Section I. TIME: FUTURE AND PAST

Considerations of Time and Space precede discussion of Matter, Energy, Information and Meaning which follow in the next sections. This implies a sense of the prior importance of Time and Space, as the framework of “bones” in which dwells the “flesh” of the Four Essences named. This may eventually turn out to be inappropriate, since Time and Space may not have this kind of priority, but it can suffice to justify the sequence of sections for the moment.

The first essay on Simulations introduces a fundamental background to subsequent essays, especially Degrees of Reality in Section II. Time and Eternity brings in the notion of time as a dimension similar to space, yet different in some ways. This is picked up in the next essay on The Arrow of Time. Subsequent essays delve into various aspects of possible futures, and, in case of Mindfire, possible imagined pasts.

SIMULATIONS.
TIME AND ETERNITY.
REVERSING THE ARROW OF TIME.
SILICON:THE SECOND LIFE
FOUR FUTURES.
SEVEN KINDS OF DEATH.
THE HOLY GRAIL.
FROM CHAOS TO EXTINCTION
INSIGHTS INTO 'MINDFIRE'
TWELVE HOURS FROM NOON TO MIDNIGHT.

Section II. THE FOUR ESSENCES

It may seem strange that the first essay in a section on “Four Essences” is entitled The Three Essences. The essay discusses Matter, Energy, and Information. The Fourth Essence, Meaning, is discussed in Section IV, in the essay “How Does “Mere InformationAcquire Meaning?. However, “The Three Essences” already discusses “meaning” in a rather detailed way, in fact breaking it down into steps leading right into linguistics, semantics, and logic.

Degrees of Reality and The Mirror World are a little more tentative about the “reality” of the “essences”, and quite in line with the tentative views of “time” versus “eternity” expressed in Section I. Preconditions of Existence expresses the anthropic sense of “reality” in a system of multiple worlds, picked up again in the essay Multiple Worlds in Section III.

“Degrees of Reality” contain some personal experiences to illustrate the point. However, the essays The Twilight Zone and Changeling of the Universe to which reference is made there are not included in this collection, being even more intensely personal.

THE THREE ESSENCES.
DEGREES OF REALITY.
THE MIRROR WORLD.
PRECONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE.

Section III. MATTER AND ENERGY

This section, on Matter and Energy, as the first two of the Four Essences, is one of the largest sections. The first essay, on States of Matter, is drawn from my experience as a student of chemistry. The next two, on Phases and the temperature zoom, come from later reading in various popular science journals. There follow 6 essays on quantum theory, where matter and energy are both implicated. Micro-Macro Convergence considers the evolution of the universe as a convergence from subatomic particles and galaxies toward more human-size dimensions. Matter and Form, Relationship, and From Fungibility to Personality discuss some supra-material properties evolving from matter. Nucleo-genesis makes a grand sweep from the Big Bang to the present, indicating an uncertain future.

Originally I wanted to have separate sections for each of the four Essences, but I found it impossible to separate matter and energy in my own writings, and so they are presented here in a joint section.

STATES OF MATTER.
PHASES.
THE TEMPERATURE ZOOM.
THE PEAK OF NON-LINEARITY.
QUANTUM IMPLICATIONS.
NON-LOCALITY.
FROM BOHR TO BOHM.
IMPLICATE ORDER (a prose poem).
BOSON-FERMION BRIDGES.
MULTIPLE WORLDS.
MACRO-MICRO CONVERGENCE (From Jantsch’s “Self-Organizing Universe”)
GALACTIC EVOLUTION.
MATTER AND FORM.
RELATIONSHIP.
FROM FUNGIBILITY TO PERSONALITY.
NUCLEOGENESIS, THEN AND NOW.

Section IV. INFORMATION

There are only four essays here. The first two deal with the non-conservation of information, which is the striking new property which distinguishes it from matter and energy. The first essay deals largely with loss of information and the second one mainly with the creation of information. The third essay forms a transition to the next section, in that it asks “How does mere information acquire meaning?” It dips into linguistics, among other things, and proposes the Fourth Essence as Mind. The last essay deals with other non-conserved or “non-diminishing” entities, mainly Love, and exhorts us to disperse it widely, since the stock is never depleted.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING SAVED.
INFORMATION IN FORMATION.
HOW DOES 'MERE INFORMATION' ACQUIRE MEANING?
NON-DIMINISHING ENTITIES.

Section V. MEANING AND KNOWLEDGE

This rather large section consists of 17 essays, of which the first is the longest. It provides a map of human cognitive development, especially the development of scientific knowledge. The other essays deal with such branches of knowledge as free will, logic, scientific method and its limits, linguistics, mathematics, rationality and its modification by human psychology, as well as various kinds of paradoxes.

