The Spiritual and the Natural

When we examine the question of metaphysical potential, and understand that at the quantum level, particles are able to behave in a way that's not a function of the past, we realize that reality as we encounter it and perceive it is mathematically free of preconditions.

This expression, mathematically free of preconditions, has important implications. First of all, it sounds entirely and exactly correct in a way that arouses an objective consonance in Being. Second of all, it reminds us that, in a universe with a fabric that is quite clearly constructed of material that interacts according to the structural discipline of numerics, that is, parts that can and cannot be counted, the fundamental rule – the mathematical rule—dictates a freedom from time. That is, reality is not dependent on time.

I say this because the word preconditions is itself a creature of time. What the Free Will Theorem essentially says is that mathematics is eternal, that is, the structural foundation of the universe exists outside of time. It is metaphysical, not physical. 

Mathematics itself is a form of metaphysics; it's a thought form, and thought forms exist outside the physical. It may seem peculiar to draw a line that links metaphysics to physics through mathematics, but this is actually the same line that the universe forms itself along. So here we have the most powerful interpretive mechanism mankind has ever devised for explaining the universe – 100% of our modern technology is a direct  consequence of that form —and it turns out that it is both metaphysical and eternal.

Sometime ago, I explained the difference between the metaphysical and the physical as the difference between the spiritual and the natural. Emmanuel Swedenborg recognized that the spiritual is what inwardly forms everything natural; he called it the inflow. What we're presented with in the modern world is the argument between metaphysical humanism and mechanistic rationalism. Mechanistic rationalism believes that the spiritual is an imaginary force arising from the accident of the natural. Metaphysical humanism, on the other hand, takes the position that the natural is an imaginary force arising from the intention of the spiritual. 

Put it in simpler terms, the question is whether nature creates the image of the soul or the soul creates the image of nature. 

Do we live in a world of accident punctuated by intention, or a world of intention punctuated by accident?

Imagination is mindful; that is to say, it requires an intelligence to manifest it and create the image. A mindless, accidental nature cannot give rise to mindfulness. But mindfulness can give rise to an intelligible nature. The metaphysical, in other words, is in every way able to give birth to all that exists; yet the physical has none of this ability whatsoever. The physical is a subset of the metaphysical, and not the other way around. This is another straightforward way of describing the situation.

Human beings have both natural and spiritual, or physical and metaphysical, Being. Their ability to act in all of the ways that life and consciousness truly act –agency, perception, intelligence, foresight and so on –is what constitutes responsibility, that is, the ability to perceive and respond. These metaphysical aspects of Being are what make Being possible in the first place; without any of the metaphysical aspects, the physical materials do nothing. There is, in other words, no doubt that metaphysics acts on physics, and not the other way around. 

We discover the origins and nature of our consciousness in eternity, that is, in an arising that exists outside of time and has no preconditions. It is metaphysical; it is spiritual. 

Quantum uncertainty is metaphysical; it's impossible to see it, to measure it, to manipulate its outcomes: we can only see its outcomes. 

In the same way, consciousness cannot be seen; only the outcomes of its existence can be perceived and measured. Every perception of the natural, in other words, is a perception of and from the spiritual. In this sense, the action of consciousness itself is an unnatural act – it comes from beyond nature. This is the reason that the sciences have had such great difficulty explaining consciousness. There is no natural explanation for it.

These ideas are not new at all, of course. Meister Eckhart's sermons create a core literature laying a foundation for this perspective in Western thought nearly a thousand years ago—and he himself came from a long line of spiritual thinkers. 

The effort of mechanistic rationalists to deconstruct this deeply human vision and force it into a world of brute matter with no intelligence has been alive for as long as those who know better. 

Yet the effort itself is wholly disingenuous. Those putting it forward have over time falsely adopted the essential humanistic underpinnings of metaphysical humanism as secular values, this in order to conceal their destructive efforts to undermine man's spiritual nature and put ego at the center of creation. 

The metaphysics of thought and feeling that create the image of the world we know are entities far greater than these tiny men and women who, despite the deceivingly vast scale and scope of their vision, can think no further than dull matter. How they have managed to put their negative theology at the base of western civilization is another question, perhaps all to easily answered. Human beings love the natural over the spiritual, because the natural is a thing of the ego that serves the self. The spiritual is of creation and serves much greater forces. 

The whole of the human saga centers around the conflict between these two forces. Even dumbed down to the vulgar ubiquity of the modern media, almost every program shares one feature in common: the bad guys are always the ones who are egoists serving themselves. The good guys are always those who serve a higher purpose. This is a crude rendering of the tension between the natural and the spiritual; so even the silliest good guy/bad guy program is a discussion not of physics, but metaphysics.

Think about this the next time you watch a program – even a quality one, such as, for example, World on Fire (PBS/BBC.) These shows, in the length, breadth, and scope of their drama, appear to be about natural events — people having babies, things blowing up – and yet in the end every situation they present is a question centered not in the physics of the interactions, but the metaphysics of the morality. 

There is no drama without a question of morality. And morality is a spiritual, not a natural, entity.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.