The significance of the UFO phenomena:

Introduction:

Human folklore is filled with remarkable tales of gods who wield supernatural powers and pass on higher learning to mankind. For those who are inclined to see the world in a purely materialist manner these tales are generally considered mere myth, or one of a variety of natural explanations are given. Certainly there are valid reasons for taking this view, as it is the easiest (and thus most likely) explanation (see Ockham’s Razor1).

One plausible explanation for these tales is that human history hasn’t been a simple straight line or exponential curve always moving in the one direction, but rather that great civilisations have come and gone. Under such a view, survivors of past advanced civilisations could easily have been considered gods to people who either had no past experience with civilisation and culture, or who had been cut off from it.

The UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) phenomena or UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – as many are now terming it) is in many ways a (more) modern equivalent of the ancient tales of gods from other lands wielding supernatural powers and either seeking to educate or enslave humanity. It is hard to trace the precise origin of this phenomena, as relevant accounts can be found back into all regions of history. However, when we talk of UFO phenomena we generally tend to think of modern accounts from the past 100 years or so.

Certainly from the the 20th century and onwards we have an abundance of personal accounts of encounters with strange lights and/or flying craft (not always disk shaped) in the sky appearing to be intelligently guided, and often accompanied by other strange features (missing time and/or various supernatural elements). In some accounts we also hear about encounters with beings that are thought to be not of this planet (and/or dimension). Some of these encounters are inspiring and uplifting, whilst others are highly disturbing in their nature and implications.

When writing on highly contentious subjects it can be really important to show your sources and discuss the raw evidence. However, I’m not going to really do that here today for a couple of reasons. Firstly, whilst I have been interested in the UFO phenomena for a long time, I have not been collecting sources on it as I go. Secondly, the nature of the source material is that a large percentage of it is highly contentious. That is, whilst I am of the opinion that the subject as a whole is legitimate, individual case files on their own are all potentially suspect, and if there was ever a subject where not everyone can be telling the truth, this is it. Thirdly, it would be a huge work to do so.

I will discuss some phenomena in a general sense and give a few examples, but I’m not going to be able to provide links to all my sources today, along with a discussions of the ins and outs of them. This would require a very lengthy and detailed article (or book), which isn’t what I’m setting out to do today.

So, for the benefit of trying to offer something of value that can be (relatively) easily digested on this topic in a blog format, I will not be diving deeply into individual cases today. Rather, I want to give my own opinions about what all this means, and what its implications are.

Some key points:

Unquestionably, everything about the UFO phenomena is a challenge to common assumptions about what is real. Firstly, we have the simple challenges of having to travel incomprehensibly vast distances across space, and the time required to do so. If we think of interstellar travel simply in terms of having to travel very, very fast for a significant period of time, the challenges are immense (I would therefore suggest that if interstellar and/or intergalactic travel is possible, it would involve the bending of space and/or travel through higher dimension of reality). To be able to accelerate to close to the speed of light would involve significant sustained acceleration (which is problematic on multiple levels) and huge risks of damage, and would still take decades to travel to the nearest star (when considering acceleration and deceleration). Not to mention the problems presented by special relativity.

Secondly, if you read some accounts of UFO encounters you will quickly see they almost always contain supernatural features. That is, they don’t simply seem to be encounters with physical craft and beings who have travelled across vast distances to visit us. Rather, there is almost always strange features present such as disturbances of perception of time, loss of memory, the bending or breaking of the laws of physics (as they are currently understood2), or the presence of something explicitly spiritual or supernatural (such as telepathic communication).

As such, UFO encounters have legitimately been categorised by some as a supernatural or occult phenomenon. If we use the term occult here it is not so much to explicitly define these experiences as being dark in nature (although some definitely appear that way, and in some cases may indeed be so3). Rather, the term occult can simply and literarily mean hidden, so the UFO phenomenon involves many things that are hidden to common human understanding.

Perhaps this is a big part of why there has been such intense skepticism and dismissiveness of the phenomena. That is, if we are to accept that these encounters are indeed with an intelligence that is not of this planet and/or dimension, then this naturally has huge implications for religion, science, politics and essentially everything. If this phenomenon is indeed real, and if humans beings at large accept it as such, then this is huge.

Current Government disclosure and a quick summary of military encounters with UFO’s over the past century:

Up until very recently there seems to have been some sort of informal consensus in the general public that only crazy people believe in UFO’s, due to too many hours reading dubious conspiracy theories and/or taking mind-altering substances. Of course this is an over-generalisation, but certainly this is largely true. Government, media, scientific authorities and society as a whole have largely scoffed at belief in UFO’s. In particular, the belief that the UFO’s originate beyond our planet and/or dimension has been (and is still) largely treated with public disdain.

In the last 12 months there has been a lot of conversation about the US Government looking at recent UFO encounters by its military (who have renamed them UAP’s – perhaps seeking to distance themselves from assumptions of an extra-terrestrial/extra-dimensional nature), and it has seemed that perhaps maybe things might change. Certainly I have heard (and seen) a number of sources say that now we actually have real evidence that something is happening that needs to be explained. As someone who has had at least a casual interest in these matters for some time I have to express that recent revelations are nothing new. Rather, military staff – pilots in particular – have been encountering UFO’s since WW2 (and probably before).

It is well attested that back in WW2, Allied, German and Japanese pilots reported seeing strange craft observing them from a distance and at times flying close by, without ever actually directly interfering with them. The Allied pilots at the time assumed that these craft were some secret German technology, though it was later discovered that the Allied pilots weren’t the only ones experiencing the phenomenon4.

From the Cold War there are countless testimonies from pilots and other military staff regarding extremely strange encounters with UFO’s. Of particular note is the intriguing case that a significant amount of UFO encounters have taken place near or at nuclear facilities (testing grounds, weapons storage facilities etc.). There are even credible and well-documented claims that on multiple occasions UFO’s appeared at facilities holding nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, and somehow enabled or disabled the weapons, and even shut down all power to the site. Whilst all manner of stories can be found in the dark corners of the Internet, many of these stories in question have been recorded publicly as told by military staff, interviewed by real journalists. It appears that whatever or whoever is responsible for these craft, they appear to be very interested (or perhaps concerned) in human development of nuclear weapons.

Over the past 12 months the US Government has publicly admitted to incidents where jet pilots have had daily encounters with unidentified craft flying at great speed and displaying extraordinary manoeuvrability (that appears to defy current understandings of physics), as well as radar staff recording these craft doing the seemingly impossible. Likewise they have released footage taken aboard military jets that show them tracking these craft, along with the audio commentary of the astonished pilots. As far as I am aware this footage has been public for some time (it was previously leaked online); it is only that now the Government has openly admitted it is real.

This is not a new phenomena:

If one looks back in history, we find many sources telling of mysterious lights in the sky, often with similar sounding supernatural features. Regarding more ancient sources for UFO encounters, it is very easy to join in the mockery of those who take these things seriously. We have all seen the endless memes at the expense of George Tsoukalos:

In all seriousness though, once we acknowledge that something is happening now, it is only natural that we consider ancient sources as relevant to the subject. Of course, we must exercise some caution about forcing the UFO and alien encounter narrative onto ancient mythology. It is obviously possible to become obsessed with this conclusion and project it into places where it doesn’t belong. Having noted that however, there are certainly cases whereby the “ancient aliens” theory is a nice fit. One obvious example is the Vimana (flying chariot, vehicle or palace of the gods) in ancient Indian religious literature. These accounts most certainly are relevant if we recognise that something real is happening now. When there is strong, credible evidence of something of a controversial nature, there is then valid reasons to consider weaker, less well- attested or less well-defined evidence as well.

Accounts of civilian Alien encounters:

I am personally of the opinion that the evidence for UFO encounters being real is strong and worthy of serious consideration. A significant part of this stems from the fact that much of the data (or evidence) comes from trained professionals, and the various accounts appear to have an overall consistency to them.

We must recognise there that UFO encounters and claimed Alien encounters (and/or abductions) are not necessarily always the same thing. That is, they are two closely related and often overlapping subjects, but either can exist independent of the other.

One notable case is claimed to have occurred in 1994, when school kids in Zimbabwe saw Aliens get out of a flying saucer and telepathically warned them of the dangers of human technological advances5. This case appears to be both a UFO and Alien encounter. Another example was in 1954 at a Soccer match in Tuscany when players and 10,000 spectators were all awestruck at mysterious lights in the sky (and play apparently stopped)6. In this case it may have been a UFO incident witnessed simultaneously by a large number of civilians.

Aside from a number of notable incidents which involve a large number of civilian witnesses, there are many cases where individuals report personal encounters with beings from other planets and/ or dimensions. Whilst military encounters with UFO’s are often quite strange, these individual encounters are probably far more bizarre.

We could perhaps oversimplify these encounters by separating them into two categories; encounters with benevolent and malevolent beings. In some of these encounters the beings are described as coming across with great warmth, expressing deep concern for the direction of human progress. The message is usually some variation of the following:

Human beings are very rapidly developing in a purely materialist way without the necessary corresponding spiritual development. As such, technological advances are putting our future at great risk, as we have the potential to destroy ourselves and the environment we live in.

Obviously, this appears to correspond very closely with the prevalence of UFO encounters at nuclear sites, and the frequent and repeated UFO encounters amongst military staff. Sometimes

the message also appears to correspond with warnings of climate change and other geological disasters (as claimed by Michel Desmarquet7).

In other examples we hear highly disturbing tales of people being abducted against their will, paralysed, induced into a semi-drugged state (by some unknown means) and violated in a variety of ways (probed, forcibly impregnated, implanted with technological devices etc.). The beings encountered in these tales are described as either cold and indifferent to human emotions, or outright malevolent, treating human beings as merely a lower life form (like humans may treat an insect).

It is hard to know what to make of these reports. It is obviously very easy to simply dismiss them all as being fictitious, and viewed individually in isolation I can certainly understand the logic to such a dismissal. However, viewed collectively as a whole, and particularly in light of the reality that a large body of evidence exists for UFO phenomenon from the hands of trained military professionals (amongst others), I think we need to consider that at least some of these tales have some truth to them.

Possible explanations:


There are obviously many different explanations that can be given for the range of phenomenon being covered here. Science as it is currently defined only considers natural (material) explanations. The method of science (methodological naturalism) presupposes only natural explanations. This has been quite fine for dealing with material phenomenon, but it naturally precludes science from being able to investigate subjects that if taken literally would imply something of a spiritual and/or supernatural nature. There is no questioning the fact that modern science has indeed been incredibly successful at achieving rapid development of human understanding and the subsequence technology that has emerged from it. However, if we have defined science not merely as a process of coming up with a hypothesis and then putting it to the test and holding it up to scrutiny, but also as bringing in metaphysical naturalism (materialism/ atheism8) through the back door, then we preclude science from being able to study subjects like UFO and claims of Alien encounters, and also NDE’s (Near Death Experiences) and ESP (Extra- Sensory Perception) etc.

If science as it is currently defined precludes the possibility that UFO/Alien phenomenon are literarily real, then science is unfit for the study of them. I would think it is obvious that to study UFO and/or Alien phenomenon properly, you must go into the study with an open mind and balanced scales, equally open to multiple possibilities and willing to let the evidence lead you towards likely conclusions.

With this established, we should note that obviously there are many organisations and people that are highly resistant to acceptance of any part of UFO/Alien phenomenon as real. Certainly we must consider all possibilities, and indeed natural possibilities are likely in at least some cases. There is no question that there are many ways that even trained professionals can be fooled by some unknown or misunderstood natural phenomena, let alone civilians. There is likewise no doubt that human beings have a virtually endless capacity for fraud and/or madness. There are countless examples for all of these explanations.

Having recognised this however, I would state that some of the natural explanations that are presented for well known UFO encounters are nothing less than ridiculous. That is, it is quite clear that in many cases the natural explanations that are given are presented not because they are the most likely, but rather because the person (or people) presenting them cannot allow for the possibility that there is an extraterrestrial and/or supernatural phenomenon at work.

I have read many accounts from trained professionals of their chaise (in a plane or car) of a UFO in which the report is dismissed as caused by a weather balloon, or a fixed object in the sky (a planet or star) etc. For example the “Gorman dogfight”9, in which USAF pilot George Gorman pursued a UFO for close to an hour. The official USAF dismissed the UFO as a weather balloon. Are we seriously to believe that a USAF pilot wouldn’t know the difference between a weather balloon (which could only be blown about at relatively slow speeds by the wind), and an intelligently guided craft travelling at great speed (far beyond his own capacity), and able to repeatedly out-manoeuvre him?

I must say that in this case the official explanation of the USAF is absurd, and almost assumes that we are simply stupid. This is not a serious explanation, but rather a mere public dismissal of a serious incident without consideration. Of course the USAF might have thought that the public couldn’t handle the truth, or they could have thought it wasn’t in their interests to disclose the nature of the incident to the public. Or the people involved may have blinded by their own personal biases, and thus precluded a serious consideration of the incident.

