{"id":202226,"date":"2020-02-09T13:16:29","date_gmt":"2020-02-09T13:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=202226"},"modified":"2020-02-13T07:32:49","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T07:32:49","slug":"weird-universe-are-we-meant-to-be-here-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=202226","title":{"rendered":"Weird Universe: Are We Meant To Be Here? (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lasha Darkmoon \u2013 Darkmoon Feb 9, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

An excursion into the visionary worlds of Blake, Swedenborg, and Leonardo da Vinci. None of these great thinkers would have had any problems believing in a postmortem existence, given that they regarded death as a \u201ccontinuation of life\u201d.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe universe is not only stranger than we imagine,<\/strong>
\nit is stranger than we\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0imagine.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Sir Arthur Eddington [1]<\/strong><\/h4>\n

PART 1 : Weird Universe<\/h2>\n

Strange. Weird. Uncanny. Three sensational synonyms to lure us into the bizarre mind worlds of William Blake, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Leonardo da Vinci. Perhaps they will help us to appreciate Hamlet\u2019s observation to his friend Horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy [2]. <\/strong><\/h5>\n
Eminent physicist Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), not content with saying that the universe was unimaginably strange, made the even stranger comment: \u201cSomething Unknown is doing something we don\u2019t know what\u201d [3]. Eddington was referring to \u201cthe Unknown God\u201d, a conscious entity behind the physical universe\u2014a universe so unimaginably strange that it is beyond the capacity of the human imagination to conceive it.<\/h5>\n
Both Blake and Swedenborg saw angels and communicated with them on a daily basis. This makes them pretty weird by all accounts. It\u2019s all par for the course, however, in a universe that modern science itself, particularly quantum physics, admits is weirder than any universe that Galileo, Newton, or Darwin could possibly have conceived in their wildest dreams: a universe of virtual particles, dark matter, and extra dimensions in which physicists are creating lasers powerful enough to\u00a0rip holes in the fabric of reality<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u2014a universe consisting of an infinite number of parallel worlds where something can appear out of nothing, where a cat (related to a Mr Shrodinger) can be both alive and dead at the same time, and where, according to the subtitle of a recent book written by two British scientists, \u201ceverything that can happen does happen<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u201c.<\/h5>\n
Here we have a multiverse so mindbogglingly strange that not only can time run backwards in it [4], but where those who died in the Holocaust in one universe did not in fact die in another parallel universe. In this particular universe we happen to inhabit, Hitler can indeed be said to have died in his bunker in 1945 after losing World War II. But in another parallel universe, Hitler apparently survived and triumphed\u2014and the Third Reich won a spectacular victory over the Allies, with Churchill and Roosevelt coming to a sticky end.<\/h5>\n
Wild speculations? Conspiracy theory poppycock? I\u2019m sorry, these are the inevitable corollaries of quantum physics in its most extreme manifestations.<\/h5>\n
The topics I am about to discuss\u2014angels, demons, and the Cosmic Man as seen in the works of Swedenborg, Blake and Leonardo da Vinci\u2014are small beer in comparison to the ideas outlined above. They are not even a nano-fraction as strange as the world of modern physics. So put your scepticism to one side for a moment and join me on this giddy-go-round of fascinating esoterica. It won\u2019t be time wasted.<\/h5>\n

