Life, Spirit and the Universe, Part I
Comparative between various philosophical religious movements and Scientology in the light of recent scientific discoveries.
Introduction
Back to the dawn of time, man has wondered about his deep nature, his future, his relationship with God and the world.1
Faced with the immensity of the universe or with death, who has not evoked one of these subjects, in a way or another? These basic questions regarding the soul, Genesis and the notion of God have been worded in numerous ways, within the scope of various religious beliefs and throught the history of philosophy.
In France, there is a deeply fixed suspicion regarding all what is connected with religion. Separation of the State and the Church, lay education and the debates that it provokes facing the rise of Islam are quite meaningful demonstrations of this. This ideological split has been going for a long time, even before the French revolution. Errors of the Churh througout its history, its eternal leagues with the political authorithy, the Inquisition, and more recently, petainism2 have left marks in the collective unconscious. The French consider themselves as « cartesians », however, few of them have read Descartes’ Metaphysical Meditations. They would be very surprised to discover that Descartes was a believer, that he doubted the body but not the soul, that his thinking was not rigid at all, but on the contrary, extremely flexible in spite of its formal rigour.
Four hundred years of positive thinking — materialistic thinking par excellence —and one century of Marxism leave little room for sacred and metaphysical concerns. In this context, Bergson’s, Theillard de Chardin’s or Levinas’ preocupations are an exception within an uninterrupted flow of materialistic thinking. Other dogmas follow the inquisitorial dogmatism of the Church, like the dogmas of science in the XIXth century, of German anthropology and psychiatry and of the «scientifical Marxism» in USSR. Clinging to generally accepted ideas is most convenient, wether in the domain of philosophy or in science. In this framework, Einstein’s theory of relativity had a hard time to impose itself. Since quantum physics and the theory of complex relativity, we are witnessing intense bubbling of ideas, as exciting as when Copernic’s book De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium2 was published.
These ideas constitute a U-turn regarding the conception of reality we live in. Oddly, the new metaphysical trends come from the scientists who have had to study the world of elemental particles rather than from specialists of social sciences. The curious thing is to see how close they come to oriental philosophy or the ideas expressed by L. Ron Hubbard in the early fifties.
In the following pages, you will find tables allowing the comparison of basic notions relating to man’s spiritual quest and conception of the universe through out different ages.
Summary
I) Soul, spirit, consciousness (go to part I)
The Bible
Islam
The Vedas
Pythagoras
Plato
Aristotle
Saint Augustine
Saint Thomas Aquinas
Descartes
Voltaire
Teilhard de Chardin
Michel Random, writer, "Energy and the Third Matter"
Régis Dutheil, physicist, "The Super-luminous Man"
J. Bousquet, biophysicist, reflexions about survival of psychism after death
Georges Lerbet, reflexions about the psychical universe
Dr Doepak Chopra, endocrinologist, Dr Fritjof Capra, nuclear physicist “The TAO of nuclear physics”
Brian Josephson, Nobel price for physics, Jean Charon, physicist, "The Eternal World of Eons"
Ron Hubbard, reflexions about the nature of life
II) God and the Infinity
The physical universe,
Matter, Energy, Space and Time (go to part II)
The Bible
The Vedas
Saint Thomas Aquinas
Descartes
Teilhard de Chardin
Sir John Eckles, Nobel price of physiology and medicine
Fritjof Capra, nuclear physicist
David Bohm, physicist theory of the « holographic universe »
Karl Pribam, neurophysiologiste, neurophysiologist, theory of the « holographic brain »
Michel Random, writer, about « the third matter » of Lupasco.
Basarab Nicolescou, theoretician with the CNRS « From Quantum Physics to Ontology »
Jean Charon, physicist « Man and the Universe »
Ron Hubbard, the Factors and Axioms of Scientology
Bibliography
Soul, spirit, consciousness
The Bible
According to the Bible, “Yahveh God modelled man out of clay from the ground, he blew in his nose the breadth of life and man became a living being.” Thus the body is an integral part of man, it is animated by the vital breath and goes back to clay after death (Genesis 2). Man has lost immortality because of Adam : "if, by the transgression of one person, death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one person Jesus Christ" but the divine presence remains in the human being and this gift of the Holy Spirit flourishes thanks to the ressurection of the dead during the «Parousy» (Glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ on the day of the Last Judgement), and then "o that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through justification for eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans V)
Islam
"Allah is the creator of all things. The soul is a creature like the other creatures. Knowing its reality is reserved to Allah the Mighty and Magnificent. Allah has reserved knowingness of it for himself… Allah the Very Noble and His Messenger have given various descriptions of the soul ; they said that it can go up and down and it is extracted from the body like a piece of hair is extracted from the paw… Qualities mentionned in the Two Revelations (Coran and Sunna) must be asserted… the soul is not like the body.
Allah send the angel to breathe the soul into the embryo following what has been reported from Abd Allah ibn Massoud :
The Messenger of Allah, the Very True, has told us that one amongst you is being constituted in his mother’s womb during forty days. Then he transforms into a blood clot during the same time. Then he becomes a fœtus during the same time. Then the angel is being sent to breathe a soul into him and is given the order to write four words regarding his subsistence, the time limit of his life, his work and his lot". Sheikh Muhammed Salih
The Vedas
The soul is immortal, it is bound to the cycle of births and lays down the law of Karma to itself, according to which we experience in any future life the consequences of our past actions. Through asceticism effort connected to meditation or other practices, the soul improves untill it is finally freed from the birth-death cycle.