This is no isolated case (read some other cases10). Rather, this is common when examining matters of a spiritual/supernatural manner. Often it is argued that the possibility of the phenomenon being real is too absurd to actually take seriously. Of course natural explanations must be considered first, as “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. But, as above we find in some cases that naturalistic explanations cannot be taken seriously, because they weren’t the result of serious consideration but rather personal bias (or a deliberate cover-up).

A very legitimate point can be made that advanced technology far beyond the general understanding can be mistaken for magic. Certainly it is fair to assume that some claims of people witnessing a UFO are actually cases of people observing military craft (including top- secret “black projects”, such as the B2 stealth Bomber). It is certainly conceivable that all UFO’s could have a terrestrial origin. In many ways this should be the default conclusion, unless strong evidence otherwise is presented (which I personally think a serious consideration in this case will support).

Certainly the default position of the worlds Governments has been to presume that UFO encounters by its military were encounters with advanced craft from other nations. Perhaps in some cases this may be so, but if you actually read the accounts of pilots and radar staff it is clear that these crafts (the UFO’s) possess technology far beyond any known civilisation on earth at the moment. It doesn’t make sense to imagine that Russia, China, Germany or Britain could possess such technology (and have done so for a considerable amount of time) and yet not also be using such advanced scientific knowledge in other areas of its nation in a way that would make it stand out entirely from the worlds nations.

A plausible alternative is that there exists survivors of earlier advanced civilisations who (for whatever reason) have chosen to remain mostly hidden from the world. Such people could be hiding out in bases within the earth, in inaccessible mountains, or in the depths of the ocean. This possibility cannot be discounted, and seems to me to the most plausible alternative to the extra- terrestrial and/or extra-dimensional origin.

The UFO and Alien phenomenon have been seen as quite challenging by many established religions. For example, orthodox Christianity sees the spiritual world in a dualistic way, in that there are simply only divine and demonic beings. Being raised in a conservative Christian family I was told that aliens were actually demons. Certainly, given the nature of some of the personal accounts one can understand this conclusion is not completely unreasonable.

Many years ago I read a book by Graham Hancock titled “Supernatural”11, which was largely about the use of psychoactive drugs in primitive cultures, and their possible role in bringing about evolution in the human psyche. He cited a work (I can’t recall the author) which argued that UFO and Alien phenomenon were a modern-day manifestation of the fairy lore. Whilst many of us have grown up hearing tales about fairies as merely benign and benevolent elemental spirits, there is much folklore that tells of them abducting and generally messing with people in a very similar way to current tales of Alien abductions.

Again, it is plausible that there is a common cause behind the two phenomenon. Having noted this, of course it should be noted that claims of alien (or fairy) abductions if considered in isolation could all be the result of fraud, mental illness or just considered as nothing more than myth.

However, given that there is tangible evidence for that UFO phenomenon are real, I am inclined to think they are at least worthy of consideration.

What do I think it all means?:

I have written before that I am seeking to differentiate between subjects of which I quite confident (like religion and general spirituality), and others in which I recognise that I simply cannot possibly know enough to reach definitive conclusions. Even in those topics like religion and spirituality where I have put in significant time and effort to compare competing views, there are still huge limitations to what I can possibly know as a single human being. It is more about being confident in which overall views and perspectives to support and which to reject (and why to reject them), then claiming to know everything relevant to these topics. Likewise, it is more about being confident about some very specific sub-topics (like the influence of the Egyptian cult of Osiris and the Greek Mystery religions on Christianity), rather than claiming to know everything about religion and spirituality as a whole.

So, having conceded the need to be cautious about reaching too strong a conclusion without being able to have enough knowledge to justify this confidence, what do I actually think? To start with, I think if ever there was a subject to be cautious about, this is it. Particularly, if ever there was a question to be cautious of, it is:

If Earth is being visited by Aliens, are they good or bad?

So, let’s break it down. Intelligently piloted craft with technology far beyond our own are deliberately making themselves known to the military of major nations. In particular, they seem to be particularly interested in all of our nuclear programs. If these beings piloting these craft were hostile towards any particular nation or towards humanity as a whole, it appears that they would have no trouble defeating or even completely destroying us.

So, it seems unlikely to me that these craft are a military risk to us. If anything, they appear to be peacekeepers, and do indeed appear to be trying to warn us of the great risk we pose to ourselves and to our environment as a whole (though some in the military have – I think falsely – interpreted it the other way round12). Nuclear weapons possess the possibility of not just killing large numbers of people in a single blast (I recall looking into this, and a typical nuclear armed ballistic missile could kill 10 million people in a heartbeat), but given enough of them, there is the capacity to induce nuclear winter, which would essentially destroy the Earth’s environment for all life (and we have come very close on multiple occasions, particularly during the Cold War13).

Never before has humanity had the potential to destroy itself. All our cleverness, all our scientific and technological advances, and we are now clever enough to do literarily the stupidest, most insane and most evil thing within our reach. We can kill not only one person, but essentially everyone and everything.

Everything about the UFO phenomena screams to us that common assumptions about the world are wrong. That is not to say that we abandon everything we think we know about the world and start from scratch. Rather, it simply means that our current understanding is only a fraction of what is truly out there. Our current theories are approximations that are good enough in some instances, but not in others. What we think to be true is only relatively so, not absolutely.

Everything about the UFO phenomena challenges the assumptions of a classical and materialistic worldview. These craft clearly have the capacity to mess with gravity, and it is only reasonable to conclude that they are messing with space and time. Likewise, if we accept that at least some of the Alien encounters are legitimate, then we also must conclude that these beings possess not just highly advanced scientific knowledge, but also capacities that we consider spiritual and/or paranormal.

I must say that it is not that there was never any evidence for these things before the modern UFO phenomena, or that there is not evidence for these things outside of the phenomenon as a whole.

If you are open to the consideration of these things, there is abundant evidence of the great weirdness of our world that can be found in many different fields.

Much of this evidence can be found within Physics, which is supposed to be the hardest of the hard sciences, and probably the most fundamental of all. Starting with special relativity, the idea that space and time are interrelated is already very weird. This in itself overturns the common assumption that time and space are simply the absolute markers of our three dimensional physical experience. The idea that the universe presents a speed limit (that of light), and as you try and approach it mass increases up to infinity is itself incredibly weird. That travelling at such speeds plays with the relative experience of time is even weirder. That anything travelling faster than light would technically be travelling back in time is even stranger still.

When it comes to quantum physics, all the classical materialistic assumptions all get thrown out the window. Matter is no longer solid, but made up almost entirely of empty space. What remains as something (other than space) itself is immaterial, it can disappear and reappear in a different location, and doesn’t need to pass through or around a barrier to go from one side to another (quantum tunnelling). Quantum particles display both particle and wave like natures, depending on how they are being studies (particle wave duality).

The full weirdness of this last phenomena (particle wave duality) isn’t often discussed, as its implications were extremely controversial for leading physicists in the early-mid 20th century, and it has become unpopular to discuss its implications in modern academia. Whilst many leading physicists in the early-mid 20th century took seriously the philosophical implications of particle- wave duality, materialistic assumptions proved to be a barrier to the subject. That is, the science naturally led towards a spiritual or idealist (idealism being the philosophic view that consciousness – rather than matter – is the substance of reality) worldview. In recent times more advanced experiments (see the quantum eraser and especially the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment14) have validated the radical implications of this phenomenon.

Quantum entanglement by itself is mighty weird, but even weirder still is the delayed choice entanglement swapping experiment15, which again shows the immaterial nature of matter and the relative nature of matter, space and time.

Back to the subject at hand, the UFO and Alien phenomenon clearly involves knowledge of such things that repeatedly shows us how little human beings currently understand about our place in the universe. Having recognised this, the possibility that Earth is actually being visited by beings from other planets and/or dimensions is not just reasonable, but highly likely. Whilst journalists, scientists, politicians and your friends and family like to scoff at these things as merely crazy talk, we truly need to take this seriously16.

Consider the implications of humanity coming into communication with beings from other planets and higher dimensions. Consider what this could mean for our future. If we think modern scientific advances have alleviated suffering for humanity, imagine what we could do with the level of scientific knowledge that these beings possess?

Human beings often think of ourselves as being at the pinnacle of a long line of human evolution and/or history. Whether it is our religious or political affiliation, our culture, race or gender or scientific worldview, people everywhere like to think of themselves as the superior ones, unlike the others. Tribalism of all sorts has been the norm throughout recorded history, and still exists today (even amongst those that claim to be against it17.

For humanity to see itself as a whole as simply a small part of a galactic or universal family would truly put our petty tribalism into its correct context. That is, our differences shouldn’t seek to divide us, but rather we should see ourselves/each other as all working together in cooperation, with complementary skills18.

I think this last point on cooperation rather than competition is a key one here. Whilst there is certainly room in life for healthy competition (sports, scientific development, business etc.) this whole hostile competition between nations is probably the most toxic and dangerous in human history. As human history is filled with wars between families, tribes and nations, human beings are often suspicious of others, and think they have to attack preemptively before their opponent attacks them. We also have the undeniable reality of human greed, that believes that it can have more by taking from or dominating others. Likewise, for ideological reasons sometimes leaders believe it is their duty to rule over others. We thus have a situation whereby nations devote massive budgets to their military, stockpiling doomsday weapons, both in fear of others, and at other times with the desire to spread their Empire.

For me, it seems that the UFO phenomenon clearly announces that this must end. That is, we cannot continue to stockpile weapons and devote our resources to military developments at the expense of peaceful scientific advances. Likewise, we cannot continue to lust after the resources of other nations and believe in the false idea that we will have more by conquering others. The opposite is true. How many times in history have the people of a nation suffered due to the lust of its leaders? Even when a nation succeeds in conquering another people, there is a cost to the Soul that is never worth it. How many people we see in the world today thriving materially, but being deprived of true, inner wealth and happiness19.

In my opinion, worldwide disclosure is needed to show people from all nations equally the insanity of our current trajectory. If Western nations were to dissolve their military’s overnight, it is highly likely that Communist China would invade in a heartbeat. Hence we have quite a lot of work to do before we can be ready to join a larger, cosmic family beyond this planet.

In this sense, human beings are still only just at the kindergarten level of cosmic evolution. Sure, we have come a long way from an animal existence; however we have a long, long way to go. These beings that are visiting us clearly have the capacity to help us in ways we cannot possibly even imagine. Perhaps we should listen to these warnings and find a way to work together.

So, the above being so, I can’t finish this without recognising the darker side of UFO and Alien phenomenon. It is certainly true that many of the stories told in this field present humans being harmed in various ways in (and after) the encounter. This brings up very difficult questions about the question of suffering and evil; the great enigma which human beings (and religion/spirituality in particular) struggles to answer.

We know in our human experience that there exists great extremes of the potential for suffering and joy, for bondage and freedom, for injustice and equity, for toiling and thriving and for hatred and love. Certainly human beings have shown this duality in the different ways we live, in the way we treat each other and in the civilisations we create. Clearly if higher (spiritual) beings exist (as I believe they do), then there is a degree of non-interference at the heart of a cosmic code. If a Supreme Being exists (as I believe), then It is not an interfering personal Deity, but something else.

An analogy I have been leaning towards is that when someone buys a computer game they would be disappointed if they mastered it in one night. Likewise, they would be highly disappointed if at the first sign of frustration at the difficulty they were handed all the cheat codes. It seems to me that help is given to us from above in more subtle ways that meet our immediate needs.

It is a valid question as to how far a civilisation can develop in a purely materialistic sense without a corresponding spiritual (or psychological and ethical if you prefer) development? That is, is there a limit to how far we can evolve outwardly without also evolving inwardly? I don’t pretend to know the answer to these questions.

It then should be asked whether perhaps there are many different races of beings from different planets and dimensions that are visiting Earth now? That is, perhaps they aren’t all on the same page morally and ethically? Perhaps there are some that want to work together and help us, whilst others are rogue civilisations that only care about their own interests and will happily interfere with us for their own gain? I do personally suspect the latter; that there is more than one group of beings coming here now, with more than one motivation.

We are however now entering into highly speculative territory. I will leave this conversation with the following opinion:

When entering any exploration beyond the normal confines of material experience, always do so with a pure heart and mind.

Of course, I also suggest living all areas of human life with a pure heart and mind. In the same way that you don’t want to go alone down a dark alley in a seedy part of a big city late at night, you don’t want to go messing with things of a supernatural nature without having the best intentions at heart. There are countless stories of people that have made this mistake and suffered greatly as a consequence.

I will leave this here for today. May our hearts and minds be open to truth, wherever it leads us. Peace.


