INCLUSIVE COSMOLOGY

That the universe has laws at all, that its has inconceivable intricacy and interconnection and evolves ineffable beauty in the life of nature and mankind, matter, mind and spirit... these are what cosmology must include in anything like an understanding. To ignore the whole of things and consider it beyond any explanation than that of the physical sciences, to analyse and reduce all this to mathematical calculations and equations makes nobody the wiser about anything worthwhile. So what is worthwhile? That is also the question of cosmology. To know the weight of the biggest black hole or the date and size of one Big Bang, the shape of the ripples... so what? How disappointing... those who sought for more near, real meaning, for greater inclusive scope and more inspiring vision!

Though cosmology interests itself in the origin and end of everything, it recognises the paradox that there is also infinity, and not merely as a convenient mathematical concept. So the methods and paradigms of cosmology proper are quite different to those of science, and are far more demanding of the person in several ways, not only as regards the embrace of knowledge, reason and insight required, but more especially as to the disciplines of self-reflection and spiritual transformation that preceed the gaining of those insights that are the cosmological answers.

Cosmology in the universal sense must investigate and integrate those most basic human interests which formed the concern of traditional philosophy, ontology, cosmology and theology. These concerns can be outlined by the three most prime urges in the human being, which everyone can validate as being such through self-inquiry and by the study of mankind: firstly to live, secondly to know, thirdly to experience pleasure. ¹ The first is interpreted by the physicalistic sciences as the survival instinct, the second as the importance of truth and the third as various things according to desire or opinion (either as sense gratification from food, drink, sleep, sex, possessions, power etc.). The three prime urges may, however, be regarded in their ultimate (i.e. autolectic) form as the expression of an ineradicable urge towards immortality, to know everything and to be immersed in unending joy or bliss. They reflect and express the qualities attributed to divinity, the perfect forms of will, knowledge and selfless love for all creation.

Philosophers have long been at odds about the ultimate origin of everything. Was all that is once created or did it always exist? Is it a question of genesis or eternity, of a one-time-only universe or of eternally recurrent cycles of time? Is there a God Creator or not? If there is, is God separate from or inherent in Creation, and in the whole of it, part of it or both? Various ancient accounts answer these questions, accounts seen by scientists as 'myths' and regarded by some as theories and others as divine revelations.

Perhaps the most ancient doctrine is that of eternally recurring cycles, such as in the ancient Indian and Chinese religions and some early Greek philosophies. Opposed to these in viewpoint are the Hebrew, Christian and Moslem creation myths, which all assert there is only one grand cycle of time, having a historical beginning and a coming end. This is also the view towards which late 20'th Century astrophysics still strongly tends, for now at least, as one never can tell what radical turnabouts on such questions astro-physicists and their kind have often announced! And who can say with certainty that the steady-state theory of the universe in Hoyle's version went out of fashion in the 1970s, but it is always unwise to rule out the possible return of cosmological theories, so uncertain is the future in science.

What can be the meaning of evolution or development in the universe and in the whole cosmos? The present universe, which we can just as well assume came into being through the Big Bang (though this is not proven) in which matter first appeared along with space and time, goes through an evolution which has already apparently been charted to a considerable extent 'backwards' in time. Further, any Western-educated person knows that there is observable evidence of extremely early events in the 'genesis' of the physical universe; theoretically-expected traces of events that occurred micro-seconds after the initial spark of expansion were at long last observed in 1992 when popularly-explained 'background ripples' of the original explosion were first detected. The very beginning itself is quite evidently unobservable.

That the universe 'has' an end is usually assumed, though the experts in the field admit that what sort of end it might be is unknown. While there are virtually no good reasons for denying the general validity of the Big Bang theory and many of it ramifications, it does not allow us to deduce either a once-only grand cycle of time-space. There are no observations and can be none that exclude the possibility of recurrent physical universes of time-space, which the ancient Indians held to be the divinely-revealed teaching.

