KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA63 (Leslie / Rees)

Commentary 27

REHEATED PORRIDGE
Part 4: The Ascension of Matter.
by Maurice McCarthy
9 January 2004, posted 25 January 2004.

c + a => k -- iff c = f(a) ......... E

c + a.h => k -- iff c = f(a.h) ... H

reality = truth and percept ...... R

<1>
Stand back and look at the overall direction Natural Selection. A mechano-chemical arrangement gives rise to life. Life has only one purpose - survival. One strategy leads to the great robustness of trees and plants where a twig or a root can regrow the entire plant. The key function in survival is reproduction. Another strategy sacrifices robustness for mobility. Mobility gives rise to intelligence. Intelligence, a survival technique, centres in the head which contains the perceptual organs and their processing machinery. Both the organs and the processor are near-dead matter sunk into an "exoskeletal" cranium. Natural Selection has created animated, living things and is then proceeding to kill off the head. Taken to a logical extreme the head will be completely removed from the body. Why? Because a consciousness which no longer requires a brain has a life-potential of eternity. Removing the head is a survival strategy. Naturally, the whole of the rest of the body would alter accordingly also, but it also would eventually disappear. The solution is brilliant : no need of sex nor reproduction but guaranteed survival.

<2>
Suppose that once water was less dense and air more dense than they are now, so that the sky was perpetually filled with mist. The warmth of the sun thickened this cloud each day and the evenings thinned it. As a result no one ever saw the sun but when the moon rose its mysterious movements enchanted all, like a white goddess floating in the sky. 0-D presents a worldview in which all objects are subtended from subjects but the subjects are disarrayed across the field of knowledge. Yet we find that most everyone is enchanted by their own objects whilst remaining oblivious of the sunlight which makes them possible.

<3>
Differences in the kinds of objects and/or worldviews which each subject subtends can only be explained by the pre-structuring of the subjects who subtend them. From E, the willingness to understand, i.e. 'a', is beyond all subjects in a subjective sense and beyond all objects in an objective sense. It is the incompassing and the encompassing beyond all. It is that which allows all existence, all knowledge and the means which unites the two. The structuring of willingness to produce subjects is immediately an angelology (RP2) wherefore religion, or rather religiology, must be added to the sciences. By simple logical reasoning both angels and the perceptual senses to see them both exist. All that is absent is merely the necessary organs, organs commensurate with their objects. As always, theory should be verified or refuted by perception.

In one sense religiology is only another worldview to be added to the rest. It has its own presupposition: that the act of knowledge is the world creator. Unlike all others, however, this is derived from the very root of knowledge itself, from 0-D, whereas all others are rather more partial and arbitrary. Without this "sun" science allotting the significance of each of the disparate sciences into a consistent, unified worldview is going to be very difficult indeed, probably impossible.

<4>
RP2 left the grades of consciousness, i.e. the degree to which a subject can see god, at the human-like. These grades are formed by the decay of god her or himself. Each successive layer has been filtered through the one above so that the higher intensities are preconditions of the lower ones. Human-likeness degrades further into reactivity. The lowest end of which is to be affected but not react - reactivity decays into affectability. Lowest of all, then, is unaffectability, the null point of subjectivity. This latter is called physical and a being is called physical because it is wholly formed from without. It is a vacuole in willingness, a hole in spirituality, and (once in existence) its causal laws are laws of contact.

<5>
There is now a one to one correspondence between the grades of consciousness and Aristotle's Categories of Being (Categories I.4):

"Expressions which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection."

Quality --- Love

Quantity -- Harmony or Proportion

Substance - Will

Relation -- Wisdom

Time ------ Movement

Place ----- Form

Position -- Human-like (archai)

Action ---- Reactivity (archangels)

Affection - Affectability (angels)

State ----- Physicality

What needs to be realised is that the intensities above State are all pre-conditions of State and therefore exist as non-enmattered beings. Physical matter cannot exist without all of the beings above it. Therefore there really are "men" on the moon (and every other object in the solar system) but only a fool would put a telescope to his eye in the hope of seeing them. Not only is it the wrong kind of instrument but it is also the wrong kind of organ.

<6>
The inception of matter is the point of origin of temporal development for us, for humanity, because we find ourselves situated as enmattered, living, mobile intellects - a concretion of the lower grades of being. The question is how can physicality rise to the kind of being we have now. When humanity composed the entire physicality of the cosmos the archai of the Celestial Hierarchies were at their human-like stage of development so we existed as material to counterpoint their intelligence and enabled them to rise by their own efforts by forming a condition upon their existence. By E content and consciousness always correspond so that if they raising themselves then we would have to be correspondingly raised below them " not by the deed of the Archai themselves but by the co-ordinated effort of higher beings above them. (When a baby has learnt to clean its own backside then you may offer it more developed objects.)