1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

2 I have long been saying that human beings are far too quick to express certainty on things they barely understand (https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/10/how-do-we-really- know-what-is-true/ ). We are also far too quick to proclaim some things to be absolutely true when they are only relatively true. Likewise, often our understanding of some facet of reality (or reality as a whole) is ultimately only an approximation, and thus gives us accurate enough results in some situations, but not in others.

3 See Aleister Crowley, Lam and the Zeta Grey Alien phenomena: https://www.vice.com/en/article/ mvpvyn/magickal-stories-lam.

4 There are tales that the Germans had been experimenting with flying disk designs during WW2, though this isn’t something I can find verify in any way. It seems however that the US did indeed build prototypes of a flying disk during the Cold War.

5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TukvVnadRic (See a short clip from Joe Rogan about this), the BBC have covered this as well: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-57749238

6 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29342407.

7 https://www.amazon.com.au/Abduction-Planet-Also-Available-Under/dp/0646159968

8 We should note that some may believe in supernatural and/or spiritual subjects but do not believe in a single Creative intelligence we call God (or insist upon defining it otherwise, despite having much in common with the general concept of God as seperate from specific sectarian definitions). Hence the term atheism can be misleading. Thus naturalism/materialism are more specific and accurate.

9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorman_dogfight.

10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightings

11 https://www.amazon.com.au/Supernatural-Meetings-Ancient-Teachers-Mankind/dp/ 1932857842

12 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15154808/ufo-swarm-us-military-nuclear-weapons-world- war-3/ ,https://www.dnaindia.com/viral/report-aliens-ufos-took-control-of-nuclear-weapons-can- start-world-war-iii-ex-us-air-force-officer-2915293

13 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200807-the-nuclear-mistakes-that-could-have-ended- civilisation

14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser 15 https://arxiv.org/vc/arxiv/papers/1203/1203.4834v1.pdf

16 Ex-Astronaut Edgar Mitchell claims to have personally witnessed UFO’s over a military base, and to have spoken personally to many people from military bases who verify these stories. Nevertheless, many in the media treat him as a sad, pathetic conspiracy theories: Edgar Mitchell from Apollo 14: https://www.gq.com/story/astronaut-who-walked-on-the-moon-claims-aliens- came-to-earth-to-prevent-nuclear-war and https://www.iflscience.com/space/apollo-astronaut- says-aliens-prevented-nuclear-war-earth/ . I should note that there are many other high-profile people worldwide that have made similar claims: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/20/ worldwide-ufo-cover-up-is-real-claims-former-canadian-defence-minister_n_7100202.html , https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgzg97/israels-former-space-security-chief-says-aliens-have- prevented-nuclear-war

17 Re: The identity politics of the political far-left, which is increasingly becoming mainstream in Western society.

18 https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2021/08/29/we-dont-have-to-be-identical-to-be- equal/

19 Just to be clear, I am not saying that material success is incompatible with inner wealth. Rather, I am just making a point about achieving material success at the expense of ones Soul.

My thoughts on Free Will:

For much of my life I took it for granted that human beings possess free will, the power to make decisions and experience the consequences of them.  When I first encountered arguments against the existence of free will, I almost wasn’t sure what to make of them, as if they couldn’t actually be serious.  It turns out however that there are many people that are extremely serious about their belief that human beings do not possess free will, to the point that some of them cannot understand those of us that do believe in it.

Certainly it is clear to me that most human beings act unconsciously much of the time.  That is, we repeat patterns of behaviour that we have learned through the conditioning of our family, education, culture, religion and general life experiences etc.  As I have grown I have seen more and more how much of human behaviour is unconsciously driven, and how little of it is consciously directed.  Certainly then I will concede that human will isn’t as free as we like to think it is.  However, I consider full rejection of free will to be a completely different matter, along with full rejection of moral responsibility.

Plurality of truth is one of the basic foundations for my overall worldview, and I have been writing on this for well over 10 years now (see the following article for my thoughts on the matter^[i]).  In short, I believe it is essential to make use of both relative and absolute conceptions of truth to make sense of reality and hold a cohesive worldview.  There are many people that profess to hold exclusively to one end alone (and thus reject all relativity or absolutes).  However, there are countless real life examples that demonstrate the necessity of both.

We know that physical matter is not solid, but made up almost entirely of empty space.  It is this fact that allows for much of the modern technology we now take for granted (like Wi-Fi signals passing through walls etc.).  And yet we experience the material world as being solid (aside from liquids, gases and plasmas obviously), and this experience cannot simply be downplayed, denied or rejected.  There is clearly room for both perspectives here, although they could be thought of as contradictory in isolation.  Whilst there are many examples that demand only relative or absolute applications, the complexity of life as a whole naturally demands we use both.

In the case of free will, many different thinkers have argued for a complete rejection of free will on grounds of materialistic interpretations of science (neuroscience in particular), spiritual/religious grounds and complex philosophical grounds.  To be quite frank here, I have never been particularly interested in following these arguments too closely.  I cannot claim to have invested significant periods of time to comparing different sides (though I did purchase and read Sam Harris’s book/article on the topic).  Rather, my thoughts here are my gut feelings, my natural leanings you could say on the subject.

I am writing this today as a friend online recently raised the subject in relation to my article on Ravi Zacharias that I shared^[ii].  Obviously it is very difficult to avoid interspersing different elements of ones overall worldview into a conversation on a specific topic (everyone does it in ordinary conversation).  In this example I obviously do it deliberately, as this is my personal blog and I am openly giving out my thoughts on many topics.

For me personally, belief in the experience of free will is part of the foundation for a coherent perspective on life.  Many people disagree however, hence when discussing any number of other subjects it often occurs that someone will take issue with some of your underlying beliefs about reality, as these have some affect on the direct topic at hand.  Hence, I thought I would publish this here to make my own thoughts on the subject open to all.

Materialistic/scientific reasons for rejecting Free Will:

I have thus far encountered three main arguments for the total rejection of free will.  The first is based on the interpretation of some findings from neuroscience.  Please note I have very deliberately stated the interpretation of here, as I will argue that we need to be very clear on the difference between philosophy and science.

Firstly though, it is relevant here to give a brief summary of some relevant information to understand the complexity of this subject.  I published an article back in July 2015 as an introduction to my views on the subject^[iii], and I will again explain a few snippets here.

It is quite clear that there is some sort of causal relationship between the physiological processes within the brain and our subjective experience of mind.  Certain chemical and electrical reactions correspond with psychological experiences.  The question then is what is the nature of this relationship?

We can quickly summarise by explaining two different types of brain/mind causality: Downward/mental causation and upward/physical causation.  Downward causation here implies consciousness or mind having its own ability to cause changes in the biological processes of the body.  An example would be deliberately choosing a sexual thought, which then sets forth physical reactions in the brain and body.  Upward causation is changes in the biological processes of the body, which then create a change in the subjective experience of mind.  An example would be after drinking several glasses of wine, the alcohol that has been introduced to the bloodstream creates obvious changes in the subjective experience of mind.

I would personally argue that we experience causation to go both ways^[iv].  There are countless examples of both upward and downward causation, so it only makes sense to accept both as being experientially real.  In Western philosophy this is known as “interactionism”^[v].  I would point out though that my own personal views on the topic are not derived from Western philosophy, so my thoughts here do not owe anything to Descartes or other well-known Western philosophers.

It could be said that human beings generally hold an unspoken assumption that mind and matter are two distinctly different things, and this view is known as dualism in the philosophy of mind.  There are however many different views on this matter, and I will briefly discuss two diametrically opposed views, each of which is essentially monistic.

A leading philosophical worldview today is known as metaphysical naturalism, which we can simply call naturalism, materialism or atheism for short (though atheism can be a misleading title^[vi]).  Naturalism states that there is only matter (and perhaps the laws that govern it), and that no such thing as mind or consciousness exists aside from matter.  Naturalism thus perceives intelligence as being an example of emergence, that being something that emerges from the biological processes in the body and brain.  Ultimately, naturalism defines consciousness as an epiphenomena, a secondary effect of matter that only appears to exist as a distinct substance in its own right.

Through the confusion and conflation of methodological naturalism (part of the method of modern science) and metaphysical naturalism (materialism), many people believe that this perspective is the Scientific worldview (as I wrote in my previously cited article on Science and Spirituality).  That is, many scientists, philosophers and lay people believe that materialism is established by Science, similar to Heliocentrism, Plate tectonics and Biological evolution.

A diametrically opposite view (which I personally ascribe to) is known by Western philosophers as monistic idealism (though the view isn’t necessarily Western in origin, having ancient roots in the East).  In this view there is only one substance in reality, and that is Consciousness.  By its nature it is unlimited and infinite (without dimension – beyond space) and eternal (timeless – beyond time), it naturally creates life and is unchanging love and peace.  This perspective views all creation as God’s cosmic dream, comparable in some ways to the personal dreams that exist within individual minds during sleep.  When I sleep at night I perceive myself as a character within my dream, interacting with other characters in a timeline and landscape.  In truth, all of this occurs only within my mind.  My character, the other characters, the landscape, all objects are only consciousness.  Within my mind time and space may bend and warp, and are relative to the space in which they are created (my mind).

Neuroscience and the “readiness potential”:

In 1964 two German scientists discovered that brain activity could be recorded prior to voluntary muscle movement (see the “readiness potential”^[vii]).  This experiment was later expanded upon and repeated over many decades by researchers across the globe.  In the 1980’s an American Neuroscientist by the name of Benjamin Libet did a series of experiments that appeared to show readiness potential before a subject was consciously aware of making a decision.  As a result, some thinkers have argued that the brain makes decisions as a purely physical apparatus, and our experience of a psychological self only thinks (or believes) it does so.  According to this view, the brain makes a decision and then a moment later we believe that we consciously choose what to do so.  Hence, it has been argued that we do not truly make our own decisions, and that our sense of free will is an illusion.

This is an interesting experiment, and if the methodology is sound then we must consider its implications.  My initial exposure with this evidence was presented in a way that made it seem that there was no contrary evidence or arguments.  Hence, there are many scientists and/or philosophers that seem to consider this an open and shut case.  However, there are in fact other scientists and philosophers that dispute the findings of these experiments and the conclusions that are commonly drawn from them.

As I am quite new to this subject myself and I haven’t invested significant time in comparing arguments and counter-arguments back-and-forth, I am going to simply link two articles below in the endnotes^[viii] and give a very quick summary here of their content before moving on.

The first article by Steve Taylor is very short and concise, and mentions a number of criticisms that have been presented against Libet’s original experiment, along with some modified versions of the experiment which have presented potentially contrary findings (such as finding readiness potential when there is no movement, or even before images are presented for the subject to make a decision upon). Also, he also briefly mentions the possibility that decision making originates beyond the conscious level of the mind, and argues that this doesn’t imply that we haven’t made a decision, as the unconscious is still part of ones self^[ix].

The second article by Bahar Gholipour explains an argument that what has been interpreted as readiness potential is simply rising and falling brain activity (or waves of neural activity), and that human beings naturally tend to make decisions at the peaks of these waves.  If this is true then readiness potential would simply be the rising of the neural activity before it peaks, rather than the brain making a decision before becoming consciously aware of it.  In support of this conclusion he cites an experiment on monkeys, which showed correlations between monkeys brain activity prior to data being presented and their later choice.

Furthermore, he cites a new study that included a control condition where the subjects didn’t move and used AI to exclude “brain noise”.  The study apparently only showed evidence of a decision 150 milliseconds before the movement, corresponding with the subjective experience of making a conscious decision, and appearing to refute Libet’s findings.

So, clearly there are scientists that dispute the claim that neuroscience has proven that human beings do not possess free will.  As with any subject being debated, it would be necessary to compare arguments and counterargument from multiple sides to really come to a proper understanding.  For today I am going to leave this here and move on to looking at free will from a more general, philosophical perspective.

As stated before, it is quite obvious that there is a correspondence between the physiology of the body/brain and our “internal” experience.  In all experiences that we have there are corresponding patterns in the brain and body.  Various meditation practices produce consistent changes in the brain, nervous and endocrine systems.  When people pray, scientists can register corresponding changes in electrical activity in the brain.

The same is also true outside of spiritual experiences.  When someone experiences fear or anger there are corresponding changes in the brain and body.  When a person feels love there are reliable responses in the brain that release “feel good” chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine.

Again though, internal experiences can also be stimulated by “hot-wiring” the body’s chemistry, through consummation of medicine/drugs.  To take some examples from the realms of banned substances, consumption of MDMA (Ecstasy) floods the brain with serotonin, creating the subjective experience of euphoria (ecstasy – hence the name) and deep love.  Likewise, consumption of DMT creates radical changes in brain chemistry that creates internal experiences that have some correspondences or overlap with advanced meditative states (ego death, transcendence of time and space, expanded/trans-dimensional sensory perception)^[x].

