The Wrong Reality. PartV Interpretation. 33 Religions Against Reason - continued
But if you look at a remote forest or a shoal of fish and realise that they exist just as they did thousands of years ago, then you know there is no death. Life is continuous; the spark is passed in the seed from body to body, plant to plant, and whatever state of consciousness it achieves is also continually conscious. That which alone brings the age-old life of a species to an end is extinction, whose new significance is not death but cessation of birth - a failure to pass or carry on the spark.
When we realise that life is an unextinguished flame passing from generation to generation we must also realise that life-forms, including humans, are most vigorous as the seed bursts into life and thereafter slowly decline, but are represented by the period between maturity, when they become able to reproduce, and the time when they lose that ability and are essentially redundant. The longer people live the greater the experience gained and, if they have truly learned from that experience, the more they have to teach. It is worth noting that here in the West the new generation of humans does not learn from the old; it teaches its seniors the lessons it learns from dialogue with the rapidly advancing Machine.
Our wish to live forever derives from the original life-force purpose reflected in the instinctive will to survive. Without that purposeful will there could have been no life, for the determination to go on living is part and parcel of the impulsion to come to life. But intellect shows us that bodily death and reproduction are necessary features of evolution, including the evolution of such as the human brain with full intellectual potential. It is likely that a sense of this continual improvement lies behind the concept of reincarnation - of the individual 'spirit' also continuing and evolving. The bodily death of individual humans may no longer really be necessary, for it is possible that our collective intellect might reach fulfilment as readily, or more readily, without it, but we are stuck with it. We have to see ourselves as part of a process whose ultimate perfection - true equilibrium - is far and away superior to our clumsy concepts of heaven. But such concepts of heaven are relative to human life, and, by fulfilling humantruth, we can both play our part in the universal process and get as near as possible to making our heaven - on Earth.
Individual consciousness is a certain factual awareness of Machine reality, a construction of limited reason and adoption of a selection of available practices, all gathered into a personal identity, parts of which are shared with others. Its chief and ultimate value is its potential, total and collectively agreed awareness of truth. But that truth exists independently, and our true awareness is not necessary to its existence yet is a vital vehicle for its universal realisation. In order to serve our purpose as a vehicle we must become supraconscious and realise truth in every possible human way. All life throughout the universe must eventually die and consciousness must die with it. There is no point at all in any kind of everlasting consciousness because true being - true equilibrium - does not require to be conscious of itself in order to be itself.
Nevertheless, as you near the end of your life and look at the well-loved persons and things - the primroses in spring and the swallows in summer - and reflect that soon you shall never see them again, death can be emotionally dismaying. You might find comfort in thinking of it this way - when you die it is as if you pass on your consciousness to somebody else, perhaps to everybody else; as though your self goes to sleep for good but awakes as energy added to the self of another person, or that other person is born or wakes up with an added spark of life that you have given. Nothing is really lost by your death because that which you knew and truly understood continues as part of the truth, and the world of which you were conscious still exists in fact and in the eyes and consciousness of others who remain alive. Even your basic physical material is not destroyed.
The beauty of it is that once you are dead there is no regretful you to know that you were once alive, any more than you are now made regretfully aware of the millions of years before your birth when you were not alive. In this and many other respects, would not death be much worse if consciousness lived on eternally?
The great error of religious faiths and beliefs, and of humans who adopt them, is summed up by the words of the Pope - 'We should avoid intellectual temptation'. A large part of religions' message is that our power of reason is restricted so that it must fall short of truth and then we must open to the 'further light of god', or 'enlightenment of universality'. This is entirely to misunderstand the purpose of our life, which is to realise truth through our intellect. We must strive for truth, not hopefully wait for it. We are the source, not merely the recipients of enlightenment.
A fundamental criticism of religions is that they do not define the nature and purpose of that which they call god, or universality, or cosmic consciousness, on the grounds that it is also beyond our power of reason to understand. The fact is that these things cannot be defined because they do not exist. Prayer and meditation can be effective as a response to determined will, but fails to bring enlightenment because it represents the misdirection and limitation of its true source, intellect. So religions draw society away from its true direction, keeping us to the automatic status quo, adjusting to the Machine as morally as it allows but generally going where the Machine wishes us to go.
