Beyond the Occult (72 page)

In other words, according to the anthropic principle the existence of life in the universe seems to argue that the universe was somehow designed to create life and that life is finally destined to colonize the furthest corners of the universe.
It is not even necessary to subscribe to Hoyle’s view that some ‘superintendent’ has been monkeying with the physics to arrive at this conclusion.
We merely have to recognize that a lifeless universe is a great machine in which there is no such thing as chance: everything
has
to happen as it does.
And since it brought life into existence it follows that it
had
to do so.
But until it reached the stage of intelligent self-reflection life had virtually no freedom: it was driven by blind biological urges.
Once it developed intelligence it also developed some degree of freedom — and as far as life is concerned, freedom means freedom to expand and evolve.
It seems possible of course that the mechanical forces of the universe will again squash it into extinction, but logically speaking that seems unlikely.
Life is the power to defy mere brute force, to struggle for survival.
If it can emerge into a mechanical universe and survive for half a billion years there seems to be no logical reason why its higher intelligent forms should be doomed to extinction.

At which point it must be admitted that in a sense, this whole argument is irrelevant.
We are assuming, as modern biologists do, that life was somehow created out of dead matter by some kind of chemical reaction.
This book has rejected such a position from the very beginning.
If paranormal research seems to demonstrate anything at all it is that life is, in some fundamental sense, independent of matter.
It
belongs to another order of reality.
In the universe of the modern biologist there is no room for clairvoyance, precognition, out-of-the-body experiences, poltergeists, time-slips or synchronicities, and there is certainly no room for life after death.
Since — to anyone who examines it with an open mind — the evidence for all these things is convincing, the notion that our universe ‘brought life into existence’ must be rejected.

The only alternative is that life somehow entered the universe of matter from ‘outside’.
This is known as vitalism.
The vitalist view is that life is trying to insert itself into matter and to enlarge the ‘leak’ of freedom, its ultimate aim being total control over matter.
So the vitalist version of the anthropic principle is that at a certain point in its evolution, the universe created the
conditions
that were suitable for the invasion of life and that life immediately took advantage of it.

However, the view expressed by vitalists like Henri Bergson and Bernard Shaw is that life was simply a blind force that gradually struggled its way — on earth — into self-consciousness.
But again the evidence of the paranormal throws doubt on this view.
If man possesses ‘hidden powers’, when did they evolve?
Even the curious ability of mathematical prodigies to work out whether some eight-figure number is a prime defies what might be called the ‘simple vitalist’ view of evolution.
If it has taken man so long to evolve to the present stage then it ought to take another million years or so to evolve an ability that surpasses that of our best computers.
Synchronicities also seem to argue that the mind has some odd power of causing coincidences which is equally unexplainable in straightforward evolutionary terms.
And if we accept the evidence for clairvoyance, precognition, ‘spirits’ and life after death, then it becomes clear that simple vitalism is hopelessly inadequate to explain our universe.

What have the mystics to tell us of the nature of the universe?
Without exception they insist that there
is
a meaning and purpose which is invisible to our earth-bound intelligences.
Even the simplest mystical experience seems to
contradict our basic human experience of being in one place at one time.
‘My consciousness passed out across the ocean and the land in all directions, through the sky and out into space.’
‘The boundary between my physical self and my surroundings seemed to dissolve and my feeling of separation vanished.’
‘I understood that the scheme of the universe was good, not evil … .’
‘I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence… .
I saw that all men are immortal.’
‘We alone are responsible for our sufferings and problems in consequence of the misuse of our free will.’
‘In an instant of time I suddenly knew, without any doubts, that I was a part of a “Whole”.’

Such experiences seem to make so little sense that we are tempted to dismiss them as some form of drunkenness, or perhaps some variety of ‘dream consciousness’.
But in the aftermath of dreaming or drunkenness we can see quite clearly that we were out of touch with reality.
The mystics assert again and again that they felt their experience to be
more real
than our ‘ordinary reality’, and that this absolute certainty persisted when they were once again trapped in the normal world of human consciousness.
If that is true then there ought to be at least a reasonable chance of learning to grasp their experience by means of our limited human awareness.

One ‘experimental mystic’, R.
H.
Ward, devoted a book to his own experiences with dental gas and the drug LSD, and this affords us some interesting insights.
^*
The first thing that strikes us is the remarkable similarities between Ward’s experiences and those described by Ouspensky.
Describing his experience of nitrous oxide gas, Ward says,’ … I passed, after the first few inhalations of the gas, directly into a state of consciousness already far more complete than the fullest degree of ordinary waking consciousness… .’
Here again we have that basic assertion that the reason we cannot comprehend our universe is that our consciousness is so dull and dim.
It seems capable of very little but focusing on what is under our noses.

Ward again emphasizes the unreality of our idea of time.
‘In one sense it lasted far longer than the short period between inhaling the gas and “coming round”, lasted indeed for an eternity, and in another sense it took no time at all.’

Ward was surprised that far from being rendered unconscious, he was suddenly far
more
conscious than usual.
‘For already I knew, I understood, I actually was, far more than I normally knew, understood and was … .’
He adds that he felt he was
rediscovering
those things ‘which had once been mine, but which I had lost many years before.
While it was altogether strange, this new condition was also familiar; it was even in some sense my rightful condition.
Meanwhile, what was becoming unreal, slow and clumsy was the ordinary world I was leaving behind.’

