Pre-existence
Scientific God Journal, June 2012, Vol. 3 No. 5
ZERO-SUM GAME
Pre-Physical-Existence & Psychophysical Reality
By Iona Miller, 2012
Abstract:
The whole of physics is predicated on the primacy of Nothing, multidimensional opposites space. The premise is metasymmetry, a self-consistent and unassuming notion which yields only zero-sum statements. Therefore, a theory of everything (TOE) also defines a theory of nothing (TON). What does pre-physical-existence mean in a largely material physics tuned to the meta-physics of the intangible? To be an accurate description of reality, a theory of everything must necessarily include consciousness. The turn-over of matter in the body means there is no single, stable structure over time -- just a duration of consciousness, pure disembodied information.
Consciousness is mediated by the entire cortex, so no single gestalt contains the entire envelope of experience. The turn-over of matter in the body means there is no single, stable structure over time--just a duration of consciousness, virtually disembodied information or vacuum energy. Physical matter is actually is nothing but energy and equivalent to light, which resides outside of space and time, therefore, matter = energy = stabilized light. Light and consciousness are virtually interchangeable. Universe is comprised consciousness which manifests itself in infinite physical and nonphysical forms and fields. Experience, as well as its interpretations, may be encoded in a field, but a computed model of the natural world and the natural world are not the same thing.
Key Words: vacuum, void, consciousness, psychophysical, preexistence, mindbody, kabbalah, negative existence, pre-spacetime, soul, panpsychism, massless spinfields, worldview, imagery, relativity, disembodied knowledge, non-spatial, non-temporal.
At first, I was iridescent; then, I became transparent; finally, I was absent. Starship
The ignorant man goes no further than the concept of God as an old man with a long beard who sat on a golden throne and gave orders for creation. The scientist will go back a little further before he is compelled to draw a veil called the ether; and the philosopher will go yet further before he draws a veil called the Absolute; but the initiate will go back furthest of all because he has learnt to do his thinking in symbols, and symbols are to the mind what tools are to the hand –an extended application of its powers. ... (Esotericists) do not try to explain to the mind that which the mind is not equipped to deal with; they give it a series of symbols to meditate upon, and these enable it to build the staircase of realization step by step and to climb where it cannot fly. The mind can no more grasp transcendental philosophy than the eye can see music. --Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah, 1935, pp. 30-31, 29
...we are not concerned here with a philosophical, much less a religious, concept of the soul, but with the psychological recognition of the existence of a semiconscious psychic complex, having partial autonomy of function, [anima].-- C.G. Jung, TWO ESSAYS.
The soul loses its psychological vision in the abstract literalisms of the spirit as well as in the concrete literalisms of the body. --James Hillman, RE-VISIONING PSYCHOLOGY
Psychic and somatic symptoms express the soul's painful wounds and obstructions. The rational mind is incapable of deciding what is best for the soul. The mind can discover what is needed only by listening to and reflecting upon the subtle movement of the soul as it expresses itself in bodily sensations, feelings, emotions, images, ideas, and dreams. --Robert M. Stein, "BODY AND PSYCHE"
The Immortality Potential expressed as The Ancient One/Blue Dragon, called Pre-Existence,
The serpentine Sine Wave, All Light Is Pre-Existant.
The Blue Dragon is the Feminine Aspect of the Initial Impetus of Creation (Seed/Egg of Local Universe).
The serpentine Sine Wave, All Light Is Pre-Existant.
The Blue Dragon is the Feminine Aspect of the Initial Impetus of Creation (Seed/Egg of Local Universe).
Introduction: Psychophysical Problem
Each and every moment is the edge of history, emerging into manifestation. What came before existence? Pre-existence? If so, what could the possible nature of such a state be? This is the age-old metaphysical, philosophical, psychological and scientific conundrum. The phrase "out of nothing" is best understood as "out of non-being" or "out of invisible”.
Is there existence separate from the molecular structure of the body? Such age-old questions kick open the depth dimension of spirituality and religion. The Ancestors go back to the beginning of our existence itself. Just as we go back to the beginning of existence. The soul is part of the psychophysical unity of man – body and soul, which harbors emotions, feelings and desires. So, the problem of unrestrained human fecundity combined with material desires and resource consumption is a soulful problem of the whole organism, species and planet.
Andromeda, nearly double the size of the Milky Way, is on a head-on collision course with our local galaxy. As the two galaxies destroy one another, they reform into one new larger galaxy. The process repeats the endless cycles of the primordial serpent that swallows its own tail in Creation. Even the Universe seems to be consuming itself, which raises some issues, surrounding the leitmotif of creation and destruction and the conservation of energy.
The Importance of Consciousness
The uncertainty principle is built into the fabric of reality, but being observer based it only makes sense from our biocentric perspective. We simply cannot measure all the properties of interacting waves and particles. Matter doesn’t seem to care what we decide to measure.
In the double-slit experiment we watch a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier. It behaves like a particle and creates solid-looking hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that measures the impacts. Logically, we expect it to pass through one hole or the other. But without observation of the particle’s trajectory, it exhibits wave-like behavior and seem to pass through both holes simultaneously. Does our observation really change what happens?
Testing the role of our consciousness in that process remains elusive because of the ultimately subjective nature of our perceptions. Naturally, we wouldn’t exist without various forms of consciousness and awareness, some of which make us unique.
Dr. Robert Lanza thinks we do not die because we are not objects, but special beings. In his biocentric theory, nothing can exist without consciousness. Space and time are not hard objects, but the tools our mind uses to weave everything together. Everything we see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in the mind in the domains of space and time.
This idea is arguably a stripped down version of a notion proposed as the Physics of Immortality by Frank Tipler in the mid-90s. He tried to use scientific principles to describe the existence of God and the likelihood of reincarnation, again with the arguments of energy conservation. He failed to persuade the scientific community with his emotionally appealing notion which still provides food for thought as science evolves.
Lanza claims, “Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.” He cites Albert Einstein’s statement, "Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one." How can we tell what is real and not?
How can we with certainty know that our brain is not giving us the illusion of a physical world? In the weird world of quantum mechanics we can’t know for sure because of the uncertainty principle or wave-particle duality. Our perceptions filter reality and some claim theoretically change it retroactively, at least potentially. Physics begins to look more like philosophy when applied to ourselves and the great questions of existence. Neurology attempts to solve the problem from the bottom-up through brain function, but there is no consensus in either life sciences or physics about the role of consciousness. Any “Theory of Everything” must face the challenge of deciphering its role in the Cosmos and our being.
Phase Transition
Kowall derives a holographic theory in which he likens existence to a virtual reality. Other models of a holographic universe were proposed by David Bohm and others, but this one claims to unite the quantum world with relativity theory. In The World as Virtual Reality he argues as follows:
“Some sort of complex information processing occurs in the brain. The result of that information processing is mental imagination. We not only perceive external sensory perceptions of the world and internal emotional perceptions of the body, but we also perceive forms of mental imagination in the form of memories and thoughts. In some sense, memory is only possible since mental images are held in mental imagination over a sequence of mental events. That holding of images in mental imagination only arises from coherent organization, as the form of those images is self-replicated in form over a sequence of events. That self-replication of form is inherently a body-based process.
The form of a body is self-replicated over a sequence of events. Self-replication of body form is called body survival. Self-replication of body form only arises from coherent organization, as the form of the body holds together as a bound state of information, just like the animated form of a computer generated body image on a viewing screen.
Self-replication of body form is possible due to the second law. Any form self-replicated in form over a sequence of events arises due to coherent organization. In the sense of thermodynamics, that form is self-replicated in the same coherently organized phase of organization. Self-replication of form is a thermodynamic process that gives rise to the same macroscopic form of something even as the microscopic details change. If we only observe the macroscopic appearance, we don't observe the microscopic details. In the sense of quantum theory, a macroscopic form arises from microscopic states that give rise to the same macroscopic appearance. A change in the macroscopic form of something is called a phase transition. All phase transitions are examples of symmetry breaking.”(Kowall)
Our notions of time and space are becoming more malleable. Jay Olson and Timothy Ralph, made a discovery in quantum physics, having to do with quantum entanglement, that may permit a form of "teleportation in time”.
“Another way of describing what happens is that the particle becomes stored in a disembodied way between the vacuum entanglement and the classic message, then is reconstructed at the future time. In other words, now you see it, now you don't, then you see it again. . . If you call it time travel, it is time travel to the future, which is allowed by relativity," Ralph said. He describes his technique as a form of “quantum teleportation” that only works for quantum particles and only forward in time. (Adhikari) Such anomalies suggest gaps in our understanding.
Unus Mundus
Perhaps it is time for a critical design review of both our philosophy and physics. It may be more accurate to conceive of soul as psyche, not as identical with spirit, but with psychophysical existence – even the World Soul or Anima Mundi, which unites psyche and matter. The doctrine of a world-soul in a highly abstract form appears as early as the eighth century BCE, described as "the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower, the Eternal in which space is woven and which is woven in it.
The psychology of the scientific process may be reflected in the material world. New terms are required to describe the quasi-physical domain of preexistence and how it permeates our psychophysical unus mundus, a body-centered imagination. The essence of the whole person is one’s essential nature. Soul or psyche mediates spirit and matter. But science excludes the material aspects of psyche. They re-appear as anomalous experience and cognition – the edge or frontier of experience as well as science. Inner spirit is self-revelatory gnosis.
“Living On the Edge”: Frontier Science, "The Edge of Exact Sciences"
David L Miller suggests, “In his book The Work of the Negative, André Green speaks about psychoanalysis as edge-work. His last chapter, entitled "On the Edge," urges psychoanalysts not to think of their discipline and their practice in a one-sided way: it is neither a science, on the one hand, nor an art, a philosophy, or a religion, on the other. Psychoanalysis, both as a theory and as a practice, is constantly -- Green argues -- on an edge between science and philosophy (Green, 1999).”
Iona Miller and Fred Graywolf Swinney argued for creative edge-work rooted in complex dynamics in experiential psychotherapy as early as 1993 in Chaosophy 93. The leading edge of unfolding transitions is poised between the demise of one modality of meaning and prior to the coming of a new one. It may be related to “the creative edge of chaos” in chaos theory and complexity.
Helene Lorenz had in 1997, in a most remarkable, and too little noticed, book on the relation of complexity theory to depth psychology, pointed to the importance of the "edges of chaos" in the analytic experience (Lorenz, 1997, chaps. 7 & 8). It is, Lorenz argues, at the "edges of chaos" that "complex adaptive systems [like the Self] begin to evolve" (p. 112), i.e., individuation takes place at a psychic edge. More recently, in an article in Spring, Giegerich has argued that the interiorized boundary of the soul is the experience of its not having a boundary (Giegerich, 1998, pp. 16-17). In my terms, this is psyche's edge. David Miller goes on to suggest, “Perhaps depth psychology should have been called edge psychology, if only to avoid the soul and spirit, anima and animus, depth and height awkwardness of vertical binarisms and split-syzygies.” (Miller)
"Holism reunites the organism once divided by the dualism of a worldview that soul separated from the body. In 1950 Wolfgang Pauli write, "Both of us [Pauli and Jung] seem to agree that the future of Jung's ideas is not with psychotherapy ... but with a unitarian, holistic concept of nature and the position of man in it." (Wolfgang Pauli to Markus Fierz, 1950)
In a transcendental view, the soul exists on a spiritual plane, a recognized spiritual element. Soul or psyche is the vital force of Consciousness, both formative and experiential as primordial awareness.
Only the soul restores the core elements of the body, transcending the dichotomy of outer and inner Universe. A complete description of nature would include both psyche and matter. Even science is a qualitative and symbolic description of nature. Quantum theory is deeply rooted in psychophysical experience.
Being represents Life and Consciousness. Without life and consciousness there is neither being nor becoming. Knowing Itself is Being, knowing Itself as the creator and the created.
The Immortality Potential expressed as the Ancient One/Blue Dragon is Pre-Existence, the serpentine Sine Wave, Limitless Preexistent Light. The Blue Dragon is the feminine aspect of the initial impetus of Creation (The Seed/Egg of local Universe).
Andromeda is near double the size of the Milky Way, and is on a head-on collision course with this local galaxy. The two Galaxies will destroy each other, and reform into one new larger galaxy. Everything is predatorial (Serpent Who Swallows It's Own Tail) in Creation.
Pre-physical-existence
Plato's idea of the preexistence and eternity of the soul, derived from his dualistic outlook, set matter and spirit at odds with one another. The Platonic doctrine tended to an extreme Transcendentalism. Soul and body are distinct orders of reality, and bodily existence involves a kind of violence to the higher part of our composite nature. The body is the "prison", the "tomb", or even, as some later Platonists expressed it, the "hell" of the soul.
In Aristotle this error is avoided. His definition of the soul as "the first entelechy of a physical organized body potentially possessing life" emphasizes the closeness of the union of soul and body. The difficulty in his theory is to determine what degree of distinctness or separateness from the matter of the body is to be conceded to the human soul. He fully recognizes the spiritual element in thought and describes the "active intellect" (nous poetikos) as "separate and impassible", but the precise relation of this active intellect to the individual mind is a hopelessly obscure question in Aristotle's psychology. (Catholic Encyclopedia)
However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same. What, however, is the potentiality of human beings? For Aristotle this question turns out to be equivalent to asking what it is that is distinctive about human beings. In Aristotle's hierarchy of being, pure potentiality (“prime matter”) is at the bottom, pure actuality (Aristotle's God) is at the top. Formed matter (everything else, including our world) is in-between.
Origen of Alexandria's argument for the preexistence and eternity of the soul is heavily dependent on Platonism. Origen taught the pre-existence of the soul. Terrestrial life is a punishment and a remedy for prenatal sin. "Soul" is properly degraded spirit: flesh is a condition of alienation and bondage (cf. Comment. ad Romans 1:18). Spirit, however, finite spirit, can exist only in a body, albeit of a glorious and ethereal nature.
Neo-Platonism, which through St. Augustine contributed so much to spiritual philosophy, belongs to this period. Like Gnosticism, it uses emanations. The primeval and eternal One begets by emanation nous (intelligence); and from nous in turn springs psyche (soul), which is the image of nous, but distinct from it. Matter is a still later emanation. Soul has relations to both ends of the scale of reality, and its perfection lies in turning towards the Divine Unity from which it came. In everything, the neo-Platonist recognized the absolute primacy of the soul with respect to the body. Thus, the mind is always active, even in sense — perception — it is only the body that is passively affected by external stimuli. Similarly Plotinus prefers to say that the body is in the soul rather than vice versa: and he seems to have been the first to conceive the peculiar manner of the soul's location as an undivided and universal presence pervading the organism. (C.Encyc.)
In Judaism the conflict between flesh and spirit was far less radical than that of the Greeks, who viewed body and soul as an absolute dichotomy. Such a view implies a disembodied spirituality.
The "Book of Concealed Mystery" goes on to state that this "Equilibrium hangeth in that region which is negatively existent." What is negative existence? What is positive existence? The distinction between these two is another fundamental idea. To define negative existence clearly is impossible, for when it is distinctly defined it ceases to be negative existence; it is then negative existence passing into static condition. Therefore wisely have the Qabalists shut out from mortal comprehension the primal AIN, Ain, the negatively existent One, and the AIN SVP, Ain Soph, the limitless Expansion; while of even the AIN SVP AVR, Ain Soph Aur, the illimitable Light, only a dim conception can be formed.
The universe first appears as a point source of unfoldment–an unfoldment which occurs from within-without, out of the Infinite and into the Finite. A Point or infinitesimal Dot represents the “I”, and is rooted in the infinities of NEGATIVE EXISTENCE. As one approaches the “supernal point” from below, one encounters the abyss, which is a veil of ignorance or a “ring pass not,” beyond which the mind cannot penetrate. However the Knowers of Self can come to so penetrate the infinite and know God. (Zero Point)
The kabbalists--the medieval Jewish mystics--believed that human life, including the life of the soul, reflected and affected the divine world, the world of the sefirot: God's ten attributes or emanations. The soul, an instrument of perfection, goes through far-reaching corresponding transformations. The soul’s material and physical elements became highly developed in medieval thought, especially in the kabbalah. The "universal soul," was considered the "active intelligence," or God himself.
In later stages of development, the Jewish conception of the soul was influenced by Greek philosophical views, as these were reformulated and interpreted by the Moslem and Christian theologians of the Middle Ages. For the first time, Judaism viewed the doctrine of the soul as belonging to the realm of philosophy, and medieval Jewish thought made a unique attempt to adapt these philosophical views to the Torah and to make them a means for interpreting concepts relating to ethics, religious piety, prophecy, and the knowledge of God.
In the Sefer ha‑Bahir, the creation and the molding and sustenance of souls is bound up with an erotic myth that speaks of sexual union between cosmic entities in the world of the sefirot (divine emanations) and of the process of creation in general. The text alludes, in highly symbolic language, to a system that was further developed in the Zohar and other kabbalistic literature.
Three stages of development are discerned in the formation of souls: the ideal, the ontological, and the actual. These stages parallel both the processes of intercourse, pregnancy, and birth, by which the physical body comes into being, and the relationships between the sefirot in the supernal [i.e. divine] world.
The erotic symbolism by which the dynamic relationship between the various aspects of the divine is described in the kabbalistic system relates to the idea that the creation of souls takes place in connection with an act of cosmic union. In addition, it reflects deep religious implications regarding the exalted nature of the soul that were attached to human sexual union on account of its archetypal parallel in the supernal worlds.
The kabbalistic doctrine of the soul is based upon three fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of man: (1) the divine origin of the human soul; (2) the idea that man is structured in the image of the sefirot, and that his soul reflects the hierarchy of the supernatural worlds, and (3) the idea that man can influence the world of the divine.
The kabbalah borrowed the philosophical division of the soul into parts and superimposed a mystical quality upon it, contending that each part expressed a different sefirot.
Negative Existence, Realms of Non-Being and the Supernal Point
Each and every moment is the edge of history, emerging into manifestation. What came before existence? Pre-existence? If so, what could the possible nature of such a state be? This is the age-old metaphysical, philosophical, psychological and scientific conundrum. The phrase "out of nothing" is best understood as "out of non-being" or "out of invisible”.
Is there existence separate from the molecular structure of the body? Such age-old questions kick open the depth dimension of spirituality and religion. The Ancestors go back to the beginning of our existence itself. Just as we go back to the beginning of existence. The soul is part of the psychophysical unity of man – body and soul, which harbors emotions, feelings and desires. So, the problem of unrestrained human fecundity combined with material desires and resource consumption is a soulful problem of the whole organism, species and planet.
Andromeda, nearly double the size of the Milky Way, is on a head-on collision course with our local galaxy. As the two galaxies destroy one another, they reform into one new larger galaxy. The process repeats the endless cycles of the primordial serpent that swallows its own tail in Creation. Even the Universe seems to be consuming itself, which raises some issues, surrounding the leitmotif of creation and destruction and the conservation of energy.
- Is death just an illusion?
- Do we continue to live in a parallel Universe?
- Many scientific experiments that raise questions about the nature of death, as we know it.
- Quantum Mechanics is rooted in uncertainty and a range of possible observations each with a different probability.
- The "many-worlds" interpretation contends each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe, what is generally called the "multiverse". Your energy never dies.
- Death is nonexistent in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them.
- Although individual bodies are genetically programmed to self-destruct, the self-reflective 'Who am I?'- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy exchange in the brain. But this energy doesn't cease to exist at death. It is axiomatic that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed.
- This energy can potentially transcend from one domain to another.
- Death doesn’t exist in a timeless, spaceless world. There is no distinction between past, present, and future. It is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
- Reality seems to be a process mysteriously related to consciousness.
The Importance of Consciousness
The uncertainty principle is built into the fabric of reality, but being observer based it only makes sense from our biocentric perspective. We simply cannot measure all the properties of interacting waves and particles. Matter doesn’t seem to care what we decide to measure.
In the double-slit experiment we watch a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier. It behaves like a particle and creates solid-looking hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that measures the impacts. Logically, we expect it to pass through one hole or the other. But without observation of the particle’s trajectory, it exhibits wave-like behavior and seem to pass through both holes simultaneously. Does our observation really change what happens?
