Above the Manifold

The Crossroads of Time

Before the birth of the Universe, Ahura Mazda existed. The ancient God of the Zoroastrian religion: Ahura Mazda embodies Goodness and Light. He is the personification of being -  limited in space, but not in time. His twin brother, Ahriman, represents all evil and negativity. Ahriman was limited in space, as well as in time. This meant that Ahriman could not see Ahura Mazda, but Ahura Mazda could see Ahriman. With his gift of the second sight, Ahura Mazda knew that by expanding into the boundless space, he would instigate a conflict, of unknown proportions, with his twin brother. But frustrated by his own spatial limitations, he was left with no other choice. When Ahriman saw a light coming across the void he did not realize it was his twin brother, who he had never seen. Jealousy became him, and he lusted after its radiant glory. Ahriman's rage manifested an army of demons hellbent on destroying it. Ahura Mazda offered peace if Ahriman consented to worship the Light, and love only good deeds. But Ahriman refused. Ahura Mazda reacted by showing his evil twin brother his ultimate fate. Horrified by what he had just witnessed, Ahriman, fell unconscious into the abyssal plane. When he awoke he resumed the bitter conflict once more.

The key weapon, in this battle between Good and Evil, is time. Being eternal, Ahura Mazda has an abundance of this commodity; whereas for Ahriman, time will eventually run out. For this reason it is said that "Ahriman has never existed and will never exist," because when measured against the infinite Ahura Mazda, the finite, invariably, is reduced to nothing.

The study of time is of great interest to Scientists and Philosophers, who believe its direction (known as the arrow of time) is determined by a property called entropy.

In the beginning, all the matter of the Universe was confined, like the God Ahura Mazda, to a very small space. This high order of material concentration is termed; a state of extremely low entropy. According to  theory, the arrow of time points, unfalteringly, in the direction of higher entropy - where the spatial distribution of matter, and energy, is more uniform. Therefore, as time moves forward, the Universe (Ahura Mazda) expands. If the boundary conditions of the Universe were to collapse back into a state of extremely low entropy (an event known as the Big Crunch), then time would also appear to travel in reverse. While it is extremely unlikely that time/entropy will go in reverse - e.g. that the contents of your belly will reemerge to form the shape of your last dinner - it is not impossible. On an infinite time scale, the probability of any event actually occurring, no matter how unlikely it seems, becomes a dead certainty. However, from a cohesive perspective, the overall direction of entropy, whether rising or falling, remains irrelevant. All that matters is the arrow of time; and this always points towards higher entropy regardless of what direction entropy is actually taking. This means that the Universe has two apparent beginnings; one at each end. It is, in fact, a diploid Universe expanding across the void to meet itself at the crossroads of time. This is the event described in the legendary encounter between brothers Ahura Mazda and Ahriman.

Life on the Eighth Sphere

From the point of view of either Universe, time in the other, flows in reverse. Given this; how do we know if we live in the Ahrimanic or Mazdaic Universe, since both are relative? No-one in the Ahrimanic Universe would dare worship Ahura Mazda, for fear of what Ahriman would do to them. Ahura Mazda is the God of the Zorastrians, and in consequence, the God of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Therefore, we must be in the Ahura Mazdaic Universe, as nothing like Zoroastrianism could occur in the other one.

What kind of creatures could there logically exist in a Universe where time flows backwards? Would we see dead bodies being pulled from graves in sorrow; reanimated, made to grow younger, and then returned to the wombs of their mothers, as babes? It is unfathomable. And what of food and excretion; are these now somehow reversed equations? It seems too unlikely. What then is the alternative? As the old saying goes, know thy enemy. To know more about the nature of the life forms we are dealing with, we must first find out more about their habitat. If their world is a threat to ours it must occupy the exact opposite position, to ours, in the Ahrimanic timesphere. Otherwise, we would never meet, and everything would go smoothly. The terrestrial counterpart of Earth, in the Ahrimanic Universe, is something called the Eighth Sphere; or the Planet of Death. According to Rudolph Steiner, founder of Anthroposophy, Ahriman created the Eighth Sphere from a portion of matter rested from the Gods at the reformation of the world. Steiner says that all man-made technology is Ahrimanic in nature, and is therefore derived from the Eighth Sphere. It appears that, on the Eighth Sphere at least, the normal carbon-based evolution of life forms lost out to the silicon-based transistor race of machines. Some of these machines may be implanted with human souls, taken from Earth by Ahriman, for reasons we won't get into here.

