“…nothing exists except through human consciousness….”There seems to be strange analogy to contemporary theoretical physics in the above excerpt from your last, dear sister in Christ. The New Physics does seem to assert “that matter is a form of energy or particles emanating off of the Void,” and this, as a concept, is similar to some Buddhist and Hindu thinking holding that “the physical world is an illusion.” Indeed, the great visionary quantum theorist Edwin Schrödinger tells of his own strong affinity with Advaita-Vedanta cosmology. My friend the astrophysicist is likewise so inclined. Many other professional scientists are as well, I gather.
The New Agers are thoroughly fixated on “physical energy,” because they have been taught to believe that they themselves are each reducible solely to the interactions of Seven Cosmic Rays, associated with seven bodily centers in the human being. So the first order of business for an initiate is to “figure out what your rays are.” For evidently, “you are only whatever they are.” Talk about the ultimate reduction of the human person! Talk about wiping out the human mind in one swell foop! The irony (genius?) is the appeal to “mind” — for help in wiping out mind….
[Ed. Note: I have a great deal of direct experience with the New Age “movement,” and it’s pretty well-reflected by now, after some 25+ years. I’d love to say more. But thinking most people reading this would find such matters boring, I’ll put a sock in it for now. ]
All of which is perfectly summarized by O’Brien — who is, dear spirited, definitely a “black magician” or sorcerer of the (ahem, relentlessly gnostic) Nietzschean, Marxian, Hegelian type — in his statement to the long-suffering Winston:
“…nothing exists except through human consciousness….”The statement would be correct, if it could be restated as:
“…nothing exists except through divine consciousness….”But O’Brien — a fictional epigone of the above-named magical miscreants — WOULD RATHER DIE THAN GIVE GLORY TO GOD. [What he thinks he “dies into” is beyond my comprehension.] He has closed his soul, his heart, his mind to God. The deep, dark “secret” is that he would be God himself [Hegel] — or at the very least, an Ubermensch [Nietzsche]. In consequence, for him, God is that which must be got rid of, in order for man to “be free.”
But free to be or do what?
Certainly Winston was not free of O’Briens’s desire to re-experience his torturous ecstasies from acts of libido dominandi on Winston's suffering person….
If we let the historical record speak to us, it will note that some absolutely horrific consequences have occurred in the human past that were set off by “mental cases” who managed to seize power and dominion; i.e., were not resisted timely by a more-or-less culturally unified, attentive populace devoted to the principles of Western civilizational success.
So, the O'Briens of this world don’t just have to “Kill God”; they also have to “End History.”
Plato noticed that the demos — the “people” — has a nasty habit of degenerating into the ochlos — the “MOB” — given enough time for the forces of cultural destruction to work on the protective institutions of civil liberty in the context of the well-being of society….
Thus man is left doubly defenseless: There is no divine order of Being, Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Justice upon which to rely, and human historical experience doesn’t count as “knowledge.”
What I wonder is: Where was “Winston” when his resistance against the total inversion of Reality by “mental cases” might have made a difference, so that the latter could not have made their insanity not only “politically effective,” but absolutely obligatory for the rest of us?
I’d better leave off for now – though I must tell you I really wanted to get into the New Physics aspect of our subject. Not to mention how Darwin’s theory fits into the picture of a psychological and intellectual revolt against Reality. But I think I’ve already taken up a lot of the reader’s time by now.
Dear spirited, my sister in Christ — thank you so very much for your (as ever) thought-provoking essay/post!
Interesting convo.... my take away is..
Is earth Paradise or HELL?.... -or- some other realm in between?..
Seems “it” got all started with that damned “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”...
Warned... to say away from that damned thing, “they didn’t”...
Is that story merely a metaphor or an actually happening?..
I think (who cares) it’s the meme that counts..
What’s good or evil (in degrees) is what takes all the air out of the room about most things “human”..
And is the elephant in the room..
Some are looking to create paradise on earth or think it is already here...
Others try to deal with the HELL they think earth already IS.. or is becoming..
Gnostic smothistic... most have never heard of gnostics....
It’s results of that damned Tree I tell ya!...
Real or imagined... it’s a real meme...
Most want to become smarter than everyone else...
The best religion being people smarter than the others..
The best government being the smartest one...
A planet of smart alecks...
Pretty smart of someone to place the Tree of the Knowledge Good and Evil -AND- The Tree of Life at the very beginning of the bible..
How dumb many are to overlook the lessons contained therein..
The question remains.. NOT how smart are you.?. BUT How smart do you think you are.?.
Can YOU determine GOOD from EVIL?....
Might take a GOD to make that qualification..
betty: “…nothing exists except through human consciousness….” The statement would be correct, if it could be restated as: “…nothing exists except through divine consciousness….”
Spirited: Your observation is itself “correct.” Though implied, Big Brother really is making the claim of divine consciousness.
Though BB is a dialectical materialist marching under the banner of scientific socialism (which is really a neo-pagan nature and Mystery Religion dressed up as politics, empiricism, natural science, etc.) BB’s consciousness is divine because miracle-producing powers and ability to self-perfect have been consigned by theoreticians to “matter” that is dialectical, which means “thinks.”
If we’re to make sense of this obvious superstition we must begin with Darwin. As Stephen Gould argues, Darwin applied a “consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature” and “the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God (are reduced to) neural complexity.” (Darwin Day in America, John G. West, p. 41)
In other words, mind, spirit and God have been subsumed into brute matter, or the neural complexity within the brain. From this it logically follows that Darwinism has,
“…substituted the conception of natural causality for the conception of miracles and divinity….I add that not only is Darwinism not contrary to socialism, but that it forms one of its fundamental scientific premises. As Virchow justly remarked, socialism is nothing else than the logical and vital outcome partly of Darwinism and partly of Spencerian evolution.” (Enrico Ferri {1856-1926}, Socialism and Religious Beliefs, marxists.org)
Spontaneously generated dialectical matter:
“….continually attains to higher perfection under its own power, thanks to indwelling dialectic…the dialectical materialists attribution of ‘dialectic’ to matter confers on it, not mental attributes only, but even divine ones.” (Dialectical Materialism, Gustav Wetter, 1977, p. 58)
Since powers of mind, spirit, miracles and God are reduced to the neural complexity (New Physics fermion or physical matter) of BB’s brain (fermions) then reality is within BB’s skull because divine consciousness (boson or psychic matter) operates within the neural complexity of his brain.
Dialectical materialism turns out to be a stealth-form of Hermetic magic and quasi-Hindu evolutionary pantheism.