Observations of angels/ devas

by Marinus Jan Marijs 

The concept: An angel is a supernatural being or spirit. The Hebrew word for angel is mala’ak; it is equivalent to the Greek word, angelos from which the English word is obviously derived. In both Hebrew and Greek, the term simply means “messenger” and was used for God’s messengers.    

Angels are an entirely different kind of being than humans. They are seen as God’s divine agents governing the world and beings of light. Usually they are not visible to human beings.

Angels, according to Augustine, were created before the firmament, and the heaven and earth were created after that, evolving from the second Principle or the Logos-the creative Deity.

Angels are described as a mental substance, which refers to the concept held by dualists and idealists, that minds are made-up of non-physical substance.

Traditional image of an angel         Giovanni Battista Piazetta  (1683 – 1754)

Cross cultural data

In this paragraph you can find many examples from literature that assume the existence of Angels.

Zoroastrianism: “Angels are often depicted as benevolent celestial beings who act as intermediaries between Heaven and Earth, or as guardian spirits or a guiding influence. In Zoroastrianism there are different angel-like figures. For example, each person has one guardian angel, called Fravashi. They patronize human beings and other creatures, and also manifest God’s energy. The Amesha Spentas have often been regarded as angels, although there is no direct reference to them conveying messages, but are rather emanations of Ahura Mazda (“Wise Lord”, God); they initially appear in an abstract fashion and then later became personalized, associated with diverse aspects of the divine creation”. (Wikipedia)

Hinduism: “Deva is the Sanskrit word for deity. In modern Hinduism, it can be loosely interpreted as any benevolent supernatural being. Devas are also the maintainers of the realms as ordained by the Trimurti. They are often warring with their equally powerful counterparts, the Asuras. The Sanskrit deva- derives from Indo-Iranian dev- meaning “celestial” or “shining”. (Wikipedia)

Judaism: “The Bible uses the terms mal’ak̠ ’elōhîm, messenger of God mal’āk̠ YHWH; messenger of the Lord, bənē Elohim ’elōhîm; sons of God to refer to beings traditionally interpreted as angels”. (Wikipedia)

Buddhism: “A deva in Buddhism is one of many different types of non-human beings who share the characteristics of being more powerful, longer-lived, and, in general, living more contentedly than the average human being. From a human perspective, devas share the characteristic of being invisible to the physical human eye. The presence of a deva can be detected by those humans who have opened the dibbacakkhu, an extrasensory power by which one can see beings from other planes. Their voices can also be heard by those who have cultivated divyaśrotra, a similar power of the ear.                              

Most devas are also capable of constructing illusory forms by which they can manifest themselves to the beings of lower worlds; higher and lower devas even have to do this between each other. Devas do not require the same kind of sustenance as humans do.
The higher sorts of deva shine with their own intrinsic luminosity. Devas are also capable of moving great distances speedily and of flying through the air. The term deva does not refer to a natural class of beings, but is defined anthropocentrically to include all those beings more powerful or more blissful than humans. It includes some very different types of being; these types can be ranked hierarchically. The lowest classes of these beings are closer in their nature to human beings than to the higher classes of deva. The devas of the Ārūpyadhātu have no physical form or location, and they dwell in meditation on formless subjects. They achieve this by attaining advanced meditational levels in another life. They do not interact with the rest of the universe. The devas of the Rūpadhātu live in a large number of “heavens” or deva-worlds that rise, layer on layer, above the earth”. (Wikipedia)

Christianity: “Later Christians inherited Jewish understandings of angels, which in turn may have been partly inherited from the Egyptians. In the early stage, the Christian concept of an angel characterized the angel as a messenger of God. Angels are creatures of good, spirits of love, and messengers of the saviour Jesus Christ Later came identification of individual angelic messengers: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel, and Lucifer. Then, in the space of little more than two centuries (from the 3rd to the 5th) the image of angels took on definite characteristics both in theology and in art.

By the late 4th century, the Church Fathers agreed that there were different categories of angels, with appropriate missions and activities assigned to them. There was, however, some disagreement regarding the nature of angels. Some argued that Angels had physical bodies, while some maintained that they were entirely spiritual. Some theologians had proposed that angels were not divine but on the level of immaterial beings subordinate to the Trinity. The resolution of this Trinitarian dispute included the development of doctrine about angels.

The angels are represented throughout the Christian Bible as a body of spiritual beings intermediate between God and men: “You have made him (man) a little less than the angels…” (Psalms 8:4-5). Some Christians believe that angels are created beings, and use the following passage as evidence: “praise ye Him, all His angels: praise ye Him, all His hosts… for He spoke and they were made. He commanded and they were created…” (Psalms 148:2-5; Colossians 1:16). The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) declared that the angels were created beings. The Council’s decree Firmiter credimus (issued against the Albigenses) declared both that angels were created and that men were created after them. The First Vatican Council (1869) repeated this declaration in Dei Filius, the “Dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith”. Of note is that the Bible describes the function of angels as “messengers” and does not indicate when the creation of angels occurred.

Thomas Aquinas (13th century) relates angels to Aristotle’s metaphysics in his Summa contra Gentiles, Summa Theologica, and in De substantiis separatis, a treatise on angelology.

Many Christians regard angels as asexual and not belonging to either gender as they interpret Matthew 22:30 in this way. Angels are on the other hand usually depicted in painting and sculpture as looking like male human beings. Their names are also masculine. And although angels have greater knowledge than men, they are not omniscient, as Matthew 24:36 points out.^[33] Christian art perhaps reflects the descriptions in Revelation 4:6–8 of the Four Living Creatures (Greek: τὰ τέσσαρα ζῷα) and the descriptions in the Hebrew Bible of cherubim and seraphim (the chayot in Ezekiel‘s Merkabah vision and the Seraphim of Isaiah). However, while cherubim and seraphim have wings in the Bible, no angel is mentioned as having wings”. (Wikipedia)

Neo-Platonism: “In the commentaries of Proclus (4th century, under Christian rule) on the Timaeus of Plato, Proclus uses the terminology of “angelic” (aggelikos) and “angel” (aggelos) in relation to metaphysical beings. According to Aristotle, just as there is a First Mover, so, too, must there be spiritual secondary movers”. (Wikipedia)

Islam: “Belief in Angels (Malaika) is the Second Article Of Faith, they are mentioned many times in the Qur’an, Islam is clear on the nature of angels in that they are messengers of God.

Theosophy: In the teachings of Theosophy, Devas are regarded as living either in the atmospheres of the planets of the solar system (Planetary Angels) or inside the Sun (Solar Angels) (presumably other planetary systems and stars have their own angels) and they help to guide the operation of the processes of nature such as the process of evolution and the growth of plants; their appearance is reputedly like colored flames about the size of a human. It is believed by Theosophists that devas can be observed when the third eye is activated. Some (but not most) devas originally incarnated as human beings.

It is believed by Theosophists that nature spirits, elementals (gnomes, undines, sylphs, and salamanders), and fairies can be also be observed when the third eye is activated. It is maintained by Theosophists that these less evolutionarily developed beings have never been previously incarnated as humans; they are regarded as being on a separate line of spiritual evolution called the “deva evolution”; eventually, as their souls advance as they reincarnate, it is believed they will incarnate as devas.

It is asserted by Theosophists that all of the above mentioned beings possess etheric bodies that are composed of etheric matter, a type of matter finer and more pure that is composed of smaller particles than ordinary physical plane matter”. (Wikipedia)

Supposed activities

According to the traditions what are the activities of angels?

The word “angel” means “messenger”; that describes their primary role, meaning God’s messengers.

Sometimes angels are send to interfere in the course of humanity. St. Paul in Hebrews 1:14, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”

And Pope John Paul II emphasized the role of angels in Catholic teachings in his 1986 address titled “Angels Participate In History Of Salvation“, in which he suggested that modern mentality should come to see the importance of angels.

They have been endowed by God with the supernatural power to keep order in the functioning of the universe.

