World, Overworld, Underworld, Dreamworld

379 Pages·2015·1.36 MB·English

by  Mike Hockney

World, Underworld, Overworld, Dreamworld
by
Mike Hockney
Published by Hyperreality Books
Copyright © Mike Hockney 2013
The right of Mike Hockney to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act
1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except in
the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a
review.
Quotations
“Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they
also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their
wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which
mark off their acts from those of the profane world.” – Bronislaw Malinowski
“Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.” – Jung
“Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood
metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts,
then you are in trouble.” – Joseph Campbell
“Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since
the Greeks.” – Alistair Cooke
“There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are
facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are
what we call ‘atheists,’ and those who think they are facts are ‘religious.’ Which group
really gets the message?” – Joseph Campbell
“Mythology may, in a real sense, be defined as other people’s religion. And
religion may, in a sense, be understood as popular misunderstanding of mythology.” –
Joseph Campbell
“Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.” – Vernor Vinge
“Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek
mythology.” – Christopher Nolan
“I believe in mythology. I guess I share Joseph Campbell’s notion that a culture or
society without mythology would die, and we’re close to that.” – Robert Redford
Table of Contents
World, Underworld, Overworld, Dreamworld
Quotations
Table of Contents
The Illuminati
The Cosmological Origin of Religion
The Homeric World
The Five Rivers of Hell
The Return of the Dead
Abrahamism: The Flat Earth Society
The Hyperboreans
Beyond the Dead: The Edge of the Universe
Winged Dreams
Dreamcatchers
Dream Architecture
The Golden Race
The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection
Tombworld
Unburied Souls
The Cimmerians: The People of the Dark
The Evolution of Dreams and Dreaming
The Dark Realm
The Silent Abode of Hypnos
Haunting
The Greatest Boundary of All: Death
The Palace of the Dead
The Blessed Race
The Koranic Flat Earth
The Son of God?
Creation by Divine Battle
The Wizard of Oz
Near Death Experiences (NDE)
Brave New World
The Orgastic Future
Heaven, Hell and Purgatory
Jack the Ripper
The Waters of Oblivion
The Inner Sanctum
Mammon’s Prophet
Empathy and Sympathy
Libido and Eros
Demons
Dreams are but Shadows
Ghost Stories
The Stars of the Dead
The Double Mind of Man
The War in Heaven
The Gorgon Shield
The Gnostic Christ
Pythagoras
The Music of the Heavens
Winners and Losers
The Heavenly Race of Gods
Sleepwalking
Reincarnation or Resurrection?
The Golden Pharaohs
A Modern Myth
The Birth of Time
The Geocentric Versus the Heliocentric
Here Be Dragons
The Labyrinth of Language
Daniel in the Lions’ Den
The Big Question
The Illuminati
THIS IS ONE OF A SERIES OF BOOKS outlining the cosmology, philosophy,
ontology, epistemology, politics and religion of the ancient and controversial secret
society known as the Illuminati, of which the Greek polymath Pythagoras was the first
official Grand Master. The society exists to this day.
The Cosmological Origin of Religion
All religious beliefs about the world begin with cosmology. The earliest
civilisations had mythological cosmologies involving various cosmic gods that were
anthropomorphisms of natural forces, so, for example, the sun is a god, the sky is a god,
earth is a god, the ocean is a god, winds are gods, the planets are gods, and so on.
Abrahamism opted for one all-powerful anthropomorphic Creator. The ancient
Greek philosophers looked to a divine, rational force that they did not anthropomorphise,
thus allowing philosophy, and eventually natural science, to develop separately from
religion. Modern science got rid of all the anthropomorphic gods and even the rational
mental force (Logos; Nous; Arche; Apeiron) of the ancient Greek philosophers, leaving
nothing but mindless, lifeless, purposeless atoms of matter, underpinned by a bizarre,
unreal, unobservable probability and possibility wavefunction. The inevitable logical
outcome of scientific materialist cosmology is atheism since there’s no place for any
gods, and not even any place for freestanding mind. Those scientists that continue to be
believers dishonestly and irrationally construct an unknowable domain of faith separate
from that of their knowable science.
This book is about the evolution of religion, philosophy and science through
humanity’s various cosmological theories, especially those concerning the World (Earth),
Overworld (sky and “heavens”), Underworld (including hell) and the World of Dreams
(of transcendent states and of mentally moving between the different levels of existence).
What you believe about the nature of reality is directly conditioned by how you
understand cosmology. People can comprehend cosmology in terms of four basic
attitudes: theism, deism, pantheism and atheism. With theism, a single God (monotheism)
or many gods (polytheism) create, design and supervise the world and take a personal
interest in humanity. This is the view of Abrahamism and the old pagan religions. With
deism, a single God or many gods are not interested in humans at all and act more in the
manner of natural laws and scientific forces. This was the standard view of the
Enlightenment. With pantheism, God and Nature are effectively the same thing: we are
all part of God/Nature. This is the core view of Eastern religion. With atheism, the
universe is meaningless, pointless, purposeless and is nothing but a machine process. This
is the standard scientific materialist view.
