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by Dan Smith
1997
from
DanSmith Website
recovered through
WayBackMachine Website
Contents
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Definition
-
A Quick Introduction to the
Aquarium & Declaration
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Navigating The Eschaton
-
Our Present Situation - On the
Doorstep of The Eschaton
-
Logic 101
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Cosmology 101
-
The Aquarium Rationale
-
Aquarium Conspiracy
-
The Aviary, the Aquarium, and
Eschatology
-
Synopses of some basic
concepts
-
A Glossary
of Terms
Definition
Go Back
A
QUICK INTRODUCTION TO THE AQUARIUM
The Aquarium is an informal and loose-knit association of
individuals with widely divergent backgrounds who share a common
realization and goal.
We recognize that society is rapidly
approaching what will be a critical junction. This junction will be
the point of convergence for a number of powerful trends and may
severely challenge the ability of our organized institutions to
effectively govern.
Although we feel that the most profound issue facing man at the
present time is essentially spiritual, we also realize that the most
practical way to bring this issue to the public is to become
involved in some of the related current problems.
Examples of our
present areas of concern are:
-
the problem of realigning the
secular political institutions with the undeniably spiritual
nature of the universe
-
government openness related to
the above
-
selected ecological issues
While a strong spiritual basis is
central to the Aquarium world view, dogmatic adherence to any one
belief system is strictly avoided. We also eschew any political
affiliations which would limit our ability to act effectively.
Our goal is to minimize the confusion, disruptions and disharmony
that will occur and to maximize the benevolent aspects of the
inevitable coming changes. To this end we endeavor to engage a
number of key relevant issues.
THE
AQUARIUM DECLARATION
-
We of the Aquarium envision a
truth beyond that of traditional and modern understanding.
-
We know the world to be a
construct of intelligence and spirit.
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We see the world as on the brink
of a dramatic transformation that will encompass its every
aspect.
-
The Aquarium Objective
To help bring about the
transformation of the world in a manner that conforms with
our highest aspirations and with the cosmic plan.
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The Aquarium Strategy
Networking in every way
possible. No rules.
-
Membership
Everyone who wants to
participate and a few select individuals who don’t want to
participate but are deemed useful by
Dan T. Smith.
Go Back
Navigating The
Eschaton
The best strategy is a self-fulfilling
prophecy
(Repent! The End is at hand! Or so
they said..., the prophets of old that is.
The complete
postmodern prophet will need a bit more sophistication, and
perhaps a website. )
Given that our world is not a physical
object, it is then a manifestation of spirit, including ours in
particular. The state of the human spirit will be manifested in the
world. If we want to transform the world we must transform our
spirit, our minds. What we truly believe about the future is what
will come to pass.
The future will be our self-fulfilled prophecy,
whether we want it to be or no.
Navigating the eschaton
The eschaton is something to be avoided and something to be courted.
It is a virtual
singularity of human consciousness marking the end
of the historical epoch. In itself it is a neutral event, one to be
reckoned with. It is a point of leverage for wielding the human
spirit.
History has been our long march into the thrall of a ’material’
world. What started as an amalgam of tribal dreamtimes has been
forged on the template of Gaia, into a rigid, unforgiving reality.
The eschaton will be an unraveling of that reality, more of less
under our control.
Hopefully our world will unravel from its fringes, leaving an intact
inertial center as a source of stability. By fringe, I am referring
to the fringes of consciousness. Our world making will be carried
out in altered states of consciousness, but gradually these altered
states will be integrated into what remains of our consensus waking
world.
There is a time frame for these events, and if we get too far ahead
or behind the invisible time line, there will be correctional forces
coming into play from the outside. It would be difficult, but if we
were to fall off the track entirely, it would ruin our whole day. We
would experience a real singularity of consciousness, rather than
just a virtual one.
By always maintaining a continuity of
consciousness we prevent the destructive discontinuities or
singularities from entering directly into the public sphere.
