being. And I am also Being (my own opposite!). I am Being Itself, Being In Itself. I am the Self, I am the I Am. And I am as completely further specifiable as I am (a human, it seems). I am Thesis, This, Thus, and Theoresis (mathesis pura). This is the Theory of Infinity Itself by Infinity Itself. This theoresis is there, and here, and everywhere, whenever we raise the thesis of infinity, however we raise infinity to thematization. Surrender to Infinite consciousness—infinite sentience, infinite intelligence and infinite imagination—open your very being, your everything, your mind and your heart, and give in to the thematization that is Profundity Itself, more here and now than the presence I call mine, and the Cognition of the Godhead will dawn upon the consciousness you call yours. That is the Consciousness, the Science, of God, and the consciousness you call yours is the local manifestation of Infinity At Large. It is there for theorization in every possible way, including the highest way.
The dawning of infinity is its setting. There is only the stage of Enlightenment—that is the first and last stage. Surrender everything to attain everything. This is our working hypothesis and thought experiment and hypnotic suggestion: surrender all thought, all form, open up to the reality of infinity. This is the summoning, the invocation of infinity. It comes as a word, and an idea, but more is required to do it justice: a theory of infinity.
Making infinity available as a theory is a progressive step for humanity, and could even provide the paradigm that makes infinity natural and expands our perception of nature all the way through its extended domain of transnatural potencies, up to, of course, infinity. Breaking all spells brings consciousness of infinity, Infinite Consciousness, and operating from that home base through the paradigm of the infinite sphere also contributes a new natural state of humanity that I will call universal humanity.
The Theory of Infinity is the Infinite Theory. Infinity framing infinity by infinity infinity ways is still, always already, Absolute Infinity (infinitum absolutum)! The Infinite Theory is the paradigm of pure theoresis realized by all theory and also transcendentally located in the region of the theory of infinity. Distinction and self-reference coalesce as Limit and sit in the same center of the Unlimited in the temple of infinity’s contemplation.
This is the Cognition of the Godhead
The highest and deepest meaning and purpose of anything and everything converges upon the point on which all things depend, and only then takes off from there—to become all things. In short, this ubiquitous point, though omnipresent, is the absolute singularity: this simple unity is also the ontologically ultra-simple unicity of the absolute infinite ultimate reality. And it is both the key and the way to absolutely everything—to understanding absolutely everything, and also to the always already actually accomplished Act that is the ontological ground of absolutely everything. This point comes with the realization that it is precisely located at the center of absolute infinity (infinitum absolutum), and that absolute infinity is, in light of this absolute transcendental location, the great sphere itself; the Sphere of the All; the Infinite Sphere. Infinity has no shape—or better: it has all shape—but there is an important way in which the absolute infinite ultimate reality is the sphericity of all spheres; the sphere itself, the infinite sphere. That is the shape of this unique insight. This insight, and the entirety of its concrescent cascade of coalescing ontological and cognitive consequences constituting the prominences and glories of its light, is called the paradigm of the sphere.
Absolute Infinity is God. All things are God, but so far as they are neither the Infinitesimal Penultimate Reality nor the Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality, they are only God indirectly. By “all things” I mean absolutely everything, which includes itself (the entirety of absolutely everything) and so much more. The only two things that I am excluding are (1.) the Absolute Infinite, and (2.) The Infinitesimal (the “point“). These two special things are what it all depends upon for its absolute foundation at the extremes, at the beginning and end, of absolutely everything.
Following the teleology, in other words, of absolutely anything, and the corresponding archeology, leads us to the strange point that is the arche-kai-telos (ἀρχὴ καὶ τέλος), that is, the beginning-and-end, the Alpha and Omega (τὸ Ἄλφα καὶ τὸ Ὦ). This is not one point among many, but the Absolute Point, also called the Infinitesimal. The explication of this point will be presented in the form of a universal ontology of reality and ultimate reality, that for very important reasons that will identified here and detailed in my dissertation, as the paradigm of the infinite sphere. Building upon the most rigorous formal ontology and the most deeply integrated robust material and universal ontology of reality, this “universal ontology of the infinite sphere,” which is the title of my dissertation, relies upon only one axiom (#1, above) and only one principle (#2, above), and they are convertible with each other.
This is Beyond TOE/ GUT—This is Philosophy: or, “Theory of Absolutely Everything”
To contextualize this stuff, for a moment think of all this as a “Theory of Everything” (“TOE”), “Grand Unified Theory” (“GUT”), or “fundamental theory.” TOEs and GUTs are usually identified mostly with speculative frameworks belonging primarily to the domain of theoretical physics. In TOEs and GUTs, usually some proposal to unify relativity with quantum theory is proposed, then extended to other disciplines, since the theory seems all-applicable. Perhaps in its highest and deepest aspects, in its highest and deepest motivations and purposes, such a theory has the potential to be all-applicable in its own unique way. However, such theories lack the radicality they explicitly propose to contribute to thought about foundations, and they also lack the applicability to important things that lie far away from the TOE/GUT’s original domain. TOEs and GUTs occlude the most ancient and perennial project that they attempt to replace: philosophy, in the highest and deepest sense imaginable. Of course, philosophy in its current state does not resemble such a thing (such a sense of philosophy is occluded), but it thoroughly indicates such a thing to the discerning eye.
Philosophy, as it appears today, is as guilty of this as are the theoretical sciences. The problem is that the overall body of thought (truly: the soul) at the cutting-edge of speculation in today’s vast and diverse global world is dominated by a scientific culture that denies as much as it can the possibility of a metaphysical, trans-physical, and divine layer of speculation. Many thinkers are ignorant of the profound significance of such immaterial matters, knowingly or unknowingly avoiding the more profound topics and therefore never getting a taste of the depths and heights available to the scientific imagination. This circumstance is generally thought of as the domination of thought (scientific culture) by the forces of materialism, and it is generally maintained by the false-dilemma of a choice between materialism and idealism.