Plato emphasised the heavenly order as evidence of intelligence in celestial bodies, and Aristotle described intelligent forces that moved the spheres of heaven.

Aristotle’s movement of the spheres, has found an explanation in Newton’s and Einstein’s laws of gravity, but the consequences from the second law of thermodynamics and the fine-tuning of the universe is where we can place Aristotle’s arguments relating to his concept of the First Mover and secondary movers.

Modern data (statistics)

Contemporary belief in angels, according to an AP-GfK poll, some 77 percent of Americans do believe in angels.

The finding mirrors a 2006 AP-AOL poll, which found that 81 percent believed in angels.

Belief in angels is actually quite widespread in certain parts of the world. While Italians and Croatians are on par with Americans, for instance, no more than a third of Danes believe in angels—somewhere between 25 and 33 percent, according to the European Values Study. The English are similarly low; just 36 percent believe in angels, according to Gallup.

This belief is primarily tied to religion. For Americans, with 88 percent of Christians, 95 percent of evangelical Christians and 94 percent of those who attend weekly religious services of any sort saying they believe in angels.

But belief in angels is fairly widespread even among the less religious. A majority of non-Christians think angels exist.

The objections against the concept

“The modern attitude to angels tends to regard the traditional references and descriptions as symbolic, poetic, or representing an earlier world-concept. Contemporary religious movements have either completely obliterated all references to angels or where they remain have understood them in poetic or mythological terms. They feel that a belief in their existence is out of keeping with a modern approach to the world and God and cannot be reconciled with modern rationalism. But nevertheless modern Orthodoxy tends to demythologize them and reinterpret them without compromising the belief in their ontological status. Angels are interpreted symbolically and belief in their existence is not denied altogether. The degree of literalness of this belief varies from group to group. It is only among some of the communities, that the literal belief in angels, which for so long characterized religious thought, is still upheld”. (Encyclopaedia Judaica)

One reason is that there are objections against the belief in angels, is the fear of superstition, while from a modern point of view it seems weird, naïve and a lapse into mythical thinking. This leaves us with the question whether there is some supporting evidence.

Notable supporters of the concept

Next to basically all founders of religion there are:

Socrates. Plato gives a description of the speech given by Socrates as he defended himself in 399 BC against the charges of not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel. In Plato’s Symposium, the priestess Diotima goes on to explain that “everything daemonic is between divine and mortal”, and she describes daemons as “interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above…”. In Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Socrates claimed to have a daimonion (literally, a “divine something”) that frequently warned him—in the form of a voice.                    

Plato: “for Plato, daimon, is a spiritual being who watches over each individual, and is tantamount to his higher self, or an angel;

Proclus: “for Proclus, daimones are the intermediary beings located between the celestial objects and the terrestrial inhabitants”. (Wikipedia)

The great historian Plutarch (born 47 AD) held that the human soul had a natural faculty for divination and added that it must be exercised at favourable times and in favourable bodily states. He described the daemon of Socrates as an intelligent light that resonated with Socrates because of his inner light. Plutarch also viewed such spirits as the mediators between god and men.

Aristotle. Medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides about Aristotle:

“…This leads Aristotle in turn to the demonstrated fact that God, glory and majesty to Him, does not do things by direct contact. God burns things by means of fire; fire is moved by the motion of the sphere; the sphere is moved by means of a disembodied intellect, these intellects being the ‘angels which are near to Him’, through whose mediation the spheres [planets] move… thus totally disembodied minds exist which emanate from God and are the intermediaries between God and all the bodies [objects] here in this world.“

—Guide for the Perplexed II:4-6, Maimonides

Descartes. Terrence McKenna about Descartes: ”I believe it was on the 17th of August that year which was 1619…… on that night Descartes had a dream, and in the dream a radiant angel appeared to him and said, “The conquest of nature is to be accomplished through number and measure,” and in that moment René Descartes went from being a nobody to being the founder of modern science. Modern science was founded at the direction of an angel, and the angel showed how it was, and to this day modern science has made all of its strides through the application of number – mathematical analysis and measure. That is the secret of the scientific conquest of nature, and it was a secret that was imparted to René Descartes by an angelic entity”.

Leibniz: “Animals have souls, but men have spirits or rational souls. Spirits include an infinite hierarchy of genii and angels superior to man, but not differing from him except in degree. They are defined by self-consciousness or apperception, by the knowledge of God and eternal truths, and by the possession of what is called reason, spirits do not, like souls, mirror only the universe of creatures, but also God. They compose the city of God”.

Alfred Russel Wallace: “For Wallace, life in all its varied abundance could only be explained by the actions of higher beings –“I believe it to be,” he said, “the guidance of beings superior to us in power and intelligence. Call them spirits, angels, gods, what you will; the name is of no importance. I find this control in the lowest cell; the wonderful activity of cells convinces me that it is guided by intelligence and consciousness. I cannot comprehend how any just and unprejudiced mind, fully aware of this amazing activity, can persuade itself to believe that the whole thing is a blind and unintelligent accident. It may not be possible for us to say how the guidance is exercised, and by exactly what powers; but for those who have eyes to see and minds accustomed to reflect, in the minutest cells, in the blood, in the whole earth, and throughout the stellar universe—our own little universe, as one may call it—there is intelligent and conscious direction; in, a word, there is Mind.” “Myers suggested that our normal consciousness is only a fragment of our total soul, that a greater part of us is at work on the body, man-aging all the wonderful and complex machinery of the organism, and influencing us without our knowledge.” “Yes, that may or may not be true. But we must enlarge our vision. We must see more beings in the universe than ourselves. I think we have got to recognise that between man and the Ultimate God there is an almost infinite multitude of beings working in the universe at tasks as definite and important as any that we have to perform on the earth. I imagine that the universe is peopled with spirits—that is to say, with intelligent beings, with powers and duties akin to our own, but vaster, infinitely vaster. I think there is a gradual ascent from man upwards and onwards, through an almost endless legion of these beings, to the First Cause, of whom it is impossible for us to speak. Through Him these endless beings act and achieve, but He Himself may have no actual contact with our earth.” “¹² he once said—who used laws known and yet unknown to man for humanity’s ultimate betterment”.
Interview with Alfred Russel Wallace, New York Times, October 8, 1911.

Wallace concluded :”I now uphold the doctrine that not man alone, but the whole World of Life, in almost all its varied manifestations, leads us to the same conclusion—that to afford any rational explanation of its phenomena, we require to postulate the continuous action and guidance of higher intelligences; and further, that these have probably been working towards a single end, the development of intellectual, moral, and spiritual beings…”.   Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution, 113-14.

Georg Cantor. “The mathematician Georg Cantor believed that his theory of transfinite numbers had been communicated to him from a “more powerful energy.” A divine voice, like the angel who in old paintings whispers the Word to the Evangelist or the Translator, whispered to Cantor the Theorems of Ordered Sets”. Stories of creation, by Ricardo Nirenberg

Alexander Fleming. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for his discovery of penicillin. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1945, in which he affirmed his belief in a Higher Power: “….I have been trying to use penicillin to illustrate two points:
The first is that team work may inhibit the primary initiation of something quite new but once a clue has been obtained team work may be absolutely necessary to bring the discovery to full advantage.
The second is that destiny may play a large part in discovery. It was destiny which contaminated my culture plate in 1928 – it was destiny which led Chain and Florey in 1938 to investigate penicillin instead of the many other antibiotics which had then been described and it was destiny that timed their work to come to fruition in war-time when penicillin was most needed.
It may be that while we think we are masters of the situation we are merely pawns being moved about on the board of life by some superior power.”

Fleming spoke of angels interfering with laboratory moulds,
Dr. Alan L. Gillen, Professor of Biology, Liberty University (July 1, 2009), in an article entitled, The Genesis of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus: A Modern Day “Leprosy” and Hospital Menace over at Answers in Genesis contains the following biographical information about Alexander Fleming:
Fleming was a Roman Catholic who saw Providence directing him through life and suggesting an “Angel” had “stirred up the waters” for the Penicillium mould to mix with S. aureus on the Petri plate that August (1928) day (Maurois 1959).

