The 'turtles all the way down' explanation of causality is denotatively irrational. It was proposed as an explanation of world causality, that atop a turtle laid the world, and below the turtle a larger one indefinitely. This example of infinite regression has been mocked thanks to its re-interpretation by Western thinkers, Hume indirectly opposes it with his explanation of the ultimate cause, which grounds the cause-effect chain with an ultimate cause not withheld by its sequence. This false dichotomy between infinite regress and ultimate cause has been substantiated thanks to linearity -- the cardinal sin of Western thinking. The 'turtles all the way down' explanation denotes infinite regression, but its intention is to connote circularity (tautology). It is Schelling who in this way distinguished himself from the Western image of thought as he comes to the esoteric Truth of the Self. By distinguishing the statement 'I am' as itself being an infinite loop (secretly stating 'I am that I am'). If a man refers to himself as himself he has said A=A and A=B simultaneously.
"This identity between the self as producing and the self as produced is expressed in the proposition, self = self; since it equates opposites to itself, this is by no means an identical proposition, but a synthetic one. Thus the proposition self = self converts the proposition A=A into a synthetic proposition, and we have found the point at which identical knowledge springs immediately from synthetic, and synthetic from identical. But this point also contains the principle of all knowledge. Hence that principle must be expressed in the proposition self = self, since this very proposition is the only one there can be that is simultaneously both identical and synthetic."[1]
In other words, the man stating 'I am' has become the object of its own subject. Schelling assures also that "The self is nothing distinct from its thinking"[2] to avoid the mundane objections. While self-sufficient statements are abundant, it is the 'I am that I am' statement that stands as the most profound. Because it is the only knowledge that can be considered both analytic (A=A) and synthetic (A=B). The Self is the most fundamental and esoteric Truth, it is the Truth where truth extends from.
It is most important to forget about ultimate causality and infinite regress, and instead focus on causal circularity. The circle is the most important statement of geometry, it is the most optimized shape, thus making all other shapes less efficient circles. An increase in mass results in roundness for this reason, as something expands it expands to a roundness, such as a balloon or a bubble. Every thing is inside a circle.
By virtue of things being distinguishable at all implies a primordial, ultimate source, what the Neoplatonists referred to as The One. The primordial soup as a physical explanation of the origin of life, if applied metaphysically, is identical to The One. Among two distinguishable things is a substance that they are originally descended from, and of that substance, the same applies. Following this understanding, it is clear that things have all individuated originally from a single substance, that was eventually split in two and then into further multitudes as things underwent descent. In his work On the Descent of the Soul, Plotinus writes:
"It is necessary that there should not be The One alone, for if this was the case all things would be concealed in his ineffable nature, and would no longer possess any proper and distinguishing form, being swallowed up, as it were, in his solitary deity; nor would there be any multitude of beings generated from one first cause, unless among the number of things which receive a progression from thence some were found established in the order of souls."[3]
It is for this reason that the first number is two, not one. Having 'one' of something means nothing if there is not the potential of two. Hence individuation (two and up) require The One. It is from The One that all multitudes of things are derived, but it is thanks to this multitude that The One can be said to exist. Plotinus writes:
"[It is necessary that] particular souls employing an intellectual appetite in a conversion to their origin, and possessing besides this a power of the governing subsequent natures, similar to light suspended on high from the sun, and at the same time communicating its illuminations without envy to things posterior to itself; it is requisite, I say, that such souls should be preserved from injury and molestation, while they abide in the intelligible world, together with universal soul."[4]
This appetite for a soul's conversion to its origin, is a longing felt in Spengler's Faustian soul. Spengler quotes a passage from Goethe's Faust I: "A longing pure and not to be described drove me to wander over woods and fields, and in a mist of hot abundant tears I felt a world arise and live for me." [5]This longing is analogous to Quixotic pseudo-nostalgia, but is homologous to a longing for The One. This longing is seen everywhere, it manifests as repatriation, historical learnedness, rituals or repeated gestures, it is coming home, fundamentally. It lies beneath all perceived difference as a single flow of a single substance.
"There is only one Brahman, the One without a second, the Essence of Existence, Knowledge,
and Eternal Bliss, and devoid of activity; there is no duality whatsoever in it."[6]
From the Self does everything spring forward, including the Self. This is an ultimate corresponding Truth. It makes the division of metaphysics and physics arbitrary. Adi Sankaracharya writes:
"In dreams, when there is not actual contact with the external world, the mind alone creates the whole universe consisting of the enjoyer etc. And similarly in the waking state also, there is no difference. Therefore all this (phenomenal universe) is the projection of the mind."[7]
And identically is Sankaracharya's passage mirrored in John Wheeler's participatory anthropic principle (PAP), stating plainly and much stronger than alternative anthropic principles in physics, that it is the spectator causing the spectated to manifest.
What is the Self? The Self is not a set of ideas, a set of things, it is not a quantity, nor a quality, nor a movement, nor a stillness, nor an attribute, nor a property. It is it's own referral.
[1] Schelling, F.W.J., Heath P, Vater M. System of Transcendental Idealism. (The University Press of Virginia, 1978), 30 [372-73]. [2] Ibid, 26 [367-68] [3] Plotinus, & Taylor, T. Collected Writings of Plotinus. (Prometheus Trust, 2000), 141. [4] Ibid, 139. [5] Spengler, O., Werner, H., Helps, A., & Atkinson, C. F. The Decline of the West. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 99. [6] Shankaracharya, A., & Madhavananda S. Vivekachudamani of Sri Sankaracharya. (Goemaere Press, 2008). [7] Ibid.