THE UNIVERSE:
A TOTAL SYSTEM

That we live in a planet called Earth that orbits around the Sun in a Solar System of planets that belongs to a huge galaxy called Milky Way is a an objective fact. This points to a realization that there is an objective Existence that we perceive by the senses as the resultant effect of many deep causes. And this leads to the study or inquiry into the nature of these unseen causes which further leads to a realization that these causes are again the effects governed by laws which themselves are based on first principles as given in a book Anatomy of Fate, Astrology and Kabbalah by Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi. These principles are arrived at by a mixture of tradition and revelation making them the most basic set of causes in the Universe. This book Anatomy of Fate is now considered a classic, and has been translated to ten languages, including Japanese. I'd like to give you the thoughts of Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi on what he calls the Universe, as a Total System which to him constitutes tradition, revelation, system, rules, laws, and underlying principles together with its heirarchy of control and forces.


TRADITION


Tradition is that which is handed down from one generation to another or from a teacher to a pupil. Tradition, in most cases is the knowledge that has been collected and verified over many centuries. Depending on its depth and weight of knowledge, this tradition likes to preserve and teach its understanding. Socrates and his disciples had long detailed conversations on existence in contrast with the terse but loaded comments of some Zen masters. In essence, tradition is a gradual building up of a body of knowledge which is transmitted by study, discipline and contemplation. This is for the most part the history of Astrology.  Like Mahatma Gandhi, I'd like to say that my continuing passion for research on the magnificence of the Universe as we know it is my adoration of its Existence. 


REVELATION

Revelation is of a quite different order. It is knowledge revealed by deep insight and the penetration of the veil of ignorance by a flash that connects things that seemed in no way related or did not have this or that implication. Here is the moment of discovery. The word – ‘dis-covery’ says it is the uncovering of something already there, like a new country or law as yet unknown. Einstein as he was sitting before his fireplace was fixed in revelatory thought that can bring about the key to atomic energy or the Buddha seated under a tree can see the way out of carnal suffering. Revelation in Astrology is those moments of illumination that have fused the masses of data into rules, laws and principles upon which the system is based.

A SYSTEM

A system is a working body of knowledge. Theory on its own is only speculation. Without practice or function theory has no real meaning or has no way of being verified. Once the atom had been split and made to work to order, atomic physics became a system. From perceptive observation of life, Halevi speaks of history and everyday things are based upon observable universal principles, as soon as they all become apparent as working systems.

Even made objects as simple as a child’s scooter or as complex as a jet engine are based on systems. Break one wheel or engine part, and the machine or mechanical system ceases to work. From all these can be deduced that there are a set of laws that are a set of interacting regulations, which apply the laws that have been created by first principles.


UNIVERSE IS MADE UP OF RULES, LAWS, AND PRINCIPLES OF EXISTENCE

All indicate a hierarchy of control and forces under direction. Like its internal imitators which only copy a particular functional aspect of its full capacity, the Universe is made up of rules, laws and principles. Based on experience and fact it has again and again concluded, in different cultures and times in history, that the best way to transmit a body of knowledge about the Universe was to construct a symbolic model based upon the original: name the principles, laws and regulations of Existence. This meant formulating a metaphysical scheme.

Such a one recurs all over the world irrespective of time and space and is quite recognizable by the discerning mind, states Halevi, despite the overlay of culture, or the distortion by decadence of the original presentation.


HIERARCHY OF CONTROL AND FORCES

Halevi goes further: The most common example found in many cultures is the principle of the Trinity. This is seen in the three Hindu gods of Creation, Maintenance and Destruction, the yin-yang and neutral principles of Taoism, the three Divine attributes of Mercy, Grace and Justice in Judaism, and the much misunderstood principle behind the Christian Trinity. These are in fact only fragments of the total scheme embodied in each religion. In the case of Astrology there is a difference because Astrology is closer to a teaching philosophy than a true religion.