The reference given by Dr. Gillen in his article is as follows:
Maurois, A. 1959. Life of Sir Alexander Fleming: Discoverer of Penicillin. London: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

Penicillin, discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, was developed as an antibiotic in 1940. Penicillin and its derivatives have been instrumental in preventing death from bacterial diseases
Between 1944 and 1972 human life expectancy jumped by eight years – an increase largely credited to the introduction of antibiotics.

Kurt Gödel. “About Gödel: Paul Davies: I think Gödel was certainly the greatest logician since Aristotle, maybe the greatest logician of all time. Freeman Dyson: If you take the historians of science, the people who are well informed, they will certainly put him on top”. Gödel left in his papers a  fourteen-point outline of his philosophical beliefs, that are dated around 1960. They show his deep belief in the rational structure of the world. Here are his 14 points:

1. The world is rational.
2. Human reason can, in principle, be developed more highly (through certain techniques).
3. There are systematic methods for the solution of all problems (also art, etc.).
4. There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind.
5. The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived.
6. There is incomparably more knowable a priori than is currently known.
7. The development of human thought since the Renaissance is thoroughly intelligible (durchaus einsichtige).
8. Reason in mankind will be developed in every direction.
9. Formal rights comprise a real science.
10. Materialism is false.
11. The higher beings are connected to the others by analogy, not by composition.
12. Concepts have an objective existence.
13. There is a scientific (exact) philosophy and theology, which deals with concepts of the highest abstractness; and this is also most highly fruitful for science.
14. Religions are, for the most part, bad– but religion is not.

In: Wang, Hao. A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy. A Bradford Book, 1997. Print. p.316.

The relevancy

It has been said that the only culture that doesn’t believe in the existence of angels, is the modern western culture, and this is the case only in the last three centuries. But even this is an understatement, between 30% and 80% in the western world still believes in the existence of angels. That makes the question of their existence socially relevant.

A conceptual framework

The concept of angels is clearly present within western culture. On Google the term “angel” gives in 22 october 2018, about 1.610.000.000 results. Angels are represented in religion, mythology, folklore, literature, poetry, paintings and statues. Some 77 percent of Americans do believe in angels. How high these numbers are, this doesn’t prove their existence, nor does this give a clear idea about their presumed residence (heaven one could say, but that is a somewhat unclear location). Then there is the question, that if they exist and as they are presumed to be non-physical, what is it that they are compounded of. While there are many people who claim that they have felt the presence of angels, being warned by them, saved from danger or been given information that changed their lives, that does not answer the questions here above. As a poetic idea it expresses a certain aesthetic quality, but aesthetic has another validity claim than factual statements. Even if one accepts that people where in communication with angels, (and one just has to look at the list above of the “Notable supporters of the concept” to take this at least into consideration), when these communications are not accompanied by visual perceptions, then these non-visual feelings of a presence, however valuable, just do not give enough information to place this all in a coherent conceptual framework. Within theology the concept of angels is accepted based upon tradition or the authority of scriptures. Within philosophy several prominent philosophers have tried to defend the existence of angels on logical grounds, this is very difficult. To make it scientific, would imply that one could show a part of the physical world that would be influenced by their activities, that could be verified with evidence and would have no other explanation.

Ontological levels

From a philosophical point of view the existence of angels would imply ontological dualism or pluralism. It would presume the existence of another world or worlds than the physical world. There is a great amount of academic discussion, with on one side monistic materialism, end on the other side dualism, interactionism, parallelism etc. A starting point here would be to prove the existence of which cannot be placed in a materialistic worldview. Elsewhere I will go into the statements and the main arguments that philosophers make relating to this issue. Next to philosophical arguments, there is the data of parapsychology, neurophysiology, psychology, research into perception and creativity, some of which supports the dualist / interactionist point of view. Especially within consciousness research in which the mind body problem is still the most important problem.

Within theoretical physics one finds a description of the different levels of existence from theoretical physicist David Bohm who developed an ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics. Bohm put forward a theory of an explicate order (the physical mater) and a series of implicate orders (each consisting of a different subtle non-physical matter). In Bohm’s ontological interpretation of quantum theory we find a series of implicated orders: “Little reflection shows that the whole idea of implicate order could be extended in a natural way. For if there are two levels of implicate order, why should there not be more? Thus if we regard the super-implicate order as the second level, then we might consider a third level which was related to the second as the second is to the first. That is to say, the third implicate order would organize the second which would thereby become non-linear”. (The Undivided Universe, David Bohm and Basil Hiley 1993)

Multiple ontological levels (heavens), holism (union) and non-locality (omnipresence) have been presumed to exist within mystical literature.

How to place the concept of super natural beings/angels in a modern world view

With the arrival of modernism and empirical science, long held world views like mythical world views etc. were replaced by mechanical world views. The enormous explanatory value of this new approach, the development of the scientific method and its practical applications would revolutionize society. Many of the long held views where now seen as outdated magical or mythical thinking. While many of the founders  of this new approach like Newton, Leibniz, etc. did still hold the spiritual world view as supreme, in the next centuries the mechanistic worldview and monistic materialism became dominant. Heavens, angels, supernatural forces, creator god(s), and life after death etc. were seen from a scientific point of view as mythical which had no basis in reality. However with the arrival of Quantum Theory and the new cosmology new insights into the nature of reality started to take shape:

Telekinesis: if there ever was a candidate of being called magical thinking it was the believe in telekinesis, while parapsychologists found supporting evidence for this phenomenon, this was mainly ignored.

However within Quantum Theory there were several different interpretations:

1 The Copenhagen Interpretation: The act of observation creates reality, the collapse of the wave function is caused by a conscious observer. (this implies micro telekinesis) This is what one calls the classical interpretation of Quantum Theory.

2 The ontological interpretation of Quantum Theory: in this interpretation the physical world (the explicated order) is influenced by a series of implicate orders, each consisting of a different subtle non-physical matter. (this implies macro telekinesis).

3 The Wheeler interpretation; this holds that reality even on a cosmic scale (the whole universe) is created by the observing act (this implies macro telekinesis on a cosmic scale).

4 The Wigner interpretation; Physical objects have no attributes if a conscious observer is not looking at.(this implies macro telekinesis) philosophical idealism.

Mysticism

Some of the leading Quantum physicists connected their findings to mysticism.

Albert Einstein; “I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science. If there is any such concept as a God, it is a subtle spirit, not an image of a man that so many have fixed in their minds. In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.” Albert Einstein, as quoted in The Private Albert Einstein (1992) by Peter A. Bucky and Allen G. Weakland, p. 86.

Erwin Schrödinger; In his book “My view of the world”, Schrödinger outlined his mystical and metaphysical view as derived from Hindu Vedanta philosophy.

Niels Bohr wrote: ”For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory…[we must turn ] to those kinds of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like Buddha and Lao Tze have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of existence” 1958 Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, (edited by John Wiley and Sons, 1958) p. 20.

Bohr was influenced by Taoism which is Chinese mysticism. As a result of those influences, Bohr adopted the yin yang symbol as part of his family coat of arms when he was knighted in 1947.

