Loading ...
Oct
23
Nature, Agriculture, Erosion, Topography and the Natural Reality Discussed
Many folks do not understand the urgency of our nation’s water supply or the issues concerning soil void of nutrients. These are serious problems for agriculture, drinking water, and we are slowly polluting our civilizations around the world, the runoff is going into the sea and causing a terrible problem. Saltwater intrusion and empty aquifers, along with rivers and lakes depleted are of grave concern. But what can be done?
An interesting case study is the Ventura County, CA coastal area, where they pumped out too much water and salt water intrusion from the ocean filled all the fresh water wells with salt water, destroying the crops and soil. Bummer there is like 50 feet of top soil there, probably the best Strawberries in the World were grown there, full of rich nutrients. So, they diverted river water into the underground aquifers and after 10-years things are back to normal, but some fear they still pump out too much ground water.
The Mississippi River Mouth is a problem, once it was a huge river delta teaming with life and nutrients, however, when you channel that level of water flow it acts like a Jacuzzi jet blasting away anything there. Being a pilot I study erosion topography when I fly, you know as a hobby, you can see the changes and it’s obvious we have a problem out there.
Erosion, water flows, and all these things can be put back to their natural states, and we can create natural states elsewhere; I believe it’s all fixable? As I study US Droughts, weather, erosion, water flows, nature etc, it seems that we are making obvious mistakes as we try to force human views onto the natural patterns, and thus, we end up with the law of unintended consequences. We need better policies.
By: Lance Winslow
About the Author:
An interesting case study is the Ventura County, CA coastal area, where they pumped out too much water and salt water intrusion from the ocean filled all the fresh water wells with salt water, destroying the crops and soil. Bummer there is like 50 feet of top soil there, probably the best Strawberries in the World were grown there, full of rich nutrients. So, they diverted river water into the underground aquifers and after 10-years things are back to normal, but some fear they still pump out too much ground water.
The Mississippi River Mouth is a problem, once it was a huge river delta teaming with life and nutrients, however, when you channel that level of water flow it acts like a Jacuzzi jet blasting away anything there. Being a pilot I study erosion topography when I fly, you know as a hobby, you can see the changes and it’s obvious we have a problem out there.
Erosion, water flows, and all these things can be put back to their natural states, and we can create natural states elsewhere; I believe it’s all fixable? As I study US Droughts, weather, erosion, water flows, nature etc, it seems that we are making obvious mistakes as we try to force human views onto the natural patterns, and thus, we end up with the law of unintended consequences. We need better policies.
By: Lance Winslow
About the Author:
Lance Winslow is a retired franchiser – Lance Winslow’s Bio. Lance Winslow is formerly the CEO of WashGuys family of franchises for instance one of Lance Winslow’s favorite companies on the team; http://www.windowwashguys.com/links.shtml/.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Oct
20
What is Reality in Physics?
Reality used to be a concept dealt with by philosophy and not science. This was changed by Galileo, when he divided physical phenomena into two classes. The first of these, what he called the “primary qualities”, were suitable for scientific treatment and analysis, because they did not depend on the presence of a person. This independent existence freed them from the vagaries of individual observations Such subjective observations could be affected by health, ability to concentrate and a host of other personal factors, which affected the “secondary qualities” and made them unfit for scientific study. These secondary qualities did require the presence of a person and applied, in Galileo’s opinion, to all observations made by the senses of smell, touch, hearing and taste.
Galileo’s primary qualities were very few in number and Rene Descartes later reduced them to just two, matter and motion. These qualities were independent of people. Their reality was therefore objective. On the other hand, the secondary qualities, which needed the presence of a person to register them through the senses mentioned, were subjective. These two realities, subjective and objective, were deeply embedded in philosophical traditions, dating back thousands of years to the ancient Greeks and beyond. In these philosophies, all physical phenomena in our world of nature, which needed our senses for their perception, were of merely subjective reality. This reality was considered very inferior to the objective reality of the divine world, which of course was beyond the direct perception of our ordinary senses and thus also beyond the need of our human presence to exist. This divine world was not just a world of religious belief in these philosophies. It was a world of real existence and the realm of all “true” knowledge. It could be accessed by people specially trained for such contact, such as oracles, seers and mystics.
