initiation expanded

A simplified explanation
about Totality
in ordinary language

companion to
a Foundation for Self-Realization ~ theory of totality

This is a theory about the meaning of Totality.
There is a Totality, and there is an Everything.
And they’re not the same. The former is bigger than the latter. Wider. Grander. Though it would seem they’re on the same page, two synonyms saying the same thing in a different way, we shall divide them.

So what is Totality?

Mind you your ability to grasp the idea of a Totality greater than Everything isn't about intelligence but the way ideas to be rigorous must be stated carefully and with a certain necessity for potentially juicy propositions coming to dry conclusions that makes it harder to grasp and less interesting to care about. Such claims need careful reasoning and sober analysis, but this explanation is not that but a casual telling of what it means to be Total and yet no less truthful because not only for insiders who shuffle symbols of logic to form premises and arguments.
However a lot of folks don't let their minds wander much to insubstantial realms where roam ideas, things, and entities teetering on the verge of the immeasurable, but rather go about eating, working, washing clothes, and playing backgammon. A solid earthly existence that doesn’t need questionable propositions and convoluted proofs to validate it. This explanation of Totality is determined to give you neither.

Totality is a metaphysical idea.

If you happen to think about such a matter as metaphysics it’s a science dealing with ideas that have no physicality, or materiality while having universal lawfulness because very basic and fundamental in nature.
Philosophy shamefully has for too long been an elitist exercise in dry as dust abstractions about things that don't have impact in anyone's life. Nor is metaphysics a clever use of words to make something real or true which can't be found one way or the either to be either. My metaphysics come out of the agon of my own Path built from flesh and blood, and skin in the game. And that's how you must discover it to live it. See it all around like you see the rain wetting the ground and watering crops, or gravity refusing to let you fly from a roof without penalty.
All empirical science is based in metaphysical laws whether its practitioners want to admit it or not. If you believe in cause and effect then you believe in a metaphysical idea that can't be explained empirically. Physics tells of an electron existing in every place in its orbit at once which however can exist nowhere in the material universe because it can't do that in time and space, so where is it doing it? But the squirmy answer is its position is indeterminate which is but a ruse to say being everywhere at once is nowhere in particular. But it can't be nowhere in particular in time and space either.

A theory of totality rests in immaterial reality.

But not one that forces you to admit to a spiritual realm of angels and spirits but it does compel you to consider a cosmos as more than matter and energy, space and time but also a field, a zero point field where nonmaterial goings-on happen that make some dwellers of ordinary status quo reality nervous for while a spiritual realm is somewhere, Totality isn’t anywhere that can be arrived at, or escaped from. It’s not anywhere at all if it’s everywhere.

Totality includes all things without discrimination.

More than everything that makes up the Everything where not all of all things are included, there's one very simple proof Everything doesn’t contain the total of all things though it contains everything: no set can be a member of itself, no more than if you throw into your toolbox your hammers, screwdrivers, and every loose nail you own, the box can’t also contain the box like the universe can't contain itself so what's containing the universe. Nothing? But nothing is nothing. Certain lazy minds are satisfied with that sloppy, unthought out explanation since unclear thinking is a hallmark of our species for all its wonders of technology; it does well with data but not so well with truth but I fear to digress into what might become a diatribe which doesn't much interest me as it used to.

Totality is the set of all things that also contains itself.

It must if it’s to be total. If it’s to be the all of all nothing excepted. Totality contains Everything and because it is the totality of the all of all it must include itself as totality as well. The only thing hard here are the heads that bang against it determined it won’t be true. Unlike the toolbox Totality can’t be a container that contains all since all that is is the same as Totality.

Totality is a field which is a home.

Besides Everything and itself it’s a field for all of Charles Fort's procession of the damned—all those facts and anomalies we throw in the trash because they don't fit the rules. A place for the excluded that don’t exist the way starfish and soap bubbles do: fictions, fantasies, fairies, absolutes, infinities, synchronicities, faster than light travel, contradictions, and insanities too. All the fabulous fables we don't take seriously are all there in Totality. But is Totality a place? Of course not. A realm. Better. A state. Not by that name. A field then? Perhaps a field not knowing exactly what that means but it's better than no word at all.
Totality doesn't exist in the sense we think of a flower or star as existing or even in the way we think of unicorns or Peter Pan as existing. Existence also is one of the items that can be counted as part of all things included in Totality, and because Totality holds existence in its collection it doesn’t need it to be itself by any conventional use of the term.

Totality is Place without placeness.

A stateless state. And if that's sounding like something that won’t make dinner table conversation that’s fine because Everything is the domain of the ordinary way of life with its grounded, sensible way of exchanging pleasantries, or insults; fine for the mind that thinks the sun rises, or that the earth turns, while Totality is the realm of suns making cartwheels in the sky. Acting as citizens of Totality we have permission to think and say fabulous things, goofy things, false things. Does 2+2=5. Sure, it does so in The Totality.

To know of Totality has personal value.

