Introduction

For Sri Aurobindo, involution is the process by which the Omnipresent Reality, i.e. the Absolute, Brahman extends Itself to create a universe of separate forms from out of Its own Force/Energy.

”Sat”, ”Chit-Tapas”, and Delight/”Ananda” are the three aspects of ”Satchitananda”, and are mentioned in terms of Involution . Spirit or consciousness manifests as these three, and then as the intermediate link of Supermind, which is transitional between the higher and lower (matter, life, and mind) nature.

The reason for involution is Delight – the Delight of Being (the Spirit or Absolute) moving to Delight of Becoming (temporal existence, the cosmos). Being throws itself forward into a multiplicity of forms, becoming lost in the inconscience of matter , and then through evolution it partakes in the Delight of rediscovering the Spirit which had been hidden in the interim.

Evolution is thus the movement forward by which the created universe evolves from its initial state of inconscience (i.e. as matter), evolves animated life forms and mental beings (i.e. humans), and continues to evolve spiritual properties, and in that process rediscovers its Source. Such an Evolution of animated forms is only possible because at each stage of development, the developing entity contains within itself the conception of what it may become. Thus, the evolution of animated life out of matter supposes a previous involution of that animated capacity. This is akin to a seed that already has the essence of the tree that will emerge from it.

Each plane emerges from an earlier plane through the evolutionary process, which takes place in chronological time. But in a parallel construction, each of these new planes can be understood as being a descendent of its corresponding higher order plane from the Infinite. Thus, when mentality emerged in the universe, the universal plane of Mind was implanted to a degree in those beings harboring that mentality.

The evolution is the development of all entities in the cosmos, including humans, in order to attain their fulfillment, including the discovery of spiritual Delight, which was, and always is, the experience of the Source Creator. The evolution is the progressive development from the original inconscience of matter into life (movement, sensation, desire, etc. and living physical beings), and from thence to mind (in conscious animals and most especially humans – the self-conscious thinking animal), and from thence to spiritualized mind, culminating in the The Supermind or Truth Consciousness (as supramental individuals, and finally the supramental, i.e. a divine life on earth.)

Sat

We cannot speak of Sat without Chit Ananda or Being, Consciousness and Bliss. They represent a totality. Sat is the vital state of that which is was and always will be. In a sense it is a beginnining but because it is pregnant with possibility it is inexorably tied to Ananda or the recognition of Being and then the subsequent realization of bliss which is divine inner knowing. Each flows out of the other and then back again. It could be said that Sat only exists through Ananda or Consciousness however, these levels of differentiation cannot grasp the true nature of either of these three qualities since they are interdependent.

”Chit-tapas”

”Chit-Tapas” or Consciousness-Force, in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy refers to the pure energy of Consciousness by which creation ultimately comes about; the infinite divine self-awareness which is also the infinite all-effective Will. It is also one of the seven planes of existence, according to the Vedic cosmology and the seven lokas of Hindu thought.

In chapter 10 of ”The Life Divine”, Sri Aurobindo writes at length on the nature of Consciousness-Force as a principle of the Divine. As he understands it (following the Tantric dichotomy of Shiva and Shakti), ”Chit” or Consciousness is not an inert and passive principle; but contains the potential spiritual Energy, ”Tapas”, which in Creation becomes the dynamic and creative principle or Force, called ”Shakti”. ”Chit-Tapas” or ”Chit-Shakti” is therefore the universal Consciousness-Force, the divine Energy; the Mother.

Delight

Delight is Sri Aurobindo’s term for ananda, and plays a large part in his cosmology and spiritual teaching. Delight is the reason for creation, by which The Absolute extends its Delight of Being into multiplicity, losing itself in the inconscience and then through Delight rediscovering Itself through individuals realising their Divine nature and proceeding to spiritual realisation.

In other words, the universe was created so that the Delight of the Infinite Spirit can manifest in all the forms of creation. When we discover our higher nature, the soul and spirit, we experience the delight for which we were came into being and of which we are a part.

In chapters 11 and 12 of ”The Life Divine”, Sri Aurobindo writes at length on the nature of Delight as a principle of the Divine, and its role in creation.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Involution (esoterism), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Nuwaubianism is an esoteric cosmology, a collection of religious teachings, a group of religious, tribal, and fraternal organizations, and a set of cultural practices that is multifaceted and ever-changing.

York developed Nuwaubianism by drawing on a wide range of sources which include Theosophy-derived New Age movements such as Astara as well as the Rosicrucians, Freemasonry, the Shriners, the Moorish Science Temple of America, the revisionist Christianity and Islam of the Ahmadiyya Movement founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the numerology of Rashad Khalifa, the ancient astronaut theories of Zecharia Sitchin, Robert Temple’s ”The Sirius Mystery”, J.J. Hurtak’s ”The Keys of Enoch”, the works of Richard Shaver (a proponent of the Hollow Earth theory), David Icke, the UFO mythology of greys and reptilians, the political and legal theories of patriot mythology, modern scientific and pseudoscientific legends like those of Area 51, the Philadelphia Experiment, Project Blue Book, Montauk Project, and MJ-12, popular conspiracy theories such as those about the Illuminati or the Bilderberg Group, and even a paperback on fortune-telling.

Journalist Adam Heimlich reviewed a number of York’s booklets in 2000 and wrote:

A partial list, from my notes, of places I’d encountered Nuwaubian notions before includes ”Chariots of the Gods” and the Rael’s [sic] embellishments on that book, conspiracy lit, UFO lit, the human potential movement, Buddhism and new-age, astrology, theosophy and Blavatsky, Leonard Jeffries and other Afrocentrics, Cayce, LaRouche, alternative medicine, self-help lit, Satanism, the Atkins diet, numerology and yoga. Many of these York mentions by name. There are also extensive discourses on the Torah, Gospels and Koran, as well as on Rastafarianism, the Nation of Islam and the Five Percent Nation.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has categorized the Nuwaubians as a black supremacist hate group.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Nuwaubianism, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Sehaj word states as Guru of love, Guru of Trust, Guru of War, Guru of Time, Guru of Power. The stated purpose of Surat Shabda Yoga is to realize the individual’s ”True Self” (Self-Realization), ”True Essence” (Spirit-Realization) and ”True Divinity” (God-Realization) while living in the human physical body. This ”Journey of Soul” involves reuniting in stages with what is called the ”Essence of the Absolute Supreme Being”, the Shabd. Attaining self-realization and above also results in ”jivan” ”moksha/mukti”, liberation/release from samsara, the cycle of karma and reincarnation while in the physical body. Initiation by an ”Outer Living” Satguru (Sat – true, Guru – teacher) is required, and involves reactivating the Shabd and stationing the Inner Shabda Master (the Radiant Form of the Master) at the third eye (tisra til) chakra. The spiritual exercises (sadhanas) include simran (repetition, particularly silent repetition of a mantra given at initiation), dhyan (concentration, viewing, or contemplation, particularly on the Inner Master), and bhajan (listening to the inner sounds of the Shabda or the Shabda Master).

Surat Shabd Yoga cosmology depicts the whole of creation (the macrocosm) as being emanated and arranged in a spiritually differentiated hierarchy, often referred to as eggs, regions, or planes. Typically, eight spiritual levels are described above the physical plane, although names and subdivisions within these levels will vary to some extent by movement and Master.

This cosmology presents the constitution of the initiate (the microcosm) as an exact replica of the macrocosm. Consequently, the microcosm consists of a number of bodies, each one suited to interact with its corresponding plane or region in the macrocosm. These bodies developed over the yugas through involution (emanating from higher planes to lower planes) and evolution (returning from lower planes to higher planes), including by karma and reincarnation in various states of consciousness. The Path of Light and Sound involves the initiate traveling the microcosm dharmicly in consciousness (soul) with the guidance and protection of the Outer Living Master in the physical world and the Inner Shabd Master in the higher worlds until the regions of pure spirituality are reached and God-Realization is attained.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Surat Shabd Yoga, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Arising out of the peripatetic philosophy as developed by Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Suhrawardi’s illuminationist philosophy is critical of several of his positions and radically departs from him in the creation of a symbolic language (mainly derived from ancient Iranian culture or ”Farhang-e Khosravani”) to give expression to his wisdom (”hikma”).

Suhrawardi taught a complex and profound emanationist cosmology, in which all creation is a successive outflow from the original Supreme Light of Lights (”Nur al-Anwar”). The fundamental of his philosophy is pure immaterial light, than which nothing is more manifest, that unfolds from the light of lights in a descending order of ever-diminishing intensity and, through complex interaction, gives rise to a “horizontal” array of lights, similar in conception to Platonic forms, that governs the species of mundane reality. In other words, the universe and all levels of existence are but varying degrees of Light – the light and the darkness. In his division of bodies, he categorizes objects in terms of their reception or non-reception of light.

Suhrawardi considers a previous existence for every soul in the angelic domain before descending to the realm of the body. The soul is divided into two parts, one remaining in heaven and the other descending into the dungeon of the body. The human soul is always sad because it has been divorced from its other half. Therefore, it aspires to become united with it again. The soul can only reach felicity again when it is united with the celestial part,

Suhrawardi elaborated the neo-Platonic idea of an independent intermediary world, the imaginal world (”alam-e mithal”). His views have exerted a powerful influence down to this day, particularly through Mulla Sadra’s combined peripatetic and illuminationist description of reality.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article Index of religion-related articles, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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mental plane, or world of thought, in Hermeticism, Theosophical, Rosicrucian, Aurobindonian, and New Age thought refers to the macrocosmic or universal plane or reality that is made up purely of thought or mindstuff. In contrast to Western secular modernist and post-modern thought, in occult and esoteric cosmology, thoughts and consciousness are not just a byproduct of brain functioning, but have their own “objective” and universal reality quite independent of the physical. This reality itself constitutes only one gradation in a whole series of planes of existence (the total number of planes varies, although seven is a common number in Theosophical formulations). In most such cosmologies and explanations of reality, the Mental Plane is located between, and hence is intermediate between, the astral plane below and the higher spiritual realms of existence above.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Mental plane, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Tiantai is a Mahāyāna school established at Tiantai Mountain in what is now Zhejiang Province. Its headquarters temple was Guoqing Temple, which still exists and is a site of tourism. The official line of transmission lists the Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna and Chinese monks Huiwen and Huisi as Zhiyi’s predecessors; however, most modern scholars consider Zhiyi to be the founder of Tiantai. The school’s sixth patriarch, Zhanran, is accredited for his clarifying commentaries on Zhiyi’s writings.

The founding of the Tiantai school is viewed by some as a response to a growing challenge amongst Chinese Buddhists. Various Chinese pilgrims and translators had gathered and translated a huge body of Buddhist scriptures, commentaries and writings from India. However, due to the vagaries of ancient travel and communications, these texts were often collected in a very eclectic – or even haphazard – manner. Collections of texts were often gathered from multiple schools of Buddhist philosophy. Occasionally, incomplete collections were brought back to China, without awareness that significant texts were missing. Texts separated by generations of philosophical developments were lumped together as contemporaries. As more and more texts became available, it was increasingly clear that many of these texts could not possibly be reconciled with one another. Many Chinese Buddhists scholars wondered how the Buddha could have possibly taught all of these seemingly contradictory doctrines. More importantly, which teaching represented the Buddha’s ultimate intentio

Zhiyi’s response was to analyze and organize all the Āgamas and Mahayana sutras into a system of five periods and eight types of teachings. For example, many elementary doctrines and bridging concepts had been taught early in the Buddha’s advent when the vast majority of the people during his time were not yet ready to grasp the ‘ultimate truth’. These teachings (the Āgamas) were an ”upaya”, or skillful means, were simply an example of the Buddha employing his boundless wisdom to lead those people towards the truth. Subsequent teachings delivered to more advanced followers thus represent a more complete and accurate picture of the Buddha’s teachings, and did away with some of the philosophical ‘crutches’ introduced earlier. Zhiyi’s classification culminated with the Lotus Sutra, which he held to be the supreme synthesis of Buddhist doctrine.

Tiantai thus became doctrinally broad, able to absorb and give rise to other movements within Buddhism. Zhiyi emphasized both scriptural study and practice, and taught the rapid attainment of Buddhahood through observing the mind. He also took up a principle of triple truth derived from Nagarjuna:

*Phenomena are empty of self-nature

*Phenomena exists provisionally from a worldly perspective

*Phenomena are both empty of existence and exists provisionally at once

The transient world of phenomena is thus seen as one with the unchanging, undifferentiated ground of existence. This doctrine was elaborated in a complex esoteric cosmology of 3000 interpenetrating realms of existence.

Most scholars regard the Tiantai as one of the first truly Chinese schools of Buddhist thought. The schools of Buddhism that had existed in China prior to the emergence of the Tiantai are generally believed to represent direct transplantations from India, with little modification to their basic doctrines and methods. The creation of the Tiantai school signified the maturation and integration of Buddhism in the Chinese context. No longer content to simply translate texts received from Indian sources, Chinese Buddhists began to apply new analyses to old texts, and even to produce new scriptures and commentaries that would attain significant status within the East Asian sphere.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Tiantai, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Planck time (10−43s) is the time it would take a photon traveling at the speed of light to cross a distance equal to the Planck length (1.616252×10−35 meters). It has been proposed that this may be the hypothetical “quantum of time”, the smallest measurement of time that has any meaning, although in current physics theory time is not quantized.

Although the laws of physics lose experimental support at the Planck time, modern science has sought to clarify the nature of these paradoxes, so far with only limited success. For example, one can apply the current understanding of grand unified theories (GUTs) both quasi-classical (such as general relativity) and modern (such as quantum gravity, superstring, and M-theories) to these three primary cosmogonic paradoxes in thought experiments. While these result in some contradictions and lack completeness in a mathematical sense (being based on axioms that are ‘merely’ self-evident, but not robust under the stresses of radical scepticism) these paradoxes can nonetheless be analyzed rationally using the subatomic applications of quantum cosmology, particularly through the employment of the Schrödinger wave equations.

In each case, where general relativity fails as the curvature of space-time invokes singularities from its equations at t=0, the statistically “grey” nature of quantum cosmology tends to allow a scientific rationale to account for each paradox, and in so doing allows for a scientific perspective on previously theistic terrain. For example, application of quantum “f

All such equations are based on differentials, which assume a continuum, where in our universe, affected by the Planck length and other minimum scales, this continuum has only limited meaning, about which philosophy remains in a state of semantic flux.

==References

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article Cosmogony, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Kingsley’s work argues that the writings of the presocratic philosophers Parmenides and Empedocles, usually seen as rational or scientific enterprises, were in fact expressions of a wider Greek mystical tradition that helped give rise to western philosophy and civilization. This tradition, according to Kingsley, was a way of life leading to the direct experience of reality and the recognition of one’s divinity. Yet, as Kingsley stresses, this was no “otherworldly” mysticism: its chief figures were also lawgivers, diplomats, physicians, and even military men. The texts produced by this tradition are seamless fabrics of what later thought would distinguish as the separate areas of mysticism, science, healing, and art.

Parmenides, most famous as the “father of western logic” and traditionally viewed as a rationalist, was a priest of Apollo and ”iatromantis” (lit. healer-prophet). Empedocles, who outlined an elaborate cosmology that introduced the enormously influential idea of the four elements into western philosophy and science, was a mystic and a magician. Kingsley reads the poems of Parmenides and Empedocles as esoteric, initiatory texts designed to lead the reader to a direct experience of the oneness of reality and the realization of his or her own divinity. A significant implication of this reading is that western logic and science originally had a deeply spiritual purpose.

Kingsley’s reading of early Greek philosophy and, in particular, of Parmenides and Empedocles, is at odds with most of the established interpretations.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Peter Kingsley (scholar), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Hinduism

The concept of multiple universes is mentioned many times in Hindu Puranic literature, such as in the Bhagavata Purana:

“Lord Śiva said: ”My dear son, I, Lord Brahmā and the other devas, who rotate within this universe under the misconception of our greatness, cannot exhibit any power to compete with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, for innumerable universes and their inhabitants come into existence and are annihilated by the simple direction of the Lord.”” (Bhagavata Purana 9.4.56)

Islam

There are exactly seven verses in the Quran that specify that there are seven heavens. One verse says that each heaven or sky has its own order, possibly meaning laws of nature. Another verse says after mentioning the seven heavens “and similar earths”.

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149–1209), in dealing with his conception of physics and the physical world in his ”Matalib”, “explores the notion of the existence of a multiverse in the context of his commentary” on the Qur’anic verse, “All praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds.” He raises the question of whether the term “worlds” in this verse refers to “multiple worlds within this single universe or cosmos, or to many other universes or a multiverse beyond this known universe.” Al-Razi disagreed with the Aristotelian and Avicennian view of the impossibility of multiple universes. This disagreement arose from his affirmation of atomism, as advocated by the Ash’ari school of Islamic theo

Planes of existence

Certain religions and esoteric cosmologies propound the idea of a whole series of subtle emanated planes or worlds.

Afterlife

Many religions include an afterlife existence in realms, such as heavens and hells, which may be very different from the observable universe.

Eschatology

Eschatological scenarios may include a new different world after the end time of the current one. For example, Hindu cosmology includes the idea of an infinite cycle of births and deaths and an infinite number of universes with each cycle lasting 8.4 billion years.

Similar eschatological scenarios appear in other religions, in the form of belief in there being a new and different world after the end time of the current one.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Multiverse, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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