Below, written April 2012 in Bakersfield, CA, by Allan
Ralph Andrews, born September 13th 1939 in Long Beach,
Ca, 4:03 AM to Jean (Thompson) Andrews (remarried in
1954 as Mrs. Paul Colaluca) and Ralph B. Andrews (Son of
Alice (Smith) Andrews and Allen Andrews).
David Deutsch has recently written “The Beginning of
Infinity,” (Viking, 2011). Here he develops the critical
rationalism of Karl Popper that suggest that science is all
about the simplest possible explanation for the observed
that can be confirmed, that is effective as an explanation
with the broadest possible reach. Current skepticism
tends to reject many of the explanations that have this
reach simply because they seem too broad. This is not
good philosophy.
Models that seem most successful are those that can
accommodate the duality of reality, its ability to generate
particles that are also waves, to locate position without
speed, etc. Relational dialectics has suggested a model
for communication that pairs novelty to predictability,
openness to closure, autonomy to connection,
impartiality to favoritism. This is similar to the system of
antimonies of Immanuel Kant: infinite to finite,
indeterminate to determinate, simple to complex,
necessary to contingent. It is also similar to the trigram
system of the Chinese I Ching: Heaven to Earth, Fire to
Water Gorge, Mountain to Lake, Penetrating Wind to
Thunder. It seems to be applicable to many things, for
example tempers in art: romantic to realistic, cubist to
baroque, impressionist to post-impressionist, classical to
expressionistic, stages of evolution: mutation to
phenotypic result, natural selection and extinction to
replication and feedback homeostasis, speciation and
genetic isolation to recombination and population
genetics, set points and adaptive peaks to maladaptive
gene expressions.
These eight sided systems, cube, octahedron seem to
develop around an axis of three primary oppositions:
energy flux to information systems, private
phenomenology to public space time, boundless
integration to local quantum mechanical particle physics.
The materialistic world known to science is rooted in four
of the six, the opposition of thermodynamic energy to
mathematical structure potential and information
systems. At the level of the small, these systems are
described by quantum mechanics, an at the level of the
large, by space time relativity. To complete this system,
and to expand it beyond the material realm known to
science, all that is needed is an infinitesimal being from
within phenomenological monad that turns energy into
passion and information into knowledge, integration into
pleasure and disintegration into pain, the private into
here and now time and the public into space time
relations and associations of that private here and now
time. Finally, all of this is bound together in the
boundless one.
In respect to the I Ching systems, the private infinitesimal
is young son yang and the public is young daughter yin,
the particulate is middle daughter yin and the everything
one is middle son yang. Energy is old son yang and
information is old daughter yin. From these three
polarities, all other things are created. The primary
source of creation is the Heaven Trigram where the old
son yang is the dance of energy flux and the middle son
yang is its boundless extension and integration, while
young son yang is its creative extension into the endless
generation of monad of infinitesimal generative
phenomenological now. This is mirrored in the
information systems of old daughter yin to propogate the
manifest world of particle physics in middle daughter yin
and space time relativity in young daughter yin. The
result is a Heaven Trigram equivalent to the God of
Alfred North Whitehead, but with a Hindu twist, Shiva as
the dance of old son yang, Vishnu as its boundless
extension and integration in Brahman Nirvana middle
son yang, and Brahma as its creative expression in an
infinity of avatars in young son yang. Out of this creation
comes the adaptive peaks of the Wind Trigram Form of
The Good, the “eternal objects” of Whitehead’s
metaphysics that generate hierarchies of systems in
Water Gorge Trigram that are experience by the
attached phenomenological mind in Mountain Trigram as
“prehensions” and in Earth Trigram as “actual occasions,”
in Flame Trigram as open “processes” and in Thunder
Trigram as “events” and recombined in Lake Trigram and
various forms of “nexus.” Here we see a metaphysical
calculus in Heaven Trigram generating expanding circles
of algebraic theory in Wind and set theory in Water
Gorge and group theory in Lake. From this comes the
arithmetic of the measurable world in Earth and the
prediction of emergent form in the statistics and
probability theory of Thunder, finally measured in the
analytic geometry and trigonometry of Mountain and the
topology of Flame.
