Image from 'The Marriage of Heaven & Hell': A Demon (left) reaches out to his heavenly counterpart . In the background Angels and demons mix and match.Around 1790, one of the least known works of English literature was completed by William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Both poetic and well-reasoned in its own frame of reference, it was generally taken to be a humorous satire on religion and morality. However, at a deeper level, many scholars have come to understand it as a seminal work that expresses - with art and language- Blake's essential wisdom and philosophy. That is, that when one strips away the existential veneer of languages, personalities, egos and false opposition, there is only unity in the world.
Thus, as shown in the book frontispiece, a demon from the bowels of Hell can reach out and caress and clasp an angel in Heaven. Following which, the two may "transgress" into one another's domain. In the general sense, any devil or demon may transition to Heaven, and angels vice versa.
Blake's esoteric philosophy is told via a set of 'Proverbs of Hell' which examine the situation from a trapped demon's point of view. Each Proverb comes over as a kind of parable which purpose is to expose some of the hypocrisy of certain "spirits" on the other side, who don't yet appreciate that Heaven and Hell are one.
The separationist-isolation fallacy, which I earlier dealt with under the entry 'Hell as a Passing Fancy' - sought to look into the holistic nature of Being and exactly why separating it out into "saved" and "unsaved", "Heaven" and "Hell" amounted to the grossest error. Much of this is stated in Blake's lead-in, entitled, The Voice of the Devil:
"All Bibles have been the causes of the following errors:
- That Man has two separate principle, a Body and Soul
- That Energy, call'd Evil is alone from the Body
- That Reason call'd Good, is alone from the Soul
- That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his energies"
It is truly interesting that many of the latest findings and research in quantum mechanics, mainly to do with nonlocality, bear this out. Chief among these is that if a wave function for the universe is assigned in certain ways, the result is a holographic and hyper-dimensional basis that unifies consciousness, energy and all apparently distinct particles. This was elaborated in a fascinating series of papers published in Foundations of Physics in the 1980s by David Bohm and Brian Hiley (then of Birkbeck Collee, London) but also in Bohm's book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order. As Bohm expresses it on page 209:
"In the implicate order we have to say that mind enfolds matter in general and therefore the body in particular. similarly the body enfolds not only the mind but also in some sense the entire material universe."
This bears some further examination to make sure it's understood, especially the difference between Bohm's explicate and implicate orders. The first is fairly simple, and is just the external manifestation of physical distinctions, separability. We behold separate animals, humans, mountains, plants, and look farther to see separate planets, separate stars, galaxies and so forth. The entire universe appears to be a nearly limitless set of distinct individual objects with no apparent connections.
The relation of individuality of forms to Nonlocal-holographic and Implicate order might be depicted as I show below:
INDIVIDUAL FORMS (EXPLICATE ORDER)
___^___^___^___^___^___
DIRAC ENERGY SEA (IMPLICATE ORDER)
Now, the vast energy sea or Dirac Ether is equivalent to Bohm's Implicate Order, or what he calls "holomovement", and is a pure frequency domain (timeless). The ripples on this sea are the distinct material forms perceived as separate entities in the universe - because we are generally unaware of the implicate order.
Nonetheless, the remarkable insight is that within this order separate forms (individualities) emerge as purely illusory. By analogy, the separate waves one sees on the ocean surface are illusions - at least in the sense they cannot be removed and placed on the beach for inspection! So also, material forms cannot be abstracted from the energy background of the Dirac Ether.
Now, if the holographic Being or nonlocal Ether is true, as the twin photon experiments (such as Alain Aspect's in Paris) suggest (see bottom, Addendum), and if one may conclude that a more general or superior Being exists and is analogous (logically), then it follows that the superior Being must share the same holographic properties. In other words, it is one seamless whole, and indivisible. Since consciousness as a form of eenrgy is part of the Whole, it cannot be isolated from the superior Being either. In other words, there can be NO partitioning of the Being - under any false reasoning or even pseudo-faith, and especially ancient texts - whose writers barely could tell one star from another. Thus, all religions which teach "damnation" are in fact teaching error.
Again, all the above is under the proviso that the holographic Being reflects a superior Substrate Being that is the ground of itself. This is an assumption, and no Atheist I know adopts it. We (Atheists) simply say instead that, okay, the nonlocal unified nature of the cosmos is valid but it is all physical - since energy is physical whether vacuum energy (in the Dirace Ether) or other. There is no supernatural aspect for it or to it, and further it isn't necessary. All I am doing here is making the conjecture or extrapolation that sentience can be added to the "ultimate" holographic Being (which Bohm calls the holomovement) but even this does not confer supernatural properties.
Now, back to Blake. Devoid of any quantum mechanics, using only his insight and poetry, he appears to have come upon the unity of Being by pure inspiration. When one reads 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' he is then reading a paean to unity, nothing less. The contacts between demonic spirits and angels, God and Satan, are merely metaphors to evoke and show this unity - mainly by tearing down the most notorious barriers that existed at his time, in most men's minds.
Interestingly, when I had my first and only debate with an Anglican priest in Barbados in 1983, he mentioned a doctrine called 'Universal Salvation' whereby all individuals are eventually unified in one Deity - One Being (he didn't use the term "heaven" since the One Being is all there is. So, "heaven" is superfluous if one is already in the Being!) His opinion was that Blake's esoteric work helped spur on that doctrine which is now accepted by nearly all Anglican clergy though they still teach the childish "Heaven and Hell" because, as he put it, their minds would not grasp anything else. (Many Anglican seminaries, however, DO teach that a purification must occur to a soul before it can be integrated into Being. This would be analogous to the Catholic 'purgatory')
I assured that priest that, if I ever did embrace religion again - which was highly unlikely- it was his church I'd likely attend, if I attended any. But he'd have to leave out all the "hell" nonsense, or risk being laughed at out loud!
---
Addendum: Basics of the Aspect Experiment:
The general layout is sketched in the schematic diagram below:
A1 (+ ½ ) <-----------[D]----------->(- ½ )A2
The above scene captures the instant just before each detector intercepts an atomic magnet from the device. The quantum state observed is described by the spin number, which is (+ ½ ) for A1 and (-½) for A2, corresponding to the spin up and spin down orientations respectively. It is important to understand that these values can only be known definitely at the instant of observation. (Actually, in the real world these are more likely to be cos (45) functions to denote tilts of the polarizers)
Prior to the observation (actual detection), neither spin value can be known according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics. That is, while the atomic magnets are in transit - from device to either detector - there is no definite information concerning which spin is going where. Say, twenty successive detections are made and we obtain, at the respective analyzers (where a ‘1’ denotes a +1/2 detection and a ‘0’ a (-1/2):
A1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
A2 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1
Then, on inspection, there is a 100% 'anti-correlation' (negative correlation) between the two and an apparent nonlocal connection. In practice, the experiment was set out so that four (not two - as shown) different orientation 'sets' were obtained for the analyzers. These might be denoted: (A1,A2)I, (A1,A2)II, (A1,A2,)III, and (A1,A2)IV.
Each result is expressed as a mathematical (statistical) quantity known as a 'correlation coefficient'. The results from each orientation were then added to yield a sum S: S = (A1,A2)I + (A1,A2)II + (A1,A2,)III + (A1,A2)IV In his (1982) experiments, Aspect determined the sum - with its attendant uncertainty - to be: S = 2.70 ± 0.05
What is the significance? In a landmark theoretical achievement in 1964, mathematician John S. Bell formulated a thought experiment based on a design similar to that shown. He made the basic assumption of locality (i.e. that no communication could occur between A1 and A2 at any rate faster than light speed). In what is now widely recognized as a seminal work of mathematical physics, he set out to show that a theory which upheld locality could reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics. His result predicted that the above sum, S, had to be less than or equal to 2 (S < /= 2). This is known as the 'Bell Inequality'.
Thus, as shown in the book frontispiece, a demon from the bowels of Hell can reach out and caress and clasp an angel in Heaven. Following which, the two may "transgress" into one another's domain. In the general sense, any devil or demon may transition to Heaven, and angels vice versa.
Blake's esoteric philosophy is told via a set of 'Proverbs of Hell' which examine the situation from a trapped demon's point of view. Each Proverb comes over as a kind of parable which purpose is to expose some of the hypocrisy of certain "spirits" on the other side, who don't yet appreciate that Heaven and Hell are one.
The separationist-isolation fallacy, which I earlier dealt with under the entry 'Hell as a Passing Fancy' - sought to look into the holistic nature of Being and exactly why separating it out into "saved" and "unsaved", "Heaven" and "Hell" amounted to the grossest error. Much of this is stated in Blake's lead-in, entitled, The Voice of the Devil:
"All Bibles have been the causes of the following errors:
- That Man has two separate principle, a Body and Soul
- That Energy, call'd Evil is alone from the Body
- That Reason call'd Good, is alone from the Soul
- That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his energies"
It is truly interesting that many of the latest findings and research in quantum mechanics, mainly to do with nonlocality, bear this out. Chief among these is that if a wave function for the universe is assigned in certain ways, the result is a holographic and hyper-dimensional basis that unifies consciousness, energy and all apparently distinct particles. This was elaborated in a fascinating series of papers published in Foundations of Physics in the 1980s by David Bohm and Brian Hiley (then of Birkbeck Collee, London) but also in Bohm's book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order. As Bohm expresses it on page 209:
"In the implicate order we have to say that mind enfolds matter in general and therefore the body in particular. similarly the body enfolds not only the mind but also in some sense the entire material universe."
This bears some further examination to make sure it's understood, especially the difference between Bohm's explicate and implicate orders. The first is fairly simple, and is just the external manifestation of physical distinctions, separability. We behold separate animals, humans, mountains, plants, and look farther to see separate planets, separate stars, galaxies and so forth. The entire universe appears to be a nearly limitless set of distinct individual objects with no apparent connections.
The relation of individuality of forms to Nonlocal-holographic and Implicate order might be depicted as I show below:
INDIVIDUAL FORMS (EXPLICATE ORDER)
___^___^___^___^___^___
DIRAC ENERGY SEA (IMPLICATE ORDER)
Now, the vast energy sea or Dirac Ether is equivalent to Bohm's Implicate Order, or what he calls "holomovement", and is a pure frequency domain (timeless). The ripples on this sea are the distinct material forms perceived as separate entities in the universe - because we are generally unaware of the implicate order.
Nonetheless, the remarkable insight is that within this order separate forms (individualities) emerge as purely illusory. By analogy, the separate waves one sees on the ocean surface are illusions - at least in the sense they cannot be removed and placed on the beach for inspection! So also, material forms cannot be abstracted from the energy background of the Dirac Ether.
Now, if the holographic Being or nonlocal Ether is true, as the twin photon experiments (such as Alain Aspect's in Paris) suggest (see bottom, Addendum), and if one may conclude that a more general or superior Being exists and is analogous (logically), then it follows that the superior Being must share the same holographic properties. In other words, it is one seamless whole, and indivisible. Since consciousness as a form of eenrgy is part of the Whole, it cannot be isolated from the superior Being either. In other words, there can be NO partitioning of the Being - under any false reasoning or even pseudo-faith, and especially ancient texts - whose writers barely could tell one star from another. Thus, all religions which teach "damnation" are in fact teaching error.
Again, all the above is under the proviso that the holographic Being reflects a superior Substrate Being that is the ground of itself. This is an assumption, and no Atheist I know adopts it. We (Atheists) simply say instead that, okay, the nonlocal unified nature of the cosmos is valid but it is all physical - since energy is physical whether vacuum energy (in the Dirace Ether) or other. There is no supernatural aspect for it or to it, and further it isn't necessary. All I am doing here is making the conjecture or extrapolation that sentience can be added to the "ultimate" holographic Being (which Bohm calls the holomovement) but even this does not confer supernatural properties.
Now, back to Blake. Devoid of any quantum mechanics, using only his insight and poetry, he appears to have come upon the unity of Being by pure inspiration. When one reads 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' he is then reading a paean to unity, nothing less. The contacts between demonic spirits and angels, God and Satan, are merely metaphors to evoke and show this unity - mainly by tearing down the most notorious barriers that existed at his time, in most men's minds.
Interestingly, when I had my first and only debate with an Anglican priest in Barbados in 1983, he mentioned a doctrine called 'Universal Salvation' whereby all individuals are eventually unified in one Deity - One Being (he didn't use the term "heaven" since the One Being is all there is. So, "heaven" is superfluous if one is already in the Being!) His opinion was that Blake's esoteric work helped spur on that doctrine which is now accepted by nearly all Anglican clergy though they still teach the childish "Heaven and Hell" because, as he put it, their minds would not grasp anything else. (Many Anglican seminaries, however, DO teach that a purification must occur to a soul before it can be integrated into Being. This would be analogous to the Catholic 'purgatory')
I assured that priest that, if I ever did embrace religion again - which was highly unlikely- it was his church I'd likely attend, if I attended any. But he'd have to leave out all the "hell" nonsense, or risk being laughed at out loud!
---
Addendum: Basics of the Aspect Experiment:
The general layout is sketched in the schematic diagram below:
A1 (+ ½ ) <-----------[D]----------->(- ½ )A2
The above scene captures the instant just before each detector intercepts an atomic magnet from the device. The quantum state observed is described by the spin number, which is (+ ½ ) for A1 and (-½) for A2, corresponding to the spin up and spin down orientations respectively. It is important to understand that these values can only be known definitely at the instant of observation. (Actually, in the real world these are more likely to be cos (45) functions to denote tilts of the polarizers)
Prior to the observation (actual detection), neither spin value can be known according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics. That is, while the atomic magnets are in transit - from device to either detector - there is no definite information concerning which spin is going where. Say, twenty successive detections are made and we obtain, at the respective analyzers (where a ‘1’ denotes a +1/2 detection and a ‘0’ a (-1/2):
A1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
A2 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1
Then, on inspection, there is a 100% 'anti-correlation' (negative correlation) between the two and an apparent nonlocal connection. In practice, the experiment was set out so that four (not two - as shown) different orientation 'sets' were obtained for the analyzers. These might be denoted: (A1,A2)I, (A1,A2)II, (A1,A2,)III, and (A1,A2)IV.
Each result is expressed as a mathematical (statistical) quantity known as a 'correlation coefficient'. The results from each orientation were then added to yield a sum S: S = (A1,A2)I + (A1,A2)II + (A1,A2,)III + (A1,A2)IV In his (1982) experiments, Aspect determined the sum - with its attendant uncertainty - to be: S = 2.70 ± 0.05
What is the significance? In a landmark theoretical achievement in 1964, mathematician John S. Bell formulated a thought experiment based on a design similar to that shown. He made the basic assumption of locality (i.e. that no communication could occur between A1 and A2 at any rate faster than light speed). In what is now widely recognized as a seminal work of mathematical physics, he set out to show that a theory which upheld locality could reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics. His result predicted that the above sum, S, had to be less than or equal to 2 (S < /= 2). This is known as the 'Bell Inequality'.
Since Aspect's result violated the Bell Inequality, it meant that either: a) there were no known local theories that could explain it and QM was thus incomplete, or b) only nonlocal theories can be accepted as consistent with QM.
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