Testing the role of our consciousness in that process remains elusive because of the ultimately subjective nature of our perceptions. Naturally, we wouldn’t exist without various forms of consciousness and awareness, some of which make us unique.
Dr. Robert Lanza thinks we do not die because we are not objects, but special beings. In his biocentric theory, nothing can exist without consciousness. Space and time are not hard objects, but the tools our mind uses to weave everything together. Everything we see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in the mind in the domains of space and time.
This idea is arguably a stripped down version of a notion proposed as the Physics of Immortality by Frank Tipler in the mid-90s. He tried to use scientific principles to describe the existence of God and the likelihood of reincarnation, again with the arguments of energy conservation. He failed to persuade the scientific community with his emotionally appealing notion which still provides food for thought as science evolves.
Lanza claims, “Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.” He cites Albert Einstein’s statement, "Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one." How can we tell what is real and not?
How can we with certainty know that our brain is not giving us the illusion of a physical world? In the weird world of quantum mechanics we can’t know for sure because of the uncertainty principle or wave-particle duality. Our perceptions filter reality and some claim theoretically change it retroactively, at least potentially. Physics begins to look more like philosophy when applied to ourselves and the great questions of existence. Neurology attempts to solve the problem from the bottom-up through brain function, but there is no consensus in either life sciences or physics about the role of consciousness. Any “Theory of Everything” must face the challenge of deciphering its role in the Cosmos and our being.
Phase Transition
Kowall derives a holographic theory in which he likens existence to a virtual reality. Other models of a holographic universe were proposed by David Bohm and others, but this one claims to unite the quantum world with relativity theory. In The World as Virtual Reality he argues as follows:
“Some sort of complex information processing occurs in the brain. The result of that information processing is mental imagination. We not only perceive external sensory perceptions of the world and internal emotional perceptions of the body, but we also perceive forms of mental imagination in the form of memories and thoughts. In some sense, memory is only possible since mental images are held in mental imagination over a sequence of mental events. That holding of images in mental imagination only arises from coherent organization, as the form of those images is self-replicated in form over a sequence of events. That self-replication of form is inherently a body-based process.
The form of a body is self-replicated over a sequence of events. Self-replication of body form is called body survival. Self-replication of body form only arises from coherent organization, as the form of the body holds together as a bound state of information, just like the animated form of a computer generated body image on a viewing screen.
Self-replication of body form is possible due to the second law. Any form self-replicated in form over a sequence of events arises due to coherent organization. In the sense of thermodynamics, that form is self-replicated in the same coherently organized phase of organization. Self-replication of form is a thermodynamic process that gives rise to the same macroscopic form of something even as the microscopic details change. If we only observe the macroscopic appearance, we don't observe the microscopic details. In the sense of quantum theory, a macroscopic form arises from microscopic states that give rise to the same macroscopic appearance. A change in the macroscopic form of something is called a phase transition. All phase transitions are examples of symmetry breaking.”(Kowall)
Our notions of time and space are becoming more malleable. Jay Olson and Timothy Ralph, made a discovery in quantum physics, having to do with quantum entanglement, that may permit a form of "teleportation in time”.
“Another way of describing what happens is that the particle becomes stored in a disembodied way between the vacuum entanglement and the classic message, then is reconstructed at the future time. In other words, now you see it, now you don't, then you see it again. . . If you call it time travel, it is time travel to the future, which is allowed by relativity," Ralph said. He describes his technique as a form of “quantum teleportation” that only works for quantum particles and only forward in time. (Adhikari) Such anomalies suggest gaps in our understanding.
Unus Mundus
Perhaps it is time for a critical design review of both our philosophy and physics. It may be more accurate to conceive of soul as psyche, not as identical with spirit, but with psychophysical existence – even the World Soul or Anima Mundi, which unites psyche and matter. The doctrine of a world-soul in a highly abstract form appears as early as the eighth century BCE, described as "the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower, the Eternal in which space is woven and which is woven in it.
The psychology of the scientific process may be reflected in the material world. New terms are required to describe the quasi-physical domain of preexistence and how it permeates our psychophysical unus mundus, a body-centered imagination. The essence of the whole person is one’s essential nature. Soul or psyche mediates spirit and matter. But science excludes the material aspects of psyche. They re-appear as anomalous experience and cognition – the edge or frontier of experience as well as science. Inner spirit is self-revelatory gnosis.
“Living On the Edge”: Frontier Science, "The Edge of Exact Sciences"
David L Miller suggests, “In his book The Work of the Negative, André Green speaks about psychoanalysis as edge-work. His last chapter, entitled "On the Edge," urges psychoanalysts not to think of their discipline and their practice in a one-sided way: it is neither a science, on the one hand, nor an art, a philosophy, or a religion, on the other. Psychoanalysis, both as a theory and as a practice, is constantly -- Green argues -- on an edge between science and philosophy (Green, 1999).”
Iona Miller and Fred Graywolf Swinney argued for creative edge-work rooted in complex dynamics in experiential psychotherapy as early as 1993 in Chaosophy 93. The leading edge of unfolding transitions is poised between the demise of one modality of meaning and prior to the coming of a new one. It may be related to “the creative edge of chaos” in chaos theory and complexity.
Helene Lorenz had in 1997, in a most remarkable, and too little noticed, book on the relation of complexity theory to depth psychology, pointed to the importance of the "edges of chaos" in the analytic experience (Lorenz, 1997, chaps. 7 & 8). It is, Lorenz argues, at the "edges of chaos" that "complex adaptive systems [like the Self] begin to evolve" (p. 112), i.e., individuation takes place at a psychic edge. More recently, in an article in Spring, Giegerich has argued that the interiorized boundary of the soul is the experience of its not having a boundary (Giegerich, 1998, pp. 16-17). In my terms, this is psyche's edge. David Miller goes on to suggest, “Perhaps depth psychology should have been called edge psychology, if only to avoid the soul and spirit, anima and animus, depth and height awkwardness of vertical binarisms and split-syzygies.” (Miller)
"Holism reunites the organism once divided by the dualism of a worldview that soul separated from the body. In 1950 Wolfgang Pauli write, "Both of us [Pauli and Jung] seem to agree that the future of Jung's ideas is not with psychotherapy ... but with a unitarian, holistic concept of nature and the position of man in it." (Wolfgang Pauli to Markus Fierz, 1950)
In a transcendental view, the soul exists on a spiritual plane, a recognized spiritual element. Soul or psyche is the vital force of Consciousness, both formative and experiential as primordial awareness.
Only the soul restores the core elements of the body, transcending the dichotomy of outer and inner Universe. A complete description of nature would include both psyche and matter. Even science is a qualitative and symbolic description of nature. Quantum theory is deeply rooted in psychophysical experience.
Being represents Life and Consciousness. Without life and consciousness there is neither being nor becoming. Knowing Itself is Being, knowing Itself as the creator and the created.
The Immortality Potential expressed as the Ancient One/Blue Dragon is Pre-Existence, the serpentine Sine Wave, Limitless Preexistent Light. The Blue Dragon is the feminine aspect of the initial impetus of Creation (The Seed/Egg of local Universe).
Andromeda is near double the size of the Milky Way, and is on a head-on collision course with this local galaxy. The two Galaxies will destroy each other, and reform into one new larger galaxy. Everything is predatorial (Serpent Who Swallows It's Own Tail) in Creation.
Pre-physical-existence
Plato's idea of the preexistence and eternity of the soul, derived from his dualistic outlook, set matter and spirit at odds with one another. The Platonic doctrine tended to an extreme Transcendentalism. Soul and body are distinct orders of reality, and bodily existence involves a kind of violence to the higher part of our composite nature. The body is the "prison", the "tomb", or even, as some later Platonists expressed it, the "hell" of the soul.
In Aristotle this error is avoided. His definition of the soul as "the first entelechy of a physical organized body potentially possessing life" emphasizes the closeness of the union of soul and body. The difficulty in his theory is to determine what degree of distinctness or separateness from the matter of the body is to be conceded to the human soul. He fully recognizes the spiritual element in thought and describes the "active intellect" (nous poetikos) as "separate and impassible", but the precise relation of this active intellect to the individual mind is a hopelessly obscure question in Aristotle's psychology. (Catholic Encyclopedia)
However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same. What, however, is the potentiality of human beings? For Aristotle this question turns out to be equivalent to asking what it is that is distinctive about human beings. In Aristotle's hierarchy of being, pure potentiality (“prime matter”) is at the bottom, pure actuality (Aristotle's God) is at the top. Formed matter (everything else, including our world) is in-between.
Origen of Alexandria's argument for the preexistence and eternity of the soul is heavily dependent on Platonism. Origen taught the pre-existence of the soul. Terrestrial life is a punishment and a remedy for prenatal sin. "Soul" is properly degraded spirit: flesh is a condition of alienation and bondage (cf. Comment. ad Romans 1:18). Spirit, however, finite spirit, can exist only in a body, albeit of a glorious and ethereal nature.
Neo-Platonism, which through St. Augustine contributed so much to spiritual philosophy, belongs to this period. Like Gnosticism, it uses emanations. The primeval and eternal One begets by emanation nous (intelligence); and from nous in turn springs psyche (soul), which is the image of nous, but distinct from it. Matter is a still later emanation. Soul has relations to both ends of the scale of reality, and its perfection lies in turning towards the Divine Unity from which it came. In everything, the neo-Platonist recognized the absolute primacy of the soul with respect to the body. Thus, the mind is always active, even in sense — perception — it is only the body that is passively affected by external stimuli. Similarly Plotinus prefers to say that the body is in the soul rather than vice versa: and he seems to have been the first to conceive the peculiar manner of the soul's location as an undivided and universal presence pervading the organism. (C.Encyc.)
In Judaism the conflict between flesh and spirit was far less radical than that of the Greeks, who viewed body and soul as an absolute dichotomy. Such a view implies a disembodied spirituality.
The "Book of Concealed Mystery" goes on to state that this "Equilibrium hangeth in that region which is negatively existent." What is negative existence? What is positive existence? The distinction between these two is another fundamental idea. To define negative existence clearly is impossible, for when it is distinctly defined it ceases to be negative existence; it is then negative existence passing into static condition. Therefore wisely have the Qabalists shut out from mortal comprehension the primal AIN, Ain, the negatively existent One, and the AIN SVP, Ain Soph, the limitless Expansion; while of even the AIN SVP AVR, Ain Soph Aur, the illimitable Light, only a dim conception can be formed.
The universe first appears as a point source of unfoldment–an unfoldment which occurs from within-without, out of the Infinite and into the Finite. A Point or infinitesimal Dot represents the “I”, and is rooted in the infinities of NEGATIVE EXISTENCE. As one approaches the “supernal point” from below, one encounters the abyss, which is a veil of ignorance or a “ring pass not,” beyond which the mind cannot penetrate. However the Knowers of Self can come to so penetrate the infinite and know God. (Zero Point)
The kabbalists--the medieval Jewish mystics--believed that human life, including the life of the soul, reflected and affected the divine world, the world of the sefirot: God's ten attributes or emanations. The soul, an instrument of perfection, goes through far-reaching corresponding transformations. The soul’s material and physical elements became highly developed in medieval thought, especially in the kabbalah. The "universal soul," was considered the "active intelligence," or God himself.
In later stages of development, the Jewish conception of the soul was influenced by Greek philosophical views, as these were reformulated and interpreted by the Moslem and Christian theologians of the Middle Ages. For the first time, Judaism viewed the doctrine of the soul as belonging to the realm of philosophy, and medieval Jewish thought made a unique attempt to adapt these philosophical views to the Torah and to make them a means for interpreting concepts relating to ethics, religious piety, prophecy, and the knowledge of God.
In the Sefer ha‑Bahir, the creation and the molding and sustenance of souls is bound up with an erotic myth that speaks of sexual union between cosmic entities in the world of the sefirot (divine emanations) and of the process of creation in general. The text alludes, in highly symbolic language, to a system that was further developed in the Zohar and other kabbalistic literature.
Three stages of development are discerned in the formation of souls: the ideal, the ontological, and the actual. These stages parallel both the processes of intercourse, pregnancy, and birth, by which the physical body comes into being, and the relationships between the sefirot in the supernal [i.e. divine] world.
The erotic symbolism by which the dynamic relationship between the various aspects of the divine is described in the kabbalistic system relates to the idea that the creation of souls takes place in connection with an act of cosmic union. In addition, it reflects deep religious implications regarding the exalted nature of the soul that were attached to human sexual union on account of its archetypal parallel in the supernal worlds.
The kabbalistic doctrine of the soul is based upon three fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of man: (1) the divine origin of the human soul; (2) the idea that man is structured in the image of the sefirot, and that his soul reflects the hierarchy of the supernatural worlds, and (3) the idea that man can influence the world of the divine.
The kabbalah borrowed the philosophical division of the soul into parts and superimposed a mystical quality upon it, contending that each part expressed a different sefirot.
Negative Existence, Realms of Non-Being and the Supernal Point
- Kabbalists use various terms and distinctions to depict THAT–THAT which is beyond human comprehension. These images and terms are subtle attempts to point in the direction of the incomprehensible. THAT is pre-existent to the creation of the universe. IT is depicted as triune in nature–as Ayin, En Soph, and En Soph Aur. These three can be considered as one or as nothing, and are related to the numbers OOO, OO, and O, respectively. Together they constitute Negative Existence–as considered from the viewpoint of the manifest creation which is labelled as positive existence. The origin of creation is from within the apparent Nothingness, beyond creation–in the O, OO, and OOO.
- AYIN, as OOO, means No-Thing. It is the ABSOLUTE NOTHING. It is God Transcendent, beyond the realms of illusory and impermanent creation. Ayin is inconceivable and unspeakable.
- Ayin Soph, O O, means ENDLESS and BOUNDLESS, LIMITLESS. Whereas Ayin is nothing, Ayin Soph is everything, the plenum of all possibilities in a potential state. It is ALL and everything in relationship to the nothing of Ayin. The ALL appears as nothing–as everything is latent and unmanifest in the root principle of material creation. Whereas Ayin is God Transcendent, Ayin Soph is God Immanent, containing the Plenum of All Possibilities in unmanifest form. This is the Fullness of the Divine Plenum. Ayin and En Soph are the VOID and the PLENUM.
- "The matter is as follows: all the worlds, and all that is in this world, all the creatures of the universe, in whatever age they were to exist, before they ever entered into this world, with all the souls now on earth, and those that are destined still to be created, together with their complete curve of development until the final goal of completion and perfection - all these were previously included in the world which is called “Endless,” “En Soph,” along with their beauty and all their fulfillments." (1984, p. 57)
- The root principles of creation lay within the plenum of all possibilities for cosmic manifestation. The En Soph includes all varied kinds of beings and their qualities and beauties, and all the laws and forces and particles of the universe. It contains all of these things in all their possibilities for involution and evolution, growth, change and perfection. The whole structure of the world orders on different dimensions and on different scales of existence, over all times, are all pre-existent in non-existence, latent within the Endlessness of the Ayin Soph.
- Ayin Soph Aur, O, the third aspect of the Absolute, means LIMITLESS LIGHT. Before the beginning, the limitless light fills the Limitless En Soph. This Limitless light is described as NEGATIVE LIGHT, in distinction to positive light manifest within creation. (Zero Point)
“Nequaquam Vacuum” - Nowhere a Void
Kabbalah was based on the Doctrine of Emanation from the Three Veils of Negative Existence – existence arises from pre-existence. Kabbalists have long portrayed the creation of the universe as emerging from a supernal point of no-dimension out of a background in NEGATIVE EXISTENCE.
This same creation scenario is elaborated by modern scientific accounts. In science, the universe emerged at the beginning of time as an infinitesimal singularity out of the nothingness and plenum of the quantum vacuum. Kabbalah would also suggest the ultimate dissolution of the Cosmos at the end of time into such an infinitesimal point, and back into the void/plenum.
Pre-existence is a pre-spacetime domain of archetypal potential, which manifests in EXISTENCE as a condensation of information. To condense information, we project the unknown onto our unique local state. The transformation of the soul becomes a powerful narrative.
What we believe about the future and the past fuels our strategies and allegiances in the present. The narratives with which we make sense of the world, our lives, and history are cautionary tales; we direct our efforts to seeking certain outcomes and avoiding others, heading for “the happy ending” or as close as we can get to it, trying to “learn from the past” (or from the narrative our imaginations and prejudices have imposed on the past).
The "Progress Narrative" competes with "Radical Transformation" of order from chaos – emergence of the unforeseen vision beyond comprehension. The soul doesn’t follow a predictable, coherent, linear path. Soul is our capacity for the quantum leap.
Pre-Spacetime
The spacetime singularity occurs prior to the emergence of matter. As the kabbalists imply, absolute space erupts as a void. Pre space-time is void of matter, non-spatial and non-temporal manifolds of chaotic perturbation leading to emergence or emanation of matter. It may be a recursive process.
The pre space-time always looks like the chaotic void, but it may be formed by the similar matter in a nested recursive mechanism – a superspin field. All things material come from and return to the Void, including ourselves, in a return to our absolute zero point which is shared by the totality of the cosmos.
So, as we know, the measurement of any state is ultimately limited by the \overlap" or similarities with our local state; our perspective. Our assumptions - our experimental setups, the very fact that we detect the universe with luminous baryonic matter and not something else - all define our perspective and bound our conclusions . (Westafer)
Zer0 Field
Massless spinfields are the vortices or whirlpools of the Dirac Sea. Interaction of such vortices is perturbed by superparamagnetic and magnetic fields. Interacting magnetic [nano]clusters are another form of the dynamic void. Matter is a field dependent phenomenon. Zero field cooled magnetization might lead to the condensation and precipitation of matter. A superspin interpretation of the prespacetime domain field becomes possible.
And physical in nature and the universe, all around is full and the emergence of a "super-spin sub - domain super-rotation vector field - spin the material into ultra - ultra-rotation of the movement and change." Objects as large as the universe Nebula, Galaxy, small particles of quarks L, D, spin. . . . . , Gravity and relativity, and its internal relations must be an integral and external linkages, "ring" - ultra-roton - super spin vector field games, nature origin, the origin of particles, the origin of the universe, the origin of changes in physical movement. Test the nature of scientific experiments, not tens of thousands of people repeated testing for verification and accurate and can be found from which to extract the inevitable and extremely critical of the mysterious natural laws of experimental evidence, theories and theorems are all equal to zero. Therefore, the natural scientists than social scientists far to harsh and hard, like a Newton's gravitation, Darwin's theory of evolution, cells, genes,, nebula science, models of the universe, the quark model, the gene model, plate theory, quantum mechanics, quantum chemistry, universe physics, cosmic chemistry, human genetics, physical anthropology, social anthropology, and so on. Science and modern economic, political, social, religious, philosophical, military, technology, civilization, democracy are inseparable, therefore, the correct view and analysis of today's world and the planet of change and development, and the real world to predict the future changes will be very important the. Otherwise, a wrong move, round loser. Natural sciences and social sciences pregnant create infinite greatness and vast, but it is not that human nature is equivalent to an ordinary, modern humans in ape simply atavistic animal. As everyone knows, super-spin sub-, super-rotation vector field field - the world's super-rotation of the material and the movement of basic mathematical equations and expressions are simple: numerous sequence ultra-c1, c2, c3 ........ tend to spin C ( Ultra super spin vector field field spin sub 。。。。。) ----- [[email protected]]
Sylos Labini and Pietronero [117]: 'A crucial point to understand is therefore the origin of the scale-invariance in the gravitational clustering phenomenon. This would correspond to the understanding of the origin of self-gravitating fractal structures and of the properties of Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) from the knowledge of the microscopic physical processes at the basis of this phenomenon.' They advocate a new approach from the directions of statistical physics and complexity theory. But the contention of this essay is that they may be mistaken in seeking a basis for cosmic SOC in 'microscopic physical processes', in the sense that no physical processes in a radically scale-free fractal universe can properly be understood as microscopic. It is argued that only a radically scale-free fractal dynamic operating on processes at all scales will get rid of the problems inherent in scale-dependent effective field theory in a fully self-consistent way.’ the context-dependency and wave-function symmetry of spin observables we propose to give up the particle/field representation in favor of a network of nonlocal linear objects. Under local measurements, each nonlocal object has a basic two-valuedness of position which also entails a basic two-valuedness of electron spin, expressed at opposite nodes reciprocally.
