I wrote this back in 1990. It's a little rough, a little out-dated, and filled with college-age idealism. Still, I was only 18 when I put this together. It's presented in its original, unedited form. |
I wrote this back in 1990. It's a little rough, a little out-dated, and filled with college-age idealism. Still, I was only 18 when I put this together. It's presented in its original, unedited form. |
We are living in the age of information. Right now, on every television station, on every radio broadcast, and in every other form of mass media, we are being bombarded with it. Thanks to the easy access to the latest home technologies, we will soon be able to communicate with and see the rest of the world in ways never done before in history, which will bring us even more knowledge of how others live all over the planet. We will witness different lifestyles, different belief systems, even different realities within the years to come...and we will attempt to process all of this information in a way that still makes sense to us with our traditional convictions of what is right and wrong.
But it is easy to see problems arising from this overdose of perception. What if our traditions don't hold up? What if the very fabric of what we have always taken for granted as being true or false...or right or wrong...is thrown for a loop when we see other cultures living and thriving in ways that are completely alien to us? What if our myths and convictions are destroyed in the process? What if other cultures are destroyed witnessing ours?
It is hard to keep track of everything that our minds perceive nowadays. Most of what the mass media is giving us is useless bits of data about the latest products or the most recent celebrity scandal. Either that or it is telling us to be complacent and fearful of the outside world by bringing us its worst elements during the nightly news broadcasts. We do not have control over what we see on our screens. We can always change the channel, but we always see what someone else wants us to.
This is changing rapidly as well. Soon we will be able to have a greater say over what we see and think. As more tools are made available to the public, more of the old confining institutions will have a much harder time keeping their grasp upon the majority. This has traditionally been met with aggression by many of these older institutions in the past, but because of the sheer amount of new knowledge being produced and distributed every second, even they can't keep up with it all. Soon there will be controls by which people can make their own television shows, or walk into virtual environments of their own design, and this is only the beginning of what we are capable of as intelligent individuals.
With all of this promise for a brighter tomorrow, there is still the fear that the elements of control and oppression will use it for their own ends and abuse these methods to further lead our species down the road to our extinction. This is why it is necessary to have a greater understanding of exactly who we are and what we are a part of to enable us to meet the next stage of human evolution in a way that is open and tolerant instead of fearful and ignorant.
That is why I have decided to write this document about my philosophy, Infinite Connectivism. It is a very detailed and somewhat complicated philosophy, but the basic idea is simple: Everything is connected in the universe and everything is infinite. By giving my ideas and those of others in attempt to understand the relationships within the endless sea of new and old religions, sciences, and mythologies, we will hopefully construct a blueprint of what is to come together as a whole, and yet still remain separate enough to maintain our individuality and personal convictions.
This philosophy is nothing new. The ideas presented here have been known since the beginning of our existence here on this planet, and perhaps even before. It is also not a religion, for with religions come dogmas, and with dogmas come the need to assert control over anyone who dares to deviate from the flock. It is that very intolerance that causes witch hunts, book burnings, and even world wars.
If you like what you read, let me know. If you hate it, let me know why. I need peoples' input to better understand my own ideas of the world and to keep a balance between my expressions and how they are perceived by others.
Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the philosophy.
It is the misunderstanding of the Earth, the forgetting of the
star on which he lives, that has made for man an existence at
the mercy of the merchandise he produces, the largest which
is devoted to death.
-Georges Bataille(1)
In a complex whole, the presupposition upon which oneness is
based is not unity or sameness, but interrelatedness and
diversity.
-Diana L. Eck(2)
When we think of the infinite, most of us are struck with a sense of dread. The concept of something without a start or a finish seems to go against the traditional way we think about things. We think of things as having a beginning and an end...after all, every book has a first and last page, everything born eventually dies. This seems to logically be the full cycle...tight, compact, and finite.
So it is no wonder when we are faced with the notion that our universe may be infinite, it seems hard to believe or accept. It brings about a certain sense of apathy and insignificance in the eyes of the cosmos...That we are hardly a speck in an eternal void of darkness without boundary or limit.
When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the
eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can
touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that
I know not and know me not, I am frightened and astonished
to see myself here instead of there...now instead of then.
-Blaise Pascal(3)
It is because of this frightening vision that we have searched for the origin of our universe, a starting point that can put some perspective on our place in the grand scheme of things.
Some of us believe that God created the Heavens and the Earth. This would seem to do the trick for many people who can be sustained by their faith alone, but unfortunately...many of us live in an age of doubt where logic and rationality bring questions to light about this theory. First of all, how could a non-physical entity such as God create a physical one such as the universe, and what was there before He created it? What was there before He created Himself? Did He create Himself? Is He a She?
One would think that science would come up with a more logical answer. The most widely accepted theory as to the origin of the universe held by scientists today is that of the Big Bang. To put it simply: A huge explosion that occurred over many billions of years ago sent all matter flying apart, causing the matter to constantly expand away from its source and form the universe. The explosion, called the Big Bang, was caused by all of the particles in the universe becoming so condensed that the tremendous pressure inevitably forced them to blow apart. What this explanation does not tell us is how those particles came into being in the first place.
If you were to ask, many scientists would tell you that before the Big Bang, there was simply "Nothing". If you were to ask most religious folks what was around before God decided to create everything, they would more than likely say "Nothing" as well. But let's think about the concept of "Nothingness" ...what would it look like? It could not be black or white, blank or dark, for that would be something. Nothingness would be impossible to perceive of, for it is a lack of perception. There is no such thing as Nothingness in our realm of awareness...for even a void in space would be a tangible thing. This leads us to the conclusion that there was never simply "Nothing".
Let's look at the Big Bang theory another way. Suppose the force that brought all the matter together in such a tightly condensed state was gravity, for we know that the force of gravity is present everywhere in the universe. Now, suppose this explosion sent all this matter outward to the far reaches of dark space, only to have the force of gravity start to pull it all back in again after a few millennium. This would mean that there would be an infinite number of Big Bangs, and that our universe is always either in a state of expansion or contraction...an oscillating system with no beginning or end.
It seems then that the particles that compose the universe were never created, that there is no true origin of it all...that everything within the universe has no beginning or end. This can easily be proven with one of the basic laws of science.
The Law of Conservation of Mass, originally discovered by Antoine Lavoisier, is that law. He found that matter cannot be created or destroyed during a chemical reaction, even though it may change its appearance. This means that the amount of matter produced by a chemical reaction must always be the same as the amount that took part in the reaction. Later on, scientists applied this law to energy as well.
So if no energy or mass is ever created or destroyed but merely changes form, nothing simply "popped" into existence. It seems like the components of the universe have been here for all eternity.
Already it seems like we are faced with the dreaded concept of an infinite universe, not only in its age but in its scale. Space does not just end at some point...it goes on forever. Lucretius gave the classic argument for a boundless universe in his De Rerum Natura:
Suppose for a moment that the whole of space were bounded
and that someone made his way to the uttermost boundary
and threw a flying dart. (4)
Either this dart would go beyond the boundary, showing that there is no boundary at all; or it will stop...showing that there is something just beyond the boundary that stops it. This again means that the universe does not simply end there.(5)
Our universe is probably contained within a larger one, and that one contained in one still larger.
So where does this put us in the perspective of this infinitely expanding space? Before one can talk of man's insignificance and tininess in the eyes of the cosmos, one must explore infinity as it applies in the small as well as the large to see our true position in the universe.
In ancient Greece, the atom was discovered. It came from the Greek word atamos, meaning "uncuttable". For many centuries, the atom was thought to be the smallest particle of matter...the smallest unit of a chemical element...indivisible and indestructible. This brought things to a nice, condensed perspective. Atoms composed all things and that was that.
