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CHAPTER 16
Take Musicians
Suppose now you see a musician. He appears active. He is writing. Strange symbols lie scattered across his page, like leaves, similar yet individual, and there is a system, that is clear. He moves after a passage and turns to a piano. Music arrives, well-orchestrated for multiple-play, cohesive, with integral form as well as format, and overall composition as a major quality. Lovely sound. He turns back to his page. More strange signals appear on it. Off to the orchestra with him.
It appears he is a maestro, for they look to him and his eye-brows rise and fall, his baton, his voice, and they all have those pages with strange marks on them. What had been suggestive of depth and brilliance before now seems to have grown up, for many voices make up the diligently active orchestra into one slightly swaying body. His signs and expressions could be comical, if the result were not grand.
It is clear that there is a strong correlation between his marks on the paper, the sounds in the air, when he is alone, and another kind of correlation when the orchestra has these signs, slightly more complicated, with his facial and baton expressiveness added. They appear to speak a foreign language, unknown to me, so that when he talks to them, changes occur in the quality of the sound.
Now I have not seen or heard anything so far, we will assume, which distinguishes these verbal, manual (when his hands turned from symbols to piano keys) and public signals, from nonsense in themselves. It is only that the paper is there, and there are repetitive elements in it, the music on his own piano is there, and there is melody and charm in it; and when he translates the result into an orchestral composite, the signs evidently from face and baton speak volumes; and furthermore, though he is rather terse sounding, the emissions from his mouth appear to influence, as another kind of signals, the result.
I am not going to be mystified, then, even if I know no music. I shall think. I see a cause, indeed a vast multitude of causes, I see symbols and from results gather they are systematically arrayed to achieve meaning, see his fingers work while his eyes scan what he wrote in symbols, observe the orderly and remarkable impact of the result of these symbols, hands, piano, observe that it too is very systematically made, though assuming I know no carpentry or mechanics; and I can see clearly that it is both orderly and exquisitely crafted. He lifts the lid, to check something: I look and it is heavily systematic with strings adapted to making noises. This in its appearance and form is not nonsense. The product was assuredly not nonsense, but a rhythmic masterpiece. As Christ put it, you do not get figs from thistles.
No idea enters my mind to what went on in his MIND concerning the symbol production, so that he might put it on paper. I do not know what emotions went into the product which stirred my emotions, but I see that there are cadences and what I find are called cadenzas, and the results are in a pentad of systems: his mind, his fingers, his symbols, his verbal communication with others and his instruments. I find no need to invent some new system of logic. I discover the idea of cause and effect perfectly consistent with all the product and the cause. in this case. To be sure, I cannot discern what precise input of thought inspired his vision, which he has translated, what species of mental digestion and creation moved behind those brows, nor the source of the vision. I know one can have visions, for I have had them; but what he had and the manner in which he had this kind of a vision, I do not know. We are assuming I am not musical, and do not know his language in its intimate recesses, but only the correlation between various sets of verbal and musical symbols, and products, both in passing and in the final accomplishment from the orchestra.
I know creation in myself, and hence am not troubled by esoteric questions concerning the forces, features and foci involved. I can analyse it, if you wish, but in the end, I am gifted in using such creation myself, and the analysis does not add much to the basic discernment that I AM equipment, and I HAVE facilities and functions, that these WORK together, system upon system, within and without my mind, and that a host of expressive modes and means are conjoint in this creation.
I do not have to wonder if the notes made the man, for obviously there is no such relationship in the most remote degree; or whether the paper made the notes, for the paper is found without notes, and some with them, and the translation of the one to another merely requires an agent, and in all kinds of ways I and others are able to be agents for transmission of many things from one medium to another, whether from will to mind, mind to finger, finger to symbol, symbol to reader-systems, and these to people who understand and respond aptly to these things, because they too have various systems ready and fitted out for correlation, it all being of one generic kind, language and personal set of features at the back.
The action INSIDE the mind of the man, and BEFORE that action in the mind, and in MAKING the mind of the man, so stupendously symbol-creative and symbol-product efficient, enabled him to call up forces by the work of the same mind-maker on the works which surround us, from mind also, so that one has only to mind one's business to find amazing results. The most stupendous systematic material work on earth is THERE, and it did not make itself before it was there to do it, nor did nothing. Inside my mind, and inside the outer regions, there is a sympathy of logic, making for investigability, and of components, making for accessibility both to mind, and in many cases, to hand.
Then I visit a biological laboratory, and find that there is an even more complex thing in my head called a brain, with a trillion or so bits in it, all rendered into a cohesive form with variable format, and that these work as one to implement one's will, and various other requirements of their own, all ordered and organised like the piano, and equipped for sharing in an agreed, or rather common mode of working in logic and with symbol.
