Belief does not take you one step closer to the True God. How could it? Ask any Christian how the fact that Yehoshua ben Yosef was executed by crucifixion two thousand years ago as an insurrectionist against the Roman Empire could possibly save you from your "sins" today and secure you a place in heaven? What, exactly, was the point of Jesus the Christ's death? What purpose did it serve? Why was it necessary? The Christians' explanation, if they are even able to formulate one, will take your breath away in terms of its absurdity. Don't take our word for it. Read about "Atonement" theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_in_Christianity:
Atonement is a doctrine that describes how sin can be forgiven by God. In Christian theology the atonement refers to the forgiving or pardoning of sin through the death of Jesus Christ by crucifixion, which made possible the reconciliation between God and creation. Within Christianity there are three main theories for how such atonement might work: the ransom theory, the satisfaction theory and the moral influence theory.
OUR COMMENT: Why can't God simply forgive people out of the goodness of his heart? Isn't he supposed to be loving and compassionate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_(Christus_Victor_view):
"Christus Victor" theory is the theory that Adam and Eve made humanity subject to the Devil during the Fall, and that God, in order to redeem humanity, sent Christ as a "ransom" or "bait" so that the Devil, not knowing Christ couldn't die permanently, would kill him, and thus lose all right to humanity following the Resurrection.
A second theory is the "Latin" or "objective" view, more commonly known as Satisfaction Theory, beginning with Anselmian Satisfaction (that Christ suffered as a substitute on behalf of humankind satisfying the demands of God's honor) and later developed by Protestants as penal substitution (that Christ is punished instead of humanity, thus satisfying the demands of justice so that God can justly forgive).
A third is the "subjective" theory, commonly known as the Moral Influence view, that Christ's passion was an act of exemplary obedience which affects the intentions of those who come to know about it: it dates back to Anselm of Laon's protegé, Abelard, who was its originator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_(ransom_view):
Essentially, this theory claimed that Adam and Eve sold humanity over to the Devil at the time of the Fall; hence, justice required that grace pay the Devil a ransom to free us from the Devil's clutches. God, however, tricked the Devil into accepting Christ's death as a ransom, for the Devil did not realize that Christ could not be held in the bonds of death. Once the Devil accepted Christ's death as a ransom, this theory concluded, justice was satisfied and God was able to free us from Satan's grip.
OUR COMMENT: So, God "tricked" the Devil? Clearly, you wouldn't want to enter into a contract with this God. He doesn't play with a straight bat. You can't trust his word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_(governmental_view):
Governmental theory holds that Christ's suffering was a real and meaningful substitute for the punishment humans deserve, but it did not consist of Christ receiving the exact punishment due to sinful people. Instead, God publicly demonstrated his displeasure with sin through the suffering of his own sinless and obedient Son as a propitiation. Christ's suffering and death served as a substitute for the punishment humans might have received. On this basis, God is able to extend forgiveness while maintaining divine order, having demonstrated the seriousness of sin and thus allowing his wrath to "pass over". This view is therefore very similar to the satisfaction view and the penal substitution view, in that all three views see Christ as satisfying God's requirement for the punishment of sin. However, the government view disagrees with the other two in that it does not affirm that Christ endured the precise punishment that sin deserves or its equivalent; instead, Christ's suffering is seen as being simply an alternative substitute to that punishment (in contrast, penal substitution holds that Christ endured the exact punishment, or the exact "worth" of punishment, that sin deserved; the satisfaction theory states that Christ paid back at least as much honor to God as sin took from Him). It is important to note, however, that these three views all acknowledge that God cannot freely forgive sins without any sort of punishment or satisfaction being exacted. By contrast, the Eastern Orthodox view, which was also held in the early Church, states that Christ died not to fulfill God's requirements or to meet His needs or demands, but to cleanse humanity, restore the Image of God in humankind, and defeat the power of death over humans from within.
OUR COMMENT: Why can't God freely forgive without requiring punishment or satisfaction being exacted?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_(limited_view):
The doctrine states that Jesus Christ's substitutionary atonement on the cross is limited in scope to those who are predestined unto salvation and its primary benefits are not given to all of humanity but rather just believers.
OUR COMMENT: So, Christ didn't die for everyone, just for the "Saved". Another partisan elitist, helping his own. No wonder the Old World Order love him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_(unlimited_view):
Unlimited atonement (sometimes called general atonement or universal atonement) is the majority doctrine in Protestant Christianity that is normally associated with Non-Calvinist Christians. The doctrine states that Jesus died as a propitiation for the benefit of mankind without exception.
OUR COMMENT: He should have spared himself the trouble. Humanity can save itself. It needs no Messiahs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_(moral_influence_view):
The moral influence view of the atonement is a doctrine in Christian theology that explains the effect of Jesus Christ's death as an act of exemplary obedience which affects the intentions of those who come to know about it.
OUR COMMENT: This exemplifies the mind control that Christianity seeks to exert over all "believers". You must obey your orders, no matter how grotesque. You must be as obedient as Abraham was when he readily agreed to kill his son.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_(penal_substitution_view):
It argues that Christ, by his own sacrificial choice, was punished (penalised) in the place of sinners (substitution), thus satisfying the demands of justice so God can justly forgive the sins.
OUR COMMENT: This is an absurd "scapegoat" theory. It is utterly immoral to punish one person for another's sins. Otherwise, the rich might as well hire the poor to suffer hell on their behalf. You wouldn't put it past them, would you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_(satisfaction_view):
The satisfaction theory teaches that Christ suffered as a substitute on behalf of humankind satisfying the demands of God's honor by his infinite merit. Anselm regarded his satisfaction view of the atonement as a distinct improvement over the older ransom theory of the atonement, which he saw as inadequate. Anselm's theory was a precursor to the refinements of Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin which introduced the idea of punishment to meet the demands of divine justice.
OUR COMMENT: Who will punish "God" for all of his crimes against humanity? Why did he feel so angry just because Adam and Eve ate an apple?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_(substitutionary_view)
It holds that only human beings can rightfully repay the debt which was incurred through their wilful disobedience to God. Since only God can make the infinite satisfaction necessary to repay it, therefore God sent the God-man, Jesus Christ, to satisfy both these conditions. Christ is a sacrifice by God on behalf of humanity, taking humanity's penalty for sin upon himself, and propitiating God's wrath. In other words, God imputed the guilt of our sins to Christ, and he, in our place, bore the punishment that we deserve. It stresses the vicarious nature of the crucifixion as being "instead of us". This nature of the atonement is expressed in Scripture verses such as "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness."
OUR COMMENT: So, first, "God" ordered Abraham to kill his son Isaac. Then "God" went one better and killed his own son as a sacrifice to himself to appease his wrath against humanity, the same wrath that had earlier made him exterminate humanity bar Noah and his family. What kind of monster is this? Is he not the world's most terrible serial killer and genocidal psychopath? How could any sane person do anything other than fight this evil, murderous tyrant?
All of these "theories" are ridiculous, embarrassing and even quite comical, like something from a Monty Python sketch. That's the arena of faith for you. There is no knowledge there worth having. Indeed there is no knowledge there at all.
