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Metaphysics and Theology,
1989 - 2024
by
ohn oland tahl
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© MMXXIV
The Evanescent Press
WWW.TREE.ORG
tree@tree.org
ISBN: 978-0-945303-23-7
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CONTENTS
Hermetic Alchemy, 1989 ............................................................................... 5
How to Measure Spiritual Growth, 2004.................................................... 13
Patterns of Illusion & Change, 2nd ed., 2005 ............................................... 17
Memoir of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, 2005 .......................................... 44
Speculations on Cosmology, 2007 ............................................................... 49
Is God Almighty?, 2007 .............................................................................. 58
The Kabbalah and The Tree of Life, 2011.................................................. 61
The Hierarchy of Importance, 2011 ............................................................ 64
The Colors of the Aura, 2013 - 2017 .......................................................... 68
The Evolution of Theology, 2016 ............................................................... 80
Speculations on Cosmic Consciousness
and the Love of God, 2016 ................................................................... 95
Philosophical Meditations, 2015-2017...................................................... 100
The Noosphere, 2017 ................................................................................ 114
Tetragrammaton, 2018 .............................................................................. 116
Meditation on Consciousness, 2018 .......................................................... 130
Gravity, 2018 ............................................................................................. 135
The Religion Taboo, 2018......................................................................... 138
The Holy Ghost, 2018............................................................................... 145
Uncertainty, 2018....................................................................................... 146
Error, 2019 ................................................................................................. 148
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Loving Everyone, 2019 .............................................................................. 149
A Personal God, 2019 ............................................................................... 151
Everything is for the Best in this Best of all Possible Worlds, 2019 ......... 156
The Finger of God ..................................................................................... 159
In Honor of Jesus Christ ........................................................................... 162
eus erditus ............................................................................................. 164
The Canary is Dying................................................................................. 168
The Meaning of Life ................................................................................. 174
5
HERMETIC ALCHEMY
1989
The writings of the Hermetic Alchemists have exercised a fascination
upon the imaginations of scholars and casual seekers alike for centuries. On
the one hand, the Hermetic writings have a well deserved reputation for
being among the most obscure writings ever penned. But on the other hand,
they have also managed to retain their status as some of the most
authoritative original sources of ancient wisdom.
Hermetic Alchemy was one of the first branches of esoteric knowledge
that I studied in my youth, drawn thither by my studies of Carl Jung, whose
researches on Alchemy absorbed his attention throughout most of his later
years. Something about the Alchemical symbols spoke to me very
powerfully; I understood Jung’s thesis that throughout the history of
Alchemy, these symbols have welled up from the souls of sensitive people all
over the earth, taken from the same ultimate source ~ the “colleive
unconscious” in the words of Jung.
Alchemy is Change. The Process of Change is the ultimate “Atom” of
the ancient Greeks, the original building block of the Cosmos. All of the
symbols of Alchemy emphasize the aspe of Change: the transmutation of
6
the baser metals into Gold through a process of olve et oagula,
eparatio et oniunio (“disintegrate” and “unite”; “separate” and “join”).
Alchemy is the “spagyric art,” from Greek words meaning “to tear apart” and
“to bring together.”
Whenever I run across some path for personal growth that seems to
suggest that the seeker need only sit on a shelf, meditate on his navel, and
suddenly find himself rising ever upward on a linear path towards perfe
clarity or Nirvana, I feel all the more strongly how much more power there is
in the Alchemical symbols. (I should suggest here an appropriate way to
study alchemical texts or any expressed idea of philosophy ~ rather than
reading with your blue pencil, deciding what is right or wrong, it is better to
try to figure out what true idea the author is trying to convey with his
sometimes limited or misleading words. In the case of an exclusive emphasis
on the journey inward, for example, the student must supply for himself the
complementary ideas which are necessary for the true illumination of
wisdom.)
Since the earliest times, Alchemists have been interested in applying
their Hermetic wisdom towards the perfeing of the body and soul of Man
~ the quest for Gold being left to the “puffers.” For the Alchemist, the first
stage of the reat or is the igredo, the stage of Blackness, disintegration,
chaos, where the material (metal, the soul of Man, or what have you) is
reduced to the prima materia or formless original stuff, before it can proceed
to the second stage, the lbedo (whiteness), where the material may be
unified once again. The Alchemical process is circular, alternating between
olve and oagula on its path towards perfeion.
7
Originally, “Alexandrian Alchemy” had as its purpose the
transmutation of the baser metals into Gold. Although this goal was quickly
superseded by the loftier notions of the Alchemical Adepts, it is instruive
to review the original understanding of the old aſters of ire. Aristotle
laid the groundwork with his famous dium: ature ſtrives towards
erfeion. This was an article of faith that defined for proponents of the
ancient wisdom the source of the whole underlying pattern of order in the
cosmos.
Next, it is necessary to understand that metals were considered to be
alive in some sense, and already undergoing a very slow process of gradual
evolutionary growth towards perfeion. That is, the most primitive form of
metal was considered to be Lead (Saturn). If left in the earth on its own, it
would eventually evolve its way towards Tin (Jupiter). Centuries later it
would grow to become Iron (Mars), followed by Copper (Venus),
Quicksilver (Mercury), Silver (the Moon), and finally, at the end of a very
long road, it would achieve the ultimate realization of Perfeion: Gold (the
Sun). This was already happening on its own; nothing at all needed to be
done ~ if you had sufficient patience. Now the Alchemist comes along and
decides to speed up the natural process: the Art of the Alchemist replaces the
Time of Nature.
So Alchemy is not black magic. The Alchemist thought that, by
diligent searching into the ways of Nature, he might be able to imitate the
natural process in his laboratories in order to realize the perfeion of gold in
his own lifetime, instead of waiting centuries for the same thing to happen
more slowly. So, from the point of view of Hermetic philosophy, it is a
8
matter of no consequence that the ancients were laboring under mistaken
ideas about the nature of metals.
The Four Elements of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth (established by
Aristotle) illustrate the four cardinal points of change, of which the four
Seasons are the most common analogy. Since the process is circular, we can
not really speak of first, but, to start with a new beginning, we start with Fire
(“Young Yang” to students of the I hing), corresponding to Spring. This is
the stage of “Aive Concentration.” At a pivotal point, the energy suddenly
changes to “Aive Expansion,” Air, Summer (“Old Yang”): COAGULA.
The next change is very gradual, as both the aivity and the expansion peter
out, being followed by “Passive Contraion,” Water, Autumn (“Young
Yin”). This accelerates until there is a sudden change at the point where the
energy turns to “Passive Expansion,” Earth, Winter (“Old Yin”): SOLVE.
The next change is very gradual, as the aive yang energy re-asserts itself in
a fresh “Aive Concentration.”
The most famous theory of the composition of the metals held that all
metals were some sort of compound (“marriage”) of Sulphur and Mercury
(the King and the Queen, the Sun and the Moon, the Fixed and the
Volatile, the Tiger and the Dragon, etc.). Then, along about the sixteenth
century, Paracelsus, a famous Swiss Alchemist and Physician (the real father
of holistic medicine) introduced Salt as a third essential ingredient in the
work. Paracelsus was one of the most stunning Alchemical writers of all
time. His ideas must have been rubbed fresh from the “colleive
unconscious” because they were immediately absorbed into the dogma of
orthodox Alchemy.
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The esoteric significance of the number three has impressed occult
philosophers since time immemorial. The Sulphur and Mercury theory
expressed the polarity of Yang and Yin, but the introduion of Salt elevated
the theory to the heights of classic occult metaphysics.
The same fundamental ideas keep turning up in one’s readings, but it
is not all the same idea. There are many expressions for the most primary
ideas of occult philosophy, but the numbers of mathematics suggest the most
logical catalog of primary mysteries. According to this idea (dating from
Pythagoras), the number “One” expresses the highest mystery, about which
nothing more can be said. (Wittgenstein: “Whatever can be said at all can
be said clearly; whereof one cannot speak, thereon must one be silent.”) The
number “Two” represents a mystery that can be spoken of: it is the
Distinion between undifferentiated primal Unity expressed as Yang and
Yin, Expansion and Contraion, Solve et Coagula, etc. But it is the number
“Three” which suggests the point of perspeive which separates the two
complimentary illusions that are the consequence of every distinion.
Does this make any sense yet? Let me present one of my favorite
analogies to occult metaphysics: the origin of the Cosmos ex nihilo as a
consequence of God laughing at His original Joke: the Distinion between
Zero and Infinity. First, I quote from the beginning of the ao e hing by
Lao Tzu (D. C. Lau translation):
“The Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way; the Name
that can be named is not the constant Name. The nameless was the
beginning of Heaven and Earth; the named was the mother of the myriad
creatures. Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its Secrets,
but always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its
10
Manifestations. These two are the same, but diverge in Name as they issue
forth. Being the same, they are called Mysteries. Mystery upon Mystery,
the gateway of the manifold secrets.”
In order to understand how the Universe was created, it is necessary to
have an understanding of the fundamental nature of Reality. We start with
the Perfeion of God, at rest, at a Point at the Center. The whole concept
is meaningless, of course, until it is contrasted with the concept of Error, or
movement away from the Center. This corresponds with old notions of the
Devil as distance from God, moving away from the Perfeion at the Center.
Now, in order to maintain the existence of any deviation from the Center of
Perfeion, an alternate and complimentary deviation in another direion
must be simultaneously sustained. There it is in a nutshell, the whole secret
to the existence of the Manifest Cosmos as a Knot in the Æther composed
of an intricate Field of Vibration of opposing concepts which, taken
altogether suggests the illusion of our visible world. All of the energy of the
Cosmos taken together adds up to Zero (or Infinity).
ero and nfinity are examples of a Distinion created out of an
undifferentiated sameness through the process of applying divergent names.
Zero and Infinity both represent absolute states which can not even be
imagined precisely, since they are beyond the consciousness of finite man.
They seem to represent two different concepts only because we can only
conceive of them at all by means of a process of movement between them.
We can imagine a very large sphere which we expand mentally until our
impoverished imagination fails us; likewise, we can imagine a dot vanishing
towards nothing. But at the approach to the limit in each case, the last to go
is nothing but location: the point where the dot is vanishing, or the center of
11
the sphere which is trying to become all-encompassing. So there is the Joke:
you establish two Names which are really the same thing at the Limit, but
then by alternating between them you set up a Field of Vibration which
presents the Illusion of finite Manifestation (“the Gateway of the manifold
Secrets”)! Hilarious. So when God made this Joke, the vibration alternating
between ero and nfinity was the aughter of od which created the finite
Universe.
The most famous original source of Hermetic Alchemy is the merald
ablet of Hermes Trismegistus. While there are lots of writings attributed to
“Hermes,” there is little agreement about the aual authorship of any of
these writings. However, the author of the merald ablet, whoever he may
have been, is the Hermes who has given his name to “Hermetic Philosophy.”
The basic Hermetic axiom is expressed there: s bove, o elow. This
line has more than one meaning. In the first place, it suggests that the laws
of the Cosmos may be found mirrored in Man: as the Macrocosm, so the
Microcosm. But many other ideas are linked by the dorine of
correspondence. For example, there is a plane of pure energy, magnetism, or
elerical field “above” that corresponds to the physical body of Man “below.”
Even Plato voiced a similar idea: the Form of the Good (for example) exists
“above” in correspondence to some physical reality of some good thing
“below.” We might go on: Astrology posits the movements of the Heavenly
bodies to exert corresponding influences on earthly events.
Likewise, Sympathetic Magic is the art of establishing associative
correspondence between objes not demonstrably conneed (as in Tarot
cards or Voodoo dolls).
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“Alchemy” is usually understood as the Western Alchemical tradition
which may have come from the Arabs of the Middle East and reached its
highest development in the famous European Alchemists, but it is very
interesting to notice that a parallel alchemical tradition has flourished in
China with no perceivable conneion to the Western Alchemical tradition,
but which has symbols that are strikingly familiar. In he ecret of the olden
lower, for example, there is described a process of evolution towards
perfeion featuring a “circulation of the light” that is praically a translation
of the Emerald Tablet (from the Emerald Tablet: “It rises from Earth to
Heaven, and then it descends again to the Earth, and receives Power from
Above and from Below.”) But this is, finally, not really surprising. I quote
from another Chinese philosopher, Ko Ch’ang:
. . . it may be objeed that this method (aoiſt oga) is praically the ſame
as that of the en uddhiſts. o this I reply that under eaven there are no two
ways, and the wiſe are ever of the ſame heart.
§
13
How to Measure Spiritual Growth
June, 2004
I remember reading about “Spiritual Materialism,” which refers to the
pride that comes from spiritual growth and spiritual attainments. After
praicing yoga for years, or working on your path of spiritual growth, there
is a common tendency to feel a kind of satisfaion in your accomplishment.
For some people, it even becomes impossible not to play the game of being
“more spiritual than thou.” This, of course, is very funny, so I would like to
share a true measure of spiritual growth that works magically and inexorably
to transcend this problem.
First, I have to prepare the ground with some discussion of a
fundamental principle of philosophy. There are basically two direions of
energy flow ~ inwards, towards the center, and outwards, away from the
center. The typical Western style (“the rat race”) is a movement reaching
ever outward, grasping towards more and more. The Eastern wisdom, on
the other hand, stresses the opposite direion ~ a movement back towards
the center, within. It sounds simple enough ~ “Oh, yes, I get it ~ moving
outward is bad; moving inward is good.” But it is not at all so simple. I am
especially fond of the alchemical symbols for personal growth, because they
stress a balance between both direions. The basic alchemical dium which
summarizes the whole art is “SOLVE ET COAGULA.” This means, literally,
“to separate, and to unite.” Break apart, and bring together. It is the
14
alternation between these two direions which comprises the “process
towards perfeion” which the study of alchemy is all about.
Let’s start with the movement towards the center. There is a point at
the center which is a point of perfe balance, peace, and clarity. Moving
away from this point goes towards, in the first place, greater novelty and
complexity, but ultimately it leads to confusion and chaos. The movie
onnie and lyde is a perfe model of this process. Bonnie and Clyde
pursue a career of violence and greed which leads to greater and greater
confusion and chaos. As the movie progresses, they become crazier and
crazier, moving faster and faster, and when they are finally blown apart,
literally, in an explosion of chaos, it is inevitable and obvious. Is your life like
that (even a little bit)? Then you need to see an Indian guru who will give
you a calming mantra and help you to compose yourself and begin the long
journey back to the center.
But the lesson of the alchemical symbols is that the fastest way to the
center is not to attempt to go there all at once, in one non-stop instant ride
(that, of course, is the Western model ~ we want it all NOW, so that we can
attain Nirvana before lunch). No, the fastest way to the center is, like
breathing, to alternate going in with going out. Both direions are
meaningful and valuable.
Some people consider that God is this point of perfeion and balance
at the center and “the Devil is distance from God” (to use a famous
definition). It gets complicated here, because I have to make a small
digression, advising the reader always to look very carefully at an idea in
order to discover the meaning of the idea, which may lie beneath the surface,
rather than simply to judge an idea as right or wrong. There are many ways
15
to use words, and the same words may be used in different ways at different
times to express the truth. So, that concept may be illuminating (that God is
Perfeion at the Center, and the Devil is movement away from that point),
but I prefer to consider that both direions are aspes of “God.” The
movement away from the center is the Creative aspe (Yang, if you like),
while the movement towards the center is the Receptive aspe (Yin).
A good example of all of this may be found on the chess board. Those
of you who play chess may understand the distinion between “Positional
Chess” and “Combinational Chess.” Positional chess follows the direion
towards the center, as the game simplifies towards the inertia inherent in the
position, while combinational chess strives to throw the game outward again
into chaos and confusion, out of which the player hopes to extra a new
inertia favoring the pieces of his color. So the movement away from the
center is the road to change, but it is only brought to completion when it
returns back to the direion towards the center.
That’s enough philosophy ~ it’s almost lunch time, after all. So now
that we are on this path towards the center, via olve et oagula, how can we
tell which of us is approaching closest to the center? As we get closer and
closer to the center, everything converges. The center is a point of clarity,
balance, peace, and infinite love. So the closer one is to this point at the
center, the more one will feel the spirit of infinite love. This is obvious ~
look at any spiritual teacher you can think of ~ all of the really advanced
spiritual teachers radiate an energy of peace and love. You can feel it and you
can see it.
Now for the funny part! Everyone is invited to play the game of being
“more spiritual than thou” ! Everyone who wants to show how advanced
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they are spiritually only has to work on radiating infinite love! The funny
part is that it aually works. No matter where you are on the spiritual
hierarchy, the more you praice infinite love, the closer you will come to
perfe clarity. So go ahead; impress your friends; be the first on your block
to manifest infinite love, and spread this measure of spiritual growth far and
wide. And do it quickly, because this world needs all the peace and love it
can get, and it needs it soon.
17
PATTERNS OF ILLUSION
AND CHANGE
by
ohn oland tahl
18
First published in 1984
THE EVANESCENT PRESS
Laytonville, California
Second Edition
© MMV
The Church of the Living Tree
THE EVANESCENT PRESS
Leggett, California
www.tree.org
tree@tree.org
19
ver nce the earlieſt times, philoſophers have been ſearching for the
underlying patterns of order that ſuſtain our world. heſe efforts have reſulted in a
great many ſyſtems of ſymbolic expreion purporting to illuminate the various
myſteries of reality and life. areful inſpeion of theſe different ſyſtems reveals that
many of them are baſed on remarably milar fundamentals. he numbers of
mathematics, for example, have been almoſt univerſally regarded as indiſpenſable
eys to an underſtanding of the primary myſteries.
he Tree of Life from the ebrew Kabbalah and the I Ching of hineſe
philoſophy are two of the moſt remarable ſyſtems of analogy baſed upon numbers.
clear underſtanding of theſe ſyſtems will provide a powerful calculus whereby all
of the complexities of contemporary life may be clearly underſtood by analogy.
ymbols from ermetic alchemy, aſtrology, and other ſources are uſed throughout
for the purpoſes of compariſon becauſe of their colorful effe and ingenious
application. hey provide a vivid contraſt to the ſtarly abſtra ſyſtems of the I
Ching and the Tree of Life.
Once the vion has begun to clarify, the next ſtep is to participate in the
unfolding of the infinite univerſe by a more conſcious awareneſs of the conſequences
of our aions. he ſame calculus which allows us paively to underſtand the
intricate patterns of the movement of life allows us as well to influence the
evolution of thoſe ſame fields of energy at any level through the agency of the
hiloſophers’ tone at any one of the oints of hange. Once the fundamentals
are underſtood, the benefits of application and analogy will quicly follow.
e preſent an arrangement of the Tree of Life which divides it into four
parts, correſponding to the Tetragrammaton, the ebrew name of od (Yod-
He-Vau-He). YHVH, the four letters of the name of od, have long been
condered to conceal eys to the higheſt underſtanding of the ultimate myſteries of
20
the coſmos, owing the evolutionary progreion from od to an, although the
nowledge of their meaning is ſaid to have been loſt. he firſt letter (Yod; Kether
on the Tree of Life) repreſents the First Arcanum, or yſtery. ince this
arcanum refers to the moſt primary myſtery, efforts to define it are inevitably
eluve. It has to do with Original Infinity (or ero). he beſt way to underſtand
this point is by contraſt with all that follows.
The way that can be spoken of
Is not the constant way;
The name that can be named
Is not the constant name.
The nameless was the beginning of Heaven and Earth;
The named was the mother of the myriad creatures.
Hence always rid yourselves of desires
In order to observe its secrets;
But always allow yourself to have desires
In order to observe its manifestations.
These two are the same
But diverge in name as they issue forth.
Being the same they are called mysteries,
Mystery upon mystery ~
The gateway of the manifold secrets.
~ ao zu, Tao Te Ching
(. . au tranation)
he Second Arcanum repreſents the primordial iſtinion which cauſes
the previouy undifferentiated oſmos to ſplit apart and come into being. his
manifeſtation of a vible oſmos is the ield of ibration which has come into
being as a conſequence of the iſtinion. he operation of this myſtery provides
the creative aſpe for every idea or microcoſm. ommon ſymbols for this myſtery
21
are eaven and arth, ight and ar, reative and eceptive, ive and
aive, Order and haos, ife and eath.
In the I Ching, the energy which causes this iſtinion (SOLVE in the
ſymboliſm of ermetic lchemy) is called Yang (—). his Yang may alſo be
viewed on another level as being itſelf compoſed of the diſtinion between the
reative and the eceptive. On the Tree of Life, this level of yang is Chokmah
(the un) while yin is Binah (the oon). ogether they form the ſecond part of
the name of od: He.
he Third Arcanum (the letter Vau of the name of od; COAGULA; Yin
− −) contains the unifying principle of the initial arcanum (Yod; the Original)
added to the iſtinion of the Second Arcanum to create a field of perſpeive
unifying the oppote elements together. he rhythm of the vibration ſet up
between them flows through the hiloſophers’ tone as the focus of attention
between ubje and Obje through the preſent oment, the infinite turning
point of the proceſs of change.
On the Tree of Life, Chesed and Geburah are balanced by Tiphereth.
(e include the Indian terms Rajas, Tamas, and Satva for compariſon.)
he Fourth Arcanum (the fourth letter of the name of od: the ſecond He)
moves beyond the pure abſtraion of the firſt three arcana into the Illuons of
anifeſtation. he four ſpheres on the ree of ife which apply to this potion
(Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkuth) repreſent the four elements ~ ire,
ater, ir, and arth ~ of ermetic lchemy. heſe four cardinal points
repreſent the whole realm of anifeſtation and Illuon. In the I Ching, theſe
four elements are called (in the ſame ſequence and with the ſame meaning) Young
Yang ( ), Young Yin ( ), Old Yang ( ), and Old Yin ( ).
22
o further clarify this progreion of primary ideas, compare the analogies of
ythagoras to the firſt four numbers: One: a point; wo: a line; hree: a plane
(triangle); and our: a ſolid (pyramid). In terms of the dimenons of phycs, the
point is dimenon zero. line extends as the firſt dimenon. plane triangle
has two dimenons, and a ſolid has three dimenons. he fourth dimenon of
phycs, time, is what we call Arcanum Five: hange. his progreion of ideas
continues out at different levels of perſpeive towards infinity. owever, it is
very uſeful to ſee the milarity in charaer of each of the odd numbered myſteries in
contraſt with another ind of idea for the even numbers. he terms which beſt
expreſs this contraſt are Coagula for the odd numbers, and Solve for the even
numbers.