Pythagoras (VIth c. BC )
The soul is immortal. It exists before the body and outlives it; it can also leave it by means of appropriate techniques. After each death, the soul goes back to Hades, it clears itself by the reincarnation cycle, to eventually be relieved from the birth cycle and come back to its divine source.
Plato, Socrate (428-348 BC)
The soul is immortal, it belongs to the world of ideas, its essence is life, therefore it is contrary to death. The being does not learn, he only recalls what he has already grasped before this life. This soul, given to us by God, lives in the highest part of our body, it is the genie who pulls us away from the earth toward heavenly zones.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Aristotle develops Plato’s themes about the immortality of the soul, but overcomes the body-spirit dichotomy by explaining that the soul is linked to the body like form to matter.
Saint Augustine (354-430)
Saint Augustine tries to reconcile the Platonic tradition and Christianity; to him too, the soul is immaterial and eternal. The main difference with his predecessors is that, from a Christian point of view, the matter is “resurrection of bodies” rather than metempsychosis (transmigration of the soul).
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1127-1274)
In his Summa Theologicae, a monument of logics and knowledge, St Thomas Aquinas at length explains evidences of the existence of God and the soul. He says that the human being is the result of the union of soul and body, he is neither pure spirit nor pure matter, but a mixture of both. The soul is not something that lives in a body but the very vital principle, the being, the one who is conscious, who remains regardless from the form.
Descartes (1596-1650)
Descartes establishes the predominance of the soul over the body from the evidence of the phenomenon of consciousness. “The soul is a substance entirely distinct from the body… the notion that we have about our soul precedes the notion that we have about our body and it is more certain, as we still doubt that there be any body in the world and yet we know that we think".
Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Yes, Plato, you tell the truth: our soul is immortal; it is God who speaks to it, a God who lives in it. Hey! Where would this big premonition, this disgust at false goods, this horror of nothingness come from, without him? I see the chains of the world and of my senses be broken and far from the body stopped in mire, the gates of life and eternity be opened. I shall see you without a shadow, you heavenly truth! This life is a dream and death, a wakening".
Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)
Teilhard, a scientist, a mystic and a poet, tells us with passion about noosphere (from « noos », thought). He makes the hypothesis of the collective exaltation of souls set up in one vault (…), the gathering of these souls creating the noosphere, doomed to close itself isolated in itself. The end of the world: reversal of the balance, untying the spirit, at last completed, from its material die to have him from now on rest with all his weight on God-Omega. Here comes again Plato’s duality and his theory of the world of ideas, along with the Christian notion of Parousie (The glorious return Jesus Christ on the day of the last judgement). “The supernatural is ferment, a soul, not a complete organism. It comes and transforms nature but it could not do without the matter which nature offers to it."
Stephan Lupasco (1900-1988)
Extracts from the lecture by Michel Random on “Energy ant the Third Matter” of Lupasco:
But what about non quantifiable energies, consciousness, or the soul? These are energies again, and when there is energy, there is unavoidably logics. The part and the Whole are consistent and contradictory but chaos is nowhere and logics is everywhere :
« Let this matter be called by any name : soul, consciousness, the unconscious, even Jung’s collective unconscious, the fact remains that it is something which offers some resistance, some permanence, which presents a certain defined configuration and structure, thus including laws, immanent deduction, logics. » (The Three Matters of Lupasco, p. 62)
The soul tears itself away from matter, from the physical and biological system, for it is made with knowledge and consciousness of both (ibid. p. 94). This accession of the soul arises consciousness in the being, a conscious consciousness that sees the nature of the transitional and opposed aspects of life and death.
In this confrontation, a consciousness of consciousness is created, a knowledge of knowledge, which are the very nature of the soul (p. 95). Maybe one had to come to the acme of the undescribable, to understand the meaning given by Stéphane Lupasco to the word energy :
« Energy, in its most basic components, has both property of identity and property of individualizating differenciation. » (« The Micropysical Experience and the Human Thought » Stephan Lupasco, PUF, 1941, p. 1)
The third matter contains in itself all energies. One poetically would say that it is « the vibration of the infinitely vibrating point », a nice way to express quantum energy. The third matter, having no « objective » character anymore, expresses a psychical quality. It is the T state, where the psychical is independant from the biological. Lupasco sees in the psychical matter, the source of the future development of Man which, he says, « leads to consciousness of consciousness and knowledge of knowledge. And it can be considered that evolution is an evolution which more and more increases man’s psychical matter. » (Man and his Three Ethics, pp. 108-109)
Michel Random (Bulletin Interactif du Centre International de Recherches et Études Transdisciplinaires [Interactive Bulletin of the International Transdisciplinary Research and Studies Center] nb 13 – May 1998)
Régis Dutheil
Extracts from Regis and Brigitte Dutheil’s thesis:
« The existence of our counsiousness is not doubtful. Yet, its nature has never been clearly defined. What is consciousness? For the materialists, it is a production of the brain and it disappears with death.
For Régis Dutheil, consciousness and the brain would have two operating modes: one would be normal, local and time-and-space related; the other one, more rare, would be non-local.
1. Supra-consciousness: it is composed of super-luminous particles and lies outside of our body, the super-luminous world.
2. Local consciousness: it is also called « sub-luminous I » and is composed of photons (thus it belongs to the « luminous » world). It shares with the nervous system, the exploitation of data that come to it from the supra-consciousness. It is it that thinks, decides and solves everyday-life problems.
When the supra-consciousness communicates with the local consciousness, traffic would be regulated by the cerebral cortex. All what is necessary to our everyday life is filtered and forwarded to the local consciousness. The brain transforms abstract data into holograms, that is to say in three-dimensional images wich represent reality for us.
