8
Interstellar Genes and the Galactic Double Helix
In the four-dimensional structure of the solar system’s long body we have seen how the planetary trails, all encircling the white-hot thread of the sun, form immense helices in space. If we imagine each of these individual sheaths to be coupled in some way with the greater spiral motion of the sun, as there are nine planets, we can say that there are nine “solar” helices. One of these, formed by the combined motion of the Earth and the sun, is fundamentally different from all the others, in that it contains life, consciousness, you, and me. This particular double helix is the “brain” of the solar being, the mind of Adam Kadmon.
But, of course, if this solar being is indeed organic, a “chromosome,” then, theoretically, like all helices it too would have the capacity, in a still higher dimension, to create, to build even greater, more complex forms of life. So, just as DNA forms the nucleus of a cell in a physical body, and the human brain forms the nucleus of a cell in the solar body of mankind, so too would the mind of this solar being form the nucleus of a cell in the greater, galactic body. This further quantum leap, from the scale of the solar system to the vaster galactic scale, means that the human brain, earlier defined as the mesocosmic double helix between DNA below and the solar configuration above, now becomes a microcosmic entity in a yet larger existence, in which the solar being represents the mesocosmic creative force, and the galactic body the macrocosmic. We shall take a closer look at these relative scales later in this chapter.
In the last chapter we noted that Rodney Collin had discovered that the orbital cycles in the planets of the solar system produce major and minor conjunctions in time, whose relative values correspond very closely to the harmonic proportions of the major scale. This legendary “music of the spheres” was frequently alluded to by the writers of ancient Greece: it was referred to by Plato as the “song of the sirens.” The hermetic symmetry of these planetary motions, as I have suggested, is an indication that there are genetic, organic processes operating in the planetary sphere.
It so happens that, very recently, further evidence has come to light concerning the relationship between the masses of certain stars that seems to indicate that this planetary harmony may extend far beyond the solar system, out into the galaxy.
While I was working through the second draft of this book, which did not then include what follows, I received a phone call from Colin Wilson. He said he had been asked to review an updated edition of a book by Robert Temple called The Sirius Mystery, first published in 1976, in which there was some very interesting cosmological data that he felt would be of interest to me. Colin had already seen a hastily written first draft of this book and had been kind enough to offer some suggestions as to its presentation and format. So he knew exactly where I was coming from and promptly realized the relevance of Temple’s conclusions to my work. He duly sent me a copy of The Sirius Mystery, which I had first read many years ago, but this new edition, as he had promised, proved to be very interesting indeed.
Temple is the man who introduced to the world the Dogon tribe of Africa, whose ancient and secret traditions contain very precise astrophysical data about Sirius and two other invisible stars in the Sirius system that have only been discovered in recent times. These two hidden companions of Sirius are known respectively as Sirius B, a white dwarf star first photographed in 1970 by Irving W. Lindenblad of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.,1 and Sirius C, a red dwarf star whose existence was only officially confirmed in 1995 by the French astronomers J. L. Duvent and Daniel Benest.2 The Dogon, it appears, were well ahead of their time.
Temple believes, reasonably enough, that this knowledge came to them in the remote past, probably from Egypt. Then he advances the theory that the Egyptians and the Sumerians obtained this knowledge directly from highly advanced amphibious extraterrestrials from the Sirius star system. He cites as part of his evidence the prominence in certain myths of amphibious creatures, half-man, half-fish, who were said to have founded the first civilizations in the Fertile Crescent. The leading “fish deity” was known under various names on the eastern flank of the Crescent, although in Egypt there is no major god answering to the description given. In Babylon and Assyria this god was known as Oannes (possibly an early form of the name John); in Sumeria, Enki; and to the Dogon tribe in Africa, Nommo.
