A Balanced View of the Universe

There is an ancient adage that the rational man and the spiritual man are like a lame man and a blind man, respectively. Neither can get about without assistance; the spiritual man without discrimination cannot see where he is going, and the rational man without heart is lame.

A happy solution is found to both their problems, however, when the lame is hoisted upon the shoulders of the blind. For then, the lame provides the blind with vision, and the blind provides the lame with mobility.

The message of this adage, of course, is that this is what we must do with the two sides of our own nature; we must merge/consummate them and employ both, so that we have the advantage of both discriminative knowledge and the conviction of spiritual knowledge.

In the spiritual life, the intellect and the heart play equally important parts. Like the blind and the lame, each is helpless without the other. Just think; how many times do we meet up with a simple, good-hearted person, full of sincere love for his or her God, and yet who, because of a lack of discrimination (or prejudice), becomes lost on the path which leads only to a corny sentimentality and misplaced affection.

And how often also do we see the overly rational, the rigid, arrogant person unwilling to let go of presuppositions long enough to feel the joy of spiritual love, or to simply pray with a humble, penitent, and loving heart.

Clearly, both are equally handicapped. The heart without discrimination leads one only into darkness and confusion. And the rational mind without the conviction of the heart makes of life a dry and trackless wasteland, without any flavour or happiness.

It is my opinion, and that of many much more wise than me, that if a person is to reach the highest perfection possible to man, there must be a balance of heart and mind. There must be both the knowledge of the Self, and at the same time, the love of God. To love God; you must first know God. Finally, we need a balanced view of reality.

A metaphysics is a view of the world that seeks to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by (sound) evidence. A metaphysics is not science; it is a map, or model, of (our) reality that must venture to incorporate all our knowledge and experience – spiritual, mystical, religious, supernatural, paranormal, philosophical, and scientific.

Modern science describes the universe in terms of only two basic, partial theories – Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

General relativity is concerned with gravity, one of the fundamental forces in the universe. (The other basic forces are electricity and magnetism, which have been unified as electromagnetism, as well as the strong, and the weak nuclear force.)

Gravity defines macroscopic behaviour, and so general relativity describes large-scale physical phenomena such as planetary dynamics, the birth and death of stars, black holes, and the evolution of the universe.

On the other hand, quantum mechanics is the science that deals with the behaviour of matter and light on the atomic and subatomic scale. It attempts to describe and account for the properties of molecules and atoms and their constituents – electrons, protons, neutrons, and other more esoteric particles such as quarks and gluons. These properties include the interactions of the particles with one another and with electromagnetic radiation (i.e., light, X-rays, and gamma rays).

Quantum field theory is a body of physical principles combining the elements of quantum mechanics with those of relativity to explain the behaviour of subatomic particles and their interactions via a variety of force fields.

The eventual goal of physical science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole of the (physical) universe in a complete unified theory.

Apparently the German physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) said on his deathbed that he will have two questions for God: why relativity, and why turbulence (i.e. chaos). He then continued by saying, “I really think He may have an answer to the first question.”

However, as even a small child knows, life is not only about our physical reality, and if you really want to understand physical reality your theories eventually will also have to include the software reality of the universe. If computer scientists, for example, want to create a unified theory of the modern, digital computer, they cannot only concentrate on the computer hardware; they must consider the computer software (programs, software algorithms, and information) as well.

The universe is our whole, cosmic system of matter and energy of which the physical earth is an integral element. This essay is a metaphysical quest for an intelligent universe – the physical universe plus the software aspects of our reality.

The universe has no detectable brain, but it certainly seems to have mind. Marshall McLuhan (The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, 1967) for example wrote, “We’re not sure who discovered water, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t fish.” When one is totally and continually immersed in a single medium all your life, awareness of that unique medium disappears entirely.

All mystic views of reality are in essence sexual. Indeed, all life is sexual. It is overt or implied, invoked or directed, stored or released. The Mass of the Roman Catholic Church is every bit as much a pantomime of the sex act as is the ‘Great Rite’ of the witches. The question is ‘what is this implied sex symbolic of?’

For two thousand years, the symbol of the virgin mother has been the representation of the pure vessel (grail?) and the supreme female spiritual ideal in Western civilisation. It is a fantastic symbol, as far as it goes, that deals with the great mystery of the descent of divine Spirit into matter and energy.