Fundamentalist Christians like to sneer at the Darwin's Theory of Evolution and dismiss it out of hand. Some of them even try to find evidence to disprove it. But how many of them seek to refute the Theory of Genesis as described in the Bible, surely one of the most laughable hypotheses ever recorded. God, we are told, made the world out of absolutely nothing in six days and rested on the seventh. Why didn't he make it in six seconds or, even better, in a single instant? Why does God need to rest? Why doesn't it mention in the Bible that God also created innumerable stars and galaxies? What purpose do these serve? How do they fit into the divine plan? Do they support any life, and, if not, why did God make them? What purpose did dinosaurs and all of the other species on earth that have become extinct serve? Why did God "create" them in the first place? Did he make a mistake?
Why did he place the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in a place of temptation for Adam and Eve, and supply it with delicious and tempting fruit? Was that another mistake? Didn't he already know what Adam and Eve were going to do? Are some of us predestined to be saved and others predestined to be damned? If so, how can anyone talk about humanity having moral choice? Why did God flood the world and exterminate the human race bar Noah and his family? Another mistake? Why didn't he lift a finger to help his "Chosen People", with whom he has a sacred covenant (allegedly), when they were suffering during the Holocaust? This "God" seems remarkably error-prone, unreliable and illogical. Can any sane person really believe in such a God?
How can this God be compatible with science in general and the First Law of Thermodynamics in particular which forbids the creation of something from nothing? Anyone who accepts the principle that something cannot be created out of nothing logically rejects any possibility of Biblical-style Creation. They also reject the "Free Lunch" universe that science describes as having appeared out of nothing. How can Christians account for Quantum theory? Why did God create such a bizarre, probabilistic rather than deterministic substratum of reality? How can Christians account for Einstein's theory of relativity? Why did God create black holes? What part do they play in the divine plan? Christians are hopeless and clueless. In the face of their overwhelming ignorance, all they ever repeat is that age-old mantra, "I believe." Such belief is worth ZERO.
Most of the richest people on earth profess to be Protestant Christians. The Bush Family are typical examples. They are the backbone of the Old World Order. Go figure why people who claim to be "spiritual" are the most materialistic people in human history, why they worship Mammon and pursue nothing but wealth and the power it brings. By the evidence of their actions what they actually believe in is enriching themselves and their families. Judge them by their deeds, not their rhetoric.
Ask yourself a very simple question - why would anyone who believes in God want to be rich? How does wealth take you closer to the Truth, to the Divine? How does spending your life pursuing material gain take you nearer to the spiritual realm? Does God honour entrepreneurs, CEOs and celebrities over those who lived modestly, helping others?
Illuminism regards "faith" as a psychological tool of the Demiurge. There is no place for faith. It serves no function other than that of encouraging delusion, which is why it is so relentlessly exploited by the Demiurge. It allows the impressionable to be brainwashed. It allows whole populations to be deceived and controlled. It stamps out freethinking, often bringing to bear an Inquisition of one sort or another to root out heretics. Look at poor old Galileo: threatened with death for saying that the earth goes round the sun, contrary to the requirement of the Abrahamic faiths which place the earth at the centre of the universe. Faith does not tolerate criticism. It breeds fanaticism. Quite simply, it is an eternal curse. It mires humanity in ignorance. It denounces Reason as the "Devil's whore." The human race cannot advance until it has overcome stupidity and rejected faith once and for all. The power of the Demiurge would be shattered overnight.
There are no "sacred scriptures" in Illuminism. There is no requirement to "believe" the ancient writings concerning archons and Phosters. The Phosters "guided" the ancient Illuminati: they did not put everything on a plate for them, and provide every answer to every conceivable question. The Phosters are helpers, not leaders. Their task is not to dictate to human beings and set down infallible words that must never be doubted or challenged. The basis of Illuminism is to provide the information, the knowledge, to allow people to make up their own minds. "Enlightenment" is a task for an individual, not a group activity. You cannot achieve gnosis just because the person standing beside you managed to do it. Enlightenment is strictly personal. You must save yourself, not look to others to save you. There is no magic formula to recite. Only one object - the Holy Grail itself - could ever help you to enormously accelerate your progress to gnosis.
Illuminism is dialectical. It progresses. It takes into account new facts, new discoveries. It continually takes theses and antitheses and turns them into higher syntheses that will then form new, more complete theses, and so on, until the day the dialectical endpoint is reached, if such a day ever comes. It is always becoming. It is not locked forever in the past as Judaism, Christianity and Islam are. These religions can never evolve. There is no scope for changing the message of the Torah, the Bible or the Koran. Imagine having to look back a million years to the death of someone on a cross as the most important event in human history, and as the means by which you will be "saved". Do you think the human race of a million years hence will take that proposition seriously? Do you think they will consult a million-year-old book called the Koran or the Torah, each written in a desert amongst primitive tribesmen, to find the definitive word of God? You must be joking.
Do you ever wonder why "God" who used to pop up all the time in the Bible, never shows his face these days? Why not? Is he scared that a lot more people are wised up these days and can't be so easily duped? Is he terrified he might actually have to answer some serious questions rather than simply demanding that everyone accept everything he says, ask no questions and worship him forever?
No, what the humans of the future will do is refer to the latest dialectical teachings of Illuminism, which is always up to date, as we have illustrated on this website by showing the extraordinary ability of the ancient teachings of Illuminism to embrace the most difficult findings of modern science. Science itself cannot construct a conceptual model to unify all of science. Illuminism has provided such a model: r >= 0, the universe of the dimensionless and dimensional. That is the core truth of Illuminism that will never be demolished or changed.
Think for yourself. Save yourself. Enlighten yourself. Let no one control you. Your salvation is your business, not anyone else's. It is up to you to make contact with the divine order. It is up to you to become God. No one else can do it for you. You can be everything you want to be if you put in the effort. No one says it will be easy. Why should it be? Why should it not be the most difficult and challenging task of all? After all, how can becoming God ever be anything other than the most difficult accomplishment humanly conceivable? But isn't that precisely what makes it so glorious; the supreme endeavour, the ultimate quest, the final and surest meaning of life, of existence itself? That is why the Holy Grail is the most sought-after object of all.
In this article we will describe the intellectual development of some of the key ideas of Illuminism. Since the first Grand Master of the Illuminati was Pythagoras, it is to Ancient Greece that we turn. Anyone who studies the philosophy of the ancient Greeks will be struck by its brilliance, contemporary relevance and how all the seeds of a true understanding of life were furnished in just three centuries: the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE.
The Pre-Socratic Philosophers
Philosophy is the "love of wisdom". Bertrand Russell described it as being a no-man's land between science and theology. It can be characterized as thinking about thinking.
The origins of philosophy lie most clearly in ancient Greece. Egyptian, Babylonian and Persian mathematics, astronomy and esoteric thinking heavily influenced the Greeks, but they took this knowledge to an entirely new and systematic level.
Thales is often labelled as the first true philosopher. He was from the town of Miletus in the Greek colony of Ionia (in modern day Turkey) and lived in the sixth century BCE. He was the first to say, "Know thyself."
He said that magnets have souls and that's why they can move iron, that all things are full of gods (a foreshadowing of panpsychism: the position that all matter has mental characteristics) and, most famously of all, that everything is made of water.
This was the first attempt to characterize the universe according to a single principle, to explain all phenomena as being different manifestations of one underlying substance, to locate the fundamental unity of things. It was, in short, the first grand unified theory of existence. Water was a surprisingly sophisticated choice since it can exist as a liquid, a solid (ice), steam (gas), and humans are, of course, at least 60% composed of water, hence it could be argued that mind, consciousness and water are somehow related.