But then subatomic particles were found. In 1932, the British physicist James Chadwick discovered the Neutron. Electrons were found even earlier in 1897 by Sir Joseph John Thompson. Then along came Protons, Quarks, Up Quarks, Down Quarks, Strange Quarks and Neutrinos. A whole vast array of smaller matter seemed to make what looked like a closed chapter in the way we understand the world around us turn into merely the tip of the iceberg.
As for there being even smaller particles, this seems very likely. Today many scientists believe things like Neutrinos to be as small as things are going to get, stating that they are completely massless. This seems to be a bit hard to believe. It would be immature to realistically consider Neutrinos the "end of the line". It's only a matter of time before technology let's us probe in deeper into the building blocks of all that surrounds us. If smaller particles were found to compose atoms, why can't they compose Neutrinos?
In his book From Quark to Quasar, Peter H. Cadogan explains this interesting theory:
The nearest we have been able to probe toward the Big Bang,
theoretically speaking of course, is a fleeting ten to the
negative forty three seconds, a point in time which is
believed that there was but one force in nature, namely that
of gravity. It is at this point that we enter what is known
as the Planck Era, about which very little is known except
the temperature of the Universe was ten to the thirtieth
kilometers and the scale of the entire universe was ten to
the negative thirty five meters, a billion trillionth of the
scale of an atomic nucleus. (6)
If the entire universe can be and was able to exist on such a small scale, is there any problem believing smaller matter lies beyond that of the smallest particle we currently know of?
My estimation is there is no smallest particle. That every piece of matter, no matter how tiny, will be composed of still yet smaller pieces of matter...indefinitely. The reason why scientists believe that this is not the case right now is because when they study subatomic particles, they literally have no dimension, and act as both a particle and a wave when observed in different ways. If something appears to take up no space, it is hard to determine what it is composed of!
Because subatomic phenomena appear as both particles and waves, scientists have put them in a special category known as "quanta". The strange thing about quanta properties is that the only time that they appear to be particles is when we are observing them! Scientists have developed clever ways of determining that when they are not observed, quantas are always in the form of waves. Perhaps within this infinite strand there lies an awareness so implicate that it can detect when it is being watched.
If subatomic quanta is indeed massless, then by its nature it must be non-local, which means that it is existing everywhere and nowhere at once. They are not here nor there, they just are. If this seems like metaphysics more than quantum physics, perhaps it is. Michael Talbot explains in greater detail what this non-local theory would mean in his book The Holographic Universe:
Indeed, because the quantum potential permeates all of space,
all particles are nonlocally interconnected. More and more the
picture of reality Bohm was developing was not one in which
subatomic particles were separate from one another and
moving through the void of space, but one in which all things
were part of an unbroken web and embedded in a space
that was as real and rich with process as the matter that
moved through it. (7)
From small to large, from large to small, our universe seems to be infinite. Every atom is an endless collection of worlds and galaxies... and this means that an infinite number of worlds come together to form each of us!
But doesn't it end there? Sure, all of these seemingly endless particles form our bodies, but this is where it stops. We are individual entities, our skin and bones separating ourselves from the external environment. Does the eternal chain come to an abrupt halt at this point?
No. For one must learn to look at the larger picture.
To better understand the larger picture, we can look at a single cell. Each cell contains the capacity to reproduce and pass on biological information, consume food, and excrete waste. Like us, each cell is a separate, individual entity in itself; but each cell must come together with other cells to form our tissue and ligaments. Your cells are merely smaller parts that come together to form a larger whole...your body.
Each of us, perspectively, comes together with other people, animals, plants, and elements around us to form a still yet larger whole...the Earth.
I have been trying to think of the Earth as a kind of organism,
but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too
complex, with too many working parts lacking visible connections.
The other night, driving through a hilly, wooded part of Southern
New England, I wondered about this. If not like an organism,,
what is it like, what is it most like? Then satisfactorily for that
moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell.
-Lewis Thomas(8)
As we know, the Earth comes together with the other planets to form the solar system. Our solar system makes up a tiny part of our galaxy the Milky Way...being one of billions of galaxies in the realm of the universe. And on and on.
So where are we in the scheme of things? Where do we stand in relation to the cosmos? It seems that we are right in the middle of an endless sea of matter...with an infinite number of universes composing you, and you composing an infinite number of universes. We are not insignificant nor are we noteworthy, but we are right in the middle of something that never ends! Everything is a center in something infinite! Our position would seem at first to be a point in an eternal chaos that goes on forever, but the more we look and study this chaos in motion...the more we see a pattern emerge.
Take a moment to consider this. Look at your hand. Now look
at the light streaming from the lamp beside you. And at the
dog resting at your feet. You are not merely made of the
same things. You are the same thing. One thing. Unbroken.
One enormous something that has extended its uncountable
arms and appendages into all the apparent objects, atoms,
restless oceans, and twinkling stars in the cosmos.
-Michael Talbot(9)
What is light to the eye is sound to the ear. I have the image
of the senses being terms, forms, or dimensions not of one
thing common to all, but of each other, locked in a circle of
mutuality.
-Alan W. Watts(10)
When most of us think of things that are not instantly recognized as having some sort of connection, we immediately disassociate one thing with another. It seems natural to us to see how a fork and a knife relate with each other, but not at all apparent how an umbrella and a fish could relate just as well.
To see this association, pretend you are a distant space traveler. For many years you have been exploring the galaxy and witnessing the various systems of rocks and global conditions on alien planets and moons. On one planet you begin to explore, at the foot of your spaceship, strangely enough, is a dead fish and an umbrella. Being away from our planet so long, you would instantly associate these two things as being part of the Earth...being part of the larger whole you once composed.
Since we are still part of this larger whole, we are not exempt from these connections. Everything around us is in a sense related with each other...part of each other, for our interactions with other external things on planet Earth cause the fate of the larger picture... The inevitable fate of the world will be our fate as well.
Everything you do, everything you see and experience, and everything you come in contact with is part of nature...so obviously we are part of nature as well. Like the forests and the oceans, like the sun and the moon, we play a crucial role in the composition of life; and to try and separate ourselves from this fact is both ignorant and dangerous.
We are told that the trouble with modern man is that he has
been trying to detach himself from nature. He sits in the
topmost tiers of polymer, glass, and steel, dangling his pulsing
legs, surveying at a distance the writhing life of the planet.
In this scenario, man comes on as a stupendous lethal force,
and the Earth bubbles at the surface of a country pond, or
flights of fragile birds.
But it is illusion to think that there is anything fragile about
the life of the Earth; surely this is the toughest membrane
imaginable in the universe, opaque to probability, imperme-
able to death. We are the delicate part, transient and
vulnerable as cilia. Nor is it a new thing for man to invent
an existence that he imagines to be above the rest of life;
this has been the consistent intellectual exertion down the
millennia. As illusion, it has never worked out to his
satisfaction in the past, any more than it does today. Man
is imbedded in nature.
-Lewis Thomas(11)
Today, most scientists can see this correlation. They look at life and everything in it as a complex web of chaotic interactions. Yet, recently in physics, patterns have begun to emerge in these seemingly random events. Chaotic theory is just starting to understand the endless connections and formations the things that compose the world can take on:
Watch two bits of foam flowing side by side at the bottom of
a waterfall. What can you guess about how close they were
on top? Nothing. As far as standard physics were concerned,
God might just as well have taken all those water molecules
under the table and shuffled them personally. Traditionally,
when physicists saw complex results, they looked for
complex causes. When they saw a random relationship
between what goes into a system and what comes out, they
assumed that they would have to build randomness into
any realistic theory, by artificially adding noise or error.
The modern study of chaos began with the creeping
realization in the 1960's that quite simple mathematical
equations could model systems every bit as violent as a
waterfall. The differences in input could quickly become
overwhelming differences in output...a phenomenon given
the name "Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions".
In weather, for example, this translates into what is only
half jokingly known as the Butterfly Effect...the notion
that a butterfly stirring in the air today in Peking can
transform storm patterns next month in New York.