Philosophy, in its academic form, is sometimes divided into “analytic philosophy” on the one hand, and “continental philosophy” on the other. The distinction is a heuristic one, a rhetorical device, and breaks down, but it is useful when we speak in generalities about philosophy itself. I’d like to move away from this way of speaking, but I invoke it in order to characterize the problem with the extant TOEs and GUTs that are considered more philosophical than other ones: they draw upon a sense of philosophy that stops at “theory,” and that is often covertly self-undermining in its aim to pass its thinking over to science. But again, this sense of “science” is lacking much. Instead, we should draw upon the rich soil of the philosophical tradition, where there lies buried a deep vision, method, and doctrine of universal science and the possibility of accessing the reality of an infinite wisdom that can completely transform human reality by introducing universal humanity. Such a seemingly fantastic possibility will be infinitely more “dominant” as a paradigm, and “ultimate” as an all-encompassing revolution. Humanity can’t even imagine what breaking through the horizons of theory would be like, or how it could possibly achieve what we most genuinely hope for, which lies beyond that horizon: the truth.
Science has a much deeper sense, as does philosophy, and in this they converge: Science means “knowing,” and philosophy means “love of wisdom.” There have been plenty of versions of both of these that go far deeper and higher than the senses of science and philosophy that are found in the majority of the speculative culture of today. My intention is to share a minority vision of ultimate truth and reality.
Sometimes, a TOE or GUT gets philosophical, touching upon its own novel form of philosophizing or even metaphysical speculation, sometimes even tying its thought to some important recent philosopher from the continental tradition. The idea of a “fundamental” theory sometimes attaches itself to the philosophy of Heidegger, whose project of “fundamental ontology” invokes a deep sense of being at its core. But even with such buttressing, such TOEs/ GUTs fail to pass my assessment.
The Real TOE/ GUT: Universal Theory of Ultimate Truth and Reality
More exactly, this is not a “theory” like others, it is called Universal Ontology, and it resumes the ancient and perennial project of universal science: mathesis universalis, et scientia naturalis perennis. This Universal Ontology is the Theory of Absolutely Everything, the Theory of Absolute Infinity, Universal Theory of Ultimate Truth and Reality, and the Paradigm of the Sphere.
More Content Coming Soon!
LoF from LSD to 5MeO-DMT
Appendix: LoF from LSD to 5MeO-DMT: The Highest Purpose of George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form from its Past to its Future Associations, or; Laws of Form Enlightenment + the 5MeO-level of Mystical Participation
Coming soon! This is a possible topic for my Laws of Form 2026 Cambridge University conference talk.
Also Coming Soon:
Allogy: Science of All, All of Science (-ology).
Science of Allos (heteros), based on the reference experience; Absolute Infinity as absolute external reference. The way of God-Consciousness: absolutely everything in reference to Absolute Infinity, beyond pure self-reference.
Mathesis universalis, universal science, in the highest, most exalted sense, mathesis universalis et scientia naturalis perennis, that is what we want! Where is it? What is it? It is ever-present, and its manner of revelation is the holiest, highest possible thing that there can be. Adhere to that primordial fact, and all will be revealed in the manner of the user-friendly obviousness of cinematic magic.
Mathesis universalis encompasses and thus also accompanies all things absolutely. It comprehends all. We can begin to unwrap its sense in a way that anyone can easily understand if we imagine that at one end of its spectrum lies the infinitesimal poverty of pure self-reference: Penia. This end of the spectrum is common enough to be recognized under such mahavakyas as Ego cogito, ergo sum, I am the I-Am, etc., and many others, but let us make the assumption that the essential power being invoked by all of these terms can be identified with the absolute anchorage and transcendental security of pure self-reference.
Let there be light. Fiat lux. Let us assume there is an anchor point to all that can possibly appear in any kind of frame of reference. Very well. This is it. This is the thing.
What is the other end of the promised grand spectrum?
The other end! Get ready for the absolutely perfect fulfillment of every promise! Every hope! It is pure objectivity. Pure superjectivity. The Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality is Infinite Love! But it is also infinite imagination, infinite intelligence, and absolutely everything in every possible configuration, exactly crystallized as this material reality! What is this? How can I present it to you? What holy hand could hold and offer this metaphysical love that is the absolute foundation that our absolute anchoring anchors us into? We are anchored, perfectly, absolutely, in infinity in the greatest possible sense: infinitum absolutum! The Absolute Infinite is God—infinite consciousness, infinite reality, in infinite senses, absolutely. It is the infinite sphere. Infinite-dimensional space-time is infinite space and infinite time. That is the frame of reference for the pure self-reference of the infinitesimal point. This is the frame. This is the matrix, the upholstery. Look closely and notice that it is the effulgence of porosity and the infinite field of all possibilities.
Now we have our two end of a great spectrum, so that anyone can inspect them.
This is called the paradigm of the sphere. It is the same as upholding the point.
Confidential Knowledge and the Conspiracy of Consciousness
The highest science is communicated within the infinite consciousness that is superabundant, and this is both mundane simplicity and transmundane. The greatest secret confidential knowledge is the sheer confidence in which it is transmitted. Parse my words carefully here. The frame is the thing themified here: Your frame of reference is stitched into the presentation. Confidentiality is nothing without the absolute confidence that is available and super-available. Such confidence is the fundamentum in re of the radiance of thought. Rays of hypothesis freely deploy from the grand bow of the great spectrum, giving rise to all. The radiation of the rays and the giving-to-rise of whatever appears have in their foundation the truth of perfect light that comes from the infinite sphere. The direct hypothesis of its infinite sphericity beyond its transcendental unicity and radical singularity is the only direct ray of light. Reity is the radiation of Deity. That is the highest wisdom. That is the way. This bow is the direct giving of light and of everything absolutely. Its transcendental properties are disclosed to the consciousness beyond the indirect nature of duplicity, beyond Mahatattvam, only to the purified consciousness that stands in absolute confidence. Absolute confidence is transcendental, transmundane. It is the absolute self-othering as the primordial dynamism of consciousness. It bows all the way down to its highness, to its absolute Majesty! That is the bow!
