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| ~ ∞ ~ Crisis at the Edge of Physics, Science & Cosmology - Awaken the Living Awareness Within ~ ∞ ~ |
By now, at this point in the book, it should have become obviously clear that there is a definite crisis not only in science and cosmology, but also in religions and philosophical thought, as well. And not only that, but also we as the collective human species are undergoing a crisis that is ethical, metaphysical, and even existential in nature. It is quite clear that the more we know about life and the universe, the more confused, conflicted, and concerned we as the collective human species seem to become. This is why all too many place all their hopes in science, and even believe that happiness can be achieved by means of what material science can deliver.
Like we have seen earlier in this book, many people hold on the assumption that the scientific view of the world should be the basis for all knowledge – forgetting that there are other aspects of knowledge as well. This simply goes on to say that the current scientific model excludes many aspects of human existence and experience – among which are values, creativity, spirituality, as well as the deeper metaphysical questions about our existence. It is almost as if in recent years, scientism has taken a considerably larger foothold in the world of science and technology. As a result, science has become ever more so pathological in nature, and thus taken a drastic turn toward being a faith, carrying religious-like undertones in its current structure. To be honest, it needs to be noted that science is a wonderful tool for showing us the ways of interpreting the physical world, but we also need spirituality into our lives to help us cope with reality. You see, without integrating this component as part of our lives, we will always fall short in our attempts to live a fulfilled, happy and healthy life of wholeness.
The problem here is that the scientifically oriented people most often seem to believe that the only way to understand the nature of the universe is through deterministic facts and evidence, but the honest and harsh truth is that in science there are no facts – there are data and models, and all models are provisional and incomplete. Despite this obvious truth, these models that are based on incomplete data are taken as facts. When we take a closer look, we can find that these scientific “facts” emerge out of a constellation of human perceptions, values and actions – in other words, out of a paradigm from which they cannot be separated. This goes on to say that our so called scientific facts are tied to our current paradigm through which we perceive the world and ourselves.
And when it comes to modern science, we find that it is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes its knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about nature and the universe. Science, as we know it today, relies on three basic assumptions that are needed to justify the scientific method. Scientists assume that there exists an objective material reality which is shared by all rational observers – independent of the contingency of its observers. Scientists also assume that this objective material reality is governed by natural laws, and that these laws can be discovered by the means of systematic observation and experimentation – meaning that the data being analyzed within the experiments are also independent of preconceptions, perceptions and experience of the scientist who is performing the test and doing the analysis.
Quite interestingly, over the past few years alone, there has been a growing awareness that many experimentally established “facts” in the scientific worldview don’t seem to hold up to repeated investigation; this is sometimes referred to as the “decline effect” – the tendency of scientific results (i.e., effect sizes) to shrink over time. On that note, it is evidently clear that the scientific process itself seems to fail us bigger than ever before. There was an article about this in the New Yorker back in 2010, titled The Truth Wears Off – Is there something wrong with the scientific method? The following is from the article:
“For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process [...] Francis Bacon, the early-modern philosopher and pioneer of the scientific method, once declared that experiments were essential because they allowed us to “put nature to the question.” But it appears that nature often gives us different answers.”
Taking the previous into consideration, it is quite remarkable that modern science reads the Book of Nature, but doesn’t actually understand what it reads. If the scientists could realize that the knowledge they have accumulated isn’t complete in itself, but depends upon the metaphysical aspects of Philosophy of the Ancients for its interpretation – they would progress on their quest for understanding. You see, ever since the classical antiquity, science as a type of knowledge has been closely linked to philosophy – this was also the case in the early modern Western world, where the words “science” and “philosophy of nature” were used interchangeably – until they were separated in the 19th century. While we are seeking answers to the big questions of life, we should remember that an older meaning of “science” was actually referring to a body of knowledge itself – of the type that can be rationally explained and reliably applied.
