The Missing Ingredient
Written by Gary Osborn between 1994 and 1997. Updated 2004.
Copyright © G Osborn 2004. All Rights Reserved
Part 1: The Void at the Center of All Information/Knowledge
'When one sees Eternity in things that pass away and infinity in finite things, then one has pure knowledge. But if one merely sees the diversity of things, with their divisions and limitations, then one has impure knowledge.’
The Bhagavad Gita. (XVIII.20-21)
These words from the ancient Gita have a wisdom in them that is rarely seen nowadays.
Instead of writing a specialist book that is limited to one particular thing – something that is usually divided and separated from all other subjects – I have concentrated my research on ‘nothing’ – or rather the Infinity that some people throughout our history have experienced in all kinds of ways: the same infinity by which all things are connected together and which I now visualise at the centre of all finite things.
Surely the phrase, ‘pure knowledge’ can only be applied to something that can ultimately unite all things? And if all the evidence leads us to conclude that all things are united by this ‘one thing,’ then this ‘one All-Non-thing’ must be ‘True’ and therefore it can no longer remain a mere conception in the mind . . .
If we want to discover the secrets of the cosmos and the nature of our existence within it, then first of all we need to ‘know’ and understand ourselves – i.e., the ‘mechanism’ by which we create the reality around us – especially if we are creating it all from a Source within us. If we do not know ourselves and the nature of this creative Source of energy within us, then we will continue to create – and unconsciously – the repeating cycles of our own “heavens” and “hells” – both of which will inevitably merge into the other – we forever blaming it all on some “white-bearded, Charlton Heston look-alike God,” who sits on a cloud somewhere – or maybe some Devil that stalks amongst us – without any realisation that we are actually creating it all.
In all seriousness, to penetrate into the Source of the mysteries, I feel it’s important to be inquisitive with a child-like wonder of the world, and that one should guard against losing this sense of wonder. In the search for “Truth,” it must be understood that all the areas of knowledge and academic study are of no use without the inclusion of the ‘higher knowledge’ which is being either suppressed, obscured or ignored . . . because each subject of enquiry is limited without it. This ‘higher knowledge’ is esoteric knowledge, which is really the knowledge gathered from one’s higher perceptions of the deeply profound connections that one thing makes with another.
The current education system actually arrests the ‘child-like wonder’ that we all naturally possess, because it teaches us a version of life, which is in step with the superficial values of society. It does this, so as to keep us focused within its system. People want to learn in their own way; they don’t want to be told ‘what’ to learn and ‘how’ to learn it. Using my own early life as an example – because I never really attended normal lessons and often stayed in the art-class – one could say I bypassed the system – but I learned about all these subjects in my own way. I learned enough about these subjects to grasp what I felt was a ‘truer’ and better understanding of this world. It was as if I already understood the essence of what I was being taught anyway and this saved me from getting lost in all the detail – i.e., “not seeing the wood for the trees.” I also mixed this mainstream knowledge and what I understood intuitively about the world with certain anecdotal material relating to what many would consider to be “other people’s weird experiences” – and what I learned made me question the ‘conventional’ or ‘official’ view regarding the nature of reality.
I knew these experiences were being largely ignored, suppressed, or ridiculed, and on a large scale, because I myself had similar experiences but never saw any acknowledgement of them in any of the subjects I was learning. These so-called “anomalies” and their existence as part of the human experience was totally ignored and rejected in the teachings of science . . . but this made me even more curious to find out the ‘Source’ of these experiences . . .
“Seek and ye shall find” is another esoteric adage. Most people take this to mean that we must search everywhere outside ourselves, not realising that the higher knowledge is already within us and what information we find in the external reality around us has really been projected “out there” from within.
The Missing Ingredient
The present education system only concentrates on the subjects that those in administration recommend. It leaves out the most important ingredient for a better understanding of ourselves, the planet, energy, the creation of life and our connection with other life-forms. Of course, this may, or may not be a consciously made decision, but it seems that many of us – and especially those of us in power – do not want the schools or colleges to include this ‘ingredient’ in the current curriculum.
It is true that many of us fear it, and have been conditioned to believe that the reason why it is ignored or rejected is because this ingredient could lead us back to the superstitions of the ‘Middle Ages,’ or maybe lead us to some subversive form of cult – either religious, political, or both – that will eventually have a major influence on our society. But I feel that the real and fundamental reason for the rejection of esotericism – or any philosophy based on mysticism, metaphysics or higher states of consciousness – is that such study could help people to ‘think’ for themselves, whereby they may begin to connect certain things together. In other words, such study may undermine the present scientific paradigm, which has been established to preserve and serve the economic paradigm, as both go hand in hand. Such study may even present a knowledge that is whole, which could eventually lead to a ‘meaningful’ knowledge – a holistic knowledge that would awaken everyone to an awesome energy within, and which would make everyone his or her own person without any psychological or neurotic dependency.
