The Grand Paradox

On the concepts that drive and shape the dimensions of our world.

This is an article about the nature of the reality that we experience while incarnated in a physical form. It is based upon several different sources, the primary one being my own mind and personal lifelong conjectures and inferences. While the following material does make reference to concepts discussed in, for example, The Law of One as described by Ra, the synthesis of these concepts in this fashion is, to my knowledge, fairly novel. I state this not to toot my own horn, as it were, but – perhaps somewhat to the contrary – to issue an even stronger suggestion than usual to use your personal discernment with this material.

Strap in, and welcome to the most analytical portion of my spiritual side. What follows is a series of diagrams that I created to illustrate what I believe to be the various forces within the first three densities (or dimensions) of experience.

I have not yet discussed the topic of the densities or dimensions whatsoever, so I shall do so now in brief. It is my hypothesis and understanding, based upon my extremely limited vantage point as an entity who was born into a third-density incarnation, that the term “density” can be most accurately thought of as informational density. Thus, the density of information that can be contained in a third-density body is significantly less than that which can be contained in a sixth-density form. Because the informational density is manifested as higher-frequency wavelengths – all of creation being, essentially, vibratory (think “string theory” rather than particle physics), the higher the density, the more information can be packed into a given space – the wavelengths are shorter (more compact – higher density) and more frequent. This hypothesis is consistent with Einstein’s calculations, which posited that the faster one moved, the “heavier” (denser) one became. It is generally assumed that the speed referred to here is linear speed, but I don’t know enough about physics to know why that is, so I am free to simply suppose here that this assumption is false. (That’s a joke … Maybe.)

Now, we have described the fact that higher density beings vibrate at a higher frequency, faster, and with more informational compaction. This, I believe, allows these beings to coexist in the same relative physical space as lower density beings; however, they are, due to the vibrational mismatch, totally invisible. Many people refer to these higher-density beings as being “higher-dimensional;” Carl Sagan was among those to postulate the existence of such beings. I had never previously been able to really wrap my brain around the concept of extra dimensions aside from the standard X, Y and Z axes. This is because our brains are not adapted to think in these terms – we are only capable of comprehending the three-dimensional world around us. This article is not about the mathematical possibilities of additional dimensions in space. This article is a discussion of the philosophical and spiritual underpinnings of the nature of dimensionality itself.

By now you may be asking, “What the heck does that mean?” That means that it’s time for some diagrams. Let’s start with a line.

[Fig. 1: The First Density, or One-Dimensional Space-Time]

The very simplest thing, of course, is a point. The point, in this diagram, is represented by a blue dot. I didn’t bother to make a diagram to illustrate the point in the absence of a line, so I’m going to draw one now, before we return to our line. Pardon me a moment.

[Fig. 2: The First Thing Ever.]

Here is our point. You may note that, contrary to the line, there is no need to label the point, because there is only one. There’s no confusing it with any other point. The point is a concept; a thought. It is generally understood to be the very first thought, and, we may argue, thus, the very first thing. The thing is the thought, which is: “I am.”

This article threatens to become very confusing. It is not my intention to make it so; in fact, I am going to make every effort in my repertoire to make these concepts as clear to the reader as I possibly can. However, one of my goals here is to clear up some concepts that seem, because they are, rather paradoxical, and in order to do that, I have kept the above diagrams intentionally nonlinear to give an example of the mode of thinking required to grasp them. In essence, my hypothesis here is that all things are essentially defined by their opposite. Thus, when we discuss a given noble or positive concept, we must first describe or define its negative or opposite. Only then can we truly illuminate the concept itself.

This, then, returns us to our point, and our line.

Our point stated, “I am.” It is a thought. It is a concept. It is the very first one.

Whomever stated this was, by definition, one who is. Thus, the very first thinker of the very first thought – whose name is unknown, and whose moniker is controversial – was, at the time of that thought, All That Is; because this thinker thought this thought first, and all else stemmed from this thought, the thinker remains All That Is, and all that ever was and will be – that is, unless there is another Original Thinker out there somewhere.

Assuming that there was not another Original Thinker, then the one who first thought “I AM” is our one and only origin point. We must assume, then, that all else stems from this thinker. How, then, did anything other than the thinker come to be?