-James Gleick (12)
The Butterfly Effect is a very powerful explanation of what our place is within the universe. Because of the infinite effects of every living creature on this planet, everything that composes it has a crucial role in the outcome of the future. Our connections to nature and the universe are so widespread that the fate of the world is in our hands. Sure, Lewis Thomas made a point that we are the delicate ones and not the Earth that surrounds us, but our minds are capable of producing technology with such damaging effects that we can only wonder how long our world can take it. Remember, the Earth's fate is our fate, for we are part of the Earth.
To see how one event can lead to an infinite number of future events, we will look at a brief description of a section from the book by James Burke, entitled appropriately enough, Connections.(13)
In the book, Burke first describes the great New York blackout that hit the city earlier in the century. When it occurred, traffic gridlocked, elevators stopped, electrical systems failed and people were rendered virtually helpless. Many who were in hospitals or other crucial situations lost their lives. Planes were unable to contact control towers and had to be diverted, and widespread looting occurred. A virtual wave of disorder and fear swept through these people as many realized for the first time just how dependent we are on the technology that surrounds us...that is capable of failure.
So how did we get to this point? What incidents in our past brought us to this helpless state? Of course there were many incidents that had a profound effect, but Burke takes us back to an ancient gold collector who was working for the king of his realm. After discovering a way to test the purity of gold by rubbing nuggets on touchstones in the lake in which he was gathering them, his king was able to value collected metals accurately. This led to the minting and distribution of coins.
Coinage was an important development of trade, for now these metals were known to be of value and easily exchanged on the market. Great trading centers such as Alexandria sprang up and became the intellectual and cultural centers of the world. It was in this trading center that Ptolemy made his discoveries of the stars and their positions on the celestial sphere.
Well, Alexandria eventually fell with Rome, but Ptolemy's works were preserved and were applied to navigation by sailors hundreds of years later. Before these maps and other advances were made in sailing techniques, only a few voyages could be made every year in certain seasons depending upon the direction of the wind. Now many trading voyages could be made at almost any time of the year, and an abundant supply of raw materials was being built up in the large cities that received them. This led to the assembly line, the factory, and the Industrial Revolution.
As inventors and retailers attempted to find better ways to make more products out of the increasingly more abundant raw materials faster and cheaper, machines were constructed and the whole world changed. People moved from the farm to the factory...from the country to the city, and the mechanization of life and dependence upon machinery began. The process of making something yourself became an alien concept as the large mills and industries churned things out for you in piles before your eyes. Heating and electricity became mechanized as well, and our cities and ways of life were run more and more by machines.
It was on one of those machines that a defective part was developed for the power lines that run into New York City. This part became unstable and sent a burst of power through the system that was too large to be maintained. This caused an overload and led to the system shutting down. This, in turn, led to the great blackout described before. All of these events can be traced back to and beyond the lone gold collector. A single, isolated incident became an explosively important one whose effects we can still very much feel today. If a gold collector can do so much...If a butterfly can do so much...think about what each of us is capable of doing!
In explaining all of this we become familiar with the primary concept of this philosophy...that everything is both infinite and connected. Knowing this gives us a better understanding of what our place and relation to things around us is in our lives. We can take anything we experience, any mystery before us...and apply these two concepts and see the results.
To see how other forms of reality can apply to this, we can never be sure. If there are indeed endless parallel universes and modes of perception, we can never really know what they may be like. But we do know of at least one other form of reality we experience other than our conscious lives that also seems to apply to Infinite Connectivism...the dream.
Dreaming is a universal human experience. In a phenomeno-
logical sense, a dream is an experience of life that is recognized,
in retrospect, to have taken place in the mind while asleep,
although at the time it was experienced it carried the same
sense of verisimilitude that we associate with waking
experiences; that is, it seemed to happen in a "real" world
that was only in retrospect acknowledged to be a "dream"
world.
-James A. Hall, M.D.(14)
We live and feel as much dreaming as waking and are the
one as much as the other. It is one of the superiority's of man
that he dreams and knows it. We have hardly made the right
use of this yet. Dreaming is a life which, combined with the
rest of us, makes up what we call human life. Dreams gradually
merge into our waking; we cannot say where man's waking
state begins.
-Lichtenberg(15)
The dreamscape is another form of consciousness we experience. While many psychologists have tried to determine what they mean to us, contrasting theories about dreams have arisen between two of the most famous men to study the mind...Freud and Jung.
While Freud's concept of the dream was that it merely guarded sleep from interruption by repressed impulses, Jung looked further into the meaning of dreams and determined that they "...compensated the limited views of the waking ego...but explained far beyond mere assimilation of new data."(16) Jung said that what one sees in dreams are our individual complexes. Complexes are an emotionally charged group of ideas or images, and at the "center" of a complex is an archetype or archetypal image. (17) We will explain what these are later.
Jung believed the mind and the "collective unconscious" as he called it, to be boundless...infinite. That instead of each person having individual thoughts they each create, the ideas are already and have always been in existence in this "Mindscape". Rudy Rucker described this well in his book Infinity and the Mind:
I think of consciousness as a point, an "eye" that moves about
in a sort of mental space. All thoughts are already there in
this multi-dimensional space, which we might as well call the
Mindscape. Our bodies move about in the physical space
called the universe; our consciousness move about in the
mental space called the Mindscape.
Just as we all share the same universe, we all share the same
Mindscape. For just as you can physically occupy the same
position in the universe that anyone else does, you can, in
principle, mentally occupy the same state of mind or position
in the Mindscape that anyone else does. It is, of course,
difficult to show someone else how to see things your way,
but all of mankind's cultural heritage attests that this is not
impossible.
Just as a rock is already in the universe, whether or not
someone is handling it, an idea is already in the Mindscape.(18)
Since this seems to say that ideas and thoughts seem to have no beginning or end, Jung concluded that they were already stored somewhere within our collective unconscious. He explained that there were certain patterns or motifs that come from the collective unconscious that are the basic content of religions, mythologies, legends and fairy tales. These he called archetypes, and claimed they emerge in individuals through dreams and visions.
As we look at the different civilizations that have emerged through history, we can see many similarities in vastly different cultures that would seem at first glance to have no association with each other whatsoever. Many of these myths of other lands contain the same symbolic metaphors as our Western religions we are so familiar with. Things like the all powerful deity, the rise and fall from grace, the saviour of mankind...except for the names and certain details that are changed, the ideas are virtually identical in these other mythologies. This would seem to be the workings of these archetypes, which manifest themselves in separate places at the same time. These are what Jung called synchronicities. Joseph Campbell said it best when he talked about these apparent contrasts between different faiths:
If you were not alert to the parallel themes, you perhaps
would think of them as quite different stories, but they're
not. (19)
Synchronicities occur all the time. Many of us have said the same thing as someone else at the same moment, seen a number or picture strangely reoccur in the most unexpected places, and on and on. It is thought that the reason this happens is because of archetypal manifestations within the Mindscape.
Recently, theoretical physics has developed a model of the universe as a hologram that would account for, among other things, the presence of synchronicities. The Holographic Model, pioneered by scientists like Karl Pribram and David Bohm, gives us an explanation for infinitely connected concepts and ideas that Michael Talbot once again explains in his book The Holographic Universe:
Three-dimensionality is not the only remarkable aspect of
holograms. If a piece of holographic film containing the image
of a apple is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each
half will still be found to contain the entire image of the
apple! Even if the halves are divided again and again, an
entire apple can still be reconstructed from each small
portion of the film (although the images will get hazier as
the portions get smaller.) Unlike normal photographs,
every small fragment of a piece of holographic film con-
tains all the information recorded in the whole.
This was precisely the feature that got Pribram so excited,
for it offered at last a way of understanding how memories
could be distributed rather than localized in the brain. If it
was possible for every portion of holographic film to contain
all the information necessary to create a whole image, then
it seemed equally possible for every part of the brain to
contain all of the information necessary to recall a whole
memory. (20)
So if the universe we inhabit is a Holographic one, then each part would contain the sum total of the whole. If this is true, synchronicities would simply be a result of the current resonating energies in existence at any particular time. This connection is even more directly experienced through the dream state.
