- The Fractal Universe – God or Machine?
- “. . . the way we think defines our world. Classic teachers, such as Aristotle or Confucius taught not in specific subjects but wide ranging thoughts that involved man and nature. Today's students are taught to be specialists. We know more and more about less and less. The classic philosophers were aware that they knew less and less about more and more.”
Andrew Sheng
Systems Thinking
I have been saying for years that all things are fractal in nature – that our reasoned awareness of reality filtered as it is through the left hemisphere of our brain perceives the universe unfolding in myriad fractal patterns that are, ultimately, variations on the same theme. However, I have a strong right-brain awareness that Time is the deciding factor in our left-brain perception. Time, my right-brain instinctively intuits
, is fractal – not the Universe. The Universe is infinitely one within itself, and therefore the paradox is that everything within the Universe is fractal, and yet the Universe itself is not. Why? The Universe is complete. It is one. The fractal patterns we observe are indeed just that – fractions of the entire pattern – the pattern that some call The Creation Script (the uni-verse), in effect the Word/Sound/Music/Vibration that began creation in many myths and theories and still reverberates throughout the Universe.
- We once knew that the Universe has a pattern, and the pattern of the Universe has meaning to us as a part of the Universe. We once knew that there is a correspondence between all things. We once knew that there are many patterns and many variations of patterns, but that many things share the same basic pattern, and all the patterns merge into a Great Pattern which is more than the sum of its parts. We once knew that every thing has its own pattern, including humans. We once knew that every individual thing has its own variation of the basic pattern it shares with all its kind, even you and me. We once called that science of knowing the patterns of Nature, Divination – the art of interpreting the future from the portends (that is, the science of interpreting the patterns of things). However, since this artful science utilized right-brain methodology it fell into derogatory disrepute and massive misuse in our post-Enlightenment left-brain culture. We lost a lot of knowledge when we decided this science was insignificant, worthless, mathematically approaching zero.
- The pattern of the Universe can be described as a Symphony of Life. But is it orchestrated by a maestro, or is it a player-piano that works by itself and ultimately will break down?
- Perhaps, neither.
- Experiences in shamanic meditation and Socratic research – otherwise known as old-time (that is, classic) philosophy – leads me to “try to” define the Universe as a fractal symphony of infinitely beautiful precision wherein there is not a single errant random note. And so, except for Free Will, everything would repeat in the same precise patterns and become pointless. Free Will can change the pattern, and that is the Point. Please note that humans are not the only ones with Free Will. Every thing that makes a choice exercises Free Will.
- I said “try to” because there are very few words for what the right-brain sees, and very little of what it sees agrees with left-brain logic. Some things you just know instinctively and intuitively. These things are too big and too small and too between for words. Fractal knowledge. Universal knowledge in a tiny crevice in the curve of a straight line that applies to every thing in its own way.
- A quick point on meditation and research. Meditation shuts down the left-brain control of perception and allows the right-brain to communicate its emotional awareness of the Universe – which is that all is one, all is alive, we are all (place name of favorite deity here). And yet, we are not. Paradox.
- Research (asking questions, seeking answers, left-brain stuff) naturally follows. The state of “wonder” is a right-brain communication. No question can be born without first there be a wondering. Wonder is a right-brain communication. The left-brain trys to understand what the right-brain experiences by question and answer – the so-called Socratic method (which is simply the way the right-brain works). Philosophy is what happens when you put meditation and research together, just as 3 usually follows 2 which usually follows 1.
- It is important to note that in a natural context (that is, in the philosophy I espouse) Emotion (right-brain/art/heart/female) births Thought (left-brain/science/mind/male), but in our post-Enlightenment society we have been taught (that is, coerced) to believe Thought (left-brain/science/mind/male) has natural dominion over, and indeed must control, Emotion (right-brain/art/heart/female). However, the Reality is that Emotion does not lie, but Thought very often does. The symbology in this is massive – it is a fractal of knowledge, a foundational pattern of the Universe infinite at different levels. It is Creation, Sustenance, Revelation and Redemption. In other words, for some it's the meaning of life, yo. Life is a wonderment in beauty that often doesn't make sense, until it does.
- In all things, truth reveals itself in paradox. That which cannot be, is, and by it being we know Reality from Perception, Viewpoint, Rhetoric and Opinion. Humans, left-brain-thinkers especially, are too smart by half for their own good (pun intended). We make models of logic and reason, and play with these toys like children playing in the middle of the street, fantasy steading for reality in our minds, oblivious to our inevitable fate. Our perception of reality has very little in common with what is real.
- The Cantor Set cannot be, yet it is. Achilles overtaking the Tortoise cannot be, yet it is. A fractal cannot be infinite, yet it is. Paradox. Truth. Beauty.
- I know modern day 'philosophers' (i.e. pretenders) are deeply troubled by the word “is”, but the common person on the street has no doubt about “is”. It is what it is, yo. Word.
- The Second Law of Thermodynamics has been broken in various and repeatable scientific experiments, and yet we still cling to the belief that the Second Law is an unbreakable Law of Reality. It is not. It is simply a reasoned (that is, a left-brain lying) way to explain our 18th century, Western Civilization, Imperialist-founded, Church-nurtured, patriarchal perception of reality. It is an opinion, nothing more. We should have listened to Newton when he said his work was not fit to be published, that it was just fevered ramblings. It has distracted us from reality. The reality is that the universe is actively creating (that is, the universe is always changing). Entropy is a myth concocted to support The Church Doctrine on the separateness of God and Nature. The Universe, in much the same way as the Hindu Goddess Kali-Ma, is a creative force, not a degenerative one. Despite this knowledge, scientists still cling to Newton's World, frightened like children in the dark, afraid that the quantum universe is waiting in the shadows to snatch them up.
