Step 18: Asimov and Unity

"Nothing is more powerful than idea whose time has come." -Victor Hugo

The Foundation
Spanning incredible ranges of topics such as Shakespeare, Chemistry, Astronomy, Religion, and Physics, Isaac Asimov wrote over 500 books and became considered a grand master of science fiction. Using this vast amount of material allowed Asimov to create stories specifically designed to guide and inspire current and future generations after his death, saying that "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all." Philosopher Michael Butor writes "Science Fiction represents the normal form of mythology in our time; a form which is not only capable of revealing profoundly new themes, but capable of integrating all the themes of old literature."

                         Hari Seldon                                             Isaac Asimov                                                                      

Arguably his most epic saga, The Foundation series answers the question on an unbelievably large scale: "How can the future of civilization be protected from corruption?" Using a combination of sociology, psychology, history, statistics, and imagination, Asimov delivers his the answers over a span of seven novels, two of which were preludes to the series written last in order. The saga begins with Foundation, set in the Galactic Era (year 12,035), a galaxy inhabited by quadrillions of humans, in which mathematician Hari Seldon is told by the Emperor's adviser, Demerzel, that their civilization is headed for catastrophe. Asimov relates Seldon's plan to bygone eras like Rome and the imperialism of America. Demerzel enlists Hari Seldon to develop his plan that he had lectured about: psychohistory, or the study of mass-scale sociology. To put his plan to action, they organize a commonwealth on the planet Terminus at "one end of the galaxy" called The Foundation. They are told to compile a massive amount of information about the galaxy into their Encyclopedia Galactica to ensure that knowledge survives the empire's collapse. 

The Mule
The Second Foundation
As predicted, the Empire crumbles. Seldon sets up his Foundation on Terminus, and records holographic footage of himself for after his death. Every 75 or so years, during a "crisis" in the plan, Seldon's recording emerges from a golden cylinder to explain the stage of the plan.  Little do the Encyclopedists know: their entire foundation colony is only one of two foundations- the second foundation being on the opposite end of the galaxy, and ran by a small collective of telepathic researchers (psychohistorians). The first foundation is for physical sciences, and the second foundation is for mental sciences. However, when a genetic mutation creates a mutant named the Mule, Seldon's psychohistory plan couldn't have possibly predicted it, and the "plan" is thrown off by his mentalist abilities, including reading and manipulating minds. Declaring himself emperor, The Mule gains control of many followers and begins imperializing. So, it begins to appear that Seldon's idea in actuality flawed and not immaculate after all. 


Foundation and Earth
After 400 years of Seldon's plan, we meet Trevize, who is asked to leave his position in governance, and takes the opportunity to borrow a special spaceship for locating the lost planet: Earth. In the galactic library on Trantor, all data has been removed about the planet, forcing him to enlist his friend Pelorat, a mythologist, to help him piece together the clues of Earth's location. When Pelorat and Trevize land on Gaia, they encounter Bliss, who explains to them that she is Gaia, the planet, and everything, even the rocks, are Gaia, and may have access to collective emotion, memory, and knowledge at any given time. The name Gaia hearkens back to the personification of Mother Earth, who connects all things, from Ancient Greek Mythology, as the single idea or archetype for our planet to strive toward. As Author Dave Pendell writes, "The greenness is all, the link between microcosm and macrocosm."

Bliss explains that Gaia has selected Trevize as the being in the galaxy with the best judgment and skillfully brought him there (through removing Earth records on the archive) so that he would observe an alternative to Hari Seldon's plan: Galaxia. He takes Bliss onboard in search of the real Earth, because he feels that it is the key to understanding the decision he must make. On their way, they discover entirely new races of creatures, one of which are humans with head implants called "lobes" used to control electricity. Each alien planet ends in a hostile situation that they must escape, and they finally find out that Earth has been radioactive for 15,000 years. Trevize reflects on meeting the new species on his journey that Seldon's plan could never have possibly predicted. He weighs the options between Hari Seldon's Plan and the vision of Galaxia: 

“The galaxy is not the Universe. There are other galaxies. ... Just outside the Galaxy are the Magellanic Clouds, where no human ship has ever penetrated ... and not very far away is the giant Andromeda Galaxy, larger than our own. Beyond that are galaxies by the billions. ...What if, in some galaxy, one species gains domination over the rest and then has time to consider the possibility of penetrating other galaxies. ...An invader that finds us divided against ourselves will dominate us all, or destroy us all. The only true defense is to produce GALAXIA, which cannot be turned against itself and which can meet invaders with maximum power. Will we have time to form Galaxia?”