I don’t feel that one can ultimately answer the question as to whether in reality causality only goes in one direction (upwards from matter, or downwards from spirit) or both directions (as we experience), without turning to a large-scale case for an overall worldview.  It is often the case that the same evidence can be interpreted from multiple perspectives, dependent upon various presumptions and relationship with myriad other fields of study.

It is very difficult to separate individual topics from ones overall worldview.  In theory at least, an overall worldview should be cohesive and able to elegantly explain all the myriad different subjects contained within it. Ideally, there should not be any circular reasoning involved, in which various parts of a worldview cannot stand on their own, but rely upon mutually related presumptions or assumptions.  In practice however, it is very difficult to have the level of understanding and self-awareness required to be fully aware of how much and how little one truly knows about the things we consider to be true (as I recently wrote^[xi]).

This may sound like a bit of a cop out, but it seems to me that to go beyond our immediate experience and perception of bi-directional causality in the mind-body and try and gain a more reliable perspective, it is therefore necessary to undertake a large-scale conversation about science, spirituality and philosophy as a whole.  To restate, there seems to be equal evidence for upward and downward causation, and overwhelming evidence for the experiential reality of both.  I’m not sure if this topic can be resolved simply on it’s own merits.

Certainly though, the trend in current scientific and medical circles is to look to brain chemistry as the cause of internal experiences.  As noted before, it seems to me that metaphysical naturalism came in the back door with methodological naturalism, and it is thus being taken as a philosophical presumption that underlies much interpretation of modern science and medicine.

Different levels of consciousness in the Self:

I have argued that we shouldn’t necessarily presuppose materialism as a philosophical lens that underlies interpretation of scientific data.  Having noted above that there may be reason to reject the findings of Libet’s experiments, let us consider a philosophical response to the standard interpretation of his studies. So, let us assume we do indeed have repeated experiments that show biological processes apparently preceding the internal experience of making a choice.  Given the materialistic lens of many modern scientists and philosophers, the standard interpretation is that the experience of making a choice is an illusion, and that it is in fact the brain that makes decisions before we are aware of it.

I would like to suggest that there is a plausible alternative that maintains the primacy of consciousness, and it is surprising to me that I haven’t seen more mention of it when reading on this subject (I don’t recall Sam Harris mentioning it at all in his book).  This will essentially be the main part of my response on the subject.  It appears self-evident to many of us (myself included) that experientially, there are various layers (or dimensions) to consciousness. That is, whilst I personally espouse a monistic worldview (as an absolute viewpoint), it is clear that in our experience (the relative viewpoint) there are multiple levels to reality.  There may not be strict defining lines between them (so they may be part of a continuum), but certainly the point stands. If this is the case, then some of our decision making will come from beyond the surface level of consciousness (as argued by Steve Taylor), but the deeper levels of us is still us.

Relevant experiences from dreaming:

It seems self-evident to me that there is much to consciousness that is beyond the normal waking state.  Anybody that experiences vivid recollection of their night-time dreams and/or the experience of lucid dreaming should be able to attest to this.  Likewise, anybody with personal experience of altered states of consciousness (whether attained through spiritual practices, consumption of entheogens or near death experiences) should be able to attest that they have experienced vastly expanded states of being that give access to far greater intelligence than available in the “normal” waking state.

I think some examples from my personal experience might be relevant here.  I have always had a very vivid dream life, and I have experienced lucid dreaming throughout most of my life^[xii].  It is common for me to be able to observe a part of my mind thinking the dream into experience.  That is, I experience myself as a part of consciousness that it silently witnessing another part of my consciousness that is thinking, and the thoughts are taking shape as the dream.  I can then choose to interfere and override the other part of my dreaming consciousness and change the course of the dream.  Or, I can simply watch it, without being fully identified with it (as in a “normal” dream, when you experience yourself as a subject or character within a dreamscape and situation).

In a similar manner I have also experienced retaining full consciousness whilst falling asleep, both into dreaming and dreamless sleep.  In the former case it involves having full waking consciousness and being completely aware of the shift in my reality.  In the latter case it has been more like an out of body experience where part of me is watching the other part of me in deep, dreamless sleep.

The main difference between lucid and “regular” dreaming is that in lucid dreaming you have a degree of self-awareness where you realise/remember that you are generally associated with a body/mind that is currently laying asleep on a bed, and that the experience you are currently having is an internal dream.  By comparison, in “regular” dreaming you are completely identified with the character and circumstances within the dream, and you have little to no awareness of your life outside of it.  During lucid dreams I can fly, make objects levitate and manipulate the “reality” of the dreamscape at will, just to name a few features that differentiate them from normal dreams and waking consciousness.

It is also common for me that once asleep I can remember a whole series of other dreams that I have had over many years.  It is as if there is a parallel long-term memory that is activated, that connects my dreams over time.  I have heard people that have experience with psychedelics/entheogens describing a similar phenomenon, whereby they can only remember certain features of the experience whilst in the altered state, and as soon as they revisit it they remember features of previous “trips”.

Another aspect of my personal experiences with dreaming that I think is relevant here is that of precognition.  I’m not sure how old I was when I first became aware that my dreams often foreshadowed circumstances of my waking life.  I seem to recall becoming aware of this in my teens (perhaps earlier), but certainly it became abundantly clear from my mid-20’s and onwards, once I started pursuing a spiritual path.  I often dream of unique circumstances that generally come to pass within a week or so of the initial dream.  Most often they come about the next day (after waking), but occasionally they take a week or two to come to fruition.

Obviously a great deal of critical thinking and self-awareness is required to make these sorts of claims.  It is obviously all too easy to deceive oneself with delusions of grandeur, or to seek patterns in random events.  Hence, I don’t present my own experiences of precognition with the intention of trying to convince anybody else that the phenomenon is real, or that there is anything special about me (there is not, these experiences are very common).  These experiences are evidence for me of the objective reality of spirituality.  Everyone has to have their own experiences to know this for themselves.

So, the reason I mention them here is that they have significant implications for the subject of free will.  Firstly, they validate the view that human consciousness is not limited to the physical body, but rather “flows out” into a deeper intelligence.  In the dream state (and other non-ordinary states of consciousness) many of us can access information that is beyond the scope of our waking mind.

Secondly, and perhaps more disturbingly, it implies that some events are becoming highly probable before they occur in the physical world.  The full implications of this are quite shocking when truly thought through.  About 12 months ago I had quite a vivid dream at the start of a week (Sunday night perhaps) which contained two distinct events.  Both of these came to pass within 30 mins of each other the following Friday.

To accept this particular dream as precognition it required me to accept that many precise details of my day were extremely high in probability (or certain) a full week in advance.  The timing of when I would leave work, exactly what would take place at home and precisely when I would leave to go to the shops were all essential for me to witness the fulfilment of a dream.  Likewise, it also involved the coordination of a number of other people being in a precise location at a precise time.  The full coordination of all these factors is beyond the scope of human intelligence.

To accept that precognition can be a real phenomena implies that the actions of countless individuals can be known well in advance by a cosmic intelligence.  This implies that we aren’t all separate individual beings like we think we are.  Rather, we could perhaps be like trees, joined through our roots in the ground that make up the Forest as a whole, intelligent entity in its own right.  So, the phenomenon implies a higher order that is greater than the individual experience of personal will and choice.

These are just a number of examples from dreaming that I think are relevant here.  There are many other examples that could be given from altered states of consciousness, particularly through meditation and the use of psychedelics that would be highly relevant.  However, I am aware that what I am writing here is intended as a blog post, not a book.  Hence, I will leave out much of what I would like to cover for the sake of readability.

Being the Witness to the Mind:

For most of humanity, our sense of identity is conflated with our body, our mind and our personal life circumstances.  When we feel cold we don’t say, “I feel cold”; rather we tend to say, “I am cold”.  When we experience pain we don’t say, “I am experiencing pain”; rather we say, “I am hurt”.  There is no recognition of space between the phenomena that we are aware of, and ourself, that which is aware (the Self).  Likewise, most of us do not differentiate between our thought processes and our awareness of them.  Hence, we mostly believe that our thoughts are essential to our self.

Through meditation and other spiritual practices (such as self-inquiry), one learns that true identity cannot be found in the content of the mind.  Rather, the true Self is that which perceives the mind, along with all else.  In this way one distinguishes between unconscious and repetitive thinking, and the deeper sense of I that initially perceives it without itself moving.  Over time, after becoming rooted in the deeper Self the mind becomes still by itself, without effort.

Likewise, one can differentiate between instinctive and conditioned mental processes (and their emotional counterparts), and a sense of individual will that possesses higher intelligence and moral integrity.  Psychological and spiritual evolution thus involves cultivating and developing the higher mind, and gradually allowing the lower mind to dissolve into it.

There are many different models of the makeup of the human being in Western and Eastern philosophy (amongst others), that describe different components of our being.  Some very basic models would be body/mind or body/mind/soul.  More complex models split mind into many different components and/or propose many different levels or dimensions to our spiritual nature.

There are many such models in Indian philosophy.  One model that I will mention here is the “’Kosha theory” as found in the Taittiriya Upanishad^[xiii].  This model proposes that human beings are manifest in five “bodies”, the first being our physical body, the second made up of life force energy (prana), the third mind, the fourth a higher intelligence and the fifth a pure spiritual force.  Beyond this it states that the true reality of the human being is the Atman (indwelling Spirit), and that the Atman is ultimately Brahman (the Supreme and ultimate reality).

This model explains that human beings have the potential to function based on automatic conditioning and unconscious instincts, if our higher nature is underdeveloped.  Alternatively however, we also have the potential to develop the higher levels of our being and operate with a clearer sense of purpose and will, using discernment to supersede our conditioning and primal instincts.

Awareness beyond the mind:

Through my spiritual path I have been blessed to experience pure awareness beyond the personal mind.  This is a very different experience to simply quietening the mind, as that requires significant effort and energy.  When you experience pure awareness there is no effort required to be silent.  Rather, silence is simply your nature, and no energy is required to rest in the Self.

This experience isn’t an out of body experience and it isn’t dissociative in any way (as defined by Western psychology).  Rather, it involves a natural and effortless clarity and focus, accompanied by a deep and fulfilling peace (ananda) and heightened intuitive and creative capacity.  From this experience it is clear that mental processes do not constitute your true nature, for they come and go, and yet you remain untouched.  As awareness you witness them arise and then fall, yet you do not come and go with them.  In fact, you may simply choose as awareness not to think at all, unless thought is required for some practical purpose.

It is clear that even what one considers to be their personality is also something that can be witnessed or observed from awareness.  Again, this isn’t a dissociative experience, but it involves absolute clarity and sanity.  The personality has very definite characteristics and it changes over time.  Yet the awareness is pure and without boundary or definitions, and it remains ever the same.

Human consciousness as merely the tip of an iceberg:

There are a number of models of consciousness that present the normal human waking state as merely the tip of the iceberg, in a vast ocean.  In this metaphor, only a small amount of the iceberg is above the surface, whilst the majority is below the surface.  Going further, even the ice is ultimately just water that is frozen, so it is of the same substance as the ocean itself.  Here we can see that the iceberg is ultimately tiny in comparison to the ocean as a whole.

This is certainly the view of Indian spiritual philosophy.  We are largely only aware of a tiny fraction of our total being, with the majority of ourselves being outside of our awareness and perceptual range.  Going further, even the deeper levels of our being are ultimately only a tiny fraction of life as a whole, and we are ultimately made of the same substance as the great ocean of Being.

From my (limited) knowledge of the work of Carl Jung, this was a primary foundation of his theories, particularly relating to the collective unconscious and universal archetypes.  However, It seems that this thinking has fallen out of favour in Western psychology in modern times, as materialism is now a presumption underlying most (if not all) accepted theories.

For those with openness to this way of viewing life, there is much evidence for this.  It is obviously far beyond the scope of this article to really go properly into such evidence though (and this article is already getting quite long).  I have given some examples from my own experience already, and I feel it’s time to move on now.

Galen’s “Basic Argument” – The Soul and its nature:

Another argument that I have seen presented against free will is Galen Strawson’s “Basic Argument”^[xiv].  This argument claims that we do what we do because of our nature, and we cannot help our nature.  Whilst Galen was a strict materialist, it has been argued that this argument would still hold even in the case of a non-physical Soul or Spirit. Before offering a very brief response to this argument, I should make it clear that I have not studied Strawson’s work at all, and really haven’t gone into this field.  Hence, I can only offer a response to the basic summary that has been presented to me.

