Change - The Irresistible Force?

All things come out of the One and the One out of all things. ...I see nothing but Becoming. Be not deceived! It is the fault of your limited outlook and not the fault of the essence of things if you believe that you see firm land anywhere in the ocean of Becoming and Passing. You need names for things, just as if they had a rigid permanence, but the very river in which you bathe a second time is no longer the same one which you entered before. 

-- Heraclitus 

(500 B.C.ish)

Heraclitus summed this all up with, "The only thing that is constant is change."  To read his philosophy is to imagine him debating the same with Gautama Buddha.  The philosophy of the obvious is a universal concept, if you stop long enough to consider it.  We have built upon this obvious of Heraclitus by stating the only universal constant is change.  The "Big Bang" evidenced that change can even occur in a vacuum of nothingness, but then, nothing is really something, since it can be named.

Does change occur if we aren't there to witness it?  Does change surpass our senses to occur of its own accord?  Does a tree falling in the wood make a sound if there is no one there to hear it?  Can we exist and not exist, at the same time?  The paradox in the story of Schrodinger's Cat would give one pause to consider this possibility.  If I understand, correctly, the question of the existence of reality, if we are not here to witness it, even insinuates itself into the study of particles in Quantum Mechanics.

"We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."

-- Heraclitus

Many of us don't like change, yet we awake every morning to a different day and another chance to excel.  We are another day older, as are our houseplants, the cat, and our loved ones.  Everything around us has changed since we went to sleep.  Try as we might, the force of change moves inexorably forward, with or without us.  As with Schrodinger's poor cat, the things we do not witness either are or they are not.  The plants we forgot to water are dead, dying, or alive, and, until someone interacts with us to confirm our own existence, we either are or are not.  If we are not bearing witness to reality and change of our own making, we bear witness to the changes occurring to our reality due to changes being effected to the realities of others; ripples interacting with numerous other ripples in this human pond.

"We are and are not."  In the mid-1600s, philosopher René Descartes said, "Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum."  ("I doubt, therefore I think, and therefore I am").  By this thought, if I understand Descartes correctly, if I cease thinking I no longer am.  The only way to truly cease thinking is to die, unless  you're a Taoist monk, or if you believe in an afterlife in which case you will always be, except to those that no longer see you and therefore cannot acknowledge whether you still are... or are not.

"No man ever steps in the same river twice"

-- Heraclitus

But this is philosophy, much of it based on facts as we understand them in the now; facts prone to change as we become more knowledgeable of our universe.  Does a tree make a sound when it falls, if no one is there to hear it?  History, our experience, would evidence yes, but we have no facts to support the premise.  If we put a microphone in the woods, we can't see if it fell or not.  If we put a video camera there, we see it fall and therefore we are there and the experiment is faulty.  

What we are left with is an ever changing abundance of faith that there will be a sound, and that this river we keep stepping into, although constantly changing even as we stand in it, still leads us to our ultimate destination.  Heraclitus told us, "The road up and the road down is one and the same," it is our existence, our reality.  However, downriver is only what we have already experienced.  We cannot stand still in this river of life and expect the source to come to us, along with the blessings flowing toward us from above, especially when we have faith that upriver leads us to the source. 

I don't view change as an irresistible force, it is simply another force which works, most often it seems, to hold us back.  We must take the first step, become the catalyst for our own change, and move forward!  By taking this control we fulfill our own destiny, God's desire for us to become more than we are, as we travel our path to the source of all things. 

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

-- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

Well, maybe in not in Horatio's.

Editor's Note 

(re: disclaimer cum "get out of jail free" card) 

Before you go getting your panties in a bunch, it is essential to understand that this is just an opinion site and, as such, can be subjected to scrutiny by anyone with a differing opinion. It doesn't make either opinion any more right or wrong than the other. An opinion, presented in this context, is a way of inciting others to think and, hopefully, to form opinions of their own, if they haven't already done so. This is also why, occasionally, I will present an "opinion" just to stir an emotional pot. Where it may sound like I agree with the statements made, I'm more interested in getting others to consider another viewpoint. 

It is my fervent hope that we keep open and active minds when reading opinions and then engaging in peaceful, constructive, discussion in an arena of mutual respect concerning the opinions put forth. After over twenty years with military intelligence, I have come to believe engaging each other in this manner and in this arena is the way we will learn tolerance and respect for differing beliefs, cultures, and viewpoints.

We all fall from grace, some more often than others; it is part of being human. God's test for us is what we do afterward, and what we learn from the experience.

Pastor Tony spent 22 years with Air Force Intelligence as a planner, analyst, briefer, and instructor. He is founder of the Congregation for Religious Tolerance and author/editor of the Congregation's official blog site, "The Path," which offers a vehicle for commentary and guidance concerning one's own personal, spiritual, path toward peace and the final destination.