PRESENTING THE BLOG BOOK
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - SPIRITUALITY AND SCIENCE CONVERGE
GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS EVOLVES
PART FOUR - UNIVERSAL GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE DIVINITY OF HUMANKIND
FEATURING THE FINDING GOD ON THE TRAIN BLOG STORY
NOTES ON
ENLIGHTENMENT -
Quest For A Positive, Personal,
And Contemplative Spirituality
THE CRYSTAL PATH
PART FOUR – GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE DIVINITY WITHIN
CHAPTER THIRTEEN SPIRITUALITY AND SCIENCE CONVERGE
GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS EVOLVES
CHAPTER HIGHLIGHTS
THE SPOT OF INFINITE UNFOLDING – MEDITATION GUIDANCE
FLIGHT FROM FEAR - ORIGINS OF FAITH, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND CONSCIENCE
FEATURING AN EMERGENT GOD - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
FEATURING VISTAS OF CONSCIOUSNESS - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
FEATURING COMBINED BEING – MEDITATION GUIDANCE
THE AXIAL AGE CONVERGENCE - THE AXIAL PERIOD
THE MYSTICS AND GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS
THE MYSTICS OF THE INDUS VALLEY
EMERGENCE OF A NEW SCIENTIFIC ORDER
THE QUANTUM ANOMALIES – NEW PHYSICS
GOSWAMI’S SELF-AWARE UNIVERSE
FEATURING POTENTIA – MEDITATION GUIDANCE
DAVID BOHM AND THE IMPLICATE ORDER
SHELDRAKE’S MORPHIC RESONANCE
MARGENAU’S UNIVERSAL MIND - LOCAL AND NONLOCAL MIND
FEATURING SLICE OF TIME - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
G.’S THEORY OF UNIVERSAL GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS
THE POWER OF UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
FEATURING PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
FEATURING COLLECTIVE SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
FEATURING THE CRYSTAL LIGHT – MEDITATION GUIDANCE
CLOSING NOTE ON ENLIGHTENMENT - BY DESIGN – POEM/NOTE
CLOSING AFFIRMATIONS – A FULLER SENSE – AFFIRMATIVE THOUGHT
PART FOUR – GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE DIVINITY WITHIN
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SPIRITUALITY AND SCIENCE CONVERGE
GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS EVOLVES
THE SPOT OF INFINITE UNFOLDING
Life is the expression full and robust; the demonstration
of the flowing and flowering of intention, the consequences
of existence in all its forms and varieties, extending to reach
through and beyond, to grasp possibility and potential,
willing both into tangible substance, experienceable being.
Every part and parcel of this orchestration that enlivens
our Souls, pump our lungs, maintain our equilibrium,
displays our consciousness as an active agent of life evolving,
the tentacles of God reaching, imagining, envisioning
via each sentient presence through each awareness.
We, you and me, all represent the ultimate testament
to this force of natural striving, this Divine reaching,
this roar of heartfelt becoming, fresh in its order, always
presenting a continual newness, an infinite surprise,
a possibility reachable but beyond reach, a solitary point
where life unfolds, erupts, comes, goes, and becomes
again: the spot of infinite unfolding.
NOE BY G. 7.7.2016
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FLIGHT FROM FEAR
THE HUMAN ORIGINS OF FAITH,
CONSCIOUSNESS AND CONSCIENCE
To comprehend the origins of human faith and religiosity, we must return to the evolution of humankind. This is not ultimately swayed by whether you believe God created us fully functioning or that we homo sapiens evolved from the animals already existing on earth. We were initially ill-prepared for life on earth, with no claws, teeth, strength, speed, armor, endurance, tools, or instincts to keep us alive. Our "Eden" was a jungle full of very hostile neighbors well prepared to eat us, and I am sure they did. OK, we were endowed with enhanced cerebral abilities, an intellect, an imagination, and an ability to reason, hopefully, to figure out how to defend ourselves with our tiny hands. Unfortunately, there was no manual or words to help us understand how to use all our mental gifts - like being dropped off in a modern war zone unarmed. You get the idea! We would have full Post Traumatic Stress fear, fear for our lives, and fear of being consumed.
Incredibly, our fledgling ancestors used their genetically acquired intellect, evolved empathetic conscience, and expanded consciousness to form a "super species"—applying teamwork, creating supportive cultures to control their fear, developing rituals, stories, and myths, and eventually conceiving of and summoning Gods to protect their existence.
a descendant or the descendants of a person,
animal, plant, offspring.
The concept of an emergent God has captured my attention and contemplation. This God might have erupted from the creative life force within us, a product of our confluent intentions, given form by our joint hopes, dreams, desires, and imaginings, attracted by our incessant spiritual need, eventually given life within our communal consciousness, our shared Universal Consciousness.
Today, while meditating and focusing on the possibility that humankind may have reached out for salvation and transcendence, I was offered the note below and jotted down these inspired words.
AN EMERGENT GOD - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
We, humankind, are the progeny of an ever-evolving
existence, of intentions, formed and emergent, palpating
with desire, fervor, stretching to be more, to be alive,
pushing what is not into being, shaping formless into
form, an incubator for possibilities and potential.
God, as with all existence, is the result of this creative
cauldron, perhaps conceived by a multitude of hopeful
whispers, pleas for salvation, a reverberation of heartfelt
intentions etched out from centuries of suffering and
fear, grasping for an overseer of humanities’ plight
and destiny; for a friend, an arbitrator, perhaps
to offer a sense of rationality, balance, and morality
in a tumultuous world.
This God, formed in our mutual and shared consciousness
has been given life, taken shape, answered our prayers,
aiding in our becoming, realizing our capacity for
magnificence as well as intolerance, working to manage
our appetites for more, urging us to consider love over
madness, hope over despair – enlightenment over darkness.
NOE BY G. 11.20.2018
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VISTAS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
DAILY POST ON ENLIGHTENMENT
John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690, defined consciousness as “the perception of what passes in a man’s mind,” establishing the modern concept of consciousness. Since Locke’s opening gambit, scientists, philosophers, psychologists, and mystics have studied and pondered “the perception,” leaving us no closer than Locke to a comprehensive understanding of human consciousness's origin and full dimensions.
Lately, I have been focused on consciousness - praying and meditating, requesting additional guidance and clarification, hoping to further explore what is, at least for me, the backdrop for our existence and the basis of God in our lives. In Part Four of the Finding God On The Train Story, I plan to outline and share what this guidance has defined as the levels of consciousness. Our “personal or local consciousness,” incorporated as a subset of the more comprehensive “nonlocal collective consciousness” of all sentient life, is again a subset of Divine consciousness, comprising the first two levels and all life that has previously existed.
I hope to join the “consciousness debate” by offering a more comprehensive theory of consciousness based on my guidance. As demonstrated by the meditation guidance below, which I received one-morning last week, my request for guidance on this subject is being sporadically answered, and I will share as received.
VISTAS OF CONSCIOUSNESS - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
Below the surface of being exists, the underpinnings, the threads
and needles, the substructure connecting allness to all else,
the energies, the particles, the bits and pieces of viable existence,
the base, the screen on which, with which, reality manifests
and performs.
This is the sub-matter behind the matter; the first thought
preceding all thoughtful connections, the conscious framework
we choose to consider reality a projection upon a projection,
within our conscious projection.
Realize the force of nature is in itself the collective vision
of billions of diverse perspectives, an ingrained, hardwired
foundation expected to be, expected to follow laws set in
motion by an active God.
Consider and contemplate this interaction, this mingling,
this natural blueprint, the vistas of consciousness, peering
within its marvels, miraculous flashes of light dwelling
intently and intensely until the props and fixtures are revealed,
allowing an awareness of the strings supporting and holding
in place this dimension, these slivers of being giving our world
form and function, mobility and energy, purpose and proposition,
as it flickers in the projector's light.
NOE BY G. 11.5.2014
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THE AXIAL AGE CONVERGENCE
THE AXIAL PERIOD
“an interregnum (an interval or a pause in continuity)
between two ages of great empire, a pause for liberty,
a deep breath bringing the most lucid consciousness.”
Dr. Karl Jaspers
So, human consciousness, much like the God-Consciousness just proposed, also emerged, appearing to have blended and merged, converging to bubble forth and take a quantum leap from its infant survival struggles of the first few newborn millennia to position itself to prosper by forging an evolved and vigorous, newly minted philosophy, scientific approach, secular guide for living and being, along with a variety of higher order spiritual practices – uncovering and outlining the human relationship with a more robust God – all manifesting in discrete, and often isolated locations.
Much of this occurred at a unique point in early human history, a spiritual, political, and secular coming of age and awakening that will serve as a conceptual guide going forward for what has been described as an axis in world history around 500 BCE (Before The Common Era), with the age commencing around 800 BCE and thought to end in 200 BCE – when such notables as the ancient Greek Philosophers: Pythagoras, Socrates and his student Plato, the father of Western philosophy - the Indian mystics Siddhartha Gautama, or Buddha who established Buddhism, and Mahavira, who founded Jainism, along with others who refined, enhanced, and documented the Vedic practice of Hinduism - Confucius and Laozi (traditional for Lao Tzu or Lao-Tse) the founders of secular Confucianism and spiritual Taoism/Daoism, fermented by the Hundred Schools Of Thought in China - Zarathustra (Persian name) of Zoroaster, founder of Zoroastrianism (note that modern research indicates now that Zarathusta predated the Axial Period by at least 500 to 1,000 + years yet I still include this early Prophet that laid the foundation for the Axial period religions) – and the Hebrew Prophets Elijah, the Isaiahs, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel came to view the God of Israel, YAHWEH, as the God who created heaven and earth, shaping the destiny of all people.
These Axial Age innovators, listed above, albeit a partial list, espoused, debated, and put into practice the very foundation of our current global philosophical, political, scientific, and spiritual systems—along with the beliefs and practices that go with them—known as the Axial Period, based on a historical paradigm formulated by the German Existential philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) in his book The Origin And Goal of History.
This axis would be situated at a point in history that gave
birth to everything which, since then, man has been able
to be, the point most overwhelmingly fruitful in fashioning
humanity. It would seem that this axis in history is to be
found in the period around 500 BCE, in the spiritual process
that occurred between 800 and 200 BCE. Man, as we know him,
came into being.
Dr. Karl Jaspers, a brilliant scholar who wrote thirty books, evolved from a medical doctor trained in psychiatry and psychology, then turned his sights on the development of philosophy, focusing on humankind's freedom of being in the world: a philosophy independent of science and avoiding becoming a substitute for e religious beliefs. Jaspers goes on to describe the Axial Period:
What is new about this age in all three areas
of the world (China, India, and The West), is that man
becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself
and his limitations. He experiences the terror of the
world and his powerlessness. He asks radical
questions and experiences absoluteness in the depths
of selfhood and in the lucidity of transcendence.
Jaspers proposes that all of this occurred in the conscious reflection process. Consciousness became once more aware of itself; thinking became its object. In this reflection, we were born with the fundamental categories within which we think today and the beginnings of the world religions by which we still live today. Jasper goes on to postulate that during this period, there was a shift – or a turn, as if on an axis – away from more local concerns, or immediate life concerns, towards transcendence: "to go beyond."
Canadian philosopher and sociologist Charles Taylor proposes that this “going beyond,” or transcendence, involved a revolution in human thought. Primarily about the world, including thinking about the cosmos and how it works. With the rise of second-order thinking about the ways human beings think about the universe and a focus on the fate of humanity and its relationship with the cosmos.