I should also note that as a whole, I have never really felt the desire to read Western philosophy.  I have always felt (and still do) that the Western mind has been conditioned to be fantastic at many things (science, medicine, art and music etc.), but that the East is where true philosophy has flourished.  I feel that much of (but not all) Western philosophy is essentially mind games, intellectual speculation, or if you can excuse the crude metaphor “mental masturbation”.  By contrast I feel that much of Eastern philosophy is built upon personal experience from a sincere attempt to probe the depth of reality.

Having noted this, I can see no real substance to Strawson’s argument, but rather only circular reasoning and baseless presuppositions.  For me, the response is really quite simple.  The way we are right now (our nature) is a result of a myriad of choices we have made over time.  Whilst we may not be able to help who we are right now, we are certainly at least partially responsible for who we are, as it is a result of the choices we have made throughout our life.  Every small decision we make adds up to the overall trajectory of our life.  Every miniscule choice has an affect on our character.

To give an example that most people can understand, let us imagine that there is a person called Stephen who is unhealthy and out of shape, and wants to do something about it.  Stephen gets home from work at 6pm, and is very tired after a hard day in the office.  Stephen has to make dinner, and feels it would be much easier to sit down in front of the TV then to try and go out for a run or go to the gym.

Stephen gives in and lounges around at home instead of exercising.  The next morning Stephen wakes up and regrets his decision the previous night.  However, he makes excuses for himself and feels that he couldn’t help his nature.  Whilst he has the desire to get fit, his lack of fitness accentuates the tiredness he feels after a long day at work.  There is momentum in his lethargy and lack of self-discipline, and it is hard to beat the current of this momentum.

However, it all starts with one small decision one night to go for that run, regardless of the tiredness.  The first night Stephen may get half way round the block and then be exhausted.  However, if he persists he quickly discovers that as soon as he begins he feels energised and enjoys the run.  He then sleeps much better and wakes up with more energy in the morning.  He then comes home feeling better, and then over time can clearly see the results of his effort.

At the very beginning Stephen did not have the freedom to completely change his nature from someone that did not take care of his health and lacked healthy self-discipline, to the opposite.  However, the small choices he makes every day create momentum that, over time, create significant changes in his life.  Two years later someone could meet Stephen and say he was athletic and highly driven.

We can make the same case for literarily anything.  It could be an addiction to drugs or alcohol, a desire to stand up for oneself, to be kinder to others, to educate oneself and increase ones intelligence, to improve ones financial position or to find a romantic partner etc.  All of these are affected by the nature of a person at a particular time.  Everyone has a degree of freedom to affect the kind of person they are and the kind of life they live.  You cannot change everything about yourself or your life instantly, but you can make one choice after another that directs your personality and life in a very different direction from where it has been.

Obviously all living beings are conditioned by environment, family, biology, and culture etc.  I have written on this many times before^[xv]. Likewise, not everyone experiences the same opportunities from their personal circumstances.  If someone is born into a small village in a poor country with a corrupt government, it is going to be much, much harder for them to develop financial abundance then for someone born into a stable family in a relatively wealthy country, with good education and employment easily available.  However, it is simply not the case that as a whole we cannot help our nature.  We all have the capacity to mould our own nature to meet our ideals.

In terms of Galen Strawson’s argument still applying where there is belief in a non-physical Soul or Spirit, I would state that I often find that materialists often imagine all sorts of made up rules about how spirituality should work.  For example, I have seen materialists argue that if mind is in fact non-physical, it would have no means of interacting with matter.

As someone who has spent a great deal of time investigating spirituality it seems hard for me to understand how someone could actually argue this, as it seems to imply a complete unfamiliarity with the subject.  Many of us that believe that consciousness is non-physical believe that it is primary over matter, and that in-fact, matter is an experiential reality within consciousness.  It seems pretty simple therefore to imagine how consciousness interacts with matter.  In fact, one could argue that evidence of downward causation is difficult (or even impossible) for materialism to explain under their model.  Obviously I don’t have the time here to deal with this little sub-topic.  I raised it merely as it was relevant to Strawson’s argument as it has been presented to me.  The Western mind is certainly brilliant at many things, but it is of course still subject to bias.

It is a valid question for those of us that believe in spirituality, whether human beings possess a non-physical Soul that pre-existed before the birth of the body.  The Abrahamic faiths generally believe that the Soul comes into existence with the conception of the foetus, and then exists after the death of the body^[xvi].  Eastern religions and modern New Age spirituality generally accept the belief in reincarnation, and with it the belief that human beings possess an immortal Soul or Spirit that pre-existed before the current life.  Many variations of this involve the belief that a human may have lived hundreds or even thousands of times before, perhaps in a variety of forms.

Obviously, if a Soul is created at conception of the current life then this would suggest that all beings are somewhat at the mercy of the hand of God, in terms of the starting point of their nature.  That is, under such a model all beings still have the freedom to choose the trajectory of their life, but with vastly different starting positions.  In many ways, this corresponds with our observations about the vast differences in the physical circumstances of people’s lives.  One can certainly see how the Abrahamic model could be used in support of Stawson’s argument.  However, even under such a model one would still have room to choose the best of their own nature, and steer themselves from their starting point.

Alternatively, if we consider the belief in reincarnation, then we could see how the personality (and potentially life circumstances^[xvii]) of an individual could be built upon many lifetimes of choices.  Under this model the nature of a Soul is simply the result of thousands upon thousands of choices, not only in the current life but also over large spans of time.  One can therefore see that in this case Galen Strawson’s argument would be false, as indeed every being is indeed at least significantly responsible for their own nature.

Free Will as empowerment:

It is the nature of ego to defend the way one is and has been, and to resist true spiritual growth.  Whilst ego has an insatiable need for more, true spiritual growth involves the dissolution of the egoic mind.  Hence, from a spiritual perspective we can state that by definition the ego maintains itself through self-limitation, with defensiveness simply part of its nature.

It is an unfortunate truth that most people are their own worst enemy (again, I have written on this before^[xviii]).  That is, our ego creates suffering for ourselves and others around us, and creates resistance that prevents us from living the life our heart truly desires.  Ego will thus naturally gravitate itself towards beliefs that sustain itself.  For this aim, ego can either be attracted to beliefs that are by their nature self-limiting, or can appropriate beliefs from various sources and twist them to its own desire.

As an example, someone recently told me that they cannot forgive other people because of their star sign.  That is, they believe that the month (and hence star sign) in which they were born fixes their personality in such a way that they are unable to forgive people that they perceive have done them wrong^[xix].  Likewise, I recall many years ago hearing someone explain their belief that a Soul will go through a cycle of incarnating into different star signs in a particular order, as if the progression directly related to their level of spiritual growth.  This person believed that you can only be enlightened at the end of the cycle, after incarnating during a specific month/star sign.

I must confess to not know a great deal about astrology.  It seems to me however that whether or not astrology has any degree of truth to it, one could still evolve spiritually and become free, regardless of what month/star sign you were born in.  Even if we assume astrology is indeed correct to state that your personality is partially shaped by your star sign, one could still evolve from your starting point and bring out the best in your potential.

I presume the above examples are misappropriations of astrology, rather than accurate expressions of its doctrines.  There are however certainly no shortages of examples from world history where a belief system was based around disempowerment.  I will give some examples in a moment.

I would therefore argue that belief in free will is empowering, both for ourselves and for others.  To believe that you have the capacity to change and move towards the fulfilment of your dreams is clearly a healthy approach to life.  Likewise, to inspire others to do the same is in their best interests.

Alternatively, when you do not believe you have the capacity to change, you are not even going to try.  When you believe you are at the mercy of forces beyond your control, you perceive the world in a very dismal way, and your experience will appear to validate your belief in lack and limitation.

Just to be clear though, I have written many times before that whilst we should aspire towards high ideals, this should not involve being harsh and judgmental with ourselves or others. Of course human beings need to learn to be kinder to both ourselves and others. However, aspiring towards personal growth and inspiring others to do the same doesn’t have to imply that we project negative judgments upon our current states of being. The two do not necessarily have to go together.

John Calvin and the absurd and abhorrent implication of complete absence of free will:

The Christian theologian John Calvin was one of the main leaders of the Protestant reformation (along with Martin Luther).  Many modern Protestant Christians denominations have built their faith upon the foundation which he (and others) laid.  Whilst Calvin covered many different features of Christian theology in his writings, I wish to quickly mention here one of the main foundations of his theology: Predestination.  Whilst belief in the absolute sovereignty of God and predestination in Christianity didn’t originate with Calvin (Calvin himself acknowledged the influence of Augustine of Hippo), it found in Calvin a new emphasis and was perhaps taken to a new level.

I have been quite clear throughout my writings that I consider the belief in eternal damnation to be the most vile, irrational aberration of human thought in known history.  The very reason why I write is to attempt to separate truth from falsehoods, and in particular separate true spirituality from religious and/or cultural superstitions.  The very idea that the Supreme Being would condemn and/or allow beings to be tortured for eternity is simply abhorrent and makes no sense.

I have also been clear in my writings that true compassion does not necessarily imply a failing a justice.  There can be implications to misdeeds that can be allowed to play out whilst still giving grace and love to all.  There are models of divine justice that accept the reality of the hellish lower astral worlds that some beings inhabit after death, but do not consider these states eternal or mandated by God^[xx].

Obviously I have many points of contention with Christian theology as a whole.  I personally view theological and apologetic works that deal with the doctrine of eternal damnation as a misuse of the human intellect.  A useful analogy might be asking brilliant University students to each write a thesis defending the work of history’s worst tyrants.

Anyways, the traditional Christian doctrine of eternal damnation is already awful enough, even when there is belief in free will.  Put predestination into it and you take it to a whole new level of vileness.  Calvin’s doctrine of double-predestination actually implies that God creates beings with a predetermined destiny to be tortured eternally in hell!  With such a belief in God, one might wonder why they also believe in Satan, as how could one imagine a being more evil than their conception of God?  Prior to Calvin, Augustine of Hippo himself had already argued in defense of the belief that babies that died without being baptised would suffer eternal damnation.  Truly monstrous ideas indeed!  If blasphemy exists, then surely this is it: Ascribing the most heinous ideas to divinity.

Anyways, my point here was to give some extreme examples of the implications of a complete lack of free will^[xxi].  However, even without these extremes it still seems absurd to me. I cannot fathom meaning in a world where one doesn’t have the capacity to choose right from wrong.  For me, I cannot see meaning in existence without at least some experiential degree of free will and relational cause and affect.

Plurality of truth:

I have written many times before about the need to be able to balance out opposing ends of duality^[xxii], and the need to use both relative and absolute conceptions of truth^[xxiii].  As I briefly mentioned in the introduction, I believe that to understand free will you must be able to look at it from both relative and absolute perspectives.

It must be acknowledged that experientially, free will exists, at least to a degree.  We all have the experience of being individuated conscious beings that make decisions and experience the consequences of them.  Certainly, we also have the experience of struggling against our nature and instincts.  A major part of being human seems to be the search for balance between expressing the needs of our body, emotions and mind in healthy ways, and transcending them in favour of the higher potentials of the Spirit.

Also though, there is much evidence from science, philosophy and spirituality that our sense of personhood is largely an illusion, and that there is a grand order to the Cosmos.  In this sense each human being is more like a molecule in a cell, in an organ, in a body, than a separate, finite unit with sole will over its existence.  Many people have had personal spiritual experiences through meditation, ritual, psychedelics or Near Death experiences in which they perceived a grand unity to existence, with their own body, mind and soul as being like a wave in a great ocean.  From this perspective our normal sense of free will starts to break down.

However, for me it is not so much that these experiences of unity completely dissolve free will and moral responsibility.  Rather, they give a greater context to it, and expand its meaning.  To understand free will you need to see both the immediate, immanent reality, and the greater, transcendent reality.  To try and understand the subject with only one end of the stick is to be incomplete, and this creates issues when an incomplete understanding is applied in real life.

I keep coming back to the example/analogy of the relativity of time and space.  We know that time and space are only experienced as being real, and are thus only relatively, not absolutely real.  And yet they are still essential elements of our experience here as human beings on earth.  We simply cannot fathom our existence here in a three (or four with time) dimensional reality without time and space.  When people have experiences that appear to be beyond time and space they have trouble translating them through language, as they are outside our common vocabulary.

For me, the same is true of free will.  It may be that our experience of free will is largely (or even entirely) illusory.  And yet it is an essential element of the experience of being human, and life on earth in a human body makes no sense without it.

I would like to offer a speculation on the spiritual perspective of free will.  It is often argued that if our experience of being finite minds is an illusion and there is only infinite consciousness, then this would naturally imply that our free will was also an illusion.  I would respond by arguing that in this spiritual perspective, the apparent will of the individual is actually the will of God, under disguise and suffering amnesia.  Due to its forgetfulness of its true nature as Spirit, it experiences human will rather than Divine will.  Nevertheless, it is still will.  One could therefore argue that to deny human free will would be to deny Divine will, and therefore to limit the Divine and consider it finite.

