The Nature of the Universe
Idealism is the view that the universe is a mental construct - an arena exclusively of ideas. There's no such thing as matter, or, rather, matter is itself just a mental construct. If no minds existed, no material world would exist.
Materialism asserts that there is nothing but matter. The mental world is a product of matter. If no matter existed, there would be no minds.
Dualism contends that matter and mind exist as independent substances. Descartes, the leading dualist, said that matter (res extensa) had the property of extension (i.e. physical dimensions) while mind (res cogitans) did not. Matter was a physical substance while mind was a substance relating to thinking, feeling, willing, perceiving and consciousness. Since they were completely different substances, it was unclear how they could interact. Descartes infamously suggested that the pineal gland in the brain acted as a mediator between mind and matter.
Idealists deny the independent existence of matter while materialists deny the independent existence of mind. Dualists assert that matter exists independently of mind, and mind independently of matter, but can't explain their relationship to each other. All three stances have failed to solve the mind/matter problem.
Is there another possibility?
Whatever the universe is made of, one thing is undeniable - it contains the capacity for intelligent thought. Humans are composed of atoms and yet they can contemplate the nature of existence. How can atoms that obey mechanistic laws combine in such a way as to give rise to intelligence?
There are different types of intelligence. A crocodile has a limited repertoire of behaviour. A horse has a larger, more complex brain and can display more varied behaviour. A human being is capable of vastly more complicated behaviour still. Yet there's an enormous range within human intelligence. Some humans are mired in trivial, hedonistic pursuits while others are wrestling with the profoundest questions of life.
Then there is the intelligence of colonies of ants or bees. Individuals within the colony have limited intelligence and yet the colony as a whole can demonstrate astonishingly complex behaviour. Is the intelligence of a collection of human beings also an example of the intelligence of a colony i.e. is human intelligence considered in isolation completely different from collective human intelligence? If someone pokes a stick into an ant colony, ants will scurry around in a host of different ways to repair the damage. If an airplane flies into a skyscraper, humans will scurry around in a host of different ways to repair the damage. Is there really such a difference between an ant colony and a human colony?
Can the human race be said to have some sort of Mass Mind? Could the inhabitants of other planets in the universe also exhibit Mass Minds? Could all of these Mass Minds act as individual brain cells for a Universal Mind? Think of the power of such a Mind. Would it be the Mind of God?
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin talked of the "noosphere" - the mind sphere, a kind of collective human consciousness. As humanity evolves and creates increasingly complex social networks and societies, so the noosphere evolves too, becoming ever more self aware. Eventually this would lead to a Mass Mind.
Gaia theory - the view that the earth self-regulates - attributes an intelligence of sorts to the planet. If such a theory is true of earth, it must be true of every other planet. If planets have this type of intelligence, why not solar systems or galaxies? Why not the universe itself? If all the "intelligent" planets and all the Mass Minds combined, what then? Is the universe a vast brain?
Since a range of intelligence is known to exist, is there any reason to believe that human intelligence should represent the upper limit? Is there any limit at all? Why should there not be levels of intelligence that make humans seem like insects in comparison? Why shouldn't evolution be able to create any level of intelligence, up to the highest possible of which the universe is capable? If a maximum intelligence is not forbidden then it's compulsory. One way or another, the universe will maximise the intelligence buried as potential within it.
What single change would revolutionise humanity? Imagine that everything that any person learned was immediately learned, effortlessly, by every other person. So, if 6.5 billion humans were each learning new things and every person was immediately accumulating all of the knowledge gained by all the others, what would happen? In a very short time, the Mass Mind of humanity would be powerful beyond imagining. Is it impossible? Or has it already happened to another species on another planet?
Long ago, the planet earth contained no life, yet it now sustains billions of intelligent humans, and countless animals and plants. Is that not the perfect example of how an apparently inanimate world has, latent within it, the potential to express incredible intelligence and abundance of life? And if that is true of earth then it must be true of the universe as a whole, yet on a breathtakingly bigger scale. If earth can evolve human intelligence, what can the universe evolve? The answer is simple - the intelligence of God.
But how can mind be generated by matter, how can intelligence emerge from atoms obeying the laws of science, how can life come from lifelessness? Any human being can be decomposed into a collection of atoms that originate from the food and drink which the person has consumed during their life. How is it that a particular arrangement of atoms can exhibit intelligence while innumerable alternative arrangements of those same atoms would show no intelligence whatever?
