Summary of the ideas in Inside the Cosmic Mind by Claudia Nielsen

Review of a talk on 'Inside the Cosmic Mind' by Claudia Nielsen This talk was given by Phoebe Wyss to the London Scientific and Medical Network group in July 2015 “This month our speaker was Phoebe Wyss. Her talk was entitled Inside the Cosmic Mind, the title of her new book.

Phoebe is a professional astrologer and this evening she explained her quest to validate astrology, which she found over the 35 years as a professional, was often dismissed as nonsensical because it cannot be tested with the tools of materialistic science. She started by pointing out the current perspective sees the cosmos as meaningless in accordance with the mainstream cosmological beliefs predicated on materialistic science. In contrast, ancient cultures had a more ‘right brain’ perception of the world in which they lived.

Phoebe pointed out for example that the ancient Egyptians did not make a difference between inner and outer worlds. Both aspects were interrelated and the gods manifested in both. The Hermetic axiom ‘as above, so below’ is the best example of this philosophy, understood also to mean ‘as inner so outer’. Looking at philosophical contributions, she singled out Plato’s realm of ideas in the Universal Mind structuring Nature, and Plotinus whose perspective was that every being, at whatever level of consciousness, participates in the Anima Mundi – the soul of the world. Pauli and Jung were also quoted extensively supporting her argument of correspondences between inner and outer worlds, the most well-known being the concept of synchronicity.

The concept of archetypes, an idea developed by Jung, helped her explain the nature of the zodiac energies in this context. Phoebe also mentioned the work of Rupert Sheldrake and his ideas of morphic resonance and the understanding of mind extending beyond the physical body both in time and in space, which brought her closer to understanding how astrology works. Another principle, that of fractal correspondence derived from chaos theory, also had an impact on Phoebe’s understanding, and together with the nested hierarchy model has helped her make sense of mind being included and transcended in levels of sophistication throughout reality. She compared it with the language of correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm, deriving from the ancients.

The human being is a mini universe containing the whole within him. The seminal work of Richard Tarnas and his student Keiron Le Grice helped Phoebe further and she quoted a sentence by Tarnas – ‘the psyche is not in us: we are in the psyche’ - which she sees as a very big idea to take in. Ultimately, Phoebe suggests that there is a top-down flow of meaning in the cosmos from the mind of the whole downwards. The zodiac ‘is a geometric matrix in the cosmic mind’ in constant flow, in which the archetypes – its core ideas – unfold and combine their qualities in ever-changing patterns. Notably the zodiac expresses no causality but a mirroring of meaningful configurations of archetypal energies, which can be found in the events of history and our personal life stories. Astrology she said, allows us to recognise these patterns as they emerge in our lives, and helps us make sense of our experience.”