Anaximander, a pupil of Thales and also a citizen of Miletus, asserted that the primordial element, the arche, was an indefinite, invisible, infinite, eternal and ageless substance called apeiron. He even attributed some type of divinity to it. Everything arose from this and everything would return to it. If we identify apeiron with "energy" then we have a thoroughly modern hypothesis.
Anaximander said, "The material cause and first element of things was the Infinite…and into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, of necessity, for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time." In other words, a natural law maintains balance and harmony. Anything that commits an "injustice" by becoming too powerful, too dominant, out of balance, is, sooner or later, brought back to its proper, healthy status. (This is a useful principle that ought to be applied to the super rich of our day. They have taken society out of balance and made it inharmonious and bubbling with discontent and rage.)
Anaximenes, also of the Milesian School, said that the primordial substance was air:
1) The universe is made of air and is subject to two spontaneous processes: rarefaction and condensation.
2) Fire is air in its most rarefied state; clouds, water, mud, earth and even stones are air which has become progressively condensed.
3) The elements in nature differ from each other not in quantity but in quality, all being formed from the same substance.
4) Rarefaction produces Heat and ultimately Fire; condensation produces Cold and ultimately Water; thus Heat and Cold are the effects rather than the causes of the transformation of air.
"Air is God," Anaximenes stated, but he used the religious word pneuma for air, meaning that the "breath, spirit or soul" of God pervaded the universe. Again, if we identify pneuma with energy, we get a respectable modern hypothesis.
Pythagoras, from the island of Samos near Miletus, was the first Grand Master of the Illuminati and the first philosopher to become a superstar. He was an extravagantly charismatic and mesmerizing individual, to whom seekers of the truth flocked. A larger than life showman, he cast a spell over his audience. Many regarded him as a demi-god. He was a mathematician, scientist, philosopher, magician and mystic. He was one of the first to teach the doctrine of reincarnation. He and his followers discovered that the earth was spherical. He assigned immense, cosmic significance to music and harmony. He was the first to systematize deductive reasoning: proceeding with logical steps from a self-evident axiom to surprising, non self-evident conclusions.
He stated that numbers were the arche, the primordial substance. Given that numbers are the basis of mathematics, that mathematics is embedded in the universe, that it is possible to describe all physical particles in terms of mathematical functions, this is a remarkably insightful assertion.
Pythagoras was obsessed with numerology, with the power, beauty and mystical properties of specific numbers and shapes, with esoteric codes, with "magic squares", with cosmic patterns reflecting the underlying mathematical character of the universe. He considered that a mathematical law of Harmony kept the universe in balance, and that the movement of the heavenly bodies created the divine Music of the Spheres.
Enemies who feared the growing influence of the Illuminati assassinated him.
Heraclitus, from Ephesus in Ionia, was the third Grand Master of the Illuminati, and one of the strangest since he didn't like people and preferred to be on his own. The complexity of his thought and his oracular style led to his being known as Heraclitus the Obscure, Heraclitus the Riddler and the "Dark Philosopher".
He added a number of crucial elements to the Illuminism taught by Pythagoras. He was the father of dialectical thinking, the core of Illuminism. He was the primary advocate of the principle of Becoming ("nothing ever is, everything is becoming"), another central pillar of Illuminism. He said that everything is in a state of flux, and that unity comes from the combination of opposites. He declared that the arche was fire, which, in modern Illuminism, is replaced by "energy". He said that the apparent chaos and conflict of the cosmos hide an underlying rational order called the Logos. This is another key idea in Illuminism. "Logos" has multiple meanings: Truth, Reason, the Word, Language, Reality, God, Natural Law and Logic (a word derived directly from Logos).
Heraclitus declared, "This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire."
His final fate was to be devoured by dogs.
Empedocles, from Sicily, was the sixth Grand Master, and another extraordinary showman and miracle worker in the mould of Pythagoras. He added Earth, Air and Water to the Fire of Heraclitus, to make four basic elements, each of which comes in the form of innumerable tiny particles of that element. He said that the particles of these elements came together or fell apart due to two principles: Love and Strife. In modern scientific terminology, we would say attraction and repulsion.
He makes a reference to the r >= 0 universe: "At one time the one grew out of the many; at another the one divided anew to become many." (This describes the dialectical relationship between the r = 0 and r > 0 aspects of the r >= 0 universe. The r = 0 domain is a unity from which the plurality of the r > 0 domain emerges, and, in reverse, the r > 0 plurality can "shrink" to the r = 0 unity.)
Heraclitus said something very similar: "All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things." But he asserted that the many have less reality than the one, which is God i.e. r = 0 is more important than r > 0.
Empedocles gave an account of evolutionary theory two thousand three hundred years before Darwin. In this account, the elements mix randomly with disastrous consequences: "Heads sprang up without necks, arms wandered bare and bereft of shoulders, eyes strayed up and down in want of foreheads…There were shambling creatures with countless hands…Many creatures were born with faces and breasts looking in different directions; some, offspring of oxen with the faces of men, while others, again, arose as offspring of men with the heads of oxen." These monsters of random mutation died out, leaving behind only those creatures whose bodies were "mingled with divinity" i.e. natural selection favoured harmonious, well-ordered beings that reflected a guiding intelligence of some kind.
Empedocles killed himself at the peak of his powers by throwing himself into the crater of the Mount Etna volcano. He desired to disappear "like a god".
After his death, the Illuminati added a fifth element to Earth, Air, Fire and Water, the four types of matter from which all other substances were composed. This was the famous quinta essentia - the quintessence, an immaterial substance that permeates everything. It is the essential principle of existence, the highest, purest and subtlest of the elements. If in modern terms we say that there are three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension (making four dimensions in total) then above them sits the quintessence - the mysterious fifth dimension which is actually not a dimension at all: it is dimensionless. The quintessence is also known as aether or ether.
So, the aether or quintessence is how the Illuminati refer to the dimensionless mental/psychic energy of the r = 0 domain of existence, from which all dimensional energy comes. Hence, as described, it is the "highest, purest and subtlest" element, that which breathes life into the r > 0 domain. It is sometimes referred to as pneuma, the breath, spirit or soul of God. Being dimensionless, it exists outside space and time. It is immortal, imperishable, incorruptible: existence in its most sublime and perfect form.
The Eleatic school of philosophy, which found its greatest expression in the philosophy of Parmenides, held the monist view that the universe consisted of one eternal substance that was not subject to time, space, change or difference. (This could be said to be a crude version of the r = 0 domain, and a complete rejection of the r > 0 universe.)
Parmenides was from Elea, a Greek colony in the south of Italy. He took the polar opposite position to Heraclitus, insisting that true change was impossible and all the change and movement that seem to happen are actually illusory.
He maintained that true Being, the only thing that actually existed, was the "One", infinite and indivisible. He defined it as, "complete, immovable and uncreated." His argument relied on his denial of empty space and the belief that for anything to move it would need to occupy a space previously empty. Since there was no empty space then nothing could move, so everything was forever locked in position - one infinite mass. He also maintained that since something cannot come from nothing then the One must always have existed and will always exist. These considerations led to his conclusion that everything we perceive regarding movement, separation and division is false and illusory. For Parmenides, movement was impossible, separation was impossible, it was impossible to divide anything, it was impossible to create anything new and it was impossible for anything to change. Our senses deceived us when they told us otherwise.
