Table Of Content

World, Underworld, Overworld, Dreamworld by Mike Hockney Published by Hyperreality Books Copyright © Mike Hockney 2013 The right of Mike Hockney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. Quotations “Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world.” – Bronislaw Malinowski “Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.” – Jung “Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.” – Joseph Campbell “Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since the Greeks.” – Alistair Cooke “There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call ‘atheists,’ and those who think they are facts are ‘religious.’ Which group really gets the message?” – Joseph Campbell “Mythology may, in a real sense, be defined as other people’s religion. And religion may, in a sense, be understood as popular misunderstanding of mythology.” – Joseph Campbell “Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.” – Vernor Vinge “Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology.” – Christopher Nolan “I believe in mythology. I guess I share Joseph Campbell’s notion that a culture or society without mythology would die, and we’re close to that.” – Robert Redford Table of Contents World, Underworld, Overworld, Dreamworld Quotations Table of Contents The Illuminati The Cosmological Origin of Religion The Homeric World The Five Rivers of Hell The Return of the Dead Abrahamism: The Flat Earth Society The Hyperboreans Beyond the Dead: The Edge of the Universe Winged Dreams Dreamcatchers Dream Architecture The Golden Race The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection Tombworld Unburied Souls The Cimmerians: The People of the Dark The Evolution of Dreams and Dreaming The Dark Realm The Silent Abode of Hypnos Haunting The Greatest Boundary of All: Death The Palace of the Dead The Blessed Race The Koranic Flat Earth The Son of God? Creation by Divine Battle The Wizard of Oz Near Death Experiences (NDE) Brave New World The Orgastic Future Heaven, Hell and Purgatory Jack the Ripper The Waters of Oblivion The Inner Sanctum Mammon’s Prophet Empathy and Sympathy Libido and Eros Demons Dreams are but Shadows Ghost Stories The Stars of the Dead The Double Mind of Man The War in Heaven The Gorgon Shield The Gnostic Christ Pythagoras The Music of the Heavens Winners and Losers The Heavenly Race of Gods Sleepwalking Reincarnation or Resurrection? The Golden Pharaohs A Modern Myth The Birth of Time The Geocentric Versus the Heliocentric Here Be Dragons The Labyrinth of Language Daniel in the Lions’ Den The Big Question The Illuminati THIS IS ONE OF A SERIES OF BOOKS outlining the cosmology, philosophy, ontology, epistemology, politics and religion of the ancient and controversial secret society known as the Illuminati, of which the Greek polymath Pythagoras was the first official Grand Master. The society exists to this day. The Cosmological Origin of Religion All religious beliefs about the world begin with cosmology. The earliest civilisations had mythological cosmologies involving various cosmic gods that were anthropomorphisms of natural forces, so, for example, the sun is a god, the sky is a god, earth is a god, the ocean is a god, winds are gods, the planets are gods, and so on. Abrahamism opted for one all-powerful anthropomorphic Creator. The ancient Greek philosophers looked to a divine, rational force that they did not anthropomorphise, thus allowing philosophy, and eventually natural science, to develop separately from religion. Modern science got rid of all the anthropomorphic gods and even the rational mental force (Logos; Nous; Arche; Apeiron) of the ancient Greek philosophers, leaving nothing but mindless, lifeless, purposeless atoms of matter, underpinned by a bizarre, unreal, unobservable probability and possibility wavefunction. The inevitable logical outcome of scientific materialist cosmology is atheism since there’s no place for any gods, and not even any place for freestanding mind. Those scientists that continue to be believers dishonestly and irrationally construct an unknowable domain of faith separate from that of their knowable science. This book is about the evolution of religion, philosophy and science through humanity’s various cosmological theories, especially those concerning the World (Earth), Overworld (sky and “heavens”), Underworld (including hell) and the World of Dreams (of transcendent states and of mentally moving between the different levels of existence). What you believe about the nature of reality is directly conditioned by how you understand cosmology. People can comprehend cosmology in terms of four basic attitudes: theism, deism, pantheism and atheism. With theism, a single God (monotheism) or many gods (polytheism) create, design and supervise the world and take a personal interest in humanity. This is the view of Abrahamism and the old pagan religions. With deism, a single God or many gods are not interested in humans at all and act more in the manner of natural laws and scientific forces. This was the standard view of the Enlightenment. With pantheism, God and Nature are effectively the same thing: we are all part of God/Nature. This is the core view of Eastern religion. With atheism, the universe is meaningless, pointless, purposeless and is nothing but a machine process. This is the standard scientific materialist view. Agnostics are those who do not commit themselves to any of the above views, hence they have no clear cosmology. (In practice, the vast majority of agnostics accept the atheist cosmology of scientific materialism but refuse to rule out something “more”. This makes no sense since, if there’s something “more”, scientific materialism is refuted.) Is the world rational or irrational? Is it conscious (mental and self-aware in its basic mode), unconscious (mental but without self-awareness in its basic mode, but with the logical capacity to evolve consciousness) or non-conscious (not mental at all in its basic mode)? Is it mental or material? Did it come from nothing at all or an eternal something? Is it purposeful or purposeless? Why is it ordered rather than chaotic? Why are we here? How did we get here? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Are we created or uncreated? Is death the end or just a new beginning? These are all the fundamental issues that have to be addressed. This is the story of how humanity has tackled these questions. And they all revolve around cosmology. The Two Species “It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination (name) for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats – and they in turn can listen to ours.” – Henning Mankell 1) Homo sapiens – wise humanity, knowing humanity, Gnostic humanity – Logos humanity. 2) Homo narrans – narrative humanity, storytelling humanity, emotional humanity, credulous humanity – Mythos humanity. We live in a world of narrative. Politics, economics, Hollywood, TV, video games, religion, advertising ... it’s all about narrative. For all members of the Mythos species, cosmology is explained in terms of a simplistic, emotional narrative about the “gods” or God: entities with which people can have a narrative and emotional connection and understanding. All members of the Logos species find cosmologies based on emotional narrative absurd. The Logos species comes to cosmology from a perspective of science, mathematics and rational philosophy. If reality is a mathematical, scientific or metaphysical system, there’s no point at all in addressing it in terms of Jews wandering in the desert, or an illiterate Arab going into a cave and speaking to an angel, or a guy born in a stable under a wandering star feeding the 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish. The Abrahamic “holy” texts have precisely zero truth content. You might as well worship fairytale princes and princesses, or frogs in need of a kiss. You cannot approach Logos from Mythos, or vice versa. They are wholly different takes on reality. One is rational (reflecting the Jungian thinking function) and the other emotional (reflecting the Jungian feeling function). Feelings cannot reveal ultimate rational truth. Rationalism cannot deliver emotional ecstasy. These are the blunt facts. If you’re a strongly feeling type, it will be impossible for you not to find Mythos explanations compelling and convincing. In fact, you will seek out such explanations since they make so much sense to you. By the same token, you will find Logos explanations cold, strange and incomprehensible, and you will avoid them as much as possible. If you’re a strongly thinking type, you will inevitably be drawn to science, rational metaphysics or mathematics. You will equally inevitably find Mythos explanations preposterous and even insane since they are so contrary to reason. No rationalist can contemplate Abrahamism without a shudder of revulsion and despair. How did a 100% lie come to be accepted by so many as 100% true? Only thanks to the ineradicable irrationalism of the Mythos species. Ultimate skepticism. What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? – They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.” – Nietzsche ***** Mythos is about storytelling and storyselling. Mythos is Hollywood applied to everything. Ye olde version of Hollywood scriptwriters were ancient prophets, priests and gurus. The idea that these people could ever tell you why the universe exists is simply comical, on a par with expecting George Clooney or one of his screenplay guys to provide the answer to life, the universe and everything. Ultimate reality has nothing at all to do with stories, feelings and wandering tribes in deserts. That’s a fact. True Religion True religion is not about “God”. It’s about the soul. God is the culmination of the soul’s journey, not the start. A god is simply any mathematically optimised soul. All souls are self-solving units of living mathematics. True religion is not about one Creator who makes everything else (all of which is dependent on him, hence enslaved by him). True religion is about countless independent, autonomous, uncreated, immortal souls with no cosmic master. ***** The truth isn’t about an eternal conscious being, as Abrahamism claims. The truth isn’t about non-conscious matter, as scientific materialism claims. The truth isn’t about a single mental Oneness outside space and time, as Eastern religion claims. The truth is about countless mathematical minds (monads; souls) that are inherently unconscious but which can dialectically evolve consciousness and finally achieve gnosis (God consciousness): the optimal state of the soul. Monads are self- solving life forces, and the answer they seek is their own divinity. All monads are teleological: their inherent purpose is to become gods. That is the authentic meaning of life. “God” is the end of this process, not the beginning. This is a fundamentally Evolutionary universe, not a Creationist universe. This is a fundamentally living universe (an organism), not a dead universe (a machine). This is a fundamentally mental universe, not a material universe. This is a fundamentally unconscious universe, not a conscious universe, but consciousness is something that can and will evolve from the