Astrology and theoretical physics.

[Danny VdB]

Hi all,


I came across this interview with a Ph. D. in physics, in which he explains how astrology "might" work.
Even though the article is quite old and a bit technical, it is still a good read.

You can also use wikipedia to dig deeper in some of the concepts mentioned, e.g. Holomovement.

Here is the article (full text copied below)


Danny

---

http://paganastrology.com/web/articles/astrologyandphysics.html




Astrology and the New Physics - Part 1

Integrating Sacred and Secular Science

by William Keepin, Ph.D.

reproduced with permission of Will Keepin

and The Mountain Astrologer magazine

Introduction by Rob Hand:

Our first speaker this morning is Will Keepin, who I personally

had the pleasure of talking with back at Astrolabe a couple of

years ago, for what was it? A day, or day-and-a-half Something

like that. It was one of the most impressive conversations I've

ever had with anybody. Basically what we have here is a convert.

Will is a Ph.D. in physics and has made a number of important

contributions to the study of modern physics. He is, in other

words, not a Ph.D. in physics, who, having not quite made it in

physics, decided to go into metaphysics. He is a Ph.D. in

physics, who, having made it in physics, decided it was

necessary to go into metaphysics and is now involved in

relationships between environments concerns and spirituality.

This is not exactly something they teach in graduate school

physics departments these days, although modern-day physics is

getting sufficiently weird so that it kind of points in this

direction. And Will is one of the first of a number of people

who have crossed the line and joined us weird people at the

periphery of modern civilization.



William Keepin:

Well, thank you Rob, for that glowing introduction. It's

wonderful to be introduced as a convert. Actually, up until

about six years ago, the last thing I ever would have thought I

would find myself doing would be speaking either about astrology

or at an astrological conference. I was trained as a scientist

in mathematical physics. And while I was open to certain things

such as consciousness expansion and Buddhist concepts of nirvana

and shunyata, the absolute last straw for a rigorous scientist

is astrology. And it's a very interesting thing, because I now

feel that it is precisely in the area of astrology where science

may have one of its greatest openings in the next few decades to

centuries, depending on how much resistance there is.

What I want to do today is outline an intimation of that

possibility. Let me say a little about my background in

astrology, which is fairly limited. I had the great fortune of

studying with Stan Grof for about three years, and during the

course of that time, Rick Tarnas came for a week and made a

series of presentations on astrology. After that, I began to

study my own chart, looking particularly at aspects and

transits, and also the charts of family members. To make a long

story short, I was guided with great thoughtfulness and care by

Rick. And I'm very grateful to him for that, because my opening

into astrology really came through Rick Tarnas.

The key "moment," my initial moment of transformation, came when

I was looking at the chart of a family member who is very close

to me. Several years earlier she had had a psychotic break in

which she was diagnosed schizophrenic, and there was a whole

period of her being in and out of the mental hospital. She

eventually came through it. She had in her natal chart a

Mars-Uranus conjunction square to Neptune, and the Neptune was

also trine to a Mercury-Venus conjunction. At the time of her

difficulty, she had transiting Pluto conjoining her Neptune, so

it was basically lighting up that challenging aspect of the

Mars-Uranus square to Neptune. Then in November of 1982,

precisely in the month that she had the break and went into the

hospital, Saturn came and conjoined Pluto. So she had transiting

Saturn and transiting Pluto conjunct her Neptune, which is

clearly a once-in-a-lifetime transit, and she certainly had a

once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience. That was a very profound

opening for me, and it led me to really begin an inquiry into

astrology, which continues to this day.

So I want to say that it's a great honor and privilege to be

here. I have to tell one more little story though, which is that

when I went to meet Rob Hand, Rick and I went together. And as

Rob said, it was one of the most fascinating discussions I've

ever had, also. We covered a wide range of topics, and afterward

Rick and I went to a conference. I don't think I've ever told

Rick this, but flying home on the airplane back to San

Francisco, as Rick and I were talking, I suddenly got the

profundity, at least at some level, of what this was all about.

