Idealism is the philosophical position that the "external world" is the creation of the mind i.e. the dimensional universe (r > 0) is an illusion. The material world, according to idealist thinkers, does not exist independently of the mind. The philosopher Bishop Berkeley is the most extreme exponent of this view. He argued that what we perceive as the material world exists only as an idea in the Mind of God. Our human minds are locked into this magnificent illusion sustained by God's imagination. If God halted the illusion, the material world would instantly disappear. This view is reminiscent of Hinduism where "God" - Brahman - creates an illusory world - Maya - which human minds seek to overcome by attaining enlightenment and becoming one with Brahman.
Immanuel Kant's "transcendental idealism" is the view that the human mind is configured to impose space and time, cause and effect on the external world i.e. these things are not authentic properties of the external world. Our minds create a world of appearances - phenomena - that has no relationship whatsoever to the world of things as they are in themselves - noumena. Because we can't escape from our own minds, we can never gain genuine knowledge of the noumenal world. It's as though we are wearing time-and-space/cause-and-effect goggles that we can never remove. No matter what, we will always see time and space, cause and effect even though they have nothing to do with the true nature of things. We can have knowledge only of mind-generated phenomena and never of noumena.
The noumenal world is outside space and time i.e. it is analogous to r = 0 except whereas the noumenal world, for Kant, is completely unknowable, r = 0, for Illuminists, can be completely known.
Schopenhauer took Kant's theory a radical step forward. He concluded that space and time create the appearance of separate things, but this means that in the noumenal universe, where space and time don't exist, nothing is separate. Whereas Kant thought a different noumenon corresponded to, and underpinned, each individual phenomenon, Schopenhauer realized that there could only be one noumenon which he called "Will": the irrepressible, eternal striving to exist, to survive. There is one universal Will but, in the world of appearances, it manifests itself in the myriad things of the phenomenal world. Trees, water, insects, rocks, stars, air, humans - they are all just different expressions of the single, fundamental, universal Will to exist. Every human is an embodiment of this Will. Our bodies are objectified Will. Schopenhauer said, "My body and my will are one."
So, for Schopenhauer, there is an outer, "objective", physical world of time, space and causation and an inner, subjective, "mental" world of Will, outwith time, space and causation. The outer world of appearances is illusory and the inner world of Will is the true nature of existence where everything is unified. Existence, in its rawest form, is pure Will.
Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, Hinduism and Buddhism offer no explanation (other than the "will of God/Nature") as to why the world should have this rather extraordinary dual nature of an illusory level of appearances overlying noumenal truth (which is usually conceived of in terms of a transcendent unity).
Idealism denies the reality of the r > 0 physical universe, consigning it to the level of an illusion in the mind. Idealism does not, however, account for what purpose is served by this fantastically elaborate illusion. For example, if there are vast galaxies in deep space that we have only discovered in the last few decades, what function is served by adding these to our "prior" illusion in which they played no part (because we knew nothing of their existence)? It seems far simpler to conclude that the r > 0 universe is real and that science gives us meaningful and legitimate knowledge of it. We discover genuinely new things, not new elements, previously hidden from us, of a grand illusion.
Those who subscribe to scientific materialism, on the other hand, take the opposite stance to idealists and deny the reality of the r = 0 aspect of the universe.
Idealism and materialism are two extreme views that both miss the mark. The truth is that r = 0 (idealism) and r > 0 (materialism) are both aspects of the genuine reality: the r >= 0 mental and physical universe.
Materialists are wrong to deny dimensionless existence, and idealists are wrong to regard dimensional existence as an illusion. Illuminism is the reconciliation of the two major philosophical traditions. Dimensional and dimensionless existence are both real; neither is an illusion. They work together dialectically and each influences the other. The r > 0 is psychosomatic i.e. the "body" is influenced by the "mind", and the r = 0 universe is somapsychic i.e. the "mind" is influenced by the "body". The profound mysteries that science has hitherto failed to penetrate are caused by science's neglect of the dimensionless universe. Equally, the absurdities that many religions and philosophies (based on idealism) fall into are caused by the neglect of the dimensional universe.
What could be simpler than the coexistence of the dimensional and the dimensionless, of time, space, causation and the principle of individuation (plurality) on the one hand, and timelessness, spacelessness, free will and the principle of interconnectedness (unity) on the other? All the problems of science, philosophy and religion disappear in the r >= 0 universe.
Take the age-old problem of free will. In the r > 0 universe, where everything is seemingly controlled by inexorable scientific laws of cause and effect, there is no room for free will. Everything is inescapably determined by the preceding scientific cause. However, once the r = 0 aspect of the universe is introduced, which stands outside scientific time, space and causation, then the causal chain that precludes free will is broken. Hence our experience of free will is no mere illusion, as the most rigorous materialists would contend.
Death in the "mortal" r > 0 domain of time and space is the definite end, but in the r = 0 universe where time and space do not apply, nothing can truly perish. Everything is, in a sense, immortal.
The human brain is the r > 0 manifestation of the r = 0 human mind, thus resolving the mystery of the relationship of brain to mind. But if the human mind is a portal to the r = 0 aspect of the universe (a "microscopic" portal in comparison with black hole singularities which are macroscopic portals) then it is also a portal to the Absolute Mind, the Mind of God.
Imagine that every human mind is unwittingly connected to the greatest mind of all. Most of us never conceive of such a connection; only mystics and those well versed in the esoteric arts have learned how to make use of this channel to the divine. But, every now and again, some of us inadvertently glimpse what is normally hidden.
When we go to sleep, we (largely) shut off our physical r > 0 senses, and then we dream. Time and space become wildly distorted; dead people can appear; we can have transcendent visions. This is exactly what we would expect if our minds were "free-floating" through the r = 0 universe.
In our article entitled Dream Gnosis, we quoted the dream of "WE":
"Here is what happened to me. I usually refer to it as my 'God Experience'…I went to sleep and had a dream that was much more real than anything that preceded it or came after it. I found myself without a body, without a name, not in any particular location, and without a sense of identity. I was everywhere at once. If there was anything I wanted to see, all I had to do was think of it. Anywhere I wanted to go to, I was there. It was as if I had become everything. I could feel anything and everything. I knew how a tree felt when the wind passed through its branches (it tickles.) I knew how the wind felt being shredded by the tree. I felt the feelings of the mouse in the cat's jaws, and the feeling of the cat with the mouse in its jaws. I felt what it was like to make love as a woman. I could experience the epic struggles of the lives of everything that lived, and when their lives were over, I would experience their story, and their story became part of my story. And whatever happened, it was okay. Somehow I could handle all this input, though it should have been overwhelming.
I went on this way for a long time (not that I was experiencing time: I was outside it), and then something happened. I felt myself becoming more concentrated or focused, so to speak. I found myself "on the ground," where some beings came to me with what looked like some sort of electrical wiring harness, capped at the top by a gray round knob. This thing was put on me somehow. I realized later that it was a spinal cord and brain. Somehow I developed a shape to conform to this device, and then I was made to crawl inside some kind of bag (skin, I figured out later.) At this point, I started losing my big-picture perspective; I became limited. I had certain characteristics, a certain type of personality, certain talents. I had become an individual. I had a sense that there was something I was supposed to do when I became this person, but what it was, I didn't know.
At this point, I woke up, and saw my familiar ceiling, looked down and saw my body bulging the blanket on my bed. I felt totally disoriented. It took a minute or two to remember who I was, and then I had to deal with a huge feeling of disappointment that I was me again, and a feeling of loss and sadness that I had come back to my own limited perspective."
This is an astonishingly good description of the difference between r = 0 and r > 0 existence, between connectedness and individuation. Was it a "mere" dream, or did WE inadvertently and briefly achieve gnosis and see reality as it truly is? Did he glimpse the Mind of God? Did he himself become God, for an all-too-fleeting moment? Is what WE describes the ecstatic destiny that awaits the enlightened?
*****
The physical can influence the mental but not determine it. The mental, however, can certainly determine the physical. Perform this experiment: think to yourself that you are going to raise your right arm, but then don't actually do so. Wait a few moments and then actually do it. The mere thinking of the thought isn't enough to cause your arm to be raised; you have to will it to happen. Watch your arm as you raise it and consider how miraculous it is that a physical object moves for no other reason than that you have willed it to do so. Schopenhauer adopts a more extreme view: willing your arm to rise does not cause the physical action, rather it is the physical action - it's the "inside" of the action, the inner experience of it. He makes will primary and intellect secondary - we become creatures driven by willful impulses rather than reason.
The r = 0 domain can be considered the primary reality because there are no circumstances in which it could ever disappear, whereas it is possible to imagine the r > 0 domain shrinking down to r = 0, i.e. for the dimensions to be removed from dimensional existence, leaving nothing but dimensionless existence.
The r > 0 domain can emerge as an emanation from the r = 0 domain (in an event such as the Big Bang), but the r = 0 domain can never emerge as an emanation from the r > 0 domain because it is impossible for the r = 0 domain not to exist. It's possible to subtract dimensions from dimensional existence, but not to subtract dimensions from dimensionless existence since there were no dimensions in the first place.
The Nature of Existence
Existence cannot come from non-existence and nor can non-existence come from existence. Non-existence does not exist, by definition. The "stuff" of which everyone is made has always existed, and always will exist. We were not non-existent before we were born; rather the "stuff" which became us had not yet been brought together. After we die, the stuff of which we are made does not become non-existent; rather it disperses and finds its way into new entities. The future does not yet exist, but all of the seeds for it are already present. The future does not spring into existence from the non-existent but rather it evolves from what already exists; it is an evolution, an extrapolation, of the present.
New existence arises from what already exists. The thoughts you will have ten seconds from now don't yet exist but they will not leap out of non-existence. They will arise from what's already there.
From "old" existence comes new existence in a never-ending flow. Nothing truly new (i.e. with no precedent, no "ancestor") ever comes into existence. Existence is perpetual becoming. New existence is always a modified form, an evolution, a transformation of what already exists.
The First Law of Thermodynamics - energy can be neither created nor destroyed - is one of the most profound laws of existence. Few people understand its full significance. It means that no new energy can ever be created and no existing energy can ever disappear. Once energy exists it exists forever, and since energy cannot be created, all the energy that exists now must always have existed. No new energy will ever be arriving, and none will ever be departing. In other words, the energy of the universe is the same now as it was a trillion years ago, and the same as it will be a trillion years from now on, and the same as it will be at any other time we care to choose. Energy can only ever be transformed, never made or unmade.
At least, that's one interpretation. There are actually two ways to view the energy content of the universe according to the First Law. Either it is always ZERO i.e. there is always precisely enough "negative" energy (from gravitation) to exactly counterbalance "positive" energy (from particles), resulting in a total universal energy of zero...or the amount of energy in the universe is always INFINITE. Science has never been able to definitively prove which option is correct. Any other value of the universe's total energy is absurd since there would never be a sufficient reason for the energy content of the universe to be an arbitrary amount. (After all, why would one amount be any more likely than any other amount?)
Once more, we confront the "limits" of existence: zero and infinity. Scientists tend to prefer the "zero" energy option because it is the only way for them to explain how it is possible to get something from nothing i.e. for the Big Bang universe to suddenly appear "out of the blue" in what would otherwise be a flagrant breach of the First Law (and this would equally be true of God creating the universe out of nothing). But then there would be nothing to prevent an infinite number of zero-energy Big Bang universes, all arising in exactly the same way, and for another infinite set of universes to be generated with every passing instant because there is never any net expenditure of energy in this "free lunch" model of existence. They would create an ever-expanding zero-energy Multiverse of parallel universes. Somehow, they would all co-exist, each with its own unique temporal and spatial dimensions so that it didn't "collide" with the others. With this scheme, an infinite amount of "positive" energy could be created from nothing, provided an infinite amount of "negative" gravitational energy was always created at the same time.
The zero energy universe usually ends in the so-called "heat death" predicted by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or a "Big Crunch" that eventually reverses the Big Bang, allowing the possibility of the universe being a perpetual motion machine based on an eternal recycling of zero energy! Does this sound remotely credible? Even so, scientists keep stumbling on sources of infinite energy and are forced to "renormalize" them out of existence, in effect by dividing each side of an equation containing infinite quantities by infinity in order to cancel them out. Renormalization, although it seems to give the right answers, has no legitimate mathematical basis. Richard Feynman said of it, "Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent...renormalization is what I would call a dippy process!"
Scientists currently have insufficient data to decide the issue between zero energy and infinite energy. Although they prefer the zero energy option, this option appears logically incoherent. What's to stop new positive energy appearing absolutely everywhere all of the time, on a microscopic and macroscopic scale, just so long as there's some kind of negative energy to balance it and maintain a total sum of zero? Would life actually be possible in this seething, bubbling cauldron of zero energy activity that would seem to magic itself out of nothing? The zero energy option resembles nothing so much as a magician's trick. It's extraordinary that it is deemed to be the most credible solution for explaining the existence of the universe.
In an alternative scenario, the "infinite" energy option within the r >= 0 framework, there is an infinite amount of dimensionless energy and this can be transformed into an infinite amount of dimensional energy in an infinitely large universe, and transformed back again. Energy is continually recycled in a logical, controlled way. The universe is a perpetual motion machine. It can never stop. Doesn't that seem much more probable than the standard scientific view?
So, what's it to be? The zero-energy "free lunch" universe where we can literally declare that existence results from no energy appearing from nothing! (Where something comes from nothing because nothing turns out to be positive "something" exactly cancelled by negative "something".) Or the immortal, infinite energy, infinitely large universe where absolute nothingness is impossible and something can never come from nothing?
*****
Existence cannot be static. A property of existence is movement, of dimensionless existence transforming itself into dimensional existence and back again. This flow can never stop. If movement is compulsory then there must be something that moves; hence there is something rather than nothing. This "something" is energy. That is what existence is: energy continually changing between dimensionless and dimensional forms.
Heraclitus said that existence is eternal fire. That, metaphorically, is an excellent description of the ceaseless movement of energy.
"There is nothing permanent except change."
Heraclitus
Cosmos means "order, good order, orderly arrangement". If the cosmos is an ordered form of existence - as it evidently is - then what properties must raw existence possess to have as a seed within it the cosmos we see around us?
Mathematics - the discipline that deals with patterns, order and organization, that is intimately connected with logic and reason - is embedded in the cosmos. If it weren't, the universe would contain no order - just incomprehensible randomness in which no intelligent life could arise.
"All things are numbers," said the great Illuminatus Pythagoras, reflecting how essential mathematics is to the cosmos.
The universe is one of logic, not illogic. It is rational, not irrational. It can be comprehended by logical beings, who are themselves products of the core logic of the cosmos. Real, authentic knowledge of the universe is possible. Faith - the denial that true knowledge is possible - is a council of despair. Faith is for fools. All religions based on faith are for the simple-minded. Logical necessity guides the cosmos.
The Illuminati refer to a basic unit of thought as a monad (Greek for "unit," "alone"), and sometimes as an "existon" or "psychon". The monad is the most elementary "particle" of dimensionless existence. It is a particle of psychic energy and it can generate quanta of physical, dimensional energy. It may emit such quanta and also reabsorb them.
But where would such quanta appear in the dimensional universe? Should it be "here" or "there" or "over there"? So where? Anywhere. Nowhere is privileged over anywhere else. There is no sufficient reason for one place to be better than another or preferred over another. Therefore a quantum of dimensional energy can arise in any possible location, which implies a dimensional universe that extends infinitely in all directions.
Energy is the basic substance of existence, the arche, the first principle. Energy has two aspects: dimensionless and dimensional. Dimensionless energy is the primary form from which dimensional physical energy can be generated - this is what happened at the Big Bang. Dimensional energy can lose its dimensionality and return to its original dimensionless form - this is what happens, for example, at the singularity of a black hole.
Psychic energy can be converted into physical energy (dimensionless energy into dimensional), and vice versa.
Energy is eternal movement. Energy is mental and physical. The mental aspect is the basis of what we call "life" and is capable of evolving into consciousness. The physical aspect is scientific and lifeless.
The events that take place in the physical universe as a result of the actions of physical energy imprint themselves on the mental aspect of energy, and vice versa i.e. the two aspects are part of a mutual, synergic feedback process, continually reinforcing each other. The "language" of order and organization that evolves from this feedback between the mental and physical aspects is mathematics. In the physical aspect of the universe, the mathematical behaviour of dimensional energy manifests itself as the "laws of physics" (which can only be understood mathematically), and in the mental aspect of the universe, the mathematical behaviour of dimensionless energy manifests itself as the "laws of thought" - logic and reason (which can be treated mathematically).
But the mental aspect of the universe isn't exclusively rational (look at the behaviour of human beings). There is another component, perhaps the most important of all: feeling. The "carrier wave" of emotion is music: "audible mathematics". It was the great Illuminatus Pythagoras who was the first to recognize music as intrinsically mathematical. Leibniz, another great Illuminatus, said, "Music is the pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting."
It is because of music's emotional power that every one of us has a soundtrack to our life. It's why movies and TV are filled with music, why rock and pop stars are so revered, why adverts are so expert in the use of music to manipulate our emotions.
Music is regarded as the most suitable analogy to elucidate "string" theory, science's current favourite approach for creating a Grand Unified Theory. Physicist Michio Kaku, one of the founders of string theory, draws the following parallels:
Musical Analogy String Counterpart
Musical notation Mathematics
Violin Strings Superstrings
Notes Subatomic particles
Laws of harmony Physics
Melodies Chemistry
Universe Symphony of strings
"Mind of God" Music resonating through hyperspace
Composer ?
But, naturally, Kaku, as a materialist, makes no mention of feeling. String theory has nothing to say about emotion.
Inextricably associated with emotion are pleasure and pain, and these can give rise to a new form of rationality, no longer based on the laws of mathematical logic, but on the separate logic of pleasure and pain. There is an overwhelming tendency for intelligent beings to wish to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. The pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain become ends in themselves. "Reason" is no longer a disinterested, dispassionate unfolding of relentless machine-like logic but a tool to be deployed to get the most favourable result from the pleasure-pain equation. No machine could ever be considered human-like until it could "feel", and respond accordingly.
So, the language of energy, both dimensional and dimensionless, is grounded in mathematics, and even pleasure and pain are mathematical in origin. (Think of pleasure as harmonious notes and pain as stabbing, discordant notes). Reason and desire, which are often said to be in conflict with each other, are applications of different types of rationality, one based on the logic of thought and the other on the logic of feeling. Jung contrasted Thinking with Feeling in his personality studies. Some of us think our way through a problem while others feel their way through.
The point of this is to demonstrate that an immense variety of phenomena - including the whole carnival of human existence - can be traced back to an extremely small set of core laws involved in the behaviour of dimensionless and dimensional energy, glued together by mathematics in the form of physics (scientific mathematics), thinking (logical mathematics) and feeling (the mathematics of music). Schopenhauer regarded music as a copy of the Will, hence its extraordinary power over us, and why it moves us emotionally and, often, physically (through dancing to it).
John Conway's "Game of Life":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life shows how complex behaviour can arise from a small, simple set of rules. Imagine what would emerge from the laws of mathematics combined with dialectical progress.
Existence is Becoming, not Being. Its intrinsic nature is to contain movement, and also an ordering principle. Movement and order are the basis of dialectics because new, higher states of order can be built from earlier, less ordered states.
The universe is dialectical. The universe is eternal becoming. It cannot logically be any other way. It has always existed and it will always exist. The underlying logic of the universe is eternally the same. But the way in which the universe physically evolves from the core logic is not fixed. Anything that can happen (that is not logically impossible) will definitely happen in an eternal logical universe. Anything that is not forbidden by the core logic is compulsory. This is the starting point of any discussion of the nature of the universe.
The question is does the core logic of the eternal logical universe imply a logical apex i.e. a maximum expression of the underlying logic? Can logic become self-aware? Can a logic based on a few simple rules lead to something as astonishingly complex as God?
The optimal universe is the one that can create the most diverse phenomena from the smallest set of core principles and properties. It is also the one that can create the highest summit of actualization. Existence begets God. It has no choice. God is compulsory, the maximum expression of the latent potential of the universe, the ultimate becoming.
"The universe was brought into being in a less than fully formed state, but was gifted to transform itself from unformed matter into a truly marvellous array of structure and life forms."
St Augustine
Existence is the relentless, perpetual unfolding of the core properties of the elementary particles of existence: monads, units of thought composed of dimensionless psychic energy, from which quanta of dimensional energy can emanate. Information from the physical universe and from other monads can be encoded onto each monad.
The Principle of Sufficient Reason says that there is no sufficient reason why there should be only a single monad. As soon as you have one, there is no logical reason why there shouldn't be an infinite number with the same properties as the first.
This, therefore, is the basic model of existence: an infinite number of monads in dimensionless existence (meaning an infinite amount of psychic energy), each of which can create one or more quanta of dimensional, physical energy, thus allowing an infinitely large dimensional universe to be populated with an infinite number of quanta of physical energy.
The infinite number of monads has always existed and always will exist. Nothing created them and nor can anything annihilate them: they are the basic units of existence. They are uncaused: they cannot have a cause because there is nothing to cause them. They are the first link in the chain of becoming. They are why there is something rather than nothing. They are the fundamental, unalterable facts of existence. They are dialectical, and the purpose of the dialectic is to take the universe from the state of maximum potential to the state of maximum actualization. The inner, core logic of the universe is to keep "becoming", and eventually that process will arrive at the highest point of becoming that the universe can possibly attain. To put it another way: the universe will inevitably create God. The universe has an implicit teleology. Even though it doesn't know it, its purpose is to give birth to God. It will keep trying, unceasingly, untiringly, blindly groping forward step by step, until it succeeds.