Young son yang is the imaginary number and young
daughter yin in the statistical norm in real numbers. Old
daughter yin is the zero point between the rational
negative and rational positive numbers and old son yang
is a fluctuating dance of irrational unknown exponential
functions. Middle daughter yin is variously a root, a
fraction, a wave function of the above and middle son
yang is an endless expansion of the systems of formulas
for integrating all of the above into something complex
and orderly and harmonious and creative in the extreme,
thus the highest form of the good and the beautiful. But
since all of this integration is spun out of the void,
emerges from the circle that expands out of the zero
point, it is at once God and Nirvana, at once everything
and nothing depending on your point of view.
So the book you wish to use depends on the way you
decide to look at it. Hinduism tends toward the
schizotypal and the Heaven Trigram romantic and
Western Materialism toward the Earth Trigram
depressed and realistic. Existentialism tends toward a
Flame Trigram sadism and Rationalism toward a
mechanistic masochism. The classical point of view
tends toward the paranoid and its expressionistic market
opposite toward pragmatic histrionics. Philosophy and
logic tend toward the skeptical and the negativistic and
their dogmatic opposite toward a borderline point of
view that sends the believer to heaven and the
disbeliever to some terrible hell.
The astrological evidence presented by Richard Tarnas in
“Cosmos and Psyche” supports some sort of masochistic
fate, a divine mechanism that we are captured in. In
contrast, the tone in Michael Talbot’s “Holographic
Universe” and Ernest Holmes “This Thing Called You”
supports the supernatural and the romantic (emphasizes
the Heaven Trigram magical). Lawrence M. Krauss, in “A
Universe from Nothing,” describes and emerging cosmos
that seems to belong to the Thunder Trigram of the
chaotic and the histrionic (facing catastrophic
exhaustion). David Deutsch, in “The Beginning of
Infinity” is more philosophical and skeptical, ready to
reject and mythical dogmatic resolution to the final
questions.
My guess is that all are true in measure. I imagine that
there is a continual expansion of energy out of the zero
point that endlessly expands the possible, so that
anything possible is true somewhere and somehow.
Even so there is also a principle of integration and
harmony that allows the development of systems and of
local unions of systems that might be called mind or
buddhamind or god and that all of these integration
systems tend to fuse as somepoint in some way. But, if
these systems are to take on concrete form they must
attach to the concrete and to some extent disintegrate,
unravel their connection to the boundless whole. At
some point this must cause a certain amount of
limitation, loss and suffering. Attachment to local
pleasure must come at the expense of cosmic bliss.
Which is what the great saints and Buddhas have been
saying from day one.
The result is a real world of visible events in Earth and
Thunder that generate mental events in more complex
organisms in Mountain Trigram mind and choices in Fire
Trigram. The infinitesimal phenomenological monad that
attaches to this mental complex is some kind of atom of
pure creative generativity, an Atman, Pneuma, Jiva, a bit
of the Creative Spirit which emerges in the boundless
possibility of the Heaven Trigram and integrates with
cosmic mind and cosmic harmony in the Wind Trigram,
and order which is shadowed in the astrological systems
of Water Gorge cosmic government and Lake Trigram
systems of birth and reincarnation, and association of
creative monads together to generate astral bodies,
complexes that allow them to attach to local minds and
find rebirth in the world as described by Talbot in the
“Holographic Universe.”
Allan Andrews, April 25th 2012, Bakersfield, CA.
What we find then is an open pluralist system emerging
from an infinite flux that makes everything possible that
generates emergent evolution in various forms, but also
generates a systems that isolate and develop set points
and organic patterns that grow like wood, hence Wind
Trigram is also Wood trigram. These patterns develop
attachments to local finite evolving systems. The result is
complex associations that play between the plural in
Flame and monotheistic astrology in Water Gorge,
between the possible in Heaven and the realized actual
in Earth, between the emergent in Thunder and the Set
Point Pattern in Wind, between a complex synthesis of
birth and rebirth and soul atom association in Lake and
the local skeptical mind of the attached soul in Mountain.