A person with this knowledge would be on the path to being a true Individual, because he or she would know what is true and what is definitely false regarding our limited human perception. Such a person would then realise that the system ‘limits’ and ‘controls’ the knowledge in the public sector by giving emphasis to the superficial, and also by promoting and endorsing an incomplete knowledge that is false.
Although our society has a compliant system to it, which ensures that everyone adhere to certain rules, codes and regulations, our knowledge does not have a system; there is nothing ‘central’ to it, which can connect it all and hold it all together, and so it remains ‘divided’ and fragmented. This is why our scientists are still looking for a “theory of everything,” which can bring all our fragmented knowledge and experience of the world together, under one equation . . . one Truth. A person when indoctrinated into the ‘societal system’ can only perceive a ‘separateness’ between him/herself and everything else, and so one’s energy is thus divided; separated, and made purposeless and ineffective. Everything is looked at separately with no understanding of the energy that links everything together. This makes a person divided within. He or she sees nothing but contradiction everywhere because the very knowledge that can connect everything together is missing. Maybe this is exactly what those who administrate the running of our societies would want. It makes people more susceptible to manipulation and exploitation – especially if we are confused with this false and contradictory view of the world we have been led to believe in.
Part Two: Seven levels of Information/Knowledge
Like the earth we live on, we seem to have a ‘sphere’ of knowledge and information.
For many of us this sphere would seem to be just a metaphorical picture – but nevertheless it is the closest we can get to a reasonable ‘image’ or impression as regards the many domains of consciousness.
Figure 1:
A B
Picture (A) is a photo of a crop circle taken by Steve Alexander (Silbury Hill, Wiltshire, July, 2002). Despite what any of us might believe about the crop circle phenomenon, my interest in this photo is purely that it shows a wheel with many spokes or appendages all radiating from the same centre. In the context of the ‘Collective Consciousness’, we would have to imagine this two-dimensional wheel as a three-dimensional sphere – which of course would resemble something like a dandelion as shown in (B). As I have found many times, at a deeper level of perception, all the things that surround us in our world can be seen as ‘metaphors’ for some higher truth.
So like a tree in winter with its exposed branches and twigs – similar to the arteries, veins and nerves in the body – the dandelion flower, like most flowers, also reminds us of the brain with its numerous axon-dendrites (neuron pathways and connections) – the stem of the flower or the trunk of a tree being a metaphor for the brain stem. Actually, the word ‘dendrite’ is the Greek word for ‘Tree’.
Going back to ‘picture A’ Imagine that this wheel represents our knowledge – which like the spokes or appendages radiating from the hub or centre – is divided around this sphere and just like the divided nations and countries on the earth.
Now also imagine each seed of the dandelion to be each individual who feels that he or she belongs to these nations and countries. As we can see, although each of us are connected by the Centre, we are divided out on the periphery and this is why our established knowledge about our world is separated and categorised under many different disciplines and is also further segregated by subject – i.e., compartmentalised between A and Z.
Most of us in society tend to study the more common, mainstream, institutionalised and standardised knowledge, which is really a divided knowledge. This divided and therefore ‘limited’ knowledge actually limits and confines our understanding of reality which is then reflected in our experience, view, opinion or belief in it, and within a certain framework, which of course cuts us off from the ‘bigger picture’.
If we look at the metaphorical pictures given above, we can see that knowledge is divided and that during our time at school or college, most of us will often flock to each of these divisions and will position ourselves around each one.
As writer on Shamanism, Mark Dunn would tell us; each area of divided knowledge then becomes a huge part of the ‘internal dialogue’ of those of us who flock to these areas, and so all our incompatible ‘world views’ create only misunderstanding and discord between all of us who are grouped and positioned around each one. In other words, most of us are divided by our knowledge.
Those of us, who are so positioned – being out on only one of the peripheral designations of the whole sphere of knowledge, have only a limited amount of knowledge, because we are usually only concentrating on one subject or one subject at a time. Because of this, we will also have a limited view of others, of life, and the world, and so we are not worthy to be called ‘individuals’ . . . each of us is a dividual – a divided person.
As we can see, there are three concentric rings to ‘diagram A’ – as if showing three levels. Now going back to the sphere represented by the dandelion; also imagine – that like the layers of an onion – this sphere has SEVEN concentric spheres within it – just like the atom that has up to seven orbits known as “shells”. Now think of the seven colours of the electromagnetic spectrum and also the seven major notes of the musical scale. Surely this tells us that everything has seven levels to it . . . seven frequencies.
