by Mike Dubbeld

In September 2003, Mike Dubbeld posted one of his most striking cross-traditional syntheses: a reading of the third-century Neoplatonist Plotinus through the lens of yogic metaphysics and modern holographic theory. Dubbeld maps Plotinus's three hypostases — the One, the Divine Mind, and the World Soul — onto the yogic concepts of Brahman, Hiranyagarbha (the cosmic egg), and the astral universe, while drawing parallels to David Bohm's Implicate Order, Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious, and quantum string theory. The argument is not academic comparison but a practitioner's claim that these traditions are describing the same architecture of consciousness from different vantage points. The essay moves with the fluency of someone who has read broadly across traditions and physics, synthesising freely without institutional constraints.

Preserved as originally posted, with line-wrapping adjusted for readability.

I was reading about Plotinus 205?-270 AD a Neo-Platonist today. He has a pretty interesting idea. His view is that there is a Divine mind composed of Forms (From Plato's Theory of Forms). These Forms are the Mind of God/Intellect of God. They are on a sphere and within this sphere is 'The One.' (Which he no doubt stole from Parmendies (early 5'th century BC/Plato was 427-347 BC/Aristotle his student of 19 years was 384-322 BC) who in turn stole it from India/got the idea from India) This 'The One' is like a point of light at the center of the sphere. It illuminates the Forms/Thoughts of God/Universe/Maya. But this is also consistent with the holographic notion of David Bohm! Another sphere on the outside of the Mind of God/Divine Mind was the World Soul - of which we as souls are a part.

The physical universe in this scheme is a projection of the forms on the world soul and the individual souls that it is made up of (this would be the astral universe Hiranyagarbha in yoga). So you could think of the Intellect of God/Thoughts of God as 'Forms' illuminated by The One and cast onto the outermost sphere of the World Soul as 'shadows' and these shadows are then cast/projected onto the outermost sphere we call the universe. Thats basically the idea behind a holographic universe except instead of this happening in 3D space it happens in higher dimensional space. We are the 3D shadows of hyperspace/holograms. Brahman being the Light that shines eternally from hyperspace taking on the form of a soul (causal 'body') at the level of the Divine Mind by the innermost sphere. Then that is cast upon the World Soul - that being the astral body/Hiranyagarbha and finally projected onto the outermost sphere as the physical universe.

Very peculiar how similar Plotinus ideas are to Indian thought. He was a mystic and basically ignored Christainity/was not influenced by it. David Peat (physicist) and author of Synchronicity (matter as related to mind) as well as Michael Talbot - author of Holographic Universe and Carl Jung (who basically can be considered to have thought of his Collective Unconsious as Divine Mind and his archetypes as Platonic 'Forms') - as not at all accidental. They might argue it is a group conscious thing/Collective Unconscious idea that is common to all of us/all cultures.

The idea of 'The One' is given such that if we think of the center of a wheel, all points on the wheel revolve around that center but the center does not move (does nothing) at all. Yet if it was not for the center point, none of the other points could do anything. In the case of Plotinus the point is at the center of a sphere and it is Light. It illuminates 3 other outer spheres (bodies of progressively denser matter). Plotinus himself uses the word matter--

'Our physical 3-dimensional world is the result of the lower aspect of Soul (nature) projecting itself upon a kind of negative field of force, which Plotinus calls "matter." Matter has no positive existence, but is simply the receptacle for the unfolding of Soul in its lowest aspect, which projects the forms in 3-dimensional space. Plotinus speakes of matter as "evil" (e.g. Enneads II.8), and of the Soul as suffering a "fall" (e.g. Enneads V.1,1), but in fact he sees the whole cosmic process as an inevitable result of the superabundant productivity of the One, and thus "the best of all possible worlds." [a quote from Leibniz the inventor of Integral Calculus who used this expression while attempting to account for evil in the world/how could a Perfect God create a world with evil in it? question]

'Plotinus was himself a mystic, but he arrived at his philosophical conclusions by perfectly logical means, and he had not much use for either traditioal religion or any of the more recent superstitions.' Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy p605 Neoplatonism.

The idea that thoughts are forms is consistent with mantra-yantra/vibration-form/vibration-geometry/quantum theory for strings. Awareness moves through 'forms' and small bundles of forms - like little movies are complete thoughts. On the buckets of these forms are labels - words. Whenever we are trying to solve a problem, we have multiple 'forms' and when awarness moves through them in the correct sequence the answer to the problem becomes clear - the 'ah hah!!' response. Understanding occurs at that instant. A new thought is 'formed.' It is important to note that the understanding itself does not involve words. But when we attempt to think about what this understanding means in terms of other things/as related to other things, we use words. Words come afterward to explain our understanding (to others).

Understanding is a 'formative' process. A new thought or idea that results from understanding is a form itself. You could say that given a bunch of forms (thoughts) and a problem, awarness travels through them so that in the minds eye we visualize how to solve this problem.

If Sultan the gorilla is given a stick and a stool and some bananas are hanging up out of his reach, he will see the bananas. Then see they are too high. Then he sees himself on the stool trying to get them, but he sees this is not high enough. Then he sees himself on the stool with the stick hitting the bananas - ah ha!! (how does an ape say this :) understanding comes to him on how to get the bananas. He 'forms' a thought on the means to get bananas given a stick and stool. Understanding arises from awareness traveling through thought images/forms to produce visualizations and solve the problem. Then some association is made to label the new thought to be used in the future. In the case of a human that association is some type of word or explanation/piecing together of words associated with the images.

