LET THERE BE LIGHT

REFLECTIONS OF LIGHT ON THE JOURNEY

Edward R. Close

In the early evening of September 17, 1960, I made my way up the steep winding switchbacks of Mount Washington Drive, just north of downtown Los Angeles, much as I had many times before. Approaching the summit of this outlier of the Hollywood Hills, I turned right onto San Rafael Avenue just below the southwest corner of the beautiful, well-tended grounds of the International Headquarters of Self-Realization Fellowship. I was on my way there that particular evening for my initiation into the practice of Kriya Yoga. I found a place to park, and as I walked through the entrance gate of the SRF grounds and along the driveway beside the print shop toward the main building, I breathed in the subtle aroma of gardenias that were blooming somewhere nearby. I stopped and took a deep breath of the sweet fragrance. When I exhaled and relaxed, I felt the deep peace that pervades these hallowed grounds where saints have trod, filling my soul.

 

Kriya Yoga is an ancient scientific method designed to speed up the natural expansion of individualized consciousness and help wandering lost souls to reunite with the eternal reality of the Infinite Source. The gradual reuniting of your soul with the Infinite is accelerated when you choose to consciously focus on the life-sustaining energies that operate involuntarily in the respiratory and circulatory systems of your body. The practice of Kriya synchronizes these energies with the opposing energies flowing in the spine, and the outward flow of energy is slowed to the point of suspension, allowing the spiritual Light of Primary Consciousness to become directly perceptible in the spiritual eye. Over the past 64 years, I’ve found that the daily practice of the Kriya techniques that I began to learn that evening so long ago, have proved to be very practical, producing positive results that have greatly improved the quality of my life.

 

The initiation was being conducted that autumn evening by Sri Dayamata, a direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda, who was the last of a revered lineage of Spiritual teachers originating in India. At the time of my initiation, Daya-ma, as we affectionately called her, had been President of SRF for five years, and I was living in Topanga Canyon, northwest of LA. I had been allowed to attend evening meditations with the monks on Mount Washington while I was studying a series of lessons that were written by Yogananda just before he entered Maha Samadhi, his final conscious exit from the physical world in 1952. Because I had been allowed to meditate and study with some of the most advanced kriya yogis alive at that time, I was able to finish the one-year preparatory course in just four months. I had passed the final exam, and I was prepared to be initiated that evening.

 

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what an honor it was to be accepted and initiated into this advanced spiritual practice by Sri Dayamata, the way I was. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that I had been involved in the effort to bring the science of Kriya Yoga into the modern world for a long time, especially during one of my previous lives in India and Tibet. There were indications of the importance of this initiation for me, and some of the other events in my life, That were accompanied by phenomenal bursts of spiritual light. The light I am talking about is not just the electromagnetic vibrations that enable us to see with our physical eyes, it is the total brilliance of the fundamental essence of light that emanates from the spiritual domain.

 

At one point in the ceremony, very suddenly, a fiery three-dimensional ball of light appeared, spinning only a few inches in front of my forehead, and I could see it with my eyes open or closed! I had never seen anything like this before, and I have not seen anything quite like it since. I accepted it as validation that this was the right spiritual path for me, but I didn’t know what it actually was. About ten years later, I described the initiation light that I experienced to one of the monks who was a direct disciple of Yogananda, and asked him what he thought it was, and why had it appeared to me? He said he thought it was an unusual blessing given to me by God through Dayamata, and that because I was a scientist, she knew that even a glimpse of the light emanating from the crown chakra would encourage me to embark on a study the spiritual eye and the source of spiritual light. Of course, she was right!

 

As I look back on my life of nearly ninety years now, I realize that the unusual spiritual light phenomena that I saw during many of the most important events of my life, including the spinning ball of light that I saw during my Kriya initiation, were glimpses of a much greater reality, perceived through the functioning of the spiritual eye, a feature of human consciousness sometimes called the “third eye”. Details about what the “third eye” is and how it functions is beyond the scope of this discussion, and I am constrained from discussing the details of the kriya initiation and the techniques taught by the SRF lineage of spiritual masters by policies that I agreed to long ago. It is still necessary to keep these policies in place to safeguard against the ego-based misuse of the consciousness-altering techniques of kriya. But I want to touch upon the nature of the eternal light of spirit and attempt to explain how it relates to physical light, the expansion of consciousness, and the all-important evolution of the human soul.

 

Individual realization of the true nature of reality is called enlightenment for a reason: The fabric of reality is light. Ultimate enlightenment is the realization that we are eternal beings of light, capable of expanding and contracting our bubbles of consciousness from one quantum to infinity. But when we choose to identify ourselves with physical bodies to experience physical pleasure and pain, we limit our growth and awareness to the space-time domain existing where the finite, quantized reality of the physical universe and the infinitely continuous multi-dimensional domain of spirit meet. Individual consciousness, as we know it, is a direct result of this intimate contact of the finite with the infinite. It is as if we have our feet planted in two different boats, each moving on the waters of existence at different rates of speed, in different directions. Unless we realize that we are beings of light, capable of expanding beyond space and time, then, at critical junctures, we must endure great pain and suffering as we are forced to choose just one of one of the two boats.