More amazing still I find that although as noted, I was not able to enter into the mind of the musician and find the springs and modes of his inspiration, the nature of his logic in general is as already known to me, and I use it, just as the cause and effect relationship is known to me, and I use that too. So I look and what I found was this. I discovered that there are different sets of systems in a code which is miniaturised to the most intimate of levels, in a sort of program or medley of programs, called the DNA, and that exists in billions of cells in what is about the most acutely and astutely miniaturised material and mathematical system conceivable. Indeed, it has the sort of information suitable for building another of those intricate, multi-level systems of which I find myself an example. Not only music, but the brain for the musician, and not only this, but the personal being which can receive and give information is also found in company with the building of the body, from babyhood, and its refinement to adulthood.
I find that not only is there this code for the building of a new generation, but various fail-safe elements are included, referred to as editing, for a lot needs copying as you move from generation to generation, and from old cells passing out to new ones which are required to be, if you will, born. Beyond that, there is a supervisory system which intervenes and brings on conditions and criteria to govern some of the multiplicity of complex-multi-system works moving continually from code to character, from potential to actuality. This is just the DNA part.
Do I need to weep because I could not enter into the mind of the musician and so tab precisely how he did the vision and the envisagement parts ? Do I need to read philosophy, and will to do this, in order to find out that I myself have a will, to admit or to nullify to a very considerable measure! Do I not know prioritisation and implementation, means and ends, principles and preferences, reasons and vision ? They are not aliens.
Do I, for lack of some intimate knowledge, regard my witness of the formation of music from a musician as some profound mystery ? Not at all, and indeed if it were other than my own subjective and objective experience enables me to see readily, it WOULD be rather strange (cf. TMR Ch. 5). There are, in view of this experience, and in view of observation of parallel works of many kinds, ways of envisaging the sort of causes needed for various effects: so is it also for making a bow, or a bowl, or a work of art, or a bridge, or a stadium, or a space ship. I am not ignorant of the style, type and stature of such things; it is all integral in mode and manner. Some things require more mental components, more physical, more visionary ones or more socially gained ones. The stature and status of the things however are all pellucid.
I turn to Einstein. We suppose him still living. We go over some of those elements of his systems which I can understand, just to get the TYPE of things he is doing. Before long, I perceive that even at the most atmospheric physical level, speaking metaphorically, his type of thought is not alien, merely elevated and involved with a series of mental systems and observational inputs which have led to a subtlety which is remarkable. This is so in two ways. First, he was subtle to find it; and the Maker wass subtle to put it there; and evensubtler to make a man able to find it and formulate it, to show in some measure, in what it consisted.
As Einstein begins to unravel some of the systems which make up, not this time, the piano or the orchestra, but the universe in its physical aspect, I am impressed with the solid characterisability of this universe, its laws, their relationships, the relationships within relationships, their reactions at higher and higher levels of interaction, the underlying and overlying influences which exist in various dimensions, in terms more and more removed from the initial observation, but accounting to some extent for it. An experiment is made, say concerning Mercury, and he seems so far so good.
I am finding that there are numerous levels of symbol, occurrence, cause and effect, and of course, construction in mathematical terms, increasingly found out and duly formulated into laws, which reflect what the actual maker of the universe (not the piano in this case), put there, this along with the minds we have and the logic we use, in order to discover them, formulate them, and test whether or not they work, AS we formulate them. When they consistently or persistently do, we have scientific laws, so good so far, like those of Newton, for some purposes. For other purposes in mind, however, these are superseded by the type of actions envisaged by Einstein, just as all are superseded by those of the Maker, to whose inputs we are approximating more and more, at these levels.
Then I met someone. He tells me that the universe is an exception. Why ? I ask. Because it is so big, he replies. How so ? I pursue it, you are much bigger than one of your brain cells, but that is not in any way contrary to the general types of things involved at all levels, in you. What is your experimental or logical ground for such an assertion ?
There is none (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!). He has no ground for matter arriving in the first place, whether in this or that form, format or with these or those features. He is logically bankrupt. He has no observable or logically demonstrated method for showing things causeless arising; and indeed it is not even possible (cf. Causes, SMR Ch. 5, Predestination and Freewill, Section 4).
Who, he asks, made the Maker ?
Let us think a while, I reply. Let the Maker be something that for mysterious, psychic reason repels you (just as blood and pus repel some personalities). So we look at nothing as the Maker. The things HAVE to be made.
But why ? he replies. They could always have been there.
Not so, I reply, for this universe is measurably running down in available energy, and supposing something does something somehow, is not a reason. It too would have to begin, or be there. In the end, you either have an eternal something, or nothing; and nothing is what nothing does; and you and I are not nothing. If there were no energy at that start, NOTHING could be done. If there were no intelligence to direct that energy, it would surge and splurge but have no characterisable feature, far less power to institute legal governance of the universe. To cut it short, we need the Maker, never nothing, eternal Maker, adequate Maker, for what is inadequate by definition does not achieve the result; if it did, it would not have been inadequate.
Eternal, adequate something, he mouthed the words.
It is not magic, but logic, I noted.
So it is quite easy and fully explicable. To be adequate for a universe subject to all kinds of laws which are never found to invent and apply themselves, and programs of information, which are never found to make themselves, but to require intelligence, to exist: you have need.
