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God’s Masterpiece, Subtle and Sublime
An Actual Entity is Whitehead’s term, short and terse,
For what he conceives as, the basic unit of the universe.
An actual entity is an “atom” of process, a pulsation,
A throb of actuality, that only for a split-second endures.
And so, at the very heart of reality, we find oscillation,
A unit of process that arises, and in a flash, matures,
And then vanishes, only to begin reiterations anew,
Wherein possibilities will arise, and may become true.
It is the crucible of creative advance,
Enshrined in the ultimate three:
God, the creatures, and creativity.
It is the face of the waters,
The word, moist, in the mouth,
The locus of “Let there be . . .”
Whitehead says that an actual entity
Owes its spatial and temporal immensity,
To the fact that, the whole universe conspires,
To create an actual entity, as his logic requires.
An actual entity is, therefore, a hologram,
As in the paradigm of Bohm and Pribram,
But foresaw by Whitehead many years before,
As early as, or earlier, than nineteen twenty-four.
As philosopher Jorge Nobo said, and I now put into verse,
The metaphysical chronology and topology of the universe,
are, in its actual occasions, forever captured and enshrined.
And, in this way, an actual entity is, as a hologram, defined.
And so each momentary throb of actuality, is a constellation,
In marvelous miniature, of the whole universe, a replication,
Showing how all things are interdependent, woven together,
In a wonderful pattern of connectedness, as fin is to feather.
With prehensive roots reaching back, to the beginning of time
And stretching forward, in branches that convolute and climb.
If this is true of an Actual Entity, then it must also be true,
Of our own momentary occasions—that is, of me and you.
And so, the entire universe, as a metaphysical hologram—lo!
Into our minds, will come and go, each second, 12 times or so.
An actual entity is, therefore,
A holographic entity, and more,
Whose prehension is the universe,
In every time and in every place,
Stretching, and this we can only trace,
To the farthest reaches of intergalactic space.
As the crucible of creativity,
An actual entity is God’s masterpiece,
Where what, might be, can come, to be.
But the wonders do not there cease.
An actual entity, if you will,
Is not only a wonder of the world,
But also, how the world comes to wonder,
And should cause us to thrill,
Like lightning and thunder
It is the crucible, the crux,
Of concrescence and transition,
The permanence and the flux,
Where, from the past, something is achieved
By lure, and intention,
And then passed on, and interweaved,
For once and future, fruition.