In this post I would like to talk about science, a field that has accompanied me for many years. Even though I recently radically changed my job, I am and probably will be always fascinated by science and recognize its importance in human's life. Nevertheless, as anything else, science has its limitations and I would like one day to assist to a radical change within its way of seeing and therefore studying reality.
"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox.
Now we have some hope of making progress"
- Niels Bohr -
Recently I have been reading and listening to many thinkers about science and having worked myself in this field for many years I have decided to express also my opinion in the context of what I have realized during my inner journey about reality.
I supposed my fascination for science has initially started by an inner desire to understand more about the reality I was living into and science, at that time, represented for me the only known direction to go. I have therefore decided to immerge myself in the study of biology and in particular molecular biology, a branch that tries to investigate the fascinating world within a single cell.
For long time I have dedicated my time in studying and working in the academic world but more recently something got broken: I realized that the answers to my questions could not be found out there in the visible world but within. My inner motivation in working in science got less and less powerful until I decided to change the direction of my life.
I, however, still consider science an important field within our society, with an huge impact in our lives. Exactly for this reason I would like science to be more open to the possibility that the direction is currently taking might be deceptional and that a 360° turn is necessary to study reality in a more accurate way. Quantum physics has certainly had an important impact on science's perspective but, overall, most of the academic world is still operating as if those conclusions do not apply to them.
I would like to take advantage of some questions I found on Internet about science as a guide to give my personal opinion on the topic.
1) What Is Science?
It is fundamental to realize that the science we are all used to hear about is a human creation. On this planet we are the only being able to observe and investigate the world outside us in order to draw conclusions about it. The main problem with modern science is that it considers the world an objective structure that exists independently of our perception of it.
Quantum physics and most importantly our own direct experience says that the world, as we experience it, is totally entangled with our very act of observing and perceiving it. No one has ever proved the existence of something outside the perceivable field. Can you? The world is therefore an extension of yourself (whatever or whoever you think to be), it is strictly dependent on our role in participating in the Universe. We cannot observe and interact with our surrounding without having any kind of impact on it. Our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions and our perceptions not only have an impact on what we see but literally create what we see and experience in the world.
Since science is a projection of the human's mind, scientists do not study an objective world but the limitations of their own minds.
By observing a tree in the garden, we are not looking to an actual objective tree existing out there having its own existence, but we are experiencing our perceptual and mental creation of it. I want to stress the fact that this view does not imply what solipsism supports, that is, that only you are real and everything else is a mental and imaginary projection of your own mind. What you call you is itself a creation/projection, you are simply not aware of it (or maybe you are). What you are has nothing to do with your body or mind.
So, why can we then share and experience a world that seems to be quite solid and objective. This brings me to question number 2.
2) What Makes Science Work?
Even though we might think that what makes science working is the existence of physical world ruled by physical laws governing the Universe that can be studied by us as objective truths, this is, in my opinion, a shallow conclusion based on our ignorance about our true nature. If only scientists cared more about metaphysical questions, their physics would be much more accurate.
Science works not because it is studying an objective world that exists as a factual structure out there but because humans are informed by the same source, Consciousness, that is filtered by the same perception, the brain (see my post "Brain And Consciousness: What Comes First? "). Consciousness is the only reality existing that can manifest itself in infinite ways (see my post "A Dream Called Reality", "What Is Reality?") and what we call "the physical world" is one outcome out of infinite ones.
Some scientists, like Bernardo Kastrup among others, have suggested that the brain does not generate or codify what we experience everyday but rather it filters out what should not be seen in order to participate in this specific "physical world" in a safe way. The common idea that the brain represents the software out of which our perceptions, emotions and feelings are generated is being slowly substituted by the hypothesis that the actual role of the brain is to filter out the infinite other dimensions existing within Consciousness in order to experience a coherent world in which humans can participate.
