Re-mapping the Cosmos

 The universe is bigger than we can think. This galaxy and its 100 billion stars is, in turn, just one of a humdred billion galaxies in the cosmos

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few”, said Buddhist scholar Shunryu Suzuki. Perhaps this explains why in the year 1900 Lord Kelvin stated that:

 "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

In just a few years physics was upturned by relativity theory, then completely reframed by quantum physics. And now we know that visible matter is but five per cent of the cosmos, with dark matter (25%) and dark energy (70%) making up the rest. And let's not even mention m-theory and the idea of multiple universes.

The limits of our vision are not the limits of the cosmos. The limits of our cognitive science are not the limits of our minds.

We might chuckle at Lord Kelvin’s short-sightedness now, barely a century since he spoke these words, but we should recall that he was one of the brightest men of his day. How long will it be before others are chuckling at the way we see the universe today? Again, history reveals that it will not be very long. Science – or at least the culture of science – is conservative. Yet futurists like me are not quite so restricted. It’s our job to critique, predict and speculate. We are expected to take risks. And that is exactly what I enjoy doing in my writing and talks! 

There is a tendency for experts and layfolk from every era to believe that history is a linear journey from superstitious past to the inevitable triumph of present wisdom; and that what we now understand as truth is the way it will always be. Each age deludes itself that it has reached the pinnacle of knowledge and that all that remains is to add the finishing touches. And each age gets it hopelessly wrong. Certain futurists like to talk about how the future will bring us flying cars and virtual reality interfaces in every room and how cool that will be. But I predict that the future will not be a mere rehashing of the current consumer age.

I like to challenge people to contemplate the changes that are taking place in science, and especially the sciences of consciousness and cosmology, and how absolutely important they are for all our futures. It is with these understandings that I predict vastly different futures than many techno-futurists. Futures which focus upon "money and machines" are what Sohail Inayatullah calls "used futures". I think we can do better than that.

For for me it is not so important to be proven correct by the passing of time, but to challenge the habits of thought that tend to make us believe that our outmoded maps of reality are actually the territory.

Marcus

How Much do we Really Know about the Universe?

How much do we really know about the universe? The answer is that we know an awful lot... but not much at all. I answer this question in today's video blog.

Marcus

 

Carl Jung: Leader-Sage

 Taos, New Mexico recently

It was in Taos, New Mexico and the year was 1932. Two men sat down together on the rooftop of a five-story building overlooking the smaller, square brick buildings nearby. They were surrounded by the rolling plateaus of the Taos, with their volcanic peaks rising high into the heavens. A bright sun warmed the cold winter air. It was to be a most remarkable meeting. One of the two men was a white man of middle age, and his name will be familiar to many readers: Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist. The other man, though largely forgotten by history, was in many ways also remarkable: native American Chief Ochwiay Biano (which means Mountain Lake). The tale of their conversation is recounted in Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Jung writes that he was able to talk to Biano in a way that he was rarely able to do with Europeans. The most significant aspect of the event remains the comments Biano made about white American culture of the time. He said:

 ‘See how cruel the whites look, their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are all mad.’

Jung fond this critique of an outsider fascinating. He asked the Chief why he thought white people were insane.

“They say they think with their heads.”

“’Why of course”, said Jung, “What do you think with?”

“’We think here,” said Biano, putting his hand on his heart.

This is revealing. It suggests that there are ways of knowing that have become alien to modern cultures, and to our modern leaders. There are cognitive processes with which the native Americans were quite familiar, but the modern world has largely forgotten. Further, we can deduce from Biano’s strong feelings that he considered that these mental processes were of vital importance in living a genuinely meaningful life.

On that day, the words of Biano also struck a deep chord within Jung. Something moved within him. Yet what fascinates me most about this encounter is what Jung did next. He did not try to psychoanalyse Biano or to critique the contents of his message. Nor did he attempt to situate the Chief’s cognitive abilities within psychologist Jean Piaget’s cognitive scheme of mental development, and explain them away as child-like “concrete operational”. Jung did not even try to write them down. Instead the great depth psychologist fell into a long meditation. In the reflective moments that followed he experienced a vision which revealed to him shocking insights into his own race and civilisation.