This means that like everything else, there are also seven levels to our knowledge and that as we move towards the centre of the sphere, each of these “spokes” of the wheel, or seeds of the dandelion, become closer to each other – the division between them diminishing until all are one at the centre.
Although ‘picture A’ in figure 24 is two dimensional, the picture we are really trying to convey would be in three dimensions – i.e., spherical like a ball, with each spoke or radii like the dandelion flower in picture B. This is both a picture of what we call the ‘collective consciousness and ‘individual consciousness’ – in other words, the same picture can be applied to both the individual and the collective and could also relate to the universe as a whole, or any spherical body – like our planet earth for instance with each spoke representing everyone on earth and each of our consciousnesses connected and fused as ONE at the CENTRE of this sphere, which could be termed ‘zero-point’.
This diagram and the understanding that came with it was inspired by a quote I had read in P.D. Ouspensky’s book Tertium Organum (1920). Ouspensky had included an extract from a book called Superconscious and Ways to its Attainment by M. V. Lodizhensky. To perhaps grasp the deeper meaning of the Great Pyramid and why its capstone is missing, we should first absorb the importance of what is being said in this excerpt from Lodizhensky’s book, as it makes an important addition to our understanding of consciousness and what I call the Neutral Point and Source-Centre:
‘Imagine a circle [says Avva Dorotheus – seventh century], in the middle, its centre, and radii, or rays, going out of this centre. The further these radii travel from the centre, the more divergent and distant they become from one another; and the other way round, the closer they are to the centre, the nearer they approach one another. Imagine now that this circle is the world, the very middle of it, God, and the straight lines (radii) going out from the centre towards the circumference, or going from the circumference towards the centre are the paths of men’s lives. And here also, the further the saints penetrate inside the circle towards the middle of it, desiring to approach God, the closer, according to the depth of this penetration, they come to God and to each other . . . Understand similarly about going out from the centre – The more they withdraw from God . . . the more, in the same measure, they withdraw from one another, and as much as they withdraw from one another, so much they withdraw from God’. [1]
What is equally interesting are the words that Ouspensky had written at the bottom of the page in reference to the above quote – and I would ask the reader to look at the Triad formed from this sphere in figure 2:
‘The author of Superconscious, M. V. Lodizhensky, told me that in the summer of 1910 he was in Yassnaya Poliana on a visit to L.N. Tolstoy, and had a talk with him about mystics and the Philokalia. At first Tolstoy took a very sceptical attitude to mysticism, but when M. V. Lodhisensky read to him the quotation, given here, from Avva Dorotheus, about the circle, Tolstoy became very enthusiastic, ran into another room and brought out a letter in which a triangle was drawn. It transpired that he had independently almost grasped the thought of Avva Dorotheus and was writing to someone that God was the apex of the triangle and men were points at the angles; coming closer to one another, they come nearer to God, and coming nearer to God they come closer to one another’. [2]
This is interesting because this is exactly what the Triad or even the pyramid in two dimensions show, and much like the triangular slice of a piece of round cake – the neutral point being the apex of the triangle or pyramid and also a portion of the centre of the circle or sphere. But we could also use the symbol of the Triad to show that there is this same division in one person – as in the points at the angles representing the left-brain/right-brain, or male-female, conscious/subconscious divisions, and that both are really united at the point of the apex of the triad, or the centre of the whole sphere – the ‘collective consciousness’ of which one is a part.
Figure 2: The Triad (triangle-pyramid) as a portion of the circle or sphere. The apex of the triad is the same as the centre and the centre is the ‘missing ingredient’ as regards our knowledge of the world. In my view, this ‘missing ingredient’ which is void like a ‘blackhole’, also reflects our ‘unconsciousness’ of the source-centre, which begs the question, is this what blackholes really are? – i.e., a reflection of our unconsciousness of the source-centre of creation? This void or man’s unconsciousness of the source is reflected in the missing apex or capstone of the Great Pyramid
Now going back to this centre in terms of knowledge, perceptions, experience, beliefs etc. As we converge on this centre, by penetrating each of the seven levels of perception and knowledge, we will understand more about the connections that one thing makes with another. We are then able to see how the form of a dandelion can be a metaphor for the brain and also the whole sphere of consciousness – meaning that we become aware that all things are really metaphors for some higher truth – the Truth actually being that ‘Centre’ – the ultimate level of knowledge and intelligence where everything is connected and fused together as One.
The thing is, most of us are unconscious of this Centre – and we are unconscious because we have our focus on the lower levels of this same knowledge – the levels where this knowledge is divided and fragmented. To see how we are unconscious of this Centre, imagine that the hub of the wheel in ‘diagram A’ and also the centre of the dandelion flower in ‘diagram B’ – are missing . . . a Void.
