Is Pseudoscience a Pejorative Term?

Pseudoscience is a favorite term to throw out against anything that suggests consciousness is foundational to reality. I am not saying that there is not pseudoscience at all. Rather, academic science uses pseudoscience as a pejorative to dismiss and ridicule aspects of paranormal phenomena that could be studied with at least a modicum of scientific rigor.

The materialist, physicalist paradigm and its accompanying dogma has discouraged and, in many cases, eliminated ideas that were important in times past. Much of humanity has been completely cut off from spirituality, and the aspect of being human which is a product of consciousness. This has been all because of not accepting things that cannot be falsified.

I am referring to phenomena such as near-death experiences, visitations of departed relatives, UFO encounters, especially human contact and abductions. I am also referring to shamanism and all mystical experiences. What kind of scientific examination could be used you may ask? Well, for one, self-reporting could be encouraged and not stigmatized.

Each of these phenomena lends themselves to providing data that could be analyzed by computers to find recuring similarities. They could be categorized in ways that statistical data could be used to identify the similarities. The problem is that there are not enough groups interested to take on this work, and it is in my view mostly because of scorn. I am quite certain that ancient civilizations that were philosophically advanced would take advantage of the opportunity to do the analysis made possible by technology.

I think that the current attitude is much more a reaction to religious dogma than anything else. Admittedly, especially in the western world, Orthodox Christianity has been controlling. In the United States Puritanical values have added to the rejection of anything spiritual. In Europe, the control of the Roman Church has had a similar effect.

In spite of this, spiritual and paranormal phenomena have been ubiquitous across all nations and cultures across the globe. The problem is that there have been too few attempts at understanding it and little if any innovation in developing methods of study. Further, all of the people who undertake study are ridiculed and called false science. That is what pseudoscience means.

Yet, within the ranks of theoretical physics, there is a plethora of hypotheses and theories that are many times hotly contested by others within the discipline. That seems to be okay but the minute that someone tries to link the strangeness of quantum mechanics to consciousness and spirituality they are ridiculed and accused of woo.

A glaring example of this is that the author Whitley Streiber has collected a group of stories in his book “The Communion Letters.” They are a few of the almost 200,000 letters he received after writing his book “Communion.” Once it was published, thousands of people from all over the world sent letters reporting similar experiences to the ones he included in the Communion book. According to Streiber the similarities were striking in a lot of accounts. It would take a lot of human power to examine all of the letters he received. His wife did a heroic job but was still only one person. Those personal stories could be analyzed in much more depth if there were more human and technological resources available.

A similar story was just recently published. It was a book entitled “The UFO of God” by Chris Bledsoe. Both he and Streiber report having contact with a non-human other-worldly female that presented esoteric information. Additionally, you have the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) that has collected and investigated thousands of stories over the years. It would be great if all of these stories could be collected and examined by a computer program that would identify similarities and present the data in a statistical format.

This represents merely one aspect of the many paranormal phenomena that are reported by individuals. More resources could be applied to near death experiences, NDE’s as well. Computer programs could be written that would categorize and correlate the information. While there are many doing this already, the number is too small in my view and more people should be interested in the investigation and the results.

Likewise, there are many cases of past life remembrances that need similar investigation. Some of these have been traced to events that can be verified. While I realize that it would be impossible to determine if someone was Napoleon or George Washington in a past life, there are many reports of more mundane lives that offer detail that could be analyzed and correlated to historical events.

We have used quantum mechanics to advance technology so much over the last one hundred and fifty years that it is a shame that we do not invest more time and resources into investigating these phenomena that have been reported throughout history. It could certainly make our lives richer, and to admit that there is a world of spirituality and consciousness that we do not understand does not mean that one has to believe in past religious dogma.

I believe that consciousness is fundamental and foundational and if that is true, the more we explore that aspect of reality, the better we as the human race will adjust to the dimension that we currently occupy, and the more positively we will affect our individual lives.

 

Miracles; Why some experience them and others do not

Have you ever wondered why some people who believe in spiritual and supernatural healing get healed and others do not? Or, why the law of attraction seems to work for some and not for others? Have you ever pondered the fact that if God, creative consciousness heals one person and not another what that suggests about God? Is the creative spiritual source merely arbitrary and capricious? Have you ever entertained any of these questions? Well, many have. I know I have.

What is the answer to these questions? Is it all merely a matter of chance?  Or, is there something deeper at play? My answer is there is something far deeper at play.

Over the last two years, I have been influenced in my thinking by Dr. Bernardo Kastrup and Dr. Donald Hoffman. Kastrup has a PhD in computer science, is knowledgeable in psychology, and is in his own right a philosopher. Hoffman is a cognitive scientist at the University of California at Irvine and is doing research into consciousness using evolutionary game theory. He has written a book entitled “The Case Against Reality.”

