Measuring the Scientific Method Against the Wisdom of Esoteric Insight

Christina Sarich, Staff Writer
Waking Times

Pseudoscience is defined as a belief or idea, accepted as true, that has not been proven by the scientific method. While science has been invaluable in helping to promote our ever-expanding knowledge of the Universe, it cannot be held as a hard-and-fast rule to determining Truth. In many instances the scientific method, and peer reviewed articles have acted as a sieve to bring only the highest learning to the forefront of humankind’s imagination, but in some instances, science, in it’s strictest sense, turns out to be nothing more than an arbitrary, and limited view of a Universe who’s laws are far too vast for our Newtonian, materialistic measurements to define.

Frank Wolfs, Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, provides his undergraduate physics students with a good working definition of the scientific method: “the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.”

“I don’t know, so maybe I’m not.” ~ Bumper Sticker

In fact, we are only now learning just how much our current level of consciousness affects even the outcome of scientific experimentation. We already know that stereotypes and the current ‘accepted’ paradigms sway the outcome of scientific experimentation, even without scientists’ conscious awareness. Our subconscious beliefs are like the vast ocean shaping our reality, and the conscious experience only a sea foam floating atop a great depth of larger understanding.

In Joseph E. LeDoux’s book, Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who  We Are, he states, “your ‘self,’ the essence of who you are, reflects patterns of interconnectivity between neurons in your brain. Most of what brain does is accomplished by synaptic transmission between neurons, and by calling upon the information encoded by past transmissions across synapses.”

This brings up an interesting question, then, in the discussion of science vs. pseudo-science. If our brains are largely projecting a reality based primarily on past neuronal pathways, then it would easily follow that future understanding of the world would be based on the most frequent pathways developed in our minds. In other words, a totally, radically, new idea is probably going to be rejected, much like imaginal cells are in the body of caterpillar becoming a butterfly.

New ideas are like a foreign invader to our current, accepted paradigms. There is a reason why the collective powers in control of the world in the time of Copernicus refused to believe the world was round. In a sense, anything or anyone that challenges our current world view, even today can be seen as part of the ‘Flat World Society.’ Altering our world view can be a radical shift, one that is unsettling and confusing, so it is no wonder that it takes a heroic individual, willing to put his or her life and reputation on the line to promote new paradigms which will radically shift our views.

No wonder it is hard to accept that wisdom could be downloaded straight from the larger consciousness which we are all a part of. It is difficult to accept that a T’ai Chi Chuan master, for example, could understand complex laws of physics just by meditating in the Wu Dang mountains, or that an Indian sage could understand fractal geometry without having ever studied math, simply by achieving non-dualistic consciousness via the attainment of Samadhi. These are not levels of awareness which our current scientific ‘laws’ permit.

There is in fact, an intelligence that far super-cedes our limited ‘scientific methods.’ It doesn’t care if we understand its laws or not. Just because we call it pseudo-science, does not make it untrue.

Visionary, Terence McKenna has said:

“The planet is some kind of organized intelligence. It’s very different from us. It’s had 5- or 6-billion years to create a slow moving mind which is made of oceans and rivers and rain forests and glaciers. It’s becoming aware of us, as we are becoming aware of it, strangely enough. Two less likely members of a relationship can hardly be imagined – the technological apes and the dreaming planet. And yet, because the life of each depends on the other, there’s a feeling towards this immense, strange, wise, old, neutral, weird thing, and it is trying to figure out why its dreams are so tormented and why everything is out of balance.”

How does one explain this with conventional scientific tools?

It doesn’t mean that science is not important. It allowed us to understand that the body was made up of quarks and then neutrinos and then even waves and particles, instead of just skin and bones. It brought us to many of the paradigm-shifting ideas which will now serve us as we shift into an even greater understanding of our world, and even greater understanding of the consciousness behind it. However, science alone cannot give us the whole Truth.

Quantum theory, which many consider the highest current science, has proven that there is a basic oneness which joins all things. Over 20 years ago, Fritjof Capra said, in the Tao of Physics,

“. . . It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated “building blocks,” but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. The human observer constitutes the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of the object’s interaction with the observer.”

You can call it psuedo-science when a Shaman sees other realities, or a Kung Fu artist learns how to defy gravity and jumps onto a second story roof after learning how to make his body ‘lighter,’ but this is simply a different acceptance of what is, and if anything, science is proving that we are only limited by whatever we think limits us.

As we observe, so we are. Stick that in your scientific method, and see what comes out the other end.

About the Author

Christina Sarich is a musician, yogi, humanitarian and freelance writer who channels many hours of studying Lao Tzu, Paramahansa Yogananda, Rob Brezny,  Miles Davis, and Tom Robbins into interesting tidbits to help you Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga for the New World. Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing the Body And Mind Through the Art of Yoga.

This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.