When we dream, our mind becomes free from the burden of logical thinking and more directly associated with the collective unconscious. It is at this time that connections with things become clearer and your deeply rooted self meshes with the symbols and experiences of your waking life. Our dreams are one of the most effective ways to clearly come in contact with those archetypes that mentally link us with everything else.
Surrealists in the early days of the movement held strong to this theory, and looked to dreams and other means of tapping into the collective unconscious to get to what they believed was the purest form of thought. Andre Breton, known as one of the founders of surrealist thought, described it this way:
Surrealism is pure psychic automatism by which it is
intended to express verbally, in writing or by other means,
the true functioning of thought. (21)
Using automatic writing, free associations like hats and tubas, and bringing every day objects together in molded sculptures, Surrealism was one of the first art movements that began to see the inner connectedness of everything that surrounds us...a realization that came to them from their dreams and their minds.
Our minds are truly boundless. When one is asked to think of what we perceive the entire Mindscape to look like, some vision or another pops into our heads. This vision would be one of endless thoughts, pictures, symbols...everything one can experience, and it would have to be infinite.
Why is this? Because if one pictures the entire Mindscape, it would have to include an image of the entire Mindscape one is now picturing! This image is included within our realm of thoughts just as clearly as any other. You can go further and say that the image of us pondering ourselves pondering...ad infinitum. So our minds are infinite just like the universe. It brings new relevance to the infamous quote by William Blake:
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would
appear to man as it is, infinite. (22)
If only man could live without the logical restraints of reason, our connection to our subconscious would be greater. Reason is the unique ability we have that separates us from the other animals on this planet, and this might not necessarily be a good thing.
It is thought that animals live a Zen-like existence...seeing how they relate with the cosmos simply by being. They are perfectly aware in their inability of logical deduction of where and what they are...alive on this planet for the sake of being alive.
We, on the other hand, have let our logic spread through our thoughts and tainted the purity of our simplistic animal like existence. Perhaps this is what is meant by our "falling from grace". When Eve ate the apple and mankind gained the knowledge of his own awareness, we started down the road to confusion, isolation, and despair.
Perhaps it is necessary to "fall" from this state however. If we do not develop logical reasoning, we will not be able to recognize what we see when we attempt to get back to that primordial state. This is why Zen Buddhists attempt to cleanse their doors of perception and truly experience the entire world around them.
Western philosophy is primarily different from Eastern philosophy in the respect that the quest for an answer in the West has been externalized to the point that one feels they need to find objective, rational signs and objects within the world to explain the nature of man. Whether this quest is directed into science, economics, semiology, psychology, or existential logic, the West's philosophy is one of language, based in words. Therefore, individual needs and questions about our purpose and place have been categorized into neatly placed conceptual schools of thought.
Being all too human in the assumption that these logical systems are direct and the only ones that will work in a reason-based world, we have forgotten for what it is that we search and how we can go about finding it.
The philosophy of the East is different because its purpose has never been lost, only its methods have changed. Eastern thought is first of all not based in time, but is very much about the timeless NOW that
exists eternally. Escaping the concepts of history and social perspective may seem irrational to those who have been led to think that we have been shaped by our culture. Western ideology believes that the only real truth lies within the larger structure of our relations with language instead of searching for an understanding of all things as part of a manifestation of a divine Oneness.
When we realize how we are connected forever to the world within us and the world outside, the goal of life would appear to be to gain a direct contact and experience with this unity in whatever way is most effective for each of us, and realize first hand that you are not a separate entity, but a direct and therefore complete part of the universal essence which drives us all. This can be done a number of ways, and language is one of them. By explaining these concepts logically, one can better grasp the ideas behind them. Unfortunately, by writing something within the confines of language that attempts to explain things that go beyond words is often a futile and dangerous task.
The paradox lies in the fact that to escape the system of our current means of communication, we must attempt to work within the structure to bring about understanding to change it. The problem is that there is no truly effective way of describing an experience that is outside of objective, rational logistics, and many times explanations become incomprehensible or confusing:
Words do not express thoughts very well. They always
become a little different immediately after they are
expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it
also pleases me and seems right that what is of value
and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.
-Hermann Hesse(23)
Joseph Campbell gave an example of a lecture by a Zen Master who merely heard a bird singing and said, "...The lesson is finished."(24) By doing this gesture, he explained how all life is transcendent and beautiful both in its complexity and in its simplicity using only four words! Most of our Western schools of spiritual beliefs are unfortunately not so brief.
Our consciousness can still understand verbal explanations of the spiritual, yet many of the proposed words of what the various religious texts and gospels say seem to always get exploited or distorted in their translations by those that control the hierarchy of the religions themselves. This is why there are Holy Wars, Inquisitions, Crusades, Holocausts and racial intolerance on a global scale. It is because man knows that it is theoretically easier to control a flock by placing them in servitude toward a higher power than explaining to them that higher power is within them as well. Not only this, but the powers that be limit their perspectives by telling them that one ideology is the only real truth and that all others are detrimental and evil.
What the thinker thinks the prover proves...whether you
are living in a Christian reality tunnel, a Mansonoid reality
tunnel, an Immortalist reality tunnel, a Vegetarian reality
tunnel, a Rationalist reality tunnel...Everybody has the "One
True Religion".
-Robert Anton Wilson(25)
Capitalism is based upon the idea that we lack the capacity to make ourselves happy and whole individuals without the consumption of material goods. It is no different from religion in the sense that both make slaves out of their followers by waving a promise that all will be well if one abides by the system. What Heaven is to Christians, the American Dream is to Capitalists. Many don't realize that if anyone within a consumer society ever found lasting contentment, the system would collapse. It seems we are living in a society structured on always keeping the carrot a few inches from our noses.
It is therefore interesting to note that this system works (more or less) by using the idea of consistent "lack". There is something that each of us desires that we can never seem to satisfy. The question is:
What? What are we lacking?
Psychologists have determined that this "lack" of something is sexual in nature. Freud sets up an elaborate notion of the Oedipal Complex, where the boy wants to have sex with his mother but won't for fear of being castrated by his father. He therefore becomes like his father and finds another woman to replace the mother he can never have. The reverse goes for girls. What is never explained effectively is why this impulse is so.
An attempt is made by Lacan to explain that the desire for the mother actually is for the abstract notion of the "Phallus", the thing that the mother desires and that the boy does not possess but the father does. This is symbolized by the penis but is not a synonym as much as it is a metaphor. The Phallus is also the authoritarian dominance of the father and the power of castration. Women see this as the penis and feel that is what they lack and need, while men see their penis as not acquiring the totality of the "True Phallus".
But what is the Phallus, really? What is this entity that both men and women seem to lack? It goes beyond simply being a penis, or wanting one. It seems to be an attempt through sexual means to return to the womb to the point of Unified Selflessness within the mother.
The Phallic phase only starts after the child has a notion of his or her own sexual identity, and this only becomes imbedded after a child gains the processes of logical thinking and conceptions of time (past, present and future). These are learned traits, as before the infant has no conception of self consciousness or separation from the external and internal worlds in which he or she lives. When the child becomes aware of this separation, he or she wants to connect with this unity they feel they have been cut away from.
Freud and Lacan have attempted to explain this need for unification as the unconscious sexual drive to reproduce, but it goes much further. After all, even in a society where sex and sexual imagery is ever present, the actual act of sexual intercourse is no way completely and permanently fulfilling this "Lack of Phallus".
So what do we need? What are we trying to find if we indeed need to find anything? If animals can live harmonious lives without a conception of themselves as separate entities living within a structure of time, why have we found it necessary to develop these notions within a structure known as logical, rational reality?