Here is truth. God does not create the universe. Precisely the reverse is true. The universe creates God.
This is perhaps the profoundest statement of all, and what makes Illuminism so different from all other religions. God is not the First Cause and the Prime Mover. He might instead be regarded as the Last Effect, that for which the whole universe moved. Any atheist can subscribe to the God of Illuminism because he is part of evolution: he is what evolution is striving to achieve, its logical endpoint.
But once the God of Evolution has come into existence then he controls evolution, just as human beings now regularly alter the course of evolution on earth. Billions of humans are alive today who would certainly be dead had not humanity become intelligent enough to understand and exploit agriculture, science, medicine, civilisation etc. Humans are increasingly the masters of evolution, and have certainly ceased to be its helpless servants and victims (as ordinary animals are).
God is the end of the chain of evolution, and the beginning of a new chain of existence that is his to define. God, the culmination of evolution, thereby transcends evolution. He is transcendence itself.
God, once he stands outside of evolution, is the master of creation. The universe created him, but now he can reverse the process and create the universe anew. This is the essence of the "Divine Suicide": God creates the new universe from himself.
God can be in the paradoxical position of being both the creation of the universe and its creator (just as humans, the creations of evolution, can create future evolution via genetic engineering), and so we have a mechanism for the universe to cycle on forever. In one phase, it is in the process of creating God. Having succeeded, it is then, in the second phase, ruled by God until he chooses to start creation all over again, using himself as the raw material. And thus we return to the first phase, and again the universe strives to reach its maximum actualisation - God. And the beat goes on. To eternity.
The Plenitude Principle states that everything that can happen will happen. No possibilities that remain eternally possible will go unrealised. Nature will become as complete and perfect as it possibly can. That is not just desirable, it is inevitable in an infinite system. If there is one state of existence - an Omega Point - that is superior to all other states then it will eventually and inevitably be attained.
From the "beginning", all things that can happen are already implicit in the universe. If God is possible then he was always possible and simply waiting for his potential to be turned into actuality.
The question all atheists have to pose themselves is this: does evolution imply an end, a summit? Is evolution ever maximised or does it keep going round in futile circles, never actually getting any better?
If human beings are vastly superior to dinosaurs (the previous masters of the world), if all forms are more highly evolved than their preceding forms, isn't it clear that evolution, on the whole, is advancing rather than regressing, is getting "better". Can it ever reach "best"?
Imagine the human race as a single person i.e. all of the talents and intelligence of humanity combined in a single personality. Wouldn't that be vastly superior to any individual human being? Would any problem resist the collective, focused intelligence of all humanity? If a few geniuses have made breathtaking leaps in our understanding of the universe, imagine the intelligence of all the geniuses merged into a single, sublime intelligence. Wouldn't that be an entity that might have some of the characteristics of what we call God? That would be achieved simply by allowing the consciousnesses of individual human beings to evolve into a collective consciousness of humanity.
But is it likely that humans are the summit of universal evolution? Can't we imagine vastly more intelligent beings than ourselves? Then imagine combining all of their intelligences. In fact, imagine combining all of the intelligences that exist in the universe. The r = 0 domain is where all "mind" in the universe exists i.e. it all exists in a single "place". If all the minds linked to the r = 0 domain combined then they would form Absolute Mind, and that would be none other than God. Each of us is a "cell" of the Absolute Mind. If we can expand our minds, we can tune into Absolute Mind, the Mind of God. We ourselves, if we can harness Absolute Mind, can become God. It is no empty claim. It is the logical opportunity afforded by the r = 0 domain. But, to harness Absolute Mind, we need to infinitely expand our limited human minds.
Thesis - Physical, Dimensional Universe (r > 0) - "BEING"
Antithesis - Non-Physical (Mental), Dimensionless Universe (r =0) - "NOTHING"
Synthesis - The Dialectical Universe (r >= 0) - "BECOMING"
The Logical Universe of Self-Awareness
Imagine the human brain as something akin to an interactive TV set: it provides the r > 0 dimensional hardware via which a signal can be received from the r = 0 dimensionless domain, and it also transmits sensory information back to the r = 0 domain. The signals passing back and forth between the r = 0 and r > 0 domains constitute a continual feedback loop. A conscious human being is an outcome of this feedback loop. It cannot be stressed enough that it is the dimensional world which supports the principium individuationis - the principle of individuation. Everything in the r = 0 domain is fundamentally interconnected. How could you ever develop an individual identity if you were permanently intertwined with everything else? You need to be separated from other things if you wish to achieve unique self-awareness. The r > 0 domain provides the mechanism of individuation. It is essential to having a separate identity.
Alan Turing added another ingredient to understanding the development of consciousness. He drew a parallel with a nuclear fission pile. Little happens unless a critical size is attained and then a breathtaking chain-reaction occurs. All non-human animals on earth are below the critical threshold required for an explosion of mental activity leading to self-consciousness. Only we humans have developed brains with so many neural connections that a chain reaction of consciousness is inevitable.
In his famous book Gödel, Escher and Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter talks about Strange Loops which he defines as follows: "The 'Strange Loop' phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started."
He says, "Implicit in the concept of Strange Loops is infinity since what is a loop but a way of representing an endless process in a finite way?"
He argued that consciousness comes from a strange loop. There's much to be said for this view. An infinite feedback loop between the r = 0 domain and a unique physical being in the r > 0 domain (with a "critical mass" brain) would constitute such a strange loop.
Hofstadter says, "In short, an 'I' comes about - in my view, at least - via a kind of vortex whereby patterns in a brain mirror the brain's mirroring of the world, and eventually mirror themselves, whereupon the vortex of 'I' becomes a real, causal entity."
