Buddhist practice involving the use of mudrā, mantra and mandala are often regarded as the primary hallmarks of esoteric Buddhism. These practices originated in different stages and contexts in the history of Buddhism, but are nonetheless central to the formation of esoteric Buddhism as a historical phenomena (sic). In the more developed phase of esoteric Buddhism (sixth cent. onwards) mudrā, mantra and mandala became inextricably bound to the Three Mysteries (sanmi 三密), the unified “mysteries” or “secrets” of body (shen 身), speech (kou 口), and mind (yi 意) respectively. (Orzech, Charles, D., and Sorensen, Henrik, H., 6 MUDRA, MANTRA AND MANDALA in, Esoteric Buddhism And The Tantras In East Asia, edited by Charles D. Orzech (General Editor), Henrik H. Sorensen (Associate Editor),  Richard K. Payne (Associate Editor), Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2011, p 76.)

A great range of opinion as to the interpretation of the term “mudrā” exists among authorities in the field of Buddhist iconography. Most of them converge toward a dominant idea contained in the original word: that of a hand pose which serves as a “seal” either to identify the various divinities or to seal, in the Esoteric sense, the spoken formulas of the rite. Coomaraswamy calls the mudrā “an established and conventional sign language”; Rao, “hand poses adopted during meditation or exposition”; Woodward, “finger-signs.” The translation in the Si-do-in-dzou is “geste mystique”; in the Bukkyō Daijiten, “the making of diverse forms (katachi) with the fingers.” Soothil defines them as “manual signs indicative of various ideas.” According to Getty, the mudrā is a “mystic pose of the hand or hands.” According to Eitel, “a system of magic gesticulation consisting in distorting the fingers so as to imitate ancient Sanskrit characters, of supposed magic effect.” The use of mudrā was introduced into Japan by Kōbō Daishi, and they are used chiefly by the Shingon sect. Franke proposes as a translation of mudrā Schrift (oder Lesekunst); Gangoly, “finger plays”; and last of all Beal, “a certain manipulation of the fingers ... as if to supplement the power of the words.” (Sanders, E., Dale, Mudra: A Study Of Symbolic Gestures In Japanese Buddhist Sculpture, Bollingen Series LVIII, Pantheon Books, New York, 1960, p 5.)

At first glance, the three groups would seem to be quite distinct from each other. But Przyluski points out a most interesting connecting thread which unites them. Beginning with the idea of “matrix,” which he compares to a mold used for the printing or stamping of objects, he establishes a relationship between meanings 1 and 3. This is, in effect, the one which exists between the matrix of a woman in which is formed the embryo of the child she will bear, and the seal which impresses on the piece of clay its form or design. The same bond exists between the second meaning — i.e., symbolic gesture —and the other two, if one accepts that the position of the hands constitutes, to a certain extent, a mystic seal.

Among the various meanings of the word “mudrā” in Sanskrit, the idea of sign as a seal is predominant in Esoteric thought. This notion crossed the frontiers of India with the vajrayāna and spread to China and later to Japan. In effect, it was by the Chinese word yin (Sino-Jap. in), “seal,” that the first translators were likely to render what seemed to them the dominant meaning of “mudrā” in the canonical writings. Thus it is that the diverse compounds designating mudra which are frequently met with in Sino-Japanese compounds all contain the vocable in. Among the most important are shu-in, kei-in, mitsu-in, sō-in, in-gei, in-sō, and simply in. On the other hand, certain authors or translators, anxious to note the Sanskrit word more precisely than the single ideogram in would permit, used Chinese characters phonetically in an attempt to reproduce the syllables “mu-da-ra.” (Ibid p 7).   

To these two meanings of “in” - gesture and symbolic attribute - may be added finally that which designates even the mystic formulas (dhāraṇī) and the images of the Buddha. It is a matter then, with respect to the Sino-Japanese term, of a phenomenon of extension analogous to what has been noted for the Sanskrit term. Just as the notion of matrix is a connecting thread binding the various meanings of “mudra,” the idea of sign binds the three significations of “in”:

1 symbolic gestures of the hands used as “seals,” which guarantee the efficacy of the spoken word;
 
2 the symbolic objects, as well as the images and the statues, which are used as “marks of identity”;
 
3  dhāraṇī, spoken formulas, which “seal” the magic of the rites. (Ibid p 9).

And a leper came to him beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, "If you will (e)a\n  qe/lh?v) you can make me clean." Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him, (e)ktei/nav th\n xei~ra au)tou~ h(/yato) and said to him, "I will; (qe/lw) be clean." And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. And he sternly charged him, and sent him away at once, and said to him, "See that you say nothing to any one; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to the people." But he went out and began to talk freely about it (h)/rcato khru/ssein polla\ kai\ diafhmei/zin to\n lo/gon) and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer enter a town, but was out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter. (Mark 1.40-45).

We find references to touch both before and after these two narratives:

Now Simon's mother-in-law lay sick with a fever, and immediately they told him of her. And he came and took her by the hand (krath/sav th~v xeiro/v) and lifted her up, and the fever left her; and she served them. (Mark 1.30-31).

I am discounting this particular text as a member of Mark's tally of just twelve healing miracle stories largely on account of its extreme brevity, and because it blends seamlessly with a summary of healing (1.32-34). The actual summary is in fact longer than the pericope concerning the individual woman, and is followed only by A Preaching Tour (vv 35-39), leading directly to the first of the two pericopae cited above. There is a similar healing summary just after the second narrative, The Man With A Withered Hand:

And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they should crush him (i(/na mh\ qli/bwsin au)t/n); for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him (w(/ste e)pi/ptein au)tw~? i(/na au)tou~ a(/ywntai o(/soi ei]xon ma/stigav). And whenever the unclean spirits beheld him, they fell down before him and cried out, "You are the Son of God." And he strictly ordered them not to make him known. (Mark 3.9-12, emphasis added.)

These references are indicative of haptic sentience as the precisely Christological, perceptual elements of consciousness. There are other healing miracle stories in which Jesus touches someone, which are not related to haptic sense-perception: The Deaf And Dumb Man (7.32-37), and The Boy With An Inclean Spirit (9.14-29) fall into this category. Also, The Haemorrhagic Woman (5.24b-34) portrays that figure as touching the garment of Jesus.  But neither is this  narrative about the percipient mode of touch. The use of somatic-haptic motifs in healing and other narratives in the gospel thus confirms haptic sentience as that specifically Christological mode of sentience, and the gospel itself, as centred upon the identity of 'the Son' rather than that of either Transcendence ('the Father') or The Holy Spirit.