Something quite different now: The five elements of
Chinese mythology are five of the twelve sides of a
mythical dodecahedron that can be imposed upon the
cube octahedron wheel of the eight trigrams. Start with
the center which is Wind Trigram and make that the
Noble Gas Pentagon. Put the lower edge of the
pentagon on Earth Trigram and create a new pentagon
called Soil, next to Soil make four more pentagons: Salt,
Sunlight, Rain, and Pottery in that order. Now put the
Music pentagon on the opposite side of the emerging
dodecahedron from Noble Gas and add Fire Pentagon
opposite to Pottery Pentagon and Wood Pentagon
opposite Soil Pentagon and Water Pentagon opposite
Salt Pentagon and Metal Pentagon opposite Sunshine
Pentagon and Earth Pentagon opposite Rain Pentagon.
Now you have created the Dodecahedron of the Five
Elements and their Five Opposites. Now Salt Pentagon
dominates Mountain Trigram and Water Pentagon
dominates Lake Trigram. Earth Trigram is the place
where Metal Pentagon and Soil Pentagon and Earth
Pentagon come together and Heaven Trigram is the
union of Sunshine, Rain, and Wood Pentagons. Fire
Pentagon dominates Fire Trigram and Pottery Pentagon
dominates Water Pit Trigram. Wind Trigram is
dominated by Noble Gas Pentagon and Thunder Trigram
is dominated by Music Pentagon. Which gets its sound
from the neighboring pentagons, for you can make music
by striking metal and wood, fire crackles and water
burbles and rocks from the earth make sounds when
they strike things. But salt and sunshine are silent, and
also misty rain, and the clay you use to make pots, till it is
properly fired (thus getting its sound from the fire that
melts it). This illustrates how the five Chinese elements
can enter into a dodecahedron that can be imposed
upon the octahedron, cube of the trigrams.
This shows how many symbol systems and structures can
provide the same functions. The symbol systems of the
Heaven Trigram tend to be polytheistic (some forms of
Hinduism, for example). Those of Water Pit, Water
Gorge are usually more monotheistic, thus Islam, or
focused, thus, the Buddha, Dharma, Sanga sequence of
Buddhism focuses everything on Buddhamind Oneness
pointing to a Nirvana Void One. Systems that emphasize
a cosmic mind, or systems, work better in Wind Trigram,
while Lake Trigram joys in the dogmas of the universal
churches and their dualism, that dams their rivals to
various hells and elevates themselves to heaven:
Christianity, Ancient Persian Religion, Mahayana
Buddhism, etc. Mountain Trigram tends toward debate
and skepticism (opposite of the dogma of Lake) and Earth
toward atheism and materialism (opposite of the magical
thinking of Heaven), Thunder is more pragmatic and
hedonistic (opposite of the Classical virtues of Wind),
Fire/Flame is existential and experimental (opposite of
the absolutism, the inquisitions, the heavy hand of Sultan
and Pope in Water Pit/Water Gorge).
Civilization passes slowly from its primitive aboriginal
condition centered in Heaven Trigram magic toward the
writing and culture based monarchy and aristocracy, the
noble castes of Wind Trigram. Finally democracy arrives
with utilitarian Earth Trigram, along with industrial
revolutions, communication revolutions bring market
based Thunder Trigram and set the species up for new
Heaven Trigrams as it explores space. There is also a
movement from Fire/Flame through Mountain Trigram,
Water Pit and Water Gorge and finally Lake Trigram, as
raiding external proletariats, like the Greeks, settle down
and build city states, thus changing Fire Trigram warlike
competition to Mountain Trigram debate. Soon universal
states develop like the Roman Empire, in Water
Pit/Water Gorge Trigram, they dissolve into universal
churches and imitative empires like the Byzantine and
the Russian Orthodox in Lake Trigram, setting the stage
for new rounds of external raids in Fire/Flame like those
of the Saracen and the Viking.