The meaning of these words is quite clear.
Man has
descended into
matter — into this ‘outer Siberia’ of the universe — from some far more desirable condition.
This also seems to be confirmed again and again by people who have been on the point of death.
Raymond Moody’s book
Life After Life
, a study of dozens of ‘near-death experiences’, is full of phrases like, ‘For a second I knew all the secrets of the ages, all the meaning of the universe.’
There is a sense of knowledge, of release, of exaltation, which seems to suggest that the experience of dying is an experience of ascending
out
of matter, out of ‘Siberia’, and back into our natural condition.
And this raises, obviously, the interesting question of why human beings should descend into ‘Siberia’ in the first place — particularly if, as Steiner suggests, it is our own choice.

Ward seems to have passed quickly into the realm that Ouspensky called a world of mathematical relations.
Ward prefers to call it ‘a region of ideas’.
But ideas, in the form of concepts, were quite unnecessary, ‘since one could manage perfectly well without them: this was a condition of complete and spontaneous lucidity, where there was not the slightest need to “think”.
One simply knew; and one knew not merely one thing here and another thing there … one knew everything there was to know.
Thus one knew that everything was one thing, and that
real knowledge
was simultaneous knowledge
of the universe and all it contains, oneself included.’
In other words ‘separateness’ had disappeared; everything was
seen
to be connected.
In this realm, he says, there was a marvellous feeling of ‘rightness’.
Images and symbols had become unnecessary.
‘All was idea, and form did not exist.
(And it seems to me very interesting that one should thus, in a dentist’s chair and the twentieth century, receive practical confirmation of the theories of Plato.)’ In this region of ideas, ‘everything lived and moved; everything “breathed”, but breathed with the “one breath” which is the universal inspiration and expiration expressed in the cardinal opposites of day and night, male and female, summer and winter.
Indeed the wonderful and awe-inspiring livingness of everything seemed to be part of the interrelatedness of everything.’

Like Ouspensky, Ward realized that our human notions about subject and object are quite wrong.
He grasped ‘a new realization of the relationship between subject and object … .
One knew and understood this different world as a spectator of it, recognizing it as the object of one’s apprehension, but at the same time knew and understood that it existed within oneself; thus one was at once the least significant atom in the universal whole and that universal whole.’
(Barbara Tucker expressed it, ‘And suddenly I knew — or saw — that time past, present and future were all one, and that I was God, and yet at the same time was only the minutest grain of sand.’) Ward explains that it is necessary to
‘think inside out’
in order to understand this baffling new relationship beween subject and object.

Ward’s ‘upward flight’ ended in ‘a perfection of light’, a state of ‘indescribable purity’ and perfect unity.
Again he experienced the odd feeling of familiarity, as if this was something he
remembered
.
After this began the ‘downward flight’ back to earth, back through the region of ideas, then, ‘as consciousness diminished towards the consciousness of everyday life’, the region of ideas began to take on forms:

On its nether fringes the symbols we need in the waking state if we are to comprehend ‘intuition’ were supplied.
In
a flash … I
saw the meaning
; the meaning, that is, of the universe, of life on earth, and of man.
As the darkness of what we flatter ourselves is consciousness closed in upon me, and even as I was dimly to be aware that I was ‘coming to’, the sum of things appeared before my inward eyes as
a living geometrical figure
, an infinitely complicated and infinitely simple arrangement of continually moving, continually changing golden lines on a background of darkness … .
This living geometrical figure seemed to be telling me that
everything is in order
, that everything works according to an ineluctable pattern, and that … nothing ever need be wholly meaningless, even on earth… .
Provided we bear the pattern’s existence in mind, even pain … can have meaning; so can death; so can the worst that we may have to endure; while the possibility of discerning this meaning is itself the meaning of divine mercy.

And as he came out of the gas he tried to recapture this vision of meaning in the words ‘Within and within and within and …’ repeated like an endlessly recurring decimal.

Ouspensky had also seemed to see the ‘meaning’ in the form of a geometrical figure,

… in the semblance of some big flower, like a rose or a lotus, the petals of which were continually unfolding from the middle, growing, increasing in size, reaching the outside of the flower and then in some way again returning to the middle and starting again from the beginning … .
In this flower there was an incredible quantity of light, movement, colour, music, emotion, agitation, knowledge, intelligence, mathematics, and continuous unceasing growth.
And while I was looking at this flower
someone
seemed to explain to me that this was the ‘World’ or ‘Brahma’ in its clearest aspect and in the nearest approximation to what it is in reality — ‘If the approximation were made still nearer, it would be Brahma himself, as he is,’ said the voice.

This image of a flower unfolding then returning continually to its own centre also seems to explain Ward’s ‘within and within and within … .’

Here again perhaps the most easily understandable part of Ward’s vision is his recognition of the ‘connectedness’ of everything, the realization that ‘nothing is separate’.
He says, ‘Things were related to one another which to ordinary thinking would have no connexion whatever, and related to one another in ways which we cannot normally conceive.
Things which we should call far apart, whether in space or time or by their nature, here interpenetrated; things which we should call wholly different from one another became one another.’
The moment we begin to experience a feeling of rising vitality we have an odd sense of the
meaningfulness
of everything — as if everything we looked at were communicating with us — and the feeling that everything
reminds
us of something else.