I had this very distinct feeling that the back half of my head

had been opened up and removed. And, I had the sense of feeling

the cosmos back behind my head in very direct communication, or

communion - it was quite a palpable physical sensation. At the

time, I just thought, "Well, that's interesting," but in

retrospect, I realize it was a very important moment.

What I'm going to offer today, rather than a presentation, is

more of a meditation. I want to give you some of the ideas and

inquiries and contemplations I have had in the last six years as

I have grappled with this question of "How could astrology

possibly be valid?" It seems so contradictory to what orthodox

science tells us. I'd like to begin by making the point that

mainstream science has no credible case against astrology. The

two usual arguments given in science are that there is no

evidence for astrology, and there is no mechanism that could

possibly explain it.

The "no evidence" is simply false, primarily because of the work

of Michel Gauquelin. I'm sure you're all familiar with the

statistical work that Gauquelin did. I'm not going into that

today, because I really want to go into the deeper theoretical

understandings. As valid and important as that work is, it is

based on statistics. And I think some of what we're going to be

seeing in the next decade or so is that statistics itself will

be coming into serious question as a valid scientific

epistemology. In any case, there is scientific evidence for

astrology.

The second point, on the business of "no mechanism," relies on

offhand order-of-magnitude arguments, such as: The gravitational

effect of the doctor on the baby was greater than the

gravitational effect of Pluto at the time of birth. Therefore,

if the doctor had nothing to do with the baby's psyche, how

could Pluto have anything to do with it?' The argument is, in a

narrow sense, valid; but all it shows is that astrology does not

work by gravity. One can make similar arguments about

electromagnetic interactions and even nuclear interactions. One

comes up with the same conclusion. It's valid as far as it goes,

but it doesn't begin to touch upon the true nature of the

phenomena. And it doesn't preclude alternative explanations.

Astrology, in no way, contradicts any of the facts of science as

we understand them. It is at variance with unjustified

extrapolation from those facts, with a world view that is

assumed to be proven by mainstream orthodox scientists, but

which, in fact, is a set of assumptions about the nature of

reality. Astrology is at odds with those assumptions, but not

with any of the established facts.

In 1975 there was a famous astronomical declaration against

astrology signed by 186 scientists. Those who signed on,

generally, actually knew either nothing or very little about

astrology. But it was interesting to hear some of the tales

about those who did not sign, such as Freeman Dyson at the

Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He refused to sign

because he simply didn't know. And Carl Sagan, who you all know

as a man with great insight into the billions of stars in the

cosmos, I believe he also refused to sign. I'm not totally sure

about that, but he did give the following statement about

astrology. It's a nice dismissal of this whole business of

astrology not being valid because we don't understand how it

could possibly work. Sagan says, "That we can think of no

mechanism for astrology is relevant, but unconvincing. No

mechanism was known, for example, for continental drift when it

was proposed by Wegener. Nevertheless, we see that Wegener was

right, and those who objected on the grounds of unavailable

mechanism were wrong." Basically, Sagan should be credited with

acknowledging this fact that astrology cannot be dismissed

simply because it's not understood how it might work.

You may be familiar with some of the work of Percy Seymour,

who's written a couple of books on science and astrology, such

as The Scientific Basis of Astrology.' I'm not intimately

familiar with his work, but I have read a good bit of it. The

essence of what he's proposing is that astrology works by some

kind of magnetic field interaction.

What I'm offering here is a very different understanding. In my

view, astrology is actually much more profound than any process

that takes place in the physical realm. It involves something

that is beyond the physical realm, for which we are now gaining

increasing evidence in some of the new developments in modern

science. And that is what I really want to speak about today.

Those developments that I'm referring to are the theoretical

work of David Bohm and the emerging fields of nonlinear dynamics

and chaos theory, and in particular, fractal geometry. I'll be

giving an example in a moment.

I'd like to begin with David Bohm's work in theoretical physics.

