Metaphysics and its influence on Science as well as Religion

New Age Metaphysics – Metaphysics in the ‘New Age’ 

Just like other eras in history such as the Aquarian Age, the ‘New Age’ is a period that has been described by historians as the era when spiritual knowledge will evolve. We currently find ourselves in this extraordinary period that had been forecasted by many visionaries and physicians such as Nostradamus, Lazarus and Edgar Cayce. The reason why the ‘New Age’ is extraordinary is that the believers consider this as an opportunity for humans to raise their consciousness to the level of the creator. No wonder Christians often refer to this era as the era of Jesus Consciousness!

New Age Metaphysics brings together science and faith in a supreme fashion as it aims at infusing scientific theories with the ideas argued under the New Age Cycle, in other words, it creates a beautiful balance between logical reasoning and inner beliefs.

Pagan Metaphysics

If we say that the principles of metaphysics act as the foundation on which Pagan beliefs stand, then it would not be incorrect but it can mislead us onto thinking that metaphysics gave birth to paganism. In fact, Pagan ideas find their origin long before anyone ever came up with terms such as ‘metaphysics’ or ‘paganism’. Think beyond this play of words and you will understand the true relationship between Pagan ideals and metaphysics principles.

While the followers of New Age Metaphysics lay their emphasis on the positive side of things, the followers of Pagan Metaphysics also consider the dark side. In fact, not only Pagan ideals acknowledge or recognize the negative side but they reason that unless you look at darkness you cannot identify what light is. By not turning a blind eye on the negative, Pagan metaphysics puts forth the idea that it is the negative that defines the positive.

Metaphysics as a religion

Whether people agree or not, the fact remains that majority of present day religions find their roots in metaphysics. However, this fact has given birth to a misconception that metaphysics itself is a religion. The fact is that Metaphysics not only encompasses or originates religions but many sciences, philosophies and literature find their roots in this doctrine. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why most encyclopedias and dictionaries define metaphysics as a philosophical theory that professes that “all things are part of each other and searches to discover first cause principals”.

However, when we set out to analyze religions that spring from the fountain of metaphysics, we find that these religions preach that everything is part of God, but nothing individually can be identified as God. They paint God as the ultimate source of life, of good and evil, of fertility and drought, of abundance and scarcity and so on. But while defining different religions the rituals, beliefs and principals their followers embrace and follow should always be considered.

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Wuthering Heights as a Metaphysical Novel

Metaphysics is the "branch of speculative inquiry which treats of the first principles of things, including such concepts as being, substance, essence, time, space, cause, identity, etc.; theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of Being and Knowing" (OED). Dorothy Van Ghent finds evidence, at one level of Wuthering

Heights, of metaphysical exploration:
the book seizes, at the point where the soul feels itself cleft within and in cleavage from the universe, the first germs of philosophic thought, the thought of the duality of human and nonhuman existence, and the thought of the cognate duality of the psyche.

The novel presents the collision between two types of reality, restrictive civilization and anonymous unrestrained natural energies or forces. This collision takes the form of inside/domestic versus outside/nature, human versus the "other," the light versus the dark within the soul. The novel repeatedly shows efforts to break through or cross the boundary of separation of the various dualities, like Lockwood's breaking the window in his dream or the figure of two children who struggle for union (Catherine and Heathcliff, Cathy and Linton, Cathy and Hareton). The two kinds of realities are, in Van Ghent's reading, both opposed and continuous There is a continuous movement to break through the constraint of civilization and personal consciousness and also a movement toward "passionate fulfillment of consciousness by deeper ingress into the matrix of its own and all energy." In other words, the impetus of life is toward unifying the dark and the light, the unknown and the known, the elemental and the human.

Catherine and Heathcliff, Van Ghent explains, are violent elementals who express the flux of nature; they struggle to be human and assume human character in their passion, confusions, and torment, but their inhuman appetites and energy can only bring chaos and self-destruction. The second generation presents the childish romance of Cathy and Linton and the healthy, culturally viable love of Cathy and Hareton. The adult love of Cathy and Hareton involves a sense of social and moral responsibilities in contrast to the asocial, amoral, irresponsible, and impulsive child's love of Catherine and Heathcliff. Van Ghent calls their love a "mythological romance" because "the astonishingly ravenous and possessive, perfectly amoral love of Catherine and Heathcliff belongs to that realm of the imagination where myths are created"; a primary function of myth being to explain origins, practices, basic human behavior, and natural phenomena. The two kinds of love (childish and adult) and the two generations are connected by Heathcliff in his role first as demon-lover and finally as ogre-father and by the two children figure.

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