It is conventional that a few pairs may preserve a singlet state of spin in a specialised nonlocal EPR symmetry, but according to our generalised symmetry all pairs can always be thought of as preserving a singlet state of superspin. Superspin is supposed to be carried as a 'super-rotation' of the plane of polarisation of a (linear polarised) photon. The photon itself 'sees' the restored superspin symmetry normalised (in null proper time) to that of a spin-zero scalar 'particle' and is blind to an imaginary torsion which it carries over into the mass relations of a pair of spin-half leptons as a spin-one electrodynamical symmetry. The emergence of the local-relativistic electrodynamical symmetry is to be identified with the spontaneous breaking of nonlocal superspin symmetry in the network. In this emergent local network each point of measurement of an electron can be seen as the origin of N complex radius vectors, each of which has some probability of being the photon vector which a measurement will elicit as being 'the electron spin axis'. Where the superrotation of the photon (linear) polarisation plane inverts through p at the measurement node, radial direction determines which of two reciprocal spin vectors is 'measured' at the node. (Shough)
Relativity of Body and Soul
Throughout history there have been many conceptions about the physical and spiritual nature of reality. Early on, they were confounded, though now separated into philosophy, physics, and religion. Each of these models or conceptions of mankind's relationship to nature and the divine was based in a belief-system which pre-conditioned all notions about the nature of the self. Some rest in the unity of nature, monism, dualism, or other primordial models. Panpsychism is a philosophical theory that mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe.
The realm of psychology, with its own unique perspective on body and soul, lies between the worlds of physical reality and experiential heights. There are many schools of thought in psychology, many of which, like behaviorism and humanism, do not consider the relevance of a notion of soul as motivating factor. On the other hand, transpersonal psychology accepts the validity of the spiritual to the point where its primary psychological orientation may recede into the background.
Jungian psychology, and its postmodern form imaginal psychology seek to maintain the primacy of the image as a direct expression of soul. As a discipline, it alleges that soul is a primary experience, and seeks to give her a voice. The realm of psyche is a subjective world of depth and meaning that is sometimes corporeal, sometimes not. Entry into this style of consciousness means heightened awareness of subjective realities. Each "thing" speaks of the gods, or archetypal qualities and forces. It boldly asserts that not even technology and inorganic matter are inherently soulless.
Imaginal psychology's main proponent, James Hillman, suggests it is only the literalist, objective world of Newtonian mechanics and the Christian apocalypse that is "dead." This school of psychology views many "spiritual" notions as products of a monotheistic style of consciousness. It puts forth the view that soul is a pluralistic expression, rather than an individual quality. It upholds a polytheistic perspective which is more in line with the primitive concepts of the nature of soul. It views notions like "spiritual soul," "material body," and "spiritual body" metaphorically, rather than literally. Each god or archetype has its relative, characteristic style of consciousness and way of seeing through the nature of things.
Jung and his followers have shown that certain mind-sets lead to biased fantasies about the nature of the body, the soul, and the cosmos. Psyche is essentially related to soma because it is rooted in organic structure. The intimacy of this relationship is not fully understood. It is a realm of mystery which brings in its wake phenomena such as synchronicity and psychosomatic disorders.
Religion and superstition undermined any remotely objective viewpoint about the physical nature of the universe until the Enlightenment. Then scientists armored themselves against incursions of the divine with Newtonian mechanics and Cartesian duality. Descarte split mind from body, and equated the soul with the ego and mind, thus disenfranchising it. The mechanistic, "clockwork universe" was based on the primacy of underlying order. The universe was perceived as chaos tending toward order, with each atom following God's great plan.
This notion of an orderly universe was superseded by the unpredictable phenomena of quantum mechanics and chaos theory. We have found that beneath the apparent order is complexity, a world of chaos that self-generates order, which dissolves back into chaos. Even orderly motion is ultimately unpredictable due to initial conditions and even the slightest of random intruding influences. So, the universe may still be "God's plan," but its basis is irrational, not rational.
Physics is a form of philosophy which makes educated guesses about the nature of reality and our existence. It invites us to "look at it this way..." Scientific revolutions demonstrate that these are not ultimate statements about the nature of reality. They are relative, state-of-the-art hypotheses. This particular type of natural philosophy includes many universal laws, however, which reflect the way things seem to be from the current point of view.
It is difficult for any of us to free ourselves from our enculturated and a priori beliefs about existence. It is hard to view anything from outside of our own fundamental philosophical, spiritual, and psychological perspectives. These theories, dogmas, and experiences condition how we perceive reality. Their influence may be so subtle we fail to notice where our position originated. Our viewpoint is relative to our position.
Einstein showed us that, in physics, all perspectives are relative to the position of the observer. He discovered this by imagining he was riding on a beam of light. This relativity holds true in psychology also, depending on what assumed truths one holds. Notions of soul and body are not describing any irreducible reality. These notions are relative realities, reflecting our personal understanding of the nature of reality. They emerge from our specific worldview about the way things (including ourselves) work.
What we believe conditions what we perceive, feel, and express. Research shows our beliefs and opinions are largely conditioned by the belief system of our peer group. The day-to-day influence of convention creates a consensus opinion about reality and is a big influence on lifestyle. Much of consensus is a tacit agreement to overlook certain kinds of information, especially if it doesn't fit the "party line."
Beliefs are subject to radical reversal in some instances--the process of conversion. Jung called this 180 degree shift in consciousness enantiodromia. Conversions arise from a desperate need, from exposure to a new peer group with different attitudes and values, or through embracing a broader worldview, or by covert means like propaganda and brainwashing.
The prime expression of beliefs is through spontaneous imagery. We never experience directly, but interpret our experience of our perceptions through imagery. All our input comes through multi-sensory channels. We never directly perceive ourselves, soul, or God. We don't perceive our bodies directly, only our sensory impressions. But we do have first-hand experience of our body-image, soul-image, and God images. That is all we know directly. The rest is pure speculation.
Relative viewpoints condition our concepts of reality, body and soul. A given individual may hold several within himself. For example, a rational scientist may find no empirical evidence for soul in her normal methods of investigation, but it does not prevent her continuing practice and belief in her faith. The emotional self will not be denied, even if it is held discrete from the workplace.
Historically, the body (and matter in general) has been a spiritual battle-ground. Because of the bi-polar nature of our being (or our perception of bi-polarity), the human spirit naturally comes into conflict with our earthy and material needs. These primal drives create conflict between spirituality and instinctuality or sensuality. But the conflict is a matter of perception and psychological perspective.
In the West, flesh was condemned for "original sin", a mandate forced on the body by so-called "spiritual" pontification. This mandate was extended to include the condemnation of all matter. In the East, the perception of any solid substance was declared a mental phenomenon. Matter was seen merely as an expression of universal mind, reduced to a gross state known as maya. In this state all matter is subject to karma, the natural consequences of active existence. In this worldview, the soul is continuously recycled. Both philosophies reject materialism, and the body with it.
So matter is merely a convincing illusion in one view, while in another it is inherently evil, the very opposite of God. The notion of immanence holds, on the other hand, along with Pantheism and Animism that all matter, formless or substantive, is naturally infused with the divine. All agree that matter occupies space and time and is perceived by the senses. Philosophically, matter is the formless material of the universe of sensory experience. Each of these ideas, maya and the "fall," provides a coherent worldview, yet remains discrete and congruent only within its own belief system, with its a priori assumptions unexamined.
In our culture, the body and our fantasies about it, have come to represent the lost Feminine element. We have lost touch with our primal femininity, the animating principle (nature, body, instinct). We have become estranged from the body through the mind/body split fostered by Cartesian thinking, which is also non-relativistic.
The image of the disembodied modern individual is one of an over-rational "walking head," not a whole human being. Our modern need is not for further disembodiment by transcending off into salvation in the nether-realms of space, not for more out-of-body experiences. Rather, we almost desperately need to create ways of truly inhabiting our bodies, unsplit by Puritanical and Cartesian residue.
There is a way that joins spirit and body through the spontaneous imagery of soul. It seeks neither to solve our troubles (pathologies) nor "save" our souls. It suggests direct engagement with images for soul-making or deepening through personal experience. We can see through the nature of apparent reality for ourselves, if we but try. Then we develop our own philosophy, apart from consensus. When it comes to questions of speculation on the unknown, we can either accept what others have said, or look for ourselves.
We seek the lost soul primarily because of the intense degree of wounding in our modern consciousness. This wounding has "opened" us to transformation. We can embody soul by seeing-through appearances to an acute awareness of the archetypal, subjective perception of our experience.
We can find soul in the body. It speaks metaphorically in body language (how closed or open one is to life and experience), body talk ("he's a pain in the neck," "I can't stomach that"), symptoms, and displacements. Conversion reactions change psychological dis-ease into concrete ailments. Jung said the gods have become diseases and there is a god within every disease. Noticing that psychic element and giving it voice is psychological soul-making. We can also look at our behavior, emotions, thoughts, and styles of consciousness psychologically.
The conflict over the body is really between spirit and spirit, good and bad, polarized. But it is popularized as a split between spirit and matter, with the soul as intermediary. To compound the problem, in linguistics and beliefs, spirit and soul have become mis-identified with one another by theology and philosophy. Philosophy, for the Greeks was an adventure undertaken for its own sake, without dogma, rites, or sacred entities.
These disciplines pull the soul in opposite directions, leaving the alienated ego rejecting both mystical experience and the imperfection of the body. Thus we need recourse to priests (for spirituality), therapists (for psychological insight), and doctors (to interpret the condition of the body).
All healing appears to come from without when we cannot heal our own dis-ease. The body is betrayed and mentally abandoned. Symptoms become something to get rid of, while the soul has no recourse to a higher power. Then the body becomes tyrannical, ruling the self with addictions and psychosomatic complaints. It has many ways of manifesting dis-ease.
The entire choice between spirit and body, inner and outer, has its source in identification with the ego. Ego maintains itself by creating conflicts from opposing drives within. It suppresses one and makes you believe you have chosen freely. The dilemma comes from the ego, not the soul.
Matter, spirit, and ego fight over the soul. Yet soul is a primary experience. Each wants its unique fantasy to reign uppermost. So, the first task is to distinguish soul from spirit, so the body may unite and be enlivened by both. In this process, primacy is given to the perspective of psyche or soul. This is a psychological approach--not spiritual or religious--giving voice to soul. It means the return of a subjective feminine eye on reality. It means the enlivening of our bodies, the world of nature, and the imagination. When we see soul as the background of all phenomena, we become aware of the animating principle.
All images arise from either body processes (instinct) or psychic forms (spirit). Whether instinct-controlled or spirit-controlled, they are related to physiological processes. They appear psychologically as images, but work physiologically. They produce emotional or visceral aspects, but not in any causal way. The images don't produce reactions. The image is the entire psychophysical gestalt.
We have considered three relative perspectives from which the notion of soul may be viewed: theological, philosophical, and psychological. Each has its own distinct notion about the body. Like Jung, we are not referring to a religious or philosophical concept of either body or soul. Soul may or may not ultimately be a disembodied, immortal thing as Zoroaster, Plato, and The Bible suggest.
They uphold the pervasive cultural view that soul is a transcendent entity, distinct from the body that participates in an idealistic afterlife. No one alive can say for sure, and what about this life, here and now? Psyche's view speaks directly to our whole personalistic experience, with its transpersonal elements.
The soul in depth psychology is an empirical manifestation of imagination, fantasy, and creativity which is always in the process of becoming--images forming, and dissolving, and forming anew. Imagination is the essence of the life forces, both physical and psychic. These fantasies always permeate our beliefs, ideas, emotions, and physical nature.
Like the psyche, or life-breath, of the early Greeks, this notion of soul is like that of the butterfly which always stays close to the ground. It is an airy thing, hovering lightly, without heroically soaring to the heights. In this model, there are no abstract flights of fancy into spirit's realm, no transcending off into subtle "spirit bodies" mistakenly distinguished as aspects of the soul. These urges are real, but they belong to spirit.
Rather, the soul generates images unceasingly. The soul lives on images and metaphor. These images form the basis for our consciousness. All we can know comes through images, through our multi-sensory perceptions. So this soul always stays close to the body, close to corporeality, to what "matters." Let the images come into your body. Embrace the image. To heal the mind/body split we need a view of reality that eliminates the dichotomy of "in here" in this separate body vs. "out there" in the alien, external world.
Even physics shows us we are continuous with that world. Our skin-boundary is an illusion. We literally exchange gases and atoms with one another, and the world. The turn-over of matter in the body means there is no single, stable structure over time--just a duration of consciousness.
The line between organic and inorganic matter is indistinguishable at the subatomic level. All that exists is alive with motion. Both body and mind are the realm of psyche which can manifest as particular behaviors, psychosomatic illnesses, emotional patterns, mental and spiritual beliefs, and synchronistic events.
Mystics tell us that the entire world of phenomena is of the nature of mind or consciousness. Modern quantum mechanics seems to uphold this view from the scientific side. There is no solid matter, when you get right down to it--only waves of energy, "quantum fuzz", and probabilities. So, matter is no more tangible, nor less divine than the intangible energy or light from which it congeals. It is a spiritual notion that matter is a debased form of energy.
But the perspective of spirit would not have us confuse the creation with the Creator. Yet, in some sense, the light is the Light, in the metaphorical, if not literalistic or concretistic sense. We are merely a local outcropping of individuality, embedded in a continuum of cosmic connectivity, a webwork of relationship. In so many words, it means, "We are the world!"
"In here" and "out there" become moot when the subatomic nature of matter is truly understood. It becomes easier to see the nature of psyche as the underlying, living, divine field of all experience and phenomena. At the deepest level, we are physically indistinguishable from the cosmos at the quantum level.
Our existence is one of an indeterminate electromagnetic field, rather than a distinct chemical entity. Divinity is not off somewhere else, long ago, or in the future. We don't need to leave the body, die, or travel through time and space to find it in "pie-in-the-sky" salvation. As the Buddhists note, all is self, or Atman, here and now always.
The universal EM field is a primary physical, if not corporeal reality. Our apparently discrete existence is contiguous with it. In this model there is no mandate for a "soul-as-spirit body" to leave or vacate the body for purification, enlightenment, or union with divinity. Only our state of consciousness keeps us from that moment-by-moment realization. Direct psychological experience tells us that "I AM THAT."
We are psychological beings, composed of body and soul. Psychic life is physical and mental. Spirit enlivens soul--it manifests through soul. Soul animates the body. Soul enlivens and tends to favor the body. The body unites with spirit and soul by becoming "saturated" with them, immersed in their essence.
Denial of the body by a disembodied spiritual drive leads to ascensionism. It may be an escapist, transcendence fantasy. It is a way of keeping life at bay. In the provisional life one is always waiting to live life if things are just so. We can re-inhabit or re-own the body in consciousness and experience ourselves as total psychosomatic beings. Spirit can be grounded in the body by making practical use of spiritual insights.
The harmonization of spirituality and instinctuality leads to wholeness. For example, in sexuality, a spirit-body split leads to an inability to see one sexual partner as both sexy and spiritually inspiring. This may manifest through circumstances or a psychological complex. It is an aspect of the Madonna-whore complex.
The whole person, on the other hand, views the sex act as the divine marriage of spirit and soul, God/Goddess, Shiva/Shakti. It epitomizes the universal cycle of creation/destruction, mind and matter in play. This attitude exalts body, soul, and spirit. It is akin to a nature mystic experience where the outer divine resonates and enters the body.
The ancient art of alchemy was the search for the God-head in matter. The alchemical task was to unify spirit and soul in the body. Psychic reality means to be in soul, esse in anima, as Jung put it. It means an enlarged experience of concrete reality to include the realm of the psyche, a dialogue with events, situations, and circumstances.
Body is made complete, not by perfecting it, but by spiritualizing it. It becomes the vehicle of the "incarnating Self." Spirit is attracted to matter and matter to spirit. Matter gets purpose and meaning from spirit. An "immortal body" now means grounding of the spirit. The uniting of soul, body, and spirit was called the Unus Mundus, or One World in alchemy.
As a psychophysical entity you experience the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World. The Jews knew it as the Shekinah. She is the embodiment of psyche, the animating force behind all events, images, and material forms. Soul functions both in the body and through projection in the physical world. Psychic reality means to be-in-soul, through embodiment (soma) or enlivenment (psyche)--perceiving images viscerally (soma) and mentally (psyche).
Acknowledgement of this force does not constitute Goddess worship--only recognition of the archetypal reality of nature, and our nature. She is a way of reclaiming the divinity of body, matter, and world. The Soul of the World notion, though repressed, is part of the return of the Feminine. Hillman invites us into this world:
Let us imagine the anima mundi neither above the world encircling it as a divine and remote emanation of spirit, a world of powers, archetypes, and principles transcendent to things, nor within the material world as its unifying panpsychic life-principle. Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, that seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each event as it is, its sensuous presentation as face bespeaking its interior image--in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as a psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing, God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street.
Hillman suggests therapy shift its focus from saving the soul of the individual to saving the soul of the world, resurrection of the world, rather than man--a raising of consciousness of created things, the world's psychic reality. He says we have, in essence, taken and stored the world soul within ourselves. "There is no 'in here' and 'out there'. We should give it back."
Physical reality becomes psychic and psyche becomes real. It "matters." The difference between soul and external things no longer matters. Inner and Outer worlds are real. They are One World. Image, metaphor and symbol bridge the abyss between matter and spirit. They are integrated with feeling, mind, and imagination. We can see soul in all natural objects. We can notice our fantasies constantly conditioning our experience of reality.
We need to learn how to be in our souls, just as we had to learn to re-inhabit the body. Being-in-soul implies that you are being suffused with spirit. Knowledge of spirit doesn't come from ideas, even revelations, but through a reflective process. Their conjunction, or marriage, means spirit is reborn whenever you are in touch with soul. They are opposites, so the interplay is eternal. Just observe without attachment the interaction of soul and spirit, distinct yet conjoined. Hold the tension of the opposites.
When spirit as energy and matter as form are in balance, the body becomes the living "Temple of the Spirit." The notion of a soul's immortality comes to mean direct experience of non-spatial, non-temporal, four-dimensional reality--the realm of relativity.
Kabbalah was based on the Doctrine of Emanation from the Three Veils of Negative Existence – existence arises from pre-existence. Kabbalists have long portrayed the creation of the universe as emerging from a supernal point of no-dimension out of a background in NEGATIVE EXISTENCE.
This same creation scenario is elaborated by modern scientific accounts. In science, the universe emerged at the beginning of time as an infinitesimal singularity out of the nothingness and plenum of the quantum vacuum. Kabbalah would also suggest the ultimate dissolution of the Cosmos at the end of time into such an infinitesimal point, and back into the void/plenum.
Pre-existence is a pre-spacetime domain of archetypal potential, which manifests in EXISTENCE as a condensation of information. To condense information, we project the unknown onto our unique local state. The transformation of the soul becomes a powerful narrative.
What we believe about the future and the past fuels our strategies and allegiances in the present. The narratives with which we make sense of the world, our lives, and history are cautionary tales; we direct our efforts to seeking certain outcomes and avoiding others, heading for “the happy ending” or as close as we can get to it, trying to “learn from the past” (or from the narrative our imaginations and prejudices have imposed on the past).
The "Progress Narrative" competes with "Radical Transformation" of order from chaos – emergence of the unforeseen vision beyond comprehension. The soul doesn’t follow a predictable, coherent, linear path. Soul is our capacity for the quantum leap.
Pre-Spacetime
The spacetime singularity occurs prior to the emergence of matter. As the kabbalists imply, absolute space erupts as a void. Pre space-time is void of matter, non-spatial and non-temporal manifolds of chaotic perturbation leading to emergence or emanation of matter. It may be a recursive process.
The pre space-time always looks like the chaotic void, but it may be formed by the similar matter in a nested recursive mechanism – a superspin field. All things material come from and return to the Void, including ourselves, in a return to our absolute zero point which is shared by the totality of the cosmos.
