The Cosmotheistic Hypothesis of Mordechai Nessyahu
|
How could the People of Israel be leaders of the ultimate development of the Universe (An appendix of the Book "Futurizing the Jews").
The Cosmotheistic Hypothesis of Mordechai Nessyahu
A Brief Introduction By Tsvi
Bisk[1] (with three appendices)
One cannot do justice, in a short appendix,
to the profound and complex forty years long life work of a deep and original
thinker. The subject described here
deserves its own book. I would entitle
it Cosmodeism: A Worldview for the Space Age. Nessyahu viewed his life work as a product of
his Jewish identity and his particular interpretation of Jewish history. He assigned a special place for the Jews and
the Jewish outlook on life in the realization of his vision. I would be remiss,
therefore, if I did not include at least a brief outline of his ideas in a book
entitled Futurizing the Jews.
The Cosmotheistic hypothesis posits that due
to the evolutionary nature of cosmic development, now being revealed by the
“New Physics” and “New Cosmology”, it is statistically certain that huge
numbers of conscious life forms (equivalent in self awareness to human beings)
have arisen throughout the Cosmos. A
very small percentage (but large in number) of these conscious
civilizations have or eventually will expand throughout their own solar systems
and eventually achieve interstellar exploratory capabilities. By doing so they will of necessity have
raised themselves to new levels of consciousness.
The
vast majority of conscious civilizations will destroy themselves by failing to
meet the challenges of their own nuclear stage of development or by ecological
collapse. But a substantial number will survive these dual challenges or will
have developed by different means.
These
surviving conscious civilizations will continue to expand throughout the
Cosmos. Eventually a very tiny
percentage but still substantial number of them will succeed in transcending
(by scientific and technical means) the physical limitations of their bodies
thus isolating and enhancing the most essential part of their “humanness” their
consciousness. They will in effect
become pure consciousness, or if you will, pure spirit. This will be an
evolutionary prerequisite to survival as the cosmic environment races towards
inevitable “heat death”.
The iron laws of entropy dictate that the Cosmos will eventually “die”;
that is to say that all its complex constructs will eventually dissolve into
undifferentiated particles of radiation uniformly distributed throughout the
Cosmos. Conscious life forms that
dedicate themselves to adapting to this inevitable cosmic environment could
survive and those that do not will perish.
Adaptation, by definition, means liberating “human consciousness” from
its physical framework and becoming pure radiation.
The further expansion of
conscious life throughout the Cosmos will be unfettered by its physical
limitations and eventually conscious life will fill the entire Cosmos. It will become coeval with a Cosmos that has
dissolved into pure radiation as an inevitable consequence of entropy. Thus the cosmos will become in its
entirety a conscious being – i.e. the Cosmos will have become God. Cosmotheism posits God as the consequence of
the Cosmos and not as its cause. Not in
the beginning God created the Universe but in the end the Cosmos will have
created God.
The fateful question that every conscious civilization throughout the
Cosmos must eventually address is: will we take part in this cosmic race for
survival and strive to survive in the cosmic “End of Days”, or will we chose to
perish along with the rest of cosmic matter?
Will we accept the limitations of our physicality or will we try to
transcend them?
Nessyahu
did not see his hypothesis as a deterministic teleology but rather as a
volitional teleology as it pertained to the human race. His hypothesis was rooted, however, in what
one might term a neo-teleological interpretation of cosmic evolution. In other words he claimed that certain cosmic
developments were inevitable on the basis of empirical scientific evidence and
deductive logic as applied to that empirical scientific evidence. But it was completely dependent on the
volitional decision of the human beings on this planet if they wanted to take
part in these cosmic developments, thus guaranteeing their “spiritual” survival
well past the physical existence of the planet Earth. This would guarantee the
cosmic significance of the billions of years of life on this planet. Failure to do so would guarantee the complete
cosmic insignificance of life on this planet and would be a tragedy.
The
thesis of God as the consequence rather than the cause of the Cosmos is not
new. Intimations can be found in the philosophy of Aristotle. The 20th century British
philosopher Samuel Alexander championed this view. The Jesuit
theologian/philosopher Teilhard de Chardin presented the idiosyncratic view
that God was both the cause and the consequence (the Alpha and Omega) of cosmic
existence and evolution. He saw end of human history as pure consciousness
merging with the Alpha God to create the Omega God. Modern German literature and philosophy is
rife with human ambition to be Godlike.
