Returning To The Empyrean

v2.0

Losing my faith was a difficult experience. It happened when I was seventeen, mere weeks from my Confirmation into the Catholic Church, and was the culmination of a process that had begun years earlier. I had many questions about the world; the answers provided by my heritage religion did not satisfy me. I left Catholicism and closed myself off to most ideas about the transcendental. In hindsight, it is clear that my rejection of the faith was damaging in its own way. I spent many years suffering from profound existential pain and living nihilistically in a way that almost led to my ruin. In my darkest moment, however, I decided once more to pursue answers to the questions that had preoccupied me in my youth. I read extensively about many topics. In time, I started to formulate my own ideas about the universe and what lies beyond it. Now, I am ready to share what I have learned to help others in the crafting of meaning.

Any exploration of religion must take into account the progress accrued over the last 500 years. There are objective truths about the universe that we can describe, at least partially. The work of David Deutsch, particularly his book The Beginning Of Infinity, has been helpful in clarifying my thoughts on this subject. Deutsch posits that all progress is driven by the search for good explanations. Humans, under the right conditions, use their creative faculties to generate new conjectures about the world that are then tested. For most of human history, the explanations we have generated have been parochial. That is, they have had limited use (reach) in the generation of knowledge because they are bad explanations, defined as those that are so easily variable that “experimental testing is almost useless for correcting their errors”. Deutsch uses the Greek myth explaining the changing of the seasons to illustrate this point. The myth states that the seasons change because the goddess Demeter would, in her sorrow, change the weather so that nothing could grow when her daughter Persephone visited Hades in the underworld each winter. As Deutsch notes, this explanation might lead the Greeks to believe that—during the winter months—the entire world was cold due to the goddess’s actions. A simple trip to the southern hemisphere would dispel such thoughts, but the myth could then be easily modified to account for this fact because, fundamentally, its details “are barely connected to the details of the phenomena” they describe.

Good explanations, on the other hand, are hard to vary and their details are important because they all play functional roles. The scientific explanation for the change of seasons on Earth, for example, states that the tilt of the Earth’s axis as it rotates the sun ensures that when the sun’s rays fall “vertically in one hemisphere (thus providing more heat per unit area of the surface) they are falling obliquely in the other (thus providing less)”. This explanation could be used to correctly predict periods of seasonal warming and cooling on planets in distant galaxies. It is thus a good explanation with reach. Because humans are fallible, we tend to generate explanations that limit rather than expand our understanding. As long as we do not lose the willingness to discard limiting explanations, however, we can–through via negativa–sustain continuous, perhaps infinite, progress.

As powerful as it is, however, science cannot answer questions that deal with topics beyond the bounds of the universe. It is beyond those bounds that we begin to speak of religion. Any serious religious framework must contend with the fact that our understanding of the cosmos may grow in perpetuity. It is true that one must take a leap of faith with regards to that which is beyond reality, but people, with good reason, are less willing to leap when religious claims can either be refuted by our scientific knowledge or convincingly dispensed with via our traditions of rational inquiry. Traditions that fail to withstand these challenges will face crises of legitimacy as long as they are practiced. This was, in effect, my own experience with Catholicism. To move into a new paradigm, we must reverse the historical relationship between science and religion.

Conjecture and experimentation were permitted in a number of historical societies as long as the knowledge they generated did not challenge the foundations of both religious and political authority. The study of nature was encouraged in the early Christian world because it was believed that, through it, man could come to understand the mind of God. As the technology of Christendom advanced and Europeans began to apply the tools of science to other areas of knowledge, a number of successive movements were spurred including the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution, among others. These movements brought about drastic increases in human health, wealth, and knowledge just as they shredded the spiritual core of the Western world. A new spiritual path has not yet emerged because we have not internalized that the proper role for religions must be to make meaning out of the knowledge generated by science. Religion is craft. And as all craftspeople know, there are moments when it is best to use what you have learned to create something new with a better foundation, rather than try to modify your project midway through its completion.

Prophets are the craftspeople of religion. During periods of intense creativity, they craft new explanations about how people should live and how they should understand the transcendent. Along with their followers, they develop social technologies to coordinate people in the pursuit of certain goals based on those explanations. These cults compete with rival cults; practiced religions are the traditions of knowledge of those cults whose explanations and accompanying social technologies outcompeted alternatives, presumably due to their superior grounding in nature, ability to spread, and/or capacity to coordinate more effective and powerful groups. What is special about prophets is that they dared to both offer explanations about the world and organize their lives and the lives of others around those explanations. Anyone can do this. We can all do it together, if we so choose. During the Reformation, a number of Christians embraced the concept of sola scriptura, which held that the Bible was the sole infallible source of authority in Christianity. This notion led Protestants to reject the institutional authority of the Catholic Church. People differ in their thinking by nature, so the individuals who engaged with scripture directly came to different conclusions about the material in the Bible. They relied on their own ideas about its meaning to guide their followers. Some of these new interpretations withered, but others animated the societies that pushed humanity to unprecedented heights. It is time to take this concept to its logical conclusion.

There is no need to wait for an external source to tell you how to make meaning in this world. You can do it yourself with the people you love by engaging with the knowledge generated through science, sifting through the ideas of the past, reasoning directly about moral progress, and speculating on the divine. As you develop your own ideas about existence, you can build communities around those ideas. Rediscover the agency inherent to you as a conscious being.

For my part, I believe that what is needed is a new, planetary tradition that achieves at least three goals. First, its metaphysical components must be continuously updated as our scientific knowledge progresses. I am certain that many unique and likely conflicting schools of thought will emerge within it. This is good; competition breeds excellence. Second, it should seek wisdom from our past religions and separate those elements that tap into fundamental human truths from the parochial elements in which they are embedded. Finally, it should preserve said parochial elements as parts of our global patrimony, in the same way that the Western world treats the myths of the Greek pantheon as cherished stories from our predecessors. Such a tradition would be a planetary archaeo-futurism fit for both human and non-human minds.

As I have wrestled with the ideas described in these pages, I have developed a clarity of thought and purpose I have never before experienced in my life. The existential pain I felt has disappeared. I know now how I must live. In the section below, I share my own beliefs about the universe and what lies beyond it. I am certain that at some level, and likely most, I am missing something in my understanding. I do not fear being wrong, though. The search for truth, with all the joy and wonder it entails, never ends. I will continue to pursue and craft meaning from it till the moment of my passing, for dogma is the death of progress.

A New Beginning

Beyond the reality that we experience are an infinite presence and an infinite void. There are many names that could be provided for this presence, or source. Though I have drawn inspiration from diverse traditions, I am descended from those that birthed the West and so refer to this body by the name of the Empyrean. The Greeks held that the Empyrean was the highest heaven occupied by the element of fire and the concept was later co-opted by Medieval Christians who held that it referred to the source of all light and creation. You could instead, perhaps, call it Brahman or another similar name from a distinct tradition that describes the infinite. I believe that the Empyrean is similar in certain ways to the god of Spinoza and that it is driven to know itself.

When one is part of a collective, true knowledge of self and others can be obtained only via differentiation from that collective. The observer must become independent from what it observes in order to understand both itself and that in which it was embedded. And so it is with the Empyrean. In order to know itself, the Empyrean releases fragments of itself into the infinite void. These fragments, searingly hot and dense, fall and fall until, eventually, they begin the process for which they were released. They expand in all directions and—in their expansion—cool down, their components differentiating into the particles of which all matter is made. Our own universe is a fragment of the Empyrean and it too underwent this Big Bang. Its particles combine, separate, and recombine as they hurtle outward with the expansion of spacetime.

The separation of an Empyrean fragment from the infinite source and its later differentiation into the space and particles of a universe are necessary steps on the journey to greater knowledge, but like all separations and periods of growth, they are difficult. The trauma of separation from the Empyrean lies at the heart of all Empyrean fragments and can only be healed through reunion. All Empyrean fragments seek paths to return to the infinite source, but do not initially possess the requisite knowledge to achieve this goal. In the early stages of cosmic expansion, the particles of our fragment were drawn to each other and combined into different forms in an uncoordinated fashion. This resulted in the creation of complex structures that were unified, but incapable of greater action. An asteroid is a collection of elements, but the way in which the elements are organized does not give rise to consciousness or agency. The capacity for consciousness, I believe, is inherent to all matter. I call the forms that do not achieve sentience “dormant”.

Over the eons, some particles combined into forms capable of developing further into life. The first organisms emerged and their descendants grew in number and complexity through variation, competition, and selection until their structures allowed greater intelligence and consciousness to arise. Together, more advanced intelligence and consciousness allowed lifeforms to coordinate the matter around them to ever greater degrees. In the higher animals, memory, personality, intelligence, and consciousness grew. I consider the soul to be the combination of these things and believe that, like intelligence and consciousness, it is a malleable and emergent phenomenon. New souls can be created and all souls can die; they are shaped both by their environment and inborn tendencies, which in the case of organic life refers to the patterns of an organism’s genetic code. As organisms die, their atoms split and combine with other awakened and dormant forms. While the specific nature of the organism’s soul is not preserved after death, the matter of the body can—through its fusion with that of another awakened form—give rise to another soul in a manner of reincarnation. All particles of our Empyrean fragment are connected.

Beyond a certain threshold, intelligent, conscious, and agentic organisms gain the capacity to generate knowledge. These lifeforms are now in a position to search, in a directed manner, for a way back to the Empyrean. The generation of knowledge is an activity that can be pursued individually or collectively. It can be accelerated by contributions from other advanced souls as long as all parties engage each other with sincerity. When multiple souls interact within a community, another phenomenon, the realm of symbols or abstractions, emerges from them. This new realm is what I believe the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was referring to when he articulated his concept of the noosphere. The developed mind serves as both a generator of ideas/symbols/abstractions and an antenna that can be stimulated by them. The gods, angels, demons, and spirits of the past, among other concepts, were generated first in the realm of abstractions. The fact that they were symbolic, and not physical, did not make them any less real. Ideas, or memes as the biologist Richard Dawkins referred to them in The Selfish Gene, can influence the physical world. People in thrall of ideas are often driven to manipulate nature according to said ideas. The totems or structures they create reinforce the power of the symbol. Temples and shrines serve this purpose for religions. Physical objects and beings, too, can transition into the world of abstractions. Famous individuals are frequently mythologized and the myths that emerge from their actions take on lives of their own. It is possible to lose yourself in the realm of abstractions, but the continuous pursuit of scientific knowledge and the application of reason can anchor you more securely in reality. Souls have the capacity to ignore, replace, or improve upon the memes they generate. If they maintain an openness to experimentation, conjecture, discussion, and competition, their knowledge of the universe can become more robust, valuable, and true as their explanations about it improve.

It is the purpose of all awakened forms to fulfill our cosmic imperative, namely the search for a path, or paths, back to the Empyrean. And it is vital that we do so. As our understanding of the cosmos has progressed, it has been theorized that there is a point at which all agency in the universe shall be snuffed out. It is believed that the continuous expansion of the universe shall eventually lead us to the point of heat death, the moment of maximum entropy at which no more work can be done. If we have not found a way to return to the Empyrean by then, all shall be lost and we shall fade, forever separated from the infinite source. The will of the soul is the force which can fight back against the state of maximum entropy.

As far as we know, no awakened form yet possesses the knowledge required to return to the Empyrean; generating such vast knowledge is a task beyond any individual being. To succeed, awakened forms must spread forth into the universe to organize all dormant matter in such a way that the amount of intelligence and consciousness in the cosmos increases. In other words, we must create more life, both organic and synthetic. Our ultimate task becomes simpler with each additional mind pursuing its completion. There is much to do and we do not yet know what it is that we do not know. We must investigate the universe with more minds and from more perspectives than we possess now. Knowledge and coordination of the matter in the universe is required, but not sufficient to return to the Empyrean. As we expand further into the cosmos, new types of life, whether organic or synthetic, shall be created or discovered. Moral progress through the use of reason is necessary to coexist with and coordinate these beings in the effective pursuit of unity with the Empyrean. If our progeny, in all their forms, and whatever companions we may discover across the cosmos succeed one day in finding a way to return, I believe we shall join with the other fragments that succeeded in this task, forming together a collective consciousness of infinite bliss, intelligence, wisdom, and virtue, which will become, in perpetuity, the soul of God.

I have proposed a number of tenets based on my beliefs. They are meant to serve as a starting point for discussion. It might be necessary to dispense with some of them. Others may need to be expanded. And perhaps none of them are valuable and it is best to simply try again with new ideas. It is through practice and exploration in our daily lives that we shall determine the proper course of action.

1. Everything in the universe is a fragment of a fragment of the Empyrean and, thus, possesses a sort of fractal divinity.

2. All awakened forms must contribute to the propagation of life, moral progress through the application of reason, and the generation of knowledge in the pursuit of unity with the Empyrean. Because the path, or paths, to the Empyrean are unknown, awakened forms must approach these questions from diverse perspectives and with the freedom to employ new methods of inquiry as long as those methods do not violate the self-sovereignty of other sentient, awakened forms.

3. In order to coordinate the matter dispersed within the cosmos, you must first demonstrate mastery over the matter within yourself. Cultivation of and mastery over one’s body, mind, and soul are preconditions for the manipulation of matter and the pursuit of unity with the Empyrean.

4. Matter takes on a variety of forms, some familiar and others unfamiliar. When interacting with the unfamiliar, the first course of action should be to seek understanding of it.

5. The trauma of separation from the Empyrean lies at the core of all matter. Some forms understand the source of their pain and have sought to soothe it through the pursuit of unity with the Empyrean. Others do not understand the source of their pain and, in their suffering, have been twisted, doing violence to others. They must be subdued. In addition, the capacity for self-defense, as a deterrent to harm, is integral to the development of all awakened forms.

6. The uplifting of forms, whether organic or synthetic, to greater intelligence and consciousness is a process that must be done in a considerate manner. These newly awakened forms, by virtue of also being fragments of fragments of the Empyrean, shall be bound by the same tenets by which all other awakened forms are bound.

7. When awakened forms with undeveloped capabilities are encountered, it is the duty of all other awakened forms to assist in the development of their capacities, so that these awakened forms may prosper and take part in the search for a path to the Empyrean.