For the first time in my life, so it seemed to me, someone had drawn for me a picture of the real white man. It was as though until now I had seen nothing but sentimental, prettified color prints. This Indian had struck our vulnerable spot, unveiled a truth to which we are blind. I felt rising within me like a shapeless mist something unknown and yet deeply familiar. And out of this mist, image upon image detached itself: first Roman legions smashing into the cities of Gaul, and the keenly incised features of Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, and Pompey. I saw the Roman eagle on the North Sea and on the banks of the White Nile. Then I saw St. Augustine transmitting the Christian creed to the Britons on the tips of Roman lances, and Charlemagne's most glorious forced conversions of the heathen; then the pillaging and murdering bands of the Crusading armies. With a secret stab I realized the hollowness of that old romanticism about the Crusades. Then followed Columbus, Cortes, and the other conquistadors who with fire, sword, torture, and Christianity came down upon even these remote pueblos dreaming peacefully in the Sun, their Father. I saw, too, the peoples of the Pacific islands decimated by firewater, syphilis, and scarlet fever carried in the clothes the missionaries forced on them.

It was enough. What we from our point of view call colonization, missions to the heathen, spread of civilization, etc., has another face the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel intentness for distant quarry a face worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen. All the eagles and other predatory creatures that adorn our coats of arms seem to me apt psychological representatives of our true nature. (Jung, 248-249)

This was remarkable indeed. Jung allowed his conscious mind to move aside for a short time. He allowed something deeper to possess him. And in those moments of receptivity, profound knowledge was given to him, knowledge which allowed him to peer into the shadow of the collective consciousness field of Caucasian civilisation. Jung believed, as do I, that the human mind is embedded within a human collective intelligence, and that this consciousness is directly accessible to us. But to access this intelligence we have to change both the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves. We have to change the way we use our minds. When this happens we begin to tap into Integrated Intelligence.

I draw from Jung’s life journey here as he was a genuine example of what I call a Leader-Sage. He was a man who was able to draw upon Integrated Intelligence to serve the evolution of the consciousness of the human race. He allowed himself to be guided by this process, and in doing so he was able tap into the intelligence of the cosmos itself. Jung was able to develop Conscious Leadership; and my upcoming book Leading with Spirit is devoted to deepening our understanding of the subject. It is also designed to help the readers - the leaders of our futures - to become genuine Leader-Sages.

Marcus

Martin Rees and the Frontiers of Knowledge

The cosmos: it's bigger than your worldview

For those with a fascination with frontier science, you might like to listen to this Martin Rees lecture entitled, “What we’ll never know”.

The audio can be found on the BBC website.

The talk has also kindly transcribed online and can be downloaded here. 

It’s part of a series of lectures called the Reeth Lectures. Rees is the President of the Royal Society, or at least was at the time of the lecture, with his retirement imminent. I find Martin Rees to be a refreshingly open-minded scientist, with a strong ability to accommodate those with differing scientific and cultural views. He is certainly no Richard Dawkins, and expresses his strong belief that science and religion must learn to must co-exist.

In this lecture Rees discusses some of the cutting edge domains of science, and addresses the limits of human understanding. Topics he covers include the discovery of life elsewhere on the universe, space programmes, time travel, the big bang and much more.

As I have often opined on my blogs and in my writing in general, there are limits to the human intellect in its typical current state of development; but this development does not represent the limits of human perception in its current potentials. One thing Rees does not address is whether there are other ways of knowing which can deliver understanding of some of these frontier domains of inquiry. My experience with meditative and visionary states, and the development of Integrated Intelligence, have allowed me to see that such other ways of knowing exist and are available to all of us. 

 Martin Rees grasping the point. But are the big questions like water: the harder one grasps, the less the mind can hold the answers?

It costs billions to fund scientific endeavors like space programmes to attempt to answer the fundamental questions that martin Rees addresses, yet there are at least partial answers to them available via a strong commitment to expanding the intuitive capacities of the mind as they exist today. Integrated Intelligence won’t deliver mathematical answers or empirical proofs, but it does enable a deepening into relationship with the world and cosmos; and in that empathic state, there are profound knowings that are available.

Martin Rees represents the affable limits of open-minded rational inquiry, or what I like to call critical rationalism. There is certainly much more that we can and will know using critical/rational inquiry, so I not suggesting we desist in its deployment.

The one statement Rees makes which epitomises the limits of scientific inquiry as they currently exist, is as follows.

Some have speculated that other universes could exist 'alongside' ours.  Imagine ants crawling around on a large sheet of paper (their two-dimensional 'universe'). They would be unaware of a similar sheet that's parallel to it. Likewise, there could be another entire universe (with 3-dimensional space, like ours) less than a millimetre away, but we would be oblivious to it if that millimetre were measured in a fourth spatial dimension, while we are imprisoned in just three.

