“Immanence and the Reconciliation of Opposites: Manifold Unity Through the Embodiment of God”

by Melanie Purcell,

Department of Philosophy University of Newcastle.

Creation stories from around the world, attempt to capture the essence of the coming into existence of the universe. Most creation myths rely upon the fecundity of sexual union through the anthropomorphic metaphor of copulation. The union of opposites is an essential feature in these cosmologies and the result is a self sacrificing state of non spatial, non temporal consciousness that comes into the experiential realm of the material universe, and hence the God the father-mother of all that is, becomes all that is. God is immanent, a manifold unity, and we along with everything else in this reality are collectively the embodiment of God's/ess'es splendour.

However, not all creation myths are the same. One that does not rely upon the union of opposites, is the Christian description of the origin of  the universe. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made....." The rising logos is here cast as a purely masculine and  infinite expanse that is the agent of God and in so being, God creates, through the Logos, the realm of the material. God is, in this model, an external causal agent, there before the beginning, and still present as an external agent, after the creation; through his word, the logos, all things are made.

This paper explores a number of creation stories from indigenous cultures, from Ancient Egypt and from Alchemical literature, and compares them to the Christian narrative of the beginning. Through a comparison of these two different ways of casting the origin  of origins, this paper explores the implications of each of these systems of cosmology through an analysis of their structural schemes, and argues that through the reconciliation of opposites, the concept of god is manifest as an indwelling force that is realised through a scheme that creates no external nor exclusive domain. Through the rising Logos, the scheme is one where an exclusive domain is relevant and a hierarchical structure imposed. Here God is not immanent but cast as the controlling authority and author of the universe itself.

Creation stories have in all cultures attempted to narrate what is considered to be the essential framework of origins as an explanation of how everything began. They deal with first causes, the essences of what their cultures perceive reality to be. In these myths people set out their primary understanding of humans and the world they inhabit, time and space, and in them cultures express most directly, before they become involved in the fine points of sophisticated dogma, their understanding of and awe before the absolute reality, the most basic fact of being.

Myth is an essential part of religion. Religion proclaims a central reality and then builds a structure of valuation around. It describes an absolute reality that is both transcendent and immanent which is not relative nor is it dependant on changing factors of time and space. Creation myths establish the basic structure of all valuation based on the supreme value of the primary reality. They consider the origin and nature of being, the very fact of existence, and the depth of profundity of some of these myths, reveal a philosophical concern that does not merely deal with the known or even seek to make determinations about the unknown, rather their real concern is with the relation of the known to the unknowable. (Sproul, 1980) The Rig-Veda (c.1200 B.C.) begins

Then neither Being nor Not-Being was

Nor atmosphere, nor firmament, nor what is beyond.

What did it encompass? Where? In whose protection?

What was water, the deep, unfathomable?

Neither death nor immortality was there then,

No sign of night or day.

Not only do myths attempt to describe the essence of the material world and how it came to exist, but within this exploration there is often a metaphysical ground of being where the source of mind contemplated as with the Indian Kena Upanishad (800-400 B.C.):

“Who sends the mind to wander afar? Who drives life to start on its journey? Who impels us to utter these words? Who is the spirit behind the eye and the ear?

We know not, we cannot understand, how he can be explained: He is above the known, and he is above the unknown.

Whilst there are a vast number of ways in which creation myths have been structured, some authors have chosen to identify general features and according to P.J.Criss, (Criss, 1997), creation myths fall into 5 general classifications which are often multiply apparent in the same myth. These are stated as follows:

 

1. from chaos or nothingness (ex nihilo)
2. from a cosmic egg or primal maternal mound
3. from world parents who are separated
4. from a process of earth-diving
5. from several stages of emergence from other worlds

It is a difficult terrain to tread in terms of categorisation, and there are many ways in which one can view these myths. The complexities seen in many myths require a deep sense of patient understanding to realise the essence of a myth. It also becomes apparent that many myths over time have been simplified to the detriment of the essential teaching. It is for this reason that I chose to approach mythology from a much simpler perspective.

What becomes apparent to a reader of cross-cultural mythology, quite often one comes across a common description of  a number of attempts at creations or a number of worlds that describe cyclic patterns of destruction and creation. For example, with ancestral Puebloan creation myths the current world is the fourth world of creation. The third world was ended by a great flood , a theme that is expressed in many mythologies, and some humans were rescued by the ant people.

The notion of there being dissatisfaction, or disaster is prevalent also in the Aboriginal myths of creation which not only signifies the process of coming into being, but also a concern for the assessment of the primal creations and necessary healing of the polarisation that can occur from the initial process. There is a sense not only of the potential for imperfection in creation, but also for the complexities that occur through a dynamic process that is alive and evolving continuously. With one of the Aboriginal creation myths, something went terribly wrong. Biamis first creation was given extreme powers, and when it emerged, the great rainbow serpent was seen as  a double headed serpent that was granted the essence of fire and compassion. The polarity apparent in this creation was so profound that it tried desperately to tear itself apart. With tears of compassion and the fire of anger intensifying, the rivers were formed as was the sun. The extremities of these attributes where expressed in the most negative a expression due to the intensity of the dynamic tension between opposites. So with the first creation, destruction was realised, and as Biami slayed his first born, all of the colours of the rainbow were given to earth as death was born.