There is nothing at all to suggest that the universe contains anything more than a variety of forms, expressions and violent expressions of energy, excepting truth and its influence. The only way of knowing and thus becoming part of the meaning and purpose of the universe is by understanding the truth and feeling its influence. No doubt this is what the worshippers and meditators sense but fail to grasp. The only way of understanding truth and thus experiencing its influence is by the optimum exercise of our supreme faculty of knowing and reasoning - our intellect.
I believe the case for supraconsciousness has already been made obvious - that since intellect is our highest faculty we should represent it and, since it cannot but be true, we shall then be essentially humantrue in all our thoughts and actions. The equivalent of universal true equilibrium in both the human mind and the world will be when all reasoned connections, all facts of reality and all emotions are as near to perfect harmonious agreement as they possibly can be.
The contrary view of mystics and meditators may be represented by the Indian notion of Darshan - the belief, already touched on in relation to the TM movement, that one enlightened person can pass to someone else a taste of enlightenment, and a further implication that the activity, attitude and construction of somebody's mind can be indirectly influenced by other minds, which is to say that enlightenment can be passed on without words and received intuitively. Darshan relates to acuteness of consciousness up to the highest level of instinctive animal awareness, and also embraces the deepest of past experience. It is the same thing when two closely related people at opposite ends of a building experience changes of delta rythm or skin resistance when there is actual cause for only one of them to experience such changes, or when all members of a large shoal of fish change direction in unison almost instantaneously (notwithstanding a recent claim that this is a matter of the fish giving off and responding to electrical impulses). And, incidentally, it is probably the same kind of influence that puts a popular leader in place, or causes several people to adopt one person as guru - a matter of animal magnetism. True human enlightenment is an intellectual matter, enormously complex by comparison and, as far as it can be conveyed between minds, is conveyed otherwise - by language. When common ideas arise simultaneously from separated minds it is not because of some unknown invisible communication but because those minds, faced with the same problematic group of factors and no doubt linked by a strong desire to solve the problem, have made the same correlations of reason at the same time. Such reasoning can not be implanted whole by magic, or through effortless meditation. It must be constructed within each individual mind and, whilst it can be stimulated and short-circuited by the conveyance of ideas, each mind has to do its own constructing of reason around those ideas. When there is complete common human enlightenment and we are living in humantrue unity, then it may be expected that true signals will bring instant true response from common awareness.
Truth requires energy for its recognition by intellect but is separate from energy. Yet energy may employ the conscious part of intellect to discover its own limited truths. The influence that integrates the flock of birds or shoal of fish may be broadcast through energy, but purely intellectual reason can only be engendered by intellation and transmitted by language. That is why human understanding of science has advanced, while our supraconsciousness and awareness of humantruth is retarded. The former is limited truth carried by energy, whilst the latter is our failure to apply energy deliberately to the recognition of whole truth.
That Darshan occurs and has a certain powerful effect is not doubted. It is the strong, benign, co-operative linking influence common to members of species of herding animals that humans are still capable of feeling and that is attractive because it is largely missing from our normal automated lives. It crops up to some extent in the form of patriotism, political party loyalty, filial love and competitive partnership in war and sport. But this is emotional good feeling whose real purpose is to back up the aims, objectives and cares of a species. For us to put such feelings first, before our automated aims which, in turn, we put before truth, is to put the cart, and ourselves in the cart, very firmly before the horse.
If enlightenment is taken to mean increased understanding of truth (and what else is meaningful?), then that which is passed on by such as Darshan is not enlightment. It is rather a state of being that has little to do with an intellectual determination upon the pursuit of truth, everything to do with instinct, subconsciousness, consciousness, emotion, and the discipline of will. It is associated with enlightenment because it is passive, and so stands out against a world background that is not so. The will that dominates it is devoted to the benign instincts and the conscious compassions so that the discipline containing it is tranquil, non-aggressive, gentle and peacable. But the so-called enlightened people of this kind can sustain that stage only in circumstances of isolation from the norm. Because they are passive they do not critically tackle the norm, but to avoid the necessity of being competitive they have to be distanced from the norm. They fabricate a way of tolerating this reality by contriving to opt out of it. This is why their form of enlightment does not spread far, because it does not aim to change existing reality for the better, which might appeal to growing awareness, but to escape its clutches, which the majority cannot do.
