A Treatise on Cosmology
Two Postulates
What is a Postulate?
In mathematics we talk about Postulates – the group of assumptions that cannot be proven or disproven. They are so fundamental, that they lie beneath the level of what can be “proved.” They are either accepted or rejected.
A simple example is “Two lines cross each other in exactly one point.” It’s a definition. Since a “line” in math is only a conceptual abstract of real world lines, we cannot ever see or touch a pure “line.” And therefore we cannot “count” the number of places two idealized lines intersect. We Postulate that when they cross they have exactly one point in common. Not two, not three. You either accept that, or you do not.
When you listen carefully to political & religious debates, you see that the overwhelming majority of the time the Postulates are the real problem:
 | Most people are not self-aware enough to be able to articulate their postulates. They cannot tell their assumptions from their "facts" and their "conclusions." |
| Once you dig through the rhetoric, you discover that people are starting from fundamentally different positions. Since their postulates are different, their conclusions are (almost always) doomed to be different. |
I will list here, as carefully as I can, those postulates upon which this Theory of Everything is based.
Postulate #1: Consciousness Precedes Matter
I see this as one of the frontier Great Debates facing the human race. It affects nearly everything we do.
| “Matter Precedes Consciousness” is the prevalent “scientific” view. The Big Bang was the source of all, and it consisted of matter. From there the universe cooled, and we got atoms of many types. More cooling, and matter began to self-organize into what we call “life.” And eventually, consciousness. Thinking. Self awareness is a happenstance function of recombinational matter. |
| “Consciousness Precedes Matter” is the primary “religious” view. The Origin starts with a self existent Being, that “creates” matter. This creation is conceived quite differently around the globe, but the central principal is the same: All matter is derived from a preceding Super-Consciousness |
In The Revealing Science of God I give my best effort to explain my position, and I refer you (yet again) to that document. There you will find my best explanations justifying Postulate #1. In short:
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Untold hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, have had the experience of "astral projection" - standing "outside" their body and looking at it. I have had this experience. | ||||||||
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The countless numbers of near death experiences, wherein people certified dead in a hospital, revived, describe in great detail the events in the operating room. I reject the pseudo-explanations that you hear:
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The fact that each and every thing the human race does, creates, manifests, has an intellectual / creative process behind it. In other words, within the human realm (at least) nothing happens without a preceding consciousness. Trains, cars, computers, rockets...all creation we know & experience comes from a directed, intelligent, conscious process. | ||||||||
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The Law of Entropy states that all processes in nature tend to move from states of order to dis-order. For a Beethoven Symphony, the creation of all the instruments, and the perceptions of all the listeners, to be nothing more than a collection of self-organizing atomic interactions....Well, it's just an idea too absurd to behold. | ||||||||
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"Matter" as we commonly think of it does not even exist. There is no "really, really tiny particle" to be found. From relativity to super-string theory and beyond, humanity has no idea what "matter" really is. But we do know, or so all the equations and experiments tell us, that "matter" has its essence beyond the bounds of this space-time continuum, and that "matter" is just energy slowed down. |
The "Mind-Brain Problem"
The "Mind-Brain Problem" is an important debate that has been with us for centuries, and will probably remain for quite a while. Is the Mind (aka consciousness) simply a function of the biological Brain, or is the Brain an expressing organ for a larger, trans-biological consciousness? There are many books and research grants dedicated to this essential question. And trust me, I'd love to have 50 clones that I could dedicate to the cause.
For here, I can only offer this small-minded (forgive the pun) summary of my position: There is simply NOT ENOUGH BIO-MATTER for Mind to be a function of the Brain. What do I mean by this? A 1 hour music CD is encoded with 600,000,000 (600 million) bytes of information. A 2 hour movie DVD needs about 4 times that much information, about 2,500,000,000 (2 and 1/2 billion) bytes of information.
Think for a moment of all the movies, CDs you have in you head, that you can "play back" at will. Think about all of your life memories that you can recall endlessly. Just imagine the uncountable amount of "disk space" that would be needed to store (and give instant recall) to all this information. I have at least 1,000 CDs "in my head," and that alone would need 600,000,000,000 (600 billion) bytes of information. (An remember, for the non-computer people out there, that a byte is 8 individual on/off switches, known as a bit.) Then let's say I have at least 100 movies in my head, and there's probably more. That requires an additional +-250,000,000,000 (250 billion) bytes of storage. Add to that my math processing power, all the music I can play, my logic & language processing, my spatial-dimension processing, and 40+ years of memories, and we clearly need trillions (thousands of billions) of "bytes" of storage.
Now the human brain is beyond unbelievable in its complexity. But it IS limited. There are "only" about 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons in the brain. Neurons are brain cells. To claim that these 100 billion neurons are capable of all the recall / memory AND processing, strictly from a biological perspective, is for me (and many much better qualified neuroscientists) simply absurd.