From this, the question arises: Could we use the aforementioned definition also as the solution? Could we then be able to explain why our own understanding of nature, the world, and the universe is so profoundly out of whack and out of sync with reality. Why is it that we are in the midst of this crisis in almost every area of life? Could it be that we as the collective human species have been suffering from a certain level of self-pride and arrogance, or more aptly – hubris of monumental proportions, which in turn has resulted in an ignorance over our own unknowingness? Could it also be that this type of behavior has caused us to deteriorate and fragment from within, and thus we are suffering from the same decline effect than our own science? Is it not obvious that we are, indeed, suffering from a disease that is eating us from within – a spiritual disease of immorality and inhumanness, inauthenticity and insincerity? Against this backdrop, one should be asking themselves: Could it also be that all of our past actions of ignorant nature has ultimately caused us to distance ourselves from the natural Living Life, which in turn has created profound difficulties in understanding the Mysteries of Life?
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On top of the underlying spiritual level, there is the mental layer that plays a major role in all of this. You see, these collective restraints are the product of our mental programming, which goes on to say that our minds run outmoded dualistic software that is way outdated. To a large degree, our inability “to see beyond the box” has prevented us from utilizing everything that we already have discovered in the world of science in creative and beneficial ways. We as a collective human species should finally mature as spiritual beings – we should loosen up the old habitual ways of thinking & being and upgrade our mental programming to match that of an eternal, evolved spiritual being. This means that we would need to switch the binary software of our minds to match that of Infinite Potentiality of Non-Dual Software. This upgraded version of ‘thinking’ would be more in the lines of a direct acknowledgement and instant knowing. A way to begin to receive the upgrade of this sort is the willingness to unplug the unnecessary processes of identification, and to loosen up the old habitual ways of thinking and being. This would, thus then, open up a whole new way of perceiving reality and life as a whole, and in so doing, it would become crystal clear that one individuated mind is not separated from the minds of others – see?
From this, the question arises: Why don’t we just start from awareness and keep it as the basis of everything? Consciousness and its inherent awareness links us to spirituality, which in this context can be seen as a science – the type that we cannot understand, yet. This goes on to say that consciousness can also be seen as a spiritual technology that we have so little knowledge about and understanding of. Consciousness is the most fundamental reality in existence; if we would account consciousness to the equation and see it as fundamental, the only thing we would have to change in science is our viewpoint of what we are actually measuring. This is to say that everything we have discovered in quantum and relativity theory, molecular biology etc., still stands to a large degree, but to get any further in understanding the reality we inhabit, the scientific community would need to change the basic assumption of what they are measuring – meaning that what is being measured is not actually matter, but rather different levels of potentials for observation; the object for the measurement would thus be an aware field of information arising from consciousness.
Needless to say, the inner experiences seem to be the only viable way to gain profound understanding about consciousness. That is to say, instead of focusing on the external world and finding explanations from the materialist paradigm, we should be focusing on the wisdom gained from these inner experiences. By doing so, we could gain deeper, wider, and broader understanding of consciousness, and therefore of reality, life, and of ourselves. As mentioned earlier, science is a wonderful tool for showing us the ways of interpreting the physical world; as a tool and system of inquiry, science excels in this role of exploring the physical reality. However, scientific paradigms can become a form of dogma, resisting the scientific revolutions of thinking and discovery that always, eventually, make these old paradigms obsolete.
We cannot solve old paradigm problems by dealing in old paradigm solutions – this is especially true with everything consciousness related. Therefore, it goes without saying that with the current approach, our ability to create and find solutions is also limited to the confines of our thinking, and so it goes that we can only produce limited, finite solutions to the many problems that we ourselves have created in the world. It certainly would help if the bubble of scientific dogma would burst open and scientism would be dismantled altogether, would it not? Someday soon, once we reach a new way of thinking that will liberate our minds not only from dogma and bias, but also from ignorance and hubris, can we approach this from another perspective, and truly proclaim to do proper science. This is when we can find creative solutions and approaches that will benefit humanity as a whole.