THE CONCEPT OF COSMOS

To describe the cosmos only in spatio-temporal terms is inappropriate. It can better be approached through figurative expressions. The Greek word 'cosmos' was diametrically opposed to 'chaos', and the qualities of cosmos can rightly be thought of as order, design, beauty, regularity and stability. The idea of chaos was one of matter existing in a totally unformed condition. The universe shown through the eyes of physicalists is like a reflection of whatever material is seen, but excluding what lies behind the seeing eye.

The physicalistic explanation substitutes the word 'cosmos' by (physical) universe, rejecting the associations of the Greek term and the idea of a creator along with it. But the explanation is always insufficient because always incomplete... neither the cause of the Big Bang nor the ultimate origin of anything can be given on the premises of science. Despite the mental contortions of those physicists who wish to deny this, caught as they are in the paradoxes of physicalist-based relativity theory, quanta relativism and more besides, the requirement of some kind of a 'first unmoved mover' is irrefutable. As a principal and unmoved cause of change', Aristotle's 'first unmoved mover' was both an cause and goal or destination (destiny) of the processes to which everything in physical nature is subject sooner or later. This is easily identified with a Creator, in whom most people of the world apparently have reason to believe. This is 'perennial philosophy'.

If the cosmos is eternal, whether in the sense of never-ceasing or that of being independent of time (timeless), 'cosmic evolution' is incompatible with a once-only universe. There is, of course, no conclusive reason why one cycle or kalpa of space-time-matter may not be repeated an endless number of times against the background of the same cosmos. On the other hand, it is not entirely inconceivable that the existence of the same one-cycle universe is itself eternal in the sense of 'timeless'; i.e. is eternally-co-existent when viewed from the ultimate cosmic perspective. Individual consciousnesses, seen as an awareness split off from the Divine Omniscient Consciousness in the image of which it is itself nonetheless formed, finds in the universe the appearance of unrepeatable ephemerality... of temporal character and temporary duration. The preformed and formative human mind may well be what gives the cosmos its apparent form, while the cosmos 'in-itself' can transcend all the limitations of human awareness and thought forms. The distinction between cosmos and universe enables one to assert that the cosmos has no beginning and no end, while the universe did have a beginning and will have an end. It so happens that infinity is an experiencable super-fact, as mystics and others who may have stumbled into it somehow know beyond any shadow of doubt. Exactly the same also applies to the universal cosmic energy that 'underlies' all physical and other phenomena.

The eternal continuum which underlies the 'saga of existence' can only logically be an undifferentiated unity of Consciousness, an eternal background upon which individual beings only figure for a while. The history of an individual persons - or of separate species, geni or families - cannot therefore be thought of as unique and ultimate, though they may at the same time be particular and irreversible from the viewpoint of each individual being.

To give only one final account of the cosmos would seem necessarily to involve narrowness of some kind, however 'pluralistic' and all-embracing it may try to be. Yet it is surprising that the reasons for different world views being at odds have seldom been considered together and interpreted in such a way that the genuine rationale of each viewpoint is granted and sought explained in an overall understanding.

CREATION ACCORDING TO VEDANTA

The Big Bang was prefigured in Vedantic thought as the event whereby the One (Brahma) separated itself from itself. Firstly, as scripture holds, 'the One became Two', thus initiating the cosmic spirit (Purusha) and the physical universe (Prakriti). The Big Bang, by this imagery, is the physical counterpart and result of the primordial act of division of the non-spatial, eternal One.

Since to separate is not necessarily the same as to divide into equal parts, the relative extent of spirit and matter can differ, though we have no means to measure such incommensurable totalities. Vedantic scripture asserts that the manifest universe is but a small fraction of the whole. An essential in this teaching is that the One that separates itself from itself nevertheless remains transcendent to its Creation! How this apparent contradiction is resolved is only explained anywhere in philosophy to any satisfactory degree in Advaitic thought.

The cosmology that is most universal in scope and validity, in my judgement, being logically consistent as far as the limits of logic allow, is found in the tradition known as Vedanta. Though detailed accounts of every phenomenon are obviously not to be found in Vedanta any more than elsewhere, all those so far commonly known can be integrated into the understanding that arises from Vedanta. The solution given in the Upanishads and related texts can potentially accommodate the major perspectives of the modern sciences for it also deals with the prime aspects of human existence, such as the self, identity, consciousness and the meaning of life. It propounds The distinction between cosmos and universe allows us to assert that the cosmos has no beginning and no end, while the universe can have had a beginning and could presumably also have an end.

