It is the burden of this paper to establish that Ultimate Truth is accessible through intuitive and contemplative processes.
Lest I be misunderstood, let me make it plain from the outset that there are those who would argue that there is no such thing as Ultimate Truth or indeed that intuition could provide any truth worth relying on. None the less, the deliberations contained within this piece are addressed to those whose comprehension of the deeper issues of the nature of reality provides some basis for justifying the search for Ultimate Truth.
The fundamental nature of reality has been realised through quantum physics and systems theory as revealing systematic interdependencies of unified connectivity, self-reference, self-organisation and organisational complexity.
Such a view of reality cannot be realised through basic geometric models that are Euclidian or Platonic, but require the rendering of models that belong to a class of topological shapes that twist into higher dimensions, unify inner and outer realms, and in effect contain themselves. The Klein bottle is such a shape, and it will be found in the course of this paper that this shape is not only of great significance to contemporary scientists in the fields of cosmology, systems theory, psychology and neuroscience to name only a few, but has served as a significant structure in western esoteric systems of knowledge.
One reason why I suggest that intuition and contemplation may lead us to a deeper understanding of reality is that while the dominant western mindset maintained a lineage of knowledge making based upon hierarchical and linear perceptions of reality the contemplative tradition of alchemy maintained cosmologies that were based upon cyclic and spiralling structures. The former is based on geometries that have discrete boundaries and limited architectures, and the latter alchemical tradition, perceived the complex topology of the Klein bottle as a shape synonymous with the structure of the universe and the nature of human ontology. This is a startling truth which suggests that the intuitive and contemplative perception of adepts where capable of extremely sophisticated articulations of Ultimate Truth. As it will be seen in the course of this paper, these complex topologies are now providing more complete mappings of reality than were previously considered.
Everything that we perceive in reality may be considered through structural analysis and the way that the dominant mindset has perceived reality, has been birthed through grand attempts at categorisations and organisation from Aristotle through to the nineteenth century perceptions of the structure of logic. Basic geometrical shapes such as spheres, planes, arcs and so on, all maintain discrete domains. Lines have a beginning and an end, time becomes a linear process of movement from the past to the future, and hierarchies like evolution develop in temporal and linear directions, where value becomes determined from a bottom up or ancient to present relationships.
These structural relationships seek to separate and order. The geometries utilised in order to rationalise relationships on the natural world have primarily maintained boundaries and discrete domains. That is, their surfaces are boundaries that separate the inner from the outer, above from below. These boundaries isolate dualistic constructs in a manner that perpetuate a dichotomous Either/Or hierarchical paradigm. With such a paradigm based on architectures that seek to separate and isolate, exclusive domains are maintained and there is no potential to unify oppositional attributes of the whole system. In fact the whole is perceived as a bounded structure lost in the space of the other or the external realm.
Dualist Separation of Either/Or Paradigm
Good Evil
Light Dark
Object Subject
Male Female
Rational Irrational/Emotional
Generally the models of reality offered by this paradigm are constrained by a mindset that is myopic and limited. It is a perspective that has attempted to visualise everything in discrete and separate units, delimiting and circumscribed, categorised and logically formulated, ordered, stable, harmonious and perfect.
The instigation of such a dualistic formulation may well be due to the vision of God’s creation as ultimate perfection, clear of any messiness and disorder. Dualistic models fail to realise the dynamic nature of a constantly evolving dynamic system. They fail to realise the relationships between opposites, that harmony and chaos are integral attributes of nature, and forming such dichotomies, a naïve hierarchical structure is born where conceptual separations identify an inherently patriarchal system.
Masculine, light, day, objective, harmonic, stable, etc are all aligned on the one hand with the good, the virtuous, and the rational however, on the other hand and pitched at extremes, we have the Feminine, darkness, night and the subjective aligned with evil, the irrational, the chaotic and the unstable.
From the roots of our contemporary mindset, we have argued for a now realised false paradigm and have tried to reduce all of the phenomena of this extraordinary reality into the tightly ordered parameters of a materialist vision of reality. We have attempted to reduce “spaceland” into “flatland”, or more specifically, we have attempted to visualise our multidimensional reality through a mindset limited by a perception based primarily in three dimensions of space and one of time, where time is realised a linear forward moving road to the future.
Through this journey we have not only destroyed the mindsets of others and decimated cultures that are different, we have created a world of artifice. We have viewed the material world as an endless resource that supports our technologies, and from them we create an artificial world that we can control and order and maintain an artificial sense of perfection.
This mindset realised its most complete expression in the seventeenth century through the classical physics of Newton and his mechanistic model of the universe. In the local world, that is, in a world that does not enter into the outer reaches of the infinitely large, the macrocosm, nor the inner most reaches of the infinitely small or microcosmic, Newtons physics worked extremely well, and is used to this day particularly in the physics of mechanics and engineering.
It was in 1905 that flaws in this classical model became more fully realised. The first few years of the 20th Century saw a radical development in Einstein’s Special theory of Relativity in 1905 which developed Newtons mechanical model of space-time and offered further revisions with General Relativity in 1915 which shows that matter changes the geometry of space-time causing it to curve where the curvature is interpreted as gravity.
Two dimensional visualisation of space time distortion. The presence of matter changes the geometry of spacetime, this curved geometry is interpreted as gravity. ( Illustration of spacetime curvature from wikimedia.org)
Just like the effects of dropping a heavy ball into a trampoline, this new model extended Newtons vision of cosmology. Whilest Einsteins revelations have been profound, we can still see that the constraints of the dominant mindset remain present.
Einstein perceived the universe as a stationary entity, which was initially at dynamical equilibrium. The emergence of Gravity would cause the universe to begin to contract and so to maintain equilibrium, he developed the cosmological constant which would counteract this contraction. The “Cosmological Constant” referred to the energy density of empty space. It could be a positive, negative or zero figure. After Hubble’s observations revealed that the universe was in fact expanding, Einstein realised the Cosmological Constant to be his biggest blunder.