I have to say that Temple’s idea of amphibious spacemen flying in from Sirius with their superior wisdom is not my favorite explanation for the birth of Earthling civilization. A more plausible theory is that the ancient civilizers appearing in all the major myths, said to have survived a Great Flood, landed on the shores of their new homeland in boats—hence the emphasis on the element of water. This proposition is further supported by the theory of transcendental evolution itself, as interpreted in many ancient legends, in which the basic element of water is primarily an evolutionary symbol, expressing the central importance of the passive, “watery” element in the process of creation (see chapter 9).
So, according to the theory of transcendental evolution, superior or “extraterrestrial” intelligence actually develops from below. And it grows, evolves, organically, ever upward, toward the stars. Temple’s view therefore appears to be upside down. His arguments in support of his theory are extensive, suggesting technical maneuvers on the part of the “fish gods” that defy comparison with anything ever accomplished on Earth, including the construction of the Great Pyramid. These include the use of water-filled spaceships capable of interstellar flight, and also the construction of Phoebe, the smooth-surfaced, tenth moon of Saturn, which Temple believes may be an artificial, water-filled satellite constructed, or perhaps “inflated,” by these fishlike creatures and used as a kind of staging post on their intermittent journeys to and from Earth.
Notwithstanding our obvious differences concerning the true nature of “alien” life, Temple has discovered some interesting new facts concerning the Sirius system and our own sun, which appear to link both star systems with the Giza plateau, in particular with the Great Pyramid and the second Pyramid of Khafre (Chephren).
As the Great Pyramid has an apparent Sirius connection (that is, the southern shaft emanating from the Queen’s Chamber, which targeted Sirius as it culminated at the meridian at the time of construction of the Great Pyramid), Temple proposes that it might be a representation of the “invisible” star, Sirius B, and that the slightly smaller Pyramid of Khafre represents our own sun. This view might appear to fly in the face of the suggestion made by Robert Bauval that the three Giza Pyramids represent the three stars of Orion’s Belt. The whole necropolis, however, as we have seen, is extraordinarily multifaceted, so it would hardly be surprising if we were to find yet more information relating to the Sirius system encoded within the design.
Temple begins by comparing the sides of the slightly larger base of the Great Pyramid (755.79 feet) with the sides of the base of the Pyramid of Khafre (707.75 feet), calculating that the sides of the Great Pyramid are 1.0678 times those of Khafre’s. He then notes, using the newest available astrophysical data, that the mass of Sirius B is 1.053 times the mass of our sun. As he says:
The correspondence is thus accurate to 0.014. However, even this tiny discrepancy may be highly significant. For 0.0136 (which rounded off is 0.014) is the precise discrepancy between the mathematics of the octave and the mathematics of the fifth in harmonic theory, where 1.0136 is referred to as the Comma of Pythagoras, and was known to the ancient Greeks, who are said to have obtained knowledge of it from Egypt.3
As a matter of fact, I have already discussed the Pythagorean Comma in my earlier book, in which I proposed that it was intended to highlight the fundamental difference between ordinary, practical music and what I call “esoteric” music—ordinary music, I believe, having been considered by the Pythagoreans as being slightly “off-key” from the true harmonic constant from which life is created.
Temple expresses much the same idea in his revised version of The Sirius Mystery, in which he calls the discrepancy of 0.0136 (rounded off to 0.014) the Particle of Pythagoras: “Essentially, one could say that it expresses the minute discrepancy between the ideal and the real.”4
Temple’s “ideal” music in this context is what I would call “esoteric.” “Real” music therefore is ordinary practical music. The harmonic deviation described by the comma is significant, raising the wider issue of how this discrepancy might have been rectified by the Pythagoreans: how they transformed ordinary music into what Temple calls the “ideal” kind. I have dealt with this in some detail in The Infinite Harmony, where I suggest that the marginal imperfection of ordinary music was connected with the “glitches” of the major scale. As I pointed out in the introduction of this book when introducing Gurdjieff’s exposition of the law of octaves, these “glitches” are identified as the two points in the octave where the rate of increase in pitch frequency between one note and the next retards, that is where there are not full tones but only half-tones: between the notes mi–fa and ti–Do. This inherent deviation in the line of development of an octave in ordinary, practical music is the underlying pattern of development of all natural phenomena, and accounts for the vast multiplicity and variety of physical forms in the universe. Thus, while the music of our favorite composers and artists sounds perfect to our ears, the Pythagorean Comma indicates that it is never quite so.