§
23
.
24
— — ——
Yin Yang
Passive Aive
Contraion Expansion
Apollo Dionysus
Reality Illusion
Inertia Novelty
Clarity Confusion
COAGULA SOLVE
25
COAGULA
Yin
Yang
SOLVE
“From Tao there comes One.
From One there come Two.
From Two there comes Three.
From Three there come all things.”
~ ao zu
26
Yesod Hod
Wands Cups
Air Water
Old Yang Young Yin
——— ———
——— — —
Netzach Malkuth
Swords Pentacles
Fire Earth
Young Yang Old Yin
— — — —
——— — —
27
Kether
Yod Arcanum I.
Binah Chokmah
Moon Sun
He Arcanum II.
SOLVE
Geburah Chesed
Tamas Rajas
Vau Arcanum III.
COAGULA Tiphereth
Satva
Hod Netzach
Water Fire
Yesod
Air
He Arcanum IV.
Manifestation
Malkuth
Earth
28
s bove,
o elow.
Arcanum V.
Change
29
PASSIVE COAGULA
COPPER GOLD
VENUS SUN
GENTLE CREATIVE
WIND, WOOD HEAVEN
SUN CH’IEN
PEACE LIGHT
SILVER TIN
MOON JUPITER
ABYSMAL JOYOUS
WATER LAKE
K’AN TUI
CONFLICT HEAVY
QUICKSILVER LEAD
MERCURY SATURN
CLINGING KEEPING STILL
FIRE MOUNTAIN
LI KÊN
ACTIVE SOLVE
IRON PRIMA MATERIA
MARS EARTH
AROUSING RECEPTIVE
THUNDER EARTH
CHÊN K’UN
30
he colored diagram illuſtrates every arcanum. he point in the center
repreſents the First Arcanum, the oint of Origin. he ſame point, from a
different level of perſpeive, repreſents each of the odd numbered arcana
(COAGULA): hree ~ the oint of alance; ive ~ the oint of hange,
etc. he reſt of the diagram repreſents the even numbered arcana (SOLVE):
wo, the original iſtinion, is clearly ſeen above and below the central
point of balance (ight and ar, reative and eceptive, eaven and
arth, etc.).
he four elements of the Fourth Arcanum are alſo clear: Young Yang
(ire, pring, ive ontraion) begins out of the haos of lac (K’un,
) with the aggreſve ed energy of new life (Chên, ). his continues,
intenfying and concentrating its energy in Orange (Li, ). uddenly a
hange taes place and the energy “turns inde out” and begins to expand
(Old Yang, ir, ummer, ive xpanon) upward through ellow
(Tui, ), and finally to hite (Ch’ien, ), the height of integration and
order. t this point, another hange taes place and the energy begins to
contra again (Young Yin, ater, utumn, aſve ontraion). his
energy falls through reen (Sun, ) to lue (K’an, ). t this point,
another hange occurs as the energy falls through the balance point again on
its way down to Old Yin (arth, inter, aſve xpanon), through
iolet (Kên, ) and bac again to lac (K’un, ).
he eight rimary rigrams of the I Ching may be more particularly
defined by aſgning a preciſe meaning to each of the lines. he ſpecific
interpretation of each rigram (or exagram ~ the traditional x lines) is
31
a very creative matter which depends upon the particular purpoſes of each
analogy. he following abſtra patterns may be more creatively interpreted
whenever they are uſed to repreſent real tuations.
ccording to traditional uſage, the bottom line of each rigram
repreſents the ubje and the top line repreſents the Obje of the analogy.
Yang lines may be defined as ive, Yin lines as aive. he center line
may be taen to indicate the value of the conjunion, with Yang taen as
potive, and Yin as negative. he direions of energy of each line may be
variouy interpreted due to the principle of enantiodromia where each
energy reverſes to it’s oppote at each extreme potion. owever, any
conſtent uſage will reveal the ſame patterns. rom theſe definitions, it is an
eaſy matter to prepare a mple catalog of the eight rimary rigrams:
he firſt rigram of the ſequence is Chên, , hunder, the
roung. ere, the ubje is the ſource of an energy of diſtinion from
the paive Obje. his repreſents the birth of a new idea or microcoſm: an
go diſtin from the whole. It is aive and aggreive. acally, it is the
aertion of diſtinion and independence from the paive arth (K’un, )
which produced it. It is repreſented in other ſymbols by the color ed, the
planet ars, and the metal Iron.
he ſecond rigram is Li, , ire, the linging. ere, the ubje is
in confli with an Obje. he interpretations of this arrangement range
from warfare, where each tries to overcome the other, to tenon, energy,
games, or ſocial aivity. he color is Orange, the planet ercury, and the
metal uicklver.
32
he next rigram is Tui, , the ae, the oyous. he ſolid center
line indicates a change of ſtate where the energy of the ubje ſees union
with the paive Obje. he color is ellow, the planet upiter, and the
metal in.
t the extremity of the ubje’s Yang energy is the rigram Ch’ien,
, eaven, the reative. It repreſents the attainment and perfeion of
balance and order which completes the ſynthes into unity, COAGULA. It is
the hite light (the union of all light), and it is the un and old.
he following rigram, Sun, , ind, ood, the entle, repreſents
the beginning of the path of the paive ubje as the Yin phaſe of the cycle
begins the downward movement towards SOLVE. In this caſe, it is the
aivity of the Obje which maintains the integration with the paive
ubje. he color is reen, the planet enus, and the metal opper.
he next rigram, K’an, , ater, the byſmal, repreſents the laſt
ſtage of harmony. oth ſubje and Obje are paive, and the integration
of the two is maintained by inertia alone. he color is lue, the planet the
oon, and the metal ilver.
he next rigram is Kên, , the ountain, eeping till. he
broen center line indicates that the ſeparation has been made, the Obje
rejeing the ubje. he color is iolet, the planet aturn, and the metal
ead.
33
t the end of the cycle is the point of complete liberation of finite
anifeſtation into ternity repreſented by the rigram K’un, , arth,
the eceptive. his is the empty blacneſs of infinite night, cold, quiet, and
ſtill: the chaos of randomneſs, the complete SOLVE where not one ſtone is left
upon another. he abſence of light is lac; the planet is the arth, and the
metal is the Prima Materia of the lchemiſts to which it was condered
neceary to reduce all metals before they could be improved or perfeed
(tranſmuted).
Of courſe the proceſs is endleſs, as it is preciſely the infinite potential of
the Solve from which a new point of Coagula may mae an appearance into
anifeſtation.
If the eight primary rigrams offer a view of eight poible
arrangements of primary energy (ixed ield Illuons), the xty-four
exagrams ſuggeſt all poible conjunions of thoſe eight patterns. here
are a great variety of poible ways to correlate the lines of the I Ching to
analogous tuations in the outer world, but according to traditional uſage,
the upper rigram refers to that which is “above, without, or in front,” and
the lower rigram refers to that which is “below, within, or behind.” or
example, the analogy may be made that the upper rigram refer to the
external or vible aſpe of a tuation, while the lower rigram refer to an
internal (occult) aſpe of the ſame tuation.
hanging lines modify each exagram according to the gnificance of
their potion. changing line (Old Yang or Old Yin) is condered to be
unſtable and liable to reverſe its direion. very time a line reaches its
34
imit, a hange occurs and the heel of anifeſtation rolls on to a new
potion. (oth poibilities of every changing line ould be condered when
preparing an I Ching analogy.)
omplex as they are, the xty-four exagrams of the I Ching ſtill
compriſe a ſtarly limited world, yet it is a true microcoſm, repreſenting all of
the patterns with equal clarity. here are many other repreſentations of theſe
primary patterns of energy, ſuch as the game of heſs which beautifully
illuminates the rigram Li, onfli. tarting with the eparation into
lac and hite, each game of cheſs is a claic battle of Yang and Yin ~
the Irreſtible orce (hite, with the firſt move, ould always be able to
win) againſt the Immovable Obje (lac, which reſponds, and ould
always be able to force a raw, or better, if hite ould mae a miſtae).
ut nce the acrocoſm is infinite, and the unchanging ao
ineffable, particular perſpeives are only poible at the expenſe of perfe
clarity. hat is, we may ſee “eality” as a ſucceion of ixed ield Illuons
~ a ſequence of ſtatic arrangements lie the ſtill frames of a “motion piure,”
whoſe motion or change only becomes apparent by the rapid ſucceion of thoſe
ſtill frames. (ere, too, the game of cheſs is an excellent analogy to this
idea.) Or, on the other hand, we may ſee reality as a ſucceion of changes.
Of courſe, the only way we can view reality at all through either perſpeive
is by means of the other. he ſucceion of ixed ield Illuons forms one
perſpeive of reality, and the ſucceion of oints of hange forms a
complimentary perſpeive as a parallel univerſe.
35
he importance of retaining both perſpeives multaneouy is
illuſtrated by the dilemma of the phyciſts who can not agree on whether a
photon of light is a point or a field. Of courſe it is both at once, and neither
the one nor the other! It requires a larger vion of conſciouſneſs to perceive
the ultimate balance where the entire acrocoſm finally becomes equivalent
multaneouy to ero and Infinity, only apparently exiſting as a field of
manifeſtation between them by means of the diſtinion imagined to exiſt
between infinite moments of eternity.
36
Postscriptvm
s I prepare the ſecond edition of Patterns of Illusion and Change,
twenty years after its firſt publication, I ſee that ſome of the moſt important
concluons are not explicitly drawn. Of courſe, I have always condered this
text to repreſent juſt the woring notes to a ſeries of claes which I would
teach, expounding the principle points in greater detail, but I wanted to
draw a few concluons here, juſt to ow the direion in which it can go, as
well as to introduce ſome of my lateſt ſpeculations on the nature of
conſciouſneſs and its relationip with od.
he moſt glaring omiion in the original text, it ſeems to me, is any
mention of ove. I have tried to mae the caſe that both direions of energy
are eential and good, both the oing In as well as the oing Out. he
alchemical ſymbols have always made this point very clear. It is not “od
and the evil”, but two different aſpes of od. (Of courſe the meanings of
words muſt be frely defined for every uſage in order to avoid
miſunderſtanding. any apparent contradiions are reſolved by
diſcovering a diſcrepancy of definition.) On the other hand, the relationip
between the two direions is not a random one at all ~ that would belie the
underlying order which informs it all. o, it is the ovement In which
defines the center line of the path of the inertia of od. o mae it mple, let
us ſay that the ovement In goes towards a theoretical point of erfeion
at the very enter, at which point all “good” things converge. or example,
37
if a perſon’s life is out of balance, out into realms of confuon, if not to chaos,
then there will be numerous problems all along the line. verything will be
out of adjuſtment. ou will fight with your wife, out at your children, and
your buneſs and perſonal affairs will come apart. ut when your life is
going towards that point of balance, then everything begins to get better.
hings come into focus and clarity; your health will improve; your
conſciouſneſs will improve; and your financial and perſonal affairs will
proſper. Inſtead of finding yourſelf running faſter and faſter and barely
being able to eep from ipping bacwards (or, in fa, iding bacwards
rapidly) you will find things eaer all the time with leſs effort until, as ao
zu ſays, you will reach a point where “you do nothing at all, and yet there
is nothing that is undone.”
ut that is juſt to define the point and the line, ſo that a pattern of
perſpeive that encompaes the clarity of the coſmos may be ſeen. owever,
if that were all, the proceſs would quicly achieve the identity of ero or
Infinity, and the manifeſtation of a particular coſmos, apart from the non-
differentiated ſtate of erfeion or onbeing, would not be poible. o
now we come to this movement away from the point ~ that is ealy ſeen and
underſtood as the ſpar of ife, which is an important aſpe of od. s I
wrote in one of my earlieſt boos, Jokes, “od is erfe, but the evil is
looing for another way.”
ut now we come to the SOLVE ET COAGULA. his movement
away from the center is only uſeful from the reference point of the center line.
ovement away from the center line ſtarts firſt with novelty, then moves
38
towards a ſtate of greater complexity, then to ſtates of confuon, and finally
to ſtates of chaos. o in order for SOLVE away from the center to be uſeful,
it muſt be followed by COAGULA bac to the center. his movement away
may be variouy viewed as on uan’s “controlled folly,” or art, or muc,
or literature, or even ornament. eviations and variations around a point
eventually modify the direion, and contribute to the refining of the center
line itſelf. good way to elucidate that thought is from another quotation
from the ſame boo of Jokes: “ ~ ut not very often. (ometimes the
evil has a good idea.)”
n amung idea I have had lately is that “a good meaſure of a
perſon’s ſpiritual growth is the degree to which they love everyone.” hat is
funny about this is that everyone is welcome to play the game of “more
ſpiritual than thou.” his notion could ſave the world if it were widely
underſtood. hat happens, of courſe, is that as you approach the heights of
ſpiritual growth, and all things ſtart to converge into clarity and unity, then
you will ſee od, and you will love everyone.
ow, what is aually going on in this convergence? It is really the
preſence of od. I ſtarted out in life as very much a ſeptic. t the age of x
I had a theological cris becauſe I couldn’t underſtand the nature of od. I
thought the concept of od were puerile and uſeleſs. (his was brought early
to a head by my father’s career as a ethodiſt miniſter.) I ſet out to
diſcover for myſelf what was the nature of the univerſe, and how it had come
into being. hen I firſt ſtarted ung the term “od” in my writings, I
thought I were being clever and funny ~ it ſeemed to fit ſo perfely, but, of
39
courſe, I thought my own peculiar definition of “od” were my own unique
underſtanding. I gradually learned, however, that the fit was not
coincidental. owever, I continued to aume that my “od” were at leaſt a
metaphycal concept that bore no relationip at all to the old man in the ſky.
owever, I have to anticipate my lateſt thoughts on the ſubje by ſaying
that my current underſtanding of “od” is about as perſonal as any old man
in the ſky you could imagine.
ow is this poible? et me bac up juſt a bit to tacle another ſerious
and complicated theological paradox, uſually called “the roblem of vil.” ~
ow can we believe in an all powerful and merciful od, who is good, and
juſt, and loving, in the face of the manifeſt evil that is preſent in the world?
hen we ſee innocent children mangled by accident or deliberate attac,
when the good die young and villains proſper, when awful diſeaſes waſte
away the bodies and lives of the niceſt people (I don’t even mention
moſquitoes) ~ how, then, can we believe in this all powerful od who is
merciful and loving? ither od is not all powerful, or od is not all that
good, franly! o which is it?
hat’s the problem; I didn’t juſt mae it up. nd what is the answer?
~ o, od is not all powerful. hat made you ſuppoſe that od were all
powerful? e are juſt doing the beſt that we can. ow? o be ſure, this is
going to involve a ſomewhat different concept about the nature of od.
hat? od is evolving, along with is univerſe, as we ſpea? hat hope
is there for us if od be not, finally, all powerful? I thin the notion that
od is all powerful is ſuppoſed to give us comfort, but it only maes me
40
nervous. If od be all powerful, what is going on in our world? I tae
greater comfort in the hope that the power of od be increang, ſo that we
may hope that the world may become a better place.
If you read the Old Testament Bible, it ſounds lie od aually
ſtarted out on a very primitive level, but more recent conceptions of od are
far more progreive. ut to explain what I mean by all of this, let me drop
that thread for the moment and tae up a new one ~ the growth of
conſciouſneſs. I remember being dazzled and amazed (at that firſt
theological cris at the age of x) by the whole idea of conſciouſneſs.
hat I couldn’t figure out was how come I happened to be “me” inſtead of
anybody elſe? hat was this “conſciouſneſs” all about? It baffled me then,
and only begins to mae ſenſe to me now. I have looed at the evolution of
conſciouſneſs. I conder animals, and wonder to myſelf how much
conſciouſneſs they have. It ſeems to be apparent that dogs and cats have more
conſciouſneſs than chicens, for example. oes my amazing and wonderful
cat eander olydayl really have as much conſciouſneſs as he ſeems to
have? ~ or am I juſt projeing this? o ſummarize my ſpeculations, I
poſtulate a continuum in which conſciouſneſs may range from “ſub conſcious”
beginnings, through to ordinary human conſciouſneſs, and on to ſubſtantial
and wide-ranging coſmic conſciouſneſs. here may ealy be ſpecies overlap. I
am quite ſure, for example, that eander’s conſciouſneſs, while perhaps
rudimentary, is nonetheleſs conderably more advanced than that of the
average merican redent. (aſn’t it ar wain who propoſed
replacing ings with cats?) (nd, as oan aez once ſaid, “ou ould
hear the verſes I left out!”)
41
o, here is where it gets intereſting ~ if, in general, the conſciouſneſs of
an organiſm is in dire correlation (more or leſs) with the complexity of the
organiſm, then the more complex the organiſm, the loftier the conſciouſneſs.
human body is made up of many living parts, yet the perſon as a whole
has a ngle conſciouſneſs. ow I conder group conſciouſneſs. here is a
group conſciouſneſs about a beehive or an anthill. I have no trouble at all
imagining a “real” conſciouſneſs pertaining to a beehive or an anthill. I do
not thin that each ant has ſo much conſciouſneſs, but I do credit the hive or
hill as a whole with having a “real” conſciouſneſs, that is not ſo much
different in ind from my own, or eander’s.
hen there are the 100 moneys. riefly, the obſerved phenomenon
was that when a certain number of moneys on an iand learned a new
tric, then ſuddenly it entered the group conſciouſneſs and all the moneys
new it, even the moneys on the other de of the iand who had no conta
with the moneys who originated the new tric. Obviouy, it is a clear caſe
of ared conſciouſneſs.
y extenon, I poſtulate a group conſciouſneſs at every level ~ there is
a group conſciouſneſs to every family, town, ſchool, city, ſtate, nation, race,
tribe, or ſub-group. his conſciouſneſs is made up of the individual
conſciouſneſs of the members of the group, but then it goes beyond to evolve a
unique and ngle conſciouſneſs that, again, is not ſo very much different in
ind from my own or eander’s. his conſcious being would be the “god”
of that group.
42
ut juſt as we can brea up the human race into as many different
countries, races, religions, languages, or any of the other ways in which
people differentiate themſelves (ſo that they can go to war with each other),
we can alſo go the other way and poſtulate a ngle, planetary human
conſciouſneſs. ut why ſtop there? his conſcious eing of our planet muſt
include the conſciouſneſs of animals as well as all of the trees and plants, too.
his is the Gaia hypothes ~ that the entire field of life energy on the planet
arth is a ngle living organiſm. ~ and, of courſe, it is fully conſcious
(which is juſt another way of ſaying the ſame thing, much lie “being in the
preſence of od” is the ſame thing as “loving everyone.”)
It is this onſciouſneſs of Gaia that I want to loo at here. ince we
are taling about levels of conſciouſneſs far above our own, that ould mean
that the nature of that conſciouſneſs ould be more advanced than our own.
hat is, not only do I poſtulate the conſciouſneſs of Gaia to be a “real”
conſcious conſciouſneſs, but I ſuggeſt that it exiſts on a more fully developed
level than our own. other arth is very much aware, thank you, and
ſtruggling to ſtay alive.
learly all of the life energy of the entire oſmos is co-extenve with
the ind of od, a fully conſcious eing. ut I think it is appropriate, at
this point in time and ſpace, to limit our preſent horizon to the planet arth.
elevant to our tuation, Gaia is the deity to whom we muſt pray! e
muſt evolve the god of our little planet for, perhaps, many more millennia
before it will be appropriate to look at a larger ſpiritual reality. or right
now, though, Gaia needs all the help we can give her! veryone who is
43
alive is partially reſponble ~ we muſt all evolve our conſciouſneſs together.
nd when all of life is finally joined together in One ove, the ingdom of
od will come on arth, and we can all live, once again, in the arden,
other arth growing green again, inſtead of withering.
I thought that was a good “curtain line,” but I’m not done. I want to
bring this back full circle to the abſtraions of metaphycs that my book is all
about. In ſpite of my “demotion” of od, there is ſtill a ſenſe that the
fundamental nature of od is what created the Univerſe in the firſt place.
he final ſolution to “the riddle of life,” or however you want to expreſs it,
may be contained in the equation:
0=∞
It is the conſtant poibility
of the alternative or oppote to
every idea that cauſes our coſmos
to come into being in the firſt
place, and the dynamic tenon
which eeps it forever going on,
evolving od nows where. I’m
glad omebody nows.
44
Memoir of Chogyam Trungpa
Rinpoche
December, 2005
Recently I was reading a very entertaining book by Sam Kashner,
When I Was Cool, a memoir of the author’s days as a student of Allen
Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and the “School of Disembodied Poetics,”
which was contemporaneous with the Naropa Institute at Boulder,
Colorado, headed by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Since I had attended a
class given by Rinpoche in 1972, I recognized many of the references, and it
occurred to me to wonder what had become of that venerable teacher. To
my dismay, I found that he had died in 1987. Now I want to add my own
recolleions of this very interesting man.
I first heard him speak in an interview with CKGM radio station in
Montreal, Quebec, probably around 1971. There was a very talented DJ in
those days (Doug Pringle, I think his name was) who made that radio station
the “hippest” station anywhere. One program I very much enjoyed was his
weekly Sunday night interview. Montreal was a large and exciting city, and
there were always visiting gurus and holy men of every description, so it was
never any problem finding some interesting “guru of the week” to interview
of a Sunday night. I listened to these gurus with amusement ~ it seemed to
me that most of them were using the interview for their career advancement.
45
Basically, they had the period of a one hour interview, complete with
questions from the listening audience, in which to drum up business for their
own particular path toward enlightenment, or whatever they were selling.
I should explain that I have always taken a very great interest in this
kind of teaching. In fa, I have studied esoteric teachings of every
description all of my life, and my major life’s work has been to discover the
central ideas which are common to just about every path, and to present
them in a systematic and logical presentation.