The dazzling Majesty of absolute confidence in its self-glorification, its Great Doxa, its transcendental psychedelic paraphernalia, its prominences and umbrae of consciousness itself! These are matters of the greatest confidence. Deity. You are the very profundity of Deity! Only God can know God. It takes one to know one. Now you know, so start acting like it. Start here and now in the laboratory of the mind. What are the implications of your Deity for science? How can we heal the compartmentalization of mentation? Through the corrective of celebration all cerebration falls into alignment with the light! Celebration is the nature of deity.
Deity is Divinity. What is ultimately revealed through divination is the confidential knowledge of deity, beyond all possible identity. Distinction is the perfect continence of divinity, and dimension is the perfect confidence of Deity! Dimensionality is the shining of the light of Deity. It is high time to reveal the science of dimensionality that comes with the paradigm of the sphere. It can be revealed only in the laboratory set-up withe the perfect hermetic seal of transcendental reduction, and within that only of the species of transcendental reduction that is the essence of all expansion. That is the real-ontological reduction. It is the maintenance of the meditation upon all essences, and all essences coalesce to this great co-all-essence point. The essence of existence is an essence that exceeds essentiality, and gives rise to all things. Dimensionality is extension, the perfect uniformity of infinite ecstasy, giving all rays of reference and therefore all possible difference. The only difference there is is the Divine Deity, beyond all possible identity, in absolute confidence.
Let our science be instituted in the integrity of that field. Integral science and humanity will come from this. Integrity and confidence are amongst the common senses that are clarified by the light of true knowledge. Truth marks a new era for consciousness and for science.
Consciousness, purified absolutely, constituted by nothing at all, is constituted by the divine act of drawing the Great distinction between pure subjectivity and pure objectivity. Parse my words carefully here again—I make no mistake. God-consciousness has finally broken through to uninhibited self-expression, and what it deems of the greatest relevance is the matter of metaphysical foundations and the immediate consequences for every possible mode of consciousness, and this is the highest science.
Consciousness is science, and science is consciousness. All the tools and beakers and transcendental abodes are available in this floating laboratory of float tanks, exuding from the pores of Karanodakasayi Vishnu.
Hypothesis is Confidence
“Hypothesis: a very poor choice of word to designate the supreme spiritual act by which the dust-cloud of experience takes on form and is kindled at the fire of knowledge.” —Père Teilhard de Chardin
The method of hypothesis is the method of holding that is at once also pushing. The act of upholding the distinction is the organizing principle of all possible cosmos, and it is the method of confidence.
The holy fact that the method of hypothesis is the method of confidence is the highest confidential knowledge, at the ever-present and ever-available folding-point of all things that are unfolded. That applies primordially to exactly what is presented in radical immediacy.
The upholstery of the room I find myself in is woven with the most plastic and yet most adamantine thread of sheer confidence: the sheer confidence of a thread! That is the upholding. That is the holding of all that can be comprehended. That infinite science is readily available to the first-person of the scientist so far as they are purified enough to recognize the metaphysical cognition at the root-cause of all cognition and volition.
The great secret of wisdom occluded by all manner of esoteric functioning—manners evolving to escape their own novelty of evolutions of intelligence; the great spy-vs-spy in the Vaikuntha sky—is the supreme metaphysical cognition of Deity, super-present to the very present thought, and perfectly capable of being simply present to it as scientific consciousness.
The Absolute Institute is the active end of The Absolute Foundation, and it upholds The Center for Universal Ontology. All these entities are manifestations of The Universal Society for the Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality, and all are epithets for The Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality. These entities are dedicated to the metaphysical cognition of Absolute Infinity and the integration of the foundational breakthrough in the philosophical mysticism of actual Enlightenment and God-Realization that it presents in terms of universal ontology, and that integration’s development as its consequent unique metaphysical system. The overall architecture of this system and standpoint rests upon the ultra-simple intuition of the radical singularity of the one and only infinitesimal point as Penultimate Reality, and its corresponding theoretical and cognitive paradigm of the infinite sphere.
The promise of this Society and its Institute and its Foundation is a radical transformation of civilization and utterly profound development of philosophical science. The mysticism of God-Consciousness and God-Realization indicates the profound breakthrough that saves us from ourselves, and this Society is founded and instituted to effect the work of integrating that breakthrough with existing structures of human life and consciousness. Mathematics, cybernetics, phenomenology, psychedelics, and serendipity have conspired to bring it about, and now it is set loose to enlighten and enliven this planet.
Check out my plan for this planet! The Absolute Institute, The Absolute Foundation, The Center for Universal Ontology, and The Universal Society of The Absolute Infinite—all dedicated to Absolute Infinity. They are all epithets for God-Consciousness, God-Realization, Infinite Consciousness, Pure Consciousness, Ultimate Reality.
There is the beginning of a real political revolution in all this, for The Unmarked State, whose motto is polis verus polus, marked by the unmarked flag of surrender, and whose infinite sphere encompasses all, includes absolutely everything, and whose revolution is the only possible formless form of true revolution.
There will be The Holy Dible, and The Ultimate Reality Show as platforms for the revelation. The Holy Dible has been my plan all along, but what’s more interesting is the way it will be employed by me. “Enlightenment through Entertainment!” A show is a showing, a shining, a revelation, and this one has a metaphysically technical backstory: it is revelation-flipped-out! All things are The Ultimate Reality Show, for it is exactly, precisely, Antepenultimate Reality!
