The 12 Branches of the Tree of Knowledge
Toward a Holistic Science Paradigm and Worldview
Book Contents
Introduction
The Natural Order (Thesis)
The Early Natural Order
The Pleasure Function
The Destruction of the Natural Order (Antithesis)
Reductionism and Moralism
Repression and Perversion
Love vs. Split-Love
The Disintegration of Sexual Paraphilias
Parent-Child Codependence and Emotional Child Abuse
The Oedipal Mold and Oedipal Culture
Mysticism and Atheism
Narcissism
Denial of Complexity
The Plague of Sadism
Conspiracy Thinking vs. Critical Thinking
Youth Fascism
The New Natural Order (Synthesis)
The Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living
The Twelve Branches of the Tree of Knowledge
The True Religio
Toward a Science of Life
Primary Power and Permissive Education
Research Bibliography
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Page Contents
Introduction
Ancient Wisdom Traditions
Goethe’s Color Theory
The 12 Branches
—01/12 Science and Divination
—02/12 Science and Energy
—03/12 Science and Flow
—04/12 Science and Gestalt
—05/12 Science and Intent
—06/12 Science and Intuition
—07/12 Science and Knowledge
—08/12 Science and Pattern
—09/12 Science and Perception
—10/12 Science and Philosophy
—11/12 Science and Truth
—12/12 Science and Vibration
Introduction
Holistic science is nothing new. It is truly the oldest of science traditions, was traditionally called Hermetic Science, thousands of years ago, and today is called Perennial Science in deliberate parallel to Aldous Huxley’s excellent research on Perennial Philosophy.
— Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (1970).
If this is a strange idea to the reader, which wouldn’t astonish me as this knowledge is still today hermetic, I recommend reading The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928/2003) by Manly P. Hall, which is about the best that was ever written on the subject. In addition, this precious and well-written book contains a wealth of references for further research.
I will demonstrate in this article that there is no functional difference between Huxley’s definition of perennial philosophy and the concept of perennial science as this difference came up because of a purely terminological confusion. To be true, in ancient times, philos sophia, the love of wisdom, to translate it literally, was considered the Queen of Sciences, something like an overarching or header science, while at that time, according to the prevailing holistic paradigm, was called philosophy.
Behold, that term was not defined in the sense it is used today, and done today, and was done already in the last three centuries, that is, as a system of intellectual speculation!
To repeat it, initially philosophy was a science, that followed rigorous research principles, and had nothing to do with speculation.
This was so until Aristotle, who actually was the first philosopher who relied almost exclusively on intuition to formulate his concepts, which is why I consider him as the first philosopher according to the modern definition; he was perhaps the first brilliant speculative thinker in human philosophical history. By the same token, I say Aristotle was not a scientist, not only in the modern definition, but also not when we apply the concept of perennial science. Aristotle was not pragmatic in developing his concepts, he was speculative as today science fiction authors are. That is why I refuse to call him a scientist, while Heraclites, his contemporary, was well an original scientist.
I would like to elucidate some of the elements that both perennial philosophy and postmodern science share, as ingredients of a soup that today we came to call holistic science.
As Fritjof Capra has shown in his bestseller The Turning Point (1987) and also in his books The Web of Life (1997) and The Hidden Connections (2002), we are in the midst of a complete paradigm change in science which will eventually declare wrong and obsolete four hundred years of scientific error in the form of so-called ‘exact,’ the former Cartesian, reductionist science.
My desire is to show that there are basically twelve, and probably more, ingredients and characteristics of holistic science that are presently more and more embraced, as we mature into new science which is of course just a modern vintage of perennial science.
Ancient Wisdom Traditions
Ancient traditional cultures and their scientific traditions, and what we today call perennial philosophy were holistic; they embraced flow principles, they looked at life as a Gestalt, and derived conclusions from the observation of the living and moving, not from the dead. Here are some of the most important of these traditions:
- Ancient Sumer
- Ancient Babylon
- Ancient Egypt
- Ancient Persia
- Ancient Greece
- Ancient Rome
- Ancient India
- Ancient China
- Ancient Japan
- Ancient Ottoman Empire
Goethe’s Color Theory
There was one genius in human science history, most of the time overlooked by our arrogant scientific pulpits, who was the real precursor of holistic science, at a time when everybody got Newtonian reductionism thrown over the head like a Cartesian mass-medicine. No, it was not Reich, while I always thought it was Reich, but just as a matter of timeline, there was one before him. It was the German lawyer, poet, philosopher and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832).
Goethe, besides other scientific novelties, developed a color theory that was in flagrant contradiction with Newton’s reductionist paradigm, and that is why Goethe was shunned by the mainstream science hierarchy not for decades, but for centuries.
And Goethe knew why he had to oppose Newton!
Though the merits of Goethe’s color science, as advanced in his text Zur Farbenlehre, have often been acknowledged, it has been almost unanimously proclaimed invalid as physics.
How could Goethe have been so mistaken?
Dennis L. Sepper shows that the condemnation of Goethe’s attacks on Newton have been based on erroneous assumptions about the history of Newton’s theory and the methods and goals of Goethe’s color science.
By illuminating the historical background and the experimental, methodological, and philosophical aspects of Goethe’s work, Sepper shows that Goethe’s color theory is in an important sense genuinely physical, and that, simultaneously as poet, scientist, historian, and philosopher, Goethe managed to anticipate important twentieth-century research not only in the history and philosophy of science, but even in color science itself.
— See Dennis L. Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton (1988), and Frederick Burwick, The Damnation of Newton (1986).
The 12 Branches
- Science and Divination
- Science and Energy
- Science and Flow
- Science and Gestalt
- Science and Intent
- Science and Intuition
- Science and Knowledge
- Science and Pattern
- Science and Perception
- Science and Philosophy
- Science and Truth
- Science and Vibration
1/12 Science and Divination
When I talk about divination, I include all possible devices, methods and traditions that are used for getting a glimpse of truth for decision-making, or potential outcome of specific events around a chosen developmental theme. Thus, divination can mean astrology, it can mean Tarot and it can mean geomancy, and it definitely also can mean using the I Ching.
Cartesian science never cared about explaining divination and why it works, while archetypal and transformational psychology, especially the Jungian branch of it, offered a pioneering and thought-provoking pathway for opening the depth of the psyche and its divinatory potential to the modern researcher or psychologist. One of the leading publications in this context is Sallie Nichols’ Jung and Tarot (1986).
It is important in this context to realize that divination is not deterministic in the sense that ‘the future is predetermined,’ while this assumption often appears to be repeated in vulgarized publications on esoteric sciences. The truth is that no diviner can ever predict ‘the future,’ as the future is simply an extrapolation of present thought content, and subconscious thought patterns, as well as emotional patterns.
What the diviner does in fact is to scan the content of your unconscious and project this content into some or the other cognitive system that renders it visible and intellectually graspable. Hence, what divination explains is but the status quo of the asker, the person who comes to the diviner, with a particular question or project. While it is true there is a certain probability that the present state of consciousness perpetuates itself into the future, by extrapolation of its content on a timeline of events, this is no ‘prediction’ of the future, simply because the asker can change their content of consciousness hic et nunc.
This is why I developed, years ago, the idea of combining astrology and other forms of divination with what I came to call Inspirational Prayer as part of my Life Authoring self-coaching technique. The prayer technique is used as an add-on to the astrological consultation in the sense that it helps changing the present content of consciousness, after it has been rendered cognizable by the projective system of astrology. I learnt the technique basically from three books by Dr. Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963), The Miracle of Mind Dynamics (1964)and Think Yourself Rich (2001).
The solution to the riddle of how divination works is contained in one single phrase of this book. Here it is:
—Remember that because your future is the result of your habitual thinking, it is already in your mind unless you change it through prayer.
What divination does, to repeat it, is to read our habitual and repetitive thought patterns, and extrapolate them on a virtual timeline into the future. This is, then, what is colloquially called ‘predicting the future.’ When you know what it’s really about and how it is done, you see that it doesn’t make sense, but can be understood as an oversimplification of the truth.