We would amend this to, "Patterns in the mind mirror the brain's mirroring of the world, and eventually mirror themselves." In other words, it's the sensory information that a physical brain provides to an abstract mind that allows the mind to reflect on that sensory data and then, finally, to reflect on the fact that it's reflecting on it, at which stage it is conscious of its own consciousness, hence it is self-conscious and has completed the required strange loop. We would also contend, as Hegel did, that another similar consciousness is essential to truly complete this process i.e. a consciousness must be able to reflect that its consciousness is different from that of another similar being i.e. it must possess Theory of Mind - the knowledge that another mind possesses different thoughts from those of itself.
Hofstadter makes extensive use of Gödel's famous Incompleteness Theorem in his argument. There's no question that self-referential statements, which lie at the core of Gödel's Theorem, are astoundingly profound:
"All Cretans are liars," said the Cretan. Is that true, false or undecidable?
"This statement is false." Is that true, false or undecidable?
"This statement cannot be proved." Is that true, false or undecidable?
How would a machine ever decide? Would it go into a perpetual loop?
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem concerns statements of axiomatic systems that are true but cannot be proved i.e. provability is a weaker concept than truth. The question that often arises is whether a machine could recognise a true statement as true if it had no axiomatic means of proving it. Only self-aware beings that can understand the paradoxes and subtleties of self-referential statements would appear capable of this. Hence a machine would need to become self-aware, to transcend its axiomatic programming, before it could do likewise. To put it another way, can logic itself become self-aware? Can it recognise its own limitations? Dialectical logic is the best means of achieving this since its whole purpose is to overcome contradictions and view them as part of an all-embracing whole. It is the whole that can see the limitations of the parts. The central principle of "gestalt" thinking is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Something has to transcend all limited axiomatic systems to be able to see all possible truths.
Is God the ultimate Gödel Being, the ultimate Gestalt?
Quantum Strangeness
Experts in Quantum Mechanics have no credible conceptual model to account for the myriad of strange phenomena associated with the quantum world. For example, how is it possible for a quantum particle to be in two or more places at once? One thought experiment involves replacing the two slits in the famous two-slit experiment of quantum mechanics with infinitely many slits of zero width i.e. no slits at all. A quantum particle would then simultaneously take all possible paths from its initial to its final position. A classical particle would take only a single path.
The following online article (http://srikant.org/core/node12.html) says:
"The fundamental paradox of quantum mechanics is the following: how can a particle be point-like when it is observed, and be wave-like when it is not observed? According to Heisenberg, when a quantum particle is not observed it exists as an ensemble of 'possibilities' (in physics called a virtual state) in which it has a likelihood of existing simultaneously at all points of space; however, when an observation is performed the quantum particle makes a discontinuous jump (called a quantum transition) to a state with some definite position and is said to be in a condition of 'actuality' (in physics called a physical state). The transition from the possible to the actual takes place the moment the quantum particle comes into contact with a measuring device."
The largest atoms are those of Caesium (Cs) and they have a radius of about 0.00000025 mm. In other words, atomic and subatomic particles are so extraordinarily small that it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish them from dimensionless points with zero radius (r = 0). It is because quantum particles are so close to being r = 0 dimensionless particles that quantum weirdness happens. Every quantum particle is continually flickering in and out of dimensionless existence.
Quantum weirdness involving particles that seem to be in multiple places at once only exists on the quantum scale. As more and more particles come together in the r > 0 universe, they increasingly bind each other in place until we reach the familiar "classical" world of solid objects that we see all around us. To put it another way, as particles come together to form new, larger objects, the "radius" of those objects gets increasingly far from r = 0. The more that the radius of an object exceeds 0, the less that object will behave like a dimensionless r = 0 point.
But it cannot be emphasized enough that although large objects have progressively less in common with dimensionless points, they are always linked to the r = 0 aspect of the universe because, being outside of space and time, the r = 0 domain is everywhere and nowhere eternally. As Kant rightly said, we are configured for thinking in terms of time and space (r > 0). He thought this meant that the r > 0 aspect of the universe was a mind-created reality that did not exist independently of mind. The opposite is true. It is precisely because the r > 0 dimensional aspect of the universe exists independently and is based on space and time that our brains and minds have evolved to allow us to comprehend physical space and time. It is physical, dimensional reality that has imposed space and time on our r = 0 minds, not the other way around.
We, as human beings, can never fully understand a spaceless, timeless, dimensionless existence because we are so embedded in the physical world. Nevertheless, our minds are fundamentally r = 0 entities and are always tuned into the r = 0 aspect of the universe, albeit while having to understand the r > 0 aspect of the universe since that is the aspect we physically inhabit.
In the r >= 0 framework, a physical particle is ultimately derived from one or more monads which exist dimensionlessly i.e. outside of space and time. A monad can continually emit and then reabsorb a variable number of quanta of dimensional energy. So, a physical particle can be flickering in and out of dimensionless space, and this will be truer the closer the particle resembles a dimensionless point. The key point is that each "flicker" is highly unlikely to bring the physical particle back to where it was before i.e. if a physical particle disappears into the r = 0 domain - outside space and time - it can re-emerge anywhere in physical space, and no time has elapsed (because dimensional time does not exist in the r = 0 domain). In other words, by having access to a portal outside of space and time, a quantum particle can intrinsically be in many places at once; in fact in all places in principle (in agreement with Heisenberg). It's an inbuilt feature of the r >= 0 universe.
The famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that is at the core of Quantum Mechanics is in fact an inevitable consequence of r >= 0 since it is always impossible to exactly specify both the position and momentum of any quantum particle because it will always display a range of both properties due to flickering in and out of r = 0 with a variable amount of energy and variable positional probabilities.
Imagine that you are sitting reading this article when you suddenly disappear into dimensionless space. You reappear several metres away but no time has elapsed (because time doesn't apply to the r = 0 domain). It's as if you have instantaneously teleported, but, because no time has passed, you still appear to be in your starting position as well as your new position. You are seemingly in two places at once. But the first you is now a "ghost", so to speak, a "virtual" you, an after-image that's about to vanish because it's no longer a real entity. This process doesn't actually happen on a human scale, of course, but it does on the scale of particles that are all-but indistinguishable from dimensionless points.
The conventional Quantum Mechanics interpretation talks about quantum particles being in "virtual" states from which one such state suddenly gets physically selected by the process of measurement/observation. In the r >= 0 framework, a particle is at all times in a real, definite state, although it is accompanied by a myriad of "ghosts" that are in the process of vanishing. Quantum "strangeness" comes not from a quantum superposition of virtual states but from the fact that a particle can disappear from dimensional existence into dimensionless existence and then reappear in a different location with a different amount of energy without any time having elapsed.
The central quantum enigma is wave-particle duality: how can quantum particles travel as waves but arrive as particles? How can the act of observing the wave make it collapse into a particle? The r >= 0 framework responds by saying that particles are always particles: it is their interaction with the spaceless and timeless domain of r = 0 that creates the appearance of wave behaviour. This appearance is caused by the fact that a particle can seem to be in many places at once provided that it is constantly entering and exiting from the r = 0 dimensionless domain.
How does the r >= 0 model account for the famous paradox of Schrödinger's Cat whereby a cat can be in a superposition of virtual states corresponding to being both dead and alive at the same time until an observation of some kind resolves the issue?
Returning to the earlier analogy about a human undergoing constant teleporting, his "consciousness" would only ever be in one place at a time, but his ghostly selves would still linger for an instant in prior locations. It is not a question of Schrödinger's cat being alive and dead simultaneously. Rather, the cat can only ever be dead or alive, but its "ghosts" could be in the opposite state. Imagine that you teleported into a gas chamber. You would die, but the virtual versions of you - the simulacra of you - that hadn't teleported into the chamber would still have the semblance of you as a living person. So, in truth, you are dead, but your ghostly simulacra might give the impression that you are still alive, but these are virtual states in the process of disappearing. The standard discussion of the Schrödinger's Cat paradox misses the point. There is only ever one true, definite, real, physical state. The so-called superposition of states relates to the "ghosts" rather than the real entity.
"The electron seems to spring into existence as a real object only when we observe it!" - Physicist Heinz Pagels. This is the infamous "measurement/ observation" problem that has perplexed so many physicists. But, contrary to quantum mechanical orthodoxy, one of a number of "virtual" states of a quantum particle isn't mysteriously selected to become real (the so-called "collapse of the wavefunction"). Rather, a measurement simply selects whatever real state the particle is in as it emerges from the r = 0 domain at the instant the measurement occurs, and the virtual states instantly dissolve.
Quantum tunnelling is the phenomenon whereby quantum particles can appear in seemingly impossible places. If we place a particle in a locked box, there is a finite chance that we will discover it outside the box, as if it has tunnelled right through the wall, without actually having any tunnelling equipment. How is this possible in terms of r >= 0? It is because a tiny dimensional particle can shrink to become a dimensionless point outside space and time and then reappear in a completely new location (e.g. outside the walls of the box rather than inside). It is as if all quantum particles can step into a dimensionless portal and then step out again in a new location that could be anywhere in the entire universe. They will probably emerge somewhere near their original location (and that is particularly true the larger a particle is i.e. the less it resembles an r = 0 point), but there is always a chance they could emerge in a radically different location.
Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman said: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics…Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will go 'down the drain' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that."
Physicist Fred Hoyle said in relation to the quantum conundrum that interactions can seem to involve the whole of the universe rather than just the immediate area of the interaction, "Success may come one day, however, but only from a nonlocal form of physics, the kind of physics that is not at all popular right now."
Non-locality is not just possible with the r >= 0 universe; it is inbuilt. In fact it is the entire basis of the r = 0 aspect of existence. In the r >= 0 universe, "local" interactions in the r > 0 dimensional aspect of the universe, involving space and time, exist in tandem with non-local interactions that take place in the r = 0 dimensionless aspect of the universe, outwith space and time. What solution could be simpler: dimensional and dimensionless aspects of reality co-existing, allowing local and non-local phenomena.
The famous Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox which amounts to an assertion that two correlated particles that are infinitely far apart can nevertheless instantaneously communicate to each other what state they are in, is utterly impossible within any current framework of orthodox physics since it would seem to involve faster-than-light signalling between the particles. It presents no challenge at all in the r >= 0 model of the universe: the instantaneous correlation takes place via the r = 0 channel which exists outside of space and time and hence is not subject to any spatial and temporal restrictions. Everything happens instantaneously in r = 0, as if the speed of light were infinite in this domain.
So, the r >= 0 framework provides a full and elegant solution to all the major puzzles of Quantum Mechanics: the twin-slit experiment, Schrödinger's Cat, the EPR paradox, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, quantum entanglement, non-locality and superposition. It also makes sense of black hole singularities, of the Big Bang Genesis Singularity, of dimensional existence appearing out of seemingly nothing ("nothing" is actually r = 0 dimensionless existence.)