PRINCIPLE OF TRINITY -- Creation, Maintenance, Destruction

To be precise Astrology is an ancillary system of knowledge to several major systems. Halevi explains: it is because it lacks a central doctrine or personality (Divine or human) to make a formal religion. It does however still stand in its own right as a complete picture of the Universe and has thus survived most of the early religions which were its contemporaries in the ancient world.

A complete system is one that points to the total picture of reality, or at least takes into account all the factors in general if not in particular. Halevi concludes that it is what modern medicine may study, in the finest detail.

Fractions of the physical body and its workings, not to mention of the ailments of the psychological organism, not to mention the ailments of the spirit which may well be the generators of physical diseases. Modern medicine, for all its technology, is an incomplete system. When the states of the two bodies of psyche and spirit are taken into consideration, then medicine can be called truly the science-art of healing.


THE UNIVERSE: A TOTAL SYSTEM

A total system is one that includes the whole. By classical times most bodies of knowledge that had been formulated around the great creative period of 500 BC were based upon a complete picture of the Universe. Nothing was seen as separate from anything else. Under the laws of the first Divine principles was the macrocosm while the microcosm was contained within the macrocosm which it reflected and followed in miniature at a lower level in Creation – As above so below. Thus in China the yin and yang principles of opposites were seen in the big scale of good government and in the small scale of the human body. In the Middle East, the Jews based their secular customs upon the twin complements of duties and rights and their religion upon the dual approach of the love and fear of God. Thus everything in Existence was perceived as one interconnecting chain of smaller and larger links that became simpler yet more potent as the level rose to a peak of Divine unity, from which everything emanated.


This total view was carried by Western civilization right through to the 17th century when the advent of anthropocentric thought and the rise of physical science shattered the whole world picture and reduced Western man to the sensual and mechanical perception of reality.


For instance, Galileo’s telescope revealed to contemporary natural philosophers that the luminaries or Lights (Sun and Moon) and the planets were not as they had been led to believe by the ancient teachers. The Sun’s pure disc had blemishes, the Moon is a rough mountainous face, and some planets possessed satellites of their own, while Saturn had strange rings. The whole allegorical aspect of the Universe evaporated with one glimpse through the telescope. Suddenly ordinary natural men of the Western world believed they could see with their sensual eye more of the Universe than of the thinkers of ancient times and thus all the ideas about relationships of the various cosmoses were clearly redundant. Within two generations the complete world picture accepted by the Elizabethan and the medieval mind had vanished and the very partial and entirely mechanical view, held up till quite recently, took its hold on the Western cultural establishment.

All was not lost, however, says Halevi. While the ‘Age of Reason’ as the new period came to be called, was examining the physical aspects of Creation through the bigger and better instruments, small groups of people dotted around Europe retained the total view in various occult and esoteric studies. These ranged from scholarly groups hidden within the rapidly changing university situation to the secret societies of the Rosicrucians and the Masons. Some groups for example, were indeed no more than cranks reacting blindly against the new mechanistic outlook, while others diligently examined ancient Teachings without possessing the vital key of insight. Yet others knew something but became preoccupied with magical power and then forgot the purpose of spiritual work. Fortunately however, the level of wisdom was still to be found here and there, and traces of it have been detected in England, Holland, and Germany in the presence of men like Fludd, van Helmont and Boehme who saw the Universe as one unified organization.


Moreover, later a while new radio Universe was discovered which pushed back the scientific horizon and revealed a vast subtle complex of vibrating forces and radiant flows which had until then been unsuspected; except by the ancients who had described it in allegory by such terms as the ‘music of the spheres.’ On the microcosmic front the apparent solidity of matter had dissolved in the laboratory experiments with the atom that uncovered as yet small entity or packet of matter.

Einstein completed the overthrowing of the concept of the mechanical Universe by perceiving time in an entirely new way so that common sense of sensual logic was no longer valid. All this together with the re-discovery of our planet's magnetophere and ecological system made scientific inquiry begin to consider that more lay beyond the scientifically observable processes and that as ancient and occult teachings stated perhaps more subtler forces existed beyond the Earth and deep within our planet's  the human being.


Next time, we will investigate what Einstein means by perceiving time in an entirely new way so that common sense logic was no longer valid. Ok?