Rediscovering the Mind

From the viewpoint of a modern microbiologist, we hear the call for integration and common sense in sciences that are all too often devising separate stakes and battlements to pontificate from, on high. The 'experts' thus proving their ignorance because the result inevitably is specious ego and puffery. Truth did not divide herself up for prissy 'nerds' to prevail upon, with their massive convolutions and devious attempts to practice buffoonery upon her.

In August of 1980 Psychology Today ran an article by Harold J. Morowitz, professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University. I recommend a complete reading of this article for anyone who has suffered through a complete exposure to all that our modern education system is comprised of; as it tries to convince you that everything is 'black and white' and that no soul exists through avoidance of its instruction (except a few artists who defy the norm).

REDISCOVERING THE MIND

Physical scientists are returning to the view that thought - meaning mind - is one of nature's ultimate realities'.

The study of life at all levels, from social to molecular behavior, has in modern times relied on reductionism as the chief explanatory concept. This approach to knowledge tries to comprehend one level of scientific phenomena in terms of concepts at a lower and presumably more fundamental level... Reductionism at the psychological level is exemplified by the viewpoint in Carl Sagan's best selling book THE DRAGONS OF EDEN.

He writes: 'My fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings- what we sometimes call 'mind' - are a consequence of its anatomy and, physiology and nothing more.' As a further demonstration of this trend of thought, we note that Sagan's glossary does not contain the words mind, consciousness, perception, awareness or thought, but rather deals with entries such as synapse, lobotomy, proteins and electrodes?

Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of the new physics, became deeply involved in the issues of philosophy and humanism. In PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF QUANTUM PHYSICS, he wrote of physicists having to renounce thoughts of an objective time-scale common to all observers, and of events in time and space that are independent of our ability to observe them. Heisenberg stressed that the laws of nature no longer dealt with elementary particles, but with our knowledge of these particles - that is, with the 'contents of our minds'. Erwin Schrödinger, the man who formulated the fundamental equation of quantum mechanics, wrote an extraordinary little book in 1958 called MIND AND MATTER. In this series of essays, he moved from the results of the new physics to a rather mystical view of the universe that he identified with the 'perennial philosophy' of Aldous Huxley. Schrödinger was the first of the quantum theoreticians to express sympathy with the UPANISHADS and Eastern philosophical thought. A growing body of literature now embodies this perspective, including two popular works. THE TAO OF PHYSICS by Fritjof Capra, and THE DANCING WU-LI MASTERS by Gary Zukav...

However, the only simple and consistent description physicists were able to assign to a measurement involved an observer's becoming aware of the result. Thus the physical event and the content of the human mind were inseparable. This linkage forced many researchers to seriously consider consciousness as an integral part of the structure of physics. Such interpretations moved science toward the 'idealist' as contracted with the 'realist' conception of philosophy.

The views of a large number of contemporary physical scientists are summed up in the essay 'Remarks on the Mind-Body Question' written by Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner. Wigner begins by pointing out that most physical scientists have returned to the recognition that thought - meaning the mind - is primary. He goes on to state: 'It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.' And he concludes by noting how remarkable it is that the scientific study of the world led to the content of consciousness as an ultimate reality.'...

The founders of modern atomic theory did not start out to impose a 'mentalist' picture on the world. Rather, they began with the opposite point of view and were forced to the present day position in order to explain experimental results...

The results of this chain of reasoning will probably lend more aid and comfort to Eastern mystics than to neurophysiologists and molecular biologists; nevertheless, the closed loop follows from a straightforward combination of the explanatory processes of recognized experts in the three separate sciences. Since individuals seldom work with more than one of these paradigms, the general problem has received little attention...

We now understand the troublesome features in a forceful commitment to uncritical reductionism as a solution to the problem of mind. We have discussed the weaknesses of that position. In addition to being weak, it is a dangerous view, since the way we respond to our fellow human beings is dependent on the way we conceptualize them in our theoretical formulations. If we envision our fellows solely as animals or machines, we drain our interactions of humanistic richness. If we seek our behavioral norms in the study of animal societies, we ignore those uniquely human features that so much enrich our lives. Radical reductionism offers very little in the area of moral imperatives! Further, it presents the wrong glossary of terms for a humanistic pursuit."

The Minnesota Twins study has been on-going for decades and it has produced some remarkable results that few reports see the impact of in reference to the very nature of 'humanistic richness' and soulful potentialities. Only once is the top researcher allowed to mention ESP. Much as the Harvard study I have reported, the participants are family members but because they were separated at birth and (in this case) twins - there is a greater connection of ESP or psychic abilities than normal. Isn't this just common sense? Who can doubt it, you might say! Yet most people think ESP is some weird attribute or freak of nature rather than a gift we all have 'within', if they think it exists at all.

The majority of people today do not know about Tesla's 'non-force info packets', 'free energy', 'energy from vacuum machines by Bearden' or what layers of time/space are involved in all psychic phenomena. Thus those who say they believe in ESP are at a loss to explain and they avoid any real involvement with it. The scientists are similarly ignorant of these things and they (after all) are 'experts' like the doctors who deny the mind-body connection with the soul that is vital to psychic utilization. Our present culture DENIED these truly human and fantastic or exquisite depths of being.

Author of Diverse Druids
World-Mysteries.com guest 'expert'
Columnist for The ES Press Magazine