After all, if the future was predestined, as Calvinism assumed, Joseph Murphy and many other new thought authors would not have written their books; and they would not lecture as ministers and spiritual guides. They do it because they have realized that wrong beliefs about life and living are destructive and make for much of the misery we encounter in human lives, and in the world at large. Our mind is fragile in the sense that it can easily be manipulated by the mass media; worse, when fortune tellers, astrologers and diviners come along to pretend they are ‘predicting the future,’ the outcome may be dangerous as their assumptions by naive souls may be taken as hypnotic spells that then may gain the power to realize as self-fulfilling prophecies. The reader may easily imagine where this can lead, and how much strife and turmoil this may produce in the lives of many humans around the world.
Murphy has seen it all around himself, and even in his own family, how people fall ill and even die without having to die, because of the suggestions they receive from others in the form of hypnotic spells wrapped in various forms, and also, unfortunately, in professional divination, when done by unspiritual, greedy and dishonest people.
And it’s a fact, only to look at the Internet, what masses of scam artists are around in all those fields called esoteric, new age, mindpower and all the rest of it. When such accumulated power of irresponsible manipulative greed meets the fragile and ignorant mind of the ‘man in the street,’ we can predict disasters to happen.
This messy situation with people being misled by both their own beliefs and predictions received from others was one of the reasons that motivated Murphy and before him, Ernest Holmes, to write their books. The science tI am talking about is the Science of Mind, also called Religious Science, as it was founded by Ernest Holmes in 1927, and expanded and commercialized in the 1960s by Dr. Joseph Murphy and Catherine Ponder, and others.
I studied the Science of Mind thoroughly over the last thirty years; it clearly emphasizes the priority of mind over matter — spiritual monism—and also the priority of the present over the past and any form of predestination.
It is hardly known that the Bible is against both astrology and any form of fortune telling. For example, Deuteronomy 18: 9–12 affirms:
9 When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. 11 Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. 12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.
When I came across these Bible quotes in 1991, I was first revolted! I found the Bible forwarded here a form of Christian fundamentalism that was against my convictions and spirituality. Yet I wanted to understand what the Bible meant here, what the deeper meaning was behind these admonitions. Thus I was asking ‘How does the Bible relate to divining? And why does it exhort us to be careful with it?’
To begin with, let me quote a mind-boggling example from Murphy’s book The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1962/1982):
How Suggestion Killed a Man. A distant relative of mine went to a celebrated crystal gazer in India and asked the woman to read his future. The seer told him that he had a bad heart. She predicted that he would die at the next new moon. My relative was aghast. He called up everyone in his family and told them about the prediction. He met with his lawyer to make sure his will was up-to-date. When I tried to talk him out of his conviction, he told me that the crystal gazer was known to have amazing occult powers. She could do great good or harm to those she dealt with. He was convinced of the truth of this. As the new moon approached, he became more and more withdrawn. A month before this man had been happy, healthy, vigorous, and robust. Now he was an invalid. On the / predicted date, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He died not knowing he was the cause of his own death. How many of us have heard similar stories and shivered a little at the thought that the world is full of mysterious uncontrollable forces? Yes, the world is full of forces, but they are neither mysterious nor uncontrollable. My relative killed himself, by allowing a powerful suggestion to enter into his subconscious mind. He believed in the crystal gazer’s powers, so he accepted her prediction completely. Let us take another look at what happened, knowing what we do about the way the subconscious mind works. Whatever the conscious, reasoning mind of a person believes, the subconscious mind will accept and act upon. My relative was in a suggestible state when he went to see the fortune teller. She gave him a negative suggestion, and he accepted it. He became terrified. He constantly ruminated on his conviction that he was going to die at the next new moon. He told everyone about it, and he prepared for his end. It was his own fear and expectation of the end, accepted as true by his subconscious mind, that brought about his death. The woman who predicted his death had no more power than the stones and sticks in the field. Her suggestion in itself had no power to create or bring about the end she suggested. If he had known the laws of his mind, he would have completely rejected the negative suggestion and refused to give her words any attention. He could have gone about the business of living with the secure knowledge that he was governed and controlled by his own thoughts and feelings. The prophecy of the seer would have been like a rubber ball thrown at an armored tank. He could have easily neutralized and dissipated her suggestion with no harm to himself. Instead, through lack of awareness and knowledge, he allowed it to kill him./ In themselves, the suggestions of others have no power over you. Whatever power they have, they gain because you give it to them through your own thoughts. You have to give your mental consent. You have to entertain and accept the thought. At that point it becomes your own thought, and your subconscious works to bring it into experience. Remember, you have the capacity to choose. Choose life! Choose love! Choose health! (Id., 29–30)
There is a difference between foolishly accepting any ‘prediction’ by an astrologer or fortune teller, or to use, for example the I Ching for decision making. The same is true regarding serious astrology; it is a question of professional ethics to avoid being suggestive in any way.
This is equally true for a serious Feng Shui consultant, Tarot expert, and even for paranormals who practice their profession within the rules of the unwritten ethical code set in ancient times for all Hermetic Sciences.
But from the side of the client, a certain level of emotional maturity is equally required! How many people die because they receive ‘death sentences’ from their physicians, taking for granted that the gods in white coats determine their destiny, for the most part ignorant about the pitfalls, limitations and outright ignorance of Western medical science!
There is a responsibility linked to every new piece of knowledge you learn and digest. This responsibility requires you to use the knowledge not with a foolish, immature or infantile mindset that takes everything for granted when it comes from a so-called ‘authority.’
2/12 Science and Energy
When we look at the ingredients of holistic science, we have to begin with a notion that is primordial to all matter and visible phenomena. It was traditionally called mana by native peoples, or ‘cosmic life energy’ by one of the greatest Western researchers on the matter, Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957). What we have to ask, what kind of energy can that possibly be?
According to Albert Einstein’s mass-energy equation (e=mc2), kinetic energy in the universe results from an interdependence of mass and velocity.
However, the energy meant in this equation is not the cosmic information field or zero-point field. This can be seen in the simple fact that kinetic energy is quantifiable, the primordial, biogenic energy however not; as a result, the first can well be measured, the second, hitherto, not.
For this primordial energy field, other laws are applicable. For example, Einstein’s speed of the light limitation while it is valid for matter, for large bodies, is not valid on the subatomic level, and it is not valid for the information field. Within the field or Akashic Field (A-field), as Ervin Laszlo calls it, information flow it total and instantaneous, and this is so from one point of the universe to any other point, which may be light years away.
The information will be transmitted instantaneously because of the entanglement of particles, a phenomenon explained either within the terminology of quantum physics or with the vocabulary created by Rupert Sheldrake, as morphic resonance.
—See, for example, Lynne McTaggart, The Field (2002), Ervin Laszlo, Science and the Akashic Field (2004), William A. Tiller, Psychoenergetic Science (2007) and Conscious Acts of Creation (2001), Richard Gerber, A Practical Guide to Vibrational Medicine (2001), Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life (2005). See also Valerie Hunt, Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness (2000) and Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe (1992).
Though I well obtained interim answers to my initial quest to find out about the primordial energy, through Paracelsus, Swedenborg and Mesmer, through Reichenbach and Reich, through Burr and Lakhovsky, and also of course through Chinese Medicine, Feng Shui, Homeopathy, Bach Flowers and Hypnosis, through Huna and the wisdom of the Essenes, I came to conclusive answers only after I got to understand quantum physics and modern research on the a-field, zero-point field or quantum vacuum, as well as morphic resonance.
At a time, some twenty years ago, when Western science was much more resistant to the idea of a primordial energy field, or energy patterns, Fritjof Capra courageously tackled the hairy problem in his book The Turning Point (1982), discussing the controversial position of Wilhelm Reich, who termed the cosmic energy orgone:
It is evident that Reich’s concept of bioenergy comes very close to the Chinese concept of ch’i. Like the Chinese, Reich emphasized the cyclical nature of the organism’s flow processes and, like the Chinese, he also saw the energy flow in the body as the reflection of a process that goes on in the universe at large. To him bioenergy was a special manifestation of a form of cosmic energy that he called orgone energy. Reich saw this orgone energy as some kind of primordial substance, present everywhere in the atmosphere and extending through all space, like the ether of the nineteenthcentury physics. Inanimate as well as living matter, according to Reich, derives from orgone energy through a complicated process of differentiation. (Id., 378)
When we try to find a unified terminology for the cosmic energy field, we need to make abstraction from the wrapper, for language is a mere fold for content that is subject to observation.