Using Jaspers’ own words, let’s turn to the specifics of this revolution in consciousness: the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently in China, India, Persia, Judea, and Greece. And these are the foundations upon which humanity still exists today.
- Confucius and Lao-Tse lived in China, as all the schools of Chinese philosophy came into being, including those of Mo Ti, Chuang Tse, Lieh Tzu, and a host of others;
- India produced the Upanishads and Buddha (I would add Jina Vardhamana Mahavira, founder of Jainism) - and, like China, ran the whole gamut of philosophical possibilities down to materialism, skepticism, and nihilism.
- In Iran, the teachings of Zarathustra (the Avestan name for the Persian prophet Zoroaster) caught fire, offering a challenging view of the world as a struggle between good and evil;
- In Palestine, the prophets appeared from Elijah through Isaiah, the Second Isaiah, Haggai, and Jeremiah, establishing the reign of the one God, YAHWEH, and monotheism.
- Greece witnessed the appearance of Homer, philosophers – Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Plato - and the tragedians Thucydides and Archimedes.
- Everything applied by these names developed during these centuries almost simultaneously in China, India, and the West.
Jaspers points out similarities between these Axial Period participants—China, India, and Asia—including their existence under similar political circumstances, comprised of multiple small states engaged in constant internal and external armed struggles. Likewise, cultures of the Axial Age were often considered Second-generation, built on the societies that preceded them.
But most importantly, for Jaspers, was the similarity in both thought and circumstance of the Axial Age’s main intellectual contributors; the similarities included an engagement in the quest for human meaning. This led to a new elite class of religious leaders and thinkers in China, India, and Asia, with all three areas “giving birth to, and then, institutionalized, a tradition of traveling scholars, who roamed from city to city to exchange ideas.”
Taoism and Confucianism emerged in China, while in other regions, the scholars were often from religious traditions that survived the era but were being reformed or reconceived; from an evolving Hinduism, the rise of Buddhism and Jainism; in Persia, the coming of Zoroaster’s teachings; in Cannan, from Judaism; and in Greece, from sophism and other classical philosophy.
Let us not miss a salient aspect of the Axial Ages’ effect on Judaism with the advent of monotheism – the concept of one God – YAHWEH – and with it, the possibility of its impact on other new theologies and philosophies brewing in other regions that would, a few centuries later, prepare the way for another religious leader, Jesus, and the birth of Christianity. Jaspers expresses it as:
These three regions which, from the beginning of the
ancient civilizations onward were possessed of a
the unique character brought forth creations during
the millennium before Christ upon which the entire
history of the human spirit has rested ever since.
OK, what caused the Axial period? First, these ancient civilizations exist in the fertile river valleys of the Nile, Mesopotamia, the Indus, and the Hwang-ho. But Jaspers suggests that the mystery of the Axial Period's simultaneous inception seems much deeper than cultural, economic, or related social factors. Jaspers believes these Axial developments were originally independent of one another. “Real communication and stimuli must be ruled out.” In his work The Origin And Goal Of History, Jaspers explores the possible causes for this phenomenon in-depth. For a more detailed and extensive historical discussion of each of the Axial cultures and their comparative pre-axial struggles, I would strongly suggest an excellent book, The Great Transformation – The Beginnings Of Our Religious Traditions by Karen Armstrong, noted religious historian and award-winning author, including most recently her book A History Of God. I will use Armstrong’s book as a reference to provide a deeper historical insight into this confluence.
One theory that Jaspers considered viable was due to the penetration of charioteers and horse riders from Central Asia into China, India, and the West, thus introducing the horse. Thanks to the horse, the people of these regions became equestrian, limiting the world's vastness and making it more open for exploration and exploitation. Along with the horse came the chariot. Karen Armstrong would add that these groups focused their chariots on conquests in their own communities; for example, in the Indus Valley, chariots were used by bands of warriors who attacked local farms, stealing their livestock and constantly disrupting life. In China and Greece, the wars would involve city-states close to home, leaving these civilizations in constant turmoil.
Jaspers goes on to remark - that as Axial societies took over the ancient civilizations by conquest, they developed a heroic-tragic consciousness that found expression in works like the epic History Of The Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens that is still studied today, authored by Thucydides (460 BCE to 400 BCE) – a General known as the father of scientific history – whose writing was made more plausible by his strict standards determining cause and effect without reference to the Gods.
However, Jaspers argues that “the spiritual movement of the Axial Age, in its simultaneity and sublimity of its content, cannot be accounted for in terms of such migrations and exchanges.” Likewise, the Axial Period does not represent a universal stage in human evolution but a singular ramified (form branches or offshoots, spread or branch out) historical process. Jaspers goes on to clarify:
No one can adequately comprehend what occurred
here and became the axis of world history, which
grows more mysterious the more closely we examine it.
Jaspers then admits that this threefold manifestation of the Axial Period is in the nature of a miracle since no really adequate explanation is possible within the limits of our present knowledge. Then he, somewhat surreptitiously, warns the reader -
It might seem as though I were out to prove direct intervention
on the part of the deity without saying so openly. By no means.
We will explore this period in greater detail, and I will let each reader make a personal assessment as we discuss the legs of the stool supporting my hypothesis of God-Consciousness I will offer in the next section. One possible perspective, a premise I would support, is that through these Axial historical machinations, combined consciousness has kick-started spiritual evolution, what the philosopher Eric Voegelin has referred to as “The Great Leap of Being,” constituting a new spiritual awakening and a shift of perception away from the societies collective good, to individual values.
The role of a deity that is God in this unique phenomenon is not mine to debate, but I will assert, and I will strongly contend, that the combined or Universal Consciousness of this time provided the shared software or framework needed for the common perspectives to be not only singularly but jointly conceived of and implemented in the axial period. Thus, it provided humankind with a gateway beyond paganism and towards modern spirituality.
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THE MYSTICS AND GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS
The wisdom of philosophy ends with the physical world.
Beyond the stars, it can only imagine God’s Essence. There are
actually many levels of universes beyond this, but the truth is
only found in the Kabbalah. It is written, “God’s understanding
be grasped” (Isaiah 40:28). One who knows the truth of the
Kabbalah perceives this well, for there is level upon level...
- Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
Before we proceed, we must examine God-Consciousness from a historical, mystical perspective, hopefully amplifying and elaborating on what has been presented as the mystical message in this book. We focus on the mystics rather than theologians - for as Aldus Huxley stated in his spiritual masterpiece The Perennial Philosophy, these mystics are the only human beings who have had a firsthand experience with God. Their followers have gone on to decipher their messages, follow their way, and often organize religions that these original mystics may not have even condoned. But others have disagreed with these mystical visionaries, declaring them heretics. In reality, many mystics have faced persecution from the established secular or religious orders, only to spend their final days imprisoned or executed.
As Rebbe Nachman so eloquently states in the quote above - philosophy, and I will expand this to include the sciences – needs the mystic’s perspective to peel the universal onion of multiple levels - to fully grasp the concept of God. But, as I have said previously, the mystic also needs the scientific perspective to expand and validate their experience. We will need some expert help in doing this, so our first stop will be to pick up the wisdom of a book we have referenced a number of times, written by Rabbi David A. Cooper – titled God Is A Verb – Kabbalah And The Practice Of Mystical Judaism.
To fully cover this topic, I need to go back to the beginning, to be exact, using the Hebrew calendar, 5,772 years ago, when, according to Jewish mysticism, a new paradigm of human consciousness was born. This paradigm shift took the world to a new level of awareness that could consciously merge with its own source. Rabbi Cooper tells us that this beginning and the continuation of this merging make up what the Kabbalists - Jewish Mystics - call the process of enlightenment. As a result, one of the primary books of the Kabbalah, the Zohar, cries out to humankind, saying, -“You beings on earth are in a deep slumber, awaken! Who among you had labored to turn darkness into light and bitterness into sweetness?” It pleads with us, “Stop sleeping! Wake up! What are you waiting for?” Awaken! Enlighten! Transform darkness into light.
The Holy One has disposed of all things in such a way that
everything in this world should be a replica of the world
above.
The Zohar speaks of a world above and a world below, which refers to realms of consciousness, with higher and lower realms of consciousness separated by space; they are dimensions that represent the proximity of the relationship to ultimate truth. The higher the consciousness, the less there is the illusion of separateness. Earth represents a level of consciousness, and everything on this level has its likeness to higher consciousness. These two realms form one interconnected whole, so when a thing below bestirs itself, the result is simultaneous stimulation of its likeness above.
Just as all our actions, words, or thoughts reverberate in our lower earth world, so does the arousal of our higher beings reverberate in the heavens. Whatever mode of consciousness we happen to be in, this is the character we energize in the other realms. This ancient Kabalistic idea is a holistic model of the universe, which cuts across all layers of reality, touching every possible dimension of creation, including angels, demons, thoughts, feelings, past, future, the incarnation, and all others. According to this Jewish mystical viewpoint, everything and every “non-thing” that has ever been in creation is interconnected.
The twelfth-century mystic Isaac the Blind gave a name to these Jewish mystical concepts, being the first to use the word “Kabbalah” to designate a variety of mystical teachings and practices. No one knows whether Isaac was really blind. It may have referred to him not seeing the way others do since he was said to have phenomenal mystical powers, able to sense if someone would die in the near future or whether a person’s Soul was newly formed or an older reincarnated Soul. Issac the Blind described this medium or interconnectedness as Tzippiyah, which could be translated as “contemplative observation.” Tzippyah is mystical awareness, what we experience when the sense of past, present, and future dissolve and we are fully present, totally in the moment.
Tzippiyah gives us a new way of looking at consciousness as interconnected. Non-local God-Consciousness and Local Human Consciousness mirror each other, overlapping, like two bubbles in a Venn diagram, with the larger God-Consciousness made up of all the local consciousnesses. Our Local Personal Consciousness is simultaneously simulating the upper worlds. This connected consciousness conveys that each of us has a perspective of reality or Local Consciousness, a razor-thin slice of the pie. We can get another portion of the pie if we change our consciousness.
Let’s explore this Holy One or God-Consciousness of the Kabbalists. Creation is made up of spheres of consciousness – creating all the things in the world so that there should be a central light of awareness with many consciousnesses encircling it. From God’s perspective, we would see everything in creation as connected to the center: the source of creation. Is God at this center? The surprising answer is yes and no, or maybe - a reply is, which God?
The Kabbalists tell us that the very first line of the bible has been mistranslated. Most people think it says: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” But the actual words in Hebrew can be read another way. The Kabbalists might say a better translation would be “With a beginning, (It) created God (Elohim), the heavens and the earth.” So, out of Nothingness, the potential to begin was created – “Beginingness.” Once there was a beginning, God (in plural form) was created – a God to which the rest of creation could relate.
According to the Kabbalists, a source of creation precedes even Nothingness – called Ein Sof, which is not the name of a thing but is an ongoing process. Ein Sof precedes thought and nothingness (ayin). Ein Sof is beyond infinity or trans infinite. Jewish mysticism teaches that we can know Ein Sof in ways that transcend thought. This aspect of developing a relationship with Endlessness, the source of creation, is a key to the Kabbalah and the lifeblood of all Jewish practice. These secret teachings regarding how to develop a relationship with Ein Sof are at the heart of these mystical teachings.
Rabbi Cooper conveys that the Kabbalists believe every human being can have a relationship with the Divine; all we need to do is awaken to the realization that the presence of the Divine is revealed in the fullness of each moment, as our hearts melt and the floodgates of our inner yearning open wide. As the great Jewish mystic of the thirteenth century, Abraham Abulfia said about one who has achieved spiritual awareness:
Now, we are no longer separated from our source; behold
we are the source, and the source is us. We are so intimately
united with It that we cannot be separated from It,
for we are It.
So the answer to the question posed above is: Is God at this center? is - “God resides wherever we let God In!” - which was given by the Kotzker rebbe, Menachem Mendel, a famous Hasidic teacher in the nineteenth century, who lived his last twenty years in voluntary seclusion - to his own question that he posed to one of his confused students, adds clarity to this Kaballist concept. Rabbi Cooper goes on to remind us that the Divine steps with us, as each breath we draw is connected with the universe's breath.
Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi adds that it is best to think about God as a process, a verb, rather than a being. Therefore, we would be better off if we renamed God, calling it God–ing, a process, rather than God, which is a noun. He suggests that God-ing is a mutually interactive verb, which entails an interdependency between two subjects, each being the object of the other.
The word “God” and Its various names in Judaism, such as El, Elohim, Adonoy, Shaddai, Zevaoth, and Y-H-V-H, represent aspects of Ein Sof. However, the Zohar warns, “woe to anyone who presumes to compare Ein Sof with any attributes, for it is limitless, and there are no means to comprehend it.” Rabbi Cooper goes on to explain that the true discovery of the intimacy of our ongoing relationship with the Divine can dramatically change our lives. Cooper tells us it often happens spontaneously and with a reason. Some call this experience “grace.”
At this juncture, it is important to ask a pivotal question: ”Why would the mystics of a monotheistic religion feel compelled to search further for a God who was effectively incorporated, the God of their bible? We might speculate that the answer is found in the Old Testament itself, which reveals a God that might be considered, at times, somewhat ungodly – deciding to start over by destroying everyone with a flood except Noah and his family, demanding Abraham to sacrifice his child to show his allegiance, torturing Job to teach him a lesson, judging and punishing people and whole cities that refuse to comply. As one religious scholar said, this God of the Old Testament would be arrested and imprisoned if It was a real person. Truly not the God the mystics had experienced in their mystical connections, nor the God that brought comfort or joy.
Yet even if Jewish Mystics had a problem with the vengeful, unforgiving, compassionless aspects of the God of the early bible, this God allowed for debate, as demonstrated by both Moses and Abraham, who repeatedly argued with and were able to intervene with their God. As Rabbi Cooper instructs:
the linchpin of our relationship with God is
founded on the belief that human beings
have the creative capability to intervene in the
“normal” course of events.
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THE MYSTICS OF THE INDUS VALLEY
1. There was neither non-existence nor existence then;
there was neither the realm of space nor the sky
which is beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose
protection? Was there water bottomlessly deep?
2. There was neither death nor immortality then.
There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day.
That one breathed, windless, by its own impulse.
Other than that, there was nothing beyond.
3. Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning;
with no distinguishing sign; all this was water. The life
force that was covered with emptiness, that one arose
through the power of heat.
Stanzas 1. to 3. of the Creation Hymn (Nasadiya) – The Rig Veda
The next stop on our mystical tour is the birthplace of Hinduism, the world’s oldest living religious tradition. Let us journey through Margenau’s “time slit” to the 3000 - 1500 BCE period to visit a highly sophisticated ancient Indus Valley civilization in North India (now Pakistan) on the banks of the Indus River. This long-forgotten civilization, which included 70 cities, was discovered in the 1850s, unearthing a society with a sophisticated industry and technology mirroring their contemporaries, the Egyptians on the Nile, including skilled metalworkers in sheet making and riveting; copper and bronze casting; standardized methods of production; land and sea trade and well-planned cities with water supplies and public sanitation, unequaled until the Romans. A relatively peaceful culture with few weapons.
This Indus Valley civilization seems to have been greatly concerned with ritual purity, which focused on cleanliness, featuring sophisticated bathing and toilet facilities. The spiritual foundation of these Indus Valley inhabitants, based on the relics found, especially seals stamped with images in soft clay, as well as a number of stone and clay artifacts, indicate an early connection to what would become traditional Hindu spirituality, featuring images of Shiva as Yogashvara, the lord of Yogathan, suggesting the early practice of yoga and meditation, a full thousand years before the Vedas were to be passed down orally.
These findings also suggest that this early Indus culture may have established the very foundation of deep internal mind control and exploration of consciousness, known as “Brahma vidya,” meaning both “the supreme science” and the study of the supreme,” which utilized an intense yoga and meditation based mystical practice: and thus, possibly representing the first foray into what would be known as spiritual science. (Note that New Thought, impacted by this Hindu tradition thousands of years later, adapted this very nomenclature - calling their spiritual efforts the Science of Mind or Religious Science.)
Around 2000 BCE, groups of European-speaking people calling themselves “Arya” or noble began to enter the Indian subcontinent through the Hindu Kush, appearing in the Indus Valley, having wandered from Central Asia. These pastoral nomads, with their horses and chariots and the ability to cast bronze on the surface, seem to support the theory that these Aryans invaded and conquered the Indus Valley, leading to its eventual demise. However, there is no archaeological evidence to confirm this, and other historians speculate that these two cultures actually coexisted in the same area well before the demise of the Indus civilization.
4. Desire came upon one in the beginning; that was
the first seed of mind. Poets seeking in their hearts
with wisdom found the bond of existence in non-existence.
5. Their cord was extended across. Was there below? Was
there above? There were seed placers; there were powers.
There was impulse beneath; there was giving forth above.
6. Who really knows? Who will proclaim it? Whence was it
produced? Where is this creation? The gods came
afterward with the creation of the universe. Who then
knows whence it has risen?
Stanzas 4. to 6. of the Creation Hymn (Nasadiya) – The Rig Veda
The Aryans brought to the Indus Valley their spiritual tradition, as well as - Sanskrit – a European-connected language – meaning well formed – which later became the language of early Hindu practice. Yet, more importantly, they shared the Vedas, their orally transmitted, ritually focused, spiritual collection of hymns and scriptures. These priestly-controlled Vedas included myths, spells/incantations, and mantras. “Veda,” defined as wisdom, was originally communicated to “rishis” – ancient seers in the Aryan’s distant past, culminating in four collections, known as Samhitas, each focused on selected aspects of their spiritual ritual. The Rid-Veda, meaning “praise,” contains a thousand songs to key divinities. Followed by the Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda, and the Atharva Veda.
7. Whence this creation has arisen – perhaps it formed itself,
or perhaps it did not - the one who looks down on it in the
highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know.
Final Stanza of the Creation Hymn (Nasadiya) – The Rig Veda
The Aryans believed the world was governed by an abstract, impersonal principle of harmony and order called “Rita,” keeping the universe unified and intact. Of course, Rita is supported by numerous gods, often referred to as devas, who are Divine beings with supernatural power, while all subject to the laws of Rita: approximately 33 Vedic devas with oversight of Divine functions - most popular in Vedic tradition being Indra, God of war, Agni, God of divine fire, Yama, the God of death – Rudra – God of sickness or misfortune, and Soma, the God of religious ecstasy. Describing this spiritual practice of worshiping one supreme God – in this case Rita – while also worshipping many lesser gods, Friedrich Mac Muller – Cambridge Hindu Scholar who directed the 50-volume set of English translations of Hindu and related spiritual texts, Sacred Books Of The East, as “henotheism,” a coexistence of polytheism and monotheism.
In the Vedas, humans are considered individual Souls representing a stratified social order; this Soul is indicated by the Sanskrit word Atman, meaning breath. Aryans were already ordered into social classes when they arrived in the Indus Valley based on occupation: Brahmins – priests and teachers; Ksatriyas, warriors and administrators; Vaisyas - merchants, artisans, ranchers, and farmers; and Sudras, considered people of the land.
By 1000 BCE, this Aryan Vedic scriptural focus appears to merge with the Indus Valley yoga and meditation Brahmavidya practice—enabling inspired “rishis” (seers) of ancient India, who are now armed with Veda-based scriptures, hymns, and mantras, to explore the depths of human consciousness in search of the absolute, honing these principles in forest academies or ashrams—a tradition that has continued for three thousand years.
By 500 BCE, this synthesis coalesces into what would later be considered a pinnacle of human spiritual thought and practice, the Upanishads. It is speculated that for centuries, the insights of this Brahmavidya approach, primarily through the studies of Veda mantras and spiritual practice, were systematically committed to memory - being orally established with clearly stated methods and discoveries, and much later, into writing in the Upanishads, the earliest and purest document representing the results of personal mystical experiences: including the four Vedas called “shruti; meaning “heard.”
The central ideas of the Upanishads - the word suggesting “sitting down at the feet of a spiritual teacher or guide" - which set down what the rishis or seers actually experienced at different levels of spiritual awareness included the Brahman, the Godhead, which was the transcendent, changeless, infinite, indivisible, the Divine ground of existence, universal; the Atman, the Divine core of personality similar to what we have addressed as the Divine Self or the Crystal Self - God immanent; the dharma, the law that expresses and maintains the unity of creation; karma, the web of cause and effect; samsara, the cycle of birth and death; moksha, the spiritual liberation that is life’s supreme goal.
The Rishis Veda/Upanishad discoveries include the following essential insights: within each of us is a Divine self. Eknath Easwaran explains in his introduction to these Hindu spiritual classics: “The Chandogya Upandishad says epigrammatically, Tat tvam asi: “Thou art That.” Atman is Brahman: the self in each person is not different from the Godhead. The self is one and the same in every creature.” Ruysbroech, the medieval mystic, expresses the same sentiment:
The image of God is found essentially and personally in
all mankind. Each possesses its whole, entire, undivided,
and not more than one alone. In this way, we are all one,
intimately united in our eternal image, which is the image
of God and the source in us of all life.
Later, the Bhagavad Gita would be added to the Shrutir. Sharkara, the great mystic of the ninth century, selected ten of the nearly a hundred Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita as key Hindu texts. The Upanishads delineate three ordinary states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep. Beyond these three is the fourth, the unitive state: "Turiya."
In the Gita, the dream of waking life is called Maya, primal energy that makes unity appear as a world of separate things. The mind observes the outside world with a consciousness that sees separate objects in a framework of time, space, and causality because of the conditions of perception; at this local level of consciousness, we see separateness as real. When we look at unity through our local consciousness, we see diversity, but when we enter a higher mode of knowing – Turiya, the fourth stage of consciousness, the duality disappears. The Gita expands on the philosophy of Sankhya with two separate categories of consciousness.
Purusha, Spirit, and Prakriti, everything else. Eknath Easwaran, in his introduction to his translation of the Bhagavad Gita, states: Prakriti is the field of what can be known objectively, is not only matter and energy but also the mind - the first of phenomena and includes mind, energy, and matter. This is similar to what we have previously defined and will define more closely as personal or local consciousness. Purusha is consciousness itself, pure spirit, is the knower of this phenomena and belongs to a wholly different order of reality with the mind and body just external implements of Purusha and may be considered as the Atman or Divine unhanging self. The goal of evolution is to return to unity; then the Soul rests in pure unity of God-Consciousness, which is a permanent state of joy.
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EMERGENCE OF A NEW SCIENTIFIC ORDER
Today’s science has forced us into a new way of thinking
that shares in the mystic vision. The new understanding
must begin and end at the point of real human experience,
the point of inner life: consciousness itself.
Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart
Eight hundred years ago, the medieval philosopher Maimonides wrote that science is not only the surest path to knowing God but also the only path. This remark was reason enough for some communities to burn his books. Although I don’t agree that science is the only path, it has proven viable in the past century. The scientific and spiritual communities have mostly been engaged in a similar pursuit, which is finding meaning in the existence we now inhabit. Whether we set out to search for the laws of the creator or the creator of the laws, we are climbing the same mountain, and in the end, both rely on belief.
As I have mentioned, science and religion are converging on this God aspect of consciousness from unique vantage points. I plan to include both perspectives along with the guidance I received on the train. Abraham Maslow, Ph.D., felt that science and religion have been too narrowly conceived and have been too exclusively dichotomized and separated from each other, being seen as mutually exclusive worlds – “this separation permitted nineteenth–century science to become exclusively mechanistic, too desperately attempting to be value–free."
With its focus on objectivity, experimentation, validity, and proof, science has, in reality, surpassed a rather entrenched spiritual community, which in most cases, has not moved beyond the musings of its founding mystics. These same communities have dealt harshly with any mystic or scientist who has claimed any other possible truth. On the other hand, science has matured and, in 400 years, has taken us into new worlds, changing our existence and lives. As the religious communities fought for spiritual and secular control, the scientific community has given us a glimpse of God through their amazing march to understanding the laws of the universe.
Modern science, especially Physics, has in the past century moved into the realm of what I call “Spiritual Science” with the work of physicists Amit Goswami, Ph.D., David Bohm, Ph.D., and Henry Margenau, Ph.D.; Biologist Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., and Paleontologist Pere Teilhard de Chardin, Ph.D. Each of these scientists has pushed the limits of their scientific acumen to help us understand the impact of a nonlocal creative consciousness or force on our lives and, by so doing, expand our beliefs.
Along with many of their peers, they have come to acknowledge the formative role of the “conscious observer,” local or nonlocal, on the behavior of the sub-atomic world studied by Quantum Mechanics/Physics or on the perception of space and time as outlined in what is now Einstein’s work on Relativity. Both point to a universal or non-local consciousness that is now considered by some as an essential factor in the actual existence of our universe. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., in his book The Science Of God, discusses this topic and makes the following assertion –
The perception that religion requires faith alone is a
misconception. Religion requires belief and belief is
built on knowledge.
In my opinion, science offers a way to validate what I understand to be my guidance and my mystical interpretation. I would like to explain how science ran head-on into God and how many scientists have expanded their scientific theories to include a Divine force. It is primarily this work being conducted in physics that has fit the message that I have received on the train. We will also take a look at Biology and other related sciences.
First, we will need to understand the emergence of a new order in physics over the past 400 years and how God came to be revealed. Physics is one branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter. The subject matter of physics, distinguished from that of chemistry and biology, includes mechanics, heat, light and other radiation, sound, electricity, magnetism, and the structure of atoms – basically the entire known or unknown universe.
Physicists fall into three broad categories:
- Theoretical physicists develop theories using mathematics to form a conceptual reality;
- Experimental physicists test and work to validate and prove these theories through actual experimentation;
- Applied physicists use this learning to improve and enhance day-to-day life.
Including a few like Brain Greene, Ph.D., Cambridge-educated String Theorist, Columbia University professor, PBS Nova host, and author of the books The Elegant Universe; The Fabric of the Cosmos, and The Hidden Reality popularizing and explaining the wonders of theoretical physics to those who, like me, might never have been able to understand any of this without his gentle translation.
So let’s start. We are all familiar with Isaac Newton, born in 1642 in Lincolnshire, England, whose genius resulted in the Universal Theory Of Gravity and ushered in what many consider the age of Classical Physics. A man so brilliant that he created the mathematics he would need to communicate and validate his assumptions. Newton declared that everything exerts and feels the force of gravity, with this force of gravitational attraction between two bodies based on the amount of matter making up each (atoms with their protons, neutrons, and electrons) and the distance between them. Newton quantified this gravitational force between two bodies as being proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Since Newton’s time, his theory has become the Law of Gravity and has been used to predict planetary orbits, the projected path of rockets, and the movement through space of everything from baseballs to jet planes.
In the 1800s, a physicist by the name of James Clark Maxwell noticed a relationship between electricity and magnetism when he realized the electro particles in lightning create an electromagnetic field. Maxwell explained the single force using four elegant mathematical equations, which would make up what we now know as the Law of Electromagnetism. Maxwell showed that electromagnetic disturbances travel at a fixed and never changing speed – the speed of light. He went on to say that light was no more than an electromagnetic wave interacting with the retina chemicals of the eye, thus giving rise to the sensation of sight. So visible light – is one type of electromagnetic wave that travels at the speed of light. The speed of the approaching photons that make up light is always traveling 670 million miles per hour, never changing.
By the end of the 19th century, physics was well on its way to describing the major laws of the physical world, and some felt all that needed accomplishing was tidying up the details. All that had occurred up to this point supported the popular mechanistic approach of science at the time; if you understood the parts, you would be able to predict the behavior of the whole machine, and, with gravity and electromagnetic fields isolated, what more could there be? However, what was to happen next would shake the foundation of science as unexplained anomalies showed their existence, revealing Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics leaps, jitters, probabilities, and wave-particle duality.
With this came the startling realization that the observer in the experiment had conscious control over the results, with the observer’s consciousness acting upon matter and creating an effect. With this, the impact of consciousness on a personal and nonlocal basis moved to the forefront of scientific investigation.
Einstein took the perspective of the observer in what he called “thought experiments,” putting the observers in railroad cars with clocks in view and traveling at the speed of light in various directions. Per Einstein, time and space measurements for these observers in relative motion will not agree, resulting in their watches stating different times and the space traveled also measuring differently. This was the basis of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, “the observer” impacting the perception and reality of space and time.
Einstein theorized that space acted more like a fabric of space and time – with three dimensions of space and a fourth being time. This fabric of space-time theorized by Einstein is warped and stretched by the matter of planets, creating curves in the spatial fabric, with ripples of gravity traveling at the speed of light. The massive weight of the earth and sun pushes down on this space fabric resulting in a circular imprint that is used by the earth to maintain its orbit.
This aspect of Einstein’s work, known as the General Theory Of Relativity, would unify the Laws of Gravity and Electromagnetism - seen as light. A new picture of space prevailed – one with warps and curves in the fabric of space and time. This warping would explain why the debris of the sun traveling at the speed of light would take eight minutes to hit the Earth. Einstein expanded our understanding of gravity and offered what would become, for all intents and purposes, the new law of the universe. This also began Einstein’s lifelong quest for the “Theory of Everything,” a single unified theory that would describe the workings of the universe.
As some physicists looked to the heavens for answers in the macro world, others focused on the subatomic world of atoms. An anomaly deviates from the standard, normal, or expected, and at this time in physics, anomalies began appearing as physicists tried to explain radiation, that is, why hot bodies such as a wood fireplace and the sun emit radiation but at different levels. German theoretical physicist Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, founder of the quantum theory in the early 1900s, theorized that light from an incandescent body consists of jiggling electron charges that absorb the energy and emit it back as heat. Planck said what appeared to be happening was that the electrons emitted their radiation in discontinuous discrete amounts, which he called “quanta of energy” using the Latin word “quantum,” meaning amount.
Einstein contributed by publishing his first research paper in 1905 on Quantum Theory, challenging the established theory that light was a wave and suggesting that light exists as a quantum – a discrete bundle of energy we now call a photon. Both Planck’s and Einstein’s views were seen as revolutionary at the time. But these very anomalies - of the sub-atomic world and its quantum antics, what would soon be known as the “New Physics” ushered in the end of the age of materialism where the universe was viewed as a machine, where if one understood how the parts worked one would effectively understand the universe.
The Quantum Anomalies – New Physics
In the early 1900s, matter was thought to consist of atoms made up of electrons going around the nucleus, and the nucleus made up of particles called protons and neutrons. In 1913, Danish physicist Niels Bohr took an even more revolutionary step and applied the idea of Einstein’s light quanta to suggest that the whole world of the atom is full of quantum jumps. The atom resembles a tiny solar system with electrons rotating around the nucleus like the planets rotating around the sun.
As Bohr suggested, unlike the orbiting solar system, the electron will stay in the orbit until its energy value changes. When the electron jumps from a higher–energy orbit to a lower-energy orbit, it emits light as a quantum. At its lowest energy level, the electron just remains in orbit and does not crash into the nucleus. The electron does not occupy space between orbits; it does not jump but disappears and reappears in a higher orbit. Instead, it seems to disappear at one rung and reappear at another. To make matters worse, as we will discuss shortly, there was no way to predict when the quantum leap would occur except by using probabilities. This was the first significant “anomaly” that began to disrupt the classical physicist’s clockwork materialistic view of the universe.
Wave - Particle Dualism
Quantum Theory, established in the late 1920s from this research, offered a radically new perspective of the world. When researchers determined that light exists as quanta, as photons, it suggests that light is made of particles – like grains of sand. But if we remember Maxwell, the light is electromagnetic waves. The debate of whether light is a wave or a particle has raged since Newton initially proclaimed that light was a stream of particles, but his colleagues disagreed with him, arguing light was a wave. In the early 1800s, English physicist Thomas Young using a double–slit experiment, proved Newton wrong.
Quantum experimenters modernized the double slit experiment, which resulted in another anomaly known as the “wave–particle duality,” originally applied to photons of light; later realized to impact electrons and other particles. It made it even stranger to comprehend when photons and electrons tested in these double-slit experiments simultaneously exhibited wave and particle qualities, depending on what was being studied or observed.
The experiment is straightforward – experimenters use an electron gun to shoot electrons with the rate of delivery adjusted. Hence, it shoots one particle at a time at a barrier that has two slits cut into it at well-spaced intervals. Behind the barrier is a photographic plate that records the arrival of the electron. Well, the electron goes through a slit and arrives one by one in a particle-like manner, but as a large number hits the photographic screen, it creates the interference effect known to be caused by a wave. This interference pattern is the unmistakable signature of the electrons behaving in a wavelike mode.
This has come to be known as the electron/wave-particle duality because the particle arrives one by one as a particle but results in an interference-wavelike behavior. Stupefied by these results, physicists realized that the electron, a building block particle of all matter, was being two things at once, a wave and a particle – or a "waveical" as it is referred to highlight this dualism. As a result, the universe was suddenly no longer orderly or explainable.
But what slit does the electron actually go through? By controlling the slit and observing the electron's path, it has been proven that the electron actually goes through both slits, not selecting one path or the other unless directed to do so by the method of measurement or the expectation of the observer. If the experiment is arranged to test a wave result, the electron obliges; if it is set up for a particle, it also complies. In fact, as we will see shortly, it travels every possible course in potentia until it is required to determine a prescribed route by the observer's intent.
German mathematical physicist and philosopher Karl Werner Heisenberg (1901–76) published his celebrated Uncertainty Principal in 1927 using matrix algebra to explain this quantum anomaly determining that one can know where an electron is but not what it is doing; or one can know what it is doing; but not where it is. But according to Heisenberg, when the physicist addresses an experimental question, “Where are you” and on this particular occasion, the answer “here” turns up. All the probability collapses into a single actuality.
