egodeath | Vertical, Timeless Determinism - In late antiquity, consciousness was
centered around the doctrine and mystic-state experience of the pre-setness of
future thoughts and occurrences. The central thematic concern of religions in
the Hellenistic era was Heimarmene
(Martin 1987), which means fatedness, Necessity, or timeless cosmic
determinism. Modern thought considers some related issues, though only in a
single cognitive state. For example, Philosophical Metaphysics investigates the
related issues of tenseless time, fatedness, agent movement through space and
time, and controller agents (Oaklander & Smith 1995).
The future is unchangeable and pre-set
because of the static relation of control to the time dimension, and because it
is largely an illusion that a person is a continuant agent who exercises power
while moving through time.
Modern science introduces clockwork determinism
and thereby reduces the person to an automaton; in reaction, Copenhagenist
quantum mechanics aims to provide an emancipating alternative to the
hidden-variables determinism of Einstein and Bohm. However, modern conceptions
of determinism and causality are limited to intellectual speculation based in
the ordinary cognitive state, so they habitually tend to envision time as a
sequential flow.
Transcending Determinism Requires Two Jumps - Determinism is both a praised goal and a
disparaged trap to escape, due to determinism-awareness being the intermediate
but not final goal of religious mental transformation. Valentinian Gnosticism
affirmed cosmic determinism but also transcended it, and formulated two
contrasting schemes of thinking about moral culpability (Pagels 1992).
Simplified 2-stage initiation themes
actually reflect a 3-stage progression that is centered around determinism.
Mystic metaphor both endorses and disparages the realization of determinism,
because determinism is only an intermediate destination on the path to salvific
regeneration. The first demon or stage of egoic delusion to be cast out is the
assumption of simple independent self-command and freewill. The second demon to
be overcome is the mental model of cosmic determinism or fatedness, a model
which is rationally coherent but raises the practical problem of control
instability.