The number of ways of grouping atoms in the human body in ways that don't lead to intelligent behaviour is almost infinitely larger than those that do. Yet humanity exists - six and half billion people, and rising. What are the odds? Is there an underlying factor that makes humans, and human intelligence in particular, much more likely than it might seem?
Evolutionist Richard Dawkins talks about "the selfish gene" and of humans being "gene survival machines". He doesn't mean that genes are literally selfish, but, rather, that if we characterise them in this way then it helps to better understand observed behaviour. For example, in moral terms, no one should be more willing to help one person rather than another, yet it's self-evident that families (i.e. groups with high genetic commonality) almost always help each other in preference to non-family members. Although other explanations can be given, this is suggestive that genes act as if to promote their own interests over those of rival genes. But if genes - particular organisations of atoms - are "selfish" then what of individual atoms?
"Panpsychism" is a theory that claims that all matter is associated with mind. If atoms are "minded" in some way i.e. aren't just passive objects being buffeted by physical forces but are active to some degree, albeit difficult to define, could it better explain scientific phenomena?
It is difficult to understand how life can emerge from lifelessness, how mind can emerge from non-mind, how a chemical soup on earth billions of years ago could randomly create the single living cells from which humanity eventually evolved. Some people find it so improbable that they dismiss it entirely and look for explanations involving God.
But if everything in the universe already has mind in some way, and can be said to be "alive" at some level, then several mysteries immediately become more comprehensible. If the chemical soup from which life emerged on earth was already "alive" (though at a non-conscious level) and was, in a sense, seeking to actualise itself in the optimal possible way; if the chemical soup were striving to generate higher forms of life from itself, then that would make the appearance of single cells more likely. Such a factor underlying evolutionary forces can't be quantified and isn't readily susceptible to scientific study, but it would radically increase the chances of complex life appearing.
Nothing is lifeless. Nothing is mindless. Life and mind are an ascending scale. The most elementary particles have little that would be recognised as life or mind, but nevertheless those qualities are there. To assert the opposite position, that there is both life and non-life, is to assume a dualistic position. How can these two entirely different "substances" interact? How can one give rise to the other? How can specific arrangements of non-life generate life? The reality is that what has been defined as non-life does contain life, albeit at a much more primitive level. A single brain cell in a human brain doesn't appear to have either life or mind, and yet that brain cell is part of a functioning mind within a living organism. There are only two possibilities: either life and mind miraculously emerge from non-life and non-mind, or life and mind were there all along, but unexpressed in any meaningful way.
The Sea of Becoming is the source of the physical world we appear to inhabit; "appear" because, as the philosophers of Idealism realised, there is no direct way to prove the existence of the physical world. All ideas about the world are just that - ideas. The world of a dream seems solid and real while the dream is being experienced, but the dreamworld simply isn't there. It exists as an idea in the mind, not as an independent reality. Is the "real" world similarly illusory? The movie "The Matrix" portrays the "real" world as an elaborate computer simulation. "There are no facts, only interpretations," said Nietzsche. The physical universe conforms to this rule. It is not a fact, it's an interpretation.
The Sea of Becoming discussed in another section of this website had the property of extension, of physical dimensions. But the Sea of Becoming could equally well have no extension, no physical dimensions. In this case, the thesis of "Being" and the antithesis of "Nothing" reach their synthesis within a dimensionless reality - the mental universe. The mental universe can contain ideas, but not physical objects.
Yet virtually no one seriously contemplates that there is not a physical world "out there". Although its existence cannot technically be demonstrated, few would assert that it's all just an illusion. Even in "The Matrix" there was an underlying truth, a real world, a "rabbit hole" leading to the truth.
So, it's possible that there's both a physical Sea of Becoming and a mental Sea of Becoming. Descartes' dualistic universe has reappeared. The issue of mind-matter dualism is really the same one as whether a hypothetical "Nothing" can be said to have dimensions or no dimensions. A physical universe can emerge from a Nothing with dimensions, but not from one without dimensions. A mental universe can arise from zero-dimensional Nothing.
Leibniz introduced the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which states that there must be a sufficient reason why something should be thus and not otherwise. There is no sufficient reason why the physical universe should be privileged over the mental, or vice versa. There is no sufficient reason why Nothing with dimensions should be privileged over Nothing with no dimensions, and vice versa. Dialectical logic provides the solution to this impasse: the thesis and antithesis are combined in a higher truth - the synthesis.