Quantum Action At A Distance – The EPR Paradox
Einstein felt that if Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle was correct and experimenters could not determine an electron's position and momentum, then there was something wrong with Quantum Mechanics, and it was an incomplete theory. In Einstein’s classical physics perspective, probabilistic Quantum Mechanics implied gambling rather than science, and Einstein went so far as to make his well-known quote:–
“God does not play dice with the universe.”
The Born-Einstein Letters 1916-55
In the 1930s, a determined Einstein joined forces with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen to prove this point conclusively. The study focused on measuring the momentum and position using two electrons that had interacted in the past but were now no longer linked. Einstein proposed that if he could use both data to determine the momentum and position for one or the other, then there was no uncertainty, just a lack in theory and mathematics. Furthermore, the results would undermine the whole Quantum notion that electrons existed in potential, running every path until observed. Taking two electrons - A and B that had interacted in the past but were now separated and no longer interacting, the EPR team proposed that if they conducted suitable measurements on electron A, they would be able to determine electron B's position or momentum.
The EPR team was successful, and they were able to do just what they proposed, but there was one very big anomaly: the measurement of one of two correlated objects in the Quantum world affected its correlated partner. Bohr is reported to have said to Einstein: ”Don’t tell God what to do.” Bohr’s response to the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen results was to point out that when an observer's measurement collapses one electron of the correlated pair’s wave function, the other’s wave function is also collapsed.
As we will cover shortly, the debate did not end here but was carried on until the work of David Bohm and Alain Aspect in 1982 settled the argument. What occurred was that the EPR correlated electrons had a nonlocal ontological connection, or inseparability, that exerted a signal-less instantaneous influence upon each other. The EPR Paradox provided the groundwork for understanding what we will refer to shortly as quantum action–at–distance, a subatomic connection that transcends local space-time. We will discuss what happened in the next section, but suffice it to say that the EPR Paradox ended up validating quantum mechanics and the role of the conscious observer. John Polkinghorne describes it aptly in his book Quantum Theory–A Very Short Introduction when he states, “Classical Physics describes a world that is clear and determinate. Quantum physics describes a world that is cloudy and fitful.”
We have covered hundreds of years of physics in a few pages, and I commend you for staying with me as we explored this foundation for our scientific understanding of God-consciousness. We now have the basic background we need to move on and understand the impact of Relativity and the anomalies of Quantum Mechanics on explaining God-consciousness. Our next stop is the work of Dr. Amit Goswami, but first, one more quote from Polkinghorne, who addresses the unique role of consciousness in Quantum Physics:
Every quantum measurement of whose outcome we have
actual knowledge has had its final step, someone’s conscious
awareness of the result. Consciousness is the ill-understood
but the undeniable experience of the interface between the material
and the mental. Perhaps, then, it is the intervention of a conscious
observer that determines the outcome of a measurement.
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Goswami’s Self-Aware Universe
Our first stop is to meet Amit Goswami, Ph.D., a theoretical nuclear physicist and professor emeritus of the University of Oregon Institute for Theoretical Physics, a resident quantum physicist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, who wrote the basic Quantum Mechanics college textbook. Goswami, whose father was a Hindu guru in India, became fascinated with the mystical and spiritual implications of the anomalies of Quantum science. In 1993, Goswami wrote his first book on the subject titled The Self–Aware Universe – How Consciousness Creates The Material World. A must-read for anyone interested in the science behind spiritual consciousness, his other works include The Visionary Window, Physics Of The Soul, Quantum Doctor, and God Is Not Dead.
Goswami proposes a new paradigm that he believes will enable the development of a science that embraces the religions of the world, working in concert with them to understand the whole human condition. The centerpiece of this new paradigm is the recognition that modern science validates an old idea – that consciousness, not matter, is the "ground of all being." Within Quantum Physics – the new physics – Goswami declares that we have found a theoretical framework supported by numerous laboratory experiments, which have led to valuable technologies such as transistors, lasers, and superconductors. To make sense of the mathematics of quantum physics, Goswami tells us we must accept what appears paradoxical or even impossible based on the following:
- A quantum object, for example, an electron, can be in more than one place at the same time (the wave property).
- A quantum object cannot be said to manifest in ordinary space-time until we observe it as a particle (collapse of a wave).
- A quantum object ceases to exist here and simultaneously appears over there; we cannot say it went through the intervening space (the quantum jump).
- A manifestation of one quantum object, caused by the observation, simultaneously influences its correlated twin object – no matter how far away they are (quantum action–at–a distance, The EPR Paradox).
Let’s take a moment and return to our previous discussion of the quantum action at a distance, as demonstrated by EPR Paradox we just discussed in the previous section. The EPR Paradox was the first step in conclusively demonstrating quantum non-locality, which would be completed fifty years later by Bohm and Aspect's work. We briefly discussed David Bohm in Part Three, Chapter 10, Mind Control – Control Of Consciousness, whose work on the Implicate Order comes next. Bohm found that an electron has a two–valued-ness called a spin, which can be best thought of as each electron having an arrow on it that points up or down. Bohm suggested that we can collide two electrons in such a way that they would be correlated after the collision, and their spin arrows would be pointed opposite each other. Bohm said these two electrons would be in a “singlet” state or correlated in their polarization.
In 1982, Alain Aspect and his collaborators at the University of Paris–Sud conducted an experiment based on Bohm's electron “singlet” work, verifying that a measurement of one photon affects its correlated partner without any exchange of local signals between them. Aspect used polarization–correlated photons that emerged in opposite directions from a source of calcium atoms. When the experimenter sets up a detector on the path of each beam of photons with a switch that could be thrown to change the polarization setting of one of the photons, thus testing the correlated impact on the other. When you changed the polarization of one of the singlets, the polarization of its partner correspondingly changed at a speed that defies the speed of light, proving they were linked non-locally. Experiments with linked electrons over great distances have shown that they continue to be connected and impacted nonlocally.
This quantum strangeness does not confine itself to the submicroscopic domain of nature but haunts us all the way up to the macro level. Aspect’s work and related experiments suggest a communication in consciousness, sharing an inspired common cause. Goswami points out that the nonlocality of Aspect’s experiment fits Carl Jung’s description of synchronicity, where he clarifies.
Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same
world, it is not only possible but fairly probable given that
psyche and matter are two different aspects of the same thing.
Goswami goes on to support a philosophy of “monistic idealism,” which is the antithesis of “material realism,” where instead of considering that everything is made of matter (including consciousness), he proposes that everything exists in and is manipulated by consciousness. Consciousness, not matter, is fundamental; it is required for actual existence to manifest.
Consciousness is the only reality, and Goswami argues that "monastic idealism" is not only compatible with quantum physics but is even essential to its interpretation – it is the agency that collapses the wave of a quantum object which exits in potentia, and each observation makes a causal pathway in the fabric of possibilities, and once a choice is made, all except one of the pathways are excluded from the world of manifestation. For the universe to exist, it assumes a Universal Consciousness potent enough to collapse all potentials into the reality we experience.
On this foundation, Goswami asserts that the brain-mind is an interactive system with both classical and quantum components in which consciousness is primary and exists locally and nonlocally. The quantum component of the brain mind is regenerative, and its states are multifaceted, capable of harnessing all potential possibilities and, when needed, using its innate manifesting power and free will to collapse the possibilities into a tangible course of action as the vehicle for conscious choice and for creativity. Goswami notes that we rarely confront the true nature of this Quantum Self and its dance with potentia until we are involved in creative pursuits. So like the electron in the double slit experiment, our local consciousness travels every logical possibility.
The classical component of the brain-mind can form memory and acts as a reference point for experience, provided psychosocial conditioning enables us to learn a set of contexts in which to operate. There exists a spectrum of self–consciousness at the lower end by the personal unconscious and the upper end by the collective unconscious. As we develop our ability to manage our consciousness, we can move through this spectrum, tap our connection to the global consciousness, and reach what Goswami calls the “Buddhi Level,” where living at the ego level is replaced by one of inner creativity, self-exploration, and actualization – enlightenment.
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POTENTIA - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
DAILY POST ON ENLIGHTENMENT
Those who have followed this blog and the unfolding of the Finding God On The Train Story realize I believe there is a convergence of science and religious research, thought, and comprehension towards a validation, or at least an understanding, of the existence of Universal Consciousness; supporting that we as individuals are connected through our local consciousness.
Whether we choose to call this force God, Source, Universal Mind, Infinite Intelligence, or Spirit is only a matter of personal semantics. However, I prefer the term God since it is what works for me, even though I understand this is based on a drastically different definition than the traditional concept of God I was exposed to growing up.
In my elaboration on this concept, I have highlighted the work of several renowned and forward-thinking physicists and will continue to do so. As Dr. Abraham H. Maslow offered in his book Religions, Values, And Peak Experiences, "We may be able to accept religious questions as a proper part of the jurisdiction of science." The same must be hoped for from the religious side, which has turned away from a scientific basis for establishing spiritual existence.
As I have noted, it is as if the religious and scientific communities are approaching the concept of spirituality and our connection with a Divine force from different sides of the same mountain. Many agree that what they may be looking at is a universal creative force, which cannot be explained away by negating the other group’s perspective.
On the scientific side, Quantum Theory - based on the subatomic world and the understanding of an atomic nucleus composed of neutrons and protons, with its orbiting electrons and small packets of light called photons, which refuse to behave in a predictable way - is able to appear either as a particle or a wave; dependent on the expectation of a conscious observer. The behavior of these particles, and the twenty-five other related particles that have since been revealed as contributing building blocks, actually form and reform at will and defy space and time constraints. Their location at any point in time can only be determined as a probability.
My mission with this approach to God and consciousness is to understand how our local mind interacts with the universal mind, working to explain if it is feasible to believe that we actually cocreate with God through what has been called the Law of Attraction or the Law of Mind Action. Are we active partners in the creation of our own existence, and is this the result of our own Divinity? If so, is there any basis in reality - using science - to provide this theory some validity?
Renowned German Physicist Werner Heisenberg, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932 for his famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which outlined this probabilistic nature of the building blocks of subatomic matter, coined the term "Potentia," which he borrowed from Aristotle as outlined in Heisenberg's book Physics and Philosophy - The Revolution In Modern Science. Heisenberg notes that in the philosophy of Aristotle, matter was thought of in the relation between form and matter, and Heisenberg goes on to write of Aristotle's approach:
All we perceive in the world of phenomena around
us is formed in matter. Matter is in itself not a reality but
only a possibility, a "potential,"; it exists only by means of
form. In the natural process, the "essence" passes over
from mere possibility into actuality.
This essence, I conjecture, on a local mind basis, is the pure conscious intention, vibrational, emanating from our emotionally charged desires, thus cocreating through Universal Consciousness, resulting in formed matter - actual reality. I consider this a theory I would like to explore in more detail in future posts and in the book - a sort of "Theory of Attraction."
Of course, I have been thinking and reading about this "potentia concept," so it is not surprising that it has surfaced several times as direct Meditation Guidance, as offered below. In this brief passage titled Potentia - the guidance clarifies this concept of potentia and how it is connected through our vibrational desire into cocreative reality.
POTENTIA - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
All thought within the local mind exists in potentia –
sending out a vibration, creating this vision into potential
existence. Each thought is positively charged with emotion
pushing its creation – or negatively charged – usually the
undesirable charged thoughts of lack, fear, and doubt.
Often, one desire has conflicting charges as our mind
debates our desire or confidence in our ability to secure.
