There are three great scientific mysteries. Why is there something rather than nothing? Nobody knows. We do know that the universe emerged from 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’re conscious—and science cannot explain it. The three gaps in our knowledge suggest we’ re missing something big—something transcendently creative. Call it God or by other names.
Our materialist friends hope to get a handle on these pesky mysteries. Good luck! Meanwhile. the gaping holes are open doors to another worldview—to a spiritual universe and the God-idea. The open doors invite us to explore the universe of spiritual consciousness. But since the industrial revolution and the rise of mechanistic science and technology, consciousness has been hypnotized by the main 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.
There may be a way out. From time to time, people have extraordinary experiences, often described as miraculous. These aren’t easily explained. As a philosopher, I tend to focus on experiences that science cannot explain. Also, I’ve had experiences we 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 (astonishing psi) 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 among mystics, poets, shamans, prophets, and all sorts ol people.
All the transcendent powers—levitation, inedia, materialization, bilocation, precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, empathy, the near-death experience, etc.—they are doorways into a different and richer dimension of possible experience. They are features of a higher human being, perhaps the future of our future selves. The prevailing intuition as people enter the deeper ranges of consciousness is the presence of the divine, the superhuman. Proof of this depends on direct experience. Enlightenment happens in different ways. God and the spirits are amazingly spontaneous and unpredictable. The good news is that science is joining the exploration of this strange god-intoxicated exploration. Many today see signs of the next stage of human evolution, a new sense of openness and shared 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.
See my book for details on the issue of self-transformation: Smile of the Universe: Miracles in an Age of a Disbelief. Amazon or Anomalist Books.
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