This dynamic relationship between creator and destroyer is echoed throughout cultures in various ways and invokes the perception of the transcendent and immanent God as a dynamic polarity, a being who is both dark and light, male and female, creative and destructive, a divine hermaphrodite. This image of the hermaphrodite is prevalent in the Gnostic myths and the Hermetic myths and can be viewed in the mythologies of Sufism, Hindu, Jain and Buddhist scriptures. The essence of a dynamic system is fuelled by such tensions, and invokes a cyclic momentum ad infinitum.

The myth becomes the metaphor for ultimate reality and as such these of the unknowable in terms of the commonly known; they speak of creation in terms of procreation. The dual attributes, the active, masculine is cast as the sky god who is the great “being” of light resplendent and vast and the passive, feminine “non-being” is identified variously as the earth or mound, or as the mysterious essence of the primal chaotic waters. They lie together and are joined in sexual union, and all the natural forces, children and creatures, landforms and starforms are created from this coupling.

This rendering of duality is, in more complex stories, realised as an awakening awareness of the self and the not-self, where the desire to become is instituted through a complete inversion from state of being into its completely opposite complement. The polarisation that is inherent in the one creator god however has often been reduced to a male-female duality that whilst being internalised as one, is expressed as a relationship where the birthing of reality is expressed without the necessary coupling of dual entities. In some cases it is assumed that the androgynous being is capable of self procreation. Thus when the power of being is characterised overtly as feminine, an earth mother goddess gives birth spontaneously and independently, without the need of a mate. If the sole deity is seen as male either he externalises the duality and imagines a mate into being and produces creatures with her, or he keeps the duality inside and uses aspects of himself as the feminine “other”. Barbara Sproul (1980) suggests furthermore that

“these  myths maintain exactly the same principle of distinguishing a directing agent (manifest being) and the raw material of creation (unmanifest not-being) as more abstract myths do in speaking of the original Chaos as self-dividing. Only here, personalised as they are, the myths are more dramatic and involving. Some tell how the god sacrifices a part of himself, cutting off a piece of his body and fashioning it into the world. Others describe him vomiting or excreting the world or giving birth to it in some related manner.”

Whilst these distinctions might be realised as a metaphorical rendering of procreation, there are structural differences that prevail between those myths that describe a union of opposites that are inherent attributes of the one creator itself and conversely the casting out of the mouth or head or any other medium through which creation is directed without sexual union, for example the voicing of the word enacting the creation through the mediation of the Logos. Where the union of oppositional extremes are a dynamic relationship between that which existed prior to being and being, procure a creation of Ultimate Reality, the prior state is transformed and becomes, therefore is never again an external non-being entity. Those myths that  rely upon a medium through which creation takes place, that is as the word, utterance or expression, or part of self, or in the case of Marduk, destruction and dismemberment of the primal goddess Tiamat, creates a structure that maintains the original creator being as whole and stable, non-transformed and external to the creation that has occurred.

Within these readings there are two completely different ways a casting creation. Through the work of scholars such as Marie Louise von Franz in the Seventies and Rianne Eisler in the Eighties the exploration of psychological relationships that are cast through these renderings of creation, and a rereading of archaeological evidences, has realised a shift from a partnership model where the dual attributes are derived equally from the primary entity; to a dominator model, which identifies a masculinisation of mythological stories casting the male attribute as a powerful autonomous light-being that is a product of an omnipotent and omnipresent God. This god remains unchanged through his actions and resides out side of the field of creation. The first creation is described as infinite, light, expansive and opposed to a more sinister chaotic and disturbed feminine principle that inhabits or is the chaos out of which the light is born.

The masculinisation of mythologies is indicative of a cultural need to cast a new structural bases for the understanding of the nature of manifestation and hence the nature of ultimate reality, in a process of acculturation from an egalitarian matrilineal model to a patriarchal one. Rianne Eisler identifies the numerous waves of “Aryan” Kurgan invasions of the Old European Neolithic societies as the cause of disruption that eventually disseminated the peaceful, agricultural and art loving peoples that then became a warlike pastoral and patriarchal culture. This transformation necessitated the reworking of the myths and through the separation of the gendered attributes and the dominance of the masculine over the feminine, a political, social and cultural tool is realised.

Tracing the changing attitudes through the usurpation of the goddess and feminine aspect, we find that there is a transformation from the feminine as a symbol of the source of wisdom, as in the figure of Sophia and the Queen of Heaven, Inanna, the sacred archetypal mother, matrix of all things, who exists with her male counterpart and is the nurturer and healer, a divine creatrix, who gives birth to all that is. This divine position falls to the dominance of the male (Barring and Cashford 1993, Eisler ) there exists a complex history that weaves itself in and out of many cultures from Upper Palaeolithic to modern times. In a chapter concerning the hidden goddess of the old testament, they describe the masculinastion of the creation itself as an act of repression.

