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Chapter Two
The Salesian Field 1946 – 1969
Peter began his Novitiate at Rupertswood, Sunbury at the end of
January, 1946. His mother, though dying of a painful cancer, insisted
he begin his studies for the priesthood and not stay with her to the
end. She was content to die, now that she knew her prayers about the
future of the once unexpected child in her womb had been answered.
In the first week of February, her suffering ended.
The year of Novitiate and the three years as a student of
Philosophy and Education passed quickly and enjoyably. He had a
considerable amount of spare time for his own private study. The
timetable catered mainly for his companions who were still
completing other subjects for tertiary qualifications whilst his
Pharmacy Diploma from Adelaide University was deemed sufficient.
This free time was generally spent in reading whatever classics of
spirituality he could find in the Library. There were several good
lives of Christ and many lives of Saints which interested him.
What drew his reflective attention and study most were books like
The Interior Castle of St. Teresa of Avila and the classic works of all
the other great mystics of the past who had described their
experiences in writing. He was gratified to find confirmation of what
he himself was progressively experiencing.
The transforming union of the Seventh Castle was new to him as a
concept in Mystical Theology but not now as a quasi-permanent
perception within his recollected consciousness. He did not discuss
these matters with his spiritual director nor with any other religious
superiors. His intuition told him that he was different from most
others in the way he realized there was a divine presence within him.
It seemed best to keep as his own secret, such unitive realizations
with an indwelling Trinity whose divine sphere of three person-terms
in one unity of centre, surface and volume was becoming less and
less an obscure mystery of mathematical logic as the years went by.
His reasoning made him determined to submit his progress as a
Salesian religious to a new interpretation of Grignion de Montfort's
slavery to Mary. Though he put the heading Per Mariam on all he
wrote, in his own mind he conceived things otherwise. Theology's
Incarnation, when the postulated divine and human natures became a
biunity or a two-in-one in the person of the physical Jesus, had taken
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place in Mary's womb. The historical Jesus was wholly and solely
grown and born of woman's flesh and blood. There was more now to
him than his once physical body. He also had an evolving psychical
mystical body. Physically he was ex ovo, from an egg, conceived in,
born of and nourished by a human placental mammal whose
primatial order-and-class status was the summit of animal
physiological growth complexity and the crowning glory of
biological evolution. The latter would continue now in the psychical
sphere.
There is a very meaningful analogy between the activities of the
physical and psychical spheres. Though it would be many years
before Peter finally understood and comprehended the ovoid nature
of the psyche, he was aware of it as a counterpart of the womb of the
female body. It also conceived new life which gestated in
recollection and sooner or later a brain child would be born. Using
his own adaptation of the Stanislavsky Method he would discipline
his mind and body to creatively re-enact the role of Mary, the Mother
of God, the mother of the mystical body of words-again-made-flesh
within human consciousness. Though he used inscribe Per Mariam as
his motto, he himself was resolved to live, As Mary, in order to
continue the evolutionary work of the Incarnation.
His theatre training also bore other fruits. As an altar boy he had
been obliged to hurry with the Latin responses at the beginning of
Mass due to the priest's abbreviated pauses between verses. This had
led to a slight nervous stammering of certain sounds in his speech.
The voice training he received in the theatre not only helped him
overcome this, but was an asset in teaching, public speaking and later
in preaching. He also taught himself to play the flute.
He found no difficulty in combining a contemplative life with the
active Salesian vocation. His father had written a few novels and
several travel books and Peter was now slowly developing his own
literary talents. During his triennium of practical training he found
time to write and produce a number of short plays and pen countless
humorous verses to recite or sing about people on Feastdays.
He was grateful to his superiors in allowing him to do his four
years of theological studies in Italy at the Salesian Pontifical
Athenaeum. In those days it was in Don Bosco's hometown of Turin
in Piedmont, not far from the Alps. Years later it would be
transferred to Rome. All his life Peter loved learning but hated the
pressurized formal study needed in order to pass examinations. He
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was selective in what could motivate his mind's dedication and he
was never able to summon enough enthusiasm to become proficient
and fluent in Latin or Italian. He eventually gained his Licentiate of
Theology with a modest Cum Laude.
He enjoyed his four years of Theology immensely and though he
was not an outstanding student, he made a reasonably good and
adequate impression on his teachers and was generally held in high
esteem by his superiors. He was able to reveal something of his
interior life to his Rector, Fr. Peter Broccardo, who was both pious
and learned. He gave Peter every encouragement to keep progressing
along the way he was being led and also gave him some wise
counsels for the future.
One of the requirements in his Third Year Theology was the
writing of an Exercitatio, or written investigative exercise of some
fixed or approved topic. It was a kind of mini-thesis. Peter was given
permission to write his on Union with God through Mary. It was a
study of mystical aspects of De Montfort's Secret of Mary and earned
him one of his rare 30 out of 30 marks. It represented his first
attempt to formally put into writing his own theological intuitions
and experiences. Almost forty years later he would look back at what
he had written then and realize how far Mary's Secret had led him.
The Theology taught at the Athenaeum was strictly in accord with
conservative Vatican policy. It was traditional and there was little
scope for innovative or original thinking. There were some very
good professors, but whatever they may have thought privately they
did not dare get out of line publicly. Peter, who had always been
something of an intellectual opportunist, had special admiration for
two members of the Faculty, Fathers Camilleri and Quadrio. He
often chatted in English with them and learnt something of their
private speculations. Father Camilleri had written his doctoral thesis
on the nature of the Beatific Vision and though it was based on some
very subtle philosophical distinctions, nevertheless Peter gained quite
a few useful insights for his own writings from its study. Relation in
Mathematical Logic and also Theology’s relatio could both benefit
from understanding each other.
With Fr. Quadrio, he had propounded some of his own theories in
regard to the nature and institution of the Sacrament of Matrimony. It
was this same ever amiable Fr. Joseph Quadrio who was the chief
examiner at his final oral examination for his Licentiate. Smilingly,
he asked the nervous Peter to expound his views on the Sacrament of
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Matrimony. As a friend, he too gave Peter useful advice for the
future. He warned him that Salesians were not supposed to speculate
on controversial sexual matters nor even write about sex. He died
whilst still quite young and his memory was cherished by all who
had known him. Later, Peter would sometimes dream of him and Fr.