As Robert Tucker points out in his book Philosophy and Myth in Karl
Marx, “The movement of thought from Kant to Hegel revolved in a fundamental
sense around the idea of man’s self-realization as a godlike being, or
alternatively as God” (pg. 31). What attracted Marx to Hegel and the use of his
philosophy, as his own philosophical infrastructure was that “he found in Hegel
the idea that man is God” (pg. 75).
History for Hegel was God realizing itself through the vehicle of
man. This is the underlying intimation
of all Enlightenment thought.
Carl Becker in his classic book The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth
Century Philosophers demonstrates how the Enlightenment is
but a secularization of the search for the Godhead. Enlightenment thinkers called it “Natural
Law” and wanted to base political organization on it. This was the sub text of all western
political theory from Hobbes onward – how to create political cosmos out of
political chaos – i.e. to be Godlike in terms of our own human society.
Nessyahu must be seen as a continuation of this Enlightenment
tradition. His contribution has been to
base his thinking on a solid foundation of the most up to date cosmological
thinking, framed by rigorous deductive logic and related to the present
revolution in human means of production.
In his perception that there is a special role for the Jewish People in
this all-human project he harks back to the Liberal Nationalist tradition of
Mazzini that saw an all-human role for every nation. This Liberal Nationalist tradition found its
Jewish echo in Moses Hess’s Rome and Jerusalem. Hess, an early follower of Marx turned
Zionist, agreed with Mazzini and saw a special role in all-human civilization
for the renewed cultural dynamism of both the Italians and the Jews.
Nessyahu foresaw a special place for the Jews and the Jewish outlook on
life in “influencing” the rest of humanity to join what he called this “cosmic
race for survival and significance”. He
based this would-be Jewish ambition on the historic role the Jews had played in
the development of human civilization.
The
Jews for him were an “Ạm Ọlam” – a universal people, or a people of
the entire world, or a people whose very ‘peoplehood’ was dependent on and a
reflection of its ongoing interaction with and contribution to the other
peoples of the planet Earth. This
concept of the Jewish People as an “Ạm Ọlam” is deeply rooted
in the Jewish tradition and must serve as a foundation rock of any Jewish
identity in the Space Age, whether one accepts the Cosmotheistic hypothesis or
not.
Nessyahu had a deep-rooted belief that because of their special
historical travail, the Jewish People had been particularly endowed by with
characteristics and capabilities that would enable them to take a pioneering
role in establishing the Cosmotheistic project on this planet. He felt that the character and needs of
modern
Nessyahu based his views on an historical analogy. He believed that the modern Jewish situation
of a national center (Israel) inter-relating with a universal Diaspora was
analogous to that era of a national center (Jerusalem) interacting with a
universal Diaspora (primarily Babylon) that created both the Jerusalem and
Babylonian Talmud and codified Monotheism.
This was the worldview that united the far-flung parts of Jewry into a
unified culture and also changed the course of all of world history. He
believed that Cosmotheism (like Monotheism in the past) would create a new
Jewish cultural energy and once again change the course of all of world
history.
Nessyahu rejected “The Nation That Dwells Alone” concept. He knew that
both ancient and modern Jewish cultures were built with the raw materials of
non-Jewish civilizations and cultures. Monotheism was clearly formulated by the
Jews but it built on the raw materials taken from other peoples and it came to
world cultural predominance by way of other religions (Christianity and Islam).
So it would be with Cosmotheism.
The raw materials will have come from other peoples (as well as totally
unrelated disciplines such as cosmology and physics) and its success will
depend on other peoples, cultures, and religions adopting its basic principles
and adapting them to their own cultural traditions. But the Jews can be those
people that “chose” themselves to become the progenitors and propagators of
this project as well as to be a living example of it. Thus we would have to
invent a new Space Age interpretation of the concept of the “Chosen People” and
being a “Light Unto the Nations”.
He believed that just the ambition to implement the Cosmotheistic
Project would recharge and rejuvenate human civilization and rescue it from the
malaise of Postmodernism (discussed in the book "Futurizing the
Jews"). He certainly believed that it would rejuvenate Jewish identity and
provide added value to the young university educated non-orthodox modern Jew.
