In Search of the
Common Code

by
Dago Vlasits.

The following essay entitled IN SEARCH OF THE COMMON CODE, was written by Dago Vlasits, shown above, for his presentation on the theme of "Science and Spirituality" at the Co-Planetary Conference in New York City in July 2006. Dago is a leading student of Arnold Keyserling, and resides in Vienna Austria. He is an educator, traveller, and deep thinker, especially in the areas of Science, Dimensions, the significance of String Theory, the Hyper-Cube and the Wheel. His native language is German, and this is his first essay in English. We at the School of Wisdom are proud to include this essay as part of our web curriculum.

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According to Judeo-Christian mythology the diversity of languages is a curse of god. Originally mankind had only one language, but because of the hubris and arrogance of the Tower of Babel, god disturbed its tongues, and from then on people couldn't understand one another. But there is also another myth concerning language diversity, only known in the Islamic culture, and written down by and commented on by Ibn Hazm, a Spanish-Arabic theologian of the 11th century. According to this story, god gave Adam and Eve the perfect language, through which they could name everything and understand the inner being of everything. In this model the occurrence of linguistic diversity is not seen as a catastrophe, but as a natural process.

The apparent multiplicity of languages is caused by an attribute of the perfect language, which at first looks like a weakness - the possibility of homonyms and synonyms, the possibility of using one word for different things and using different words for one thing. Ibn Hazm writes, that in spite of this attribute, the word of god can still be understood in every language, one needs only to use the concepts in the right way.

So, in this myth, it is said that the perfect language is not one, but the totality of all languages, and that every language is still participating in the perfect one.

Both myths express a truth about the human condition. We can share the optimism of Ibn Hazm, because basically it's possible, that people can understand each other. The social and political facts tell us another thing, so that we have also to accept the biblical diagnosis about the language-problem. Especially if one takes the concept of language in a wider sense, so that one regards every theory or ideology as a different language and a different approach to reality. Then one has to admit, that the different languages are the source of misunderstanding and disagreement, of exclusion and war.

Talking about languages or codes is actually talking about thinking. What is the role of thinking and theories when questions about the spiritual life are concerned? Spirituality is a matter of experience, and not so much one of thinking. It's a matter of experiencing - let's say, with the heart - what one realizes as the deepest reality, the one which gives meaning to one's life and is felt as the source of everything and the goal of all human striving for fulfilment.

It's not only our spiritual experiences which have a great impact on our life and the fate of the earth, but also to a high degree our concepts and conceptions, what and how we think about reality. This differs from person to person and from culture to culture, and it differs very much between the scientific and the spiritual cultures.

In order to create a dialogue between the different approaches to reality, do we need a common language? Or do we have to find something common behind all languages and different world views, something beside good will and tolerance? Tolerance and good will are essential; no dialogue is possible without them, only discussion. To satisfy the thinking part in us, we need a common conception which makes it evident that there is only one reality that we are talking about, just as there is only one atmosphere we are breathing. We need to find a common code, a common knowledge, which can serve as a uniting wisdom.

You may ask, is not the longing for a common language a vain dream or even worse, a totalitarian request, denying and fighting the differences? The variety of languages is a characteristic of life's diversity like the biodiversity, and it can't be a goal, that one dominates all the others. But we are not talking about uniformity, and our search should not be understood as the search for a new lingua franca, like English, or an artificial language like Esperanto. This would only be a preference of one species, or the synthetic creation of a new one. But to get something common for all, we need to find a kind of unification. The question is, on what level this unification could exist. Staying with the biological metaphor, our search should be understood like the search for the genetic code. It is the search for the common denominators behind all text production, the search for the common denominators behind all human thinking.

When the description of the objective world is concerned, we already have a common language; it is the scientific one. The success and worldwide acceptance of sciences cannot be ascribed only to their practical results, but also to the fact that scientific information represents a kind of common truth. Never in history had mankind developed a comparable institution where the truth is not defended dogmatically as in religion, rather it is based on observation and experiment, logic and mathematics, the probative force of which holds for everyone.

These characteristics of the scientific method have to be also the characteristics of the kind of common knowledge we are looking for. Yet a scientific approach is not sufficient since sciences exclude everything that is subjective and it is definitely not the intention of science to give answers to questions about the sense and meaning of human life.

Therefore the common code cannot be grounded merely on the generalizations of the sciences; neither can it be based merely on the so-called eternal truths of religious revelation and dogma.

