ALEXIS KARPOUZOS NON DUALITY THE PARTICI (1)

by Alekos Karpouzos

  ALEXIS KARPOUZOS

  NON - DUALITY

  THE PARTICIPATORY UNIVERSE

  EDITIONS

  COSMIC SPIRIT

  ''The universe is not a world of separate things and events but is a cosmos that is

  connected, coherent, and bears a profound resemblance to the visions held in the

  earliest spiritual traditions in which the physical world and spiritual experience were

  both aspects of the same reality and man and the universe were one. The findings

  that justify this new vision of the underlying logic of the universe come from almost all

  of the empirical sciences: physics, cosmology, the life sciences, and consciousness

  research. They explain how interactions lead to interconnections that produce

  instantaneous and multifaceted coherence–what happens to one part also happens

  to the other parts, and hence to the system as a whole. The sense of sacred oneness

  experienced by our ancestors that was displaced by the unyielding material

  presumptions of modern science can be restored, and humanity can once again feel

  at home in the universe''.

  Alexis Karpouzos

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  A new cosmic shift

  Chapter 2

  The End of Certainty Chaos, Complexity And Self-Organized Systems………………4

  Chapter 3

  Beyond the separation: the new cosomological paradigm…………………………….1

  HISTORICAL RECURSIOΝ

  THE AWAKENING OF THE HOLISTIC SPIRIT WEST

  The roots of physics, as of all Western science, are to be found in the first period of

  Greek philosophy in the sixth century BC, in a culture where science, philosophy and

  religion were not separated. The sages of the Milesian school in Ionia were not

  concerned with such distinctions. Their aim was to discover the essential nature, or

  real constitution, of things which they called 'physis'. The term 'physics' is derived

  from this Greek word and meant therefore, originally, the endeavour of seeing the

  essential nature of all things. This, of course, is also the central aim of all mystics,

  and the philosophy of the Milesian school did indeed have a strong mystical flavour.

  The Milesians were called 'hylozoists', or 'those who think matter is alive', by the later

  Greeks, because they saw no distinction between animate and inanimate, spirit end

  matter. In fact, they did not even have a word for matter,since they saw all forms of

  existence as manifestations of the 'physis', endowed with life and spirituality.

  Thus Thales declared all things to be full of gods and Anaximander saw the universe

  as a kind of organism which was supported by 'pneuma', the cosmic breath, in the

  same way as the human body is supported by air. Pythagora’s cosmotheory

  supported that spirit is the matter of the world and it is subject to a mental set that

  expresses the Universal Divinity. The “Universal Mind” (or the global consciousness

  as it is differently called nowadays), namely the totality of all the actions and

  thoughts, is what creates reality around us in the same way quantum physics

  teaches us that the observer chooses his reality among an ocean of probabilities the

  moment of the observation, i. e. at the act of thought.

  The monistic view of the Milesians was very close to that of ancient Indian and

  Chinese philosophy, and the parallels to Eastern thought are even stronger in the

  philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus. Heraclitus believed in a world of perpetual

  change, of eternal 'Becoming'. For him, all static Being was based on deception and

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  his universal principle was fire, a symbol for the continuous flow and change of all

  things.

  Heraclitus taught that all changes in the world arise from the dynamic and cyclic

  interplay of opposites and he saw any pair of opposites as a unity. This unity, which

  contains and transcends all opposing forces, he called the Logos .

  THE AWAKENING OF THE UNIVERSAL SPIRIT EASTERN

  In the same period of Greek philosophy in the sixth century BC, in a Eastern culture

  where philosophical thinking and religion were not separated. Although the various

  schools of Eastern thought differ in many details, they all emphasize the basic unity

  of the universe which is the central feature of their teachings. The highest aim for

  their followers-whether they are Hindus, Buddhists or Taoists-is to become aware of

  the unity and mutual interrelation of all things, to transcend the notion of an isolated

  individual self and to identify themselves with the ultimate reality. The emergence of

  this awareness-known as 'enlightenment'-is not only an intellectual act but is an

  experience which involves the whole person and is religious in its ultimate nature. For

  this reason, most Eastern philosophies are essentially religious philosophies. In the

  Eastern view, then, the division of nature into separate objects is not fundamental

  and any such objects have a fluid and ever-changing character.

  The Eastern world view is therefore intrinsically dynamic and contains time and

  change as essential features. The cosmos is seen as one inseparable reality-for ever

  in motion, alive, organic; spiritual and material at the same time. Since motion and

  change are essential properties of things, the forces causing the motion are not

  outside the objects, as in the classical Greek view, but are an intrinsic property of

  matter. Correspondingly, the Eastern image of the Divine is not that of a ruler who

  directs the world from above, but of a principle that controls everything from within.

  Μore specifical y: The Chinese Tao is the symbol that characterizes the dialectic

  unity of opposites. The Tao is the rhythm which connects the opposites. The Hindu

  tradition of the Upanishads faces the personal ego as an illusion (Maya). Maya

  separates the personal Ego from the transcendent Being (Brahman).

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  When the illusion of the personal Ego is spoiled, then the compound with the

  Transcendent Being is achieved. The Transcendent Being is located deep inside the

  human’s soul (Αtman). The human’s soul (Αtman) and the Transcendent Being

  (Brahman) are the Same, boundlessly and timelessly. You are this one (tat tvam asi)

  “The one who lives inside al beings, but is something else compared to them. He,

  who is being ignored by the beings, but his body is all the beings. He, who controls

  all the beings from inside.

  He is your Soul, the internal Auditor, the Immortal”. The Vedas teach that we are

  more than physical bodies operating according to the laws of physics and chemistry.

  We, the eternal conscious self ( Atma ), are inherently connected to the greater

  whole ( ParamAtma ), and this eternal inherent connection is totally transcendental to

  matter. All living entities ( Atmas), having free will, are able to ignore this connection

  or recognize it. The Vedas teach us how to do both.

  When we act as scientists and look for facts and accept them and then go on to use

  and ac
t according to our new realizations we can make great progress. Similarly, as

  living entities, we must scientifically study the great work of the evidential books of

  the Vedas in order to help us realize the facts of this universe and beyond, and our

  natural position in it.

  A Buddhist text gives us a vision of the time: “Buddha taught the past, the future, the

  natural world and each one of us is nothing but names, forms of thought, public

  words, simply superficial realities.” A Buddhist sutra says: “the form is the vacuum,

  the vacuum is the form”. For the Japanese Buddhist zen there is no other space,

  there is no other time. This moment is everything. In this moment the whole being is

  being summarized. In this moment everything is available, into this moment eternity

  penetrates the existence and existence penetrates eternity.

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  EARLY SIGNS OF SEPARATION IN WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

  Anaxagoras is the first thinker in the history of world that separated matter from spirit,

  the souled from the soul ess and supported that the cosmic “Mind” includes al the

  laws that express the activity of God. For Anaxagoras the word Cosmos means

  “order in the cosmic system”. The spirit of God is the creator of the order. The above

  applies to the entire Universe. The “deamon” of Socrates is the voice of God that

  works inside us, it is an echo of the voice that governs the Universe and defines the

  operation of everything in the world. This way, Socrates unites in a mutual substance

  the man, the Universe and the God! Socrates cogitates the sky, detects the stars,

  envisions the entire world and within him there is the profound conviction that through

  the “cosmic creation” and the “human fate”, a superior Intel ect, which is an imprint of

  our own Intellect, dominates.

  The split of this unity began with the Eleatic school, which assumed a Divine

  Principle standing above all gods and men. This principle was first identified with the

  unity of the universe, but was later seen as an intelligent and personal God who

  stands above the world and directs it. Thus began a trend of thought which led,

  ultimately, to the separation of spirit and matter. and to a dualism which became

  characteristic of Western philosophy.

  A drastic step in this direction was taken by Parmenides of Elea who was in strong

  opposition to Heraclitus. He called his basic principle the Being and held that it was

  unique and invariable. He considered change to be impossible and regarded the

  changes we seem to perceive in the world as mere illusions of the senses. The

  concept of an indestructible substance as the subject of varying properties grew out

  of this philosophy and became one of the fundamental concepts of Western thought.

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  SYSTEMATIZATION OF SEPARATION

  In the fifth century BC, the Greek philosophers tried to overcome the sharp contrast

  between the views of Parmenides and Heraclitus. In order to reconcile the idea of

  unchangeable Being (Of Parmenides) with that of eternal Becoming (of Heraclitus),

  they assumed that the Being is manifest in certain invariable substances, the mixture

  and separation of which gives rise to the changes in the world. This led to the

  concept of the' atom, the smallest indivisible unit of matter, which found its clearest

  expression in the philosophy of Leucippus and Democritus. The Greek atomists drew

  a clear line between spirit and matter, picturing matter as being made of several '

  basic building blocks '. These were purely passive and intrinsically dead particles

  moving in the void. The cause of their motion was not explained, 'but was often

  associated with external forces which were assumed to be of spiritual origin and

  fundamentally different from matter. In subsequent centuries, this image became an

  essential element of Western thought, of the dualism between mind and matter,

  between body and soul.

  The classical philosophical thought and the theory of knowledge of Western culture -

  from Plato and Aristotle (philosophy of Being), continuing with Descartes and the first

  epistemology (philosophy of Noesis – ‘’I am thinking, therefore I exist’ ), and ending

  the linguistic turn of Wittgenstein of the Vienna Circle and other positivists language

  (analytic(al) philosophy – linguistic analysis) - was founded on the separation Is and

  Not Is, Plenum and Vacuum, Cosmos and Thought, One and Multiple, Anything and

  Everything, namely on the separation Subject - Object. Of these ontological

  divisions were created epistemological separations as idealism - materialism and

  anthropological separation as Soul-Body e.t Philosophy, epistemology and theory of

  knowledge, consider that knowledge is acquired when a subject, as an external-

  uninvolved observer, represents in the mind of the subject, the '' Nature ' . But the

  ‘’Nature’ It is a metaphysical abstraction of the wholeness of the world, is a logical

  construct and has named "Nature".

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  COMPLETE OF SEPARATION

  In the late fifteenth century, the study of nature was approached, for the first time, in

  a truly scientific spirit and experiments were undertaken to test speculative ideas. As

  this development was paralleled by a growing interest in mathematics, it finally led to

  the formulation of proper scientific theories, based on experiment and expressed in

  mathematical language. Galileo was the first to combine empirical knowledge with

  mathematics and is therefore seen as the father of modern science.

  The birth of modern science was preceded and accompanied by a development of

  philosophical thought which led to an extreme formulation of the spirit/matter dualism.

  This formulation appeared in the seventeenth century in the philosophy of René

  Descartes who based his view of nature on a fundamental division into two separate

  and independent realms; that of mind (res cogitans), and that of matter (res extensa).

  The 'Cartesian' division allowed scientists to treat matter as dead and completely

  separate from themselves, and to see the material world as a multitude of different

  objects assembled into a huge machine. Such a mechanistic world view was held by

  Isaac Newton who constructed his mechanics on its basis and made it the foundation

  of classical physics. From the second half of the seventeenth to the end of the

  nineteenth century, the mechanistic Newtonian model .of the universe dominated all

  scientific thought It was paralleled by the image of a monarchical God who ruled the

  world from above by imposing his divine law on it. The fundamental laws of nature

  searched for by the scientists were thus seen as the laws of God, invariable and

  eternal, to which the world was subjected.

  The philosophy of Descartes was not only important for the development of classical

  physics, but also had a tremendous influence on the general Western way of thinking

  up to the present day. Descartes' famous sentence 'Cogito ergo sum'-'I think,

  therefore I exist'-has led Western man to equate his identity with his mind, instead of

  with his whole organism. As a consequence of the Cartesian division , most

  individuals are aware of themselves as isolated egos existing inside' their bodies.

  The mind has been separated from the body and given the futile task of control
ling it,

  thus causing an apparent conflict between the conscious will and the involuntary

  instincts .

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  Each individual has been split up further into a large number of separate

  compartments, according to his or her activities, talents, feelings, beliefs, etc, which

  are engaged in endless conflicts generating continuous metaphysical confusion and

  frustration.

  This inner fragmentation of man mirrors his view of the world 'outside' which is seen

  as a multitude of separate objects and events. The natural environment is treated as

  if it consisted of separate parts to be exploited by different interest groups. The

  fragmented view is further extended to society which is split, into different nations,

  races, religious and political groups . The belief that all these fragments-in ourselves,

  in our environment and in our society-are really separate can be seen as the

  essential reason for the present series of social, ecological and cultural crises. It has

  alienated us from nature and from our fellow human beings. It has brought a grossly

  unjust distribution of natural resources creating economic and political disorder; an

  ever rising wave of violence, both spontaneous and institutionalized,and an ugly,

  polluted environment in which life has often become physically and mentally

  unhealthy.

  The Cartesian division and the mechanistic world view have thus been beneficial and

  detrimental at the same time. They were extremely successful in the development of

  classical physics and technology, but had many adverse consequences for our

  civilization. It is fascinating to see that twentieth-century science, which originated in

  the Cartesian split and in the mechanistic world view, and which indeed only became

  possible because of such a view, now overcomes this fragmentation and leads back

  to the idea of unity expressed in the early Greek and Eastern philosophies.