We could ask what value is knowing the sun is a star. It won't help grow our tomatoes. And while truth for truth's sake is fine because there's a place for theory as opposed to application such ideas as Totality give us a solid foundation to practice self-realization. It's not that we can't do so without such a knowledge for I can eat a potato knowing nothing of digestion but if I get indigestion I start wishing I knew more about my anatomy. And when engaging in self-realization there's more than enough indigestion to make anyone want to quit eating. Except we have to eat to live so we need to bone up on the facts of our own body which is our most intimate worldly environment.
Our bodies live inside a larger environment called Everything whose environment is an even larger Totality therefore we live in the environment of Totality as well. Everything we do we do as a dweller of Totality.

Totality has its uses.

But even if useful as a mindmap to orient by how can such an abstracted idea be useful in practice—except ask your subconscious. So much of what we use to get through life isn't conscious understanding but a worldview slowly constructed informing all our actions below consciousness. I don't have to say I believe in a God or even think much about it, but you'd see it in the way I interact with the world around. Or a racist never has to say the ‘n’ word but you'll know what they're thinking when around certain dark-skinned people. An understanding of Totality (and the paradigm it builds) will reform the whole of your belief system. Different belief systems result in different goals, and actions, and lives leading to ends wildly divergent.

Totality is an extreme idea.

These kind of ideas take discipline to give them comfortable acceptance in the mind. Totality’s found comfortable domicile in the pattern of my thoughts as sometimes a plushy sofa to sink into safe and warm. And for those who don't believe in an afterlife their nonexistence will still be a part of Totality for they can't absolutely not-exist as long as there's Totality which will welcome them like a plushy sofa to give any state of theirs a refuge.
Good practice to find analogies that work for you. One is this: facts comprise an everything while truth value is the totality. One member of the set of things that truth value inspects is truth value itself so in that way it contains itself.

Totality is a paradox.

While noncontradiction is a mainstay of Everything, contradiction is the playground of Totality. Its modus operandI and how it works if it's to work. It's a hard paradox meaning it's not to be solved since its contradiction being consistent with its nature doesn't have to be explained but only described. A square circle is a fake paradox because it has no meaningfulness to solve or not solve. "This sentence isn't true" is a soft paradox because it can be resolved and has been in various ways. But hard paradox isn’t something we just have to live with but rejoice in.

vTotality is the end of the line. We can ascend in mind to a domain outside the sluggish lawful necessities of Everything where there is something more, and suffice it to say the universe is grand, a multiverse even grander but though the cosmos might be a nested box of realities it ends at that ‘box’ that includes itself along with nonsensical fabrications like a square circle and we don't have to feel stupid or ashamed, just float light and free in the welcoming atmosphere of Totality. We can call anyone any cruel name in Totality because Totality is amoral allowing every kind of negative reality or truth without judgment. Totality is agnostic about the existential validity of its inhabitants. It even welcomes the idea of there being no such thing as itself. Come aboard. We may have enemies in the world of Everything but they’re all friends in Totality.

All my thoughts begin in Totality.

They don’t have to be explained or justified until I wish to bring them down to the solid, stodgy realm of Everything then I need to add morality, and logicality, and weight and measure of form.
As far as self-realization acted out as a stodgy, moral, and logical practice there is a form of it called perfective self-realization. A process whose goal ends in perfection. Literally, not metaphorically. It would take a restructuring of a whole belief system in order to engage with it, and starting in the absolute environment of Totality gives us a sense of scale, a giant breathing in we don't have to breathe out—until our lungs find themselves in Everything. If Everything is a place of duality, of breathing in and out, sleeping and waking, and of antinomy with opposites in opposition, Totality is a unity of the all of all. One big happy family.

Totality is where Being and Nonbeing marry.

And have a baby called Becoming. It's where infinity stops having nowhere to go. It is in fact, the matrix of Everything for Everything was born from out of its necessity to be what it is. Not a wayward child escaped from the womb of Everything nor an abstraction produced in the mind of some philosopher with no existence outside a mind. Totality is much more real than that, existing where Being can’t exist. Work on that for a while. And then catch the freedom and the expansiveness of it.

Totality is an absolute.

That's why it's uncomfortable to include in a daily routine. No brand of philosophy yet has understood what an Absolute is. Totality is an absolute and by it you see what absolutes really are about. They aren’t some other kind of Something. They’re beyond beyond because there’s no bridge from the relative to the absolute in word, thought, or deed.
Physical science explains them away, while philosophy babbles like a baby trying to talk; ordinary folk have no eye or ear for them and probably no taste buds. We are finite struggling to assert noncontradiction, determined to be either this or that: objects in the temporary collection of Everything struggling to maintain being.
Absolutes have no being to maintain. Why? They are absolute. The logic isn't complicated. What's complicated is the stupidity of our engines of understanding that can’t and won’t allow them credence.
And while our Gods are absolutes they aren't as absolute as Totality because God is a member of the class of all things totaled. Totality enfolds God. God doesn’t enfold Totality. If you're religious you'll see why understanding Totality is so momentous. I'll leave it there.