Our tough reality, in which the majority presently have to live, does not give way to gentleness as it does to power. Yet it responded to gentle Jesus who is said to have brought to humanity the grace of god, the free gift of which is known as charisma. It was their powerful charisma, or compellingly attractive personality, that enabled mystics and gurus to influence people. Under their influence individuals would accept without question the simple import of their words, taking it in as an unreasoned faith. Only in this simple sense might it be said that a meditating person could influence changes in brain activity which, by feedback, might grow and spread but to a limited extent. That which is being influenced is chiefly an emotion that requires continual excitement if it is to be maintained, let alone propagated. That which responds to pure reasoning, on the other hand, is further reasoning, which can grow and spread under its own stimulation. Meditation is a state of tranquility, with tranquillising feedback, but in this automatic reality it is more than outweighed by states of emotional tension, with their own traumatic feedback. Yet tension and stress arouses the activity of reason and is therefore potentially much more valuable to the search for true humanity than relaxation.
Having already adopted a religious prejudice, misguided conscious reason views the paranormal as evidence of god or cosmic wisdom According to human convention we see ourselves as weak, the universe as powerful but leading us to chaos, and god or cosmic consciousness as all-wise, all-powerful, and capable of leading us into ordered good if we will but follow. I see a broad picture of existence on two scales: energy, from rampant to docile, and a governing pattern, from false to true. Every universe begins as energy rampant and whether it returns to another Big Bang or becomes energy docile and in a state of true equilibrium depends on whether the false or true pattern prevails.
The truth is that nothing can withstand the enormous power of energy but energy can be persuaded to submit to the true influence :
This is the truth, and though we sense it our reason is not guided by it, yet our false reason often appears to be backed up by scientific fact. For example, the notion of Darshan, on which is founded the claim of transcendental meditation to be the potential saviour of the world, is supported by the evident fact that rats learn behaviour-patterns from the passed-on experience of other rats that are apart and unrelated except that they are of the same species.
Rupert Sheldrake sees this rat behaviour as an example of what he calls formative causation (A New Science of Life by Rupert Sheldrake, Pub: Blond and Briggs, London.) He proposes that systems are regulated not only by the laws known to physical science but also by invisible organising fields, which he calls morphogenetic fields. He believes the regularities of nature to be more like habits than reflections of physical laws. His theory postulates that if one member of a biological species learns a new behaviour the morphogenetic field for the species changes, even if very slightly. If the behaviour is repeated for long enough its 'morphic state' builds up and begins to affect the entire species. Thus, in the case of rats, the more rats who learn the task the stronger the morphogenetic field becomes and the more easily other rats learn the task.
As another example of formative causation, Rupert Sheldrake cites the difficulty of crystallising certain organic compounds that have never been crystallised before. Scientists may work for years until they obtain one crystal, but once this has been achieved other scientists suddenly achieve the same. Experimenters across the world now find it relatively easy to produce their own crystals, and the more crystals are produced the easier it becomes to crystallise the compound. One fundamental criticism of this theory is that we cannot possibly say that a compound has never been crystallised before, for this might be true of this universe but not of previous ones. Another criticism can be made on the grounds that the accumulative ease with which the compound crystallises is due to the growing expertise in bringing this about, paralleled in the experience of all scientists throughout the world who are working on the problem, but it would appear that this last criticism fails to take into account all that is involved here.