Parmenides said that being and thought are one and the same on the grounds that what cannot be thought cannot be, and, equally, what cannot be cannot be thought. Hence he regarded thought (mind) and being (substance) as identical. Everything is endowed with mind (panpsychism), and mind causes everything, although he wasn't sure how. So, for Parmenides, thought (mind) creates being (matter). The seeds of idealism - the thesis that only mind exists and matter is its creation - are sown here, although Parmenides didn't state that position exactly, and didn't think through his position in a coherent way.
The "One" then becomes a mental construct, a vast Mind, creating the illusion of moving matter. Mind does not move; the illusion of matter does. Mind cannot be created. Mind is complete. Mind is One, a single, unified entity.
The view of Parmenides that nothing could change, although extreme and seemingly ridiculous, was highly influential because it left a profound impression on Plato, one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Plato was equally strongly influenced by Parmenides' thesis that the whole of perceived existence is an illusion and the underlying reality is something quite different.
The chief successor of Parmenides was Zeno. With his famous paradoxes (including the "impossibility" of Achilles ever overtaking a tortoise to which he had given a good start in a race), he provided ingenious arguments to support the Eleatic case. To this day, his paradoxes are extremely difficult for the non-mathematical to refute.
Anaxagoras was the first to regard mind (nous) as a separate substance that entered into the composition of living things, thus distinguishing them from dead matter. He said that mind had power over everything that possessed life. It was infinite, self-ruled and was mixed with nothing else. It caused all movement, but was distinct from the substance that moved.
Anaxagoras was the first to point to a clear dualism between matter and mind: between that which moved and that which caused it to move. But he didn't talk of individual minds; rather a World Mind which is distinct from all the individual objects of the universe but makes them all move.
The Atomists Democritus and Leucippus argued that the world was composed of eternal, unchanging, elementary atoms that could not be divided into smaller parts (atom is Greek for "indivisible"), and were in constant motion. Atoms ceaselessly rearranging themselves cause the world of constant change that we observe. Their thesis skilfully combines the opposite positions of Heraclitus and Parmenides since, although atoms are constantly moving and bringing about change (in agreement with Heraclitus), they are also unchanging, indivisible and eternal (in agreement with Parmenides).
After the Pre-Socratics came Socrates himself, one of the most well known philosophers, at least by name if not by what he actually said.
Socrates and Plato
Socrates declared, "The unexamined life is not worth living." He argued that ignorance is the cause of evil and hence that the wisest man would never sin. Knowledge and virtue are the same, he said. He spent a lot of time in the Athenian marketplace asking awkward questions. He was eventually put on trial for allegedly corrupting the youth of Athens and showing impiety towards the traditional gods. He was found guilty and he goaded the jury into passing the death sentence on him. He died by drinking hemlock and transformed himself into the most heroic martyr of philosophy.
Socrates was the mentor of Plato, widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of all time. A.N. Whitehead said, "The safest general characterization of the whole Western philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
Plato is regarded as something of a mystic as well as a rationalist, showing that the two need not be incompatible. He joined the Illuminati but was expelled for openly discussing what he had learned with "outsiders".
He set up his own version of the schools associated with the Illuminati. His was called the Academy and is widely regarded as the prototype of modern universities. Like Pythagoras, whom he greatly admired, Plato was a champion of mathematics. Over his Academy hung the sign: "Do not enter unless you know geometry."
He was as contemptuous as Socrates of those who did not reflect on their lives. He said, "The wise man is to the ignorant as the living is to the dead."
His critical contribution to philosophy was the Theory of Forms.
Forms can be thought of as supersensible realities (i.e. beyond the reaches of the physical senses) that exist in a wondrous realm outside space and time and represent the eternal verities. Only the eye of the mind could ever see these Forms. They are perfect, imperishable, incorruptible ideas that are eternal guarantors of what they represent. For example, the Form of Justice is perfect justice that contains not a trace or possibility of injustice.
According to Plato, the exercise of justice on earth is good or bad to the extent that it partakes of the eternal Form of Justice. If a judgement on earth fully reflected the Form of Justice then it would be perfect. There would be no possibility of a miscarriage of justice. Of course, in this fallible world, no judge could ever "tune in" perfectly the Form of Justice and deliver perfect verdicts. All judgements will contain an element of injustice. And judges who have no affinity with the Form of Justice will deliver nothing but injustice.
In a sense, each Form might be considered an aspect of God (although Plato did not make this analogy). If we took every idea in the mind of a perfect God and placed it on its own on a shining pedestal then it would be a Form. All of God's ideas would constitute all of the Forms, each one transcendentally perfect.
So, anyone seeking absolute truth, absolute certainty regarding all things, is, for Plato, someone who looks to the realm of Forms. These are the guarantors of perfection. They are beyond mere opinion and relativity. They are the antidote to skepticism and uncertainty.
Truth cannot be found in this world, only in the world of Forms. Every question is answered there. The more our minds are attuned to this world of Forms, the better we will be, the more knowledgeable, truthful and, indeed, Godlike.
The road to the realm of Forms is the "true path". The Holy Grail, so to speak, is that which puts us in touch with the realm of Forms. The Forms provide the sure ground on which we can build true knowledge; otherwise we would be floundering amongst relativism and mere opinion. All true knowledge is found in the realm of the Forms. It is found nowhere else.
In Plato's realm of Forms you will find perfect versions of entities that are ever only imperfect approximations in the world of our experience. For example, a perfect circle exists as a Form, but no circle ever drawn in the physical world is perfect. Nor can a true straight line be drawn, or a flawless cube, or a sphere, or any geometric object.
A "real" circle exists in only one place and is distinct from all particular instances of it, which are always imperfect and changing, always "becoming". The real circle, on the other hand, in the realm of Forms, is no longer "becoming"; it is pure "being".
Every object that exists in the world is an imperfect copy of its perfect template in the realm of Forms. Everything is a simulacrum, an inferior copy. We live in a world of poor copies of perfection.
We cannot conceive of anything that is not represented by a Form. A separate Form corresponds to each and every idea and concept that we can ever have.
If someone saw a completely new breed of dog, how would they know it was a dog? Because it would immediately register in their mind as an instance of the Form of the Dog (and not of the Horse, for example). When we recognize anything, we are essentially classifying it as an instance of a Form. Until we can relate it to a Form, we would have no idea what it was.
In relation to the r >= 0 universe, Plato's realm of Forms would exist in the dimensionless aspect of the universe (r = 0). The physical aspect (r > 0) of the universe would be where imperfect copies of the Forms come into being.
Plato's Forms are what Illuminists call monads (units of thought) that have reached their dialectical endpoint and cannot change any more. A circle, or any geometrical or mathematical entity, is something that reaches its dialectical conclusion rapidly.
Mathematics is embedded in the physical universe because every component of mathematics exists as a perfect Form in the r = 0 domain i.e. each number is perfect, and each geometrical shape. Every material object that comes into existence is in contact with the all-pervasive, omnipresent r = 0 domain, and "partakes" of the Forms i.e. is guided and shaped by them.
Panpsychism ("all mind") is the concept that everything is imbued with mind: rocks, trees, air, sand, grass, water. The r >= 0 framework is panpsychic because the r = 0 domain is omnipresent in the r > 0 domain. We can imagine the r > 0 physical domain being laid over an infinity of dimensionless points, all of which are interconnected by virtue of being outside space and time. So, we have time and space "sitting on" timelessness and spacelessness. The two domains can never be separated. The r = 0 domain is the quintessence or aether - it cannot be physically apprehended because it is not in the physical domain, yet it pervades the physical domain. Mind permeates matter. It is impossible to visualise the precise relationship because how can something that is outside the physical dimensions of our everyday experience be physically perceived? Our physical eyes could never help us, but our "mind's eye" can because it too is outside the physical domain.
