The Scientist & the Mystic
Trip report from the Science & Consciousness Conference, held Nov 14-18 2021, at Broughton Hall, Skipton, United Kingdom.
It’s been on my mind — and actually weighing a bit on my heart — to write this post for more than a month. I so wanted to bring you a taste of what we experienced at this conference, and the groundbreaking implications of what became more visible for me. I struggled at first to create a comprehensive report of the “findings” of the conference. Then, I got over myself, and came back to my self. The following shares my own experience, synthesizes my insights, and offers resources.
As I wrote, four themes emerged:
Our consciousness affects the physical world (I affects IT); the empirical study of such phenomenon provides scientific and statistically overwhelming confirmation.
Such confirmation has not been assimilated by the general public due to the underlying (and unconscious) ideology behind much of science, which is reductionistic (only the right-hand quadrants are ‘real’), preventing the honest scientific exploration of the above; science has become a form of unconscious “religion” (Modernity), based on dogma.
One unexplored method for further understanding the interplay between consciousness and reality is to pair the empirical method of science with the phenomenological approach of mysticism; observing our inner world more precisely can help us understand the empirical results we get, and vice versa.
The above serves to confirm and embolden the realization that we can sense the morphic field that underlies a social system like a family, a team, an organization, or society. Systemic constellations tap into those morphic fields, helping us see what we know, but don’t now that we know.
My Conclusion: the knowing field / morphic field is every-bit as real as gravitational or electromagnetic fields; it’s time for me to convey how seriously I take them.
The Report
The backstory about how and why I went was largely due to the insistence, determination and insight of our COO, Marie Murtagh. As our informal head of R&D, Marie had been connected with the conference organizer, Peter Merry, for some time; we had both taken a micro-class with him at Ubiquity University on the subject of energetic architecture (how cool is that?). Marie had the foresight to see this as a great opportunity to be exposed to some really interesting and forward thinking people and ideas: how right she was!
After summarizing the main thrust of the research, I’ll move on to my own emerging view of the nature of the potential partnership between the scientific and the mystical path.
The cofounder of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab, Brenda Dunne, opened the conference with a summary of the lab’s findings over 28 years, plus some glimpses into the context in which they worked. Their findings can be summarized briefly as: human intention is decidedly able to affect the phenomenal world, in a way that ordinary science finds objectionable. Much of their research was based on the use of Random Event Generator (REG) machines, that essentially do mechanical “coin flips” in a truly random (and quantum) fashion. The overall probability of any flip is of course 0.5. Actual results may vary from that for a short time, but will eventually recover to 50-50. So much is straightforward.
When human intention was added to the REG coin flips — humans trying to influence the outcome, visualized on the screen of an REG as a horizontal tracer line in the middle that represents 50-50 probability, along with a parabolic line above, and one below, that represents when the coin flips are going outside the probability of 50-50 because something is influencing them — namely, human intention. Experiments can be done for one person, or a group, who intend for the line to go up or go down, then see what actually happens. We did this ourselves and found it possible, if not easy, to influence the outcome, especially if we were relaxed and unattached.
The results of thousands of such trials over 28 years — carefully measured by the PEAR lab — was that humans regularly (not always) influence the outcome. The lab performed so many such experiments that, statistically, the fact that intention can influence the REGs was confirmed far far beyond the standard of conventional science — somewhere beyond one in a billion!! By reference, standard scientific practice is to establish a .01 or .05 confidence (probability) level, establishing that an effect was not due to chance (meaning one in a hundred). Think about that for a minute: one in a hundred vs one in a billion. (A summary of PEAR research findings — a conversation with Brenda Dunne on “Humanity Rising” — is available here.)
The social context in which the PEAR lab operated was anywhere from isolation to alienation and even to hostility, with threats and critiques that were not based on the actual science they were doing, but on an ideological belief held by members of Princeton and the scientific community that such things simply cannot happen (according to their worldview). The problem was summarized by one of the scientist/participants in the conference as: the data is there, but the theory does not predict it, so there is no reason to really treat it seriously. (See the Rupert Sheldrake talk below for more detail, and the Galileo Commission link for an alternative.)
When we did the experiments ourselves (REG, remote viewing, etc.) what I realized was that the REG machines were acting like a kind of biofeedback that reflected the efficacy of our attempts to influence the field: we could see the effect of our intention experiment immediately on the machine, helping us know that whatever we were doing at the time was working, or was not working. If we paid close attention, we could begin to recognize the patterns in our mind when it worked, and when it did not; then do further experiments, learning and getting better.
This led me to a striking — if retrospectively obvious — realization: we could improve our ability to influence events if we used our phenomenological awareness, to notice subtle differences in our internal mental process when things went well — we noticed for instance that the readout went in the intended direction when we weren’t trying too hard and having fun vs. when they did not go in the intended direction — when we were trying too hard to concentrate and make it happen. This is a consistent finding to what people who are sophisticated in working the inner game of intention say — you visualize your goal as real, as already accomplished, and be grateful for the outcome. It is one thing to read that in a book, another to experience it directly.
Further, what I saw at the conference was a group of very dedicated and creative scientists, struggling mightily against the “mainstream” reductionistic worldview of their profession, trying to be ever more diligent in devising methods to creatively measure such affects. But I realized that this approach would only take them (and us) so far. I saw a bigger potential goldmine in the possibility of combining an empirical approach with a phenomenological one, an IT quadrant approach paired with an I quadrant one, the scientist partnered with the mystic.
In my work with systemic constellations for the past 19 years, I have come to see clearly that the morphic (or knowing) field around a system — team, family, organization — provides a vast depth of information about that system — things that we know on some level, but do not realize that we know. The uncanny accuracy of the information is sometimes spooky. Yet, there it is, again and again and again. This phenomenon of the knowing field having key information about a system makes sense, given that we humans have evolved as herd animals, highly attuned to the group requirements in any system to which we belong. It was evolutionary adaptive to be “psychic”. This is not “paranormal”, it is normal.
Despite my own experience and deep conviction about this work, I still at times attract people that just can’t see it, can’t go there. I believe they are influenced by flatland reductionism; and some part of that lives in my own shadow. It perhaps reflects some deep level of my own doubt, my incredulity at the nature of real magic. Hence, I needed to write this piece.
Indeed, the world is a mysterious and beautiful place, both mystical and scientific. Ah, how lucky are we?
Resources
Peter Merry, the conference convener’s summary and insights about the experience.
Internationally recognized journalistic leader in reporting on the interface of science and consciousness, Lynne McTaggart. Here is her summary and tribute to her friend Brenda Dunne.
Marilyn Hamilton, founder of Integral City, provided a nice summary of the whole event.
Rupert Sheldrake’s talk: A related talk (from Infosyon) on his ideas about the morphic field that creates the underlying basis of systemic constellations, with additional material about the marginalization in science of research that does not comport with mechanistic scientific materialism. As one of the scientists in his conference report said: “It can’t happen (according to our ideology), therefore it doesn’t happen.”
Nishad Dubashia on his Diamond Model, a beautiful metamodel that helps us see the underlying pathway of involution incarnating into multiplicity and fragmentation, then evolving back to the underlying whole and non-dual ground: the pathway of Waking Up. Nishad starts about minute 8:00. Nishad also presented at a private Spiral Dynamics group that Marie and I attended where he made the case that scientism is a form of religious ideology, expressing Orange values (video not currently available).
Galileo Commission: https://galileocommission.org/ - evidence-based, post-materialistic science. Consciousness is what remains as the last frontier (Vaselios)
Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World - Bob Jahn & Brenda Dunne, available on Amazon.