In the end, Asimov sacrifices his idea of Seldon's creative problem solving in favor of an ancient concept he can claim no credit to, which as an author reveals Asimov's humanitarian spirit. Interestingly enough, the Atari arcade game Galaxia flashes the introduction words:

We are all Galaxians.

Asimov never decided how to continue the series with Galaxia, so he wrote two Prequels: Prelude to Foundation and Forward The Foundation, where Hari Seldon uses the Empire's main planet Trantor and its many subsections as a microcosm for the galaxy to develop psychohistory with his special telepathic Granddaughter, Wanda. Deciphering the series as a whole, which connects with his 'Robots' and 'Empire' series also, I realized that Asimov is not simply asking us to form Galaxia. He is asking for people to interpret these books and other prophetic texts as The Second Foundation would Seldon's Plan, and develop non-verbal communication by beginning symbolically. From there, the growing idea and awareness of unity will take root into an even greater structure. A combination of both groups (The Second Foundation) and 'Ideaspace' (Gaia- see below) are what I believe Asimov would advise through his books.
Beginning with Luminaries, each post has described different levels of humanity's connection to one another, with knowledge of this almost entirely from The Swamp Thing and The Foundation. The idea (whose time has come more than ever!) is the singular consciousness vision of Asimov's Gaia. The plot of The Foundation is not unlike the Ancient Chinese prediction system called the I Ching. However, in our modern era there are a number of different entities that predict behavior of populations:

• Google can use search results and dates of searches to determine future trends and events referred to as "predictive programming"
• Facebook can collect information, and use events, groups and data for long-term projections of the future as well.
• Terrence McKenna has expanded a model of the I Ching to a prediction system based on the appearance of new ideas called Novelty. The new model is charted on a graph of time and novelty called "Time Wave Zero."

Gaia and Ideaspace
The collective conscious or unconscious includes emotional instincts, mythologies, symbols, and archetypes. The symbol for the collective unconscious is a mandala made up of smaller  parts that each relate to the whole, and can serve as a personal meditation tool. On a wider scale, many artistic mediums may allow ideas to become collective spaces of new reality, or Ideaspace. The process of sharing collective ideas are what seasoned artists specialize in best. Artist Arik "Moonhawk" Roper's project encapsulates this process: "Shadowscapes is an image series based on pure imagination and inner visions. The project is inspired by my interest in the idea that every creative concept is a new reality. Initially, this new reality may be limited to only one mind but the more the concept is articulated and illustrated, the more sentience it acquires. As other minds participate in the imagining of this idea it grows to potentially infinite horizons until we are all creative collaborators in a vast reality that started as a dream, not unlike the one in which you are reading these words. These images are merely seeds of creation, water them if you wish."

Graphic Novelist Alan Moore shares his thesis of Ideas creating a collective reality.

"An Idea may be a pebble, a rock, a mountain, or a whole continent in terms of its stature, but the important thing is that it exists, at least metaphysically, as a solid object in this mutually-accessible terrain of mind that I'm describing. Thus, numerous different people, all "wandering" in their minds, might conceivably stumble across the same idea almost at once, like separate hill-walkers all having happened upon the same distinctive landmark.

This means that navigation in Ideaspace, are more like the navigational rules of the Internet, with one idea hot-linked to another, than the navigational rueles that are employed on an average car journey. It would also seem that Time, as a phenomoneon, doesn't apply in the same way to the realm of the mind as it does in our time-locked material realm. 

Everyday ideas could be seen as common minnows that swarm around the coastal waters of our ocean of Idea Space, easily reached for and caught by anyone. Ideas that are more uncommon are rarer, further out, require a bit more wading or possibly even snorkelling to locate them. Artists and writers and other creators, therefore, tend to be judged upon how far they have travelled in persuit of their catch."

Using art as Ideaspace is one method of creating unity with others. The other method is physically doing so. Manly P. Hall concluded his book Mysteries of the Mandala with a crystal clear message for the survival of the human race:

"When all work together for common survival, realizing that the failure of one part must finally end in disaster for all, we might be able to establish a philosophical commonwealth. The first step is the reorganization of society through the realization of the universal purpose." In other words, if universal ideals like art and music, which create shared space, infuse love and other emotions, and unite an unlimited number of people are considered most important when making decisions, every step of the way will increase our unity.

Rhonda Byrne suggests the best method for eradicating self consciousness: "When we shift our awareness or 'frequency' from self-consciousness -- where fear, impossibility or feelings of separation reside -- to Cosmic Consciousness, which is in total HARMONY with the Universe and where none of those feelings exist, then anything is possible."