The mystery of Babalon, the Mother of abomination, concerns an entirely different concept, namely that of the re-absorption of all evolving life and awareness back into Spirit – Yin and Yang into the original Golden Orb (Li in Chinese).

The supreme spiritual message is that eventually each of us will come to a level of consciousness so profoundly high that the only level higher is the Universal Consciousness of deity itself. Our dissolution into the Infinite of Infinites is the ultimate sacrifice, the consummation of the ultimate marriage – Mind, matter, and energy into the womb of Spirit again. Deity lusts for that moment when all Its progeny will return. Someday, all of us will also lust for that moment. Father (Therion) and Mother (Babalon) will unite in Bliss as the Ambhibium (Cosmic Spirit) wait for the homecoming of the wayward Son (all their children). In Spirit, the male (Mind) and female (substance, pure matter and energy) aspects of the Cosmic Deity are united in consummated bliss.

Life is the ‘sexual intercourse’ between mind (a software algorithm) and substance, pure matter and energy (hardware, the universe, body) to reproduce new offspring – life, blood and flesh, information, memory, et cetera.

At present, most of us are still like bacteria living in the anus of an ordinary farm swine, believing that the shit we live in is all there is in our universe. These bacteria, most probably, know nothing about the swine, or the universe, but then again they might have a very rich spiritual life – how will we ever know. Perhaps we should stop thinking about contacting extraterrestrial life (e.g. SETI) and rather make an effort to communicate with bacteria – they apparently have a history on earth that spans some four billion (4 x 10⁹) years!

From the atom to the galaxy, with everything in between, there is unambiguous evidence of design in the universe (some call it order) – there are distinct laws (physical, mental, and spiritual). From Isaac Newton (1643-1727) onwards – the era of modern science – scientists have increasingly seen the universe as a complex machine – a well-planned, mechanical contrivance.

Most people associate mind and intelligence mainly with humans and only marginally with other highly evolved animals. We tend to regard humankind as separate from the rest of nature, a different order of being. In pre-modern times this was not so.

People of the ancient Germanic, and other, traditions, as well as medieval mystics like Saint Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226) and Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) and others, saw the whole of nature as an interrelated community. We see the same message in the Hebrew Psalms, the Hindu philosophies, et cetera.

Today most scientists recognise that humankind is an integral, interrelated, part of the universe. We are of the earth, and of Spirit and mind, a product of cosmic processes, not outside observers or alien invaders. Some say we are stardust, however, we are much more than just dust, wherever its origins.

Insofar as scientists recognise the existence of mind today, they do not confine it to humankind. True, it is manifested quite intensely in humans (as heat is manifested in suns, for example), but it does not stop there. It appears less clearly in the higher animals and insects and less still in the lower ones. Even plants seem to possess intelligence. However, although there is no detectable trace of intelligence in a rock, there is no definable cut-off point either.

Earth may be the cosmic centre of ‘gravity for mind’, or it may not be. There may be other concentrations in other places in the universe. Even though mind is not a material substance, it is still not unreasonable to suppose it is distributed through the universe, albeit very unequally, like matter. Some scientists have coined the term ‘psi field’, an energy which we have at present no means of measuring quantitatively.

Ervin Laszlo (1932- ) thought if maybe this entity we call ‘Mind’ is really a vaster collective consciousness – the fount of ‘all’ consciousness. Considering a self-aware universe, Laszlo believes that such a Cosmic Entity would be subject to conservation as a ‘dynamic energy’ phenomenon just as are all other phenomena in the physical universe. Energy is conserved according to the first law of thermodynamics so that it might only be transformed from one form to another, so that nothing is lost in the universe.

To summarise, mind is a cosmic phenomenon that we cannot locate precisely. It is everywhere. It functions predominantly, physically, in the organs we call brains and nervous systems, but we cannot locate it there. Some have suggested that the cosmic mind directs the process of cosmic evolution, however limited it is by uncertainty and randomness. This is metaphysics, even spirituality, but not science.

When we speak of intelligence, it is only as we recognise it in ourselves, but in fact we refer to a transcendent quality of the whole universe. Ours is an intelligent universe – where we can define intelligence as the ability to achieve complex goals in a complex environment.