Adam Blatner, Imagination-ologist
It May Be More Like This (see diagram above right)
Or perhaps more like what is shown here to the left. If sentences can be diagramed in terms of their grammatical structure, why not theories?
Of course, theories involve many world-views, basic assumptions, sets that operate at a meta-level, hinted at by this picture on the right, below, which show the inter-flow of different idea-trends, paradigm-shifts, and their permutations in the evolving noosphere.
Alas, these cannot be adequately demonstrated in a two-dimensional portrayal of a three-dimensional surface, because it’s all far more “dimensionally” complex.
There are problems to be considered, problems about what’s properly imagined as “out there” versus “in-here;” what is objective versus what is subjective; and as for the subjective, there is ane emerging awareness of the variety of and prevalence—if not dominance—of minor and major influences of non-rational mind. (See comments on nonrational mind on blog).
External reality—i.e., “objectivity,”—is, of course, partly or largely illusory. For one thing, what seems to be “happening” is partly determined not so much by individual minds desiring or willing this or that—or praying for it—but rather by the result of large collective vectors of consciousness operating over many generations.
This may involve not only a culture, but the interface with certain other relevant cultures. There are also the degrees of intensity of beliefs to be considered. As is illustrated on the left, these collectively formed archetypes converge on a nexus that is experience by human minds as “out-there reality,” and we also share the consensus illusion that “we” are not doing it.
I don't know how to express this clearly, but another important dynamic is the involution and evolution of existence, the vibratory-at-many-frequencies patterns of how the cosmos circulates. Poetically---and isn't much of non-rational mind poetic?---let's say that all experience, including the experience of creativity, circulates between the whole (God?) and the parts (us?) so that it resonates; and this resonance operates, as does music, at many frequency, from the low notes (requiring centuries or eons, or filling galaxies) to the "high" notes (involving micro-seconds and applying to molecules and atoms). The result is the so-called "music of the spheres."
The Future
There remains the future, when further dimensions and depths of “reality” have yet to be discovered (Revealed? Invented? Created? Channeled?). This will be happening as our species matures over the next decades, centuries, millennia, assuming for the moment that we don’t extinguish ourselves as a species in the meantime. These discoveries will further thicken the breadth and quality of reality that we are inclined to believe in. One pleasant trend is that there will likely be increased tolerance and perhaps even some respect for local creations, manifestations of eccentric and idiosyncratic belief-experience... such as this paper.
Summary
The diagram on the left---the roughtly six-vertex-continous star figure, mainly, set among a chain-like frame---is what I call the "star of the heart." It is a personal symbol of mine. This figure---the six-"pointed" star, not the frame--- is related to what in solid geometry is called a lissajou curve, a type of stable vibration in three dimensions. It also relates I suspect to what a friend of mine calles "mereon."
This symbol came to me, tumbling slowly, in a dream in late 1972: It represents a three-dimensional figure that can seem like a star if looked at in a certain way: It is a symbol for the way our three-dimensional space + one dimension of time - universe actually has another dimension (or more, really) of mind-like aspects, but to us it can appear as if these other dimensions don't exist. Various books about "Flatland" hint at this situation. Now that reputable scientists are talking seriously about more than 3-D space, it's time to ask: What are those higher dimensions about? Are they merely mathematical devices to make the results not come out so screwy, or can we take other dimensions seriously? And if we do, and they are about mind-like elements, then what are those like? It is for now an un-ending mystery: The more we find out, the more we'll discover yet other frontiers about which we do not yet know.
Yet art and intuition and poetic writing can give a hint, prepare our minds and worldviews to stretch and relax.