The patterns observed here illuminate the various meanings of “meaning” in different fields of knowledge.

The reader should also turn to the essay The Mind as a Three-Way Plug in Section VI, which also contains some speculations on meaning.

THE UNFINISHED ROAD OF PENETRATION INTO TRUTH.
COMPLEXIFICATION AND THE MIND OF GOD.
SPECULATIONS ON FREE WILL.
MORE SPECULATIONS ON "THE CHAOTIC OBLIQUITY OF MARS."
THE NICHE FOR FREE WILL.
LIMITS TO KNOWLEDGE.
DANGERS OF INDUCTION.
IF...THEN...
WAYS OF KNOWING.
MORE HUMANE THAN THE LOGICIAN: BENEFICENT DEVIATIONS FROM RATIONALITY.
THE LINGUISTIC UNIVERSE.
MATHEMATICAL OPERATIONS.
IRRATIONALITY.
CONTINUITY ON THE NUMBER LINE.
FRACTAL SELF-SIMILARITY LIMITS.
THEORY AS MYTH.

Section VI. MIND

This is a collection of 16 essays and 2 poems under the heading of “Mind”. While Mind is not one of the four essences named in Section II, it can be considered as a further elaboration of Meaning, or as an attribute of Life (the title of Section VIII), or as a separate entity.

The Realm of the Mind is the first and the most extensive. The idea of multiple rooms should be read as a metaphor, but throwing some light on reality. Another metaphor is the “the three-way plug”. Mind as Interiority harks back somewhat to the previous essay on Degrees of Reality in Section II. A poem commenting on a story told in “Interiority” and pointing out the essential unity of life is interposed between the essays. Three essays deal with the phenomena of sleep. The next three essays deal with levels of consciousness in humans and the evolution of mind in the animal kingdom. There follow five essays on theories ofthe human mind by various authors, with my comments. Then two essays and a poem touch on beauty, music and the arts. The section closes with a brief speculation on “psychic fields”.

THE REALM OF THE MIND.
THE MIND AS A THREE-WAY PLUG.
INTERIORITY.
SLEEP THOUGHT.
SOUL OF WILLOW. (From a folk tale.)
THE SLEEP WORLD.
MORE ON SLEEP.
LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
EVOLUTION OF MIND.
AWAKENING.
CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED?
PSYCHO-PHYSICS.
SPERRY AND BERRY.
BOTH SIDES NOW.
CRACK IN THE COSMIC EGG.
BEAUTY, IN RELATION TO TRUTH AND GOODNESS.
MUSIC AND LIFE.
FRACTAL FLICKER.
PSYCHIC FIELD.

Section VII. SPIRIT

Under the heading of “Spirit” are essays on religion, several attempts to synthesize the beliefs of various faiths, theories of afterlife (a comparative summary of various beliefs without a final commitment to any), brief speculations on mandala patterns, one very personal essay (The Fifth Yoga) on my own experiences, four on the nature of God (and the Devil), and a closing poem.

I have no training as a theologian, no firm personal faith (though I lean in certain directions)==*==, and probably no right to speak on these matters. Yet again, I remind the reader that these are trial balloons, not dogmas or doctrines, and therefore I feel justified in exploring religious matters, as a lay person and a citizen.

* Although in “The Fifth Yoga” I express a conviction that God exists and is even communicating with me, I don’t yet have a feeling of His Presence. Perhaps I am too ambitious. There are no burning bushes, even though there is sacred ground.

SYMMETRY RESTORATION -- ABOVE AND BELOW.
RELIGION FOR THE COMING AGE.
KABBALISTIC EVOLUTION.
SUPER-ECUMENICAL SYNTHESIS.
RELIGIOUS PARADIGMS.
HAGIOSOPHY.
BETWEEN DEISM AND TAOISM.
THE POWERLESS GOD.
POETRY, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION.
AN IMAGE OF GOD.
MANDALA PATTERNS.
THE CORE OF THE MATTER.
THE CENTRALITY OF IRON.
THANATOLOGY.
THE FIFTH YOGA.
THE INEFFABLE GOD?
BREAD AND WINE.

Section VIII. LIFE

This very long section on “Life” reveals my intense interest in the nature and origin of life. These essays deal with evolution and development (they are not the same), teleology, social development and evolution, origin of life, and even the interpretation of a myth (that of Psyche).