Ultimately though, these are merely intellectual speculations.  Mind games.  Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that we experience ourselves largely as individuated beings.  Hence, unless you are experiencing the full, classical conception of enlightenment continuously (permanent union with the Divine, complete non-duality), then you are experiencing reality as bound by time and space, and also experiencing yourself as an individuated being possessing free will.  How many people on the planet can truthfully claim that they are fully enlightened in the classical sense^[xxiv]?

I believe we should live as if we have free will, until or unless we reach a permanent state in which we know ourselves to be extensions of the Divine, at which point such conversations are irrelevant.  The evidence of one who is living without ego should be that they live a life of wisdom and compassion.  Likewise, we should encourage others to live as if they have free will, until they too know themselves to be extensions of the Divine.  We should treat others and ourselves as if we are morally responsible for our actions.  Again, the evidence of one living without ego is that they do not do harm to others (though some may still take offence at them or may fail to recognise them due to their cynicism, ignorance and arrogance).

Mooji has repeatedly stated that no free will is not a good teaching, only a good discovery.  I feel that is a sensible approach to spiritual nullifications of free will.  I have attended satsang with a modern Advaita teacher that was reputed to be enlightened (along with a number of his students), where no free will was emphasised as a main teaching.  Whilst I felt some Presence in the meetings and felt that those present (including the teacher himself) were lovely people, I didn’t feel that they were enlightened.  I personally felt the teaching of no free will to be counterproductive, and I didn’t feel that anyone present was able to understand the implications of what they were teaching.

Moral responsibility:

I would hope that it goes without saying that this is a very troubling idea.  Certainly I have long been arguing that we should show compassion to absolutely everyone, including those that mistreat others and even those that commit crimes against others.  However, I have also always argued that compassion should not necessarily override justice.  That is, we can forgive someone in our hearts and show them kindness as human beings, and yet still demand that justice be served.  Grace should not necessarily cancel out the consequences of misdeeds.

To believe that others have no power to change their behaviour is to do them a great disservice.  How many people have reformed their behaviour and credited a large part of it to the insistence of someone who simply wouldn’t give up on them?  It is common that when you try and help someone with major behavioural problems they will lash out at you in their defensiveness.  However, if you finally get through to them they sometimes finally realise what a great service you did for them.  It is unfortunately par for the course that if you have a heart to help others you have to be able to not take it personally when they react defensively against you.  However, it is all worthwhile when you see someone turn their life around.

I truly believe that quite literally everyone has the capacity to change any and all of their behaviours, though very few realise a fraction of that potential within the current earthly life.  Whilst it certainly seems likely to me that our human conception of free will and individuality are only relatively true, I can see no reason or purpose in rejecting them completely.  I can see nothing positive coming out of the total rejection of free will and moral responsibility.

Human beings need to be inspired to believe in our own capacity to change.  We need to be reminded of our own potential.  Consciousness is by its very nature unlimited.  Anyone that takes the time to explore themselves through a genuine spiritual practice can experience this for themselves.  Knowing this, we can step back from the conditioned patterns of behaviour that keep us stuck in repetitive cycles.  In stepping back we pull the plug out and remove the power source from our ego, taking back our true power.  In doing so we realise that we can become anything we truly desire in our heart, as long as that desire doesn’t come from the conditioning itself.

In this process there is a certain experience of surrender to a greater power and intelligence, and a letting go of the sense of individual will.  And yet we continue to have the experience of individuation and experience the consequences of our choices.

In summary:

It is clear that reality is far vaster and weirder than what we human beings can currently comprehend.  Many of our attempts to define ourselves and life as a whole massively oversimplify the complexities that are inherent in the cosmos.  There is room for us to approach some areas of life with simplicity, and in other ways recognise the incomprehensible complexity of creation.

Human beings should live as if we have free will, as if we are empowered and inspired to create positive change and growth, and as if we are morally responsible for our actions.  However, we should also recognise that our sense of personal doership is only a relative truth, something that appears to be so, and is useful (or even essential), even if it is not absolutely true.  There is much evidence of a deeper order to reality that defies human conceptions of time, space and individuality.

In playing our part and accepting personal responsibility and empowerment with humility, we can align ourselves with a greater power, a greater intelligence and a greater love.  In this way we have the potential to rise above both the unconscious unity with nature of the animals and the conscious division with nature of current human consciousness, and evolve into conscious unity with life as a whole.

If you feel that what is written here is of value in any way, please consider liking, subscribing, commenting and/or sharing.

May all beings be empowered and live in peace.

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^[i] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2019/07/15/to-see-the-big-picture-you-have-to-be-able-to-consider-the-validity-of-many-different-perspectives/

^[ii] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/28/my-thoughts-regarding-the-scandalous-revelations-about-ravi-zacharias/

^[iii] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/science-philosophy-and-the-supernatural-101/

^[iv] There are many people that argue simply for physical, upward causation only.  I have heard people argue that as (they believe that) consciousness is epiphenomena of matter, all perceived activity of consciousness is in truth actually the activity of matter.  That is, if you believe that physical processes are the cause of the mental experience of making decisions, then ultimately there is no difference between upward and downward causation, as they are all then upward (from matter).

I obviously don’t have the time and space here to do this topic justice, but obviously we should not allow presumptions to pass as facts.  Otherwise this would simply be circular reasoning.  You can’t assume materialism in order to make an argument for materialism.  You can however suggest natural explanations for evidence that may go against materialism (though one would have to accept the speculative nature of such a line of reasoning).

The opposite however can also be reasoned.  That is, one can also argue that as there is only consciousness, all causation is downward.  There is no physical activity in which consciousness isn’t present, otherwise it wouldn’t be known in any way, and thus could not be discussed.  Assuming that matter is an appearance, experience or epiphenomena within consciousness, thus all material causation is only ever truly downward causation. Again though, the same rules apply. We should not use circular reasoning, regardless of where we sit on these issues.

^[v] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#Int

^[vi] Many people believe in spiritual and/or paranormal phenomena and do not subscribe to the belief in a Supreme Being. Likewise, many simply do not like their belief in the nature of Reality being confused with personal conceptions of God as found in theistic religions such as orthodox Christianity.

^[vii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereitschaftspotential

^[viii] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-free-will-doesnt-exist/ and:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/.

^[ix] My initial response to my first encounter of this case against free will was to argue along the same grounds, well before I had read Steve Taylor’s article.  I will cover this shortly.

^[x] I will point out here that there are different opinions as to whether drug induced states are equal or inferior to altered states of consciousness achieved through other spiritual practices.  I will give my own thoughts on this subject in an upcoming article.

^[xi] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/10/how-do-we-really-know-what-is-true/

^[xii] The only exception was during the 5-6 years (’99-‘05) in which I was smoking marijuana every day.  When I stopped, my (recollection of) dreaming returned.  It was actually quite surprising to me when I first heard in adult life that some people do not remember their dreams.  I actually have a friend who has absolutely zero recollection of his dreams, to the point that he doesn’t have any familiarity with the experience at all.  This was quite shocking to me that my own personal night-time experiences were absolutely foreign to him.

^[xiii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taittiriya_Upanishad#Ananda_Valli.  Also, see the excellent explanation of the five koshas at the following link: https://yogainternational.com/article/view/the-koshas-5-layers-of-being.

^[xiv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen_Strawson#Free_will

^[xv] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/trauma-suffering-conditioning-and-the-ego/ for one example.

^[xvi] Though there are some that believe that without salvation there is no afterlife in any form (hence extinguishment).

^[xvii] Just to be clear, there are other alternatives other than the simple (and potentially disturbing) belief that those born into difficult circumstances in this life are suffering the consequences of past mistakes, and that those that are blessed in this life are reaping the rewards of past good deeds.

^[xviii] Again, see the following article (which I have now referenced twice here): https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/trauma-suffering-conditioning-and-the-ego/

^[xix] Please note that I have deliberately written, “they perceive have done them wrong”, rather than just “have done them wrong”.  There is obviously no question there are many people that cause harm to others.  However, there are also some people who are so caught up in their heads that they cannot see that they are the one creating suffering for everyone (including themselves).

^[xx] I obviously do not have the time here to cover this in detail.  I have hinted on this before in some previous articles and written on it in length in my upcoming book (which has been now overdue for a good 5-10 years).  I will publish an article on death in the coming month/s, which will cover this topic in some depth.

^[xxi] I should mention that some Christians who believe in full predestination also ascribe to a belief in free will.  How on earth they manage to live with this cognitive dissonance is fortunately beyond me.

^[xxii] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2018/08/27/faith-and-reason-devotion-and-skepticism-in-spiritual-life/

^[xxiii] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2019/07/15/to-see-the-big-picture-you-have-to-be-able-to-consider-the-validity-of-many-different-perspectives/

^[xxiv] Please note my deliberate emphasis on the classical definition of enlightenment versus modern conceptions of it.  Many people today consider simply being free of uncontrolled mental activity and the turbulent emotions it creates to be enlightenment.  This however is simply a significant but early step in the classical conception. I will write on this at some point.

How do we really know what is true?

How does one properly go about investigating a topic?  Who do we trust to give us reliable information on a topic?  How do we evaluate our existing presumptions about life?  The reality is that we all carry innumerable presumptions, things we believe in with a great deal of confidence (or even absolute confidence), even though we cannot be absolutely certain of their truth.  For so much of humanity, this isn’t even necessarily something that we are conscious of.  That is, there is so much we take for granted that may not necessarily be so.  Many of the things we take to be absolutely true are only relatively so, and many more aren’t even true in any sense.

We are conditioned by our families, by our culture and civilisation, by our teachers, friends and peers, by various media (books, television, Internet etc.), by religion, politics, economics, by various life experiences, by our experiences of gender and race, and even by simply being human (rather than say birds, fish or plants).  To even be aware of the depth of this conditioning is a rare trait in humanity at this time.  Even rarer is the soul who succeeds in both becoming aware of what is beyond their conditioning, and also fully embodying their humanity.  Just because one may become aware of their conditioning to some degree doesn’t by any means imply that it is easy to then transcend this conditioning.  As always, intellectual understanding and experiential realisation can be two completely different matters.

As someone who has invested quite significant amounts of time to comparing competing arguments on a number of topics, I have some appreciation for what is really required to be confident (let alone certain) on a topic of contention.  It is all too easy to be temporarily persuaded by a passionate argument and a carefully selected series of facts (or lies…).  To actually take the time and effort to pit competing arguments against each other to see who comes out on top is extremely time consuming.  You have to really care about something to be willing to do this yourself.

Hence, most of us either rely on trusted experts to direct our opinions, or we simply go with the whims of our personal biases, without awareness of how little we know about a topic.  As I am human like anyone else, I sometimes find myself saying something and then quickly realising that I cannot be confident that it is correct.  I therefore attempt to differentiate between subjects which I have more familiarity (and therefore more confidence in my opinions), and others in which I am still more open, in recognition of how little I truly know.

We human beings are not always as rational as we like to think we are:

I would really love to participate in creating positive change in the world, hence why I write.  When I first started researching and writing on spirituality and religion I quite naively thought that if I could lay out a series of well-thought out and well supported arguments, that most people would happily change their beliefs in accordance with the new evidence and arguments.  Of course, I now know that this simply isn’t the case.

Theoretically of course, all human beings are capable of changing their thoughts, beliefs (which are deeply entrenched thoughts), states of being (mental, emotional and spiritual states) and behaviour.  Realistically though, change is often much more difficult than we expect.  In my last article (on Trauma and the Ego^[i]) I mentioned that even when we are at least partially aware of our own issues, it can feel like we are trying everything without succeeding.

Largely though, most humans are unaware how little they know.  We tend to prefer the confidence of false certainty to the uncertainty of the vast unknown.  Take religion for example.  How many religious believers have really, truly evaluated their sacred beliefs?  How many have truly sought to investigate the facts and compare different opinions to see who has the best explanations?  Even still, I often say: “it isn’t necessarily how much you read, but what you read”.  That is, even with a sincere attempt to come to understand a topic, one still has to encounter the right people, books or schools of thought at the right time.

Also, human beings tend to naturally gravitate to reading sources that validate their unconscious (or even conscious) biases.  Hence, I frequently discover when debating religion that others have never really read outside of their own tradition.  Taking Christianity as an example, most Christians only ever investigate other religions by reading the works of other Christians.  Likewise, they tend to only encounter criticisms of their own faith by reading works of other Christians (called apologists) seeking to refute such claims.

I have recently been re-reading my friend D.N. Boswell’s series of posts on Christmas and parallels in Egyptian religion (“In Winter Shall it Be”^[ii]), along with various articles and videos on the subject by those who do not share our perspective.  It is extraordinary to see how much confidence is expressed by those who really seem to know almost nothing about the topic.  Even more extraordinary is the disparaging way they relate to those they disagree with, seemingly unaware of their own ignorance on the matter.