“The source of Wisdom sometimes alternates between the image of Sophia and that of Yahwah. Engelsman, in her exploration of Sophia, believes that there was tension between the adherents of Yahweh and those of Sophia at the beginning of the Christian era: ‘This tension appears to have been resolved by repression… At least her power and prestige were radically curtailed at this time, and Sophia does not reappear as a major figure until the rise of Jewish mysticism in the Middle Ages.’ …. The image of the feminine Sophia, as the personification of Wisdom in both Judaism and Christianity, was replaced by the masculine Logos. The Word as Wisdom became the mediator between Godhead and humanity. In this way, the feminine image of the divine was again lost.” (Baring and Cashford 1993).

Removing any connotations of a female aspect or co-creator through sexual union and hence reconciliation of opposites has necessarily produced a virgin birth of sorts, one where the male aspect is realised in its outrageous and blinding force as the only necessary element that then becomes the multiplicity of all that is. He is not the god himself, God remains outside of the reality that God is creating. The Logos is the Word or the emanation that here, is intended as being uttered out of the mouth of God, but is not actually the God himself. This externalisation of God as grand manipulator, further develops the political and social system that becomes consolidated through the laws of the biblical cannon.

This and the implication of the logos or male deity not coupling with its female counterpart presents what I consider to be the most profound of problems concerning the intellectualisation of our origins, a problem that is a foundation for the fear of the wrath of god as an external causal agent, the sexual repression of the Western culture and the misogyny that is so well epitomised by the  masculinised creation stories that developed in alphabetic literate cultures such as the creation myth of Marduk previously mentioned. This myth described on “the Seven Tablets Of Creation” replaces previous Sumerian creation myths in about 1700 B.C. and characterises a gross act of creation through the violent murder and dismembering of Tiamat, the Great Mother who, being challenged by Marduk, attempts to devour him, but is overwhelmed by the elemental forces which he unleashes upon her filling her with the rage of gales and storms. In a final victorious act he ruptures her stomach and splits her heart. In this so called act of  “creation”, he dismembers her body which becomes the landforms and pierces her eyes with his sword, the tears of which form the two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.

Her  torture continued and is echoed in the much later atrocity committed against Hypatia in the fifth century (Shlain 1998).  Hypatia was a scientist and scholar, and teacher of wisdom in the Library of Alexandria. She was abducted by Christian priests and while still alive, had all of skin scraped from her bones by oyster shells prior to being dismembered. (Shlain 1998) The burning of the Library of Alexandria, the subsequent destruction of most of the temples and sculptures devoted to the various images of the Goddess and the torture and murder of Hypatia are a significant nexus of events heralding the rise of patriarchal Christian dominance in the 5^th Century. The reasoning behind these acts of violence were to once and for all destroy the pagan hereticism that was flourishing in the various academies devoted to Gnosticism, Neo Platonism and the Corpus Hermetica. The essential differences between these beliefs and the Christianity that has prevailed is complex and reveals a possible oversimplification of myths and selection of texts designed to maintain a sense of  social control instituted through a select and educated hierarchy that maintained the fear in god’s wrath as an external omnipotent and omnipresent overlord. (Shlain 1998, Biagent 1998, Biagent and Leigh, 1998)

The Logos, originally seen as being God, (the word was god), has realised as the mediator. It is a blasting light, a vibration of sound and the initial expansion into the world of grace. By this action of changing the Logos into the mediator however, the rationalisation of creation remains interrupted and held by the externalised creator as an extension that is thought to be sufficient in itself, that has no need for a feminine aspect. At once the Logos, the word, the primal emanation which was the material potential of God, becomes the extension of God when once it was the actual God incarnate. Here, the prior state which is external to the manifest reality, which is other than something, remains as the causal agent. With earlier and non-literate  procreative mythologies, God is immanent. God is transformed from that which was the singular entity prior to spacetime, into all that is in existence. In the masculinised versions, the state prior to becoming, the state of non-being is now granted Godhead and the state of becoming is the creation of that Godhead. The Logos is the means through which creation takes place. Without a transformative  movement, where the potential is realised as an archetypal sacrifice to become, the unification of the oppositional attributes is held in a singular stasis, impotent of a sexual procreative multiplication, and devoid of conjiunction. (Jung 1967).

The splendour of that infinite ejaculation blasts fourth upon an eternity devoid of nourishment and fecundity. The expression of creation has exploded from the egoistic masculinisation of the logos and its unconsummated celibacy. Through this patriarchal perception, where the image of the unnecessary female remains in the chaotic waters of that which was before, this blasting out of the logos, is a graphically intellectualised ejaculation of God’s power, blasting out of its often grossly destructive battle with its shadow, the mysterious other, the dark and dangerous female which is left lurking as the sinister entity ready to be invoked as the object of evil intent. This is a logic of control and hierarchy. The primal material, the matter, matrix, mother of reality is subverted by a masculinised and external creator  that manipulates the matrix and is the causal agent of the actions and reactions that come into the realm of manifestation without the sexual  copulatory act.

In “The Tripartite Tractate” (Nag Hammadi Library 1977) one of the books included in the Nag Hammadi Library of Coptic, Gnostic, Christian Texts[1], the formulation of these masculine notions of creation and with it the identification of the Church as the only authority are well illustrated:

            “Just as the Father exists in the fullest sense, the one before whom [there was no one] else and [the one] after [whom] there is no other unbegotten one, so too the [Son] exists in the fullest sense, the one before whom there is no other and after whom no other son exists. Therefore he is a first-born and an only Son, the first-born because no one exists before him and the only Son because no one is after him. Furthermore, he has his own fruit, that which is unknown because of its surpassing greatness. Yet he wanted it to be known, because of the riches of his sweetness. And he revealed the unsurpassable power and he combined with it the great abundance of his generosity.