David Bohm was born in 1917. He was a young, brilliant physicist

who studied at Berkeley under Oppenheimer. He then went to

Princeton and became a colleague of Albert Einstein. And in

fact, he and Einstein had very intensive discussions about the

meaning of quantum theory. David Bohm wrote a book on quantum

theory that was published in 1951, which Einstein said was the

clearest exposition of quantum theory he had ever seen. The two

became very close, and then there was a very curious

development. Bohm was called to testify against Robert

Oppenheimer in the McCarthy era, and he refused. Although

Oppenheimer was acquitted, Bohm lost his job at Princeton and

had to leave the country. Thus his association with Einstein was

effectively terminated. So, Bohm went to Brazil, then Israel,

and then ended up at the University of London, where he did most

of his work.

His basic contribution to physics, and to science generally, is

still greatly under-recognized, and I submit that it's nothing

less than a completely new understanding of what science means

and what science is. I want to briefly summarize his

contributions.

First, a comment on the way that Bohm worked. He had these

burning passionate quests for deep understanding of the nature

of reality and existence, and this carried him quite beyond the

bounds of physics. As many of you may know, he carried on a

20-year dialogue with the Indian mystic and sage, Krishnamurti.

He also had extensive dialogues with other spiritual masters,

including the Dalai Lama. And he ended up developing a

theoretical understanding of modern physics that is actually

consistent with spiritual teachings down through the ages. And,

quite rich and complex. What I'm going to do today is merely

outline some of the fundamentals of his understanding.

The basic nature of reality, according to David Bohm, was what

he called holomovement - holo, meaning holo-graphic-like, and

movement suggesting dynamism and process. To use his words, the

nature of reality is "a single unbroken wholeness in flowing

movement." So everything is connected and everything in dynamic

flux. Now in this term holo-movement, holo refers to holograph

structure, meaning that each part of the flow, in some way,

contains the entire flow. We'll be looking at some examples of

what that might mean. And the movement part of the holomovement

is that the whole flow is in a continual process change. Bohm

developed this out of his reinterpretation of quantum physics.

Many of you may have read some of the famous works by Fritjof

Capra and Gary Zukav and that whole beautiful opening, which

happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s, into essentially the

mystical implications of modern physics.

What Bohm did was something I think is at least as important,

but has not been recognized as such. He began with the

Schrodinger equation, which is the central equation of quantum

theory, and partitioned it mathematically into two parts. The

first part was essentially a recapitulation of classical

Newtonian physics, and the second part was a wave-like

information field. The Schrodinger equation is an equation for

the movement of the electron and offers insight into questions

such as, "How does the electron behave?" and, "What is the

nature of the electron?" Bohm postulated that the electron

behaves just like an ordinary classical particle, contrary to

the whole complementary wave-particle duality theory of Neils

Bohr and the "Copenhagen" school of interpretation. Bohm was

saying that the electron does behave like a particle, but with

access to information about the rest of the universe.

This is the part that physicists have a hard time accepting, as

you might imagine, because the electron is essentially acting

with a kind of awareness about the rest of the universe. That

awareness comes in this second term, which Bohm called the

quantum potential, which is a wave-like information field that

gives the electron access to information about the rest of the

physical universe. Bohm was able to show that the influence of

this quantum potential depended only on the form and not on the

magnitude of this wave-form. And because it didn't depend on the

magnitude, it was therefore independent of separation in space.

Therefore, every point in space had a contribution to make to

the electron's awareness.

If that makes any sense, the essence is that the electron is a

kind of guided particle. In fact, Bohm uses the analogy of a 747

plane flying over an ocean. It's guided by radio waves. The

radio waves themselves do not have the energy to actually cause

the airplane to turn and make a change in course, but they

provide information that the airliner then responds to and

adjusts its course according to the information supplied in

these radio waves. So, the radio waves themselves contain much

less energy than the airliner, in a physical sense. But the

information that they contain enables the airliner to guide and

direct its own energy. Essentially it's the same kind of

understanding that Bohm had about the electron.

Bohm further proposed that the holomovement I mentioned consists

of two parts... an explicate order and an implicate order. I

will clarify this difference with an example that Bohm himself

developed.