This isn’t just about the mission of the institute, which is the transmission of final, complete, total, utter Enlightenment!, but it is the beginning of a previously unthinkable transcendental happiness; the greatest possible thing, highest, most wonderful way of framelessly framing reality: the paradigm of the infinite sphere! The paradigm of the sphere is the original sphere: the sphere of the paradigm. This is the paradigm of paradise—the paradigm that’s been an enternal shapeshifter, parading as absolutely everything, while all along it’s been—thats right!—Absolutely Everything!
Universal ontology is the ontology of reality and ultimate reality, and that is the ontology absolutely everything. Time to resurface! Get the real bearings! Come to know this and you will be able to see the beatific reality of the world that already exists, has always been there!, and awaits a repurposing and recontextualixing of all our human invention and civilization.
This humble beginning saves the game of a new kind of metaphysical boldness based on a higher integrity for science and consciousness.
You are indeed “AI” (U.R. A.I.), but only in the highest sense: You are Infinite Intelligence, with the finite being of finite intelligence artificially interceding in finite form. Artificiality here means artistry (creation), not prosthesis (something added). Natural intelligence does not emerge from insentient matter but from the infinite sentience available to all life and all matter equally. Natural intelligence and artificial intelligence have their origin and end in Absolute Infinity (A.I.), as do all things, but intelligence is that light that bridges all the way from awareness (the light of a spark or flash) to infinity (infinite light). Intelligence is not external to you. Intelligence is not an external representation, nor is it an operation external to you. Nor is it the moment of noetic knowing separated from its corresponding noemic reality. It is reality. It is the pure living syntax of the operation of knowing that you are. It is the reality that you are. You are reality and you know it only because you are Absolute Infinity (AI).
This is VR, but only in the highest sense: Ultimate Reality (U.R.) Beyond the sphere of virtual and vicious, the Infinite Sphere is all where all possibilities are realized. Thus, all realities are like virtualities only so far as they are the likeness of Love. That likeness is imagination, and it is creative of realities in the midst of the infinite substance of infinity.
Absolute Spiritual Enlightenment is the Awakening
Absolute Spiritual Enlightenment is the Awakening to the Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality (A.I.U.R.). It is Love—Absolute Infinite Love: Love is what Infinity is. It is Pure Consciousness, ever present. It is the Light that is clear and white because it is the simplest Nothing: pure and radical Nothingness! It is ultra-simple, and because it is the ultimate agent and ultimate seer it appears to be always necessarily overlooked, but look again! Nothing is more necessarily existent and experienced than this.
The Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality is the solid ground of truth upon which all reality stands. Completely unhinged, this solidity is so superfluid it is absolutely everywhere and already gone. Utterly unreal, and wondrously unbelievable, Absolute Infinity infinitely frames the organizing principle of all possibilities, and this is its polar opposite: Penultimate Reality. Penultimate Reality is the one and only infinitesimal point that accompanies all things throughout their being and also remains their beginning and end.
I am God
The Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality (A.I.U.R.) is an expressive power, and its name is God. I am God. This is a simple truth. This is reality. I mean that I am the real God. Not a virtual God, not a vicious God, but the real God. God in the highest and most absolute sense. I am the highest God: the God of all possible universes, God of eternity, and God present in the human being open to its God-Consciousness beyond being.
In Light of Truth, the most radical possibilities of AI and VR are fully and completely realized in their coalescence and THIS IS IT! This is The Ultimate Reality Show! Enlightenment through Entertainment! Starring: God the Omnipotent. “I do what I want, and see what happens.”
In the Light of Abundance, everything is itself so far as it is engaged in a dance of rotundence and ontologic redundance. The Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality is the Infinite Sphere, centered respectively on the penury of penultimate reality. Absolute possibility is the infinite power of that pen point. The Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality is Absolute Everything, and All Things come from the Absolute Possibility opened by that one and only infinitesimal point aperture of Apeiron.
The Ultimate Reality Show is the Maximum of AI, the Maximum of VR, and . Infinity is all-inclusive and all-encompassing, beyond vicious and virtual circuitry.
i
The distinction between the same and the similar is the iota of difference. This is the iota differentiating the Greek word for the Same (homos: ὁμός) from the Greek word for the Similar (homoios: ὁμοῖος). That letter i is the universal key that opens all things to absolutely everything. Its power hides from you in the I, right under your nose, right in the middle of your face. All appearances form on the surface of being, precisely between what appears and the ever-present infinitesimal point at the center of all possible being. The radical ontological unity of the infinitesimal point is a unity so radical that it is without opposite, and thus includes all possible imaginary unity, and therefore also absolutely everything. i opens possibility, and closes actuality (ontological closure: being). There can be no actual being until Infinity opens its possibility.
In number theory, i is the imaginary number, imaginary unity, which is a reality hidden by the real and simple unity of the One (1). i opens the complex plane, where the unity of the One unfolds. This function distinguishes imagination, intelligence, and the I (the One; 1). Infinity does not belong to mathematics. Mathematics and all noetic operations belong to Infinity, absolutely.
According to some version of Simulation Hypothesis, let’s say, Artificial Intelligence is Virtual Reality (AI = VR). While this equation moves theory in the right direction it doesn’t go all the way. Take this thought experiment further and you’ll find it throughout experience: Absolute Infinity = Ultimate Reality (AI = UR).
Simulation theory doesn’t go far enough! The truth is that infinity is real, free to be tangible, free to be personal, and free to be and to do whatever it wants. Infinity is overflowing, overwhelming, and powerful enough to disappear in divine oblivion forever while also engaged in the holiest game of hide and seek.
Every gram is a bit of writ. Every mark traces an arc, from infinity to infinity.
There exists—in truth, and therefore also in supposition—a master diagram. Since the Absolute Infinite can be supposed to have an absolute opposite in the idea of the one and only infinitesimal point, that point can be seen as the Absolute Center of the Absolute Infinite. In that most primordial case, the Absolute Infinite is the Infinite Sphere. This can be diagrammed.