The model I subscribe to, in which I am not alone, which is completely consistent with Postulate #1, is that the brain is the organ of expression of a trans-biological consciousness, aka The Mind. You see, for me, the "Brain-as-consciousness" model is like saying that the computer you are sitting at has inside it all of the consciousness that is expressed through it. As powerful as the computer is, it is a bare shadow compared to the transcendent consciousness that can be expressed through it. It's the same thing with the brain: its purpose is to express consciousness.
I cannot prove this to you. You can do the research yourself. But there are PhDs in neuroscience who start, before hand, with the assumption that there is nothing beyond bio-matter, so they see the brain as consciousness. As a result, I leave this in the category of Postulate #1, as contributing evidence, that nevertheless falls short of "proof."
But please note very carefully that the model is at the least consistent, and consistency is one of the cornerstones of a good theory. According to this "Consciousness Precedes Matter" postulate, and consistent within it:
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A computer is a material instrument that expresses a higher consciousness. The higher human consciousness in fact created the lower instrument of expression, aka computer, precisely so that the higher consciousness could be expressed. |
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A brain is a bio-matter instrument that expresses a higher consciousness. The higher Mind consciousness in fact created the lower instrument of expression, aka Brain, precisely so that the higher consciousness could be expressed. |
For purposes of this writing, it is a fundamental postulate that a Super-Consciousness (aka God) exists, and that everything derives from it. Like I said, I cannot ultimately "prove" this to you, for by its very nature it lies beyond anything you would consider grounds for "proof." If your logic cannot see this, and you have not had the experience of life outside your body, then I just do not know what I could possibly offer you.
We then have this remarkable result:
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God is expressed in Consciousness |
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Consciousness is expressed in Mind |
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Mind is expressed in Brain |
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Brain is expressed in Computer |
Restated slightly:
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God rides in Consciousness |
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Consciousness rides in Mind |
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Mind rides in Brain |
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Brain rides in Computer |
Postulate #2: As Above, So Below
Coming directly from Postulate #1, we assume that everything we see here has an impetus or design “from above.” And yes, if you are reading carefully, you will see that above I credit Postulate #2 as part of my "evidence" for Postulate #1. The two work together. Frankly, they are just different ways of looking at the same thing:
Everything we know from humanity shows a conscious direction; we project this (as below, so above) onto the Cosmos at large, postulating that everything has a conscious directive.
This is an ancient idea. Plato spoke of this world being likened unto shadows on the wall of a cave; the real world was only hinted at here. In Exodus Moses is shown the Heavenly Tabernacle that he is to fashion his earthly version after. Over and over again we read stories of earthly creations being modeled after heavenly designs.
| But this notion is not really so strange. It is all around us, every day. The music Mozart notated as scratches of ink on parchment was just dictation of the music he heard in his mind. |
| Every word we say is a vibration of physical vocal chords based on “higher” thoughts and emotions. |
| Every building of brick or stone or wood or glass and iron is a physical manifestation of the architect’s ideas. |
| On and on and on forever........ |
I cannot prove to you the “next world” or heaven
exists. That’s a part of Postulate #1. So a relationship between
heaven and earth must remain likewise a postulate. And that gives you Postulate
#2: Everything on Earth has a Heavenly counterpart.
Model of the Cosmos
"You mean, that's it?"
Yes, that’s all. Everything that follows in this
odd Treatise is connected directly to these Two Postulates.
To restate:
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SINCE everything humanity does derives from a consciousness, we see that
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The Thought ("above") is reflected in the Creation ("below").
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This is our Model of the Cosmos, as simple as that.
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So, when we see non-human-created things (plants, stars, birds...) we apply the Model of the Cosmos, and
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must CONCLUDE that some trans-human Thought ("above") has likewise shaped everything in this world ("below.")
This Universe is a reflection of Thought.
What applies to the human, is extrapolated to apply to the whole.
This deserves attention: This entire Treatise on Cosmology is based, ultimately, on just one simple observation:
Before we make anything, we first have a thought about it. This observation leads to a postulate about Consciousness (#1) and Reflection (#2). As a working hypothesis of the universe, I know of none cleaner, tighter, simpler.
From #1 we will discuss the conscious imperatives that lead
to the development of the Universe.
From #2 we will enter the glorious world of symbolism,
reflection and symmetry. Everything relates to everything else. Cars
on a highway bear an amazing resemblance to blood cells in your body. This is
not chance. So, to make a very long story short, we will look at
“everything” here in the world as telling us something about the next world.
And, from the Department of Redundancy Department, if you
cannot accept either of these foundational Postulates, nothing that follows will
be of any value to you.
There. I just saved you the trouble. You're welcome.
