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  • Search for the Mind of God

    Search for the Mind of God

    From New Dawn 127 (Jul-Aug 2011)

    Stephen Hawking famously ended his 1988 bestseller A Brief History of Time with the statement that, if and when physics finds its long-sought grand unified field theory “we would know the mind of God.”1 Although since then he has reportedly regretted the phrase, and famously announced in 2010 that “God did not create the universe,” his original statement was – knowingly or not – in fact simply a repetition of the underlying quest of the historical scientific revolution.

    All its great pioneers, from Copernicus to Newton, were motivated by the passionate belief that by discovering the way the universe works they were not only uncovering God’s design, but also taking humankind closer to the divine. Science was for them primarily a spiritual quest. And, given the evidence, that’s precisely what it should be now.

    Despite rather desperately cowering behind the wall of strident rationalism most of them are famous for, the startling truth is that cosmologists and quantum physicists themselves have revealed that the mind of God may be much nearer than we think. Science itself has effectively proven that ours is not a random universe. Science itself has demonstrated it was literally designed for life, which implies a designer… But as science itself – in general – is rather backward in coming forward about this, permit us to explain.

    The sensational conclusion that the universe appears to be meant began to be formulated with the famous ‘anthropic principle’ brought to the attention of the scientific community at the end of the 1970s by the seminal Nature paper by British cosmologists Bernard Carr and Martin Rees. The latter, now Lord Rees – Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society until 2010 – recently attracted the disdain of many colleagues by accepting the annual million-pound Templeton Foundation prize awarded for an “outstanding contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” Quite something for a mainstream scientist – and of course hugely controversial.

    The Designer Universe

    At its most basic, the anthropic principle states that all the cosmological data shows the laws of physics are, to an uncanny degree, exactly the ones needed for a bio-friendly universe. According to Paul Davies’ book The Goldilocks Enigma (2006) conditions are, like her porridge, “just right” for organic life. It needs precisely our kind of universe: relatively stable, with galaxies and stars – and this was by no means inevitable: if things were even slightly different matter could never have coalesced, or the universe would be riddled with black holes, preventing the formation of heavenly bodies. Life requires certain chemical elements, primarily carbon, which need stars to manufacture them and disperse them in their supernovae explosions. It also needs planets where the building blocks can be assembled for living beings to develop.

    All this requires not only fundamental particles and energies to possess particular values, but the relationships between them must be very precise. Carr and Rees noted that for almost every variation of the physical laws, a bio-friendly universe would be impossible. Yet as Hawking writes, “a series of startling coincidences” make the laws of physics “a system that is extremely fine-tuned” to produce conditions propitious for life.2 Freeman Dyson, the British-born American physicist, writes that there are “numerical accidents that seem to conspire to make the universe habitable,”3 while Paul Davies notes the “ingenious and seemingly contrived ways”4 the laws of physics allow the creation and dispersal of the elements necessary for life – and that we appear to live in a “designer universe.”

    More astoundingly, as all the values were ‘set’ by the big bang – if the conditions at the start of the universe had been say, bigger and bangier or smaller and less bangy (sorry for the technical terms), the physical laws would also be different – then life seems to have been an integral part of the design from the very beginning.

    One of the first examples of the fine-tuning to be recognised, back in the 1950s, is the formation of carbon – quintessential to organic life – which like all except the simplest three elements is forged in the centre of stars. However, scientists had long realised that according to conventional wisdom, carbon shouldn’t exist at all (or if it did it should be extremely rare). Even the vast temperatures and pressure in stars shouldn’t produce enough energy for stable atoms to form. But we now know there is a lucky fluke – a quantum effect known as resonance – which produces a ‘spike’ that enormously amplifies the energy to exactly the right value. This only happens for carbon.

    The scientist who worked out the process, the maverick British astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle, was so astonished by the coincidence that he famously described it as a “put-up job.” In a 1957 lecture he observed:

    If this was a purely scientific problem and not one that touched on the religious problem, I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars. If this is so, then my apparently random quirks have become part of a deep-laid scheme. If not then we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents.5

    The most recently-discovered example of fine tuning is perhaps the most compelling. This relates to ‘vacuum energy,’ a force arising from ‘virtual particles’ that fill even empty interstellar space, and which has a profound effect on the universe, since it determines its rate of expansion and this in turn determines how life-friendly it is. If the universe was expanding too quickly, then gravity would be unable to build galaxies, planets and stars; if too slowly, then all matter would be pulled back to the ‘big crunch’ before life had time to evolve. Obviously, our universe is expanding within that critically narrow range that allows it to be bio-friendly. But only recently has it been discovered how narrow – indeed, wafer-thin – that range is.

