The principle of cause & effect
JULY 9 2022 (updated on February 9, 2024)
“Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens in accordance with the Law; chance is only a name given to the unrecognized Law; there are many planes of causality, but nothing escapes the Law.” [1]
Table of contents
The principle of cause and effect implies that “nothing ever happens without a cause, or better yet, without a succession of causes”. If you remember the principle of mentalism, you remember that the preceding statement is true with one “small” precision: “the Whole is above all Cause and Effect, except when it WANTS to become a Cause. It is then that the Principle manifests itself. Thus there is a Will at the origin of the manifestation of the world of causes and effects.
The principle of correspondence teaches that every manifestation occurs on different planes of existence. These can be likened to different planes of causality, an effect always being in correspondence with a cause. They coexist within a vibratory continuum, in which the cause only has meaning in relation to the effect and vice versa: this is the principle of polarity. Remove the cause, you will remove the effect, and thus neutralize the principle of rhythm.
Classical physics is based on a causality that unfolds in the temporal sphere. But according to the Hermetic teachings, the latter is only an effect of the principle of vibration, which itself emanates from the principle of mentalism. Thus physics did not develop in connection with its metaphysical origin. Many of the physicists who have thought and written about it have, from then on, lost their way between acausality and chance. Others reconcile physics and causality by bringing information into play. It is this path that I invite you to follow in this article.
Resonance, chance, acausality: a question of information
Resonance Vs trajectory
Determinism and the notion of trajectory
“An event is what comes, what happens, what occurs, as a result or consequence of some previous event (…) There is a continuity between all previous, consequent and subsequent events.”
In writing these words, the initiates of the Kybalion place themselves from the viewpoint of the universe. Their statement is thus adapted to the visible, mortal and relative world [2] that unfolds before our eyes in the temporal sphere. In this sense, it is quite close to the definition of determinism given by classical physics. The latter implies that any event occurs as a function of the sequence of events that preceded it. Determinism is thus closely linked to the notions of time and trajectory.
However, for the Hermetists, behind temporality lies vibration. This is where the currents of thought diverge, vibration being to Hermetists what time is to physicists: the fourth dimension of the universe. However, if physicists have given time a place in their equations, they have not defined it. And for good reason, its nature is as mysterious as it is elusive [3]. Nevertheless, they use this variable to predict and anticipate the evolution of systems… at least to a certain extent.
Indeed, in the course of history, they have come up against systems that force them to question the notions of prediction and even causality, whether on the quantum or cosmological scale. Among these systems are chaotic systems.
Chaotic systems and the notion of resonance
Although chaotic systems obey the law of causality and determinism, it is impossible to predict their evolution over the long term. This depends on the knowledge of the initial conditions… which can never be known with infinite precision. This imprecision could be negligible, but it turns out that a tiny variation in the initial conditions has considerable consequences on the evolution of these systems.
As classical determinism proved insufficient to explain the magnitude of these effects, the notion of chaos was juxtaposed to it. Thus deterministic chaos was born. Henri Poincaré – and later Ilya Prigogine – had however explored a more promising avenue: that of resonances. On the one hand, resonances render obsolete the Newtonian way of thinking by inviting us to think differently than in terms of trajectories. On the other hand, they are very close to Hermetic thought. Resonances are indeed linked to frequencies [4] that is to say to vibrations.
Thus, far from calling into question the principle of causality, resonances support it on the contrary: systems are simply subject to causes and effects of a vibratory nature. Because they manifest themselves on different planes, they can nevertheless escape the visible universe and thus our understanding.
“One event does not create another event; it is a link in the great orderly chain of events emerging from the creative energy of The All,” teach the Hermetists. Thus, a butterfly flapping its wings will probably not produce a tornado, but rather the tornado is produced by the resonance of a very large number of atmospheric fluctuations [5].
We could interpret the appearance of the tornado as a coincidence if we are not able to understand the causes…
Chance, cause and effect
“Chance is simply a word meant to express obscure causes, causes we cannot perceive, causes we cannot understand.”