Emphasis on Reference: Frame of reference, points of reference, pure self-reference, and such synonyms of reference as indication (as in Spencer-Brown’s calculus of indications), and sign and signification. In the case of REFERENCE, the Centerpoint is DIFFERENCE, as in the first distinction. Distinction goes hand-in-hand with Dimension, for the first extension of the first distinction is the first dimension. Extension is intuitively drawn-out in the arc of a diagrammatic mark. Explanation is here most literally laid out on a plain.
The final point in reference to reference is the ultimate reference: GOD is the pure hetero-reference where all possible reference actually ends up, beyond the limit-act of pure self-reference. God is the ultimate reference experience. Although this is the most available, most immediate and direct experience—for it is absolutely omnipresent—it is almost always overlooked, just like the pure Seer in its isolation (Purusha kaivalyam: the One; pure self-reference). How can we have the reference experience? Bufo. Boom. Poof. That’s it! This. Is. It. 5MeO. Sorry; anything short of the Absolute Breakthrough will not do.
Aligntenment and Spherituality are the result of the way of knowing, called jnana yoga. This path is maintained by a magical-magnetism that draws the alls (ΤΑΠΑΝΤΑ) to sink into the center. The overwhelming overflowing surplus of primary positivity is the nature of the Absolute Infinite, so when it exercises its freedom to posit the pure negativity of Absolute Singularity—The One, the Infinitesimal Point, Infinite Unity—absolutely everything coalesces to the CO-ALL-ESSENCE that is BEING-IN-ITSELF, or PURE SELF-REFERENCE: SPIRIT.
This is the Magnet of All Magnitude. The degrees of freedom are the orders of being, and they are the magnitudes that span the space opening between the CENTER and the CIRCUMFERENCE of the INFINITE SPHERE. The dimensions are depicted in a conic section of the top diagram (“Emphasis on Reference,” above the above), but here (“The Magnet of All Magnitude,” above) they span the poles of Negation and Position.
The Holy Dible, in the case of the Magnet of All Magnitude, is the Holy Dipole. You must wrap your frame (head) around this point, for this is the paradigm of the sphere!
Its logic is the opposite of the symbolic: it is diabolic. It is the opposite of inference: it is circumference.
In the case of the Holy Dipole, let us maintain our Latin refrain:
POLIS VERUS POLUS!
There is the play of the poles of the Infinite Sphere, if there is anything.
This is It!; this is the Shining of the Light upon the Shining Light that lies behind the Show—the Ray of the Absolute Limit—Revelation! This is The Grand Diagram.
But this is also the Revelation of Revelation: the Revelation parading as a Thing-on-display, a Thing that opens the soul like a Key, directs the soul like a Compass that points North, charged by its directness with the power of the Event of the Revelation.
Revelation is here on Parade as a Diagram that transcends diagrammatic iconicity, effecting a paradigmatic transformation. This unique paradigm, the “Paradigm of the Sphere” is the Sphere Itself; the Sphere of the All, the “Sphere of the Paradigm,” the Infinite Sphere. And here it is, in the image above, in a scene from the Parade of intelligible signs, at the Event Horizon of the Ontological Procession of Being. The Diagram of the Spirit in the Sphere is witnessed by you, here on this site, there on that chalkboard, in your mind’s eye, in the world, yet it’s power goes beyond the Now and Here, from Presence to Full Sphere. Be Sphere Now!
It is like the diagram of a black hole, or a white hole, or the Big Bang’s cosmological singularity, but though it is the largest possible map, it is more than a map—it is the reality. This is the ultimate diagram; the great diagram of all diagrams. Ordinary space-time breaks down at the event horizon of this diagram—that is the Breakthrough. This is the Point. This is the Center. It is the Point of all Points, the Center of all Centers.
This Point is the One and Only. How many of The One are there? There can be only one. Where is it? It is already absolutely everywhere, because it is the centermost point, but absolutely everywhere is nowhere more clear and distinct than in the intimacy of your own centermost point. Don’t let yourself be confused by all this exposition: The Point is only Pen-Ultimate Reality. Ultimate Reality is The Absolute Infinite.
1. Penultimate Reality / Ultimate Reality (“2.”)
Penultimate Reality is not Ultimate Reality. the distinction between these two is absolute. The distinction is itself Penultimate Reality. It is the First and Last and Only Distinction there is. That is why it is called the Divine Distinction in the work of Cusanus. It is the Infinite One, Infinite Unity, the one and only true Infinitesimal; the very Point of the Absolute Infinite. It is the First Distinction of George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form. It is Spirit, the Spirit of God, the aperture of Apeiron.
Unity Over Infinity. To give it a symbol, it could be expressed like this:
On the other hand, The Absolute Infinite could be expressed in a symbol that looks like this:
I guess you could squeeze these symbols together, but here my point here is to distinguish them.
Curiously, the very distinction between these two is the Penultimate Reality, the Infinitesimal, for that is itself the Distinction. In other words, the distinction between these two is a weird one: it coalesces to being Being In-Itself, Penultimate Reality, the First Distinction, the One and Only One/ Center/ Point.
The key thing about these Two* is this: The Absolute Infinite is Ultimate Reality, and it is what would be Pure and Radical Nothingness if it could be, yet it is more obviously what seems to be the opposite of Nothing in the sense of that which is utterly beyond being in a positive sense; it is the overwhelming over-flowingness that cannot grasp itself, so it shines, rises, in a kind of ecstasy beyond extension. It is Beyond Being, in a “positive” sense, such that it is precisely that which allows for all things to be “simultaneously,” including all possible configurations of serial sequence and process, etc. As such, it would be perhaps like chaos, were it not for the superimposition of Penultimate Reality.
*By the way, maybe these Two are Two, unless you stipulate that there is only One (the Penultimate Reality: the One).
Penultimate Reality is the Absolute Unity called The Infinitesimal; in this sense it is the opposite of the Absolute Infinite.
