What About
Science?
Another piece for my
book-
In discussing these
topics over the years I have occasionally been asked whether what I
am saying means science is wrong. This is because most would assume
that mainstream scientific theory would be in direct conflict with
the types of things I am discussing about non-physical reality.
After-all, how could the mainstream theory of a material based
reality vs a theory which postulates that material doesn't even
exist, find any common ground? Oddly enough, I think there may be
quite a bit.
First of all:
clearly scientific thought has had a huge impact on the life of most
of the population of the planet. Every aspect of modern life is
derived from one scientific development or another. It would
certainly be difficult to suggest that science is irrelevant and
totally based on false notions: wouldn’t it? Well,,, yes and no.
While working in the
computer design world for several decades, I became very familiar
with an engineering concept call “abstraction”. This approach is
used because, especially in very complex systems, engineers must
design the system in a series of levels, where each level serves a
purpose, one building on the next. This approach allows a person or a
team to concentrate on a particular aspect of the overall problem to
be solved, without the need to pay much attention, or even to
understand, what is going on “above” or “below” the layer on
which they are working. In a computer programming situation, you
might have a person working on some core part of a program, and
perhaps another working on displaying the results to a screen, and
perhaps a third managing the data storage. Each of these people has a
problem to solve, and they just need to know how to communicate to
one or more of the other layers, but are not generally concerned with
the details of what the other layers are doing, or how it is being
done.
A more humanistic
example might be the process that ensues when you decide to start
your car. You simply put the key in the ignition, and turn it, right?
And the car starts. But there is an abstraction going on here. There
is actually MUCH more going on that you don’t think about, (or
perhaps that you would even understand) in order to start your car.
There are thousands (maybe even millions) of individual steps which
are necessary to accomplish the task. Luckily for you, a team of
engineers have abstracted all that for you, so all you need to do is
turn the key.
For the last several
hundred years science has discovered smaller and small objects in our
world and through understanding these objects, they have invented
things: like, telescopes and advanced chemistry, and semiconductors,
all of which have contributed to mankind's advancement, literally
toward the stars. They have done this by leveraging the work that
preceded their own. The interesting thing however, that they almost
all fail to realize, is they are working on an abstracted version of
reality.
So what does that
actually mean?
It means that we do
experience the fact that there are little bits of matter
making up our world. They attract each other, and and repel each
other in chemical reactions. And they seem to emit and absorb energy.
And when we smash them, they they seem to be made up of smaller and
small constituent parts. Our scientific community has figured out how
these apparent pieces of “solid material” interact and behave.
While our engineering communities have then taken advantage of these
insights to design everything in our world. Their understanding of
the universe, and its apparently material make-up, has been
sufficient for them to accomplish incredible things. And their
understanding is correct, to a point.
Here’s the rub: I
am suggesting that although we all have the experience of
material objects, these pieces of matter, they only exist as ideas,
not as actual stuff. Just because our scientists and engineers have
discovered and utilized how these apparent bits of matter behave, it
doesn’t mean they are actually made of physical material. They
might also be made of something else, but appear to be matter.
The bottom line is:
science has made lots of valid discoveries about this thing that
appears to be matter, which makes up our world, and they have a
pretty good understanding of the rules governing it. All this is
valid and true. However, they are almost all making a huge, incorrect
and unquestioned assumption: that matter is a physical thing. That we
are physical things. That our whole reality is based on physical
things. There is no good reason to take this as an unquestioned fact,
but they have always done so. This fallacy is the reason why our
science is simultaneously correct in terms of that thing called
matter, which appears to be physical, while it is also wrong because
they don’t acknowledge that this thing is an abstraction. The thing
they have always taken as a given, that matter is a solid thing, is
only true in terms of our experience. There is an
underlying process going on that has been mostly unseen for eons,
that has been creating this “matter experience”. This creative
mechanism is non-physical in nature and is not understood in the
least, but should no longer be ignored. It seems to be associated
with the enigma of consciousness. We may not understand how it works,
but we should start at least acknowledging its profound impact on our
world, and its role in creating the illusion of matter. And we
should come to terms with the fact that our whole experience of
reality is an abstraction with this non-physical mechanism of
physical creation at its core.
But how could that
be?
If you think about
it, we are talking about trying to understand the nature of our
reality, while being encompassed by (and in many ways limited by) the
experience of it.
Consider a video
game that simulates a world: one like “The Sims” or “World of
Warcraft”. Let’s start by imagining that you are a character in a
Sims world.
This Sims world is
just like “real life”. There is gravity. You can walk, but not
fly. If you drop an egg, it will break apart. You need to eat, or you
get hungry. You need to sleep, or you get over-tired. And if you
plant a seed, and water it, and the temperature and sunlight is
correct, a plant will grow and fruit or vegetables will ripen.