It used to amuse me to hear these gurus sounding like used car
salesmen, hawking their wares, speaking loud and fast about meditation and
peace! Anyway, comes the turn of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In most
cases, it doesn’t take much to get the guru being interviewed to launch into
his spiel. The interviewer barely has a chance to get a word in edgewise.
Usually, he just introduces the weekly guru, and then turns him loose.
Rinpoche, however, had nothing to say. After the usual introduions, he
just sat there, smiling. (I could easily hear him smiling, even though it was
just a radio program.)
As I have said, the interviewer was very good, and very well versed in
all manner of esoteric thought, so he would try to draw him out. “What do
you think about the following idea? Would you say that blah, blah, blah,
and blah, blah, blah?”
And Rinpoche would answer, “Yes.”
The problem, of course, was that the interviewer was too good. “Well,
what about this: do you think that blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah?”
46
“Yes, that’s right.”
This went on for a while, with Rinpoche saying praically nothing at
all. Finally, in despair, the interviewer turned to the telephone lines.
Since the callers were so much less erudite than the interviewer, their
questions revealed errors of one sort or another, and I noticed with growing
awe that Rinpoche took every question and identified the error in a very few
well-chosen words, and then reduced the matter to brilliant clarity in a
matter of moments. I could still hear him smiling. This continued for the
duration of the interview ~ Rinpoche had nothing whatever to say, but if any
caller had any question or any confusion, it was quickly and brilliantly
reduced to clarity in a very efficient and incisive manner.
I was very impressed. I was so impressed, as a matter of fa, that I
packed up my few possessions and went out to Boulder Colorado to attend
Rinpoche’s class in Tibetan Buddhism.
His class met once a week for three hours. At the appointed time, the
class was full. There were regularly enrolled students, along with a large
number of un-enrolled persons “auditing” the class without academic credit.
I was one of the latter category. However, Rinpoche was not there. He was
late. Everyone waited patiently for him to arrive. We waited and waited.
Finally, about forty-five minutes late, he arrived. Rinpoche’s lateness to his
classes is legendary ~ you may be surprised to hear that he was only forty-
five minutes late, but this was the first class of the semester. At each
succeeding class, he was later and later, finally reaching as much as three
hours late.
47
As soon as Rinpoche arrived, everyone rustled their papers, took out
their pens and notebooks and adjusted their seating positions in readiness to
begin. Rinpoche took a chair at the front of the class and sat there quietly
and smiled at the class. He continued to sit there smiling for about another
twenty minutes before beginning to speak.
Finally he began to speak. This was supposed to be a three hour class,
but he only spoke for about twenty minutes. Those twenty minutes,
however, were clear and brilliant expositions of the tenets of Tibetan
Buddhism, and I was not disappointed. Then he allowed questions from the
class, and he repeated his Montreal stunt ~ every question was very easily
and brilliantly reduced to clarity in a very few well chosen words. This was
the pattern of every one of his classes. He arrived later and later to his
classes as the semester wore on. What I found surprising was that not one of
the students ever missed a class or arrived a moment later than the posted
starting time! No one wanted to miss a moment, and everyone seemed
perfely content to wait for two hours or more ~ as long as it might take ~
to hear the great man speak! There was never the slightest indication that
anyone were restless or annoyed. Everyone sat in the classroom as patiently
as you please, waiting for him to arrive. You might think that Rinpoche
were returning from some special event in Denver, or at least he might be
researching some point he wanted to make for his class, but this was not the
case. It soon became common knowledge that he was simply sitting in some
local bar, drinking. Of course, as the semester progressed, he would show up
for his classes later and later, and more and more drunk.
48
Every time he finally arrived at the classroom, he would begin by
sitting in his chair and smiling quietly for at least twenty minutes or half an
hour before beginning to speak. No one seemed to mind his eccentricities in
any way. He was non-attached to his ego to a fault! He seemed to live in a
world in which he really didn’t care what anyone thought about him.
His basic philosophical position was that there is no problem at all.
Everything is clear, and he has nothing to say. But when a student has a
problem, he is happy to point out the error and reduce the problem back to
serene clarity, where he seemed to reside all the time, smiling, and fully at
peace.
At one time I showed him some of my own writings, and I wondered
what he would have to say. He looked at my writings very carefully for some
minutes with close interest, and finally he said, with obvious surprise, “Yes,
this is right!” There could be no higher praise from Chogyam Trungpa
Rinpoche than when he has nothing to say.
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Speculations on Cosmology
September, 2007
I have spent most of my life working up a comprehensive outline of
metaphysics (ide: atterns of Illuſion and hange). This is not intended to be
a description of how everything works ~ it is merely an outline of the
abstra principles which would form the prolegomena to any such
description. Therefore, whenever I try to understand some aspe of how the
world works, I try to follow the abstra principles for clues as to how the
physical operations might proceed.
I have just been reading Bill Bryson’s amusing little volume, hort
iſtory of early verything, and I see that the scientific establishment
hasn’t yet quite achieved much clarity on two fronts ~ the microcosm and
the macrocosm. There seems to be no consensus about what is aually
going on, and nary a clue about why or how. So let me see what I can do
about clearing up any loose ends.
I begin with the Macrocosm, although I want to start off by repeating
the old Hermetic axiom that the Macrocosm is refleed in the microcosm,
and that the solution of the obscurities of one will suggest the solutions to
the obscurities of the other. Einstein was rightly convinced that it was way
beyond “untidy” to have to deal with two entirely separate systems of
theoretical physics, one for the macrocosm, and another one for the
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microcosm. Surely there must be some “unified field theory” that can explain
both of them with a single set of principles. I do not say “a single set of
laws,” because one of my principles is that “anything” is either non-existent,
or it is simultaneously either one thing, and/or it’s total opposite, and that
potentiality is what allows the universe to exist at all in the first place. (0 =
infinity) The universe is certainly not a wind-up clock.
According to this theory, the Universe itself sprang into being
spontaneously as the alternation between the ideas (which of course are
equivalent) of Zero and Infinity. It is only the “imaginary” field composed of
the movement between the two “opposite” extremes which presents us with
the illusion of an aual, manifest cosmos. I call this the Original Joke,
God’s laughter to which constitutes the creation of His cosmos (ide:
ermetic lchemy).
In the present paper, I want to take a closer look into the mechanics of
all of that, venturing a little further out from the safety of abstra ideas to
speculations which will touch upon some of the questions disturbing modern
physics.
I wish to offer a disclaimer at the outset that I consider my special field
of expertise to be in the realm of the abstraion, so the further out I range
into questions of physics, the less confident I feel of the integrity of my
solutions. So, if I sound like I am pontificating ex cathedra, ~ well, I guess
that’s what I am doing. Ideas just come to me.
I take as my jumping off point the notion of the expanding universe,
consequent upon the hypothesized Big Bang, and I compare it with my own
atterns for the Process of Change. According to my atterns, the process
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of change passes progressively and repeatedly through four primary phases,
which correspond with the Four Elements of Aristotle, and the Four Seasons
of Nature. These also correspond with the four values of Yang and Yin,
which greatly clarify the concept which is but inadequately described by
“Yang and Yin.” (We may say that “Yang and Yin” constitutes the Second
Arcanum, while, through the agency of the Third Arcanum, the four values
constitute the Fourth Arcanum, physical manifestation. Those four values
are: young yang ( Fire, Spring), old yang ( Air, Summer), young yin
( Water, Autumn), and old yin ( Earth, Winter).
We might describe those four values for our present purpose (of
course, as abstra concepts, they might be described differently, but
comparably, for different applications) as young yang = aive contraion
towards a point; old yang = aive expansion outward, away from the center;
young yin = passive contraion back to the center; and old yin = passive
expansion outward. Old Yang might be described as the extreme of Order
(or Infinity; The Creative in the I hing), while Old Yin might be described
as the extreme of Chaos (or Zero; The Receptive in the I hing).
My first observation is that, while cosmologists are trying to make a
single determination for the state of the cosmos, my own assumption would
be that the universe is now undergoing its second phase, that of the old yang.
So, instead of supposing that the universe “began” with a Big Bang, and has
since been expanding outward, I would rather assume that the universe has
passed through the “singularity” represented as the turning point between
young yang and old yang, and is now in the process of its aive, outward
expansion towards greater complexity and higher states of order (my system
posits two sudden changes and two gradual changes; the next change, that
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from old yang to young yin, will be extremely gradual). The fa that the
expansion of the universe is or appears to be accelerating suggests that we are
nowhere close to the turning point towards young yin.
This already seems to me to put the ebb and flow of the cosmos into a
more understandable context, but I want to continue the analogy to my
Patterns of the Process of Change to suggest that we are simply enjoying one
of an infinite series of universes, each one very similar to the one before it,
but slightly changed, incorporating some new elements of Novelty with each
successive universe. Thus, with each passage through that point of
Singularity (the Omega Point of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), the new
incarnation of the universe that follows will be just a bit different than the
one that preceded it, much like the evolutionary succession of lives of any
living species.
[I must make a side track here and mention that the succession of lives
does not assume a reincarnation of previous consciousness; I rather hold to
the principle of the continuity of consciousness. The point of my analogy is
simply that with every successive life of any living organism, there is the
opportunity for a fresh spasm of Novelty to promote a gradual evolution.]
Now, to imagine an infinite series of universes coming and going in
this way is a whole lot easier for me to understand than the notion that our
Universe just suddenly popped into being out of nothingness, fully blown,
like Athena from the head of Zeus.
What? I thought I was the proponent of creation ex nihilo, suggesting
that the universe did, in fa, do just that? Aha: yes, but not to this point;
not to this universe we are currently enjoying! My third conclusion is that
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the succession of universes follows the pattern of the creation of life; namely,
that it happened very, very slowly! I would suppose that our current universe
represents a very mature specimen of universe. Universes may have been
“blinking on and off” for many trillions of such incarnations (each one, of
course, existing for the length of time usual with universes, so that the
process I am describing did not happen in any six days).
Of course, none of this (yet) describes how the very first one popped
into being, but we are getting to that. At least looking at our universe as a
manifestation somewhere quite well along, after the succession of universes
has had quite an extensive time to evolve from its primitive and abstra
beginnings, makes a whole lot more sense to me than anything I have heard
described heretofore.
Let me compare the evolution of successive universes to the origin of
life on earth. I don’t find the origin of life to be so surprising, after all. I am
still quite amazed and dazzled by the implications of Consciousness, but life
itself seems simple enough. I think Wilhelm Reich was on the right track in
his descriptions of the origins of life from very primitive beginnings, starting
with simple heating and cooling (following the day and night cycle of the
earth), followed by a progressively more pronounced and definite pulsation
(“bions” he called them; not yet alive, but precursors to life). These grains of
sand in the desert (where there is a large fluuation in temperature between
day and night) may have gone on pulsating in some elementary way for
untold millions of years before the interseion of another alternation, the
wet and dry cycle, may have boosted the pulsation to something just a tad
more complex. After as many more millions of years as you please, we still
54
might not want to call the little pulsating jolt “alive” or anything, but we can
see where this is going.
Obviously, there was never one fine morning when the thing suddenly
passed into “life” from its pre-life origins. Even after all of these many
millions of years, what we may have is so primitive that no one will agree
upon the point at which to call it “alive.” We might say that at some point
in the distant past the bit of pulsating matter could not really be called
“alive,” but by so many hundreds of millions of years later, it really did seem
to exhibit properties which might merit the term, even though in an
extremely primitive way. If the cosmos be thirteen and a half billion years
old (give or take a few billion, and dating it just from the most recent passage
through the Singularity), there is plenty of time for this process to evolve as
sedately as you please.
Now to compare all of that with my succession of universes ~ when my
first “universe” popped into being ex nihilo, it really wasn’t any instance of
“something” popping into existence out of “nothing.” It was the joke of
considering the alternation from “zero” to “infinity” to have any meaning. It
was only after many trillions (“or so”) of such alternations that there was
anything present in the passage between zero and infinity that might appear
to anyone as anything real. Indeed, the whole substance of my theory of
cosmology is that “Everything is all a Big Joke” ( ~ Dr. Ed Madden,
University of Conneicut, circa 1954). Or, to express it more specifically,
what we think of as the manifest cosmos is really only the field of illusion
that seems to exist as God laughs His way from Zero to Infinity and back
again.
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Still more specifically, I assume that if all of the matter and energy of
the cosmos were added up, it would be equal to, yes, take your pick ~ zero
and/or infinity. And this is exaly what happens when “all of the matter and
energy of the universe is compressed into a single point of no dimensions” as
it passes through the famous Singularity (the Big Bang) on its way to
incarnating as yet another Universe in the series.
So, when a new universe pops into being, it doesn’t really come out of
nowhere ~ it follows the inertia of the previous universe, creating a new one
very similar to the one before, only this time modified with some additional
Novelty as it continues to evolve.
I know I am repeating the expositions of my earlier works when I say
that this concept of Novelty is “movement away from the center,” (Yang “the
Creative”), in contrast to the Inertia of God which tends to return to the
center (Yin, “the Receptive”). “The Devil” has been defined, ingeniously
enough, as “distance from God,” suggesting that movements away from the
center are movements towards the Devil, while movements towards the
center go closer to God. However, I find it more illuminating to think of
these two direions as two different aspes of God; there is not a “war in
Heaven” so much as an eternal creative interplay of these two ideas.
The movement away from the center is Novelty, which becomes
Creativity and Complexity. However, if this movement continues further
and further away, it becomes Confusion, and, finally, Chaos. But without
that creative movement away from the center, the cosmos would eventually
resolve itself back to nothingness.
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So, after all of this, I think the nature of the cosmos is a little more
clear, yet there are two questions still unanswered. One question is, of
course, “why should this Joke have happened, anyway? And, secondly, just
how much potential for Novelty is there?”
As to the first question, I might say that the concept is inherent in the
metaphysics, which is another way of saying that there really isn’t any other
basis upon which you could postulate a cosmos. Or, you might simply say
that a universe without any potential for novelty would never, therefore, have
any chance of coming into being, so, since there seems to be a cosmos here
of one sort or another, then clearly such a potential had to exist. I am trying
to say that the joke of nothingness being separable into Zero and Infinity is a
form of tautology. I am also saying that my descriptions of the Patterns of
the Process of Change are the only such patterns which are possible, hence
they are inevitable and inescapable. If we were to start all over again with
“Nothingness,” sooner or later God would have to appear, popping into
existence Himself as His laughter creates His cosmos.
The second question is a bit more subtle. If everything were constantly
switching into its opposite, there would be no stability at all, and there would
be nothing but total chaos. However, I don’t think there is some
“Cosmological Constant Novelty Faor.” I recall some very interesting
studies of chaos, in which it is discovered that “pure chaos” is impossible,
since “pure chaos” is really a kind of order. I think that the study went on to
suggest that whenever there is set up any situation of “chaos,” sooner or later
it seems to resolve itself into orderly patterns. That is to say, total chaos is a
kind of order.
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Like genetic mutation, novelty is attempted constantly. Most of the
time, novelty goes nowhere, and becomes simply a deviation towards error
(towards the Devil), but every once in a while, the random reaching outward
into Novelty accomplishes something sufficiently interesting so that the
likelihood of it happening again increases. And Who knows to what
consequences that might lead?
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Is God Almighty?
December, 2010
Any serious effort to discuss theology must begin with a rigorous
analysis of all definitions involved in the discussion. It was the brilliant
insight of Wittgenstein that when these definitions are exhaustively analyzed
until total clarity has been achieved, the questions and problems will unravel
themselves, and vanish. It is the disappearing knot trick.
Every “problem” in philosophy should simply melt away like last year’s
snow under the bright light of this process of analysis. Once “clarity” has
been achieved, whatever has been under discussion will simply be reduced to
“zero” (or “infinity”; the two terms mean the same thing). When the “joke”
is explained that caused the divergence of the infinite wisdom into two
opposite ideas, then once again “it is all one.”
It is only after this process has really been wrung dry, that it is possible
to examine the fragments that might remain and see if they constitute an
idea or not. Is there any point at all, for example, of introducing a term such
as “God” into the discussions of philosophy? Does the whole thing have any
meaning, and if it do, then what be it? (This is the subjunive mood again,
Buster, and if you don’t like it, just put up with it.)
There may be nearly as many ideas of what God is as there are people
to wonder about it. There are many traditional definitions, but not really any
59
final consensus; at least, not any consensus to which I am able to
subscribe. One way that I see to express the answer to the question is to say
that “God is what is left over when all jokes are explained and vanish.”
Well, I have my idea of what is the most relevant and useful way to
understand the ultimate resolution of this oldest of all problems, “hat is the
ature of od?” But I want to compare that idea with some of the
traditional definitions. If there be a proposed consensus, it seems to run
along these lines: In the First place, it is the Agency by which the cosmos
were created, or came into Being. Next, it is pretty universally presumed to
be omnipotent and omniscient ~ all powerful and all knowing. Finally, it is
asserted to be all good.
The fly in the ointment is the Problem of Evil. One way to express
the Problem of Evil is, “ow can you believe in a merciful od when there are
ſuch creatures as moſquitoes on the earth?” There are several other ways in
which this problem is sometimes presented, but they all convey the same
general idea.
I finally came to the conclusion that something had to go, and it was
the idea that God were omnipotent. All of the other attributes are clear and
wonderful, even obvious; but there is really no reason to introduce
omnipotence among the other attributes of God. In fa, once you consider
the aspe of a God which is a little more humble than previous incarnations,
your admiration may clarify and greatly enlarge, not be reduced, by “such a
come-down as to be giving up the claim to omnipotence.”
Even the omniscience might be toned down a bit. The Omniscience
of God is obviously the Colleive Unconscious, as it was termed by Carl
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Jung, or the Mind of aia, or Cosmic Consciousness, as others describe
it. God is Life, and Life is Consciousness. The more life, the more
consciousness; and the more consciousness, the more life. However, vast as
this Ocean of Consciousness may be, we can only speculate as to its limits.
Even the assumption that it must be “good” must be looked at very
carefully to be sure we understand what we mean by “good.” Is Life as a
whole more interested in the survival and enlargement in the whole field of
life energy, or does it favor any one part of that ocean of life? To put it
bluntly, is Man favored of God, or what?
I don’t present my arguments here; I only present my
conclusions. The ideas and arguments are far too complex to put into words,
and I don’t want to make that effort, but I think the human race does
represent a very mature development of the energy of life, and, as such, its
survival will always be a major part of the agenda of life. However, the
survival of the trees may overshadow the importance of man; if the planet
becomes uninhabitable, the race of man cannot survive.
The most pressing problem on aia’s agenda is to reverse the physical
decline of the earth. Since aia (or God) be not omnipotent, it must be up
to Us Who are aually God, after all, to take upon Ourselves this
responsibility.
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The Kabbalah and The Tree of Life
March, 2011
I have studied ecleic philosophy all my life. I learned most about the
Tree of Life of the Kabbalah when I accidentally re-invented it. When I saw
that what I had done matched completely what was done before, I began to
think that I must be on the right track.
It was Pythagoras who had the brilliant epiphany that the Numbers of
mathematics are themselves the primary symbols of the Arcana, and
comprise the original Metaphysics representing our Cosmos as Emanations
from God. It is like all of the laws of geometry being based upon the
definitions and axioms of Euclid.
Early on in my studies I figured out that all of the philosophies and
religions in the world were all based around the same series of primary ideas,
some emphasized more than others. I sorted out the ideas into those ideas
expressed by the number One, ideas represented by the number Two, ideas
illuminated by the number Three, ideas corresponding to the number Four,
and ideas relating to the number Five. The meaning of each of these
primary mysteries is best illuminated symbolically by the concept of the
number associated with each idea (ythagorean orine).
I developed simple images to illustrate the essence of each number, and
this sequence of ideas represented by the numbers of mathematics formed
the basis of my studies and teaching of Hermetic philosophy.
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One day, pretty much by accident, I happened to stack my images
vertically instead of horizontally, the way I had been presenting them in my
books. To my surprise, I immediately recognized the Tree of Life from the
Kabbalah. At first I thought this were an amusing coincidence, but, upon
further investigation, I discovered that it was not simply the visible piure
that was matched, but in every case, each of the 10 spheres (ephiroth)
corresponded precisely to the significance of the same position on my
design! At first I was astonished, but eventually I realized that it would be
more astonishing if they differed, since my sequence of images was intended
to convey the same sequence of ideas represented by the Tree of Life: a
primary Metaphysics illuminating evolution from God to Man.
After discovering this similarity, it became an easy matter to develop a
much deeper understanding and appreciation of the Tree of Life. This is the
same sequence of primary ideas as represented by every spiritual teaching in
one way or another.
This primary sequence of Ideas and their Numbers from Pythagoras is
none other than the Four Letters of the Name of God: etragrammaton. I
was always very interested in the Tetragrammaton, as it was said to be the
highest Key to understanding the Mysteries ~ the rcana. However, all of
my research sources lamented that the meaning and significance of the
Tetragrammaton, while revered as surely the highest Key to the Mysteries,
has, unfortunately, been lost. But such Mysteries cannot be lost. As
Pythagoras tells us, the Illumination of each Mystery is contained within
itself.
ide: atterns of Illuſion and hange, reprinted in he aughter of od.
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Kether
Yod Arcanum I.
Binah Chokmah
Moon Sun
He Arcanum II.
SOLVE
Geburah Chesed
Tamas Rajas
Vau Arcanum III.
COAGULA Tiphereth
Satva
Hod Netzach
Water Fire
Yesod
Air
He Arcanum IV.
Manifestation
Malkuth
The Tree of Life Earth
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The Hierarchy of Importance
June, 2011
The Hierarchy of Importance suggests an idea which comes very close
to an illumination of the concept of God. It is of universal application: it is
always invoked, in addition to anything else going on. When one searches
philosophy for an answer to the questions of life, the funion of the reply is
to indicate that it is really the answer to the question, “What should I do,
now?” That is really the answer behind every question; so what should I do,
now?
Like everything else, the answer will unfold along the lines of that
hierarchy of importance. What is of the most fundamental importance? I
start with an understanding of our world as a single integrated field of life
energy existing within the edges of chaos. What is important to understand
is that it is a single organism, and that it is alive, and conscious. Perhaps it is
linked with other patches of life energy in the universe, but, in any case, it is
most useful to focus our attention upon the life we know of, here: aia, a
personification of the living aspe of all of life on our planet Earth (God, to
us).
