Matter Into Feeling: A New Alchemy of Science and Spirit

FURTHER PRAISE FOR

MATTER INTO FEELING

"Fred Alan Wolf is an integral thinker who combines his talent for quantum physics with a sharp philosophical mind, a poet's heart, and the mystic's visionary quest. He resolves the problem of modern thought, what can be called ‘epistemological schizophrenia,’ the crisis of fragmented knowing, in his own creative integration of the important ways of knowing—scientific, philosophical, poetic, aesthetic, and mystical—in all his writings, and here in this compelling book, Matter into Feeling. He is one of the significant guides to enhanced understanding, being, and life."

WAYNE TEASDALE, Author of A Monk in the World

"Once again, Fred Alan Wolf takes us on a journey into the future. His expertise and wisdom is evident as he presents the cellular map to love. After reading Matter into Feeling, your universe will never be the same."

MICHAEL TOMS, Co-founder and Host of New Dimensions Radio and Author of A Time for Choices

"For decades, Fred Alan Wolf has been one of the foremost representatives of new-paradigm thinking in science. Using the discoveries of quantumrelativistic physics, he has been able to bring scientific rigor into the study of such elusive phenomena as mysticism, shamanism, dreams, the relationship between the mind and the body, and the nature of reality. His latest book, Matter into Feeling, a brilliant synthesis of the ancient wisdom of Qabala and modern physics, is in many ways a culmination of his passionate quest. In this ground-breaking work, Wolf has succeeded in expressing profound ideas in a captivating, easily understandable style."

STANISLAV GROF, M.D., Author of Psychology of the

Future and The Cosmic Game

Fred Alan Wolf's methodical and scholarly work to interpret ancient mystical traditions in terms of modern science, deserves our rapt attention and deepest thought.

Moment Point Press, Inc.

EDGAR MITCHELL, Apollo 14 Astronaut, Founder of

the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and Author of The Way

of the Explorer

Moment Point Press, Inc.

P.O. Box 4549

Portsmouth, NH 03802-4549 www.momentpoint.com

Matter into Feeling: A New Alchemy of Science and Spirit

Copyright © 2002 by Fred Alan Wolf

Cover design by Metaglyph and Susan Ray

MG

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

For information please address Moment Point Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolf, Fred Alan

Matter into feeling : a new alchemy of science and spirit / Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D.

p. cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-930491-00-X (alk. paper)

1. Mind and body. 2. Matter. 3. Emotions. 4. Philosophy.

BF161.W64 2002

110--dc21

2002005909

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on recycled acid-free paper.

Moment Point Press

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

www.redwheelweiser.com

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To my mentor the late Carlo Suarès. His vision guides me.

Also to my wife, Sonia, who provides the necessary reflection

of love in my life and the reminder that the One Mind

can only be witnessed through another's eyes.

And I would like to thank Natalie Reid for a helpful

discussion regarding Hebrew characters and words.

ALSO BY FRED ALAN WOLF

Mind into Matter

The Spiritual Universe

The Dreaming Universe

The Eagle's Quest

Parallel Universes

The Body Quantum

Star Wave

Taking the Quantum Leap

Space-Time and Beyond

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION   Transforming Matter into Feeling

CHAPTER 1   The Island of Feeling We Call the Body

CHAPTER 2   From a Dream to Reality

CHAPTER 3   The Wave of Feeling

CHAPTER 4   A Trickster in Our Memory

CHAPTER 5   The Curve of Life

CHAPTER 6   Sex: Information Flowing Backward from the Future

CHAPTER 7   The Eye to the Universe

CHAPTER 8   From Possibility to Persona and Soul

CHAPTER 9   The Structure of Love in the Universe

ENDNOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

Transforming Matter into Feeling

Shall we be able to realize, on a higher plane, alchemy's old dream of psychophysical unity, by the creation of a unified conceptual foundation for the scientific comprehension of the physical as well as the psychical?

