From Kalachakra to IMS: Process Ontology Without Progress

This working paper provides an ontological clarification of the IMS axis (Inversion–Metastasis–Sublimation) by situating it explicitly as a system-theoretical translation of Kalachakra temporality. It addresses recurring misclassifications that interpret IMS as a form of Kantian or post-Kantian epistemology, critical realism, process philosophy, or “Buddhist ethics,” and demonstrates why these readings constitute category errors. The paper defines teleology in its historical and secularized forms and shows how modern ideologies—such as Marxism, progressivism, feminism, and liberal moral universalism—do not abandon teleology but recode it through inversion, metastasis, and sublimation. Against these teleological frameworks, IMS articulates a process ontology without historical progress, grounded in cyclical temporality, symbolic mediation, and civilizational-scale analysis. Crucially, the paper distinguishes between historical-civilizational processes and personal liberation. While society and culture operate within the cyclical logic of Kalachakra and IMS—marked by decay, inversion, and rebirth—liberation (Erlösung) is understood as non-historical exit from ignorance, craving, hatred, and delusion, rather than as collective or historical culmination. The framework therefore rejects teleology without endorsing nihilism, fatalism, or quietism. The paper concludes with a canonical positioning statement that defines how the framework should be classified and how it should not. It functions as a foundational clarification within the author’s broader research corpus and provides the ontological grammar for subsequent analyses, including institutional diagnostics such as the Apparent Liberal Mirage (ALM).