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Excerpt

ON THE ULTIMATE ESSENTIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL

In search of the ultimate criterion for finding true purpose and rationality in physical being and existence — toward understanding what it’s all about — there are mighty few disciplines to turn to, really. There are Science, Religion, Philosophy (reflecting, reasoning, deducing, cognizing, concluding); and then there is Hocus-Pocus, and -- can you think of any other discipline that might cloister life's ultimate secrets, purpose and promise?

We might start by deliberating the gamut of science’s findings, or by going into exhaustive religious discussions -- but let's first take an overview of what we are trying to accomplish. In ultimate ends, should we really expect our answers to come from science's deep-seated last secrets, or from near-perfect delusion and edicts of religious rites and traditions? Or, all considered, would it not be more appropriate and important for us to find up front whether it all is – very basically, fundamentally – rational, of good purpose, right or wrong, adequate or inadequate, in true essential nature? I opt for the latter.

If all the stuff of science, whatever it may yield for us, were not to measure up to 'good, adequate, moral and right', then we would surely have to ignore that discipline as one of our appropriate means of exploring the deep mysteries of existence. For in our proper, correct judgment, most assuredly an ultimate good and right purpose must be a paramount consideration, a prerequisite to any valid finding on the adequacy and rationality of being and existence. Science certainly has helped us like no other discipline toward understanding our tangible, physical worlds, but can it be the one to give us ultimate (metaphysical) answers? It is doubtful that it could deal with right or wrong, or even with rationality, as it appears very much in a class with inanimate phenomena, having no subjectivity of its own. It will do anything you want it to do, even in negative demonic patronage. Is the true ultimate criterion, then, an ethical, a moral question – in judgment over right and wrong, over error, ignorance and sin versus bliss and enlightenment? For us, an emphatic YES — and with the right awareness it is clearly a question of rationality as well.

Rightfully then – in ultimate consequence – the moral, ethical issue, right or wrong, good or evil, adequacy versus inadequacy, emerge as our final and rational determinants. The circle is complete when morality is in accord with rationality. Moral and rational, the correct combination – the way it ought to be, and is, when things are right.

It is my sure sense that it is this simple way with our life's last consequence -- the ultimate criterion being a question of the rationality, of the morality, the adequacy of the nature of our being in light of highest universal principles – as the brief encounter with consciousness that is human life struggles toward its full self-realization.