“Ideal” music, however, the esoteric music of the Greeks, is organic music, the music of the Hermetic Code and the genetic code. This very special kind of music actually takes account of, and rectifies, the discrepancy highlighted by the Comma. Essentially, of course, this is the “music of the mind,” the music from which life itself is created. It is Egyptian alchemy, which involved the application of the law of octaves as a mode of being, but with a very slight yet crucial additional input in each developing scale at precisely the two semitone points mentioned above. This means that a fully developed “psychological” or organic octave is composed not of seven stages, as in a normal scale, but of nine, because it includes within it the two extra impulses at the points of the missing semitones. If we remember that each of these nine stages, according to the second fundamental law of nature, is itself an octave, then quite clearly we have a genuinely perfect scale consisting of sixty-four “inner notes” (9 x 7 + 1, the 1 being the final Do).
Readers wishing to explore in greater depth the theory of the “missing semitones” may care to consult the relevant section of my previous book,5 but for the present we must return to the main cosmological theme of this chapter.
Temple goes on to reveal that the precise value of 1.053, which we have noted has only very recently been identified as the exact ratio of the masses of Sirius B and our own sun, was very accurately expressed by the astronomer/mathematician Macrobius in the fifth century CE in the form of the “sacred” fraction, 256/243. Macrobius claimed that this fraction, which was also referred to by several of his contemporaries, was used in harmonic theory by people who he himself referred to as the ancients.
Temple suggests that this apparent harmonic connection between Sirius B and the sun—stars that, on a universal scale, are virtually neighbors—might in fact be implicit throughout the universe, at least between localized white dwarf stars and ordinary stars like the sun. The wider implication is that all types of stars could have relative masses corresponding in some way to the established ratios of harmonic theory, that is, with the ratios embodied within the Hermetic Code.
One possible way of explaining this long-range coordination, says Temple, is to regard the two solar systems as inhabiting the same “cell” of space. This idea has emerged from a new area of research known as Complexity Theory, which involves the study of the sudden appearance and disappearance of order in the greater cosmos. It has been noted that something that looks very much like instantaneous communication occurs in such “cells,” “whereby huge macro-regions of space behave as if their elements were not separated by spatial or temporal distance, and the ‘cell’ engages in what is called ‘self-organisation.’”6
We have already identified what appears to be a microworld equivalent of this kind of process in plasmas, where billions of electrons simultaneously perform coordinated movements, exactly as if they were all communicating non-locally. Another example cited by Temple is the Bénard cell, a thermal phenomenon caused by convection in a fluid, in which millions of individual molecules instantaneously align. He also notes that there are other similar phenomena in nature, such as the simple sponge, which can transmit stimuli from one end of its body to the other at apparently “impossible” velocities, as if the whole creature were a single giant cell or neuron. This is not dissimilar to the proposition made by Roger Penrose, the Cambridge scientist mentioned in chapter 4, who suggested that “non-local quantum correlations” might occur between widely separated regions of the brain, thus enabling billions of individual neurons to respond as a coherent whole—a microcosmic equivalent of the Greek concept of homonoia, a “union of minds,” or, in this case, of neurons.
Obviously the principle of nonlocality is hard for us to understand. It defies ordinary logic and excludes the time and space familiar to our ordinary senses. But while the nonlocal realm—what I have called the plane of light—might be difficult to conceptualize, there is a sense in which music itself can provide an explanation for the kind of simultaneous coordinated action we have been considering here.
This centers around the eighth and last note of an octave, Do, which, once struck, simultaneously becomes the first note of a higher octave, a greater scale. Such a note has dual properties, existing in two different scales at one and the same time. So let’s say that the whole range of biochemical vibrations produced by neurons in the brain or in a sponge develop inwardly as an octave, and that ultimately this octave begins to vibrate, to resonate, at its optimum potential. When this occurs, the entire evolutionary scale becomes fused into one final note, Do. In this way all separate components of the scale not only become simultaneously interconnected with all other components, no matter what their “position” in the scale, they also become simultaneously connected, through the ultimate note, with the next scale or dimension above.