Thus in keeping with Markan economy, we have just two stories which deal in turn, with each of the three modes of sense-perception, and these are ordered according to the intelligible, categoreal division between perceptual memory and perceptual imagination. Their division as such underlines a definitive Markan preoccupation, the conceptual form of unity space : time. Another remarkable healing miracle story in which touch plays such an important role is Jairus' Daughter (Mark 5.21-24a, and vv 35-43). Its description is strangely reminiscent of the wording used in the story of Simon Peter's mother-in-law:

Taking her by the hand (kai\ krath/sav th~v xeiro\v tou~ paidi/ou) he said to her, "Talitha cumi"; which means, "Little girl, I say to you, arise." (5.41).

The immediate utility of the hand for Christian meditative practice rests upon the fact that the fingers contain just twelve phalanges. I do not include the thumb in this count. Only two of its joints are phalanges, the third is considered a metacarpal. If we include the thumb with the four fingers, the final number of phalanges is 14. This readily corresponds formally to the two sevenfold serial narratives, of Genesis and the gospels, since they each contain an outstanding seventh element. In the abstract the hand replicates a reticulate of 4x3 units. That is, the four fingers consist equally of three phalanges: proximal, medial and distal. We might just as readily render this in terms of its wholes, as three of one axis, and four of another, so that the hand just as easily embodies the heptad. And if we include the two most clearly articulated phalanges of the thumb, the total is 14. These figures, 7 and 14, no less than 12, occur with remarkable insistence in biblical literature. I shall return to the issue of the enumeration of the phalanges of the thumb directly in relation to the mandala and the hoshen.

Again, in the abstract, the paradigm of the hand as a network or web, and as the basis of the mandala in its simplest rendition, reminds us of Indra's net. Although it does not consist of exactly twelve components, it is often conceptualised as a three-dimensional nexus of joints, with a jewel at each vertex or node, similarly to the hoshen. (See Rajiv Malhotra, An Introduction To Indra's Net). The jewels reflect one another as tokens of interrelatedness. Both the hoshen and Indra's Net are points of comparison and departure, for neither engages the dodecaphonic series, which semiologically expounds the relations obtaining between the twelve categoreal entities of the Christian revelation concerning consciousness or mind. I will contend that this, the acoustic semiosis, referred to in The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, surpasses both of these metaphors in this as in other respects. Nor shall I develop any further, the physical consonance of the hand and the hoshen, since it is foremost a visual symbol, and one largely ill at ease in the Judaic tradition, as I explain below. The final reiteration of the hoshen occurs albeit in a new configuration in The Apocalypse, there as a constituent in the structure of the New Jerusalem. In just which context, that of Christian Pneumatology, it is indeed much more at home.

Hands are readily available to enumerate, and we learn very early in life, to count on our fingers. The dodecad, a vital aspect of biblical metaphysics, counts the total number of identifiable radicals, or categories of mind, as these are classified in the two narrative cycles, Genesis 1.1-2.4 and the messianic series. The twelve stories of miraculous healings in the gospel of Mark reiterate these taxonomies. That is, they confirm the six conceptual and six perceptual components which form the basis of Christian philosophical psychology, which is to say, Christology. The six Days as a taxonomy of the conceptual pole of consciousness, occur in one-to-one analogical correspondence with the six messianic miracles, the taxonomy of the perceptual pole. Did the evangelist(s?) we refer to as Mark utilise the hand as mnemonic device? We have no way of saying more than it most probably figured as such in experiences of the early bearers of the tradition. It is difficult to concede that in the organization of two series of miracle narratives in this, which is arguably the earliest of the four gospels, in some way the hand was not involved.

The dodecadic structure of the acoustic semiosis, its foremost and simplest morphological property, is consonant with the same format. Western music, and indeed Christian music in the west since the birth of musical notation, has employed sevenfold and twelvefold series in both its modes and its diatonic scales, and we see both configurations in the narratives. The P creation series and messianic series are both ultimately sevenfold, even while they clearly demonstrate other mereological forms. The structure of the four fingers immediately offers itself as a haptic-somatic manifest of the pattern 3 : 4, which recurs in both narrative cycles, 'beginning and end', focusing upon identity and unity respectively. Moreover both semioses, the sixfold-sevenfold optic, and sevenfold-twelvefold acoustic semioses, complementarily dispose the analogous rapport between the six conceptual and six perceptual components of consciousness according to various relations obtaining among them.  These twelve radical categories are configured in the basic disposition of the four fingers of the hand. When viewed in the abstract, it comprises two axes, juxtaposed at right angles to one another: the four fingers each consisting of three phalanges; and the three phalanges themselves, distal, medial and proximal, taken in isolation from one another, recurrent in each of the four fingers. This establishes the basis of the mandala: a two-dimensional reticulate of 3x4 vertices. The juxtaposition of the two axes reveals that of disjunction and conjunction, in keeping with the presentation of the modes of antithesis in the P creation narrative, and the doctrine of external and internal relations, and their ensuing relation.

Known also as Hridayanjali Mudra, or Namaskara Mudra, this mudra is thus not exclusive to Christianity. Where Christian mudra meditation distinguishes itself from other traditions in which it is employed however, is in that it must signify the division into four architectonic elements of mind (logos), according to their analogously formed conscious and aconscious components. In describing these four dyadic components of mind as 'architectonic', I mean to emphasise the pervasive or ultimately general nature of the canonical occasions of intentional forms to which they give rise: desire, knowing, will and belief, and the aconscious formulations with which they are combined analogously: belief-in-desire, will-to-believe, knowledge-of-will and desire-to-know respectively. These four moments mark the four tipping points of the annual cycle, the two solstices and the two equinoxes, such that one member of each dyad signifies the diurnal interval, and its analogue, the nocturnal interval. As for the relation between mind itself and time, I am not referring merely to a developmental psychology, the necessary by-product of the growth and development of the actual body, during its passage through exceptionally clearly framed phases of life, such as we find outlined in the Dharmasutras and Ashram Upanishad. Nor merely do I refer to an evolutionary psychological understanding of the accord between time and the development of higher consciousness, ultimately reached in humankind, with the final compact between belief and the desire-to-know, signifying the summer solstice. I am referring also to the essential compact between temporal passage and ultimately the death of the body and the life of the soul as given in The Transfiguration.

