Hagger, Nicholas Comments

Correspondence

Email from Nicholas Hagger 9 July 2018 11:54

Dear David

I agree with the principles behind Harald Walach’s profound and thought-provoking Science Beyond a Materialist Worldview – Towards a Spiritually Informed Science. In the early 1990s I called for a Metaphysical Revolution as you have recalled, and I see this report as continuing and developing the work we did then. I agree that the background assumptions of science should not see matter as the only ontological reality in the universe and external experience as the only valid method of arriving at knowledge. I agree that binary logical analysis and Golden-Rule ethics are limiting.

In my own work I have contrasted the synthesising approach to the One with the analytical approach, and have argued that self-reports on inner experience should form part of scientific method. I have argued that consciousness is an entity in its own right.

Below I list a dozen principles drawn from some of my own works – I am currently working on my 50th book – which predate and make contact with Walach’s principles and may reinforce some of them:

1. Part Two of The New Philosophy of Universalism gives an up-to-date view of all the sciences and sees them in terms of ‘the order principle’. It finds that the infinite pervades and surrounds the expanding shuttlecock-shaped universe, and a surfer on the edge of the expanding shuttlecock-shaped universe (see attachment) in which matter comprises only 4% would have his feet in space-time and the rest of him outside space-time and in the infinite. (The New Philosophy of Universalism.)

2. The New Philosophy of Universalism describes the world/universe in terms of One Reality, in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. Reality has manifested through four stages/levels, from Absolute Nothingness (a void that contains the potentialities of infinite Non-Being, a Fullness, Pleroma, transcendent Reality, the Fire or Light before it became immanent) to Non-Being (a void that contains the potentialities of Being, the quantum vacuum) to Being (a void that contains all the potentialities of Existence, immanent Being within the microworld) and Existence (the visible world of cosmology and physics that began with the Big Bang). (The Universe and the Light, The New Philosophy of Universalism.)

3. The four subdivisions of metaphysics are: ontology (the study of Being, the transcendent or immanent Fire or Light, the infinite One); psychology (what can be experienced of Being, focus on the part of the self that is transpersonal or spiritual, beyond the rational social ego); epistemology (what can be known about Being, how Reality is known, focus on a transformational centre-shift from the ego to the soul); and cosmology (the structure of the universe, the world of physics where any invisible Reality that cannot be tested is deemed speculative). (The Universe and the Light, The New Philosophy of Universalism.)

4. When the universe is seen in terms of the Light, Supreme Being, a true Theory of Everything becomes possible. (The Universe and the Light, ‘The Nature of Light’.)

5. Reductionism is countered by physicalist holism (Smuts’ Holism and Evolution), and by metaphysical holism I call ‘Universalism’, which calls for a ‘Metaphysical Revolution’. (The Universe and the Light, ‘Reductionism, Holism and Universalism: Metaphysical Science and the Metaphysical Revolution’, The One and the Many, ‘Revolution in Thought and Culture’.)

6. Experiences of the Light, immanent Being (also known as the Divine Light), are valid – I list 93 self-reports of my experiences in appendices entitled Light in two works. (My Double Life 1: This Dark Wood, My Double Life 2: A Rainbow over the Hills.)

7. All the accounts of all the experiences of the Light in all cultures and civilizations are self-reports and are valid evidential reports on metaphysical experiences. These can be found in two of my books. (The Fire and the Stones, The Light of Civilization.)

8. There are 12 levels of consciousness, the two highest or deepest are transpersonal consciousness and universal consciousness in which the metaphysical Light can be contemplated. (The New Philosophy of Universalism, pp.250–251.)

9. Husserl’s method of ‘bracketing out the object’ is a valid way of studying consciousness, and the Light can be ‘bracketed out’ to focus on its reception in consciousness, compare no.7. (The Fire and the Stones, The Universe and the Light.)

10. The universe is a unity that reconciles apparent contradictions (day/night, war/peace, life/death, time/eternity, finite/infinite) within the formula +A + –A = 0 (Great Zero, Unity). (In all my works, including my two epic poems on war and peace, Overlord, Armageddon.)

11. All human beings are spiritually equal and should be governed by political Universalism. (The World Government, World State, World Constitution.)

12. All deep contemplation of the universe is cross-disciplinary, and so my works within seven disciplines are like the seven bands of a rainbow: they are all within the bands of one overarching unity that is an image of the One. (My Double Life 2: A Rainbow over the Hills.)

As I have said, I endorse Harald Walach’s paper, and the above 12 principles indicate key points of contact in my works in which I have developed thinking that may coincide with/carry forward the Galileo Commission’s report. The terrain is vast, covering the universe and all the sciences, and I offer the above 12 principles as a manageable contribution. They are summarised here, full versions can be found in my works.

I hope this is helpful, and I wish the Galileo Commission’s report well.

Best wishes

Nicholas