- [Narrator] Not long ago, we published a video
about how science seems to have its roots
in ancient spirituality.
And today, we're gonna go even further.
You see, when we discuss the bridge
between science and spirituality,
there is a big problem that exists,
that is actually holding us back as a species.
But it's not necessarily a problem
with science or spirituality,
but rather the reaction of the collective mind
to new discoveries and scientific approaches
to spiritual experiences.
Throughout history,
it's no secret that almost every great mind and idea
has been met with opposition and skepticism.
In fact, many of the great discoveries
that today we take for granted, originally were seen
as hogwash or even at times silly nonsense superstition.
Galileo's heliocentric model of the universe
was hugely controversial for its time.
Lemaitre's theory of the Big Bang
was met with rigid skepticism.
And even Newton had been reluctant to publish his calculus
because he feared controversy and criticism.
Right from its inception as an academic discipline,
science itself faced criticism.
But now the question is why?
Why are humans so slow to adapt to new ideas?
Why are we so rigid, quick to shoot down ideas
that change the way that we see ourselves and the world?
If we really wanted to advance as a species
the last thing we should be doing is closing our minds
to new ideas.
But yet, this mindset is nearly all pervading in the world.
Now don't get me wrong.
I think it's a good thing to approach new ideas
with a healthy skepticism.
But when we resist new ideas fundamentally,
do not truly listen to the new material
or wisdom and even become mean derogatory or insulting
towards people who don't share the same perspective as you,
that's when we create serious divisions that can impact
or even stunt our collective evolution for generations.
Today, we're going to look
at what causes us to assume a position
of skepticism in the first place,
and what it says about us, our way of life
and ultimately how we approach our relationship
with the universe around us.
Here we go.
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Back in 2015, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake,
a Biologist from Cambridge University
and author of more than 90 scientific papers
and nine books, give a lecture
on the nature of consciousness and spoke
about scientific approaches to spiritual experiences.
He summarized that at the moment,
there are two main views on the nature of our reality.
The first view is that we live
in a universe that is entirely unconscious,
and has little bits of consciousness sprinkled about.
Like within the brains of living things,
and ultimately is just the product of complex
but purely physical coincidences without purpose.
Now this is a concept
that we know today as scientific materialism,
and it posits that other than ourselves,
and of course aliens, if they exist,
everything in existence is fully unconscious.
For the majority of the scientific community,
this is the stance or foundational approach
that they take when observing new ideas or theories.
Now, interestingly, the origins
of scientific materialism lie
in many ancient schools of thought too.
Ranging from Indian to Greek philosophy,
that was largely based on early ideas about atomism.
Greek philosophers such as Leucippus
and Democritus were some of the first people
to be labeled as Physikoi,
which in Greek translated as a natural philosopher.
Because they investigated natural causes,
often excluding any role for gods
in the creation or operation of the world.
This eventually led to fully developed systems,
such as Epicureanism,
which sought to explain everything that exists
as the product of atoms falling and swerving in a void.
Now, according to Rupert Sheldrake,
this scientific materialism is the first common perspective.
The second perspective is as you might be guessing,
seeing the universe as being permeated with consciousness.
We find today that almost every form
of religion and spirituality, tribal faith
or ancient mystery school, held closely this idea
that everything in some way was a part
of the divine mind or a universal oneness.
And that our world was within this oneness.
And the oneness was naturally conscious,
and imbued all that existed with this consciousness.
Nowadays, a middle ground has appeared
in some academic circles, a school
of thought known as Panpsychism, which is a belief
that there is an underlying mind or consciousness
even on a quantum level
of electrons that moves throughout all of nature.
And as a result, a large new wave
of scientists are changing their position
from rigid old school materialism to this new middle ground.
The list includes some pretty famous names.
Rudolph Peierls, a physicist who played a major role
in the Manhattan Project, rejected materialism saying,
"The premise that you can describe in terms of Physics,
the whole function of a human being,
including knowledge and consciousness is untenable.
There is still something missing."
Schrodinger, you know, the guy with the famous cat,
stated that, "Consciousness cannot be accounted for
in physical terms, for consciousness
is absolutely fundamental.
It can not be accounted for in terms of anything else."
And even Heisenberg was quoted saying that,
"The ontology of materialism rested
upon the illusion that the kind of existence,
the direct actuality of the world around us,
can be extrapolated into the atomic range.
This extrapolation, however, is impossible.
Atoms are not things."
Now you might be wondering why I'm rambling
on about all this.