Terence McKenna comments regarding the terminology used by tribal peoples to describe energetic phenomena that it metaphorically says basically the same as modern science. In The Archaic Revival (1992), and with regard to the bioenergetic charge contained in plant substances used for religious purposes, McKenna writes:
They [the natives] are the true phenomenologists of this world; they know plant chemistry, yet they call these energy fields spirits. (Id., 45)
But of course, McTaggart, Laszlo, Tiller or Gerber are not the last word. And let’s not forget that despite these authors being recognized authorities in their field, this means only that we got some authoritative views, but not more. The last word of mainstream science regarding the integration of the cosmic energy field is not out until this day. And that means that — so far — this science operates around the main parameter of the universe. Which is quite of an elegant workaround after all. I haven’t heard of a pianist who can play without a piano. Dora van Gelder expresses this beautifully when she says, in her book The Real World of Fairies (1977/1999):
We live in a world of form without understanding the life force beneath the forms.
3/12 Science and Flow
When we look at the ingredients of holistic science, we have to begin with flow. There is an important difference between a static and a dynamic science concept. The mechanistic science concept was static. Instead of looking at the living and moving substance, it vivisected dead corpses to gain insights about life. Why was that so?
Cartesianism disregarded flow, while ancient traditional cultures and their scientific traditions, and what we today call perennial science, were holistic; they embraced flow principles. They looked at life as a Gestalt, and derived conclusions from the observation of the living and moving, not from the dead.
Our own holistic science tradition probably started not with Aristotle, but with Heraclites.
—See, for example, Richard Geldard, Remembering Heraclitus (2000) and Charles H. Kahn (Ed.), The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (2008).
Heraclites’ most important principle in nature was flow, the flow principle as we would say today as it was rediscovered in systems theory, the science of living systems.
The most pertinent general information on the flow principle I found in the books of Fritjof Capra, while I know that there is much more specialized literature about this subject. Yet Capra’s books are really instructive in that they contain all the references needed to research these publications. In most cases, it suffices to read Capra’s very well-written summaries to get the picture. His elucidations provide a bird perspective on systems theory and the intricacies of living systems, and from there you can go deeper, using the references as guides for your own further research.
—Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (1975/2000), The Turning Point (1987), The Web of Life (1997), The Hidden Connections (2002), Steering Business Toward Sustainability (1995), and The Systems View of Life (2014).
4/12 Science and Gestalt
As I have shown in my reviews of some of the lesser known books by Wilhelm Reich, this scientist’s conceptual framework had firmly embodied the Gestalt. Reich’s genius as a scientist was his gift of observation, and his particular talent to see not single elements of a process, but the whole of the process. Reich was in this respect really different from the main bunch of his Cartesian-minded professional colleagues. In our days, Reich would probably be considered as one of the leading-edge scientists.
Generally speaking, when we observe living processes, we can either put our focus on single elements, or the substance, or we can focus on the process, and the form. Both form and substance are present in living systems.
Our culture has created the line as a symbol for evolution. However, the straight line is an artificial construct, inexistent in nature, a purely mental achievement, while evolution is cyclic: it allows the line only in combination with the circle, so as to say, resulting in the spiral.
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the spiral as relating to the advancement to higher levels through a series of cyclical movements. The curving movement of the spiral is what it has in common with the circle; the increase or decrease in size of the spiral is a function of its moving upward or downward.
Interestingly enough, the spiral is by far the dominating form to be found in nature, and in all natural processes. It is a symbol or Gestalt for evolution in general. Life is coded in the spiraled double-helix of the DNA molecule. The spiral is the expression of the periodic, systemic and cyclic development that is in accordance with the laws of life. The progression of the spiral shows that it always carries its root, however transporting it through every cycle onto a higher level or dimension; whereas the line leaves its root forever. All towers of Babel are manifestations of the line; they are linear and are created by linear thought structures.
True growth is always cyclic and spiraled, and nonlinear.
On the subject of bringing in Gestalt thinking in the logic of healing, Manly P. Hall, in his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928/2003) writes about Paracelsus and states:
Paracelsus discovered that in many cases plants revealed by their shape the particular organs of the human body which they served most effectively. The medical system of Paracelsus was based on the theory that by removing the diseased etheric mumia from the organism of the patient and causing it to be accepted into the nature of some distant and disinterested thing of comparatively little value, it was possible to divert from the patient the flow of the archaeus which had been continually revitalizing and nourishing the malady. Its vehicle of expression being transplanted, the archaeus necessarily accompanied its mumia, and the patient recovered. (Id., 347)
It was Gestalt considerations and the insight that nature is basically an assemblage of patterns, and not of randomly arranged matter that recently led a number of researchers to corroborate the age-old assumption that our universe is holographic, and thus programmed in holographic patterns that are all mutually interconnected. Ervin Laszlo writes in his remarkable study Science and the Akashic Field (2004):
In a holographic recording — created by the interference pattern of two light beams — there is no one-to-one correspondence between points on the surface of the object that is recorded and points in the recording itself. Holograms carry information in a distributed form, so all the information that makes up a hologram is present in every part of it. The points that make up the recording of the object’s surface are present throughout the interference patterns recorded on the photographic plate: in a way, the image of the object is enfolded throughout the plate. As a result, when any small piece of the plate is illuminated, the full image of the object appears, though it may be fuzzier than the image resulting from illuminating the entire plate. (Id., 55)
5/12 Science and Intent
It was only fairly recently that modern science began to ask if, and in how far, intent, human intention, impacts upon matter, or even may contribute to changing matter? This very question would have been judged insane still a few decades ago by the bulk of modern scientists. The question of how intention impacts upon matter is generally asked in the context of what is called ‘Mind and Matter Interaction,’ and this is itself a topic related to consciousness research.
I have for the first time heard of this new pathway in modern research through the film What The Bleep Do We Know!? and its later Rabbit Hole Edition and was then reviewing the mind-boggling presentation by William A. Tiller, Stanford University Emeritus entitled Conscious Acts of Creation (DVD).
Shortly thereafter I found in Chapter 8 of the book The Conscious Universe (1997), by Dean Radin, entitled Mind-Matter Interaction, the following interesting remark; it’s not the answer yet, but a well formulated question:
Does mental intention affect the physical world? In a trivial sense, the answer is obviously yes. An automotive engineer imagines a new way to build a car, and several months or years later it appears. This transformation from mental into physical is not considered remarkable because the sequence of events is well understood. But a similar question can be asked that is no longer self-evident: does mental intention directly affect the physical world, without an intermediary? This question concerning the ultimate role of the human mind in the physical world has intrigued philosophers for millennia. Indeed, the concept that mind is primary over matter is deeply rooted in Eastern philosophies and ancient beliefs about magic. For the past few hundred years, such beliefs have been firmly rejected by Western science as mere superstition. And yet, the fundamental issues remain as mysterious today as they did five thousand years ago. What is mind, and what is its relationship to matter? Is the mind caused, or is it causal? (Id., 127)
Answers are now given by a number of scientists, among them Dr. Tiller. Based upon years of detailed research, Dr. Tiller has amassed convincing experimental data showing that in seemingly the same cognitive space, basic chemical reactions and material properties can be strongly altered by human intentions. He says, we are all capable of performing what we think of as miracles. In Conscious Acts of Creation, Dr. Tiller explains these findings in clear, understandable language and supports it with just enough math and physics to deeply move just about everyone.
The exciting bottom line is that it appears now real that these findings and the new technologies Tiller has developed, are capable of catalyzing human intention in the process of changing matter!