Agnostics are those who do not commit themselves to any of the above views,
hence they have no clear cosmology. (In practice, the vast majority of agnostics accept
the atheist cosmology of scientific materialism but refuse to rule out something “more”.
This makes no sense since, if there’s something “more”, scientific materialism is refuted.)
Is the world rational or irrational? Is it conscious (mental and self-aware in its
basic mode), unconscious (mental but without self-awareness in its basic mode, but with
the logical capacity to evolve consciousness) or non-conscious (not mental at all in its
basic mode)? Is it mental or material? Did it come from nothing at all or an eternal
something? Is it purposeful or purposeless? Why is it ordered rather than chaotic? Why
are we here? How did we get here? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Are
we created or uncreated? Is death the end or just a new beginning? These are all the
fundamental issues that have to be addressed.
This is the story of how humanity has tackled these questions. And they all
revolve around cosmology.
The Two Species
“It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination (name) for our
species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What
differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams,
fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats – and they in turn can listen to ours.” – Henning
Mankell
1) Homo sapiens – wise humanity, knowing humanity, Gnostic humanity –
Logos humanity.
2) Homo narrans – narrative humanity, storytelling humanity, emotional
humanity, credulous humanity – Mythos humanity.
We live in a world of narrative. Politics, economics, Hollywood, TV, video games,
religion, advertising ... it’s all about narrative.
For all members of the Mythos species, cosmology is explained in terms of a
simplistic, emotional narrative about the “gods” or God: entities with which people can
have a narrative and emotional connection and understanding.
All members of the Logos species find cosmologies based on emotional narrative
absurd. The Logos species comes to cosmology from a perspective of science,
mathematics and rational philosophy.
If reality is a mathematical, scientific or metaphysical system, there’s no point at
all in addressing it in terms of Jews wandering in the desert, or an illiterate Arab going
into a cave and speaking to an angel, or a guy born in a stable under a wandering star
feeding the 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish.
The Abrahamic “holy” texts have precisely zero truth content. You might as well
worship fairytale princes and princesses, or frogs in need of a kiss.
You cannot approach Logos from Mythos, or vice versa. They are wholly
different takes on reality. One is rational (reflecting the Jungian thinking function) and
the other emotional (reflecting the Jungian feeling function). Feelings cannot reveal
ultimate rational truth. Rationalism cannot deliver emotional ecstasy. These are the blunt
facts.
If you’re a strongly feeling type, it will be impossible for you not to find Mythos
explanations compelling and convincing. In fact, you will seek out such explanations
since they make so much sense to you. By the same token, you will find Logos
explanations cold, strange and incomprehensible, and you will avoid them as much as
possible.
If you’re a strongly thinking type, you will inevitably be drawn to science,
rational metaphysics or mathematics. You will equally inevitably find Mythos
explanations preposterous and even insane since they are so contrary to reason. No
rationalist can contemplate Abrahamism without a shudder of revulsion and despair. How
did a 100% lie come to be accepted by so many as 100% true? Only thanks to the
ineradicable irrationalism of the Mythos species.
Ultimate skepticism. What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? – They
are the irrefutable errors of mankind.” – Nietzsche
*****
Mythos is about storytelling and storyselling. Mythos is Hollywood applied to
everything. Ye olde version of Hollywood scriptwriters were ancient prophets, priests and
gurus. The idea that these people could ever tell you why the universe exists is simply
comical, on a par with expecting George Clooney or one of his screenplay guys to
provide the answer to life, the universe and everything. Ultimate reality has nothing at all
to do with stories, feelings and wandering tribes in deserts. That’s a fact.
True Religion
True religion is not about “God”. It’s about the soul. God is the culmination of the
soul’s journey, not the start. A god is simply any mathematically optimised soul. All souls
are self-solving units of living mathematics.
True religion is not about one Creator who makes everything else (all of which is
dependent on him, hence enslaved by him). True religion is about countless independent,
autonomous, uncreated, immortal souls with no cosmic master.
*****
The truth isn’t about an eternal conscious being, as Abrahamism claims.
The truth isn’t about non-conscious matter, as scientific materialism claims.
The truth isn’t about a single mental Oneness outside space and time, as Eastern
religion claims.
The truth is about countless mathematical minds (monads; souls) that are
inherently unconscious but which can dialectically evolve consciousness and finally
achieve gnosis (God consciousness): the optimal state of the soul. Monads are self-
solving life forces, and the answer they seek is their own divinity. All monads are
teleological: their inherent purpose is to become gods. That is the authentic meaning of
life. “God” is the end of this process, not the beginning.
This is a fundamentally Evolutionary universe, not a Creationist universe.
This is a fundamentally living universe (an organism), not a dead universe (a
machine).
