by Marinus Jan Marijs
(phenomenology)
There is a description of A.P. Shepherd relating to the different levels of existence:
“These worlds are dimensional levels and are not separate regions, specially divided from one other, so that it would be necessary to move in space in order to pass from one to another. The highest worlds completely interpenetrate the lower worlds, which are fashioned and sustained by their activities. What divides them is that each world has a more limited and controlled level of consciousness than the world above it. The lower consciousness is unable to experience the life of the higher worlds and is even unaware of their existence, although it is penetrated by them. But if the beings of a lower world can raise their consciousness to a higher level, then that higher world becomes manifest to them, and they can be said to have passed to a higher world, although they have not moved in space ”. (A.P. Shepherd: “A Scientist of the invisible” 1954)
Another description of the different levels of existence is from theoretical physicist David Bohm. { David Bohm was an eminent theoretical physicist, as the following quote underscores: “It was Einstein who had said, referring to the need for a radical new quantum theory, “if anyone can do it, then it will be Bohm.” (Peat, 1997)}.
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: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory David Bohm, Basil J. Hiley – 1993).
As to the number of levels of existence, if one takes into consideration that there are different levels, then the question could be how much different levels are there? It has been postulated that this different levels deal with increasing complexity, in which case the number of levels would be unlimited (like there is no highest number, there would always be a highest number plus one). But if different levels deal with increasing unity, in that case the number of levels would be limited or even exactly fixed so to speak. If the different levels of existence were laid down by an involutionary process, so to speak, than the number of levels is pre-given, determined.
William Blake (1757 – 1827)
