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Current Research on Science and Spirituality - Pablo Sender
Current Research on Science and Spirituality - Pablo Sender
Download handouts
Handout 1
Handout 2
Handout 3
Current research on Science and Spirituality is far more progressive, imaginative, inspiring, and encouraging than much of the substance of what we typically view as belonging to mainstream science. Perhaps it is always the case that real innovation is shunned or ignored by the mainstream of the status quo if only because there are no categories or reference points to attach to them. But as Theosophy attests, Truth does not need to attach itself to the categories or reference points of any particular belief system in order to be true or to have lasting and profound significance. Here are a list of discussion questions for handouts 1 and 2. Your group can work through handout 3 as time and interest permit. For the proposed activities section of this class, participants should be notified of their chance to bring in articles of interest before the class begins. The contents of handouts 1 and 2 should be made available and read by participants before the class, so that more time can be spent on discussion.
Discussion questions
Handout 1—“The Healing Sound of Music – Music Therapy”
1- Share any experiences you have had observing children reacting to music. Give as much detail as you can on the physical and emotional changes you observed.
2- Share any experiences you may have had observing individuals with Alzheimer’s reacting to music.
3- Music seems to be the key ingredient for helping teenagers cross the difficult terrain of adolescence. Why do you think this is so? Why does music take on such an especially deep role in the lives and transitions of so many teenagers?
4a- What does the word “healing” mean to you?
b- Do you think emotional and physical healing are directly linked?
c- If you have ever experienced anything like emotional and/or spiritual healing, briefly try to describe it. What do you think were the key factors to your healing?
5- How do you think that music heals?
Handout 1—“Cymatics: Visible Sound”
1- After reading through the article, view the YouTube video “Sound and Salt” in order to get a visceral experience of the way sound creates form. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuyQSZX8HMI&feature=related
2- What are your reactions to the article and/or the video?
3- What does it mean to you that the forms created by sound develop with such symmetry? Do you find a symbolic meaning in this symmetry? If so, what is it?
4- What do the article and video tell us about the relationship between sound and matter?
5- Do you think this same phenomenon may explain why thoughts and emotions create forms of mental and astral matter?
Handout 1—“Parallel Worlds,” by Michio Kaku
1- What is your reaction to string theory?
2- What is the significance of the fact that string theory declares sound and vibration to be at the essence of matter? (i.e., what possibilities for envisioning unity, connection, and even conceptualization itself are newly present with a theory that puts sound and vibration at the core of all?)
3- What does it mean if we, ourselves, are essentially sound and vibration? For example, if we are literally vibrating, musical beings, how does that affect the way we view the following concepts:
(The group may want to take a few minutes in silent meditation to literally picture themselves as vibrating music, and then, the moderator might ask, “In this context, how do you react to the following concepts?”)
A) Meaning
B) Certainty
C) Change
D) Wholeness
E) Matter and spirit
Leibniz once said, “Music is the hidden arithmetic exercise of a soul unconscious that it is calculating.”
4a- What is your reaction to the Leibniz quote?
b- What do you think is the connection between the unconscious and creation (be it personal or universal creation)?
Handout 1—“The Hundredth Monkey,” by Ken Keyes, Jr.
1- Regardless of whether you feel The Hundredth Monkey experiment is the right example to illustrate the point, do you agree with this basic theory that “when a certain critical number achieves awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind?”
2- There are numerous stories and examples throughout cultural history that show ideas in both science and the arts seeming to, for lack of a better description, simply be broadcast in the air; thus breakthroughs in arts and science often happen somewhat simultaneously as individuals in different locations and different disciplines tune in to those broadcasts. Likewise, breakthroughs in science very often parallel new modes in art happening at the same time.
a- Can you think of times in history when insights/breakthroughs have happened in different or similar disciplines at once? Share your thoughts.
b- Can you think of examples now that seem to suggest ideas of insight/breakthrough happening in different disciplines at once?
3- Do you agree with the idea that the Internet is an instance of a sort of group mind or do you think the seeming lack of an unconscious or spiritual nature to the Internet disqualifies it from truly being a manifestation of group mind?
Handout 2—“Science and the Akashic Field,” by Ervin Laszlo
1- “The staggering coherence of our universe tells us that all its stars and galaxies are interconnected in some way. And the astonishing fine-tuning of the physical laws and constants of our universe suggest that at its birth our universe may have been connected with prior universes.”
Why do you think Laszlo states that “the astonishing fine-tuning of the physical laws and constants of our universe suggests that at its birth our universe may have been connected with prior universes”? Why prior universes?