Even though Einstein’s Theory of Relativity has radically transformed our vision of the universe and of reality, our considered geometries of the universe have been developed through filter of Euclidean geometries. The possible shapes offered, and maintained even now, are constrained by geometries that maintain discrete, separate and ultimately and inert non dynamic structure.
positive curvature
negative curvature
zero curvature
Such architectures fail to realise the true livingness of real entities and dynamic systems. Our universe is a dynamic system, and requires a topology that is not constrained by the previous paradigm.
Einstein’s theories had no need of this Cosmological constant and the profundity of his theories have stood the test time, passed rigorous experimental procedures and is has consolidated a new way of perceiving reality. However, the nature and shape of the universe remains an illusive objective, as does the theory of everything, and the cosmological constant too remains and is invoked in a variety of ways in many hypotheses, ranging from infinitesimally small units of plank length, as with the Lambda CDM model to the infinitely large cosmological constant used in many Quantum Field Theories required to balance the energy of the Quantum Vacuum. For Super Symmetric Theories the Cosmological Constant remains at Zero.
Whilst the Theory of Relativity has extended our knowledge of the infinitely large, and has led to extreme revisions of the nature of the quantum world, there is still no unified theory that realises the physics of the large and the small in one theory. They are worlds apart.
The legacy of which is a situation that while complete theories of the strange and paradoxical nature of reality which have generated numerous branches such as complexity theory and Quantum Electrodynamics and so on, numerous scientists and philosophers of science remain vigilant guards of physical realism.
It would be foolish of me to assume the territory of the scientist and offer explanations of the new science and its implications, however the developments in Quantum Mechanics that have now become known as archetypal experiments that reveal wave particle duality and non locality, such as the EPR experiments and the work of Alain Aspect, not to mention the interpretations offered by David Bohm have been significant in shattering the old paradigm however as the old paradigm remains the lens through which we view our local world, it doggedly maintains a filter to truth. We still assume that the universe has a basic geometric structure.
In a world were paradox is primary, uncertainty and indeterminism a given and the subject influence of the observer understood, the ability to determine a fixed interpretation is impossible. Critics of idealism resort to untenable notions of God as evidence against idealism.
The irony however, is that these untenable notions of God have been conceived through geometric structures that are formed in the Anglocentric model of discrete space, where god is personified as a separate entity that stands outside the scheme of things, manipulating reality at his will. Through rational logical argument the untenability of such a god becomes reasoned.
The irony is that these issues are being fought through a flawed mindset. It is the actual constraints of the mindset itself, which are invoked to ridicule the opposed perception of reality. No other construct of God, not immanence, or the unity of the one and the many, no alternative perception of God is invoked in such a critique at all.
We are in fact witness to an inherent and unconscious supremacy that continues in the dominant mindset, which is invested in all of the political social and economic structures that this mindset has birthed.
The complexities that exist within these opposed views of reality are strikingly similar and yet the implication of each offer extremely different realities.
Realism Idealism
Matter is primary Consciousness is primary
Consciousness is emergent Organisational complexity of matter determines the
from the organisational complexity of the consciousness inherent in the
complexity of the organism organism or matter
In Realism, matter is considered to be primary and consciousness is emergent through the organisational complexity of the organism.
Conversely Idealism suggests that consciousness is primary and organisational complexity of matter determines the complexity of the consciousness inherent in the organism or matter.
The similarities reveal that complex consciousness is born our of organisation complexity, however the building blocks of realism have no consciousness as such. It is a phenomena that emerges at a certain level of complexity, a boundary state that presently is not defined, and perhaps is shifting from humans and some animals to include all animals, or may even shift further as is the case of Danah Zohar's suggestion of a limited panpsychism where the boundary would be identified as the categorical separation between living and non living (however whether such a boundary exists is a matter of debate!)
These debates reveal inconsistencies that were explored in parallel to these great developments in Science, and have made major contributions to a new comprehension of logic. It is evidence of the deep entrenchment of ideas concerning reality, that so many decades have seen these developments take form, and that sadly there may well be so many decades to come, before we realise the depth of the problems that we have faced and are facing and will face. If this paradigm shift occurs at all, it will global, it will reach through every construct of knowledge that has been known to us, it will effect every aspect of our waking sleeping and dreaming life.
Just prior to Einstein’ radical revisions similarly startling results were obtained in 1901 from a set of simple exercises in logic.
Hilbert: aimed to show the consistency of mathematical systems from the assumption that the "finitary arithmetic" (a subsystem of the usual arithmetic of the positive integers, chosen to be philosophically uncontroversial) was consistent.
In response to Newtons Principia Mathematica and to Hilbert’s notions of mathematical consistency, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s attempted to formulate this logic in their own Principia Mathematica published in 1901. Theirs was an attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a well-defined set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic, known now as the set theoretic.
The Set Theoretic and Russell’s Paradox
A set is a boundary that contains entities.
As such, it cannot contain itself. The “Omega Set”
Is the “set of all sets”. It contains everything and in doing so contains itself.
This reveals the inherent paradox of such a system of logic.
He found however that this approach led to paradox. The omega set or the “set of all sets” invoked an unspeakable structure, as a set could not contain itself. Russell’s paradox was a startling revelation which led Whitehead to shift his intellectual direction toward comprehending a deeper understanding of reality and organisational complexity, drawing more from the work of scientists such as Henri Bergson and mathematicians such as Leibniz. He, like many others, returned to the earliest roots of our knowledge, to stoic physics and to Plato, finding in these ancient texts, sophisticated reasoning of a holistic perception of reality, and numerous warnings that prophesised the limitations of attempting to formulate through systems of knowledge a true rendering of reality.
“The safest general characterization of the whole Western philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Alfred North Whitehead)
His own words suggest that “The safest general characterization of the whole Western philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Alfred North Whitehead) and went on to developed his ideas with his Publication in 1929 of “Process and Reality”.