New worlds for old
Once we are safely past our close encounter with the eschaton, which
might transpire over ’decades’ of our present time, we will find
that our reality has been made rather more supple by the ’tidal’
forces of the eschaton. This will be our new ’dreamtime.’ We will be
building new realities out of old, using ’technologies’ that are
infused with our spirit.
These new worlds will never become as rigid as this one has. As
our
spiritual path accelerates, there will not be time for the
structures or vehicles to become fixed, nor will the boundaries ever
be clearly defined.
Let it be clear that the metaphors of space and time that are used
in describing the world after the eschaton, are only metaphors.
History will be a thing of the ’past’!
Go Back
Our Present Situation - On the Doorstep of The Eschaton
Although we spend most of our time profitably engaged with the
immediate concerns of everyday life, more and more of us are
becoming aware of a pervasive and deepening sense of anxiety that is
clouding our horizon.
Even the ending of the cold war, an apparent
booming economy and our new commitments to protecting our
environment and establishing a new world order have done little to
relieve this subliminal sense of crisis.
With this undefined unease there is the accompanying realization
that we are approaching what many feel will be the most significant
events in human history. For some the sources of this belief can be
traced to the many historical prophecies concerning the end of the
world, but even those who choose to discount these predictions
recognize that there are a number of powerful trends manifest in
modern society and that these trends all seem to be leading us to
some final event.
We at the Aquarium believe that human society is indeed on the
doorstep of the eschaton. We also believe that this event will
represent both a frightening challenge and a great opportunity for
society as a whole and each of us as individuals.
We invite you to
further explore our present situation
Go Back
Logic 101
Back to the
Future - the Re-enchantment of the World
There was a time when the modern scientific cosmology was
emerging that it was capable of striking terror into the hearts of
thoughtful people.
The idea that life was an accident in a
meaningless universe, and that the earth was a barely a speck of
dust lost in the immensities of space and time, is anything but a
cozy idea. But we seem to have gotten used to it, and it is
difficult for us now to recall that initial terror.
Now, in the face of another disrupting change of world views, we may
once again experience the terror of the unknown, but let us remind
ourselves that life will go on, albeit in forms and contexts that we
might not readily recognize.
Just as we were getting used to the idea of being left alone in the
universe to our own devices, we awaken from our slumber of
materialism to a world that is vastly more mysterious and complex
than science was leading us to believe.
Moreover it is a world
haunted by myriad, barely concealed intelligences with unknown
designs on our own existence.
Taking the world for Granite
Science would have us take a lot of things for granted,
but everything is up for grabs when we wake up to the fact that
everything is much more like a dream world than it is like an
absolute object. But, of course, nothing about the world will change
unless we change our minds.
Changing our minds will have to be our
first order of business.
Proof?
It is fair to ask how we can know what is the true nature
of reality. Immaterialism will win the metaphysical contest largely
be default. The incoherence of materialism and dualism will make
those views relatively unacceptable. There is a coherence to
materialism, but it is a coherence that is abstract and theoretical
that can hardly be sustained outside the lecture hall. Its
conceptual rigidity make is vulnerable to even the slightest
incursions of what may be wild or weird in the world.
The original novelty and shock value of materialism has long since
worn off. Our minds now easily wander past its very narrow confines.
Ironically it is the psychological and even spiritual allures of
virtual reality and cyberspace that can be seen as the last hurrah
of materialism. Technology has sewn the seeds of its own
transcendence, just as it was destined to do.
It is not the abstract proofs which will carry the day.
At the end
of the day, it is our spirits that will lead us to our next
challenges, guide us to our next high frontiers.
Onward to Mysticism?
No!! Rationality begins and ends with our own minds.
If
the world is to be rational, then it must be of, for and by
ourselves and other spiritual beings of similar nature. This is our
only guarantee that there is an ultimate, comprehensible truth. At
this point, one can easily hear the snickering from the cynics in
the back benches. How long have we to wait for the final revelation,
they might wonder. Only a few seconds....