Camilleri and be encouraged.
Peter was ordained a priest in the Basilica of Mary, Help of
Christians, Turin on July the first, 1956 and offered his first Mass the
next day, the Feast of the Visitation. That Feast had special
significance for him. It summed up the gift he would like to possess,
that of efficacy of word and speech. At the sound of Mary's voice the
infant John the Baptist had stirred in Elizabeth's womb. On his
Ordination Souvenir cards, he quoted the Epistle to the Hebrews 5/1,
chosen from among his fellow-men and made a representative of men
in their dealings with God. With hindsight, it has an awesome
ambiguity and more meaningful echo than he had ever intended or
conceivably imagined then.
Just prior to Ordination, Peter resolved he would decree a kind of
everlasting testimony, written and sealed in his own blood. He does
not remember now the exact words that he had used then, but the
general idea was that he formally renounced his personal existence as
the singular Peter Lock, an I-me-mine, in order to live as the Mother
of God and to make real within himself the We-Us-Ours of the
Trinity. In his own mind, the use of the possessive pronoun mine was
and always would be anathema. He wrote out a rough copy,
improved it here and there and finally the wording was ready. He
deliberately cut his finger and with a pen he committed to writing in
his own blood what he would always consider as an irrevocable
decision. When the red ink was dry the document was folded and put
inside his wallet. During the next twenty years he would sometimes
open it out and re-read it. He never bothered about noticing whether
there was anything strange happening to the writing and never
reflected on its changing colour.
It was some years after he had been obliged to seek laicization for
mental health reasons, that in a brooding moment of bewilderment
and uncertainty about his past priestly vocation, he decided to put the
past completely behind him. He destroyed all photographs of himself
both as a religious and as a priest. He took out his precious
document, read and kissed it and put a lighted match to it. As it
burnt, a confused Peter had observed that what he had written was
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not in its original reddish colour. Emotionally disturbed and with his
thoughts disorientated, he was not in a reflective state of mind to
appreciate anything out of the ordinary. He was not repudiating his
testimony. That had been written in his own blood and was
irrevocably programmed into his brain. It was just that the world of
the past was gone and that he now had to make his future life evolve
in the world towards an as-yet unknown destiny.
Later he would recall the incident and tearfully remember in detail
what he had seen. Whether it was just a natural phenomenon or not,
he did not know, but the writing had glistened as of the finest
burnished gold crystals which remained behind even after the paper
was rendered to ashes. He never told anyone, not even his
understanding wife. Later on, after both she and he had witnessed
other extraordinary scenes, he acquainted her of what had happened.
They both kept their own counsel and said nothing to anyone.
The Gospel story portrays the Apostle Peter as being somewhat
impetuous. The newly ordained Fr. Lock had a goodly share of
similar indiscreet zeal. He could hardly wait to begin his ministry of
the word. He had volunteered to preach the forthcoming spiritual
Retreat, which was due to begin at Sunbury soon after his arrival
back in Australia. On board the boat on the way home he had
contracted a touch of fever and when he finally arrived in Victoria he
felt incapable of fulfilling what he had given the undertaking to do. It
was humiliating in the extreme to have to admit this and what he
deplored more was the fact that someone else would be
inconvenienced in having to substitute for him at such short notice.
Thereafter, in his ordinary human affairs he would make his own the
rule, Ask for nothing, refuse nothing. He would readily and happily
do whatever obedience or any person's real need or request
demanded but he would not try to anticipate or to force the hand of
divine Providence.
He would always have his dreams of changing the world and
never ceased offering himself unconditionally to the Spirit-Power
within as an instrument to renew the face of the Earth. His pious
ambitions were not restrained by any false modesty or fear of
becoming proud. It was the Otherself in his inner space who dictated
the terms of partnership. During the Marian Year of 1954, he had
read somewhere, whilst researching his Exercitatio, that the ultimate
book about Mary and her Motherhood of God, had yet to be written.
An intuition made him meekly determined to pursue that challenge
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for the honour of his Queen. One day, her page boy would pen what
she inspired and The Woman would have the last word.
Peter Lock was one of the founding fathers of the Salesian
College, Chadstone. It had humble beginnings back in the late
nineteen fifties. It is very well appointed now and has become a
much respected educational establishment. For the best part of ten
years, he taught Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry as well as
taking a big share of Religious Instruction. At weekends he would
help out in various parishes, often hearing confessions on Saturday
nights and generally celebrating two Masses on Sundays. He never
wrote out his sermons, but spent considerable time preparing a series
of pertinent points which he would develop in the pulpit, as the spirit
moved him. He rarely looked at the people in the congregation and
facetiously insisted that he preached a foot above the heads of the
people at the back of the Church. There was never a sermon without
reference somewhere to HER.
He was active also in such professional organizations as the
Mathematics and Science Teachers' Associations. He had been given
time off from teaching to complete his Bachelor of Science Degree
and received it formally at Melbourne University on April 1st, 1967.
His main interests had been Pure Mathematics, Mathematical
Logic and the Philosophy of Science. Set Theory had been
introduced and was being taught in all classes in both primary and
secondary schools, as well as being given a fuller treatment at the
tertiary level. Peter learnt as much as he could of this new
mathematical approach. It gave promise of shedding an extra and
always eagerly sought new light on his own theological speculations
about the mathematical nature of The Infinite Trinity. The Cantorian
Logic of Infinite Sets also greatly intrigued him.
Peter had a prior acquaintance with Scholastic Philosophy from
his teenage reading of books like those by Jacques Maritain. It was
probably in one of them that his curiosity had been aroused by a
statement that Philosophy had yet to explore the real nature and
meaning of Unity.
A satisfactory understanding of unity and infinity is as equally
important to the philosopher and theologian as to the astrophysicist
and the molecular biologist. The childlike enquiring mind of a
natural philosopher can neither wander nor wonder in a metaphysical
void. No Theory of Everything can be complete without a rational
and comprehensive solution to the age-old questions concerning the
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nature of that which has neither beginning nor end, yet in whose
continuum there is infinite provision for both retrogressive change
and progressive evolutionary growth. In this quest for the Holy Grail
of Philosophy and Science, a modern restructured and consistent Set
Theory of Unity and Infinity can provide a simple, non-technical and
yet most meaningful revelation of this basic human intuition of
infinity's beginningless past and endless future in the field unity of
the Cosmos.