The Platonic and Preplatonic wisdom overtly warned of the future inability to realise Ultimate Truth. From a conversation between Asclepius and Trismagistus in the Corpus Hermeticum this prophetic warning is stated as such:
“ The many make philosophy obscure in the multiplicity of their reasoning.. by combining it through ingenious argument with various branches of study that are not comprehensible….. Accordingly, the people who will come after us, deceived by the ingenuity of sophists, will be estranged from the true, pure and holy philosophy.”
-Asclepius: To me this Asclepius is like the sun. A Holy Book of Hermes Trismagistus addressed to Asclepius
“Speaking as a prophet, I will tell you that after us will remain none of that simple regard for philosophy found only in the continuing reflection and holy reverence by which one must recognize divinity. The many make philosophy obscure in the multiplicity of their reasoning…..…by combining it through ingenious argument with various branches of study that are not comprehensible- arithmetike and music and geometry. Pure philosophy that depends only on reverence for god should attend to these matters only to wonder at at the recurrence of the stars, how their measure stays constant in prescribed stations and in the orbit of their turning; it should learn the dimensions, qualities and quantities of the land, the depths of the sea, the power of fire and the nature and effects of all such things in order to commend, worship and wonder at the skill and mind of god. Knowing music is nothing more than being versed in the correct sequence of all things together as allotted by divine reason. By divine song, this sequencing or marshalling of each particular thing into a single whole through reason’s craftwork produces concord- very sweet and true.
Accordingly, the people who will come after us, deceived by the ingenuity of sophists, will be estranged from the true, pure and holy philosophy. To adore the godhead with simple mind and soul and to honor his works, also to give thanks to god’s will …this is a philosophy unprofaned by relentlessly curious thinking”
And from Plato:
“ But this much at any rate I can affirm about any present or future writers who pretend to knowledge of the matters with which I concern myself (mystical knowledge of the One); in my judgement it is impossible that they should have any understanding of the subject. It is not something that can be put into words like other branches of learning; only after long partnership in a common life (contemplative community) devoted to this very thing does truth flash upon the soul, like a flame kindled by a leaping spark. No treatise by me concerning it exists or ever will exist.”
-Plato, Seventh Epistle
For Whitehead, Bertrand Russel and himself had unwittingly begun the unpacking of a cornucopia of issues that would spark furiously through the fabric of knowledge, in and out of numerous disciplines like the firing of neurons in the cosmic mind. However, the full implications of this have yet been unable to ground for reasons that are complex and require detailed revisions of the formative influences of the contemporary mindset.
Kurt Godel continued to work with this revelation of paradox, and out of this came his incompleteness theorems.
Kurt Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem 2
basic arithmetic cannot be used to prove its own consistency
no consistent system can be used to prove its own consistency
These theorems revealed that basic arithmetic cannot be used to prove its own consistency and further that no consistent system can be used to prove its own consistency.
The technical results of Godel’s theorem dealt a fatal blow to Hilbert’s Program and pointed toward the difficult issue of defining logical truth which was developed further by Tarski through simple thought experiments.
Tarski’s Self-Referential provability.
“Statement” is true if and only if “Statement” is true
eg The grass is green if and only if the grass is green.
Tarski’s very simple definition reduced the issue to self-referential provability. It is here that echoes to the past began to reverbarate.
It is here also that we see the falsity in a variety of philosophical arguments that debate against idealism from a false set of precepts, that are generated by a false geometric visualisation and offered back as proof of and alternative systems falsity. Paradox reigns! And is perhaps one of the only truths that we can speak with certainty.
What has occurred out of these revisions has been an appeal to higher dimensional topologies. An preceding invocation of this radical thought is expressed in the work of Robert Boyle specifically with his perpetual motion machine.
Robert Boyles Self Flowing Flask
Robert Boyle developed his perpetual motion machine in the 17th century. He was influenced by Hermetic knowledge, this is certainly known, and possibly mused at the designs offered by ancient alembic vessels of the alchemists, whatever its source, this impossible machine was seen as a ridiculous notion that would never have the potential to be realised at all.
The self referentiality present in the previous thought experiments allude to something far more deeply present in Ultimate Reality. These thought experiments would be realised many decades later with the ecological observations that reveal the natural world as a self organising dynamic system. Feedback loops are a fundamental attribute of all dynamic systems. Computability developed the potential to realise the underlying nature of the natural world and of dynamic systems itself, giving birth to Chaos theory and Complexity science. Information was also seen as dynamic system and the reality of what constitutes life became extended into a Russian doll sequence of system within system within system. The Gaia Hypothesis is perhaps the most famous realisation of this dynamic global entity.
What drives the system though is a mysterious question.
David Bohms Implicate Order invokes the Quantum potential as an internal engine or source of energy within all elementary particles and as Zajonc suggests in “Catching the Light” is
“a monumental shift (that) has taken place in our conception of things……..which urges us to do what Goethe, Thoreau, Whitman, and a thousand others have petitioned for a century: to conceive of things as a whole…….If one day we awoke and truly saw the world this way, the ramifications would shake our psyche to its foundations assuming we remained sane, the relationship of I to thou, of individual to planet, of my actions to yours, would be revolutionised.”
Alchemy is a curious practice that is multifaceted and rarely understood in its entirety. It has influenced many of the great scientists, philosophers and artists of the West. It has been a source of wisdom for Islamic mystics and the esoteric tradition of the Jews and is equal in its significance to well known eastern scriptures such as the Upanishads, the Dhammapada and the Tao te Ching. It is a cornerstone of western Knowledge and many of its precepts can be found in the doctrines of Christianity. Yet it has been the source of major conflict and persecution, judged primarily for its association and confusion with the Black arts, or magic, and the truths that it holds have been rejected by many as confused and irrational practices that have no place in the scheme of contemporary thinking.
Firstly, Alchemy was not as many critics have suggested, simply ‘a medieval chemistry chiefly concerned with efforts to turn base metals into gold’ (Merriam Webster Dictionary) or was the deeper purpose of Alchemy to manifest wealth and success, or the creation of a golden elixir, or panacea. While the alchemists intentions have been a primary objective for many practicing alchemists, at its most pure form, alchemy was and still is a method that engages the participant in a systematic process of purification, where the subject engages in an introjective analysis of the self in order achieve spiritual aspirations that would lead the psyche on a journey of integration towards an objective of equal-mindedness and realisation of Ultimate Reality and Ultimate Truth.