Anjali Mudra joins the hands in an attitude of respectful acknowledgement. It can therefore stand as homage to the gospels themselves as the deposit of faith. We need not envisage them as the products of individuals, although in the cases of Luke, and probably John for the most part, this seems legitimate. That is, the mudra need not, as for guru yoga, be an act of veneration towards another human person, or yet again, towards the texts themselves as texts. What is of prime importance as far as homage or veneration is concerned is given in the subject: the word of God, that is the person of Christ. Mudra are essentially bound to this person ('identity') as are mandala to The Holy Spirit, and mantra to The Transcendent.

Having been celebrated as fundamental to a natural theology since earliest times, and having been recorded in a variety of archaeoastronomical monuments in an equally variant distribution of time and place, the division of the year is marked by four seasons, each amounting to approximately 13 weeks; those of spring, summer, autumn, winter. Respectively, these express the dynamics of dark to light - winter solstice to spring equinox; light to light - spring equinox to summer solstice; light to dark - summer solstice to autumn equinox; dark to dark - autumn equinox to winter solstice. The Letter To Nagarjuna records these as types of humans, personality types, but his reference lacks any evident analogy to the fourfold division of the year as such, opting instead for a single ideal: 

There are four kinds of persons (pudgala): those that go from light to light, those that go from darkness to darkness, those that go from light to darkness, and those that go from darkness to light; of these do thou the first!   (Nagarjuna's "Friendly Epistle", Journal Of The Pali Text Society, Translated by Heinrich Wenzel, London, Henry Frowde, 1886, stanza 19.)

We shall say more concerning categoreal entities as the basis of a typology of personality, and hence, its relevance for Christian deity yoga. The role of identity in the theologies of transcendence supports such a strategy. In Nagarjuna's work, the figure light-to-light stands as exemplary of the ideal Buddhist. But Christian meditation employs all four seasonal figures since each is equally represented in the structure of the gospel, a structure which reflects the anatomy of mind itself. This is the rationale of the revisioning in The Apocalypse of the very four zodiacal symbols first delivered in Ezekiel 1 and 10. Its justification depends upon the doctrine of intentionality which defers in the first instance to the two narratives, Genesis 1.1-24a and the messianic series. Thus each of the four, dyadic configurations of intentional modes constituting the most radical aspect of the twelve categories vis-à-vis the temporal template of the year, is equally an analogous manifestation of the most radical structural features of mind. In just this respect the gospel as fourfold, comprehensively offers analogues both to the the phenomenon of world religions, and the fundamental varieties of Christian confessional stances, the various forms of both of which it recognises and affirms.

The epistemological status of the attributions concerning world religions and specific Christian ecclesial varieties contained in the following second table is typological, the content of which summarizes some of the relevant postulates concerning the series of seven seals for both ecclesiology and the Christian theology of religions. At the outset, it is necessary to make a logical and epistemological distinction between taxonomy and typology. Thus the first table essentially summarises the two primary depositions of the Christological, propositional content of faith: Genesis 1.1-2.4a and the messianic series, independently of the content and intent of The Apocalypse. Nevertheless, it includes the four Pneumatological components of mind, which remain the central Christological concerns of that book, and which are uniformly determinative of medial temporalities, and highly significant for the concept of temporal passage. This sorts with the irreducibly hybrid character of their corresponding modes of intentionality. These radical components of mind, and their ensuing intentional forms are already disclosed within the two serial catalogues, Days and messianic events. Like Christological and Transcendental intentional modes, they belong to both conceptual and perceptual poles of consciousness. But it is apparent from the mere fact that there are only four tipping points of the annual, temporal compass, to which the organic composition of the gospels conforms, that they differ remarkably from the four-eight radicals representative of the soteriological perspectives proper to each of the four gospels. It is precisely this difference which leaves the Pneumatological radicals of consciousness as the ambit of The Apocalypse, and which is responsible for the singular quality of that member of the canon when viewed in its syntactical co-ordination with the texts of Genesis and the gospels, the stories of beginning and end.

Consequently the Christological-Transcendental soteriologies of the gospels are remarkably consistent also in being premised on the four dyads which are other than Pneumatological. Pneumatology remains the concern of The Apocalypse, as is abundantly clear from its emphatic pre-occupation with the perceptual radicals, optic imagination and optic memory as well as the conceptual radicals, symbolic masculine and symbolic feminine. The central vision of the woman crowned, the war in heaven, and of the two beasts reinstate the conceptual Pneumatological radicals which are the analogues of optic memory and optic imagination. Thus the references to 'the beast from the sea' and the 'beast from the earth' the Pneumatological rubric Day 3, which is paired to that of Day 6, detailing the creation of the male and female humans, but also to Genesis 1.2; the description of the state antecedent to the creation, which mentions these same two elements, the sea and the earth.

The four sevenfold series of The Apocalypse are therefore formally and symbolically commensurate with the structure of the gospels. The two series of unnumbered visions in The Apocalypse, 12.1-14.20 and 19.11-21.8, certainly contain references of the kind which match the two sets of Pneumatological categories, optic memory : optic imagination, and symbolic feminine : symbolic masculine. (This reckoning excludes the text following the seventh bowl, the fulsome description of the fall of Babylon - 'the great harlot' (17.1-19.10). At this point the term ei]don recurs several times (17.3, 6, 8, 12, 18, 18.1). These uses all describe the same event, the destruction of Babylon, heralded in the seventh bowl immediately prior (Apocalypse 16.17-19). They therefore do not constitute a series of episodes differentiated from one another as do the events of the two unnumbered septets, and do not interfere with the validity of the two unnumbered septets as formally assignable to Pneumatology; yet another factor symbolically securing the relationship of The Apocalypse with the gospel.) In these sections of the work, which may well constitute its original core, we find ei]don ('I saw', emphasis added,) as recurrently as we do the formula myhl) rm)yw, ('[And] God said', emphasis added,) in the creation narrative, to which The Apocalypse stands as literary foil. It is true of course that each of the axiological affirmations is prefaced by a reference to sight: 'And God saw, that it was good.' (0)ryw, Genesis 1.4, 10, 13 et passim, emphasis added.) Unlike the speech act however, this is not the causative expression of God's will, and its location at the conclusion of each creative fiat is effectively precursive of the link between optic sentience and teleology-eschatology in The Apocalypse. The latter of course for its part contains many references to acoustic sentience; notably those of the series of letters and trumpets, which are nevertheless clearly linked to The Transcendent.


