Three Perspectives

Three Perspectives

1. The Scientific Perspective

According to the current scientific consensus, the cosmos began from a single point into which was compressed everything that was to be in the universe. Of no size, no place, it was not just all energy and all matter, but all space, all time, all ‘forces’, all potential events, all everything. No description can be made of it, no measure deduced. All that can be said about it is that it was One, a Unity. The scientific call this, that which was ‘before’ the beginning of the universe, a ‘Singularity’

Then, for no reason that can be known, it exploded in a big bang. The cosmos came into being as time, space, energy, matter, and blind ‘forces’, all ‘governed’ by the ‘laws’ of the cosmos. And that’s it. Energies cool down and coalesce into dead matter that bumps around obeying the ‘laws’ in a totally meaning less (sic) way until we get to today – the Present Moment.

From this perspective the universe is lifeless and meaningless. It just happens to ‘be’. And it is unscientific to look for any cause beyond the mechanical.

Actually, a creation like this does imply a creator. The ‘laws’ a law-giver. A ‘Governor’.  The scientific may say that no such claim is made, that Science is a method, not a position. But the implication is there just the same.

2. The Abrahamic Perspective

Much of the scientific perspective is remarkably parallel to judeo/christian/islamic – abrahamic – cosmology. You really couldn’t get much more creationist than the Big Bang theory. “Let there be light” says the all-powerful all-father as he brings all into being from his place outside the universe. For the all-father is transcendent to his creation. In the order and hierarchy of things he is higher, more important than the cosmos and all that is in it. He is the Governor and He ‘owns’ the universe as a possession. And the all-father lays down ‘laws’ for his creation to obey.

Usually to make sure the men, and most especially the women, obey and conform to the ‘law’, the all-father ‘personally’ entrusts a chosen few with the ‘laws’, the word of god, abraham, jacob, moses, jesus, mohamed et al. And, usually, in their name absolute authority to enforce the ‘laws’ is given to, or taken by, the followers of the chosen few  (as they themselves interpret them)

3. An Other Perspective

The above symbol-group represents a different cosmology which existed (and exists) in the orient (represented here by the Tao), the occident (represented by the shela-na-gig), in ancient Egypt (represented by the hieroglyph) and world-wide long, long before the imposition and domination of abrahamic ‘law-giver’, ‘law-enforcer’ mythology. It describes creation not as a manufactured thing, made from without, but as a creation born, and constantly born again from moment to moment, from within.

It is a born, rather than a manufactured, creation because the universe is alive and not dead or inanimate. We know the universe is alive because it has got us in it. This is a matter of fact, not faith or philosophy. It is alive in the same way that our bodies are – because it has life in it.

1 for Sorrow, 2 for Joy, 3 for a Girl, 4 for a Boy…

From this perspective the cosmos began from a unity which was all, everything. No description can be made of it, no measure deduced, except that it was One, a Singularity, just as the scientific and abrahamics say. Then, for no reason that can be known, the unity divided or split. A primal scission.

This division immediately brings into existence, paradoxically, a third thing, that had not existed ‘before’ in the primal unity; the singularity; the One. Even though the One was all. All time; space; matter; energy; forces; potential events. All everything that could be.

This new thing that had not existed in the One, is the relationship between the two parts into which the One had divided. The proportion between them.

Other philosophies and religions have thought of the primal scission as the Unity, the singularity, becoming aware of itself. An awakening of consciousness within the One. And they have thought of the Creation as the physical expression of the relationship which comes into existence between the One and its conscious self.

This proportional relationship is (from these other perspectives) the fundamental principle that underpins all that exists.  It is the fundamental generative and regenerative nature of the universe. This creative-, or ‘mother-’, nature was not created by being ‘manufactured’ by the duality that the One had divided into, it was born between them. Nature literally means “that which is born”. And the creation of this principle/nature immediately brings into existence the first ‘moment’ of time and space. Movement and matter.

It is this all-mother nature that itself gives virgin birth to the material world and all that exists. In the symbol above, the infant pointing to himself is saying by his gesture “I AM” and of course he’s smiling.

Because this third thing, the universal nature/principle/spirit symbolized here and in the past by the image of a mother, is an effect (of the primal scission), it becomes a cause itself – at that very same moment – of new proportion, new relationship, change in the nature of the universe. Which are further effects. Which are themselves causes.  And so on and on until we get to today, the Present Moment. A constant creation and re-creation, a constant birth and re-birth of all that exists, which is the Present Moment.

The Present Moment is the only moment that does exist. The past does not exist. The past is defined as that which no longer exists. The future does not exist. The future is defined as that which does not yet exist. Our selves, our consciousnesses exist in the present moment and the present moment lies between the past and the future. It is the relationship between the past and the future. It is of infinitely short duration because if you were to move into the past or the future by even the smallest amount of time, you would move out of existence.

At the same time the Present Moment is the only moment that has ever existed. And because it started at the beginning of time and will go on until the end of time it is of infinitely long duration. Time proceeds through the Present Moment, which exists for no time at all.

This is not conjecture.

Our Consciousness in the Present Moment

The hieroglyph part of the above symbol (symbol-group) is of the crown prince Horus Harpocrates. In this symbol he represents our, human, experience of the physical reality brought into existence by the all-mother nature of the universe.   In ancient Egyptian mythology the Neter (not ‘god’) Horus was used by the Egyptians to symbolize the nature of the potential that is immanent in human consciousness.  Horus Harpocrates is the infant Horus, not yet fully grown.

(In the Egyptian hieroglyphs the word Neter is spelled ‘n’, ‘tch’, ‘r’ – pronounced ‘nature’. Neter has been mistranslated by our archeologists, deliberately, into our word, and western concept of, ‘god’).

In the complete hieroglyph from which the above was taken, Horus Harpocrates sits within the circle of the eternal Present Moment. The Present Moment is symbolized by the sign of the horizon within the sun disk, meaning ‘today’. ‘Today’ is encircled by the serpent eating its own tail (in ancient Egypt as elsewhere, a symbol of eternity and/or immortality). This symbol is then set between the Lions of Aker, the lions of yesterday and tomorrow. The eternal ‘today’ is set between past and future.  And it’s not a coincidence or a mis-representation. It is what they meant. Our consciousness exists within the Eternal Present Moment.

In the complete hieroglyph, one of the lions is smiling, the other looks sad. The right foot of Horus Harpocrates reaches through the present moment, steps over eternity. And his toe rests upon the head of the smiling lion

Is the implication of the Present Moment, and these ‘other’ perspectives, that some sort of deliberate conscious awareness may enable a new, or dormant, sense of infinity? Or a consciousness unbounded by infinity and the Present Moment?  Or that an individual human consciousness may perhaps know the infinite? May we be able to  commune with the Source?

I believe that this may, at least in part, be the origin and objective of the human spiritual quest – transcendence, gnosis, nirvana, enlightenment, oneness with the universe. A knowing and conscious participation.

This ‘Other’ perspective – to the scientific and abrahamic, although massively degraded by millennia of attack and abuse, is at the heart of human spirituality.

The greatest perversions of human spirituality ever to befall the people and befoul the earth are represented by the abrahamic churches of judaism, christianity and (if it survives the current assault from the other two), islam.

Abrahamism is a True Curse upon our Mother Earth

These forgers of an all-father god of domination and ownership have usurped the principle of the all-mother that went before, with the principle of a cancerous selfishness. They seek to tame the Mother Nature, to own and rape our Mother Earth  and to destroy Her. And by so doing commit suicide on behalf of us all. Driven to fulfill their own prophecies of apocalyptic horror not by ‘destiny’ but by a 180-degree distortion of reality and a well deserved fear and guilt at all they have done, are doing and will do.

Beyond an actual miracle in the evolution of human consciousness – to a point where human consciousness, or a large enough part of it , a critical mass of it, can act coherently enough together to save the day – they will succeed.

They may already have done so

Abrahamism has brought about a situation that is a complete inversion, a perversion, of any sort of right, balanced, harmonic way for the human race to live.

The environment is our environment not as something owned but as a shared existence. We are not ‘other’ than the environment. We are the environment. Along with all the other things in it. The great destruction of the environment is our destruction in every sense. Cause, participant and subject.

We now “know, scientifically” that this is true (where before we could “only intuit”, unscientifically). Our home and our future, all our children, stand forfeit for following the abrahamic way.

The preposition that humankind is by nature a violently, aggressive and selfish animal is shown by historical fact to be a false preposition. Just as the supposition that it is a futile and naïve dream to think that humankind can live with rhyme and reason, is similarly shown by historical fact to be a false supposition. These positions would be provably shown to be false by any single incident in history that contradicts them. And there are many. They are legion.

Outside the histories provided for us by the ‘winners’, it is provably shown that to live in balance with their environment and in fairness to their neighbours is the preferred position for most people, most of the time. Until, in fact, subjected to some inevitable stress. We could not have survived otherwise

And if humans were the naturally violent selfish greedy things we are constantly told we are, then there would be no need to keep making the argument. The war would have been over long ago. There would be no need to constantly, in every place and in every generation, suppress, corrupt and turn aside the spontaneous appearance of fairness, justice and decency. Humanity is our nature – given the opportunity.

Violence, aggression and selfishness are not ‘bad’. They are the necessary responses to stress that ensure our survival. But to invoke and provoke them as a deliberate means of control when not strictly necessary. That is more than just ‘bad’.

The false perspective of humankind as a vicious selfish and greedy animal kept in check and on the right road only by a domination and brutal enforcement of the ‘Law’ is the perspective of abrahamism and of our current scientific paradigm.

The abrahamic sects are the religions of tyrant father, of ownership and money, of perversion, guilt and anxiety, of intolerance and hatred posing as piety and forgiveness, of law posing as justice. It is the author of the dreadful lie that this life need be full of pain and misery to balance out an idyllic existence in some fantastic next life. It is the thief of those great expressions of what it is to be human – kindness and love, implying that goodness itself is a Judeo/Christian possession. Abrahamism has proved to be the memetic switch that has turned mankind from being the most miraculous fruit of the life form of Earth, into its cancer. Its consumption.

The abrahamic perspective is our current ‘scientific’ perspective. The one was manufactured to serve the interests of the other.  The judeo-christian way of abraham means a science-and-technology driven, industrial-scale capitalism that is being imposed upon us without, if not actually against, our will in the selfish, psychotic, delusional and suicidal interests of a tiny fraction of the peoples and life of our Earth.

These perspectives are ‘Them’. And it may already be too late. It may be hopeless. And I think we can certainly forget any savior coming down from heaven to save the day, or aliens, pixies or ‘scientific breakthroughs’. But it is not impossible to rid ourselves of our dominators and their false perspectives, and also not impossible to establish a better way of living with life on earth while we still have it.

How? I don’t know. But I would offer these suggestions as a start.

Be Good, Strong and Clever.

Boycott, Obstruct and Communicate

If you’ve heard of an organization, so have They.

Violence is Theirs.  Don’t use it if you don’t have to.

All electronic communication is compromised.

I have no doubt that much of my current perspective is inaccurate, mistaken or incomplete. If there is one thing I’ve learned during this life it is that I am very capable at making mistakes

Simon Prichard