The Serpent's Wisdom

I do not agree with the theory of cosmic causal determinism.

I mean, yes, you can generally determine a cause for most observed phenomena, and you can with arbitrary accuracy predict the outcome of events you set in motion in a controlled environment.

But I do not agree that these experimental outcomes imply that someone with a large enough computer and a keen enough understanding of the state of the singularity before the big bang could predict that on April 17, 2010, at 10:36 AM EDT, I would sit here typing these words. IMO the theory of cosmic determinism is a fallacy of induction.

So, yes, I think we have free will, and it's a wild world.

For a while now i've been toying around from time to time with the idea that mind is a field. Under this view, mind is given the respect it is due as a phenomenon in its own right, but without a metaphysical dualism of the sort with which mind/body theories typically wrestle.

Some implications of this are interesting. Fields have properties like resonance, and theoretically extend over the whole universe. Noön particles would be quantum-interlinked just like other particles. So our individual minds, thoughts, feelings, are not as isolatedly individual as we seem to experience them. While noöns may be concentrated inside living brains, they wouldn't be found only there.

If noöns exist, why haven't we seen them? I think they possess a rather unique place in nature, in that they serve as an explication factor which draws spacetime reality into being from the melange of the holomovement. Trying to observe one directly would be difficult for the same reason it is hard to pinpoint the exact nature of first-person experience. Noöns are, in my hypothesis, what acts on quantum fields to produce what we perceive as the "quantum wave collapse." In other words, what defines "reality" as distinct from the fullness of existence is the influence of a noönic field. So to look at a noön would be analogous to looking at a mirror; you don't see an image, but only a reflection of what is around. Seeing anything at all *is* the process of seeing a noön.

(It sounds like i am proposing a duality here between explicated and otherwise, but i do not imagine a universe where explicit matter is free from influence by that which remains enfolded. If you said this sounds like a hidden-variable-invoking Bohmian interpretation, you'd be right. Heck, noöns themselves are a hidden variable.)

There is a lot that might be explained by the supposition that each mind extends over all of spacetime. It might partly explain, for example, instant attraction or repulsion. Have you ever met someone and felt like you recognized them immediately? Perhaps there is a strong resonance between your noönic fields. If however you meet someone whose noönic field is dissonant with your own, you might be inclined to dislike them, and you'd likely be right: that person would think and act in ways very different from you.

Many different aspects of collective human behavior might be explained this way, from mob consciousness to the intuitive appeal of ideas like Jung's collective unconscious, or Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere as the endpoint of human evolution.

It also allows for the possibility of noönic solitons or persistences. I could write a whole entry on what that means, persistent noönic waves floating around free of brains to shape them, affecting thought, feeling, and perhaps even matter. Some memes might be noönic solitons -- as might memories or experiences some people attribute to "reincarnation." Perhaps instincts and patterns of human behavior i referred to recently as "human nature" are noönic solitons as well.

There are interesting implications regarding will and causation, too. Jeffrey Schwartz proposed a notion he called "mental force" to explain the observable change in brain structure which can result from focused meditation. That the brain is capable of self-reprogramming is fascinating and opens a wide range of potential for human improvement. But this result also gives us hard evidence that consciousness is something real. (Contrast the views of Daniel Dennett and other eliminative-materialists who claim that consciousness and self are pure memetic illusion, on the basis of the observation that there is no place within the brain where consciousness resides.)

I've come to think that being abusive, hateful, and intolerant is evidence of having a weak will in the face of external influence. A person who displays these traits is less of an individuated person; they are blown about and easily carried along by external currents. In my opinion, the work of individuation, of learning to focus one's will by way of discipline (meditation, contemplative prayer, martial arts, esoterica, and other kinds of discipline) is inseparable from the work of cultivating a better human society.

Unity is plural and at minimum two. Synergetics 321.01

1. Keying off my earlier thoughts about how there is an explication factor at work in the cosmos, I suggested that at least one manifestation of this explication factor is consciousness. Consciousness explicates, but cannot explicate itself. Therefore the cosmos contains a minimum of two explicators. By mutual consent they explicate one another, and thereby everything else there is, every instant.

This means that God, if there is a God, interacts with the cosmos on a minimum of two points, which we can perceive as a syzygy, perhaps, of interconnected yet distinct dance partners -- or partners in something that can be depicted in far more salacious terms.

2. Explication makes relativity possible; relativity reflects a kind of induced locality, as if the "normal" unbroken interconnectness has been somehow sedated. Each point in the cosmos is at the bottom of a trough, and spacetime curves upwards away in all directions. The spacetime remoteness of every other point is underscored in human experience by the .5 seconds it takes between the instant of raw perception, and the construction and editing of the first-person subjective "narrative" of the present moment. (For specifics on this cf. for example Nigel Penrose, Daniel Dennett.) For whose benefit is this "narrative" being written? This suggests an "ontological proof" of the existence of the Self.

For a couple of weeks I've been wanting to post about my spiritual thoughts and inclinations, since they have evolved.

I recently described my views as closest to atheistic and I suppose that's basically correct. That is, there is no room in my views (if there ever really was) for a distinct being that possesses volition and intelligence and which guides the cosmos. However, there is a presence that I have felt in moments of stillness which I call for lack of a better word divine.

One of my inquiries regards the "substance" out of which the divine presence could be composed. To put that in more specific terms, what is it precisely that meaningfully distinguishes divine presence from mundane presence? The answer I keep coming back to is perception, which is why I continue to self-identify as "gnostic" (gnosis = perception). The presence of divinity is distinguished primarily by the (subjective or perhaps intersubjective) perception thereof.