When you go to sleep
and wake up, you will find you are still in the Sim cabin with
everything pretty much the same as you went to bed. The cabin still
has the same number of rooms. The tree outside the door is still
there. And the garden is still there, full of vegetables. Except,,,
that one red tomato that you have been thinking about eating, is now
half eaten. Apparently in the night that pesky gopher stopped by for
a quick meal. So it looks like you are not the only creature in this
world that can do things.
To you, the world is
an amazing place. You occasionally wonder how this place works and
why you are there, but in the end, you decide it just there is no
purpose: it just IS.
That world is pretty
ordinary and similar to ours. It is governed by the basic rules of
physics and chemistry of which we are all familiar. It is “stable”.
That is: it is pretty much the same when you awake as when you went
to sleep (unlike a dream for instance), but just as in our “real”
world, things do seem to be changeable. Just as in our world, those
things that do change seem to be easily explained by the basic idea
that matter or energy (both “material” things) can act on other
matter or energy and affect it. So wind can blow down a tree. Sun can
make a plant grow. And you can light a fire by rubbing two sticks
together, and then cook a meal. Nothing very interesting here right?
Now lets take a look
a the same situation but from our “higher” perspective in our
current physical reality sitting at the computer, watching or playing
with the Sims world. From our perspective we can see the plant which
produced the tomato that Fred is wanting. But it doesn't exist in
what WE would call a physical sense. Neither does Fred’s cabin, or
the rock outside, or even Fred himself. All of these things are
ideas. They are based on bits of data which were used to fabricate
Fred’s world. Every tree, blade of grass, every molecule, every
subatomic particle in Fred’s Sim world, is a construction by a
powerful system, which is hidden from Fred but not from us. And the
fundamental behaviors of Fred’s world, the rules, are all feeding
into the system which is manifesting the world. So what Fred sees as
a solid rock, is actually just an idea of a rock, manifested by the
game system based on the data-set, and the rules governing the game.
But it sure seems
real to Fred. Just yesterday he stubbed his toe on that very rock,
and he felt that pain for hours. How could it NOT be real? Not be
solid? It IS. He knows it more than he knows anything! He knows it
just as much as he knows he is alive and breathing. He knows it to
his core.
Let’s dig a little
deeper.
Fred has a friend, a
philosopher named Phil. Phil is always stopping buy with food and
wine for Fred. They like to sit for long hours by the river, smoking
cigars, and drinking wine, and talking about the big questions of
life, and even of existence itself.
Phil has been giving
a lot of thought to the subject of the nature of reality. He has come
to the conclusion that perhaps, everything we see, touch, and hear,
is illusionary. He was half way through explaining this, when Fred
stood up, fuming. Fred was amazed that his good friend could be
spouting such nonsense, and insulted that Phil expected him to accept
such a far fetched premise. He then provided what he considered to be
an inarguable demonstration that matter is undoubtedly real:
“otherwise how could I do this?” he said, while he banged his
fist on the table the wine spilling all over. The argument went along
for quite some time, but since Phil’s contention lacked sufficient
proof to overcome what Fred felt was the incontrovertible and quite
obvious fact of the physical world of matter, the two finally agreed
to disagree on this point.
Let’s take a look
at this argument from our superior standing on the question. Although
we can see why Fred may not be able to swallow what Phil was saying,
we can also see that without question, Phil was correct. We know
with complete certainly that the environment where they live their
lives is an artificial construction. We know the rock which caused
Fred such pain, is only a concept. It contains no physical aspect
whatsoever. All of this is obvious to us, given our more complete
perspective on their world, even though it may be inconceivable for
most of the people within that world. It should not be a surprise
that they are unable to see, or sense, or possibly even imagine, that
the apparently solid world in which they live, doesn’t physically
exist.
Let’s pause to
make an important point- Of course I’m not suggesting that this
little story proves anything about the state of matter in our
reality. It is just a story after-all, about two characters in a
fictional world designed by software engineers, which is “manifested”
on a computer designed by another group of engineers.
What the story does
do however, is demonstrate the principal of superior standing (or
point of view). It can be clearly seen that a question which is
clearly in dispute, one which would be otherwise very hard to resolve
within one point of reference, may be quite obvious and easy to put
to rest, with a different point of view: a point of view with higher
standing on the situation. One that perhaps contains some additional
knowledge of the situation that the other observers lack. In this
sort of situation, not only can the truth be easily seen, but also
the reason for confusion on the part of the people at the lower level
of perception is also quite clear. It becomes clear that: of course
the players in the game can’t see the situation they are in. How
could they? They lack the necessary overview of the situation that
would be necessary to make the truth obvious. The fact is however,
that the truth IS available to the people in our story, it just isn’t
always easy to see.