So what is necessary? A completely different understanding of mathematics is necessary. To begin our search, we have to realize that the elements of the common code have their basis in the laws of geometry and numbers and that they are the unconscious matrix of all symbolic operations of the mind, of all language and theory. Ideas like this were cultivated in all traditions which looked at the numbers of the decimal system as the foundation of all wisdom. They were aware of the nameless, ineffable source of everything and referred to this Divine reality through numbers, understood as the "names of god" or the emanations of the ineffable.

The essence of these wisdom traditions is eternal, independent of time. In their historical appearance, these traditions are subjected to the process of evolution and have to be reformulated from time to time, incorporating the leading-edge of present philosophical and scientific development. This was done by Arnold Keyserling for the Pythagorean tradition, a tradition which inspired not only Cabbala and Sufism but also the modern sciences as well.

Ralph Losey has already given you an impression of the intentions and activities of the School of Wisdom in Orlando and the Schule des Rades (School of the Wheel) in Vienna, whose beginnings go back to the work of Herrmann von Keyserling, and were continued by his son Arnold.

Herrmann von Keyserling has formulated in his work the idea of a "World-philosophy" and pointed out that every philosophy and tradition is based on a specific premise or pre-condition, and - to overcome this exclusiveness - that it would be necessary, to work out the system of the possible premises. Arnold Keyserling dedicated his life to this work with the intention to develop a tool for understanding all traditions in an integrative way, and at the same time, a tool for personal integration and development.

Having the huge amount of information in mind that mankind has gathered 'til today, it is obvious, that a system of this kind can only be based on analogue thinking, the thinking of the right brain. The left brain-based positivism and rationalism of the sciences divides the world into parts, and tends to put them together in a coherent way. The right brain-based imagination and intuition of wisdom conceives reality as a whole, not merely asking if an event fits logically and causally, but if it gives sense to life. What we experience as sense in our life is not limited by the rules of the disciplines of logic, psychology, biology, astronomy, chemistry and so on, but is rather based on similarity and synchronicity. Hermes, the winged god, at home in all worlds, is a symbol for this all-persuading, all-penetrating sense.

Arnold Keyserling, in discovering a holistic system, understood as the system of the sensual and the spiritual world - hermetically spoken "below as above" - has provided the tools to adjust human thinking to the immanent and the transcendent reality. It is in this way that he made a contribution in epistemology, a formulation of the systemic order of analogue thinking. As far as possible in this short time, and as far as I am able to do it, I would like to give some information about the systemic basics of Arnold Keyserling's holistic approach to these matters. I had the opportunity to get to know Arnold Keyserling 30 years ago and to participate in his work. All his life he was after a common code, after the common denominators in all verbal and symbolic descriptions of reality - in sciences, philosophies, religions and spiritual traditions. Together with his wife Willy, his lifelong striving for this unified system had its fruition in a geometric image, which he called the Wheel. Later on it was graphically designed by our friend Ernst Graf and printed on linen sheets to hang on the wall for contemplation.

Humorous as Arnold always was, he said, that he is the inventor of the first washable philosophy. Seriously speaking, it has to be understood as a kind of world-grammar, as the knowledge behind the knowledge.

What is the function and role of the wheel? The structure of the Wheel bears the same relation to the different religious traditions as grammar does to poetry. If one learns and knows the wheel, one can identify all the historical traditions and conceptions as a specific synthesis of elements of the wheel itself. With the help of the wheel, one can see the history of the religious ideas as the evolution of human self-understanding, as the evolutionof the human mentality, based on the spinning movement of the earth-axis around the zodiac.

This time cycle with its 26 000 year period, large enough to span long historical epochs, delivers a framework for understanding human history, from the era of Neolithic man, 11 thousand years ago, the clan-member with an animistic mind, to the present time, the era of the human, who is in a state of awakening to his planetary responsibility, changing his mind from ideological, exclusive consciousness to holistic awareness.

Furthermore the wheel provides a kind of blueprint for the most elemental conceptions of modern sciences, the basic features of the cosmos we are living in. On the microcosmic level the structure of the atom, on the mesocosmic level the four attractors of chaos and self-organisation, and on the macrocosmic level a model of our solar system.

Yet, the main function of the wheel is not to give an abstract, objective description of the world. The knowledge of the wheel has an initiatory character and serves as a tool for giving sense to life on the subjective level. All these empirical structures -the atom with its 7 layers, chaos with its 4 attractors, and the sun with its 9 planets in our galaxy - are described by the sciences to get an objective, strategic understanding of the world. In the wheel - with the human subject in the centre - these physical structures gain a spiritual meaning. In which way?