Positive and negative charges of the same vibration negate
each other out, leaving only potentia with a strong positive
and negative charge in the balance.
In the end, whatever charge exists determines the vibration
path through Universal Consciousness and the final creation
attracted into form. The Universal Mind combines the charges
of others with related potentia, forming a creation in unison.
NOE BY G. 9.24.2011
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David Bohm And The Implicate Order
We begin by proposing that, in some sense,
consciousness is to be comprehended in terms
of the implicate order. That is to say, the implicate
order applies to both matter and consciousness.
David Bohm – Wholeness And The Implicate Order
David Bohm, Ph.D. is one of the more fascinating and controversial figures of the 20th-century quantum physics world, a maverick who was not afraid to challenge the standard interpretations of Quantum physics or leave the country to resist McCarthyism, who in the 1940s redefined the theory of plasma as the fourth state of matter, in the 1950s recast the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox, and became one of the early physicists who understood the essential nature of consciousness proposing the universe has an Implicate Order and is constructed the same way as a hologram. This uniqueness is underscored by the book about his work titled The Essential David Bohm, where The Dalai Lama offers a reminiscence, calling him one of his scientific gurus.
The same four bulleted quantum anomalies impacted Bohm we listed above outlined by Goswami - the wave property, the collapse of the wave, the quantum jump, and the quantum action-at-a-distance. As a result, Bohm determined that either the theory of quantum mechanics was wrong or some form of non-locality must permeate reality. Bohm proceeded to outline a philosophy of Implicate Order for two reasons; first, he felt that relativity and quantum theory pointed to a wholeness of the natural world, and second, for Bohm, this wholeness is actual and requires metaphysical investigation. Bohm, like Goswami, questioned material realism and felt compelled to take it into a metaphysical dimension.
In response, Bohm introduced the Implicate Order, asking, “how are we to think coherently of a single, unbroken, flowing actuality of existence as a whole, containing both thought (consciousness) and external reality as we experience it.” Bohm concluded that consciousness must have room in it to understand what it means for its content to be “reality as a whole." We need to understand how reality and consciousness are related. But Bohm looked beyond just science and believed that man’s general way of thinking of the totality, i.e., his general worldview, is crucial for the overall order of the human mind.
The way could be opened for a world view in which
consciousness and reality would not be fragmented
from each other.
Bohm offers a new notion of an order that may be appropriate to a universe of unbroken wholeness. According to Bohm’s theory, there are three major realms of existence: the Explicate Order, the Implicate Order, and a Source or Ground Beyond Both. The world of seemingly separate and isolated things and events in space and time comprises the Explicate Order in the world. The Implicate Order is a realm in which all things and events are enfolded in total wholeness and unity, which encompasses the Explicate Order of the world we experience through our senses. The Implicate or Enfolded Order is where ordinary notions of space and time and those of separately existent material particles are abstracted as forms derived from a deeper universal order – the Source Of Ground Beyond.
Bohm argues that a conception of undivided wholeness is implicit in both relativity and quantum physics. Bohm’s vision of the Implicate Order is a dynamic “structure–process” from which our coordinate-based experience of three–dimensional space and time is but a derivative, temporary projection to be enfolded within and therefore available to human experience. Any describable event, object, or entity in the explicate world is an abstraction from an unknown and undefinable totality of flowing movement, which Bohm calls Holomovement, which includes “life implicit,” is the ground both of "life explicit" and “inanimate matter,” and this ground is self-existent and universal. Bohm’s Holomovement is alive with many types of waves or any form of movement, including movements known and unknown.
Bohm believed that there is a holographic quality to existence based on the properties of a hologram, which is the only instrument whose function is to make a static record or snapshot of this order, enabling the recording of the complex movement of electromagnetic fields in the form of light waves. To Bohm, the universe is permeated with waveforms, with all matter having a wavelike aspect, even atoms and molecules. Quantum theory has explained many of the anomalies we have discussed by proposing that there is a matter field for each type of particle: an electron is a quantum of the electron-positron field, and a proton is a quantum of the proton-antiproton field.
Bohm goes on to propose that we live in a holographic universe: the holoverse. The central feature of Bohm’s holoverse is a oneness that exists beyond the visible world in the Implicate Order. We can apprehend it, Bohm says, but we can never comprehend it. Bohm’s views go behind the unification of consciousness; they also lead to the conclusion of the immortality of the mind.
Bohm came to the position that mind and matter cannot be understood as two.
Yet, deep down, the consciousness of mankind is one.
That each moment of consciousness has a certain
explicit content, which is a foreground, and an implicit
content, which is a corresponding background.
At first glance, Bohm’s approach is somewhat overwhelming, but if we simply re-label the “Explicate Order” as “Local or Personal Consciousness,” “the Implicate Order as Collective Local Consciousness,” and the Source Of Ground Beyond or the Holoverse as Universal or God-Consciousness, the pieces of the puzzle fit more clearly. The notion that each part of the whole contains the whole, as in a hologram of the whole, becomes understandable and defensible.
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Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance
Bohm’s work with the Implicate order has been mirrored by the work of Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., a biologist and author of ten books and 80 scientific papers on similar subjects, as well as a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and a Research Fellow of the Royal Society who has defined what he calls the “Morphic Resonance” where, for example, the expanding seed of a tree would connect with “morphogenetic fields” to find the blueprint outlining each and every detail for the existence of this tree. Rather than genes, the human embryo connects with this knowledge base to complete the creation of the human form. Most of what is covered here can be fully examined by reading Morphic Resonance–The Nature of Formative Causation and The Presence Of The Past–Morphic Resonance and the Habits Of Nature.
Let’s spend some time understanding Sheldrake’s concepts. As Sheldrake states: “Responding to the failure of the Human Genome Project where the old assumption that life would be understood if molecular biologists knew the “program” of the organism is giving way to a realization that there is a huge gap between gene sequences and the way living organisms grow and behave.” Sheldrake’s work is meant to bridge this gap. Sheldrake goes on to clarify that the first surprise with the genome project was that there were so few genes. Rather than the predicted 100,000 or more, the final tally of about 25,000 was very puzzling. The genomes of other animals are much simpler than ourselves with more genes - there are 17,000 genes in a fruit fly and about 26,000 in a sea urchin. Many species have more than we do–rice has about 38,000 genes. Based on genes, there is no way to distinguish humans from chimpanzees.
Morphogenetic Fields are proposed as the organizing fields of molecules, crystals, cells, tissues, and all biological systems. Sheldrake also discusses organizing fields of animal behavior and social groups. Morphogenetic Fields influence form and behavioral fields influence behavior. The organizing folds of social groups, such as flocks of birds, schools of fish, and colonies of termites, are social fields. All of these kinds of fields are morphic fields. All morphic fields have an inherent memory given by morphic resonance. Sheldrake relates these Morphogenetic fields to the work being done in physics, suggesting that Bohm’s Implicate Order involves a kind of memory that is expressed through quantum fields; in his book, Morphic Resonance, Sheldrake includes an appendix featuring a discussion with David Bohm.
Another way morphic resonance is related to modern physics is through extra dimensions of space and time suggested by the theory of General Relativity, the Kaluza-Klein theory, and the eleven dimensions proposed by the Super String theory. First, let us start with the hypothesis of formative causation based on the assumption that Morphogenetic Fields are physically real, in the sense that gravitational, electromagnetic, and quantum matter fields are physically real. Each kind of cell, tissue, and organism has its own kind of field. These fields shape and organize developing micro-organisms, plants, and animals and stabilize the forms of adult organisms. These fields' structure depends on the forms of similar previous organisms. In other words, the structure of a field depends on what has happened before. Thus, for example, the Morphogenetic Fields of foxglove plants are shaped by influences from previous foxgloves. They make up a kind of pooled or collective memory of the species.
Morphic Resonance takes place on the basis of similarity. The more similar an organism is to previous organisms, the greater its influence on it by morphic resonance. The more such organisms exist, the more powerful their cumulative influence. Thus, the developing foxglove seedling, for example, is subject to morphic resonance from countless foxgloves that came before, and this resonance shapes and stabilizes its morphogenetic fields.
This communication occurs on the basis of rhythmic patterns of activity. All organisms undergo rhythmic oscillations, vibrations, periodic movements, or cycles. In atoms and molecules, the electrons are in constant vibratory movement within their orbitals; large molecules wobble and undulate. Cells also contain innumerable vibrating structures. According to the hypothesis of formative causation, Morphic Resonance occurs between such rhythmic structures and involves a kind of action at a distance in both space and time, so influence echoes do not decline with distance in space and time.
I know what you are thinking; wow, this would make a great science fiction film - but let’s bare with Sheldrake, who may be onto something weird but valid. OK, how does this work? An embryo develops from a fertilized egg containing DNA, proteins, and other molecules that are organized in particular ways and are characteristic of the species. Such organized starting structures, or as Sheldrakes calls them, “Morphogentic Germs,” enter into the Morphic Resonance with previous members of the species. In other words, the developing embryo is “tuned in” to the fields of the species and thereby becomes surrounded by, embedded within, the forces that shape its development, as countless other embryos were shaped in the past.
All members of the species influence these fields, and their influence is cumulative; it increases as the total number of members of the species grows. According to Sheldrake, morphogenetic fields are “probability structures” in which the influence of the most common past types combines to increase the probability that such types will occur again. The hypothesis of formative causation postulates a two-way flow of influence: from fields to organisms and from organisms to fields. Morphic resonance involves a different kind of action at a distance, which is harder to conceive since it does not involve the movement of quanta of energy through any of the known fields of physics. Sheldrake proposes that we might imagine a “morphogenetic ether,” or another “dimension” or influences passing “beyond” space-time and then re-entering.
You may be thinking that formative causation sounds like bizarre metaphysical speculation, but Sheldrake responds by saying that classic mechanistic theory also depends on assumptions, if anything, more metaphysical than the idea of formative causation. Sheldrake also replaces the term morphic field for the morphogenetic field to include the other organizing fields we mentioned earlier, including the organizing fields of animal and human behavior and social and cultural systems. Mental activity can be regarded as occurring in a specially tailored morphic field that contains inherent memory.
Where do these Morphic Fields originate? Sheldrake says they might have arisen spontaneously or already existed at the time the universe came into being. I will refer you to Rupert Sheldrake’s book The Presence Of The Past for this discussion, but as Sheldrake admits, it suggests that the invisible originating principles of nature, rather than being eternally fixed, evolve along with the systems they organize.
I would like to propose that when we tap into what the New Thought community has defined as the Infinite Mind or Universal Intelligence, we are taping into the Morphic Field for human consciousness existing now or that has ever existed. A storehouse of all the knowledge and wisdom – a database of all those who have ever existed. As we have discussed, Sheldrake’s Morphic Fields would provide a framework for explaining both local and non-local consciousness and how and why it is connected. Shortly I will outline my own theory of Universal Consciousness that incorporates many of Sheldrake’s basic morphic-related concepts. Let’s move on to the work of Dr. Henry Margenau.
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Margenau’s Universal Mind
The road to a viable theory of the Universal Mind is a search for a science or at least a philosophy of consciousness that spans centuries. No scientist has embraced this concept of the Universal Mind and has taken it further than Henry Margenau, Ph.D. (1901-1997), distinguished Yale University Professor of Physics and Natural Philosophy, whose theoretical work embraced an investigation of intermolecular forces, spectroscopy, nuclear physics, and electronics. Later in life, Margenau served on the World Council Of Churches’ commission to develop an ecumenical position on nuclear weapons and atomic warfare.