                “Not only does the Son exist from the beginning, but the Church, too, exists from the beginning. Now he who thinks that the discovery that the Son is an only son opposes the word (about the church)- as the Father is a unity and has revealed himself as a father for him (the Son) alone, so too the Son was found to be a brother to him (the Father) alone, in virtue of the fact that he is unbegotten and without beginning. He wonders at himself [along with the] Father, and he gives [him(self)] glory and honor and [love]. Furthermore, he too is the one who conceives of himself as Son, in accordance with the conditions: “without beginning” and “without end”. The matter (of the Son) exists just as something which is fixed. His offspring, the things which exist, being innumerable, illimitable, and inseparable, have like kisses, come forth from the Son and the father, (like kisses) because of the multitude of those who kiss one another with a good, insatiable thought, the kiss being a unity, although it involves many. Such is the Church consisting of many men, which exists before the aeons, and which is called, in the proper sense, “the aeons of the aeons.” Such is the nature of the holy imperishable spirits, upon which the Son rests, since his essence is like that of the Father who rests upon the Son..”

Another document of Gnostic Gospels, further identifies the masculinisation of creation with the quality of the feminine figure of Wisdom, Sophia- Achamoth. In this way, the masculine element escapes the dangers of being swallowed by the dark powers of chaos and remained safe in the Pneumatic realm of light, while Sophia is driven into relation with the outer darkness that surrounds the realm of creation. Jung suggests this

            “describes in the form of cosmic projection, the separation of the feminine anima from a masculine and spiritually orientated consciousness that strives for the final and absolute victory of the spirit over the world of the senses.” (Jung 1967, page 334)

The separation of these dual attributes realises a polarisation of good and evil, heaven and hell, where the divinity remains in a realm of oneness, an unobtainable height of infinite perfection that necessitates the worldly manifest realms to wallow in their imperfection and fear the wrath of the all perceiving deity that bears witness to all of the ills perpetrated in the world. This fear further perpetuates a complex vehicle for control instituted by the authorities that lay claim to an exclusive position of knowing. Here we have a monotheistic realm that induces dualism, separation, exclusive domains and impossible strivings that reveal at its very heart a supremacist dogma. The geometry of this world of separation is one where opposed realms are discrete and unable to be unified. A sphere perhaps where hierarchical realms  are divided by the surface that contains an interior realm, illusive, dark and mysterious, intuitive and irrational, that is juxtaposed by an exterior rational light and overt realm of action. Outside of this structure, the deity looks upon his creation as if it is his footstool, and amuses himself with the challenges that he has set for the perfectly imperfect to negotiate.

Immanence, on the other hand, realises the indwelling inherent spirit of all that is. The universal Mercurious awakened from the sleeping consciousness of its inert non-being, invokes its own antithesis, its complementary state and like a snake turning its old skin inside out, the transformation of this archetypal hermaphrodite, creates sacrifice through its very action, the death of the oneness, the state of non-being is left for the opposite to be realised, a manifold reality that is an infinite realm of diversity and dynamic experience. A material realm where the spirit explores what was its shadow and a desire to become.

The plenum is released into dynamic cycle of complex process. The one lets go to become the all, with a single breath of desire and the relationships here between the macrocosm and microcosm become tangled in complex hierarchies that are best described through an interpretation of the ancient texts of Hindu Polytheism, as the correlation of the essence of these texts reverberates through Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, Sufism and Hermeticism.

Those mythologies that are apparent in Hindu Polytheism, describe the nature of manifestation as emerging from pure consciousness to individuality as the first form of differentiated existence. Alain Danielou (Danielou, 1985) explains the complexities of this perception of the nature of manifestion as follows:

            “The first plan of the universe is built within consciousness, within the sphere of pure thought. It remains unmanifest, a mere idea, so long as no independent center of perception has been evolved to grasp it as a reality. Manifestation thus implies the existence of an individual independent perceiver. Being the meeting point of two forms of consciousness, it has of necessity, the character of a limit. Manifestation can appear only in a definite location, at the junction between two forms of thought, between two orders of things. There must be a moment when a thing is going to exist and yet has not begun to exist; the point where it will appear must exist before it appears. It must thus have a position, though as yet it may have no extension. The place where manifestation will appear is determined by the first contact of the macrocosm  and the microcosm, but even then the manifest form has as yet no extension. This first moment of contact is known as the point-limit, the bindu. To one such point limit can be traced the origin of all the forms of manifest existence. This point, in which all future developments are potentially implied, is sometimes identified with the Self, the Atman.

                From the point-limit is issued the transcendent-principle-of-manifestation (mahat-tattva), which is universal Intellect (buddhi). After the principle of manifestation we meet another limit, that is, the principle-of-individuality (aham-tattva), the first form of differentiated existence. Only then can the mind exist and work within an individualised consciousness. From the mind arise, gradually, in order of subtlety, all the elements or spheres of perception.

The appearance of the Universe is therefore compared to the growing of a plant. The seed is

dormant yet  full of potential and likened to a state of sleep. The sprouting of the seed is the

resulting stage and likened to individuality. Through the process of manifestation, the seed is

destroyed as it awakens from its dormant sleep and transforms into a completely different entity.

                “The first dormant stage of the seed is the theoretical potentiality known as maya, the power of illusion. The Nonevolved (avyakta) is the stage of germinating –potentiality (ucchunavastha), intermediary between that of the seed and that of the sprout, when the seed gets ready to develop at the first contact with warmth and moisture. The sprouting of the seed is the resulting-stage (karyavastha), which includes all the developments from the point-limit onward.

                “In man we may take the state of sleep as the seed stage; consciousness, yet devoid of analytical faculty, as the universal principle of manifestation. It is from this first principle, and from the principle of individuality which springs from it that the multiplicity of the perceptible resulting world arises”.( Karapatri, Ähamartha aur atma,” Siddhanta, II, 1941-42, 67.) (Danielou, 1985)

This transformation process realises the manifestation of godhead as the manifold  unity of all

that is. From the point of becoming, the temporal extension has ruptured the state of nonbeing

into an active principle of generation. The temporal extension of non-being is further

altered when the motion of this first awakening opens like a sprout shooting into a spatial and

temporal reality. That which was infinite and non-existent, turns itself completely inside-out

and upside down to become its directly opposite complement. An infinite Nothingness,

becomes a manifold of finite entities, and so being, the macrocosmic-microcosmic

relationship is born as a knotting together of remarkable inductions of inherent and therefore

potential complements to that which was no-thing.

                The nonevolved, the universal principle of manifestation, and the principle of individuality, taken together, form the subtle body of the universal Man. When these all-pervading entities happen to be tied together at a particular point, just as different strings happen to form a knot, this constitutes an individuality. If all of the causal entities are involved in this knot the individuality is called the universe. If only fractions of these entities are tied together, the individuality is an individual being. The individual being is thus a smaller replica of the universal Being. The individual atman is a fragment of the universal Atman, the individual intellect a part of the universal Substance and Mind. Each of these elements will return to its own store of substance once the individual knot is undone and the individual being ceases to exist. Matter returns to matter, the mind to the universal Mind, the faculties to universal Faculties, etc., from which they were never really separated. (Danielou, 1985)

Danielou continues with a description of the finer points of soul involvement with the real

 World as expressed in the Prasna Upanishad (Danielou, 1985).

                “The undoing of the knot of individuality may, however, be progressive, that is , accomplished by stages; when the outer envelopes are first released, some of the more subtle elements may remain tied together. Thus is formed the transmigrant body, the part of the individual being which remains united and in existence as a distinct unit after death. These transmigrant bodies can again become involved in a new knot with physical substance, an occurrence known as rebirth; or they may, on the contrary, further dissociate, and this is the final liberation, in which the individual being completely ceases to exist and dissolves into universal Being and , ultimately, into non-Being.

                “As the rivers that flow toward the sea, on reaching the sea, dissappear, their name and form destroyed, and are just called the sea, so too, this individual spectator, made up of sixteen components, on reaching the Cosmic Person disappears. His name and form are destroyed, and he is called simply ‘the Person’. Having attained knowledge and being without parts, he becomes immortal. Hence the scripture says:

Know that he in whom all components are firmly set,

like the spokes on the hub of a wheel, is the Person to be known.

Knowing this, you will not fear death.”(Prasna Upanishad 6.5-6.[75])

With this description of the first motion, God is expressed as consciousness, a pure thought, selfless and not self conscious. Siva is the Transcendent-Lord-of –Sleep, the unmanifest consciousness that exists alone in absolute freedom. In discussing the nature of Hindu Metaphysics, Ninian Smart suggest that the action of projecting forth the universe, is

‘like a silver screen projecting onto itself a movie. This movie is not however an illusion, because it is argued that being produced by Consciousness it must be in  the last resort made of the same sort of stuff. It is fleeting and without its own substance but it is real. As part of the movie, Siva, as absolute Consciousness pours out cloud of unknowing and it is because of this obscuration that individuals do not realise that their essential inner nature is simply that light of absolute consciousness which is Siva. The individuals, however, in part through God’s act, are turned back towards himself, their divine Source, and in them is gradually reawakened a memory of their origin. This is the remembrance or recognition of their Source. In order to obtain liberation it is necessary, drawing upon God’s grace …to practice intense meditation and so to gain samadhi or rapt concentration in which the individual experiences directly the non-dual state of merging with the divine Consciousness. He is light and all his ignorance is dispersed in this glorious realisation. Naturally, the figure of the two-in-one or sexual union is apt in conveying the sense of spiritual rapture obtained (this could also justify the use of Tantric techniques in pursuit of the highest bliss.” (Smart, 1999).

This image that is depicted describes a twisting return where the infinite expansion of light returns to the source. Clearly the infinite unites with the singularity if its origin, and here infinity will dance zero. As we will see it is a geometry indicative of the Alchemists flask, the pelican vessel that is a symbol of the universe itself, as a Klein bottle structure, a single sided shape that turns in on itself and is reminiscent of the cornucopia, the Horn of Plenty, that is held by the early goddess sculptures of the Neolithic era. See figure One Below.

Through the identification of the self, the spatial and temporal expansion is realised. With this initial expansion, nothing has become two opposite things. Nothing and something. There is a transformation of one nonexistent potential becoming its completely antithetical complement. With this transformation into a spatial and temporal reality, dimension has occurred and initially the self and the not self is identified. In this case it is lightness and darkness, which very quickly manifests into a multiplicity as the initial extension is seen to have two opposed ends, as well as above, below, in front and behind. Interestingly, a point, as defined through Egyptian mathematics is considered to be of three spatial dimensions,( R.A. Schwaller De Lubriz, 1986) just as an extension has three dimensions in space and one in time. The generation of these complements is definitively expressed in the cosmology of the ancient Chinese where the initial dyads are depicted as the archetypal male and female aspects which were originally conceived of as a rod. Hence the original inception of the yin-yang symbol as the complements of two triplicites that forged the hexagonal dynamics of the complementary trigrams with three yang or masculine and three yin or feminine attributes. (Chung-Ying Chen,  Pages 167 to 208.) An interesting and unsurprising correlation with this is the triple Goddess and consorts realised in the Hindu Texts as that which initially becomes in the first stages of  manifestation.

The word or Logos is identified as light and as such it is an infinite expansion, an ejaculation of life force, a brilliant and huge presence, dynamic and forthright, potent and formidable. It is the masculine principle and has been identified as such through many mythologies. Out of the darkness comes light at once the first principle and yet spawned and separated from the mysterious and elusive feminine aspect of itself, which is in effect and ironically, its point of origin. The paradoxical situation revealed here shows that from nothing or the state of non-being, both the masculine infinite and the feminine singularity from which that emanation exploded, is created simultaneously. That which is the first radiant expanse is both the father of the female point (as without its motion of becoming the point of origin would not have occurred) and the son as it was born out of this same point of its own origin. The father  unites with its shadow. Similarly, the point of origin is the mother and daughter of this primordial event.

Curiously there is an overt correspondence between this complex rendering of paradoxical associations and one of the texts included amongst the Nag Hammadi Library collection. In “On the Origin of the World” an untitled text translated by Hans Gebhard Bethge and Bently Layton (Nag Hammadi, 1990) we find a detailed narrative that is essentially discussing the mythology of the first creation as a complex story that includes such identities as Eve, Adam and Sophia, written in a way, however, that shares no likeness with those texts that are included in the Bibles compilation. Here, this confusing territory of the first born is expressed as such:

            “Now, Eve is the first virgin, the one who without a husband bore her first offspring. It is she who served as her own midwife. For this reason she is held to have said:

It is I who am the part of my mother; and it is I who am the mother.

It is I who am the wife; it is I who am the virgin.

It is I who am pregnant; it is I who am the midwife.

It is I who am the one that comforts pains of travail.

It is my husband who bore me; and it is I who am his mother.

And it is he who is my father and my lord.

It is he who is my force; What he desires, he says with reason.

I am in the process of becoming; yet I have borne a man as lord.”

In many mythologies the serpent is identified as the symbol of the primal extension, the origin or tail being the feminine principle and the head often crowned, being the masculine, usually illustrated with a radiant halo expanding from its crown. (Huxley 1979.) The serpent, also considered the universal symbol of information, the ‘mercurious’ is depicted with its head eating its tail. This alchemical symbol, as it is depicted in a 4^th century manuscript written by an alchemist called Cleopatra, bears the inscription “One is all, of him is everything, for him is everything. The snake is the one: it has two symbols, good and evil”.(Roob, 1997)

The unification of opposites, or as Jung (1970). called it, the Mysterium Coniunctionis, the divine marriage and sexual procreation gives birth to the multiplicity and sees the generative forces of manifestation come into full completion. The divine expanse of light seeks out its partner and couples with its opposite, the point of nothing or the singularity from which it originated, and in doing so, unifies the primordial pair in an act of sexual procreation. This closing of the circle so to speak, is identified in esoteric literature as the consolidation of manifestation. Whilst the initial union  to create the rising logos or spirit of light has taken place, it is not considered as an act that is within the realm of manifestation, until union occurs. It is therefore a repeated or externalised act of copulation that begets all things, and consolidates the materialisation through a cyclic process of continuous creation. (R.A. Schwaller de Lubruz,1986).

The nothing becomes the one  that existed before, which is now two extremes of the initial extension. The third , that which is between the infinite and the singularity, due to dimensionality, holds within itself the fourth, fifth and sixth aspect. That is, above, below, in front and behind. This double triad is forged simultaneously of masculine and feminine attributes, which upon seeking each other out, unify in the act of coupling which then presents the fourth phase that leads into the realm of continuous manifestation and the completion of the first primal cycle from 1 to ten. The magical premise of the pyramid of numbers is therefore more realisable as the four phases of creation completes the whole:  1+2+3+4=10 (R.A. Schwaller de Lubruz, 1986).