As regards the earthly sphere we call our reality and everyone in it, this Void in the centre would be the location of the now ‘missing ingredient’ as regards our knowledge which is divided like the spokes of the wheel and because of this it has become a ‘common knowledge’, which is limited.
Part 3: Source-Center
As we can see, in my metaphorical diagram given on the previous page, all knowledge is connected at the centre.
However, in the normal and divided perception of those who study the more common, ‘established’ knowledge and so limit themselves to the boundaries of a few specialist subjects, this centre – as well as the higher levels of the same knowledge – i.e., ‘esoteric knowledge’ – is ignored because it is missing for these people and is not a part of their lives.
In other words, most of us will identify with things external to ourselves and live in conflict and contradiction with others – who like us – also live outside and along the peripheral edge of the sphere and within their own ‘reality tunnels’.
Many of us are ‘peripheral’ people because we identify with the illusory things that are positioned on the periphery of our senses . . . we are therefore looking ‘outside’ ourselves for the centre of ‘All knowledge’ that is already within us – even though it is within this ‘missing ingredient’ – the ‘Inner Centre’ of all our divided knowledge – that we will find our True Self.
As said, ‘esoteric knowledge’ is found in the inner and higher levels – closer to the centre of this wheel or sphere.
Now a person, who studies esoteric knowledge and begins to understand it, will eventually sense the many connections that exist between all our categorised and departmental knowledge. He or she will eventually begin to have intuitive insights into these connections. These insights then allow the person to pull everything a little closer towards the central point – in fact the person would actually become aware that he or she IS the central point of everything and that all this knowledge and more can be found within his or her own Centre. This centre is the Source-Centre of one’s own Consciousness; the "God within".
By discovering that ‘missing ingredient’, and then including that ingredient by placing it within the centre of the whole sphere, one connects all knowledge together. At the same time, one also discovers one’s own Centre of consciousness – the source of Intelligence itself – which one is usually unaware and ‘unconscious’ of to some degree – and does not have to rely on the normal ‘peripheral vision’ which is a ‘divided’ and limited perception of things.
This calm and peaceful “eye of the storm” centre – from where everything has its origin and to which everything is returning, and where everything is really fused together as ‘One’ – is within us all . . . but most of us are unconscious of it – which is why it remains a ‘missing ingredient’ . . . a void . . . zero.
This is why after all the measuring and weighing-up of the universe our physicists have now come face to face with the ‘nothing vacuum’ they call ‘zero-point energy’.
It’s as if we have peered through all seven levels of knowledge and have merely glimpsed this Centre without any real understanding of the very point that brings all this knowledge together. The reason why it is seen as “zero” or “nothing” to most of our western physicists is because in our knowledge and view of the world has always been a ‘missing ingredient’.
Like most of us, the physicists are unconscious of this centre, and so now having come face-to-face with it, all they see is ‘zero’, a ‘void’ – the “nothing” associated with our unconsciousness of it. In effect we could say that the scientists and physicists have come face-to-face with their own ‘unconscious’ and the ‘Unconscious’ of the collective.
Again, in the context of our common knowledge, this void represents the ‘missing ingredient’, which brings everything together. Understanding this ‘centre’ can only be gained through a synthesis between our common ‘exoteric’ knowledge found on the lower levels and our ‘esoteric knowledge found on the higher levels. Through synthesis one is led through each of the seven levels to the Centre – which one finds is the Source-Centre of his or her own existence. And instead of merely perceiving it to be “zero” – i.e., a “nothing” void – which is the perception of those who have reached this centre without proper understanding – one experiences it as the ‘bright-white-light’ of “enlightenment” where this centre becomes . . . everything!
Now this is something we will be looking at in many ways as we go on. In fact this Centre is not only the centre of all knowledge, but it is also an aspect or manifestation of that energy found at the Source-Centre of All – the Collective Consciousness – being the Source of all intelligence itself.
The ancient Egyptians knew it as Nun, the ‘primordial waters’, and later personified it as the father god Atum or Atum-Ra. By being unconscious of this Source, we limit our intelligence and also our perceptions and experiences to the mundane world of appearances – dragging others down with us.
An understanding of esoteric knowledge will eventually lead one to the significance of the Void as the ‘Creative Principle’ which is located at the centre of everything and this is another reason why the centres of the above diagrams would be missing and why the capstone of the Great Pyramid – which represents the Void, the original Source-Centre from which everything manifests, and to which everything returns – is missing.
Being located at the centre of the earth’s landmasses and marking the original Prime Meridian, the Great Pyramid is just like the “hub of the wheel” in figure 1 (A) – all the world’s cities and the people in those cities being located on the “spokes” lines or radii that radiate out from it and back into it.
Continue with next Article: Akh: The Seed-Point and Seed-Stone of Creation
References
1. Tertium Organum by P.D. Ouspensky. (1920).
2. Ibid.