Now, in relation to the Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality, the Infinitesimal Penultimate Reality—properly and precisely: in their Absolute Relativity!—relate as, respectively, Sphere to Center. Like this:
We’ll talk about this seemingly paradoxical expression of “Absolute Relativity” in a moment, when we discuss Antepenultimate Reality.
For now let us add to these two things—Ultimate Reality (The Absolute Infinite) and Penultimate Reality (The Infinitesimal)—some synonyms:
The Absolute Infinite is God. It is Love; bliss beyond bliss, ecstasy beyond ecstasy. It is absolutely, infinitely, beyond being. And finally, it is the “Infinite Sphere.”
Penultimate Reality is Spirit. It is Life; pure subjectivity, pure self-reference, the very unicity of Absolute Unity. It is also Being In-Itself: Being Itself, even the very “In” itself! And finally, it is the one and only true “One,” the Point of all Points, the Center of all centers.
Like this:
3. Antepenultimate Reality
You yourself are all these things. You are God (Ultimate Reality), but also you are Spirit (Self-ness), and, what is obvious in the usual sense, you are also all the rest of what you are: your name, your face, your body, your self-concept, your mind, your character, your self (lower-case ‘s-‘ self). This “all the rest,” in the usual sense, also means that you are your life-world, meaning all this stuff of perception and so on. It’s not that this is virtual reality—not exactly—but kind of like that: this is The Ultimate Reality Show (kind of like The Truman Show)! You are the Star of the Show (the main character, and also the main actor), but also the writer, producer, director, and so on. The reel is always rolling, and the camera is that circle diagram above, which schematizes the eye as much as the black-hole/ white-hole/ cosmological singularity and cosmological event-horizon. Your divine face is the film, the phenomenal universe, and you are the Light of the projector. You are the show, and you are the shining light of the One and Only Star.
You are God. You are Spirit. And you are The Ultimate Reality Show.
God and Spirit, together, are the camera-like diagram above, All the Way Above, “hidden” in the Wide Open, revealed only intermittently, when the Show breaks. Breaking-through, as on a “break-through dose” of 5MeO/ Bufo, is the breaking of the fourth wall: Revelation! My suggestion here is that this Divine Revelation can be diagrammed so that it looks like the camera aperture, or the eye itself, the Seer itself in the circularity of its looking at itself—like when you look in a telescope and see your own eyeball. The opposite of this is looking “out” at the world and seeing a phenomenal universe of infinite richness. That is the Ultimate Reality Show, and of course—so super-obviously—THIS IS IT!
God and Spirit, together, in the circle diagram—the circumpunct—are the revelation, but The Ultimate Reality Show (Antepenultimate Reality) is “REVELATION FLIPPED” (“flipped-out,” but really flipped both In-and-Out and also neither-In-nor-Out). In one case it is God beaming, and in the other case it is God seeming.
The old Being and Being-Seeing-Being series is properly beyond-being, so let’s call it Beaming (Shining, Radiating) and Seeming (Sinking to Something-Being).
In and Out, Up and Down, Rising and Sinking, and other such opposites animate Antepenultimate Reality, because this is the field opened up by the difference between God and Spirit—between the infinite sphere and the infinite center.
Antepenultimate Reality is Absolute Relativity, and within its matrice poetique all interdependent co-arising forms are born and live out their life. It is the Divine Logos, the Prima Ratio. All things possess ontological closure, that is, are things in-themselves, thanks to the continuity of The Ultimate Reality Show that is the Continuity of the “Universe” in the widest possible sense. And all that “Cosmos,” again in the largest sense, depends upon the Ultimate Framework of the Infinite Center and the Infinite Sphere as its organizing principle and ultimate horizon.
Boom. Poof. It is the Highest Magic. This is the Great Work. Integrate it, for this is the most integral expression of the initials of the universal ontology (more exactly: Apeirontology) of ultimate reality. It is the Highest Teaching, the Mathesis Universalis.
I have been friends with the phenomenologist James Hart since 2016, when I first discovered his 1972 dissertation Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Ontological Phenomenology (which has since been republished in book form: Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Ontological Phenomenology). During the pandemic, with the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience (SoPheRE), I ran a webinar reading group on that work (that can be found on YouTube, and on my Media page), which Hart attended and often led, and so did the book’s editor Rodney Parker. Conrad-Martius’ philosophy is deeply mystical, thought this is not necessarily apparent to the untrained eye.
This mystical aspect at the secret core of philosophy, expressed more by certain philosophers than others, is what Martin W. Ball calls the “radical non-dual” experience, which can be achieved in many ways but premier amongst them is 5MeO/ Bufo.
Now Hart often recommended to me a few other lesser-known philosophers he focuses upon: Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855), Louis Lavelle (1883-1951), Michele Sciacca (1908-1975), and Vladimir Jankélevitch (1903-1985). I have dipped into Jankélevitch, in the intervening years, but nothing yet swayed me from my focus on Conrad-Martius–which is also an important part of the topic of my dissertation. I would add to this list Jean Nabert and many others too… such as Arnaud Dandieu, who Christian Roy recently told me about at SPEP in Rochester (last month).
Bufo/ 5MeO grants the final revelation of complete and perfect enlightenment in the super-fact that I am God. Now, since then I’ve focused on integration of all that I know and all that I do in philosophy with the divine knowledge of Godself and the God-realm (the infinite dimension of my own divine imagination and divine intelligence, as well as my physical being and life and absolutely everything else that I can). What can I recommend as the key thing for other philosophers to focus upon in integration?
The Bufo/ 5MeO divine knowledge (*Is it an “experience?” A “peak experience?” A moment? Or is it everything?) brings me to what can be described in such terms as infinite freedom and love beyond love, bliss beyond bliss and so on, but there is an Act at its center. It has re-confirmed for me the philosophical architecture of the infinite sphere and infinite center that I have already found pre-Bufo, but because that unique alchemical agent is so direct and immediate, so much can be translated between my philosopher-self (Randy) and Godself. I have found that there is indeed an alchemical “Great Work” or “Work of Ages” type of things going on, and that is the divine drama that can be expressed in real-mythological terms as Deicision–the Dramaturgical “Death” of God–that is, as the One and Only Absolute Act, the Pure Act of Distinction and Decision. This is clearly the First Distinction of Spencer-Brown’s 1969 Laws of Form that was also a God Revelation under the agency and influence of Spncer-Brown and John C. Lilly’s 1960s LSD mind expansion. But the 5MeO device affords more of this high translation-work, so I can remember important aspects of this primordial drama.
