Throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods, metaphysics in the Western world was dominated by two primary currents of thought. The first and most significant in terms of its influence upon culture and religion was the school established by Aristotle, which was based on empirical study of the material world. Much like modern physical scientists, Aristotle believed that ultimate reality could be found in the behavior of material objects that could be observed and measured. The second was the school established by Plato, who contended that ultimate reality could be found in the world of Ideal Forms, akin to the world of mathematics.
Both Plato and Aristotle postulated that the fundamental building blocks of reality consist of Matter and Form. Matter refers to the actual physical substance of which objects are composed – atoms, molecules, and elementary particles. Form refers to how these particles are arranged, encompassing every manifestation of substance from a simple block of metal or stone to complex interrelated systems. Form is especially essential to living organisms – if a human body were broken down into its component molecules, the result would be mostly water and collection of complex hydrocarbons. Obviously, mixing these hydrocarbons and water back together will not produce a human being. While the matter of which the original person was composed is still present, the complexity of the person’s original form has been destroyed. Where the two schools disagree is that Aristotle taught that matter preceded form and was therefore more real, while Plato taught that form preceded matter and therefore form was the most real.
Classical Gnosticism based much of its metaphysics on Plato’s emanationist model, in which the Ideal Forms of the design realm “descend” into matter and become more diluted and flawed as they give rise to physical objects. This is likely the original source of the historical rejection of the material world and material conditions. Spirit, closer to the ideal realm, was viewed as pure and holy, while matter, distant from source, was viewed as degraded and sinful. To be fair to our predecessors, life was much harder for most people before the rise of modern technology. Infectious diseases were rampant. Childhood mortality was extremely high, to the extent that few parents would go through life without losing at least one child and likely more. In that context, viewing the world as place of grief and suffering made sense. But our lives would go on to improve in ways that the Classical Gnostics could barely imagine.
In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant set out to develop what he described as a “Copernican turn” in metaphysics that he believed could resolve some of the difficulties with both the Platonic and Aristotelean systems. Instead of attempting to define the fundamental nature of objective reality, Kant directed his attention to the perspective of the individual and how reality is perceived. Kant proposed two levels of reality, the world of “things in themselves,” or objective reality, and the world of appearances, or subjective reality. He further proposed that objects of awareness must conform to our mode of awareness, meaning that information from objective reality is taken in by the senses and interpreted by the mind to construct a personal subjective reality.
Kant’s metaphysics would go on to become the principle metaphysical model employed by scientists from the European Enlightenment onward, and to this day it offers a good description of how perception of and interaction with the material world operates. Neo-Gnosticism also takes this same approach, aligning spirituality with modern science. Kant correctly observed that the world in which we interact is constructed by our own minds based on the integration of sensory information. This observation is the root of many mystic teachings that regard the world as “illusionary.” These teachings generally do not contend that physical reality does not exist. Rather, they point to the realization that our perception of physical objects and events are in fact more subjective than they seem.
As this subjective reality is what individuals actually experience, the objective universe is not directly knowable. Nonetheless, Kant asserted the existence of an objective reality on the basis of principles such as the law of cause and effect and object permanence, and thus avoided the idealistic position of philosophers who contended that only those things that were observed existed and that no objective things were necessarily real or present.
As we change “things in themselves” by our actions – moving objects around, typing on a computer, or engaging in whatever hobbies we enjoy, the senses are constantly providing feedback about what we are doing with our motor skills and capacities. The full model, therefore, looks like this:
Once we’re at this point, it becomes clear how the psychic and paranormal abilities can be fitted into the “Copernican” model without any changes. I simply propose that psychic awareness is an additional sense that humans possess to varying degrees, placed in position II. as part of the overall sensory apparatus. Likewise, the paranormal ability to shift probability is an additional “motor capacity” that humans possess to varying degrees that should be placed in position V.
We can fine-tune this further by separating the links joining I. and II. and V. and I. into categories. Strong links are Physical links. If I want to read something, it’s easiest to read it with my eyes. If I want to knock something over, it is easiest to use my hand rather than any form of psychic ability. Contagion and Resonance links are the two kinds of magical links. They are much weaker than physical links but can influence “things in themselves” to some degree in cases where a direct physical link is not possible. Magick and psychic awareness work on this very principle.
Intelligent spirits can be represented the same way. The difference is that spirits are less material so they are generally less capable of using physical links and must rely more on contagion and resonance. They do seem to have some ability to affect the world physically, but to nowhere near the same degree as material objects, living or nonliving. They can effectively be treated like other individuals sharing the same world of “things in themselves,” but with a less material form. The physical aspect of a spirit is usually energetic, but we still are talking about matter in relation to form. Energy and matter, as modern physics shows us, are fundamentally similar and either can be transformed into the other.
There are several advantages of this approach over both classical Platonism and the Neo-Platonism of the European Renaissance – which really, was only new in the sense that the teachings of Plato were mostly unknown before the discovery of ancient Greek texts at the beginning of that period. Rejection of the material world is an endemic problem to many forms of spirituality, and the Platonic model posited that the material world was unimportant, or least occupied an inferior position to the world of mind and spirit. But in fact, according to the modern panpsychist view, consciousness – that is, spirit – infuses everything in the physical universe.
This means that we are neither spiritual beings having a material experience, nor material beings having a spiritual experience. We are beings with both material and spiritual aspects, and these are aspects that are largely inseparable. There is no “ladder” from impure or degraded matter to pure and perfect source. Spirit exists. Matter exists. These aspects fall on a continuum from the material to the spiritual, but only from the material to spiritual. This continuum behaves like a dimension such as length. An object of a particular length occupies space, but no individual point along that space is superior to any other.
If we are going to define values in this way, we must choose a heuristic by which they can be measured. The beauty of the “Copernican” model is that even the selection of this heuristic is left up to the individual. You can decide, like Plato, to privilege form over matter, or like Aristotle, to privilege matter over form. What you cannot do, though, is enshrine your selected heuristic as the “one true way.” You get to choose for yourself, but not for others. We each have the right to live by our own heuristic – that is, our own law. The only ladder is the one we create for ourselves.
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