The future behavior of chaotic systems is considered to be entirely determined by the initial conditions, without the intervention of chance. This presupposes that chance exists. For some physicists no doubt, for the hermeticists, not really!
Drawing on Poincaré’s thinking on the subject, physicist David Ruelle reconciles the two points of view. According to him, if the uncertainty of chaos (the sensitivity of chaotic systems to initial conditions) is indeed for Poincaré a source of chance, this means that “chance corresponds to incomplete information (…)“. [6]
Moreover, one only has to observe the evolution of these systems. They end up converging towards fixed and periodic points, called attractors, thus evolving from an apparent chaos towards a certain regularity. In the case of the Lorenz attractor (illustration above), the number of revolutions on one region or another remains difficult to predict. But whatever the starting point – and therefore whatever the initial conditions – all trajectories will eventually pass through one or the other region, and with the same frequency.
If this reminds you of the principle of polarity, that’s a good sign.
Finally, there is not really any room for chance in this dynamic. In fact, the more information we gather as the system evolves, the less room there is for “chance”…!
Now let’s see what happens in the infinitely small.
Acausality and information theory in quantum physics
There is a concept in quantum physics called “indeterminism”, which derives from the idea that events have no cause. The uncertainty principle formulated by the physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1927 is an illustration of this. It states that it is impossible to determine the speed and position of an electron precisely and simultaneously.
Applied to quantum physics, the principle of causality is: “the ability to infer the position of a particle when [one knows] the position of that same particle an instant before.” [7]. Except that in quantum physics, trying to know the position of a particle requires the setting up of a whole device…!
This one consists in sending on the particle a photon [8] which, at the moment of impact, will reveal the position of the particle. The latter will then be projected to an undetermined and indeterminable location and it will become impossible to reconstruct its trajectory. Indeed, from one measurement to the next, we never know where the particle will be, and in fact, we cannot even be sure that it has a trajectory between two observations.
If the perturbation of the system prevents us from knowing the position of the particle at the previous instant, this is tantamount to saying that we lack the information that would allow us to apply the principle of causality. Yet, “it is not that [we should] completely reject the idea that events have causes, but only the idea that [we can] apply the principle of causality for the purpose of prediction” explains the philosopher of science Michel Bitbol [9] and [10].
Acausality can also be discussed on our scale, when our ordinary perception of the world is disturbed by unusual events, such as synchronicities…
Causality exists on several planes
“Since there are different planes of Cause and Effect, and the higher plane always dominates the lower, nothing can escape the Law entirely.”
Do synchronicities have a cause ?
Rare and unique events, synchronicities leave one both amazed and perplexed. Jung named them so after discovering “the existence of parallel psychological phenomena between which it is absolutely not possible to establish a causal relationship but which must be in another order of connections.” [11] To the notion of causality as classical determinism defines it, he then substituted a principle of similarity of meaning. But does meaning, even if it is legitimate, replace causality?
Hermetic philosophy tells us that “nothing escapes the Law except the Whole which is its own Law”. Causality is thus well and truly at work in the universe. Thus, synchronistic events have a cause, but this cause being inaccessible to our consciousness, we can only distinguish them through meaning. The absence of a cause is therefore ultimately equivalent to an absence of information that often does not stand the test of time: “An event is said to be acausal until its cause is discovered (…) The history of science is ultimately the list of causal relationships successively discovered between apparently unrelated objects.” [12]
Causality at work brings into play resonance, not that which can be confused with determinism, but a resonance with a plane of causality that lies beyond our field of consciousness. Indeed, classical causality has been established from the events that have reached our consciousness. And it can only apply to those events. I am talking about a causality that would involve another level of consciousness than the one from which we interact with reality. A causality that would bring into play the unconscious [13].