While Dr. Tiller’s research investigates the impact of intent on mechanics, simple machines and their workings when under the influence of conscious intent, I am actually interested to use his methodology to explain shamanism, and particularly shamanic healing. It is namely on the same line of reasoning when I say that shamans use intent for altering consciousness. For example, it can be asked how intent comes into play during shamanic healing, and how, in detail, a shaman’s conscious intent impacts upon the consciousness matrix of the receiver?
I namely argue, corroborated by my own experience with Ayahuasca, which I describe in my audio book Consciousness and Shamanism (2010), that the shaman does not impact directly on the consciousness of his client but by using entheogenic plants as a receptor, amplifier and emitter platform for thought content, and for intention.
6/12 Science and Intuition
As early as in high-school I was awake, critical and suspicious why my science teachers were so painstakingly discarding intuition out from the core scientific method and paradigm. I simply thought they were feeble-minded, which is probably why I never learnt much science. But I don’t regret it, because what I would have learnt, as I know today, would have been wrong — completely wrong.
In Antiquity, intuition truly had its place, and this is now beginning to dawn on the cutting edge of modern science, as intuitive diagnosis of illness, an idea that would have sounded science-fiction just a few decades ago, begins to be seriously recognized within modern medicine.
Caroline Myss, in her practice, has shown to intuitively diagnose illness with a more than eighty percent accuracy, which is simply phenomenal. In her contribution to Russell DiCarlo’s science reader, Towards A New Worldview (1996), she says she relates intuition to the vital energy.
In her view, intuition is one of the many manifestations of the ch’i energy or cosmic information field. As such, to use my own terminology, as I explain it in my audio book Emonics (2010), intuition is a function of emonic vibrations. She writes in Russell DiCarlo (Ed.), A New Worldview (1996):
The human energy field shouldn’t be called that at all, but since we call it that, let’s define it very clearly. It’s better understood as an information center because that’s what it is. And that’s where you store all your messages. That’s where you store all your faxes. That’s where you warehouse everything. Your responses to everything and everyone, all your fear — everything — is stored in your energy field. Your responses form patterns that influence your electromagnetic circuitry. This dictates a quality control signal that influences the creation and quality of cell tissue’. (…) Energy is intelligent. It is alive. It is information — energy is information. It is one and the same thing. (Id., 136–145)
Barbara Brennan, in her contribution to the same science reader, emphasized that all our thoughts and emotions impact upon the energy field in which we are woven. As such, what we perceive and intuit is transmitted to us by energy, because energy is information.
In between the structured layers of the field is a bioplasma-like energy that simply flows along the lines of the structured field pattern. It’s the energy that flows along the lines of the structured field pattern that changes very fast with thoughts and emotions, not the structured pattern itself. For example, if you stop yourself from feeling something, it will stop the flow of energy in the field. And if you experience the feeling, the energy will be released. There is a direct correlation. There are even correlations between the energy field and the part of the brain you are thinking with. As you change your thought patterns, the patterning of the field changes. (Id., 147)
The idea of intuition being a variant of direct perception is old, very old. It was an idea very dear to Pythagoras. Manly P. Hall writes in The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928/2003):
Pythagoras defined knowledge as the fruitage of mental accumulation. He believed that it would be obtained in many ways, but principally through observation. Wisdom was the understanding of the source or cause of all things, and this could be secured only by raising the intellect to a point where it intuitively cognized the invisible manifesting outwardly through the visible, and thus became capable of bringing itself en rapport with the spirit of things rather than with their forms. (Id., 197)
Manly P. Hall reports that John Stuart Mill believed in intuition and reason to be the two superior modes of apprehending reality, and that they are higher states of the mind compared to mere sensory perception.
John Stuart Mill believed that if it is possible through sensation to secure knowledge of the properties of things, it is also possible through a higher state of the mind — that is, intuition or reason — to gain a knowledge of the true substance of things. (Id., 34)
Vidette Todaro-Franceschi, in her book The Enigma of Energy (1999), has asked the question ‘What, Exactly, is Nature?’ Referring to historian and philosopher of science R. G. Collingwood, she writes that there are three periods in the development of the idea of nature, which she sees coincidentally reflect the ideas of energy. Then, on the subject of the third period in the developmental view of nature, she notes:
I believe that during this period the idea that energy was an autonomous existent contributed to the shift in focus. It became vaguely evident that change was inherent in various things; that is, it was recognized that change could occur without the provocation of external forces or efficient causes. Collingwood identifies the idea of a ‘rhythmical pattern’ with the modern view of nature and acknowledges that the new physics theories are partly responsible for this notion. But the rhythmical patterns we now know to exist in nature also seem to denote an inner principle of change, or an Aristotelian ‘that for the sake of which,’ originally expressed by the ancient Greeks. So one might say we have come full circle. In conjunction with this new take on an old idea that was present in both Eastern and Western antiquity is the increasing awareness that intuition plays a significant role in scientific discoveries. As the historical background of the idea of energy attests, intuitive ways of knowing have been crucial to the development of scientific ideas throughout history. Many individuals knew things, such as the energy conservation doctrine, without being able to empirically verify them. In other words, intuitive ways of knowing seem to have led / us in the right direction long before we were capable of scientifically validating what we somehow knew to be so. Subjectivity and subjective ways of knowing, such as intuition, have become as vital to our understanding as objectivity and empirical ways of knowing. In this modern view of nature humankind has once again come to be recognized as being part of nature, rather than outside of it. (Id., 125–126)
7/12 Science and Knowledge
Is science per se a form of knowledge-gathering? Or is it rather the opposite, a system that inhibits us from gaining true knowledge? These questions guide us toward the insight that all depends on our definition of science.
Scientia, the Latin word, originally meant indeed knowledge. But has our traditional science led us toward true knowledge, true knowledge of the nature of life, the wisdom of living, the art of togetherness and of peace?
I believe it has rather done the contrary, at least from the point it was transformed into Newtonian-Cartesian Reductionism, a split self of its original integrated whole, that it still was in Antiquity. In our Bible, which is for most people in Western traditions a true guide book, knowledge was in the Genesis considered as dangerous and it was explicitly forbidden to collect the fruits of the ‘tree of knowledge.’ The serpent, which in ancient traditions was always considered a consort of knowledge, was acting counter to this nonsensical prohibition and liberated man from the constriction imposed by a jealous, power-hungry persecutor-god.
And indeed most people, quite instinctively, because of their Christian upbringing, take the position of the serpent-killer, not the serpent-friend, and thus automatically become knowledge-hostile.
Even in today’s pretendedly so enlightened international intelligentsia, knowledge is only accepted once it is promoted by a well-known academic authority and accepted on a larger scale — this acceptance being valid only when the majority among the knowledge-bearers are academia, and thus accredited at leading universities.
All other kind of knowledge is ruthlessly discarded out, and often those who bear the knowledge as well. Which is not democratic, nor is it enlightened.
The puzzle of true knowledge is a web-like structure, not a hierarchy of principles. It’s nonlinear, not linear. It consists of many elements that are structurally related. When science cares about true knowledge, it first of all cares about nature, the true and only knowledge-giver in the universe. I will quote in this paragraph a few examples of knowledge that is not considered valid knowledge under our present science paradigm but that I consider as true knowledge, while I am not a clairvoyant myself.
But when science is primarily observation, then clairvoyant observation must be included in our plethora of scientific observations of nature.
When I include this knowledge here, I do it in fair appreciation of clairvoyants such as Dora van Gelder or Charles W. Leadbeater, whose life stories I have studied, and in consideration of their high reputation as having been honest and scientific-minded people who received high regard and even admiration from the side of both academia and their contemporaries.