 

That evening in the autumn of 1960, I saw the pure light emanating from the multi-dimensional domain of Spirit for the first time in this life, and it certainly encouraged me to get to work on expanding my consciousness. And I have since come to realize that the narrow band of electromagnetic energy that we perceive shining through the limited space and time of the physical world, is only a faint reflection of the awesomely beautiful spiritual light that illuminates the spiritual domain of the soul.

 

Every life in the physical world provides us with opportunities to learn and grow spiritually, i.e., to become more and more enlightened. So, in case someone might be interested, I will attempt to summarize what I have learned as a result of using the kriya consciousness expanding techniques for 64 years, starting with some astoundingly profound truths. But first, I must clarify what makes a truth profound, as opposed to a less important, trivial truth. Danish physicist Niels Bohr explained this distinction when he said: “The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false, while the opposite of a profound truth is also true.” You may find this statement somewhat confusing, but it provides a way to distinguish between a profound truth and a trivial truth. Here are some important examples:

 

1.   There is no such thing as nothing.  This is a profound truth arising from the fact that there is something real that does exist. The undeniable truth that ‘something exists’ implies that the exact opposite statement, i.e.: ‘nothing does not exist’ is also true.

 

2.   A state of absolute nothingness never existed and will never exist. Profound truth #1 and its opposite, coupled with the law of conservation of mass and energy, verified by every scientific experiment ever performed, allows us to definitively answer the question that the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz called the first and most important question that science should ask: Why is there something rather than nothing? The profound truth that a state in which something presently exists, coupled with the universal law of the conservation of matter and energy implies that ‘a state of nothingness’ can never have existed, cannot exist now, and will never exist in the future. Thus, the popular big bang theory of the origin of the universe as an explosion of something from nothing, is pure science fiction. Something has always existed.

 

3.   Reality is the sum total of everything that has ever existed, exists now, and will ever exist. This profound truth is implied by profound truth #2 with the realization that space-time has no existence of its own.

 

These three profound truths verify Planck’s breakthrough realization that he described with the following statements: “There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind, and this mind is the matrix of all matter.” As we shall see, Planck’s realization leads to a picture of reality very different from the materialistic belief of mainstream science.

 

It’s very important to note that Albert Einstein agreed with his good friend and colleague, Max Planck. Einstein said: “Concerning matter, we've been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. Matter is spirit reduced to a point of visibility; there is no matter.”

 

Einstein added to Planck’s enlightenment regarding the fundamental variables of physics by pointing out that proof of general relativity implies that the assumption that space is a uniformly existing background, in which all things exist, was also wrong. In June 1952, less than three years before his death in April 1855, in a special appendix to his popular book titled Relativity, the Special and the general Theory, a Clear Explanation that Anyone Can Understand, He made this point, stating that “Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way, the concept of ‘empty space’ loses its meaning, and space can claim no existence of its own.”

 

From 1981 until 1986, while living and working in the Middle East, I had time between jobs to do some serious thinking about what these bombshell statements made by Planck and Einstein really meant. I reasoned that if the common assumptions about the most basic variables of our scientific model of physical reality, i.e., matter, energy, space, and time, that seemed so obvious were wrong, then our model of the nature of reality, being based on those assumptions was also wrong.

 

If Planck and Einstein were right, the concept of matter measured in units of mass mathematically equivalent to a huge number of units of energy determined by the equation E = mc², with the concept of energy measured in units defined by the amount of force required to move the mass of an electron through a unit of space in a unit of time, and all four variables are dependent upon the “existence of a conscious and intelligent mind”, then a new calculus, a new mathematical logic that includes a unitary measure of consciousness was needed. So, I began working to adapt G. Spencer Brown’s primary calculus of mathematical logic, as defined in his book Laws of Form, for application to, and analysis of the interface of consciousness with relativistic, quantized physical reality. No small task.

 

I realized that to create an internally consistent quantum calculus designed to deal with the infinite continuity of mind interacting with the finite quantized nature of physical reality in a mathematically and logically consistent manner, I had to define a basic quantum equivalence unit for all of the fundamental units of measurement. To avoid the inconsistency of the basic unit of consciousness turning out to be mathematically incommensurable with the basic units of mass, energy, space, and time, the basic quantum equivalence unit had to be based on the mass or equivalent energy and the volume of the smallest sub-atomic entity, which happens to be the free electron. To emphasize the unit’s dimensionality, I called this basic unit of the calculus the triadic rotational unit of equivalence (TRUE).

 

At this point, an important question arises: What if mind and matter are intrinsically incommensurable? If so, consciousness can’t be quantized in any logically consistent way. The obvious way around this conundrum is: If physical reality reflects the logical structure of Primary Consciousness, it will be internally consistent only if the logic of Primary Consciousness is internally consistent. The fact that we exist in a complex, highly structured physical universe that appears to conform to a set of cause-and-effect laws that we are able to discover, and are in the process of discovering, suggests that the logical structure of Primary Consciousness is internally consistent. The bottom line is that the way forward is to assume that Primary Consciousness and its reflection in physical reality are logically consistent and proceed to define the most basic quantum equivalence unit by setting both the mass-energy equivalence and volume of the free electron to unity and see what happens. In other words, the proof is in the pudding!  

