Experience and Experiment
What we know of the material world in which we apparently live and move and have our beings reaches us through our physical senses which have their limitations. We wear spectacles to help us see better and hearing aids to help us hear better. We use microscopes to look at small things and telescopes to see things which are far away. We invent scientific instruments to improve the accuracy of our observations and measurements, and we devise experiments to clarify, or perhaps show the falsity of, some of our ideas about the world. But after all our experiments conducted with the aid of the most sophisticated instruments, we still have to rely on sight, sound, touch, taste and smell to observe; we rely on our minds to interpret what we observe; and we end up with some awkward contradictions.
Verse 27 of the first chapter of Genesis reads:
If I was created to be like God then, if I can get to know myself really well, I can hope to get some understanding of the God Who created me. So what I shall try to present for your consideration is a sequence of key ideas that I hope you will find helpful as a foundation for your own researches into a particular kind of knowledge which has long been lost from our education system.
Universe the totality of all that we can conceive of as existing.
But in doing so, there are some things we can learn in common, and one of these is the nature of experience itself. Most of us are so concerned with what seems to be going on outside us that we seldom if ever take the trouble to look into ourselves and examine how we actually experience our personal worlds. So let's begin by observing some features of how our own minds work.
But there is still another mystery. The image your optic nerves and brain deal with is inside your eye, inside your body, within yourself. So how is it that you see the tree out there, in the world?
What we can say from this experience is that all you know of the tree is an idea in your mind.
The image on the retina is perceived by the mind, interpreted by the mind, and presented to the understanding as being a tree "out there" in the world. The process demands the positive activity of intelligence as well as the passive receptivity of eye, nerve, and brain. Intelligence implies consciousness of some kind, and as we are normally unaware of the activity which transforms a miniature upside-down image on the retina of the eye into the idea of a tree "out there", we must conclude that it occurs below the threshold of ordinary consciousness; in other words, the process is sub-conscious. It occurs below the level of our conscious awareness so it cannot be observed. We know nothing about the process of seeing until we are aware of seeing something "out there".
Similar considerations apply also to our senses of hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. We are aware of the sensation, but have no direct consciousness of the physical, nervous, and mental processes which are involved in providing us with the sensation.
This mysterious mind of ours is capable of dreaming up an infinite variety of characters and experiences which it always projects into a dream space in a dream time of its own manufacture. If it did not operate in this way, we could not dream at all. But we do dream. And our dreams are strictly private. No-one else can share them.
But our mind does not create the thing for anyone else. It creates it only for our self. Each of us lives in a unique mental world. Our sensations cannot be identical, even when we both listen to the same music, because they are our very own. Yours are produced by your mind and mine are produced by my mind. Our ideas may be similar, but a little conversation between us will reveal that they are by no means identical.
It is because we are not "all of one mind" that disagreements, even conflicts, occur between us human beings. We perceive one and the same thing from different points of view, and our minds construct interpretations so different that they cannot easily be reconciled.
That is why scientists have long sought a Grand Universal Theory. Genesis starts off with one such Grand Universal Theory and calls it God.
Let us try to apply this method and see if what little we have learned of the way our own minds work will help us to understand the concept of creation.
The process is one of involution (elaboration in mind to devise a plan) followed by evolution, the working out or manifestation of the plan, whereby it becomes part of the public world. We know in practice that evolution is usually followed by devolution, in which the project gradually falls apart through pressure of changing circumstances, and the energies employed in it become available for re-deployment in other projects. Thus the public world consists of a multiplicity of projects each of which has a life-cycle of involution, evolution, and devolution, all of which form parts of our personal waking dream.
That is what happens here below. By analogy, something similar must happen above, and be responsible for directing the dream and so manifesting the Universe.
In Genesis, we find God embarking on a gigantic project and the first chapter of Genesis describes the process of involution in God's Mind.