In the same way an antenna does not produce a radio program but it only selects one out of many, our brain selects specific information out of the infinite potential dwelling within Consciousness. Therefore the brain localizes and modulates Consciousness without causing it. It is therefore obvious that by changing the ability of our brain to filter some information rather than others (using meditation, yoga, breathing techniques or psychedelics' for instance) we experience ourselves and the world in a completely different ways.
Some scientific experiments on psychedelics have proved their ability to reduce the filtering function of our brain giving the possibility to experience what is normally kept out from the infinite field of Consciousness. These amazing results show that what science considers true is only valid in the relative domain of the human's mind. Outside it all the laws that are governing our physical world are not valid anymore and new physics should be formulated accordingly.
Unfortunately at the moment science labels those experiences as brain's hallucinations and it does not realize that is picturing an upside down world. I am not implying the usage of those substances as a way to go (complex topic), but I do support the science behind it as a proof of the existence of something vaster than what modern science is considering at the moment. By considering matter to come first, everything else is seen as unreal, the result of brain imagination. However, by putting Consciousness first we could explain many phenomena that are at the moment unsolved by science and matter it would became only a relative way how to describe reality. Whether we like it or not, scientists are not studying Reality but a reality, the one filtered by the human's mind.
3) What are Science Assumptions, Limitations and Biases?
In my opinion the most important assumption that is holding science from solving the most important questions about reality is that it still considers as true the existence of something called "matter" from which it tries to explain other phenomena.
Even though quantum physics seems to have debunked this premise, it is still common for many scientists framing their theories and experiments from that perspective leading them to believe that there is an objective external reality and that Consciousness is a by-product of the brain (no one proved it yet). By doing so, it will be impossible to explain phenomena that are nowadays well documented like the existence of parallel realities, out of body experiences, non-human entities, mystic experiences and so on.
Science has to realize and admit that the reality is studying and describing concerns only what is measurable and quantifiable by its own mind and perceptions and that those tools are limited. Science should not limit the investigation of reality to the mere use of microscopes and other standard techniques because those rely on the human's mind. To really study reality science should make use of unconventional tools that would help scientists to transcend their mind and perceptions and explore new territories realizing that there is much more that exists compared to what can be perceived by our senses.
Keeping a close-minded view on how science should be carried on and not realizing that all science is a subjective projection of our own minds limits its potential to have an impact on our understanding of reality and on our lives.
4) What Is Science Function?
I believe that the role of science should be to study reality in its wholeness and help humanity in its evolution. However, in my opinion, modern science is very far from this goal. It is important to admit that the science we know nowadays is strictly linked to the concept of survival. Science is indeed serving humans in surviving in the specific reality we are living into and helping them to expand into the Universe for its own purposes.
Nothing wrong with that. However, other than keeping us safe, science should aim to something higher like helping evolving our species. Someone might reject that science is actually promoting a huge step in what might be the society of the future thanks to the new technological discoveries that are leading us in a more evolved direction. I personally do not see those discoveries a real evolution but rather a system to keep humans on survival mode run by fear.
The science of today has probably some impact on few people but most of us hold science discoveries and knowledge as a belief not different from a religion. Science is definitely changing our habits, making our life easier and apparently more exciting with the promise of exploring new area of the Universe but this is not what humans need for their evolution.
We need a science that explores a different field of the Universe that is within us, a science that is closer to humans and that serves not its survival but its evolution. This science already exists since centuries, it belongs to many traditions spread all over the world and it has precise methodology of investigation. It has been simply forgotten and replaced by a science totally projected outside, studying a world that represents only its reflection.
I do not claim that modern science has no importance but it should be guided by an Inner Science that has the ability to ground our reality in more solid premises than the one used nowadays. This Inner Science has the potential to help humanity to realize the real nature of itself and of the entire Universe, to master its body, mind and emotions, to heal itself, to explore its full potential as a being, to transcend its own limitations, to travel in different dimensions, to remember what we have forgotten.
An entire Universe is within us still unexplored and, I believe, most of the solutions we are looking for outside us are already present within us. Inner Science is a much more inclusive tool of exploration of reality that directly involves and invites each human to become itself (as someone else said) "a scientist of the impalpable".