This is a fundamentally mental universe, not a material universe.
This is a fundamentally unconscious universe, not a conscious universe, but
consciousness is something that can and will evolve from the unconscious.
*****
The Jews say that the truth is delivered via stories and commandments relayed to
us by the prophet Moses, who allegedly spoke to “God” on the summit of Mount Sinai.
Christianity says the truth is delivered to us by the platitudes, parables, fables and
sermons of a Jewish rabbi called Yehoshua ben Yosef (aka the man-God-Messiah “Jesus
Christ”).
Islam says that the truth is delivered to us by an illiterate Arab who dictated his
“angelic visions” to credulous, superstitious scribes.
Illuminism says the truth is delivered to us via the eternal truths of mathematics.
You can’t learn a single thing about truth from Mythos. Truth is purely a Logos
issue. Mythos might be fantastically entertaining, inspiring and moving, but it has zero
truth content. No matter how good the story is, you won’t find yourself any closer to the
truth.
Mythos cosmology is always ridiculous. Only Logos cosmology can converge on
the truth. We live in the Real World, not Story World.
The Wrong Answer
“The most important things are family and love.” – an anonymous terminally ill
man, anticipating his final Christmas
Most people share this view: a sentimental Mythos view. The most important
thing, sorry to say, is reason, and knowing what comes next. You are an eternal being and
you have had countless families and you have experienced love countless times. If only
you could see true reality – from the perspective of eternity (the God’s eye view) – you
would never become so emotional about one stitch of this eternal tapestry. It’s reason that
offers supreme beauty and brings you ultimate peace, pleasure and knowledge of all
things, including why you are here.
The First Philosophers
The ancient Greeks, with their dazzling philosophers, were the first to separate
cosmology from theology. However, originally, the views of the Greeks were
mythological and theological, like those of everyone else. Homer and Hesiod may be
considered the first Greek cosmologists, and they took their inspiration from the religions
(or mythologies, as we would now say) of Babylon and Egypt.
The basic view of Homer was that Earth was a flat disk, completely surrounded
by a vast, wide (effectively impassable) circular river called Oceanus. The land of the
dead was either on the other, far side of Oceanus (hence unreachable from the land of the
living), or beneath the surface of Earth (in the unreachable Underworld). In fact, both
views can be combined so that the land of the dead is both across the ocean and under the
ground.
Above Earth, in the Homeric view, was the lower sky and then the region of
aether (pure air, so to speak, breathed by the immortal gods), and above everything was
the vault of the heavens – a vast brass dome that enclosed the upper cosmos.
The sun, moon, dawn and heavenly constellations all rose from and set into the
great Ocean-river. The sun rose in the East and set in the West, and was then transported
back to the East in time for the next morning’s sunrise.
Hesiod conceived a vast dome called Tartarus that matched the sky dome but was
under rather than over the Earth disk and was as deep as the sky dome was high. The
whole universe thus formed a vast sphere.
So, “flat earthers” weren’t so flat! They were perfectly happy with the concept of
the sphere, but for the cosmos rather than for Earth itself. Later, the Earth was also
conceived as a sphere and then became the centre of a radiating set of spheres (or shells)
that formed the complete cosmos (the Aristotelian system of crystal spheres).
Mathematically, the concept of a flat Earth enclosed in a sphere is the first step in
a mathematical progression to that of a spherical Earth at the centre of a whole set of
cosmic spheres. Illuminism takes this progression much further, except it uses “complex”
circles and spheres (i.e. involving imaginary numbers as well as real numbers) that arise
from the generalised Euler Formula (the God Equation).
We are in a beautiful universe of circles and spheres (perfect shapes), except they
are “complex” rather than “real”, hence much harder to visualize and understand. Only
mathematics reveals their true nature, not observation.
Chaos
Many ancients spoke of the universe beginning in “Chaos”. So, what was chaos?
For many, it was water (the “waters of chaos”). Homer said that Oceanus was the origin
of everything. Thales, the first philosopher, asserted that water was the arche – the
fundamental substance of existence – and said that all things “are full of gods”. He meant
that water was divine, and the source of mind and life. (We would all die without live-
giving water, and we are overwhelmingly made of water). Water was not itself conscious
but it gave rise to consciousness, through the gods, who then directed the creation of the
universe.
“Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the
Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods.” – Anthony Gottlieb
For Thales, Earth was a circular disk floating on water like a piece of wood.
Thales was vital in the development of thought by asserting that a substance (water)
produced the gods rather than the gods producing a substance. This is revolutionary and
gets rid of the gods as Creators. As in Illuminism, the universe creates the gods and the
gods do not create the universe.
Water, not gods or God, was the “first principle” for Thales. Anaximander, Thales’
successor, replaced water with the apeiron (the infinite or indefinite). Anaximenes, the
next great philosopher, then suggested divine air as the arche. Pythagoras asserted that it
was divine numbers and Heraclitus divine fire (which we would now call energy, defined
by mathematics).