It is my hope that Asimov, and other amazing prophets, will rekindle a sense of collectivism that ancient cultures had with mythology, symbols, and abstract thinking based in the right hemisphere of the brain that supplies understanding of infinite unity. Visionary Artist Alex Grey captures this incredible state of mind in his Collective Vision: "The many faces of Collective Vision united by the mandalic eye-field suggest both expansion of consciousness and sharing of consciousness with other beings. The painting was based on a profoundly ego dissolving entheogenic mystical trance where I heard the words "Infinite Oneness... The Oneness should never forget the Infinitude and the Infinitude should never forget the Oneness...

Alex Grey's "Collective Vision"
www.alexgrey.com

Step 17: "Watchmen" and Synchronicity

Texts from Last Night: "Dude! I found a quote that totally describes Swamp Thing:

"If an intellect which at any given moment knew all the forces that animate Nature and the mutual positions of the beings that comprise it... could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom: for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain; and the future just like the past would be present before our eyes."                                               -P. S. Laplace

"The Messenger" by Martina Hoffman

The Grapes of Wrath and Pratityasamutpada

Ancient Cultures often used specific types of characters (archetypes) to convey greater meanings in their mythologies. These archetypes are found in dreams and visions, as well as visual or verbal stories across the world. The many mediums of art each allow a unique way to understand the archetypes. It is now in the modern era that the perfect medium (graphic novels) for representing higher levels of consciousness, such as the Sanskrit term "Pratityasamutpada" which refers to the state of

 all phenomena arising together in a mutually interdependent web of cause and effect. 

Before comic books allowed authors to represent many different interweaving stories at once, Californian author John Steinbeck laid the groundwork in his intricate novels which spanned multiple generations. In the context of the West, but with philosophy of the East, Steinbeck mastered the art of illustrating with words. His epic tale of transmigration, The Grapes of Wrath, follows the Joad family, which represents a sample of the whole (the Microcosm), who leave their drought-ridden Oklahoma plains in search of California's lush vegetation. Between the chapters about the Joad family, Steinbeck inserts 'intercalary chapters,' or segments about the entire group of migrating farmers (the Macrocosm). When situation after situation challenges their ability to solve problems alone, the characters come to realize they are interdependent with each other. The character who represents the total lack of compassion, or Vanity, is Rosasharon, whose hair is described as being arranged on her head in the shape of a tiara or a crown. Her realization that their survival depends on not only the relationship between her and her family members, but also the need to relate with other families allows her to compassion to blossom in the novel's final pages as she offers her lactating breast to malnourished men. The intercalary chapters begin to relate more and more to the Joads and their journey until it becomes completely clear that the microcosm family is inseparable with the macrocosm migration. It is her gradual understanding of interdependence and pratityasamutpada that opens Rosasharon's compassionate floodgates. In this way, she becomes a cultural archetype of transformation.

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch: Heaven, Earth, Hell

East of Eden and Transcending Opposites

Using the Salenas Valley in California as archetypes of good and evil (between the dark mountain range and the light mountains), the themes of East of Eden encompass the transcending of cycles, fate and evil. Although it is set in the 1800s, the title of the book derives from the Biblical "land of Nod" situated east of the Garden of Eden after the banishment of Adam and Eve for their knowledge of reproduction and good and evil. After Cain kills his brother Abel, God is translated as saying to him "You will conquer evil." But after bringing the book to a group of Chinese Religious Researchers, they find there was a mis-translation of the Hebrew word Timshel: it actually means "Thou Mayest." After many similarities of generations between "A"-lettered name brothers victimized by the "C"-lettered name brothers, Cal is led to hope in the final page of the book for overcoming his evil by his father's final word on his deathbed: the simple yet empowering message "Timshel!" It is without a doubt Steinbeck's mass-scale war cry for the breaking of negative cycles and karma in favor of altruism, love and compassion. 

Philosopher Gary Zukav writes in The Seat of the Soul that "The remedy for an absence is a presence. Evil is an absence and, therefore, it cannot be healed with an absence. Hatred of evil does not diminish evil, it increases it. A compassionate heart is more effective against evil than an army: it can engage evil directly- it can bring Light where there is no Light."

 Although the novel does not continue past the word Timshel, we are led to believe that Cal has or will reach the state of release from the causal-effect world of karma and duality of opposites by applying the idea of absolute freedom of choice to his life.  

