Paradox

My interest in the ancient Egyptian worldview is that for them, their gods and goddesses had a quality of being visible in the world and were embedded in their spirituality through their symbolism. Many of the Egyptian hieroglyphs were of hawk or crocodile gods or cow goddesses who were believed to embody the particular form, characteristics and attributes of these animals.

There is a common perception in our present day age to view myths as simply stories, but an ancient worldview would have perceived them as being parables and symbols of being able to see the divine as embedded throughout the natural world. The ancient Egyptians called the divine ‘NTR’ and the ancient Greeks may have picked up on that usage in their word for ‘nature’.

Meister Eckhart, a 13^th century Christian mystic wrote:

“Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and a book about God. Every creature is a word of God. If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature – even a caterpillar- I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God is every creature.”

I am contemplating the shifts of thinking and spiritual practice that has emerged throughout our cultures, particularly those which have had an effect of diminishing the perception of the divine as being present in the natural world. It could appear to an observer as if the divine was present and then it wasn’t – so where did the divine go, what consequence did that have and who or what stepped in as its intermediaries or replacements?

In this respect, it can be helpful to navigate through the twists and turns of the differing religious and spiritual philosophies to offer insight.

There is ‘animism’, a view that all creatures, places, objects such as rocks, the weather and even words are alive and possess a distinct spiritual essence.

Or ‘polytheism’, a belief in and worship of multiple deities along with their own associated rituals. These gods and goddesses are representations of forces of nature or ancestral principles and can be viewed as either autonomous or as aspects or emanations of a creator god which manifests immanently in nature.

There is ‘monotheism’ which is the belief in the existence of only one god that created the world, which is all powerful and intervenes in the world.

Then along comes the 17^th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, whose book ‘Ethics’ was an answer to Descartes’ famous dualist theory that the body and spirit are separate. Spinoza formed the concept of ‘pantheism’ as a view that everything is part of an all-encompassing and immanent god and that all forms of reality may be considered either modes of that being or identical with it.

'Panentheism’ was coined by the 19^th century philosopher Karl Krause to distinguish between the ideas of Hegel and Schelling about the relation of god and the cosmos from the supposed pantheism of Spinoza. Panentheism being an idea that the divine pervades and interpenetrates every part of the universe and also extends beyond time and space.

Depending on the extent to which one identifies with any one of these philosophies or spiritual practices, what are the implications in terms of behaviour – how does our view of the world and of who we are offer us a sense of purpose, meaning and shape our relationships with one another, particularly those of a differing philosophical, religious or spiritual belief and practice?

One of the ways which comes to mind is that it invokes a sense of competitiveness of whose logos or accounting of creation is demonstrably more valid than another. Words of ancient scripts and texts become fiercely guarded and fought over, as if in a spirit of animism, it is the words themselves which are alive with a spiritual essence. There is a similarity of relationship but a difference of how the logos or word of god is being perceived.

For instance, the ancient Egyptians in the Land of Khem, communicating through their practice and language of hieroglyphs conveyed an intentionality of manifestation through the medium of sound and being. This had to do with an understanding of the divine being immanent.

A religious or spiritual world view which identifies with being a guardian of any ancient relics, land or texts is perceiving not so much that the divine is immanent but that certain protocols have to be implemented, i.e. a pathway prepared, before the divine will return.

Difference in perception or world view can create a sense of dischord and dissatisfaction at the same time as it can present a path for being able to perceive and experience unity in the world. An opening of being able to observe this paradox is in accordance with a level of willingness of an individual to discover the nature of what they are (which is not the same as an indigenous or cultural identity or of any practice).

This 'knowing' is picked up on in the tale of an old Hindu legend…

…. There was once a time when all human beings were gods, but they so abused their divinity that Brahma, the chief god, decided to take it away from them and hide it where it could never be found.

Where to hide their divinity was the question. So Brahma called a council of the gods to help him decide. “Let’s bury it deep in the earth” said the gods. But Brahma answered, “No, that will not do because humans will dig into the earth and find it”. Then the gods said, “Let’s sink it in the deepest ocean”. But Brahma said, “No, not there, for they will learn to dive into the ocean and will find it”. Then the gods said, “What about the highest mountain top, out in the farthest corner of the earth?” But again Brahma replied, “No, that will not do either, because they will eventually climb every mountain and search every cave and once again find and take up their divinity”. The gods gave up and said, “We do not know where to hide it, because it seems that there is no place on earth or in the sea that human beings will not eventually reach”.