The ultimate truth can only be love, what else could possibly make
any sense. If in the final exam for Logic 101 or for any other
course, you dare to write just that one word, you will get an A+,
guaranteed. Everything else is fear, loathing and cynicism.
How can I know this? How can I believe it?
There is nothing else
that is worth believing, and there really is nothing else to believe
except a lot of mental abstractions. There is a hierarchy of things,
emotions and ideas, and all you have to do is stop to reflect for a
few moments to realize what must lie at the top of that heap. There
really is no middle ground.
We can choose love or we can choose the
void.
The Logic of the World
A world composed of atomic stuff in the void can,
sometimes, make a lot of sense until we realize that we are not
compelled to believe it. We can be sane and not believe in atomic
physics, although there are many pressures to sustain the modernist,
naive realist consensus. But these pressures continue to diminish,
mainly from boredom from within that regimen.
If logic cannot be posited in the atoms or the void, then the only
other place for it is in our minds. Our minds are then microcosms
reflecting the cosmic spirit. We are sparks off of that block. This
is beginning and end of all knowledge, of gnosis.
One might suppose that there could be something other, something out
there radically alien to anything we can know or imagine. What is to
prevent this something from crashing into us and upsetting our cozy
little cosmos.
Well, in some sense, that alien ’asteroid’ is what the eschaton is,
relative to our present slumber of materialism. It is our wakeup
call. But it is not alien. It serves only to waken us to the true
and deeper nature of ourselves and the world. It is we who have
become the aliens. We have become alienated from our true selves and
from the truth of the world.
The rest of this cosmology is to be taken in the light of the
eschaton waking us to the truth that has been with us from the
beginning. You know it when you feel it. You feel it when you see
it. To participate in truth, all you have to do is be a little more
reflective, a little less grasping of all those half truths that do
not finally amount to anything but a big abstraction.
We are the logic, we are the LOGOS of this world. It is our story to
tell, no one else’s.
Go Back
Cosmology 101
What must the
world be if it is to be understood?
Perhaps the most mysterious thing about the world is the
amazing degree to which we have been able to understand and
manipulate it with our science and technology.
We have come a long
way from the primordial muck that is supposed to be our point of
origin.
-
How did we ever manage to get to the point where we can even
wonder about these larger questions?
-
How much further might we
progress in spiritual or material evolution?
-
Is there anything
special about the world that makes life and consciousness possible?
When physicists ask themselves these questions, the best they can do
is to posit an
Anthropic Principle.
What you must be to understand the world
But the truth is that physicists do not get paid to ask
such questions, no one does.
Asking questions for which a given
culture does not have adequate answers is a threat to the
continuation of that culture. If an unanswerable question cannot be
ridiculed, then it may signal the end of the culture that spawned
it.
These larger questions are ridiculously easy to answer, if we only
allow ourselves the freedom and confidence to do so. These are
states of mind which most cultures, especially in their terminal
phase, will find suspicious if not actually subversive. The upshot
is that even before you can ask a serious question about ourselves
or the world, you must be willing to entertain some of the notions
of eschatology.
You must be willing to undergo an enlightenment that will appear
apocalyptic from a cultural perspective. To maintain a state of
gnosis or knowingness will surely cast you into a terminal struggle
with the homeys in the ’hood. You become a prophet, or you go back
to pumping gas.
I cannot recommend either alternative.
What is there to know?
Mercifully, knowledge is limited to whatever is essential
in the given context. We know that the world is a product and
reflection of intelligence and so are we.
There is a meaning and
purpose to all of this, that is revealed at the end, or to those who
put themselves at the end of the world, like right here chez Dan.
From where do we come? Whither do we go?
Being located in space and time is a temporary and
necessary illusion, if you will.
This is not to say the the world is
unreal, but only that it is not an ultimate reality. Ultimate
reality is from where we come, and to which we return, that is our
only certainty in existence. Only when we experience ultimate
reality will we comprehend the present degree of our
unconsciousness.
