reconstructing the spiritual hierarchy with scientific mysticism

Some spiritual hierarchies present a dichotomy, with the physical world at the bottom, and the spiritual world on top. The spiritual world is seen as better or more important, and the physical world as base, dangerous, and less important. People from traditions across the world express this viewpoint. It has its merits, but i would like to present a slightly different take, which i believe to be more accurate.

Here is reality, which is everything that is. Formations within reality give rise to new layers of existence. Time and space, forces and particles, molecules, stars and planets, life, thought, society. None of these things is separate from reality, nor from any of the other layers. They are emergent configurations of the underlying system. My whole body is made out of atoms, and that's all it is. But the arrangement of those atoms encodes a result of millions of years of evolution, and decades of human life experience. Evolution mixes all species and substances together in a combinatoric quest to discover what all can happen. The connections between the neurons in my head allow me to write these words. It's all just atoms, and it's all much more than atoms.

So at the bottom of the hierarchy is the vast realm of concrete reality. It is devoid of abstraction; there are no things, and nothing is happening. It is simply a structure, full of redundant information, and predicated on a very simple* rule. It is the highest level of detail, and from here we will embark on a journey of generalization.

* That the rules of the universe are very simple is a guess, derived in part by playing with complex systems like conway's game of life, the collatz conjecture, or fractals like the mandelbrot and julia sets. All of these systems have very simple rules which give rise to incredible complexity. In the world, too, we have seen this from the opposite perspective: That there are levels of simplicity within the hierarchy of existence. The enormous complexity of life, for example, is all built on the properties and combinatorics of the genetic molecules. Of course, we don't yet know the rule of the universe, and it may even be impossible to know it. But don't let logic stop you. Logic is only half of the mind's power. All great scientific discoveries were performed with intuition. Logic is busywork in comparison.

Moving up from there, i find the ideas of "1:03 pm in rain's room on january 7, 2023", "rain's favorite pebble, found several years ago", "rain's hand", and "raincomplex". We can do a meditation here and touch "the experience of being a human". Continuing up the hierarchy, eventually we reach large concepts like "humanity", "living things", "goodness", "molecule", and "time". Sitting at the top is "the universe aka* god", containing everything else.

* That god and the universe are the same thing is derived in part by reading the writings of the mystics. It is not a philosophical or metaphysical position, but a linguistic or semantic one. We find in these writings, as we read with as little interpretation as possible, that when they talk about god (or whatever term for unity), they are talking about reality itself, seen without human ideas in the way. It is later interpreters of these works who create the separation between god and reality, by moving god from the concrete realm into the abstract.

There are many ideas which are based on other ideas instead of directly on reality. Some of these ideas match reality well, while others do not. There are many "false universes" which are not grounded. Strictly speaking, no idea can perfectly match reality, because in an idea there is always a loss of information or context (as compared to reality).

But there is more to say about god. If you like, substitute the word 'universe' or 'reality' for 'god'. God is definitely in the concrete reality, because that's the definition of god. Is god in abstraction? There are two* answers to this question:

The first answer is that all abstractions are mental states, and all mental states are physical states. An abstraction is only a configuration of reality, and so god is in it, in that sense.

The second answer is that an abstraction's truth is determined by how well it fits reality, and how sensitive its context is. The degree to which an abstraction fits reality determines how much god is in it. This sense is sometimes employed to point out the separation between humans and god, called sin or illusion. As union with god, it is a measure of our understanding of reality.

* These two ways of looking are called "ultimate" and "conventional". The ultimate perspective is that of reality itself, devoid of human conception. It is about unity and the interrelation of all parts of the universe. The conventional perspective is the ordinary human way of looking, with the separateness of things and ideas. How is it even possible that we can adopt the ultimate perspective? Strictly speaking, only the universe does this, by virtue of its being the universe. But there is a way of thinking which is very close to the ultimate.

So at the bottom of the hierarchy, we have god, and at the top of the hierarchy, we have the idea of god. In this way, the hierarchy is almost a loop. The hierarchy itself is not a map of reality, but of the space of ideas as they emerge from reality. Ideas are the map of reality. Reality is not mappable without abstraction; a map is an abstraction. The ultimate cannot be described, but simply is. And it's our job to understand and describe it.

Determinism and whether a dichotomy between entropic and deterministic exists

Raincomplex's writeup got me thinking about determinism versus nondeterministic entropic systems.

I’m trying to figure out if I have an opinion on determinism and entropy. I have thoughts, but an end-all judgement eludes me. (Determinism is the idea that events are predetermined because the vectors of the universe are ultimately observable and calculable, even if we will never reach that point. Entropic is the idea that enough randomness exists in any given closed system to prevent anything from being deterministic.) The idea of determinism is pretty well encapsulated in many of Sherlock’s soliloquys in the BBC Sherlock show that was a thing in like 2016. In the show, Sherlock monologues about his idea that if someone could know the vector of every single electron and the superposition of every quark, one could know everything that will ever happen.

There is this idea that the universe is entropic to the point of being inherently nondeterministic. Enough randomness (or “entropy”) exists for determinism to be impossible to quantify. I don’t care about various subtleties of arguments and boil it down to the fundamental base argument: is the universe a deterministic system?

In Judeo-Christian (or really monotheistic) ideology, the idea that God is both omnipresent and omniscient equates to the idea that God knows the vector of every electron and every quark. If such an entity (God) exists, it necessitates that the entire universe is a deterministic system. This begs the question – if God is outside of the universe, does this make the universe a closed system? If you know the vector of every variable, does this negate entropy? Strictly hypothetically, if this entity stopped observing the vectors, but once took a snapshot at any given point in time, will that entity be able to predict every single past and future vector, superposition, and energy state of each electron and quark?

The real question lies in perspective. If humans deem the entropy too vast to be calculable by mortal minds, but God is the sole entity that sees the universe as deterministic, does this mean that it is simultaneously too entropic to be deterministic but also, to the observer entity (God), inherently deterministic?

Is there a strict dichotomy between the two, or can both exist at once? Strictly a priori the answer to this question is inherently unknowable until we reach Stephen Hawking’s “ultimate triumph of human reason and (in which) we will know the mind of God.” I don’t think this can happen. The universe is too entropic for human minds to ever create Hawking’s Universal Equation.

The dichotomy between divine and base

The idea that the “passions of this world” are dirty, vile, base, and sinful is a fundamental doctrine in Christianity in all sects. Christian ascetism, “mortification of the flesh”, “denial of the passions”, self flagellating "decomposition of the ego and in substitution surrendering one’s body and soul to the "noumenal, perfect, unflawed divine. The idea that there is a “noumenal” divine and a “base” passions are vile. Ultimately, it is complete denial of one’s own humanity. “Put to death the ways of the flesh so that you may be as Christ.”

When I say “noumenon”, what I mean is a realm or entity that exists outside of empirical reality, and is “completely without blemish”

Nietzsche might have been right when he wrote “trying to find the noumenon is complete bullshit. Christianity is no longer necessary for society to remain cohesive, let’s throw out the idea of a noumenon and let the will to power in substitution overthrow both the base passions and the inherent need for the noumenal.” (heavy heavy heavy paraphrase).

Subjective experience and miscellany

I don’t know if I can be considered a “Christian” anymore but I still find myself in the old habit of self-mortification. I still pray to the Christian God. If the universe is indeed observed by an omniscient and omnipresent entity, my prayers will find my way to Him or It. Victor Hugo is where that thought originates I think, or at the very least that is where I got it from.

So many questions. No answers until we become God. Will it happen? My subjective mysticism says no.

A problem I’ve been wrestling through with this is the flagrant ardency to which my teenage Judeo-Christian influence and early-adult pseudo-Catholicism falls into play here. I am neither of those things anymore. I still believe in the Christian God because I’m terrified not to, and I still remain an apologist in that I believe in the idea of God’s omnipresence. The reason why is profoundly logically unsatisfying; “faith”. It almost disgusts me, and if anything it’s causing me a great deal of cognitive dissonance. Where is the boundary between entropic human subjection and the divine, noumenal determinist?