Set Theory is a relatively modern topic in Mathematics and
provides both fresh insights and also the terminology necessary for
the formal logical analysis of self-reference systems. Known simply
as The New Mathematics, it has a unique and vital role in cultural
evolution. Little children in their first years of Primary School are
taught that a well-defined collection of distinct things is called a Set,
like the set of children in the class or the set of chairs in the room.
Such a collective whole is made manifest by enclosing the distinct
units in a pair of bracket-like braces { }.
For this writer, in more abstract terms, a Set is a well-defined Unity
of distinct Units in intentional Union. A set of two things is called a
two-in-one or a biunity: a set of three things is called a three-in-one,
a triunity or trinity: a set of many things is called a many-in-one or
polyunity. Using ≡ as the conventional identity sign, and meaning is
identical with, traditional Christian Creeds could now be abbreviated
to God ≡ { Father, Son, Holy Spirit }.
Sets have subsets which are well-defined sets of some specific
and distinct members of the original set. The set of letters of the
English alphabet has the subsets of five vowels and twenty one
consonants. There are also sets of sets e.g. The set of letters of the
alphabet ≡{ The set of vowels, The set of consonants}. The set of all
possible subsets of any set is called a power set. With the inclusion
now of the word all, complications arise from the unlimited use of
all in the concept of a Set of All Sets. Granted that a Set of All Sets
is a power set, there arises the problem whether such a Set is an
element itself of this Set of All Sets. If X stands for the Set of All
Sets, is X an element of X? This may seem only a trivial question,
but in reality it is pertinent to the nature and existence of Aseity, the
Self of the Cosmos.
The concept of The Set of All Sets had been dealt a deathblow at
the hands of Russell's Barber. The seeming contradictions or
paradoxes which resulted from its acceptance into a formal system of
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mathematical logic rendered the latter's conclusions inconsistent. Its
use had been abandoned but its ghost still lurked in academic
discussions.
It began to preoccupy Peter's mind. When he first heard the term
mentioned in lectures, he immediately sought an association between
the Set of All Sets and Theology's God. Academia had proclaimed
them both to be dead. He was convinced that there was a logical
mistake somewhere along the line. Most problems which were
capable of being formulated should also be capable of being solved.
There had to be some resolution of the logic paradoxes of Set Theory
by which The Set of All Sets could be resurrected, brought back to
academic life and be restored to its proper importance. Peter prayed
with confidence to the Other within. The answer came imperceptibly
in the growing awareness of the self↔other relationship of
Existential Relativity.
Sets only exist in the mind of a self who identifies its one self with
some other or with all others in the one act of knowing. The human
self’s knowledge function operates from such self's conscious willed
unity of its reflexive self’s being and its transitive otherself's
becoming. All self's knowledge can be expressed as the unity or set
{reflexive self-being, transitive otherself-becoming}, experienced
when the self knows, simultaneously, its own self reflexively and its
known otherself transitively in the one act of self-other knowledge.
In the Set Theory of Modern Mathematics, if one existing set of
circumstances mutually excludes another set of circumstances, the
two sets are said to be disjoint, as when we say that the letters of the
alphabet fall into categories of either consonants or vowels. As a
whole, the alphabet is made up of both vowels and consonants.
By analysis in its parts, each letter is either a vowel or a consonant
and cannot be both a vowel and a consonant at the same time. The
letter y has consonantal value and also serves as a possible substitute
for vocalic i in any position.
Very often two disjoint sets can complement each other to form a
whole or universal set, as we have seen with the vowels complementing the consonants to effect in their union the universal set of letters
of the alphabet. When two sets are such that they are both disjoint
and complementary in their union making the whole or universal set
of discourse, then one is said to be the notset of the other. When all
that we are discoursing about is the set of letters of the alphabet, the
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set of not-vowels is the set of consonants and the set of notconsonants is the set of vowels.
There is no great difficulty in understanding this kind of negation
which, although it uses the word not, does not imply the sense of
contradiction but of complementarity in distinction. In their distinction and union to form now an all of discourse, self and other are
both disjoint and complementary, and hence the notself becomes
synonymous with the other and vice versa. As long as notself is
rendered by other no problems arise, but to try to positively selfrelate terms involving and expressed with the words, self and not self
and notself, is to become confronted inevitably with selfcontradictions. Notself (one word) is taken in this book as the true
and proper complement of self, and is synonymous with its otherself,
or just plain other. Not self, by definition, means no sort of self,
neither self nor otherself. In its complete self-negation, it contradicts
both self and otherself.
By not explicitly identifying the notself with the other, one aspect
of the linguistic resolution of the self-reference paradoxes in logic
has been held up for over a Century. Commentators who still persist
in using the self-negated reflexive not self have necessarily become
trapped with pernicious paradoxes or seeming contra- dictions. There
is only one literal self-contradictory term in English and that is not
self. If the true and proper notself exists, it exists in an otherself. Not
self denies the real existence, in any way, of self or otherself and
therefore denies any form of selfexistence.
Peter’s books The S.T.U.F.F. of Infinity and Achieving the
Impossible disposed of all the seeming contradictions of selfreference and expressed what he considered as the last word on the
logic paradoxes of Set Theory. Bertrand Russell's Barber Paradox
proceeded as follows. In a certain village there is a barber who
shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves. The selfdeceptive question has always been, Who, if any, shaves the barber?
If the barber does not shave himself, then he becomes a member of
the set of people whom he does shave. If he does shave himself, he
contradicts his role which is to shave all and only those who do not
shave themselves. A seeming contradiction or paradox rears its
annoying head.
In its more formal statement, the Paradox refers to sets of all sets
which either do, or do not, contain themselves as members. There are
many variations of paradoxes on this theme. Epimenides, a Cretan,
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was purported to have said “All Cretans are liars.” A graffiti read
“Ban all graffiti”. These are dealt with fully in Peter’s other books.