And the thing is, it's because this worldview,
directly affects how we interpret spiritual experiences
in a scientific way.
Spiritual experiences by their very definition are relative
to conscious experiences on a base level
they occur within ourselves, or more importantly
within our own minds, within our consciousness
and our perspective of reality.
Does this mean then,
that whenever we have a significant spiritual experience,
that it's all in our heads?
Well today, everyone tends to agree that the mind
can be changed through mindful meditation,
meaningful experiences and of course,
Shamanic plant medicine ceremonies,
or even a near-death experience.
But what makes all the difference,
is in how we interpret those experiences.
From a historic or materialistic point of view, yes,
these experiences happen, but they happen
within our mind and are the result of biological impulses,
the release of neurochemicals or changes
in the electrical signals within the brain.
In this perspective, something divine can exist, but only
within our head, as our own invention.
This is nothing new however,
as it bears striking resemblance
to the school of metaphysical naturalism
that we spoke about earlier.
Naturally, this is the default position
of educated people in academia
and is the standard secularist view of the world.
Historically with the rise and dominance of Christianity
in the West and the later spread of Islam in the East,
metaphysical naturalism was generally abandoned
by intellectuals as silly superstition.
As a result, there is little evidence for it
in medieval philosophy.
The problem that no one seems to acknowledge though,
is that the assumptions on which philosophical materialism
are based are just that, assumptions.
Throughout the middle ages, this idea of a divine mind
was extremely popular.
People believed everything existed in harmony and order,
and that everything had an established place
in a universal hierarchy known as the chain of being.
Now, don't get us wrong.
People have interpreted and used the chain concept
to their own advantage countless times.
So as always, please feel free to do your own research
and form your own perspective on what you believe.
The point is though, there was this predominant belief
that there was a universal spirit
or soul that permeated all of nature.
Even more so, completely the opposite
of what we spoke about earlier, the middle age scientists
or philosophers thought that everything was alive
and had some form of soul.
Following Aristotle,
all beings had souls which gave form to their bodies.
In more modern languages, it seems as if Aristotle believed
that the mechanism behind cell formation
and auto responses within our body
and those of plants and animals,
were the result of a guiding yet underlying consciousness.
In much the same way,
animals were said to have souls,
which provided basic movement patterns,
instincts, and even emotions.
In fact, even the word animal itself comes
from the Latin, 'Animalis',
which meant having soul or breath.
Where we as humans were different however,
in that we possessed different elements
of which made up our overall spirit.
So not only did we have a plant or earthly element
to our soul, which shaped the body and our embryo
and enabled us to self heal,
and an animalistic part, which gave us our emotions
and our ability to interact with the natural world,
but we also possessed a rational conscious mind,
which operated in the world through language.
According to the legendary philosopher, Thomas Aquinas,
this rational mind was open to the spirit of God,
which could be experienced through spiritual acts,
such as prayer, meditation and chanting.
During the 17th century, however,
the scientific revolution was described as such,
because it rejected this view of nature, entirely.
Many of the early Gnostic scientists that we spoke about
in the last science episode, such as Copernicus, Galileo
and even Newton began working at a time when
the Christian Church had created
a huge split in the field of science.
Science was emerging,
describing the function of things.
But the church had to keep its worldviews intact.
And so, the general belief system adapted,
so that there were still God, angels, our main man, JC,
but the natural physical world in which we live was stripped
of its soul and seen as something purely mechanical,
governed by impersonal forces.
As a result, any spiritual significance
to the physical world began to be seen
as heresy by the church.
As spiritual miracles were only seen to happen by God.
Now the concept of Cartesian dualism also comes into this,
but this is a huge topic of its own.
So we're not going to cover this today, but suffice to say
there were debates about whether the mind
and body were indeed separate at all.
Which culminated in the dualism of religion and science.
Religion got what was left of the Aristotelian
and Platonic philosophies and the whole realm of spirit.
And science was left with
the pure physical mechanics of nature.
Fast forward to the 19th century,
a lot of scientists didn't like this idea
of dualism and instead wanted one singular branch of study.
There were a few theories at odds, such as,
idealism, stating that everything was in the mind.
And that even matter was simply
a more dense version of the mind.
Or a materialistic view,
that everything was just made of matter.
We know from science today, that it was this idea
of materialism that took off.
But let's look at why.
Again in the words of Rupert Sheldrake,
"The reason materialism took off wasn't
because it was the best theory for science,
but because by its very nature, it is atheistic."