A correspondence between the conscious and the unconscious
Including the field of the unconscious in the equation of causality does not mean that we can no longer apply the principle of causality. It simply means that we cannot observe its implementation in the field of application that is accessible to us. For if only the effect is accessible, how could we establish a relationship between the effect and the cause?
On the other hand, at the level of the information field of the universe, what would prevent a law of causality from being at work? A law whose application we would only see through the very reduced filter of our field of consciousness?
If this were the case, it would mean that the principle of causality would be at work all the time and on all planes, but that we could only observe its action on manifested events. In this scenario, for the vast majority of us, causality would always take precedence over meaning in our interpretation of the world. This is because the level of consciousness from which we interpret the world is mental. It is linear, mechanical, based on the past/present/future sequence and therefore on causality. In other words, this scenario would be very similar to the reality we know! Why, then, dwell on it?
Because it broadens our perspective considerably. Causality, within the mental framework in which we apply it, excludes the field of the unconscious. However, the fact that, despite everything, synchronicities occur should make us consider taking it into account. We must consider it because synchronicities do not bring just any kind of information: they reveal information that resonates with the field of the conscious. This is why they make sense.
Let’s now look at the dynamics behind the principle of cause and effect.
The connected universe: the effect is already in the cause
“Nothing can reach higher than its own source; nothing is applied that is not already implied; nothing is manifested in the effect that is not already in the cause.”
Reading this Kybalion teaching reminded me of David Bohm’s theory of implicit order. For this physicist, there are several levels of reality, which offer an interesting parallel with the different planes of Hermetic causality.
First, there is the ultimate level, called the super-implicit order, which remains unfathomable. It is the origin of all others, dispensing a reality that is both unique and multidimensional. David Bohm explains that it can only be perceived by a free mind capable of going beyond thought. It could be compared to the Hermetic Whole.
There is then an order of reality that is more accessible, but more fundamental than the space- time world we know. This order is located at the quantum level and implies the real existence of particles and fields. The physicist reformulated Schrödinger’s equation by a wave function that guides the path of particles in the world thanks to a crucial parameter, the quantum potential, or information potential. Thus matter would be governed in a deterministic and causal manner, but at an underlying level of reality.
From the two previous levels emerges the perceptible and measurable universe. This is the explicit order, which would be a manifestation, an expression or a holographic projection of the implicit reality [14].
The implicit order can be compared to Jung’s collective unconscious. While synchronicities would be explainable by the causality induced by the information potential and its non-local effects [15].
The dynamics of cause and effect
According to David Bohm, everything in the universe is constantly moving from implicit to explicit order. This flow, called holomovement, explains the relationship between matter and consciousness… by a continuous feedback between the two.
Nassim Haramein shows that the quantum vacuum – consciousness in the making [16] or energy – is the source of matter [17]. This teaches us two things. First, there is no separation between the energy of the vacuum and matter. And secondly, there is a causal relationship between the two: without the energy of the quantum vacuum, there is no matter.
This means that there is a plane of causality that is inaccessible to us, unlike the one that manifests itself at the level of matter itself, which we experience on a daily basis and on which we base our law of causality. And not only is this plane of causality inaccessible to us, but it involves an imperceptible delay on our scale between cause and effect. Why is this? Because the exchange of information between the vacuum and matter is done at the speed of light! This feedback loop is made possible by the fractal dynamics of the universe (dynamics that explain the evolution of strange attractors in chaos theory). As a fractal level takes up and completes the information of the previous level, the previous level is thus the cause of the later level.
Furthermore, the continuous feedback of information between matter and vaccum, between what reaches consciousness and what remains in the unconscious field, also explains synchronicities. Thus, an unconscious cause can have a conscious effect and a conscious cause can have an unconscious effect.
Becoming the cause of the lower planes
We feed both the causes and effects of the world and creation, even though we often tend to see ourselves as an effect, or even a victim. Victim of our past, of circumstances, of other people, of the passing of time, of the environment, of mass consciousness…
Learning to balance the perception of our own influence on the world is the condition for taking back our power. For if we do not master the art of being a conscious cause, we will live our lives as victims. This is the law of polarity.