    It all hangs on the rate of expansion, determined by the balance between the negative and positive energy of the virtual particles. In the mid-1990s, based on new improved data from the Hubble Space Telescope and other sources, cosmologists were finally able to calculate the balance. It turns out that the negative energy cancels out all but an infinitesimal amount of the positive – all but 10120 (that’s 119 zeroes after the decimal point and before the 1).

    But the scary thing is that if this number was just one decimal place shorter – 10119 – then the universe would be expanding too quickly: there would be no stars and no planets. That tiny decimal place is the difference between life and no-life. The leading American theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind wrote: “This seems like an absurd accident and we have no idea why it should happen. There is no fine-tuning quite like this in the rest of physics.”6 Nobel prize-winning theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg commented in 1993 that if the extraordinary balancing act of the vacuum energy was confirmed then, “it will be reasonable to infer that our own existence plays an important part in explaining why the universe is the way it is,” but went on, “For what it is worth, I hope that this is not the case.”7 Unfortunately for Weinberg, it has since been confirmed. It is the case.

    It’s rather like winning the lottery (we assume). If our numbers come up we might think we’re clever or destined to win but of course it would be just chance. Not so long ago astrophysicists assumed that’s how it was with life: the right conditions just happened by accident. But the anthropic principle has shown that the game appears to have been fixed – as if only our numbers went into the machine. We couldn’t lose. In fact, the ‘coincidences’ involved in the universal fine tuning are so vast it’s more like winning the lottery week after week for several years.

    Of course this was unthinkable for most scientists – after all, design implies a designer – so they desperately searched for a get-out clause. Susskind duly came up with the now-ubiquitous multiverse as a way out of the anthropic conundrum: the theory that there are really billions – perhaps an infinity – of universes, each with its own physical laws (since conditions at the big bang were different for each one). The vast majority don’t possess life, but because we live in one of the few that does, we are mistakenly over-impressed by the coincidence that it is spot on for us.

    The multiverse hypothesis turns the virtually improbable into the inevitable. This time it’s like entering our lottery numbers into several billion games simultaneously. We’re bound to scoop the jackpot at least once. The multiverse allowed scientists uncomfortable with the implications of the anthropic principle to breathe a sigh of relief.

    There is, however, a major problem with the multiverse – and its exotic brother theories, string and M. There’s not a shred of evidence for any of it. Ironically it’s a fundamental aspect of the multiverse that there can never be any, since interaction between universes is by definition impossible. Which also conveniently makes the theory impossible to disprove. As Carr wrote in 2007, the multiverse “is highly speculative and… currently untestable. Indeed, it may always remain so…”8

    It gets worse. Being untestable means it violates one of science’s cardinal rules – that any hypotheses should be capable of being tested by experiment or observation. At best the multiverse is an interesting speculation, a possible but unprovable answer to the conundrum of the anthropic principle. But the majority of physicists take it as the answer to their prayers. If indeed they ever admit to praying.

    It’s easy to understand why. Hawking, for example, has acknowledged it’s a straight choice between intelligent design (begging the awkward question of the designer) and the multiverse.9 Naturally he champions the latter, as do most of his colleagues, keen to look cool and cutting-edge, and beguiled by the seduction of endless equations – even if by definition they can never lead anywhere or prove anything.

    The Anti-Science of the Multiverse

    One of the key principles of every other area of science is that it is contingent, the consensus at any time being based on the best data, but with the underlying acknowledgement that future discoveries may lead to major revisions. But here we have hard data pointing directly to a designer universe – and yet the overwhelming majority of scientists prefer to accept the entirely speculative and untestable multiverse, just because one day they might find a way of proving it. In other words, they accept it on faith, their belief in a non-designed universe blinding them to the overwhelming evidence for one that is obviously designed, and that science itself now points to.

    The anthropic principle has been conceptually divided between the ‘weak’ version (the universe appears to be designed for intelligent life, but this is an illusion) and the ‘strong’ version (the universe appears to be designed for us because it is). Enter the American John Archibald Wheeler (1926-2008), one of the most eminent modern theoretical physicists, discoverer of black holes and originator of the concept of space-time wormholes, who came up with a new spin: the “participatory anthropic principle.”