 

When I applied the electron-based quantum calculus to the analysis of the logical structure of the most stable object in the universe, the proton, the quantized measure of organization linking the conscious intelligent mind with physical reality emerged as the third form of the essence of reality with no intrinsic mass or energy. We, Dr. Vernon Neppe and I, chose to represent this new variable with Gimel, the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

 

Converting the total mass and energy of the proton to TRUE units of energy, we found that without the presence of a specific number of mass-less, energy-less units of Gimel contributing to the total volume and angular momentum of the proton, it would not be stable. Including the units of mass-less Gimel allowed us to calculate the exact mass and volume of the stable hydrogen atom in TRUE units. The addition of units of Gimel in subatomic structure also allowed us to calculate the exact mass and volume of the neutron and explain how and why neutrons are formed in the more complex atoms of the periodic table. The success of this preliminary application of the new calculus was encouraging.

 

We found that every stable atom contains the specific number of TRUE units of Gimel that are needed to make it geometrically symmetric and stable. We were not surprised to find that the elements and compounds that have the most Gimel are the elements that support intelligent forms of life. Happily, the existence of Gimel also explains many, if not all of the paradoxical puzzles and the “weirdness” of quantum physics that physicists like to talk about. With dozens of successful resolutions of the logical paradoxes of particle physics and some predictions verified experimentally, we consider the theory we called the Triadic Dimensional Vortical Paradigm (TDVP) no longer hypothetical, and the original assumption of a logically consistent electron-based quantum equivalence unit has been verified.

 

The presence of volumetric quantum equivalence units (TRUE) of Gimel in atomic structure turns out to be mathematically related to the wave lengths and frequencies of light released by radioactive decay. The exact volume of TRUE units of the orbital electrons and Gimel existing in each energy shell explains the complex electron energy-shell geometry of atom structure. I want to use the rest of this discussion to focus on the knowledge of this intimate relationship of Gimel to consciousness and light at the quantum level because I  believe that a deeper understanding of this relationship can help us to understand how meditation techniques like Kriya can accelerate the growth of mental and spiritual virtue and affect positive results in the physical world that could very well save human civilization from self-destruction and extinction on this planet.

 

The discovery of Gimel and its role as the measurable organizer of subatomic structure, provides us with a new understanding that allows us to focus on ways that we can consciously connect with the infinite continuity of Primary Consciousness while occupying finite physical bodies. Visualizing the geometry of progressive unitary projection into hyperspace provides us with a way to project our individualized consciousness from the finite, quantized world of physical existence into the infinitely continuous domain of Spirit. This is possible only if the most basic phenomena that make up all aspects of reality, including mass, energy, gimel, and consciousness, is light.

 

The images of the reality that we are aware of through our senses, we conceptualize in our minds as objects interacting in space and time according to the logic and intent of Primary Consciousness, and we call our descriptions of the elements of that primary logic that we have been able to discover and formalize in the language of mathematics, the laws of nature. I am forever grateful for the realizations of the Spiritual Masters of all times and for the insights of Einstein, Planck, and Bohr, that led to the discovery of Gimel, the link between mind and matter, between the finite and the infinite, because otherwise, most of us alive on this planet today would only be able to imagine what it might be like to experience the perfection from which the divine light that forms all of reality radiates.

 

As conscious beings, we can never be satisfied with the forms that manifest at the low vibratory energy levels available to us as finite physical beings evolving toward the perfection of the infinite, timeless, all-pervasive expanding form of Primary Consciousness that we so imperfectly reflect. What we see and think of as solid matter and tangible energy in the form of objects and living beings in the dimensions of space and time, are really only incomplete images of perfect forms, vibrating and flickering like faint reflections of the divine light dancing in the multi-dimensional domain of Primary Consciousness.

 

Individual conscious beings in the physical universe are animated and motivated by an innate desire to live, feel, and experience progressively greater dimensional domains of reality. This innate desire for more awareness originates in the spiritual nature of the substrate of reality coming out of Primary Consciousness, and it drives the long-term physical, mental, and spiritual evolution of cosmological reality. Understanding this intellectually is the first, and unfortunately, the easiest step toward conscious positive expansion of individualized consciousness. The concrete visualization of a path from intellectual understanding to spiritual enlightenment is possible in one lifetime for any human being alive on this planet, but the road from imagination to actualization is very difficult. Thinking about enlightenment and actually achieving it are two very different things.

 

Fortunately, help is available from a few historical figures who have achieved ultimate enlightenment and in the teachings of others who have achieved high levels of enlightenment beyond that available to the average person. You will be able to find the enlightened souls, whether they are in physical form or not, when your urgent need to know the true nature of reality becomes greater than your desire for physical pleasure. If you seek them in earnest, and you develop the ability to see the divine light of the spiritual eye, then you will know them by the light that shines within them and by the fruits of their actions.

 

As we descended from the last highest age of mental and spiritual virtue into the dark age that reached the lowest point around 500 A.D., techniques for consciousness expansion were still being taught by a few individuals who reached the ultimate enlightenment as spiritual masters in previous lives. Small groups developed in the presence of these special beings to enjoy the loving fellowship they engendered, but when they were gone, the groups they established soon devolved into social organizations that we now call religions, as their teachings were subverted by political opportunists incapable of understanding the actual meaning and intent of the teachings, into ways and means to control people.