Galileo’s revolutionary thinking can now be fully appreciated. He had the audacity to take the concept of objective reality, as a property of the divine world only, and tack it on to his two primary qualities of matter and motion, which were properties of the lowly world of nature. Matter and motion were now the exclusive subjects of his new science, physics. They formed the basis of all Newton’s great synthesis of natural laws. They were the foundation concepts of a philosophy, scientific determinism, and of a model of the world that ruled physics until the 1920s, when it had to be abandoned.
The consequences of Galileo’s actions in these matters were quite extraordinary and have lasted to this day. While he himself was careful to limit objective reality to only his two primary qualities of matter and motion, as time went on scientists began to treat all natural phenomena, perceived by all our senses, as having an independent existence of their own. This allowed them to postulate that the history of nature was quite independent of the history of man, so that it could be extrapolated to the earliest periods of this earth’s existence, long before the appearance on the scene of man. It may seem extraordinary to us today, but this method of perceiving the geological history of the world is no older than Galileo. Before him, at least in Christian times, the world started in 4004 BC. There was also another consequence. This independent matter was now perceived as the primal substance, from which everything else that has appeared on earth, such as life, feeling and consciousness, has evolved by means of purely natural, random processes.
Objective reality disappeared from physics in the 1920s, when scientific determinism, based on the total predictability of cause and effect, had to be abandoned as it no longer represented the facts discovered by the new branches of physics, especially quantum mechanics, which required the inclusion of Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty. For the last eighty or more years, therefore, physics has operated on the basis of subjective reality only. It no longer recognizes Galileo’s division of natural phenomena into two classes: for modern physics, all perceived natural phenomena are of a subjective nature, because they require the apparatus of our senses. Galileo’s attempt to make some “qualities” of matter objective has simply been ignored by modern physics, which is not interested in philosophical errors of hundreds of years ago. As the divine world was eliminated by science, so its objective reality has also been removed. In this, modern physics has recognized that Galileo made a fundamental error when saying that his primary qualities did not need the presence of a person. Matter and motion still had to be perceived in order to be dealt with by science. The sense of sight was therefore involved and the sense of sight is still a physical sense and thus subjective.
All these developments in physics have left loose ends dangling about. If matter is now no longer considered objective, must we not alter our assumptions about the very early eons of the earth’s existence, before the appearance of man? Philosophically speaking, how does the absence of objective reality affect us in our relationship with nature? If we only accept subjective reality now in our science, does this not mean that we must regard ourselves as the creators of the world? Only to the creator is everything around him subjective, because he himself has created everything! Then again, if matter is merely a subjective appearance, of which we are aware only through our sense perceptions, can it really be the primal, independent substance from which everything else has been derived?
All these musings about the nature of reality are beginning to be important because of recent developments in particle physics. What, for instance, can be said about the reality of a string particle? This particle is defined as the ultimate, irreducible matter particle. It is also defined as having only one dimension, length. Our sense structure is not built to perceive an object of only one dimension anywhere in our physical world. So we cannot call the string particle subjectively real, like other physical phenomena. But if matter is considered to be subjectively real, should not the origin of matter, the ultimate, irreducible particle of matter, also be real? Here again, the absence of objective reality in physics today is becoming a problem.
Subjective reality is becoming interesting to physics in another line of investigation being followed. The old question, posed by Bishop Berkeley and others, about the existence of the world if we are not there to perceive it, can now be investigated scientifically. The results of two such investigations have recently been published, one conducted in Japan and the other in Canada. Both used photons as the particles being observed and then not observed. The last part was achieved mathematically by not completing the procedures under observation. The results in both cases indicate that the world does indeed continue to exist when we are not observing it, but some of the results were nevertheless startling. Some of these photons, which should have been somewhere, simply disappeared. The Japanese experimenter called this result “preposterous”.
Galileo’s Shadow is a book that deals with these conflicting concepts of reality within physics. It suggests a way to reincorporate objective reality back into science, as well as many other problems in physics that are becoming increasingly urgent. One of the aims of the book is to make physics accessible again to a broader audience, where it used to be in the age of Newton, when ordinary educated people could understand its broad concepts even if they were not mathematical geniuses.
By: Werner Thurau
About the Author:
Galileo’s primary qualities were very few in number and Rene Descartes later reduced them to just two, matter and motion. These qualities were independent of people. Their reality was therefore objective. On the other hand, the secondary qualities, which needed the presence of a person to register them through the senses mentioned, were subjective. These two realities, subjective and objective, were deeply embedded in philosophical traditions, dating back thousands of years to the ancient Greeks and beyond. In these philosophies, all physical phenomena in our world of nature, which needed our senses for their perception, were of merely subjective reality. This reality was considered very inferior to the objective reality of the divine world, which of course was beyond the direct perception of our ordinary senses and thus also beyond the need of our human presence to exist. This divine world was not just a world of religious belief in these philosophies. It was a world of real existence and the realm of all “true” knowledge. It could be accessed by people specially trained for such contact, such as oracles, seers and mystics.
Galileo’s revolutionary thinking can now be fully appreciated. He had the audacity to take the concept of objective reality, as a property of the divine world only, and tack it on to his two primary qualities of matter and motion, which were properties of the lowly world of nature. Matter and motion were now the exclusive subjects of his new science, physics. They formed the basis of all Newton’s great synthesis of natural laws. They were the foundation concepts of a philosophy, scientific determinism, and of a model of the world that ruled physics until the 1920s, when it had to be abandoned.
The consequences of Galileo’s actions in these matters were quite extraordinary and have lasted to this day. While he himself was careful to limit objective reality to only his two primary qualities of matter and motion, as time went on scientists began to treat all natural phenomena, perceived by all our senses, as having an independent existence of their own. This allowed them to postulate that the history of nature was quite independent of the history of man, so that it could be extrapolated to the earliest periods of this earth’s existence, long before the appearance on the scene of man. It may seem extraordinary to us today, but this method of perceiving the geological history of the world is no older than Galileo. Before him, at least in Christian times, the world started in 4004 BC. There was also another consequence. This independent matter was now perceived as the primal substance, from which everything else that has appeared on earth, such as life, feeling and consciousness, has evolved by means of purely natural, random processes.
Objective reality disappeared from physics in the 1920s, when scientific determinism, based on the total predictability of cause and effect, had to be abandoned as it no longer represented the facts discovered by the new branches of physics, especially quantum mechanics, which required the inclusion of Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty. For the last eighty or more years, therefore, physics has operated on the basis of subjective reality only. It no longer recognizes Galileo’s division of natural phenomena into two classes: for modern physics, all perceived natural phenomena are of a subjective nature, because they require the apparatus of our senses. Galileo’s attempt to make some “qualities” of matter objective has simply been ignored by modern physics, which is not interested in philosophical errors of hundreds of years ago. As the divine world was eliminated by science, so its objective reality has also been removed. In this, modern physics has recognized that Galileo made a fundamental error when saying that his primary qualities did not need the presence of a person. Matter and motion still had to be perceived in order to be dealt with by science. The sense of sight was therefore involved and the sense of sight is still a physical sense and thus subjective.
All these developments in physics have left loose ends dangling about. If matter is now no longer considered objective, must we not alter our assumptions about the very early eons of the earth’s existence, before the appearance of man? Philosophically speaking, how does the absence of objective reality affect us in our relationship with nature? If we only accept subjective reality now in our science, does this not mean that we must regard ourselves as the creators of the world? Only to the creator is everything around him subjective, because he himself has created everything! Then again, if matter is merely a subjective appearance, of which we are aware only through our sense perceptions, can it really be the primal, independent substance from which everything else has been derived?
All these musings about the nature of reality are beginning to be important because of recent developments in particle physics. What, for instance, can be said about the reality of a string particle? This particle is defined as the ultimate, irreducible matter particle. It is also defined as having only one dimension, length. Our sense structure is not built to perceive an object of only one dimension anywhere in our physical world. So we cannot call the string particle subjectively real, like other physical phenomena. But if matter is considered to be subjectively real, should not the origin of matter, the ultimate, irreducible particle of matter, also be real? Here again, the absence of objective reality in physics today is becoming a problem.