Our hierarchy of importance starts with the survival and growth of this
organism, which is us, after all. The major observation is that this field of
life energy is under enormous, seemingly insurmountable, levels of stress; the
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planet has been visibly dying for several hundred years, and the pace of
disintegration of the life force has picked up lately as the earth falls further
and further behind, biologically.
Next in importance comes the consciousness that the biological
condition of the earth needs to be turned around immediately, “at war-time
speed,” as Lester Brown says in his important book, orld on the dge. In
fa, that book is an excellent place to begin learning about all of the
problems facing the survival of life on earth, and some of the suggested ways
of addressing those issues.
That book doesn’t really consider the political issues, but there are very
definitely political obstacles to the rapid and efficient management of the
earth’s resources back to a sustainable, and regenerative, level. So this next
idea is the One orld overnment, as the political evolution most
immediately essential for the regeneration of the earth to be undertaken.
This is always the most politically charged proposal, but the only alternative
to some form of One orld overnment, is a ungle of overeign tates,
which is the political format which we are currently enjoying. At least, I
suppose we are enjoying it. In the interests of a tight edit, I here omit a
whole tirade upon the abuses borne by our Mother Earth by some of her
Sovereign Masters, lately.
Moving right along, once we have a One World Government and a
Single Currency, we will also want a standard and universal land tax,
colleed and administered by the state, but no other taxation, other than
some sort of “resource depletion tax” which will be used to modify
inappropriate aivity for the earth.
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Next in importance is to establish free farms for the indigent, world-
wide. Everywhere in the world there should be places where anyone can go
to live for free, with food to eat. This is by far the easiest way to deal with
the problem of hungry people: just feed them!
At this point in the argument, it is time to address major issues in land
use management in order to evolve ways of living on the earth which will
tend to increase the life energy, order, and efficiency of life, rather than
continuing the parade of its decline and death. It will come as a surprise to
no one that I put the restoration of the Trees as first in importance under
this heading!
But, not only do we need to plant more trees, we need to manage all of
the biological cycles in the most efficient way, following the course
recommended by nature. We will want to create healthy soil for restoring
the earth to fertility, and an important example of what needs to be done is
for all of the colleion of residential organic waste (the toilet, plus kitchen
scraps and yard waste) to be processed and returned to the soil in as short a
loop as possible (whenever possible, all recycling should be done on the spot,
in ſitu). All organic waste, from all sources, must be returned to the soil, or
otherwise recycled into use. I have never believed that the entire whirlwind
of waste processing is simply to throw it away. s bove, o elow: as it is
in my garden, so it may be on the Earth: if I constantly recycle all organic
waste back to my compost piles, aive with worms, then I very quickly
accumulate an abundance of rich soil which may be used to increase the
coverage of my cultivation. But if the soil be depleted and dry, with flooding
and soil erosion in other seasons, then the land will rapidly decline back to
the desert.
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The next in importance would be to establish a eat of uthority
behind the One World Government. My own idea is a Seminary of
Candidates, a School of International Studies, which would colleively hold
the eat of uthority (hrone, or athedra), and which would endow one of
their number as their Spokesperson, who would personally sign their
decisions as their agent and advocate.
From here I see a great many lesser matters of process which seem to
be flawed, and in need of correion of error. One of the most important
ideas is the understanding of personal health in the same light as the health
of Mother Earth, or aia. In order to ensure the survival of life on earth, we
want to encourage all of the natural life processes to continue, and minimize
interference from the forces of chaos. In the case of the soil of our earth, it is
essential to cultivate her as an organic, living being, rich with life, and not
clouded with chemical interference whose long term consequences are
generally the opposite of the early experience (just exaly the same pattern as
any other drug).
And we should treat our own body with the same reverence and
respe, trying to understand how to maximize the integration of our life
forces in accordance with the natural process, avoiding the use of synthetic
chemicals. As our lands will become fertile again, our bodies will likewise
become healthy and fertile again, and life can go on.
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The Colors of the Aura
2013 ~ 2017
When you add the Colors of the Aura to the patterns of energy
described by the trigrams of the I hing, the planets of Astrology, and the
metals of Alchemy, it is easy to see anything in terms of its life energy just by
considering the visual impa represented by the color of its aura. When
Life is broken down into its elements, there is Chaos and Death at the
bottom, then Aggression and Failure, War and Peace, the Giving and
Receiving of Love, and, at the top, the Point of Perfeion, Love, and Bliss:
Union with God.
There are eight patterns of energy in this cycle of life, and each one can
be easily understood by means of its color: Black is the color of death and
chaos; Red is aggression and anger; Purple is rejeion and defeat; Orange is
war; Blue is peace; Yellow is giving love; Green is receiving love; and White
is union with God.
The color of the aura refles the spiritual evolution or consciousness of
the energy form. These auras are not only visible in people, but plants and
animals, and even planets, may be seen with their auras clearly visible. There
is a simple and obvious hierarchy of spiritual evolution, from the violence
and anger of the lower levels, to the higher and much healthier expressions
of life energies reaching upwards to love and union.
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The theory of alchemy is that the process of change follows an
underlying pattern that can be seen in everything that happens. The
progression through the metals, from Lead to Gold, has been understood as
an analogy to the progress of the soul or consciousness of man, as expressed
in the color of his aura. In an earlier article (he etaphyſics of ex), these
same patterns of energy were viewed within the context of sexual expression.
At the end of life, back to the original chaos, there is the color Black.
Then there are the edges of life and death: Red, the color of aggression,
anger, and violence, and Purple, the color of oppression, rejeion, and
failure. Above this there are the energies represented by the colors Orange
and Blue: war and peace. From here, the ranks thin out considerably, as so
much of the world, its animals, its plants, and its people, seem to be living
their lives in the realms of the lower energies, represented by the darker
colors of their aura. Planet Earth, aia, is dying, twisting and turning in the
sordid colors of Red, aggression, anger, and violence, and the Purple of
oppression, rejeion, and defeat, always edged with Black, and within all of
this turmoil on the face of the planet, most of the plants, animals, and people
living on the earth seem to be affeed by that powerful vortex of negative
energy, and so they are caught up in the same energies and colors.
In fa, a considerable amount of energy has to be expended in order to
get some upward traion in spiritual evolution, in the face of a dying planet
that no longer supports life. There have been many efforts to turn this
around, first on a personal level, and then on a planetary level, but the heavy
weight of inertia makes it hard to break free. So it is perfely clear: if we
want our world to survive, and to grow into a healthier world for us to live in,
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it is essential for all animals, plants, and people to elevate the horizons of
their spiritual growth, so that, as aia, we can continue to survive.
Voltaire figured out long ago that we should all go out and work in the
garden: that is the solution to all of the problems of the world. All systems
of life must follow the natural process, from organic composting, mulch, and
earth worms, to a complete avoidance of chemical fertilizers for the fields,
and pharmaceutical drugs for people and animals. These drugs are all of a
piece, and they are killing off the bees, and soon the genetically modified
soybean and corn, along with copious amounts of glyphosate Round-Up, will
kill off the rest of us. It is already happening: the growing prevalence of
cancer is just one of the visible effes of living in a world environment which
is becoming more and more toxic to life.
So, let us go out and work in the garden, and, with enough sunshine
and rain, there will be plenty of green once again on the earth. All of our
wounds have to heal, and we must all together try to ascend to a healthier
state of life, and try to nurture our planet and ourselves back to health.
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BLACK
Earth
rima ateria
K’un
Solitude or Death
The Priest ~ The Magician ~ The Madman
72
RED
Mars
Iron
Chên
Aggression, Anger, or Violence
73
PURPLE
Saturn
Lead
Kên
Oppression or Suffering
74
ORANGE
Mercury
Quicksilver
Li
Confli, War
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BLUE
The Moon
Silver
K’an
Peace
76
YELLOW
Jupiter
Tin
Tui
Love
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GREEN
Venus
Copper
Sun
Grace
78
WHITE
The Sun
Gold
Ch’ien
Union
79
COAGULA
GIVE old RECEIVE
in un opper
upiter reative enus
oyous eaven entle
ake h’ien ind, ood
ui un
CONFLICT ’an
uickſilver ater
ercury byſmal
linging oon
ire ilver
i PEACE
hên ên
hunder ’un ountain
rouſing arth eeping till
ars eceptive aturn
Iron arth ead
EXPAND rima ateria CONTRACT
SOLVE
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The Evolution of Theology
2016
In my own life, my ideas of religion and theology have passed through
a very surprising evolution. Born the son and grandson of Methodist
ministers, with my father also a PhD in Philosophy, I was familiar with
religious ideas from my earliest years, dutifully attending Sunday School and
Church services every week. However, being an intelligent child with an
inquiring mind, I was naturally an atheist from at least the age of seven or
eight. I suppose it is possible that in my yet earlier and more tender years I
may have believed, or at least accepted, my father’s explanations of
theological questions, but as soon as I was old enough to understand the
ideas which I was expeed to believe, I thoroughly rejeed them. “Just
Who does he think is listening to those prayers he makes in church every
Sunday morning?” I was embarrassed for my naive and simple-minded
father, who had done so well academically, but seemed to be so lacking in
mature judgment and critical discernment.
As I grew into adolescence and beyond, my rejeion of all fanciful
ideas of religion only hardened into a confirmed atheism. However, I found
myself confronted with metaphysical questions which I could not answer.
Even in my earliest days of rejeion of religious answers to the primary
questions of philosophy and metaphysics, I had sense enough to realize that
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it was not sufficient to proclaim negation; if I were going to reje the
religious answers to these questions, I must put forward some credible
alternatives which I could believe. In other words, to present the problem in
terms of the eight-year-old atheist, if the universe were not created by God,
where did it come from? (Or, “Who made God, or where did He come
from?”) These questions boggled my little brain, but every time I had to
endure the embarrassment of listening to my father’s Sunday morning
prayers, I renewed my determination to understand these questions “without
the use of theological postulates.” Accordingly, I have spent most of my life
searching for answers to these questions. I studied every source of
philosophy and religion ~ Christian, Hebrew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist,
Taoist, Hermetic philosophy, occult philosophy, Freemasonry, even
Satanism, as well as the whole gamut of Western philosophy from
Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Plato to Wittgenstein and Whitehead.
From what started out as a huge chaos and confusion of contradiory
ideas, I gradually began to discover some promising threads, finding links of
remarkable similarity from widely disparate sources. The alchemical ideas of
Hermetic philosophy were some of the first to impress me the most
favorably. I began to see some patterns emerging out of the labyrinth of
ideas, and I gradually began to understand a principle which seemed to be at
the heart of the process of change. I liked the concept of the Philosophers’
stone, and thought I understood the pivotal role it played in the process of
Change which lay at the heart of the mysteries. The Greeks were barking up
the wrong tree looking for some fundamental particle or “atom” which was
the ultimate basis of the universe. Aually, Heraclitus was onto the right
approach, declaring that Change was the ultimate reality.
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Gradually I developed an understanding of a whole abstra
metaphysics which seemed to bring me closer and closer to an understanding
of the primary mysteries of nature (referred to as the Arcana in the old
mystery schools). At one point it occurred to me that I might even refer to
the Philosophers’ Stone as “God,” and I thought that was pretty clever, to
use the name of God to explain the ordering principle of my system of
abstra metaphysics. Then, finally, it dawned on me that I had just
discovered what many people had meant by “God” all along! But, of course,
my own understanding of “God” was entirely abstra and had nothing
whatever to do with that funny Being to Whom my father was addressing
his prayers!
In this essay, I want to go over all of this ground again, describing how
my understanding gradually evolved to a deeper understanding of the nature
of God, reaching such astonishing conclusions as an understanding of the
three Persons of the Trinity, and even an understanding of a personal God
Who might even hear and answer prayer! And ~ most astonishing of all ~ if
anyone had ever told my eight-year-old self that I would someday come to
recognize Jesus Christ as the most important religious figure of all time, I
would not have believed it.
Not that all of my conclusions are entirely orthodox, by any means! I
have finally achieved my childhood quest of understanding the creation of
the cosmos ex nihilo, and I have even solved the difficulty of the Problem of
Evil (“How can we believe in a good, just, and merciful God when there are
mosquitoes in the world?” ~ one of many ways in which this old problem can
be expressed.) Along the way, I have come to have a radical understanding
of God which is contrary to every previous conception of His nature, but
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which resolves all of the problems pertaining to our understanding of God.
It is this new interpretation of the mystery of God which I wish to introduce
in the present essay.
I wish to carry the evolution of God forward in the same sequence in
which it has come to me, beginning with rejeion and atheism, evolving
thence into an abstra metaphysics, then emerging as a conscious and
personal God, and finally revealing the outstanding importance of Jesus
Christ.
Rejeion and atheism is easy. It has always been easier for big sister
Lucy to knock over little brother’s house of blocks, laughing, than it ever was
for Linus to constru his creative work of architeure in the first place.
“Where does the sky end?” was my earliest problem. It was useless for
my father to assure me that the sky goes on forever ~ how can that be?
Infinity is not a concept that an eight-year-old mind can grasp. But the
infinity of time is even more puzzling than that of space. It is bad enough to
assert that the universe will go on forever, but to go into the past and pretend
that it has always existed is patently absurd, as any bright eight-year-old
could easily assure you.
Another absurdity is the notion that we should accept the truth of
revealed religion on faith! As Bertrand Russell has observed (quoted from
memory; not a dire quote), “There are many hundreds of different religions
in the world, all of them mutually exclusive and contradiory, so that it
stands to reason, as a matter of logic, that no more than one of them could
represent the truth, and all the rest of them are just bunk, so why should
anyone believe that the religion into which they happen to have been born is
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the truth? It is more logical to assume that all of them are bunk.” ~ Bertrand
Russell, hy I m ot a hriſtian. I fully understand the difficulty ~ since
it is considered to be impossible to come to any clear theological
understanding by reason alone, the only recourse left to us is to accept our
revealed beliefs on faith.
Well, I am here to pick two holes in that analysis. In the first place, as
I researched every imaginable source of religious and philosophical ideas, I
began to see many of the most important ideas cropping up again and again,
clothed, it is true, in an extravagant variety of costumes, but of which certain
core ideas kept coming up unmistakably again and again with surprising
similarity. Eventually I began to distinguish these ideas and sort them out
into a system according to their patterns. Suddenly Bertrand Russell’s whole
argument flipped onto its head ~ if the same fundamental ideas keep coming
up again and again no matter how widely diverse the sources, there must be
something to it!
The second hole in the idea that belief can only be based on faith since
there is no way to derive an understanding of religion by reason alone is that
I have done just exaly that ~ without relying upon faith at all; in fa,
starting from a total rejeion of everything I was expeed to believe on faith
~ I have derived an understanding of metaphysics and theology which I am
not only convinced is corre, but which I believe is the only solution possible
to the major problems of philosophy. But what ended up as a complete and
integrated system of metaphysics started out as just a series of related ideas.
One of my epiphanies along the way was to see that these ideas were
most effeively illustrated by the numbers of mathematics. I understood
that this was the meaning of the claim by Pythagoras that Numbers were the
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Secret Key to an understanding of the Mysteries of Nature. (So, aually,
this epiphany occurred to Pythagoras first, but it was an original idea to me.)
“Mathematics is the language of God.” The concept of Number is the
mother of all abstraion. The whole field of mathematics is a priori
knowledge that can be conceived without any reference to the external world.
There is a mystery associated with the number One, another mystery
associated with the number Two, another mystery associated with the
number Three, and another mystery associated with the number Four. The
mysteries continue, but these first four are the most important and primary.
In fa, the smaller the number, the more important the mystery in a kind of
logarithmic scale in which each number is more important than the one
which follows. This sequence of the first four primary mysteries comprise
what Pythagoras referred to as the etrays. It is represented also by the
four letters of the Name of God in Hebrew (the etragrammaton).
I have written about these mysteries all of my life, from my earliest
book, ympoum by od and the evil, and the apis hiloſophorum (I
especially prefer the third edition), to the very elaborate heophany, which I
printed by letterpress from hand-set type on paper made by hand, to the
atterns of Illuſion and hange, and, most recently, etragrammaton, a small
book of piures illustrating the primary mysteries, “the Keys to the Arcana.”
In the first two books mentioned, I presented the sequence of Arcana
horizontally, one to a page. Then, in a truly major epiphany (assisted, as I
recall, by the fortuitous stimulus of LSD, which enjoys a well-documented
history of association with divine inspiration), I stacked the symbols
vertically, and saw, to my astonishment, that I had recreated the Tree of Life
from the Kabbalah! At first I thought it were just an amazing coincidence,
but as I looked more closely, I saw that every sphere on the Tree of Life
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corresponded exaly to its relative position on my own diagrams. Then,
when I considered that both diagrams were intended to convey the same
sequence of ideas (“the evolution from God to Man”), I was no longer
surprised that my own designs should be praically identical with a design
which was several thousand years old. I also realized immediately that the
Tetragrammaton was just one final layer of abstraion up from the Tree of
Life (the Tetragrammaton has always been said to express the same mystery
~ the evolution from God to Man ~ although its precise meaning has been
universally considered to have been lost over the ages).
So now let us briefly review these ideas. In one way or another, all my
writings are expositions of these Arcana, but I will try to review them
sufficiently here to lay a basis for understanding the evolution of my ideas of
theology. The Number One is the most important, but the hardest to speak
about. In the words of the ao e hing by Lao Tzu, “From Tao there
comes One; from One there come Two; from Two there comes Three; and
from Three there come all things.” According to Pythagoras, the best
illumination of each mystery is contained in the concept of the Number for
which it stands. That is, the meaning of the first and most primary mystery
can best be understood by meditating on the Number One. The best I can
come up with in words is an idea of Perfeion expressed as a point which
has no dimensions, no existence in time, and, in fa, no existence at all until
the universe comes into being by the Error or Joke of a Distinion between
All and Nothing, Infinity and Zero (pretending that the two terms mean
something different, opposite to each other). Now it is possible to perceive
that point of perfeion (after the creation of the cosmos) at the center of a
sphere of error, or cloud of confusion, surrounding that point. Of course, we
can understand that point of Perfeion as God (the Holy Ghost, in my most
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recent understanding of correspondence to the Christian Trinity) and all the
manifestation surrounding it as “the Devil.” One very important theological
point is this understanding of the Devil not as an organized and conscious
incarnation of evil (as many Christians seem to believe), but as confusion and
error, “distance from God.” This makes a whole lot more sense
theologically; there are not two gods, one good and one evil (that is an old
but primitive idea ~ compare Zoroastrianism), but only one God, defining
Perfeion at the center, with Dante’s receding circles of Hell the further
away one goes from God. God is the light at the center, and “the Devil” is
expressed as increasing confusion and error, receding out into chaos,
darkness, and death.
But it is a lot more complicated than this. So far we have this pattern
of God at the center, with energies of confusion moving out into error.
There are numerous applications of this image ~ for example, we might say
that everyone lives their life somewhere on this continuum (which is not
linear, but better expressed as a point at the center of a sphere moving out in
an infinite number of direions away from God at the center to increasing
degrees of error and confusion towards the periphery). Furthermore, it is
possible to go closer in towards the center, or to move further out away from
God. A praice such as meditation is designed to bring one closer to God,
while expressions of anger, over-indulgence in drugs or alcohol, or engaging
in crime or war will carry one inexorably further away from God.
So far this might seem to be fairly simple and straightforward ~ going
in is good; going out is bad. But it is not that simple! What we see as error
and confusion, iniquity and sin, is aually only the excess of that direion of
energy, not any movement in that direion at all! Metaphysically, that
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direion of energy which caused the universe to break apart from non-being
and perfeion into manifestation and reality is the Quest for Novelty, which
is the Spark of Life! It is an absolutely essential component of the cosmos,
and value expressions of “good” or “evil” are wholly inappropriate. One of
the reasons why I enjoyed the ideas of Hermetic Alchemy was its recognition
that the most efficient path towards perfeion was not a bee-line to the
center (which, if it were even possible, would just result in the annihilation of
all manifestation back into the state of perfe non-being), but the
alternation of olve et oagula (breaking apart and coming together). All
evolutionary growth is a produ of this pattern ~ inhalation-exhalation,
expansion-contraion, analysis-synthesis, etc.
So it is only in excess that this “quest for novelty” gets us into trouble.
Initially, this quest for novelty leads to creativity and originality, leading to
evolutionary growth and all of the wonders of science and life. However, if
the forays out into novelty are not resolved and reintegrated back to the
center, the outward moving energy just continues out past creativity and
complexity into confusion and madness, eventually leading to chaos,
darkness and death.
Now to relate these ideas to the numbers of metaphysics, it is the
duality of the Number Two, yang and yin, expansion and contraion. If the
Number One represents the ultimate Origin, the reaching out into Novelty
of the Number Two represents the spark of life which creates and animates
the cosmos. So far from considering this movement “evil,” we consider this
essential breath of life to be one of the Persons of the Trinity which is God.
At the point of perfeion, all good things converge ~ clarity,
harmony, love, joy, bliss, good health, prosperity, etc. Increasing distance
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away from this point leads to confusion, discord, anger, sorrow, confli,
poor health, failure, etc. Yet, as long as the energy is continually re-
integrated back to the center, the movement outward is life itself ~ novelty,
creativity, complexity, and growth. This may seem like a paradox. If all
good things converge at the point in the center, how is it that movement
away from this point can produce good effes? As I search for an analogy to
explain this idea, I find one that may seem unsuitable, yet is really corre.
This movement outward, away from the center of perfeion is like a drug ~
coffee, for example. Coffee provides a positive stimulus, yet, in the first
place, it is most effeive the more rarely it is used. And, secondly, the more
it is used to excess, the more negative the effes become. The lesson, then,
is that this outward movement is very powerful magic, but it must be used
sparingly, and followed by a return back to the center to maintain integrity
and balance, to assimilate the new information into the path of evolutionary
change and growth. Another very coarse example is spontaneous mutation.
