St. John’s Time Crystal

2100 Words, 10 Minutes

Who discovered the Rondeau Time Crystal (RTC),  aka Time Rondeau Crystal, Leo Joon Il Moon (2025 CE) or John the Evangelist (c. 80)? Hint: Dr. Moon applied for a patent only to be told by the U.S. Patent Office that his idea had been in the public domain for almost two millennia. 

A Crystal (think diamond, quartz, et al.) is a state of matter in which a particular pattern repeats indefinitely in space. They’ve been around for at least 4 billion years. A Time Crystal is a state of matter in which a particular pattern repeats indefinitely in time. Time Crystals were discovered in 2012.

 A ‘Rondeau Time Crystal’ is a type of time crystal that consists of three phases: Alpha and Omega phases, which are co-determined, separated by a Delta phase which is entirely indeterminate (aka chaotic). RTCs were discovered by Dr. Moon’s team in 2025.

Who cares? We do, all of us! At least since the dawn of the so-called Enlightenment, physicists, philosophers, and theologians, strange bed fellows they, have been wrestling with a common problem: How can we reconcile free will with causality? 

Innumerable solutions have been proposed but none has achieved anything approaching consensus. Many exclude free will entirely (Laplace); some exclude causation (Hume). Others have suggested ways to package the two without slipping into the intellectual quicksand of dualism (Sartre). But frankly, it’s a bit of a mess.

Now the Moon Team has suggested that determinism (causality) and indeterminism (chaos, freedom) might co-exist in a single entity. But they have done more than just suggest; they have demonstrated it IRL! (In my view, this is the most important scientific breakthrough in 60 years, i.e. since John Bell proved mathematically that the universe is non-local and Alan Aspect demonstrated it experimentally a few years later.)

In an RTC, the determinate phases recur, oblivious to the chaotic Delta phase, while Delta, whose content is wholly undetermined, is nonetheless ‘shaped’ by its position in-between Alpha and Omega. How so?

Remember that Summer when you decided to take life easy for once? You ordered a hammock from Amazon, and when it arrived (next day), you left it in a heap on your lawn. As a pile of rope and canvas, it had no defined shape. But when you strung that material between two trees as directed, voila, it suddenly assumed a mathematically well-defined shape: catenary. 

The hammock acquired its signature (and oh so welcome) topology (shape) from its position between two trees, and it is because of that topology that you were able to spend the summer sipping gin & tonics and chipping away at your multiyear sleep deficit.  

Likewise, in an RTC the content of the Delta phase is wholly indeterminate, but its topology is strictly a function of its position between Alpha and Omega. Importantly, Delta’s shape turns out to be conducive to the formation of short-lived local islands (yes, I’m aware I just ‘three-peated’) of low entropy, i.e. relative order as measured by the absolute order characteristic of Alpha/Omega.

But what could any of this possibly have to do with John the Evangelist? John’s Gospel includes events in the life of Jesus that the other three evangelists (MM&L) skip over. Understandably so! John’s Gospel addresses a different audience and serves a different purpose. 

John is more focused on theology, less on biography, than his predecessors. By the time John put pen to paper, the story of Jesus was well known, at least in certain circles. The challenge now was to articulate the meaning and significance of that story. 

Appropriately, John records in detail Jesus’ final teaching to his apostles, delivered at the Last Supper and during their post prandial procession to Gethsemane. The so-called ‘Farewell Discourses’ (FDs) occupy four chapters (13 – 17) in John. Here the evangelist presents a cosmology whose structure, as we’ll see below, prefigures Dr. Moon’s RTCs. 

The FDs mainly concern relations among three entities: (1) God the Father (YHWH), (2) God the Son (Christ), and (3) the World, beginning with the 11 faithful Apostles. Jesus describes the Father-Son relationship in language suggestive of the Alpha and Omega phases of an RTC with the World as its Delta:

“I am in the Father (Alpha) and the Father is in me (Omega)...” (14: 10) Alpha ↔ Omega

“…And you in me and I in you.” (14: 20) Delta ↔ Omega 

“…I in them and you in me.” (17: 23a) Alpha → Omega → Delta 

“…You love them as you loved me.” (17: 23b) Omega ← Alpha → Delta

“…So that the love you had for me may be in them and I may be in them.” (17: 26)  Delta ← Omega ← Alpha → Delta

This is a paradigm of the differance (Derrida) that is the foundation of consciousness. Delta experiences Alpha directly and then again through the mediation of Omega. This slight displacement, which applies in varying ways and degrees to most experiences, creates the ‘gap’ which consciousness bridges. This gap is what consciousness experts mistake for a Global Workspace or for the site of Information Integration. 

Sidebar: This also explains why consciousness seems so widely distributed among living organisms, even those that lack any sort of brain or central nervous system (e.g. bacteria). Basically, any organism capable of both direct and mediated experience is at least dimly conscious (Whitehead).

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“He who dwells in me and I in him will bear much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing. He who does not dwell in me is like a withered branch thrown into the fire and burned.” (15: 5-6) 

Applying a formula first proposed by Gregory Bateson, Being consists of ‘babies having babies’ – i.e. differences making a difference. Whatever occurs only in spacetime is finite; by definition it makes no ultimate difference, so it is not (and never was). 

Things are just as they would be if nothing had ever happened (nothing ever did happen).. An event isolated in Delta is like a withered branch consumed by fire… unless that event can somehow be eternalized. (Stay tuned)

“This is my father’s glory, that you may bear fruit in plenty…” (15: 8) Alpha ← Delta → Omega 

Glory is a deceptively simple concept. We think of it as some sort of spectacular theophany, preferably accompanied by fireworks, but the Hebrew root suggests something more mundane, like gravity. Glory shapes spacetime as two trees shape a hammock; it’s closer to a cause than it is to an effect. 