2- “Native tribes seem able to communicate beyond the range of eye and ear…In the laboratory also, modern people display a capacity for spontaneous transference of impressions and images, especially when they are emotionally close to each other….”
Why do you think that emotional closeness seems to increase the odds for the spontaneous transference of impressions and images between two people?
3- “Hindu and Chinese cosmologies have always maintained that the things and beings that exist in the world are a concretization or distillation of the basic energy of the cosmos, descending from its original source.”
“[The] physical world is a reflection of energy vibrations from more subtle energy fields. Creation and all subsequent existence, is a progression downward and outwards from the primordial source.”
“In Indian philosophy the ultimate end of the physical world is a return to Akasha, its original subtle-energy womb. At the end of times as we know it, the almost infinitely varied things and forms of the manifest world dissolve into formlessness…In Akasha, all attributes of the manifest world merge in to a state that is beyond attributes: the state of Brahman.”
Compare this summary with the Theosophical concept of Cyclic Evolution.
4- “What we call ‘matter’ is the aspect we apprehend when we look at a person, a plant, or a molecule from the outside; ‘mind’ is the readout we get when we look at the same thing from the inside.”
Is this statement on mind and matter an effective description? Why or why not? Is it the same as the Theosophical view on mind and spirit?
Handout 2—“A New Science of Life” with Rupert Sheldrake
1- Collective unconscious, sometimes known as collective subconscious, is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, a people, or all humanity, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science, religion, and morality.
Compare and contrast Sheldrake’s theory of morphic field with Jung’s “collective unconscious.”
2- “For the first time somebody rode a bicycle. Before that, there hadn’t been a habit of bicycle riding. Now tens and hundreds of millions of people in the world have a habit of bicycle riding, and I think precisely because so many people have that habit, it’s easier for everybody else to learn to ride bicycles, on average, by morphic resonance from this habitual activity.”
Here Sheldrake uses his morphic field theory to imply a Hundredth Monkey-like quality of species habit that goes along with it. Do you agree with this particular example, i.e., do you think it is easier now for a person to learn to ride a bicycle than it was a hundred years ago due to the growth of the habit in the species morphic field? Do you think this is also why young people today seem to take to technology with more ease than previous generations?
3- If Sheldrake’s theory about collective habit and collective ability can be gradually strengthened within a species’ morphic field, what does that tell us about:
a- The process of change in habit of a species (according to Sheldrake); and
b- The role of the individual in affecting communal change?
4- Why is Sheldrake so enthusiastic about what he describes as almost the inevitable probability that science and spirituality are now merging and will continue to merge?
5a- Explain in your own words Sheldrake’s belief that from a spiritual perspective all dualities are essentially trinities.
b- What does Sheldrake’s dualities-as-trinities theory imply about the potential for
solutions and/or evolution beyond surface conflicts?
Proposed activities
Summarize and discuss the findings of articles brought in by individual group members on current research in Science and Spirituality.
Related Resources:
- Becker, Carl B., Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death, 133.9 BEC PES
- Brown, David Jay, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse: Contemplating the Future with Noam Chomsky, George Carlin, Deepak Chopra, Rupert Sheldrake, and Others, 215 BRO CEA
- Bstan-dzin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, B501 DAL-XIV USA
- Capra, Fritjof, Belonging to the Universe: Explorations on the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality, 501 CAP BU
- Friends of Creation, Spirituality, Four Great Revelations of Ancient Religion & The New Science, VR 0475 PT.1
- Goleman, Daniel, Measuring the Immeasurable: The Scientific Case for Spirituality, 201.65 GOL MI
- Hawking, S. W., Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, 530.1 HAW BHBU
- Hayes, Michael, The Hermetic Code in DNA: The Sacred Principles in the Ordering of the Universe, 540.1 HAY HCD
- Hoskins, Ianthe H., The Science of Spirituality, AR 3045
- Nimoy, Leonard, Astrology : Secrets in the Stars, DVD 0122
- Ravindra, Ravi, Science and Spirituality, AR 4565
- Roach, Mary, Spook : Science Tackles the Afterlife, 129 ROA S
- Sheldrake, Rupert, Morphogenetic Fields and Theories of Cosmic Consciousness, AR 0884-3
- Sheldrake, Rupert, The Sense of Being Stared At: and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind, 133.8 SHE SBSA
- Theosophical Society in America, Taking the Quantum Leap: Connecting Science and Spirituality, DVD 0054 V.1
- Wolf, Fred Alan, New Physics and Beyond, VR 0556
Download handouts
Handout 1
Handout 2
Handout 3
Current research on Science and Spirituality is far more progressive, imaginative, inspiring, and encouraging than much of the substance of what we typically view as belonging to mainstream science. Perhaps it is always the case that real innovation is shunned or ignored by the mainstream of the status quo if only because there are no categories or reference points to attach to them. But as Theosophy attests, Truth does not need to attach itself to the categories or reference points of any particular belief system in order to be true or to have lasting and profound significance. Here are a list of discussion questions for handouts 1 and 2. Your group can work through handout 3 as time and interest permit. For the proposed activities section of this class, participants should be notified of their chance to bring in articles of interest before the class begins. The contents of handouts 1 and 2 should be made available and read by participants before the class, so that more time can be spent on discussion.