In order for us to be lost in space and time, as we are, we must
temporarily forget our true natures. We are given to remember only
when there is a need.
Timing
Waking up is all a question of timing, and so, of course,
is the end of the world.
When you awaken, you can only wonder when
the rest of the world will follow. Are you and I just isolated
incidents, or part of a final preparation? The only way to find out
is to see how other people respond when confronted with apocalyptic
information.
The Web surrounding Dan’s Place certainly provides a
new type of venue for acting out the end of the world.
From where comes spirit? - Cosmogony
If everything derives from a great spirit or cosmic mind,
is it illegitimate to wonder where that spirit comes from? Only
partly so. Spirit exists beyond space and time, so to speaking of
beginnings is only metaphorical.
Think of the primordial chaos, but not as an objective chaos as in
science or in the Bible. This is a subjective, experiential chaos,
where all possible experience happens at once, in some virtual
manner. (This is similar to the quantum vacuum state in physics.)
Out of this chaos emerges an ordering principle, not unlike love,
which serves as a virtual, hyperdimensional attractor in the
manifold of all experience.
The experiences that coalesce around the attractor become the
experiences of spirits in worlds. As these spirits learn to
’conspire,’ the attractor becomes the great spirit or cosmic mind
that we call God. All lesser spirits come from and eventually become
this greater spirit. There is a constant cycling and renewal as with
the yin and yang within the Tao.
Our world constituted of human history and consciousness is one a
many ’bootstraps’ which in turn constitute the self-recreation of
the great spirit.
So much for our cosmogony.
Cosmic politics - the prime directive
The prime directive comes from Star Trek, or so I am
told. It is a statement of a cosmic policy of non-interference
between worlds that are at different stages of their history.
This
is the approach of the anthropologist in studying an alien culture.
It is not the approach of the missionary.
Open communication between worlds occurs only when both parties are
willing and ready to participate. All other communication is either
illicit or occurs in a fashion that is sufficiently ambiguous so as
to preserve the directive. The communications that allegedly
constitute the origins of most religions would be in the latter
category, presumably. The various paranormal experiences of
individuals could be in either category.
The natural result of such a directive would be that besides the
communicating groups of ’advanced’ worlds, there would also be a
collection of less ’developed’ worlds, such as our own, under
varying degrees of quarantine.
Each of these worlds represents an
essential element in the cosmic cycle of creation and recreation,
and so each has its own destiny to fulfill. Nonetheless,
matriculation into cosmic communication is likely to be the most
dramatic point in the history of any world. After that point, the
concepts of history and of space and time take on very different
meanings.
This public opening to cosmic communication and consciousness would
be an essential component of the apocalypse that is our impending
eschaton.
Go Back
The Aquarium Rationale
The eschaton is the problem - The Aquarium
is the solution
The aquarium preempts the eschaton.
We transform the eschaton into a transcendental opportunity. The world will not end
because the world has already been saved. The aquarium saves the
world by reminding the world, in a novel fashion, that it has
already been saved two thousand years ago. The aquarium is the
second coming, for all practical purposes. The aquarium walks softly
and carries a big eschaton. This second offer of salvation is the
offer that the world cannot and will not refuse.
This is a very pragmatic idealism. Reasoned negotiation is our
strategy. We prophesy the inevitable. The spiritual revolution will
be played out here in cyberspace before anyone has a chance to pick
up a rock to throw through a window.
In this revolution, I am the good cop and my buddy Ron, the spook,
is the bad cop. We conspire to place ourselves between the world and
the eschaton. We also place ourselves between cosmic intelligence
and central intelligence. To do our jobs we do not have to be or
become anything, we merely have to hang out here at the end of the
world, thereby being the fulcrum which Archimedes sought.
This is no harder or easier than any other job. We merely
demonstrate how all of us are in the right place at the right time,
for the final few who do not already know that.
The aquarium does not have to make a splash. The right pebble at the
right time in the cyberpond will send out the ripple that people
will feel when they need to feel.
The whole pond will be the
aquarium, a conspiracy without a secret or a boundary.