Wolfgang Pauli, physicist

In my previous book, Mind into Matter, my goal was to show that within your own mind and body lies a majestic story filled with drama, pathos, humor, intelligence, fantasy, and fact. While it is certainly your own story, it is also the story of the entire universe, its creation, transformation, and ultimate purpose. I showed how this story called you unfolds into a panorama of life, literally a you-niverse. I explored how the basic operations of what I call the new alchemy—thinking, sensing, feeling, and intuiting—form and shape the primary material of our conscious and unconscious life. And we saw that reshaping this primary material gives rise to forces that transform the world and us, namely creation, animation, resistance, vitality, replication, chance, unification, structure, and transformation. The ultimate goal of all this being the transmutation of information into matter; matter arises from mind—a vast field of influence commonly envisioned as the Mind of God.

You may consider Mind into Matter, then, to be an introduction into what the ancients called the great work of new alchemy. And now having introduced you to the new alchemy, much remains to be explored. We might ask ourselves, for example, How do I use the tools presented in Mind into Matter to change myself ? How do I realize these transformational forces? How do I live a more creative and fruitful spiritual life?

Realization of the new alchemy brings novel forms of the creative transforming forces into play. While the mind-to-matter transformation deals with primary or archetypal images and how these images become material, the next phase of the great work is the transformation of the newly-formed matter into feeling. This is where we begin to feel life in our bodies, as real living tissue. And this applies to all living beings, as all living beings feel. Feeling goes beyond the senses and can be imagined as the fundamental awareness out of which all of the other senses develop. Feeling results from the incessant hum of life itself.

In Mind into Matter I brought forward the notion of Adam Kadmon—the universal and archetypal human. This Adam, unlike the original Adam of the Bible, is capable of realizing at once spirit, matter, and full powers of transformation. What makes Adam Kadmon differ from the biblical Adam can be summarized into one word: feeling. The Adam of the Book of Genesis seems almost an automaton, incapable of any real feeling, except perhaps for the feeling of shame when he and Eve are thrown out of Eden. Adam Kadmon, on the other hand, is capable of feeling deeply all of the transformational possibilities embedded within him. So we can say that Adam represented the first phase of the transformation—mind into matter—while Adam Kadmon represents the second phase— matter into feeling.

As with Mind into Matter, Matter into Feeling is divided into nine chapters, each framed by the nine letter-symbols of the Hebrew alphabet, or aleph-bayt. In Mind into Matter we dealt with the archetypes spirit, represented by aleph ( , 1), through structure, represented by tayt ( , 9). Now we will be concerned with their development—their transformation from seeds into young sprouts. This is accomplished in Qabala by multiplying each letter-symbol by the number ten. Since the letter-symbol for ten in Hebrew is yod, meaning existence, we see that multiplying by ten each of the nine archetype lettersymbols actualizes them, brings them into existence, or as I put it, brings matter into feeling.

Thus aleph ( ), representing number 1, transforms into yod ( ), number 10; bayt ( , 2) becomes khaf ( , 20); ghimel ( , 3) becomes lammed ( , 30); dallet ( , 4) becomes mem ( , 40); hay ( , 5) becomes noon ( , 50); vav ( , 6) becomes sammekh ( , 60); zayn ( , 7) becomes ayn ( , 70); hhayt ( , 8) becomes phay ( , 80); and tayt ( , 9) becomes tsadde ( , 90). In each chapter opening I will review these transformations and explain in more detail what they mean.

The advancement of the letter-symbols points to experience, life, reality, and so on, with the symbols coming alive, as it were. Matter into Feeling, then, looks at the continual movement of the nine mental/material seed archetypes into living symbols, literally a transformation of matter—already embodying mind—into life, the feeling and awareness of matter.

Note, too, that when we put two letter-symbols together, indicating a transformation from the former to the latter, they occasionally spell out a Hebrew word that symbolizes that transformation. In ancient Hebrew there may have been more examples of a matching between ancient words and the sacred meaning of the letters. Short of that, by going through a typical modern Hebrew/English dictionary I came up with words, shown below, that typify the transformation. In those cases where no word seemed to exist, I used the Qabala definition of the symbols:

aleph to yod ( to ; 1 to 10)

island—the movement to self-identity

bayt to khaf ( to ; 2 to 20)

birth—the movement from dream to reality

ghimel to lammed ( to ; 3 to 30)

wave—the movement from wave to feeling

dallet to mem ( to ; 4 to 40)

blood—the movement of the trickster

hay to noon ( to ; 5 to 50)

curve of life—the movement toward balance

vav to sammekh ( to ; 6 to 60)