The Eighth Sphere.

If you think our, biological, world would be untenable in a time-reversed sphere, the machine world affords a certain welcome logic.

In their world, robotic systems would absorb energy, as they went about their business, not release it. They would act as a kind of storage battery, drawing energy in directly from their environment, in the form of latent heat or kinetic energy. It would thereby be converted into nuclear or chemical reactions. Fully charged fuel cell reactors would be deposited, by the machines, at power stations or drop boxes. From here the process of defining energy in terms of matter, or higher force fields, would come to an end. All of these commands and protocols would be carried out via the use of reverse binary code and time reversal invariant mathematics. Eventually, when every mineral deposit is returned to its mountain resting place and every poisoned river is detoxified, the process of repopulating the eco-sphere could begin. Billions of years of computerized research would have enabled software bio-engineers to produce limitless varieties of plant and animal species - but, something is missing. Presiding over this incredible project, the Artificial Intelligence, with its capacity for reasoning and self reflection, is lonely. It looks to create a being with which to share its existence. And so; machine creates man in its own image.

This single event represents the biospheric singularity; whereby biological life becomes self-aware in humanity, and then seeks to overthrow their mechanical overlords. In the course of time, the human insurgency gain access to the machines' software protocols, and begin the process of erasing and rewriting crucial lines of code. This attack is mustered with breath-taking speed. Soon all that is left of the once great empire is the emaciated and sluggish automatons we see around us today. Could this be the terrifying vision that Ahriman witnessed? Certainly, this is what Ahura Mazda meant, when he said; Ahriman has never and will never exist. Ahriman cannot exist, because his origins lay in the future, which has not yet taken place. Everything he does, is an undoing.

The Midway Point

Terrence Mckenna, co-creator of the 2012 Time Wave singularity hypothesis, suggests that novelty (entropy) will increase to infinite proportions on the Winter Solstice of 2012. Possible outcomes of this increase in novelty include;

– an excruciatingly tight genetic filter

– encountering the technological singularity 

 – or a possible collision with another dimension

A technological singularity is defined as the moment when the rate of man's technological advancements out-strips his comprehension /control over them. Beyond the singularity machines are thought to be self-aware. The distinct temporal origins of the Ahrimanic Universe, and its duplicate Earth, fit the criteria of an Alternate Dimension. An encounter with this dimension, and its technologically evolved inhabitants, would be equivalent to encountering the  technological singularity head on. The winter solstice 2012 is the datum McKenna ascribes to the possibility of this dual event.

 If our present Universe is on a collision course with that of the future, Ahrimanic Universe, then the point at which they collide, naturally, represents midway between the creation and destruction of both our Universes. Knowing that the Universe is some 13.7 billion years old, we can easily calculate the projected life-span of the Universe to be about 27.4 billion years. Not as long as one might expect. The winter solstice of 2012 represents a branch point, the crossroads of time, that will could either save or condemn human society. 

Universe A is the Mazdaic Universe; and Universe B, the Ahrimanic.

At 11:11 GMT on the 2012 Winter Solstice the spacetime manifold will reach its most entropic. The course of events that has decided the destinies of our two worlds will finally bring them crashing together. Anything that occurs after this moment in time will, from now on, be spoken about as being; above the manifold. The (11:11) - 21.12.2012 time-space manifold subset will represent the first, and only time, when the events of both Universes synch up exactly. As a consequence of this temporal alignment, we could potentially see a doubling in the energetic conditions of the Universe. What this means is that there would be twice the normal energy level available for you to make changes in your lives, and the lives of others. The more perceptive amongst you will become increasingly aware of the onset of this synchronization, months, if not years, in advance of its occurrence. At present we are faced with two choices, as regards the future. We can either become assimilated into the Eighth Sphere, whereby our future is their past; and vice versa, or we can create our own future. One that will encompass all of the aspects of the human condition.

