Beyond Cycles and Change

The intellect is incapable of grasping “The Great Insight” or the worldview of Oneness which has to be intuitively internalized or “felt” to be profoundly realized. But the intellect can understand paradigm shifts in the realm of the relative and even help generate such shifts. For example, the invention of navigation instruments made possible the circumnavigation of the globe and the so-called Age of Exploration. The telescope and the microscope impacted the very identity of humanity. Copernicus’ theory of a heliocentric universe was confirmed by Galileo’s telescope. Aristotle’s static, earth-centered universe and the Renaissance belief that “man” was the measure of all things were both shattered by such scientific discoveries.

The resulting paradigm shift in the 17^th century was also evident in the arts. We can see the shift in Sir Christopher Wren’s architecture, John Dryden’s literature and Henry Purcell’s music. The architect of St. Paul’s, Christopher Wren, had been a mechanical inventor, an experimental scientist and a professor of astronomy at London and Oxford. His artistic vision can be seen throughout London in the hundreds of buildings he designed and built after the Great Fire of 1666, including 50 new parish churches.  “In the crypt beneath St. Paul’s Cathedral in London a Latin inscription on a stone slab reads: ‘Beneath is laid the builder of this church and city, Christopher Wren who lived more than 90 years, not for himself but for the good of the state. If you seek a monument, look around you.’” 

The European nation states were an indirect result of scientific inventions and were creating a shift in power from the Popes, Holy Roman Emperors and kings to the middle class bourgeoisie and in the case of England to Parliament. A new identity and a new creative energy had been unleashed by the paradigm shift. St. Paul’s was “the only major cathedral in Europe to be built by one architect, by one master mason, and during the episcopate of one bishop. In contrast it took 13 architects, 20 popes, and more than a century to build St. Peter’s in Rome.”

The rationalism of the new paradigm was based on the emerging 17^th century worldview that the universe could be understood as being based on mathematical laws, mechanical laws and human logic. The inventive spirit and new worldview also affected music. “Purcell’s music reflects a buoyant self-confidence, an inventive spirit that gave birth to new forms, an exploration of novel optical and acoustical ideas, and a conviction that a work of art should in its way be a reflection of an orderly and lawful universe.”

Dryden’s poetic drama reflected the same unique creative energies that had been released in Wren’s architecture and Purcell’s music. “The fellows of the Royal Society appointed John Dryden to a committee whose purpose was to study the English language with a view toward linguistic reforms. They recommended that English prose should have both purity and brevity [simplicity], so that verbal communication could be brought as close to mathematical plainness and precision as possible.”

Paradigm shifts often involve conflict as the new version of P-B gradually replaces the old version. “The baroque world was one in which irreconcilable oppositions had to find a way of coexistence. The rise of rationalism was accompanied by the march of militant mysticism [think Jesuits]; the aristocratic cult of majesty [think Louis XIV]; by the bourgeois cult of domesticity [think Dutch burghers]; the internationalism of Roman Catholicism was in conflict with the nationalism of the Protestant sects; religious orthodoxy had to contend with freedom of thought; the Jesuits brought all the arts into their churches, while Calvin did his utmost to exclude the arts as vanities; Philip II built a palatial mausoleum and monastery [Escorial Palace], while Louis XIV erected a pleasure palace and theater [Versailles]; Charles I tried to force an absolute monarchy on England, and Cromwell’s answer was a republican commonwealth; the printing press made books available, while suppression by censorship [the Inquisition] took them away; the boldest scientific speculation took place alongside a reassertion of the belief in miracles and a renewal of religious fundamentalism; Newton’s Principia and the final part of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress appeared in London within two years of each other. In Spain, the emotional involvement of El Greco was succeeded by the optical detachment of Velazquez; in France the spontaneity of Rubens was followed by the academic formalism of Poussin; in Holland, the broad humanity of Rembrandt led to the specialization and precision of Vermeer.”

That is a snapshot of a relative paradigm shift, the inventions of the intellect that triggered it and the energies released and how they were expressed. Such changes in worldview constitute the history of humanity and continue to occur in an endless cycles of change. However, Simple Reality is a paradigm beyond such modifications in form and thought. That which is real does not change. If we remain unconscious, a shift from P-B to P-A will of course be impossible.  For that shift to occur, we must transcend the cycles of change altogether. A new worldview and the resultant new identity that will deliver humanity into our true state of being, into the Now, are much less complicated and are more rational than the examples given above. Transcending P-B is indeed “simple.”

We can begin the dialogue on how and why to do that at any time.

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References and notes are available for this article.
For a much more in-depth discussion on Simple Reality, read Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival, by Roy Charles Henry, published in 2011.