Imagine a jar filled with a thick, transparent fluid-like

glycerin, a highly viscous fluid. In the center of the jar is a

cylinder rod with a handle so you can turn the rod. You add a

drop of ink into the glycerin, and the ink just sits there. But

when you turn the inner cylinder around, it pulls this drop of

ink and stretches it out. If you continue turning, the ink is

drawn out into longer, ever finer and fainter lines.

Eventually, if you keep doing this, the ink actually disappears

completely. You can no longer see it.

Now at this point, it's very tempting to conclude that the order

that was originally present in the drop has now been rendered

completely random and chaotic by thorough mixing of the ink into

the glycerin. So much so that you can no longer even see the

ink. However, if you now reverse the direction of rotation, what

you find is that this thin long line of ink will begin to

reappear. And as you continue the reverse rotation, it will

continue to get thicker and more clearly defined, and

eventually, it will completely reconstruct itself.

Now this is a mechanical metaphor for what Bohm talks about.

What it tells us is that a hidden order may be present in what

appears to be random. That's a very important insight that Bohm

had, so I'd like to repeat it. With reference to this example

and with reference to reality in general, what appears to be

random may, in fact, contain a hidden order. And unless your

epistemological net is sufficiently fine, or sufficiently broad,

you may miss that hidden order.

Bohm called this order the implicate order, because although the

ink is dispersed to the point of not being visible, its order

has, in some way, been preserved. Or, I should rather say that

it's been transformed into a different form, but it has not been

destroyed. And it can then move from being implicate into what

Bohm would call the explicate order, where the order has been

made visible and made manifest. So we then have this ink dot

reappearing. When the ink drop disappears, Bohm would say that

its order is enfolded in the glycerin. When the ink droplet

reappears, its order is unfolded back into the explicate order.

I am going to be using these terms, so I want you to become

familiar with them.

The whole relationship between the explicate and the implicate

order is quite a complex one, and I'll just say a few things

about it. If you're struggling for a way to get your mind around

it, a very simple way of understanding it is that the explicate

order is the manifest realm; it is the physical space-time

universe in which we live. Then, the implicate order is the

unseen, or the unmanifest realm.

It's tempting, perhaps, to think of the explicate order as the

primary reality, and the implicate order as a subtle secondary

reality. For Bohm, precisely the opposite is the case, The

fundamental primary reality is the implicate order, and the

explicate order is but a set of ripples on the surface of the

implicate order. So, that which we can see and feel and touch is

merely the waves on the surface of reality, which is the vast

ocean of implicate order.

Another way of possibly thinking about this is in terms of the

good old television set. The implicate order is essentially all

the programming being broadcast at any given time, and the

explicate order is what's on the screen at a particular time.

So, the explicate order is but a narrow window on what's

actually there - a tiny little part that's manifest on a sea of

possibility - and the full reality exists in the implicate

order.

Another point that Bohm emphasized was that empty space is part

of the wholeness - this unbroken flowing movement. Empty space

is not just some giant vacuum through which matter moves, but

rather, space and matter are intimately interconnected. This is

a very important way of reconsidering the ontology of so-called

empty space. Bohm actually did some calculations showing that

each cubic centimeter of so-called empty space contains more

potential energy than all the manifest energy in the universe.

As he put it, space is full, rather than empty.

This gives you some sense of the thinking of David Bohm. What I

want to do now is to go into a more concrete example of the

holographic structure. To do this, I'll use an example from

chaos theory and fractal geometry.

This example is known as the Mandelbrot set. Much of what I'm

saying, in a sense, is not really going to be new to most of

you. As astrologers, you know this, intuitively. The main point

of my presentation today is to show you how certain directions

in science are emerging toward a parallel understanding.

This is called the Mandelbrot set, after the French

mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot. It is generated by a nonlinear

iterated process. The process itself is incredibly simple.

Basically, you begin with a number, and you square that number,

then you add a constant to it. That will give you a new number.

You then take that new number, square it, and add a constant,

which gives you a third number; and you continue repeating this

process. If that sequence stays bounded, i.e., if it doesn't

blow up to infinity, then the point that you began with is in

the Mandelbrot set. It's in the black area. If it does blow up

into infinity, then it's outside of the set, in the white area.

If you don't understand the mathematics, don't worry. It's not

important for the essence of what I want to show you.

Now let us zoom in on this Mandelbrot set into the order of

about a billion times, and you can really see the structure of

this set. As we "dive" into it, you can begin to see some quite

beautiful regularity of structure and, also, some patterns that

are repeated on different scales. You'll also notice that these

little patterns begin to look like parts of the original

structure. [editor's note: Space does not permit the use of the

visuals that Dr. Keepin used in this part of bis speech, but we

refer the reader here to color plates in the widely-available

book "Chaos: Making a New Science" by James Gleick (Penguin

Books, NI).]

To continue our zooming process, I'd like to go deep down into

one of these little white glowing spots, and as you can see,

there is quite some intricacy and delicacy and grace and

elegance to this structure. Continuing further, if you'll

notice in the middle of this, there is another little white

spot, so we're now going to zoom right into that, and now you'll

begin to see something emerging. If you look closely into the

center of that white spot, you'll see the original figure

reappearing. So here we have essentially the same structure

replicated on a scale one-billion times smaller. In mathematics,

this is called self-similar structures or nested sets of

self-similar structures. In alchemy and astrology, it is called

"As above, so below."

In a sense, science is now beginning to discover, through

certain recent developments, some of the ancient wisdom and

teachings. I want to say a little bit more about the nature of

this. In the Mandelbrot example, recall that we zoomed in about

a billion times and found a structure that virtually resembles

the whole. However, on very close inspection, it's not

identical. It's slightly different, and not only that, if you

blow up any one of these other parts of this same structure, you

will again find these little Mandelbrot sets embedded within it.

There are literally billions of them. In fact, there is an

infinity of them, because each of them contains billions within

it, and the process of worlds within worlds keeps going. What we

have here is a very profound set of nested self-similar

structures. That's how the scientists would put it.

We have here a kind of evidence for the alchemical notion of "As

above, so below." Moreover, this reveals the ontological

bankruptcy of reductionism. The basic philosophy of

reductionism, which prevailed in orthodox science, holds that if

we want to understand a complex system, we must break it apart

into pieces to render it much more simple. What we're finding

here is that when we break the whole apart into these pieces,

each piece is as complex as the original whole. This is a very

different understanding. You can now begin to see what is meant

by this idea that each part contains the whole. Because when we

zoom in on one of these tiny little Mandelbrot sets, which is

one-billionth of the size of the whole, it has the identical

structure.

The microcosm has all elements, essentially, of the macrocosm.

However, I want to emphasize that each part does contain the

whole, not at the manifest level, but rather, at the process

level. The little tiny Mandelbrot bug does not contain the great

big one in a physical sense. It's much too small to contain it.

But at the level of the process, the two are virtually

identical.

Now, what does all this mean, and what does it mean for

astrology? This is where I want to invite a kind of metaphorical

flight of fancy. This is what I meant when I said this was a

meditation, it requires imaginative mental thinking. I'd like to

invite you to consider this Mandelbrot set as a kind of cosmos.

Let us think of each little Mandelbrot sets as, human being.

Then if one would go inward and contemplate the nature of ones

existence deeply, one would come into awareness of the process

that gave rise to one's existence. In coming into that

awareness, one would then apprehend the process of the entire

cosmos, because they are one and the same process. It's like

what the Tantric Buddhists say which is, "If you come to know

the human body deeply enough, you come to know the entire

cosmos." And they're not talking about a physical knowing. They

are talking about a knowing at an energetic level, at the level

of process. In this case it's represented by Mandelbrot's simple

equation, which is the implicate order.

Thus far, these Mandelbrot sets we've been looking at are static

structures. They are fixed, unchanging mathematical structures.

Now let us imagine instead that the structures and underlying

processes are both evolving in time. Imagine that this process -

the implicate order - is changing over time and that, therefore,

this Mandlebrot structure - the explicate order, is itself

changing over time. I actually looked for some videos of this

and wasn't able to find any. I don't even know if this has been

done mathematically. But basically the idea would be that as the

process underlying this manifestation unfolds and changes, then

this whole structure would also change and evolve as a kind of

dynamic fractal. You can then imagine that each one of these

little tiny embedded Mandelbrots changes and evolves in a way

that is directly correlated with the evolution of the entire

macrocosm. In this way, we begin to understand how there could

be correlations between the evolution of the macrocosm, i.e.,

the motion of the planets, for example, and the evolution of one

individual part of that macrocosm, i.e., one human being.

This leads to a kind of metaphorical understanding for how

astrology might work, and it works in a way that is not

mechanistic. This is very important to understand. It's not that

Pluto sends rays down to your brain, which acts as a radio

receiver, picks them up, and goes and does Plutonic things. And

it's not that Pluto is in you, in the sense that the physical

Pluto is much too big to be contained in your physical body.

It's that the process that's going on in Pluto is also going on

in you. Literally. So, Pluto is literally contained in you, and

in me, but at the process level, not at the manifest level.

In response to an inaudible audience question, Dr Keepin

replies. The Mandelbrot set is actually a two-dimensional

object, which exists in the mathematical complex plane. And

there's another limitation of this whole metaphor that I want to

mention. Basically, what I'm trying to suggest here is that,

very loosely, this gives us a model for understanding something

about the nature of how astrology works. Which is that we have a

generative process, or implicate order, and then we have a

manifest realm. And as this process changes over time, it

results in an unfolding cosmos that has temporal correlations

between the microcosmic and the macrocosmic manifestations. But

as you know, a given astrological archetypal configuration can

result in a variety of different manifestations, depending on

the intentions, the being, and the integrity of the person

involved. So it's really much more complex than this. This is

really intended only to give a most simplistic glimpse of how

some of this might be working.

I want to say just a few more things, and then I am going to

stop so that we have some time for questions and answers.

There is a kind of holographic structure to much of astrology,

and I'll just mention a few. One is the idea of the outer three

planets being the "higher octaves" of the personal planets -

Neptune the higher octave of Venus and Pluto the higher octave

of Mars. To the extent that there is some validity in this - I

don't want to portray it as a literal truth - it reflects

relationship of self-similar structures at different scales.

Similarly, with respect to progressions, a whole year is

essentially represented by the Sun's movement in a single day.

There is a way in which time also has this fractal structure. In

fact, David Bohm said that each moment in time contains all of

the past and all of the future. Time is not a steady flowing

stream that is intrinsic to the explicate order. Rather, time is

a particular type of explicate order that unfolds as a

sequencing of events, with past and future being measures of the

depth of implication. Furthermore, time has its own implicate

order that Bohm called the eternal order, which is beyond

manifest time altogether. You can begin to see how every

explication has a deeper implication, and it goes on

indefinitely, to ever more subtle levels. In the case of

astrology, we can see the archetypes as a kind of implicate

order, and when they become explicate, those are the actual

manifest events. But there could also be a super-implicate

order, higher than the archetypes, that orders them. So it gets

quite complex, and Bohm did develop the idea of super-implicate

order, which I'll just mention, but I'm not going to dwell on

it.

Yet another example of holographic like structure in astrology

is this: You can give an entire reading based on simply which

signs the planets are in. The signs really refer to the entire

cosmos, since they essentially divide up the universe into

twelve sectors. On the other hand, you can also give an entire

reading with just the planetary aspects and midpoints

themselves. In the latter case, you are only looking at the

level of the solar system, not further. You can completely

ignore the signs, in fact, and still get a very accurate

reading. So the same information is enfolded at different levels

and, in some way, is replicated at the solar system level, as

well as the cosmic level.

Now, there is one final thing I want to mention about David

Bohm's work. It's very important, and it's not emphasized in

many of the writings about him. Bohm came up with this idea of a

kind of tripartite ontology. What he said was that reality

consists of matter, energy, and meaning. The usual physical

understanding in science is that the universe consists of matter

and energy, and Einstein did the glorious equation of the two

with E = MC squared. What Bohm says, however, is that meaning

has the same ontological primacy as matter and energy. Let me

give you a direct quote. Bohm says, "Energy enfolds matter and

meaning, while matter enfolds energy and meaning." (When you

hear this word enfold, think of the ink drops disappearing into

the glycerin.) "But also, meaning enfolds both matter and

energy. So each of these three basic notions enfolds the other

two."