A Glitch in Time...
All of history can be seen as a preparation for our
impending close encounter with the eschaton.
As the event draws
nearer, the preparations become more obvious. Of particular concern
in this regard is the likelihood of a strong negative reaction from
this world’s power structure. This would have been the case if there
had not been a preemptive move on the part of the higher powers.
A compelling scenario for this preemption comes in the form of a
trojan horse visitation directed particularly at the
military-industrial complex of the U.S. Something like this has
certainly become an icon of popular culture, and at the end of the
day, what may have actually happened will be a moot point, relative
to what could have happened or what people believe, or what the
authorities come to believe may have happened. Having a literalist
frame of mind is useful in the hard sciences, but often not in the
soft sciences.
The higher powers look for the meanest dog in town and send it a
gift horse in the form of an exotic package that will confound all
the kings men as they try to reassemble it. They cannot swallow it,
nor can they spit it out. They are left with a funny looking
visiting sage who lectures to them at his leisure about the finer
points of cosmic etiquette.
The junkyard dog learns table manners in
the privacy of his own dog house.
Enter, the aquarium...
No! Enter,
the aviary.
Find yourself in the bowels of the
cold war machine, in the belly of the beast. I spy? No, Psi Spy. It
is cheap and dirty, and the occasional spectacular hit provides a
few new kids, the aviary, with an enter up to the window of the dog
house. They caught a whiff of the weird and just followed their
noses. They are allowed to press their noses against the glass. They
see a funny looking guy surrounded by grown men who are crying, but
now house broken, nonetheless. The Grown Men, The Kids, and finally
El Nino...
It’s deja vu all over again. Herod’s henchmen have been
temporarily neutralized. Along comes the aquarium, tripping through
the tulips, and muttering things eschatological. We are not given
enter to the privy chamber, but we can mingle with the homeys in the
hood and on the Hill.
Anything more, by way of access, would probably violate the prime
directive. Salvation comes from within, spontaneously, and the most
we can expect is to be allowed to prime that spiritual pump, having
been indirectly set up by the aforementioned cosmic glitch. The
aquarium is opportunist, looking to be in that certain place at the
certain time.
Dan’s place?
And where is the proof?
The proof is in your head and in your heart.
That is
where it will be when you feel an urge to look for it. We have been
looking for truth in all the wrong places, through telescopes and
through microscopes. We can only wander so far into the cosmos
before we see Friday’s footprints leading back to our own souls,
thus completing the sojourn of history. That is the apocalypse when
the heavens fall and become the new heaven and new earth, ourselves
at the helm.
Our lower powers break the illusion of separation becoming one with
the higher power. That is what our starry messenger came to tell us.
That is what I pass on to you. You want it from the horse’s mouth.
That is what I and now you are.
There is no hurry, we have all the
time in the world.
Go Back
The Aquarium Conspiracy
by Dan Smith and Rosemary Ellen Guiley
"In the beginning there was
eschatology--the branch of theology dealing with the end times.
Dan, having spent many years first studying physics and then
metaphysics, came to the conclusion that the scientists have
been looking at the world upside down. Mind, not matter,
is the
foundation for all realities. Moreover, the materialist paradigm
was in danger of imminent collapse, being subverted on the
inside by its own contradictions, and on the outside by the
growing body of evidence for the paranormal.
Creating and maintaining a reality is no easy game. It requires
a lot of magic, and a lot of conscious critters like ourselves
who are pretty good at collective self-deception. Fortunately--
or perhaps unfortunately--our particular reality game has about
reached its natural conclusion, and we are waking up to the fact
that mind and matter are not separate. We are undergoing an
exciting but stressful revolution in our collective
consciousness.
This revolution, or global spiritual emergency,
will bring upheavals and overloads in our global consciousness
that will impact the material Earth for better or worse, and may
quickly get out of control. We also will be opening up to other
realities that will be impacting us as well. Our present very
tidy sense of reality and its boundaries is due to become much
more fluid and permeable. Every spiritual tradition takes very
seriously its
prophesies about the end of the world, but for the
first time we are seeing these prophesies turning into
believable predictions of earth and reality changes.