The synthesis of mind and matter - of two supposedly separate, independent, incompatible substances - is that they are the same substance viewed from two different perspectives. Zero and non-zero dimensional nothingness are the same nothingness viewed from two different perspectives. Every deep secret of the universe flows from the truth that the material and mental worlds are not separate, and that zero dimensions can coexist with multi dimensions. All the difficulties of metaphysics arise from a false dichotomy between mind and matter.
The Complementarity Principle of Quantum Theory says (http://universe-review.ca/F12-molecule.htm):
"According to the uncertainty principle, the pair of conjugate variables such as the position and momentum of a particle is not well defined but exist only as opposing potentialities. These potentialities complement each other, since each is necessary in a complete description of the physical processes through which the particle manifests itself. This is referred as "principle of complementarity". The more general statement reads: At the quantum level, the most general physical properties of any system must be expressed in terms of complementary pairs of variables, each of which can be better defined only at the expense of a corresponding loss in the degree of definition of the other. In particular, particle and wave can be considered as one of those complementary pairs - no experiment can reveal both at once."
Mind and matter are also a complementary pair. No experiment can reveal both simultaneously. Mind is the inner, internalised aspect of the universe while matter is the outer, externalised aspect. If a human skull is opened up, a fleshy brain will be exposed, but no mind. Yet the mind is there. No one can deny it. In fact, the appearance of the physical brain is, ultimately, nothing but an idea in the mind.
Illumination teaches that everything that appears in the physical world - the world of dimensions - has a complementary appearance in the mental world, the non-dimensional world i.e. every physical event also registers as a mental event. All physical objects are also mental entities. The physical world is objectified mind while the mental world is subjectified matter. Mind is the inner experience of matter while matter is the outer experience of mind. The physical world is the objective, external reality experienced in a scientific way while the mental world is the subjective, internal reality experienced within the spectrum of consciousness.
Human consciousness belongs to the non-dimensional domain, yet it is tied to the physical world. It is impossible to probe it directly because it is not in the dimensional reality of science. Science has provided a vast amount of knowledge about the physical world, but it cannot say anything significant about the non-physical world. That is the province of metaphysics. Historically, science and metaphysics have clashed because metaphysics has strayed into scientific territory, and vice versa.
Illumination combines science and metaphysics, acknowledging the primacy of each in its own sphere. If the proper applicability of science and metaphysics is understood, science should never contradict metaphysics, and vice versa.
Metaphysical Reality
Immanuel Kant is recognised as one of the greatest philosophers of all time, but he has probably done more than anyone to cause confusion between science and metaphysics. Kant applied two descriptions to the universe: "noumenal" and "phenomenal". Noumenal applies to the universe as it is in itself while phenomenal applies to how the universe appears to observers. Kant was highlighting a potential gulf between how things really are and how they seem. If it's impossible to get beyond the universe of appearances then the world as it is in itself can never be known.
Every human presents a mask - a persona - to others, but underneath that mask lie traits, feelings and beliefs that could be shocking to others. No one can claim to absolutely know any other person, no matter how seemingly close they are, because the mask - the appearance - always stands in the way.
Kant's revolutionary idea was that the universe doesn't put on a mask but, rather, observers put a mask on the universe. Reality doesn't shape the human mind, rather the human mind shapes reality i.e. "reality" is a construct of the human mind and there's no way of knowing if there's any correspondence between the mind-generated reality and reality itself. The world of phenomena - things as they appear to us - seem that way because our minds compel them to. In particular, Kant said, our minds create time and space, cause and effect, and everything is viewed through the prism of these categories. If our minds didn't exist there would be no time and space, no cause and effect. Things would be how they really are: "things-in-themselves" i.e. noumena. According to Kant, knowledge of noumena is impossible. Every human, by virtue of having a human mind, is permanently excluded from seeing the underlying reality of existence.
It's important to emphasise that, for Kant, there is a single reality, but the actions of mind create a mind-specific interpretation of reality. Every different type of mind - those of insects, mammals, dinosaurs, aliens - would produce a different interpretation of the same underlying reality. It's not the reality that changes but the way in which it is perceived by particular minds. The universe is masked in as many ways as there are observers. The mind creates phenomena and can know nothing of noumena.
