We usually experience the world around us as largely “solid” and therefore “real”, even though we know in our more reflective minds that this is an illusion. We know that in actuality the “things” we believe we are seeing are themselves agglomerations of molecules which are each conglomerations of atoms. Within each atom are concentrations of energy we call protons, neutrons, and electrons. We now know we are really surrounded by nothing solid at all. We ourselves are far from “solid” as well. Our brains are, however, programmed to keep us at arm’s length from this underlying truth.
Once we peer through our usual illusions, however, what is the ultimate reality we really are experiencing? If God is all that exists, why and how do we come to project the endlessly variegated interwoven and teemingly diverse world, or worlds, we sense around us and then feel as if we are living inside of?
Where do these projections come from? Are they “real” or not? Most importantly, why do we feel as if we are trapped inside them, inside this pseudo-solid “reality” that seems to enfold us? Are we personally creating this apparent “reality” around ourselves, each of us projecting it somewhat differently? If we understand how and why we are “surrounded” by what we seem to be seeing, does this enable us to change it? If actually malleable, why do these constructions of ours seem so often so stubbornly fixed and solid?
Returning from the moon on Apollo 14 in 1971, astronaut Edgar Mitchell had an overpowering experience:
“It was then, while staring out the window, that Ed experienced the strangest personal feeling he would ever have: a feeling of interconnectedness, as if all the planets and all the people of all time were attached by some invisible web. He could hardly breathe from the majesty of the moment…There seemed to be an enormous force field here, connecting all people, their intentions and thoughts, And every animate and inanimate form of matter for all time…Time was just an artificial construct. Everything he’d been taught about the separateness of people and things felt wrong… This wasn’t something he was simply comprehending in his mind, but an overwhelmingly visceral feeling, as though he were physically extending out of the window to the very farthest reaches of the cosmos.”
The most essential ingredient of this interconnected universe he now perceived so vividly, Mitchell was beginning to suspect, was the living consciousness that observed it. Quantum physicists were starting to believe it was actually the consciousness of the observer that brought the observed object into being. Mitchell realized, then every moment of every day we were taking a central role in creating our world.
Karl Pribram discovered the “unique ability of quantum waves to store vast quantities of information in a totality and in three dimensions, and for our brains to be able to read this information and from this to ‘create’ the world.” Pribram came to believe that, “in the act of observation, we are transforming the timeless, spaceless world of interference patterns” into a “virtual image of the object” and projecting this into the “concrete world” of time and space. Quantum waves, Lynn McTaggart reminds us, can hold unimaginable quantities of data. There is no clear dividing line, scientific investigators were learning, between the mental and the physical. Instead, they appeared to be intertwined and constantly inter-acting aspects of a single unity, as interface alchemists had already been probing for a thousand years.
There are, Bernardo Kastrup tells us, tribes in the Amazon that have never been exposed to a materialist world view. To them, the materialism so accepted by us seems like a strange fantasy. We ourselves dwell, however, in a culture dedicated to reinforcing and promoting a materialist consensus. Kastrup maintains that:
“When it comes to consciousness, nothing allows us to deduce the properties of subjective experience –the redness of red, the bitterness of regret, the warmth of fire – from the mass, momentum, spin, charge, or any other property of subatomic particles bouncing around in the brain.”
This is, according to Kastrup, the essence of the “hard problem of consciousness.”
In The Unfettered Soul, Michael Singer too directs our attention to this deeper level of consciousness within us that is the listener, the observer, of all the endless chatter of our ordinary minds.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Singer reminds us, “you have a mental dialogue going on in your head that never stops. If you spend some time observing this mental voice, the first thing you will notice is that it never shuts up.” It is, “actually a shocking realization when you first notice that your mind is constantly talking to you.” If however, Singer points out, “you” are the one hearing that voice, it (that monologue in your head) is obviously not the innermost you.