Now, first of all, what is clairvoyance? Dora van Gelder writes in The Real World of Fairies (1999):
The fact is that there is a real physical basis for clairvoyance, and the faculty is not especially mysterious. The power centers in that tiny organ in the brain called the pituitary gland. The kind of vibrations involved are so subtle that no physical opening in the skin is needed to convey them to the pituitary body, but there is a special spot of sensitiveness just between the eyes above the root of the nose which acts as the external opening for the gland within. (Id., 4)
So the pituitary gland is certainly very much alive and important in human beings. And it certainly has this use for receiving very fine vibrations from a world of things which are subtler than anything we know. (Id., 5)
And what does modern science know about the spirits of nature, and the fairy worlds? Nothing. And because it knows nothing, it says that ‘these things’ do not exist. Very intelligent indeed. I think that modern science is a special form of religious fundamentalism that has not yet been identified as such. The spirits of nature, shunned so much by Christian fundamentalism, that was the predecessor of modern science, and reborn now in the course of the New Age movement, and the revival of the folk lore of fairies, as it was, for example, rediscovered by Dr. Evans-Wentz in his remarkable study The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (1911/2002), and observed by clairvoyant Dora van Gelder in her book The Real World of Fairies (1977/1999), have certain well-defined characteristics and they are quite distinct of human beings. Leadbeater explains in his book Astral Plane (1895/1997):
We might almost look upon the nature-spirits as a kind of astral humanity, but for the fact that none of them — not even the highest — possess a permanent reincarnating individuality. Apparently therefore, one point in which their line of evolution differs from ours is that a much greater proportion of intelligence is developed before permanent individualization takes places; but of the stages through which they have passed, and those through which they have yet to pass, we can know little. The life-periods of the different subdivisions vary greatly, some being quite short, others much longer than our human lifetime. We stand so entirely outside such a life as theirs that it is impossible for us to understand much about its conditions; but it appears on / the whole to be a simply, joyous, irresponsible kind of existence, much such as a party of happy children might lead among exceptionally favourable physical surroundings. Though tricky and mischievous, they are rarely malicious unless provoked by some unwarrantable intrusion or annoyance; but as a body they also partake to some extent of the universal feeling of distrust for man, and they generally seem inclined to resent somewhat the first appearances of a neophyte on the astral plane, so that he usually makes their freaks, they soon accept him as a necessary evil and take no further notice of him, while some among them may even after a time become friendly and manifest pleasure on meeting him. (Id., 61)
The Adept knows how to make use of the services of the nature-spirits when he requires them, but the ordinary magician can obtain their assistance only by processes either of invocation or evocation — that is, either by attracting their attention as a suppliant and making some kind of bargain with them, or by endeavouring to set in motion influences which would compel their obedience. Both methods are extremely undesirable, and the latter is also excessively dangerous, as the operator would arouse a determined hostility / which might prove fatal to him. Needless to say, no one studying occultism under a qualified Master would ever be permitted to attempt anything of the kind at all. (Id., 61–62)
And regarding medical science, the picture is not much different. It ignores more than it knows, it shuns and discards more than it embraces and recognizes in its medical paradigm. Dr. Alberto Villoldo, in his book Shaman, Healer, Sage (2000), remarks:
Until fifty years ago, going to a doctor was more dangerous to your health than staying home and letting your body-mind take its own course. (Id., 13)
I think Villoldo is rather optimistic here; in my view this is still true today. You may have a little carcinoma, a little tumor, or even a big tumor, but anyway, that’s not a reason to get a death sentence pronounced by your medical executioner and a torture called chemotherapy to get you back to system-conformity and brave emotional dullness! Your body revolts with a tumor because you have abused it with conforming, probably over some decades, with a dead culture that is essentially pro-bomb and anti-body. Because you have denied your particular perversity and thought it was not politically correct. That’s why people get cancers, not because of what medical business writes in their propaganda leaflets.
You can have all true information about cancer from alternative cancer specialists such as Simonton & Simonton, who are medical doctors of a different kind because they did not sell their souls to medical business.
—See O. Carl Simonton, Getting Well Again (1992).
Villoldo recognizes the power of the mind over the body when he recalls his own childhood:
The very real effects of the mind on the body have been confirmed by research. In a sense, we all became experts at developing psychosomatic disease very early in life. At the age of six I could create the symptoms of a cold in minutes if I did not want to go to school. Psychosomatic disease goes against every survival instinct programmed into the body by three hundred million years of evolution. How powerful the mind must be to override all of these survival and self-preservation mechanisms. Imagine if we could marshal these resources to create psychosomatic health! (Id.)
It seems that there is in our culture always a form of ‘official knowledge’ that is put forward to kill off all real knowledge. In present times, this killer app is biotechnology, commonly called gene technology. In similar ways as Fritjof Capra, who is one of the most explicit opponents to genetic determinism, Alberto Villoldo, in his book Mending the Past and Healing the Future with Soul Retrieval (2005) has lucidly analyzed the myth of genetic imperialism pervading our present-day culture. He comes to the following conclusion, which is an empathetic statement for deep ecology. I agree as there cannot be a culture of knowledge that destroys its own roots.
Our behavior is a form of matricide, in which the child of nature — the human — is killing its own mother. To protect herself, nature is beginning to reject us: Water supplies are drying up, new plagues are infecting the planet, and the earth is beginning to respond to us as an undesirable life form. We’re becoming a flea on the tail of a dog, a germ that will be annihilated by the immune system of the planet. All this comes at a time when medicine feels newly empowered by our discoveries of the secret of life. When Watson and Crick discovered the DNA code, we suddenly converted to a new scientific faith, and antimicrobial medicine became supplemented by genetics. We now believe that risk factors inherited from our parents and ancestors through our genes predispose us to how long we’re going to live (and how well), what illnesses we’re going to get, how we’re going to heal, and how we’re going to age. We’ve devised tests to tell us from birth what genetic risks we’ve inherited, and we race to find cures from the same DNA strands that we use to predict our future. Genetic markers, nanotechnology, and other tools of the biotechnology industry promise us healthier and longer lives. But this is just a new trick for an old dog, because biotechnology is still looking for ways to fix, correct, and kill at an even subtler molecular level. We’ve simply added more precision and skill to the attack, while what we should be doing is seeking harmony with nature, both inside and out.
A true culture of knowledge will put a preference and urgency agenda over all other seeming priorities for protecting the very base layer of life — our Mother Earth.
8/12 Science and Pattern
I have stressed in all my publications the importance of understanding the nature of our universe as a basically patterned universe; on the basis of this insight, I am addressing scientists to focus on patterned intelligence, or patterned organization when we observe nature.
What are patterns? I began identifying the perennial pro-life patterns in living by firstly invalidating the fake principles that mainstream Western science declares to be the founding concepts of our universe. To put it more precisely, there was actually nothing to invalidate: I found that these alleged principles were but intellectual assumptions and thus simply invalid as founding principles of life. At the same time, diligent study of the I Ching and almost daily use of it for divination during more than twenty years distilled in me an intuitive understanding of the real and valid patterns that are inherent in all living. I therefore simply called them patterns of living.
Let me first of all explain why I use the term patterns, consciously deciding to discontinue the use of the term principles. I indeed think that here we are facing a key point that marks the essential difference between death science and life science.
A pattern is a set of things, a certain arrangement I can make out in the complex scheme of reality. It is something I can observe. A pattern can be fix or it can be changeable. It can be static or dynamic.
By contrast, a principle typically is the beginning of a down-hierarchy. It’s a top-something in a kind of up-to-down order. It is not something I can observe. Its reality is merely intellectual, the outcome of a conclusion I draw in my rational mind after observing nature. A principle thus contains my observer point or my judgment about reality.
Death science looks at life through the glasses of principles it has set before it was going to observe. It is essential blind, and it proceeds by imposing characteristics upon nature.
Western science is death science. Traditionally, it gained its first conclusions about life by vivisecting cadavers, not by observing the moving changes of living. It is, and remained, a cadaver science that is far removed from the changing patterns of reality.
Life science looks at life without any set principles or assumptions and observes the dynamic patterns or changes in the texture of life. It is a science that since its start in China, around five thousand years ago, was interested in life, and thus drew conclusions from life, and not from death.
Traditional Chinese science is life science, one branch of this very large body of science and philosophy being Feng Shui.