How much is this also so when it comes to other highly volatile and divisive subjects such as politics?  How many people have truly examined politics in enough detail to be confident of their opinions?  Furthermore, how many of us are truly aware of the depth of our own bias?  There are highly educated people on all sides and they can’t all be equally correct.  Hence, even when we are well versed in relevant facts and arguments, our own ability to translate evidence and reason into conclusions is still limited by our humanity, which naturally includes our own fallibility.

Consensus and alternative views:

There are many subjects in which there exists a common census or mainstream narrative, and other narratives that are considered to be alternative, fringe, conspiracy or crank views.  It is all too easy to make fun of people with alternative perspectives, such as believers in a flat-earth.  The sheer scale of conspiracy that would be required for this to be so is truly staggering.  It is likewise all too easy to get angry with neo-Nazis who deny the holocaust.  In this example we can clearly see that such people are simply motivated by irrational hatred.

However, there are countless examples of subjects in which there is a perspective that does not necessarily deserve to be considered a consensus, and also compelling alternative views that do not necessarily deserve to be dismissed as mere crank.  In giving some examples here I will no doubt find some areas of disagreement with my readers, as it is highly unlikely that anyone reading this will agree with all of my views.

The philosophy of metaphysical naturalism is considered to be a consensus worldview in Western science and medicine (which is really a field of science).  As such, all belief in spirituality and the supernatural is considered by many to be crank.  And yet, many people (such as myself) have had experiences that have convinced us of the reality of spirituality.  Likewise, we also find much evidence outside ourselves that appears to us to support our personal experiences.  As such we have no choice but to hold a perspective that goes against what some consider to be established facts.

On a related sub-topic, many scientists and philosophers have argued that Quantum Mechanics (QM for short) has unavoidable philosophical consequences, which refute the basic presumptions of materialism/metaphysical naturalism, and naturally imply support for a spiritual worldview.  However, whilst this view has been put forth by many prominent names in physics, there is a mainstream consensus that completely disagrees, and considers such things to be crank science or bad philosophy.

Regarding the history of planet earth, there has long been a consensus view that human civilisation has only really appeared in the last 6,000 or so years (therefore beginning around 4,000BCE).  This view points to Sumer, Egypt and India as examples of the earliest human civilisations.  However, there also exists a field of alternative archaeology, in which many have argued that human civilisation goes well back into the last Ice Age, and beyond.

One well-known example in this field is Graham Hancock^[iii].  I first became aware of Graham Hancock when I encountered his book “Underworld”^[iv] in a bookstore, back around 2005 (and this was actually the very discovery that started my thirst for reading).  In this book he argued that there was overwhelming evidence of a worldwide Ice-Age civilisation that largely disappeared in a global cataclysm at the end of the last Ice Age.  Hancock has argued that the end of the last Ice Age was spurred on by meteorites melting large ice sheets, bringing on a sudden rise in sea levels and destroying the cities that were built close to the shoreline.

On the front cover of Underworld was a photo of what is known as the “Yonaguni Monument”, an underwater rock formation that bears almost irrefutable signs of human design.  And yet, the consensus view appears to be that it is a natural formation.  As such, Hancock (along with others) is considered by many to be nothing more than a crank, a pseudo-archaeologist.  I obviously do not have the knowledge to be able to properly evaluate all of Hancock’s claims.  From my own casual observations however, I suspect he is correct about many things that go against the mainstream view, though probably not everything.  As such, I again find myself forced to go against what is considered to be a mainstream perspective and consider views that are commonly ridiculed as being unworthy of serious discussion.

Often all it takes is for someone to imply that a belief or perspective is hilariously stupid or motivated by hate, and such views are rejected without discussion.  Whilst this can be understandable in some cases, it is ultimately a dangerous precedent, as it prevents us from considering information that might shatter illusions that we consider to be truths. Hence, this is a bad habit we suffer from that prevents growth in many significant areas of human understanding.

I couldn’t count the amount of times I have seen people simply laugh off the topic of UFO’s, seemingly unaware of the body of evidence that exists, and the often absurd explanations that are used to reject them.  Likewise, those of us that do not believe in a historical Jesus have become accustomed to being denounced as ignorant and even hateful (Bart Ehrman has compared Mythicism to Holocaust denial^[v]).

My point in all of this is that we cannot always rely upon mainstream consensus to provide us with sensible, well-educated and well-thought-out perspectives on life.  Human bias extends into all fields of study, from laymen to academics.  Whilst formal study has its undeniable benefits, there is also value to being at least partially self-educated, or at the very least, aware of views outside the mainstream.  There are countless laymen (and women) who have made valuable contributions to a field, despite lacking in formal qualifications.

We live in a curious age, whereby anybody can pull out a smartphone and do a quick search on any topic and have instant access to a wide variety of information and views.  Of course the Internet is full of garbage, sources that are simply not worth your time to read.  And yet, the Internet is also a treasure-chest, containing works by many brilliant but otherwise unknown authors (the perfect example being my friend D.N. Boswell).

So, my point here is not to suggest that all views are inherently equal.  Clearly there is a vast difference in the quality of different minds, in their ability to apply reason and provide evidence to support their contentions.  Anybody that has attempted to engage in any form of debating would know that not everybody argues on the same level.  Furthermore, many people seem to be completely unaware of the fact that they are not at the same level as others (see the Dunning-Kruger effect^[vi]).

True wisdom begins with an acknowledgement of our own ignorance:

My point is simply that we need to be more cautious about assuming complete knowledge.  Let us not see human civilisation as standing at the pinnacle of thousands of years of growth, but rather as standing at the foundation of great possibilities.  That is, perhaps we are still at Kindergarten in the grand scheme of things, just starting out as a self-aware species, starting to learn about the grand mysteries of the Cosmos.  We can therefore benefit from humility in the face of the unfathomable richness and complexity of life.

Many great minds have noted that the beginning of wisdom is the recognition of how little we truly know, or even could know.  A human life of a mere 100 years is simply not long enough to gain complete knowledge (by regular means at least^[vii]) of all the workings of the universe.

Perhaps therefore, we could all benefit by having more sympathy for those we disagree with.  Perhaps we can attempt to be more cautious about what we claim to be true.  Perhaps we can find awe in uncertainty, wonder in the continuous unfolding of the mystery of life.  Perhaps we can re-discover joy in becoming childlike, constantly learning more about this marvellous experience we call life.

May all beings find happiness, health and prosperity/contentment.

Peace.

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^[i] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/trauma-suffering-conditioning-and-the-ego/?fbclid=IwAR24LxbwaVbhJn-yuxitlRvfx6s67_C7ANttsTYcSkjQqt7t0mvncRqqZU4.

^[ii] https://mythodoxy.wordpress.com/2019/12/01/in-winter-shall-it-be/.

^[iii] https://grahamhancock.com.

^[iv] https://www.amazon.com/Underworld-Mysterious-Civilization-Graham-Hancock/dp/1400049512.

^[v] “”There are people out there who don’t think the Holocaust happened, there wasn’t a lone JFK assassin and Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.,” Ehrman says. “Among them are people who don’t think Jesus existed.””

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/15/living/jesus-debate-man-versus-myth/index.html

^[vi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect.

^[vii] There are of course many reported experiences of individuals gaining “intuitive knowledge”, either spontaneously or through various practices and methods.  There are even examples of individuals who have been claimed to have had access to almost infinite knowledge through spiritual means (for example Neem Karoli Baba, the master of Ram Dass and Krishna Dass, to name of a few of his well known students).

Science, Philosophy and the Supernatural 101:

Summary:

Whilst I am only beginning my in-depth studies of this topic, I feel confident about some preliminary judgments and conclusions. Science is a method, which has given so much to the world over the past few centuries, speeding up progress in so many areas at an exponential rate. Unlike other methods to attempt to learn about reality (such as religion and philosophy) the scientific method produces consistent testable results, and hence the scientific community has reached consensus on various fundamental properties of reality. This success has enabled rapid economic growth that has dramatically raised the standard of living worldwide, and enabled the development of technology and medicine that have largely solved many of the causes of human suffering through recorded history.

In many ways science has had to stand against religion in its quest to discover the true nature of reality, and many prominent scientists faced ridicule and/or persecution in their time for standing against the doctrines of “the church” (primarily orthodox Christianity). Incredible as it may seem, this situation still very much exists today, particularly in North America where the religious right are still trying to claim that the earth (and universe as a whole) is a mere 6,000 years old (as an approximation) and that various animals (humans included) have not undergone significant genetic mutations. Hence it is easy to understand why many might believe that science is immune to the curse of philosophical bias, and that scientists are the only ones that are able to leave their own personal dogmas behind in their work. Unfortunately, I argue that scientists too as human beings are likewise subject to philosophical bias, and that there are a number of very obvious examples whereby this is the case.

It is perhaps easy to understand why and how this has happened when you consider the details. Part of the modern scientific method is methodological naturalism; that being the presupposition of natural causes as the simplest and most likely explanation for any phenomena, excluding even the consideration of supernatural causes. Unfortunately it seems that there has been a collective move from the use of methodological naturalism for  scientific development to an unconscious and unquestioned acceptance of metaphysical naturalism (a philosophical position that states that only matter and material laws exist, and denies consciousness and/or spirit), as a philosophical worldview, and as the scientific worldview. This transition has been largely unconscious, and I believe that it needs to be discussed in detail to reveal a major aberration in the thinking of modern man.

As a result of this philosophical presupposition, many otherwise scientifically minded thinkers have rejected outright the possibility of various paranormal phenomena, on the basis that they believe them to be impossible before even investigating them. Likewise, many otherwise rational people have failed to accept the startling philosophical implications of highly successful scientific theories and repeated experiments, as they challenge the very foundational of the worldview (metaphysical naturalism), which has been confused with the method of science. Likewise, in regards to various human experiences and phenomena, which might be difficult for science to evaluate, many people have erroneously concluded that science has proven them to be impossible. Hence we find ourselves in the same stalemate position that we encounter with many religious believers, whereby they will not seem to even entertain the possibility that their presuppositions could be incorrect, and it seems that solid evidence and rational arguments only fall on deaf ears. We are here encountering the very same manifestations of the human ego that we encounter with religious fanatics; only that in this case the very people who so often cut through religious dogma fail to see themselves falling trap to the very same behaviour.

I believe that real evidence exists for paranormal and spiritual phenomena, and some of this evidence is scientific in nature (though it’s very nature may demand that we refine and evolve the scientific method to work equally well in all possible contexts). I believe that when all is considered objectively, the evidence strongly points to Monistic Idealism as being the worldview that accurately describes reality as it truly is. Monistic idealism states that there is in-fact only one absolute substance, and that substance is infinite consciousness, with all apparent diversity and interaction occurring within this singular consciousness just as our nightly dreams occur within the mind of the dreamer.

Whilst this may seem to defy common sense at first, I believe that this conclusion is not merely defensible, but unavoidable once all is considered. I believe that science already has 100 years of evidence performed under the strictest laboratory conditions that absolutely necessitates this conclusion, and I believe that the evidence will only continue to accumulate as science moves forward. I suggest that whilst accepting this model of reality may seem shocking at first to many people, it offers immense possibilities both for personal growth and creative power, and almost infinite possibilities for the development of technology and the expansion of human civilization, if approached correctly. Hence, science does not need to fear the inevitable here, but rather will only thrive as a result.

Perhaps one of the hardest things to get our heads around will be finding the correct balance whereby science continues to debunk charlatans and reject real pseudoscience, whilst it simultaneously evolves and expands to allow in many areas which it has to date unfortunately attempted to taint with the same terms. Science must continue to stand for truth, against the campaigns of religious fanatics, who have often attempted to push their ideology into the classrooms of public schools (and have at times succeeded). However, science must be able to recognize and question its own presuppositions, and whilst we continue to apply the method of methodological naturalism to scour the working of nature, we must not be afraid to accept the consequences of our search, when it leads us back to the inescapable and shocking view of the primacy of consciousness.

Main Article:

I have personally learned to be cautious about forming solid opinions until becoming well acquainted with the relevant data and arguments, at a level that is worthy of the topic at hand.  The question of science, philosophy and the supernatural is a vast one, and is perhaps somewhat more difficult to unravel than the question of how best to understand comparative religion if we presume that spirituality is objectively real (the premise of my first book).  As I see it this is because in this question we wish to apply scientific standards and methodology to the subjects of philosophy and spirituality (which traditionally go by somewhat different standards, and apply quite different methodology), and vice versa.

