The Secret History of the World

by Mark Booth

  It is important to realize that by these deeper laws are meant more than the mere ‘runs of luck’ that gamblers experience or accidents seeming to happen in sequences of three. No, by these laws the secret societies meant laws that weave themselves into the warp and weft of each individual life at the most intimate level, as well as the great and complex patterns of providential order that have shaped the history of the world. The theory of this book is that history has a deeper structure, that events we usually explain in terms of politics, economics or natural disaster can more profitably be seen in terms of other, more spiritual patterns.

  ALL THE UPSIDE-DOWN, INSIDE-OUT, other-way-round thinking of the secret societies, all that is bizarre and mind-bending in what follows stems from the belief that mind preceded matter. We have almost no evidence to go on when we decide what we believe happened at the beginning of time, but the choice we make has massive implications for our understanding of the way the world works.

  If you believe that matter came before mind, you have to explain how a chance coming together of chemicals creates consciousness, which is difficult. If, on the other hand, you believe that matter is precipitated by a cosmic mind, you have the equally difficult problem of explaining how, of providing a working model.

  From the priests of the Egyptian temples to today’s secret societies, from Pythagoras to Rudolf Steiner, the great Austrian initiate of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, this model has always been conceived of as a series of thoughts emanating from the cosmic mind. Pure mind to begin with, these thought-emanations later become a sort of proto-matter, energy that becomes increasingly dense then becomes matter so ethereal that it is finer than gas, without particles of any kind. Eventually the emanations became gas, then liquid and finally solids.

  Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics at Reading University and one of the world’s leading creators of artificial intelligence. Working in friendly rivalry with his contemporaries at MIT in the United States, he has made robots able to interact with their environment, learn and adjust their behaviour accordingly. These robots exhibit a level of intelligence that matches that of the lower animals such as bees. Within five years, he says, robots will have achieved the level of intelligence of cats and in ten years they will be at least as intelligent as humans. He is also in the process of engineering a new generation of robotic computers he expects to be able to design and manufacture other computers, each level generating the lesser level beneath it.

  An alchemical engraving from the Mutus Liber, published anonymously in 1677. In alchemy the precipitation of the morning dew is a symbol of the emanation of the Cosmic Mind into the realm of matter. As the Cabala puts it, the Ancient of Days shakes his shaggy head and a dew of divine white light falls. More particularly dew is a symbol of the spiritual forces that work on the conscience during the night. This is why a bad conscience may give us a sleepless night. Here initiates are seen collecting and working on the dew — in other words reaping the benefits upon waking of the spiritual exercises they performed when they went to bed.

  According to the cosmologists of the ancient world and the secret societies, emanations from the cosmic mind should be understood in the same way, as working downwards in a hierarchy from the higher and more powerful and pervasive principles to the narrower and more particular, each level creating and directing the one below it.

  These emanations have also always been thought of as in some sense personified, as being in some sense also intelligent.

  When I saw Kevin Warwick present his findings to his peers at the Royal Institute in 2001, he was criticized by some for suggesting that his robots were intelligent and so by implication conscious. But what is undeniably true is that these robots’ brains grow in something like an organic way. They form something very like personalities, interreact with other robots and make choices beyond anything that has been programmed into them. Kevin argued that while his robots might not have consciousness with all the characteristics of human consciousness, neither do dogs. Dogs are conscious in a doggy way and his robots, he said, are conscious in a robotic way. Of course, in some ways — such as the ability to make massive mathematical calculations instantly — robots display a consciousness that is superior to our own consciousness.

  We might think of the consciousness of the emanations from the cosmic mind in similar terms. We might also be reminded of the Tibetan spiritual masters who are said to be able to form a type of thoughts called tulpas by intense concentration and visualization. These beings — we might call them Thought-Beings — attain some sort of independent life and go off and do their master’s bidding. Similarly Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century Swiss magus, wrote about what he called an ‘aquastor’, a being formed by the power of concentrated imagination which may obtain a life of his or her own — and in special circumstances become visible, even tangible.

  At the lowest level of the hierarchy, according to the ancient and secret doctrine in all cultures, these emanations, these Thought-Beings from the cosmic mind, interweave so tightly that they create the appearance of solid matter.

  Today if you wanted to find language to describe this strange phenomenon, you might choose to look to quantum mechanics, but in the secret societies the interweaving of invisible forces to create the appearance of the material world has always been conceived of as a net of light and colour or — to use an alchemical term — the Matrix.

  TOP SCIENTIST ASKS: IS LIFE ALL JUST A DREAM?

  THIS HEADLINE RAN IN THE SUNDAY TIMES in February 2005. The story was that Sir Martin Rees, Britain’s astronomer royal, was saying, ‘Over a few decades computers have evolved from being able to simulate only very simple patterns to being able to create virtual worlds with a lot of detail. If that trend were to continue, then we can imagine computers which will be able to simulate worlds perhaps even as complicated as the one we think we’re living in. This raises the philosophical question: could we ourselves be in such a simulation and could what we think is the universe be some sort of vault of heaven rather than the real thing. In a sense we could ourselves be the creations within that simulation.’

  The wider story was that leading scientists around the world are becoming increasingly fascinated by the extraordinary degree of fine-tuning that has been necessary for us to evolve. And this is making them question what is really real.

  As well as these recent developments in science, novels and movies have gone some way to acclimatizing us to the idea that what we routinely take to be reality might be a ‘virtual reality’. Philip K. Dick, who was perhaps the first writer to seed these ideas in pop culture, was steeped in initiatic wisdom regarding altered states and parallel dimensions. His novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was filmed as Blade Runner. Other films with this theme include Minority Report — also based on a book by Dick — Total Recall, The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But the biggest has been The Matrix.

  In The Matrix menacing, shade-wearing villains police the virtual world we call reality in order to control us for their own nefarious purposes. In part, at least, this is an accurate reflection of the teachings of the Mystery schools and secret societies. Although all the beings that live behind the veil of illusion are part of the hierarchies of emanations from the mind of God, some display a disturbing moral ambivalence.

  These are the same beings that the peoples of the ancient world experienced as their gods, spirits and demons.

  THE FACT THAT SOME LEADING SCIENTISTS are again beginning to see possibilities in this very ancient way of looking at the cosmos is an encouraging sign. Although modern sensibility has little patience with metaphysics, with what might look like high-minded, recherché abstractions piled up on each other, the cosmology of the ancient world was, as any fair historian of ideas will allow, a magnificent philosophical machine. In its account of interlocking, evolving dimensions, the clashing, morphing and intermingling of great systems, in its scale, complexity and awesome explanatory power it riva
ls that of modern science.

  We cannot simply say that physics has replaced metaphysics and made it redundant. There is a key difference between these systems which is that they are explaining different things. Modern science explains how the universe comes to be as it is. Ancient philosophy of the kind we will be exploring in this book explains how our experience of the universe comes to be as it is. For science the great miracle to be explained is the physical universe. For esoteric philosophy the great miracle is human consciousness.

  Scientists are fascinated by the extraordinary series of balances between various sets of factors that has been necessary in order to make life on earth possible. They talk in terms of balances between heat and cold, wetness and dryness, the earth being so far from the sun (and no further), the sun being at a particular stage of evolution (neither hotter nor cooler). At a more fundamental level, in order for matter to cohere, the forces of gravity and electromagnetism must each be of a particular degree (neither stronger nor weaker). And so on.

  Looked at from the point of view of esoteric philosophy we can begin to see that an equally extraordinary series of balances has been necessary to make our subjective consciousness what it is, in other words to give our experience the structure it has.

  By ‘balances’ I’m talking about more than having a balanced mind in the colloquial sense, that is to say of having emotions which are healthy and not too strong. I’m talking of something deeper, something essential.

  What, for example, is needed to make possible the internal narrative, the collection of stories we string together to form our basic sense of self? The answer is, of course, memory. It is only by remembering what I did yesterday that I can identify myself as the person who did these things. The key point is that it is a particular degree of memory that is needed, neither stronger nor weaker. The Italian novelist Italo Calvino, one of the many modern writers who have followed the ancient and mystical philosophy, puts it precisely: ‘Memory has to be strong enough to enable us to act without forgetting what we wanted to do, to learn without ceasing to be the same person, but it also has to be weak enough to allow us to keep moving into the future.’

  Other balances are necessary in order for us to be able to think freely, to weave thoughts around that central sense of self. We have to be able to perceive the outside world through the senses, but it is equally important for us not to be overwhelmed by sensations which could otherwise occupy all our mental space. Then we could neither reflect nor imagine. That this balance holds is as extraordinary in its way as — for example — the fact that our planet is neither too far from, nor too close to, the sun.

  We also have the ability to move our point of consciousness around our interior life — like a cursor on a computer screen. As a result of this, we have the freedom to choose what to think about. If we did not have the right balance of attachment and detachment from our interior impulses as well as from our perceptions of the outside world, then at this very moment you would have no freedom to choose to take your attention away from the page you are looking at now and no freedom to think about anything else.

  And so, crucially, if the most fundamental conditions of human consciousness were not characterized by this set of exceptionally fine balances, it would not be possible for us to exercise free thought or free will.

  When it comes to the very highest points of human experience, what the American psychologist Abraham Maslow usefully called ‘peak experiences’, even finer balances are necessary. For example, we may be required to make decisions at the great turning points of our lives. Again, it is the common, if not universal human experience, that if we try to work out what is the right thing to do with our lives using all our intelligence, if we work at it with a good and whole heart, if we exercise patience and humility, we can — just — discern the right thing to do. And once we have made the right decision, the chosen course of action will probably require all the willpower we are capable of, perhaps for just as long as we are able to bear it, if we are to complete it successfully. This is right at the core of what it means to experience life as a human being.