Let us think about this word, "beginning". It can't really mean that before this, there was nothing: because then there would have been no God to create anything, not even in mind. So we must imagine a "creative" Being conceiving an ambitious project, and thinking "What is the first thing I must do?" not in order of time (which has no meaning until the evolutionary stage is reached) but in order of causation. God's "beginning" is therefore not a once-for-all event but a continuous fact. God still creates the heavens and the earth.
And the first thing was to devise two separate and distinct ideas heavens and earth. We must be careful not to interpret these things too literally in terms of human language, which has been designed to deal with what we ordinarily think of as physical objects. If we think of the operation of our own minds, we can see that anything of which we can be conscious must have its contrasting background against which it is perceived. Without contrast, there can be no perception.
So we interpret this first verse as meaning that God provided for the creation project by inventing the idea of a conscious mind.
This seems to confirm our interpretation. God now has the idea of a mind which is capable of being conscious, but at this stage in the process, there is nothing to be conscious of. There is a background, but there is no form for it to perceive against the background. There is endless possibility, but the mind cannot yet see anything. It is in the dark.
But what about the "Spirit" and the "Waters"? We note that Spirit is singular, reminding us that God is the ONE Source of everything of which we can be conscious. "Waters" is plural. It cannot possibly mean waters as we know them, because as yet there is no such thing as water. The idea of God "hovering" over something suggests the idea of movement. Can we not see here another analogy with our own minds? We have an "active" part of the mind that thinks, and a "passive" part in which can be formed ideas that the active mind creates or thinks about. The one Spirit is active and, like wind on water, is able to stir up a substrate which it can diversify into many potential forms. We may call this substrate (which is esoterically called "Water") the Distributive Medium through which the hitherto undistributed energy of Spirit receives differentiation of direction and so ultimately produces differentiation of forms and relations which are discernible by the conscious mind.
Medieval writers spoke of this mental substrate as "Anima Mundi", the "Soul" of the Universe, as distinct from "Animus Dei", the Divine Self. As the Latin forms of the words suggest, the contrast is analogous to gender. The soul of the world is feminine; the Spirit of God is masculine. That is why God is traditionally referred to as "He".
The action of "Spirit" on "Water" is that of an active upon a relatively passive or receptive principle; and the result of any kind of Work is the reconstruction of the material worked upon into a form which it did not possess before. Any creative act must begin at a more interior level than that of the form to be created. It is only the form that emerges and becomes discernible in the public world.
So, in verse 2, God is preparing the mind for the work of producing forms.
Light is the first product of the hovering of Spirit upon Water. Physics tells us that light and heat are forms of energy, and that all forms of energy are vibratory, constantly in motion. Active Spirit hovers over passive Water, stirs it up, and produces Light.
But the sun, moon and stars have not yet appeared. So the light referred to is not the light whereby the eye discerns physical objects, but that All-pervading Inner Light of Mind wherein the Spirit mentally "sees" and determines the forms of those things which are to be.
4. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
This is the point at which God is satisfied that mind is now capable of doing whatever is required of it.
5. God called the light "day", and the darkness He called "night". And there was evening, and there was morning the first day.
We now have a contrast by which a mind can distinguish between light and its absence, between day and night, knowledge and ignorance, science and nescience.
Here we see the first step in the process of distribution, whereby a hitherto undifferentiated substrate, "Water", becomes differentiated under the action of Spirit and becomes capable of "taking shape", and thus revealing distribution in space. The mind is now capable of thinking and of having ideas which may be distinguished from one another in mental space.
Ultimately, the third force may be interpreted as the Will of the Creator who perceives the form as being "good", and so wishes to preserve it for His enjoyment.
The Rule of Three is probably what originally gave rise to the Christian doctrine of God as a Trinity.
9. And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear". And it was so.
The initial Light having been produced, the separation of "water from water" on the second day indicates the separation of the spiritual or ideal principles of the different members of the world-system from one another, and the third day sees the emanation of Earth from "the Water", or the design of the cosmic system of Nature.