 

Fortunately, the essence of the knowledge and technologies developed during previous ages of enlightenment are stored in stone structures around the world both by technological means and natural processes. Such storage comprises the planet’s memory and preserves information that might have otherwise disappeared along with most of the evidence of the last post-materialist civilizations, destroyed by natural weathering, cataclysmic volcanic eruptions, and platonic subduction. We should also be thankful that practical methods of consciousness expansion like the kriya techniques mentioned here have been preserved by a few advanced souls reincarnated for the specific purpose of helping humanity survive. Thankfully, the knowledge and wisdom needed for spiritual evolution is never completely lost. But, because of the great disparity between the slow progress of cosmic time and the brief endurance of human life, the efforts of individual lives may seem tragically futile unless effective consciousness-expanding spiritual techniques like kriya are known and practiced diligently.

 

Research and application of the mathematical logic of the quantum calculus has proved that the structures of energy and mass that comprise physical reality are stable only because of the existence of Gimel, and total mass as energy and Gimel are conserved in every experiment and observable natural process. Therefore, Gimel and the consciousness its existence implies have always existed and will always continue to exist, even if human beings foolishly destroy themselves during the dark ages of mechanistic materialism.

 

Primary Consciousness is expanding into and back out of the infinity of itself in hyper-dimensional reality, but the individualized bubbles of consciousness that we possess as human beings in the four dimensions of space-time, are capable of expanding and contracting. This is what makes practices like the kriya techniques so useful. To understand how and why an energy focusing technique like kriya can be very practical and effective as a spiritual practice, it is helpful to think of reality, from electrons to atoms, from molecules to living cells, from plants and animals to human beings, and everything else that exists in the universe, as consisting of light.

 

By simply beginning to concentrate on the sensations of your breath flowing in and out of your lung as light, you can gradually increase your awareness of other deeper, more subtle movements of energy in your body that are associated with consciousness, and become aware of the movement of consciousness itself, as light.

 

There are some venerable traditions hidden within the major religions of this world, discounted by modern science as arcane and mysterious at best, that are remnants of the original teachings of fully realized spiritual masters from previous cycles of enlightenment. These venerable spiritual traditions include Sufism in Islam, Tibetan Yoga, Zen Buddhism, Jewish and Christian Mysticism, Sikhism, Jainism, various forms of Raja Yoga in Hinduism, and other cultural traditions now forgotten and/or hidden in the illusions of space-time and matter. All of these traditions contain some form of concentration on the spiritual light of the soul, similar to the kriya techniques. For example, Sufi Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan advises the advanced seeker to “fashion a body of light and become a being of light”.

 

Everything is ultimately made of some form of light, and every conscious entity has a radiant aura of light associated with its existence. Subtle spiritual bodies exist, whether you can see them or not. But, if you see no light within yourself, don’t be discouraged. With some determination and effort, you may be able to tap into the spiritual structures manifested by some of the various traditions mentioned above. Jesus, as a Rabbi teaching his followers how to pray and how to live, is quoted in the Book of Matthew saying, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” I can attest to the truth of this, having experienced it personally on occasion while focusing on the light of the spiritual eye.

 

Based on experiences with the higher-dimensional phenomena of spiritual light like the one I’ve discussed here, I conclude that physical vision is a dim reflection of spiritual vision, and I believe that “if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” was a metaphor that an enlightened man named Jesus used to direct spiritual seekers to turn their attention to the spiritual reality within. If we consciously withdraw the energy normally wasted on distractions and focus it on the spiritual eye and the light existing within, then we can allow the whole spectrum of the light of Primary Consciousness to fill our minds and bodies, and God’s healing Love will begin to manifest in our lives.

ERC 8/23/2024

THE JOURNEY TO COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

 

CONSCIOUSNESS, BIRTH, LIFE, AND DEATH

A Spiritual Journey

© Copyright 2022 Edward R. Close

 

INTRODUCTION

I want to begin this post by acknowledging that the many different aspects of the basic components of human experience listed in the title above have been the stuff of dreams, poems, symphonies, love songs, and books, as well as endless academic and common place discussions about the nature of reality, from the beginning of civilization as we know it, until the present moment. Is it possible to address such important human experiences in any meaningful way in one short blogpost? Perhaps not. But in meditation I have seen what I believe to be memories of events that have occurred in multiple lives and between-lives in what I think may be the conscious zero-point quantum field, known in times of more advanced mental and spiritual virtue as the Akashic record. They appear in a form that I would describe as an unbelievably colorful multi-dimensional fabric of interwoven threads of consciousness, forming elegant patterns in the endless holistic tapestry of Reality. If I can convey even a tiny hint of the transcendental beauty of my vision of this majestic tapestry that I think of as the mind of God, then I will be happy.

 

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?

First, it is important to realize that the illusions of beginnings and endings, like births and deaths, have no meaning without the prior existence of some form of consciousness. Scientists sometimes speak about the birth, life, and death of stellar objects like stars, the nearest one of which is our sun; but this clearly anthropomorphic conceptualization is dependent upon the prior existence of some form of highly intelligent consciousness. In 1931, Max Planck, the German physicist who discovered that physical reality is quantized, when interviewed by a reporter for The Observer, a newspaper based in London England, put it as plainly as I believe anyone can, when he said:

 

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.”