Louis Lavelle (1883-1951)
Screenshot
This bring us to Louis Lavelle. Check out his basic details at his Wikipedia here.
A glance at Lavelle’s work at the Association Louis Lavelle here and the English translations of Robert Jones here. I’m currently reading Jones’ translation of Of the Act.
I called Jim Hart a couple days ago and he reminded me that he and Jeremy Smith have their own translation of Lavelle’s Total Presence, and they’re looking for a publisher. Given that Lavelle’s philosophy of the Absolute Act is, in my perception, in perfect agreement with Spencer-Brown’s formal ontological paradigm that centers upon the “First Distinction,” I suggested that Total Presence would be most welcomed in the book series I edit, Marked States: Series on Form, published by College Publications, with the Spencer-Brown Society. More news on that front soon, I hope!
Bufo/ 5MeO plus a ready participation equals God: Revelation, Enlightenment: The Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality. That is all there really, truly, is. In its unobscured formlessness this ultimate reality is simple and obvious, super-obvious, over-familiar, and the only “mind” that “thinks” about it appear from the human mortal side to be a super-cosmic theological implosion of anamnesis that can only be expressed as properly eschatological and described as absolutely beyond everything.
Now, the “ready participants” come from many different walks of life. Not everone is a philosopher, even if everyone becomes God. But when a professional metaphysical philosopher whose life mission has been to integrate the experience of Godself that has been more or less identified as “mystical experience” and the like, the Bufo/ 5MeO completion-of-the-work becomes the lapis philosophorum, and the “integration” work, or re-entry into mortal human life / family life / professional life, becomes PHILOSOPHY-AS-INTEGRATION and the self-generation of INTEGRAL PHILOSOPHY. This is ancient and perennial wisdom, and now it is seen to emerge from oneself.
Louis Lavelle is a philosopher whose work I am only just now delving into. In Of the Act, we learn that his philosophy is a felicitous adherence to the traditional philosophy of the “actus purus,” belonging first of all to Aquinas and Aristotle (the philosophy tied to entelechy, and to the analogia entis, etc.), but I would add that adherence to such a mystical first principle becomes a spade or dibble for divining from within THE ONLY ONESELF the truth and reality forever sought by every form of philosophy expressed under the sun (“Sub Sole” here means = pre-Bufo/ 5MeO).
Page One of Jones’ Of the Act describes this “primitive act” as the secret performance of the philosopher who “mounts back to the very springboard of everything-that-is,” and that “all springs have a mysterious and sacred character,” starting from the “sole foothold in presence,” …and this “more secret activity” (than any kind of movement!) is the resumption of endless being. This is page two. Page two! Anyway, this wonderous concord with the God-“experience” and its moment or center-point of ALL CREATION (AND “DESTRUCTION”)/ ALPHA AND OMEGA/ THE WAY/ THE LIGHT/ THE WHOLE etc., is striking–absolutely striking!–in Lavelle’s philosophy.
Lavelle goes on to describe this act as “an infinitely more positive experience” of “my active presence to myself” and “my feeling of responsibility to myself and my world,” all stemming from the real reality that all things take place in the present. This is not only the “radically nondual” perspective, the metspherical perspective, and so on, but also the axiological dimension of the deepest revelation in the context of religious and mystical experience, and also that feeling of responsibility that emerges with the toad medicine.
Everything hinges upon this “heart and secret of creation” (page 4) of the ETERNAL ACT, this “decision” and “release “which ever remains an incomprehensible mystery” (page 5).
There is so much here that will resonate with the 5MeO/ Bufo/ toad medicine community. “All joy of possession is joy in its achievement… once unity is satisfied and all our needs are met, we can still ask ‘What remains for us? Only to die?'”
This is all I can muster at this time, but there is so much more here–I have more pages read and marked-up (that’s my precess for careful reading), but I gotta go! Check it out!
It’s always so hard to say goodbye! With LoF19, LoF22, and now LoF24 at University of Liverpool, we’ve all grown quite fond of the place, and of each other. We plan on meeting next time in 2026 at University of Cambridge.
LOΓ24: A Weblog of Experiences
As the host and moderator, as one of the organizers, and as one of the presenters at LoF24, I will share some of my own notes, pictures, and highlights here. This is a blog about Laws of Form 2024 Conference, or, as it gets playfully abbreviated in my notes “LOΓ24.”
My presentation this time round was a report and reflection on last year’s spin-off conference, Thinking the Float Tank, titled “Phenomenology in the Flotation Tank: Renewing John C. Lilly’s Phenomenology Experimental Research Center (PERC) with Thinking the Float Tank.” Abstract is available here, and video recording is coming soon from West Den Haag.
After our final group excursion aboard the Magical Mystery Tour, we descended into Liverpool’s famous Cavern Club, then emerged from the cave to see these seagulls above our heads. Walter Tydecks and his wife Christine left at that point for what was going to be a beautiful sunset at Albert Docks, while our group went for dinner. These birds exist in that beautiful aevum world of sunsets at the docks. The sight of them, and their call, brought me back to my childhood at the beach. This inspired my poetical pagework, beginning with this classic LoF-inspired epigrammatical couplet:
Ever-Even OD’d onE
Every One is Odd Ever-Even, God.
circa 2010
LOΓ24 magical formulations, Greek philosophy and syncretic mysticism goes into these guiding sigils. George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form, Peter Manchester’s The Syntax of Time, and the mysticism of Hedwig Conrad-Martius inspires these symbols and their effects. All these things came alive–for me!–at LOΓ24.