In the same way the RNA codon template, created by DNA from three inert chemical bases, or three harmonious “octaves” of chemical resonance, simultaneously becomes a single new biochemical “note”— an amino acid—one of twenty-two comprising the greater scale above. Thus, although the process is essentially linear, taking place in time, there comes a point where a kind of simultaneity definitely does occur, where lower scales are suddenly transcended, and where time and space count for nothing. The same could apply, of course, to the higher scales of biochemical evolution, perhaps when the amino-acid chain transmutes “up” into the scale of the protein macromolecule, or when the protein evolves up further into the scale of organs, or of glands, bone, tissue, and so on. In all of these transitional stages of evolution there must be points where the notes in one scale all combine to strike simultaneously a single new note up into a greater scale. Therefore, these “nonlocal correlations,” in addition to being a general property of nature at the quantum level of existence, probably manifest at many different levels on the evolutionary ladder.
As Temple says, if a simple sponge can defy space and time at the bottom of the sea, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that these greater “cells” above can do so within the galaxy.
Inevitably, perhaps, Temple is ultimately drawn to consider the possibility that such macrocosmic cells, which he calls Anubis cells (Anubis being the jackal-headed deity of the Egyptian pantheon associated with the “dog star” Sirius), may be alive. “The vast Ordering Principle,” he says, “may be an Entity.”7
Quite so. Hermetic is genetic, and the musical symmetries evident in the planetary sphere of our solar system, and in the mass ratio of Sirius B and our sun, indicate that this life force may be prevalent throughout the entire universe. Remember also that the basic structure of all life-bearing phenomena is the spiral, the helix—and the entire cosmos, as we have seen, is positively teeming with these “serpents in the sky.”
Our own solar system is comprised of nine such serpents, all coiled around the path of the sun, while the motion of the sun itself traces an infinitely greater helix winding around the central path of the galactic center.
The most distinctive of the nine “lesser serpents” described above is, of course, serpent Earth, from which has developed the evolving “solar mind” of the human race. Of course, if this greater helix is a cosmic “chromosome” developing in an organic fashion deep inside some kind of cell nucleus, then logically one would expect to find the greater body of the host cell all around it. In this case, the most obvious structure in evidence is that of the solar system itself.
Interestingly enough, when we look at the solar system in relation to the greater body of the Milky Way, its position appears strikingly similar to that of certain ordinary living cells. We could compare it, for example, to the position of a single blood cell in the human body. Like the solar system, a white corpuscle is structured around a central nucleus, or “sun.” Floating around the nucleus are smaller components of varying size, complexity, and energy content, such as enzymes, mitochondria, ribosomes, RNA, and so on. These components all exist inside the body of the cell, floating around in a watery medium, a liquid membrane known as the cytoplasm. Beyond the walls of the individual blood cell and separating it from all others is more fluid membrane.
The boundary of the cosmic “cytoplasm” of the solar system might be defined as the sphere of the sun’s immediate magnetic and gravitational influence, the sphere in which all the planets, asteroids, comets, and other orbiting materials are contained. The “cytoplasm,” however, or the medium in which the components of the solar system exist and operate, would be infinitely more rarefied than the liquid membrane of the cell, or even the air we breathe on Earth, but it must be just as real nonetheless and it similarly must fill the whole system. Possibly this medium is light itself or, rather, the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, which extends far beyond the boundaries of the solar system and is the medium in which all greater cosmic systems exist.
The spiral galaxy, consisting of billions of these “solar cells,” is composed mainly of hydrogen-burning stars, vast, interstellar clouds of cosmic dust, or nebulae, and, one assumes, billions upon billions of planets, all whirling around a central nucleus of super-dense energy—a black hole, perhaps. And this great cosmic firework, with its immense spiral arms, as well as spinning around its central axis, is also hurtling through space at a velocity of around six hundred kilometers per second. Therefore, as with the solar helices, if we wish to perceive something of the galaxy’s true form, we must try to visualize it not in the timescale involved in taking a frozen snapshot of it, a few seconds or a minute or so, but in that of the galactic being itself. In such a scale, a few “seconds” might be equivalent to hundreds of thousands or even millions of our years. So, if the four-dimensional structure of the galaxy could somehow be captured by time-lapse photography, after a few of its “seconds” or “minutes” we would see something very similar to the long body of the solar system described by Rodney Collin, an immensely elongated, shimmering spiral of electromagnetic radiation coiling toward infinity—another true helix.
This image of a long helical body really only describes the basic physical or four-dimensional form of one of these macrocosmic “chromosomes.” But, like the DNA strand in a cell nucleus, the brain housed in a skull, or the creative solar mind of the human race, its overall complexity and influence would far exceed the scale of its origin. In fact, what we see when we look at the contents of the nucleus of a cell, a cerebral cortex or a solar system is merely a simplified cross-section of the whole entity.
For example, we look at a DNA strand and see only a relatively simple chain of chemically encoded digital instructions. Yet scientific investigation has shown us another, much more powerful dimension to DNA: it reaches out and indeed controls all of the creative functions in every part of the greater “world” in which it exists, that is, in the entire body of the host organism. Thus a single gene located in the chromosome of the first reproductive cells of an evolving organism may ultimately determine such features as the color of hair or eyes, the configuration of bone structure, and other complex characteristics.
Similarly the human brain can be scientifically reduced to its simplest form by describing it as a mass of neurons interacting through chemical reactions and electrical impulses, all comfortably housed in a protective covering of hard bone. But quite clearly the skull itself does not even remotely define the real boundaries of the brain’s existence. The brain, like the chromosome, is merely the physical manifestation of a much greater, profoundly more complex entity, one capable of thinking conceptually or of dreaming up imaginary worlds, that of traveling backward in time through memory or alternatively speculating its way into the future. It can transmit information to other brains, it can intuit, impress, inspire, it can even, many believe, communicate telepathically, directly influence physical objects, predict coming events, and so on. In effect, like the DNA double helix, the brain is potentially as big as the “world” in which it functions.
The solar helix, or the collective mind of humanity, would clearly be of an order of consciousness far more advanced than any we could imagine. The “organism” in which this helix is housed would be composed of the entire body of mankind’s accumulated wisdom, every idea, theory, or belief system that has ever been conceived, or ever will be. Trying to understand the true nature of such a being, whose life span would be measured in hundreds of thousands of our years, would involve studying, in the minutest detail, every intellectual and spiritual discipline known or yet to be developed. Like the two orders of helices below it—the human brain and DNA—we would expect the solar helix to exert creative influences reaching way beyond its own scale of existence, out into the greater body of the host galaxy.
In the same way we see the greater galactic helix as composed of symmetrical, localized concentrations of matter and energy traveling through a given region in space, but its greater presence, or the totality of vibrations issuing from it, spreads far and wide. We know the galaxy is formed like it is because there are four fundamental forces (“bases”) keeping it together: the short-range strong and short-range weak nuclear forces, the gravitational force, and the electromagnetic force. The electromagnetic radiation emitted by all the stars of a galaxy spreads out at the speed of light in all directions, extending over distances of billions of light years from the source of origin. Therefore, the outer limits of all the light that has ever been emitted from the galactic helix, together with the outer limits of the gravitational influence it has exerted from the time of its formation, represent the greater body of the galaxy itself. Thus, as with the DNA double helix, the human brain, and the solar helix, we can say that the potential influence of the galactic “mind” would also be as immense and complex as the “world” in which it exists.