 J

ohn Steinbeck                           Alan Moore

The Parliament of Trees and the Akashic Records

Expanding on the ideas of overcoming cycles, Alan Moore includes the characters of Cain and Abel in the world of Saga of the Swamp Thing (later to re-appear in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series). They serve as archetypes for the eternal struggle of good against evil. Another prominent archetype in The Swamp Thing is death and rebirth. In Germanic mythology, and commonly Norse, the World Tree Yggdrasil represented the Macrocosm (the universe) as a Microcosm. In Alan Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thingissue 35, The Swamp Thing (formerly Alec Holland) becomes initiated by Constantine (Hellblazer) on a path of inner realization. Constantine explains that the Swamp Thing has unlimited capabilities that he does not realize he can access. It is not until the Swamp Thing travels to the land of his future gravesite, The Parliament of Trees, that he understands the interconnected nature of good and evil. 

Alan Moore cleverly incorporates many elementals and green monsters of folk lore (such as England's Jack-in-the-Green) in the Parliament of Trees. 

The Head tree, Yggdrasil tells Swamp Thing telepathically that with every swamp creature

"

All... Our stories... Are subtly ... Different ... yet the underlying... Pattern... Remains Constant. A Man.. Dies in Flames... A monster

rises from the mire... sacrifice... and resurrection.. that is always... our beginning.

Our Ending... Is Always here... In this Grove."

 The Swamp Thing at first does not comprehend this cycle of Samsara, and Yggdrasil responds with: "

Coincidence is the pattern of the world's bark."

Swamp Thing seeks the solution for fighting against evil. Yggdrasil tells the Swamp Thing in return that "Aphid Eats Leaf, Ladybug eats Aphid, Soil Absorbs Dead Ladybug, Plant Feeds Upon Soil... Is Aphid Evil? Is Ladybug Evil? Is Soil Evil? Where is evil, in all the wood? 

The parliamant has spoken."

The Swamp thing leaves without fully understanding Yggdrasil's cryptic remark. 

The earlier post on Swamp Thing explains that Alan Moore uses nature consciousness as an archetype for the human collective consciousness, which mirrors Carl Jung's observation that "Mother Earth is connected to all of us in the whole world; our subconscious mind is the mind of the planet." 

Saga of the Swamp Thing, issue 34

After underwater battles and psychological warfare, the Swamp Thing is chosen to enter the embodiment of Darkness to deliver a message. He speaks with experience:

"I have seen Evil... Its cruelty... The randomness with which it ravages.. Innocent... And Guilty Alike... I have not... Understood It... They told me to look to the soil... The black soil.. is rich in foul decay... yet glorious life... springs from it... but however dazzling.. the flourishes of life... in the end... all decays... to the same black humus. Perhaps Evil... is the humus... formed by Virtue's decay... and Perhaps It is From... That Dark, Sinister Loam... That Virtue Grows Strongest? Right and wrong, black and white, good and evil... All my existence I have looked from one to the other, fully embracing neither one... Never before have I understood how much they depend upon each other." Here, Swamp Thing explains that Dark and Light are inter-connected (pratityasamutpada). The story arc ends with Abel saying to Cain: "But Don't You See? Nearly all our stories revolve around Good Struggling Against Evil, Darkness against Light. What will become of the stories? Without that ancient conflict to fall back on, what will they be about?" With that, Cain pushes Abel off a cliff and replies "Oh- I'm sure we can think of something."

In the Egyptian Mythology, the meaning of the title of 'Pharaoh' represented to the masses "that which you will become." Similarly, the journeys of modern archetypes also deliver instructions for personal growth. For example, Yggdrasil tells the Swamp Thing to avoid power and the quest for power completely. When this is achieved, the Swamp Thing is free, like Cal in East of Eden, rather than a prisoner of opposites. Carl Jung summarizes the absence of power: “Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking.”

All it required was a few clues from the Parliament of Trees for the Swamp Thing to realize its position in time and space. In altered states of consciousness, one can perceive aspects of the interconnected quality of life. In rare circumstances, individuals in deep sleep hypnosis or other intense experiences have read from a book made of lighted symbols instead of words in the collective unconscious called "The Akashic Records." All information about personal destiny and universal knowledge is contained within, much like the collective minds of the Parliament of Trees. 
The Parliament teaches The Swamp Thing to interpret even the most miniscule of objects or circumstances as an important piece of the grand puzzle (macrocosm). Zukav writes that: “Impulses, hunches, sudden insights and subtle insights have assisted us on our evolutionary path since the origin of our species. That we have not recognized the guidance that has come to us in this way is a consequence of seeing reality through only five senses. From the multisensory point of view, these messages come from the soul, or from advanced intelligences that assist the soul on its evolutionary journey." Relating to earlier posts, the Swamp Thing realizes there is a type of order in the great chaos of the planet. He is not alone, and he will become an omniscient part of the Parliament when he, too, passes. This is what being 'immortal' means: leaving the physical body with continuous, unbroken memory. 

