15
QP2: The Universal Paradigm
As we noted previously, the holographic principle—of the whole existing in every part—can be expressed quite simply in terms of musical theory, where each tone, semitone, quarter-tone, and the like of a major scale contains within it all the data needed to recreate the scale in full. We noted in chapter 8 that the principle of nonlocality is also accommodated by musical theory, in that the ultimate note at the top of a given octave, being also potentially the first note of the next scale, can exist in two places/scales at one and the same instant. In the same way, the top note of a given triple octave would exist in four scales simultaneously. And so on.
Now, the two fundamental musical laws of nature embodied within pi—the law of three and the law of octaves—tell us that all human beings are “triple octaves” of resonance, walking “trinities” composed of our sensations, emotions, and perceptions. In the Book of Revelation, which is one of the most detailed and revealing hermetic texts in existence, this internal trinity is symbolized by the image of the Woman in Heaven, the pregnant (fully realized) goddess of the skies, whose “child,” after birth, becomes united with God. Significantly, she is associated with three distinct sources of cosmic radiation emanating from above, namely the stars, the planets (symbolized by the moon), and the sun.1
Assuming that these three “octaves” of the human psyche are harmoniously composed, a transcendental, twenty-second “note” (the “child” referred to in the above cosmological description by St. John) is then created. This is an entirely new phenomenon capable of existing in a greater scale, a higher dimension. We came across this extraordinary creation in earlier chapters: it is the concept, the “immaculate conception” of Christian tradition.
The Hermetic Code, remember, as well as embodying within it the holographic principle of inner octaves and of nonlocality, is also in essence a description of an organic process of evolution. This is to say that the individual’s relationship with the greater cosmos is “biometaphysical,” a repetition, on a higher scale, of DNA’s relationship with its host organism. We can thus regard the concept as being the metaphysical equivalent of the amino acid. As I explained previously, the amino acid is the transcendental product of the RNA triplet-codon template, which is composed from three of the four fundamental nitrogenous bases. In precisely the same way, the concept, derived from the harmonious combination of three fundamental “metaphysical bases”—sensation, emotion, perception—must also be a transcendental phenomenon, an active, organic component in a higher, more complex process of development.
If we note that the Book of Revelation associates these three fundamental forms of human impulse with the forces operating in the trinity above—that is the stars, the planets, and the sun—we can depict the structure of the human psyche and its relationship with the greater cosmos like so:
As we can see, the entire “composition” of the human condition and its relationship with the higher dimensions is described in perfect detail by the Hermetic Code. The influence of the stars, the planets, and the sun in the diagram above, I have called, for want of a better word, magnetic, although the term orthodox scientists generally abhor— cosmic—might serve just as well. The fourth metaphysical base, animal magnetism, is an internal power source, and from it is derived the concept, the product of the harmonious combination of the first three “bases,” represented in the diagram as the ultimate note of the scale.
The idea that “cosmic vibrations” emanating from the spheres above might in some mysterious way influence the human psyche has always been anathema to modern science. Many scientists today, I am sure, would squirm at such a possibility. And yet, in the light of the universal hermetic processes referred to in practically every chapter of this book, the orthodox scientific view appears completely untenable. Just think about it. Are we seriously to believe that there is no connection what-soever between ourselves and the greater cosmos, no continuity other than the purely chemical connection between the atoms of which we are composed and the exploding supernovae from which they originated? As we have seen, hermetic theory, a truly universal theory, emphatically excludes this kind of isolationism, and it even provides us with a coherent theoretical basis for such an exclusion. We have already seen this universal/hermetic connection in the way the seven dimensions of the universe coexist and interpenetrate, and how the four “base notes” of the entire evolving cosmos—DNA, the human brain, the solar helix, and the galactic helix—each function on their own scale, quite literally, as active, organic nuclei in the cells of the bodies of greater beings.
In Revelation, the four “base notes” of the trinity within us all (sensation, emotion, perception, conception), which together represent a microcosmic replica of the greater universal being, are symbolized by the four “beasts” sitting at the foot of God’s throne—the lion, the calf, the man, and the magical fourth, the “flying” (transcendental) eagle. The eagle, in this context, is the concept, the product of animal magnetism. This is fire, the fourth “rare earth” of the alchemists, a human condition that Gurdjieff would describe as the law-conformable product of a real and independent will.
So, from the harmonious combination of the three principal “octaves” of the human psyche is born the last fundamental “note” of the whole scale, the transcendental fourth “base,” out of which proceeds our fourth faculty, our ability to “immaculately conceive,” to formulate enduring concepts and, no doubt, to perceive the world with a much greater degree of understanding. Representing as it does the ultimate note in the scale of human evolution, animal magnetism has qualities unique to it alone. It contains, at one and the same time, all the vibrations contained within the twenty-one notes below it. Furthermore, once this final link in the evolutionary chain of events is set in place, the whole phenomenon—in this case the psyche of the individual—resonates within as a unified whole, so that each of the twenty-two separate components of the given triple octave, being harmoniously related in the fullest sense, has nonlocal/holographic properties and contains within it all the information needed to recreate all three scales.
Taking the principle one step further, we can say that the whole psyche of the fully developed individual, all three inner octaves, also represents a single new note in a greater macrocosmic scale existing far beyond the confines of the brain. And if this greater scale of cosmic resonance is also harmoniously composed, then the higher “notes” comprising it would also be integral parts of a unified whole. Therefore each note of this greater scale (one of which, remember, is the human psyche itself) would possess nonlocal or holographic attributes and would therefore contain within it all the information contained within the whole.
As we see, hermetic theory not only supports the notion that the psyche is holographic within, it also accords with Bohm’s view that it is an interactive part of a greater holographic process operating “out there.” As Gurdjieff said, we are miniature universes, and within us are exactly the same laws and forces operating in the greater universe. It is this very fundamental truth that the enigmatic Egyptian “scribe of the gods” intended to convey to mankind when he first expressed the universal paradigm, “As above, so below.”
Over the last few thousand years of human evolution, this concept of universal compatibility—this genuine “immaculate conception”— has persisted in the traditions of civilization builders across the entire world. Heaven is above, Earth is below, and the former dimension is accessible to anyone living what preachers of religions call a “righteous” life, that is, a way of being that reflects, and is compatible with, the prevailing laws and forces of the higher world, of heaven.
So, what would it mean for an individual to achieve this kind of cosmic consciousness? What might be going on inside the head of such a human being?
In an earlier chapter I discussed the work of Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, who conducted an extensive series of laboratory-controlled experiments to test the psychokinetic abilities of ordinary volunteers. Having concluded from their findings that such powers, albeit slight, do in fact exist, they have proffered an explanation for them. Basically they believe that consciousness itself, like all physical processes, possesses a kind of particle/wave duality, and that, when it is in a wavelike mode it can produce effects at a distance, for example psychokinesis or telepathy. If Ouspensky’s previously mentioned telepathic encounters with Gurdjieff operated in such a fashion, that is through interpenetrating waves of inner octaves, or interference patterns, this means that such effects can span tens and hundreds of miles, and even lock on to a moving train.
The obvious implications of the proposition put forward by Jahn and Dunne is that the whole brain, when functioning at these higher levels of awareness, begins to behave something like a single quantum or wave/particle, whereby vast numbers of neurons occupying a given region of the cortex simultaneously act in concert, resonating at a frequency common to all the others—a kind of microcosmic version of what Colin Wilson calls the “group-mind” phenomenon, whose collective power greatly exceeds the sum of its parts. As I mentioned in chapter 4, the Cambridge mathematician Roger Penrose has come surprisingly close to this idea by suggesting that “non-local quantum correlations” between fundamental particles might be involved in conscious thought processes activated in the brain, so that a greater degree of awareness is possibly a direct result of this kind of “highly coherent quantum state.” So perhaps neurons themselves can be induced to behave like particles, engaging in nonlocal quantum correspondence with other neurons and working as a single entity, as they seem to do in the case of the simple sponge.
We now have plenty of evidence of this “group-mind” activity in the quantum world, between electrons in plasmas, for instance, and in the phenomenal, instantaneous alignment of millions of molecules in the thermal process of formation of the Bénard cell. Another interesting example worth considering is the phenomenon of superconductivity.
A superconductor is the name given to any material that can carry a measured current of electricity with absolutely zero resistance. Normal conductors, such as the copper wires of electrical appliances in the main circuit of your home, invariably put up a certain amount of resistance to the flow of the current. This is usually lost along the length of wire in the form of heat energy. Under normal temperatures, known superconducting materials behave in exactly the same way, partly resisting the flow of the current and losing energy through a dispersal of heat. When they are cooled to temperatures approaching absolute zero, however, at a certain stage there occurs a magical transition, and the whole conductor seems suddenly to switch over to an overall “coherent quantum state” with absolutely zero resistance. It is as if every individual electron has suddenly transcended to a higher level of concerted “awareness,” so that the whole conducting surface begins to perform like a single giant electron.
I’m suggesting here that something very like this kind of “superunification” may also occur in selected regions of the brain, where individual neurons, given the right kind of impetus, can also transcend the ordinary physical world of cause and effect and unite as a single giant neuron with extra-cortical or transcendental properties.
But what kind of impetus is required to induce in the brain a highly coherent quantum state? Curiously enough, superconductivity may provide us with a clue here. We shall see how in a moment.
We are now assuming, of course, that higher states of awareness are indeed a reality. Such states have been spoken of not only by respected illuminati like Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and prominent Indian yogi masters like Yogananda and Sri Aurobindo, but also, as we have seen, by a number of forward-thinking scientists in disciplines physical and metaphysical, ranging across a wide spectrum of intellectual effort, from quantum mechanics to clinical psychology.
As we know, yogis and other spiritual masters say that the higher psychological frequencies required to pierce the veil of space and time are accessed through work on oneself; through disciplined exercises in posture, meditation, and contemplation; and other specialized activities. Clearly, therefore, meditation, a process of stilling the mind, is a key factor.
To still the mind, as I have explained at length in The Infinite Harmony, is to switch over from an active mode of thought into a passive mode. Now this process is not dissimilar, in principle, to the cooling down of the superconductor, which brings about a drastic reduction in particle activity within its atomic structure. In effect, the superconductor becomes passive, and when it does the miraculous transformation in its conductivity occurs and there is suddenly absolutely zero resistance to the flow of the current. Something very like this, I believe, is what happens inside the brain when it is stilled to a sufficient degree; it turns into a kind of metaphysical superconductor, in which mode it puts up absolutely zero resistance to the flow of the “cosmic current.”
In scripture, this process of switching over from active to passive mode is generally expressed through the idea of offering some kind of “sacrifice to God,” that is to the higher vibrations of this world. It might be a very personal sacrifice, like giving up something dear to oneself, maybe a habit or tendency (as in Lent or Ramadan), or perhaps some time (through prayer or contemplation), or even something as seemingly mundane as your last-but-one goat, which at the start of the Muslim festival of Eid is traditionally killed and distributed to the needy.
At its heart, this sacrificial element is, in my view, the key to the whole process of transcendental evolution. It is spoken of in many ancient esoteric traditions, and I believe it refers principally to a psychological frame of mind in which we as individuals give up our preoccupations with secular trivia and switch over into an overall passive state. And this, of course, is precisely why in religion so much emphasis is placed on meditation or contemplation. Only a passive, receptive mind can take in active data, as a superconductor takes in an electric current, and subsequently transmit this energy, or whatever, in the most efficient way possible.
Significantly, this fundamental requirement—that is, that the mind must be passive in order to conceive, or to create—is graphically emphasized in Revelation, through the symbolism of the Woman in Heaven, a feminine, passive, receptive entity, who duly conceives and subsequently gives birth to a transcendental phenomenon—the Holy Child, the personification of the “immaculate conception.”
Gurdjieff expressed this concept quite clearly during discussions with his groups in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In one talk, for example, he mentions a certain book of aphorisms, a collection of home truths gathered from unnamed sages. The following quotations from it clearly emphasize the importance of the passive element in the evolutionary processes of the mind: “A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.”2
We can interpret this passage in the following way. A man may be “born”: that is he may, as Gurdjieff would express it, begin the course of his evolution. In order to do this, he must first “die”: he must sacrifice everything for the good of the work. In order to be able to sacrifice all for the good, he must first “awake”: he must first realize the need for change in himself.
Another favored aphorism also gets right to the point: “When a man awakes he can die; when he dies he can be born.”3
This is precisely what the alchemical process described in the ancient pyramid ritual was intended to express. To be reborn as a god, as an “Osiris,” the initiate first has to “die,” to become receptive, to open his “mouth,” his mind. When this is done, consciousness, like all products of nature’s organic processes, can continue to grow further and ultimately come to fruition.
As I have explained at length in The Infinite Harmony, the need for the properly evolving mind regularly to “take time out” is actually the basis of all major religious disciplines. This is why so much emphasis is placed on setting aside, at the end of a working day, or week, a period of rest, a sacred interval, a Sabbath. To this end, meditation, contemplation, devotional prayer, and acknowledgment of forces or powers greater than our own are all valid exercises in stilling the mind, in making it receptive to the unseen, evolutionary forces permeating the universe. At the root of all this “religious” activity, of course, is music, which is why the Sabbath has consistently been associated with the number 7, the seventh note, ti, of the major scale, from which is “born” the transcendental eighth note.
The concept of composing mind and body, as I have said before, is relatively straightforward in theory, but in practice, as anyone familiar with the subtleties of yoga will know, proper meditation, involving correct breathing, posture, and thoughts—correct everything—is a very difficult thing to sustain for prolonged periods of time. Yogis undergo years of disciplined training to achieve mastery over themselves in this way.
It is clear that Gurdjieff drew some of his ideas from Hindu philosophy, but his particular system of self-development was perhaps more pragmatic and better tailored to the systematic Western mind. In principle, however, the objective remains the same: the acquisition of spiritual and psychological harmony.
Gurdjieff always emphasized the fact that the human being is fundamentally a trinity within, a triple octave, possessing three “brains” or “centers”—the moving center, the emotional center, and the thinking center. He said that all three of these “brains” need exercise, need to be developed together, in concert with one another. If only the thinking center is developed at the expense of the other two, the result is an unbalanced individual—something like the absent-minded professor who can never find his keys or his umbrella. Alternatively, a highly developed physical “brain” coupled with undeveloped emotional and thinking centers would result in an equally unbalanced or disharmonious individual—the “beefcake” archetype; and so on.
These three fundamental archetypes Gurdjieff referred to as “man number one,” “man number two,” and “man number three.” All had something to contribute toward the development of the whole, he said, but the alchemical formulas for getting the mix right were solely the property of “man number four”—the “sly” man—possessor of animal magnetism, an individual who, like the eagle beast of Revelation, could “fly” to places where the first three could not.
The “places” in question are, of course, the nonlocal spheres discussed in previous chapters, the higher dimensions existing beyond space and time: the fifth, the plane of light; the sixth, the “solid” world of ultimate reality; and the seventh, the medium in which all “solids,” all six-dimensional entities, exist and operate.
As we have seen, the first of these higher spheres—the plane of light, or the quantum field—has been pretty well charted by scientists. So this alternative reality definitely does exist. If it did not, there would be no such thing as a photon quantum, no means by which to gauge the maximum velocity allowed by nature—the “constant” or speed of light—and the theory of Special Relativity, with its implications for the “elasticity” of space and time, would be meaningless. This concept may be difficult for us to understand fully with only our ordinary logical thought processes, but the fact is that science has proven beyond all reasonable doubt that the quantum picture is the primary reality, and that our ordinary perception of both space and time is simply, as Einstein phrased it, a “stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Nothing new here, then: after all, mystics and yogis have been telling us this for centuries, that there is no space, no time, no separate, isolated “things,” that heaven is eternal and its extremities infinite. And all of these observations, as we have seen, are in accord with the quantum picture of reality.
These days, of course, established religious disciplines, originally designed for the express purpose of inducing in devotees the kind of altered states of consciousness we have been describing, are for many people decidedly passé. Others regard religion as little more than archaic mumbo jumbo, the “opium of the people,” while the more vehement critics will argue that it has ultimately been the root cause of more murder, war, and bloodshed than any other human invention—as if man’s inherent selfishness and his insatiable appetite for wealth and power had nothing to do with it.
Now there are, as we have seen, shortcuts to these higher planes of consciousness, such as the use of chemical triggers like nitrous oxide and LSD. Stanislav Grof’s research led him to conclude that psychedelic trips—transpersonal experiences—are in fact voyages into the quantum or subquantum field. Presumably there will also be a few million former hippies out there who can remember experiencing the sensations of timelessness and oneness. And if their lysergic acid was pure enough, and their constitutions strong enough, they might also remember having the distinct impression, as Yogananda did, that all material things are actually “undifferentiated masses of light.”
Obviously, however, the legitimate way of perceiving one or another aspect of the wider reality is, quite simply, to work on oneself, to develop one’s powers of cognition, and thus evolve. Gurdjieff said that work of this kind was best performed in a school situation, in which each individual member is able to assist, and can be assisted, in the execution of what he called their “conscious labors,” that is labors done in the right frame of mind and spirit. There is thus a subtle but important difference between ordinary work and work for the sake of the Work. As Gurdjieff put it, there is more to be gained from simply sweeping a floor with the right intent than there is from writing a dozen books with the wrong one.
In one talk he likened the situation of the pupil to that of a prisoner locked in a cell, whose only hope of escape is to enlist the help of others. One maybe fashions him a rope, another steals him a key, a third perhaps acts as a decoy, while a fourth sits discreetly outside the perimeter wall in the getaway car. Thus, individual development within a school is in fact a joint effort, a “group-mind” situation, in which all must contribute for the good of the whole. Of course, once our escapee is free from his “prison,” there is opened up a whole new range of possibilities for the comrades he left behind, for they now have additional “outside” help.
And so, what of the possibility of raising the level of individual consciousness? If we judiciously exclude the somewhat controversial method of ingesting psychedelics, or of being fortunate enough to locate an authentic school of self-development (beware of imitations), then it would seem, on the face of things, that there are precious few possibilities for us to perceive directly the kind of nonlocal reality described by physicists. But in fact this is not necessarily so. As I said when discussing Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert’s description of the so-called pyramid ritual performed by the priests of ancient Egypt, this essentially “alchemical” or hermetic process can be reenacted by anyone, and one doesn’t necessarily have to be inside the Great Pyramid for it to be effectively performed. Indeed, there are situations in life that can induce these receptive states of mind, nearly always bringing with them a markedly greater perception of the wider reality, a greater appreciation of the world about us.
For example, when in imminent danger of losing one’s life, the brain, or its consciousness, appears to be capable of tuning in instantaneously to the quantum field. Thus, survivors of violent events like car, train, or aircraft crashes often speak of having “seen” their whole lives flash by them in an instant. This kind of panoramic perception, in which an entire lifetime is somehow condensed into a single brief instant, can only take place in a dimension outside ordinary time.
The writer Graham Greene, a manic-depressive in his earlier years, experienced something very similar when, in a moment of recklessness that would make ingesting psychedelics seem as harmless as taking tea with your grandmother, he picked up a revolver and proceeded to play Russian roulette. The hammer on the gun clicked, the realization that he was still alive dawned on him and, as if a veil had suddenly been lifted from his eyes, the world immediately appeared infinitely more rich and meaningful.
