THE OMEGA SEED: AN ESCHATOLOGICAL HYPOTHESIS
(Paolo Soleri - the architect of Arcosanti, Arizona)
CONCEPTS:
1. The
mass-energy universe is a ‘knot’ that unravels in time and space at the
direction of life. Life requires the
energizing of the physical universe; spirit consumes matter. Space, time, mass and energy are consumed in
the process of creation and growth of
spirit. Matter and its correlates are
the ‘media' becoming pure spirit, the ‘message’.
2. Theologically,
the God of creation is seen as the "Alpha-God", the colossally
brutish force of `big bang', from which was provided the un-organized,
non-intentional energy becoming matter, the "media" out of which
life, consciousness and spirit could generate themselves. Similar to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's
concept of "noosphere" (an enlarging envelope of consciousness and
spirituality surrounding the planet, it's goal being the "Omega-point"
of God attainment); Soleri refers to the `Urban-effect' whereby as humans
congregate into urban environments they will inspire each other towards the
ultimate god-state, the "Omega-God" (the second person of the
Trinity, the God-Son). The thrust of
the Alpha force and the pull of the Omega god (Logos) is toward higher
evolutionary life forms and finer purities of the matter/energy media,
converted into intelligence/conscience.
Complexity and miniaturization are seen as the keys to `Omega Seed' status, the human brain with its compactness and short communication links for information processing and creative visualization being seen as a ‘way-station' to ultimate ‘seed’ complexity/miniaturization), the aggregate seeds in effect comprising the universe's contraction to a singularity within which is the ‘seeded’ pattern for the next Big Bang. (The Omega seed at ‘resurrection’ will contain the totality of all that has been).
3.
Our individual consciousness (mind) is like a membrane
interposed between two mysterious universes - the inner and the outer; the
inner universe is complex, directional and imploded; the outer universe is
spatio-temporal, expanding. The quality
of the membrane - our conscience and our doing - is directly dependent on the
intensity and the appeal of both mysterious universes interflowing through the
sensitized membrane - in effect the flow, quality and quantity of available
information from both sources - to ‘know Self’ and what externals the Self is
dealing with.
The environment - the outer
mystery - is the most readily accessed by us and hence is the most powerful
conscience-maker (life maker). One sees
the need then to ensure that one’s environment is as rich as circumstances
allow, and it is entirely up to the mind membrane [oneself] to
see that such richness is made, nurtured, maintained, accrued, and transfigured
for the sake of the beholder.
The interflowing, inter-pressuring of these
"remotenesses", the inner and the outer, results in the performance
of consciousness of the affected, sensitized personal noosphere in an oracular
way, ambiguous and divinatory. The power of the oracle is in grasping the
enormity of the power of remoteness and in developing the capacity to use some
of such power without being annihilated by the inertial mass of the whole of it
(overwhelmed by either the external or internal messages). To attempt to know all and to be "tuned
in" to the whole damn thing is not only a futile exercise, but a suicidal
one, since by excessive dilution it leaves consciousness below the threshold of
existential radiance and the individual blurs into nirvana (the condition of
non-being).
4. Life
(the flesh) is the bridge transmuting matter into spirit.
In the flesh we connect both, and while in this ‘bridge’ mode we are an unbreakable mix of matter and spirit.
-----------------
FINDINGS:
1. Rather
than belief in a benign or Father-God expectant of a penitent or resigned
humankind, the suggestion is we are actually divine, radiant
Gods-in-the-making, that life creates out of itself.
2.
God is a hypothesis which human life cannot do
without. Man's inquietude and existential anxiety
and sense of loss resulting from his fragmented self prompts the invention of
divinity, whole, integral and loving.
This invented vessel is a self-fulfilling prophecy, the miracle of
evolution emerging from the pre-embryonic stages with a willful thrust. The divine, however, is practically all in
the future and we, in life, are responsible for its creation. This divine God simulation thereby is our
blueprint for creation.
3.