The order of the first four seals as denoted by the semeioptika white, red, black green, (Apocalypse 6.2, 4, 5, 8), designates the seasons and their corresponding gospels: summer - John; autumn - Matthew; winter - Luke; spring - Mark. As signifiers, these are more important as well as more efficient than the zodiacal signs used in the initial vision of the four living creatures ('zoa', 4.6b). That the zodiacal signs historically have been attributed to different gospels by different authors is yet another reason to dispense with them as ultimately significant. The order presented in John's initial vision is remarkably at odds with the occurrence of the astrological signs in sequence, since lion-ox-man-eagle refers to Leo-Taurus-Aquarius-Scorpio, unless we take it refer to the precession of the equinoxes. (There are two zodiacal signs intervening between these successive signs in each case.) Moreover this order does not conform to the pattern established in Ezekiel 1.10: man-lion-ox-eagle, nor to that of Ezekiel 10.14, in which the order is 'cherub'-human-lion-eagle, just as these two orders in themselves are inconsistent. In all, the zodiacal signs are not semiologically important. That they point to the succession of the year viewed in terms of the two equinoctial and two solstitial seasons is enough. The same four zodiacal signs are not mentioned beyond the initial vision, although the living creatures are. The semeioptika therefore fulfill the task of delineating the gospels vis-à-vis the annual cycle.

The second table above read from left to right omits the four intervening ('medial', Pneumatological) elements, whose modes of intentionality are uniformly hybrids, and it follows the seasonal order beginning with the summer. This is also the order of the three numbered sevenfold series, seals, trumpets, and bowls, insofar as these replicate three quarters of the same quaternary. This follows the author's penchant for the figure four as signal of the earth and of immanence generally.

The series of letters which introduces the narrative is not numbered, and on this account comes last according to the pattern disclosed by the semeioptika as mentioned in the vision of the four horsemen. In a sense then, the work is arranged similarly to the fourth gospel which ends with a fishing expedition evoking the calling narratives, which the synoptists place at the start of their gospels. The end returns us to the beginning.

The deployment of colour terms, including the achromatic expressions 'white' and black', is illustrative of John's idiomatic penchant for visual signifiers, or what I am calling semeioptika. In assigning each horseman a differently coloured horse, John identifies each of the four living creatures in relation to the annual spatiotemporal compass. The visions of horses and the like in both Zechariah and John occur in tandem with the four cardinal directions, as well as the four tipping points of the annual cycle. Four angels are involved in the sealing, and similar expressions further display the author's penchant for the symbolic and theological value of that figure. (References to various fractions of quarters and thirds  occur throughout the text. The description of the rider on the black horse mentions both 'a quart' (xoi~nic) and 'three quarts' (trei~v xoi/nikev, Apocalypse 6.6) according to certain translations. The term is a hapax legomenon; and does not denote literally a 'fourth part'. That fraction, 'a fourth' or 'quarter', does occur in the verse concluding the vision of the four horsemen: '... and they were given power over a fourth of the earth (e)pi\ to/ te/tarton th~v gh~v), to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts.' (Apocalypse 6.8b)).

The purpose behind the adoption of zodiacal imagery, once it had been given a legitimate scriptural warrant by Ezekiel, points to the temporal compass, that is, the annual cycle, consisting of four distinct tipping points marking the beginning and end of the four seasons. The concept of time looms large in John's consciousness. It is evinced by the resumption of thematic constructs from Daniel, another prophetic work in which temporality is a prevalent if not the dominant conceptual motif. The expression 'a time, times and half a time' occurs in Daniel 7.25 and 12.7 (LXX  e(/wv kairou~ kai\ kairw~n kai\ h(/misu kairou; e)iv kairo\n kairw~n kai\ h(/misu kairou~) and recurs in Apocalypse 12.14 (kairo\n kai\ kairou\v kai\ h(/misu kairou~). The concept of time is evident also in the recurrence of the threefold distinction John forges between past, present, and future, which to some extent, he superimposes on the three Christological-Trinitarian titles; 'the beginning and the end', 'the first and the last', 'the Alpha and the Omega' (Apocalypse 1.4, 8, 4.8). The same threefold temporal division is twice applied to 'the beast' (Apocalypse 17.7-14).

Over time, the twelve zodiacal signs themselves, as measures of the equinoctial and solstitial tipping points, change. Thus the spring equinox is marked by each succeeding zodiacal sign in the circle, moving counter clockwise, every 'astrological age'. This is the result of the precession of the earth's rotational axis, and even though the complete cycle occurs once every 25,772 years, it has to be taken into account. Each astrological age endures for between approximately 2,000 and 2,500 years. Astrologers do not agree on the computations of astrological ages because there is no consensus as to whether these twelve ages are of equal or variable lengths. Of the four figures recorded in Ezekiel which John borrows, it is probable that the bull, the sign for Taurus, marked the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere during Ezekiel's lifetime.

Thus John's use of semeioptika avoids any confusion. The two sets of colour words, achromatic and chromatic, unambiguously denote the two sets of antithetical seasons, solstitial and equinoctial respectively, reinforcing the iconography of the four zoa as indexing the four  gospels, and concomitantly their 'eschatological' reinscription in the four sevenfold series of The Apocalypse. The oppositional chromatic colour terms red and green used in the context of the first four seals, designate the two quarters which culminate in the equinoxes, autumn and spring respectively. The two different equinoctial diurnal-nocturnal measures are simultaneous in the northern and southern hemispheres. This binary also adverts to the gospels of Matthew and Mark respectively as their analogues. The further use of the achromatic, oppositional colour terms, white and black, designates the relation of the seasons ending in solstices, equally simultaneous in the two hemispheres. These specify the summer and winter respectively analogously to the gospels of John and Luke respectively. Hence these four colour terms in the description of the first four seals apply indirectly to the living creatures themselves, through the horsemen which they each call forth, and so fit the four septenaries as aligned with the gospels, and the gospels themselves as aligned with the fourfold annual cycle.