Science, in this view, is the systematic study of something that is really an illusion. The maximum possible knowledge of the phenomenal world would yield no truths at all about how things are in themselves. If the scientists in the movie "The Matrix" had discovered every conceivable scientific "truth" about their world, they would have learned nothing except the rules of the elaborate computer simulation in which they were trapped. They wouldn't have discovered a single fact about the reality outwith that simulation. Science, in the Kantian view, does nothing but help us to make sense of our own mental simulation of how things are, but the relationship of that simulation to reality remains forever unknowable.
Illumination, on the other hand, teaches that there is a single reality that manifests itself in two ways: physical and mental. In Kant's universe, noumena are unknowable and phenomena are illusory, but in the universe of Illumination, the mental component of existence is fully knowable, and through it the physical component of the universe. The perfect understanding of the universe in both of its aspects is the province of God.
The mental and physical aspects inherently interact with and link to each other; they always do so and can never not do so. Being part of a single reality, they are never independent of each other. But if the physical is active, the mental is passive, and if the mental is active the physical is passive. At any instant, either the physical or mental is in control. Control can switch instantly from one to another.
The physical aspect of the universe provides the platform for the mental aspect to express itself as fully as possible. Evolution is about simpler forms, under the control of the physical aspect of the universe, trying to find ways to create more complex forms where the mental aspect comes to the fore. The ultimate manifestation of the mental universe is the supreme consciousness: God. The universe is going on an extraordinary journey from an apparently blind, mechanical, unconscious physical nature to completely purposeful, intelligent self-awareness. The Law of Becoming dictates that the physical aspect of reality gradually surrenders to the mental. The physical world is the start of the journey, the mental the end.
Whereas Kant believed that the human mind creates time and space, cause and effect, Illumination teaches the opposite. Time and space, cause and effect are features of the physical world and not of the mental. The physical world gives these attributes to the mental, not the other way around. When the brain, the physical aspect of the mind, goes to sleep, the mind isn't disengaged. It continues to function - in dreams. Dreams reveal something of the pure mental domain. Causality breaks down, time and space are distorted. Reality becomes a weird hyperreality.
If Kant were right and the mind were the active creator of time and space, of cause and effect, there would be no reason for dreams to be different from reality. Yet they are entirely different. In sleep, sensory input from the physical world is denied to the mental world, so the mental world reverts to its own way of working. Similarly, when a brain is affected by drugs, especially hallucinogens, and normal functioning is disrupted, the mind loses all sense of space and time, cause and effect. Under the influence of hallucinogens, senses often become confused. People can smell colours, taste sounds, hear sights and so on. The mind requires a properly functioning brain to operate correctly. The mental world is shaped by the physical.
There is no true noumenal/phenomenal divide. The mental is trying to harness the physical in order to understand both the physical and itself. A sufficient mind - that of God - can have complete understanding of the physical and mental worlds. Even the limited human mind can gain a far deeper understanding than Kant believed possible.
Jung said, "Psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another. Psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing." This is exactly what Illumination teaches.
But if everything physical has a psyche, what is the nature of that psyche? It's absurd to claim that an atom has a psyche in precisely the same way as a human being. Individual atoms are not conscious. They do not feel, do not exhibit intelligence, and do not make plans for the future. To understand their mental nature, it is necessary to turn to a concept known as "will".
Schopenhauer, a man who hated the Illuminati because of his personal rivalry with the great Illuminist Hegel, independently produced a philosophy that, ironically, has several points of similarity to Illumination.
Schopenhauer said, "The act of will and the action of the body are not two different states objectively known, connected by the bond of causality; they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect, but are one and the same thing, though given in two entirely different ways, first quite directly, and then in perception for the understanding."
In other words, an act of will does not cause a physical action to take place. Rather, the act of will is the same thing as the physical action, just viewed from a different perspective.
Schopenhauer's "will" is the will-to-exist, the will-to-live, the will-to-survive. It is a blind, irrational striving, driving forward relentlessly and forever, with no object other than to exist. In a sense, it manifests itself as a cosmic yearning, an unquenchable desire. Schopenhauer, a notorious pessimist, characterised it as evil. It leads, he said, to eternal, pointless existence that fights and struggles and wreaks misery in its desperation to continue to be. It contains no meaning whatever. Happiness, if it ever appears, is never anything other than fleeting, and quickly succumbs to fresh struggles and disappointments.