Margenau was appointed Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and Natural Philosophy at Yale in 1950, a post he was to hold until his retirement from formal academic life in 1986. He also became a staff member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the MIT Radiation Laboratory. In addition, he acted as a consultant to the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. National Bureau of Standards, Argonne National Laboratory, Rand Corporation, General Electric Co., and Lockheed during his career.
Margenau wrote extensively on science, his works including Ethics and Science; The Nature of Physical Reality; and Quantum Mechanics and Integrative Principles of Modern Thought. In 1984 Margenau published The Miracle Of Existence, where he proposed a Physics-based theory of the Universal Mind, which he considered a logical extension of the theoretical work done on Quantum Mechanics and the Theory of Relativity. For the first time, his theory of the Universal Mind would merge physics with spirituality while incorporating diverse religious and philosophical traditions.
Margenau’s Universal Mind Theory, a “World Formula,” is based on all the science and philosophy of consciousness that is known to date, which indicates that existence and evolution are ruled by the purpose of a Universal Mind or Consciousness. Margenau envisions an individual or personal mind or consciousness that is a subset of a Universal Mind or Non-local Consciousness that encompasses the attributes of what we have known as God. Margenau often refers to the Universal Mind as God.
Magenau’s Factors Of Individual or Personal Mind
Each individual mind is part of the Universal Mind. Its individual knowledge comprises not only the entire present but all past events as well. Individual or personal mind or consciousness has the following characteristics, according to Margenau:
- This level of consciousness is experienced in three-dimensional space, with time flowing as a separate entity, only one point of which, one moment, the present, is perceived.
- Through a slit in time, the present is experienced, and the past can be remembered, but the future cannot be seen.
- This “time slit” makes the Individual or Personal Mind seem separate and distinct, but it is part of the Universal Mind.
- This "time slit" separation is referred to in Margenau’s theory as the “personal wall.” It produces the prevailing sense of individual isolation and gives this level of consciousness an identity as well as an ego.
- Quantum Physics makes freedom of will possible as realized - the future is based on probabilities, the probability distribution of possible happenings. This limitation to the probabilistic anticipation of future events is referred to as Stochastic Inhibition - or Stochastic Wall – limiting personal consciousness by restricting knowledge of the future but permissive to individual free will.
- The three restrictions represented by the Personal Wall or Personal Isolation, the time slit or temporal restriction, and the probabilistic knowledge imposed by the Stochastic wall are not absolute but can vary in strictness.
- A widening of the time slit would impact personal awareness of the future, resulting in the experience of precognition.
- Lowering the Personal Wall would enhance the personal sense of identity with others – possibly occurring in prayer or meditation when the individual or personal consciousness merges with the Universal Mind. This could result in extrasensory perception in the form of coalescence of information or mind reading.
- Margenau’s Theory might explain some Para psychological effects (Margenau strongly believed in the occurrence of paranormal activity).
Magenau’s Factors Of Universal or Non-local Mind
Ultimate existence is ascribed to the Universal Mind. All individual minds are part of the Universal Mind, which confers existence on all conscious, sentient beings in varying degrees, and these beings create out of the minds bestowed on them and, in accordance with principles imposed by the Universal Mind, everything else they call real and existing. The Universal Mind obviously presents some of the attributes of God. The universal mind includes all of the following:
- Only the Universal Mind, “cosmic consciousness,” possesses existence in full-unlimited measure.
- The Universal Mind is responsible for the universal laws of nature and encompasses all existence.
- The Universal Mind comprises each individual's individual mind and is fully aware of their entire past and future as it is created.
- The existence and successful applicability of universal laws of nature, for which only the universal mind is responsible, makes it possible for the individual mind to construct in an absolute and verifiable fashion all objects of the external world, including the body and all of its parts, such as the brain.
- No time slit, no personal wall exists for the Universal Mind - its knowledge of the future is not limited by quantum possibilities; it can also travel back and forth in time.
- Universal Mind has no need for memory since the past, present, and future are open to its grasp.
Margenau goes on to postulate the following: “each of us is the Universal Mind but inflicted with limitations that obscure all but a tiny fraction of its aspects and properties.
I have relied heavily on Henry Margenau's work in forming my theory of Universal God Consciousness, which I will outline next. I will be elaborating on many of these key Margenau concepts. Please note that in our discussion of the New Physics, I have left out String Theory and the pursuit of a “Theory of Everything.”
SLICE OF TIME - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
This thin slice of time we now inhabit reveals
only the immediate moment, as we, in conscious
adaptation creates a fuller, more multidimensional
the perspective of past and present incorporated,
well on its way to an imagined future. With this
the lens in place, we maneuver these settings
to comprehend this expression of existence.
Perhaps this present – this prelude to the future
is but a convergence of multi-moments, a sum
of probable alternatives that, in an infinitesimal,
momentary calculation forms a sort of sum over
history, an average of all possible scenarios,
to select and give us, as our best and most
suitable reality – our now.
Limited by our perception, we must
be aware that God’s perspective is fuller,
more inclusive but still impacted by
the complexity of multiple frameworks, alternatives
selected and abandoned, along with the power
of will and choice in every sentient participant
in this existence, so no static, fully framed
future can exist, just an ocean of possibilities
waiting to be perceived, then combined,
and finally, to arrive as a slice of the present
time for us to live again.
NOE BY G. 8.3.2018
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G.'s THEORY OF UNIVERSAL GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS
One thing I have learned from my extensive reading of scientific theory and research in the pursuit of validating the role of God Consciousness is that everyone has a theory they follow or have proposed; that is, a theoretical framework to be used as a backdrop for understanding their interpretation of reality, and hence supporting their central hypothesis. So, I would like to present - The G. Theory Of Universal God-Consciousness, but before laying out this theory in detail, I would like to introduce the Meditation Guidance below titled The Power Of Universal Consciousness, because it forms, in most part, the basis for my theory.
THE POWER OF UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
God is a Universal Consciousness.
I am a Universal Consciousness.
We are Universal Consciousness.
Everything starts and finishes with the power of Universal Consciousness
formed of all the consciousnesses of each piece of sentient life alive
or that has ever lived. Your consciousness is a connected subset of the
Universal - a contributor and emissary – the hands and feet of this
conscious creation is known as life.
When you meditate and move behind your ego longings, indoctrination,
conditioned thought patterns, and the chaotic chatter of a mind yet
fully trained to move beyond the misconception of separate existence,
you connect with the consciousness of God – call it what you wish
Universal, Infinite – call it mind, intelligence, or consciousness – it is
within this purposeful vehicle of creation that you are connected with,
submerged in, surrounded by, and one with God. Here is the essence of
positive creation.
Your task is to train your mind to live in harmony with this connection,
realize its existence, and stay connected, allowing it to live with fully
you and cocreate with you. At this point, you will recognize the power of
connected existence and move on with others to re-conceive this world –
as one – the next step in the evolution of consciousness.
This is the Divine plan, the inheritance of collective conscious will evolving –
becoming – pushing forward – expanding the potential of all consciousness.
NOE BY G. 8.14.2011 8:15 AM
Using this guidance above and the other related messages I have received on the train, I would like to begin by providing an overview, or summary, of what I propose as The G. Theory of Universal God-Consciousness. Then, as I do, I would like to provide what I consider support for this conceptual framework and the hypothesis in general.
INTRODUCTION
This macro Universal God-Consciousness is comprised of Four Levels, including three major or micro subsystem levels: the Personal Consciousness, the Collective Personal Consciousness, and the Collective Soul Consciousness. These levels are distinct but interact as subsets of the whole and of each other, resulting in the macro or ultimate level: Universal God-Consciousness.
Our Universe is a projection of Universal God-Consciousness fully designed to support creative life. In this thought creation, all the parts and materials carry the vision of the whole and their plan and purpose within the whole. Our universe is an incubator generated to allow life to form and thrive. It is only one of many thoughts or universes within the actual infinity of God-Consciousness:
There are three primary levels of Universal God-Consciousness - the Personal Consciousness, the Collective Personal Consciousness, and the Collective Soul Consciousness, all distinct but interacting as subsets of the whole.
Personal Consciousness represents the First Level of Universal God-Consciousness. I want to offer the following Meditation Guidance to define Personal Consciousness. However, the guidance is focused on human consciousness. Therefore, I propose this level includes all sentient, conscious life, including plants and animals.
PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
Before the beginning, there was only God-Consciousness –
Universal Consciousness - where now your personal
consciousness exists as a bubble of viable, evolving
intention allowing life as you know it to live and be
experienced within - giving it tangible form and
solidity – forming it, expanding it into the existence
you now are aware of and accept.
Personal consciousness is protected within the sea of
God-consciousness – receiving nourishment, guidance,
and inspiration but fully able to exist on its own to live
a life with or without connection with God. Personal
consciousness expands or contracts to match individual
desires, conceptions, or intentions.
At the same time, it is the pathway or portal to the
interconnectivity of Universal Consciousness with the
ability to connect to the collective creative power of all
who exist or who have ever lived.
During meditation and prayer, allow yourself
to experience and journey within your Personal
Consciousness – expanding your vision – revealing
the true center of your existence – push towards
knowing how you exist within the sea of God-
Consciousness – allowing the edges to fade –
the boundaries to disappear until you feel God
wash over you – feel the sincerity of pure love
enfolds you – and from this point, work on
strengthening this conceptual connection until
you touch the true center of gravity.
NOE BY G. 1.18.2012 7:10 AM
This first level of Personal Consciousness, as we have seen from our work with mind control and the control of this consciousness, is not easy to understand and is especially difficult to harness. Of this level, C.G. Jung, in his book The Undiscovered Self, clarifies the importance of what Jung refers to as the “phenomenon of consciousness:"
Without consciousness, there would, practically speaking,
be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as
it is consciously reflected and consciously expressed
by the psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being.
This personal or individual level of Universal Consciousness is powerful in its own right - only beginning to be partly understood by the lessons learned from the scientific community. We need to understand Jung’s statement above that – “consciousness is a precondition of being.” As we have discussed, many in the scientific community believe that a conscious observer is required for the world to exist, thus impacting the essential element of existence.
Borrowing heavily from Dr. Henry Magenau’s Theory of the Universal Mind we just reviewed, presented in his book The Miracle Of Existence - at this level of Personal Consciousness:
- Each mind is part of Universal God-Consciousness, but its knowledge comprises the entire present and all past events. Our experience is in three-dimensional space, and time flows as a separate entity, only one point of which, one moment, we can perceive.
- We see a slit in time where we experience the present and can remember the past but cannot see the future. This “time slit” or personal wall makes us seem like individuals, although we are a part of Universal God-Consciousness.
- This time slit separation, the “personal wall,” as Magenau refers to it, produces the prevailing sense of individual isolation and gives us an identity and an ego.
The Second Level or Subset of Universal God-Consciousness is the Collective Personal Consciousness which is the aggregate of all the Personal Consciousness’ of humans and other conscious, sentient life currently existing within the universe, allowing for communication and thought connection on both the conscious and subconscious levels. For example, in the meditation guidance below, titled All Connected, it is through this level that we can access the Heartlight and realize a connection to all who are now living and conscious. We utilize This level when considering Extra Sensory Perception and Astral Projection.
ALL CONNECTED - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
I see myself in a billion selves, all one and connected.
All connected. All one. All God. This is the essence of
the Divine connection with God within the self –
connected to the God selves living now or transitioned.