Implicitly or explicitly they all contain the few words which are the
root cause of all the trouble, namely, the universal all and the
enigmatic, not hyphenated not self as distinct in meaning from the
hyphenated not-self.
Does not self-containing mean notself containing or not any kind
of self-containing? As defined above, the notself containing is taken
here to mean the complementary and transitive otherself containing,
whilst the second alternative excludes both self and otherself. Any
not self-containing container that does not contain something or
other, at least potentially is meaningless and lacks all real existence
outside the mind. It would appear that Russell, and all other logicians
since him, never averted to an explicit transitive use of other in the
place of the negated reflexive notself. There is no way of deciding
whether a proposition is a not self negation or a notself complement
with respect to negated self-reference, unless we make the prior
distinction of transitive operation-verbs used reflexively or not
reflexively. Those people who do not shave themselves reflexively,
yet who do get themselves shaved, must of necessity be transitively
other-shaved, i.e., shaved by an other.
Logically, there are three distinct sets of barbers' shaving razors,
self-shaving only, others-shaving only, and both self-and-othersshaving. Russell's Barber either has no facial hair to shave or sports a
beard, since he professedly only uses others-shaving razors. He now
advertises himself as one who shaves all and only those who are
other-shaved, i.e., those who, not being reflexively self-shaved, are
shaved transitively by an other.
Russell's Barber Paradox could be rephrased to be made consistent
in an other way when it is understood that the barber in question,
with or without a beard, shaves all and only those others who do not
shave themselves. The Cretan Epimenides should have said “I am
not a liar, but all other Cretans are liars”. The graffiti should have
read “Ban all other graffiti”.
There is a Law Of Generation Of Sets. It is simply that self's all
is the unity effected by the union of distinction's self and all other.
For economy of words we need only take its first letters, and call the
acronym, the LOGOS Rule. It turns all into a sharp two-edged
sword of self and other and its cut lays open the very existence and
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essence of all knowledge and psychical activity in Universal
Relativity. The latter may also be termed Existential Relativity.
All that was missing from the self of Set Theory was the
identification of its notself with the logical otherself. Grammatically,
the negated reflexive relation had to be interpreted instead as a
transitive relationship if logical consistency was to be maintained.
Simply one other word, other, was all that was needed to bring the
Set of All Sets back to an other life. Ockham's celebrated Razor
would find an everlasting place in its ultimate most meaningful use
in the hands of Russell's equally celebrated Barber.
The Trinity as a Infinite Set would continue to tease Peter's
understanding and speculations. Two decades later, the ovoidal
nature of the Cosmos, of all being and becoming, of all distinction
and union, of all self-other knowledge finally dawned on his own
evolving self-other-consciousness. He began to comprehend the full
reality and wholeness of all self-and-other-functioning feedback
systems which revealed their self to him and found expression in his
first book, THE S.T.U.F.F. OF INFINITY. The acronym stood for Set
Theory Underlying Feedback Functions.
In that book, a whole section was devoted to the Logic of Sets.
Little need be added here to highlight the background of that work.
Mathematics, as knowledge by enquiry into self-other relations, and
works of Art as self's material expressionings of its Thou-Art-other,
are manifestations of intelligence. Intelligent people today speak of
living in an age of Pluralism. The word pluralist has become a key
link in association with, and in attempts to understand, the society in
which we are involved. What is plurality? It is the abstraction of the
experience of being plural, of becoming more than one at the same
time, of polyune many-in-oneness. It is contrasted with singular.
Mathematicians, in their endless research into existential relativity,
have taken a long time to find out what they think they are talking
about when they speak about numbers which is not quite what
plurality, as a pure abstraction, connotes. Knowledge is an existential
relation, a revelation of the becomingness of a subsistent self. In a
relation, one thing is linked with one other thing and their linkage
becomes a further complex one. From the one alpha-term,
differentiated from, yet related to, the one omega-term, there now
emerges from their distinction in union, a one unity term. A one and
a one become an other one. Such an intellectual experience we call a
three of ones and we name it a tri-unity or trinity. Such trinity is the
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archetype of all relations, of the existential relativity both of being
and its becoming. It is the divine meta-mathematical algorithm which
is concerned with what goes on behind the scenes or in the backroom
of plurality's counting house where distinction and union preside in
unity. Triunity's broad-cast seed is sown in the psychical field of the
mind which conceives, gestates and gives birth to all knowledge. All
knowledge is trinitarian by nature and follows a set pattern. All
conceptioning, physical or psychical, is the union of one unit with
distinction's other one unit to form a further distinctioning complex
one-unity.
In Set Theory, a Relation is a Set of Ordered Pairs. The Set of first
elements (the alpha-terms) is called the Domain; the set of second
elements (the omega-terms) or images is called the Range or Codomain. A Set is a Unity of Distinct Units in Union. Applying this to
traditional theological ideas and formulations of the Trinity, its logic
takes the mystery out of the Christian Revelation and its faith’s
interpretation of the personal life of the deity. The Biblical injunction
concerning Baptism in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy spirit is rooted in the reality of mathematical plurality.
The elements of Set Theory have been taught in both primary and
secondary Schools for over thirty years. The sheer simplicity of the
one self's psychical addition, of its simultaneous self identification of
a one-unit and a one-unit making an other complex one-unit, of a two
of ones becoming a one of twos, is usually much too subtle for
modern complicated and undisciplined minds to grasp. Some
students comprehend it better than others, as is quite natural. For
many non-mathematical academics and non-scientific intellectuals,
especially theologians, it is a foreign language in an equally foreign
and possibly hostile environment. If Set Theory had been taught in
the kindergartens of St. Augustine's time, who knows how
enlightened he might have become if he had continued to discuss
trinitarian Theology with little children on the beach.