Schopenhauer criticised science on the basis that it only ever gave us knowledge of one aspect of reality. We find out many things about the "outer" aspect of reality, but discover nothing about its inner character, which is why science seems so cold, clinical and sterile. It doesn't seem to answer any of the profound questions of existence because it is always standing on the outside. Illumination is about reconciling the outer with the inner, about revealing the science of the inner realm. This is a very different science from the conventional one and yet it is really just the same thing viewed from a radically different perspective.
Atoms are too simple to manifest any behaviour that could be deemed purposeful. Although they have a mental aspect, they are not conscious. At such an elementary level, "will" cannot express itself meaningfully. It is potentiality rather than actuality. The physical aspect dominates the mental aspect. The laws of science rather than those of the mind are obeyed. At a certain point in evolution, there is a transition from dominance of the physical to that of the mental, from science to religion/philosophy, from objective to subjective, outer to inner, mechanistic laws to moral laws.
Science is easier to study than the mental arena because it is objective rather than subjective. Primitive objects can't lie, dream, deceive, delude themselves, fantasise, choose, act irrationally: sophisticated minds can do all of those. The mental arena is unreliable in a way that the physical isn't, yet everything that constitutes the meaning of life lies in the mental arena and not in the physical.
Nietzsche, an admirer of Schopenhauer's philosophy in his youth, argued that the will to live was really the will to power. He pointed out that animals, including humans, often risk their lives to gain more power. They would not do so if survival were their goal. The fight to gain power, risking death, can be more alluring than long life without power. Fear, In Nietzsche's view, is the feeling of the absence of power. Those animals, or humans, that fail to struggle for power lack will to power and hence lead fearful lives. Nietzsche, an opponent of dualism, said, "'Will' can of course operate only on 'will' - and not on 'matter' (not on 'nerves', for example - ): enough, one must venture the hypothesis that wherever 'effects' are recognised, will is operating upon will - and that all mechanical occurrences, in so far as a force is active in them, are force of will, effects of will."
Nietzsche is right that one substance can operate on another only if it is a compatible substance. If "will" is radically different from "matter", the two cannot interact. Illumination, by revealing that mind and matter are two aspects of the same substance allows will to directly influence matter, and vice versa. Mind and matter are distinct yet inseparable. Neither can be reduced to the other, nor to any other substance. They are dual aspects of a single reality, but this reality will always present itself in one way or another, never as both. This is known technically as "dual aspect monism". It is like the Roman god Janus, normally depicted with two heads facing in opposite directions. You can look at one or other of his faces, but never both. (Janus is a prominent symbol of the Illuminati.)
Nietzsche believed that everything could be reduced to will to power, but it is not a simple monism. Rather, it is a "dialectical monism". Walter Kaufmann said, "[Nietzsche's] basic force, the will to power, is not only the Dionysian passionate striving, akin to Schopenhauer's irrational will, but is also Apollonian and possesses an inherent capacity to give itself form."
In other words, the will to power is a synthesis of a chaotic, impulsive, irrational, passionate, destructive force (which Nietzsche labelled Dionysian in honour of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and intoxication), and its antithesis: an ordered, organised, rational, cool and calculating creative force (labelled the Apollonian, in honour of Apollo, the Greek god of light and the sun, the truth, prophecy and the arts - the Illuminati have many symbols associated with Apollo).
Nietzsche's notion of a force that strives to create order and form from chaos is an improvement over Schopenhauer's more simple force. The seed of Freud's Id, Ego, and Superego tripartite division of the human psyche can be glimpsed in Nietzsche's work (the Id is akin to the Dionysian force, the Superego to the Apollonian, and the Ego to the synthesis of the two.)
Nietzsche's dialectical will to power, with its inbuilt tendency to create order, accords more with observed reality than Schopenhauer's blind, chaotic striving.
Hegel referred to the basic substance of the universe as "Geist", a complex German word that expresses notions of both mind and spirit. Geist is dialectically evolving towards what Hegel called 'the Absolute' - God. The Absolute represents the complete control of the physical world by the mental. It is a state of Absolute Knowledge and Absolute Freedom. The Absolute understands itself perfectly. Hegel is often interpreted as an idealist, denying the existence of the physical, but in fact, like all Illuminists, he considered the physical and mental to be two aspects of a single substance. However, he certainly regarded the mental as the dominant aspect of the single mind-matter reality - the dialectical process is all about bringing mind to its highest possible expression - and to that extent can be regarded as an idealist. Hence "Geist" is carefully chosen to emphasise the mental aspect.
