Science, Reality and Transcendent Experience

Submitted by Elia Wise

My invitation to the Drynachan Symposium came on the recommendation of our fine hostess, The Countess Angelika Cawdor, whom I met seven years ago when I was speaking at and she was attending a conference in the United States. Neither of us ever returned to that annual conference, but from that meeting a deeply inquiring and spiritual friendship has grown.

My work of the last thirty years has been that of mapping the relationship of Being and behavior and of communicating, from a multidimensional context, what it means to be a person. My inquiries and my insights come from my own naturally expanded states of consciousness and multidimensional experience, as well as from the written and spoken accounts of others who consciously access uncommon states of conscious-ness and dimensions of experience. A book I have written on this subject, Letter to Earth, was self-published last spring and has since been sold to Random House for release in January of 2000.

Although I dreamed that a rich opening would occur at Drynachan, that some confluence of our systems and psyches would weave a new warp into the fabric of three dimensional science, I came to the gathering allowing that no more might transpire than a meeting with open-minded scientists who were advancing intellectually into the domain of nonmaterial, multidimensional consciousness. Honoring the wave of hope I felt while reading two issues of Network, and being a dream weaver at heart, I drove 7 hours north to leave my 5 year old daughter with willing friends, so that I could fly from California to Scotland to participate in this symposium.

What I found when I met my fellow collaborators was so much more than open minds. I found open hearts, spiritual devotion and inner-direction. I found material scientists who were already practicing the inclusion of subjective experience, but who as yet had no maps to pass on, so that others in their respective disciplines could build the bridge and cross the great water. I found social scientists, theologians and philosophers whose disciplines allowed them greater freedom for exploration of the relationship of Being and behavior, but whose impact was limited by the criteria of material science. As a whole the group was so spiritually dedicated to facilitating liberation from self-limiting models, for themselves, science, and humanity, that I perceived this gathering to be one of souls uniting in service, rather than experts in academic discourse. I felt myself to be at home in this fellowship.

As a visionary who sees relationships rather than linear sequences, I often make analytical assessments regarding the when of the futures I foresee. As the days at Drynachan, our dialogue and our group coherence progressed, I saw that we were not yet weaving a fabric, but rather establishing a template, making conscious the inherent design of the cloth from which the future unification of mind and matter would be cut. My previous assessments of the timing of forseen transformational phases dissolved in a knowing that the emerging new fabric of consciousness would be cut in my lifetime.

As a nonscientist and nonacademic, I was not equipped to discuss our symposium topic from the point of view of any scientific or scholarly discipline. Instead, it was my hope that I would be able to demonstrate the relationship of science, reality and transcendent experience from my own experience and in my own state of Being. I hoped that in this way I might reveal the integrated workings of material and experiential reality for our collective observation, and that our observations might inspire recognition of means that would progress material scientists in taking the step before them-seeing the integrity and necessity of including consciousness and experience in the scientific model. Because I have come to my measure of compre- hension of the nature of things through direct experience, without the benefits or limitations of academic and scientific training, it is impossible for me to conceive of seeking knowledge and understanding in a model of reality that excludes me as a meaningful expression of the itself.

Although there were three of us addressing The Significance for Science of Subjective and Mystical Experience-each with different rich and deep personal experience as our foundation-I found myself in the position of being the only nonacademic. As it became clear to me that I had little no practical access to the shared references and technical language of the larger group, my subjective self wobbled in its interface with my essential/Soul dimensions of being. I wondered if my skillfulness in accessing the essential building blocks of consciousness would enable me to enter this sophisticated and technical dialogue deeply enough to demonstrate application of the overarching and omnipresent values that empower all languages, metaphors, mediums and communication and thereby make a practical contribution.

I soon stabilized the wobble, establishing my consciousness in the two domains of self and Soul, simultaneously. To know what my fellow collaborators were talking about I had to use Soul resources (higher mind) to track the frequencies within their conversation back to the inspiring, essential and universal values from which their language and concepts were derived. Having identified the universal value(s) the actual conversation was pursuing. I could engage with my Soul's understanding of the value(s). I was still one step away from being participatory. I then needed to use my bodily senses to understand the subjective meaning and feeling from which each speaker was approaching or reflecting each universal value. In other words: I used multidimen-sional experiential states of consciousness to know the essence of what was being talked about and I used my local material senses to receive the personal nuances that imbedded these essences/values with the temporal meanings of each of my fellow collaborators. How much easier it would have been if I had had a splendid education and could collaborate in the traditional fashion…and how much less revealing.