Here Bohm is proposing a kind of interpenetration of matter,

energy, and meaning. He goes on to say, "This implies in

contrast to the usual view, that meaning is an inherent and

essential part of our overall reality, and it is not merely a

purely abstract ethereal quality having its existence only in

the mind, or to put it differently, in human life. Quite

generally, meaning is being. In a way, we could say that we are

the totality of our meanings."

For Bohm, the nature of reality is this interpenetration of

matter, energy, and meaning. The matter-energy realm is the

explicate order, or manifest realm. The meaning realm is the

implicate order, and there's an interpenetration between the

two.

I want to mention here that this is where I get some of my hope

for the possibility of "saving the planet." Most of my work is

in environmental science, and if you look at the objective facts

of the environmental crisis, it is very, very disturbing. And if

you take the usual scientific view that we have to fix the

entire planet incrementally, piece by piece, it is hopeless.

But, if you imagine that a few of us well intentioned little

Mandelbrots here can be sufficiently self-aware and tap into the

process underlying all of manifest reality, essentially going

into the nature of the creative process itself and working at

that level - this is what might be called spiritual, or love, or

whatever - we then may be able to affect the very evolution of

the process!

I realize this may be a little far-fetched, but in so doing, we

then may be able to have an effect way beyond our numbers. And

there is precedent for this in cosmology. For example, all of

the hydrogen in the universe appeared in one moment. There was

no hydrogen, and suddenly, hydrogen appeared everywhere,

simultaneously. The same with the galaxies. The galaxies did not

exist up until some point and then all of a sudden, they all

crystallized and condensed into a form. Essentially they became

manifest out of the Implicate order everywhere at once.

In this same sense, through deeply intentioned action in the

world, I think a few people can potentially make a huge

difference. The masses would call this divine intervention. They

would see this as an incredible magical thing, but it is not

divine intervention. It's divine architecture. It's the way

reality is structured. And knowing that and working at the

process level, instead of only at the manifest level, we can

begin to tap into that deeper ordering of reality.

So, to close, I want to give a positive vision of the future of

science. First, what is science? Science is a kind of pattern

recognition, and what it requires, the sin qua non for science,

is some kind of order. There's a basic order in the material

realm and so we have orthodox science, which results from the

study of the order in matter and energy.

By the same token, there is also order in meaning. Meaning is

ordered, not arbitrary. There are lots of different example of

this, one example being the beauty of Mozart's music compared

with Salieri's which is an objective fact. But it cannot be

measured on laboratory instruments nor can a microphone pick it

up. Nor could Fourier analysis of the wave forms coming from

that microfilm ever enable you to distinguish between Mozart's

and Salieri's music in terms of the essential genius and beauty.

But it's there.

Astrology, in a sense, is a science of the order in meaning, and

of its interpenetration with the physical space-time universe.

And this is where I think astrology is so profound. Because in a

sense, all of the esoteric sciences, such as the I Ching, Tarot,

and others, are sciences of the order in meaning. They are

essentially models of the implicate order in a way. But what is

so profound about astrology is by virtue of its connection to

planets and stars, it also precisely models the interpenetration

between the invisible realms of meaning and the physical

space-time universe.

So, what do I foresee, or perhaps pray for, for the future of

science? Essentially, a grand synthesis of explicate and

implicate sciences. Today's orthodox science would come to be

seen as a partial science limited to the explicate order. It

focuses on those manifest ripples we see all around us and

mistakenly take for the whole of reality. Meanwhile, astrology

and the other esoteric sciences are sciences of the implicate

order, and rather than contradicting the physical sciences,

astrology and physics are two aspects of a much greater whole.

This will eventually lead to a grand synthesis of sacred and

secular sciences into a much more profound science than we have

today. Thank you.