But what if all of this is indeed just a shadow of
something deeper. This was the point of view of Ernest
Homes who decided to view it from the point of view of a
simple opening on the individual. If we set ourselves up
in the Flame and Fire Trigram, the whole system of
metaphysics is spread out before us. The mountain
trigram turns on young son yang in the Pneuma of the
creative spirit, which is the entrance of the infinitely
creative Heaven Trigram into the mind through the
indwelling jiva of phenomenological awareness. Mind
connects with universal mind in old daughter yin as the
information systems of psyche enter the orderly systems
of Water Pit and Water Gorge that collectively order Lake
Trigram. Finally the middle daughter yin of the body, of
mother nature opens up the world of emergent
evolution in Thunder Trigram. We have three systems to
study this, Science in Earth Trigram materialism,
philosophy in Wind Trigram metaphysics, and finally
religion in Lake Trigram church and dogma. Ultimately
our freedom in Flame Fire Trigram allows us to rule the
three gunas, the rajas guna of old son yang creative
change, the tama guna that rules the middle daughter
yin of the body, and the sattva guna, the young son yang
that connects the jiva soul to Christ Mind and Buddha
Mind in Wind Trigram. It is this vision that Ernest Holmes
offers as the simple key to this complex whole in his
works like “This Thing Called You.”
Allan Andrews, April 26th 2012, Bakersfield, CA
The complex relationships of dodecahedra and
octahedral can be simplified in a tetrahedron of four
parts, the open spot, the Fire Element that gazes on the
Air Element, the metaphysical, the Water Element, the
ideological and mythical, and the Earth Element, the
material and scientific. But even more simple in the
triangle of the Mountain Trigram, the simplifying mind
that looks to infinite creativity in Heaven Trigram
becoming the creative spirit in young son yang fertilizing
old daughter yin in the order and system of Water Pit
Trigram an the collective unconscious of Lake Trigram to
generate the manifest world of Earth and Thunder
through the medium of the Body of middle daughter yin.
The key notion here is the fundamental duality of the
individual discovering his origin in the transcendent as it
collectively responds to the individual in generating its
reaction in the manifest world. But this has a higher
meaning: the fundamental unity of all things in divine
mind as the good that moves from Wind Trigram to
Water Pit Trigram perfection, the true that enters Wind
Trigram from Mountain Trigram in the discovery of the
pure enduring principles, and finally the beautiful that
flows from the creative abundance of Heaven Trigram
into the ideal set point that is Wind. This is the Father
Mother God as the creation of beauty, the Son as the
word, logos of truth, of Buddha as enlightenment, and
finally the Holy Spirit as the good, the wholesome
perfection of all purposes in the endless integration of
the boundless.
Allan Andrews, April 26th 2012
The purest pleasure belongs to the boundless one, but
this pleasure is diffuse and weak, it is the pleasure of
deep sleep. To strengthen the pleasure, soul seeks
wakefulness and attachment, this can generate
passionate, concentrated, pleasure, but at the expense
of addiction and attachment and potential pain and
suffering. To gain a body that is integrated enough to
assure continued pleasure, the soul monad associates
with other soul monads to create attachment structure,
attachment bodies that facilitate their attachment to
favorable organic bodies in the finite realm. Typically
they will seek wild, unexplored places, like this universe
because there is less competition for the bodies
available, but the risk of the colonization of such remote
areas is the potential domination by demonic beings and
possible entrapment in various forms of hells and
purgatories. Salvation from such entrapment is provided
by contact with savior beings, angels, messengers from
the realms of organized spiritual virtues, equivalents of
the paradise of heaven in Dante’s Divine Commedia.
Mythological versions of this story are common in the
theology of many human religions: Hinduism, Catholic,
Orthodox, Protestant Christianity, Ancient Persian
religion, Islam, Chinese Taoism, Chinese, South Asian,
Japanese, and Tibetan Buddhism, Jewish Theology in
various Orthodox, Conservative, and Reformed
variations, Pythagorean belief, Ancient Egyptian religious
forms, mystery religions in Ancient Greece and Rome,
etc. and etc.. Various Native American systems including
Mayan, etc..