Leaving the womb and entering the world of rational reality is what many believe to be the "fall of man". In this world, there is no longer a sense of unity but a sense of Duality between self and others, between good and evil, and man and woman...
...And so Adam and Eve have thrown themselves out of the
Garden of Timeless Unity, you might say, just by the act of
recognizing duality. To move out into this world, you have
to act in terms of pairs of opposites.
-Joseph Campbell(26)
It seems like a simple notion that the thing one needs to do is to attempt to see things in their unity and re-establish this bond with the Eternal, but it is only by self realization and actually experiencing what this transcendent state is like on one's own volition that it can be put into practice.
Before we can go on explaining the nature of this "Divine Ground", we must come to terms with the notion that reality is based in language and the signs, symbols, and structures of the time in which we live. Semiotics would argue that even this so-called "higher plane" of existence can fit into the structures of our rationality, and is therefore only another part swallowed up by the monster of logical Western thought.
It...(language)...has a distinctive and thus arbitrary way of
organizing the world into concepts and categories.
-Saussure(27)
Saussure, who many believe to be the father of Semiotics, developed a system wherein every sign or concept in language is broken down into a "Signifier" (the form's structure or shape) or a "Signified" (the concept which the form evokes). Therefore, even the notion of a non-Dualistic universe can be put into the structure of a Dualistic universe through the language and concepts which attempt to conceive it.
Charles Sanders Pierce goes even further in this denial of a Perennial reality by explaining that every reality is itself only a product of its representation:
The meaning of a representation can be nothing but a
representation. In fact, it is nothing but the representation
itself conceived as stripping of irrelevant clothing. But this
clothing never can be completely stripped off; it is only
changed for something more diaphanous. So there is an
infinite regression here. Finally, the interpretant is
nothing but another representation to which the torch
of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has
interpretation again. Lo, another infinite series.(28)
Ironically, it is a man who studied Semiotics that brings us back to the Perennial nature of signs and signifiers. Jacques Derrida discovered that same "Lack of Phallus", or need for the thing that is unknowable, in what he called the "Transcendental Signified". This is Derrida's explanation that if an infinite regression of signifiers and signifieds exist, there is a "source" which everything is attempting to represent...a type of infinite essence to all things that words can only attempt to convey as specific symbols within this essence. This is similar to Plato's notion of "Ideal Forms" and goes into the realm of metaphysics in that the concept cannot be explained or understood within the confines of logical deduction.
The transcendental signified extends the
domain and play of signification infinitely.
-Jacques Derrida (29)
Even the rigid, logical structures of Semiology come down to the unknowable, just as science and physics are now coming to the borders of where rational reasoning ends and spiritual perspectives begin.
The element that Semiology, science and mathematics overlook in their Dualistic binary systems is that each of them is based within the structure of time. We live our lives not in each eternal moment but as a continual process of "Becoming". When one recognizes that we are only "Becoming" that which we already are, and that the whole process of "Becoming" is itself within the process of "Being", we will understand that the Phallus, or Transcendental Signified, has been with us all along. It is our true, timeless selves.
To be whole is to be healed and to be self-healing; it is to be
able to change and to follow the line of least resistance,
assimilating and eschewing according to what is necessary
to the maintenance of the organism. Maintenance is not
staying put, but being able to endure; not a static but a
dynamic process. The root of endurance is transformation,
change. Often the best protection is change, even if it
means being no longer what one has been; but then, one
never is what one has been, and one never will be what
one is. Only the source of energy is eternal, and energy
maintains itself through transformation.
-Jose and Miriam Arguelles(30)
We look for the secret of the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir
of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, "God", or whatever
the final answer may be...in all directions; north, east, south,
west, and all the time it is carrying us about. It is the
human nervous system itself, the marvelous instrument
through which we create order out of chaos, science out
of ignorance, meaning out of mystery, "mescalito" (or
chair) out of whirling energy.
-Robert Anton Wilson(31)
As we explore the connections our mind can make with the Infinite Mindscape, one question remains about its nature...Is the mind merely a physical part of the body or is it something that interacts with the body but is a separate entity within itself? This question has perplexed philosophical thinkers for ages and is still in hot dispute. It is an important concept to think about because it could explain whether or not something lies beyond for us after death.
As we now know, nothing ever simply ends in the universe. We know that when we die our bodies will not just disappear. They will eventually rot and turn to dust, maintaining their role as a part of the larger whole of our world. Will our minds simply go along with our bodies? If our minds are indeed separate from the purely physical, but connected in the sense that they can fully interact with that level of existence, it is only logical that they will change, but continue to exist in some form or another. What this may be is anyone's guess...but nothing is destroyed in the universe, it just changes form. So we must determine for these purposes: What is the mind and its true role in the body?
It seems at first to be an obvious thing. The mind is contained within the body and controls it, but our mental relations such as love and pain and joy would no doubt be non physical in nature. The brain merely acts as a physical impulse center where the things we experience are stored. This is the essence of Cartesian Dualism, that the mind and body are separate entities...that the mind does not take up space, but only fills the body with data and causes physical relations to take place.(32)
There are strong criticisms with this theory. First of all, if the mind does not take up physical space, how can it cause physical reactions? In order for them to occur, a previous physical reaction must trigger it. This gap in physical causation, if it existed in the brain, would prove this theory to be true, but there is none to be found. Because of this reason, Cartesian Dualism seems to be false...for nothing just starts from nothing. (33)
Other theorists such as Behaviorists then emerged. They believed that the mind is composed of certain things and properties of a physical nature that are the same as feeling a certain way. In other words, if one feels uncomfortable, flinches or winces, one is experiencing pain behavior. (34)
We can think of a possible world where a race of super strong warriors have learned through time not to display any signs of pain behavior. Although they may be in extreme agony, they will not scream or flinch or let on in any way how they feel. This race is a logically possible one, and shows us that it is not logically necessary that objects which have pain are exactly the objects which display pain behavior. Therefore, it is not the case that pain is equal to the display of pain behavior...showing Behaviorism to have strong philosophical problems as well. (35)
Then came the Materialists. They believe that everything which has a mental property has some physical property which goes along with it. This would mean that sensations we feel are brain processes, for every mental object such as an event or feeling in the mind would be a physical event or feeling. This theory, the Token Materialist view of the physical nature of the mind, seems to be a good one. It doesn't fall prey to the discrepancy in Behaviorism, for even though mental properties such as pain will not always cause one to exhibit pain behavior, Token Materialism merely states that the experience of feeling pain is a physical one. (36)
We can argue that we have no way of getting the right chemical reactions together to make a thinking brain, and no way of knowing if it is thinking for itself if one eventually is created. At the rate that artificial intelligence technology is going, it may only be a matter of time before we are able to do this. It is true we can never know for sure if it will work, but logically one cannot deny the possibility.
So is this the final step in the mind/body problem? After all this time, is the mind finally determined to be a physical property of the brain? Well...yes and no. The mind does seem to have properties of a physical nature, but one problem with this still occurs...we can never know what it is like to be a bat.
Thomas Nagel (37) determined a lot about mental states. He found that a creature only experiences conscious experience if and only if there is something that it is like to be that creature. We know what it is like to be human because we were born and raised as humans, while bats were born and raised as bats. These properties by which a creature has conscious experience are therefore Subjective. We only know what it is like to see, feel, and experience things as our individual selves. We can never know what it is like to be another creature...either a person or a bat. This brings on the discrepancy with Token Materialism.
By their nature, physical properties are Objective. We can all witness the process by which ice melts or coal is heated. It is because of this that physical properties can be studied in repeated experiments and each of us can witness their reactions in the world. We have already stated that mental properties are not Objective, they are only seen by the individual experiencing them. Therefore, we can determine that the properties by virtue of which a creature has conscious experience are not physical in nature!