Because of the way his cognitive development has been delimited by modern science and education, Martin Rees, somewhat ironically, cannot see just how true that statement is, that the there are indeed other universes sitting right before us, and that intelligent life is already interacting with us from other realms of existence.

I certainly don’t pretend to understand more than a tiny piece of the scope of those other dimensions, but I think it is reasonable to assume that one day science will come to explore and understand them at a much greater level, and with that exploration, we will allow ourselves to relax and permit other ways of knowing to inform our understanding of the cosmos. Intelligence is not confined to the brain, and mental influence is not confined to local space and time. I have seen this to be true beyond any doubt.

It is perfectly reasonable to assume that other intelligent life forms from other worlds and other universes and dimensions know this at a level far beyond what any human can perceive, and that they currently utilise this non-localised space/time and integrated intelligence to connect with other life in the cosmos – and us. This would certainly help to explain many of the things that I have seen and experienced in my own lifetime (UFOs, spiritual entities, ESP, out of body experiences etc), and those experienced by mystics, alternative researchers and teachers such as Whitley Strieber, Esther Hicks, John Mack, Rupert Sheldrake and so on.

Undoubtedly we (I’ll include myself and the reader as lesser known explorers in the same waters) are making mistakes in our thinking and perception. Yet unless we step offshore to explore the oceans of the cosmic mind, not only will we never make mistakes, we will never learn from those mistakes.

Still, I suggest you take the time to listen to Martin Rees lecture and to the teachings of other learned scientists and thinkers who may not necessarily hold a spiritual perspective on life and cosmos. We have much to learn from each other. The truths that I write about here will make themselves known in greater scale sooner or later, and in the meantime we should relax and listen to each other in the spirit of open-minded and humble exploration.

Marcus

The Frontiers of Human Intelligence

How far can we go?

In the last few days I have been reading James R. Flynn’s What is Intelligence? The book includes some extremely important information and arguments about the nature of human intelligence. In particular, it indirectly sheds light upon the nature of Integrated Intelligence, and why it is so poorly understood. Integrated Intelligence is my term for the transpersonal awareness which permits one to gain deeper insight into the spiritual aspects of life. It is what allows for the development of Deep Futures.

James Flynn is best known for his discovery of The Flynn Effect: that IQ scores have been increasing greatly since intelligence testing first began more than a century ago. In the USA between 1947 and 2002, IQ has increased about 17.5 IQ points. Logically, and via extrapolation, we might conclude that our grandparents were mentally retarded by today’s standards. However logic is only as good as the premises which underpin it, and as Flynn is at pains to point out, the massive increases in IQ scores probably do not equate to an equivalent real world increase in intelligence. However I am not going to discuss this specific point today.

Most interesting for me is what particular aspects of measured intelligence have been improving, and which have not. The greatest increases in the USA between 1947 and 2002 have been in Raven’s Progressive Matrices (27.5 IQ points), which involve visual manipulation of symbols and abstract reasoning. Raven’s involves such tasks as arranging blocks so that the view from above duplicates a presented pattern, building an object out of its disassembled parts, arranging pictures to tell a story and so on.

The task of identifying similarities has also improved about 24 points. How are a bear and a cat similar, for example?

Some domains have not shown so much improvement, such as reading comprehension (12 points), while scores in information, arithmetic and vocabulary have increased only about 3 points. In fact in Britain and the USA, recent data indicates that math and reading abilities have dropped off slightly in recent years.

Most nations have shown similar patterns.

People of past eras rarely or never took standardised tests, but now people are bombarded with them. This has to account for some of the improvements we have seen in IQ.

One point that Flynn argues is that our ancestors from the turn of the twentieth century processed reality quite differently. Their cognitive processing was centered in everyday reality, not upon abstraction, which is an intellectualised mental space. Modern education systems have greatly enhanced the capacity for abstraction. This is one indisputable conclusion we can draw from the data.

One of the most notable aspects of these findings is that the results of each intelligence subtest has been greatly influenced by social values and priorities. This is what I have long argued regarding the development of intuitive intelligence. The lack of valuing of the intuitive mind in modern society and education has greatly restricted its development.

The huge improvement in visual intelligence is almost certainly a function of the fact that leisure time for the young is now filled with activities requiring complex visual processing, beginning with television in the 1950s, and moving through to today’s explosion of internet usage via PCs, laptops and mobile devices.

The huge increases in Raven’s Matrices test scores also suggest that today’s children are far better at solving problems on the spot without having a prior learned method to work from.