As Peter became better acquainted with propositional logic, he
was able to apply his knowledge to other grammatical issues. The
considerations of Material Implication are basic to the Philosophy
and Methodology of Science and also to the working out of the trialand-error techniques of feedback systems. There is both positive and
negative feedback. A thermostat which operates to turn the heating
down when the room becomes too hot, is executing negative
feedback. IF the temperature in a room is equal to or above a certain
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level (antecedent), THEN (consequent) the system must be made to
act to stop or turn the heating down. Positive feedback would arise in
the other hypothetical situation. IF the temperature in a room is equal
to or above a certain level, THEN acting to make the room hotter and
hotter would be classified as positive feedback. It is obvious that the
positive feedback of the latter hypothesis is a certain recipe for
disaster and can be understood as responsible for what may be
termed technological evil. This negative and positive feedback in
technology must not be confused with customer feedback in
marketplace advertising.
Such positive feedback in the parts or sub-systems of any
biological or social self-functioning-feedback-system (s-f-f-s) would
be cancerous and endanger its true functioning. This would be the
basis of Peter's categorical imperative or one commandment in the
human moral sphere. In later books, he would develop also the IFhypothesis to encompass both divine and human acts of creative
artistry and in doing so make plausible the association of Aseity with
the origin and growth of self's knowledge of good and evil.
At forty years of age, Peter felt quite secure in his role as a priesteducator. He was enthusiastic in teaching and preaching. He loved
the religious community life of the Salesians of Don Bosco and was
zealous for obtaining new vocations. His cerebral computer had been
programmed since childhood to accept all that the Pope and Catholic
Church authorities said as absolutely true. Together with his faith
there went that certain ecclesiastical pride found among convinced
catholics that only in their Roman Church was to be found the
fullness of divinely revealed truth and grace. Excuses were easily
made for the mistakes of the past as, for example, in the case of
Galileo and The Inquisition. Peter's reverence for Vatican authority
and its decrees would soon be put to the test on a number of issues.
Docile submission to a static intolerant male Magisterium would be
increasingly difficult, if not impossible, as a dynamic cultural aseistic
evolution began speeding up to a new climax in changing world
attitudes towards traditional religions. To Peter and to many like him
the Holy Spirit of the first Pentecost was breathing new life
elsewhere than in the eternally reluctant-to-act old minds in Rome.
The systematic conceptualized Theology that was taught in
seminaries had everything neatly tied up and stamped with the seal
of being the deposit of faith. Its Creeds were requiring to be believed.
It was academically satisfying to minds that sought after and rejoiced
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in such security. There could supposedly be no real conflict between
Theology's revealed religion of the Absolute and Science's concern
with what was judged to be merely relative or accidental. The former
could never be proved wrong or invalid in its own formal and
circular logic construct. If Science dared to call in question and
genuinely sought to re-interpret the data of biblical revelation, then it
became immediately threatening, suspect and dangerous. Its
protagonists, if Catholics, were almost certain to be condemned if
they made their views public and sooner or later would be subjected
to some form of ecclesiastical censure.
Such a fate had befallen the Jesuit priest, Teilhard de Chardin who
had died in 1955 and all of whose major works had to be published
privately and posthumously. Peter had read his books but had not
been impressed by them to the point of usefully transplanting any of
their salient ideas into his own gestating brain child. He shared a
kindred spirit with Chardin in seeking an evolving unity of Science
and Religion and admired him for having the courage of his
intellectual convictions. Chardin had been one of the first Roman
Catholic priest writers to openly dare question the accepted biblical
interpretation of the origin of the human species. Though his
personal integrity, spirituality and scientific dedication were never in
doubt, the Holy Office had issued a warning in 1962 against
uncritical acceptance of his ideas.
Peter was interested in all aspects of scientific investigation but
preferred to generalize in them all rather than to specialize in just one
particular branch. At Chadstone he had executed two very large
whole-wall masonite charts, one for Chemistry and the other for
Physics. The Chemistry one was a kind of Periodic Table for about
seventy of the most common elements with relevant information
painted on it in fluorescent paints. On it there were also represented
three dimensional, scaled model wooden spheres of their respective
atoms and ions. He was quite proud of this work of art and found it
invaluable in teaching Chemistry as an ordered whole, rather than as
a conglomerate of distinct unrelated bits.
The same applied to his representation of the electro-magnetic
radiation spectrum in his colourful Physics chart. It was a source of
great aesthetic delight to contemplate the transition from the low
frequency but long wave-length radio end of the spectrum to the very
high frequency but very small wave-length of cosmic ray photons.
The higher the frequency, the more materialized or matter-like the
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phenomenon appeared to be. In between, was the very small band of
visible light which enabled perceptual self-functioning vision in
living beings. The wave-particle duality intrigued him.
So also did the kind of reverse particle - waves or matter waves
which de Broglie had intuitioned. If waves seemed to behave like
particles under certain circumstances, de Broglie suggested that the
motion of a particle might be governed by the wave properties of
certain pilot waves which are associated with the particle. Peter's
distinctioning in mathematical logic of distinction and union
themselves and their union subsequently in a set's unity held the key
to unlock many natural mysteries. His concept of a Set as a Unity of
distinct Units in Union, combined in its Unity both the continuum's
union with the discrete particles' distinction.
Action at a distance, like gravitational interaction, had always
been a thorny problem philosophically and was riddled with
difficulties. In trying to explain how the mass of one body interacts
with the mass of another, be it close or billions of light years away,
scientists postulated a gravitational field. Their field theory with its
notion of spatial curvature effected by the presence of mass, whilst
being most plausible in its explanations, seemed to raise as many
difficulties as it removed. Instead of invisible stretched rubber bands
drawing masses together, there was now had invisible rubber sheets
being deformed and stretched by masses. The existential relation of
the mutual attraction of one mass for an other would always be with
us though the essence of gravity might elude our senses and its
explanation forever tease our understanding.
More fruitful research into the nature of force-fields is taking place
by investigating the interaction between bodies as being carried out
by the exchange or intervention of other bodies. In the case of
gravity, these hypothetical third particles are postulated as gravitons.
Whatever is the ultimate mechanism for their operation, force-fields
are real not virtual. They exist. They are essentially an indivisible
existential relation, a manifestation of the complex unity of
existential self-other relativity and which, because it is not capable of
being dissected into individual separate parts physically, is not
perceptible to the discriminating senses, except as a whole. Fields of
force can only be comprehended by a relation-minded being with a
pluralist outlook which intuitively understands the triunity of the
mutually bound, attractor and attracted in the oneness of attracting.