It cannot be emphasized enough that our physical body is located in the physical world (r >0), and our mind in the non-physical mental domain (r =0), and that the dream-state, when we suppress our physical senses through sleep, gives us our closest experience of the r = 0 domain. In dreams, there is no "hard" time i.e. no stopwatch can monitor the passing of time because time has no rules in dreams. Equally, there is no "hard" space i.e. no instrument can measure distance because distance has no rules in dreams. In your dream, you could be sitting in your kitchen one moment and then be struggling through a jungle in the next and then falling off a cliff or flying through space: temporal and spatial relations have disintegrated. They do not bind you.
The ancients thought that dreams demonstrated that there was a domain "beyond" this one. They were right: it's the r = 0 domain.
Plato's position is a combination of the Principle of Being (Parmenides) and the Principle of Becoming (Heraclitus). Reality is divided into two domains: the realm of Forms and the realm of Sensible Things (things that can be perceived by the physical senses). The realm of Forms is Changeless. It is eternal Being. Here, according to Plato, we find the imperishable Forms that guarantee absolute truth and knowledge forever. The realm of Sensible Things, on the other hand, is ever-changing. It is eternal Becoming. This is the domain of a kaleidoscope of sensations, of constant activity and movement. There is no true knowledge to be found in this inconstant world that is forever slipping through our grasp. We can never pin it down. Here, mere belief reigns rather than knowledge. Nothing can ever be proved. Nothing can be relied upon. Nothing is sure and firm.
These two domains constitute the Whole of Reality, and it can be seen that Plato's scheme bears a striking resemblance to the r = 0 and r > 0 domains of the r >= 0 universe. However, there is one critical difference. Both frameworks, Plato's and that of the Illuminati, agree that the realm of Sensible Things (r > 0) is governed by Heraclitus's Principle of Becoming. However, whereas Plato states that the realm of Forms is governed by Parmenides' Principle of Being, the Illuminati's r = 0 domain is also Heraclitean in nature and is governed by the Dialectical Principle of Becoming. The key point to emphasize is that everything in r = 0 is evolving dialectically, but some things come to a dialectical end-point sooner than others. The consequence is that things that have reached their dialectical conclusion cannot change any further and hence are now eternally fixed i.e. they have become Parmenidean and are now pure Being. But all those things that have not reached their dialectical conclusion are still "becoming". Humanity is still becoming.
Becoming is primary. Being is a secondary quality that arises when a process of becoming reaches a logical endpoint and no further change is possible. Heraclitus trumps Parmenides.
True knowledge, in Plato's system, is knowledge of Forms. Metaphysics is the study of Forms whereas physics (science) is the study of sensible objects. In relation to Illumination, metaphysics focuses on the r = 0 domain and physics (science) on the r > 0 domain. Metaphysics is what exists beyond the "reality" explored by science.
It is our minds and not our physical senses that lead us to the truth. Our senses come into no contact at all with the realm of Forms. Our senses are locked into r > 0. R = 0 is the province of our minds.
The most complete set of Forms is that of mathematics. Mathematics, the "Queen of the sciences", is literally inscribed in the entire physical universe (which is why science is able to make sense of it).
Plato's vision of perfect Forms in a realm beyond the cosmos has a staggering grandeur and power that has captivated many an imagination. It became the basis of the Catholic conception of heaven. For Plato, the mind - reason - is the pilot that will lead our soul to the transcendental realm of Forms.
He contended that one Form stood above all others, at the apex of a pyramid of Forms. He called this highest Form the "Good" and it was the supreme guiding principle for the whole of reality. If we remove one "o" from Good we get God, and that's essentially what Christianity did, prompting Nietzsche to scornfully remark, "Christianity is Platonism for the masses."
The highest Form, for Christians, is God, and the realm of Forms is Heaven: eternal, unchanging, imperishable and beyond the physical world of the senses. It is to here that a good soul travels upon death. Christians normally refer to Heaven as being in "another dimension", but they really mean that it is in no dimension at all: it is in the dimensionless r = 0 domain.
Plato agreed with the Pythagorean doctrine of reincarnation. Only when a soul achieved gnosis - which for Plato was complete understanding of the Forms - would it be liberated from physical existence and travel permanently to the realm of Forms where it would eternally contemplate the most beautiful, noble and inspiring Form of all: the Good.
Christianity hijacked this concept. St Augustine preached that the Summum Bonum - the highest good - involved souls eternally contemplating the limitless glory of God, bathing forever in the divine light. This was the so-called Beatific Vision. The souls would literally be seeing God and be immersed in happiness and blessedness. The saints would get closer to God and enjoy a better view and more intimate contact with the divine presence.
But note that this "heaven" is essentially a place of intellectual and spiritual contemplation. It is a paradise for philosophers, monks, introverts and the introspective, and perhaps not such a good place for shallow, materialistic action-seeking extraverts.
Plato's statements regarding God and gods are somewhat confused. Sometimes he seems to support the polytheistic conception of Greek gods that were popular amongst the ordinary people; at other times he moves towards a monotheistic stance. At other times he emphasizes the "Good" - an abstraction of perfection rather than a personalized God of perfection.
He even talks of a "Demiurge" in a manner reminiscent of a conventional monotheistic God. Whereas in Gnosticism the Demiurge is invariably an evil deity with malign intent, for Plato he was the divine craftsman, the celestial architect, and was wholly benign.
In the Timaeus, Plato talks of the beginning of the universe. He characterizes the material of the physical universe as being unformed, chaotic, in flux, all potential rather than actuality, cosmic clay waiting to be moulded.
The Demiurge took this matter and, with his mind firmly fixed on the perfect Forms, he shaped the unformed matter and fashioned copies of the Forms, albeit imperfectly because of the flawed nature of matter from which perfection can never be attained. In particular, he created the four elements: Earth, Fire, Air and Water.
The Demiurge created the physical cosmos - the "ordered Whole" and set it in motion, causing it to be guided by reason and harmony. The Demiurge's cosmos, for Plato, is rational and good.
Even so, the everyday world must be considered inferior; a shadow of the "real" world of the Forms. For Plato, the non-physical is real while the physical is always a degraded copy, a distortion. (This resembles the Gnostic teachings concerning the relationship of the world of matter to that of the realm of light.)
Plato's central doctrine - the Theory of Forms - is an impressive intellectual achievement. As we have shown, the r >= 0 universe can embrace much of Plato's framework, although there are important differences in the detail. And, in truth, many of his ideas were inspired by the knowledge he acquired while he was a junior member of the Illuminati, so the similarities are hardly surprising.
Aristotle
Aristotle, another of the greatest and most influential philosophers of all time, was Plato's cleverest student at the Academy. In medieval Europe, he was considered the most intelligent person who ever lived. Much of the course of Western thinking can be attributed to him. He set the rational, scientific and technological agenda that has dominated Western culture and made the West the most materially successful and richest part of the world. His influence also extends to politics, ethics, psychology, biology and even the theory of literature.
The Catholic Church based much of its core theology on Aristotle's philosophy (with Plato furnishing most of the remainder). It is for this reason that the Catholic religion is vastly more intellectually credible than Protestantism. Catholicism, whatever else might be said about it, is a serious and credible intellectual endeavour because of its roots in Greek philosophy. If the absurd figure of Yehoshua ben Yosef (Jesus the Christ) were removed from Catholicism, it would not be so far removed from Illuminism (which is essentially ancient Greek philosophy dialectically overlaid by German Enlightenment thinking).
