Žr. Viena

See also: Facts, Word, {{God}}, Overview

===What is Theory?===

Theory is:

• what can be shared
• grounds for sharing Definition
• the grounds for Definition.
• Logos
• the Word

{{God}} is a Theory that makes sense of the Facts.

Perhaps this is what is meant in the Gospel of John by the Word (or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos Logos]): In the beginning was the Word. And the word was towards God. And God was the word. This may mean that Theory was toward God (of himself) and God (upon going beyond himself) was Theory.

Theory (Logos)

• is God's going beyond himself, which is what we are, Person. God's quality (aloneness) is what can be negated. God goes beyond aloneness into aloneness, thus is not alone. God's going beyond relates God and NotGod in terms of Being (of God) and NotBeing. Nullsome, Being as distinct from NotBeing, the positive Activity (of being alone, our going beyond ourselves) that defines our being as Persons in Scopes, that creates and defines the arisal of everything, the maintaining of Position, our identity as not our Selves, God's question “Am I alone?” that is self-sufficent, unresolved, empathetic, the taking up of what is beyond, of what is not taking up, the Spirit of Truth, the marked opposite, necessary, the taking up of Questions, it is Questions taking up Questions, what is actual. God thereby creates us who go before him, who are alone prior to him. God is not where he already is for he is alone, but Person allows God to arise there.

===A letter===

[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/livingbytruth/message/695 August 1, 2007, Living by Truth]

In 1971, when I was child, I set upon a quest to know everything and apply that knowledge usefully. In 1982, when I entered college, I started to catalogue structures that expressed the limits of our minds, notably "divisions of everything", but later "representations", "topologies", "languages" and "primary structures". In 2000 or so, I started to seek a theory that would pull all of the structural facts together and generate how they unfold. I try to work on that every morning here and am making incremental progress.

This year I have been trying to find the end of the string that ties it all together. The unfolding is driven by God's going beyond himself. But what in his nature most deeply compels him? For example, the unconditional goes beyond itself into the conditional; the indefinite into the definite; the inconsistent into the consistent; the unlimited into the limited; and so on. What seems to be at the heart is that "being one with" goes beyond itself into "not being one with". I'm still not sure, but it is emotionally meaningful, morally satisfying, structurally fruitful and also scripturally central given Jesus's personal prayer to his Father in the Gospel of John where he speaks of "love" and "being one with" as if they were analogues. http://www.ebible.org/web/John.htm#C17V1 Perhaps "being one with" is a premonition of "love" in the sense that I will explain below.

As I swirled inward looking for the starting point of it all, I recognized that I should distinguish the structural facts from the explanatory theory which I was seeking. The structural facts about our minds were there to be explained regardless of any theory. Although a successful theory might make those facts much more evident. But what I am doing now is seeking a theory. My instinct is that God (to be defined or not!) is at the root of it all. Whether or not God exists - and I think God is prior to matters of existence - but my theory is that if we can take up God's point of view then we can indeed know everything and apply that knowledge usefully.

You might imagine, the closer that we get to the starting point, the more we have to let go of all of our presumptions and contexts. Indeed, our greatest presumptions must be built into the starting point. So as I kept rethinking the starting point I wondered maybe Theory itself is the starting point because that is what I am seeking and is the context in which I am working. Then I recalled the beginning of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." http://www.ebible.org/web/John.htm And in Greek the "Word" is Logos which has many interpretations. But I thought, what if Logos means Theory? And that seems quite plausible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos And there is a supposedly literal translation of the Greek: "In beginning was the word, and the word was toward the god, and god was the word". From my point of view this would say: "In the beginning there was the Theory, and the Theory (was embraced by? or went beyond itself to?) God, and the God was (defined as?) Theory." In the Christian faith, the Logos is identified with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, which might make sense in that Jesus is the perfect person in theory - the organizing principle for our universe - who was then realized in practice.

This allows God - or the root of it all - to be considered as the Theory such that:

• God is the Theory of BeingOneWith
• The Facts are that the Theory is going beyond itself into what is NotBeingOneWith
• The Truth is the Application that we can be meeting the Theory and thus BeingOneWith

This opens up a role for us as those in NotBeingOneWith who can meet with BeingOneWith and enter into it, link up our perspective with its perspective. It also provides a stark moral choice between "living with a theory" and "living without any theory". I suspect that the latter option ends badly, but this may very well be life's question. And perhaps a more troubling question is, if we "live with a theory" (a god), then must we "live with a Theory" (a God), which is to say, live by a comprehensive theory?

I also noticed that the most explicit, developed structures (divisions of everything, topologies, representations) were at play from the very beginning in the unfolding of structure. But I realized that they could be thought of as premonitions of what was to come and only realized themselves as Definition itself progressed from soft to hard. And I saw that this progression could be measured by the Scope given by the overlap of BeingOneWith and NotBeingOneWith so that at the beginning they are the same and the scope is Everything, but as Truth hardens, they become separate and the scope is Nothing.

I then looked at the different fundamental concepts that were relevant to explain the unfolding of the structure. The notion of Conditional and Unconditional was quite central but I realized that this could be driven by the perspective of NotBeingOneWith. There were also concepts that played off both oppositions (+/- BeingOneWith and +- Unconditional), namely:

• Person (such as God, I, You, Other) = Unconditional BeingOneWith
• Perspective (such as Life, Anything, Choosing, Will) = Conditional BeingOneWith
• Position (such as EternalLife, Wisdom, GoodWill, GodsWill) = Conditional NotBeingOneWith
• System (such as God, Everything, Wishing, Love) = Unconditional NotBeingOneWith

and these are organized by the diagram I wrote about earlier regarding Experiencing and Understanding at http://www.worknets.org/http://www.ms.lt/livingbytruth/?page=LivingByTruth/Overview

So I thought in what sense "BeingOneWith and NotBeingOneWith" are to BeingOneWith what "Unconditional" and "Conditional" are to NotBeingOneWith? And I realized that what is NotBeingOneWith is separating it's own perspective from whatever it might even be one with, which is to say, it is not subjective, it is not engaged. As I thought about that I realized that we might phrase this positively in terms of grounds for definition:

• BeingOneWith is "sharing the grounds for definition"
• NotBeingOneWith is "not sharing the grounds for definition"

Which is to say that BeingOneWith is inclusive and treating others by the same presumptions as in "love your neighbor as yourself" and "love God". Whereas NotBeingOneWith is keeping others at arm's length and applying a different standard to them. BeingOneWith is "allowing for A theory" whereas NotBeingOneWith is "not allowing for A theory". What this means is that NotBeingOneWith allows for "redefinition", "reinterpretation" as it is engaged by BeingOneWith and chased as to its grounds until after four levels finally they are all exhausted and there is nothing left of NotBeingOneWith except the freedom that was opened up in this.

[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/livingbytruth/message/674 System distinguishes experiencing and understanding, May 1, 2007, Andrius Kulikauskas]