I can not help but reflect on how the process I just described is the very nature of the daily communication we enjoy-unconsciously-in the more readily accessible field of common human experience. History and genetics (perhaps two manifestations of the same value) usually preclude our cognitive experience of the distance we straddle between words and the essential values that make understanding of even our simplest communications possible. It is only because I was in an inaccessible field of experience that I identified with a different base system wherein I could find the needed common denominator…and observe this process that empowers communication. Surely it is not possible for people to communicate exclusively from our subjective resources of human experience. Aren't we are scanning and tracking at some essential level we currently attribute to intuition, to shape our delivery, responses, understanding and trust of a communication?

During most of the first full day at Drynachan I experienced uncertainty as to whether the little me could ground the capacities of the multidimensional me within this group context. I interpreted this as a reflection of the challenge of our entire group and of the subjective dimensions we had undertaken to explore. Could we include ourselves, so full with the variability that is controlled within science, and still pursue scientific inquiry with scientific results? What are the boundaries of science? Where are the lines? Why are the lines? Do they produce duality or reflect it?

I could not help but notice that others in the group were also transiting through their domains of personal uncertainty. Personal doubts, and insecurities arose, as did personal frustrations with the current limitations of material knowledge. Surely we were doing what we had come to do-to explore the significance for science of the subjective realm. My fellow collaborator's were pursuing this uncharted relationship of material science and subjective experience from within it-from within themselves--rather than from the theoretically disengaged scientific observer. How unprotected one must be to allow this terrain to emerge for exploration. How disciplined one must be to build bridges from one system to the other so the vantage point of each can be used to observe and assess the other-until they are equal in maturity, able to experience their integral nature, and produce unified revelation.

I had come to Drynachan expecting to meet the traditional paradigm in a promising, self-reflective moment, willing to acknowledge that its seams were bursting from some unseen intrapsychic expansion. Instead I found a group of heartful and empowering seekers who, far beyond opening their seams, were already weaving the new fabric of personal being and a new ground of scientific inquiry.

I can offer no more that to recount my experience of the Drynachan Symposiium at this personal level. What was produced in the practical sense can be found in the 12 points-or seed thoughts-we distilled at the meeting's end. With all of these points excepting #2 and #4 I am quite comfortable. I object to the word "Scientism" in #2 and I feel #4 has a scramble of priorities in attributing values to science rather than seeing science as a medium for expressing these values.

What follows is a slightly expanded version (the final paragraph has been added) of the abstract which represented my intent in participating in the Drynachan gathering. I feel this intent was fulfilled.

 

THE SIGNIFICANCE FOR SCIENCE OF SUBJECTIVE AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

The disappearance and reappearance of sun and moon were once considered mystical phenomena. Allowing that science is not other than subjective mystical experience, but subjective experience that falls within a more commonly shared context-which has enjoyed the benefit of centuries of exploration and testing-today's mystical insights empower tomorrow's science.

When the experiences of those who participate in expanded states of reality are lucid, orderly and repeatable, they can provide models and organizing principles around which the scientist-as-seeker can configure inquiry and research. If these models or principles are coherent with daily human experience and readily observed from the point of view of human consciousness and behavior, then conceptual transformation- paradigm shifting-can expand easily from the scientific forum into popular understanding.

When the individuals who experience expanded states accomplish conscious personal integration with the universal context that informs them, they have the ability to communicate the vital energy of these states and thereby stimulate a receptive scientist into direct experience and understanding of the unified field in which the context of human consciousness and the context of science are integral.

In current efforts transformational scientists are attempting to find analogies between profound spiritual teachings and quantum mechanics, expanding the 3 fields of physics to include the 4th field of human consciousness, Those who know themselves within this unified field can offer metastructures for the phenomena quantum physics address.

Finding the language and understandings that engage the transformational community (numbering 44,000,000 people in America alone) is an objective to which I am devoted. We live in a world where our success at poor ideas is killing us. There is a massive population ready and willing to explore and engage in new social models. When science engages with the consciousness that motivates this population, there will be a merging of the material and the experiential that will empower both, giving rise to practical social manifestations of their integration-a more humane society.

Conceptual continuity of the material and the experiential will seed a new ground of Being.

References

Ray, Paul, H. (1996) The Integral Culture Survey: A Study of the Emergence of Transformational Values in America. Institute of Noetic Sciences in partnership with Fetzer Institute.
Wise, Elia (1998) Letter to Earth, California: Inspired Company.