In yoga we have vaikhari the audible sound/madhyama which is the differentiation of thought into word. Notice how above I was careful to distinguish thoughts from the words assigned to them. Words are a left brain activity. Pattern recognition is a right brain activity. When someone tells a joke, it is the right brain that understands the joke but the left brain that generates laughter. Understanding is done in the right brain. The cumbersome process of communication (output/peripherial devices on computers always lag CPU speeds) happens in the left hemisphere of the brain. I could talk about speech and ther brain a lot more but for now - the right brain does pattern recognition and understands things. It functions in an analog fashion and is also called the subconscious mind. Some people believe we are actually 2 people and the right brain is a prisoner/slave/servant of the left brain which deals with language/reason and logic. (Search on 'alien hand')

So getting the message from the right brain which accomplishes understanding to the left brain where words/language is associated with it is madhyama. This is an important concept because it is here where we reify (pop the wave function in quantum theory) the understanding into some sort of 'reality.' This reality is inevitably biased and distorted - what words we chose to use for our understanding will always differ from that of another. In like fashion, in quantum theory, the data/experimental evidence is there for all to see. But when all see it about 7 major different interpretations arise. (I am not talking about Witten in 1995 telling everyone they were all looking at the same problem from a different perspective but that is an equally valid analogy). This is the crucial stage of the introduction of distortion. The ego sets filters in the mind to perceive the world in various ways. You may fancy Rolls Royce's and particularly yellow ones. So if a car goes by you screen it on a priority basis so and part of that basis is your yellow Rolls Royces. Perceiver can not be separated from perceived means that when the raw visual information from the right brain attempts an output function explanation in words, distorion/bias must be introduced. This is what gives rise to our individuality. We think of things in our particular way/subjective/idiosyncratic way.

'We see what we expect to see.' We see 'more than the physics of the situation.' This is 'observer created reality.' While we are forming a solution to a problem by moving awareness through the thoughts/forms/images - having them projected in our minds eye, this act requires willpower. It is a creative act as opposed to awareness floating along by association from one form (ops - thought) to the next effortlessly. To be creative requires willpower. Problem solving requires willpower - creatively solving a problem by moving awareness creatively through the images to arrive at a solution/understanding. But what is willpower? It IS awareness/consciousness/jiva itself. So saying we need willpower merely means we must increase the amount of intelligence + prana = awareness = willpower to control awareness from floating along as ususal. Pashyanti is the telepathic stage that occurs before any attempt to output our understanding of a problem. When I see a rose, I have a pattern match in memory - right brain holographic image matching - extremely fast. Before the name 'rose' arises in my mind I understand this rose. Someone that speaks German sees the same rose and understands it as well - before their word for rose. We both understand the rose before a word is given for it from a pattern match. That a pattern match at all even occured means I decided to give this particular flower my 'attention.' Had I not given this flower my attention I could never have done a pattern match of it to begin with.

Attention means that you have placed your awareness on something that comes in from the senses - something in particular and you would like to know more about it. So attention causes a pattern matching algorithm to kick in and and understanding arises when a match is found. The left brain reads the label off the bucket where it was found and out come rose facts. The important point being that we can be aware of a rose without putting our attention on it. The putting of attention on it calls up a pattern matching search. But suppose we are looking for something and it is not there. We don't look at every leaf on a tree and go through this process of attention to say - no that is not what I am looking for. We take the entire picture we see and scan it for for the thing (say a ball). We are aware of what is in front of us but what is in front of us does not have our attention. Awareness and attention are 2 different things is the point. When we are aware without attention this is the Para state. It is simply pure undifferentiated awareness.

Quantum mechanics tells us the there is no solid physical objective universe. The universe exists as waves. Only when we observe it (interfere with it) does it reify into a particular form. Our awareness of the data coming in from the eyes (senses) is Fourier analyzed into solid things of the universe. The solid things are no less real in a sense because although they are reflections/3D shadows of a higher reality of the Implicate Order (the holographic film itself in a higher dimension) they also are the means to understand the higher level reality. The 3D shadows of the universe/maya are the feedback we have of this deeper reality as ego-minds. The distinctions we see in solid things from our Fourier analyzer brains is all we have to understand the deeper reality.

For those of you that are not familiar with Fourier, Fourier synthesis is the use of waves to construct any form/geometry. All forms have some corresponding set of waves that can produce them. Similarly, Fourier analysis is the taking of a form/geometry and breaking it down into its constituent waves. Simply by adding waves you can construct any form, although it is a very complex affair for all but the simplest of them. If the entire universe is a holographic projection from hyperspace where the film is a deeper reality, then the addition of waves - interference patterns of the 4 forces of the universe can be thought of as projectors of these forces to result in the visible universe. How it is that the forces acting as interference patterns give rise to the 3D shadow universe is not known. All of this is very speculative. But you have to do thought experiments for 'formative' understanding/creativitiy.

I hope some of this has given you something to think about in your own way such that it may be useful to you. Yoga does not need all this stuff at all. Yoga would consider the entire endeavor simply a distraction from the goal of Enlightenment. However, the fact of the matter is that the planet is over-run by ego-minds whose only reality is mind. Logically, there is no more basis to believe science is more credible than metaphysics. This has been known for over 70 years. Metaphysics is as credible logically to participate in as science itself. But our very language is constructed so as to create delusion and confusion. Metaphysics will become ever more important because it is of far greater scope than science.

Mike Dubbeld

Colophon

Posted to alt.yoga on 26 September 2003. Author: Mike Dubbeld. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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