The data and arguments presented in Flynn’s book appear to support, in a general sense, a schema which I took from science historian John Pickstone, and his book Other Ways of Knowing. Pickstone argues that there are three main ways of knowing employed in the modern world, and each developed out of particular historical contexts. Classification emerged around 1500 as universities in Europe adopted curricula based upon the scholastic movement’s need for lumping concepts (animals, plants etc.) into prearranged categories. Around 1800 analysis became more pronounced, and by 1850 experimentation was taking hold.

I have used this schema extensively in my own writing. However with a little further reading and reflection, I think that “experimentation” is too narrow a term to describe scientific thinking. It also incorporates the kinds of mental abilities that James Flynn describes in his idea of scientific thinking. Flynn argues that the gains in IQ scores in recent decades are largely a function of the development of the scientific mind, and its requirements for abstraction and logical thinking. He makes the distinction between the pre-scientific and scientific minds. Flynn writes:

A person who views the world through pre-scientific spectacles thinks in terms of the categories that order perceived objects and functional relationships…. If the everyday world is you cognitive home, it is not natural to detach abstractions and logic and see the hypothetical from their concrete referents… Today we have no difficulty freeing logic from concrete referents and reasoning about purely hypothetical situations.

To back his arguments, Flynn takes fascinating and somewhat humorous examples from the research of famed Russian psychologist Luria in the 1970s, when the latter interviewed Russian peasants. I have listed a couple of interview  extracts, below.         

White bears and Novaya Zemlya
Q:  All bears are white where there is always snow; in Novaya Zemlya there is always snow; what color are the bears there?
A:  I have seen only black bears and I do not talk of what I have not seen.
Q:  But what do my words imply?
A;  If a person has not been there he can not say anything on the basis of words.  If a man was 60 or 80 and had seen a white bear there and told me about it, he could be believed.

Camels and Germany

Q:  There are no camels in Germany; B is a city in Germany; are there camels there?
A:  I don't know, I have never seen German villages. If B is a large city, there should be camels there.
Q:  But what if there are none in all of Germany?
A:  Perhaps this is a small village within a large city and there is no room for camels.

Now, here is the point I wish to draw from all this research, including the Flynn Effect. It is difficult for a person processing information and reality via one way of knowing to understand the thinking of those who are processing information via another way of knowing. Further, we have to make a distinction in that contemporary ways of knowing, at least to some degree, incorporate all the ways of knowing that came before it in history. This mirrors Ken Wilber’s idea of “include and transcend.” As one’s consciousness expands to a higher level, a person retains access to the cognitive processes that preceded the expansion. Indeed, at a higher level, the limitations of the lower level can be more fully appreciated. James Flynn can get his mind around the worldview of a Russian peasant, but the Russian peasant would simply be incapable of fully comprehending what the scientist is doing in his lab.

One hypothesis that I would like to put forward is that the development of mind from pre-scientific to scientific might actually retard certain forms of perception. The detachment and abstraction of the scientific mind creates a distancing from the world, and from the body and the subtle intuitions of spirit; and with that comes a loss of relationship knowledge.

My argument is that the development of Integrated Intelligence - as I define it, and as I experience it - transcends the scientific mind. It enables one to utilise scientific and logical ways of knowing, but expands upon them. It also enables a greater array of data to be accessed via the extended mind. The mind becomes more permeable, and the scientific assumption that mind is contained within the brain is seen to be a delusion. Having incorporated and transcended the scientific mind, it is easy to understand the limits of the scientific mind and why it is incapable of understanding Integrated Intelligence. However the reverse is not true. Using logic, abstraction, detachment, experimentation is simply inadequate to access and utilise Integrated Intelligence, and to understand it.

There are fantastic insights which are available via Integrated Intelligence. Perhaps most vitally, it allows one to intuit the inherent meaning of life and specific events that occur in one’s life. These insights are simply not available to the scientific mind. This is why in order for Deep Futures to truly evolve, there is a requirement for human beings to embrace an expanded range of cognitive development.

As a result of a commitment to developing Integrated Intelligence my own world is far richer than it once was. Many might suggest that such a world an extraordinary world where extraordinary “intelligence” is exhibited. This is only true from the perspective of the pre-scientific and scientific minds. For the Russian peasant, doing calculus must appear to be absolutely incredible, but it is standard fair in a modern university. I predict that one day in the not too distant future, Integrated Intelligence will be standard. I have already seen many “ordinary” people develop it.