There is no word that perfectly captures the nature of the basic substance of the universe: the arche, the first principle. The Ancient Greek philosopher Anaximander used the word "apeiron", which is usually translated as "a substance without definition that gives rise to all things and to which all things return, a sort of primal chaos."
Illuminists most usually use the word "Becoming" to describe the single fundamental substance of the universe. "Becoming" is technically an adjective rather than a noun, but Illuminists prefer this word over any other because it makes clear the difference between Illumination and the false religions of Being such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism. "Becoming" emphasises the changing, dynamic nature of the universe, the evolutionary, dialectical aspect that drives the universe forwards and upwards. "Being" on the other hand is frozen, static, conservative, resistant to change.
Mathematician Roger Penrose has proposed that there are three kinds of reality: physical, mental and mathematical, all connected in an unknown and deeply mysterious way. In fact there is only one reality, which presents itself in two ways: mind and matter.
Mathematics, it is true, is more than just a language created by the mind. It might be said to be a deep expression of Nietzsche's Apollonian ordering principle that seeks to shape the Dionysian chaos. Mind and matter, if they are to avoid an existence of meaningless chaos, must have a strong core of order and organisation, a tendency to obey natural laws. That tendency will never be precise, but it will be reliable on average, hence the statistical emphasis of modern Quantum Theory.
Mind and matter both have mathematics built into them. Mathematics can be defined as the science of pattern. Mathematicians look for patterns in numbers and space, in the physical world and abstract worlds. The mind cannot help looking for patterns. Humans look at the clouds in the sky and start to see meaningful shapes. People have reported seeing the face of Jesus Christ on slices of toast. At all times, the mind tries to shape and pattern sensory data. All of this is mathematical in nature.
Baseball players, basketball players, American football players, soccer players and most other sportspeople engage in remarkable feats of intuitive mathematics. Think of the skill involved in catching a ball while on the run: the catcher is subconsciously calculating the speed of the ball, its trajectory, wind speed, his own speed, the conditions under his feet, the interception point, the orientation of his hands etc. The person involved may know nothing about mathematics as an academic subject, he might even be hopeless at the subject, yet he can solve this complex maths problem as he's on the move without carrying out a single conscious calculation. Autistic savants can carry out prodigious calculations in their heads faster than professors can solve them with a calculator. These examples prove how deeply embedded in the psyche mathematics is.
The Ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras - another great Illuminist (and the first to be identified with Illumination's fundamental doctrine of the transmigration of souls) - claimed that numbers are the arche. He also said that a mathematical Law called Harmony controlled the universe.
Pythagoras is associated with the mystical idea of the Music of the Spheres (also known as Musica universalis - universal music): the most beautiful and perfect music of all, which permeates the entire universe but can be heard only by God. Music is audible mathematics. It is the sound of the Apollonian order in the universe. It has such a powerful effect on us because it resonates with the mathematical intuitions buried within us. When we hear harmonies, we are listening to orchestrated numbers; we are directly experiencing universal order in the form of musical notes. Discordant music, jarring notes are the province of Dionysian disharmony. Schopenhauer said that music was a "copy of the will itself" and there's much truth in this.
Illumination is a religion that holds mathematics in the highest regard and assigns to it an elevated status, but it is not a separate reality as Roger Penrose believes. It is part of the fabric of mind and matter. It is the language of the fundamental ordering principle.
The Apollonian principle of order and harmony is opposed by the Dionysian principle of chaos, disharmony and entropy. "Becoming" requires the two opposing principles. It is the tension between the two that fuels the dialectic, that generates the never-ending cycle of birth, death and rebirth. "Becoming" requires destruction and creation. "Being" on the other hand is static and lifeless. Quite simply, there is no such thing as eternal Being. All teachings regarding Being are false. Becoming is the only true reality.
It is said that in order to command nature one must first learn to obey it. At the outset, the mind obeys the physical (matter over mind), but later it commands it (mind over matter).
Consciousness has five levels: non-conscious, pre-conscious, conscious (sentient), self-conscious and hyper-conscious. Rocks are non-conscious, plants pre-conscious, animals conscious, humans self-conscious and the divine hyper-conscious. The next stage of human evolution is to bridge the gap between self-consciousness and hyper-consciousness.
The theory of epiphenomenalism portrays the mind as a by-product of brain activity. The mind, in this view, has no effect on physical events. It merely interprets events after the fact and deludes itself that it caused them. This is not as absurd as it seems. In a famous experiment by Benjamin Libet, he showed that the decision to carry out certain voluntary actions is initiated prior to any conscious intention to perform them.