The serial order white-red-black-green operates analogously in two ways. Firstly, it delineates the series of heptads beginning with the seals themselves, the same series in which this order itself is put. Secondly, as analogues to the heptads, beginning with the last term, it delineates the four septenaries as they occur sequentially in the actual text. This means that the first sequence begins with the numbered heptads, and corresponds to summer (white - seals), autumn (red - trumpets) and winter (black - bowls), consecutively, thus highlighting the first. The second sequence begins with the last colour term, green, denoting the spring, and the series of unnumbered letters, which it thus isolates for consideration. (Both names mentioned a propos the rider on the green horse, 'Death' and 'Hades', recur in the introduction to the series of letters (Apocalypse 1.18)). In this way, the first two heptads, both highlighted, are grouped together. Together, they determine the two corresponding quarters of the solar  cycle when the ratio of light to dark, day to night, is increasing. The same format is reflected in that the contents of the two remaining heptads are highly similar. The Apocalypse thus divides congruently with the two fundamental durations of the annual cycle marked by the dynamic ratios of light : dark and day : night. This sorts well with the logos theology to which both the Days series and messianic series are foundational.

These semeioptika also identify the four living creatures, and thus, the alignment of the gospels with the four clearly demarcated sevenfold series:letters; seals; trumpets; bowls. John's text is not only comprehensively intertextual, since it extensively encompasses portions of the Tanakh, and refers just as clearly also to the gospels. It is intratextual as well. Moreover, it subsists as a natural theology, since the overriding referent of the first four seals is the tetradic disposition of the annual cycle. In this respect, precisely as an ending, it complements the story of beginning, in which we first encounter the theological nexus between time and mind.


The tetrad is the most rudimentary and overarching form, the architectonic, of any typological personality theory, but it must include the reality of temporal passage from one tipping point to the next. It must account equally for the entire panoply of differing ratios between the diurnal and nocturnal intervals which occur repetitively throughout the years, in its analogical function; that of the disclosure of mind or consciousness, the Christological category par excellence. Indeed, if it is to function analogously to personality-typological theory, this pattern should be construed extensively as a spectrum, in keeping with the two semioses, acoustic and optic, which serve its semiological articulation and representation. Even in that case moreover, we must admit the overriding fact of continuous change; that is, the reality not just that 'persons' themselves are susceptible of change, which is itself reflected in the passage of the annual cycle; but also that any such construal of a spectrum from one to the other of its termini will allow for a vast, if not putatively infinite number of individual points, each indexing a 'type'. This bears upon the hermeneutic not just of the series of seals in The Apocalypse, but specifically upon that of the sixth seal, in which persons are collectively identified as belonging to 'tribes', just as it will bear upon the incidence of other twelvefold conceits in that same work.

The fingers of both hands joined together in the Anjali Mudra, mirror the analogical accord of four seasons, with the epistemological-psychological syntax of the gospels. We may then conceive of this mudra as equally observant of the four taxa, as well as of the specifically decisive and pivotal four moments which mark the epistemological-psychological basis of each one of the four gospels. In such a representation the final form of intentionality, is the determining factor. In all cases this is epistemic or cognitive, rather than conative, and denotes a proximal rather than a distal temporal domain. It is superodinate in its functional capacity over its counterpart, whether this be in the conscious or aconscious order. In other words, for example, just as the middle finger may answer to the fourth gospel John, insofar as its own evidently idiomatic and Christological concerns arise from the conceptual form mind, and the perceptual form haptic imagination, and moreover, from the two modes of intentionality deriving from these, namely belief, and desire-to-know respectively, so too it marks the passage of which Nagarjuna speaks; that of summer, the transition of 'light to light', as the increase in the diurnal interval relatively to its nocturnal counterpart. That is, it signifies the taxon of three pure conceptual forms and their concomitant three modes of intentionality.

Superordinacy is tantamount to entelechy. Superordinate intentional modes occupy the final phases of their respective taxa away from distal temporal domains towards immediate temporality; in short, the Sabbatical-Eucharistic now. Thus all superordinate members of their taxa, including those of the aconscious, belief-in-desire and knowledge-of-will, accomplish the inherent drive of the taxon itself, the acme of its intrinsic purpose in virtue of knowing or belief, and its accompanying impetus towards the present from either the past or the future. They are consequently cognitive or epistemic, and proximal rather than distal in their relation to the hic et nunc. Thus the four fingers of Anjali Mudra capably manifest both the transitions towards the four tipping points of the annual cycle, and the tipping points themselves as analogous to the various tenets of the theology of logos preserved in the doctrine of intentionality. They embody both the motion towards the consummation of the class of entities to which they belong, and that very consummation itself.



That each finger contains three phalanges coincides with the composition of each taxon as tripartite. This additional representation of the inherent momentum of the four taxa as belonging to the business of its given corporeal analogue, one of the four fingers, has certain ramifications for the prospect of the theology of religions announced albeit in its nascent form, in The Apocalypse. That this must necessarily be typological in nature ensures its connection with what has been said concerning personality theory, and the hermeneutic of the series of seals. The Anjali Mudra in Christian usage thus returns us to consideration of the annual cycle, and the all-encompassing nature of the gospel; its everlasting relevance for all times and all places, and its embrace of all living entities in salvation.

We should bear in mind, given the use of Anjali Mudra in both traditions other than the Christian, that is, Sanatana Dharma and Buddhism, the consideration which these afford to animal life. The immanence of God within the consciousnesses of subhuman animals is a prime factor in such consideration. Animals are pertinent and sympathetically treated subjects in both creation narratives; several healing miracle stories; the Lukan infancy narrative and several parables; and consistently throughout The Apocalypse. There too, The Son is routinely referred to as "The Lamb". The same theme, the value of animal life to God, is sounded in many Psalms. The following image is presented in the same spirit, and in order to emphasize that the Christian worldview too, enjoins such consideration. 




The dispositional consonance of human hand with the mandala in its simplest rendition in no uncertain sense rescues it from mere abstraction, and distinguishes between two fundamental temporal perspectives, of which its abstraction to the form of a reticulate itself is incapable. These are not those of linear and cyclic, any more than they are those of past and present. They are reiterations of the categoreal radicals complete with a variety of their corresponding intentional modes, including the hybrid forms of the same, viewed now as synchronic and now as diachronic. That is to say, as both sub specie aeternitatis and sub specie durationis respectively. The hand embodies the semiological expression/representation of both harmonic intervals and melodic intervals. Harmonic intervals are sounded or sung, simultaneously; melodic intervals are sounded or sung successively. Harmonic intervals as a group, are expressed in the relatedness of the distal, medial and proximal phalanges of the four fingers and so they have four constituents. This is not to say that the nomenclature for these groupings is necessarily applied to the intentional modes in question. It does not follow that the distal phalanges always signify distal intentional modes. But we shall come to this point later. Melodic intervals as a group are reckoned on the actual four fingers themselves, and so they have three constituents.