However, in order for the potential widespread activation of Integrated Intelligence to occur, the relevant cognitive processes have to be employed in life and/or education. They have to be understood, and most of all they have to be valued. The recent massive increases in the capacity for abstraction and visual intelligence have arisen because of society’s increased valuing of these concepts. I predict the same will occur with Integrated Intelligence - if it is valued.

Whether it will be valued anytime soon remains to be seen.

Marcus

On Not Knowing Crap

My second last post was about NOT knowing. Not knowing is very freeing. The ego always wants to know. It wants closure, certainty, definitive answers. Those of you who have used spiritual guidance, have you ever noticed that the 'answers' from Spirit are often ambiguous?

The truth is that in many ways Spirit prefers that we do not know the answers, as opposed to knowing what's going to happen.

There's a certain state of being that Bashar calls the limbo state (check out the YouTube videos). This is basically where you are hanging in space, waiting to connect with whatever unfolds next. Maybe you have made a commitment to a project, or taken certain actions, and then you are waiting for the next thing to unfold. The ego wants to know what's going down. It wants a guarantee. But really, what do you know? I mean, really know? The answer is "not much."

After the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, a certain mystic, much more famous and successful than I, came out and boasted "I told you so!" He had, at some point in the last decade or so, made a prediction about an earthquake in Japan.  Apparently he had seen it in a vision, God knows how many years ago. 

Why do mystics always want to predict the future? It seems they want validation of their mystical powers at the level of ego. Here, I predicted the drought in Australia! Look, there were tornadoes in the mid west! A world leader died! There was an earthquake in Japan, look how damn brilliant I am!

Why do I mention this? A few weeks ago I heard about a job going at an Australian university. Immediately I got the strongest intuition that this job was meant for me. I applied, and after I submitted my CV, I had the strongest conviction that the energy was 100% open. This was meant to be.

Guess what happened? Well, I got an interview, just as expected. The online interview was fine (although I think I could have done better). After the interview I was told that they were interviewing all the following week, so it would be at least a week before I heard anything from them.

It's now a week later. It's Saturday evening, and all things being equal, I will know the result on Monday or Tuesday (I get that it will be Tuesday, from my reading of the energy). 

But what do I know about the outcome? At the level of ego, I simply do not know. And that is exactly how it always will be. I have had very positive guidance on this one. My gut feelings say "yes" (My fear says it will never happen. They will never employ someone like me. Look at how many rejections I have had over the years!)

As I write in my book Discover your Soul Template, whenever we reach forward to create something which takes us beyond our comfort zone, the entire process inevitably triggers the unresolved issues that lie dormant within our psyches. This in turn will activate psychic dramas with those indviduals, living or dead, who were involved in the creation of those issues. This means that your consciousness field will be exchanging 'energy' with those individuals. The drama is actually an opportunity for healing, and a step 'forward' in terms of your spiritual evolution. The thing is bringing awareness to what is going down; being able to assume responsibility for your part in the drama; and especially being able to witness the drama without judgment. The latter point is crucial, as there is nothing more important to the development of spiritual maturity than being able to maintain mindfulness during difficult times. True healing requires bringing the parts of the mind which are attached to the past (including its traumas) fully into presence.

The whole situation with my job interview has pushed certain of my buttons. Unresolved spiritual issues about worthiness and fairness have arisen. They are biographical (childhood) and karmic(past lives). I have allowed the feelings and energy from those issues to surface. This means allowing the feelings of inadequacy and shame to surface, and the anger and blame that goes with them. But after all is said and done, in the end there is simply the knowing that...

... to be human is to be vulnerable.

We do not know what the next year, week, day or moment will bring. It takes great courage to accept that.

Interestingly, on a somewhat related note, I had a vision a month ago. I saw a newspaper headline which said "Katich sacked." Simon Katich is a very good Australian cricketer. He has been Australia's most consistent batsman over the last year. Interestingly as I looked at the headline, the name "Katich" kept morphing into "Hilditch" - the surname of the Chairman of the selection committee of the Australian cricket team. When I awoke from the dream, I felt both these guys were going to get the axe. Then two days ago I opened a newspaper to see that Simon Katich has indeed been dropped from the team. It has created a media storm in Australia and internationally in cricket circles. Many are incensed that one of Australia's best performing cricketers has been fired. Some are calling for heads to roll - especially that of the Chairman of Selectors, Andrew Hilditch.

Of course, when it happens, I won't say "I told you so." That would be far too arrogant.

Marcus

On Not Knowing

 Space: it's big and it's out there. But what's in here?