Both believe that consciousness is foundational to reality and that the creative source of the universe is mentation. They agree in a lot of areas, and they have used similar metaphors to explain their idea of reality. Kastrup is promoting a philosophy he calls analytical idealism which is a variation of the idealism of Plato but with a twenty-first century understanding of science. I will try to briefly explain his ideas first. He begins with the idea that we do not really see reality and instead see and interface that he likens to a dashboard of dials. Hoffman’s metaphor is a virtual reality headset or a computer screen. Neither of the metaphors shows the underlying reality they represent. Both are designed to eliminate the overwhelming data in reality.

Kastrup also sees each of us individual conscious agents, (a phrase that Hoffman coined) as dissociative personalities of the one universal mind. He points out that there are documented cases of dissociative personalities within individuals where one personality is blind and the other has sight, and that the blind one actually cannot physically see because of a change in the brain. It should also be pointed out that some personalities are actually aware of the existence of the others. This enriches the metaphor.

Hoffman has used evolutionary game theory to show that the chances that we see reality as it is are absolutely zero. He theorizes that there is a deeper reality than space-time and he has spring boarded off the work of physicist Nima Arkani Ha-med. He cites the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics proving that the universe is not locally real. He and his students have written papers that have been peer reviewed and published so he is not completely fringe woo. His idea is that we are all conscious agents of the one supreme consciousness. As far as determining the purpose consciousness has in creation of us, he leans on Godel’s incompleteness theorem. It basically states that mathematics is infinite and there is no end to the exploration of it. He believes that the purpose for the material world and all other dimensions is consciousness exploring itself.

As I said, I have been influenced by these two academics to a great degree over the last two years. However, my view is that science is not spiritual enough and spirituality is not scientific enough. I therefore will in turn springboard off these two theories of reality. I have concluded that consciousness is the foundational aspect of reality. I think it is synonymous with what we call spirituality. Creative consciousness and God are interchangeable terms.

Consciousness has infinite and unlimited potential knowledge. However, in the realm of consciousness, thought and knowledge there is no experience. Experience demands a dimensional reality. We then are God experiencing what it knows. The possibilities are infinite and endless.

This brings us to good and evil, pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, prosperity and poverty and all possible examples of polarity. This is the reason that I see the Kybalion as so informative when it comes to the nature of this mental reality. It states that polarity is one of the seven basic principles of hermetic teaching.

If Dr. Bernardo Kastrup is correct, and if we are each dissociative personalities of the one great mind, and if Dr. Donald Hoffman is right in this assessment of the purpose that consciousness is exploring limitless possibilities, then we each are individual conscious agents of the one great mind and as it is without beginning and end, so are we eternal. If we are eternal, we never end. We merely change from one state to another and from one incarnation to another. As we do we keep adding to the experience of creative consciousness which I like to call the mind at larger. We also have the opportunity to rest in the mind at large or the mind of the all.

Here is where the questions mentioned at the beginning find their answer. Why do some experience miracles and others do not? The quick answer is choice. Before you get angry and shut this down, please hear me out. If we are divine, dissociative personalities of the creative source, we are eternal. Assuming the Hermetic principle of correspondence, as above so below and as below so above we can know that within the one great mind at large, we can communicate. In an egalitarian fashion, each of us individual souls or conscious agents can choose what experience we will have next.

Going further into Hermetics, if we look at the principle of polarity, we can and do experience pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, and likewise all of the other polarities of potential experience. Both joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure are but seasonal. They all add to the experience of the one great mind at large the creative source. We all grow because of these experiences and it is toward love and peace, but the experience wouldn’t be complete without experiencing hatred and unrest.

Some people have chosen to be able to manipulate situations in miraculous fashion, and others have chosen for a specific incarnation to be locked out of the experience. It all washes out over various incarnations. It adds to the experiential knowledge of potential knowledge. It is in the mind at large that we individuals have free will. Sometimes we appear to have it in incarnations and sometimes it appears that we are locked into fatalism. There are endless dimensions and possibilities. Not all of them are the same as this arena of dimensional space time and matter. Not all experiences are material. The possibilities are truly ineffable.

We are one and we are separate. This fulfills the Hermetic principle of polarity. “All truths are but half-truths” and “All paradoxes are resolved.” This should motivate us to gain the absolute most out of every opportunity for experience. The main place to focus our attention is on the egalitarian aspect of this ongoing eternal process. We can also choose at any time to rest in the Mind of the All.