Nagel went on to prove this by going into the future to a time when technology could advance far enough to let us have the experience of being a bat. Huge wings would be installed and a mock radar system would be set up so that each of us can see and feel what it would be like to swoop down in search of prey and fly through the night as a bat would feel it. This would still not show that conscious experience was determined to be Objective. Even if this experience of becoming a bat were accurate to the smallest detail, (which we would never really know), we would still be seeing what it is like to be a bat from the perspective of a human being. We can never know what it is like to be born and think as a bat. This is a Subjective property each bat alone can only experience. Even if there was a way to hook up electrodes to a bat's head and get a mental image of what it was thinking and seeing on a large television monitor...we would still have no concept of what it was like to actually feel those images.
A Subjective property is essentially connected to or knowable from a single point of view. Mental properties are Subjective. An Objective property is accessible or knowable from many different points of view. Physical properties are Objective. Therefore, the mind and body are not the same.
Another example can be stated. Imagine that there was a physicist who was blind since birth. Despite his handicap, he became brilliant in his field and excelled in the scientific community. He learned every property and characteristic of everything around him. He learned for example, that apples are red fruit, and could tell the weight and mass and the path which light was reflected on the apple to make it red. He could tell you what acids and chemical compositions formed apples and how they grow and what affect they can have on your body. Let's say this scientist knew all there was to know scientifically about an apple.
One day, miraculously, the physicist suddenly regains his sight and actually sees an apple in front of him for the first time...actually visually experiences the color red and the look and the texture of these apples he thought he knew so well. No matter how much he had learned about them, nothing could have possibly physically explained what the experience would be like to actually see and consciously visualize an apple. There is a certain transcendent quality of experience that seems to go beyond the realm of our flesh and blood, and our minds seem to be a part of this.
So what is our mind if it is not just contained as chemical processes in the brain? If it goes beyond that, what is it? Perhaps it is a form of anti matter. Perhaps all of the things in the universe in which we can see their effects but cannot synthesize into physical properties are anti matter. This would include our minds, the force of gravity, the force of magnetism and all the other invisible substances that have a profound effect on the physical world.
The mind might also be a level of frequency that is picked up by our body and processed through our individual DNA variation to transmit our own personal channel. In other words, our bodies might act like giant radios that are able to receive and broadcast our consciousness very much like a station on the dial. If this is true, once we can determine how to pick up our channels (or our individual consciousness variations), we might be able to build new and better radio receivers when the old ones begin to wear out.
All of this may or may not be so, but whatever it is...the mind seems to have properties all its own. Science will probably never know its true nature, but it is best to keep an open mind about it. It could be that life after death is when the mind leaves the physical shell of the body and proceeds to become one with the collective unconscious... with the infinite. We will probably find out eventually.
Whatever the outcome, it is somewhat reassuring that if nothing ever simply ends, something...anything...might lie beyond the physical plane of existence. But what if this something is indeed Nothing? What if death is where it all stops, and the mind ceases and goes into a state of non-existence? Nothingness. A true void is a lack of all thought or awareness. While others would like to believe that at death the mind enters the Mindscape and becomes one with it, the possibility is still very likely that the other form of consciousness our minds can enter is one of an Absolute Void.
We can think of Nothingness as an end, but it really isn't one. There is no way for us to perceive of what it would be like. We cannot turn off our thoughts and get to a state of non-awareness while we are alive. The Absolute Void, like the Absolute Infinity, is a level of existence we are unable to fully experience, and both of these extremes might actually turn out to be the same thing. This is a hard concept to grasp, that all of nothing and all of something may indeed be one, but it is a concept very familiar to Zen masters and other ancient philosophers.
But we can never really know until we are experiencing it...or not experiencing it.
The Tao-te Ching explains: "He who thinks he knows, doesn't
know. He who knows he doesn't know, knows. For in this
context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know.
-Joseph Campbell(38)
Let's think about the concept of infinity itself for a minute. Rudy Rucker once again makes us think by asking this question in his book Infinity and the Mind:
If someone said that infinitely many planets existed, then
every possible planet would have to exist, including , for
instance, a planet exactly like the Earth except with unicorns.
Is this necessarily true? (39)
He goes on to explain the answer:
No it is not. We can see this by considering a numerical
analogy. Let E be the "universe" of all even numbers. E
contains infinitely many numbers, yet it does not contain
every possible type of number, to wit, it contains no odd
numbers. Although an exhaustive collection of planets
would (probably) have to be infinite, an infinite collection
of planets need not be exhaustive. (40)
This analogy tells us something interesting...that there can be infinite numbers of infinite sets. Every circle is infinite, yet it does not contain everything within its circumference. There can be an infinite number of circles and it would still not fill up the universe.
One can attempt to bring all of these various sets together and call it "Absolute Infinity", but all one has to do is add one to the concept, or square it, or make any hint at there being an infinite number of absolute infinities to explain to us the perplexing and endless variations it can be manifested into.
This confusing cycle is how our universe is composed...like it or not. We cannot even begin to imagine the vastness of infinite numbers of infinite infinities. Perhaps this is what the religious concept of God must be.
Now, eternity is beyond all categories of thought. This is an
important point in all the Oriental religions. We want to
think about God. God is a thought. God is a name. God is an
idea. But its reference is to something that transcends all
thinking. The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all
categories of thought.
-Joseph Campbell(41)
If this is indeed what the notion of an eternal entity is, then we are not separated from it. Obviously we help to compose the Infinite Absolute of all infinities. We are part of it and our interactions are widespread and relevant. This, therefore, would make us a part of God.
When we become consciously aware of this connection, and find a way to directly experience it, we experience a level of perception that is transcendent and enlightening if one enters it without fear. There are many ways to do this, be it through the use of certain psychoactive drugs, meditation or experiencing situations of high imprint vulnerability that enable us to lose control of our rational minds and re-enter the world of the senses. This "Divine Ground" can only be reached when we are able to let go of our individual egos and witness what we see with understanding and wisdom. These two things are learned traits, which is why one would have to fall from this state (which we have already discussed as being the state in which we exist before we enter the world of Duality and separation) in order to recognize it again when one re-enters it.
Hebrew Kabbalists think of it like God building a great mirror called the universe in which He may look at Himself (or Herself, or Itself) from. Only when the creations of this force know that they are manifestations of their creator will this be done, and it can only be done by acquiring a rational, time-based awareness of timelessness. This is what makes humanity distinct from other creatures, and is the goal of our evolution.
The Kabbalah calls this enlightened man Adam Kadmon, and explains that it is within us all to become him.
Adam Kadmon contains everything that is needed to complete
the task of Divine Reflection. He is both the viewer and the
mirror, and within his being Will, Intellect, Emotion, and
Capacity for Action. Most of all, Adam Kadmon is conscious
of the Divine, although at the moment of his calling forth his
state is an innocent awareness of it, as a fish is oblivious of
the sea in which it exists.
-Z'ev Ben Shimon Halevi (42)
Many look at the loss of control of their minds as the worst possible scenario one can experience; and it can become so if the ego, or the self, continues to fight the process to maintain its individuality. No one really postulates the idea that in the loss of a grip on the controls of our consciousness is the way to the Eternal. This is understandable for a few reasons. First of all, many of us in our logic based, selfish society could simply not handle the shock of letting go of our minds willingly, and will fight the urge to do so any way we can. This is what leads to fear and misunderstanding.
When we let our minds go, we only see what is in our minds. What is really there. This is the Divine Ground. This is for what we are searching, and the only way to achieve this is by relinquishing the Will to Power and letting go of ego.
The Will to Power is our need to overpower someone or something else to justify our own existence. We kill others to make ourselves feel important as an influence...in this case the ultimate influence...in someone else's fate. We thus become stronger in our egos by our power of influence. Whether it is acquiring material goods, or rape, each product of the individual ego's Will to Power only brings one further away from the true Self...the Phallus, the Transcendental Signifier, or God. This is because the true self validates itself by itself, by its own revelation, and nothing else is needed.