If the thinker is, then logically, there is nothing that is not. In essence, we have Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. This, however, becomes overwhelming rather quickly; such is the burden of omnipotence and omniscience. We must, therefore, have some sort of logical foil for our thinker. Because there is actually nothing that is not, this foil can be thought of as “That which is not;” if the thinker can be thought of as the Architect of All That Is, then that which is not would logically seek to be its Destroyer.

The Destroyer finds its hypothetical self in a quandary, however, because nothing can actually ever be destroyed. Thus, although it may seek to call itself The Destroyer, it cannot actually destroy anything at all; it can only temporarily break down That Which Is into its component parts; that is to say, it can seek to break down the ordered Structure into its component parts, deteriorating it into Chaos. In this, we observe our first paradox: In order for All That Is to properly appreciate the Structure that has been created by its thoughts, there must be a force that opposes it. We can even suppose that this imaginary force is the First Law of Thermodynamics, “All matter tends towards chaos and equilibrium,” conceptualized as The Destroyer by All That Is – and, because this force is more basic, more seemingly primeval than the refinement of The Architect, this destructive, chaotic force actually (falsely) appears to have come first. This is the First Paradox of The Illusion.

The Second Paradox of The Illusion could be conflated with the story of the fall of Adam and Eve; however, I don’t believe that this is a terribly useful or accurate metaphor for this concept. I mention it only because the name that I have given to the opposing, paradoxical force here – The Deceiver – is one that is associated with the concept of Satan, which is associated by many with the Serpent; thus, some readers may leap to this conclusion on their own. I’m going to state here and now that I do not equate any of the above three concepts — I hold each separate, and, while there are certainly ties and parallels between them, it would be counterproductive to discuss them here and now.

The Deceiver in this case is not anthropomorphic, or even possessed of any form at all. It is purely conceptual. It is, as we can see in the next diagram, nothing more than the personification of yet another paradox: the concept of Lies.

Here, I present to you, in cleaned-up, color-coded and annotated format the very first theosophical conceptual diagram that I ever drew as a kid. I drew it twice, in fact; the first must have been my preteen years, and the second was some time as a later teenager. The concept was powerful enough to me that it broke through my consciousness twice asking to be written down. The third time it did so, I finally turned it into a proper diagram:

[Fig. 3: The Four Forces of the Second Density / Second Dimension.]

This depicts what I then termed the Four Forces; I would now amend that to qualify that they are The Four Forces that act upon Consciousness itself. On the Y axis, we have our two Primary Forces, those of Architect and Destroyer. I placed these in such a configuration for no reason other than to place the Architect at the top, for obvious symbolic reasons. On the X axis, we have two new forces: that of the Deceiver, as mentioned, and that of the Enlightener. As can be seen in the key to the right, the Deceiver spreads Lies, and the Enlightener teaches Facts.

Once again, we have a paradox here, and that is that, prior to the concept of the Deceiver, and the Lies that it tells, there was no such thing as “Facts.” Everything simply was, and thus, everything that a consciousness encountered had to be true by default. (Note here that I chose the word “Facts” very deliberately over the word “Truth.” This is because, in this day and age, we often speak of “Subjective Truth,” but nobody sane can make the argument for the existence of a “False Fact.”) Prior to the concept of the Deceiver, there was no such thing as a Lie, and thus, there could be no Illusion. The Deceiver is the force upon which the Illusion itself is predicated – the Illusion being, of course, the Great Lie that we are in some way separate from the Architect that dreamed us.

If we think of the first dimensional line as illustrating a gradient of Entropy – from Chaos to Structure – we can likewise think of the second dimensional line as illustrating another gradient, that of Knowledge – from Lies to Facts. Thus, we now have two gradients – those of Entropy and Knowledge – that are created by our Four Forces: The Architect, The Destroyer, The Deceiver and The Enlightener.

Since I’ve already ventured pretty far into the material described by Ra that is often referred to at The Law of One – that is, to describe the thoughts of the first thinker, All That Is, as All That Is, and to refer to the concept that “we” are somehow separate from that as a deceitful Illusion – I may as well jump right into the next concept: The Choice.

[Fig. 4: Third Density, or The Choice of the Third Dimension.]