Their differentiation is exclusive to acoustic semeia; which is to affirm that it is insusceptible of mathematical representation. There is no means other than by the acoustic semiosis of its expression/representation. In other words, the theological exposition of the relation of mind and time is peculiarly the burden of the acoustic semiosis, the reason for attributing to the gospel of Mark, the intentional modes will-to-believe and knowing, since for that gospel both categories, space : time, and acoustic memory, are of pre-eminent moment.

We might have expected the former, transcendental in kind, to emphasize the triad, and to consist of three units, and the latter, immanent in kind, to consist of four, highlighting the tetrad. But the opposite occurs. It is not the composition of the actual relations, their number of components, but rather the total number of related forms so constituted, arising from the thoroughgoing interdependence of the twelve semeia, and the express semiotic/semantic relation of the ciphers 3 and 4 indicatively of temporality comprehended in these two disparate ways, as of their intrinsic relation. For there are indeed three comparable organic arrangements of synchronic semeia, configuring transcendence; each of which has four parts or components. Just so, there are four comparable organic arrangements of diachronic semeia; each of which has three parts or components. The structure of the human hand viewed in the abstract, as a reticulate or matrix composed of the intersection of horizontal and vertical axes, four of one kind, three of the other, intersecting at twelve points, recreates the substructure of the mandala as the expression of mind and time in their given togetherness. (The latter do not correspond to the simple organization of the four taxa, except in one mandala. I shall refer to this as the Markan mandala, since it emphasises for contemplation, the two modes, knowing and will-to-believe, in their canonical occasions.)

Elementary radicals of mind expressed in terms of their relation sub specie durationis conform to the theological delivery of the two primary narratives, creation and salvation, which groups them according to the fourfold taxonomical principle. Thus as successive, they mark the (four) transitions from element to element within either polarity, conceptual or perceptual, independently of the ordered dichotomy conscious, aconscious, since as already noted, conscious intentional modes may inhabit aconscious taxonomical radicals, and vice versa; aconscious categories may instantiate conscious intentionality. This organization is obedient to the first level distinction made by the two narratives, creation and salvation, where once again we find the Trinitarian formulae as categoreal paradigm, 'the heavens and the earth'. The four markers of successive ('diachronic') temporal passage, and their three constituent Christological (philosophical-psychological) components as logically contiguous (continuous), incarnately exhibited by the four fingers, are expressed/represented by three whole tones in every case. These are uniformly determined as continuous, that is, successive. The passage from one to the next is uniformly semiologically articulated by the interval of a whole tone.

This is not so for the same components viewed in terms of their  relation to one another sub specie aeternitatis. Here there are three groups of four semeiacoustika, signified by the four distal, four medial, and four proximal joints of the four fingers. These necessarily combine the two poles, conceptual and perceptual, as expressed/represented by both whole-tone scales. The components in all three cases are not simply of one kind, conceptual or perceptual. Nor does the interval of a single whole-tone occur in their semeiacoustikal expression. The basic pattern has already been put: it consists of the major triad with the addition of the minor third below the tonic of the same. That is, the minor/major seventh harmonic interval. (The major/minor seventh also occurs as implicated in the same configuration.) This combines in each case, the conative and cognitive modes of intentionality of all four of its taxonomical permutations: conscious conceptual; conscious perceptual; aconscious conceptual and aconscious perceptual.

The concept of harmony will play a leading role in the exposition of what I believe Whitehead means when he refers to as 'God's primordial nature'. Leibniz uses the phrase 'pre-established harmony' to mean something very similar: viz. the ideal or potential established for the optimization of value reflecting God by his creatures. The phenomenon of harmony is the single great advantage that the acoustic semiosis enjoys over mathematics in its capacity to reveal consciousness to itself. It is a manifest of The Word.

I repeat here this vital aspect of the acoustic semiosis: it confirms these facts concerning mind and time as per the theology of semiotic forms, insofar as it readily divides into two juxtaposed means of the articulation of its signs: the simultaneous, expressed as harmonic intervals, and the successive, expressed as melodic intervals. These are fundamentally juxtaposed aspects of time itself. In a musical score, these are written according to the vertical (simultaneous) and horizontal (successive) planes of the notated page.  The fourfold harmonic structure, the chord, is constituted by four harmonic intervals. These combine the major harmonic tones, I, III and V, with that of the relative minor in the root position. This minor/major seventh chord articulates the semeiacoustika representative of hybrid intentional modes, since it combines in one simultaneity, the minor which announces the  distal mode and the major which announces the proximal mode, in either polarity perceptual or conceptual.

An example of this hybrid is the minor chord representing desire, and the major chord representing knowing: G-Bb-D-F in combination. In itself, the chord G-Bb-D is the chord G minor; in itself the chord Bb-D-F is Bb major. The 2-3 cadence in the minor, is identical to the 7-8 cadence in the major: both resolve in the Bb as the ascending tone. These chords can and do combine, forming the minor/major seventh chord. Hence this particular harmonic interval voices an occasion of desire-and-knowing, the simultaneous occurrence of a conative, that is, distal mode, desire, and cognitive, that is, proximal mode, knowing form of intentionality, which are together indissolubly related. This is an example of a hybrid, perceptual form of intentionality, representative of the the identity of The Holy Spirit, as are all hybrid intentional modes. Their togetherness, or unity, tells for immanence, as for Pneumatological intentionality. Both desire and knowing belong to the perceptual pole, and as such, are susceptible of hybridisation, or conjunction. The occurrence of identically related conceptual forms of intentionality is no different. Nor is that of the same two polarities in the aconscious order. These structures obtain in the same manner. In each case the minor/major seventh chord (harmonic interval(s)) are semiological articulations of the same atemporal ordering of the entities in question.
 
The significance of the combination of the two interdependent temporal perspectives for theology is paramount. By 'temporal' I refer here to temporality, that is, diachronic and successive, actual temporality, and atemporality - the eternal or timeless ordering articulated by concurrent ('simultaneous', synchronic) harmony. In other words, I am using the phrase 'the two interdependent temporal perspectives' to mean the integration of components of consciousness viewed both sub specie durationis and sub specie aeternitatis. It is difficult to overemphasize the theological value and import of the acoustic semiosis for the doctrine of consciousness (logos). We shall return to it in due course.