Wolfgang Pauli: The Harvard historian Juan Miguel Marin noted also the “lucid mysticism,” a synthesis between rationality and religion” favoured by Wolfgang Pauli, noted that Pauli “speculated that quantum theory could unify the psychological/scientific and philosophical/mystical approaches to consciousness”. Pauli’s perspective was influenced by the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, whose views on reality were in turn influenced by Eastern religions. Marin further noted:

“Among contemporary quantum field theories, the important gauge theories are indebted to the work of [Hermann] Weyl and Pauli. Yet many physicists today would be shocked if they learned how Weyl and Pauli understood the concept ‘field’ when they wrote their classic articles. They were both immersed in mysticism, searching for a way to unify mind and physics. Weyl published a lecture where he concluded by favouring the Christian-mathematical mysticism of Nicholas of Cusa. Moreover, Pauli’s published article on Kepler presents him as part of the Western mystical tradition … For those who do not favour the Copenhagen interpretation and prefer the alternative proposed by David Bohm, I would suggest reading Bohm’s many published dialogues on the topic of Eastern mysticism … Eddington and Schrödinger, like many today, joined forces to find a quantum gravity theory. Did their shared mysticism have a role to play in whatever insights they gained or mistakes they made? I do not know, but I think it’s important to find out”. (Harvard historian Juan Miguel Marin)

Werner Heisenberg wrote: “There is a startling parallelism between today’s
physics and the world vision of Eastern mysticism……one cannot always distinguish between statements made by Eastern metaphysics based on mystical insight and the pronouncements of modern physics based on observations, experiments and mathematical calculations”.

Eugene Wigner, a Nobel laureate, wrote that ”Philosophical materialism is not logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.”

David Bohm “was deeply influenced by Jiddu Krishnamurti, crediting him as a source for understanding the worldview he proposed in his interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that he put forth in Wholeness and the Implicate Order”.

—Juan Miguel Marin, “‘Mysticism’ in Quantum Mechanics: The Forgotten Controversy” in European Journal of Physics 30 (2009).

Arthur Eddington: In his Gifford Lectures (1927) on “The Nature of the Physical World” (1929). The last chapter dealt specifically with “Science as Mysticism.” He noted that any attempt to hold science and religion mutually exclusive cannot be achieved in view of their overlapping and changing frontiers. He describes the reductionistic identification “that the dance of atoms in the brain really constitutes the thought …” as “out of keeping with recent … fundamental principles of physics”, and recalls that “Mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote inference.” Following up with a discussion of the problem of experience, he argues that the “mystical outlook” does face the hard facts of experience, whereas reductionists are “shirking one of the most immediate facts of experience, namely that consciousness is not wholly nor even primarily a device for receiving sense impressions.” Although these arguments for “natural” mysticism do not imply a religious mysticism, they mean that many objections lose their force. In: “Astrophysics and Mysticism: the life of Arthur Stanley Eddington” Ian H Hutchinson Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology December 2002.

Creation

In the nineteenth century the general idea was that the universe had no beginning in time, that Matter always existed. The so called steady state model. With the discovery of the big bang it was clear that the universe had a beginning in time. A point of creation. Already two major theories had been developed that showed an evolution over a long period of time. One was Darwinism which showed a biological evolution over hundreds of millions of years, and the other stellar nucleosynthesis which produces higher elements like carbon, which are necessary for biological life. This process can take thousands of millions of years. However the creation of all matter in the big bang took place in only a fraction of a second and not only that, the second law of thermodynamics is concerned with entropy, which is a measure of disorder. The second law says that the entropy of the universe increases with the passing of time, which means the disorder in the universe increases the more time passes. The logical consequence is that the more we go back in time, the greater the order in the universe is. As the universe is 13.700 million years old that means that at the big bang the order was extremely high.

“The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature”. Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927). Next to this there is what are known as cosmological constants, commonly referred to as fine-tuning of the universe. When scientists speak of the fine-tuning of the universe, they are generally referring to the extraordinary balancing of the fundamental laws and parameters of physics and the initial conditions of the universe. The result of these constants is that the universe has just the right conditions to sustain life. The coincidence of all of these constants being so life permitting are too amazing to have been the result of meaningless coincidences. These cosmological constants all work together to keep the universe perfectly fine-tuned in order to make life possible. So we have several evolutionary processes, such as biological evolution by natural selection and among others the development of higher chemical elements in stellar nucleosynthesis. Both these processes generate complex structures after thousands of millions of years. And there is a totally different fact, the extraordinary high ordering, as is clear from the consequences from the second law of thermodynamics and the fine-tuning of the universe. It is here where we can place Aristotle’s First Mover and his secondary movers. Can supernatural beings be the cause of changes in the natural world? It is especially the fine tuning of the universe that made a substantial number of scientists, among whom several former atheists come to the conclusion that this is evidence for the existence or some form of intelligence capable of manipulating or designing the basic physics that governs the Universe.Roger Penrose’s calculation is that the probability of the occurrence of a universe in which life can form is at least 10 to the power of 123 to 1 1:1010(123) To quote: “the multiverse theory which states that our universe is one of many. It could be 10 to the 500th different universes or an infinite number of universes. In other universes, the physical constants are different and ours happens to be the one that is life permitting. This idea supposedly solves the problem of why our universe is so delicately and exquisitely fine-tuned to allow for intelligent, carbon based life to emerge and it also solves several other puzzling concepts in quantum physics. This is a problem that has concerned and worried many atheists because in a single universe, it is just too good to be true. The odds are truly incomprehensible. If there is a multitude of different universes, then our perplexing existence can comfortably be attributed to the atheists best friend, sheer dumb luck. The central purpose of these ideas is to explain how the universe could have created itself out of nothing”. “Now a similar problem afflicts the contemporary appeal to the multiverse to explain away fine-tuning. Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s “ low-entropy “(high ordering) condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1:1010(123), an inconceivable number. If our universe were but one member of a multiverse of randomly ordered worlds, then it is vastly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller universe. For example, the odds of our solar system’s being formed instantly by the random collision of particles is about 1:1010(60), a vast number, but inconceivably smaller than 1:1010(123).  (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison [The Road to Reality (Knopf, 2005), pp. 762-5]). Or again, if our universe is but one member of a multiverse, then we ought to be observing highly extraordinary events, like horses’ popping into and out of existence by random collisions, or perpetual motion machines, since these are vastly more probable than all of nature’s constants and quantities’ falling by chance into the virtually infinitesimal life-permitting range. Observable universes like those strange worlds are simply much more plenteous in the ensemble of universes than worlds like ours and, therefore, ought to be observed by us if the universe were but a random member of a multiverse of worlds.  Since we do not have such observations, that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. On naturalism, at least, it is therefore highly probable that there is no multiverse. All this has been said, of course, without asking whether the multiverse itself must not exhibit fine-tuning in order to exist. If it does, as some have argued, then it is a non-starter as an alternative to design”. (by William Lane Craig) One of the problems with the Multiverse theory one is its extreme violation of the parsimony principle; Ockham’s razor (Latin lex parsimoniae) is the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness. It is a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect. Another problem with the multiverse explanation is that the sustainability for biological life of the universe is in no way conducive to cosmic sustainability, no form of Darwinist selection process for cosmic evolution can be invoked. Furthermore a mechanism for generating such universes needs to be explained. Within the scientific community it has been said that the biggest difficulty with the concept of the existence of parallel universes is, that by definition they cannot be observed and they can be neither verified nor falsified. As this is absolutely necessary for a scientific theory, the Multiverse theory therefore is not a scientific theory. However there may be a way to falsify the multiverse theory, by using the theory that has been developed by theoretical physicist David Bohm and biochemist and cell biologist Rupert Sheldrake relating to non-locality. If there is an infinite number of universes that make up a multiverse, than novelty in the total system is excluded. Because in an infinite number of universes everything that can exist, does exist. By using the methods that are put forward in Rupert Sheldrake’s: “Morphic resonance, the nature of formative causation”, in which a non-local methods of research are described the multiverse theory could probably be tested. This book includes a discussion between David Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake. In this book Sheldrake gives some examples of some new chemical substances which melting point drastically lowered when they were masse produced. If this theory is testable, and if proven to be correct then this shows novelty does exist. That would imply that an infinite number of universes that make up a multiverse that does excludes novelty in the total system, is non-existent. (M.J.M.)     About the transcendent and modern science:                                                           “If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago. … This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism”. — Fritjof Capra     In The Tao of Physics (1975) Max Planck (Nobel Prize in Physics): “We must assume that behind the world of phenomena exists a Superior Mind. This Mind is the Creator of the Universe”. British mathematician-physicist-astronomer Sir James Jeans wrote in his 1929 work, The Universe Around Us: “Today there is a wide measure of agreement … that the stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter”. Quantum Theory and Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem made clear that the nineteenth century mechanistic worldview and its positivistic philosophy were naïve realism. How can we explain that supernatural beings can be the cause of changes in the natural world? The answer may be in John Archibald Wheeler’s statement: “Observer participancy is the mechanism for bringing physical reality into existence”.