So, as we know, the measurement of any state is ultimately limited by the \overlap" or similarities with our local state; our perspective. Our assumptions - our experimental setups, the very fact that we detect the universe with luminous baryonic matter and not something else - all define our perspective and bound our conclusions . (Westafer)
Zer0 Field
Massless spinfields are the vortices or whirlpools of the Dirac Sea. Interaction of such vortices is perturbed by superparamagnetic and magnetic fields. Interacting magnetic [nano]clusters are another form of the dynamic void. Matter is a field dependent phenomenon. Zero field cooled magnetization might lead to the condensation and precipitation of matter. A superspin interpretation of the prespacetime domain field becomes possible.
And physical in nature and the universe, all around is full and the emergence of a "super-spin sub - domain super-rotation vector field - spin the material into ultra - ultra-rotation of the movement and change." Objects as large as the universe Nebula, Galaxy, small particles of quarks L, D, spin. . . . . , Gravity and relativity, and its internal relations must be an integral and external linkages, "ring" - ultra-roton - super spin vector field games, nature origin, the origin of particles, the origin of the universe, the origin of changes in physical movement. Test the nature of scientific experiments, not tens of thousands of people repeated testing for verification and accurate and can be found from which to extract the inevitable and extremely critical of the mysterious natural laws of experimental evidence, theories and theorems are all equal to zero. Therefore, the natural scientists than social scientists far to harsh and hard, like a Newton's gravitation, Darwin's theory of evolution, cells, genes,, nebula science, models of the universe, the quark model, the gene model, plate theory, quantum mechanics, quantum chemistry, universe physics, cosmic chemistry, human genetics, physical anthropology, social anthropology, and so on. Science and modern economic, political, social, religious, philosophical, military, technology, civilization, democracy are inseparable, therefore, the correct view and analysis of today's world and the planet of change and development, and the real world to predict the future changes will be very important the. Otherwise, a wrong move, round loser. Natural sciences and social sciences pregnant create infinite greatness and vast, but it is not that human nature is equivalent to an ordinary, modern humans in ape simply atavistic animal. As everyone knows, super-spin sub-, super-rotation vector field field - the world's super-rotation of the material and the movement of basic mathematical equations and expressions are simple: numerous sequence ultra-c1, c2, c3 ........ tend to spin C ( Ultra super spin vector field field spin sub 。。。。。) ----- [[email protected]]
Sylos Labini and Pietronero [117]: 'A crucial point to understand is therefore the origin of the scale-invariance in the gravitational clustering phenomenon. This would correspond to the understanding of the origin of self-gravitating fractal structures and of the properties of Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) from the knowledge of the microscopic physical processes at the basis of this phenomenon.' They advocate a new approach from the directions of statistical physics and complexity theory. But the contention of this essay is that they may be mistaken in seeking a basis for cosmic SOC in 'microscopic physical processes', in the sense that no physical processes in a radically scale-free fractal universe can properly be understood as microscopic. It is argued that only a radically scale-free fractal dynamic operating on processes at all scales will get rid of the problems inherent in scale-dependent effective field theory in a fully self-consistent way.’ the context-dependency and wave-function symmetry of spin observables we propose to give up the particle/field representation in favor of a network of nonlocal linear objects. Under local measurements, each nonlocal object has a basic two-valuedness of position which also entails a basic two-valuedness of electron spin, expressed at opposite nodes reciprocally.
It is conventional that a few pairs may preserve a singlet state of spin in a specialised nonlocal EPR symmetry, but according to our generalised symmetry all pairs can always be thought of as preserving a singlet state of superspin. Superspin is supposed to be carried as a 'super-rotation' of the plane of polarisation of a (linear polarised) photon. The photon itself 'sees' the restored superspin symmetry normalised (in null proper time) to that of a spin-zero scalar 'particle' and is blind to an imaginary torsion which it carries over into the mass relations of a pair of spin-half leptons as a spin-one electrodynamical symmetry. The emergence of the local-relativistic electrodynamical symmetry is to be identified with the spontaneous breaking of nonlocal superspin symmetry in the network. In this emergent local network each point of measurement of an electron can be seen as the origin of N complex radius vectors, each of which has some probability of being the photon vector which a measurement will elicit as being 'the electron spin axis'. Where the superrotation of the photon (linear) polarisation plane inverts through p at the measurement node, radial direction determines which of two reciprocal spin vectors is 'measured' at the node. (Shough)
Relativity of Body and Soul
Throughout history there have been many conceptions about the physical and spiritual nature of reality. Early on, they were confounded, though now separated into philosophy, physics, and religion. Each of these models or conceptions of mankind's relationship to nature and the divine was based in a belief-system which pre-conditioned all notions about the nature of the self. Some rest in the unity of nature, monism, dualism, or other primordial models. Panpsychism is a philosophical theory that mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe.
The realm of psychology, with its own unique perspective on body and soul, lies between the worlds of physical reality and experiential heights. There are many schools of thought in psychology, many of which, like behaviorism and humanism, do not consider the relevance of a notion of soul as motivating factor. On the other hand, transpersonal psychology accepts the validity of the spiritual to the point where its primary psychological orientation may recede into the background.
Jungian psychology, and its postmodern form imaginal psychology seek to maintain the primacy of the image as a direct expression of soul. As a discipline, it alleges that soul is a primary experience, and seeks to give her a voice. The realm of psyche is a subjective world of depth and meaning that is sometimes corporeal, sometimes not. Entry into this style of consciousness means heightened awareness of subjective realities. Each "thing" speaks of the gods, or archetypal qualities and forces. It boldly asserts that not even technology and inorganic matter are inherently soulless.
Imaginal psychology's main proponent, James Hillman, suggests it is only the literalist, objective world of Newtonian mechanics and the Christian apocalypse that is "dead." This school of psychology views many "spiritual" notions as products of a monotheistic style of consciousness. It puts forth the view that soul is a pluralistic expression, rather than an individual quality. It upholds a polytheistic perspective which is more in line with the primitive concepts of the nature of soul. It views notions like "spiritual soul," "material body," and "spiritual body" metaphorically, rather than literally. Each god or archetype has its relative, characteristic style of consciousness and way of seeing through the nature of things.
Jung and his followers have shown that certain mind-sets lead to biased fantasies about the nature of the body, the soul, and the cosmos. Psyche is essentially related to soma because it is rooted in organic structure. The intimacy of this relationship is not fully understood. It is a realm of mystery which brings in its wake phenomena such as synchronicity and psychosomatic disorders.
Religion and superstition undermined any remotely objective viewpoint about the physical nature of the universe until the Enlightenment. Then scientists armored themselves against incursions of the divine with Newtonian mechanics and Cartesian duality. Descarte split mind from body, and equated the soul with the ego and mind, thus disenfranchising it. The mechanistic, "clockwork universe" was based on the primacy of underlying order. The universe was perceived as chaos tending toward order, with each atom following God's great plan.
This notion of an orderly universe was superseded by the unpredictable phenomena of quantum mechanics and chaos theory. We have found that beneath the apparent order is complexity, a world of chaos that self-generates order, which dissolves back into chaos. Even orderly motion is ultimately unpredictable due to initial conditions and even the slightest of random intruding influences. So, the universe may still be "God's plan," but its basis is irrational, not rational.
Physics is a form of philosophy which makes educated guesses about the nature of reality and our existence. It invites us to "look at it this way..." Scientific revolutions demonstrate that these are not ultimate statements about the nature of reality. They are relative, state-of-the-art hypotheses. This particular type of natural philosophy includes many universal laws, however, which reflect the way things seem to be from the current point of view.
It is difficult for any of us to free ourselves from our enculturated and a priori beliefs about existence. It is hard to view anything from outside of our own fundamental philosophical, spiritual, and psychological perspectives. These theories, dogmas, and experiences condition how we perceive reality. Their influence may be so subtle we fail to notice where our position originated. Our viewpoint is relative to our position.
Einstein showed us that, in physics, all perspectives are relative to the position of the observer. He discovered this by imagining he was riding on a beam of light. This relativity holds true in psychology also, depending on what assumed truths one holds. Notions of soul and body are not describing any irreducible reality. These notions are relative realities, reflecting our personal understanding of the nature of reality. They emerge from our specific worldview about the way things (including ourselves) work.
What we believe conditions what we perceive, feel, and express. Research shows our beliefs and opinions are largely conditioned by the belief system of our peer group. The day-to-day influence of convention creates a consensus opinion about reality and is a big influence on lifestyle. Much of consensus is a tacit agreement to overlook certain kinds of information, especially if it doesn't fit the "party line."
Beliefs are subject to radical reversal in some instances--the process of conversion. Jung called this 180 degree shift in consciousness enantiodromia. Conversions arise from a desperate need, from exposure to a new peer group with different attitudes and values, or through embracing a broader worldview, or by covert means like propaganda and brainwashing.
The prime expression of beliefs is through spontaneous imagery. We never experience directly, but interpret our experience of our perceptions through imagery. All our input comes through multi-sensory channels. We never directly perceive ourselves, soul, or God. We don't perceive our bodies directly, only our sensory impressions. But we do have first-hand experience of our body-image, soul-image, and God images. That is all we know directly. The rest is pure speculation.
Relative viewpoints condition our concepts of reality, body and soul. A given individual may hold several within himself. For example, a rational scientist may find no empirical evidence for soul in her normal methods of investigation, but it does not prevent her continuing practice and belief in her faith. The emotional self will not be denied, even if it is held discrete from the workplace.
Historically, the body (and matter in general) has been a spiritual battle-ground. Because of the bi-polar nature of our being (or our perception of bi-polarity), the human spirit naturally comes into conflict with our earthy and material needs. These primal drives create conflict between spirituality and instinctuality or sensuality. But the conflict is a matter of perception and psychological perspective.
In the West, flesh was condemned for "original sin", a mandate forced on the body by so-called "spiritual" pontification. This mandate was extended to include the condemnation of all matter. In the East, the perception of any solid substance was declared a mental phenomenon. Matter was seen merely as an expression of universal mind, reduced to a gross state known as maya. In this state all matter is subject to karma, the natural consequences of active existence. In this worldview, the soul is continuously recycled. Both philosophies reject materialism, and the body with it.
So matter is merely a convincing illusion in one view, while in another it is inherently evil, the very opposite of God. The notion of immanence holds, on the other hand, along with Pantheism and Animism that all matter, formless or substantive, is naturally infused with the divine. All agree that matter occupies space and time and is perceived by the senses. Philosophically, matter is the formless material of the universe of sensory experience. Each of these ideas, maya and the "fall," provides a coherent worldview, yet remains discrete and congruent only within its own belief system, with its a priori assumptions unexamined.
In our culture, the body and our fantasies about it, have come to represent the lost Feminine element. We have lost touch with our primal femininity, the animating principle (nature, body, instinct). We have become estranged from the body through the mind/body split fostered by Cartesian thinking, which is also non-relativistic.
The image of the disembodied modern individual is one of an over-rational "walking head," not a whole human being. Our modern need is not for further disembodiment by transcending off into salvation in the nether-realms of space, not for more out-of-body experiences. Rather, we almost desperately need to create ways of truly inhabiting our bodies, unsplit by Puritanical and Cartesian residue.
There is a way that joins spirit and body through the spontaneous imagery of soul. It seeks neither to solve our troubles (pathologies) nor "save" our souls. It suggests direct engagement with images for soul-making or deepening through personal experience. We can see through the nature of apparent reality for ourselves, if we but try. Then we develop our own philosophy, apart from consensus. When it comes to questions of speculation on the unknown, we can either accept what others have said, or look for ourselves.
We seek the lost soul primarily because of the intense degree of wounding in our modern consciousness. This wounding has "opened" us to transformation. We can embody soul by seeing-through appearances to an acute awareness of the archetypal, subjective perception of our experience.
We can find soul in the body. It speaks metaphorically in body language (how closed or open one is to life and experience), body talk ("he's a pain in the neck," "I can't stomach that"), symptoms, and displacements. Conversion reactions change psychological dis-ease into concrete ailments. Jung said the gods have become diseases and there is a god within every disease. Noticing that psychic element and giving it voice is psychological soul-making. We can also look at our behavior, emotions, thoughts, and styles of consciousness psychologically.
The conflict over the body is really between spirit and spirit, good and bad, polarized. But it is popularized as a split between spirit and matter, with the soul as intermediary. To compound the problem, in linguistics and beliefs, spirit and soul have become mis-identified with one another by theology and philosophy. Philosophy, for the Greeks was an adventure undertaken for its own sake, without dogma, rites, or sacred entities.
These disciplines pull the soul in opposite directions, leaving the alienated ego rejecting both mystical experience and the imperfection of the body. Thus we need recourse to priests (for spirituality), therapists (for psychological insight), and doctors (to interpret the condition of the body).
All healing appears to come from without when we cannot heal our own dis-ease. The body is betrayed and mentally abandoned. Symptoms become something to get rid of, while the soul has no recourse to a higher power. Then the body becomes tyrannical, ruling the self with addictions and psychosomatic complaints. It has many ways of manifesting dis-ease.
The entire choice between spirit and body, inner and outer, has its source in identification with the ego. Ego maintains itself by creating conflicts from opposing drives within. It suppresses one and makes you believe you have chosen freely. The dilemma comes from the ego, not the soul.
Matter, spirit, and ego fight over the soul. Yet soul is a primary experience. Each wants its unique fantasy to reign uppermost. So, the first task is to distinguish soul from spirit, so the body may unite and be enlivened by both. In this process, primacy is given to the perspective of psyche or soul. This is a psychological approach--not spiritual or religious--giving voice to soul. It means the return of a subjective feminine eye on reality. It means the enlivening of our bodies, the world of nature, and the imagination. When we see soul as the background of all phenomena, we become aware of the animating principle.
All images arise from either body processes (instinct) or psychic forms (spirit). Whether instinct-controlled or spirit-controlled, they are related to physiological processes. They appear psychologically as images, but work physiologically. They produce emotional or visceral aspects, but not in any causal way. The images don't produce reactions. The image is the entire psychophysical gestalt.
We have considered three relative perspectives from which the notion of soul may be viewed: theological, philosophical, and psychological. Each has its own distinct notion about the body. Like Jung, we are not referring to a religious or philosophical concept of either body or soul. Soul may or may not ultimately be a disembodied, immortal thing as Zoroaster, Plato, and The Bible suggest.
They uphold the pervasive cultural view that soul is a transcendent entity, distinct from the body that participates in an idealistic afterlife. No one alive can say for sure, and what about this life, here and now? Psyche's view speaks directly to our whole personalistic experience, with its transpersonal elements.
The soul in depth psychology is an empirical manifestation of imagination, fantasy, and creativity which is always in the process of becoming--images forming, and dissolving, and forming anew. Imagination is the essence of the life forces, both physical and psychic. These fantasies always permeate our beliefs, ideas, emotions, and physical nature.
Like the psyche, or life-breath, of the early Greeks, this notion of soul is like that of the butterfly which always stays close to the ground. It is an airy thing, hovering lightly, without heroically soaring to the heights. In this model, there are no abstract flights of fancy into spirit's realm, no transcending off into subtle "spirit bodies" mistakenly distinguished as aspects of the soul. These urges are real, but they belong to spirit.
Rather, the soul generates images unceasingly. The soul lives on images and metaphor. These images form the basis for our consciousness. All we can know comes through images, through our multi-sensory perceptions. So this soul always stays close to the body, close to corporeality, to what "matters." Let the images come into your body. Embrace the image. To heal the mind/body split we need a view of reality that eliminates the dichotomy of "in here" in this separate body vs. "out there" in the alien, external world.
Even physics shows us we are continuous with that world. Our skin-boundary is an illusion. We literally exchange gases and atoms with one another, and the world. The turn-over of matter in the body means there is no single, stable structure over time--just a duration of consciousness.
The line between organic and inorganic matter is indistinguishable at the subatomic level. All that exists is alive with motion. Both body and mind are the realm of psyche which can manifest as particular behaviors, psychosomatic illnesses, emotional patterns, mental and spiritual beliefs, and synchronistic events.
Mystics tell us that the entire world of phenomena is of the nature of mind or consciousness. Modern quantum mechanics seems to uphold this view from the scientific side. There is no solid matter, when you get right down to it--only waves of energy, "quantum fuzz", and probabilities. So, matter is no more tangible, nor less divine than the intangible energy or light from which it congeals. It is a spiritual notion that matter is a debased form of energy.
But the perspective of spirit would not have us confuse the creation with the Creator. Yet, in some sense, the light is the Light, in the metaphorical, if not literalistic or concretistic sense. We are merely a local outcropping of individuality, embedded in a continuum of cosmic connectivity, a webwork of relationship. In so many words, it means, "We are the world!"
"In here" and "out there" become moot when the subatomic nature of matter is truly understood. It becomes easier to see the nature of psyche as the underlying, living, divine field of all experience and phenomena. At the deepest level, we are physically indistinguishable from the cosmos at the quantum level.
Our existence is one of an indeterminate electromagnetic field, rather than a distinct chemical entity. Divinity is not off somewhere else, long ago, or in the future. We don't need to leave the body, die, or travel through time and space to find it in "pie-in-the-sky" salvation. As the Buddhists note, all is self, or Atman, here and now always.
The universal EM field is a primary physical, if not corporeal reality. Our apparently discrete existence is contiguous with it. In this model there is no mandate for a "soul-as-spirit body" to leave or vacate the body for purification, enlightenment, or union with divinity. Only our state of consciousness keeps us from that moment-by-moment realization. Direct psychological experience tells us that "I AM THAT."
We are psychological beings, composed of body and soul. Psychic life is physical and mental. Spirit enlivens soul--it manifests through soul. Soul animates the body. Soul enlivens and tends to favor the body. The body unites with spirit and soul by becoming "saturated" with them, immersed in their essence.
Denial of the body by a disembodied spiritual drive leads to ascensionism. It may be an escapist, transcendence fantasy. It is a way of keeping life at bay. In the provisional life one is always waiting to live life if things are just so. We can re-inhabit or re-own the body in consciousness and experience ourselves as total psychosomatic beings. Spirit can be grounded in the body by making practical use of spiritual insights.
The harmonization of spirituality and instinctuality leads to wholeness. For example, in sexuality, a spirit-body split leads to an inability to see one sexual partner as both sexy and spiritually inspiring. This may manifest through circumstances or a psychological complex. It is an aspect of the Madonna-whore complex.
The whole person, on the other hand, views the sex act as the divine marriage of spirit and soul, God/Goddess, Shiva/Shakti. It epitomizes the universal cycle of creation/destruction, mind and matter in play. This attitude exalts body, soul, and spirit. It is akin to a nature mystic experience where the outer divine resonates and enters the body.
The ancient art of alchemy was the search for the God-head in matter. The alchemical task was to unify spirit and soul in the body. Psychic reality means to be in soul, esse in anima, as Jung put it. It means an enlarged experience of concrete reality to include the realm of the psyche, a dialogue with events, situations, and circumstances.
Body is made complete, not by perfecting it, but by spiritualizing it. It becomes the vehicle of the "incarnating Self." Spirit is attracted to matter and matter to spirit. Matter gets purpose and meaning from spirit. An "immortal body" now means grounding of the spirit. The uniting of soul, body, and spirit was called the Unus Mundus, or One World in alchemy.
As a psychophysical entity you experience the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World. The Jews knew it as the Shekinah. She is the embodiment of psyche, the animating force behind all events, images, and material forms. Soul functions both in the body and through projection in the physical world. Psychic reality means to be-in-soul, through embodiment (soma) or enlivenment (psyche)--perceiving images viscerally (soma) and mentally (psyche).
Acknowledgement of this force does not constitute Goddess worship--only recognition of the archetypal reality of nature, and our nature. She is a way of reclaiming the divinity of body, matter, and world. The Soul of the World notion, though repressed, is part of the return of the Feminine. Hillman invites us into this world:
Let us imagine the anima mundi neither above the world encircling it as a divine and remote emanation of spirit, a world of powers, archetypes, and principles transcendent to things, nor within the material world as its unifying panpsychic life-principle. Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, that seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each event as it is, its sensuous presentation as face bespeaking its interior image--in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as a psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing, God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street.
Hillman suggests therapy shift its focus from saving the soul of the individual to saving the soul of the world, resurrection of the world, rather than man--a raising of consciousness of created things, the world's psychic reality. He says we have, in essence, taken and stored the world soul within ourselves. "There is no 'in here' and 'out there'. We should give it back."