Seeing ourselves as an effect and not as a cause limits our freedom. The unified physics described by Nassim Haramein proposes a model where determinism has as much place as non-determinism [18]. This is in line with the Hermetic teaching.
“(…) Neither side of the controversy [between Free Will and Determinism] is entirely correct (…) The Principle of Polarity shows that both are but half Truths, the opposite poles of Truth. The Doctrine teaches that a man may be both Free or Bound by any necessity; all depends on the meaning of the words and the height of Truth from which the question is examined. The ancient writers considered the subject as follows: “The farther the creation is from the Center, the more determined it is; the nearer it is to the Center the nearer it is to Freedom.” “ [19]
To come closer to the center is to become a Master. The Hermetists are a conscious part of the Law, instead of being unconscious instruments of it. They master the art of rising above the ordinary plane of Cause and Effect. Thus they obey the Causality of the higher plane while ruling on their own plane.
We are almost at the end of this series of articles. To close this series on the Hermetic principles, I invite you to discover the eighth and last part: the gender principle.
Key points
- Chaotic systems and quantum physics challenge the notions of prediction and even causality.
- The introduction of the notion of resonance to explain the dynamics of physical systems (Poincaré, Prigogine and Haramein) joins the hermetic vision of the principle of cause and effect.
- The notions of chance and acausality no longer hold when there is an input of information.
- Hermeticists master the art of being a conscious cause: to meditate !
Notes & references
Resonance, chance, acausality: a question of information
[1] Unless otherwise noted, all quotes in italics are from the Kybalion.
[2] See the section on the divine paradox in the article on the Principle of Polarity.
[3] See also the article on irreversibility, memory and entropy.
[4] “The notion of resonance characterizes a relationship between frequencies (…) Resonance occurs when (…) two frequencies (…) correspond to a simple numerical ratio (one of the frequencies is equal to an integer multiple of the other) (…) Frequencies, and in particular the question of their resonance, are at the heart of the description of dynamic systems.” (Ilya Prigogine)
[5] See also the section on the butterfly effect in the article on chaotic systems.
[6] RUELLE David, Chaos, unpredictability, chance, The university of all knowledge, conference n°218, August 2000 (in French)
[7] HEISENBERG Werner, quoted by BITBOL Michel (2013, January 18), Dissiper les propriétés intrinsèques et l’existence intrinsèque [Dissipating intrinsic properties and intrinsic existence], In: Flowers of the dharma, Mind and Life XXVI – Mind, brain and matter, pp.9-10 (in French)
[8] The photon is the quantum of energy associated with electromagnetic waves.
[9] BITBOL Michel, Dissiper les propriétés intrinsèques et l’existence intrinsèque, op.cit, p.10
[10] See also the article Indeterminism and entanglement.
Causality exists on several planes
[11] JUNG Carl Gustav, Ma vie : souvenirs, rêves et pensées [My life: memories, dreams and thoughts], Paris: Gallimard, Collection Folio, 1991, p.463
[12] REEVES Hubert (1990). Incursion dans le monde acausal [Incursion into the acausal world], In : Les synchronicités, l’âme et la science [Synchronicity, the soul and science], H. Reeves, M.Cazenave, P. Solié et al, Editions Séveyrat, p.11
[13] See also the article Synchronicities, a resonance with the unconscious.
[14] To know more about it, you can consult the article The holographic universe: the underlying unity
[15] This is the phenomenon of entanglement in which information is transmitted instantaneously – thus at a speed greater than that of light – from one particle to another. See the section on indeterminism and entanglement in the article on this subject.
[16] See also the section on the difference between awareness and consciousness in the article on conscious experience.
[17] See the unified field theory.
Becoming the cause of the lower planes
[18] See the section devoted in the article Is the universe deterministic?
[19] See also the article Does free will exist?
On the same theme