“…Through them my glory has shone…that they may be one as we are one.” (17: 10-11)

Delta exists only in the context of Alpha/Omega and while the latter does not determine the content of the former, it does exert some subtle influences as noted above. Those influences may be summarized as God’s Glory, i.e. God’s gravitational influence. 

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I am reminded of Deuteronomy (30:19): “I set before you life and death, blessing and curse, therefore choose life.” Of course, this is not a choice at all because Option B cannot in fact be chosen…it runs afoul of the Grandfather Paradox. 

To cease being is never to have been at all: Is you is or is you ain’t? But if you had never been, you would not be on hand now to choose Option B. So choosing Option B precludes you from choosing Option B. Clever… So there is only one option, Option A: Live long and prosper! Choose life and be! 

Virtual events in Delta vanish into the oblivion of never having happened… unless they are somehow able to transcend spacetime by co-locating in Alpha/Omega. 

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“As the Father has loved me so I have loved you. Dwell in my love.” (15: 9) Alpha → Omega → Delta

“This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.” (15: 12) Delta ↔ Delta ← Omega → Delta ↔ Delta

“If you heed my commands, you will dwell in my love, as I have heeded my Father’s commands and dwell in his love.” (15: 10) Delta ↔ Omega ↔ Alpha

So how do I, in Delta, co-locate with Christ in Omega? This simple question summarizes the entirety of Christian spirituality and ethics…and not just Christian. In the end, it is the existential question, the only question that matters. If I fail to solve this riddle, at least intuitively, I lose everything. Bumper Sticker: Co-locate or Be Not!

YHWH makes this clear at the outset of his first intervention in human history, the Exodus: “I am who am.” (Ex. 3: 14) Billboard: Want to be? Go through me!

When I heed a command, I conform my behavior to the will of another; I perform physically what another has willed intellectually. God’s sole command is that we love one another. When we do so, we conform our actions to his will (Omega) and our will to his values (Alpha). 

God is primordially and essentially co-located (Alpha and Omega). His acts and values resonate, they share a common wavelength, they are mutually reinforcing. When we act in concert with God’s will (i.e. when we love), we are co-located as well but accidentally, not essentially. Still, we share the common wavelength and our acts resonate with God’s values and will.

Sidebar: Resonance is pattern and pattern is information and information (bit) trumps infrastructure (it): “It from bit” (Wheeler). When patterns resonate, they merge and become one pattern across many structures. The epiphenomenal figure (pattern) becomes the substructural ground. When patterns merge, they co-locate, so one pattern may, and usually will, appear in all three phases (Delta, Omega and Alpha) simultaneously. 

Events in the World (Delta) are undetermined; they are sui generis and causa sui, free to conform, or not, to God’s will and values. By obeying God’s command (‘love one another’) we freely choose to conform our actions so they resonate with God’s will and values and co-locate in Alpha/Omega - a union of act, value, and will. 

Fortunately, God is omni potentia. Alpha defines his nature (Values) but Omega consists of every possible state-of-affairs that is not inconsistent with those values. The ‘way’ is not narrow after all; it is exceedingly broad. We do not have to guess at God’s will. We’re not required to pick THE right answer; we just need to avoid wrong ones, i.e. ones that are incompatible with his values (Alpha).

“In my father’s house there are many mansions.” (14: 2)

“We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works that God has prepared for us in advance that we might step into them.” - Paul’s Letter to Ephesians (2: 10)

The set of good works God has prepared for us includes whatever is not incompatible with his values. Here God’s Providence and Mercy come into play. The shaping of Delta (Providence) favors the emergence of order, measured by compatibility with God’s will. 

We can do what is right in our own eyes, confident that if we allow our actions to be guided by Divine Values (e.g. Beauty, Truth, Justice), we will not act in ways that are incompatible with God’s will, knowing that a merciful God redeems every act, no matter how ‘divergent’, as long as it does not conflict irredeemably with his nature.

Confirmation of this is found in 4 places in the Book of Judges: “In those days, Israel had no king; everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” (17: 6, 18: 1, 19: 1, 21: 25)

When we successfully conform our acts (Delta) to God’s values (Alpha), our temporal acts resonate with states-of-affairs located in Omega, merging with them to effect co-location so that we may participate in Eternity. 

Mortality is not an alternative to Eternity (StarTrek), it is the deprivation of Eternity. To exist exclusively in the Delta phase, i.e. to be ‘temporal only’, is to be incompletely real. Whatever is fully real is co-located. Eternity trumps mortality. Once an event is eternal, mortality loses all meaning. 

To be clear: we are not saying that God, or the Universe, is an RTC. Rather, we’re saying that the discovery of RTCs proves that order and freedom can (and do) coexist in a single entity, suggesting that what is transient in Delta can also be eternal in Alpha/Omega. Not bad for a day’s work!

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El Greco — Saint John the Evangelist (c. 1605) presents John as a youthful, inward-looking figure, emphasizing spiritual intensity over historical realism. El Greco’s elongated forms, cool blues, and flickering highlights create an otherworldly presence, suggesting John’s role as visionary and theologian rather than narrative actor. The saint’s upward gaze and symbolic attributes (often associated with revelation and the Eucharistic chalice) reinforce themes of divine inspiration, love, and mystical insight central to John’s writings.