The wheel is not a description of a spiritual path, yet it can serve as a kind of map for those, who have taken the risk, to go their own way into the unknown, without guru and defined routes. As a map it shows the structures of our world in time and space. To live a spiritual life, a life in resonance with the Whole, we need to tune-in into these structures of time and space.

What are time and space? The sciences have no final definitions for them, as there is no definition of what matter actually is. Space, Time, Matter, they all are metaphysical concepts. Scientific thinking only knows that for certain kinds of observations and experiences, like our everyday experiences, the Newtonian space-time model is sufficient. To understand other observations, like the behaviour of masses, moving with velocities near the speed of light, one needs the space-time-continuum of Einstein. And to understand smallest particles and discontinuous quantum-effects, one needs a space-time with other properties. Latest theories in physics demand a spacetime with more than our 4 well-known dimensions.

Some words about these new conceptions:
Physics of today is confronted with the problem, having developed two completely different approaches to reality -Einstein's theory of gravity and Quantum-theory. In one theory the universe is successfully described on the macrocosmic scale as a continuous entity, in the other the universe is successfully described on the microcosmic level as a multiplicity of myriads of discrete actions.

The search for the theory, which unites these two completely different approaches is the search for the holy grail in present theoretical physics. One of these attempts to unite Quantum Theory and General Relativity - and in this way to unite the four forces - electromagnetism, strong force, weak force and gravity - is the not yet proofed Superstring-theory. It demands a space-time of 10 dimensions, six of them are supposed to be rolled up and therefore so small, that they are hidden to our perception.

Using one-dimensional string-like particles instead of point-like particles in their calculations, string-physicist were able to produce, to demonstrate all the forces and particles of the already existing so called Standard Model, which was developed in the 70ies. Like a vibrating violin-string creates overtones, the string - vibrating in one time- and 9 space-dimensions - creates the diversity of the particles, which is the stuff the atom and the four forces are made of.

String-theory, starting in the sixties of the last millennium, was forgotten for a while, then went through several changes, and turned out to be actually part of an even more encompassing theory, the so called M-Theory. It contains 5 possible String theories, each one describing aspects of our reality within certain limits and conditions, and it contains as a sixth theory, the so-called Theory of Supergravity. M-Theory unites these six possible and necessary theories and is regarded as a Theory of theories. It shows the interrelations among all six theories and shows how each can be transformed into one another.

Yet, is space-time in terms of a scientific, formal system sufficient to integrate and understand all human experiences? Certainly not. In popular publications String-theory and M-theory are referred to as TOE (Theory of Everything). This is an overstatement, excluding as it does the human element.

So do we have to leave behind us all this crap about space and time, because it can tell us nothing about our values and desires, about our position and role in the universe and our sense of life? Or do we have to find a richer concept of space-time, one which can give answers even to questions about our spiritual life?

There are some formal similarities between the wheel and latest physical theories. We must not overestimate them, because these concepts are in a permanent change, yet they seem to confirm some Pythagorean intuitions. The vibrating string reminds us on Pythagoras` insight, that the laws of sound and music are the laws of our cosmos, and the ten-dimensionality reminds us on his insight, that the 10 numbers are the very ground of all reality, and that our world in space and time is made of them. Furthermore the wheel is also a kind of theory of theories, like M-theory, showing the interrelation of traditions and relativizing their claim for absoluteness.

As the wheel is not a theory for particle-physics, rather for gaining wisdom, space-time in the wheel is treated differently than in physics.

Time is treated as the 12-fold circle of the zodiac with its various rhythms of the earth-axis and the planets. Space is treated as the powers of the 8 directions, like in some shamanic traditions. The 12-fold time structure is the matrix of the developing human being, individually and collectively, and the 8 directions of space are the source of visions and inspirations, actually the source of all energies, which create, sustain and transform our life.

I don't wish to go too deeply into the construction of the wheel, I only want to mention, that all these time- and space-structures were derived by Arnold Keyserling mathematically, combining arithmetic and geometry in a new way, and using the mathematics of music.

These time- and space-structures of the wheel are in accordance with our experience - covering the experience of four time dimensions- past, present, future and instant and covering our normal space experience in three dimensions and the continuum as a fourth space-dimension. All this is shown in the 8-fold circle of dimensions, which is not shown explicitly on the Wheel. Only the resulting primal concepts are on the wheel. These 8 concepts of dimensions describe our psychology, the components of our consciousness.