Illumination teaches that mind can be active and passive (engaged versus unengaged). The mind affects the world only when it is active. Otherwise, physical events occur mechanistically, and the mind makes sense of those events afterwards, but is passive in relation to them.
Consider this thought experiment. Imagine you are about to raise your arm, but don't actually do so. Now go ahead and raise your arm. Can you identify any difference between thinking of raising your arm and actually doing it? Yet merely thinking about it has no effect in the physical world. It is passive thinking. Much of our mental activity is of that sort. To physically raise you arm, you must actively will it. Your mind must be engaged. The non-conscious and pre-conscious minds are always passive; the conscious and self-conscious minds are sometimes passive and sometimes active. The hyper-conscious mind is always active.
When the mind is passive, it exists in an epiphenomenal state, rationalising events after they've taken place. For example, tears appear in your eyes, and you explain to yourself that you are sad. But that is a post-rationalisation. There was no conscious decision by you to shed tears. You might not even have been sad, but you will convince yourself that you were in order to explain the tears.
It is argued that you will feel better if you smile. Why? Because your mind will automatically try to think of good, positive reasons why you're happy, and by that very process you will become happy. So, if you smile for non-conscious reasons, you will quickly find conscious reasons to account for your happiness, whether or not they're correct.
Conclusion
Illumination teaches that the basic substance of the universe, the arche, is "Becoming", the synthesis of Being and Nothing. It is the ever-changing "fire" of Heraclitus. Becoming has two aspects: the physical and the mental. At the earliest stages of Becoming, the physical is dominant. During this phase, the mental is non-conscious but has an inherent Apollonian tendency to create form and order, to promote growth, interaction and change.
As Becoming unfolds and evolves, the physical grows increasingly organised, giving the mental ever-greater expression until eventually consciousness has appeared in the mental arena. (Consciousness is mind that has been given a direct window into the physical world via the senses. Consciousness cannot exist without senses. Senses are the connecting channels between the physical and the mental.)
Consciousness in turn evolves into self-consciousness: a higher form of consciousness where a being can reflect on its own existence. Becoming follows a dialectical process to achieve an ascending scale of consciousness, and of truth, knowledge and freedom. As Becoming advances, the mental aspect becomes entirely dominant and able to control the physical at will.
The culmination of Becoming is the Absolute. God. Becoming is a process that never ends, but it does reach a so-called End of History where all major changes possible have taken place. Events still take place after the End of History, but in a context of peace, freedom and self-understanding. The End of History is the age of Heaven.
The God of Becoming is the True God. He is the perfect potential that existed within the universe from its beginning. The purpose of the universe, of Becoming, is to release its maximum potential. That maximum is God. God is the perfection of Becoming. God is ultimate Becoming. Nothing can become greater than God.
Here is the highest wisdom. God himself is evolving. He is not pure Being but pure Becoming. That means that the universe is not in any final state. Indeed, it can never reach any final state. There is no Last Judgement, no Day of Resurrection. The gospel - the good news - is that there is no predestination. We are free and our future is not locked and sealed. We can become the most that we have it within ourselves to be, the most that our merits deserve.
Later, we will explain the religious rather than philosophical aspects of Becoming. We will reveal why the God of Becoming created good and evil, why Satan was permitted to become a new creator - a creator of a particular type of matter - why we are reincarnated beings that are confronted by an incredible challenge - to maximise ourselves, to self-actualise, to become as perfect as we can be.
We can become our best selves only by overcoming the hardest challenges, hence Satan, the great Adversary, the great Tester, the ultimate Tempter. It is Satan who stands between God and us. The Old World Order are those who have succumbed to Satan and accepted every temptation he has to offer.
Satan creates false religions such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism that masquerade as the truth, as good and noble messages for humanity, but are lies and poison from beginning to end. These religions corrupt humanity and are designed to lure the souls of the believers to Hell. Only knowledge - Gnosis - can save us. Illumination lights the path for us all, the road through the Satanic darkness.
We will show how we ourselves can become gods. The vast majority will fail, but the select few, the most meritocratic, those who have worked hardest and followed the path of Illumination across many reincarnations will be provided with the ultimate reward.
Personal divinity.
Paradise Regained
There is a final truth.
Ultimate becoming is God. But there is one stage beyond.
A community of Gods.
And we can become part of that divine community.