    Wheeler developed the concept as the logical extrapolation of another weird aspect of quantum physics, the implications of which few other physicists have dared explore. It is accepted that by observing events at the quantum level they will inevitably be changed by the act of observation. The outcome of a particular experiment often depends on how the experimenter chooses to make the observation – in effect they assign particular values to a subatomic particle.

    This is seen most famously in the ‘double slit experiment’, where the experimenter can ‘choose’ whether a beam of light behaves as a particle or a wave even when only a single photon is involved. Bizarre though it might seem, a fundamental principle of quantum theory is that the photon does not take a single path, but takes every possible path simultaneously. They exist as a series of probabilities (‘wave functions’), and only when an observation is made does the wave function ‘collapse’ and the photon take a specific position. As Wheeler declared (his emphasis): “Each photon is governed by laws of probability and behaves like a cloud until it is detected… The act of measurement is the transforming act that collapses uncertainty into certainty.”10 On a much wider scale, every particle in the universe exists as a wave function, ‘waiting’ to be given specific values by being observed.

    Wheeler showed that it wasn’t just a question of the experimenter determining through observation how a particle behaves now. In the double-slit experiment choosing how the photon is observed after it has passed through the slit produces the same effect. The observer effectively chooses how the particle behaved in the past – maybe only microseconds ago, but in the past nevertheless (‘backward causation’).

    Initially Wheeler’s proposal could only be a thought experiment as the technology allowing a choice to be made in the infinitesimally small period while a photon is in ‘flight’ wasn’t available. But in 2006 a French team devised a method of experimenting for real. Wheeler was proved right.

    He then realised the same effect could be obtained if light from a distant star was involved, but the observer on Earth would be ‘choosing’ how a photon behaved when it set out on its journey thousands, maybe millions, of light years ago. The observer effect must be truly cosmic in scale. He then developed the notion of the “participatory universe” – by observing the universe, we are actually creating it, not just now but in the past. In short, we are determining the initial conditions set by the big bang. Physicists aren’t discovering the laws of physics – they are creating them. As he noted: “The past history of the universe has no more validity then is assigned by the measurements we make – now!”11 And in a somewhat Star Trekky soundbite he declared: “We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago.”12

    In Wheeler’s vision, human consciousness (and that of any other sentient beings out there) is an integral part of cosmic evolution. The big bang creates the subatomic particles from which galaxies, stars and planets are built. Life forms on planets and evolves to produce intelligent, conscious beings, who through their active observation actually manifest the big bang itself, “the mechanism of genesis.”13 (Wheeler pointed out that this disposes of the multiverse: if consciousness is needed to make the universe, then only a universe such as ours, with its conscious living beings, can exist.)

    In other words, there is a circular relationship between mind and the universe – human consciousness is in some way necessary for its completion: the universe is evolving from a starting point towards some end, and mind plays a key part in that process. As Bernard Carr commented: “Wheeler has suggested a more radical interpretation [of the anthropic principle] in which the universe does not even come into being in a well-defined way until an observer is produced who can perceive it. In this case, the very existence of the universe depends on life.”14

    Although to the casual reader this might seem somewhat off the wall, Wheeler’s logic holds up – and, unlike the multiverse, its predictions have been tested experimentally – winning acceptance from other prominent physicists. Among them is Stephen Hawking, who writes in The Grand Design: “We create history by our observation, rather than history creating us.”15 If Wheeler is right, then we play a part in the grand design implied by the anthropic principle. And if for ‘designer’ we read ‘God’, then we are, at least in part, God, or have a share in God’s mind.

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    Back to the Future

    Perhaps the oddest – and most satisfying – aspect of this is how Wheeler’s participatory universe dovetails with the beliefs of the ancients, as Austrian astrophysicist Erich Jantsch (1929-80) noted. Based on the mass of evidence for cosmic purpose, he developed the concept of the ‘self-organising universe’, very similar to Wheeler’s. To him, the universe, through its components – including conscious beings – determines its own evolution. He wrote, “God is not the creator, but the mind of the universe.”16 But although acknowledging that the self-organising universe was prefigured in many mystical religious systems, Jantsch singled out one in particular: “the oldest recorded world view, Hermetic philosophy.”17

    Bingo! In fact we had pinpointed the very same tradition while researching our latest book, The Forbidden Universe, as the inspiration for all the great heroes of the scientific revolution: Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, William Harvey, William Gilbert, Isaac Newton – even the allegedly arch-rationalist Francis Bacon.