It is this connection of self-force that creates the power
and energy of the Divine – the Divine Self – the Divine Soul.
Only the ego or the false self is made up of fears and
indoctrination of a lifetime of separate self-training, seeing
our self as separate and not part of the whole Divine Soul.
In God, we are alive and connected to the Divine Soul
or Self and all selves. We can connect to this energy and force
and easily travel through this connection – via the Heartlight
into the hopes, dreams, desires, and creation of all
selves – all living kind experiencing the essence of the
Divine connection.
Connect to your Divine Self and connect to the selves of all life
connected – the Divine Self of God. Travel through this connection
and explore the mysteries of life and all existence – explore
the Divine within you – One In God. NOE BY G.
The Third Level or Subset of Universal God-Consciousness is the Collective Soul Consciousness - where the life force of all human or other sentient life that has ever lived or existed resides. This collective grouping provides the creative resource, memory, and intelligence of all existence by creating an infinite consciousness or intelligence connecting all human or other sentient life with the guidance to develop and grow per historical evolution and learning. This is the level that holds the blueprint and master design for all existence from the cell level through the complexities of the human form.
The Meditation Guidance below explains how to harness the power of this level.
COLLECTIVE SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS - MEDITATION GUIDANCE
In prayer and meditation, you connect with the collective
Consciousness of all existence, the Consciousness of each
person or living Soul who is alive now or who has ever lived
or existed. The faces you encounter during deep meditation
are reflections of this conscious energy – each a pattern
or imprint their own Consciousness with the memory
of all the lives that they have lived.
This collective grouping of all Soul energy combines to expand
and reform constantly and, in total, creates the infinite
consciousness or intelligence connecting all humankind.
This conscious collectivity forms the ever-expanding
consciousness of God – the creative energy of all existence.
Each question or request framed in prayer and meditation
connects to the Collective Soul and is responded to in kind
with the appropriate answer or action.
In this way, God harnesses the collective life experiences
of all who have ever lived as a reference and consultant
to what real human existence entails. Each of us, upon
transition will enter this consciousness carrying with us
this life experience – the joys, the knowledge, the creations,
as well as the sorrows, regrets, and evil personally created.
For most who have lived authentically, fully, and lovingly,
this is a time to communicate and guide as reunited with
like souls. For those who have created hell or earth, there
will only be time to reflect, try to resolve, and be forgiven
by those they hurt to exist in peace. They will carry their pain
until they are released or can attempt another opportunity
to live.
This Collective Soul Consciousness – this essence of God
is the center of all knowledge, all love, all creation. It is
connected with this source that all cocreation exists and
forms as all consciousness continually expands.
NOE BY G. 4.27.2011 7:25 AM
Level IV. The Fourth and Penultimate Level – Universal God-Consciousness (UGC) - is what Ernest Holmes called “the Thing itself.” The three levels of Consciousness we have just proposed and discussed are subsets of this Universal God-Consciousness.
Theoretically, we can make a few assumptions regarding this Fourth and Penultimate Level, again based extensively on the work of Dr. Henry Margenau and Dr. Rupert Sheldrake.
Universal God Consciousness (UGC) Fourth Level Assumptions: UGC is an active agent in the design, creation, and evolution of our known universal fields of existence, no matter how large or small.
- UGC shares its consciousness with all existence – capable of fully experiencing all that is occurring or will ever occur within its consciousness.
- UGC is a field of thought created within a pre-ordained natural set of laws or paradigms.
- The UGC cannot adjust natural laws after they are set in motion, so the forces of nature are not within its control.
- The UGC has established a system that allows all creative existence to thrive through a shared connection to the morphic guidelines developed and evolved over centuries.
- Each particle of existence or “onta” contains an understanding of its own potential within the whole of existence, with each particle required to follow the plan laid out by its own morphic memory and the ultimate plan of the universe.
- The UGC may only influence human behavior through its connection with the personal and collective level of consciousness but cannot override the free will that is part of the morphic framework of human existence. The same is true for the actions or development of all other morphically established sentient beings.
- The UGC does not need memory since the past, present, and future in potentia exist simultaneously.
- The UGC is fully aware that individual and collective conscious choice points impact all time dimensions, reverberating through the past, re-aligning the present, and resetting future probabilities.
Based on the message from God I received on the train, I would add the following assumptions that are more theological than scientific.
- The UGC is nameless – formless – faceless – and is the creative force of our universe – the essence of all that exists or will ever exist.
- The UGC is the authentic life force inside every cell of everything we encounter, pushing us to become more.
- The UGC moves only toward the apparent truth of perfect, abundant life. Each step builds on the previous step, and each creation forms and becomes new. This source is God as we know it.
- The UGC is fully aware of the potential of good and evil in the world, with full knowledge of the positive and negative aspects of life and death, growth, and stagnation.
- Evil, despair, and fear are based on the human will, and its ego's desire to control, dominate, and dictate to The UGC cannot stop or prevent the evil created by humankind; only humans can do this.
- The UGC grows with each moment of creation in the manifested world – with each idea, movement, and breath – the fullness of the UGC grows. All life unfolds within the UGC in the pursuit of more life, creation, and growth. This life force, this creative force, is God's essence- the source – where all creation is fueled and put in motion.
OK, you may be thinking, but how would, or does, this work? I had the same question and decided to ask. What I received is best conveyed in the republished blog post that follows.
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THE CRYSTAL LIGHT - MEDITATION GUIDANCE –
NEW THOUGHT NOTE FOR THE DAY
In January of 2008, when I first transcribed one of my earliest Divinely inspired notes of guidance after meditating during one of my daily one-and-a-half-hour train commutes to Washington DC, titled The Crystal Path To The Heartlight (available in Chapter Eight - The Foundation), I have realized “crystals” would be a significant component of the message I would be asked to convey. I have received notes about the crystal path, the crystal self, crystal consciousness, and now this Meditation Guidance below titled The Crystal Light.
THE CRYSTAL LIGHT TO THE HEARTLIGHT -
MEDITATION GUIDANCE
We are living and existing in the crystal light
of God-Consciousness, comprising the universe –
containing the universe itself – all matter –
all space within is refracted light, illuminating
the creative intentions of God – we – you – me
all exist in this Consciousness as creative energy
evolving, expressing, and becoming more –
expanding the nature of God.
At the edges of the universe is the crystal nature
of God holding – growing – becoming – with light
streaming through this crystal fabric – this
hologram shell representing all life, all matter,
all space, all time - and within creating what we
see as the visible universe.
All appears natural to us in this three-dimensional
illumination - as tangible, whole, complex, accurate.
Within is the universe of holographic light –
each particle of all matter is a hologram of the whole.
Within, the creative forces of God's intention
exist as if separate –distinct, but are merely
the individual elements of this whole. Living holograms
within – connected - one particle of God’s dream.
NOE BY G. 11.3.2011
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I realize this may sound to you like a bizarre sci-fi movie, but many of its components have a basis in theoretical scientific thought, as we have discussed extensively in this chapter. Suppose David Bohm, one of the most well-respected and brilliant physicists, supports the theory that all matter within the “implicate order” could be made up of holograms. In that case, it is not too bizarre to propose - within this somewhat avant-garde theoretical framework, that the light that powers these holograms is the light through some universal crystal fabric. Many physicists agree our three-dimensional world may be an illusion created by our consciousness, and we exist in a two-dimensional existence, which we see as three-dimensional. Others believe there are ten dimensions, nine made of space – one of time. I will put this on the table and see if I might find some proof in the future.
This G. Theory Of Universal God-Consciousness is offered to provide a framework for understanding how our existence is organized, thus, hopefully, clarifying our relationship with a God that continues to be intimately involved with our lives. This theory proposes we are formed and exist within God-Consciousness; we are part and parcel of the whole. One could logically argue why God and the universe might be better off, lasting longer, if humankind continues on its current path to self-extinction. Instead, the UGC continues as an active agent to help us evolve, working to improve our potential on Earth. Why?
I propose it is because God has no other logical choice. The eight billion of us who consciously inhabit this planet comprise a substantial part of The UGC – God and humankind are entangled, interwoven, the same. We are individual God-like components, the hands and feet of God, and when we are not self-destructing, we are together a massive force for positive creation. God cannot walk away from itself when all that is needed is the next step in the evolution of humankind – the awakening. This is occurring now as millions are awakening to their inner Divinity and pushing forward with their spiritual evolution – a wave of change impacting all consciousness.
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CLOSING NOTE ON ENLIGHTENMENT
It is often the rationality of the design beneath even the most expected items of this world; the morning glory blossomed blue–yellow–white on the neighbor’s fence, the minnows scampering in lock-step motion in the pond, the bird chorus of high-pitched mating calls harmonizing, the sheer complexity of a rabbit popping up to survey the possibilities.
I have watched this excellence unfold daily, even if, often, I have just taken it for a given, failing to realize the enormous genius involved in its formation, the sheer monumental energy even one nanosecond of its universal becoming requires, often unaware of its carefully crafted and sculpted creations set to maximize even the minutest presence, powering each form forward and beyond what even now is considered plausible, realistic.
I feel when we set out to understand the design and the designer, stretching out somewhere in our reflection, a Gestalt takes place; then, only then, for a moment, can we peer beyond the artifacts into the very engine of creation, then, only then, do we perceive the vastness of the infinite, the magnitude of becoming.
In this sense, I offer the poem/note titled By Design, possibly to assist this sort of spiritual deep consciousness diving, with the hopes of piercing the source, or at least, to gain a brief glimpse of the magnificence behind the scenes.
BY DESIGN - POEM/NOTE ON ENLIGHTENMENT
There is, within this world, the repetition
of excellence, the continual unfolding
of a design that enhances what it supports;
as it encloses, fashions, and drives into
unique being – with its natural embodiment
providing a strong skeletal structure
individuated, leaving nothing to the randomness
of chance; rather than preordaining, configuring
what was previously determined, sketched
through earlier contemplation, then pushed
to emerge as conceived - one blossom at
a time, one leaf, one twig, all prepared to act
as perceived, agreed upon by some earlier
intention, disposition: calmly and sincerely
becoming what is and will ever be the pursuit
of another iteration of the infrastructure
of creative Divine striving, reaching through
the rich dark earth, fixed on the nutrients
of growth, sun, air, water, love – then bursting
out, layered pursuit presented, audited, then
again, until life arrives, formed and sentient.
POEM/NOE BY G. 6.2.2106
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CLOSING AFFIRMATIONS
As we discussed, affirmations are positive statements announcing to God – the universal mind – and to your subconscious mind how you view the world and what you expect to occur during the day or in your life. It is a powerful way to use the Law of Mind Action or Attraction to frame your reality and set positive expectations.
A FULLER SENSE - AFFIRMATIVE THOUGHT
Let us strive today to seek a higher,
more prominent perspective,
a fuller sense, beyond the micro,
beyond the intricacies into the complete,
the whole vision of this undertaking,
allowing this vaster, wider vision,
to reframe our scope, shift our paradigm,
impassion our day-to-day contributions.
Let us perceive the order, the purpose,
the intention, as we levitate from the ground,
through the sky, to the darkest space, seeing
what was monumental receding into
a sliver of being, from object to line,
to dot until the gestalt is formed,
prominent without confusion,
the story revealed.
Let us, from this perch grasp
the Divine vantage point,
knowing every task is of merit,
contributing to its totality.
AT BY G. 8.24.2016
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