Protestantism is Catholicism for Dummies. It stripped out the complex Greek philosophy and replaced it with the ludicrous assertion that the Bible rather than the Church was the sole source of truth. According to Protestantism, if scripture doesn't support something then it's false. For Protestants, the three Jewish influences - Yahweh, Moses and Yehoshua ben Yosef - replaced the pagan philosophers Plato and Aristotle. Protestants, rather than struggling with the complexities of philosophy, could now simply hold up a Bible and quote whatever they liked from it to justify their stance. Catholicism held that only trained intellectuals - the priesthood - could really understand Catholicism. Protestantism says that anyone who can pick up a Bible is as well qualified to talk about religion as anyone else. Islam, another remarkably stupid religion, is very similar to Protestantism in this regard. All you need to do is buy a Koran and you can be an expert in Islam. Like most Protestant sects, Muslims have no need of bishops and archbishops, and certainly not of cardinals and popes. It's because Protestantism has no hierarchy that there are so many Protestant sects. There is, however, only one Catholicism. It's because Islam has no hierarchy that radically different interpretations of Islam exist. Some Muslims are quite normal and reasonable; others are psychopaths who interpret the Koran as a Book of Murder.
Although Protestantism allowed many new thinkers to emerge, freed from the straitjacket of Catholic orthodoxy, and thus galvanised new intellectual approaches, in another sense Protestantism represented a deadly attack on intellectualism. Evangelical, "born again" Protestants are amongst the most dangerous and deranged people on earth. America is full of them, and because of the Jewish emphasis of Protestantism, these people are often highly supportive of Zionism. They understand and empathize with the Zionist mentality.
Evangelical Protestantism is offensive to all intelligent people. Evangelical Protestants are Creationists (because it says so in the Bible and the Bible can never be wrong because it's the infallible word of God) and completely reject Darwin's Theory of Evolution, even though it is one of the most well supported scientific theories of all. Evangelical Protestants are the Fundamentalist Christians who, along with the Fundamentalist Muslims and Fundamentalist Jews, represent the greatest possible danger to humanity's progress. Most of the Old World Order have evangelical Protestant backgrounds. Most of the highest ranks of Freemasonry have evangelical Protestant backgrounds. Most of the richest people on earth have evangelical Protestant and Zionist backgrounds. Evangelical Protestantism is an extreme threat to humanity. It represents the Dark Ages.
Evolution
Aristotle, at 41, was appointed tutor to the young Alexander the Great - an extraordinary coming together of the finest mind of the day with the boy who would become the greatest conqueror of his day.
Aristotle cultivated two types of writing: "exoteric" for public consumption and "esoteric" for the select few. (Sadly, all of Aristotle's exoteric writings have been lost.) Great thinkers of the Illuminati have traditionally used this same approach: producing certain writings that they have placed in the public domain (which have been made "acceptable" to the authorities of the day so as not to attract hostility and persecution) while committing their uncensored thinking, reflecting their true stance, to their esoteric writings, often exclusively available to the Illuminati.
Aristotle eventually rejected Plato's Theory of Forms. He didn't agree that there was a separate, eternal realm outwith physical reality. He might be said to be the first thinker to downplay r = 0 and emphasize instead r > 0, which is now the established orthodoxy of science.
Whereas Plato envisaged the Demiurge fashioning amorphous and characterless matter by using the "moulds" provided by the eternal Forms, Aristotle dispensed with the Demiurge and with the realm of Forms and instead made the Forms part of "Nature", part of the physical world. This can be thought of as transferring the Forms from r = 0 to r > 0. The combination of form and matter gives rise to what Aristotle defines as "substance". Substances are all the material objects that have form that we see all around us. When a sculptor takes a block of marble, he puts form into it and turns it into a sculpture. An acorn puts form into soil and water to create an oak tree. That's its nature. A fertilized human egg puts form into the food and drink consumed by a mother and creates a human baby. There is virtually no more astonishing fact in the universe than that crude, digested food and drink can be fashioned into human beings able to engage in maths, philosophy and art, to write plays and poems that can make audiences weep. Form applied to "junk" material can produce humans. Can it not also produce gods?
Substances, for Aristotle, are sure evidence of purpose or design. When the sculptor fashions a block of marble, he is externally applying form: he imposes form on matter from without. When an acorn produces an oak tree the form is internally applied: it imposes form on matter from within.
The oak tree is a product of teleology i.e. of purposeful action that had a specific end in mind. It was the acorn's purpose to create the oak tree. Nature is all about form, about form getting injected into matter. Matter is simply the "clay" that is moulded by form.
Before Darwin's Theory of Evolution by natural selection became scientific orthodoxy in the nineteenth century, Aristotle's teleological explanation of nature was the accepted paradigm. In Aristotle's framework, Darwinian evolution is impossible because there are no final purposes in Darwinism. Aristotle would not have accepted random mutations and natural selection i.e. form that evolved rather than form that was there right from the beginning. Aristotle said, "Nature does not act without a goal."
However, dialectical thinking asserts that Darwin and Aristotle are both wrong. If Aristotle's model is the thesis and Darwinism the antithesis then a synthesis is required. The probability of getting food and drink to randomly evolve into mathematicians, philosophers and artists is so overwhelmingly remote that it is extraordinary that it has ever been taken seriously. That's what exclusively r > 0 thinking leads to: accepting the impossible in order to allow the denial of any non-scientific forces. However, if Darwinian evolution by natural selection is combined with Aristotelian teleology i.e. the strictly random, purposeless nature of Darwinism is instead "guided" by a teleological r = 0 force that is striving to achieve greater complexity, and even consciousness, then a credible mechanism is created to account for how the miracle of humanity was accomplished...and how the even greater miracle of God is possible.
This teleological process wouldn't be amenable to scientific study because it would always be disguised by apparently random selection. Ultimately, it is statistics and metaphysics that will establish the truth. If it were possible to establish statistically that the odds against humanity evolving according to exclusively random Darwinian mechanisms were simply astronomical then science would have to look elsewhere. It would be compelled to turn to metaphysics and the r = 0 universe.
There is a phenomenon called the "vacuum catastrophe" where scientific theory and scientific measurements are in spectacular disagreement. The vacuum catastrophe concerns a disagreement of 107 orders of magnitude between experimental data and theoretical calculations concerning vacuum energy density. This discrepancy has been described as, "the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics!"
One day, scientists will establish that unmodified Darwinism is equally implausible. We are not asserting that Darwinism is wrong; rather that it is incomplete and in need of the addition of a teleological element.
Aristotle's Supreme Being
For Aristotle, the Supreme Being is the maximum expression of reason, indeed is Reason itself, and spends eternity contemplating its own nature i.e. it is pure thought thinking about thought. The Supreme Being is the Unmoved Mover, the Uncaused Cause, the summit of the hierarchy of existence. It changes others but is not changed itself. The Supreme Being is the maximum actualisation of existence.
One spark of the Supreme Being manifests itself in humanity - our reason. When we engage in rational thought, especially philosophy, we are being as godlike as we can be. When we philosophise we are, in a sense, entering into union with God. Our minds are intersecting with his.
