Of Angels.

THE one most important reflection I have to ponder and remind myself of whenever I think about existence or the universe is that of Progression. Common it is and useful to reckon or rationalise things from complex to simple; this is for example one of the great arguments of Richard Dawkins against the existence of God, that God is not an explanation but demands an explanation for being too complex. Conversely G.K. Chesterton observed that an acorn demands a tree. Without descending freefall into Asiatic philosophies of reciprocal circles, Yin Yang, reincarnation, and so on, I nevertheless think there is logical power in both directions: the complex can be understood by the simple and the simple can be understood by the complex. That is the nature of human comprehension, but of the two I would contend the most deceptive method is rationalising the complex by the simple.

   The best example I can give and have given many times is that of a human being as understood by atomic theory. If atomic theory is to stand alone we have to admit for a certainty that there is essentially no difference between a human being and a lump of coal. Scientifically this is perfectly sound doctrine, each is a collation of atoms, but actually it is so strange as to invite ridicule. I think Richard Dawkins would in his bold way say it is not ridiculous, but I think silently his hearers, too cowed by the gravity of his presence and intellect, would say only quietly to themselves, 'It is ridiculous'. The opposite way of course is the unacceptable way to Dawkins, that an atom is to be understood by means of God, that is, a very simple thing is to be understood by means of an infinitely complex thing. 'How?' might he ask, 'Well,' might I reply, 'consider the number 100. Divide it by itself and you understand the number 1.' 'No,' might he contend, 'take the number 1 and multiply it 100 times and you understand the number 100.' 'But Dawkins, my dear fellow, you have presumed the multiple without first having it.'

   That is why I say ultimately it is the complex which explains the simple. I know I have maintained, and still maintain, that the number 1 can be considered equivalent with ∞, but I use the operators in their typical sense for the purposes of illustration (which, incidentally, is all I think explaining the complex by the simple is at heart). Therefore there is this progression, logically because actually. I have been considering the nature of sound for example, that it is after all vibration perceived by the ear, therefore only vibration, and yet if only vibration why is it not merely the flicker of a sensitive flame near a rumble? The ear makes it something more, or perhaps, as that most clapped out of philosophical questions suggests, the ear reveals more greatly what it is, this vibration. But what after all is vibration? Some very deep theories of physics even suggest that it is the heart even of atoms and particles. It is oscillation I learn and oscillation is after all really but motion of a kind, and yet this begs the question Descartes asked as to the nature of existence itself, or extension as he named it. If everything is really vibration what is it which vibrates? What medium permits the vibration? What dimension permits the medium? What thought realises the dimension, if thought is necessary to realisation?

   Now I have been at the extremity of duress recently and a beautiful thought of Christianity came to my mind at the time, the thought of an angel. I prefer the cultural perception of angels as female to the tradition of their being male and kinds of upper ministers in the echelons of heaven, angels and archangels like bishops and archbishops. At any rate I thought of an angel as a being beyond the ordinary plane of life, beyond the organic and blood based kind of existence, even a representation of one who has died. A pure and pleasant person, a beautiful thing and a delightful thought, but what reality can my logic imbue into such an imagined object? I cannot say quite but I consider the fact that upborne from base strings, if strings they are, or modulating oscillations somehow conglobing into lumps of force or matter which, in a great deal of time start threading out thoughts like a spider threading out webs of silk, there might well be attributable a reality to anything at all conceivable. In a certain sense, there was a visitation in my mind, even if others should call it a hallucination as physicists call a human being but a piece of matter. There was I feel an actual angel representative in my mind for a time and she came bearing forgiveness in her left hand and kindness in her right, and the thought of her was balm to me more than the quantity of medical drugs that ever could be administered, more than all the wanton therapy they provided in that asylum, making a sandwich, planting a flower, or discussing a diagnosis.

   It is easy but also very serviceable to say there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in all philosophy. Of course it is absolutely true but that does not stop a Dawkins or a Gervais talking about putting away childhood toys, facing reality; tell me, is cowardice more a reality than courage? Is ugliness more substantial than beauty? Is peace less actual than distress? This angel was beautiful and gave me courage and peace, that to me in sheer duress was absolute reality, better as Russell might say than the bleak dystopian visions which a mistaken evolutionary biologist doles out so cogently and well (mistaken because Darwin actually believed in God—at least if I am to trust his word as written on the very last page of On the Origin of Species). The angel was there with me more thoroughly than most people in my life, and if reality should be tested by completeness of thought, she was real.