Actual communication would happen at the time of the physical death: immortaliy of the local consciousnss which, at death, separates from the physical body and tries to unite with its super-luminous counterpart.
The implications of the super-luminous theory also allow to account for some para-normal phenomena ; in this way, prior lives could be simultaneous with current life, considering that time does not exist in the super-luminous universe.
What science has discovered only very late, age-old esoteric traditions seem to have discovered a long time ago. As a matter of fact, the « vital energy » culture can be found in many civilisations, some of which no longer exist. Within their very practices (initiatic rites…), we can find odd similarities with what physicists are discovering nowadays. Thus a number of unexplained phenomena linked to these rites find a meaning today. » Régis and Brigitte Dutheil
J. Bousquet biologist
As a matter of fact, the problem which is posed to man when thinking about the sense of life is: where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? Today, taking into account the irruption of quantum physics into biology, the recognition of informational fields and, particularly, the extraordinary works of the mathematician Emile Pinel, can we « scientifically » answer these questions? The answer is yes. It is just important to have some knowledge in mathematics and physics. Biologists have to urgently review the program learned at secondary school, to come back to classical physics which places us in a space-time continuum woven in the electro-magnetic waves composed of vibrations. David Böhm defines the brain as « a hologram which analyses the hologram of the Universe. » Nowadays, thanks to the works of the German biophysicist F. A. Popp, we know that cells communicate by correlated photons and that the repair system of DNA is made in ultraviolet rays. However, information being immaterial by nature, (…), the photon is no good candidate for being the support of thought. R. Sheldrake and all precursors since Gurwich, including E. Pinel have provided ample proof of this. Thus something else must be found so that the scientific world – reductionnist by nature – accepts to change paradigms, thus concepts. For this reason, searchers - amongst whom L. Kervran – have been driven to envisage that this role could be played by an enigmatic particle, without charge or mass for the moment: the neutrino. This hypthesis is pleasant as photons are always described as being together with neutrinos. Thorough analysis of light, photon by photon, allows to measure the energy of the photon, on one hand, and on the other hand, presence of an empty wave capable of material effects additionnally.
Bench scientists specify that the brain is sensitive to these space waves. We still have to tackle the problem of how these data come and structure matter and give it consistency. These empty waves or space waves are capable of using the basic property of living beings, i.e. piezoelecticity… It is the way by which limits of forms are constituted ; in other words, membranes composed of + and – polarities ; we know that piezoelecticity is the first property of the living to disappear at death. As the brain is sensitive to these waves, neurons (cerebral cells) transform the vibration in electrical current by means of the centriole, sort of power supply – the relay memory of quantum medical doctors -, source of the kinetic energy of the cell (E. Pinel). In this approach, the brain is a code converter, it allows thought to enter matter, justifying in this way, by the way, Hamer’s theories and the presence of « fuses » able to blow or disturb the energy (support of the data) of a psychism disturbed by destructuring data. Taking into account all what has been written so far, we are not what we believe. We must stop identifying ourselves to the material body which is only the result of the manifestation of a complex field containing all our concepts, thus our psychism ».
The first material manifestation is the particle. « In this new type of physics, there is no room for both field and matter, for field is the only reality. » Albert Einstein
It always goes with a wave called psy wave that permanently informs the particle – and thus the field which is associated to it – about the energetic state – thus informational – of its environment. This is the source of the various laws of physics (Bell’s theorem, Chew’s Bootstrap theory, hologram of the universe) and particularly the apparition of a new vision of the world where everything is inter-related and where « one cannot cut a flower without shaking a star or also : a butterfly flapping wings can start a hurricane ! » This analysis must lead us to demonstrate that death does not exist. It only consists on the disappearance of our physical body and allows the entity to review its various concepts, its experiences and its errors and to survive in a field of light demonstrated by F. A. Popp, waiting for a new incarnation in order to come on with its evolution. We must absolutely start from Emile Pinel’s works, perfectly summarized by an excellent article by Serge Nahon, physicist, which you can consult in Internet.
I shall just quote Serge Nahon’s conclusions: « These fields are, to us, as impalpable as magnetic field, however they have an effect on us.
But the oddest thing is that when the individual dies, the equations show that two of these fields « die » but not the third one. It is the reason why we say that H1 and H2 fields die. But H3 fiels does not « die », it is its variation with time which dies. In other words, when the individual dies, H3 field does not vary anymore, thus it must stay constant. But this field happens to have a psychological component, noticed by Emile Pinel on ill persons whom he cured.
Any incarnation implies unavoidable death of the physical body, but also implies survival as far as the form field containing impedimenta, therefore psychism, is concerned. » Our freedom lies in the control of what we agree to believe, thus, of the immaterial contents of our psychism.
Georges Lerbet
"The psychical universe and complex thought: in this third matter, psychical, Lupasco has seen the most important concentration of energy, similar and not identical to the one found in nuclear matter. It is the universe of spirit, meditating, imagining but also living and moving for its quest for knowing the world around and in which it is wrapped and which it comes from. In other words, this psychical universe is modelled in order to account for the most organic physical and biological processes which the body supports, but also for cognitive processes which handle this body and this psychism in time and space … ".