Relevant to this statement is a Lecture given by Professor Brian D. Josephson (The Nobel Prize in Physics 1973):

“The problem of how life came into existence is a major challenge for biology. I shall argue for an explanation involving the idea that a more elementary form of life, not dependent on matter, existed prior to the big bang, and evolved at the level of ideas in the same way that human societies evolve at the level of ideas. Just as human society discovered how to use matter in a range of technological applications, the hypothesised life before the big bang discovered how to organise energy to make physical universes, and to make fruitful use of the matter available in such universes. In addition, our various creative abilities are in part expressions of aspects of this original life”. Professor Brian D. Josephsonhttp://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/871489

Phenomenology: Introduction

Dealing with the direct perception and its phenomenological description, the aim is not to put forward a series of logical arguments to support a conclusion, (as done here above), but to give an accurate description of these perceptions. Descriptions of perceptions of supernatural beings are to be found in many cultures. Some of these descriptions go back thousands of years. The category that we describe here (supernatural beings) does not refer to:

Apparitions of humans – Angels as they have been described for example by the great Hebrew prophets are of an entirely different order of beings than humans. They never were, and will not become human beings.

Visions – visions are form structures which are mostly personal and cultural specific, Visions are not the perception of concentrations of conscious subtle energies.

Guardian angels – this concept has to do with one’s own higher spirit which guards and protects us, and is an element of man’s own constitution and not an on its own standing being which is external to us.

Perceptions of beings within ourselves as in imagination or memory, who are internal to us, and not conscious beings which are external to us.

Idea patterns that are projected by the sub-consciousness of the perceiver in an ideoplastic environment.

There are different levels of existence as for example described within neo-platonic philosophy. While these different levels manifest themselves as psychological levels within a human, they are not only psychological structures that are individual and subjective. But they are also collective objective worlds. While humans take part in these different levels of existence, the direct visual perception of these different ontological worlds and its energetic processes are normally not available. When humans get access to higher levels of consciousness as is the case with mystics, prophets, seers, then the subtle energies, the higher worlds and their inhabitants become visible. These supernatural beings become visible as concentrations of subtle energies, objects in an ontologically higher world.

Some of the Hebrew prophets like the prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel gave some elaborate descriptions of them:  

Isaiah 6:1-7

King James Version (KJV)

6 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

² Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

³ And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

⁴ And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

⁵ Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

⁶ Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:

⁷ And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

Ezekiel 1:1-28

¹ Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.

² In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin’s captivity,

³ The word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.

⁴ And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

⁵ Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man.

⁶ And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.

⁷ And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass.

⁸ And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings.

⁹ Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward.

¹⁰ As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.

¹¹ Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies.

¹² And they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went.

¹³ As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.

¹⁴ And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning.

¹⁵ Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces.

¹⁶ The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.

¹⁷ When they went, they went upon their four sides: and they turned not when they went.

¹⁸ As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four.

¹⁹ And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.

²⁰ Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.

²¹ When those went, these went; and when those stood, these stood; and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.

²² And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above.

²³ And under the firmament were their wings straight, the one toward the other: every one had two, which covered on this side, and every one had two, which covered on that side, their bodies.

²⁴ And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host: when they stood, they let down their wings.

²⁵ And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads, when they stood, and had let down their wings.

²⁶ And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.

²⁷ And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about.

²⁸ As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spoke.

Daniel 7:9-10

⁹ I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.

¹⁰ A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.

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These powerful descriptions of the three great Hebrew prophets, we shall use as a starting point.

Phenomenology: Direct perception

Walking nearby the riverside, suddenly there was a shift in perception. Within the landscape a structure of hundreds of meters high in a X shaped form became visible. It consisted of multiple streams of subtle energy, ribbons so to speak. While the ribbons had only one colour the total field had three colours: Red, blue and violet. These energy streams came together at the heart of the field. Seen from the centre of the field, the streams of energy extended downwards and spread outwards, other streams of energy extended upwards and spread outwards. The streams slowly undulated. In the centre was a red coloured spherical shaped energy of about twenty meters in diameter, which pulsated like a flame. It was obviously a conscious creature, which was aware of its human observer. The general impression was that of an enormous generator and an exalted pure serene consciousness. The perception lasted about ten minutes. It seemed to scan its human observer and then it projected for about one minute a humanoid shape in its own field like a transparent statue of about twelve meters high. This was obviously an ideoplastic projection. The subtle energy fields where three dimensional and located in space. The mental perception was that of Union, resonating with the energies of this supernatural being. These kind of observations came repeatedly about once in several months.

Some months later: Looking at a book in a bookshelf in my room, there was the feeling of being consciously observed and a shift in visual perception from the physical world to a higher plane of existence took place. A portal did open itself, not to a physical location but to a higher ontological level. The shape, the energetic streams and its movement patterns that became visible were more or less the same as with the perceptions of several months ago; the observed colours of the streams of subtle energy here were yellow, green and blue. Perhaps the height was about the same, but this perception was not in physical surroundings, so its spatial frame of reference was less clear. In the centre was a yellow coloured spherical shaped energy of about twenty meters in diameter. Within this yellow coloured spherical shaped energy there was a wheel like structure from about four meters across. The spokes / rods radiating from the centre of the wheel so to speak were curved, so the wheels shape was that of a spoked circular Catherine wheel. The wheel was a chakra. There was a non-verbal, non-conceptual form of communication, a form of communication that was based upon resonance, union. I counted the parts in which the wheel, the chakra was divided, which now occupied a great part of my field of vision, and I counted twelve. This wheel was a resonating pattern that was being formed because the energies of the yellow coloured spherical shape were circulating in the chakra, and were drown into its centre. {Ezekiel 1:20: “The spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.”}. The energies within the wheel were constantly circulating, but the shape of the wheel remained stable. The circulating energies were all yellow in colour. Within these wheels/chakras there were concentrated points of subtle energy that looked like burning magnesium, much brighter than the other parts of the wheel/chakra. Ezekiel calls them eyes. {Ezekiel 1:18:…..and their rings were full of eyes ….}. When I was concentrating on these bright concentrated points of subtle energy a remarkable change took place. Instead of observing this being from the outside the focus point of my consciousness including my visual perception, and other forms of perception were now centered in the ‘heart’ of this being. This was no longer a state of union between two elements, but a state of identity because there were no longer two elements but one. The two atman points did fell completely together.

{The focus point of consciousness is called Atman in Hindu philosophy and the (created) monad in the philosophy of Leibniz. While the subtle energies are extended in space, the Atman, the (created) monad is localized in space and time, but not extended. Brahman, the uncreated monad, the Absolute, is not localized in space and time}.

Suddenly the focus point of my consciousness including my visual perception, and other forms of perception were now centered in the centre of a four meter across wheel like structure. Seeing and feeling circulating rotating subtle energies which seem to be a part of one’s condition, one’s existence. From this central point streams of coloured subtle energy extended upwards and downwards. In this state of identity, oneness, there was an much more clearer perception of these processes than was the case in the state of union. Here was a highly energetic conscious being which mental state so to speak was serene, exceptionally clear, an intuitive perceiving consciousness. This was not an analytical functioning, with reminiscence and anticipation from stored memory patterns, but a direct intuitive knowing. Its awareness was especially in the slowly undulating energy ribbons, almost like a musician who is tuning an instrument. The movements of the outgoing streams produced psychic sounds. {Ezekiel 1:24: “And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters”}. This experience lasted for about ten minutes (this experience was not a OBE, but a mental Bi-location, this situation not only transcending space but also ontological levels).

