What about the fact that the
act of observation itself changes conditions, and influences the experiment?
What about the insight,
shared and confirmed by all of us, that as objective as this concrete, physical world
appears to be, we all still
experience it somewhat differently? That consciousness itself is subjective?
You know, two people can agree that `
blue' is a certain range of light wavelengths on the visible spectrum, yet there is a different "feel" associated with that color, depending on who you ask, their various associations, and even their mood & time of day? Oh, come back later, I'm
feeling blue right now. Don't disturb me, man, I've got the blues ... and I'm listening to BB King here. Or you know, just
say the word, and notice that one person thinks of the sky (`Carolina' blue around here), while another thinks of deep, navy blue, and a third person calls to mind `true' blue!
Esotericists, such as myself, maintain that
all of color as we know it is but a dim, pale, shadowy reflection of something vastly more beautiful, existing in the spiritual worlds. Nevertheless, a correlation exists, and
blue in the visible spectrum
does NOT match up arbitrarily with say, yellow, in the "spiritual" spectrum. No, gee, it just
happens to correspond with
BLUE.
But how would I begin to go about describing these `spiritual' or deeper, richer colors? If I said, "oh, they're so much richer, more wonderful, almost metallic & shiny, or shimmery - yet so obviously
ALIVE .... truly LIVING substance," what sense would that make to the hard-nosed skeptic, the man of science who swears, lives and dies by ONLY what his 5
known senses can show & confirm for him?
What do we make of two people, standing side by side, who can both look at the same tree, and describe its very being and presence in utterly different language? The one is cold, detached, and purely visual, while the other is more vibrant, and full of feeling! Is the first description inaccurate, or
inferior to the first? No. Is the second description any less helpful or realistic than the first? No.
My point is that if you add a third, then a fourth person, a fifth person, and so on to this picture,
each person will behold the tree slightly differently -
evidenced in their description. You would say that the
scientific bunch among these people would stick to "the facts" - to purely physical characteristics, yes? And what about the ones who are more "touchy-feely?" The poets of the group. Are their descriptions less valid, less meaningful or helpful? I think you will find, Mr. Science, that
among the poetic lot, there will be MUCH that they can agree on, quite readily. And while different
associations may come to mind, they all know that they are perceiving the same tree, and that, if engaged in dialogue, they are also weaving together an understanding of that tree,
equally valid as the scientific observation, classification and understanding - yet organized according to different principles, rules, or classification methodologies. Nevertheless, ORDER exists in their
systemitization.
But let's reach beyond, and admit to this group of onlookers a few genuine clairvoyants. Let's take a few people who can all partake, even if in varying degrees, of the supra-physical wavelengths of light - perceiving the ultra-violet in the very least, and perhaps utterly beyond ... into the emotional and mental/intellectual, even spiritual, wavelengths of LIGHT. Just as you and I, the scientific or the poetic lot, these clairvoyants can SEE the tree, yet their refined and trained SENSES (physical and
supra-physical) are able to gather MORE DATA. I would submit that, IF these clairvoyants apply the scientific method to their observations, discussions, and classifications/systemitizations, they can and will arrive at something utterly unlike
pseudo-science. It will be
SCIENCE plain and simple, and a noble one, which already has an established body of researchers, publishers, experimenters, and adherents.
Research into mediumship and/or the nature of life after death has proceeded in this way. So also research into all the many fields of supra-physical consciousness, as well as the subtler aspects of physical consciousness and activity itself. Even LIFE Itself, as something subtler still but no less objective, has been observed, catalogued & classified, and submitted to all the rigours of science - just as the form, or mechanism, and its subtler component, consciousness. Thus at the moment of death, many individuals can literally SEE the subtler counterpart(s) of the physical person ...
separating from and leaving the inert body behind. And this is far more common than some might think.
But yes, the hard-nosed skeptic will have none of it. Just as, equally, a man of certain religious opinion will maintain his beliefs
no matter what his objective observations seem to indicate to the contrary. Both will rationalize and explain everything away, as suits the moment.
But Consciousness Itself, the Soul resident within {every} person, the One Who Observes ... always does so without qualification or conditioning. It is the layer upon layer of the human mind, the filters of fears & expectation of human emotion, and the limitations & varying abilities of the human brain itself - which ADD TO or, more accurately,
LIMIT, what reaches our wordly awareness ... until the latter is FREED (through discipline, training, purification & expansion), and restored to its pristine, original state. But even this is a bit of a conundrum, a
chicken & the egg type of question. The Platonists, at least, have got a leg up, inasmuch as they ask, "Did the Soul exist prior to physical birth?" Oh, but
did it ever!
Namaskar,
taijasi