Dr. Chopra endocrinologist
"Maybe a greater reality of the physical body exists. Maybe the physical body is what the Rishis (spiritual masters) in India call maya, illusion, which gives us the appearance of something while actually, beyond the mask of mortality, there is something else. Beyond this façade of mortality, there is something else which outlives the physical expression of the physical body… ”
“ …If you could see the body again as the physicist sees it, all what you would see are atoms. And if you could see atoms like they actually are, and not through the artefact of sensitive experience, you could see these atoms like particles moving like lightning within huge empty spaces. These particles are no material objects at all. They are variations of energy and information within a huge empty space devoided of energy and information. If I could see your body without the sense artefact, I would discern a huge empty space with some rare points and some random electrical discharges here and there and I would see that 99. 999999% of your body is empty space! And the 0. 000001% that appears as matter is also empty space ... "
Dr Capra physicist
"The quantum theory and the theory of relativity both force us to see the world very much in the way a Buddhist or Taoist sees it… The basic features of the Eastern conception of the world are the same as those of the vision of universe coming from modern physics. There can be two kinds of knowledge or two modes of awareness: the rational one and the intuitive one. They are often associated to science and religion. Under this double aspect of knowlege, the East and the West oppose. Our abstract system of thought could neither describe nor completely understand the reality of a world which is infinitely varied and complex, a multidimensional world where phenomena do not occur successively but simultaneously.
Eastern spirituality deals with an immediate experience of reality, going beyond thought and perception. Lao-Tzu calls this ultimate reality TAO. Catching it is an experience happening in an extraordinary state of awareness which can be labelled as mystic. This Eastern mystic experience is described as an intuition, external to the intellect and gained by observing, by looking by oneself rather than by thinking – which seems to correspond to the experimental step in scientific research. ”…
“Eastern imagination, especially the Indian one, has for long conceived myths, metaphors, symbols, images, because of the inadequacy of the language, to express reality. By these means, mystics communicate their experience of reality, much better than current language could do. Chinese and Japanese mystics rather use paradoxes, in the purpose of showing contradictions arisen from verbal communication, to refer to reality as it is.
Modern physics has come to adopt the same attitude regarding its approximative and inexact verbal theories. They are the counterparts of Asian myths. Shiva’s cosmic dance and the quantum field theory are constructions of the spirit, models aimed at describing a certain intuition of reality".
Brian D. Josephson Nobel Prize for Physics
"According to the Vedas, the spirit exists before space and has the power to create it. Once space has come to existence, material forms can develop in it. And these forms related to space are those which seem to us to be the objective reality… Nothing opposes that we admit the interaction between spirit and matter. One just has to be at the appropriate level of physics…"
Jean Charon physicist
Jean Charon has worked in the wake of Albert Einstein’s discoveries and he developped the Theory of Complex Relativity. According to him, electrons have psychical properties and these electrons, which he then calls « eons », would contain the spirit.
« I would very easily bet that for generations to come, the most important discovery of our twentieth century will not have been the discovery of nuclear forces, nor the one relating to the numerous developments in audio-visual, nor even the one of discovering machines to go to the Moon : it will be the discovery of the inner world by physics. »
« In fact, the discovery of the inner world constitutes the third relativistic revolution accomplished since the beginning of the century. »
« If the electron actually carrys the spirit, it is because it also contributes to our spirit, as it comes into our body. But then, if our spirit is locked up in this small electron world, it is because this particle must include in its own structure, the whole mechanics of the representation of the world, given that it is our spirit which is the source of the representation which science makes of the world. »
« Elements accumulated during one life in the memory acquired by each Eon, after a while, need to be coordinated with those of the innate Eonic memory. This balancing, as already mentionned, is realised each night during our sleep… in the silence of the in between-lives, when all Eons of our body will go back to « dust »… my living self then becomes my cosmic self, he is alone, that is to say he does not belong anymore to a living organism, before him lies the complete panorama of his lives, lived during his successive incarnations, for millions of years, not only in men but in all the living kingdom.
This millenial innate memory, which holds all his past existences, this memory which he distinguished only in a hazy way during the life period, which he saw only through the blurred data from his unconscious, he happens now to be able to contemplate the totality of its contents. Death is nothing else than a long reflexion on our past lives.
Till the time when my cosmic self chooses AGAIN to take part in a living organism…
Physics agrees with all religions when it concludes that the self is immortal. In the same time, it comes to rediscover the basics of Jung’s psychology, especially the notions of wakefulness and sleep, of conscious and unconscious. »
(Physics and Spirituality, article published in the magazine Le Monde Inconnu [The Unknown World] in 1982).
Ron Hubbard (1911-1986)
…"Life is something more than a mechanical contrivance… a dead organism disintegrates into dust. Something has obviously ceased to be a part of this organism, however, the moment it fully died. This «something» has variously been called the human soul, the spirit, the life force. Bergson called it élan vital.
Let us call this life energy by a symbol in order to identify it. We will assign to it the Greek letter theta and distinguish it as an energy existing separate and distinct from the physical universe as we know it.” (1950)
“Thetan — the person himself — not his body or his name, the physical universe, his mind, or anything else; that which is aware of being aware; the identity which is the individual. The term […] comes from the Greek letter Theta ( θ ), which the Greek used to represent thought or perhaps spirit […]. The individual man is divisible into three parts. The first of these is the spirit, called in Scientology the Thetan. The second of these parts is the Mind. The third of these parts is the Body. No part of the mest can be static, but Theta is static. A static has no motion; "The awareness of awareness unit has all potentialities but no mass, no wave-lenght and no location" (...) "is considered in Scientology as having no mass, no wave lenght, no energy and no time or location in space exept by consideration or postulate". The static has the pecularity of acting like a «mirror». It records and holds the images of motion.
It can even create motion and record and hold the image of that. It records also space and time in order to record motion, which is, after all, only «change in space through time».