The I Ching is based upon life science, and is perhaps the highest condensation of it. Needless to add that, as such, it is nonjudgmental and thus bears no moralistic judgments about human behavior. It looks at human behavior in exactly the same way it looks at all life patterns, and sees the changing nature of it before all. I am angry at twelve twenty and hungry at twelve thirty.
In his book The Web of Life (1997), Fritjof Capra explains the importance of pattern when he explores the meaning of self-organization, which is one major characteristic pattern of living systems:
To understand the phenomenon of self-organization, we first need to understand the importance of pattern. The idea of a pattern of organization — a configuration of relationships characteristic of a particular system — became the explicit focus of systems thinking in cybernetics and has been a crucial concept ever since. From the systems point of view, the understanding of life begins with the understanding of pattern. (Id., 80)
When inquiring what patterns are, we need to change our basic setup of scientific investigation. Capra explains:
In the study of structure we measure and weigh things. Patterns, however, cannot be measured or weighed; they must be mapped. To understand a pattern we must map a configuration of relationships. In other words, structure involves quantities, while pattern involves qualities. (Id., 81)
This really involves a radical change in scientific thinking because traditionally Cartesian science was quantity-based and measure-oriented, while systemic science is quality-based and relationship-oriented, a truth that Capra exemplifies when looking at the properties involved in the scientific focus of both static and systemic science theory:
Systemic properties are properties of pattern. What is destroyed when a living organism is dissected is its pattern. The components are still there, but the configuration of relationships among them — the pattern — is destroyed, and thus the organism dies. (Id.)
The next important point to understand how nature ‘thinks’ is the cell’s metabolism, the network that serves recycling. Capra succinctly elaborates in his book The Hidden Connections (2002):
When we take a closer look at the processes of metabolism, we notice that they form a chemical network. This is another fundamental feature of life. As ecosystems are understood in terms of food webs (networks of organisms), so organisms are viewed as networks of cells, organs and organ systems, and cells as networks of molecules. One of the key insights of the systems approach has been the realization that the network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks. (…) The metabolic network of a cell involves very special dynamics that differ strikingly from the cell’s nonliving environment. Taking in nutrients from the outside world, the cell sustains itself by means of a network of chemical reactions that take place inside the boundary and produce all of the cell’s components, including those of the boundary itself. (Id., 9)
But the most revolutionary finding is that our usual habit of dissecting parts of a whole for further scrutiny and scientific investigation does not work with living systems. Why is this so? Capra pursues in The Web of Life (1997):
Ultimately — as quantum physics showed so dramatically — there are no parts at all. What we call a part if merely a pattern in an inseparable web of relationships. Therefore the shift from the parts to the whole can also be seen as a shift from objects to relationships. (Id., 37)
My hypothesis is that Western culture has never until now applied what I came to call the Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living and that it therefore is at the border of chaos, destruction or another kind of worldwide catastrophe, suffering from a schizoid mindset, the perversion of love into hate and sadism, rampant violence, the impudent slaughtering of minorities, famines that could easily be avoided, and generally a lack of genuine spirituality which, by itself, already makes for a large part of the depression and psychosomatic disorders many consumers in postmodern international culture are suffering from.
What I say is that the Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living have been respected and applied by all major tribal cultures including the North American Indians, and that therefore they have lived, and live, peacefully. With peacefully I do not mean an artificial peace concept, but a dynamic peace continuum that allows little fights and small wars to happen, as required by the dynamics of yin and yang, but that is so balanced that it will never trigger a major and global destruction.
The fact that our global industrial culture is at the tipping point of this destruction in all possible ways, economical, social, health-wise, military-wise, ecological, and other ways, shows that the continuum balance that the eight patterns give is lacking in modern society’s philosophy, science, military policy, diplomacy, politics and strategy. We all have in one way or the other contributed to bring about the emotional plague, symbolized by the atomic bomb’s mushroom.
Thus, the eight patterns could be taken as a guide concept and implemented in a new kind of lifestyle to be worked out as part of our presently evolving postindustrial global culture. That is the basic idea. I think that the eight patterns are tremendously useful as a base layer for establishing the ground principles of a new peaceful society, instead of beginning with Adam and Eve and go time and again though all anthropological material. I have actually done this and there is no more novelty in this. The eight patterns cover all spheres of life and living.
9/12 Science and Perception
Cartesian, mechanistic science was reductionist in that it was limited to sensory perception, shutting out everything from scientific observation that could not be grasped with the five senses. By definition, thus, extrasensorial and multisensorial perception was discarded out from scientific scrutiny and relegated to ‘mysticism,’ ‘imagination,’ ‘daydreaming’ or somnambulism, to a point to actually label people insane who do have a complete range of natural perception. This distorted science paradigm has not only created havoc in its own culture, but it definitely has been paradigmatically at the origin of large-scale genocide of native cultures. That is why I call cartesian, mechanistic science a cadaver science and a murder science. It can kill effectively, but it cannot heal. It can destroy, but not create, dissect but not integrate, separate but not unite. It’s simply perverse as all those who work for it with their eternal male hubris and their backpack of hangups. It has been the foundation of massacres against tribal populations for centuries and centuries and it has absolved the intentional murder of uncountable animals that it cruelly tortured and dissected in their lifeless and aseptic laboratories.
Alberto Villoldo, in his book Shaman, Healer, Sage (2000) distinguishes between rule-driven, concept-driven and perception-driven societies. While this distinction may not be clear-cut and cover all cases, it is a good and practically useful guideline that shows what could be called the predominant orientation of a given culture and its intelligentsia. Villoldo writes:
We are a rule-driven society that relies on documents such as the Constitution, the Ten Commandments, or laws passed by elected officials to bring order to our lives. We change precepts (rules or laws) when we want to change the world. The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, were people of the concept. They were interested not in rules but rather in / ideas. They believed that a single idea could change the world and that there was nothing as powerful as an idea whose time had come. Shamans are people of the percept. When they want to change the world, they engage in perceptual shifts that change their relationship to life. They envision the possible, and the outer world changes. This is why a group of Inka elders will sit in meditation envisioning the kind of world they want their grandchildren to inherit. (Id., 9–10)
The predominant orientation of native peoples around the world is perception, not just perception but direct perception. Modern science has very little understood so far what immediate, direct or primary perception is. Direct perception circumvents the judgment interface of the neocortex and thus short-circuits the rational mind. It is connected with the reptilian brain and the limbic system.
Dr. Villoldo calls it primary perception, for good reason as it was surely the primal form of perception in the run of human evolution. Its use decreased through settlement, domestication and human civilization, while in the shamanic world this primary form of perception is still the rule — at least for the shamans themselves.
Now, what is direct perception? It is as difficult to define perception as it is to define life. You can call it total unity with all-that-is, fusion with the object, an absence of the secondary observer.
—Commonly, the expression secondary observer connotes the judgment interface, our morality, the conditioning we have received and that impacts upon and distorts our perception of reality. The primary observer is another expression for what Transactional Analysis (TA) calls the inner adult. The secondary observer is called by TA the inner critic. It’s a dysfunctional psychic instance and is created artificially through a hypertrophy of the intellect and an overbearing superego. In simple words, it’s accumulated shame or a shame-based identity.
A person who perceives reality totally could be called, for example, a totally conscious direct observer. Dr. Villoldo writes in Shaman, Healer, Sage (2000):
To practice primary perception shamans have developed a kind of ‘common sense’ that bridges all of the senses. They are able to taste fire, to touch the fragrance of a flower, and to smell an image. They attain immediate perception before an experience is divided among the senses, an ability known as synesthesia. This blending of sensory modalities seems strange only to those who have distanced themselves from a direct, primordial experience of the natural world. (Id., 116)
I think it is possible to train our direct perception capability in developing consciousness that apprehends reality beyond our five senses; this means to train ESP, extrasensorial perception and MSP, multisensorial perception. Extrasensorial perception is in our society discussed among the greater topic of parapsychology or psychic research, while multisensorial perception, as Dr. Villoldo remarks, is commonly associated with shamanism and synesthesia.