Let's start with the zero-dimension. It is the void and the unknown, and at the same time the absolute consciousness, empty of content. The psychological concept for it is Awareness. For the spiritual person the source of enlightenment and holistic perception, it can for the scientific approach never be more than a black spot, at most rated as the unknown or unknowable, but usually treated as not existing or illusionary. As a time-dimension it is the instant. As the ineffable and formless it is the source of the objective world, and the source of our subjective consciousness. As the Awareness it is our true subject, the ability to identify (or not identify) with whatever is possible. It identifies with
the data of sensing, the information, delivered through the five senses,
with words and reflections of thinking,
with drives, needs, wishes and dreams of feeling,
and with choice and decision of willing.

It identifies
with the object-world of the body
with the social relations of the soul
and with the visions and inspirations of the spirit.

In studying a theory, philosophy or religion one can always ask, how far are all 8 components considered in this theory, or is one or more of them not taken into account. One-sidedness of this sort creates positions which we call scientific, positivistic, rationalistic, mythic, realistic, sociological, idealistic and so on.

Yet, even more important than this epistemological question is the question, to what extend are we awakened and live in awareness, and how far we have integrated the 7 components of our consciousness. This seven is also known as the seven chakras, and what we have dealt with so far by thinking, can be experienced actually in special trainings such as yoga, etc.

Awareness, as the zero-dimension, is beyond time and space, but our life takes place in a space-time, which is the merger of the four functions sensing, thinking, feeling, willing, and the 3 realms body, soul and spirit. This merger creates a 12-fold framework for all our experience. This structure is no more and no less than the knowledge of the zodiac, which was conceived by our pre-rational ancestors, handed down, developed and degenerated to what we call today astrology.

Astrology, this mythical heritage of our ancestors, which is nowadays in a miserable condition, can be understood in a rational way, if one understands the twelve themes of the zodiac simply as the combination of the 4 functions interacting with the 3 realms. The rational, psychological concepts together with the mythological images - for instance soul/ willing + Aries, body /sensing + Taurus, spirit/thinking + Gemini and so on - can give us a deeper understanding of what astrology really is. Its aim is not to tell fortunes but to provide a truly holistic view of the human being. The zodiac was always understood as the human body, divided into 12 parts and organs, each symbolizing a certain sphere of experience - personality (Aries), possession (Taurus), learning (Gemini), needs (Cancer), mastery (Leo), work (Virgo), community (Libra), death (Scorpio), inspiration (Sagittarius), profession (Capricorn), culture (Aquarius) and wholeness (Pisces).

In these twelve fields, there are nine impulses in action, traditionally named after the planetary gods and experienced by us as nine motivations. Usually they are more unconscious than conscious. They can show up as vices and uncontrollable passions - 1 jealousy, 2 vanity, 3 ambition, 4 voracity, 5 avarice, 6 envy, 7 combativeness, 8 eagerness for power and control -which is actually fear, and 9 snobbish lust for fame and originality.

To a certain degree we can suppress, fight and control them. But its no help to cut them off, this only reinforces our self-righteousness and the psychologically well-known mechanism of projecting our shadow-sides onto others. These nine motivations are the force-aspect of our nature, rooted in our biological, earthly heritage. The task is, to unite these with the light-aspect of our nature, to combine the nine motivations with the nine intentions or visions - the intention to 1 heal and integrate, 2 to create, 3 to learn, 4 to care, 5 to undertake, 6 to communicate, 7 to begin, 8 to be responsible and 9 to invent something new.

This uniting of motivation and intention is the main work and task the human has to accomplish and happens only due to a conscious decision, a decision for love and dialogue and against hate and separation.

Integrating the nine planets means to realize and develop our personal predispositions and potentialities. It means to actualize our sun - that is to create the being, which we can become in our life. Integrated, the planets no longer shade the light of our sun, so that it may radiate and support the life around. And the planets became the abilities, by what we perform our individual task in life.

Arnold Keyserling always referred to the zodiac as the archetype of man, "the man in the universe", comparable with the idea of Adam Kadmon in the cabbalistic, or of Mahapurusha in the Hindu tradition. It is not an image of god, since god is beyond all images, but it is the origin of all visions of god.

The vision of god, which can lead us in our time, which is, according to the wheel the Age of Aquarius, is god as a friend. We are not so much children of god anymore, but friends of god and co-workers in the evolution on earth, which is the feminine aspect of god. It's as much a work on one's inner nature as it is a work in the outer world, and the ideal of fulfilment and perfection is not so much the mystic fusion, but - as in the Pythagorean tradition - friendship between all beings in all worlds.