This is the point at which evolution can begin, and God's project first becomes realisable by other conscious minds. Up to this point the action has been entirely upon the inner plane of "Water", that is to say, it has been a process of Involution in Mind.
Hitherto, our mental analysis has been of the "top-down" variety. Now that we have the idea of an Earth, we can transfer our attention to it and start mentally filling in some details. We should not forget that the Book of Genesis was written by humans for humans.
Though we must assume that the ideas of sun, moon, and stars as well as the planets must have been formed during day 3, their physical counterparts had not yet appeared.
This reminds us that the "days" of Genesis are not to be thought of as corresponding in any way to our limited days determined by one rotation of the earth on its axis. A "day" in Genesis represents a significant phase in the development of an ongoing effect on the Inner Plane of Mind. Time is important only for the relative measurement of life-histories on the Outer Plane of World.
The earth, already on the third day impregnated with the vegetable principle, is prepared to take up the evolutionary work on the sixth day by producing all those other animal races which have not yet originated in the waters, and thus preparing the world as a stage for Mankind, the principal actors in God's drama, endowed with a mind which is able to read and interpret God's Mind.
It would be difficult to give a more concise statement of Involution leading to Evolution than that contained in Chapter 1 of Genesis. Originating Spirit subsists at first as simple Unity. Then it differentiates itself into the bifurcated mind spoken of as "Heavens" and "Earth", and then into the active and passive principles it calls "Spirit" and "Water". From these proceed Light and the separation into their respective spheres of the spiritual principles of the different planets, each carrying with it the potential of self-reproducing power.
Then provision is made for realisation, so that the work that has been done on the interior planes during the "project planning" stage can be "rolled out" in physical manifestation. Finally, in the phrases "let the waters bring forth" and "let the earth bring forth", the land and water of our habitable globe are distinctly stated to be the sources from which all vegetable and animal forms are to be evolved.
Thus creation is described as the self-transforming action of the ONE unanalysable Spirit passing by successive transitions into all the varieties of manifestation that fill the Universe.
It is surely because the starting point was Darkness, and the coming of Light out of darkness cannot be stated in any other order than the dawning of morning from night. It is the dawning of manifestation out of non-manifestation, and this happens at each successive stage of the evolutionary process.
Notice also that nothing is said of the remainder of each day. All that we hear of each day is "the morning", thus indicating the grand truth that when once a Divine day opens, it is open for ever. Once something has been invented, it cannot be uninvented. The cyclical process of Involution, Evolution and Devolution is still going on at this moment.
The Spiritual Sun is always climbing higher and higher, but never passes the zenith or commences to decline a truth which Swedenborg expresses by saying that the Spiritual Sun is always seen in the Eastern heavens at an angle of forty-five degrees above the horizon.
The most significant implication of this statement must be that God gave man (including woman!) the incomparable gift of a conscious mind. But as himself included in the great Whole, man is no exception to the Universal Law of Evolution.
It has often been remarked that the account of the creation is twofold. First we are told in chapter 1 of the creation in the realm of the invisible the process of Involution; and afterwards, in chapter 2, we are told of the creation on the plane of the visible and tangible the process of Evolution. And since Involution is the cause and Evolution the effect, Genesis observes this order both in the account of the creation of the world and in that of the creation of man.
Then in Chapter 3, we have an attempt to account for the process of Devolution, whereby the neutralising force gradually loosens its grip and permits established forms to disintegrate and dissolve, allowing the mental energy locked up in sustaining them to be released and resolved into new forms to serve more advanced and more beautiful purposes. Thus creation is simultaneously a cyclical but ever-advancing process with no foreseeable prospect of coming to an end.
When "God saw that it was good", it implies that God so liked His system, or "so loved the world" which was capable of producing such endless variety, that He made it permanent by enshrining its principles in what we conceive of as fundamental eternal laws. And, at least as far as planet Earth is concerned, there can be no doubt that if we can train ourselves to act upon that conclusion, and bring ourselves to believe that we really are made in the image and likeness of God, then perhaps we shall find that we are, after all, capable of creating in thought and realising our ideas in various ways. We are clearly intended to be creative agents of Evolution, helping to further God's intention of producing beauty through infinite variety.