That is how Dan fell from physics into eschatology. After
experiencing numerous slammed doors among his former scientific
colleagues, he decided that the most logical place to find
fellow eschatologists would be in various intelligence agencies
and among investigators of the paranormal. Dan next addressed
how to communicate about the eschaton.
Even a small hint that
the government is worried about the end of the world might start
a chain reaction of panic, which could possibly serve as a
trigger for the eschaton. On the other hand, people inside the
government might be wanting to set up a kind of civil defense
network vis a vis the eschaton, and so they would be looking for
people on the outside who could much more freely network among
the general public.
An important link in the communication chain is what has become
known as the Aviary. This is the final link next to the public
network, and so it must be heavily disguised by its own
surrealistic smoke screen. The Aviary functions best by
amplifying people’s own misconceptions about the paranormal. It
does this by helping to over-inflate individual pieces of the
puzzle so that particular investigators get pushed further into
their own blind alleys.
People are encouraged to be so
distracted by the trees that they fail to see the forest. This
cacophony by people looking for truth in all the strangest
places provides an excellent cover for the deadly serious
business of clearing the decks and battening down the hatches
for the eschaton event. It is like a Manhattan Project going on
behind the scenes of alien grays and praying mantises having sex
with humans.
However, this eschaton conspiracy is being orchestrated by
higher powers, and we don’t mean the Committee of 300. Very few
of the people even near the center of the orchestration have a
clear picture of what is coming down, but they do know that
something is coming and that they will have front row seats.
The
Manhattan Project relative to the eschaton is a global civilian
network of people who will serve as a lightning rod for the
cosmic energies coming in during the consciousness revolution.
They will be looking to channel these energies into expanded
realities. Thus, they will provide a degree of protection for
those people who can find their places alongside the network.
Outside of the network there will be greater levels of trauma
and confusion. The pieces of the network are already in place,
the remaining task is to properly activate and link the pieces
into a critical mass of awareness. This last step is now
underway. This is how an Aviary helps to spawn an Aquarium, and
how birds learn to swim.
The Aquarium is our business, and we
are working to reach people who are ready to be activated in the
consciousness revolution."
Go Back
Synopses of some Basic Concepts
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Anthropic
Principle
This really just describes the intuition that our
world is special in a way that makes our existence possible.
There might have been no world, or it might have been different
in a way that would have made life or consciousness impossible.
When physicists look at this world, they are impressed by the
fact that even slight variations in otherwise arbitrary physical
laws would radically alter the attributes of the world. It seems
either obvious or likely that most of those alternative worlds
would not be amenable to any for of life.
Thus in modern physics, we are being pushed to once again
consider the problem of design or teleology, that was supposed
to have been put to rest by the Theory of Evolution. Not!!
-
Cosmology
The Big Bang and Unified Field theories will remain as a
convenient way to systematize the physical appearance of the
world. At a deeper level, we will come to understand that these
’physical’ appearances were a logical way for the cosmic
intelligence to separate and conceal itself from us creatures.
As scientists do their theorizing and ’discovering’ they are
actually participating in the manifestation of the cosmic
template that is also embedded in the microcosms of our
individual minds.
From our mythic, dreamtime origins, it was our continued
participation in this mythos that has gradually imposed the
present degree of detail and constancy that is the delight of
scientists. It is us creatures who have fleshed out the template
of our world that resides in the mind of the universal spirit.
But now we are destined to become conscious co-creators of new
realities with new templates.
-
Dualism
Spirit/Matter or Mind/Brain dualism was introduced by
Rene
Descartes (1596-1650), the French philosopher.
It is the view
that the world is composed of two distinct substances: mind and
matter. Matter is distinguished by having the attributes of
spatial location and extension. Mind, on the other hand, has
only the attribute of thought.