Smaller concentrations of conscious subtle energies

Walking and looking at an old tree that was standing next to the road there was a shift in perception: A group of flame-like orange energy concentrations spiralled upwards through the tree, then went a few meters sideways, and spiralled downwards, entering the tree again and spiralled upwards through the tree and the process repeated itself. I counted fourteen of these flame-like energies about a meter long and about fifteen centimetres wide spiralling energies, they were single coloured and conscious.

The placement of the matrices

A few minutes after going to bed, the room was filled with energetic processes, and I became aware of the presence of four creatures. They were of the same kind but had different energy groups. Meaning they each had three different colours, but each of them had a different combination of colours. This started a process which took more than an hour. During this timeframe there was a full awareness of the process and there was a continuous visual perception of this process as well the feeling of the energetic developments. The four creatures were located at each side, nothing anthropomorphic, but were just coloured undulating energy fields, and the impression was that they connected their energy fields so that they resonated together in a particular way. The energy fields of these four beings formed a collective resonance so to speak, that generated a process that they couldn’t generate on their own. Within these streams of subtle energy slowly a structure was formed, it looked somewhat like the computer-generated three dimensional wire models. This was a sphere shaped structure about seventeen centimetres across weaved of intertwined light wires of a few millimetres across. The wires were generated from one point which stretched out into a curved wire. Which on its turn generated a three dimensional structure. This structure had three colours, it was an open structure with a distance between the wires of about one and one and a halve centimetres and the light wires were only at the surface, the outside of the sphere. In a timeframe of about an hour more than twenty of these wire structures were formed. Some of them looked like spheres, others looked eight-like shaped, some were oval shaped, curved but all with rounded shapes. These wire structures / matrices were placed in my own subtle energy fields (the aura).      

A subtle energy Matrix (about 17 centimetres across)                       

 

Some had three colours, others just one. While looking at these developments, I wondered what the function of these matrices would be. There was some communication (nothing verbal) which clarified what their function was: Normally aura fields develop slowly. After a certain development the subtle energies that make up the aura will, if they are activated in a new way, slowly develop that new capacity. However if the subtle energy fields that are circulating through these matrices, they develop new capacities much faster. The development of cognitive, communicative, transformational, new forms of perception, totally new activities and capacities. After the matrices are placed, they stay permanent in the aura fields, continuing with their function.  

Another subtle energy matrix  (about 24 centimetres ↕ ⨉ by 8 centimetres)
© Marinus Jan Marijs

Here for clarity, only the top half of the structure is represented.

It is an open structure, which only consists of force lines. It is not a closed, massive structure.

The structure is top-down, left-right and front-back symmetrical.

Here below a lower part of the structure is also displayed.

Traveling

The train journey took about one hour and twenty minutes. While there was a perception in a normal timeframe in which the landscapes and the villages that were passed were all perceived, at the same time there was a transcending of time in which time didn’t seem to exist.  After reaching the train station, I walked into the streets of the city. After a few minutes there was a deep connection with this other being. It almost immediately shifted into a state of identity. And the other was no longer the other. Two consciousness’s melted together. The human observer and the non-human observer. It was a strange experience, on one hand walking on a busy street, on the other hand ones perception was in a higher world. It was like being in two totally different worlds at the same time. On one hand there was a physical body walking on a busy street, on the other hand there were these streams of undulating energy blue, green and yellow in colour, clearly visible for the mind’s eye. It took about thirty minutes to walk to one’s destiny, but all the time there was this connection with this other that was no other, at a great distance that was no distance.

Another type of Deva

Most of the deva’s have three different colours and have multiple streams of subtle energy, ribbons that are about seventy centimetres wide. However: At one night, when I was in a non-dual state / turiya / nirodha, while my body was deep asleep and awareness was still present; suddenly an energetic structure of several hundreds of metres high became visible. This was a totally other type of deva. It consisted of hundreds of energy streams hundreds of metres long but they were just a few centimetres diameter. It had five colour groups red, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The energetic streams were as clear as neon lights. It had a deep awareness and its residence was at a high level of existence.

To be able to perceive these cherubim / seraphim or deva rajas, a mystical development is necessary. At the level of nature / low subtle mysticism and they are felt, while at the level of high subtle mysticism they seen, but to see them frequently requires a low or high causal level development. To perceive them visually, it is the capacity to see auras that is used here. But as this perception is on a much higher level than the human aura, the perception is rather exceptional.

There is an excellent book by Geoffrey Hodson “The Kingdom of the Gods” which has many coloured representations of these beings. Going back to the great Hebrew prophets; The ophanim (Hebrew “wheels”) refer to the wheels seen on Ezekiel’s vision. These are chakras which, as with humans, connect the subtle energies that they have on different ontological levels with each other. The many eyes refer to high energy concentrations within these wheels / chakra’s. Cherubim in Ezekiel‘s vision and the Seraphim of Isaiah are said to have wings. Not that they have wings, but their energy streams look somewhat like wings. However, while cherubim and seraphim are mentioned to have wings in the Bible, no angel is mentioned as having wings.

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Daniel:” …..His throne like flames of fire: the wheels of it like a burning fire. A swift stream of fire issued forth from before Him”. Here also the wheels, chakra’s, and the flame like energies. The cherubim in Ezekiel’s vision are described as a part animal and part human, sphinxlike. This image is cultural specific, Ezekiel lived in Babylon were sphinxlike beings, the karibus were depicted, they were a winged, eagle-headed angelic deities. This figure originated in Mesopotamia; they were the guardians of the temples and palaces in Sumer, and Babylon. Cherub is the Jewish equivalent for karibu. Ezekiel lived in Babylon where there were statues of the karibus on the temple walls. However the perception of the subtle energy flame like streams and the chakras, are concentrations of conscious, subtle energies which is another kind of phenomenon. This differs from the perception of the cultural specific ideoplastic formed humanoid or sphinxlike images.

Hierarchical organization

The Catholic Encyclopaedia gives the following: “The treatise “De Coelesti Hierarchia”, which is ascribed to St. Denis the Areopagite, and which exercised so strong an influence upon the Scholastics, treats at great length of the hierarchies and orders of the angels. It is generally conceded that this work was not due to St. Denis, but must date some centuries later. Though the doctrine it contains regarding the choirs of angels has been received in the Church with extraordinary unanimity, no proposition touching the angelic hierarchies is binding on our faith. The following passages from St. Gregory the Great (Hom. 34, In Evang.) will give us a clear idea of the view of the Church’s doctors on the point:

We know on the authority of Scripture that there are nine orders of angels, viz., Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Dominations, Throne, Cherubim and Seraphim. That there are Angels and Archangels nearly every page of the Bible tell us, and the books of the Prophets talk of Cherubim and Seraphim. St. Paul, too, writing to the Ephesians enumerates four orders when he says: ‘above all Principality, and Power, and Virtue, and Domination’; and again, writing to the Colossians he says: ‘whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers’. If we now join these two lists together we have five Orders, and adding Angels and Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim, we find nine Orders of Angels.

St. Thomas (Summa Theologica I:108), following St. Denis (De Coelesti Hierarchia, vi, vii), divides the angels into three hierarchies each of which contains three orders. Their proximity to the Supreme Being serves as the basis of this division. In the first hierarchy he places the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; in the second, the Dominations, Virtues, and Powers; in the third, the Principalities, Archangels, and Angels”.

This hierarchical organisation corresponds with a twelve ontological levels model by which the lowest level is the physical world, and the levels two up to ten correspond to the angelic worlds. The two highest two levels are the Divine worlds; {St. Paul tells us (Ephesians 1:21) that Christ is raised up “above all principality, and power, and virtue, and dominion”}; which indicates a higher level. The hierarchical organisation is based on an ontological ranking. Next to this, there are the differences in spatial dimensions.

The perception of these concentrations of conscious subtle energies that one calls angels or devas, are if they are perceived be just some tens of centimetres, to hundreds of metres high. This gives an indication of their ontological level.