If, further, not all the archai succeed then human-physicality becomes divided internally and externally. Humanity splits into material and enmattered living forms. In three great stages this division raises humanity into vegetable, animal and human enmattered forms. This evolution preserves H in every stage and so, because we have a real relation to the material of our present cosmos, then our willingness allows us to know it with the degree of reliability which we do.

<7>
Notice that the appearance of matter has no bearing on this. Present matter is highly unlikely to look anything like prime human-matter because the condition of all levels of being has been altered in the meantime. It is physical because its laws are laws of contact. Likewise the affectable, or simply living subject, can be affected from anywhere. Life laws are action at a distance and the affected remains subjectively affected even having lost cognisance of space. The reactive or animal form sees space but not time. The animal's lack of freedom is due to the absence of temporal knowledge. They have no memory in the human sense but what we loosely call animal memory is an acquired instinct, entirely causal upon its behaviour. "Memory" is an ambiguous word.

<8>
In summary, the middle triad of beings mediates the objective appearances of the world whereas our subjectivity is mediated through the last triad and the whole is co-ordinated by the first. There is now before us a picture of the world built up by the action of hosts of beings all of whom have evolved higher than us. They are free beings who each may have their own ideas on how things should be done. Now remove the sight of the hierarchies and look at it entirely externally. What do you see? At the bottom the free action of hosts looks like random action and yet somehow, inexplicably in an external sense, there is an awesome fine-tuning of certain physical constants such that we would not be here to know the world without them. What we have is what our scientifically mediated experience says we have except that in religiology there is good reason for it, whereas physically it is inexplicable.

<9>
Some points trouble me. In the religiological model (a form of monism) matter is not degradable yet we are faced with the fact of radioactivity. When fact contradicts theory then the fact cannot be altered so the theory must be modified to accommodate it. There is a second point which, after some thought, seems to be related to this. In the objective triad divinity decays into truth and light - these forming the limits of spiritual objectivity. Truth is the highest objective factor and light the lowest. (As the highest form of objectivity truth, the unity of the beings of wisdom, actually touches the first triad, touches divinity.) So when we passed from mythic consciousness, i.e. an objective pictorial consciousness, then the next linear step in the advance of human consciousness ought to have been the subjectivising of pictorial consciousness. (That means the handing down of the mediation of pictures to humanity from the Forms to the Archai. Released of a lower duty the Forms would move up a grade and equally the Archai have gained an ability which moves them on at the same time as human consciousness is lifted. In this kind of manner the entire being of the cosmos articulates together " the whole cosmos is a single organism where each organ is a category of being. The cosmos as a whole is conscious.) Yet we have subjectivised truth before pictorial perception. Why? Perhaps I should first point out that 2400 years ago the logos was objective truth yet by ~1200 A.D. we have the first autobiography, indicating the subjectivisation of thinking and thereby the intensifying of individuality. For the sake of a figure lets say ~400 A.D. was the time of this movement during the age of Augustine. After 400 A.D. truth became an increasingly subjective term.

<10>
What struck me was that material degradation is three orders of intensity below the human whereas truth is three orders above, as if the second had been an act to counter-balance the first. What does material disintegration signify? It means that the first triad could no longer hold the balance of the cosmos. The diabolic powers of the second triad had reached such strength that there was a catastrophic collapse of the fabric of the material universe. There is one and only being with the ability to correct this. He would have to descend into the fabric of matter and hold it all together then wait. Just wait. The god who is willingness would just wait. Wait for what? Well .... That's your decision. Do you want to see a miracle? Put one foot in front of the other. This is a miracle. It is made possible by the continuing conscious action of Christ. God alone knows what suffering it costs. The words, "He died to save us all," are not empty.

<11>
The physical consequence is this, that the disintegration of matter has an origin finite in time and measured in thousands, not millions, of years. This must be physically demonstrable, though I have not yet pursued it. Radioactive half-lives can only have been stable since the crucifixion " the time when I suppose Christ really entered 'the earth'. Therefore cross-referencing carbon-dating should show this catastrophic collapse with a wide degree of scatter in the results; also this scatter drawn into lawful alignment around the historical time given.