Spontaneous mutation is precisely this “quest for novelty” in aion, and is
the mechanism of evolutionary growth. Yet if the pace of mutation exceeds
a safe limit, the organism breaks down into uncontrolled chaos and eventual
death. The COAGULA phase must follow the SOLVE in order for the
novelties to be either integrated into the center (as the agency of positive
growth), or rejeed and passed over.
Most Christian theologians consider Jesus as the “Son of God” and the
second Person of the Trinity, and none of that is inconsistent with my view.
The prime attribute of the convergence of all good things is Love, the
ultimate COAGULA. (We must distinguish here, by analogy with
mathematics, the “approach to the limit” from “the limit itself.” At the
aual attainment of the limit, all bets are off, and all manifestation would be
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hypothetically superseded by non-being.) Since Jesus Christ is unparalleled
in the primacy of his message of love, we may say that Jesus was “closer to
God” than any other person known to history. I have to take issue here with
people who seem to think that the message of Jesus is, “Believe in Me and
you will never die.” For those who don’t know, the message of Jesus can be
found in John 13; 34-35 ~ “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye
love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this
shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if you have love one to another.”
And also First John 4:7-8 ~ “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of
God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that
loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”
I find Jesus to be a far more impressive person when understood as a
human being who was very close to God, rather than some sort of magical
being identified as God Himself. The whole point of the teaching of Jesus
was to show the way by example as someone whom we may aspire to follow.
Once you claim that he is God Himself his whole existence and message is
belittled and trivialized. His followers may have been dazzled, as the Aztecs
were dazzled by Cortez and thought he was God, but the story of Jesus
makes a lot more sense to me as an example of the power and glory of God
the closer we approach to Him. But as close as Jesus was to God, he also
embodied the virtues of novelty in large measure! Time after time his
message broke with tradition, bringing us, in every way, a New
Testament. An example of his attitude is his reply when questioned about
healing on the Sabbath: “The Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the
Sabbath.” Jesus, being close to God, is a perfe exemplar of the Second
Arcanum and the Second Person of the Trinity, reaching out into novelty
from the perfeion of God.
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The funny thing about the Trinity is that it really does take three
perspeives to fully understand God. At the top (Arcanum I), there is od,
the oly hoſt. Then there are the two forces of the Second Arcanum ~
oddeſs, the other (yin), and od, the on (yang). Altogether they
comprise the Trinity of God.
So if the Number One expresses God as the ultimate Origin, and the
Number Two expresses the Divergence into complexity represented by the
movement outward into novelty (balanced by movement back in to the
center), what is the significance of the Number Three? The Number Three
represents the expanding consequence of the divergence of the Number
Two. Three is achieved by a point of perspeive between Subje and
Obje. Where the Number Two expresses abstra direions of energy as
complementary ideas, the Number Three brings into being an entire field of
energy (for example, the entire manifest cosmos and the infinite
consciousness of God) which comes into being between the hypothetical and
imaginary limits of All and Nothing, Infinity and Zero. This Trinity
completes the expression of God. The Number Four represents the aual
and tangible manifestation of the cosmos, completing the evolution from
God to Man. (More information concerning any of this may be found in my
books already mentioned, which may be found on my web site:
www.tree.org.)
But let’s take a closer look at this Number Three. The key feature of
the Third Arcanum is Life and Consciousness. I have developed this idea at
greater length in previous writings, but to make a quick summary ~ by
analogy with an atom, which has a nucleus surrounded by a swarm of
elerons relatively far out from the nucleus, I imagine that there is a vast
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field of energy surrounding every human being. Close to the body there may
be an aura, visible to some sensitive people, but there must be a huge field of
energy extending out for a considerable distance ~ at least, say, to the outer
limits of the atmosphere around planet Earth. What this means is that all
life on the planet, human, animal, and vegetable, is occupying the same
space! Advancing quickly to a complex idea, I accept the postulate of a being
(“aia”) which is comprised of the entire field of life energy on the planet,
with a shared consciousness. Now, by the idea that consciousness increases
in dire proportion to the complexity of an organism, aia must have a
greater consciousness than any of the “separate” people, plants, or animals of
which she is composed.
Suddenly all manner of psychic phenomena become very easy to
understand, since all life is essentially linked into a single system of energy.
You see where I am going with this ~ it may be that there is a yet larger
Being composed of all life in the cosmos, but from our point of view, we may
think of aia as the Consciousness of God (The Holy Ghost). Suppose this
is not just some abstraion, but is aually real? Is it too much to imagine
that this Consciousness is “aware” of our individual thoughts on some level?
And what about the other direion? I have always thought it was
stupid and useless to “pray” by submitting a shopping list to God like a child
writing a letter to Santa Claus. It makes much more sense to me for us to
“pray” by listening receptively for any messages which God (or aia) may
have for us. Perhaps my writings are inspired by God. How was it possible
otherwise that I should re-invent the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah so many
millennia after its initial appearance? I tuned it in.
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Initially I promised an explanation of the creation of the cosmos ex
nihilo. That requires some extremely dense metaphysical speculation and is
aually beyond the scope of the present essay (but see peculations on
oſmology). However, I also promised to resolve the Problem of Evil, which
I now propose to do. The resolution of the problem, as Wittgenstein would
advise us, is to be found in the statement of the problem itself. “How can we
believe in the existence of an Almighty God, infinite in power, wisdom, and
goodness, in the face of so much manifest evil in the world?” Well, the
solution to the problem lies in the prior assumptions. Who says God is
Almighty, infinite in power, wisdom, or even goodness? Are we like the
Aztecs dazzled by Cortez, or like children who believe in the infallibility of
their parents? If we understand that God is all of Us, all Life on the planet,
and We are just trying to stay alive (and, perhaps, losing the battle), then
perhaps We can understand the inadequacy of the attitude to “let George do
it.” We need to take responsibility for Our world, the only one We have,
and put Our shoulders to the wheel before it is too late.
Our concept of God has evolved considerably from the Old Testament
to the New Testament. Jesus has given us a glimpse of a much greater God
than anything found in the Old Testament, by teaching that God is Love; a
radical idea then as now. Now it is time for us to come of age and
participate in the continuing evolution of God and Man. If we just sit back
and let George do it, there may be nothing left for our children. Our planet
is dying (and that means We are dying), and it is up to Us to rise to the
challenge of Our present need and try to reverse that slide into confusion,
error, chaos, darkness, and death. aia can’t do it without Us. Do you hear
Her speaking to you? If not, then ut up and liſten! At the very least, get out
of the way if you can’t lend a hand, for the times they are a-changing. It is
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up to Us to ensure that the changes bring Us closer to the light instead of
delivering Us to the rapidly encroaching darkness.
The most urgent priority is to mobilize a vast army of tree planters to
restore the proteive tree cover on the earth. More trees will improve the
carbon balance, produce more oxygen, and help to prevent the destruive
cycle of drought and floods by anchoring the soil to the earth, retaining the
water when it rains, and returning it gradually during the dry seasons,
preventing water runoff and soil erosion. Trees also encourage the survival
of smaller shrubs and ground covers, further proteing the earth and its
living creatures, including human life.
There are plenty of other problems that need to be addressed, but the
restoration of the Trees is such an urgent priority that I don’t want to
mention anything else on the same page.
The Glory of God is very much manifest in the Trees, but up until
now, the human race has just been dragging Us down. The human race has
interjeed an amazing and explosive burst of Novelty, but if We are unable
fully to realize that energy and reintegrate it back to God, it will carry Us
inexorably further out along the path of increasing complexity leading to
confusion and error, and thence to the outer reaches of chaos, darkness, and
death. The message here is that it is not enough to say that “God is in His
Heaven, and all’s right with the world,” or “God works in mysterious ways,
but His plan is surely unfolding as it should.” No! Our world is spiraling
out into chaos, and time is running out. Enough SOLVE already! Now it is
time for a new COAGULA to bring Us back to God.
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Speculations on Cosmic
Consciousness and the Love of God
2016
A while ago (March of 2015) I saw on the news the videos of the
soldiers of ISIS destroying all the ancient art, artifas, and architeure from
a museum in Northern Iraq. As I write this, I seem to recall that that was
even before the unbelievably egregious destruion of Palmyra a bit later on.
All of that is way beyond inexcusable. War is a bad enough business, and,
most of the time, both sides seem to be convinced that they are in the right,
but wanton destruion of our heritage of ancient art is totally senseless. I
am still in shock over the burning of the library at Alexandria, and now this!
Religious beliefs are hard to argue with when people believe on faith
the religion they were taught at their mother’s knee. When someone else
comes along with different beliefs which he also accepts on faith, there is no
common ground for any discussion. Well, here I am trying to establish some
common ground. My first proposition, which I offer for acceptance as an
axiom (accepted without proof) is that “the meaning and purpose of religion
is to get closer to God.” I believe that is a pretty fundamental idea which
most people would accept regardless of their religious backgrounds.
Buddhism is not specifically theistic, but I think most Buddhists would
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accept the proposition anyway, when they see how I understand the concept.
(In other words, what I mean by “getting closer to God” turns out to be
identical with the goals of Buddhist praice, the attainment of
enlightenment being simply equated with union with God.) I can hardly
imagine anyone claiming a different purpose for their religious praices, but
if they do (e.g., to propitiate an angry God) then my present remarks just do
not apply to them.
But, if one accept my starting premise, then I introduce my second
premise, which is that the best way to measure a person’s closeness to God is
to consider the degree to which they love everyone. I suggest that the most
clearly distinguishing feature of the most religious or spiritual people is the
love they feel for all of life. Most recognized “holy men” or “holy women” or
spiritual teachers are famous for radiating an oceanic love for all life. Once
again, it is hard to engage “proofs” for this idea, so I will call it another
axiom ~ “The more love one feels for all of life, the closer one is to God.”
So, if we can accept these two propositions, suddenly we have an
objeive measure of comparison for religious beliefs and praices. Simply
look at your religious beliefs and praices and ask, “Do these beliefs and
praices bring me closer to God, or do they drive me further away from
God? As I continue on the way of my religious observance, am I becoming
more loving to all of life, or less?” If one be looking for a spiritual teacher or
guru, simply seek one who most clearly radiates the love of God. In other
articles, I have repeatedly described a three dimensional continuum which
goes from a center of peace, love, harmony, joy, and clarity outwards in all
direions towards increasing tension, anger, disharmony, sorrow, and
confusion. God is at that point at the center, and the further away one goes
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from that point, the more one is distant from God (“distance from God” is
an old and very good definition for the Devil).
So, to make my conclusion, I say to those soldiers of ISIS,
o, you are not obeying the will of llah, as you pound thoſe ancient
artifas to rubble, conſumed with your paion of anger and hatred. o, you are
loſt in confuon and error. I am not an Iſlamic ſcholar, but I am ſure that a
diligent ſearch of your oran will ſuggeſt new direions for your energies that
might bring you cloſer to od than your preſent courſe of anger, violence, and
hatred. It is not neceary to convert to hriſtianity or uddhiſm; all you have to
do is ſeek for those interpretations of your oran that lead you cloſer to the love of
od.
Of course, it is not only Moslems who drift away from God, seduced
by false prophets ~ plenty of Christians (and others) have lost all
understanding of the original teachings of the founders of their Church and
are just as lost in confusion and error as any Moslem. I call upon the leaders
of every religion to clarify for your communicants the path which leads to the
love of God.
Many people are uncomfortable with any expression of religious belief.
When I was a child, unbelievers would prudently conceal their unbelief.
Now, it is religious believers who hide their beliefs out of a fear of ridicule.
Well, the important aspes of my own ideas are quite independent of the
religious component. My principle image describing the spiritual state of
human beings (a sphere with a center of peace, harmony, clarity, love, and
joy extending outward towards increasing anger, disharmony, confusion,
hatred, sorrow, darkness, and death) may be applied without any mention of
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God. If I label the center “God” and the outer reaches of confusion “the
Devil,” that may be understood figuratively rather than literally. Certainly
the labeling of confusion, distant from God, as “the Devil” is intended to
disavow, once and for all, the idea of the Devil as a kind of conscious and
deliberate “evil god.” And, whether you think of God at the center as a
conscious being of some sort or just a figurative image to describe the quality
makes no real difference. Just as Buddhist meditation can bring you to a
state of peace and serenity, so the effort to become “closer to God” can yield
the same benefits of peace, clarity, joy, love, and good health, regardless of
any theological ideas pertaining to that mysterious point at the center.
The crux of the whole matter is consciousness. I suggest that
consciousness (and free will) increases as you get closer to God (or “to the
center”) and decreases as you move away into confusion, error, and darkness.
So “union with God” would mean the attainment of cosmic consciousness, as
well as enlightenment, Nirvana, limitless love, and total bliss. This, of
course, is entirely speculative. I am suggesting, by analogy with the
consciousness of animals and human beings, that the more complex and
highly evolved the organism, the greater the consciousness. To postulate
that the entire field of life energy on the planet is all inter-conneed and, in
fa, comprises a single living being, is also speculative, but it is an extremely
interesting and provocative concept, and offers no theological problems
whatsoever. It is the suggestion that this being (“aia”) is fully conscious
and is responsible for the nearly universal belief in some sort of God, that is
the most radical idea here. If it were true, it could account for a great many
unexplained and/or psychic phenomena as a medium for the transmission of
all kinds of energies of communication and even telekinetic aivity, as well
as prayer.
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At the same time, it is an idea of God that avoids the deal-breaker
concept of an Almighty God Who is responsible for everything that happens
in the world, good and bad. When theologians try to explain the Problem of
Evil by attempting to shift the blame onto humans, when the Deity should
have known better, I don’t find their arguments very convincing. I think
God is evolving along with Our cosmos, and We are doing the best We can.
Consciousness is a very astonishing experience. But if human beings
can enjoy the kind of consciousness with which we are familiar, I do not find
it too surprising to imagine aia as a conscious being, trying hard to stay
alive but losing the battle due to the endless and growing confusion of her
parts.
But, whether you believe that aia is a conscious Being, an
unconscious being, or even just a random and unconneed confusion of
unrelated beings (human, animal, and vegetable), the path towards an
evolutionary growth that can sustain the fragile envelope of life on this planet
is all the same ~ a concerted effort for all sentient beings to move closer to
that center of peace, clarity, love, and joy, regardless of whether you endow
that point with any theological significance or not.
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Philosophical Meditations
on the Nature of God
2015 - 2017
11.III.15 Suddenly I am re-thinking the whole aia hypothesis. The
problem is that all of the life energies of the planet do not show a level of
integration comparable to the single organism of a person, animal, or plant.
It is true that a human being contains millions of smaller organisms that are
hostile to the person, and sometimes these hostile organisms destroy the
integrity of the person, leading to death. But in this case, those hostile
organisms are opposed to the person, not an integral part. I would speculate
that the person’s consciousness would not include these organisms but would
maintain distinion from it. In the same way, a human body sometimes
rejes a transplant; the ego (i.e., the center of consciousness) refuses to
incorporate the alien part. So, in the case of planet earth, I cannot see the
analogy of a single organism with a single consciousness. As I try to make
sense of it all, I try to follow the consciousness. I have always had a pagan
“many gods” attitude (whether or not there is One overall God) ~ that every
family, school, city, state, tribe, language group, biker group, street gang, or
interest group (not to mention every river and forest) may have a shared
consciousness, so perhaps our world is just a jungle of such “gods,” all
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struggling for dominance. Perhaps the God of the Hebrews was just that ~
a parochial god for one tribe of people, not a God who would include other
alien tribes (this may be the root cause of much anti-Semitism).
So, if this more accurately represents the spiritual state of the planet,
what are the implications for consciousness and/or theology? Of course, I
am treading upon unknowable ground, but I am a philosopher, not a
scientist. A scientist does not speculate beyond the data, whereas the
speculations of philosophers begin where those of the scientists leave off.
My first thought is that I cannot decisively rule out a single
consciousness that encompasses all of life. But in view of the jungle of
mutually hostile life forms, such a consciousness would not necessarily favor
mankind. Perhaps such a consciousness would favor Man’s destruion by
fire (nuclear war) comparable to an earlier destruion by flood. Once the
failed experiment of human life were cleared from the earth, the evolution of
life might proceed again, over here, with a fresh opportunity. As to
theology, this view of the nature of the consciousness of God does not offer
much comfort (to human beings).
But, whether or not there is some sort of overall consciousness, I
consider the status of the next level of consciousness down ~ is there a single
consciousness for the human race as a whole, or is the jungle of warring
peoples, races, tribes, religions, and lawgivers in an endless struggle for
survival or dominance? And what are the implications for the survival of life
on earth? Well, as to that, I return to a very old idea of mine, which has
been shared by many others over the years ~ there can be no hope for any
positive evolution of the human race until or unless the entire planet be
unified under a single political entity. This might be accomplished after
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devastation by war and conquest, or by political evolution of negotiation and
compromise. One idea which I have had from the beginning of my
theological speculations about aia is that God is just as much a work in
progress as any of the life forms which contribute to His consciousness. If
the human race and the planet can be unified under a single political
struure, then our God could grow commensurately.
So, after all of this speculation, I am left with a world in chaos, beset
by warring faions all over the globe with no end in sight. One idea seems
clear enough ~ a gradual and evolutionary movement toward union
(COAGULA) is better (i.e., more conducive to the possibility of the survival
of life on earth) than a cataclysmic or expanding confli leading to
destruion and chaos (SOLVE).
So, the conclusion of my morning’s meditation is to suggest passing
out free LSD to all the warring faions all over the world to promote an
elevation of spiritual consciousness leading finally to an ultimate union and
the triumph of the love of God over the confusion, chaos, and darkness of
the Devil.
The lesson for aia, the consciousness of our planetary god, is the
same as that for every person on the planet ~ in order to accomplish a
positive elevation of spiritual growth, the life energies on our planet, just as
with each individual soul, must come together towards a center of clarity,
peace, harmony, joy, and love. The alternative, for each person as for our
planet, is confusion, destruion, chaos, darkness, and death. herefore, chooſe
ife. (Deuteronomy 30:15-20)
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13.III.15 rimum obile
I may, of course, be wrong in any of my speculations, but at least I
have clear ideas about almost every aspe of philosophy and metaphysics.
There is really only one point that is not entirely clear ~ the very first point,
the primum mobile. As I have mentioned before, science really has no better
explanation for this point than theology. Science can describe the expansion
of the Big Bang from the first few millionths of a second after the Big Bang
itself, but by that time all of the really interesting stuff is already ancient
history. I want to know exaly how and why that Big Bang aually
happened in the firſt place! So, that is my problem of metaphysics, and there
is also my problem of theology and consciousness ~ is there a whole
planetary consciousness or is the consciousness limited to lower levels? This
is unknowable, but my current thinking is that there is some sort of
planetary-wide aia consciousness, even if the parts are in confli.
It may sound funny to put it in this way, but, as a God, aia is way
down on the scale of spiritual evolution (about on the level of the Old
Testament God). When the life energies of the planet resemble the fully
realized saint of “Buddha Nature” or “Christ Consciousness,” then we will be
entering a Golden Age or the Kingdom of God on Earth. We have a long
way to go (underſtatement alert). So, to clarify my ideas about a personal God
Who might hear our prayers or facilitate other psychic phenomena, this
might refer to levels of super-consciousness below the planetary level, and
these spheres of consciousness may be intermingled in any complex way
beyond our comprehension.
But it is the first and most abstra metaphysics that I want to consider
now: the primum mobile itself. So, to review, there is the First Arcanum, as
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that point of perfeion at the center of our virtual sphere (which doesn’t
exist until the Second Arcanum brings it into being). Then the Second
Arcanum causes the Universe to split apart and come into being with a
Quest for Novelty which moves away from the perfeion of God at the
center outward into “error” in any of an infinite number of direions. Does
the First Arcanum have any existence or reality “before” the Second
Arcanum brings it all into being? The First Arcanum makes sense to me as
a senior concept (from which the Second Arcanum breaks away) even in the
absence of the Second Arcanum. In the same sense that the concept of
Number may have an a priori reality apart from any manifestation in the
physical world, so, also, in the same way that we imagine infinity as an
approach to a limit, I can imagine an ultimate ain ſoph, total nothingness, as
the Original antecedent of the birth of God, which I call the First Arcanum.
We might call that ain ſoph the Zero Arcanum, analogous to The Fool of the
Tarot.
But it is this Second Arcanum which holds the greater part of my
interest! There is something natural and original about the First Arcanum,
but the Second Arcanum is really the trigger (or its consequence) which
initiates the Big Bang. [The First Arcanum and the Second Arcanum are
different; the hange which happens occurs at a point between the two
Arcana, in the same way that the First Arcanum already expresses the point
in process as it changes from ain ſoph to the first singularity.]
So what is this Quest for Novelty, and whence does it come? It
doesn’t seem to be as obvious a given as the serenity and perfeion of the
First Arcanum. The Quest for Novelty exists because without it there would
be nothing to disturb the serenity of God’s infinite Perfeion. But why does
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it exist? It is, obviously, the origin and source of life, as well as all existence,
personified as ros. In spite of the fa that it is clearly a “junior” concept to
the seniority and perfeion of the First Arcanum, it seems to be responsible
for most of the interest. The movement inward, back to the center and
perfeion of God, seems to be more like a resolution of the error implied by
the movement away from the center (this would be gravity ~ time and/or
space is “the measure of error”) but the movement outward, in any of an
infinite number of direions in search of novelty, seems to bear all of the
dynamic potential of the cosmos and of life. (It also offers a theoretical
explanation for the significance of “devil worship.”)
So this Quest for Novelty is the final and irreducible primum mobile,
after all. It defies speculation as to where It might come from ~ all we can
say is that without It there never would have been any universe to disturb the
Perfeion of God.
Nothing in these speculations is contrary to any of the findings of
science ~ all I have done is to restore the name of God to the Creation.
Until any scientist or theologian can explain the how or why of the Big Bang
at the moment of Creation itself, I will prefer my solution, as it showcases
the very focal point of the Mystery Itself instead of trying to pretend that it
doesn’t exist.
16.XII.16 Another explanation for the primum mobile might claim
that the quest for novelty is inherent in the metaphysics. By analogy, we
claim that the numbers of mathematics may be entirely derived a priori and
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ex nihilo. The concept and meaning of the numbers of mathematics do not
depend upon any external realities. In the same way, it may be possible to
claim that the metaphysics of the sequence of the primary mysteries of nature
is also inherent in the fundamental nature of reality. The metaphysical
expansion of the ideas of Number have been there all along, as much a part
of the attributes of Number as their use as simple counting markers.
