THE NEW PARADIGM
Science has become the mainstay of our search for truth. We look to Science to validate everything. Its worthwhile, then, asking ourselves: where is that attitude taking us? The answer is not too good really. We are going to be feeling the exhaustion phase of oil and natural gas within the lifetime of most of us now alive. However, because we have not seen far enough ahead and built substitute machinery to draw energy from several available resources, we shall go on burning fossil fuels, even coal, - to the end. Unfortunately, this brings up the question of the CO2 and how it will drive the temperature of the atmosphere and it seems now that we may be threatened not merely with temperatures which make life uncomfortable and eventually impossible: we are threatened by SUDDEN climate changes and eventually the icecaps on both poles will melt and the world's sea level rise will be more than 20 feet.
These predictions stimulate us to take a look into some of the problems of the moment and ask ourselves to what extent Science as a general fount of truth is always a satisfactory source. For example, one of the most solid facts of Science is that masses attract each other, - gravity, - but after 400 years of pondering why, we still have no idea. Like wise the attraction of magnets for each other, - are the famous rule that in Electrostatics like charges repel and unlike charges attract as the basis of much in Physics and Chemistry and yet we do not really know why this rule exists. And what is an electric field? To shine a light on Physics, - the heart of Science, - as it is in the early part or the third Millennium, - Chapter 3 of this book takes a closer look. Darwins theory of evolution, Einsteins contributions to the Theory of Relativity, the Quantum Theory, and present ideas on, a) the origin of the universe, and b) life are all shaking a doubted by frontier thinking scientists. I've explained why.
Then comes the question of those phenomena, - some of them are very familiar to us, - which scientists, however, deny. Of course I mean ESP (telepathy and precognition), but also things like ghosts and hauntings. It turns out that some brave scientists, strong enough to withstand ridicule - have investigated these matters pretty thoroughly. Sometimes people who have just died turn up again and communicate with their loved ones. Many strange experiences occur near death and in the last 25 years psychiatrists, heart surgeons, and others have learned much from what their patients tell them. Is what is related to us glimpses of an After Life? At first when these tales became accounts and were clarified, it seemed that the news was always good, Bliss and Love, were the things we were to meet when we died. But, recently, as the data came in as it was realized that people remember the good things but try to forget the bad, there is another side to death which can be terrifying as well as the blissful side which had been so often described. At least 15 percent of the experiences are not good and act indeed as a warning that we are to take into account in our lives.
The investigation of the Great Question, do we survive death and the decay of the body, has been worked upon scientifically for about a century and the data, of course, are mixed but some authors in particular the UK author Alan Gould and a US author Steve Braude, have individually brought out books which are remarkable in their detail and come quite firmly, - after fighting a number of battles on the way, - to a positive conclusion: Some personalities do survive death and some of them seem to live again on the earth.
But these collections of evidence for survival bring up a great many Problems. Our bodies begin to decay directly life is gone. If there is to be "something else" which survives, which takes with it our memories and experiences, indeed our whole personalities, - then we have to ask: What is it? Over the centuries we have talked about this problem from a religious viewpoint and of course the word soul comes up, but nowadays the scientists who work in this area have concentrated upon a concept which for decades was a non-entity but now blooms forth and even tends to become the center of a developing concept. I refer to "Consciousness." The founder of Quantum Mechanics, Erwin Schrodinger, gave encouragement to scientists to embrace the concept of "Consciousness," and although the Consciousness has a thing which exists associated with, but not directly of, our bodies. And although he seemed to look at it for much of his writings in this way, - that this was the entity which defied death, he also said, - and what did he mean, - that there is only one Consciousness. Now most scientists feel that Survival of death is impossible because they associate the You with your body only and that certainly does not last long after the heart has stopped. Evidently, gradually, we have to make a mighty turn in public philosophy and understand that our Consciousness is like the driver of a car (our bodies) and just as, when the car gets old and broken down, we climb out and get into another one, a new and youthful car, so it seems that, at least for some of us there is an individual something, the Consciousness which exits the body when its time has come but enters another, - and perhaps many, - in succeeding generations.
In writing rather overconfidently about these matters I may be going a bit too far too fast. There are a huge number of unanswered questions in this new area (the Science of the After Life) but my main message is that there is positive evidence, obtained in a scientific way, that is too strong to throw away in a shower of ridicule, which, tragically, so many scientists have met the early statements about it during the last 100 years. It is time for a change. A change? Well, yes, a change in the way we live and what we live for.
The last chapter in my book, The New Paradigm, tries to say something about that. It certainly brings a new powerful element in life if we continue to live in some way in tune with the intricacies of adjusting to the positive evidence which appears to be before us now.
My book is meant for everyone who reads. There are bits of mathematics in Chapter 3, but theyre high school or otherwise freshman standard and serve to illustrate how simply the great ideas of the Quantum Theory and Relatively can be derived.
I wish my readers good fortune and I hope as much joy in learning comes to them as came to me in writing this book.
John O'M. Bockris
College Station, Texas, 2004 |