But if we realise that we live in a mental Universe, then we shall find that we are capable of original creation, not in material but in mind. Thus we can modify our circumstances and redistribute the raw materials at our disposal in ways that can restore, maintain, and progress the Divine intention, not only for the health of our own bodies but also for that of a world which our failure to realise our own Divine nature is turning into a rubbish tip.
"Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning" by Thomas Troward
Solidity
Perhaps the most awkward of these contradictions is the discrepancy between what our unaided senses tell us of what we call matter, and the quantum physicists' description of it. The science of physics has turned apparently solid matter inside-out and found it practically empty. This means that the very ground we walk on is almost wholly empty space. But our senses, particularly that of touch, make it feel firm, compact, motionless, and impenetrable. Touch gives us an illusory experience owing, perhaps, to the limited range within which it can work. Similar considerations apply to all our physical senses. All of them are interpreted by the mind and our reactions to them are mental reactions.
Objectivity and Subjectivity
The important lesson to learn from this awkwardness is that in interpreting the Universe, we need not only to observe it, but also to know a great deal more about what we observe it with, and how we interpret what we observe. Before we can know the Universe, we must first know ourselves. "Know thyself" has been the first recommendation of venerable philosophers and teachers down the ages.
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
Definitions
First, let me narrow down the meanings of few important words as I shall be using them.
Cosmos an ordered system of ideas constituting a harmonious unit or sub-unit. Thus the Universe may be thought of as a cosmos or as a hierarchy of cosmoses.
World the totality of things, events, etc., of which one has personal experience.
Mind that which makes us aware or enables us to think of anything.
Individuality
The thinking self is surrounded by the not-self. Each of us experiences the world separately. Each of us has a unique existence. Each of us is entitled to call himself or herself 'I', and no other person is entitled to use the singular first personal pronoun to refer to anyone else. Each of us is a centre around which our personal world revolves. I am as inseparable from my world as you are from yours. Therefore, if our quest for understanding the Universe is to be based on experience, and not our own or somebody else's fantasy, we have to pursue it individually.
Seeing
Imagine you are looking at a tree. This tree is now part of your world. But what do we mean when we say we "see" a tree? We learn at school that the impression of seeing an object starts with light rays reflected by the object entering the eye which, responding to this stimulus, forms an image on the retina. But we are not conscious of this image. If we were, the tree would be seen to be upside-down. All that has happened is a chemical and structural change in the retina of the eye. News of the existence of the tree has not yet reached the conscious mind. If the tree is, say, twenty feet tall, there is no room in your eye for an image that big. So we are forced to conclude that our brains and nervous systems have some magical ability whereby they can interpret a tiny upside-down image on the retina of the eye as being "in reality" a twenty-foot tree.
Dream
Supporting evidence for this is afforded by the phenomenon of dream. I lived for many years under the impression that I had no dreams. Later, I discovered that this impression arose simply because on waking, I did not remember my dreams. When I learned that I do have dreams and began to pay more attention to them, I discovered that my dream senses apparently work in exactly the same way as my waking senses. I walk in a dream world, ride in dream trains, drive dream cars. I see dream persons, dream animals, and dream trees "out there" in a world created by my dreaming mind. I see the colours in a dream sunset. I hear dream music and I smell dream scents. I pat dream dogs and stroke dream cats which purr in response. I feel jostled by a dream crowd when I am trying to buy a dream drink in a dream bar. And my wife will tell you of the time when she woke up clinging desperately to the frame of the bed because she was terrified by the shaking she experienced in a dream earthquake of which I knew nothing.
Ideal World
When we wake up, it is as if we are in a public dream. All our senses can be interpreted as awareness of a sensation which is transmitted through nerve and brain and becomes an idea in consciousness. Knowledge of an object's existence does not arise in the bodily eye, ear, skin, tongue, or nose, but only after an idea emerges in consciousness. All we can know are our own ideas.