 

We know that consciousness exists, because we experience it directly as our own self-awareness and the ability to draw the distinction between self and other. In fact, consciousness is the only thing that we experience directly. If there is nothing behind consciousness, then, it follows that the ultimate reality behind everything is an a-temporal, non-local, primary form of consciousness, perhaps what has traditionally been called Spirit. But when our current mainstream scientists ask: “What is this thing we call consciousness?” they come up against a blank wall, because it is beyond the limits of their materialistic assumptions. From the point of view of an objective conscious observer, we can trace the distinctions of objective reality from the galaxies of the expanding big-bang universe, all the way back to the stable patterns of information that have meaning in sub-atomic structures, such as neutrons, protons, electrons, even down to the unstable patterns of mass and energy that exist for short periods of time as quarks, and the whole super-ephemeral particle zoo; but, when trying to define what consciousness is, science has no answer because the finite, quantized human brain, is limited by the scientific method, and the mathematical reality of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, which reflect the infinite continuity of Primary Consciousness.

 

THE PARADOX OF SCIENTIFIC DEFINITIONS

We would like to think that the various institutions that we call modern mainstream science, are the embodiment of a well-defined, effective method of investigation, collectively known as “The Scientific Method”, a procedure designed to obtain true knowledge about the true nature of reality. Unfortunately, this is not the case, even though those of us who identify as scientists have to pretend that it is, to earn university degrees and obtain the funding needed to apply the methods of investigation that we have learned in one or a few areas of specialization. To understand the nature of this scientific self-deception, we have to step back from our fascination with the physical accomplishments of modern science, engineering, and technology, for a moment, and think about ontology and epistemology. For readers who might not be familiar with these terms describing philosophical enquiry, ontology attempts to determine what actually exists, while epistemology is an effort to understand what knowledge of reality is, and how we know about it.

 

You may be surprised to learn that the definitions of basic scientific concepts are produced by closed intellectual processes of circular reasoning. Due to the fact that we have no direct experience of the objective reality we assume to exist in the form of separate objects independent of our consciousness, definitions of the things that we have come to regard, for various reasons, as elementary components of objective reality, are actually verbal or written interpretations of mental images constructed from physical, electrical, and magnetic energy pulses, vibrating in narrow ranges of frequencies, transformed by complex physical, chemical, and mental processes as they are transferred in various ways, through space and physical media of various densities, impacting the cellular, molecular, atomic and subatomic structure of transmitters and receptors, evolved for that purpose in our physical bodies, until they finally impact our consciousness to be translated into thought and become the afore-mentioned verbal and written expressions.

 

This self-referential circular reasoning is the only basis we have for believing that an objective reality actually exists. The circular nature of scientific reasoning becomes obvious when we realize that we are only directly aware of our own consciousness, and unless we can expand our consciousness beyond the boundaries of our physical bodies, it’s the only thing we have. If, as Max Planck declared nearly 100 years ago, consciousness is primary, then we cannot define it in the way we define everything else. It can only be defined in terms of itself. We may talk about how consciousness functions as the organizer of the patterns that we perceive in reality, and we can even identify different forms and states of consciousness, but we can never define consciousness itself, we can only experience it.

 

When someone says you can’t argue with the science, like certain government employed physicians did recently, to help totalitarian governments control the citizens of the Earth, he reveals the fact that he doesn’t know what science is. When a scientist is not skeptical of the results of his own experimentations, he is no longer a scientist, he is a believer, and his science has become a religion or a political ideology. The next step on that slippery slope is irrational zealotry. Belief in an absolutely knowable physical reality is belief in a false god, an idol. Real science is never complete because reality is infinite. That is actually what the proof of Gödel’s theorems tells us: Finite symbols and ‘theories of everything’ cannot describe reality, they can only describe a portion of the process of reality evolving and changing itself within Primary Consciousness. This means that the stated goals of ontology and epistemology, i.e., complete knowledge of what actually exists, and complete understanding of how we know about it, will never be achieved. But this is not a cause for despair. No matter how much we learn about the nature of reality, there will always be more to learn, because Gödel’s theorem has proved that reality is infinite.

 

The disparity between descriptive science and reality becomes obvious when we analyze the process of definition. A word or symbol used to describe a scientific concept or object is defined in a dictionary by suggesting that it means the same thing as another word or symbol - or something similar. This is a prime example of circular reasoning. For example, the British Dictionary defines the scientific method as “a method of investigation in which a problem is first identified and observations, experiments, or other relevant data are then used to construct or test hypotheses that purport to solve it.”

In the light of Gödel’s theorem, analysis of this definition of the scientific method reveals the fact that if a problem can be resolved with the logic of the system within which it has been articulated, then the solution will be present in the statement of the problem. This was one of the two major points of G. Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form. He demonstrated this brilliantly by showing that complex logical syllogisms could be solved almost instantly by merely looking at the form of the statement of the problem expressed in a primary calculus like his calculus of indications.

The popular American word book, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, defines the scientific method as “principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.”