Imagine for a minute
that the world we are currently living in, is such a world as Fred
and Phil’s. One where although we all experience solid matter as an
obvious fact, the real truth, is that matter is a construction of
some kind. And not only is “it” a construction, but even YOU are
a creation of some larger system. How would you know? How would you
tell? How would you react if someone told you the truth?
I am suggesting
that, just as in the fictional Sims example, there is the obvious
answer that nearly all people would believe to be true: and then
there is the hidden, but ACTUAL answer to the question.
Let’s start with
the first of the questions I pose: How would you know?
In the movie The
Matrix, a group was walking through a wrecked building with Neo. Neo
saw a cat, and then he saw the exact same cat again. Deja Vu.
Morpheus explained that this was a “glitch in the system” which
indicates they are not in the real world, but rather a simulation.
Morpheus had realized that they had come across an anomaly that
couldn't be explained by their science, and he was alert enough to
not just let it pass. He understood that it was a fleeting example of
the actual nature of their reality, vs the nature that most assumed
was correct.
I have found that
one way to see whether what we are experiencing is material or
non-physically based, is by seeing if there are aspects of the world
that just don’t fit using conventional thinking or applying the
conventional rules of material science. If we were to find aspects of
our world that don’t fit with materialist theories, things that
seem to be more based in the non-physical vs physical matter, perhaps
this could crack open the whole mystery for us. That is where we will
be focusing our attention for now: finding those aspects of our world
that just don’t fit.
Don’t worry: I
don’t ask that the reader believe the unbelievable. I suggest that
if the reader can set aside their long-held beliefs, and objectively
look at the data which is available, they will find that there are
“glitches” in our world that are available for all of us to see,
and have been there throughout the whole of recorded human existence.
For all that time we have almost universally just decided to turn the
other way when they occur. After-all, even if we did notice, we would
probably attribute the glitch to some religious story, or myth, or
superstition. In the end, we were probably too busy just surviving to
really pay much attention.
More recently,
especially in the past 200 years or so, we have decided to let the
high priests of religion and science to do the work of looking into
this. We have abdicated our personal responsibility to make sense of
things, and have decided that others are better prepared through
their position, education or intelligence to figure out the truth,
and explain these things to us. We were probably generally right:
they may have been much better prepared to look into these things
than the average person.
Until just recently
our inability to crack the code was quite understandable as we only
had small amounts of evidence indicating the falsity of our assumed
physical nature, and further, we didn’t have the statistical tools
or scientific means to show us the improbability of the odd things we
DID occasionally see, if indeed we noticed at all.
However, with the
latest science and the www we now we have:
1- fingertip access
to all nearly all of the information ever recorded,
2- scientific
methods to create and run tests, and measure results, with amazing
rapidity and accuracy,
3- the ability to
quickly analyze data with advanced statistical tools and methods,
4- the ability to
communicate with nearly everyone on earth about our findings, and
theirs.
It is due to these
advancements that we humans now have the ability to study the real
nature of our world. And further, even those of us who aren’t
scientists now have the ability to collect, review, and understand
the state-of-the-art in research into the nature of our reality.
Anyone with sufficient time, a computer, curiosity, and ability to
comprehend, can reach their own conclusions about the nature of the
world in which we exist.
But why would we
need to do this important work ourselves? Aren’t “really smart”
people already working on this? I mean, what happened to all those
scientists? In a few cases yes smart people ARE looking into this,
but unfortunately I have found that nearly all scientists are doing
just what we have all done, they turn the other way when they find a
glitch. Or worse: rather than investigating the data and try to make
sense of it, they twist themselves in knots to explain away the
things that they don’t like, or don’t understand, rather than
take the time to really comprehend what they are seeing. After-all,
these apparent glitches bring into question the cherished beliefs
they hold dear, and which form the basis of their whole working life
in science. Yes, I’m saying that the same thing that motivates most
people: a good job, well fed and happy children, and a vacation once
in a while, motivate a scientist. They are people after-all. All of
these things that most people want, require a stable job, and this is
a strong motivation toward the accepted status quo. Scientists who go
“off the reservation” and start poking around trying to
understand the actual nature of reality are few and far between,
because there are not many good paying jobs awaiting those who do so.
Better to smash bits of “matter” together at CERN, or to teach
more young minds about the nature of matter in our world, and thus
perpetuating the hold that materialism has on us all.
So what do you say?
Ready to take a closer look?