Synesthesia has been reported and documented, to my knowledge, from two famous musicians, Olivier Messiaen and Alexander Scriabin. Messiaen was commonly talking about colors in his music, specific colors that he could identify when the music was performed. He also claimed that his music was more colorful than, for example, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Scriabin’s sense of synesthesia was vastly commented upon by his biographers.
Dr. Villoldo quotes an interesting passage from Phenomenology of Perception (1945/1999), by Maurice Merleau-Ponty that claims synesthesia to be our primary mode of sensorial input.
As the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote in Phenomenology of Perception, ‘Synesthetic perception is the rule, and we are unaware of it only because scientific knowledge shifts the center of gravity of experience, so that we have unlearned how to see, hear, and generally speaking, feel, in order to deduce, from our bodily organization, the world as a physicist conceives it, that we are to see, hear and feel.’
This is a classical example for the fact that our science is a death science that murders, shuts out, discards and ignores more in the universe than it embraces and knows about. And not only that. It also trains and conditions young citizens to perceive the world in a limited way, when it infiltrates into the school system. And in so far it mutilates the perception of our children. I do really not know what science is good for other than for building fridges, airplanes, televisions and light bulbs? It has been good for providing us comfort and safety, but it has deprived us from, and shielded us against, most of the living world.
10/12 Science and Philosophy
There is an important terminological clarification to be made regarding the terms science, on one hand, and philosophy, on the other.
Traditionally, in Western culture philosophy was connoted with more or less vague assumptions about life, or a certain life program, and associated with, or even used as a synonym of, Weltanschauung. Science, by contrast, in the Western science tradition, was understood, as I pointed out already, as reductionism — a regard on the world that pretended to be exact, objective and methodologically sound, while it was clearly shutting out more from this world than it admitted in its residue paradigm.
I am using these terms in the precisely opposite sense, in the sense namely that is in accordance with the oldest of science traditions, the hermetic tradition, and perennial philosophy. In this sense, what was called philos sophia (love of wisdom) in Antiquity was the header notion for science, whereas philosophy in the sense it was used during the last four hundred years simply would have to be called speculation. In other words, applying the ancient holistic science concept, our modern science would represent but a tiny portion of that cake …
Manly P. Hall, in his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928/2003), observes:
Among the ancients, philosophy, science, and religion were never considered as separate units: each was regarded as an integral part of the whole. Philosophy was scientific and religious; science was philosophic and religious; religion was philosophic and scientific. Perfect wisdom was considered unattainable save as the result of harmonizing all three of these expressions of mental and moral activity. (Id., 253)
So the wisdom here is to remain open and flexibly intelligent so that the observer can shift and move and change — and only then a truly scientific approach is granted. As Fritjof Capra writes in his book The Web of Life (1997):
What makes it possible to turn the systems approach into a science is the discovery that there is approximate knowledge. This insight is crucial to all of modern science. The old paradigm is based on the Cartesian belief in the certainty of scientific knowledge. In the new paradigm it is recognized that all scientific concepts and theories are limited and approximate. Science can never provide any complete and definite understanding. (Id., 41)
While my view was still a few years ago considered a minority opinion, it is now more and more recognized as the correct view, and it is currently developing into the new mainstream view of new science. What is this new science? It is mainly a renaissance, not an original new creation of modern minds; but this rebirth of perennial philosophy in a new garment is enriched by the irrevocable discoveries in quantum physics, and thus got a foundation that cannot be discarded. And eventually, this science begins to recognize and acknowledge the fact that life is coded in holistic energy patterns that constantly change and evolve. Capra writes in The Web of Life (1997):
At each scale, under closer scrutiny, the nodes of the network reveal themselves as smaller networks. We tend to arrange these systems, all nesting within larger systems, in a hierarchical scheme by placing the larger systems above the smaller ones in pyramid fashion. But this is a human projection. In nature there is no ‘above’ or ‘below’, and there are no hierarchies. There are only networks nesting within other networks. (Id., 41)
Nothing in life is static. All is movement. The universe is a dance. In death processes, the relentless movement of life slows down and comes to a point of profound stillness. However, in this stillness is contained the grain for further movement, for new life. In every condition is contained its opposite. In stillness is contained movement, in movement is contained stillness, in hot is contained cold, in male is contained female. In the small boy is contained the great general, in the small girl is contained the famous film diva. In yin is contained yang and in yang is contained yin. What is contained is smaller as what bears it because it is in growth. By the same token, what bears the smaller is decreasing in size to become small itself. With culmination and fullness decay sets in, and a new cycle of growth is put in motion.
11/12 Science and Truth
The simple truth is that every science is observation. After observing nature, we recollect what we saw and share it with others, who in turn observed and reported. This is how any primal form of scientific consensus is brought about: by sharing observations. However, this has not been the normal course of our Western science. Instead of observing, nature was subjected under coercive scientific reason and this is how intellectual concepts or principles were projected upon nature.
Quantum physics has given a majestic blow to this madhouse of projections and human hubris in telling our mechanistic scientists that they are part of the experiment, that their subjective and changing humanity cannot be discarded out of their clean laboratory experiments. With other words, as human nature is part of all nature, human nature is entangled with all that can be observed; hence, there cannot be any objective kind of observation, and there cannot be any objective science.
Science is entangled with the unknown, which is the human. The simple truth is that if we kept true to our observations and simply, and honestly, shared them, we would create true science. But to do this, honesty, scientific and simple human honesty is required. This honesty is not part, and was never part, of the scientific establishment, while it may be present in individual scientists. True science, if this has ever existed, therefore is not established science, but at best the science that we call exploratory or experimental, or what is called alternative science.
And in this sense, in our society, children are the only true scientists, because they simply observe and report what they saw, without projecting any intellectual content upon their observations. And in this sense, all true scientists have a childlike way of doing science. Albert Einstein lived the single best example of this truth.
Manly P. Hall, in his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928/2003) affirms that in ancient traditions science and religion were not separated and that therefore science at that time was much closer to truth than it is today.
Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician, during the fifth century before Christ, dissociated the healing art from the other sciences of the temple and thereby established a precedent for separateness. One of the consequences is the present widespread crass scientific materialism. The ancients realized the interdependence of the sciences. The moderns do not; and as a result, incomplete systems of learning are attempting to maintain isolated individualism. The obstacles which confront present-day scientific research are largely the result of prejudicial limitations imposed by those who are unwilling to accept that which transcends the concrete perceptions of the five primary human senses. (Id., 344)
Ervin László provides us with many honest statements of an avant-garde scientist, musician and genius that are unusual to hear from the mouth of a highly reputed scientist. According to László, science does not automatically equate truth, but sets up an equation of relationship between reality and scientific truth. This relationship is brought about and maintained through mapping reality with scientific instruments and theories. Ervin László explains in Science and the Akashic Field (2004):
Science’s disenchantment of the world has exacted a high price. When mind, consciousness, and meaning are seen as uniquely human phenomena, we humans — purposeful, valuing, feeling beings — find ourselves in a universe devoid of the very qualities we ourselves possess. We are strangers in the world in which we have come to be. Our alienation from nature opens the way to the blind exploitation of everything around us. If we arrogate all mind to ourselves, said Gregory Bateson, we will see the world as mindless and therefore as not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. (Id., 14)
Whatever interpretation of the findings scientists may espouse, they are hard at work mapping ever more of the reality to which their observations and experiments are believed to refer. (Id., 16)
Whether or not scientific theories are humanly meaningful, they are clearly not eternal. Occasionally even the best-established theories break down — the predictions flowing out of them are not matched by observations. In that case the observations are said to be ‘anomalous;’ they have no ready explanation. Strangely enough, this is the real engine of progress in science. (Id., 17–18)
Investigating the anomalies that crop up in observation and experiment and coming up with the fables that could account for them make up the nuts and bolts of fundamental research in science. If the anomalies persist despite the best efforts of mainstream scientists, and if one or the other of the fables advanced by maverick investigators gives a simpler and more logical explanation, a critical mass of scientists (mostly young ones) stops standing by the old paradigm. We have a paradigm shift. A concept that was until then a fable is recognized as a valid scientific theory. (Id., 18)
But there is a danger of mapping reality with the tool of scientific investigation and relying exclusively on the worldview provided by science. Why has Western science never grasped the idea that life is basically energy, and why is it stuck in scientific materialism? Dr. Alberto Villoldo provides one of the answers, in his book Shaman, Healer, Sage (2000). He says:
Once we have drawn our maps of reality, 90 percent of our synaptic connections die. We become familiar with only one way to get to the river. The other routes are erased. (…) The spiritual landscape is not even acknowledged as real. There is no river, so why cut trails to get to it? Westerners have not developed the neural pathways to sense energy. (Id., 113)
Vidette Todaro-Franceschi, in her book The Enigma of Energy (1991), has seen science and religion converging around the subject of her research: the nature and the enigma of energy. She writes in the introduction of her book:
The more I worked on this project the more I became aware that somehow science and religion were converging. It was never my goal to merge these two seemingly disparate areas; in fact, when my search led me into religious realms of thought, I tried hard at first to stay clear of them. But it was impossible to do so. Anytime I came across literature that was related to an idea of energy there were implicit or explicit spiritual overtones. Most surprising was the abundance of spiritual ideas found in physics. It seems that you simply cannot talk of wholeness or oneness without getting into some kind of religion.
