maintaining old metaphysics in a new world
In the human apprehension of the world, there are many
layers, many membranes through which the raw information is processed,
categorized, contextualized and judged for value, that by the time we as humans
perceive anything at all—be it the visual image of a tree, an unfamiliar sound
in the darkness of the night, the intentions of another being—the information
itself may indeed hardly be considered the same. It is for this reason that philosophers
through the ages, from Plato to even Baudrillard, have urged us to use reason to
temper our perceptions. And yet, as
Baudrillard has argued most recently, we have become so enraptured by our
illusions in the modern world that those illusions have come to contain as much
reality as any reality that may (or may not) be objectively provable.
In that same vein, I assert that our eye is as much the
projector of reality as it is the perceiver of it (as long as we include within
our definition of reality the beliefs, opinions and perspectives of others) and
in such case we must conclude that reality is not a static but a co-created
artifact.
I have argued elsewhere for a model of the universe that
includes five dimensions (the 3 dimensions of physical space, the 4th
dimension of Time, and the 5th dimension of Consciousness), and I
wish to offer here some further texture to that model, as well as some
anticipation of resistance from what I like to call the Cult of Rational
Nihilism—that modern edifice of positivism, that has been born of the scientific
paradigm and has come to dominate Academia.
I call it a cult because it bears at its root a metaphysical assumption
that if a thing cannot be explained by reason and replicated in a lab it cannot
possibly exist. This is perhaps a
misperception or even a prejudice of mine, but more and more I find within the
halls of the Ivory Palace that the requirement for externalized evidence and replicability,
the foundations of good science, which are perfectly appropriate within that
field, have become the judiciary even for fields which attempt to reach beyond
the physical world. Thus conscience does
make cowards of us all, I might quote, and thus the innate human desire to
exceed our previous bounds of perception becomes sicklied o’er with
presumptions of a void that may be filled with new worlds.
And here, then, is the point I wish to make: in the post-Enlightenment
world, in which the dangerous fundamentalisms of religion have terrified most
reasonable folks, in which the pragmatism of science has provided us with such
profound and luxurious command over our immediate physical surroundings, we
have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, and are busily
forsaking the magnificent potential to bridge the two. Religion—at least the mystical religions I
have always held the most fondness for—explores the deeper senses of the human
being in an effort to better perceive firsthand
the subtler forces of cause and effect that work through the interstitial space
between particles, as it were. Religion
is fundamentally unprovable because it relies upon idiosyncratic
experience. For instance, I could tell
you that god speaks to me all the time, and she generally does so with the
voice of a Southern Black Grandma. I
could tell you that I have had visions in shamanic journeys that have led me
directly to resources in the waking world and to answers for some of my most
challenging puzzles. I could describe in
great detail the vast worlds that unfold in my inner universe (and yours) and
the numinous blanket of loving presence that exists there. But if you have not experienced that reality yourself,
it is quite easy and reasonable for you to say that it does not exist. You could describe a rainbow to me in great
detail, but if I have always been blind, it would be quite simple for me to
argue that the whole thing is your imagination.
But I ask you this: what is the imagination in the first
place? We often think of the imaginary
as the opposite of the real. And yet,
just as Plato argued so long ago, the world of Ideas is the very source for so
much of what is now real, if not all of it.
This paper that I am writing now.
It has existed only in my mind, in my imagination, you might say, up
until this very moment. And yet, does
the simple act of transcribing my thoughts into digital form that you can then
read and share in—does that act confer upon this treatise more reality than it
had before? Or does it simply change the
nature of its reality, bringing it to a lower branch upon the Kabbalistic Tree
of Life from crown toward kingdom? In
the mystical traditions, there has never been any doubt that the Imagination,
the realm of Kether, the world of Platonic Forms, inheres to its own brand of
Reality. The Aboriginal Australians even
go so far as to say that the Dream world is the real world, and the waking
world the Dream and how can you contradict this assertion without making a
metaphysical claim? Many eyes have gazed
upon this rainbow, and describe it in such similar terms, and yet the blind continue
to refuse even to humor an attempt to explain.
Perhaps in my blindness, I could be convinced that rainbows
do in fact exist if enough people tell me about and describe them in similar,
replicable ways, or offer me a reasonable explanation for the refraction of the
light spectrum through water. But only
because I am willing to remain open to considering such possibilities. In other words, only because my inner
universe is receptive to the perspectives of others am I able to use the
scientific method well.
This then, is my final conclusion: The Cult of Rational Nihilism has its place in
the pantheon of Earthly religions. Science is a profoundly important and useful
tool and it has enabled us to cast off at least in theory the old gods of Dogma
and Religious Imperialism. But I hold
that consciousness, the experience of being aware, is a dimension unto
itself. It is an a-priori,
already-existing universe that we, as conscious beings can access, but only
idiosyncratically, only by peering back behind our own eyes. And because of this fundamental nature, it is
inherently unmeasurable and (at least superficially) unreplicable and therefore
represents an entire sector of the cosmos that is by definition unapprehendable
by science. There are of course
practical dangers in drafting public policy according to idiosyncratic
experience. We have to let the old gods remain
dead. If you meet Buddha on the road,
kill him, say the Buddhists. If I try to
convince you that Jesus was white and he told me personally that white supremacy is god’s
plan for humanity, please feel free to shoot me. However,
there is a baby in that bathwater. There
is a conscious spirit that animates each of us, and it is participating in a
vast universe that is knowable, but not in the rational, replicable ways of
knowing. We must turn our backs to that
bathwater raining down, turn our faces again to the Sun of our imagination, and
a rainbow awaits.