The Mother begets a Son whom she marries, and who is her father as she is his daughter! Here we have before us the archetypal Bride and Groom of the Hermetic tradition, an esoteric cosmology that is traceable to the ancient Egyptian Pyramid texts and the Corpus Hermeticum, a cosmological system that saw the primal origin as an hermaphrodite and the non-being of God as having to sacrifice its state of non-being, and literally turning itself inside out and upside down, transforming to become its complete antithesis, a being of multiplicity or manifold unity. With this we can easily find, as did the cosmologists of the ancient Chinese,  the two trigrams, one masculine and one feminine, the double trinity, the father /mother daughter/ son and the bride and groom. These two triangles one of masculine orientation and one of feminine orientation, unified as one resonate with the Star of David and Seal of Solomon. (Jung 1970).

It is with the divine marriage, the consummation of the initial desire to become made manifest, that we find the rendering of the scriptures departing from  this procreative and unitary trend of the mythological constructs, yet the notion of sacred marriage has been with us always. The Christian cannon prefers to take the sex out of creation, leaving the infinite expansion of light, the first blinding powerful ejaculation of thought, the primal vibration or  sound of the logos, the word that was God Himself, the primal explosion of life force as the creator of heaven and earth, night and day, both man and woman. He leaves the feminine principal as the dark mysterious energy that lurks beneath the waters of creation. He identifies her as the very presence of evil, left as sinister, left as the matrix that was there before the light blasted out of its grasp. (Stone 1976; Larrington, 1992; Barring and Cashford, 1993) This problem of casting that identity of god as a self empowered infinite blast of light, self created but not consuming the creator, finds no place for the feminine except the dark and formless waters, the turgid chaos that was the unfathomable depths of uncertainty and confusion, the irrational landscape of nonlife, of evil.

“The Monotheistic editor of the cosmogony in Genesis I and II could assign no part in Creation to anyone but god, and therefore omitted all pre-existing elements or beings which might be held divine. Such abstractions as Chaos(tohu wa-bohu), Darkness (hosekh), and the Deep (tehom) would, however tempt no worshippers: so these took the place of the ancient matriarchal deities.” (Graves and Patai, 1983).

The Sacred Marriage provides the image of wholeness and balance between the masculine and feminine archetypes and in doing so unifies the inner and outer realms that remain separated throughout the Christianised cannons. The separation is one where good and evil are pitched against each other, as is the realm of light and that of dark, the realm of light is all that is God-given and the realm of darkness is where evil lurks in the chaos of feminine irrationality and emotionality. The traces that we find of this holy union are perpetuated through the holy union of the man and wife as is shown in this excerpt from Baring and Cashford. (1991)

“From Sumeria and Egypt to the beginning of the Christian ear, the ritual of the sacred marriage, gave the psyche an image of wholeness and relationship, unifying the two dimensions of heaven and earth, spirit and nature, which language separates. The temple ritual was reflected in the secular marriage ceremony that was, and still is for some, one of the most treasured experiences of human life. The image of human union was anchored in the symbolic union of heaven and earth, celebrated annually in the temple precinct between the king and the high priestess, who personified the goddess. Even now, the resonance of this ceremony is apparent in the intense excitement generated by a royal marriage. The psyche appears to need a “sacred” image of wholeness to preserve its relationship between the feminine and masculine archetypes.”            

The geometry of an external God that has no need for sexual union defines an exclusive domain identified by the separation of opposites. Like a sphere, the inner realm and the outer realm are separate and discrete. As there is no passage through the boundary that unifies the opposites, the perpetuation of separateness from that which is included as the universe and that which is cast out from that realm creates the universe of determinism. Through the powers of judgement delineated by the laws of a superior cannon and moral code that is prescribed to all who wish to be included in the light and righteous domain, good and evil are determined realities. There are no grey fuzzy in between environments and no exceptions to the rules.

Opposing this system, is one that is born out of the union of opposites. Black and white, male and female, creation and destruction, chaos and harmony are all considered to be extreme aspect of a single whole. The inner and outer realms, whilst existing as opposites are complementary and in being complementary  find no definitive ground of distinction, as the black becomes white through degrees, just as night becomes day. There is no external realm and no external God that sits outside of reality. This union of opposites invokes the metaphysics of  Eastern philosophies and esoteric Western metaphysics such as Alchemy and aspects of Gnosticism. The geometry is a curious one and was recognised by both Eastern philosophies and Western Alchemical texts. It has already been noted that there is a recorded history concerning the Corpus Hermeticum and its recognised influence in Eastern philosophical traditions.

The essence of this shape is assumed by the Chinese Yin Yang symbol, which is the closest two-dimensional rendering of the Klein Bottle neck to the Pelican Flask. This shape was recognised by the Alchemists as symbolic of their Universe and was replicated as a glass vessel that they used to process their material work in, as they assumed the spiritual reflection of the same work upon themselves as an act of purification and transformation from an ordinary to a transcendent state.

The most elegant attributes of such a geometry are that there is no exclusive domain that is separate from an external reality. The Klein bottle or “Pelican” as the alchemists called it, is a single surfaced structure whose inside is the same side as the outside as the shape twists and penetrates itself through a singular point of no dimension.

Figure 2, the Klein bottle. Figure 3, Pelican opening its breast to feed its young., and Figure 4, The Pelican, Glass Alembic Vessel of the Alchemists used to sublimate or distil  their various chemical processes. Note the base of the flask is stoppered and the internal passage of the Klein bottle form is not illustrated.

