When we try to understand what the
universe and people really are, we come
up against a stumbling block. We can understand that we and the world around us
are physically made of particles, but the fundamental nature of these building blocks
still eludes us. What is a particle really? What is a thought, and how is it
connected to the matter making up our bodies? We can certainly find
correspondences with thoughts to certain parts of our brain, but they might be
no more than impressions that the mind, which we cannot really understand,
exerts on the body. I’ve recently been reading a book that addresses some of these
issues, and that’s what I’ll quote from today. It’s quite an ambitious book: the
author says in the preface that the goal of his work is to “harmonize the revelation of the Spirit and the faith
of the Christ with science,” and that
if he succeeds in this task, he shall “reveal the mystery of all religion, the
key to all scientific knowledge, and shall unveil the mystery of life and the means
by which men may conquer death and thus be saved and become saviors of the
people from the cause of their suffering and death.” (!) That’s probably the
most ambitious goal of a book I’ve ever read, but even if it falls short of its
goal, which I’m nearly certain it will, it’s still an illuminating book that’s
worth reading!From H.E. Butler’s The Goal of Life, or Science and Revelation (1908):
“If…all is mind and all is the product of the Creative Word, then we are compelled to recognize in all these activities of the universe the functioning of mind."
Whatever force or god created the universe, there was at one point in time a beginning, and, in the quote above, it is expressed as the ‘Creative Word.’ Butler also says that “the will being simply a force acting in obedience to the thought, and thought being form and order, then, to the end that there may be order in any form, there must be a mind to direct the force, for in all nature’s activity order is the direct manifestation of the mind.” Such a center of activity, called a “mind-center|, contains a will, a center from which action and organization emerges in the world around it. This is a kind of force comparable to the physical force of, say, gravity, except to control it involves a highly developed mind that can understand itself and the thoughts and wills around it. Of course, as humans we cannot simply change things by willing it (not usually, at least), but higher beings may be able to connect to the world directly with their minds and could be certainly be these “mind-centers” from which real change can occur. From here, it isn’t a huge step to extrapolate to see that God can be thought of as a mind-center as well, the mind-center from which such lesser mind-centers originated.
Butler says that this is the origin of the phrase in the Bible that “God created man in his own image.” If, then, God created the universe and we are his image, then everything is a kind of “mind-element” of God. So, to a lesser degree, we as mind-centers can also create “universes,” as could other intelligent beings on other worlds. Butler also says that “the bodies of these humanities are mind-centers brought into manifestation by their controlling center which holds in unity all its worlds, controls every action and keeps them ever revolving through space around itself, their governing center.” So we have something like a fractal: we are mind-centers who were created by a greater mind center (the “controlling center” in the quote above), and after a sufficient period of evolution, we too may be able to create a lower level of mind-centers. And going the other way, the god that created us might just be one of many mind-centers created by a higher god, and so on. Indeed, Butler talks about the Elohim, who are enlightened individuals who have attained union with God and who created our world and possibly others. He talks a lot about the existence of other worlds, and looks at the possibility that other planets in the universe harbor life. Regarding the Elohim, he says that “they have reached heights of attainment so far beyond the possibility of our conception that they have become the Creators, Preservers and Rulers, not of this earth alone, but probably of the whole solar system.”
By turning our “thought and aspiration” toward what is above us and to be “able to give free expression to the life that animates” them, we can truly become an image of the Elohim, to possess true free will to be able to recreate not just ourselves but the world around us. For “the life of man is the same life—on a lower plane—as that which animates Yahveh Elohim [this is the Elohim].” There is the microcosm and the macrocosm: our personal world around us as well as the universe of which we are a part. Ultimately, they reflect each other: the same laws of the universe and the structures within it exist on all levels. Although the book is primarily philosophical and religious, we can see this in science as well: in quantum mechanics, the physics of the very tiny atoms that make up all matter and energy, experiments have shown that we can influence matter with our thoughts, and although at this stage it is in a very primitive sense, such as influencing the outcome on a random number generator to give higher or lower results, or having patterns in water reflect our emotions, it is the first step in evolving to be more like creators of our world rather than just inhabitants within it.
Once
people reach a sufficient state of knowing,
of understanding the laws of the universe, both those that govern the physical and
spiritual worlds, they may be able to transcend these laws. If we understand
how something works, our species can eventually evolve to go beyond it. This is
the same as when you learn anything: you master a certain level in, say, a video
game, then you can go to the next one where entirely new opportunities arise
that you couldn’t have imagined while on the previous level. This is reminiscent
of the cycle of worlds in esoteric Buddhism (I talked about it in a previous post), and also in Butler’s book, there is specific mention of “higher planets”
and “the elder worlds” that have already evolved to this higher state and are
untraceable to us now. For if they are so advanced and spiritual, they could be
beyond the physical senses we possess, i.e. “There may be worlds that have become so spiritualized as to be beyond
the perception of worlds upon lower planes of existence.
So returning to the quote, every law, every
world, in the universe is an expression of the thoughts of a higher being:
possibly the highest God or a less powerful god who created this universe rather
than all of existence. And if all things, including us as well as matter, are
all thoughts, then we are all connected in this web, something of a cosmic mind
that exists at a higher level of reality. Whether any of this is true probably can’t
be determined until we take further steps along our evolution not only as human
beings, but spiritual beings living in a universe that we can come to understand
and ultimately control. But eventually, I think it is very likely that we
shall.Tweet
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