Interstellar is both an action thriller and a science fiction head trip raising questions without settling them on the primacy of individual, family, or species, on the vulnerability of Earth and the desolation of worlds without life, on the meaning of time, on self-sacrifice, on loneliness, on the origins and constitution of the universe. And who are the "They" out there? Or are They We? But the biggest question: is there a fifth dimension in addition to space and time called "love" related to our capacity for empathy?
The movie recalled something I wrote many years ago when exploring the notion of God in our post-modern culture.
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God is Love. When we love, God is in us and we are in God. 1John, 4,16.
That's pretty simple and very profound stuff. What John is saying to me is that to be with God, in God, for God, no particular beliefs are necessary. No laws. No rules. No morality. Just love. We don't even need a belief in God.
Love means a relationship to at least one other and a very special relationship at that. A loving relationship, a sort of identity with the other, not as other, but as self. Not a thee or an it, but a thou. Not an object of negotiations or affections or thought or sexuality, but an originator of negotiations, affections, thinking, sexuality.
When I have this kind of relationship with another, we are entwined in a creative act because you are treating me and I am treating you, not as an object, but as another you, a person.
The more persons and creatures we include in this kind of relationship, the more God is in us and we are in God.
No matter what we are focusing on, plans for a house or the city, a business deal, political events and choices, education of our children, financial planning, the latest discoveries of science, a good movie, our hopes and beliefs--we have a background experience of ourselves in relation as co-directors, co-creators, co-subjects, self-actualizing persons (Mazlow), Thous (Buber). That background experience is the frame and context for our words, statements, drawings, plans, and accounts.
The focus-object, articulated in words and formulas, is contained in the four dimensions of space-time. The background experience of relationality is the 5th dimension. It is "behind" the categories of space and time. It is the presence to the other as subject, unmediated by words. It is the unspoken, hidden, unobserved, uncategorized relation to yous.
The 5th dimension is love, connectivity, and the relational aspect of all things in space and time. Is "God" the name we traditionally called that background experience, the 5th dimension to space-time, the connection of all beings? Or is there a Being outside and separate to which that experience points, the Singularity, the Source, the Culmination, the Ground of connectivity, relationality, inter-personality? Is there a Transcendent even to transcendence, the non-objective presence and interaction of persons in relation?
I suppose we could posit a Separate Being out there distinct from the relationality of beings, a sort of Generator for the energy, rather than the relationality or energy of interaction itself. But I am not sure why that is necessary or even what that would mean.
I would rather affirm the 5th dimension, the relational, unspoken, pre-thematic dimension of what is spoken and objectified. The love dimension. The dimension of syntropy that balances-in-tension the entropic force of material things. This dimension is what we call spirit, consciousness, presence, interpersonal co-subjectivity, transcendence, no-thing. It is the dimension out of which all things appear in space and time. It is the dimension through which all our words and formulas and laws and propositions and beliefs and expressions make sense.
The ground experience on which figures appear has been called in French "conscience". Conscience means in English both "Consciousness," a kind of intuitive or direct, unmediated cognitive experience, and "Conscience", a kind of intuitive or direct, unmediated moral experience.
When I am acting I perceive a certain inter-subjective space that grounds our objective world (consciousness). When I am acting I experience also a direction or an intentionality of my action with and to others (conscience). Conscience is inter-action with others as co-actors. Conscience is interaction present to itself (knowing itself). Conscience is intentionality present to itself (appreciating itself).
Conscience is the foundation of objective knowledge--con-science. Conscience is the foundation of action with others in the world, conscience. It is the "inner, quiet voice" or "silent companion" that accompanies all our actions in society and in the world. It is the sense of being related to all in all, the sense of being present to every space-time, the sense of the eternal and the absolute in this fleeting instant. It is the sense of Love.
Love is the 5th dimension, the connectivity, the relational aspect of all objects, the source of all things, humanity and the universe transcending. Love perdures throughout space and time
That's it. Simple. I am using too many words. Be silent. Experience. Let be. Listen to the synergy surrounding us. See the luminous fibers conjoining us and all that is.
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Interstellar, like Star Wars, is offering a new creation narrative for our post-modern, new-science culture. Neither of these would be called a religious film because they are not proselytizing any existing religion. Yet they are raising the question of the religious in our, what some would call, "post-religious" society. They point at the transcendence in our existence and offer hope.
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