Wikipedia says: “The scientific method is an empirical  method of acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of  science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries). It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses via induction, based on such observations; experimental and measurement-based statistical testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are principles of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises.”

One of the most Influential philosophers of science in the entire 20th century, Austrian-British thinker, Sir Karl Popper, rejected logic-based induction- deduction definitions of the scientific method like those cited above, in favor of defining the scientific method as a process of “empirical falsification”. He believed that theories developed from experimental data could never be proved in the absolute sense that mathematical theorems are proved, but that they can be falsified if they happen to be untrue or incomplete, by performing experiments designed to test them.

If you keep searching, you can find dozens of other ‘definitions’ of the scientific method. Some list five steps in their attempts to define it, others articulate seven steps. You can pick the one that makes the most sense to you. Scientists pride themselves in the accuracy and precision of their detailed definitions and descriptions of reality, but the most precise definition possible, is completely useless. If the words comprising the subject and object of a sentence defining a scientific term are precisely equivalent, then the definition is a tautology, stating the obvious, essentially saying ‘It is what it is!’ In mathematical notation, such a precise definition is an identity of the form represented by X≡X.

My point is that the idea that there can be a complete and precise theory of everything expressed in one, two, three, - or any finite number of words and equations - is indicative of the inherent delusion of the finite mind; but scientists should never give up trying to find a theory of everything, because it is like the carrot on a stick suspended in front of a donkey to keep him moving in the right direction. In this donkey and carrot analogy, the finite mind is analogous to the donkey, coaxed to walk, or perhaps even to run after the carrot dangling in front of him on a pole, and the illusion of a finite theory of everything is the carrot.

Based on glimpses of the Akashic record, we can logically extend this analogy by upgrading the conscious, warm-blooded animal, the donkey, to a self-aware intelligent human being; the carrot to the human being’s mental image of “the glory of God”, inspired by a glimpse of the splendor of the Akasha. Such a ‘carrot’ should motivate the individual conscious being to do everything within its power to find a way to expand its sphere of consciousness toward the ultimate state of oneness with the Infinite within its lifetime. This brings us to the next, and most important definition related to consciousness.

WHAT IS LIFE?

Discovery of the existence of specific numbers of quantum equivalence units of a non-material component of objective reality (ERC 2011) that we chose to call gimmel (Neppe & Close, 2015) present in quarks and electrons, and the fact that they had to exist prior to the formation of any stable material structure, i.e., for any physical reality to exist, proved that Planck was right when he stated that he could tell us as a result of his “research about the atoms” that there is “no matter as such!” and that we must “regard matter as fundamental…as derivative from consciousness” and that “We cannot get behind consciousness.” Confirmation of this declaration about the nature of reality has profound implications concerning what life is.

The discovery that something non-material had to exist before the first stable elementary object could form, and the demonstration that that non-material gimmel performs the primary function of consciousness by organizing quanta of mass and energy into meaningful structures, implies that gimmel is consciousness. Gimmel, and therefore consciousness, is not just fundamental, as Planck suggested, but it is primary, and as the primary source of stable reality, consciousness cannot be defined as equal to or similar to anything else. Gimmel is the bridge between physical and non-physical reality.

If life and consciousness were the same thing, then we could answer the question posed above by declaring that: “Life IS consciousness!”  But consciousness and life as we experience them on this planet, cannot be the same thing, since consciousness is primary, and therefore had to exist before the elementary particles and objective materials that make up organic life forms, could evolve. Unlike consciousness, life can be defined in terms of the interactions of other pre- or co-existing things comprising the morphogenic processes that manifest the logical structures of consciousness.

Collectively, these processes, existing in animal, plant, and fungal species, combine for the purpose of making the survival of some members of those species possible, thereby making survival of some continuing form of the species possible. These processes are iteratively manifested and perpetuated in transformative cycles of reproductive birth, growth, decay, death, and re-birth. Thus, life and consciousness are categorically different things. Proof of the primacy of consciousness as the undefinable reality behind physical and non-physical reality (mass-energy and gimmel) implies that consciousness can and does exist without biological life, but life cannot exist without consciousness. A growing body of experimental data and objectively verified personal experiences confirms this.

WHAT IS BIRTH, AND WHAT IS DEATH?

The life that you are living consists of a sequence of events that you are experiencing as a conscious being. You are, however, not experiencing those events directly. You are experiencing them through the filter of a finite bio-physical organism that you identify as your body. It has specialized cognitive and sensing organs designed for the purpose of consciously drawing finite distinctions in the infinitely continuous fabric of the reality of Primary Consciousness. Your life is distinguished from other lives contributing to the multi-dimensional fabric of Reality by the characteristics encoded in the DNA of your body. Your life is distinguished in time by two events of profound importance, impacting, your body, mind, and soul. We call these events birth and death. They mark the beginning and ending of a series of relationships with unique associations of symbiotic organisms whose DNA patterns and processes form a counterpoint to the blueprint of your DNA. Together, they guide the way your body develops, reacts, to stimuli, and eventually decays and dies.