Aristotle contended that everything consists of varying degrees of actuality and potentiality. Form actualises the potential of matter. Form determines and matter is determined. An ascending scale of existence can be established. At the very bottom is pure matter: imperfect, shapeless, undetermined, pure potentiality and no actualisation. As the degree of form increases, we get more and more actualisation of potential. A tree is more actualised than a weed. A human is vastly more actualised than a rat. We keep ascending until we reach the Supreme Being who contains no potentiality at all. He is fully actual, fully formed, the absolute opposite of formless matter. He is complete, perfect form, without a trace of matter.
Everything exists on the continuum of potentiality and actuality. Everything is a mix of the two ingredients. The more actualised something is, the closer it is to God. The aim of any human being is to achieve maximum actualisation of his potential.
Aristotle's scheme resembles the central thesis of Illuminism: that the universe evolves teleologically from its simplest state to its most complex, from maximum potential to maximum actualisation, from utter formlessness to perfect form, from matter to God. In Aristotle's scheme it is the pre-existing Supreme Being who is drawing the universe upwards towards him: in Illuminism, the universe becomes the Supreme Being (who did not previously exist).
To ascend this scale towards its apex is the purpose of the universe, its intrinsic teleological aim. If ascending this scale is not forbidden then it is compulsory. If it can happen, it will. God, the Supreme Being, the maximum actualisation of the universe, is inevitable. The universe, of necessity, dialectically evolves towards the greatest perfection of which it is capable. That evolutionary process may often seem blind, purposeless and random, in accordance with Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, but this is an incomplete, naïve and simplistic view, fuelled by the r > 0 scientific orthodoxy that refuses to contemplate that there is anything beyond r > 0. Darwinism - a grim, reductive, dehumanising theory - is all that remains when the r = 0 domain is denied. Why do scientists have no dreams in their heart, no songs in their soul, no poetry that raises their eyes to the glittering stars?
The current ruling scientific paradigm is sterile, hopeless, unimaginative and uninspiring. Anything that does not fit its narrow confines is dismissed out of hand. Yet it has plainly failed when it comes to ultimate explanations of our lives. Quantum theory and General Relativity cannot be reconciled, showing that the scientific model contains a fundamental conceptual flaw. Darwinism cannot explain the mind or how life can possibly come from lifelessness. Illumination, on the other hand, addresses all of these in a rigorous scientific and metaphysical way. It provides the basis for a complete description of all phenomena. It brings religion, philosophy, science and art into harmony.
It's time scientists woke up. Richard Dawkins will never lead humanity forward with his depressing and reductive ideology. Dawkins' "philosophy" has no pulse. It's as dead as the dead atoms it's based on. It's sad that such an intelligent man should have made himself so blind to the higher purpose of the universe.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, the leading theologian of Catholicism, and a convinced Aristotelian, said, "A great chain of being stretches down from God, through angels and then humans, animals, plants and all material elements." He considered that the human intellect was drawn up this chain, this hierarchy, to achieve the ultimate objective: the direct contemplation of God himself.
Dante's Divine Comedy involves a journey downwards into the lowest circle of hell, followed by an upwards ascent through Purgatory and then all the celestial levels (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Sphere of the Fixed Stars (the Zodiac), the Crystalline Sphere of the Primum Mobile) until finally the Empyrean, the very home of God, paradise itself, is reached. The Empyrean, beyond space and time, is clearly related, as far as Illuminism is concerned, with r = 0.
Gnosticism has a similar concept of progressive emanations from a Supreme Being. The further the emanation is from God, the more base and corrupt it becomes, the less illuminated by the divine light. Conversely, the closer the emanation is to God, the more illuminated it is.
The Enigma of Universals
Aristotle asserted that there "is nothing in our intellect that was not first in the senses". Objects in the world impress themselves on our senses, just as a ring seal leaves an impression on soft wax. Our brains interpret these impressions and then our reason goes to work on them. The impressions are "potentially intelligible" but then have to be processed by the mind to make them "actually intelligible". We see a particular dog and we are able to extract the form "dog". We are able to see another breed of dog that we have never seen before and still recognise it as a dog. How are we able to do that? It's because we have abstracted the form of the dog and turned it into a "universal" - a general concept with which we can classify all instances of dogs, all particular dogs. Such universals, for Illuminism, exist in the r = 0 domain. A long-standing debate in philosophy is whether universals have real existence or are just names. For example, would the Form "dog" exist independently of any particular dogs? If dogs became extinct, would the Form "dog" have any reality? Illuminism supports universals; they are intrinsic to the r = 0 domain and to the teleology advocated by Illuminism. All dogs do indeed partake of the Form "dog" and even if they all died, the Form would remain, just as the Form "unicorn" exists even though there have never been any physical instances of unicorns. If one miraculously appeared, we would have no difficulty recognising it.
Aristotle regarded the human body as matter and the soul as form. The soul shaped the body and animated it with the life force. In terms of human babies, Aristotle thought that women provided the matter for the babies, and men the form.
Aristotle contended that there must be first principles - primary propositions - from which everything else is derived. These primary propositions drive the universe. They themselves can have no cause because there is nothing more basic which could cause them. These primary principles are logically inevitable. They cannot be otherwise. They are the fundamental, unalterable facts of existence. There is nothing beyond or above them by reference to which they can be explained.
In relation to Illuminism, the primary principles are these:
1) Energy (dimensionless and dimensional) is the fundamental substance of the universe.
2) Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only transformed.
3) Energy was, is and always will be.
4) Energy is uncaused.
5) The universe of energy has no beginning and no end: it is not created.
6) There is an infinite amount of energy.
7) The dimensional r > 0 universe is infinitely large.
8) The dimensionless r = 0 domain has infinite capacity to store information.
9) The energy of the r > 0 universe is the energy studied by science.
10) The energy of the r = 0 domain is the energy of the mind (aether).
11) The r > 0 domain is "dead", without "mind".
12) The r = 0 domain is "alive", with "mind".
13) The r = 0 and r > 0 domains form a continuum r >= 0.
14) The r = 0 and r > 0 domains interact dialectically.
15) This cosmic dialectic drives the universe inexorably towards the Whole, the Absolute, Total Synthesis, the maximum expression of the potential of the universe, its maximum actualisation.
16) This dialectical end-point, the Omega Point, is Abraxas, the True God, the Supreme Being: the Conscious Universe, the Cosmic Soul, Absolute Mind, Absolute Spirit, Absolute Idea, Absolute Form, Absolute Knowledge, Absolute Freedom.
17) The scientific paradigm that excludes the r = 0 domain is incapable of accounting for how lifeless atoms can be assembled into life, how they can generate mind and consciousness.
18) The r = 0 domain, being outside space and time, is everywhere and nowhere. All r > 0 entities originate in r = 0 dimensionless points. All r > 0 entities, although technically lifeless and mindless, are therefore linked to an r = 0 component which imbues them with the potential for life and mind.
19) Life and mind will manifest themselves meaningfully in the r > 0 universe only where the "brute force" of physical energy can be controlled by mental energy.
20) There will be a continuum extending from apparent lifelessness and mindlessness to rudimentary life and mind (plants) to primitive life and mind (animals) to sophisticated life and mind (humans) to, ultimately, maximum life and mind (God).
21) The r = 0 domain will ultimately fully control the r > 0 universe.
How would the universe know it was getting closer to actualisation? It feels it, exactly as we do when we feel we are achieving our purpose, when we feel fulfilled, when we are with those we want to be with and accomplishing what we wish to accomplish. It knows it is not getting closer when it feels distress, pain, discomfort, when it feels bad and negative. "Feeling" is how we judge success. Everything "feels", although what a rock "feels" is not of particular interest since it is so primitive.