Subjective reality is becoming interesting to physics in another line of investigation being followed. The old question, posed by Bishop Berkeley and others, about the existence of the world if we are not there to perceive it, can now be investigated scientifically. The results of two such investigations have recently been published, one conducted in Japan and the other in Canada. Both used photons as the particles being observed and then not observed. The last part was achieved mathematically by not completing the procedures under observation. The results in both cases indicate that the world does indeed continue to exist when we are not observing it, but some of the results were nevertheless startling. Some of these photons, which should have been somewhere, simply disappeared. The Japanese experimenter called this result “preposterous”.
Galileo’s Shadow is a book that deals with these conflicting concepts of reality within physics. It suggests a way to reincorporate objective reality back into science, as well as many other problems in physics that are becoming increasingly urgent. One of the aims of the book is to make physics accessible again to a broader audience, where it used to be in the age of Newton, when ordinary educated people could understand its broad concepts even if they were not mathematical geniuses.
By: Werner Thurau
About the Author:
Werner Thurau thinks physics must be everyone’s concern because this science can now destroy the world. It should not be discussed only by a small group of specialists in abstruse mathematics. For that reason, he wrote “Galileo’s Shadow”, which deals historically and philosophically with physics, right up to the most modern string theory. This book is written for the general educated public. The concepts of reality were important to Galileo and have recently become important again in physics, which is the reason for this article. Further articles will deal with other aspects of physics, as covered in “Galileo’s Shadow”.
Some of the conclusions on that book will be considered radical and should lead to a good and necessary discussion on the future of physics. Find out more at http://www.galileoshadow.com
Popularity: 1% [?]
Oct
15
Thought Power – Your Thoughts Create Your Reality
Thought power is the key to creating your reality. Everything you perceive in the physical world has its origin in the invisible, inner world of your thoughts and beliefs. To become the master of your destiny, you must learn to control the nature of your dominant, habitual thoughts. By doing so you will be able to attract into your life anything you desire with exact precision as you come to know the Truth that your thoughts create your reality.
For Every Outside Effect There is an Inner Cause: Every effect you see in your outside or physical world has a very specific cause which has its origin in your inner or mental world. This is the essence of thought power. Put another way, the conditions and circumstances of your life are as a result of your thoughts and beliefs. James Allen said it best when he said “circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him”. Every aspect of your life, from the state of your finances to the state of your health and your relationships, is accurately revealing your thoughts and your beliefs.
It’s an Inside Job: Most people have it back to front, believing that they feel or think a certain way because of their circumstances, not knowing the truth that it is their thought power that is creating those very circumstances, whether wanted or unwanted. By internalizing and applying this Truth, that your thoughts create your reality, you will grant yourself the power to create the changes you desire to see manifest in your life. Reality creation is an inside job.
Your Thought Power is Limitless: There is a single, intelligent Consciousness that pervades the entire Universe – all powerful, all knowing, all creative and present everywhere at the same time – the Universal Mind. Your mind is part of this One Universal Mind and since your thoughts are a product of your mind, it follows that your thought power too is limitless. Once you truly understand that your mind is one with the Single Source of All Power and that this power is within you, you will have found the only true source of infinite power for which nothing is impossible and impossible is nothing. Know that thought power comes from within. All power comes from within.
Your Thoughts are Alive: The greatest mystics and teachers that have walked the Earth have told us that everything is energy. This fundamental Truth has now been undeniably confirmed by modern science. Your thoughts too are energy. William Walker Atkinson told us that “where mind is static energy, thought is dynamic energy – two phases of the same thing” and Charles Haanel went on to say that “thought power is the vibratory force formed by converting static mind into dynamic mind”. Your thoughts are alive. Each time you entertain a specific thought, you emit a very specific, corresponding frequency or energy vibration.
What Frequency Are You On: The basic premise of the Law of Attraction is that like energy attracts like energy. You attract to yourself those things and circumstances that are in vibrational harmony with your dominant frequency, which is itself determined by your dominant mental attitude, habitual thoughts and beliefs. Mike Dooley, one of the presenters of the movie The Secret, fittingly suggests if you want to know what a thought looks like, just look around you. Keep in mind his three words “thoughts are things”.
