The tendency of modern physics is, of course, to resolve the whole material
universe into electromagnetic waves. When the eardrum vibrates, an equivalent
sound is generated in the fluid within the ear. This tells the brain about the
pitch, volume and duration or frequency of the electromagnetic “sound”.
Likewise, when an odour molecule docks with a receptor, the signal travels to
the olfactory bulb, which is the brain’s clearing house for smells. Essentially,
too, the entire range of electromagnetic radiation - from gamma rays, x-rays,
ultra-violet, visible light, infra-red, microwaves, radiowaves etc.- is beyond
the retina’s threshold for perceptible vision, while colours, across the visible
spectrum in both directions are merely different electromagnetic frequencies.
When light falls on the retina, chemical changes occur that stimulate certain
electric activities by which the human brain interprets to itself the content of
its sensory experience. Not hues, tones, shades, tints, blushes or dyes, but
sensations in the brain!
So are we dreaming a dream?
Well, if the cosmology of relativity is correct, then the only standard
by which reality can now be judged is an essentially prescriptive or even
solipsistic one. The perspective is decidedly anthropocentric. Einstein’s
greatest merit, of course, was his emphasis on relativity as a metabolic
principle. Before him the universe had been conceived of as inherently
mechanical. Now it became a dynamic, intelligent organism, in every essential
alive.
With Newton classical physics was at its greatest - and at its most
naive!
Einstein, by implication, was probing the universe as a function of its
relation to the human mind. Man fundamentally causes things to exist. He gives
them the essential attributes they possess. Upon this simple principle he
evolved a number of set equations which declared that the universe adapts to us
rather than being irrespective of ourselves. As I have written elsewhere, his
universe impresses not by its statement of fact but rather by a strong
susceptibility to the inherent characteristics of its own empirical psychology.
We are, as nearly as we can tell, inextricably entangled in what we see -
affected by no other causes than ourselves.
Of course, in order to understand the initial conditions of the
universe, we have to turn to quantum mechanics. The effect produced by the Big
Bang, the actual micro-second of creation 13,7 billion years ago, was primarily
one of the passage of time - i.e. of the relation of thought to extension. Very
few people trouble to remember that there can be no such thing as extension
without duration. Time and space are one. Both conceptions of the universe are
complete in themselves, apparently, but we cannot conceive of one without
recourse to the other. Space involves distance! Measurement involves time. Or,
indeed, energy - and definition (or mass, which we perceive as weight). Mass and
energy are, in fact, two aspects of the same phenomenon: E = mc2.
At what we call zero-time - mind became matter!
Neither by the grace of God nor by intelligent design, but by a sort of
irreducible necessity, the universe is produced like a rabbit out of a hat! Like
it or not, our cosmic inheritance, its very title deeds, lie in the thought, a
template which has to be accepted as a virtual concept rather than an
established material system. And not least because circumstances make of
irreducible necessity a conceptual law of creation - with Gravity being the
medium between thought and action.
The universe is a logical concept. It follows its own train of
thoughts.
If God’s aim was to produce something which relied upon irreducible
necessity rather than specific form he couldn’t have done better than with the
Big Bang. And He certainly gave prove of it. The creation of the original cause
is more properly to be regarded as an act of conception, rather than an event in
the ordinary meaning of the term. Something that can be metaphysical or
material, depending on nothing that the human mind can grasp. For it is through
our very own eyes that the Universe is, for the first time, able to conceive of
itself. Indeed, if there is one idea that one takes away from contemplating the
universe, it is that of pure intelligence. Or that of the cosmos, far from being
fixed by Newtonian edict, unfolding like some enormous brain.
But could God be unaware of his own divinity? By substituting Man for
God - or Thought for Being - it no longer seems quite so preposterous to imagine
that it is in this enormous, retrospective subjectivity that the unrivalled
conceptual power of the human mind, weak though it may be in other respects, is
ultimately vested.
Dreamy