Specifically, as the Second Arcanum reaches Outward into Novelty it is
nothing more nor less than the inevitable expression of the Second Arcanum.
In the same way, the Mystery of the Number Three is just as inevitable: once
the process of expansion into complexity through the operation of the Quest
for Novelty has begun (olve et oagula), it will inevitably generate Life, and,
finally, Consciousness. You can call this God, or just call it the natural world
doing its thing.
A very interesting idea from Taoism is enantiodromia: reversal in
extremis, the idea that as everything makes its round of cyclical progression,
at the end of every extremity of yang or yin there is a turning around to go
the other way. This is the same as the Quest for Novelty and the Return to
the Center, or the olve et oagula of the alchemists. According to this view,
the universe had to pop into existence sooner or later, and, as time is
meaningless in the absence of existence, it just had to happen. Now, of
course, the universe is winding back down to Nothingness once again. This
cycle of a universe popping into and out of existence may be analogous to the
popping into and out of existence of sub-atomic particles of quantum
physics.
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On the other hand, it is possible to imagine that this is all Natural and
inevitable, and doesn’t require any “God” to put it into motion. Or, you
could say that the bursting apart of Original Perfeion into the endless
Quest for Novelty and the Return to the Center, is God’s little Joke, and it is
His Laughter that we know as the unfolding Universe. This would be God’s
way of existing forever without getting bored.
10.I.17 eus fecit
Looking over these meditations, I can see that I have narrowed it
down to two possibilities ~ either we accept the premise that the
metaphysical extensions of the concept of Number are, in fa, as inherent in
the numbers themselves as are their qualities as simple counting units, so
that the whole progression of metaphysics is inevitable ~ that the universe
just had to pop into existence “sooner or later,” and that the evolution to life
and consciousness was also inevitable; or one could deny the associations of
metaphysics to the qualities of Number. In fa, one might even reje the
claim that Number itself could be derived a priori and ex nihilo. My
metaphysics falters on the same rock that stumps the scientist. Certainly,
given One, Two must follow, and then Three, and then All Things. But
who says the One is given? If even the abstraions of Number be not
allowed as given (or as axioms), then the Original Source of the initial One is
just as unknown as the hypothetical Big Bang of science.
But that is all good ~ if the claim that the metaphysics is inherent in
the concept of Number be not considered sufficient to say that the universe
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made itself, then Whatever or Whoever brought it into being, we might as
well call God.
The concept of enantiodromia is the foundation of Taoism. It is even a
definition of the Tao, as in “From Tao there comes One . . .” [I], which
started off the whole chain of events. The dichotomy and alternation of All
and Nothing, Infinity and Zero [II], is inevitable, and the alternation
between the two sets up a field of energy between them [III] which, in turn,
creates the manifest cosmos [IV]. Zero and Infinity may be equivalent at the
limit, but in the hypothetical movement between the two a whole potential
field of energy comes into being, reaching out into Novelty, hence the
ensuing evolution into the cosmos as we know it.
So we can trace the origin of the cosmos back to the Tao. But, of
course, whence comes this Tao? I think it is irreducible. Either we accept
the Tao as original and fundamental, out of which the cosmos created itself,
or we append the name of a causal agent: eus fecit. It’s all one.
29.I.17
The fundamental axiom of Western Logic is that “A Proposition is
either True or False.” From this axiom, the whole system of mathematics,
philosophy, and science is deduced analytically. In the binary logic of
computers, each bit in the string is either On or Off. This may seem
straightforward enough, and, like Newtonian physics, it generally suffices for
most of the tasks to which Western logic is put.
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But, just as Western logic and mathematics prove inadequate when
dealing with sub-atomic or quantum levels of reality, they are also inadequate
when dealing with macrocosmic questions such as the creation or origin of
the universe. No, for those questions we must employ the more
comprehensive potential of Eastern logic and philosophy.
Where the Western philosopher or scientist takes as his starting axiom
that a proposition is either true or false, the Eastern philosopher allows for a
proposition to be either “True,” “Not True,” “both True and Not True,” or
“neither True nor Not True.”
Careful analysis of the last two possibilities reveals that they are
essentially the same, but from the point of view of opposite perspeives.
Thus, we can simplify the Eastern position by suggesting that there is a
“Third Way” in addition to the two values recognized by Western logic,
philosophy, and science.
This “third way” throws an enormous monkey wrench into any effort
to get a grasp on reality. To begin with, we must regretfully give up the
concept of “certainty.” We can never be certain of anything, at all. To get
an idea of what it might mean in terms of our efforts to understand the
cosmos, I want to combine the ideas of Heraclitus and Lao Tzu. From
Heraclitus we get the idea that nothing can exist without the simultaneous
existence of its opposite. From Lao Tzu and the concepts of Taoism we get
the idea that Yang and Yin succeed each other in turn. So we might evolve a
new idea, that, to start with the binary logic of computers, each bit is either
“predominantly On,” “predominantly Off,” or “fluuating so rapidly between
On and Off that its state is indeterminate.”
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In the ordinary reality of daily life, these fluuations mostly balance
each other out, but on the level of quantum mechanics or macro-cosmology,
the indeterminate nature of reality is inescapable. This is the loophole that
“lets the magic in,” allowing our cosmos to exist at all, with the possibility of
expanding towards limitless complexity in search of endless novelty.
So, sit back and watch the show, or sit up and participate in the
unfolding of our astonishing universe.
29.IX.17
Question ~ is Enantiodromia (reversal in extremis, the Tao) sufficient
to explain the Quest for Novelty? Or is the Quest for Novelty the elder idea,
which requires the utilization of the principle of Enantiodromia, the Tao, to
implement its intention?
It seems to me that I have failed to find a First Cause sufficient to
create the universe ex nihilo. My candidate, the Tao, is silent when asked
whence he comes. So if we say that the Quest for Novelty utilizes the Tao to
obtain its effes, the position of this Quest for Novelty is sounding more
and more theological all the time. But I can’t think of any other way to
account for it. Otherwise, if we say that the Quest for Novelty is derived
from the Tao, it is the same situation, just calling the First Cause by a
different name. eus fecit.
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24.X.17
My problem has always been the rimum obile ~ how did it all
begin?
I have a metaphysics which explains the endless expansion into
complexity that is our universe, but I feel like the scientist who describes the
original expansion of the cosmos from the Big Bang, beginning ten
millionths of a second after the big bang happened ~ who cares about those
minor details? I want to know how it all began.
The sequence of the rcana are as fundamental and a priori as the
numbers of mathematics. The Primary Mysteries, illuminating the
unfolding evolution from God to Man, are inherent in the Numbers, as
Pythagoras so famously figured out so long ago. And the sequence of the
first four comprise the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah, and the Name of God,
the etragrammaton. Why, it is enough to make one give up eating beans (as
required by followers of the school of Pythagoras).
So far, all of this is the answer to the question, “Where do all of these
ideas come from?” So we are only really left with one problem ~ why did the
Big Bang happen to have happened when it did? Aually, this is the easier
question ~ obviously “time” has no more meaning than anything else prior to
the moment of creation.
As to these unfolding Mysteries, starting from Arcanum 0, the ain
ſoph, then all three of the primary Arcana come into being at once ~ I, II, and
III. Then comes IV, the manifestation of our cosmos springing to life ex
nihilo, as the consequence of the metaphysics set up by the first three,
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followed by the endless expansion into complexity, which is still going on.
(“This trip is going on.”)
The sequence of the rimary rcana are a description and
illumination of the unfolding evolution from God to Man, just as the
sequence of primary numbers expresses the same thing more abstraly. The
etrays of Pythagoras, the ree of ife of the abbalah, and the four letters
of the Hebrew Name of God (etragrammaton), are all expressions of the
first four primary mysteries.
22.XII.17
Contemporary binary logic suggests a linear sequence of points, each of
which is On or Off, just as Western Logic assumes that a Proposition is
either True or False.
Suppose, as an alternative logic, a non-linear succession of points, each
of which is either On, Off, or Indeterminate (True, False, or neither/both).
Thence proceeds a triangular logic of great complexity, leading to a whole
new world of logical possibility.
[2018: This may not be just a crazy and impossible idea of mine; I have
recently (long after first writing those words above) been reading about
“Quantum Computers” featuring “qubits” which “are capable of being in
both states at the same time ~ 1 or 0”).]
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27.XII.17
What non-binary logic might look like as applied to our own world ~
Binary: On, Off, On, Off, On, Off . . .
Non-Binary: at random intervals, a point might be Indeterminate,
which would then be followed by either On or Off, or both.
. . . On, Off, Ind. --> On, Off, On, Off . . . --> Off, On, Off, On . . .
This is the flaw in Perfeion that “lets the magic in,” and perhaps
allows our Cosmos to come into being at all. If, at any point, a link in an
energy stream becomes indeterminate, it can be followed by going in either
direion, on or off, true or false. The possibility of this happening can be
entirely random, or there may be an average “cosmological constant novelty
faor.” It seems to me that the indeterminacy must be totally random;
otherwise, it makes no sense at all.
The first bifurcation of Reality, from infinite Perfeion to the endless
interplay of Yang and Yin, All or Nothing, was the spontaneous Creation of
the Cosmos. Since then, this potential for novelty has kept our world
expanding outward into endless unfolding complexity and further growth.
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The Noosphere
March, 2017
I am just reading over he henomenon of an by Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin, one of the most significant books in the history of philosophy. His
thesis is that the evolution of the universe is the evolution of Life, and that
the evolution of Life leads inevitably to the evolution of Consciousness.
He sees this evolution on an inevitable trajeory towards an increasing
of consciousness towards some unknowable future state which he calls the
Omega oint. He leaves it there, not hazarding a speculation as to the nature
of such a point, but he understands it as a transformational point by which
ontogenesis, biogenesis, and noogenesis make a major breakthrough to a
whole new plateau, as profound as the initial transformation into Life from
the chance agglomerations of matter, or the transformation into the level of
refleive thought and consciousness from the instinive level of lower
animals.
Today’s meditation is a speculation as to the nature of that
evolutionary advance which will lead life and consciousness into these new
levels of experience.
I suggest that this transformational point which we are in the process
of crossing is the transition from individual consciousness to planetary-wide
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bio-consciousness. Aually, Teilhard de Chardin suggested as much, but he
clearly anticipates that there will be much about this new experience that is
beyond speculation. This evolutionary leap may take a great many years to
be fully accomplished, but I expe that we will see more and more people
sharing a planetary-wide consciousness as the years go by. Together we will
form a whole new plateau in the expression of Life leading to monumental
changes in every aspe of our existence.
I have always felt that I were “tuning in” messages from the planetary-
wide “aia consciousness,” not only in terms of philosophical ideas, but also
in terms of planetary evolution. Now, some of my ideas may seem way
beyond radical (ide, e.g., One orld otal akeover), but eventually the
ideas may be seen as being in line with what the desperate state of our world
requires.
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TETRAGRAMMATON
he eys of the rcana
The Theory of Everything
by John Roland Stahl
.
..
...
....
117
to future generations
of life on earth
© MMXVIII
The Evanescent Press
WWW.TREE.ORG
tree@tree.org
ISBN: 978-0-945303-22-0
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THE ARCANA
ermetic hiloſophy is the roceſs of hange.
ythagorean hiloſophy is the ltimate ature of eality,
and the eaning of ife.
athematics is the anguage of od. ythagoras
ſuggeſted that it is an expanding attern expreing and
revealing the ltimate ature of eality. he ſequence of
atural umbers correſponds to the ſame ſequence of the
rinciple yſteries of ife in the order of their Importance;
and the eys to theſe yſteries are the umbers themſelves.
he ſequence of the firſt four umbers and their
aociated yſteries is the baſis of the ree of ife of the
ebrew abbalah. he etragrammaton, the four letters of
the ame of od, repreſents the ſame ſequence of umbers
and yſteries. ythagoras called the ſame ſequence of ideas
etrays, repreſented as piured on the itle age.
119
eraclitus had the idea that othing could exiſt as a
hing in Itſelf, but could only exiſt by the multaneous
exiſtence of its oppote. e expand this idea by combining it
with the aoiſt principle that the direions of ang and in
(On and Off, expanding towards Infinity and contraing
towards ero), ſucceed each other in turn, as when reaching
the imit in either direion, they turn to go the other way
(enantiodromia: Tao).
he ppearance of the niverſe is the fluuation
between ll and othing, the endleſs atterns of which
thence enſuing evolving eventually to produce ife and
onſciouſneſs, on its way to endleſs expanon into further
ovelty and ever increang omplexity.
e are alive.
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Kether
Yod Arcanum I.
Binah Chokmah
Moon Sun
He Arcanum II.
SOLVE
Geburah Chesed
Tamas Rajas
Vau Arcanum III.
COAGULA Tiphereth
Satva
Hod Netzach
Water Fire
Yesod
Air
He Arcanum IV.
Manifestation
Malkuth
The Tree of Life Earth
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ARCANUM 0
ain ſoph
122
ARCANUM I
Yin
123
— — ———
Yin Yang
Passive Aive
Contraion Expansion
Receptive Creative
Inertia Novelty
Gravity Energy
Apollo Dionysus
God Eros
Positional Chess Combinational Chess
Theology Metaphysics
COAGULA SOLVE
ARCANUM II
Yang
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“From Tao there comes One.
From One there come Two.
From Two there comes Three.
From Three there come all things.”
~ Lao Tzu
ao e hing
ARCANUM III
Tao
125
Wands Cups
eſod od
Air Water
SUMMER AUTUMN
Old Yang Young Yin
——— ———
——— — —
Swords Pentacles
etzach alkuth
Fire Earth
SPRING WINTER
Young Yang Old Yin
— — — —
——— — —
ARCANUM IV
Life
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s bove,
he reſent oment apis hiloſophorum
o elow.
ARCANUM V
Change
127
COAGULA
GIVE old RECEIVE
in un opper
upiter reative enus
oyous eaven entle
ake h’ien ind, ood
ui un
CONFLICT ’an
uickſilver ater
ercury byſmal
linging oon
ire ilver
i PEACE
hên ên
hunder ’un ountain
rouſing arth eeping till
ars eceptive aturn
Iron arth ead
EXPAND rima ateria CONTRACT
SOLVE
128
God ~ Life ~ Light
Consciousness ~ Free Will ~ Health
Love ~ Harmony ~ Peace
Clarity
xpanſion ontraion
into ovelty to the enter
Yang Yin
Confusion
Hatred ~ Anger ~ Confli
Chaos ~ Karma ~ Disease
The Devil ~ Death ~ Darkness
129
130
Meditation on Consciousness
April, 2018
Frequently, in my philosophical speculations, I don’t know which way
to apply symbolic representations of yang and yin. The issue is greatly
clarified by the concepts of Young Yang, Young Yin, Old Yang, and Old Yin
from the I hing. Thus we have the All and Nothing of the Old Yang and
Old Yin, but there is also the expanding and contraing of the Young Yang
and Young Yin. But then the issue is further complexified by the concept of
enantiodromia, that the consequence of the extreme of either yang or yin is a
reversal into its opposite direion.
But another consideration that I run into repeatedly is that, given any
microcosm (or Macrocosm, for that matter, as a good Hermeticist), while
some aspes are expanding as yang, others are contraing as yin. Thus, for
example, we have the world exploding into astonishing levels of complexity,
typified by the apparently limitless potential of computers and the
internet. One thing is for sure ~ we haven’t seen anything yet. The whole
computer and internet age is just in its veriest infancy. But this has divergent
consequences ~ some of the consequences are very good, while others are
very bad. One simple example is the unbelievable access to information. In
so many ways, this opens up whole new worlds of possibility, accelerating the
pace of advancing science and technology, but it also means the total end of
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privacy as we know it. Children are now being born into a world where
everything is known about everything and everyone, and plenty of people
seem to welcome this development, or at least accept it as the inevitable price
of our unprecedented access to information.
Other developments are a bit more sinister ~ “the more theoretical
control is gained, the more aual control is lost.” For example, chemical
pesticides and herbicides may seem to augment the capacity of the earth to
grow more food to feed more people (arguably, not at all a good thing on the
face of it), but, in fa, they may be destroying the ecosystem of the earth,
killing off not only harmful inses, but beneficial inses as well. Bees are
massively dying off, and the deaths of people to cancer, caused by our
increasingly toxic world environment, are not far behind. And, quod erat
demonſtrandum, modern technology may create incredibly powerful nuclear
weapons, but, rather than making the world more secure, they threaten to
destroy all life on earth.
Change happens slowly, too slowly to notice. Personal privacy is not
the only thing that is being lost to the modern world. Many of today’s
young people know nothing of trees, gardens, or fresh food. Four-fifths of
every supermarket consists of produs which I don’t recognize as food, from
sugary drinks to processed “food.” And hamburgers are not only destroying
the last of the ancient rainforests (one of the major sources of pollution is the
smoke from the thousands of acres of rainforest burned off every day to make
room for more burger-beef), but they are also destroying the health of
anyone so misguided as to eat them, thinking they are a kind of food,
washed down with sugar water and greasy fries.
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But none of this was what was on my mind when I took up my pencil
today (I am happy to edit by computer, but I compose by pencil, an ancient
wooden artifa filled with carbon, formerly used for writing before the
advent of computers).
I wanted to discuss consciousness. I have been using the imagery of
spiritual elevation leading to convergence at a center of unity, clarity, cosmic
consciousness, love, joy, and health. Distance from this center leads out
progressively into error, disharmony, subje-obje divergence, anger, and
confli, leading finally to chaos, darkness, and death. But there is an aspe
of consciousness that increases as a funion of complexity ~ higher
organisms, representing increased orders of complexity, exhibit greater
consciousness. How do I reconcile those concepts? Isn’t the expansion into
complexity the pattern of moving away from the perfeion at the
center? But “a little knowledge leads one away from God; a greater
knowledge brings one back, closer to God.” This is a case of two movements
in different direions going on at once ~ the yang energy of separation and
expansion into diversity, and the yin energy of the coalescence of
consciousness back to the center of unity, clarity, and love. These are
independent movements ~ the elevation of consciousness towards unity can
be going on in spite of an ongoing expansion into complexity.
I don’t have a finished idea to present here; that’s why I call it a
meditation.
I think where I’m going with this is that some “New Age” writers seem
to assert that the ultimate origin of the universe is pure consciousness, from
which all manifestation has been derived. This has a really nice “feel good”
aspe about it ~ you know, the Original Mind of God as the Creator of the
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universe. But as I look back on my theological speculations, I seem to have
been suggesting a more impersonal explanation for the origin of the universe,
that the universe somehow “created itself” ~ came into being spontaneously
as an inevitable manifestation of ultimate a priori principles (ide: he
volution of heology, peculations on oſmic onſciouſneſs and the ove of od,
and hiloſophical editations on the ature of od). Then, not only is
consciousness a later development, but God Herself is evolving along with
Her Cosmos. In other words, until and unless we find some more evolved
beings somewhere, as far as we know, We are the cutting edge of
Consciousness, and God and aia are evolving along with us. This is a total
reversal of most New Age dorine, but it makes more sense to me.
In many ways, I think I am getting at what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
was talking about as we expand our evolutionary growth of consciousness
towards an unknowable Omega Point (ide: he henomenon of an by
Teilhard de Chardin). This evolution of life and consciousness is still going
on. Compare the evolution of Man’s understanding of God, from the very
primitive, vengeful, and petty God of the Old Testament (not welcome at
my house; if the Old Testament God were to show up at my house, I would
offer Him a meal and a place to sleep, out of Christian charity, but then send
Him on down the road in the morning), to the far more enlightened God of
Love of the New Testament, to present conceptions of aia, encompassing
not just the tribe of Hebrews, nor even the whole human race, but the entire
field of life energy on the planet.
Human consciousness, too, is evolving on all sides. Perhaps the
Omega Point of Teilhard de Chardin represents the convergence back to the
center of unity, clarity, love, and light which enlightened mystics have been
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describing for a long time. Perhaps one day a critical mass of enlightenment
will propel the human race, along with all life on earth, towards a new
Golden Age.
Let us hope that the energy towards such a convergence will overtake
and displace the contrary energy towards divergence, destruion, and chaos
which is riding us rampantly (transitive verb) to the edge of darkness.
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Gravity
May, 2018
I have briefly mentioned my idea of gravity as the yin force of a “return
to the center” which balances the yang force of the “quest for novelty”
(hiloſophical editations on the ature of od, 13.III.15), but I want to
take a closer look at it today.
One of the fundamental questions which continue to bother scientists
and philosophers is, “Why is there any universe here at all, instead of just
nothing?” I have also been confused by that problem, and my solution is not
altogether satisfying even to me (that the universe just popped into being
spontaneously, in accordance with some inevitable ultimate reality).
But I don’t want to belabor that problem anymore here ~ what I want
to do is to accept those two opposing forces as given, and try to understand
how those two forces might explain the nature of the cosmos as we know it.
I start by agreeing that the “natural” state of the cosmos is nothingness,
non-being, ain ſoph. This is not yet “zero” ~ zero is already far along on the
road to the manifestation of being. Now comes the “Laughter of God” (or
however you like to express this mystery) which separates nothingness into
two parts, All and Nothing, or an expansive force which creates and
maintains a subje/obje distinion, and a complementary force which
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resolves all such distinions back to “the center” (the singularity which
started and/or ended it all).
I am happy to see that some recent speculations on the nature of the
cosmos tend to see some sort of endless cycle expanding out of a singularity
and finally resolving back into a black hole, whence it might re-emerge to
form a “new universe.” This has always made more sense to me than the
facile postulation of an original Big Bang ex nihilo. However we may wish to
explain the expansive force, or attempt to account for its presence or
existence, it is clear to me that the opposite force, of reduion back to the
center, from diversity back to singularity, is what we know of as the force of
gravity.