Peter would always remain convinced that somehow or other the
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ovoid and its quaternity of terms held the ultimate revelation of the
nature of spaced times and their fields of force. Modern String
Theory could easily be incorporated into his own speculations.
An expanding, evolving universe exhibits, in spaced time, the
becomingness of growth. Growth is self-functioning but otherdependent and there is both positive and negative growth. Positive
growth's progression proceeds forward from the unity of distinction
and union, when self and other complement each other. Negative
growth or regression results when self tries to ignore or deceive its
other and with presumptuous pseudo-self-sufficiency stagnates to
entropy's maximum disordered energy, unavailable now to effect any
other growth-unity in its repudiation of otherness' perfecting
distinction.
The existential relation of space and time or fields of spaced time
are implicit in all growth functioning. The becomingness of growth
makes spaced time visible or perceptible. We can only observe and
measure changes which involve some kind of distinction or
asymmetry and all changes take place in some field of spaced time.
The latter makes the physical world possible and makes possible its
study in Physics. It is the most basic and most mysterious intuition in
Science.
Eddington coined the expression arrow of time to suggest its oneway property of being irreversible. Historically, it has been pictured
as now flowing and according to Newton, absolute, true and
mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equally
without relation to anything external. Einsteinian Relativity induced
the laying aside of Newtonian Time with its universal now and time
became part of a four dimensional space-time quaternity. To try to
identify the exact same moment of time in two different places has
no strict meaning in Modern Physics.
Metaphysics seeks to go behind the scenes of the physical universe
and to propose consistent first principles to illumine and guide the
study of Physics itself. Peter explored and speculated on both the
distinction and the union of the psychical and physical realms and
elaborated a metaphysics of SELF and OTHER. Although his
Theory of Self-Other Universal Relativity has yet to be accepted as
general knowledge, there is a convergence of other studies, like
bootstrap models, which echo implicitly his postulated first basic
Law of Cosmology. All growth and subsequent sustainability in any
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system of the Cosmos is simultaneously self-functioning and otherdependent.
On the psychical inner spaced time of self's here and now there
is superimposed the feedback reflection of the physical outside
world's there and then. In the self, time IS, just as being IS, just as
selflife IS. The divine Aseity marks time in her own being and
through her immanence puts time's mark on all of her becomingness.
Time is a self-function of being, and space is a function of being's
becomingness or otherness. Time in itself, in its self, may enjoy
distinction and asymmetry. It may grow and if it is self-functioning,
then its growth rate should be exponential and dependent on its other
which is space. In the archetypal self-other duality, self's space is
other to self's time.
Psychical unity only exists in the self who identifies its one self
simultaneously with the distinct units which come together in self's
dual-focussed surfaced knowledge of its others. The self of a set or
unity is the self who conceives and contains it within itself. Its
conception, like other conceptions, is the union of a one with a
distinct other, an alpha-self with its omega-other-self. Aseity or
Selflife is a Set of All Sets which contains its own divine Self as well
as all its human spaced time otherselves. It is an infinite set. It does
not name a transcendent deity from without or on the outside of the
finite physical. It makes its presence felt as an existential immanence
in its heavenly queendom within. Aseity enwombs distinction's
enshrined and fertilizing becomingness.
Ovoidal self-life has no beginning but only a relative first person
focus-term or alpha-self. It knows no ending but only a related other,
a second person focus-term or omega-self. Their intentional union or
third term self surfaces as the self's becomingness in differentiated
knowledge whilst the integration of the whole self is effected in the
self's fourth term of volumed all-embracing unifying love. In Aseity,
selflife is self-other love, existential sexual relativity.
One of the ironies in some present day theological discussion is
the position of authority and tutelage accorded to the writings of
Thomas Aquinas. Nobody can question his genius in remodelling the
newly re-discovered Aristotelian Philosophy to satisfy the
requirements of Christian Doctrine. Not enough credit is given to his
teacher Albertus Magnus who helped, more than anyone else, to
systematize the thought of Aristotle by continual reference to fresh
Arabian commentaries. From the point of view of pure erudition,
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Albert was conceivably the most learned man of his time. He was
also a dedicated observer of Nature. In his literary works there is
evidence that the scientific spirit was beginning to awaken and his
involvement in the mysteries of Alchemy was such as to make him a
much quoted source of its activities.
All this took place in the Thirteenth Century when the only
scientific quaternity known at the time was Aristotle's earth, air, fire
and water from which all other things were thought to be
compounded. What is of the greatest importance today is not the
letter of the writings of both of these medieval Scholastic giants, but
the spirit which animated their use of speculative reason to innovate
and reinterpret Theology in the terms of the times.
Their thinking was never static but dynamic, open to all new ideas
and ready to run counter to established ecclesiastical traditions and
opinions. They wrote so as to pass on to others the fruits of their
contemplation. Aquinas incurred considerable opposition from very
many of his contemporaries and was condemned by some of the
highest ecclesiastical authorities. He never intended to have the last
word on controversial theological issues and he left his writings open
to future development. This author would like to think that were the
Schoolmen Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas alive today they
would write a new Summa Thealogica, incorporating also basic
Mathematical Logic and factual verifiable Science.
Peter found himself slowly becoming increasingly critical of male
priestly prejudices and traditional patriarchal ideas about religion.
His study of general biological evolution had put the self-conscious
female placental mammal on her rightful throne of predestined
superiority. Biologically, males and this must include the biblical
Adam, were not placental mammals. The man in Genesis was
deceived and taken in by his self-styled naming of woman in more
ways than one. Man is taken from mother-woman, not vice-versa.
In Nature's long evolutionary ascent on Mother Earth towards the
most abundant life, sexuality's two-in-oneness was indispensable for
functional distinction at all levels of being and becomingness. The
male role, though necessary for propagating new and varied growth,
was secondary and transitory, a mere fertilizing factor in a moment
of time. In the historical origins of the human species, considered as
the highest order of primatial placental mammals, it was a
metaphysical necessity that the mother herself together with her eggother-self within should come first. Of such was the very essence and
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continuing existence of evolved and still evolving human nature.