Unity
Knowledge relies on the assumption that everything that exists, or can rightly be conceived of, is part of an essential cosmic unity. That is what the words "cosmos" and "Universe" imply. If there were no such unity, such inter-connectedness, there could be no science, no philosophy, no truth. Truth has no meaning other than the reduction of the plurality of phenomena to an essential unity of facts to laws, of laws to principles, of principles to essence or being. All search for truth postulates the underlying unity of everything we observe. That is why in our search for truth, we proceed from the known to the unknown, in the belief that the necessary connections exist.
Hermetic Philosophy
Hermetic philosophy takes the unity of all that exists as its basic tenet. It then adopts the method of analogy "as above, so below; as below, so above" and proceeds to apply the statement in verse 27 of the first chapter of Genesis that God created man in His own image.
Project
This word, project, is currently in fashion. Many of us are engaged in what we call a project. A project has a life-history. It begins as a private idea which is elaborated in mind until there is a plan which can be implemented, whether by one person or by many, each of whom subsequently makes a contribution to the outward manifestation of the project according to the subject's understanding of his or her participation in the plan.
Conscious Mind
1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Active and Passive
2. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Light
3. And God said, "Let there be light", and there was light.
Space
6. And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water".
7. So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so.
8. God called the expanse "sky". And there was evening, and there was morning the second day.
The Rule of Three
We know that our ideas are fleeting evanescent things unless we like them enough to make them more or less permanent constituents of what we call our personality. Three forces are required to maintain a manifestation. There has to be an active force acting upon a relatively passive force to produce a form. But if that form is to keep its shape despite the constant stirring of the waters by the Spirit, a neutralising or stabilising or preserving force of some kind is needed. This force can be very subtle and difficult to discern in any given manifestation: but its action is always to preserve form for long enough to make it discernible. It may appear as a repetitive cyclical pattern of movement within the overall stirring as in musical themes or the eddies whose existence we can follow for significant distances in slow-moving streams. In what we think of as living creatures, this third force is sometimes called the "Life Force" which endows a form with enough permanence to give it a "life-history".
"Consolidation"
10. God called the dry ground "land", and the gathered waters He called "seas". And God saw that it was good.
11. Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. And it was so.
12. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
13. And there was evening and there was morning the third day.
Time
With the fourth day, the imaginary "physical" Universe having been mentally differentiated into shape, the idea of time appears. Consciousness of the relative cyclical motion in space of the Sun and the Earth gives us our Earthly days, seasons, and years; and awareness of the relative cyclical motion of Earth, Sun and Moon gives us our Earthly months, but all these phenomena had first to be envisaged as noumena in God's Mind before they could evolve and become perceptible by our minds.
Evolution
On the fifth day, the terrestrial waters begin to play their part in the evolutionary process by spontaneously producing fish and fowl. Here we may notice how Genesis anticipated modern science in the discovery that birds are ideally, and therefore anatomically, more closely related to fishes than to land animals.
Evening and Morning
Why does each day begin with the evening?
Man
Let us remind ourselves of Verse 27:
"So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
The Role of Mankind
Adding what we know of our own minds and what we have analogically deduced about the Mind of God, does it not seem very likely that far from inhabiting a concrete material world, we are really part of a projected dream in which, by virtue of our God-like mentality, we are empowered to participate in God's dream; and it seems so much more real to us than our own fragmented dreams because God's Mind is Infinite whereas ours is limited.
Creation and Construction
But in our efforts, we must distinguish between creation and construction. If we want to realise the idea of a boat or anything else, it is ordinarily easiest and most natural for us to construct it by using materials which have already been created and are available for our use.
Supplementary Reading:
The Kybalion by "Three Initiates"
"The Wisdom of the Overself" by Dr Paul Brunton
"Meditations on the Tarot" by an Anonymous Author