Since nothingness is the “natural” state of the cosmos, some force or
intervention is required to create and maintain a distinion. One of my
earliest philosophical pronouncements (dating back to my book of okes,
1975, letterpress, miniature) is “Time is the Measure of Error.” I might
slightly update that pronouncement as: “Time and Space are the Measures of
Error.” Thus, the expansive yang energy of subje/obje distinion is
identified as some sort of error, like the grain of sand in an oyster which
generates a pearl. So, as that initial force dissipates, and the distinions
resolve back to singularity, the manifestations of time and space tend to
return back to zero. (A singularity, as a point of no dimensions, is
indistinguishable from zero, the reverse of the First Arcanum, which refers
to the emergence of the Singularity from the Zero Arcanum of ain ſoph.)
This whole process of the return back to the singularity is what is
observed as the “force of gravity.” That is, the “force of gravity” isn’t really a
force, at all; it is just the dissipation of the contrary force which generates
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expansion into proliferating distinion. In other words, yang expresses an
aive force reaching out into novelty and distinion, while yin is the passive
return to the equilibrium of nothingness. The Hermetic alchemists summed
up the whole process as olve et oagula.
So, is everything clear now? Of course I have side-stepped the whole
question of the origin, nature, and meaning of that yang force of distinion,
the quest for novelty. Words are wholly inadequate (which is why I resort to
quotation marks so often), but to suggest that the whole “Laughter of God”
is somehow based on some sort of error, or “crack in the cosmic egg,” seems
to me to be hinting, in some poetical fashion, for an interpretation of the
ultimate mystery of why there is anything here at all, instead of just
nothingness.
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The Religion Taboo
August, 2018
Continuing along the line of the observation that if we draw a map of
the world in which every area is colored according to my scheme of aura
colors, then there is a startling overlap of the most volatile areas, in the colors
of Red and Purple, with the range of Islam over the globe. But that’s not the
Islam I know ~ isn’t Islam all about peace, and obedience to the Will of
Allah? So why is the face of Islam so mired in the Red of aggression and
violence, and the Purple of oppression and defeat?
I know that it is not considered politically corre to question another
person’s religion, but I have found that, even though all religions speak of
similar themes, there seem to be differences among the major religions that
suggest to me sorting them out according to the colors of their aura. This is
a pretty radical political venture. It suggests that there are differences in
spiritual or ethical value among the religions of the world: that some are
better than others.
All of the placement of the colors seems to be obvious, except perhaps
the Orange of Hinduism, but I see Hinduism as a religion of engagement
with the world, where Buddhism is a religion of withdrawal from the world
(Blue). Christianity has always been the clearest voice for the message of
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love (Yellow). The Jews have historically been oppressed people (Purple),
while Moslems seem to be on an endless jihad (Red).
GOD
Union
CHRISTIANITY GRACE
Aive Love Receptive Love
HINDUISM BUDDHISM
Engagement Peace
ISLAM JUDAISM
Aggression Oppression
SATANISM
Death
So here it is possible to see the levels of value, with the Black of
Satanism on the bottom, and the Jews and Moslems slugging it out, literally,
on the line between life and death, with Hinduism and Buddhism at a clearly
elevated plane of consciousness above. This puts Christianity close to the
top, along with the Grace of God (Yellow and Green). Above is the merger
into Cosmic Consciousness at the apex of Union (White).
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I am just sitting here stunned at the extent to which this is all
politically incorre. How can I sit here and make these judgments? Well, I
just call them as I see them, and I find Christianity to be the clearest
expression of the highest religious experience. Leaving aside Hinduism and
Buddhism, both of which impart valuable spiritual values to their followers,
that leaves Islam and Judaism as problematic religions, and I look at them
not through their theology, but through the aions of their adherents. I find
them both to be primitive (somewhere on the level of the Old Testament
God). Someone should send missionaries to spread the message of higher
levels of consciousness.
Well, intelleual honesty compels me to acknowledge that I do not
believe that all religions are equally worthy of respe, but that some are
better than others (from the point of view of world harmony). I have eaten
fearlessly from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the
Apple of Discord. According to Homeric myth, the Apple of Discord was
the source of the origin of the cosmos, which I call “The Laughter of God.”
As I look over what I wrote yesterday, I see that it is deeply flawed. I
have been critical of both Islam and Judaism, not because of their theology or
stated principles, but because of the way the people live their lives.
Obviously this is a gross generalization ~ I am just reaing to what I see on
the ground, and that is the unconscionable behavior of the Israelis towards
the Palestinians as they pursue the “final solution” to the “Palestinian
problem” without any appreciation of the historical irony, and the endless
jihad of Moslems all over the globe. I must, in fairness, dissociate the state
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of Israel from the Jewish people worldwide, most of whom seem to live their
lives innocuously enough.
However, in the case of Christianity, I have unfairly focused on the
essence of what it is all about, rather than the aions of Christians. But
even if we only look at the present day, and ignore all of the historical
atrocities committed in the name of Jesus Christ, the piure is not
unequivocal. The United States is predominately Christian, overall, yet its
government is out of control in planetary-wide life-threatening depravity.
Perhaps it is more accurate to charaerize the United States as essentially
lacking in any religious awareness at all. In any case, it is very hard to find
any uniform standards by which to compare the integrity of religious beliefs.
I guess I have to conclude that my catalog of religious beliefs according
to the predominant aura color is just an idle amusement which cannot be
seriously defended. But it is useless to consider the value of religious
teaching while negleing the way that teaching influences the moral
expression of its adherents.
I wrote all of that several days ago, and I have been unhappy about it
ever since. At the very least, we will have to say that it is grossly
oversimplified, if not entirely misleading and worthless. And yet, something
about the idea persists, and I just can’t let it go. The basic problem is that it
deliberately targets both Jews and Moslems as living under a substandard
religious influence, with negative consequences.
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But, if that is the core of the issue, perhaps there is something to it.
As I look at what I know of Judaism and Islam (and I take my knowledge
not from their sacred literature and traditions, but from an observance of the
effe of their religion on personal behavior), I have to say that I don’t see
much of any tendency to love thy neighbor. Islam gets points for their
hospitality to strangers and travelers, and I have always felt that one of the
most charming traditions of Judaism is the Seder, some special memorial
dinner in which one is urged to find someone who is alone and invite him to
share the meal together with your family. I also want to mention that I have
traveled extensively in Moslem countries and I have encountered numerous
instances of very friendly people who have gone out of their way to be
helpful to me, and I have never personally witnessed any moral shortcomings
of the Moslem people. But that still leaves the unimaginable depravity of
the State of Israel against the Palestinian people, and the endless jihad of
Moslems, mostly against other Moslems, not just against The Great Satan
and other Western countries. If it is unfair of me to malign these religions
on the basis of the aions of some minority of their adherents, I would say
that it is up to the religious leaders of both Judaism and Islam to speak out
against those abuses and clarify the position of their faith. lace your bets
here: will the leaders of Judaism be the first to speak out against the State of
Israel, or will the leaders of Islam speak out against the endless wars carried
on in the name of Islam?
On the whole, Christianity is way out in front expressing the high
ground of spiritual consciousness. new commandment I give unto you,
that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye alſo love one another.
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y this all all men know that ye are my diſciples, if ye have love one to
another. (John XIII: 34-35)
Now I want to get down to cases. First of all, levels of spiritual
consciousness contain both sides in their aura ~ Yellow and Green, Orange
and Blue, and Red and Purple. I have placed the Moslems on the Red side,
and Jews on the Purple side, but in the case of the relationship between the
Jews and the Palestinians in Israel/Palestine, the Jews are clearly the violent
aggressors (Red), and the Palestinians are the oppressed viims (Purple). I
have seen as a general observation of human nature that when someone
commits an injustice upon someone else, rather than apologize for their
error, they double-down and increase their violent attacks against their
viim. Here, the Israelis are clearly exhibiting the charaeristic behavior of
persons ruled by a Red/Purple aura, which typically oscillates between
aggression and violence on the one hand, and then further oppression as
viim on the other. It is a vicious cycle that can only be transcended by
going upwards.
More and more I am thinking that my “facetious” suggestion that Jews
should convert to Christianity and Moslems to Buddhism is literally the way
forward in this thousand year old confli in the Middle East. If the Jews
were suddenly visited with Christ Consciousness (like Saul on the road to
Damascus), they might make a sudden leap upwards in spiritual
consciousness, open their borders to returning Palestinians, end all embargo
by sea, rebuild the infrastruure that they have been so persistently
demolishing for the last hundred years, and offer cash reparations to
Palestinians who have been forcibly removed from their land. If they were to
do all of this, then relations between the Jews and Palestinians might
144
approach normal conditions in as little as two or three generations. And, as
for Moslems embracing Buddhism, I think that would be the best thing for
the peace of the earth. They need to try meditation and find peace within;
they need to let go of all of the anger and aggression and return to the love of
their families and friends.
Anyway, instead of fighting against any of these people, either Jews or
Moslems, they should be offered opportunities of religious education,
something like Christian Science Reading Rooms (rather than, for example,
more aggressive Missionaries). Whether Jews or Moslems aually convert
to Christianity or Buddhism, or whether they just advance new ses which
embody higher levels of spiritual awareness and expression, it all amounts to
the same thing in the end.
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The Holy Ghost
September, 2018
The Holy Ghost is the Cosmic Consciousness of God. In this sense,
it is easy to see that the same God which is the entirety of the Cosmic
Consciousness of God is also that rimum obile which caused the cosmos
to come into being, bursting out with Novelty as it expands into endless
complexity. There are two direions of energy known as God (or God and
the Devil) : God as the movement in, back towards the Center, and God as
the creative movement outward into Novelty, away from the Center.
Altogether it is a Trinity, the understanding of which is the traditional
Secret of occult philosophy.
God and Our universe come into being as God divides Oneself into
yang and yin. olve et oagula.
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Uncertainty
Oober, 2018
Is it a Quest for Novelty or simply the fundamental error rate of the
cosmos? In my search for God, I value this reaching out into novelty just as
much as I value the return to the Center of Perfeion. And I keep
wondering (reverently) whence comes this outward quest into novelty? But
perhaps it all comes down to the fa that our universe just isn’t perfe, after
all, but is subje to some mean failure rate. Perhaps there is some small
chance that any particle of matter or energy could flip into its opposite
expression at any time or at any place. This fundamental uncertainty would
be what makes our cosmos lurch along at random, exploding into novelty as
it expands.
So, according to this theory, the primum mobile is the expression of
that inescapable potential for error in the cosmos. At some point in time
(which didn’t exist until that moment) the Universe slipped out of Perfeion
and fell into Being. Naturally, there is a powerful force for the restoration of
Perfeion again (gravity), equal to the energy which broke it apart, but that
potential for error in the cosmos just seems to keep pushing the universe
further out into complexity. Perhaps, because of that error potential, there is
no chance of restoring perfeion, or stopping the cosmos from spinning out
into ever increasing complexity, finally leading to darkness, chaos, and death.
So now I don’t know whether the universe will finally contra back to a
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singularity again (Perfeion) or if each universe just plays out until its heat
death (the opposite pole of the Singularity) and then we wait for the cosmos
to slip out of perfeion again some time, falling into Being one more time. I
look, but I ſee it both ways.
If the Universe were perfe, it wouldn’t exist; existence implies error.
But there’s a flaw somewhere. Earlier I was writing about incorporating
uncertainty into a non-binary logic for a computer. Suppose that at any
place, at any time, there is always a chance ~ very small perhaps, but not zero
~ that “anything” might reverse into its opposite expression (remembering
from Heraclitus that anything or any idea can only exist along with its
opposite). Suppose that this is just a fa about our universe here ~ No; it
isn’t perfe; there is always the chance that anything could suddenly flip into
its opposite expression “without intervention”, i.e., without perceivable cause
according to the known laws of physics. And perhaps this fundamental
Uncertainty is one more of the laws of physics.
The good news is that it is this Error which allows our universe to
come into being at all, for which I am thankful and grateful. As for this
endless potential for uncertainty, it isn’t necessarily bad news ~ perhaps it is
what accounts for the persistent novelty reaching into the Unknown with a
new idea, and is responsible for all of the interest in this silly world of ours.
And what if that were the whole idea all along? Perhaps the
Consciousness of God came into being with the first event or error. This
particular universe with its Conscious God is alive and going on, gathering
momentum as it expands. We always knew that nothing could be Perfe ~
there always has to be some flaw somewhere, or it can’t exist.
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Error
January, 2019
God is absolute erfeion and the movement in towards the center.
But the movement out into rror is also an important part of the
understanding of God, because without error, there would be nothing at all.
Error is the source of life. If you look for the ultimate rimum obile, you
will find error, the æmon that is looking for something new. In some
mythologies, this æmon which caused the cosmos to come into being is
identified with ros, the god of Love.
This it is that allows Life to happen, reaching out into Novelty. It is
this error that inspires the Laughter of God, which we experience as our
unfolding universe.
That’s our Cosmos, a priori and ex nihilo, caused by random error.
Thank you, God.
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Loving Everyone
February, 2019
The familiar image of Hermetic philosophy and alchemy is the
transmutation of lead into gold. This movement through the seven metals
has been considered by philosophers as correlating to the stages of growth of
the consciousness of man. This range and progression of the planets and
metals along with the colors of the aura, matching the same sequence of
ideas in the Trigrams of the I hing, is the basis of Hermetic philosophy and
esoteric alchemy.
Today I just thought of another way of expressing that progression of
consciousness. I have related the rising of consciousness to the expansion of
a feeling of love for everyone. hen you take about 300 mcg of you ſee
od, and you love everyone. But this doesn’t mean that you love all people
equally ~ there will always be some that you love more or less than others.
But what happens is that the whole level rises, as there are fewer people
whom you love less, and more people whom you love more. I have thought
of graphing this pattern over that familiar Wheel of Change.
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If you represent a circle to include all the people you know, and then
shade the portion you like less than the others, the piure seems to follow
the familiar pattern with remarkable fidelity.
To clarify what this diagram means, if the Aura of a person be known,
that person might have a like/dislike profile similar to what is suggested in
the diagrams.
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A Personal God
March, 2019
Now I am reading over oneſt to od and he oneſt to od ebate,
and it seems to me that John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, doesn’t really
seem to understand God, so it is no wonder that he is all confused. I agree
that many of the “supernatural” aspes of Christianity may have to be clearly
relegated to the euphemism of historical analogy, myth, and symbol, such as
the Virgin Birth (Immaculate Conception), the Divinity of Christ, the
Resurreion, and the Transubstantiation. But then Bishop Robinson goes
on to conclude that we will also have to let go of the phantasy of a Personal
God, now that we have “come of age.”
And yet, according to my theology, God is very much of a Trinity of
ideas, all of which seem to be independent ideas, but all of which are
necessary and inseparable for a complete view of God. Of these, “the
Mother and the Son” correspond to the primary Yin and Yang with which
God brought Oneself into Being, Whose metaphysics I have been trying to
elucidate in my books he aughter of od and ore aughter. But it is the
Holy Ghost that ties it all together and infuses the Whole with life and
consciousness.
I understand fields of consciousness at every level ~ every family, tribe,
nation, language, or interest group contains a center of consciousness which
constitutes the center of life for that entity. Thus, our world contains all of
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these fields of consciousness simultaneously in a complex and interconneed
dance. To posit that these fields are conſcious and alive may seem to be
debatable, but to me it seems to be the whole essence of the matter ~ to be
alive is to be conscious. I am aware of the consciousness of trees, other
plants, and animals, and have no trouble communicating with them.
I go up to the most inclusive field of consciousness on planet earth,
comprising the entire biosphere of life on the planet, and I assume that it is
alive and conscious, and currently receiving mail as “Gaia,” but I have no
trouble imagining a more all-inclusive consciousness as comprising the entire
field of life in the universe, but, as I have said before, the consciousness of
aia is the primary focus for the idea of God on earth, and must be known,
understood, supported, and proteed, as essential to our own survival and
well-being.
Consciousness is the essence of life, and it is certainly personal. Every
center of consciousness is aware of its smallest component parts, and
communicates with them. Likewise, each part sends its messages back up
the line to the center of consciousness, analogous to the experience of living
human beings.
So, yes ~ we can pray to God, or aia, and (if we can learn how to
listen) we can also hear messages and replies coming to us. I wish more
people would pay more attention to this voice, as it is coming with increasing
urgency.
So, all of this makes me praically Orthodox, with a belief in God as a
Trinity, and including a very Personal God in the person of the Holy Ghost.
Add to this the person of Jesus Christ, showing us clearly the path to eternal
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life as a path of love, and we have the essential message of the Christian
Gospel in a nutshell.
But, lest I leave too orthodox a taste in the mouth, let me recount my
understanding of some of the historical aspes of the Christian story.
To begin with, there is the matter of the Virgin Birth. Out of respe
for the mother of Jesus, I will stipulate that no other interpretation of the
historical events other than that of the virgin birth story can be imagined. If
Mary never had any sexual congress with Joseph, then clearly the father of
Jesus must have been God Almighty. (If there were a cute stable-boy who
might have had other information, no memoirs of his have survived.)
Incidentally, the claim that Jesus was of the House of David is carefully
documented from King David all the way down to ~ oſeph, which, of
course, can have no bearing upon the ancestry of Jesus.
Moving right along, what about the divinity of Jesus? If we accept the
record of the Gospels, it seems to be clear beyond dispute that Jesus
considered Himself to be divine in a much more primary sense than that “all
living things partake of the divine to some degree.” Perhaps Jesus was very
close to God, hence “divine,” and yet it seems clear that Jesus had visions of a
grandeur some orders of magnitude beyond that. No problem; so Jesus was a
simple fisherman, who need not be expeed to have comprehended all of the
complexities of metaphysics. I consider Jesus not as a God, but as a teacher
whose message was clear and important, matching the wisdom of the
Hermetic philosophers and alchemists who taught a similar aspiration
towards higher consciousness under the analogy and symbolism of the
transmutation of the baser metals into gold.
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Next, I come to the sacrament of Holy Communion. I believe that
community and fellowship are very important. I think it is a wonderful idea
to commemorate the last supper of Jesus with his disciples. Today, whenever
two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midſt of them.
By all means, let us break bread together with our friends in fellowship and
love, but anyone who needs to take the words of Jesus literally and assume
that they are eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking His blood are requested
to keep such unwholesome phantasies to themselves.
Then there is the crucifixion and resurreion of Jesus. Many people
seem to think that this is the real essence of Christianity. How can anyone
be a “Christian” unless they believe in the death and resurreion of Christ?
Well, since you ask, Jesus himself explained how ~ y this ſhall all men know
that ye are my diſciples, if ye have love one to another.
As I consider the story of the resurreion of Jesus, I wonder if there
are any other interpretations of the data (as in the story of the virgin birth,
for example). Sure enough, other possibilities arise. I might suppose that
Jesus survived the crucifixion, for example. As I look over the story, I see
nothing about that experience that precludes survival ~ they didn’t even
break his bones. I think that perhaps we may tend to think about historical
events in the precise categories of modern terms, when the aual events may
not have been so inflexible. Certainly one was not expeed to survive
crucifixion, but the certainty of death need not have been assumed. The
importance of the crucifixion was the enormity of the torture. Whether or
not anyone might survive such an ordeal was beside the point.
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But the Crucifixion of Christ was a devastating failure. It seems
evident from the tale as we have it that Jesus expeed to be “glorified by the
Father,” Who would be coming down to earth surrounded by his Choirs of
Angels to exalt Jesus and bear him off in Glory and Triumph to His
Celestial Home, to the sound of Hosannas of Joy and Praise to the Lord and
His Son.
That didn’t happen. The poor old fraud just suffered his agony on the
cross, leaving his exhausted and wasted body to be gathered up by Joseph of
Arimathæa, with Pilate’s permission. Upon cleaning the body for interment,
Joseph discovered that the poor wreck of a man was still alive, so he whisked
the body off to a safe house where he might be nursed back to health. Later
on, the disciples had the wit to make the best of a bad situation by claiming
that Jesus died on the cross, all right, but that he then arose from the dead
on the third day, etc. But, as for Jesus, he had just been shown up as a fraud,
so he made only rare appearances to his closest disciples. Perhaps Paul never
knew.
Whether he then slunk away with Mary Magdalene, making it as far as
France where they had some babies, whose heirs eventually included the
Merovingian Kings of France, is a story which may be considered
apocryphal, as the evidence for anything like that is generally considered to
be meagre.
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Everything is for the Best in this
Best of all Possible Worlds
November, 2019
The idea that everything is for the best in this best of all possible
worlds comes from Leibnitz, but it is probably best known from andide, the
hilarious story by Voltaire, in which the idea is mercilessly pilloried by
Voltaire’s matchless wit. The poor hero Candide, his wife Cunegonde, and
his philosopher Pangloss suffer the most horrible adventures imaginable,
while Pangloss is trying to explain to Candide how all of their sorrowful
catastrophes can be understood within the context of this “best of all possible
worlds.” But, funny as that story is, I have been increasingly inclined to
agree with Leibnitz! The key to understanding the concept lies in the
operative word “possible.” In fa, this is the only possible world; hence, it
must surely be the best.
I have been reading the very enjoyable and brilliant book by Paul
Davies, he ind of od, which examines many of the fundamental
questions in which I have been interested all of my life. There is one point
to which he returns again and again (and he is not alone in this fantasy; I see
it all the time among philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians) ~ he
expresses astonishment at our amazing and complex world, full of some
special set of particular “laws of physics” which just happen, by chance or
otherwise, to apply to our world. He continually speculates about all of the
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infinite variety of other possible universes which may happen to enjoy some
completely different set of physical laws. However, it is my belief that what
we know as “the laws of physics” are inevitably derived from the ultimate
nature of reality as revealed by many inspired writings and esoteric traditions,
such as the Hebrew Kabbalah, the I Ching, the Taoist writings of Lao Tzu
and his followers, as well as the ideas of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, the
Hermetic alchemists, and many others, all of which I have tried to restate in
as clear and consistent a presentation as possible.
I am a die-hard Platonist, believing that all of the metaphysical ideas
which I derive from the numbers of mathematics are inherently real and
inescapable. That is, these ideas are not “invented”; they are “discovered,”
and it is not surprising that many speculative philosophers and mystics have
come up with very similar views of this ultimate nature of reality. This
means that all of the elaborate metaphysical implications of those ultimate
symbols, the numbers of mathematics, are not clever inventions, but are
ongoing discoveries about the ultimate nature of reality.
