There are three great scientific mysteries. Why is there something rather than nothing? Nobody knows. We do know that our universe started, apparently out of nothing, 13.7 billion years ago. The second mystery is the origin of life. Biology has advanced wonderfully, but the origin of life remains unknown. The third mystery is consciousness. Science cannot explain how life or consciousness evolved from dead matter. Consciousness lights up the universe for us—and for all living things. The most obvious fact—that we are conscious—and yet physicalist science cannot explain it. The three gaps in our knowledge suggest we are missing something big—something transcendently creative. Something we end up calling God?
Our materialist friends are optimistic and hope to get a handle on these pesky problems—good luck! Meanwhile. the gaping holes in the materialist worldview are open doors to another worldview—to a spiritual universe and the God-idea. These open doors invite us to explore the universe of spiritual consciousness. But since the industrial revolution and the rise of mechanistic science and technology, the collective consciousness has been hypnotized and manipulated by the dominant media. It’s hard to break the spell of the mainstream archetypes; hard to snatch a breath of inspiration from a culture intent on keeping us in the materialist box.
As it happens, there may be a way out. From time to time, people have extraordinary experiences. For example, I’m interested in experiences described as miraculous. These aren’t easily explained. As a philosopher, I took it as my duty to focus on experiences that science cannot explain. Moreover, I’ve had experiences that parapsychologists call paranormal—precognition, telepathy, healing, apports, and so on. My favorite, I was once physically attacked by a ghost in a haunted house. My research has taught me that miracles are a universal feature of human experience. They point to an extraphysical, transcendent reality, variously named God, the divine, the great spirit, etc. Such experiences are found in major religions, indigenous cultures, spiritualist movements, and with individual mystics, poets, shamans, prophets, and ordinary people.
All the transcendent powers—levitation, inedia, materialization, bilocation, precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, empathy, the near-death experience, etc.—they are doorways into an alternate dimension of experience. The prevailing intuition as people enter the deeper ranges of consciousness is the presence of the divine, the superhuman. Proof of this depends on the light of direct experience. The enlightenment happens in different ways at different times and cultures. God and the spirits are amazingly spontaneous and unpredictable. The good news is that science is joining the exploration. Many today see signs of the next stage of human evolution, a new sense of openness and shared higher consciousness. A new empathy for all forms of life on Earth. St. Augustine said, if you seek God, go within. The miracle of our own consciousness is the best argument for the existence of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment