theosophy

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The theosophical teachings on evolution given out since the formation of the Theosophical Society in 1875 are merely a general outline of the information in the possession of the Brotherhood of Adepts.1 This information is said to have been compiled and repeatedly verified by countless generations of sages and seers, whose occult powers grant them access to the inner realms of nature and enable them to read the records of the earth’s history clairvoyantly. The adepts are also said to possess written records, fossils, technological inventions, and other artifacts from bygone ages. They disseminate their knowledge in proportion to people’s ability to respond to it intelligently.
Darwinism is rooted in the materialistic assumption that the universe consists essentially of physical matter and energy, and that mind and consciousness are merely byproducts of the brain. According to the theosophic tradition, on the other hand, the physical world is the outer shell of inner worlds – astral, mental, and spiritual. Likewise, every physical organism is animated by inner, subtler ‘bodies’ or souls, including an astral model-body (the template for the physical body), an instinctive or selfconscious mind, of widely varying degrees of development, and a spiritual-divine self or monad. Evolution involves the unfolding of latent powers and capacities in response to impulses from within and stimuli from without, and the development of suitable physical forms through which they can be expressed.

Theosophy rejects the darwinian theory of common descent, i.e. the notion that the first unicellular organisms have undergone successive bodily transformations, leading eventually to all the present creatures, including man. The enormous gaps in the fossil record prove that there has been no continuous, gradual transformation of one species into a higher species. Darwinists of the ‘punctuationist’ school recognize this and argue that new species arise relatively suddenly in small, isolated populations, and that such episodes of speciation are separated by long periods of stasis, in which species undergo little change. However, their insistence that these sudden spurts of evolutionary creativity are ultimately based on blind chance places great strains on our credulity.
H.P. Blavatsky and G. de Purucker cited various pieces of evidence contradicting the ape-ancestry theory, including finds of human remains, footprints, and stone tools, such as those presented in section 3, showing that humans of one type or another existed in much earlier geologic periods than orthodox evolutionary theory allows,1 and evidence such as that mentioned in the previous section, showing that the modern human anatomy is simpler and less specialized than that of our supposed ancestors.2 They also mentioned several contemporary scientists who believed that apes had evolved from man, while man had evolved from other types of animals.3 Blavatsky called the ape-ancestry hypothesis ‘self-degrading’ and ‘the most extravagant theory of the ages’.4
Referring to the Lemurian episode of interbreeding, the Stanzas of Dzyan7 state that ‘those who had no spark’ (i.e. nonselfconscious humans) ‘took huge she-animals unto them’,* which belonged to several species and were quite different from any known today, and ‘begat upon them dumb races’. The offspring are described as a ‘race of crooked, red-hair-covered monsters, going on all fours’, ‘a truly pithecoid species, now extinct’, and a Commentary mentions: ‘Red-haired, swarthy men going on all-fours, who bend and unbend (stand erect and fall on their hands again) who speak as their forefathers, and run on their hands as their giant fore-mothers.’8
In the epic Hindu poem the Ramayana, the apes are depicted as far more humanlike than they are today; they even talk and have their own governments and laws. Led by Hanuman, the monkey god, they fight on the side of Rama against the Rakshasas of Lanka in the great epic war of India. Viewed theosophically, the depiction of the apes in the Hindu legend is not entirely fictional.

Strand

Strand
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According to mainstream science, humans are evolved apes who, as a result of random genetic mutations and environmental pressures, happened to acquire the unique power of selfconsciousness. However, the loud publicity and slick propaganda for the ape-ancestry theory cannot alter the fact that the evidence is scanty and contradictory and open to other interpretations.

Anthropologist Richard Leakey has said that ‘If someone went to the trouble of collecting together in one room all the fossil remains so far discovered of our ancestors (and their biological relatives) who lived, say, between five and one million years ago, he would need only a couple of large trestle tables on which to spread them out.’1 Most hominid fossils are fragments of jaws and scraps of skulls but, as palaeontologist Stephen J. Gould once said, ‘they serve as a basis for endless speculation and elaborate storytelling’.2
Paleoanthropological discoveries make it clear that the human family tree is not a single lineage in which one species succeeded another, leading relentlessly to the appearance of modern humans. Instead, the hominid fossil record suggests that our ancestry is better thought of as a bush, with the branches representing a number of bipedal species that evolved along different evolutionary lines.1


For new species to arise through a series of rapid genetic changes, those changes would have to be directed and coordinated in some way. Even then, the belief that humans descended from australopithecines and ultimately from some Miocene ape remains no more than an unproven hypothesis. Theosophy argues that it is actually the apes which are partially descended from man (see section 6). Some scientists have recognized that even the earliest apelike creatures had anatomical specializations that make them unlikely ancestors of humans, who have a simpler, more generalized anatomy (see section 5). As already explained, a few scientists argue that far from being our ancestors, the australopithecines descended from a bipedal hominid and were evolving towards quadrupedalism. However, many evolutionists take the view that there is no objection to anatomical specializations being gained and later lost in the course of evolution – if this is what it takes to save the ape-ancestry theory from collapse!

Godkings

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There will be a celebration of the Auspicious at the Times Change High & Lonesome Blues Cafe next Thursday the 25th.

String Theory

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Ever since string theory was first proposed by Leonard Susskind in 1969 it has been plagued by ridicule and controversy, but the theory still continues to attract serious attention from prominent scientists. As with any theory amendments have to be made, and recently Susskind has come out and conceded that his initial model is likely only one small part of a much larger and more complex multifaceted megaverse. But many in the scientific community are resisting this revolutionary train of thought, and claim that Susskind has no evidence, and therefore no reason, to continue with this folly. But regardless of which camp you choose to side with, recent discoveries in astrophysics may soon put this little quandary to rest.

The initial motivation behind introducing string theory was to amend the Standard Model so that its fundamental units would become one-dimensional, elongated objects, rather than zero-dimensional particles. With such a model, string theorists hoped that a cogent and more consistent quantum theory of gravity would be revealed, in addition to a number of other fantastic consequences that would also follow. Some of these consequences may seem fairly mundane to the layperson, such as a unified theory of everything, which would amalgamate scientists' current understanding of the four basic forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong). But some of these consequences, such as multiverses and other dimensions, seem more akin to science fiction. In more general terms, Susskind proposes that we may be fortunate enough to be living at a time when everything that we know about the universe is about to go through a tremendous and astonishing upheaval.

Susskind claims that our universe, and the unshakable physical laws that govern it, is but one small "pocket" of existence among a multitude of others. In other words, what's true in our neck of the woods does not necessarily hold true elsewhere in the megaverse. It's certainly a tantalizing prospect, but string theory (incorporating a number of variants on the same theme, such as supersymmetry that includes fermions, the building blocks of all matter) has one teensy-weensy problem; it has, as yet, no testable hypothesis. It's this bit of scientific sacrilege that makes it all too easy for critics of the theory to lambaste and lampoon it. One such critic is Peter Woit, lecturer in the Mathematics Department of Columbia University, who seems to be making a career out of claiming that without a testable hypothesis, string theory is no better than religious dogma. Put up, or shut up, as the saying goes. Well now, finally, it looks as though string theorists may finally get their day in court.

It was Einstein who proposed the idea of gravitational waves (a phenomenon that scientists are yet to observe), which are the supposed end product of moving matter warping the fabric of four-dimensional space-time. But now, researchers from the University of Washington (UW) claim that it is possible to detect gravitational waves emitted from what they call superstrings. Superstrings are, apparently, an observable effect consistent with at least one of the prevailing versions of string theory. UW cosmologist Craig Hogan describes superstrings as narrow tubes of energy leftover from the beginning of the universe, which have been substantially stretched out as the universe continues to expand.

Hogan believes there may be innumerable cosmic superstrings stretched out like giant elastic bands throughout the universe, holding indeterminate amounts of the vacuum of the early universe. These strings, says Hogan, can form loops that "flop around" and discharge gravitational waves as they decay and disappear. "They're so light that they can't have any effect on cosmic structure, but they create this bath of gravitational waves just by decaying," says Hogan. But just how does one go about detecting something that has no apparent affect on the cosmic structure?