Scientists will argue that a galaxy cannot conceivably possess any kind of consciousness, that it is simply an involving, runaway mass of chemical elements randomly exploding and flying off in all directions according to basic physical laws. But then, the often-violent electrochemical reactions taking place inside an active human brain could also be described in much the same way—and yet we know that consciousness dwells there. Similarly the superactive speed-of-light fusion of electropositive elements combining, through photon interchange, with electronegative elements in the atomic chemistry of dynamic, evolving biomolecules would also give the appearance, to a microcosmic onlooker, of being a purely physical, entropic process. But we know that this entropy observed in the genetic microworld is basically an illusion, for from it evolve immense, harmoniously proportioned, and long-living organic structures.
In the case of the solar being, whose extraterrestrial body, remember, is constructed from the metaphysical “gene pool” of mankind’s collective consciousness, disorder seems, at least on the surface of things, to be endemic. Go into any large town or city on a normal day and observe the inhabitants going about their business, rushing, pushing, shouting, hustling, absent-mindedly moving around in random directions, each of them in a private world of their own, with hardly ever a thought for the planet we live on, or the solar system within which it rotates, or the galaxy on high. No homonoia here. Elsewhere men are warring with and killing one another in a hundred different regions of the world, famines are ravaging millions of helpless and innocent victims with merciless regularity, global ecological disasters are occurring almost daily. All this evident confusion is “cacophony,” a general manifestation of the social animal at its worst, with consciousness locked in a materialistic, dualistic stupor. No homonoia here either.
And yet beneath all this apparently chaotic activity there is, in fact, an underlying current of metaphysical harmony that has been continuously flowing throughout recorded history in the form of hermetic ideas. Fortunately for us, and presumably also for the Helix above, these concepts, being psychologically sound, are infinitely more “resonant” than the crass “isms” that man is prone to preach. This is precisely why, just like successful genes in the evolutionary processes of the microworld, they are so faithfully replicated and passed on for future generations by millions of other human minds.
This solar being, whose metaphysical “body” we have just described, is but one of around one hundred billion in our galaxy alone. If we assume that these beings possess “minds” with a degree of consciousness of some macrocosmic order, then presumably their “thoughts” or “concepts” would also have substance to them and would in turn be synthesized at a higher level in the construction of an infinitely greater galactic body. The real nature of such godly thought processes lie beyond our ordinary comprehension, but the manner in which they evolve must in principle be identical to the evolution of the helices below—the DNA molecule and the human brain. Therefore, the “concepts” or evolutionary signals engendered by the solar being above us, assuming they are of an “immaculate” order, would simultaneously be passed on, or transmitted, to other solar beings in the galaxy. So, like the dominant or active genes of DNA, or the hermetic ideas of creative mankind, the more successful of the “ideas” conceived in the solar helix will be replicated by other conscious beings in its “world.” This will construct the body of an even greater organism—the galactic being.
But what about the mind of this greater entity? Where is it? How does it operate?
As I said earlier, the body of the galaxy is composed of billions of individual solar systems, or solar “cells,” but its mind, evolving transcendentally out of the collective consciousness of all the solar beings in a given galaxy, is identifiable in the overall four-dimensional helical structure of the galaxy itself—the galactic “chromosome.”
The order of consciousness of the solar being, as we have seen, is complex enough in itself, but it can, nevertheless, be explained in fairly rational terms, that is, as a composite structure formed from the entire body of humanity’s collective consciousness, its accumulated secular and esoteric wisdom. But when considering the kind of “consciousness” our own Milky Way might possess, which clearly would exist and operate in a scale of being unimaginably greater than the solar scale, we are touching on possible processes so refined and ultra-resonant that they must remain for us hypothetical in our present state of evolution. This does not, however, prevent us from speculating on the nature of these projected “galactic vibrations.”
Possibly the most distinctive features of these galactic vibrations would be their relative pitch frequencies and their rate of transmission. These higher creative processes would operate with degrees of resonance far more rarefied than those emanating from the helices below.
