Perpetuum mobile

A reality without ability to embrace extremes wouldn’t be a reality — it would collapse because of inner imperfection. Our theories may collapse because our reasoning based on prejudices and limited observation is imperfect and inadequate, but we cannot say the world collapses because of that.

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As we examine human history we see the nature producing wonderful new answers and opportunities in extreme conditions. Possibly for a moment we see certain behaviors as extremes, but they inevitably bring forward reactions which create new possibilities and realms of existence. Today’s extremes are tomorrow’s yesterday’s news. In language of contemporary physics, we cannot say extremes we see are indeed the outmost stretch of the objective reality, but they’re part of our subjective reality. But even as such reality seems to be all accommodating and shifts itself the very next moment to embrace changes caused by extremities. It somehow finds a perfect solution, or a remedy, that in turn creates new level of existence and understanding.

That is, in essence, how the principle of dualism(1) works, and that’s how we gather knowledge of the world and its possibilities. Dualism is thus both the mean and the way of existence. It helps us gather better knowledge and understanding of our own potential. It’s in the nature, and in the nature of self.

Something profound is hidden in this principle. It will help us understand some old insights in a new light and demystify them. There’s an old parable: one has become many. It comes from the old scriptures and wants to illustrate an idea of how God created cosmos and beings like us. But it doesn’t explain why exactly. We’re left with only some religious and pre-rational assumptions about it that don’t convince anymore. Today we may ask rightfully: what’s wrong in being just one?

If we observe the picture from our new perspective, the answer is immanent: to experience how far one can go and what are the limits of its own potential. To illustrate it visually, one has created numerous mirrors to observe its own existence from various angles. What is such an existence capable of? A true potential of such a reality cannot be realised and released otherwise but through numerous mirrors, or witnesses of one’s existence. No observers, no reality.

Our life’s experience tells we always need something or someone to reflect onto, to reflect upon, to observe ourselves and the outreach of our existence. For example, we need friends to see how capable friends we are. We need children to see how good parents we are. Once we reach something, we see something new coming again, one more reason to live the moment. It’s the only and true perpetuum mobile.(2) It’s not only preserving the momentum (which would mean it doesn’t lose its energy), but along with inevitable friction (in the form of everything outdated and obsolete) it constantly creates new potential. An outside observer would perceive it as a perfect state of balance. However, from the inside, an observer would experience a constant flux and motion.

Let’s stop for a moment now. Can we indeed perceive such a reality from outside and observe its balance? No, we cannot. We’re already submerged into reality and the balance we eagerly strive for in our lives must be achieved through its flux and motion — through the cycle of perpetuum mobile — and not through the state of immobility and inactivity. As contemporary physics suggests, even immobility and inaction is already an action because we cannot separate ourselves from the environment. When we observe, we already participate in and change reality.

Perpetuum mobile of the one and self doesn’t deplete its own resources through the feedback loop and doesn’t stop after some time. It always gives birth to something new. Its primary nature is to exist and from that everything else arises.

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(1) Dualism: the division of something conceptually into two opposed or contrasted aspects, or the state of being so divided.
(2) Perpetuum mobile, or perpetual motion: a state in which movement or action is or appears to be continuous and unceasing.

— Zvonimir Tosic

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