A Dream of the Universe: Truth, Perception and Natural Law

“Now we see that God is within the soul as power, substance, and intelligence — or in spiritual terms, wisdom, love and truth — and is brought out into form or expression through consciousness.”

Emil, Life and Teaching of
The Masters of The Far East

In today’s modern world there exists a persistent notion that there is no such thing as objective Truth. Instead there is only perception. What is meant by this is that since every human has his individual perception of reality, reality itself is different for each individual and therefore absolutely relative. This leads many to conclude that there can be no overarching, consistent form of truth present in our Universe. Even though this view has some validity, when followed through, it becomes clear that it is an insufficient explanation for the nature of reality and that there exists indeed a form of absolute Truth. This is demonstrated by a simple thought experiment.

Imagine an empty room with two people. Person A has normal sight and person B is color blind. In the middle of the room is an apple. If asked what color the apple has, person A will say it is green. Person B on the other hand will say that to him the colour of the apple is red. Clearly, both are looking at the same apple but perceive it differently. In other words, both persons have a different perception of reality. However, if you take the apple away they will both agree that, regardless of their different perception of reality, there is no apple in the room, because how can you have a perception of something if there is nothing to perceive? Put differently, how can you have a subjective experience if there is no object? So it logically follows that in order to have a perception of reality, first there must be a reality that we then can perceive. Hence, there is an objective reality although our perception of it is relative and unique.

A similar observation was made by the renowned theoretical physicist and pioneer of quantum mechanics, David Bohm. In his book ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’, Bohm describes an experiment with a rectangular tank full of water and a fish swimming in it. Two cameras that project the images on television screens are directed at the water tank at right angles to each other. This gives the following result:

“What we will see [is that] there is a certain relationship between the images appearing on the two screens…. At any given moment each image will generally look different from the other. Nevertheless, the differences will be related, in the sense that when one image is seen to execute certain movements, the other will be seen to execute corresponding movements. Moreover, content that is mainly on one screen will pass into the other, and vice versa (e.g., when a fish initially facing camera A turns through a right angle, the image that was on A is now to be found on B). Thus at all times the image content on the other screen will correlate with and reflect that of the other.”

― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Again we see two apparently different images of a single object. Two perceptions that appear to be different but are actually different projections of one and the same thing. This implies that there is a deeper level of reality than our perception: a constant, or an actuality as Bohm calls it, that underlies our seemingly random experience of existence.

“This actuality is of higher dimensionality than are the separate images on the screens; or, to put it differently, the images on the screens are two-dimensional projections (or facets) of a three-dimensional reality. In some sense this three dimensional reality holds these two-dimensional projections within it. Yet, since these projections exist only as abstractions, the three-dimensional reality is neither of these, but rather it is something else, something of a nature beyond both.”

― David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order

So the question then rises why so many educated and intelligent people fail to recognize this? I believe the main answer lies in that we live in a world that is predominantly based on a soulless, Newtonian paradigm that reduces reality to nothing more than a set of dead atoms, and where our thinking is ruled by the dogma that “nothing can ever be known.” It is this ultra-rational, rigid scientism that leads us to believe that we humans are unable to have any comprehensive understanding of the Universe.

The way ‘accepted’ science maintains this fallacy is through fragmentation and framing. First it takes an infinite and holistic concept that is the Universe, and breaks it up into little fragments. These fragments are then framed into measurable units. If the measurements fit the proposed frame, a consensus is reached that forms the basis for a theory. This theory is then presented as the highest form of knowledge that renders all other views irrelevant or obsolete. Once this monopoly on truth is established, it is repeated as a mantra through media, culture and education until it becomes the generally accepted view and the basis for our schools, societies, cultures and thinking, ultimately creating the illusion of separation between man, Nature and the Universe.

“It must be understood that this new institution of knowing is a form of mysticism like its religious precursors. Contemporary science is predicated upon empiricism, the idea that all knowledge is derived exclusively through the senses. Yet, an exclusively empirical approach relegates cause to the realm of metaphysical fantasy. This holds enormous ramifications for science. Do we really know what causes anything?”

― Phillip D. Collins, The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship Part One: Illuminating the Occult Origin of Darwinism

This is not to say that science in itself is without value. It’s an inherent feature of a human being to investigate (his) existence. Empirical science is one of the methods to do this and it goes without saying that it has made a significant contribution to the wellbeing of humanity. The problem lies in its application as an authoritative philosophical foundation that is often equally or even more fundamentalist than the religions it claims to be superior to. Ironically, this dictatorial approach also provides the means to censor scientific research that contradicts its own Newtonian paradigm and dismiss it as an impossibility or regard it as pseudoscience. Moreover, as a philosophy, it lacks the ability to give a comprehensive explanation of the Universe because by its very nature it is concerned with the ‘how’ and not the ‘why’.

It comes as no surprise then that ever since it was aborted from its magical traditions, science has always been doing catching up with what the mystics have known for aeons: that the Universe is not a linear system consisting of isolated objects but an infinite, ever-evolving, interacting entity, that can never be viewed separately. It’s only in recent times, through the discovery of quantum physics, that science was forced to transcend the boundaries of its mechanistic construct and it finally began to reconnect with its spiritual underpinnings.

“In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although I am now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on. Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.”

― Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Laureate and father of quantum physics, Scientific Truth and Religious Truth

Evidence that we live in an infinite, interactive and multidimensional Universe can be found in a phenomenon experienced by every human being on Earth: dreaming. In our dreams we are presented with a very different reality than in our waking life. In dreams there is no solidity, thoughts and emotions instantly manifest images and experiences that endlessly flow into each other.

According to Buddhist lama of the Bönn religion, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, dreams arise from karmic traces we accumulate both awake and when dreaming. Karma is the consequence of not understanding the causes and effects that come with attachments, desires and aversions, generating a perpetual cycle of actions and reactions. In Buddhism this cycle is called the Wheel of Samsara, and humans are considered trapped in this Wheel by continuously planting karmic seeds; emotional and mental phenomena in the mind, that they then have to process through dreams. The word karma means action, therefore “karmic traces are the results of actions that can be regarded as tendencies in the unconsciousness.”

Advanced astral traveller, Jurgen Ziewe, through his explorations of the ‘afterlive’, discovered that what we generally call the dreamworld is actually “the Astral World, the world we will inhabit when our physical stay on this planet comes to an end.” It is an alternate universe with infinite dimensions that “offer varieties of experiences simply unknown to us here, allowing for creativity and original invention that by far surpasses anything we can conjure up on this worldly Earth.“

Not only religionists and mystics, but also spiritual scientists like Rudolf Steiner and Carl Jung, that assimilated psychoanalysis into esoteric traditions, have established the importance of dreams and the unconscious in general. Whether mainstream science, that typically loses itself in the measuring of brain activity, accepts the mystical explanations or not is irrelevant in this case. The fact that the unconscious, through our dreams, presents us with a transformed interpretation of ‘real’ life events is further confirmation that what we generally call ‘reality’, is in reality (pardon the pun) a deeper layer of existence, viewed from a materialistic perspective in an infinite number of ways. It is by studying and exploring these apparently undefinable, finer layers of reality that we can gain an understanding of the spiritual laws that govern the micro -and macrocosmos of the Universe. Or in other words: Truth.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Throughout (pre-)history, depending on the culture and the place, a large variety of mystical systems has been developed to address the question of Truth. Each of these systems promoted specific practices and philosophies, that eventually evolved into a myriad exoteric and esoteric religious traditions. However there is one tradition that more than any other seems to provide us with a comprehensive philosophical foundation from which the workings of the Universe in all its infinite potential can be readily understood.

Hermetic philosophy, or simply Hermetics is claimed to be the Atlantean wisdom that was passed down to us by the deified Egyptian sage Thoth, who is also known as Hermes Trismegistus or Hermes The Thrice Great. As a philosophy it is an important current underlying the Western esoteric tradition, particularly of alchemy and magic. According to ‘The Kybalion’, its main tenets are the concept of ‘The All’ and the ‘Seven Hermetic Principles’. The All is what by many exoteric religions would be considered God, New Agers would call it the ‘Great Spirit’ and Freemasons the ‘Architect’. It is the substantial reality that comprises everything in creation and even creation itself. It is all that has been, is, and ever will be. It is the infinite, absolute, eternal living mind beyond which nothing can ever exist.

“Under, and back of, the Universe of Time, Space and Change, is ever to be found The Substantial Reality — the Fundamental Truth... While All is in THE ALL, it is equally true that THE ALL is in All. To him who truly understands this truth hath come great knowledge.”

― The Three Initiates, The Kybalion

The Seven Hermetic Principles are the seven all encompassing, all penetrating and immutable laws that govern The All or the Universe. These seven laws are:

I. THE PRINCIPLE OF MENTALISM
The All is mind; The Universe is Mental.

II. THE PRINCIPLE OF CORRESPONDENCE
As above, so below; as below, so above. As within, so without; as without, so within.

III. THE PRINCIPLE OF VIBRATION
Nothing rests; Everything moves; Everything vibrates.

IV. THE PRINCIPLE OF POLARITY
Everything is dual; Everything has poles; Everything has its pair of opposites; Like and unlike are the same; Opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; Extremes meet; All truths, are but half-truths; All paradoxes may be reconciled.

V. THE PRINCIPLE OF RHYTHM
Everything flows, out and in; Everything has its tides; All things rise and fall; The pendulum swing manifests in everything; The measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; Rhythm compensates.

VI. THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSE AND EFFECT
Every cause has its effect; Every effect has its cause; Everything happens according to law; Chance is but a name for law not recognized; There are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the law.

VII. THE PRINCIPLE OF GENDER
Gender is in everything; Everything has its masculine and feminine principles; Gender manifests on all planes.

When properly understood these principles and its moral consequences hold “the key that unlocks all the locks, on all the doors to all the cages” because it not only teaches how to distinguish between Truth and perception but also provides the means to align yourself with the forces of the Universe.

“The universe runs on natural laws. Apples fall. Birds fly. We live. We die. When we take the time to understand these laws, we can use them. We can leverage them. We can push against gravity to fly. We can use the knowledge one day we must die, to live better lives. And since the very beginning of civilization the wisest of us have been united by this pursuit of discovering what these natural laws are, so we can learn from them and use them to experience more happiness, meaning, and control over our lives in the time we do have.“

― Colton Swabb, The Hermetic Revival: 7 Ancient Principles For Self-Mastery

Below you can find an elaborate ‘Natural Law’ seminar by de-occultist Mark Passio in which he explores esoteric ways of learning, the Seven Hermetic Principles and its moral consequences on both an individual and societal level.

May the Truth set us free.

Godspeed


Parallel Heimat