When we considered the solar helix, we identified its two principal properties or components as the active emanations of the sun (light) and the passive, metaphysical vibrations of the Earth (consciousness). These, I suggested, were “light” and “consciousness” of a different order from the light and consciousness of our ordinary world. Significantly the nature of the more rarefied light of the solar helix is described by the Hermetic Code and by the Magic Square associated with the Great Pyramid—“The Lights”—as a squared phenomenon, the square of the constant. Such, therefore, would be the nature of the “light” of the solar helix. The nature of the more rarefied consciousness of the entire human race would therefore have to correspond accordingly, and would presumably be as far removed from ordinary consciousness as the speed of light is from the square of the speed of light.
The galactic helix, however, whose scale of being is at least one hundred billion times more extensive that that of the single solar helix, would probably be engaged in an exchange of energies moving, or vibrating, at frequencies far in excess of the square of the speed of light. As we know, Special Relativity asserts that nothing can travel through space faster than the constant velocity. But of course we have seen from the nonlocal connections existing between interacting quanta that information can “travel” instantaneously from one to another— through the quantum field, where space and time simply don’t exist. Possibly this is how these great galactic beings, whose sheer magnitude make even the square of the speed of light seem hopelessly inadequate as a universal rate of intelligence transmission, might “speak” with one another.
We are now poised to make a final ascent to the very summit of Jacob’s evolutionary “ladder,” beyond the scale of the “angels” (suns) and the scale of the “archangels” (galaxies), and out into the realms of the Absolute scale—the universe in its entirety. In this scale, the mighty galaxy, whose three-dimensional form is measured in tens of billions of light years across, is but a single cell in the body of its host. And just like all cells, the cells of planetary organisms, the cells of the solar body (you and me), and the cells of the galactic body (like our solar system), this greater galactic mind must ultimately have the ability to create, in the greatest scale of them all, the ultimate, universal being.
Before we continue our journey across the universe, it is worth reflecting for a moment on the overall evolutionary picture we have just been describing. This is a picture, remember, that was first outlined by Egyptian metaphysicians in the third millennium BCE and that was neatly summed up in the phrase “As above, so below.” Now you may or may not accept this scenario of ascending, living scales as the real thing, but whether this view is literally true or not, it is nevertheless unique in the entire history of philosophical thought in that it provides a very plausible answer to two of the most fundamental and puzzling questions of all, questions that, as I explained in the introduction of this book, were the cause of much consternation to me as a boy: why are we here? Is there life after death? The theory of transcendental evolution pulls no punches here: it answers these two questions in a quite straightforward and unambiguous way.
According to this original creation theory, we are here as a direct result of nature’s grand design, all of us being—potentially at least— vital and integral parts of a much greater evolutionary process. This process begins in the “primordial waters” (with the DNA–RNA complex), it then evolves up through the consciousness of sentient beings like ourselves, then further still into “angelic” (solar) and “archangelic” (galactic) form, ultimately to flower into the superconscious “mind” of the universe itself—the ultimate “helix.” We are a crucial link in the chain.
On the second question—of life after death—hermetic theory is equally emphatic. Of course there is life after death, for death itself, the final note, Do, at the top of one’s own personal scale of evolution, is also the first note of the greater scale above. By this account, not only is there life after death, but, compared to the ordinary timescale of the modern hominid, it would be, as the ancients have always said, a “life everlasting.”
The implication of this upward evolutionary motion is that the universe seems destined to become fully conscious of itself. But then perhaps it is already; it is certainly old enough to have come of age by now. Maybe this is why photons are so acutely aware of happenings in the greater quantum field, or why billions of electrons in plasmas and metals can act as if they already know what billions of other electrons are about to do. It’s as if there is a general “awareness,” even at the most basic level of material existence.
Sri Aurobindo said that the universe was wholly conscious and that if just one point in it were not so, the whole fabric would break down into a lifeless void. He was merely echoing the Greeks, of course, but the message remains the same, which is that the universe is, in fact, already conscious of itself, and that it is merely waiting for us to realize this and contribute toward its maintenance. Perhaps this is why the God of the ancients was said to be so concerned for our well-being. We are his life-blood.