If you can’t figure Totality you may not need it.

If your world doesn't contain or need an idea of perfective self-realization you aren't demoted in status. Life is honorable in all its varieties. Go to work, come home, have a fine meal. watch a ball game, and lay in bed with your spouse. You don't need Totality when Everything is enough. Not every life, lifestyle, or goal needs a working model of Totality. Perfective self-realization isn't for everyone, and those who abstain from it aren’t inferior in life, desire, or beliefs. But it's nice if they could be aware of that other realm of possibility and what its paradigm consists of. Totality accepts Everything in all of its ways and means but Everything has trouble giving Totality its due or even acknowledging meaningfulness.

Totality loves contradiction.

That said, in order to understand a factual claim in the realm of Everything we have to state it in a way that’s noncontradictory contrary to the nature of Totality which loves contradiction but allows noncontradiction because it contradicts it.
For example, when we use such weighty terms as “complete”, “whole”, and “perfect” they have no validity of use unless they mean completely complete, wholly whole, and perfectly perfect. But what else could they mean? Exactly. What else could Totality have meant but totally total but who in the history of mental sanity ever used it to mean exactly what it has to mean to be meaningful. To be totally total is to include more than everything. No thousand-legged cow is included in Everything or in a theory of everything, or factored in as anything that needs explanation.
But Realization needs to realize itself if it's to mean it and it can only do that by being completely, fully realized in its meaning. We can't self-realize with a definition of realization only partial because partial by nature won't last being mixed with the property of its own lack and loss. A hundred percent realized is the true definition of “realized” but a hundred percent realized is no longer a relative realization but a nonrelative one (I abstained from saying an absolute one because it's jarring).

Totality is Prime Condition.

So there's your succinct definition that can easily fit in a pocket, ‘What is Totality?’, answer, ‘Prime condition’.
From the limitless potential of Prime Condition we can allow anything and everything because they’re allowed whether we allow them or not. From that matrix of Totality we can birth an Everything where happy contradiction must be able to dwell in one place at one time in contradiction to contradiction: potentiality needs rules for actualization. Duality is the manifestation of Totality's unity of truth and falsehood and a state where opposites war as easily as they embrace. while being and nonbeing are at most friendly enemies in the domain of Everything. Unlike the all of all of Totality, in the all of Everything good and evil, right and wrong, god and the lack of god are not mutually masturbatory.
There has never been a ground of Reality for either deductive science or inductive science to solidly rest upon, spring from, and refer back to. Material science is adrift without it, immaterial science is a game until acknowledged, our lives shadows of partial living not knowing how or where to find orientation without Totality as Ground of Being.

Totality can't be synonymous with the universe.

No absolute anything resides in our relative universe. But you see how ideas fit together if you accept the Totality as having to be totally total then that same rule applies to anything else claiming to be anything. But what does that mean if a realization to be reached must become absolute, or a love being relative can't last but only hold out for as long as it can. Depressing. Yes and no. We know we die but we keep on living even knowing we won't keep on living. Life wants to live, and realization wants to be realized because that's their natures so they try but what is trying if it can't succeed.
Unless of course it can because otherwise every positive word we give to label anything is false, untrue, and just plain fake if unable to give us one example that completely and fully fits their definitions.
We can legitimately talk about partial completion in a relative sense if it's backed by the assurance that complete completeness (which is the only valid definition of it) is meaningful. And it can only be meaningful if attainable, no, not in every endeavor but in at least one. A wholeness that has no representation anywhere in the universe is a word empty of meaning.
Think of a circle. There’s no circle in our universe, perhaps no universe where every point is the same distance from the center measured down to the atomic level because that's the only definition of a circle that can sustain itself as a definition—and the only circle that can be called a circle. Irregular, inexact circles can be called circular but don’t call them circles. Only an absolute regular circularity can be called a circle. And none exist or can exist in a relative universe.

A perfect circle can only exist in Totality,

But if there’s no perfecting of anything in Everything there’s no permanent self-realization as a result of its perfecting. What’s the point of trying. But you just found the key!
Trying’s a wedge idea propelling us past the sticking point of having no bridge between partial and complete because the act of trying as long as it keeps on trying fulfills the definition of what it is. Only when trying stops trying is it unwhole, incomplete, not fully itself, and partial. It’s by trying we overcome the relativity that governs Everything because if our trying continues to try then it’s complete in its trying no matter how weak. A trying that tries does what its nature demands. If we try to be complete and whole, realized and perfect what happens to that impossible, contradictory and unachievable goal when the process of trying refuses to be relative by quitting but continues to be itself. Life will die, love fade eventually but trying can always try because when it can no longer seem to rise to the occasion it can still look for a way to try and that’s the same as trying to try and if it can’t do that it can try to try to try, if not that then try to try to try to try. Think about it.

From here you can next consider the nature of overtruth
because self-realization needs an overlogic
to get you there.