Recently a good friend of mine, Simon Buckland (see his blog here), sent me a link to an interesting TED talk by neuroscientist David Eagleman. He makes a case for "possibilianism", which is a philosophy of "not knowing" - admitting that there is so much in the universe that we do not know at this time in the development of science (which is where he is coming from). From this not knowing the joy and wonder of the world, cosmos and life can be appreciated in its fullness. 

It was actually something of a synchronicity that Simon shared this, as I had been thinking of writing a post about not knowing before I got sidetracked with other things these last two weeks. In the workshop I attended in Beijing a few weeks ago - with mystic Leonard Jacobson - he talked about the power and beauty of not knowing. But are Eagleman andJ acobson talking about the same thing. The answer is "Yes, but only a bit." Let me explain.

Eagleman's possibilianism is the next step beyond scientism - a hard core belief in the methods of reductionist science - and is much preferable to it, in my opinion. The idea of not knowing is indeed very powerful. However Eagleman's understanding is delimited by the fact that at a personal level he is not making an inner journey of any depth. Many of his insights are relatively simple, the kinds of things most primary school kids think of - for example that there are so many religious perspectives and gods that religion obviously cannot be taken literally. This is obviously true. 

Yet there are some "certainties" that Eagleman claims that are untrue, and unfortunately these fundamental presuppositions of Eagelman's are central to the understanding of the human experience. The most telling of these is his belief that "we are our brains", which is incorrect. Even at a scientific level this claim is problematic - we have to dismiss all the insights of mystical traditions and the scientific evidence into the extended mind and psi experience to maintain the view. And Eagleman does just that, saying there is no evidence for ESP. This is an inexcusable bit of ignorance/denial for a neuroscientist. There is definitely enough evidence from parapsychology to say that there is a solid possibility that various psi experiences and capacities are real (check out Dean Radin's site, for example). A true "possibilian" would acknowledge that. Of course the real "evidence" for ESP, clairvoyance etc. does not come from analysing data, but through first person experience, and this is part of the reason why Eagleman gets it wrong. I can say this with certainty having done a great deal of inner work myself.

One of the reasons why many scientists, academics and others don't make that inner journey is because it requires not knowing at a much deeper level than what Eagleman is prepared to admit. In fact it requires the dismantling of ego - surrender (at least in part) - and this is actually quite frightening and often very painful because it requires allowing the hurt parts of the psyche to find expression. Thus the control of ego remains in place for most of today's knowledge gurus, and the capacity for deeper perception is retarded.

Another problem for Eagleman is that he does not realise that there are direct inner perceptions that reveal deeper truths, and they emerge from a release of cultural knowledge, an unlearning. Thus he is wrong to say that all "religious" views are culturally based. Undoubtedly culture still influences the way we interpret the deeper knowings, and how we communicate them via language. But the influence of culture and prior learning is minimised or almost negligible in the actual moments of perception; in perfect presence they cease to function.

Interestingly the first book I ever wrote when I was 26 - a little self-deluded tome called the Freedom of Dynamic Consciousness - basically mirrors what Eagleman says. I came from a philosophical position and argued that being unattached to knowing was better than the fundamentalism of mainstream religion and science. I hadn't made much of an inner journey at that time My awareness now is much deeper, including, ironically, my awareness of the importance of not knowing.

In short, it's good Eagleman moves into the unknown - that is a tiny step towards loosening the strings of ego. But his understanding is still delimited by his worldview and the ways of knowing it legitimates (and forbids). And by the grip of the ego/mind.

It is certainly true that not knowing is very powerful. In deep, silent presence not knowing (via the mind) is the prime way of knowing - in something of a seeming contradiction. Each moment just unfolds. It is the "knowing" of the mind that occludes that deeper "not knowing".

I have to admit seeing this talk by Eagelman and the huge audience he garners does make me slightly sad. I have met and worked with the most amazing people who know so much more about this than Eagleman does - Leonard Jacobson is just one of them. But they don't get a voice on any stage, let alone the world stage. The dominant paradigms just don't allow it. And the truth is that much of their understanding is too far off the map to make sense to most scientists and academics anyway.

That's one of the reasons why I started this blog, and called it "22Cplus". It's about long term perspectives of the future - into the 22nd century and beyond. Trish MacGreggor left a comment on a previous post last week that it might take another 200 years for science to fully acknowledge the existence of the soul. That may well be true.

But who knows?

Here's the TED talk by Eagleman.

Blessings,

Marcus

 

Cheers,

Marcus