Later, the Gaia Hypothesis of Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock
would engage his enthusiastic attention and help him evolve and
perfect his new simple logic of the Extraordinary. The latter in turn
would validate Gaia.
Many theologians and philosophers speak with authoritarian male
tones about the Natural Law whereas in fact they know little or
nothing of Nature herself, nor of her very elusive so-called laws. A
superficial analysis might agree with Aristotle that it is natural for
stones to fall and smoke to rise and then conclude that their
subsequent contrary behaviour in an earth-satellite was against the
Natural Law. Nature abhors absolute eternal unchanging laws which
would restrict the freedom of her selective self-revealing evolution
from proceeding towards increasing ordered togetherness amid
expanding diversity and complexity. She flees from sharp
distinctions but admits a continuous gradation or overlapping
hierarchy of ordered beings which serve each other. Laws of Nature
are human axiomatic statements of empirical relationships and apply
within limits to specific circumstances. There are innumerable
relative laws in Nature and these laws are modified and adapted to
varying situations. The real physical world of those material forms
guised for us as waves and particles exists before its ideal psychical
existence in the human mind. Ideal laws are only subjective
approximations to a greater or lesser extent of the real world.
Newton's Laws of Motion are not absolute. They are good enough
for a human scale or earth-frame of reference but need radical
modifications for velocities appreciably close to the speed of light
and for the phenomena of the micro-cosmos.
Nature's fruitfulness defies precise definition or limiting
boundaries. She manifests trends and unifying patterns of
development but always provides exceptions to confuse the
uniformists whose selfdeception and dishonesty is epitomised in the
lie that the exception proves the rule. The exception proves that the
rule, as it stands, is absolutely wrong, though relatively good enough
in many or most cases. A true antecedent cannot be coupled with a
false consequent. If it seems so in Nature, then either the antecedent
hypothesis is false or the material implication unjustified and invalid.
Ordered growth to a predetermined goal amid developing
complexity demands norms to serve as guiding lines only, not as
universal absolute laws to be slavishly worshipped as intolerable
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dictators. Order does not result from blind obedience to changeless
laws whose letter would stifle all evolutionary growth. Order follows
from the unity of distinction and union and flows from an internally
permeating unifying field or spirit whereby the member of a class of
compounds or species is freed from slavery to a sterile individualism
and lowest ebb equilibrium potential to find perfecting liberty in
service to others in a more rest-mass-full, less violent chemical,
biological, pyschical or social togetherness. Order results from a
differentiated individual's self-denial in a negative feedback process
of harmonious sublimation to serve a more complex sophisticated
social integration with others. This decree of progressive change and
organic complex growth, of free relational interdependence in an
orderly commonwealth togetherness seems to be one of the few
absolute laws that can sensibly be observed in the living growing
world around us. To ignore or reject this is to court the very evil-one
of stubborn singularity which refuses to serve a plurality and resists
its own salvation from hell-fired, entropic, chaotic, virginal sterility.
The liberty which a self enjoys in freed social enterprise for the
beneficial carrying out of this divinely mandated self-otherfunctioning feedback system or global community relationship is a
far-cry from the slavery which binds and blinds the masses in some
modern aggressive Socialism.
Immutability, legal or local, is not a divine perfection. If it were,
there would be no creative acts in finite spaced times. It could be the
attribute of a sterile virgin god whose worshippers project, with
infertile ever-virgin infantile minds, their own corresponding interior
psychic state into a lifeless legalistic theodicy. The absence of
absolute immutable laws in Nature does not mean chance random
development. On the contrary it means that Nature freely chooses
which path shall be followed in orderly organic evolutionary growth
as the needs of adaptation to new planned situations arise,
necessitating the predetermined application of foresight's feedbacktrial-and-error techniques. For theologians of bygone days, a
transcendent god existed, up in heaven somewhere, the archetypal
Father, and popularly visioned as an old man with an abundant
flowing white beard. Today, Science and Mathematics and conscious
selflife reveal to us a little about THE immanent Aseity, the Mother
Self who does exist in the Queendom of Heaven within us and in
whose self-revealing Cosmos-womb we humans are grateful to have
been chosen to live as her wave-formed other-selves and share in her
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being's field of becomingness.
Aseity shows a comic touch of typical feminine unpredictable
caprice, a certain pretended uncertainty on principle. Whilst
scientists are becoming reconciled to the limitations of their strict
paternal straight line causality in a maternal, ovoidally expanding
world of curved fields, they are amassing a vast amount of welldefined data and statistics showing general trends in specified areas
and directions. Anarchical minds may try to project their own
specious random abandon onto Nature but she refutes them by
visibly drawing voluptuous order out of their imputed repulsive
chaos. A nucleated atom, much less the s-f-f-s of a living human
body, is not just a fortuitous assembly of chaotic discrete particles.
To Peter now, as he writes about his past ideas, there are only
vague memories of what happened to him in the second half of the
nineteen sixties when his head began to play tricks on him. He was
all too conscious of what was likely to befall him as the shadow-fears
and the volcano inside his brain began ominous rumblings.
He had changed his mind about the use of artificial contraception.
He had reflected and reasoned about what attitude to take in the
Confessional to the tearful problems of married women, who for
financial or health reasons, rightly dreaded becoming pregnant again
and again, particularly when their doctors had warned them of
possible danger. Human compassion dictated one course of action
and advice, submission to Rome demanded an other. Like most
priests at the time, he had hoped that those in authority in the Vatican
would accept the compelling arguments and advice of the special
Commission which had been appointed to examine the issue. In July
1968, the encyclical letter of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae was
published reaffirming the traditional stand. It was a disaster for Peter
and for many others like him. It was later revealed that 64 members
of the Commission had voted to drop the ban, whilst only 4 had
opted to retain it.
To distract himself from the threatening fearful eruptions inside
his head, Peter took to writing verse. He disciplined his mind with
iambic pentameter and over a period of a few years completed most
of what later would be condensed and entitled as The Mind of Aseity,
The Lore of Aseity and The Great Mystery. It was conceived as a set
of five books, a kind of Pentateuch called, of woman born, and was
the fulfillment of his page boy ambition, not just to put in prose, but
to narrate in ordered epic poem form, the praises of his Queen. He
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showed the first part of it to three people for their opinion, a young
nun, an Anglican priest and a University don. The first two were
more than impressed and positively encouraging, whilst the third did
not consider himself competent to pass judgment.