menses—the movement of sexual energy

zayn to ayn ( to ; 7 to 70)

observation—the movement of the universe

hhayt to phay ( to ; 8 to 80)

purity—the movement from self to soul

tayt to tsadde ( to ; 9 to 90)

structure of love—the movement of life

In bringing mind into matter we had to deal with resistance and the trickster element. Now, similarly, we must deal with the conflicts and resistance we face in our lives as we attempt to make sense of the world, and learn to put up with our material demands, our addictions, our ups and downs, successes and failures. For many of us on the spiritual path, the great work gets trapped here—we live and die never realizing that other phases of transformation are even possible. In other words, we get fooled by our appetites.

To make the leap, to realize the remaining phases, requires understanding that the stuck life is only a phase, much as a child throwing a tantrum is merely going through a phase. The movement of matter into feeling is the second phase. And my goal with Matter into Feeling is to help guide you through it.

aleph ( , 1)

to

yod ( , 10)

The Book of Genesis presents the timeless, metaphorical battle of matter with spirit—the continuing story of man acting against God. This story resonates through a number of biblical scenarios, including Adam and Eve's willful ignoring of God in the Garden of Eden, Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, and God's refusing Moses entry into the new world.

The Hebrew alphabet provides letter-symbols of this war of matter with spirit: aleph, representing unembodied spirit, and yod, representing spirit contained and limited in matter that in its pride fights against the very thing that brought it into reality. And thus the transformation of aleph to yod is symbolized by the word island —the movement to self-identity.

CHAPTER 1

The Island of Feeling We Call the Body

No man is an island, entire of himself; every man is a piece of the continent.

John Donne

Much like Narcissus, who was punished by the goddess Nemesis for resisting Echo's call,¹ spirit embedded in matter as self—meaning body consciousness—resists spirit's call. In doing so, embodied spirit makes a primary distinction: recognizing itself as matter, it becomes entranced, lost in the image of itself as separate from spirit. An illusion, and a powerful one. Thus we, as self, begin the lifelong process of distinguishing one thing from another, a process from which we derive both joy and suffering.

The ability to carry out this action, to make objective discriminations, constitutes scientific intelligence and remains necessary for material survival. The difference between scientific intelligence and spiritual intelligence lies in this ability to discern. It seems the two forms of experience produce a complementarity.

To explain, in quantum physics the principle of complementarity says that the physical universe can never be known independent of an observer's choices of what to observe. Moreover, these choices fall into two distinct, or complementary, sets of observations called observables. Observation of one observable always precludes the possibility of simultaneous observation of its complement. For example, the observation of the location and the observation of the motion of a subatomic particle form complementary observables. Hence the observation of one renders the other indeterminate or uncertain. So the more objective we are in our observations, the more difficulty we will have in dealing with spirit, and the more likely we will become drawn into the material world.² Conversely, as we become more spiritually awakened, the less concern we will feel for our material existence.

It's true, scientists have mastered the ability to find particles of matter standing alone with separate properties. Yet they witnessed every electron behaving exactly alike and each atom differing not a chemical whit from any other atom with the same atomic number. Hydrogen is hydrogen and copper is copper, wherever they may roam.³ This principle of scientific identity seems to hold throughout the universe and indicates that matter only exists according to certain basic structural rules. So although matter appears as separate particles, the fact that they are identical particles tells us that their separation is illusory.

Scientists could have imagined all kinds of matter,⁴ but something compelled them to find a simpler, rational basis for all that we experience as matter. That basis culminated into only perceiving matter objectively. With the discovery of quantum physics, however, science uncovered reality's own subjective nature; it found everything connected, joined in identity as if mirrored, and this, in the sense of identical particle construction, pointed to a unity of all matter. It also showed that a deeper, non-material reality played a significant role in determining how objective matter behaved.

But in spite of the compelling evidence of material unity and the recognition of matter's deeper, non-material basis, scientists, with a few notable exceptions,⁵ still find spiritual concerns troubling. Thus the battle of spirit with its own reflection in matter goes on. And together matter and spirit make the world into a series of separate islands. Each island appears to itself and sees the other islands as distinct. As each of us comes into the world, we begin to see ourselves as isolated beings, separate islands seemingly adrift in the vast ocean of life.

In this chapter, we will explore the