According to Angelus Silesius: ‘Lead becomes changed into Gold, doubt vanishes, when with God, I am changed by God into God…It is the heart which is transmuted into the finest gold, Christ, or heavenly grace being the tincture.’ (Chevalier 1996)
Alchemy has remained shrouded in mystery even though Carl Jung saw in it a cornucopia of archetypal images, symbols and representations of processes that reflected both deeply personal and universal revelations. These revelations seemed to transgress the physical constraints of ordinary awareness. His extensive research into the symbolism and narrative of the process has reconnected the contemporary mind with the alchemical process as a means to exalt the psyche through transformation and transubstantiation. Jung’s earliest publication of “Symbols of Transformation” was in 1912 and greatly influenced artists of that time especially those involved with the Dada and Surrealist movements. However brilliant his work has been, the newly developing science of psychology did not embrace it, and today, his theories remain marginalised and misunderstood, even though many contemporary theorists are indebted to his work.
To comprehend the fullest appreciation of Alchemy, we have to suspend our classically defined perceptions of reality and open our limited perceptual filters to include a multidimensional reality where space and time are nonlinear and extend beyond the physical constraints with which we have become most familiar. It is only through this conceptual portal that we can come to understand how alchemical symbolism is set on the cosmological plane.
The Roots of Alchemy
Alchemy’s roots are obscure and supported by mythological constructs that refer to a legendary entity Thoth, who supposedly preceded the first Egyptian God, Ra. According to Zecharia Sitchin, in “When Time Began"-
"Thoth was called in the “Pyramid Texts”, 'He who reckons the heavens, the counter of the stars and the measurer of the Earth', the inventor of arts and sciences, scribe of the gods, the 'One who made calculations concerning the heavens, the stars and the Earth'. As the 'Reckoner of times and of seasons', he was depicted with a symbol combining the Sun's disk and the Moon's crescent upon his head, and - in words reminiscent of the biblical adoration of the Celestial Lord - the Egyptian inscriptions and legends said of Thoth that his knowledge and powers of calculating 'measured out the heavens and planned the Earth'. His hieroglyphic name Tehuti is usually explained as meaning 'He who balances'. Heinrich Brugsch (Religion und Mythologie) and E. A. Wallis Budge (The Gods of the Egyptians) interpreted that to mean that Thoth was the 'god of the equilibrium' and considered depictions of him as 'Master of the Balance' to indicate that he was associated with the equinoxes - the time when the day and the night were balanced."
Jean-Philipe Lauer, in his book, “Saqqara”, writes about the “King list of Turin” which details the names of some 300 kings being a summary of 958 years of history, from the reign of King Menes to the end of the 8th Dynasty. It is a list of great detail and completeness. What is surprising is that it refers also to a preceding epoch where
“Immediately before Menes came several lines which summarize the collective reigns of 'spirits', not given individual names, and before these, and heading the whole compilation, a list of deities. The name of each is written in a cartouche, as if a king, and followed by a precise length of reign. In the case of the god Thoth, for example, this is 7,726 years."
Thoth was a grand re-creator. He was depicted in various forms particularly as a sacred ibis and a baboon and is essentially a figure that heralds a new beginning, a recreation of sorts, where the roots of our civilisation grew out of a complex and exhaustive knowledge base that was cast in temples of stone, codifying complex mathematics and sacred geometries by way of extraordinary architectural feats which mimic and attempt to explain the infinitude of perfection and intricacy found in the natural world around us, as well as in the cosmology of which our world was a part, including the inner realm of consciousness. This abrupt beginning, startling in the magnitude of its sophistication is itself shrouded in mystery and remains virtually inaccessible.
Our ancestors have struggled with the meaning of this ancient past as we struggle with it now. The legacy of this has been to assume that the ancients themselves new little about reality and through this ignorance, generated cosmologies that were fanciful and bizarre, and hence not worthy of serious research outside of the rigours of scientific enquiry into the archaeology of the structures that remain.
Finding meaning in such riddles has been considered the domain of sensationalist and emotive explorers that have constantly been rejected by serious academics. Consequently, entire subjects remain in a quagmire of unresolved attempts to present the ancients as having sophisticated philosophical underpinnings of Ultimate Reality.
Since the development of computability, complexity theories have allowed us to realise everything around us as interconnected dynamic systems that are self-organising through mechanisms that allow new information to feedback into the system providing for reorganisation. This, in turn, develops adaptations to the external world, allowing the system to continue at its highest capacity within the environment that it is located.
Our evolving knowledge and processing of information is such a system, but we have not yet realised the ability, nor necessity to allow ways where new revisions or new discoveries can feedback to this system. As I have stated above, our perceptual limitations have perpetuated dualistic, linear and hierarchical models of development and logic, constantly rejecting incommensurable theories that do not fit tightly into a mindset that has since been rocked to its core with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the New Science that it gave birth to.
Our contemporary appreciation of reality has failed to comprehend intuitive, emotional and subjective perceptions of reality, has failed to understand numerous phenomena, it has failed to deliver a nineteenth century Utopia and to realise freedom, unity and the ultimate comprehension of love and interconnectedness. It is a mindset of control, power and domination. With its technological dependence and its economic rationalisations for continued exploitation of the earth’s resources and its attempted destruction of every other cultural mindset, it has resisted revisions and maintained its foundation of materialist realism at the expense of its own survival.
To address this extraordinary predicament, we need to appeal to the foundations of all literate cultures; and for this an excursion into the murky waters of the past and its narratives of creation is essential.
(Table from www.accuracyingenisis.com/flood)
Creation myths of all cultures provide an arena that is completely astonishing particularly for a mindset that has little understanding of the capacity for intuition or contemplation to provide wisdom and truth.