"Theta could be considered to have as one of its missions (...) the conquest of the physical universe.The survival of thete depends, as it applies to this universe on changing MEST and organising MEST. Life is a manifestation of theta-conquered MEST. Theta, alone of observable energies, motivates and activates MEST matter and energy through space and time."
God and the Infinity
The physical universe,
Matter, Energy, Space and Time
La Bible
The Bible, a reference book common to the great monotheistic religions, explains the origin of the world and humankind in Genesis: « At the beginning, God created the sky and the earth. But the earth was empty and vague, darkness covered the chasm and a divine wind shaked the surface of waters. God said: « Let there be light, and there was light… » The Old Testament begins in this way, it describes the steps of the creation in the « six-day work ».
Les Védas
Maybe the Vedas are the oldest religious sciptures in the world. Their basic lessons are that man’s genuine nature is divine. God, or the Brahman (the supreme principle that transcends all dualities) as he is generally called, exists in each living being.
Saint Thomas d’Aquin (1127-1274)
« God is without limits. God is perfect, he is present everywhere, in any thing. God is unfailing and he is outside time. God is love, his love is not passion but action. Space boundaries are the source of forms within space, the absence of limits in space is a material absence of limits that can only apply to God. »
Descartes (1596-1650)
« By the name of God, I mean an infinite, eternal, immutable, independant, all-knowing and allmighty substance and by which myself and all the other things (…) have been created and produced. I would have no idea of an infinite substance, myself who is a finite being, if it had not been put in me by any substance which would have really been infinite. »
Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)
« Vast and envelopping like matter, but warm and intimate like a soul, God is the center spread everywhere, the immensity of which is due to an excess of concentration, the opulent simplicity of which is the synthesis of a paroxysm of accululated virtues. You are my God in the very bottom and the stability of the eternal milieu without duration nor space (…) Everywhere, dispersion, sign of the corruptible and precarious, and yet everywhere, the trace and nostalgia of a unique support and absolute soul, of a synthetic reality which would be as stable and universal as matter. »
Sir John Eckles, prix Nobel de physiologie et de médecine (1903-1997)
« I would like you to understand that there is no colour in the real world. There is no beauty, there is no ugliness. Nothing of that kind. Outside, it is a chaos of soup and energy fields. Really. We take this and somewhere inside ourselves, we create a world. This happens somewhere in ourselves. »
Dr Capra physicien nucléaire
« In classical physics, there was this notion that objects are made of material substance.
But when one magnifies these objects, when one tries to know what they are made of, one discovers that they are made of atoms and atoms are made of particles. But these very particles are not composed of a material substance. These are like clusters of energy.
These particles are perpetually going through change. Thus no material substance can be seen. But one can rather see an uninterrupting process. A process of what? There is no answer, as there is no substance!
Buddhists had the intuition of this; according to them: finally, the universe is a process of transformation acting according to patterns, but without material substance. »
David Bohm Physicist (1917-1992)
« The holographic universe of David Bohm ». In 1981 a remarkable event took place. At the Institut d’Optique d’Orsay [Orsay Institute of Optics], the research team led by Alain Aspect, physicist, has made one of the most important experiences of the XXth century. The « discovery » of Aspect and his team consists of an experiment, rather simple to describe, made several times. David Bohm gave a specific interpretation of this experiment. First, the facts: sub-atomic particles like photons and electrons are able to instantly communicate with their conter-part, no matter how long the distance between them. That they be at ten meters or 10 billions kilometers makes no difference. Each particle responds to the behaviour of the other as though they still were one. The means of this communication (intantaneous, anyway faster than light) poses a problem: it is undetectable. This communication breaks the law put in mathematical form by Einstein, according to which no mass can travel faster than light. David Bohm, physicist (at the London University), thinks that Aspect’s experiment implies that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity, the universe is a fantasy, a huge and marvellously detailed hologram. To understand why Bohm asserts this astonishing assertion, it is necessary to remind what a hologram is. A hologram is a three-dimensional picture made with a laser. The important fact is that the relief is retained in full : in particular, the observer could see, by moving his eye, parts of the object closest to him come and mask other parts located in the background. This idea allows to understand Aspect’s discovery. Bohm believes that the reason why the sub-atomic particles are able to remain in contact with each other independantly of the distance between them is not that they would send a mysterious signal both ways (faster than speed of light) but because their separation is an illusion.
In a universe where nothing is really separated from any other thing, time and three-dimensional space must also be seen as projections of a deeper order and unity. This underlying reality can be conceived as some kind of super-hologram in which past, present and future exist simultaneously. This suggests that if we were given the approriate tools (making the hypothesis that these tools could exist), we would be able to reach in the super-holographic level, the scenes of the past … and of the future.
What the super-hologram could contain else (apart from our universe) remains an open question. However it is still permitted to think, as far as our current knowledge is concerned, that this super-hologram be the womb which gave birth to our universe: to the slightest particle which has been, is and will be, to any possible configuration and to any form of energy, to snowflakes as well as quasars, to blue whales as well as gamma rays… It must be seen as a super cosmic warehouse of « Everything which Is » » (Words quoted on the website outre-vie.com)
Karl Pribam neurophysiologist
« Working independantly in the domain of the brain, Karl Pribam, neurophysiologist, and Professor Standford are also convinced of the holographic nature of reality. Pribam drew from the holographic model, an explanation allowing to solve the enigma of how memory is stored in the brain.