Vedantic scriptural cosmology compares the process of creation and dissolution to that of breathing. The Divine Breath, which projects and enlivens the universe, is firstly expansive... then contracts, withdrawing everything into itself, the One. This latter evidently favours the 'Big Crunch' hypothesis of astro-physics, rather than Hoyle's steady state theory or the absurd and horrifying idea of eternal expansion. The 'inhalation' phase, whereby creation turns back towards its Divine Source applies both to the various forms of nature and of soul or spirit. The three phases in the life of each physical universe are represented in the symbolic figures of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Sustainer and Shiva the Destroyer.

In Vedanta, Shiva's famed power of destruction or disintegration - when applied to the evolution of individual human beings - is to be understood as the process of change and transformation... a gradual removal of all physical attachments and hence of constraints on the urge to return to the source, the pristine Unity of Godhood. God eventually withdraws into himself the spirit of all individuals until there remains only the One. Thus it is not only the physical universe that is withdrawn, but also that of spirit (Purusha) whereby all beings that have emerged from it again merge in the One.

The act of creation, attributed to Brahma and which begins through division, proceeds by subdivision by the same creative urge. The first two units become four, then eight and so on in a geometric progression, very rapidly 'expanding' into quadrillions, until all the many elementary particles of matter and of spirit exist. This 'exhalation phase' is of dual nature: on the one hand, this is the explosive Big Bang, on the other it is the creation of individual souls by Divine Fiat.

The divisive force at the root of creation is also reproduced or reflected in the basic duality and complementarity of everything in physical nature (Prakriti), such as in the positive charge that implies an equal negative charge, the electron and the proton, heat and cold, light and darkness etc. It is seen in the complementarity of wave and particle motion in physics.

It is no exaggeration to say that physicists are still totally perplexed by the facts concerning matter vs. anti-matter. Though all physical theory points to the existence of another force in the universe equal to the sum force inherent in matter, it just cannot be found. They have named this force 'anti-matter', a logical name, though hardly an inspired one. Anti-matter is allegedly identified by some physicists in the tiniest quantities for minute fractions of a second in cyclotron atom-smashers. Physicists largely agree, however, in predicting that if anti-matter were to combine with matter, a gigantic explosion would result. Were an anti-universe to exist and to come into contact with the material universe, physicists theorise, we could expect the equivalent of the Big Bang in reverse.

How might a Creator, God, fit into this thought? A sceptic might argue that there is no basis for the obvious idea that God controls the negative energy (anti-matter). In Vedanta, God is regarded as the overall creator, sustainer and destroyer of the universe. Physics provides a possible explanation of how the destruction of the universe might occur, based on what is present. Yet it is still unable to explain either how it is created or sustained... that is what generates and sustains the underlying 'energy' in everything, energy in its most primordial, formless form.

In this connections, it is certainly of interest that the ancient scriptures which contain measurements on the smallest micro-scale and the greatest macro-stretches of time that are as near-identical as to be the same as results that science has only just arrived at. See On India's Ancient Past.

THE COSMOS IN MIND AND SPIRIT

The word 'cosmos' cannot reasonably refer only to matter, since the material universe is informed by Spirit (Purusha). The Vedantic view of the cosmos, being the most comprehensive of spiritual visions, regards the Spirit as subjecting itself through creation to the process of subdivision, for this alone explains the existence of billions of individual beings (jivas)... not only human beings, but all living beings having some degree of awareness of environment. Despite this, and paradoxically from the limited viewpoint of logic, Purusha both permeates everything and itself constitutes the spiritual cosmos of diverse life. Hence it is a unity that is omni-present, both in space and time (though space and time are also Maya). Every 'individual' being in some way has the experience of otherness or being separate from all else. The jivas can be regarded as evolving souls, each at their level of development corresponding to the 8.4 million distinct species of Vedic lore. Science has gradually through the centuries been approaching this figure for the number of species on earth. Estimates of 200,000 species in the previous century were increased until from 4 or 5 million upwards in recent decades, while the estimate of 8 million species or more was first seriously considered as possible in modern biology in the 1990s!