Epilogue

There are several philosophical views of which a great number postulate the existence of higher worlds or higher planes of existence. While monistic materialism denies other levels of existence, the following philosophical views allow for a reality beyond matter and imply higher levels of existence:

• “Substance dualism, the view found in the writings of Plato and Descartes that the universe is composed of two kinds of stuff, the physical and the stuff of soul, mind or consciousness.
• Ontological pluralism: Pluralist philosophies include Plato‘s Theory of Forms and Aristotle‘s hylomorphic categories.
• Hylomorphism a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, who says that the intellect (nous), the ability to think, has no bodily organ .In fact, he says that it is not mixed with the body and suggests that it can exist apart from the body.
• Psycho-physical parallelism: is usually associated with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a 17th-century German philosopher, scientist, and mathematician.
• Double-aspect theory: Double-aspect theorists include: Baruch Spinoza, who believed that the Existence had two aspects, God and Nature, whereas most subsequent dual aspect theorists accept a duality of Mind and Matter. There is a dual-aspect interpretation of Immanuel Kant‘s noumenon. Arthur Schopenhauer, who considered the fundamental aspects of reality to be Will and Representation. Gustav Fechner, Carl Gustav Jung, Wolfgang Pauli, John Polkinghorne, Thomas Nagel and David Chalmers who explores a double-aspect view of information (Wikipedia).
• Synechism: Charles Sanders Peirce In an 1893 manuscript “Immortality in the Light of Synechism,” applied his doctrine of synechism to the question of the soul’s immortality in order to argue in the affirmative.
• Objective idealism: Objective idealism accepts common sense Realism (the view that material objects exist) but rejects Naturalism (according to which the mind and spiritual values have emerged from material things), whereas subjective idealism denies that material objects exist independently of human perception and thus stands opposed to both realism and naturalism. Notable supporters: Plato, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Charles Sanders Peirce and Josiah Royce.
• Spiritualism (philosophy): the notion, shared by a wide variety of systems of thought, that there is an immaterial reality that cannot be perceived by the senses, as well as any systems of thought that assume a universal mind or cosmic forces lying beyond the reach of purely materialistic interpretations. Notable supporters: Plato, Aristotle, Henri Bergson, F. H. Bradley, René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Josiah Royce”. (Wikipedia)

The existence of angels in a modern world view

To place the existence of angels in a modern world view is a not an easy task, here several fields of inquiry are presented:

Cross-cultural evidence; this could be used to gather comparable data from different cultures in order to test hypotheses concerning the differences between cultural specific and universal, multicultural concepts.

Consensus gentium; In many cultures there is a believe in the existence of angels, even in the modern western culture, something between 30% and 80% of the population believes in the existence of angels. While that makes the question of their existence at least socially relevant, the unanimity of tradition, the existence of a ‘consensus gentium’ or agreement between all people (which was an ancient criterion of truth) is not an scientifically sound principle to prove the existence of phenomena, because widely upheld beliefs can be false. However, the cross-cultural data presented here can be a starting point for further investigation.

There are five major domains of reality, which each have their own validity claim:

The aesthetic:   is it beautiful,

The cognitive:    is it factual, is it true

The social:          is it sociable, communicative

The ethical:        is it righteous

The spiritual:      is it meaningful

Every group has its own value and validity claim. Let’s apply this principle to the existence of angels.

The question here, is whether that which is referred to as angels or devas etc. is based on facts, and this question belongs to the cognitive group. The depiction of supernatural beings in mythology, folklore, literature, poetry, paintings and statues, belong to the aesthetic group which has its own validity claim, its own value as an art form, but doesn’t prove factual existence.

Theology; postulates the existence of Angels and takes the witness of Scripture as absolute, from that starting point on it tries to put up a logical and coherent theory, but it doesn’t investigate its basic assumptions. While philosophy acknowledges logic, intuition and inspiration as sources of knowledge, theology acknowledges also revelation as a source of knowledge, and with that communication from a supernatural entity, which includes communication with angels. But the claims about the nature of the source of the revelation are difficult to substantiate.

Notable supporters; the list of scientists, mathematicians and philosophers who are recognized in history for making genuine contributions to their fields but who also expressed a believe in rational beings of a different and higher kind on a higher ontological level.

The aim of this biographical information is primarily to show that the validity of the conjecture of the existence of realities beyond the physical world, higher ontological levels or beings, has been accepted by some of the greatest philosophers, logicians, mathematicians and biologist.

Socrates:”(c. 469 BC – 399 BC) was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Many would claim that Plato’s dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity.

Through his portrayal in Plato’s dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions are asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. Plato’s Socrates also made important and lasting contributions to the field of epistemology, and the influence of his ideas and approach remains a strong foundation for much western philosophy that followed”. (Wikipedia)

Plato: “(428/427 BC – 348/347 BC) was a philosopher in Classical Greece. He was also a mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.

Plato’s sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have been ascribed to him. Plato’s writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato’s texts. Plato’s dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, religion and mathematics. Plato is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy”. (Wikipedia)

Aristotle: “(384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theatre, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato’s teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle’s writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing ethics, aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics.

Aristotle’s views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic.

In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as “The First Teacher”.

His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as “a river of gold”)” (Wikipedia)

Descartes: “31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French mathematician and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the ‘Father of Modern Philosophy’, and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. In particular, his “Meditations on First Philosophy” continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes’s influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system — allowing reference to a point in space as a set of numbers, and allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two-dimensional coordinate system (and conversely, shapes to be described as equations) — was named after him. He is credited as the father of analytical geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, crucial to the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution and has been described as an example of genius.

Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul, a treatise on the Early Modern version of what are now commonly called emotions Descartes was a major figure in 17th-century continental rationalism, later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all well versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well.” (Wikipedia)

Leibniz: “(July 1, 1646 – November 14, 1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher. He occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy.

Leibniz developed the infinitesimal calculus independently of Isaac Newton, and Leibniz’s mathematical notation has been widely used ever since it was published. It was only in the 20th century that his Law of Continuity and Transcendental Law of Homogeneity found mathematical implementation (by means of non-standard analysis). He became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to Pascal’s calculator, he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator in 1685 and invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. He also refined the binary number system, which is at the foundation of virtually all digital computers.

In philosophy, Leibniz is most noted for his optimism, e.g., his conclusion that our Universe is, in a restricted sense, the best possible one that God could have created. Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three great 17th century advocates of rationalism. The work of Leibniz anticipated modern logic and analytic philosophy, but his philosophy also looks back to the scholastic tradition, in which conclusions are produced by applying reason to first principles or prior definitions rather than to empirical evidence.

Leibniz made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in philosophy, probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. He wrote works on philosophy, politics, law, ethics, theology, history, and philology. Leibniz’s contributions to this vast array of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters, and in unpublished manuscripts. He wrote in several languages, but primarily in Latin, French, and German”. (Wikipedia)

Alfred Russel Wallace: “(8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; His formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection, predated Charles Darwin’s published contributions his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin‘s writings in 1858. This prompted Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the Wallace Line that divides the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia. He was considered the 19th century’s leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species and is sometimes called the “father of biogeography“. Wallace was one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the 19th century and made many other contributions to the development of evolutionary theory besides being co-discoverer of natural selection. These included the concept of warning colouration in animals, and the Wallace effect, a hypothesis on how natural selection could contribute to speciation by encouraging the development of barriers against hybridization.

Wallace was strongly attracted to unconventional ideas (such as evolution). His advocacy of spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with some members of the scientific establishment. In addition to his scientific work, he was a social activist who was critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and economic system in 19th-century Britain. His interest in natural history resulted in his being one of the first prominent scientists to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity.

Wallace was a prolific author who wrote on both scientific and social issues; his account of his adventures and observations during his explorations in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, The Malay Archipelago, is regarded as probably the best of all journals of scientific exploration published during the 19th century”. (Wikipedia)

Georg Cantor:“March 3, 1845 – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician, best known as the inventor of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between the members of two sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are “more numerous” than the natural numbers. In fact, Cantor’s method of proof of this theorem implies the existence of an “infinity of infinities”. He defined the cardinal and ordinal numbers and their arithmetic. Cantor’s work is of great philosophical interest, a fact of which he was well aware.