Physical reality becomes psychic and psyche becomes real. It "matters." The difference between soul and external things no longer matters. Inner and Outer worlds are real. They are One World. Image, metaphor and symbol bridge the abyss between matter and spirit. They are integrated with feeling, mind, and imagination. We can see soul in all natural objects. We can notice our fantasies constantly conditioning our experience of reality.
We need to learn how to be in our souls, just as we had to learn to re-inhabit the body. Being-in-soul implies that you are being suffused with spirit. Knowledge of spirit doesn't come from ideas, even revelations, but through a reflective process. Their conjunction, or marriage, means spirit is reborn whenever you are in touch with soul. They are opposites, so the interplay is eternal. Just observe without attachment the interaction of soul and spirit, distinct yet conjoined. Hold the tension of the opposites.
When spirit as energy and matter as form are in balance, the body becomes the living "Temple of the Spirit." The notion of a soul's immortality comes to mean direct experience of non-spatial, non-temporal, four-dimensional reality--the realm of relativity.
References
Adhikari, Richard, Time Travel a No Go? No Way http://www.technewsworld.com/story/72969.html
Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm
Elior, Rachel, Jewish Spirituality and the Soul,
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Theology/Afterlife_and_Messiah/Life_After_Death/Immortality/Spirituality_and_the_Soul.shtml
Green, A. (1999). The Work of the Negative. (A. Weller, Trans.). New York: Free Association P.
Kowall, James,The World as Virtual Reality Scientific God Journal, No. 4 (2012).
Lanza, Robert, Does Death Exist? New Theory Says No. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-new-theo_b_384515.html
[Lorenz], H. Shulman. (1997). Living at the Edge of Chaos: Complex Systems in Culture and Psyche. Einsiedeln: Daimon Verlag.
Miller, David L., At the Edges of the Round Table: Jung, Religion, and Eranos
http://www.imaginalinstitute.com/edge.htm
Shough, Martin, 2002, A SPECULATIVE ONTOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF NONLOCAL
CONTEXT-DEPENDENCY IN ELECTRON SPIN, http://martinshough.com/physics/spinont.pdf
Westafer, http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Westafer_UltimatelyPossible_2.pdf
Zero Point, http://www.zeropoint.ca/microcosm-kabbalah.html
Adhikari, Richard, Time Travel a No Go? No Way http://www.technewsworld.com/story/72969.html
Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm
Elior, Rachel, Jewish Spirituality and the Soul,
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Theology/Afterlife_and_Messiah/Life_After_Death/Immortality/Spirituality_and_the_Soul.shtml
Green, A. (1999). The Work of the Negative. (A. Weller, Trans.). New York: Free Association P.
Kowall, James,The World as Virtual Reality Scientific God Journal, No. 4 (2012).
Lanza, Robert, Does Death Exist? New Theory Says No. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-new-theo_b_384515.html
[Lorenz], H. Shulman. (1997). Living at the Edge of Chaos: Complex Systems in Culture and Psyche. Einsiedeln: Daimon Verlag.
Miller, David L., At the Edges of the Round Table: Jung, Religion, and Eranos
http://www.imaginalinstitute.com/edge.htm
Shough, Martin, 2002, A SPECULATIVE ONTOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF NONLOCAL
CONTEXT-DEPENDENCY IN ELECTRON SPIN, http://martinshough.com/physics/spinont.pdf
Westafer, http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Westafer_UltimatelyPossible_2.pdf
Zero Point, http://www.zeropoint.ca/microcosm-kabbalah.html
Introduction: Psychophysical Problem
Each and every moment is the edge of history, emerging into manifestation. What came before existence? Pre-existence? If so, what could the possible nature of such a state be? This is the age-old metaphysical, philosophical, psychological and scientific conundrum. The phrase "out of nothing" is best understood as "out of non-being" or "out of invisible.
Is there existence separate from the molecular structure of the body? Such age-old questions kick open the depth dimension of spirituality and religion. The Ancestors go back to the beginning of our existence itself. Just as we go back to the beginning of existence. The soul is part of the psychophysical unity of man – body and soul, which harbors emotions, feelings and desires. So, the problem of unrestrained human fecundity combined with material desires and resource consumption is a soulful problem of the whole organism, species and planet.
Andromeda, nearly double the size of the Milky Way, is on a head-on collision course with our local galaxy. As the two galaxies destroy one another, they reform into one new larger galaxy. The process repeats the endless cycles of primordial serpent who swallows its own tail in Creation. Even the Universe seems to be consuming itself.
The Importance of Consciousness
"Consider the uncertainty principle, one of the most famous and important aspects of quantum mechanics. Experiments confirm it's built into the fabric of reality, but it only makes sense from a biocentric perspective. If there's really a world out there with particles just bouncing around, then we should be able to measure all their properties. But we can't. Why should it matter to a particle what you decide to measure?
Consider the double-slit experiment: if one "watches" a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle and creates solid-looking hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that measures the impacts.
Like a tiny bullet, it logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists do not observe the trajectory of the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves that allow it pass through both holes at the same time. Why does our observation change what happens? Answer: Because reality is a process that requires our consciousness," Lanza says.
You would not exist without a consciousness. One of the reasons Robert Lanza thinks you will not die, is because you are not a object. You're a special being. According to biocentrism, nothing could exist without consciousness. Remember you can't see through the bone surrounding your brain. Space and time are not hard objects, but rather the tools our mind uses to weave everything together. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.
Lanzer points out that death does not exists in a timeless, spaceless world. There is no distinction between past, present, and future. It is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether. Albert Einstein once said: " Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one." How can we tell what is real and not? How can we with certainty know that our brain is not giving us the illusion of a physical world?
http://www.messagetoeagle.com/deathillusionparuniverse.php
Phase Transition
Kowall in The World as Virtual Reality argues, “Some sort of complex information processing occurs in the brain. The result of that information processing is mental imagination. We not only perceive external sensory perceptions of the world and internal emotional perceptions of the body, but we also perceive forms of mental imagination in the form of memories and thoughts. In some sense, memory is only possible since mental images are held in mental imagination over a sequence of mental events. That holding of images in mental imagination only arises from coherent organization, as the form of those images is self-replicated in form over a sequence of events. That self-replication of form is inherently a body-based process.
The form of a body is self-replicated over a sequence of events. Self-replication of body form is called body survival. Self-replication of body form only arises from coherent organization, as the form of the body holds together as a bound state of information, just like the animated form of a computer generated body image on a viewing screen.
Self-replication of body form is possible due to the second law. Any form self-replicated in form over a sequence of events arises due to coherent organization. In the sense of thermodynamics, that form is self-replicated in the same coherently organized phase of organization. Self-replication of form is a thermodynamic process that gives rise to the same macroscopic form of something even as the microscopic details change. If we only observe the macroscopic appearance, we don't observe the microscopic details. In the sense of quantum theory, a macroscopic form arises from microscopic states that give rise to the same macroscopic appearance. A change in the macroscopic form of something is called a phase transition. All phase transitions are examples of symmetry breaking.”(Kowall)
Another way of describing what happens is that the particle becomes stored in a disembodied way between the vacuum entanglement and the classic message, then is reconstructed at the future time. In other words, now you see it, now you don't, then you see it again.
"If you call it time travel, it is time travel to the future, which is allowed by relativity," Ralph said.
"The technique mentioned in our paper is a form of quantum teleportation. It only works for quantum particles," Ralph added. "It only works forward in time." http://www.technewsworld.com/story/72969.html
Unus Mundus
Perhaps it is time for a critical design review. Perhaps, it is more accurate to conceive of soul as psyche, not as identical with spirit, but with psychophysical existence – even the World Soul or Anima Mundi, which unites psyche and matter. The doctrine of a world-soul in a highly abstract form appears as early as the eighth century BCE, described as "the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower, the Eternal in which space is woven and which is woven in it.
The psychology of the scientific process may be reflected in the material world. New terms are required to describe the quasi-physical domain of preexistence and how it permeates our psychophysical unus mundus, a body-centered imagination. The essence of the whole person is one’s essential nature. Soul or psyche mediates spirit and matter. But science excludes the material aspects of psyche. They re-appear as anomalous experience and cognition – the edge or frontier of experience as well as science. Inner spirit is self-revelatory gnosis.
“Living On the Edge”: Frontier Science, "The Edge of Exact Sciences,"
David L Miller suggests, “In his book The Work of the Negative, André Green speaks about psychoanalysis as edge-work. His last chapter, entitled "On the Edge," urges psychoanalysts not to think of their discipline and their practice in a one-sided way: it is neither a science, on the one hand, nor an art, a philosophy, or a religion, on the other. Psychoanalysis, both as a theory and as a practice, is constantly -- Green argues -- on an edge between science and philosophy (Green, 1999).”
Iona Miller and Fred Graywolf Swinney argued for creative edge-work rooted in complex dynamics in experiential psychotherapy as early as 1993 in Chaosophy 93. leading edge of unfolding transitions, poised between the demise of one modality of meaning and prior to the coming of a new one.
Helene Lorenz had in 1997, in a most remarkable, and too little noticed, book on the relation of complexity theory to depth psychology, pointed to the importance of the "edges of chaos" in the analytic experience (Lorenz, 1997, chaps. 7 & 8). It is, Lorenz argues, at the "edges of chaos" that "complex adaptive systems [like the Self] begin to evolve" (p. 112), i.e., individuation takes place at a psychic edge. More recently, in an article in Spring, Giegerich has argued that the interiorized boundary of the soul is the experience of its not having a boundary (Giegerich, 1998, pp. 16-17). In my terms, this is psyche's edge. David Miller goes on to suggest, “Perhaps depth psychology should have been called edge psychology, if only to avoid the soul and spirit, anima and animus, depth and height awkwardness of vertical binarisms and split-syzygies.” http://www.imaginalinstitute.com/edge.htm
Holism reunites the organism once divided by the dualism of a worldview that soul separated from the body. In 1950 Wolfgang Pauli write, "Both of us [Pauli and Jung] seem to agree that the future of Jung's ideas is not with psychotherapy ... but with a unitarian, holistic concept of nature and the position of man in it." (Wolfgang Pauli to Markus Fierz, 1950)
In a transcendental view, the soul exists on a spiritual plane, a recognized spiritual element. Soul or psyche is the vital force of Consciousness, both formative and experiential as primordial awareness.
Only the soul restores the core elements of the body, transcending the dichotomy of outer and inner Universe. A complete description of nature would include both psyche and matter. Even science is a qualitative and symbolic description of nature. Quantum theory is deeply rooted in psychophysical experience.
Being represents Life and Consciousness. Without life and consciousness there is neither being nor becoming. Knowing Itself is Being, knowing Itself as the creator and the created.
The Immortality Potential expressed as the Ancient One/Blue Dragon is Pre-Existence, the serpentine Sine Wave, Limitless Preexistent Light. The Blue Dragon is the feminine aspect of the initial impetus of Creation (The Seed/Egg of local Universe).
Andromeda is near double the size of the Milky Way, and is on a head-on collision course with this local galaxy. The two Galaxies will destroy each other, and reform into one new larger galaxy. Rverything is predatorial (Serpent Who Swallows It's Own Tail) in Creation.
Pre-physical-existence
Plato's idea of the preexistence and eternity of the soul, derived from his dualistic outlook, set matter and spirit at odds with one another. The Platonic doctrine tended to an extreme Transcendentalism. Soul and body are distinct orders of reality, and bodily existence involves a kind of violence to the higher part of our composite nature. The body is the "prison", the "tomb", or even, as some later Platonists expressed it, the "hell" of the soul.
In Aristotle this error is avoided. His definition of the soul as "the first entelechy of a physical organized body potentially possessing life" emphasizes the closeness of the union of soul and body. The difficulty in his theory is to determine what degree of distinctness or separateness from the matter of the body is to be conceded to the human soul. He fully recognizes the spiritual element in thought and describes the "active intellect" (nous poetikos) as "separate and impassible", but the precise relation of this active intellect to the individual mind is a hopelessly obscure question in Aristotle's psychology. (Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm)
However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same. What, however, is the potentiality of human beings? For Aristotle this question turns out to be equivalent to asking what it is that is distinctive about human beings. In Aristotle's hierarchy of being, pure potentiality (“prime matter”) is at the bottom, pure actuality (Aristotle's God) is at the top. Formed matter (everything else, including our world) is in-between.
Origen of Alexandria's argument for the preexistence and eternity of the soul is heavily dependent on Platonism. Origen taught the pre-existence of the soul. Terrestrial life is a punishment and a remedy for prenatal sin. "Soul" is properly degraded spirit: flesh is a condition of alienation and bondage (cf. Comment. ad Romans 1:18). Spirit, however, finite spirit, can exist only in a body, albeit of a glorious and ethereal nature.
Neo-Platonism, which through St. Augustine contributed so much to spiritual philosophy, belongs to this period. Like Gnosticism, it uses emanations. The primeval and eternal One begets by emanation nous (intelligence); and from nous in turn springs psyche (soul), which is the image of nous, but distinct from it. Matter is a still later emanation. Soul has relations to both ends of the scale of reality, and its perfection lies in turning towards the Divine Unity from which it came. In everything, the neo-Platonist recognized the absolute primacy of the soul with respect to the body. Thus, the mind is always active, even in sense — perception — it is only the body that is passively affected by external stimuli. Similarly Plotinus prefers to say that the body is in the soul rather than vice versa: and he seems to have been the first to conceive the peculiar manner of the soul's location as an undivided and universal presence pervading the organism. (C.Encyc.)
In Judaism the conflict between flesh and spirit was far less radical than that of the Greeks, who viewed body and soul as an absolute dichotomy. Such a view implies a disembodied spirituality.
The "Book of Concealed Mystery" goes on to state that this "Equilibrium hangeth in that region which is negatively existent." What is negative existence? What is positive existence? The distinction between these two is another fundamental idea. To define negative existence clearly is impossible, for when it is distinctly defined it ceases to be negative existence; it is then negative existence passing into static condition. Therefore wisely have the Qabalists shut out from mortal comprehension the primal AIN, Ain, the negatively existent One, and the AIN SVP, Ain Soph, the limitless Expansion; while of even the AIN SVP AVR, Ain Soph Aur, the illimitable Light, only a dim conception can be formed.
The universe first appears as a point source of unfoldment–an unfoldment which occurs from within-without, out of the Infinite and into the Finite. A Point or infinitesimal Dot represents the “I”, and is rooted in the infinities of NEGATIVE EXISTENCE. As one approaches the “supernal point” from below, one encounters the abyss, which is a veil of ignorance or a “ring pass not,” beyond which the mind cannot penetrate. However the Knowers of Self can come to so penetrate the infinite and know God. http://www.zeropoint.ca/microcosm-kabbalah.html
The kabbalists--the medieval Jewish mystics--believed that human life, including the life of the soul, reflected and affected the divine world, the world of the sefirot: God's ten attributes or emanations. The soul, an instrument of perfection, goes through far-reaching corresponding transformations. The soul’s material and physical elements became highly developed in medieval thought, especially in the kabbalah. The "universal soul," was considered the "active intelligence," or God himself.
In later stages of development, the Jewish conception of the soul was influenced by Greek philosophical views, as these were reformulated and interpreted by the Moslem and Christian theologians of the Middle Ages. For the first time, Judaism viewed the doctrine of the soul as belonging to the realm of philosophy, and medieval Jewish thought made a unique attempt to adapt these philosophical views to the Torah and to make them a means for interpreting concepts relating to ethics, religious piety, prophecy, and the knowledge of God.
In the Sefer ha‑Bahir, the creation and the molding and sustenance of souls is bound up with an erotic myth that speaks of sexual union between cosmic entities in the world of the sefirot (divine emanations) and of the process of creation in general. The text alludes, in highly symbolic language, to a system that was further developed in the Zohar and other kabbalistic literature.
Three stages of development are discerned in the formation of souls: the ideal, the ontological, and the actual. These stages parallel both the processes of intercourse, pregnancy, and birth, by which the physical body comes into being, and the relationships between the sefirot in the supernal [i.e. divine] world.
The erotic symbolism by which the dynamic relationship between the various aspects of the divine is described in the kabbalistic system relates to the idea that the creation of souls takes place in connection with an act of cosmic union. In addition, it reflects deep religious implications regarding the exalted nature of the soul that were attached to human sexual union on account of its archetypal parallel in the supernal worlds.
The kabbalistic doctrine of the soul is based upon three fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of man: (1) the divine origin of the human soul; (2) the idea that man is structured in the image of the sefirot, and that his soul reflects the hierarchy of the supernatural worlds, and (3) the idea that man can influence the world of the divine.
The kabbalah borrowed the philosophical division of the soul into parts and superimposed a mystical quality upon it, contending that each part expressed a different sefirot.
Negative Existence, Realms of Non-Being and the Supernal Point
What kind of existence is within the “plenum” of the En Soph–unmanifest but latent within the fullness of emptiness is described by Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag:
“Nequaquam Vacuum” - Nowhere a Void
Kabbalah was based on the Doctrine of Emanation from the Three Veils of Negative Existence – existence arises from pre-existence. Kabbalists have long portrayed the creation of the universe as emerging from a supernal point of no-dimension out of a background in NEGATIVE EXISTENCE.
This same creation scenario is elaborated by modern scientific accounts. In science, the universe emerged at the beginning of time as an infinitesimal singularity out of the nothingness and plenum of the quantum vacuum. Kabbalah would also suggest the ultimate dissolution of the Cosmos at the end of time into such an infinitesimal point, and back into the void/plenum.
Pre-existence is a pre-spacetime domain of archetypal potential, which manifests in EXISTENCE as a condensation of information. To condense information, we project the unknown onto our unique local state. The transformation of the soul becomes a powerful narrative.
What we believe about the future and the past fuels our strategies and allegiances in the present. The narratives with which we make sense of the world, our lives, and history are cautionary tales; we direct our efforts to seeking certain outcomes and avoiding others, heading for “the happy ending” or as close as we can get to it, trying to “learn from the past” (or from the narrative our imaginations and prejudices have imposed on the past).
The "Progress Narrative" competes with "Radical Transformation" of order from chaos – emergence of the unforeseen vision beyond comprehension. The soul doesn’t follow a predictable, coherent, linear path. Soul is our capacity for the quantum leap.
Pre-Spacetime
The spacetime singularity occurs prior to the emergence of matter. As the kabbalists imply, absolute space erupts as a void. Pre space-time is void of matter, non-spatial and non-temporal manifolds of chaotic perturbation leading to emergence or emanation of matter. It may be a recursive process.
The pre space-time always looks like the chaotic void, but it may be formed by the similar matter in a nested recursive mechanism – a superspin field. All things material come from and return to the Void, including ourselves, in a return to our absolute zero point which is shared by the totality of the cosmos.
So, as we know, the measurement of any state is ultimately limited by the \overlap" or similarities with our local state; our perspective. Our assumptions - our experimental setups, the very fact that we detect the universe with luminous baryonic matter and not something else - all define our perspective and bound our conclusions. (Westafer)
Zer0 Field
Massless spinfields are the vortices or whirlpools of the Dirac Sea. Interaction of such vortices is perturbed by superparamagnetic and magnetic fields. Interacting magnetic [nano]clusters are another form of the dynamic void. Matter is a field dependent phenomena. Zero field cooled magnetization might lead to the condensation and precipitation of matter. A superspin interpretation of the prespacetime domain field.