Stoicism
Stoicism was a later Greek philosophy heavily influenced by Aristotle. It divides the universe into passive matter and active Universal Reason (the Logos) - intelligent aether - which acts on matter. The universe can therefore be considered a thinking, reasoning entity. The Stoics regarded the Logos (aether) as a universal soul that animated the universe as a human soul animates a human body. The divine principle flows through everything, making the universe alive. (This is reminiscent of the Illuminist doctrine that the r = 0 domain is the universe's mind and the r > 0 domain its body.) Everything that happened in the universe was, the Stoics believed, due to Divine Providence, hence served a higher purpose that the human mind might not easily discern. Nevertheless, whatever happened was for the best. This philosophy allowed Stoics to endure great suffering and torment with little complaint, and they became renowned for their courage, dignity and acceptance in the face of adversity, hence why we say that someone reacted "stoically" to bad news.
Marx said that Stoicism was the form in which "Greece migrated to Rome." Stoicism was indeed a philosophy well suited to the Roman temperament.
The Roman Empire, it must be said, produced virtually no new philosophical thinking. America, today's Roman Empire, is equally bereft of fresh philosophical ideas. America's energies are invariably turned towards how to make money, how to get higher status, how to extend its power across the globe. The dumb religion of evangelical Protestantism is well suited to capitalist, materialist, consumerist, celebrity-obsessed America. "I believe in the American Dream" is a natural counterpart of "I believe in Jesus Christ." Only when the Old World Order is destroyed will Americans' minds be liberated.
Religion
Illumination teaches that the universe exists in two aspects: a physical world of dimensions embedded in time and space (r > 0) where everything is individuated, and a dimensionless mental domain outside time and space where everything is interconnected (r = 0). The two aspects are forever in touch with each other. It might be said that a layer of time and space sits over a layer of timelessness and spacelessness, that a domain of individuation is superimposed on a domain of interconnectedness, or that time and space (the domain of "locality") is permeated by timelessness and spacelessness (the domain of "non-locality"). All of this is encapsulated by r >= 0, which defines the deep mystery of existence.
Humanity's predicament lies in the fact that we are embedded in time and space, which we can study (with great success up to a point), scientifically, and also embedded in a mental arena which is not amenable to any straightforward study and has to be apprehended logically, rationally, metaphysically and even mystically. Yet logic and reason can easily lead us astray because they too get sucked into the time and space domain of our everyday experience. We have to transcend the domain of appearances - phenomena - and get in touch with the noumenal domain. This latter domain is not unknowable as Kant claimed. Instead, it is fully knowable as Hegel asserted, but such knowledge is fantastically difficult to attain because we must transcend one domain (r > 0) in which our normal experiences are located and enter another (r = 0) for which the other domain not only does not prepare us, but actively sabotages our efforts because it is so different from the other.
What is the difference between science and gnosis, two words that mean "knowledge"? Science is knowledge of the r > 0 dimensional domain. Gnosis is knowledge of the full r >= 0 universe. It goes beyond scientific knowledge. Gnosis transcends the boundaries of space and time, rendering it somewhat mystical and esoteric. That cannot be avoided. That is the nature of existence. Science can take us so far and no further. Only gnosis leads us into the Unknown Country and opens our eyes to the totality of existence. We can use science as a platform for knowledge and then we must climb up further using our reason, logic, intuition, imagination, creativity and spirituality. When gnosis is attained, everything seems so obvious, so easy, so simple. But getting to that point is the great quest of humanity.
Descartes taught the dualist doctrine that the universe is made up of two types of substance: mind and body. Spinoza disputed this and asserted that there was only a single substance - God - which constituted everything. God, said Spinoza, is infinite and has an infinite number of aspects or modes of being. We know two of these: mind and matter. Spinoza's position is reminiscent of Stoicism. If everything is God then everything is divinely mandated and for the best, no matter how appearances might suggest otherwise.
Spinoza's position comes quite close to Illumination. There is only one substance - energy - which exists in two aspects (dimensionless and dimensional - mind and matter). Dimensionless energy (aether) is the basis of mind and permeates the dimensional energy studied by science. Mind can evolve dialectically until it becomes Absolute Mind - God. At this point, the universe resembles that of Spinoza's philosophy: God (the totality of r >= 0) manifesting in two interconnected aspects (r > 0) and (r = 0).
Quantum physics provided the first scientific evidence of how r = 0 shapes r > 0. The quantum world can only be understood by invoking non-locality and this is exactly what r = 0 uniquely provides.
Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics described how quantum physics points to many parallels with the ancient teachings of Eastern philosophy which emphasizes that everything in the Universe is interconnected, no parts are truly independent, and human consciousness is embedded in the Universe.
Eastern mystics have sought to reach transcendental states through the use of deep meditation where, they claim, they mentally experience the interconnected Whole that constitutes reality. They achieve this by freeing themselves of the prisons of language, of dimensional thinking, of everything that binds them to the everyday world. In effect they are seeking gnosis. They are trying to climb above r > 0 and reach r = 0.
Eastern thinking is therefore highly compatible with Illumination.
In Taoism, the concept of Tao signifies the fundamental, true nature of reality. All the phenomena in the world are labelled "the named" and are said to be manifestations of Tao, operating within the boundaries set by Tao. Tao itself is labelled "the nameless" because its full nature can never be adequately expressed in words. This is remarkably similar to the teachings of Illumination where the r > 0 domain can be "named" in a scientific sense while the r = 0 domain is nameless in that same sense i.e. cannot be defined through the dimensional principles of science.
Despite the difficulties, Taoism insists that Tao can be known and its principles followed in a life of virtue. Similarly, Illumination teaches that the r = 0 domain can be known through gnosis.
Taoism is also heavily dialectical, emphasizing, as it does, the polar opposite forces of yin and yang which are nevertheless interconnected and interdependent, and give rise to each other in turn. Every action creates an equal and opposite reaction as a natural, unavoidable expression of the Tao.
T'ai-chi T'u meaning "Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate" is the Chinese symbol chosen to represent Yin and Yang:
Like the Monad, it is astonishingly simple and beautiful, and manages to convey so much. We see Yin and Yang eternally bound together, and with each component having the seed of the other component within it. This is exactly the nature of the dialectic. What the symbol does not adequately express is the aspect of synthesis, raising the opposites to a higher level with each synthesis. Perhaps a double helix winding upwards to an ever-narrowing point might provide the best representation, with the apex marking the Omega Point - God.
The double helix describes, of course, the structure of the fundamental molecule of humanity - DNA. Does it raise us up to God?
Conclusion
We have illustrated how the r => 0 paradigm is as old as ancient Greece. It shows Illumination's power that it has never become outdated (as Judaism, Christianity and Islam most certainly have). Illuminism is a religion of becoming. It is dialectical. It grows, develops and evolves as humanity grows, develops and evolves. It is never stuck in the past or frozen in time. It requires no fanatical beliefs. It has no sacred scriptures that must be unquestioningly obeyed. It has revered thinkers but no holy prophets. It is a thinking religion for thinking people, a religion of knowledge rather than of faith. No one has to go to church or pray. No one controls anyone else. No one demands anything of anyone else. No one bows or kneels. No one pays tithes. There is no formal priesthood. It is nothing like other religions.
The world, if it were to embrace Illumination, would be transformed overnight. Isn't it time for a new way of doing things? Isn't it time for a new world? Haven't we waited long enough?