To lose one's self and one's Will to Power with a conscious awareness of what one is seeing goes beyond words the same way dreams and love do. It cannot be explained, only experienced.
The metaprogramming circuit, known as the "Soul" in
Gnosticism, the "No Mind" in China, the White Light of the
Void in Tibetan Buddhism, Shiva Darshana in Hinduism,
the True Intellectual Center of Gurdjieff, simply represents
the brain becoming aware of itself.
-Robert Anton Wilson(43)
The Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with the Brahman,
the Absolute Principal of all existence; and the last end of
every human being is to discover the fact for himself, to find
out who he really is.
-Aldous Huxley(44)
Though God is everywhere present, yet He is only present
to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul. The
natural senses cannot possess God or untie thee to Him; nay,
the inward faculties of understanding, will and memory
can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of His
habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth of thee from
whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a
center, or as branches from the body of the tree. This
depth is the unity, the eternity...I had almost said infinity
of thy soul; for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy
it or give it rest but the infinity of God.
-William Law(45)
The use of the word "God" in this sense is bringing this external concept within each of us and making it internal...personal. This is how one can choose to read the concept of God, as a metaphor that one can apply to their lives instead of as a rigid, dominant force we cannot hope to connect to outside of a church or synagogue.
There are other metaphors that people have misunderstood about religious philosophy, like the concepts of Heaven and Hell and Good and Evil.
When most of us think about Heaven and Hell, we think of them as places. One is up in the sky, with angels with harps fly about, and the other is a fiery pit of eternal pain and horror. In reality there are no places in the external world that are Heaven and Hell. You cannot dig underground or fly up in the sky and find them. Heaven and Hell are states of mind.
Think about it, Heaven is a state of eternal bliss. This is a mental state. Hell is a state of eternal damnation. This is a mental state as well. When the Bible said Jesus ascended to Heaven, he was not going up in the sky, for that is not where Heaven is...he was going within us. This is a metaphor. It brings us to a closer correlation with the concepts presented. We are now part of God and He is part of us. Re-read this to say we are now part of the Infinite Absolute and it is part of us and we can see the validity of this image. There are infinite numbers of infinities we are connected to, and countless connections we can make to all of those infinities.
So let's look at the concepts of Good and evil now. The infinite cosmos...God, if you will...is composed of elements of both extremes, and so is Mankind. Good and Evil is a relative term. What could be considered Good by one person could be considered Evil by another.
The ceremonial human sacrifices to the gods is usually looked at as horrific by our culture when we study the Aztecs and the Mayans who partook in these rituals, but to them it signified a renewal of life and promise in the death of one instead of the death of many. We must decide for ourselves what is best for our culture and act according to our own destinies. We understand what we individually consider to be right and wrong, and know we have potential for both. Good and evil only exist, as does Heaven and Hell, in our own individual minds.
In other traditions, good and evil are relative to the position
in which you are standing...you've got to say yes to life and
see it as magnificent in this way; for this is surely the way
God intended it.
-Joseph Campbell(46)
All demons and angels, all heavens and hells, are within you.
-Timothy Leary(47)
The idea of a utopia has always been with us for as long as there have been groups of people living together. Rationally, we understand how difficult it would be to actually bring into existence. Too many people think too many different things and want more than there is to give for there to be a perfect balance on every level necessary to have a utopian society last.
Because of the very fact that it transcends language, a society based upon the ideas stated within this philosophy will inevitably come to failure if it is not run and practiced without coercion. This is because one cannot experience heightened states of awareness by coercion. A coercive society would no doubt turn into any other dogmatic upsurgence of the Reformation, with ego-centric leaders led on by their own Will to Power.
It is the same argument of Marxist theory, that if a Proletariat revolution occurs, the workers will become bourgeoisie within a month. If one group in a system is destroyed and replaced by another group with the same underlying interests, the system stays the same.
This is not to say that an Enlightened Society is impossible. It can happen successfully. But the only way it can is if every single person within the society realizes their divine nature themselves, non-coercively and goes about living peacefully and in balance with themselves and others. This is, in every sense, what we are evolving towards, if we don't destroy ourselves first, and there are ways to bring this about.
...The attempt to impose more unity upon societies than their
individual members are ready for makes it psychologically
almost impossible for those individuals to realize their unity
with the Divine Ground and with one another.
-Aldous Huxley(48)
Today, every ad we see on television, every word from the President's mouth, every store we see in Beverly Hills, and every course offered at our universities is part of the social zeitgeist that creates our ideology. In the United States, it is imbedded within the notion of Will to Power through Capitalism, and as advertisers and businessmen go to great lengths to keep their products flashy and appealing while their "buyers" (or subjects as Marx would call them) stay complacent, unquestioning, and stupid.
A countries ideology is determined by how the governing philosophy of that country is interpreted and implemented on the people. In America, the interpretation of the "Land of the Free" seems to contradict the entire concept of capitalism. We are the land of the dollar and don't look too kindly on those who do not have them. But by playing up this contradiction in our mythology, the governing elements can run a society where we all "think" we are free, but are not. Here, everything is possible but nothing is allowed...unless, of course, you have the money to do it.
This paradoxical mythology is created by our media. What we see on our screens or read in our newspapers every day is what we believe to be real, for we trust in the fact that it must be coming from "the source" of truth. Most people are only beginning to understand how effective media is as a means of control over what we think and how we act.
So if ideology is material in nature, and it can in some way affect consciousness of the masses, we need to bring fourth the ideas of intelligence increase, understanding, and existence without coercion into the general zeitgeist of the language in clear, understandable forms.
This has already been done. There are a lot of books and papers and films and paintings almost everywhere you look telling you the same thing. All one has to do is to teach people to recognize it.
If only Semiology could teach one to see the Transcendent Signified that makes itself known all around us, the world would be a better place.
The way people learn to recognize what is right in front of them is by way of education and raising the intelligence of the masses. If this seems like an incredibly hard task, you're right; but as new methods of higher conscious learning are developed, their use may indeed change the odds.
There are machines out there specifically designed for bringing one electronically into a meditative state. Since our consciousness itself can be physically altered, with proper instruction these tools can be used as an alternative to drugs or years on a monastic retreat. This branch of physically induced mind expansion is known as Consciousness Tech:
Consciousness Tech is to the mind what the radio telescope
is to the universe. It is a natural outgrowth of the revolution
in neuro-science, which has given us the ability to look
inside the human brain. Now we can take PET scans
(diagnostic photos) of hallucinations, and radioactively label
the neurotransmitters that make us violent or passionate, it
is inevitable to want to master and control our mental life,
to improve our own brains, to access (if you'll excuse the
jargon) the 90% of our neural capacity. What is the brain
chemical that mediates joy? What is the brain wave freq-
uency that provides enlightenment? More important, how
do we manipulate such a phenomena? Consciousness Tech
is based upon a marriage of Western Technology and
superior spiritual technology in the East. The result is an
explosion of new psycho-technologies that are changing
the way we think...and perhaps even our brains themselves.
-Judith Hooper(49)
Isolation tanks, virtual reality, light goggles, and other forms of mind altering products produced by society will further these ideas toward these goals if they are developed at a pace that is equal to peoples' understanding of their applications. This again comes back to education.
Drugs, probably a more effective way to bring about rapid consciousness change, should be approached with caution. Although certain drugs can be amazing catalysts toward personal enlightenment, the untrained mind could be susceptible to misuse, abuse, and mental instability if that person's ego is not prepared to be let go of. Other drugs can lead to addiction and death. It is an individuals choice whether or not they decide to use a drug, but making some of these substances illegal and impossible to get off of the black market when they can be used in many beneficial ways when administered properly is not logical. LSD, Psylocybin, Hash and Marijuana are not lethal in controlled dosages and are not addictive. They are considered abusive, which means they do not cause physical or psychological dependency but may be misused after frequent use.