Working on the premise that any moving body emits a gravitational wave, Hogan hypothesized that these gravitational waves should also produce a detectable frequency. "Big masses tend to take a long time to move about, so there are more sources at lower frequencies," explains Hogan. "Sensing these vibrations would add the soundtrack to the beautiful imagery of astronomy that we are used to seeing. All this time, we have been watching a silent movie." While the frequencies at which any gravitational wave is produced are likely to be well below that of human hearing (possibly 10 to 20 octaves below), Hogan and his team predict that these gravitational waves may feasibly be detected by listening out for them using a proposed orbiting observatory called the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna.

Ultimately, Hogan hopes that among the bass notes of black holes and binary stars there is more than a faint trace of superstrings contributing to his proposed cosmic symphony. "If we see some of this background, we will have real physical evidence that these strings exist," claims Hogan. But Hogan acknowledges that it will take more than just detecting gravitational waves to make a good case for the existence of superstrings; superstring gravitational waves must be isolated from the rest of the symphony. "The strings, if they exist, are part of that noise, but we want to listen in at lower frequencies and try to detect them," he said.

But there is still a very long way to go, and other recent discoveries may yet dampen the enthusiasm surrounding prospects of finally having, at least in theory, a way in which to test for the existence of strings. Researchers successfully mapping the apparent shape of dark matter contained in a region of space may be one example where superstring theory is rendered redundant. Researchers from ESA are amazed by how well their map of dark matter - using a technique called gravitational lensing, which researchers describe as the deflection of light from distant galaxies by the gravitational attraction of foreground mass concentrations - conforms to current standard models of matter. In this respect, the research teams working at ESA now consider dark matter the "scaffolding" encompassing the assembly of stars and galaxies. "It's reassuring how well our map confirms the standard theories for structure formation," says Richard Massey, of the California Institute of Technology.

Somewhat controversially, Peter Woit suggests that string theorists, starved of anything tangible to go on, seem to be appropriating known physics to suit their own ends. According to Woit, string theorists are offering dramatic and outrageous rhetoric, rather than science, to support their case, referring to one such "over-the-top outrageous" quote made by Susskind himself: "Dark matter and dark energy would remain imponderable enigmas, shorn of any clues about where they come from. Astronomers can live without knowing the quantum properties of gravity. But to learn that 96 percent of the cosmos is unknowable would be a bitter pill to swallow. It would be even worse for physicists. Without a logical framework in which to pose and answer questions, our inquiries into the fundamental aspects of the physical world would devolve into semantic quibbles."

Susskind's prospect of extra dimensions and possibilities beyond our wildest imaginings, beyond our "elegant universe," is sure to appeal to the fantasist inside of everyone, but whether this is reality rather than wishful thinking remains to be seen. "I don't know what strange and unimaginable twists our view of the universe will undergo while exploring the vastness of the landscape," Susskind said in a recent interview, "But I would bet that at the turn of the 22nd century, philosophers and physicists will look back nostalgically at the present and recall a golden age in which the narrow provincial 20th century concept of the universe gave way to a bigger better megaverse, populating a landscape of mind-boggling proportions."

Ectoplasm

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What am I but a ghost? Dreaming a dream of a girl with ectoplasm coming out of her nipples. And here I am, trying to forget myself. Only to be reminded by the phantom of death who sings to me from the moon while I stand on the river in Winnipeg.

Langside Lounge

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Many religious belief systems have a particular spirit, deity, demon or angel whose responsibility is to escort newly-deceased souls to the afterlife, such as Heaven or Hell. These creatures are called psychopomps, from the Greek word ψυχοπομπóς (psychopompos), literally meaning the "guide of souls". They were often associated with horses, whippoorwills, ravens, dogs, crows, owls, sparrows, harts, and dolphins.

In Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams as a wise man (or woman), or sometimes as a helpful animal. In some cultures acting as a psychopompos was also one of the functions of a shaman. This could include not only acompanying the soul of the dead, but also vice versa: to help at birth, to introduce the newborn's soul to the world.

Yukdugu

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I can't beleive Im here at the Langside Lounge with my Korean Kitty.
Happy New Year!