When consciousness suddenly “expands” in this way, the process appears to be very similar to what happens when the latent energy inside a microcosmic atom is released in a nuclear explosion and the resultant shock waves reverberate out into the macrocosm, or the atmosphere, in the form of a vast mushroom cloud. The physical brain housed in the skull is the “atom,” a microcosm, a localized center of energy; consciousness itself, when operating at the kind of frequencies triggered, say, by imminent danger, is a macrocosmic manifestation of the selfsame energy.
Now there are, I believe, more gentle and amenable ways to expand consciousness, to pierce beyond the veil of ordinary time and space. For example, even something as simple as a hard-earned vacation can lift the spirits and make one noticeably more appreciative of the vast richness and variety of the world about us. In such situations, time can seem to fly by, whereas in duller moments we say it drags.
But in reality, of course, the world itself does not alter in any fundamental way; it is always full of wonder, and often all that is needed is a different perspective, a change of scenery, for us to sense that this is so. We have all, at some stage in our lives, experienced negative thoughts and emotions, felt deflated, bound in time, locked inside a “miserable” day, inside an hour, inside a tiny moment. At such times we see practically nothing of the world about us. On the other hand, you might also remember how rose-tinted the world looked when you had just “broken up” for the summer holidays, or when you were young and first in love, or perhaps camping out under a tropical sky with the stars so close you felt you could reach up and grasp them. Such experiences as these are, in fact, genuinely magical, and if one takes time out from the humdrum grind of secular living to reflect upon one’s own life, they can usually be remembered quite easily.
Unfortunately, however, despite these illuminating incidents, we generally live the major part of our lives only in the fourth dimension of time, a sphere of existence that, in respect to the higher dimensions, is a narrow, essentially linear and extremely restricted world. This is where ordinary consciousness exists, isolated, like a faint spot of warmth moving along an invisible wire. And if this wire, the line of time, is, as I have tried to explain in earlier chapters, a sort of “cross-section” of a greater plane, then during such events as transpersonal experiences, consciousness, like the energy of the atom bursting out in a nuclear explosion or, perhaps, the mass of a galaxy as it draws toward the threshold of the speed of light, would theoretically expand, stretching out laterally, “at right angles,” to the directional flow of the line of time.
Significantly, Yogananda says much the same thing when speaking of masters who are able to perform supernatural feats, that they “have fulfilled the lawful condition; their mass is infinite.”4
He says further:
The consciousness of a perfected yogi is effortlessly identified not with a narrow body but with a universal structure. Gravitation, whether the “force” of Newton or the Einsteinian “manifestation of inertia,” is powerless to compel a master to exhibit the property of weight, the distinguishing gravitational condition of all material objects. He who knows himself as the omnipresent Spirit is subject no longer to the rigidities of a body in time and space.5
Quantum psychology in a nutshell.
Not surprisingly, the Hindu tradition of Yogananda is steeped in hermetic lore. Thus the individual is regarded, as in all religious systems, as a living trinity, comprising a physical, astral, and mental body—the equivalent of Gurdjieff’s three “centers,” the moving, the emotional, and the thinking.
In a short but remarkably perceptive book, The Theory of Eternal Life, Ouspensky’s associate Rodney Collin, drawing from Gurdjieff’s original ideas, tries to identify the possible nature of these three bodies.
The physical body, he says, is the one we are all familiar with, and is fundamentally cellular in nature. The second, astral body, or the “soul,” which, he suggests, grows as a result of developing the emotional center, is basically a molecular manifestation, like, say, sound or scent. Being of a finer, more fluid form of materiality, the astral body has powers unobtainable by the physical body. For example, like sound or scent, it would be able to diffuse many times faster than the cellular body moves. Further, a cellular body moves only in a line, whereas a molecular body would be able to spread out simultaneously over a wide area, like an aroma. Significantly, such a presence would also be free of the force of gravity, a fact that reminds us of Yogananda’s claim that such a force cannot affect those who “know themselves.”
Collin then goes on to imagine human consciousness endowed with the properties of matter in a molecular state. It could, for example, be present in many places simultaneously. It could pass through walls, assume a whole host of different shapes, even enter inside other human beings. Like musk, it might “haunt” a place for several years; and if a molecular body the size of a human being possessed the metaphysical equivalent of the “pungency” of mercaptan, which retains its nature even when diluted in fifty trillion times its own volume of air, it could be simultaneously conscious of every hectare of land in an area the size of China.
As Collin notes, The Tibetan Book of the Dead refers to this astral or molecular body as the “desire body,” one that, unlike the gross physical body, has the power to “go right through any rock-masses, hills, boulders, earth, houses, and Mount Meru itself.”6
The passage quoted is addressed to the dead person, and it implies that the molecular or astral body can continue to exist after the physical body has expired. It continues: “Thou art actually endowed with the power of miraculous action. . . . Thou canst instantaneously arrive in whatever place thou wishest; thou hast the power of reaching there within the time which a man taketh to bend, or to stretch forth his hand.”7
Remarkable as these powers might seem, however, they would still fall short of the real thing, in that the astral body constitutes only one third of the complete trinity, vastly more complex and energetic than the physical body, but compared to the mental body born of what Gurdjieff called the thinking center, it would still be relatively small and limited. This is why the quoted passage finishes with a warning: “These various powers of illusion and of shape-shifting desire not, desire not.”8
As Collin says, both The Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Egyptian book of the same name, along with many other ancient texts, all suggest that at the death of the physical body this new body of molecular energy—the astral body—is born. Buddhists believe that this acts as the vehicle of consciousness in the interval between incarnations. In fact, in Tibetan, Egyptian, and Peruvian rituals, fresh food and drink were set aside in the belief that the smell or essence of it would nourish the soul of the dead person—a practice Collin sees as clear recognition of the fact that the physical composition of the “soul” is similar to scent, that it consists of matter in molecular state. He suggests that this molecular body, like everything else, has to be created, and that this is accomplished through a sustained accumulation of the finest energies produced by the physical organism in life. And in order to do this, as Gurdjieff said, individuals must first create in themselves a will of their own, one that would empower them with the inner strength to restrain the wasting of these energies through the usual negative emotions or impulses—anger, fear, longing, envy, and so forth. This, according to Gurdjieff, is real alchemy, the “transmutation” of coarser energies (human emotions) into finer ones, or the transformation from an ordinary “individual” into one who is genuinely undivided, and whose inherent willpower is consequently fully developed.
In chapter 4, Collin goes on to speculate on the possible form and function of the third and last component in the human trinity, the harmonious product of the thinking center, that is the mental or, as he calls it, the “electronic” body. His ideas here are particularly interesting, because they bring us right back to the quantum field of the physicist, the plane of light.
As he says, molecular vibrations, like sound, diffuse about a hundred times faster than physical bodies move, but “electronic” energy (by which he meant light, the photon quantum), radiates nearly a million times faster still. Thus a body composed of “electronic” matter, which Collin calls the “spirit,” could travel instantaneously through three dimensions: that is along a line, like a cellular body, over an area, like scent or a sonic boom, and throughout an infinite volume of space, like the proverbial Holy Ghost.
Collin then tries to imagine what would happen if human consciousness were attached to an electronic device, for example a bright lamp in a room.
First, the center, or heart, of the body would be the incandescent filament of the lamp, but it would also include all the light emitted from it. A consciousness attached to a body of this nature would contain within it all the objects in the room: furniture, flowers, and plants, even its occupants. Consequently it would illuminate or be conscious of every object from all sides simultaneously. Everything in the room would, in a sense, become inner organs of this electronic entity, and everything happening would be happening inside it and would be sensed as its own life. Thus human consciousness attached to a body of light, in including all neighboring beings within itself, would share the nature of “God,” in whom, it is said, all creatures exist and have their being. It is precisely this principle of joining together, says Collin, that lies at the root of both yoga, which means “union,” and religion, which means, “reunion.”