Your mind is the link between your physical body and the spark of Primary Consciousness that is your soul. As a spark of Primary Consciousness, your soul has a modicum of free will that allows it to modify the patterns set up by the DNA codes you were born with. The amount of free will a conscious being has depends on where that individual soul is on its journey of spiritual development. According to my spiritual mentors, about 75% of the actions of souls living on this planet at this time are determined by their DNA, leaving about 25% to be chosen by free will. It is through the available choices that an individual may accelerate, stall, or reverse its progress on the journey of spiritual development.

The physically and mentally traumatic events we call birth and death simply mark the beginning and ending of a temporary association of an individual soul with the appropriate organic lifeforms and situations that give your soul valuable opportunities to make decisions that will expand the consciousness of the soul to a greater understanding and experiencing of the reality of Primary Consciousness. Your birth is not the creation of something from nothing, and your death is not the destruction of your soul. Your physical body and brain are not blank slates created at birth, upon which your life’s story is written, just to be destroyed when your physical body dies. Your soul existed before the birth of your current physical body and will continue to exist after that body has ceased to function. The extent and content of the domain of the consciousness of your soul will be enhanced, stultified, or reduced by the experiences and choices you make during your life. Due to the law of the conservation of mass, energy, and gimmel, nothing is ever created or destroyed, but only changed in form. The conditions of life are the effects of previous causes, and the experiences and actions of life are the causes of future conditions; so, it behooves us to choose from the options open to us wisely.

THE REST OF THE STORY

We become very attached to some of the conditions of our lives, the bodies we identify with while in them, and the illusions of opportunities to satisfy desires. But peace beyond understanding is only experienced outside of the physical body. As consciousness expands, it becomes possible, under certain conditions, to experience extra-corporeal awareness while alive and still return to the body. These experiences are called out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and they can occur under a variety of conditions. Based on personal experience, I will divide them into three categories for discussion here:

1) Consciousness-Projection Experiences (CPEs), which are OBEs that sometimes occur spontaneously when the body is relaxed and the mind is in prayer, meditation, or between wakefulness and sleep.

2) Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) are OBEs that occur under extremely traumatic conditions when the physical body is severely damaged or diseased and ceases to function temporarily.

3) Between-Life Experiences (BLEs) are exactly what the name indicates: experiences of consciousness before birth or after the death and disintegration of the physical body of a specific life.

In this post I will only discuss the third type of OBEs in any detail, because they are part of the normal spiritual journey of every conscious being alive, while the other two are relatively rare experiences, only happening to souls who have accumulated spiritual and mental virtue a little bit beyond the average.

Between-life experiences that are remembered in dreams or meditation, become more and more beautiful and detailed as you grow in spiritual and mental virtue on your journey from the first flash of self-awareness to the ecstasy of Cosmic Consciousness. In later stages of Spiritual progress, they are almost always important meetings with your Spiritual Advisors in which your reason for entering the next life is revealed. Sometimes the setting is a marbled hall surrounded in shelves of books and windows overlooking beautiful landscapes.          

Resolution of the paradox of the finite mind trying to define the infinite reality in which it exists, reveals a paradox of circular reasoning and the profound truth of the infinitely continuous self-referential nature of the omnipresent form of Primary Consciousness existing behind, beyond, within, and throughout Reality. You actually are that! Peace.

ERC 10/20/2022

SOME PREDICTIONS

 

WHAT IN THE WORLD WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

© Copyright October 2022 Edward R. Close

 

The Human Condition

We are living in difficult times. In one sense, it’s no worse than any other time, but in another very real sense, we are entering the most dangerous time since World War II. We are, in fact already in WW III, the Tribulation, and the End Times predicted in scripture. We are experiencing an epic struggle between good and evil. Absolute lies are being promoted as truth and the truth is often hidden or distorted for political purposes. This struggle between good and evil has always been there, hidden by the fake battles of left vs right or democrats vs republicans. The forces of evil are not stupid. They do not play by anyone’s rules. They don’t wear black hats or intimidating uniforms to announce their intention to do evil, they rely on stealth; but they have been emboldened by the human complacency that overtook us as we were finally coming out of the dark ages, and now they are panicking because they know that they will ultimately fail. But, like cornered animals, they are now becoming most dangerous.

Trying to Bring Order out of Chaos

I know I am faced with a challenge here; the challenge of speaking truth to people who have become deeply divided due to the efforts of the dark side of humanity that is operating through certain individual evil souls, reincarnating time after time as tyrants, trying to hang on to the physical and psychological control of the masses that they gained through physical violence and subversion in the times of the lowest ebb of mental and spiritual virtue in this planetary time cycle, known as the dark ages. As spiritual beings, we are trying to emerge from the spiritually darkest 2400 years of this round of Earth’s planetary time cycles, consisting of 1200 years of descending virtue and 1200 years of ascending virtue; time periods centering around the lowest point in current human history, 499 AD, together known as the descending and ascending Kali Yugas, spanning the time period from 701 BC to 1699 AD.

What we are experiencing now are the last gasps of the evil forces of the Kali Yugas trying to hold on to their power over humanity as we move into the Dwapara Yuga. In the West, the resistance to spiritual growth is surfacing in the form of the remnants of despotic rulers and monarchs still reluctant to relinquish economic or psychological control and the illusion of superiority. We are only 1,522 years past the lowest point and still 10,478 years from the next peak of mental and spiritual virtue for the average conscious being on this planet, so the forces of evil are still strong.