In other words, the r >= 0 model explains the whole universe, from the smallest aspects to the largest, in a comprehensive, comprehensible way that accounts for all the gaping holes in the conventional scientific conceptual models. Science has reached a brick wall caused by its obsession with materialism. It can only take the next step forward by adding r = 0 to r > 0 and embracing the truth of r >= 0. And, once it has done so, it will find itself confronting ancient philosophical, religious, mystical and esoteric truths that it has long dismissed as nonsense and fantasy.
Stephen Hawking says that it is meaningless to talk of a time 'before the Big Bang.' If the Big Bang were to be defined as the r > 0 dimensional domain suddenly emerging from the r = 0 dimensionless domain that exists outside of space and time then he is exactly right. After all, the whole point of the r = 0 domain is that dimensional concepts do not apply.
"There is no quantum world. There is only abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics only concerns what we can say about nature."
Neils Bohr
The "M-theory" of superstrings asserts that we really inhabit an eleven-dimensional domain (ten of space and one of time), with seven of the spatial dimensions apparently being "curled up" so small that we can't perceive them.
The r >= 0 framework does not add any such weird dimensions. There are three spatial and one time dimension in the r > 0 domain, and the r = 0 domain is dimensionless. What could be more straightforward?
So, M-theory or r >= 0: which do you find more plausible?
Science has hit a dead-end. It can go no further within the prevailing paradigm. It will keep inventing more dimensions, more worlds, more exotic particles, more abstract mathematics, in an attempt to salvage the unsalvageable. And all because it refuses to contemplate dimensionless existence, even though the most basic mathematical entity - a simple point - is dimensionless.
Richard Feynman's "sum-over-histories" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics says that a particle moving from A to B simultaneously explores all possible paths between the two points, however improbable the route. When all of the different possible paths are added together, they almost completely cancel each other out. What remains is the supposed physical path taken by the particle.
This approach is not all that conceptually different from what the r >= 0 framework proposes, and could possibly be shown to be functionally identical.
We offer a straightforward challenge to all scientists. Can you shoot down r >= 0? Does it not provide a better explanation of reality than anything science has hitherto produced? Does it not address all of the fundamental conceptual difficulties of cutting-edge science? Does it not offer a true Grand Unified Theory of everything, including philosophy and religion?
*****
We have spent a lot of time showing that r >= 0 is
completely consistent with Quantum Mechanics because it is vital to
present a religious and philosophical framework that is fully compatible
with advanced science.
The Abrahamic faiths spectacularly fail to do so.
They are absurd, unbelievable and incomprehensible. They speculate
about an invisible dimension beyond human experience and knowledge where
God, heaven and souls exist. We're not supposed to question this, just
to take it on faith. In fact, God, heaven and souls exist in the
dimensionless r = 0 domain, and we are in contact with this domain at
all times. There is nothing mysterious or weird about it. The
dimensionless and dimensional domains exist on the continuum of r >=
0. If we progressively "shrank" dimensional existence it would
eventually become dimensionless. If we expanded dimensionless existence
it would become dimensional. So, they are fully compatible with one
another; they blend into one another. There are absolutely no spooky
dimensions where God and souls hide from us.
Followers of the Abrahamic faiths are prodigiously
stupid. How can they possibly believe the nonsense spouted by popes,
priests, pastors, imams and rabbis? None of it makes one iota of sense.
It's utter fantasy.
Make no mistake: these religions are the creations of
Satan. Their specific purpose is to allow people to be controlled; to
cause them to abdicate their intelligence, to make them gullible and
sheep-like, to fill them with fear. They lead people as far from the
truth as possible.
Compare Illuminism with Christianity, Judaism and
Islam. We have provided a comprehensive, scientifically-compatible
framework in which everything can be understood logically, without any
resort to spookiness regarding dimensions beyond mortal
contact and comprehension. Could a single Christian, Jew or Muslim
refute us? Not a chance. Would they even try? Not a chance. They will do
what they have always done, believe what they have always believed.
Why? Because it's easiest, because it's the path of least resistance.
It's so much easier to raise your hands and cry, "I believe!" than it is
to, God forbid, actually think for yourself. The Abrahamists are
amongst the dumbest people on earth. They can't adapt.
That is the difference between a religion based on
knowledge and one on faith. The latter is the road to ruin. The faithful
are permanently walking backwards into the past, into ever greater
ignorance.
As for scientists, when will they accept that there
is nothing scientifically or mathematically problematic about
dimensionless existence? Until they embrace the dimensionless, they will
make no further progress. They have gone as far as they can within the r
> 0 framework.
Illumination is a religion for all time: past,
present and future. It will dispel the darkness of the Abrahamic faiths.
Join the army of light. One day in the future, there will be no
Christians, Muslims or Jews. They will have vanished into the mists of
history. They are a dialectical dead-end, an evolutionary cul-de-sac.
Their race is already run. They just don't know it yet. They were never
quick on the uptake.
2012: Liberation is coming. Deliverance. Salvation. A New World Order
based on justice and merit.
And who will the saviours be? You will!
*****
Someone asked us where the concept of r = 0 came from since, obviously, it must have preceded modern black hole theory and quantum theory. The answer is simple. It is two and a half thousand years old and it came from Pythagoras, the first Grand Master of the Illuminati. It is taken from his secret writings concerning the Monad, which is depicted below. You are looking at one of the simplest, most ancient, most powerful, most profound symbols of all time. To this day, it is the symbol the Illuminati use to refer to the r >= 0 universe. It is the essence of existence. You might even call it the image of God.
