One view of the evolutionary trend is that physics is returning to the holistic assumptions of the magical era. But there is an important difference. The post-modern view no longer lacks the explanatory power of the first era.
(Dean Radin: Entangled Minds: 244)
Despite the scientific conceit expressed by Dean Radin above, “the holistic assumptions of the magical era” were just as explanatory as are the unholistic (unholy?) assumptions of modern science. But the two traditions use different mental powers to explain. Lets return to the teachings of Hermes to explore this.
The principles of Hermes teachings were the foundation of alchemy and most other occult arts around the world. I don’t mean that everybody learned directly from Hermes, but that, given the similarity in the thought and vision of the seemingly different alchemical traditions, European, Indian, Chinese, it seems that this is a level of human consciousness activated and released into the world by Him, as the spirit of faith was activated and released by Abraham’s test of faith.
Ancient cosmologists of both east and west believed there were two universal realities in relationship, the One Mind, which was the Universal Mind, and the One Thing, or primal, elemental matter, the basic substance of the universe. Mind and Matter were, to use the latest term, entangled, making a same but different structure and interaction. Mind in-forms, or puts form into, matter which at its most fundamental level of the prima materia is the repository of all past and future physical configurations. That is, active Mind energized its recipient Matter, giving it life and form and purpose. The two universal realities were both in the visible world and in the unseen world which was nevertheless intelligible. The difference between the two worlds was determined by which universal Reality predominated, Mind or Matter. These realities were considered to be interlocked, interconnected and interrelated. Whatever appeared in one had its counterpart in the other, whatever happened in one effected the other.
There was yet a greater life energy common to both realities that acted as their means of communication and brought the two realities into relation. The life energy, or spirit, of the individual was the same as the life energy of the planet; the macrocosm of the universe was reflected in all its grandeur in the microcosm of the human being. Things were known and related by “spiritual” means.
Modern science is likely to use terms such as information and energy for the alchemical Mind and Thing, or Matter. But the process of creation science presents is essentially the same as myth presents—the union of energy and form, whatever we wish to call these. Baha’u’llah, in the Tablet of Wisdom, calls this creative relation “the glorious structure” and it is built on the Hermetic principle: “these two are the same, yet they are different.” (Tablets of Baha’u’llah:140)
Thus all cosmologists explore the same thing, the universe. But whereas alchemy and other ancient investigations took primarily an imaginative/experiential look at it, science takes a conceptual/experimental look at it. The ancients tend to see aspects of the same thing while we moderns tend to see the aspects as separate things. But new science is using a more imaginative approach, so it is more holistic and conceives the various levels of known energy as manifestations of one Energy.
The resurgence of the imaginative and mythical is manifest in a whole shelf of books bearing titles such as The Tao of Physics, Science and the Akashic Record, The God Theory, and Why God Won’t Go Away, and sub-atomic experimental physics pursues the God particle. From the other side of modernity, books like Sacred Science, describing the “science” of ancient Egypt, and Symbols of Sacred Science by the modern day philosopher Rene Guenon, stress the symbology of the ancient teachings and their hermeneutical usefulness for today’s thinking.
While differences of approach remain, these may only reflect differences of terminology which are converging. The ancient names of ether and the akashic, for example, from the classical Greek and ancient Hindu traditions, seem to name the same fundamental power and intelligence underpinning the physical universe. Quantum physicists use terms like the Zero Point Field and the Quantum Vacuum to describe the same entity, with “ether” making a sort of comeback after being banished by the famous Michelson/Morley experiment that seemed to rule out its existence. There is also the M theory of the string theorists, a theory that will contain, they hope, everything. The Grand Field Theory of physics will be the scientific story of all things, following all the poetic stories of all things, those epical, encyclopedic poems such as Milton’s Paradise Lost. Other fields include the Morphogenetic field of Rupert Sheldrake to account for the continuity of life forms in a species, a field through time not just in space, and the Intentional Field of Wayne Dyer, to designate the purposeful thought of the Universal Mind.
Old Alchemy and New Science converge and are reuniting, a great B and E experience is occurring, so that knowledge is becoming one: antiquity is modernity. Another eminent scientist, Dr. Robert Becker, nominated twice for the Nobel Prize, wrote: “Medicine has come full circle, from the mysterious energies of the shaman-healer to the scientific understanding of the life energies of the body and their relationship to the energies of the environment. This scientific revolution has simultaneously enriched the concepts of technological medicine and supported the ideas of energy medicine. What is emerging is a new paradigm of life, energy and medicine.” (Cross Currents:81)
Today in the same collective mental “space” where mythical demons and goblins snarled, and fairies and sprites played and danced, holographic models and implicate and explicate orders are seen, and quantum events take place. There are many other names and parts to this great universe we are trying to find our way around in conceptually and know the nature of experimentally.
Perhaps the mythical is making a strong comeback because of the chaotic times we live in. In such situations the mythic always returns. Why? Eliade explains: “Every myth shows how a reality came into existence, whether it be the total reality, the cosmos, or only a fragment—an island, a species of plant, a human institution. To tell how things come into existence is to explain them and at the same time indirectly to answer another question: Why did they come into existence? The why is always implied in the how—for the simple reason that to tell how a thing was born is to reveal an irruption of the sacred into the world, and the sacred is the ultimate cause of all real existence.
Moreover, since every creation is a divine work and hence an irruption of the sacred, it is at the same time represents an irruption of creative energy into the world. Every creation springs from an abundance. The gods create out of an excess of power, an overflow of energy. Creation is accomplished by a surplus of ontological substance. This is why the myth, which narrates this sacred ontophany, this victorious manifestation of a plentitude of being, becomes a paradigmatic model for all human activities.” (The Sacred and the Profane: 97-98)
It is not that the mythical cosmology is truer than the scientific, or vice-versa, (which is the fallacy of literalism in any shape or form) except as a matter of preference, imaginative or conceptual. It is that this process of symbolizing coming out of ancient Egypt with Hermes/Idris is how creative thought gets up and going at all. That is, it has something to do with how human thought works creatively at any level.
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