Discussion questions
Handout 1—“The Healing Sound of Music – Music Therapy”
1- Share any experiences you have had observing children reacting to music. Give as much detail as you can on the physical and emotional changes you observed.
2- Share any experiences you may have had observing individuals with Alzheimer’s reacting to music.
3- Music seems to be the key ingredient for helping teenagers cross the difficult terrain of adolescence. Why do you think this is so? Why does music take on such an especially deep role in the lives and transitions of so many teenagers?
4a- What does the word “healing” mean to you?
b- Do you think emotional and physical healing are directly linked?
c- If you have ever experienced anything like emotional and/or spiritual healing, briefly try to describe it. What do you think were the key factors to your healing?
5- How do you think that music heals?
Handout 1—“Cymatics: Visible Sound”
1- After reading through the article, view the YouTube video “Sound and Salt” in order to get a visceral experience of the way sound creates form. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuyQSZX8HMI&feature=related
2- What are your reactions to the article and/or the video?
3- What does it mean to you that the forms created by sound develop with such symmetry? Do you find a symbolic meaning in this symmetry? If so, what is it?
4- What do the article and video tell us about the relationship between sound and matter?
5- Do you think this same phenomenon may explain why thoughts and emotions create forms of mental and astral matter?
Handout 1—“Parallel Worlds,” by Michio Kaku
1- What is your reaction to string theory?
2- What is the significance of the fact that string theory declares sound and vibration to be at the essence of matter? (i.e., what possibilities for envisioning unity, connection, and even conceptualization itself are newly present with a theory that puts sound and vibration at the core of all?)
3- What does it mean if we, ourselves, are essentially sound and vibration? For example, if we are literally vibrating, musical beings, how does that affect the way we view the following concepts:
(The group may want to take a few minutes in silent meditation to literally picture themselves as vibrating music, and then, the moderator might ask, “In this context, how do you react to the following concepts?”)
A) Meaning
B) Certainty
C) Change
D) Wholeness
E) Matter and spirit
Leibniz once said, “Music is the hidden arithmetic exercise of a soul unconscious that it is calculating.”
4a- What is your reaction to the Leibniz quote?
b- What do you think is the connection between the unconscious and creation (be it personal or universal creation)?
Handout 1—“The Hundredth Monkey,” by Ken Keyes, Jr.
1- Regardless of whether you feel The Hundredth Monkey experiment is the right example to illustrate the point, do you agree with this basic theory that “when a certain critical number achieves awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind?”
2- There are numerous stories and examples throughout cultural history that show ideas in both science and the arts seeming to, for lack of a better description, simply be broadcast in the air; thus breakthroughs in arts and science often happen somewhat simultaneously as individuals in different locations and different disciplines tune in to those broadcasts. Likewise, breakthroughs in science very often parallel new modes in art happening at the same time.
a- Can you think of times in history when insights/breakthroughs have happened in different or similar disciplines at once? Share your thoughts.
b- Can you think of examples now that seem to suggest ideas of insight/breakthrough happening in different disciplines at once?
3- Do you agree with the idea that the Internet is an instance of a sort of group mind or do you think the seeming lack of an unconscious or spiritual nature to the Internet disqualifies it from truly being a manifestation of group mind?
Handout 2—“Science and the Akashic Field,” by Ervin Laszlo
1- “The staggering coherence of our universe tells us that all its stars and galaxies are interconnected in some way. And the astonishing fine-tuning of the physical laws and constants of our universe suggest that at its birth our universe may have been connected with prior universes.”
Why do you think Laszlo states that “the astonishing fine-tuning of the physical laws and constants of our universe suggests that at its birth our universe may have been connected with prior universes”? Why prior universes?