    The Hermetic system is a metaphysical and magical philosophy and cosmology contained in a collection of texts known as the Hermetica, ascribed to a legendary Egyptian teacher, Hermes Trismegistus (‘Thrice-Great Hermes’). These writings, of which around twenty survive out of a much larger body, were set down in Egypt during the period of Greek domination, some time after the third century BCE.

    They were largely lost to Europe after the crackdown on pagan scholarship when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century CE. But they survived in the Middle East (where they actually laid the foundations of medieval Arab science), and were rediscovered by Europe in the mid-fifteenth century by an agent working for the great patron of learning, Cosimo de’ Medici – the event that actually triggered the Renaissance.

    As we show in The Forbidden Universe, not only did the Hermetica go on to be the driving force behind the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it also – somewhat spookily – outlines a cosmology that fits very neatly with Wheeler’s and Jantsch’s. (This may not be entirely coincidental, as Wheeler’s great philosophical hero was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz [1646-1716], the extraordinary intellect and contemporary of Newton, who, like him, was steeped in the Hermetic tradition – although it was expedient to downplay his interest in matters esoteric.)

    The Hermetica, too, celebrated the universe as an emanation of the mind of God, declaring: “… you must think of god in this way, as having everything – the cosmos, himself, the universe – like thoughts within himself.”18 American historian of science Ernest Lee Tuveson sums up the fundamental Hermetic principle: “the world emanates from the divine intelligence, and, as a whole in which each part is an essential component member, expresses the great Mind.”19 And modern Hermetic specialist, American philosopher Glenn Alexander Magee, writes: “Hermeticists not only hold that God requires creation, they make a specific creature, man, play a crucial role in God’s self-actualisation. Hermeticism holds that man can know God, and that man’s knowledge of God is necessary for God’s own completion.”20 Back to Wheeler’s participatory universe…

    In the Hermetic cosmology, the universe is God, everything in it is an emanation of God’s mind, and human beings play a necessary part in God’s self-actualisation. In Wheeler’s, consciousness plays a fundamental role in actualising the universe.

    But where did the writers of the Hermetic treatises get their ideas? Renaissance devotees of their philosophy believed it encapsulated the highest wisdom of the ancient Egyptian civilisation, that of the pyramid builders themselves. In later centuries there was a more critical view: the texts might have been written in Egypt, but owed more to Greek ideas. However, recent research shows that – while written for a Greek audience – the Hermetic books do indeed contain traditional Egyptian religious and cosmological ideas. In fact, there a compelling case that they came from the most ancient known Egyptian cult: the religion of Heliopolis, as set out in the Pyramid Texts, the oldest magical writings in the world. And as it was indeed the religion of the builders of the great pyramids of Giza, this would vindicate the beliefs of the Renaissance Hermeticists.

    In their complex and highly symbolic system, the Pyramid Texts too reveal many parallels with Wheeler’s participatory universe. According to the Heliopolitan theology the cosmos is an emanation flowing out from the creator-god, Atum, expanding from a single point of origin outward to the material world. But it, too, involves a flow from ourselves back to the moment of creation. As specialist in the Heliopolitan religion, American anthropologist Karl Luckert puts it, the universe not only “exhales” from Atum but “inhales.” We might need Atum/God, but he needs us.

    So perhaps instead of tying themselves in the knots of string theory and abandoning themselves to the siren seduction of the non-existent multiverse, scientists would be better advised to read the Hermetica. After all, they would only be following in the footsteps of intellectual giants. But they should be warned: there is a creative consciousness involved, as science itself shows. It is a fact: face it. But we must stress that while this ‘god’ bears no resemblance whatsoever to the petty tyrant of the Old Testament, he/she/it is not too hard to find. Simply start the quest with a mirror.

    Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince are the authors of the book The Forbidden Universe: The Occult Origins Of Science And The Search For The Mind Of God (Constable, 2011), available from all good bookstores.

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    Footnotes

    1. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Press, London, 1988, 175.

    2. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, Bantam Press, London, 161.

    3. Freeman J. Dyson, A Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 2007, 44.

    4. Paul Davies, The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning, Penguin, London, 1993, 197.

    5. In Mervyn Stockwood (ed.), Religion and the Scientists, SCM Press, London, 1959, 64.

    6. Leonard Susskind, ‘A Universe Like No Other’, New Scientist, no. 2419, 2003, 37.

    7. Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, Hutchinson, London, 1993, 182.