Not All Thoughts Are Created Equal: The attractive power of any particular thought is determined by how often you have that thought and by the strength of the feelings or emotions associated with it. The more energy you give to a particular thought, the greater its power to attract its corresponding circumstance into your physical world through the Law of Attraction. Your one-off, passing thoughts do not have the same creative power as your habitual thoughts and beliefs. Remember, that it is of little use to entertain positive thoughts for just a short burst of time each day if you then proceed to think negative or unwanted thoughts for the rest of the day. Your reality is the sum total of all your thoughts.
Use Thought Power to Change Your Life: It is your subconscious mind that is the store house of your deep-seated beliefs and programmes. To change your circumstances and attract to yourself that which you desire, you must learn to programme and re-programme your subconscious mind. Since your mind is one with the all-powerful Universal Mind, the potential power of your subconscious mind is also limitless. The most effective and practical way to programme your subconscious mind for success in all areas of your life is to learn the simple process of creative visualization. It is the technique underlying reality creation, making use of thought power to consciously imagine, create and attract that which you desire. Your imagination is the engine of your thoughts. It converts your thought power into mental images.
Become Aware of Your Thoughts But Not Obsessed: It is important that you learn to be aware of your habitual thoughts and to appropriately adjust them so as to maintain an overall positive mental attitude. However, be careful not to become obsessed with every thought that enters your mind as this would be equally counter-productive, if not more so, than not being aware of them at all. Remember that to obsess over your negative, unwanted thoughts, is to give them power and as the saying goes, what you resist persists. So instead of resisting any of your negative thoughts, simply learn to effortlessly cancel them by replacing them as they arise.
Instantly Replace Unwanted Thoughts: To instantly neutralize the power of a negative thought, calmly and deliberately replace it with its opposite, positive equivalent. For instance if you think to yourself “I’m not good enough, I will never succeed”, mentally replace the thought with “I am good enough and success comes to me easily”. You can also use the “cancel cancel” technique made famous by the Silva Method. Each time you catch yourself thinking an unwanted thought, mentally tell yourself and the Universe “cancel cancel” and immediately follow it up with a positive statement.
Tame Your Dominant Thoughts and the Random Will Follow: It is estimated that the average person has between 12,000 and 70,000 thoughts a day. This is evidence enough to suggest that your goal should not be to control every thought. It is your dominant thoughts and beliefs that you must learn to bring under your conscious control as they are what largely determine your mental attitude. As you do, you will find your random thoughts themselves becoming more positive and more deliberate.
The following words of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha perfectly capture the essence of thought power: “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.”
In a nutshell, your life is the perfect mirror of your thoughts, beliefs and dominant mental attitude. Whether you realise it or not you are already creating your reality through your thought power. Every effect you see in your outside world has its original cause within you – no exceptions. To gain access to the greatest creative power at your disposal, you must learn to control the nature of your habitual thoughts and to align yourself with the One Source of All Power of which you are a part. Your thoughts create your reality – know, internalize and apply this Truth and you will see your life transform in miraculous ways.
By: Tania Kotsos
About the Author:
For Every Outside Effect There is an Inner Cause: Every effect you see in your outside or physical world has a very specific cause which has its origin in your inner or mental world. This is the essence of thought power. Put another way, the conditions and circumstances of your life are as a result of your thoughts and beliefs. James Allen said it best when he said “circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him”. Every aspect of your life, from the state of your finances to the state of your health and your relationships, is accurately revealing your thoughts and your beliefs.
It’s an Inside Job: Most people have it back to front, believing that they feel or think a certain way because of their circumstances, not knowing the truth that it is their thought power that is creating those very circumstances, whether wanted or unwanted. By internalizing and applying this Truth, that your thoughts create your reality, you will grant yourself the power to create the changes you desire to see manifest in your life. Reality creation is an inside job.
Your Thought Power is Limitless: There is a single, intelligent Consciousness that pervades the entire Universe – all powerful, all knowing, all creative and present everywhere at the same time – the Universal Mind. Your mind is part of this One Universal Mind and since your thoughts are a product of your mind, it follows that your thought power too is limitless. Once you truly understand that your mind is one with the Single Source of All Power and that this power is within you, you will have found the only true source of infinite power for which nothing is impossible and impossible is nothing. Know that thought power comes from within. All power comes from within.