Cantor’s theory of transfinite numbers was originally regarded as so counter-intuitive – even shocking – that it encountered resistance from mathematical contemporaries such as Leopold Kronecker and Henri Poincaré and later from Hermann Weyl and L. E. J. Brouwer, while Ludwig Wittgenstein raised philosophical objections. Some Christian theologians (particularly neo-Scholastics) saw Cantor’s work as a challenge to the uniqueness of the absolute infinity in the nature of God – on one occasion equating the theory of transfinite numbers with pantheism – a proposition that Cantor vigorously rejected.

In 1904, the Royal Society awarded Cantor its Sylvester Medal, the highest honour it can confer for work in mathematics. It has been suggested that Cantor believed his theory of transfinite numbers had been communicated to him by God. David Hilbert defended it from its critics by famously declaring: “No one shall expel us from the Paradise that Cantor has created.” (Wikipedia)

Alexander Fleming: Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for his discovery of penicillin. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1945, in which he affirmed his belief in a Higher Power: “….I have been trying to use penicillin to illustrate two points:
The first is that team work may inhibit the primary initiation of something quite new but once a clue has been obtained team work may be absolutely necessary to bring the discovery to full advantage.
The second is that destiny may play a large part in discovery. It was destiny which contaminated my culture plate in 1928 – it was destiny which led Chain and Florey in 1938 to investigate penicillin instead of the many other antibiotics which had then been described and it was destiny that timed their work to come to fruition in war-time when penicillin was most needed.
It may be that while we think we are masters of the situation we are merely pawns being moved about on the board of life by some superior power.”

Fleming spoke of angels interfering with laboratory moulds,
Dr. Alan L. Gillen, Professor of Biology, Liberty University (July 1, 2009), in an article entitled, The Genesis of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus: A Modern Day “Leprosy” and Hospital Menace over at Answers in Genesis contains the following biographical information about Alexander Fleming:
Fleming was a Roman Catholic who saw Providence directing him through life and suggesting an “Angel” had “stirred up the waters” for the Penicillium mould to mix with S. aureus on the Petri plate that August (1928) day (Maurois 1959).

The reference given by Dr. Gillen in his article is as follows:
Maurois, A. 1959. Life of Sir Alexander Fleming: Discoverer of Penicillin. London: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

Penicillin, discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, was developed as an antibiotic in 1940. Penicillin and its derivatives have been instrumental in preventing death from bacterial diseases
Between 1944 and 1972 human life expectancy jumped by eight years – an increase largely credited to the introduction of antibiotics.

Kurt Gödel:” ( April 28, 1906 – Jan. 14, 1978.), mathematician, logician, and philosopher who obtained what may be the most important mathematical result of the 20th century: his famous incompleteness theorem, which states that within any axiomatic mathematical system there are propositions that cannot be proved or disproved on the basis of the axioms within that system; thus, such a system cannot be simultaneously complete and consistent. This proof established Gödel as one of the greatest logicians since Aristotle, and its repercussions continue to be felt and debated today. He subscribed to Platonism, theism, and mind-body dualism.

In his doctoral thesis “On the Completeness of the Calculus of Logic”, published in a slightly shortened form in 1930, Gödel proved one of the most important logical results of the century—indeed, of all time—namely, the completeness theorem, which established that classical first-order logic, or predicate calculus, is complete in the sense that all of the first-order logical truths can be proved in standard first-order proof systems.

This, however, was nothing compared with what Gödel published in 1931—namely, the incompleteness theorem: “On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems”. Roughly speaking, this theorem established the result that it is impossible to use the axiomatic method to construct a mathematical theory, in any branch of mathematics, that entails all of the truths in that branch of mathematics. (In England, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell had spent years on such a program, which they published as Principia Mathematica in three volumes in 1910, 1912, and 1913.) For instance, it is impossible to come up with an axiomatic mathematical theory that captures even all of the truths about the natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3,…). This was an extremely important negative result, as before 1931 many mathematicians were trying to do precisely that—construct axiom systems that could be used to prove all mathematical truths. Indeed, several well-known logicians and mathematicians (e.g., Whitehead, Russell, Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert) spent significant portions of their careers on this project. Unfortunately for them, Gödel’s theorem destroyed this entire axiomatic research program”. (Wikipedia)   .                                                         ……………….

Ontological levels; the Neo-Platonists and many other philosophers developed theories about the different levels of reality. They are found in: Ontological pluralism (philosophy), In the concept of heavens (religion), In out of the body experiences (empirical). And in Bohm’s ontological interpretation of quantum theory we find a series of implicated orders (Theoretical physics)

If one postulates the existence of angels, then this involves the existence of higher ontological levels as well. Any proof that higher ontological levels do exist would be relevant relating to the question of the existence of angels.

Classical philosophical worldviews; monistic materialism which excludes higher ontological realities or beings, is the dominant worldview in the western world. But there is a vast array of highly diversified philosophical views, which claim that mind and matter are two ontologically separate categories. Mind-body dualism claims that neither the mind nor matter can be reduced to each other in any way. Many of these philosophical views include higher ontological realities or beings“ {Generally, any philosophical position, be it dualism, monism, atheism, theism, pantheism, idealism or any other, is compatible with spiritualism as long as it allows for a reality beyond matter (Encyclopædia Britannica)} “

Hylic pluralism; the plurality of matter is relevant for our subject. The concept of an angel in theology can be divided in two points of view, one is that angels are dimensionless, located in space but not extended, and the other is that angels have non-physical bodies, fields of subtle energy. Their atman / monad, their focus point of consciousness is dimensionless, located in space but not extended, but their fields of subtle energy, are located in space and extended. If they are dimensionless points they cannot evolve, but if angels have non-physical bodies, fields of subtle energy, they can evolve. J. J. Poortman formulated the idea of a hylic pluralism of the plurality of matter, a model of the universe in which science and metaphysics are no longer contradictory. This vision was explained in his four volume work: “Vehicles of Consciousness.”

Worldviews / modern physics; the limits of a nineteenth century mechanistic worldview and logical positivism, which were at the heart of monistic materialism, were shown by Quantum Theory and Gödel’s theorem. As indicated here above, the new worldview was less hostile to other approaches, which included concepts of higher ontological realities.

Mysticism and the perception of higher realities / angels

While the existence of angels is presumed within theology, within mysticism they were perceived. Basically all the founders of religion, and other mystics claimed not only the existence of angels, but also to be in contact with them. So this wasn’t the result of philosophical speculation, but direct perception, it was here where the concept originated. These were very private experiences that are normally not accessible to observation by others, and therefore difficult to substantiate. But nevertheless it is the most direct way to obtain information about the subject.

Life after death; the question if there is life after death, is also relevant in this matter. If it could be proved that the human spirit can life on after death in a non–physical world, then it would be a small step to accept that a non-human spirit can life in a non –physical world.

Fine-tuning; it is especially the fine tuning of the universe that made a substantial number of scientists come to the conclusion that this is evidence for the existence or some form of intelligence capable of manipulating or designing the basic physics that governs the Universe.

{Albert Einstein; “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists”}

“According to Aristotle, just as there is a First Mover (God), so, too, must there be spiritual secondary movers (Angels)”. (Wikipedia)

 

The spatial dimensions of devas on different levels:

12    —-

11    —-

10   several kilometers high

9   ±1000  meters high, up to several kilometers high

8   ±300  meters high, up to ±1000  meters high

7   ±100  meters high, up to ±300  meters high

6   ±30  meters high, up to ±100  meters high

5   ±10  meters high, up to ±30  meters high

4   ±6 meters high, up to ±10  meters high

3   ±3 meters high, up to ±6 meters high

2    several decimeters high, up to ±3 meters high

1    —-