    8. Bernard Carr, Universe of Multiverse?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, 14.

    9. In the Sunday Times’ Eureka magazine, September 2010.

    10. John Archibald Wheeler and Kenneth Ford, Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1998, 334.

    11. Ibid., 337.

    12. On ‘The Anthropic Universe’, The Science Show, ABC National Radio, 18 February 2006.

    13. John Archibald Wheeler, ‘Genesis and Observership’, in Robert E. Butts and Jaakko Hintikka (eds.), Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1977.

    14. B.J. Carr, ‘On the Origin, Evolution and Purpose of the Physical Universe’, in John Leslie (ed.), Physical Cosmology and Philosophy, Macmillan, New York, 1990, 152.

    15. Hawking and Mlodinow, op. cit., 140.

    16. Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1980, 308.

    17. Ibid., 308.

    18. Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, 41.

    19. Ernest Lee Tuveson, The Avatars of Thrice Great Hermes, Bucknell University Press, London, 1982, xi.

    20. Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2001, 9.

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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  • The Hermetic Universe

    The Hermetic Universe

    Ever since my formative years, when I first began to think in concepts, I have always been confounded by the mystery of human existence. By and large we all tend to take this consciousness of ours for granted, but for me it has always been a source of wonder. Equally perplexing is that ultimate question in life: death – that future happening looming over the horizon of all of our lives like some conceptual black hole. What, one wonders, is the purpose in the unending cycle of the genesis and inevitable destruction of all of us? Why are millions of sentient beings all over our planet created, only to starve or be slaughtered wholesale, many without ever having been given the opportunity to fulfil themselves?

    On the wider scale of evolution, we see evidence in palaeontological and fossil records, of the emergence and subsequent violent extinction of whole races of people and species of animal. These entities come and go with alarming regularity. But to what avail?

    In the greater universe also, existence is no less capricious, with the continuous formation and devastating destruction of planets, stars – even entire galaxies. And who knows what countless other life-forms out there are being indiscriminately annihilated in this way? Just normal, everyday occurrences – but these inviolable and often disturbingly violent events have persistently gnawed at my reason. Why, I ask myself, would the theologians all-wise and all-knowing Benefactor – if he exists – create such a myriad of wonderful forms and then turn round and simply destroy them? These endless cycles of life and death, creation and destruction – what kind of devilment is this?

    The ongoing debate over the possible existence and modus operendi of a conscious, all-knowing creator proceeds unabated, with contributors from all disciplines lining up to have their say. However, owing to a specific sequence of events which led me on a solitary quest which was to last nearly fifteen years, I believe I have found a way of understanding what might really be going on in and around us. And ultimately, if I am right, the future looks not all bad. What is more, in this particular scheme of things, God is tangible, very much alive, and undeniably omnipresent.

    Strange as this may seem, this whole scenario can all be explained with numbers.

    Introducing the Hermetic Code

    The theory in question centres on a familiar numerical symbol: 22/7. This is pi of course, a unique mathematical convention whose discovery is generally attributed to the Greeks, but which in fact expresses a symmetry that was recognised as far back as the time of the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom.

    It is now generally accepted by all but the most hardened sceptic that the classical pi ratio – 22/7, or 3.142857 etc. – is incorporated in the dimensions and proportions of the Great Pyramid. That the Egyptians knew of this value is further substantiated by a key piece of non-pyramidal evidence. This appears in the form of a royal decree, one of the most important administrative documents of the Old Kingdom, which appoints the high priest and Grand Vizier Shemaj Director of Upper Egypt. This document officially places all twenty-two nomes (districts) under his authority, enumerating them from first to last. Some time later the pharaoh appoints to the post of deputy the overseer vizier j, who seems to be the son of the same Shemaj. But then comes the most interesting part of this ancient decree, which states that the son’s jurisdiction, as deputy, extends to only seven nomes. The symbolism is obvious: father over son, twenty-two over seven: pi.

    Most people are aware that pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. However this ratio exists separate from circles as well. It resonates in and around us and is the answer to innumerable maths puzzles. It is intrinsic to the solutions of probability and statistical questions; and it is part of how we interpret phenomena as varied as the structure of atoms to the motion of stars. Is it not remarkable, therefore, given its uniqueness and sophistication, that the ancient Egyptians incorporated this symmetry, not only in the proportions and dimensions of what is undoubtedly one of the most impressive pieces of architecture of the ancient world, but also as a basic model for the conduct and interactions of their high priests?