Although many cultures remained geographically isolated for millennium, the concurrence of their stories is remarkable and has led researchers like Campbell, Graves, Sitchin, Eliade and many others, to conclude that their accounts refer to a lineage of oral traditions that through metaphor hold details about real events. Alternatively, as Jung thought, there was a collective unconscious that was a common source of wisdom where archetypal narratives provided symbolic means through which the individual could integrate experiences of the world around them. For others still, the narratives where thought of as explications of truth that could provide deeper insights of a more esoteric nature.
Whatever the case may be, the fundamental similarities of these creation myths point to catastrophic origins. With this in mind, the Corpus Hermeticum reads like a prescription for spiritual purification. It is a treatise on how to achieve a state of perfection necessary for a post catastrophic recreation.
In many creation myths from the Vedas to the myths of Sumer, are stories that refer to a cataclysmic rupture where the forces of nature are ripped apart and a great battle between Gods is amassed in the heavens. (Hancock, Sitchin, Alford, Phillips) These accounts offer detailed descriptions of fiery bodies, comets or meteors impacting the earth and wars between heavenly Gods which are followed by a period of chaos, after which a new creation is realised with knowledge being offered to different tribes across the planet, in order to assist in their survival.
The chaos includes the description of a great flood as told in numerous myths including the Rig Veda, the Pyramid texts and of course in the biblical story of Noah. In the Rig Veda, Manu like Noah was warned by Vishnu that there would be a deluge, and that he would send him a large ship, that he was to load it with two of every living species and the seeds of every plant. The Deluge had carried away all creatures and Manu remained alone in the domain of a new creation.
Similarly, in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh sits at the feet of the sage and hears the story of the Flood and how the Gods warned Utnapishtim to build an ark shaped like a perfect cube with seven levels. William Irwin Thompson tells us in his book concerning the origins of culture, that this cube resembled more a Platonic solid from the Timaeus than a seaworthy craft. That the cube is a traditional Hermetic and alchemical symbol for the earth suggests that what was being described “is the creation of a new body for the earth for the newly emerging world epoch.”
These motives often coincide with the ursurption of the feminine, a pulling apart of the natural world or the body of the goddess herself, and with this, its recreation by the masculine God, which Leonard Shlain has associated with the development of literacy and a culture of domination over the forces of nature, and over the feminine.
With many creation myths what precedes this catastrophe is a situation that describes social immorality and distortion. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and Thoth declares:
“They have fought fights, they have upheld strifes, they have done evil they have created hostilities, they have made slaughter, they have caused trouble and oppression…I am going to blot out everything that I have made. This earth shall enter into the watery abyss by means of a raging flood, and will become even as it was in primeval time.”
The archaeological and geological evidence concerning global volcanic activity, climatic change, the rising of the oceans waters by approximately 200 meters, covering various landbridges locates this time at approximately 12-14,000 years ago. (Josephine Flood “Archeology of the Dreamtime” 1983; Australian Museum)
This too corresponds with the controversial dating of snap frozen mammoths of Siberia through a shift in the glacial regions, and melting of others. The cause of this effect has been associated with the impact from meteors or a comet, thought to have been large enough to have shifted the polar axis of the earth causing radical global floods and ruptures in the earths crust resulting in super volcanoes. (Otto Muck et all ) One of the proposed sites of such an impact is thought to be in the Gulf of Mexico affecting the coastline of Southern Carolina, which reveals deep craters now known as the Carolina Bays.
These bays have been the subject of extensive geological research, which suggests the impact was caused by a comet dated at about the same time. The effects of such an impact in this environment, known for its structural fragility and proximity to Atlantic fault lines would be not to far from the Atlantean accounts in Plato’s Timaeus which describes a sea impassable by ships, a darkness that was impenetrable, in effect the edge of the world. (Muck, Alford, Donelly, West, et all)
Many creationists appeal to such data as evidence of a cataclysm signifying a recreation of the world out of which the dominant cultures have grown. This is one of many areas which require open minded non dogmatic scholarship as it is intrinsic to the nature of proceeding psychological attitudes to the world around us.
The cradle of our contemporary civilisation was most likely informed by cataclysmic events, the outcomes of which have generated a culture of fear, control and domination, a culture that survives through control and relies on the development of technologies as the vehicle for the potential emancipation from the constraints of this seemingly hostile planet.
It is here that we locate the most convincing aetiology of the polarisation of cultural mindsets. That is the difference between a culture that realises love and interconnectedness as a primary truth as opposed to its antithesis. The psychology that is born out of such a trauma of loss, is one that is also based on fear. It is a psychology of woundedness and the wound is imprinted by archetypal memories of the Fall from Grace, of the corruption of the world and of the self. No longer are we custodians of paradise, as Aboriginal and other preliterate cultures remained; no longer are we nurtured by the mother earth herself. We are cast out and dispossessed, fragmented and dissociated from our true origins and spiritual heritage, and wrenched from our spiritual birthright like an dispossessed child.
Crawling out of the chaos that precedes the growth of these post cataclysmic civilisations, our psychological demeanour focuses upon raw emotions as we stand in the shadow of our former selves. Our emotional fractures cause us to project upon the world all that we desire to reinstate, and our quest for freedom becomes enslaved by our attachments to a future utopia cast in the fabric of matter.
Our technologies have become a projection of our denied spiritual potential and with this our gross manipulations of the material world have become the domain of unconsciously driven magicians, the creators of artifice, so powerful in our ignorance, inspired by the darkness of our loss and despair, and wilful in our attempts to be God.
With this artificial simulucrum, as Baudrillard calls it, our technology mimics our unconscious spiritual aspirations as it mimics the perfection of the natural world. Our dream for love unity and the ultimate potential for humanity has been held in suspension bound by the convictions of a despiritualised mindset. Everything has turned inside out and the cradle of civilisation has become the crucible of the dark brotherhood.