Holographic paradigm 25:
The most interesting aspect of Pribam’s holographic model applied to the brain is what happens when it is joined to Bohm’ theory. If the « concrete » of the world is not only a secondary reality and is a holographic stain of frequencies, if the brain is also a hologram and selects only some of these frequencies, if it mathematically transforms its sensations into « concrete » perceptions, what does the objective reality become ? It stops existing.
As the Eastern religions have long mantained, the material world is a mâya, an illusion, and though we could believe we are physical beings moving by a physical world, this is an illusion too. We would only be « receivers » floating in a kaleidoscopic ocean. We would float at a specific frequency which we extract from this ocean and which we would transform into physical reality. The physical reality in itself would only be a channel amongst many others (other realities, finally) extracted from the super-hologram.
This image of reality, based on the synthesis of Bohm’s theory with Pribam’s, is called holographic paradigm. Though many scientists have welcomed it with skepticism, it has galvanized some others. A small and fast-growing group of searchers believes that this paradigm could be the most accurate model of reality which we have at the time. This model could be the base for a science of reality.
From this, some people think they can solve other mysteries of science. One of these misteries is the paranormal: is it scientific? Does it have to be put down in the list of natural phenomena? Some experiments have shown that « paranormal » indeed exists (telepathy, clairvoyance, miraculous recovery…) but numerous other experiments have proven that this phenomenon was neither repetitive nor predictible. With the holographic paradigm, the paranormal becomes understandable, it becomes part of nature. Numerous searchers, including Bohm and Pribam, have noticed that many para-psychical phenomena could then be solved.
In a universe where individual intelligence is actually indivisible, the greatest parts of the hologram are connected with the infinitesimal – with all the infinitesimal. So, a psi capability like telepathy would simply be the sign of a connexion (short-lived) at the holographic level. Once this accepted as a hypothesis, it becomes easier to understand how information can travel from the spirit of an individual A to the one of an individual B, no matter the distance: just consider A and B as particles, spirits as full objects. They would be as one, at a certain time, because in reality they can just be as one, being as one at the holographic level, but being two at the physical reality level.
The holographic paradigm has also consequences on recognized sciences like biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Vermont College, stated that, « if concrete reality were just a « holographic illusion », one could not say anymore that the brain produces consciousness. This would rather be consciousness which makes the brain appear, as well as the body… and all the rest around, which we interpret as a physical reality. »
Such a reversal with our conception of biological structures has caused other statements, especially by medical doctors, for whom comprehension of the curing process could also be transformed by the holographic paradigm. If the apparent physical structure of the body is just the holographic projection of consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is much more responsible of our health than medical doctors believe nowadays. From this point of view, remissions of illnesses thought to be mortal and miraculous recoveries noticed by medicine (apart from recoveries in Lourdes) would actually be changes in the consciousness (or the unconscious) would in turn change the hologram of the body. Placebo and nocebo (the opposite) effects would then find complete significance.
Maybe our description and vision of reality is just a consensus about what is and what is not, formulated and ratified at the unconscious level, wether it is accepted or not at the conscious level. This consensus would be visible by everybody and materialized by everybody because all spirits would own the same unconscious, because they would all be connected by the holographic or unconscious part of their brain. » (Words quoted on the website outre-vie.com)
Stephan Lupasco (1900-1988) according to Michel Random
« Energy and living matter: to Lupasco, the two properties of energy, identity and differenciation, are at the same time distinct and however closely linked. From these two vector energies, two matters were born, once more; one is physical, the other one biological. Both matters, being diversified, lead to creating heterogeneousness: they create all what exists. The third matter contains in itself all energies…This is what Lupasco also calls the Third Logics, what he considered as his great discovery. It is the occasion to notice that Sufism also considers the universe as a set of « bodyties ». In other words, all what has appeared in the universe belongs to forms, looking like thinner and thinner bodies, but which do not escape matter. Thought iself, also being thin matter.
These few examples show how great visionary Lupasco is about knowledge. Science is overcautious, it fears that one ceases to be scientifical when something is not obvious in the bubble chamber or under a microscope. It is necessary to have great minds like Lupasco or David Bohm not to be scared by the meaning. After all, it is the watching which contributes to create the real, as much as the real creates watching (B. d’Espagnat).
« Ancient wisdom reaches conclusions which I personnally eventually find by extremely complex and long paths. It is the verifying of traditional awareness of the conciousness of the world. It is extremely interesting » (p. 185).
Emptiness is also potentialization, a Tao which contains infinite potentializations, thus infinite universes. As Revelation is a being and a non-being, thus potentiality is « which is not yet actualized, but which contains what is going to actualize ». Let me give a concrete example, Lupasco says: « I am going to buy tobacco across the street; well, this is a potentiality: at that time, my subject is busy because my neuro-central system is busy with this potentiality « go and buy tobacco ». When I go and buy tobacco, I actualize this potentiality. » (Talks with M. Random)
One can pass from tobacco to the cosmic range and to the world of all what is possible. Potentiality is consciousness and consciousness is third matter or third universe. « The universe gives us some pale example, the vulnerable, seldom though powerful psychical matter, which develops, surprisingly conquering on our planet and which must not, for sure, be missing in other parts of our world », S. Lupasco writes.
At each level, there is consciousness, he says. Consciousness never disappears. Here, consciousness is information orientated, directed, programmed, "conscious" so to speak. And our consciousness is the real, the implicit and explicit order of the world itself, as David Bohm would say.
So one can conceive other words, or other « parts of our world ». (…) « It is precisely here that the historical merit of Lupasco lies, Barasab Nicolescu says ; he has been able to recognize that the uncountable multiplicity of the real can be re-structured, derived from three logic terms only, making in this way, the hope expressed before by Peirce concrete. » (Us, the Particle and the World, op.cit.) Indeed, this ternary structure can be found in our brain. Our brain indeed works in space-time, but consciousness spontaneously exists outside space-time.
