Alliance for Mystical Pragmatics

Alliance for Mystical Pragmatics

Harmonizing Evolutionary Convergence

Glossary Menus

structure

In Integral Relational Logic, structure is a primal concept, essentially synonymous with graph in this context, depicting the relationships between forms or elements, prior to interpretation as a network, which contains further semantic detail.

In a schematic representation of structure, forms are represented as circles, with relationships depicted as lines connecting them. Here is a simple example, as an abstraction of graph in mathematics. At this primal, ontological level, the forms in such a structure are also structures consisting of the relationships between forms. This means that structures have the property of self-similarity, like fractals, revealing the holographic nature of the Cosmos.

Most significantly, such structures are universal and transcultural, not anthropocentric. They are what we share in the utmost depths of being with all other beings, human or otherwise, showing that we are all interconnected in Wholeness. Indeed, when structures are interpreted, we can see that the underlying structure of the Cosmos is a multidimensional network of hierarchical relationships.

Furthermore, as the Totality of Existence consists of nothing else but structure, structures are causal and synergistically energetic, whether they be physical or nonphysical, as David Bohm told me when we first met in London in November 1980.

As a meditation exercise, inspired by Jñāna yoga in Advaita, I dive into the underlying structure of the Cosmos until eventually the forms become singularities and the map consists solely of relationships, which then merge into the Formless Absolute as the Bliss of Emptiness.

In contrast to this involutionary process, any particular structure is a form in a broader structure of relationships between forms, expanding ever outwards. Eventually, this emergent evolutionary process culminates in the Splendour of the Fullness of the Formless Absolute, in conformity with the fundamental law of the Universe.

In this beautiful contemplative manner—depicted in the vertical lines in the Grand Design of the Universe—discreteness is turned into continuity, and what appear to be separate beings dissolve into the vast Ocean of Consciousness. It is from this Gnostic Space that we can enjoy structures that are not immediately discernable mathematically, such as works of art, pieces of music, and the forests around us, which resonate deeply in our souls.

At the end of time, there is then Peace, Perfect Peace, as we realize our Authentic Self as Divine, Cosmic beings.

To illustrate the omnipresence of structure, here is a depiction of Indra’s Net of jewels or pearls in Huayan Buddhism, which Alan Watts likened to a dewy spider’s web, saying, “Imagine a multidimensional spider’s web in the early morning covered with dewdrops. And every dewdrop contains the reflection of all the other dewdrops. And, in each reflected dewdrop, the reflections of all the other dewdrops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.”

Indra’s Net is mentioned several times in the monumental Avatamsaka Sūtra, known as The Flower Ornament Scripture in English, which the Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki described as “the consummation of Buddhist thought”. Francis H. Cook then said that the grand syncretism of Huayan Buddhism, “came to serve as the philosophical basis for the other schools of Buddhism more concerned with practice and realization. … Hua-yen is the philosophy of Zen and Zen is the practice of Hua-yen.”

Cook began his book on Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra in 1977 with this visionary sentence: “Western man may be on the brink of an entirely new understanding of existence,” which is today consummated in the art and science of Panosophy, as the complete unification of East and West and of all sciences, philosophies, religions, humanities, and economic ideologies.

This leads us naturally to the notion of structuralism, which Jean Piaget said in Structuralism is not easy to define “because it has taken too many different forms for a common denominator to be in evidence.” Nevertheless, Terence Hawkes tells us in Structuralism and Semiotics that “The true nature of things may be said to lie not in things themselves, but in the relationships which we construct, and then perceive, between them.” Structuralists thus take a holistic view, rather than the reductionist approach of traditional science. Indeed, “to be human … is to be a structuralist,” as he says.

See also: 

Etymology

Probably 1440, ‘process of building; building or reinforcing materials’, from Latin strūctūra, ‘a building, mode of construction; arrangement’, from strūctus, past participle of strūere ‘to put together, put in order; construct, build, erect’, from PIE base *ster-². From 1610s, ‘that which is constructed, a building or edifice’.

Common ancestor(s):