In short, divine presence is distinguished against the background of the cosmos solely via human consciousness, and, as best we can determine, nothing else. That means that God is, in terms of the manifest cosmos at least, made of nothing, but it is a meaningful nothingness. I've arrived at this answer before, with allusions to the Kabbalistic idea of ein sof. (It's also possible that "Allah" translates to "the no," or distinct nothingness.)

A description of the divine which I read once in challenging_god (offered I think by lasa) describes the divine as "creating by withdrawing." This corresponds closely to my observation that the divine presence operates by providing the potential whereby things occur. IOW, God creates a void of potential, into which nature/the cosmos "flows." The Tao is compared to the "watercourse way," and water runs downhill because potential exists whenever water can flow. The idea of the watercourse way, notably, suggests not the presence of a being with will that directly acts, but a harmonious sort of interbeing whereby nature provides for itself, summarized in the translation: "the Tao is that which never acts, yet leaves nothing undone."

Consider for example recent inquiries into the processes whereby things in the cosmos evolve and become more complex. Cellular automata and replicators, information theory and chaos and bifurcation points and catastrophe theory. It all points to a simple and harmonious self-consistency in the cosmos -- a kind of self-reflective morphic resonance. What causes complexity to develop is the opening of a niche or the existence of a system in a state of heightened dis-equilibrium. Either way we have the creation of what can be conceptualized as a void that will soon be filled.

Another concept that can be thrown in the mix here is the "holomovement," David Bohm's depiction of the cosmos as a mostly folded-up (or implicate) unbroken whole. Consciousness is tied in with the unfolding of the implicate order -- and the enfolded aspect of reality can be thought of as the potential for unfolding. The idea of the holomovement describes a cosmos made entirely of movement and of process, and in which every relevated thing is interconnected with every other relevated thing. From the perspective of any particular object, that object can be seen to be a hologram of the entire cosmos.

While I can see parallels in the Tao Te Ching and even the Upanishads to this idea of the cosmos as holomovement, I've found a very clear depiction thereof in Neil Douglas-Klotz's interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. I'll try to find a way to present that in a coherent way.

Now, I hold all this in one part of my mind while another repeats the disclaimer that any conception I hold of god is only a limited eidolon (image or shadow) thereof.

Crossposting to challenging_god.

On a thread hidden in ricochet_rabbit's discussion about hell, ithryn asked, with regard to apocatastasis:

That idea is attractive, but that makes temporal existence very puzzling. If we're all going to heaven, why are we even here? Why aren't we instantly put into heaven now, or why weren't we created there in the first place? Why suffering? If all of us are going to end up perfectly good, why give us free will? It seems incongruent that God would dispense free will and then would utterly negate it in the end.

I do not believe in the immortality of the soul, for lack of evidence that any part of "me" will survive beyond the death of my body; yet I am a theist. This seeming contradiction multiplies the difficulty of my position.

Physicists have observed that in the void of space, particle-antiparticle pairs "burst forth" into existence all the time. This is not creation ex nihilo; the pair of particles are what result from the spontaneous transformation of a photon or packet of energy. It is not uncommon for the particle and anti-particle to meet up again and destroy one another, their mass converted to energy in the form of a photon.

I view the cosmos as a larger scale, more complex kind of odyssey akin to that of the particle-antiparticle pairs. Nothing we have observed is constant; everything, even the most fundamental properties of the spacetime continuum itself, changes over time. I view ideas like apocatastasis, the vow of the bodhisattva in Buddhism, the tikkun olam in Judaism, and the Great Work of modern occultism, as reflections of this idea that all things will eventually return to the Source, and so it is good and holy to aid this.

As an individual, I am simply a permutation of several patterns much larger than myself. I have come, as many mystics do, to identify my "true self" not with this temporal and very mortal body and mind, but with the more timeless patterns which I reflect. The "true me" will live and thrive after my death; other beings will benefit from the body I leave behind; and all is as it should be.

There seems to be an almost primal fear that many people feel when they consider that maybe there is no cosmic meaning after all. If this is so, I see it opined, then we might as well kill ourselves, or kill one another, but only after indulging our basest needs to satisfaction. Atheist mystics (yes, such a thing is possible and not really uncommon) with whom I have conversed describe the problem thus: the quest for meaningful-ness in a universe where messages from God are not forthcoming, where meaning itself appears to be a purely human invention. The next most logical answer is to look within, and discover the ways in which I can be better as an individual and as a member of my society. Meaning in this model is an unfolding, not a given; a revelation from within, not from without.

It seems to me that nothing can be more good and right than fulfilling that which I perceive is my purpose. If virtue is indeed its own reward, there is no need to worry about the possible meaningless-ness of existence.

If you haven't peeked in on the conversation stemming from my post yesterday regarding math and reality on philosophy, you are really missing out. It's gotten fascinating, folks.

Is anyone laughing at the irony in some of the discussion threads? I'm arguing against positions I've held strongly for quite some time. Back to the drawing board... hehehe...

A few days ago I posed the question in questionofgod how we should interpret Proverbs 8, a passage that depicts Wisdom/Sophia as a "co-creator."

Here is what I just wrote as a reply (I think on a different thread actually), to explain my own thoughts.

I interpret the Wisdom passages in Proverbs figuratively, as an indication of the relationship between Mind (Nous/Logos) and the universe. The idea was expressed in Stoic and Alexandrian Jewish (and, later, Gnostic, Hermetic, and some Christian) philosophy that the cosmos was arranged like a mind, or indeed WAS the mind of God, and furthermore, that the person who achieved alignment with that Mind -- "marrying Wisdom," as it was expressed in the late Solomonic literature -- achieved righteousness or salvation.

The word used in the gospels frequently translated as "repent" in most Bibles -- metanoeo -- more accurately means "I align my mind/thoughts."