It seems to me that what is involved is not the influence of a single field but a variety of forces of energetic will, from that of the atom, to that of the single cell, to that of the intelligent life-form, which causes a certain mode of behaviour, from the simple selection of right or left quantum bias (see Chapter 32, Roots of Religion) to complex instructions of instinct, these being inter-communicated by nerve-systems within bodies and by telepathy between bodies. I have already mentioned these processes as playing their part in the mutations necessary to the advance of evolution, and in the co-operative support given by colonies of cells forming organs of the body to the overall well-being of that body. In the case of needful change the higher forces of will express desire for it and the lower forces respond by trial and error until a pattern is achieved that constitutes the desired and needful change. Another controversial example of formative causation is that plants which are lovingly talked to grow better - against which the similar criticism is levelled that the gardener who loves his plants enough to talk to them will also give more attention and care to them, which is perfectly true. Nevertheless the influence of both energy and truth is constantly exerted with the aim of progressive growth towards the ultimate. This influence is expressed by the will of the plants to grow to the optimum, and of the soil elements to contribute to that growth. It is surely logical that when there is added to this the will of the human gardener, who represents the supreme achievement of this process of evolution, then optimum growth will be more readily achieved.
I see natural morphogenetic fields as a variety of different patterns of behaviour that life-force and instinct have so far selected, from all those which energy makes possible, subject to the requirement of true influence that they represent advances towards the eventual fulfilment of truth (human (unnatural) fields are a different matter). These natural fields are responded to by recipients who have developed the need to be receptive, or are open to changes by quantum or bifurcation bias, for the sake of progressive advantage. Rats, for instance, are always receptive to any change that improves their opportunities for survival. Where it is a matter of learning certain complicated routes that lead to food it is suggested that this learning is passed on to other 'unrelated' rats by stimulation of the empathic growth of new dendrites on appropriate neurones which make the necessary learning connections. This is similar to the empathic transference of genes to the stick insect which enables it to simulate the twigs on which it lives. In the case of Gaia, all the inanimate matter of Earth is subject, at the point of quantum decision, to change influenced by the combined survival will of all life. In the case of telepathy between mother and child, or the instant response of flying birds to a change in direction, or the Baka people being instantly aware of a kill by their far distant hunters, there is weak communication made effective by the fact that it serves the extremely strong interests of continued survival, and is sent, and received, with intense thought and feeling.
It is probable that once the first life-form evolved on any planet it set a precedent, a morphogenetic field, a weakly-signalled quantum bias that was hugely boosted by the great desire of energy to express itself by way of life; it performed a trick that was quickly learned, as the rats learned to find their way and the compound learned to crystallise, and was followed by widespread evolution in all directions. It is possible that this formative causation had universal influence whereby the strong existence of successful reproductive life, on the first planet in the universe to evolve and support life, would stimulate the evolution of life on every other suitable planet in the universe.
The morphogenetic field of natural life comes under the general description of instinct. The human field is unnatural, in this sense, because we have partially broken with instinct. Its form, which largely causes our behaviour, is different from instinct because we have achieved potential intellect. Ideally the form of our morphogenetic field would be decided, and then carefully sustained by intellect, causing us to behave humantruly. But an intellectual species can wilfully submit to forms of behaviour that are not advances towards eventual fulfilment of truth, and are destructive rather than constructive. That is what we have done. We humans, presently here on Earth, are between the rampant and docile states of energy, open to both false and true influence. This is why our character varies between extremes. The automaton represents rampant energy and compels amoral or immoral behaviour; docile energy is represented by the separate exclusive morphogenetic sub-field of various religions; and our response to the true influence, in the form of conscience, is mostly feebly reflected in our personal and private virtues. Our existing general overall morphogenetic field is the Machine, holding us to patterns of automated thought and behaviour that are hard to stand back from, identify and break. A humantrue framework of society would be the formation that, together with our supraconscious frame of mind, caused us to be of good and true morality - our humantrue morphogenetic field. To cure us of our present automated state requires both that humantruth be proffered to humanity with intensity and that humanity makes itself highly receptive to humantruth. Thereafter our ideal formative causation will be a constitution that we can follow almost without thought yet must sustain with thoughtful intention, watchful that it never submits to the temptation of a callow desire for reckless change.
Pt.5 INTERPRETATION
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See also in associated website The Holographic Dimension, an article which approaches from a new angle the questions of how the brain provides mind and memory, spirituality, cosmic consciousness, the paranormal etc. The Holographic Dimension
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