And physical in nature and the universe, all around is full and the emergence of a "super-spin sub - domain super-rotation vector field - spin the material into ultra - ultra-rotation of the movement and change." Objects as large as the universe Nebula, Galaxy, small particles of quarks L, D, spin. . . . . , Gravity and relativity, and its internal relations must be an integral and external linkages, "ring" - ultra-roton - super spin vector field games, nature origin, the origin of particles, the origin of the universe, the origin of changes in physical movement. Test the nature of scientific experiments, not tens of thousands of people repeated testing for verification and accurate and can be found from which to extract the inevitable and extremely critical of the mysterious natural laws of experimental evidence, theories and theorems are all equal to zero. Therefore, the natural scientists than social scientists far to harsh and hard, like a Newton's gravitation, Darwin's theory of evolution, cells, genes,, nebula science, models of the universe, the quark model, the gene model, plate theory, quantum mechanics, quantum chemistry, universe physics, cosmic chemistry, human genetics, physical anthropology, social anthropology, and so on. Science and modern economic, political, social, religious, philosophical, military, technology, civilization, democracy are inseparable, therefore, the correct view and analysis of today's world and the planet of change and development, and the real world to predict the future changes will be very important the. Otherwise, a wrong move, round loser. Natural sciences and social sciences pregnant create infinite greatness and vast, but it is not that human nature is equivalent to an ordinary, modern humans in ape simply atavistic animal. As everyone knows, super-spin sub-, super-rotation vector field field - the world's super-rotation of the material and the movement of basic mathematical equations and expressions are simple: numerous sequence ultra-c1, c2, c3 ........ tend to spin C ( Ultra super spin vector field field spin sub 。。。。。) ----- [email protected]//[email protected]
Sylos Labini and Pietronero [117]: 'A crucial point to understand is therefore the origin of the scale-invariance in the gravitational clustering phenomenon. This would correspond to the understanding of the origin of self-gravitating fractal structures and of the properties of Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) from the knowledge of the microscopic physical processes at the basis of this phenomenon.' They advocate a new approach
from the directions of statistical physics and complexity theory. But the contention of this essay is that they may be mistaken in seeking a basis for cosmic SOC in 'microscopic physical processes', in the sense that no physical processes in a radically scale-free fractal universe can properly be understood as microscopic. It is argued that only a radically scale-free fractal dynamic operating on processes at all scales will get rid of the problems inherent in scale-dependent effective field theory in a fully self-consistent way.’
the context-dependency and wave-function symmetry of spin observables we propose to give up the particle/field representation in favor of a network of nonlocal linear objects. Under local measurements, each nonlocal object has a basic two-valuedness of position which also entails a basic two-valuedness of electron spin, expressed at opposite nodes reciprocally. It is conventional that a few pairs may preserve a singlet state of spin in
a specialised nonlocal EPR symmetry, but according to our generalised symmetry all pairs can always be thought of as preserving a singlet state of superspin. Superspin is supposed to be carried as a 'super-rotation' of the plane of polarisation of a (linear polarised) photon. The photon itself 'sees' the restored superspin symmetry normalised (in null proper time) to that of a spin-zero scalar 'particle' and is blind to an imaginary torsion which it carries over into the mass relations of a pair of spin-half leptons as a spin-one electrodynamical symmetry. The emergence of the local-relativistic electrodynamical symmetry is to be identified with the spontaneous breaking of nonlocal superspin symmetry in the network. In this emergent local network each point of measurement of an electron can be seen as the origin of N complex radius vectors, each of which has some probability of being the photon vector which a measurement will elicit as being 'the electron spin axis'. Where the superrotation of the photon (linear) polarisation plane inverts through p at the measurement node, radial direction determines which of two reciprocal spin vectors is 'measured' at the node at
http://martinshough.com/physics/spinont.pdf
Relativity of Body and Soul
Throughout history there have been many conceptions about the physical and spiritual nature of reality. Early on, they were confounded, though now separated into philosophy, physics, and religion. Each of these models or conceptions of mankind's relationship to nature and the divine was based in a belief-system which pre-conditioned all notions about the nature of the self. Some rest in the unity of nature, monism, dualism, or other primordial models. Panpsychism is a philosophical theory that mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe.
The realm of psychology, with its own unique perspective on body and soul, lies between the worlds of physical reality and experiential heights. There are many schools of thought in psychology, many of which, like behaviorism and humanism, do not consider the relevance of a notion of soul as motivating factor. On the other hand, transpersonal psychology accepts the validity of the spiritual to the point where its primary psychological orientation may recede into the background.
Jungian psychology, and its postmodern form imaginal psychology seek to maintain the primacy of the image as a direct expression of soul. As a discipline, it alleges that soul is a primary experience, and seeks to give her a voice. The realm of psyche is a subjective world of depth and meaning that is sometimes corporeal, sometimes not. Entry into this style of consciousness means heightened awareness of subjective realities. Each "thing" speaks of the gods, or archetypal qualities and forces. It boldly asserts that not even technology and inorganic matter are inherently soulless.
Imaginal psychology's main proponent, James Hillman, suggests it is only the literalist, objective world of Newtonian mechanics and the Christian apocalypse that is "dead." This school of psychology views many "spiritual" notions as products of a monotheistic style of consciousness. It puts forth the view that soul is a pluralistic expression, rather than an individual quality. It upholds a polytheistic perspective which is more in line with the primitive concepts of the nature of soul. It views notions like "spiritual soul," "material body," and "spiritual body" metaphorically, rather than literally. Each god or archetype has its relative, characteristic style of consciousness and way of seeing through the nature of things.
Jung and his followers have shown that certain mind-sets lead to biased fantasies about the nature of the body, the soul, and the cosmos. Psyche is essentially related to soma because it is rooted in organic structure. The intimacy of this relationship is not fully understood. It is a realm of mystery which brings in its wake phenomena such as synchronicity and psychosomatic disorders.
Religion and superstition undermined any remotely objective viewpoint about the physical nature of the universe until the Enlightenment. Then scientists armored themselves against incursions of the divine with Newtonian mechanics and Cartesian duality. Descarte split mind from body, and equated the soul with the ego and mind, thus disenfranchising it. The mechanistic, "clockwork universe" was based on the primacy of underlying order. The universe was perceived as chaos tending toward order, with each atom following God's great plan.
This notion of an orderly universe was superseded by the unpredictable phenomena of quantum mechanics and chaos theory. We have found that beneath the apparent order is complexity, a world of chaos that self-generates order, which dissolves back into chaos. Even orderly motion is ultimately unpredictable due to initial conditions and even the slightest of random intruding influences. So, the universe may still be "God's plan," but its basis is irrational, not rational.
Physics is a form of philosophy which makes educated guesses about the nature of reality and our existence. It invites us to "look at it this way..." Scientific revolutions demonstrate that these are not ultimate statements about the nature of reality. They are relative, state-of-the-art hypotheses. This particular type of natural philosophy includes many universal laws, however, which reflect the way things seem to be from the current point of view.
It is difficult for any of us to free ourselves from our enculturated and a priori beliefs about existence. It is hard to view anything from outside of our own fundamental philosophical, spiritual, and psychological perspectives. These theories, dogmas, and experiences condition how we perceive reality. Their influence may be so subtle we fail to notice where our position originated. Our viewpoint is relative to our position.
Einstein showed us that, in physics, all perspectives are relative to the position of the observer. He discovered this by imagining he was riding on a beam of light. This relativity holds true in psychology also, depending on what assumed truths one holds. Notions of soul and body are not describing any irreducible reality. These notions are relative realities, reflecting our personal understanding of the nature of reality. They emerge from our specific worldview about the way things (including ourselves) work.
What we believe conditions what we perceive, feel, and express. Research shows our beliefs and opinions are largely conditioned by the belief system of our peer group. The day-to-day influence of convention creates a consensus opinion about reality and is a big influence on lifestyle. Much of consensus is a tacit agreement to overlook certain kinds of information, especially if it doesn't fit the "party line."
Beliefs are subject to radical reversal in some instances--the process of conversion. Jung called this 180 degree shift in consciousness enantiodromia. Conversions arise from a desperate need, from exposure to a new peer group with different attitudes and values, or through embracing a broader worldview, or by covert means like propaganda and brainwashing.
The prime expression of beliefs is through spontaneous imagery. We never experience directly, but interpret our experience of our perceptions through imagery. All our input comes through multi-sensory channels. We never directly perceive ourselves, soul, or God. We don't perceive our bodies directly, only our sensory impressions. But we do have first-hand experience of our body-image, soul-image, and God images. That is all we know directly. The rest is pure speculation.
Relative viewpoints condition our concepts of reality, body and soul. A given individual may hold several within himself. For example, a rational scientist may find no empirical evidence for soul in her normal methods of investigation, but it does not prevent her continuing practice and belief in her faith. The emotional self will not be denied, even if it is held discrete from the workplace.
Historically, the body (and matter in general) has been a spiritual battle-ground. Because of the bi-polar nature of our being (or our perception of bi-polarity), the human spirit naturally comes into conflict with our earthy and material needs. These primal drives create conflict between spirituality and instinctuality or sensuality. But the conflict is a matter of perception and psychological perspective.
In the West, flesh was condemned for "original sin", a mandate forced on the body by so-called "spiritual" pontification. This mandate was extended to include the condemnation of all matter. In the East, the perception of any solid substance was declared a mental phenomena. Matter was seen merely as an expression of universal mind, reduced to a gross state known as maya. In this state all matter is subject to karma, the natural consequences of active existence. In this worldview, the soul is continuously recycled. Both philosophies reject materialism, and the body with it.
So matter is merely a convincing illusion in one view, while in another it is inherently evil, the very opposite of God. The notion of immanence holds, on the other hand, along with Pantheism and Animism, that all matter, formless or substantive, is naturally infused with the divine. All agree that matter occupies space and time and is perceived by the senses. Philosophically, matter is the formless material of the universe of sensory experience. Each of these ideas, maya and the "fall," provides a coherent worldview, yet remains discrete and congruent only within its own belief system, with its a priori assumptions unexamined.
In our culture, the body and our fantasies about it, have come to represent the lost Feminine element. We have lost touch with our primal femininity, the animating principle (nature, body, instinct). We have become estranged from the body through the mind/body split fostered by Cartesian thinking, which is also non-relativistic.
The image of the disembodied modern individual is one of an over-rational "walking head," not a whole human being. Our modern need is not for further disembodiment by transcending off into salvation in the nether-realms of space, not for more out-of-body experiences. Rather, we almost desperately need to create ways of truly inhabiting our bodies, unsplit by Puritanical and Cartesian residue.
There is a way that joins spirit and body through the spontaneous imagery of soul. It seeks neither to solve our troubles (pathologies) nor "save" our souls. It suggests direct engagement with images for soul-making or deepening through personal experience. We can see through the nature of apparent reality for ourselves, if we but try. Then we develop our own philosophy, apart from consensus. When it comes to questions of speculation on the unknown, we can either accept what others have said, or look for ourselves.
We seek the lost soul primarily because of the intense degree of wounding in our modern consciousness. This wounding has "opened" us to transformation. We can embody soul by seeing-through appearances to an acute awareness of the archetypal, subjective perception of our experience.
We can find soul in the body. It speaks metaphorically in body language (how closed or open one is to life and experience), body talk ("he's a pain in the neck," "I can't stomach that"), symptoms, and displacements. Conversion reactions change psychological dis-ease into concrete ailments. Jung said the gods have become diseases and there is a god within every disease. Noticing that psychic element and giving it voice is psychological soul-making. We can also look at our behavior, emotions, thoughts, and styles of consciousness psychologically.
The conflict over the body is really between spirit and spirit, good and bad, polarized. But it is popularized as a split between spirit and matter, with the soul as intermediary. To compound the problem, in linguistics and beliefs, spirit and soul have become mis-identified with one another by theology and philosophy. Philosophy, for the Greeks was an adventure undertaken for its own sake, without dogma, rites, or sacred entities.
These disciplines pull the soul in opposite directions, leaving the alienated ego rejecting both mystical experience and the imperfection of the body. Thus we need recourse to priests (for spirituality), therapists (for psychological insight), and doctors (to interpret the condition of the body).
All healing appears to come from without when we cannot heal our own dis-ease. The body is betrayed and mentally abandoned. Symptoms become something to get rid of, while the soul has no recourse to a higher power. Then the body becomes tyrannical, ruling the self with addictions and psychosomatic complaints. It has many ways of manifesting dis-ease.
The entire choice between spirit and body, inner and outer, has its source in identification with the ego. Ego maintains itself by creating conflicts from opposing drives within. It suppresses one and makes you believe you have chosen freely. The dilemma comes from the ego, not the soul.
Matter, spirit, and ego fight over the soul. Yet soul is a primary experience. Each wants its unique fantasy to reign uppermost. So, the first task is to distinguish soul from spirit, so the body may unite and be enlivened by both. In this process, primacy is given to the perspective of psyche or soul. This is a psychological approach--not spiritual or religious--giving voice to soul. It means the return of a subjective feminine eye on reality. It means the enlivening of our bodies, the world of nature, and the imagination. When we see soul as the background of all phenomena, we become aware of the animating principle
All images arise from either body processes (instinct) or psychic forms (spirit). Whether instinct-controlled or spirit-controlled, they are related to physiological processes. They appear psychologically as images, but work physiologically. They produce emotional or visceral aspects, but not in any causal way. The images don't produce reactions. The image is the entire psychophysical gestalt.
We have considered three relative perspectives from which the notion of soul may be viewed: theological, philosophical, and psychological. Each has its own distinct notion about the body. Like Jung, we are not referring to a religious or philosophical concept of either body or soul. Soul may or may not ultimately be a disembodied, immortal thing as Zoroaster, Plato, and The Bible suggest.
They uphold the pervasive cultural view that soul is a transcendent entity, distinct from the body that participates in an idealistic afterlife. No one alive can say for sure, and what about this life, here and now? Psyche's view speaks directly to our whole personalistic experience, with its transpersonal elements.
The soul in depth psychology is an empirical manifestation of imagination, fantasy, and creativity which is always in the process of becoming--images forming, and dissolving, and forming anew. Imagination is the essence of the life forces, both physical and psychic. These fantasies always permeate our beliefs, ideas, emotions, and physical nature.
Like the psyche, or life-breath, of the early Greeks, this notion of soul is like that of the butterfly which always stays close to the ground. It is an airy thing, hovering lightly, without heroically soaring to the heights. In this model, there are no abstract flights of fancy into spirit's realm, no transcending off into subtle "spirit bodies" mistakenly distinguished as aspects of the soul. These urges are real, but they belong to spirit.
Rather, the soul generates images unceasingly. The soul lives on images and metaphor. These images form the basis for our consciousness. All we can know comes through images, through our multi-sensory perceptions. So this soul always stays close to the body, close to corporeality, to what "matters." Let the images come into your body. Embrace the image. To heal the mind/body split we need a view of reality that eliminates the dichotomy of "in here" in this separate body vs. "out there" in the alien, external world.
Even physics shows us we are continuous with that world. Our skin-boundary is an illusion. We literally exchange gases and atoms with one another, and the world. The turn-over of matter in the body means there is no single, stable structure over time--just a duration of consciousness.
The line between organic and inorganic matter is indistinguishable at the subatomic level. All that exists is alive with motion. Both body and mind are the realm of psyche which can manifest as particular behaviors, psychosomatic illnesses, emotional patterns, mental and spiritual beliefs, and synchronistic events.
Mystics tell us that the entire world of phenomena is of the nature of mind or consciousness. Modern quantum mechanics seems to uphold this view from the scientific side. There is no solid matter, when you get right down to it--only waves of energy, "quantum fuzz", and probabilities. So, matter is no more tangible, nor less divine than the intangible energy or light from which it congeals. It is a spiritual notion that matter is a debased form of energy.
But the perspective of spirit would not have us confuse the creation with the Creator. Yet, in some sense, the light is the Light, in the metaphorical, if not literalistic or concretistic sense. We are merely a local outcropping of individuality, embedded in a continuum of cosmic connectivity, a webwork of relationship. In so many words, it means, "We are the world!"
"In here" and "out there" become moot when the subatomic nature of matter is truly understood. It becomes easier to see the nature of psyche as the underlying, living, divine field of all experience and phenomena. At the deepest level, we are physically indistinguishable from the cosmos at the quantum level.
Our existence is one of an indeterminate electromagnetic field, rather than a distinct chemical entity. Divinity is not off somewhere else, long ago, or in the future. We don't need to leave the body, die, or travel through time and space to find it in "pie-in-the-sky" salvation. As the Buddhists note, all is self, or Atman, here and now always.
The universal EM field is a primary physical, if not corporeal reality. Our apparently discrete existence is contiguous with it. In this model there is no mandate for a "soul-as-spirit body" to leave or vacate the body for purification, enlightenment, or union with divinity. Only our state of consciousness keeps us from that moment-by-moment realization. Direct psychological experience tells us that "I AM THAT."
We are psychological beings, composed of body and soul. Psychic life is physical and mental. Spirit enlivens soul--it manifests through soul. Soul animates the body. Soul enlivens and tends to favor the body. The body unites with spirit and soul by becoming "saturated" with them, immersed in their essence.
Denial of the body by a disembodied spiritual drive leads to ascensionism. It may be an escapist, transcendence fantasy. It is a way of keeping life at bay. In the provisional life one is always waiting to live life if things are just so. We can reinhabit or re-own the body in consciousness and experience ourselves as total psychosomatic beings. Spirit can be grounded in the body by making practical use of spiritual insights.
The harmonization of spirituality and instinctuality leads to wholeness. For example, in sexuality, a spirit-body split leads to an inability to see one sexual partner as both sexy and spiritually inspiring. This may manifest through circumstances or a psychological complex. It is an aspect of the Madonna-whore complex.
The whole person, on the other hand, views the sex act as the divine marriage of spirit and soul, God/Goddess, Shiva/Shakti. It epitomizes the universal cycle of creation/destruction, mind and matter in play. This attitude exalts body, soul, and spirit. It is akin to a nature mystic experience where the outer divine resonates and enters the body.
The ancient art of alchemy was the search for the God-head in matter. The alchemical task was to unify spirit and soul in the body. Psychic reality means to be in soul, esse in anima, as Jung put it. It means an enlarged experience of concrete reality to include the realm of the psyche, a dialogue with events, situations, and circumstances.
Body is made complete, not by perfecting it, but by spiritualizing it. It becomes the vehicle of the "incarnating Self." Spirit is attracted to matter and matter to spirit. Matter gets purpose and meaning from spirit. An "immortal body" now means grounding of the spirit. The uniting of soul, body, and spirit was called the Unus Mundus, or One World in alchemy.
As a psychophysical entity you experience the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World. The Jews knew it as the Shekinah. She is the embodiment of psyche, the animating force behind all events, images, and material forms. Soul functions both in the body and through projection in the physical world. Psychic reality means to be-in-soul, through embodiment (soma) or enlivenment (psyche)--perceiving images viscerally (soma) and mentally (psyche).
Acknowledgement of this force does not constitute Goddess worship--only recognition of the archetypal reality of nature, and our nature. She is a way of reclaiming the divinity of body, matter, and world. The Soul of the World notion, though repressed, is part of the return of the Feminine. Hillman invites us into this world:
"Let us imagine the anima mundi neither above the world encircling it as a divine and remote emanation of spirit, a world of powers, archetypes, and principles transcendent to things, nor within the material world as its unifying panpsychic life-principle. Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, that seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each event as it is, its sensuous presentation as face bespeaking its interior image--in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as a psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing, God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street."
Hillman suggests therapy shift its focus from saving the soul of the individual to saving the soul of the world, resurrection of the world, rather than man--a raising of consciousness of created things, the world's psychic reality. He says we have, in essence, taken and stored the world soul within ourselves. "There is no 'in here' and 'out there'. We should give it back."
Physical reality becomes psychic and psyche becomes real. It "matters." The difference between soul and external things no longer matters. Inner and Outer worlds are real. They are One World. Image, metaphor and symbol bridge the abyss between matter and spirit. They are integrated with feeling, mind, and imagination. We can see soul in all natural objects. We can notice our fantasies constantly conditioning our experience of reality.
We need to learn how to be in our souls, just as we had to learn to reinhabit the body. Being-in-soul implies that you are being suffused with spirit. Knowledge of spirit doesn't come from ideas, even revelations, but through a reflective process. Their conjunction, or marriage, means spirit is reborn whenever you are in touch with soul. They are opposites, so the interplay is eternal. Just observe without attachment the interaction of soul and spirit, distinct yet conjoined. Hold the tension of the opposites.
When spirit as energy and matter as form are in balance, the body becomes the living "Temple of the Spirit." The notion of a soul's immortality comes to mean direct experience of non-spatial, non-temporal, four-dimensional reality--the realm of relativity.
REFERENCES
Adhikari, Richard, Time Travel a No Go? No Way http://www.technewsworld.com/story/72969.html
Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm
Elior, Rachel, Jewish Spirituality and the Soul,
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Theology/Afterlife_and_Messiah/Life_After_Death/Immortality/Spirituality_and_the_Soul.shtml
Green, A. (1999). The Work of the Negative. (A. Weller, Trans.). New York: Free Association Press.
