Oleksandr Shapoval

Integrated metaphysical systems combine ontological, cosmological, psychological, evolutionary, and soteriological relations within larger conceptual configurations. Their concepts therefore cannot be compared adequately by examining individual terms or apparent similarities alone. Meaning is shaped by the relations in which concepts participate and by the larger systems in which those relations are organized. Direct synthesis risks importing the internal organization of one system into another. Terminological comparison can identify similarities without establishing the structural relations that make them comparable. This essay develops a framework for addressing this problem of comparison and for formalizing relations identified across different integrated metaphysical systems within a common ontological architecture. Sāṃkhya and the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo are examined as two systems characterized by different forms of architectural organization: Sāṃkhya differentiates fundamental ontological relations within a coherent metaphysical framework, while Sri Aurobindo integrates related ontological, cosmological, psychological, and evolutionary relations into a broader metaphysical vision. Meta-Para-Ontology (MPO) engages these systems through ontological decomposition, identification of structural functions, and reconstruction. This procedure distinguishes general ontological relations from the particular metaphysical interpretations through which they are expressed and reconstructs them within an explicit ontological architecture. Universality arises through coordination across difference: heterogeneous metaphysical systems can retain their distinct conceptual and metaphysical configurations while becoming structurally comparable through common ontological relations. The essay thus presents MPO as a method for constructing a universal ontology by differentiating and reconstructing ontological relations identified across historically situated metaphysical systems.

Any attempt to explain everything already presupposes a conception of what explanation is, what belongs to the domain being explained, and what makes different phenomena intelligible within a common account. A theory can expand its explanatory reach across increasingly broad ranges of phenomena, domains, and levels without exceeding the conceptual framework through which that reach is defined. Its universality may therefore grow in scope while remaining bounded by the principles that determine what counts as fundamental, relevant, and intelligible. This becomes apparent when comprehensive theories are considered across different disciplines. What appears as a Theory of Everything within one domain may leave fundamental questions unresolved in another, and the reverse may also be true. Different disciplines may organize reality through different assumptions about what exists, what is fundamental, what constitutes explanation, and what makes a description adequate. The resulting plurality is therefore a plurality of ways in which reality can become theoretically intelligible, but the intelligibility established within one framework does not necessarily extend to others. This raises the question of whether the ambition of “Everything” can itself be reformulated at a level capable of encompassing the plurality of frameworks through which reality is rendered intelligible. The present essay develops the concept of a Meta-Level Theory of Everything by reconsidering “everything” as a heterogeneous field of descriptions, models, concepts, principles, claims, and comprehensive frameworks through which reality is disclosed and organized. The resulting conception treats universality as a property of coordination across difference, opening a meta-systemic dimension for transdisciplinary approaches to “Everything” without reducing heterogeneous descriptions to a common substantive framework.

Contemporary knowledge is divided among disciplinary and conceptual frameworks that often employ different concepts, assumptions, methods, and criteria of explanation. Interdisciplinary approaches can establish relations among such domains, but they do not by themselves provide a common basis for comparing systems whose fundamental descriptions of reality may differ or conflict. This paper examines the conditions required for a universal meta-system capable of supporting such comparison while preserving the distinctions among the systems it maps. It develops eight criteria that distinguish a coordinate architecture from a substantive theory and specify the conditions under which heterogeneous systems can be accommodated, related, and reconstructed within a common analytical space. Meta-Para-Ontology is presented as a candidate realization of these requirements, originally developed with these criteria in view. Its Register Ontology provides a minimal and invariant coordinate architecture based on four ontological registers, enabling Polymetaphysical Cartography to localize and compare heterogeneous philosophical, scientific, psychological, and metaphysical systems without reducing them to a common substantive vocabulary. In this framework, Meta-Para-Ontology addresses the problems of incommensurability and reductionism by reconceptualizing substantive theoretical approaches toward a Meta-Level Theory of Everything and providing a universal coordinate architecture for relating diverse theories and descriptions of reality within a common ontological space.

This paper introduces the Theory of Emergent Metric Tension in Causality (TEMTC), grounded in the ontological architecture of Meta-Para-Ontology, as a meta-structural framework for interpreting the conceptual divide between quantum mechanics and general relativity. By situating physical phenomena within a broader coordinate framework, TEMTC interprets spacetime geometry, gravitational dynamics, and quantum behavior as emergent expressions of a deeper causal organization. Causality functions as a field of relational constraints whose internal tensions manifest as physical phenomena. Space and time arise at the threshold of Manifestation as relational forms through which this relational network becomes accessible to observation, such that gravitational dynamics express the stabilization and systemic coherence of these underlying relations. By prioritizing this shared coordinate architecture, TEMTC uncovers the root of their incompatibility as a problem of ontological interpretation—requiring no alternative mathematical formalism—thereby preserving the formal integrity of each physical paradigm.

The Theory of Functional Configurations of Experience (TFCE) proposes a formal account of how manifestation becomes organized as experience. The theory argues that appearing is structured through three irreducible and co-original Functions of Manifestation: Recall, Differentiation, and Actualization. Recall articulates continuity and temporal coherence; Differentiation articulates distinction and spatial extension; Actualization articulates evolutionary reorientation and the transformation of cognitive capacities. Space, time, and evolution are understood as functional expressions of this triad. TFCE introduces the concept of a Functional Configuration of Experience—a momentary regime of manifestation determined by the relative activity of the three Functions—through which experience can appear as stable, distinct, and oriented for consciousness. The framework is situated within Meta-Para-Ontology, which understands consciousness as the invariant presence for which manifestation is lived and examines the functional operations that structure manifestation. Lived experience is described as a reconfiguration of the qualitative vectors {R, D, A}, which also finds a philosophical parallel with the ancient Indian Samkhya tradition in the doctrine of the three gunas.

What are the structural conditions under which any ontology becomes possible? Contemporary philosophy has produced a remarkable diversity of metaphysical systems, yet the principles governing their formation, comparison, and mutual intelligibility remain largely unexplored. Meta-Para-Ontology addresses this problem by shifting philosophical inquiry from competing descriptions of reality toward the reconstruction of the ontological prerequisites that make any description of reality possible. Its central concepts function as philosophical reconstructions of these underlying conditions of ontological articulation, remaining entirely distinct from the designation of independently existing metaphysical entities. On this basis, Meta-Para-Ontology develops a unified account of manifestation, consciousness, causality, emergence, and reflexive realization as interconnected dimensions of a single architecture. Diverse scientific theories, philosophical traditions, and religious metaphysics each occupy a distinct position within this shared topology, preserving the integrity of their conceptual architectures. The result is a framework of permanent descriptive openness: a universal coordinate system that transforms metaphysical plurality from a problem of incommensurability into a unified cartographic discipline.