Watchmen and Synchronicity

In a 12-Part series, Alan Moore creates an interconnected centrifuge of characters, events, and ideas. The idea of "watchmen" comes from the interconnecting parts of a watch, which according to J. e. Cirlot's A Dictionary of Symbols: 

"Like all circular forms incorporating a number of internal elements, the clock may be interpreted as a kind of Mandala." However, using alternating panels of different story lines happening at once, the pages begin to physically appear as a mandala or fourth-dimensional map. The beauty of Watchmen begins when the interconnecting story lines begin to coincidentally interweave. Unlike the novel's intercalary chapters, the Watchmen uses intercalary panels that simultaneously represent multiple worlds at once. Some characters, like Rorschach, are quite complex and become symbolically integrated in ingenious ways only a sagely graphic novelist could conceive of. The antagonist, Adrian Veitch, is represented as a shipwrecked pirate in the comic a boy reads near a street vendor called "Tales of the Black Freighter." Moore cleverly uses panels from this fictional comic to relate to the story line of the Watchmen: The Pirate is shown tying corpses of his shipwrecked ship mates together and riding them as a raft. Like the Pirate, Veitch, sitting as the capstone of a pyramid, tells Dr. Manhattan:

"What's significant is that I know. I know I've struggled across the backs of murdered innocents to save humanity... but someone had to take the weight of that awful crime." 

Cirlot also notes that the symbol of a clock is "related to the idea of perpetual motion." Perpetual motion is a major theme of Watchmen, due to its central archetype of a higher consciousness, Dr. Manhattan.

According to ancient culture researcher Drunvalo Malchizedek, these were called 'Neters,' and were "

Mythical human beings with animal heads, representing the pathway of how to go from the first to the second level of consciousness." Dr. Manhattan is a step above a Neter, but the same principle applies. After being disintegrated in a particle machine, Dr. Manhattan reconfigures his atoms by himself with the result of gaining greater capabilities like the Egyptian God Osiris, who was mangled and later reassembled. Malchizedek discusses how this same theme or process is actually an archetypal template: "Notice that Osiris was first alive, walking around in a body in the first level of consciousness. Then he was killed and his body was cut into pieces. He was separated from himself- this was consciousness level two, our level. Then his pieces were brought back together and he was made whole again, which put him into the third level of consciousness, which is immortality. He went through three levels of consciousness. So they used Osiris' understanding of how he became immortal as the template for how other people could reach the same state of consciousness. This became the religion of Atlantis and later on the religion of Egypt." Dr. Manhattan represents the "higher self" of the soul, with fourth-dimensional perception and beyond in our third-dimensional world. The reader will begin to notice a pattern, much like the reader of The Grapes of Wraith discovering the microcosm simultaneously relating to the macrocosm. 

Malchizedek says that the lower self (collective unconscious) must be connected to the higher self for develop correctly. He continues:
"When you're completely connected to the lower and higher selves, it becomes clear that everything is alive. Once that realization becomes your life, then everything becomescommunication and everything has meaning. Once connected, the entire Reality becomes alive and fully conscious, and everything is communicating at all times. Your inner world is alive and directly connected to the outer world. The outer world can speak to your inner world." This simultaneous understanding fulfills the definition of Synchronicity: a meaningful coincidence of outer and inner events that are not themselves causally connected. Threading the different storylines together becomes a personal process for the reader, who will feel as empowered as the characters when the stories finally fit into place.

The final chapter of Watchmen is called "A Stronger, Loving World." Zukav provides the formula: "When you are compassionate with yourself and others, your world becomes compassionate. You draw to yourself other souls of like frequency, and with them you create, through your intentions and your actions and your interactions, a compassionate world. Your intentions create the reality that you experience. Until you become aware of this, it happens unconsciously. Therefore, be mindful of what you project. That is the first step toward authentic power."

Robert Venosa explains this in his artist's mission statement:

"My work is an attempt to show spirit as the universal force which unifies us beyond the confines of cultural and religious differences. By accepting the interdependency of all life and our universal interconnectedness we have a chance to heal and transform the planet's general state of woundedness. In using art as a tool for transformation, we have the opportunity to createa reality as beautiful, healthy and strong as our imagination permits."

M.C. Escher's "Three Worlds"