This salvation process is one of the most pleasurable
experiences available. The intense energy released in
the process of reintegrating awareness to the central
whole can generate a high degree of creative integration
associated with Buddhist and Christian Compassion and
Islamic beneficence. Thus, salvation from suffering, from
hells, salvation of this type is considered one of the
highest levels of spiritual experience. It is the message of
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the Christian Gospels,
the Books of the Buddhist Tripitaka, etc.
So the infinite flux (Heaven Trigram) that makes the
improbable probable generates the most perfect
improbable (Wind Trigram) that is the Platonic Form of
the Good, Alfred North Whitehead’s Eternal Objects, the
set points of the order of all things, the Buddhamind,
Christmind, Cosmic Mind, this emerges out of old son
yang (God Shiva, the destroyer) into middle son yang
(God Vishnu, the preserver, who preserves this into the
boundless everything void that is Brahman and Nirvana
and the Hen One of Plotinus, the God of Spinoza’s Ethics)
which forms the old daughter yin, the Law of Mind out of
young son yang (God Brahma the creator that generates
the infinity of avatars of Vishnu in the atman jiva pneuma
monads of the infinitesimal). Young daughter yin, the
cosmic systems in relativistic space and time emerge out
of the Water Pit Water Gorge Trigram that is the
collective unconscious and the Dharma that is spun out
of the Karma of old son yang in Lake Trigram
recombination generates by complex associations of
souls in astral bodies ruled by astrological systems in
Water Pit Trigram generating evolutionary emergence in
Thunder Trigram and the physical and natural result in
Earth Trigram out of the quantum mechanics of middle
daughter yin in the Soma, the Body that provides the
basis for the prehensions, the empirical mind of the
individual, the attached monad in Mountain Trigram
emerging out of the competition of monads in Flame Fire
Trigram generated from the three gunas of sattva guna
young son yang and rajas guna old son yang manifest in
tamas guna middle daughter yang and the dance of Shiva
in old son yang allows the monad of the
phenomenological self in young son yang to court middle
daughter yin experience in the Soma, the physical body
to which it chooses to attach.
Young son yang involves the inner phenomenology and
young daughter yin involves relativistic public time and
space. Middle daughter yang is the particle events
known to physics and middle son yang is the everything
whole that is an object of mythology and worship. Old
son yang is pure energy from without and passion from
within and old daughter yin is pure information from
without and knowledge from within. Thus, we have six
utter opposites known in six utterly different ways,
private within and public without, science fact parts and
religious myth wholes, a dance of flux in energy and
enduring logical patterns in information systems. From
these oppositions in yang and yin is generated the
supersystem of all things. Heaven as supernatural magic
and Earth as natural science, Wind as metaphysical ideals
and Thunder as practical contingency, Flame as open
alternatives and Water Pit as cosmic fate derived from
the astrological government of birth and rebirth,
Mountain as skepticism and logical debate and Lake as
complex systems of belief, of birth and death, as the
roots of astrology in the mythology and dogma
generated from complex associations in the literature
that emerges from the collective unconscious.
Basically what happens is old son yang, the God Shiva,
dances out an infinity of patterns that fertilize the
potentials in the eternal womb of Santa Sophia, holy
wisdom in old daughter yin (Mother Kali). From this
emerges an ever more perfect sequence of goodness, of
ideals for the integration of all things as beauty, coming
from Heaven Trigram, as morality going into the
governing systems of all things in the feed back
mechanisms, the Dharma-Karma of Water Pit Trigram,
endlessly recombined in the collective unconscious
deeps of Lake Trigram birth and rebirth. Finally entering
the truth that is local mind in Mountain Trigram and local
freedom in Flame, out of this comes the shadow of the
good, the actual occasions, the events of Earth Trigram,
evolving and emerging in Thunder Trigram.