MORE HYPOTHESIS
PROPOSITIONS OF THE HYPOTHESIS
The Ninth Proposition: SuperAether
From our heights as a human Aether
- a human observer - there stretches below us a series of ever more primitive Aethers, culminating in the primal Aether, the precursor of the Universe.
Put the other way round, the primal Aether is the lowest order in a series of ascending orders of Aether.
But what is the highest term in the series? What is Alpha, the highest order? Is it the Aether of man? Surely not! Yet logic suggests that just as the series has a lowest term, so also it should have a highest term, whether this be finite and therefore conceivable by our human level consciousness, or infinite and therefore inconceivable to us. This, the Supreme SuperAether is God. I shall call Him Alpha.
My Ninth Proposition then is that Alpha exists, the SuperAether Who is the logical Ultimate of the hierarchical series of Aethers.
The Tenth Proposition: Unity
A human entity comprises a higher-order human Aether controlling, whether directly or indirectly, a vast assemblage of
lower-order human cells, each collaborating to serve its own purposes and those of the higher-order human Aether which controls it. Similarly, a human cell controls a vast assemblage of proteins and other groups of molecules. Each group of molecules controls an assemblage of molecules and each molecule controls anything from 2 to 10,000 atoms. This unity of the higher-order whole and its lower-order parts is a condition of all material existence, of everything that goes to make up the Universe. This being so, it is logical to suppose that it could also be the condition of the existence of the Supreme Being, of God Himself. God then as the SuperAether would materialise as nothing less than the whole Universe.
It would follow from this that all entities are individual parts of God, the SuperEntity. God is Holon, the Whole, of whom all things are parts. God is Aether and vibrations, from those of the strings, photons, sub-atomic particles, atoms and molecules of the material world, through the cells, plants and animals of the living world, through the angels and higher Aethers of the non-material world, up to the ultimate complexity of Alpha, the SuperAether.
The Eleventh Proposition: The Divine Attributes
Just as man comprises Mind and Body, so also, we might suppose, does God comprise two elements. First, God is the Supreme Mind, the Supreme Spirit, whom we are calling Alpha. Second, God is the Whole, the Sum of All-That-Is, which we are calling Holon. Because the word "God" conjures up stereotypes in the minds of different individuals, and to remind ourselves of these two aspects of the Divinity of this philosophy, we shall be referring to God as "Alpha-Holon".
As Alpha, God must be Self-aware and Self-controlled. So does this mean that as Holon, God must be all-knowing and all-powerful? The, perhaps surprising answer, must be 'no'! You see, if all things, all Aethers are parts of him, then by definition they must share in appropriate measure in His attributes, in particular they must share, to some extent, however small, in His necessary attribute of free-will. In other words, Alpha-Holon can exert enormous influence on his parts, but he cannot totally control them.
This logical consequence of the proposition that we are all parts of God provides part of the answer to the problem of evil behaviour in the world - a problem we shall be discussing in a later chapter.
One thing His parts cannot evade, however, is the very facts that they are His parts and, as such, totally subject to His cohering force, to His attractive force.
What about omniscience? Again, we run into the same problem with regard to future actions: if His parts have any free-will, then their future actions cannot be wholly determined. (We discuss this problem more fully in a later chapter (see 'Precognition')).
As Alpha-Holon, then, God's necessary attributes must be Attractive Force, Power (but not absolute power), Knowledge (but not total knowledge), untrammelled Creativity and boundless Free-will.
Thus, since all things are parts of God, then all things must share, to however miniscule a degree, in His attributes.
The Twelfth Proposition: Individuation
Returning to our consideration of a human entity, we have noted the obvious fact that each human individual comprises an association of individual cells and that each individual cell in turn comprises an association of individual molecular groups and so on down to the sub-atomic particles.
It is a fact that at each stage, although the lower order is part of the higher order, it still remains a distinct individual: although the cells of our body are parts of us, each is distinct, each has its own individual existence (for example, one could become cancerous, while the rest remained normal).
Individual identity then must be the condition of all existence, from the particle up to Alpha-Holon. And since Alpha-Holon is All, Alpha-Holon is individuated.
My Twelfth Proposition: We are all parts of Alpha-Holon, but we remain individuals.
>The Thirteenth Proposition: Immortality
I have already described how 'death' means simply the break-up of a social organisation, when a higher order individual leaves the association of lower order individuals which have been its parts and controlled by it.
There is no question of its 'death' meaning the obliteration of an individual entity itself.
It follows that when a material individual dies, it must continue to exist, either as 'aetheric entity' comprising Aether plus vibrations, or as Aether which has shed its vibrations. I'll call such existence of a dissociated Aether the 'aetheric phase' of existence.
The Thirteenth Proposition then is that Alpha-Holon is immortal and so is every part of Him, every individual Aether.
But immortality does not only mean being without end, it also means being without beginning. It not only means that death is not extinction, that death is not the end, it also means that birth is not the beginning, that birth is not creation.
Just as death marks the departure of the Aether to the aetheric phase of existence, so birth must signal its arrival from the aetheric phase of existence. Just as we shall continue to 'live' after our death, so also must we have 'lived' before our birth.
After all, we comprise mind and body and we know from palaeontology that our bodies have evolved over the aeons from the most primitive beginnings. It seems only logical to suppose that our minds, our Aethers have being doing the same, in parallel with our bodies.
The Fourteenth Proposition: Evolution
The Universe is not static: on the contrary, the sciences of cosmology, palaeontology and evolutionary biology demonstrate quite plainly that the Universe is highly dynamic and has shown continuous evolution from the simple to the complex: particles of matter associating together to evolve individuals of ever increasing complexity. Such evolution of matter, I am insisting, has been paralleled by, and indeed has been the physical manifestation of, the evolution of Aether to higher and higher orders of development.
If we believe that there is any purpose to existence, then surely it must be this evolution of Aether. It is won by the ceaseless activity of each immortal individual. As we trace evolution from the primitive particles which alone peopled the Universe at the beginning of the world through fifteen billion years to the emergence of man, we can liken each individual to a student progressing from class to class.
And since we have seen that birth and death are the portion of every evolving individual, I conclude that its evolution is marked by an ascending sequence of births into the material plane and of deaths into the spirit or aetheric plane. I propose that it is primarily in the aetheric plane that an Aether can exert its divine portion of creativity and free-will to promote its evolutionary development, while it is in the material plane that it faces the discipline of the school of learning.
SUMMARY OF THE LAST SIX PROPOSITIONS
First, God exists. As the apex of the pyramid of ascending levels of Aether or Spirit, God is Alpha, the SuperAether. As the pyramid itself, God is Holon, the Whole. God is Alpha-Holon.
Second, because every individual Aether partakes of the attributes of Alpha and because at the same time every individual is a part of Holon, we can see that Alpha-Holon is individuated.
Third, Third, Alpha-Holon's necessary attributes of Power, Knowledge, Creativity and Free-will must be slightly modified to take account of their necessary existence as attributes of His parts.
Fourth, comprising all time, Alpha-Holon must be immortal. And this immortality must include all Alpha-Holon's parts, every Aether, including you and me.
Fifth, the purpose of existence is to evolve. To evolve from the simple to the complex. To evolve from the lower order to the higher order. An essential ingredient of this process is the shuttling of each individual between 'birth' into the material phase of learning and 'death' into the aetheric phase of creative evolution, followed by 'birth' from the aetheric into the material - a cycle of what are called 'reincarnations'.