The phenomenon of mind and of the person as an individual is also a result of a fundamental division because, in order to perceive or think articulately, each mind requires both subject and object... a duality that reflects the original creative division. The mind, as we understand the term generally in the West, covers many different faculties, from consciousness, conscience or higher intellect to perception, memory, rational and calculative thought, imagination, feelings, attachments etc. Consciousness itself is regarded as being intrinsic to the spirit or Self (Purusha) as do also conscience and higher reason. These constitute the subject, while the object world consists in all other representations of the mind which appear before consciousness (i.e. 'phenomena', which include perceptions, memories, mental images or feelings etc.). Unlike consciousness itself, these latter have a physical basis.

The basis of mind is Maya, often translated as illusion. But Maya is far more complex than one word can describe and represent. Maya is what causes the individual mind to perceive the physical universe as objective reality (as object) and also to separate itself from the objective as 'subjective' and as 'I'. Through the medium of space and time, Maya creates the illusion of the separateness of the human soul from God. It creates 'the many' and thereby conceals the unity and transcendent reality of God. Each mind is an individual expression of Spirit . Reflecting the nature of the One (Brahma), each mind is able to divide itself from itself and, though its conception of dualities, to distinguish anything from everything and everything from nothing etc. But the mind evolves and eventually turns inward in search for its true identity, the origin of the 'I'. The illusion is destroyed to the extent that mind itself is 'destroyed', that is to say, is controlled and eventually transcended. Beyond mind is Being in its ineffable, unlimited, unalterable and blissful Consciousness.

To rise above all distinctions and differences, to become perfectly equinanimous, is to step beyond the diversions and confusions of the mind. The individual jiva reunites in full awareness with the unity which it always is, yet had through Maya apparently parted from. To step back into the mind, so to speak, is to recreate and reenter the phenomenal world. As we think the harder, the mind extends its labyrinth of alternative hypotheses, which can become so involved and multifacetted that there seems to be no escape from intellectual disorientation (so well illustrated when scientists try to debate issues that are actually of a spiritual nature).

To step consciously beyond the mind is clearly not achieved simply or without much preceeding time and effort. According to the perennial philosophy of the ancient religions, every human mind has a far longer prehistory than it is usually aware of - and the momentum of accumulated karma predetermines its overall present condition. Karmic inheritance is the spiritual parallel of the material genetic kind. This human 'pre-existence' is parallel to the prehistory of the evolution of the many species of living being.

The present result of the process of development of each individual mind is commonly the ego. The ego is that worldly aspect of our identity, assumed and formed in childhood, which asserts possession or ownership. Where one's mind is concerned, personal tastes, opinions, ideas and mental achievements are regarded as 'mine'. This is the essence of ego. So as to transcend the mind and detach consciousness from the object world, it is necessary firstly to neutralise the ego. For those much attached to mental and intellectual pursuits, this is possible only to the extent that one is selfless, which is to say liberated from the constraints of the ego and its perpetual self-centredness and self-defensivity against the changing environment.

All materialistic theories of man and nature imply egoism as the only or main driving force of all living beings. None of these philosophies are held by those who claim and refer to any state of supra-mental consciousness. The (unproven) hypothesis that the mind and all its contents are exclusively the product of the physical organism, where the brain and central nervous system play the kingly role, is the belief of atheistic physicalism. The possibility that the brain is merely an instrument of thoughts, minds and the tool of a subtle soul is anathema to them. That thoughts could be registered - somewhat as a radio received picks up the contents of carrier waves of certain frequencies - is a perfectly feasible idea and one which no neurological or other research can produce weightly evidence against. Such an explanation can account for the entire range of human mental and psychic and spiritual phenomena. Perhaps this is why believers in physicalistic scientism deny, in the face of massive testimony and sound researches, and in advance of any observation they could undertake, the very existence of all the so-called 'paranormal' phenomena that cannot be explained by physical causes.

The strength of emotion and language regularly expressed by most scientists against para-normal or 'cosmic' explanations suggests a more psychological explanation for physicalism than a rational(izing) one. The ego of the scientist who identifies strongly with his own assumptions and beliefs is often seen to be threatened even by mere ideas of supra-scientific explanations. Pride in the mind - whatever the actual level of mentally agility - most usually is strongest where there is narrowness of views or some rigid mental conventions. Thinkers who are less attached to their own ideas are not usually the less objective for it, despite their sometimes choosing a measure of rhetoric so as to stimulate to serious debate.

The famous Buddhistic image of Nirvana as being like a 'candle blown out' implies the elimination of ego and the ego-supportive mind and the removal of the mayic illusion of an independently-existing physical universe. Due to the general decline in philosophy, few appear now to be able seriously even to conceive how the supposed objective existence of matter in space-time is fundamentally illusory, let alone understand how this fact affects common suppositions and accepted knowledge. The well-tried questions that arise are answerable, though not without considerable study and the right guidance. The appearance of the physical universe as real is obviously only fully eliminated, however, for those who attain full realisation and can witness how the universe is the creation of the power of Maya working through the mind. Meanwhile, the physical universe doubtless continues to fulfil the purpose of its existence according to its evolution and the laws that regulate it.

PREDETERMINED OMNIPRESENCE OR EVOLVING TEMPORALITY?

One problem in cosmology is whether the universe is a predetermined system, complete and omnipresent, or whether it develops 'through time' as it goes a appears between these two alternatives, one long. A major difference, which troubles all inquisitive scientists and philosophers alike. This difference seems to be that the predetermination model leaves no room for other changes than those which are already inherent and latent in the overall design (hence predestined) while the developmental model opens for a universe that has no definite overall design; one that is open to sheer chance developments or to 'cosmic accident'.

The first is a concept of cosmos (as an ordered, beautiful whole) and it seems to imply an all-knowing, all-powerful Creating Intelligence. The second concept is more like that of the universe as a product of some sort of gross primordial urge or blind force without any control or design(er). This seems to fit the bill of materialism or scientism more than the former. There is nevetheless an apparent discrepancy in this: physical materialism always tends towards total determinism, which is however the key feature of the first model. Similarly, a cosmos - if identified with an omnipotent Creator and all the intelligence it encompasses - could be changed in its development underway. Being omnipotent, can not God as the creative source have chosen as part of the plan to act through human intelligence, thus altering the sub-plans at any time? If unable delegate creativity, such as through giving human beings limited (free) will power, God would not have the ultimate freedom of Omnipotence. Of course, being all-powerful does not mean that one has to exercise that power in all things at all times, but rather to have 'the first and last say' wherever necessary.

We need to reconcile these opposing hypotheses and resolve the basic philosophical difficulty of the contradictory ideas of freedom and universal causation. Freedom or choice (like 'indeterminacy') can occur to some limited extent within a determinate whole and be as real as all other determined and/or conditioned phenomena that come and go within the present framework of time-space. Equally well, however, everything in space-time can be seen as transitory and thus in an ultimate sense, 'illusory' (such as in Vedanta, Buddhism, Parmenides and Plato).

Theories of time are often conceived and classified as either 'linear' or 'circular'. This itself tends to over-simplify by locking conceptions into one of the two opposing images. There is some sound evidence to support both ideas, yet a third alternative is not unthinkable. The following articulated image illustrates how both chance and overall design may occur within one and the same cosmos.

Conceive one unmoving, steady circle - like the outline of a pond - within which many small circles or other shapes move. The reality, the permanent Design, is unchanged while everything within it is ephemeral and subject to novelty and chance configurations, varying degrees of harmony and disorder. The Cosmic Reality is the eternal 'whole' which gives room to the temporal 'parts'. Past and future universes can likewise be accommodated under the same universal idea of ever-omnipresent Cosmos.

CREATION AND EVOLUTION

Physical evolutionism can be regarded as an established theory based on fact. Yet it signally fails to explain either how or why human consciousness - more precisely self-awareness - arose. The best biologists can suggest is that it is a result of a huge surplus capacity of the brain, a by-product of biological complexity.

Most geneticists now hold the view that evolution does not simply reproduce identical beings, but allow for what scientists call genetical 'errors', the occasional development of entirely new genes, without which the entire diversity of species and individuals would not exist. Evolution also has 'mechanisms', geneticists agree, that stabilise bodily organisms in protecting them from accommodating too many 'errors'.

The mechanistic paradigm still rears its ugly head in cutting edge science, which otherwise claims to have been freed from this primitive 19th century model. The fact is, mechanism is simply inseparable from scientistic physicalism. That the wonderful design of multiple life is only due to 'error' seems an all-too-human 'anthropomorphical' judgement. Error is a human trait, not a natural condition, so one might somewhat wickedly ask to whom geneticists attribute these clever 'mistakes'?

It is thought by some biologists that the universe is built so that man can evolve. The goal of evolution, however is viewed in quite contrary terms by those who have physicalism as their assumption to those who do not. The ancient conception of entelechy was of development from what is potential to what is perfected and actualised. It was closely allied to that of an informing spirit. This whole conception is the exact opposite of the pessimistic entropy of a universe running down that repeatedly has held sway in astrophysics. The physical sciences still take their lead from the ever-shifting theories and speculative arguments of physical cosmology. The resulting Weltanschauung has no room for sublime conceptions, such as each human being being able to evolve back to the realisation and perfection of her or his inherent Divinity and attain liberation from the cycle of birth and death through this. Yet the arguments for this view are no less extensive than those derived from the natural sciences, and from my perspective they are also much more compelling. Though these ancient teachings are still very little and fragmentarily known in the West, they cannot be given more than a brief mention here.

From the viewpoint of human self-understanding and its necessary basis, self esteem or 'basic trust', a non-physicalistic cosmology is far superior to that provided by science, which erases any idea of an integral human self or, at best, only pays lip service to its possible existence. Unlike the fundamentally pessimistic cosmological view of the sciences, with their meaningless assumption of purposelessness, chance development of life, survivalism and entropy, the cosmology which conceives all beings as inherently Divine, part of the body of God and yet a part within which the whole is contained in microcosm, provides the ultimate ground for human values and self-realisation. It is both an age-old and a well-tried teaching, its directions having been practiced fully by thousands of individuals through the ages who have attained the heights of 'mystical' vision and bliss. That this is possible is not only a matter of massive historical and contemporary testimony, but it is presently observable in persons alive today.

That there is such a thing as gradual spiritual evolution through repeated rebirths into higher levels of physically-evolving bodies, animal and human - is so far a conception 'beyond science'. Yet human rebirth can be researched with the aid of empirical methods, and has already been shown to be based on a broad body of evidence that is otherwise quite inexplicable. As one part of the cosmos, the Vedantic 'hypothesis' holds, the physical world (Prakriti) is a flux in transience, a stage setting through which the human soul (Purusha) at every level of mental, psychic and spiritual evolution or development is reborn until the final goal is attained.

Historically, the chief difference between the two viewpoints under examination has turned on the question of whether the evolutionary theory of the universe, life and man is true or whether, as according to the Bible's Book of Genesis, God created man 'in seven days' (or, for that matter all at once by immediate fiat as in Vedantic and other scriptures). Impossible as it has seemed to logical minds, there is a way of reconciling these two viewpoints, as follows:-

Since the acceptance of Einsteinian relativity theory, our ideas of matter, time and space have had to be de-absolutised to what is an amazing degree by previous European philosophical standards. Space, time and matter are relative quantities, being functions of each other. However, already in an almost pre-historic age, the Vedantic philosophy propounded a yet more thoroughgoing kind of relativism! In relativity theory we first received a means to express what the ancient rishis regarded as 'ineffable' vision. Time, space and matter were only the body of God (Brahmam), not the spirit. They are seen as temporary and ultimately insubstantial phenomena, themselves created and sustained by God who omnipotently created the physical universe by separating Divine Self from Self, creating the many phenomena from out of the One Eternal Reality. The Creator of the universe also necessarily creates time itself, and all that can evolve within it! Thus, the total design is known to Divine Consciousness as if 'in advance', or rather, independently of time-space-matter. A cosmology that thus allows for the possibility of precognition can account for all the facts in a far superior manner to any that insists on regarding reality as totally and ultimately indeterminate. If that were so, one would eventually have to reject as illogical and empirically insupportable the very idea on which sciences depend, that there are universally applicable and unchanging laws of nature. Here I shall not go into exceptions to known laws that can arise in the shape of divine interventions - known to many as miracles and leelas as gifts of grace. They are as far beyond explanation as the the fact of creation, universal order in natural laws and such questions as rebirth and incarnations ultimately remain.

There can be no doubt in the mind of a person who has repeatedly experienced precognitions or even who has investigated the field sufficiently to discover that very exact predictions have been made on occasion about some events, even events far into the future. There are historical records enough that prove that some precognitions are exact and unmistakable beyond all reasonable doubt, though they are overwhelmingly outnumbered by wrong predictions, vague and worthless precognitions and out-and-out frauds. Many scientists seem keen to ignore, suppress, deny or ridicule these materials, a remarkable psychological and social fact that itself deserves study. A priori dogmas about what can and cannot be known or exist are often part of a mental defence system against fear of paranormal facts, perhaps because of what they might imply for one's own ideas, professional prestige or life.

Though the arts of precognition are doubtless very largely practiced as doubtful money-making enterprises and are only alleged to be 'spiritual science', there actually are still those who can and do make extremely accurate predictions of events with such precision and timing as to be beyond any doubt, particularly in India and in other related Eastern cultures. Only those who have not investigated these facts directly themselves and have studied the relevant research can doubt it. Such seers and astrologers are, nonetheless, probably never entirely correct in their prognostications, yet some few do prove to be amazingly accurate in much of what they predict. Be all this as it may, it only requires two or three very precise precognitive dreams or visions to show that the future is somehow and to some extent exactly pre-ordained. If this has not occurred to a majority of persons in the world, it certainly has done so to a huge minority, as all kinds of surveys bear out every time.

APPEARANCE, REALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE COSMOS

What we come to know through the astronomical and allied sciences appears to be objective reality, existing independently of any individual mind - even perhaps of human minds altogether. Nonetheless it is still only appearance, because any 'reality' discovered has its support just as much in subjectivity as it has in observable data! That astronomical hypotheses are supported by sense experience through experimentally deduced tests does not alter the fact that any view of the universe is ultimately a 'projection' of mind, influenced in many respects by the complex of cultures that happen to operate in each case. What the mind perceives through the senses is something quite different in many respects to what science insists is actually present.

The recent history of astronomical science illustrates how this 'projection' changes its structure as hypotheses develop and contradict one another and subsequently change what we look at and how different interpretations are applied in speculative theory. The observable character of the universe continually alters, from our point of view. Some alterations, which occur seldom, are so radical that the previous 'view' is thereafter regarded as so incorrect as to be almost delusory! The greatest turnabouts of all occurred both with the Copernican and the Einsteinian revolutions. However, all of this is only an extension - however extended it is - of the early Greek obsession with finding the primaeval stuff of the universe (arche). Neither relativity nor quantum physics have changed the orientation of thought radically away from the naturalistic materialism of the pre-Socratic astronomers and philosophers.

As said, the driving idea of the physical sciences is expressed most succinctly in the famous "Thing-in-itself" of Kant's philosophy (Das Ding-an-Sich). It represents what supposedly exists independently of the human mind or consciousness. It may either be an 'objective reality' beyond all perception or else only an 'idea' which focusses our perception and thus 'regulates' all our experiences of the appearances to which our senses are limited. The reality, the thing-in-itself independent of the things-for-us, is never knowable by the subjective sense-oriented mind. Likewise, the physical universe, whether as approached through micro-physics or at the opposite macro-level of astro-physics, is unknowable to the situated mind for what it is in itself.

The mind, in developing theories, always sooner or later discovers mind itself, first in general and later more particularly. Or, rather, it really increases its scope gradually so as to include itself and its operations more thoroughly in its reckonings. The struggle towards fulfillment from partial understanding to whole comprehension moves it towards gradual self-realisation. There is, in this process, always a 'quantum leap' or major qualitative transition open to the human mind, a leap that can be secured intellectually in respect of all the critical perspicacity, known facts and theories it previously held as true. This leap goes from the philosophy of materialism that is assumed by science to the spiritual view that instead adopts the ultimate primacy of consciousness in all creation.

Rejecting materialistic objectivism does not mean that one falls blindly into the contrary fallacies of subjectivism or relativism. Subjectivism takes various forms, from sheer solipsism to the inter-subjective relativism of contemporary science. Even inter-subjectivism is no substitute for naive objectivism because consensus is not a substitute for truth. It may be the best guarantee available, but the history of scientific errors indisputably shows how even the full consensus of trained scientific observers on the status of almost any hypothesis can be wrong or inaccurate, and almost without exception has at least to be modified as the mainstream views progress.

What is the solution to the objective-subjective dilemma? There is no well-defined term for that ontological position which best solves it. The term 'idealism' is too vague, having many misleading uses, including associations to various Greek philosophers which do not accord with the thesis intended here. Another term, suggested by Dr. Paul Brunton, is 'mentalism'. Contrasting matter with mind suggests that materialism stands in contrast to mentalism. But it is not the mind's sensory-mental activity that is most fundamental, but extra-mental consciousness. A possible term for this may be 'supra-mentalism', which indicates the primacy of consciousness both over matter and over mental activity. Further, consciousness is then to be regarded as the universal existant in which the individual mind shares and upon which every individual's true identity is ultimately based.

According to supra-mentalism, the universe - including both mind and matter - is ultimately the creation of Consciousness, and not the converse. This does not mean that our simply being conscious involves creation of the perceived world, which is an absurdity, but that there is an infinitely potent universal Consciousness, of which our everyday awareness is as a miniscule fragment. However, within this fragment resides the potency to raise itself progressively to the Universal Consciousness, as and when the many human prerequisites are fulfilled. This appears only as an hypothesis to those without any experience of transcendental awareness, but not to those who have such experiences.

The consequences of this view for all aspects of human knowledge and activity are approachable through the best of philosophy and religion, but the fundamental datum itself is realisable only through concerted inward self-investigation. Matter is then progressively perceived as the temporal medium of reflection for consciousness, which is the only ultimate existant (ontos). This view also calls for a very radical turnaround of much present-day human science, as well as much current but fruitless neurological speculation and epistemologically futile psychology. Those science writers who ridicule this view often seem to have most scant acquaintance with the ideas involved. When Francis Crick claimed it was unnecessary to 'invoke consciousness' to explain the phenomenon one might reply that, in a sense, by invoking Consciousness a decisive step is taken towards understanding how narrow is the view of Crick.

The suggestion that matter is, in a subtle sense of the word, a 'reflection' of consciousness rather than vice-versa should not take micro-physicists entirely by surprise. Modern physicists appreciate that the observing subject is part of the experimental process itself, though probably not to the full extent.

The physicist's own mind's 'creations' are also part and parcel of the (phenomenologically) observable world. However, the micro-physicist 'perceives' only a microscopic aspect of the universal energy that 'underlies' all its forms and all kinds of matter, and that only under highly specialised experimental conditions in instruments designed to interfere with the so-called particles and their components. The macroscopic interplay of energies as they are present in the current, highly-evolved universe (and not just in the undeveloped conditions shortly after the Big Bang, as cyclotrons today recreate) infinitely exceeds that of the few atoms in any cyclotron. These complexes cannot be studied, for only the various forms that energy takes under very unusual test conditions and only at the physical level can be studied. There is also undeniably a mental level, which is not yet much available to instruments, but is so to living minds. That is not the whole story either... but those who have had no perception of the massive and subtle matrix of energies will never be quite convinced of this cosmic fact.

Physical answers about the genesis and fate of the universe have really little or no relevance to human life, least of all to those who are concerned with meeting the fuller challenge of living. The very real task of realising oneself in all and everything requires no mathematics, no speculative cosmology. Those restless cogitations and series of scientific arguments serve more to misdirect human attention from the real, the near and the what should be the dear to us, humanity itself and the living world. It is not just a question of 'knowing' the possibilities in life, but also being aware that what lies above and beyond us in 'unobservable' dimensions of consciousness, known through transcendental experience after long inward seeking and faith.