Life uses all the essences (matter, energy, information, meaning), as well as mind and spirit as in the preceding Section headings. It is somehow an amalgam of all of these, or giving rise to an emergence of mind and spirit from matter. It is a very mysterious and holy phenomenon. I have written poems about it, but decided to include here only one near the end, The Mind and the Body.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.
THE GOLDILOCKS EFFECT.
META-HISTORY.
AGES AND TRANSFORMATIONS.
MORPHOGENETIC FIELDS.
RADICAL VITALISM.
A RE-INTERPRETATION OF PSYCHE'S LABOURS.
PSYCHE REVISITED.
A SINGLE PROCESS: THE CONVEYOR BELT.
ORTHOGONAL EVOLUTION.
THE DEFINITION OF LIFE.
DOWNGRADING THE LIFE FORCE.
CONVERGENCE IN BIOLOGY.
DESIGN VERSUS SELECTION: TWO WAYS TO REACH THE GOAL.
THE MASTER SWITCH.
LIMITS OF A GENETIC PARADIGM.
THE MIND AND THE BODY.

Section IX. LEVELS OF BEING.

After a brief introductory essay on Intertwining Levels follows a long essay on various information systems in a living organism, illustrating its Levels of Being. It is a natural sequel to the previous section on “Life”. Perhaps readers will feel that this information is already provided in biology textbooks and that this essay is unnecessary. However, I have never seen it drawn together quite like this. To me, it puts various separate islands of knowledge into a common context.

This is followed by essays on the evolution of reproduction, the roles of women and men, and the nature of homosexuality. Not everyone will agree with these. Nor will all readers concur with the essays on social evolution. But I hope we can all be inspired by the longish book review of Peter Russell’s The Awakening Earth. Finally, Our Common Essence provides a firm non-theological basis for ethical behaviour, so that atheists and agnostic can also follow it.

INTERTWINING LEVELS.
LEVELS OF BEING.
BODY LEVELS IN ESOTERIC DOCTRINES.
IMPORTANT MARGINS.
EVOLUTION OF REPRODUCTION.
THE ARCHETYPAL BATTLE OF THE SEXES.
SEXUAL DIALECTIC.
HOMOSEXUALITY AND BIOLOGY.
ORGANISMS AND SOCIETIES.
BIOLOGICAL METAPHORS FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION.
THE AWAKENING EARTH.
OUR COMMON ESSENCE.

Section X. RHYTHMS OF CHANGE

While parts of previous sections dealt with patterns in space, the essays in this section deal with patterns in time: staircases, cycles, sudden transitions, and phases. There is also one essay on a very fundamental differential equation (which I call The Key), which connects exponential growth or decay with sinusoidal waves and oscillations. The role of contingency and pruning in evolution also receives attention.

Concepts such as “Crisis”, “Catastrophe”, “Chaos”, and “The Devil’s Staircase” sound quite ominous, but are not; they are only phenomena occurring in rapid transitions, continuous or discontinuous, orderly or unpredictable.

This links up with ideas already presented in a previous essay, Religion for the Coming Age.

THE RISE AND RUN: STAIRCASE RHYTHM AND THE RAPIDS OF CHANGE.
THE SWALLOWTAIL AND THE BUTTERFLY.
MOON TIDES: PHASES AND CYCLES.
CYCLES.
THE KEY.
SYMMETRY-BREAKING.
CONTINGENCY.
PRUNING THE TREE OF LIFE.

Section XI. PASSAGES

This section on Passages is mainly about astrological signs, Tarot cards, and Chakras, used as metaphors for certain stages in the human life-cycle. Possibly some of the relationships are somewhat forced as if into a bed of Procrustes, but I find them insightful and instructive.

To make the passages more vivid, they are retold as a story in Pilgrims’s Progress, which is definitely not autobiographical. The Angel’s Staircase is a further comment on the Tarot Major Arcana; the title is meant as a counter to the fractal curve known as The Devil’s Staircase.

PASSAGES.
PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
THE ANGEL'S STAIRCASE.
TRANSIENCE.

Section XII. CONCLUSIONS

This concluding section tries to pull it all together, in five essays, a brief meditation, and two poems.

The first essay summarizes some insights from science. It was originally written for a discussion group on science and religion. The second essay tries to remove some contradictions among previous essays, but fails to provide a “theory of everything”. It concludes with a religious meditation. The third essay, which provided the title for this whole collection, tries to pull together some of the main concepts from previous sections’ essays. The fourth essay takes us through the entire past and future history of the Universe, with some rather far-fetched speculation about a closed cycle even of an “open” Universe. The brief speculations draw some wide-ranging comparisons between cosmic and earthly structures. And the two poems are self-explanatory.

WHAT INSIGHTS DO WE GET FROM SCIENCE?
THE GRAND CONVERGENCE
HOW THINGS COME TOGETHER: A TENTATIVE SCHEME.
EONS OF THE UNIVERSE.
OF STARS AND SPECIES.
PARADOX AND PARADIGM.
LOVE-UNION.
Bibliography