The Incompleteness of Order

Order is conveyed into the finite, quantized physical universe from the infinitely continuous spiritual source of reality by the incarnation of  spiritual souls living in physical bodies that act like antennas to receive certain frequencies of energies that are part of the order of the Spiritual Cosmos needed for survival. But chaos is also conveyed into physical reality in the same way by evil souls who want to perpetuate the dark ages and feed on the energies of evolving souls, thereby retarding their progress. The incompleteness theorems, proved by Kurt Gödel in 1933 as we were entering the ascending Dwapara Yuga, describes the eternal incompleteness of all finite logical systems, including the logical order of the physical universe. The finite physical universe is never complete, expanding eternally into the infinity of Cosmic Consciousness.

Existing on the Edge

As human beings, we exist on the multi-dimensional interface between the infinite spiritual realm and the finite quantized physical reality of inhabitable planets with organic life forms, giving us the opportunity to evolve spiritually. We live through numerous individual lives, progressing from being barely aware, to self-awareness, to Cosmic Consciousness as beings of light who are one with the Infinite intelligence that provides the positive order of reality that endures in the face of the negative forces of chaos.

The Fallacy of Binary Thinking

I have taken pains in these posts to make the point that the binary thinking of True vs False, “Us vs Them”, Boolean Algebra, and the ones and zeros of AI computer programming must be replaced by triadic logic (as in the TDVP model of reality of Neppe & Close) as we progress into times of newly expanded consciousness, for science to progress. Specifically, as relates to the current series of fabricated crises designed to depopulate the planet and keep economic and military control in the hands of the self-appointed global elite, the “us vs them”, left vs right, Republican vs Democrat form of binary thinking is just what the dark forces need, to hang on to their power. They are not interested in those games as such, other than as cover for their true objectives, and as a minor plus in their efforts to reduce the numbers of the masses currently living on this planet.

The greatest danger to the orderly progression of human beings toward any sort of happiness in the physical realm and the eventual ecstasy of Cosmic Consciousness is not global warming or mobs of white supremacists, or Black Lives Matter rioters, it is those who think they can replace the Cosmic Intelligence that creates, maintains, and evolves the logic and order of physical reality and dictate to the rest of us how, or even if, we can live our lives. We have far too many idols and false gods today, and the imperative: “everyone should vote” is dead wrong. Voters need to be informed. Every uninformed or mis-informed voter is a contributor to the chaos necessary for evil to succeed.

How do you become informed? Do your own research, but not on Twitter, Google, or the mainstream media. “Garbage in, garbage out” is not just true for the AI of computers and news commentators, It’s just as true for the average human brain. If you have no direct knowledge about a candidate, do not vote for him or her. If your own thinking is all you have to go on, use some common sense. How can you know who to vote for, when the difference between a psychotic liar and a professional politician is almost always undiscernible on the surface, the answer is obvious: You will “know them by their fruits”, i.e., by the results of their actions. That’s the proof, not what they say they will do. Politicians are trained to say what people want to hear.        

What Does the Future Hold?

I think anyone with some awareness of what has been going on for the last 40 years, and especially the last six years, is waiting, with some level of anxiety and trepidation, ranging from mild concern to abject fear, to see what is going to happen next. Here are my thoughts about the situation: I don’t favor a red wave or a blue retention of power next month or in 2024. I would rather see more voters, and those responsible for the openness and integrity of our elections, become actively and devotedly non-political and fact driven by personal knowledge. I would like to see candidates with a desire to serve and with no allegiance to anyone because of donations or political favors, find their way into office. Some experience in management is good, but career politicians who have become multi-millionaires, or even billionaires while in office, are not public servants, they are parasites.

My predictions:

I don’t agree with those who predict doom and gloom. I believe that we have progressed far enough spiritually in the last 300 years, that the truth will eventually prevail, despite all the efforts to hide or distort it by many politicians on both sides of the isle. I predict that common sense and informed consensus will prevail. Those behind globalism will fail because the people are slowly waking up. No slavery of any kind will be tolerated much longer. The global elitists are pushing for more war to hide their crimes against humanity, and the average human being is susceptible to neurolinguistic programming, so there is great danger of civil unrest after the election next month, regardless of who wins the elections, especially if it’s overwhelming one way or the other.

Republicans will regain control of both houses of congress if election fraud is held to a minimum. But then, they will have to seek out and eliminate the globalists subversives among them who have been bought by the billionaire psychopaths, to get anything positive done. Contrary to the expectations of most American conservatives and independents, after the midterm elections, the Democrats will also purge their ranks of Leftists who are working to destroy America and Western Civilization. Before 2024, America will re-emerge as the bastion of freedom and liberty it has been for the past 200 + years.

A global government will eventually be established, I think by the year 2141, but not by coercion, and we may be allowed to join a galactic alliance of some sort after the year 2541.

ERC 10/02/22

References: The Holy Science, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, Self-Realization Fellowship, Fifth Edition, 1957

The Book of Atma, E.R. Close, Libra Publishers, New York, 1977

 Also see THE FUTURE OF AI AND CONSCIOUSNESS posted in this blog 11, 2022