Since the time of Descartes, science has done its utmost to
eliminate the mental or subjective aspect of reality. However,
within the ’Consciousness Movement’ there are now a number of
scholars who are using ’quantum dualism’ to revive the Cartesian
dichotomy.
Nonetheless, history has shown Cartesian dualism to be an
unworkable and incoherent compromise between the monistic
philosophies of materialism and immaterialism, in my opinion.
-
History
A distinction may be made between history proper and
pre-history, history proper being recorded human history.
The
recorded history of human consciousness can be ascribed a
reality greater than that of dinosaurs or the Big Bang, in my
opinion. Pre-history existed as a mythic dreamtime where time
and space take on a very fluid character. One does not have to
draw a line of demarcation between these two epochs. The one can
be seen to blend into the other.
Another consideration is the teleology of history.
The eschaton becomes the primary ordering principle of history,
and is the final cause par excellence. The paradigm inversion
suggests that the eschaton may replace the Big Bang as the
primary ’causative’ agent in shaping our world and history. The
meaning of Human History will be finally understood in the
realization and the light of the eschaton.
-
Immaterialism & Idealism
The history of philosophy and of ideas in general may
be understood as a prolonged argument with the tendency we all
have to embrace a common sense form of naive realism.
Science also takes the world as brute object, but it is far from
naive and far from decided as to what might actually be out
there. Immaterialism is a direct inversion of the scientific and naive
tendency to objectify the world as existing independent of all
consciousness or intelligence.
Idealism, in its Western, Platonic versions, tends to objectify
preexistent, transcendental ideas as the ultimate source of all
order in the world.
In contrast, the immaterialism that I
espouse is rather more pragmatic and process oriented, in the
sense of A. N. Whitehead.
-
Paradigm
Inversion
Science could be right about all its facts, but still be wrong
about the nature of reality. Instead of our minds being an
epiphenomenon of a material world, it is entirely possible that
our world is a construct of cosmic intelligence, of which we are
an integral part.
The practical question is whether this cosmological gestalt
switch in our world view can be made without serious
disorientation, particularly within the academic and religious
communities.
Using the internet to its utmost would be one way
to both expedite and soften the impact of this Paradigm
Inversion.
-
Teleology
Teleology and eschatology are inseparable doctrines, in my
estimation. The ’final cause’ of teleology is located in the
dynamic of the eschaton of history. Teleology holds that
meaning, purpose and design exist in all things. This would not
be possible if human history did not have a conclusion or goal.
History, in order to be a meaningful story must have a
beginning, middle and end. This simple insight is the genius of
the Western prophetic tradition.
The idea that there is an arrow of time that moves in a linear
fashion actually derives from the prophetic tradition. But it
was 19th century physics that attempted to make this
over into an objective abstraction transcending the phenomenon
of history. The idea of an absolute, objective time and space
are conceptual traps from which physics in the 20th
century has been struggling to free itself.
Next to the problem of mind, the problem of time and
causality
has provided metaphysicians with the greatest perplexities. For
instance it is not at all clear whether time depends on
causality or vice versa.
This is only to say that there is
plenty of room for other than initial material causes in the
greater scheme of things, as long as we are willing to forego
the oversimplifications of a prior century.
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Glossary
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Epiphenomenon - An
accidental byproduct or mere symptom other more fundamental
processes. Such phenomena occur without any consequences of
their own.
-
eschaton (ES-ka-ton) - A
dramatic transformation of reality from what we know or
imagine it to be. Literally, the end of the world.
-
Naive realism - This is
the usually unarticulated belief that the world exists as a
brute fact, just as we naively see and think it to be.
-
Noosphere (NEW-sphere) -
The present and future mental extension of the Biosphere.
-
Teilhard (TAY-yar) - Pierre Teilhard de Cardin (1881-1955). French Jesuit priest,
paleontologist, and philosopher/mystic. Coined the term Noosphere.
-
Teleology - The doctrine
of final causes. The understanding that purpose and design
exist in the natural order of things.
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