There can only be one meaning to energy in the universe: the consciousness-energy: « Consciousness is Energy », Shakta Vedanta says. The mysterious energy of Brahman, the Absolute. But Brahman’s, Buddah’s or Lao-Tzu’s energy or awareness, as we said, is empty, empty or immaterial as thought. This Emptiness contains all energies.
This has led us to the concept of pure energy and non-matter as Lupasco had seen it well.
« All objects around us… have nothing which is « material », in the multi-millenial and instinctual sense of the notion of matter, they are just … the more or less resistive appearances and systematizations of energy… » (The Three Matters, p. 23)
Any perception, any knowledge, any energy thus comes from the nature of the spirit. Conclusion achieved by Von Neumann, Henry Stapp, David Bohm, Bernard d’Espagnat and so many other physicists. Cerebral events are quantum phenomena which in turn determine the nature of information.
Michel RANDOM
Bulletin Interactif du Centre International de Recherches et d’Études transdisciplinaires [Interactive Bulletin of the International Transdisciplinary Research and Studies Center], nb 13, May 1998
Basarab Nicolesc théoricien au CNRS
Extracts from Barasab Nicolescu’s paper « From Quantum Physics to Ontology » during the CIRET symposium dedicated to Lupasco : « In his most famous book, The Three Matters, published nine years after The Antagomism Principle, Lupasco writes: « …matter does not stem from the inanimate … to raise, through the biological, from complexities to complexities, up to the psychical and even beyond : its three aspects constitute … three divergent orientations, one of which, of microphysical nature… is no synthesis of two, but rather their fight, their inhibiting conflict… » The conclusion that any appearance, any system includes a triple aspect – macrophysical, biological and quantum (microphysical or psychical) – is indeed surprising and full of many consequences.
Lupasco’s tri-dialectic is a vison of the unity of the world, of its non-separability: « … there is no element, event, not any point in the world which is independant, which does not contain any relationship in terms of connection or rupture with an other element or event or point, since there are more than one element or event or point in the world (if only for our representation or our intellect)… ». And Lupasco says as a conclusion: « thus everything is connected in the world… if, of course, the world is logical… » Lupasco revives the tradition in casting new light on the old-time principle of universal interdependancy. But he is also one decade ahead as he anticipates the bootstrap principle, introduced in quantum physics by Geoffrey Chew, according to which each particle is what it is because all the other particles exist at the same time. In a certain way, any particle is made up with all the other particles. Therefore it is not surprinsing that Lupasco, whith the bootstrap theory, shares the idea that there cannot be ultimate constituents of matter. To Lupasco, any system is a system of systems. Lupasco shows with relevance, the metaphysical ground of the believing in the ultimate constituents of matter, a believing which is quite deep-rooted even nowadays amongst quantum physicists: « … the element … will always be, in turn, composed of elements, will always structurally contain other elements, without our being able to arrive to a final element which would mean… perfect identity and absolute non-contradiction… and which would reduce any thing to a unique element, to, when all is said and done, the metaphysical ONE… »
In particle physics, quarks indeed appear as ultimate constituents of matter. But quarks have a paradoxal property: the theoretical mechanism of permanent confining of quarks says that they can never come out of the matter, for, in order to come out, they would need infinite energy. Moreover, as far as theory is concerned, one could expect that quarks have, in turn, sub-constituents. The quest for ultimate constituents of matter seems endless.
Extracts from the Bulletin Interactif du Centre International de Recherches et d’Études transdisciplinaires [Interactive Bulletin of the International Transdisciplinary Research and Studies Center], nb 13, May 1998
Jean Charon Physicist
Jean Charon, following the new gnostics, would like us to come out from the dead-end road between determinism and probabilism, harmony and randomity. In the tradition of Einstein’s Relativity, in 1976, he establishes the complex Relativity theory, by adding to the space-time continuum, the new dimension of the imaginary or spirit.
By discovering that the Spirit is the deep « Inside » of any thing, he wants to re-introduce the Spirit into Matter which is the « Outside » of it. By refusing that this Spirit be excluded out of Science, maybe he is at the reconciliation point, since God is not just the order of relations, but the eternal Spirit who shows in the initial particles, the « eons », since the beginning untill the end of time.
« In short, one can assert, in this finishing century, that inert matter never exists alone, it always joins with psycho-matter, which gives both physical and spiritual properties to the whole.
« When one thinks about our universe and its evolution in the scope of this new science – psycho-physics (study of psycho-matter) – one is led, as could be expected, to almost completely change our approach of reality. »
Ron Hubbard (1911-1986)
« The eight dynamic— is urge toward existence as infinity. This is also identified as the supreme being. This can be called the infinity or God dynamic. »
The FACTORS (23 April 1953)
- Before the beginning was a Cause and the entire purpose of the Cause was the creation of effect.
- In the beginning and forever is the decision and the decision is TO BE.
- The first action of beingness is to assume a viewpoint.
- The second action of beingness is to extend from the viewpoint, points to view, which are dimension points.
- Thus there is space created, for the definition of space is: viewpoint of dimension. And the purpose of a dimension point is space and a point of view.
- The action of a dimension point is reaching and withdrawing.
- And from the viewpoint to the dimension points there are connection and interchange. Thus new dimension points are made. Thus there is communication.
- And thus there is light.
- And thus there is energy.
- And thus there is life.