For this reason I would like to state in advance that the opinions expressed in this article are perhaps viewed as strong intuitions, which as far as I have seen (at this stage) seem to be supported by the evidence itself.  It is quite likely that my views on the subject will gain new depth over the coming 5 years (approx.) as I study it in detail, though it remains to be seen whether such study will change my overall conclusions (I personally do not think that they will).  Obviously also, the following is not intended to be a comprehensive word on the topic, but rather a quick summary of my leanings, and a hint of what I will publish here on this blog on the topic in the future, as well as what will end up in book form at a later date.

I am fully aware that I am courting significant criticism in expressing strong opinions on this topic well before I will be ready to defend them in the necessary detail that the topic demands.  I will in the near future post an article covering philosophical implications of quantum mechanics and an introduction to parapsychology. That article will go into some degree of detail as to various experiments from QM (in particular the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser experiments) and the arguments and counter-arguments of different camps as to their interpretations and implications. Also in that article I will give a quick summary of the field of parapsychology, and discuss in some detail the results of one large-scale parapsychology experiment, the Global Consciousness project, as its methodology and results are quite unique, and as the attempts at debunking them by naturalists that I have seen have been deeply flawed.  In doing so I believe I will be able to back up my conclusions (that I give here) with at least a preliminary demonstration of the evidence and arguments at hand.  Hence, I will progressively go into greater detail as to the specifics that I believe support my contentions, and I will just have to live with whatever responses I receive to my conclusions in the meantime.  With that said, let us begin.

I have personally had a great deal of personal experiences with spiritual and paranormal phenomena, and I believe that anybody else that has had similar experiences can attest that they cannot all be explained away as due to fraud, delusion or ignorance of natural forces.  The problem is then how to present arguments in the language and standards of science that can translate these experiences into useable knowledge about nature.  Science demands certain standards for any theory, and any claim about the nature of reality needs to be clearly defined, testable and falsifiable if it is to expect to be considered scientifically viable.  Failing this standard renders any claims about the workings of our world either out of the limits of science (and hence puts it in the realms of philosophy), or at worst it can attract the label of pseudoscience (junk science).

It is understandable why many people would feel that if a theory or claim cannot be supported by science then it should be automatically rejected, as science has been extremely successful over the past few centuries at revealing great mysteries that people of the past may have believed were supernatural in nature.  It is therefore a valid question as to whether there are fields of study for which science will not be able to illuminate, or whether scientific endeavours will eventually reveal all on every subject we can imagine?  The nature of consciousness is currently seen by many as being difficult for science to deal with, yet simultaneously there are large numbers of scientists devoting their careers to its study.  Many scientists and philosophers today believe that in the near future we will have a complete scientific (read naturalistic) model for the working of consciousness.

On the other hand, there are a significant number of professionals who claim that consciousness can never be understood in solely materialistic terms, as it is by very nature subjective and immaterial.  Such a view has become quite unpopular in western academia over the past few centuries, due largely to a bit of a mess associated with Rene Descartes.  As a result many westerners erroneously refer to any and all claims that consciousness is immaterial as being “dualist theories”, and then proceed to dismiss them under the assumption that mind-brain dualism is scientifically and philosophically untenable.  This is a great shame, as it reveals one of the great flaws in western education.

In truth, in most cases whereby consciousness is claimed to be immaterial and thus distinct and separate from the brain, the claim is made in the context of a monistic philosophical worldview (that being Monistic Idealism), which is the exact opposite of metaphysical naturalism (which is also monistic).  To dismiss all immaterial theories of consciousness as dualistic is just as erroneous as to claim that metaphysical naturalism is likewise dualistic and thus false (when in fact it also claims that consciousness and matter are ultimately the same substance, though in an opposite way to monistic idealism).  I will certainly write on mind-brain dualism in some detail in the future, as we really should be doing better on the subject then we are at this point.

Many people today believe that metaphysical naturalism is the scientific worldview, and claim that if you reject metaphysical naturalism then you reject science.  This is a slightly dangerous situation we have gotten ourselves into, as it appears to place science and spirituality in opposite camps directly opposed to each other, when in reality nothing could be further from the truth.  Some of those that take such views are willing to accept that spirituality can still have the right to exist, as long as it stays out of science and remains a form of vague pop psychology that adds meaning to peoples personal lives, but doesn’t attempt to interfere in debates as to the nature of reality, or the interpretation of scientific experiments.  Still there are other naturalists (atheists) who would like to see the end of all religion and spirituality, and do not believe that there is anything at all worthwhile in the entire field, and that the world would surely be a better place when it is gone (which some believe is inevitable).

As for those modern thinkers that claim that there is no divide between science and spirituality and attempt to bridge the gap in the mindset of the scientific community, they are largely dismissed as peddling New Age nonsense, and tagged with the titles of pseudoscience or “woo-woo” (a childish insult which attempts to presuppose that any and all beliefs in the supernatural are ridiculous and unworthy of a serious response).  I do certainly agree that there are a great number of charlatans out there seeking attention, money, sex, power and so forth, and there are likewise countless nutcases out there making claims that are worthy of ridicule.  However, there are likewise many brilliant thinkers and scientists who I believe have correctly attempted to balance scientific endeavours with spiritual and philosophical studies.  What’s more, I believe that there are likewise many brilliant thinkers that have correctly identified the place in science for consciousness, in which consciousness takes the centre stage, not merely as an emergent phenomena or epiphenomena, but as the substratum of reality itself!

I also agree that there are many New Age writers who have perhaps not risen to the task of discussing the intersect between science and spirituality at the level that science demands, and this is perhaps where we (in the New Age movement) need to lift our game.  Part of the reason science has been so successful is the high level of precision that it demands in the use of language, and its insistence that a theory be testable and falsifiable to be considered scientific in nature.  There have been many New Age thinkers that have failed to meet these standards, regardless of whether or not their conclusions have been correct.  Deepak Chopra is frequently ridiculed by naturalists for his attempts to bring science and spirituality together.  I find myself in a difficult position with Chopra in that I really like the guy, I agree with most of his conclusions and I admire his passion, but I tend to agree that his means of expression has not yet succeeded in meeting the necessary standard.

Do I believe I can do better?  Well yes and no.  Chopra certainly has fair more precise knowledge than myself, a lifetime of experience, real academic qualifications and almost certainly a far deeper level of spiritual attainment than myself.  So, I do not mean to insult the man; rather if I met Chopra I would feel privileged to be in the presence of someone who lives their life fearlessly pursuing what they believe to be true and good, regardless of the backlash.  However, I would like to attempt to do things differently from how I have seen most writers in the field proceed, and only time will tell if I succeed in attaining the standard to which I aspire.

Most scientists consider the field of parapsychology to be pseudoscience, despite the fact that it has met practically every criticism that has been launched towards it, and established rigorous standards for its research.  I will personally invert the accusation, and state that those that deny parapsychology are guilty of pseudoscience; literarily refusing to accept the results of real science and refusing to accept reality as it is, rather insisting on the impossibility of phenomena, which have been repeatedly studied in laboratory conditions.  Parapsychology has successfully and repeatedly produced results so far beyond the realms of chance that in any other field they would already be well accepted, but under the presumption that they are impossible they have still not received recognition.

Likewise, I believe there is a vast ignorance amongst the scientific community as to the true implications of Quantum Mechanics, and the mechanisms involved in the experiments themselves.  Whilst most scientists merely scoff at the claims of New Age writers regarding QM, so many of them seem to have little understanding of what has actually been discovered in the laboratory, and it seems to me as if it is only those of us with spiritual leanings that are ready to accept the startling implications of science in this manner.  I will make the rather bold claim that there are many deeply talented scientists who should know better, that are making claims that are mutually exclusive with the data.

For example, naturalists commonly claim that the differentiations between particle and wave results in dual-slit experiments are the result of interference between the particle and classical, material objects, such as the instruments involved in making measurements in the experiment itself. This is despite the fact that in recent years this possibility has been absolutely ruled out through highly sophisticated experiments, such as the many variations on the Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser concept. Such experiments have proven time and time again that it is knowledge of the “which-path” information of the particle that determines the outcome, and that this has nothing to do with any physical interaction.  Again then, I invert the charge levelled against the New Age movement in regarding to QM, and accuse much of the scientific establishment of pseudoscience, in refusing to accept the results of 100 years of experiments, and ultimately refusing to accept reality as it is.

Physics has quite literarily shown that reality is immaterial, as most of what makes up matter is simply empty space, and the only things that aren’t empty space (down into the realm of particles) have no fixed material properties, and only take on temporary physical properties whilst they are locked in interactions with other systems, in measurement and/or being observed.  Likewise, quantum entanglement has gone well beyond Einstein’s shocking discoveries with special relativity, and has shown that space and time are actually relative constructs, lacking objective and absolute reality, and can under certain circumstances be violated in ways that almost bring mockery to intuitive ways in which we view them.  I will argue that science has indeed falsified every facet of metaphysical naturalism (realism, materialism and physicalism), and has left in its place only one reasonable alternative to which evidence from all fields points; that being monistic idealism.

Modern western science and philosophy have become so biased against the possibility of an immaterial mind that they are going as far as to attempt to deny the existence of downward (mental) causation.  This is despite the fact that evidence for downward causation is abundant throughout life; one might even go as far as to state that it is one of the most self-evident facts of life.  And yet it poses a great threat for metaphysical naturalism, hence those that wish to see science wholly associated with this philosophical view have sought to deny it.  Furthermore, recent developments in neuroscience have been interpreted by many as outright denying the existence of free-will, an erroneous and outright dangerous claim, particularly when proponents of this view are quite outspoken in claiming that it is not merely a philosophical view, but a scientific one.

There is also some evidence that I believe is relevant, which is not specifically scientific in nature, but crosses over slightly into the realm of science and medicine.  Near-Death Experiences (NDE’s for short) have often been reported in cases whereby medical professionals have been able to attest that a patient shows no signs of life (heartbeat, breath, brainwaves etc.).  Hence those of us that believe that NDE’s are objective experiences of consciousness (spirit) existing out of the body have often claimed that this provides external verification of the reality of such phenomena.  In response, naturalists have attempted to debunk these claims and argue for a purely materialistic mechanism in the dying brain as the cause of the experiences.  Again however, it appears to me that such explanations fail for several obvious reasons; most notably they commonly assume that any evidence for upward causation (from brain to mind, for example the fact that altered states of consciousness can be induced through electrical stimulation to the brain) cancels out the possibility of mind being immaterial, along with the standard erroneous western objections to mind-brain dualism.

I would argue that there is abundant evidence for the brain-mind model of causation commonly known as interactionism, in which causality goes both ways; that being from mind to body, and also from body to mind.  For example, when somebody takes a mind-altering drug, this is an example of upwards causation, as a physical substance initiated changes in the consciousness of the individual.  Likewise, when somebody practices meditation or undergoes hypnosis these are examples of downwards causation, as free-will choices to direct the mind have corresponding physical effects in the changes to the brains chemistry and electrical activity.  It seems to me that naturalistic explanations for NDE’s appear to be approaching the subject not with the intent of objectively considering what is going on (the spirit of the scientific method), but rather with the presupposition that the claims of the people having NDE’s are scientifically impossible.

My contention then is that naturalists are confusing science and philosophy, trying to pass philosophy off as science, and unfortunately they appear to be getting away with it. This is a shame given the great success of science in showing how things really are and cutting through a myriad of speculative theories and providing consistent, replicable evidence for how nature truly works.  Unfortunately the lines blur between science, philosophy and religion when it comes to questions about consciousness, and interpreting data relating to the relationship between our perception of the mind and the physical organ that is the brain.

We should perhaps note a common erroneous claim made by naturalists, that if paranormal and/or spiritual phenomena were objectively real then this would necessitate that everything science has discovered about the universe is wrong, and that we need to start again.  This claim is actually quite easy to reject as it attempts to place the vast scope of science within the realms of simple black and white absolutes, when of course scientific knowledge has always been a continuum of partial, relative understanding of the working of nature, constantly moving towards a deeper, more fundamental conception of reality and natural law.  If monistic idealism is true, it does not mean for a second that we have to abandon what science has taught us about the world.  Rather, the only things that need to be abandoned are philosophical views that have been presupposed through erroneous interpretations and extrapolations of scientific data.

Monistic Idealism is the worldview of the Perennial Philosophy, as it is explicitly laid forth in the spiritual philosophy of various cultures and times (most explicitly to my knowledge in Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism and Hermeticism).  This view of the world has long been known to those who have studied consciousness in-depth through meditation, revealing fundamental and absolute truths about ourselves and the world around us. Whilst science has very much appeared to be the enemy of religion for some time, I believe that it is inevitable that the two come together, albeit in purer more evolved forms.  Science and spirituality alike must weed out the charlatans and the madmen from their ranks, and working together using different methods to provide consistent and cohesive knowledge about ourselves and our world.  When this occurs we will find ourselves truly in awe of the almost infinite potential for growth that human beings have before us, and the extraordinary possibilities for the development of technology using concepts from advanced physics.

Peace