Kowall, James,The World as Virtual Reality Scientific God Journal, No. 4 (2012).
Lanza, Robert, Does Death Exist? New Theory Says No. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-new-theo_b_384515.html
[Lorenz], H. Shulman. (1997). Living at the Edge of Chaos: Complex Systems in Culture and Psyche. Einsiedeln: Daimon Verlag.
Miller, David L., At the Edges of the Round Table: Jung, Religion, and Eranos
http://www.imaginalinstitute.com/edge.htm
Shough, Martin, 2002, A SPECULATIVE ONTOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF NONLOCAL
CONTEXT-DEPENDENCY IN ELECTRON SPIN, http://martinshough.com/physics/spinont.pdf
Westafer, http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Westafer_UltimatelyPossible_2.pdf
Zero Point, http://www.zeropoint.ca/microcosm-kabbalah.html
Each and every moment is the edge of history, emerging into manifestation. What came before existence? Pre-existence? If so, what could the possible nature of such a state be? This is the age-old metaphysical, philosophical, psychological and scientific conundrum. The phrase "out of nothing" is best understood as "out of non-being" or "out of invisible.
Is there existence separate from the molecular structure of the body? Such age-old questions kick open the depth dimension of spirituality and religion. The Ancestors go back to the beginning of our existence itself. Just as we go back to the beginning of existence. The soul is part of the psychophysical unity of man – body and soul, which harbors emotions, feelings and desires. So, the problem of unrestrained human fecundity combined with material desires and resource consumption is a soulful problem of the whole organism, species and planet.
Andromeda, nearly double the size of the Milky Way, is on a head-on collision course with our local galaxy. As the two galaxies destroy one another, they reform into one new larger galaxy. The process repeats the endless cycles of primordial serpent who swallows its own tail in Creation. Even the Universe seems to be consuming itself.
- Is death just an illusion?
- Will You Continue To Live In A Parallel Universe?
- There are many scientific experiments that seriously question the term death, as we know it.
- According to quantum physics certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability.
- The "many-worlds" interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe, what is generally called the "multiverse". Your Energy Never Dies
- Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling - the 'Who am I?'- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed."
- This energy can transcend from one world to another.
The Importance of Consciousness
"Consider the uncertainty principle, one of the most famous and important aspects of quantum mechanics. Experiments confirm it's built into the fabric of reality, but it only makes sense from a biocentric perspective. If there's really a world out there with particles just bouncing around, then we should be able to measure all their properties. But we can't. Why should it matter to a particle what you decide to measure?
Consider the double-slit experiment: if one "watches" a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle and creates solid-looking hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that measures the impacts.
Like a tiny bullet, it logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists do not observe the trajectory of the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves that allow it pass through both holes at the same time. Why does our observation change what happens? Answer: Because reality is a process that requires our consciousness," Lanza says.
You would not exist without a consciousness. One of the reasons Robert Lanza thinks you will not die, is because you are not a object. You're a special being. According to biocentrism, nothing could exist without consciousness. Remember you can't see through the bone surrounding your brain. Space and time are not hard objects, but rather the tools our mind uses to weave everything together. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.
Lanzer points out that death does not exists in a timeless, spaceless world. There is no distinction between past, present, and future. It is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether. Albert Einstein once said: " Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one." How can we tell what is real and not? How can we with certainty know that our brain is not giving us the illusion of a physical world?
http://www.messagetoeagle.com/deathillusionparuniverse.php
Phase Transition
Kowall in The World as Virtual Reality argues, “Some sort of complex information processing occurs in the brain. The result of that information processing is mental imagination. We not only perceive external sensory perceptions of the world and internal emotional perceptions of the body, but we also perceive forms of mental imagination in the form of memories and thoughts. In some sense, memory is only possible since mental images are held in mental imagination over a sequence of mental events. That holding of images in mental imagination only arises from coherent organization, as the form of those images is self-replicated in form over a sequence of events. That self-replication of form is inherently a body-based process.
The form of a body is self-replicated over a sequence of events. Self-replication of body form is called body survival. Self-replication of body form only arises from coherent organization, as the form of the body holds together as a bound state of information, just like the animated form of a computer generated body image on a viewing screen.
Self-replication of body form is possible due to the second law. Any form self-replicated in form over a sequence of events arises due to coherent organization. In the sense of thermodynamics, that form is self-replicated in the same coherently organized phase of organization. Self-replication of form is a thermodynamic process that gives rise to the same macroscopic form of something even as the microscopic details change. If we only observe the macroscopic appearance, we don't observe the microscopic details. In the sense of quantum theory, a macroscopic form arises from microscopic states that give rise to the same macroscopic appearance. A change in the macroscopic form of something is called a phase transition. All phase transitions are examples of symmetry breaking.”(Kowall)
Another way of describing what happens is that the particle becomes stored in a disembodied way between the vacuum entanglement and the classic message, then is reconstructed at the future time. In other words, now you see it, now you don't, then you see it again.
"If you call it time travel, it is time travel to the future, which is allowed by relativity," Ralph said.
"The technique mentioned in our paper is a form of quantum teleportation. It only works for quantum particles," Ralph added. "It only works forward in time." http://www.technewsworld.com/story/72969.html
Unus Mundus
Perhaps it is time for a critical design review. Perhaps, it is more accurate to conceive of soul as psyche, not as identical with spirit, but with psychophysical existence – even the World Soul or Anima Mundi, which unites psyche and matter. The doctrine of a world-soul in a highly abstract form appears as early as the eighth century BCE, described as "the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower, the Eternal in which space is woven and which is woven in it.
The psychology of the scientific process may be reflected in the material world. New terms are required to describe the quasi-physical domain of preexistence and how it permeates our psychophysical unus mundus, a body-centered imagination. The essence of the whole person is one’s essential nature. Soul or psyche mediates spirit and matter. But science excludes the material aspects of psyche. They re-appear as anomalous experience and cognition – the edge or frontier of experience as well as science. Inner spirit is self-revelatory gnosis.
“Living On the Edge”: Frontier Science, "The Edge of Exact Sciences,"
David L Miller suggests, “In his book The Work of the Negative, André Green speaks about psychoanalysis as edge-work. His last chapter, entitled "On the Edge," urges psychoanalysts not to think of their discipline and their practice in a one-sided way: it is neither a science, on the one hand, nor an art, a philosophy, or a religion, on the other. Psychoanalysis, both as a theory and as a practice, is constantly -- Green argues -- on an edge between science and philosophy (Green, 1999).”
Iona Miller and Fred Graywolf Swinney argued for creative edge-work rooted in complex dynamics in experiential psychotherapy as early as 1993 in Chaosophy 93. leading edge of unfolding transitions, poised between the demise of one modality of meaning and prior to the coming of a new one.
Helene Lorenz had in 1997, in a most remarkable, and too little noticed, book on the relation of complexity theory to depth psychology, pointed to the importance of the "edges of chaos" in the analytic experience (Lorenz, 1997, chaps. 7 & 8). It is, Lorenz argues, at the "edges of chaos" that "complex adaptive systems [like the Self] begin to evolve" (p. 112), i.e., individuation takes place at a psychic edge. More recently, in an article in Spring, Giegerich has argued that the interiorized boundary of the soul is the experience of its not having a boundary (Giegerich, 1998, pp. 16-17). In my terms, this is psyche's edge. David Miller goes on to suggest, “Perhaps depth psychology should have been called edge psychology, if only to avoid the soul and spirit, anima and animus, depth and height awkwardness of vertical binarisms and split-syzygies.” http://www.imaginalinstitute.com/edge.htm
Holism reunites the organism once divided by the dualism of a worldview that soul separated from the body. In 1950 Wolfgang Pauli write, "Both of us [Pauli and Jung] seem to agree that the future of Jung's ideas is not with psychotherapy ... but with a unitarian, holistic concept of nature and the position of man in it." (Wolfgang Pauli to Markus Fierz, 1950)
In a transcendental view, the soul exists on a spiritual plane, a recognized spiritual element. Soul or psyche is the vital force of Consciousness, both formative and experiential as primordial awareness.
Only the soul restores the core elements of the body, transcending the dichotomy of outer and inner Universe. A complete description of nature would include both psyche and matter. Even science is a qualitative and symbolic description of nature. Quantum theory is deeply rooted in psychophysical experience.
Being represents Life and Consciousness. Without life and consciousness there is neither being nor becoming. Knowing Itself is Being, knowing Itself as the creator and the created.
The Immortality Potential expressed as the Ancient One/Blue Dragon is Pre-Existence, the serpentine Sine Wave, Limitless Preexistent Light. The Blue Dragon is the feminine aspect of the initial impetus of Creation (The Seed/Egg of local Universe).
Andromeda is near double the size of the Milky Way, and is on a head-on collision course with this local galaxy. The two Galaxies will destroy each other, and reform into one new larger galaxy. Rverything is predatorial (Serpent Who Swallows It's Own Tail) in Creation.
Pre-physical-existence
Plato's idea of the preexistence and eternity of the soul, derived from his dualistic outlook, set matter and spirit at odds with one another. The Platonic doctrine tended to an extreme Transcendentalism. Soul and body are distinct orders of reality, and bodily existence involves a kind of violence to the higher part of our composite nature. The body is the "prison", the "tomb", or even, as some later Platonists expressed it, the "hell" of the soul.
In Aristotle this error is avoided. His definition of the soul as "the first entelechy of a physical organized body potentially possessing life" emphasizes the closeness of the union of soul and body. The difficulty in his theory is to determine what degree of distinctness or separateness from the matter of the body is to be conceded to the human soul. He fully recognizes the spiritual element in thought and describes the "active intellect" (nous poetikos) as "separate and impassible", but the precise relation of this active intellect to the individual mind is a hopelessly obscure question in Aristotle's psychology. (Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm)
However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same. What, however, is the potentiality of human beings? For Aristotle this question turns out to be equivalent to asking what it is that is distinctive about human beings. In Aristotle's hierarchy of being, pure potentiality (“prime matter”) is at the bottom, pure actuality (Aristotle's God) is at the top. Formed matter (everything else, including our world) is in-between.
Origen of Alexandria's argument for the preexistence and eternity of the soul is heavily dependent on Platonism. Origen taught the pre-existence of the soul. Terrestrial life is a punishment and a remedy for prenatal sin. "Soul" is properly degraded spirit: flesh is a condition of alienation and bondage (cf. Comment. ad Romans 1:18). Spirit, however, finite spirit, can exist only in a body, albeit of a glorious and ethereal nature.
Neo-Platonism, which through St. Augustine contributed so much to spiritual philosophy, belongs to this period. Like Gnosticism, it uses emanations. The primeval and eternal One begets by emanation nous (intelligence); and from nous in turn springs psyche (soul), which is the image of nous, but distinct from it. Matter is a still later emanation. Soul has relations to both ends of the scale of reality, and its perfection lies in turning towards the Divine Unity from which it came. In everything, the neo-Platonist recognized the absolute primacy of the soul with respect to the body. Thus, the mind is always active, even in sense — perception — it is only the body that is passively affected by external stimuli. Similarly Plotinus prefers to say that the body is in the soul rather than vice versa: and he seems to have been the first to conceive the peculiar manner of the soul's location as an undivided and universal presence pervading the organism. (C.Encyc.)
In Judaism the conflict between flesh and spirit was far less radical than that of the Greeks, who viewed body and soul as an absolute dichotomy. Such a view implies a disembodied spirituality.
The "Book of Concealed Mystery" goes on to state that this "Equilibrium hangeth in that region which is negatively existent." What is negative existence? What is positive existence? The distinction between these two is another fundamental idea. To define negative existence clearly is impossible, for when it is distinctly defined it ceases to be negative existence; it is then negative existence passing into static condition. Therefore wisely have the Qabalists shut out from mortal comprehension the primal AIN, Ain, the negatively existent One, and the AIN SVP, Ain Soph, the limitless Expansion; while of even the AIN SVP AVR, Ain Soph Aur, the illimitable Light, only a dim conception can be formed.
The universe first appears as a point source of unfoldment–an unfoldment which occurs from within-without, out of the Infinite and into the Finite. A Point or infinitesimal Dot represents the “I”, and is rooted in the infinities of NEGATIVE EXISTENCE. As one approaches the “supernal point” from below, one encounters the abyss, which is a veil of ignorance or a “ring pass not,” beyond which the mind cannot penetrate. However the Knowers of Self can come to so penetrate the infinite and know God. http://www.zeropoint.ca/microcosm-kabbalah.html
The kabbalists--the medieval Jewish mystics--believed that human life, including the life of the soul, reflected and affected the divine world, the world of the sefirot: God's ten attributes or emanations. The soul, an instrument of perfection, goes through far-reaching corresponding transformations. The soul’s material and physical elements became highly developed in medieval thought, especially in the kabbalah. The "universal soul," was considered the "active intelligence," or God himself.
In later stages of development, the Jewish conception of the soul was influenced by Greek philosophical views, as these were reformulated and interpreted by the Moslem and Christian theologians of the Middle Ages. For the first time, Judaism viewed the doctrine of the soul as belonging to the realm of philosophy, and medieval Jewish thought made a unique attempt to adapt these philosophical views to the Torah and to make them a means for interpreting concepts relating to ethics, religious piety, prophecy, and the knowledge of God.
In the Sefer ha‑Bahir, the creation and the molding and sustenance of souls is bound up with an erotic myth that speaks of sexual union between cosmic entities in the world of the sefirot (divine emanations) and of the process of creation in general. The text alludes, in highly symbolic language, to a system that was further developed in the Zohar and other kabbalistic literature.
Three stages of development are discerned in the formation of souls: the ideal, the ontological, and the actual. These stages parallel both the processes of intercourse, pregnancy, and birth, by which the physical body comes into being, and the relationships between the sefirot in the supernal [i.e. divine] world.
The erotic symbolism by which the dynamic relationship between the various aspects of the divine is described in the kabbalistic system relates to the idea that the creation of souls takes place in connection with an act of cosmic union. In addition, it reflects deep religious implications regarding the exalted nature of the soul that were attached to human sexual union on account of its archetypal parallel in the supernal worlds.
The kabbalistic doctrine of the soul is based upon three fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of man: (1) the divine origin of the human soul; (2) the idea that man is structured in the image of the sefirot, and that his soul reflects the hierarchy of the supernatural worlds, and (3) the idea that man can influence the world of the divine.
The kabbalah borrowed the philosophical division of the soul into parts and superimposed a mystical quality upon it, contending that each part expressed a different sefirot.
Negative Existence, Realms of Non-Being and the Supernal Point
- Kabbalists use various terms and distinctions to depict THAT–THAT which is beyond human comprehension. These images and terms are subtle attempts to point in the direction of the incomprehensible. THAT is pre-existent to the creation of the universe. IT is depicted as triune in nature–as Ayin, En Soph, and En Soph Aur. These three can be considered as one or as nothing, and are related to the numbers OOO, OO, and O, respectively. Together they constitute Negative Existence–as considered from the viewpoint of the manifest creation which is labelled as positive existence. The origin of creation is from within the apparent Nothingness, beyond creation–in the O, OO, and OOO.
- AYIN, as OOO, means No-Thing. It is the ABSOLUTE NOTHING. It is God Transcendent, beyond the realms of illusory and impermanent creation. Ayin is inconceivable and unspeakable.
- Ayin Soph, O O, means ENDLESS and BOUNDLESS, LIMITLESS. Whereas Ayin is nothing, Ayin Soph is everything, the plenum of all possibilities in a potential state. It is ALL and everything in relationship to the nothing of Ayin. The ALL appears as nothing–as everything is latent and unmanifest in the root principle of material creation. Whereas Ayin is God Transcendent, Ayin Soph is God Immanent, containing the Plenum of All Possibilities in unmanifest form. This is the Fullness of the Divine Plenum. Ayin and En Soph are the VOID and the PLENUM.
What kind of existence is within the “plenum” of the En Soph–unmanifest but latent within the fullness of emptiness is described by Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag:
- "The matter is as follows: all the worlds, and all that is in this world, all the creatures of the universe, in whatever age they were to exist, before they ever entered into this world, with all the souls now on earth, and those that are destined still to be created, together with their complete curve of development until the final goal of completion and perfection - all these were previously included in the world which is called “Endless,” “En Soph,” along with their beauty and all their fulfillments." (1984, p. 57)
- The root principles of creation lay within the plenum of all possibilities for cosmic manifestation. The En Soph includes all varied kinds of beings and their qualities and beauties, and all the laws and forces and particles of the universe. It contains all of these things in all their possibilities for involution and evolution, growth, change and perfection. The whole structure of the world orders on different dimensions and on different scales of existence, over all times, are all pre-existent in non-existence, latent within the Endlessness of the Ayin Soph.
- Ayin Soph Aur, O, the third aspect of the Absolute, means LIMITLESS LIGHT. Before the beginning, the limitless light fills the Limitless En Soph. This Limitless light is described as NEGATIVE LIGHT, in distinction to positive light manifest within creation. http://www.zeropoint.ca/microcosm-kabbalah.html
“Nequaquam Vacuum” - Nowhere a Void
Kabbalah was based on the Doctrine of Emanation from the Three Veils of Negative Existence – existence arises from pre-existence. Kabbalists have long portrayed the creation of the universe as emerging from a supernal point of no-dimension out of a background in NEGATIVE EXISTENCE.
This same creation scenario is elaborated by modern scientific accounts. In science, the universe emerged at the beginning of time as an infinitesimal singularity out of the nothingness and plenum of the quantum vacuum. Kabbalah would also suggest the ultimate dissolution of the Cosmos at the end of time into such an infinitesimal point, and back into the void/plenum.
Pre-existence is a pre-spacetime domain of archetypal potential, which manifests in EXISTENCE as a condensation of information. To condense information, we project the unknown onto our unique local state. The transformation of the soul becomes a powerful narrative.
What we believe about the future and the past fuels our strategies and allegiances in the present. The narratives with which we make sense of the world, our lives, and history are cautionary tales; we direct our efforts to seeking certain outcomes and avoiding others, heading for “the happy ending” or as close as we can get to it, trying to “learn from the past” (or from the narrative our imaginations and prejudices have imposed on the past).
The "Progress Narrative" competes with "Radical Transformation" of order from chaos – emergence of the unforeseen vision beyond comprehension. The soul doesn’t follow a predictable, coherent, linear path. Soul is our capacity for the quantum leap.
Pre-Spacetime
The spacetime singularity occurs prior to the emergence of matter. As the kabbalists imply, absolute space erupts as a void. Pre space-time is void of matter, non-spatial and non-temporal manifolds of chaotic perturbation leading to emergence or emanation of matter. It may be a recursive process.
The pre space-time always looks like the chaotic void, but it may be formed by the similar matter in a nested recursive mechanism – a superspin field. All things material come from and return to the Void, including ourselves, in a return to our absolute zero point which is shared by the totality of the cosmos.
So, as we know, the measurement of any state is ultimately limited by the \overlap" or similarities with our local state; our perspective. Our assumptions - our experimental setups, the very fact that we detect the universe with luminous baryonic matter and not something else - all define our perspective and bound our conclusions. (Westafer)
Zer0 Field
Massless spinfields are the vortices or whirlpools of the Dirac Sea. Interaction of such vortices is perturbed by superparamagnetic and magnetic fields. Interacting magnetic [nano]clusters are another form of the dynamic void. Matter is a field dependent phenomena. Zero field cooled magnetization might lead to the condensation and precipitation of matter. A superspin interpretation of the prespacetime domain field.