Brahma was quiet for a time. He thought long and deep. Finally, he looked up at the rest of the gods, a knowing twinkle in his eye. “Here is what we shall do. We will hide their divinity deep in the centre of their own being, for humans will never think to look for it there”. All the gods agreed that this was the perfect hiding place and the deed was done. And since that time humans have been going up and down the earth, digging, diving, climbing and exploring
 – searching for something that is already within themselves.

Author unknown

There are some passages contained in the Gospel of Thomas which are sharing a similar message: 

3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.
 Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.”

18. The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us, how will our end come?" 
Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? 
You see, the end will be where the beginning is.

Then to refer back to the poem by T S Eliot which I closed yesterday’s blog with, it contains these lines which stand out in particular for me: 

“Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;”

All of these messages are conveying a similar theme for me, in that they are suggesting that whilst any messages or words that are being conveyed in an outer world can offer differing interpretations of reality ~ any wisdom that they are speaking of is not something that can be learnt but has to be experienced viscerally through a willingness to open the mind into receiving and this takes place in an atmosphere of stillness.

There can be a negative association with any concept of surrender, which has arisen out of an experience of mistaken ideas about an authentic embodiment of power. Receiving is different from obedience and for that matter, supplication, as there is already a filter in that stance. Remember what I shared yesterday, in that the mind resists seeing its own reflection and is unwilling to perceive its own nature?

The birthing pains of awakening into a new reality would seem to be that of cognitive dissonance; of being capable of holding two seemingly conflicting truths at the same time and of allowing them to dialogue in order for new information to emerge. There has to be the willingness to release the mental patterning of either/or before being able to embrace both/and, just as a scientific world view has had to shift from its understanding of particle or wave and into a quantum world of both.

Certainly, quantum mechanics is revealing much with regards to the nature of reality and it would seem that we are going to need to devise a language that is capable of describing it experientially and that does not collapse through the weight of its limitation. Mathematics alone is not sufficient because whilst it can offer a glimpse, it does not readily translate into action. We have been exploring reality from a perspective of individuations and are going to find it necessary to master the complexities of relationship as are being revealed through nonlocality and of a collective in order to know ourselves as quantum beings.

Niels Bohr’s breakthrough in quantum mechanics has revealed to us that at the subatomic level and to understand where an electron is, we have to look at it and to do that, we have to shine a light upon it. But, to shine a light upon it disturbs where the electron is, meaning that the very act of observing an object changes its location and creates uncertainty.

Earlier in the blog, I mentioned that I was ‘contemplating the shifts of thinking and spiritual practice which have emerged throughout our cultures, particularly those which have had an effect of diminishing the perception of the divine as present in the natural world … It could appear to an observer as if the divine was present and then it wasn’t…’

In this respect, the differing expressions of our philosophies and religious practice have all served through their being ‘snapshots’ of how we view ourselves as individuations, organise ourselves and try to govern our behaviour whilst sensing the presence of an ineffable world which creates uncertainty. Human beings generally don’t like uncertainty. This is understandable, given the perception of being one individuation in a world of many and with seemingly finite resources, shifting environmental patterns, deterioration of the body and of death.

Stories are a combination of observations, perception of events and experiences and our imaginings of what could be in a climate of uncertainty. They are the mind’s endeavours to weave together all the differing ways in which we are able to see and to experience our own nature. We experience them emotionally, which is why they are so powerful. Whilst an ineffable quality of a quantum world is being perceived as something ‘larger than life’ and being adorned with the most powerful attributes that we can conceive, the stories that we create around that will have power over us until such time as we are curious enough to explore further and to allow our perception and its images to transform.

In the early part of the last century, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s work attempted to recover the most fundamental philosophical question concerning the quality of being-ness and of what it means for something to be. He said that since the ancient Greeks, philosophy has ignored that question and has turned towards an analysis of particular beings. He sought to identify the criteria or conditions by which any specific entity can show up at all.

With Niels Bohr's work in the quantum world informing us that the very act of observing an object changes its location and creates uncertainty and Heidegger’s explorations into the nature of being – of consciousness - as primary to how we can know ourselves at all, it would appear as if humans are irrevocably encountering a convergence of science and spirituality. Never mind a ‘Big Bang’ this feels more like an implosion of consciousness – a vortex – the Einstein Rosen Bridge or the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen (EPR) Paradox?