There is, Singer believes, “nothing more important” to inner evolution “than realizing that you are not that endless babble in your mind”, but that instead, “you are the one that hears it.” We are not the speaker. Our inner essence, our deeper consciousness, is the hearer, the listener. To experience what truly is, Singer tells us, we must also let go of “false solidity.” It is through this shift in perspective, Singer writes, that a more spiritual understanding, and even the presence of God, can become a reality.
Rupert Sheldrake’s experiments seem to support as well the underlying unity of mind. Thought, Sheldrake has shown, can be transmitted between minds, even over great distances, outside of our usual sense organs. Such direct contact between human minds may, in fact, exist at all times. Is there some kind of electromagnetic “fabric”, “web”, or etheric “net” connecting all of our minds together? Are animal minds encompassed also within this same interlinked grid?
There are, Sheldrake has shown, even greater well-documented mysteries including clairvoyance, being able to see clearly someplace far away, and pre-sentience, knowing, or seeing sharply in the mind, events that have not yet occurred. Does some kind of unitary fabric of mind know not only what exists in the present beyond the use of the usual bodily senses, but what will come to exist in the future as well? The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in 2001 were both, Sheldrake tells us, preceded by a surprising number of precise forebodings. This raises, in turn, questions about what “time” is exactly and whether time, as we experience it subjectively, even really exists in more “ultimate” reality. Sheldrake believes we are in constant inter-communication through the “Quantum Sea” beneath the fabric of the “physical” world, where space and time, in the way we usually understand them, do not exist.
Bell’s Theorem, first published in 1964 and now proven time after time, revealed that we, the observer, have an active, and central role in creating the reality we experience. For those who understood what this meant, it effectively, William Keith writes, brought the whole “structure of material realism crashing down.” The engagement of the consciousness of the observer played a crucial part in “collapsing” apparent “reality” out of a vague and nonspecific state of endless possibilities. Object and observer could not be disentangled. There was no boundary between the “observer” and “observed.” We participate inherently in creating everything that we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch.
So how does our “free will” enter into this picture? A key is realizing that all possible states, decisions, and choices exist simultaneously in each wave. As our consciousness “collapses” these waves into decisions, we create our “reality.” For William Keith, magical practice is ultimately based on quantum physics. If our minds are full of stress, worry, and incessant chatter, these gateways into our still and silent interior will remain locked. It is essential to instead leave those superficial levels behind as we make our way into the more rich and potent dimensions within ourselves.
The ancient sacred science of kabbalah and alchemy are based on similar insights. Practitioners of the esoteric paths of kabbalah and alchemy understand how crucial it is to break through the usual separation between “inner” and “outer”, between the material realm and realm of the spirit. They understand that multiple deeper inner dimensions exist, and can be accessed, within what we call reality. The “Jewish saint”, or “tzaddik”, Perle Epstein tells us, “lives completely detached from the pleasure of the world.” If sufficiently cleansed, their fervent, unceasing love of God can bring him or her to a state of union with the divine. Ultimately, their body becomes a house for this divine presence, a “hollow channel vibrating with divine energy.” In the innermost realm of divinity itself, the kabbalist can attain freedom from the limitations of space and time and become a co-creator with God.
In the realms of the interior, Epstein reports, the spheres of the Sephiroth reveal themselves to be contained one within the other like the skins of an onion so that each is a shell to the next deeper one. The separation between inner and outer disappears. At an advanced level, the spheres of the Sephiroth infuse and illumine the body and the kabbalist’s entire body can become “alive with knowledge.”
In the alchemical quest as well, the inter-relationship between inner and outer is crucially crucial. Alchemical processes, Frater Albertus informs us, must occur within us as well as “outside” and in union with each other. The alchemist must go beyond false and illusory distinctions between his or her own interior world and what seems, to most, to be “outside us” and the alchemist must become profoundly aware of the interplay between mind and matter. “All that IS,” Albertus reminds us, “exists because of our own consciousness.” For the alchemist, Albertus reiterates, all, including all that is down within the alchemist himself or herself, is very much alive. At the heart of all creation, and of the alchemist as well, is spirit, soul, consciousness, the unfolding of the divine quintessence.
Copyright 2022 Will Gold.
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