Architecture of the Spirit-The Circuits of the All

My intention in this site has been to uncover the way in which traditions of spiritual thought all find their original inspiration in the patterning that the human imagination discerns in the cycles of the stars. Hopefully the 'probabilities' as Plato calls them, which I have adduced here are certainly up to his required standard. I hope I have put forward a convincing enough argument to suggest that the consistency is of such an order as to make them in fact far more likely than almost any others.

Amongst the 'many opinions about the generation of the universe' that we have seen, one fundamental spiritual image emerges, that of the severance of Heaven and Earth. This image has been shown to have its origin in the recognition of the Precession of the Equinoxes, the understanding of the dynamic interaction of the 'terrestrial' and 'celestial' spheres.

Gradual though it may have been, this recognition transformed the notion of the relationship which is said to have existed previously between the occupants of these two spheres, between Men and Gods. More than anything else it was this transformed relationship which supplied the architecture for the phenomenon that we experience as meaning. For the traditions which Plato inherited, even the Creation itself was to be regarded as a product of the this generative division. The familiar concepts of sin, of redemption, of the soul and its immortality have likewise been derived from this model. We have also seen how the most fundamental structures of traditional societies are representations of these notions. In short, it was the recognition of the phenomenon of the precession that laid down the fundamental architecture of the human spirit.

The ARCHITECTURE of the SPIRIT
Introduction	Creation	Separation	Reunion

The Circuits of the All
	'Now unto the divine part in us the motions which are kin are the thoughts and Circuits of the All. These must every man follow that he may regulate the revolutions in his head which were disturbed when the Soul was born in the flesh; and by thoroughly learning the Harmonies and Circuits of the All may make that which understandeth like unto that which is understood'. ( Plato: Timaeus )
	On this page I have summarised the text of the Conclusion to The Architecture of the Spirit' I hope to expand this section to include further speculation and discussion
	'If then, amid the many opinions about the gods and the generations of the universe, we are not able to give notions which are altogether and in every aspect exact and consistent with one another, do not be surprised. Enough, if we adduce probabilities as likely as any other'
	My intention in this site has been to uncover the way in which traditions of spiritual thought all find their original inspiration in the patterning that the human imagination discerns in the cycles of the stars. Hopefully the 'probabilities' as Plato calls them, which I have adduced here are certainly up to his required standard. I hope I have put forward a convincing enough argument to suggest that the consistency is of such an order as to make them in fact far more likely than almost any others. Amongst the 'many opinions about the generation of the universe' that we have seen, one fundamental spiritual image emerges, that of the severance of Heaven and Earth. This image has been shown to have its origin in the recognition of the Precession of the Equinoxes, the understanding of the dynamic interaction of the 'terrestrial' and 'celestial' spheres. Gradual though it may have been, this recognition transformed the notion of the relationship which is said to have existed previously between the occupants of these two spheres, between Men and Gods. More than anything else it was this transformed relationship which supplied the architecture for the phenomenon that we experience as meaning. For the traditions which Plato inherited, even the Creation itself was to be regarded as a product of the this generative division. The familiar concepts of sin, of redemption, of the soul and its immortality have likewise been derived from this model. We have also seen how the most fundamental structures of traditional societies are representations of these notions. In short, it was the recognition of the phenomenon of the precession that laid down the fundamental architecture of the human spirit.
	Today, the view through the kaleidoscope of human observation is once again causing the patterns of cosmology to shift, to expand into a much vaster perspective. Through the language of mathematics and astronomy during our lifetimes we have seen new patterns emerge whose significance is as great, if not greater than that felt by the Ancients who first watched the Cycle of the Precession alter their notion of the universal for ever. Anyone who has attempted to read a new sense of meaning into this shifting cosmos must still be reeling. Scientists, almost unwittingly, have been forced to stray into the symbolic world of the spiritual for a suitable language and imagery for their narrative. Seldom have we been in such great need and yet so distressingly short of poets with the creative power to proclaim and to celebrate the manner in which humanity itself is bound into these patterns. One thing, however, we can be confident of and that is that the notion of Severance, which has characterised the human spirit throughout the era considered in this book, is now of little relevance. And if we are no longer entitled to regard the duality of Heaven and Earth as the fundamental determinant of the nature of the Cosmos, then we must also consign to the realm of nostalgia such notions as Creation, Sin and Redemption which derive from it. Even the immortal soul as we now understand it has no place in the new Cosmos.
	For the Zoroastrians, the duality of the universe which ensued from the discovery of the imperfections of Creation, the rivalry of the divided heavens, was expressed as the confrontation between Love and Strife. Love was seen as the power which ordered and united, Strife as the power which disordered and dissolved, and whose weapon was the 'ignorance of the right order of things'. If in the face of the contemporary Cosmos we introduce Love as the mythic image of relatedness, then Strife (the quality which in other times we might have called 'Evil') becomes truly the result of 'the ignorance of the right order of things', the kind of response to the universe which arises when personal experience, for whatever reason, never confirms any sensation of relatedness. The spirit faced with the collapse of the traditional cosmos is all too prone to fall prey to the power of Strife, to see in the universe only decay, disorder and disruption and to reverberate with that sense of dissolution. This is the ultimate expression of isolation; of desolation; a spirit without any sense of pattern. To avoid such a fate, Plato's advice is that we thoroughly learn the Circuits of the All. For Plato this All was limited to the cosmos of his day, bounded by the limits of human vision. For us the cosmos has limits which are constantly receding in both Space and Time. It is to this vast expanding All that should Plato's advice must be applied. The task is perhaps no greater than that encompassed by those ancient poets who, faced with the dissolution of an earlier myth, rebuilt the Architecture of the Spirit.