1.05.2013

Towards an Oniric Ontology

confluences between magic, philosophy and science

Nelson Job


This article in portuguese: HERE


"I can even sleep, but at the same time strong dreams keep me awake."
Franz Kafka




"Cowan City" Yerka



The relations between magic, philosophy and science were hidden for a long time by the Illuminist paradigm. Now we can approach with greater consistency the intense resonances between those modes of knowledge. Establishing the proximity between, specifically, Hermeticism, the avatar of Western magic, the Philosophy of Difference, according to development by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Modern Physics, with emphasis on Quantum Mechanics, Chaos Theory and elements of Cosmology, it is possible to elaborate an ontological theory of dreams and a new conception for transcendence.

Hermetism, an open definition
To define ‘magic’ is an inglorious task, since demonology historian Stuart Clark (2006) sustains that magic is nothing; it is whatever a certain cultural scenario determines it to be. A helpful definition for composing the concepts of this article is made by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss (2003), defining magic as “the art of change”. In this article[1], we will use the most influent example of Western Magic: Hermeticism.

Hermeticism (Westcott, 2003) is a confluence between the wisdom associated to the cult of the god Thoth in ancient Egypt with the Neoplatonic philosophy of Plotinus. It is commonly associated to the mythic figure of Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Great Master: of the physical, mental and spiritual worlds), and is named as the god Thoth himself, as well as his greatest disciple, without any historical corroboration of his existence, which indicates that the texts attributed to him were written by different authors using his name. Hermeticism was organized in the turn of the 19th to the 20th century in seven principles, which will be used to weave the relations with philosophy and science in this article.

Hermeticism influenced the philosophy of Leibniz and Spinoza, as well as great names of science. Giordano Bruno (Yates, 1964) based his important conceptions of an animic, infinite, decentralized and dynamic universe on Hermeticism, among other inspirations. Kepler (Connor, 2005) – who performed with remarkable acclaim the role of astrologer – was also influenced by the Hermetic knowledge to compose his Harmony of the World. Isaac Newton was inspired by Alchemy and Hermeticism to create his general concept of force and gravity (Dobbs, 1984). Newton removed from the second edition of his Principia the affirmation of his belief in the transmutation of matter, relegating the quote to his Optica. From this it is possible to speculate that Poincaré and Einstein may have, with the equivalence of energy and matter, recovered the occult Newton.

The influence of Newton’s physics was independent of his Hermetic influences, but science never lost the Hermetic accent, above all in some peculiarities of modern Physics. This purified Newtonian Physics, the Inquisition, the postulation of a language ontologically disconnected from the world (establishing a separation between words and things) and the triumph of Illuminism relegated Hermeticism, between the 17th and 18th centuries, to ghettos without any credibility.

Becoming
The Philosophy of Difference, between other modes of knowledge, tackles the problem of dualities such as nature and culture, body and mind, subject and object, etc. or, at least, puts those dualities in movement. We will use here the conception of Philosophy of Difference defended by Deleuze (2006) in his book Difference and Repetition: it intends to “take away the difference from its state of damnation”; no longer subordinating difference to opposition, analogy, similarity, denial, identity, that is, to all aspects of mediation and representation, for that is how pure difference is reached. It is not about inscribing difference in the general concept. Difference is affirmation. It is not a question of givens, but how the givens are given. The process-based tonic is extremely relevant, as well as the concept of becoming: the change that changes, without support, continuously, but in an inconstant way, eliminating permanence and transcendence. Here, becoming is in principle equivalent to being, but goes beyond it, that is, ontology itself is in becoming in the Philosophy of Difference.

In this article we will use the seven items of Simulacra presented by Deleuze which are considered by Manuel Delanda (2004), while present in the entire opus of Deleuze, duly altered and updated in different planes according to the problem in question. These items belong to a Bergsonian ontology, composed by the actual, the intensive and the virtual.

 The virtual: the coexistence of times past, present and future, where the future is ontological, as all time, but it does not involve the production of the new: the becoming. The actual: the present that passes away, the present moment and the intensive: the passage from the actual to the virtual and vice-versa, with one way not corresponding to the other. The actual, the virtual and the intensive overlap, as there is no pure virtual or actual (Bergson, 1999). The Principles of Hermeticism also overlap. As the functions of Modern Physics speak about the same universe, but in different levels, they also overlap, and this superposition is a goal of science with the name of Theory of Unification.

The entangled differences
The Seven Principles of Hermeticism will now be related to the seven items of the Simulacra and the seven functions of Modern Physics. It is worth to note what Heisenberg (1999) said about the philosophy of Heraclitus: “If we replace the word fire with energy, we may almost repeat his affirmations word by word, according to our modern point of view”.

The Principle of Gender, in Hermeticism, asserts the relationship between the male and female principles engendering the continuity of the universe. Not “man” and “woman”, but different and complementary cosmic principles. Deleuze says that the item of Simulacra called involving center is the accretion of complexity of living beings, the physic-chemical, organic and cultural unfolding[2] without involving a teleological evolutionism. Now, the cosmology of Mário Novello (2010) supposes a bouncing universe, eternal and dynamic, as the cosmos enunciated by Heraclitus. Here, the relation between these three modes of knowledge share a dynamic process-related cosmos, continuously self-creating in all levels.

In the Principle of Cause and Effect, from all previous causes emerge an effect, that is, the effect is not generated by a single previous cause, but by the entire chain of events so far, keeping the idea that cosmic processes are continuous. Deleuze says that the molar and the molecular are a double articulation that is simultaneously of the order of quality and extension, which in Physics corresponds to the non-elementary particles. We can note visions with differentiated, but implicated levels of organization, taking part in a grand cosmic process.

The most popular Principle of Hermeticism is the Principle of Correspondence, which says: as above, so below, relating macrocosm and microcosm. In the Philosophy of Difference, there is the concept of monad, systematized by Leibniz, and developed by Gabriel Tarde. Deleuze (2000) conceptualizes the monad drawing from these authors, affirming that it is the living and perpetual mirror of the universe, but with a closed level resonating with the entire universe and other directly connected to the universe. The philosopher articulates the monads with the fractals, self-similary figures related Chaos Theory. The so-called wave collapse also conflates these concepts, in the sense that the monad, example of the intensive in Bergson, actualizes the virtual, as the wave, in Quantum Mechanics (QM), collapses into a particle. Anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff (2002), using his model of quantum consciousness created with physician Roger Penrose, links the version of the wave collapse caused by the supposed quantum gravity, called Objective Reduction, with an example of monad. As the monadology creates a new statute of the subject, non-aprioristic, but relational in becoming, where the sequence of monads is the place of emergence of the subject, also the sequence of Objective Reductions in the brain creates the flow of consciousness, differing from the conventional interpretations of QM where the observer realizes the wave collapse. Finally, the speculative proposal of quantum gravitation called Causal Dynamic Triangulation (Ambjorn, Jurkiewicz, and Loll, 2008) establishes a fractal self-similarity in the quantum level of matter. All these levels show a profound relation between the micro and macro levels of the cosmos, indicating that each portion of the cosmos bears the totality, even if in becoming.
The Principle of Polarity says that everything in the cosmos has its opposite that is, in truth, the extreme of the same thing; everything has its double, that are different in degree but of the same nature. The concept of resonance, that Deleuze unfolds based on Gilbert Simondon, affirms the intrinsic relationship between two instances, being even capable of being non-local, and those two instances, even when generating an individuation process, follow their process of differentiation. An example would be the non-local resonance between Leibniz and Newton when they created the differential calculus, but with different formalisms. In QM, the quantum entanglement is the simultaneity relationship between two elementary particles in quantum state, with some differences, such as spin rotation. Here we can verify in these three modes of knowledge a relationship of simultaneity between different but interlinked processes.

The principle of Rhythm shows that everything has an ebb and flow in the cosmos, patterns of behavior. The concept of abstract machine in Deleuze e Guattari (1995) also indicates a process of trans-spatial and trans-temporal self-organization between vectors that compose a pattern. Manuel Delanda (1997), building on a proposal by Prigogine, relates abstract machines with attractors, where the strange attractor, in Chaos Theory, becomes one of the simplest example of an abstract machine. The strange attractor is formed by self-organizing vectors, bifurcating fractally. With those relations, we can observe that the cosmos possess a process of self-organization, manifested in patterns identified in many levels.

The Principle of Vibration affirms that the entire cosmos is vibrational, as in the Philosophy of Difference: everything vibrates, as exemplified by the concept of multiplicity understood as a noun, not as an attribute or an adjective. Difference of difference producing divergence and de-centering. Here the vectors begin to appear, but the sense and connection are not yet well defined. One of the Unification Theories, the Superstring Theory (Greene, 2005), also presumes a vibrational cosmos, of strings vibrating in different ways, generating different manifestations of elementary particles. There is no need to place our bets in the entire superstrings theory; it is its vibrational aspect that is being pointed here. In this item is easy to relate the vibrational aspect in Hermeticism, in philosophy and Physics: all is vibration.

Finally, in the Principle of Mentalism[3] the cosmos is the mind, and matter is understood as a coagulation of this mind. The plane of immanence, a concept of Deleuze and Guattari (1992), is pure difference, infinite velocity, the positive zero. The plane coexists with chaos and cannot be thought about without it. Deleuze and Guattari conceive the time of philosophy as the coexistence of various planes, without eliminating the “before” and the “after”. In QM, the quantum void is the function closest to these concepts, as it is formed by a complex structure of relation between opposite that cancel each other, but which can be excited to generate some material form. There are many examples of a similar structure, such as the concept of Tao, one of the fundaments of Taoism. In this last articulation, we can perceive that there is an instance in the cosmos that almost does not exist, but exists minimally, generation the possibility of emerging the cosmos from itself. But, as we have seen, the way does not come only from this primordial instance, but in becoming, in arriving at it, in a process of de-coagulation of matter, be it through meditation, quantum state or from causing changes in the bodies that may or not be subtle, but which are intensive.