At once I was in the Spirit, and lo, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne! And he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian, and round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. (Apocalypse 4.3-3).

This topic is addressed in more detail in the section dealing with the gospel of Mark, 2 The Semeiakoustika: An Introduction, in which the above diagram is contained. I repeat it here for the sake of convenience. It shows the co-ordination of the acoustic and optic semeia, each of which is polarised compatibly with the two sixfold series. The visible hues of the spectrum have a beginning and end, as do the twelve tones of the dodecaphonic series. Pitches are relative to one another; occurring either higher or lower in the scale. This relational property is what fits them perfectly to the exposition contained within the two narratives. It is immaterial at which point we begin the twelvefold acoustic series. The same pattern recurs independently of its nominated compass within each octave; that is, within each twelvefold (dodecadic) series. Thus there is nothing inseparably affine about C natural and acoustic imagination, or Cb and the conceptual form space. They might equally be articulated by another interval of the same measure, the minor second, a semitone, such that the semeiacoustikon announcing the conceptual form space is the lower of the two. This 'relative ordinality' of the acoustika is not maintained by the optic semeia. These stand inseparably from their respective entities. Thus both of these categoreal entities just mentioned have the semeioptikon, viz. red, assigned to them inalterably, and signifying their analogous relation to each other. I have adopted Cb as the 'fundamental' in the above image since it borders C natural, which is located in the centre of keyboard instruments. This is probably the readiest reference point for the exposition.

The co-ordination of these semiotic series explains the reduction of the semeioptika to the hexad, emphatically pronounced in both Christological, messianic miracle narratives: six stone jars containing water, and six days. We have already encountered this in the above remarks concerning mudra, insofar as the four fingers alone were taken into account, and we necessarily excluded, for the moment, any reckoning of the two visibly articulated phalanges of thumb. That their inclusion would result in the tally of fourteen suggests, as does the sheer centrality of the thumb to the hand, and thus to mudra, that they are indeed susceptible of inclusion. Each of the Eucharistic miracle stories contains a duplicate numerical cipher. The simplest reading of the three semiotic series, acoustic-haptic-optic, orders them according to the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence. The same co-ordination of these elements of perceptual consciousness can be summarised by means of the repeated ciphers of the miracle stories 5-6-7, notwithstanding that this is not identical to the ordering of the same radicals in each taxon. The sequence of the duplicate numerals corresponds to that of The Transcendent ("The Father")-The Son-The Holy Spirit. But the sequence of the members of each taxon is either The Transcendent-The Holy Spirit-The Son, as for the pure conceptual forms and forms of virtual immanence; or its obverse:The Son-The Holy Spirit-The Transcendent, as for the forms of actual immanence and those of virtual transcendence. This alternative modellng confirms the hybrid modes of intentionality proper to Pneumatological doctrine in their role as instrumental from the initial to the final canonical occasions of each intentional mode.

In order to expedite the discussion of atemporal and temporal aspects of mind or consciousness, it will be helpful to appeal to the treatment in Process philosophy/theology of the doctrine of God's natures, both 'primordial' and 'consequent'. I quote here from the account given by Whitehead in God And The World,  the final chapter of Process And Reality: Corrected Edition:
These efforts on the part of process philosophy/theology are thus determined to interweave, to interrelate, those aspects of God formerly described as mutable and immutable, or passive and impassive, in the sense of prone to suffering and not prone to suffering respectively. They mean to rescue from absolute differentiation such two opposed visions of Godhead, or the emphasis of one at the expense of the other. We may just as easily subsume that same dichotomy under the temporal distinction expressed in the two forms of acoustic signification, diachronic and/or synchronic, that is, successive and/or simultaneous and 'eternal' and/or temporal. The latter are particularly appropriate synonyms, since they advert to time (xro/nov), and hence to suffering, and hence also to the ultimacy of death.

If God dare not enter into real relations with His creatures because that would cause God to change, and, of course, God as immutable cannot change at all, then the God of traditional theism, we’re told, is really irrelevant to modern men and women. Charles Hartshorne, another very significant process thinker, adds to this by saying that God is love or for someone to say that God is love and to speak of God as Lord, all of which would suggest that God can express emotions and enter into relationship, to say that God is love and to speak of God as Lord and then to turn around and say that God is absolute, immutable, and impassive is to contradict oneself. You can see I think what the problem is that Hartshorne is suggesting. Incidentally, these ideas from Hartshorne come from his significant work entitled The Divine Relativity [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982]. (John S. Feinberg, Contemporary Theology II: From Theology Of Hope To Postmodernism. Process Theology: Background And Concept, Lesson 14 of 24, pp 3-4.)

He says, “Anselm’s God can give us everything, everything except the right to believe that there is one who, with infinitely subtle and appropriate sensitivity, rejoices in all our joys and sorrows in all our sorrows. But this benefit which Anselm will not allow God to bestow upon us is the supreme benefit which God, and only God, could give us.” (Ibid p 4).

Even though process theologians claim that God is fundamentally mutable or changeable, there’s at least one sense in which they see Him as immutable; that is, whatever qualities God does have He has them immutably. So, for example, God is unchangeably changeable. He is unchangeably or immutably surrelative. He’s immutably or unchangeably passible, and so on and so forth. Since God is personal and He is mutable, it follows that He must be affected by the world. He experiences our sufferings and our joys as we experience them ourselves. What we think and what we do affects Him, and that also means that we can enrich God and add value to Him by our actions, according to process thinkers. (Feinberg, Process Theology: Major Concepts, Lesson 15 of 24, p 8, emphasis added.)

Feinberg's reference to 'value' here is cogent. Even if his final assessment of process theology is more negative than positive, and even if he supports a view of scripture as 'inerrant and infallible', which I cannot endorse. That said, it is patently indubitable that the arguments advanced here not only take their cue from scripture as in some sense, revealed truth. It is equally the case that without recourse to 'special revelation', or by whatever means we distinguish the two canons of the Christian tradition, the dependence of this present enterprise on the same is a foregone conclusion. The Bible is foundational to what I conceive as Markan metaphysics. The previous citations I put here, because they state in quite simple terms, the certain, obvious advantages offered by process metaphysics over contemporary philosophical world views ancillary to the theological enterprise. (Existentialism is a case in point, since it represents a wholesale retreat from any systematic method, and abdicates in toto any philosophical treatment of mind. Indeed just how, in the first instance, it might qualify as philosophy at all, even granted that its agenda might count as psychology, remains dubious.)