One
can ascribe to the notion that we must cultivate ambitions to create “Space
Age” versions of Judaism without subscribing to the Cosmotheistic
Hypothesis. But we all must recognize
the need to proffer alternative Jewish visions of a depth and a breadth that at
least approaches that of the Cosmotheistic Hypothesis if we are to generate
Jewish ambitions in the 21st century.
Appendices:
A. about the book
by Tsvi Bisk & Moshe Dror: Futurizing the Jews: Alternative Futures for Meaningful Jewish Existence in the 21st Century Praeger, 2003
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction – The Task of the Jewish Futurist
Chapter One – The World We Live In
Chapter Two – The Triumph of Zionism
Chapter Three – Zionism in the 21st Century
Chapter Four – The Special Case of American Jewry
Chapter Five – Israeli Grand Strategy: A Historical Critique
Chapter Six – Reinventing Israeli Grand Strategy
Chapter Seven – Reinventing Israel-Diaspora Relations
Chapter Eight – The Future of Arab-Jewish Relations
Chapter Nine – The Future of Ethnic Relations and Israeli Culture
Chapter Ten – The Future of Jewish-Christian Relations
Chapter Eleven – The Future of Jewish Identity
Chapter Twelve – Futurizing Jewish Education
Chapter Thirteen – The Future of Jewish Spirituality
Chapter Fourteen – The World Jewish Community in Cyberspace
Appendices
Glossary
Index
To order book: http://www.amazon.com/Futurizing-Jews-Alternative-Meaningful-Existence/dp/0275969088
To order as e-book - http://www.amazon.com/Futurizing-Jews-Alternative-Meaningful-ebook/dp/B000PC0VRU
B - Biography of Nessiyahu: by Tsevi Bisk
While studying physics and philosophy at the Hebrew University Nessyahu began to formulate the worldview he eventually called Cosmotheism. He exchanged several letters on the subject with Albert Einstein. In 1953 he published a book in Hebrew entitled Mada Ha'Cosmos ve Hevrat Ha'Mada (Cosmic Science and the Scientific Society) which became the first foundation stone of his eventual Cosmotheistic formulation. Moshe Sharett, soon to be Israel's second Prime Minister was so impressed by the book that he shared it Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. As a result Nessyahu was appointed Director of the Research Department of the Beit Berl Institute (the Education, Study and Research arm of the Israeli Labor Party). Nessyahu remained in this position until his death.
In 1968 he met Tsvi Bisk, a new immigrant from the United States, who became his assistant at the Research Department. This meeting triggered a renewed interest in Cosmotheism with Bisk as his collaborator and translator. Numerous English language drafts of the idea were produced over the years and sent to hundreds of thinkers around the world to solicit their opinions; unfortunately some of these drafts fell into unsavory hands.
The year he died Nessyahu finally published his work in book form in Hebrew.
C - From Cosmotheism to Cosmodeism: by Tsvi Bisk
William
Luther Pierce III was an assistant professor of Physics at Oregon State University
and as such was a recipient of one of Nessyahu's English language drafts of
Cosmotheism. Unfortunately Pierce was also a white supremacist and neo-Nazi
racist and co-opted the term Cosmotheism, establishing a "religion"
by the same name based on white racialism and National Socialism. Pierce's
views influenced Norman Lowell a European and founder of the racist Imperium
Europa which advocates an all-White Europe and the forced expulsion of
non-whites from the continent. Needless to say these positions would have been anathema
to Nessyahu and are in complete contravention of the spirit of Cosmotheism. As
a consequence, Tsvi Bisk, his collaborator and translator decided to rename
Nessyahu's Hypothesis to Cosmodeism[i],
which ironically is a name closer to the tradition of natural theology under
which Cosmodeism might be listed. Bisk is presently writing a book entitled Cosmodeism:
A Worldview for the Space Age.
[1] This article was written as an appendix to Tsvi Bisk & Moshe Dror’s book: Futurizing the Jews: Alternative Futures for Meaningful Jewish Existence in the 21st Century. The list of contents of the book is given at the appendix, with contact information.