Your Thoughts are Alive: The greatest mystics and teachers that have walked the Earth have told us that everything is energy. This fundamental Truth has now been undeniably confirmed by modern science. Your thoughts too are energy. William Walker Atkinson told us that “where mind is static energy, thought is dynamic energy – two phases of the same thing” and Charles Haanel went on to say that “thought power is the vibratory force formed by converting static mind into dynamic mind”. Your thoughts are alive. Each time you entertain a specific thought, you emit a very specific, corresponding frequency or energy vibration.
What Frequency Are You On: The basic premise of the Law of Attraction is that like energy attracts like energy. You attract to yourself those things and circumstances that are in vibrational harmony with your dominant frequency, which is itself determined by your dominant mental attitude, habitual thoughts and beliefs. Mike Dooley, one of the presenters of the movie The Secret, fittingly suggests if you want to know what a thought looks like, just look around you. Keep in mind his three words “thoughts are things”.
Not All Thoughts Are Created Equal: The attractive power of any particular thought is determined by how often you have that thought and by the strength of the feelings or emotions associated with it. The more energy you give to a particular thought, the greater its power to attract its corresponding circumstance into your physical world through the Law of Attraction. Your one-off, passing thoughts do not have the same creative power as your habitual thoughts and beliefs. Remember, that it is of little use to entertain positive thoughts for just a short burst of time each day if you then proceed to think negative or unwanted thoughts for the rest of the day. Your reality is the sum total of all your thoughts.
Use Thought Power to Change Your Life: It is your subconscious mind that is the store house of your deep-seated beliefs and programmes. To change your circumstances and attract to yourself that which you desire, you must learn to programme and re-programme your subconscious mind. Since your mind is one with the all-powerful Universal Mind, the potential power of your subconscious mind is also limitless. The most effective and practical way to programme your subconscious mind for success in all areas of your life is to learn the simple process of creative visualization. It is the technique underlying reality creation, making use of thought power to consciously imagine, create and attract that which you desire. Your imagination is the engine of your thoughts. It converts your thought power into mental images.
Become Aware of Your Thoughts But Not Obsessed: It is important that you learn to be aware of your habitual thoughts and to appropriately adjust them so as to maintain an overall positive mental attitude. However, be careful not to become obsessed with every thought that enters your mind as this would be equally counter-productive, if not more so, than not being aware of them at all. Remember that to obsess over your negative, unwanted thoughts, is to give them power and as the saying goes, what you resist persists. So instead of resisting any of your negative thoughts, simply learn to effortlessly cancel them by replacing them as they arise.
Instantly Replace Unwanted Thoughts: To instantly neutralize the power of a negative thought, calmly and deliberately replace it with its opposite, positive equivalent. For instance if you think to yourself “I’m not good enough, I will never succeed”, mentally replace the thought with “I am good enough and success comes to me easily”. You can also use the “cancel cancel” technique made famous by the Silva Method. Each time you catch yourself thinking an unwanted thought, mentally tell yourself and the Universe “cancel cancel” and immediately follow it up with a positive statement.
Tame Your Dominant Thoughts and the Random Will Follow: It is estimated that the average person has between 12,000 and 70,000 thoughts a day. This is evidence enough to suggest that your goal should not be to control every thought. It is your dominant thoughts and beliefs that you must learn to bring under your conscious control as they are what largely determine your mental attitude. As you do, you will find your random thoughts themselves becoming more positive and more deliberate.
The following words of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha perfectly capture the essence of thought power: “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.”
In a nutshell, your life is the perfect mirror of your thoughts, beliefs and dominant mental attitude. Whether you realise it or not you are already creating your reality through your thought power. Every effect you see in your outside world has its original cause within you – no exceptions. To gain access to the greatest creative power at your disposal, you must learn to control the nature of your habitual thoughts and to align yourself with the One Source of All Power of which you are a part. Your thoughts create your reality – know, internalize and apply this Truth and you will see your life transform in miraculous ways.
By: Tania Kotsos
About the Author:
Tania Kotsos is the founder and author of Mind Your Reality – Your Ultimate Guide to Using Mind Power to Create Your Reality. She has been studying mind power and the nature of reality for the last 15 years.