Rudolph Steiner, in his book The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, out-lines a method to achieve the latter. It simply requires a balancing of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principals. So, if you are on the computer all day, or driving the car, you should take time out to go walking in the park or along the beach; searching for shells or species of plants you don't recognize. The purpose is to interact with nature (the Luciferic principal) and to have regard for it. Beyond that there is not much more you can do.

Above the manifold there will be no difference between man and machine.

I was recently told, the above, in a dream; the circumstances of which I have since forgotten. At the time, I took it to mean that the technological singularity in 2012 would reduce thinking men to soulless automatons. I therefore, began investigating the spiritual and mathematical concepts behind space-time manifolds. There was surprisingly little information out there on this subject; and even less that I could understand. This article; with its entropic mix of Zoroastrianism and temporal manifolds, is the result of that investigation.

A superficial perusal of the internet will bring to light a disturbing trend transpiring in the spiritualization of technology and the promotion of transhumanism. I believe that this circumstantial evidence is confirmation of the oneiric message; above the manifold there will be no difference between man and machine. Even the word 'manifold,' describing as it does a machine component, appears to express the material infiltration of an otherwise spiritual event; 2012. But then, perhaps this is the spiritual challenge facing us, as we move forward.

(Or is it backward?)

E8; Sphere of Death

In this article I will try to prove that the Large Hadron Collider is the culmination of centuries of active research into the secrets of the Egyptian Ogdoad. I will trace the belief in this magical symbol from its roots in Hermopolis to the degrees of Freemasonry, through extensive periods of mathematical inquiry and finally to the LHC itself. Lastly, I will attempt to understand the real reasons behind this scientific venture, by discovering the secrets of the mysterious Eighth Sphere.

The Ogdoad (meaning eight-fold) represents the eight deities of the Ancient Egyptian pantheon. According to the mythology; the Ogdoad consisted of four male-female pairs, inhabiting a vast and dark void maintained prior to the birth of the Universe. An unforeseen imbalance in their respective forces creates the Sun God Ra. Given the pivotal nature of the Ogdoad to the Ancient Egyptian world view, we would expect some reference to it in the primarily symbolic language of the Masonic sects, which draw from this endless source of magic. We find that the Ogdoad finds expression in Freemasonry through the Masonic double square.

Left; the Ogdoad of the Aurum Solis. Right; the Masonic Double Square.

The double square is an abridged version of the Ogdoad specific to the Aurum Solis; a magical order that claims decent from the Ogdoadic tradition of the Western mystic form. The Ogdoad is an important part of Masonic and Aurum Soils initiation rites and represents the unification of cosmic forces.

In 1888, the mathematician William Killing discovered the E8 Lie Group - it is the first of all the largest Lie Algebras. It is so large that if all of the data pertaining to E8 were written out in standard typeface on A4 sheets, laid side by side, they would cover an area the size of Manhattan Island. E8 is the ultimate extension of the Ogdoad; it has 8 real space vector coordinates with 240 additional vertices, making a total of 248 dimensions. It has taken many decades to compile all of the statistical data on this structure, such is its magnitude. In 2007, Antony Garret Lisi incorporated what is known about E8 with his theories on particle physics to form a Grand Unified Field Theory. He suggested that each of the 248 vertices represent a subatomic particle. This implies that the basic underlying structure of the Universe must be 8-dimensional. Rotation of the E8 sphere in 8-dimensional space produces the observable particles and subatomic particles that make up the material Universe. Garret Lisi will be testing his theory alongside physicists at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in the New Year.

The LHC collides photons at extremely high speeds in the search for the subatomic particle that gives mass to an atom's nucleus. A consequence of these collisions is the creation of mass out of energy. This mass is comprised of equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. When matter and anti-matter come into physical contact, they annihilate one another. This was the condition of the Universe close to its beginning. An imbalance must have occurred early on between these two opposing forms of matter to create the Universe we see around us today. Just such an imbalance is spoken of in the Ogdoad of Hermopolis. The 8 deities of the Ogdoad are the real space vector dimensions of the E8 sphere, upon which all of the matter in the Universe is structured. Therefore, the matter-antimatter imbalance, known as the CP violation, must be  an artifact from the 8-dimensional proto-space of the Ogdoad.

The LHC Silicon Pixel detector arrays ALICE and ATLAS, are both octagonal in shape. The shape could be influenced by the Ancient Egyptian Ogdoad; in much the same way the London Eye was influenced by the early Christian Ogdoad. Further investigation of the dimensions of these detectors and the general layout of the LHC reveals repeated reference to the number 8. The Alice Pixel detector has 8192 (8 x 8 x 8 x 8ˆ2) 8" silicon wafers arranged in 256 rows and 32 columns. The Atlas array has 1744 (8 x 218) modules in the innermost part of the detector. There are some 1232 (8 x 154) dipole magnets in the collider tunnel. The tunnel has eight cryogenic distributor points. The collider tunnel contains two adjacent parallel beam pipes that intersect at four points, making a total of eight intersecting beams. The entire facility appears built to a specification expressing the Ogdoadic and Masonic Double Square. Finally, the design for the ALICE logo is an octagon.

The Octagonal Atlas detector at Cern.

Considering how long it took to compile the E8 data and the vastness of the Collider, it is remarkable that these two complex areas of research were completed just in time for Garret Lisi to test his theory. It is as if the Universe wanted us to find these things and put them together. The discovery of E8 in 1888, could be itself a communication from the Universe; alerting us to the important applications of this number. The comparatively simple eight-point star of the Ogdoad has been replaced by an 8-dimensional one. What does this mean for the future of the Ogdoad?

To understand the motives behind the construction of the Collider; and how it relates to the Ogdoad, we must first know a bit more about the Ogdoad itself. The Ordo Aurum Solis assigned seven of the eight Aeons (dimensional realms) of the Christian Ogdoad to the seven known celestial spheres (planets). The last Aeon of the Ogdoad was known as the Eighth Sphere. But what exactly is the Eighth Sphere?

A section in Madame Blavatski's The Keys to Theosophy entitled On the Septenary Constitution of Our Planet sheds light on Blavakski's belief that there are seven planet Earths nested one inside/beside the other in hyper-dimensional space. (She suggests that the Earth we inhabit extends to the fourth dimension, at most.) Originally Blavatsky taught openly about 8 eight such parallel Earths, but after she suspected left-hand initiates of leading her astray, she revised this to only seven, and left the 8th Sphere, as part of a secret doctrine for higher initiates only.  In this doctrine, the Eighth Sphere was described as a place where irredeemable souls are taken to be ground up into their constituent particles by the Ineffable Father; a place also known as the Planet of Death.

In Gnostic Scripture, the Eighth Sphere is more cheerfully referred to as the Eighth Heaven. It is the perfect realm of the One True God, who supercedes the blind demiurge Yaldabaoth/Yahweh. Considering that these scriptures were only discovered in the last century in the caves at Nag Hammadi, we can assume that Blavatsky was uneducated with regard to the true teachings on this subject. It is conceivable, indeed likely, that had she been privy to such information her views on the Eighth Sphere would have been very different. It is interesting to note that the Ordo Aurum Solis are among the only Secret Societies to have preserved the knowledge of the Eighth Heaven in the shape of the Ogdoad, which we know today as E8.
E8 may not simply be the shape of the physical universe, but that of heaven itself (see image left). Heaven contains our three-dimensional space as a subgroup within the 8th dimensional E8 Sphere. This gives it an Gnostic System of 3 + 5, completing the 7 + 1, 6 + 2, 4 + 4. of earlier Gnostic systems.