The timing as to when the breakdown occurred should correspond to the very beginning of Ancient Greek thought. To be precise when the oracle issued the words, "Know Thyself." These must have been inspired by Christ himself because they altered the natural direction of evolution. Since this is such a dramatic turn then I would guess it must require the collapse of a civilisation to allow its germination. The Mycenaean collapse took place about 1250 B.C. and led into the Dark Ages of Greece so I would place radioactivity perhaps no earlier than 1500 B.C. Whatever, the physical facts are demonstrably right or wrong whereas the others will depend upon spiritual perception.

<12>
Consciousness has the form of a butterfly.

Intelligence sits between space and time.

Willingness flies on wings of time and wisdom.

Whither now? 0-D is the consummation of all philosophy in which it has reached its ultimate purpose. This is to show us the door once again to the spiritual worlds. Since we are here, in this forum, discussing 0-D then the next stage is already under way. All colour is now draining from the physical world. Literally, all mankind is going colour-blind. This will be statistically verifiable this century. The incidence of colour-blindness and the number of colours lost will increase throughout coming generations. It is happening because the Forms are now handing the mediation of colour to the Archai. Therefore we are re-gaining the power of spiritual perception. Like all advances into unknown territory it is fraught with unknown dangers and self-deception will be the worst. Your only weapon is the integrity of your own thinking.

<13>
The higher beings who are now moving out of the physical senses must move to another temporal structure. The most refined such structure we could give them is a consciously maintained one. This means one erected by prayer or meditation. (Formerly religious ritual would have performed this service but I am dubious that it should do so again. It seems preferable that this be an individual act.) The European edition of Time magazine carried a front page article on meditation October 27, 2003 "Just Say Om," by Joel Stein:

" ... I hit it. It looks like infinite blackness, feels like a separation from my body and seems like the moment right before you fall asleep, only I'm completely awake. It's kind of nice. And then, immediately, I have this epiphany; I could be watching television." p. 52.

We do not actually have to provide them with this new structure. We could stay pragmatic and just accept being colour-blind - because that will happen anyway. However, they would then have to find an unconscious human structure in which to act. An unconscious percept is an instinct, a regression into reactivity. It will be a spiritual disaster in the disguise of a blessing.

<14>
What if Christ cannot take the strain any more? In humanity matter has reached the point that it can begin to take a hand in its own karma, begin to ascend the ladder of being under its own power. We stand at the beginning of the entire dissolution of the physical world. If we choose to go the spiritual route matter will be lifted behind us through the ulterior causes, the higher beings who form it for us. If we stay as we are then Christ, in all willingness, has to let go simply because it is a kind of democratic vote. The universe will tear apart, become a bi-verse, and each part will follow completely separate development.

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Addendum

British TV Channel 5 has been running a science series called "The Big Question". On successive evenings we have had Susan Blackmore, Stephen Hawking, Harry Kroto, Richard Dawkins and Susan Greenfield, some of the most famous names in British science - giving us 25 minute snapshots of the state of play in their arts.

Susan Greenfield was on on the 8th January. She discussed consciousness in "Why am I me?", what gives us the continuing feeling of self-identity? Starting by presenting the 'fact' that the brain supplies this, she claims that the answer is due to the "interplay of three crucial concepts" - mind, emotion and consciousness. This is a division which I can agree with but concepts are all experiences and not something seen in the brain. (Concepts on their own defy R.) She considered the mind or logical intellect first and with elegant clarity demonstrated how experience structures the brain, grows the neurons which enlarge brain mass. In the well-known MRI brain images of London taxi drivers, who have to learn over 400 major routes and 25,000 streets in order to gain a license, the significant difference between those taxi drivers and the control group is that the hippocampus is enlarged. There are not more neurons but the neurons have grown and made more connections. The brain did not structure experience but, vice versa, experience has structured the brain thereby confirming the "interplay" and refuting the first supposition that the brain creates experience for us.

Observing that machines can do the kind of processing that minds can, then she reasoned that intellect or mind alone cannot be what gives us consciousness. However, machines don't care but we do. Therefore consciousness is somehow the result of mind and emotion. This, too, I agree with when we are looking at a temporal development. In priority of being, the mind and emotion (as Prof. Greenfield uses these words) are the degradation of consciousness, in my view.

She went to say that even lesser minds retain some sort of self-hood and that consciousness did not appear to be specifically located but more to do with the co-operation of the brain as a whole and concluded that consciousness was caused by the totality of the brain's workings, a sort of global property of brains. She appeared to be completely oblivious that her argument, as she interpreted it, was a double contradiction where principle and conclusion conform only because both are supposition.

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Maurice McCarthy