And physical in nature and the universe, all around is full and the emergence of a "super-spin sub - domain super-rotation vector field - spin the material into ultra - ultra-rotation of the movement and change." Objects as large as the universe Nebula, Galaxy, small particles of quarks L, D, spin. . . . . , Gravity and relativity, and its internal relations must be an integral and external linkages, "ring" - ultra-roton - super spin vector field games, nature origin, the origin of particles, the origin of the universe, the origin of changes in physical movement. Test the nature of scientific experiments, not tens of thousands of people repeated testing for verification and accurate and can be found from which to extract the inevitable and extremely critical of the mysterious natural laws of experimental evidence, theories and theorems are all equal to zero. Therefore, the natural scientists than social scientists far to harsh and hard, like a Newton's gravitation, Darwin's theory of evolution, cells, genes,, nebula science, models of the universe, the quark model, the gene model, plate theory, quantum mechanics, quantum chemistry, universe physics, cosmic chemistry, human genetics, physical anthropology, social anthropology, and so on. Science and modern economic, political, social, religious, philosophical, military, technology, civilization, democracy are inseparable, therefore, the correct view and analysis of today's world and the planet of change and development, and the real world to predict the future changes will be very important the. Otherwise, a wrong move, round loser. Natural sciences and social sciences pregnant create infinite greatness and vast, but it is not that human nature is equivalent to an ordinary, modern humans in ape simply atavistic animal. As everyone knows, super-spin sub-, super-rotation vector field field - the world's super-rotation of the material and the movement of basic mathematical equations and expressions are simple: numerous sequence ultra-c1, c2, c3 ........ tend to spin C ( Ultra super spin vector field field spin sub 。。。。。) ----- [email protected]//[email protected]
Sylos Labini and Pietronero [117]: 'A crucial point to understand is therefore the origin of the scale-invariance in the gravitational clustering phenomenon. This would correspond to the understanding of the origin of self-gravitating fractal structures and of the properties of Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) from the knowledge of the microscopic physical processes at the basis of this phenomenon.' They advocate a new approach
from the directions of statistical physics and complexity theory. But the contention of this essay is that they may be mistaken in seeking a basis for cosmic SOC in 'microscopic physical processes', in the sense that no physical processes in a radically scale-free fractal universe can properly be understood as microscopic. It is argued that only a radically scale-free fractal dynamic operating on processes at all scales will get rid of the problems inherent in scale-dependent effective field theory in a fully self-consistent way.’
the context-dependency and wave-function symmetry of spin observables we propose to give up the particle/field representation in favor of a network of nonlocal linear objects. Under local measurements, each nonlocal object has a basic two-valuedness of position which also entails a basic two-valuedness of electron spin, expressed at opposite nodes reciprocally. It is conventional that a few pairs may preserve a singlet state of spin in
a specialised nonlocal EPR symmetry, but according to our generalised symmetry all pairs can always be thought of as preserving a singlet state of superspin. Superspin is supposed to be carried as a 'super-rotation' of the plane of polarisation of a (linear polarised) photon. The photon itself 'sees' the restored superspin symmetry normalised (in null proper time) to that of a spin-zero scalar 'particle' and is blind to an imaginary torsion which it carries over into the mass relations of a pair of spin-half leptons as a spin-one electrodynamical symmetry. The emergence of the local-relativistic electrodynamical symmetry is to be identified with the spontaneous breaking of nonlocal superspin symmetry in the network. In this emergent local network each point of measurement of an electron can be seen as the origin of N complex radius vectors, each of which has some probability of being the photon vector which a measurement will elicit as being 'the electron spin axis'. Where the superrotation of the photon (linear) polarisation plane inverts through p at the measurement node, radial direction determines which of two reciprocal spin vectors is 'measured' at the node at
http://martinshough.com/physics/spinont.pdf
Relativity of Body and Soul
Throughout history there have been many conceptions about the physical and spiritual nature of reality. Early on, they were confounded, though now separated into philosophy, physics, and religion. Each of these models or conceptions of mankind's relationship to nature and the divine was based in a belief-system which pre-conditioned all notions about the nature of the self. Some rest in the unity of nature, monism, dualism, or other primordial models. Panpsychism is a philosophical theory that mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe.
The realm of psychology, with its own unique perspective on body and soul, lies between the worlds of physical reality and experiential heights. There are many schools of thought in psychology, many of which, like behaviorism and humanism, do not consider the relevance of a notion of soul as motivating factor. On the other hand, transpersonal psychology accepts the validity of the spiritual to the point where its primary psychological orientation may recede into the background.
Jungian psychology, and its postmodern form imaginal psychology seek to maintain the primacy of the image as a direct expression of soul. As a discipline, it alleges that soul is a primary experience, and seeks to give her a voice. The realm of psyche is a subjective world of depth and meaning that is sometimes corporeal, sometimes not. Entry into this style of consciousness means heightened awareness of subjective realities. Each "thing" speaks of the gods, or archetypal qualities and forces. It boldly asserts that not even technology and inorganic matter are inherently soulless.
Imaginal psychology's main proponent, James Hillman, suggests it is only the literalist, objective world of Newtonian mechanics and the Christian apocalypse that is "dead." This school of psychology views many "spiritual" notions as products of a monotheistic style of consciousness. It puts forth the view that soul is a pluralistic expression, rather than an individual quality. It upholds a polytheistic perspective which is more in line with the primitive concepts of the nature of soul. It views notions like "spiritual soul," "material body," and "spiritual body" metaphorically, rather than literally. Each god or archetype has its relative, characteristic style of consciousness and way of seeing through the nature of things.
Jung and his followers have shown that certain mind-sets lead to biased fantasies about the nature of the body, the soul, and the cosmos. Psyche is essentially related to soma because it is rooted in organic structure. The intimacy of this relationship is not fully understood. It is a realm of mystery which brings in its wake phenomena such as synchronicity and psychosomatic disorders.
Religion and superstition undermined any remotely objective viewpoint about the physical nature of the universe until the Enlightenment. Then scientists armored themselves against incursions of the divine with Newtonian mechanics and Cartesian duality. Descarte split mind from body, and equated the soul with the ego and mind, thus disenfranchising it. The mechanistic, "clockwork universe" was based on the primacy of underlying order. The universe was perceived as chaos tending toward order, with each atom following God's great plan.
This notion of an orderly universe was superseded by the unpredictable phenomena of quantum mechanics and chaos theory. We have found that beneath the apparent order is complexity, a world of chaos that self-generates order, which dissolves back into chaos. Even orderly motion is ultimately unpredictable due to initial conditions and even the slightest of random intruding influences. So, the universe may still be "God's plan," but its basis is irrational, not rational.
Physics is a form of philosophy which makes educated guesses about the nature of reality and our existence. It invites us to "look at it this way..." Scientific revolutions demonstrate that these are not ultimate statements about the nature of reality. They are relative, state-of-the-art hypotheses. This particular type of natural philosophy includes many universal laws, however, which reflect the way things seem to be from the current point of view.
It is difficult for any of us to free ourselves from our enculturated and a priori beliefs about existence. It is hard to view anything from outside of our own fundamental philosophical, spiritual, and psychological perspectives. These theories, dogmas, and experiences condition how we perceive reality. Their influence may be so subtle we fail to notice where our position originated. Our viewpoint is relative to our position.
Einstein showed us that, in physics, all perspectives are relative to the position of the observer. He discovered this by imagining he was riding on a beam of light. This relativity holds true in psychology also, depending on what assumed truths one holds. Notions of soul and body are not describing any irreducible reality. These notions are relative realities, reflecting our personal understanding of the nature of reality. They emerge from our specific worldview about the way things (including ourselves) work.
What we believe conditions what we perceive, feel, and express. Research shows our beliefs and opinions are largely conditioned by the belief system of our peer group. The day-to-day influence of convention creates a consensus opinion about reality and is a big influence on lifestyle. Much of consensus is a tacit agreement to overlook certain kinds of information, especially if it doesn't fit the "party line."
Beliefs are subject to radical reversal in some instances--the process of conversion. Jung called this 180 degree shift in consciousness enantiodromia. Conversions arise from a desperate need, from exposure to a new peer group with different attitudes and values, or through embracing a broader worldview, or by covert means like propaganda and brainwashing.
The prime expression of beliefs is through spontaneous imagery. We never experience directly, but interpret our experience of our perceptions through imagery. All our input comes through multi-sensory channels. We never directly perceive ourselves, soul, or God. We don't perceive our bodies directly, only our sensory impressions. But we do have first-hand experience of our body-image, soul-image, and God images. That is all we know directly. The rest is pure speculation.
Relative viewpoints condition our concepts of reality, body and soul. A given individual may hold several within himself. For example, a rational scientist may find no empirical evidence for soul in her normal methods of investigation, but it does not prevent her continuing practice and belief in her faith. The emotional self will not be denied, even if it is held discrete from the workplace.
Historically, the body (and matter in general) has been a spiritual battle-ground. Because of the bi-polar nature of our being (or our perception of bi-polarity), the human spirit naturally comes into conflict with our earthy and material needs. These primal drives create conflict between spirituality and instinctuality or sensuality. But the conflict is a matter of perception and psychological perspective.
In the West, flesh was condemned for "original sin", a mandate forced on the body by so-called "spiritual" pontification. This mandate was extended to include the condemnation of all matter. In the East, the perception of any solid substance was declared a mental phenomena. Matter was seen merely as an expression of universal mind, reduced to a gross state known as maya. In this state all matter is subject to karma, the natural consequences of active existence. In this worldview, the soul is continuously recycled. Both philosophies reject materialism, and the body with it.
So matter is merely a convincing illusion in one view, while in another it is inherently evil, the very opposite of God. The notion of immanence holds, on the other hand, along with Pantheism and Animism, that all matter, formless or substantive, is naturally infused with the divine. All agree that matter occupies space and time and is perceived by the senses. Philosophically, matter is the formless material of the universe of sensory experience. Each of these ideas, maya and the "fall," provides a coherent worldview, yet remains discrete and congruent only within its own belief system, with its a priori assumptions unexamined.
In our culture, the body and our fantasies about it, have come to represent the lost Feminine element. We have lost touch with our primal femininity, the animating principle (nature, body, instinct). We have become estranged from the body through the mind/body split fostered by Cartesian thinking, which is also non-relativistic.
The image of the disembodied modern individual is one of an over-rational "walking head," not a whole human being. Our modern need is not for further disembodiment by transcending off into salvation in the nether-realms of space, not for more out-of-body experiences. Rather, we almost desperately need to create ways of truly inhabiting our bodies, unsplit by Puritanical and Cartesian residue.
There is a way that joins spirit and body through the spontaneous imagery of soul. It seeks neither to solve our troubles (pathologies) nor "save" our souls. It suggests direct engagement with images for soul-making or deepening through personal experience. We can see through the nature of apparent reality for ourselves, if we but try. Then we develop our own philosophy, apart from consensus. When it comes to questions of speculation on the unknown, we can either accept what others have said, or look for ourselves.
We seek the lost soul primarily because of the intense degree of wounding in our modern consciousness. This wounding has "opened" us to transformation. We can embody soul by seeing-through appearances to an acute awareness of the archetypal, subjective perception of our experience.
We can find soul in the body. It speaks metaphorically in body language (how closed or open one is to life and experience), body talk ("he's a pain in the neck," "I can't stomach that"), symptoms, and displacements. Conversion reactions change psychological dis-ease into concrete ailments. Jung said the gods have become diseases and there is a god within every disease. Noticing that psychic element and giving it voice is psychological soul-making. We can also look at our behavior, emotions, thoughts, and styles of consciousness psychologically.
The conflict over the body is really between spirit and spirit, good and bad, polarized. But it is popularized as a split between spirit and matter, with the soul as intermediary. To compound the problem, in linguistics and beliefs, spirit and soul have become mis-identified with one another by theology and philosophy. Philosophy, for the Greeks was an adventure undertaken for its own sake, without dogma, rites, or sacred entities.
These disciplines pull the soul in opposite directions, leaving the alienated ego rejecting both mystical experience and the imperfection of the body. Thus we need recourse to priests (for spirituality), therapists (for psychological insight), and doctors (to interpret the condition of the body).
All healing appears to come from without when we cannot heal our own dis-ease. The body is betrayed and mentally abandoned. Symptoms become something to get rid of, while the soul has no recourse to a higher power. Then the body becomes tyrannical, ruling the self with addictions and psychosomatic complaints. It has many ways of manifesting dis-ease.
The entire choice between spirit and body, inner and outer, has its source in identification with the ego. Ego maintains itself by creating conflicts from opposing drives within. It suppresses one and makes you believe you have chosen freely. The dilemma comes from the ego, not the soul.
Matter, spirit, and ego fight over the soul. Yet soul is a primary experience. Each wants its unique fantasy to reign uppermost. So, the first task is to distinguish soul from spirit, so the body may unite and be enlivened by both. In this process, primacy is given to the perspective of psyche or soul. This is a psychological approach--not spiritual or religious--giving voice to soul. It means the return of a subjective feminine eye on reality. It means the enlivening of our bodies, the world of nature, and the imagination. When we see soul as the background of all phenomena, we become aware of the animating principle
All images arise from either body processes (instinct) or psychic forms (spirit). Whether instinct-controlled or spirit-controlled, they are related to physiological processes. They appear psychologically as images, but work physiologically. They produce emotional or visceral aspects, but not in any causal way. The images don't produce reactions. The image is the entire psychophysical gestalt.
We have considered three relative perspectives from which the notion of soul may be viewed: theological, philosophical, and psychological. Each has its own distinct notion about the body. Like Jung, we are not referring to a religious or philosophical concept of either body or soul. Soul may or may not ultimately be a disembodied, immortal thing as Zoroaster, Plato, and The Bible suggest.
They uphold the pervasive cultural view that soul is a transcendent entity, distinct from the body that participates in an idealistic afterlife. No one alive can say for sure, and what about this life, here and now? Psyche's view speaks directly to our whole personalistic experience, with its transpersonal elements.
The soul in depth psychology is an empirical manifestation of imagination, fantasy, and creativity which is always in the process of becoming--images forming, and dissolving, and forming anew. Imagination is the essence of the life forces, both physical and psychic. These fantasies always permeate our beliefs, ideas, emotions, and physical nature.
Like the psyche, or life-breath, of the early Greeks, this notion of soul is like that of the butterfly which always stays close to the ground. It is an airy thing, hovering lightly, without heroically soaring to the heights. In this model, there are no abstract flights of fancy into spirit's realm, no transcending off into subtle "spirit bodies" mistakenly distinguished as aspects of the soul. These urges are real, but they belong to spirit.
Rather, the soul generates images unceasingly. The soul lives on images and metaphor. These images form the basis for our consciousness. All we can know comes through images, through our multi-sensory perceptions. So this soul always stays close to the body, close to corporeality, to what "matters." Let the images come into your body. Embrace the image. To heal the mind/body split we need a view of reality that eliminates the dichotomy of "in here" in this separate body vs. "out there" in the alien, external world.
Even physics shows us we are continuous with that world. Our skin-boundary is an illusion. We literally exchange gases and atoms with one another, and the world. The turn-over of matter in the body means there is no single, stable structure over time--just a duration of consciousness.
The line between organic and inorganic matter is indistinguishable at the subatomic level. All that exists is alive with motion. Both body and mind are the realm of psyche which can manifest as particular behaviors, psychosomatic illnesses, emotional patterns, mental and spiritual beliefs, and synchronistic events.
Mystics tell us that the entire world of phenomena is of the nature of mind or consciousness. Modern quantum mechanics seems to uphold this view from the scientific side. There is no solid matter, when you get right down to it--only waves of energy, "quantum fuzz", and probabilities. So, matter is no more tangible, nor less divine than the intangible energy or light from which it congeals. It is a spiritual notion that matter is a debased form of energy.
But the perspective of spirit would not have us confuse the creation with the Creator. Yet, in some sense, the light is the Light, in the metaphorical, if not literalistic or concretistic sense. We are merely a local outcropping of individuality, embedded in a continuum of cosmic connectivity, a webwork of relationship. In so many words, it means, "We are the world!"
"In here" and "out there" become moot when the subatomic nature of matter is truly understood. It becomes easier to see the nature of psyche as the underlying, living, divine field of all experience and phenomena. At the deepest level, we are physically indistinguishable from the cosmos at the quantum level.
Our existence is one of an indeterminate electromagnetic field, rather than a distinct chemical entity. Divinity is not off somewhere else, long ago, or in the future. We don't need to leave the body, die, or travel through time and space to find it in "pie-in-the-sky" salvation. As the Buddhists note, all is self, or Atman, here and now always.
The universal EM field is a primary physical, if not corporeal reality. Our apparently discrete existence is contiguous with it. In this model there is no mandate for a "soul-as-spirit body" to leave or vacate the body for purification, enlightenment, or union with divinity. Only our state of consciousness keeps us from that moment-by-moment realization. Direct psychological experience tells us that "I AM THAT."
We are psychological beings, composed of body and soul. Psychic life is physical and mental. Spirit enlivens soul--it manifests through soul. Soul animates the body. Soul enlivens and tends to favor the body. The body unites with spirit and soul by becoming "saturated" with them, immersed in their essence.
Denial of the body by a disembodied spiritual drive leads to ascensionism. It may be an escapist, transcendence fantasy. It is a way of keeping life at bay. In the provisional life one is always waiting to live life if things are just so. We can reinhabit or re-own the body in consciousness and experience ourselves as total psychosomatic beings. Spirit can be grounded in the body by making practical use of spiritual insights.
The harmonization of spirituality and instinctuality leads to wholeness. For example, in sexuality, a spirit-body split leads to an inability to see one sexual partner as both sexy and spiritually inspiring. This may manifest through circumstances or a psychological complex. It is an aspect of the Madonna-whore complex.
The whole person, on the other hand, views the sex act as the divine marriage of spirit and soul, God/Goddess, Shiva/Shakti. It epitomizes the universal cycle of creation/destruction, mind and matter in play. This attitude exalts body, soul, and spirit. It is akin to a nature mystic experience where the outer divine resonates and enters the body.
The ancient art of alchemy was the search for the God-head in matter. The alchemical task was to unify spirit and soul in the body. Psychic reality means to be in soul, esse in anima, as Jung put it. It means an enlarged experience of concrete reality to include the realm of the psyche, a dialogue with events, situations, and circumstances.
Body is made complete, not by perfecting it, but by spiritualizing it. It becomes the vehicle of the "incarnating Self." Spirit is attracted to matter and matter to spirit. Matter gets purpose and meaning from spirit. An "immortal body" now means grounding of the spirit. The uniting of soul, body, and spirit was called the Unus Mundus, or One World in alchemy.
As a psychophysical entity you experience the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World. The Jews knew it as the Shekinah. She is the embodiment of psyche, the animating force behind all events, images, and material forms. Soul functions both in the body and through projection in the physical world. Psychic reality means to be-in-soul, through embodiment (soma) or enlivenment (psyche)--perceiving images viscerally (soma) and mentally (psyche).
Acknowledgement of this force does not constitute Goddess worship--only recognition of the archetypal reality of nature, and our nature. She is a way of reclaiming the divinity of body, matter, and world. The Soul of the World notion, though repressed, is part of the return of the Feminine. Hillman invites us into this world:
"Let us imagine the anima mundi neither above the world encircling it as a divine and remote emanation of spirit, a world of powers, archetypes, and principles transcendent to things, nor within the material world as its unifying panpsychic life-principle. Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, that seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each event as it is, its sensuous presentation as face bespeaking its interior image--in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as a psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing, God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street."
Hillman suggests therapy shift its focus from saving the soul of the individual to saving the soul of the world, resurrection of the world, rather than man--a raising of consciousness of created things, the world's psychic reality. He says we have, in essence, taken and stored the world soul within ourselves. "There is no 'in here' and 'out there'. We should give it back."
Physical reality becomes psychic and psyche becomes real. It "matters." The difference between soul and external things no longer matters. Inner and Outer worlds are real. They are One World. Image, metaphor and symbol bridge the abyss between matter and spirit. They are integrated with feeling, mind, and imagination. We can see soul in all natural objects. We can notice our fantasies constantly conditioning our experience of reality.
We need to learn how to be in our souls, just as we had to learn to reinhabit the body. Being-in-soul implies that you are being suffused with spirit. Knowledge of spirit doesn't come from ideas, even revelations, but through a reflective process. Their conjunction, or marriage, means spirit is reborn whenever you are in touch with soul. They are opposites, so the interplay is eternal. Just observe without attachment the interaction of soul and spirit, distinct yet conjoined. Hold the tension of the opposites.
When spirit as energy and matter as form are in balance, the body becomes the living "Temple of the Spirit." The notion of a soul's immortality comes to mean direct experience of non-spatial, non-temporal, four-dimensional reality--the realm of relativity.
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Green, A. (1999). The Work of the Negative. (A. Weller, Trans.). New York: Free Association Press.
Kowall, James,The World as Virtual Reality Scientific God Journal, No. 4 (2012).
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