unconscious. ***** The Jews say that the truth is delivered via stories and commandments relayed to us by the prophet Moses, who allegedly spoke to “God” on the summit of Mount Sinai. Christianity says the truth is delivered to us by the platitudes, parables, fables and sermons of a Jewish rabbi called Yehoshua ben Yosef (aka the man-God-Messiah “Jesus Christ”). Islam says that the truth is delivered to us by an illiterate Arab who dictated his “angelic visions” to credulous, superstitious scribes. Illuminism says the truth is delivered to us via the eternal truths of mathematics. You can’t learn a single thing about truth from Mythos. Truth is purely a Logos issue. Mythos might be fantastically entertaining, inspiring and moving, but it has zero truth content. No matter how good the story is, you won’t find yourself any closer to the truth. Mythos cosmology is always ridiculous. Only Logos cosmology can converge on the truth. We live in the Real World, not Story World. The Wrong Answer “The most important things are family and love.” – an anonymous terminally ill man, anticipating his final Christmas Most people share this view: a sentimental Mythos view. The most important thing, sorry to say, is reason, and knowing what comes next. You are an eternal being and you have had countless families and you have experienced love countless times. If only you could see true reality – from the perspective of eternity (the God’s eye view) – you would never become so emotional about one stitch of this eternal tapestry. It’s reason that offers supreme beauty and brings you ultimate peace, pleasure and knowledge of all things, including why you are here. The First Philosophers The ancient Greeks, with their dazzling philosophers, were the first to separate cosmology from theology. However, originally, the views of the Greeks were mythological and theological, like those of everyone else. Homer and Hesiod may be considered the first Greek cosmologists, and they took their inspiration from the religions (or mythologies, as we would now say) of Babylon and Egypt. The basic view of Homer was that Earth was a flat disk, completely surrounded by a vast, wide (effectively impassable) circular river called Oceanus. The land of the dead was either on the other, far side of Oceanus (hence unreachable from the land of the living), or beneath the surface of Earth (in the unreachable Underworld). In fact, both views can be combined so that the land of the dead is both across the ocean and under the ground. Above Earth, in the Homeric view, was the lower sky and then the region of aether (pure air, so to speak, breathed by the immortal gods), and above everything was the vault of the heavens – a vast brass dome that enclosed the upper cosmos. The sun, moon, dawn and heavenly constellations all rose from and set into the great Ocean-river. The sun rose in the East and set in the West, and was then transported back to the East in time for the next morning’s sunrise. Hesiod conceived a vast dome called Tartarus that matched the sky dome but was under rather than over the Earth disk and was as deep as the sky dome was high. The whole universe thus formed a vast sphere. So, “flat earthers” weren’t so flat! They were perfectly happy with the concept of the sphere, but for the cosmos rather than for Earth itself. Later, the Earth was also conceived as a sphere and then became the centre of a radiating set of spheres (or shells) that formed the complete cosmos (the Aristotelian system of crystal spheres). Mathematically, the concept of a flat Earth enclosed in a sphere is the first step in a mathematical progression to that of a spherical Earth at the centre of a whole set of cosmic spheres. Illuminism takes this progression much further, except it uses “complex” circles and spheres (i.e. involving imaginary numbers as well as real numbers) that arise from the generalised Euler Formula (the God Equation). We are in a beautiful universe of circles and spheres (perfect shapes), except they are “complex” rather than “real”, hence much harder to visualize and understand. Only mathematics reveals their true nature, not observation. Chaos Many ancients spoke of the universe beginning in “Chaos”. So, what was chaos? For many, it was water (the “waters of chaos”). Homer said that Oceanus was the origin of everything. Thales, the first philosopher, asserted that water was the arche – the fundamental substance of existence – and said that all things “are full of gods”. He meant that water was divine, and the source of mind and life. (We would all die without live- giving water, and we are overwhelmingly made of water). Water was not itself conscious but it gave rise to consciousness, through the gods, who then directed the creation of the universe. “Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods.” – Anthony Gottlieb For Thales, Earth was a circular disk floating on water like a piece of wood. Thales was vital in the development of thought by asserting that a substance (water) produced the gods rather than the gods producing a substance. This is revolutionary and gets rid of the gods as Creators. As in Illuminism, the universe creates the gods and the gods do not create the universe. Water, not gods or God, was the “first principle” for Thales. Anaximander, Thales’ successor, replaced water with the apeiron (the infinite or indefinite). Anaximenes, the next great philosopher, then suggested divine air as the arche. Pythagoras asserted that it was divine numbers and Heraclitus divine fire (which we would now call energy, defined by mathematics).

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