Answers to Audience Questions:

(Following are answers to some of the audience questions.

Unfortunately they were inaudible on the tape-recording of the

talk)

Let me just say that chaos theory, first of all, is really not

about chaos, it's about order. So, in a certain way, it's a

misnomer, and it came out of certain processes that appeared to

be chaotic, but when studied more deeply were revealed to

exhibit order. This is an example of what I was saying earlier

about hidden order being present in what appears to be chaotic

or random. Chaos theory is a general field in mathematics and

nonlinear dynamics, and fractal geometry is a subset of that.

The Mandelbrot set is one single example. It's one of the most

simple and basic examples of this fractal geometry. **** There

is a kind of ontological hegemony in science. There's this

incredible obsession to have the planets be nothing more than

giant dead rocks described by their masses, chemical

composition, orbital periodicities, etc. And you know the

curious thing about it is that this lifeless ontology is

tragically paltry in comparison to astrology. For me, I just

want to say, as a physicist, astrology has so much more deeply -

I mean, beyond any words I could possibly describe - opened up

my whole understanding of reality, the cosmos, and enriched it.

It essentially put flesh and bones and life on this rather dry

skeletal body of equations and mechanics. *** The question is

could I say something about the relationship between what

I'm speaking about and Jung's concept of synchronicity?" I

haven't really thought about this. It's an excellent question.

But synchronicity is essentially another name, in a way, for the

correlations between what happens in the realm of meaning and

what happens in the space-time realm of events. In a sense, it

would be a kind of correlation between what happens here in the

implicate order and what becomes manifest. It can have that

quality of divine intervention, or magic. But again, as I was

saying earlier, this isn't really magic. This is, in fact, the

architecture of existence.

As I said, this metaphor is quite limited. One of the things I

feel that needs to be included is that there's a feedback from

the manifest realm back to the creative process, so that these

two are in a process of co-evolving, in a certain way. There's a

kind of mutual, interdependent causality that is going on, so

it's not the case that the process just does its thing,

independent of what's being manifested. The two are in a kind of

co-creation. And that's why I feel that there's some hope for

saving the Earth. Because those of us - all of us in this room

and others - who are working at the implicate order level can

potentially affect the very process that gives rise to our

manifest reality. **** The question is that the description of

the Mandelbrot set reminds her of how homeopathy works, and she

wanted me to say something about the nature of physics and

healing. I agree, basically, and I've worked, myself,

extensively with the holotropic breath work process that Stan

Grof developed, which is a kind of psychic homeopathy, if you

will. One of the things that Stan said, after 30 years of

working in the realm of consciousness, was that his deepest

conviction is that "each of us is everything." By which he

meant, that if we go inward, we can find within ourselves every

manifest form of consciousness that there is, which is a kind of

psychic version of what we're talking about here. I feel this

offers great hope, because in the sense that the leaf contains

the tree, then in healing, if a leaf heals itself, this has a

healing impact on the entire tree. So, if that makes any sense,

it is where I derive my hope for healing for the culture and our

relationship with the Earth. ---

[Danny VdB]

Hi Howard,


Naturally a system of astrology is always much more simple than reality.
It can't be otherwise.

There are only that many different 4P charts possible; there are only a certain limited number of different readings one can get in I Ching divination.
So there is no way that these systems can reflect every little detail about a person or event.

That's why one can't expect 4P to explain every little tooth ache in a person's life.
That's why one can't do divination by only applying the fixed and rigid rules found in classic books.
Flexibility is needed to account for variations within a given pattern.


Danny

[Annie Pecheva]

Hi Danny,


Thanks for the interesting article, I appreciate it a lot.

"the fractal structure of time" - the transits and progressions in Western astrology, and the different cycles in Chinese astrology;

"the subtle levels of time", "every explication has a deeper implication" - this relates well to the different scales in astrology reading, I Ching and in metaphysics as general...

"Science is a kind of pattern recognition" - and so does astrology...

I found that the author of this article, Will Keepin, is the co-founder of Satyana Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Here is the website:
http://www.satyana.org/about_new2.html


Annie