And for various economical and political reasons,
many people wanted to undermine the power of the church,
especially in states, such as France and Germany,
which were reactionary states at heart.
As a result,
'matter is all there is', became the dominant go-to view
for science by the end of the 19th century
and still largely persists today.
With this in mind, it's easy to see why
and how people are naturally skeptical of a new discovery.
Unless it fits into the materialistic view,
it is no longer considered science.
As the modern field of science has advanced,
we gain new and exciting ways to study the world
around us and collect empirical evidence.
The problem is, since spirituality was severed from science,
it has to some extent, been left behind
in the eyes of the public.
Imagine for one second, that the split never occurred,
that science and spirit had evolved together
as one discipline into our modern age.
Think about what kind of proof mechanisms
and tests we would be able to perform to accurately measure
and make use of the spiritual truths within the world.
The mind really does boggle at the possibilities.
We know such fields like Quantum Physics
and Parapsychology, are taking cues
from early Gnostic scientists.
But they're are undoubtedly going to run
into the same problem.
Not only has our idea
of spirituality hardly evolved since it was severed,
but neither has our understanding.
If we really knew, and I mean really knew,
just how much energy and underlying connection there is
in our world today, in the plants and the trees,
in the air that we breathe, in the ground that we walk on,
we would never feel alone
or dwarfed by our misunderstanding of the universe.
This to us is probably why people naturally gravitate
towards a sense of skepticism
when a new discovery is revealed.
Materialism posits that this is all there is.
Except when we make a new discovery at any point in history,
one that challenges and redefines our existence,
not only do we not want to believe it,
but we can barely comprehend it.
And naturally as humans, we deny that
which we don't understand.
It takes small numbers
of people starting to take these ideas, play with them,
implement them and see them work in their lives.
That slowly gets people talking
about it until it hits a critical mass.
And then suddenly everyone seems to wake
up very quickly to this truth and the cycle repeats again.
And on this note, there is one more thing we must talk
about briefly before we bring this conversation to a close.
And this is the subject of academic jargon.
On a purely physical front, the growing inaccessibility
of science to the wider public is an issue
that has been becoming more and more apparent
in recent years, especially since
the invention of the internet.
Take a moment and think about how you hear
about and see new scientific journals or discoveries.
Can you say for a fact that you read the actual publication
and paper published and peer reviewed by the authors,
or do you like most of us,
hear about these new discoveries through media outlets,
articles or other online sources like social media?
And let me ask you another question.
Do any of us actually know how to find
and read an actual scientific paper?
Unless you were in an academic institution,
such as a university or college,
chances are, you probably do the former.
This presents a huge problem
for both the scientific community and the wider public,
as it seems like only those
within the bounds of academia can access academic work.
If you take a look at any
of the research papers sharing sites,
such as JStor or research.org,
they all require monthly subscriptions or pay-per-view,
that most people can't afford or justify paying for.
And the other issue is of course, the language.
Most scientific papers are written by scientists
for scientists and therefore make use of extensive jargon
and complex language that is specific
to certain disciplines.
While this isn't necessarily a bad thing for the research,
it does mean that the general public continually struggle
to understand and even read new papers when they come out.
The ultimate consequence of all of this,
is that it fosters a growing distrust
of the scientific community.
The whole 'scientists are hiding the truth from us' thing
and gives rise to more and more people
who present alternative theories
in an effort to discredit others, which ultimately
creates an environment of fear and mistrust.
Luckily though, there are websites that are appearing
and sharing free research and we'll leave links
to some of them in the descriptions
for you to check out below.
To end with, I'd like to propose an idea
that might seem kind of radical,
but it's a great way to openly engage
with a new idea about the world within you.
It's the idea that human consciousness is a measurable field
and it exists within and throughout all
of us and across the entire planet.
Within this consciousness field exists a reflection
of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.
However, when a new idea or theory is proposed,
or a new discovery is made, it takes some time to integrate
into our shared perspective of reality.
And it needs to find a place where it can fit or adapt
into the consciousness field, so to speak.
Until that energy can merge together
with the collective whole, it is bound to uproot and shake
up old ideas and paradigms, which is why people
get upset when you tell them their perspective
of the world is outdated.
Nobody wants to hear that.
You just got to help them recognize the value
of the new ideas in the process of the transition.
But then it's just an idea to think about.
So with that, thank you so much for watching.
If you haven't yet, please be sure to subscribe
and hit the notification bell for more videos,
just like these.
We post new spirit science episodes every week.
So we'll see you in about seven days,
for another journey down the rabbit hole
Toodles.
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