Magus Thomas Potter, 1998
Human intellect can solve many problems, yet some questions can drive human thought to the rim of rational knowledge. Confucius (@ 550 b.c.e.) has said “words cannot express thoughts completely, [I Ching, p 322].” There have been over ten-thousand words spoken and written to express the shaping of natural forces and their effect on human affairs. “The aim of language is to transmit an idea from the heart of the speaker into the heart of the listener. But the complete intention can be communicated only by means of face-to-face discourse. Oral communication is superior to written communication, to quote from the mouths of scholars and not from the mouths of books.” [Rabmi Yehudah ha-Ley]. At the center of this discourse over the millennia are the Principles of Causation and the Principle of chance. On one hand, one can argue, every cause has an effect. One may also argue that there is a synchronicity between events with no time for causation. The mind is a power faculty, full of mystery. The mind can see the whole irrational world on one side, while needing to rationalize everything, classifying and sorting the parts. Inspiration comes with the synthesis of both approaches opening new vistas of opportunity.
From the days of the Trisdectamegistus Mother, Tiamat, to these days of mathematical revelations human intellect has asked the questions “How?” and “Why?” The answers of “how” are the domain of science; the answers of “why” are the domain of Magic and religion.
At the dawn of human awareness, the disciplines of science and Magic were twins, children of religion. Both are the study of Mogur (Shaman) and Magus (priest). They saw the domains of the spirits and believed all to be alive. Until science can adequately answer the question of what makes one assembly of chemicals alive and another dead how can we say the Mogur was ever wrong? In this day of dynamism we saw events as deliberate interventions of spirits, or even the gods themselves. If a hunter came upon a hungry cheetah, he would run and intuition would gladly oblige the cheetah to give chase. The hunter might trip on a tree root, and in stumbling might avoid penciled in on her menu. The hunter may believe that the tree deliberately tripped him to save his life. Anthropologists may label him an animist if the hunter believes the tree acted deliberately. The anthropologist would label him an animatist if the hunter believed the tree acted solely on impulse. Either way, the encompassing term is “dynamism,” that is holding to a belief in the self-empowerment of nonliving or inanimate events. The hunter would, of course, have believed this tree to be endowed with spirit, and worthy of gratitude. Today, most would be glad for the happy accident and be gone.
The Magi (a.k.a. mathematicians) of Egypt and Mesopotamia extended this belief to the heavens and saw even the stars as sources of Causation. They considered the relationships between the luminaries, planets, and fixed stars to decide the fates of humans and their affairs. The ancient and classical Greek, Celtic, and Chinese, (and possibly Mesoamerican) cultures refined these methods, leading to calendars and mathematics. These Magi concluded that:Every cause has its effect. Every effect has its cause. Everything happens according to according to Law. Chance is but a name for Law not yet recognized [Kybalion , p 171].
Centuries of exoteric philosophy studied ways to rise from one plane of causation to another. They extended the edict “Know thy self,” to both the phenomenal and phantasmic worlds. The Chinese sages of old, some say they:… Instituted the hexagrams (as found in the I Ching) so that phenomena might be perceived therein. [I Ching, p 287]
It is from these attempts to observe the changing world that Chinese science, medicine, and philosophy achieved their perfections.
Like the visual process of the right and left sides of the brain differ, the Western and Eastern philosophies have differed in some fundamental ways. As the left side of the brain wants to divide, segregate, define, and rationalize, the Western thought has worked much the same way. European science has viewed the relationships of Cause and Effect as different events. The advantage to this approach has been the classification of events, ideas, and entities, and to study their relationships, qualities, powers, and natures. Chinese science, on the other hand, has viewed the world as a dynamic, irrational whole. They, too, saw the powers, qualities, and relationships within nature, and saw them as ever changing parts of the whole. By thinking through the order of the outer world to the end, and by exploring the Law of their nature to the deepest core, they arrived at an understanding of fate [I Ching, p 262].
or in the words of the Kybalion :What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is like that which is below to accomplish the miracles of the One thing.
The human mind has evolved into a powerful faculty, one of the best in the Universe. Curiosity has driven this mind to the edge of the world and found it had moved. The Mogur, Magi, and Sages of old thought through the laws of Nature and determined how they worked. Yet, just as they establish their conclusions into stone tablets, “Yet what about … ?” would crack that stone, and the search would continue.
Science, in modern practice, in the rational analysis (left brain activity) of a set of facts in their relation to one another. A scientist creates a model of the world in his mind. He or she will establish a set of rules that relate that model to the world at large. This theory is an abstraction that describes the forces and qualities of nature. Much of science is statistical in nature and can be dry and insipid to the average citizen.
Science, traditionally, has favored the Principle of Causation for two reasons: 1) the father of modern science, Alchemy, considered the axiom of Causation to be a law of nature; and 2) causation can be statistically and empirically tested. The Principle of Causation states simply that:Energy and momentum are transferred over spatial distances only with particles, and that this transfer occurs in such a way that a particle can only be created in one reaction and destroyed in another only if the latter reaction occurs after the former [Tao of Physics, p 265].
This Principle is quite easy to see, even in the casting of the die per chance that a particular combination should occur. While we may not know the conditions for any combinations -- gravitation, muscles, throwing surface, & al. -- unless the die are fixed (another cause) the chances for each combination are equal. In the sterile conditions of the laboratory, however, study can exclude the multitude of causation that would otherwise change the results. Chaos theory tries to include conditions the lab excludes. As depicted by Dr. Goldblum in the story Jurassic Park, a drop of water allowed to travel down the hand may take a different path from the drop before it. With all the statistical schemas available to this author, he has predicted the time of foaling for twenty out of fifty foals. Humanity finds ourselves in a world of chaos. We want to make sense of the phenomenal world, so we can be confident about our place within it. Experiences always confront modern science with the unity of nature. The scientist may observe the temporal coincidence of two or more events that we link only by meaning and without the possibility of a causal link. All things in time-space are interconnected, but the conceptions are not causal [Tao of Physics, p173].
The ancient Chinese philosophers, as well as modern quantum physicists, find that one can only know the wold if one becomes a part of it, rather than apart from it. In the Upanishads, the King of Death tells Nachika; In one’s own soul Brahman (reality) is realized clearly as if seen in a mirror [Upanishads, p 23, parentheses mine].
Synchronicity is that effect that an event has occurred at just the right time and space to reflect meaning into the observer. Whether this meaning is real is still a topic of debate (for another paper), yet the meaning exists. C. G. Jung has defined Synchronicity as: The coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers [I Ching, p xxiv].
Events occur in the macrocosm of the Universe that tend to coincide with events that happen within the microcosm of society or the individual. For example; we discovered Uranus, a planet with unusual qualities that rebel against normal observation, at the early part of modern history’s revolutionary period. These revolutions happed in political circles where populations revolted against authoritarian rule. These revolutions also happed in industrial circles, where we invented assembly lines and weaving machines. The discovery of Uranus could not have caused these revolutions; he is too far away to affect the Earth in any appreciable manner. When a mystic casts and studies divinatory devices and thereby determines the best advice in a situation, we say that the moment is a part of the world at large, a microcosm of it, if you will. As such we say the reading reflects in an accurate way the macrocosm. Maybe, it only reflects reality as seen through that mystic.
Science is ever searching for facts in the phenomenal world to analyze. Yet not all facts are discoverable, or even recognized when found. The better scientist will avoid setting his or her conclusion into stone. A qualified scientist is prepared to have his model of the world crumble in the face of new discoveries. In the words of the Alchemist: All truths are but half-truths, and all gods are but half-gods. We may reconcile all paradoxes [Kybalion].
The Principle of Causation is clearly a viable theory. Yet, so does the Principle of Synchronicity, which is not so clear a conclusion.
Was it the Goddess dancing with Her Dragon consort? Maybe it was just a meteorological display, after all. Perhaps, the truth is somewhere between both truths.
Although the Human intellect can solve many problems, there are questions whose answers are beyond current understanding that can drive human thought to the rim of rational knowledge. The forces that are in effect in nature are many and diverse, and the mind is a powerful and driven faculty. The Western mind has divided, segregate, and defined everything it has found, and some things it has not. Still, there is much yet to be discovered. The Eastern mind has viewed the phenomenal world as a dynamic and changing whole. Yet many eastern sages have chosen not to be engaged or involved. By exploring this world they have often come to the conclusions of how and why, only to find a new vista ahead to explore. In this modern era of expedient answers and communication it may be that we need to bring both right and left minded approaches together so that humanity can come to a conclusion that it was a worthy pursuit of no consequence.