When we agree that science is a process of mapping reality to conceptual perception to arrive at a relatively coherent view of the world, then we have to bring in as well the fact that this mapping of reality is a consensus after all. To view things realistically, we have to admit that if mapping reality was done only by one single scientist and if all other scientists disagreed, a new scientific paradigm would not be formed.
So we can say that scientific observation of reality is something where the consensus of more than just one scientist is involved and required. It doesn’t need to be all scientists, but what typically happens is that first a minority of scientists, a small yet powerful avant-garde group forms a new paradigm which is then, gradually, taken over by a growing number of mainstream scientists. This is how scientifically approved reality is build, and rebuilt, in a constant process of renewed consensus.
Now, Ervin László explains in Science and the Akashic Field (2004) that this process becomes more and more complex because the number of parameters involved in mapping reality to conceptual reality shoot up exponentially. This results forcefully in more and more ‘esoteric’ scientific models that need more and more research equipment, resources, and complex instruments to be verified over time:
While conservative investigators insist that the only ideas that can be considered scientific are those published in established science journals and reproduced in standard textbooks, maverick researchers look for fundamentally new concepts, including some that were considered beyond the pale of their discipline but a few years ago. As a result, the world in a growing number of disciplines is turning more and more fabulous. It is furnished with dark matter, dark energy, and multidimensional spaces in cosmology, with particles that are instantly connected throughout space-time by deeper levels of reality in quantum physics, with living matter that exhibits the coherence of quanta in biology, and with space- and time-independent transpersonal connection in consciousness research — to mention but a few of the currently advanced ‘fables.’ (Id., 24)
Vidette Todaro-Franceschi, in The Enigma of Energy (1991), writes that there are three periods in the development of the idea of nature, which she sees coincidentally reflect the ideas of energy.
In his discussion of the first period, the Greek view of nature, Collingwood points out that the ancient Greeks believed a certain vitality or ceaseless motion existed in nature, which they generally attributed to the soul. (…) The most important aspect of Aristotle’s conception of nature lies in his belief that all things have a final cause, which is exhibited by the individual thing’s form. According to him the soul was the essence of living things, and of course the form of anything / was the purpose or reason for its becoming. Overall, according to Aristotle, the teleological qualities of things were so strong that there could be no explanation for anything in nature, including us, without it. (Id., 123–124)
In the second period, she reports, that Collingwood referred to as the Renaissance view of nature, mechanism was firmly established.
Collingwood notes that the second stage of the Renaissance view of nature came about with the Copernican discovery that our world was not the center of the universe. The main contention during this time became ‘the denial that the world of nature, the world studied by physical science, is an organism and the assertion that it is both devoid of intelligence and of life’. / During this period, human beings were seen as outside of, rather than a part of, nature. We became pompous, thinking that we controlled things and that we were somehow superior. Explicit in this view was the denial of final causation. The primary focus was on matter and the natural laws by which matter changes. Science and philosophy recognized only efficient causes: forces producing effects. And finally, mathematical structure accounted for the changes, both of a qualitative and quantitative nature. (Id., 124–125)
The third and last period identified by Collingwood, she reports, is the modern view of nature, which has its origin in the latter part of the eighteenth century when process and change became the focus.
I believe that during this period the idea that energy was an autonomous existent contributed to the shift in focus. It became vaguely evident that change was inherent in various things; that is, it was recognized that change could occur without the provocation of external forces or efficient causes.
In conjunction with this new take on an old idea that was present in both Eastern and Western antiquity is the increasing awareness that intuition plays a significant role in scientific discoveries. As the historical background of the idea of energy attests, intuitive ways of knowing have been crucial to the development of scientific ideas throughout history. Many individuals knew things, such as the energy conservation doctrine, without being able to empirically verify them. In other words, intuitive ways of knowing seem to have led us in the right direction long before we were capable of scientifically validating what we somehow knew to be so.
Subjectivity and subjective ways of knowing, such as intuition, have become as vital to our understanding as objectivity and empirical ways of knowing. In this modern view of nature humankind has once again come to be recognized as being part of nature, rather than outside of it. (Id., 125–126)
12/12 Science and Vibration
Vibration really is the most fundamental of phenomena around life and living. Life is essentially vibration, and all vibration potentially is at the origin of one or the other form of life.
This was recognized by perennial philosophy, especially the Pythagorean branch of it. Vibrational and sound healing was the special knowledge of the sage, and this tradition that was perhaps first established by the Egyptians, became firmly rooted in Greek antiquity and from there went on till the Renaissance.
Vibration was considered as the divine directly impacting upon matter, something related to the cosmic breath; the knowledge about vibration was used for healing with sound, with music. As noted by Manly P. Hall in The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928/2003), it was recognized that every element in nature has its own keynote. Hall writes:
If these elements are combined in a composite structure the result is a chord that, if sounded, will disintegrate the compound into its integral parts. Likewise each individual has a keynote that, if sounded, will destroy him. The allegory of the walls of Jericho falling when the trumpets of Israel were sounded is undoubtedly intended to set forth the arcane significance of individual keynote or vibration. (Id., 256)
In the Hermetic Theory Concerning the Causation of Disease, seven causes and remedies were recognized. The second of these was vibration. Hall writes:
The second method of healing was by vibration. The inharmonies of the bodies were neutralized by chanting spells and intoning the sacred names or by playing upon musical instruments and singing. Sometimes articles of various colors were exposed to the sight of the sick, for the ancients recognized, at least in part, the principle of color therapeutics, now in the process of rediscovery. (Id., 349)
And he leaves no doubt that vibrational medicine, as we call it today, was an established branch, if not the main branch of healing:
The magic rituals used by the Egyptian priests for the curing of disease were based upon a highly developed comprehension of the complex workings of the human mind and its reactions upon the physical constitution. The Egyptian and Brahmin worlds undoubtedly understood the fundamental principle of vibrotherapeutics. (Id.)
Vidette Todaro-Franceschi asks in her scholarly study if modern scientific discoveries could be reconciled with Aristotle’s idea of energeia as actuality?
She answers in the affirmative, explaining that science and philosophy ‘are finally merging their beliefs as nature is being increasingly recognized as dynamic rather than mechanistic.’
What she writes here is of importance not only for the seeming dichotomy of science and philosophy, that is actually a mutually fertilizing and positively codependent relationship, but also for the vibrational nature of all creation.
All things have a definite rhythmical pattern that is constantly changing. Activity that is probabilistic but not predictable is innate in all nature. Even on a quantum level things are predictably unpredictable! Movement is in a definite direction toward something not yet actualized. And the direction a thing moves in is for the benefit of its own becoming. Therefore, the modern view of nature and hence, our universe, can be equated with principles set forth by Aristotle centuries ago. (The Enigma of Energy (1999), 41)