Ironically, our truly dark brothers, those to whom these cultures of literacy, civilisation, sophistication and dominance refer as savages, maintained their light, their love and respect for the mother, the goddess and for the earth. They remained custodians of her rich and powerful body and tended her garden with a mindset that intuited their world as an interconnected dynamic system that was multidimensional and unconstrained by ideas of linear time and soulless matter until their world too become ruptured by grotesque atrocities waged against them. It is a legacy generated by fear, anger and hatred, all of the emotions that have created a mindset of distortion, destruction and the diabolic. All that is opposite to the symbolic, the symbiont, the sympathetic, the symmetric.
Technological developments, the development of cities, and social systems, and particularly of defences and weapons all required the mining of the earth’s resources. The heartfelt guilt induced by these actions were justified through myths that identified the mercurious or prima materia, the divine essence of reality itself, as the dragon monstrum that was for the West considered a malevolent being and in the East a being of benevolence. It may be that the chaotic, and evil connotations of this being were the result of imaging the universe as an order and perfect creation of God. In the East however, where harmony is visualised through a dynamic relationship between opposites as depicted in the Yin Yang symbol, chaos and paradox were not seen as anomalies to nature, and their appreciation of mercurious, the essence of nature is therefore a dragon of benevolence.
For the West, the evil serpent or dragon was slain in order to retrieve the riches of the earth, which were seen as rightful possessions provided for the use of humans at their will. In the East, conversely, the dragon was seen as a benevolent being and was considered to always give freely of these riches, but contrary to the way this benevolent being was identified through pagan rites as freely moving in the cosmos, visiting sites periodically, the myths and practices developed in the East, sought to trap the dragon in geomantically constructed temples so that the riches could be offered continuously. For both the East and West, the problem of opening the body of the mother, that is the earth, or the natural world in order to continuously use her resources was resolved and for both she became a host to be used and abused at will.
The literate cultures have become the most dominant and the most dominant of them, the West, maintains an arrogant supremacy, assuming that its perception of reality and involvement with the planet is the product of a natural process of evolution. They consider their technological prowess is indicative of their intellectual ability. For Westerners, as for a projective materialist mindset, this statement is true. If it were true of all humans one would suppose that given the right circumstances and influences all other cultures would have come to the same end. That end assumes a mindset born out of fear and reaction to be the truest expression of humanity. All other cultural mindsets who consider love as a primary unifying agent, who honour the sacred as the immanence of God in all things, and see reality as an interconnected whole have been either destroyed or oppressed, misunderstood and ridiculed for their reverence.
Our literacy has assumed the position of a repository of truth, and our technologies out picture our inner potential, our wills become focused on wealth and resources, power and control. In our initial and relative isolation we were masters of all around us, over time we have mastered the entire world of matter. We have become unconscious magicians, not believing in the power of will, yet wilfully creating our minds desires, our hearts reaching out to the utopian paradise that is the paradise lost. We are recreating the original wound through our unresolved projections, as Arther Janov would suggest, in our projective reactions we are re-enacting what has already occurred to us.
What can be retrieved from such a culture of darkness, alienation, and despair in a climate that foresees little hope for transformation? Without addressing the psychological distortions, anything we do becomes a cosmetic bandaid that seeks to find within the system itself, something that will cure all of the negative fallout that our technologies, brilliant as they are produce. We must attempt to see within these technological achievements the human aspiration that has been synthetically achieved. If we can do this, then our technology may offer us the material analogue to our true hearts yearning. In a sense this will be a reverse Alchemy!
The Corpus Hermeticum is a book that reveals an incredibly sensitive comprehension of interconnectedness, complexity and immanence. It is recognised as one of the most influential esoteric texts that has informed all of the major religions, Sufism, the Vedas, Christianity and numerous Eastern esoteric practices. Contained within it are precious insights and intuitions of the sacred that hold for all of us the potential to reclaim our true selves.
Alchemy’s preChristian heritage was a practice based on the inner reflection of an outer material process. The history of magic and the black arts has similar roots in Egyptian mysticism and some of the methods and intentions have became confused and distorted. The magical papyrus however is a completely different text, and if we consider this history as one of instructing an new world on how to cope, and how to heal, and how to create, then one can understand the need for such a magical treatise. To mix these texts though confuses two distinctly different and opposed approaches to being in this world. Such distinctions between these practices are complex and often never considered. Subsequently this legacy of confusion has led to gross distortions in contemporary spiritual practice.
The specifically Western and both pre and post Christian alchemy which is inspired by the Cropus Hermeticum, is particular in its practice, and completely opposite to the project of magic. Some would suggest that Christianity is completely informed by these books and that the life of Jesus depicts an attempt to address the chaos, wilful behaviour, magic and debauchery of the time. The difference is to be realised as either a wilful process where the practitioner is the Magician or a process of surrender where the partitioner is a servant of God. These two archetypes may be realised as that of the Magician and that of the Fool.
The former employs his will upon the outer environment, harnessing all of the forces around him, and controls his environment, others around him and the future as an outcome of the directed projection where is work upon matter intensifies and concretises his will. Conversely, as surrender, the practitioner denies his personal will, assumes his position as post fall distorted being in need of purification, surrenders his ‘weapons of accomplishment’ from the distorted self, accepts the heritage of original sin as the fall from grace, and aspires to surrender his will completely to the will of God. He devotes himself to rituals of purification, where the corruptions of the astral mental and emotional planes are cleansed. In attempting to attain the heights of godhead, the aspirant seeks to cleanse that which has been congested through the dross of its descent into matter and desirousness, from the corporeal to the hyper-real. God and mans prenatal self is seen as an androgyny, the union of male and female essence.
As the archetype of the fool, he is often considered to be naïve and at the beginning of the path of aspiration. He is however at the beginning and the end, he is engrossed in the world fully connected and inspired by its majesty. He is carefree and not hindered by desires or fears, he is not concerned with death or life, he simply is. And is his freedom, being connected to all that surrounds him, he trusts his world implicitly. As he is about to wander of the edge of the cliff, his dog catches his clothes in his mouth and pulls him out of harms way.