- But there are other viewpoints and these viewpoints out-thrust points to view. And there comes about an interchange amongst viewpoints; but the interchange is never otherwise than in terms of exchanging dimension points.
- The dimension point can be moved by the viewpoint, for the viewpoint, in addition to creative ability and consideration, possesses volition and potential independence of action ; and the viewpoint, viewing dimension points, can change in relation to its own or other dimension points or viewpoints. Thus comes about all the fundamentals there are to motion.
- The dimension points are each and every one, wether large or small, solid. And they are solid solely because the viewpoints say they are solid.
- Many dimension points combine into larger gases, fluids or solids. Thus there is matter. But the most valued point is admiration, and admiration is so strong its absence alone permits persistence.
- The dimension points can be different from other dimension points and thus can possess an individual quality. And many dimension points can possess a similar quality, and others can possess a similar quality unto themselves. Thus comes about the quality of classes of matter.
- The viewpoint can combine dimension points into forms and the forms can be simple or complex and can be at different distances from the viewpoints and so there can be combinations of form. And the forms are capable of motion and the viewpoints are capable of motion and so there can be motion of forms.
- And the opinion of the viewpoint regulates the consideration of the forms, their stillness or their motion, and these considerations consist of assignment of beauty or ugliness to the forms and these considerations alone are art.
- It is the opinion of the viewpoints that some of these forms should endure. Thus there is survival.
- And the viewpoint can never perish ; but the form can perish.
- And the many viewpoints, interacting, become dependent upon one another’s forms and do not choose to distinguish completely the ownership of dimension points and so comes about a dependency upon the dimension points and upon the other viewpoints.
- From this comes a consistency of viewpoint of the interaction of dimension points and this, regulated, is time.
- And there are universes.
- The universes, then , are three in number : the universe created by one viewpoint, the universe created by every other viewpoint, the universe created by the mutual action of viewpoints which is agreed to be upheld — the physical universe.
THE AXIOMS OF SCIENTOLOGY (1954)
- Life is basically a static.
Definition: A life static has no mass, no motion, no wavelenght, no location in space or time. It has the ability to postulate and to perceive. - The static is capable of considerations, postulates and opinions.
- Space, energy, objects, form and time are the result of considerations made and/or agreed upon by the static and are perceived solely because the static considers that it can perceive them.
- Space is a viewpoint of dimension.
- Energy consists of postulated particles in space.
- Objects consist of grouped particles.
- Time is basically a postulate that space and particles will persist.
- The apparency of time is the change of position of particles in space.
- Change is the primary manifestation of time.
- The highest purpose in the universe is the creation of an effect.
- The considerations resulting in conditions of existence are fourfold :
a) As-isness is the condition of immediate creation without persistence, and is the condition of existence which exists at the moment of creation and the moment of destruction, and is different from other considerations in that it does not contain survival.
b) Alter-isness is the consideration which introduces change, and therefore time and persistence, into an as-isness to obtain persistency.
c) Isness is an apparency of existence brought about by the continuous alteration of an as-isness. This is called, when agreed upon, reality.
d) Not-isness is the effort to handle isness by reducing its condition through the use of force. It is an apparency and cannot entirely vanquish an isness.
The sixth dynamic is the urge toward existence as the physical universe.
If Life — or Theta, as it is called in Scientology ( θ ) — is a mirror and a creator of motion which can be mirrored, it follows then that mirror-wise, the whole of the laws of motion, magnetism, energy, matter, space and time can be found in thought, and behavior and even thinking partake of the physical universe laws regarding matter, energy, space and time. The physical universe consists of four parts: Matter, Energy, Space and Time. mest stands for matter, energy, space and time, and is a composite of the first letter of each. The word mest appearing all by itself denotes the physical universe.The origin of mest lies with theta itself, and mest, as we know the physical universe, is a product of theta.
Formerly, a static was defined only as a motionless object. This definition is not adequate, since (...)- a state of rest for an object — is attained only by an equilibrium of forces, and all objects have in themselves, if only on a molecular level, motion, and exist in space, which is itself an integral portion of motion. Hence we see we are dealing with a higher-level static. This word comes from Latin sto, meaning « stand ». No part of mest can be static, but theta is static.
Theta has no motion. Even when the mest it controls is moving in space and time, theta is not moving, since theta is not in space or time.
Space: The workable definition of space is « viewpoint of dimension » : there is no space without viewpoint, there is no space without points to view. Space is not nothingness. Space is the viewpoint of dimension. It is how far one looks. If one did not look, one would not have any space. Space is caused by looking out from one point. The only actuality of space is the agreed-upon consideration that one perceives through something, and this we call space. A dimension point is any point in a space or at the boundaries of space.
Matter: Matter is a condensation of energy. The more energy condenses, the less space it occupies and the greater its endurance becomes. Energy becomes matter if condensed. Matter becomes energy if dispersed. One cannot consider matter without also considering energy.
Time: Time is actually a consideration, but there is the experience of time. There is a distance, there is a velocity of particle travel — and the movement of that particle in relationship to its starting point and in relationship to its ending point, itself is the consideration of time. One cannot have time without space, energy and objects. There is no time without those items. Time is measured by motion. […] Time is actual. But the person has becom so dependant on matter moving in space to tell time that his time sense has become dependent on matter, energy and space. The apparency of time is the change of position of particles in space (Axiom 8) and … change is the primary manifestation of time (Axiom 9).
Notes:
1 Au sens médiéval du terme, ensemble de tout ce qui existe.
2 Traité d'astronomie, décrivant le mouvement des corps célestes dans le firmament et où il démontre que la terre tourne autour du soleil.
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