The World of William Blake<\/h2>\n

Take a step with me now into the minds of Blake and Swedenborg and savour their weirdness.\u00a0 I will deal later with Leonardo who belongs in a different category, much more sober and scientifically advanced compared to any of his contemporaries.\u00a0 Let\u2019s begin with England\u2019s most mystical poet and painter, William Blake.\u00a0 Mull over these astonishing words\u2014some would say\u00a0ravings<\/em>\u2014and ask yourself, is this man stark raving mad? Either that, or he has eaten the same magic mushrooms as\u00a0Hieronymus Bosch<\/a><\/strong><\/span>:<\/h5>\n
WILLIAM BLAKE:<\/strong>\u00a0 An Angel came to me and said, O pitiable foolish young man! O horrible! O dreadful state! consider the hot burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all eternity.<\/h5>\n
[H]e took me thro\u2019 a stable & thro\u2019 a church & down into the church vault at the end of which was a mill; thro\u2019 the mill we went, and came to a cave. down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way till a void boundless as a nether sky appeared us, & we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity. I remained with him sitting in the twisted root of an oak, he was suspended in a fungus which hung with the head downward into the deep.<\/h5>\n
By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black but shining round it were fiery tracks on which revolv\u2019d vast spiders, crawling after their prey; & the air was full of them, & seemd composed of them; these are Devils. and are called Powers of the air.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
My friend the Angel climb\u2019d up from his station into the mill; but I found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moon light hearing a harper who sung to the harp. & his theme was,\u00a0<\/strong>The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind.<\/strong><\/em><\/h5>\n
I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning.<\/h5>\n
Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho\u2019 it is only the Contents or Index of already publish\u2019d books. Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth: Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods.<\/h5>\n
And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro\u2019 his conceited notions. Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all superficial opinions.<\/h5>\n
Have now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents may from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg\u2019s. and from those of Dante or Shakespeare, an infinite number.<\/h5>\n
But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds\u00a0a candle in sunshine<\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
(Emphasis added and ellipses omitted)<\/em><\/h5>\n
Let\u2019s treasure those memorable words: \u201cA CANDLE IN SUNSHINE.\u201d\u00a0 The purport of Blake\u2019s message is this:\u00a0 all the scientific knowledge we have acquired since man invented the wheel is no more than\u00a0a candle in sunshine.\u00a0<\/em>Human knowledge is a drop in an infinite ocean. It is the realm of the Known.\u00a0 The rest of the ocean, stretching away infinitely beyond the reach of the human mind, is the Unknown and Unknowable.<\/h5>\n
Referring to the Unknown and the Unknowable, these modest words of Charles Darwin to his American friend Asa Gray strike a chord: \u201cA dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newto<\/span>n<\/a><\/strong>. Let each man hope & believe what he can.\u201d<\/h5>\n
There will always be something God knows that no one else knows.<\/h5>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One cannot help wondering what the devoutly Christian Newton, who spent\u00a0more time\u00a0 on Biblical exegesis<\/span><\/a>\u00a0than he did on the scientific discoveries for which he is better known, would have made of Christ\u2019s contradictory dictum:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cFor nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known.\u201d<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0[5]<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Blake and the Doctrine of Salvation through Sex<\/h2>\n

Christian Rossetti<\/strong>\u00a0(1830-1894), my favourite female poet, spent most of her life longing for heaven, sick to death of existence in this vale of tears. It can be said without exaggeration that Christina, like many Christian saints before her [6], regarded life on earth not so much as a complete waste of time but as a cross to be borne, a\u00a0via dolorosa<\/em> or sorrowful journey over tough terrain en route to one\u2019s final destination in paradise. Let\u2019s now consider what Miss Rossetti, chaste Victorian virgin with her head in the clouds all day, poring over the works of Plato and Dante, would have made of the bizarre visions of William Blake and his eccentric predecessor Emanuel Swedenborg.<\/h5>\n
The lovely Christina (pictured here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>) was a pious Anglican Christian who attended regular church services, as Darwin himself did for the first 40 years of his life. She would have completely rejected the heretical fringe Christianity of William Blake, a Christianity rooted in the esoteric teachings of Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg. Though Blake launches a fierce attack on Swedenborg in the long passage quoted above, he was, paradoxically, a member of the Swedenborg Church in London.\u00a0 If I mention Christina Rossetti and Darwin in the same breath as Blake and Swedenborg, it is not because I am straying from the point\u2014it is simply to drive home the point that Christianity, like Hinduism and Buddhism, is, so to speak,\u00a0 an extremely \u201cbroad church\u201d accommodating within its ranks so many different sects and sub-sects that none would seem to have anything in common apart from a core religiosity that recognises the transcendence of the Logos \u2014 the idea that the universe, however incomprehensible, is rationally ordered and shows evidence of design and purpose. [7]<\/h5>\n
In a sense, Blake and Swedenborg were different sides of the same coin; and Blake\u2019s paintings as well as his poetry were\u00a0heavily dependent on the work of the Swedish mystic<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>who had flourished in the previous century and died 15 years before Blake was born. (See Part 2 for more on Swedenborg).<\/h5>\n
Another reason Christina Rossetti would have run a mile if she\u2019d ever been introduced to Blake, is that she was sexually inhibited to a fantastic degree, living the austere life of a nun, whereas Blake believed passionately in free love and\u00a0tantric sex with multiple partners<\/span><\/a><\/strong>. Ecstatic sex was Blake\u2019s entrance ticket to heaven on earth, and he advocated it openly as a way of union with God. Taking multiple concubines within marriage met with his full approval, as well as sexual threesomes in which his wife was theoretically welcome to partake as a blissful spectator\u2014watching him sport with a nubile young beauty on an adjacent couch and achieve her own version of nirvana thereby.<\/h5>\n
Whether William Blake (1757-1827) actually practised what he preached is not clear, but he fervently advocated the most uninhibited sexuality. Had he been a Jew, he would almost certainly have been a disciple of Sabbatai Zevi , the self-proclaimed false Messiah of the Jews, who believed in salvation through sex.<\/h5>\n
Sabbatai Zevi (1627-1676)\u00a0 was later denounced as a \u201cmanic-depressive\u201d by Jewish academic philosopher Gershom Scholem who felt that Zevi was bringing Judaism into disrepute by his misguided attempt to spiritualise lust. It is doubtful if the sex-obsessed Blake, however, would have gone so far as to subscribe to the more extreme version of Zevi\u2019s Sabbatianism, advocated by Zevi\u2019s disciple Jacob Frank (1776-1791), who went on to preach \u201csalvation through sin\u201d. Far from regarding his sexual cavortings as \u201csinful\u201d, Blake would have celebrated them as holy. He would have sung \u201cHalleluiah!\u201d every time he achieved an orgasm with an equally enthusiastic partner, both seeking divinity through sexual delight. As Adam and Eve wandered naked through the Earthly Paradise before the Fall, plucking fruit from the trees of Eden, they decided one day to pluck the Forbidden Fruit of sex. The rest we know.<\/h5>\n
According to Blake\u2019s philosophy, Eve was right to listen to the wily Serpent; and Adam was equally right to succumb to her irresistible charms. This is the philosophy of tantric yoga, and it is also the philosophy underlying Sabbatianism. It is hedonism pushed to an extreme, in which sexual pleasure is seen as much more than a consolation for life\u2019s inadequacies and becomes rather a sacred obligation leading to enlightenment and union with God.<\/h5>\n
Dangerous? Of course. That goes without saying. These toxic ideas, far from being dead relics of the past, swirl around us today like incandescent mind viruses. They have brought us to where we are right now: into\u00a0 the midst of a roaring inferno. These edgy ideas, needless to say, would have been totally anathema to St Augustine with his doctrine of \u201cconcupiscence\u201d \u2014 a technical term he was the first to use. [8]. They would have clashed with his basic core idea, on which orthodox Christianity is based, that Lust was the Original Sin (peccatum originale<\/em>) of our First Parents, whether literally or allegorically, and that all subsequent generations are the products of primal lust, tainted even by the sanctioned sex of the marriage bed. Lust, according to Augustine, is the invariable concomitant of every act of sex; which would not be possible \u201cwithout the ardor of lust\u201d.\u00a0 It is this self-evident proposition that makes man, in Augustine\u2019s own words, \u201ca lump of sin\u201d \u2014\u00a0massa peccati<\/em>.<\/h5>\n
\u201cThe problem,\u201d according to a highly respected recent commentator on these ethico-theological minutiae, \u201cis that even the most legitimate form of sexual intercourse\u2014between a husband and wife mutually bent on engendering a child\u2014is also corrupt. The current of sinfulness that courses through it is precisely the mechanism that carries the stain of evil from one generation to the next and infects the dreams of those most determined to keep themselves pure and chaste. Human sinfulness is a sexually transmitted disease.\u201d [9]<\/strong><\/h5>\n

From \u201cSalvation Through Sex\u201d to \u201cDo What Thou Wilt\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
It\u2019s one small step from \u201csalvation through sex\u201d to\u00a0anything goes<\/em>.<\/h5>\n
Note that Jacob Frank\u2019s bizarre doctrine of \u201csalvation through sin\u201d, later adopted by Aleister Crowley and his band of Satanists \u2014\u201dDO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW<\/span><\/a><\/strong>!\u2014entered the dark stream of Judaism where it was\u00a0 euphemistically known as\u00a0 \u201cpurification through transgression.\u201d [10]<\/h5>\n
One must take care be not to be bamboozled by all of Blake\u2019s seemingly sage pronouncements. Some of them frankly border on lunacy. What would you think of someone who advised you to strangle a baby in its cradle if you wished to experience an unforgettable high? Blake does this. \u00a0\u201cIt is better to strangle an infant in its cradle than to nurse an ungratified desire,\u201d he advises us wackily. A doctrine that would certainly win plaudits from one class of criminal psychopath: the homicidal pedophile.<\/h5>\n
However silly you might consider such a maxim, Blake will attempt to silence you with the equally wacky maxim, \u201cIf the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThe road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,\u201d to quote our eccentric seer again, but how many of us would choose to achieve wisdom through child murder?<\/h5>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is better to strangle an infant in the cradle<\/strong>
\nthan to nurse an ungratified desire.\u201d \u2014\u00a0<\/strong>William Blake<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n
A word of caution. It can be plausibly argued that Blake did not intend his \u201cProverbs of Hell\u201d to be taken seriously by the \u201cchildren of light\u201d but only by the \u201cchildren of darkness\u201d, the many deluded souls who belong, so to speak, to the Devil\u2019s party.<\/h5>\n
One would have to be a full-fledged Satanist to believe that strangling babies is okay as a cure for depression and because it gives you a fantastic dopamine high. Blake himself admits that it is devils in hell who think like this, precisely because they are deluded and serve \u201cthe Father of Lies\u201d; and humans, too, presumably, who have been infected by the same virus of diabolical evil.<\/h5>\n
\u201cAs I was walking among the fires of hell,\u201d Blake recalls matter-of-factly, \u201cI collected some of their Proverbs\u2026\u201d [11]<\/h5>\n
So that\u2019s all right then.<\/h5>\n

Continued in Part 2 : We Are Meant To Be Here<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n
Notes (Part 1)<\/h5>\n
[1] \u201cThe universe is not only stranger\u2026\u201d A sentence attributed also to English biologist J.B.S. Haldane and others,\u00a0 (See\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>)<\/h5>\n
[2]\u00a0 Hamlet to Horatio,\u00a0Hamlet<\/em>\u00a0(1.5.167-8).<\/h5>\n
[3]\u00a0 \u201cSomething Unknown\u2026\u201d. quoted in John Lloyd & John Mitchinson, Advanced Banter, Faber and Faber, 2008, p. 228<\/h5>\n
[4]\u00a0 Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988), noted for his contribution to quantum mechanics,\u00a0 won the Nobel prize in Physics in 1965. He had much to say on time running backwards in different universes, producing elegant equations to propound his theories. (See James Gleick,\u00a0Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics<\/span><\/a><\/strong>, 1992, index, time (reversibility), especially pp. 108-112, 118-20, 253-54, and 272-74)<\/h5>\n
[5] \u00a0Luke, 8:17<\/h5>\n
[6]\u00a0 A passionately devout High Church Anglican, Christina Rossetti has now been\u00a0honoured with a special feast day<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0assigned to her on the liturgical calendar of the Anglican Church (27 April).<\/h5>\n
[7]\u00a0 \u201d . . . evidence of design and purpose.\u201d See end of Part 2, the famous quote from the final paragraph of Professor Paul Davies\u2019 ground-breaking book,\u00a0The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning<\/span><\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(1992).<\/h5>\n
[8]\u00a0 Stephen Greenblatt,\u00a0The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve<\/span><\/a><\/strong>, The Bodley Head, London, 2017, p108<\/h5>\n
[9]\u00a0\u00a0\u201cHuman sinfulness is a sexually transmitted disease.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Stephen Greenblatt, ibid., pp. 107-108<\/h5>\n
[10]\u00a0 Pawel Maciejko,\u00a0The Frankist Movement in Poland, the Czech Lands, and Germany<\/span><\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(1755\u20131816). Oxford University Press, 2003. (Cited in an\u00a0excerpt<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0f<\/span>rom Gershom Scholem\u2019s\u00a0The Holiness of Sin<\/em>).<\/h5>\n
[11]\u00a0 John Lloyd & John Mitchinson, The QI Book of the Dead<\/span><\/a><\/strong>, p.380<\/h5>\n

Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lasha Darkmoon takes the reader through the world’s of Blake, Swedenborg, and Leonardo da Vinci — who all regarded death as a \u201ccontinuation of life\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-The_Unexplained_esoteric_and_hidden_knowledge"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202226"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202235,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202226\/revisions\/202235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}