Go to http://www.mind-your-reality.com to visit Mind Your Reality and learn all about mind power, reality creation, the universal laws, success secrets, relationship advice and much more all for FREE.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Oct
01
Hidden Layers of Reality
Who are we? What is this reality that we’re part of? Why are we here at all? These questions lie at the depths of our being, and their answers – should we ever find them – would dictate the very purpose of our existence.
As a species we have evolved from single-celled organisms into beings that can travel in space, probe the very building blocks of our bodily nature and the universe we inhabit, and create works of art capable of moving us to the core. And yet for all our tremendous mastery of knowledge there appears to be a boundary that we cannot penetrate.
The 18/19th century mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace postulated a super-intelligent “demon” having knowledge of the position and momentum of every particle in the universe. Laplace’s demon also possessed some kind of super computer able to process this vast dataset, thus availing it of the universe’s entire future and past. This presented a gloomy scenario for mankind, as it completely removed the role of free-will. It also opened a can of moral worms with regard to law, crime and punishment (how could someone be punished for committing crimes that were predetermined?)
Then, in the 20th century, along came quantum physics and with it Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. In a nutshell, Heisenberg showed that Laplace’s demon was theoretically impossible, since we can never obtain precise information of the simultaneous position and momentum of any particle. Heisenberg essentially demonstrated a limit to scientific understanding.
Furthermore, the experimentally well-proven quantum theory reveals an inherent randomness in the behavior of the most elementary particles that form the material realm. The great scientist Albert Einstein’s response was that “God does not play dice with the universe.”
Despite the overwhelming evidence for the validity of quantum theory our innate experience, and instinct, tends to concord with Einstein. Our experience of the world is based on deterministic cause and effect; we push the switch, the light comes on… But can both views be right? And can this paradox offer a glimpse into the true nature of reality?
There is a mass of anecdotal evidence of paranormal phenomena, ie happenings that transcend the known laws of science. Raise the subject in just about any gathering and you’ll likely find someone who’s experienced something they couldn’t quite explain. These experiences extend throughout history and across cultures. And interest in the technological information age remains as strong as ever, with a Google search on the term paranormal returning no fewer than 21,400,000 matches.
Might it be such experiences offer a glimpse into reality sufficient to keep us motivated, but not quite enough to encourage abandonment of our earthly mission to return “home” prematurely?
And might the more enlightened beings such as Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed… have enjoyed certain knowledge rather than occasional glimpses of ultimate reality, in order to educate the rest of us via the leading Spiritual models (religions) existing today? Indeed, might these (and other teachers) be different incarnations of the same benevolent entity? The late Pope John Paul said “Though the routes taken may be different, there is but a single goal to which is directed the deepest aspiration of the human Spirit.”
Spiritualist mediums often speak of the earth and Spirit realms co-existing, but at different vibrations (the earth is lower and Spirit higher). Communication between the living and the departed takes place when the medium raises his/her vibration and the Spirit communicator lowers theirs, to the degree that both become aware of the other.
Modern physics has two well-established theories – relativity, which explains what happens on a very big scale, ie the behavior of the cosmos; and quantum mechanics, which explains the very small. Both theories contradict the “common sense” view of reality, and both have striking parallels with descriptions of reality given by ancient Spiritual philosophies.
The problem is that relativity and quantum physics differ, ie the set of laws explaining the very small doesn’t apply to the very large and vice versa. Thus the quest of physics since Einstein has been to find a grand, unified theory that combines relativity and quantum mechanics into an explanation of everything. Though no accepted theory has yet emerged, one of the strongest candidates is superstring theory, which relies on multiple dimensions existing beyond the perceived four of space-time. Might the highest of these dimensions equate to what, over the centuries and across traditions, has been called Spirit?
Whether science will ever produce a single theory that explains everything is debatable. But the fact science is moving to accept multiple dimensions beyond those forming the physical realm in accordance with traditional Spiritual teaching could be significant. A multi-dimensional model could accommodate both the material world we inhabit and the Spiritual plane from which we emanate. The increasing convergence between science and various Spiritual traditions suggests the reality we perceive is but part of all that exists. And this part is ever influenced by events within the higher parts, which in turn are primarily influenced by Spirit.