  There is no inevitability about our consciousness having the structure that makes possible these freedoms, these opportunities to choose to do the right thing, to grow and develop into good, perhaps even heroic people — unless you believe in Providence, that is to say unless you believe that it was meant to be.

  Human consciousness is therefore a sort of miracle. If today we tend to overlook this, the ancients were stirred by the wonder of it. As we are about to see, their intellectual leaders tracked subtle changes in human consciousness with as much diligence as modern scientists track changes in the physical environment. Their account of history — with its mythical and supernatural happenings — was an account of how human consciousness evolved.

  Modern science tries to enforce a narrow, reductive view of our consciousness. It tries to convince us of the unreality of elements, even quite persistent elements in experience, that it cannot explain. These include the shadowy power of prayer, premonitions, the feeling of being stared at, the evidence for mind-reading, out-of-body-experiences, meaningful coincidences and other things swept under the carpet by modern science.

  And much, much more importantly, science in this reductive mood denies the universal human experience that life has a meaning. Some scientists even deny that the question of whether or not life has meaning is worth asking.

  We will see in the course of this history that many of the most intelligent people who have ever lived have become devotees of esoteric philosophy. I believe it may even be the case that every intelligent person has tried to find out about it at some time.

  It is a natural human impulse to wonder if life has a meaning, and esoteric philosophy represents the richest, deepest, most concentrated body of thought on this subject. Before we embark on our narrative, therefore, it is vital that we apply one more sharp philosophical distinction to the softer edge of modern scientific thought.

  SOMETIMES THINGS GO WRONG, AND LIFE seems pointless. But then at other times our lives do seem to have meaning. For example, life sometimes seems to have taken a wrong turn — we fail an exam, lose a job or a love affair ends — but then we find our true métier or true love as a result of this seeming wrong turn. Or it happens that someone decides against boarding a plane, which then crashes. If something like this happens, we may feel as if ‘someone up there’ is looking after us, that our footsteps have been guided. We may have a heightened sense of the precariousness of life, how easily things could have turned out differently had it not been for an almost imperceptible, perhaps otherworldy nudge.

  Similarly with the down-to-earth, science-oriented part of ourselves we may see a coincidence as a chance coming together of related events, but sometimes deep down we suspect that a coincidence is not a matter of chance at all. In coincidences we sometimes feel we catch a hint, albeit an elusive one, of a deep pattern of meaning hidden behind the muddle of everyday experience.

  And sometimes people find that just when all hope seems lost, happiness is discovered the other side of despair, or that inside hatred hides the growing germ of love. For reasons we’ll look at later, questions of happiness are these days closely connected with notions of sexual love, so that it is often the experience of falling in love that gives us the sense that ‘this was MEANT to be’.

  RECENTLY LEADING SCIENTISTS HAVE been widely quoted as boasting that science is on the brink of discovering the explanation for — or the meaning of — everything in life and the universe. This is usually in relation to ‘string theory’, a theory, they say, shortly to be formulated, of all the forces of nature, which will combine the laws of gravity with the physics of the quantum world. We will then be able to relate the reasonable laws that govern objects we can sense with the very different behaviour of phenomena in the sub-atomic realm. Once this has been formulated we will understand everything there is to be understood about the structure, origin and future of the cosmos. W
e will have accounted for everything there is, because, they say, there is nothing else.

  Before we can learn the secrets of the initiates and begin to understand their strange beliefs about history it’s important to be clear about the distinction between ‘meaning’ as it is used in connection with questions about the meaning of life and ‘meaning’ as scientists use it.

  A boy arranges to meet his girlfriend for a date, but she stands him up. He’s hurt and angry. He wants to understand the painful thing that’s happened to him. When he tracks her down, he interrogates her. His repeated question is WHY?

  … because I missed my bus, she says,

  … because I was late leaving work

  … because I was distracted and didn’t notice the time

  … because I’m unhappy about something.

  And so he presses and presses until he gets what he’s after (sort of):

  … because I don’t want to see you any more.

  When we ask WHY, it can be taken in two ways: either as in the girl’s first, evasive answers, as meaning the same as HOW, that is to say requiring answers which give an account of a sequence of cause and effect, of atom knocking against atom; — or, alternatively, WHY can be taken in the way the boy wanted to be answered, which is a matter of trying to winkle out INTENTION.

  Similarly when we ask about the meaning of life and the universe we’re not really asking HOW it came about in the cause-and-effect sense of how the right elements and conditions came together to form matter, stars, planets, organic matter and so on. We’re asking about the intention behind it all.