The legacy of this lack of discernment of opposed lineages has been a blanket attempt to destroy what is essentially the deeper esoteric truths of our major religions, particularly of Christianity. Even today the New Age makes few attempts to discern such differences and in the quest for spiritual aspiration, sees unity as a given union of dualities, where good and evil are relative aspect of the one “force” or energy leading to a completely ignorant and distorted engagement with reality. In the quest for self empowerment the subject overlooks the project of a deeply Christian practice and employs the will of the self, often without assuming any need for purification, and often purely for the manifestation of wealth and success, good health and power to control the forces around them. This new power and wealth is justified as a god given right that will be more divinely used by one who is so empowered, than by one who is not inspired with such knowledge.
The reason for this lies in the lack of discernment between the lineage of wilful control which is born out of the fear of loss. It is synonymous with separation, judgement, isolation, alienation and ultimately of hatred and destruction, and that of surrender. Such a distortion, effectively from a mindset of love and interconnectedness, reveals itself as a matrix of personas, or wounded aspects of the self, that have been generated in order to maintain some connection with a reality that is itself engendered by the distortion itself.
Projection engages with reality through action and reaction, seeing every new situation as discrete from any emotional baggage or memories that may resonate with the initial reading of a situation even though nothing may be actually be known about the situation or event. Reaction lifts us to act out of impulse to the resonance and memory of a past scenario that that is unconsciously invoked and has already flushed the body with the appropriate chemicals to prepare for defence and attack. By the time we engage our analytical process, we have already destroyed the opponent, or the relationship, or any form of constructive interaction.
Conversely, introjection recognises everything that is external to the self, as a reflection of the inner state of consciousness, which is where the process of alchemical purification seeks to clear the emotional body of anything that is corrupted or unprocessed, in effect, the realisation of any cellular memory that has congested the energetic or etheric body.
The material process of alchemy provides the participant with an analogue of cleansing through working upon material forms. The alchemists of old worked upon the transmutation of metals that would undergo detailed processes of purification. These processes would mimic an inner journey where cleansing, and union, death, putrefaction, sublimation, hermaphroditic or incestuous union, pregnancy and rebirth, where the soul is purified by heavenly dew, follow the separation of the parts. The process then enters a third union, that of the heavenly marriage which precedes the assumption of the soul as Mary received as queen of heaven while the body lies in state awaiting the Easter resurrection of the Christed self, after which the fourth traumatic act of union and rebirth is accomplished.
Many creative processes have provided such an arena where artist work on an expression of an inner process of death and resurrection.
Contemporary psychophysical modalities developed today are influenced by similar processes that have been created through a history of Shamanism and of experimental fields such as altered states induced formally by drugs and more recently through mediation, that seek deep healing of emotional distortions with the intent to realise spiritual wholeness in cathartic release of suppressed emotion and wounded experience.
In seeking to realise this state of perfection, the aspirant recognises through self-reference the distortions of the psyche which manifest as false personas that engage in a world where truth does not reign. In all attempts to prevent the self from entering the domain of woundedness these false personas project to the world, opposed constructs of the true self’s intention, essentially holding the true self hostage. The journey toward individuation is one that first initiates self-reference, that is observing the self and all of its personas where the outside realm of experience becomes the mirror and reflection of truth.
In observing the process of being in the world, and one’s relationship to real events, the subject becomes aware of the emotional reactions and the desire to project onto the object of their distress. At this point a great deal of conscious failure is realised as reaction inadvertently occurs and spills forth the rage and expression of whatever unrealised or unprocessed wound has been sympathetically aroused. In a culture devoid of feeling and expressing emotions, our bodies are possessed by memories of such events, the trauma of which is held in the cells and will remain potently charged and ready to issue forth often at the slightest provocation. The body is in the grips of an emotional template where the endocrine system releases all of the chemicals that the cells are charged with and as they flush through the body we are called to act. In preventing projective action, the former unrealised wound can be summoned to consciousness and through introjection the narrative relived in right relationship to its past.
Each of us has all of the wounds necessary for the soul to realise liberation in this way, though we are often too bound to the ego to humble ourselves in the face of our own trauma. The ultimate aspiration through such a journey is to bring forth the true self, unattached to desires and fears and all of the lower emotions, exalted as the divine and purified feminine and masculine true self, where individuation is realised as the divine marriage, the divine feminine honoured and the Christed self revealed.
The issues here are profound and any attempt to homogenise and recreate a way of being in this world without realising the complexities that inform our current situation is of great concern. There is a need to address the mindset and change our approach to these ancient writings, whereby light will return to such profound and detailed processes of aspiration to Godhead.
Science and Alchemy
For Basarab Nicolescu it was the union of opposites and self referential essence of alchemy that inspired his exploration of the Cosmology of Jacob Boehme. In 1991, he published “Science, Meaning, and Evolution” and in it this leading theoretical physicist outlines the striking correspondence that the new physics has with this older form of understanding reality, and suggests a ‘new approach of Transdisciplinary study where the integration between the physical universe and humanity can take place’. He has been one of few contemporary scientists to realise the fullness of the Alchemical process and its cosmology.
In attempting to conceive the primary modality of Alchemy as the unity of contradictory opposites, he realised that the newly birthed and truly transdisciplinary branch of science -Quantum Cosmology made an excellent example. He realised that ‘this new science is based on the idea of the unity between two scales of nature which were considered, until just a few years ago, as completely different- the quantum scale and the cosmological scale.’ He goes on to say that
“quantum cosmology revolves around the idea of the spontaneous appearance of the universe, as the result of laws of physics. The universe seems capable of creating itself and also organising itself, with no “outside” intervention. The most appropriate image for visualising this self-contained dynamic of the universe would be the Ouroborus- the serpent which bites its own tail- an ancient Gnostic symbol and also the symbol of the completion of the Great Work in alchemy….a true dynamic of the bootstrap type (self-consistency) could be envisaged between different levels of reality: each level of reality is what it is because all other levels of reality exist at the same time. A meta-discourse or a meta-theory would therefore be possible, but they would never be unique or absolute. While located resolutely in the domain of the rational, the transdisciplinary approach would permit the emergence of a polyphonic dialogue, between rational and irrational, sacred and profane, simplicity and complexity, unity and diversity, nature and the imaginal, man and the universe. I am convinced that in the decades to come it could establish itself as the preferred means for developing the epistemology of complexity and could light the way to the formulation of a new Philosophy of nature.”