2- “Native tribes seem able to communicate beyond the range of eye and ear…In the laboratory also, modern people display a capacity for spontaneous transference of impressions and images, especially when they are emotionally close to each other….”
Why do you think that emotional closeness seems to increase the odds for the spontaneous transference of impressions and images between two people?
3- “Hindu and Chinese cosmologies have always maintained that the things and beings that exist in the world are a concretization or distillation of the basic energy of the cosmos, descending from its original source.”
“[The] physical world is a reflection of energy vibrations from more subtle energy fields. Creation and all subsequent existence, is a progression downward and outwards from the primordial source.”
“In Indian philosophy the ultimate end of the physical world is a return to Akasha, its original subtle-energy womb. At the end of times as we know it, the almost infinitely varied things and forms of the manifest world dissolve into formlessness…In Akasha, all attributes of the manifest world merge in to a state that is beyond attributes: the state of Brahman.”
Compare this summary with the Theosophical concept of Cyclic Evolution.
4- “What we call ‘matter’ is the aspect we apprehend when we look at a person, a plant, or a molecule from the outside; ‘mind’ is the readout we get when we look at the same thing from the inside.”
Is this statement on mind and matter an effective description? Why or why not? Is it the same as the Theosophical view on mind and spirit?
Handout 2—“A New Science of Life” with Rupert Sheldrake
1- Collective unconscious, sometimes known as collective subconscious, is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, a people, or all humanity, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science, religion, and morality.
Compare and contrast Sheldrake’s theory of morphic field with Jung’s “collective unconscious.”
2- “For the first time somebody rode a bicycle. Before that, there hadn’t been a habit of bicycle riding. Now tens and hundreds of millions of people in the world have a habit of bicycle riding, and I think precisely because so many people have that habit, it’s easier for everybody else to learn to ride bicycles, on average, by morphic resonance from this habitual activity.”
Here Sheldrake uses his morphic field theory to imply a Hundredth Monkey-like quality of species habit that goes along with it. Do you agree with this particular example, i.e., do you think it is easier now for a person to learn to ride a bicycle than it was a hundred years ago due to the growth of the habit in the species morphic field? Do you think this is also why young people today seem to take to technology with more ease than previous generations?
3- If Sheldrake’s theory about collective habit and collective ability can be gradually strengthened within a species’ morphic field, what does that tell us about:
a- The process of change in habit of a species (according to Sheldrake); and
b- The role of the individual in affecting communal change?
4- Why is Sheldrake so enthusiastic about what he describes as almost the inevitable probability that science and spirituality are now merging and will continue to merge?
5a- Explain in your own words Sheldrake’s belief that from a spiritual perspective all dualities are essentially trinities.
b- What does Sheldrake’s dualities-as-trinities theory imply about the potential for
solutions and/or evolution beyond surface conflicts?
Proposed activities
Summarize and discuss the findings of articles brought in by individual group members on current research in Science and Spirituality.
Related Resources:
- Becker, Carl B., Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death, 133.9 BEC PES
- Brown, David Jay, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse: Contemplating the Future with Noam Chomsky, George Carlin, Deepak Chopra, Rupert Sheldrake, and Others, 215 BRO CEA
- Bstan-dzin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, B501 DAL-XIV USA
- Capra, Fritjof, Belonging to the Universe: Explorations on the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality, 501 CAP BU
- Friends of Creation, Spirituality, Four Great Revelations of Ancient Religion & The New Science, VR 0475 PT.1
- Goleman, Daniel, Measuring the Immeasurable: The Scientific Case for Spirituality, 201.65 GOL MI
- Hawking, S. W., Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, 530.1 HAW BHBU
- Hayes, Michael, The Hermetic Code in DNA: The Sacred Principles in the Ordering of the Universe, 540.1 HAY HCD
- Hoskins, Ianthe H., The Science of Spirituality, AR 3045
- Nimoy, Leonard, Astrology : Secrets in the Stars, DVD 0122
- Ravindra, Ravi, Science and Spirituality, AR 4565
- Roach, Mary, Spook : Science Tackles the Afterlife, 129 ROA S
- Sheldrake, Rupert, Morphogenetic Fields and Theories of Cosmic Consciousness, AR 0884-3
- Sheldrake, Rupert, The Sense of Being Stared At: and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind, 133.8 SHE SBSA
- Theosophical Society in America, Taking the Quantum Leap: Connecting Science and Spirituality, DVD 0054 V.1
- Wolf, Fred Alan, New Physics and Beyond, VR 0556
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