Here we have a very bad diagram. It’s bad because it is supposed to convey three-dimensionality, yet I made no effort whatsoever to do so graphically, for which I do apologize. Please imagine, if you will, that the blue and red lines that made up the X and Y axes of our last illustration have simply rotated 90 degrees towards you on the previously invisible Z axis. Bisecting these first two lines at 90 degree angles to both X and Y is a whole new axis, the Z axis, represented by a green line. This we will refer to as Polarity. It is also often referred to as The Choice, for it is truly the very first choice that any entity that has achieved conscious awareness of Self ever gets to make.

The Choice can only be made once a being achieves awareness of its own consciousness, separate from All That Is. Note that, as described above, this is technically an Illusion, for All That Is is All That Is, and every conscious entity is a part of All That Is; however, the Illusion of Separation is the critical illusion that, paradoxically, enables “us” to have any consciousness in the first place. The Choice is also predicated upon a conscious, Self-aware being having achieved this Self-awareness in a social setting. It is not really possible for a being that evolves its intelligence in a social vacuum to make The Choice.

Why this is shall become clear as we begin to unravel precisely what this choice truly is. In many circles, the two options at either extreme of The Choice of Polarity are referred to as “Service-to-Self” versus “Service-to-Others.” For several reasons, I have elected to use different terminology here, although the meaning remains the same. At one end of the Z axis, we have the concept of Selfishness. Selfishness may here be defined as the choice that may be made by an entity that is aware of itself to direct its actions exclusively towards the service to its own self interests, even at the expense of others. On the other end of the axis, we have the concept of Altruism – the Choice to direct a majority of one’s actions towards the service and benefit of others without the expectation of any reciprocity or benefit to the self in return. The Archetype that is embodied by the most extreme form of selfishness is here referred to as The Despot – a vicious, tyrannical ruler. Generally speaking, The Despot can be said to follow and embody the Lies of The Deceiver, though this is not a one-to-one association. The Archetype at the most advanced form of Altruism might, in this world, be thought of as The Martyr – one who would willingly give one’s very life in order to serve the greatest good of others (though not, it is to be noted, one who necessarily needs to do so in order to prove it). Similarly, The Martyr is very often an Enlightener as well, but this, too, is no hard and fast rule.

The Choice is one that is, of course, predicated upon the Illusion of Separation — if All is One, there can be no Choice. It is also a paradox in and of itself. One need only consider the example of our dear old Earth in order to understand that all of the problems of its dominant social species – Man – can be traced back to the actions of a handful of Despots. There is, of course, no question that natural disasters do occur, and that resources may at times become scarce; barring these outlying circumstances, however, it is not difficult to imagine a world in which “we could all just get along” – if only for the actions of those Selfish people. It is “those Selfish people,” therefore, who give the Human population the catalysts that it needs in order to make The Choice to be of service to others at all – only by seeing and experiencing the worst possible examples of selfishness can others fully appreciate just how rotten that extreme truly is, and consciously choose its opposite. In an Edenic utopia, there would be no Choice. Thus, the Paradox of The Choice is that only through Selfishness can the virtue of Altruism be truly and fully illuminated at the highest level of contrast, so to speak.

This leads us to our final summation of the first three densities of existence: The Grand Paradox. At each of these levels, it is only through its unfortunate opposite that the most noble and positive concept of each of the densities can truly be brought into being. The Structure of Creation begins from Chaos. Within this Structure, it is only when the concept of the Lie is introduced that the concept of Facts may emerge. Through the Facts that emerge, the Illusion of Separation becomes more entrenched, for no Fact can ever truly prove All That Is, and so the great Lie of the Illusion is perpetuated further. From the Illusion of Separation, the concept of Selfishness emerges, and from this, the virtue of Altruism is underscored in contrast. Thus, as we can see, the Universe that we inhabit is a Grand Paradox, built upon a series of Paradoxes, all unfolding to become the beautiful mess that we now inhabit: Third Density Earth.

With that, I leave you with a rainbow, which appeared to me just moments after I concluded this essay on the first three densities or dimensions of physical space-time. In my next essay, I’m going to offer some conjecture as to what may lie just a step or two beyond. If you found this interesting, I invite you to join me next time as we step all the way through and over the rainbow.

Yes, there is going to be another diagram.

The Rainbow at the End of the Third Density.