As the Chinese have recognised that yin is always in a state of becoming yang as yang in always in a state of becoming yin, (Cheng 1994) opposites are seen to be integral aspects of a whole. This resonates well with the psychology of Jung that is informed by the Alchemical works of Hermeticists, where the identity of both genders are present in both sexes and the individuation of self is realised through the reconciliation of opposites.

I have in this discussion, described some fairly complex and detailed observations concerning the  structural attributes apparent in many myths that can be associated with the distinction between the necessary union of opposites as a procreative device or the maintenance of  a separated duality born out of a Supreme entity that remains located in his exclusive domain.

On the one hand this system reveals the primal sacrifice of the self to become self conscious, where godhead is realised as the manifold unity of all that is manifest. In this system, freedom and inspiration opens to the seeker as the godhead is not out of reach, but available as a personal transcendent realisation obtained through practices that lead to enlightenment. On the other hand, the wrath of God seen in his unobtainable perfection constrains the individual by rendering them unworthy of such lofty ideals as transcendence or enlightenment. Freedom is a concept that is waged against itself, as it is only available through death and the passing of judgement that may open the heavens to those who have followed the instructions set forth by those mortals who have assumed the authority to judge.

Immanence is all around us. We are all collectively the majesty of God. As the spirit rises through each individual, the collective assumes its grand light of purification and sublime transcendence.

In manifold unity, The one God is All and the All of existence is the One. A monotheistic polytheism perhaps, a divine paradox most likely. The unity of the primal duality is the perfection of this dynamic process.

It is the transformation that is causality of the process. A transformation between involution and evolution. In Yeats “A Vision”, the revealed knowledge shows this tension diagrammatically/ William Irwin Thompson recasts Yeats realisation through the emblematic form of the double triangle as has been so prevalent in many earlier alchemical diagrams.

Figure 5.,  The dynamic tension between opposites that unify the infinite realms of each one’s extremity and totality.

He suggests that

This double-triangle emblem can also be used as an image for the  process of transformation. One part of the transformation   is a very slow and gradual build-up of the preconditions necessary for transformation, a preparation of the vessel,

The other part is an instantaneous burst in which the transformation seems to occur like lightning in the “twinkling of an eye” 

The evolution of life is a pre-eminent example: slowly the planet is prepared over eons, and then in an electric bolt of lightening the ocean is catalysed and molecular life appears.

We do not know what bolt of lightening came inside the brains of the hominids to generate language. The creator sounded a note and the brutes responded, dumbfounded. Such is the transformation of hominization . At the edge of consciousness, there are no explanations; there are only invocations of mythology.” (Thompson 1981)

To realise complete transcendence and to give birth to godhead, the invocation of the dynamic system of sexual union, tantric generations, through the myths of two aspects of a divine entity that was previously asleep but is now awake and active- through coupling, twisting and turning, engaging and entangling, complimentary and reflecting. The inside and the outside merge through extremes that explode into each other as the door of infinity and zero are united. A black hole of reality, white hole of the future. All that is the complete antithesis of the physical is the project mind of the collective that makes up the material as the two are one. All this projected into the archetypal framework of the temporality. The silver screen of Plato’s Cave. The hologram of our minds generations. Art is being. Being creates reality. The art of being is reflected in the technology necessitated to sustain it. The alchemy of physical manipulation through the nonphysical dimensions, allows us to cast our god as the product of all that is. Divided we oppose, the difference between us as we unleash the extremities of our emotional terrain. Annihilation through the challenge of difference, like the twin head of that rainbow serpent, tearing itself apart through the confrontation of the extremes of emotion. When acceptance of being raises the light quotient, the positive embracing of unified consciousness realises itself.    Awake, and now conscious, everything that is, and has been, process reality. The Illusion is on the screen, as we are simultaneously generating it.

This reality has realised freedom through identifying the oneness of the primal duality unified after becoming self away. The continuum is born and everything plays the drama of life through the archetypal ripples of the echoes of creation. The chaos of reality itself, is the illusion of all controlled and uncontrolled expressions. The self-consciousness of consciousness, with the shadow and light entangled like the twin snakes of the caduceus, the kundalini rising into ecstatic bliss that ejaculates in the mind as hormonal explosions of eternity. Active, and reacting. The awareness of everything as the face and expression of God head and Divinity is seen through the hologram of manifold unity. Acceptance of everything. The mountains’ mind is that which is the collective mind of all entities both macrocosmic and microcosmic that exist in the spiritus locii, the fixed place, the particles of matter and their spiritual antithesis.

I imagine what is in my mind, my loves and fears, angers and compassion projected and try to visualise the magnitude of the expression of that vast reality that my quantum awareness cannot even attempt to conceive.

Maxwells demon is born as awakened consciousness is the collective power source. The awakened generators, the transceivers. The mind of God turns inside out and upside down as it passes the infinity of its complete state of nothing, as it awakens, to all that is beyond comprehension. We are all, and all is every last thing where all physciality is mirrored in all of its complete opposite, non physical, emotional, astral, elemental, spiritual, soulful, thoughts and ideas that literally fuels the spacetime reality. God is immanence. One is all. All is the mind of God.

In the dynamic universe consciousness is awakened and with it spacetime, "Viva la Mertra" and the resurrection of the soul.

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