While
the plant and the animal live in the present (their action in the present being
a function of genetic instinct), mankind with its additional gift of free will
lives in the now-as-‘pre-future’. We
thereby know that in the sequence of cause and effect, in our future we will
have to live with the consequences of pre-future actions, hence the need to plan
for the future in the pre-future.
The risk of over-planning is that we tend to oversimplify our lives,
reducing the complexity (risk) and thereby missing much of the potential for
experiential growth. Yet if man tries
to live without anticipation (planning) he in effect endorses the notion of
fate (or providence) and is thereby vulnerable to agendas within which his own
senses of responsibility and creativity do not have fields conducive to
personal growth. (The `golden mean' is
a synthesis of spirit and reason).
4. Within
the noosphere concept, our individual responsibility (purpose of life) is to inspire each other (spiritualize each other).
5. The
Mediocrity Trap - All people are not created equally,
nor are we equally innately good, nor equally creative. The trap of mediocrity is the teaching by
society that everyone is equal, and to stifle those few who do have higher
potential (intelligence/drive/contextual consciousness) so as to fit them into
the equality (mediocrity) mould. With a whole universe to learn from if one has
an attitude of humility (and encouragement and inspiration from another),
succumbing to the peer pressure of ignorant, arrogant self-gratification is the
ultimate waste of spirit.
6. Of
the "mechanism" named Mozart, the robot has passed away, and, as
robots go it was nothing special. But
its master, Mozart's spirit, and the sounds he made into creations are at work
moulding into other "mechanisms" the thirst for the spirit.
7.
The Virtue of Frugality
is an ecological imperative and the opposite of mediocrity which is a wasting
of life. To not exercise
frugality is to manifest ignorance (ignorance defined as stemming from lack of
experimental processes, or from the inability to profit from experiential
processes). The true frugal is the
truly integrative and essentializing one who, by choice, can synthesize those
few essentials necessary as moorings for one's existence (not to be confused
with those inflicted by indigence, weakness of will, or ignorance of
options).
Frugality allows one to concentrate resources (time/money/self) on areas of personally higher value. Such an attitude, if generalized, could play havoc with consumerism societies, which are more inclined to instill greed and competitive mediocrity in mankind. A mediocre society is by definition a wasteful society, since it is a society which is incapable of that leanness of thought and action that is characteristic of a consciously-directed, discriminating, frugal condition.
8. (From
the preface by John B. Cobb, Jr.) - "For Henri Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin, the human species
stands in the flow of evolutionary process and gains its meaning from its place
and role in that process. This process
is not a gentle nor automatic escalator to ever happier ends. But it does work, over eons of time, toward
new forms of order which sustain new intensities of realization."
------------
Reviewer’s
PERSONAL CONJECTURES:
1.
In
Soleri's creation cosmology, if Trinity I is the Alpha- Father of ‘big bang’
brute, un-purposed, eminent beginning force, and Trinity II is the Omega ‘Son'
of organized, realized, immanent purposeful ends, un-stated in the essays is
the function of Trinity III, the Christian theological Holy Ghost. Perhaps Trinity III is the field of
connection between Trinity I and II, the whole play of accreting
energy-matter-consciousness i.e., the
"path" of evolving life-drives and processes between the aspects of
the bi-polar Alpha/Omega Divinities.
2. One
can perceive the similarities between those Trinity concepts and the
Hindu Vedic God-Head Trinity of Brahman (creation), Siva (maintenance/ recycle)
and Vishnu (annihilation).
3. Bearing
in mind Pope Ambrose's advice to Augustine (circa 375 AD) to study the Bible as
an allegory (of mankind's evolution from the Genesis blank slate to the
New Testament doctrine of internalized Heaven and God within) Soleri's
Alpha/Omega opus may have metaphoric validity not only in a cosmological
context - but also point to the story of mankind's evolutionary progression
and, further, to the individual human being's development through life's
classroom.
(From the Hermetic Kybalion - the
Principle of Correspondence - "as above, so below")
Keith and Marnie
Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site
Home
|
Our Stories
|
The Sublime
|
Our World and Times
|
Book Reviews
|
Marnie's Images
|
The Journal
|
Gleanings
|
From The Writings Of. . .
|
Allegories
|