A Tally of the Theories

What do concepts like the Fall, Maya, Fourth and Higher Dimensions, Alienation, and David Bohm’s Explicit and Implicit orders have in common? And here I might also mention Doris Lessing’s Substance-of-We-Feeling (SOWF). They suggests powerfully that our experience of reality, not least the entire whole we call the cosmos, may be something incomplete.

The Fall, of course, holds the idea of some kind of descent—from something high; in actual usage the concept of a spatial height is not what the Fall means. The spatial reference is a metaphor. Some condition or event is likened to a physical descent. The reason for the Fall, of course, isn’t clumsy climbing but disobedience. The process is also likened to an expulsion—from the Garden—into another and highly deficient realm. Here the imagery is horizontal, but its cause, disobedience, is the same.

The Sanskrit word Maya means illusion; it suggests the unreality of the cosmos. It is said to arise from ignorance, thus the false belief that what we experience has genuine essence. It is an appearance, not the real. Thus the cosmos lacks—reality, reality as fully constituted.

The dimensions above the three spatial (length, width, height) and time, thus a fourth spatial dimension (and successive others) were uncovered by mathematical contemplation. But extra-dimensionality, thus the possible existence of reality beyond the three, or four with time added, quickly captured the fancy of those who believe in a spiritual reality. It provides a modern, math-based “proof” of sorts that the spiritual intuition may be backed by science. We are not really home until we return to the Garden.

Alienation is the core of gnostic beliefs—of which a modern representative is Existentialism. We’re living in a world produced by an underling, the demiurge. Therefore we live as strangers in a strange land—and won’t escape until we know this (gnosis).

David Bohm, the physicist, conceived of a vast enfolded reality of which our cosmos is but a temporarily unfolded bubble. The Big Bang therefore produced a tiny bubble. Here too the symbolism is metaphoric; the Big Bang was a coincidence of the most minute wavelengths. Bohm also suggested, however, that there is a conditioned order, meaning deterministic to a fault, and an unconditioned order, intelligence, perceivable directly in humans.

Lessing’s fictional Fall is caused by the thinning of some mysterious psychic energy in the cosmos, that thinning assigned to a celestial event; it causes human behavior as we know it—but also affects everything else.

As the above illustrates, there is a strong tendency to project explanations of reality using dimensions directly or relatively—height, planes, space-time, distance, and such. The results, taken more or less literally, are incomprehensible. We cannot picture a fourth space dimension; if this table is illusion, it’s still certainly very hard. What precisely is present in the Garden that, if we had it, would make us happy? Harps on clouds won’t do it. At the same time, human intuition unfailingly answers Yes, yes, yes—producing the conclusion that we know something. But we have the devil of a time giving it expression in the language and thought modes of this Fallen world. And the inability also afflicts those few who manage to get a really good look at that Garden, another Dimension, the Implicate Order, or feel the winds of SOWF blowing right strongly a ways beyond Borderzone.

Substance-Of-We-Feeling

We tend to think of Revelation as communication of knowledge, guidance, and of information from the realms beyond the border. That’s also the context in which I’ve written on the subject in multiple posts here (see Categories). That human renditions of revelation might decay over time and need to be renewed seems obvious to me—but such a view tends to be resisted by those who control its dissemination. They’d agree that interpretation may be necessary—but they reserve the right of interpretation to themselves. I’ve never encountered a sharply put interpretation saying that revelation may also be nutrition, indeed necessary spiritual nutrition. These are my two subjects today.

Let me start with the first by focusing on a single word, Grace. The first dictionary definition of that word is “unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification.” The first example Merriam-Webster’s online version gives is “She walked across the stage with effortless grace.” The last three examples mention God. One of these is “By the grace of God, no one was seriously hurt,” but you won’t see that in newspapers. They will substitute “fortunately” for the leading phrase. Neither the deeper meanings of the word, nor its role in religious controversy, is present here.

The word does have such meanings in Christianity. There it is a gift of God linked to salvation and said to flow from right deeds and holiness. Luther disputed this by asserting that faith alone saves—and grace is unnecessary. Its meaning therefore as an active, indeed necessary, support, arising from a real and transcendental source has very much thinned out, more or less replaced by modernity’s secular explanation for all mysteries: chance and probability.

Now concerning the subject of nutrition. In her science fiction novel, Shikasta, Doris Lessing tells the story of a galactic empire, but of a different kind. Multiple planetary settlements have taken place over many eons from the star system Canopus, in the constellation of Argos. All kinds of species have been, as it were, planted, and they are evolving. Sustaining their evolution is an energetic emanation called Substance-Of-We-Feeling, abbreviated SOWF. It isn’t necessary for simple survival, but it is what sustains harmonious development. All is well for a long, long time—but then the emissaries from Canopus notice that something very troubling has taken place. An unexpected cosmic realignment causes the flow of SOWF to thin. Another empire, Canopus’ enemy, Puttoria, attempts to exploit this situation. A degenerative disease begins to affect settlements, among them Shikasta (read Earth); it’s not a physical disease; it is the higher levels—spiritual life, community life—that are affected.

The story of Shikasta, of course, merits interpretation as a new or as a renewed revelation—this one emanating from Sufi roots. Doris Lessing was associated with the Sufi teaching projected by Idries Shah from Britain. When I first read Shikasta, I had to smile when I encountered SOWF; to me it was an obvious reference to Sufism; later I discovered that others had had much the same thought. Lessing’s series of novels, collectively known as Canopus in Argos, is the framing of a cosmology in modern terms, thus accessible to a secular and technological age. SOWF functions as Grace—a gift, a source of higher nutrition, regenerative, as Webster’s has it. Lessing’s intent, to be sure, is far from suggesting that God is a distant galactic civilization. The effect of her, alas, very difficult fiction is to make such ideas of a conscious and meaningful cosmic plan—in which, as it were, energetic emanations like Grace play a vital role—visible to modern minds and, when thought about, illuminative of ancient and by now moribund structures of belief we’ve come to dismiss as backward superstitions.