TPW cosmology, from Yves' point of view
. Incidentally Robert Ornstein doesn't suggest that the human mind is whole in any sense, only that it has evolved the tools it needs to survive and breed adequately in the world.)
(Meshing my current reading with the worldview of In Nomine I already had in place here
Yves looked up from the book he had in hand at the new petitioner in his library. While he didn't have true precognition, not under most circumstances anyway, he could sniff and surmise and decide that this guest could touch the profound truths of the Symphony. He gave the newcomer his full attention, discarding the Distracted Old Man as well as he could. “Come in, come in.”...
...When the conversation turned deeper he shifted forms to that of a matronly black woman. He was quoting The Matrix, hoping his guest would catch the reference. Not the haughty old Architect but the comforting and wise and slightly mad Oracle. “There's this book,” she said, poking through some more ordinary archives for just the volume. “Chanced on it really. A nice explanation of evolution.” She waved away her guest's concern. “It is quite relevant to the subject at hand. Be patient.” She flipped the cover open to the title page, The Evolution of Consciousness. “Not the most recent book on the topic, but one with a premise that illustrates your question perfectly. Imagine the human mind...”
Another objection waved away. Yves was going to take her time with this explanation; cutting to the chase would give grave injustice to a topic so very serious. “Imagine the human organism as a ship, a great ocean liner with a crew of hundreds. You have that picture? Except instead of trained and resourceful crew you have a collection of simple creatures. One knows how to keep the boiler running but is pointless for navigation. Another can read the waves but has no concept of stars. Et cetera et cetera, hundreds of these specialized simpletons. Together, for different reasons, they manage to sail this ship. After all there have been billions of ships, and simple odds say that some of them will survive.”
The guest nodded, fussed a little, urged Yves to continue if there was more to say.
“Now, in all of those simple-creature crewmen, you have one whose job it is to watch the clock. It can think back, hmmm, a couple hours ago the weather was fine, and now it's choppy. So says the weather creature. It can think forward: now we have enough fuel, but soon we will be low again, so says the fuel creature. For all this fine thinking our clock-watcher fancies himself bright. He puts the clock by the wheel and tells the wheelman (who ignores him half the time) where to steer, and imagines himself the captain, imagines himself a self, the mind of the ship. He's wrong of course; the ship has no mind, it is only wood and metal and a hundred very lucky simple creatures. And this, Mr. Ornstein tells us, is the human mind. He's not far off.”
The guest nodded sagely. It was an odd way of looking at things, but one worth turning over a bit.
“And that captain is me.” Yves watched with amused satisfaction the look on her guest's face, the look she never grew tired of. It was the look of a mind being blown apart by a radical new idea then reforming around that idea, shattered momentarily and then whole as though whole were an inevitable state. “And the ship is the Host, and we were all one Godhead once. And then we-at the time I-chose to shatter myself, to break the Mind into its component parts.” The guest was horrified; Yves was saying in essence that God was mad and had committed suicide. “Why? I don't recall exactly. There was something to be learned. Perhaps there was something to be tested: would we reassemble? Can we? Can we ever be One again? I don't know, but I believe. That's what we have, isn't it? Faith. Faith that our simple natures need each other, demon and angel alike.
“Yes, demons were part of the plan-I figured that out after a time. Why else leave Heaven but to move among humanity, to protect them? And incidentally to see what Whole looks like. Oh sure, whole but wildly imperfect. It could take another billion years of evolution for them to be perfected if it ever happens at all, but then it could take another billion years for us to be whole again, though were are in totality perfect.
“A race, a contest? No. We should learn from each other, ideally to reach the whole-perfect together. But that part I don't know the plan, if there even is a plan, if there's anything more than simple faith...”
Yves grew tired of the woman's vessel and slipped back into the Distracted Old Man. It reflected him better anyway right now; all this profound talk of the Great Work upset him and pushed his simple creature's mind to its limits. He let the book fall and sought some lighter reading, disappearing into the stacks among the Existentialists.