THE LIVING UNIVERSE
According to the seers, the highest of the celestial gods has a cosmic body that corresponds to the body of the Cosmos as a whole. In the Hermetic texts, this great god was simply called Cosmos, the embodiment of the living universe: “Now this whole Cosmos—which is a great god, and an image of Him who is greater...
is one mass of life; and there is not anything in the Cosmos, nor has been through all of time from the foundation of the universe, neither in the whole nor among the various things contained in it, that is not alive.”2The idea that the universe and everything in it is alive and endowed with consciousness is consistent with the ancient subjective paradigm, which suggests that everything in the universe has its ultimate origin in the field of pure consciousness. This includes not only the celestial bodies that appear as the cosmological wholes above, but also the elementary particles that appear as the microscopic parts below. In this regard, we must draw a distinction between the universal gods, which correspond to all-pervading fields of consciousness (or universal vacuum states), and the elementary constituents of those fields, which correspond to disembodied souls.
As we have seen, in the Vedic tradition, the soul was called variously the jiva or purusha, which in a disembodied state has the form of a point value of consciousness. These point values represent the elementary constituents of the universal fields of consciousness. Yet not all point values are the same. The Vedic texts tell us that there are two types of souls in the world, the perishable (kshara) and imperishable (akshara): “There are these two [types of] souls in the world—perishable and imperishable. The perishable consists of all the elements. The immovable multitude is called imperishable. But the highest soul is another, called the supreme Self....” 3
This very revealing passage suggests that the perishable souls—the perishable point values of consciousness—correspond to “all the elements” (sarva bhutani) of creation.
In other words, they correspond to the elementary particles. In both classical and quantum mechanics, the elementary particles are treated as infinitesimal point particles, which are nevertheless endowed with certain properties, such as mass, charge, momentum, and energy. There is no notion that one of these properties is consciousness, so that an elementary particle can be conceived as an elementary soul—but that was precisely the position of the ancients: Each elementary particle was viewed as a perishable point value of consciousness.The idea that these point values are perishable is consistent with quantum theory, in which the elementary particles are viewed as being created constantly and annihilated constantly at a frequency that transcends all means of empirical observation. In the Vedic texts, this constant process of creation and annihilation was called nitya pralaya and was attributed to the force of time:
Some men, knowing the subtle state of things... declare the creation and dissolution of all beings, from Brahma [the Cosmos] downward, as taking place all the time. The successive stages undergone by all changing things serve as an index of the constant creation and dissolution of those things, as carried out by the force of time. These [high frequency] stages [of creation and annihilation], brought about by the force of time... are not perceived [by ordinary men]. 4
The point values of consciousness caught up in this constant process of creation and annihilation were viewed as perishable souls, which constitute “all the elements” of creation. These correspond to the movable point values of consciousness from which is fashioned the perishable form of the Cosmos. The imperishable souls, on the other hand, correspond to the immovable point values from which is fashioned the imperishable form of the metaphysical Logos. This is none other than the crystalline structure of the transcendental superlattice, wherein each lattice point serves as the seat of an imperishable soul.
Unlike the perishable soul, which is movable, the imperishable soul is immovable; it does not have the freedom to move through space, and therefore has no interpretation as a particle or element of creation. Rather, the imperishable souls collectively form an “immovable multitude” (kutastha), which defines the quantum geometry of transcendental space itself. That crystalline geometry is none other than the transcendental superlattice, which represents the ideal form of the metaphysical Logos.
Although the imperishable souls are immovable, this does not mean that they lack freedom. They may be eternally frozen in place, but they are free to expand and contract their scales of subjective comprehension over the entire spectrum of consciousness. This amounts to a completely different type of freedom from that enjoyed by the perishable soul.
The field of pure consciousness includes both types of point values. In the passage quoted above, it is referred to as the highest soul, which serves as the one supreme self of all the point values—whether perishable or imperishable. By means of the perishable soul, the self obtains various points of view regarding the movable reality of the physical Cosmos, and by means of the imperishable soul, it obtains viewpoints regarding the immovable reality of the metaphysical Logos. In the final analysis, the same eternal self possesses both points of view.
That self, in turn, has various manifestations of space and time on different scales as all-pervading fields of consciousness, which can be viewed variously as universal layers, universal gods, or universal vacuum states. Each of these fields acts as the presiding deity, or self, of all the pointlike souls—both perishable and imperishable—that operate under its jurisdiction.
For this reason, the Hermetic texts tell us that the layers serve as the haunts of disembodied souls, the point values of consciousness, which provide the field with various points of view on its own reality. These souls constitute the conscious and living parts from which are composed both the physical Cosmos and metaphysical Logos. Their behavior is directed by the universal gods, and ultimately by God, the Supreme Being, who is the very self of them all.