- They are right. It is. It is hiding in the shadow of the fractal curve of every straight line.
- What about God? What about a Mechanical universe (ala Stephen Hawking)?
- Well, first I have to abuse the notion of God. Archaeological and historical evidence points to “God” (as is historically defined) being the creation of the criminally patriarchal, Indo-Aryan, mountain war-chiefs of Middle Asia. That same band of murderers and rapists who are chronicled in cuneiform telling how they descended upon pre-Sumerian Mesopotamia and usurped power from the Sisters of Inanna (that is, the women elders), and sent their progeny throughout the world overturning the old (pre-patriarchal) order. The cruel Rapist Gods of Mount Olympus of Greek mythology and the angry Destroyer God of Mount Sinai of the Abrahamic mythology are but two examples of this Indo-Aryan influence in the historical record that stretches in many guises world-wide from before Ur to the present day. The progression of this patriarchal usurpation was described in writing by history's first known poet, Enheduanna, in her tales of Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. The same pattern can be found in the foundations of all cultures within patriarchal “civilization”. Each is a fraction of the story, each a budding of the fractal replicated in all its major points at different levels of “zoom”. Together they make up the The Patriarchy Fractal – the pattern of destruction and oppression the patriarchy always follows regardless of time or culture. Is it a wonder they “created” entropy?
- God as an anthropomorphic “Him” is an obvious fiction originally contrived to counter the so-called Goddess-societies that were prevalent before patriarchal history. The stories of the ages confirm “His” evolution from mountain god to sun god to creator god, all the way usurping what had been female power in order to control the population. Under its destructive influence we deny our inborn divinity, and stifle our inherent need for creative self-expression. In this way we bring Entropy (that is, Hell) upon ourselves, creating it ourselves, afflicting ourselves. God needs Entropy/Hell to exist, so we create it in order to create God. Without Entropy/Hell there is nothing for God to do. The Universe as a creative force negates the need for God.
- Goddess, on the other hand, is obviously real.
- Paradox?
- Perhaps. Perhaps just a aeons-old Lie found out.
- The creative force of the universe is female in nature. Look around you. There is a deep felt species-wide emotion, an instinctual intuition, a knowing that persists, that the earth is Mother. That is not an insignificant emotional fact. Deny this, and you deny your eyes, your ears, your tongue, your heart, and your Self (soul/spirit/I-ness) in favor of an immoral war hierarchy based upon rape, paternity and murder.
- Do not we all begin in the womb as female? The male seems to be an evolution descended from the female for the specific purpose of providing sustenance – that is, figure out (left-brain) how to provide shelter, food, and comfort. A hint toward that purpose, and how the male power went astray, can be deduced from the current “Extreme Male Brain Theory of Autism” (Simon Baron-Cohen, 2002, Autism Research Centre). As well, this theory supports the right-brain experience as being just as real as the left-brain experience, and, more importantly, a moderating force that keeps the left-brain sane – when all is working properly, that is. Of course, Simon Baron-Cohen doesn't philosophize about any of the points in this paper. He merely reports scientific evidence on the physical characteristics of male and female brains in relation to autistics, hysterics, and so-called normals. His work, however, supports the philosophical leaps I seem to be taking in reference to it.
- But does the femaleness in the character of Creation mean a “female God”? No. I am not describing a God in Human form, alternately destroying and creating, who meddles in Human affairs, performing miracles of parthenogenesis or otherwise apportioning apocalypses. Goddess is an emotional perception, an instinctual intuition, a left-brain label for a right-brain sensing. What is the sensing . . . of? It is the sensing of the awareness of the live Universe; the Universe as a live and aware organism connected directly to you and to everyone and everything else. Something like that, perhaps. It is ineffable – meaning I'll never get the right words, you will have to look into my eyes (that is, my soul) to know what I mean.
- So . . . that doesn't qualify as an anthropomorphic deity, even if we, as a species, can only emotionally relate to the essence of the Universe (that is, Nature) as Mother. No God or Goddess in human form, or otherwise centered solely upon the human species. There is just the neverending Universe, it is alive, it creates (that is, gives birth) and we are all a part of it – literally and emotionally. Aho mitakuye oyasin.
- So much, as well, for the Machine Universe . . . for how can the Universe be an unthinking, unfeeling, unliving mechanical construct when all within it is alive with an energy that is always changing but is never destroyed? A non-living machine created Life? That is not a paradox, that is simply absurd in an experiential reality (that is, the only Reality that matters). Life is created by life through the female essence. The truth of it is all around us.
- Look at the Universe through a starry night sky, and meditate upon its entirety. Meditate upon its ultimate vastness. Meditate upon whether or not any species upon this tiny, lonely speck of a planet qualifies as more than an insignificant detail that can be equated mathematically as approaching zero. Meditate then upon the fact that there is no randomness, and that there is no zero in infinity. Therefore, everything is significant and nothing ever fades to zeroness. Then meditate upon the fractal zoom, where molecules of coherent energy whizz like solar systems through their galaxies of energy bonds, and we stand midway between them and the stars in the galaxies of the sky. And know that by deep meditation, by letting the right-brain freely experience reality, we can experience Oneness with the Universe – and then we realize everything's gonna be all right. It's good to be alive. As for death, in a sense, we never die, only change, just like everything else. We are, after all, beings of energy (Jill Bolte Taylor).