Yes, as seen on another occasion*, you need intelligence and energy, but also entrepreneurial ability to structure the laws and materials and invent the modes and mathematics and their mutual application over trillions of units, worked into one whole in the human body, for example.
What was that about need ?
When we were talking about music, it was noted that there was no need, as one watched the entire assemblage from vision to orchestra, to feel troubled because one did not actually enter into the mind of the musician. We have minds. We understand without the slightest difficulty what vision and intelligence and imagination and strength and will and purpose can do, and there are higher and higher levels to which one can go, in finding more and more elevated overviews and interviews between intelligence and work, leading to what I call the integrality of it all, the universe on the one hand, and a human being, or race, on the other.
But what about creation ?
Making it all ? What is hard about it all, from cause and effect and what is sufficient as cause for a given effect. We see it all the time, and at different levels. Thus a child makes a little spade with some spare wood, his father makes a little house for him in a tree, his boss makes a factory for him to work in, a Firm makes Boeings with more and more complex input, people make laboratories with all sorts of sophisticated multi-system inputs: it is there all the time. When you begin to make the bigger hangar, even the universe, you need a lot more to be adequate, but there is no trouble whatever. You just need the ADEQUACY to be there eternally, and when you leave laws forced into matter and so forth, you have to have a lawgiver; but when you come to the ultimate adequacy, then He has to transcend all systematics, and substructure of thought and might, for them, so that like the musician letting me see it from hand from mind to paper, to orchestral production, He proceeds to make it at that level, including time and space and all the other little oddments needed, on this scale or that. It is the thought that counts, and it is the size which is merely one component.
But that means He had to make matter ?
It is relatively simple.
But there is so much of it...
Adequacy is a funny thing. At times, to make the US highway system would have seemed a mad impossibility; but as time passed, they in fact made it. If you have adequacy, what lies within its scope can be made, however staggering it may seem before you know how considerable that adequacy is. When you come to the Maker, not controlled by laws, not subject to anything, but the Eternal Being, then it is that making matter is just making a relatively simple, but very well controllable body of energy and form-forma*1, with convertible powers under certain conditions.
But that is huge ...
If you mean large, yes, but a house seems large to a kid still in his cot. We have considered that. But if you mean that this is a staggering performance, then yes. What the mind and hand of the musician created was too; but he did it. He was adequate for it. He had the pleasure of using his capacities for it, and the joy of the product from his vision.
But all that, making personalities and freedom and laws, it makes you want to worship Him.
There is far more to it than that. He has left a book called the Bible with large numbers of ways of testing it, and in addition to the creation-control in DNA, for new generations, He has left this for inspection and checking, so that one can make sure it is or is not from Him. This testing has been done for millenia, and at LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST, you see the results. Better than man's knowledge, whether in subjection to scientific method (not all science is nowadays - is the knowledge of this God. He needs no revision over millenia; scientists frequently need major revisions in a few years.
But the musician had an orchestra. Just a book and a universe, it seems so impersonal.
But it is not just that. The book foretold the coming of this God as a man, in order to cover the sin problem, in revolt, immorality, misuse of equipment, refusal to know Him, even the One who made you and so forth. He would, and did, sacrifice Himself as a payment of a fine, a death in place of what we deserve for our effrontery and arrogance and disobedience, rebellion and self-assurance while behaving jejunely; and His name is Jesus. You see this in such places as That Magnificent Rock, Chs. 2 and 3, and it is in what are called the Gospels.
So it is personal.
Very much so.
Well why does one have to be so impersonal and illogical when it is all there, utterly readily understood and utterly testable ?
One does not have to be so; but many choose to hide in their preferred medium, like juveniles stealing sports cars, and have their fling.
I would not do so; it makes you wonder what they deserve for such effrontery. One would think they could be flung out of the universe.
Actually, in the end, when God has finished this particular (if you will, musical) production, its due date comes and He removes it. It is at that level that He is, eternally.
What about the meantime ?
Read Matthew 11:27ff., John 5:24, 10:9,27-28, II Corinthians 5:17ff. You see you are like a sheep without a shepherd, alone in a world which, when you leave God, is indeed somewhat impersonal at the highest level, for then you have by will left that vacant. Read Psalm 1 about that! So you need to regret your ignorance and waywardness and failure to act, repent and turn back to God.
But what if He will not hear me ? he might be sick of me.
In the book, and through the Person, Jesus Christ, the only Saviour (cf. Isaiah 43:10-11, Acts 4:11-12), you are assured that on the contrary even for the wicked (and it is wicked to have avoided Him, or put His affairs way down the list, for some other time, somehow, maybe), God has no pleasure in their death. He actually cries out, TURN, TURN, WHY WILL YOU DIE ?
So you turn to this Saviour, Jesus Christ, repenting, and accept what He has done, and then find that He loves you indeed, and so walk not impersonally, but personally with your very own Maker.
Spot on.
Done.
NOTE
See Department of Bible ... Vol. 2, Ch. 5.