KARL JASPERS FORUM
TA108
(Green)
Commentary 8 (to Patlavskiy, C3 and C7)
NATURAL ORDER, NATURAL LAW
by Joseph S. Johnson
15 July 2008, posted 16 August
2008
<1>
My arguments on this thread are
based on 1) the assumption that the reader has read “About the Continuity of
Our Consciousness” by Pim Van Lommel
(1) referred to by Green, and 2) that the near death experiences (NDE) and
studies thereof as described therein are factual and responsibly reported;
particularly reports of clinically ‘brain-dead’ patients accurately reporting
hearing and seeing events taking place during their comatose state, contrary to
all medical theory. Where such new
experience is in such major conflict with existing belief a major synthesis is
required to reconcile the two. It is
argued here that natural laws are only a small part of the larger hierarchic
structure of natural order that is subjective at the highest level.
<2>
S.P.{2} “In my view, a true
revolution would be in case we give up using such word as "epiphenomenon"
at all, and accept that consciousness (or sensitivity to information and
information workability) , matter, and energy are three equally important
factors that, when acting together, enable existence of everything existent in
our Reality.” [JJ]: Materialists invoke ‘epiphenomenon’ to imply
that consciousness and its subjective experience is simply a meaningless shadow
or illusion emerging from the ‘real’ material world. My point is that the phenomenon of such emergence
is a basic property of natural order of cosmos taken as a process in time. In other words, what we observe in nature is
the endless proliferati on from the most general to
the most refined particulars, an evolution across innumerable levels of
emergent properties of increasingly complex systems. This is the process
structure of natural order.
<3>
What the materialists fail to
understand is that it is consciousness that is fundamental, i.e. the Source,
the abstract, the general, and it is the material that is contrived,
derivative. While we can ‘know’
consciousness (and perhaps more deeply through meditation) because we ‘are’
conscious, natural laws are simply the ways we define our experience with the
emergent objective particulars.
Regardless of the depth of experimental data from our physical
experiments such as the new LHC, the human mind will never compose an objective
theory (TOE) that will explain all the data for the simple reason that at the
most fundamental level, natural order is subjective. The implication is that the material world
will more likely be found to be the contrived illusion.
<4>
As William Byers (TA99) put it,
when new experience clashes with old ideas, the result can be ambiguity,
contradiction, even paradox. As ‘new
experience’ what NDE’s seem to demonstrate, more than anything, is that
objectivity and subjectivity are two ends of the same stick; dualism is
dead. In other words, natural order is
unitary, coherent. Our perception of the
persistent creativity of cosmos as process in time implies a most remarkable
coherence of direction and means.
Direction appears to be from eternal sameness or omniscience toward
eternal novelty. As to means, novelty is
impossible without perceived differences, requiring the imposition of limit s,
constraints, both objective and subjective.
At our level, both matter and energy are relevant to discussion as
particular expressions of the deeper structure of natural order. However, the vital relational feature binding
objective and subjective experience missing from most discussions is the
relevance of the hierarchic structure of natural order connecting the two.
<5>
[S.P.] TA108 C3<20>
“Consciousness, rather, organizes.
Namely, it tends to reduce the entropy of the system which is described
by informational characteristic. In case of the living organisms, consciousness
(or, the acts of processing and conceptualization of information) is
responsible for the effect of self-organization, and life as such. Therefore, the formulated law may be accepted
if by the term "creation" we would mean "organization, or the
improvement of something which already exists". For example,
"creation of a life-form" should be meant as an "improvement, or
organization of some already existent dead-form". [J.J]: Stated in that manner suggests
dualism; intervention in a mechanistic universe, which is misleading. Bioscience reveals tha
t self-organizing even precedes living organisms, to say nothing of creation of
more complex atoms in stars, etc, so self-organization (consciousness) is there
from the beginning, further supporting the notion that the deeper structure of
natural order is singular, unitary, rather than dualistic.
<6>
Again, we wrote natural laws
simply to describe our experience of objective relationships within closed,
isolated physical systems, rather than to cosmos as a whole. They become essential tools to support our
own creativity, independent of the larger cosmic
process. On the other hand, natural order is the specification of the
hierarchic structure of the essential qualities of the whole cosmic process;
qualities which begin subjective and general, expressed as increasingly refined
particulars, both objective and subjective, as the cosmic process in time. For example, the very refined particulars of
biological properties are sustained at the more abstract level by chemical
laws, while chemical properties are sustained at the more abstract level by
physical laws, while physical laws are sustained at a more abstract level by
symmetry constraints upon the several forces.
Specifically, the big bang metaphor of creation reveals the equation
between the objective and subjective properties of natural order: whereas the
entire body of conservation law represents particulars of ‘symmetry,’ the
hierarchic structure of natural order tells us that if symmetry is an abstract
of conservation law, then symmetry must be a particular of still higher
subjective abstracts of natural order, such as aesthetics and beyond. In turn,
this has much to tell us of the reason why aesthetic sensibilities have evolved
in the dominant species, and how they relate to our emotions and give direction
to our more constructive and sustaining choices, and why such values have been
a major issue in human history. It is
hardly surprising that the neural faculties of the dominant species have
evolved to reveal to us the hierarchic structure of natural order in both
objective and subjective qualities. (‘Abstraction Theory’
TA79 R8, etc.) The creative
subject seems nothing less than the integral agent of the larger cosmic
process.
<7>
Again, looking back on Cosmos as
such a process, general features seem to stand out. Creation appears as nothing less than flight
of consciousness from eternal sameness toward eternal novelty. Given the apparent scarcity (our lonely
planet) and brevity of life where it does occur, all created at such enormous
cost, it would make no sense at all if all such experience – information – was
not conserved, and that the implicit creativity of consciousness had no other
realm of existence, perception or expression than the physical. As a tentative theory, it would seem that the
‘soul’ is born into the characteristics of local time and place; the beginning
of an eternal and increasingly refined journey in the care and direction of the
creative and sustaining sou rce
of all.
<8>
Not being a physicist, I can only
wonder whether nonlocality, higher dimensions, etc.
can account for such (subjective) information storage, interaction and
processing. It might explain why such
‘order’ of higher dimensional information is proving so intractable to
objective analysis and any TOE. Ideas?
------------------------------------------------
Note:
1. “About the Continuity of Our
Consciousness” by Pim van Lommel. See:
http://www.towardthelight.org/neardeathstudies/pimvanlommelarticles.html
------------------------------------------------
Joseph S. Johnson
e-mail <jsjnson (at) comcast.net>