As far as the addictive qualities of Marijuana, three studies have shown that it is not, (50) and the environmental benefits far outweigh the negative hysteria the drug has obtained. Environmentally, agriculturally and medicinally, we cannot afford to live without Hemp. This is another essay in itself and will not be emphasized here.
What it inevitably comes down to through all of these means is an attempt to get people to think for themselves. If everyone was able to do this we would be witnessing the collapse of our society, and the advancement of our species. Either we will end up destroying ourselves or finding some way to enlighten ourselves. Although the signs look pretty grim, things have been worse.
Even though the world is a mess and the environment is as well, at least people are becoming aware of it. Slowly but surely...Even though people still think America is the pinnacle of liberty, justice, and freedom, the sagging economy and the slow death of the American Dream are becoming more apparent. And even though dogmatic religions still persist in their blinding of the masses, at least now we are not culturally isolated and have at our disposal thoughts and ideas from everywhere around the world.
At the moment, the big problem with the popular is that it's
educating people's attitudes to become more stupid. Nobody's
encouraging you to think, it's as simple as that. Thinking is
considered a sin, even by the left wing, even by your so-called
Time Out, City Limits crew. The only crime which anyone
would possibly pin on us, is firstly having opinions, and
secondly telling people what we think, and actually living
out what we say we think should happen.
-Genesis P-Orridge(51)
In summary, Intelligence Intensification is desirable because
there is not a single problem confronting humanity that is not
either caused or considerably worsened by the prevailing
stupidity (insensitivity) of the species: badly wired robots
bumping into and maiming and killing each other.
Intelligence Intensification is attainable, because modern
advances in neuroscience are showing us how to alter any
imprinted, conditioned, or learned reflex that previously
restricted us.
Intelligence Intensification is hedonic, because the more
freedom and consciousness you achieve, the more you want;
the less willing you are to slip back to dumb, blind
mechanistic circuits.
-Robert Anton Wilson(52)
When you see the Earth from the moon, you don't see
any divisions there of nations or states. This might be
the symbol for the new mythology to come. That is the
country that we are going to be celebrating. And those
are the people we are one with.
-Joseph Campbell(53)
So everything is infinite and connected. Nothing ever just begins or ends...and we all relate to and are part of the Eternal Absolute that composes the universe. Our minds, likewise, are boundless and infinite as well. These are the basic components to the philosophy of Infinite Connectivism. But what is the overall meaning of all of this? What does it say about the reason we exist?
We can ponder forever what the meaning of our existence may be. The truth is that each of us find our own meaning and purpose. A philosophy cannot hope to explain that we are where we are for one individual reason. There is an infinite number of reasons (and lack thereof) for what life means to each thing that experiences it...and no matter what lay ahead for us when our time comes to leave this form of consciousness, we should be aware of the fact that we are experiencing the life we are living right now, and to enjoy it while it lasts. We may never be able to exist in this form of life ever again.
What this philosophy does hope to do is to give you a better understanding of what your place is within the universe and how you connect with everything around you. This in turn, can help one find themselves and their individual purpose. We have gotten to a point where most of us neglect the fact that we do not come into the universe, we come out of it. The things that compose us have always and will always be here in some form or another, and we must do what we can to preserve the world that has sustained us and has let us come into this state of existence.
Each of us has a profound effect on our environment; although this effect at times can prove to be beyond our control, for who knows what the simple act of waking up each morning will hold for the future fate of the universe? We all have the power to change things for the better or for the worse, and like it or not, we all make a difference.
We should be aware of our past and our future and where we come in contact with it, but live for each moment. Every second of our lives is an eternity. Think of a single photograph. Each photograph is a single moment in time, a different dimension in itself. We should live our lives like a camera...constantly freezing each moment as an eternal experience. This way, life will not pass us by unnoticed, but will leave us in a constant state of wonder.
Perhaps we will get to a state of mind where we all realize exactly where we are in the eyes of the cosmos, at its center; and that each of us is not just a separate entity, but that we all come together with everyone else as a unified whole.
The Grand Unified Theory, which forms the link between consciousness, matter, energy, physical forces and science, as well as every religion, emotion, perspective, philosophy, reality, theory and study can be summed up into one thing... It connects every school of thought into a tangible model that is compatible with all of them and at the same time does not negate or confirm any of them either. It is the sum total of all I have seen, heard and learned about what is going on, broken down to its bare bones into one sentence that explains it all...The one connecting element everyone agrees with...
SOMETHING IS HAPPENING.
1. From Modern Primitives Quotations, RE Search Publications, San Francisco, 1989. P 191.
2. Diana L. Eck, Darsan, Seeing the Divine Image in India, Anima Books, Pennsylvania 1985. p 25.
3. Blaise Pascal, Pense'es et Opuscules, Pense'e No. 205, Leon Brunschvicg ed., Paris, Classiques Hatchette, 1961. p 427.
4. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, Ronald E. Latham, trans Harmondsworth, England, Penguin 1951. p 554.
5. Explanation of Lucretius by Rudy Rucker, Infinity and the Mind, Bantam Books, New York, 1982. p 16.
6. Peter H. Cadogan, From Quark to Quasar, Cambridge University Press, London 1985. p 172.
7. Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, Harper Perennial, New York, 1991. pp 33-34.
8. Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell, Bantam Books, Toronto 1974.
9. Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, p 8.
10. Alan Watts, The Joyus Cosmology, Pantheon Books, New York 1962. p 31.
11. Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell
12. James Gleick, Chaos, Penguin Books, New York 1987. p 8
13. James Burke, Connections, St. Martins Press, New York 1978.
14. James A. Hall, Jung: Interpreting Your Dreams, St. Martins Press, New York, 1989.
15. From Modern Primitives Quotations p 191.
16. James A Hall, Jung: Interpreting Your Dreams.
17. Ibid.
18. Rudy Rucker, Infinity and the Mind, p 38.
19. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, Doubleday, New York 1987. p 11.
20. Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, pp 16-17.
21. Andre Breton quoted from the book What is Surrealism?
22. Quoted from the book Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley.
23. Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, Bantam Books, New York 1972. p 145.
24. Joseph Campbell, from The Power of Myth
25. Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising, New Falcon Press, Phoenix 1990. p 148.
26. Joseph Campbell, from The Power of Myth
27. Quoted from Kaja Silverman's "Subject of Semiotics", Oxford Press, New York, p 9.
28. Ibid p 15.
29. Ibid p 33.
30. Jose and Miriam Arguelles, Mandala, Shambhala, Boston 1985.
31. Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger, New Falcon Press, Phoenix 1977. p 29.
32. Taken from Rene Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy"
33. Criticism of Descartes by Gilbert Ryle, "Descartes Myth"
34. From Carl G. Hempnel, "Logical Analysis of Psychology"
35. Information from Philosophy 7 Reader, UCLA, "Introduction to Philosophy of the Mind", compiled by Michael Gehman.
36. Ibid.
37. From Thomas Nagel article, "What is it Like to Be a Bat?"
38. From Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth
39. Rudy Rucker, Infinity and the Mind p 55.
40. Ibid p 318.
41. From Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth p 49.
42. Z'ev Ben Halevi, Kabbalah, Thames and Hudson, England 1979. p 12.
43. Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising, p 197.
44. Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, Harper and Row, New York 1945. p 2.
45. William Law, Characters and Characteristics of William Law London 1898.
46. From Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth
47. Timothy Leary, from The Psychedelic Experience, Citadel Press, New Jersey.
48. Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, p 11
49. Judith Hooper, Would the Buddah Wear a Walkman? Fireside Press, New York 1990.
50. Marijuana does not lead to physical dependency. Costa Rican Study, 1980; Jamaican Study, 1975; Nixon Blue Ribbon Report 1972.
51. Quoted from Charles Neal's Tape Delay, Interview with Genesis P-Orridge, SAF Publications, England 1987.
52. Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising, pp 256-257.
53. From Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth
