Image via Wikipedia
There has been a great deal of talk about “cosmic memory,” “Akashic Records,” and so forth among both mainstream parapsychologists and New Agers. This is an old idea that was revived not only by Theosophists, but also by philosophers such as William James, and there are some affinities with Jung’s “collective unconscious.” Ervin Laszlo has written a great deal on “Akashic memory,” as Edgar Mitchell and Stanley Krippner accept some version of cosmic memory placed in the framework of contemporary physics.
Such views remind me of Alfred North Whitehead‘s notion of “objective immortality.” For Whitehead, like contemporary advocates of cosmic memory, every event in nature is interconnected. As events constantly flow into the past, they are recorded in the mind of God, where they are stored forever. Whitehead himself denies subjective immortality, the notion that individual humans, for example, will live forever. But he accepts the idea that God remembers every event, and in that sense everything is immortal. These memories enrich the life of God, and He can use them as He continually aids the world in enfolding toward greater enrichment of value. Thus, Whitehead accepts a theistic (specifically a panentheistic) view of cosmic memory as existing in the mind of God.
None of these positions would suit traditional Christianity–but there is a version of cosmic memory that can–that of St. Thomas Aquinas. For Aquinas, God eternally holds every object and event in His mind. Although that is not the same as something existing in re, in itself, in another sense existing in God’s mind is more real than existing in re. Now Aquinas believes in subjective immortality; that is, he believes that God will raise all humans from the dead, restoring their souls to new bodies that are in a real sense continuous with the old. While Aquinas’ version of the afterlife sounds boring (“the beatific vision of God,” in which the saved contemplate God forever), as the late Father Joseph Owens of The Medieval Institute of the University of Toronto has noted, such an afterlife need not be boring at all. If all events and all places, everything that has ever existed or happened, exist virtually in God’s mind, then a resurrected person could have an experience of walking through the fields of his childhood. This sounds like a George Berkeley-like view of Heaven, or perhaps H. H. Price’s image-world with God as a ground of stability. My one caveat would be that if I exist in such a world, I would want the animals I have loved to be really, not just virtually, present–with their conscious lives restored and intact. If all else is composed of images in the mind of God, what would be the practical difference between such a world and a material world? Does the substrate out of which solid material objects is made really make a difference? There would be still be, to use Christian terminology, a “New Heaven and a New Earth.” On this view, the Beatific Vision of God would mark the fulfillment of our materiality rather than its repudiation. And the full truth of cosmic memory would be fulfilled in the ultimate vision of God’s memory playing a role in the blessed life of the resurrected.
Gratiaetnatura's Blog 
Oct 24, 2011 @ 21:55:56
Your blog is rather addictive. I haven’t heard any one mention H.H.Price in many years or indicate they know who Ervin Lszlo is. I remember being greatly impressed by the elegance of Price’s style. And that of C. D. Broad’s. I have noted that Donald Davidson is a fine writer. If only a fine style went always with truth!
I assume you do not believe in reincarnation though it seems obvious that the Israelites at the time of Jesus did and that he probably did also. In any case I have not come across any reason not to in the annals of Christianity. I believe the Pope rejected the council that decided to make it heresy.
Here is my position. The soul creates the physical body and mind. We have the body and circumstances we desired before conception and birth. When we die the soul body separates from the physical and spends a certain amount of time in an after life. Then it returns. For another go. At some point the soul reaches a point of perfection and need not incarnate again. Currently there is a great deal of scientific evidence for this position.
I see no reason why Christianity needs to be stuck back with a church council that had ulterior motives for taking the position it took .
Aquinas did not support the idea of a God that could be described. That position is not so different if at all from the Eastern notions of God. At this point I would suggest looking at consciousness. Consciousness can not be characterized as all our language is designed to describe forms. And consciousness is that in virtue of which we have or entertain forms. But what is consciousness? We can not imagine true nothingness. But absent consciousness that would be the case–unimaginable. I believe this is the KEY.
And this why the mind body problem can not be solved. Of which more later.
So what we call Christianity today is the best job people have been able to do over the centuries to characterize the teachings of Jesus; but they are not in most respects identical to his teachings. For the time and place and culture and language maybe they were fine and had widespread appeal. But now they need to be updated and revised for this place and time and culture. And since the essence is Pure Love, what counts is that the resultant enhance that message to go out. Whether after he died physically Jesus ascended to heaven or went to Kashmir is really irrelevant I believe. I believe remembering the Common Prayer Book that he gave two commandments: one with respect to God. One with respect to our fellow person. The only heresy would be to deny one of those.
Oct 25, 2011 @ 01:04:12
My view on the body/soul relationship is more or less Thomist–I believe in a soul that is separable from the body, but without many of its powers. Since I am an empiricist who believes that knowledge comes through sensation, one needs a body to gain new knowledge of reality. I do not know how reincarnation would help anyone in a moral sense (as in the Hindu and Buddhist notion of Karma) if the person does not remember his previous life. I suppose you could say that if the reborn person had a first person sense of “I-ness” that was in some sense continuous with the previous incarnation that a limited continuity of consciousness is preserved. You might be interested in Rao’s recent book on Cognitive Anomalies, when he brings in Eastern notions of consciousness that sound similar to yours as a via media between mind and body, and to explain psi phenomena. I cannot disagree with the two great commandments, but to love God you have to have some notion of whom you’re loving, and that requires some theology. Yes, Aquinas believed that the via negativa was primary and the via analogia secondary, so you are correct on that point.
Jul 16, 2012 @ 02:13:53
Your consciousness section is rather skimpy so I will have to insert here. I think David Chalmers makes the most sense. It is totally correct when he says that consciousness is that which i am most directly and immediately aware of –to write this in a way which is not awkward is difficult, It seems obvious that
consciousness must exist prior to an I or self. It also seems simplest to identify with consciousness. That is, I am consciousness or awareness. This is not at all abstract or theoretical but eminently practical.
Interesting that he has very long hair as the materialists all look like middle class Americans with vested interests in perpetuating the Western style of life even where and when it is highly destructive of humans and the environment. Many philosophers would make good bankers.
I have noticed that most scientists are extremely clean cut and almost military in appearance and manner. Stephen Hawkings and his arrogance seems to represent modern science excellently.
Anyway nothing could be more intimate than consciousness itself. Its objects of course are always situated at a remove.
Oct 06, 2012 @ 01:31:05
As you may know physicists consider matter as arising from fields and not the other way around. But field is a concept comparably vague as consciousness, And yet the source of matter can hardly be considered as anything but extremely creative,
One consistent fact that we possess is that all objects of consciousness exists in our experience with equal status, That is, whether a chair or an idea or a bodily sensation the object becomes present to our awareness and can be studied or dismissed after a time, It would not be impossible to imagine a person with a brain affliction who no longer treated physical appearances as different from imaged objects, Even being handed an object say a vase he would not be caused to change his mind. As part of his therapy he would have to relearn that these objects we call physical occupied a particular space and had to be dealt with in a special way. But nothing we normally think of as distinguishing physical things from mental things would strike him as important, He would not share our prejudice or idea of that the physical were somehow much different from what we call the mental. He might even come to think of these things as simply denser mental objects, He could live without this dichotomy of mental/physical!
So fortunately our patient’s best friend is a philospher-scientist who now has the following thoughts. Matter from fields. All objects of consciousness are in some sense substantial–they are not nothing, So all objects of consciousness are the products of fields . . . hmm, Could the field be consciousness? Various levels of which would produce intuitions, thoughts, emotions, sensations, and even physical objects, Well, then we could just toss out this troublesome mind-body dichotomy entirely. And also the subject object one. Eventually. And likewise objective and subjective as they are now treated as distinct realms,
Now it is easy to see how this illusion got created in the first place: survival. But later on it build a confusion into the mind which has persisted. It is also deeply embedded in our modern languages. So much so that is hard not think in terms of these opposites. The bifurcation of nature.
Oct 09, 2012 @ 21:10:44
“Field” is a rather odd concept, dating back to Faraday. I do not know if consciousness is a field; if the notion of a “field” makes sense, I doubt it is a contradiction to say that such a field is consciousness, as long as “consciousness” is understood in a way that distinguishes it from nothing.
Oct 10, 2012 @ 00:16:54
Space-time perturbations as objects . . . might be the simpler way to put it. In any case taking consciousness as primary and self originating is the important thing here. Things as content-less patterns organized mathematically–Pythagorean idea.
Field is an important idea or concept in physics (electricity and gravity for example):In physics a force field is a vector field that describes a non-contact force acting on a particle at various positions in space.–Wikipedia
One of the main participants in string theory describes his contribution as a new geometry . . . the eleven dimensions that the theory might entail.
The materialists who are so skeptical would faint if they got too close to contemporary physics! Physics now sounds more like persons having LSD trips. Structured nothingness? These super minute strings are under thousands of tons of tension. All this is unimaginable. And it is all in mathematical terms. Nothing to take hold of.
So we have a physics that sounds like Eastern mysticism in a society that increasingly acts with extreme primitiveness. Or really far worse than primitive or archaic tribal peoples.
Oct 18, 2012 @ 23:10:05
Findings in Quantum Biology Proves Existence of IMMATERIAL SOUL!
“So modern physics tells us that the world is an illusion (Zeilinger, Maldacena, Whitworth et al), and it depends on quantum measurement.
Well it turns out a quantum biologist named Stuart Kauffman has made progress on quantum neuroscience that suggests that the mind exists at a “poised realm” (at the threshold between classical and quantum) and is what collapses (measures) the brain states.
In other words, an immaterial non-local mind, measures and collapses a material brain!” video here: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread891366/pg1
This is just one of many articles coming out now that argue against the brain-mind identity. And some are by the neuro-scientists whom contemporary philosophers have relied on for support of their to me preposterous ideas on the mind!
Oct 19, 2012 @ 03:38:22
Let us assume that mathematics is the best thing the West has developed. And further that it is the language which has allowed physics to evolve to such a high degree. Unfortunately most persons including philosophers do not know enough mathematics usually to know what physics has to say. And in some cases physicists do not actually know what they are saying.
But interestingly it is beginning to sound more and more like much Eastern spiritual philosophy!
We are I believe getting closer and closer in the West to considering that Consciousness is the Source and that matter is the least real expression of Consciousness. What I would like to suggest is that the physical world is the outer most and the smallest. That beyond the physical there are many subtler layers and that physical things and events are the products of what transpires in these other layers of consciousness. What modern philosophers and thinkers are doing is taking this physical world and trying to create it out of itself. And they can not succeed. So then we get the quantum world with its probabilities. And this is a bit hard to digest.
The other thing is that Consciousness is one of a kind so to speak and can not provide an answer to the question what is consciousness? It is not a thing that can be likened to another thing. Such as what is an apple? Or what is red?
It is worth taking in Kaufman’s lengthy video at YouTube. He has lots of interesting things to say. Or perhaps you already have.
Consciousness is the most self evident “thing” there is. So how do we account for the fact that it is such a mystery? It’s the bird pursuing the question of air.
I know what it is to see the tree; and I also know what it is to be simply aware of that activity. Then I notice that consciousness is this power to manifest objects for myself. This begins to seem much like collapsing the quantum wave. Quantum physics from inside the processes rather than viewing it through mathematical formulae. Picking out the one from the many possibilities.
Oct 19, 2012 @ 14:03:15
Your position sounds like a version of Neo-Platonism. There is a danger in such views of holding that matter itself is evil or at least the source of evil. This is contrary to the Christian position of the goodness of matter. Perhaps matter will be raised to a higher level by God, as Teilhard de Chardin believed. The Eastern Orthodox Church does not make a radical distinction between matter and spirit. You might also be interested in Thomas Nagel’s most recent book.
Oct 19, 2012 @ 17:10:33
No, I do not see matter as evil , , , nor do I imagine that physicists that have reduced it almost to an illusion do. Plato’s ideas come through Orphism from the East. It looks like most persons, even highly educated ones, are still trapped in Newton’s universe. Matter does not have to be evil to be at the bottom of the barrel.
Ultimately the physical world can be viewed as the higher or subtler realms in their final expression . . . so it depends on how Spirit is defined. If as Consciousness, then I would agree. In which case we have removed ourselves from a dualistic stance. Evil and good are then simply polarized values which ultimately resolve and vanish. No evil; no good. Just what is. All good and evil are relative to the desires of the moment. The more detached one is the less inclined to judge. And judgements tend to bring pain and a depressed state of mind. Etc.
I think the belief “I am the doer” is the source of all human suffering. How relieved Paul was to give up his will!
Oct 19, 2012 @ 22:16:08
Note: I am puzzled by what seems like an obsession with matter by both Jews and Christians. No wonder the West is so materialistic. I can not see why matter would need to be raised to a higher level. Utopia for things? I am very fond of trees. Trees are largely matter. Some trees seem very happy and others distressed. My impression of ancient America is that it was a paradise for plants and animals. It must have been very beautiful at that time.
The Timaeus is not very inspiring. Some elements of Eastern thought do seem anti-body. Anti-sex. This seems to have arisen from failed asceticism.
But the same could be said of much in Christianity. The problem lies with the human being and his point of view. It is never the body which is the source of trouble but the mind. If suicides knew this they would have to try something else.
I did have a fundamentalist Catholic tell me recently that cocaine was inherently evil. He has been a successful nurse and also was a seminarian. He takes Prosaic. The idea of a thing being inherently evil is preposterous. Since when did Catholics think that matter had free will? Could sin? Etc. There is increasing evidence that psychiatric drugs create permanently mentally ill persons. Very scary considering the numbers now.
However, the practical problem is this: most people believe they are the doer. This is simply an opinion they have absorbed. I have looked with considerable effort and do not find an I that initiates actions. What I find are impulses varying from those caused by loud sounds to itches to thoughts and feelings . . . but the difference between jumping due to a loud sound which is merely instinctive and calling someone on the phone due to the arrival of a desire to have contact with some person to be not much. In both cases the action begins some time after something becomes conscious and then that something leads to something else and finally an action. Dialing the number. Often the thought that comes to mind is a bit surprising or unexpected. There is no unconscious I that selects the thought or impulse. Just as free will is puzzling so the idea of being the doer is also puzzling because it is not possible to describe how that would work. I can not conceive an I that determines what thought or emotion or desire will come next. Our conscious self is more like a reporter than anything else or a spectator. It observes what comes along and what the comes along does next.
In effect our whole picture of human life is skewed and confused and based on habits of thoughts, ideas, and language and very hard to change. It is a vast structure of opinions. Many, perhaps most, are false.
Jan 10, 2014 @ 23:05:33
There is a serious problem with Brentano’s way of viewing consciousness, As I have mentioned before either the statement consciousness always has an object is simply an axiom or definition like every triangle has three sides; or it is a scientific statement. If the former, it is simply something that appeals to people and may or may not be worth holding. Euclid’s parallel axiom comes to mind. While it seemed true enough it always bothered the best mathematicians.
If the statement is a scientific claim then it must be capable of being falsified. How would you go about falsifying it? I have a way as follows. Each day we spend a certain amount of time waking, in dreams and dreamless sleep. Clearly the latter is without dream events or things. So of course no one remembers dreamless sleep since there is nothing to remember. But at the same time we don’t wake up feeling as though we ceased to exist. A period of dreamless sleep is not the same as being brain dead. I maintain that one is simply conscious without any objects. An experiment would be to find persons who could get into this state without first going to sleep–this could be checked with one or the other brain scanning devices.
Every act of consciousness must have an object also makes consciousness dependent on forms or objects and vice versa. This is simply a claim. Where is the proof? Of course this is true in the waking or dream state. Usually. I maintain that a state of mind exists such that one is conscious but not conscious of any form. This means that consciousness is independent of objects. And I have supplied a way to prove this to the doubters!
As an interesting historical note, I recently discovered that Avicenna held this position also. As you know he was outstanding in both philosophy and medicine.