The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes this form of consciousness as the “Radiance of the Clear Light of Pure Reality.” The dead person, assuming he possesses a “spirit,” is addressed thus: “Thine own consciousness, shining, void and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the immutable light.”9
According to Collin’s interpretation of Gurdjieff’s system, in order to acquire a spirit, an electronic body, an individual must first develop a soul, a molecular body. This is done by concentrating all of one’s molecular energy—one’s emotional output—to this single goal. Once this is achieved, the next step would be to “infuse soul with spirit,” which means, in effect, that individuals have to learn how to transmute molecular matter into “electronic” matter, that is, “To split the atom and release internally a degree of energy which only our own age can begin to measure.”10
As we see, we once again find ourselves being drawn into the quantum world inside the atom, the nonlocal realm of electromagnetic radiation, of the photon quantum, the Holy Ghost, the Immutable Light of Tibetan Buddhism.
Inside the atom, the nuclear forces ensure that the constituent particles are contained within definite energy levels. Thus the atom, together with its nucleus, is a hard nut to crack. Gravity also plays a part in it, though very small, as all matter exerts a gravitational pull, however slight.
The atoms themselves are held together by the electromagnetic force, which binds all matter. If its influence were removed, all material stability would cease. Without the electromagnetic force, the chair you are sitting on, or the ground on which you stand, together with the body you are presently occupying, would dissipate, dissolve into invisible clouds of free-floating quanta. There would be no molecules, inorganic or organic, only a homogenous soup of fundamental components—quarks—bouncing off one another in an endless display of randomness and non-interaction.
Now the force-carrier, or “gluon,” of electromagnetic radiation is, of course, the ever-constant photon, the most special of all wave/particles. It is unique primarily because it is the only phenomenon in existence capable of inducing in us visual sensation. In other words, it is the medium via which we receive most of our impressions or perceptions, the bridge, so to speak, between mind and the empirical world. But bridges are for crossing, and in the light of the evidence discussed in this chapter it would appear that this particular one has been successfully encountered by many a free spirit, some of whom, as we have seen, have left us with some extremely lucid accounts of the extraordinary things they have witnessed on the “other side.” With one voice, they speak of a miraculous, timeless, spaceless world, brimming with consciousness and light, pulsating with waves upon waves of pure energy.
Scientists say that mass and energy are in fact different manifestations of the same thing. This is significant, because consciousness, although we cannot clearly define the phenomenon, can reasonably be regarded as a manifestation of a subtle form of energy. And then we have the photon, the other side of our metaphysical coin, a “virtual” particle that, having practically no measurable mass, exists on the very edge of materiality. Moreover, of all particles known to exist, only the photon has no antimatter opposite; the photon is its own opposite. If you were to draw a line down the center of a piece of paper and list all particles on one side and all antiparticles on the other, the photon would have to be placed over the line. It is in every sense a duplicitous entity, a shapeshifting Jekyll and Hyde, a particle and a wave. Catch it if you can.
Thus we can see that the dividing line between mind and matter is in reality extremely tenuous, so much so that one feels it would not be stretching credibility too far to propose that a high degree of consciousness resonating “in tune” with photon quanta might somehow temporarily neutralize the electromagnetic force, thus making any form of matter present within the sphere of neutralization “fluid.” It need only be a fleeting moment of fluidity, imperceptible to the naked eye, but if actualized repeatedly in short, sharp bursts, it could well be sufficient, say, effectively to reshape or move great chunks of stone with relative ease.
Such powers, in my view, are attainable, but I believe that they are simply a by-product of quantum psychology, the transcendental evolution of the mind. The Egyptians and the “builder gods” of ancient America, and probably their mysterious forebears, the original initiates, were clearly past masters of the art. It might be appropriate, therefore, to leave the last word to them.