By: J Finnis
About the Author:
As a species we have evolved from single-celled organisms into beings that can travel in space, probe the very building blocks of our bodily nature and the universe we inhabit, and create works of art capable of moving us to the core. And yet for all our tremendous mastery of knowledge there appears to be a boundary that we cannot penetrate.
The 18/19th century mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace postulated a super-intelligent “demon” having knowledge of the position and momentum of every particle in the universe. Laplace’s demon also possessed some kind of super computer able to process this vast dataset, thus availing it of the universe’s entire future and past. This presented a gloomy scenario for mankind, as it completely removed the role of free-will. It also opened a can of moral worms with regard to law, crime and punishment (how could someone be punished for committing crimes that were predetermined?)
Then, in the 20th century, along came quantum physics and with it Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. In a nutshell, Heisenberg showed that Laplace’s demon was theoretically impossible, since we can never obtain precise information of the simultaneous position and momentum of any particle. Heisenberg essentially demonstrated a limit to scientific understanding.
Furthermore, the experimentally well-proven quantum theory reveals an inherent randomness in the behavior of the most elementary particles that form the material realm. The great scientist Albert Einstein’s response was that “God does not play dice with the universe.”
Despite the overwhelming evidence for the validity of quantum theory our innate experience, and instinct, tends to concord with Einstein. Our experience of the world is based on deterministic cause and effect; we push the switch, the light comes on… But can both views be right? And can this paradox offer a glimpse into the true nature of reality?
There is a mass of anecdotal evidence of paranormal phenomena, ie happenings that transcend the known laws of science. Raise the subject in just about any gathering and you’ll likely find someone who’s experienced something they couldn’t quite explain. These experiences extend throughout history and across cultures. And interest in the technological information age remains as strong as ever, with a Google search on the term paranormal returning no fewer than 21,400,000 matches.
Might it be such experiences offer a glimpse into reality sufficient to keep us motivated, but not quite enough to encourage abandonment of our earthly mission to return “home” prematurely?
And might the more enlightened beings such as Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed… have enjoyed certain knowledge rather than occasional glimpses of ultimate reality, in order to educate the rest of us via the leading Spiritual models (religions) existing today? Indeed, might these (and other teachers) be different incarnations of the same benevolent entity? The late Pope John Paul said “Though the routes taken may be different, there is but a single goal to which is directed the deepest aspiration of the human Spirit.”
Spiritualist mediums often speak of the earth and Spirit realms co-existing, but at different vibrations (the earth is lower and Spirit higher). Communication between the living and the departed takes place when the medium raises his/her vibration and the Spirit communicator lowers theirs, to the degree that both become aware of the other.
Modern physics has two well-established theories – relativity, which explains what happens on a very big scale, ie the behavior of the cosmos; and quantum mechanics, which explains the very small. Both theories contradict the “common sense” view of reality, and both have striking parallels with descriptions of reality given by ancient Spiritual philosophies.
The problem is that relativity and quantum physics differ, ie the set of laws explaining the very small doesn’t apply to the very large and vice versa. Thus the quest of physics since Einstein has been to find a grand, unified theory that combines relativity and quantum mechanics into an explanation of everything. Though no accepted theory has yet emerged, one of the strongest candidates is superstring theory, which relies on multiple dimensions existing beyond the perceived four of space-time. Might the highest of these dimensions equate to what, over the centuries and across traditions, has been called Spirit?
Whether science will ever produce a single theory that explains everything is debatable. But the fact science is moving to accept multiple dimensions beyond those forming the physical realm in accordance with traditional Spiritual teaching could be significant. A multi-dimensional model could accommodate both the material world we inhabit and the Spiritual plane from which we emanate. The increasing convergence between science and various Spiritual traditions suggests the reality we perceive is but part of all that exists. And this part is ever influenced by events within the higher parts, which in turn are primarily influenced by Spirit.
By: J Finnis
About the Author:
Johnny is the editor of new age spirituality – exploring the idea that this life, this world, is not the totality of our existence. In fact, it might be just one small part of something much bigger, just one tiny step along an infinite journey… Have your say on our blog A Spiritual Voice.
Popularity: 1% [?]