The TES Hypothesis
It is a mind that is unprejudiced by religion, philosophy, and cultural conditioning. It is going naked in the stars
The TES Hypothesis states that everything
we have and will ever see and know is composed of three
elements: time, energy, and space, which we can call the TES
(Pronounced as the name Tess.) Even the
ethereal phenomena of compassion and love are a product of this
singular universal cosmic entity. There are forms of energy and
dimensions of space that have not yet been quantified by science.
Those mysterious realities are within the normal workings of the
TES. Nothing in the universe is supernatural and beyond the laws
of nature. Everything that exists is created through cycles of
the TES, both on the large physical scale involving the formation of
stars, galaxies, and planets, and on the subtler inner dimensions
involving the evolution of the human brain and consciousness.
The Hindu word 'Atman' means the soul of life and the essence of
being. The Atman is not the individual human mind, but is defined
as the universal soul that exists everywhere. For this discussion,
we will use the word Atman more strictly to designate that part of the
TES that becomes conscious of itself on the grand and cosmic
scale. We thus define the Atman as the universal cosmic
consciousness.
The vast majority of the
TES exists unconsciously, without feeling or life. This portion
is made up of relatively empty space, stars, and the bulk of
planets. Primitive life forms that exist on a minority of planets
have a utilitarian consciousness which allows them to survive through
interacting with their environment. The fundamental awareness of
physical objects, combined with the pleasure-pain mechanism and the
ultimate survival of the fittest and smartest creates the evolutionary
pathway through which the unconscious TES slowly evolves to greater
levels of awareness. The unconscious TES, raw matter and energy,
give birth to the partially conscious TES, the world of plants and
animals. With the evolution of higher animals, the intensely
conscious TES, the Atman, arises. This oceanic consciousness is a
normal product of the TES and is inherently immortal. When human
beings become enlightened, their consciousness becomes one with the
Atman, but they never achieve magical abilities outside of the natural
laws and properties of the TES. Enlightened beings remain
physically mortal, but their consciousness becomes one with the
primordial consciousness of nature itself. This Atman has always
existed and will exist eternally into the future.
No human being has ever known the unconscious part of the TES
directly, because all that we know is within the world of
consciousness. We become aware of the unconscious realm of the
TES only through inference. When you look at a tree, you are not
seeing the tree directly, but rather a representation of the tree
created by your own brain. Our experience of colors, smells,
tastes, and sounds, are all subjective creations of our mammalian
neurological evolution.
As long as we feel we exist as individuals we suffer because that
perception is based on a temporary neurological illusion. This
illusion of an individual I is so vulnerable that even sleep destroys
it. Every time you go into deep sleep your consciousness
temporarily dies and your subjective individual identity dies with
it. Get rid of the feeling I exist, and you get rid of
attachments which create tension, suffering, and feelings of
danger. When you focus your consciousness on that which is
limited, you become small and vulnerable. When you open your
consciousness to experience the whole universe, you become vast,
limitless, and without mental anguish. Thus, the art of
meditation is the art of inner astronomy.
The ultimate experience of the TES is so vast that there is nothing to
compare it to. With no comparison possible, the experience of
everything feels like nothingness. How can infinity have a size
or a shape when by definition it has no boundaries? The TES is so
full of space that it feels like oblivion, thus many enlightened
teachers have called it the Void. This feeling of the ultimate
extinction of all things is cosmically erotic, and in a strange
contradiction of terms it is a rich and positively charged
experience. Even this ultimate experience of the Void is a
subjective illusion, because Energy-Matter and Time-Space do exist,
even if enlightened humans do not perceive them in the ordinary gross
physical way.
The Hindu and
Buddhist concept of an ultimate personal liberation, "nirvana" or
"moksha," is impossible. Ask yourself two fundamental
questions. Who is going to be liberated, and what is he going to
be liberated from? In truth the 'who' and the 'what' are the same
thing. Ask yourself what being was behind the eyes of the
Buddha? The answer is Time-Energy-Space, the TES. Then ask
yourself what being is behind the eyes of Vladimir Putin?
The answer is still Time-Energy-Space. Individuals exist and have
reality, but they are just temporary products of the TES, which is our
fundamental immortal identity.
The TES
is always creating new life and new personalities out of its own
being. The individual is always in danger of being destroyed, but
the cosmic presence that animates us is eternal. Unless the
entire TES is destroyed, liberation from cycles of life and death is
impossible. The TES creates a human being, and that individual
experiences joy and suffering, but it is the TES having these
experiences in a dream drama that the TES itself creates. The TES
is within each cell of our body and is our true personal identity, not
the temporary mortal personality that carries a picture ID in his
wallet. Therefore, the goal of religion should not be an
impossible liberation from the inevitable cycles of life, but rather
how to make the unstoppable fact of life more
ecstatic.
The term
TES is a temporary creation, as are all the holy words of ancient
scripture. Those words are names used to designate that which is
beyond any language. It is an effort to express that which cannot
be expressed by a mountain of scholarly scriptures. No name can
stick, and no philosophy can ring perfectly true, because you cannot
paste a bumper sticker on a tidal wave. You cannot shrink a
supernova into something that will fit in a library.
In time, all evidence that human animals existed on this Earth will be
washed away, and new civilizations will be born on other worlds to take
our place. Those new conscious beings will discover the unity of
the TES, which they will call by another name in a language never
spoken by any human being. The meaning, however, will be exactly
the same.
Here is an inspirational quote from my father, a man I never fully appreciated until after he was gone.
"The
alternative to despair is courage. And human life can be viewed
as a continuous struggle between these two options. Courage is
the capacity to affirm one's life in spite of the elements which
threaten it. The fact that courage usually predominates over
despair in itself tells us something important about life. It
tells you that the forces that affirm life are stronger than those that
negate it."
Christopher Calder calderconnection@gmail.com