A propos of value and its role in the dialectical relation of the 'natures' of God, their relation of logos, which adjudicates value, I cite the following:

The World which emphasizes Persistence is the World of Value. Value is in its nature timeless and immortal. Its essence is not rooted in any passing circumstance. The immediacy of some mortal circumstance is only valuable because it shares in the immortality of some value. The value inherent in the Universe has an essential independence of any moment of time; and yet it loses its meaning apart from its necessary reference to the World of passing fact. Value refers to Fact, and Fact refers to Value. [This statement is a direct contradiction to Plato, and to the theological tradition derived from him.]

But no heroic deed, and no unworthy act, depends for its heroism, or disgust, upon the exact second of time at which it occurs, unless such change of time places it in a different sequence of values. The value-judgment points beyond the immediacy of historic fact.

The description of either of the two Worlds involves stages which include characteristics borrowed from the other World. The reason is that these Worlds are abstractions from the Universe; and every abstraction involves reference to the totality of existence. There is no self-contained abstraction.

For this reason Value cannot be considered apart from the Activity which is the primary character of the other World. Value is the general name for the infinity of Values, partly concordant and partly discordant. The essence of these values is their capacity for realization in the World of Action. Such realization involves the exclusion of discordant values. Thus the World of Values must be conceived as active with the adjustment of the potentialities for realization. This activity of internal adjustment is expressed by our moral and aesthetic judgments. Such judgments involve the ultimate notions of “better” and “worse.” This internal activity of the World of Value will be termed “Valuation,” for the purpose of this discussion. This character of "Valuation" is one meaning of the term Judgement. Judgement is a process of unification. It involves the necessary relevance of values to each other.

Value is also relevant to the process of realization in the World of Activity. Thus there is a further intrusion of judgment which is here called Evaluation. This term will be used to mean the analysis of particular facts in the World of Activity to determine the values realized and the values excluded. There is no escape from the totality of the Universe, and exclusion is an activity comparable to inclusion. Every fact in the World of Activity has a positive relevance to the whole range of the World of Value. Evaluation refers equally to omissions and admissions. Evaluation involves a process of modification: the World of Activity is modified by the World of Value. It receives pleasure or disgust from the Evaluations. It receives acceptance or rejection: It receives its perspective of the past, and it receives its purpose for the future. This interconnection of the two Worlds is Evaluation, and it is an activity of modification.

But Evaluation always presupposes abstraction from the sheer immediacy of fact: It involves reference to Valuation. (Alfred North Whitehead, Immortality, (1941), in Essays In Science And Philosophy, Rider And Company, London,  1948, p 62.)

What is at stake in the understanding of the relation of God and the world, and that of the world and God in process theological thought, is precisely value. The values in question Whitehead more than once refers to: the good, the true and the beautiful, as in one of the above citations. I have already discussed these vis-à-vis the three Eucharistic miracles as a Trinitarian theology of sense-percipience, the subjects of those very stories, and the impetus behind both the Christian theory and practice of  mantra, mudra, and mandala. The same values are not the exclusive property of the class of forms of perceptual memory; they are not exclusive to actual immanence. They are concomitant with each member of all four taxa. They reiterate the identity : unity of the triune God. The increase in value, its optimization of these same three forms of value, is what is reckoned as the creative advance of the world in its realization of the unity of God, The Transcendent, The Word, and The Holy Spirit. If we may say then, that what the eye seeks if it doesn't actually see, is beauty; and what the ear would hear is truth; just as what we feel or touch, is what we desire as good in itself, the same applies to the conceptual pole. Will is effectively and essentially the will to truth; and belief, is inextricably just as essentially, conviction in respect of what is good. So too, their hybrid, truth and goodness both, is the object of will-and-belief. (I do not mention the respectively accompanying disvalues here for the obvious reason; they go without saying. Clearly then, belief for example, in its categoreal function, must just as well concern the confident judgement concerning evil.)

This point of the chronological character of the mandala, as of the hand, reinforces the essential affinity between the analogous Markan categories, space-time and acoustic memory, and hence, it supports also the incorporation of the mantra, the dodecaphonic twelve-tone series in the same theological project. Here we might further develop the theme of the acoustic semiosis, since it propounds so much of the theology inherent in the three esoterica, the theology of semiotic forms; and so it is here that we return to the capability of the acoustic semiosis for the exposition of both structures of consciousness. That is, of the disclosure of mind viewed as both sub specie aeternitatis or atemporal, and sub specie durationis or temporal. These are put by the acoustic semiosis, and their explication as such is unmatched in its perfect clarity and succinctness by any other means. In sum, the difference between the atemporal and temporal is tantamount to that of harmonic and melodic intervals respectively. In the following discussion, in lieu of the terminology of Process philosophical theology 'primordial' and consequent' I shall use the three permutations of the categoreal paradigm referred to in The Apocalypse: 'the beginning and the end'; 'the first and the last'; 'the Alpha and the Omega', as well as the former itself, 'the heavens and the earth'. I shall also take as the primary instance of their reference to both Trinitarian identities and the syntax of the texts which reflect them, that of the second table referred to in 2 The Semeiacoustika: An Introduction. Thus The Holy Spirit, The Apocalypse and consequently the hybrid modes of intentionality are all equally subsumed under the copula of those four formulae.

In what follows, I do not rely in the first place upon philosophical sources for any exposition of the eternal being ('primordial nature') of God. Its systematic basis is rather to be found in just those two of the four gospels predisposed in virtue of transcendence rather than immanence: viz. Matthew and John. Nonetheless, whether in Plato, Leibniz, or Whitehead, we encounter this same conviction, which lends support to the dialectic fundamental to any biblical metaphysics of time. That is, the most rudimentary construct for any procedural discussion of time in its relation to mind will be that of its natures referred to in the opening inclusio of the creation story, 'the heavens and the earth'. This frames the method essential to biblical metaphysics concerning the anatomy of consciousness. Whether we refer to these natures as sub specie aeternitatis and sub specie durationis, or 'primordial and consequent', or otherwise, is of equal moment. Moreoever, it is the working premise of the present study that the same exposition can be undertaken only by means of the methodical use of the theology of semiotic forms, which accords with their presentation in the three esoterica of Buddhist praxes, and simultaneously, with the Western tradition of the Socratic triad, consisting of the three forms of value: the good, the true and the beautiful.



Page updated 18.08.2022.