Oniric ontology
These relations between Hermeticism, philosophy and physics can take us to unprecedented places. A peculiar question is dreaming. Psychology, since Freud, delimited the study of dreams to a representational model, reducing the oniric processes to a mere exercise of interpretation, inherited from Christianity, which stigmatized dreaming and hunted down its interpreters. Observing ancient traditions, such as Shamanism, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, and in Ancient Greece, with the oneirocritica of Artemidorus, the dream is generally treated as a state of reality that includes many levels, and also as a non-temporal process that allows intuitions about the future (Shulman and Stroumsa, 1999).

The Philosophy of Difference affirms that the dream is virtual, since during sleep the sensory-motor is relaxed, allowing a flowing into the virtual, with dreaming being this non-temporal exercise. The narration of the dream, actualizing this dreaming, should be less interpreted and more experienced, as an invitation to new possibilities in life. The dream not as the protector of sleep, as neuroscience want us to believe, but as a singular modulation of vigil; in other words, through the oniric philosophy of María Zambrano (2006), we affirm that the greatest challenge is not interpreting the dream, but assimilating it.

If, in the quantum consciousness model of Penrose and Hameroff, there is quantum entanglement in the brain, we may speculate that there is quantum entanglement between two or more brains and between brains and other objects. Articulating this to a cosmological possibility in which the universe may possess different physical laws in different places (Novello, 1988), we could also speculate that during dreaming the brain entangles with places where the cosmos has other laws, sometimes incomprehensible ones, much different from this corner of the universe. The cosmos, then, is understood as a material that is also oniric, where the threshold between dream and vigil is so soft as the quantum and classic thresholds of the universe.

For another transcendence
Another development of the relations realized here is the radicalization of the concept of becoming. If given its maximum liberty, the becoming – which, above all after Spinoza, allows the problematization of dualities, including between transcendence and immanence – brings a novelty: the postulation of an a posteriori transcendence. If transcendence is forbidden to the becoming, an epistemological transcendence is created by this: there is no transcendence in the becoming. This is a fact if we conceive a priori transcendences: the Platonic world of the Ideas, the God of Scholastics, the mind having different nature than the body, in Descartes and the Kantian categorical imperatives. These concepts, really, have no place in a Philosophy of Difference, but a wild becoming, without any bounds - including epistemological bounds – can generate transcendence, a posteriori, of course. But here, this transcendence indeed transcends all knowledge and experience; it is not known if it exists, but only that it can possibly be created by the becoming. It is not a new duality, since then we would know something about it: that this transcendence would be in opposition to immanence. But such is not the case, since this transcendence, beyond any way of knowing, is also beyond any category, and to fit it in a dualism would be to categorize it. It is not the advent of a discontinuous either, since when we state a continuous immanence we do not know if this transcendence makes the immanence discontinuous. It is only assumed the possibility of an a posteriori transcendence, generated by the wildest becoming, and nothing else can be known or said about it so far, without creating apriorisms and epistemologies disconnected from ontology.

When a virtual dream concept with the status of reality is generated, an oniric ontology is also established. So we can observe another element of such ontology: being in becoming, it cannot be disconnected from an epistemology, for there is no definitive way of knowing about it, since here magic, philosophy and science are understood as immanent modes of knowledge. However, at any moment can be generated, if it has not been done already, an a posteriori transcendence, eliminating any apriorism in the cosmos, an oniric ontology in wild becoming.

So the dream is the start of all magic, as said by Zambrano (1994). Which goes to show that magic is present in all modes of knowledge, philosophy, science, but also the arts. Magic and art are the first versions of the desired assimilation of dreams, with magic recurring to practices that cross the threshold of the actual. In those practices is the core of science, and from the apprehension of these processes, philosophy emerges. We did not speak of a species of “theory of everything”, but of a springboard to a not-knowing, concepts that promote the abandon of concepts, event if the evocation of this not-knowing is not consistent: the intuition of an a posteriori transcendence. There is an awakening in the dream, which is reality. An oniric ontology is made.



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[1] This article is a summary of my doctor degree thesis “Towards an Oniric Ontology: confluences between magic, philosophy and science”, published at HCTE/UFRJ, with the orientation of Physician Luiz Pinguelli Rosa.

[2] The Philosophy of Difference possesses the concept of non-organic life, uniting the natural and the artificial.
[3] In the threshold of the Principles of Mentalism and Gender, since all principles coexist, we find resonances also with the physical relationship between matter and anti-matter.

Translated by Pedro Ribeiro

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth’ exhibited 1842


"Snow Storm" Turner