The Mercurious The pelican Christus and the Ouroborus.
The ouroborus is a major alchemical symbol, and Nicolescu says it is a powerful symbol of unity, self organisation and continuity. Nicolescus scientific intuition is profound.
But alchemy offers even deeper insights to the nature of Ultimate Reality. We must come to appreciate the truly startling revelation that the Ultimate Truth of reality flows through the inspiration, through the very breath of the intuitive and contemplative mind of a purified soul.
The Mercurious is the prima materia, the serpent mercurialis, the duplex, the microcosm, the saviour of the macrocosm, the soul of gold and silver, the spiritual blood, the trinity, the totality or wholeness, the trickster, the unconscious, Yesod the ground of all procreative powers, Anthropos, the arcane substance, the caduceus, the Virgin Mary and the Christ. It is all these things. It is all of these things.
Jung identified two main symbols that signify the mercurious. These are the Ouroborus and the Pelican Christus. The Ouroborus as Nicolescu points out is the snake eating its tail. As a wheel of Life it symbolises the eternal return, and as it is often depicted as part black and part white, it is a unifying principal of opposites.
The Pelican Christus, also a major alchemical symbol that signifies the Mercurious, depicts a water bird, the pelican, opening its breast in order to nourish its seven young. As a symbol of Christ, its wounded heart flows forth life giving nourishment.
“Behold, pelican waters you with his blood and the waters of his heart. If you accept them fittingly….you will at once be alive and well.” (Angelus Silesuis) The alchemists worked their materials in a vessel called the pelican flask. It represented a double quaternity. It is is contained the microcosm and the macrocosm, the two quanternities unifying heaven and earth, of summer and autumn, winter and spring and male and female. Its structure was depicted as such
(from Jung’s Mysterium Conjunctionis)
The double quaternary or ogdoad stands for a totality, for something that is a once heavenly and earthly, spiritual or corporeal, and is found in the unconscious. It is without doubt the Microcosm, the mystical Adam and the bisexual Original Man in his prenatal state as it were, when he is identical with the unconscious. Hence in Gnosticism the “Father of All” is described not only as masculine and feminie (or neither), but as Bythos, the abyss. In the scholia to the “Tractus aureus Hermetis” there is a quaternio consisting of superius /inferius, exterius /interius. They are united into one thing by means of the circular distillation, named the Pelican: “Let all be one in one circular vessel. For this vessel is the true philosphocal Pelican, nor is any other to be sought after in all the world.”
Jung goes on to explain that ‘the central point A signifies the origin and goal, the circulus exiguus, very small circle, and a “mediator making peace between enemies or elements, that they may love one another in a meet embrace” (Auora Consurgens). This little inner circle corresponds to the mercurial Fountain in the Rosarium, the more spiritual, perfect, and nobler Mercurius. BCDE represent the outside, FG stands for above and Below, and together the letters signify the hidden magical septenary.’… ‘the “centre” unites the four and the seven into one. The unifying agent is the spirit Mercurius, and this singular spirit then causes the author to confess himself a member of the Ecclesia spiritualis, for the spirit of God, this religious background is already apparent in the choice of the term “Pelican” for the circular process, since this bird is a well-known allegory of Christ. The idea of Mercurius as a peacemaker, the mediator between the warring elements and producer of unity, probably goes back to the Ephesians 2 : 13”
The alchemical tone of this bible passage is itself quite surprising and when seen in the light of the alchemical process of inner work, with the union being an inner marriage that is realised through bearing the cross in surrender to gods will. The deeper esoteric meaning behind these passages is illuminated:
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made both one, and had broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of the commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
Although Jung recognised that both the Ouroborus and the Pelican Christus signified the Mercurious, he was not aware of the fact that they were both different and opposed postures of the same shape. This same shape is the Klein Bottle. If the neck is pulled through its body after turning inside out and upside down, it opens out to the posture of the Ouroborus.
What is most curious about this mercurial subject, is that the Klien bottle presents to us a most striking topology that is recognised as resolving and unifying opposites, as describing the dynamics of self organising systems, an inherent and primary structural fact of all systems that are natural and manmade.
It has been revealed as the most likely topology that describes the organisational features of the Visual cortex (Nicholas Swindale) and in attempts to resolve the primary issues that are inherent in our contemporary mindset, each discipline is expanding their view from limited topologies such as the sphere to include the truth of self reference. Gregory Bateson pointed towards the need to comprehend the relation of recursive forms to empirical events. Rosen, McNiel and Ryan have suggested such a topology to understand unconscious processes, as Grandpierre has proposed the Klein Bottle as a means to understand the Dynamics of time and timelessness. Quantonics, by Hughes and Burian suggest a new form of logic that realises self-referentiality and looks at higher dimensional topologies such as the Klein bottle to realise this.
The Klein bottle extends our comprehension of dialectics and logic to a more complete and real understanding of the nature of reality, where the previously discrete and polarised dualities become unified in a vessel of reconciliation.
The very process of cell division, that of gastrulation and the blastopore is one of turning inside out and upside down.
Self organisation and self-referentiality are inherent attributes of all systems.
Alchemist and artists have known this for millennium.
It is our intuitive contemplative potential that brings forth Ultimate Truth.
It is to these processes that any directives for the future need to appeal.
It is imperative that we fully comprehend the implications of alchemical wisdom.
They knew that the universe and consciousness where interconnected and would share the same structure. They knew that the Klein bottle was a symbol that embraced the essence of reality.
Perhaps the Klein bottle will provide similar revelations for contemporary cosmology.
Ultimately the full implications of this paper point to a complete reorientation of the way we think and feel, the way we interact with others, and with ourselves, and most certainly the way we exchange information and direct institutions of learning.
The future depends upon the miraculous. It is our duty to see that all can be done to achieve this.