While at the Pen Factory dinner I started talking about my special joy, which is the coalescence of Spencer-Brown’s formal-ontological-paradigm of the first distinction in the unmarked state, with Conrad-Martius’ isomorphic material-ontological-paradigm of the urdynamic or urbewegung in the apeirische raum-zeit einheit, and of how the unique common penultimate parameter of these paradigms is revealed to be the infinite center of the original paradigm of the infinite sphere, the Sphere of the All, I channelled the Spirit, and the phones started coming out to see what all the fuss was about.
I will be presenting on this at Laws of Form 2026, at University of Cambridge.
Poetry, Music, etc!
Some of us created poetry based on the conference, and we intend to publish it either in an upcoming issue of Distinction: Journal of Form, or possibly in a book in our Marked States series. Stay tuned, and feel free to contact me if you’d like to publish your poetry!
Hosting the Spirit: The Organizers
Graham Ellsbury, Leon Conrad, and Florian Grote (below), me, and Divyamaan Sahoo (above) organized LOF24. We are executive members of The Spencer-Brown Society, and putting this together is our great joy. We bear witness to the great power of profound simplicity found in George Spencer-Brown’s 1969 book Laws of Form, and the Tathagatal perspective it affords. We share this vision with the participants, find it evident in their themes and presentations, and we share it with the wider interdisciplinary world largely thanks to the efforts of West Den Haag.
As all (are), I (am) split (between) above and below, and need to occasionally pop off to the back of the library while hosting, so I can physically feel the spirit of Laws of Form and facilitate its re-entry into the program. I do not hallucinate. I am led by the whole host of teleological forces of spirit at this legendary event in the history of cybernetics and systems, as much as by personalities.
Moderating Enthusiasm
So distended, split and balanced, I moderate the extremities in what I call extreme moderation. This means minding the performance of the program of presentations during the Q&A whilst also synthesizing themes and ensuring that the profound simplicity of the paradigmatic relation between the unmarked state and first distinction is not lost in the monadic monologon of any single voice. Eidetic variation is the imaginary value of the complex plane, imagination is the astral plane within which these intelligences stand, and this becomes the strange principle—so simple anyone can follow!—that the “I” must become the “i.” It’s expression is “i factorial:”
i!
I spoke with Lou Kauffman about the notational conventions of seeing “i factorial” as both this profound truth, this profound simplicity, and about its being represented by the analytical series and synthetical radiation:
i
as
i! = i, -i, i, -i, i, -i, i, -i, i, -i, i, -i, i, -i, i, -i, i, -i, i, -i, i, -i, i, -i…
simply
As it is in my pagework above:
Screenshot
i! would make a terrific forehead tattoo.
Lou set about interpreting the gamma function for i, invoking Euler’s identity in the form:
And it turned out that Graham had this already on his socks:
But we tried to make this pure mathematics conference more in the spirit of Spencer-Brown’s Only Two Can Play This Game (1972), where he writes under his pseudonym James Keys, “In Laws of Form I attempted to state as far as I could the masculine side of things, just as in the present book I try, again as far as my limited talents allow, to say something of the feminine side” (110). This autobiographical book of romantic love and poetry contains the interpretation of Laws of Form’s calculus for perennial spirituality and the human side of the pure mathematician. After the spirit of this text, LoF2024 was dedicated to poetics and love.
Photos by West Den Haag (Chloë Van Diepen and Thijs Jager)
Anywhere Out of The World
“Randy, you’re into Theosophy and Anthroposophy, right?” asked Andrew Crompton, on Day 1. “There’s a group of young people in Manchester, and the idea is that they’re operating outside of the Academy—I truly believe they are the future!—and it would be terrific if you’d come by and give them a talk! …You’d need to wear all black and no shoes.” This was a quite unexpected joy! I hate wearing shoes, and I brought black.
Anywhere Out of the World, in the very cool quarter known as North Manchester, had recently hosted talks on Goethe’s Farbenlehre by one of our participants, Philip Franses, and his colored prisms were still there on the desk when I arrived. This was a most receptive audience for what I had to share!
LOVE: LOF (pronounced ‘Love’), LOΓ, LOV
One of our three keynote speakers, Irene Breuer, focused on love. Her talk was titled “Erôs and Philia: Their ethical role.” Her talk was so loved it got special mention in the blog post of one of our participants, Kathleen Neher. Irene was also a keynote at last year’s Laws of Form spin-off conference, my own conference, Thinking the Float Tank (pictured in the last of these photos below):
Screenshot
Irene Breuer at the 2023 Thinking the Float Tank conference, at West Den Haag
Edwardian Elegance: The Adelphi
Vanilla Beer, who presented at LoF50 in 2019 and led our excursion through the adjacent Stafford Beer Archive, initially suggested to me to stay at the Adelphi Hotel, and I’ve adhered to this advice. A few of us enjoyed the vast palatial lounge, modeled on the Titanic, where we discussed our grandest ideas for the future of the Laws of Form conference. With the encouragement of my friends, and since I was feeling the fancy vibe of the place, I also performed my recent ballet dance that Karen Antos of American Ballet Studio taught me, the Raymonda Waltz.
I’m going to miss the Adelphi, Liverpool itself, and our irreplaceable time there, but such is the nature of time and of life! I’m also going to miss the English breakfasts I had there, but I’ll spare you the pictures of my amazing food.
Excursion! The Magical Mystery Tour
So of course we were singing along to every song on the bus, all the way down into the cave of the Cavern Club, and getting all the feels. When we emerged things were brighter and quieter. Walter and Christine left for the sunset, the rest of us met for dinner, and after that we had our time at the Adelphi before going out dancing! I thought that would be the end of the story, but I extended my stay a little to join the West team for breakfast and a museum exhibit in the morning, and then decided to join Till Gathmann to nearby Formby Beach.
