A Return to Subjectivity

This book was written by a professional scientist who is also an artist and an initiate into several esoteric disciplines. It offers a different approach to reality than much "New Age" literature which usually ignores the dramatic change in perspective offered by Science in recent years. The text may even help "scientific sceptics" to think twice before rejecting human experience outside the current confines of "objective knowledge." The author's search for a "Theory of Nearly Everything" (TONE) required a return to subjective knowledge, where he sought common ground between the natural world and the Spirit while respecting both. Exploring the sensory capabilities of the body and esoteric energy practices convinced him that many aspects of mysticism or spirituality are real phenomena, even if not embraced by Science. He explains why this dichotomy is likely to continue through an investigation into "Silent Knowledge," using dowsing to explore the energy inherent in objects and language. Science and society have been spectacularly unsuccessful in conserving our planet's ecosystems, and in the author's professional experience this failure is due more to a lack of reverence for the natural world than a lack of knowledge. Our carelessness stems from the dominant ethical force on the planet, the credo of materialism/consumerism which treats the living world as a source of soulless "exploitable resources." Unfortunately this world view is supported by some religious traditions which see mankind as the only organism worthy of Divine love. This is at variance with ancient shamanic practices which saw the animal, vegetable and mineral world as permeated with a life force that was divine.Recent perceptions of the vastness of this Universe as revealed by the Hubble telescope, and the discovery of life on earth in inhospitable places, almost certainly means that the Universe contains many intelligent species equally worthy of God's love. Our importance is strictly local, and our prime responsibility is to conserve the natural ecosystems of our own planet for our descendants and fellow species. The ancient idea is re-emerging that the living world Gaia which forms the aura of vital energy of the planet we are embedded in, is a magic entity deserving our love and respect. The author is convinced that restoring a sense of the sacred beauty and fragility of our world is the only way we might help scientific knowledge cure rather than further destroy the balance of nature. The personal framework for reality the author has arrived at includes phenomena of the energy body such as auras and chakras. Although perceived by many persons, these phenomena resist experimental verification for reasons he explains. However, some new perspectives of Science may not be incompatible with psychic experience. The author's experiences through a "sixth sense" had to be reconciled with the "objective" phenomena of science, and his hypotheses on auras, chakras and the energy body suggest that if these phenomena are accepted as "real," a broadening of our field of investigation on the origins and meaning of life should be possible. Since the work of Kurt Godel we realize that even "hard science" rests on unverifiable axioms, and this even affects that current obsession of physics: the search for a "Theory of Everything" or TOE. Modern string theory has come closest to providing aworkable TOE, and requires that multiple dimensions or planes of being exist. Practical experience of multiple planes of reality is also met with in shamanic voyaging and is common to many mystical traditions. Some modern concepts such as the meme and the implicate order also seem compatible with many ancient mythologies. Given the many gaps in our knowledge, the author feels that a Theory of Nearly Everything (TONE) is likely the best we can do in this direction, since much of the Universe is, and will remain, beyond our grasp: its spiritual implications extend well beyond the frontiers of science. Inevitably a TONE is very personal and has to be addressed by each person as a series of tentative hypotheses, and the author provides an outline of his tone in a table at the end of the book. A TONE should however seek coherence across all fields of experience without being viewed as dogma. Dividing it into hermetically-sealed spiritual and material components seems a recipe for schizophrenia! The text comes in two different fonts: one describing objective information from different sources; another is subjective - personal experiences in the same modality that deeply influenced the author, and these correspond to the two halves of the human personality. In practice, to insert subjective accounts into an objective discussion seems to offer the key to creative thinking in science, poetry and the arts. The author finds the creative moment in science and the arts to be the same, and a search for personal creativity forms a sub-theme. Accessing the universal source of knowledge and inspiration referred to by David Bohm as the Implicate Order appears to be at the origin of many important butunplanned breakthroughs in Science, as well as forming the basis for shamanic practice. The lesson is that even in science, major steps forward have depended on inspiration and not just logic. The shamanic beliefs described by anthropologists were surprisingly similar world-wide, and anthropology and mythology are drawn upon in this account. In compensation for their lack of "book learning" our ancestors had an intuitive spiritual connection with the world which deserves our respect. The fragmentation of the oldest knowledge source of our species, shamanism, into the separate fields of science, art and religion only occurred some millennia ago, and the author recommends that we look again at the sources of silent knowledge our early ancestors had access to prior to written (and perhaps even spoken?) communication. The unconscious mental and sensory conditioning modern man is subject to emerges from new concepts such as the meme and the implicate order. With the scepticism of the materialistic world view, this forms a barrier to perceptive clarity. Seeking to reconcile the very old with the very new should help put mankind's search for meaning in a wider perspective. Fortunately nowadays a falling inwards from different sources is taking place, towards a common field of knowledge that might be accepted by people from different walks of life and credos. Auras, chakras and spirit bodies, if treated as real phenomena, may help explain how life arose on a small planet in a multi-dimensional universe. Most people still adhere unconsciously to the idea overturned by Galileo, that the earth is at the centre of the universe, or a more recent view that our planet is circling a stationarystar, the sun. The spiritual significance of astronomy's new view, namely that the planet has been speeding through space in spirals for the entire span of life on Earth, has not yet sunk in. Given that spirals occur at all scales from fractals and DNA, to chakras and galaxies, should lead us to question whether it is a coincidence that early man's most sacred symbol was the spiral? Viewing the "life energy" or chi as a dynamic force generated by our acceleration through space, is a speculation that seeks to explain the mysterious origins of life and its maintenance.