    Now, apart from geometry and the solving of probability and statistical questions, there is another, much more important aspect of the pi convention. This is its musical conformity. 22/7 is in fact an expression of three consecutive octaves of resonance. An octave, as everyone knows, comprises seven fundamental notes: Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti. The eighth note, Do, a repeat of the first but with double the pitch frequency, is the first note of the second octave. Accordingly the eighth note of the second octave – again, Do – is the first note of the third. Taken together these three octaves contain twenty-two notes.

    What we have here, in fact, is a symbolic embodiment of the two most fundamental laws of nature, namely, the ubiquitous law of three forces (active-passive-neutral), and the lesser-known but equally all-embracing law of octaves. The law of three forces, as we shall see, is the absolute mainstay of all creative processes, whose influence manifests practically everywhere. The second law, the law of octaves, tells us that all phenomena generated by these three primordial forces are essentially musically structured. To sensibly visualise this concept, we need to look at the formula pi when expressed musically, like so:

    Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-Do.

    This configuration expresses in exact scientific terms everything you need to know to understand the General Theory of just about Everything. All one need do to appreciate this is to remember the key musical numbers incorporated within it. These are: 3, 4, 7, 8, 22, and 64. Three, the number of the Trinity, is the number of octaves encoded in pi. Four is the number of base-notes (Dos) in three consecutive octaves. Seven is the number of intervals between the notes of the major scale. Eight is the number of individual notes in the major scale. Twenty-two is the number of notes in three consecutive scales or octaves. And, according to the law of three forces, the three octaves incorporated in pi are each sub-divisible into three octaves apiece, giving an inner formula of nine octaves, or sixty-four notes. So eight is the constant, and sixty-four, is the square of it.

    So much for the maths. You don’t need to be an Einstein to venture further, although it is worth noting the most famous scientific equation of all time – e=mc2 – was formulated to verify this great scientist’s Special Theory of Relativity, which states that e, the latent nuclear energy contained in any given element, is equal to m, the mass of the thing, multiplied by c2, the square of the constant speed of light. As we shall see, the square of the constant occurs time and again throughout the whole of nature.

    I have called this musical pattern of symmetry the Hermetic Code, after the Greek god of wisdom and patron of alchemy Hermes Trismegistus, known as the god Thoth, in Old Kingdom Egypt. As noted previously, it was in ancient Egypt where the pi symmetry first came to light, both in its most famous piece of architecture the Great Pyramid – and also in extant administrative documents of the Old Kingdom.

    The law of three expressed in the Hermetic Code can be recognised by anyone. Nothing in this universe can be created without the combined action of the three forces described by it: active, passive and neutral. The three main constituents of atoms – protons, electrons and neutrons – the triplet-codon templates of the genetic code, the three pin plug, two opposing teams and a neutral referee, the three primary colours of the spectrum of light, the tripart social and political arenas, two chemical compounds and an intermediary catalyst – all of these trinities exist and interact as a direct result of the three fundamental forces described by the first law of nature. Whenever and wherever something is created, these three forces will inevitably be there.

    The second law – the law of octaves – also operates throughout the entire universe. For example, the atomic scale of matter described by the periodic table of elements in chemistry conforms to this law precisely. Based on the atomic weight of a given substance, the table begins at its apex with hydrogen, the lightest of all elements, which has just one electron tracing a specific orbit, or period, around the nucleus. The heavier the element, the more electrons it hosts, and the more periods are needed to accommodate them. The table culminates with substances like curium, one of the densest of radioactive elements. The curium atom consists of ninety-six electrons, which between them trace a total of seven periods around the nucleus precisely the number of periods, or intervals, between the fundamental notes of the major musical scale. The eighth, transcendental note of this atomic scale is the whole phenomenon, all atoms combined.

    There is also a current method of classification in nuclear physics called the theory of quantum chromodynamics, which indicates that, beneath the atomic scale, in the world of subatomic quanta, there are also distinct musical symmetries. The American physicist Murray Gell-Man noted that the categories of particle-molecules known as baryons, mesons and pions always combine together in families of eight, which he called octets – hence his name for the system: the eightfold way. Further, each of the eight particles in an octet is a triplet made up of three smaller particles, which Gell-Man called quarks. Three quarks to each particle, eight particles to each octet – an altogether familiar pattern. And then we have the hermetic structure of light, with its three primary colours, the seven fundamental colours of the spectrum and the final eighth note, the product of all seven colours when spun together – the white ray.

    Whilst still on the subject of theoretical physics, significantly the number sixty-four, the square of the musical constant, has surfaced in superstring theory, which describes all particles in the universe as infinitesimally small strings made of a kind of vibrational energy. You really cannot get more conceptually obscure than superstring theory, with its eleven different dimensions (three spacial, one temporal, and seven others of increasingly acute curvature), and a system of higher mathematics guaranteed to give the layman a form of intellectual vertigo. But no matter, all we need to know here is that this incredibly complicated system holds that there are eight degrees of manifestation or modes of movement inherent within the string itself. Moreover, in order to account for the four-dimensional structure of classical space-time geometry, the superstring theory is further developed through calculating the formulation of the string in four dimensions, the mathematics of which apparently produces precisely sixty-four specific degrees of movement associated with it. The detailed mechanics of this theory involves a language all of its own, inaccessible to the general reader, myself included. The point is – and any lay observer can see this – even the most complex and advanced mathematical formulae of present-day scientific thought, taken as symbols, reflect virtually every aspect, every nuance, of the original Hermetic Code.

    As well as the microcosmic music of the underworld, there is also a cosmic aspect of the Hermetic Code. This is dramatically reflected, not only in the musical symmetry of light itself, but also in the movements of major planets in relation to the Sun, many of which, as I explain in my book High Priests, Quantum Genes, beat out endlessly repeating intervals developing in time, which exactly conform to the relative values of the fundamental notes of the major scale. Ergo, the music of the spheres is not simply legend, but fact.

    Perhaps most crucial of all aspects of the Hermetic Code is that it actually resonates throughout the entire organic world. Probably most of you will have heard of the genetic code, a chemical arrangement used by the DNA in the cells of your body to manufacture amino acids, the building blocks of all organic life. In the genetic code there are four kinds of fundamental chemical bases: adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. In this respect it is significant there are exactly four base-notes, four Dos, in the triple-octave of resonance described by pi. It takes three of these bases to make what is known as a triplet-codon, an amino acid template, of which there are precisely sixty-four variations. Each of these codons correspond to one or another of twenty-two more complex components, namely, the twenty amino acids and two further coded instructions for starting and stopping the process of protein synthesis.

    All this, therefore, is crystallised music, composed by nature from units and sub-units of the constant number eight and its natural multiple, the square of the constant, sixty four. This same universal harmony is also reflected in the ever present number seven of course, which again, as we see from the periodic table, is prevalent throughout the whole of nature. This is simply because it, too, is an expression of the law of octaves, which describes eight fundamental notes, but with seven intervals between.

    So the General Theory of just about Everything is described in its entirety by the Hermetic Code, an exact blueprint, not only of the underlying structure of the physical universe, but also of the genetic code, of the DNA molecule, of life itself. This unique evolutionary concept has been in existence at least since the time of Old Kingdom Egypt. And, remarkably, the symmetry it describes is currently resonating through the entire spectrum of modern scientific enquiry. How strange is that? Well, not quite so strange, for the seeds of science were sown long ago, as we shall see when we go back in time. Consider this:

    In the symbolism of every major religion and belief system in history, the key numbers of the Hermetic Code are paramount. Without exception, these immensely powerful religious doctrines are all exact copies of the original blueprint. To briefly illustrate this, we need only to focus on the two key numbers of the octave: eight (the notes) and seven (the intervals between).

    In ancient Egypt, where the Hermetic Code first came to light, the people revered a pantheon of eight principal gods. There were three main theologies in the Old Kingdom: Hermopolitan, Memphite and Heliopolitan, and in all of them the octave format formed the basic blueprint.

    In China, in the third millennium BCE, the legendary sage Fu Hsi introduced a belief-system which was subsequently condensed into a book we today know as the I-Ching, whose chapters were numbered using a combination of eight three line symbols called trigrams. Confucius, who later added commentaries to this enigmatic book, subsequently introduced a system of instruction known as the Eight Steps of Learning.