So I say to all of those philosophers who like to speculate about all of
those other “possible universes,” some going so far as to suggest that there
are an infinite number of possible universes, “No ~ you’re all wrong! This
universe and its laws of physics are not just a happy colleion from amongst
some infinite pool of imaginary “laws of physics,” but that every aspe of the
world we know is inevitably derived from the same ultimate and universal
metaphysics which may be derived deduively from those Original Symbols,
the numbers of mathematics, according to the famous epiphany of
Pythagoras that “all is number.”
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So we suggest that the numbers of mathematics are not just some
clever inventions, but represent a window into the Mind of God. The
metaphysics which we derive from the numbers of mathematics are not only
derived a priori from those symbols, but the metaphysics derived from the
numbers of mathematics constitute the only such metaphysics which may be
derived from any other symbols or ideas. There are no other symbols
comparable to the numbers of mathematics in their a priori purity and
perfeion. Any other symbols you might enjoy are all derived from the
lower world, created, according to Plato, by the Demiurge from the pure
ideas of the upper world of perfe forms.
In fa, all of this is so obvious and clear to me that I am really
surprised that many otherwise brilliant philosophers, scientists, and
mathematicians can speak so blithely about all of those infinite other possible
universes with some seleion out of an infinite pool of possible laws of
physics! No, all of what we know as the laws of physics must be ultimately
derived from the same original metaphysics (the only possible metaphysics)
revealed by the numbers of mathematics. Some of these mathematicians
speak of an arbitrary set of “input conditions” out of which some novelty
univerſe du jour might be hatched.
By the way, in case anyone wants to know, I have figured it out ~ the
egg came first. If you have to ask where the egg came from, you haven’t
been paying attention.
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The Finger of God
November, 2019
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems
pointless.” ~ Steven Weinberg.
Oh, no ~ the universe is brilliant! As I said so felicitously and
mellifluously somewhere earlier, the universe expanding with endless novelty
into ever greater complexity is God’s way of living forever without getting
bored. The universe is an endless exploration and celebration of the Quest
for Novelty.
There it is ~ the meaning of life, and the solution to the enigma of
why there should be any universe here at all, instead of simply nothing. I
seem to be just summing up here because I come again to the origin of the
universe as ros, forever reaching out into Novelty; but remembering also
that this is just one Person of the Trinity of God (the Mother, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost). And all three come into Being simultaneously, habens tres
partes hiloſophiæ totius undi. ompletum eſt quod dixi de Operatione olis.
And the universe thence proceeding is the aughter of od, unfolding into
the infinity of eternity.
...
I have been thinking of the idea of quantum uncertainty ~ that
“anything,” in order to exist at all, must exist as both some thing and it’s
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opposite, after the epiphany of Heraclitus. And they can reverse into their
opposite expression at any time, randomly ~ it is just the fundamental nature
of reality. But the inherent uncertainty of quantum physics becomes more
and more averaged out when you consider higher (more complex) levels of
manifestation.
However, this ripple of uncertainty can always bubble up into any
level, creating an apparent anomaly, or error. The potential for this error is
at the heart of the creation of the cosmos. What we refer to elsewhere as
ros, and the endless Quest for Novelty, we are here looking for the
equivalent mathematical expression, and I want to illustrate this with a
computer program. Let us take, for example, a program that generates a
continuously expanding fraal. Now, suppose we introduce a bug into the
program that allows (with an average random degree of frequency depending
on the complexity of the program) any pair of bits to switch into their
opposite expression, on or off, yang or yin. Now we run the program and see
what happens. By tinkering with this rate of novelty, we might generate
programs of varying levels of interest, an examination of which might
suggest interesting speculations. It would probably have to be rare, because
unrestrained error would probably quickly crash most programs. In terms of
the replication of fraals, it might be pretty interesting. The range of
“useful” rates might be narrowed down to some theoretical range, varying
from radical change to very slow evolution. Too far to the left beyond
radical change leads to explosive expressions, and too far to the right leads to
stasis and constipation. (You are welcome to compare political analogues.)
Now, over and above all of this “random change,” is the teleology
sufficient to suggest evidence of design? Is the principle of design anything
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more than the endless novelty, or is the finger of God somewhere in
evidence? (I am wondering if there is any way that the sense of that line
might be perverted, but any such efforts seem to be meaningless. Perhaps
someone with the patience and affliions of Job might lament ruefully at the
finger of God ruining his life. Hey, I guess that works, but it’s not how I
meant it.) But perhaps half the time the finger of God sends blessings, but
the other half brings affliion. So believers in God’s goodness and mercy
will consider all of their blessings and be grateful and thankful, all the while
trying to ignore or transcend all of their affliions, but there may be others
for whom the finger of God has given them nothing but sorrow. Am I
avoiding the Question, or is it unanswerable? I want to believe in a search
for the Good, not just a mindless quest for Novelty. This has to be the Holy
Ghost, making order out of chaos. But in the quest for this ultimate Good,
there is certainly a whole lot lost in the debris from the finger of God.
The Holy Ghost
Search for the Good Quest for Novelty
Mother, aia Son, ros
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In Honor of Jesus Christ
December, 2021
In honor of Jesus Christ, I want to review the eight layers of
consciousness, represented by the series of planets and metals of astrology
and alchemy, the trigrams of the I Ching, and the colors of the aura. The
familiar quest of the alchemist was to transmute lead into gold, as
represented by the following sequence of colors.
On the bottom is Black, solitude or death, depending on your frame of
reference. Nothing to see here. Then, from the view of the bottom of the
whirlpool into Black, we see the struggle for life between the anger and
violence of Red and the oppression or defeat of Purple. For a large part of
the human race, this is the horizon of consciousness ~ dog eat dog, and rat
eat rat, as people strive to get ahead of others by theft, deceit, or violence. At
a higher level than that, there is Orange, confli or engagement, which may
be anything from war to market struggle, or any work involving close
interaion. At a far remove from all of that, above the fray, there is the
peace and rest of Blue, where everything is in harmony with Tao. This is the
obje of Buddhism.
As the horizon of consciousness rises, it includes the earlier layers, but
each layer is only aware of those at that level or below. Levels higher than
the ideals of Buddhism are hard to find, but there are two more levels above
the Blue, not counting the union, White, at the top ~ Yellow and Green,
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love and grace. Yellow expresses the radiance of positive energy as love, and
Green expresses the blessings of the grace of God.
The most important lesson to be learned from this alchemical sequence
of the transmutation of lead into gold is that everything gets better as the
level of the consciousness rises. If everyone would understand this, everyone
would want to raise their consciousness as high as possible. Jesus Christ is
the most famous advocate of this level of consciousness, and this is the
foundation of his message. The theology of the Christian Church has been
developed by later scholars, but his foundational message coincides exaly
with the secret tradition of alchemy which studies the transmutation of lead
into gold.
new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another;
as I have loved you, that ye alſo love one another.
y this all all men know that ye are my diſciples if ye have love one to another.
John XIII, 34-35
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eus erditus
August, 2022
I always keep looking for the root causes of problems. It is useless to
keep stretching new band-aids over festering wounds, when what we really
need is something much more fundamental. I look at the political problems
facing the United States, and the Rest of the World, too, and I compare it
with the escalating Climate Catastrophe our planet is experiencing, along
with the Pandemics, and the Fires that are literally burning our planet up,
and I try to think, “What is the Root cause of all of this mayhem? What is
really causing this?”
My standard answer, for the last fifty years or so, has been that the
wanton destruion of our planetary heritage of Trees is the biggest problem
underlying everything else. Now they are telling us that planting trees is not
even sufficient anymore. No, it is not ufficient, but it is eceary. This
planet is too far gone to be restored to vitality merely by re-planting the
Trees that we have destroyed. But it is the underlying pre-condition before
anything else can really begin to help. It’s not just about carbon. There is a
whole organic biosphere that needs to be restored, and packing compressed
carbon dioxide into barrels buried in the ground (at astronomical expense
gleefully financed through the Banks) is not the solution. A much better
solution is to restore all of that carbon to the planet as Trees that have always
been the foundation of its health and vitality.
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But I have realized that this problem cannot even be addressed in
today’s world, as long as the planet continues as a lawless raging jungle,
activated solely by financial considerations. I have said before that Money is
the same as Power, in the same way that Matter may be converted into
Energy ~ they are two names for two expressions of the same underlying
concept. And, just to emphasize again the main point, that is no way to run
a railroad, let alone a Planet. That whole cloud of psychic energy which we
call Money (or Power) is what runs this planet, and has been causing its
inevitable collapse, which is now upon us.
So, before we can address the physical dying of our planet, we have to
address the raging conflagration of Power Points (e.g., Donald Trump,
Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Big Oil, Google, Amazon) all struggling for
dominance, which is the cause of the planet’s disease. Yes, of course this is
the same old theme, because there really isn’t any other hope unless we figure
it out ~ that reliance upon financial gain and profit is not ſuitable as the
motivating force driving all aivity on the planet.
But today’s idea is to see the problem from a yet more fundamental
view ~ always trying to get to the ultimate Root of the Problem. And I find
that all knowledge of God seems to have been lost to the present generation.
eus ortuus, eus bſconditus, aut eus erditus. Is God Dead? Or is
He only in Hiding? Or has He been Lost?
Since my father was a Methodist minister, I encountered the problem
of God at a very early age, but couldn’t understand it. Since then, I have
made it a major study, and long ago I began to figure it all out. Now it all
seems so simple and obvious. Whether you believe in God or not, at least it
is clear what it means. od is to the World as a ardener is to his arden. Did
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the Gardener die? Has he turned from his garden and hidden himself away?
Or has the Garden lost its Gardener?
All this talk about the Gardener makes me sound very conservative,
certainly paternalistic (although, of course, the Gardener we are looking for
might be either male or female, or even something in-between).
Authoritarian is the word, I guess. Yes, certainly ~ it is all about the ource
of uthority ! That is the fundamental problem of the world, and the one
which must be addressed first of all, before the other problems can be sorted
out. You need a King to keep the Nobles in check. The King, whose power
comes from God, allies with the People, in the same way that the whole Free
Farm economy and all the free services of health, education, food, and
transport are all to support the People, while the Nobles are taxed by the
King to pay for it all. But the King cannot be just the most powerful bandit
of the lot ~ He must be on a higher level, in which the King is really
identified as God. It is no coincidence that this pattern is exaly the pattern
of human society from its infancy. So, yes, we long for the Return of the
God-King, as in all the best fairy tales, and, lest you misunderstand, we are
certainly not talking about the Donald ! What a comical joke for people who
somehow yearn for the eturn of the ing to see someone like Donald
Trump as the possible Messiah they have been looking for. My viewpoint
rises quite a bit higher on the Conservative scale than that ! No, we need to
recreate a new King as an Avatar of God in a dedicated Alchemical Vessel.
A lot of people are very fearful of the implications of all of this, but it
is certainly clear to me and to a great many other visionaries that our little
garden would be a whole lot better off if the Gardener would come back.
Please, if we have lost our Gardener, let us cultivate a new one. If we gather
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a Seminary of healthy young people from all over the world, and give them
the best encouragement we can in every way, then surely an Avatar of God
will come into Being among them. That’s how magic works.
And if you can figure that out, you will not only understand Magic,
but you will also understand God.
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The Canary is Dying
January, 2024
What is going on ? I am not surprised that the world is overwhelmed
with chaos. Of courſe our world is plunging into chaos ~ there are so many
huge problems tearing this planet apart that there are going to be some
strange days ahead for the foreseeable future. Oh, no, Toto, forget about
Kansas ~ those days are never coming back; that balloon back to Kansas has
sailed long ago. Tensions exploding into war over larger and larger portions
of this frail planet of ours ? ~ get used to it. Maniacs attempting to seize
power with the help of scared and confused people who don’t know what to
think ? ~ what else is new ? [hich maniacs do I have in mind, here? tart a
liſt.]
The whole “Conservative” trend that has been going on lately confuses
a lot of different ideas which need to be sorted out. I have considered that
the more relevant fulcrum upon which the world turns is to be found in the
continuum between the extremes of harpening and eveling. Not to review
the whole idea here, but basically it is arpening that leads to effes of
diminishing tolerance variously called right-wing or fascist, and leveling that
leads to effes such as socialism or free farms. The important point here is
that neither idea is right or wrong ~ it is all a matter of degree (and
application, time, place, and situation). A certain amount of sharpening
promotes an increase of excellence, but an extreme of sharpening becomes
fascism, just as surely as ripe fruit begins to rot by a continuation of the same
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ripening process (oxidation). It is only when the fulcrum between
sharpening and leveling goes out to extreme distances in either direion,
that the probability of revolutionary change increases. This is pure Taoist
philosophy here ~ when an extreme of Yang or Yin has been reached, the
energy reverses direion, and goes the other way (enantiodromia). In a
complete life cycle there are four such points of change, two of them very
gradual, and two of them very sudden. [vide: End Notes, below]
Yes, one of those sudden changes we are talking about here is the ad
ews. So, the more we see rising symptoms of increasing sharpening all
over the world, lurching toward the right-wing, becoming less and less
tolerant, more and more hostile, and increasingly angry and violent, the
closer and more inevitable that looming ad ews becomes.
None of this, as I have said, is the least bit surprising. All of this is
perfely evident to quite a number of people, world-wide, who express their
dismay, aghast with unbelief and horror. But what I find most astonishing,
and even quite scary, is that nowhere do I see the slightest glimmer of
interest, anywhere, in addressing the roblem !
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As I have said before, quite a number of times, there can be no
progress moving forward until the entirety of planet Earth be united, and
cultivated as a Garden by a Trustee who receive one’s authority from God.
If you don’t understand what we mean by God, don’t worry about it ~
enough people have understood it over the years to keep the light visible at
the end of the tunnel. One way to get an understanding of the idea of God
is to compare our present world (without God, or where God has been
abandoned) with a potential world united under a single, established
institution designed to promote the channel from God to the life of our
planet and its flora and fauna, including human beings. This present world
of ours is a rolling catastrophe of endless war, greedy mining, raping, and
pillaging under the aw of the ungle. That world is now in smoking ruins ~
just ask anyone in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Syria . . .
But a world gratefully accepting the Grace of God in the person of an
incarnate Avatar who would supervise the restoration and cultivation of this
Earth of ours back to the Garden it once was, would be a game changing
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improvement, a transformative revolution analogous in scope to the Omega
oint of Teilhard de Chardin (quod vide).
oney is a universal abstraion which describes the movements of
human energy on the planet. Thus, a new Bank must be established under
an entirely new principle. Money would be created as needed and dispensed
to fund every enterprise important to the health of the planet. A funioning
economy has to have a free flowing movement of money, so the new Bank
would fund farmers to grow food and people to plant trees. All public
services, health care, education, research, public transit, struural
maintenance, and more would all be direly funded by the Bank, as
authorized by the Trustee. Other services could be provided, such as non-
profit food distribution, and free farms for the indigent. Other aspes of
life, such as the manufaure and sale of consumer produs, would be
provided by a free market.
The Bank would manage the value of the new currency it creates by a
system of taxation. A primary tax would be imposed for any pollution or
resource extraion of any kind. For example, a very large tax would have to
be paid to the Bank for every barrel of oil pumped out of the ground, or
every tree cut down. This would force the prices up, so that much less oil
would be pumped out and fewer trees would be cut, and those taxes would
continue to increase, pricing oil out of the market entirely (except for very
specialized industrial uses), and making wood produs very expensive. But
after these taxes, a general property or wealth tax would be colleed from the
wealthiest of persons or companies. A progressive tax rate wouldn’t even
start until around $10 million or so, at very moderate rates, but then rates
would increase rapidly at the upper levels of wealth so that it would be the
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super-rich who pay the great bulk of the tax, while everyone else not only
pays little or no tax at all, but receives all of the free services above
enumerated for the smooth and happy funioning of the world. Best of all,
who among the super-rich will come forward to complain about the tax ?
The amount of ones tax would be an ultimate status symbol.
Anyone else would be free to operate any business without hindrance,
as long as there be no infraion of the extensive climate or environmental
regulations, taxes, or fines. With a network of free farms, “where everyone is
welcome and everything is free,” anyone who runs out of financial resources
for any reason could just live a simple life for free (until or unless taking up a
new position in the outside world again). An immense host of social
problems would fade away once it were no longer necessary to obtain money
at any cost.
There would be very little need for any other international regulation
apart from the enormous influence of direing the creation and spending of
money. However, the same Avatar, incarnation of the living God, would
also exercise the funion of final arbiter of Justice in the court system, in
addition to authorizing the disbursement of funds by the Bank. There
would be no more use for war, since wars only move one backwards. War
creates a nadir of prosperity, which, in turn, creates more anger and violence,
which leads to more and more mutually self-destruive war, (this is the self-
perpetuating negative cycle of Red and Purple consciousness ~ did you know
that there is also a self-perpetuating positive cycle way up above, at the level
of Yellow and Green?) Since ultimately it is money over which people go to
war, territorial distinions won’t make much difference. It really doesn’t
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matter who “owns” regions of eastern Ukraine, since everyone would live by
the same laws anyway.
All of the transaions with the Bank could be done instantly, by
computer. All taxes and fees paid back to the Bank would be simply erased,
as the only funion of the taxation is to maintain the value of the currency
by trimming the excess off the top. The atural aw of oney (in case you
hadn’t noticed) is that it is constantly being vacuumed up to the top, so the
obvious principle of taxation, and the role of the State, should be to take it
off the top and return it to the base via all the free services described herein.
Notice how the “role of the State” here differs from the Jungle economy, in
which the “State” is maintained by the wealthy for the purpose of conserving
and increasing their wealth. The present Jungle economy must be replaced
by a Trustee whose authority comes from God. The founding of a Seminary
for this purpose has been discussed elsewhere.
Under the beneficent regulation of this Trustee, or Advocate, who
speaks for God, a new Golden Age of peace and prosperity would supervene.
Anger and confli would begin to recede; “the war will be over;” soldiers
could return to their families and their farms; and the agenda of regenerating
the living biosphere of the Earth could begin in a systematic way ~ planting
more trees, retreating from the fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy, and
more ~ for example, inhumane faory animal farms would be taxed or fined
out of existence. Non-organic farming praices would also be taxed away or
outlawed.
It is hard to calculate the net effe of all of this on the general index of
happiness and prosperity, but it seems to me that a world under the direion
of a Gardener under the authority of God would vastly outperform our
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present world, and the contrast between the chaos rampaging all over the
globe at the present time and a world carefully cultivated by the Gardener of
God would finally allow anyone who hasn’t figured it out yet to understand
what God means, after all.
nd otes: Further information about the ideas mentioned here can
be found in the Author’s colleed essays ~ One lanet akeover
(tree.org/One Planet Makeover.pdf) and eleed rticles, etaphyſics and
heology (tree.org/Seleed Articles.pdf).
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The Meaning of Life
May, 2024
At last! Some good news: “.. gnals ſupport for poible I ſanions
over Iſrael arrants.” But then, when I go to read the article, it turns out that
the sanions under discussion are sanions against the International
Criminal Court for daring to suggest that Israel had done anything wrong!
We are told that the I CC has made a “profoundly wrong-headed decision.”
That’s worse than Donald Trump instigating an insurreion when he fails to
get re-eleed. Both the United States and Israel need to take off their
blinders and see what they look like in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Both countries are aing from a very primitive level of consciousness. But
since levels of consciousness have been plunging precipitously all over the
planet, it is all the more important for some visionaries to exercise some
leadership at a higher level, to guide this wayward planet back to health,
because, of course, the planet’s prevailing level of consciousness is direly
related to the prevailing level of biological health. As one goes down, so
does the other. It is the unintended conſequence of climate change.
Oh, how the mighty are fallen! This used to be a great country
(relatively speaking) as recently as 1950, but it’s all over now, Baby Blue.
The rate at which stuff that goes on in this world is spinning out of
control is rapidly accelerating. I must be getting old, if everything I see
happening is wrong, wrong, wrong, and getting worſe. I take some comfort
176
from the fa that most of my views align with those of the very young, who
are concerned about climate change, and consider it a real issue, unlike the
endless parade of useless news that is just out there to distra us from what
is really going on. Most young people, all over the world, want to see
charges dropped from Julien Assange (and given a Congressional Medal of
Honor, into the bargain), and are strenuously opposed to the genocide
perpetrated by the State of Israel against the Palestinian people, who were
living on the land before the Jews came along to take it from them.
Anytime I say things like this I have to repeat that I do not dislike Jews
~ it is the odious State of Israel and its leaders that I dislike, with their
unreconstrued view of Zionism ~ very Old Testament, and repugnant to
modern sensibilities. In the same way, I do not dislike the Russian people or
the American people; I just dislike the wicked governments of same.
What else do we agree on, young people and I ? ~ the insurgents in
Burma (calling itself Myanmar, these days), and the people of Ukraine,
Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, all of whom want to be free. Tax the rich,
especially billionaires, who can most easily afford it, and, in return, provide a
Universal Basic Income for the rest of us (similar to my suggestion of Free
Farms ~ I still like the free farm idea; it’s more fun, cheaper to implement,
and an altogether better solution for people who run out of money). Tax Big
Oil and any other criminal gang profiteering from the rape of the earth.
Settle international disputes by diplomacy instead of war. Free the herb, of
course, but free LSD, too, and all the rest of the agents of change, while we
are at it. Free people should be allowed to make their own choices about the
way they want to live their lives [thank you, imi endrix]. Education
should be the only legal recourse against anything with which one has a
177
problem. If people want to tattoo their bodies, change their gender, abort
their children, love someone whom other people consider inappropriate
[which is worse ~ loving someone of an “inappropriate” age, gender, or
status, or not loving anyone at all?], jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, or
otherwise behave in ways at variance with the dominant paradigm, it is
nobody’s business but those who are direly involved.
I think the voting age should be twenty-five. Anyone over that age
shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
There is a reason why the large strand of human energy flows in the
way that it does, but creative variations all around the central cord, in
constant search of an alternative, are the energy of creative evolution, the
endless quest for novelty. It’s the Meaning of Life, after all.
178
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