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< Stone Tape Theory and Apophenia
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I believe that the impressions you are referring to have been called the Akashic Record. I'd be interested in some explanation of what you mean by "material but non-physical". Epicurus believed consciousness to consist in very fine or subtle matter, but this was still physical: it is composed of atoms that are smaller, smoother, and easier to set into motion than the atoms of familiar matter, and interact normally with common matter; their motion is eventually transferred to, e.g., the limbs of the body.
In my own case, I'm always trying to reconcile my interest in the occult with my belief in a universe that is not only purely physical, but strongly deterministic and intrinsically meaningless. I could also see impressions in a place as being made upon the noösphere, in the memetic or social-psychological sense, and persisting over time culturally though possibly sub-consciously. This is quite similar to your 'ether tape', except that the actual encoding occurs physically in human brains, though the information content can be described independently of its physical substrate. I have a related theory of demonic possession which I have not fully written up.
I'd be interested in some explanation of what you mean by "material but non-physical"
You put me in a bit of a tight spot here, I'll try my best to explain myself :-)
We distinguish two different concepts here: matter, and spirit. The fundamental difference between both of them is that matter is ever subject to change, impermanent.
Now, inasmuch as "mind" is, in the dominant ontology of the west, considered to be an emergent property of the mechanistic processes of what we shall call 'gross matter', which is non other than what I refered to as what is "physical", ie, the aspect of reality which can be observed, measure and described by the physical science, then the whole of mind, again, is nothing but a material quality. I must say that I do not agree with this purely mechanistic perception of nature, and I think it goes both ways: the subtle matter, or ether, or the astral plane, call it as you may, carries the semantic aspect of reality, the one which in turn guides the processes of the merely reactive physical matter. In this sense, I disagree with the characterization of nature as
a universe that is not only purely physical, but strongly deterministic and intrinsically meaningless.
Here is a common allegory that I like to use: the semantics of a computer program are not merely the "emergent properties" of the symbols with which the program is written, they have a separate reality of their own (in our minds, in this case), and the very different manifestations of such a program (say, in a haskell source file, or in the final, compiled binary) are but a manifestation of the semantic plane which brings all the symbols (or words of machine code) together.
In my view, both subtle and gross matter evolve together in increasing complexity, just as a primitive cell could start out as a bilipid layer enclosing a sort of proto-RNA chain and some coalescing proteins, the semantic interpretation of it (which, granted, we apply retroactively from the perspective of fully developed organic living beings) as a sort of "stronghold against entropy" started developing as well.
Mind being matter, it is also bound to the rules of matter, in it's own way. It is so that logic and mathematics, being "non-physical", also follow rules of operation. It is so, too, that minds and personalities and not entirely unpredictable, but follow observable patterns. That these patterns are not subject to precise observation and measurement is related to their "non-physical" nature, as they cannot be measured by instruments which have a discrete, and more or less "objective" (meaning that we could reach almost universal consensus on their bounds and structure) body.
Look at the Tree of Life: everything upwards of Malkuth, the tenth sephirah, is a product of Creation, yet none of it is physical; and only the lower triangle, Netzach, Hod and Yesod represent the mind as we understand it. In general, everything below the first three sephiroth (the so-called "supernal" triangle), and perhaps even themselves, is matter. The idea here is that the very essence if nature is not the crude, physical realm of Malkuth, but the subtle, astral, or akashic structure of which Malkuth is the final manifestation.
As for what I mean by 'Spirit', it'll have to wait for a different post, I have elaborated quite a bit for now, and if subtle matter is an elusive subject, spirit is moreso, I couldn't claim to grasp it, let alone to talk at length about it.
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I must remind you: this is nothing but my own model of reality, as I have gleaned it from the very few sources that I have read. I do not speak for anyone else or accurately represent any one tradition, and all of what I may say may be inaccurate and subject to change. But it is, as of today, more or less a good representation of the model of the world as I have built it, to the best of my effort.