He would reglaze his mind's magic casements during the ensuing
next few decades, but the poem would remain substantially the same.
It was the fruit of his union with The Woman within. Externally he
would seek to imitate the meek and authoritative Jesus. Violence was
repugnant to him and he could never bring himself to hurt anybody
deliberately in word or deed. In sheer desperation, he might have
whacked a few boys' backsides in the classroom, but he always was
sorry for it and made his peace with the culprits afterwards.
Though there were a few men whom he truly admired and loved in
different ways like Jesus, Don Bosco, his brother Maurice and some
of his professorial friends abroad, he had a low opinion of the male
sex as a whole with their hypocrisy, double standards and irrational
resort to violence. He despised arrogant male chauvinists and any
sort of bully, physical, academic or mercantile. It pleased him to put
Woman on a privileged pedestal and he felt a hostile contempt for
males who raped and abused women and treated them as mere
household objects to be possessed and exploited for selfish
gratification.
He did not take kindly either to that lingering ecclesiastical distrust
of women which made them out to be second class members of the
Church and a perennial temptation and threat to a celibate's virtue.
He understood how women could love other women and respond
sexually to each other. He could relate in his own mind with a kind
of empathy to Lesbians’ antipathy towards and distrust of men in
general. From his past experience, he would not pass moral judgment
on male homosexual activity. Some of it could be a meaningful and
sanctifying self-other committment, but for him personally, the idea
of such relationships had always been repugnant.
It was towards the end of 1966, after completing his final
examinations for B.Sc. that he began to fear for his continued sanity.
He was having some strange disturbing hallucinations about the
Papacy. He was residing at Don Bosco Hostel, Brunswick, since it
was only a few minutes scootering from there to the Melbourne
University. It was a Saturday evening and Peter knelt apprehensively
in prayer before a Crucifix in his room. Into his mind came the
profound and distressing intuition that in some way, he too, was
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going to be crucified. The volcano that had once been on the verge of
erupting in his mind in 1945 was threatening to become active again
and he asked to be taken that night to St. Vincent's Hospital where he
was admitted to the psychiatric ward. It is purely hypothetical
whether the course of hospital events of 1945 would have achieved
the same result in 1966. He had kept his vow of continence all
through the years, not without distressing sleepless nights. Later,
when married, he would appreciate the relief from psychical tension
to be obtained from guilt-free orgasmic experience, but such
therapeutic sex was forbidden him then. How much his troubles were
due to sexual repression will forever remain an object of psychiatric
speculation.
It was obvious to the hospital staff that Peter was suffering from
some psychological disturbance akin to religious mania, or
hallucinations. As he used facetiously remark afterwards, they
subjected him to electrical shock treatment for no reason at all. All
that such treatment succeeded in doing was to dull his memory
completely and to give him the added new perception of what it was
like to be a depressed zombie.
In his hospitalization, the hand of Providence manifested itself
again in a strange twist of events. On his father's side, Peter had
second cousins who were catholics but whom he could never recall
as having met. One of them, Ellen, had a daughter who worked in the
office at St. Vincents. The latter came home one evening and
informed her mother that there was a certain Fr. Peter Lock in the
psychiatric ward. Ellen knew of Peter's existence but that was all.
She took no further notice of her daughter's information until, quite
unexpectedly some time later, a mysterious but unmistakable voice
told her insistingly “visit the sick”. Surprised and reluctant, she knew
she had to obey. If the prayerful possessing of his Our Lady
interiorly had been enough in the past to strengthen Peter and help
him ride over any serious psychical trouble, it seemed that something
more would henceforth be necessary. Emotionally disturbed, he now
had need externally of a woman’s compassion and understanding,
her shoulder to cry on. Ellen's intuition perceived as much and she
became a leaning post to help him weather the storms ahead. The
psychiatrists, it seemed, welcomed the opportunity to experiment on
a harmless passing case of excessive religious enthusiasm.
Storms there would be a-plenty, for the initial shock treatment had
left its side-effects. He cannot remember how many more times he
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would find himself in hospital. His superiors were naturally very
worried. He never bothered to find out what the doctors told them
about him. Towards the end of 1968 he woke up one morning to find
himself again in the St. John of God Hospital and subjected to more
shocking treatment and regular dosing with inappropriate tablets. He
left the hospital in the early months of the next year and was put on
special medication. The latter made him worse in mind and body and
without telling anyone, he discontinued their use. Months later, he
explained what he had done to his doctor who did not rebuke him,
but rather was pleased with his initiative and progress. Whether the
medical profession ever fully understood his real problems or not,
Peter would never know nor would he care. He was told that he
would have to make up his own mind and he himself would have to
choose, once and for all, between his sanctity and his sanity.
There was no option left for him. The same spirit which had
insisted that he join the Salesians, was now unquestionably telling
him to leave and go back to the lay state and to the market-place. His
superiors concurred and in December 1969, much to their regret, he
rode away from Chadstone on the Lambretta which his superiors had
allowed him to keep. He had less money in his pocket now than
when he had entered the Novitiate, twenty three years before, but
that did not worry him in the least. He always claimed that the shares
which he had in the Bank of Divine Providence ensured that he
would never want for anything that he really needed in the way of
essential food, clothing, shelter, study materials, transport and now a
woman's shoulder to cry on. Happiness was promised to the poor in
spirit, and since not being preoccupied with obtaining or maintaining
external and worldly material possessions, he could give himself
without any distractions to possessing the Queendom of Aseity's
heaven in his inner spaced time.
His Provincial, Fr. W. L. Cornell. S.D.B lamented it was his
saddest day in office as he officially wrote on 12th December 1969 :
This is to state that PETER BAYARD LOCK has requested and
has been granted exclaustration for reasons of health. He became a
Salesian in 1947 and was ordained in 1956. He ceased active service
with us with our blessing, our good wishes and our friendship. He is
a man of sterling character and of the highest integrity.