    The body of writings known as the Vedas of Indian tradition described the nature of reality as being supported by a system of proofs, of which there were considered to be eight fundamental types. Reminiscent of this also are the systems of the Buddha, with his Eightfold Path, and the Persian Zoroaster, with his pantheon of eight Bounteous Immortals. Pythagoras, as we know, reinvented his own take on this oldest of sciences by working out the precise mathematics of the octave. In the Book of Genesis of Mosaic tradition, we read that God worked for six days, rested on the seventh, presumably starting over again on the eighth. Later still, Jesus Christ acted out possibly the greatest musical performance of all time through the Passion, which began on Palm Sunday and ended, seven days later, on the Sunday of the Resurrection. Finally we have Mohammad, last of the great revelationists, whose famous night journey began at the sacred site of the furthest mosque (The Dome of the Rock Temple in Jerusalem – the first note), and continued up through the seven heavens.

    The number seven, or the septenary principle, is equally ubiquitous in the annals of human tradition.

    It first appears in the customs of the Neanderthal race as far back as 75,000 BCE. In a cave at Drachenloch in the Swiss Alps, a known bear-hunter site, there was discovered an altar in which were enshrined seven bear skulls, each with their muzzles pointing toward the entrance.

    The Hindus regarded the constellation of the Great Bear (our Plough), as the heavenly home of the Septarishi, an embodiment of the seven Rishis (properties) applicable to the whole of nature. Their land had seven peninsulas, seven islands, seven rivers, seven seas and seven mountains.

    Another key number of the Hermetic Code, as noted earlier, is the number sixty-four, the square of the constant. This, too, is a vital component of many major religious and esoteric traditions. We have already noted this number is intrinsic to the pi convention, whose encoded triple-octave is further subdivisible into nine inner octaves – sixty-four notes. The Greeks recognised an Egyptian number system known as the Magic Square of Mercury, defined by the number 2080, which is the sum of all the numbers from one to sixty-four. Mercury, of course, is a Romanised version of Hermes/Thoth, the Egyptian messenger of the gods.

    In the time of the Buddha it was customary for the nobility to consult a council of sixty-four Brahmins on matters of supreme importance. The ancient game of chess, whose true origins are the subject of endless debate and whose strategic possibilities are seemingly endless, is played on a board comprising sixty-four squares. The Tarot pack, with its fifty-six minor arcana cards also includes a major arcana of twenty-two cards. This major arcana, a triple-octave on one scale, must also, according to the law of three forces, be a single octave on another scale. If we add this greater single octave onto the minor arcana figure, we end up with a total of sixty-four notes. And again, in the Koran, there is a crucial chapter on the sacred light of Allah – chapter sixty-four.

    So, what does all this mean? It means many things, whose separate conceptual strands all lead us back to the same hermetic blueprint. It means that the Hermetic Code, the design plan for everything existing – particles, cosmic concentrations, living cells – is applicable literally everywhere, not only in the wider universe, but also, as we see from esoteric traditions going back over centuries and millennia, in the ephemeral realms of the collective human psyche. It tells us that, if everything is music, then everything is hermetic, genetic, alive. There is an ancient dictum attributed to the Egyptian god Thoth which sums up this idea perfectly: As above, so below. The message is clear: man below and the universe above, as stated so emphatically in Genesis, are made in the same image. Everyone, quite literally, is a miniature universe. And expansion is the natural course of things.

    And so, if hermetic is genetic, this means the whole universe itself is alive, it is a living organism of infinite size. So if you are looking for a god, we have here a candidate that outshines all of the ill-defined, abstract deities alluded to by clueless clerics – an all-powerful, omnipresent deity that actually does exist.

    If we assume, therefore, that the universe is itself an organism, a living entity, and that we are all copies of it, then this would imply that the more advanced products of an organic brain – ideas, theories, concepts – are also in their own way alive, they are metaphysical genes, as organic as the brain from which they originate. The ancients of the remote past, in my view, seem somehow to have understood this, which is why they devised a musical mode of existence in the form of prescribed disciplines and rituals which enabled them to psychologically conform to the laws and forces controlling evolution. This is precisely why religion was first invented – to instil into the collective consciousness of humanity the necessity of harmonising one’s inner faculties according to the principles of the Hermetic Code.

    The aim was quite straightforward, it was an attempt to complete the natural course of one’s evolutionary and psychological development by living-out a harmonious existence and ultimately transcending on to a higher plane, a greater musical scale above. This greater scale, a wholly scientific concept describing a higher dimension of existence accessible to the trained mind, is the heaven expressed in all religions.
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